Letter: Nothing has changed (2005)

Letter to the Editors from the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nothing has changed

Dears Editors

Twenty years ago, there was a high profile pop concert organised by the Live Aid group, to help the famine in Ethiopia. Now two decades later nothing has changed.

The Live 8 concerts addressed the effects of poverty not it causes. Unless the present social system has changed, for many more decades down the line there will be more Live Aids, more GB summits on this poor continent, and more Bonos and Bob Geldofs, yet all their cries for billions to be spent on aid are still unlikely to make more than the smallest dent in the deprivation.

Although there is criminal incompetence of Africa’s post-colonial black elites (the people who call themselves presidents, prime ministers, and in some instances kings and princes of the continent have waged war on their own people and plundered the continent’s wealth to ever bulging Bank account in Switzerland), the main problem of the continent is capitalism.

It is common knowledge that up to two-thirds of the world’s population are hungry, while millions actually die from starvation each year. Why in a world of potential plenty is so elementary a human need as food neglected for some many people?

Some would deny that we live in a world of plenty and claim that the cause of world hunger is natural scarcity. That in other words, some people starve simply because not enough food can be produced.

In the present state scientific knowledge and productive techniques, enough food could be produced adequately to feed the population of the world.

World malnutrition then is not a natural but a social problem. Its cause must be sought not in any lack of natural resources but in the way society is organised. World society everywhere rests on the basis of the resources of the world, natural and manufactured, by very rich minorities.

Rock stars or any other celebrities will not persuade the rich class to make world poverty history. It’s in fact the world market system that ruled the world. Acting like a natural force beyond human control, it has much power than any national government.

The market creates an artificial scarcity and organised waste that is responsible for poverty and hunger in the world today. The law that governs everywhere is “no profit, no production”.

Michael Ghebre, 

London NW1

Letter: to Bob (2005)

Letter to the Editors from the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Letter to Bob

Dear Editors

Below is a letter I sent to Bob Geldof.

Dear Bob,

I deeply respect your sincerity in campaigning for the end of poverty through the world. My understanding of poverty is the insufficiency of the necessities of life leading to an inability to enjoy the wealth potentially able to be created in abundance by humankind, including leisure pursuits, the arts and the basic necessities including shelter, warmth, food and water and the freedom from illness. This deprivation leads inevitably to hunger and disease. I believe that this insufficiency is largely caused by money.

As I am sure you will agree, it is important to understand that wide-scale hunger and even famine can occur when the available food supplies are not necessarily less than sufficient to feed the people they should be intended for. For example the well-known study of the 1943 Bengal Famine by Armatya Sen, which I am sure you are familiar with, showed this clearly. Other famines in recent times have occurred when there has been a sufficiency of food. Indeed food exporting from Ethiopia continued during the famine of the 1980’s.

It is also important to understand that not all the population of an area affected by hunger will go hungry. It is often what has been called ‘entitlement’ that denies access to the available food. Under the present way of ordering Society this entitlement can be determined by money or barter and not necessarily by a person’s need for food. Having money alone that would ordinarily secure enough of the basics does not always ensure sufficient access to those basics as, for example, when there is a shortage caused by ‘natural’ or human factors. Generally, as with anything else, when there is perceived to be a shortage, the ‘value’ of goods and services (including food) rises. Because of the way things are ordered it is the poorest who suffer most when the price of commodities rises. Therefore Poverty can be said to cause hunger and hunger to cause poverty, because hunger weakens resistance to disease, which in turn leads to an increasing tendency to an inability on the part of its victims to tend to their needs.

As things are presently ordered, therefore, there is an advantage to those who control the availability of essentials and who in some way or other profit from their sale to regulate the supply of goods and services anywhere in the world.

If the products of human labour and indeed the plentiful raw materials throughout the world – including Africa – were freely available to those who needed them and indeed to those who help make them available for human consumption without the intervention of money or any other limiting factor imposed by a minority of humans then there could not be need of any kind, much less catastrophes like famines. Where there were factors held to be beyond the immediate control of humankind, for example floods or droughts, then the technology presently widely available could be used to ameliorate their worst effects. Water can be transported, sea water can be desalinated, rivers can, to some extent, be contained in their capacity to cause widespread damage to the lives of people who happen to live in their flood plains.

Presently some African countries are troubled by, among other things, wars, corrupt government as well as crop failure due to drought and other factors. To some extent many other parts of the world have also been affected in similar ways over the last few centuries. The ‘debt’ that is owed by many countries in Africa and elsewhere is often at least in part due to the efforts of other countries to trade with them. With things ordered as they presently are – in other words governed by money – there is no incentive for traders with Africa or anywhere else to be ‘fair’. These traders are bound by the same rules all traders in the present system are – i.e. to maximise their profit in trading with anyone. If they were ‘fair’ they would quickly go out of business because their profits would decline.

Therefore ‘wiping out’ present debts is no guarantee of a long term solution to the poverty that has been more or less imposed on many African countries. Rather the abandoning of the money system itself by the entire world and sharing the resources of the earth in common is the only real way. Perhaps those countries that have experience in combating the worst effects of droughts could be called upon to help. There are many examples of international co-operation at present under the money system, Space Exploration to name one large one. Another example near to my home is the construction of the Thames Barrier, which utilised the expertise of the Dutch in Flood Defences, the Americans in producing heavy duty waterproof bearings for the gates, the British with their expertise in large scale steel structures, and Austrians with other necessary skills. If this can all be done now, with money as a limiting factor – imagine what could be done when the entire world is united in the will to solve the problems any other area may suffer! We could all share the skills and resources we all have in plenty for the benefit of all humanity! Imagine what kind of world that could be!

Yours,

Tony Norwell, 

London SE2 

Observations: Two steps forward; two steps back (1986)

The Observations Column from the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two steps forward; two steps back

Well over twelve months later, and the Band Aid-Wagon keeps rolling on . . . US Aid for Africa, Live Aid, Fashion Aid and Classical Aid have all occupied a lot of publicity, not to mention time and energy. In the course of this they have raised a sum of money immense to the average reader of the Socialist Standard, but insignificant when placed alongside the priorities of capitalism. For example, the amount of money raised (over £100 million), is still a fraction of the one billion pounds spent in Europe every year to keep the food mountains frozen and stored. And what else could you spend the whole proceeds from the various charities on? How about one-and-a-half Buccaneer fighter planes, such is the logic of capitalism.

The lunacy of the buying and selling system is such that while Live Aid is trying to get more food to Africa, a similar fund-raising concert. "Farming Aid" is trying to reduce the amount of food being produced.

Bob Geldof recently warned that two-and-a-half million people will run out of food in the Western Sudan, and that the situation in Ethiopia is as bad as it was before Band Aid started. And just as the problem will not go away, neither it seems will the spectacularly futile attempts to deal with it. The latest event, which of course, must be sufficiently entertaining to satisfy the media's hunger for good pictures, is Sports Aid. which has had everyone running round in circles to raise money to send food to Africa while it is money and markets which stop the food from reaching the hungry in the first place.

In the course of such campaigns as Sports Aid — which try to deal with the problems of capitalism while leaving the cause intact — reformists always end up tying themselves in knots: the Save the Children Fund ended up at the end of last year asking that food should not be sent, as it would cause "economic chaos" in Sudan . . . it 's all very well peasants suffering but not the market, seems to be the suggestion. The Oxfam report on "Sudan: the roots of famine" gives the same shortsighted solutions with the ludicrous request to Western governments to prevent "the dumping of surpluses such as sugar on to world markets', when it is in fact the buying and selling system that can produce poverty amidst plenty. starvation alongside "surpluses”.

Now most people are aware of the contradictions between starving millions and the food mountains like the beef, cereals and skimmed milk in two hundred warehouses around Britain. But, so the argument goes, we must "do something now". The same was said for the famines in the Seventies in Biafra and elsewhere, and now, ten years on, the charities, the politicians and the bureaucrats are back where they started. Whether we shall be in the same position in another ten years' time — with a world of even greater productive capacity, and world hunger falling in the TV ratings depends on whether we start running society sanely, or just end up running on the spot.

Police accountability

The Labour Party has frequently offered "accountability" as a solution to the problem of abuses of power within the police force. Currently this is being down-played a bit as Labour tries to rival the Tories in its attempts to court the Police Federation (who are playing hard-to-get), woo the electorate (with promises of gifts of burglar alarms and window-locks) and convince us that they too are "a party of law and order ", in time for the next general election.

The limits of accountability as a strategy for curtailing the activities of the police were made plain recently when Douglas Hurd, the Home Secretary, announced that chief constables could over-ride the decision of their local police authorities and obtain stocks of plastic bullets, water cannon, and CS gas. At present police forces are, in theory, local in that they are answerable to a police authority which oversees spending. Police authorities have in some areas (especially Greater Manchester, West and South Yorkshire) been reluctant to allow the police to increase their para military hardware through the acquisition of these items. Chief Constables are now going to be able to side-step the authorities to which they are supposed to be accountable in order to get the equipment that they want and which the Home Secretary clearly wants them to have. So much for police accountability!

Whose house?

More and more workers have been persuaded to buy their own homes because of offers they can't refuse: no more council house building and existing council houses being sold to tenants at knock-down prices; building societies offering 100 per cent mortgages to just about anyone who wants one; and the lack of privately rented housing forcing people to "buy" whether they really want to or whether they can really afford it.

Owning your own home has long been sold to workers as a mark of status, a sign that they've made it to the ranks of the "middle classes". But those workers who bought that line when they "bought" their home are in for a nasty shock. The government is about to give them a reminder that they are workers after all with the same interests and problems as all workers under capitalism.

This blow to "middle class" pretensions comes from a proposal announced by Norman Fowler, Social Services secretary, that unemployed home-owners will lose their right to claim Supplementary Benefit to cover half their mortgage interest payments. These changes are likely to affect 90,000 claimants at any one time, forcing them to renegotiate mortgage repayments with their banks or building societies. This comes at a time when the numbers of people in arrears with their mortgages has increased rapidly (as have repossessions of houses by building societies because of non-payment of mortgages) as a result both of unemployment and the policy to force people through lack of choice to take out mortgages they can't really afford.

This change, if it is accepted, can only lead to more workers being evicted from the homes they thought they owned — a sharp reminder of how little workers really own under capitalism.

Postal code

An item in the Mail on Sunday on 1 June 1986 reveals that the Post Office is recruiting two stress counsellors to combat illness amongst harassed staff. Professor Cary Cooper of Manchester University Science and Technology Institute, who is helping to select the counsellors, believes improving the general well-being of the work force will help boost productivity and overall performance at work. He adds "When you overload people it has an adverse effect on production and leads to bad decisions and absence through sickness". What you might call putting capitalism's stamp on your health.

Making poverty history or helping capitalists exploit Africa? (2005)

From the July 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who is the G8? In a nutshell, it is a clique of the 8 leading industrial States who have appointed themselves rulers of the world. The G8 leaders are actually the executive of the capitalist class of their respective countries and are the staunchest defenders of neoliberal corporate globalisation, the custodians of privilege and corporate power and the guardians of world capitalism. They help rule the world and maintain the playing field for profit-hungry western corporations. Together they have the power to dictate who eats and who starves, who lives and who dies, to declare war regardless of the wishes of the people who elected them. Their policies have resulted in global poverty and environmental destruction. They are meeting in Edinburgh this July to decide on which international strategies they can commonly pursue, allegedly in the interests of the people of the word and the natural environment.

Lined up against the G8 leaders this July in Edinburgh is the campaign group Make Poverty History, a loose coalition of  some 450 NGOs, unions and charitable organisations, united in the demand for fairer trading conditions for developing States, debt cancellation and increased and improved aid.

Oxfam’s role

By far the biggest development organisation within Make Poverty History is Oxfam, which has been widely accused of pandering to the whims of New Labour and propagating objectives which are identical to those of a Blair government frantic, in the face of the Iraq fiasco, to implement a foreign policy that campaign movements can stomach. Indeed, there are individuals and groups associated with Make Poverty History who identify with the objectives of Messrs Blair and Brown. The celebrity Bono, for instance, referred to the smiling duo at the last Labour Party conference as the “Lennon and McCartney” of poverty reduction.

Loud-mouthed celebrity Bob Geldof, a week after Bono’s remark, revealed he was backing Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s attempts to deliver development to Africa because of their Christian values. Geldof can well support New Labour and obsessively promote the agenda of the MPH campaign, but you have to begin asking questions when even Blair has been spotted wearing a white Make Poverty History wristband.

The praise is of course reciprocal. On 3 June, Gordon Brown expressed his support for Sir Bob the Gob’s Live8 concerts and encouraged demonstrations at the G8 summit, as long as they take the form of a “peaceful march”. Any other government would have feared a march by one million demonstrators, but not New Labour. Blair and Brown are so happy with the convergence of their own overseas agenda and the demands of the Make Poverty History campaign that they rather see a million person march as being a rally in support of Labour Party policies.

Chancellor Gordon Brown is nowadays advised on international development by former Oxfam trustee and former director at the US bank UBS Warburg, Shriti Vandera, and Blair has the backing of Justin Forsyth – one time Director of Policy and Campaigns at Oxfam – on the Downing Street Policy Unit. Said the latter back in 2002: “When you speak to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, they really understand [the] issues. They are easily some of the best leaders when it comes to talking about development and dismantling subsidy, and they are making the right arguments time and again.”

Of course there are some within Making Poverty History that see through the scam. War on Want is dismayed at the way New Labour’s overseas policies are winning widespread acceptance and undermining their own campaigning efforts. And neither is Christian Aid happy at Oxfam’s over-cosy, less critical relationship with the government. Friends of the Earth likewise believe there are disadvantages to the privileged position Oxfam enjoys with the government, believing the demands of campaign movements are becoming diluted and generalised.

They have a point. Blair sees himself as somewhat spearheading the MPH campaign at Gleneagles and queries why the MPH are heading for Edinburgh when he speaks their jargon. In Dundee, in March of this year, he commented: “It would be very odd if people came to protest against this G8, as we’re focusing on poverty in Africa and climate change. I don’t quite know what they’ll be protesting against.” 

Making Poverty History has been so linked to the government as to be rendered toothless. When the main players in the coalition demanded a meeting with the government, Whitehall couldn’t accede fast enough. So closely have Blair and Brown been identified with the objectives of the coalition that they have been criticised by other EU member states for softening their pro-liberalisation stance.

And who is it that rallied to the defence of the government to counter the claims of Blair’s cynics in Europe? None other that Oxfam who issued a statement criticising Blair’s detractors for trying to hamper Britain’s attempt to help the world’s poor. It is no secret that Oxfam has informed other developmental groups linked to Make Poverty History that it is important not to be perceived as being confrontational with the government now that Blair and Brown are singing from the same hymn sheet as them.

Opening up Africa

Meanwhile, John Hilary, Director of Campaigns and Policy at War on Want, says that the British contingent at the WTO told him to “get real. The development agenda does not go very far. We have to be pro-business and pro-trade” (New Statesman, 30 May).

Hilary appears to have been well-informed when one considers the agenda emerging from the much praised Commission for Africa Report. This report, which was published on 11 March is the showpiece of the Blair government’s strategy for the G8. responding to its launch, the BBC, (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4337239.stm) listed eight areas necessitating action by the West, inclusive of doubling or trebling aid, cancelling debt, spending more on HIV/AIDS, financing African universities and the removal of trade barriers to African exports in the West. (The report can be downloaded in full or in sections at the following link.)

There is much in the report to whet the appetite of the anti-poverty campaigner. But, you need only read the precis of the various chapters to suss out what is in fact the real schema.  In chapter 7, for instance, objectives for fiscal growth in Africa are alleged to be possible “only if the obstacles of+ a discouraging investment climate are overcome”. And it proposes the “public and private sector working together to identify the obstacles to a favourable investment climate”. How else can this be interpreted other than in suggesting more liberalisation and privatisation and more opportunities for western corporations to exploit African resources and labour?

The summary of Chapter 8 says: “Investments in infrastructure and the enabling climate for the private sector are at the top of the agenda.” Is this not the government spearheading neoliberal reform in Africa on behalf of big business?

Business Action for Africa has been in cahoots with the Commission for Africa. This coalition of 250 business representatives met with the Commission in February following formal dialogue between the Commission and the private sector on the continents of Africa, North America and Europe – a meeting arranged via the Business Contact Group, itself set up to provide private sector input to the Commission for Africa, and the result of a meeting co-chaired chaired by Gordon Brown and Reuter’s chairman, Niall Fitzgerald.

Referring to the Business Contact Group, Corporate Watch observed:

  “Its 16 or so corporate members read like a roll call of the most exploitative and despised companies currently operating on the continent including Anglo American, Shell, De Beers, Rio Tinto and…Diageo, who also own the Gleneagles hotel where the G8 Summit will take place. Its programme was managed by Shell International’s Senior Business Development Advisor for Africa. Also managing the Contact Group is the Commonwealth Business Council (CBC). The Corporate Council on Africa and the Canadian Council on Africa also gave input, thus allowing oil corporations, ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, a say.” (http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=1535)

Dave Miller, writing for Znet in an article entitled Spinning the G8, commented:

  “The corporations involved can barely contain their excitement. The ‘outlook’ of the business community is a ‘positive one’ says one of the CFA commissioners.  ‘It believes Africa is the next frontier for investment’. James Smith, the UK chair of Shell, which co-hosted the meeting, noted that progress ‘requires that the private sector has a bigger role’. The chair of the Commonwealth Business Council, the business lobby group co-hosting the meeting, read out the concluding statement. Dr Mohan Kaul affirmed that ‘getting the conditions right for doing business in Africa is the biggest single investment for the future well-being of its citizens’. A ‘vibrant and successful private sector+ is required’ he noted. (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7852)

EU states may well be critical of Britain’s new pro-Africa stance as being influenced by celebrities and NGOs, but the truth is that affiliates to Make Poverty History, in applauding Brown and Blair,  are the unwitting accomplices  of a government which forms the vanguard of the latest corporate drive to open up markets throughout the developing world.

World-wide reaction

Increasingly, in the last decade, there has been a worldwide reaction against neoliberal globalisation, corporate power and the injustices associated with modern-day capitalism. Everywhere where the world’s ruling elite have assembled to decide their next step they have been met with protests and demonstrations that have attracted hundreds of thousands. Demonstrations at Seattle, Gothenburg, Cologne, Evian, Birmingham, Prague, Genoa and Quebec, have stimulated debate on the nature of modern day capitalism. Thousands of articles have been written on the subject and hundreds of books have been published that explore the aims, objectives and the alternatives offered by the anti-globalisation movement.

What is now clear is that the anti-globalisation/pro-development movement, however well-meaning, does not seek to replace capitalism with any real alternative social system. At best it attracts a myriad of groups, all pursuing their own reformist agenda. Some call for greater corporate responsibility. Some demand the restructuring of international institutions like the IMF, World Bank and the WTO. Others call for the expansion of democracy and fairer trading conditions, debt cancellation and more aid. All, however, fail to address the root cause of the problems of capitalism and promote the damnable system they are critical of by applauding any meagre reform.

One thing is certain: no amount of high table reform is going to legislate poverty out of existence as the MHP coalition believes. Capitalism cannot be reformed in the interests of the world’s suffering billions, because reform does not address the basic contradiction between profit and need. Moreover, reform can be so packaged and camouflaged as to be acceptable to protestors whilst leaving their real grievances unaddressed. The world’s leaders simply cannot be depended upon to implement real change because they can only ever act as the executive of corporate capitalism.

The protesters at the G8 might think they are united in common cause, but in truth they are only united in supporting capitalism and in their mistaken belief that poverty can be legislated out of existence, They have no blueprint for change other than the three demands put forward by the Make Poverty History campaign – Fair trade, more aid and debt cancellation. – and this is about as radical as it gets. In mirroring in their objectives the overseas goals of Blair and Brown they are anything but the modern day revolutionaries they claim to be.

It is now no utopian fantasy – but a practical, revolutionary proposition – to suggest we can live in a world without waste or want or war, in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation. That much is assured. We certainly have the science, the technology and the know-how. All that is missing is the will – the global desire for change that can make that next great historical advance possible; a belief in ourselves as masters of our own destiny; a belief that it is possible to free production from the artificial constraints of profit and to fashion a world in our own interests. And how soon this happens depends upon us all – each and every one of us.

John Bissett

No business like . . . (1988)

From the July 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

How do you persuade millions of people that commerce and conscience are compatible after all? The ITV television companies certainly had a good try at this over the bank holiday at the end of May. For 27 hours, a procession of media has-beens such as Tony Blackburn, Lionel Blair, Rolf Harris and Frank Carson were given a new lease of life. Tipped out of their Rolls Royces on to our TV screens, these "entertainers" then proceeded to trot out their Bob Geldof impersonations, ordering the British public to redistribute their poverty.

The event was helped along by various other budding cheerleaders, such as that opportunist and careerist starlet of the "alternative" media establishment, Emma Freud, together with racist comedian Jim Davidson, and Derek Hatton who, having tired of making Liverpudlian workers' lives miserable in the name of "socialism", was now seen judging a beauty contest at a London nightclub while swigging bottles of champagne (for charity, of course). We were even treated to a performance from David Steel and Alan Beith, who showed that their musical ability was as flimsy as the political lies out of which they have built careers.

This charity bonanza had creaked into action on the Sunday evening, when Prince Charles gave us a message from his home at Highgrove in Gloucestershire, urging everyone to "keep up the good work", just like the local headmaster or vicar at the village fete. By the time it was all over, and Cilia Black sang "Tomorrow is a Lovely Day", many viewers must have been saying that it had better be. for the day that had passed was a tawdry shambles of crass commercialism dressed up as a caring conscience. As the picture faded, the audience could be heard chanting "Here we go. here we go. here we go . . ." and again, there was a feeling that this was yet another case of the journey being more important than the arrival.

Unlike previous such events, this was an openly commercial television charity show. With a sickening narrow-minded nationalism, the advance publicity had stressed that this time the money would go to "our own", British charities (not to mere Ethiopians, or others who might be starving). What an admission this is, that Britain also is plagued with poverty and suffering, despite the pretence of civilisation and prosperity. In fact, in Britain today there are over 100,000 registered charities, all seeking to mop up after the devastation caused by the priorities of the profit system.

The chief presenter, Michael Aspel, entered into the competitive spirit of the day by boasting at the end that "we" had beaten "the Americans" in their recent efforts to raise money along similar lines. In fact, the total raised was a pittance compared with the needs it was seeking to meet: a mere £22 million. At the time, the audience gasped and screamed with excitement that such a lot had been raised. This is only because it is more than working-class families will see in their lives. But it was only about 40p per person in this country. When divided between the several thousand charities involved in the share-out, it will hardly solve the problems they are trying to deal with. In capitalist terms, the amount collected represents the money received by General Motors last year from their car sales every 3-4 hours on average. (Their total sales last year were over 100 billion dollars.) The total spent by British companies on advertising themselves in 1987 was £5.8 billion: nearly 30 times the telethon total.

Looked at from another point of view, the total of £22 million could have been easily provided by just one man, if Robert Maxwell had donated one-third of his personal unearned income for 1987. Or if Sir John Sainsbury had added just one-fiftieth (or two per cent) of his own private accumulated wealth to the ITV begging bowl, it would have more than doubled the total collected immediately. It was certainly, then, a case of the poor throwing a few pennies at the poor and becoming hysterical in the process.

Undoubtedly the most hypocritical aspect of the May Telethon, however, was the nature of some of the donations themselves. Nicholas Scott, the government Social Security minister, came on to present a cheque for £ 1 million, made up from pensions which had been underpaid as a result of a computer error. One wondered whether this error would have been announced very loudly by the government if it had not been parading its generosity on TV. by handing back to the poor and needy those benefits which were originally supposed to have been paid to. . . the poor and needy. Then, to add insult to injury, it was revealed some weeks later that this government "cheque" had in fact been a blank piece of paper held up for effect, as the government would be donating this money only indirectly, through concessions.

The main feature of the programme, though, was a series of smiling businessmen, lining up to present cheques to the good cause, and stressing visually, verbally and in any other way they could think of. the identify of the company involved. It was not very long before the adverts shown every 20 minutes throughout the 27 hours were becoming indistinguishable from these cheque presentations. For example, there was what amounted to a full-blown Martini ad, complete with the familiar tune and a woman on roller skates with tray and drinks, who rolled on to present a cheque for a mere £ 10,000. The equivalent length of time for an ordinary paid TV ad would have cost several times as much as this, about £50.000. It seems that on this occasion both commercial advantage and conscience money came dirt cheap. Barclays Bank presented a cheque for £100,000, and had their name and image glorified across our screens. Were these charitable donations tax deductible? If they were, Michael Aspel certainly wasn't saying anything about it. In any case, as a fraction of Barclays' world profits, this amount would only represent about one afternoon of their earnings.

To criticise the pop-charity of recent years may be unpopular, but it does not take much investigation to see what is happening here. It is no coincidence that the present government, with its talk of Victorian values, and the cutting down of social benefits for the "undeserving" paupers, is quite keen on the indignities of good, old-fashioned private-enterprise charity, for the more "deserving" clients (if indeed the government believes that there are any left). The problems have remained or multiplied since efforts such as Band-Aid. and this has even been admitted by the charity guru, Bob Geldof himself. But "conscience money" allows people to retreat from real political action, safe in the false security of feeling that "something is being done". In the case of Telethon, it would be more accurate to say that "someone was being done", namely the viewers, as we were dished up hours of adverts and publicity-seeking, disguised as entertainment and compassion. . . and all for a pittance.

Clifford Slapper

Editorial: In Place of Wishes (1988)

Editorial from the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Each year at this time an arbitrary line is drawn across our lives. It has as much mysticism about it as any religion. On one side of the line lies the Old Year with its mistakes, its problems, its inadequacies. On the other the New Year beckons us, with its pristine sanity, enlightenment, happiness. It is a time to make resolutions that the next twelve months will be innocent of the disfigurements of the past twelve. Some people mark the occasion by getting drunk, to lubricate the process of acting towards others with warmth and respect. Others may rely on the collective hysteria of the occasion to intoxicate them. Happy New Year, they wish each other. It’s probably not all insincere, either.

But powerful as alcoholic poisoning and popular delusions can be there is an amnesiac scale about the event which is positively staggering. For does life really get better from year to year for the millions of people who wish to each other that it should? The millions who snatch the short holiday to pretend that they are something other than the social class which, although productive and useful, is exploited, repressed and deceived?

That question was what actually dominated the election last June. Thatcher and her crew energetically told us that things were not only getting better but would carry on like that, as if the Tories will never rest until they have drenched us all in prosperity. Enough workers were impressed by this campaign, shrewdly aimed as it was, to send the Iron Lady back to Number Ten.

It is likely that the Tories won a lot of votes through their schemes to enable workers to buy shares in the privatised industries. This whole idea, with its elaborately buoyant publicity, rested on the assumption that the Stock Market is a casino where share prices always go up, so that workers who borrowed a little money to buy a few shares could then sell them quickly and so make a small profit. This illusion — that the class structure of capitalism had been radically changed by Norman Tebbit was badly damaged by the stock market crash, which catapulted distraught yuppies into a position of media-dominance. In fact, a falling stock market also offers the possibility of making money — but in a way not usually open to penurious workers.

It is worth mentioning this if only because a popular response to any criticism of Thatcherite Britain is that the critics are motivated by a septic envy. There is, apparently, an opulent gravy train on the move for those who are economically nimble enough to climb aboard. The economically disabled have only themselves to blame. But is this society, which we labour under, really so carefree an arrangement? Are its critics really so devoid of material to support their arguments?

Well what, apart from the events on the Stock Exchange, happened last year? What effect did all those salutations, last January, have for us?

It was, in fact, a year of disasters in a very material sense. The crazy massacre of Hungerford cannot be explained away as an isolated mental breakdown. Michael Ryan was a man who could not answer, to his own satisfaction, the sexual, social and familial expectations of capitalism. So instead he loved his guns, his cars and his terrible fantasies. The capsize of the Herald of Free Enterprise was not an accident for the ship was being sailed just as the company's balance sheet thought appropriate. At the time of writing the immediate cause of the King's Cross fire has not been made public, but emerging facts have shown up the reductions in vital staff and the tardiness in replacing dangerously outdated equipment, in the cause of reducing costs and so maximising profit.

Although as a disaster it is rather less dramatic, the problem of the homeless grew worse, with the numbers of families with nowhere to live increasing as their chances of finding anywhere within a reasonable time decreased. Young workers have been coerced into accepting government approved work or courses under pain of being cut off from state benefit. The government's discovery that state benefits can be cut by changing their name and the conditions under which they can be claimed brings memories of the special indignities heaped on the unemployed during the 1930s. Finally, in face of the official statistics which tell us that it is not happening, the waiting lists of workers who need treatment in hospital grew longer so that some die while they are waiting and babies are prevented from having desperately needed operations through a lack of specialised nurses who have been driven out of the work through their paltry wages. Even the consultants, contemplating the beds kept empty by the priority of conforming to a budget, have been moved to make their unequivocal protests.

There was no happier prospect abroad. At the end of the year Bob Geldof was flying back to Ethiopia to ask why, after all that effort and expenditure, millions have to suffer an agonising, degrading death by starvation. Those sickening pictures of dying babies, too sick even to take their mother's milk, are condemnation enough of capitalism in themselves. The Gulf War continued to consume its fearsome human diet, there is slaughter in Africa, Haiti, Afghanistan and the brutality of South Africa's racist regime does not lessen. The cold cynicism of capitalist politics has been exposed by the Irangate affair, which cannot be hushed over by even Reagan's consummate acting skills. He may yet be saved by the diversion of a treaty to abolish medium-range nuclear missiles which, even if it should ever be fully implemented, would still leave us living in a world with more than enough destructive power to kill us all several times over.

No, it was not a Happy New Year. Neither was 1986, 1985, 1984 . . . We shall need to do more than wish that things will get better. We have the power to change the world and the ability to run it in the interests of the human race. And the reasons for that are all too obvious.

Paying the Piper (1989)

From the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

As an addition to background music we play a subliminal message in a store, a message which you can't consciously hear, but which is going to be subconsciously received. We are in a sense an improvement in that we can focus more specifically on what we're trying to achieve with the pro-active system than you can with background music. We are trying to create a subtle effect, for instance using it for theft prevention. We've had systems in for two and a half years now and our results have ranged anywhere from 20 per cent reductions on theft to 90 per cent reductions on theft
(David Tyler. President of Pro-active Systems Inc., interviewed on Omnibus. BBC TV. 16 July 1984.)

The system described in this quotation — appropriately enough in the year 1984 — includes the words “I do not steal. I do not steal. I am honest . . . " repeated in a whisper which cannot be consciously heard as it follows the sound level in the supermarket. Policing the workforce has certainly come on a long way since the days of the Bow Street Runners. Rediffusion now exports the sedative effects of "Muzak" to 135.000 large subscribers in over 30 countries, from Africa to New Zealand and Japan. But the power of music has long been recognised by those in power. In Ancient China there was the Foundation Tone, a "sacred" pitch believed to guard against disorder. In Ancient Greece, music was legally regulated as a potential force for good or evil. In the nineteenth century, the emotive quality of music was shamelessly prostituted to enhance many nationalist movements, despite its intrinsically global appeal. In the 1920s. Catholic missionaries introduced brass bands into Papua to "subdue the dangerous energy" of native headhunters. And when the BBC lengthened the last pip of the radio time-signal after the Second World War, a number of angry listeners complained about unwarranted interference with the true and proper order of things.

Music and songs can, of course, be great forces for change, although recent cases where this has been claimed are in fact nothing but shams. Take the boom in musical charity projects which began a few years ago with Bandaid. Liveaid and the We Are The World record. The fine sentiments of global unity and compassion fizzled out in the old holy trinity of "faith, hope and charity"; the attempt to redistribute poverty failed utterly. Even Bob Geldof himself now freely admits that it solved nothing and changed nothing. Some still say "Well, we know it's not the answer, but . . . " in a defeatist tone which accepts that this society of insane contradictions will just have to do for the time being.

The subversive rebel music of the fifties and sixties — the tradition of sticking two fingers up at the establishment — found its seventies expression in punk rock. Once again, there is a long history of such musical defiance, with jazz in its day having enjoyed a similar reputation, even if it did not embody the punk idea of participation and access to the music for anyone. In 1928, W.H. Hadow wrote that "the jazz band . . .  puts itself outside the pale of music by the coarseness and vulgarity of its utterances" and four years later Arthur Bliss pronounced that jazz was "a subject for the pathologist rather than the musician". These fearful reactions continue today, particularly among the "moral majority" in the American South where an MCA executive refused to produce an album by the punk group Black Flag on the grounds that it was “anti-family”.

The ways in which such music has been accommodated into the mainstream have been well documented. Speaking of the punk album Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols, the Virgin Records Press Officer, Al Clarke, said: "The LP was released eleven days ago. It brought in £250.000 before it was even released and went straight to Number 1 in the charts". Once Castro was in power in Cuba he used the tradition of subversive music, La Trova Cubana to consolidate the new régime, with an official festival in Havana in 1967 called a "Protest Song Get Together". Likewise, reggae has been used in Jamaica by the state as a means of controlling dissent; it is perhaps significant that Bob Marley's first record was called Simmer Down. And in Britain, the idea of using apparently rebellious music as a means of control came readily to ex-teachers like Sting when he was singing with his old group The Police. In an interview he spoke of controlling the crowd and leading them to oblivion, and concluded "There isn't much difference between rock'n'roll and teaching, mind you. It's the same job. You're entertaining delinquents for an hour”.

The limitations of protest music were well summed up by the folk singer, Dick Gaughan in Folk Roots, September 1986:

 You can say what a bunch of villains the ruling class really are, what a nasty bunch of war-mongermg bastards they are. Bob Dylan made a fortune out of doing that in the '60s. Nothing wrong with that. But as soon as you go over the edge and take the step of saying the solution to the problem is ordinary working class people who are actually not just going to say the world is a terrible place, but are going to take the power off you and stuff it up your arse . . .  say that we are actually going to lake control . . . at that point you have gone too far. You can say anything you like except suggest a change of power into the hands of the working class. You can argue for socialism as long as you don't define what you mean by socialism. 

This safety has been well noted and acted on by some of the commercially promoted and quite successful artists who form the eighties equivalent of protest music, the (mostly pro-Labour) ‘agitprop” bands and singers affiliated to campaigns like Red Wedge.

Whereas an earlier generation of protest singers like Dylan sang the poetry of dissent without campaigning for presidents or prime ministers, the present wave have been recruited into British party politics by the ogre of Thatcherism rather than the capitalist system itself. In some cases artistic popularity has been used to sell stale and second-hand ideas for an alternative brand of "people's capitalism”.

During 1985. Billy Bragg performed 50 concerts as part of the "Jobs For Youth" campaign in conjunction with the Labour Party, and that tour led directly to the founding of Red Wedge, a coalition of performers which declared itself "committed to a Labour victory at the next election'. Billy Bragg himself was quoted as saying of the earlier protest singers that “All that generation came to nought. They thought that if they joined hands and sang Imagine the world would change" (Sunday Times, 26 January 1986). But this eighties "realism" is not all it seems, and John Lennon's plea for people to “imagine — no possessions" will prove to have been more challenging than Bragg's badge of slavery in Between The Wars: “I'll give my consent, to any government that does not deny a man a Living Wage . . . " In the same article, Andy McSmith. Labour's Jobs and Industry campaign co-ordinator said “Billy is worth his weight in gold to us”, and Eric Heffer commented “it is a good thing that an ordinary working-class lad like Billy should identify himself with the Labour movement". The Red Wedge manifesto itself strengthened the myth that mass unemployment was invented in 1979 and could be cured by “Government and council spending", and on the subject of war only promises more of the same:

The Russians are making clear their commitment to world peace . . .  under Labour we would see a move to real defence . . .  This does not mean, as the Tories claim, that the country would be defenceless. It means strengthening and modernising our conventional defences, which are dangerously run down.

Which brings us full circle to the Ancient Chinese Foundation Tone, humming the monotonous tune of the present order, with its international rivalry and bombs, its poverty and despair. But there are far brighter things to sing about. The world and all its resources, including communication and entertainment, are still waiting to be taken into the hands of the world community, to be used by and for us all.

Clifford Slapper

To be continued next month with a look at how the music industry makes its profits.

Aid fatigue? (1988)

From the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

It seems that the prospect of over five million people being threatened with death by starvation, in one area in a fairly short space of time, is no longer headline news unless attached to a famous name. That is a very real possibility in parts of Ethiopia now, after the latest droughts and further harvest failures. And yet this time the first headlines to appear were “Geldof flies to Ethiopia as starvation threatens” (Guardian, 30 November/1 December 1987).

Whatever his good intentions, Bob Geldof must know that the recurrence of the problem itself proves the utter futility of charity as even a partial solution to the obscene contradictions of present-day society. Indeed, he said he found it distressing that over the past three years “nothing serious has been done”. Perhaps he thinks we’re not trying hard enough to redistribute our poverty. In fact, some commentators this time have invented the phrase “aid fatigue”, to suggest that workers scraping by in countries like Britain and Ireland may have genuine compassion for those who are even worse off than we are, but can only take so much sermonising and scolding from public figures who preach to us that if only we were a bit more caring, we really could humanise the global slaughter-house we live in . . .

In fact, the anger of Saint Bob has now found a new object. On flying out from Heathrow on a “fact-finding” mission to Ethiopia, he said that he laid the blame for the famine at the door of the “Marxist” government, and that he would be requesting a meeting with the Ethiopian leader, Colonel Mengistu, to ask him about his arms purchasing policy. He failed to say whether he would be popping in to the Pope on his way, to sort out a few problems there, or perhaps a few of the other heads of governments who could tell him a thing or two about arms purchases. After all, the governments of the world as a whole spend, between them, over one million dollars on weapons every minute of the day and night. They do not do this because they are evil (however suitable that description may be); they do it as a necessary aspect of the world capitalist system which a majority have been persuaded to accept or support. Rather than confusing the issue by isolating one leader or government in particular to “blame”, it might in fact prove far more “compassionate” in the long run for Geldof to focus publicity on the practical answer. Only a global overthrow of property relationships across the world will rescue the world’s dispossessed from the trap of poverty and hunger. It might make better publicity to demand chats with the Colonel about what arms he buys, but if Geldof is going to join the fools’ chorus which scoffs at the possibility of the socialist solution, then he should have stuck to singing songs.

We are now told, however, that the colonel is a marxist revolutionary. Of course, Ethiopia has no more relation to Marx’s ideas of human liberation that do Russia, China, America or Britain. Socialists have good reason to be bitterly opposed to every one of these regimes. In fact Marx and his collaborator Engels understood very well how capitalism (whether state-controlled or “private”) starves people. In 1865, Engels wrote to Marx:

Too little is produced . . . But why is too little produced? Not because the limits of production are exhausted. No, but because the limits of production are determined not by the number of hungry bellies, but by the number of purses able to buy and pay.

The military conflict in Ethiopia between separatist guerrillas and government forces, which has made the situation even worse, is itself a product of the international power struggles of the capitalist world order, based ultimately on the pursuit of profit and power by a minority. Neither can nature be held responsible: it is poverty which has made people increasingly vulnerable to any problems of rainfall and harvests, and the poor condition of the soil in much of Africa is also largely caused by social and economic factors. The world as a whole is crying out for social transformation, and if you start talking about the change to a system of production of use, wherever you may be, then you are part of that process of change, rather than remaining one of those who would put it off forever, with a collection of leaky sticking plasters.

Clifford Slapper

Between the Lines: Sinn Fein, Game Shows and Live Aid (1985)

The Between the Lines Column from the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sinn Feigners

Beatrix Campbell, in Diverse Reports (C4, 3 July), sought to portray Sinn Fein as a progressive, caring, reforming party—an image it seeks to put across to electors. It should not be surprising that a programme showed Sinn Fein's policies without constant reference to the party's support for nationalist murderers; after all, the Tory and Labour parties support national armies committed to obscene acts of violence, but this is not mentioned every time there is a programme about their policies.

And having seen the uncensored picture, what are we to conclude? Quite simply, that Sinn Fein is just another party of reformist politicians who want to run capitalism. As the party's leader Gerry Adams, said, "All we can do is  . . . achieve those very small gains by working along with the people within the system". So much for Assembly member, Danny Morrison's throwaway comment that Sinn Fein is "a revolutionary party". From Adams we heard the usual vague claims of a reformist leader: first the nationalist movement must be built up to oppose British rule, and then after the British have withdrawn and Ireland is independent there will be "the beginnings of a socialist society". What does this mean? Uncensored Adams neglected to tell us. Campbell, who is a feminist, asked Adams what the position of women would be once Ireland had achieved Home/Rome Rule; she stated that "for women this happens to be one of the most repressive cultures you can think of." But Gerry told her that her question was based on "cultural imperialism" and she, being English, should learn that Irish people are different.

At the end of the programme one was left with the clear impression of a political party based on the twin confusions of nationalist illusion and reformist promise. If there ever is a united Ireland, presided over by Sinn Fein, it will be another capitalist state and the workers living under it will detest Adams and his fellow would-be rulers as much as they do their present representatives.

Even without the terrorist violence, which socialist unequivocally condemn, there was plenty shown about Sinn Fein to justify the unreserved hostility of socialists towards them.

Money sickness

It was D. H. Lawrence who referred to "the collective money-madness of mankind",  and where better to  observe that madness than in the gambling establishments of Las Vegas. Showdown at Glitter Gulch was a documentary about the world poker championship (BBC1, 3 July)  - an event where the winner gets a million dollars. It was an obscene spectacle, all these idlers throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars on to a table while millions of workers go without a decent supper and millions more die for lack of money for food. It was not "human nature" which led these men to indulge in an insane monetary ritual — it was a social system which elevates money into the god of life and trains those with more of it than sense to invest their energies in acquiring more. A mad system drives men mad and this programme was a peep through the window of one of the top-class asylums.

The price is indignity

The same "collective money-madness", but at a cheaper rate for the proles, is The Price is Right (don't know or care when it's on). The programme succeeds in being the ultimate in tasteless money fetishism. Crowds of impoverished workers scream and throw dignity to the wind as the prospect of guessing the price of an electric carving knife turns them into human cash registers. The aim of the game is to guess how much commodities are worth and if the guess is near enough to the price you win. Game shows generally portray capitalism as its most grotesque, and the trouble with watching them is that we are supposed to applaud contestants for doing well.

Live aid

Live Aid for Africa (BBC, 13 July) demonstrated several things that it did not intend, The purpose of the concert was to raise money to stop people starving to death in Africa. Yet its effect will be minimal, negligible, crumbs thrown into an ocean of despair. What then did the event show? First of all, that workers, even when motivated by immense goodwill and collective concern, cannot solve capitalism's problems. During the course of the sixteen-hour concert British workers donated a mere £4 million in telephone pledges, less than the British Government spends on the military machine every three hours every day; less than the richest woman in Britain (the Queen( receives as interest on her personal investments in one week. Workers were 'phoning up and saying that they would sell their cars and donate their precious savings to the worthy cause — but asking the impoverished in Britain to feed the starving of Africa solves precisely nothing.

Secondly, the show demonstrated just how superficial is the moralising self-righteousness of those who do not understand the capitalist system. Periodically we would be urged — by millionaires who became rich by dressing up in fancy costumes and singing about love through sore throats — to "feed the world". But why is food dumped while people starve? Why do some people have banquets while others do not? In short, the whole event was an invitation to weep at the symptoms, and to hell with any concern about the disease. Indeed, Bob Geldof (who may be sincere, but it certainly naive to a dangerous degree) was seen repeatedly throwing his arms in the air, like a man who feels something but does not know what, and declaring that governments should "do something". In fact, governments are doing something: running capitalism and feeding the capitalists' hunger for profits.

Thirdly, the show proved just how musicians have become incapable of performing without record producers to twiddle knobs and make them sound any good. Some of the sets from Wembley and Philadelphia, presented without the benefit of studio treatment, ranged from not very good to pathetic. Demonstrated above all, however, was the power of communication technology: fourteen international satellites beamed the show to 50 million TV sets, reaching an estimated audience of 1.5 billion people. But just as this technology can unite millions of workers for a lofty, if ultimately futile, moral cause, so too can it bind them together for more sinister propaganda messages, such as those demanded for example in the build-up to war. Left in the hands of the capitalist minority the means of mass communication are a potent weapon. But used for socialist purposes, think of how the worldwide unity forged by Live Aid could be turned into an instrument for making democracy work within the global village.

Watching the show until the final performance by Bob Dylan (not an occasion worthy of the wait, as it turned out), I was struck by an overwhelming sense of depression — not just at the thought that fellow human beings are starving to death, although that is good enough reason for a sleepless night, but because all the goodwill, energy, determination and technological know-how put into "doing something about it" will not feed the world. Despite Geldof's moral crusade the obscenity of mass human misery will go on and on and on until Elvis Costello stops singing "all you need is love" and the workers realise that the world os ours for the taking. And finally the national anthem came on, and by the time it got to "Long To Reign Over Us" I was fast asleep.

Steve Coleman 

Show Biz re-visits world poverty (2005)

From the July 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Can Live 8 and the host of attendant charities campaigning this month really make a difference to world poverty?

“Make Poverty History” is an imaginative slogan. Who could disagree with the idea of a society in which all people enjoy good health and material security, with all the miseries of world poverty consigned to the past?  Sir Bob Geldof is one who believes in such a world and, as a rock performer with credibility, is trying to mobilise millions of like-minded people in great demonstrations aimed at bringing pressure on the G8 governments to assist the desperately poor in the undeveloped countries. If his plans succeed a million people will go to Edinburgh, and added to these will be many more attending concerts in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin and Philadelphia, all to celebrate their solidarity and to make the point that the people of the richest countries should spend more money to end hunger. The aim is also to persuade world leaders to drop third world debt, reform trade laws and double aid to the undeveloped regions.

It is not for socialists to spoil a good party.  On the contrary, we can take some heart from these popular demonstrations of care and concern. It would be even more depressing if millions of people were dying every year from easily preventable causes while those better off never gave it a thought. However, this is not the case, so at least there is something reassuring about the willingness and enthusiasm of many people to join together to focus attention on the tragedies of needless death in a world that could so easily provide the good things of life for all.

However, we are bound to ask some critical questions. The staging of pop concerts aimed at making poverty history is beginning to acquire a history of its own.  It is twenty years since the first Live Aid Concert was staged at Wembley in 1985 and was thought to be a great success.  The aim was to make a difference but what difference did it make?

Reality behind the hype

No doubt in a very minor way the money raised following concerts and channelled through organisations like OXFAM has done a bit of good. But this should be seen against the scale of the problem and whether the actions led by Live Aid, or as it is now called Live 8, in any way address its causes. Over the years, agencies of the United Nations such as the Food and Agricultural Organisation have posted the numbers suffering poverty. For example, in 1975, 435 million people were seriously undernourished. By the year 2000 this had almost doubled to 820 million. UNICEF states that approximately 40,000 children under five die every day from preventable causes.  These figures indicate that since the first Live Aid concert in 1985 the numbers dying from poverty have been increasing horrendously, which leaves little doubt that pop concerts and the charities have made no significant impact on the problem. The grim facts are that the present methods of the “Make Poverty History” campaign stand no chance of ending deaths from hunger. If we are to be serious about stopping this perpetual holocaust, the many thousands of people who support this campaign should have a serious re-think about how best to go about it.

We don’t see much by way of analysis, but judged by its methods the “Make Poverty History” campaign appears to think that the fault lies with the developed countries in not cancelling third world debt, not opening up more free trade, and not being more generous in sending money aid to the undeveloped countries, particularly in Africa. However, there is not a shred of evidence that any cancellation of debt will result in improved conditions for workers in Africa.  It is claimed that the aim of loans to African states is to improve services such as health and education and build up infrastructures such as communications, port facilities, roads and bridges, etc. In theory these would assist the development of trade with a prospect of raising living standards throughout the continent.  A more realistic view is that loans enable Western governments, banks and global corporations to maintain an economic stranglehold on the economies of countries that are rich in resources such as oil, natural gas, gold, diamonds, iron ore, titanium ore, bauxite, timber, rubber, copper and other vital materials.

One example is Nigeria with a population of 135 million, GDP per capita of $275  per annum, an external debt of $1.1 billion and producing 750 million barrels of oil per year under the control of global oil companies such as Shell (Anglo Dutch), Exxon Mobil (US), Sasol (South Africa), AGIP International (Italy), Chevron (US), Total (France), BP (UK), Statoil (Norway).

Angola financed its civil war from profits from the sales of oil and diamonds and also relies on oil-backed loans which now burden the economy with an external debt of  $10.45 billion. Average life expectancy in Angola is 36 years.  Its GDP per capita income is $632 per year. Whilst most of its population suffers the most severe poverty its political rulers benefit from corruption. “The IMF found that between 1997 and 2002 some $4.22 billion went missing equivalent to some 12 percent of GDP. Angola’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small elite, who often use government positions for massive personal enrichment” (Guardian, 1 June).

The small country of Equatorial Guinea was recently subject to an escapade involving Sir Mark Thatcher who was accused of being part of an intended takeover. It is immensely rich in resources with oil and gas production expected to reach 150 million barrels a year. It carries an external debt of $248 million. Some international companies reaping high profits include Marathon Oil (US), Exxon Mobile (US), Energy Africa (South Africa), Chevron (US), British Gas (UK).

Marathon Oil operates in Equatorial Guinea on very good terms which may be associated with the benefits its politicians enjoy. “Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the country’s president, and his wife and son, were apparently treating themselves to planes, big houses and shopping sprees. Millions of dollars in cash were being lugged around Washington in suitcases” (Guardian, 2 June).

Taking the continent of Africa as a whole the (British) Prime Minister’s Commission for Africa “estimated that the amount stolen and now held in foreign banks is equivalent to more then half the continent’s external debt of $300 billion” (Guardian, 3 June).

There can be little doubt that the world we are now describing is one motivated by greed and pursued through a ruthless exploitation of natural and human resources. The main players are governments, multinational corporations and corrupt local politicians running gangster regimes. It may well be that the governments of the G8 will make a gesture that partially cancels third world debt but the write-off of these dollars will only be a means of continuing their grip on African countries whilst dressing their actions with the phoney rhetoric of care and concern.

There will be no outcome that will solve the problems of the desperately poor of Africa, and however well meaning may be their slogans, workers in the developed countries should not become involved in the machinations of interest groups whose basic concern is profit and the economic strategies of ruling elites.

Weakness of mere protest

Whilst the G8 protests may demonstrate great strength of feeling they will also demonstrate a great weakness; this is the lack of control of those who take part and their dependence on the decisions and actions of present power structures. Because of this, protesters can become victims of a seductive but deadly process. The capitalist system constantly throws up issues that demand action amongst those who are concerned and by many people who think of themselves as socialists. As a result, protest tends to become a demand for an “improved” kind of capitalism which leaves the long-term reasons for protest intact. This has been the history of protest.

In this sense, protest tends to set a stage for further protest and further demonstrations. Though the issues may vary the message stays the same: “We demand that governments do this, that or the other!” The spectacle of thousands demanding that governments act on their behalf is a most reassuring signal to those in power that their positions of control are secure.  In this way, repeated demonstrations do little more than confirm the continuity of the system. The point is to change society, not to appeal to the doubtful better nature of its power structures.

With Sir Bob as its high priest, we could also think of the Live 8 concerts as homage to the god of money and the illusion that it has powers of action on its own.  But the opposite is true. Money is part of a system that prevents us from using our real powers of production for the benefit of all people. Geldof never stops going on about giving more money and this feeds the illusion that without money we have no way to provide for the things we need. This leaves us separated from our powers of action. It ignores the fact that productive resources are not money but labour, land, industry, manufacture, transport and communications. The problems of world poverty require that these should be liberated from the economic constraints of money and the profit system.

Given that the number of people suffering and dying from the effects of world poverty have doubled over the past 25 years and on any realistic forecast will continue to increase, it should be obvious that we must go far beyond mere protests, organise to abolish the profit system and replace it with a world of common ownership, democratic control and production solely for needs. Such a socialist world would be able to stop people dying from hunger immediately and rapidly increase world food production to reach a point where every person on the planet would have free access to sufficient good quality food to maintain good health.

Pieter Lawrence

Socialism and rock music (1985)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

In many ways the music business is a prime example of all the workings of the capitalist system: the exploitation of talented, sincere musicians for the profit of the record company shareholders - even if they wouldn't know the difference between a crotchet and a quaver - along with the enormous waste involved in the socially useless task of selling people something that left to their own devices, they would probably want anyway (or - even worse - in some cases would never buy if it wasn't for the thinly-disguised associations of the product with "social success").

Rock music is an extremely attractive means of social control for the ruling class. For besides being hugely profitable (and better still, free of industrial strife - when did you last hear of Paul McCartney downing guitars in support of a pay claim?) it serves as an effective mechanism whereby youth rebellion may be channelled away from establishment targets and in on itself. Just as sexism and racism divert ordinary people from the real source of their problems, so it is that the rivalry in youth sub-culture between Punks and Teds and Mods and Rockers, is merely a smoke-screen obscuring the one real issue that faces young people - the choice between capitalism and socialism.

We would, then, hardly expect rock music to play an important role in the propagation of socialist views. This, I contend, is not true. Most readers will know of at least one artist/group that were marketed as anti-establishment rebels, only to become part of the establishment themselves at a later point and, in so doing, make a fortune.

The Clash- one of the most prominent political punk bands - have often poured scorn on the hypocrisy of those who betray their class in such a way: songs such as Death or Glory ("He who fucks nuns will later join the church") and White Man in Hammersmith Palais ("You think it's funny, turning rebellion into money") spring readily to the mind. The Clash are obviously not alone in this and there are many examples of musicians condemning, through their music, the business within which they work.

But what of critiques of capitalist society as a whole? Again, one thinks of The Clash who, in their early stages of their career, were known for their sympathies with the Red Brigade and other violent left-wing factions. The Clash, however, while frequently and virulently condemning the more obscene endemic ills of capitalism, never really escaped the mill-stone of their marketing image of pseudo Rolling Stones rock'n'roll rebels and as a consequence were never able to proffer a socialist society as a solution to the evils they had identified. For all that, it is probable that The Clash did at least awaken some young people to the insanity of the society within which they lived and for that reason should not be condemned too harshly. It is important to note that The Clash were successful mainly because their songs were relevant and comprehensible.

Compare the down-to-earth approach of The Clash with the intellectual ramblings of Green of Scritti Politti. Whereas The Clash expressed themselves in the language of ordinary workers. Scritti Politti's lyrics were incomprehensible to all but a student of politics and those fortunate (?) enough to know one. The capability of rock music to put over socialist ideas to a mass audience is, however, being realised by a growing number of artists, and we shall look at two of these.

The first is Paul Weller, formerly of The Jam and now of The Style Council. Over the years Weller's political attitude has matured from "rebel without a cause", prevalent among many punk bands, through a reformist stage before eventually settling into the full-blooded "socialism" of his current writings. The fact that for the past seven years he has remained a major figure on the British rock scene is evidence that he is able to influence many young people. Songs like When You're Young ("It's so hard to understand, why the worlds your oyster but your future's a clam") and Going Underground ("It's the kidney machines that pay for rockets and guns") set out a case against capitalism. More importantly, recent releases such as Money-Go-Round (the sleeve-notes for which state: " . . . was God an astronaut or a socialist? . . . For the potential beauty and goodness he has given us, I would have to insist the latter") and The Whole Point Of No Return ("The laws made for and by the rich") outline a case for socialism. The latter song was taken from the album Cafe Bleu, whose extensive sleeve-notes outline socialist ideas of production for the use of the community rather than the profit of a few.

Another major socialist rock musician/songwriter to emerge along with punk was Elvis Costello. Possibly an even more incisive critic of capitalist society than Weller, one of his most recent albums - Punch The Clock - contained two very important socialist songs. the first, Shipbuilding, Costello introduced on a recent concert tour as "a Falklands lament". A poignant ballad, it points out the tragic irony of parents constructing the means of their children's destruction with lines such as: "Somebody said that someone got filled in, for saying that people get killed in, the result of this shipbuilding". Further, in the line: "With all the will in the world, diving for dear life, when we could be diving for pearls", he highlights the pathetic situation where people like the Cammell-Laird shipworkers and the miners waste valuable energy in desperate fights for the dubious "right" to be exploited when, if only they could see the true nature of their problem, a socialist society could be theirs.

The other song of note was released on the eve of the June 1983 election. This track, the vitriolic Pills and Soap, presents a scathing attack on the hypocrisy of the capitalist press, using lyrics such as these to illustrate the point: "Four and twenty crowbars jemmy your desire, out of the frying pan into the fire. The King is in his counting house, some folk have all the luck. And all we get is pictures of Lord and Lady Muck. That come from lovely people with a hard line in hypocrisy, there are ashtrays of emotion for the fag-ends of the aristocracy".

Weller and Costello are not alone in their use of music to spread socialist ideas. It should be plain that the medium of rock music must not be ignored by socialists in their struggle to enhance the workers' political awareness.

Stuart Harrad 

(Norwich)

Reply:

Stuart Harrad makes some interesting observations about popular music and the profit-system. All of the evidence around us suggests that the potential creativity and social enjoyment of music are stunted and restricted by the way society is presently organised. Capitalism is a social system based on buying and selling, where almost everything we experience from the cradle to the coffin has a price on it. The majority of us - members of the working class - sell (or try to) our working abilities by the week or month to an employer. Under such a social system the inspirational and imaginative possibilities of music are imprisoned by economic laws.

Referring to the way that some of the Beatles' songs were appropriated for profit by 'entrepreneurs' in the music industry, Paul McCartney said recently, "It was a funny thing, but to begin with we hadn't realised that someone could actually own a song". Although some music artists become quite wealthy, most do not. The tycoons of this industry (the owners of large companies like RCA, EMI, CBS and so forth) acquire their great wealth through the combined labours of the thousands of people needed to produce a record and distribute it. Consider the number of people who work in the recording studios as technicians and engineers; the people who work in the factories producing records, compact discs and cassettes; the people who transport these, once they are made, all over the world and the people who work in record shops. Then there are all the workers involved in the organisation and presentation of concerts. All of these workers are in a condition of relative poverty. Although the results of all of this work involve thousands of people, most remain faceless and anonymous because the music industry reflects the elitist culture of capitalism, a society based on the minority ownership of the means of life. This economic basis of society has produced an ideology consistent with the view that the people "at the top" are there through merit, which is of course a fallacy. Those who have the largest stakes in the music industry are no more magnates on account of their musical knowledge or proficiency than the great landowners are in their positions by virtue of their abilities as farm workers or gardeners.

As Stuart Harrad observes, the ant--establishment theme of much modern music is often useless because it channels dissatisfaction into cults of rebellion which offer no alternative to the social system which has produced their misery. During the 1960s Bob Dylan wrote many poetic and piquant indictments of aspects of the capitalist system. The argument for socialism, however, was never explicitly advocated, with the result that many of Dylan's appreciators became cynically acquiescent in the profit system. Poverty, degradation and war would have to continue while the answer was "blowing in the wind". Many of those who excitedly sang that "the order is rapidly fading" were to find that this sort of protest movement would not dismantle capitalism and that the times they weren't a-changin'. In the 1970s, with rising unemployment, especially among young people, Punk rock stuck two fingers up at some "traditional values" and snarled at the glossy glamour enjoyed by a minority. But as with the protest movement of the sixties there was despair and rebellion without a constructive solution. In a spirit of nihilism, Johnny Rotten and The Sex Pistols sneered that there was "no future in England's dreamland". In one sense they were right but by telling only part of the story they were probably responsible for producing more cynicism about political change.

Like television companies and major newspapers, the large record companies are owned and controlled by people from that small minority of the population whose privileged economic position puts them in the ruling class. There is, therefore, a degree of reluctance for promotion to be given to anyone wishing to make serious and sustained criticism of class-divided society. As Elvis Costello noted:

You either shut up or get cut up

They don't wanna hear about it.

It's only inches on the reel to reel

And the radio is in the hands of

Such a lot of fools tryin' to

Anaesthetise they way you feel . . .

(Radio, Radio. 1980)

The Specials made a similar criticism when they sang:

And catch 22 says if I sing the truth

They won't make me an overnight star . . . 

(Gangsters. 1979) 

In a world straining with so many grotesque and unnecessary social problems it is conspicuous that so much popular chart music is void of social comment. Amongst the myriad of bland ballads and instantly forgettable fandangos there are, of course, songs which are enjoyable although they have no political comment. Socialists do not have common views as to what constitutes "good music". However, it is worth considering why commercial success is so widely enjoyed by songs which do not question the bleakness of present society. This must be partly because they are meant to be lighthearted—an area of fun completely divorced from the everyday problems we are plagued with—and partly because we are socially conditioned to develop certain sorts of taste.

That workers are basically stupid is an erroneous and arrogant assumption often made by various left wing political parties. Workers, the argument runs, should not be approached directly with the case for a classless, moneyless society because they will properly understand it. Instead they need to be baited with isolated issues and by unsuccessfully wrestling with these problems for long enough they will eventually become socialists. There is no evidence to support this contention; in fact all the evidence suggests that the subjects of this sort of political engineering usually become disillusioned and cynical or fall for some other dead-end pursuit like fascism. Workers are not stupid but sometimes stupefied. But this state is very open to change, as is testified by the great efforts that the ruling class put into the continuing process of conditioning people to accept the status quo. But the con trick is becoming difficult to sustain. As a recent letter to a music paper explained,

. . . As long as the majority of the world's population put their trust in leaders to build a fairer capitalist society we will be in the same position of degradation and poverty. Because capitalism is a system out of control of even the minority who own and reap the benefits, it is a system which is by its very nature must produce periodic crises, of which the present world recession is but one. The only sensible solution to this anarchy of production is for a class-conscious working class to take away the ownership and control of the world's resources and to democratically run it in their own interest. Until we have this majority we shall have to exist on the crumbs thrown to us by the parasitic minority.

(Gary Cornwell, New Musical Express, 23 February 1985.)

Culture Club can sing that "war is stupid" and Frankie Goes to Hollywood lament that "when two tribes go to war, a point is all that you can score", but this sort of thing will not shake the ideology of capitalism. The ruling class would agree: from their point of view war is a costly and damaging interruption to their parasitic way of life. Warfare is an endemic feature of a system which periodically produces conflict when economic rivalries cannot be settled around the summit table. Again, look at some of the songs about money. While Abba's Money, Money, Money probably did not have anyone breaking out in a nervous sweat at the Stock Exchange as the record rose in the charts, Pretty Green by The Jam and Money by Pink Floyd were more direct in their questioning of the need for a property society and its means of exchange. But even then it is probably the case that the lyrics of these songs struck a chord mainly with workers who had already considered the case for the abolition of private property. Without further comment lyrics can easily be misinterpreted and it is always possible, of course, that the rare songs that socialists often cite as significant were really written for an entirely different reason.

It is true that no popular song has had lyrics expressing the ideas contained in the Declaration of Principles of The Socialist Party. "But", an observer could suggest, "there are some songs which, because of their message, must serve to raise the social consciousness of the tens of thousands of workers familiar with the lyrics." In a chart song called The Lunatics, The Fun Boy Three sang,

I see the faces of starvation

But just cannot see the point

'Cos there's so much food here today

That no one wants to take away . . . 

The recent Band Aid single, Feed the World, made a comparable, if more vague, point. Mass malnutrition and starvation co-existing with our potential to produce enough food for everybody is an inherent contradiction of a social system which operates on the basis of profit of the few rather than social need. Feed the World, however, was more of a moral imperative than an urge to social revolution. In this sense Band Aid was an appropriate name for a group whose solution to famine within the profit system is comparable with advocating sticking plasters as a remedy for malaria.

Some of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism are doubtlessly made clearer by this sort of song; it is certainly more likely to provoke serious thought about social change than ditties about walks in the park or inquiries such as "Do you think I'm sexy?". The danger is that where a response to social problems is presented, it is given obtusely by vague hint or innuendo and if workers are ever inspired to formulate political ideas as a result many different sorts of conclusions may be drawn. If no coherent argument is being advocated by the artists (and really it cannot be, given the idiom in which they work) then no purposeful group of socialists can be produced by the music. At best, commentators like Paul Weller (who would, as an SWP supporter, presumably vote for the Labour Party and another dose of the profit system at an election) and Elvis Costello give occasional inspiration to socialists with some of the emotive poetry they write about capitalism. On the subjects of militarism and sexuality, for example, Costello  has written some poignant material about the way behaviour and aspirations are affected by the profit system.

Popular songs with a political slant are always open to misinterpretation. The playwright David Hare once stated that you can produce a play to highlight the atrocities of fascism and always have a certain number of people leave the theatre thinking that the Nazis had the right idea. The same subtleties of song lyrics carry the same susceptibility to misunderstanding. It is difficult to compress the argument for socialism on to a single track, so get the 12 inch version—The Socialist Standard!

Gary Jay