Behind the fine words
Environmentalists were delighted by the news that “The United States and the European Union forced through a ministerial statement which bound the OECD group of industrialised countries to adopt legally binding limits, targets and timetables to reduce greenhouse gas emission from 2000" (Guardian, 19 July).
But the deal drew “fierce objections” from Russia, Saudi Arabia and the OPEC countries because it threatens their income from fossil-fuel sales, and without their acceptance all the fine words are meaningless.
And Charles Linderman, speaking for 600 US electricity producers, claimed the deal “would eliminate millions of American jobs, reduce America’s ability to compete and force Americans into second-rate lifestyles.”
How will American voters react to this? We have seen how quickly governments can change their policies when votes are at stake, so before environmentalists start celebrating they should remember capitalism’s host of conflicting economic and political interests.
Land of the Free
After the press revelations about President Clinton’s murky doings as Governor of Arkansas, we now learn his Republican opponent, Robert Dole, also has a doubtful financial past.
The vice-chairman of Dole’s national finance committee has been fined $1 million, his company has agreed to pay a further $5 million, and the US Attorney is still demanding that he should go to jail. All of this in connection with a giant fraud to fund Dole’s campaign.
Stanley Hilton, who was the counsel on Dole’s Senate Staff in 1979-80, has explained Dole’s relationship to donors in “Senators for Sale”:
“He is largely a special-interest slot machine, a human pendulum dancing to the tune of the highest contributors. . . Dole’s career symbolises much of what is wrong with American politics: the shameless selling of office and legislation to the highest bidder."
This is the reality behind all those find words—’’democracy”, “law and order” and the “American way of life”.
Leave chose kids alone
Capitalism perverts everything it touches. It sees childhood as a “selling opportunity”.
One company, Imagination for School Media Marketing, has secured clearance from the government to sell advertising hoardings in school corridors. Another is producing a bulletin of groovy words used by kids in the playground so that advertisers can cash in on a market worth £1.6 billion a year of children’s direct purchases and £8.4 billion the kids have in “pester power”.
Jane Mathews, a board director of ad agency J. Walker Thomson, says in the Observer (14 July):
“Advertising is a very soft target. It is easy for the Press to lay the blame at the nasty ad agencies’ door, but more should be said about parents, who in the end have the ultimate responsibility—they can always say no.”
Mathews knows only too well, with a potential £10 billion market the advertisers rely heavily on kids’ “pester power”.
She is right in one respect though. We all have the power to stop this perversion of childhood—we can just say No to capitalism.
Cops and capitalism
Socialists are precise about the term “working class”. We mean all those who must sell their ability to work for a wage or a salary'. The “left” are vague on this. They classify such workers as doctors, university lecturers or the police as “middle class”.
A reading of The Job, staff magazine of London police officers, should dispel any doubts about the class position of the police. The majority of ads are for loans or debt counselling.
An ex-policeman Mike Thomas of insolvency firm C. Jacob and Co., which advertises in The Job, is quoted in Time Out (17 July) on some policemen’s plight:
“I know of police officers w ho take home £720 per month for a full week including weekends and night shifts.”
The Police Federation has expressed concern about the plight of new recruits since the scrapping of housing allowances, reduction in overtime and mileage allowance. According to them some recruits are having to claim Family-Credit or take out bank loans in order to survive.
Despite the illusions of the left—or the police themselves—cops are workers.
New Labour, new cuisine
It was Thursday, 11 July, and the Savoy chef had excelled himself in producing salad with asparagus and chicken, salmon watercress sauce and lemon brûlée on a raspberry coulis.
It was a very' important dinner date. It was New Labour’s £500 a head fund raiser.
As the diners left the millionaires’ hotel, fortified by “after dinner port and cognac offered courtesy of Philip Morris Limited”, was the sound emanating from doorway dossers in the Strand that of hollow laughter?
Socialists? Do me a favour, guv.
1 comment:
That's the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard done and dusted.
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