Sting in the Tail: An open letter (1996)

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

An open letter

To: Colin Tudge,

Centre of Philosophy,

London School of Economics.

Dear Colin,

We enjoyed your recent diatribe in the Independent on Sunday against the effects of the profit motive on agriculture.

You explained how your researches into famine convinced you that food production in “the modern world” is not aimed at feeding people but at making money. Then you condemned the “bad husbandry” which led to BSE and the tortures inflicted on farm animals and provided the reason:

"When profit is the driving force. .. those who do not cut corners go to the wall."

Yes, you certainly put the boot into the profit motive in agriculture, but that doesn’t go nearly far enough, does it? After all, food is only one of society’s necessities: housing, clothing, medicine, in fact all the things we need are produced for profit and not people.

So, Colin, what you call “the modern world” is really the capitalist system and that’s what you should be attacking, not just one aspect of it.

Science and profits

The Observer (28 April) has revealed another piece of capitalist skulduggery in the relentless pursuit of profit:

"Boots, one of Britain's most trusted companies, commissioned research and then suppressed it after the results showed that its most lucrative drug could be replaced by products three times as cheap and just as effective. ”

After paying $250,000 for the survey by the University of California to test their drug Synthroid against cheaper ones produced by their rivals, they threatened legal action against publication. They used a team of private investigators to discredit the report, another example of the waste of human effort and the distortion of science caused by a society based on the profit motive.

Inside a society based on production for use the disinterested pursuit of human knowledge will be essential. Inside that society distortion of scientific research for profit will be impossible.

Learned fools

Below are some examples of “howlers” from last year’s GCSE exams:

Q. If the letter MW appear on a radio, what does it mean? 

A. Don’t play it on top of the microwave.

Q. Name some key figures from the industrial revolution. 

A. Harold Wilson and Arthur Scargill.

Q. Give an example of the use of the word “judicious”. 

A. The hands that judicious can be soft as your face with mild, green Fairy liquid.

Here are some howlers provided by very important public figures:

The core of empire was not profit but governance (Prof Max Beloff).

Iran is a theocracy but it is also a democracy (Louis Farrakhan of the Black Muslims).

Private ownership is the basis of all ethics on which man’s personality is built (Cardinal Józef Glemp, Primate of Poland).

Prescott’s pretensions

John Prescott, deputy leader of the Labour Party, declares that he is middle class, so Barry Hugill writes in an article in the Observer (14 April) entitled “We’re all middle class now”.

"It's a tricky question because there is no right answer. Karl Marx, never the snappiest of writers, dreamed up ‘relationship to the means of production’ as the key factor. So an engineer earning more than £40,000 per year would be working class because he doesn't own the company he his working for—he is just a prole like the rest of us. "

This won’t do for Hugill. After discussing education, vocabulary, occupation, housing, income and snobbery he concludes “So what are you? And does it matter?”

Well, yes it does. Class is determined by none of the categories in Hugill’s 600-word article, but by Karl Marx’s “relationship to the means of production”. Snappy enough for you, Mr Hugill?

Hattersley’s hesitations

Somewhat surprisingly, Prescott’s predecessor as Deputy leader of the Labour Party, Roy Hattersley, has an inkling that this might be so, writing in The Guardian (22 April) that:

"Social groups are determined by their relationship to the means of production. It is just my luck to begin spouting Marxism at the moment when nobody else believes a word that he wrote. ”

Hattersley’s comment on Marxism is wrong, but if by “social groups” he means classes then he is right. People who work for a wage or salary are working class whether they know this or not, and those who think they are “middle class” are only kidding themselves.

Alderson in Wonderland

The left was delighted, the right were enraged, and socialists were amused.

John Alderson, ex-Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall, wrote in the left-wing journal Red Pepper claiming that Britain is becoming a police state and anti-road protesters and protesters against the export of veal calves are the hope for the future.

Alderson gave his Humpty Dumpty view of the world in the statement:

"The primary task of policing is to uphold and safeguard human rights, he says, calling for an independent police commission to resolve conflict between police and public ” (Observer, 21 April).

The primary task of policing is to protect private property. The hope for the future is in workers organising for a society based on common ownership.

Alderson, Red Pepper, its left-wing supporters and its right-wing opponents, are united in their opposition to that revolutionary aim. Curiouser and curiouser.