Limited Choices (2024)

Book Review from the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Free and Equal: What Would a Fair Society Look Like? By Daniel Chandler. Penguin £10.99.

In 1971 the political philosopher John Rawls published A Theory of Justice. This has had a massive impact in the academic world, giving rise to a great many articles and books discussing its argument, but it has so far had few consequences in practical politics, and that is what Daniel Chandler sets out to alter here. He presents arguments for a ‘fair society’, which Rawls referred to as ‘realistically utopian’. This review will focus on Chandler’s proposals, sometimes looking at the theoretical background to these.

Essentially, a programme of reforms is set out, including universal basic income and a higher minimum wage. There would be increased taxes on capital income, more progressive inheritance tax and an annual wealth tax on the largest fortunes. Employees should have more say in how their workplaces are run, and co-management (which is found in Germany) would mean workers and owners sharing control rights within a company. Worker co-operatives might be an improvement on this, though. Fee-paying schools would be abolished, and more would be spent on children from less-advantaged backgrounds. University education would be financed by combining free tuition and income-contingent loans. Politics could be made more democratic if corporate donations to political parties were banned and there was a cap on individual donations. Each citizen could be given a ‘democracy voucher’, so they could make an annual donation to a party or candidate of their choice. A combination of electoral and direct democracy would make political equality more likely. Communities could be in charge of local budgets, perhaps by means of citizens’ assemblies.

Rawls’ work is based on a thought experiment. In Chandler’s words, ‘we should ask ourselves what kind of world we would choose to live in if we didn’t know who we would be within it’. Presumably people would opt for a world with little inequality or discrimination, with nobody’s life experience dependent on their gender, ethnicity or sexuality, with equality of opportunity as far as possible. But the trouble is that both authors’ views are stuck within capitalism. Chandler writes: ‘We should rely on markets to distribute most consumer goods and services because the alternative would be some form of state-controlled rationing.’ But this is not the only alternative: a society of free access and production for use based on the common ownership of the means of living could provide a decent life for everyone.

The few remarks made here about socialism are not at all enlightening. Chandler says it is not clear what sort of society socialists today stand for. In a note he states that socialists now advocate reforms, rather than the use of public ownership and central planning, as supposedly used to be the case. But acquaintance with the case of the Socialist Party would show that we oppose reformism and have a definite proposal for future society, and this does not involve central planning. A better response to Rawls’ thought experiment would be a world without money or classes or states or borders, and this is entirely realistic.

Paul Bennett

Cooking the Books: UBI no solution (2024)

The Cooking the Books column from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

We’ll need universal basic income — AI “godfather” . The godfather in question was Professor Geoffrey Hinton, so dubbed because he was a pioneer of neural networks on which AI is modelled. He told BBC Newsnight that a scheme ‘giving fixed amounts of cash to every citizen would be needed because he was “very worried about AI taking lots of mundane jobs”. ( …) He said while he felt AI would increase productivity and wealth, the money would go to the rich “and not the people whose jobs get lost and that’s going to be very bad for society”’.

It’s a common view: AI will lead to mass unemployment with a consequent reduction in paying demand; the remedy to this is ‘the government paying all individuals a set salary regardless of their means’. This would both sustain paying demand and reduce inequality.

But it is not a new idea. The same analysis and the same proposal were made sixty years ago, but in relation to ‘cybernation’, a word that has dropped out of common use but which means ‘the control of an industrial operation or task through processing of information with a computer’. In March 1964 a group of left-wing intellectuals formed an ‘Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution’ and drew up a report for presentation to President Johnson. One of these revolutions was the ‘cybernation revolution’.

They argued that ‘the rate of productivity increase has risen with the onset of cybernation’ and that ‘an industrial economic system postulated on scarcity has been unable to distribute the abundant goods and services produced by a cybernated system or potential in it’. To remedy this, they proposed:

‘. . . it is essential to recognize that the traditional link between jobs and incomes is being broken. The economy of abundance can sustain all citizens in comfort and economic security whether or not they engage in what is commonly reckoned as work. Wealth produced by machines rather than by men is still wealth. We urge, therefore, that society, through its appropriate legal and governmental institutions, undertake an unqualified commitment to provide every individual and every family with an adequate income as a matter of right’ (tinyurl.com/3362249j).

They were in effect saying that capitalism had solved the problem of producing enough for everyone but had not solved that of distributing it. Theirs was a proposal as to how capitalism could do this. Johnson of course took no notice of their report. Cybernation continued but there was no consequential massive increase in technological unemployment. So where did they go wrong?

One reason was assuming that mechanisation (of which automation, cybernation and now AI are instances) takes place as soon as it just becomes technologically possible. Under capitalism it is only applied if it is cheaper than having the work done manually or by some already established machine. This slows down technological progress.

Nor does technological progress come in all at once but spreads only slowly. Overall productivity does increase but only at a fairly modest rate (averaging around 2 percent a year). This gives the economy time to adjust. There is some technological unemployment but new employment opportunities (though not necessarily for those displaced) open up as capital accumulation proceeds.

Paying a basic income to everyone while maintaining private ownership of machines and production for profit won’t work, because it would undermine both the profit motive and the wages system, two essential features of the capitalist system. The money to do this could only come from taxes and taxes ultimately fall on profits, reducing the incentive that drives capitalism. It would undermine the wages system by reducing the economic pressure on the excluded majority to work for an employer to get money to buy what they need to live.

Capitalism is inherently incapable of solving the problem of distributing enough for all.

Moneyless or not (1971)

From the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

“While there is money, there is scarcity”. “. . . Work itself becomes voluntary. The new incentives will be pleasure, pride and social responsibility”

These are among the ideas expressed in the final chapter of the book Play-power by Richard Neville, one of the editors of OZ convicted of producing what the Law regards as an obscene publication.

Quite true; men could use modern technology to design and construct machines to do the boring and repetitive jobs involved in the production of wealth, thus freeing human beings to engage in interesting, creative work of their choice. Employment could be abolished and work become voluntary.

But before this could be done the machines and the other means of production must have ceased to be the property of a privileged minority and have come instead under the democratic control of all the people. Only then could they be used to turn out an abundance of good-quality consumer goods and services which people could use to satisfy their needs. Money would become redundant.

There is no doubt at all that in writing about “a moneyless society” Neville was directly influenced by the ideas of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. For he was quoting with approval from one of a number of articles that have appeared in OZ written by a Socialist (‘The Food Explosion” OZ 19 and 26. See also “Smash Cash” OZ 17).

The only trouble is that Neville isn’t consistent and so gives the impression of having used our arguments merely to justify shoplifting and fare-dodging. People who do this, he says “are training themselves for a moneyless society”. There is of course nothing “immoral” in these practices but they have nothing to do with a moneyless, socialist society, and are practised by many others besides Socialists and those Neville calls “drop-outs”.

Neville’s inconsistency comes out on the very next page where he uses a quite different argument to justify the practice of non-employment (what is sometimes called “refusing to work”). He conjures up the vision of a society where, in order to maintain consumer demand in the face of growing unemployment caused by automation, the State pays everybody a guaranteed income. This would presumably be paid in money, so what became of the moneyless society Neville was supposed to be training for?

We can only say that, if Neville really does believe in a State guaranteed income, he is way behind the times. In this age of potential abundance nothing short of free access to wealth will do. He was right the first time: future society will have no need for money. Today’s notes and coins—dollars and cents, pounds and pence, roubles and kopecks—can be relegated to the museums alongside the Romans’ coins and the South Sea Islanders' cowrie shells.

Capitalist cake (2020)

Book Review from the October 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pandemic Capitalism. From Broken Systems to Basic Incomes by Chris Oestereich (Wicked Problems Collaborative. 2020)

While this short book insists that the post coronavirus world can and must be one of radical change (‘a new paradigm’ as one of its chapter titles says) and one that provides a decent means of life for everyone, it nails its colours to the mast in the opening pages by quoting approvingly the World Economic Forum’s words: ‘We seriously need to consider implementing a well designed Universal Basic Income (UBI), so shocks may hit, but they won’t destroy.’ So the new world will, in the author’s view, still be one ensconced in the existing system of ‘incomes’ and not one involving the real paradigm shift of abolition of wages and salaries, of buying and selling and of money and wages. It will be, in the author’s own words and imagination, ‘a cake made of socialism with a layer of capitalism’.

Having said that, it cannot be denied that this book has a laudable aim, that of ‘finding a way to share the bounty of our planet, while working within its limits’. Its description of the kind of society we live in (‘a society rooted in cut-throat economic competition’ with ‘spiralling inequality’, where ‘necessities go unfulfilled while the privileged indulge in perversities’) is impossible not to recognise and agree with. The author is right to say that we live ‘on a planet where much of the food that is grown goes to waste, we destroy unsold garments, and homes sit empty’. The question he asks about what the world could look like if people were able ‘to choose a collaborative orientation, rather than being forced into a competitive one’ is also entirely pertinent to the endeavours of socialists to open up people’s imagination to the possibility of a different kind of world, one of cooperative work at all levels and free access to all goods and services, where, in the words of one of this book’s chapter titles, we would all be ‘sharing the bounty’.

With regard to UBI, the author is right to say that it is an idea that has very much come to the fore in recent times, the idea being that the state would pay each of its citizens an unconditional basic income. But could such a reform solve the endemic problems of capitalist society? Would it rather not be just capitalism with a few tweaks? As articles which have appeared recently in the Socialist Standard (May and July, 2020) have shown, the likely effect of UBI, even if it could be made to work, would be to redistribute poverty. The chronically poor would be slightly better off (better than nothing admittedly), but the gulf between the vast majority who own little other than their energies and the minority who monopolise most of the world’s wealth would remain. Above all it would leave the market and commodity relations, the bulwarks of capitalism, intact. So, far from the idea of UBI being, as the author puts it, ‘a stretch of the imagination’ for many people, it is actually relatively easy to imagine as reforms of capitalism go. The real stretch of the imagination is the socialist society of from each according to ability to each according to needs. So one thing we would entirely agree with the author on is his approving reference to the words of the anarcho-socialist author, Ursula Le Guin: ‘We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings.’

Howard Moss

Blogger's Note:

In the original review it was stated that the " . . . articles which have appeared recently in the Socialist Standard (May and June, 2020)." It was actually the May and July Socialist Standards.

The Uxbridge by-election: The Green Party (2023)

From the SPGB Discussion Forum

More leaflets were distributed on Friday. And more discarded leaflets from other parties collected. This time the manifesto of the Green Party candidate (who, appropriately enough, is actually called Green). She confirms that the Green Party wants to return to the small-scale capitalism (from which present-day corporate capitalism evolved):

“Vote Green Party for a Well Being Economy.

Public Money to be spent on Public Good not profits for the few.

The economy is not working for most people (. . .)

Society needs to transition to a sustainable economy urgently.

Introduce universal basic income to reduce dependency on economic growth. Revive and support the local economy, home based enterprises, local food production and reskilling.”

She is right that the economy is not working for most people, but that’s the nature of the capitalist economy. It cannot be made to work for most people, not even by the reforms proposed by the Green Party. It is a profit-making economy that can work only in the interest of the profit-takers.

Just how universal basic income will “reduce dependency on economic growth” is not explained. You would have thought, rather, that it would be the other way round — that economic growth would be needed to sustain UBI. But we shouldn’t expect clear thinking on economic matters from the Green Party which believes that banks can and do create money from thin air.

FALC (2022)

From the October 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

The term ’Fully Automated Luxury Communism’ was invented by Aaron Bastani. In his book he says he is using the word to ‘denote a society in which work is eliminated, scarcity replaced by abundance and where labour and leisure blend into one another’ (p. 50). He calls this communism after Marx’s ’higher phase of communist society’ when ‘all the springs of co-operative wealth spring more abundantly’ and society can ‘inscribe on its banner: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs! ’

Bastani sees such a society having become possible as a result of what he calls the ’Third Disruption’, the two previous ’disruptions’ being the Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. His Third Disruption is basically the application of information technology to production; which ’means machines will be capable of replicating ever more of what was, until now, uniquely human work’ (p. 37).

A large part of his book is devoted to describing the possibilities that his Third Disruption opens up, such as full automation, gene editing, asteroid mining, synthetic meat, and endless energy from natural forces. He sees this last as eventually leading to a situation where it will be so cheap to produce individual items of wealth that there will be no point in putting a price on them; they could simply be given away. Similarly, work for a wage would become redundant as people would no longer have to sell their working energy to access what they need.

’What stands in the way isn’t the inevitable scarcity of nature, but the artificial scarcity of market rationing and ensuring that everything, at all cost, is produced for profit’ (p. 156).

How does he think society will get there? Disappointingly, but all too common amongst authors who present an often trenchant criticism of capitalism, he advocates various measures that he sees as steps in the right direction; he rejects UBI in favour of UBS (universal free basic services) as being more compatible with the ultimate aim.

He also states that ’any attempt at communism within the limits of the Second Disruption’ was ‘impossible’ (p. 241); this, because before the coming of IT it would not have been possible to eliminate work. But is eliminating human work an aim of communism? Hasn’t it been rather to eliminate working for wages, reduce working hours and make work enjoyable? And would it not have been possible to produce plenty for all on the basis of the common ownership of productive resources even before the digitalisation of information? Maybe it wouldn’t have been FALC, but certainly highly-automated, enough-for-all communism.

Blogger's Note:

See also:

• Seeing Visions (June 2019)
• The Strange World of FALC: Consumer Fantasy? (June 2019) 

The Poverty of the Greens (1999)

From the October 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Green Party has recently made significant strides forward—attaining its first seat in a UK Parliament in Scotland, winning numerous seats at local levels, and getting two MEPs in June’s Euro elections, and is currently choosing its candidate for the Mayor of London. But their policies for making things better are doomed to fail to make things better.

The Greens form a part of the rising “left alternative”, political groups moving in to fill in the gaps left by Labour’s lurch rightwards. Indeed, they present a potent radical package, eschewing the political institutional demands for a leader, instead having two “Principal Speakers”; and presenting a platform replete with sweeping reforms to improve society.

That’s just it though. They are reformists, and for all their alleged radicalism, that’s all they will ever be; endlessly promoting their brand of radical Liberalism warmed-up; attempts to breath life into the mummified remains of the two hundred year old political corpse our current political system is built upon. Their campaigning is not based on changing minds, but on appealing to the values of those who feel abandoned by the traditional parties—promising this time they will get it to work.

A simple examination of their policies suffices to show their misguided muddleheadedness, and the doomed, inevitable failure of their programme. For example, their industrial relations policy:

We know that most collective organisation is in trade unions, and value that. (Manifesto for a Sustainable Society, WR104).

This is hardly a ringing endorsement of workers’ militancy, support for workers in their union struggles. It is simply recognition from afar, a nice idea to be viewed from a distance, and valued like an old pet dog. Then again, however, at least it makes a change from the rabid anti-unionism of the “grey parties” (as the Greens call them). It remains though, a very passive support.

Is there, then, a more radical element to it? Of course there is, our Green friends would tell us:

The Green Party is committed to workplace democracy . . . whereby undertakings shall be managed co-operatively through the involvement of those who work in them and the communities they serve (WR105).

This is excellent, they must mean socialising the production process, handing the reigns of power to the people—we socialists should support them! Well, no, actually:

Worker participation improves the industrial process, increases personal satisfaction and gives the community a bigger stake. Workers’ Councils should be set up along the lines of the successful German model (IN617).

Then we must institutionalise yet more corporatist policies in order to be even and fair about removing people’s right to strike.

But, despite their bureaucratic wishy-washiness, surely the Greens have some truly momentous social policies? Erm . . .

A Citizens’ Income scheme, eventually sufficient to cover basic needs, will be introduced in stages as an integrated taxation and benefit system to replace most present social benefits and tax allowances (EC705).

A basic income for every citizen! Of course, how this is to be squared with the wages system is anyone’s guess. As the 18th century agricultural Speenhamland system showed, when people can get a better income without having to work, they (quite sensibly) take it. The policy would be brought in within the lifetime of one Parliament, and over that time there would be a mass exodus of people from shite jobs (the Greens may like that, but I doubt the employers would enjoy it).

Sustainable industrial activity tends to be more labour intensive . . . the introduction of Citizens’ Income would reduce the cost of labour to industry without pushing people into poverty (IN605).

That’s more like it—it’s a pay-off. With this scheme employers could cut wages, and thus industry would be able to become more profitable. Exactly how, then, this would leave workers better off, is up for debate since at most the basic income could only cover the basic cost of living (or less), their real wage wouldn’t actually change.

This agenda continues:

Land Value Taxation. A system of land taxation, to be known as Land Value Taxation (LVT), will be introduced, this will be a tax on the annual value of land (i.e. excluding buildings, machinery etc.). An initial levy of LVT will be made at a fraction of the annual value as determined by preliminary assessment, according to permitted use. Ultimately the full annual value of land will accrue to the community (EC725).

The hobby-horse of the followers of the 19th century American economist Henry George, and an idea that has an old pedigree (back to the 18th century artisan radical Thomas Spence in his journal Pig’s Meat): profit from land is unearned and so is taxable, leaving the true and “fair” earnings duly accrued to Capital and Labour untouched.

Of course, such radicals as Thomas Spence were around at the birth of the idea of the small-holder market economy, which lives on in the minds of the Greens:

Smaller and more democratically structured enterprises are more open to community regulation, ensuring that greater care is taken both of the people who work in them, and of the concerns and needs of the local community and the environment.

There is the myth of Mom & Pop businesses, as if being small makes a business any less dominated by the overriding imperative for profits. With small companies we are to return to the dream of fair economics, freed from the distortions caused by big-business. the one true market redeemed from its despoilers.

Of course, the real enemy of the small capitalist, the banks, will get theirs too:

Under the current banking system, money is created predominantly as interest-bearing debt by commercial banks and the financial institutions. This will gradually be replaced by one in which money is created interest-free for the benefit of the community. The place of the commercial banks in financing enterprise will gradually be taken by mediating, non-profit local community banks providing low-cost finance, both at district and regional levels (EC512).

Pardon me, pray, please, do excuse me, it’s so very hard to type while laughing this hard. So the Greens believe that when a bank wants to make a loan it just creates the money by magicking it out of thin air! And a Green government is going to take over this magical power and use it to make loans free from that evil interest! Actually, to return from the world of Paul Daniels for a moment, only the central government not banks can create money; banks are already what the Greens say they want them to become—”mediating” institutions between lenders and borrowers, making a profit (if only to offset losses from bad loans) out of the difference between the rate of interest they pay to those who lend them money and the rate they charge borrowers.

The Greens have strong convictions, a sense of justice, and a need to care for the environment and the future. However, their policies fail to live up to their values—or even begin to meet the necessary conditions for bringing them about. So long as they remain committed to a generalised community and humanity, neglecting and ignoring class interests in favour of consensus, then effectively they are propping up the capitalist order. Without backing the liberation of the working class, they are continuing our routine enslavement.

The Greens in Germany show us that these reformers will go the way of all reformers, forced by the electoral system, and the dictates of staying in power, to turn their backs on the Party’s pacifism, and support the NATO Balkans war.

The Greens are just the new face of an old Liberalism (“Whigs Astray” as William Morris called it in the 1880s), lost in a wilderness of trying to finally making the market work, failing to meet the real needs of the community, so long as they fail to address ownership of property and the abolition of class.

Pik Smeet

UBI: Red Herring or Wild Goose Chase? (2021)

From the September 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are some critics of capitalism who realise that something more radical is needed than the ‘baby steps’ that common or garden reformists have been reduced to campaigning for. They can see that such tinkering will not solve the problem they are concerned about. However, instead of proposing socialism (common ownership and production for need), which they dismiss as unrealistic, they advocate something else that they regard as more achievable. Actually, it is the other way around. It’s what they propose that is unrealistic and, in any event, would probably take as much time and energy to get enough support for, if it is be fully attempted, as would getting support for socialism. Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a case in point.

This is the proposal, also known as Citizens’ Income, that the government should pay everyone a regular monthly income of a given amount as of right, i.e. unconditionally and without means testing.

The idea is to free people from worry over not being able to meet their basic needs and having to accept a crap job to do so, and to give them a wider choice of how to organise their life. Some advocate it as a way of dealing with the hypothetical mass unemployment they are expecting to occur as AI is applied to more and more jobs.

The bolder amongst them see it as a first step towards breaking the link between work and income, a way of gradually abolishing the wages system with the proportion of a person’s income paid by the state increasing at the expense of that paid by their employer.

The obvious first question is: where is the money to come from? It would cost a huge amount, the more so the greater the payment agreed on. Governments have no income of their own and depend, for what they spend, on taxation and borrowing. Since workers are on average paid only enough to maintain their particular working skill – i.e. to keep themselves in working order – the taxes they pay, whether direct or indirect, get passed on to employers in the form of a higher money wage and so ultimately fall on profits.

So, UBI is basically a proposition to massively tax profits to pay everybody a free income. And its advocates dismiss socialism as unrealistic!

It is true that, if this were ever to happen, employers would be compensated by not having to pay wages at the same level, since a part of the cost of keeping a worker in working order would then be paid by the government. Some UBIers attempt to deny that their scheme, if implemented, would lead money wages to fall, but this goes against all the evidence of the effect of other payments by the state to people in work.

Others pull in their horns and publish detailed calculations showing that their scheme would not lead to much more being spent on government payments to people than at present, since many existing payments (eg unemployment pay, sick pay, family allowances) would be abolished. So, they end up with a UBI payment at the low end (perhaps not even as high as £500 a month) and so are in effect proposing what used to be called a ‘redistribution of poverty’.

Talk of employers, wages and money income shows that UBIers envisage their scheme being implemented in a society that will continue to be divided into employers (owners of a productive resource) and workers (driven by economic necessity to sell their working skills to an employer for money).

As to gradually increasing the state payment until most of a person’s income is paid by the state and a diminishing proportion by the employer, it’s hard to think of a more unrealistic proposal. Capitalism is based on the wages system, on most of the population being forced by economic necessity to obtain the money to buy the things they need to live by selling their capacity to work to an employer. No capitalist state will ever agree to undermine the wages system by weakening that pressure, as giving everyone a sum of money at anything much more than a minimal amount would. It’s just not going to happen.

The aim of breaking the link between work and the amount you get to live on is laudable; socialism will in fact bring this about by allowing the implementation of the principle ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’. But this is not something that can be introduced gradually under capitalism. It can only be implemented after capitalism has been ended through replacing class ownership of productive resources by their common ownership by society as a whole. This – socialism – has to come first.

The most that could happen to the UBI is that the idea of an unconditional free basic income is taken up by the state for certain groups it considers deserving and who would otherwise be destitute. Experiments involving this have already taken place. Of course, this would not be UBI as these payments would not be universal. It would completely emasculate the original idea of paying everyone a basic income. Also, the level would be more or less the poverty line which most states bring destitute people up to. Administrative costs would be saved by not having to means-test recipients and check that they continue to be eligible. In the end, then, as a ‘realistic’ proposition UBI would be reduced to a tweak to the Poor Law System (aka the Welfare State). Just another ‘baby step’, but to nowhere.

Rather than waste their time and energy pursuing something that is impossible under capitalism and unnecessary in socialism, those dissatisfied with capitalism are better advised to work for socialism. This will provide the framework in which the problems they are concerned about can be lastingly solved since, with the common ownership of resources by society, the economic laws of capitalism which render reforms such as UBI impossible will no longer operate.

Adam Buick

Cooking the Books: Back to the seventies? (2007)

The Cooking the Books column from the June 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last year the Oxford economist Andrew Glyn brought out a new book called Capitalism Unleashed. Thirty-five years ago he was the co-author of a Penguin Special that came out in 1972 called British Capitalism, Workers and the Profits Squeeze. In it he and his fellow author (Bob Sutcliffe) argued that capitalism, at least in Britain, had been brought to a life-or-death crisis because working class militancy, on the one hand, and international competition, on the other, had squeezed profits, the life-blood of the system without which it couldn’t survive. One more push from the workers, they suggested, and capitalism could be overthrown.

We ourselves were sceptical about the whole analysis, suggesting that they were greatly exaggerating trade union “power” and that the crisis was not a life-or-death one but just a phase of the ordinary business cycle which capitalism goes through and from which it would recover sooner or later (see our review in February 1973 Socialist Standard). Actually, it turned out to be a bigger turning point than we thought, as capitalism has never since returned to the “full employment” days of the 50s and 60s.

In any event, capitalism did survive. So what does Glyn think now? Modern-day, “unleashed” capitalism, he says, has its problems (financial turbulence, corporate corruption, etc) but cannot be said to be in a state of crisis in the sense of the Oxford Dictionary definition of “the point in the progress of a disease when an important development or change takes place which is decisive of recovery or death” that he believed it to have been in in the 70s. In fact, his view is that there is now no alternative to capitalism on the horizon, so all we’ve got is a choice of different kinds of capitalism.

  

“The longer-term objective of socialism was always to facilitate the development of people’s lives in a more fulfilling direction”, he writes, and asks: “Is it possible to make serious moves in this direction even within what is still a predominantly capitalist economy?”.

His answer is, perhaps surprisingly from someone who was associated with Militant for a while, “yes”, in the form of the scheme proposed by the Belgian social thinker, Philippe Van Parijs, for paying everyone a Basic Income as of right and irrespective of whether or not they work, referring to an article by him in a book with the revealing title of Redesigning Distribution: Basic Income and Stakeholder Grants as Designs for a More Egalitarian Capitalism. Or, as Van Parijs himself has put it:

  “In classical Marxism, socialism is just an instrument for achieving the society in which people can work freely according to their abilities but still get enough according to their needs. If socialism doesn’t work, because of threats to freedom and problems of dynamic efficiency, then why not harness capitalism to achieve the same objectives?” (The Bulletin, Brussels, 19 July 2001).

It’s a pipedream of course and a bit currency cranky (though to give Van Parijs his due, he did come up with a brilliant title for one of his books in What’s Wrong with a Free Lunch?). A Basic Income paid as of right would have to be funded (even squeezed) out of profits and would either undermine the wages system (why work for a capitalist employer if the State is paying you whether you work or not?) or make no difference (since wages would fall by the amount of the State wage subsidy that a Basic Income would represent). Or it would be fixed at so low a level as to be just another name for “Income Support”.

The simple fact is that capitalism can’t be reformed, humanised or made more egalitarian. It must be ended not mended.

Letters: CND’s weaknesses (2008)

Letters to the Editors from the April 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

CND’s weaknesses

Dear Editors,

As a former ban-the-bomber I would like to make a few points regarding CND (Socialist Standard March)

1. Its original appeal was rather insular, asking the government to set a moral example and give a lead to the rest of the non-nuclear world—“Let Britain show the way”.
2. It recognised that it would seem completely unrealistic to demand unilateral action from either of the two great nuclear powers. Much more reasonable to seek to prevent nuclear possession spreading—those who do not have them should not make them.
3. The Labour Party leader Gaitskell and others (and the media) consistently and quite knowingly mis-stated the CND policy as: “Asking ‘the West’ to disarm.” Which it never did—urging ‘multilateral’ agreement and reductions by means of various treaties.
4. CND sometimes made ludicrous claims that it influenced Test Ban agreements etc. All Test Bans or Weapons Limitation treaties were concluded when (a) Testing was no longer deemed essential or (b) when the warheads to be scrapped had been rendered out of date or no longer necessary as technology enabled the production of smaller, but more accurate and effective, weapons and delivery.
5. Significantly, CND support in the UK began to diminish when it broadened its campaign to oppose all nuclear weapons.
6. Some CND supporters supported the existence of NATO.
7. Some (Stalinists and some Trotskyists etc) members of CND did want ‘one-sided’ disarmament and were staunch supporters of the “workers’” bomb.
8. Some ‘Communists’ did have the integrity to oppose capitalist and workers’ bombs.
9. Pacifists (like myself) were a minority in the movement—most accepting that non-nuclear conventional war may sometimes be necessary.
10. “Entryists” did achieve some limited success (certainly temporarily controlling at least one Branch), but they were generally flushed out by the more genuinely radical elements among the membership.

Nevertheless, it would be churlish to ignore the remarkable contribution CND made in raising public awareness of the nuclear issue. Sometimes it is forgotten how deeply limited was the public knowledge of the kind of facts that CND routinely uncovered. Speaking personally, the kind of stuff that I have tried to articulate exposing (in the cause of socialism) the breathtaking hypocrisy of double dealing defence policies of the past and present was spawned by CND. The real disappointment is that comparatively few CND members moved beyond the optimistic (but narrow) objectives embraced by the original policies.

Obviously, the oft repeated claim that “there will not be time” for a deeper objective than nuclear disarmament (I made it myself) has, thankfully, proved to be erroneous.

Richard Headicar, 

Hethersett, Norfolk

Back to basics

Dear Editors ,

Thank you for the comments. I’ll like to respond only to what I think are the main issues raised by Adam Buick’s remarks on my book (Socialist Standard, March). This does not necessarily mean that I am in agreement with him over other things that I do not take up here.

(1) The Speenhamland system is about as similar to Basic Income (BI) as en egg is to a chestnut. We are more than two hundred years on from that agrarian economy. Moreover, Speenhamland was a conditional system and BI is, by definition, unconditional. Criticisms of a conditional system can hardly be applied to a system that is unconditional per excellence.

(2) The objection at the core of the whole article, that BI “would be a wage subsidy to employers” is rather odd. If the law prohibits employers from paying less than a Minimum Wage, as happens in many countries, the argument sinks all by itself without any extra help. Some trade unions are more than aware of this and, for example, the ESK (Basque Union Group) have been BI supporters for some time now.

(3) The author’s views that a BI would be a “wage subsidy to employers” without taking into account the economic forces of the time and without bothering to look into what effects a BI might have on the working class are not only more-than-dubiously based in historical terms but he also seems to be arguing as if the only decision-maker is the management. But aren’t management wishes conditioned in any way by resistance from the workers? According to this line of argument, one might almost deduce that the workers shouldn’t engage in too many distracting struggles to improve their conditions because the minute a bad economic situation comes along the management will take away what they’ve won previously. This is an odd way of understanding things.

(4) Have you pondered how a BI might affect the sector of the working class that is subject to the more precarious form of contract (about 40 percent of the workers in my country, Catalonia)? I’ve seen in the talks I’ve given over the years that, when the public consists in particular of very young workers, BI is understood as a measure that would help them to avoid accepting the very bad and insecure working conditions they’re obliged to accept at present. A BI would give them the chance to say “no” to job situations that they have to agree to now. Have you wondered how a BI might affect a lot of women who depend economically on their husbands? Have you really thought about the possibilities for workers’ protests that a BI could offer as a resistance fund? In general, the right immediately grasps the whole potential of BI and is therefore totally against it (as the debate in the Spanish Parliament revealed on 2 October 2007). The left, at least part of the left, has more problems in understanding of the whole potential a BI could have for a good part of the working class. It’s a shame, but that’s how things are.

Daniel Raventós (by email)

Reply:

We can’t see how, given the way that capitalism works, a state payment, whether conditional or unconditional, to all workers is not going to end up being a wage subsidy to employers. It is bound to upset the labour market by setting in motion downward pressures on wages and salaries. Of course workers, through their unions, should resist such pressures (as they always should), but the employers’ trump card is going to be “Look, your members are not going to be worse off, since their total income from us and the state is going to be more or less the same”. In other words, a Basic Income scheme would not make workers better off in terms of money income; it would just be a more or less neutral “reorganisation of poverty”. Surely you don’t think that if BI was fixed at even as low as £5000 a year workers would be better off by that amount? Or that employers could be prevented by law from taking this payment into account when fixing or negotiating the wages they pay?

Yes, we are aware of the benefits that are claimed for BI and they sound alright. But excuse us if we are rather sceptical as we’ve heard claims of this sort made for many reforms of capitalism (including for family allowances, which the advocates of BI now want to replace by their scheme). The fact is that, while workers can obtain some improvements under capitalism, capitalism itself cannot be permanently reformed so as to work in the interest of wage and salary workers. At the present time, with the fiscal crisis of the capitalist state, any reform that will cost more money is not likely to pass anyway. Much better, then, that workers should go for the bakery rather than a few more, perhaps unobtainable, crumbs – socialism rather than a reform to capitalism. 

Editors.

Police strikes

Dear Editors,

Many thanks for forwarding on the article from the Socialist Standard (January) about the last, failed, police strike. I’m sure many of the officers who heeded the old Police Union’s strike call would have agreed with the sentiment – although I’m not sure history has necessary proved it true.

One thing that the article does not reflect is the police’s reluctance, as true now as it was then, to have to resort to this final exercise of industrial action.

Communications Department, Police Federation of England and Wales

Cooking the Books: UBI – Useless Baseless Initiative (2020)

The Cooking the Books column from the July 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Coronavirus has united left and right on value of universal basic income’, was the headline of an article in the Times (2 June) by Philip Aldrick, its Economics Editor. This is the reform to capitalism under which the state would pay each of its citizens an unconditional minimum income.

The ‘right’ favour it to take the place of free and subsidised services provided to the poor; they want to give them instead the money to buy these services from private capitalists, The ‘left’ see it as a desirable social reform, some as a way to break the link between income and work. The Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has endorsed it, on behalf of the ‘centre’. Socialists are not keen on it at all.

On the face of it, giving people more money to spend seems a good idea. Who doesn’t want more money? But it won’t work, at least not as intended; for two reasons.

The first is that the payment from the state is never going to be much more than ‘basic’, something near the poverty line such as the level to which in Britain a person’s income is made up to under the Income Support scheme. This is in part because the capitalist state will want to keep the amount spent on UBI down, but also because, if the income was too high, it would undermine the economic coercion that is behind the wages system.

If people could live, even if rather sparsely, on the income there would be less pressure on them to go out and find an employer. Some advocates of the scheme say this would strengthen the low-paid workers’ bargaining position and see it as a reason why it should be introduced. But this is precisely why no capitalist government would introduce it at any level other than around the poverty line.

So, if introduced, it would only be as a tweak to the welfare or tax systems, with the basic income replacing other benefits, amounting to no more than a ‘redistribution of poverty’. The results of the Finnish experiment, on which reformists placed such hopes, showed that it did bring some benefit to the unemployed who received it in that they no longer had to submit to what even the Economics Editor of the Times called ‘intrusive and dehumanising’ means testing, nor trying to find a job that wasn’t there (capitalism needs a certain level of unemployment, so there are always going to be some unemployed), nor going on useless courses about how to fill in a CV. On the other hand, those receiving it didn’t show any extra inclination to seek out a job; which was why it is not going be adopted.

The other objection to the scheme is that, as it would be paid to every citizen, whatever their situation and even if they were employed, it would be bound to have an effect on wages; it would strengthen the employers’ hand in bargaining over wages as the price of people’s working skills. Wages reflect the cost of reproducing these skills. So, if wage-workers are paid an amount by the state, the employer will not need to pay so much. This wouldn’t happen immediately but it would exert a pressure for money wages not to rise in line with the general price level. In the end, what the right hand gave the left hand would take away.

The only viable way to break the link between income and work is on the basis of the common ownership of productive resources; that will allow the principle of ‘from each according to their their ability, to each according to their needs’ to be implemented.

Letters: More Basic Income (2008)

Letters to the Editors from the May 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

More Basic Income

Dear Editors

Two quick comments on the article in the March Socialist Standard.

1. New research on the Speenhamland system is now arguing that the common interpretations are not very accurate. It is not my field of research so I guide you here, but I think there are some papers on this at recent BI conferences.

2. The fact that conservatives fear that Basic Income gives too much power to workers (as they can opt out) and radicals argue that it undercuts workers shows that we cannot easily conclude what the micro effects will be.

BI was killed in USA in early 1970s because it gave blacks more independence, and that worried white southerners. The negative income tax experiments in USA originally seemed to show disincentives to work, but we know that the early results were distorted, and then it was shut down. I do not see how a BI necessarily affects profit rates, certainly not differential profit rates, except that it might change the composition of demand, which will certainly help some industries and hurt others. But I do not see how one can apply the simple Ricardo-Marx wage-profit trade-off model in a modern economy when income categories are not so clear cut. (Much of the income for the upper classes is labor income and not property income).

Good luck with your work.

C. Clark (by e-mail)

Dear Editors

In response to Adam Buick’s article in the March Socialist Standard: I find his predictions unduly pessimistic.

He acknowledges that Basic Income would strengthen workers’ power in striking, but fails to acknowledge that while, yes, it would allow some wages to be pushed down, it would conversely result in others being pushed up.

Dangerous, unpleasant, or essentially anti-social or environmentally destructive occupations, which many workers are currently forced to accept, would need to offer higher rewards to keep their labour – or cease business, which for many such businesses, would be a good thing.

While he is correct that most governments are in practice in the pockets of big business, this is not entirely true of all. The post-WW2 Welfare State brought much improvement to workers’ conditions – and those of the unemployed; and attention to the source of the power of corporations and banks would give a future, enlightened government the power to work for the benefit of the environment and community – including the workers and unemployed.

The fundamental source of this power is the right ceded by government to the banks, to create our money supply, by making loans. This power should be ended, and instead government should create and spend into circulation all the money needed by society, and adjust its volume to meet needs without causing undue inflation or the destructive growth of debt which is now threatening the collapse of the whole system. This is something you should seriously look into.

Brian Leslie (by e-mail)

Reply: 

We should have guessed. There is some sort of link here between Basic Income and the currency crank ideas of Major Douglas and Social Credit. We haven’t got the space to go into this in detail here. Suffice it to say that banks do not have the power to create money by making loans. They can only lend out what has been deposited with them or what they themselves borrow. If this wasn’t the case why are they in trouble now? Why don’t they simply create more money by making more loans? Your plan to finance Basic Income by recourse to the printing press will shock many of its other advocates. In fact, we imagine them falling over themselves to repudiate it – Editors.

Politics

Dear Editors

In the apology published at the bottom right hand side of Page 23 (April Socialist Standard), we are told that “The Politics Show” does not exist.  Surely this is the show that was on for many years on BBC1 on Sundays at noon?  Indeed it was the show that no-hopers Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne had their infamous bust-up on – if I’ve remembered that correctly

Dave Ainsworth (by email)

Reply: 

You’re right “The Politics Show” did, and still does, exist. We were just trying to suggest that, as far as Andrew Neil was concerned, it probably didn’t.– Editors.

UBI: Redistributing Poverty (2020)

From the May 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

From Lockdown to Basic Income?

The acolytes of the fashionable radical idea of Universal Basic Income (UBI) must have been overjoyed by two recent news items. Apparently, the Pope has endorsed the idea. According to the Irish Times (13 April), ‘In a letter addressed to popular movements around the world, he expressed solidarity with their aim of bringing change to global systems and structures that exclude the majority’.

They report him as saying in the letter:

  ‘Street vendors, recyclers, carnival workers, small farmers, construction  workers, seamstresses, the different kinds of caregivers: you who are informal, working on your own or in the grassroots economy, you have no steady income to get you through this hard time… and the lockdowns are becoming unbearable. This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage which would acknowledge and dignify the noble, essential tasks you carry out’.

This news was coupled with reports that the Spanish left-wing government has announced that it intends to become the first European country to implement UBI:

  ‘Minister for Economic Affairs Nadia Calvino said that UBI would be introduced “as soon as possible” and could be something that “stays forever, becomes a structural instrument, a permanent instrument”’.

Although, as advocates of UBI noted, ‘the payments will be targeted to families and will differentiate based on their “circumstances.” In practice, differentiating based on circumstances will result in means tests that fall on the poor’.

If it is targeted at families, not individuals, and is based on assessment, it would more closely resemble a Beveridge-style welfare state, than the full-fat version of UBI, something referred to as a Contingent Basic Income.

Redistributing poverty

The idea behind UBI is that every individual in a country is guaranteed a certain amount of income. In its most basic form, the state would simply send a payment to each person (much as the United States has done as part of its response to Covid-19 related unemployment). This sum is irrespective of employment or personal status. Fundamentally, it breaks the link between the sale of labour power and the ability to access necessary resources. It is simultaneously egalitarian and libertarian, since it avoids the need for state bureaucracy to carry out cheeseparing assessments and domination over individuals lives.

It also has the benefit of being easy to imagine, since it has the simple form of keeping commodity relations intact: it keeps the market in place. That is its chief problem: it tries to address the problems caused by a system that defines people by their property through giving them all property. Although it will give people money, those who own other types of property, such as houses, would be able to benefit from rents and market demand for goods they hold.

Hearne and de Ruyter estimate it would cost £540 billion to give everyone in the UK over 16 £10,000 a year (LINK). In 2017-18 the UK government tax take was £589 billion. It would be possible, but the government wouldn’t be able to do much else (which is why right-wing supporters like it).

Employers would be able eventually to lower wages, relying on the UBI subsidy to count towards their employee’s cost of living. In those terms, it would be a substantial transfer of wealth from firms that don’t need much labour to labour intensive industries (in particular, as many people focus on, the so-called gig economy of the likes of Uber).

We described this as the ‘redistribution of poverty’ in our classic pamphlet on the Beveridge Plan . That criticism stands true for UBI.

Flawed Acquisitive Notions

By concentrating on the surface phenomena of money and commodities, UBI ignores the social relationship behind in the form of value production. This comes to the fore when people start whining about ‘the incentive to work’ and the need to keep UBI so low that the lash of poverty can still be applied (surely if we were talking about incentive, doubling your income should be enough? That people might be assumed to prefer to not work and live on a basic income demonstrates the flaw in acquisitive notions of human behaviour).

People will need to work to make the taxes to pay for the UBI. Society and the employers would then be locked in a struggle over the share of wealth going to labour and the share going to profits. The only difference would be that the state would become a key battle ground instead of the labour market directly.

Likewise, the ideology of people getting something for nothing can cause resentment. We can see this sort of thing when Tories call for unruly families to be thrown out of council housing, as if it were a grace and favour home, rather than a right to housing. If UBI is seen as a gift, with obligation (as per the Contingent Basic Income idea), then it would not be supported by many of the population. Hence, also, why Donald Trump wanted to have his name on all the cheques sent out to Americans to cover loss of income due to Covid-19, he wants them to see the money as a gift from him.

Since some will be net contributors to the UBI, they will not perceive this as a benefit to all but a cross-subsidy, a gift they make to others, with corresponding obligation.

Although the reality is that the burden of taxation comes from profits, the structure of income tax nominally coming from employees creates an ideological value that deceives them into thinking they are paying for the government and therefore have a stake in it. In this case people would believe they were paying the income for those who earn less than them.

Universal Basis Services

Some, such as David Harvey, propose Universal Basic Services instead of UBI. This would be things like the NHS, free at the point of use. This has the benefit of removing the commodity character of the service, and would represent an improvement (though likely, in a capitalist world, to still be wrapped up in the struggles between classes over spending levels and coated in bureaucracy to control those costs). But if we had the political strength to impose substantial gains through UBS, we’d have the strength to abolish capitalism outright.

The post-Covid situation will be that millions will be out of work, and capital may not be readily available to provide new employment, as many firms go bust. Governments will have to find ways to keep social peace. They will take radical steps, throwing much market ideology to the wind, but they will be doing that to maintain the advantage of the owning class and rejuvenate market society, as they did after the 2008 crash.

Pik Smeet

Automation & Unemployment (2020)

Book Review from the March 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

A World Without Work. Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond by Daniel Susskind: Allen Lane. 2020. 326pp.

Will there be enough work to go round? That is the fundamental question discussed in this book by Oxford University economist and former government policy adviser, Daniel Susskind. His main concern is whether the rapid spread of automated work, most of it based on the use of artificial intelligence (AI), will, in the near future, lead to ‘technological unemployment’ and if so how that future society can cope with this.

In a compellingly written and clearly argued narrative, his thesis is that, even if in the past, fears that new technology would lead to unemployment have proved unfounded, the nature of current and ongoing technology, especially AI and the robots it is creating, will indeed mean that the demand for human work will ‘wither away’. He argues convincingly and with many salient examples that the potential of AI is such that even the many tasks which are highly important for human society to operate efficiently involving feeling, empathy and judgement will, contrary to commonly expressed views, soon be able to be done by machines. Such machines, he insists, are already in use or in the process of being invented, even if they cannot ape human means of carrying out certain important tasks, are capable of achieving equally (or more) efficient outcomes than the same work done by the manual or brain power of human beings. And if no action is taken to handle this ‘task encroachment’ (the term he uses to describe this process) the resulting ‘technological employment’ is likely to bring increasing social instability.

So what action does he recommend? Certainly not efforts to prevent technology from taking over human jobs, He quite understandably sees that as an impossibility in a system where the criterion for choosing between human work or automation is which is more profitable and where the increasing trend is for the cost of automation based on AI to fall. Instead, accepting that in the future there will be far less work for people to be employed in, he recommends an increased role for the state. He argues that the state (the ‘Big State’ as he calls it) will have to intervene, to regulate and to effectively prop up the living standards of workers by what he calls a ‘conditional basic income’, a variation of the currently much discussed idea of a ‘universal basic income’.

How this could work leads the author on to some interesting discussion about the difference between work and employment. In particular, though not seeing beyond the need for the current organisation of work as paid employment, he also sees another dimension of work – as ‘a source of meaning, purpose and direction in life’. And this connects with the socialist case for a world of voluntary work and free access to all goods and services. The argument often made against this is that such a system could not work since, without the necessity to make money to buy goods and services, people would not work, would not co-operate to carry out the tasks to make society operate efficiently and things would simply fall apart.

However, even if Susskind’s own field of vision lies firmly entrenched in the current society of wages and salaries, buying and selling and the pursuit of profit, it is possible to draw succour for a different system from much of what he says. His final chapter, especially, entitled ‘Meaning and Purpose’, contains the notion implicit in the socialist idea of a moneyless, wageless society that it is not inevitable for human beings to see work merely as a means of keeping the wolf from the door (i.e. gaining income from employment) but that, over and above the current employment system, work is a basic human need, has a ‘social dimension’ and provides ‘a chance to gain status and social esteem’.

In this connection, as pointed out by the writer, even today, in a situation in which most people have difficulty in imagining how society could be organised differently from the way it is, in the UK 15 million people still volunteer regularly, already half as many as are in paid work, and are engaged in the kind of activity referred to by the author as ‘work in pursuit of purpose rather than productivity’. In this they achieve, as he puts it, ‘value through community recognition rather than through market wages’. Then, towards the end of his book, the author quotes with apparent approval the description of work in Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme as ‘not only a means of life but life’s prime want’.

So this is a book well worth reading not only for its knowledge of and insights into likely developments in the field of work within the capitalist system but also for its reflections on the nature and purpose of work generally. While the author does not imagine a society structured fundamentally differently from the current one, he clearly sees that work could, and should, be more than just the grind of employment that it is for so many and as helping to fulfil the basic human need for personal fulfilment and social interaction.

Howard Moss

Pointless Work (2019)

Book Review from the December 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

David Graeber: Bullshit Jobs. Penguin £9.99.

Socialists often refer to the fact that so many jobs under capitalism are useless in terms of satisfying people’s needs. Everything to do with banks, insurance and accounting falls into this category, as do the armed forces, courts and prisons, bailiffs, advertising and so on.

But here David Graeber takes this idea much further, with the idea of a bullshit job: ‘a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels obliged to pretend that this is not the case.’ Such jobs are mostly white collar, and one survey showed that 37 per cent of workers felt that their job did not ‘make a meaningful contribution to the world’. Jobs which are unpleasant and badly paid, but which need to be done, are not bullshit jobs but rather are characterised as ‘shit jobs’.

Much of Graeber’s evidence is taken from email and other responses to his requests for examples of bullshit jobs from workers performing them, and he quotes at length from these accounts. The jobs themselves are of various kinds, including flunky jobs (designed to make someone else feel important), duct tapers (who solve problems that should not really exist) and box tickers (who allow an organisation to claim it is doing something which in fact it is not). Such jobs often lead to increased stress and anxiety, while more meaningful work may be done in a more collaborative way. Moreover, the more a job benefits others, the less the worker is likely to be paid (though of course there are many exceptions to this).

Although it is hard to quantify, the number and proportion of bullshit jobs appears to be increasing, and Graeber attributes this primarily to what he terms ‘managerial feudalism’, a concept which seems to mean that managers want more power and so more underlings to make them feel and appear important. He also cites a remark made by Barack Obama, that rationalising the US health care system would lead to the problem of what to do with the millions who work for medical insurance companies: in effect admitting that they are not doing useful work at all, but then wondering how they would otherwise be employed.

The final chapter contains a proposal for a universal basic income, but the book’s interest lies in the earlier chapters, where a great deal is said about the reality for so many of employment under capitalism. One worker in a bullshit job is quoted as follows: ‘I consider a worthwhile job to be one that fulfills a preexisting need, or creates a product or service that people hadn’t thought of, that somehow enhances and improves their lives. I believe we passed the point where most jobs were these type of jobs a long time ago.’ Indeed, and it would be straightforward to make work more satisfying and to reduce working hours, while still producing enough to meet human need.

Paul Bennett

Rear View: No gods! No masters! (2017)

The Rear View Column from the February 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

No gods! No masters!

‘Creationist Ken Ham is very angry at the Washington Post for incorrectly reporting that he believes dinosaurs were wiped out by the biblical flood described in the story of Noah’ (rawstory.com, 1 January). According to Ham, they joined Noah on his ark and the Post should get their facts right! The standard atheist approach to such nonsense is to use real facts. Against the belief in an all-knowing/loving/powerful god/s, an atheist is right to wield facts such as humans are 90 percent bacteria, see less than 1 percent of the light spectrum , have sub-optimal plumbing (breathing, eating, excretory and reproductive) and are programmed to die. The atheist could reasonably add that at least 40 percent of animal species are parasites, and over 99 percent of all species that ever lived are extinct. Socialists, unlike atheists, fight against Creationists like Ham and clerics in general not because of their belief in God but because priests of all religions have been, in all phases of history, the allies of the ruling classes in keeping the masses bent under the yoke. Churches have crowned the peoples’ oppressors, and crucified our forebears. New Age religion is merely the old repackaged in a new, modern form. Rather than obeying a priest, they choose the form of our own mental domination and the flight from reality into a magical world.

Universal Freedom

The concluding paragraph of Money for nothing: What universal basic income means for you reads: ‘I realize that to some, basic income sounds like a Black Mirror episode with millions of people sitting on their couches all day, bored, listless, and up to no good. But based on what I’ve read so far, I believe that if it’s handled correctly, it could be a positive step forward in the age-old journey to realize our true human potential’ (mashable.com, 4 January). But, of course, the capitalist class have enjoyed for centuries an unearned income – money for nothing! – that is anything but basic. For the 99 percent UBI is nothing more than a redistribution of crumbs, promoted by reformists of the left and right.

Looking backwards

When it comes to predicting the future, economists are marginally better than clairvoyants but far worse than meteorologists. ‘It is official. Figures for the past six months show that the forecasts of instant Brexit catastrophe from the Treasury and the Bank of England were garbage. The Bank’s economist, Andrew Haldane, admitted yesterday that it was a repeat of the failure to predict the 2008 crash. It was another ‘Michael Fish moment’, when meteorologists failed to forecast the 1987 hurricane’ (theguardian.com,6 January). 85 years ago we published the pamphlet Why Capitalism Will Not Collapse. The economic outlook back then appeared even worse than it is today: ‘We are in the midst of a crisis that is world-wide. Every country feels its ravages. Millions and millions of workers are unemployed and in acute poverty. Everywhere there is discontent and a feeling of insecurity, and the prestige of even the strongest of governments has been shaken. All sorts of emergency measures have been hastily adopted, but the depression still continues. Working men and women who normally ignore such questions, are now asking why the crisis has occurred, what will be its outcome, and whether it could have been avoided. In some minds there is a fear, and in others a hope, that the industrial crisis may bring the present system of society down in ruins, and make way for another.’ We warned those who said that capitalism would imminently collapse that their claim was groundless. History has vindicated this position. There will be no need for economists in a socialist world where production is for use not profit and distribution according to self-defined need rather than having sufficient money. They along with former bankers, expropriated capitalists and tax consultants will join clairvoyants, homeopaths, lawyers and priests looking for something more meaningful to do with their lives.

Dustbin of history

‘One Nation candidate Shan Ju Lin has labelled gay people ‘abnormal’, saying that they ‘should be treated as patients’ and ‘need to receive treatments” (news.com.au, 7 January). Unscientific prejudice like this serves the interests of the status quo by dividing our class and delaying the socialist revolution.