Letter: But What Can I Do? (2007)

Letter to the Editors from the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

But What Can I Do?

“But what can I do?” How many times do you hear that or similar phrases from people too overwhelmed by the enormity of the task that they can’t see the wood for the trees?

Socialism isn’t going to be born overnight, that has long been agreed. It’s going to be a long uphill struggle by those with enough conviction against the million and one forces stacked against it, and I’m not talking about the forces of the imperial armies or the might of the transnational corporations, I’m talking about the likes of your brother-in-law who can only see as far as the next pay day and a six-pack in front of the TV, or the woman at work who can’t understand that you won’t buy a lottery ticket because winning the jackpot won’t exactly mean you beat the system. Life can get tedious explaining the same old obvious thing to yet one more sceptical punter, however, if we don’t………?

This is about one of my bêtes-noires, which is, why do so many people drink Coca  Cola? (insert your own pet-hate here.) Not only does this company have a terrible track record for union busting around the world even going so far as to be involved in killings by private militia, for depriving some Indian villages of water and poisoning wells through over-extraction in others, but it’s so full of sugar and junk that it tastes horrible and it’s harmful to health to boot.

All the restaurants, cafes and bars in the tourist areas close to here offer Coke or Pepsi whichever concession is dominant in the particular vicinity and it follows that their other soft drinks and bottled water are purchased through the same concession. In towns and villages outside the tourist areas it is unusual to be offered bottled water at restaurants, coffee houses, bus station cafeterias and the like.

Water comes in a jug from the tap. Village water here is clean, unadulterated and abundant. Many townfolk can be observed stopping at their favourite spring by the roadside to stock up with several days’ supply of what is considered the best drinking water. In the towns where chlorine etc is used in the public supply local shops deliver large containers of natural spring water (the preferred option) to homes and businesses.

In our very local favourite restaurant which served water bottled by the Coca Cola Co. here in Turkey (acknowledged in letters so small as to require both good light and good eyesight to see it and which has been guilty of union-busting here too), we would ask for a jug of village water from the tap, – no Coca Cola bottled water for us thankyou!

Over time and with a few more Turkish lessons under our belt we painstakingly explained our position to a number of employees and to the owners. One tack they understood and warmed to was that there are a number of small local water bottling plants, soft drink manufacturers and fruit juice companies (for the environment generally speaking local is better than national and national better than international). Very soon we noticed the presence of a local company’s bottled water on the tables in place of the  earlier offence to the eye and the conscience. And my water from the tap now tastes  even sweeter.

We’ve had similar results with another restaurant we patronise, up in the mountains by a fast-flowing river. All the food served here comes from within just a few miles and now that includes the bottled water too.

So, 2 down, 999,998 to go. A drop in the ocean? Yes. A message in a bottle? Maybe.

Janet Surman, 

Turkey.

Tiny Tips (2023)

The Tiny Tips column from the December 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Cost of living crisis, what cost of living crisis? A new breed of uber-luxury hotels in London is breaking records with rooms costing more than £1,000 a night as wealthy visitors flock to the capital for ‘experiences’ only (a lot of) money can buy. In the Peninsula on Hyde Park Corner, a short walk from Buckingham Palace, rooms start at a kingly £1,300. Despite the startling price tag, the hotel is said to be running at full capacity (Link).

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Pfizer recently announced it would increase the U.S. list price of its patented Covid treatment nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (Paxlovid) to $1,390 for a five-day treatment course. Experts at Harvard University have estimated that the cost of producing a five-day course of nirmatrelvir-ritonavir is $1 (Link).

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‘[Scientists] created weapons under the protection of St. Seraphim of Sarov because, by the ineffable providence of God, these weapons were created in the monastery of St. Seraphim… Thanks to this power, Russia has remained independent and free, and, of course, we must all cherish this remarkable feat of our scientists, who practically saved the country, in our hearts and memories,’, Russian Orthodox Church Head Patriarch Kirill saying that Russia’s nuclear weapons saved the nation (Link).

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@CraigMurrayOrg. To be entirely plain. I have always viscerally opposed war. I have dedicated my life to conflict resolution and reconciliation. But in the coming Gaza genocide, every act of armed resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah will have my support. If that is a crime, send me back to jail (Link).

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Hamas — being a reactionary, exclusivist outfit — has a ‘post-Israel’ vision that will produce an ethnically cleansed theocratic dictatorship, in other words ‘building up yet another system of exploitation’. More, their pogromist violence against Jewish civilians is not “cathartic”, or restoring Palestinian self-respect, but instead full-on racist sadism (Link).

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More than one million children experienced the ‘most extreme form of poverty’ last year, said Sky News, according to a new report that slams such ‘horrifying levels of destitution’ as a political choice. The report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that the number of people experiencing these levels of poverty in the UK has ‘increased by 61%’ between 2019 and 2022, with 3.8 million people experiencing destitution. More than half of destitute households have a ‘weekly income of less than £85’ (Link).

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Coca-Cola has quietly scrubbed references to Hamas-supporting BLM from its website (Link).

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The founder of a Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization is voicing his support of Jan. 6 prisoners and not shying away from endorsing former President Donald Trump as ‘the best candidate we have’ (Link).

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When Shevek asks the socialists of Nio Esseia what Anarres, which they see as their ‘moon,’, means to them, they respond that every time they look up at the night sky, they are reminded that a society with no government, no police, and no economic exploitation exists and cannot be dismissed as merely a utopian fantasy (Link).

Proper Gander: Super marketing (2023)

The Proper Gander column from the September 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

What’s the difference between Wagon Wheels and Cart Wheels? About 10p a pack and the colour of their packaging: Cart Wheels are Aldi’s cheaper version of the perennial chocolatey snack, which original maker Burton’s insists hasn’t shrunk over the decades. The differences – and similarities – between established brands like Wagon Wheels and supermarkets’ counterparts were the subject of Channel 4’s Secrets Of The Supermarket Own-Brands. Presenter Denise van Outen checks out the products lining the aisles, and chats with various experts to reveal how supermarket own-brands are more than just slightly inferior copycats of ‘proper’ brands. How they are marketed is as important as how they are manufactured, and the documentary only has enough time to outline some of the methods used to flog us one variety of comestibles over another. With its jaunty music and bright colours, the programme is pitched as a cheeky nudge to be more shopping savvy rather than a hard-hitting exposé of a racket. Despite this, it highlights how much we’re manipulated not just in what we buy, but also what we think we’re buying.

Most supermarkets have at least three ‘tiers’ of own-brand goods: the cheapest ‘budget’ range, the standard one which just undercuts the ‘proper’ brands, and the ‘premium’ one with the swankiest wrapping. Traditionally, ‘budget’ ranges were packaged in an obviously no-frills way, with the apparent cheapness of the design echoing the lower price. A tin of Tesco’s Value baked beans with its stark blue and white stripes looked quite unlike a can of Heinz Beanz. Strategies started to change around 2018, by which time discount chains like Aldi and Lidl had established themselves in the marketplace. Since then, ‘budget’ supermarket own-brands have been more likely to ape the packaging of their branded counterpart, such as Cart / Wagon Wheels and other favourites like Hula Hoops and Robinson’s cordials. Often, the branding will barely mention the supermarket and instead go for an image that suggests a homespun, small-scale producer, such as Sainsbury’s Stamford Street or Tesco’s Stockwell & Co. Both strategies disguise that the products are ‘budget’ own-brands, although the ‘premium’ ranges, such as Sainsbury’s Taste The Difference, aren’t shy with mentioning the shop. All this suggests that supermarkets no longer want their name to be associated with cheapness, even though cheapness is what more people are after since prices rocketed. Still, the strategies are doing what they’re supposed to, proven by how supermarkets generate more profits from their own-brands than from branded products.

The way that own-brand goods are manufactured is planned to maximise profits by minimising costs. Richard Crampton, Sainsbury’s Director of Fresh Food, admits that sometimes the three ‘tiers’ of their own-brand products, from ‘budget’ to ‘premium’, are all made in the same place. One example is their own-brand stuffed pasta, with each range distinguished from the others by slight variations in their recipes ‘enhancing that product’ to the ‘same high standards’, enthuses Crampton. There are also more similarities in the content of branded and own-brand goods than we might expect. For example, Hula Hoops and their replicas are both produced in the same crisp factory, albeit with varying ingredients or processes. And the six most well-known brands of washing powder are made by only two companies, with nearly all own-brand ones manufactured by a third. The diverse range of brands for what boils down to similar products by a few producers gives only an illusion of choice, one of capitalism’s hallmarks.

The companies get away with this because of how their branding strategies are underpinned by an understanding of psychology. One state of mind which they aim to encourage is loyalty to a particular product. We’re most likely to stick with ‘proper’ brands for toiletries, beauty products and cleaning materials, no doubt reinforced by their advertising campaigns which can ‘shout louder’, according to retail expert Miya Knights. While there’s more competition between own-brand and branded food and drink, some long-established names have maintained their loyal followers, such as Coca Cola. The documentary features YouTube food reviewers the Smythe family, whose parents resolutely only buy Coke. However, the predictable result of a blind taste test is that they mistake Lidl’s Freeway cola for ‘the real thing’, showing that the brand they adhere to isn’t as distinctive as they assume.

A related point was made when Denise and brand psychologist Jonathan Gabay set up a street stall to hand out Magnum-like ice creams to passers-by. Some are promoted with a snazzy image and an elaborate back story about how the ice cream gets churned, and others are only announced with the word ‘Aldi’ written in felt-tip. Even though the same ice cream was given out throughout, those which came with the sales pitch were thought to taste better than the ones without, even once the hoodwinked recipients were told the truth.

The two experiments show us how much our preferences, for food in this instance, are shaped by how they are commodified. A small number of producers have dominated the market by finding the most cost-effective ways to manufacture our more popular fodder. Tweaking the details of a basic recipe creates versions of the product which can be pitched to customers grouped by levels of spending ability. This lack of real choice between ice cream, cola or pasta is disguised by varying the branding, either a little or a lot. At its most manipulative, branding can even impact on how appetising we find the product, when we associate its image with good taste. Throughout, money dictates how this process plays out, in the costs of manufacturing and marketing, and then in the sales which turn into profits for the owners. The way that commodification moulds what we consume is inescapable in capitalism, of course, not just in what we use but also what we watch. Secrets Of The Supermarket Own-Brands itself was interspersed with glossy adverts and sponsored by a big name brand.

Mike Foster

Sting in the Tail: Competition Humbug (1991)

The Sting in the Tail column from the April 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Competition Humbug

Every Chairman and Director of every company will insist that competition is essential, indeed, is a sacred principle of capitalism.

But look at this: several top companies in the concrete business, Tarmac, Redland and RMC among them, have just been convicted of having 65 secret deals to keep concrete prices high.

The same situation exists in every industry. During the last few years 60 glass companies, including the largest, Pilkington, operated a price-fixing racket; 66 private bus operators colluded to avoid competing with one another, while ICI, BP and Shell did likewise in plastics. The list is endless.

Yes, they will all agree that competition is essential — for everyone else, but not for them.


Spare a Tear

Yet another left-wing firebrand has mellowed somewhat. Eric Heffer MP, recalls that when he first entered parliament he thought it was like "a great church which practised ancestor worship". (The Guardian, 20 February).

Now that he may be forced to retire through ill-health, he will "miss the place", especially "the friends . . . from all sides of the House". Tories too? Certainly, indeed he even admired Enoch Powell who could whip-up a bit of racial hatred.

Above all, he will miss "the great debates", or, put another way, those bawling sessions which often degenerate into near-riots, and is

  ". . . glad that Churchill insisted that the Chamber be restored exactly as it was . . . with the seats facing each other, like choir stalls. It gives an intimacy . . ."

Isn't that touching?

So remember, the next time some Labour MPs follow Heffer’s example by singing "The Red Flag" in parliament or mucking around with the mace, it doesn’t follow that they don't fondly embrace the hoary Institutions of what has been called "the best private club in the world".


Opportunism Knocks

Gorby's attempt to boost his waning status through his Gulf "peace" initiative had Labour leader Neil Kinnock worried.

Delaying the ground attack, he fretted, might encourage Saddam to regroup his forces and

  he feared a hold-up in military action could give Iraq a wrong signal, possibly prolong the war and causing more loss of life.

ITV's Oracle (22 February)

Once he was Kinnock the left-wing firebrand, then he became a "Statesman", now he's a military strategist.

The opportunist tradition set by all previous Labour leaders is obviously safe in Kinnock's hands.


War for Freedom?

After the cessation of hostilities in the Gulf many newspapers went well over the top with claims such as "Kuwait City is freed". Anything approaching freedom in that city has a long way to go, whether ruled by an Iraqi or Kuwaiti dictator.

The Anti-Slavery International recently reported a case of how the Kuwaiti ruling clique treated their workers in London, never mind Kuwait City.

  Alice, a Filipino domestic who said she worked for Kuwait's ruling al-Sabah family, said: "I was forced to sleep on the floor between the bedroom and the bathroom. I had to wear a bell so they could call for me at any time.
  I worked from 6am to 2am each day. They fed me their left-overs and used to kick me at night, on their way to the bathroom.
  They kept my passport".
  The 29-year-old woman, who was too frightened to give her full name, said she ran away after an attempt to rape her. At the time she was so thin from lack of food she escaped by crawling through a cat flap.

The Independent (7 March)

Super Sports Event?

One of the less publicised aspects of the Gulf War was the way hundreds of US companies poured their products free of charge into the area for the US troops. Behind this apparent generosity there is a sordid economic reality.

  The ferocious soft-drink war is the sub-text of the larger better known conflict. "Anyone who helps someone out there is making a friend for life" according to Coke, and no doubt the same logic is driving the other US companies sponsoring the war effort — 1,127 had signed up before a shot was fired.

The Independent (17 February)

The view of the marketing people on war is worth noting:

  "One tries to associate a product with an experience", says David Stewart, a US marketing expert. "War is a particularly intensive experience. War alone is not attractive, but there are aspects which are. There are heroes. There’s style, magnanimity . . . It's like a super sport event".

This view of war contrasts sharply with what actually happens in these hellish conflicts as reported in the same newspaper on 28 February 1991:

  "Don't be surprised", the man said, "I had two neighbours who the Iraqis thought were in the resistance. So they pushed them into drains, closed the grill, poured petrol on them and set them on fire. Their families buried them later — you can't leave bodies in drains."

War as a super sports event is typical of the sick morality of the capitalist system.


Praise me Blame them

It is an old political ploy for politicians to claim the praise if anything ever works out well in capitalism (a rare event); and it is equally part of the strategy that if anything goes wrong ( a not unknown occurrence) to blame someone else. But Kenneth Clarke, Secretary of State for Education and Science, has probably overplayed that much used ruse.

On the same day he was pointing the finger of blame in two different directions as reported in The Independent on 7 March.

  Politicians often have louder voices than scientists, Sir David Phillips, chairman of the Advisory Board for the Research Councils (ABRC) told the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology. Kenneth Clarke, Secretary of State for Education and Science, has insisted that scientists cannot blame him for the current financial crisis. He says he is acting on the advice of the ABRC.
   Leaks suggest that the ABRC this year recommended spending at least £50m more on science than was allocated.

Brought to task on declining reading standards at primary schools he was equally blameless according to him:

  He startled members of the Commons Select Committee on Education who are investigating claims of a decline in reading in English primary schools by telling them: "I won’t take responsibility for things that are utterly beyond my control." Mr Clarke Insisted:"Today's schools are the best resourced we have ever had", and went on to criticise some local education authorities for "extravagance and incompetence".

It will be interesting to see if at the next General Election Clarke is talking about "things that are utterly beyond my control" or has resorted to the usual arrogant electioneering pose of all his kind.

Soft Drink, Hard Labour (1987)

Book Review from the December 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Soft Drink Hard Labour: Guatemalan Workers Take on Coca Cola. Mike Gatehouse and Miguel Angel Reyes (Latin American Bureau London. 1987).

Guatemala is a country of violent repression. According to a British Parliamentary Delegation who visited the country in 1984 as many as 100,000 people had been killed and 38,000 had disappeared in the previous thirty years. Guatemala is also a country of poverty in which 63 per cent of the population live below the official poverty line and in which 2 per cent of the population own 65 per cent of the land. Against this background the study examines the industrial dispute that took place over a nine-year period involving Coca Cola workers and their union STEGAC and the owners of the Coca Cola bottling plant in Guatemala City.

Coca Cola does not directly own or manage local companies but allows franchise contracts to bottlers. In this particular case it was Embotelladora Guatemalteca SA (EGSA), owned originally by a Texan family, the Flemings of Houston. In 1975 the workers in the company attempted to re-establish a trade union which had been crushed after the military coup of 1954. The process is complex and involves legal registration of a union followed by recognition and granting of bargaining rights by an employer The factory manager, John C. Trotter, attempted various tactics to stop the union, including physical violence and intimidation. He hired members of the Mobile Military Police to act as armed guards, based on a fixed charge per day per guard payable to the army:

EGSA managers began to make explicit threats to Coke workers active in the union. On 10 February 1977 the personnel manager threatened Angel Villeda and Oscar Humberto Sarti. On 1 March, both were shot and wounded. The following day. the Coke workers' lawyers, the Torres, were seriously injured when their car was deliberately bumped and forced off the road by a jeep driven by a government employee, (p.8)

Worse was to follow. Manual López Balam, STEGAC General Secretary, was killed by a group armed with knives and iron bars while he was delivering crates of Coca Cola. The 16-year-old daughter of a union lawyer was arrested, beaten, raped, tortured and temporarily blinded. Further workers and union officials were killed or disappeared or were violently assaulted, as in the case of Amulfo Gómez Segura whose lips were slashed with a razor, his tongue cut out and placed in his shirt pocket.

Pressure was put on Coca Cola including that by the Interfaith Centre for Corporate Responsibility, a group of shareholders from churches and religious orders. They were responsible for bringing Israel Márquez, a STEGAC General Secretary, to Coca Cola's AGM in 1979. It was Márquez who coined the phrase "in Guatemala, Coca Cola is a name for murder". There was also pressure from the Geneva based International Union of Food and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF). Coca Cola denied responsibility, maintaining that franchisees were independent operators. Nonetheless cooperation between Coca Cola and the licence holders was seen to constitute complicity. The IUF called on its affiliates to put pressure on Coca Cola which controls 44 per cent of the world's soft drinks sales. The effect of that pressure was to give bad publicity to the image of Coca Cola and it was this to which the company responded. The EGSA franchise was transferred to new owners and a new management team was brought in. The backlash for Coca Cola was that they were increasingly criticised by the business world for allowing "the dangerous precedent of multinational trade union intervention (the IUF) in multinational corporation affairs".

Meanwhile the new management at EGSA were gradually undermining the company, a policy which could not have gone unnoticed by Coca Cola as they held overall financial control. Under threatened closure the workers occupied the factory in February 1984. A new policy was adopted to deal with the dispute. Further bloodshed would have looked bad for Coca Cola who were that year major sponsors of the Olympic Games. The Government of General Mejia Victores was looking for foreign aid and loans and was promising elections for a Constituent Assembly so again bad publicity was not desired. The occupation of EGSA is a testimony to working-class self-organisation. There were some unusual elements. There is the ironic detail, quoted from Jim Wilson of the IUF. that "every day a sympathetic priest comes in from the outside to say mass before a makeshift altar surrounded by high stacks of Coca Cola crates". Yet the ability to maintain that occupation for a year in a land of poverty and violent repression cannot be underestimated. Nor should the ability to withstand the economic pressure brought to bear by EGSA/Coca Cola. Again there was multinational trade union support for the Guatemalan workers and finally Coca Cola re-negotiated with STEGAC, although insisting that the IUF must not be involved in any settlement.

There are lessons to be learned from this study. A multinational corporation was pressurised into allowing a victory, although limited, to the Guatemalan workers. The occupation testified to the resilience and persistence of a group of workers in establishing and maintaining a trade union against awesome odds. The discipline of those workers during the occupation ensured a majority support and a willingness to sustain the daily routine of maintenance, cleaning, guard duty, assemblies and education and leisure activity. Yet we ought not to forget that no victory guarantees the future while capitalism is maintained. Guatemala may have an elected government but the military bureaucracy still exists. With more than 50 per cent of Guatemala's workforce without permanent employment many fear that contact with a trade union can only take place at the expense of employment. It may be that the security forces are also biding their time. In the struggle for reforms it is the effects that are tackled and not their causes.

Philip Bentley