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.

Quote . . . Unquote (1972)

From issue number 2 (1972) of The Western Socialist

We couldn't have said it better 

"Look at it this way. America is run largely by and for about 5.000 people who are actively supported by 50,000 beavers eager to take their places. I arrive at the round figure this way: maybe 2.500 megacorporation executives, 500 politicians, lobbyists and Congressional committee chairmen. 500 investment bankers, 500 commercial bankers, 500 partners in major accounting firms, 500 labor brokers. If you don't like my figures, make up your own. We won’t be far apart in the context of a country with 210-million people. The 5.000 appoint their own successors, are responsible to nobody. They treat this nation as an exclusive whorehouse especially designed for their comfort and kicks. The President of these United States, in their private view, is head towel boy. They prefer clever flunkies who. like most of the present White House gang, are so slippery they can enter a telephone booth and leave by the side door.

For most of us, the 210-million, the result is a tearing frustration. Frustration with unemployment, inequity, taxes and prices, to be sure, but under it all a rage at the giant, impregnable, impenetrable, anonymous, unaccountable. irresponsible,  immoveable bastions of power. And now, through the Naderites, through the blizzard of shredded documents at I.T.T., we get our noses rubbed in the whole sick operation of decadent power blocks.

The time has come to have dreams, hopes as tangible as an A.P. dateline and not far off." 

Robert Townsend in New York Times Book Review Section, April 30. 1972

What class are you? (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

Do you believe that America is a free society, one in which each citizen has the same rights as all citizens, where hard and fast socio-economic class divisions do not really exist? There are not many today who believe that old wives’ tale although the time was, in the memory of many of us, when it was a widely accepted myth.

We do not mean to imply that most Americans, today, are any clearer on the question of class. In fact, sociologists in these times have done a remarkable job in confusing the issue. In America, they inform us. there are a number of distinct classes. The writer Vance Packard, in “The Status Seekers," sets down a total of five divisions, two of them in what he calls "the Diploma Elite" and three in “The Supporting Classes." On top of the heap are the members of “The Real Upper Class" and “The Semi-Upper Class." On the lower levels running from top to bottom are “The Limited Success Class," “The Working Class,” and “The Real Lower Class." Note well that Mr. Packard does recognize that there is a working class but it is but one among three distinct "supporting'’ classes. The working class, in Mr. Packard's scheme of things, seems to be sandwiched between a top slice of white-collar and higher income blue-collar workers, and a bottom slice of the lower I.Q. workers, the slum dwellers.

There are, no doubt, other class designations, that are better known, designations such as upper upper, lower upper, upper middle, lower middle, upper lower, and lower lower. If you were not confused before now you should be by now. And yet, such terms are used by professionals who are supposed to know what they are talking about because their field is sociology.

Well, let’s take a closer look at the confusion. How does one go about determining one’s class? By education? By Income? Or perhaps it should be based on one’s parents' education or income, or on one’s children’s education or income? Where do the operators of a mamma and pappa grocery store that keeps open on a 12-hour-per-day, seven-day week basis fit? Suppose they wind up with $10,000 a year but have no better than high school education, or perhaps not even that much? Are they lower middle? But supposing they have a doctor or lawyer son and own a house in a better-type neighborhood? Then they might be upper middle. Or perhaps even lower upper If their son’s income is away up there.

Or how about the college graduate with an income of $12,000 per year. Is his class determined by his education or his income or both? And is he in a higher or lower class than a construction worker who dropped out of high school but who earns $15,000 per year and owns a split level home next to his? But, you might protest, the construction worker is not secure because were the building boom to slow he would suffer in income. Ah yes! But the college graduate is in the same boat or have you forgotten the engineers, doctors, and lawyers who adorned the WPA rolls In the 30s? Professionals with degrees also sell the commodity labor-power, their particular skills, and are subject to the vicissitudes of the labor market, too.

Socialists have a far simpler and far more scientific method of determining class. Do you work because you must work in order to live, be you doctor, lawyer, engineer, bricklayer, hod carrier, grocery clerk, or casual odd job laborer? Then you belong to the working class and there’s no use trying to kid yourself into thinking otherwise. Certainly some workers earn more than others, live better, but the size of one’s salary is not pertinent to the question of class. If your income is not based upon wages or salaries but upon rent, interest and/or profit you are a member of the capitalist class, one of some 10% of the population. You may be a big capitalist or you may be a small capitalist but this is not the point. Socialists divide society into two basic classes based upon ownership or lack of ownership of the means for producing and distributing wealth. And socialists aim for a world in which classes, real or imaginary, will cease to exist, where people will no longer be classified as capitalist or worker but simply as people.

Voice From The Back: Unnatural causes (1999)

The Voice From The Back Column from the August 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unnatural causes

In Ethiopia, people suffer from the natural disaster of drought. But Oxfam also works with poor people to help them combat a disaster more destructive than any natural calamity: poverty. Take Bangladesh: the world was shocked by the catastrophic cyclone and floods in 1991, in which 140,000 died. Yet the same number of children are killed by poverty in Bangladesh every 2 months. The main killers are common diseases, often spread by dirty water, like diarrhoea. Worldwide, a mother watches her child die of diarrhoea every 8 seconds. Oxfam begging letter, June.

At the class divide

There is, for example, a house price boom going on—at least for those living in the advantaged parts of the country. The half a million pound house is becoming a commonplace and a million pounds is no longer rare; more extraordinarily still, prices are rising by 20 or 30 percent a year. To buy such a house demands a mortgage of a quarter a million or more, and that in turn, even with today’s interest rates, implies monthly repayments of around £2,000 a month. But for a growing number of households, where both partners work, such repayments can be paid relatively easily. It may mean both are working for 50 or 60 hours a week and the parenting of their children, even the caring of their pets, is being subcontracted; but the mortgage can be paid. Observer, 6 June.

They own them all

Eighty-two percent of corporate stock in America is held by the wealthiest 10 percent of families. But over half those shares, the controlling stake, is owned by the richest one percent alone. The membership of this One Per Cent Club has expertly diversified portfolios and trusts. They own GM and Ford, Monsanto and its “competitor” Dow Chemical. Ergo, they don’t care which horse wins the race because they own the whole race track. So what does the Wealthy One Per Cent want? Answer: more wealth. Where will they get it? As with a tube of toothpaste, they are squeezing from the bottom. Observer, 6 June.

Trust 

The Prime Minister yesterday urged employers and unions to end the “often meaningless ritual” of the annual pay round when he launched a £5 million fund to promote partnership at work. He made the call as part of the Government’s plan to reduce the causes of regular conflict between employers and the unions in a speech at a Trades Union Congress conference in London aimed at promoting partnership. Mr Blair said the unions must resist reverting to the “bad old days” of the “them and us” climate of the 1970s and work at being more committed to business. The £5 million will be used to train managers and trade union officials to work together more effectively and to build trust between unions and businesses. Metro, 25 May.

Exploitation must increase 

Businesses in many European countries are outraged at a rising tide of social legislation and working directives, which they claim stifle enterprise and competitiveness, threaten jobs and cost billions. They support the view held by many UK businesses that without more flexibility, enterprises will go bust. At the head of their hate list are the Social Chapter, which includes trade union rights, the Working Time Directive limiting employees’ working hours, and a mass of environmental regulations. Financial Mail on Sunday, 6 June.

Better than opium? 

Our national lottery’s licence is up for grabs and the only question is: will Camelot win it again? The lottery’s sole problem is that we in Britain are currently spending only £100m a week on it, so they are launching a new game next week to tempt us to blow a little more . . . Last year one independent, British, world-class academic revealed that more than 100,000 children in their early teens were seriously hooked on gambling. Those findings, based on publicly-funded research, were so worrying that the government tried to suppress them. Guardian, 3 June.

What starvation?

Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler is expected to propose doubling the proportion of arable land to be left uncultivated by farmers next year. Experts predict that he will propose a set-aside rate of at least 10 percent in the 1999 season. Commission officials say the current level of 5 percent has failed to prevent soaring cereal production, causing a sharp drop in EU market prices and forcing the institution to buy in large amounts of surplus wheat and barley at the guaranteed price of 119 ecu per tonne. “Surplus stocks stand at about 15 million tonnes at present. We estimate that if this rate of 5 percent is carried over into next year, they will rise to 25 million tonne,” said one official. European Voice, 4/10 June.

Note on inspiring conference in U.S.A. (1958)

Party News from the February 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

I learn that some American readers are disturbed by the fact that, in the write-up of my trip to America in the November Socialist Standard, I did not mention the festering slums, the dingy tenements, the innumerable houses like large dog kennels only more dilapidated, the turmoil inside the factories, and the other social sores. To the people for whom I was writing it is common knowledge that every modern city in the world has its large cesspools of misery—American cities no less than others. Likewise that the insides of factories are places where tortured humanity toils and sweats for the class that owns.

The paragraph that led to a misconception is preceded by the sentence: “I would add a few words on my impressions—necessarily scanty." I then mentioned a few things that I thought would interest members and sympathisers here—among them a reference to wood-built houses to indicate that they could be as pleasant and comfortable as those built of brick. I did not think it necessary to add that there were thousands of them that were practically uninhabitable. In another column of this paper there are references to the appalling state of housing in the United States.

Perhaps I should add that I was only making a comparison of a few externals to indicate how factories and streets could be laid out in the future. I did not need to go inside the offices and factories; I knew what they were like before I set out on the visit, and so did those for whom I was writing. Of course there is rush and tear inside, but I was interested in some differences outside, compared with here. Naturally my references only concerned the particular places I visited, which are mentioned in the write-up.

Need I also add that I did not go to America to study conditions and report on them—that would have taken months. I simply went out to meet, and become closer acquainted with, the members and sympathisers connected with our companion parties over there. When ' I came back I wanted members and sympathisers here to know how warmly I was received, and those in America to know how much I appreciated the reception they gave me.

Gilmac.

Film Review: Jumping the Broom (2011)

Film Review from the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jumping the Broom is a black (and you can bet there’s no pun intended) comedy about class distinction in America’s black community.

Sabrina Watson (Paula Patton) a successful lawyer, from a wealthy family, falls for Jason (Laz Alonso), a Wall Street wiz-kid, whose mother Pam (Loretta Devine) is a postal worker. Tensions flare the day before the wedding, when the two families meet for the first time. Pam feels ultra defensive, especially when she observes the Watson’s home on Martha’s Vineyard, which she compares to the Kennedy compound. When she says grace at supper, the evening before the wedding, Pam sets the tone for the movie by being blatantly insulting.

The crux of the matter becomes her insistence that the ‘Happy Couple’ “Jump the Broom” This dates back to when African slaves were not allowed to marry and jumped over a broom, which was the equivalent of a ceremony.

Mrs. Watson (Angela Bassett) is totally opposed to this on the grounds that it was a slave ritual. She informs Pam that her family had never been slaves and, in fact, once owned them. That blacks themselves, sometimes, had black slaves is a little-known fact of American history. Class distinctions and the hostilities they create reach boiling point, causing family secrets, such as Sabrina’s real parentage, to be revealed. Disgusted with everything, the bride refuses to marry and flees the scene.

This is where the movie, which is Salim Akil’s directional debut, breaks down. When everyone’s been rubbed the wrong way and all hitherto concealed feelings are in the open, it becomes kiss and make up and “lets give the audience a happy ending” time. This is hardly believable of any family in such a previously volatile situation. What is believable is that, if capitalists invest in anything, they will want as good a return as they can get. If it means giving the public an unrealistic ending, they will do so.

There is nothing new about class distinctions based on money, nor hereditary titles among America’s black community. In 1948 when Nat King Cole married Maria Ellington, her wealthy aunt, Dr. Charlotte Hawkins, shunned him because, although wealthy at the time, Cole came from a poor family. Dr. Hawkins, coming from a more prosperous one, had founded America’s first finishing school for African American ladies and boasted of her friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt. When the happy couple returned from their honeymoon, Hawkins paid for a banquet in their honour as she considered it her duty, but refused to attend.

Capitalism is as divisive as it is corrupting whether the community be black, white, red, yellow or any other colour, economics will always cause distinctions between people.

Steve Shannon

Finance and Industry: The Stock Exchange (1962)

The Finance and Industry Column from the June 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Stock Exchange

The Stock Exchange has spent some time over the past years in trying to improve its public image, which was so badly mauled by the slumps between the wars. About eight years ago a Visitors' Gallery was opened, from which anybody can watch the Exchange at work. The Secretary's department is eager to answer any enquiries and will send a list of brokers on request. And now. although they have always frowned firmly and finally upon any broker advertising himself, the Stock Exchange is itself launching out on a publicity campaign.

The theme is that the work of the Exchange vitally affects us all and that without it we would all be a lot worse off. "Without investment,” says one advertisement, “ British commerce would just cease to exist. And without the Stock Exchange, investment would be next to impossible.” Vintage ad-man's stuff, this. Capitalism always took care to develop the machinery which its property basis needed, but that does not make that machinery socially desirable or useful. The Stock Exchange was developed to organise some of Capitalism's investments, but even without it there would still have been a Capitalist class who would have grown very rich from the work of the rest of us. So when the Stock Exchange pats itself on the back they are making a social virtue out of an anti-social necessity.

Who are the advertisements intended to influence? Presumably the Capitalists, who have the money to invest, already know all about the Stock Exchange. This must also apply to the trustees and the funds' organisers whose job it is to invest other people's money. Could the ads. be aimed at the worker who has a little money which he would normally put aside in the Post Office, for his holiday or something similar? A small gamble in stocks and shares would be enough to convince many workers that they were Capitalists and so make them loyal supporters of Capitalism. But many workers who play the shares find that for everyone who wins on the Stock Exchange somebody else must lose and that, although the Capitalists can take these losses, to lose is a different matter for them.

So we exclude ourselves from the scope of the advertisement's claim, that the Stock Exchange is ". . . helping us all to live as we want to.” Socialists want lo live in a free world, which is owned by its people. The Stock Exchange does not help us to live that life: in fact, it does just the opposite. By misleading workers into accepting Capitalism as a dynamic, logical, beneficial system it prevents us all from living not just the lives we want but the lives we desperately need.

How few own how much?

There are certain essential facts about Capitalism upon which we have always based our case against it. However the system may change in small ways, these facts are as relevant today as they always have been.

One of them is that the overwhelming mass of the world’s wealth is owned by only a small proportion of its population. That, like all property societies, Capitalism is made up of a small number of owners and a vast majority who own nothing or virtually nothing.

Equally important is the fact that this pattern has remained fundamentally unchanged over the years.

As long ago as 1904. Sir Leo Chiozza Money showed that about one-third of the country's total income was taken by only 3 per cent. of the population. In 1908, he estimated that about half was taken by 12 per cent.

In 1913, Sir J. C. Stamp calculated that no more than 36,000 owned about one-third of the total national wealth and that 400,000, or a tenth of the population, owned two-thirds of it. Another investigation by Daniels and Campion showed that in the same year one per cent. of the population owned 70 per cent. of the total capital and that 5 per cent. owned between 85 and 90 per cent.

The same investigators estimated that in 1924 one per cent. owned 60 per cent. of the national wealth and that 5 per cent. still owned 80 per cent, of it.

How has this position changed at the present time? In spite of all the talk of the "affluent society" and "you’ve never had it so good,” hardly at all.

The Economic Editor of the Observer has recently calculated that 27 per cent. of total personal wealth is accounted for by one-half of one per cent. of the people; 35 per cent. by one per cent: 42 per cent. by 1½ per cent.; and 52 per cent. by 2½ per cent. He adds that all these calculations probably under-estimate both the total of wealth and the inequality of its distribution since most of its owners have already taken steps to avoid the full effects of death duties (his figures are based on Inland Revenue estate duty figures).

And in the United States.

As chance would have it, a similar enquiry about the position in the United States has just been published. It reveals that in 1953 a minority of 11 per cent. owned 60 per cent. of the total American assets. These figures are again based on estate duty returns and would appear to under-estimate the true proportions as with the U.K. figures.

We hope to get hold of the book in due course to see what other information it gives about wealth ownership under American Capitalism, but even the sparse details quoted above make it clear that the position is basically similar to that in Britain.

Omission.

The paragraph on the railways in last month's issue unfortunately omitted to mention the amount of interest still paid out yearly on the £1,000 million of government stock handed over to the former railway owners by the Labour Government in 1946. The figure is £30 million.

Almost £500 million has therefore since been paid out in interest by a concern which is now so deep in the red that nothing will apparently save it. And this interest will continue lo be distributed year in and year out unless the government should one day decide to redeem the stock. Should this happen, the lucky bondholders will be paid out at par to the tune of the full £1,000 million.

No doubt about it. Whatever our Labour Government did not do, they certainly did the railway owners proud.

Stan Hampson

Voice From The Back: The Class Divide (2011)

The Voice From The Back column from the may 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Class Divide                                            

In a recent issue of the Guardian newspaper there was an inserted leaflet from the charity WaterAid. It was appealing for £52 million in a campaign to change the lives of 884 million people who still lack clean water and the 2.6 billion who have nowhere safe to go to the toilet. According to the leaflet “It’s a fact that around 4,000 children die every day from diarrhoea because they lack clean water and sanitation.” If  £52 million seems like a lot of money it should be noted in that same newspaper there was an  article that reported the sale of super luxurious flats in London. “The property tycoons behind London’s most lavish residential development are £62 million better off after fresh details emerged of sales at One Hyde Park. The Candy brothers, Nick and Christian, and their backers have pocketed the sum after selling one sixth floor property for £22m, and one on the second floor for £21.6m …. A penthouse flat in the development is understood to have been sold for £135m, but Land Registry documents have yet to be filed.” (Guardian, 16 March) WaterAid’s appeal for £52 million seems modest compared with these sums, but that is how capitalism works. The poor die young and the rich live in luxury based on the misery of the poor. 4,000 kids are dying every day, are you going to do anything about it?

Comic Book Capitalism                                     

Capitalism is an insane society that values things much more than human beings. The following news item should be read with the knowledge that millions of people are trying to exist on the equivalent of $1.25 a day. “A comic collector has been caught in Spider-Man’s web, paying $1.1 million for a near-mint copy of “Amazing Fantasy” No. 15 that features the wall-crawler’s debut. The issue, first published in 1962, was sold Monday by a private seller to a private buyer, ComicConnect.com chief executive Stephen Fishler told The Associated Press on Tuesday. It’s not the highest price ever paid for a comic book, an honor that goes to “Action Comics” No. 1 with Superman on the cover, which went for $1.5 million.” (Yahoo News, 9 March) Millions of dollars spent on nonsense while real human beings die of hunger. It is not funny, it is not comic. It is disgraceful.

Another Day, Another Disaster
                    

Newspapers are quick to cover a story like the miners rescued from the cave-in in Chile, but mining disasters are so common that they hardly register in the media compared to important events like a Royal wedding. So it should come as no surprise to learn of the following event only being covered by a few lines in the national press. “At least six workers were killed and 46 trapped by a methane explosion in a coal mine in southwestern Pakistan. An official said that the mine was declared dangerous two weeks ago, but the warning was ignored.” (Times, 21 March) The reality inside a capitalist society is that coal and the profits that can accrue from it is much more important that human lives.

Rich and Poor in the USA                                    

In a recent newspaper debate about the growing inequalities of wealth in the USA  entitled “Rising Wealth Inequality: Should We Care? Why do Americans seem unperturbed about the growing gap between the rich and the poor?”, Michael I. Norton an associate professor at the Harvard Business School, who is  currently co-writing a book on money and happiness, made some interesting observations. “In a recent survey of Americans, my colleague Dan Ariely and I found that Americans drastically underestimated the level of wealth inequality in the United States. While recent data indicates that the richest 20 percent of Americans own 84 percent of all wealth, people estimated that this group owned just 59 percent believing that total wealth in this country is far more evenly divided among poorer Americans.” (New York Times, 22 March) It may have escaped the professors’ notice, but all the media is owned by the rich and it is in their interest to spread the false notion that capitalism is a fair and equitable society.  

Those Lazy Workers Again                                 

“Almost every NHS nurse works more than their contracted hours and one in five does so every shift, a new poll shows. Some 95% of nurses say they work longer hours than they are paid for, according to ICM research for the Royal  College of Nursing. . .Many nurses say they have to skip meals and rarely or never get the breaks at work to which they are entitled…” (Observer, 10 April)

Family Values

“British families are facing the biggest peacetime squeeze on their finances since 1921, according to a leading economic consultancy. Soaring inflation and weak earning growth will leave the average family £910 worse off than two years ago, according to analysis by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR).” (Sunday Times, 10 April).

Home and Away (2020)

Book Review from the April 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

No Home For You Here: a Memoir of Class and Culture by Adam Theron-Lee Rensch (Reaktion Books £14.95.)

Rensch was born in rural Ohio in 1984 and spent much of his childhood in a mobile home that had been moved from a trailer park after his family were evicted for not paying rent in protest at conditions there. He became a university student, and much of the book, which includes both personal and more general accounts, deals with the conflict between being a ‘white-trash kid’ and a ‘liberal intellectual’. His family did not have much money but they did have fun, his mother tells him, while Rensch came to owe $160,000 in student loans.

Rather than a characterisation in terms of physical or mental labour, he is keen to offer a material definition of class, based on ownership of resources: the capitalists control and allocate economic resources, while the working class have to sell their labour power in order to live. Even so, there are some unclear references to the middle class, which seems to consist of small-scale capitalists. Working-class life in the US has become increasingly pressurised: the minimum wage has nowhere near kept up with inflation, leading to widespread poverty. In 2016, around 30 percent of wage-earners had an annual income of less than $15,000. Credit cards are used to fund spending, resulting in total household debt exceeding total disposable income.

Some of Rensch’s friends died young, one through suicide at 33, one of a heroin overdose at 34. His father died after a fall, aged just 46: an unemployed widower with ‘nothing to his name but time’, who drank and gradually became less liberal in his politics (‘between losing his job to the economy and his [second] wife to cancer, my father had become a reactionary’). The difference between failure and (relative) success is often just due to luck.

In rural areas, there is very little rented accommodation available, hence the need to buy a house and the extent of predatory lending to enable house purchase; hence, too, the ubiquity of subprime lending and the resulting crash of 2008. It is hard for people to leave the rural US, as doing so requires considerable time and money, including having a reliable car so you can look for a job. In small towns, churches ‘provided a crucial sense of belonging’.

The book offers a well-told account of inequality and the lack of social mobility. Rensch acknowledges that he does not have an easy solution, though he does refer to ending the tyranny of wage labour. And ponder this: ‘admiring the beauty of poverty and despair is easier than trying to change it’.

Paul Bennett

Voice From The Back: Good Will Hutton (2001)

The  Voice From The Back column from the April 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Good Will Hutton 

Surprise, surprise—the journalist Will Hutton, Keynesian economist and supporter of New Labour has actually written something interesting:

“The wealthy are doing well in America. Since 1976, the share of wealth owned by the wealthiest one per cent of Americans has doubled courtesy of the explosion of stock options, near halving of the top rate of income tax and the cuts in inheritance and capital gains tax. As a result the top one per cent of households own more than the bottom 95 percent of Americans combined” (Observer, 25 February).

Construction site carnage

  “Deaths of construction workers are ‘spiralling out of control’ as building companies slash staffing numbers in a bid to meet tight margins. There have been 100 fatal accidents on British sites over the last year in an industry booming thanks to increased orders and consolidations. Unions blame this ‘construction site carnage’ on firms that force workers to go self-employed. George Brumwell, general secretary of the builders’ union UCATT, said: ‘The increase in the number of employees forced to go self-employed leads to corner-cutting, risk-taking, people doing jobs they are not trained to do, and cash-saving at all costs'” (Observer, 25 February).

Supporters of capitalism delight in telling socialists that competition and the market are the most efficient way to run society. According to the above press report, capitalism is the best way to run society—if you happen to be an undertaker.

10,000 kids a day

Profit is the driving force of capitalism. The environment, the health and happiness of humanity is of no importance in relation to the profit motive. This has been again illustrated by the WHO report Water for Health; Taking Charge:

  “More than a billion people lack access to clean water, despite 10 years of intense efforts by aid agencies to avert drought and pollution. An investigation by the World Health Organisation has revealed that tens of thousands of children are dying every day of thirst or from diseases triggered by infected or poisoned water. The WHO report, to be published next month says global warming will exacerbate the situation. ‘The greenhouse effect is already bringing more extreme weather and that means more droughts and more outbreaks of serious flooding,’ said Dr James Bartram (co-ordinator of the WHO’s water, sanitation and health programme). With flooding, drinking supplies get contaminated with sewage and people can no longer consume unpolluted water. Epidemics of disease, such as cholera then break out” (Observer, 25 February).

Mysterious indeed

The Judeo-Christian God is a particularly blood-thirsty deity. According to his followers he is a dab hand at slaughter, famine and pestilence. Not to be outdone the Muslim deity (or is he the same one?) has been busy on the mayhem trail lately. The ways of God are indeed mysterious but those of his superstitious adherents are downright baffling.

  “Thirty-five Muslims were crushed to death in a stampede near the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia yesterday, as tragedy once again struck the annual hajj pilgrimage. The victims, 23 women and 12 men, mostly elderly and of various nationalities, were trampled and suffocated when a huge crowd in Mina valley rushed towards one of three giant pillars representing the Devil during a ritual known as ‘Stoning of Satan’. It was the first such tragedy at the hajj since 1998 when at least 118 pilgrims died, and more than 180 were injured in a stampede at the same spot in the third and last day of the stoning ritual. A year earlier, 343 pilgrims were killed and more than 1,500 injured when a fire destroyed 70,000 tents in Mina. The worst hajj disaster came in 1990 when 1,426 pilgrims were crushed to death in a stampede when a bottleneck developed at the entrance to a congested tunnel” (Times, 6 March).

It’s not cricket

The socialist view that capitalism distorts every human endeavour and makes it a mere commodity to be sold on the market place was recently illustrated by that arch-conservative the former Test Cricket umpire Harold Davis Bird (Dickie Bird):

  “I think it is very, very sad that the old umpire has gone, but it all boils down to money. Winning means everything—don’t get me wrong—we all like to win but, once we lose the enjoyment of playing the sport you’re gone and it’s all down to money” (c.CrickInfo.Ltd, 6 March).

The futility of reform 

  “The Government’s measures to help the most excluded people in society have had no significant effect, researchers have concluded The study, Low-income Families in Britain: Work, Welfare and Social Security in 1999, found that more than 80 per cent of children in households where neither parent worked were forced to go without basic necessities.” (Times, 15 March)

Material World: I Wannabe a Plutocrat! (2013)

The Material World Column from the August 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Material World, 

My life’s dream is to become a fully paid-up member of the capitalist class. Do you have any advice? How much money do I need to join? I am willing to work hard, but I need some guidance. 

Greed is good! 

Wannabe Plutocrat

Dear Wannabee Plutocrat,

Your greed and ambition are commendable, but your ‘willingness to work hard’ suggests a certain naivety. What sort of attitude is that for a would-be capitalist? The so-called ‘work ethic’ is strictly for the proles. The key to becoming a capitalist – seeing that you lacked the good sense to be born to rich parents – is to get other people working hard for you!

I am sure you will understand why I cannot possibly give away specific advice on how to make money. But you happen to be in luck, because I still have a few copies left of my invaluable Swindler’s Handbook: Never Give a Sucker an Even Break ($99 plus sales tax, postage free). And you have my assurance that every technique described in the handbook is completely legal.

There is no annual charge for membership in the capitalist class. But you do need to have enough money for you and your family to live in comfort – or, better yet, luxury – without ever finding yourself in the humiliating situation of having to sell your ability to work.

For detailed information on the various strata of the capitalist class in the United States, I recommend the ‘Who Rules America?’ website maintained by Professor G. William Domhoff of the University of California at Santa Cruz (www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica) and especially the paper contributed anonymously by an investment manager who serves wealthy clients.   

The Occupy Wall Street movement has popularised the idea of ‘the top 1 percent’. The anonymous investment manager advises that you enter the top 1 percent when your financial assets exceed $1.2 million. He warns, however, that the bottom half of the top 1 percent is full of such small fry as lawyers, physicians, upper middle managers and small business owners.

The adult population of the US is currently about 236 million (75 percent of a total population of 315 million). So there are well over two million adults in that top 1 percent – hardly a very exclusive club! If you want to be a plutocrat, you must set your sights higher than that.   

Fortunately, for just $2 million you can join the top half of the top 1 percent. For $3 million you can join the top quarter of the top 1 percent. For $5.5 million you can join the top 0.1 percent, and for $24.4 million the top 0.01 percent. At this rarefied level you will belong to a club of only 20,000 or so truly wealthy individuals. And besides being free of all financial worries you will enjoy ready access to the corridors of power, with politicians at your beck and call. You will have achieved your life’s dream, for you will be not just an ordinary capitalist but a member of the ruling circles, a real plutocrat!

Sincerely,

Material World

************************************************************

It is almost half a century since the first publication of Ferdinand Lundberg’s best-selling The Rich and the Super-Rich: A Study in the Power of Money Today (Lyle Stuart, 1968). Lundberg’s basic argument remains as valid as ever. In fact, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny minority is considerably greater today than it was then.

Chapter 1, entitled ‘The Elect and the Damned’, starts as follows:

  “Most Americans – citizens of the wealthiest, most powerful and most ideal-swathed country in the world – by a very wide margin own nothing more than their household goods, a few glittering gadgets such as automobiles and television sets (usually purchased on the instalment plan, many at second hand) and the clothes on their backs. A horde if not a majority of Americans live in shacks, cabins, hovels, shanties, hand-me-down Victorian eyesores, rickety tenements and flaky apartment buildings… 

  At the same time, a relative handful of Americans are extravagantly endowed, like princes in the Arabian Nights tales. Their agents deafen a baffled world with a never-ceasing chant about the occult merits of private-property ownership … and the vaulting puissance of the American owners. 

  It would be difficult … for a large majority of Americans to show fewer significant possessions if the country had long laboured under a grasping dictatorship… 

  Most adult Americans in the quasi-affluent society of today … are nothing more than employees. For the most part they are precariously situated; nearly all of them are menials…”

Statements such as the foregoing on the rare occasions when they are ventured (although strictly true and by no means new) are bound to be challenged by the alert propaganda watchdogs of the established order. These propagandists, when hard pressed, offer an incantation about a mythical high American standard of living which on inspection turns out to be no more than a standard of gross consumption. The statements must therefore … be monumentally and precisely documented and re-documented. Not that this will deter the watchdogs, who have limitless resources of casuistry and dialectic to fall back upon as well as an endless supply of white paper from denuded forests.

Stefan

WPA Strikes (1939)

From the December 1939 issue of The Western Socialist

Karl Marx, in his writings, predicted that some day the capitalists would have to take care of their slaves; that they would be forced to feed and otherwise keep alive an ever increasing army of unemployed workers. Modern capitalism has fulfilled this prediction with a vengeance.

In this era of chronic depression millions of workers are forced to remain idle. Their mental and physical energies cannot he utilized in a society based upon production for profit. These unemployed workers and their dependents must be either left to starve or be given a handout in the form of a dole or work relief. Handouts become the order of the day because the exploiting class cannot kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Furthermore, it is impossible to place these millions of workers in cold storage until they are again needed. The problem of what to do with these "useless” slaves would be rendered much simpler to the capitalist class if a few million were killed off in a war. (It must he remembered, however, that the capitalist nations do not wage wars with the object of getting rid of the unemployed.)

The following "solution" was actually proposed by John D. C. Weldon in the Magazine of Wall Street, Dec. 1935, who said. "Ten million potential workers and a total of possibly 30,000,000 people are outside the circle of work, production, and income. They are not only a burden — they are an economic loss — to speak with grim realism, the country would be relatively prosperous if they were annihilated.”

One of the mockeries of capitalism is that in the midst of this growing reserve army of unemployed, there exists a shortage of skilled workers. This is quite conspicuous in Great Britain and Germany. Only this month the N. Y. Times has been carrying British advertisements for skilled engineers. Thousands of industrial workers and farmers are being shipped into Germany. Even in the United States, there exists a shortage in many trades, notably airplanes. shipbuilding, and toolmaking.

Experience demonstrates that the old method of private charity can no longer cope with the conditions resulting from widespread unemployment, and thus the government is forced to administer relief. Though many capitalists oppose relief expenditures by the government as “wasteful extravagance” “harmful to business’, and that vague abstraction, “demoralizing the recipients”, unfolding events compel the capitalist class, through its executive committee, Congress, to hand out a dole. Buying off the discontent of hungry workers is more efficient than maintaining an enormous police force or employing other repressive apparatus to keep the workers in subjection. Disorders, riots, and possible insurrections of desperate workers are thereby averted.

Despite the realization by the property owners and their political representatives of the effective role that government-sponsored work relief and welfare play in the continuance of the status quo, their efforts are directed toward the reduction of the cost of relief. Economy measures are pushed in an effort to reduce the amount of dole paid welfare recipients and work relief employees, tending to bring the payments down to the bare subsistence level. Added to this is the old attempt to discourage the taking of welfare by placing a moral stigma thereon. The most recent application of this policy manifested itself in reduction of the rolls by quota cuts, extension of the work month to 130 hours, pay slashes and "30-day starvation furloughs.” These, together with the red tape, and the contemptuous attitude adopted toward welfare clients and WPA workers, are the typical methods employed to rid the relief rolls of idle workers. The result of these constant harrying attacks is to impair the precarious and already too low economic standing of the workers.

The tendency is to drive the standard of living towards and below the subsistence level. Yet, at the same time, for obvious reasons, they must see to it that this standard of living does not fall below the starvation level. There does arise, however, a point where the workers must and do resist. Through their limited WPA unions and unemployed organizations they attempt to withstand the pressure. This determination not to submit is inevitable and is the result of necessity and experience. Success can and has been obtained for the limited objective of resisting this pressure. Resistance has taken on various forms of activity including mass demonstrations, delegations, work stoppages, and strikes. In regard to the A. F. of L. strikes on the WPA in July 1939, there arises an interesting situation. The capitalist government ruling the U. S. A. refuses officially to recognize strikes on the part of WPA workers on the trumped-up grounds that "the people” can not strike against themselves. F. D. Roosevelt said, "You can’t strike against the government.” This statement becomes absurd in the face of the antagonism between workers and capitalists.

The real objection by capitalists to strikes of this kind is that they indicate a tendency that may develop into a threat to the capitalist state. This situation can be compared to the sit-down strikers disregard for private property. Though it is not a clearly formulated threat to the capitalist system, it does constitute a definite measure of loss of respect for the sanctity of the state. Confronted with these WPA strikes, the New Deal government loses some of its glamour and "benevolence.” The F. B. I. investigations, threats of arrest, removal from jobs, and the barring of home relief to WPA strikers betrays the real character of the New Deal. Whenever it becomes necessary, the capitalist state, as employer, confronting recalcitrant workers, is quick to strip off the velvet glove and wield its naked iron fist.

In view of this fact, it become apparent that victory for the working class depends upon control of that power, the state, which now strives to keep the workers in subjection and attempts to allay their discontent by offering them work relief and doles, which are. as other reforms, insufficient. The capture of “state power”, rather than the resisting of "state pressure”, must become the objective of the workers.

The concessions in the nature of reforms given to the workers under capitalism may temporarily alleviate but will never eradicate the misery of the working class. The continuation of capitalism with or without relief will only serve to perpetuate the hardships and suffering of the workers, both employed and unemployed. Capitalism has to have relief in order to exist. Ridding society of capitalism with its inevitable unemployment is the only solution. It can be seen that no amount or variety of reform will ever be able to abolish the workers' discontent. On the day that this discontent becomes crystalized into socialist understanding, we will see the end of capitalism and all its evil effects.

Peter Martel

A Culture of Contentment? (1993)

Book Review from the December 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Culture of Contentment. By J. K Galbraith. Penguin 1993.

Professor Galbraith, the venerable centre-left economist, has written another book on American capitalism. Nothing surprising in that — he has written many previous such books on slightly different themes. The main theme of this one is that a majority of Americans who actually vote are contented with the way things are and will vote for the party that says it will make them pay the least taxes.

Galbraith sees this culture of contentment as supported by a number of attitudes and beliefs. The first is that the allegedly contented majority the four fifths living above the poverty line — believe they are receiving their just desserts and are entitled to be angry if anything impinges on what they so clearly deserve. The second altitude is short-termism: don’t pay out of today's taxes for things that will only benefit people in the future.

Thirdly, the state is seen as a burden; measures to help the poor only sap their moral fibre and help to keep them poor. However, state measures designed to support the system or bail out unfortunate investors are acceptable (such as social security, military' expenditure, guarantees to depositors in ill-

fated banks). Fourthly, the contented are said to be tolerant of great differences in income and capital: the plush advantage of the very rich is the price the contented majority pays for retaining what is less but is still very good.

Galbraith, a long-time supporter of the Democratic Party, expands on these themes with wit, clarity and convincing research. But never with even a hint that the whole lousy system can and should be changed. The mood in which he prefers to write is "analytical and not adjuratory, detached and not, as far as possible, politically involved". Bringing news of capitalism's excesses of poverty and riches, misery and privilege, Galbraith obviously has no intention of being shot as the messenger. His point is not to change the world but to "understand" it.

Galbraith invites us to be sceptical about claims that America is a classless society. Yet his own conception of the American socio-economic structure seems equally unrealistic. He recognizes a "functional underclass" of at least 12.8 percent living below the poverty line. But he makes no mention of any other class except the contented majority. In this latter group are a tiny minority of billionaires — and millions struggling to make ends meet just above the poverty line. Perhaps, like the equal right of rich and poor to sleep under bridges, all except the underclass have an equal right to be contented with the system. In his last chapter, entitled "Requiem", Galbraith offers only a "sad ending". The two main parties — and he could be talking here about either the USA or Britain — offer alternative administrations of capitalism to slightly different but heavily overlapping constituencies. The underclass is dismissed as powerless, despite its growing numbers. Is there really as much contentment as Galbraith would have us believe? He seems to doubt it himself, since on the last page he writes of "the present discontent and dissonance".

Stan Parker

Is A Socialist Policy Applicable To America. (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Correspondent’s Letter and Our Reply.

Crockett, California.

I am an interested, though at present unaffiliated sympathiser, in fact an adherent to the principles and programme of your party, and have been in the recent past aligned with small study groups both in Detroit and in New York, patterned very much along the same line as your organisation in point of principles.

The question I am about to ask may or may not be fatuous, or ambiguous, it may even have been already gone over in your columns several times in the past year. I have not been able to get copies of your paper in a long time, but now that I live adjacent to San Francisco, I can get the “Standard” at McDonald’s book store as often as it comes, hoping that my query is given an airing in an early issue.

The Kautskian position is, as I understand it, fully endorsed by the S.P. of G.B., particularly where it emphasises the prime importance above all things of political action in the form of parliamentary representation, and by using the constitutional camouflage of the bourgeois state, as a means to attain power. All schemes, such as military coups de etat, are in that case foredoomed, and in the final analysis Socialism as Marx has it, must come about only through the efforts by and for the immense majority. Otherwise, it is not Socialism. Agreed. 

Is the editor able to answer a question that only has to do with America? If so how would he deal with a political situation at present, such as it now exists in the United States, that on the surface of it, and as far as the interests of the proletarian revolutionary movement is concerned, is well-nigh hopeless? I have run across this continent time and again over a decade, and have conversed with countless numbers of workers everywhere, besides reading contemporary periodical literature, giving a more or less accurate expression to the prevailing psychology of the American people. The popular notion is growing, and by now has become well-nigh universal, that political campaigns, election promises and programmes, ballots and everything else that goes with it, is hopelessly corrupt, and the very mention of Socialists, as a trial proposition, in way of political power, elicits no response.

The power of big business and the seemingly impregnable position of finance and industrial capital has, as it were, completely cowed and rendered tame the immense majority of the people in the United States. In the face of all this, what is there to be hoped for, if we are to go by what Kautsky tells us, and assuming that American “prosperity” breaks down in a year or two and renders living almost insupportable for millions who are now employed, and are living in a fools' paradise, to hear them talk, how is that condition going to bring about a swing towards anything that resembles intelligent co-operation in the working-class?

Can the inhibitions and ingrained superstitions of an idiotically ignorant and proud people such as the average Anglo-Saxon and Celtic, native American, be overcome and give way to a change of sentiment from that of extreme egotistic individualism to that of a class-consciousness in its correct sense in anything less than another generation? Does biology, and several other sciences, that deal with man, his physical and mental make-up, give us any hopes for a possibility of any much to be hoped for, sudden change, or at least a mental condition that will even listen to Socialist propaganda ?

I am not in the habit of transcribing articles, or writing anything, and you can condense this as you see fit, and answer it as far as you are capable of doing, living as you do, so far away from these conditions as they appear to me. In short, will Kautsky’s premise fit this country. I close hoping that you will give this due consideration and I remain,

Yours in revolt,

M. Wasson

OUR REPLY.

The above letter sets out by associating us with Kautsky’s attitude, and as the latter has continually shifted his ground politically, we must decline to be identified with such an anti-Socialist as Kautsky has shown himself to be.

Kautsky has, however, offered unanswerable criticisms of Lenin’s views on democracy and dictatorship, and no doubt our Californian correspondent has these points in mind.

The main question in the above letter deals with the application of Marx’s (and therefore the S.P.G.B.’s) policy to the United States. Socialist policy naturally depends for its application upon the conditions prevailing in a country, but those who argue that conditions in any country warrant an entirely different policy to ours, generally fail to deal with the so-called-differences in conditions between this and other countries.

The widespread ignorance of class interests among workers in U.S.A. offers no permanent hindrance to our Socialist policy. That ignorance is due to certain causes, and the lack of interest in revolutionary ideas amongst the masses is a phase which is true of every country for a time.

Economic development has rapidly converted the United States from a prairie into a nation of vast companies, where the largest and latest plant and machinery is in use, each employing many thousands under one roof.

The comparatively recent industrial growth and commercial expansion of the U.S.A. offers one reason for the so-called “better conditions" of labour. This is partly responsible for the lack of interest in social change amongst the workers there. This lack of interest, however, is not simply a reflex of “better” conditions, but a result of capitalist propaganda by press, priest and schoolmaster, which is more powerfully and carefully used in American life than perhaps any other country, to mould the working millions to capitalist views. The extremely careful selection of and control over teachers in school and college to avoid any advanced political views being taught, is notorious. Then we have the intense campaigns always subsidised to naturalise the immigrant arid “educate” him into worship of American institutions. The unexampled dominion of a vast newspaper and magazine press pouring out lies to cloud the “popular” mind is an immense factor in working-class ignorance there.

The primitive and highly-organised and well-financed religious bodies of America still have a remarkably large influence in U.S.A. These agencies of propaganda employed to keep the workers submissive, are effective because temporarily the conditions in the United States have not caused deep and lasting discontent. If a collapse of conditions causes vast discontent, can anything be hoped for if the working-class are ignorant of Socialism?

Such is the question asked by our correspondent.

Discontent in itself is not sufficient. We had 6 or 7 millions out of work in America in 1921 and 1922, but they were largely seeking charity or temporary relief whilst hoping for better times. They did not revolt though the Communists there told them the factories would never re-open, and that the revolution was on the way.

The insecurity of work in a country so highly productive and so scientifically organised in production as America is a very important element in the workers' life, and the growing experience of this in recent years does play a part in the workers' education. The apparent slowness of change in ideas amongst the workers there is evidently one of our questioner’s stumbling-blocks.

If he expects vast and rapid changes amongst the majority in a few years he is likely to be disillusioned. America has profited by European decline since the war, and has captured many of their markets, especially those on the American continent, and so for a while she will be able to keep the wheels turning. Apart from that aspect however, there is the fact to be faced that conditions in so vast and so recently developed a country as the U.S.A. cannot change the individualist outlook to a Socialist one overnight.

The conditions for generations bred an optimism and an individualism amongst the migrating settlers, and only continual experience of the insecurity and suffering of capitalist development can be effective in turning them to Socialist education for enlightenment.

Our experience and general information shows that interest in Socialist ideas and desire for social change does grow in the United States. The vast literature, even of Marx and Engels (apart from the more popular) which has been sold in America is an example that all is not as black as our questioner thinks. One large factor in their backwardness is the deliberate use of the labour leader over there as well as here, to confuse and mislead the worker. From Gompers down to the Communists parading as left-wing labour leaders, these have all been well used to side-track the worker. And as recent revelations and many “raids" and trials have shown, prominent Communists over there have been used by the authorities to preach violence by minorities, and so frighten wage-workers away from even the name of Socialism and Communism.

That conditions are likely to develop anti-capitalist views amongst the workers in U.S.A. is so well-known to the capitalists there that they have spent fabulous sums in controlling almost every agency of education and opinion, including the labour leader.

The open and constant use of the wealth of the few to control affairs by so-called corruption is inevitable, especially in the U.S.A., where the relatively few large owners do not enter into politics themselves, but hire the lawyers and professors to run affairs in their interest. Politics in America are as corrupt possibly as trade union officialism there. This, however, will not prevent or influence the awakened worker once be realises that economic and political action are essential for him, and that neither political or economic action are in themselves corrupt or need ever be corrupt once the workers understand and control the economic and political organisations for themselves and in their own interest.

With the overwhelming mass of the population in America being workers and possessing the majority of the votes as they do, there is no hindrance to them controlling the State machine in America for themselves once they want to and know what to do with it. There is no other way but control of political power in U.S.A., and the stupendous economic development of that country cannot but quicken what has already commenced—the ripening of the working-class mind, and the eventual acceptance of the Socialist position.

Adolph Kohn

State Murder in the USA. (1993)

From the October 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The law and order card is always the trump that struggling governments use to divert attention away from the crisis created by the capitalist system they help to run. Just as crime, law and order have been at the forefront of the political agenda in Britain, so too is this the case in America now if all else fails, there is always the scapegoat, the working class, potential miscreants and criminals who are responsible for social decline.

The only Western industrialized state that still applies the death penalty is the United States. Just as grotesque, in this land where its constitution proclaims the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", is that come election time candidate’s stance in the capital punishment debate can win or lose him or her a seat in Congress or the Senate.

In 1988 Democrat Michael Dukakis voiced his opposition to the death penalty and lost many votes in the presidential elections. Bill Clinton, as Governor of Arkansas, was all too aware of this when he later sanctioned the execution of a mentally subnormal teenager — he had in mind the 80 percent of the American electorate who belong to the pro-capital punishment camp.

To what extent Clinton’s victory last year in the race to the White House depended on his pro-death penalty views is open to question. But his views on the death penalty and on crime in America in general are now being used by Democrats to regain the political initiative. Basically, Clinton wants $3.4 billion funding for a plan that will put an extra 50,000 police officers on the streets. He also wants to expand the number of crimes punishable by death and to limit death row inmates to one habeas corpus appeal within six months of sentence. He also believes the law's governing the sale of handguns should be tightened calling for a 5-day waiting period for handgun purchases!

If any department in the American Establishment is devoid of logic it is certainly that which is responsiblc for law and order. In 1990 (the last year for which statistics are available), 37,155 Americans died of gunshot wounds. If this is not an abominable figure (3.000 have died in Northern Ireland since 1968), there are an estimated 200,000,000 firearms in circulation in America. Yet the Clinton camp have revealed no plans to curb the individual’s "right" to possess a firearm.

At present some 2.500 prisoners await execution on death row in 36 states. The statistics here are just as baffling. Between 1973 and 1988, executions and the lengthy appeal process they entailed cost Florida tax payers $57 million. Which is $3.2 million per execution. At the same time, a prisoner held in maximum security cost $40,000 per year — twice the cost had he been educated at Harvard. In the state of Texas the cost of an execution case is the equivalent to the cost of imprisoning three men for "life".

Anyone with a grain of common sense will realize that an extra 50.000 police officers, all with arrest quotas to meet, will mean a jump in prison statistics. Clinton could only say this on the matter: "The plan is tough. It will put police on the streets and criminals in jail" (Guardian, 12 August).

Perhaps no-one has told him that there are some one million prisoners in the United States, housed in federal, state and county jails the highest incarceration rate in the world, with imprisonment, rising at the rate of 13 percent per year, and the criminal justice system processing 1,500 new prisoners per day. Little wonder that new prison construction costs are running at $6 billion per year.

Against all the crass statistics on the vast amounts spent on imprisonment must be set the penny-pinching when it comes to executing death row inmates. States that do use the death penalty arc finding it cost efficient to use the lethal injection method of execution - the equipment costs a pittance.

Oklahoma has been using the lethal injection method since 1977. Apparently prison authorities did not want to fork out the $60,000 needed to fix the electric chair while, the $200,000 asking price for a gas chamber was out of the question. Surely a bullet to the head would have cost the state no more than one-dollar per year!

1977 was also the year that Texas’ Governor claimed lethal injection would "provide some dignity with death". Where is the dignity in being forcibly strapped into a chair by men in uniform and injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs?

In all forms of execution the prisoner suffers pain and trauma. Sitting in the gas chamber in 1983. Jimmy Lee Gray convulsed for eight minutes before dying. In 1985 William Van Diver took 17 minutes to die in the electric chair, requiring five charges. Observers reported seeing his flesh smoke. Even where lethal injection is used, groans have been heard 18 minutes into the execution.

Any true Socialist is appalled at the idea of the state having the right to execute its citizens. The death penalty in any form is a blatant violation of human rights — the most undignified and irreversible of all punishments. How do you resurrect an innocent man? State executions are in reality the state taking revenge on the wage-slave for a mistake he or she committed because of the frustrations caused by the contradictions of the capitalist system that they are conditioned to exist in.

Those who advocate the death penalty tend to use the time-honoured argument that the death penalty is a deterrent, that it helps to reduce crime. However, throughout the world, no sociologist nor any export hired to study the subject has been able to demonstrate conclusively that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to the commission of the crime for which it is exacted. Moreover, there is no proof that the abolition of the death penalty will lead to the nightmare consequences predicted by its propagandists.

In the United States in 1985, FBI research revealed that the number of law enforcement officers killed was almost four times as high in states with the death penalty than in states without it. This stark revelation led reformers to conclude that legal executions may actually stimulate violent crime by exemplifying society’s approval of killing.

The equation Capitalism = Mass Inequality. Frustration. Murder for Gain State Execution is backed up by further statistics. Since 1972, 60 percent of death row inmates were unemployed at the time of their crimes. Of the 2.500 on America’s death rows, 65 percent were in low-paid, unskilled jobs. A study carried out on the Texas judicial system found that prisoners with court appointed lawyers were over twice as likely to be given the death penalty as those who could afford a reputable defence team.

The American criminal justice system is also racist with black people murdering whites 11 times more likely to face execution than for white people murdering blacks. In Florida the ratio is 40-1! Of all men executed for rape since 1930, 90 percent were black. There are six black people in prison for every four in higher education.

State executions is capitalism at its ugliest. It is the state giving up on the individual and admitting that the social system under capitalism is not working — that the only solution to capital crimes is death.

As Clinton refuses to address the real problems facing America, and to look to solutions that have already been tried and failed in the past, American wage-slaves can expect a tough time ahead should they look for a quick way to bridge the gap between poverty and wealth.

John Bissett