Gangster strategy (2026)

From the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Famously, US President Theodore Roosevelt said ‘speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far’. He expanded: ‘If you simply speak softly the other man will bully you. If you leave your stick at home you will find the other man did not. If you carry the stick only and forget to speak softly in nine cases out of ten, the other man will have a bigger stick’. In practice for international relations, this has been interpreted as having credible military capacity, relying on diplomacy and ‘soft power’ first.

In effect, this is the ideology of gangsters. The aim is to get your way by any means, talk backed up by force is the easy way. As the late David Graeber observed, capitalism was founded on an ‘alliance of financiers and warriors’ so this gangsterism cuts to the essence of the worldwide system in which we live. The talking quietly part, though, usually entails telling stories that deny this gangsterism and instead making the narrative about democracy versus autocracy or good versus evil.

The current US President seems willing to dispense with the ‘speak softly’, as evidenced by the recently published National Security Strategy (2025) which with typical modesty envisages a ‘roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history which possesses ‘inherent greatness and decency’. Much of it reads as much of a manifesto as a strategy document, but it is very revealing, especially considering that for years we and others have been arguing that the goals of state foreign policies are to support their access to trade routes and vital resources, and here they are admitting this is the case. Take this piece of nonsensical bombast:

‘President Trump’s foreign policy is pragmatic without being “pragmatist,” realistic without being “realist,” principled without being “idealistic,” muscular without being “hawkish,” and restrained without being “dovish.” It is not grounded in traditional, political ideology. It is motivated above all by what works for America—or, in two words, “America First”’.

This can be summed up as flexible, self-interested and unprincipled. However, the document is clear about the strategic way to achieve that self-interest:

‘We want to recruit, train, equip, and field the world’s most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced military to protect our interests, deter wars, and—if necessary—win them quickly and decisively, with the lowest possible casualties to our forces’.

They want to do this to keep ‘the Indo-Pacific free and open, preserving freedom of navigation in all crucial sea lanes, and maintaining secure and reliable supply chains and access to critical materials.’ Given this was precisely the background to the wars in Vietnam and Korea, this merely displays Palmerston’s axiom ‘We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow’.

The document recognises, however, that ‘As the United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself, we must prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others’. Securing these interests means preventing anyone else being able to challenge them. Hence ‘We want to prevent an adversarial power from dominating the Middle East, its oil and gas supplies, and the chokepoints through which they pass’. This is at least an honest expression of what has been America’s long-term strategy in the Middle East, except with a determination not to become embroiled in war there.

More broadly: ‘We stand for the sovereign rights of nations, against the sovereignty-sapping incursions of the most intrusive transnational organizations, and for reforming those institutions so that they assist rather than hinder individual sovereignty and further American interests’.

National interests above human or individual rights, a bleak authoritarian doctrine, especially, as the strategy affirms: ‘The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations.’ Indeed, the aim seems to be precisely to enable such domination by inhibiting transnational bodies.

This can be seen in the section about Europe: ‘We want to support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity’. The fetishised ‘Western identity’ politics that sees America as a successor to Rome lives in the minds of many of the current faction in charge of the government there. Hence they also state ‘America is, understandably, sentimentally attached to the European continent— and, of course, to Britain and Ireland’.

The document sees ‘the larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty.’ To that end ‘America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.’ In other words, the strategy document seeks to fragment Europe into nation states, which the US can dominate and use.

An interesting note is that the US seeks to end ‘the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance’ and to ‘reestablish strategic stability with Russia,’ and ‘prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war’ in Ukraine.

The real focus is on the Indo-Pacific part of the globe which ‘is already the source of almost half the world’s GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP), and one third based on nominal GDP. That share is certain to grow over the 21st century’. The US there seeks to avoid war ‘by preserving military overmatch’ and to deal with China as a near peer.

Perhaps most unfortunately, the strategy states ‘We reject the disastrous “climate change” and “Net Zero” ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidize our adversaries’. Climate change is a real security threat, that pales all the rest. This document envisages energy dominance and using energy resources to grow the American economy and military power.

This dismal manifesto sees the world continuing to settle disputes, as Shaw put it ‘as dogs settle a dispute over a bone’.

Pik Smeet

Socialist Sonnet No. 180: Barriers (2025)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Barriers

Close the borders of the land of the free,

Throw up interlocked fences, build a wall

Or, better still, both, thereby keeping all

Clamouring criminal migrants at bay.

Call out the National Guard, a show of strength

By bristling patriotic warriors.

Next, time to erect tariff barriers

And be prepared to go to any length

To make this a country of succeeders.

 Promise the people they’ll be securer,

Even when everyone’s so much poorer,

Everyone, that is, except the leaders.

It seems the question of security

Is finally solved through ethnic purity.

D. A.

Editorial: Trump – what now? (2025)

Editorial from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 20 January Donald Trump officially became president of the United States, much to the consternation of almost 50 percent of the US electorate, and many others around the world. When Trump lost the 2020 election, much relief was expressed by those who feared that he would have established some kind of dictatorship, stamping on all dissent and taking draconian measures against all ‘progressive’ forces. Similar fears are now being expressed.

He says he knows how to quickly resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict (even if he seems to have moved away from his earlier ‘single phone call’ boast). He has promised mass deportations of ‘unregistered’ people. He has vowed to counter attempts to limit fossil fuel and carbon emissions. He has proposed heavy taxes on imports from foreign countries, especially China. And he wants Greenland and the Panama Canal.

Will any of this happen? Whoever has to run the capitalist system in any country often sees their ‘best laid plans’ go awry, because capitalism cannot be controlled by governments. Trump’s desire to take over those other territories could only come to fruition if other global players inexplicably chose not to resist. And his mass deportation plans are likely to meet obstacles at local, state or international levels, making them no more successful than his previous plan to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.

His promotion of the fossil fuel industry may have earned him votes in the ‘rust belt’, but – with climate change implicated in multiple disasters including the recent Los Angeles fires – it could end up losing him support. If his confidence over the Russia-Ukraine war is based on cutting off weapons to Ukraine, he might find that Ukraine manages to get its weapons elsewhere, making him look impotent.

What would he say if such failures, or one of capitalism’s periodic downturns, lose him support? Some say he won’t care, because he will have established a police state that lets him rule unhindered. But advanced capitalist democracies like the US, and others such as the UK, Canada, Germany, France, Holland, Sweden, South Korea, etc, have well-entrenched mechanisms for preventing dictatorships. That’s true even if the would-be dictator surrounds himself, as Trump seems to be doing, with a cohort of compliant disciples who compete to express the most extreme views.

Examples of Trump’s puerile narcissism abound, for example, pinning the blame for the Los Angeles fires on the state governor, Gavin ‘Newscum’ Newsom. Expect further vilification of opponents by him and his best bro, the increasingly preposterous billionaire Elon Musk. Journalist Patrick Cockburn in the i Paper calls it ‘the most crazed administration in US history’. Another commentator calls it ‘the power of dumb’. Even so, it will still have to play by capitalism’s rules.

What has happened in the US seems aeons away from the kind of society we advocate – leaderless, moneyless, wageless, frontierless and entirely democratic. But even if the US election had voted in the ‘lesser evil’ (ie, the Democrats), that party would still have been obliged to run the system in a business-as-usual way, ie, in the profit-seeking interests of the tiny minority who monopolise the majority of the wealth. And so it will continue as long as most wage-slaves continue to support, or at least acquiesce in, capitalism and the profit-seeking force that drives it.

Editorial: Trump triumphs (2024)

Editorial from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

So the ‘isolationist’ section of the ruling class has won control of political power in the United States. This was one of those rare elections under capitalism where the choice was not simply between two different management teams to implement the same basic policy. It was one, as over Brexit here, where there were real policy differences between two sections of the ruling class and where the issue was put to the mainly working class electorate to decide. As in Britain, the dominant section of the ruling class was outvoted.

‘Isolationism’ has been defined as ‘a political philosophy that advocates for a nation to avoid involvement in the affairs of other countries, especially in their wars, and only engaging in wars if attacked’. It has always been a trend in US history, explaining their late intervention in both the last century’s world wars. Since the end of the second of these, which resulted in the US becoming the dominant world power at the expense of Britain and France and their empires, ‘interventionism’ as the ‘world’s policeman’ has been the main feature of US foreign policy.

Will Trump end this? He has made it clear that he is not interested in continuing the war in Ukraine — a European war — but he still sees Iran and China as threats, to US commercial interests, respectively in the middle and far east. So, we can’t expect a complete retreat from the unashamed ‘American imperialism’ favoured by the Democratic Party and until recently by the Republicans too.

‘America First’ will have implications on relations between the capitalist states and trading blocs into which the world is divided. If Trump goes ahead with imposing tariffs on all imports, including from the EU, Japan and Britain, this would unleash a world trade war. If he puts US interests as a fossil-fuel producer ahead of the general world capitalist interest to try to do something about climate change this will hinder the already feeble international measures to deal with it.

What about the working class? Properly defined not just, as in American usage, those without a college degree but all those economically obliged to try to find an employer to get an income. They will remain in this same basic position and will still face the problems that the politicians on both sides promised to solve.

Why, then, did so many vote for him? It will have been, in the words of one of Bill Clinton’s advisers, ‘the economy, stupid’. Workers in the US, as elsewhere, have been experiencing the effects of more rapidly rising prices than in the past few decades and voted against the incumbent government which they mistakenly blamed for this (rather than capitalism). There will also have been the mistaken belief that Trump, as a perceived successful and tough businessman, was a good person to deal with it.

Mistaken they were, but they weren’t one reactionary mass voting for a supposed would-be dictator. They were voting for the price of groceries to come down. They will be disappointed in that Trump won’t be able to make them ‘prosperous again’. No government can make capitalism work for the benefit of the working class.

The Great US Presidential Election Show (2000)

From the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

US workers, who are getting poorer and working longer, settle in for another edition of the great US presidential election show

Like an over-extended series of sequels that have long outlived the originality and vitality of the original blockbuster, so comes the current edition of the US Presidential Election. When looking at the scripted positions of the extended cast of four candidates (yes four, count ’em) registering in national popularity polls an apt title for this sequel would be “Mission Impossible 2000”.

But first the plot as hyped by the current administration and fully supported by the media. It goes something like this. The United States of America is on a roll of the longest uninterrupted period of prosperity in its entire history. This unforeseen and unprecedented prosperity has positioned the United States in the prime spot to be the economic and political dynamo for the entire new century. The question is who is best to maintain this phenomenal convergence of conditions which America has carefully crafted and is benefiting from.

It sounds like an old story and it is. Like any tired sequel the plot gets weaker, more porous the closer one watches and actually thinks about the drama unfolding before one’s eyes.

The CNN.com web site on August 29 2000 featured a story based upon a Justice Department study that showed nearly 1.5 million children in America had a parent in prison in 1999. That is an increase of over 500,000 to be added to this unfortunate class from 1991. Children with mothers incarcerated rose a startling 98 percent over the past eight years. The prison population as a whole grew by 62 percent from 1991-1999. A rather peculiar trend to parallel the longest period of uninterrupted economic growth, one would think. President Clinton himself unwittingly let a cat out of the bag at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. He announced the findings of a study he commissioned on as to why voter participation was steadily declining. The finding was “Lack of time. People just don’t have enough time now to go and vote.”

We the audience can logically conclude that both of these trends are due to the population’s effort to make ends meet. Thus crimes are committed and jobs worked at for longer hours so increasing the extent of not being able to care for one’s own children or participate in the political process. A most flimsy and inconsistent plot indeed. When one looks at the stars and their dialogue this sequel takes a real nosedive.

Bore and Gush

Vice President Al Gore of the Democratic Party plays the role of the dashing lead actor. “I will fight for you!” is his signature line in this year’s political drama. With his book Earth in the Balance and anticipation of the elimination of the internal combustion petroleum engine in his lifetime, he brings a depth and insight not usually found in such a role.

At the 1988 Democratic Convention he gave a heart-wrenching speech about his sister dying of lung cancer after years of smoking cigarettes. It was later revealed that Al Gore himself was a generous recipient of blood money from the same evil interest that he railed against at that convention. His most infamous line, in a typicaly ridiculous hammy fashion of an overgrandiose actor on the political stage, is: “I took the initiative to invent the internet”.

He opposes the Republican Party plan of a $250 billion tax cut saying it would “benefit the rich”. He instead proposes to use the money for paying for prescription pills for the elderly. Now after the elderly have purchased $250 billion worth of prescription medicine guess who will pocket the money? Yep, the rich pharmacutical companies. The same with food stamps, subsidised housing, whatever, they are all about subsidies to the rich. His signature line should be: “I will fight for you to hand over all the money you created to the rich!” Then again this is political theater, not reality, so you will never hear an actor utter such a line in capitalist politics.

It is interesting to note that both lead actors represent a clash between contemporary political oligarchies. Al Gore picked up the mantel of political power from the same political district that his father held in the State of Tennessee. His arch-rival George W. Bush is the son of the recent American President of Gulf War fame.

As the Republican Party arch-rival in the cast, George W. Bush’s signature line is: “I am a uniter not a divider”. This has to be one of the most laughable and politically naive lines ever uttered by a capitalist politician, particularly coming from an actor who as Governor of the State of Texas, has presided over 300 executions in his state and has vigously defended each one of them, including the execution of a retired grandmother. The cold reality is we live in a class-divided society and, like his father, George W. Bush’s means of “uniting” involves being prepared to slaughter people who pose a “problem” for it, whether they be an Iraqi soldier or an American citizen. The Bush family oligarchy has shown a most sinister means of “uniting” people.

In college he was noted for cocaine use and once dancing nude atop a table at a frat party. That alone tells you what an absurd sequel this election has become. His signature line should be: “I am a death presider and class divider”. But alas, such real life preformaces will not be found in the theater of American politics.

Peculiar populist

It is significant that for the first time ever four different candidates are registering in a national poll on the eve of a US Presidential election. This is because two other parties are starting to gain national support, another indicative trend amidst eight years of so-called unprecedented, uninterrupted prosperity. The American voter is starting to look beyond the two major parties for political solutions.

“The two-party system has become a delusion. On foreign and trade policy, open-borders immigration and corporate influence, Republicans and Democrats are carbon copies of one another. Neither offers voters a real choice. Both parties backed the illegal war in Kosovo. ”

No, the above quote did not come from the World Socialist Party of the United States but was from an internet release by the Reform Party. What was once considered off-the-wall assertions are now gaining currency in the commonsense of American political thinking.

The Reform Party though trots out a most peculiar populist in former Republican lesser player Patrick Buchanan. He is a former speech writer for Presidents Richard Nixion and Ronald Reagan and now fancies himself a wannabe “Peoples President”. True, in the 1996 Republican primary he referred to Senator Bob Dole as “a bell hop for the business round table”. What with those dark suits Dole wore, it was an apt description.

Buchanan decries the loss of jobs in America to overseas factories, giving rise to his “America First” slogan. But, as a vigorous defender to this day of the Nixon administration, he seems to forget about a trade agreement signed under it that dumped cheap China cotton on the American market forcing the closing of dozens of textile factories in the south-eastern United States. But then those commercial interest were prone to donate money to the Democratic Party. And one can also suspect such motives in Al Gore’s crusade against the tobacco industry closely associated with key Republicans. Using state power to wreck the financial backers of one’s opposition party is an accepted scorched earth tactic in American politics. Thus one can see why such a man as Buchanan would strike fear in the two major parties should he attain the White House.

It is only in this context could he be seen as anything remotely resembling a “populist”. Otherwise, he has perfected divisiveness to an art form and generally strikes fear into most everyone else’s hearts as well. This odd populist opposes a woman’s right to an abortion and homosexuals in general. He is also an ardent defender of the 1950s racially-segregated Washington, DC, that he grew up in. To top it off, Patrick Buchanan has raised the alarm that America itself is becoming “balkanized”.

One can plainly see that, far from an alternative to the two major parties, he himself is just another supporter of capitalism having his doubts.

Saving capitalism

This brings us to another doubting supporter of capitalism, Ralph Nader and his Green Party. Unlike Buchanan who relies on cultural observations to express his doubts, Nader in his acceptance speech of his party’s’ nomination has facts to support his doubts. And plenty of them come from this professional “consumer advocate”:

• Consumer debt is at an all time high, totalling over $6 trillion.
• American workers are working an average of 163 more hours per year than 20 years ago.
• Over 20 percent of children were growing up in poverty over the last decade.
• A majority of workers are making less now, inflation adjusted, than in 1979.
• The top one percent of the wealthiest people have more financial wealth than the bottom 90 percent of Americans combined.

Nader correctly proclaims “we can have a democratic society or we can have great concentrated wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both“.

And what is his scheme to defend democracy?

“Pluralistic democracy has enlarged markets and created the middle class. Yet the short term, monetized, minds of corporatists are bent on weakening, defeating, diluting, diminishing, circumventing, coopting, or corrupting all traditional countervailing forces that have saved American corporate capitalism from itself.”

Ah! To save American corporate capitalism from itself! Why has not anyone else thought of that? Or is he really that naive as to the other parties political agendas?

Well, at least he knows his role in this madcap, absurd sequel. Ralph Nader, in his quest to save corporate America from itself, is himself the nadir of struggling actors in “Mission Impossible 2000”.

Hopefully this silly series will soon end to give way to another blockbuster like . . . World Socialist President. If the World Socialist Party of the United States at some point in the future were to run a candidate for President and won, their mission would be to abolish the very office they were elected to. A socialist society would have no need for the United States of America or any other nation for that matter. Much less of a head of state. Such an episode would be a sequel to the real hit watched all across America and the world: WORLD SOCIALIST REVOLUTION IN THE FORMER USA!

Wesley J Lawrimore

(World Socialist Party of the US)

Letter: Was Trump a fascist? (2021)

Letter to the Editors from the April 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

I subscribe to the Socialist Standard (and in former years to the Western Socialist) and reside in Boston, US. I am writing in response to articles in the Standards of Sept, Oct, and Dec 2020 concerning the Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum ness of the US presidential candidates.

As soon as I was old enough to vote I enthusiastically voted for Democrat Lyndon Johnson for president and two years later for Republican Ed Brooke for US senate because both had proclaimed themselves peace candidates while running against open warmongers. Shortly after the votes were counted both turned into war candidates. I grew wise to the shell game and between 1966 and 2020 never voted for a Democrat or Republican for any but the most local offices. Over the years I cast ballots only for candidates promoting socialism of various sorts.

This election I voted for Biden with no illusions that he would other than avidly promote the interests of the capitalists and likely engage in more antagonistic relations with Russia and maybe the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. The reason I cast that ballot was that Trump was openly indicating that he was moving towards creating a fascist dictatorship. Hardly a joking matter.

In your editorial ‘How real is democracy today?’ you state ‘ … we must not read into this that capitalist democracy is a sham that workers should have nothing to do with … the workers were not handed their democratic rights on a plate, they had to struggle for them…’ These rights: speech, assembly, religion, freedom from unreasonable search & seizure and the rest are extremely valuable and deserve being protected – to that end I have membership of the American Civil Liberties Union. The state is regularly engaged in attacking these rights but the system of capitalist democracy allows workers space to organize. Hitler, Mussolini, Franco showed us what fascism is. When a Trump is openly threatening such a thing I decided a vote for Biden was a wise thing.

Fraternally

Steve Kellerman

PS For a stunning depiction of life in a free society I recommend the novel Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone.

Reply:

You say that Trump was ‘openly indicating that he was moving towards creating a fascist dictatorship’ and that this was ‘hardly a joking matter’. Apart from the fact that little that capitalist leaders do is ‘a joking matter’ and indeed can sometimes be a matter of life and death for workers, this does not mean that one of these leaders can at will take over the state and set up a fascist regime, Hitler or Mussolini-style. As recent articles in the Socialist Standard have pointed out, the US, as a developed capitalist state with a longstanding electoral process, has a well-entrenched mechanism for preventing an individual from exercising unrestrained personal power. The result of the November election helps to illustrate that, but, even had it gone the other way, Trump, despite his rhetoric and all else, would still not have been able to set up his own autocratic rule. In fact he would have stumbled on, attempting, always unsuccessfully, to tame the capitalism system and the anarchic market forces which dictate its ups and downs, much the same as Biden is doing now. You are right to say that capitalist democracy, limited as it is, ‘allows workers space to organise’, and this is important and essential so that workers can plan for a society to supersede capitalism and be able to vote to set up that society when they decide to do so. However, we cannot agree that Trump could have seriously carried out threats to remove workers’ space to organise (i.e. their long established democratic ‘rights’) and to close down the American electoral system. Did he even make such threats? So, given that such a thing was not seriously on the agenda, a vote for Biden was indeed a vote for Tweedledee.

You are right to say that Biden’s policies may well be more anti-Russian and anti-North Korean than Trump’s, but all this is part of the international capitalist power game to gain influence over trade routes, raw materials and markets. And since the rulers of all these countries are playing that same power game, we should neither support or sympathise with any of them and certainly not suggest, as you seem to be doing, that there is anything in the least ‘socialist’ or ‘democratic’ in the horribly misnamed ‘People’s Democratic Republic of Korea’.

As a long-time reader of the Socialist Standard, you will obviously know about the kind of socialist society we advocate – moneyless, wageless, marketless and based on common ownership, social cooperation and free access. In view of this it seems a little surprising that you should view Ignazio Silone’s novel Bread and Wine as ‘a stunning depiction of life in a free society’. Our reading of it is that it is the story of a brave individual desperately struggling to survive in the genuinely fascist society that was Italy in the 1930s. – Editors.

Sting in the Tail: Attila’s fan club (1994)

The Sting in the Tail column from the July 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Attila’s fan club

"I’m depraved because I’m deprived" runs one line in a song from the musical West Side Story, but the Police Federation doesn’t agree.

At their annual conference in Brighton delegates rejected by three-to-one a motion stating that "crime is inevitably linked to deprivation".

Speakers in the debate queued up to rubbish this and echo the Tory view that crime is down to the "wickedness and greed" of criminals who deliberately choose to break the law.

But they were accused by one of the motion’s supporters of sounding like the "Attila the Hun fan club".

It was a delegate from the Metropolitan Police who made the most profound contribution when he insisted:

"We‘re not playing politics. We’d be no good at politics — we’re much too honest" (Guardian, 20 May).

Since this came from a member of what is widely regarded at the most corrupt police force in Britain then it is surely the unkindest thing yet said about politicians.

It gets everywhere

That inevitable struggle between employees and employers crops up in the strangest places.

Buddhist monks in a Japanese temple have formed the Heartful Labour Union because one of them was abused, assaulted and then sacked by the head monk (Guardian, 11 June).

This head monk refuses to negotiate, thinks Buddhism is going to the dogs because the monks are "only in it for the money", and claims there is no employment relation between the monks and the temple, only one of mutual "trust".

Now a court case will decide if the monks are paid workers or owe allegiance to a "Higher Authority".

Meanwhile, the sacked monk worries about his mortgage and his children’s future and says "money is a key problem. I have to keep my family".

Dressed in his saffron robe, this monk may not have the appearance of your average worker, but he obviously has just the same problems.

Master race again

"Think of it as master race studies. Some Florida schools have introduced a new curriculum which teaches that Americans are ’unquestionably superior ’ to any other nation now, or at any time in history" (Guardian, 16 May).

This policy has been imposed by Christian fundamentalists who control the local school board. Teachers have been told by the board’s chairwoman that they can only discuss other countries if they first tell their pupils that America is "the best of the best". She has never been outside America but said "I don’t need to visit other countries to know that America is the best."

Is this policy crazy? That depends on your standpoint. For instance, another board member explained that they think an American-first policy is necessary for the children because "if they felt our land was inferior or equal to others, they would have no motive to go to war and defend our country"

For anyone who looks at it from that angle, that policy isn’t so crazy, is it?

Hogan’s heroes

Professor Robert Hogan, a psychologist at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma, claims that most bosses are incompetents who command little respect from their subordinates and only got their jobs because they are good at interviews which he derides as "beauty contests":

"There is a type who is particularly good in these contests . . . These people are arrogant, conceited, believe they are God's gift and won't take blame for mistakes, only the credit for everyone else’s successes. Once they get on the job they drive everyone nuts" (The Herald, 25 April).

Hogan’s claims "are supported by research which shows that among the top 500 US companies 60 percent of chief executives are fired every three years".

And these are the people who call themselves "the wealth creators", demand a monopoly of decision-making, and award themselves huge salaries and pensions. They are also the people whom most workers insist "we cannot do without".

Nothing sacred

Yet another old British institution is under threat. No, not the Royals or even the Tory Party, but the building societies. There were over 700 societies in 1960 but now there are only 84 with more casualties to come.

The fact is that there are too many societies competing for mortgage business. They have been losing market share to the banks while current low interest rates have caused savers to withdraw funds from the societies to invest in National Savings and shares.

All this explains why the Cheltenham and Gloucester society wanted to merge with Lloyd’s Bank. If this eventually happens then their combined strength will give them the edge over their competitors, so the other societies and banks will be under pressure to follow their example.

In socialist society homes will be built without the need for building societies, banks or mortgages. All that will be required is labour, materials and land, and these exist in abundance.

Painful truth

"Days of boom and bust are over, Clarke promises" read the front page headline in the Independent reporting the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s 15 June Mansion House speech.

This was just another politicians’ promise of course. Pure hot air, since years of experience have shown that governments just can’t control the way the capitalist economy works.

But Clarke is a Tory "wet". Which means he shares the Labour Party (and LibDem, for that matter) illusion that, with a bit of good will and determination, the rough edges can be smoothed off capitalism, as in this case by getting rid of the boom-slump cycle.

Two of his recent predecessors as Chancellor, however, both realise the true situation.

Nigel Lawson told a meeting the following week of the Social Market Foundation (by the sound of it, an institution which believes that circles can be squared) at the London School of Economics that governments have no power to abolish the boom-slump cycle. "The plain fact is that the economic cycle is endemic", he said (Independent, 21 June).

Norman Lamont has said the same thing in his 1991 budget speech when he declared "recessions are always painful, but they are an inescapable feature of market economies" (Independent, 20 March 1991).

Maybe after a little more experience like them of trying unsuccessfully to control the way the capitalist economy works Kenneth Clarke, too, will come to realise that regularly-occurring slumps are an inescapable, endemic painful feature of capitalism.

Material World: Trump – Not Happy with his Lot as World Policeman? (2019)

The Material World column from the February 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

America may have entered upon a new relationship with the rest of the world if we are to believe its president, Donald Trump.

In a speech to American troops in Iraq on Boxing Day he announced a military withdrawal from Syria and declared that the USA would no longer ‘…continue to be the policeman of the world,’ warning that he was committed to withdrawing troops from foreign wars. ‘We’re no longer the suckers, folks.’

Trump’s removal of American soldiers from Syria can be seen as belatedly rectifying the crime of Obama in placing them there in the first place.

The ‘policeman of the world’, a mantle taken over from the British Empire and other colonial powers, is a benign description of being able to deploy armed forces to any spot in the world to protect national interests wherever they are threatened. Trump is not the first president to advocate an isolationist foreign policy and we doubt he will be the last. But saying one thing does not necessarily mean it can be accomplished. Nevertheless, Trump has already cancelled agreements and broken international treaties which he has deemed to be against his ‘America First’ stance. Trump’s policies in the White House certainly show that he is not out of step with many other politicians supporting nationalist, isolationist and protectionist measures. Rarely has there been a US president so maverick, so egocentric and so unconcerned about the suffering and misery of other people as Trump has revealed himself to be.

It should not be thought that his fine rhetoric demonstrates a principled commitment. Trump has not expressed any intention of following up on any ‘peace’ dividend by cutting the military budget. Nor does he intend to stop the lucrative American arms trade. The exercise of might will always be part of his outlook. America, after all, is the caretaker of world capitalism. The concept of American isolationism is a myth and a deception.

A 2007 article in the Socialist Standard in May 2007 drew attention to the argument that an anti-war position was not only the preserve of the liberals and progressives but there was a strong current on the right who opposed foreign military ventures.

  ‘…The logic goes something like this: Free-market capitalism on its own would naturally lead to a world of personal freedom and economic prosperity, but this is thwarted by the power of the state, an organism that grows robustly at times of war. Hence, war must be opposed not only because of its own obvious evils, but as a way to drive back the power of the state which is standing in the way of a better life… The state and the wars it wages may seem a complete waste of taxpayer money to the individual capitalist…’

Against such isolationist views, the transnational corporations and international capitalists (now derided by populists as ‘globalists’) cannot allow narrow national fragmentation to succeed. The belief that isolationism is possible for the United States is an illusion, without any connection to political and economic reality.

Whether they call their wars humanitarian and defensive, waged for democracy and freedom, the true purpose is to control the resources of the world for various sections of the capitalist class. Trump will persist with his fake criticism of unprofitable wars but will maintain Uncle Sam’s military domination because he stands for the retention of capitalism. The thought that the United States can remain ‘isolated’ from any vital conflict is absurd, regardless of the president at its helm.

The Socialist Party attitude to war is that no matter what side prevails, a war still leaves the real problem – capitalism – unsolved and by creating more national hatred, it makes the socialist solution even more difficult than ever to achieve.

‘Isolationism’ in foreign affairs was once seen as a rare phenomenon yet now the ‘isolationist’ sentiment seems to be flourishing. Many working people think the tragedies in other parts of the world are none of their business. Their own problems and issues as workers leave them feeling indifferent, an attitude of ‘isolationism’ harmful to the very people who practise it. The workers of one nation have a common cause and a shared sympathy with the fellow-workers of every other country.

If you are neutral in such situations, ‘you have chosen the side of the oppressor’ as Archbishop Desmond Tutu once put it.

ALJO