Cooking the Books: No reformism in one country (2026)

The Cooking the Books column from the November 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

In September Jamie Driscoll, former Labour Mayor of North Tyne and now a member of the Green Party, published a report called Hostage Nation: Britain’s Escape Plan. He contends that Britain is a hostage to foreign bondholders and speculators and proposes a plan to remedy this so that the government can run the economy in the interests of everyone.

Governments as such do not produce any wealth. To function they have to obtain this from the section of society that does. Capitalist governments do this by taxation and borrowing. As they control the issue of money they can also create money and spend it. However, if this is more than the economy requires, this depreciates the currency and so raises prices. It is really a hidden form of taxation, an indirect way of extracting money from those who have some since the depreciation of the currency reduces their wealth.

Driscoll, relying on the arguments of ‘Modern Monetary Theory’ (also known as ‘Magic Money Theory’), has claimed that ‘as a sovereign nation with a central bank, Britain can effectively borrow from itself’. In a section headed ‘Let’s dismantle the myth that the state cannot afford to build things because it has “run out of money”’, he argues:

‘When a currency-issuing state invests in its own economy, that money moves in a circle. Every pound the state injects into productive infrastructure sets off a powerful chain reaction known as an economic multiplier. When the state funds a project, that money immediately pays the wages of engineers, project managers, and construction workers. Those workers don’t stuff that cash under their mattresses. They spend it on the high street, paying for groceries, haircuts, and clothes, boosting local businesses. Those businesses, in turn, expand and hire more staff. The Treasury takes a cut at every stage. It collects income tax and national insurance from the workers, VAT on their purchases, and corporation tax from the businesses.’

‘This investment,’ he says, ‘creates downstream savings across the state apparatus’, giving the example of insulated homes meaning less state spending by the health service to deal with respiratory illnesses caused by damp housing. So, basically, the government gets its money back through taxation and reduced spending.

However, there is a time lag between what the government spends and when it saves money on other spending. In the meantime current spending has to continue. So, when a state does what Driscoll sets out, total government spending increases. The classical way to deal with this is to borrow the extra money and repay when the benefits arrive. Driscoll argues that the government needn’t borrow this from overseas lenders. ‘The money,’ he asserts, ‘is already here. We do not need to look abroad for capital.’ He is talking about people’s savings and suggests that the money can be raised from directing this into non-tradable government bonds and from taxing the rich. Some could be raised in that way but hardly enough to avoid borrowing from foreign bond and currency speculators.

Driscoll has very little to say about the implications of his plan on Britain’s position as a capitalist country that runs a trade deficit (more spent on buying imports than received from selling exports) that has to be balanced by payments from abroad, whether investments or loans. Reduced government borrowing from abroad would have to be balanced by a combination of increased foreign investment, reduced imports and more exports … or, if this doesn’t work, cutting government spending, ie, austerity.

Whatever the government implementing his plan tries to do about this it wouldn’t be able to escape from the pressures of the world market as the capitalist economy is an integrated world system. No state can. None is that ‘sovereign’. Reformism in one country is just as impossible as socialism in one country.

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the November 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Here is a number that should stop us cold: 64 percent. That is the share of Black families in America who, right now, lack the income and resources needed to meet the true cost of economic security. Not poverty or survival, but genuine stability. On the heels of the 63rd anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, that number tells us how far we have to go… 49 percent of all Americans — nearly half the country — lacks the resources they need to be economically secure. Economic insecurity cuts across racial lines, affecting families of every background and in every part of the country. 

[The Hill]

‘Commodities must be sold, profits must be made, capital must accumulate. Short-term corporate gains are more important than long-term social losses. Capitalism, in short, is incompatible with the maintenance of the conditions that have made human civilisation possible for more than ten thousand years’. 

[Yorkshire Bylines]

The future of Babylon 5 shows time and time again that life may be different in the far future, but humanity’s problems remain much the same. There’s a long history of labor strikes and riots throughout the world, making the dock workers in ‘By Any Means Necessary’ another footnote in the ongoing battle between those who control the means of production and those who do the actual production.

[Giant Freakin Robot]

The leader of the Norwegian Union of Trade Unions, Helene Harsvik Skeibrok, expresses her condolences to the royal family and the entire Norwegian people. ‘It is very sad to hear that King Harald has passed away. Our thoughts go out to Queen Sonja, the rest of the royal family and everyone who mourns the loss of a king who has meant a lot to very many, says Skeibrok’.

[Fagforbundet]

‘Marxist Meghan’s’ list of demands for her kids’ school exposed.

[YouTube]

In 2026, the ‘rainbow nation’ will face the longest wave of organized xenophobic violence since the end of apartheid in 1994.

[rosalux]

Mason quotes the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, with an obituary of his state on the last day of its existence in 1991: Sixteen per cent of the national income went on armaments; another four on the KGB … the country was ruined, the people were kept half starved … And this was called the class approach. If that is socialism it can go to hell.

[The Spectator]

‘I’ve been sounding the alarm about how Tyson treats their workers for years’, said Nana Ouro-Agoro, founder of Akwaaba, a nonprofit organization that provides support to the Quad Cities’ immigrant population. Originally from Togo, Ouro-Agoro came to the Quad Cities after winning the immigration lottery in 2008. She learned that many of her neighbors worked at Tyson, where they were frequently injured on the job and afraid to speak out. Workers told her they were being treated ‘worse than the cattle’.

[Labornotes]

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

Hoping against hope (2026)

From the November 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Hope is a bad thing,’ said Henry Miller, ’It means that you entertain illusions.’

That hope is illusory is an eternal concept. In the ancient Greek myth of Pandora, her box was filled with all the evils that beset humanity and right at the very bottom was, hope.

Fast forward a few thousand years to a Labour Party conference and there is the leader, and Prime Minister, having rummaged around in Pandora’s Box, standing before the assembled delegates brandishing Hope for their inspiration. Andy Burnham declared that by dint of his honesty, hope will emerge to unite the British people behind him and his schemes to rejuvenate the nation. ‘My plan for Britain is our chance to believe again.’ ‘Britain can hope again’ was his headline for the brief summary of his proposals published to rouse support. ‘My plan for Britain starts today. I’m asking you to stand with me.’ The plan does indeed have attractive features, especially for the multitudes struggling to cope with ever increasing bills and decreasing real incomes.

The very next day after Burnham’s address to his party, and hence the nation, a 6am news broadcast carried a headline item about energy price rises coming January 2027 in the teens of percent, with the prospect of more later next year. This announcement of not such a happy new year in prospect followed hard on the heels of Burnham’s first economic pronouncement in his summary. ‘We’re going to start with the essentials in life. Housing, water and energy will be brought back under more public control so we can make them affordable again.’

Quite apposite it might appear. Yet this statement not so much begs as pleads a number of questions. How will the public, the many millions, actually exert their control? There is no direct way they can decisively influence what will inevitably be a state body set up as a substitute for the boards of directors. Even if this state body could be more beneficent, is it going to be in place by January of next year, just a couple of months away? Also, is it going to have access to sources of energy free of the international travails presently forcing up prices?

No energy will be available unless it is profitable. The whole worldwide economic system is presently capitalist, meaning production is driven by profit and will remain so even if the state becomes the de facto capitalist.

Then there’s the question of compensation. It may be that those on, or to, the left of the Labour Party will resurrect their venerable slogan, ‘nationalisation without compensation’. Sounds good, even plausible, until it gets into the courtroom. Not only does the state serve the interests of capitalism, so does the legal system. It would undoubtedly be found illegal to simply take companies away from present owners. Even if some way of doing this was found there would, most likely, be years of litigious wrangling resulting in huge legal costs consumers would ultimately pay.

The same principle applies to Burnham’s other two essentials, housing and water.

No matter the deficiencies identified in the housing market, it is an error to suppose those deficiencies will drive house building. Houses are not built primarily to provide people with somewhere to live; that is their purpose, their use value. However, the spur to building is the exchange value of the house, essentially the price it can be sold for and thus realise a profit.

Profit is the driver of house building not the need for homes, which is why it’s known as a housing market. This is why there has been a tendency for house construction firms to build 4 and 5 bedroom detached ‘executive’ houses.

A four-bedroom house does not cost twice as much to build as a two-bed, making the smaller house relatively more expensive to build and, therefore, buy. Government can intervene and require builders to erect smaller houses, but they will not be sold at cost. They will still have to yield a significant profit. If land is identified as suitable for building, construction companies will buy it then not build on it unless and until any subsequent housing is deemed profitable. It doesn’t matter if there is a huge need for housing in the area.

Government, national or local, could initiate the building of council/social housing for rent. While this would obviate the need for buying, with its requirements for large deposits and mortgages, rents would have to repay the initial financing, indirectly paying interest on money borrowed for the purpose as well as the original capital. And rent is not a fixed term like a mortgage, but must be paid over the lifetime of the tenant or tenants. Rents may or may not be lower than mortgage repayments. It could be that those identified as having special or exceptional needs will be exempted from, or pay reduced, rents. This would not remove the value of those rents from the financial equation, but might have to be spread over actual rent payers, council tax, or both. Such provision would be very limited, otherwise the cost would become unsustainable.

There is absolutely no hope of freely meeting everyone’s housing need while capitalism’s financial market and the construction industry continue to be driven, as they must be, by the overriding imperative to realise profit.

The same applies to Burnham’s third essential, water. Rain may fall for free, but by the time it flows from a tap it has been collected, stored and treated in various ways. Then, when it has been used it has to be drained away and treated again. Each one of these processes adds a cost, as does the expense of maintaining and replacing supply and drainage systems. Why would companies bother to do all this in the first place unless there was a prospect of profit?

Railways provide an exemplar of what happens when sufficient profits are not accrued. The companies surrender their franchises for the government to take back responsibility for loss-making. Then the state must find ways of providing the services. If that means those services continue loss-making then they will have to be subsidised. As governments correctly claim, they don’t automatically have money, they have to raise it through taxation or borrow it on financial markets. Either way it’s a drain on the national economy.

Then, along with all other government expenditure, if that drain becomes too large financial markets raise their borrowing rates which adversely affects all sectors of the economy, with rising inflation and unemployment; the threat of recession, a way capitalism can discipline government.

Nationalisation or public/private partnerships are often cited as being socialistic (that is, a little bit socialist). In this way they are sold to the electorate as hope-filled alternatives to capitalism. The reality is they are not, and cannot, be anything of the sort, being as subject to capitalism’s strictures as any wholly private enterprise.

The Prime Minister can preach the gospel of hope and perhaps even convince himself. After all he could not stand up at the Labour Party conference and declare they would build a totally new, worldwide society no longer driven by the profit motive, but centred on freely satisfying everyone’s needs.

He correctly identified three essentials (though failed to mention all the others people require), but however well-intentioned he was being it is not in his power to do more than tinker a little in the hope of some limited short-term improvement. As well as putting crosses on ballot papers come an election voters can cross their fingers and hope. Both will be equally (in)effective in ameliorating the deprivations caused by capitalism.

Better to realise that it is time to move beyond capitalism and actively pursue the socialist alternative, rather than just hope for the best.

D.A.

Non-voluntary exchange (2026)

From the November 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

One argument made by defenders of capitalism is that it involves voluntary exchange between people. If you buy an item of clothing, for instance, both you and the shop are free participants in the purchase. You can choose to buy a different item, to buy elsewhere or not to buy anything at all.

Employment is seen in the same way. You can choose not to work for a particular employer and they can choose not to employ you, or to sack you. You can look for a job somewhere else, perhaps with better pay or better working conditions.

All these, it is claimed, are voluntary decisions by people who are free to make up their own minds and do as they wish. It is not the kind of coercion which existed under slavery or serfdom.

Except that, certainly where employment is concerned, it is not like that at all. You will have to work for someone, since if you do not, you will starve or have to get by, for a limited period only, on paltry unemployment benefits.

How much choice you have in finding another job depends on various factors, including your own abilities, the area where you live and the general state of the economy and the job market. Finding another job will be easier for some than for others, and it may mean lower pay and/or longer hours.

So the coercion involved in employment under capitalism is not identical to chattel slavery but it still means workers being in a subordinate position and having to do as their employer says. To say nothing of the exploitation that is part and parcel of wage labour.

Capitalism is emphatically not a matter of voluntary exchange, as workers have little choice but to work for a capitalist company in order to survive.

Paul Bennett

France: what was it all about? (2026)

From the November 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s a little too early to make any definitive appreciations of the recent demonstrations and riots which spread across metropolitan France in October. Doubtless, readers of the Socialist Standard will have seen the images of massive gangs of young people looting and setting fire to shops and attacking police dressed in riot gear. As is only to be expected, it’s the most violent scenes which have found their way onto the mainstream news; the fire which destroyed the Town Hall of Limoges being a case in point. On the other hand, the media also showed images of the enormous and well-ordered demonstrations by students who were more often than not accompanied by teachers and parents. There were demonstrations in small towns right across France which recalled in many ways the monster manifestations in defence of retirement pensions of a few years ago.

Mysterious wreckers

Demonstrations are, of course, part and parcel of everyday life in France, there being something of a deeply rooted culture of defiance common to the left and right. What was notable in this case was the massive presence of hooded and masked casseurs – vandals – uniformly dressed in black who were clearly operating in organised and one suspects disciplined mobs. These agents provocateurs incited the more disorganised groups of casual looters who are now found in all mass disorders breaking out across the globe.

Strangely enough these violent groups, sometimes known as the black bloc, are rarely picked up by the police and arrested. Nobody knows who they are. They seem to be used to keep ordinary citizens at a cautious distance from their rights to free expression. Amazingly those conventional politicians who managed to find their way across the Parisian battlefield into the safe havens of the TV studios seem to be convinced that their membership consists of highly organised members of the ‘ultra-gauche’. (Earlier references to the black bloc seem to have been edited out of the official narrative). The designated culprit it would seem is what they call the ‘antifa’ (anti-fascist); heretofore a fantastical organisation which has miraculously put down solid roots in the USA. There they have – according to the official narrative – violently interrupted the work of Trump’s anti-immigrant agency and rendered the (strictly anti-constitutional) operations of the ICE goons problematic. One may ask, aren’t we supposed to be anti-fascist in a democracy?

Political ineptitude

For the point, of course, is that we are talking about a movement initiated and organised by kids; high-school students to be precise. Consequently, the maintenance of public order and the protection of protestors should run together. However, parents would do well to realize that the government at times seems to be applying the selfsame tactics cynically deployed against the gilets jaunes of a few years ago. This was a movement which was quite violently repressed in every sense of the term.

In the case of the students, however, a certain circumspection was in evidence in the days preceding the events of Saturday 17 October, even though some youngsters were roughed up, injured and arrested. It’s quite possible that something changed in the clumsy official response on that day. TV coverage insisted heavily upon the destruction of shops and public buildings, to the exclusion of the peaceful marches undertaken by school students and sympathisers. Up to a point, the authorities seem to have attempted to calm down the situation, although if anything Macron’s typically leaden televised address to the nation on the Sunday made clear his crass insensitivity to the demands of the students – mentioned in passing – and to his incredible political ineptitude.

For the point is that once the tear-gas has wafted away, it will become evident that the students had drawn up an extremely intelligent and reasonable list of demands, demands which would give some substance to the egalitarianism established by the republican constitution and proclaimed above the façade of every single lycée in France.

Neglected issues

To give effect to these aspirations, the students were asking for the urgent building of schools and for the renovation of ill-adapted and run-down premises. The recent and stifling heatwaves which hit France over the summer saw school pupils attempting to tackle the baccalaureate exams in buildings lacking window blinds and adequate ventilation, as teachers and administrators ran around with water bottles to quench the thirst of distressed youngsters. In the winter many classrooms are freezing, ceilings are leaky and sanitary facilities are filthy. Many schools lack facilities to deal with students experiencing psychological problems often resulting from learning disabilities.

Other demands include one for a massive recruitment drive to deal with the shortage of trained teachers. The typically French drama of classes without teachers at the beginning of the school term is high on the list of preoccupations.  But teacher recruitment is difficult given stagnant wages and disaffection. Note that the hapless Minister of Education hurriedly pulled hundreds of trained teachers out of a standby status when the demonstrations started to tilt public opinion to the side of the youngsters.

Other demands made by the students were nothing if not legitimate. Better student grants, subsidies to help with student accommodation, more places to be made available in the (increasingly run-down) universities, more student representation in schools and at long last, measures to reform the ludicrous and exhaustingly overloaded school curriculum. More time to eat in the midday break and so on and so on. In short, these are measures which aim at the re-establishment of an equilibrium centred on student well-being; welfare measures and so on. In short, the kind of bread-and-butter issues neglected during the long and uncaring duration of Macron’s atrocious term in office.

Malcolm Mansfield,

Paris

Blogger's Note:

An earlier version of this article originally appeared on the Socialism or Your Money Back blog on the 22nd October.

Material World: News from Canada (2026)

The Material World Column from the November 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Climate change in Canada is irreversible! So says a report issued by Environment and Climate Change Canada on 3 September and authored by two dozen government and climate scientists. The average temperatures are expected to rise by 3.5C by the end of the century. It says that even if the world reaches net-zero emissions by 2075, the effects on Canada will still be very bad. These include a 50 percent increase in the area burned by wildfires and glaciers losing 75 percent of their mass. Ryan Ness, director of ECCC, made a comment breathtaking in its brilliance, ‘The most surprising thing is the contrast between what the report says we can expect for our future climate and the level of action the federal government and other governments are taking.’ Nevertheless Mr. Ness knows how we can adapt to these awful changes, like retrofitting homes with more fireproof material and to build flood walls around communities. Once again capitalism creates problems it can’t solve.

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Parti Québécois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon caused an uproar on 4 September while campaigning for support in the provincial election in October. Plamondon claimed that Premier Legault’s ruling Coalition Avenir Québec had lost control of its immigration system. Plamondon said a PQ government would reduce the number of temporary immigrants in Quebec per year from more than 500,000 to between 200,000 and 250,000. He promised to reduce this number to 35,000 a year, claiming Quebec isn’t capable of absorbing too many immigrants. Suffice to say all other parties went ballistic over his comments but the PQ won the election. This is allegedly one of capitalism’s most rotten stinking aspects: ‘Too many Jews, Pakistanis, Moslems, etc have been allowed in, soon they’ll take over our jobs and then they’ll be telling us what to do’. Capitalism is a divisive system, splitting the working class, who in contrast should stand united against the system that attempts to divide them.

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There is a new organization, the Toronto Tenant Union, which is expanding across the city fighting rising rents, evictions and bad housing conditions. Toronto is one of the most expensive cities, rent wise, anywhere. An average one-bedroom apartment requires an income of $90,000 a year. Research by the Canadian Alliance to end Homelessness shows the loss of affordable housing has created higher rates of homelessness. According to Leilani Farha, former U.N. expert on housing, ‘What tenants often don’t know is that their rent increases are predetermined, calculated into a firm’s return on investment before it even buys a building. Our biggest banks who are also reaping in record profits, reward the behaviour by offering better loan terms when the building owners raise rents. I call this displacement financing; the more a landlord raises rents the cheaper their financing becomes’. As for help from politicians — good luck — 128 of Canada’s 338 federal MPs are landlords, while renters make up nearly a third of Canada’s households. While we may hope the new tenants’ union has some success, nevertheless, dealing with the effects of capitalism is not the answer, its abolition is.

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A Canadian company, Calian Group Ltd., has signed a deal to partner with Ukrainian defence company SkyFall to focus on drone defence training. The two companies will develop unmanned systems training and education for armed forces in Canada and various NATO members and allied countries. Mark Carney said Canada will work with Ukraine to produce millions of drones, after a meeting with President Zelensky. The SkyFall Academy is a training center for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, which specializes in unmanned systems training and has trained more than 30,000 military personnel over the last three years. Carney probably thinks this will help the Canadian economy, which if it does, just goes to show how disgusting it is that production for war is a major profit source of capitalism.

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Despite all the terrible things Trump has done, nevertheless he’s good for a laugh. He has accused Canada of, ‘Ripping America off’; it’s hilarious on the news watching people take down Lake Ontario signs and put up Lake America ones. At the time of writing, Donny baby was considering calling New Mexico, New America. By the time you read this he will probably have done more stupid things. However, to any non-socialist who may read this we can say that, yes Trump has caused a lot of problems for people all over the world, but be that as it is, he is still a product of his time, which is a time when the capitalist system is spiralling downward, which he has worsened. In other words, capitalism is the disease, Trump its symptom.

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On 24 September, at an interview with the New York Times, Mark Carney said that he had carefully examined the possibility of a U.S. military action against Canada. Carney was sending a message to Canadians, to Trump, and the world at large. Initially he had said he thought Canada and the U.S. were involved in a trade war, though obviously he had thought it could go beyond that. The Toronto Star ran an article the next day headlined, ‘Carney will need the support of the workers’. As socialists we all know wars are economically based, and as everyone knows, an invasion of Canada isn’t something one can put past Trump. As socialists we also know the working class have no stake in wars, but depressing as it is, so many Canadian workers have said they would fight tenaciously to defend Canada against the U.S. As Pete Seeger said, ‘When will they ever learn?’

(From the October monthly bulletin of the Socialist Party of Canada)

Halo Halo (2026)

The Halo Halo! column from the November 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The UK has, amongst other anti-hurt-feelings legislation, the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. In a ten year period there were ten individuals who were arrested for publicly saying words out loud in public that were considered to be ‘hurty’. Note that in all cases once arrested no further action was taken. Some of these arrests were for the ‘offence’ of preaching from the Bible or rather some bits that criticised particular lifestyles. The UK does not have a blasphemy law but ninety plus countries in the world do.

Two Californian Assembly Bills just enacted mandate training, for companies with five employees or more, on recognising, reporting and confronting workplace speech that ‘vilifies, humiliates, or incites hatred’ against people based on protected characteristics and one of which ‘requires paid local officials, to receive “anti-hate speech” training as part of their existing harassment training, and directs the state to develop an online course “on responding to hate” for state officials’. These have churches in a tiswas because the fear is that the legislation will be used to prevent them from proselytising.

In no way are we encouraging the propagation of religious hooey. The prohibition, or attempted prohibition, of speech can lead to unintended consequences. The encouragement of ‘protected characteristics’ whereby those placing themselves in such categories see themselves as victims or special because they’re in an exclusive club is not the benefit that some might think. Division merely profits the minority class.

In September a visit to the Eiffel Tower by Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha Hindu monks (BAPS) resulted in individuals born with XX chromosomes becoming personae non gratae. Females were not allowed to be seen, heard or make their presence felt in any way lest it upset the delicate sensibilities of the Hindu monks. BAPS say that that decision lay with the Tower bosses and was nothing to do with them. But where did the bosses get the idea that monks would be defiled by the sight of, or interaction with, women?

Just as bizarre, an American council meeting opened with a prayer to Satan. Some were not amused. Why is such poppycock occurring anyway, whichever sky muppet is being invoked?

It is not often that this column feels sympathy for Church of England wage slaves, the ones with the back to front collar, but it was elicited recently when two members of the cloth were harassed and abused online forcing them to block and lock their social media accounts. Described as ‘satan spawn’ and ‘evil’, their monstrous ‘crime’ must have been unspeakably vile.

Actually it was to post that you don’t need to spend one hundred and twelve quid on an advent calendar when you can get a nicer one for six. This apparently triggered the distributor’s supporters to a state of hysterical frenzy and a barrage of abuse.

One cannot help but think that even if clergymen were a group with ‘protected characteristics’ this particular ad hominem would still have occurred.

DC

Sting in the Tail: An ill wind (1990)

The Sting in the Tail column from the November 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

An ill wind

As thousands of workers await in fear the outcome of events in the Gulf and the prospect of war appears more and more likely, it is worth noting that these development are not being greeted with universal horror.

Some people are delighted with the war preparations. For instance, according to The Times (13 October) It would seem that it is shudders of delight, not fear, that are being experienced in the City.

Enterprise has become the first oil company to give an Indication of the impact the Middle Eastern troubles and the consequent surge in the price of oil are having. The group told a packed meeting of City fund managers at James Capel, the broker, that the oil price rise had added £1 million a day to its profits.

The winds of war may seem harsh to the Kuwait hostages but in the City it is a delightful zephyr.

Marxism "Fails" Again

The Guardian's much-hyped interview with Russian spy, George Blake, appeared on 19 September along with the headline "Blake says Marxism failed. 

Nowhere in the interview did Blake say any such thing. What he did say was that the "communist" party had failed but someone at the Guardian saw fit to twist this.

In any case Blake is hardly an authority on Marxism: according to the interview he believes in "predestination", meaning that people have no choice of action, and he claims that his belief was "strengthened by Marxism"

Compare this with Marx's own view:

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make It under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.

Where is the "predestination" there?

George Blake certainly had a talent for disclosing state secrets but Marxism obviously remains a secret for him.

No More Workers?

The Times (8 October) reports an amazing court case that is to be heard this month in the High Court.

The subject is to be — is there such a social group as the working class! This astonishing question has arisen over Lady Porter, leader of Westminster Council, trying to pull down a block of flats owned by the Duke of Westminster's Grosvenor Estate.

The flats were granted to the Westminster Council on a 999 year lease in 1937. The lease specified that they be "dwellings for the working class".

Now Lady Porter, heiress to the Tesco millions, wants to pull them down for redevelopment and her claim is "working class no longer has a clear meaning in Thatcher's Britain."

The arrogance of the capitalist class knows no bounds. Here is a rich woman who lives off the surplus value created by the working class and, in an attempt at a shady redevelopment deal, claims there is no such class as the working class!

Hearing Voices

Peter Morgan must be a very clever man. He told a meeting in Birmingham that if the "Jeremiah voices" were heeded then Britain would be talked into recession. (Oracle: 4 October).

If Mr. Morgan is right then he is half-way to discovering the cure for capitalism's boom-slump cycle: after all, if Britain can be talked into recession then it can just as easily be talked back out again!

No wonder Peter Morgan is the highly-paid Director General of the Institute of Directors.

Expert Witness

Mrs. Thatcher's pet economist, Professor Alan Walters, once warned her to "remember how little we understand about the economy".

Can this be true? Look at what happens whenever figures on inflation, High Street spending, balance of trade, etc., are published: they are nearly always very different from what the "experts" predicted.

And although every bank and stockbroker employs well-paid analysts to assess the prospects of industries and companies, they very often get it completely wrong — the City encouraged investors to buy shares in Coloroll and British and Commonwealth just before they both crashed.

Various excuses are given for all this: that companies withhold vital information which makes them look better than they are or that the quality of the analysts is poor.

The truth is that even the best analysts armed with the best available information cannot tell how capitalism's economy will behave. How can they, when producers and consumers all over the world are making decisions about spending, investment, production, etc., which no one knows about, and all doing this within market and political conditions which constantly change.

It would seem for once the Prof, was only telling it like it is.

Follow My Leader

It is a basic tenet of the Socialist Party that the movement for world socialism has got to be democratic: that a majority of the working class must understand and desire socialism before it can come about. This principled position has received nothing but cynicism and abuse from reformist parties such as the Labour Party. That the Labour Party’s aim is nothing other than the continuation of capitalism should be obvious but perhaps there are still some misguided workers who imagine that the Labour Party is at least democratic.

If there are any such dupes around surely this report in The Economist (6 October) must make even them think again:

This year, If he had been able to get away with it, Mr. Kinnock would probably have preferred to have no conference at all. As It was, things were tightly controlled. On a few issues, such as defence cuts and inner-party democracy, the conference did rise in rebellion. But that did not signify much: these days, the leadership simply ignores inconvenient votes.

Thus, after the defence vote that appeared to commit him to a £7 billion cut in Britain's military budget, Mr. Kinnock calmly announced: "We live in the world of realities, not resolutions." And then he walked cheerily away.

Freedom of the Press

The freedom of the Press is one of those capitalist freedoms that appears to be so desirable and worthwhile on paper but when the facts are examined it turns out to be just another capitalist sham.

The Independent on Sunday was launched at the beginning of the year with a fanfare of independent noises. Indeed its statutes forbid any investor from holding more than 15% of its shares. It is in direct competition with the Sunday Correspondent, an ailing rival that Is losing around £250,000 a week and which recently changed to a tabloid format in a desperate attempt to survive.

Strangely enough this change was financed by Mr. Robert Maxwell who owns 8% of the Independent on Sunday. This apparently benign gesture is probably best explained by The Economist (6 October):

Mr. Maxwell hopes that the survival of the Correspondent for just a little longer will increase the pressure on the Independent's shareholders to change the rules and sell more shares to him. Fanciful speculation? Not at all. When we put the theory to Mr. Maxwell, he described It as "a very shrewd and cunning observation".

Editorial: Who would vote Labour? (1990)

Editorial from the November 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

This year's Labour Party Conference was an unashamed exercise in image-building. The whole affair was stage-managed by professionals from the world of advertising to project the Labour leaders as fit to govern.

We must admit to being convinced by the show. Yes, the present Labour leaders are quite fitted for running the affairs of British capitalism. They have convinced us that they will not waste government money on increasing pensions and other benefits and that they will restrain the unions and stamp on excessive wage demands. They have convinced us that they will maintain the armed forces at a sufficient level to further the overseas business and commercial interests of British capitalism — and that they will be prepared to go to war in the Gulf in pursuit of these interests. The City and Big Business need have no worries on these scores.

We only wonder whether the image-builders may not have gone a little too far. Most people, we suspect, will have gained the impression that the Labour leaders were ready to sacrifice everything — principles, policies, traditions, even their own dignity and self-respect — just to get their hands on the reins of office.

We wonder too why the delegates bothered to turn up. They must like being film extras. They certainly didn't go to Blackpool to make policy. That had already been decided by the leaders of the party in Parliament in the light of what market research had suggested would attract the floating voters.

The leaders stated in advance that they were not going to take the slightest notice of what the delegates might decide. And so it was. When the delegates voted to spend an extra £6 billion on pensions, the leaders explained that a future Labour government could not possibly be committed to such extravagance. When the delegates voted to cut military spending by the same amount, the leaders explained that a Labour government could not possibly be so irresponsible. There was a time — a long while ago now, it is true — when the Labour Party would have promised to cut military spending to increase pensions. Of course when they were elected they never did. But now they openly declare, even before they get into office, that they will put maintaining the military might of British capitalism before the needs of pensioners on the poverty line.

We don't want to exaggerate. It wasn't some great sea change that took place at this year's Labour Conference. The Labour Party has always supported capitalism. It always was the parliamentary leaders not the Conference who determined party policy. When in office Labour always has done what has been necessary to further the interests of British capitalism, not hesitating to break strikes, impose wage freezes, cut benefits and equip the armed forces with the most destructive weapons of war available. Nothing has changed in these respects.

What has changed is the image the Labour leaders want to convey. They now no longer wish to be seen as a party committed, however vaguely, to transforming society in the interest of workers. Instead they wish to be seen as prudent and efficient managers of capitalism.

"Don’t dream of what may be", Kinnock told the delegates, "Work for what can be." In other words, don't think of achieving some new system of society even by gradual means. Accept society as it is — a profit-governed market economy where a tiny handful own and control the means of production as their private property — and work within it, according to its criteria of what can be.

At least this clears the air. All workers, and not just socialists, now know exactly what to expect from the Labour Party.

Economic causes of Gulf conflict (1990)

From the November 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Prussian militarist Clausewitz declared that war was “nothing but the continuation of politics by other means”. He would have been nearer the truth if he had said that war was the continuation of economics by other means. Since the onset of capitalism five hundred years ago wars have been caused by conflicts of economic interest over sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets, investment outlets and strategic points and places to secure and protect these.  The threatening war in the Middle East is no exception to this rule, and in fact strikingly confirms the socialist analysis of the cause of war.

Although it is rather obvious that what is at stake is oil, both sides try to play this down. Bush and Thatcher say that Saddam Hussein is a dictator whose expansionist ambitions must be checked in the interests of world peace. Saddam Hussein says that he has struck a blow for Arab Nationalism by eliminating a state tailor-made by Western imperialism to suit its interests. Saddam Hussein is a dictator and he has taken over a state created by Western imperialism, but it is not for these reasons that the West is preparing to go to war. The Western powers tolerate dictators when it suits their interests. In fact they tolerated, financed and armed Saddam Hussein himself when they needed someone to prevent Iran under Khomeini coming to dominate the Gulf area and threaten their oil supplies. And they tolerated the Indonesian invasion and annexation of East Timor in 1975 as they had that of Goa by India in 1961 without shrieking that world peace and order were threatened. The difference was that, while in East Timor and Goa only carrots grew, Kuwait is situated right in the middle of the world’s largest and lowest-cost oilfields.

Oil and Empire

British imperialism made Kuwait, which remained nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, a “protectorate” in 1899. This was done not for its oil resources, which nobody even suspected existed, but for its strategic position.

At the time Imperial Germany, already squaring up to Britain in the inter-imperialist rivalry which eventually broke out as the First World War, was planning to build a railway that would extend from Europe through Turkey and Mesopotamia down to the Persian Gulf. This was the Berlin to Baghdad railway of history book fame and, if completed, would have represented an alternative and rival to the British-controlled Suez Canal as a trade route to and from the Indian Ocean and the Far East. Kuwait, a small port and pearl-fishing centre at the northern end of the Gulf ruled by a sheik called Al-Sabah, was the likely terminus for the German project. So it was “protected” by British imperialism, to thwart German imperialism.

Oil, however, was soon discovered near Kuwait, first in Persia and then in Mesopotamia. Britain acquired complete control of the Persian oilfields but those of Mesopotamia had to be shared with Germany. As Turkey had entered the First World War on the side of German imperialism, the British and French imperialists made plans to carve up the Ottoman Empire amongst themselves in the event of victory. A secret agreement in 1916 gave what is now Syria, Lebanon and the northern part of Iraq to France, and Palestine and what is now Jordan and the southern part of Iraq to Britain.

Almost as soon as the agreement had been signed, someone in the Foreign Office realised that a ghastly mistake had been made: northern Mesopotamia contained the oilfields of Mosul and Kirkuk. The French were persuaded on some pretext to agree to a rectification, and after the war the spoils were divided along the lines of today’s Middle Eastern states. Iraq is just as much an artificial creation of Western imperialism as Kuwait, though its ruling class ought to be grateful that perfide Albion outwitted French imperialism, otherwise its northern oilfields would be in Syria.

Britain creates Kuwait

Kuwait remained a British protectorate when Iraq became an independent state in 1932, but the new Iraqi rulers were not happy about being deprived of a secure outlet to the Persian Gulf. A glance at a map of Iraq will show that it only has two possible outlets to the sea. The first is via the Shatt al Arab river, but this is shared with Iran. The second is via an inlet to the west, access to which is controlled by two islands belonging to Kuwait.

At one time—in the fifties when Iraq under a pro-Western king and government seemed firmly anchored in the Western camp through its membership of CENTO, the Middle Eastern equivalent of NATO—British officials considered making some concessions to Iraq on this issue, but this was blocked by the Al-Sabah dynasty. The Emir of Kuwait, which since 1946 had become an oil-producing area with huge reserves, proved to be the better judge of his interests. On 14 July 1958¸ the king of Iraq and his pro-western prime minister were overthrown and killed in a military coup led by pro-Nasser army officers. The British Foreign Minister, Selwyn Lloyd, rushed to Washington to discuss the crisis. On 19 July he sent a secret telegram, recently released under the thirty-year rule, to Macmillan, the Prime Minister, in which he reported:

I am sure that you are considering anxiously the problem of Kuwait. One of the most reassuring features of my talks here has been the complete United States solidarity with us over the Gulf. They are assuming that we will take firm action to maintain our position in Kuwait.  They themselves are disposed to act with similar resolution in relation to the Aramco oilfields in the area of Dhahran, although the logistics are not worked out. They assume that we will also hold Bahrain and Qatar, come what may. They agree that at all costs these oilfields must be kept in Western hands. The immediate problem is whether it is good tactics to occupy Kuwait against the wishes of the ruling family.

Selwyn Lloyd went on to discuss the options, including turning Kuwait from a protectorate into a colony, i.e., annexing it as Iraq has just done, but rejected this in favour of another option:

On balance, I feel it very much to our advantage to have a kind of Kuwaiti Switzerland where the British do not exercise physical control. (Independent, 13 September).

This was the solution eventually adopted and in 1961 Kuwait was granted “independence” in the sense of no longer being subject to direct “physical control” by Britain. Iraq immediately moved its troops up to the border—and British troops had to be rushed in to prop up the artificial Middle Eastern “Switzerland” that their government had just set up.

Kuwait survived and its rulers prospered. Thanks to revenues from oil, the ruling Al-Sabah dynasty became one of the richest families in the world, overtaken only by fellow oil nouveaux riches the Saudi royals and the Sultan of Brunei, and far surpassing other dynastic billionaires like the Queen of England and Juliana of the Netherlands.

The Shatt al Arab War

Iraq meanwhile also developed its oil resources and revenues, which were mainly used to build up its armed forces so strengthening the grip of the military on the state. Iraqi politics came to consist of coups and plots and counter-plots amongst the leaders of the armed forces. Out of these Saddam Hussein emerged as top dog in 1979.

The current Iraqi regime, though in fact a military dictatorship pursuing the national interests of Iraqi capitalism, has as its ideology the Pan-Arab Nationalism of the Baath party. Iraq, however, is by no means purely an Arab country since up to a quarter of its population speak Kurdish rather than Arabic, and the attempt to impose Baathism in the 1970s led to a revival of the armed revolt of Kurdish nationalists in the North of the country, where the oilfields of Mosul and Kirkuk are situated—which explains why Iraq has been prepared to use all means, including, more recently, poison gas, to retain the area.

This revolt was encouraged as a means of weakening Iraq by the Shah of Iran, whose country had a long-standing dispute with Iraq over the control of the Shatt al Arab river. The dispute went back to the time of the first commercial exploitation of Iranian oil before the First World War and concerned Iran’s demand for access and protection for its bordering oil wells and installations.

The Shatt al Arab is the name of the river formed by the confluence of the Euphrates and the Tigris. From the Iranian town of Khorramshahr to the sea it forms the frontier between Iraq and Iran. Safe, free navigation in this waterway is absolutely vital to Iraq as its main port, Basra, can only be reached via the Shatt al Arab. Without this, Iraq becomes virtually a land-locked country, dependent on other countries for the transit of its imports and the export of its main product, oil. Its vulnerability in this respect was well illustrated by the ease and speed with which the pipelines via Turkey and Saudi Arabia were closed to enforce UN sanctions (and by the fact that a third pipeline via Syria had long been closed by the Syrian government for political reasons).

The Shah’s strategy worked and in 1975 a treaty was signed between Iraq and Iran under which Iraq ceded control of the eastern side of the Shatt al Arab to Iran in return for Iran withdrawing its support for the Kurdish nationalists. When, however, the Shah was overthrown in 1979 and Iran began to slip into chaos, the tables were turned. The Iraqi ruling class decided to use the occasion to attack Iran and regain control of the whole of the Shatt al Arab and perhaps more. So began, in 1980, one of the longest and bloodiest wars of modern history. The war lasted eight years and led to the death of about one million people—all for control of a strategic commercial waterway.

The Western powers were happy to let the war go on, using Iraq to block any Iranian take-over of the Gulf region. When, however, Iran began to attack shipping in the Gulf in 1987, the West was forced to send its own taskforce of warships and warplanes to the area to protect the free flow of its oil supplies.

Why Iraq invaded Kuwait

The war ended in 1988¸ in a stalemate, with Iraq in control of some Iranian territory but with the port of Basra blocked. This put pressure on Iraq to turn to its other possible outlet to the sea: that blocked by Kuwaiti control of the islands of Warba and Bubiyan.

The Iraq-Iran war strikingly confirmed a point made in 1938 by the Iraqi Foreign Minister in discussions with his British counterpart:

Iraq would like to rent a piece of land from Kuwait for establishing a deep harbour and connecting it to the Basra railway line, since Iraq could not guarantee navigational safety on the Shatt al-Arab in the case of an Iraq-Iran dispute. (Quoted in press release on “The Political Background to the Current Events” issued by the Iraqi Press Office, London, on 12 September,  pp 16-17).

The present Iraqi Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz, has made it quite clear that Iraq’s motives for taking over Kuwait were economic, commercial and strategic. In a letter on The Kuwait Question sent to all foreign ministers on 4 September he denounced Britain for having created and sustained since 1899 an “artificial entity called Kuwait” which cut off Iraq from “its natural access to the waters of the Arab Gulf”, and went on to say that all Iraqi governments since the establishment of the state of Iraq in 1924 had insisted that Iraq must have Kuwait

to guarantee its commercial and economic interests and provide it with the requirements necessary for the defence of its national security.

King Hussein of Jordan brought out the same point, in a message broadcast on the American TV network CNN on 22 September, when he said that Iraq had been seeking 

“an agreement with Kuwait that would secure it an independent access to the sea which it considers of vital national interest.”

The phrase “vital national interest”, invoked by both sides in the threatening war, is the key as in the mealy-mouthed language of diplomacy this refers to issues over which states are prepared to go to war in the last resort.

Iraq emerged from its war with Iran with a huge financial debt and a desperate need for money to pay for reconstruction. With oil revenues as virtually its only source of income, Iraq favoured using the OPEC cartel to push up the price of oil by restricting its supply. Since this was in the interests of a number of other OPEC members, including Iran, some move in this direction was agreed. However, two countries in particular—Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates—failed to apply this. They consistently exceeded their quotas, so preventing the price of oil from rising.

The reason why the emirs and sheiks and sultans of the Gulf pursued this policy was not short-sightedness or cussedness. It was because it had become in their economic interest to do so. The Al-Sabah family had not wasted all its riches on horse-racing, gambling and gold-fitted bathrooms. Most of it had been re-invested in capitalist industry and finance in the West, so much so in fact that a large part of Kuwait’s income came from these investments. In other words, the Kuwaiti and other Gulf rulers had become Western capitalists themselves and not just oil rentiers—with the same interest in not having too high a price for oil.

Iraq regarded this refusal to take steps to raise the price of oil as a plot to prevent it recovering from the war. Combined with their long-standing claim to Kuwait as a means of obtaining a vitally-needed secure trade route to the sea, this decided the Iraqi ruling class to take military action. On the night of 1/2 August Kuwait was invaded and later annexed. As an additional bonus, the Kuwaiti oilfields when added to the Iraqi ones make Iraq potentially almost as big a producer sitting on as big reserves as Saudi Arabia.

Why the West is going to war

Bush, and Thatcher who happened to be in America on a lecture tour, reacted quickly, issuing an ultimatum to Iraq not to move further down the coast and take over the Saudi oilfields and dispatching a battle fleet to the Gulf for the second time in three years.

Iraq probably had no intention of invading Saudi Arabia, but America had every interest in finding an excuse to send troops to protect the Saudi oilfields. Since 1950 these had been an American preserve: under an agreement with the King of Saudi Arabia European oil companies were excluded and US ones, grouped together as ARAMCO, given a monopoly. In preparing for war by dispatching troops to the Gulf, Bush is applying the policy enunciated by Carter in his January 23 1980 State of the Union message:

Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States. It will be repelled by use of any means necessary, including military force.

The Gulf, he explained, was of “great strategic importance” because “it contains more than two-thirds of the world’s exportable oil” and because the Strait of Hormuz at its mouth is “a waterway through which much of the free world’s oil must flow”. At the time the immediate threat was seen as coming from Russia which had just invaded Afghanistan, but the Carter Doctrine applied equally to threats to American oil supplies from other states like Iran and now Iraq.

In Britain the Sunday Times (12 August), which has called for war since day one of the crisis, has been equally frank:

The reason why we will shortly have to go to war with Iraq is not to free Kuwait, though that is to be desired, or to defend Saudi Arabia, though that is important. It is because President Saddam is a menace to vital Western interests in the Gulf, above all the free flow of oil at market prices, which is essential to the West’s prosperity.

If war breaks out in the Middle East, the issues at stake will be purely economic and commercial: access to the sea and a high price of oil, on the one side, and control of oilfields and a low price of oil, on the other. Neither of which are issues justifying the shedding of a single drop of working class blood.

Adam Buick

Blogger's Note:

Within this article there were the following pieces which were placed in quotation boxes.

The Carter Doctrine

"Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States. It will be repelled by use of any means necessary, including military force".

Iraq's interest in Kuwait

"Britain perniciously severed a part of Iraq in a manner that deprived [it] . . . of its natural access to the waters of the Arab Gulf . . . All successive Iraqi governments have continued to demand the return of this severed part of Iraq and historical and geographical justice be done to Iraq to guarantee its commercial and economic interests and provide it with the requirements for the defence of its national security". 

— Tariq Aziz, Iraqi Foreign Minister, 4 September 1990.

Neither Washington nor International Socialism but Baghdad, says SWP

"We call for the withdrawal of Western forces from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. And if war breaks out nonetheless we are for the defeat of America and the victory of Iraq".

— John Molyneux, Socialist Worker, 25 August 1990, urging Iraqi workers to go and die to secure a safe trade route to the sea for Iraqi capitalism.

Marine refuses to fight for cheap oil and American profits

While something akin to war fever has gripped the United States, some American soldiers have refused to go to the Middle East . . . The most outspoken objector so far is Marine Corporal Jeffrey Paterson in Hawaii who said he would not fight for "American profits and cheap oil" and is in a military prison for refusing to go to the Middle East.

[Guardian, 7 September 1990.]

Divide and rule in Kuwait (1990)

From the November 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Within hours of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Emir had fled to safety in Saudi Arabia in an armoured-plated Mercedes. He was soon joined by his ministers, and by the following day they were able to hold a cabinet meeting. The first item on the agenda was the safety of their colleagues and families still in Kuwait. Within days these, too, had been evacuated to safety.

Meanwhile, thousands of people who worked in Kuwait had to make their own way to safety in grueling heat only to find themselves ending up in refugee camps in Jordan, where they lived in squalid conditions, queuing in temperatures of over 100 degrees for their one meal a day and living in constant fear of a cholera epidemic.

Recent events in the Gulf demonstrate very clearly three points about the society we live in. First, that it is a class-divided society where the majority of us have nothing but our capacity to work which we have to sell in order to live. Second, that this class-divided society engenders deep racist and nationalist divisions between us workers, which the capitalist-owned media nourish and perpetuate. Third, that workers have no country; national governments do not represent our interests but the interests of the tiny minority who own and control the world’s resources.

Workers come to Kuwait

There have been foreign workers in Kuwait ever since the first explorations for oil between the two world wars. But the first major influx of workers from abroad arrived in the early 1970s. The oil price explosion of that period resulted in a huge increase in revenue which enabled the Kuwaiti government to implement a massive programme of development — the building of roads, airports, schools, hospitals and further work on oil installations, which demanded a workforce of a size which the local population was too small to provide.

The incentive for foreign workers was high wages and escape from unemployment in their countries of origin. A professional or skilled Bangladeshi could earn 6-8 times more than in Bangladesh. Sri Lankan housemaids and labourers could command 12 times what they earned in Sri Lanka. Western workers could earn several times what they would get in Britain or Europe, plus additional perks such as rent-free accommodation, tax-free earnings, school fees, and air fares home. It meant that skilled and professional workers could pay off mortgages and debts at home and enjoy in material terms a better standard of living.

By the 1980s over 70 per cent of Kuwait’s labour force came from abroad — from labourers to domestic servants through to skilled and professional workers such as engineers, architects and doctors. The largest proportion of this workforce was engaged in the construction industry and the second largest in schools, hospitals and other services.

The Western workers — on whom the British media has largely focused — constitute only a small proportion of the foreign labour force and are mainly highly-trained professional workers. The majority of workers are from other Arab countries and from countries in the Indian sub-continent and South East Asia. These countries encouraged their nationals to go the Gulf states to work, requiring them to remit a proportion of their wages. These remittances overtook commodity exports as the major foreign currency earner. For many Third World countries this was enough to compensate for the rise in the price of oil.

Just as countries grow or produce commodities for export for profits while the basic needs of people in them are not met — coffee plantations while people are starving, for instance — so, similarly, many Third World countries were exporting skilled expertise to the Gulf that their populations were crying out for. Kuwaiti hospitals — the finest in the Middle East — are staffed with Palestinian doctors and nurses while Palestinians in the refugee camps in Lebanon and the West Bank are desperate for medical facilities and expertise.

Divide and rule

The foreign workers’ labour in Kuwait made millions for the multinational companies they worked for. Yet at the end there would be very little to show for it, beyond being able to meet their basic needs at a slightly higher standard than if they had stayed at home — and only as long as they continued working in the Gulf.

Many of the workers in Kuwait were living and working in harsh conditions. Even the highly-paid professionals worked for long hours under a great deal of stress. Life was certainly not one blissful round of expatriate picnics and golf in the desert, as one newspaper article suggested. The non-professionals lived under very spartan conditions. Many construction workers lived in camps built and managed by the multinational companies they worked for, often miles from the town and the rest of the population. South Korean workers had some of the best conditions: 25 square metres per person, one bath-house for every 500, and a volleyball court and table-tennis table for camps with a population of over 50. Out of sheer boredom workers would put in a lot of overtime, and stress and exhaustion (and working in a dry, hot climate) resulted in poor health and accidents.

The Kuwait ruling class was totally dependent on the foreign labour force which by the 1980s was made up of about 68 nationalities. Despite this they were seen as a source of danger, a bridgehead for outside interests and for other countries to lay claim to Kuwaiti territory and wealth. Also, they could be seen as a focus for the development of working class consciousness which would demand political democracy, trade unions and so on.

So a thoroughly efficient system of divide and rule was set in operation. Kuwait was to be exclusively for the Kuwaitis. The rights of foreign workers were largely restricted to the terms and conditions of their work contracts and it was made very clear to them that they were only in Kuwait to provide labour and should not look upon it as their home. They were not allowed to join trade unions unless resident in Kuwait for over five years. In recent years many workers were restricted to short-term contracts of two years. Also, workers could only live in the country for as long as they were working there, and could only bring in dependents if earning more than a certain level of salary.

The right to Kuwaiti citizenship was restricted. In 1959 the Nationality Law defined Kuwaitis are being basically the descendants of those who inhabited Kuwait before 1920. These had the right to vote (men only). A second category of citizenship was created for those who arrived after 1920, with no right to vote. Kuwaiti citizenship was very difficult to get and this always remained a grievance for the Palestinians living in Kuwait, many of whom have been there for more than 30 years. Kuwaitis had other privileges denied to foreigners: the sole right to own property, to open businesses and to receive social security. However, not all Kuwaitis were happy to accept this system of divide and rule. In 1963, Dr Ahmed Khatib proposed that the privileges enjoyed by Kuwaitis be extended to foreign labour.

A policy of residential segregation was pursued. Already in the 1950s the official town plan set apart housing zones for foreigners. While strictly speaking it was not actually forbidden for foreigners to live in Kuwaiti areas, people were encouraged to congregate in different areas.

As well as the division between Kuwaitis and non-Kuwaitis, racial prejudice also divided the foreign labour force. A three–tier system of racial superiority operated, with the Europeans at the top, Arabs in the middle and Asians at the bottom. This reflected the salaries of the respective groups and their economic position in society. The highest paid workers in Kuwait tended to be the professionally qualified workers brought from the West by the multinationals. The lowest paid tended to be domestic servants and labourers from Third World countries such as Bangladesh where wages are very low, making it easy for them to be recruited as cheap labour. Low economic status was generally accompanied by derogatory views. For example Bangladeshi maids were considered to be “less clean” than their slightly more expensive Filipino counterparts.

The racial division between white and non-white workers also had its roots in Europe’s history as a colonial power in many of the Third World countries which sent labour to Kuwait. The more naive amongst the European workers saw themselves as a sort of new raj, and found it difficult to accept that Kuwaitis could tell them what to do and to take instructions from their equally highly-qualified and experienced colleagues from Third World countries.

The British media’s coverage of events in the Gulf has continued this prejudiced view. For the first few weeks of the crisis, media coverage focused almost exclusively on the Europeans trapped or held hostage in the Gulf. Stories of brave, heroic escapes or of innocent victims caught up in a war that didn’t concern them were prevalent, as though no other workers lived there.

Workers have no country

Workers, whether born in Britain, Kuwait, Egypt, Sri Lanka or the Philippines, have no country. Nation-states are created and destroyed as the capitalist class in different parts of the world struggle to control the resources of the globe, with no regard whatsoever for the lives of people, let alone their cultural and linguistic identity. Kuwait is a perfect example of this.

The Kuwaiti Planning Minister has talked of how sad it would be if future generations of Kuwaitis did not have a country and so of it being worth spending part of Kuwait’s $100 billion investments on the multi-national force. Perhaps he should be reminded that there has not been a country called Kuwait for that long. Certainly, there has been a place called Kuwait since at least the 18th century, with an economy based on pearl-diving and fishing, but the modern boundaries between Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi Arabia were drawn up in 1922 by Sir Percy Cox. So, in effect, present-day Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi Arabia were created by Western colonial powers in order to protect their own political, military and economic interests in the area, with the help of local ruling families who were interested in preserving their own power over the local population.

The Kuwaiti leaders are putting on quite a show of patriotic bravado. The crown prince declared from the safety of his London home that every member of the ruling family would be prepared to die for his country. In fact it is those workers who could not afford to get out of the war-zone who are already suffering and who will be the first to die as innocent victims caught up in a battle that does not concern them as their homes are bombed and their children die of dehydration and cholera when they flee to refugee camps. Others will die as soldiers conned into believing that they are fighting for their country.

This potential war, as with all wars, is yet another conflict brought about by the squalid interests of the minority who own and control the resources of our Earth. War will bring only misery and death to workers, whether they be Iraqi, Kuwaiti, British, American or from anywhere else in the world. Workers’ interests are best served by their refusing to slaughter one another at the behest of their capitalist masters. Instead they should overcome nationalist and racist divisions and join in the struggle to overthrow capitalism and put in its place a society where all people have free access to all they need and an informed democratic voice in how we run our planet.

Kerima Mohideen

Caught In The Act: Major operations (1990)

The Caught In The Act Column from the November 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Major operations

Among the many gifts to a not-always grateful nation, Margaret Thatcher has appointed a succession of extremely clever Chancellors of the Exchequer. Nobody should underestimate the importance of this because Chancellors have the job of running the economy and Geoffrey Howe, Nigel Lawson and John Major have thought up many clever schemes to make us all prosperous and secure. Chancellors say that by cutting or increasing taxes, or by raising or lowering interest rates, they can cultivate industrial growth, stimulate an enterprising spirit among business people, bring the balance of trade into surplus and control what they call inflation (which is really rising prices).

They have had so much practice at this you would have thought they would have got it right by now. But another part of their job is to make boring speeches full of technical jargon telling us that they have not got it right — that we are still in an economic crisis and that, although they have failed to cure the problem, we must still have confidence in them. They make it sound very intricate and delicate, in the hope that we will begin to understand why Chancellors need to be so clever.

At this point we meet a problem because both of Thatcher's previous Chancellors are now written off as failures whose policies — which were so emphatically approved at the time — are now condemned as responsible for many of the present economic difficulties. Geoffrey Howe is now remembered as the Chancellor who almost single-handed engineered an economic recession. The fact that this can hardly be true does not prevent him having to fight a rearguard action for his political survival, of an obstinacy to surprise those who despise him as a moribund sheep.

Nigel Lawson, who now has such a lucrative living in the City that he doesn't have to fight for anything (his two-day-a-week, £200,000 a year job at Barclays Bank has just been supplemented by one which will take up another two days advising East European governments on how to privatise their industries) is now discredited as the instigator of wild extravagance at the Treasury for which there had to be a day of reckoning.

It's all our fault

So the Tories have been hoping that John Major will make a better showing, by which they mean that he will produce the kind of budgets to persuade workers that the best way of running British capitalism is to keep the Conservatives in power for ever, with Margaret Thatcher as prime minister until John Major is ready to take over. There could hardly be a greater contrast than that between Lawson and Major; the one overweight, arrogant and self-advertising, the other mouse-like, colourless and reticent.

In one way Major is just like all other Chancellors. Even if he has nothing new or promising to offer, he offers it with conviction and optimism. For example, there is the matter of "inflation" which all Chancellors have agreed is the main obstacle to their plans for our welfare. Unless "inflation" is beaten (they usually use such words, as if a physical struggle was in progress) nothing else will work. So severe is the problem that the Treasury itself seems confused about it, because while the Chancellor claims to be able to control "inflation" he also tells us that it is caused by influences outside his control like world oil prices and extravagant wage rises — which does not apply to people like Nigel Lawson but workers like ambulance crews and miners and teachers. But whatever the battering he receives in the fight against "inflation" the Chancellor has to keep coming back for more, in case we begin to doubt that victory is in the offing.

Ups and downs

Geoffrey Howe, in spite of his reputation as a colourless plodder, was responsible for the most extravagant boast in May 1981 that "zero inflation is possible" — that we could have a situation in which prices did not rise.

Tom King, who was not Chancellor of the Exchequer but obviously wanted to get in on the act, said in May 1984 that the government was ". . . on course to get inflation down to 4.5 per cent by the end of the year". It was then at 5.2 per cent; a year later when it was at 7 per cent King, unabashed, was declaring, "inflation will be on the way down again by the end of the year". As it happened "inflation" did come down so that in June 1987, when it was at 4.1 per cent, Nigel Lawson could promise that it would be ". . . below 4 per cent by the end of the year". A year later Lawson's way of dealing with another rise was to promise that "inflation is now likely to edge up in the second half of the year before coming back down again".

When this promise did not work, in June 1989 when "inflation" stood at 8.3 per cent, Thatcher declared "the Chancellor will get the inflation rate down. It will fall over the rest of the life of this parliament". When Lawson resigned, with "inflation" still rising, John Major admitted in July 1990 that it was ". . .  taking longer than we expected to get down. It is near but possibly not at its peak". Since then it has risen by a full one per cent, which means that Major has felt the need to speak up again; in October he told us that "the prospect is for a substantial reduction in inflation over the coming year . . ". Perhaps impressed by his own performance as an "inflation" fighter, a few days later Major told the Tory conference, which is not famous for being intelligently selective, "I am now in no doubt that inflation will fall sharply over the next year". As if that forecast were not dangerous enough, he then set his sights on the same target as Geoffrey Howe in 1981: ". . . most importantly to reduce inflation and then eliminate it entirely".

Confidence

The level of "inflation" — whether prices go up or down — is of no lasting concern to the majority of people, who depend for their living on employment. Whatever the effect of "inflation" it can only be short term and makes no difference to our standing. Nor does it make capitalism a more acceptable way of running human affairs.

It says a great deal about capitalism, and about the people like Howe, Lawson and Major who win votes on their promises to be able to control the system, that after so many florid claims by so many politicians, they are now making the same promises about eliminating it as they made nine years ago. There has been no progress, which raises a wider question. If politicians are unable to control prices, what confidence can there be that they can do anything about the other problems of the modern world — war, famine, disease, poverty? Answers to John Major and his colleagues please — on your ballot paper.

Ivan