Thursday, May 14, 2020

Sting in the Tail: Pious words, harsh reality (1996)

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

Pious words, harsh reality

The National Poverty Hearing, organised by the ecumenical Church Action On Poverty, was attended by MP’s, business representatives, charities, voluntary organisations and church leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal Basil Hume, Archbishop of Westminster.

They all agreed that "something must be done”. Of course, nothing will be done by such pious gatherings. The words of the Archbishop of Canterbury amply illustrates this:
  “I believe in the enterprise society and wealth creation. Without wealth creation you cannot create jobs and if you haven 't got jobs you've got poverty. I believe in a stakeholder society. We must all participate in it" (Herald, 20 March).
The “enterprise” and “stakeholder” society are just weasel words for the capitalist system of society. A system that condemns millions to live in poverty while the Archbishop lives in a palace and is driven to and from such gatherings in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce.

Is it any wonder that he “believes” in this system?


That American Dream fades

Pat Buchanan, defeated far-right runner in the race to be Republican candidate in the US presidential election, attracted support from angry American workers by attacking “big capitalism”.

He did this by pointing to such business giants as IBM, AT & T, Boeing, etc., who are drastically “downsizing” their workforces while awarding huge sums to executives for ruthlessly wielding the axe.

Of course, the sackings weren’t down to “corporate greed” as Buchanan made out. They are simply part of the cost cutting necessary' to increase profits in order to keep investors happy and finance the re-investment required to meet ever-increasing competition.

Most American workers have been brought up believing that capitalism would provide them with security and steadily rising incomes. Now, ever-growing numbers of them have seen their jobs vanish or their real incomes fall, and even harder times arc predicted.

The conditions for demagogues like Buchanan have never been more promising.


Engels and Gould

It has become popular in academic circles to dismiss the materialist view of history of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. It is refreshing therefore to read Ever Since Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould.

In discussing Engels’s The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, Gould praises Engels for “his trenchant political analysis of why Western Science was so hung up on the a priori assertion of cerebral primacy.”

Engels showed how the class divisions in society—firstly in Ancient Greece based on slavery and latterly capitalism based on wage slavery—put the primacy of human progress on the idea rather than the action. To the ruling class would go the praise, to the wealth producers the scorn.

Gould, Professor of Geology' and Zoology at Harvard University, concludes his essay with these words:
  "If we took Engels's message to heart and recognised our belief in the inherent superiority of pure research for what it is—namely social prejudice—then we might forge amongst scientists the union between theory and practice that a world teetering dangerously near the brink so desperately needs."

Good news for some

When the headlines proclaim that some company has sacked thousands of workers it appears that the news is received by universal gloom. Leader writers pontificate about “economic disaster”, opposition politicians claim “something must be done” and priests and ministers of all persuasions wring their hands in despair and preach about the “iniquities of an uncaring society”.

The news is not received in some circles in the same gloomy fashion. Some positively beam with pleasure at the prospect of more workers thrown on the scrap heap. For instance in the Business Section of the Observer (17 March) we read:
  "Downsizing has entered the corporate culture as well as the dictionary and a company’s financial virility is now measured by the Stock Market in terms of its most recent redundancy announcement.
    When Lloyd's Bank merged with TSB last October, analysts predicted up to 20,000 job losses. Its shares leapt almost 5 per cent. That reaction is typical. ”

Communist "liberators"

The buzz these days is that British capitalism must take as its model the dynamic, free-market Asian economies such as Hong Kong.

But how does all this dynamism affect the workers there? According to Lee Cheuk-yan, head of the colony’s Confederation of Trade Unionists:
"Hong Kong has become a prosperous country, but the benefits are not yet being shared with ordinary workers ” (Guardian, 8 March).
Workers have little or no protection against employers who can veto any government proposals which they think would lessen their stranglehold on the labour market.

Surely all this will change when “communist” China takes over in 1997? Lee Cheuk-yan’s view on this is very forthright:
   "Things will be much worse then. The Chinese Communist Party can't wait to get into bed with the big capitalists. "

1 comment:

Imposs1904 said...

That's May 1996 put to bed.