Proper Gander: Four Sale (2022)

The Proper Gander Column from the May 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Any celebrations planned by Channel 4 to mark its upcoming fortieth birthday are likely to be clouded by its future as a state-owned broadcaster being in doubt. The channel which has brought us Big Brother, Bake Off, Brookside and Brass Eye is the most prominent of the 12 run by The Channel 4 Television Corporation, with others including Film4, E4 and streaming service All 4. Its content, which aims to be edgier and hipper than that of the BBC, ITV and Channel 5, isn’t made in-house, but by profit-seeking companies such as Endemol Shine UK and All3Media.

The Channel 4 Television Corporation is a statutory corporation, which means that its remit is decided by an Act of Parliament. On 4 April the government announced its intention to privatise the corporation, which would require a change in legislation, with its sale to the highest bidder expected in 2024. The government’s stated rationale is that a privatised Channel 4 would have more freedom to make money, with the implication that this will improve its programming. The previous Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Oliver Dowden explained this in true Tory style: ‘There are constraints that come with public ownership, and a new owner could bring access and benefits, including access to capital, to strategic partnerships and to the international markets. Private investment would mean more content, and more jobs’ (tinyurl.com/puun7a93).

This is a u-turn from the government’s stance in 2016, when the then-Secretary of State Karen Bradley agreed with a report from the House of Lords which said ‘We are concerned that, notwithstanding assurances given at the point of sale, a private owner may seek to dilute Channel 4 Corporation’s public service remit in future, in order to maximise profit’ (p.4, tinyurl.com/26k45c7t). The change in policy is apparently due to shifts in the media landscape since 2016, particularly the rise of video-on-demand services. On 4 April current Secretary of State Nadine Dorries posted on Twitter ‘Government ownership is holding Channel 4 back from competing against streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon’. This isn’t really an equal comparison, as streaming services don’t broadcast news, which is one of Channel 4’s most popular products, but they are all competing in the overall media marketplace. Channel 4, along with other traditional broadcasters, is steadily losing viewers to the trendy streaming services. Consequently, the adverts which interrupt its shows have fewer viewers, and so the cost of advertising drops, which reduces its income and therefore its reserves needed to buy programmes.

This is a threat to Channel 4 because nearly all its funding comes through selling advertising slots. Although this wasn’t known to Nadine Dorries, who during a meeting of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Select Committee in November 2021 wrongly assumed that Channel 4 was funded by ‘public money’, and when she was corrected responded with ‘And… so… though it’s… yeah and that’ (tinyurl.com/2p8a5m6e). Dorries’ credentials for overseeing the nation’s culture were previously demonstrated by her eating animal genitals during her appearance on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! which led to her breaking the MPs’ code of conduct and being suspended from the party whip.

Despite the market shifting towards streaming services, Channel 4 is in a confident position financially, reporting a record pre-tax surplus in 2020 (tinyurl.com/4hrzakwv). Media analysts Enders have estimated that the channel could be sold for between £600m and £1.5bn (tinyurl.com/yc76h7fa) to whichever hungry buyer wins the eventual bid.

Many people are against Channel 4’s potential privatisation, including its bosses. Chair Charles Gurassa said that its board has ‘serious concerns that the consequences will be very harmful, both to the UK’s creative economy and to the choice and breadth of distinctive British-made content available to UK audiences’ (tinyurl.com/yckd26yc). The National Union of Journalists and opposition parties don’t support the sell-off either, with Liberal Democrat culture spokesman Jamie Stone saying ‘This government seems hell-bent on trashing this uniquely British legacy and undermining jobs and investment in the creative sector’ (tinyurl.com/mem434kt).

With the criticism has come speculation on the political reasons behind the planned sale. Jeremy Corbyn tweeted on 5 April ‘The Tories want to privatise Channel 4 to shield themselves from accountability and drag the UK’s media landscape even further to the right. If Channel 4 falls into the hands of billionaire barons, the establishment moves closer to freedom from scrutiny at the expense of truth’. Channel 4 News has a reputation for being critical of the government, so the argument is that privatisation will stifle this. Previous Minister of State for Media and Data John Whittingdale said ‘This is not motivated in any way by a political agenda or ideology. It is about sustaining Channel 4 and making sure that it has a viable future’ (tinyurl.com/yc3xunss). But there is an ideology involved, that of believing that organising production is best left to the dynamics of the capitalist market. Those opposed to privatisation are concerned that increasing the extent to which market forces affect the channel will damage programmes which have less potential to be profitable, such as the news and niche drama. Where they’re mistaken is in assuming that the channel is sufficiently protected from market forces by remaining state-owned. Whether Channel 4 is ‘privately’ or ‘publicly’ owned, its output is still produced by companies motivated by profit, and shaped by commercial interests, such as the rise and fall of viewing figures representing changing consumer levels and therefore income. And even while the channel is ‘publicly’ owned, the public doesn’t own it in any practical way. Channel 4 already runs according to what’s in the interests of media companies, which privatisation would only reinforce.

Mike Foster

Cooking the Books: Something (a lot) for Nothing (2022)

The Cooking the Books column from the May 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, cannot be pleased. It seems that his political rivals have been using his wife – the daughter of one of India’s richest capitalists and a capitalist in her own right – to sabotage his political career. It is true that there is something incongruous about a rich politician presiding over the pain, in terms of higher gas, petrol and diesel prices, that the government has decided is worth workers paying as a result of their sanctions against Russia.

The media and the Labour Party made great play of the fact that Sunak’s wife was a ‘non-dom’, someone whose tax domicile is another country and so who can pay taxes there rather than here, in her case India where they are lower. But which state – India or the UK – she pays taxes to is irrelevant from the point of view of those who work for wages. What is relevant is how she gets her income in the first place.

According to the BBC, ‘She owns £700m in shares of the Indian IT giant Infosys, founded by her father, from which she received £11.6m in dividend income last year’ (bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61045825).

£11.6 million a year is £233,077 a week, without having to do anything, not even these days to clip coupons. Who said the idle rich no longer exist? But where does it come from?

The immediate source is the dividends on the £700 million’s worth of shares in the capitalist enterprise founded by her father. But where did the wealth of that company come from? According to the company’s website:

‘From a capital of US$250, we have grown to become a US$106.44 billion company’ (infosys.com/about/history.html) .

Maybe, but how did that happen? It will be a typical story.

Infosys was started in 1981 by a group of software engineers. In 1992 it became a public limited company. The following year it was ‘floated’, selling shares in it to outside capitalists and financial institutions. These will have invested their money with a view to obtaining a share of future profits while the company used the money to expand its activities.

For the first few years the original founders would have worked hard to build up the business, though $250 would not have taken them very far; they would have had to borrow more from somewhere, even if from their friends and relatives but more likely a bank. When they had acquired enough they could begin to take on employees. These too would work hard but, unlike the founders, would not have benefitted fully from their work; a part of the value they added would have gone to the company as profits, most of which would have been re-invested to expand the business.

As the business expanded the original capital made up a smaller and smaller part of the total capital which would have been built up out of the profits produced by the workers and by invested outside capital (built up too out of the profits of other workers).

So, the Chancellor’s wife’s wealth comes from the exploitation of workers. The dividends that enable her to live an idle life of luxury come from the same source. They are a pure property income, what the tax authorities in Britain used to call ‘unearned income’ – before they realised that ‘unearned’ could mean ‘not earned’ and so be interpreted as ‘ill-gotten’. It’s an income that she – and others like her – get just because they have titles of ownership of means of production and to a share of the profits their operation by wage-workers brings.

That’s the scandal, not that she played the system to pay less tax.

Obituary: Keith Powell (2022)

Obituary from the May 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

In late February, I received the sad news that our comrade Keith Powell had died at the age of 83. Keith joined the SPGB in the early 1980s and was tremendously active in Islington Branch during its period of remarkable growth throughout the 80s. For a considerable time, he served as a very efficient Branch Treasurer. He also became the Party’s Treasurer for a time.

In his advocacy of the case for socialism, he was highly rational and analytical. In his Branch and Party work, he was meticulous, painstaking and thorough. When it came to propaganda activities, Keith was always a keen participant. A regular group of us, including Keith, would often go out selling the Standard, leafleting door-to-door and flyposting all over Islington, in a period when Islington was not so highly developed and we could always find flyposting sites, such as areas with corrugated iron and boarded-up premises. On more than one occasion, we were stopped by the police who, in their concern for private property, forced us to take down our posters. Nevertheless, our posters (both printed and handwritten) were very much in evidence around the area. Later on, Keith moved to the Midlands and became less active but, according to Beryl, his partner of over 30 years, he remained a convinced socialist and would put the Party case in conversations with friends, family and complete strangers, whenever he saw an opportunity.

He originally trained as a chemist and then got involved in food analysis. He was enthusiastic about many technical subjects, particularly electronics, and later he worked for BT as an engineer. Keith was very much ‘old school’ when it came to repairing equipment rather than slavishly following the wasteful capitalist ethos which prefers us to throw things away and buy new to boost company profits. Knowing this, back in the 80s, I asked him to fix my prized electronic typewriter which had broken down. I looked on in admiration as he meticulously dismantled it, then used a soldering iron to carry out a skilful and careful repair and then reassembled the machine, thus giving it a whole new lease of life.

I have many fond memories of Keith and I very much enjoyed his company, although I had unfortunately lost touch with him some years ago. Beryl tells me he had battled against prostate cancer for the last 10 years but up until the Covid period, they had enjoyed regular walking holidays together. As for me, I will remember him as a highly esteemed, hard-working comrade.

Chris Dufton

Marxist Anti-Bolshevik (2022)

Book Review from the May 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

World Bolshevism. By Iulii Martov. Translated by Paul Kellogg and Mariya Melentyeva. AU Press, Edmonton, Canada, 2022.

When in 1938 International Review published, under the title The State and the Socialist Revolution, a number of essays written by Martov in the years 1918-1921 (he died in 1923) the translator omitted the first section. The whole collection had been published in Russian, in Berlin in 1923, under the title “Mirovoi bol’shevizm” (World Bolshevism). This explains why Martov has come to be called Julius, the German equivalent of Iulii (or Yuliy), his first name in Russian.

The whole collection has now been published in a new translation with an introduction by Kellog. In the missing chapters Martov advanced the view that Bolshevism was popular amongst large sections of the working class outside Russia because they had been brutalised by serving as soldiers during the war, hence their belief in violent direct action and contempt for traditional working class institutions and activities (reformist parliamentary action and trade unionism). The newly-translated chapters don’t add much, in terms of Marxist analysis, to the points made in the parts that have been available in English since 1938. In any event, by 1921 the Bolsheviks had abandoned advocating an immediate armed insurrection in favour of electing left-wing governments, which brought them a different following.

As a further dissemination of Martov’s Marxist criticism of Lenin and Bolshevik ideology the new translation can only be welcome.

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: Conference Report (2022)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 1972 Annual Conference of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was held at Conway Hall, London, over Easter and was attended by delegates and visitors from many parts of Britain. Among the resolutions passed were ones criticising the format of the Socialist Standard for being too formal, calling for consideration of publishing Russia 1917-67 in German and committing the Party to contesting at least one seat in every General Election. (…)

At one point the proceedings were undemocratically interrupted by a group calling themselves “the London Situationists” who noisily stopped a discussion on the need to develop Marxist theory in order to hand out An Open Letter to the SPGB. This turned out to be a peculiar amalgam of Freudian pseudo-psychology (both Marcuse and Reich, despite their opposing views), some organisational ideas and an ill-informed criticism of our policy of conscious political action, via the ballot box and Parliament, to establish Socialism. The organisational criticism boiled down to saying that the time was not yet ripe for a formal, centralised socialist group, while the political criticism failed to take into account that the Socialist Party has never said that the establishment of Socialism involves just a few million X’s for Socialism followed by a parliamentary resolution. We have always said that Socialism can only be established by a conscious, participating working class organised not only politically to capture and destroy the State machine but also outside parliament ready to take over and run industry and society generally.

The best—and most readable (most of it is written in mock political French)—part of the document which called for “the automated economy of abundance’’ was clearly influenced by our thinking anyway. Unfortunately, though they will the end they don’t will the means. The spectre of the Russian Revolution still haunts them: their alternative of our policy is “workers’ councils”, i.e. soviets!

(Socialist Standard, May 1972)

Editorial: Discontented workers choose the devil they know (2022)

Editorial from the May 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 2022 French presidential election took place against the backdrop of deep working-class dissatisfaction with the political status quo. As in 2017, the first round of results gave French workers the choice between Emmanuel Macron and the far-right nationalist, Marine Le Pen in the second round. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the left-wing reformer, came in a close third at 22 percent of the votes cast (Le Pen came in second at 23 percent and Macron on top at 28 percent). What is striking is how the established capitalist parties, Les Républicains and so-called Parti Socialiste, were reduced to insignificance electorally, gaining between them about 6.5 percent of the vote less than the total cast for Eric Zemmour, the other far-right candidate at 7.1 percent. There were six other candidates.

Macron is no longer the new kid on the block. He has been the President for the last five years and has revealed himself as the faithful servant of French capitalism. In this time, he has introduced anti-working class austerity policies which provoked strikes and protests from the workers and also the Gilets jaunes protests which, although small-business led, had drawn in discontented workers. No wonder he is known as the ‘president of the rich’.

Le Pen continues in her attempt to make her party less toxic. She has changed its name to the Rassemblement National (National Rally) and has dropped her opposition to the EU and the Euro. She wants to reform it and reduce France’s contribution to the EU budget. French law would take precedence over EU law. For all her efforts to soften her party’s image, there are still her noxious xenophobic and racist policies – French nationals given priority over immigrants in jobs, housing and social services and tougher immigration policies and the banning of Muslim headscarves in public. She was helped by the fact that her rival on the far right, Zemmour, who is more obnoxious than she, is had helped her to appear more ‘moderate’. She poses as the workers’ friend by focussing on the cost-of-living crisis, with pledges like abolishing income tax for the under-thirties. However, she has had to play down her former close links with Putin by condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and faced taunts that her party had accepted loans from Russian banks.

It is not surprising that there is little enthusiasm for either of these candidates. Both Macron and Le Pen had gone after the votes that went to Mélenchon. Macron had sold himself to younger voters as a keen supporter of a pro-environment agenda.

After the second round of voting on 24 April, Emmanuel Macron was declared the final winner. Many French workers stayed with the devil they knew. Although profoundly dissatisfied with his political leadership, they reckoned that the alternative was far too unpalatable and decided to hold their noses and vote for him. There will be a sigh of relief among the world’s capitalists, especially those from the EU area, that the French workers had opted for a safe pair of hands. However for the French workers, there is little change, the same old drudgery and the struggle to make ends meet, which is the fate of workers all over the world.