Voice From The Back: Who armed Saddam? (1998)

The Voice From The Back Column from the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who armed Saddam?

Advocates of a bombing campaign speak as if they had just discovered Saddam’s lethal potential. America has known about his chemical and biological weapons for a generation. In 1975 an American corporation, Pfaulder of Rochester, New York, sold Saddam the plans for a chemical weapons factory that he built at Akashat for $78 million. In 1983 Saddam first deployed chemical gas against Iran, killing 45,000 Iranian soldiers over the next five years in clear violation of international law. In 1988 Saddam sprayed mustard gas and sarin on the Kurdish village of Halabja to murder at least 5,000 civilians. A few months later, in January 1989, ABC News uncovered details of Saddam’s germ-warfare programme at a facility south of Baghdad. The State Department, which now issues briefings on the same site at Salman Pak, denied its existence at the time. Despite the use of chemicals and clear evidence of Saddam’s development in the 1980s of anthrax, tularaemia and cholera, the US and Britain increased their export credit guarantees to his regime . . . All the time Saddam was massacring his citizens and invading his neighbour, Iran, the American Karkar corporation supplied him with communications for his Ba’ath party spies. The CIA gave him reconnaissance pictures of Iranian troop positions. British Aerospace, Westland Helicopters, Dassault of France and Karl Kolb of Germany were adding to an Iraqi arsenal already over-supplied by the Soviet Union. New Statesman, 20 February.

Squandered resources

A staggering £250 million a year is wasted in the National Health Service on food patients don’t eat. Half of the food served is unpalatable or unwanted, threatening patients’ health and recovery because they don’t get the nutrients they need. A study of nine wards for the elderly, and of medical and surgical cases in four hospitals in London and the South-East found that 23 percent of food served for breakfast and around 40 percent of food provided for midday and evening meals was thrown away. When food was served on the ward from a trolley almost 60 percent was discarded. Mail on Sunday, 7 December.

This new capitalism’s a load of . . .

Employees at a large state farm in Vlogda, northern Russia, have not taken kindly to the cash-strapped government’s policy of remunerating workers with agricultural goods in an effort to compensate for months of unpaid salaries. Instead of receiving chickens and vegetables, they were paid last month with piles of manure. Special trucks were laid on to deliver “salaries” to the workers’ doorsteps, prompting vigorous protests from neighbours about poor air quality. Sunday Times, 19 October.

Looking both ways

Poor people are much more likely to be knocked over on the roads than people living in affluent areas, according to a study of road accidents in Edinburgh and the surrounding Lothian region. It is the first detailed analysis of the link between road accidents and social deprivation. The researchers . . . found that young children from the 15 percent most deprived areas of the region were almost eight times as likely to be knocked over as children living in the richest 15 percent. Accident Analysis and Prevention, vol 29, p.583.

Child labour

Forty years after it joined the European Community, and more than a decade after it overtook Britain in the league table of national wealth, Italy still has almost 300,000 child workers . . . The biggest concentration of under-age workers is thought to be in and around Naples, where their wages average about 70,000 lire (£26) a week. Guardian, 8 January.

World Wide Web

When I go online to engage in human interaction, I log off feeling energised. When I search databases or shop in online malls, I leave the experience feeling drained and alone. The former involves communicating with other living beings, while the latter concerns only machines and their information. Douglas Rushkoff, Guardian Online, 8 January.

Globalisation

Competition, so admired by champions of capitalism, is being rapidly eradicated by—competition. “Before many more years, there will be one or at most two global companies per industry, trampling over a fluctuating number of local suppliers living off their personal connections and/or niche services,” wrote William Kay, the City Editor of the Financial Mail on Sunday on 8 February. “The process is nearly complete in sectors as diverse as alcohol and accountancy . . . The trouble is that what counts as duplication from the suppliers’ point of view is good old competition as far as the customers are concerned . . . When the customers in question have been mere individuals, their interests have been at best only hazily defended.”

Multinational’s charter (1998)

From the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the last few years the 29 members of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) including Britain, have been secretly negotiating a Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) which they hope to conlude by the end of April.

This treaty is ostensibly meant to provide a framework for international co-operation in protecting investments made by multinational and international corporations and institutions. The OECD will adopt the procedures of this treaty among its membership, which includes the most economically advanced states in the world. The plan is to extend it to all states, through pressure and the development of the idea of MAI being a hallmark of investment security. Once any state joins it will be bound to the treaty’s strictures for a minimum of twenty years (that being the time it takes to actually withdraw from the treaty).

The treaty seeks to protect international investment in two ways.

Firstly, it will forbid any member state from distinguishing between local capital and foreign capital (for instance this could forbid states from putting restrictions on media ownership by non-nationals, as is found currently in several states). This would extend towards the prevention of compulsory nationalisations and expropriations without compensation (as an example, Chancellor Brown’s windfall levy could have counted as an expropriation, which the British government would have had to compensate foreign investors for, had the treaty been in force then).

Secondly, it will for the first time give multinationals and investors rights under international law. The treaty will provide a set of provisions for punishments for infringing its strictures. Effectively this means that if a corporation does not like a law passed by a country, it can take that country to court to try to get the law changed. Of course, as usual when our corporate masters grant themselves rights, there are no corresponding duties–there is no commitment upon them to protect the welfare of their workers or the local environment.

The Green movement is mobilising to attack this treaty, on the grounds that it will damage the environment, and impede national sovereignty and restrict democracy by providing for unelected, unaccountable business elites to be able to change the laws of democratically elected governments, and by restricting the capacity of individual governments to stimulate their own economy or build a local economic base of their own. What, though, is really so new in this?

As far as socialists are concerned, states have always been in the pocket of unaccountable business cliques, and have always worked in their interest. Many of the states whose “sovereignty” will be infringed are already corrupt and toadying lackeys to our corporate masters, with despotic elites living the life of Riley out of ill-gotten plunder from environmental despoliation and pillage, wealth almost literally torn from the bodies of the world’s poor. A little more formalisation of this relationship, and a little extra protection for our masters can’t be such a bad thing, really? Can it?

This treaty is important because it means that for the first time our corporate elites are taking direct control of matters, instead of working through their state. One of the greatest threats to their own dominance of the world has been nationalist competitors, restricting their access to markets by asserting a claim to rights in a particular territory. Just look at how many wars have been fought these past fifty years by our imperial masters against nationalist upstarts: Suez, Vietnam, America’s dirty wars in South America; all in the name of keeping some particular territory within the web of international corporate capitalism. Having crushed most such opposition, all that remains for them now is to assert their authority within such territories and to lay claim to plunder of the world.

As the economic situation deteriorates, with the older capitalist states almost unable to sustain growth and the South Asian tigers suffering crises, our masters must desperately search around for new markets and sources of profit and new investment outlets. And they must seek to protect that investment, and make sure that every drop of wealth that they suck out of these areas will return to them, and not to some group of local rivals.

This treaty will strengthen the negotiating hand of multinationals against local power elites, enabling them to get even better returns on their profit than they could if they had to bribe the local rulers. It also makes it easier for them to try to force local governments to act against the workers, and write into law whatever is to the benefit of our international overlords.

As their position has become more precarious they have had to cut out any room for manoeuvre by states, and that includes the pressure release of even a moderately reform-minded government. By cutting off the route of reform in the way that this treaty does, our rulers are accentuating and revealing the truth about the class divide.

The MAI means making the strong even stronger and even more effective and efficient in the exploitation of the working class and the environment the world over. In their desperation our corporate masters are opening their greedy maw even wider, determined to swallow the world whole.

Pik Smeet

Party News (1998)

Party News from the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Annual Conference

The 94th Annual Conference of the Socialist Party will take place over Easter weekend on Friday and Saturday, 10 and 11 April from 10.15 to 18.00 on both days.

As with all our meetings, there are no closed sessions and visitors are welcome to sit in and listen to the delegates and to meet and discuss with members in the canteen or afterwards.

Local elections

Socialist Party candidates will be standing in Manchester, London, Tyneside and Bournemouth in this year’s local elections on 7 May. Further details and offers of help: South East Manchester, Central London, North East and Bournemouth branches and group respectively (see Directory on this page).

London Referendum

Also on 7 May electors in London will be voting on a government proposal for an elected mayor and an elected assembly to replace the GLC abolished by the Tories in 1988.

The Socialist Party has produced a leaflet explaining that real democracy is not possible under capitalism where some are more equal than others because they have more money and where the economic laws of the profit system work to frustrate improvements people vote for from being carried out.

London branches and members will be distributing this leaflet in April and early May. Copies for distribution can be obtained from: Election Dept, The Socialist Party. 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN.

Apologies

Due to problems at our printers a couple of passages in the May Socialist Standard became incomprehensible.

The second paragraph of the editorial reply to the letter from Kimberley Ellis should have read:

“In short, we think that given the development of productive capacity since Marx made the distinction in 1875 between a 'first' (when full free access according to needs would not be possible) and a 'higher’ phase of 'communist society' (when it would), the so called higher phase con be established more or less immediately" 

Similarly, part of the third paragraph of the review of the play Junk was just that. Our apologies to both the writer and our readers.

Three new plays (1998)

Theatre Review from the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Kevin Elyot had a huge success four years ago with My Night With Reg (Evening Standard and Laurence Olivier Awards etc, filmed by the BBC, and already 17 productions world-wide). His new play The Day I Stood Still at the National Theatre (Cottlesloe) makes for a marvellous evening. By turns funny, sharp and revealing, it tells of Horace, a bumbling curator at a London museum, for whom life stood still on a never-to-be-forgotten day more than 30 years ago when he fell in love with Jimi. Elyot, together with his peerless cast and director Ian Rickson, catch the mood the swinging 60s with great conviction, and manage Horace’s chance meeting with Jimi’s son 30 years later as a sustained climax which is both elegiac and liberating.

Writing in the programme Elyot discusses the power of theatre—of seeing a live event in an age when our lives are so much dominated by screens. He writes, “There should be a moment, at least a moment, during the course of the play, when an audience thinks, ‘I couldn’t have got that anywhere else’, that the hassle of going to the theatre that night has been worth it.”

There are many such moments in Elyot’s latest play, and even more in Conor McPherson’s The Weir at the Royal Court (Theatre Downstairs). On a routinely dull night in rural Ireland the regulars settle to drink their ale in a Sligo snug, only to be disturbed by the arrival of Valerie, an attractive woman from Dublin. Released from the tedium of wasteful chat, they tell a series of unlikely stories full of Irish folklore, and blind unreasonable superstition. But as they strut their stuff and tell their tales they also reveal themselves, and the loneliness and wasteful poverty of their lives. Valerie moved by the alcohol and the revealing openness of her hosts has a rather different tale to tell: a real tale of personal tragedy, such as “to melt a heart of stone”. The effect of Valerie’s story is almost cataclysmic. Pomposity and pretence are replaced by sympathy and concern, and one of the characters—liberated by the honest truth-telling of Valerie and wishing to comfort and sustain—tells us of his own wasteful, unhappy life, and of one never-to-be-forgotten moment when in the pits of utter despair a total stranger offered him an unsolicited kindness.

This is theatre at its most sublime. The atmospheric set, and the superb playing of the cast and imaginative direction, conspire to produce a powerful, poetic and realistic drama. You can smell the turf burning in the stove, see the dust lying thick on untended shelves, hear the wind whistling wildly outside; as before the arrival of Valerie the characters reveal a conversational emptiness in tune with the emptiness of their whole lives. Valerie’s revelation serves both to underscore this emptiness and to offer an alternative which might be reached through honest, open discourse, about matters of real concern, managed in an empathetic manner. Were it that the people who decide what should appear on the screens which “so dominate our lives”, were prepared to offer the same opportunities for drama which is both enlightened and potentially enlightening. But an enlightened population is anathema to those who collectively manage the mass media, even if it can be tolerated in the theatre. The Weir might be seen by 30,000 people in its six-week run at the Royal Court. As against this one episode of crude, dishonest EastEnders, is seen by 15 million people.

Stanisława Przybyszewska

Thoughts of enlightenment are also prompted by a new play by Pam Gems, called The Snow Palace (touring widely). Gems has taken a script written by Stanisława Przybyszewska about the French Revolution, and adapted it so that we see some of the major elements in Stanislawa’s play as well as something of her own life. Stanislawa was the illegitimate daughter of an “avant-garde writer, wild man, drinker, reputed Satanist”, who conceived such a passion for Robespierre that she lived alone, writing, almost demonically, her 600-page drama. She died of malnutrition and hypothermia, in an unheated hut partially buried in snow, in 1935.

Pam Gems has fashioned an elegant drama. She is helped by an imaginative set and subtle lighting (which signals a shift of action from Stanislawa’s story to the French Revolution and vice versa) and by a splendid cast. She manages the discussions between Danton and Robespierre with great conviction, contrasting Robespierre’s passionate commitment to “a virtuous life” with Danton’s pleasure-seeking pragmatism.

Socialists will sympathise with many of Robespierre’s sentiments. “A life shaped only by commerce and self-interest,” he says, “leads to bestiality and the rape of children.” But the revolutionaries were undone because, like leaders before and since, they tried to lead people to what they saw as a more desirable future. The essence of the socialist case is that it is only an enlightened working class, conscious of the nature of the world in which we all live, that can transcend vile, unjust capitalism, and build a new world founded on freedom, equality and justice. We have to do it for ourselves.

Michael Gill

Letters: Socialism on one island? (1998)

Letters to the Editors from the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism on one island?

Dear Editors,

Is a socialist Britain really still an “impossibility” (Editors’ reply, Letters, Socialist Standard, January)? If the people understood what socialism was, and voted to make a go of it, is there proof: That if we resorted to all the available land for food production, there would not be enough? That we are incapable of producing satisfactory goods we need no matter what? Has there been a scrupulous and fair evaluation into such matters? Advances in productivity may have now reached a state where self-sufficiency in food, goods and essential services is no longer the “impossibility” it once was in Russia, etc due to economic backwardness.

Food is being destroyed, stockpiled or not grown because over- rather than under-productiveness has become a problem for capitalism. Goods can also be mass-produced now with comparative ease. If financial restraints were removed entirely, considerable latent productive forces could be brought into play-—including millions of people unemployed and wasting their labour in banking, etc. new techniques could be adopted, like widespread recycling of metals and other materials. It does not happen now simply because of the financial cost.

The world market needs countries to keep playing the capitalist game. If they can opt out, it would be global capitalism that loses—not socialist countries utilising a far more productive, efficient and flexible system. Your “world car” was merely an example of global market forces—not “interdependence”. Various parts are produced in different countries due simply to more favourable economies and tax systems, cheaper and better prepared workers, grants to attract foreign firms and other incentives that boost profits. You cannot extrapolate from this market that British socialism could not meet all needs. Socialism is superior in many ways, and as no sensible attempt to establish it has ever been made, only proper evaluation of hard facts can shed light on what the outcome might be.

There is no proof that retaining limited financial links would cause a socialist country to fail. Twenty-four million tourists brought £12 billion here in 1995. If this helped socialism to thrive by allowing a few imports of items which Britain could not provide, then it makes sense. British socialism succeeds. Visitors go home impressed. The world’s media report socialism works well. Other populations inevitably consider how they would benefit from joining in. Socialism soon expands. The Socialist Party must handle money to end capitalism. A socialist Britain would be doing the same.

Political, economic and other factors make even development of socialism world-wide unlikely. If supporting evidence does not exist, maintaining that one-country socialism is impossible may be a mistake. Furthermore, must not activists ease off promoting socialism if other countries were lagging behind, thereby causing supporters to despair and feel let down?

Max Hess, 

Folkestone

Reply:

To start with your last point—which in fact is the whole point—we fundamentally disagree that “political, economic and other factors make even development of socialism world-wide unlikely”. We think the opposite is true.

Leaving aside for the moment that one aspect of the idea of socialism is a world-wide society without frontiers, passports and separate nation-states, why should the idea of a society of common ownership, democratic control and production for use not profit, when it begins to take off, progress quicker in (to take your example) Britain as opposed to France or Germany or America or Japan or Argentina or South Africa or . . . ? What’s so special about the 1 percent or so of the world’s population who live on these islands off the northwest coast of the Eurasian landmass?

Life, problems, concerns–and the objective solution–are the same wherever capitalism exists. This is why it is unreasonable to suppose that people in one area will come to see through capitalism without this happening to people in the other areas too, at more or less the same rate.

Already, under capitalism, people are beginning to think in world terms. More and more people are coming to appreciate world music and world theatre. Millions more follow world sporting events, and there is a growing consciousness that all humans are part of one world, that we share a common planet. As more than one astronaut has remarked, when looking down on the Earth you can’t see any frontiers. Millions of people throughout the world are concerned about world poverty and world hunger and problems such as global warming and tropical deforestation.

This is a reflection of the material fact that we are increasingly living in one, interdependent world, albeit a capitalist one at the moment. It is this interdependence which has long meant that there are no national solutions to today’s universal social problems. Capitalism is a global problem, to which the answer is global socialism.

If people in one country were lagging behind (for some reason you will be able to imagine better than us) this would not be a reason for easing off but for stepping up spreading socialist ideas amongst the people of that part of the world.

We should perhaps add that we are not so naive as to imagine that the changeover from world capitalism to world socialism will occur over a single weekend. The changeover can be envisaged as taking place over a relatively short period of time of, say, five years (we don’t know) so the situation might well occur of socialists having won control in some parts of the world but not everywhere. Naturally, they will manage as best they can in the circumstances, no doubt ending class ownership and bringing in democratic control of all aspects of social life including production. Their other main priority would be to do what they could to accelerate the winning of power by socialist majorities in the rest of the world.

But this is not the same as the situation you seem to be envisaging of the people of one country deliberately aiming to establish socialism in just that country while the rest of the world remains solidly capitalist. In our view, this is neither desirable nor at all likely to happen. So we are not called upon to speculate about whether people in Britain would be prepared to go without tea, coffee, chocolate, oranges, bananas, rice, soya, rubber, cotton and other products that won’t grow in these climes, or about whether they will be able to manage without new supplies of iron ore, aluminium, nickel, copper, manganese, mercury, chrome, tungsten and other rare metals.

Editors.

Stone age economics?

Dear Editors,

I read with great interest your reply to Bryan Fair’s letter in the January issue of Socialist Standard in which it was stated that a Socialist Britain is an impossibility because of international economical interdependence.

I hope you will forgive me for stating the obvious from this, that is, if all countries worked towards being independent of each other for all their needs, indeed, not only would a socialist Britain be possible . . . but a complete socialist world would be possible!

You also stated that countries such as Russia, Cuba and Nicaragua have tried to escape from the laws of the world market economy, yet to my knowledge, none of these countries have ever really gone down the road to a Stateless Moneyless Society, which I think, must include autonomous self-reliant communities.

Probably, the hub of the difference between myself and your thinking is that I do not believe for one moment, that in a future socialist world, workers would clock in and out of massive factories making goods to deliver across to the other side of the planet. Surely, mass culture of any sort must be eradicated if true socialism is to shine through.

It is, however, quite feasible to understand that people would work within small communities for their own needs and the needs of others which they can relate to within their own community. This is not to say that surpluses can not be passed on to other communities and there be some international activity between communities, and migration between communities.

Vic Button, 

Deeside, Flintshire

Reply:

When you talk about “self-reliant communities” we don’t suppose you mean this literally in the sense that each “small community” should actually have to provide for all its needs from its own resources. If we ignore the resources which will have been inherited from capitalism and which will be able to be used for a while, for many communities this would mean having to go back, not to the iron age or the bronze age, but to the stone age since they wouldn’t have any access to metals or metal ores.

Since we can’t believe you really subscribe to so absurd a position we will interpret your phrase as a rhetorical flourish and assume that what you envisage is “self-administering” communities which would try to meet as many of their everyday needs as practicable from local sources. That local communities should be the basic unit of democratic self-administration is a principle we can go along with but, when it comes to production, it is as well to be aware to what extent local communities are interconnected and interdependent and that this places severe limits on what needs could be met locally.

The fact is that people in small communities aren’t able to produce all they need, or anything like it. The final stage of the production of a range of goods for everyday use could be done locally–food, clothes, shoes, furniture–as well as repairs but neither (most of) the raw materials nor (in most cases) any of the metals to make the tools and machines used in this final stage could be produced locally.

You don’t like the idea of mass production but most people would consider access to such items as a cooker, a fridge, a vacuum cleaner, a washing machine, a telephone, a radio (and a TV) as essential, but you can’t be suggesting that these should be assembled individually on an artisanal basis. To meet needs, they would have to be produced en masse. This doesn’t mean that they need be produced under the conditions that exist today in factories under capitalism. Far from it. Factories in a socialist society can and will be structured and run quite differently: slower pace of work, shorter hours, more automation, non-polluting technology, democratic participation in decision-making, even be set amidst trees and gardens.

Nor, to answer your point, would they be “making goods to deliver across to the other side of the planet” (except, perhaps, for some factories producing very specialised equipment as for hospitals or scientific research). They would be making goods to supply all the local communities in a given area.

People also, rightly, consider running water and mains electricity as necessities. Although some water and some electricity could be supplied locally, the machinery and equipment to do this (pipes, pumps, tanks, generators, transformers, cables, wires, etc) couldn’t. Even environment-friendly technology such as solar power involves highly sophisticated equipment that will be beyond the capabilities of local communities to produce on their own.

So, local communities cannot be independent or self-reliant as far as meeting their material needs goes; they are interdependent. This is not a question of communities passing on their “surpluses” to one another (most, if left to themselves, wouldn’t have any surplus); it is a question of them being interlinked in a single network of production which in the end embraces the whole world.

This does not mean that everything has to be controlled from a single world centre. Only a few functions would have to be dealt with at world level such as, for instance, communications satellites. Most could be carried out (as in practice at present) at a level that can be called regional (in world terms). It is at this level that production of intermediate goods and machines and equipment can be envisaged as being produced, for distribution for use either in other factories or by local communities.

Local communities can only be the basis for consumption and for democratic decision-making but not for production. Of course the actual degree of centralisation and decentralisation will be up to the people around at the time to decide in the light of their traditions, experiences and preferences. One thing, however, is clear (but you realise this anyway): even the ultra-decentralised structure you advocate could only be achieved in a world where resources no longer belonged to private individuals, corporations and states and where production was no longer carried on for sale on a market with a view to profit. In other words, in a socialist world.

Editors.

The museum piece (1998)

A Short Story from the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let’s let Mr Money retire from the management of our mode of survival and find shelter in a museum niche to rest beside flint stone hammers, anvils and bronze axes. Visitors might then like to stop a while in front of the niche, ponder over the antique family accommodated therein and discover Mr Money among them; but this time with a difference. For the old, Mr Money might still rouse great reminiscences, but for the young merely an inquisitiveness about an odd article, now stripped of any individuality.

Our kids would surely be much amused to observe the currency note with printing on the paper and ask “What’s that, mummy?”, “Papa, what is it?” and we “papas” and “mummies” would be prompt enough with our ready knowledge: “That was money.”

“Well, what was money?” our kids would wonder.

“Money was what money did.”

“What did it do?”

We should then recite what we had to memorise by rote from the lecture-notes of, and texts written by, our revered professors in the lately-dead economics departments of universities–“Money had four functions: exchange, measure, payment, store.”

“Exchange? Peculiar.” “What did it mean?”

“Buying and selling.”

“And, what was it that buying and selling stood for?”

“You see, in actual fact, functions do not define a thing; they only describe its form; but it has also its content which has to be sought in its source. The source of money was exchange-value that expressed value that stood for the social labour necessary to produce something useful. Exchange, or to sell to buy, so to say, was engendered by private property relations. You couldn’t sell what wasn’t exclusively yours; you couldn’t buy what was exclusively yours. Money couldn’t be eaten; money couldn’t be worn. You couldn’t use money to build houses. Money did not lay and hatch eggs, or bear fruits, or produce young. You couldn’t sow money and reap a harvest. Nothing useful could be produced merely by laying and sowing money. Money did not even produce money.”

“Why was it necessary, then?”

“Because there was a social alienation—an owner/non-owner divide.”

“Why was society divided that way?”

“Oh Dear! Why do you need to know all this here and now? It’ll take a lot of time to explain the whole lot. Anyway for the time being, try to understand just a difference. Nowadays, as and when we feel hungry, what do we do? We just take what we need from where it is stored; and that’s all, simply because we all have free access to them, we all collectively own and control them. But in those days when only a few people privately owned and controlled all means of production and distribution, the vast majority of us had little or nothing to own or control but our ability to work, which we were obliged to sell for a wage or a salary which was always less in terms of value than what we produced, and then we had to spend the money thus received to buy what we ourselves had produced and stocked at the behest of our employers—our food, clothes and all that we needed.”

“Really, very interesting! But, what happened when you couldn’t find a buyer for your ability to work?”

“Can’t you follow? We had to starve. It’s as simple as that!”

“Starve? A strange word, but what did it mean?”

“It meant to die of hunger. Understand?”

“Did it? Die of hunger? Even if there were enough stocks to meet everybody’s need? And that merely because you didn’t possess these coloured pieces of worthless paper to buy the products of your own labour? Horrific! What a shame on you!”

“Indeed! Quite so, the state of affairs was exactly what you’ve just stated. Yet, my sweet little observers, money wasn’t just coloured pieces of worthless paper. In itself it might have been worthless, but it represented a great worth—private property. It was the ultimate form of expression of a relation between people mediated as though it was a relation between things. A relation between active social forces carried through a unique, indirect and roundabout manner working exactly like natural forces, irrespective of people’s will, forcibly, coercively, destructively, blindly, behind the backs of the producers themselves. A totally inhuman relation reigning over humanity.”

“And, that day, when we were listening to you reading off a passage from your school history book, we heard the author boast, claiming such a society to be civilised, and you said you were required to go on cramming such stuff for your exams. How stupid you were!”

Binay Sarkar

The Class Struggle on board the ‘Titanic’ (1998)

From the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

You’ve seen the film. Now read what the Socialist Standard said at the time.

Once again humanity has been staggered by an appalling catastrophe, in which hundreds of human lives have been thrown away, and hundreds of homes plunged into grief and despair. Once again the wild cry of horror has vibrated through the world, and the multitude have been not only shocked, but astounded, as if the unexpected had happened. Once again the newspapers have been slobbering sentimental platitudes and unctuous hypocrisy as though this were not the best thing that has happened for them for many a long day. Once again the machinery of bogus inquiries and sanctimonious “charity” has been set in motion in order to hide awkward and incriminating facts. And finally, once again have the flouted working class, on whom the brunt of this stupendous sacrifice to Mammon has fallen, begun to forget all about it.

Well, there is nothing at all unusual in that. The workers have proverbially sort memories. They have forgotten Featherstone; they have forgotten Whitehaven, they have forgotten Bolston, and in a few short days they will have forgotten the “Titanic”.

Murder of workers is so common; the workers are so used to it, that they cannot even recognise it for what it is. When the murderous rifles of the soldiery shoot unarmed workers down, it is only the operation of the Law, and there’s and end on’t. When mine-owners neglect to keep their mines ventilated, and blow hundreds of miners into eternity, or brick them up in the pit to be burnt alive, it’s a lamentable occurrence but quite an accident, and again there’s an end on’t. And now that the vast “unsinkable,” the floating city, has carried its full living cargo to the bottom of the Atlantic, the workers arouse themselves in horror of it for a day or two, note with approval that the Royal Family have donated about one day’s income to the relief fund, and then slip quietly back into their sleeping sickness.

And, of course, they are to be helped to do this by a sham enquiry which will start out with the set purpose of fixing the blame on the iceberg, or at most on the dead officers who were supposed to have control of the ship. But this enquiry is a mere blind, a cunning attempt to cloak the real position and to screen from blame the real culprit.

The enquiry in America, for all its seeming fierce determination to get to the bottom of the matter, and for all the awkward evidence it has elicited, was only embarked on for the purpose of skating on the surface. If they could fix the blame on the White Star people, then so much the better for the American shipping interests. But beyond this they did not go; beyond this they never intended to go; beyond this they dared not go. All their virtuous indignation is of a piece with the “patriotism” of their grandfathers, who poisoned Washington’s soldiers with villainous provisions with an unscrupulousness even modern Chicago fails to beat.

To those who understand modern conditions no enquiry is necessary in order to apportion the blame. The starting point of this enquiry will, of course, be the hour immediately preceding the collision. They will go on the worn-out assumption that the captain had the command of the ship. No one will ask why was the "Titanic" built? No one will dream of making the designing of the ship the starting-point of the enquiry. No one will dare to suggest that the captain and his officers had not the command of the vessel.

May 1912 Socialist Standard

Yet this way lies the truth. In the very designing of the “Titanic” is the first word of the tragic story, in keeping with which is every jot and tittle of evidence to the end. In the luxurious furnishings—the swimming baths, the flower gardens, the racquets courts—read the secret of the catastrophe. The ship was built to carry rich passengers across the herring-pond.

Almost the first comment that was made by the newspapers when the fatal news came to hand was that among the first class passengers aboard the vessel were millionaires who were collectively worth £30,000,000. This in itself is significant.

The fares of those six hundred first and second class passengers must have totalled an enormous sum, compared with which the passage money of the steerage was a negligible quantity. The “Titanic,” then, was essentially built for rich passengers upon whom the White Star Company depended to enable their vessel to “earn” a dividend.

The course is clear from this. The ship was on her maiden voyage; it was necessary to convince the wealthy, whose time is so extremely valuable, that she was a fast boat. So, as it is admitted, there was a general order to “smash all records”—which was duly done.

This explains why the look-out men had glasses until they reached Queenstown, but not afterwards-record smashing on the Western voyage commences at Queenstown. When records are to be smashed it is very inconvenient to have the look-out seeing too much—especially when the ship is an “unsinkable” and well-insured. It also explains why the vessel was on a wrong course at a wrong speed, and why no notice was taken of the look-out’s warning.

Much will be made of these latter facts, no doubt, and the dead officers will be blamed. It must not be forgotten, however, that capitalist companies invariably choose for responsible positions those men to do what they are paid to do. It is all moonshine to talk of the captain being in command. They command who hold is livelihood in their hands. If we will not take risks and get the speed they want, then he must give place to one who will.

So at the bottom it is the greed for profit and the insatiable desire for speed on the part of the rich that is responsible for the disaster, whatever conclusion the Committee of Enquiry may come to. Of course, they will not give any such verdict as that, for that would be to indict the capitalist system.

The actual details of the wreck afford a further opportunity of pressing home a lesson. The evidence of the survivors and the evidence of the official figures of the saved, show that even on the decks of the sinking liner, and to the very end, the class struggle was on.

Those who had clamoured for speed were the first to monopolise the boats, and the way was kept open for them by the officers’ revolvers. Even the capitalist newspapers are compelled to admit the significance of the figures. Of the first class men 34 per cent were saved: of the steerage men only 12 per cent. Figures like those are eloquent enough without the evidence of the officer who admitted that he kept steerage passengers from a half-filled boat with shots from his revolver.

Much has been made of the fact that the cry “Women and children first” was raised, and it is not necessary to cast aspersions on the courage of any man who survives. The salient fact is that it was not a question of courage but of class. “Women and children” meant women and children of the wealthy class. Of first class women and children practically all were saved, some even with their pet dogs. Of the steerage women and children more than half perished. The “chivalry” of the ruling class does not, save in very rare instances, extend itself to the class beneath them.

We are not of those who expect any great results from this ocean tragedy. Working-class lives are very cheap, and the age that abolishes the Plimsoll Line at the demand of those greedy for profit is hardly likely to insist upon the provision of proper means of life-saving or the careful navigation of passenger vessels. Murder by wholesale may be committed without doing violence to “law and order,” so long as it is committed by the capitalist class in the “legitimate” scramble for profits. The law only moves against the Crippens and the Seddons, but the murders quite commonly committed by the capitalist class are not one whit less foul, for all nobody is hanged for them.

A.E. Jacomb

(From front page article, Socialist Standard, May 1912)

50 Years Ago: The Budget (1998)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Cabinet spokesmen oppose higher wages they do so because their immediate and predominant responsibility, by virtue of being the Government, is to keep the capitalist system functioning in the only way that capitalism can function, that is by enabling the capitalists to make profits. The Labour Party grew up on the mistaken belief that under Labour Government there would be great possibilities to raise wages by cutting into profits. Rather late in the day some of them, certainly Sir Stafford Cripps, have come up against the harsh truth that those who administer the capitalist system have very limited freedom of action—on all important issues they can depart little from the practice of their Conservative predecessors. Official figures on the proportion of the national income which goes as salaries, wages and rent and profits, etc., bring this out clearly. In 1938 wages accounted for 39 per cent, salaries for 24 per cent, and profits, rent and interest for 37 per cent. In 1947 wages accounted for 44 per cent, salaries 20 per cent., and rent, profits, etc., 36 per cent. (See Economist, April 10th, 1948, p. 59. In each case the figures are after meeting income tax.) It will be observed that the percentage going to wages and salaries together, i.e., 63 per cent, in 1938 and 64 per cent in 1947 has hardly changed at all, likewise the percentage to rent, profit, etc.—37 per cent in 1938 and 36 per cent in 1947.

This is the dilemma of all Labour Governments, but no such dilemma faces Socialists. Socialism is not a scheme for redistributing wealth and income inside capitalism, but a system of society to replace the capitalist system.

(From editorial, Socialist Standard, April 1948)

The London Referendum (1998)

Editorial from the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The referendum in London on 7 May is a farce. For a start, full details of what is involved were only made public in March, so there has not been enough time for a proper debate. Second, there is no provision for equal time to be given to both the “yes” and the “no” sides. So the media will be free to give an unfair advantage to the government case for voting “yes”, as they shamelessly did during the referendums in Scotland and Wales. Third, the question is rigged. If you want an elected assembly for London (as most people do since this is an elementary democratic measure) you can’t vote for this without at the same time voting for an elected mayor who will have more power than the assembly. So you don’t have the choice of saying “yes” to an elected assembly but “no” to an elected mayor.

This neo-Tory Labour government talks a lot about democracy and democratic reform but in practice resorts to the same underhand tactics to get its way as do governments everywhere. It has linked the two questions so as to be sure to get its dubious proposal for a London City Boss through on the back of popular support for the restoration of an elected London council.

We in the Socialist Party are well aware that in the end whatever arrangements are adopted for local government in London won’t make much difference. This is because such arrangements are to be implemented within the context of the profit system, whose economic mechanisms require all levels of government, however structured, to trim their spending so as not to endanger profit levels whatever people may want–or vote for.

Even so, an elected mayor is not a good idea. As the title of the government’s Green Paper–New Leadership for London—proclaims, this is a proposal to elect a Leader for London. This Leader will not just have more power than the elected assembly but will be paid a fat cat salary (so as to remove, it is said, the temptation to be corrupt) and have the remit of managing London as if it were a capitalist enterprise. The whole proposal is a travesty of democracy.

Democracy means participating in the running of affairs, not following leaders. The proposal for an elected mayor is a proposal to endorse what passes for democracy under capitalism: a choice not of alternative social systems or even policies but of rival leaders who are all packaging and no substance. Tony Banks, David Mellor, Chris Patten, who has the best smile? Who cares? But worse, it encourages people to think that some Leader can solve society’s problems for them, whereas these problems can only be solved by people refusing to follow leaders and acting for themselves. The only kind of politics that is going to work is a do-it-yourself politics aimed at abolishing the profit system.

Greasy Pole: Who Said It First? (1998)

The Greasy Pole column from the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

A few years ago Joe Biden fancied himself as the next president of the United States but his candidature came to an abrupt end when it was discovered that he had repeated word-for-word parts of a speech by Neil Kinnock. We can assume that Biden was not penalised because he lifted someone else’s words but because it was clear that anyone who thought Kinnock even said anything worth repeating must be too mad to be trusted in the White House.

This sordid incident came to mind last month when William Hague was accused of pirating parts of speeches made by Tony Blair and in his turn charged Blair with lifting phrases from John Major (which would be even more insane than plagiarising Neil Kinnock). In what seemed a leaked version of a speech he intended to make in Australia, Hague was to have said:

“We can say to the elderly person who is afraid to go out at night for fear of being attacked–we are on your side.”

Which was rather like Blair at the Labour Party Conference in 1994:

“To the pensioners who fear to go out of their homes, let us say–we are on your side.”

There were plenty of other examples because it seems that Hague and Blair are both on the same side of all sorts of people–parents, students, people who run small businesses–in fact almost anyone who could suppress their anxieties at being at one with Blair and Hague long enough to vote for them.

Europe

If the charge against Hague was true it can be said that at least he showed a keen sense of timing because Blair made that speech four years ago and we all know what can happen to politicians’ promises over that kind of time lapse. In his past, for example, Blair spoke up for the trade unions and for CND. His election address in 1983 declared:

“We’ll negotiate a withdrawal from the EEC (EU) which has drained our natural resources and destroyed jobs.”

But in April 1995 he told the Royal Institute of International Affairs that:

" . . . Europe is today the only route through which Britain can exercise power and influence. If it is to maintain its historical role as a global player, Britain has to be a central part of the politics of Europe. so Labour will be strong in Europe.”

What this means is that if Hague is really so short on ideas that his speechwriters are reduced to plundering Blair’s speeches, he has a lot of choice. And the same would apply to Blair. Because what has been overlooked, as the accusations and counter-accusations over the speeches flow backwards and forwards, is that there is a simple, established reason for any similarity between what the two leaders say. They basically agree with each other. In terms of the policies and the promises they offer the voters there is really nothing to choose between them. It is, obviously, difficult to keep spouting the same tired arguments without occasionally repeating yourself, or using phrases which have already been used by the person you call your opponent.

Real issue

This is the nub of the matter; it is the real issue which should concern all those people who allow themselves to be carried away in their interest in the trivial spats between the parties of capitalism. Read the manifestoes, listen the leaders’ speeches–and what do you find? First of all there is a great deal of broad-ranging but empty assertion of “principles”. Both will tell you how courageous, industrious and ingenious the British people are. Both will say that all those qualities are being, or have been, held in check by the policies of the other party. Both will offer sweeping, generalised pledges to make things better. There will be a few memorable sound-bites.

If you have managed to last this long you will then come to the more detailed plans for the management of British capitalism. Here again you would need a microscope to see any real differences. In many examples you could exchange one set of detailed proposals for the other. No-one would notice. And when, after all the reading of manifestoes and listening to speeches, a government is elected you will find them in their actions they are to all intents and purposes indistinguishable from each other.

That is why Blair’s government is upsetting so many of its supporters, who thought they had seen the end of almost 20 years of Conservative government and that after 1 May things could only get better. That is why, as Blair and his ministers attack our living standards and crack down on the poorer and weaker among the working class, they tell us that this is really for our own good because its our fault if we’re poor and weak in the first place–just as Tory ministers used to tell us.

That is why, as they speak in the same terms, what they say is interchangeable. So that they can imitate, or steal, what each other say. If we do notice, we will have gone a long way towards treating these incidents as seriously as they deserve–not as minor spats about who said what first but as the exposure of a social system and its cynical propagandists.

Ivan

Great Stuff (1998)

The TV Review column from the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is so much crap on TV that deserves the severest criticism by socialists that when a rare, inspiring programme appears on the box, those of us who spend too much of our time in front of it are more than justified in celebrating the event.

Just such an occasion was the last series of the “The Mark Thomas Comedy Product” (Channel 4). If nothing else, this show achieved something absolutely vital: it was both meaningfully political and very, very funny. Scorching, bang-bang-bang studio stand-up was mixed in with film of Mark and his mates pulling situationist-style stunts at the expense of members of the establishment, the capitalist class, and their shabby hypocrisy.

Those who enjoyed the previous series–gas fat-cat Cedric Brown refusing to meet Thomas and receive a cheque for five grand “we’ve just proved that Cedric Brown is now so rich that he won’t even walk down a flight of stairs for £5000!”); Mark sticking ice cream cones on a tank and inquiring of William Waldegrave about sending it to a “mate in Iraq”–were not disappointed this time out.

In an unforgettable TV moment Mark drew out of a Church of England investment manager that the Church wouldn’t make money from companies concerned with drink or porn on “moral” grounds, but weaponry was fine. He then rolled up with a missile launcher of the type the Church profits from, decked out with the slogan “CHURCH OF ENGLAND–KILLING FOREIGNERS FOR PROFIT AND JESUS”, as a helpful suggestion of how the god squad should publicise their activities. In doing this Thomas was able to reveal “the great and the good” as the callous money-grubbing bastards they often are. And the reaction of the (mostly male) anti-abortion moral fascists he so accurately sent up really was unmissable.

As for the straightforward comedy routines, the anti-work song in the penultimate episode (more “fucks” than you could shake a boss at) had this socialist reaching for “rewind” time after time–a really funny, bitingly accurate ballad against wage slavery.

But any criticisms? Lack of a proposed social alternative, for instance? Not really, because it’s amazing just how much a man so obviously from a libertarian political background was actually able to get away with. In his own postscript to the series Thomas summed up by saying that if the show had been about anything, it was that there is no reason why we should have to put up with the sort of shit he had been tackling.

This wasn’t the political and social action needed to get rid of that shit certainly, and didn’t pretend to be, but the more or this sort of TV there is to combat the lies and dross our class is forever bombarded with the better. Great stuff!

Ben Malcolm

Crisis in Indonesia (1998)

From the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1965, General Suharto came to power in a military coup in Indonesia that had the full backing of Britain and the US. During a Cold War arms build-up and a world focusing on the Vietnam War and the "communist threat", Suharto became a welcome ally as he massacred 600,000 of his opponents. In the years that followed, Suharto would consolidate his power, corruption would take on a whole new meaning and Indonesia would become a by-word for human rights abuses, most notably following the annexation of East Timor and the massacre of a further 200,000. All the while, the West turned a blind eye, supplying him with arms and training his military staff--interested only in the vast oil reserves Indonesia straddles.

Western eyes are now looking cautiously at Indonesia. In July of last year, the economy began to collapse and reached real crisis point during January of this year. Inflation rocketed and bankruptcies followed. Basic foodstuffs have more than doubled in price and thousands have died of hunger.

That much of his happened during January--a month of self-restraint (Ramadan) for Indonesia's moslems--perhaps explains why food riots born of country-wide discontent did not erupt fully until February, with Chinese food stores and restaurants taking much of the impact. The Chinese, who make up five percent of the population, were readily perceived as being the cause of the food shortages. That they own 70 percent of Indonesia's wealth was reason enough to convince angry crowds that they had grown rich off the backs of the masses.

Media analysts fear more trouble ahead, indeed a total meltdown of the Indonesian economy within the next month, particularly in light of a recent IMF decision to delay disbursement of the next tranche of a $43 billion bailout.

The IMF agreed to the $43 billion lifeline on condition that Suharto reformed a structure of monopolies, tariffs and subsidies--in other words, the targeting of the interests of his cronies and six offspring.

Suharto accused the IMF of trying to impose a liberal economy on the country, which he claimed was not in line with Article 33 of the Indonesian constitution, which stipulates that the economy should be developed along "family principles and which stresses 'regulated cooperatives' rather than the 'free market'".

Back to basics

"Family principles" takes on a whole new meaning in Indonesia. Not only is nepotism rampant, with Suharto's relatives up to their necks in all manner corruption, but Suharto himself is estimated to have assets worth over $40 billion (coincidentally the size of the IMF loan he is haggling over).

Having promised to give Indonesia's central bank full autonomy over monetary policy, Suharto then sacked its governor and directors for objecting to his plans for an "IMF-plus measure"--the setting up of a currency board charged with pegging the Indonesian rupiah to the US dollar. Not only was this opposed by the IMF, the World Bank, the US and the EU, but his own critics in Indonesia lambasted it, pointing to the country's limited foreign reserves and corrupt bureaucracy.

Having just been elected president for the seventh time, to rule for another five years, by a 1,000-member electoral assembly he vetted himself, Suharto is taking economic advice from his schoolfriend Professor Jusuf Habiba. Habiba's economic competence has long been questioned--even by Western economists who still dream up futile models of how capitalism can best work--at least since his "zig-zag" theory which professed that rising inflation is best offset with low interest rates.

It is highly likely that a state of emergency will be declared shortly. Riots have been widespread, often urged on by students less inclined to the rhetoric of scape-goating. Panic buying has emptied shelves and forced many shops to close and the military is becoming edgy, fearful for its own interests. With a restless population of over 200 million, split into 300 ethnic groups, Indonesia faces a precarious next few months.

If the worst does come, we can well imagine the front page analysts pointing to Suharto's corruption and poor economic insight as a cause, and others to the "bursting bubble" of the Asian economic miracle and its wider dimensions. None, we predict, will point out that this is how capitalism functions, that capitalism is an archaic, chaotic and ungovernable system. And we are not being churlish in suggesting that nothing out of the ordinary is happening Indonesia--for this is capitalism working normally, according to its own insane logic.

Our sympathies go out to the millions destined to suffer in the madness, the millions who will in fact lend their support to the same system that has impoverished them, and who will always suffer until it dawns on them there is an alternative and that it is they alone who can bring it about.

John Bissett

Artificial scarcity (1998)

From the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Technological capacity to produce enough to satisfy everyone's needs already exists globally and has done so for many decades. Yet needs continue to remain unmet on a massive scale. Why? Quite simply because scarcity is a functional requirement of capitalism itself.

Production today is not primarily geared to satisfy human needs but "effective demand"--when "consumers" are able to buy goods at a price which will enable enterprises producing them to realise a profit. If what people can afford falls short of what they need, increasing output to satisfy the latter would cause prices to fall--to the detriment of profit. So the need for profit conflicts with the satisfaction of human needs.

Profit is not essentially a measure of technical efficiency. It is sometimes argued that the market's "hidden hand" guides enterprises towards the most efficient allocation of resources by bankrupting those failing to respond appropriately to its price signals. According to this argument, resources are inherently scarce and the market provides the best, if not the only, available mechanism for ensuring they are not wasted (which would aggravate scarcity). But the yardstick of "efficiency" used here is not something external to capitalism but intrinsic to it. An enterprise is judged to be "efficient" to the extent that it is profitable.

That means its revenue exceeds its cost. However, this can create the illusion that profits are made in the market--by raising prices to more than cover costs. But capitalists cannot just arbitrarily raise their prices--that could mean losing business to their competitors. In any case, one enterprise's price increase would constitute another's cost increase (insofar as enterprises supply each other with the inputs they require), with the resulting reciprocal losses and gains balancing each other in the long run.

In fact, profits are made in the sphere of production (but only "realised" in the market). The source of all wealth is human labour applied to natural resources. Those who apply their labour to create this wealth today (the workers) are employed to do so by the owners of the means of wealth production (the capitalists). The value of the wealth workers create necessarily exceeds the value of their working abilities for which they are paid a wage (or salary)--the difference between these two values being "surplus value", the source of the capitalists' profit.

So profit depends on restricting workers' consumption to what is needed to develop and maintain their working abilities at the level required. More than that only adds to the wages bill without producing a commensurate increase in productivity. But what is so vital about profit that makes this necessary? Not only does it afford capitalists a lavish lifestyle; more importantly, it is the source of their capital. The more capital they can accumulate out of the profits accruing to them the more effectively can they compete--by investing in more productive technologies to undercut their competitors--and thus claim a larger share of the market for themselves. If they did not do this then their competitors would, and could knock them out of business.

So economic competition between enterprises fuels the drive towards capital accumulation. This in turn necessitates profit maximisation which expresses itself as a continuous downward pressure on wages (reinforced by competition between workers on the labour market), insofar as these constitute costs which subtract from the capitalists' profit. This downward pressure on wages was once widely thought by Leftists to lead to a chronic and ever-deepening depression. According to this theory of "underconsumption", the development of the productive forces would result in increasing quantities of consumer goods swamping the market which workers would be unable to buy back, thus precipitating capitalism's collapse.

However, any decline in the workers' share of total wealth must represent an increase in the share appropriated by the capitalists and hence also their potential demand for consumer goods. It might be argued that rather than increase their consumption of consumer goods the capitalists could divert more of their wealth into investment instead, thereby enhancing the productive capacity of industry. But since such investment will only proceed when there is the expectation of profit this presupposes the existence of consumer markets capable of absorbing the potential increase in output.

Nevertheless, while growth in productive capacity and market demands tend to balance out in the long run their normal state is one of "disequilibrium". This generates a continuous process of mutual adjustment which takes the form of the capitalist "trade cycle". In the run-up to a boom enterprises expand their productive capacity to meet the surge in market demand. However, blind competition between them leads to overproduction in some sectors of the economy at first, resulting in falling prices and a squeeze on profits. Workers are then laid off in these sectors thereby reducing their demand for the goods provided by other sectors. A ripple effect is thus created which takes its toll on an expanding range of industries resulting in a generalised recession which only comes to an end when the conditions for profitable production are restored. As Marx put it: "the last cause of all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as compared to the tendency of capitalist production to develop the productive forces in such a way that only the absolute power of consumption of the entire society would be their limit" (Capital III, p.30).

Artificial needs

As well as desiring things we need, we are also encouraged to desire things that we do not need. Indeed, insofar as there is theoretically no limit to what we are capable of desiring this allows pro-capitalist economists to argue that scarcity is the "condition of the world". To question why we should desire such things over and above what we need is to encroach on territory that falls beyond the scope of traditional economics; it is thus deemed inadmissible from the blinkered perspective of the economists themselves.

Not that that prevents them from adopting the assumption that human beings are fundamentally driven by insatiable desires. In fact, the attempt to universalise that assumption by grounding it in the very nature of human beings was, as Marshall Sahlins argues in his Stone Age Economics, the ideological by-product of an emerging bourgeois society. Not coincidentally, it went hand-in-hand with the attempt to downgrade and dismiss earlier cultures as "primitive" and "backward" for not exhibiting the insatiable desires characteristic of bourgeois society itself. As Sahlins points out, the bourgeois axiom of scarce resources and unlimited wants can be neatly reversed in the case of our hunter-gatherer forbears for whom an excess of possessions was not merely disapproved of but viewed as a positive encumbrance to their nomadic way of life.

It was with the appearance of private property, particularly in its individualistic capitalist form, that the ideology of scarcity took root. In his perceptive book To Have or To Be, Erich Fromm notes that private property derives from the Latin word privare meaning "to deprive of" because "the person or persons who own it are its sole masters, with full powers to deprive others of its use or enjoyment". It is such deprivation that engenders the pathological desire to possess. For within this individualistic world-view it is through one's possessions that one attains the power and freedom to be oneself; one's sense of self-identity and self-worth--in short, one's social status--is tied up with, and expressed through, one's possessions. This is what Fromm means by a "having" mode of existence as opposed to a "being" mode.

Crudely speaking, this means that the better-off one is materially speaking the more status one accrues. However, since it is not the absolute amount of one's material possessions as such that determines one's position in this status hierarchy but rather what one has compared with what others have, it follows that economic inequality is a basic precondition for such a system of status differentiation to effectively operate. In this respect, capitalism not only provides the yardstick by which this concept of status is measured but also works to ensure an unequal distribution of wealth, enabling such a system to operate.

So it does not matter how modest one's real needs may be or how easily they may be met; capitalism's "consumer culture" leads one to want more than one may materially need since what the individual desires is to enhance his or her status within this culture of consumerism and this is dependent upon acquiring more than others have got. But since others desire the same thing, the economic inequality inherent in a system of competitive capitalism must inevitably generate a pervasive sense of relative deprivation.

What this amounts to is a kind of institutionalised envy. This is ironic inasmuch as socialists are often accused of being motivated by the "politics of envy". Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, such envy is merely the flip side of the same coin as greed. And it is the idea of greed which underwrites the myth of scarcity which, in turn, serves to justify the existence of a market which socialists oppose.

Socially useless production

Socially useless production constitutes a large and growing proportion of economic activity within capitalism and, as such, contributes significantly to the perpetuation of artificial scarcity--in this case from the standpoint of supply rather than demand.

Of course, capitalism does not and cannot distinguish between socially useful and socially useless production. The reason for this is that both are functionally necessary for the realisation of profit. So for anyone not looking beyond the parameters of capitalism such a distinction will remain obscured.

If socially useful production comprises any form of activity that goes to satisfy real human needs, socially useless production represents any activity that does not satisfy such needs. The needs that the latter satisfies are the system's needs. These include not only status needs but operational needs arising from how the system operates. There is a tendency for capitalism to develop towards ever-increasing complexity with the consequence that over time its operational needs tend to soak up ever-larger quantities of resources and human labour. This is exemplified by the growth of money-based activities to facilitate market transactions (from banking to retailing), reactive/remedial activities to cope with the social problems thrown up by capitalism (from social workers to trade unions) and coercive activities to protect or promote the interests of capital (from weapons research to security firms).

Estimates vary as the proportion of total labour and resources devoted to systemic needs but there can be little doubt that, particularly in the advanced capitalist economies, well over half the total labour force is involved in one or other form of socially useless production. This represents a massive waste of human effort and resources which, if redirected towards socially useful production, could effectively eliminate scarcity as far as the satisfaction of real needs is concerned. To eliminate scarcity, however, requires a fundamental switch from production for profit to production for use--from capitalism to socialism.

Robin Cox