Government by the few for the few (2024)

From the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Manifestos have been published, promises have been made and intentions made opaque by the vagueness that always accompanies the usual mixture of hope, cynicism and downright duplicity displayed by establishment politicians. We can now all sit back and await the inevitable failures, betrayals and hypocrisy of a new government.

This is not a statement of cynical bitterness or even one resulting from the betrayed hopes of the past but merely a recognition of what the state (of which the government is merely the executive) was created for and how it has evolved. We are always told at election time that the people have the power to create political change by voting for one political party or another – this lies at the heart of the claim that ours is a ‘democratic’ country. Many believe the last 14 years of Tory rule has been a failure but the rich have become richer, the state has become ever more powerful and the Washington oligarchs couldn’t be more pleased with the government’s subservience to their imperial needs. From a ruling class perspective the Tories have delivered everything they desired.

Of course, there have been the odd ideologues who actually believe the propaganda and seek some kind of radical right-wing changes (Braverman, Truss, Patel etc.) who have rocked the boat but they have been seen off and it was business as usual. These individuals, together with their left-wing counterparts like Corbyn, Galloway and Abbott, really seem to believe that government action can improve people’s lives. Perhaps a reality check is timely for those idealists and for anyone who still believes that a government can be a vehicle for the profound change that our society so desperately needs.

The origin of parliament

The relationship between the King and his barons had, since medieval times, been a tense struggle for money and power. On many occasions actual wars broke out, and there were subsequent attempts to reach a settlement between the King and his court and the barons and their private armies, of which the most famous were a series called Magna Carta. The King was obliged to call on the advice of the kingdom’s magnates before raising taxes or going to war etc. This is the origin of governance through parliament.

As the nation-state became increasingly centralised during the Tudor period the financial system grew ever more complex requiring a specialism that was quite alien to most aristocrats. The ‘House of Commons’ became ever more important as it consisted of those who knew how to exploit the labour force for profit and so contributed the lion’s share of taxable revenue. This evolution was accelerated by the political revolution of 1642 and subsequently, despite an attempted counter revolution by the King in 1688, the capitalist class through their representatives in parliament became the dominant political and economic power. However, the purpose of the government did not change as its primary purpose remained to serve the economic needs of another tiny parasitic class.

Governments and the states they control have never existed to serve the needs of the people as a whole but only to preserve the wealth and power of parasitic elites. The first rule of any parliament is: thou shall not over-burden the wealthy with taxes, and so the running of the nation’s infrastructure is always accomplished with the least expenditure possible. The second rule is to ensure that no laws should be passed that in any way impede profitability, and so ensure that those who create wealth never have direct access to it, but only through a system of rationing called wages and salaries. Despite this, many political idealists continue to believe that social improvement is possible using the state and its government. But why this political illusion and the normalisation of this political lie?

Republicans ancient and modern

The capitalist class’s need to legitimise their form of government has a long history. Many ‘gentlemen’ historians of the past, and some even today, look back to the likes of Cicero as a hero of republican virtues, struggling against malign populists and demagogues like Catiline and Julius Caesar. He allegedly stood for constitutional values and anti-tyranny, but this overlooks his involvement with the murder squads that were sent out by the Senate to destroy anyone who spoke of reforming the system to benefit the people. His hands were drenched with the blood of those who challenged the oligarchs in control of a Senate (government) that ensured their continual accumulation of wealth and power.

There is no evidence that Catiline or Caesar ever intended to destroy Rome and we have only Cicero’s words to that effect. Of course he never mentioned the class interests that he served and all his rhetoric about the ‘Republic’ merely obscured his real motive to preserve the power and economic interests of the patrician elite. All reformers were demonised as wreckers of society – sound familiar?

Any governments who call themselves republics are essentially the same as their ancient counterparts. They believe in an elite that are entitled to rule through tradition and, usually, inherited wealth. Although the UK calls itself a constitutional monarchy it is, in fact, no different from the capitalist republics described above – the monarch is one of the wealthiest capitalists of them all. So the tradition for all capitalist governments is to talk continuously about democracy whilst ensuring its impossibility. But the gloomy gothic corridors of power within Westminster are not the only, or even the most important, centre of political power.

Since the Second World War the ruling class of this country have aligned themselves with the interests of the Washington oligarchs and so become willing subjects of US imperialism. No UK ‘foreign policy’ is decided without consulting this military empire (aka NATO). Even after Brexit, the EU together with the WTO and the World Bank have a significant impact on what Westminster can do economically, and this leads us to another great power on the global stage, the multi-national corporations. Their lobbying of governments is unceasing and connections with politicians, corrupt or otherwise, is undeniable. Many of the same individuals are involved in these organisations which can deservedly be called ‘the establishment’. They all share a common interest in defending their trade-routes, market share, cheap labour, natural resources etc. from the other capitalist cabals of Russia and China. But all of them are subject to the ultimate power of the anarchic fluctuations of capitalist economics which none of them, it would seem, have much understanding of.

The excuse of the recent Tory government for its manifest failures were the COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine – both of which might have been predicted but would anyway have been ignored by the overriding necessity for economic ‘growth’ and bigger profits. Given all this one is tempted to ask, what is the point of national governments? The oligarchs of ancient Rome, like Cicero and Cato, could tell you why – to preserve the illusion of national/tribal communal interest and deny class division so as to exclude the majority from power.

Starmer is no different from his war-mongering predecessor Blair and will do anything to placate the power of the ‘establishment’. Like Cicero he will claim to be a protector of legitimacy and justice but will be infinitely flexible when he is required to excuse genocide in Gaza or persecute the sick and the unemployed. Remember, the parasites and their defenders like the Labour Party depend on the masses of workers to produce the means and wealth for their own continued exploitation. The real historical power belongs to us workers and we must turn away from these hypocrites, liars and fools and take responsibility for this world into our own hands.

Wez.

Cooking the Books: Should tokens make the world go round? (2024)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 2022 Jan Philipp Dapprich, a researcher at a German university, published a paper entitled ‘Tokens make the world go round: socialist tokens as an alternative to money’ in which he argued that ‘non-circulating tokens should be used as an alternative to money for distributing consumer products to the population in a socialist economy’.

That he is talking about a socialist or communist society (terms which he says can be used interchangeably) is clear from how he envisages the production of all goods taking place. The places where they are produced ‘are collectively administered by the people or by institutions accountable on their behalf. Since all firms would share the same owner, there is no need for firms to exchange goods, as the general public would remain the owner of those goods either way’; ‘production units would simply receive raw materials and pass on their finished products, as specified by the plan without paying or receiving payment. There would thus be no need for money as a medium of exchange within the realm of production’; ‘The constraints, benefits and costs of production are to be evaluated in purely physical terms.’

So, he is recognisably talking about what we (and Marx) mean by socialism.

Marx, writing 150 years ago in some private notes published after his death as The Critique of the Gotha Programme, did discuss the possible need for a system of non-circulating tokens (vouchers that would be cancelled after being used to redeem some product) to distribute consumer products in the early days had socialism been established at the time, though he envisaged it eventually being abolished in favour of distribution according to self-determined needs.

Marx may have had a point had socialism been established in 1875 but it wasn’t, so this could be regarded as an academic issue. Dapprich, however, thinks that some token system (not necessarily the one mentioned by Marx) would still be required if socialism were to be established today; in fact he thinks that this should be a permanent feature of a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. He goes so far as to describe free access as envisaged by Marx as ‘pie in the sky’.

His argument is that this is unnecessary anyway ‘because the ‘needs principle’ of the higher phase can be sufficiently realised within the token system’. This can be done, he suggests, by the wider provision of free services such as health care and by giving tokens to those unable to work or to work fully. But why? His hidden assumption is that, with free access, there might not be enough to go round and that therefore the consumption of some will need to be limited, even if at a generously high level, so as to ensure that more urgent needs of others are met.

He does mention the argument that ‘since we have seen significant increases in productive capacities since the nineteenth century, during which Marx was writing, perhaps the token system is already outdated’. This is precisely a point we have made but Dapprich dismisses this, rather too offhandedly, as ‘unconvincing’ without saying why.

But whether or not society has the capacity to produce enough consumer products to satisfy likely self-assessed needs is the crux of the matter at issue. If it has, as we contend, then the case for a permanent non-circulating token system falls.

In any event, once common ownership and production directly for use have been established, should there arise some temporary shortage of some products it would be up to those around at the time to settle how to deal with it. Drawing up a blueprint for this now, without knowing the exact circumstances or the preferences of people then, is literally academic.

Mail Bomb (2024)

Book Review from the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Murder by Mail: A Global History of the Letter Bomb. By Mitchel P. Roth and Mahmut Cengiz. Reaktion Books. 2024.

It’s not often we get to review true crime in the pages of the Socialist Standard. However, this book isn’t your industry-standard sensationalist pulp about Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer. Instead, it’s a well-researched, exhaustive compendium of the history of the mail bomb, or ‘Infernal Machine’ as the authors point out was its original nom de guerre. This device has been used not only by political zealots, religious extremists, and anarchist assassins but also by hot-tempered lovers, family feuders, and jealous friends.

The history of the mail bomb is as rich as you would expect from such a unique device. But beyond the contraption itself, what really makes a mail bomber tick? Unfortunately, the scope of this subject is so wide and the history so varied that the authors don’t have much room for the psychology behind the minds behind the bombs. However, each case does receive a few lines about the individuals (or groups or governments) involved, the situations they were in, and the goals they aimed to achieve. We learn that ‘while the IRA is often credited with introducing terror to the British Isles, the first terrorist bomb to explode in Ireland in the 20th century was planted by suffragettes’.

The cases span from the American bomber who wanted to plot out a giant smiley face across the map of North America in recent history to the anarchist Mayday mail bombing campaign at the beginning of the 20th century, which aimed to assassinate J.P. Morgan and almost 20 other enemies of the working class, including the Minister of Labor, in one postal sweep.

What can we as a party take away from all this? We already know why we reject violence as a means and support democratic revolution. But let’s separate out the mail bomb as a firearm and cast a scientific eye over it. This is a suitable analogy as the earliest documented infernal device was a gun rigged up inside a hat box.

Theodore Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, is a case in point. From the outside, ‘Uncle Ted’ appeared to be a genius frustrated with the ‘techno-industrial’ system, blaming not just capitalism but anything in human development after agriculture. His manifesto mainly critiqued left-wing parties and used (specious) logic to justify his personal campaign of violence and murder.

However, once you dig past the internet memes and media characterizations, Ted is just another mentally ill man with a grudge and zero social intelligence. If Ted were to start his campaign today, he would have more in common with alt-right Incels than anyone on the left.

Early signs of his mental illness expressed themselves in joke bombs of firecrackers mailed to love interests, and he was fired by his own brother for writing hundreds of harassing notes (poetry and jokes) to a former lover who had spurned him after their first date. Other red flags included breaking into his neighbour’s house and defecating on the floor and other antisocial behaviour a good ten years before he mailed his first infernal devices.

Although the authors don’t delve much into the psychology of the political groups conducting bombings, those we do learn about, and those not motivated by politics, share a common thread. The most disenfranchised, desperate, and mentally ill people resort to mail bombs. Despite all their work and planning, they needn’t bother, as 80 percent of devices don’t even ignite or trigger the main explosive. As the authors point out, you are ‘more likely to get hit by lightning than die by a letter bomb’. Ted himself struggled for around ten years before he was satisfied with the level of violence his bombs were causing. In fact, he kept detailed diaries where he showed no regret in targetting students, shopkeepers, or receptionists but was only upset that his bombs were failing to kill anyone.

The majority of letter bombs won’t reach their target but instead kill postal workers or secretaries, with very few making it beyond the sorting office. So, aside from the discussion of violence as a tactic, the infernal machine is objectively not a very effective way of killing people. In the 1980s and 90s, there seemed to be a shift to postal explosives deliberately made not to kill but designed as a scare tactic. However, this too has become redundant as the media no longer picks up stories about such campaigns because the use of improvised devices has become so common in the United States that their impact is no longer of interest.

These arguments are redundant for us socialists as we oppose terrorist tactics. However, much like the many types of men (they are mostly men) documented in this book, the world’s poorest are being stretched to their limits. This book serves as a handy device to show that this path has been trodden and the means didn’t justify the ends. A compelling read, well-researched, and, despite the grim subject, humorous in places.

A. T.

The poison of development aid (1986)

From the Summer 1986 issue of the World Socialist

The following article has been translated from the Internationales Freies Wort, journal of the Bund Demokratischer Sozialisten, the section of the World Socialist Movement in Austria.

The poison gas catastrophe in Bhopal in India with its large number of dead plus many more blinded and injured shook world opinion. The American multinational chemical corporation Union Carbide, to whom the Indian poison laboratory belonged, was quick to point out in the media that its production of protection for plants (pesticides) aided India towards self-sufficiency in food and thereby saved many people from dying of hunger. So, after deducting the thousands who were poisoned Union Carbide still comes out as positive!

But the truth is that India doesn't need any poisonous material for pesticides. The poverty-stricken small farmers lack the most basic implements such as spades and hoes as well as pumps for irrigation, etc. But there's no business in this for big industry in the Western countries. So the underdeveloped countries get pushed the products which the industrialised countries want to sell, all in the name of development aid. In other words, "we are helping ourselves, not the underdeveloped countries" as no less than President Nixon openly declared when development aid was under attack in America.

So the Indians, happy with their unordered poison which of course the poverty-stricken small farmers could not buy, were forced to migrate to the towns as they couldn't make a living from agriculture, where they settled in front of the gates of the chemical factory and died "like flies" when the poison gas leak came.

World opinion, prevented from a correct insight into the problems of the underdeveloped countries by all the manoeuvres that go on over loans and exchange rates, was taken unawares by this catastrophe. But not anyone who had taken the trouble to inform themselves of the facts. Some years ago the American writer Susan George published her How The Other Half Dies in which she attacked established myths and exposed the businesses of the industrialised countries as responsible for the poverty of the underdeveloped countries.

Such statements are not approved of by the establishment of the industrialised countries — but the latter's failings make their investigation of the problem worthless. This is also the case with the "Independent Commission for Development Questions", a committee under the chairmanship of Willy Brandt (SPD), the majority of whose members are "representatives" of the underdeveloped countries themselves but they are all from the capital-benefiting elite-strata of these countries. The consequence is that the first report (1980) carefully avoids everything that could go against the capital interests of the industrialised countries and so ignores all the real problems and can show no way towards solving them.

The second report (1983) is just the same. In the foreword Brandt points out that events have regrettably confirmed the worst apprehensions of the first report. In which case the Brandt Commission was useless. Of the 94 proposals in the first report not one had been implemented. Of course something else will happen — more recommendations and more pious wishes.

Development to what?

In reality everything resolves around the preservation of the existing economic institutions of the industrialised countries. The assumption is that the underdeveloped countries should be lifted to the splendid heights of the developed countries. But people in the developing countries are less and less enchanted with this. It has been noticed that all the aid has not reduced the gap between living standards in the South and those in the North — on the contrary the backward countries have fallen even further behind. It has also been noticed that the industrialised countries are not a paradise for all their inhabitants. The introduction of industry into the underdeveloped countries has led to more disadvantages than advantages — the uprooting of traditional ways of living and working, the cut-back in home production in favour of the products of the multinational corporations, the growing impoverishment through the ever-increasing dispossession of those who are insolvent, ending in the disasters like Bhopal.

If the practice of industrial development is so unsatisfactory this is above all because its theory, the basic concept of raising the underdeveloped countries to the level of the developed countries, is nonsense from the beginning. When the whole world is "developed" and busies itself with profitable stock exchange transactions where would the raw materials and foodstuffs at present imported from the underdeveloped countries come from?

But this leads to the view that real aid for the underdeveloped countries demands fundamental changes in the developed countries — and that the establishment does not want to hear. It wants to push forward normal business to an ever greater extent, to exploit the population of the underdeveloped countries as underpaid producers of raw materials and, beyond this, also to make them low-wage industrial workers and customers for the products of the multinationals. In this effort large factories have been set up in the underdeveloped countries, to the detriment of existing industries in the developed countries. Their financing has mainly come from credit.

International debts

High finance, which likes to go on about being thrifty, once again didn't follow its own advice. The big banks queued up to lend credits to the underdeveloped countries. Now they are faced with the international debt problem, the consequences of which are borne by the underdeveloped countries. Over-burdened with debts these have growing interest payments and an increasing dollar exchange rate to worry about too. The much-ballyhooed recovery of the American economy which Reagan boasts about has taken place mainly to the detriment of other countries. Tax reductions for the rich and unlimited increasing arms spending has led to an enormous deficit in the American budget with no noticeable inflation — at home. The inflation was in fact exported through the increased interest rates which attracted international capital to the US and made it a debtor country, but pushed up the exchange rate of the dollar.

The underdeveloped countries are now faced with a mountain of debts expressed in expensive dollars, borrowed at ever-increasing rates of interest. On top of this the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which the second Brandt report still hoped would increase its support for these countries, forced devaluations on the debtors, further increasing the burden of their dollar debt. In 1985 the interest payments alone were 50 per cent of the borrowed amount for Argentina and Brazil and 40 per cent in the case of Mexico. These are the so-called "threshold countries" who stand on the threshold of industrialisation and so should be "somewhat better" than the ordinary underdeveloped countries!

The Debtors

Brazil was the first country to break the hundred billion dollar debt level. In Sao Paulo 34 per cent of those available for work are unemployed. They don't known that they each owe 14,000 Schillings (about $750) to the international bankers, and, even if they did know, it wouldn't worry them. The debts were contracted under the military regime to use on numerous large projects which were in part profitable, but which in many cases became unprofitable through mismanagement and the downturn in the economy. Home-produced cars fill the streets, but have no petrol and run on alcohol which is produced from raw sugar. The cultivation of this together with that of soya beans for export means that the cultivation of foodstuffs has fallen by 12 per cent, and this in a country of chronic undernourishment! The really pressing problem of increasing the production of home-grown foodstuffs has been forgotten in the industrialisation-illusion.

The Pinochet regime in Chile, supported by international finance capital, came to power through the murder of the democratically-elected President Allende and has since practised a murderous reign of terror. But this has not meant that there have been no business swindles under it. The five big banks which Pinochet had privatised could only be saved from bankruptcy by being renationalised. And a number of bankers and two Ministers have been found guilty of fraud by the Courts.

In this respect there is no essential change if a military government is replaced by a civilian one, as has happened in Argentina and now also in Brazil, so long as the civilian government continues to obey international capital and its bailiff, the IMF. In the rest of South America and in Africa and Asia things are similar: foreign credit is mainly used for projects which ignore the needs of the population because these only very sporadically correspond to the valorisation requirements of capital.

The spectre

There is a saying that if you owe the bank $1000 you have problems but that if you owe the bank $1,000,000 the bank has problems. And the underdeveloped countries have debts of billions of dollars! Hence the spectre of a debtor's cartel: if all the developing countries were to stop their payments at the same time then all the big banks in the industrialised countries would go bankrupt and there would be an economic earthquake. At present it hasn't happened as the governments in these backward countries are in the hands of wealthy capital-benefiting minorities and have openly gone into the (well paid) service of the foreign exploiters. But in the last analysis they have to understand that an explosion threatens them if they exact further sacrifices from the population.

The creditors can no longer seriously hope to ever recover their capital. It is now only a case for the creditor-banks of not having to cancel the uncollected debts and thereby admit their faulty credit position. The debtors are given a delay for repayment and are lent yet more money so that they can pay the interest. In theory the debtors receive the new money but they never see it; it remains in New York, London, etc in the hands of the banks who are thus enabled to achieve considerable profits.

The truth is that these countries can only settle these new debts inadequately. Among the many proposed solutions there is the tried solution which always emerges when the capitalists are in difficulty: let the much-suffering state pay! This would save the banks, before or after, from their bankruptcy - naturally at the expense of the majority of the population of the industrialised countries who thereby see established a forced solidarity with the inhabitants of the underdeveloped countries.

We can't help thanking them. Financial pressures have produced more than enough harm — they have poisoned not only the thousands in Bhopal but the whole economy of the underdeveloped countries. And the economy of the industrialised countries is in no better state: they suffer from stagnation and unemployment and so have unused resources that could be used to produce the things the underdeveloped countries really need.

But this is opposed to the basic principles of the profit economy: only what yields or at least promises a profit is produced. Here is the real problem and any attempt to find a solution must start from here. The removal of the profit system is the watchword. That the Brandt Commission and the other aid schemes are chained to the profit system is the real reason for their failure.

South Africa: metals before morals (1986)

From the Summer 1986 issue of the World Socialist

In July of last year at Helsinki there was a meeting of various foreign ministers called to discuss economic sanctions against South Africa. Delivered to the meeting room was a single sheet of paper from the South African government which carried a list of the metals it exports to the rest of the world. The message was crystal clear, and to gentlemen who deal in conniving it needed no explanation: they knew that sanctions against South Africa might provoke the government in Pretoria into cutting vital metal exports and that any pressure contributing to the downfall of the racist government could bring civil disturbances that would disrupt mineral supplies for the Western and other economies.

How desperately do the Western economies need South African metals and what would be the result of a ban in supplies?

Strategic stockpiles

Western Europe and Japan are the most heavily reliant on South African minerals. In most metals, world reliance is not particularly great because other production sources or mineral substitutes are available; but in two metals, chromium and platinum, a disruption of supplies would be grave. The only country to plan for a shortage of metals is the US. Its $38 billion (US) stockpile contains a 3-year supply of "strategic metals" defined as those coming mainly from unstable countries and at the same time being vital to industry and the military. Until recently stockpile planners made no allowance for South African instability, with the result that, in some important metals, stocks are inadequate. The US stockpile, for instance, is badly deficient in platinum.

There are five metals which South Africa produces enough of to seriously matter if output were disrupted: platinum, vanadium, gold, chromium and manganese.

Vandium, normally included in stockpiles, is a strong metal mainly used in steel for pipelines, bridges and high-rise buildings. According to Peter Robbins, director of the International Metal Trade, Unicoal Metals Ltd, a cut in South African vanadium supplies, "would not be an insoluble problem. Other metals such as molybdenum, can be substituted for vanadium. With the decline in pipeline building, there is lots of both metals around at the moment. China is also a big producer. So if there was a disruption of months rather than years in South Africa, it probably wouldn't affect the market at all" (Toronto Globe and Mail, October 1, 1985).

Similarly with manganese which is in glut and available elsewhere. Used in dry-cell batteries and as one of the main ingredients in alloy steel, it is a cheap metal; the quantities added to steel are small. Having to pay higher prices to alternative producers would not be crippling. Neither would there be drastic problems if South African gold production were hit, though gold prices would rise, according to Antony Murray of the Commodities Research Unit, one of the largest international minerals consulting firms:

More than 90 percent of all gold ever mined is still around on the gold markets. Known world gold stocks are more than 20,000 tonnes — equal to more than 30 years of South African production. In uranium, where there is over-supply, it would be a relief if South Africa stopped production. Diamonds are also an embarrassment. Industry need not worry about the diamond supply (Toronto Star, September 30, 1985).

But what about platinum?

The West seems able to cope with any South African disruption except chromium and platinum:

Chrome consumers who use the metal in making high quality steel for aerospace, petroleum and chemical industries, have already persuaded South African producers to store extra supplies abroad, and West German users are turning to the Philippines as an alternative supplier. Even with this added to government stockpiles, disruption would hurt badly, particularly in Western Europe. Though South Africa produces 30 percent of the world's chrome supplies, Britain, for example, depends on it for 60 percent of its consumption. The British government over the years, could, but didn't, find other suppliers such as Albania, which sells its chrome through an agent in Milan (Leslie Plommer, Toronto Globe and Mail, October 1, 1985).

The West could, perhaps, cope with a partial reduction in chromium supplies by substituting other metals where possible. One problem they would have is that the Soviet Union might withhold its chromium from the West, in its attempts to damage their economies. On the other hand, it might sell. During the Vietnam war, Russia sold nickel to the US (when there was a nickel-miners strike), knowing it was being used for production in the war against the North-Vietnamese, who they were backing. Commodities, including raw materials, are made (or mined) for sale at a profit on the market and one market is as good as another.

To what extent a cut-back in chromium supplies would affect Western economies, would be dependant on how long it would last. A one or two-month disruption would be no major problem, though it would force prices up. However, a 6-month break would create major difficulties.

Equally crucial are the expensive platinum group metals (PMG) of which the most important are platinum, palladium and rhodium. Their uses include catalysts for the petro-chemical industry and for reducing toxic-emissions from cars. Platinum is currently in good supply with prices low and palladium is in glut. Rhodium, however, is in short supply as Japanese and US car production has increased. Its price has quadrupled in a year. Demand for the platinum group is soon to increase further as the European community phases in new exhaust regulations for auto-makers starting in 1987. It could be that a disruption in South African supplies might force suspension of laws on auto-emissions in the US and Japan and a delay of the European measures. Rising prices could also induce jewellery owners - who absorb about 10 percent of world production — to sell their bangles for industrial use. At present no country keeps a stockpile of platinum and at the moment there is only a 3-month world supply in stock. Canada, the only significant Western source, produces one-tenth the volume mined by South Africa. With other metals, it may be possible to find ways of getting around shortages, but with platinum it's not possible. There would be a major industrial disruption, causing technology and industry to be redesigned completely.

Fear of losing supplies

Keith Shaw, senior mining analyst for Laing and Cruickshank, one of London's largest stockbrokers, believes Western dependence on South African supplies across a range of minerals is underestimated. "No country is indespensible", he said, "but, if the US gets tucked into Star Wars, there will be a big increase in the importance of South African metals. In an increasingly high-tech world, South Africa is a sensible supplier of these things" (Toronto Globe and Mail, October 2, 1985).

Experts point to another possibility. South Africa has the power to block mineral exports from Zambia, Zaire, and Zimbabwe. These countries, along the African mineral spine, which stretches from the Congo to the Cape, are huge producers of many of the same metals as South Africa and to export them they are dependant on South Africa for locomotives, sea access and port facilities. Any move against them by South Africa would not only ruin their economies, but increase world reliance on South Africa, even more than at present.

Given the profit-oriented nature of capitalism, there are a few basic points we can be sure of. Governments, elected or otherwise, exist primarily to administer the affairs of capitalism. Since capitalism's very death blood is the profit-motive it logically follows that major government decisions, like major business decisions, are with view to profit, both long term as well as short term. To keep business, hence profits, moving smoothly (or as smooth as possible in the anarchy that is capitalism) they must have the necessary raw materials.

No government gives a damn about ethical and moral considerations, not because they are composed of nasty people and not because many of them weren't concerned before they came to power, but because once in power, they quickly find out there is only one thing they can do — run the affairs of capitalism. The dog wags the tail, not the tail the dog. Whatever politicians say and whatever minor steps are taken against South Africa, there will be no major course of action against it for fear of losing needed supplies. Breaking off diplomatic relations can hardly be considered a major course of action if one still buys from them; that's like not having a chat with your butcher when you buy his meat. Nor would economic sanctions solve anything.

History has proven that racial prejudice cannot be eradicated within capitalism, a system which, by its very class divisions and the competitiveness these create, divides worker against worker. Only by recognizing that socialism (as defined below) alone is the answer to the major social problems and that political organization is the way to achieve it, can people really start to remove apartheid, racism and economic sanctions as well as all forms of economic blackmail.

Ray Rawlings

(Canada)

What socialism is (1986)

From the Summer 1986 issue of the World Socialist

Socialism is not the state capitalism that is oppressing the workers in the USSR, China, Yugoslavia, Poland or any other country that claims to be socialist. Socialism also is not the nationalization of industries that Sweden, Great Britain and others have set up. In fact, socialism has never been truly tried anywhere on the face of the earth.

A socialist society is a stateless, moneyless, classless society based on production to satisfy human needs. A socialist society has collective ownership by all of the railroads, factories, mines and other means of production. These means of production will be controlled through a democratically elected administration. The persons in this administration will be subject to removal at any time by the people who elected them.

The only way the above society can become a reality is if the working class organizes into a political party of socialism and through democratic elections captures the state. Socialism cannot be established by a vanguard party. Socialism must be established through a majority of persons wishing it so. In places where there are no electoral ways of taking power other democratic means may have to be taken. But, in such places as the US, Great Britain and Canada where workers have access to the ballot, peaceful electoral methods should be used.

Rich Foland

(United States)

The tyranny of the wages system (1985-6)

From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist

In any form of society wealth is created by the application of human labour-power to nature-given materials. In capitalist society, whether 'private' or state varieties, this fact is concealed by the need to procure capital to furnish machinery and equipment and to pay wages — thus the capitalist apologia that capital and labour are complementary. The relationship is one created by capitalism and, whereas the skills and energies of workers can, if allowed access to natural resources, produce all the goods and services required by human beings, a train-load of money, left over an area where seismographic tests have indicated, say, the presence of oil, will not succeed even in breaking the soil.

Capital, in the form of money, is simply congealed labour, an exchange equivalent of commodities already produced by wage labour. In its constant form (raw materials, buildings, machinery, etc.) it is, similarly, a representation of accumulated labour. It is labour-power that produces all wealth and it is in our role as wealth-producers obliged to sell ourselves on the labour market for a wage or salary that the working class is exploited. We are not, as a class, exploited as consumers or as taxpayers but as producers.

Capitalism's exploitive mechanism is the wages system. We live in a society where the means of life such as food, clothing and shelter have to be purchased with money. For the great majority of people, that money is derived from a wage packet or a salary cheque which they receive from their employer for the sale of their labour-power, their mental or physical ability to contribute to the production of wealth. It is this necessity to sell its labour-power that divides the working class from the minority of capitalists who — whether they choose to work or not — are able to live by profit or by rent or interest. Thus capitalism divides the human family into two distinct and conflicting classes: the capitalist class, which buys labour-power, and the working class, which sells labour-power. Inevitably, as in all transactions between buyer and seller, there is a conflict of interest between these two classes with one trying to sell its labour-power for as much as possible and the other trying to buy it as cheaply as possible.

The source of all wealth, as we have observed, is human labour-power applied to nature-given materials. But the wealth produced, which, under capitalism takes the form of a great aggregation of commodities, does not belong to the class that produces it but, instead, to the class whose claim to ownership of the natural resources and the means of production (themselves the product of past expenditure of labour-power) are enshrined in law and enforced, if necessary, by the coercive power of the state.

The unassailable fact that all wealth is produced by the working class demonstrates that the source of capital accumulation and of the profit, rent and interest that underwrites the affluence, power and privilege of the capitalist class is the surplus of wealth produced over and above what the working class is paid for its labours. This is in accordance with the economic laws of a market economy for though the workers do receive the value of the commodity they sell, their labour-power, nevertheless their exploitation is through the wages system.

What we get for the sale of our labour-power to our employers is a wage or salary that equates to the price currently being paid for our particular type of labour-power. Our ability to work, in capitalist society, is a commodity the price of which is determined by the same factors as govern the price of other commodities. When a particular commodity is in short supply its price tends to rise and, when it is plentiful, its price tends to fall. To say this, however, begs the question: above what does it rise and fall? The answer is its value and that value is determined by its labour cost of production or, in other words, by the amount of socially-necessary labour time required under average conditions of production to produce it from start to finish. It is value that determines the point above and below which prices fluctuate in line with supply and demand.

Since our labour-power is sold on the labour market as a commodity, its value is determined in the same way as any other commodity. In other words, the value of labour-power is determined by the amount of socially-necessary labour required to maintain us as useful, functioning units of production and enable us to provide for the next generation of wage slaves. The value of particular types of labour-power varies, then, in accordance with the amount of training or education that is required to equip workers with certain skills and these greater values are reflected in the inequality of wages.

But labour-power has a unique property: it can create value of greater quantity than the value required in its own production. It is this capacity to create surplus value that lies at the heart of the workers' exploitation and the capitalists' profit. In any given period labour-power can produce wealth greater than the equivalent of the socially-necessary labour required in its own production. Let us say that workers in a particular industry produce a value amounting to double that of the value of their own labour-power. In half of each day they would produce a value equal to the value represented by their wages for a full day. For the second half of each day they would produce a surplus over and above the value they received in the form of wages or salary. This surplus value belongs to their employer and represents his profit, after payment of rent or Interest if the employer has such obligations.

The ratio of labour-power paid for by an employer to that spent by the worker in creating surplus value determines the rate of exploitation of the worker or, as Marx called it, the rate of surplus value. "The rate of surplus value, all other circumstances remaining the same, will depend in the proportion between that part of the working day necessary to reproduce the value of the labouring power and the surplus time performed for the capitalists" (Value, Price and Profit).

This, then, is the seat of capitalist exploitation of the working class. Other conditions, such as the state of the market, the degree of working class organisation in trade unions and, even, the form of capitalist organisation, may affect or influence the rate of exploitation of the worker at particular times but such influences can themselves be cancelled out by market forces. It is the tyranny of the wages system that itself imposes on the working class their slave status. Where the wages-system exists, irrespective of what party holds political power or whether ownership of the wealth-producing machinery is vested in the state or is in private hands, capitalism exists. That is why Marx refused to support the nonsensical slogan of "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work" and urged workers to inscribe instead on their banner "ABOLITION OF THE WAGES SYSTEM".

That is why the World Socialist Movement defines Socialism as a wageless, moneyless and classless society of common ownership and production for use.

Richard Montague

(Ireland)

The threat to the Great Lakes (1985-6)

From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist

In recent months there has been antagonism between various Canadian and American politicians concerning access to, and the use of, water from the Great Lakes, with each going to bat for the respective needs of the big-business interests they represent. A conference held in Toronto in June, 1984, solved nothing, though some ideas were voiced that could, in a sane society, be workable.

As far as we know, Samuel de Champlain was the first white man to reach the shores of the Great Lakes in 1615. Though he could not have known it, he had stumbled on to the greatest lake system in the world. Though the lakes could not have known it either, it was the portent of dreadful things to come.

Now, less than 400 years later, its watershed is home to 50 million thirsty folk, with another 100 million even thirstier people casting envious eyes northward. The fact that some US political errand boys, such  as  Governor  Scott Matheson  of Utah,  seem sincere  in  their intentions to quench this rather large thirst, can be explained by the simple word — votes. There are, however, more than Scott's electors who need it and intend by foul means or fouler, to get it; such as farmers in the mid-west who want it for increasing their profits through irrigation. Then there are western coal producers who want to take it out to use for coal slurry pipelines.

These would be new uses for the lakes which for years have been very useful to large companies in other ways — such as a dumping ground for industrial pollution. This is the way Lake Erie was killed; not killed meaning dead of course. It was alive, but with plenty of the wrong things.

It's typical that the effects of capitalism create a problem for its everyday abnormal functioning, then you have its apologists running around panicking because they have a problem.

Wasting what's not renewable

The lakes are immense, covering an area the size of Michigan, Indiana and Ohio combined. In some places, they go to the depth of 1,000 feet. They are, however, fragile, chemical-wise, and must be treated carefully. They were created after the last ice age and are not renewable; only the annual fall of rain and snow is.

Many reports have been presented to the various interested parties, but most stress the qualitative aspect not the quantitative. There is, however, a mean level that must be maintained at all times. If it isn't, shipping, the tourist industry and power generation are affected. That critical level cannot be sustained if more water is taken out than put in.

In   many  areas  of North  America,   man's  withdrawal  from  the watershed and acquirers exceeds nature's deposits. Wells are drying up, river flows are declining, yet businesses waste water continuously. Seeking to solve the problem within capitalism, they are searching for ways to recapture the finite amounts flowing through the water cycle. If they tackle this problem with the same degree of success they've had curbing pollution, the day will come when one will be able to drive from one end of the system to the other on the bed of the lake.

America uses 250 billions of gallons of fresh water a day, over half of it for irrigation, and the US General Accounting Office says that half the water used for irrigation is wasted. Yet, the working Joe wastes very little, 25 percent he drinks, the other 75 percent is used in the bathroom (baths, showers, flushing the toilet).

Of all the world's water, less than 1 per cent is available in North America. It's in the rivers, streams and underground aquifiers. The rest is salty or frozen in polar ice caps. Twenty-five percent of this 1 percent is in the Great Lakes, providing water for 200 towns and cities on its shores and other parts of the continent, keeping large factories going, providing hydro power and supporting a tourism industry generating $50 billion a year.

It seems strange (and it is) to be as concerned, as some conservationists and other sundry do-gooders are, because farm land is being gobbled up for shopping centres and condos, while underneath the water slips beyond their grasp.

A quarter of a million square miles of land above the Ogallala Aquifier, which is the world's largest reservoir of ground water, produces 25 percent of American cotton, 38 percent of the grain sorghum, 16 percent of the wheat and 15 percent of the corn. Forty percent of America's grain-fed beef is fattened and watered here. At the present rate of usage, the Ogallala Aquifier will be dry in 2024. A ten million year old resource wiped out in a few decades.

Conflicts of capitalist interest

The Chicago diversion plan is typical of the anarchy of capitalism. The Great Lakes are used for water supplies, for sewage disposal, for power generation and for navigation. Since these waters are shared by the US and Canada, it is inevitable that given the profit-oriented nature of capitalism, clashes between the ruling class in both countries will occur.

As Lake Michigan is wholly within the US, Ontario and bordering states are dependant on US Supreme Court decrees to control its outflow and as the Chicago diversion would affect levels in the entire system, the future (if any) of the system could well be decided in American courts and not by the International Joint Commission set up under the International Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909, which is made up of officials from both countries and supposedly oversees the use of the Great Lakes system.

This plan would seriously affect water levels in the Great Lakes and the Ontario government is concerned about it, particularly because severe lowering of lake levels would kill a multi-billion dollar shipping industry, and has made it clear that it will not support diversion of waters direct or indirect.

To solve the problem of the Ogallala Aquifier being used for irrigation faster than rainfall can replenish it, it has been suggested by some mid-west Senators to pipe water from Lake Superior, 600 miles to the Missouri River Basin. This is not merely opposed by Canadians involved, but also some Americans. Ex-governor Milliken of Michigan said he would give anyone proposing such ideas a "good drenching." Milliken himself, when in office, was vociferous in his support of conservation. One wonders if the support of Milliken by the 500,000 strong Michigan Conservation Club, had any bearing on it.

Another dilemma is how to ship coal from the western minefields to the industrial areas in the mid-west where it's needed for power. It has been suggested that it be crushed, mixed with water piped from Lake Michigan and pumped through a slurry pipeline to mid-west states.

Recently, there was also talk of increasing the water flow to improve local water quality and to lower Great Lake levels, reducing erosion and flooding damage. A recent study shows that increasing the water flow to 10,000 cubic feet a second would yield "benefits" worth $3.25 million. It also found that the resulting power and navigation losses would total $40 million annually. So, the "experts" are considering an increase to 6,600 cubic feet per second instead.

In each case, the so-called solution is to use Great Lakes water with no care for the consequences. The benefits, meaning profits for businesses, would be short-term and who knows what later; but then, that is the way capitalism must function.

Whatever happens, one thing's for sure, soon big business in the US will need more water, particularly if they wish to continue wasting it at the present rate. Also, the ruling class realize the working class need it in order to continue to be in a fit state to be exploited. Some observers think that the US may start leaning on Canada to buy Canadian water by the turn of the century. It all boils down to whether or not the predicted shortage will reach beyond toilet flushing and showers to such a trickle that it threatens all human survival — capitalist as well as worker.

No concern for the future

If much of the above seems to the reader to be irresponsible to the point of folly, that's because capitalism, through the profit motive, its very death blood, can function in no other way. Profits must be acquired and quickly for a business to survive, regardless of what long-term disasters may do to those businesses in the future. Also, the need of competing sections of the capitalist class for materials for its specific requirements, which in this case means a source of power to run industry, as well as profits concerning the sale of drink, must inevitably bring them into clashes with each other, clashes the working class has no stake in.

In a socialist society, with the abolition of the profit motive, no such screwball situations could exist. Whereas water, and anything else people need, would be moved from one place to another, this would not mean lowering the levels of lakes if it's thought that would create problems. Mankind would use the technology and technical know-how available to find where water is and transport it wherever it's needed without plundering and wasting the resources on which continuing human life on this planet depends.

Ray Rawlings

(Canada)

Class-divided society breeds pollution (1985-6)

From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist

In world capitalism, goods and services take the form of commodities, i.e., goods produced primarily for profit. They must be sold to realise dividends for private shareholders, interest for owners of government bonds and an income for members of the capitalist class generally. The unearned wealth that accrues to the owners and controllers of capital, whether private or state, comes in the form of unpaid or stolen labor. Wages only supply workers with the cost of maintenance and renewal of the abilities they sell. Wages are far less than the monetary value of the things workers produce. Investment only occurs when the workers can be fleeced in this manner. No profit, no production. To compete successfully for markets industries must minimize costs. They must produce cheaply to get buyers. One of the ways of doing this is to produce without concern for the environment and to avoid neutralizing the wastes even if they are dangerous to humanity.

Pollution and class-divided social systems co-exist, they form two sides of an equation. Exploitation by a dominant class of a subject class leads to despoiliation of the natural environment. No social interest exists, because of the absence of social cohesion in the interests of all individuals who make up the organised group.

On the other hand, in the classless phase of social evolution known as tribal or primitive society, humans were in harmony with the nature that they so urgently depended upon. With a sparse knowledge of the world, mankind was compelled to utilize every bit of vegetable and mineral substance he could apprehend. It was a food-gathering, not a money-gathering culture. Man lived in reverence of the material-elemental source of survival. And co-operation for the individual-common good was mandatory.

Environmental destruction began when this social unity for the good of all broke up into antagonistic classes of masters and slaves around 7 to 10 thousand years ago. With a ruling class, responsible only to itself in its quest for riches out of the surplus labor of its slaves, there was little concern for making resources sustainable or extensible.

The two pre-capitalist property systems, chattel slavery and feudalism, brought about deforestation, erosion, soil exhaustion, flooding, air pollution, wild-life extinction and disease. (Hughs, Ecology in Ancient Civilizations). With the coming of industrial production, in the form of capital and wage-labor, in the 18th and 19th centuries and the expansion of production this brought about, the defilement of nature increased proportionately. Vast areas of England and Europe were blackened by soot. Millions of wage slaves there and in the US suffered lung diseases, cancers, and died from industrial pollution and degraded tainted food.

Pollution control: legalizing levels of pollution

Since the wages-prices-profit system is perceived as being unchangeable, so despoilment of nature is viewed as being physically necessary or inevitable. The system's reaction is to deal with the symptoms. For instance, as birth defects double every 20 years (Toronto Star, 19/5/84), governments pay for special homes, and educational facilities for the growing number of mentally retarded, handicapped children. As the North American cancer rate rises to 18 per cent of deaths (Epstein, Politics of Cancer), which according to the World Health Organization (WHO) is 75 to 80 per cent environmentally caused, governments and industry finance medical research and care to fight the disease. Obviously, after divesting workers of the fruits of their labor and polluting their bodies, profits are healthy enough for the employing class to transfer a portion toward band-aids for social sores and propaganda about governments being oriented around the interests of all.

Pollution controls have been enacted by governments in various countries, but these are the minimum levels thought to be necessary to protect the profits of the owning class, not the health of the population. Pollution control has nothing more to do with health than war has to do with saving lives.

The Ecologist, (Nov/Dec 1979) points out that acceptable levels of potentially dangerous chemicals released ". . . are simply the minimum levels that can be achieved without compromising economic priorities". (Their emphasis, "economic" being a popular euphemism to downplay profits). It also showed that WHO's minimum standard of mercury poison in food of 0.2 to 0.5 ppm catered to the average cost of profitable production of most countries. Costs in Swedish fisheries during the 1960's for example, were higher than WHO's average. Sweden had to allow 1.00 ppm of mercury poison or else 45 per cent of its fisheries would have had to shut down. Another example from the Ecologist: "When WHO recently raised (the acceptable level of lead in drinking water) from 50 micrograms to 100 micrograms per litre, this was not the result of the sudden discovery that man was less sensitive to lead poisoning than previously thought, but to the fact that few water authorities could provide water to this standard" (their italics).

A legalized level of pollution, to make working class exploitation possible, while being biologically harmful to the useful class, is not a rigid boundary line which cannot be transgressed. The anarchy of market competition makes control merely a goal. Laws against gross desecration are about as effective as laws against bank robbery.

A small percentage of violators are caught, and fined lightly. Much of the contamination is unknown to regulatory authorities. Some businesses do not even know if their wastes are toxic. Others refuse to reveal the nature of their disposal matter for fear of imparting information to their competitors. In the US state of New Jersey, crime kings have moved into the disposal of hazardous waste business (Times/ Colonist, 17/12/80). It is very lucrative, surreptitiously dumping the stuff without neutralizing it. Up to 1979 there were thousands of dangerous dumps in the US, with no laws or funds to deal with them (New Scientist, 21/6/79).   Many   more   were   unknown,   with   businesses   sneaking truckloads of toxic effluvium, at high speed, nocturnally, to secret destinations. Oil spills are generally uncontrollable as they are incurred between national boundaries.

There are more unknown factors. Several million pollutants have been introduced into the global environment. How many break down or decay into new compounds, and what they are, is unknown. The synergic effects, where destructive chemicals, acting upon one another, combining to increase the sum of their individual potency hundreds of times more than when in isolation, is mostly unknown. The US Environmental Protection Agency studied that country's drinking water and discovered that "there may be a myriad of organic chemicals, not yet isolated and identified" (Ecologist, November/December 1979). There is the so-called safe level of poisoning for the average person* but most people are not average. And so on.

Pollution control means governments issuing permits to industries to sell "safe" pesticides, food additives and to dump toxic chemical wastes harmlessly, then, after 10 or so years of public exposure to them, banning them after discovering through further research, that they are harmful after all. Control also means governments issuing permits to pollute. Amax of Canada, Ltd, for example, sat down with the federal government and helped to write its own permit to dump toxic mine tailings into a northern British Columbia ocean inlet, which the local Nishga Indians depended on for their fish supplies (Times/Colonist, 1/3/ 83).

Control also means a Canadian government without enough money to conduct its own tests on new pesticides and additives coming on the market. Instead it accepts the reports on tests done by the manufacturers themselves. This is like sending the fox to guard the chicken coop. Consequently, one testing firm, Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories, Inc. of Northbrook, 111., falsified health tests on pesticides and drugs for 7 years, to save money (Times/Colonist, 23/6/81). Control means the Canadian government health department knowingly allowing Canada Housing, a mortgage corporation, to use carcinogenic urea formaldehyde foam insulation for government subsidized home insulation for workers (Times/Colonist, 5/9/81).

Under state capitalism too

The words "Communist," "Socialist" or "Marxist," are pseudonyms which conceal the state capitalism which exists in all "iron curtain" countries. It should come as no surprise therefore, that production for sale-profit social conditions under rigid, one-party police states degrade the environment as they do in the rest of the world.

Poland, for example, is likely the most polluted country in the world (New Scientist, 22/10/81). In Russia, the massive surface coal mining complexes ". . . are witness to the environmental devastation that has been caused. Vast tracts of forest and agricultural land have been torn up, and the pollution of local streams and rivers has been drastic." Deforestation has resulted in serious land erosion (Ecologist, June/78). The 5-year plan, rapid capital expansion (high profits) development of the USSR has left little regard for ecological conservation.

China has been desecrating its own land surface by deforesting 24 per cent of its treed area for pulp and paper profits during the 1940's (Toronto Star, 19/5/84). At this time, only 12 per cent of China has trees. The scenery along the Yellow River is a bald moonscape, and a brown smog chokes Peking, to the extent of eating the wood and stone ballustrades of the ancient imperial palace (Toronto Star, 24/5/84). That country's capitalist political dictators fear that "ultimate . . . ecological disaster" could threaten their "modernization (= more efficient exploitation of the workers) plans." China too, has begun to tinker with effects, by choking the political atmosphere with bureaucratic institutions, such as the Municipal Bureau for Preserving Cultural Relics, and laws, in a vain attempt to curb pollution.

Ecology movements trapped by the economic system

The average crusader against ecological degradation sees the private and state property system, with its money, wages and profits, as basically a static arrangement which can be improved for the masses through a gradual process of reform for the common good. Ecologists are generally unaware of the class-divided world social structure, and of their own existence as workers as part of the lower, exploited one of two antagonistic classes.

Environmentalists could be included as members of "his majesty's loyal opposition". Some of their groups receive grants from governments who are funded through taxes from some industries which are extreme polluters. The movements function, in part, as watchdogs to try to see that the system's masochistic excesses don't get out of hand and threaten, in some areas, the exploitive apple cart. Many of their victories undoubtedly meet with the approval of the polluting industries' shareholders, who may not quite make the connection between the earth's degradation and their dividends. These manipulated successes are enough to motivate the tinkerers onward. It is encouraging that they protest the debauchery of the planet, but not so happy that they are failing to stop it.

Ecologists are ill-equipped, have no answer for such defenses from the spokesmen of the owning class that more pollution should be allowed during a depression, to help to "create" jobs; or to cut costs so that "our" industries can compete on foreign markets.

If they ever came to power the ecologists would be trapped by the economics of the system. There are not as many ecological organizations as there are toxic elements and other threats to the natural surroundings, but it is likely that many reformers would favor such a state, to hopefully make their efforts effective. Advice on scrubbing unwashed vegetables and fruits to reduce pesticide residues, and ingest vitamin and mineral supplements to neutralize environmental poisons, are within the band-aid sphere of the ecology movements.

Being generally and unconsciously mired in capitalist ideology, ecology groups embrace the political "spectrum" parties, from extreme "left" to the "right" with most tending toward liberal left. Some, such as the Green Party of West Germany, Canada and the US and the Ecology Party of Britain, have organised separate parties. They too aim for a clean earth, in contradiction to the conventional thinking which they share with the rest of the working class.

A world free of pollution

Once the realities of the present sick society are perceived, putting a stop to environmental degradation and regenerating the planet becomes a matter of the conscious majority, the world's workers, taking political action to replace it with common ownership and democratic control of the means of life. Which means voluntarily co-operative production and distribution for the free consumption of all according to each individual's requirements.

There is no technological barrier to a pollution-free earth, but there is a political one, at present. Some scientists are aware that no such technological barrier exists, including chemistry Nobel prize winner Sir Derek Barton of London's Imperial College. In a lecture to the Vancouver Institute, University of B.C., he said: "The problem of pollution does not exist. We already have the knowledge to correct pollution when we find it. World problems of energy, pollution, hunger . . . and the economy are all artificial. . . crises" (Vancouver Sun, 31/10/77). He is supported by Dr Lee A. Dubridge of CalTech: "We now have enough technical knowledge to solve most of mankind's problems .. . The air of all cities would be free of all forms of man-made pollution'." (New York Herald Tribune, 25/10/ 61). (If the restrictions of the financial yardstick were out of the way). And from another source; during the observation of environment day, Environment Canada said: "We can have development without pollution. We have the technology — all we need is the will." (CFMS Radio, 5/6/80).

When mankind is in control of its social forces, the circumstances point to the human species identifying its interests with the earth on which it depends for its well-being. The ending of military competition between blocks of capital in nations, vying for markets and materials, will eliminate a large proportion of global contamination. Probably the first anti-pollution goal of the classless world democracy will be: (1) finding and neutralizing the deadly dumps of the past, and cleaning the poisonous air, water and soil; (2) modifying, as well as expanding productive and distributive processes, so that all can be provided for, with no pollution.

Free society will use scientific and technical potential that is possible today for these purposes, but which the present divided, competitive system has no call for. A few instances. Agriculture can be revolutionized to maintain fertile soil, health and strength of plants and their natural immunization against insects and disease. Insects have been used to control harmful insects; bacteria to control other bacteria and harmful insects; bacteria to break down sewage for natural fertilizer; some plants can protect other plants from insect pests; some useful plants can repel weeds, chemically, some pesticides have been developed which are harmful only to the insects which need to be controlled, and to no other biological species.

There are some small farmers in Canada's prairie provinces, who make a living with large yields of high quality grain, preserving fertile soil, using no artificial fertilizers or pesticides. Some small beef producers are raising cattle at low cost, with no feed supplements, no artificial vitamins, or drugs, even under the handicaps of present-day society. And this is only scratching the surface, in the area of agriculture alone.

The fractions of people, which is what wage-slaves are, will be transformed into enlightened somebodies. Socialist society will have something that capitalism forbids, the creative and productive potential that every human is born with. People will participate in a society of their choosing, free to express the natural urge to solve problems, express self-interest in co-operative harmony with all others, for maximum enjoyment of life.

Humanity in control of its affairs will never do what capitalism does—defecate on its doorstep.

George Jenkins

(Canada)