Christmas every day? (2024)

Viv and Keith.

From the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1961 Viv Nicholson, whose husband had won the equivalent of over four million pounds on the football pools, became famous after declaring she would ‘spend, spend, spend’. Which she then proceeded to do. At this time of year, without that amount of geld available to you, do you feel pressured to follow that example? Do you wish you were like Viv and could win loads of lucre on the national lottery. That would solve all your problems, wouldn’t it? Or would it?

Festivity: ‘a joyous feast, holiday or celebration’. Do you buy into Christmas because it makes you temporarily forget how pitiful it is to be a wage slave? Not that you’re being pressured. Much. The retail outlets have been selling Christmas commodities since September. Poverty, or struggling with the rising cost of living or unaffordable energy bills is no excuse. Not believing in the Christmas fairytale doesn’t excuse you from participating. The UK now has more atheists than believers in a fairy tale. So what are you celebrating? It’s a British tradition, you say? Christmas trees, Charles Dickens, God bless us one and all, blah blah. The Queen’s, oops, King’s Speech telling you that no matter how bad your year has been the privileged ruling class have had it much worse.

Is it because the kids expect presents, expensive ones too? Do you want them to be embarrassed because their friends got much better ones? They’ll probably still be dissatisfied. Don’t you realise that the true meaning of Christmas is spend, spend, spend until it hurts? Is no one thinking of the poor capitalists and their profits? Oh, you are fighting your way through the Boxing Day sales where wage slaves in shops are forced to work the holiday to add to capital’s rapacious pursuit of even more profit. They don’t have a choice. This applies to many other workers in various industries. Selling your mental or physical labour power is necessary to live in a capitalist system.

The mainstream media will no doubt have faux anger stories about a single parent spending huge amounts of money on presents for their children. This will elicit gasps of horror in the comments section from the indignant who will be incensed that someone on benefits can afford to do that. ‘I work long and hard and I can’t afford to do that’, they will cry. ‘It’s my taxes that’s paying for that!’ Note that in order for the media to manufacture outrage the story has to be about someone being supported by the state.

Once there was a time when preparations for the winter festival did not begin until a week or two before… Home-made paper chains as decorations. Catching the bus with your mom to go shopping in the local town or village to buy all the necessary prerequisites. Salvation Army bands busking in the streets, guilt-tripping passers-by into putting money in their hat. It’s for charity! It should be noted that the lyrics of many carols would have made William McGonagall ashamed to have written them.

Charities love Christmas. An excellent time to prick people’s consciences and get the money rolling in. The homeless and dispossessed may enjoy a few days of respite at Christmas before once more disappearing out of sight and out of mind. Society won’t begrudge them a little warmth, some decent food and a warm bed, but will happily turn them back onto the streets and leave them to their fate.

Oh, how naive we were then. Pillowcases of presents to open when you awake. At that age there was no conception of how hard it might have been for your parents to provide the gifts. Your dad getting up early to build a fire in the grates to warm the rooms. Him making the first cup of tea of the day for everyone and adding a generous measure of whisky to it, even for the thirteen year old. Mothers and female relatives working as hard as they did every day, or even harder, with no labour-saving devices to help them.

This is not to romanticise the past, but to highlight that for many of us it would be many years before we learnt how exploitative the capitalist system is and discovered that there was and is a better alternative. Back then there was no knowledge of how one’s parents might have had to scrape and save to buy their children presents and provide the enjoyable, but ignorant, experience.

Season of goodwill to all men, women and children? Not to those who are still being killed and maimed because some capitalists within particular states are intent on fulfilling their desire for yet more profit irrespective of the cost to innocent lives. Is there likely to be a Christmas truce, like the one in the First World War, in the conflicts currently raging across the world? You wouldn’t bet on it, and in any case a cessation of hostilities for one day is hardly sufficient. Hostilities across the world need to be suppressed forever. What is the likelihood of that happening under capitalism? Zero.

When the ‘festivities’ have ended what is there to look forward to? The rich will get richer, the poor won’t, and the global working class will continue to be exploited. The world will continue to be a less safe place.

Greg Lake sang that the Christmas you get, you deserve. Don’t you think you deserve something better than capitalism? Don’t wait until another year has gone by. Make your new year’s resolution a Lennon one… ‘Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for. And no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace.’ There’s many more benefits to a system where goods and services are produced for use, not profit. No classes, no leaders either. Give yourself and everyone else a real present – socialism.

Dave Coggan

Dreams and Schemes (2024)

Book Review from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

We Need to Talk About Xi: What We Need to Know About the World’s Most Powerful Leader. By Michael Dillon. Ebury Press/Penguin £10.99.

Xi Jinping is general secretary of the Chinese ‘Communist’ Party, president of China and chair of the country’s Central Military Commission. This combination certainly makes him one of the most powerful people on the planet, and here Michael Dillon summarises his personal history and political policies, against the background of developments in China, especially since the death of Mao Zedong. Little is known of his private life, but who cares?

Born in 1953, Xi gradually worked his way up through CCP ranks, working in various provincial posts. In 2002 he became a member of the Central Committee, and in 2007 of the Politburo Standing Committee. He became general secretary of the party in 2012, and his five-year term was renewed in 2017 and again in 2022. The expected practice was for the general secretary to serve two such five-year terms before stepping down, but Xi has overturned this. He is apparently seen by others in ruling circles as a ‘safe pair of hands’, though he is also less collegial and more authoritarian.

Dillon says that Xi has reversed much of the modernisation of the Chinese economy begun under Deng Xiaoping, though without saying a great deal about this. And he has lost support among ‘captains of industry’, who see him as not sufficiently friendly to business. A few years ago he announced a clampdown on the billionaires with plans to ‘regulate excessively high incomes’ (NBC News, 5/9/21), though it is not clear that this has had any real effect.

The authoritarian side has been made plain not just in the general attacks on dissidents but in events in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. In both cases, Xi has run things behind the scenes, making local leaders appear responsible. In Hong Kong, for instance, a man was recently jailed for fourteen months for wearing a T-shirt with a supposedly seditious slogan on it. Many Uyghurs in Xinjiang have been sent to ‘re-education camps’ as they are euphemistically called, in order to suppress demands for independence for the region. Finding information about developments there is difficult, but Dillon states that there has been much damage to social and religious networks, and also to the economy, with many workers being removed from their posts.

Allegedly Xi has less interest in international affairs, though the Belt and Road initiative has been an expensive and potentially influential policy. His extremely vague China Dream may see the country as a global power like the US, but clearly he is primarily interested in maintaining his own power and that of all those who rule China, whether private capitalists or part of the state and party bureaucracy.

Paul Bennett

Proper Gander: Far into the far right (2024)

The Proper Gander column from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite its promotional graphics promising a flashy spy thriller with steely black-clad secret agents, Channel 4’s documentary Undercover: Exposing The Far Right was more sobering than spectacular. Cameras followed investigators from advocacy group Hope Not Hate as they went incognito among far-right activists to learn more about how they operate. As Hope Not Hate’s Director of Research Joe Mulhall says, ‘the far right often present one image to the world, and what they’re saying when they think no-one is listening is different. We have to be in the room when they think no-one’s listening’.

Two researchers who get ‘in the room’ are Harry Shukman and Patrik Hermansson. They travel from London to Tallinn, Warsaw and Athens, with Harry wearing a hidden camera and adopting the persona of ‘Chris’ to infiltrate a far-right network. This is composed of the richer, entrepreneurial type of activist, rather than the thuggish, St George’s flag-wearing variety, but their attitudes are the same, as shown when secret filming reveals abhorrent racist views.

By attending meetings online and in person as ‘Chris’, Harry pieces together information about what he calls a ‘very secretive company’: the Human Diversity Foundation, whose CEO Emil Kirkegaard is described as a ‘scientific racist’. One arm of the company arranges and funds research into ‘race science’, with articles published by its other arm, the Aporia website, established by ex-RE teacher Matt Archer. Aporia’s essays defend conservative values, with an unnerving emphasis on discussing genetic differences between groups. The documentary goes on to explain that the Human Diversity Foundation is a replacement for the Pioneer Fund, a financial backer of the far right. Being a charity, the Pioneer Fund had to disclose its funding sources, but as a private company, the HDF has no such requirement. ‘Chris’ is keen to find out the identity of a donor willing to invest $1.3 million, who Kirkegaard says is ‘between white nationalist and libertarian’. When ‘Chris’ asks if this person’s views could attract criticism, Kirkegaard replies ‘he’s so well off that it doesn’t really matter what they say’, which was one of the more depressing lines in the programme. Harry and Patrik eventually learn that the donor is Andrew Conru, a millionaire who made money in the early years of the internet by setting up online dating sites. Captions at the end of the documentary say that Archer and Conru have now ended their involvement with the HDF.

A previous covert operation by Hope Not Hate to infiltrate the fascist group National Action helped prevent a murder attempt on Labour MP Rosie Cooper, and was later dramatised for ITV. The documentary features its work to investigate and expose other far-right players, such as Paul Golding and Tommy Robinson. Golding, leader of the Britain First party, is filmed by Harry’s hidden camera saying he wants the country to deteriorate, as he sees it, so that this will motivate more people towards the far right. Tommy Robinson (formerly of the English Defence League) was found guilty of defaming a 15-year-old refugee from Syria, and went on to break a court order by repeating his claims in interviews and broadcasts. He was sent to prison for this in October 2024, with evidence for his trial contributed by Hope Not Hate.

Fighting the far right comes with risks of threats and retaliation; its ideology attracts people attracted to violence. The documentary itself was pulled at the last minute from premiering at the London Film Festival in case its screening led to reprisals. And while it was being recorded, Hope Not Hate’s founder and CEO Nick Lowles heard that the police had arrested someone who was arranging to have him targeted. The programme shows the strength and perseverance of those such as Patrik and Harry in particular who have kept up a persona to go undercover amongst such hate-fuelled people, although they’ll have to find other activities now their identities have been broadcast.

Contrasted with the bravery of the investigators is the confidence of the far right, no doubt boosted by the wealth available to organisations such as the Human Diversity Foundation. The documentary focuses on revealing Conru’s identity, but presumably there are also other millionaires who feel that their privileged status is best defended by investing in ‘race science’. The more money which goes into researching ‘race science’, the more it can gain traction in the market for ideas, regardless of the weakness of its arguments. The far-right activists featured in the documentary promote their ideology with a professional, business-like approach which suits their aims. The HDF aspires for its research to influence public policy and the views of the capitalist class, whereas the likes of Tommy Robinson and Paul Golding aim to attract support among the working class. This potentially makes the HDF and its associates more dangerous than the ‘populist’ far right, because of the power wielded by the elite. Even with a proportion of the capitalist class backing ‘race science’ – ie, race-based eugenics, how successfully they could translate this into furthering their own wealth would depend on the vagaries of the economic market and attracting broader support. Still, it’s concerning that ‘race science’ is now more prominent as part of the far right’s ideology than at any time since the 1930s. Hope Not Hate aims to combat this tendency by unearthing how its organisations are run and working with the police when they break the law. However many successful investigations they complete, the struggle is too wide for them to win, as it will continue as long as the societal conditions exist which breed far-right ideology.

Mike Foster

Halo Halo! (2024)

The Halo Halo! column from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shakespeare used the idiom ‘He who sups with the Devil should have a long spoon’. The ‘Devil’ is a character in a fairy story, similar to the one wherein this month millions still ‘celebrate’ the birth of a made-up ‘messiah’.

As a writer in a previous Socialist Standard wrote, ‘religion is intensely anti-working-class… the whole panoply of belief, ritual, salvation and miracle stands against the interests of all working people.’ The Catholic Church and totalitarian states have much in common.

Proponents of mumbo jumbo, the Catholic Church, should have used a longer spoon. A United States Commission on International Religious Freedom report noted that ‘the Vatican entered into an undisclosed agreement with the Chinese Communist Party (sic) in 2018 that established cooperation between Church authorities and Chinese officials in appointing bishops. But “the government has unilaterally installed CCP-aligned bishops without the Vatican’s consultation and approval” despite that agreement’.

‘Chinese officials have ordered the removal of crosses from churches and have replaced images of Christ and the Virgin Mary with images of President Xi Jinping. They have also censored religious texts, forced members of the clergy to preach CCP ideology, and mandated the display of CCP slogans within churches. “Ultimately, the Chinese government is solely interested in instilling unwavering obedience and devotion to the CCP, its political agenda, and its vision for religion, not protecting the religious freedom rights of Catholics”’ (Ncresister.com).

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In Malaysia, where almost two thirds of the populace practise Islam, the state’s official religion, the government is seeking to enact a Mufti Bill which would grant ‘greater authority to religious courts, potentially eroding the rights of non-Muslims’. ‘The Mufti bill is not just about religious matters. It’s about power and control. If this bill passes, it could lead to a situation where religious authorities have the final say on a wide range of issues, from personal relationships to public policy. Supporters of the bill contend that it is necessary to strengthen the role of Islamic law to uphold traditional values. They argue that the bill would not infringe upon the rights of non-Muslims.’ Flying pigs come to mind. Oh, not halal. Flying gibbons or crocodiles?

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Christmas, and hopefully all other religious festivals, may be on its way to extinction. The UK now has more atheists than people who believe in the existence of God.

‘Queen’s University Belfast, in a global project Explaining Atheism (nearly 25,000 people from six countries surveyed) to find out why people become atheists and agnostics. found that the common notion of the “purposeless unbeliever”, lacking a sense of ultimate meaning in life, objective morality, and strong values is not accurate, challenging the stereotype that atheists lead lives devoid of meaning, morality, and purpose. Dr Lee said: “The UK is entering its first atheist age. Whilst atheism has been prominent in our culture for some time, be it through Karl Marx, George Eliot, or Ricky Gervais, it is only now that atheists have begun to outnumber theists for the first time in our history”’.

DC

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard 

… a tiny minority of about 0.6 percent of the population, own 45 percent of the country’s total wealth. For workers… the situation in Germany, is becoming increasingly precarious. 

(WSWS)

… support for Hezbollah — as well as opposition to it — still fall primarily along sectarian lines. Polling by The Washington Institute late last year found that 34% of Sunni Muslims and 29% of Christians expressed a positive view of Hezbollah, while 93% of Shias said they approved of the group. 

(NBC)

As he watches the world go by each day from the shade of his porch in southern Havana, Ramone Monteagudo, 72, a retired history teacher, has a front-row seat for the wreckage… Now flies swarm over a sea of rubbish in the sticky heat. He watches some of his poorer neighbors — who until a few years ago had enough to eat — pick leftover food out of the rot. ‘When it comes to food and medicine, we’re living through an extraordinarily difficult situation’. 

(Truthdig)

It was done for the Viet Cong in numerous countries during the US involvement in Vietnam. It was done for the African National Congress (ANC). It was done for the Irish Revolutionary (sic) Army (IRA). Across the United States, Europe and Australasia, all three organisations, demonised as terrorist outfits, received tacit, symbolic support from protestors. In some cases, support was genuine and pecuniary. Now, the Lebanese Shia militant and political group Hezbollah, designated a terrorist organisation in a number of Western states, has inspired flag holders to appear at protests against the expanding conflict in Gaza and Lebanon.

(Dissident Voice)

Saudi Arabia has executed 213 people so far in 2024, more than it has in any other calendar year on record, as the kingdom competes for a seat at the UN Human Rights Council. 

(Middle East Eye)

‘. . . The ratepayers’ association and the ANC led municipality are working together to evict poor black people, to destroy our homes and communities. They say that our presence reduces the value of the land, as if value is just a question of the price of the land and has nothing to do with the value of land for the human beings who live on it. They say that we must be removed because we are a health hazard as we must use the bush to relieve ourselves whereas the obvious solution to the lack of sanitation is to provide sanitation. They say that we are ‘chasing tourists away’. The strong element of racism driving all this is often openly displayed on the social media used by the white residents of the gated communities. The black elites who live in the gated communities are silent about this racism”.

(Dissident Voice)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Obituary: Eric Boden (1975)

Obituary from the April 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to report the death in December last of Eric Boden. He joined the Party in 1912, and was already writing for the Socialist Standard before the first world war.

With some interruptions he continued to write until he dropped out of the Party in 1953, though his interest in Party work remained. At one period he went to East Africa and was conscripted to the army there. Old members will remember the articles he wrote about developments in East Africa, and he contributed many other valuable articles.

He became the branch secretary of our former Sheffield Branch, and at another time was a member of the Watford Branch. He spoke on the Party platform in Sheffield and Doncaster, and occasionally attended Conference as a delegate. His wife also was a Party member. Boden was a persuasive and knowledgeable speaker, and wherever he went he devoted himself to making the Socialist case known.