The Invisible Doctrine (2024)

Book Review from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism (& How It Came to Control Your Life). By George Monbiot & Peter Hutchison (Allen Lane)

This small book embraces some pretty big ideas, of interest to socialists. It’s a collaboration between US radical filmmaker Peter Hutchison (whose past work ranges from Iron Man to the Noam Chomsky documentary Requiem for the American Dream) and journalist George Monbiot. Monbiot’s trajectory is also of interest for socialists. From run-of-the-mill environmental reform campaigner in the 1990s his writings over the last 20 years detail a growing revolutionary political consciousness.

The objective of the book is to shed light on the significant political changes – ‘capitalism on steroids’ as the authors put it – that have occurred in the last 50 years and understand the extent to which these are predictable consequences of a concerted ideological offensive by the ruling class.

The book traces the intellectual origins of neoliberalism back to Hayek and von Mises. These ideas (privatization, cut taxes, deregulation etc) originally confined to academia were nurtured, funded and propagated by US business interests. (Monbiot has previously done much to shed light on the murky business origins of all the impressive-sounding institutes, thinktanks and lobbyists that actively try and manage political debate).

The authors make an attempt to argue that neoliberalism is distinct from classical laissez-faire liberalism, in that it emphasizes economic freedoms but pays less attention to the philosophical liberties of the individual that are usually bundled in. Adam Smith may have felt it necessary to expound on the benefits to society of the ‘invisible hand’; in contrast neoliberals don’t really care what the consequences are – the free market is the objective. For our part we have to be hopeful that workers increasingly see an invisible hand that gives them a very visible ‘two-fingers’. I’m not sure whether neoliberalism merits its own chapter in any political history of exploitation and oppression, but socialists would perhaps see it as a more honest philosophical rationale for capitalism. Either way the authors don’t get lost in the angels-on-pins philosophy, and are pretty explicit: ‘Neoliberalism is class war’.

The authors argue that neoliberalism’s disdain for anything beyond the market means that democracy is being degraded globally. We used to be told that capitalism and democracy were ideologically intertwined in a glorious revolutionary project. That was nonsense of course (the vote was just a necessary concession made by capitalists to keep workers on-side) but nevertheless democracy is a pretty heavyweight argument, one worth trying to have on your side. Harder to argue though in an era when free-market ideology appears to travel hand-in-hand with openly authoritarian demagogues; the recent Elon Musk/Donald Trump interview is a clear example (but perhaps not so much ‘hand-in-hand‘ as just two hours of mutual rimming – apologies to Socialist Standard readers for the mental image invoked).

World socialists are arguably unique as a political movement in how explicit we are in our confidence in the capacity of our species to understand the world we live in (given a chance) and act in our collective interests to create a democratic, participative and conscious revolution. We are therefore very interested in the spread of political ideas, including pro-capitalist ones. The ideas of von Mises and Hayek have clearly had impact. It helps to have a billionaires’ blank cheque of course, but the story of neoliberalism lends strength to the argument that ideas, particularly if they can be framed in a coherent narrative, actually matter. The unopposed march of neoliberal ideas has partly been because the left has been unable to adequately create its own narrative. World socialists would argue that this is because so much of the left are in denial; deep-down they are actually wedded to capitalism.

Many supposedly ‘anti-capitalist’ books end with a whimper as the author provides a list of reforms, a mild wish list. Monbiot and Hutchison end their book more substantially, suggesting the potential for some sort of alternative narrative, a ‘politics of belonging’. This involves acknowledging the remaining non-market commons around us that we share, and interesting concepts such as private sufficiency/public luxury are discussed that should be of interest to world socialists. There are glimpses of how this may be pre-figured and developed within the capitalist state (a contentious point for most world socialists) but don’t let this put you off. In the final chapter the authors make a strong and refreshing argument, that every world socialist will echo, against reformism:

‘Far from being a shortcut to the change we want to see, it is the morass into which ambition sinks. System change as the neoliberals and the new demagogues have proven is, and has always been, the only fast and effective means of transformation’.

Brian Gardner

Material World: Non-market socialism is feasible (2024)

The Material World Column from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

All the necessary techno-infrastructure required to enable a post-capitalist society to function effectively already exists today; we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. A self-regulating system of stock control involving ‘calculation-in-kind’, making use of disaggregated physical magnitudes (for instance, the number of cans of baked beans in stock in a store) rather than some single common unit of accounting (such as money) as the basis for calculation, is something that already operates well enough under our very noses within capitalism, alongside monetary accounting. Any supermarket today would, operationally speaking, rapidly grind to a complete halt without recourse to calculation-in-kind to manage and monitor the flow of goods in and out of the store.

At any point in time our supermarket will know more or less exactly how many tins of baked beans it has on its shelves. The computerisation of inventory management has made this task so much simpler. Our supermarket will know, also, the rate at which those tins of baked beans are being removed from the shelves. On the basis of this information it will know when, and how much fresh stock, it will need to order from the suppliers to replenish its existing stock – this simple arithmetical procedure being precisely what is meant by ‘calculation-in-kind’. It is applicable to every conceivable kind of good – from intermediate or producer goods to final or consumer goods.

Calculation-in-kind is the bedrock upon which any kind of advanced and large-scale system of production crucially depends. In capitalism, monetary accounting coexists alongside in-kind accounting but is completely tangential or irrelevant to the latter. It is only because goods – like our tins of baked beans – take the form of commodities that one can be beguiled into thinking that calculation-in-kind somehow depends on monetary calculation. It doesn’t. It firmly stands on its own two feet.

Market libertarians don’t appear to grasp this point at all. For instance, according to Jésus Huerta de Soto:

‘… the problem with proposals to carry out economic calculation in natura or in kind is simply that no calculation, neither addition nor subtraction, can be made using heterogeneous quantities. Indeed, if, in exchange for a certain machine, the governing body decides to hand over 40 pigs, 5 barrels of flour, 1 ton of butter, and 200 eggs, how can it know that it is not handing over more than it should from the standpoint of its own valuations?’ (Socialism, Economic Calculation and Entrepreneurship, 1992, Ch 4, Section 5).

This passage reveals a complete misunderstanding of the nature and significance of calculation-in-kind in a post-capitalist society. Such a society is not based on, or concerned with, economic exchange at all. Consequently, the claim that ‘no calculation, neither addition nor subtraction, can be made using heterogeneous quantities’ is completely irrelevant since such a society is not called upon to perform these kinds of arithmetic operations involving a common unit of account. This is only necessary within an exchange-based economy in which you need to ensure exchanges are objectively equivalent.

On the other hand, even an exchange-based economy, like capitalism, absolutely depends on calculation in kind. As Paul Cockshott rightly notes:

‘Indeed every economic system must calculate in kind. The whole process of capitalist economy would fail if firms like Honda could not draw up detailed bills of materials for the cars they finally produce. Only a small part of the information exchanged between companies relates to prices. The greater part relates to physical quantities and physical specifications of products’ (Reply to Brewster, Paul Cockshott’s Blog, 28 August 2017).

In his Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth Mises claimed that the application of in-kind calculation would be feasible only on a small scale. However, it is possible to identify extant or past examples of calculation-in-kind being implemented on a fairly – or even very large scale. For instance, Cockshott refers us to the fascinating case of the first Pyramid at Saqqara, built under the supervision of Imhotep, an enormous undertaking by any standard, involving nothing more than calculation-in-kind. Another example was the Inca civilisation, a large-scale and complex civilisation that effectively operated without money.

However, it was really the emergence of linear programming that has effectively delivered the coup de grâce against this particular line of argument peddled by Mises and others. It has removed what Mises considered to be the main objection to calculation in kind – that it could not be applied on a large scale basis.

Linear programming is an algorithmic technique developed by the Soviet mathematician Leonid Kantorovich in 1939 and, around about the same time, the Dutch-American economist, T. C. Koopman. As a technique it is widely and routinely used today to solve a variety of problems – such as the logistics of supply chains, production scheduling, and such technical issues as how to best to organise traffic flows within a highly complex public transportation network with a view to, say, reducing average waiting times.

To begin with, the computational possibilities of this technique were rather limited. This changed with the development of the computer. As Cockshott notes:

‘Since the pioneering work on linear programming in the 30s, computing has been transformed from something done by human ’computers’ to something done by electronic ones. The speed at which calculations can be done has increased many billion-fold. It is now possible to use software packages to solve huge systems of linear equations’ (Paul Cockshott, 2007, Mises, Kantorovich and Economic Computation, Munich Personal RePEc Archive, Paper No. 6063).

Computerised linear programming allows us to solve some very large-scale optimisation problems involving many thousands of variables. It can also help to solve small-scale optimisation problems.

In short, linear programming provides us with a method for optimising the use of resources – either by maximising a given output or by minimising material inputs or both. The problem with any single scalar measure or unit of accounting (such as market price or labour values) is that these are unable to properly handle the complexity of real world constraints on production which, by their very nature, are multi-factorial. Calculation-in-kind in the guise of linear programming provides us with the means of doing precisely this since it is directly concerned with the way in which multiple factors interact with – and constrain – each other.

While a non-market system of production could operate well enough without linear programming, there is little doubt that the availability of such a tool has now put the matter of whether such a system is feasible or not, beyond dispute.

Robin Cox

Labour's capitalist wealth fund (2024)

Tony Crosland

From the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party used to believe that if the government controlled the ‘commanding heights of the economy’ — such as the central bank, coal, electricity, steel, railways — it would be able to control the way the capitalist economy worked as it would make state capital investment rather than private capital investment the driving force. If private capital investment faltered then the state could step in and invest instead.

The 1945 Labour government did implement widespread nationalisation but things didn’t work out as planned. The theory was premised on the state industries making sufficient profits. In practice, while they did make a profit most of time, it wasn’t enough and they themselves had to borrow money. As they were providing a monopoly service to the private sector there were pressures not to charge too much so as not to undermine the competitiveness of private capitalist firms on export markets. They were also burdened by having to pay interest on the compensation bonds paid to the former owners. Then, after Labour was voted out of office in 1951, oil — in private hands — began to outcompete coal as a means of generating power for industry and the transport of goods, undermining any ‘commanding’ position the government was supposed to have.

In opposition, as Patrick Maguire pointed out in an article before the election in the Times (21 June), some Labour strategists began to question the commanding heights theory and to suggest that there were other ways of controlling the economy such as monetary and tax policy without needing to take industry out of private hands. This view was put forward by Labour politician Anthony Crosland in 1956 in his book The Future of Socialism. According to Maguire:

‘Crosland said something heretical. Profits were not only a precondition of rapid growth but something that socialists must “logically applaud” as a driver of industrial expansion and investment’.

The view of the current Labour leadership, Maguire went on, is basically the same:

‘That a Labour government that wishes to transform public services needs to encourage private investment and, yes, profit’.

Something, of course, that the Conservatives and Liberals had always accepted.

Actually, Crosland questioned whether capitalism was still capitalism and whether what had evolved in its place was still dominated by the profit motive, but it is revealing that, when his book was republished on its fiftieth anniversary in 2006, he was perceived by Labour leaders as saying that the economy was driven by private capitalist firms seeking to make a profit and that this must be applauded and encouraged. But this was a lesson the Labour Party had learned in the meantime from its experience in office in the 1960s and 70s.

Maguire’s article was entitled ‘Reeves’s plan for growth is built on private cash’. What she is setting up is a ‘National Wealth Fund’ to mobilise private capital to invest in the transition to a low-carbon economy in the expectation that this will stimulate growth in the rest of the capitalist economy (‘boost growth and unlock investment’ as the government press release put it – tinyurl.com/59ckdkdv).

The idea is that, for a particular project, the state will put up a quarter of the amount needed as long as private investors put up the rest, with any profits to be shared pro rata. To work, the project will need to be profitable; otherwise no private capitalist firm will be interested. As one of those involved in the scheme told the Times (15 July):

‘This is going to sink or swim based on its return generation. If this loses money it’ll be in trouble. It’s absolutely critical that it makes money’.

For the private capitalist investors of course, not just the government.

The government is banking that putting up a quarter of the money will attract private capital that otherwise wouldn’t be interested as the risk of not generating enough profit was too high. This might indeed attract some private capital. But, as Mehreen Kahn, the Economics Editor of the Times has pointed out:

‘Labour has made a virtue of “derisking” private sector investment. The danger is a state that will end up underwriting corporate profits while nationalising losses in the rush to fix a longstanding investment gap by throwing money at private finance’ (16 July).

In any event, the commanding heights of the economy remain occupied by private capitalist enterprises and so the economy will be driven by how much these decide to invest, which in turn will depend on how much profit they judge they can make. That means that whether or not there is the growth that the Labour government wants (to pay for promised improvements in public services) will be up to those deciding on private capital investment. To have any chance of succeeding, the government will have to pander to private capitalist industry and serve its interests.

This they already pledged to do when they proclaimed themselves the Party of Business. During — and for — the elections they added that they were pro-worker too. But it is not possible to be both pro-business and pro-worker as there is an irreconcilable conflict of interests between the capitalists and the workers arising from the fact that profits originate from the difference between what workers produce and what they get paid. Any party that takes office under capitalism is forced to give priority to profit-making as this is what drives the capitalist economy and so has to be pro-business, even if it might want to be pro-worker and even if initially it brings in some pro-worker measures. This is the experience not just of all previous Labour governments but of similar governments everywhere. The newly-elected Starmer Labour government won’t be — can’t be — any different. As will become evident.

As we said, capitalism was the problem, not the Tories. It still is.

Adam Buick

Grenfell: an unquenchable blaze (2024)

From the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Imagine waking at night inside walls of dripping flames in a fire that’s engulfing your flat in the tower block that is your home. A crackling storm of searing flames, where the walls turn to molten polyethylene (uPVC), a material described by Peter Apps, an editor at Inside Housing magazine, ‘like a solid petrol’ burning. It’s a material that melts as it burns, which it does easily at low temperatures. The air itself becomes as hot as the fire itself, scalding your lungs with each breath. Many victims of fire die in hospital from burn damage to lungs, days or weeks later after inhaling a suffocating thick black petroleum-based smoke. One element of the chemical cocktail released from burning uPVC is cyanide.

The escape routes, once familiar corridors and communal areas, now transformed into dark labyrinths of despair. The firefighters had told you stay put for safety but now the building’s uPVC shell is quickly and fully alight, dripping flaming materials floor to floor.

Grenfell Tower’s residents experienced this horror on 14 June 2017, when the 24-storey block was engulfed in fire, causing 72 deaths. The fire began with a malfunctioning fridge-freezer but spread due to the building’s combustible cladding, revealing systemic safety failures in UK construction and government oversight.

Survivor and campaigner testimonies

Survivors and bereaved families had consistently criticised the lack of accountability from authorities. They argue that Grenfell happened because the people in power saw the residents as expenses, not individuals. Grenfell Action Group (GAG), which was instrumental in raising concerns before the fire, repeatedly warned that a disaster was inevitable. Their warnings, however, were ignored. In a blog post written months before the fire, GAG chillingly predicted, ‘only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord’.

Testimonies to the Inquiry, whose final report was published at the beginning of September, revealed that fire safety was sidelined in favour of cost reduction and aesthetics. Architects and contractors ignored basic safety practices, contributing to the mass killing. As lawyer Stephanie Barwise KC, representing survivors, noted, there were repeated opportunities to prevent the fire, but none were taken.

The inquiry has also shone a light on the inequality and indifference shown towards social housing tenants and marginalised communities.

Refurbishment and cladding

It started with regeneration. Decisions in relation to Grenfell made during the refurbishment of the tower avoided consulting residents who before the fire had formed a residents’ committee. The refurbishment project was carried out by private contractors under the direction of the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO)

Following decades of deregulation and privatisation, social housing management has often been outsourced to private contractors, as was the case with KCTMO, which managed Grenfell on behalf of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. This system of privatised management prioritised efficiency and cost-reduction over the safety of the residents.

Originally, fireproof cladding was planned for Grenfell’s refurbishment. However, the material was downgraded to save money. An email from one contractor revealed that lower quality cladding was selected to save money despite warnings about the fire risk posed by the material. As one Inquiry expert aptly described it, ‘the cladding was a time bomb waiting to go off’.

The decision to downgrade the type of cladding was made to increase profits for the subcontractor. It directly led to the rapid spread of the fire. It was a decision that didn’t involve the people whose lives would be affected, but whose lives were ended by this decision. The money ‘saved’ on the cladding and which ultimately ended 72 lives was £293,368.

Grenfell was a block in the midst of one of the most affluent areas of London, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and was considered by its rich neighbours as an eyesore. The cladding served more for aesthetic purposes, making the building blend in with the affluent neighbourhood of Kensington rather than improving its safety. It was, as one resident put it, just ‘lipstick for the building’.

The residents themselves pointed out that they were more concerned with the activities inside the building such as the decommissioning of the communal boiler in favour of installation of individual boilers in the hall outside of the flats. These boiler cupboards were installed so the KCTMO could reduce their own servicing costs while passing the cost of heating and hot water to individual residents, while still jacking up service charges, an area where regulation doesn’t prevent extortion of residents. These same boiler installations were cited by one victim of the fire as what prevented him from getting his daughter and pregnant wife out of the building during the fire. What was previously a straight line to the fire exit was now a series of enclaves that in the thick tar of petroleum-based plastic fuelled smoke, had trapped his family.

Systemic inequality and class divide

The KCTMO repeatedly ignored safety concerns raised by residents. Residents had formed grassroots resistance against the faceless body managing their lives, but their warnings fell on deaf ears. The KCTMO, motivated by cost-cutting, neglected the safety of Grenfell’s working-class residents. The residents were living in unsafe conditions.

Social inequality, an essential aspect of capitalism, was a core underlying cause of what happened. Survivors and campaigners pointed out that the fire would likely not have occurred in a building which housed wealthier residents, because standards of safety and maintenance would have been higher. Edward Daffarn, a Grenfell resident and campaigner, stated:

‘We were treated as second-class citizens because of our postcode and because we were poor’.

Dr Lee Elliot Major, a social mobility expert, concurred: ‘Grenfell exemplifies how housing policy in the UK, driven by neoliberal economics, has led to a profit-driven culture where the most vulnerable are treated as afterthoughts’.

A major critique emerging from the Grenfell fire is how capitalism treats housing as a commodity rather than as satisfying a basic human need. Housing policy has shifted towards encouraging individual ownership, with little regard for the safety of those left living in social housing. This has been underfunded and neglected for decades, often outsourced to private contractors whose primary concern is profit, not safety. Grenfell epitomises where this leads.

Corporate negligence and government deregulation

The corporate entities involved in Grenfell’s refurbishment, which included Rydon, Arconic and Celotex, are rightly criticised for their role in the mass killing. These companies continued to sell or install materials that were known to be unsafe, driven by the profit motive. Internal documents from Arconic, for example, showed that the company knew their cladding was highly flammable but continued to supply it because it was cheaper and there was little regulatory pressure to stop doing so.

These corporate entities are not just the few bad apples. Maximising profits is the standard practice not just in the housing and building industry but within all capitalist enterprises. Everyone living under capitalism is subjected to this law of the jungle that permeates every aspect in life.

The role of successive governments in the mass killing cannot be overlooked. They must share the blame. The previous Labour government brought in the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, weakening fire safety regulations. This measure transferred responsibility for fire risk assessments to building owners and landlords, who rely on private contractors who, as always under the pressure of profit-making, are incentivised to minimise costs rather than maximise safety.

The Tory-Lib Dem coalition government which took over from Labour in 2010 is also to be blamed for its role in the policies and decisions that contributed to the Grenfell Tower fire, especially Eric Pickles, who was its Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government from 2010 to 2015. His time in office was marked by several actions related to fire safety and housing regulation, many of which are now seen as contributing to the fire.

Pickles cut back on regulations including fire safety, as part of the broader government push to reduce public spending and further ‘cut red tape’. Under Pickles’s leadership, there was a move to reduce the burden on housing developers and councils to meet stringent safety standards. One example was the weakening of building regulations, which reduced the requirement for fire safety inspections in some types of properties.

This drive to deregulate was touted as making construction and housing development more cost-efficient, but by unleashing profit-seeking private companies it compromised safety; it was an outgrowth of capitalist ideology that places emphasis on reducing government oversight in favour of what are euphemistically termed market-led solutions. Profit always trumps the lives of working-class people. As socialists we know no matter how much the market is regulated no length of leash will hold back the mad dog of capital from attacking when his food bowl is threatened.

The role of capitalism

The decisions leading to the Grenfell killings are a reflection of capitalism’s systemic failures. The drive for profit at all costs, the deregulation of safety standards, and the neglect of social housing tenants are all inherent features of this economic system. As a result, the lives of working-class people are deemed expendable in the pursuit of wealth.

In 2017 in the aftermath of the fire David Lammy, now Foreign Secretary in the current Labour government, summed up the situation as: ‘This is what happens when you deregulate and allow market forces to dictate safety in housing. Profit comes first, people come second’.

Grenfell is not just a story of corporate and governmental negligence; it is a symbol of deep-seated inequality. The fire exposed the glaring class divides in London, where working-class residents of social housing are treated as expendable. Now that the Inquiry has reported, the survivors and campaigners remain determined to hold those responsible accountable and to ensure that no other community suffers the same fate.

For survivors and the bereaved, justice remains elusive. As survivor Edward Daffarn stated during his testimony: ‘No one has been held to account for what happened at Grenfell. We don’t just want words; we want to see real change.’

‘Justice for Grenfell’ is not merely about criminal charges or compensation—it is about systemic change, ending capitalism with its class inequality and profit priority.

A. T.

Country Lives (2024)

Book Review from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Forgotten Girls: a Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America. By Monica Potts. Penguin £10.99.

The author was born and brought up in the small town of Clinton in Arkansas. Her book has two main themes: life, especially for women, in an isolated area, and the story of her friend Darci.

Like much of the rural US, Clinton has social and economic problems, made worse by the 2007–8 crash. Services such as schools and post offices are closing, industries are leaving, and poor white people – women, especially – are dying younger than a generation ago. Clinton is part of the Bible Belt, and evangelical churches are very powerful. There are high rates of sexual abuse and childhood trauma, and women in particular are discriminated against. ‘The church set girls up to be of service to everyone and in charge of nothing’ and ‘Women were held morally responsible for everything that happened in their families and communities. They were supposed to sacrifice everything for their children, even their own happiness and mental health.’ They find it hard to imagine a single life and are expected to do what their husbands tell them. There is a high rate of teenage births, and what sex education there is emphasises abstinence. The area is very conservative, is strongly anti-abortion and supports Trump.

Potts was, partly by chance, able to move away, attend college and become a journalist, though she later moved back to Clinton with her partner. Darci, however, was not so lucky. She lost her virginity at fourteen (to an eighteen-year-old); another local girl got married at fifteen, to a man nine years older. By the age of sixteen, Darci had a live-in boyfriend. She had some talent as a musician and played at music festivals, but drug-taking meant she missed so much attendance that she was unable to graduate from high school. She was emotionally and physically abused by partners, and had two children in her twenties. She stole smallish sums from an employer, but this eventually totalled $13,000, and she was sentenced to probation. Various jail spells followed drug charges and violating probation.

One of Potts’ cousins says to her: ‘Can you imagine waking up in your life, at thirty-five, and realising you have nothing?’ This aptly characterises the lives of Darci and people (not just women) like her: they are depressed, break the law in various ways, go to jail, are released, but then the cycle starts again. Poor white people are badly off, but feel that at least they are not black and at the bottom of the ‘rigid racial hierarchy’.

This is a vivid account of working-class life in some of the poorest parts of the US, and a reminder of how capitalism treats so many people in the ‘land of the free’.

Paul Bennett

Proper Gander: Flipped Off (2024)

The Proper Gander column from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Property makeover shows have been a regular fixture-and-fitting in the TV schedules since the BBC’s ratings hit Changing Rooms in the ‘90s. This century, the genre itself has been made over, going upmarket from redecorating neighbours’ lounges to renovating entire houses. BBC One’s Homes Under The Hammer has been popular enough for 27 series of formulaic episodes of the presenters looking round tired properties being sold at auction, meeting the people who buy them, and catching up again after refurbishments have been carried out. Announcing any profit made from the homes’ recalculated monetary value is the programme’s punchline, and appropriately, its title sequence features model houses wrapped in banknotes.

Wanting to snare some of the BBC’s viewers, Channel 4 responded with The Great House Giveaway. This has taken the setup of before-and-after renovation and stretched it out to go into more detail about the process in between, adding a game show element with contestants and prizes. The ‘giveaway’ in the title is misleading, as the contestants aren’t given a house, but are there to win money towards a deposit to get on the ‘property ladder’. Paired up and with varying amounts of expertise, they revamp a dilapidated semi or bungalow purchased at auction by the programme makers. With a timescale and a budget to replace bathrooms, knock down walls or install new kitchens, the aim is to re-sell the house afterwards at a higher price. The format is televised ‘flipping’: the practice of buying a property to sell it again at a profit rather than live in it. This profit is the contestants’ prize, after costs for going over budget, stamp duty, council tax, auction fees, utility bills, loan interest, insurance, solicitors and surveyors are deducted. More recent editions were filmed when the property market ‘went haywire’, leading to many refurbished houses being sold at auction for less than expected, and sometimes at a loss.

We watch these programmes to see the buildings being transformed from run down to done up, with the financial stakes intended to add some tension and adrenaline. The programme makers realise that paying stamp duty or calculating loan interest aren’t as visual as someone swinging a mallet at a fireplace, so it’s understandable that they don’t dwell much on accounts and bureaucracy. But emphasising the renovation over the finances, at least until the reveal of the profit or loss at the end, distracts from the tawdry basis of The Great House Giveaway. The contestants slog for months doing up each property for an uncertain amount of financial reward, if any, making it harsher than the average gameshow.

Both The Great House Giveaway and Homes Under The Hammer illustrate the commodification of where we live. The property being renovated is understood in terms of its financial value: the amount of money it sells for, the cost of materials and labour, the admin and legal fees, the hoped-for surplus. It’s a good thing that a house gets renovated in each episode, but in The Great House Giveaway especially, this is a means to a monetary end rather than because it benefits whoever moves in. Alongside this commodification is the separation between who owns a house and who lives in it. If we’re renting, we’re beholden to the landlord, and if we have a mortgage, we’re in debt for decades, and in both situations we risk losing the right to live in our home if we don’t keep up with the payments. In capitalism, much of our sense of security comes from how secure our home is, and this depends on how strong we are in the turbulent economic market.

People living in a future society of free access and common ownership of land and industries will have a different kind of relationship to where they call home. We can’t really empathise with this now, as our view is shaped by living within capitalism’s alienating system. The sense of security which would come with a home in socialism wouldn’t rely on something external and out of our control, as in capitalism, but on whether it suits our own needs. With production directly aimed at satisfying what communities require, there would be no reason for people to live in overcrowded, damp buildings made of shoddy or dangerous materials. We could have the flexibility to choose whether to remain in one home for years or decades, or to travel around, staying in different places for shorter periods. There would likely be a wider understanding of what makes a household, with the freedom to live by ourselves, in families, with friends or as part of larger groups. These variations exist now, of course, but the difference is that in capitalism, our choices are constrained by our economic position, while in a socialist society, our choices would be based only on preferences and practicalities.

Communities would still need some oversight of how housing is organised, with frameworks agreed democratically based on what’s needed. The concepts of ‘owning’ and ‘renting’ properties as we understand them now wouldn’t apply, as these relate to an economic and legal context which won’t exist. There could be some kind of agreement between a household and a community about how long they plan to live in a particular home, if the circumstances require it. And communities would still have to make sure there are the resources, the know-how and the means to build and maintain homes, which will be more straightforward without having to take finances into account. A socialist society might even have television programmes about renovating properties, although any retro broadcasts of The Great House Giveaway or Homes Under The Hammer will be nigh-on incomprehensible.

Mike Foster

Socialist Sonnet No. 171: Drama or Farce? (2024)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog 

Drama or Farce?

 Viewed through red and blue tinted spectacles,

The two candidates perform as per script,

A political pantomime that’s gripped

The media at least. To raise the hackles

There’s the villain and his dastardly schemes,

With a reasonable heroine who charms:

Their parts deliver pathos and alarms,

While nothing in the plot’s quite what it seems.

With faux audience participation

People are moved to laughter, tears and rage,

But know they will never be centre stage;

This drama is not of their creation.

Both actors appear sincere and intense

Enough to fascinate the audience.

D. A.

Food, insecure food (2024)

From the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

It goes without saying that food is the most basic need of human beings. Survival, health, growth: all depend on sufficient quality and amounts of food. Indeed, human history can in part be seen as an effort to acquire adequate food, whether from gathering, hunting or growing.

But despite the advances in technology, plenty of people today still struggle to provide enough food for themselves and their family. They suffer from food poverty or food insecurity, which can be defined as ‘when a person is without reliable access to enough affordable, nutritious, healthy food’ (redcross.org.uk), or as ‘insufficient or insecure access to food due to resource constraints’ (sustainweb.org). This does not only apply in the global South, but in so-called developed countries too. It has been estimated that over seven million people in the UK were living in ‘food insecure households’ in the UK in 2022–3 (an increase of 2.5 million over the previous year). This included one child in six and one working-age adult in nine. One solution that has been proposed is to provide free school meals to all children. Things may get worse if some farmers reduce production, as may happen, largely due to labour supply problems.

In the US the situation is also deteriorating. In 2023, almost 18 per cent of households with children were food-insecure, a small rise from the previous year. In 2009, the proportion was just over one in five; the figure fell after the financial crisis but then began to rise again during Covid when school lunches came to an end.

Yet it is in underdeveloped parts of the world that food insecurity is at its most serious. A recent UNICEF report stated that 181 million children worldwide under the age of five lived in severe food poverty (one child in four). Global food security deteriorated between 2019 and 2022, worst of all in Syria, Haiti and Venezuela. Large parts of Africa are in really dire straits, as is much of South Asia. In Somalia almost two-thirds of children live in ‘extreme food poverty’, while in Gaza the figure is nine children out of ten.

Famine, as defined by the UN World Food Programme, involves such criteria as 30 percent of children suffering from acute malnutrition, which is far more severe than food poverty. No countries currently meet the definition, but that does not stop the overall food situation from being dreadful.

The UN Environment Programme recently issued a Food Waste Index Report 2024, which contains some quite astonishing facts and figures. Globally, over a trillion US dollars’ worth of food is thrown away each year; this leads to perhaps a tenth of greenhouse gas emissions and occupies nearly thirty per event of agricultural land. The waste occurs in various places, including households, retail and supply chains, though it has to be remembered that the data in middle- and low-income countries is probably pretty unreliable. And some inedible matter is included, as the distinction between edible and inedible is not always clear. Reducing food waste is obviously a good thing, but in a world based on profit and with billions of impoverished people it is not straightforward.

According to Action Against Hunger, 733 million people (one person in eleven) go hungry. Rising temperatures and extreme weather have worsened the crisis, as have Covid and conflicts. But, as they say, ‘There’s more than enough food produced in the world to feed everyone on the planet.’ It does not reach all those who need it, partly because of food waste, but also because of poverty. The UN Environment Programme states that it is perfectly possible to feed ten billion people, if the world population reaches that figure. Reducing CO2 ‘could positively impact the nutritional value of the food produced’, while restoring biodiversity would make it easier to cope with pests and disease. An increase in plant-based diets would produce less greenhouse gas and need less water. Replacing monoculture with regenerative farming, using rotational methods, would restore wildlife and soil.

One of the immediate priorities in a socialist world will be ensuring that there is enough food for everyone, that nobody suffers from food insecurity. We cannot say now just how this will be carried out, as we do not know what the food situation will be at the time that socialism is established. But we can say that scientists and farmers know how to go about growing enough good-quality food for all, and know how to co-operate with others to make food insecurity a thing of the past.

Paul Bennett

Halo Halo! (2024)

The Halo Halo! column from the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists are wrong! Who says so? Apart from everyone who shills for the capitalist class, the pope, that’s who. In particular, pope Leo XIII. You may have missed his papal encyclical Rerum Novarum.

Well, it was over one hundred and thirty years ago.

Leo writes of a ‘great mistake’ embraced by the socialist-leaning labor movements, which is the notion that ‘class is naturally hostile to class’ and ‘wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict.’ This view, he asserts, is ‘so false … that the direct contrary is the truth.’ ‘It [is] ordained by nature that these two classes should dwell in harmony and agreement, so as to maintain the balance of the body politic,’ Leo claims. ‘Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital.’

By ‘nature’ did he mean the sky deity? Which one, Zeus, Ra, Varuna, Yahweh? Apologies to all of the sky deities who didn’t get a mention here but the list is too long to include them all. Early priests had discovered that propagating the myth that unpleasant fictional beings could be mean enough to ruin the lives of the populace unless sacrifices were made through wealth accruing to their self-styled intermediaries, the priest class. Popes continue to deceive the gullible in similar ways.

Leo must have spat out his wafer and choked on the altar wine when The Communist Manifesto came out in 1848. Pope of the day Pius IX wasted no time in composing a retort.

Pius’s 1849 Nostis et nobiscum calls socialism and communism an ‘iniquitous plot’ and ‘perverted teachings’: ‘The special goal of their proponents is to introduce to the people the pernicious fictions by misapplying the terms “liberty” and “equality.” The final goal teachings, whether of Communism or Socialism, is to excite by continuous disturbances workers and others, especially those of the lower class, whom they have deceived by their lies and deluded by the promise of a happier condition. They are preparing them for plundering, stealing, and usurping first the Church’s and then everyone’s property. After this they will profane all law, human and divine, to destroy divine worship and to subvert the entire ordering of civil societies.’

As Jimmy Cricket used to say, and there’s more. ‘The crafty enemies of the Church and human society attempt to seduce the people in many ways. One of their chief methods is the misuse of the new technique of book-production. They are wholly absorbed in the ceaseless daily publication and proliferation of impious pamphlets, newspapers and leaflets which are full of lies, calumnies and seduction.’ Keep the masses in ignorance! Guess Pius IX would have hated social media.

From 1560 to 1966 the Catholic Church had an Index of Forbidden Books, Index Librorum Prohibitorum. The sheep who allowed the church to regulate even their sex lives were forbidden to print or read publications from this list.

Other totalitarian regimes who thought likewise spring to mind.

DC

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘I cried deep inside of my heart’, said Nisa, now 32, recounting her first contract wedding. ‘Who wants to sleep with an old man? I did this purely for the money, so my parents can eat and my siblings can go to school.’ With her encouragement, her sister also became a contract bride, bringing in a dowry of $3,000 for her first marriage because she was a virgin. Nisa estimated that she herself has been in 20 contract marriages (‘Sex tourism in Indonesia sells itself as Islamic temporary marriage’.) 

(Los Angeles Times).

‘Interestingly, some of these people were supporters of the communist regime only a few years ago. There are of course others who are still convinced by CCP propaganda, who believe that China is the safest place in the world and that everywhere else is in chaos’, Cui adds. He attributes China’s economic development to “the hard work of the people” who are exploited by Party leaders. As an example of the lack of political rights, he cites the fact that the regime has taken away the freedom and wealth of nouveau riche figures like Xu Jiayin and Jack Ma. He cites the words of late Premier Li Keqiang, who made public in 2020 that some 600 million Chinese live on less than US$140 a month. 

(Equal Times)

As for national liberation, all one can say is that with friends like Hamas, Palestinians do not need enemies. Rather than freedom, the so-called ‘Islamic Resistance’ has nothing to offer them but poverty and bloodshed. Hamas’s position is crystal clear. ‘These are necessary sacrifices’, military commander Yahya Sinwar said of the mass. destruction in Gaza in a communication with fellow Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar. 

(Daniel Lazere)

‘While Ukraine presses on with its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, its troops are still losing precious ground along the country’s eastern front – a grim erosion that military commanders blame in part on poorly trained recruits drawn from a recent mobilization drive, as well as Russia’s clear superiority in ammunition and air power. “Some people don’t want to shoot. They see the enemy in the firing position in trenches but don’t open fire. … That is why our men are dying,” said a frustrated battalion commander in Ukraine’s 47th Brigade’. 

(Libcom)

Ahn Chang-ho, who opposes anti-discrimination laws, also rejects the theory of evolution and wants creationism lessons in schools. A former judge nominated to lead South Korea’s human rights body has sparked outrage with his comments against the LGBTQ community and the theory of evolution, with observers citing him as proof of the country’s flawed system for official appointments. Ahn Chang-ho, 67, is under scrutiny for his statements in parliament suggesting that homosexuality is a tool used by communists to incite revolution. 

(MSN)

In a healthy ecosystem, the various sets of animal … get along with each other without the need of any system of authority or dominance—indeed, without overriding structure or organization of any kind soever. 

(Counterpunch)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Proper Gander: Not-so special offers (2024)

The Proper Gander column from the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Supermarkets like to make us think they are there to help us keep the cost of our shopping down, with slogans such as Morrisons ‘Price locked low’ and Sainsbury’s ‘Hey big saver’. Cheesy catchphrases are just one of the strategies which the supermarkets employ to attract punters keen for a bargain. Some of their other tactics were explored in an edition of BBC One’s Panorama called Supermarket Deals: How Good Are They?

Reporter Michelle Ackerley starts with some supermarket own-brand, pre-prepared cuts of meat and fish. The packaging sneakily makes the cuts look larger than they are, with the label or sleeve covering an empty space in the tray instead of more meat. Consequently, the customer assumes they’re getting a better deal for their money than the reality. While this trick dates back as long as goods have been sold, traditional supermarkets such as Tesco and Morrisons have had to find newer approaches since budget rivals Aldi and Lidl have appeared and snared some of their customers. One of the ways they have responded is to advertise that some of their products are the same price as their equivalents in the discount supermarkets. Michelle recruits two families to trawl round the stores looking for ‘price-matched’ goods, who find out that this involves more effort than usual, without much difference in what they spend. Only a few hundred items out of tens of thousands are ‘price-matched’, but the ubiquitous signs around the aisles advertising them give the impression there are more. These signs are often bright red and yellow, colours which, according to Ele Clark, retail editor of Which?, we are ‘programmed’ to associate with ‘a great offer’.

‘Price-matching’ isn’t just a psychologically savvy way of promoting products, though; it also affects how they are made. Michelle compares similarly priced, similarly sized foodstuffs from Tesco and Aldi, which we might expect to be of similar quality. However, chicken nuggets from Tesco had less chicken in than those from Aldi, and tins of Tesco coconut milk contained less coconut than their Aldi equivalent. To match the price charged by Aldi, Tesco have scrimped on the ingredients because their other costs are higher, with both stores’ pricing expected to allow a profit. From the shopper’s point of view, Tesco’s inferior versions are worse value than Aldi’s, and this is disguised by them being at the same price. But more fundamentally, this illustrates how products are designed and manufactured according to what’s most profitable for the companies rather than with the aim of making them as good as possible. The documentary describes another example of this: shrinkflation.

Shrinkflation is the practice of reducing the size of a product while maintaining the same sale price. Shrinking it means saving on rising production costs, allowing a wider profit margin, with the consumer losing out by getting less for their money. Chocolate bars and bags of crisps are most obviously smaller than they used to be, and Michelle shows us how the New York Bakery Co has kept its bagels the same width, but deviously increased the size of the hole in the middle. As Ele says, if the price of something remains the same, we don’t always notice when it has been subject to shrinkflation.

Perhaps to counter the risk of customers being put off by inferior or shrinkflated comestibles, supermarkets aim to maintain them with loyalty card schemes, such as Tesco’s Clubcard and Morrisons’ More Card. When shoppers who have signed up for a loyalty card make purchases, they accrue points which can then be redeemed back as cash vouchers, and they are also eligible for discounts on particular items. A browse round a branch of Sainsbury’s shows that the price reductions which come with having their Nectar card tend to apply to cakes, crisps, fizzy drinks and alcohol, rather than staples such as meat and vegetables. As retail expert Kate Hardcastle says, seeing that something is on special offer can be enough temptation to buy it, even if we didn’t originally intend to. Rebecca Tobi of The Food Foundation adds that because unhealthy snacks tend to be cheap to make, there’s a commercial incentive for companies to push their sales to maximise profits. She wants ‘systemic change’, but defines this merely as having offers on healthier produce. As well as encouraging customers towards profitable comfort food, loyalty cards also provide the supermarket with valuable data on spending patterns which feeds into their marketing machine.

All the tricks and techniques shown on Panorama’s exposé are consequences of goods being commodified, or produced for sale. A can of beans isn’t just a can of beans, it’s an economically quantified unit whose end form has been shaped by what’s profitable for the owners of the companies which manufacture and distribute it. The quality and amount of its ingredients aren’t decided upon to make it better to eat, but according to what’s cost effective. Its packaging isn’t only designed to preserve the food inside, but also to publicise and exaggerate it. And when it’s sold to us, we’re made to believe we’ve got a decent deal if marketing strategies such as price-matching and loyalty cards have worked. These strategies cynically and subtly aim to manipulate our choices so we spend more and keep coming back. Competition between supermarkets for market share fuels a race to the bottom as far as the quality of goods is concerned, while profits for the capitalist class soar.

Mike Foster

Action Replay: The Price Is Right, or wrong (2024)

The Action Replay column from the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

There has been a lot of media coverage about the cost of attending concerts by Taylor Swift and Oasis, and some – though much less – on the prices of tickets for sporting events. Particularly in the context of profitability and sustainability rules, football clubs now have to rely more on income from ticket sales, sponsorships and merchandise.

One particular case where fans objected was Aston Villa, who are back in the top European competition this season, after forty years away from it. Most fans will pay at least £70 to watch a home Champions League game, but in the top seats it will be over £90. The club at least changed their mind after trying to double the cost of disabled parking for the season. They have a kit deal, and shirt deals with betting companies to help them out a bit.

And it’s not just football. Tickets for top boxing events can cost upwards of £200. Also, there have been complaints about Lord’s cricket ground in London charging £95 to watch the fourth day of the Test against Sri Lanka, when the ground was less than a third full. Most years Lord’s hosts two Tests (out of six), while some well-known venues, which tend to be a lot cheaper, miss out. The MCC is a bastion of privilege and has been accused of racism and sexism. It is also a home of profit (over £67m in 2023).

Twickenham, the home of English rugby union, has now been renamed the Allianz Stadium, after the world’s largest insurance company, which has also acquired the name of Bayern Munich’s football stadium in Germany, as well as the rugby league ground in Sydney and a football stadium in São Paulo. Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh hosts Scotland’s rugby union internationals: except it’s now Scottish Gas Murrayfield. The Millennium Stadium in Cardiff is now the Principality Stadium. Plenty of other grounds are named after sponsors: Emirates, Etihad, Vitality, Amex and so on. And of course most big stadiums host not just sporting events but music concerts etc as well. In the US National Football League, far more stadiums have sponsors’ names than is the case in England.

Another way of boosting income for both football clubs and the European governing body UEFA is to increase the number of games. So the league stage of the Champions League (and other European competitions) has now been changed to eight matches per club rather than six, with an additional knock-out round for many of those participants too. Players complained that too many games made them tired, and there was even talk of a strike. Fifpro, the union for the very top players, stated that legal action against Fifa was ‘inevitable’ after the number of matches for the Club World Cup was increased too.

Paul Bennett

Is anybody up there? (1982)

From the November 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last year the American government published the proceedings of a conference in California in June 1979 whose ostensible purpose was to explore the prospects for research into the nature and distribution of life in the universe (Life in the Universe, NASA Conference Publication 2156. US Government Printing Office). While the case for the establishment of a sane and harmonious society here on earth is obviously not dependent on such findings, the papers do contain much of interest to socialists.

The conference considered the origin of life, life supporting environments, the evolution of complex life, the detectability of technically advanced civilisations and the problem of locating extraterrestrial intelligence. Two different though complementary approaches are encompassed here. The first seeks to develop an understanding of life and the environments necessary to support it. Such research cannot, of course, uniquely determine the existence of life outside the planet earth, but will enable attention to be focused on the more promising candidates among the heavenly bodies. The second approach has already been christened SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), and involves listening for potential radio transmissions from intelligent life, and an examination of suitable stars for target. A research programme has been established to pursue these aims.

The advance in thinking in this branch of science since Darwin wrote The Origin of Species is as immense as that made in the same period in the design of weapons of war. The two are in fact linked, as illustrated by the development of nuclear bombs and the use of space-craft for reconnaissance and, potentially at least, for other military purposes. It is a mistake to think of this advance of science in terms of increasing the number of solved problems (with a corresponding reduction of those unsolved), although there is a sense in which this is a valid viewpoint. Attempts to attack one particular problem often lead to unexpected results which themselves cause new questions to be posed and fresh problems identified as requiring solutions. An example of this was the bringing back to earth for analysis of samples from the moon. The results have been somewhat misleadingly reported as having caused confusion among scientists. In fact the longterm result is an enlargement of horizons and an enrichment of understanding.

Certainly this aspect of scientific research can be irritating. It requires the modification of theories in the face of new evidence, often the abandonment of what had appeared to be promising lines of enquiry. Thus the appearance can easily be given that no progress is being made. It is here that the sniping movement calling itself Creation Science has found its opportunity. There have surely been few organisations to which the word reactionary can be more appropriately applied. Claiming that science has failed to provide the answers, it advocates a return to the old creation theories of religion. Its adherents focus on biological evolution and Darwin's work and pose the question, “Was Darwin right?”, as though they were continuing the famous debate between Bishop Wilberforce and T.H. Huxley. Their claim that the fossil record does not support Darwin is technically correct although rather impertinent. Darwin as was understandable in his time, saw evolution as proceeding at a much more constant rate than present-day evidence will support. In fact, as presented by Valentine [1], what now appears to have happened is lengthy periods of relative stability with small changes (microevolution) interspersed with intervals where more revolutionary events happened (macroevolution). Valentine writes: "A large mutation can produce a descendant which is infertile with members of its parental species, including its parents. If it can fertilise itself, however, it may propagate and thrive”. In the human species mutations are produced which differ considerably from their parents. This occurred with much greater frequency immediately following the atomic bombardment of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Like most mutations these were tragic, one-off cases and where they survived they did so only because human society can now prevent natural selection operating. The point is, however, that it was the normal human reproductive process which brought forth these ‘children’, and to claim that a ‘creator’ is at work here is worse than ridiculous.

The concept of concurrent micro and macroevolution appears to be well supported by the fossil record. Indeed in the last 20 years one of the main arguments used by “creationists' has disappeared. As reported by Margolis and Havelock [2], it used to be thought that the Precambrian rocks of the Ediacaran period (700 million to 570 million years ago approximately) did not contain a fossil record. The pioneering work of Elso Barghoorn and Stanley Tyler of Harvard University has shown that this is not the case, the difficulty having been related to detection techniques and scientific expectation. Margolis and Havelock put it thus: “These investigators realised that the conspicuous fossil record of large organisms must have been preceded by something smaller. Such ideas led them to microscopic studies of thin sections of unaltered sedimentary rocks”. Far from supporting biblical or neo-biblical viewpoint, modern science is dealing it ever more crushing blows. This message is forcefully conveyed in nearly all the papers presented at the conference. ‘Creation science', incorporating as it does a complete misunderstanding of modern scientific method, must be largely motivated by its own deadly fear of the consequences of driving God out of the heavens. The complexity of the universe, as it is now understood, shows more clearly than ever before that the idea that we can ‘know all the answers' is a religious and not a scientific one. How could the inert matter which preceded life on earth have left sign-points to show us how it came to be where it was?

When talking about the possibility of detecting the existence of life outside our own planet, we of course mean life as we know it’; that is. life that has evolved in much the same way from much the same material conditions and resources as has life here on earth. We cannot, of course, even begin to discuss any other possible method of life evolution as it would be totally outside our experience and knowledge. All that can be said is that while this possibility cannot be entirely ruled out, the chances do seem to be extremely small. The phrase ‘conditions which will support life’ must also be taken to mean ‘conditions similar to those on earth’.

The space exploration which has already taken place certainly appears to have ruled out any chance of life at the present time anywhere else in the solar system. No attempt was made by sensate beings to intercept or communicate with the spacecraft, and nowhere was a life supporting environment detected. However Chang [3] suggests that Venus and Mars may have supported some form of life in the past. As for the chances of life further afield, this appears to boil down to which is the greater of two very large numbers. The odds against all the requirements of organic life appearing on another plant, or perhaps a satellite, in much the same proportions as on earth, are obviously very great. Equally vast however is the number of heavenly bodies in the universe. The biblical writer who compared their abundance to that of sand on the seashore was considerably more right than he knew. He probably did not believe what he wrote, but he has proved not to be far out. There has even been speculation that the planet earth may not be unique — that is to say. there may be another bloke called Edge writing at this instant about life in the universe for another journal called Socialist Standard on an identical planet many light years away! Opinion at the conference was divided on this issue. Drake [4] states: “The current consensus concerning extraterrestrial life is that it exists in abundance in the universe". However in the present state of knowledge the opinion of Lovejoy [5] seems more realistic: “I think it quite reasonable to suppose that despite the immensity of the known universe, the specificity in the physiostructure of any organism is so great and its immensely complex pathway of progression so ancient that the probability of re-expression is simply infinitesimal". This, needless to say. has nothing in common with the religious view of man as the special creation of God. Lovejoy’s comments are the product of more than a century of dedicated scientific observation.

What is the real purpose of this conference? In his introductory remarks Frosch [6] said: "The ‘golden fleece' idea that searches, gropings for knowledge whose purpose we do not understand are silly and some kind of rip off, results from sheer lack of understanding, lack of imagination and lack of perception of the meaning of the history of the human race". As far as it went, this was very well said. However, it would be naive indeed to accept that the gathering was concerned with pure research for the long-term benefit of humanity. Under the present social system funds are not provided for such studies. Certain capitalist interests, of course, stand to benefit in the short term from the construction of the high technology instruments required to scan the universe for life. Spacecraft travelling up to the speed of light have been envisaged. Generally speaking, however, such interests, despite all their lobbying, are unlikely by themselves to generate enough pressure to force governments, considering the interests of the capitalist class as a whole, to provide them with the necessary finance. Not surprisingly, “earth politics" is ignored in all of the papers. This is an indication, however, that the participants implicitly accepted not only that there is no feasible alternative to the capitalist system here on earth, but that the advanced civilisations which they hope to find elsewhere will be capitalist in character also.

In discussing how such advanced civilisations may be detected, Braccwell [7] unwittingly and grimly admits this when he says, "incidental signals offer more interesting grounds for speculation. There is of course the possibility of emission from bomb explosions. Sustained nuclear reactions for the purpose of power generation do not seem a likely source because leakage would represent waste”. Unlike CND, it would appear that this author holds justifiably pessimistic views of the possibility of removing the threat of nuclear war while retaining the system that causes it. It can reasonably be assumed that the conference would have been no more optimistic about the prospect of tackling the problems of pollution and depletion of natural resources. These are also insoluble within capitalism, and are seriously worrying the more thinking among our rulers.

There are perhaps two obvious ways in which such people may see communication with other life-supporting planets as offering a way out. First, there is the hope that some "super intelligence” may be contacted who could point to solutions which have escaped dumb earthlings. However socialists see this as another form of the "great man" idea, and thus doomed to failure. Secondly, and perhaps the speculation on long-distance space travel is indicative, there is the possibility of transplanting earth capitalism to another site (and eventually wrecking this place in the way the earth is now being wrecked). This may prove to be a more practical proposition than trying to establish life support systems on other members of the solar system which are at present inimical to life. Such a migration could involve war. not only with existing inhabitants, but fierce conflict between the rival capitalist groups on earth as they try to extend their space colonies at each other's expense, just as happened here. This scepticism over motives however does not detract from the value of this publication as an abundant source of information and valuable insight into current scientific thinking.

E. C. Edge

References

(All references are taken from NASA Conference Publication 2156)

1. Emergence and Radiation of Multicellular Organisms; James W. Valentine (University of California)

2. Atmosphere and Evolution; Lynn Margolis (Boston University) and James E. Lovelock (Reading University, UK)

3. Organic Chemical Evolution; Sherwood Chang (Ames Research Centre. NASA)

4. Comments by Frank D. Drake (Professor of Astronomy. Cornell University) as session chairman for session 5.

5. Evolution of Man and its Implications for General Principles of the Evolution of Intelligent Life; C. Owen Lovejoy (Kent State University, Ohio)

6. Introductory remarks by Robert A. Frosch (President of the American Association of Engineering Societies)

7. Manifestations of Advanced Civilisations; Ronald N. Braccwell (Stanford University, California)

The bankers and the crisis (1982)

From the November 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The German philosopher. Hegel, said that the only lesson of history is "that people and governments never have learnt anything from history". This is not altogether true but it can be applied to the attitude of capitalists, of capitalist politicians and of economists to the recurrent crises and depressions of capitalism. In spite of a score or more of depressions in the past 200 years the capitalists (and most workers) believe, when each boom comes, that it will last for ever. As Marx put it, when the market is expanding, each capitalist behaves as if the demand for his products is limitless. For a time this appears to be true: there is a growing demand for raw materials and finished products, and for workers. Profit prospects are good, unemployment falls and wages rise. But, as Marx also said, that situation is "the harbinger of a coming crisis". Suddenly some industries find that they have overproduced for their particular market and start to halt further investment and curb output.

Capitalism does not go on producing if there is no profit in it. At that point (as happened in the autumn of 1973) there will be. side by side, some companies cutting back because of falling orders and other companies still reporting inability to meet their orders because of scarcity of materials and workers. Then they all become more or less involved in the depression as unemployment grows and demand falls generally.

When the inevitable depression takes place, politicians and economic "experts" say that something has gone wrong, and that what they have to do is discover what this something is, why it happened and how to avoid it next time. Dozens of "remedies" have been publicised: put wages up or put them down; raise prices or reduce them; go in for free trade or import restrictions; increase government expenditure or decrease it; stay in the EEC or leave it; induce the banks to lend more freely or the reverse; increase government borrowing or avoid it; increase taxation or reduce it; raise the foreign exchange rate of the pound or lower it; tighten up trade union law or relax it: have more nationalisation or less nationalisation. One thing ignored by all these peddlers of remedies is that they have all been tried before and failed.

Take the Thatcher government, with its “monetarist” policies. They say that all will be well if government expenditure, borrowing and taxation are reduced, inflation got rid of, wages and prices left to market forces, if there is less nationalisation and tighter laws governing trade unions and strikes. But all these supposed cures for depression existed in the last quarter of the 19th century. Government expenditure and taxation, in relation to the National Income, were only about a fifth of what they are now. There was no inflation. Wages and prices were then left to market forces and not only were the unions numerically much weaker but they operated under more stringent trade union law. There was much less nationalisation. For most of the time Tory governments were in office. So what happened? It was the period of the Great Depression, which lasted for over twenty years. In the middle of it, in 1884. the Tory leader. Lord Randolph Churchill, had this to say:

We are suffering from a depression of trade extending as far back as 1874. ten years of trade depression, and the most hopeful either among our capitalists or among our artisans can discern no signs of a revival.

He listed all the industries that were, in his words, dead or dying — coal, iron, shipbuilding, silk, wool and cotton. He ended: “Turn your eyes where you like, you will find signs of mortal disease".

This country had not at that time experienced capitalism run by Labour governments, whose record was in fact no better than that of the Tories or Liberals. In the fifty years 1929-79 there were four periods of Labour government, in all of which priority was given to reducing unemployment and keeping it low. (Actually they said they could abolish it entirely.) In all these four periods unemployment was higher when they left office than when they went in. The latest period was 1974-79, which saw unemployment rise from 629,000 to just under 1,300,000. The favourite remedy of Foot and Benn to this is to increase government expenditure. In 1973 unemployment was 630,000 and government expenditure £24,000m. The latter has increased every year since 1973. including the years of Thatcher government, and in 1981 was £107,000 million, but unemployment, though still much below the levels of the 1930s. is now over 3 million.

One question on which the Labour Party, the Tory Party and the economists are agreed is that one cause of depression and heavy unemployment is that prices are too high. In a similar situation of depression and heavy unemployment in 1931 a government committee (Committee on Finance and Industry), took exactly the opposite line. The fourteen top bankers, economists and Tory, Labour and Liberal politicians studied the problems for eighteen months and issued their Report in June 1931. Among the recommendations was a chapter on "The immediate necessity to raise prices above their present level”. Both views are baseless: capitalism has periodic depressions whether prices are high or low, rising or falling.

The belief of the searchers for remedies is based on a misconception. They believe that trade depression and heavy unemployment prove that something has gone wrong. They are mistaken. Nothing whatever has "gone wrong" with capitalism; it is just the way the system operates in accordance with its structure, with alternate expansion and contraction, much like the tides. If, one evening at the seaside, you see the sea almost up to road level, and then in the morning see that it has dropped twenty feet, you don't shout: "Something has gone wrong. What shall we do about it?"

Where the analogy with the tides fails is in respect of regularity and the length of trade depressions. It is not possible to count on all depressions lasting for some specified time. Some are quite short, others very long, like the Great Depression. (Some economists have recalled the "long-wave” speculative theory of Kondratieff. An article on this in the Financial Times on 6 September had the cheerful title:"Why The Recession May Last Till 1996".) All that can be said is that at some stage in the present depression, as in all the earlier ones, expansion will be resumed when capitalists, viewing all the relevant factors (prices, interest rates, wages) decide that it will be profitable to invest again in the development of new industries and the re-expansion of old ones.

The headlines have recently been made by the banking crisis. There is nothing new in this; every trade depression is accompanied by bank failures or banks losing much of their assets. Walter Leaf in Banking (1926 edition, page 59) says that in the crisis of 1837 "it is believed that every bank in the United States, without exception, suspended payment". And the same happened again in 1875. Writing of the American depression in the 1930s, H. G. Nicholas says that “two-thirds of the banks of the country had closed their doors". (The American Union, page 252.) H. M. Hyndman, in his Commercial Crises of the Nineteenth Century (page 95) wrote of the collapse of the great banking house Overend & Gurney, described as standing next to the Bank of England, and “their name and influence extended to all parts of the civilised globe”. When they stopped payment on 10 May 1866 "the panic occasioned throughout Great Britain was to the full as furious and unreasoning for the time . . . as the panic of 1857”. Hyndman says that the Foreign Secretary "was impelled to send a circular to all our Ambassadors abroad, in order to assure foreigners that the bottom had not fallen out of our island". Banks make most of their profit by borrowing money from depositors at a low rate of interest and lending or investing at a higher return. According to the Financial Times (27 September) the London Clearing Banks are now paying on average about 3 per cent to depositors and lending at over 12 per cent. Out of this margin they have to meet the costs of 234,000 staff and of maintaining some 11,000 branches. Banks can get into difficulties either by their depositors wanting to withdraw all their deposits, or by lending money to companies or governments which go bankrupt or default on the loan.

If depositors lose confidence in the bank and try to get their money out the bank is in trouble because they have only very small amounts of cash in their tills or on deposit at the Bank of England, and it may not be possible for them to turn other assets into cash at short notice without big losses. The Evening Standard (8 September) reported that the sudden decision of the Mexican government to nationalise all banks, suspend payment for five days and make the dollar an illegal currency was because there was a run on the banks; they "literally ran out of dollars". The Western bankers are all in trouble through having lent vast sums of money to companies and governments which, because of the depression, are unable to keep their repayment agreements or, in some cases, even to pay the interest. Mexico’s interest payments have been running at £580 million a month.

One aspect has been the fall of oil prices and oil consumption which have reduced the foreign investments of the oil producing countries (OPEC). At the same time Third World countries find their exports falling so that they are unable both to pay for necessary imports and meet commitments on their huge debts. One of the worst-hit countries is Mexico. On the strength of hoped-for big and increasing revenue from oil exports, loans were raised from world banks totalling £67,000 million, of which £15,700 million was due to be repaid this year. Because of the depression and falling oil revenues Mexico was unable to pay. In effect it was on the verge of defaulting. but that is the last thing the bankers want. So the Mexican authorities were able to induce the bankers, through the International Monetary Fund, to lend still more, an amount of £2,640 million, and with the agreement of the bankers to defer repayment of the debt in the hope that sometime or other Mexico will be better able to pay. However, IMF loans are granted only on the condition that the borrowing government agrees to restrict its expenditure and take whatever other measures the IMF will approve'. One action forced on the Mexican government is to impose a wage freeze until the end of the year.

Poland and many other countries are in the same plight as Mexico. While arrangements such as the IMF loan to Mexico save the banks from having to show big losses in their balance sheets, as they would if Mexico defaulted, they cannot avoid the loss they suffer through deferment of repayment of the loans. The Polish Government, which is in negotiation with Western banks over its huge debts is reported (Financial Times, 25 September) to have warned them that "there is no point in talking of repaying our debt over the next seven or eight years".

While the depression, like all the earlier ones, has seen thousands of companies go bankrupt in America. Britain and other countries, if appears that the governments will, this time, try to prevent widespread failures of big banks. And a small step has been taken in Britain to protect depositors against losses through bank failures. The banks, with Bank of England approval, have arranged to set up funds to ensure that depositors up to £10,000 will receive 75 per cent of their deposits in the event of the smaller banks closing down. The Midland Bank is reported (Sunday Times, 19 September) to be asking the government to guarantee any further loans to ailing companies to prevent them closing down, since this was done with government encouragement.

It should of course be remembered that whatever governments may, or may not do, the banks cannot escape running up huge bad debts in a depression, at the expense of bank shareholders. If banks fail, depositors lose. Any government financial aid must come out of taxation — a choice of evils as far as the banks are concerned. The Daily Mail (7 September) quotes an American banker as saying: “We’ll never sec most of these loans again. The best we can plan is to lose them gradually and gracefully”.

What of the future? In this depression, as in all the others, voices are heard prophesying the coming end of capitalism — a "final collapse". This overlooks the fact that all the parties of capitalism, including the Labour Party, far from seeking the end of capitalism, are busy devising policies to keep the system going. Until the world working class decide to end capitalism this present chaos will continue — the present depression will end followed by another crisis and depression, and another and another.

Edgar Hardcastle