Exhibition Review: Betrayal? (2026)

Exhibition Review from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Great Betrayal? One Hundred Years On. The lessons of the 1926 strike revisited (Working Class Movement Library)

In May we reviewed an exhibition at the People’s History Museum in Manchester marking the centenary of the General Strike. There are a number of exhibitions on this topic (see generalstrike100.com), including one at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, which is on until December, and focuses more on the strike itself, rather than the years since. It is entitled ‘A Great Betrayal?’, which clearly indicates its main theme.

The display consists of information boards plus some original documents. It is made clear that the government had prepared for a confrontation beforehand, for instance by setting up the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies, and it referred to the strike as an attempted revolution. All army officers were required to participate in strike-breaking. The BBC of course did not present the union side of the dispute. The TUC, which apparently turned down an offer of financial support from Russia, voted for a general strike, but as a defensive action, not as a challenge to the authority of the state (though it is not at all clear what that could have involved).   

The information boards are made more personal by including information about individual workers and their treatment. For instance, the miner Bill Muckle spent over two years in prison after helping to derail the Flying Scotsman train, while Jack Forshaw was arrested for distributing a supposedly seditious pamphlet. He was diabetic and died after being mistreated in jail, before being sentenced.

The documents displayed include a booklet on the impact of the strike in Bolton, and also copies of various strike bulletins and of the British Worker and the government propaganda sheet The British Gazette.

An informative exhibition, though naturally rather restricted in its coverage, and also rather optimistic about what might have been achieved.

Paul Bennett

Cooking the Books: Human capital (2026)

The Cooking The Books column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Announcing plans to cut nearly 8,000 jobs by using AI instead, Bill Winters, the CEO of Standard Bank, told reporters:

‘It’s not cost-cutting. It’s replacing in some cases lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital we’re putting in’.

He seemed to have forgotten that he was not addressing a board meeting but the general public. The resulting outrage at him calling his employees ‘lower-value human capital’ forced him to apologise. But he was actually accurately describing a fact.

What a capitalist firm has to set aside to pay its workers is part of its capital. You could call it ‘human’ capital as opposed to the capital invested in plant, equipment, machines, materials and power.  Or, expressed another way, it is the difference between ‘living’ labour and ‘dead’ labour, useful as it brings out that the other factors that capital is invested in have been produced by people working.

The terms Marx used to make this distinction were ‘variable’ capital and ‘constant’ capital, as set out in chapter 8 of Volume I of Capital:

‘The means of production on the one hand, labour-power on the other, are merely the different modes of existence which the value of the original capital assumed when from being money it was transformed into the various factors of the labour-process. That part of capital then, which is represented by the means of production, by the raw material, auxiliary material and the instruments of labour does not, in the process of production, undergo any quantitative alteration of value. I therefore call it the constant part of capital, or, more shortly, constant capital. On the other hand, that part of capital, represented by labour-power, does, in the process of production, undergo an alteration of value. It both reproduces the equivalent of its own value, and also produces an excess, a surplus-value, which may itself vary, may be more or less according to circumstances. This part of capital is continually being transformed from a constant into a variable magnitude. I therefore call it the variable part of capital, or, shortly, variable capital’.

So the money invested in buying the ability to work of employees is indeed a part of capital. Economically speaking, that’s what workers are and that’s what they are treated as.

Winters claimed that it wasn’t about cost-cutting. Of course it was. What would be the point of investing in AI if it wasn’t cheaper than having the work done by humans? What he was probably trying to say was that the board had decided to use a larger proportion of its capital as non-human capital than as human capital and that some of the latter was of ‘lower value’ to his business because it was costing more and so reducing profits.

He would be really ignorant if he thought that human capital in general was of ‘lower value’ to a capitalist business than non-human capital. The source of profits is precisely the extra value over and above its own value that living labour produces, the amount by which such capital ‘varies’ compared to its original value. But perhaps he was misled because he is running a bank and banks don’t actually produce anything but siphon off a part of the surplus value produced in industry.

The indignation of workers at being called ‘human capital’ brings out a key difference between the two types of capital. Humans can think and act and so can get together to end their economic status as a part of a capitalist business’s capital — by ending the whole economic system where production is in the hands of money-investing, profit-seeking businesses.

Letter: Animal liberation and socialism (2026)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Animal liberation and socialism

As a member of the organisation Socialism for Animal Liberation referenced in Howard Moss’s article ‘The Annual Vegan Fair’ (Socialist Standard, May 2026), I would like to make the following response.

SAL was formed in the summer of last year with three very clear goals. The first being to campaign for an end to all forms of animal abuse. The second being to bring anti-capitalist ideas into the animal rights movement. The third being to bring animal liberationist arguments into the movements of the left. We also understood SAL to be an emerging coalition of individuals and groups and welcomed participation from all different revolutionary traditions, whether they be socialist, anarchist, communist or radical green.

Bearing this in mind, I was a bit surprised by some of Howard’s comments.

For starters, Howard doesn’t seem to think that SAL is as committed to socialist politics as we are to animal liberation and feels that the organization will end up concentrating on individual acts of animal abuse to the neglect of systemic change. To be blunt, I really don’t know where this comes from since in all our literature and in all our presentations we make it crystal clear that it is only with socialism and socialism alone that we will end not just the exploitation of people by capital but also of animals and the natural world that we share the planet with. The modern-day animal rights movement, by contrast, often neglects the need for political change, focussing instead on personal outreach around veganism, on boycott, on direct action and on lobbying, all of which have their role but which ultimately cannot deliver animal liberation.

Howard makes the comment that SAL doesn’t appear to have a clear understanding of socialism and then lists some of the indices of what constitutes a post capitalist society such as its being moneyless and leaderless. I’d personally consider many of these criteria to be more indicative of a communist society than of a socialist state but I’ll agree to disagree with Howard on that one, as I do with anarchist comrades in SAL! If Howard means that not everyone would sign up to the SPGB definition then he’s completely correct, SAL being a coalition of shared concerns rather than a political party.

Some of Howard’s remarks unfortunately read along the lines that everything will be ok come the revolution, something more than problematic on several counts. The history of women’s relationship and socialist revolutions shows that if the left don’t take on demands in the here and now they are highly unlikely to be realised in the future. Likewise, does the Socialist Party of Great Britain have a formal commitment to animal liberation? If it doesn’t, and I’m fairly sure it doesn’t, then why should we see the end of the meat and dairy industry, of vivisection and of all bloodsports come socialism? Securing animal liberation means transforming human society in its entirety, hence the reason why comrades of SAL in other countries have spent so much time developing a programme that is both revolutionary and transitional.

Ultimately with its emphasis on ending profit-based relationships, on social ownership and a planned economy, SAL remains convinced that it is only in the context of a socialist society that animals will achieve true liberation. However, whilst we see that socialism as laying the material basis for animal liberation, there is no inevitable relationship between the two unless we consciously choose to develop one.

Finally, I’m not sure I was present at the online meeting that Howard attended but, like all organisations, when we come together to discuss action, the nature of that meeting will be determined by who attends and by what the agenda is. One month, much of the discussion might centre on how best to support the recent Beagles campaign, understandably so. Another month, most of the meeting might concentrate on discussing the finer points of Marxist theory and how it does, and doesn’t, fit into animal liberationist narratives. In other words, had Howard attended another meeting he might have come away with a totally different impression.

For the liberation of all,

Steven Andrew, 

Salford

Reply:

The article about Socialism for Animal Liberation (SAL) in the May Socialist Standard was largely sympathetic to that group’s analysis of society and its statement of intent. However, it did pick up on the contradiction between calling for complete ‘system change’ and at the same time seeming to focus on reforms to deal with particular problems within the current system. It made the point that focusing on single issues (animal abuse in this case) simply pushes real system change into the background. There is also the fact that any apparent progress via reforms can be – and often is – easily reversed by a mere change of government. A current example of this is the declaration by Nigel Farage that there is nothing wrong with fox-hunting and his suggestion that, if his Party came to power (something not entirely unlikely), the ban on it could be relaxed.

So while history has shown that single-issue campaigns and reforms can achieve a small degree of progress for both humans and animals, it is clear that they cannot lead to real revolutionary change. In other words, contrary to what our correspondent says, it is impossible to be both ‘revolutionary and transitional’ at the same time. The second of these simply precludes the first.

In addition, there is a manifest difference between what he means by socialism and what the Socialist Party means. While, like him, we work for a society without ‘profit-based relationships’, such a society could only come about through doing away with money, buying and selling and leaders and led, something he seems to reject – perhaps because he cannot imagine it. Nothing short of that could give us the ‘post-capitalist’ society he says he is looking for. Anything else would still be some form of capitalism – perhaps state capitalism – which would be unlikely to be a significant improvement for people (or for animals) on what we have now. Above all it would be a ‘state’ system, and, though he uses the term ‘socialist state’, that is in fact a contradiction in terms, since, if socialism is anything meaningful, it is a stateless and borderless society. Moreover, contrary to the distinction our correspondent wants to make between ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’, we’re perfectly happy for such a society to be called either. Like Marx, we consider the two terms to be synonymous and both to mean a society of free access to all goods and services where both humans and animals will be most likely to live decent, comfortable and unexploited lives. – Editors.

Another New Left (2026)

Book Review from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

This is Only the Beginning. The Making of a New Left, From Anti-Austerity to the Fall of Corbyn. By Michael Chessum. Bloomsbury. 2022. 230pp.

After the collapse of the USSR at the beginning of the 1990s ‘socialism’ became discredited. It had supposedly been tried and had failed. Apologists for capitalism proclaimed that capitalism was the only game in town and even the end-point of history. After the financial crash of 2008 the tide began to turn and ‘capitalism’ came to be unpopular.  An anti-capitalist movement of sorts arose, demanding that people should come before profits. Chessum was himself involved in this, both as a student activist and later as a Corbynite (he was a treasurer of Momentum).

The decade began with student fury at the breaking by the Liberal Democrats of their election pledge to abolish student tuition fees, when they entered into a coalition government with the Conservatives after the 2010 General Election. Universities up and down the country were occupied and the Tory party’s HQ in London ransacked. Then there was the campaign of direct action by UnCut against the premises of firms that were avoiding paying UK taxes by operating from tax havens. Then the campaign against the austerity measures imposed by the Coalition government. The movement had been given a boost by the Occupy movement of 2011 which identified a more general enemy than the government: the ‘top 1%’, the super-rich.

Chessum concedes that none of these campaigns was a success and writes of ‘the defeat of the anti-austerity movement’ (p. 104). What, for him, was positive were the new organisational form and methods of these movements: anti-hierarchical with actions being decided by groups of activists on the ground themselves and not directed by some leadership. This meant that not just the Labour Party but also the Leninist groups had no attraction for them and both stagnated.

Ironically, the second half of the decade saw the entry of many of the ‘anti-capitalists’ into the Labour Party, to elect Corbyn as Leader (twice) and then to try to change the Labour Party. That didn’t work out partly because, as Chessum himself experienced, the approach of those around Corbyn was also top-down. Corbyn resigned as Labour leader in 2020 following Labour’s poor showing in the 2019 general election and his opponents took back control of the party. So, another defeat. That’s where the book ends, but with Chessum confidently predicting that the anti-capitalist movement would find political expression in some other way. Hence the book’s title.

Obviously, it is a good thing that these days there are more people than there were in a recent past who recognise that capitalism puts profits before people and that something should be done about it. But what? Most anti-capitalists seem to think that, with enough pressure from below and with enough determined political will, people can be put before profit; that in effect capitalism can be reformed to allow this. But the experience of past attempts to do this have shown that it can’t be. Attempts to do this from below will fail just as surely as past attempts from above have done. It’s not a question of the method used but the fact that it is economically impossible to make capitalism put people before profit. Capitalism is driven by profit-making which must — and in the end always does — come first.

Chessum’s prediction that the movement would not die with Corbynism has since been borne out. When last July Sultana and Corbyn announced the launch of a new leftwing party, 800,000 expressed an interest. But the two made a mess of it and in the end most went on to join or support the Green Party. Chessum himself was among these and is now a Green Party councillor and Council Cabinet member for ‘Economy, Cost of Living and Empowered Communities’. Let’s see how he does.

Adam Buick

The real state we’re in: a response to the iPaper’s jobs fair propaganda (2026)

From the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vicky Spratt’s glazing dispatch from the Youth Guarantee Jobs Fair at Boxpark Camden reads like a press release from the Department for Work and Pensions (In Camden, I saw the antidote to Gen Z’s endless job rejections). She describes a ‘buzzing’ event where recruiters from Arsenal Football Club to the NHS handed out chocolate bars and baseball caps to smiling young jobseekers. Secretary of State Pat McFadden who was also present waxes lyrical about ‘welfare reform’ that puts ‘work and opportunity at its heart’. It is, by her account, ‘the antidote to Gen Z’s endless job rejections’.

I was there too. And I saw something very different.

I am not a young person. I am in my late 40s, a former events manager who once worked across Europe (bringing revenue into the UK economy), until Brexit devastated the industry I loved. My case manager at the DWP, aware of my age and experience, sent me to this ‘youth’ jobs fair anyway. What I witnessed was not an antidote. It was a symptom.

The fiasco of the ‘Fair’

Let us begin with the basics of event management, a profession I practised for years before this government destroyed my livelihood. A jobs fair is, at minimum, a professional event requiring adequate space, accessibility, and basic dignity for attendees. Boxpark Camden, a street food market, offered none of these.

The DWP, symptomatic of its ‘The Thick Of It’ style corporate culture, decided to go cheap and secure the food hall’s grubby, rickety beer hall tables and bench seating on the second and third levels. There was no space to move. If you used a wheelchair, crutches, or had any mobility impairment, you could not have navigated the space at all. Access was via narrow staircases only. There were no accessible toilets. The noise was overwhelming, a cacophony that made conversation, let alone professional networking, nearly impossible. The food vendors I met weren’t very happy that their tables were occupied all day by companies (and consuming outside food) and the place packed with unemployed youth.

My case manager knows I have ASD and auditory processing difficulties so added a note on my file to say that a quiet space is required for my meetings. This environment was not merely unsuitable; it was actively hostile. I travelled over an hour and a half on two buses to reach it, despite my job coach’s insistence that the journey was shorter. DWP are notorious for this sort of support for disabled jobseekers: sending us to inaccessible, sensory-overloading spaces in the name of ‘opportunity’. I suppose my job coach has quotas to meet lest he end up back in the electronic dole queue behind me.

For a former event manager, the incompetence was staggering. The UK events industry, worth £68.7 billion in 2024, has been battered by Brexit with 82 percent of industry respondents reporting that leaving the EU negatively affected their business, and 67 percent experiencing significant or minor losses.

The damage is documented and severe. A Stanford study estimates that by 2025, Brexit had reduced UK GDP by 6-8 percent, investment by 12-18 percent, and employment by 3-4 percent. The events sector saw losses of up to £1 million for individual companies. A major exhibition that drew 45,000 visitors annually moved from London to Barcelona. UK musicians have seen a 27 percent decline in small and medium-sized EU festival bookings, with 95 percent of affected artists experiencing decreased earnings.

The government’s own policies have helped hollow out a sector that once employed people like me. And yet when the DWP needs to organise an event, this is the best it can manage: a chaotic scramble in a food court which they probably got for free on a mid-week day in Camden.

Vicky Spratt writes warmly of hospitality roles ‘with training,’ care work, and paid experience on offer at this ramshackle event. What she does not interrogate is the quality of these jobs.

I spoke to the recruiters. Many of the ‘opportunities’ were barely really jobs at all, just the dregs of the labour market. Dishwashing in basement hotel kitchens. Zero-hour contracts in care. Jobs with such high turnover that employers attend fairs like this not out of social responsibility, but to factory farm disenfranchised young people and process them through. The symptom of an economy that has failed to provide meaningful work.

This is the ‘Youth Guarantee’ in practice: an £823 million scheme that offers employers £3,000 per hire, incentivising them to cycle through the cheapest possible labour rather than invest in genuine skills development. McFadden praises Marks & Spencer for creating 1,000 ‘training roles.’ He does not say what those roles pay, how long they last, or whether they lead anywhere. The structure of the scheme itself, paying employers to take on the long-term unemployed, creates a perverse incentive to treat young workers as subsidised, disposable inputs rather than human beings with futures.

Pat McFadden continues his spiel that ‘the narrative that says young people are shirkers and snowflakes … is wrong’. This is clever positioning. Rejecting the most overtly cruel rhetoric, he presents himself as the compassionate reformer and saviour. Actual policy direction reveals the same old coercion dressed in snake oil language.

McFadden describes hiring incentives and work experience placements as ‘welfare reform.’ He says the ‘best way into welfare reform’ is to ‘put work and opportunity at its heart’. This is not reform. This is the ideological enforcement of wage labour as the only legitimate form of existence.

But the Labour Party and the unions that founded it have always been occupied in trying to solve wages problems within capitalism, never questioning capitalism itself. The result? The problems multiply and become more complex and the armies of ‘solvers’ become larger and larger. There is not the slightest prospect that these people will solve the problems, because it is the very nature of wage-labour itself that causes the problems in the first place.

McFadden’s reform talks of cliff edges where people lose housing benefit if they enter work but his solution is not to question why housing should be contingent on employment at all. He speaks of ‘talking to people and working out how the government can help them to change their lives’ but the only change on offer is insertion into the labour market, on capital’s terms, at wages that do not cover the cost of living.

The right exam question, as McFadden puts it, is not how to assess what benefits people are entitled to. It is whether a system that forces millions to sell their labour power to survive while a tiny minority accumulates wealth from their subsequent labour is worth preserving at all.

Abolition of work

The young people Spratt interviews are not ‘snowflakes’. They are victims of a system that demands their labour while offering them precarity in return. Amina, the law graduate relying on Universal Credit who told the iPaper that ‘nobody replies’ to her applications, is not failing the labour market. The labour market is failing her. Brendan, who calls online applications a ‘black hole,’ is not lazy. He is alienated from a process that treats him as an input rather than a person.

The ‘black hole’ Brendan describes is not a glitch in the system. It is the system functioning as designed. Capitalism requires a reserve army of the unemployed applying for dozens, hundreds of jobs, hearing nothing back, to keep wages low and workers desperate. The DWP’s job fairs, with their chocolate bars and branded pens, are not an alternative to the black hole, they are it. To discipline the unemployed, making them visible, countable, and grateful for whatever scraps are offered

A genuine alternative would begin with the recognition that work as currently organised, serves capital not human need. What would society look like where housing, healthcare, education, or sustenance were not dependent on employment? Where the means of production were collectively owned and managed? Where the purpose of economic activity was the satisfaction of human needs rather than the accumulation of profit?

McFadden will never ask these questions. The Labour Party, committed to managing capitalism rather than transcending it, cannot ask them. But over a million young people classed as NEET, the highest figure since the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, are to be herded through food courts and told that their problem is a lack of ‘opportunity’.

What Spratt won’t ask

Spratt’s article is not dishonest, but it is narrow. She does not ask why a jobs fair for young people was sending an experienced professional approaching her 40s to a youth event. She does not ask why the DWP chose a filthy Camden street food market over an accessible conference venue. She does not ask why the jobs on offer weren’t skilled careers but, overwhelmingly, low-wage, high-turnover positions where you’ll still be visiting food banks rather than skilled careers. She does not ask why a law graduate is on Universal Credit after six months of silence from employers. She does not ask why the ‘solution’ to youth unemployment is always more work, never less capitalism.

Spratt does not ask Pat McFadden whether the welfare system he oversees is designed to support people or to discipline them. Whether ‘work and opportunity at its heart’ is a promise or a threat.

In the end, McFadden’s ‘welfare reform’ is nothing more than an attempt to make wage-working seem more palatable, to dress coercion in the language of opportunity.

A.T.

Proper Gander: Grander designs (2026)

The Proper Gander column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Kevin McCloud’s Listed Britain (Channel 4) is a tour round the country’s architectural heritage, particularly buildings which have been awarded ‘listed’ status. These are those which, because of their history, rarity or style, are deemed worth protecting. A listed building may not be demolished or altered without permission from its local planning authority, and renovations are expected to be carried out using sympathetic materials and techniques. Classifications differ across the UK: In England and Wales, ‘Grade 1’ confers the most protection, with ‘Grade A’ as the equivalent in Northern Ireland and ‘Category A’ in Scotland. The organisations which oversee this are various extensions of the state; in England and Scotland they are ‘executive non-departmental public bodies’.

Without safeguarding our most significant buildings, the country would become ‘a retail park with aspirations’, according to presenter Kevin McCloud. Old structures ‘speak through the generations’, being physical reminders of the past. When we see their brickwork, carvings or fixtures and fittings, we can imagine the people who made them and the circumstances in which they lived. However, buildings get built because of the prerogatives of landowners and business owners rather than in the interests of those who construct them. The series’ second episode covers structures which were intended to express the elite’s position in society: ‘the status symbols built to impress, dazzle and dominate’, as McCloud puts it. Chatsworth House and gardens in Derbyshire were intentionally designed ‘to communicate power’. Inside the main house, the most ostentatious display of wealth is the Painted Hall, which boasts an overwhelming range of murals above a cantilevered staircase, summed up by McCloud as ‘gargantuan’. The estate was and is owned by the aristocratic Cavendish family, whose successive Dukes of Devonshire prompted expansions during the 18th century, including demolishing part of a nearby village which apparently spoilt the view.

The building which most obviously embodies political power is the Palace of Westminster in London, completed in 1876 in the ‘Gothic Revival’ style. So, fittingly, Parliament is housed in an imposing, regimented relic of an outdated era. Also appropriate is that the structure has long been deteriorating and attempts to patch it up are too costly to be viable. McCloud wonders if the £35-40 billion needed to renovate the palace is worth it, as the same amount would fund the salaries of every NHS nurse for over two years. He asks ‘do you want to see democracy crumble? Do you want to see all vestiges of it disappear, turn to a pile of dust, or do you want to repair it, keep it going?’ ‘We as a nation have to collectively decide’ he adds, although the crumbling parliamentary democracy he describes doesn’t really enable us to ‘collectively decide’ how the state functions.

As illustrated by the Palace of Westminster, listed status doesn’t prevent a building from sliding into decline, and less prominent or unused sites are more vulnerable. The money system holds back buildings of historical and aesthetic importance being adequately maintained because the required skilled workers, specialist techniques and specific materials tend to be prohibitively expensive. Places attract income from visitors if there’s a lot to see, but there isn’t in 14th century Baguley Hall in Manchester, for example. ‘Financial viability and money is always the problem’ says heritage expert Catherine Dewar about the struggles with its upkeep.

Listed status isn’t only granted to buildings well over a hundred years old. Cathedrals in Coventry and Liverpool from the mid-20th century have Grade 1 classification, as does another place of worship. Being a hub for the insurance market, the Lloyds building in London is like a cathedral to commerce, where its congregation of underwriters and brokers put their faith in the economy. Completed at the height of yuppiedom in 1986, with its pipes, lifts and facilities on the outside to leave more space in the middle for business, the Lloyds building looks like it’s ‘made by machines’, and made for the machinery of capitalism.

Not all listed buildings reflect the power of the elite: a hidden grotto lined with seashells and London Zoo’s Modernist penguin enclosure were more personal passion-projects. The programme is also keen to emphasise the ‘positive energy’ of community groups, campaigners and craftspeople working to preserve heritage architecture.

A framework for listing buildings could exist in a socialist society, although the context would be different to that of today. The notion of a cherished building under threat of destruction sits more in capitalism than socialism, as the impetus for destruction is invariably money-driven. Any scheme for listing buildings in a socialist society would be shaped by how they are ‘owned’. The understanding and application of who owns buildings would be unlike that in capitalism, where possession is held by individuals or organisations, and ‘legitimised’ by legislation and money.

The situation with Mavisbank House in Midlothian, Scotland, highlights some of the quirks of ownership in our current society. Constructed in the 1720s as the first villa in the Palladian style in Scotland, by the late 20th century the building was a ruin. The Lothian Preservation Trust’s aims of restoration were complicated by Mavisbank’s ownership not being clear. Its last documented owner claimed he sold it to three probably fictitious people, and he also sold off its access roads so its actual owner may not legally be able to get to it.

In a socialist society, buildings and their environment would be the responsibility of the community as a whole. So, there would be no separation between ownership and who uses buildings, avoiding one of the restrictions of the capitalist system. As a socialist society wouldn’t ration its resources with money, another barrier to maintaining buildings wouldn’t apply. Any rules about protecting significant buildings would be decided democratically and managed by whatever method is most accountable and fair. There would still be disputes over whether or not a particular construction should be retained, but their resolution would be more straightforward and transparent, compared with the financial constraints, hierarchies and bureaucracy of capitalism.

Mike Foster

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Global real worker pay fell 12 percent while real CEO pay surged 54 percent between 2019 and 2025. At least four CEOs of major corporations each pocketed over $100 million in pay and bonuses last year. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan led the pack at over $205 million. Billionaires were paid $2,500 per second in dividends in 2025. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and Oxfam are calling for urgent action to rein in extreme wealth, including higher, fairer taxes on the richest and binding limits on CEO pay.

[Common Dreams]

In 2011, he spent 81 days detained in China for criticizing the government following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in which 90,000 people died. Ai Weiwei worked with hundreds of anonymous volunteers to identify and publish the names of more than 5,000 children who died under the rubble of poorly constructed schools, information that the government sought to censor. 

[El Pais]

…. the Housing and Land Rights Network, have argued that the real numbers are significantly higher and estimate at 3 million…Shelters, where available, are frequently inadequate, overcrowded, unsanitary, unsafe for women, or located far from work opportunities. Instead of treating shelter as a right linked to dignity, many city administrations treat it as temporary charity. During mega-events such as the Commonwealth Games 2010 or the G20 Summit gatherings hosted in India, homeless people are often subjected to eviction drives in the name of beautification. Pavements are cleared, encampments removed, and poverty hidden so that cities may appear modern to visitors.

[Countercurrents]

The right to life in Kenya is often treated as if it begins at conception and ends at birth. As in much of the world, self-described ‘pro-lifers’ claim to defend life at all costs – yet too often stop short of defending the lives already being lived, and those cut short too early.

[openDemocracy]

…the central question of his book, which is built around a concept Marx called ‘disposable time’—the time left over after workers have completed the labor necessary to sustain themselves and their families. Marx traced this idea back to an obscure 1821 pamphlet he discovered in the British Museum, in which the author argued that a nation’s true wealth lies not in gold or goods but in free time: ‘Wealth is disposable time, and nothing more’.

[People’s World]

The communist revolution, if it arrives in the nick of time to prevent humankind’s suicide, is a seismic event that changes everything. It is difficult to imagine it but it will leave nothing untouched. People will change. In the heat of the struggle for survival, proletarians will come together and become the self-conscious collective worker, which he/she already was but didn’t know it. All human relationships (between producers, family members, men-women, young-old, teachers-students and more) change in the process. The entire way in which society reproduces itself changes. Work changes. It no longer means labor.

[Internationalist Perspective]

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

Cooking the Books: Economic leverage (2026)

The Cooking The Books column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Workers face worst squeeze on real pay since 2022’ was the headline of an article in the Times (20 May) by its Economics Editor Mehreen Khan. In the first three months of this year, average weekly earnings increased by 3.4 percent, which was more or less the same as the rise in the Consumer Prices Index. ‘However’, Khan writes,

‘while real incomes are on course to flatline this year, the jump in global oil prices is expected to push annual inflation close to 4 per cent in the coming months’.

If average earnings go up by 3.4 percent and consumer prices go up by 4 percent, that’s a reduction in real pay for workers. So why don’t they simply go on strike and push up wages to keep up?

The answer is that workers don’t have the power to put up the price of what they have for sale — their labour power — just because they want to, even to cover a rise in the cost of what they need to produce what they are selling. They, like all other sellers, can only charge ‘what the market will bear’. And, as Khan and the economists she quotes note, the current state of the labour market will not allow an increase:

‘Rising prices, combined with a weakening job market — where unemployment has risen to 5 per cent — means workers are losing their bargaining power to demand pay rises, economists said.’

One of the economists, Josie Anderson of the financial services group Namura, used the term ‘soft labour market’. This doesn’t mean what you might expect — surely, the current labour market is a ‘hard’ one as far as workers are concerned? — until you realise she was writing from the employers’ point of view as buyers of labour power. An AI definition of the term (cobbled together from other definitions) makes this clear:

‘A soft labor market (also called a “cooling” or “loose” labour market) is an economic environment where the supply of available workers outpaces the demand for labour. In this climate, hiring slows down, job seekers face stiffer competition, and employers regain negotiating leverage.’

Whether or by how much real pay goes up or down is a question of the respective bargaining strength of employers and workers, which in turn depends on the state of the labour market, but that is not something we are usually told by the media. Normally the story is of greedy workers causing inflation by forcing employers to agree to excessive wage demands.

Sometimes workers are in a favourable bargaining position and can maintain or push up real pay: when business is booming, finding a job is easy, and employers are making good profits; this ‘hard’ labour market for employers gives workers some ‘negotiating leverage’. That is the time to strike or threaten to strike. But the reverse of this is a ‘soft’ labour market for employers; it is they who are then in a stronger bargaining position, as at present and, according to one of the economists, for the fourth time ‘in less than two decades’.

We are talking here just about changes in bargaining leverage over the shortish-time price of labour power. Ultimately, over wages, the capitalist class have the upper hand as they monopolise productive resources. This gives them leverage to force workers to sell their labour-power for a wage in the first place. There is no bargaining about this; it’s just a fact of capitalist life that is imposed on workers. The way out for them is political not economic: to take political action to make the means of life commonly owned and democratically controlled by the whole community. Then there will be no labour market and no wages system.

Socialist Sonnet No. 239: Penalties (2026)

 From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Penalties

Both captains of England beaming

Out through a betting shop window.

The trophy they hold’s just for show

To entice punters who’re dreaming

World Cup dreams. Footballing success

Against the odds: There is romance

And an outside gamble that chance

Might pay out, and so help to address

The piker’s parlous fiscal state.

Also, there’s national pride at stake,

All lost on a simple mistake;

Seeming perniciousness of fate.

Briefly, the optimism flows,

But then, the final whistle blows.

 D. A.

SPGB July Events (2026)

Party News from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our general discussion meetings are held on Zoom. To connect to a meeting, enter https://zoom.us/wc/join/7421974305 in your browser. Then follow instructions on screen and wait to be admitted to the meeting.

Halo Halo (2026)

The Halo Halo Column from the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

From Ecclesiastes 1:9: ‘What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun’. A sentiment that we can find ourselves in agreement with. We are returning to a topic that appeared in Halo Halo eleven years ago, because the speculation engendered then has raised its alien head yet again.

Rumours regarding the involvement of the gods, read aliens, in human affairs and development have been swirling for many years but should convincing evidence ever surface then the fallout might prove too much to bear for many. Reluctant as we are to use nuclear devastation as a metaphor, the outcome from the consequences of the newest revelations might prove to be la désolation for those to whom ‘faith’ matters more than rationality.

The 2015 Halo had some interesting responses to the possibility of there being other sentient beings. ‘If there was intelligent life (on another planet) I don’t see that as a contradiction with the Christian faith… If God created aliens somewhere out there, then the Vatican is in no position to say Jesus wasn’t for them too’… ‘aliens who seek baptism should receive it from the church, because any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul’. ‘Alien life would be part of God’s creation’ and aliens would be ‘our brothers’.

Back in the 1960s a Swiss author published Chariots of the Gods. It has sold over thirty million copies. The book purported to show evidence that extraterrestrial beings once visited Earth and guided some embryonic civilisations. The thesis was, over time, carefully examined and the ‘evidence’ shown to have meanings different to the proposed hypothesis. Case not proven.

On 8 and 22 May 2026, the American military Pentagon gave out two lots of declassified files regarding UFOs (now called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAP). Quelle surprise mon blancmange, the released files do not provide any definitive or conclusive evidence of life on Mars, of Alien Ubers, or of a Men in Black establishment.  Such non-evidence from these files will not necessarily disappoint conspiracy theorists who will maintain that the ‘real’ evidence is still being withheld for a number of reasons and the government is doing what the government always does, hiding information for the benefit of a minority.

The solar system resides in the Milky Way which has an estimated total of possibly up to four hundred billion stars and planets. So about the same odds as winning the national lottery. Who wants to bet that there isn’t other evolved life out there? As has been noted in the past, if evolved life is at a higher level of consciousness than humankind then it would assiduously avoid this neighbourhood rather than moving into it.

Conclusion, the expected ‘nuclear devastation’ is no such thing and doesn’t even qualify as a damp squib. Guess we’ll have to wait until the visitors actually do jet in to see the level of the welcome.

DC

Trust me, I’m a reformist (2026)

From the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Remember Kaa, the snake in the cartoon version of The Jungle Book? A thoroughly dangerous and treacherous constrictor whose one interest in life is to get his coils around Mowgli and squeeze the life out of the poor lad.He nearly manages it too, with his hypnotic eyes and the lisped lyrics of a song that goes:

‘Trusst in me, jusst in me, shut your eyes and trusst in me’.

And if you were to look for a common denominator of all the reformist parties currently slithering around in front of the working class, whatever the details of the various plans they’ve hatched to ensure a wonderful future for the likes of you and me, it would surely be this plea to ‘Trusst in me’.

And they all echo one of Kaa’s follow-up lines, ‘You can sleep safe and sound, knowing I am around’.

And if you reckon that you will be able to sleep safe and sound by once again voting to hand over the administration of the capitalist system to any of these reformists, you are heading for yet another rude awakening. Because, as we will never tire of reminding you, the system cannot be made to work in the interest of the majority. The minority’s interest will and must always come first.

And unlike the fictional Kaa, who was after just one quick fatal squeeze, in the real world we’re trapped in the coils of a system that is designed to keep squeezing us to provide its owners with profit.

Budgie

Cut and thrust (2026)

Book Review from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tory Cuts. By David Connolly. Self-published. 2026.

This has been advertised in the classified section of Private Eye and is clearly aimed at the sub-section of society that is actively critical about the way UK society and its economy operate. It is at times amusing and frustrating, the latter mainly because of the large number of editing errors and the rather scattergun approach to structure – there is an underpinning narrative thread, but it really does test the patience of the reader as it often meanders off on tangents. At root, it needed a much finer editorial hand.

The over-arching theme is that the approach to economic management favoured by the Conservative Party in recent decades (and to some extent Labour) is a form of neo-liberalism that has only served to damage the UK economy, engender class division and infect the UK public sphere. Connolly’s solution seems to be Social Democratic Party-style economic interventionism allied with aspects of social conservatism. In some ways it is a ‘back to the future’ scenario as all this has been tried before and the social democratic economies of Europe (Scandinavia in particular) that he lauds have now been beset by similar issues. Indeed, pretty much all of them have seen falls in their growth rates like the UK and their halcyon days seem well and truly over, with resulting social discontent which hasn’t been seen in decades and a concomitant rise of the populist right.

It should be added that there is some very selective use of statistics in this book and some of them could be questioned too (including the over-stated claim that workers in the UK are losing 10 percent of our wages for every 10 years of neo-liberalism). But it is entertaining in parts and brings out the class divide at the heart of society well enough.

The solution to the problems Connolly identifies lies not in a return to a mythical social democratic past though – a past, after all, that was perceived as being so glorious the working class elected Thatcher and her successors in gratitude. Furthermore, much of what Connolly blames on neo-liberalism and monetarist economics – such as the decline in UK manufacturing – is really much more a product of the shift in world capitalism away from many of the traditional metropolitan centres of capital in Western Europe to China, India and the Far East instead, where labour costs are lower. For instance, while it is true that the proportion of UK jobs in manufacturing fell from around 25 percent of the workforce in 1980 to about 8 percent now, in Germany it fell from around 40 percent to about 19 percent, France from 25 percent to under 12 percent and Spain from about 20 percent to 10 percent. There has been a big fall in the neo-liberal US economy too, of course, though actually less than any of these European countries, many of whom use the same type of broadly social democratic approach he favours.

Ultimately, the underlying cause of the issues Connolly is rightly concerned about is not the actions of Tory governments and those who wish to copy them like Blair and Starmer – it is the way society is organised. Class division, economic instability and an uneven, antagonistic system of income distribution are at the very heart of all market economies, irrespective of political colours. Top-down, class-divided, based on entitlement and exclusion, with untold riches for a tiny minority and salary slavery for everybody else – that’s the capitalist way and it will need a lot more than a modification of personnel at the top to make it history.

DAP

Material World: It’s the Economy, Stupid! (2026)

The Material World column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

So said James Carville, a political strategist on Bill Clinton’s successful campaign to win the American presidency in 1992. It was written up on a whiteboard in Clinton’s Little Rock headquarters, as a reminder to campaign workers to remain focused on the recession then affecting voters.

A decade and a half earlier the Italian historian, Carlo M. Cipolla, wrote his essay, ‘The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity’. His basic contention was that everyone always underestimates the number of stupid people there are.

Stupidity is generally defined as acting foolishly or carelessly, in an apparently stunned or blank manner, or being ridiculous to an extreme degree. It is important at this point to establish that Cipolla wasn’t using stupidity as a synonym for idiocy or lack of intelligence. But rather it is a human feature of many, perhaps all, whatever an individual’s mental acuity.

Everyone, if they are honest with themselves, will be able to identify personal examples of their own stupidity, indeed they are likely to be many and various. Usually, they do not result in anything too serious, more often nothing worse than inconvenience or embarrassment. Occasionally, though there is injury, or worse

At the Kremlin

Consider two presidents, one Russian, the other American and their current wars. If there is one huge lesson the Second World War should have taught Russia’s present leader it’s that a powerful military force can be thwarted by a determined population.

Stalingrad was thoroughly bombed, shelled and otherwise blasted for over five months. 90 percent of the city was taken by the aggressors with almost half a million military and 40,000 civilian casualties. Yet not only did it not surrender but became the instance from which the invaders suffered ultimate defeat. Four decades later the Russians became the insurgent force in Afghanistan only to suffer defeat and expulsion at the hands of a seemingly inferior military.

So what induces the present Kremlin incumbent to consider victory in Ukraine likely? Dreadful as they are, the missiles and drones launched against the cities are not anything like the razing of Stalingrad. If the intention was to thwart NATO, the consequence has been to strengthen its resolve and expand it. To have expected otherwise, in the face of previous experiences, appears to be an exemplar of stupidity, at an awful and avoidable cost.

In the White House

Meanwhile, in the White House, stupidity seems to be the order of the day. The Vietnam War is not so long ago its conduct and outcome can have been forgotten. B52 bombers that were to return Hanoi to the Stone Age proved far less effective than bicycles down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. America’s own, more recent, experience in Afghanistan, with the eventual return to government of the Taliban should have highlighted how all too easy it is to become embroiled in bellicose misadventures.

The setting aside once more of historical experience has ensnared the Commander in Chief in a conflict he is having great difficulty in extricating himself from. Indeed, it could well lead to the regime in Tehran becoming stronger. Stupidity wrapped in stars and stripes.

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to identify any war the outcome of which was an unmitigated success for a winner. For any supposed winner there may be some short-term spoils, but any such resolution is subsequently unravelled by further conflict arising directly or indirectly from that martial discord.

Following leaders

The present system is driven by the accumulation of capital, which requires nation states to compete for resources, trade routes and markets, competition that all too often manifests as armed conflict. Governments of all types have to serve the interests of capital, the unfettered, as far as possible, pursuit of profit. It doesn’t matter what governments or politicians promise their citizens – better welfare at home or conquests abroad – the imperative of profit will be the deciding factor.

There are of course those for whom war is not stupidity writ large, the arms manufacturers. A huge industry worldwide it consumes massive amounts of scientific research time, resources and labour power, as well as the lives of multitudinous casualties military and civilian.

Consider how humanity worldwide would benefit if that effort was focused on meeting people’s needs rather than profiting from their deaths. It must be stupidity to persevere with maintaining a system that cannot be anything other than careless of human need.

Any campaigning against the arms industry is opposed not only by shareholders who want their dividend from the profits, governments covetous of tax revenue and, also, the trade unions of those employed in the industry. Yet the best interests of all, even the shareholders, would be in establishing a cooperative worldwide society that wasn’t riven by nationalism, wars, terrorism and all such manifestations of inhumanity.

However, for as long as people continue to lend their support, via the ballot box or other means, to political individuals or parties while expecting, or hoping for, better outcomes they are denying their own experiences. Rather than accepting the need to play an active part in determining a very different society, they continue to be passive recipients of whatever capitalism deigns to spare them. This is not congenital, but elective, which means it is eminently possible to choose otherwise.

One of the basic laws Cipolla formulated in his pamphlet was ‘A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or a group of persons while himself deriving no gain or even possibly incurring losses’.

Consider the two leaders referred to above, along with leaders in general, in the light of Ciprolla’s law. How long is humanity to be subjected to leadership stupidity? How long is humanity going to continue the stupidity of following leaders?

James Carville was certainly no socialist, but he unintentionally acceded to socialist understanding. Because it is the economy, the worldwide economy that is ultimately the determining factor of the quality of life to be shared by all.

D. A.

Obituary: Janet Carter (2026)

Obituary from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to have to report that our comrade Janet Carter died at the beginning of May at the age of 89. During the Second World War she was evacuated from the East End of London to Cornwall. Janet first came across the Socialist Party when she bought a Socialist Standard at an anti-Vietnam war demonstration in Trafalgar Square in 1967. The following year she joined the Haringey branch, having previously briefly been a member of the Communist Party. Later she was a member of the Redbridge, North London and latterly our Online Central Branch.

Nationally, Janet took on various responsibilities, serving at times as General Secretary, Executive Committee member, and Central Branch Secretary. During the Miners’ Strike of 1984-5 she had two children of miners stay with the family. She had started work as a shorthand typist, and later, after doing a part-time degree course, worked as a qualified librarian. She worked at Walthamstow Central Library where for a while she was a union rep too. She was predeceased by her husband Joe who had also been a Party member. She was a calm, considered voice in the Party who widely commanded the respect of members. Our condolences go to her daughter and son and other members of her family.

Blogger's Note:

From an earlier post on the blog.

"In 2019, Janet [Carter] kindly agreed to be interviewed for an article in that year's Summer School publication, which had the theme of 'being a socialist in a capitalist world'. Carla Dee put together some questions and wrote up Janet's replies about her life as a socialist and the people she met. Here's the text of the interview".

Action Replay: Fifteen to one (2026)

The Action Replay column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have written before about the financial problems of professional tennis players (see Action Replay for August 2024 and May 2025). The question has now arisen again, with some top players demanding a bigger share of the takings at the largest tournaments, the Majors or Grand Slams (Paris, Wimbledon, Melbourne, New York). They have taken the drastic step of cutting short press interviews, and have also threatened a possible boycott. Taking part in interviews is a requirement at Grand Slams.

This may sound a bit over the top, as the leading players are millionaires, but that is not the whole story. The tactic is to limit interviews to 15 minutes, as a reference to the 15 percent of revenue that the big tournaments allocate to prize money. For instance, the All-England Lawn Tennis Club had an income of £427m in the year to July 2025; players have asked for 22 percent of revenue to go to prize money by 2030.

The players also want the Grand Slams to contribute more to pension and maternity funds, and wish to have more of a say in tournament organisation. This would mean less gruelling schedules and fewer late-night finishes. So working conditions are a bone of contention, as for most of those who have to work for a wage.

To illustrate the kinds of problems that players can have, Maja Chwalińska was runner-up in the recent French Open, her first success at that level. Her prize was €1.4 million, which of course is pretty impressive. But she did not receive her earnings until after the tournament ended, so she had problems paying for her hotel in Paris, though a Polish company did step in to cover the costs. Losing in the first round would get €87,000 for a woman player. Aryna Sabalenka, the world number one, said, ‘It’s about the players who are lower in the ranking, who are suffering.’

It has been claimed that to break even as a player you need to be in the world’s top 75, with travel and accommodation costs eating up a large part of a player’s income, together with hiring a coach and a physiotherapist. Players from South America have to pay larger amounts than most to compete in tournaments in other parts of the world. Winning £300,000 in a season probably sounds quite reasonable, but it will probably be just enough to break even. The Grand Slams are the major sources of income for players lower down the ladder.

So what may seem from the outside to be a glamorous way of earning a living can for many be a pretty hard grind.

Paul Bennett

A word to the electors of Clapham Park (2026)

Party News from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our manifesto for a local council by-election in Lambeth on 9 July.

You are being asked to vote in yet another election. The other parties will come to you with lists of promises: more housing, safer streets, better parks, protection for LGBTQ+ people. They will tell you that if you elect them to the council, they will manage capitalism a little more humanely.

We say: we have all heard these promises before. Labour, Lib Dem, Green, they have all sat in the council chamber. The housing crisis has deepened. Rents have soared. Our parks have been fenced off for private profit. And still they ask for your vote on the promise that this time it will be different.

The SOCIALIST PARTY does not make promises we cannot keep. We do not ask you to vote for us in order to administer capitalism more efficiently. We ask you to use your vote as a weapon of class consciousness, to register that you understand the root cause of every problem facing Clapham Park, and that the solution lies not in the council chamber but in the abolition of the wages system itself.

HOUSING: AGAINST PRIVATISATION, FOR THE COMMONS

Lambeth Council has spent decades selling off, demolishing, and privatising the housing stock that working people in Clapham Park depend upon. Council homes have been transferred to housing associations. Estates have been handed to developers under ‘regeneration’ schemes that mean demolition for tenants and luxury flats for investors. The Clapham Park Estate itself has seen the slow erosion of social housing, replaced by ‘mixed tenure’ developments where the ‘mix’ means that those with money and those without are segregated within the same postcode.

The other parties will tell you they will build more ‘affordable’ homes. But ‘affordable’ to whom? To the buy-to-let landlord? To the overseas investor with an empty flat? To the young professional on a six-figure salary? Affordable housing is a contradiction in terms under a system where land and property are commodities to be speculated upon.

The SOCIALIST PARTY has always maintained that housing problems cannot be solved by reform. Every reform, council housing, rent control, ‘right to buy’, has been absorbed, undermined or reversed by the logic of capital. As we argued in the Socialist Standard over a century ago, and as history has proven again and again: what is given by reformist legislation is taken back by economic necessity.

From a socialist perspective, we do not seek to ‘improve’ social housing as a transition to socialism. We recognise that the very form of the commodity, whether a council flat or a private apartment, must be abolished. Housing must cease to be an asset class and become a commons, a space for social engagement, collectively controlled and freely accessible. The ‘communalisation of housework’ demanded by feminist commons theorists is inseparable from the communalisation of housing itself.

Housing under capitalism means rent, mortgage debt, eviction, and ‘regeneration’ that regenerates profit for developers while displacing tenants. Council housing, housing associations, ‘affordable’ rents — all are attempts to manage this contradiction, and all have failed because they leave the wages system intact

Socialism means the common ownership of land and buildings. No rent. No landlords. No ‘property ladder.’ Shelter produced and distributed according to need, not according to ability to pay. This is not a policy to be voted through a council chamber. It is a necessary part of working-class revolution.

BROCKWELL PARK: ECOLOGY AGAINST ‘PARKSPLOITATION’

Brockwell Park is being destroyed before our eyes. Not by neglect, but by commercialisation. Lambeth Council has handed our park to Brockwell Live, a festival operator owned by the private equity firm KKR, managers of approximately £600 billion in assets, with average returns of 18-23 percent. KKR is accountable only to its shareholders. It has no interest in our park, our ecology, or our community.

The result? Up to 32 days of fenced-off, ticketed events. The ‘Great Wall’ erected across public land. Ancient trees damaged. Grasslands turned to mud. And for what? So that profits can be extracted from what was once free space for all, then funnelled through a Luxembourg holding company while Lambeth claims it needs the revenue to ‘subsidise’ the very community events it has now cancelled.

This is not mismanagement. This is capitalism functioning exactly as designed: the enclosure of the commons, the selling-off of things we all use, the subordination of our natural and social landscape to the imperative of profit.

The Green Party will tell you to vote for them to ‘protect’ the park. But ‘protection’ within capitalism means regulation, consultation, planning permission, a slower form of the same enclosure. The Labour Council, meanwhile, has been found by the High Court to have acted unlawfully and irrationally in its handling of these events. Yet they press on.

From a socialist standpoint, we reject the framework that says Brockwell Park must ‘pay for itself.’ Public space is not a revenue stream. Ecology is not a balance sheet. The SOCIALIST PARTY has long argued that capitalism treats the environment as a ‘free good’ to be exploited at no cost to capital. We say: the park belongs to the people who use it, not to the council that administers it, and certainly not to a private equity firm.

Brockwell Park under capitalism is being enclosed by KKR because every space is subject to the logic of the profit system. Labour has managed the park’s enclosure. The Greens would regulate it. Neither questions the system that requires it.

Only socialism can de-commodify public space. Only when production is for use, not profit, can a park be simply a park — trees, grass, birdsong, and the free association of human beings without ticket barriers, security fences, or ‘events strategies.’

LGBTQ SAFETY ON CLAPHAM HIGH STREET

Clapham High Street should be a space where LGBTQ people can move freely and safely. The recent history of violence, harassment, and hate crime in the area is real and must be addressed. But how it is addressed matters.

The other parties will tell you the answer is more police. More CCTV. More ‘hate crime’ legislation. More reporting mechanisms that funnel vulnerable people into the arms of the same criminal justice system that disproportionately arrests, harasses, and imprisons LGBTQ people especially trans people, and sex workers.

The SOCIALIST PARTY has always maintained that the police are not a neutral force. They are, as we have argued since 1904, part of the coercive wing of the capitalist state. Their function is not to protect the vulnerable but to protect property and the social order that produces vulnerability. The modern police force emerged to discipline the working class, break strikes, and enforce the property relations that create the conditions for violence in the first place. As we have consistently pointed out, the police do not prevent crime; they manage its distribution, channelling it away from the wealthy and toward the poor.

The ‘community policing’ advocated by some reformists is no solution. It merely extends the reach of surveillance and control into our neighbourhoods under a friendlier face. The abolition of state policing does not mean its replacement by ‘community policing;’ it means the abolition of the conditions that make policing ‘necessary.’

From a socialist perspective, safety is not produced by force but by different social relations. When housing is secure, when work is voluntary, when gender is not a source of economic precarity, when the ‘family’ is not the enforced unit of social reproduction, then the violence that policing claims to address withers away. The work of collectives like Cradle Community, developing transformative responses to harm that do not rely on coercive institutions, shows us what is possible. But these experiments remain trapped within capitalism, unable to address the structural roots of the violence they respond to.

Policing under capitalism is not a neutral service but the defence of property relations. The police do not prevent violence against LGBTQ people; they manage its distribution, channelling it toward the poor and the marginalised. ‘Community policing’ fulfils the same role, but with a friendlier face.

The socialist alternative is not a different kind of policing but the abolition of the conditions that make policing ‘necessary.’ This is not reform. This is revolution.

WHY WE STAND

THE SOCIALIST PARTY is often called ‘impossibilist.’ We accept the term. We were given it by reformists who thought socialism could be achieved piece by piece, reform by reform, compromise by compromise. Over 120 years, we have watched every such attempt fail or become diluted. The welfare state was built then partially dismantled. Council housing was built and sold off. The ‘right to work’ became the obligation to work for a pittance.

We do not stand for allegedly ‘possible’ improvements within capitalism. We stand for the so-called impossible: a world without wages, without landlords, without police, without states; a world where production is for use, not profit; where the means of life are held in common; where human need, not the accumulation of capital, governs society.

This is not a distant utopia to be achieved after a ‘transition period.’ It is not a programme to be implemented by a party or a state. It is the practical activity of working people abolishing for themselves the divisive and exploitative categories of wage, commodity, property, gender and race.

We do not ask you to vote for us in order to ‘represent’ you in the council chamber. We ask you to vote for us in order to register your rejection of the entire framework of capitalist politics. Every vote for the SOCIALIST PARTY is a vote for the common ownership of the means of life. It is a declaration that you understand that Clapham Park’s problems over housing, ecology, safety, dignity cannot be solved by better management of the same system that produces them.

THE ONLY WAY FORWARD

The other candidates will tell you they can make Lambeth ‘better.’ We tell you the truth: Lambeth cannot be made better while capitalism remains. The council, whatever its political colour, is an administrative body of a class state. It manages the affairs of capital in our locality. It cannot abolish the profit motive. It cannot communalise housing. It cannot de-commodify our parks. It cannot produce safety without force.

Only the conscious, organised working class can do these things. Only when the majority of people understand their interest in the abolition of capitalism and act upon that understanding can we move beyond the endless cycle of reform and reaction.

Your vote for Anya Krycek is not a vote for a councillor. It is a vote for socialism. It is a declaration that you refuse to be bought off with promises of ‘affordable’ rents and ‘community’ policing. It is a recognition that the problems of Clapham Park are the problems of the world system and that their solution requires the revolutionary transformation of that system.

50 Years Ago: The class issue in the American Revolution (2026)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

What, if anything, does the Declaration of Independence mean? The approach of its 200th anniversary has produced a small deluge of reviews of the saga of American history and the ‘truths’ adopted on 4th July 1776. There must be many who, having read and listened, still wonder why a nation claiming to be founded on ‘inalienable rights’ of equality, freedom of speech and thought and ‘the pursuit of happiness’ manifestly does not have them. The answer is that the Declaration of Independence was framed as the expression of one class’s economic interests…

The greater part of the Declaration of Independence consists of political attacks on George III. In Britain the Georges were supported by the Tory representatives of the landowning aristocracy while the Whigs, standing for the interests of developing capitalism and freedom of trade, were still struggling. In America, still in its early stages, the class issues were confused but the dominant interests were those from which the capitalist class originated: the smuggling merchants, land speculators, and would-be manufacturers. The Tories comprised large landholders, ‘respectable’ merchants, officials and dependants of the British regime, and the Church of England faction…

The War of Independence ended in 1782, one month before the Tory government fell and the Americans’ Whig allies came to power in Britain. This was the beginning of capitalism’s rise to maturity. How much the Declaration of Independence meant, and whom it stood for, can be seen in the fact that in the mid-1780s out of an American population of 3½ million (excluding Indians) only 400,000 were ‘free’ men. Its principles, and the ideas of democracy it embodied, were cast aside almost immediately…

The history books show Independence to have been essential to the emergence of a great modern nation: the creation of a strong central government controlled by the manufacturing and commercial class. The capitalists were a revolutionary class, advancing the capacities of mankind immeasurably. What the Declaration of Independence shows is their inability to fulfil those capacities after two hundred years. Like the aristocracy from whose grip they broke, from a dynamic social force they have long since become an obstruction to mankind. It is time for the next move, to Socialism.

[From the article, The Class Issue in the American Revolution' by Robert Barltrop, Socialist Standard, July 1976.]

Editorial: The same difference (2026)

Editorial from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

So Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, has won the Makerfield by-election and can now challenge Starmer for the leadership of the Labour Party. If he wins, he will become the new Prime Minister. So what?

Marx famously pointed out that governments are ‘a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’. In Britain the Prime Minister is the chairperson of this committee which doesn’t have to be composed of actual capitalists. In Marx’s day most British Prime Ministers were not capitalists but landed aristocrats but this was acceptable as long as they managed things in the general interest of the capitalist class. In the course of the last century committee members and chairs came to be drawn from a pool of professional politicians who could come from any background. This, too, was acceptable and is the norm today.

All the governments there have been in Britain, whether Conservative or Labour or, earlier, Liberal, or a coalition of two or all three of them, have managed the common affairs of the owning class in the interests of that class. The first duty of any government is to guarantee and enforce the ownership rights of capitalists over the means of production. The second has been to ensure that priority is given to the making and accumulation of profits. These — class ownership and production for profit —are the basis of capitalism and no government has ever challenged them.

Governments have a free hand on narrowly political matters such as the structure of the state machine or what is a crime but, when it comes to the economy, its power is limited by the nature of the capitalist economy as one that runs on profits. If, in its taxation or trade or tariff or employment policies, it goes against this, then sooner or later it will provoke an economic downturn and the risk of the resulting popular discontent leading to it being voted out of office and a rival set of politicians taking over. This is enough to keep governments in line with the general capitalist interest. The Labour Party learned this the hard way while the Conservative and Liberals didn’t need to be taught it. The Green Party has yet to learn it.

If the government has to respect and apply the economic laws of capitalism then it is not all that important who is the chairperson of the board of directors of UK Capitalism PLC. It is true that there can a bad government from a capitalist point of view — one that doesn’t competently manage the common affairs of the capitalist class — and an incompetent chairperson, such as the over-confident Truss or the bumbling Starmer, can contribute to this. But that’s a problem for the capitalist class, not the workers.

Whether Starmer or Burnham is Prime Minister is not going to make the slightest difference to the workers’ subordinate position in society nor solve the problems this brings them.