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

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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.

SPGB Snippets: Sleeping on the street (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

July 1, 2026

The government has just repealed the Vagrancy Act of 1824, which made rough sleeping a crime. There are about a million empty homes in England alone with more than a quarter of them empty for more than six months. So there is absolutely no need for anyone to sleep rough.

In London, there are over 47.000 homes that have been empty for more than six months, enough to house the estimated 13,000 people sleeping rough there each year, and the 200,000 living in temporary accommodation.

In this supposedly relatively wealthy country, the possibility of providing decent homes for everyone is perfectly feasible, but capitalism’s profit motive prevents it from happening.