These FoolishThings . . . (1995)

The Scavenger column from the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The basic contradictions in capitalism cause widespread death, destruction, pollution, poverty and waste. But this is to take the world view. Most of us experience day-to-day capitalism as a series of small stupidities, irritations and frustrations. Here are a few. If you encounter any worth a wry smile, please send them to The Scavenger, who will publish the best.

Corporate loyalty

“In El Segundo, California, just before Christmas, Mattel, the toy manufacturer, made some announcements. Dividends would increase, the company would have record sales and earnings for the sixth year in a row, the balance sheet was strong and getting even better.

“Also, the company would eliminate 1,000 jobs, about four per cent of its work force . . . The deal most workers thought they had — that their jobs would be safer and wages higher if thing were good at the factory — is over”. New York Times.

True courage

“I wore my fur coat to Salisbury's at the weekend and one lady came over to congratulate me on being so courageous,” says Aliza Claremont, director of a lingerie company. Robyn Opie, proprietor of a West End nail salon, says: “I have a full-length silver fox — a serious fur coal — that I walk to work every' morning, and I haven’t had the slightest bit of hassle". Mail on Sunday, 15 January.

Dazed and confused

Paratrooper Lee Clegg who was convicted of shooting and killing a joyrider in a stolen car in 1990, said: “The irony is that, if war broke out tomorrow I would have been willing to lay down my life for these pillars of society who have sent me to prison for life for acting in accordance with my training and regulations.”

Learning

From a local headmaster’s newsletter to parents: “Behind these crimes [junk culture] against education are the profits of big business — large firms and their shareholders . . . They are also the people whose voices are loudest in complaining about education standards. Hypocrisy rules.”

“It’s a free country”

“Britain’s prisons are behind the state of play in our security conscious department stores and town centres . . . Seeing how the outside is actually becoming more like an open prison, the prison system will have at least to try to catch up”. Nigel Burke, Guardian, 19 January.

The Scavenger

Shoplift (2024)

From the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum, well not the forum but a supermarket store, owned by German capitalists. Sunday morning at ten and the place was busier than a Japanese commuter subway station during rush-hour.

This was an unfamiliar store. In familiar ones a yellow sticker on an item signifies that the commodity is near to, or almost past, its sell-by date, so a sharp money-saving eye is always on the lookout for such. Glimpsing such coloured things, they were not as they first appeared. Stickers on items in the various meats section turned out to be security tags. These were then found on many other different goods across the various aisles.

Socialists are generally law-abiding and tend to react as anyone would when their probity is called into question. After reciting the whole of Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner the checkout was finally arrived at. Here something unexpected occurred. With the meagre commodities placed upon the conveyor belt the wage slave operating the till asked if the shopping bags could be checked to make sure that they were empty.

Non-plussedness caused temporary speechlessness. Light bulb time. They think there might be commodities in bags that had been appropriated without the gelt made toward the profits of the German capitalists. There’s a first time for everything and this was the first time this writer has ever been confronted with such a request.

Finally, the response was articulated. Yes, one did mind. Till person’s training kicked in as they began the spiel about how such intrusion was company policy and how much shoplifting cost the store annually. This programming of the wage slaves in such occupations means that refusals are a regular occurrence and some behavioural psychologists have worked out that an appeal of this nature would overcome any objections the customer might have. Think of the poor capitalist!

At this point words passionately overflowed regarding the iniquities of capitalism. This did not go down well. Totally misunderstanding at whom the diatribe was aimed the till person responded with ‘if you’re abusive I won’t serve you’!

The thought arose, it’s exploitative capitalism that abuses the vast majority in many different ways.

Some deluded individuals, when confronted with a situation which is an abuse of civil liberties, respond with, ‘I don’t mind, I’ve nothing to hide and neither should anyone mind if they haven’t done anything wrong’. This is an erroneous view in a surveillance society. An under-the-counter button was now being jabbed furiously.

Enter stage left the in-house security. The attitude of this member of the working class couldn’t have been more different. Unlike the cashier he behaved in a perfectly pleasant, reasonable manner. This offered an opportunity to explain the objections to having one’s bag searched.

If this tale was being retold on some confessional social media sites it would end with everyone queuing and listening, then finally bursting into cheering and applause. Followed no doubt by a mass rendition of the Internationale. One has to know when to cut one’s losses.

One glance at the faces of those in the queue behind was sufficient to show that it was time to graciously concede. Explaining that one did not want to keep anyone waiting any longer I said look into the bags if you want to. Just as graciously the security guard indicated that that would not be necessary. The bags were not examined. ‘Security’ was someone the narrator would have liked to have a long conversation with about socialism. Commodities run through till, paid for, exit narrator with mental note never to visit that particular supermarket again.

Socialists are generally very non-prejudiced men and women. Apart from in one case. Socialists are very prejudiced when it comes to capitalism. There are, of course, many people who dislike capitalism, but not all of those, even the ones who term themselves socialists, want to see its replacement by a class-free, wage-free, money-free, leader-free, nation-free society.

There’s none so blind as those who will not see. Knowing that a socialist society would provide free access to quality goods and services if only a majority of the working class understood and wanted it, makes transactions designed to further enrich capitalists hard to bear.

The reasons for shoplifting are varied: the economic necessity of doing so because particular commodities necessary for life are unaffordable or in order to profit by selling on the commodities more cheaply than are available in store. A previous shoplifting article in the Life and Times column of the Socialist Standard in October, points out that some may shoplift as an act of ‘disobedience to the authority of the private property system’. However, as that article explains, ‘it is not a particularly positive or constructive way to help do away with that system’.

Reflection upon that event by the narrator was one of sadness that the other customers and staff, in that location, were unaware that angst-ridden capitalism could be, as Life and Times correctly has it, replaced with a system ‘in which the stores of the world can be made freely available to them – and to everyone’.

Dave Coggan

Voice From The Back: Polluting for profit (2002)

The Voice From The Back Column from the October 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Polluting for profit

The major problems of pollution are caused by the excessive burning of fossil fuels, everyone except the coal and oil lobby agrees. There are alternatives such as wind and solar power; so why aren’t they being developed at the same rate as fossil fuel usage? Simple really. “At present wind power costs between 1.9 and 3.1p a unit, while solar is more than 20p. Conventional generated power sells for between l.1p and 1.3p.” Observer (25 August). Inside a socialist society we won’t be polluting the earth if we have an alternative, but then we would not be producing wealth to make a handful rich but to satisfy human need.

DIY hanging

Clive Fairweather, the outgoing HM Inspector for prisons in Scotland had some figures on suicides in prison that might cheer the “hang-’em, flog-’em” brigade but should chill any compassionate human being. Think of the despair that lies behind a young man taking his own life. Another indictment of the inhumanity of capitalism. “Mr Fairweather told his audience that in the eight years he had been chief inspector of prisons, 170 prisoners had died, yet between 1900 and 1963, only 35 were executed by hanging. 'Bring back hanging? It’s DIY hanging at eight times the rate these days, for our young in prison', he said.” Herald (4 September).

The close circuit society

In the Guardian of 7 September there was a supplement on surveillance in Britain today. It was pretty scary stuff and shows how capitalism is becoming more and more restrictive . “From the moment a worker logs on in the morning to the moment they shut down at night, corporate information *technology departments can watch each and every action they make — which keys they press, which websites they visit, what emails they receive and send . . . Security procedures such as swipe cards on entrances also allow detailed following of employees — if management wants to — of how much time is spent in which parts of a building and, in some workplaces, with cards required for entry to workplace toilets.”

Exporting destruction

As the US and UK leaders claim an attack on Iraq is justified because that country has stocks of “mass destruction weapons” it is worthwhile noting where Iraq was obtaining these weapons from. Surprise, surprise, from the US and the UK. “Reports by the US Senate’s committee on banking, housing and urban affairs — which oversees American export policy — reveal that the US under the successive administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Snr. sold materials including anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile germs and botulism to Iraq right up until March 1992, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia . . . Classified US Defence Department documents also seen by the Sunday Herald show that Britain sold Iraq the drug pralidoxin, an antidote to nerve gas, in March 1992, after the end of the Gulf war. Pralidoxin can be reverse engineered to create nerve gas.” Sunday Herald (8 September).

The Voice of America?

Ann Coulter, an American journalist and broadcaster has written a book “Slander” containing outrageous right wing views. It is subtitled “Liberal Lies About The American Right” In her column in the National Review she put forward her solution to the Middle East problem, quoted in the Sunday Herald Magazine (8 September): “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” Voice of America?, let’s hope not; though her book does currently top the New York [Times]  bestsellers list.

Oxfam’s solution to famine

Have you ever given money to Oxfam for them to help out by distributing food during some famine? If so, you may well be surprised by the following news item: "British charity Oxfam today launched a 'coffee rescue plan' urging political and business leaders to destroy surplus stocks and guarantee a fair price for farmers" (Guardian, 19 September).

Oxfam's original name was the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief but it later branched out into being a reformist campaigning organisation, working within the context of capitalism. We have always argued that those who set out to reform capitalism end up accepting its logic. This latest episode proves this point up to the hilt. Capitalism periodically produces crises where "too much" food\ has been produced, a crisis of plenty amidst poverty. It solves such crises) not by distributing the plenty to the poor (that would be against its logic and undermine profits), but by destroying the plenty. This has been a classic illustration of the socialist case against capitalism: that it is a system of production for profit rather than to satisfy human needs. Now OXFAM, an organisation set up to try to distribute a bit of the plenty to some of the poor, has come round to the capitalist solution: destroy the food! Remember that next time they shake a collection tin under your nose.

Voice From The Back: The Inequalities Of Capitalism (2006)

The Voice From The Back Column from the October 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Inequalities Of Capitalism

A good example of the class division in modern society can be seen when we look at the wealth of the top 0.1 percent of the population in the USA. “An analysis by David Cay Johnston in the New York Times found that the average annual inflation-adjusted income of this group increased by 2.5 times, to $3 million (£1.6 million), from 1980 to 2002. The average net worth of those on the Forbes 400 list has mushroomed in the past 20 years, rising from $390 million (£206 million) to $2.8 billion (£1.48 billion)” (Times, 17 August).  As for you and your family, “inflation adjusted” how are you doing? A little less than $3 million this year I would imagine.

Pardon Our French

Nothing sums up capitalism better than the article that appeared in the Observer Magazine (27 August) when dealing with the former member of the Workers Revolutionary Party John Bird, who it describes as an entrepreneur. We think this might mean con man but we never went to French classes. This enterprising person may be more familiar to you as the owner of the magazine The Big Issue – yes the one you bought because you felt sorry for the lady outside the bus station.

Here is the owner of that magazine on the homeless and how he feels about it. “Fifty years ago a homeless person wasn’t allowed to sleep rough or beg. They’d get a menial job but they were part of society. Nowadays they pay nothing. They are infantilised. And it costs us £60,000 to keep each one of them in that state.” We must go to French classes. Perhaps entrepreneur really means “arrogant owning class bastard.”

Exploitation

It is a basic premise of socialists that all wealth that is produced inside modern capitalism is the product of the working class and that the capitalist class live off the surplus value that the working class produce. Now we have such pillars of capitalist society as the Observer and Reuters agreeing with us. “The 20 largest quoted companies in the UK make an average of over £96,000 pre-tax profit per employee, according to research carried out by the Observer. … BG, formerly British Gas, made by far the most – approximately £445,000 ..” (Observer, 27 August). Are you understanding these figures? On average your employer cons you out of more than £1,800 a week and in the case of BG over £8,000 a week. Why aren’t you a socialist? Are you a shareholder in BG?

The American Dream

There is a popular misconception about that as the USA is the world’s most developed capitalist country and the most productive the American workers must be well off. A recent report from the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute shows that this is not true.

“Adjusted for inflation, average wages in the US are now lower than they were in 2000 – so the benefits of the rapid increases in productivity . . .  are not being passed to the workers. In fact, as the New York Times reported last week, official figures show that wages and salaries now make up the smallest part of GDP since records began in 1947 . . .  In 1965, CEOs earned 24 times more than the average worker; by 2005 it was 262 times. . . . The top 20 per cent of asset-holders now control 85 per cent of all America’s wealth.” (Observer, 3 September)

Bones of Contention

The National Museum of Kenya is to reopen next year after extensive renovations. It will feature a special exhibit The Origins Of Man which will display the key fossil finds of Africa’s Great Rift Valley – considered by many to be the cradle of humanity. All round celebrations locally, you may imagine. Not a bit of it. “It’s creating a big weapon against Christians that’s killing our faith,” said Bishop Boniface Adoyo, who is leading the hide-the-bones-campaign.” (Observer, 10 September). This individual is chairman of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya, which claims to represent churches of 35 denominations with 9 million members. No surprise there, he is carrying on the long tradition of Christian suppression of scientific enquiry.

 

Big Brother Is Watching You

George Orwell’s 1984 was a dystopia where every move of the worker was monitored, but Orwell’s nightmare has arrived. “Learn that truth, and learn it well; what you do at work is the boss’s business. Xora and SurfControl are just some of the new technologies that have sprung up in the past two years peddling products and services – software, GPS video and phone surveillance, even investigators – that let managers get to know you really well. The worst mole sits right on your desk. Your computer can be rigged to lock down work files, restrict Web searches and flag e-mailed jokes about the CEO’s wife. ‘Virtually nothing you do at work on your computer can’t be monitored’, says Jeremy Gruber, legal director of the US National Workrights Institute, which advocates work place privacy” (Time, 11 September). The article goes on to quantify how widespread this snooping is. 76 percent of employers watch your use of the Web, 36 percent track the content and time spent on the keyboard. 38 percent hire staff to sift through your e-mail and 38 percent have fired workers over the last 12 months for misuse of the email.

Voice From The Back: Capitalist profits (1998)

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

Capitalist profits

From December 1, when the second stage of this year’s pay award is implemented, a D-grade staff nurse will earn a basic of between £12,855 and £14,705. Starting salaries for teachers are £14,500 and for police constables £15,500. Guardian, 6 August.

Full Marx!

Karl Marx’s theories may not be much appreciated in police forces, but his observation that under capitalism everything eventually becomes a commodity may strike a few chords in the Los Angeles police department: it is registering its initials LAPD as a trademark. Guardian, 6 August.

Value for money

Barbara [Corcoran] says that in Manhattan, where she lives, her annual £45,000 investment in her looks is de rigeur. There, she says, “looking good is more important than being good . . .” “People judge you down to the tiniest detail, the cut of your suit shoulder, the size of the pearl in your earring, even how you apply your make up.” Express, 20 July.

This secret society

Gun Mart, a magazine for shooters, has a particular concern about the confiscation of the majority of private hand guns following the Dunblane massacre. In its August issue it draws attention to the fact that the police report on Thomas Hamilton, made to the Procurator Fiscal before the mass shooting of the school children, will not be put into the Library of the House of Commons. In fact, Lord Cullen, for the government, has recommended that a 100 year closure be placed upon this and related documents. Not even most war secrets are suppressed for this long. What are they hiding? Gross negligence is one possibility. A real excuse for the banning of guns is another.

Political starvation

“The country’s [Sudan’s] 15-year civil, war has uprooted millions. The UN World Food Programme predicted the food emergency last September. But a worsening drought, lack of interest in the international community, widespread fighting and a ban on relief flights by the Sudanese government have resulted in a much worse crisis today . . . people are dying, at an average of 50 a day in Wau, one of the hardest hit areas.” Catherine Bertini, Executive Director, UN World Food Programme.

Feelgood factor 1

Keith Bradley, Professor of international management at the Open University Business School was doing his bit for the class struggle in the Financial Mail on Sunday, 16 August. He said, “Chief secretary to the Treasury Stephen Byers touched a raw nerve last week when he hit out at ‘greedy’ power and water bosses whose massive pay rises of up to 70 percent fuel anger amongst ordinary workers. But while fat cats are easily pilloried, there is little doubt that huge pay disparities are here to stay. Indeed, the rich are likely to get richer-and deservedly so . . . In today’s world there is a massive difference between winning and coming second. Nearly winning a legal battle, nearly scoring a goal, or nearly completing a business deal are all worlds apart from actually achieving these things.”

Feelgood factor 2

Earlier this year, when he was anticipating, and perhaps trying to influence, the Labour government’s budget, Martin Taylor, chief executive of Barclays Bank, told the Commons social security Select Committee that the working families tax credit (WFTC), which was expected to replace the in-work family credit, would have “important psychological effects on the way people feel about work”. Delivered through the pay packet rather than the benefits system, it would change the attitudes to living on welfare by associating state aid with work, said Mr Taylor. “If welfare to work succeeds, and I expect it will, there are going to be a lot more people in relatively low paid jobs . . .” “It’s important that they should feel good about that and that society as a whole should feel good.” Mr Taylor was doing his bit for the class war—on behalf of his class.

Feelbad factor

In May, the Boston Sheraton hotel in Massachusetts had to pay $200,000 (£120,000) in a lawsuit in which employees said they were videotaped in a changing room, and a California trucking firm’s employees discovered a video camera in the men’s toilet. Every aspect of employment becomes disputed territory in the class war.

Pollute and be damned

Asbestos pollution is one of the biggest environmental health problems in the world, according to the Johannesburg Star, and South Africa is the global epicentre of asbestos-related disease (ARD), in particular mesothelioma, which is a cancer related specifically to asbestos exposure. It was estimated that 30 to 40 percent of people who worked in SA’s asbestos mines for more than 20 years developed ARD. A study of the town of Mafefe in Northern Province revealed that half the adult population of 12,000 had ARD.

Open Prison (2006)

From the February 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

On January 1st, police in Britain were given sweeping new powers. Police are now allowed, if they think it “necessary”, to hold anyone they suspect of any offence – motorists who are not wearing seat belts, for instance, or who commit the felony of driving in a bus lane, or even your young ne’er-do-well who throws his fish supper wrapper away in the street. Moreover, the police will be allowed to store a digital photograph of you on a database even if you have been found not guilty of the charge you were originally arrested for.

The Home Office is changing the law because current legislation on what is an arrestable offence is, they argue, “bewildering”.  So on the one hand you have the Home Office suggesting your average cop is too daft to make his/her mind up as to what is a criminal offence, while at the same time asking the police to make an on-the-spot decision on whether or not it is “necessary” to arrest your average lawbreaker for gobbing his wad of chewing gum onto the pavement.

It’s already bad enough that Britain has more CCTVs spying on us than any other country on the planet (an estimated 300 cameras will have watched me when I get back home after a day’s bargain-hunting in Newcastle), that the British police have the biggest DNA database in the world, that your location can be tracked to within 6 feet when you use your mobile phone. But from this March, almost every car journey made in this country will be logged by CCTV and satellite cameras, and stored away for future reference on a police database.

Terrestrial and space-based cameras make it possible for the state to recognise your car number-plates anywhere you go and, we are told, quite soon they will be able to recognise human faces as well.

With 77 percent of MPs now favouring the introduction of a national identity card and the Identity Cards Bill due another vote in the House of Commons, now that the Lords have made their minor amendments, it looks as if the State – 2008 is when Labour seeks to introduce them – will soon have another means of collecting and collating information about us.

It is anticipated that eventually, as well as carrying our photos, biometric ID cards will hold iris scans and fingerprints. Moreover, the database holding all the information on our ID cards would not only be accessible by the police, but open to the immigration service and numerous public and private organisations.

Forgive me for being alarmist, but I’m betting that in a few years every single adult in Britain will have their mug-shot and their entire personal history on a police database; that the day will come when your movements will be logged the moment you leave your home in the morning.

No doubt people, like me, concerned about increased police powers and increasing state intrusion into our daily affairs will be met with the imbecilic line: “If you’re not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.” This cop-out totally misses the point. In truth this has nothing to do with our innocence. It’s all about mistrust; about the state saying we can not trust a single one of you as far as we could kick you. The state is saying you have a brain and are capable of thought, so you are therefore a potential threat to very powerful interests and consequently need to be tracked 24/7. This is the state saying they want to know everything about us from the moment we’re born until the second our heart stops beating.

When you consider the state has access to the NHS database, to info transmitted each time we use credit cards (the spy in your wallet), to info that will be contained on the coming national id cards, the info gleaned at GCHQ in Cheltenham, at the NSA base at Menwith Hill that scrutinises our phone conversations and scans our email, the info amassed by Echelon, perhaps the most powerful intelligence gathering organization in the world and sponsored by the USA and the UK, then it’s time to sit up and start worrying.

Think not? Consider also the introduction of radio-frequency identification tagging (RFID) which started in stock control and on motorway tollgates in the USA. Supermarkets are now using this technology – electronic chips that send out a code when exited – with companies like M&S and Tescos investing millions in this new spy hardware. It is anticipated that soon the chips will be small enough to be undetectable in products such as clothing, the carrier being detectable from space.

Our civil liberties are not only being eroded by the day, but the state is intruding deeper and deeper into our personal lives. You can sit back and accept it all as inevitable in this post-9/11 world and reconcile yourself to a lifetime of mind-numbing conformity, inside of your new open prison – for this is what Britain and many other countries are turning into – never daring to think an out-of-the-place thought about the system that exploits you, afraid you may accidentally commit a “crime” on your way to the shops (some security camera catching you walking on the grass or expectorating a lump of phlegm). Or you can organise with others in an attempt to wrest state control from those who use it as a means of utter oppression on behalf of the master class. But don’t take too long to think about it – your thoughts may one day not be your own.

John Bissett

Proper Gander: ‘I’ve Got Nothing. I Ain’t Got No-one. But I’ve Got The Shops’ (2020)

The Proper Gander column from the September 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The High Street was already on the financial skids before the pandemic, which has sped up the shift to online shopping. And these days, going to the shops has the added considerations of facemasks, social distancing, arrows on the floor and sanitisers by the doors, making it more of an ordeal than before. Despite all this, slick, brightly-lit shopping malls are still there to tempt those looking for either retail therapy or a five-finger discount. The latter were the focus of Channel 5’s recent Shoplifters: At War With The Law. This fly-on-the-wall documentary series follows the security guards and their quarries at two interchangeable shopping centres: West Orchards in Coventry and Weston Favell in Northampton. It was filmed pre-Covid 19, so since the cameras left, the guards are presumably on the hunt for people not wearing masks as well as people not paying.

According to the programme’s voiceover, last year, there were 400,000 shoplifting incidents reported nationwide, with the number of those that go undetected estimated to be 20 times higher. Of course, we don’t see any of these, and the shopping centres understandably want the programme to emphasise the chances of getting nabbed. Regardless of this, the show has plenty of tips for would-be pilferers, such as going with a group of friends to distract the guards while items are slipped into pockets elsewhere. And higher-end goods with electronic tags attached can be dealt with by snipping them off with pliers or hiding them in a bag lined with foil so they don’t set off the door alarms.

Watching out for all this are hundreds of HD CCTV cameras, whose footage is relayed back to each shopping centre’s control room. When the guard on duty there sees someone acting shiftily or gets a tip-off from one of the shops, they can radio down to their colleagues to find their target. It’s all quite sad to watch this game of cat-and-mouse, although a couple of the guards get a kick out of their work. ‘I always catch my prey,’ boasts one, ‘that’s why I do my job. I love it’. The guards can only apprehend someone once they’ve left a store, although they cynically assume ‘anybody that’s in the shop is a shoplifter until they go to the till’. Those who are caught are led to a bleak holding room to be questioned and have their bags searched. The police will be called if the person has ‘gone equipped’ with a foil-lined bag or pliers, or if what they have stolen is valued at over £200. If the goods are worth less than this the police won’t usually be involved and instead, a year-long ban from the shopping centre is issued. If the accused says they have no ID, they’re asked to bring up their social media profile instead. Their name, address and date of birth are taken, as is a mug shot for the database. If they are seen to return to the centre, they will be trespassing and the police will be called. The guards have had plenty of practice with the procedure: the West Orchards team ‘take down’ up to ten shoplifters a day, as they put it.

The programme-makers blur out the faces of the people caught, which also has the effect of emphasising how dehumanising the need to shoplift is, and the rituals around it. Some of the people featured have been recruited by gangs, and probably have very little choice in the matter. They tend to be from Eastern Europe, not able to claim benefits and without much chance of securing better paid work, which makes them vulnerable to exploitation from organised gangs. Most of the value of any successfully shoplifted goods is likely to go to the gangmasters, with those who take the risks receiving little back; a more extreme version of mainstream employment. These gangs tend to move between areas once they become too well-known in one place. Nearly three quarters of shoplifting in West Orchards is carried out by a small group of local repeat visitors. Many of these are homeless, with or without a benefit claim, either stealing to get enough food or to fund a drug habit. One man speaks to the camera crew after he’s thrown out for the umpteenth time: ‘I’ve got nothing. I ain’t got no-one. But … I’ve got the shops.’ The guards tend to treat those who are pushed into shoplifting by poverty with some sensitivity, as long as they don’t get lairy.

But Shoplifters: At War With The Law doesn’t want us to feel too sympathetic towards people who steal. Its voiceover makes the point that shoplifting ‘takes more than £2 million out of tills every day’, and that to make up for these losses shops have been ‘ramping up prices for millions of honest shoppers’. It’s easy to claim that theft raises prices, but this falsely implies that retailers would lower prices below the market rate if people stopped stealing, which of course no retailer would ever do, so it just scapegoats people who shoplift and provides an alibi for inflated prices. The costs of security measures and stolen items do impact on the profitability of goods to some extent, so the chain store owners will be keen to clamp down on shoplifting. But a few pinched bottles of perfume or boxes of chocolates are nothing compared to the billions of pounds creamed off by owners and shareholders.

Mike Foster

Credit and Control in China (2019)

From the December 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

One consequence of new technology has been a vast increase in the extent of surveillance of people, whether by the state or private companies. CCTV, facial recognition, tracking the use of debit and credit cards, having access to phone records, cookies and other ways of recording a person’s use of social networks and the rest of the internet: all this shows how much information (often using big data and processed by artificial intelligence) is held about people. The ways in which this information can be used vary enormously, but nearly all relate to controlling behaviour or influencing opinions or making profits. The term ‘surveillance capitalism’ has been used by some to describe the way people are observed and tracked.

Hardly anywhere, though, is the extent of information and the degree of control greater than in China, where the ‘social credit’ system is widely used. In a sense this is rather like the idea of credit scores in the UK and elsewhere, which provide a numerical statement of how likely a person is to repay money they owe. If you have a low score, you will probably find it difficult to borrow money, take out a credit card or have a mortgage; and even if you are able to do these things, you are likely to be charged a higher interest rate. Providing credit scores has become an industry in its own right.

Part of what happens in China is rather similar, with people being given a social credit score by various private companies. There are also some local government schemes which rely on ‘good deeds’ such as donating to charity or giving blood and on bad ones such as going through a red light, and increase or reduce your score as a result. But there are also much grander plans for a system run at national and governmental level, though this is not planned to come into existence until some time in 2020, and it is not even clear if that deadline will be met. A Chinese State Council document from 2014 described the social credit system as ‘an important component of the Socialist market economic system and the social governance system … its reward and punishment mechanisms are incentivizing trustworthiness and restricting untrustworthiness’. Despite what is sometimes claimed, though, social credit is not as yet an all-pervasive system that intrudes into everyone’s daily life to snoop on what they’ve been up to.

People can be blacklisted in a number of ways. For instance, the journalist Liu Hu writes about censorship and government corruption. Apart from being fined, he was banned from flying and using some train lines, without being informed in advance. A similar ban on travel by plane or train affects several million people. It is possible to pay the fine or whatever the court demands in such cases, and so theoretically be removed from any blacklist, but this does not always happen in practice, especially as there is little supervision of the Chinese legal system.

Various kinds of infraction, many of them pretty trivial, are covered, such as smoking in a no-smoking part of a train, spending too much time playing video games, posting fake news, quarrelling with neighbours or walking your dog without a lead. In contrast, being a ‘good citizen’ can earn you discounts on energy bills and even boost your profile on a dating site. The supposed intention is to combat corruption and fraud, but of course what is done goes well beyond anything that could be relevant to that. For instance, people’s mobile phone usage is closely tracked. And there are supposedly 200 million surveillance cameras in China, which can snoop on people’s activities.

The system is part of a much wider move towards greater repression, such as those against Uighurs in Xinjiang, Tibetans and the protests in Hong Kong. Xi Jinping has removed limits on the terms of office of the president, so could in theory remain in charge for life. Human Rights Watch has recently referred to ‘increasing repression under Xi’s rule’, including the jailing of journalists, academics, religious teachers, protestors against sexual harassment and others. In addition to keeping tabs on individuals, there are also mechanisms for tracking what companies do, supposedly to cut down on fraud and ensure compliance with the law. Overseas companies operating in China may have to conform to even more governmental requirements too.

Overall, and however much it is fully implemented in the future, the social credit system is designed to keep Chinese workers on the straight and narrow, penalising anyone who steps out of line. Any resistance to the rule of the ‘Communist’ Party and the ruling capitalist class will be one of many actions that lead to being penalised in one way or another.

Paul Bennett

Proper Gander: Giggly Walking CCTV Cameras (2012)

The Proper Gander column from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Making a hasty, ill-informed judgement about someone you don’t know is easy, thanks to the internet. You can post it on their forum thread or Facebook update, laugh, then hide behind your username and the ‘log off’ option. It’s not quite as straightforward as that in real life, as those taking part in The Audience (Channel 4) find out. In this show, a volunteer has opened up their life to the scrutiny of fifty strangers and a film crew. The volunteer has “a life-changing decision to make”, and will seek the advice of the others who literally follow him around for a week.

The first episode’s lamb-to-the-slaughter is Ian Wainwright who, being a farmer, has probably slaughtered a few lambs himself. Nice guy Ian slaves away on the farm owned by his two septuagenarian uncles, who can’t do much other than bark from their farmhouse chairs. Imposed guilt and family loyalty tie Ian to the long hours and little money. He knows he’s trapped, and that he’s not spending enough time with his girlfriend. So, should he find a new life with her, as this means leaving his uncles to an uncertain future?

The crowd of fifty start out like giggly walking CCTV cameras. They follow Ian to the milking shed, then the fields, then they meet the rest of his family, firing questions and discussing him along the way. Their initial snap judgements on his situation give way to a realisation that it involves conflicting viewpoints, and then there are tears as the decision looms. Obviously, the programme-makers milk all this for its emotional capital, much like Ian milks his cows. He takes the advice to leave the farm, and the producers must have been rubbing their hands with glee when he rounds off the programme by proposing to his girlfriend.

Maybe some choices benefit from having other people patiently look into all the pros and cons to come up with some reasoned advice. But it’s less likely that a situation will be improved by the manipulation and selective editing of a film crew. The Audience feeds on the fashionably alienated belief that if you have a problem, then the best way to get help is through a TV show.

Mike Foster

Life On Earth (2010)

Book Review from the May 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ground Control. By Anna Minton. (Penguin Books)

As new shopping malls and blocks of flats are built in city centres, they represent an extension of ownership by investors and private companies at the expense of local councils. Docklands in London, for instance, is privately-owned, and the flats there are mostly in gated enclaves. The Liverpool One shopping development belongs to Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminster’s property company. These places are patrolled by private security guards and rigidly control what is or is not allowed to be done there (skateboarding, for instance, or selling political journals).

These and similar changes are the focus of Minton’s book, which gives a good overview of the situation, particularly with regard to housing and general control of behaviour in public. Despite the spread of CCTV (Britain has more cameras than the rest of Europe put together), people do not feel safer in the streets; in fact, fear of crime has been increasing as crime rates themselves fall. Stop-and-search powers are used more and more, but overwhelmingly in poorer areas. Breaching an ASBO can lead to a prison sentence for doing something which was not in itself a crime.

As far as housing is concerned, one consequence of gated communities is increased control over tenants. For instance, people may be forbidden from hanging out their washing or placing pots on exterior window sills. More seriously, profits for builders and property companies take priority over satisfying people’s housing needs. As Minton says, ‘house builders have greater guarantees of profits if they limit supply and so keep prices high’. The government’s Pathfinder programme is intended to solve problems that the market cannot tackle, but in practice it can mean houses being demolished and replaced by new ones that can be sold at higher prices. If a council declares that an area is due for demolition, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with residents keen to move away and others unwilling to move in. At the same time, newly-built homes are unsold, as mortgages are much harder to obtain during the credit crunch.

The number of official homeless is nearly 100,000, though councils restrict who counts as ‘homeless’ in order to avoid their rehousing responsibilities. The bottom of the private rented sector includes many, many properties that are damp and overcrowded. In the worst cases, this can lead to ‘buggy babies’, left in their buggy all the time because there is no proper room for them to sit or play. Their heads may get misshapen because they spend so much time lying down. What a comment on the realities of destitution under capitalism.

Paul Bennett

Voice From The Back: The Filthy Rich (2007)

Voice From The Back Column from the August 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Filthy Rich

"Somewhere in the world, 100-foot yachts are derided as 'dinghies' ... and 'true wealth' starts at a hefty $10 million. That's 'Richistan'. The term, which journalist Robert Frank defines as a 'parallel country of the rich,' is also the title of his new book about its inhabitants, whom he calls Richistanis. The book got its start in 2003, when Frank, who reports for The Wall Street Journal, picked up a fresh, full-time beat: the new rich..... From 1995 to 2003, the number of millionaires in America doubled. During the same period, the number of households worth $5 million, $10 million and $25 million, respectively, all doubled. In 2005 alone, America minted 227,000 new millionaires." (USA Today, 17 June) As you are reading this in the Socialist Standard and not the Wall Street Journal it is unlikely you belong to Richistan, you are more likely to be a subject of Povertistan.

Wealthy get wealthier

"The 2007 World Wealth Report, from Merrill Lynch and Cap Gemini, indicated that the number of ultra high net worth individuals - with $30 million or more to invest - in Britain rose by 10 per cent last year to about 3,750. About one in six of Europe's 23,460 super-rich now hails from the UK. ... Globally nearly 10,000 more individuals joined the ranks of the super-rich, taking the total to about 95,000." (London Times, 28 June) So much for the Labour Party's promises about a more equitable society.

Biblical Weather Forecasting 

The owning class spend a great deal of money in keeping the Meteorological Office running but a reverend gentleman has come up with a super wheeze to save that expenditure. "The floods that have devastated swathes of the country are God's judgment on the immorality and greed of modern society, according to senior Church of England bishops. One diocesan bishop has even claimed that laws that have undermined marriage, including the introduction of pro-gay legislation, have provoked God to act by sending the storms that have left thousands of people homeless. ... The Rt Rev Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle, argued that the floods are not just a result of a lack of respect for the planet, but also a judgment on society's moral decadence." (Sunday Telegraph, 1 July) Simple really - read your bible, do what the bishops say and you can close the meteorological offices and get rid of redundant mops. Floods — what floods?

The Failure of Reformism 

"Social mobility is more difficult for children in Britain than for those in most other wealthy countries. A study by the London School of Economics found that poorer children born in 1970 had less opportunity to improve their economic and social status as adults than those born in 1958." (London Times, 3 July) Fifty years of reforming British capitalism and the end result is abject failure.

The Church goes commercial 

"A prominent Polish cleric known for preaching against communism and for his anti-Semitic remarks said on Tuesday he planned to launch perfumes, clothing and cafes branded with his image. Father Henryk Jankowski took part in strikes which led to the end of communism in 1989 as part of Solidarity movement. He was later suspended from preaching for a year after insulting remarks about Jews. ... Jankowski, who already has a wine branded with his image under the name 'Monsignore,' said he would be on the panel for 'castings' of waitresses for the 16 cafes he plans to open in major Polish cities." (Yahoo News, 3 July) Wine making? Cafe owners? What about that story about Jesus casting money changers from the temple? On Sunday mornings priests can preach against materialism but capitalism rules the rest of the week.

Big Brother is watching you 

"Every day in London, an average person is captured on camera 300 times — on a bus or subway, in stores or office buildings, or simply walking on the street. Britain is home to 20% of the world's closed-circuit cameras, according to a report issued last year by the nation's independent Information Commissioners Office. That may make Britons the most closely monitored people in the world. There are 4.2 million such cameras throughout the country, or one for every 14 people." (USA Today, 4 July) Modern Britain is even more closely monitored than dreamt of by Orwell in his dystopia 1984.

Charity as a status symbol 

The immense wealth enjoyed by the British capitalist class is well illustrated by their charity donations. "Two tycoons have in the past few days earmarked stupendous sums for charity: hedge fund manager Chris Hohn, a prime mover in the fight to take over ABN Amro, is giving away £230m, and Peter Crudas, the founder of CMC Markets, is donating £100m. ... The rich have complex motivations for their philanthropy; a real desire to do good may be mixed with wallet-waving competition between Masters of the Universe. Some hope to disarm critics who are uneasy at the gap between rich and poor. Others have so much money they genuinely don't know what to do with it." (Observer, 8 July)