Material World: No Borders! (2023)

The Material World column from the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists want a world without countries or borders or passports, where people are part of the great human family and can come and go as they wish, with no concept of migration or asylum. This is part of our aim of a global society with no poverty or hunger or war, where people co-operate for the common good and the resources of the planet belong to everyone, are used to meet human need and are subject to democratic control.

Borders, frontiers and walls are usually seen as an essential part of capitalism. The ruling capitalist class determine the laws and policies within the area they control, at least to the extent that capitalism allows them to do so. Among other things, this means laying down regulations about immigration, who can enter the country, where they can come from, which requirements they must meet, how long they can stay, which kind of jobs they can hold. Brexit was in part motivated by the desire to limit immigration and ‘control our borders’, rather than the EU having the final say in such matters.

However, there are some supporters of capitalism who advocate ‘open borders’, at least to the extent of allowing migration without any restrictions. For instance: ‘if workers could move freely around the world, the market would generally match people and jobs efficiently, but when governments intervene selectively, obstructing some workers from moving while actively encouraging others to do so, the market becomes distorted’ (Philippe Legrain: Immigrants).

The point is that capitalism often needs to ‘import’ workers from elsewhere, perhaps because of a shortage of those with the relevant skills or of those willing to do back-breaking labour; in Germany, for instance, a law was passed recently to make it easier for workers from outside the EU to move there. Borders and immigration controls are not compatible with the supposed ‘free market’, where supply and demand (of workers just as much as cars and chairs) will allegedly match each other by a kind of magic. After all, if you believe there should be no restrictions or taxes on movement of consumer goods or the export of capital, then logically neither should there be limits on workers moving around the globe.

Other arguments along similar lines can be found on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation (fff.org), a ‘libertarian’ US think tank that stands for the more-or-less unfettered freedom of capitalists to exploit workers. A talk in 2014 by its president Jacob Hornberger included the absurd claim that ‘immigration controls are nothing more than socialist central planning’. His solution was ‘a free market in immigration’, with open borders, across which people could move freely. In such a system, ‘people would be free to come to the United States and enter into mutually beneficial labor relationships with American employers who would be willing to hire them.’ Borders would still exist, separating the world into different jurisdictions, but people would be free to cross them as they wish.

This is of course based on a ludicrous idea of how capitalism works. The relations between capitalists and workers are not ‘mutually beneficial’ but based on exploitation and a real gap in status between the two parties to the relationship. Wealth and power on one side, poverty and insecurity on the other. Supposedly open borders will not change this in the slightest.

Tim Marshall’s book Divided also deals with the issue of open borders. He refers to an article by the American economist Nathan Smith, which argues that ending migration controls would (in Smith’s words) ‘increase liberty, reduce global poverty, and accelerate economic growth.’ Labour would be allocated more efficiently, resulting in ‘global increases in productivity, leading the world economy to nearly double in size.’ This would ‘disproportionately benefit the world’s poorest people.’

Marshall objects to this proposal on two grounds. The first is that the initial migrants from impoverished countries would be those who could afford to do so, meaning fewer doctors, teachers and so on in the countries concerned. The second relates to ‘human nature’ or ‘group identity’: people tend not to like it when large groups of ‘outsiders’ descend on them. But this relates to what often happens now, in a society based on competition and shortages and ‘us versus them’, and is not a general feature of how people live. His book is full of examples of the appalling consequences of walls, such as the 2,500-mile fence that the Indian government has built along most of its border with Bangladesh. Over a third of the world’s countries have physical barriers along their borders.

These ideas (Legrain, Hornberger, Smith, and Marshall’s doubts too) are rooted in capitalism, a system which is based on dividing people and setting them against each other. Further, in a society where global heating and environmental damage are major problems, the idea of doubling the size of the world’s economy is not attractive. One of the priorities of socialism will be to provide decent food, housing, healthcare and education for all the world’s population. We cannot say now just what that would involve in terms of committing people and resources, but it will take place in a world where there really are no borders, no classes, no rulers and no governments. Decisions will be made democratically, at whatever level (local, regional, etc) is deemed appropriate. Having no borders does not mean there are no sub-divisions for administrative purposes, just that people will not be seen as belonging to some arbitrary part of the Earth and as somehow different from those who ‘belong’ elsewhere.

Paul Bennett

Cooking the Books: The papers learn how banks work (2023)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over the weekend of 17/18 June two national newspapers ran the same story. ‘Banks rake in £4.8bn extra profits in “appalling rip-off”’, said the i paper. ‘Britain’s biggest lenders rake in £44BILLION as interest rates rise while hard-hit families suffer from rising mortgage costs’ said the Mail on Sunday. They were criticising the banks for being quick – when the Bank Rate goes up – to put up the rate of interest they charge those with a mortgage but much slower to put up the rate they pay to those who have savings with them.

Both pointed out that this leads to an increased ‘net interest income’ for banks which the i paper said was ‘the profit made by banks from charging higher borrowing costs on mortgages and loans, compared to what they pay out in savings accounts.’ The Mail on Sunday defined it as ‘the difference between what the companies charge borrowers for loans and mortgages and what is paid to savers in interest’. Theirs was the more accurate description as it’s the banks’ income. Only a part of this will be their profits as out of it the banks have to pay their costs such as buildings, computer systems and wages. Banks also have other sources of income which are not banking, for example fees from financial advice and management.

‘Net interest income’ is the key to understanding how banks work as it shows that they are financial intermediaries making money by borrowing at one rate of interest and lending at a higher rate. Others have suggested a different model, arguing that banks simply create the money they lend by a few keyboard strokes. In that case banks would not be financial intermediaries but money creators. Their income would be ‘gross interest income’ and their profits greater by the amount they currently pay savers (and others who lend them money). Populist journalists could be even shriller in denouncing them as greedy.

But the papers confined themselves to examining the ‘net interest income’ that shows that banks are financial intermediaries rather than money creators. The money they lend — the credit they extend — comes from money they themselves borrow. They compete against each other to attract savings in order to get money to lend. Which they wouldn’t need to if they could simply create it.

Banks don’t borrow just from savers. They also borrow from the money market, where the lenders are other financial institutions and banks, and, unlike building societies (which are essentially specialised banks), they don’t just lend money to buy houses.

The high street banks are not the only financial intermediaries. There are other financial institutions which borrow money to re-lend; in fact, there is a whole ‘shadow banking’ sector involved in this, less regulated and more risky and dodgy. At the other end are credit unions which nobody dares claim create the money they lend.

There is nothing special about banking. It is just one field of profit-seeking capitalist business enterprise. As their trade association, UK Finance, told the Mail on Sunday:

‘Banks are commercial organisations and therefore seek to offer the best possible value to customers while also making a profit. This allows them to invest in their business and deliver shareholders a return on their investment.’

Bankers don’t control the economy. Banks don’t make bigger profits than other capitalist enterprises and don’t need to be singled out as ‘finance capital’ as something worse than industrial capital. There is one difference, though. While the physical assets of industrial capital will be taken over in socialism and used to produce directly to satisfy people’s needs rather than for profit, banks will have no place.

Halo Halo! (2023)

The Halo Halo! column from the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

In Belgium only ten percent of its population now go to church regularly. Dwindling congregations means more socially useful churches. They’re being turned into hotels, breweries, libraries, cultural centres, and night clubs (Yahoo News, 22 June).

Think of the uses they can be put to in socialism.

Capitalism damages your health. So do religious beliefs.

The fanatical kind of American Christian believes that Darwin and evolution science is bunkum. They are convinced and conditioned that the Armageddon is imminent and when the Rapture occurs they will be transported up into heaven leaving the rest of us heathens behind.

Who knows if this involves travelling upwards in a space ship? In 1997 thirty nine members of the Heaven’s Gate cult committed mass suicide in such a belief.

James Ussher (1581-1656), Armagh Archbishop, working from Genesis decided that the universe was created on Sunday 23 October 4004 BCE. Though apparently he didn’t know what time this occurred.

What’s Intelligent Design? Simply put it’s a denial of natural selection because you know there just has to be a supreme being behind it all. There just has! He/she/they created the dinosaurs and fossils as well, you know. Why? Don’t question the divine plan!

In 1925 a teacher in Tennessee. John Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution instead of creationism – the Scopes Monkey Trial. The Discovery Institute, an American think tank, is now offering American home-schooling tutors ‘science’ material ‘from the perspective that nature reflects intelligent design.’

A writer in American Thinker, June 16, ‘argues’ that the birth, development and growth of children, of plants, and of the brain, is incontrovertible evidence of ‘intelligent design’. Maybe he’s descended from one of the prosecutors in the Monkey Trial.

The Reno Gazette Journal, June 1, reports a research centre’s findings that over a third of American parents believe, ‘it’s extremely or very important that their children have similar religious beliefs to their own’. The ‘balance’ in the piece comes from Richard Dawkins’ warning ‘don’t force your beliefs on your children.’ The RGJ asked its panel if parents should ‘pass along’ their religion to their children. Their panel consisted of: a rabbi, a Bahá’í, a pastor, a Muslim, a bishop, a Buddhist, and a Mormon. Bet you can’t guess what they all thought?

A scene in the 1979 Monty Python film, Life of Brian, satirises the absurdity of someone being stoned simply for uttering the name, Jehovah. To paraphrase Kenneth Williams as Julius Caesar in Carry On Cleo, ‘Infamy, infamy!’ Blasphemy, blasphemy. However, this is no laughing matter. In certain dominions the accusation alone can result in death.

‘Succumbing to the demands of a radical Islamist party, the Pakistan government has agreed to try blasphemy suspects under terrorism charges in addition to the other sections of the country’s penal code (Rediff.com, 18 June).

Twelve months ago a vicar was discovered, in a public place, having ‘relationships’ with a Henry hoover. Sexual proclivities are entirely a personal matter. Disseminating fairy stories is far more harmful.

DC

NHS – 75 years of socialism? (2023)

From the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

July 5 2023 was the 75th birthday of the National Health Service. The media celebrated, events were held, paeans of praise for what generally is considered to be the golden public utility. Such was the glister.

All this was tarnished somewhat as medical staff are having to resort to striking in an attempt not just to increase pay, but rather to restore some of the value after years of salary stagnation. As prices have continued rising this has been a period of reducing real wages.

The main story for the media has been and remains increasing waiting lists, the difficulty of securing GP appointments and overwhelmed A & E units. All the while governments of all flavours have pursued an attritional process of privatisation.

However, the NHS is commonly cited, by members and supporters of the Labour Party, as an example of socialist legislation undertaken during the 1945 to 1951 Attlee administration. Even those who now openly admit that Labour is not socialist will use the NHS to convince, perhaps mainly themselves, that it once was.

Certainly there was socialist-sounding rhetoric spouted at the time. Aneurin Bevan, who is usually identified as the politician responsible for the NHS, said, ‘No society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of a lack of means.’

Previously William Beveridge, whose report instigated what became known as the Welfare State, declared, ‘A revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolution, not for patching.’ He would go on to be ennobled and leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords.

The context for such sentiments were the previous years of protracted immiseration leading into the Second World War and a recognition that measures were required to prevent social breakdown, a situation inimical to capitalist prosperity.

Bevan made a political statement that, by removing one word, can be assented to by socialists. ‘How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political power to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.’ Subtract the word ‘Conservative’ and the piece poses a question relevant then and now.

Bevan’s myopic political view could see only the Tories as being the problem, on occasion referring to them as vermin. What he apparently could not see was the real problem, why a ‘sick person’, or any person, has ‘a lack of means’.

Despite Beveridge’s imperative his report led not to revolution, but to patching. Wherever the worst traumas of capitalism were diagnosed a welfare state patch could be applied. A hundred years previous to the NHS a Royal Commission into public health identified the need for the state to act.

Appropriately, acting on the Commission’s findings, the Liberal Party played a leading role through the latter nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries. The Welfare State, and the NHS in particular, were further social and political developments of this imperative to develop a functioning capitalist society.

In his report of 1942 Beveridge costed a health service at £130 million annually. By 1948 the actual cost was £400 million, which, in the present, would be £11.2 billion. This represented a significant investment by the state on behalf of capitalism.

Thirty years on, this annual amount had risen to £5,200 million (£38.4 billion present day equivalent), on its way to £160.4 billion in 2023. The figures seem to indicate that the NHS becomes increasingly expensive.

In the 1950s waste and bureaucracy were being regularly identified as contributing unnecessarily to the cost of the NHS, as it continues to be today. While this may well be correct the significance is probably not so great.

The number of nurses employed in 1948 was 125,000 along with 5,000 consultants for 480,000 beds. At present there are approximately 1.4 million full-time employees in the NHS servicing about 140,000 beds.

Far fewer beds but much higher costs, certainly not explained by bureaucracy. 37% of NHS spending is on staffing. How much greater this would be if nurses’ real wages, for instance, were restored to 2010 levels. Nurses have effectively involuntarily been subsidising the NHS for over a decade.

Then there are the pharmaceuticals and the impressively wide array of technological devices, scanners and monitors etc., plus food, services such as cleaning and equipment like surgical tools and walking frames, not forgetting buildings. All supplied by capitalist industries with ever increasing potential for profits.

The NHS is effectively a market place which is why the forces of privatisation have increasingly muscled in. This is not being facilitated by the Conservatives alone. The Labour government of 1997 to 2010 launched the Private Finance Initiative of hospital building, along with other tendering measures for services.

It is now an accepted commonplace for NHS procedures to be carried out in private medical facilities by staff employed by both. This is by no means a recent development in thinking about the provision of health care.

Talking of medical provision in a 1943 radio broadcast, the then prime minister Winston Churchill used the expression, ‘From the cradle to the grave’, a phrase that can be traced back to the founder of The Spectator Richard Steele in 1709.

What Churchill was referring to was the possible development of social insurance to finance individual medical care. He was not advocating state intervention.

While medical provision remains largely, though by no means entirely, free at the point of use, the figures above demonstrate that from the very outset the NHS was not, and most certainly is not, free. This is not to deny the beneficial worth of the NHS. That is also true of many services and features of capitalist society.

To directly address the question posed in the title, the answer is straightforward, no! The NHS is not, and never was, a socialist organisation. A defining socialist axiom is, ‘to each according to need’, in a worldwide society that does not have money to limit the extent needs can be met.

As medical procedures and technology have advanced so has the amount spent increased significantly from £11 billion in 1948 (at today’s values) to over £160 billion in 2023. A figure that continues to be inadequate and, therefore, a limiting factor in meeting need either by delay or even denial of treatment.

When politicians claim to have increased spending on the NHS they are correct. What they, or any of the parties, do not address is that while capitalism continues there cannot be sufficient funds. Ultimately, such spending is drawn from the overall pot of value created by an economic system prioritising profit making. While income tax seems to be a payment by individual workers’ wages, that simply means it becomes a factor in each person’s salary requirement paid by employers. An extra penny in the pound tax rise for workers is an extra penny in the pound employers have to pay.

A few years ago an otherwise amiable American appeared incredulous that I, and the British in general, could tolerate a National Health Service. Why did we put up with such an obviously socialist, communist, system?

By communist he meant the by-then failed soviet state capitalist system. Inadvertently he had identified something those who equate the NHS with actual socialism have missed. It is the state intervening socially on behalf of capitalism.

There can only be a truly socialist health service in a truly socialist society. For that to be achieved, merely advocating ever greater spending must give way to actively working to abolish capitalism. Then there can be socialism, a really healthy society.

Dave Alton

Toothache? Pay private fees or do it yourself (2023)

From the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many will know that, while most people have to pay something for NHS dental treatment, it is still free to a certain section of the community: children and pregnant women and new mothers. But, as George Monbiot pointed out in his column in the Guardian on 2 March:

‘Every child in the UK is entitled to free treatment by a non-existent dentist. Some people on benefits, pregnant women and those who have recently given birth also have free and full access to an imaginary service. Your rights are guaranteed, up to the point at which you seek to exercise them’ (tinyurl.com/s7epuzad).

Dental practices, being profit-seeking businesses, consider that what they are paid for treating NHS patients is not enough – they claim that in some cases it doesn’t even cover their costs – and so are increasingly reluctant to offer it and have not been using up all their NHS funding. In February it was reported that ‘Around £400million allocated for dental care went unspent this year because of a shortage of dentists willing to do NHS work’ (tinyurl.com/yrrpakv2).

What this ultimately means is that any patient requiring urgent treatment is forced to make a choice between suffering or paying privately for the treatment there and then.

With private dental treatment running into the hundreds, sometimes thousands of pounds, it is obvious that those on lower incomes are really faced with no choice at all.

The system does appear to offer an alternative. Since 2006 the necessity to ‘register’ with a particular dentist has been abolished. What this means is that a patient whose regular dentist is unable or unwilling to provide NHS-funded treatment can shop around for another dentist prepared to treat them under the NHS.

The reason this only ‘appears’ to be an alternative is because it is another of Monbiot’s rights to a non-existent service. You won’t find another dentist prepared to treat you as they won’t find it profitable. So, when you look at those same low-income families and elderly people who can’t afford to ‘go private’, you see that really this is not much of an alternative at all.

In any event, going to another dentist obviously can involve increased travel costs if the dentist is out of the area. While merely inconvenient for some it could mean the difference between having the treatment and not for others such as the very low-waged who do not have access to personal transport or the rurally housed elderly who rely on poor public transport coverage. When you add the psychological factor of forcing people to see a dentist they are unfamiliar with which, as we know, can have a particular impact on older members of our community, you can see why so many people elect to wait for their own dentist to be able to do the work or forgo the treatment altogether.

There is another option – DIY dentistry – which, apparently, some have been taking. As Monbiot noted:

‘The result, in one of the richest nations on Earth, is that people are extracting their own teeth, making their own fillings, improvising dentures and sticking them to their gums with superglue, and overdosing on painkillers’.

We continue to be forced into a situation where, when we need treatment which is vital to our health and well-being, we either pay extortionate private fees, are forced to seek out another dentist at our own cost or, if none of the above are possible for us because of our financial situation, simply wait, with our condition worsening.

In socialism dental treatment would be provided freely to anyone who needed it. Unshackled from the financial pressures of the capitalist system, freed from the necessity of eking out an inadequate funding budget, the health services would be able to treat all those in a timely fashion to the best possible standard.

The fact is that no-one should be forced to make such dire choices when it comes to this or any other area of their health. The NHS was originally intended to implement the admirable principle: ‘Treatment free at the point of need’. Where our dental treatment is concerned, this principle has long had a thread tied between it and the door handle, and the door slammed shut.

Starmer versus the logic of the market (2023)

From the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sir Keir Starmer has announced that the Labour Party (looking increasingly likely to form the next government) will set a target rate of 70 percent of all UK households being in owner- occupied homes. This sounds ambitious, but the current rate of 68 percent means that in fact only half a million new owner occupiers would be needed to meet this target.

What it does though, is send a signal about the priorities of Sir Keir and his party, that they will be on the side of property owners. It is as much an ideological expression as it is a practical policy. As Sir Keir said in a tweet: ‘Owning your home is not just about having a place to live, it’s about having pride and security’. Presumably renters cannot have pride and security.

This is balanced by the claim that ‘Labour will introduce a Renters’ Charter to give new rights and protections for renters. We will build more high-quality, affordable homes and restore the dream of home ownership’. Quite why having a place to live should be a dream is a strange thing: it’s only a ‘dream’ because it is so unobtainable at present.

As the Office for National Statistics notes: ‘Over the last 25 years, housing affordability has worsened in every [Local Authority area], especially in London or surrounding areas’ and ‘In 1997, 89% of LAs had an affordability ratio of less than five times workers’ earnings, whereas only 7% had this level of affordability in 2022’ (tinyurl.com/bdfbmmjw).

Part of the problem is that whilst everyone could be housed by simply building more houses, the financial model of home ownership requires constantly rising house prices. To make buying worthwhile, prices need to rise by more than inflation and interest rates, else effectively, the owner is just renting from the bank (alongside shouldering all the liabilities for maintenance and structure). For many people, their house is a financial instrument for when they plan to downsize and retire on part of the difference between house prices (or rent the house out, as a form of pension income).

So, Labour’s plans to increase home ownership cannot come at the price of threatening the asset value of those who already own a home, much less those who make their income from letting out houses (which includes a great number of MPs of both parties).

Further to that, any widespread house-building programme will almost inevitably be met with fierce opposition from local home owners who will see a threat to their amenities (as well as the value of their properties from the increase of supply). Even in such cities as Bristol, where the house prices are overheated and there is massive demand for new housing, every option to build new is met with a storm of protest from NIMBYs.

Land monopolists

Even then, widening the pool of home owners doesn’t change the effect of private property in land on the general economy. As Marx notes in Volume 3 of Capital:

‘Wherever natural forces can be monopolised and guarantee a surplus-profit to the industrial capitalist using them, be it waterfalls, rich mines, waters teeming with fish, or a favourably located building site, there the person who by virtue of title to a portion of the globe has become the proprietor of these natural objects will wrest this surplus-profit from functioning capital in the form of rent’ (Chapter 46, tinyurl.com/4fnpkk4j).

The value of houses derives, in large part, from the general growth of the economy, and the expansion of demand of land:

‘One part of society thus exacts tribute from another for the permission to inhabit the earth, as landed property in general assigns the landlord the privilege of exploiting the terrestrial body, the bowels of the earth, the air, and thereby the maintenance and development of life. Not only the population increase and with it the growing demand for shelter, but also the development of fixed capital, which is either incorporated in land, or takes root in it and is based upon it, such as all industrial buildings, railways, warehouses, factory buildings, docks, etc., necessarily increase the building rent.’

Merely by holding onto land in the form of property draws a share of the surplus value generated (either through rent on homes or through windfall sales, both of which feed into raising the cost of wages to the industrial capitalist, without increasing the mass of use values the workers can purchase).

‘The mere legal ownership of land does not create any ground-rent for the owner. But it does, indeed, give him the power to withdraw his land from exploitation until economic conditions permit him to utilise it in such a manner as to yield him a surplus, be it used for actual agricultural or other production purposes, such as buildings, etc’ (Chapter 45, tinyurl.com/5b8jsz96 ).

This means that any attempt to regulate landowners could be met with stock being withdrawn from the market to protect their margins: it is the right of ownership that gives them the ability to extract tribute, nothing inherent in the land or the house itself. It’s worth noting that in 2021/22 the UK government paid tribute of £30 billion, about 2.5 percent of government expenditure (tinyurl.com/6wj5hh9h). This was in part reduced by the government pressuring social landlords to hold their rent down, which might explain why Sir Keir’s plans do include an element of expanding social housing as well.

His plans, though, also run up against another part of the logic of a market society. As empirical research by Warwick University showed, back in the 90s, ‘every additional 10 percentage points on home ownership puts 2 percentage points on the unemployment rate’ (tinyurl.com/yc76fj8m). Reducing the mobility of labour seems to cause more rigidity in labour markets.

Sir Keir may think he has come up with a low-cost way to win over natural Tory voters, but it is not without risks. The problems do not stem from any technical difficulty in providing suitable housing for all households, but from the nature of property.

Pik Smeet

Let’s abolish food banks (2023)

From the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are various providers of free or very cheap meals all across the country. They may rely on donations from individuals or companies or they may ‘recycle’ food which would otherwise go to waste. Foodcycle’s answer to the question, what is surplus food is that ‘Surplus food is designated for people to eat but which has ‘no commercial value for the retailer.’ ‘In the UK, an estimated 12 million tonnes of food is wasted each year at all levels from plough to plate whilst 4 million people are affected by food poverty. At least 400,000 tonnes of this food is thrown away at retail level’ (foodcycle.org.uk/who-we-are).

This provider says it wants to ‘make food poverty, loneliness and food waste a thing of the past for every community’. Admirable. Who doesn’t support that? Other similar providers have similar ideals. The Trussell Trust says ‘…the stark reality is that too many people are unable to stay warm, fed, and dry right now’. Too true unfortunately. No argument there. ‘It doesn’t have to be this way’, Trussell says. Spot on. Ticking all the right boxes definitely.

They all put forward their solutions for minimising the impact of the underlying conditions that lie at the root of food poverty. The underlying cause is capitalism. Do they realise that?

All these various providers, whether large or small, still have to function within the straitjacket of capitalism. They have paid full-time staff, have to pay for their premises, have to pay their utility bills. Those employed by the charities and those who volunteer also have to live according to the norms of a capitalist society. They need money in order to live too. Check any website in the Third Sector. Capitalism means it will always be channelling Bob Geldof at Band Aid. Give us your money! But generally much more politely than Sir Bob.

The issue is, how is poverty in its many forms to be eradicated?

A solution that appeals to many is, vote for a more society-friendly (sic) party. Kick this heartless government out of office, then things will change for the better! It’s not difficult to find examples of the stony attitudes within one of the political parties which is regularly put into the position of running capitalism on behalf of the UK asset-owning class.

The Marie Antoinette of the Tories, ex-Conservative-MP Ann Widdecombe, said a little while ago, ‘Britons don’t have an automatic right to low food prices’, adding that people should simply go without certain items if they are struggling financially. Widdecombe also advised people who cannot afford to pay for some food items, like cheese, to simply stop buying them:

‘Well then you don’t do the cheese sandwich. None of it’s new. We’ve been through this before’, she said. ‘The problem is we’ve been decades now without inflation, we’ve come to regard it as some kind of given right’ (Guardian, 17 May).

Discussing the UK’s cost-of-living crisis on the BBC’s Politics Live show, the former Tory and Brexit Party MEP suggested that anyone claiming unemployment benefits should be made to fill labour shortages by picking fruit.

Under-fire Andrew Bailey told workers to stop asking bosses for unsustainable pay rises – shortly after piling interest rate misery on households. The Bank of England governor battling to bring inflation under control, said the country ‘can’t continue to have the current level of wage increases’ (tinyurl.com/5a78w28s).

In Peter Tinniswood’s stories about Yorkshire family the Brandons, Carter Brandon’s fiancé Pat opens conversations with, ‘Isn’t the price of sprouts outrageous’? Yes, and so’s the price of nearly everything in the supermarket nowadays. The cost of living has surely superseded the favourite topic of the British, the weather.

The Trussell Trust recently issued a 100-page report called Hunger in the UK. It makes sobering reading. One in seven people in the UK faced hunger in 2022 due to a lack of money, they say. The survey equated this to an estimated 11.3 million people.

Why were people being forced to use food banks? Money. Or rather the lack of it due to living in a capitalist society where the price of nearly everything keeps getting higher and higher.

The United Kingdom has the second largest economy in Europe and the sixth largest economy in the world.

Hunger in the UK: 

‘… insufficient income is the fundamental driver for almost all peo-ple forced to use a food bank. The vast majority (86%) of people referred to food banks in the Trussell Trust network in mid-2022 have an income so low that they were experiencing destitution when they were supported by the food bank. (They) are further destabilised by a lack of savings and having to cope with arrears and debt’.

The report lists those who are most like to feel the pinch. This includes a high proportion of people renting, ethnic minorities, the disabled, unpaid carers, those living alone, those with dependent children, and single parents.

In the report’s introduction the Chief Executive of the Trust says:

‘That means we know what needs to change if we’re going to build a more just society where everyone has enough money for the essentials. It is clear that we need a social security system which provides protection and dignity for people to cover the costs of their own essentials, such as food and bills’. 

‘Because in coming together, and working together, we will build a future where none of us need a food bank, because none of us will allow it’ (tinyurl.com/nhhr7evt). 

We certainly know what needs to change but we need more than to tinker with a knackered engine. We need to replace it. Whilst a capitalist society continues to receive support from very many, including those globally who suffer badly under that system, sticking plaster solutions are not the answer.

Working together for socialism, we can build a future where none of us will need a food bank ever again. Our solution is one that eradicates the problem once and for all.

Dave Coggan

The Jesus movement (2023)

Book Review from the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict. By James Crossley and Robert J. Myles. Zero Books, 2023

This book takes a materialist approach to the emergence of the Jesus movement, informed by contemporary texts and archaeological findings. It uses critical historical imagination through a lens of Eric Hobsbawm’s ideas on banditry as a form of pre-political (and pre-capitalist) form of peasant resistance. They provocatively describe the Apostles as a sort of politburo to this millenarian movement. They defend their category of peasantry as being appropriate for the economic conditions of the time, and against notions that fishermen and carpenters would be of some sort of relatively privileged class.

They paint a picture of the Jesus movement as an itinerant band with a ‘mission to the rich’. This is evidenced by the Gospel sentiment ‘I have come to call sinners’. The itinerant band was thus supported by wealthy individuals donating to their movement in a form of atonement. The group itself preached that ‘he who is last shall be first’ and a time would come when the wealthy sinners would be overthrown, and the world rid of landlords, tax collectors and unjust kings. The Jesus movement would then rule.

Certainly, as Norman Cohn noted in his book The Pursuit of the Millennium, that was an ideology read into the Gospels repeatedly throughout the Middle Ages as peasant movements led by Beggar Kings and the occasional pseudo-Baldwin would rise up with the promise of the end of work and that landlords, priests and usurers would be put to the righteous sword. ‘A dictatorship serving the interests of the peasantry’ as Crossley and Myles term it.

They trace the material source of this movement to the upheaval in first-century Galilee. Households were being broken up by elite building projects in urban centres. Antipas was the ruler of Galilee at the time, and he was responsible for rebuilding the town of Sepphoris (which had recently been razed by the Romans after it was seized by rebel bandits) and the town of Tiberius. Such building involved taxing peasants, clearing them from the land and drawing labour from the countryside to the city coupled with unemployment when the project was complete. They note that Jesus’ reputation as a carpenter means he was more broadly a builder, and he may have been involved in such building projects.

Amidst such dislocation, then, the Jesus movement was socially conservative, with hardline views on promiscuity and marriage, and it looked to the restoration and observance of a peasant version of the Jewish law (the authors present an intriguing reading of the parable of the good Samaritan as being about purity laws rather than the goodness of the cultural Other in the form of the Samaritan).

Crossley and Myles suggest that this itinerant band, preaching repentance to the wealthy became a form of family in itself, to give stability in a time of trouble. It also may have spent most of its time in the rural parts of Galilee, avoiding such cities as Sepphoris and Tiberius (which might account for any absence of any contemporary textual accounts, other than a couple of mentions in Josephus’ Antiquities). When the Jesus group went to Jerusalem during the Passover festival, it would seem their disruption in the temple was, by this account, as much a stand against idolatry and profaning of the Temple (such as with the erection of a Roman eagle at the Temple gate, or with issues around the symbolism on some of the money used there) as it was about the exploitation and avarice of the moneylenders themselves.

Disruption of the Temple during Passover would not have escaped the notice of the authorities, and it seems there is sufficient textual evidence in the record that Jesus was tried and executed as a bandit/rebel for these actions. As is often noted, given the shameful character of crucifixion, the early Jesus movement would be unlikely to make up such a fate for their leader, suggesting that it was such a known and established fact that they had to stick with it.

A major plank of the argument is around the word ‘sinners’ which the authors argue should be read as a reference first and foremost to the wealthy, but more broadly those without the Jewish law, which would also include foreigners. This mission to the rich sinners also therefore could become a mission to non-Jewish people. This provides a plausible explanation for the ability of the ideas of the Jesus movement to spread on a cross-class basis throughout the Roman empire, gradually losing its regional specificity. Hence why the early movement had to grapple with issues such as observance of the Jewish law.

The chief sources remain the Gospels, however, and the authors spend a lot of time noting the discrepancies between the various accounts, and showing how passages were added to the account that might be influenced by the needs of the movement as it developed and in a sort of dialogue with previous Gospels to overcome barriers: Joseph of Arimathea moves from being a member of the Sanhedrin to being a wealthy follower of Jesus, in order to overcome changes of the account of the role of that body in Jesus’s execution.

All of the extant texts are from after the time of Jesus’s ministry, and the writers show the legend growing with younger texts being more elaborate. They note there is a notional ‘Q’ text that was the original source material of three of the Gospels. The bare bones of the story is that there was a group preaching around the first century, practising baptism and calling ‘sinners’ to repentance, and that their apparent leader was betrayed and executed.

This is a plausible and interesting account of the growth of the Jesus movement that does not rely on a miraculous nor charismatic leader, but looks to the social conflicts of the first-century Near East. Although some of its arguments rest on a certain amount of philological knowledge (such as the meaning of the word ‘sinners’) it is largely accessible and a pleasurable read.

Pik Smeet

‘Imagine’ – Sugar-coated anti-capitalism? (2023)

From the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

John Lennon’s 1971 song Imagine is often hailed as the encapsulation of a true socialist society. It depicts unswervingly and melodically a world where the resources of the earth are shared between its populace with everyone having enough to eat, living cooperative lives and no longer being plagued by war, religion or national divisions. Yet there’s no shortage of criticism of it from those who have a different view of the best way for humans to live or from those who just don’t like John Lennon.

A recent example of this is in an article – ’10 revered classic rock songs that are actually awful’ – which recently appeared in Far Out Magazine. It places ‘Imagine’ among those ‘actually awful’ songs (tinyurl.com/4wpuam45). It describes its words as ‘cliched’ and says that Lennon ‘treated the populace as idiots’. The article then goes on to describe the song as ‘so insipidly idealist that even school kids can see through the lack of sincerity and humanised realism’. It also alludes to Lennon’s well-known ‘sugar-coated’ comment, that is to his having himself said of the song: ‘Anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic, but because it is sugar-coated it is accepted. Now I understand what you have to do. Put your political message across with a little honey’ (quoted in Geoffrey Giuliani’s 2000 biography Lennon in America).

Imagine there’s no heaven

It’s easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peaceYou may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world

You may say I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will live as one

It’s easy to see why someone might see the words of Lennon’s song as ‘idealistic’. After all, the future world he describes and advocates is, in just about all its features, the direct opposite of what exists today. ‘No countries to live or die for’, ‘no religion’ (‘above us only sky’), ‘no need for greed or hunger’, ‘all the people sharing all the world’. How far away can you get from the nationalistic, religion-besmirched world that is modern capitalism, a system in which greed is lauded and personal wealth is looked up to while around 286 million people wake up every day not knowing where their next meal will come from? But is Lennon’s ‘idealistic’ vision here something to be scorned as lacking ‘realism’ simply because it yearns for something different and better?

As for the idea that it is something that school kids will ‘see through’, will they in fact not be more likely to see the sense in it? After all school kids have spent less time than others living in the system that dominates and enslaves the world and so may be less conditioned by its rules and norms, and therefore more able to imagine a world organised differently. Conversely, for adults, having been subjected to the conditioning process for longer, a greater effort of the imagination may be necessary for them to contemplate a world with ‘no heaven’ and ‘no hell’, where people are ‘living life in peace’ and where there are ’no possessions’ (ie, surely artistic shorthand for no monopoly of wealth). But imagination is what socialists have always insisted is needed by those who own nothing but their ability to work and need to sell their energies to survive (ie, the vast majority).

Meanwhile those who have difficulty in exercising their imagination will always tend to say of the existing social order that ‘there is no alternative’. And this, contrary to what Lennon’s critic says about ‘Imagine’ being clichéd, is the real cliché and summed up so well by the science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin who wrote: ‘We live in capitalism – its power seems inescapable. But so did the divine right of kings.’ As history has shown, change does come, and, if that change means looking to a radically different way of living, perhaps we should say with Lennon ‘it’s easy if you try’.

Finally, another part of the criticism seems to be that Lennon doesn’t attempt to give any prescription as to how his imagined world is to be brought about. But how could he in three minutes or so? The fact is that he has outlined some of the key features of a socialist world, one without buying and selling, without markets, without rich and poor, without leaders and led, without wars or religion. And, as pop song popularity polls have constantly shown, he has done it in a way that people find appealing and listenable to. And if that’s what ‘sugar-coated’ means, then so be it. Of course, Lennon’s Imagine doesn’t seem to have made a large impact in shifting people towards socialist ideas, but it’s not hard to imagine that, as socialist ideas spread, it will be an anthem that people identify with as they take action to plan and bring into being the system of society it depicts.

Howard Moss

Cooking the Books: What about producer prices? (2023)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a speech on 27 June, Swati Dhingra, a member of the committee that sets the Bank Rate, described changes in the producer prices index as ‘one of the best leading indicators of the long-run evolution of prices in this country’ (tinyurl.com/ye2yb5ex). But what is this index that we don’t hear much about?

The US Bureau of Labor defines inflation as: ‘The overall general upward price movement of goods and services in an economy’. That’s alright as far as it goes. In the US, as in most countries, this is generally measured by an increase in an index measuring the price of a basket of consumer goods and services. If the index goes up so many points, that increase is expressed as a percentage of what the index was before and is ‘inflation’.

It is hard to see how an ‘overall upward price movement’ could be measured other than by an increase in some index, but is an index of consumer prices the best way to do this? Consumer goods and services are not the only things that are sold. There are also the goods and services that businesses sell to each other from which to make the final product which consumers buy.

Besides a consumer prices index the Office for National Statistics produces indexes of producer prices. There is an index of ‘input prices’, which covers the prices of materials and intermediate or semi-finished goods that businesses buy from each other to process into final products as well as the price of fuels used in the course of doing this. There is another for ‘output prices.’ Also called ‘factory gate prices’, this is defined as:

‘The amount received by UK producers for the goods that they sell to the domestic market. It includes the margin that businesses make on goods, in addition to costs such as labour, raw materials and energy, as well as interest on loans, site or building maintenance, or rent’.

Producer prices inflation (PPI) is an increase in this index calculated as a percentage. This gives different results for the ‘overall general upward price movement’. Dhingra pointed to

‘a sharp drop in the annual rate of producer price inflation, which was 2.9% in May, its lowest in more than two years and down from a peak of 19.6% in July 2022. Consumer price inflation (CPI), which is targeted by the BoE, peaked at 11.1% in October 2022 and has been slower to fall than the central bank expected, holding at 8.7% in May’.

The index of input prices is a measure of business costs. The difference between the changes in it and changes in the output prices index can be an indication of the income of business out of which its profits come and so also of how profits are doing. The corresponding figures to those quoted by Dhingra were up 0.5% in May, down from a peak of 24.4% in June 2022. Comparing the two suggests that the hit profits took from rising oil prices as an immediate result of the war in Ukraine (when input prices rose more than output prices) is now being overcome (as input prices are rising slower than output prices). Profits are being restored.

From the point of view of analysing how the capitalist economic system works, the factory gate price index is arguably more useful than an index of the price of consumer goods. It is measuring price increases from the seller’s point of view rather than the buyer’s, what they get rather than what we pay. After all, capitalism is a system geared to sellers making a profit, not to meeting consumers’ needs as so often portrayed.