Futuristic (2026)

Book Review from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

What We Can Know. By Ian McEwan. Jonathan Cape. 2025. 301pp.

What a fine novelist Ian McEwan is. Apart from being a superb craftsman of language and plot and a massively perceptive observer of human behaviour, his widely read fiction often contains strong social or socio-political elements offering serious food for reflection. Even more trenchant on this front than others of his novels is his latest, What We Can Know, which also stands out for its strong futuristic content. Yet, set as it is in the year 2119, it also reflects back on the present day at a moment before climate change and nuclear conflict have caused global populations to halve, seas to rise massively and biodiversity to decline. And it offers a constant interplay between the imagined future, which humanity’s response (or lack of response) has shaped, and the world of today.

As it moves between these two time periods, it reveals the details of what is imagined to have happened through human mismanagement of the planet and its resources and technology. So, for example, scores of cities, including Glasgow and New York, have vanished and there is no longer any kind of globalised economy. Yet despite the wars, genocides, floods, famines, viruses, droughts, tsunamis, starvation and disease that have decimated the population, human society has carried on (‘we scraped through’ is the expression survivors use). As for Britain, what is left of it is an archipelago (ie a group of small islands) that is all the remaining population has left following the inundations caused by rising seas, and whose ‘finest achievement was not to be at war’. Though run by corrupt elite ‘Citizens Committees’, there is relative order in society and formal education still takes place. We are told that: ‘Significant parts of the knowledge base were preserved. Many institutions crawled through the gaps between catastrophes. People lived at poverty level but they lived.’

The main character is an academic at the University of the South Downs teaching history (for which he receives half the pay of his science and technology colleagues) and at the same time working on the biography of a poet who lived 100 years earlier. Hence his interest in that (our) era. Could those pre-inundation populations not have done ‘something other than grow their economies and wage war?’, asks one of his students, which makes the teacher himself wonder whether ‘many of humanity’s problems could have been solved’ before planetary havoc set in. But could it have been different? The question is left in the air.

Obviously the precise circumstances laid out as having led up to this future are no more than speculation. Yet it is speculation plausibly depicted, building on the political and environmental instability of the world we live in today, in which, as the author puts it, ‘capitalism… invents furiously and persuades us of new needs’. Not that his well-founded and pungent comments on various aspects of current or recent reality (for example, ‘These were the early Thatcher years, and there was crazy greed in the air’) are accompanied by any proposed solution or clear course of action regarding the problems he perceives. Little more in fact than the kind of wishy-washy statement he made in a recent interview to the magazine Positive News that: ‘We just have to stop doing bad things and do good things’. No recognition, therefore, that those ‘bad things’ come out of a bad system, which, in order to stop those things getting worse, needs to be replaced by a better system.

But it would be wrong-headed not to recognise that What We Can Know is a work of fiction and that, in the final analysis, there is no obligation for fiction to be prescriptive or to propose remedies. The main virtue of McEwan’s writing lies in its power to create believable human character and interaction through effective use of language, so allowing the reader to see truthfulness in what is depicted. It is especially in the clever and nuanced ‘looking-back’ element of his story that the author does this most consistently. He captures some highly recognisable realities of the social and political mores of the current age, while also managing to weave much ‘human interest’ into his narrative, for example a highly sensitive portrayal of early onset Alzheimer’s, a love story or two, and a crime of passion. No short review can in fact do justice to the book’s overall literary merit, but the following passage can be seen as a typical example of its acuteness of perception and mastery of language: ‘Memory is a sponge. It soaks up material from other times, other places and leaks it all over the moment in question. Its unreliability was one of the discoveries of twentieth-century psychology’.

Howard Moss

Letter: A View from the Hospital Basement (2026)

Letter to the Editors from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

A View from the Hospital Basement

To the Editors,

I write to you as a 53 year old working class logistics porter for NHS Scotland, and someone who has recently come to terms with a lifelong reality: I am autistic. Having spent my younger years in the frantic ‘activism’ of the far left, I find myself now, in the quiet of my fifties, looking at the world through a lens sharpened by both my diagnosis and the consistent logic of socialism.

For the autistic worker, capitalism is not merely an exploitative system; it is a sensory and social assault. The ‘wages system’ demands a specific type of human raw material, one that is flexible, socially performative, and capable of enduring the chaotic, profit driven environments of modern industry. If you cannot ‘mask’ your traits, if you cannot navigate the arbitrary social hierarchies of management, or if your nervous system recoils at the bright, loud, and disorganised nature of the capitalist workplace, you are branded ‘inefficient’.

In my eighteen years within the NHS, I have seen the machinery of the state attempt to patch up a broken population. We are a class of ‘repair men’ trying to fix the damage caused by a system that prioritizes the accumulation of capital over human well being. My job as a porter relies on lists, logic, and routine, elements that suit my autistic mind. Yet, the overarching system is one of irrationality. We see the ‘crisis’ in our hospitals not as a failure of funding, but as a failure of a system that treats health as a commodity and workers as mere expenses on a balance sheet.

The Socialist Party’s ‘Impossibilist’ stance, the refusal to advocate for the mere ‘crumbs’ of reform resonates deeply with the autistic need for systemic consistency. In my youth, I chased the ‘immediate demands’ of reformism, only to find that every hard won ‘right’ can be stripped away by the next budget or the next shift in the market. For my daughters, one who shares my neurodivergent wiring, I have no interest in fighting for a ‘better’ version of their exploitation.

A socialist society, one based on the common ownership of the means of life and production for use, is the only environment in which the neurodivergent person can truly thrive. Consider the logic:

First, the abolition of the ‘interview’ and the ‘personality test’. In a world of voluntary labour, the social ritual of ‘selling oneself’ to a master disappears. An autistic person’s focus and ‘special interests’ cease to be a commodity and become a direct contribution to the community.

Second, the end of sensory exploitation. Capitalism builds cheap, high stress environments because they are profitable. A society producing for human need would, for the first time, design spaces for human comfort, accounting for the diverse sensory needs of all its members.

Third, the removal of social hierarchy. My alexithymia and my struggle with social cues are only ‘disabilities’ because capitalism demands a specific type of social compliance to maintain the master servant relationship. In a society of equals, where no one has the power to command another’s labour, the ‘unwritten rules’ of the workplace vanish.

I have stopped apologising for the way I am wired. I have realised that my autistic brain, with its preference for facts over rhetoric and systems over leaders. We do not need charismatic leaders to tell us we are exploited; we need only to look at the ledgers of our lives.

Socialism offers a ‘case’ that does not shift with the political winds. It is a list of principles that holds up to the most rigorous logical scrutiny. For the worker in Scotland, for the porter in the basement, and for the autistic child yet to enter the fray, the message must remain clear: the system cannot be mended. It must be ended.

Yours for the Revolution,

Pablo Wilcox

Scotland

Letter: Engels (2026)

Letter to the Editors from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Engels

Hello

There’s a certain irony in being accused (Pathfinders, February) of not having read Engels when my point (very much a side point) was that Engels’ arguments were based on no evidence of how people organised themselves in prehistory. My main point was that no, prehistory was not a feminist utopia, but there was a huge diversity of relations between men and women of which, until recently, we were completely ignorant. My reason for not including Engels in Further Reading was not that it was old hat, though perhaps even the author of this piece would agree that Engels’ ideas have been around a while, but that the rule for that particular section of The Guardian’s books pages is that it should be inspired by recent thinking and recent books – which are then cited in Further Reading. If this author were himself better read, he would know that I’ve written on this subject in greater depth, with a less restrictive word count, for New Scientist – written and he would, I hope, feel a little ashamed of his groundless (rather like Engels’) statements.

Best wishes,

Laura Spinney

Reply from the writer

As a New Scientist subscriber for twenty years I’ve appreciated many of your interesting articles, but I must have missed the one you wrote on Engels. You say there’s no evidence for his hypothesis on the subjection of women (actually derived from pioneering anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan), even calling it ‘groundless’. This seems a little harsh given that whole theoretical edifices are sometimes constructed based on one finger bone. The evidence of patriarchy is all around you and everywhere in history. Is the alternative origin story simply that ‘it’s complicated?’ To discuss Engels’ argument while omitting the crucial role of emerging property relations is a bit like discussing gravity without mentioning mass, or Newton, or relativity. That’s why your representation of Engels came across as woolly, hence the speculation that you might not have gone to the source. Angela Saini, as the article points out, instead takes the argument and runs with it in a way that sheds further light rather than confusion on the subject.

PJS

Proper Gander: Reporting on reporting (2026)

The Proper Gander column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Journalist Steve Rosenberg hasn’t chosen the easiest of careers. His appearances on BBC News as their correspondent in Russia raise questions about how free he is to investigate and report on what’s happening there, especially since the war in Ukraine reignited in 2022. The Panorama episode Our Man In Moscow (BBC One) offers an answer by showing what Rosenberg, his producer and camera operator do between the times we see him on air. Their trip to the city of Tver to interview people on the street is interrupted by both the police and state media asking what they’re doing, with the producer saying this could have turned out to be ‘much worse’ than an identity check. The forums and summits which they and other journalists attend are as slickly presented as those anywhere else. Although Rosenberg says that some of the attendees are now reluctant to speak to the BBC, he has put in questions to Putin on a couple of occasions. At an annual press conference, Rosenberg lists some of Russia’s problems then asks Putin ‘do you think you have taken care of your country?’, to which he predictably replies in the affirmative. The following year, Rosenberg asks what future Putin plans for Russia, including militarily, and is told ‘there will be no operations if you treat us with respect’. Rosenberg’s analysis is that the Kremlin’s confidence is fuelled by Europe being weakened because it is distanced from Trump’s America.

Steve Rosenberg became interested in Russian culture and language during his teenage years in Chingford. His first visit to Russia was in 1987, when the Soviet Union was starting to open up more to global markets, and he was there a few years later when it broke up. Having lived and worked as a reporter in Moscow since the mid-1990s, Rosenberg is now the BBC’s Russia Editor. He’s nostalgic for the country he saw when he was younger, which he tells us had more optimism. He describes the time when Putin came to power by saying ‘it felt as if this huge black cloud had come over’. Being a journalist there now is compared to walking on a tightrope: ‘You can’t relax, really, for a second. You want to report accurately and honestly about what’s happening, but you don’t want to fall off the tightrope onto the minefield below, and hit a mine’.

According to Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, Russia ranks 171st out of 180 countries, making it among the most restricted places for what news is reported, how and by whom. Virtually all media produced there comes from state-owned or affiliated organisations, with controls on its content increased further due to the war. Military personnel are banned from speaking to journalists, and the dissemination of ‘unreliable information’ about the armed forces is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Dozens of critics of the authorities and the war are currently jailed, some for spying charges, and most foreign reporters have left the country. Rosenberg explains that he’s one of the few western journalists remaining in Moscow, as he walks through an empty office which used to be bustling with colleagues.

Rosenberg and his crew have got used to being monitored by the state, learning that it’s safest to calmly present the required documents when approached by the police while out reporting. They are also followed by plain-clothes agents, one of whom denies this when Rosenberg challenges him. These agents wouldn’t be too concerned that they have been rumbled, for the reason that Rosenberg is likely to be more unsettled and restrained being aware that they’re watching him. The authorities will probably watch the Panorama documentary too, which Rosenberg, his colleagues and BBC executives would realise, and so they wouldn’t have included anything too incriminating.

Rosenberg isn’t popular with the nation’s state-owned media either, which depicts him as an anti-Russian propagandist by selectively editing quotes from his reports. We see some Russian journalists questioning him on his reporting, albeit in their role as state lackeys. Television is more prominent as a source of information in Russia than in western countries: nearly two-thirds of its citizens mainly get their news in this way, according to Reporters Without Borders. We see a clip of an angry TV show host calling Rosenberg a ‘conscious enemy of our country’ and (oddly) a ‘defecating squirrel, constantly surprised by things’. Admirably, Rosenberg perseveres with his job despite the tense position it places him in, walking his tightrope. He comes across as professional and sincere, having developed a personal understanding of Russian culture and politics.

While the context Rosenberg works in is different to that of most reporters, it illustrates how journalism isn’t as simple as a dogged pursuit of the truth. In Russia more than elsewhere, the restrictions and threats hanging over journalists will shape their approaches and the words they use. Many have been silenced completely, further limiting awareness and viewpoints. Alongside this, the Russian state’s media has become even more empowered, dominating the market. Legislating speech is an obvious admission by the state that it wants to control the narrative, skewed to promote both the ruling elite and the system which enables it.

Journalism is moulded not only by regulation, but also by what’s acceptable to the organisations which produce it. Being an employee of the BBC, Rosenberg has to work within the corporation’s frame of reference. This isn’t just its editorial guidelines, but its overall ethos as part of the establishment, creating both conscious and subconscious bias in its news output. So, the war between Russia and Ukraine is analysed only on the surface level of capitalist politics, between rival governments. Mainstream journalism, whether in Britain, Russia or anywhere else wouldn’t examine more fundamentally how the war is between factions of the capitalist class for their economic interests, not those of the working class.

Mike Foster

Better, not more (2026)

Book Review from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Less: Stop Buying So Much Rubbish: How Having Fewer, Better Things Can Make Us Happier. By Patrick Grant. William Collins £10.99.

In the August 2022 Socialist Standard, we reviewed Phillip Coggan’s More, which deals with the expansion in production over the centuries. Grant’s book is a kind of counterpart to that, advocating the making of fewer things. The author is a fashion designer, business owner and judge on a TV programme to do with sewing. Here we will focus on his general remarks, rather than his account of his own history in business (he is founder of the Blackburn-based Community Clothing, communityclothing.co.uk).

The development of capitalism meant that the interests of business took precedence over everyone else, including those who did the work and produced the goods. Only the rich benefited from this, and the emphasis switched to increasing output and consumption, rather than happiness. The fashion industry in particular grew via social manipulation, with seasonal fashions having a fixed shelf life. Many companies spend more on marketing and selling their products than on making them, and over thirty percent of all the clothing made is never sold, with fast fashion brands such as Shein and Temu leading the way here. Shein’s marketing strategy is simple: ‘make an unfathomable quantity of incredibly low-quality stuff, sell it cheaply, aggressively acquire customers, swamp the competition.’ A new product is launched every three seconds. A mention of Oscar Wilde’s remark that ‘fashion is merely a form of ugliness so absolutely unbearable that we have to alter it every six months’, would have been apposite here, except that it seems now to be a matter of days rather than months.

The quality of much of what is produced has declined over the last several decades (though cars may well be an exception). Cheaper products usually mean higher profits, of course. Fewer raw materials means clothes are often skinnier, shorter or thinner, and overcoats contain far less wool than they did fifty years ago. From the 60s and 70s, synthetic fibres such as nylon, polyester and acrylic became widely available and many manufacturers of natural-fibre fabrics went out of business, especially as offshoring became more common. The owners of companies that produce poor-quality goods are extremely rich (H&M, for instance). When you buy a garment online, you cannot judge its quality.

Moreover, few people nowadays love their jobs, even though work can contribute to personal happiness. These days far fewer people actually make things for a living, and there is a lack of workers in manual trades, which are not just ‘manual’ as they require a lot of knowledge and cognitive processing. One aim should be the creation of skilled fulfilling local jobs. Clothes, the author argues, can be produced in a way that will ensure that they age so as to provide pleasure to the wearer. Older second-hand goods can still be of high quality, and the better an object is, the more likely it is to be repaired.

There seems to be no mention here of degrowth, but a lot of what Grant advocates would imply a reduction in the amount produced and even an end to the continuous economic growth of capitalism. Much of what he says here could certainly be considered for adoption in a socialist world, but it is hard to see how it could be implemented under capitalism.

Paul Bennett

Throwing custard over the Crown Jewels and shoplifting at Waitrose (2026)

From the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last December a group called Take Back Power made news by throwing apple crumble and custard over a glass case containing the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London. Describing itself as a ‘nonviolent civil-resistance group’, Take Back Power, though talked of as a successor to Just Stop Oil which has now dissolved itself, has a new and different agenda focusing on what can broadly be called ‘economic inequality’. Its declared concerns are matters such as the cost of living and, in particular, what it describes as ‘unfair taxation’. To bring attention to such issues, its members are promising mass shopliftings of ‘high-end’ stores such as Waitrose and redistribution of the food removed to those who need it. Such activities are seen as a way of exerting pressure on the government to set up what they call ‘a permanent citizen’s assembly – a House of the People, which has the power to tax extreme wealth and fix Britain’. This echoes the words on the sign carried by those arrested at the scene of the apple crumble and custard event: ‘Democracy has crumbled – tax the rich’.

Daily Mail v Take Back Power

The group was the subject of a predictably derogatory report in the Daily Mail on the occasion of its formal launch in January of this year. One of its founders, Arthur Clifton, was reported as telling the audience at the founding event: ‘We have seen that food is locked behind skyrocketing prices. Less and less people can afford less and less food’. And then the article went on to mention that two of those involved in the ‘custard’ protest were ‘an NHS worker and a former doctor’ and pointed out that Clifton was ‘privately educated’ at ‘one of the country’s top public schools’ and came from a wealthy family. In so doing it lit the blue touch paper for its discerning readers in the comments facility on the website. Typical examples of comments were:

‘Terrorists, by another way and means. They need locking up.’

‘Start prosecuting and imprison these vandals & thieves with long sentences.’

‘Morons and jealous half-wits.’

‘Why do this lot always look like they need a good bath!!’

‘If they hate capitalism why not moving to China or Cuba? or … North Korea?’

‘Anti-capitalist group: the upper-middle class way of saying “’thieves”’.

‘Middle class privileged kids playing at politics.’

‘A few baseball bats and pickaxe handles would soon sort these goons out.’ (from Big Richard of Birmingham)

‘Live rounds, now!’ (from Shampoo Bamboo of Sheffield)

Such comments are of course to be looked upon with the contempt they deserve, but of real relevance to the venture they are commenting on are a number of points made in earlier editions of the Socialist Standard about Take Back Power’s predecessor group, Just Stop Oil.

Single-issue groups

Firstly, single-issue groups, no matter how well supported they may appear to be at a given time, tend to have limited impact, if any, in the longer term. Recent history illustrates this when we think of, for example the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Anti-Vivisection Society, Occupy, Extinction Rebellion, which either become extinct when members tire of working hard for little visible gain or soldier on even when they get overtaken by events and changing conditions make the issue they are campaigning for seem less relevant. In general, it must be said that such organisations are nothing if not commendable for their concern for human welfare and the sincerity of their intentions. And on occasion they can be judged to have had some kind of positive impact on society or on social attitudes. But this is usually because their agenda becomes aligned with the needs of the social and economic system we live in (capitalism), making what they are campaigning for useful or necessary for the continued smooth running of that system. Examples of this are the campaign for a National Health Service in Britain at the end of the second world war (basically a necessary back-to-work scheme for efficient employment), and the Civil Rights movement in the US which was at least partially successful in improving conditions for the black minority. One of its effects was to put them in a less inferior position to the white majority in the labour market and so giving employers a wider pool of workers to choose from. In the end, such ‘successes’ as there have been among single-issue campaigns form part of the list of never-ending reforms that capitalism itself always needs to facilitate its operation.

What does ‘anti-capitalist’ mean?

Secondly, though the Daily Mail article referred to Take Back Power as an ‘anti-capitalist group’ and a number of its readers’ comments picked up on that, when looked at closely the group’s aims and activities are not ‘anti-capitalist’ in any meaningful way. It envisages its ambitions as being achieved within the framework of the current system of money, wages and buying and selling. They involve either influencing existing governments or leaders or somehow having a part in government themselves. There is nothing ‘anti-capitalist’ in this. Anti-capitalism (or ‘socialism’ as we would call it) means a social system without governments or leaders based on common ownership of all goods and services and free access to all the necessities of life for all. Reforms to the current system (even a conglomeration of them) cannot provide that. Nor does anti-capitalism or socialism have anything whatever to do with China, Cuba or North Korea, as suggested by some of the Daily Mail’s keyboard warriors.

Class

Thirdly, some explanation is needed regarding ‘class’, especially given that the protestors in question are referred to in the newspaper as ‘middle-class’ (and therefore not ‘working class’). The important reality to grasp is that there are very few of us indeed who are not ‘working class’. This is in the sense that the overwhelming majority of us need to find an employer to work for in order to have a wage or salary as a means of survival. And that will certainly be the case for virtually all those who gathered on 17 January at Limehouse Town Hall in London to formally found Take Back Power. We can say with a good degree of certainty that very few of them indeed, if any, belong to that small group of people who do not have to sell their energies to an employer day by day because they own enough wealth to be able to live comfortably without doing that, ie, those who belong to the tiny minority of people who own most of the earth’s resources – those we call the capitalist class.

Who pays taxes?

Finally, while the idea that imposing higher taxation on the rich and reducing it for the poor may seem superficially attractive, it is, when examined closely, fundamentally wrong-headed. It’s true that most people have an image of the state and its government as a kind of ‘neutral’ agency standing above society, to which all must contribute. In this view state revenue is the ‘public purse’, which we all have to support through taxation. But the main burden of taxation in fact rests on the tiny minority of people who own the vast majority of the wealth (the capitalist class) and who the government extracts it from in order to maintain the whole machinery on which the system depends for its orderly functioning . And they pay it out of the profit accruing to them from their ownership of the means of production and distribution over the whole of society. If they were prevailed upon to pay even more than they already do, it would have the effect of eating into the profit which is the life blood of capitalism, cause disinvestment, economic decline and possibly worse, and make workers even poorer as wages declined and unemployment rose.

Mirages, dead ends and the real deal

So in all these terms Take Back Power’s aim of a society run by a ‘Citizens’ Assembly’ which would tax ‘extreme wealth’ is nothing more than a mirage. It is a mistaken notion that, within the framework of a society founded on buying and selling, things could be run in a notably more equitable way than at present. If, by some unimaginable quirk, such an experiment did come to be tried, it would quickly become clear that whoever or whichever body was running things, they would quickly have to bow to the dictates of profit and to a similar order of things as exist already for the vast majority (ie the workers) and effectively carry on running capitalism. While we can thoroughly agree with the statement made by Take Back Power that governments ‘serve the super rich’ and ‘do not care about working people’, their plans for somehow reducing the wealth of those they call ‘the obscenely wealthy’ could not possibly be realised within the existing framework of social organisation with its governments and monetary exchange.

The ‘guru’ of Just Stop Oil, Roger Hallam, who has recently served a prison sentence under the British state’s arsenal of repressive laws for involvement in tactics like blocking roads or gluing yourself to paintings, is on record as saying ‘If you don’t upset people, then nothing happens’. It remains to be seen whether Take Back Power will now go in for similar actions to try and attract attention to their cause. But even if they are successful in this, what they will be spreading is attention to what can only be a dead end. What is needed is a wider view of how society works than that adopted by any single-issue campaign. The working class does indeed need to ‘take back power’, but it needs to do that in a way that focuses not on social or economic reform within the framework of capitalism, but on a change from a society of production for profit to one of production for need based on common ownership of the world’s resources and free access to all goods and services.

Howard Moss

Blogger's Note:

The following two articles from previous Socialist Standards go into more detail on Just Stop Oil:

• Dec 2022: Just stop being manipulative by Adam Buick
• May 2025: Just Stop Oil: the failure of a tactic by Adam Buick

Roger Hallam’s new plan (2026)

From the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Roger Hallam, the man behind the failed Just Stop Oil campaign, has emerged from prison a reformed character. He has now abandoned civil disobedience as a way of trying to change things and has embraced electoral action. He is not, however, in a position to say what he really thinks as, if he did continue to advocate breaking the law, he’d be sent straight back to prison to serve the rest of his 2025 four-year prison sentence.

In January he brought out a three-hour video and podcast called How To Start a Revolution in 2026, subtitled ‘ordinary people can run society — but only if we build the structures to let them’. The subtitle gives a clue to what he means by ‘revolution’ — a radical change in the way political decisions are made.

He proposes that elected local councillors should be answerable to and overseen by citizens’ assemblies selected by lot. It’s basically a scheme for a functioning participatory democracy. It’s not necessarily a bad proposal in itself. The trouble is that Hallam envisages it being implemented under capitalism. What he is in effect proposing is a reform of the political superstructure of capitalism while leaving its social and economic base untouched.

But it is not a lack of democracy that causes the problems that the non-owning majority face today. It’s the capitalist system of minority ownership of the means of life and production for profit. Not even the most radical democratic decision-making structure can change or overcome the basic economic law of capitalism that making profits must come before all other considerations. Given capitalism, citizens’ assemblies would be no more able to solve the problems the majority face than existing governments or local councils. His proposed new democratic and community-led political structure could only work on the basis of the common ownership of the means of life. That is the only basis on which there would be neither vested interests nor coercive economic laws standing in the way of gearing production to meeting people’s needs.

So much for the goal but what about the means to get there? Here Hallam has drawn up a detailed plan of how to mobilise people at local level to put up their own candidates and win, involving regular weekly door-knocking, postering, telephoning, targeting non-voters (over 60 percent in most local council wards), meet-ups, and fund raising. He is prepared to put his money where his mouth is and try out his plan. The chosen place is Lambeth in London, currently controlled by an unpopular Labour council. He intends to organise candidates in all 25 wards and expects, even promises, that if his plan is carried out Labour will be kicked out.

Hallam may have embraced electoral action but he hasn’t changed his view from his Extinction Rebellion days that only a minority is needed to bring about political change. He still says:

‘Mass movements don’t grow by persuading everyone. They grow by activating a specific minority — roughly five per cent of the population — who are alienated, capable, and waiting for something credible. Most people will never mobilise’.

Lenin thought much the same. The results of the elections in Lambeth in May will show how large a following Hallam’s vanguard can get. But it would only be to reform the political set-up not for a social revolution to end minority ownership of the means society needs to survive.

Adam Buick

Peter Mandelson: arch Labour Party careerist (2026)

From the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

A friend and former Labour councillor reported to me how Peter Mandelson spoke at an online seminar. He had been impressed by one comment, summed up as: ‘If you have a good idea, don’t bother asking everybody, just go ahead and do it’. This seems to sum up all that was wrong with the New Labour project, even if you are achieving good results, not asking people makes them feel divorced from the outcomes. Even worse, it can lead to disastrous and unintended consequences, as those who know more could warn you about in advance.

Mr. Starmer thought appointing Mr. Mandelson as ambassador to Washington was a good idea, and he just went ahead and did it. The consequences have been disastrous for him.

Mandelson’s biography is well known. Grandson of wartime Labour Home Secretary Herbert Morrison, he had a natural ‘in’ into the Labour Party and movement, beginning his career (much like many Labour figures, including Jeremy Corbyn) as an employee of the trade union movement, working for the TUC.

It’s not necessary here to reprise his whole biography: it is widely available. Suffice to say that, apart from a short stint working in television, he worked as a Labour movement staff member, specifically in charge of communications. Once in parliament and then in government, he twice stepped down as a cabinet minister: once for taking an unsecured loan from a cabinet colleague, Geoffrey Robinson, for a house worth (at the time) £475,000. The second scandal was around him intervening in the passport application of billionaire businessman Srichand Hinduja. Although in both instances formal inquiries cleared him of any wrongdoing, the perception was that he was into palling around with – and getting favours from and doing favours for – very wealthy people.

It’s notable, now, that he lives in a £12 million house. This was paid for by the infamous revolving door of government ministers going into private lobbying and well-remunerated directorships after leaving office. While a well-known phenomenon, thanks to the publication of all of the notorious paedophile Jeffery Epstein’s correspondence, we now get a glimpse of the process working in practice.

Epstein advised Mandelson on how to apply for directorships, including with Deutsche Bank, that could have been worth $4-10 million per year. In the end, Mandelson didn’t want to work full time, and so got a job with a firm called Lazard for one day a week, worth a mere $1 million per year. He also set up his own lobbying firm, Global Counsel, which, as Mandelson said in one email to Epstein, paid his expensive mortgage. Epstein advised him on how to find clients for that firm. Global Counsel has had firms such as JPMorgan, Palantir and Anglo-American as clients.

These roles sought were, in part, to avoid regulation around former ministers taking jobs that relied on their former political roles or were intrinsically linked with them: and it is clear that what was for sale was general political, not financial advice, how to get things done, including introductions and network access. This is clearly not an uncommon situation. Epstein, it seems, also gave similar advice to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. After all, as we have written in these pages before, this was Epstein’s business, helping manage other people’s wealth, for a cut.

Itch to live like them

It is, perhaps, not surprising that people who find themselves rubbing shoulders with the fabulously wealthy should not feel the itch to be able to live like them, especially as, when entering the room as government officials they are functionally treated as peers of the wealthy: individuals of power and respect. It is equally understandable that the wealthy should want to encourage such feelings and throw a few crumbs to the politicians to win their loyalty.

As the case of Mandelson demonstrates, it does not have to be the naked bribery of plain brown envelopes. Continued loyalty (in his case as Business Secretary in the UK, and Trade Commissioner of the EU) can be generally rewarded by these advisor roles, directorships or other supposed jobs where the ultra-wealthy can name the price. We’ve noted before that the book-publishing and speaking-tour game is a simple way to transfer substantial sums to former politicians in ways which no set of rules could ever stop. Any attempt to ban such channelling of funds will always simply be circumvented, as Mandelson and Epstein managed to do.

Epstein gives us a great example, in one of his emails, where he leadenly says ‘supporting [Gordon Brown] will be seen as bad form commercially’: Mandelson’s own interests in the subsequent selling price of his skills and contacts depended on him being seen as helpful to commercial interests. That he had the lack of sense to forward secret and commercially sensitive government documents to Epstein will certainly come to be seen as bad form commercially. It is inconceivable that other ministers through the ages have not, in private conversations and communications, given wealthy friends and acquaintances tips and winks about what was coming up, but that would never be provable. There have just never been email dumps like this one before to let the cat out of the bag. And even if, again, Mandelson is formally cleared, his misjudgement in leaving evidence behind will be remembered.

What should also be remembered is that all of this flows, not just from personal cupidity, but structurally, from a society of immense inequality. A society in which a handful live in luxury, and can spare some of their wealth to tempt and buy whomsoever they please. Journalists have come out, after Mandelson’s fall, with stories of how he would threaten their jobs because he knew their boss (shades of the Savile playbook). Where people depend for their livelihood on their job, such threats have power.

His wealth of money and connections fed back into his ability to influence the machinery of the Labour Party, and restore it as a party safe for capital. But, again, it is not him alone as some sort of cuckoo in the nest – any party that seeks to manage an unequal society will inevitably end up being run for the benefit of the people who benefit from that inequality.

Pik Smeet

SPGB March Events (2026)

Party News from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our general discussion meetings are held on Zoom. To connect to a meeting, enter https://zoom.us/wc/join/7421974305 in your browser. Then follow instructions on screen and wait to be admitted to the meeting.

Blogger's Note:

Kate Raworth's 2017 book, Doughnut Economics, has been discussed/reviewed in two recent issues of the Socialist Standard:

• Material World: Looking inside the doughnut (October 2025)
• The Doughnut revisited (November 2025)

SPGB Snippets: Unhealthy Living (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

March 11, 2026

The ONS recently reported that there had been small increases in life expectancy in the UK since the 2019–21 period. However, it also revealed that in 2022–24 there had been decreases in healthy life expectancy (HLE) since the previous period.

HLE is the number of years that people can expect to spend in ‘good’ general health. In the more recent period, HLE at birth was 60.7 years for males and 60.9 years for females. The reductions here are 1.8 and 2.5 years, respectively.

So the chances are that at least a fifth of a person’s life will not be spent in decent health, a situation which is deteriorating. That’s life and health under capitalism!

Socialist Sonnet No. 226: Spectacular Stories (2025)

   From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Spectacular Stories

Headlines were about a sex marketeer,

Spiced with possible royal relations,

The media was alive with sensations.

Until the tale changed and it became clear

The Commander in Chief had his eagle eye

On Greenland; cue a sharp change to the script.

How easily sovereignty can be stripped

Away, without a by your leave or why.

But, then on to the next cause, the next plan,

Kidnap an inconvenient head of state.

Yet hardly had he succumbed to his fate

When the world’s focus was moved to Iran.

Not letting news settle on a topic,

Spectacles might make people myopic.

 

D. A.

News in Review: Respectable revolt (1965)

The News in Review column from the March 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Respectable revolt

Straws which are currently in the wind of British capitalism are rumblings of militancy in the so-called middle class, and the re-occurrence of the plea for more unemployed.

Some teachers and doctors have recently considered withdrawing their labour power, the former from schools and the latter from the National Health Scheme. Their reasons, basically, were concerned with their pay.

Doctors and teachers have long considered the strike as unprofessional, and in bad taste. But capitalism does not exempt any worker from the need to fight to maintain and increase his standard of living; and if doctors and teachers remain quiescent their standard of living must suffer.

Before the war when unemployment was widespread the “secure” teachers grumbled about their pay. Doctors got their patients in a free market, and many in the poorest working class districts were little better off than their patients.

Now both groups are complaining about their financial rewards; they are finding that a sense of vocation is no weapon in this competitive society. So they are considering the withdrawal of their labour power—in other words, using the weapon which marks them as members of the working class.

There is another way of losing your pay.

Lord Plowden, former Chief Planning Officer and Chairman of the Economic Planning Board, also chairman of Tube Investment Co. Ltd., and director of four other companies, was reported in the Daily Telegraph in January as wanting . . . ”better use of the labour force . . . this would lead to transitional unemployment . . . to do everything possible to mitigate the resulting hardship.”

“This is what we mean when we say that we want increased productivity, and why should we be mealy-mouthed about it?”

Capitalists are not opposed to unemployment if they think it necessary. Plowden wants to replace the carrot with the stick, on the theory that there is nothing like a dose of unemployment to increase productivity.

Is Lord Plowden himself prepared to live on the dole? Or is that a fate reserved for the workers on whom he so coldly theorises? These are questions which no highly paid servant of capitalism should want to duck.

Unless, that is, he is being mealy mouthed.

Everlasting Milk

The news which came out during the first week of last month, that British scientists had developed a method of treating milk which will make it last for months, was greeted in the newspapers with all the customary enthusiasm.

The chairman of the Express Dairy, Mr. W. E. D. Bell, helped the enthusiasm along a bit by proclaiming: “At last, we can feed milk to the two-thirds of the world that is starving.” He might as well have said that at last they could break into a market which up to now has been held by dried milk, which is easier to handle and transport than the liquid.

The Express are not, of course, about to throw in their hand with OXFAM and become a charitable institution. They quickly set up a new company to deal with the export of the new milk. Orders have been received from Central America and some shipping lines, and more may follow from the British and United States Navies.

It was not the desire to feed the hungry which was responsible for this haste. Mr. Bell made it clear: “We must,” he said, “Pull our fingers out and get this project going before the Swiss or anybody move in.”

At the time of writing, the new process has not been approved by the government for milk sold on the home market. Exported milk is not covered by the need for official approval. If the new milk is approved for home distribution, there will probably be considerable savings for the dairy industry whose bugbear, like other branches of agriculture, has always been the expensive business of rush distribution.

Agriculture is as much tied to the need to make profits as any other industry, and it is constantly looking for ways around its distribution problems. Hence the development of massive, mechanised farms, of the broiler hen and the beef factories. Hence the rise of the frozen food industry.

Some people, derided as crackpots, have questioned the effects which all this has on the food. But as long as there is a profit to be made, or increased, who cares about quality? Capitalism encourages the shoddy rush job in many of its industries, and there is no reason why agriculture should be an exception.

This is the motive behind the everlasting milk. The Sunday Times thought that, apart from anything the Express will get out of the new product, “. . . it offers a way of giving the dairy farmers more for their milk without raising the price to the public.”

The profit priorities of capitalism affect every aspect of our lives. Everywhere we go, everything we wear, the very air we breathe, everything we eat and drink, is polluted by it. And all the time there is the smokescreen of hypocrisy about human interests—about, for example, feeding the world’s hungry when the real motive is to make life more comfortable yet for the privileged few.

Vietnam

For some reason, it has suddenly become fashionable for journalists to use some peculiar words about the war which is currently being fought in Vietnam.

They have called it the “unnecessary” war, the “tragic” war, the “forgotten” war. As if all wars are not tragic, unnecessary affairs.

The Americans, deeply involved, have their own description of the war. It is, they say a vital war, because it is being fought to defend freedom. Every time the American jets go in, President Johnson claims that they fire their rockets in the cause of liberty.

We are, as usual, invited to accept the story that in Vietnam one side (the North —theirs) stands for brutal dictatorship and the other (the South—ours) stands for liberty and brotherhood.

But the South Vietnamese have shown what they mean by freedom and brotherhood by the manner in which they maltreat their prisoners. One of their recent tricks was to use a wounded prisoner (who later died) as a human mine detector—to send him wading across a river to detonate any mines on the bed.

This is only one piece of the surface evidence which shows up that it is barefaced nonsense to claim that the war in Vietnam is for freedom. In fact, the United States are involved in the war for familiar, classical reasons.

They are interested in the strategic position of Vietnam, and in the bases which they have set up there. They are desperately concerned that the expanding Chinese threat to the established powers in the Far East should be held in cheek.

The British capitalist class, who have their own troubles a little further south, are reluctant to become involved in Vietnam. British influence in the Far East was extensively diminished during the last war, and although there is still a lot of British capital invested out there, the protection of it is largely the concern of the U.S.A.

The Soviet Union is also reluctant to get involved, but is having its hand forced. They also fear Chinese ambitions; hence the belligerent words from Moscow —which remain no more than words.

The Economist’s prophesy of the outcome of Premier Kosygin’s visit to Hanoi was remarkably accurate:

“Mr. Kosygin is virtually certain to proclaim . . . that (American) attacks would involve the risk of nuclear escalation. In exchange, the Russians may well urge the North Vietnamese not to push their present military advantage in the south too far.”

Vietnam is a typical local struggle in the wider conflict of interests between the great blocs of capitalism with China, struggling for its place in the world power line up, an aggravation. China’s belligerency is customary for an upstart capitalist power; customary also are the efforts which the established powers are making to stifle her.

This could mean that the Vietnam battle will not escalate (ugly word) into a major nuclear war. But mistakes and miscalculations have been known before.

If Vietnam does prove to be the first spark in a world wide conflagration the result will be an unnecessary war, a tragic war but one which, if there is any-one left to remember it, will not be forgotten.

Gordon-Walker and immigration

The defeat of Patrick Gordon-Walker at the so-called safe seat of Leyton provided both press and politicians with a field day for comment and speculation. A number of reasons for the surprise result were suggested; in a survey just after the by-election, The Observer placed coloured immigration at the head of the list, with Labour voters the majority to voice dissatisfaction on this problem.

When the Conservative government introduced a bill curbing the flow of immigrants into this country, the Labour Opposition resisted it, creating the impression that they were in favour of unlimited free entry. Disastrously for a party seeking mass support, they overlooked the political climate. It is possible that their slender majority at the general election was caused partly by this. Gordon-Walker had the job of opposing the Tory bill in Parliament and this has made him an obvious whipping boy in what the press is fond of calling the white backlash.

At Smethwick, his Conservative opponent, by using an extremist minority as his supporters, played on the electorate’s prejudices, and their fears of the growth of a large coloured population in Britain. While the fascists ranted and raved and worked on a suppressed sore, the Tories got the benefit. At Leyton the racial question and immigration were smothered by the three main candidates, but Gordon-Walker was pestered by Nazi gadflies.

Most workers, irrespective of colour and race, fear a sudden mass influx of foreign workers because they see them as a threat to their jobs and as an aggravation of the housing shortage. On top of this is a fear that people coming from less developed areas may be willing to accept lower wages and social standards.

Immigrants have entered Britain before, but they have been mainly European and were therefore quickly assimilated. It would, for example, be difficult to trace the whereabouts of the Germans who came to Britain in Edwardian times. The recent wave of immigrants is vastly different. The colour of their skin makes it impossible for them to be quickly submerged and forgotten. They stimulate a multitude of primitive fears among the working class.

But what will happen if the coloured population of this country increases enormously? Most coloured people are just part of the working class, subject to the same rough end of the economic stick as their white brothers. In time the demands of industrialism will destroy their own customs and they will appear similar to the Anglo-Saxons, Celts, Poles etc, that go to make up the British population.

Smethwick, Leyton and Gordon-Walker are examples of how it is impossible to operate vague humanitarian concepts in a capitalist society. The government has in fact already announced much stricter screening of coloured immigrants at the points of entry. Thus do capitalism and a non-socialist working class destroy the best laid plans of mice and men.

After Leyton, What? (1965)

From the March 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Leyton by-election has passed into political history, and for a long time to come will be one of the psephologists’ favourite test-tubes.

It was also the psephologists’ nightmare, disproving all their predictions and setting the opinion polls to searching for what went wrong. This is all strongly reminiscent of the Truman victory in the United States in 1948. None of the pollsters cared to recall, after Leyton, that in 1948 they said they had found a hidden defect in their systems, that they had eliminated it and that such mistakes would not happen again.

In fact, there were signs before the votes were cast that things were not going too well for Mr. Gordon Walker. The Wilson government had not produced the promised rabbits out of the expected hats. The pensioners were annoyed about having to wait for their rise, the mortgagees were furious that their rise—in the interest rates—came upon them so quickly. On 20th. January, The Guardian’s reporter noticed “… a remarkably consistent switch away from Labour. It would not be sufficient to upset the Foreign Secretary’s anticipated election . . . but (it) would reduce his majority considerably.”

As it turned out, that was an understatement. Leyton confirmed a trend which has been developing for some time now —the trend towards an electoral mood more volatile than that which, for years after the war, stolidly returned “no change” verdicts in by-election after by-election. Orpington Man, now old and well established, has been followed by the perhaps more menacing figure of Leyton Man.

Along with the psephologists, the Labour Party are also looking for what went wrong. In a letter to The Observer, Lord Sorensen made it clear that he thought the defeat was caused by what he called “unworthy abstentions.” Having been kicked upstairs so that Mr. Gordon Walker could lose his seat, Lord Sorensen obviously feels the defeat especially strongly. But during the election, the Labour Party were content to accept what they presumed would be a favourable result: “I will consider the result a verdict on the Government and on the Opposition’s performance to date.” (Mr. Gordon Walker, at Leyton, 14th. January.) Well, the verdict is plain; even the verdict of those who voted by staying away from the polling booths. The Labour government has not been able to inspire its supporters to turn out to vote for it, which says very little for their talk, during the general election, of action and progress and urgency.

Lord Sorensen did not confine his strictures to abstainers: “. . . the deliberate denigration of Gordon Walker . . . demonstrates how far we have to go to ensure that electors vote on principles and policies rather than being swayed by extraneous secondary matters.”

Two things are apparent from this statement. The first is that Lord Sorensen is complaining about votes which lost his party a seat; if the election had gone the other way, he would have been full of praise for the voters’ sanity and principles. The second point, which follows from the first, is that what Lord Sorensen means by “voting on principles” is, in fact, voting blindly for the Labour Party, whatever their record, whatever hardships they impose upon the working class and however many promises they break.

It will be interesting to ask, now, what the Labour Party does to realise Sorensen’s dream of people voting on principles and policies. The first step in this should be, of course, for the Labour Party themselves to have some principles for the electors to vote on. But a look at the programmes which they have offered shows that principles are the last things the Labour Party has, or indeed wants.

What has happened, for example, to the “principle” of the nationalisation of land? To the “principle” of abolition of the House of Lords? (Lord Sorensen himself should be able to answer that one.) What has happened to the “principles” put forward by the Labour Party at the more recent elections —nationalisation of “sections of the chemical and machine tools industries” (1955) and the renationalisation of road haulage (1959)?

There was no mention of either of these in Labour’s 1964 programme, which means that any elector who was anxious to vote for them, innocently thinking them to be part of Labour’s principles, was disappointed.

Even more to the point, what has happened to the Labour Party’s opposition to the Commonwealth Immigration Act? When the Conservative government introduced the measure, Labour fought bitterly against it, and perhaps convinced some voters that they did so on grounds of principle. But since then their “principles” have, apparently, changed; the tears of defeat were hardly dry on Gordon Walker’s face when Labour’s Home Secretary Sir Frank Soskice was telling the House of Commons that, far from abolishing the restrictions on immigrants, the government intends to ” … make stricter use of the existing powers of control . . .” This must have been very confusing to anyone at Leyton who wanted to vote, as Lord Sorensen advises, on the principle of the thing.

This confusion is cleared up only by realising that the Labour Party has no principle other than their basic support of capitalism. Within that, they will support any policy, temporary or otherwise, which seems expedient. To get into power, they will promise all sorts of things—Gaitskell’s tax cuts in 1959, George Brown’s three per cent mortgage last October—which they think will attract votes. They do not particularly care who joins their ranks, recruiting freely anyone who will pay their dues. (Some prominent men they have actually invited to join.) Labour’s preoccupation with collecting votes means that they do not bother about the intention and knowledge behind the votes. They anxiously solicit the support of people who are politically ignorant. The very last thing they intend to do is to encourage the electors to vote on principles, because that would be the death of them and of the parties like them.

This is not to say that the Labour Party does not offer a substitute for principles. Their leaders are constantly making what seem to be brave statements of conviction and intent, which probably impress people who do not care to look behind the empty phrase. Wilson, for example, told the T.U.C. last September that this is “… a time for choice, for action, for decision, for exciting change …” Gordon Walker told the voters at Leyton that he stood for “… the abolition of all weapons, both nuclear and conventional, except those needed for internal security and international peacekeeping,” which is the same as saying, that he stands for the abolition of all weapons except those that he wants to keep. It is this sort of mishmash of nonsense that the Labour Party offer as their principles, and which Lord Sorensen wants us to vote on.

The inevitable result of this is that the vote which elects a Labour MP is unstable. It is not a vote for any political principle, let alone a vote for Socialism, with all that implies. Sometimes it is a vote for a set of capitalist reforms like the National Health Service or an alteration in the Pensions Scheme. More often, it is a vote for a vague and ill-informed idea of what the Labour Party stands for—a vague idea that they stand for the interests of people who live on council estates, for closer relations with Russia and so on.

Perhaps it was this which caused Leyton to pass its scathing verdict on the Labour government before it had even had time to bring in the reforms which it had promised—an apt comment on the instability of a vote which is based on a lack of political consciousness. Perhaps it also brought about the defeat of Gordon Walker at Smethwick; the voters there apparently wanted immigration control yet they rejected a man who, as he himself pointed out, stood for just that.

But an unstable vote which switches from Labour to Tory in one election will as quickly change back to Labour again. It is reasonable to assume that anything which the Labour Party may have lost on the swings of electoral instability they have gained on the roundabouts. There are probably plenty of voters who support the Labour Party because they are convinced that they stand for higher wages, or that they would pursue a different policy from the Tories in disputes like those in Malaysia and Arabia. Now if the Labour Party was as interested in political principles as Lord Sorensen would have us believe, they would discourage such votes by pointing out, firmly and clearly, that on these issues their policy is as imperialist as that of the Tories. But this, of course, is something they never do.

No capitalist party can try to destroy the mutually supporting circle of ignorance and futility which keeps one or other of them in power. Any examination of the policies of these parties, in terms of principles and effectiveness, would compel the admission that practically every one of them was useless and that many of them were inspired by vote-catching expediency. It would compel the admission that, after all the speeches and the programmes and the promises, the problems which afflicted the working class when the Labour Party was born are still, in one way or another, troubling them today.

The Labour Party would have to admit something else besides. After nearly sixty years of their propaganda, after the position of great power which they have held and still hold, there are still enough workers who harbour racial prejudices to hound a Labour Minister from one Parliamentary seat to another. Racial theories cannot be separated from the rest of the false political ideas which the working class hold, and which the Labour Party have done nothing to dispel. If it is true that racism is among the more primitive and vicious of working class delusions, that is a bitter comment upon the confusion and ignorance which the Labour Party has helped to spread.

They can have no complaint if this confusion, which may help them at one time, harms them at another. From some aspects, elections are depressing affairs, because it is never very inspiring to witness the working class opting for another dose of capitalist suppression. But even more depressing the 1964 election saw the emergence of race as an issue, strongly in some constituencies, and underlying the campaign as a whole.

Douglas-Home has now indicated that the Conservatives intend to bring immigration more and more into the forefront of political controversy. It is not comforting to reflect upon the history of similar situations, and upon the possible outcome of this one. The alarming thing about racial theories is that, unlike most other working class delusions, they are so often asserted in the most extreme and relentless violence. Leyton at the moment is a psephologist’s test tube, but who dare say that one day it will not be remembered as the start of the experiment which blew up the laboratory?

Ivan

The Passing Show: Who are the hungry? (1965)

The Passing Show Column from the March 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who are the hungry?

When I was a youngster, my parents had the sort of struggle to clothe and feed their children that was common enough in those days. With the Old Man often out of work, Ma had to turn her hand to any job available—charring mainly—for a few shillings. Like many other working class children, we were badly clothed and housed, and while perhaps we did not actually starve, we were often hungry.

At that time, it would have been ludicrous to suggest that we give to funds aimed at preventing starvation or alleviating poverty in other parts of the world. Ma would have laughed that one bitterly out of court. We were already recipients of charity in one form or another—coal, food parcels and other children’s leftoffs—and it was cold comfort to be told that there were always those worse off than ourselves.

Times have now changed, we are assured. Ma is dead and Pa draws National Assistance to keep him ticking over in his declining days. The overt charity has more or less dried up, although he does get occasional gifts and treats from the old age pensioners’ club. He doesn’t go hungry, although from what I can see of it, a lot of what he eats is starchy filler with not much food value. Ironically, two or three years ago he was frequently an interested reader of The Good Food Guide, a yearly catalogue of recommended eating houses in the British Isles.

Ironic from another angle too. This book is published by The Good Food Club, which recently allowed OXFAM access to its address lists for circularising an invitation to an “austerity supper.” The meal would consist of a bowl of herbs and rice, with cold water. The charge, said the letter, would be two guineas, the balance after meeting costs to go to OXFAM funds. Pa got one of the circulars.

Now no one is suggesting that there was any calculated insult intended. Of course OXFAM could not know that they were writing to an old age pensioner, and anyway, he did not take it amiss—merely laughed. It is the whole basic concept of such bodies as OXFAM that must be challenged. In a world where there are over forty million refugees and around half the population underfed, an organisation like this can barely begin to scratch the surface of the problem, granting their sincerity every inch of the way.

I have before me one or two of OXFAM’s appeal adverts. One tells us that:

“Millions of the world’s families have no great hope for 1965. To them it will be just another year in the endless battle against hunger, disease and the terrible, grinding poverty.”

And another says that OXFAM will be:

“Helping them get enough to eat, buying them medicines, giving them a roof over their heads. But most important, helping them free themselves from a life sentence of poverty—with education, training, new tools.”

So from this you could be forgiven for thinking that these problems are associated perhaps with the “backward” areas. Politicians do anyway lend credence to it by talking about “aid to underdeveloped countries” (e.g. Mr. Wilson at the beginning of January). But it is not so. The foremost capitalist country in the world—USA—has such an appalling poverty problem that writers are often drawing attention to it.

“According to government figures … 56 per cent of low-income farm families were deficient in one or more basic nutrients in the diet. The rural poor were ever worse off. Seventy per cent suffered from this deficiency. Thus there is hunger in the midst of abundance.” (Michael Harrington, The Other America.)

Yet OXFAM would think it ridiculous to spend their funds in the USA. They concentrate exclusively on the extreme poverty and hunger which are rooted in primitive agriculture and inadequate physical means of production, poor land etc. These may of course aggravate a local condition under capitalism, but there is no doubt that the world at large is capable of feeding everyone—if properly organised.

Aye, there’s the rub. Wheat stored away in river backwaters, lettuces and potatoes ploughed back into the soil, and land deliberately taken out of cultivation, all to try and keep up the prices to a profitable level. The fact that people starve in the meantime is a mere incidental. The market is the all powerful god under capitalism. And this not only in Western countries. Only last month we drew attention to the deliberate burning of cocoa in Ghana for precisely the same reason as above. If OXFAM are thinking of spending some of their money in this backward area, we wonder what they think about such news as that.

The tragedy of OXFAM, Freedom from Hunger, War on Want, and other such organisations is not just their failure to make any worthwhile effect on the problem. It is their refusal even to glimpse its causes or to question a world which can destroy food stocks wholesale in one place and let millions starve in another.

Conservative Security

I noticed a giant poster, presumably a leftover from the general election, on a hoarding at the top of our road a week or two ago. “For a safer world, vote Conservative” it screamed at me from the usual bilious red white and blue colour scheme. It was the use of the comparative “safer” I found intriguing. Did it mean safer than right now. Or perhaps safer when the Conservatives were last in power, or just safer in a general sense?

Whichever way you look at it, the underlying theme is that political parties in general and the Conservative Party in particular, can appreciably affect the safety of the world by their policies. The Tories would not of course suggest that their opponents were deliberately pushing the world to the verge of another war. Rather would they be inclined to say that it was their ineptitude which was doing the damage, and that only the return of the Conservatives can restore matters.

Well let’s have a brief look at it. In the past fifty years there have been two world wars, both supported by the Tories. They were in power for quite a large part of that period. Not a particularly peaceful one. In the years of the postwar Labour government, it was remarkable how Tory support could be guaranteed for actions involving armed force or the threat of it, such as Greece, Berlin and Korea.

What of the years which followed? When they returned to power in 1951, the Conservatives had already made the usual vague promises about “our contribution to peace,” but whatever this may have meant to them in theory, what happened in practice was the almost chronic bloodshed in Cyprus, and the crises in Suez, Lebanon and Berlin (again). A safer world?

I would not have called it that, but there’s an amazing flexibility of meaning to such words when spoken by capitalist statesmen. Anyway, they were not discouraged and were busy telling us again later that “Peace is one more reason why Conservative government is good government.” (Guardian advert 17.8.59.). In the five years which followed that little piece of double talk, we have had more bloodletting in Cyprus and the agonising Cuba affair, not to mention smaller incidents in various parts of the world.

The truth is that the Conservative Party is no more a party of peace than of war. Like its Labour counterpart it is committed to running British capitalism and protecting its interests at home and abroad. At times this will mean sending men out to fight and die. That is why, even allowing for differences of opinion and errors of judgment, the views of government and opposition are so close, especially in the field of foreign policy. That is why also, there will always be those on either side who will jeer that the others are stealing their thunder, or protest that their party is becoming contaminated with the other side’s ideas. This was the very gist of one speaker’s complaint at the Young Conservatives’ Conference on February 7th.

But the net result is still the same. It is still a very unsafe world in which to live because the conflicting interests of capitalism make it so. Far from influencing the course of events to any great extent, the Conservative and other capitalist parties must frame their policies to meet the events and then hope for the best.

Propaganda Broadside

Have you noticed a crop of newspaper adverts about South Africa recently? Those I have seen glowingly describe the place as “a developing community of nations” or “rich in resources and rewards” or “the British Motor Industry’s biggest single export market.” The South African government is obviously anxious to build up a favourable picture particularly, it seems, in Britain, and if in the process the truth gets a bit discoloured that’s not likely to worry them overmuch.

Take for example their claim of January 26th:

“The structure of non-white wages has been, and is constantly being, raised to realistic levels of economic and social requirements . . . thousands of African workers . . . seek an opportunity to work and earn better wages on South African farms and in the mines and factories.”

Somewhat vague, but definitely calculated to create a good impression would you think? Now compare it with a United Nations report only two weeks earlier:

“Africans working for foreign companies in S.W. Africa live as though in slavery. . . . The policy of Apartheid . . . offers . . . every opportunity for the exploitation of the indigenous inhabitants. . . . The very low level of African wages, the lack of development of the native reserves, and the evils of the migratory labour system, result in misery and untold sufferings.”

Maybe it’s as well that Socialists have a sort of built-in scepticism which makes them examine everything they are told with a supercritical eye. But as you can see, we don’t always have to make conscious efforts at disproving the falsehoods spread around by one ruling class or the other. South African racial policies have provoked hostility among the new “coloured” states, and some of the older capitalist states are coming out against them too. So it’s not surprising that reports like this one appear from time to time, and South Africa comes under fire from the other paragons of virtue at the U.N.

What we should bear in mind is that there has been evidence of harsh and oppressive conditions there for many years, but it is only recently that outside interests have demanded any fuss be made about it. Quite clearly brotherly love is only a minor consideration in this new-found desire for racial equality. “Exploitation for all workers, regardless of race” is the real battle cry behind the pious slop uttered by the winds-of-change-merchants.

Eddie Critchfield