Voice From The Back: Hard Times (2007)

The Voice From The Back Column from the July 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hard Times 

Capitalism treats everything as a business. The Thomas Deacon Academy in Peterborough is a good example. Chief executive of the new ú46 million academy Alan McMurdo makes his aims plain. He will have no playground and insists that the school will be a business concern. “Dr McMurdo … says that he wants to run his school like a business, treating pupils as employees. Lunch will be incorporated into the third lesson of the day, when students will be escorted to the refectory and given 30 minutes to eat before returning directly to the classroom. … ‘It’s all about the investment of public money,’ he said.” (Times, 14 May) Charles Dickens’s tyrannical school teacher Gradgrind looks positively benevolent compared to McMurdo.

Moral Majority nonsense

The death of Jerry Falwell, the founder of Moral Majority Inc. marks the end of an obnoxious combination of rightwing politics, homophobia, racialism and US nationalism. In the 1980s he had a 21 million TV viewing audience and a church that was enjoying an income of £45 million a year. “While MMI was avowedly bipartisan, he claimed that Democrats were a ‘dangerous minority of homosexuals, feminists, socialists and freezeniks’. He said that anyone who was anti-Israel was anti-God, but later added that the Antichrist was Jewish, and that Jews, like Roman Catholics, had no place in heaven.” (Times, 16 May) His life is a sad commentary on the gullibility of many American workers. Eventually his MMI ended in financial bankruptcy to match its intellectual bankruptcy.

USA, fantasy and reality 

“At least 10 of the Republicans and Democrats hoping to run for U.S. president in the November 2008 election are millionaires, The Washington Post reported on Thursday. Collectively, the candidates are worth at least a quarter of a billion dollars, the newspaper said. Republican Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and founder of a private equity firm, is the richest of the field with personal assets estimated by his campaign at $190 million to $250 million, the Post reported. …The Post noted a long history of the very wealthy becoming president, from Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.” (Yahoo News, 17, May) So much for the fantasy of “log cabin to White House”.

Merchants of Death

“The Government’s pledge ten years ago to act ethically and openly when licensing arms export sales has failed to eradicate corruption or stop weapons ending up in the wrong hands, a report says today.” (Times, 21 May) The report The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: a Decade of Labour’s Arms Exports is produced by Saferworld and reports that Britain has consistently approved military exports to countries accused of violating human rights, including Colombia and Indonesia. They make peaceful electoral promises, but in power – business is business.

Let them suffer

“Sick children who have been taking part in trials for a drug that has transformed their lives now face the prospect of being denied the treatment because of NHS cost-cutting. Doctors have condemned the NHS for inflicting misery on children who have the painful rare blood disorder sickle cell anaemia. Some children have gone from the agonising routine of having their parents insert a needle into their stomach for eight to 12 hours a night at least five nights a week, to taking two Exjade tablets daily. The drug cleanses their blood of life-threatening excess iron – a side effect of the frequent blood transfusions needed to treat the disease.” (Observer, 3 June) 10,000 people in the UK suffer from this condition, so why the delay in supplying this drug? It costs £10,000-£15,000 for a year’s supply for a sufferer. Need any other explanation?

Capitalism distorts science 

Two separate items from the same day’s newspaper illustrate the harshness of capitalism. “Several men were arrested in an organ-smuggling inquiry in Jordan for allegedly luring poor people to sell their kidneys. More than 80 cases have been uncovered in recent months. Each kidney can sell for up to $2,000 (£1,000).” (Times, 5 June)

“Clinical trials that compare two similar drugs are significantly more likely to favour the one made by the company that pays for the work, according to a study that sheds new light on bias in medical research. …The work, by a team led by Lisa Bero, Professor of Clinical Pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco, raises fresh concern about the influence of pharmaceutical companies over research.” (Times, 5 June)

Growing old disgracefully 

The journalist Mary Riddell paints a dire picture of what it is like to be old when you are poor. “Some of the 31,000 pensioners who died of cold-related illnesses in the last five winters would still be alive, but for enforced frugality. … In its Spotlight survey out this week Help the Aged will present a disturbing picture of worsening old age. According to its findings, 144,000 people never leave their homes, 21 per cent live in poverty and more than one in 10 is chronically lonely, a figure up significantly in the past year; 73 per cent of adults say older people face routine discrimination.” (Observer, 10 June) After a lifetime of work and exploitation, this is the fate of many workers inside capitalism.

Editorial: The profit system must go (2007)

Editorial from the July 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Things are not produced today to meet people’s needs. They are produced to make a profit. And that’s the cause of the problems we face.

Under the profit system profits always come first, before providing basic services like health care and transport, before improving conditions at work, and before protecting the environment. At the same time it encourages a get-rich-quick climate where competition to make money takes over from cooperation and community values. Everything is reduced to its cash value and people are judged, not for what they are but by how much money they have.

Look at the results. The health service is creaking. The transport system is in chaos. Schools have become swot shops. Pollution is rife and the environment under attack. The poor have got poorer. Begging and homelessness have spread. Crime is rising. Racism is reviving. Business culture reigns supreme, with “market forces”, “competition” and “profit” as the buzz-words. Life is becoming more and more commercialized and empty. People are becoming isolated from each other, with drug abuse and mental illness on the increase. The standard of living may be going up, but the standard of life is going down. Under the profit system production is in the hands of profit-seeking business enterprises – some state-owned, but mostly private – all competing to maximise the rate of return on the money invested in them. Decisions as to what to produce and how much, and how and where to produce it, are made not in response to people’s needs but in response to market forces. For a business, its profits are the difference between its sales receipts and its production costs. Market forces act on both. Through competition between different firms, they force each firm to seek to maximise its sales and to minimise its costs.

Both these have serious consequences for the way we live.

Maximising sales turns society into one huge marketplace. Advertising, the hard sell and swindles to trap the unwary have all grown over the years, and are getting worse. At one time television was free from commercial ads. Not any longer. Then came commercial radio. Sunday selling has been allowed. So, now buying and selling can go on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All this represents a commercialisation and a degradation of our lives. Minimising costs so as to maximise profits has equally harmful consequences. When a firm has a choice between two materials or two methods of production, one cheaper and the other safer or less damaging to the environment, it has to chose the first. Otherwise its production costs would be higher and it would lose out in the battle of competition. Its profits would be less and it would eventually risk being driven out of business altogether. The health and welfare of the workforce and the effects on the environment take second place. That’s what minimising costs means. This why at work we suffer speed-up, pain, stress, boredom, overwork and accidents. This is why we have to work long hours, shiftwork and nightwork. This is why the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe are all polluted. This is why the Earth’s non-renewal mineral and energy resources are plundered. This is why natural balances are upset and the environment destroyed.

The profit system can’t help doing this. It’s the only way it can work. Which is why it must go.

Letter: Panama canal (2007)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

The article in last month’s issue on the Panama Canal rightly points out that the reason for the canal at this site was political. Of nineteen possible routes this was one of the worse. A more attractive one was the San Juan River/Lake Nicaragua route, but as this formed the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica would have been difficult to control.

The Panama Canal can now only be used by vessels of ‘panamax’ size, the locks being 1000ft long and 110ft wide. Very restricted for present and future use.

In the 1960s President L. B. Johnson wanted to build a seaway through the isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico using nuclear explosives. This would be maintenance-free when finished and very cheap to excavate. Fortunately he could not sell this “grand project” to the Mexicans.

The President of Nicaragua has pledged to build an all-Nicaraguan canal on the river Escondido/Lake Nicaragua route. The drive for huge profits may even see this constructed.

Fred Moore, 

Canterbury.

The Haves and the Have-Yachts (2007)

From the July 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

The rich are not all equally wealthy. According to an article in Times at the end of last year (4 December), a rift is opening up among wealthy Britons between the merely rich, and the super-rich. The reporter went to a West London nursery school – £1800 a term, or £5400 a year – and found the conversation mainly about the forthcoming City bonuses. “According to the centre for Economics and Business Research, a staggering £8.8 billion will be paid out in this next round, with more than 4200 individuals receiving more than £1 million each. Much of that money (around £5 billion) will find its way into property, half of it in London; and of the overall bonus, between 60 and 70 percent will go to non-UK residents – i.e., foreign nationals working in London, many of whom will not be liable for UK tax.” Many of these latter are now the super-rich, whose expenditure is soaring above that of the rich: as Rachel Johnston put it in her book Notting Hell, it is now “the Haves versus the Have Yachts”.

One of the main reasons for the rise of the super-rich is the policy of the Labour government: Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and their friends do love the wealthy. “Britain has one of the most business-friendly tax environments on the planet, exemplified by the non-domicile (or ‘non-dom’) tax laws. In simple terms, these allow wealthy foreign nationals to hold their main liquid assets in tax-free offshore environments while operating freely within the UK – largely untroubled by the Exchequer (the same is not true of British nationals).” The result is that “London’s status as the place to make and take money has only been reinforced in recent years”.

With such competition, the merely rich feel jealous about the super-rich. One City fund manager (Eton and Oxford) said “Not only do they look down on us, they have made our lives more uncomfortable from a financial point of view too, by pushing up the price of traditional wealth assets – school fees, house prices, staff.” An investment banker said, “the super-rich are fine. They either don’t need to pay tax at all or find ways of avoiding it. I don’t have enough cash to employ a clever accountant.”

The Have Yachts – people “with more than £15 million to invest” – operate on a higher level. “These are people who think nothing of spending several million on a party, or having their children picked up from school by helicopter and transported to a waiting private jet for a weekend in Gstaad. They have so much money that they pay experts to help them spend it.” For example, “at Quintessentially, the global concierge service, their ‘elite’ membership is by invitation only and costs a basic £24,000 a year. For that, members have access to finders and fixers in every major city across the world, 24 hours a day.” Among the requests they have dealt with are “finding a premiership footballer to play with a member’s son; sourcing twelve albino peacocks for a party with just three hours’ notice; completely redesigning a London hotel room; and organizing a trip to Hudson Bay, Canada, during the one month each year when the world’s largest concentration of polar bears gathers on the ice”. One service in much demand is finding appropriate houses, usually in London, or by the sea in the west country.

A director of a Central London estate agency said “super-rich foreigners” were their best customers. “Between 70 and 80 percent of our top deals are with foreign nationals.” The steady injection of largely tax-free money by the super-rich into the London housing market (prices in the “most exclusive districts” went up by 31 percent in the year to February 2007) keeps all prices rising, because the cost of cheaper houses follows the market upwards; so ultimately all the young people trying to get their own property, or giving up in despair, are feeling the knock-on effects of the Blair/Brown romance with the rich. If the specially favourable terms for foreign magnates are thought to be under threat, prices decline. “House prices in Central London took a considerable dip in 2004 when ‘non-dom’ was last under serious review; but a sustained campaign from the City and the Exchequer persuaded” the Chancellor to relent, and the super-rich breathed a sigh of relief.

Tax Haven

The International Monetary Fund has decided that Britain is now an offshore tax haven, listing it “alongside the likes of Bermuda and the Cayman Islands – unregulated jurisdictions associated with illicit funds” (Observer, 22 April). The “non-dom” people save vast amounts by largely avoiding British income tax. “The accountancy firm Grant Thornton worked out that the UK’s fifty-four billionaires paid income tax totalling just £14.7 million on their £126 billion combined fortunes” (Observer 4 March). That makes a rate of about one-hundredth part the percentage that the merely rich, who can’t wangle this particular tax-exemption, have to pay on their incomes. Among the “non-dom” Londoners are Lakshmi Mittal, Roman Abramovich, and the Hinduja brothers. The Observer (22 April) has several times asked Sir Ronald Cohen, who was born in Egypt and is now Gordon Brown’s “senior City advisor” (Brown has appointed him to several “taskforces”) whether he is lucky enough to have this “non-dom” tax status; Sir Ronald has refused to answer. If he has this status, he has something to thank the Labour Party for, and he – like Lakshmi Mittal, who tops the Sunday Times Rich List this year (20 April) – is among those who have generously donated funds to the Labour Party.

If you think that the law says that foreigners cannot contribute to British party funds, you would be mistaken: the Inland Revenue (whose regulations are laid down by Gordon Brown) says that people living in Britain under the “non-dom” rules can still be counted as residents, who can thus legally give money to – for example – the Labour Party (Observer 18 February). So that’s all right then. The authorities are less than forthcoming when questioned about this “non-dom” dodge. When asked about a month ago, Gordon Brown’s front man Ed Balls said, “Estimates of the tax foregone in the UK . . . by those not domiciled in the UK are not routinely made” (Private Eye 8 June). But when Private Eye asked about it, “HM Customs and Excise confirmed the information does exist”. However, they refused to divulge it because if they did “it would lead to less robust policy development” (whatever that means). It seems that the ” ‘non-dom’ tax exemption saves the mega-rich billions. The last figure released showed that in 2003 ‘non-doms’ were saving around £1 billion a year; and use of the ruse has multiplied since then. The benefits to Britain of hosting more billionaires and bankers are uncertain.” But Brown, “who has received campaign donations from prominent non-doms, wants to keep them happy without revealing the size of their subsidy. So much for his promise of ‘open and accountable’ government.” It’s all a long way from what Keir Hardie thought he was going to do when he helped to found the party which – he claimed – was going to establish socialism.

Like nearly all the big issues of the day which are endlessly canvassed in the papers and on radio and TV, this unpleasantness arises out of a disagreement within the owning class. Should all the members of that class pay their due taxes, to help support the state which runs capitalism for them? Or should some be allowed to get away with much less taxation than the others have to stump up? For Socialists, there is only one issue: getting rid of capitalism and all the struggles and the dubious hanky-panky it inevitably engenders, both between classes and within classes. If the non-dom ruse was stopped tomorrow, the owning class would still be obscenely richer than the rest of us.

Alwyn Edgar

The Hanging Gardens of Bombay (2007)

From the July 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

In India the Prime Ministers is worried about the way the rich flaunt it . . .

In India the rich are getting richer; the poor, naturally, are a long way behind. There are thirty-six “dollar billionaires”, and their combined fortunes add up to about £96 billion, according to an article in the Times (26 May) about the recent annual conference of the Confederation of Indian Industry in Delhi. Among the tycoons present was the sixth-richest Indian, who has nearly £5,000 million: and the article was accompanied by a photograph showing another tycoon, Yohan Poonawalla, an industrialist, posing beside “two of his Rolls-Royces”.

Yet another tycoon, Mukesh Ambani (oil, retail, and biotechnology), is building for himself in Bombay a “sixty-storey palace” (Guardian, 31 May). “Draped in hanging gardens, the building will house a floor for a home theatre, a glass-fronted apartment for guests, and a two-storey health club.” The bottom six floors are for car parking, and at the top is a place to land a helicopter. Ambani has six in his family, and a full-time staff of 600, making a satisfactory ratio of 100 servants to one Ambani. His new retreat will have more floor space than the Palace of Versailles.

Some of these rich Indians have come to live in Britain. The richest of them all, Lakshmi Mittal, currently lives here, carefully looking after his £19,000 million (other sources say it is in fact £32,000 million: no doubt it is difficult to count all that money exactly – by the time you had finished, there would be a lot more interest to add on). In 2002 Tony Blair kindly wrote a personal letter on his behalf to the Romanian government when he was trying to buy the Romanian steel industry. Mittal had recently given £125,000 to Labour Party funds, but Blair (the head of the Labour Party) did not know anything about that – he told us so. He said he was simply helping a “British company”.

Mittal, the head of the company, is an Indian citizen and intends to remain an Indian citizen; his company is registered in the Dutch Antilles (West Indies); his steelworks are in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa; and of his more than 100,000 employees, fewer than one percent are based in the UK. So what Blair called a “British company” was not actually all that British. However, after Mittal with Blair’s help got hold of the Romanian steel industry, and the Romanian steelworkers were making a sizeable contribution to his profits, he was properly grateful to Blair; in July 2005 he gave the Labour Party two million pounds, and in January this year he gave it another two million (Guardian, 16 January).

Admittedly those gifts were only petty cash to Mittal. In 2004 he bought a nice house in London for £57 million – then the most expensive house there, though now this record has been eclipsed by someone who paid eight-four million for a flat in Park Lane. Also in 2004, he spent thirty million on his daughter’s wedding.

Not all Indians are so fortunate. According to the same Times article, two out of every five Indians “live on less than a dollar [about 50p] a day and have seen little evidence of growth apart from rising food prices”. Bombay, where Ambani’s palace is being constructed, is said to be the sixth most populous city in the world,, and an academic report said that one half of the people there “live in slums or are homeless; they live in tenements and huts, on pavements, along railway tracks”, and “under bridges”, and there is “terrible poverty, squalor and deprivation”.

The lavish extravagance of the Indian owning class, as against the poverty of most Indians, has got Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, very concerned. He made a speech at the conference, saying that “the electronic media carries the lifestyle of the rich and famous into every village and slum. Media often highlights the vulgar display of their wealth.” He went on: “An area of great concern is the level of ostentatious expenditure on weddings and other family events. Such vulgarity insults the poverty of the less privileged, it is socially wasteful and it plants the seeds of resentment in the minds of the have-nots.” In fact these inequalities of wealth “can led to social unrest”

Someone earning 50p a day would have to keep going for thirty-three million years to reach the amount of money owned by the chap in the audience at the Delhi conference. Faced with such absurdities, you could choose to work for a more just society; or you could ask the rich to make it less obvious how enormous the gap is. The Indian Prime Minister has chosen the easier option.

Alwyn Edgar

Cooking the Books: Who will verify the verifiers? (2007)

The Cooking the Books column from the July 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his book on the dangers of global warming, Heat, George Monbiot endorses a scheme, thought-up by Mayer Hillman and called “contract and convergence”. The basic idea is that a target should be fixed for reducing average world CO2 emissions per person to a level much lower than at present. Countries above this average should commit themselves to reducing their emissions while countries below it should be allowed to increase theirs up to the average. The countries above this average will of course be the developed capitalist countries while those below will be developing capitalist countries such as China and India.

So, it’s a proposal that the developed capitalist countries should voluntarily shackle themselves in the competitive struggle with their developing rivals to produce and make a profit from selling goods on the world market. Which is why it will never be adopted. There is simply no way that the capitalist corporations of the West and the states that protect their interests are going to agree to this. Given capitalism – as Monbiot and Hillman assume – each capitalist state will defend its own in the battle to realise profits on the world market. No capitalist state is going to undermine the competitiveness of its capitalist firms by imposing more expensive energy on them while its competitors in the developing world are not subject to this. It’s just not going to happen.

A front-page article in the Guardian (2 June) gave another reason why it wouldn’t work even in the unlikely event of its being adopted. Headed “Abuse and incompetence in fight against global warming” and subtitled “Up to 20% of carbon savings in doubt as monitoring firms criticised by UN body”, the article concerned the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) set up under the 1997 Kyoto treaty.

The CDM is a “carbon trading” scheme, which supporters of capitalism are lauding as the way to solve the problem within the profit system. Under this particular scheme, projects are started in the developing countries which are certified as reducing CO2 emissions; the firms carrying out these projects can then sell these “carbon credits” to firms in the developed countries for them to emit (a lesser amount of) CO2 instead.

But it hasn’t worked as planned:

“Within the world of carbon trading there are numerous cases of projects which are widely regarded as breaking CDM rules. Some existed long before the CDM project was launched: if they do happen to be producing fewer greenhouse gases that is the natural state and not a reduction which can be claimed and sold. Yet, such schemes have been validated by specialist companies and accepted by the CDM board; and the companies running them have been allowed to earn large amounts of money by selling unjustified Certified Emissions Reductions”.

These specialist companies are hired by firms who stand to earn big profits if their project is accepted. The Guardian quoted one carbon analyst: “The verifiers are being paid by the people they are verifying. If it turns out the verified is a bad guy, he is paying the policeman to sign him off as a good guy”.

Monbiot’s scheme would demand a far wider verification of carbon saving since accurate statistics would have to be collected and verified for every country (and every individual in every country). So, the problem uncovered by the Guardian would be multiplied many times, with every country trying to cook the books by understating the amount of its emissions.

Compared to “contract and convergence”, it would be much simpler to introduce socialism, the common ownership of the world’s resources with production to satisfy people’s needs not for profit, where vested capitalist interests and market forces would no longer conspire to prevent what needs to be done being done.

America’s “Radical” Presidents (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

A glance at U.S. political history of this century discloses an amazing fact. From Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, to Richard Nixon, a Republican, there have been a number of Presidents from both major parties who have either been labelled communist, socialist or radical leftist by their opponents or have legislated — or advocated legislation — widely thought of as socialistic. Roosevelt the First denounced the "malefactors of great wealth” and was known as a Trust Buster. Woodrow Wilson’s administration introduced the tax on income for the first time and that was definitely branded as socialist by his wealthy Republican opponents. Roosevelt the Second legislated social security, government relief projects and a number of other agencies that were tagged socialist by his enemies. He was widely denounced as a sort of communist. Harry Truman brought in Medicare which was certainly — according to the American Medical Association — the opening wedge to socialized medicine. Elsenhower was denounced by the Birch Society and by the ardent followers of Senator Joe McCarthy as a communist dupe Kennedy and Johnson both continued to talk in the manner of their predecessors with Lyndon going so far as to join in a chorus of We Shall Overcome when he signed the Civil Rights Bill. And now Richard M. Nixon, that one-time battler of Communists has topped them all by going for government economic controls on the home front and practicing blood-brother summitry with the leaders of his erstwhile enemies In Peking and in Moscow.

Amazing? It certainly is when one considers the fact that American capitalism has seemingly thrived on all of its radical presidents and all of its “socialist” legislation. America has become, in this century, the bastion of world capitalism.

And now comes Senator George McGovern and his running mate Mr Shriver. multi-millionaire and member of the Kennedy family by marriage, with more “socialist” proposals, according to those who are frightened by them, and one cannot but wonder: why the alarm? Since what is popularly believed to be socialism has worked to make America the top plutocracy of all time would it not seem practical to have more of it? Or is the widespread fear of Mr. McGovern’s radical ideas merely a reflection of a widespread admiration for Mr. Nixon’s own “socialist” efforts? If we have to have socialism, the worriers might be thinking, let’s continue with Dick’s brand rather than have George do it.

The fact is, of course, that the terms “socialism” and “communism" have come to mean something quite alien to their true meaning. What is socialism? What is communism? They are different terms for the same system of society, a social order without buying and selling, minus wage labor, a world without nations, a system based upon free right of access, by all mankind, to all that is produced.

What has that to do with the creation of government agencies to handle problems of the poor, both working and unemployed? Obviously nothing. Such agencies are but continued recognition of the only real inalienable right of the workers under capitalism, the right to continue in poverty and insecurity. Is It not apparent after seven decades of so-called socialistic legislation and so-called socialist and communist-type political leaders, from Republicans and Democrats alike, that capitalism in any form can only continue to really enrich the capitalists and do nothing to improve the conditions of life for the vast majority? Any attempt to make capitalism work in the interests of the vast majority is fruitless.

Why “World” Socialists? (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

A correspondent asks us: “Why do you call yourselves World Socialists?” A good question and one deserving of a serious answer. To begin with, the pioneers of scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, called upon the workers of the world to unite, rather than just the workers of England or France or Germany or America. And there was a sound reason for this, a reason based upon an understanding of capitalism both from an historical perspective and the economics of the system.

For the first time in history a social system was making possible a world that would sweep away existing national. religious and ethnic differences; making the antagonisms among mankind, the wars and the poverty, all things of the past. Making all this possible, yes, but only after working people everywhere organized to abolish the existing relationships between capital and labor, the relationships that were stymying the very thing that was becoming possible. On the one hand, capitalism had introduced a mode of production that was social in scope while, on the other hand, ownership was vested in private, corporate or state institutions—a serious contradiction, indeed.

Let us look at production under capitalism. In the first place just about everything — whether goods or services — are produced for the purpose of sale on the market. There was this sort of thing during the times of feudalism and chattel slavery, too, but to a limited degree. The systems in those times were based, primarily, on agrarianism and on production for use — plenty for the use of the feudal aristocracy and Church or the various ruling classes within chattel slave society; scarcity for the serfs and the slaves. Commodity production, to the extent it existed prior to capitalism, was by no means social in the sense it is today. A cobbler made a pair of shoes largely by his own efforts. The same was true of the suit of clothes made by the tailor. And so on. Industry was. to a considerable extent a family affair even in the Infancy of capitalism.

Developing capitalism transformed the primitive handicraft methods of feudalism into a system of production In which thousands — and tens and hundreds of thousands of workers in our times — in many parts of the world, contribute their labor power to the production and distribution of commodities.

Think of a common needle. It requires steel. Steel is made in the United States but one of its essential ingredients, ferro-manganese, is not obtainable here. Furthermore, the machinery, the transportation, the electrification, the plant erection, that is required to produce needles in the era of capitalism requires the cooperative labor of a multitude of workers. The same is true of all other commodities, from the smallest to the largest. All of production, under capitalism, is socialized production. The rub is that ownership is vested in a class, a small percentage of the population, and the rest of us work for them.

So what does the World Socialist Party plan on doing about this? Expropriate the capitalists? Just take their property away from them? We hear you and we would remind you that class ownership of the means of production is based, historically, upon expropriation There isn’t a country in the world where land and resources were not usurped from the original occupiers or users, violently expropriated in many cases. As Marx so eloquently put It: "Capital came into the world with blood dripping from every pore.” And how do we suppose that capital will go out of the world? We are convinced that the revolution that will transform the means of production and distribution into the common property of all mankind will be relatively peaceful. When compared with the blood-letting that has punctuated the history of capitalism to this day it will be serene. Why not investigate?

The supermarket (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

You drive into the vast parking area and jigsaw your car into one of the spaces. The supermarket looms within a few easy strides and in a matter of minutes you are inside the electric-eye doors, selecting a shopping cart; the heat, the cold, the rain or the snow — as the case may be — is left outside and as you push your cart up one aisle and down the next you are lulled by pleasant music, attractively displayed merchandise of hundreds of varieties, the meat counters. the delicatessen counters, the frozen food counters and, occasionally, the smiling demonstrator woman or man who offers free samples of this or of that delicacy.

So you forget, for the moment, all but the fact that here are food items, durables, even — in many instances — articles of wearing apparel waiting to be selected and dropped into your shopping cart. You know you can find good use for much, if not most, of everything in the market and heavens knows! you have been reminded enough that your life will not be full unless and until you have this. that, and the other product in your pantry, your refrigerator, your closets, or some place or other even it in your attic or your cellar! So you sail into the pleasant chore and before you know it your cart is piled high with delectables for the table, with stockings for the kids, with cleaning solvents, can openers and all of the things that go to make a happy home, maybe even a clock radio. Wonderful country, America! Where else could one find so much of what everybody wants under one roof? And all there for the taking. Richest country in the world — highest standard of living — freest democracy—etc., etc. You muse on all of this because you have heard this and read this, time and time again, interspersed between commercials advertising beer, cigarettes, beef, underwear and so forth. "Only in America," you muse.

Then suddenly you are caught up short. “For crying out loud!” you cry out inwardly. “How much is all of this going to cost? I won't have enough money and if I do and I pay for all this I won’t have enough to do till next payday."

Yes! The trouble is that there are cash registers in those supermarkets. And one does not get out of the store with one’s selections until they are paid for — unless you can do it without getting caught, which is quite a trick.

Well, up to a point, this has been a recitation of the right of access to the items which are supposed to constitute a decent standard of living. Capitalism does give one the right of access to what is produced, providing one has the money to pay. But how, you must be wondering, how does this socialist nut think one can run a supermarket without cash registers.

Of course you can’t run a supermarket or anything else without cash registers, under capitalism. The cash registers and the money that is used to transact the business are the hallmarks of class ownership. Everything in the supermarket, including the cash registers has been produced socially by thousands of workers from many different countries using raw materials from areas in far flung parts of the world. But under capitalism, the land, the mines, the forests, the workshops, and the supermarkets are all owned by a capitalist class or a capitalist state — which amounts to the same thing, class ownership rather than social ownership.

When the world is socialist, everything — including the supermarkets — will be run differently. Certainly there will be a variety of the things people want although the chances are that wants — when no longer conditioned by hucksters on the mass media and in the newspapers — will be fewer. But there will be no cash registers, because ownership will be vested in all mankind, not an economic class. The money that changes hands today has nothing at all to do with the production and availability of the goods in the store. Only labor power applied to raw materials can produce wealth. Goods and services under socialism will be produced only to satisfy human needs and wants. The world will become one vast supermarket. Better look into this further.

Dedication to wasted effort (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

There is a sales manager gimmick, used to put salesmen in a correct mental attitude, that goes something like this: You say you have problems? Your wife is ill; your boy needs money for tuition; your car is ready for the graveyard; you’ve just gotten an increase in your rent? Actually, you only have one problem. Money! So why not get on the territory and make more money?

It might be argued that this is the scientific way of handling a number of problems. Find the common factor that generates them and correct it. In this case, however, the reasoning is not too sound because, at best, it would only work for a few. Money does not really have expansion qualities and the garnering of more by some can only mean the accumulation of less by others. And, yet, there is a lesson to be learned here.

In the world of our times there are all sorts of problems that seem to be shaking society to its roots. War, pollution. crime, uncontrolled population growth, cheating in the realm of merchandising, ghettoization, slum neighborhoods and the struggle for women’s and gay liberation. You name it. And each of these areas has its adherents and devotees: men. women and children willing to give of themselves to aid their cause, convinced that they are involved in the struggle for a better world.

Their dedication is, unfortunately, largely a wasted effort. There is a common factor in all of these problems that not only generates them, to begin with, but operates to prevent their elimination or even improvement. They are all spawned by the economics of the capitalist system and are symptoms of a world-wide system of class or state ownership of the means and instruments of wealth production and distribution.

The problem, in these times of potential abundance, begins with propaganda Not the propaganda of socialism but the propaganda of capitalism. Even before our children can walk and talk, their eyes and ears are bombarded with the capitalist way of life. Buying and selling, profit, wages and the struggle to stretch them from payday to payday are presented as a normal, unchangeable, natural law. Even the progressively oriented kiddles' books and TV shows are designed to educate them to cope with this way of life rather than to abolish it for something better. Yet, all around us, on the other hand, is evidence of the restraining and throttling of production. the potential abundance of all those things needed to make a good life, in order that a system based upon production for a market, for profit, might be maintained.

What is it that causes war, for example, in these times? The ever-expanding need for nations to find markets, sources of raw materials, and the military might to dominate other nations seeking the same things. And flowing from this base, this all-out emphasis on accumulation of capital which is integral to capitalism, those other problems that capture most imaginations arise. The fight against pollution and crime; the spread of slums and ghettos; the need for women's and gay liberation movements; the growth of consumer protection groups are necessary because of a system that places profits above all; vests ownership of the means of a livelihood In a minority while divesting most of us of almost all but our ability to work which we must sell in order to live and pits section against section on the age-old axiom of divide and rule.

Even the fear of uncontrolled population growth Is based upon the needs of capitalism's labor market rather than on humanitarianism. A sane system, based upon production for use would support a much greater population than exists now on earth.

Yes, there really is but one problem. It is world capitalism. Why not organize to abolish it?

Does peace justify violence? (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

One subject the World Socialist Movement keeps harping on — and we harp on a lot of subjects — is the necessarily non-violent nature of the socialist revolution. Why do we insist that the abolition of world capitalism must be brought about peacefully? Not because we are idealists, or humanists, although idealism and humanism do have some role in our philosophy. We advocate a non-violent revolution principally because we are convinced that a socialist revolution cannot be brought about in any other way. This is why we do not qualify our terms with ”ifs,'' "ands,” or “buts."

In the first place let us look at the question of ends and means. There is an old cliche, usually attributed to Bolsheviks but also part of the philosophy of capitalism, that the end justifies the means. In other words, anything one can do — not even excepting mass murder — to bring the end of capitalism, or the end of totalitarianism, or the end of something else that so many wars have been supposedly fought over, is justifiable. Which would be a logical argument only for one important factor — at least one. Ends and means are all part of a process, are inter-related. Violent means have to result in violent ends. There has never been a period in the lives of any person living today when nations did not argue that they needed more and more powerful weapons. Why? Because only by building up a powerful armed force could peace be maintained. Yet, violence has grown in scope and in intensity all through the years of the lifetime of everybody living today, and in every country regardless of the professed peace-loving nature of its government.

Most people still seem to think that the trouble is all caused by bad guys — the other country. If only that country or the other country wasn’t made up of intrinsically warlike, or intrinsically greedy people everything would be all right. All we want is to be left alone. This is the usual argument that the average person in every country in the world gives. But the answers go deeper. The very existence of nations implies violence and this is the case whether the nation calls itself capitalist, socialist. or anything else. Which brings us back to the subject of socialist revolution and why we insist it must be peaceful.

For the first time in history, a revolution will be by the immense majority in the interests of the whole population. All previous revolutions have been organized by minorities in the interest of minorities. This is why all previous social revolutions were accompanied by violence, either at the moment of consummation or immediately following. So when advocates of violent revolution base their argument on the fact that revolutions have always been accompanied by violence they are unwittingly rejecting socialist revolution and advocating the overthrow of one group of exploiters and the substitution of another group of exploiters — themselves — in the guise of state officials “Unwittingly?” we said. Perhaps, in cases.

The main point to bear in mind when considering world socialist revolution is that it is a revolution organized and consummated by a majority of the people. And an immense majority has no need for violence. An upsurge of revolutionary-thinking in the population would result in an overwhelming majority of scientific socialists being elected to the central organs of power, the state. And this would mean one all-important thing, that the overwhelming majority of the population would have to be fed up with capitalism and would want no more part of it. A victory at the polls by a genuine socialist organization would be followed immediately by the abolition of class ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth.

Would the defeated capitalist class resist with an organization of violence? Hardly likely when the very basis for their existence as a capitalist class has been removed. What could they offer that isn’t already freely available to ail. including themselves? Think about it and help organize for world socialism.

Brains and money (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

A most persistent myth that enjoys widespread belief in modern times is the fable about wealth being the result of brainpower—the brainpower of those who possess wealth. “It takes brains to make money,” we are told again and again. If we point to that considerable percentage of the super-capitalist class—a, majority, in fact—whose wealth is inherited, there is the immediate response: “Well, so their fathers or grandfathers had the brains. And they have to know how to handle the fortunes, too, or they can lose them."

Well, it isn't easy to argue with that because it does take a certain type of brains to found and maintain a financial empire. A reading of American history makes this apparent. The Morgans, the Mellons, the Rockefellers, the Carnegies and Fricks, the Fords, the DuPonts and the rest of the super-rich Americans did have the sort of brains one finds in the Jungle among predatory animals. They were pitiless as they clawed their way to success, with little mercy for the workers and their families whom they used (“employed,” is the word in general usage) to produce their wealth and just as little compassion for one another in their mad competition to sell one another short.

But we must admit the analogy is not altogether fitting. The predatory lower animals, we understand, do not usually devour their own particular species, nor do they seek to store up endless caches of dead carcasses. On the other hand, the two-legged predator has had, and still maintains, institutions that surround his depredations with the aura of respectability, even holiness. He has his charitable foundations and his churches, upon which he bestows vast sums and which reciprocate by saving him on his taxes, keeping his name before the public, and generally singing his praises. They function as pillars of his empire.

Well, we are often told, that might be true of some of the capitalists but it doesn’t fit the majority, it doesn’t affect the proposition that it still takes talent to make money. And of course brains and abilities are invaluable assets. But the industries and institutions of capitalism today are not generally operated by members of the capitalist class. Rare, indeed, is it to find a capitalist in modern times who even knows where his industries are, leave alone have anything to do with operating them. Can one imagine a Rockefeller or a J. Paul Getty concerning himself with the actual details of running his far-flung financial and industrial institutions? They are no doubt busy most of the time with their travels, their political manipulations and their society events. They may conceivably consult, from time to time, with some of their executives. But even allowing for acumen in their own right they would have to be supermen, indeed, to have the time and talents needed to operate the industries of these times. And that is precisely why they endow the prestigious business schools throughout the nation. They pay to train, and then hire the required brains. As a class, the capitalists of our times are completely superfluous and parasitic. They could all be transported to the moon, never to return, without noticeable effect to the total economy, not even to their stock exchanges for they, too, are operated from top to bottom by hirelings.

What does it take to make money today? Brains and talent, certainly, but not one's own brains and talents. One needs capital. How does one get capital? In various ways: by inheriting it, by luck at the racetrack or lottery, by robbery (but don’t get caught!). Far better to pick the right parents. We wouldn't necessarily agree with the great French novelist Balzac who argued that behind every fortune is a crime. But we do agree with Marx who exposed primitive accumulation as forcible, brutal, even murderous expropriation of the majority and the creation of a propertyless working class. But the secret to riches in modern times is: by hook or by crook, hire the brains to make it for you.

What’s a revolutionary? (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

Have you noticed how words have a tendency to lose their original meaning and evolve to a point where once disrespectable terms fall into widespread use by more respectable sections of society? Many examples could be given but we will concentrate, for now, on the word “revolution.”

Are you old enough to remember the times when the very sound of revolution conjured up images of bushy-bearded, long-haired ogres with pockets filled with bombs? When one immediately pictured blood and gore coursing down the gutters? Well, it is true that there are as many bushy-bearded and long-haired people around today, if not more. And some of them possibly do fall into the category of violence advocates. But whatever the extent of bloodshed and cracked skulls in the violent demonstrations of today it has been established beyond doubt that the overwhelming bulk comes from those who are hired to protect “our” institutions, not destroy them — the police and military. Nevertheless, the terrible turmoil that is going on today around the world is widely termed “revolution” and the word has become respectable in the black communities, among the youth, and throughout the mass media.

Scientific socialists reject this meaning. It is completely out of tune with revolutionary socialist thought and has nothing whatever to do with the theories and tactics of the founders and heirs of Marxian socialism This could have a lot to do with the widespread recognition and even occasional toleration of the so-called revolutionaries by the ruling class, itself. One can view black “revolutionaries” and white “revolutionaries” just about any night in the week these days on TV. One can read thousands and thousands of words devoted to them and by them any day in the press. One can listen to and read the “revolutionary” words of preachers, rabbis, priests and even nuns. Everybody seems to be classified as some sort of revolutionary And yet, there is one acid test that can be applied that will give fast results in placing them in their true category. The test would run somewhat like this.

You say you are a revolutionary, that you are anti-establishment; that you want to overthrow the “system.” Let’s see what you mean?

By the “Establishment" do you mean the capitalist class as an economic category or are you referring to the particular representatives and members of this class who now hold and exercise power? Are you asking for the abolition of the “Establishment” as an economic category or are you merely asking for new and what you would call revolutionary substitutes for this establishment?

And just what do you mean by “system?" Are you talking about the organization of society on the basis of ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by a minority of the population, as it is today? Are you advocating that the earth and everything on it and in it shall become the common property of all mankind and that all of mankind shall have free access to its wants and needs? Are you advocating, in other words, the immediate abolition of the wages system — of buying and selling, production for sale on the market with view to profit? Of the end to all arbitrary divisions of the population on the basis of skin color and ethnic background? Do you mean that you favor an immediate end to all national boundaries and the establishment of a world based upon human brotherhood?

If you recoil either in horror or in amusement at words such as these you are no revolutionary. You are merely advocating more of the same that we now have with different people at the top—perhaps yourselves.

But it could be that some of you do mean just these things. If so. we urge you to disengage yourselves from those who would change nothing but the rules of what we now have and the personnel of those who own and control the world. Why not join with the World Socialist Movement to bring it about?

International Socialism (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

One of the basic fundamentals of the socialist movement is the fact that it is a world movement. This doesn’t mean that socialists are internationalists in the widely accepted interpretation of that word. In the world of our times the term ‘internationalist" has grown to mean one who advocates such developments as "United Nations" or even "World Federalism." The difference between such concepts and that of the scientific socialists is that socialism envisages a world without nations and without governments, a world without economic class divisions, a world in which government over man as we know it becomes an administration by men over things. Only in this sense are socialists internationalists.

As things exist, however, socialists are compelled to operate within national boundaries. We are ticketed from birth or through naturalization as American or English or German and so on. Whether we like it or not we are compelled to build our organizations within this type of world, attempting to gain political control from the class that now controls it and introduce a classless society. So the members of the Companion Party movement are composed of individuals from many different nations and we speak in the tongue and in the particular accents of the countries and the sections of those countries from which we come. But although our language may differ, our object and our principles are one for despite all differences in language, in customs, or even in dress, the conditions which cry out for the abolition of capitalism in America are basically no different than those that exist throughout the world, generally. Nor are the confusions that fill the minds of most people on the subject of socialism any different elsewhere than they are in America. Take, for example, the situation in Great Britain.

Our sister party in Britain is the Socialist Party of Great Britain. That organization was founded in 1904 prior to the establishment of the British Labour Party and has continued, ever since, to publish its journal The Socialist Standard and to disseminate information on the subject of socialism in various ways. — Nevertheless, the British Labour Party, which has never in its history advocated the abolition of the wages system, is widely regarded throughout Great Britain and the rest of the world as a party of socialism. For more than sixty years the British Labour Party has advocated nationalization of industries. Furthermore they have actually instituted such nationalization. During all of this period the Socialist Party of Great Britain have maintained that nationalization of industries is in no way analogous to socialism and that the contradictions of capitalism would operate just as freely within a Labour regime as they would in any other regime. Scientific socialists have continued to contend that no political organization — regardless of label — can make capitalism operate in the interest of the majority of the population. We have continued to point out that poverty on a wide scale would continue under Labour government, that strikes on the home front and wars on the international front would continue to be the order of the day regardless of who runs the government — avowed capitalist or professed labour politicians. That nothing short of the abolition of capitalism and the introduction of a system of production for use rather than for sale on the market would solve the problems that threaten to destroy us all.

Yet we still hear the friends of reform politics advocate labor parties as governments and we still have the enemies of socialism pointing to Britain as a horrible example of socialism in action.

The time will come, we feel, when the workers in their millions will understand that labor party politics have nothing to do with socialism but are just another scheme to make capitalism somehow become more palatable to the majority who reap no benefits from it. The time will come when the program of the Companion Parties of Socialism will become the order of the day

How to spot a phoney socialist (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

There are more bogus socialist organizations around today than you can shake a stick at. To begin with: the traditional long-established, reformer-type so-called socialist is still with us, although not nearly so vocal or numerous as in former days. That era when the Socialist Party of America and the Communist Party U.S.A. could run national tickets, calling for radical reform of capitalism and receive relatively good press and media coverage, is all but gone. They certainly sowed a great crop of confusion in their times. But the case for what they imagine socialism to be was clear-cut. It was either a desire to operate basic industry in the manner of the British Labour Party and, for that matter, of the British Tories, through nationalization, or to emulate the system in the Soviet Union — also nationalization, but with a one-party oligarchy styled the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Yes, the false image of socialism in operation sown by America's social democrats and bolsheviks—as well as the entire bourgeois media—is still the order of the day.

But much confusion on tactics and organisation has been added by other organisations that have either become greatly activated and more widely-known than they once were, or have sprung up rather suddenly. On the one hand there is the tendency to merge more disreputable bolshevik-type tactics of the past with the more respectable variety of so-called socialist program; to present a more traditional type of campaign. On the other hand, there are the more flamboyant sort of phoney socialists who magnify the bolshevik psychology of tabloid-journalism together with frequent attacks on the principle of freedom-of-speech by disruption of public meetings. And there is also the hit-and-run commando and kidnap tactic of the guerrilla fighter. Because the unusual is what constitutes news, the gatherers and disseminators of news are the unpaid press agents of all of these phoney socialists. They provide the sort of publicity that genuine socialists can never get.

The main problem in building a mass movement for a new social order is the need for conscious understanding of socialism and what it entails by those who support such a movement. The mere fact that tabloid-style sensationalism in radical journalism exists is no indication that the mass of workers are ready to accept socialism. But let’s organize them, anyway, argue the phonies The mere fact of commando and sharp-shooter tactics in the so-called revolutionary movement signifies widespread political reaction. Whether right wing or left wing in ideology is of no real consequence. Let’s not talk about taking the means of production and distribution from the capitalists and vesting them in society as a whole, say the bogus socialists. Let’s just compel individual capitalists to organise free-food programs for a section of the working class who can qualify as poor.

How, then, does one go about spotting a bogus socialist? Whether the old-style confusionist of the social democratic or the Communist variety; the new-style merger of those two tendencies; the loud and active advocate of scare-type organisation against individual capitalists; or the left-wing commandos whose bag of tricks consists of kidnap, ransom and extortion; them is a common thread that runs through all of them. They all see socialism as a continuation of the system of production for sale on the market; for wage-labor; for capital; for buying and selling; all vested in a state rather than in individual capitalists. And until the present basis of production is abolished and productlon-for-use only introduced, it makes little difference how the various bogus socialists organize their tactics. They may even be successful in driving the present exploiters out of political control. But they will have done nothing at all for socialism and that is the only thing that really matters.