The Farce Of Consumer Protection. (1962)

From the September 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 30 pages and over 150,000 words the team of eleven men and women who signed the final report of the Molony committee on Consumer Protection made recommendations about ways of securing that the things people buy shall be a little nearer to what they want and what the makers and sellers claim them to be.

The Committee made a large number of observations and recommendations, the most important of the latter category being the proposal to set up a 12-man Consumer Council “to devise and advance” the means of resolving the problems of consumers. But the Council is not itself to prepare test reports on articles offered for sale, or receive complaints or take proceedings. Its chief functions are to get information about consumer’s problems, determine what can be done and give advice and guidance through Citizen’s Advice Bureaux and other organisations and by its own publications. It all sounds very vague and ineffective. Other recommendations are that whatever protection is now given by hire-purchase law shall no longer be limited to transactions worth less than £300, but shall be extended (taking in cars and caravans), and that misleading descriptions of articles offered for sale shall be made more difficult by tightening up the administration of the Merchandise Marks Acts and widening their scope to all classes of goods.

At the time of writing the Government has not announced its intention about the recommendations, only undertaking to “study the reactions of all parties affected before finally concluding what we should do.”

What is more interesting than the details of the Committee’s recommendations is what they did not do, and the principle on which they worked.

If buyers in great numbers complain that they are being misled or defrauded by sellers it would seem that two lines of action would theoretically be open to a Committee set up to solve the problem; to place legal restrictions on the freedom of action of sellers, or to abolish the buyer-seller relationship. The latter is the solution inherent in establishing a Socialist system of society and was not even thought of by the Committee. The Committee, however, managed to find a third solution, which is to allow the sellers to behave as at present, but to encourage the buyers to show more aggressive resistance. So the Economist, in its issue of July 28th, after an implied approval of what it calls “slick American style selling,” blames the 15 million British housewives for not standing up to it, and hopes that with more information and advice they will be encouraged to do so:

“This is why it was so important that the Molony report . . . should get its balance of recommendations just right. The right precept is full free speech for the advertiser and salesman, but also full free speech (and sufficient detailed information) against them. In the event the Molony committee severely avoids being anti-salesman, but seems not quite sufficiently radically pro-consumer.”

Quality goods

No doubt the Government will implement parts of the Molony recommendations and if the Labour Party, with or without association with the Liberals, becomes the Government after the next election, it is certain that they will do much the same. It is equally certain that the problem will not be solved, nor even stated. Neither this Committee nor the earlier Committees that ploughed the same field, nor any of the Party spokesmen and newspapers that have offered alternative proposals have got as far as admitting why these deceitful practices go on, much less accepting the logical conclusion that there is only one way to end them.

There is a question that could be asked. In a world in which technically it would be possible to produce and distribute only first-class articles, not needing false deceptions and high power salesmanship to make them acceptable, why do the producers and distributors put out so much that is inferior and cheap and known to be so by the purchasers, and so much that is, in addition, dressed up to look better than it is? The manufacturers have a simple answer to the first part of the question. What would be the use, they would say, of producing masses of good quality articles that the majority of the population could not afford to buy. It is the poverty problem of every country in the world today—one standard of quality and quantity for the rich few, and another for the poor majority, and none of the governments are concerned to put an end to this situation. We also have to accept that many workers still regard it as natural and inevitable—like the workers rebuilding the Prime Minister’s residence at 10, Downing Street, who told a Guardian correspondent:

“There should be a sense of achievement on a job like this—doing something exceptional, you know. Another added, It’s not just a housing estate after all—you can’t just bung it up.” (27 March 1962.)

These workers probably themselves live in just such a bunged-up estate.

The other aspect—the adulterations, the false descriptions, the petty cheating, is in a different category and a complex one for those who govern. It can hit the rich shopper as well as the poor one, and while some manufacturers are prepared to legislate to limit it, others want it left alone. Their interests are divided and only pettifogging “remedies” are possible. Some manufacturers of high-quality, high-cost, articles would be happy to see the advertising carried on by their mass producing rivals curbed; and the latter would favour laws against the swindling activities of cheap-jack competitors who undersell them; but how is this to be done without hampering the normal business in which they are all engaged, that of making profit?

The dilemma they face here is closely paralleled by the problem of placing limits on the exploitation of the workers. All capitalist profit flows from the exploitation of the workers, so there is a common interest in continuing it, but if particular groups of employers carry exploitation to extremes by child labour, excessive hours, dangerous and insanitary factories, it undermines the health of the workers (not to mention their fitness to be soldiers) and damages the profit interest of the whole class of exploiters.

So also in the field of legal restrictions on the sale of defective and misrepresented goods. Committees of inquiry expose the evils (like the one that sat just over a century ago), then the interested parties squabble about the minimum of legislation they are prepared to enact.

Those at the back cry forward and those at the front cry back! While Jean Robertson in the Sunday Telegraph (29/7/62) criticises the Molony Committee for being too timid and points out that “while we were waiting for Molony, four modest consumer Bills introduced by private members were killed off in his name”, the Guardian (26/7/62) while admitting that some of the existing regulations under the Merchandise Marks Act “are enforced slackly or not at all” goes on to plead the traditional businessman’s case against legal restrictions: “There is much to be said against attempts to interfere administratively with too many points in the complicated business of distribution.”

Adulteration

The problem examined by the Molony Committee is not new, though in earlier times it went by the cruder name of adulteration, and this time the scope of the inquiry was expressly limited. The Committee confined itself to private consumers, cutting out the sale of goods to manufacturers, farmers and traders. Nor did it include services, though admitting there is much complaint about such work as the repair of radio and television sets. It excluded food and drugs on the ground that these are covered by the Food and Drugs Act, 1955, and excluded the nationalised power industries (except the sale of solid fuels) mainly because in these industries functions and relationship to the public have been determined as a matter of government policy. They admitted that they heard much complaint about prices being excessive, but decided against making recommendations because it would be difficult and costly to fix prices and in any event “vigorous competition” makes price control unnecessary. They fell back on the good old myth of the capitalist economists that the consumer has “wide freedom of choice” and this is his best protection. (Paragraph 6.)

As already remarked, the problem of adulteration is not new. The 1950 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in an article under that heading divides it into three types, the intentional palming off of an inferior article, the addition of injurious ingredients, and the deliberate or negligent use of contaminated or deteriorated material not necessarily injurious. Having produced evidence that such practices existed from the earliest historical times the article smugly avoids inquiry into their precise causes with the remark that “adulteration of the first kind is probably as old as human greed itself” which, of course, adds nothing to our knowledge.

The Encyclopaedia writer did, however, throw light on a development that explains why the Molony Committee became necessary and the form its inquiries took:

“… as the rise of the factory gradually took the manufacturing of many foods out of the home, and away from the farm and the village, the forms of adulteration became at once more invidious, more numerous and more difficult of detection. The proof of the pudding was no longer in the eating, but in the laboratory.”

This development has extended to all sorts of products, not only foods: in our century it is not enough for the buyer “to beware,” he now must have at his disposal expert knowledge and means of elaborate testing.

For the economic background we must turn to Marx for more enlightenment about adulteration. In Volume I of Capital (Chapters VI, X and XXIV) he reproduced from the reports of committees of inquiry over a century ago numerous examples of the widespread practice of adulterating foodstuffs, medicines and other articles, and showed how the demand for laws against adulteration of bread came from bakers themselves: they saw their trade being ruined through the lower prices charged by their adulterating rivals.

The moral

But unlike the Encyclopaedia, which avoided seeking the real cause and took refuge in a sort of original sin, the greed of the human race, Marx pin-pointed it in the class structure of capitalist society, which functions through the exploitation of one class by another and by the necessity of making profit:

“This fanatic love of the capitalist for profit is expressed … by the adulteration of the elements of production, which is one of the principal means of reducing the value of the constant capital in comparison with the variable capital, and thus raising the rate of profit.” (Capital Vol. III Page 100.)

The moral of this ought to be obvious—though not to government committees. What is needed is not more laws and regulations to restrict capitalism’s freedom of action in the market, but the abolition of a system of society that works through the Market; having in its place production solely for use, so that there will be no-one against whom consumers will need to be protected.

Edgar Hardcastle

Into Battle! The War over Soap Substitutes (1950)

From the July 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to all reports, the first salvoes are now being fired in what promises to be one of the biggest trade-wars we have seen in this country for many a long year. The contestants in the struggle are the manufacturers of detergents, or soap-substitutes.

The set-to in Britain is actually the second round of a contest which has only just come to an uneasy (and probably temporary) end in the United States. Here, Proctor and Gamble an American firm, and Lever Bros., the Anglo-Dutch combine, fought out a bitter struggle for many months before Lever Bros, were defeated and forced to content themselves, for the time being at any rate, with only a minor share of the American soap-substitute market.

Now the scene has changed to this country, though the chief contenders are the same. On the one hand is Thomas Hedley & Co., the British subsidiary of Proctor and Gamble; on the other. Lever Bros, once more, fighting this time on their own ground. In addition there are a host of smaller fry, all trying hard to keep a foothold in a very precarious and uncertain market.

All of them, big and small, are spending large sums on advertising (Hedley’s and Lever Bros, are employing two of the biggest firms in the business). Hedley’s are reported to have already spent £72,000 on Press advertising for “Dreft,” besides about £100,000 on film publicity. Now they are busy launching “Tide” on the public, with what seems like lavishness of advertising even greater than that devoted to “Dreft.” Lever Bros, in their turn have already spent £73,000 on “Wisk,” and £22,000 on their liquid product “Quix.” Both seem ready to spend a lot more besides. These two big firms, it will be noticed, are playing the game of running two products, so giving themselves an opportunity of pitting one against the other, as well as against the products of their rivals. When one product really begins to outstrip the other, then they will probably drop the poorly-selling one and concentrate on the one that is selling well. One of them, perhaps both, may even now be working out plans to launch a third, so getting the additional advantage of newness—an important factor when each new product is launched with lavish publicity.

Just recently, the situation has been further complicated by a new big rival, the American Colgate-Palmolive-Peet combine, which plans to put its own product “Fab” on the market in a big way. The smaller fry are, of course, now some way behind, but they are all struggling hard for their own little place in the trade. Domestos Ltd., for example, have already spent £39,000 on advertising “ Stergene,” and the Brobat Mfg. Co. £33,000 on “Brobat.” Boots with “D.10,” and the Co-op with “Cascade,” are of course at some advantage in that they can distribute their products in their own shops, but their trade will in effect be confined to their own distribution system. They will not stand a chance on the open market unless they are prepared to risk a great deal of money in pushing their products. Having taken a look at the jungle outside, they have no doubt already decided to stay at home!

This high-pressure advertising is, of course, only the prelude to the fight. The first real blow was struck by Lever Bros, when they offered, temporarily, to let housewives have two packets of “Wisk” for the price of one. Hedley’s replied by covering large areas of London with vouchers offering a 1s. 7d. packet of “Tide” for 6d. Apart from stunts, prices generally are already on the way down. “Fab” recently dropped from 1s. 9d. to 1s. 7d.; “Dreft ” from 1s. 7d. to 1s. 4d.; and “Cascade ” from 8d. to 6d. (Price differences are largely accounted for by differences in the sizes of the packets). All of them are probably working frantically to think of other bright ideas which will enable them to gain an advantage.

Even when soap-rationing is abolished, all the manufacturers seem convinced that there is a future for detergents. If they did not think so, they obviously would not be doing what they are doing. Reinforcing them in their belief is their determination to bring down the price of detergents below the price of soap. One of the main ways in which this can be done is by reducing the price of the raw materials from which detergents are made.

Detergents, as is well known, are derived from petrol, and just as competition is now rife among the detergent manufacturers so is competition among the oil-producers. At least four companies are already producing raw materials for soap-substitutes, and others are thinking of doing so. Shell are the biggest producers at present with “Teepol.” After them come I.C.I. with “Lissapol,” Anglo-Iranian with “Comprox,” and Monsanto Chemicals with “ Santomerse ”— all struggling hard to get hold of as much of the rapidly growing market as they can. For detergents to really compete with soap, the oil-producers will have to cut their prices. That they can do so was shown when the soap ration was last increased—prices immediately dropped. They will probably find means of doing so again when rationing is fully lifted and their products have to compete on equal terms with soap.

Whatever form the struggle takes, it should be interesting to watch. The contestants may fight to the limit, as they did in the United States. They may try to reach a compromise, which will certainly be an uneasy and temporary one. Perhaps the abolition of soap-rationing will prick the whole bubble. We do not know, nor do we wish to speculate.

What is worthy of comment is the stupidity of a system in which huge sums of money are being spent in selling, one against the other, products between which there is probably not a scrap of difference worth troubling about; the stupidity of a system in which adults in complete possession of their senses spend their working hours thinking up new and better stunts to help sell these products; the stupidity of a system where other fully mature men and women worry themselves sick wondering whether “this” is a better name than “ that,” or “that” is a better name than “this” (we have it on no less an authority than the Financial Times that enormous care and market research is expended on choosing just the right brand name). The example of soap-substitutes can be multiplied a thousandfold, and the wastefulness in terms of wealth and human effort is correspondingly greater.

Capitalism has introduced a substitute for soap. When are you workers going to introduce the substitute for capitalism—socialism?

Stan Hampson

Value For Money? (1998)

TV Review from the March 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Value For Money?

A new concept is invading television; the concept of “value for money”. The TV executives aren’t attempting to deliver a fair return for the licence-payers’ cash of course, but they have discovered that the search for “good value” can provide them with an endless stream of cheap programmes.

It is a concept that the ordinary person is familiar with, since modern-day crusades are more likely to be carried out under the banner of Fair Trading than anything else. The Bargain has become the Holy Grail of the 20th Century and is proving to be equally elusive—because it is equally mythical.

Any local news programme shows how deeply ingrained this myth of “value” is. A recent report showed an elderly woman expressing her disgust that diabetics should have to pay more vehicle insurance simply because they constitute more of a risk. It didn’t seem to occur to her that the nice man from the Prudential advert wants to make as much profit as he can, and will penalise diabetics all the way to hell and back if that’s what it takes. Incredibly, many people share this delusion, the untenable belief that private companies are in some way providing a public service.

My job enables me to see this widespread fallacy at work. Charging for entrance to a multi-feature attraction with a single admission fee, I find that those who don’t want to see all the attractions tell me this is “stupid”. Stupid? Do they seriously believe that it’s some kind of oversight on the part of the management? It’s a deliberate policy designed to extract as much money as possible from visitors. And it works.

In this society goods and services are produced with one aim in mind, the production of profit. Capitalism dictates that only what is profitable can be done, so there is little hope of companies behaving in a selfless way. They will never allow those who constitute a greater risk to pay the same insurance premiums as others, because this would lose them money. They will not selflessly decline the opportunity to make a profit since profit is the oxygen they breathe. They are bound by the rules of The System just as we are. It is The System which creates “raw deals”, and to end them we must end the system.

There may be times when we can buy what might be called “bargains”, articles priced at less than we might normally expect to pay for them. Prices are not reduced out of generosity though, but with the aim of minimising losses and enticing people to spend more. In short, the bargain is just another means by which the capitalist machine ensures that profit is made.

Nonetheless, the value-for-money myth has now provided us with five different flavours of Watchdog. It’s a profitable seam to mine—but the rip-offs that concern the BBC are far removed from the fundamental exploitation which lies at the heart of capitalism.

Anyone who feels they’ve had an unfair deal can now write to Anne Robinson and have their claim investigated on a Thursday or a Friday. The introduction of the second show is proof, if any were needed, that the first show wasn’t working.

Sooner or later Robinson will have to admit not being quite the Wonderwoman she’d like to be. No matter how much she probes and sniffs there are always enough rip-offs left to fill the next edition of her show.

If she was honest she’d admit that you might as well write in to her show to complain about the weather. Watchdog has more chance of securing a sub-tropical rainy season for Great Britain than it has of getting a “fair deal for the consumer” whilst capitalism survives. But are we to be faced with five channels of 24-hour Watchdog before she realises this? I hope not, especially as the answer is staring her in the face. Were she to turn around the title of her own show’s sister programme—Value for Money—she would have the key to the solution.

The bigger rip-off

Value For Money. Money for value? Does money equal value? Are our wages (money) equivalent to the value of the things which we produce? Clearly they are not, otherwise where would profit come from? It might then occur to her than even if someone managed by some incredible fluke to purchase nothing but “bargains” throughout their entire life, they wouldn’t be getting a fair deal by any means. They would still be exploited.

The working class are paid less than the value of what they produce, or else are condemned by The System to bare subsistence on the dole, as part of the army of unemployed that capitalism requires to keep wages down. Would Robinson grasp that there can only be the occasional piece of “good value” because everything else is very bad value indeed? No matter how cheap an item may be it is still far, far too dear, for why should we be forced to labour in order to have what should be ours by rights?

Perhaps she would see the irony of the fact that the capitalist who, in order to make a profit, pays workers less than the value of their labour, always gets good value for money, whereas the producer never does. The mists would then clear, allowing her to see the answer to the difficult question of why so many companies are unscrupulous, why so many people are exploited, cheated and penalised, whilst others live in luxury and why unnecessary things are produced even though much that is vital is left undone.

I’d be quite happy to see the Ginger Ninja fighting our corner. She may grate the nerves but she’s a tough opponent, and I could even bring myself to tolerate her infamous winking, if every wink were a symbolic nail in the coffin of capitalism. But for the time being we must put up with her being an apologist for the myth that a Fair Deal can be had under capitalism.

Matthew Vaughan Wilson

From America: The Coffee ‘Rip-off’ and some facts of Life (1977)

From the April 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Permit me to add my two bits-plus worth to the brouhaha over skyrocketing coffee prices in America.

I worked in coffee warehouses where “working in coffee” can mean anything from “bull gang labour, unloading freight cars of 125-pound sacks of green coffee (two men per sack) to stacking cases of 1-pound tins of ground coffee (prior to the advent of fork-lifting machines) in five and/or seven tiers that reached above the rafters (until a tip that fire inspectors were on the way had bull gangs frantically tearing down the top layers).

In between these extremes were stints at loading empty cans on the track at the top of the packing process; and duty at the spout from which the packer keeps pace, like an “appendage of the machine,” with a steady flow of filled and hermetically sealed 1 lb. tins, pumping them with right foot into a carton held against the spout with left hand while the right hand is making ready another carton from the flattened-out pile beside you, then flipping the filled boxes on to a moving track where they are sealed and borne to waiting hands for stacking. All this time, one weather-eye is kept on the onrushing cans in order to pull dents off the line before they enter the spout, jam the machinery and interfere with production-time; while the other one takes note of the diminishing stock of flattened cartons against the time you dash for replacements, getting back to the post in time to keep the process moving. The “coffee nerves” one is supposed to develop from drinking too much of it are nothing as compared to the shakes one gets from packing it!

This sort of familiarity with coffee does not qualify one to explain the economics behind the $3.00 per-lb. —more or less—that coffee brings today at the supermarket. After all, in those times referred to, top grades of the roasted and ground beans retailed at about 40-cents per lb. while one could be served a cup of it, along with a couple of doughnuts, for a thin dime —when one could afford to spend the dime. After Pearl Harbour and the advent of food (and coffee) rationing, prices did advance although with some controls through a Government agency and the problem of getting enough coffee on the white market was considered by President F. D. Roosevelt. He (a non-coffee drinker) advised us to re-use the grounds from each batch, at least once, before discarding!

Why is coffee produced, in the first place? Are growers and processors motivated by the “consuming public’s” love affair with the brew? No question about it. That factor plays a part only in the sense that it enables them to produce profits. That is what any business is all about so coffee growers and processors should hardly care less if the “consuming public” were to lose its taste for the stuff providing some other popular use might be found for their commodity (perhaps it might serve as a land filler or as a fertilizer). And, given the free enterprise mode of production, how can one argue logically against such a principle? How can one, consistently, argue the case for the profit system yet organize and/or participate in boycotts against rising prices? “The consumer is being ripped-off!” they cream. And they call for volunteers for picket duty in a battle to force one group of industrialists to cease taking advantage of a situation that enables them to corner a larger-than-usual share of the profits. They forget that the first duty of an industry is to its owners, or stock-holders and that fat years afford opportunity to recoup from lean years.

Now this is not to turn a cold shoulder to the plight of those who can hardly, if at all, make ends meet as it is without more price-gouging by those who own and control coffee. But boycotts of such items are not organized, generally, by those who cannot afford the high prices. They are the brain children of those who delight in bragging about their large expenditures, trips abroad, etc. Most of us are too busy getting by without joining in such movements. Wage-working people do gripe about prices, search for bargains, frequently strike for higher pay, and even more frequently look to moonlighting to compensate for rising costs of their necessities. All of which does not mean that coffee tycoons, or any other variety, can continue to raise prices at will. There is that other Nemesis that thwarts such a hope—the competition among themselves for a larger share of the market that, willy nilly, eventually leads to a drop in prices.

It should be plain, then, that—like it or not—our system is operating normally, and taking advantage of opportunities to maximize profits is in harmony with sound economics. Would the outraged ones champion a totally different social system than any now existing anywhere, production solely for use rather than for sale on a market with view to profit? Don’t all speak at once!

Harry Morrison

(WSP, Boston)

The Real Waste (2020)

From the April 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people who sympathise with the socialist case do not join us because they feel that working for socialism requires a lot of time and effort, with no guarantee of success. Much better, they may say, to work for short-term gains that need less commitment and are more likely to be achieved.

I was recently reading Will McCallum’s book How to Give Up Plastic. This gives a detailed account of the problems caused by various forms of plastic, from bags and bottles to straws, nappies and takeaway coffee cups. Many of these are used just the once and then disposed of, eventually leading to the clogging up of rivers, beaches and oceans. Samples taken from the deepest place on earth, the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific, contain microplastics.

McCallum makes many recommendations for how people can massively reduce their use of plastics, such as having reusable water bottles and coffee cups. But aside from what people can do at an individual level, often without too much trouble, he gives examples of larger campaigns. Clearing litter from a park or beach requires a lot of work and preparation, from publicising the event to bringing bin bags and weighing what has been collected. He also posits a ladder of escalating approaches: writing letters, holding a meeting, writing an article for the media, organising a petition, and finally having a protest (which may just mean leaving unnecessary packaging at the till in a supermarket, rather than staging a demo).

What a lot of effort! And campaigns like this will always come up against the simple fact that capitalism is basically about profit, not about reducing pollution and conserving the oceans. Consumer pressure can bring about changes in the ways in which companies source, produce and package commodities, and there is nothing wrong with having a reusable coffee cup, but when seen against the background of all the ecological damage done by capitalism, this really is, well, a drop in the ocean. All the time and ingenuity that is spent on such campaigning would be far better put to the task of making socialists and bringing about a society based on meeting human need, which would include environmental considerations being made a priority.

Paul Bennett

Answer To Correspondent. (1929)

From the March 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Combines and the Unemployed. 
A reader makes the suggestion that the workers should deal at the small shops and avoid the big stores because the growth of the latter stores results in an increase in the army of unemployed. He assumes that the quality and price of the goods sold is the same in both cases. This assumption is in fact not correct. The big stores crush out their small competitors because they can and do undercut them, and offer service which is superior in other respects also. If this were not so the big stores would never be successful in their efforts to crush or absorb the small ones. The workers cannot afford to buy in any but the cheapest market, and the whole idea that they can thus reverse the course of capitalist development is fantastic.

Editorial Committee

Letter: The Vote or Twitter? (2016)

Letter to the Editors from the June 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

Here’s a polemical question for the readers of Socialist Standard: 'Do we now have more power as consumers, texters, and members of the Twitteratti, than we have as mere voters?’

We know that our so-called leaders and their camp followers in the political chatteratti are increasingly out of touch and that Napoleon’s dictum ‘the people are just three hot meals away from revolution’ has never been more apt. You only need to substitute the words pay-day loan, mortgage re-payment, zero-hours contract, health emergency, or pension crisis. And there you have it –life in contemporary Britain for millions of people.

We even have a new social type –the superfluous graduate, someone with no future who works in a dystopian culture where you practically need a degree to be an employee in a shoe shop. There is now a tidal wave of tertiary educated youth enslaved by student debt, stuck in a never-ending series of McJobs –with low wages, poor conditions, short-term, temporary contracts, no pensions, no benefits, no security, and next to no job satisfaction. This group knows full well that it’s only the sons and daughters of the privileged 1 percent who can take on those unpaid internships which lead to secure, well-paid, fulfilling careers. Unpaid internships are also a great deal for the bosses. Unlike the old-time slave owners they don’t even need to house, feed, or clothe their workers!

The 99 percent also understand that the concept of social mobility is dead and that many of them will be the first generation in their family’s history to be less prosperous, less contented, less healthy, and die younger than their parents.

When will the electorate collectively realize that they have no more choice in our political leaders than in our selection of baked bean brands? We can only buy what’s placed on the supermarket shelf. Or, in the case of our dysfunctional voting system, the candidates who are shortlisted for the rest of us by the corporations, the media, and the 1 percenters.

The old joke that if democracy really changed anything they wouldn’t allow it, has never held more meaning – we pretend to vote and they pretend to govern. Have political parties been reduced to useful tools which the political establishment then use to shape the proletariat? If the Right is the hammer, then has the Left just become an anvil?

If so, is the game up for democracy and what will the coming revolution look like for the remaining 99 percent in the age of the internet? Won’t political parties become increasingly irrelevant and eventually redundant if our only real power comes via our functions as consumers, texters, and members of the online Twitteratti? Please note – I’m not saying this is a good thing – but just a reality of the human condition in the age of new technology.

If so, then it’s obvious, to have real power we must simply stop feeding the beast. The only fear for the corporate plutocracy is the disruption that would ensue if we simply stopped consuming en mass and paralyzed the economic system. Their worst nightmare is a text message that goes viral and calls for a boycott of a particular company or product. Imagine if millions of people stopped banking at RBS, ceased filling their petrol tanks at Shell, or refused to buy Coca-Cola – if only for a few weeks.

Think this could never happen? Wrong, it’s already happening! Using the website Change.org a customer of Verizon Wireless organized an online petition garnering over 165,000 signatures which within hours forced the company to back down on its plans to introduce a $2 ‘convenience’charge for the rip-off ‘privilege’of paying bills by phone or online. A similar ploy received over 300,000 supporters and defeated Bank of America’s avaricious scam for a $5 usage fee for credit cards.

This is just the beginning –consumers have barely begun to flex their internet muscles. If there is a political manifesto for today it must read: ‘We the people simply demand a sharing of the wealth, a sustainable economy which preserves the environment, the dissolution of central power, a guarantee of personal freedoms, and an end to corrupt corporate power elites’.

Ted Newcomen (by email from USA)

Reply: 

The saying 'if democracy really changed anything they wouldn't allow it' is indeed old, but that doesn't make it true. It does, however, reflect the experienced fact that 'changing governments changes nothing' but this is not the fault of political democracy. It is because governments govern in the context of capitalism and capitalism can never be made to work in the interest of the majority as it is based on minority ownership and production for their profit. To blame political democracy when capitalism is the real culprit is to make the mistake many voters in Germany did in the 1930s when they voted the Nazis into power.

The saying is also wrong in suggesting that political democracy is something that the ruling class can choose to allow or not. Universal suffrage is something that the majority had to struggle for against the ruling class and which they had to impose on them and so which our rulers can't just turn off or on at will. They have since learned to adapt to it and how to manipulate it and they now find it a useful way to chose governments to run things on their behalf and also to bring an air of legitimacy to their rule. All the same, it remains a gain for the majority class of wage and salary workers and a weapon they can use to dislodge the ruling class.

We have nothing against twitter and other social media. No doubt they will play their part in spreading the idea of a classless society based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources as the only practicable alternative to capitalism. But, while they may be able to organise a campaign to get some capitalist corporation to reverse some maybe ill-judged decision, they will not be able to get them to stop seeking profits, even less to get the owning class – those you call the '1 percenters' – to give up their ownership rights. That will have to be imposed on them and the best way to do this is through political action – by an informed majority winning control of political power and using this to declare all property rights and all corporations null and void. In fact, this is the only way that a framework can be created within which the problems you list facing members of the excluded majority can be constructively tackled and lastingly ended.

You ask us to consider what would happen if millions stopped banking with one particular bank or refused to buy one particular brand of fizzy drink. We ask you to consider what would happen if millions stopped voting for pro-capitalist politicians and used the power the vote gives them to elect instead delegates mandated to use political power to end capitalism and usher in socialism –Editors.