Letter: Deglobalization? (2017)

Letter to the Editors from the September 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Deglobalization?

Dear Comrades

I read Stefan’s article ‘Deglobalization: Is globalization going in reverse?’ (Socialist Standard, May). Stefan’s treatment of this extremely complex phenomenon is thought-provoking.

Despite a weakening of intergovernmental institutions, are there not deeper structures of globalization – not necessarily in the political sphere – that remain intact?

There is an inherent carrot versus stick relationship introduced into the arena of international business by existing treaties on trade: ‘Profit’ v ‘Regulation’ however mild. The abandonment of international trade treaties would perhaps result in a more laissez-faire, colonial frontier type freedom of exploitation and expropriation. Down this turnpike the destination could be the hell of war.

At this juncture it would perhaps be unwise to rule out a come-back of globalization in the fairly near future or to assume that we are on the threshold of a long period of deglobalization.

Joe R. Hopkins, 

Florida, USA.

Reply:

Good point – in particular about ‘deep structures’. The crucial deep structure is that of capital itself, because a relentless drive to expand is intrinsic to capital as self-expanding value. Even protectionist governments are under constant pressure to accommodate this drive.

As Marx put it in Grundrisse: 

‘Capital is the endless and limitless drive to go beyond its limiting barrier. Every boundary is and has to be a barrier for it. Else it would cease to be capital – money as self-reproductive’ (Notebook III/IV).

And again:

‘Capital by its nature drives beyond every spatial barrier… Capital must strive to tear down every spatial barrier to intercourse, i.e. to exchange, and conquer the whole earth for its market’ (Notebook V). 

Nor is there any reason to expect capital to halt at the limits of the planet of its birth. – Editors

Letter: Backstop (2019)

Letter to the Editors from the September 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Backstop

While I am a fellow socialist and broadly agree with your views, I was very disappointed to see the attached image on page 10/11 of the August 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard. Does the artist not know of the existence of the Republic of Ireland? Is it implying that the UK will invade said Republic to put an end to the hard border?

Mick Kennedy

Sting in the Tail: Behind the fine words (1996)

The Sting in the Tail column from the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Behind the fine words

Environmentalists were delighted by the news that “The United States and the European Union forced through a ministerial statement which bound the OECD group of industrialised countries to adopt legally binding limits, targets and timetables to reduce greenhouse gas emission from 2000" (Guardian, 19 July).

But the deal drew “fierce objections” from Russia, Saudi Arabia and the OPEC countries because it threatens their income from fossil-fuel sales, and without their acceptance all the fine words are meaningless.

And Charles Linderman, speaking for 600 US electricity producers, claimed the deal “would eliminate millions of American jobs, reduce America’s ability to compete and force Americans into second-rate lifestyles.”

How will American voters react to this? We have seen how quickly governments can change their policies when votes are at stake, so before environmentalists start celebrating they should remember capitalism’s host of conflicting economic and political interests.

Land of the Free

After the press revelations about President Clinton’s murky doings as Governor of Arkansas, we now learn his Republican opponent, Robert Dole, also has a doubtful financial past.

The vice-chairman of Dole’s national finance committee has been fined $1 million, his company has agreed to pay a further $5 million, and the US Attorney is still demanding that he should go to jail. All of this in connection with a giant fraud to fund Dole’s campaign.

Stanley Hilton, who was the counsel on Dole’s Senate Staff in 1979-80, has explained Dole’s relationship to donors in “Senators for Sale”:

“He is largely a special-interest slot machine, a human pendulum dancing to the tune of the highest contributors. . . Dole’s career symbolises much of what is wrong with American politics: the shameless selling of office and legislation to the highest bidder."

This is the reality behind all those find words—’’democracy”, “law and order” and the “American way of life”.

Leave chose kids alone

Capitalism perverts everything it touches. It sees childhood as a “selling opportunity”.

One company, Imagination for School Media Marketing, has secured clearance from the government to sell advertising hoardings in school corridors. Another is producing a bulletin of groovy words used by kids in the playground so that advertisers can cash in on a market worth £1.6 billion a year of children’s direct purchases and £8.4 billion the kids have in “pester power”.

Jane Mathews, a board director of ad agency J. Walker Thomson, says in the Observer (14 July):

“Advertising is a very soft target. It is easy for the Press to lay the blame at the nasty ad agencies’ door, but more should be said about parents, who in the end have the ultimate responsibility—they can always say no.”

Mathews knows only too well, with a potential £10 billion market the advertisers rely heavily on kids’ “pester power”.

She is right in one respect though. We all have the power to stop this perversion of childhood—we can just say No to capitalism.

Cops and capitalism

Socialists are precise about the term “working class”. We mean all those who must sell their ability to work for a wage or a salary'. The “left” are vague on this. They classify such workers as doctors, university lecturers or the police as “middle class”.

A reading of The Job, staff magazine of London police officers, should dispel any doubts about the class position of the police. The majority of ads are for loans or debt counselling.

An ex-policeman Mike Thomas of insolvency firm C. Jacob and Co., which advertises in The Job, is quoted in Time Out (17 July) on some policemen’s plight:

“I know of police officers w ho take home £720 per month for a full week including weekends and night shifts.”

The Police Federation has expressed concern about the plight of new recruits since the scrapping of housing allowances, reduction in overtime and mileage allowance. According to them some recruits are having to claim Family-Credit or take out bank loans in order to survive.

Despite the illusions of the left—or the police themselves—cops are workers.

New Labour, new cuisine

It was Thursday, 11 July, and the Savoy chef had excelled himself in producing salad with asparagus and chicken, salmon watercress sauce and lemon brûlée on a raspberry coulis.

It was a very' important dinner date. It was New Labour’s £500 a head fund raiser.

As the diners left the millionaires’ hotel, fortified by “after dinner port and cognac offered courtesy of Philip Morris Limited”, was the sound emanating from doorway dossers in the Strand that of hollow laughter?

Socialists? Do me a favour, guv.

Make history or be it? (1996)

From the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists can be forgiven for getting frustrated and annoyed when
 we are told by politically active workers that, although they
sympathise with and support our ultimate goal, they prefer to join
 other parties — like New Labour — and “do something now”.
After all, they have been “doing something now” for over a century 
and they’re in a worse position now than when they started

In the final analysis, numbers count. Without the growth of a mass movement for socialism there can be no socialism. How then are we to build such a movement?

The case against capitalism has been thoroughly vindicated. This is a society that impoverishes us, emotionally and materially, that constantly saps our sense of security, that wantonly plunders our planet in the pursuit of profit. That much is well known and increasingly accepted. Nor does the idea of socialism seem particularly problematic Indeed, it usually evokes a quite favourable response, is considered a “nice idea". Yet, how often, no sooner are these words uttered, do they seem to prompt the afterthought, “but it will never happen . . . “?

Some years ago, a US state official, Francis Fukuyama, penned a controversial tract with the intriguing title The End of History. Fukuyama’s thesis in a nutshell was that notwithstanding such contemporary aberrations as Islamic fundamentalism, the world was inexorably moving towards a consensual cul-de-sac organised around the closely intertwined institutions of the bourgeois-democratic state and the free market. Socialism did not even figure in Fukuyama’s vision of the future. What he called "socialism" or “communism” turned out (predictably) to mean the discredited and floundering state capitalism of the Eastern bloc—more grist to the mill of his basic argument: the inevitable triumph of political and economic “liberalism”.

Future not predetermined

Socialists reject any notion of a future that is predetermined. Such fatalistic thinking is grounded in a view of history as something that happens to as, not something we make ourselves. Socialism is not inevitable but then neither is the continuation of capitalism. To assert that capitalism will always be with us, that we have reached the “end of history” is, in a sense, to justify not doing anything about it—for what would be the point? —and thus, ironically, to ensure socialism can never happen. Because unless we strive to make socialism happen it certainly will never happen.

For the moment, however, most people have probably never heard of the movement for real socialism and what that entails. Even so, among these, there are probably thousands of individuals unbeknown to us, or each other, who are already more or less on a socialist wavelength. I can recall once standing in a supermarket queue eavesdropping on a discussion between two women behind me enthusing over the benefits of a moneyless society. Many minutes later, with the store still gridlocked by trolleys, you could see that had a point. Anyone could.

It is little instances like that which highlight the potential of socialist ideas. If the spread of a socialist consciousness depended exclusively on the political activity of socialists it would be a long time in coming. At bottom, the socialist cause is only ever going to take off because it makes sense in terms of our life experiences and our human needs.

That said, unless we combine together to promote that cause we are not going to make headway. As isolated individuals we are powerless. And it is this sense of powerlessness that lies behind the sentiment that socialism is just a “nice idea”, worth talking about but without any real prospect of being realised.

That is why we need a genuine socialist movement. It provides a means of coordinating and focusing our individual efforts, spurring us on, as William Morris once put it, in the great task of “making socialists”. It imparts a sense of confidence that comes from knowing there are others who share our point of view. In short, it empowers us.

That much seems obvious enough and a good enough reason to join such a movement—for there can be no movement without individuals willing to join it. Yet, even a majority of those who have heard of us and know what we stand for, still decline to join us.

Their reasons appear to fall into two categories. The first of these is predicated on the premise that socialism is somehow intrinsically unworkable. Thus, it is claimed that it takes no account of “human nature” or that for technical reasons you cannot organise production in a complex modern society without recourse to money or some form of capitalist accounting. Such objections have been dealt with elsewhere in our literature and so need not detain us at this point.

But there is a second category based on what might be called “subjective” reasons which arguably constitute a far more formidable obstacle to the growth of our movement, for instance:

"I like what you stand for but while socialism remains such a remote prospect I prefer to devote my time and effort to something more achievable than something that is only likely to materialise in the very long term, if ever. ”

()n the face of it this is not at all an unreasonable proposition, given that as individuals we only have a limited amount of time and energy at our disposal. Given that the socialist movement, with a history' of struggle behind it spanning a turbulent century or more, has still not even reached the point of political “take-off”, it is perhaps not surprising that most of those who have come into contact with it have come to the conclusion that it is not worth their practical support.

How do we respond to this point? Let us start by clearing up a possible misunderstanding. The struggle for socialism does not entail forsaking one’s “immediate concerns”. Besides promoting the case for socialism on the political front, socialists are involved in a whole range of activities and organisations that are of immediate benefit to themselves, their families, their fellow workers or their local communities. These include trade unions, tenants’ associations, claimants’ unions, various voluntary and self-help organisations and schemes. We acknowledge the practical benefits that can stem from involvement with them. More than that, we recognise that they can serve as a kind of practical illustration of the principles of voluntarism and democratic control which will animate a future socialist society.

So we have no quarrel with anyone who wishes to participate in such activities. As a political organisation, however, the Socialist Party does not and cannot directly involve itself in these activities; that would detract from our sole purpose—to propagate the case for socialism.

It is part of that case that the basic problems that confront working people within capitalism are insoluble within the framework of capitalism. It is on this fundamental point that socialists and non-socialists part company.

Capitalism can’t be controlled

As socialists we reject the notion that governments can eliminate, or can be pressured into eliminating, the problems of present-day society through the implementation of reforms. This is what we mean by “reformism”. Reformism, we claim, does not work but not because of any lack of will to make it work. If politicians were able to make it work they would have every reason to make it work—if only to secure the popular support of the electorate. They do not make it work because they cannot. And because they cannot, reformism reveals itself to be a manifest waste of time and effort, time and effort that could have otherwise been used to hasten the only lasting solution to those problems: socialism.

Capitalism, we argue, operates according to inherent economic laws which are not amenable to political manipulation. What we perceive as very real problems through our human eyes—like unemployment, poverty, homelessness and hunger—are quite invisible from the perspective of the system itself. “The system” is analogous to a machine that has been designed to function according to a built-in programme. The only command it can recognise is the need to realise profit. Without profit it grinds to a halt. Thus capitalism strives continually towards the maximisation of profit—economic competition rules out any other option—and, in the process, continually reproduces the very problems we have to suffer in order to realise that goal.

Any political party that sets out to operate this machine, rather than dismantle it, will in time become little more than a mere appendage to it. If confirmation of this were needed we need look no further than the Labour Party, its very rhetoric speaks for itself. This is a party that set out to transform capitalism in the interest of the workers but instead has been transformed by capitalism. Though always a capitalist party it has never been quite so consciously comfortable in that role as it is today, in its transmogrification as “New labour”.

Were the Socialist Party to go down that same road for the sake of courting short-term popularity we would end up in the same quagmire as New Labour; we too would be just as incapable of running capitalism in the interests of workers. It’s not a question of remaining “pure” or being “unwilling to get our hands dirty” in the squalid politics of opportunism; it is rather a hard-headed and utterly realistic assessment of the situation that compels us to reject such reformism.

So distinguishing between the pursuit of short-term objectives and the “long term” objective of socialism—which is only as long term as we allow it to be—is to beg a fundamental question: what is realisable in the short term? We are not opposed to individuals pursuing their “short term” interests in those ways outlined earlier providing this does not close off, or detract from, the ultimate objective of achieving socialism. But we make a sharp distinction between that and reformism. For the latter necessarily constitutes a political choice in favour of retaining capitalism and rejecting socialism.

Reformism may achieve certain desirable results in the short term but this will often be at the expense of other reforms (for example, due to a change in funding priorities) while the inherent instability of capitalism with its boom-slump business cycle means that any gains made today are likely to be wiped out tomorrow. But the most tragic aspect of reformism is not so much its inherent futility but the fact that it can only be promoted at the expense of socialism. In the final analysis, it has to presume that socialism is rendered unnecessary by the alleged capacity of government to manipulate capitalism at will and to be benefit of the electorate at large.

Ironically, it is a growing socialist movement uncompromisingly opposed to reformism, that is more likely to force governments into granting reforms if only to head off the growth of our movement. Not only that, such growth, by profoundly altering the social climate is likely to exert a far more positive impact on a whole host of baleful and divisive prejudices than can be achieved by tackling any one of these in isolation.

Consider for example, the following. Can an ideology like racism which serves to divide black and white workers continue to thrive in the face of a movement to unite them? Can sexism persist when women and men of the working class come to recognise that they have a common interest? Will workers of the world be as easily lured by national chauvinism to take up arms against each other when they come to see that collectively they have a world to win? To ask such questions is to answer them.

To join or not to join

However, we are not yet at that stage. That leaves us with a problem which could be posed as follows:

“I agree with what you say but you are still a relatively small organisation. Surely then it would be better to work within an organisation that had more clout than the Socialist Party to bring about the kind of change we desire? ” 

The short answer to this is that size counts for nothing if the organisation concerned is not oriented towards the achievement of that change. Yes, we want to build a mass movement but it is not only movement that matters, direction counts just as much. New Labour, for example is an organisation vastly greater in size than the Socialist Party. However, by joining it, or by urging workers to “vote Labour” (as does the SWP), one would be contributing to the illusion that a Labour government would be to the advantage of working people. That being so, all one would have done is to help bring about the inevitable disillusionment and cynical backlash that a future Labour government will incur. Ironically, the likely beneficiaries of one’s actions—SWP’ers please note —would be the Tories. Hardly the kind of change one had in mind!

Let’s put it like this—if the size of an organisation was the only consideration, the effect of any one individual, from the standpoint of changing society, joining a large organisation would be no different from joining a small organisation; one might then just as well join a small organisation. If society could be compared to a plate of soup we are, each of us, tiny morsels which contribute to its overall flavour. The question is what kind of flavour do we want society to have?

The Socialist Party today is still a relatively small organisation. Because it is small it appears to lack credibility. And because it appears to lack credibility it continues to remain relatively small. In short it finds itself trapped within what is classically called a “vicious circle”.

To break out of this vicious circle it will need to breach a critical threshold of support; its take-off requires this. For that to happen depends on you. If you agree with us then why not join with us? For it is only by making socialists that, collectively, we can begin to make our own history.

Robin Cox

SPGB Meetings (1996)

Party News from the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

"Socialist activity in Hertfordshire".  

 

And a couple of us spent a couple of hours in a convivial enough pub on London Road, Apsley, waiting for a couple of sympathisers and/or Socialist Standard subscribers to turn up for a first meeting of a proposed discussion group. "Reader, they didn't turn up". (Excuse the literary paraphrasing.)

 

What might have been . . . 

Do you give a damn? (1996)

The A Word in Your Ear column from the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you care that someone somewhere is suffering needlessly, then how can you live in peace? How can there be peace when the very system of society we live under is at war against so many human needs? What brutalities have to be committed under our noses before we pause to think, “Why should these brutalities not be stopped?” What brutalities must be committed against our own human consciousness for us not to even care? How damaged are they who hear the screams of starving children and watch the self-torment of the mother with too little money in her purse and see the old couple hobbling for miles because they can’t afford transport and say, “This is nothing to do with me—1 don’t care.”

Christians like to think they have the monopoly upon caring. They weep and they pray for you and then they go on supporting the very system which creates all this mess. They leave big things like systems to god. They pray into the sky and they prey on the hopelessness of millions who fall into their arms, exhausted, confused, uncared for. And then the millions are told they are sinners.

You get a better night’s sleep if you try not to care. Being brutalised is good for the quest for rest. (Others use hard drugs.) Watching that documentary about the prison camp for young offenders in Khazakstan—you’ll know the one if you saw it, because it will have kept you awake too—was a cue for several nights of anguish. Not the hand-wringing of the “nice" politician whose caring sincerity is painted on each morning with cosmetics provided by Avon, but the unstoppable caring of being a human and seeing what is being done to other humans. A baby slowly dying of hunger or thirst is enough to bring a sickness to the pit of your stomach. No wonder the apologists for the profit system sometimes say that those of us who are against it are sick. In a way, we are.

But we should turn our sickness into something more than the despair of empty care. Because however much we care or collect coins or campaigns or hold rock concerts to complain against iniquities, the cause of the trouble remains untouched. It remains and seems to laugh out loud at our futile caring. Care as much as you want, it sneers, and see how much feeling sorry for each other does for you.

Caring isn’t enough. But not caring is enough to dehumanise us. Those who don’t care have lost a big piece of their humanity. It is the piece which resides in everyone else.

So, it really is true that those poor wretches in Khazakstan need our care, not least because the system which can so easily treat them like dirt can next treat us like dirt. Just as it treats prisoners everywhere like varying degrees of dirt. Remember the British prison governor who resigned calling these places “penal dustbins”? And it can treat people on the dole like dirt. And it can treat like dirt wage-slaves who are forced to sell themselves for whatever lousy job comes along. And it can teach children in its schools how to prepare themselves to be treated like dirt. And these may be your children, or you may be those children who have grown up to be treated like dirt. And even if you don’t care that they treat you like dirt, I do because the dirt rubs off on everyone.

So, the starting point for doing what needs to be done is to care that the world is how it is and that we are part of it. There will be no escape through prayer. Lifetimes spent reforming little bits will at best remove this or that speck of dirt from the system. But the system will still be laughing—or, at least, the very few who profit from it will. Because profit will continue to come before need. That is the golden law of the profit system. There is no avoiding it unless you care enough to take on the system itself: to say quite simply that profit should not come before need—that we don’t need production for profit.

One of the few signs of hope in a relatively hopeless age is that many, many people are angry. Their anger all too frequently takes very anti-social forms. But the anger indicates something about how they feel: it indicates that they feel anything at all, and that discontent is in the air. Even the kids who smash up public amenities because they hate the world have not lost the urge to care about what the world is doing to them.

Acting upon this care and consciously organising this mass of discontent is an urgent task. It’s not an ideal or daydream about a bright new future. These humans are being trapped in Khazakstan now. And they are the tip of an iceberg of human wretchedness which, if we don’t care enough to do something soon, will eventually, and in one way or another, make wretches of us all.

Steve Coleman

Caught in the safety net (1996)

From the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

There may be trouble ahead . . . if there is one thing capitalism can be relied upon to do it is to create the circumstances in which the need to have one kind of insurance or another is virtually essential. Robbery, burglary, car theft  . . . the list is endless

Curiously, the day the news broke there was a rare feeling of fellowship buzzing round the office. The official statement came through the internal e-mail system, though some heard it first on the early morning news. Groups of us talked about the future, looked eagerly out of the window at the cameramen and, later, crowded round the first edition of the evening ‘paper with its ominous headline. On the day we heard five thousand of us would lose our jobs we felt strangely excited.

Sun Alliance and Royal Insurance announced their proposed merger on 3 May. Within two years this will create Britain’s largest general insurer, with world-wide premiums of £9,386 million, assets of £55,051 million and pre-tax profits of £1,026 million (based on 1995 figures). Both companies will save an estimated £175 million by 1998, at a cost of 4,000 jobs in the UK and another 1,000 world-wide.

The history of insurance is crisscrossed with company mergers and takeovers, more so than other professions because each insurer is run using very similar methods to chase after the same portions of a particular market

Moulded by markets

A combination of market forces, legislation and changes in social responsibility has defined the rule of insurance within capitalism. In Britain, most of us have some involvement with it through household cover, life assurance or motor policies (compulsory since 1930). As a worker or even a customer in a shop we are likely to be covered by an insurance policy. Indeed, the different status of workers, customers and owners in relation to companies is reinforced by the way policies classify people. If you suffer an injury at work you will be ensured compensation through an Employers' Liability policy. Your legal position in either circumstance depends on your relationship to the owner of the property where the accident occurred. As this type of insurance has contributed to the development of worker and consumer rights, it also represents how the working class is financially dependent on company owners.

Because it relies so heavily on the fortunes of other businesses for its income, the insurance profession is a useful barometer of the state of the economy on the whole. Insurers have only recently recovered their losses caused by the 1987 hurricane and the heaviest years of the recession. Since then, the cautious mood of the ’90s’ business activities has predictably lead to rationalisation.

Insurers will reduce staff numbers sooner than increase them and policies will only be issued if they are expected to be directly profitable. Even those committed to the system are realising insurance has moved away from pretending to be a public service towards a more openly cut-throat side of capitalism. In its place in Socialism, the emergency services would have to be expanded or another organisation created to deal with the longterm effects of accidents or natural disasters. But the whole range of insurances which deal with the flow of money and owner/worker/customer relations — theft cover, liability cover, health insurance, car insurance, life assurance — would become irrelevant and left for the history' books. Current policies exclude any change in the insured’s circumstances in the event of major social changes, including revolution. Those who devise the policy wordings have realised the concept of insurance is only tied up with the current system and not a permanent way of dealing with property, even if this isn’t the image they publicise.

International capital

Large companies need a rigid structure to function, aimed at encouraging maximum efficiency with the minimum of costs. Each of the major insurers are organised in similar ways. Most have stakes in several countries, and usually continents. In each country a head office will decide company strategy and oversee the running of several regional offices. The bulk of the company’s income (excluding that made from company-owned shares or interest on loans) will come from policies underwritten here, often through intermediaries of varying sizes. There may also be smaller offices acting as sales outlets. Behind the scenes will be the support facilities responsible for computer systems, administration, surveying, accounting, stationery, maintenance, distribution and catering. All these aspects of the insurance company are interdependent, although there will be another side to the company which has little contact with anyone except senior management. This is the “group headquarters” where directors and owners of the company observe its activities world-wide and contribute to group strategy and image.

It would be impossible for one person to comprehend all the systems in place to perpetuate such massive organisations, not only from within but also to provide the energy and resources they require. Throughout is the attitude that “the company” is an entity greater than the sum of its parts. Staff will answer the phone in the name of the department or company rather than themselves, and speak in terms of working for the company rather than in it. This ethos runs through many organisations including those not based around profits like charities and political parties. But for the worker without a vested interest beyond his or her job security this attitude is essential to divert attention from the company’s real identity—its shareholders and directors. Tasks which would otherwise be pointless or objectionable are justified by being in the interests of “the company”. Staff accept they are secondary to this mythical entity, although initiatives promoting the idea of a “customer-focused” organisation attempt to give it a human helping face.

Top down commands

The competition which capitalism needs to function is reinforced in the insurance world through staff grading systems. A worker’s grade is related to his or her age and experience, and the level and complexity of their job.

Coupled with the employee being delegated their own responsibilities and workload through it, the grading system gives what could be called their “political niche”. Their position in the company dictates what information they receive, to what extent they can voice their opinions, how they speak to people and even who they speak to. Offices are riddled with ladders of authority and chains of command. Most people aspire to having a “higher” position and will work to try and achieve it, but there is a universal acceptance of the status quo which people only try to work within rather than improve. Strikes are unheard of and unions have little power and low membership, particularly among younger workers. This situation has arisen because working in insurance is isolated and comfortable compared to many other professions, particularly in the larger companies, and the “them-and-us” attitude is weakened when senior management are beyond reach and lower management are working in the same office as other staff.

The lowest graded workers are usually those who deal directly with customers and perform the basic functions of underwriting. However, managers are reluctant to give decision-making authority to them, partly because of their inexperience and partly because it would undermine their own authority. Therefore you have a situation where the lower grades constantly have to refer to others for authorisation even when they may be perfectly competent to carry out the decision themselves. The insurance profession thrives on this sort of inequality, even though it is a constant frustration to those who realise the situation, everything comes down from above — decisions, information, workload, attitudes, and there is little the average worker can realistically do to improve this for themselves, except try to make the orders rather than take them. Women usually suffer more from this system than men. Although more are reaching senior positions than before, the management of insurance companies is still an “old boy’s network”, and most women don’t fit into the boozing chumminess which lies behind many of the important decisions.

Profit patter

As with most areas of work, insurance has its own technical terms. An esoteric environment leads to a particular method of speech, which in this ease takes workers away from emotive, practical thoughts and makes them think and talk in vague, inhuman terms like “competitiveness”, “the market” and “profitability”. The nature of insurance is to regard things — factories, cars, people — as economic units and the only way to do this is to speak and think in a particular way. For example, an underwriter calculating a car insurance premium wouldn’t think “Is this driver responsible and safe enough to drive without being likely to cause accidents?” He or she would learn to think “Is this driver safe and responsible so they won’t incur any claims, which would cost this company money?” Personnel strategists are keen to develop the idea of the “corporate worker”— someone who answers the phone in the accepted way, is perfectly organised, stress-free and never makes mistakes. Courses are run all the time to develop this kind of attitude, intended to make workers think about the interests of the company before themselves. There is also increasing pressure to study for insurance qualifications, available up to degree standard, which give an understanding of the profession around which to base a method of thinking. This form of education doesn’t encourage workers to think about any alternative ways of dealing with property and losses, and therefore only aims to perpetuate the system.

Despite the social engineering, workgroups within insurance aren’t motivated primarily by profit because it remains abstract to those below section head level. Older workers are more likely to be shareholders, have profit targets to meet and would have been in the profession long enough to be conditioned by it. Most lower-grade workers believe profits are a good thing for the company and themselves, reflected in bonuses and job security. But their motivation primarily stems from wanting to be efficient and responsible, and in the long term to further their position in the company. This style of work is about achieving what is expected or asked of you, or more, and not thinking about the system at large or any alternatives. The differences between what motivates workers of different ages echoes the grading system and prevents the existence of a common goal, which would be the prime motivator in socialism.

As insurers compete with one another for business, departments compete for a greater share of the company’s profits and workers compete with each other for jobs. For those caught inside it, the insurance world is a mass of internal politics, delegation, procedures, competition, customer focus, corporate image and above all, money around which everything else must revolve.

Clive Hendry

Go to work on an egg (1996)

From the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hard as it is to believe, there is actually such a thing as a Code of
Advertising Practice. Although it purports to lay down guidelines as
 to the content of adverts and the way they should be presented, of
course, it is universally ignored in the great scramble for market
 share and dominance

Advertising is one of the few industries that has done well out of the recession. In 1994 British companies spent £10 billion on advertisements, compared to a figure of under £6 billion for 1987. To illustrate the extent of this expenditure, consider the fact that Beecham’s spend more on advertising and promotion for Ribena than on the blackcurrants from which it is made. And Procter & Gamble, the biggest advertisers, spent over £5 billion worldwide on marketing in 1995. Not a penny of all these vast sums serves any socially useful purpose. Rather, the thousands of ads we are all subjected to each day are designed to maintain and improve profits.

It might be argued that advertisements exist primarily to inform consumers of new products and give them worthwhile information. However, the overwhelming majority of ads are on behalf of established product lines, and are intended as a reminder to existing customers to keep on buying and not to switch brands. The companies which spend most on advertising in Britain are Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Nestle, Kellogg’s and Mars, all of whom occupy leading positions in the market for food and various household items. Cornflakes, to take one example, are promoted not because there is anything new to say about them (apart from trying to persuade us to eat them at times other than breakfast), but because “brand loyalty” needs to be kept up.

One of the main aims of such high advertising expenditure on leading brands is that it makes it prohibitively expensive for competitors to enter the market with a rival product. As a consequence, many brand leaders have been around for decades, Kellogg’s Crunchie dates from 1929, and Fruit Gums from 1893—an interesting sidelight on capitalism’s supposed emphasis on innovation. It is partly because of the high advertising costs associated with product launches that over 90 percent of new products are failures. New lines, it should be said, are rarely started in order to meet unsatisfied consumer needs, but for reasons of competition, to do down another company and prevent them establishing too much command of a market:

“The multiple-brand advertisers launch products because of competition and market conditions, not because consumers ’ needs are not being satisfied. . . . Marketers in most major product sectors have their eye more firmly on what the consumers are doing ’’(Sean Brierley: The Advertising Handbook).

Many companies operate in what are known as saturated markets: for instance, it is difficult to increase the total amount of soap that people buy, so all that advertising can do to increase sales is to influence people to switch brands. Small wonder that writers on marketing speak of competition between companies in terms of warfare. The ratio of advertising to sales differs enormously from brand to brand, the highest ratios being for indigestion remedies, double glazing and toys. Advertisements aimed at children are especially traumatic for parents, who may have to try to explain why the longed-for toy is simply beyond their means.

It is a truism among advertising gurus that consumer behaviour is irrational, that people stick to buying a particular brand even if they cannot identify it in “blind” tests, or that their buying habits can change for trivial reasons. In fact, such behaviour simply reflects the fact that so many of the competing products are virtually indistinguishable, that the fabled choice created by capitalism is a myth. It is to tap such supposed irrationality and consumers’ alleged underlying motivations that so many advertisement trade on images, rather than any actual properties of what is being advertised. Think for instance, of the ads for Marlboro cigarettes: the scenes of “Marlboro country”, with its open spaces and dramatic vistas, never mention the cigarettes themselves. The Gold Blend coffee ads suggest a lifestyle for those who drink the stuff, and are successful in promoting media interest in their “plot” line, which means even more free publicity for the coffee. Current TV ads for Barclays and Toyota poke fun at the poor and elderly in a particularly cynical way. The fantasy world depicted in advertisements is a long way from the sordid realities of everyday life under capitalism.

Advertising agencies develop sophisticated techniques of influencing consumer behaviour, though they are forced to admit that it is impossible to predict just how people will react to particular campaigns, and that advertising on its own can have comparatively little effect. Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders (first published in 1957) gives an informative account of motivation research, one particular approach to influencing purchasers. Things have become more complex since then, and advertisers go to a lot of trouble to ensure that an ad does not put off some customers while attracting others. Sex is of course a popular basis for adverts, especially for holiday companies (witness Club 18-30’s suggestive ads for “package holidays”), but, like all advertising motifs, it needs to be used with care.

An outstanding recent example of the nonsense of advertising and its hype is provided by the launch of a new can for Pepsi-Cola. The drink itself is unchanged, but $500 million is being spent on a campaign centred on a new colour for the can! Blue is designed to distinguish Pepsi from the brand leader, Coca-Cola, and from supermarkets’ own-brand colas, which have begun to chip away at the Pepsi/Coke duopoly. However, the aim is again to stimulate wider press coverage in addition to the paid-for advertising: in words of one Pepsi executive, “The cola wars are good for the business, they keep up interest in the product.” The biggest example of manipulation surrounding a product launch must go to Windows 95, the “new” computer operating system from Microsoft which was launched to a fanfare of media excitement and technical scorn last year.

According to the Code of Advertising Practice, ads should be “legal, decent, honest and truthful”. But a really honest ad might say something along the following lines: “This product is fifth-rate, it’ll fall apart after a month or two, it’s minimally different from a dozen other products on the market, and to get you to buy it we’ll try to convince you that people who use it are attractive, popular and successful.” Next time you are confronted with an advertisement, just think about the lies, hypocrisy and waste that lie behind it.

Paul Bennett

Blogger's Note:

Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders was reviewed in the December 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Letter: Fetish for a moneyless society? (1996)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fetish for a moneyless society?

Dear Editors,

I have read a number of Socialist Standards over the last couple of years, and whilst I agree in very general terms with your espousal of socialism, it seems to me that your outlook tends to be naive in the extreme.

Your journal suffers the common affliction of preaching to the converted. For instance, a recent article on Trade Unions and the Labour Party was somewhat simplistic and presumptuous of the reader's left-wing sympathies. After the "Winter of Discontent" debacle we have had to endure a certain legacy of "the unions were running the country". Now whilst you and I might dispute this line, the general public remain cynical of organised labour. The strikes of the late 70s and the miners’ great strike of '84-'85 raised concerns (whether justified or not) about trade union democracy, so some attempts could have been made to tackle the “overmighty unions” thesis.

It might be an altogether better idea to encourage something of a radical forum, and solicit letters and essays from right-wingers so that some of these issues can actually be open to debate.

As for your criticisms of New Labour, this is surely superfluous. I am intrigued by critique of the old clause IV. part IV which differed from your own formulation of common ownership in respect of the socialisation of the “means of exchange”. Well, this really is splitting hairs, isn’t it? This particular fetish of yours for the moneyless society is analogous to the number of angels dancing on a pinhead, a largely esoteric and pedantic concern. You would have been on better ground lambasting Labour for its failure in socialist political economy than arguing about these semantic totems. Money, alas, isn't the problem, the profit motive is! Besides a socialist economy would surely have to ration scarce resources, or at least avoid the “double coincidence of wants". Free access ignores the physical constraints of scarcity.

Your constitution sounds very libertarian, you make a point of saying there are no leaders or followers with the SPGB. This cannot be so, you have an editorial team, presumably an NEC/executive committee. You make decisions and decide a party line, as your journal testifies to. This is leadership of a kind, even if collectively administered and democratically accountable. Presumably you also expel people from time to time.

Perhaps the most damning tenet of the SPGB is that your members have to be avowed atheists to join. I can understand a socialist party advocating the privatisation of religion, but to demand a doctrinaire atheism, is, dare I say it, very Stalinist of you. Of course from a purely scientific viewpoint agnosticism makes sense, but to officially control a person’s private metaphysical leanings is dangerous. Fair enough, I may be personally inclined to atheism, but science cannot resolve this philosophical question, and probably never will. Whilst I may think a person’s metaphysical beliefs irrational, s/he is still entitled to them (in so far as they harm no others), especially as this is pure speculation.

I dislike scientific socialism because it then becomes a caricature, a scientism, a crude 19th century positivism. Socialism should be humanistic and conjectural rather than a Marxist teleology of self-confirming dogma. As such it should concede its limitations and move towards some kind of genuine enlightenment.

A. M. Wallace, 

Rochdale

Reply:

We have our own criticism of the unions. They tend to be bureaucratic not democratic organisations. Many of them support the Labour Party. All of them seek “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work" instead of the "abolition of the wages system". All we say in their favour is that they do by and large succeed in acting as a brake against the ever-present downward pressures of employers and governments on wages and working conditions. That’s why our members join them and why other workers should join them too.

2. You are quite right. It isn’t money in itself that is the problem. It is what the existence of money represents that is the problem. Money means that goods and services are produced to be bought and sold; which in turn means that private ownership exists. Socialists stand for common ownership, for all land and industry becoming the common heritage of the whole community instead of being the exclusive property of individuals, companies and governments. With common ownership, goods are not produced to be sold (how can you sell what you already own?) but to be distributed, or rather to be made available for people to take according to their needs. So you don’t need money, and if you don't need money you don’t need banks, insurance companies, pension funds and other financial institutions which Labour's old Clause IV wanted to nationalise as “means of exchange”. This is not being pedantic: if someone speaks in terms of nationalising “the means of exchange" this shows that they are still thinking in terms of capitalism and so stand for state capitalism not socialism.

3. Yes. we have no leaders. There is an executive committee. elected each year in a vote of the whole membership. The editorial committee of this journal is appointed by the executive committee, but both committees are purely administrative and technical bodies. Policies are decided by a vote at our annual conference of mandated branch delegates and, occasionally, by a referendum of the whole membership. The executive committee, the editorial committee and all other committees are there to carry out those policies. People elected to carry out specific functions on behalf of an organisation and who remain responsible to those who elected them are not leaders, they are delegates. How else could an organisation function democratically?

4. We are not saying that people are not entitled to hold religious and other irrational beliefs if they want to. Of course they are. We are merely say that people with such views are ineligible to join our organisation, as are racists, nationalists. Tories. Labourites and other people whose views we regard as mistaken (including atheists who support capitalism). What’s "Stalinist" about a voluntary organisation laying down conditions of membership? All organisations do this.

5. Socialism is "humanistic" in the sense of wanting a society where humans can relate to each other as human beings and not as commodities and where human welfare is the overriding priority. There’s no contradiction between this and taking a scientific approach to nature and society. In fact it’s the best approach to take if you want to find out the best way to establish such a society.

Editors.

 

 

Blogger's Note:

The above photograph of the SPGB Executive Committee is from the original September 1996 issue of the Standard. I'm not sure who the person is with their back to the camera, but those facing on are, from left to right, Richard Headicar, Gwynn Thomas, Les Cox, Dick Donnelly and Mike Browne.

These Foolish Things: Lies, damned lies and . . . (1996)

The Scavenger column from the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lies, damned lies and . . .

DSS data show: Numbers living below half average income rose from 5 million (9 percent of the population) in 1979 to 14.1 million (25 percent) in 1992-93. Richest tenth of the population had 62 percent rise in income, poorest tenth a 17 percent cut.

But Peter Lilley’s study shows the top fifth of male earners in 1978 enjoyed a 33 percent rise in real earnings by 1992/93. But bottom fifth increased earnings by 42 percent. Guardian, 27 June.

Honey, I shrunk the housekeeping

Nearly 30 percent of workers in the West Midlands have experienced unemployment since the last general election, Margaret Beckett, shadow trade and industry' secretary told a meeting. Addressing the annual lunch of the West Midlands CBI, Mrs Beckett said that 29 percent of the West Midlands work force—579,340 men and 296,980 women—had been out of work at least once in the last four years. Evening Mail, 11 July.

Welsh coolies?

The gusto with which the Government welcomed yesterday’s decision by the Korean electronics firm, LG, to create 6,000 jobs in Wales underlines the ministerial belief that inward investment is the industrial policy of the 1990s . . . Britain is attractive because it is cheap and getting cheaper. Britain is close to the bottom of the European league table for labour costs, which are around half those in Germany or Switzerland, but the recent spate of investment from the dynamic Asian economies such as Taiwan or Korea suggests Britain’s labour costs—in regions such as Wales, at least—are now lower than those on the Pacific Rim. Guardian, 11 July.

Money mad

Mental health services for the severely disturbed are on the point of collapse, with the safety of patients, health staff and the public at risk in some areas because of a lack of beds, the Royal College of Psychiatrists warned yesterday . . . (Professor Thompson said]: “We fully support the principles of care in the community, but this cannot be done if it is not properly resourced and we are in that situation. We are aware of plans to close remaining psychiatric beds in many areas and concentrate on community services. This is no longer an option.” Money from the sale of old asylums had not been put back into psychiatric services, and hospital beds were not available to readmit patients if they relapsed into serious illness. Guardian, 11 July.

Real education

Cadbury Schweppes chairman Dominic Cadbury has told Birmingham businessmen that university students should pay their own tuition fees in order to save taxpayers’ cash . . . And Mr Cadbury questioned the value of arts degrees—unless they armed graduates with skills for the work place . . . Mr Cadbury, who was educated at Eton, Trinity College, Cambridge and Stanford University, said: ‘‘The taxpayer’s investment in university graduates is many times greater than that in the school leaver” Evening Mail, 17 July.

The Scavenger

Greasy Pole: Pragmatic chickens (1996)

The Greasy Pole column from the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our more retentive readers will recall that last month The Greasy Pole had things to say about the use made of the word pragmatic by ministers in Harold Wilson’s 1964-70 government, to excuse their failure to live up to their manifesto promises. As the next election approaches we have experienced some examples of extremely hard-headed pragmatism from Tory MPs, even before their manifesto has been finally composed.

We are referring here to what has been called the chicken run. This is the process by which certain Conservative members have announced that they will not stand again for the constituency they now represent and will instead try for the nomination somewhere else. In some cases the MPs’ pragmatism has proved attractive enough for them to be adopted for some other constituency quickly and relatively painlessly—unless we take account of the disappointments of other contenders for those nominations. But in other cases the search for another prospective seat has been laborious and unpromising and we have had to endure the heart-rending spectacle of politicians bulging with talent scouring the country for somewhere to lay their electoral head.

Consider, for example, the case of Terry Dicks, who has been the MP for Hayes and Harlington, which was not among the prettiest places in the country, even before the big jets began to scream low overhead to and from Heathrow. It is a place supposedly teeming with people who were once natural Labour voters—manual workers who swung to the Tories because they got fed up with the strikes of the Winter of Discontent. They then, runs the argument, found that under the Thatcher government they were doing slightly better than before. They assumed this insignificant, temporary change was due to Conservative policies and they went out in droves to vote for people like Dicks.

These voters expected not only policies from their MP but also opinions of a certain robustness. And that was what they got. Dicks did not became famous for any reticence or sensitivity in his views. His heart was not one to bleed easily over the plight of anyone who was not able to feel they were better off under the Tories. Allied to this he was always ready to challenge any incautious critics to the financially bruising costs of a libel action.

Immovable

This seemed to be what Hayes and Harlington had wanted. In 1983 Dicks benefited from a swing of over eight percent; he changed a Labour majority of over 3,000 into a Tory lead of over 4,000. In 1987 he increased his majority, largely through a swing of more than 11 percent from the SDP, to nearly 6.000. He seemed immovable. Yet now he is on the move. Hayes and Harlington will no longer shrill to his strident opinions. Of course this may have something to do with the fact that the electorate there have had a hand in persuading Dicks to look elsewhere. At the last election his majority was down, after some recounts, to a nail-biting 53. There may be people in Hayes and Harlington who wonder why such an attractive and talented representative has not yet found another constituency. But not many.

Another MP on the move who is renowned for robust opinions—if more delicately expressed—is Peter Lilley, the present MP for the cathedral city of St. Albans. He was once an investment adviser specialising in North Sea Oil so it seemed natural for him to be put in charge of Social Security, most of whose customers are unlikely to be sinking the proceeds of their Giros in energy exploration. In fact when he took over at the DSS Lilley’s reputation ensured that his appointment would not be the cause of any celebrations in welfare rights offices. His latest, well publicised, wheeze is to encourage people to spy on their friends and neighbours and report them if they seem to be making invalid benefit claims. We understand there is no truth in the rumour that the Hot Line was jammed with calls about a certain family who have homes in London, Windsor, Norfolk and Balmoral and who are in receipt of excessively generous handouts from the state . . . But we do wonder why Lilley is so wantonly depriving the people of St. Albans, who have so faithfully increased his majority time and again, of his protection for their rectitude.

Feel fed-up

However we answer this, how do we explain the plight of Dr Brian Mawhinney from Peterborough? Mawhinney is chairman of the Conservative Party and so in overall charge of their campaign to win the next election. He oversees their publicity stunts—like New Labour, New Danger and the spoof Labour manifesto (as if the real one will not be bad enough). Since 1983 the Doctor has seen his majority in Peterborough dwindle from nearly 10,500 to just over 5,000.

But does this adequately explain his urge to emigrate to more promising electoral lands? (He has been adopted for another seat.) As chairman of his party Mawhinney is supposed to believe in what they say and to persuade the voters to do the same. He is supposed to think that Tory policies are so successful that the voters will be falling over themselves to return them to power—even in places like Peterborough where there seems to be a feel fed-up factor at work.

Can it be that the Tories—people like Dicks, Lilley, Mawhinney—are not so confident, that they know they have failed and it is time for the Labour Party to be exposed again? After all, to run away and live to fight another way is one of the most enduring examples of the art of pragmatism.

Ivan

Blogger's Note:

• Terry Dicks didn't find another seat to stand in, and did not contest the 1997 General Election. Left-wing Labourite, John McDonnell, won Hayes and Harlington with a thumping majority at the 1997 election. He remains the MP for that seat. 
• Peter Lilley decamped to the Hitchin and Harpenden constituency for the 1997 General Election. He remained the MP for that seat for the next 20 years. The Tories lost his old seat, St Albans, to the Labour Party at the 1997 election.
• Brian Mawhinney left his Peterborough constituency for the safer Tory seat of North West Cambridgeshire. The Tories lost Peterborough to Labour in the 1997 Labour landslide.

World View: Global inequality is getting worse (1996)

From the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

News that 358 people own as much wealth as half the world's population will come as no surprise to regular readers of this journal. Neither will socialists be alarmed at similar findings published in the 1996 Human Development Report prepared by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

What is at first remarkable, however, is that the report's findings come during the International Year of Poverty. Yes, this is the year—a year set aside by those who set years aside for special problems—in which we are supposed to be solving the problem of global inequality and, yes, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that socialism is the panacea recommended by the report.

“There was plenty for the pessimist," wrote Martin Jacques of the report (Observer, 21 July)—though we would have preferred the term "realist”—having pointed out that since 1980 over 100 countries have had stagnant or declining incomes that have reduced living standards for 1.6 billion people.

Presumably we are supposed to feel "optimistic" about the 15 countries that have experienced economic growth during this period, even if, like Singapore, freedom of speech has been outlawed.

The report also reveals that whereas the world’s richest 20 percent were 30 times as wealthy as their poorer counterparts then, they are now 61 times as wealthy.

What the Observer found "encouraging” was the report’s use of a human development index, whereby not only GDP per capita, but also illiteracy, enrolment in education and life expectancy are also taken into consideration. By which measure “virtually every country in the world has improved its lot since 1980. In sub-Saharan Africa life expectancy rose from 46-51 ’’. But the downside is that, if followed to its logical conclusion, your average sub-Saharan African was enabled to be exploited for a further five years by the master class, enduring, en route, poverty, starvation, disease, civil war and the certainty that at death their dependants would fair no better.

Interestingly, the UNDP administrator, James Speth, believes "the world has become more economically polarised" and that "if present trends continue, economic disparities between industrial and developing nations will move from inequitable to inhuman" (Observer, ibid.).

In spite of this assertion, in spite of the simple fact that global inequality is so inextricably linked to the present insane profit system. Richard Jolly, the compiler of the report, and special adviser to Mr Speth, reasons that the problem can be tackled within the context of capitalism and has put forward a three-pronged strategy to reverse the trend: ". . . a target of 3 per cent capita growth in the poorest countries, an emphasis on making expansion sustainable and more equitable, and action to avoid the five forms of undesirable growth”. Which the UN describes as:

"jobless growth, ruthless growth where only the rich benefit, anti-democratic voiceless growth, unsustainable futureless growth, and rootless growth, which tramples on cultural identities" (Guardian, 16 July).

Of course, there is about as much hindsight and foresight here as an IMF structural adjustment programme. Growth is dependent, for instance, on investment and the building up of the industrial, private and public sectors in poor countries—all of which becomes impossible because of debt repayment schemes and because any country wishing to speed up development will become competitive and import less, which runs counter to the interests of the larger and wealthier capitalist nations who can easily out-compete and consequently halt the ambitions of their poorer counterparts.

Neither can expansion be really sustainable. Sooner or later a point is reached that capitalism cannot accommodate. “Too much” is produced and profits fall. Hence global booms and recessions.

In truth, the only way capitalism can be run is as it is now. This is the raison d'etre of capitalism, profit at any cost, in the interest of the minority and at the expense of the majority. And just as it is an unavoidable fact that capitalism creates the exploiter and the exploited in any given country, so it is the case that if some countries are to thrive, others must face ruin at their expense.

There can be no strategy or plan or panacea to remedy what is, after all, the logic of capitalism, within the context of capitalism. The only solution remains to abolish the system entirely and to establish socialism. The abolition of the profit system, money, wages, frontiers and borders, social classes and leaders, and the establishment of a global system based on community ownership and democratic control of productive wealth is the only way to end a system where one Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, can purchase six of the world’s poorest countries.

Commenting on the UNDP report, Victor Keegan, writing in the Guardian (22 July), said: “Never in the history of the world have they [the rich] been present in such quantities and in such flamboyant contrast with the poor as now." We might add: “and never has the case for world socialism been so pressing". 

John Bissett

World View: Slaves and wage slaves (1996)

From the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Earlier this year, the writer and TV broadcaster John Pilger visited Burma and talked with the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi. He also managed to secretly visit a vast labour camp and construction site in Mon State, between the towns of Yeand Tavoy and the Andaman Sea.

“Scores of people were building embankments and a bridge across a dry river bed." says Pilger. "The skilled were paid 60 cents a day. The majority were slave labourers, of whom many were children . . . The children carried heavy loads of mud mixed with straw in baskets and dishes on their heads and clearly agonised under the weight of it."

Every village in the area must give labour "voluntarily" regardless of the age or state of health of the villagers. When Pilger asked one villager why she was being forced to work in this way, she replied that they had heard that they were having to build a railway so that a French oil company could run a pipeline through.

The oil company, according to John Pilger, is Total, “which is part-owned by the French Government. In partnership with the American Unocal company, Total is building a $1.3 billion pipeline that will carry Burma’s natural gas into Thailand.

The deal will give the Rangoon generals $400 million a year over 30 years. Since they put an end to democracy in 1990, it is estimated that the Slorc have received 65 per cent of their financial backing from foreign oil companies" (West Australian, 8 June).

Also six years ago, 6,000 people who lived in the city of Pagan, "one of the last wonders of the ancient world”, were forced, at between two weeks and a few days, from their homes which were subsequently bulldozed, and they were marched at gunpoint to a shadeless area out of sight of tour buses.

And for why? “The city was being opened to mass tourism and only guides and the staff of a planned strip of hotels were permitted to stay" (West Australian, 8 June).

As always, profits and the lure of profits for the few come before the many. And the military rulers of Burma and Indonesia, like the ruling class elsewhere, have been learning fast.

Peter E. Newell

Knowledge is mostly potential (1996)

Book Review from the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

We Can Change the World: the Real Meaning of Everyday Life. David G. Stratman, New Democracy Books. £7.

From a socialist point of view, this book has much to commend it. However, it does have a few features which make us less happy. First the positive points. David Stratman’s main thesis is a critical opposition to both capitalism and Communism (the system he sees as having operated in the USSR) and their replacement by what he calls revolutionary democracy. In Part I he seeks to show the links between class struggle and people’s everyday lives. He discusses the bussing in Boston of black children into white neighbourhoods, the British miners’ strike of 1984-5, a meat packers’ strike, and working-class opposition to an élite educational programme. The common theme he sees running through these episodes is that “class struggle is a struggle over different conceptions of what it means to be human”.

In Part II Stratman backs his claim that “the history of the past two decades is driven not by competition among rival business economies, but by a struggle between the world élite and most people over the future of human society”. One chapter is devoted to “revolutionary” activity in the USSR. The author’s general conclusion is that “the problem of capitalists is not each other; their problem is their inability to subdue the working population. Capitalism is in crisis because it cannot win the class war”.

Part III is intended to show that “Communism” has been consistently counter-revolutionary and that trade unions function as instruments of capitalist control. In a chapter on the current US political scene Stratman attacks “the left” for not really believing in the possibility of revolution and hence restricting themselves to aiming at a reformed capitalism as the best possible system.

Finally, Part IV discusses the nature of the revolutionary movement, and the rôle of the revolutionary party which follows from “a new model of social change and a new view of people”. Socialists would not dispute his contention that “the role of a revolutionary party is not to bring to the working class a consciousness from outside, but to uncover and bring together the fragments of consciousness that are already there, rooted in workers’ experience and their values and social relations”.

Stratman writes well and with conviction. He says many things with which we agree. However, here are some differences and disagreements.

We recognise that Stratman and his associates are living in a country where, perhaps even more than in Britain, “communism” is insistently and deeply identified with what went on in the USSR and elsewhere, and even “socialism” is grossly distorted. But do we get over this problem by calling our object the attainment of “revolutionary democracy”? Stratman admits that both “democracy” and “revolution” have been distorted in meaning, but he doesn’t make a convincing case that a doubly distorted label for the kind of world we are working for is any better than a singly distorted one.

His major failure to recognise the positive theoretical insights to be drawn from Marxist thinking is made worse by his unsustainable claim that “Leninism is a consistent development of the internal logic of Marxism, adapting it for practical use … The Soviet Union and other Communist societies represent not a betrayal of Marxism but its fulfilment.” There are also some worryingly approving comments on the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s China.

Stratman talks about a “revolutionary party”, yet he is very vague about what a revolutionary democratic world will actually be like, other than that it won’t be capitalism. Will it be a world in which the means of wealth production and distribution will be commonly owned and democratically controlled? Will it be a world in which there are no nation states, no armies and police forces, no buying and selling, no money? In the absence of a solid and widely understood basis for fundamental change, and democratic action to achieve that change, some form of capitalism will surely go on.

Stratman believes that “people collectively know enough now to crush capitalism and to create a new world”. If they do know enough, what’s stopping them? The answer must be that the knowledge is mostly potential, and that it needs to be converted into actual knowledge and then appropriate revolutionary action.

Stan Parker