". . . And too dear" (1948)

From the December 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is some months now since the present Government started its "More production” poster propaganda campaign. The first, and perhaps the most notorious, of this series of posters, was the one headed. "Work or Want.” Many workers dubbed this the "Work and Want” poster. There followed the "Ten-per-cent” poster, being an appeal by Mr. Attlee for a 10 per cent, all round increase in production. Since then there have been a number of similar large bills, pictorial and otherwise, decorating the hoardings.

The recent one carrying the doggerel:

"Some make big stuff, Some make small,

    More from each means more for all.” 

gave rise to wisecracks and humorous comment from some workers. Popular was the parody,

"Some make big stuff, some make small,

   But the boss sits around and makes sweet nothing at all.”

The latest edition in this poster campaign is far from funny. It sounds a note of warning. This poster boldly announces that it is issued by "His Majesty’s Government.” In view of the speeches and writings of some of the members of that Government in their less palmy days, one can only conclude that, either they are indulging in downright lying propaganda and know it, or else they are so stupid and ignorant of the manner in which Capitalism operates, that one can only marvel that they should have achieved their present position. 

The poster reads:

"Jobs. The danger to full employment is not producing too much, but producing too little —and too dear.”

The fact that it has been found necessary to make such a statement as this is an indication that the real cause of unemployment is fairly widely appreciated by the working class. It is fast becoming apparent to the workers that, when goods have been produced in such great quantities that the markets of the world cannot absorb them, then production will cease, or, at least, slow down. In either case it spells loss of employment to many.

The warning of the approach of that day is contained in the final phrase on this poster. “ —and too dear.” No longer is there a “sellers’ market.” The post-war day is almost past when the demand for goods is so great that extravagant prices can be asked—and obtained—for them. Governments in all parts of the world are urging their respective workers to hustle, to produce more, to work harder, to work longer, to abolish restrictive practices, etc. All are striving to make the most of that wonderful market, that dwindling market which provides such remarkable profits. And with the wealth of goods that the workers are producing, the market is becoming saturated. It is less easy to sell now. Competition is becoming more keen. That means that prices will be cut in an endeavour to undersell competitors. Lower prices mean lower profits, unless the cost of production can be lowered also. Lowering the cost of production means that, either fewer workers are to be employed to produce a given amount; the same number of workers must produce more at the same cost; or the same number of workers must produce the given amount at a lower cost. And that word "cost” means “wages” to the workers. It is, of course, the second alternative that is being urged at the moment, with just a suspicion of a hint at the third.

We note that the employers in the Ladies’ Hairdressing Trade are saying that the present price cutting war in that trade will mean that they may he unable to meet their employees’ wage demands. This line of argument will not be confined to one trade alone.

Those words "—and too dear” are indeed a warning, maybe even a threat.

W. Waters.

Another Anti-War Committee (1948)

From the December 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why the S.P.G.B. will not join in

We received an invitation from the London Division of the I.L.P. in which they ask if the S.P.G.B. “will agree to a working committee together with ourselves, the Common Wealth Party, Peace Pledge Union, Anarchist Federation and/or any other body with the exception of the Communist Party, that is interested in an anti-war campaign.”

The purpose of the Committee, as set out in the letter of invitation, is “to cover the present drift towards a Third World War and, if possible, to put forward suggestions that we may have in common for future activities.”

The invitation was declined, the I.L.P. being informed by the Executive Committee of the S.P.G.B. that we are not prepared to ally ourselves with our political opponents for any purpose.

This attitude will not be understood by the well-meaning people who are forming the committee and therefore it merits some explanation.

We accept the view that the world is drifting towards another war—though to be more precise it is not enough to speak of a drift; rather it should be said that certain factors are at work actively promoting international conflict. What are these factors? They are the ceaseless efforts made by all the countries (including, of course, those ruled by Labour Party Governments and Communist Party Governments) to capture foreign markets for their exports, to control trade routes and strategic points, and to acquire or hold territories rich in raw materials.

The only way to remove the cause of war is to remove capitalism, and the only method is for a working class won over to Socialism, democratically to gain control of the machinery of government for the purpose of establishing Socialism. In relation to this object the setting up of Anti-War Committees while leaving capitalism intact is a sheer irrelevance, futile because it cannot abolish war and dangerous because of the illusions it fosters.

Where do the various organisations stand that are to set up this Anti-War Committee? The I.L.P. and Common Wealth have a record of activity, not of seeking to abolish capitalism and establish Socialism, but of supporting reforms of capitalism and of propagating the false notion that nationalisation or State Capitalism is Socialism or is a means to achieve Socialism.

The Peace Pledge Union has members in all the non-Socialist parties and is not concerned as such with abolishing capitalism which is the cause of war.

The Anarchist Federation adds its quota of confusion by denying the need for the control of the machinery of Government and by pretending that the failure of Labour and Communist State Capitalism is a failure of Socialism.

In these circumstances to talk of forming a joint committee based on what the S.P.G.B. has “in common” with these other bodies is an absurdity. The S.P.G.B. unites with Socialists to achieve Socialism but will not help to perpetuate the error that sham unity with the opponents of Socialism, however well-meaning they may be, will help the working-class or the Socialist movement.

When we come to examine the proposed committee in detail the truth of what is said above will be apparent. The Committee is to unite all parties that “are interested in an anti-war campaign “—with one exception, the Communist Party. But the Communist Party, in between supporting various wars, is more interested than any organisation in running anti-war campaigns. It is one of their most fruitful methods of tricking the working class into serving as tools for Russian Government policy. Indeed, they are running such a campaign now (simultaneously with supporting various wars, as in China and Palestine), and among the speakers at the Anti-War Rally that they organised in Trafalgar Square on Sunday, 14th November, was at least one prominent member of the Peace Pledge Union, Miss Sybil Morrison. (See Daily Worker, 11/11/48.) So the Anti-War Committee is to include the P.P.U. and exclude the Communists, while a P.P.U. speaker associates with the excluded Communist Party! The new United Committee has demonstrated its lack of unity before it even held its first meeting. It will end like the scores of earlier attempts on the same lines— they flourish in peace and disintegrate when war comes.

Ed. Comm.

Common ownership of jumble sales (1948)

From the December 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Arise ye starvelings from your slumber. It won't be long now. Christmas is coming accompanied by the Daily Worker Bazaar Organiser. Our old Comrades Communist Association are feeling the pinch. The price of whitewash for the decoration of garden walls and railway bridges has gone up. If you want the Revolution unimpeded and such slogans as “long live the Working Class” or “fight for peace” rally to the rescue. Dig out mother-in-law’s old “what’s its” your father’s old thingamybobs and peace be with ye! Dame Rumour has it that the Red Dean will convey the odour of sanctity by donating half-a-dozen old cassocks and two sets of surplices. Old socks and Union Jacks will be democratically assembled in patchwork quilts, rag rugs, and soft dolls with soft heads.

The big day is in December, when the “day to day struggle” begins on the “Jumble” front. Special competitions better than the News of the World crossword will occupy the grey matter. This year’s competition is “What is our Policy?” What’s that? Oh, we have it wrong. That was last year’s competition, we stand corrected. We understand from King Street that the competition will be “What has the Daily Worker got that the others haven’t got?” By way of a few clues they kid us along by a process of elimination. Listen to this bizarre bazaar handbill.

“Look through a week’s issue and you’ll see it’s got everything the other papers have got: All the news from home and abroad — cartoons — features for women — a strip for the kiddies — reviews of films, books, theatre, radio, art, hints on gardening, handicrafts and bringing up children— a page of sports by a team of experts—Yes . . . it’s all there.”

The Jumble Sale leaflet does, however enlighten us a little further. In answer to its own question about what it is the Daily Worker has that the others haven’t got we read: “ Well—it’s no great secret . . . it’s the Fighting Fund That makes it different.”

Wot, no Communism?

“Silence, fool, or suffer excommunication!”

J.D.

Cheaper food—less wages (1948)

From the December 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the firm of Harry Ferguson, Ltd., of Coventry, producers of the Ferguson Tractor, comes a booklet containing an alleged solution to the rising cost of living. By reducing the cost of food and thereby preventing demands for higher wages, the farmer, so he is assured, can prevent the “vicious, mounting spiral of inflation.” But let Harry Ferguson, Ltd., speak for themselves:

A paragraph headed : “Industry’s Prime Cost’’ proceeds:

“The prime cost of all industry is the cost of maintaining human beings. Human beings cannot he maintained unless they are paid enough to ensure that they get sufficient food to keep them fit to do their jobs; and they must also have, at the very least, a reasonable margin left over to enjoy other things.

“If, therefore, food prices can be stabilised, wages can be stabilised too.”

The writer delicately refrains from carrying his argument to the next logical step—that if food prices can be reduced, wages can be reduced too.

This booklet has not, as you may guess, been produced for the purpose of introducing the employees of Harry Ferguson, Ltd., to Marx’s theory of Value. It has as its object the sale of tractors and carries the popular two fold appeal to the potential customer—the assurance that “costs” will be cut, backed by the patriotic appeal to assist the “National effort.”

Nevertheless, although the composer of this stirring appeal may never have read a line of Marx, no Marxist could quarrel with his analysis of the prime cost of industry. (The additional margin to “enjoy other things” is a novel, if somewhat vague touch and should merit close attention if some economist can be persuaded to come forward with the formula by means of which this margin is calculated!)

How often have the workers refused to accent this analysis from the Socialist platform? Will they accept it now, from the pen of their masters’ hirelings?

Let the worker consider carefully the implications. The farmer is urged to buy agricultural implements to enable the worker to enjoy a more substantial or varied diet. but, in reality, to facilitate a general reduction in wages. Nor is this stupid and vicious economy confined to the land. Everywhere that so-called “labour-saving” machinery is installed, whether in mills, mines or factories, whether in warehouses, offices or hotels, the object is never to save labour hut always to save wages.

This is inevitable under capitalism. The capitalist class is forever striving to reduce wages, whether by direct action in the workshops where labour-saving machinery enables production to be maintained or increased with fewer workers, or indirectly where the cheaper production of the necessities of life enables a reduction to be made in the basic wage.

The solution? A social system wherein the use of machinery on the farm as in every other sphere of production, has as its two-fold object the genuine saving of labour (with its accompanying increase of leisure and energy to enjoy that leisure) and the production of articles solely, simply and sensibly for—need. In a word—Socialism.

H.J.G.

Blogger's Note:

There's a strong chance that 'H.J.G.' was Howard J. Grew. My reasoning is twofold: Howard was a member of the Birmingham Branch of the SPGB, and the article refers to a firm in the West Midlands; and, secondly, he joined the Party in 1947, so his membership and this article overlap.

Howard's obituary appeared in  the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard.

The National Health Service (1948)

From the December 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

On July 5th, 1948, an ever-benevolent Labour Government bestowed yet another of its infinite blessings on the working-class of this country— this time in the guise of the National Health Service.

Doubtless on that happy day many working class wives and mothers, whilst in the process of scraping together a few meagre rations to sustain their families through their day of wage-labour, thought with deep thankfulness that now they and their children, as well as their husbands, could have as many bottles of stomach mixture as they liked without having to pay for it!

Much controversy raged amongst the workers as to whether or not this new Act was a good thing, but as to how many penetrated to the root of the matter—that is a different story.

Did it really seem to you, Mrs. Wage-Slave, as you sat (if you were lucky) for approximately three hours in that most fertile of all bacteria-breeding laboratories —the doctor’s waiting-room, that the fact that now you could obtain your tins of health salts and your packets of cotton-wool without passing cash over the chemist’s counter was a blessing that would make life more full and abundant for you? Can this National Health Service supply you with the means of preventing your husband's stomach trouble—your own nervous condition and your children’s chest complaints? Is it going to give you an abundance of the right kinds of food— a home that isn’t damp—and a set of conditions that will make the weird disease that you euphemistically term “nerves,” things of the past? You know that this is not the case and no-one would pretend that it was, but of what real use is the attempted cure without the prevention?

One point that you might raise is that now the managing director of your firm is, even more than in the past, helping to pay for your own particular dope. You may also think that you are paying for his, should he care to take advantage of the fact. But he won’t, knowing that by a little extra payment far more interest will be taken in his aches and pains than in yours.

The consumption of allegedly therapeutic medicine in this country is still steadily increasing. Consider only the numbers of B.B.C. announcements relating to lost drugs, usually of the sedative type. These are an everyday occurrence now, and are treated with as much contempt as the weather forecast. The laws governing the supply of these drugs may be enforced more strictly, as indeed they have been recently, but nothing can alter the fact that increasing numbers of people are having to rely more and more on artificial aid to bring a few hours of rest and relief from the harassing life inflicted on them by the present system.

Neither has the sale of patent medicines diminished. With blind faith in advertisement the working class still buy their weekly supply of pills and liniment, and with scorn and disbelief born of superior knowledge through experience, vehemently support their own pet brand of bilgewater, even when told it is so much rubbish.

Many people might say that in faith lies the basis of healing. Possibly, but it will take more than faith to battle with the conditions that impel us to resort to these palliatives. Within the framework of our present society there can be no cure for the illness that besets us. A broken leg can be mended but the countless complaints that take what little enjoyment we might have from our lives are part and parcel of the present set-up and can only be abolished along with the entire system.

Only under Socialism can every individual achieve a healthily working mind and body. Under a system where production for profit is a thing of the past, when the innumerable good things are freely available to all, health bills and kindred reforms will be relegated to a museum of forgotten capitalist paraphernalia to be puzzled over by the generations that will be born under Socialism.

Think then upon the deeper implications of the National Health Service before you accept it as a necessary part of your lives. No reform can ever solve your problems. Do not blindly dismiss it as a good or a bad thing but none the less inevitable. Nothing is inevitable, unless you choose to make it so. Think of what life is, compared to what it could be—to what, indeed, it will be when you and millions like you have awakened to the understanding of what Socialism is and have united to work for its achievement. 

D. M.

'Some Tell Big Lies . . .' (1948)

 From the December 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Some make Big Stuff,

    Some make Small;

More from Each

  Is More for All." — Govt. poster.

Some Tell Big Lies,

  Some Tell Small;

The one above this 

  BEATS THEM ALL!

 

Blogger's Note: 

For more background on the government poster reproduced above, see this article by Bill Waters from the same issue of the Socialist Standard.

SPGB Meetings (1948)

Party News from the December 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

With regards to the Bethnal Green meetings listed, 'R. Coster' was  Robert Barltrop's 'party name' during his period of membership from 1945 until 1960. Joyce Millen's obituary appeared in the March 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Voice From The Back: Californian Nightmare (2007)

The Voice From The Back Column from the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Californian Nightmare

The dreadful fires in California that led to death and destruction were well reported in the British press, but what was hardly covered was the plight of the immigrant workers. “Out of the burning brush, from behind canyon rocks, several immigrants bolted toward a group of firefighters, chased not by the border police but by the onrush of flames from one of the biggest wildfires this week. … Immigrants from south of the border, many illegal, provide the backbone of menial labor in San Diego, picking fruit, cleaning hotel rooms, sweeping walks and mowing lawns. The wildfires, one of the biggest disasters to strike the county, exposed their often-invisible existence in ways that were sometimes deadly. The four bodies were found in a burned area in southeastern San Diego County, a region known for intense illegal immigration. …Terri Trujillo, who helps the immigrants, checked on those in the canyons, urging them to leave, too, when she left her house in Rancho Peñasquitos ahead of the fires. Ms. Trujillo and others who help the immigrants said they saw several out in the fields as the fires approached and ash fell on them. She said many were afraid to lose their jobs. ‘There were Mercedeses and Jaguars pulling out, people evacuating, and the migrants were still working,’ said Enrique Morones, who takes food and blankets to the immigrants’ camps. ‘It’s outrageous.’ Some of the illegal workers who sought help from the authorities were arrested and deported.” (New York Times, 27 October) What a comment on capitalism, some workers live in such poverty and insecurity they give up their lives in an attempt to keep a menial weekly wage.

Wall Street Shuffle

We are always being told that capitalism is a competitive system that rewards success and punishes failure, but what are we to make of the following? “Merrill Lynch’s directors may be weighing E. Stanley O’Neal’s future, but one thing is already guaranteed: a payday of at least $159 million if he steps down. Mr. O’Neal, the company’s chairman and chief executive, is entitled to $30 million in retirement benefits as well as $129 million in stock and option holdings, according to an analysis by James F. Reda & Associates using yesterday’s share price of $66.09. That would be on top of the roughly $160 million he took home in his nearly five years on the job. Under Mr. O’Neal, Merrill moved aggressively into lucrative businesses like the packaging of subprime mortgages and other complex debt securities. …But those big bets appeared to go bust this week. Merrill announced an $8.4 billion write-down, raising questions about whether Mr. O’Neal will keep his job. One thing that he surely will hold onto, though, are the giant paychecks he has collected. ‘I lay the blame at the foot of the board,” Frederick E. Rowe Jr., a money manager and president of Investors for Director Accountability. “He was paid a tremendous amount of money to create a loss that is mind-boggling, and he obviously took risks that should never have been taken.’” (New York Times, 27 October) He managed to lose $8.4 billion for the company and can claim $159 million for his efforts. Who says capitalism isn’t crazy?

This Is Communism?

“The United States has more billionaires than any other country: 415 by the last count of Forbes magazine. No. 2, and closing fast? China. A year ago, there were 15 billionaires in China. Now, there are more than 100, according to the widely watched Hurun Report. Forbes has documented 66. ..As much as the bounty of billionaires is a source of pride, it is also a potential cause for concern in a nominally Communist country. Per capita income in China is less than $1,000 a year.” (New York Times, 7 November) China is a fast developing capitalist country and just like any other capitalist economy the gap between the rich and the poor is immense.

Chinese Statistics

One of the effects of the rapid expansion of Chinese capitalism is the pollution of the atmosphere and drinking water. This has led to these horrendous statistics. “40% – Percentage by which birth defects among Chinese infants have risen since 2001, according to a government report, which linked the rise to environmental pollution. 460,000 – Number of Chinese who die prematurely every year from exposure to pollution and dirty water.” (Time, 12 November) This expansion may be leading to the creation of more billionaires, but it is also producing more corpses.

Global warming – what is it? (2007)

From the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Global warming is an increase in mean global temperature, which is an average of temperatures taken in various parts of the world at near surface level on land and sea. It’s now about 14.6º Celsius (about 58º in old money). On a mild December day in Britain it could be more or less that temperature outside. But of course this is a pure coincidence. In most other parts of the world the temperature today will have been quite different. That’s because it’s an average. Actually, the absolute figure is pretty meaningless, which is why commentators generally fix a base year and compare changes since that year.

More or less reliable statistics have existed only since 1880 and these show that the average global temperature in 2000 was 0.5ºC higher than in 1900. But this was not a continuous rise. It rose from the 1900s to 1940s, then fell in the 1950s and 1960s, and has been rising since the 1970s. The average temperature in the 70s was 14.01. Today it’s about 14.6, a rise of 0.6º. So, while it is not accurate to say (as some do) that temperatures have been rising since 1900 or since the industrial revolution, the world does seem to be currently warming – even though a century, let alone a few decades is the equivalent of a second in geological time over which changes in global temperatures (Ice Ages and Warm Periods) are measured.

Changes in the Earth’s temperature also mean changes in the Earth’s climate or, rather, since there’s no such thing as a single Earth climate, in the climates of the different parts of the world. When the Earth warms up this means, for instance, that the polar ice caps decrease in size and that glaciers everywhere retreat. Which is happening now.

So, it can be accepted that we are living in a period when the Earth is warming at least temporarily and that this is resulting in climate change.

The big question is: what is causing this? We know that in the past the Earth has warmed and cooled and that this has been due to natural phenomena such as volcanic activity, changes in the intensity of solar radiation or changes in the Earth’s tilt towards the Sun or its orbit round the Sun. Some scientists are suggesting that this is the case now, that the Earth is just warming up after the “Little Ice Age” that lasted from 1500 to 1850 and which may partly have been caused by a reduction in solar radiation.

But the majority of scientists take the view, to quote from a recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which groups hundreds of scientists, specialists in their field, from all over the world:

“Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations”.

Burning fossil fuels releases the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), into the atmosphere. CO2 is called a greenhouse gas because, though it does not prevent heat from the Sun reaching the Earth, it prevents some of it from radiating back. Which is a good thing actually, since we need this. Without any greenhouse gases in the atmosphere the average world temperature would be minus 18C.

At the time of the industrial revolution and for thousands of years before the average amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been estimated as about 280 parts per million or ppm (in other words, out of every million molecules in the air 280 were CO2, not much: 0.00028%). In 1958 when this was first measured (as opposed to estimated from other data) it was 315. In 2000 it was 367. Today it is near 380 – and rising. A word of caution is in order here. CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. There are others, especially methane (which is a product of agriculture). Total greenhouse gas presence in the atmosphere is measured in terms of CO2 equivalent. Today this is about 430 ppm. And this is the figure that is generally referred to in discussions on the subject. It’s as well to be aware that when this figure is quoted not all of it is made up of CO2, but is a figure for all greenhouse gases. CO2 equivalent is about 15 percent higher than the figure for CO2 alone.

Socialists are not scientists so all we can do is to exercise critical thinking while taking into account what the majority of scientists in the field have concluded, knowing that they could be wrong.

The majority of scientists in the fields involved have concluded that the undeniable rise in average global temperatures has been caused since at least the 1970s by the rise in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels. In other words, that it is man-made or “anthropogenic” as they put it in their language.

What is not clear – scientists are still arguing about it – is what precise temperature rise is caused by the emission of a given extra amount of CO2. This of course is a key ratio since more and more CO2 is being released into the atmosphere by the continued burning of coal, oil and gas.

If you assume the “climate sensibility” of CO2 to be low, then the rise in average global temperature at particular levels will be low. If you consider its “climate sensibility” to be high, then by 2100 the rise could be 2, 3 or 4ºC. A 3 or 4º rise could cause huge problems: sea levels rising by a third to a half a metre (one or two feet), more stormy weather, more forest fires, more droughts and desertification.

So, without necessarily subscribing to the higher figures put forward by the more engaged scientists, it can be accepted that it is desirable to cut back on CO2 emissions. The question we look at in this issue is how likely is this to happen under capitalism given its competitive and anarchic nature?

Respect – in retrospect (2007)

From the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

We look at the shipwreck of yet another attempt to organise a left-of-Labour reformist party.

Respect – acronym for Respect, Equality, Socialism, Peace, Environment, Community, Trade unionism – was set in January 2004 by George Galloway and the Socialist Workers Party to try to make political capital out of the widespread opposition to the Iraq War.

The SWP is a Leninist vanguard party and as such is always on the look-out for protest movements to take over with a view to recruiting more members and followers for itself. Before the Iraq War the front organisation which the SWP pushed, in a bid to create a left-of-Labour political party it could influence, was the “Socialist Alliance”. But they had been thinking about “playing the Muslim card” since the time of the first Gulf War.

According to “author and academic” Jamal Iqbal, writing in the East London Advertiser (8 November):

“Leading figures in the SWP had been advocating the alliance with religious groups for some time. In the 1994 pamphlet, Prophet and the Proletariat, Chris Harman – then as now one of the SWP’s chief ideologists – argued that the party should make common cause on the issue of ‘anti-imperialism’ with Islamists, in part as a way of recruiting their members”.

Much to the annoyance of others who had participated in the project, the SWP decided to pull the plug on the “Socialist Alliance” so that its members could concentrate on building up and controlling Respect. For a while the strategy of building up Respect as a left-wing alternative to Labour seemed to be working. In the 2004 European Parliament and London Assembly elections Respect polled over a quarter of million votes. Then, in the General Election the following year, Galloway scored a spectacular victory in the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency in the East End of London over the sitting Labour MP, Oona King, becoming the first left-of-Labour MP to be elected at a General Election since 1945.

Galloway’s victory was followed by an equally spectacular breakthrough at local level, when 12 Respect councillors were elected to Tower Hamlets borough council where they became the official opposition to Labour ahead of the Tories and the Liberals. Some on the left saw this as the beginning of an electoral challenge to Labour from the left which could spread. But they overlooked two things. First, that all 12 Respect councillors were of Bangledeshi origin and had been elected, not as leftwingers, but on the basis of Muslim “communalism”, of playing the Muslim card to win the Muslim vote. Second, that not far away in Dagenham there was another spectacular result: the British National Party with 11 councillors emerged as official opposition. Their votes had been obtained by playing the “white working class” and “anti-Muslim” card – and there are more “white workers” in Britain than “Muslims”. What Respect and the SWP were doing was splitting the working class on religious and communalist lines and in effect opening the door for the BNP.

Now the whole thing has blown up in their face. In September Galloway issued a circular denouncing the SWP’s stranglehold on Respect. He and his supporters began to organise to put the SWP in its place. The SWP responded by expelling some of its members who refused to break with Galloway and then provoking a split in Respect.

At local level, in Tower Hamlets, this took the form of four councillors breaking away from the Respect group and forming a new “Respect (Independent)” group on the council. Their leader was Councillor Oliur Rahman who, as Respect candidate in Poplar and Canning Town at the 2005 General Election, had come third, polling a respectable 6573 votes or 17 percent. According to the local paper, their press conference on 29 October to announce the breakaway “was overseen by John Rees, the main man in the Socialist Workers Party and still currently the national secretary of Respect” (East London Advertiser, 1 November).

In a letter in the local paper the following week, expelled SWP members Kevin Ovenden and Rob Hoveman revealed that two of the breakaway councillors were card-carrying members of the SWP. Their letter was also revealing in other respects as it was written by two people who until a month or so ago had been leading SWP “cadres” (even though, as Galloway’s parliamentary assistants, their salaries are paid out of his expenses as an MP):

“It is extremely regrettable that a fundamental division has occurred in the Respect between the leadership of a very small organisation called the Socialist Workers Party and almost everyone else in Respect. The SWP acquired a stranglehold over our organisation, which has caused a deep rift at national level. Our MP George Galloway (Bethnal Green and Bow) raised criticisms of the direction the national organisation was heading in August. Instead of a reasoned response from senior SWP members, the criticisms were met with growing hysteria. This has finally come to a head, with the SWP leadership seeking to undermine the democratic structures of Respect and abusing many of its leading members. The SWP has also sowed the seeds of division which have seen four Tower Hamlets councillors turn their backs on Respect after trying to stage a coup against the democratically-elected group leader. Two of these councillors are SWP members and the other two are the SWP’s closest allies. If they had any principles, they would stand as SWP candidates – but know they would get no votes.” (East London Advertiser, 8 November).

Respect’s annual conference was to have been held on 17 November. What happened was that two conferences were held that day, one organised and controlled by the SWP and the other by Galloway and his supporters. Respect has split into two rival organisations. It remains to be seen what the political fall-out will be.

There are a number of lessons to be learned from this.

First, the dishonest tactics of Leninist groups such as the SWP which set up front organisations to attract the support of well-meaning people concerned about some issue. The honest approach would be to say “we are the SWP, this is what we stand for, join us if you agree”. But this is not how Leninist organisations operate. For them, workers are not politically intelligent enough to work things out for themselves and so need to be led – by them. They see themselves as leaders and discontented workers merely as foot soldiers to be used to further their political influence and, ultimately, to help them into power. They really are officers looking for infantry.

Second, as workers are not that stupid, they eventually get found out. This happened once before, in the 1970s, when the SWP (and its predecessor IS) managed to obtain considerable influence over the rank-and-file shop stewards movement of the time. They thought they were using the movement for their own Leninist ends. The shop stewards went along with this because they welcomed the research work done by SWP academics and students and the printing facilities the SWP provided. At some point the SWP leadership decided to tighten its control. The shop stewards demurred and eventually a whole section of the SWP was expelled for syndicalist deviationism.

Third, playing the Muslim card always was playing with fire. The Islamist groups the SWP worked with and hoped to influence were never going to be manipulated by secular Leninists. Once again it was a question of who was using who and of when those who the SWP thought they could manipulate would turn on them. The SWP – together with Galloway and his supporters – must take a heavy responsibility, having encouraged a split in working class in Britain on communalist lines. The SWP might now try to take up a more secularist position, but the damage has been done. Not only have they burnt their own fingers, but they have left a legacy which genuine socialists will have to undo by re-asserting the need for working class to organise on class, not communal, lines.

Adam Buick

Saving Earth or Saving Profits? (2007)

From the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

The environment is not under threat from industrial production as such, but from this in the service of profit-seeking.

All forms of vegetable and animal life are part of a network of relations called an “ecosystem” in ecology. Normally this system is self-regulating to the extent that, if an imbalance develops, this is rectified spontaneously, either by the restoration of the previous balance or by the establishment of a new balance.

The problem is that there’s been the industrial revolution: the pollution of water and the ground due to the massive disposal of toxic or non-recyclable wastes and to the use in intensive agriculture of chemical fertilisers, nitrates and pesticides; the pollution of the oceans due to the increase of maritime traffic, the flow from polluted rivers, the shipwreck of oil tankers (70 alone in 1996!), the discharge of toxic, chemical and radioactive waste, desludging at sea, etc; overfishing; the pollution of the air due to the massive use of fossil fuels, the development of the individual motor car, and the clearance by fire of forests (despite these being the lungs of the planet!); industrial accidents (Seveso (1996), Bhopal (1984), Chernobyl (1986), Toulouse (2001)); the emission of greenhouse gases (CO2) by petrol vehicles and factories, deforestation, leading to global warming and its consequences (rise in the sea level due to the melting of the icepack and of polar and continental glaciers, floods, desertification, storms); acid rain; extinction of living species; introduction of GM organisms; storage of nuclear waste; expansion of towns (where now more than half the world’s population live).

And for a good reason! No State is going to implement legislation which would penalise the competitiveness of its national enterprises in the face of foreign competition. States only take into account environmental questions if they can find an agreement at international level which will disadvantage none of them. But that’s the snag because competition for the appropriation of world profits is one of the bases of the present system. Attempts at international cooperation have already been made: the League of Nations, then the UN, for example, were set up to “maintain” peace. But the 20th century saw the most devastating and murderous wars in history!

No agreement to limit the activities of the multinationals in their relentless quest for profits is possible. Measures in favour of the environment (and the far-reaching transformation of the productive apparatus and transport system these imply) come up against the interests of enterprises (and their shareholders!) because by increasing costs they decrease profits.

Humans are capable, whatever the form of production, of integrating themselves into a stable ecosystem. That was the case of many “primitive” societies which coexisted in complete harmony with the rest of nature, and there is nothing whatsoever that prevents this being possible today on the basis of industrial technology and methods of production, all the more so that renewable energies exist (wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, waves, biomass, etc) but, for the capitalists, these are a “cost” which penalises them in face of international competition.

So it’s not production as such (i. e., the fashioning of nature to meet human needs) which is incompatible with a stable balance of nature, but the application of certain productive methods which disregard natural balances or which involve changes that are too rapid to allow a natural balance to develop.

The preservation of the environment is a social problem which requires humanity to establish a viable and stable relationship with the rest of nature. In practice this implies a society which uses, as far as possible, renewable energy and raw material resources and which practises the recycling of non-renewable resources; a society which, once an appropriate balance with nature has been formed, will tend towards a stable level of production, indeed towards “zero growth”. This does not mean that changes are to be excluded on principle, but that any change will have to respect the environment by taking place at a pace to which nature can adapt. But the employment by capitalism of destructive methods of production has, over two centuries, upset the balance of nature.

Whether it is called “the market economy”, “economic liberalism”, “free enterprise” or any other euphemism, the social system under which we live is capitalism. Under this system the means of the production and distribution of social wealth – the means of society’s existence – are the exclusive property of a dominant parasitic minority – the holders of capital, or capitalist class – for whose benefit they are inevitably managed.

As a system governed by economic laws which impose themselves as external constraints on human productive activities, and in which enterprises are in competition with each other to obtain short-term economic gains, capitalism pushes economic decision-makers to adopt productive methods which serve profitability rather than concern for the future.

So it is not “Man” but the capitalist economic system itself which is responsible for ecological problems. In fact, not only have workers no influence over the decisions taken by enterprises but those who do have the power to decide – the capitalists – are themselves subject to the laws of profit and competition.

Of course capitalism has sooner or later to face up to the ecological problems caused by the search for profit, but only afterwards, after the damage has been done. But the ecologists, so critical of “liberal” capitalism, accept, like all the other varieties of reformism, the economic dictatorship of the owning minority since they don’t understand the link that exists between the destruction of the environment and the private ownership of the means of production. That is why the Greens were forced to make concessions when, from 1997-2002, they were part of the Jospin government: over the authorisations given by this government of the “plural” Left, in November 1997 and July 1998, for transgenetic maize, over nuclear questions and other matters, not to mention their complicity over “social” questions such as the suppression of 3100 jobs with the closure of the Renault factory at Vilvord or the repression of the occupation of employment offices by the unemployed in 1997, the closure of the naval shipyards in Le Havre in 1998, the calling into question of retirement at age 60 with a full pension, or the suppression of 10,000 hospital beds in the Ile de France in 1999, etc.

Because by definition capitalism can only function in the interest of the capitalists, no palliative, no rearrangement, no measure, no reform can (nor ever will be able to) subordinate capitalist private property to the general interest. For this reason only the threat of a socialist movement setting down as the only realistic and immediate aim the establishment of social property (hence the name socialism) of society’s means of existence so as to ensure their management by (and so in the interest of) the whole community, would be able to force the capitalists to concede reforms favourable to the workers for fear of losing the whole cake.

So it is for building such a movement that we launch an appeal to all workers who understand the opposition and incompatibility of their interests with those of the capitalists, to all those who, concerned about the ceaseless attacks of which we are the victims and of the dangers to which the capitalists are exposing our planet, want not to patch up but to end existing society. Our numerical superiority allows all hope.

It is only after having placed the means of society’s existence under the control of the community that we will be able to at last ensure their management, no longer in the selfish interest of their present owners, but this time really in the general interest.

Only then will we be in a position to achieve a world in which the present system of rival States will be replaced by a world community without frontiers, the rationing of money and the wages system by free access to the wealth produced, competition by cooperation, and class antagonism by social equality.

We can only “cure the planet” by establishing a society without private productive property or profit where humans will be freed from the uncontrollable economic laws of the pursuit of profit and the accumulation of capital. In short, only a world socialist society, based on the common ownership and democratic control of natural resources, is compatible with production that respects the natural environment.

– translated from a leaflet distributed by socialists in France.

Letter: Living outside capitalism? (2007)

Letter to the Editors from the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Living outside capitalism?

Dear Editors

In talking about freeganism (Socialist Standard, October), much of the media has focused on food and lifestyle, which is what plays best in a society obsessed by spectacle. Most freegans I know are very politically motivated, which some of the articles touch on. Many of us are involved in grassroots and direct action projects, and I’d say a lot of our work would fall into the “deep ecology” category.

Although the NYC-based group started as an offshoot of an anarchist collective called the Activism Center at Wetlands Preserve, there is no party line among freegans, As of 2003 many people across the world already thought of themselves as freegans; the freegan.info website gathered lots of existing info and resources on the subject. Some of us are primitivists, many others are not. There are freegans who are animal rights activists, liberal ecologists, Christians, and various flavors of leftists.

But we are united in our desire to boycott capitalism and its products to the greatest extent we can. Most of us believe that global industrialism, and its drive towards an ever multiplying glut of unneeded commodities, does great harm to all living things. We don’t believe humans have a right to all of the world’s resources, even if we shared them equally among us. We do not see socialist governments doing a better job with it – look at what’s happening in China, for example.

We realize that our practice is seen as extreme, but we don’t think turning one’s back on mass consumer culture has to be a marginal activity. We’re seeing lots of people inspired to reduce their consumption – take a look at the book Not Buying It, the internet support groups called The Compact, writing by Colin Beavan (aka No Impact Man), the “freegan experiment” recently undertaken by journalist Raina Kelley in Newsweek, a very mainstream US magazine. Even without political analysis or motivation, we think the consistent practice of not-buying, refusing to let your relations and life be mediated by commodities, is powerful in itself, and leads people to see the world differently.

And yes, we use the internet, we use phones, many of us have jobs, many of us pay rent or own our homes, some of us own motorized vehicles. These are clear contradictions. Our goal is to live outside of capitalism to as great an extent possible, but as you note, capitalism is very much the dominant force. Like many activists before us, our aim is to create a new world in the shell of the old.

Here’s to dialogue among those of us working for social change!

Madeline Nelson 

for freegan.info

Reply:

If you want to try and “boycott” and “live outside of” capitalism, that’s up to you. We don’t think it’s very practical or a way of ending capitalism. Capitalism can only be done away with by the conscious political action of a majority of the population with a view to making the world’s resources the common heritage of all. In such a socialist world the wastes of capitalism (advertising, packaging, consumerism as well as armaments and everything to do with buying and selling) would be eliminated and the overall consumption of resources per head reduced while still allowing people to consume better food, housing, health care, and the other things needed (desperately needed in many parts of the world) for a decent life.

We are not “primitivists” and reject the idea that it is industrial production as such that has caused the problem of wasted resources; this is caused by the misuse of industrialism in the cause of profit. Industrial production is in fact essential if the reasonable needs of the world’s population are to be met. It’s the same with “globalization”: there is nothing wrong with a more united world; the problem is capitalist financial globalization.

We don’t think China is socialist, so what’s happening there is irrelevant as an argument against socialism. The Chinese government is a capitalist government (a “socialist government” is a contradiction in terms) presiding over the development of capitalism there with all its attendant problems – Editors.

Booms and Slums (2007)

From the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who has read Frederick Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England will long remember much of what it says. Page after page describes the lives of workers in the big cities in 1844. Two boys in London, for instance, were arrested for stealing a half-cooked calf’s foot from a shop: the magistrate discovered that their mother had sold or pawned all the family’s possessions in order to buy food. Many others had little or no furniture and slept on the floor, covered in rags.

The accounts of slum dwellings are sometimes hard to believe. Perhaps the worst was the Little Ireland area of Manchester, where four thousand people lived in overcrowded, unsanitary, decrepit cottages and the filth and stench were all but intolerable. Similar conditions were found in Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford, Glasgow, and so on. It is difficult to disagree with Engels’ statement that working people were enduring ‘a condition unworthy of human beings’.

In 1971 Robert Roberts published The Classic Slum, an account of his upbringing in Salford in the early twentieth century. In 1910, he records, his mother cajoled their landlord into installing a cast-iron bath (which meant an extra shilling a week in rent). Several neighbours came to look at the bath, its taps and so on: they had never used or even seen a bath before. Workers scrimped and saved to afford a rag rug and a couple of framed pictures, let alone ‘luxuries’ such as a watch or a bike. Getting by from week to week often relied on pawning their Sunday best clothes. In looking back at his childhood and the lives of his neighbours, Roberts refers to ‘the spoiled complexions, the mouths full of rotten teeth, the varicose veins, the ignorance of simple hygiene, the intelligence stifled and the endless battle merely to keep clean’. Such were the good old days amid the flourishing of the British Empire.

And is it all just in the Victorian and Edwardian past? While homelessness and bad housing still exist, can it be said that slums — crowded, filthy, nasty — are no longer the lot of most? Mike Davis’ book Planet of Slums describes a world where one in three of the urban population, mainly in the ‘Third World’, live in slums. It goes without saying that slum life is bad for your health and life expectancy. Landslides, floods and earthquakes threaten those who live in shoddy housing in marginal areas. Fires, whether accidental or deliberately set by property developers, can spread so fast that nobody can escape.

Sanitation is another disaster area, with the situation having changed little since Engels’ day. Sewage systems are virtually non-existent in many cities: Davis cites one slum area in Nairobi which had just ten working toilets for forty thousand people. But there is hope for the future, as in some places pay toilets have become a hugely profitable growth industry — though of course they’re not so convenient for the millions who cannot afford to use them.

Profiting from poverty is widespread. Such is the population density in slums that landlords make plenty of money from even the poorest neighbourhoods. Many cities in Asia and Africa are effectively owned by small numbers of landlords, and those who rent from them are the most powerless of all. Squatting becomes increasingly difficult as vacant land is developed and forcible evictions increase: over three-quarters of a million evicted in Harare in 2005, for instance. Slum-dwellers often have little choice but to fight back by building their own homes or resorting to food riots.

Cities like Manchester in Engels’ time were essentially the result of the Industrial Revolution. But in contrast, Davis argues, the growth of megacities and hence of megaslums over the last twenty years or so has been marked by deindustrialisation, as factories have closed in places such as Mumbai, Johannesburg and Sao Paulo. Like Mexico City and Jakarta, these have enormous populations but far smaller economies. The new slums are also mostly on the peripheries of the cities rather than in inner-city areas, and so usually lack any half-way decent transport infrastructure.

The financial institutions of global capitalism have played a major role in maintaining the regime of slum living. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have helped finance slum ‘improvement’ programmes in city after city, via privatisation of housing supply and the ending of food subsidies. The result has not been to eradicate slums, of course, but to spread ‘informal’ employment which lacks contracts and bargaining power. Along with this has come an expansion of child labour along the lines recorded by Engels and Dickens.

The development of capitalism, then, has not done away with the horrors of slums. Inadequate housing continues to exist in ‘advanced’ countries, with an estimated 100,000 homeless people in Los Angeles and one child in seven growing up in bad housing in the UK. Perhaps two million American families will lose their homes over the next couple of years, as the sub-prime crisis bites. Worldwide, as many as one billion people live — or do their best to create some kind of life — in slums. While the rich reside in their gated communities, the poor dwell in conditions of scarcely-imaginable squalor, marginalised in terms of work and family life. A Socialist society would face a tremendous task in replacing slums with decent housing, but that is a problem that capitalism can never tackle let alone solve.

Paul Bennett

Greasy Pole: It’s Nice to Have Friends (2007)

The Greasy Pole column from the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Saudi, helping the police with their enquiries can mean systematic torture in a room described by a British man roped in in 2001 as having “…years’ worth of blood on the floor that nobody bothered to clean”.

As a TV spectacle it was some way behind Coronation Street’s Sarah Platt and Jason Grimshaw navigating their way through a chaotic, unpromising wedding. The other soap opera, at Buckingham Palace, had a cast of hundreds, rather more expensively dressed than our Sarah and Jason and making their way to the banquet through a corridor of bowing flunkeys. At their head the Queen strode as grimly as if she was flouncing out of (or should that be into?) a session with a top society photographer. Prince Philip’s face hinted that he might have been reviewing his stock of undiplomatic racist quips. And there was the king of Saudi Arabia otherwise known as The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Abdullah Bin Abdul Azaz Al Saud, whose very presence reveals a lot about that country – for example the fact that he is one of his father’s 37 sons.

About Saudi Arabia more later. Of more pressing interest about the guests at that banquet to welcome the 82 year old dictator of that brutal, oil rich country was Gordon Brown parading rigidly encased in white tie and tails, perhaps trying to hide his embarrassment in submerged conversation with a wide-eyed, scuttling Lord Chancellor Jack Straw, similarly garbed. What did they find to talk about, so intently? Was it the fact that Brown always made a point of refusing to get himself up in the manner demanded by the etiquette of such occasions – like the London Lord Mayor’s Mansion House banquet? Brown’s stand on this matter – he once let it be known it was all to do with principle – would cause not a few crimson robes to rustle and not a few chains of office to jangle, in disapproval. His going back on what he called principle was an indication that this was an event far more important than any gathering of over-fed, over-rich City grandees slapping each others’ backs and their own comfortable stomachs.

Oil

Saudi Arabia means oil, which also means the attention, and wherever possible the intrusion, of capitalism’s great economic and military powers. Crucially, Saudi oil lies close to the surface, which enables it to be extracted faster and cheaper. The first concession to get at the black, vital stuff was granted to a British company in 1933; another, to the American firm Standard Oil Company, in 1934. Symbolically, the company’s name was changed in 1944 to ARAMCO – Arabian American Oil Company – and as larger reserves were found other companies came in with capital investment, effectively exerting a stranglehold on the country. Predictably, other American companies were commissioned by ARAMCO to develop the country’s infrastructure – the giant Bechtel imported their mammoth plant to lay down roads, ports, power plants and the schools and hospitals to support them. TWA provided a passenger air service, the Ford Foundation advised (which may not be exactly the correct word for what they provided) on administration; and the US Army Engineers set up a TV and broadcasting service and helped develop Saudi Arabia’s “defence” industry. The first great oil boom in the early 1950s dramatically altered the country from a bleak, infertile slab of the Middle East, enabling royals who, for all their exalted status, had been able to do little better than live on local dates and milk from camels, to swan around the flesh pots of the Mediterranean in their gleaming yachts and to practically take root in the casinos. This was a startlingly abrupt change, overwhelmingly to the benefit of the ruling families; at a recent air show in Dubai a billionaire Saudi prince ordered a personal luxury version of the Airbus 380 which, with a few essential extras, will set him back somewhere in the region of two hundred and thirty million pounds.

Common Values

At the banquet in Buckingham Palace the Queen took the opportunity to inform the Saudi royal about her esteem for his country and the comfort she takes from the close ties between Saudi and Britain: “It is a great pleasure to welcome King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, to London once more….We have shared values that stem from two great religious traditions…we must continue to work together to promote common values…” Harping on the same happy theme was Kim Howells, who during the 1960s was a left wing student firebrand, then official in the National Union of Mineworkers during the 1984 strike and is now Labour MP for Pontypridd and Foreign Office Minister. Howells is famous for speaking his mind no matter what the consequences; for example as Minister of Culture he felt free to lash out at the Turner Prize candidates as “cold, mechanical, conceptual bull”. He is also on record as describing the royal family as “all a bit bonkers” but this did not prevent him agreeing with the Queen about Saudi Arabia as he rhapsodised about those same “shared values” .

We have not yet been told by either the Queen or Howells what they meant by the phrase .Was it the fact that Saudi Arabian women are treated as rather lower than second class, forbidden to go out unless with a male under pain of being beaten up by the uniformed thugs of the chillingly titled Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice? Perhaps they hope that Britain copies the penal system in Saudi, where helping the police with their enquiries can mean systematic torture in a room described by a British man roped in in 2001 as having “…years’ worth of blood on the floor that nobody bothered to clean”. Or the extravagant use of the death penalty for, among other offenders, actively gay people or anyone having extra-marital sex. According to Amnesty International there have been 124 executions so far this year. These have been mostly by beheading and sometimes in public; an official executioner has set the grisly scene by assuring everyone that he keeps his sword razor sharp and that his children learn to grow up into good Saudis by helping him clean it. “People” he tells us proudly “are amazed at how fast it can separate the head from the body”.

In fact it would probably be difficult to find anyone to take seriously that nonsense about “shared values”. What connects the ruling elites of Britain and Saudi Arabia is much harsher – the fact that so much of the world’s oil is under Saudi control (one estimate puts it as high as 25 percent] and the existence of a mouthwateringly massive export market, including one for billions of pounds worth of armaments, all nourished through an artery of bribery. This is yet another example of human debasement driven by capitalism’s profit motive justifying untold lies, cruelty, corruption, murder. It can also persuade Gordon Brown to dress up for an evening out with a pitiless international gangster.

Ivan