Sting in the Tail: Behind the fine words (1996)

The Sting in the Tail column from the September 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Behind the fine words

Environmentalists were delighted by the news that “The United States and the European Union forced through a ministerial statement which bound the OECD group of industrialised countries to adopt legally binding limits, targets and timetables to reduce greenhouse gas emission from 2000" (Guardian, 19 July).

But the deal drew “fierce objections” from Russia, Saudi Arabia and the OPEC countries because it threatens their income from fossil-fuel sales, and without their acceptance all the fine words are meaningless.

And Charles Linderman, speaking for 600 US electricity producers, claimed the deal “would eliminate millions of American jobs, reduce America’s ability to compete and force Americans into second-rate lifestyles.”

How will American voters react to this? We have seen how quickly governments can change their policies when votes are at stake, so before environmentalists start celebrating they should remember capitalism’s host of conflicting economic and political interests.

Land of the Free

After the press revelations about President Clinton’s murky doings as Governor of Arkansas, we now learn his Republican opponent, Robert Dole, also has a doubtful financial past.

The vice-chairman of Dole’s national finance committee has been fined $1 million, his company has agreed to pay a further $5 million, and the US Attorney is still demanding that he should go to jail. All of this in connection with a giant fraud to fund Dole’s campaign.

Stanley Hilton, who was the counsel on Dole’s Senate Staff in 1979-80, has explained Dole’s relationship to donors in “Senators for Sale”:

“He is largely a special-interest slot machine, a human pendulum dancing to the tune of the highest contributors. . . Dole’s career symbolises much of what is wrong with American politics: the shameless selling of office and legislation to the highest bidder."

This is the reality behind all those find words—’’democracy”, “law and order” and the “American way of life”.

Leave those kids alone

Capitalism perverts everything it touches. It sees childhood as a “selling opportunity”.

One company, Imagination for School Media Marketing, has secured clearance from the government to sell advertising hoardings in school corridors. Another is producing a bulletin of groovy words used by kids in the playground so that advertisers can cash in on a market worth £1.6 billion a year of children’s direct purchases and £8.4 billion the kids have in “pester power”.

Jane Mathews, a board director of ad agency J. Walker Thomson, says in the Observer (14 July):

“Advertising is a very soft target. It is easy for the Press to lay the blame at the nasty ad agencies’ door, but more should be said about parents, who in the end have the ultimate responsibility—they can always say no.”

Mathews knows only too well, with a potential £10 billion market the advertisers rely heavily on kids’ “pester power”.

She is right in one respect though. We all have the power to stop this perversion of childhood—we can just say No to capitalism.

Cops and capitalism

Socialists are precise about the term “working class”. We mean all those who must sell their ability to work for a wage or a salary'. The “left” are vague on this. They classify such workers as doctors, university lecturers or the police as “middle class”.

A reading of The Job, staff magazine of London police officers, should dispel any doubts about the class position of the police. The majority of ads are for loans or debt counselling.

An ex-policeman Mike Thomas of insolvency firm C. Jacob and Co., which advertises in The Job, is quoted in Time Out (17 July) on some policemen’s plight:

“I know of police officers w ho take home £720 per month for a full week including weekends and night shifts.”

The Police Federation has expressed concern about the plight of new recruits since the scrapping of housing allowances, reduction in overtime and mileage allowance. According to them some recruits are having to claim Family-Credit or take out bank loans in order to survive.

Despite the illusions of the left—or the police themselves—cops are workers.

New Labour, new cuisine

It was Thursday, 11 July, and the Savoy chef had excelled himself in producing salad with asparagus and chicken, salmon watercress sauce and lemon brûlée on a raspberry coulis.

It was a very' important dinner date. It was New Labour’s £500 a head fund raiser.

As the diners left the millionaires’ hotel, fortified by “after dinner port and cognac offered courtesy of Philip Morris Limited”, was the sound emanating from doorway dossers in the Strand that of hollow laughter?

Socialists? Do me a favour, guv.

The Fraud is dead! Long live the Fraud! (1976)

From the October 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Labour MP called John Stonehouse has had the bad luck to be arraigned at the Old Bailey on a charge of fraud and. being found guilty, sentenced to seven years in clink. In case this was not unlucky enough, the poor politician had to listen to an idiot in a wig telling him in the course of sentencing that three besetting sins led to his downfall: lying, hypocrisy, ambition. Now is it not remarkable that a man be so wise, a veritable Daniel come to Judgment, and yet pronounce such an obvious load of codswallop?

Can anyone be so obtuse as not to realize that it is impossible for a man to succeed in the dirty game of capitalist politics unless he exhibits these very sins? Sins? Does not the learned ass know that these are essential qualifications for the job and that without them you might as well look for some relatively honest job (a landlord, or a moneylender, for example)? Imagine a Labour politician coming to the electorate and saying: “My friends, I will not be a liar or a hypocrite. I will not tell you that I am a socialist or that you will be one whit better off if you return a Labour government into power because I know full well—and it’s high time you did too; you members of the working class have been conned so often—that if you elect me and my friends we will administer capitalism in the way it has always ben run. Indeed there is no other way. I will tell you that I want you to vote for me because being an MP is a nicer job than being a miner or a railwayman or whatever I would be otherwise. The only difference in voting for me instead of the Tory or the Liberal is that you will have Bloggs as your MP instead of Smogs or Flogs. Or, as Tolstoy wrote to Chekhov in another context, the difference is that between cats and dogs. No lies. No hypocrisy. And of course, no votes.

As for ambition, it is news that this is a sin under capitalism. I always thought it was regarded as a virtue to become a great leader of men or a great capitalist. The judge must have been reading Mark Antony’s speech at Caesar’s funeral where he defended his dead friend against the charge: “But Brutus says he was ambitious.’’ Well, whatever ambition signified in ancient Rome, it is nothing to be ashamed of in capitalist society. Harold Wilson’s daddy got a picture of little Harold in front of No. 10 Downing St. to fire him with the right ideas—and the ambitious little lad got there, didn’t he?

Needless to say, we are not seriously offering sympathy to Stonehouse. It seems he was in rather too much of a hurry to make his fortune and purloined a few hundred thousand quid that belonged to other people. This sort of fraud is not looked kindly upon under capitalism, even though it is a system which is actually based on the purloining of the wealth produced by the working class by a small minority of society for their own benefit. We socialists have no truck with the Stonehouse kind of frauds. We have no regard for crooks or murderers or rogues in general, but we can leave them to the tender mercies of the capitalist establishment.

Our worry—and it should be the worry of the working class as a whole—concerns the system itself and the politicians who run it. Because look at the absurdity of this Stonehouse business. He is found guilty of fraud and no longer represents the electors of Walsall North. His party’s aim is to secure his votes from the dupes of Walsall by putting forward promises while knowing that it has no prospect of fulfilling them. In other words, the element which the lawyers call the mens rea, the guilty mind, is clearly present and renders the Labour Party guilty of intent to defraud. His successor was formerly an MP and is as sure as we are that his being elected will have no more to do with Socialism now than it had when he was in the House before. We have little regard for Labour politicians but we know they are not such idiots as to imagine that their government will do anything other than administer capitalism. How can you be at the same time a Socialist, dedicated to overthrowing the system which now rules the earth, and at the same time say that you will make the system run better for the voters—who are of course almost entirely workers? (Capitalists can choose where they live so there aren’t many in Walsall which is a place only fit for workers.)

Winnick, Stonehouse’s successor, is a leftist and knows perfectly well that by electing him his voters will not cure their unemployment, their rotten housing, their insecurity—and the mental stresses that go with insecurity and cause one in six of the voters of Walsall (as of everywhere else, of course) to need psychiatric treatment at some time of their lives and cause the NHS to devote half its beds to mental sickness—i.e. as much as all the rest of the illnesses put together. It must surely be the greatest of all indictments of capitalism that it drives millions of people this way, people who organically have nothing wrong whatever. A lunatic system fit only for lunatics. And frauds. And yet here are the workers of Walsall, having had their fraudulent MP taken from them, about to be the victim again of the swindle that eclipses his.

At the same time as we read of Stonehouse being jailed for fraud his former leader announces that he is going to do a series on TV telling what goes on in the councils of the great. The former working-class boy, now Duke of Uddersfield is already reputed to have made half a million selling his memoirs but of course he is going to help himself to as much as he can. But of course, the “sensible” politicians like Wilson and Winnick (and Foot and Callaghan and Heath and Thatcher) deceive the working class with monotonous regularity and far from being charged with the “sin” of ambition are loaded with wealth and honours. And if the workers of Walsall swallow all the decades of bitter experience of so-called socialist governments, they really cannot altogether complain “I wuz robbed”. The virgin who out of sheer cussedness determines to frequent a dark alley after she has been warned it is the abode of thugs has no right to scream “outrage!” The workers of the world have had plenty of evidence that capitalism is their enemy. As long as they keep voting for it they will deserve what leaders they get.

As a sort of postscript to the above, it is worth having a wry smile at the letters column of that Sunday paper for the intelligent (Jesus!), The Observer.

They published a letter (16th Aug.) suggesting that the crimes of people like Stonehouse, like those of Hitler, are caused by the onset of the male menopause. At one time sunspots were held to be the cause of crises. Now we don’t need to look for the kind of reasons given in this article for the emergence of Stonehouse. It’s the male menopause! A brand-new disease which none of us knew we had till it appeared in the brains of Observer intellectuals. One looked in following issues for letters pointing out the sheer idiocy of this stuff; instead a letter (30th Aug.) by two nitwits: “Quite right. We are just writing a book about it”. Must read it. Perhaps we will find out why Hitler tried his first fascist putsch when he was 30. And why Sir ’Arold was an ambitious little brat when he was 8.

L. E. Weidberg

Blogger's Note:

The Labour Party candidate, David Winnick, actually lost the bye-election but he did he regain the seat at the 1979 General Election.

Highs and Lows (2026)

Book Review from the October 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The China Contract: the Inside Story of the World’s Biggest Financial Scandal … and How It Was Covered Up. By Clare Rewcastle Brown. Westbourne Press £20.

In February 2019 we reviewed Rewcastle Brown’s The Sarawak Report. This revealed a scam in which large amounts of money were siphoned from Malaysian state finances, specifically the One Malaysia Development Fund (1MDB), into the pockets of the former Prime Minister, Najib Razak, and his accomplices, including Jho Low, who was in practice in charge of the Fund (though this was officially denied). Here she returns to the same events and updates the story but also adds a lot of information about China’s involvement in some of what went on.

The sums involved are staggering, with perhaps $5bn in all siphoned from the fund. One mechanism for achieving this was round-tripping, where assets are sold to another company and then bought back. This makes it look as if something productive has taken place, when in fact no such thing has occurred. It can be used to evade taxes or launder money. Subsidiary companies with only notional values can be created, with banks playing a large part in all this and collecting massive fees. Goldman Sachs in particular had a sizeable role here, for instance being paid a million dollars for ‘advising’ on one deal. One of their top managers was sentenced to two years in prison after co-operating with investigators. On one occasion, Jho made around $130m from selling and reselling bonds.

As for the role of China and the contract in the book’s title, this relates initially to an agreement between the Malaysian government and a Chinese company to build a railway line in Malaysia, as part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. This was at an inflated price, apparently so that the Chinese company could shoulder the massive debt of 1MDB. Najib seemed to be going along with China’s expansionist plans; this is significant, as Malaysia controls the Malacca Strait, an important sea route which China needs access to. The Chinese government was behind the rail line contract, in the hope of further similar projects, with Malaysia accepting the Belt and Road idea. The country’s economic dependence on China would be enormous. Jho Low became involved with the Chinese ‘Communist’ Party and may have started running agents for them in other countries.

But, of course, it was all too good to last. The Belt and Road Initiative has run into problems but is still part of the Chinese government’s plan for economic expansion and the reduction of US power. More specifically, Najib was arrested in 2018 and subsequently found guilty of a number of offences, including abuse of power and money laundering, and was sentenced to twelve years in prison; there have been various appeals since then. Jho Low became a fugitive in 2019 and is currently believed to be living in China.

This is a comprehensive and well-argued examination of an enormous example of theft and corruption, but in many ways it is just a special case of the way capitalism operates, with a few fabulously wealthy and powerful people running things the way they want, even if in this instance they were too blatant and did not get away with it.

Paul Bennett

Letter: Four questions (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Four questions

I enjoyed listening to your speakers in Hyde Park, in particular their synopsis of the “wage-slave” state we have today. Perhaps you could enlighten me on the following questions.

1. You stress the importance of the working man under Socialism, but do you believe that work alone is the reason for man’s existence? Surely self-fulfilment of the individual and the economic freedom necessary for this are more important. Surely the real challenge of the future is not full employment but the management of leisure?

2. Surely it is a basic desire and right of man to own his own piece of land for himself and his family.

3. You subscribe to the idea of “democratic representation”, presumably this means majority rule. Do you think the majority are ever right? Surely a better system would be for each individual to exercise his freedom with respect to the rights of others based on the inherent good of man and the acceptance that Utopia is impossible?

4. Would not elected Socialist representatives succumb to corruption, just as is evident today in the major political parties and has happened to every governing body since time immemorial?

S. D. Chapman

London W.11.

Reply:

You have obviously not yet fully grasped the Socialist position, but we appreciate your interest and will try to make matters a little clearer.

1. We stress the importance of the working class under capitalism because they are the great majority whose interests can only be expressed by establishing Socialism. In Socialism there will be no classes at all. Of course work should not be the be-all and end-all of existence and individual fulfilment is something all Socialists look forward to. However, bear in mind (a) that comfort and freedom must rest on a solid material foundation — man has got to produce, and (b) that many people can and do find personal fulfilment in creative, interesting work. Leisure and “management” of it is the corollary to dull, unrewarding work to which people are condemned. “Full employment” has to do with capitalism, not Socialism.

2. “Ownership” and “rights” arc not basic human desires but ideas implanted by property societies: they imply a person’s or a class’s having something to the exclusion of others. Socialism means that all the means of living will be owned by everyone in common, and all people will have free access to them — including pieces of land for cultivation — and their products.

3. What else can democracy mean except majority rule? To speak of majorities being right or wrong implies some superior standard of judgement; however, the informed and argued collective view of a dozen or a hundred people is more likely to be sound than an individual’s by himself.

The individual’s freedom is always bounded by his existence among other people. What you term “the inherent good of man” is simply his social nature and consequent tendency always to co-operation and order. Given that, there is no conflict between individuality and democracy.

4. To refer back to no. 3, we do not advocate “democratic representation”, where — as now — a person is elected without being answerable; if we did, we might be in a way to “succumb to corruption”, as you say. In the Socialist Party we appoint delegates who are instructed by those who elect them and have no other powers. Our organization is framed to vest control in all matters in the entire membership; we have no leaders or positions of authority, and all our transactions down to the most trivial ones are open to the public as well as the membership. That is how the administration of Socialism will be carried out.

To Sir, Without Love (1976)

The Lavender List

From the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

There has been a lot of noise about your choice of peers for your last Honours List but before we deal with this vital subject perhaps we can ask you a question which I think has not been put to you: Sir, Oh Sir, wherefore art thou Sir? After all, you have so often proclaimed yourself an “egalitarian socialist” (whatever that is supposed to mean) who didn’t believe in titles. (We know you believed in other things. Like money. And translated your sincere belief into practice.) So what on earth has your hand been doing on the royal garter? It makes one doubt your honesty!

Of course, we Socialists understand the noble reason you have always given for creating nobles. You had to put “socialists” in the House of Lords so as to smooth the way for the introduction of “socialism”. Couldn’t expect those Tory backwoodsmen to bring in “socialism,” could we? And if you had to make Lords for the sake of the cause, what more natural than that you should choose your friends? So you created Lord Jumbojet, your solicitor. He was already President of everything in sight so he was well suited to Lord it (or to lard the lean earth, like the original Falstaff). True, he jumbojetted to the villainous Smithie for Sir Alec Whom? who does not claim to be a socialist (about the only one who doesn’t, I think). But it would be ignoble to quibble. He did it all for “socialism”. Noblesse oblige.

Then you made a Lady of your chef de cabinet (and about time too, I’m sure). Lady Marcia, the Virgin of the Slagheaps. Such a pity that your kitchenmaid had to have a flutter in the property sewers when you had been going out of your way to denounce such ways of making money under capitalism — though why the acquisition of wealth from slagheaps is any worse than from any other heaps — e.g. memoirs — is a bit puzzling. It’s all coming from the same source, the exploitation of the working class, isn’t it? Or did you find your five houses in a slagheap, perhaps? Still, we won’t be unkind to the Lady; as she explained, she only did it to have something put by for her old age. True, some villainous Socialist in the Socialist Standard was a bit caustic about this excuse, saying something about you having used your power to arrange pittances for the old age of real workers and why isn’t that good enough for my Lady? No satisfying these Socialists, is there?

In the light of all that sort of thing, the furore over your parting gift to a bunch of rather obvious capitalists, is really unfair to you. But now your hard stint at the coalface is over, what did you achieve for the workers? They did plenty for you didn’t they? And where is the socialism you got the power for? Somehow, I don’t think you’ll answer that one.

L. E. Weidberg

World View: Zimbabwe: from bloody elections to extra poverty (2002)

From the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The old adage that “a hungry man is an angry man” is one that finds echoes in the deteriorating economic situation in Zimbabwe. Indeed, the same dilemma is to some extent threatening the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as a whole. The future looks increasingly bleak.

Long faces are a commonplace in the streets in most (if not all) urban areas. Queues for basic commodities are unending. This has given blank cheques to the unscrupulous, profiteering vendors who charge exorbitant prices for scarce commodities such as the staple, maize meal, sugar, cooking oil – to mention just a few. The irony is that Zimbabwe was once a significant regional supplier of agricultural products.

These shortages are human-made rather than natural. Mugabe’s fast track land reform programme has offered to the people every kind of hindrance and no encouragement at all. The shambolically executed “re-settlement programme” has seen the displacement of some of the 4000 white commercial farmers by would-be peasant farmers, many with very slight practical experience and little or no equipment. The question is why is this happening now? Why, since coming to power in 1980, had Mugabe done so little to progress the question of “land redistribution” before now?

Under the Lancaster House agreement, land redistribution was to be implemented on the basis of “willing buyer – willing seller” with Britain putting up the money to make this arrangement work. But the formula never really worked. Moreover, many of the existing white farmers are “people who bought farms after independence, encouraged by Mugabe in the 1980s to develop farmland. Mostly, they were local whites who decided to take up farming, or return to it, but some came from South Africa” (CNN.com/world, 16 August, 2001). What little land that was redistributed tended to gravitate into the hands of people like the “relatives of ministers, army generals, permanent secretaries, directors of government departments and local party bosses” (Mail & Guardian, December 14, 1998.) There are reputedly at least 600 commercial farms (exceeding 1000 hectares each) belonging to rich blacks, mostly with links to ZANU-PF.

In the early years of independence, falling commodity prices on the world market – a common predicament faced by many developing countries – led the Zimbabwean government to succumb to IMF pressure to introduce austerity measures. In 1991, an Economic Structural Adjustment Plan (ESAP) effectively “liberalised” the economy by privatising state-owned firms, slashing social spending, and facilitating inflows of foreign capital. However, this only made matters worse. It decimated the manufacturing sector of the economy, destroying over 50,000 jobs. Real wages began to fall and the economy stagnated. In addition to this Zimbabwe’s involvement in a protracted war in the Congo imposed a crippling burden on the state.

This was the background against which we saw increasing outbreaks of industrial discontent during the 1990s which led, in due course, to the formation in 1999 of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) whose leader Morgan Tsvangirai was a trade unionist. But protest was not confined to the urban areas; in the rural areas too increasing impatience at the slow pace of land redistribution likewise threatened to undermine support for the regime. Faced with a growing opposition within the country the Mugabe regime then began to increasingly resist IMF pressures to further “reform” the economy which caused the IMF and the World Bank to suspend all further loans to Zimbabwe in 1999.

It was in this context and with the prospect of a presidential election in March 2002 that Zanu-PF began to take up the cause of land redistribution more vigorously. This move was cynically calculated to win support from the rural population (while the threat posed by urban workers was reduced by such Machia-vellian tactics as were outlined in April 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard). Mugabe received plaudits from the rural peasantry with the slogan “Land to the people!” and that was enough to enable him to scrape home with 1.6 million votes compared to Tsvangirai’s 1.2 million (if you disregard those among nation’s 5.6 million registered voters who were prevented from casting their vote). But having been returned to power, the Mugabe regime has now has to contend with an economy that is largely in ruins.

To make matters worse, there has been a terrible drought. The resettled farmers’ efforts were substantially undermined by this event which affected the whole country. Droughts are not uncommon in this part of the world and in the past the government used to have adequate stockpiled reserves – amounting to more than 1 million tonnes of maize – to cover such eventualities. However pressure from the World Bank forced the state to sell off these stockpiles with the result that it now has to import maize from elsewhere at a considerable cost

The government had received early warnings from concerned bodies in Zimbabwe (and many international bodies as well) about the drought and that their reserves would not suffice as far as the needs of the people were concerned. But because of Zanu-PF’s culturally induced paranoia of winning (elections), they, through the minister of Lands, Agriculture and Resettlement, Joseph Made, dismissed these reports as baseless and mere speculations concocted by unscrupulous organisations to defame the credibility of their government.

So all Zimbabweans are now waiting for the masquerading, self-proclaimed “socialist” – Mugabe – to fulfil his promises of land and bread. There is a noticeable difference in outlook, not to say suspicion and even hatred, between rural and urban folk, something that the Mugabe régime has itself fostered. The former tend to support the government because of its promise of more land which they see as the answer to the problem. The generally speaking, better educated urban workers, on the other hand, tend to support the MDC and know all to well that the country is now under sanctions and their “illegitimate” government has no foreign currency to deal with the growing food crisis. They see the lives of Zimbabweans as that of a man submerged in a duck pond up to the lips. The slightest ripple of misfortune will serve to drown him.

The fact of the matter is Mugabe and his counterparts are dangerous men, passionately dedicated to capitalist doctrines and contemptuous of the masses. His regime can offer nothing but more suffering as a precondition of some never-never land of economic salvation. On the other hand, the MDC is itself hardly much of an alternative to recommend, dominated as it is by capitalist interests. Their economics advisor Eddie Cross, a leading member of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI) has already talked (before the election) of continuing where Mugabe left off by privatising the top parastatals in the country and getting “government employment down from about 300,000 at the present time to about 75,000 in five years” (quoted in P. Bond, Radical Rhetoric and the Working Class during Zimbabwean Nationalism’s Dying Day”, JWSR). Hardly something likely to benefit the workers of Zimbabwe.

In the meanwhile, Morgan Tsvangirai has refused to accept an offer of a coalition government. The South African and Nigerian presidents, Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo respectively have failed to convince Tsvangirai before the recent Commonwealth troika meeting held in London. This led to the suspension of Zimbabwe from the club for a year. What a mess: from bloody elections to extra poverty.

Bigboy Musemwa

Instability and Corruption (1995)

From the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is now almost universally accepted that politicians aspiring
 to positions of power do so on the failings of those already in 
power rather than on any ideas of their own. Everywhere we 
look in the world today capitalism is in chaos - and it isn't
 going to get any better.

It seems that the more capitalism develops the more anarchic the global as system becomes, with chaotic economic development in such areas as China's free enterprise zones and the mad scramble for power in the wars of Soviet succession. In the West so-called democracy just seems to lead to confusion as politicians are unable to solve basic economic and social problems. As people have not yet identified capitalism as the real cause of these problems, the latest set of incumbent politicians are blamed, as if the next lot have the magic formula.

So in France we have seen the “Socialist" government and parliamentary representatives decimated in elections as unemployment and crime rise, to be replaced by a right-wing government who in turn are incapable of solving economic problems and will probably be replaced by a resurgent left. Whilst in Italy a government elected on a specific anti-corruption ticket has collapsed through corruption allegations and a confused electorate are prepared to vote in desperation for extremist parties.

The list could go on, so in this context the convoluted events in Ireland do not seem so surprising. The fact that Ireland's electoral system, in common with much of Europe, creates coalitions means that frequent changes of government are common as partners in these coalitions squabble. In Ireland the specific causes of that squabbling in recent years revolved around the main coalition partner, Fianna Fail, and its cosy relationship with Ireland's largest beef baron and how that relationship upset the “normal” running of government business, irritating the other coalition parties.

Having already caused one general election this underlying feeling quickly soured another coalition, this time between Fianna Fail and an electorally confident Labour Party. The catalyst that broke this coalition, as everyone probably knows by now, was the inexplicable delay by the Irish Attorney General's office to extradite a paedophile priest to Northern Ireland, and the insistence of Fianna Fail to promote the very man responsible for this delay. The catalogue of excuses, blame and backbiting that ensued meant that the coalition was doomed. This bizarre story finally ended with a parliamentary coalition reshuffle excluding Fianna Fail and the introduction of Democratic Left into the coalition to make up the numbers.

Political instability and corruption seem to be endemic to governments but whatever the specific causes of each incidence of graft or dispute the general underlying cause is capitalism.

Never-ending search for profit

Capitalism as an economic system is inherently unstable for a number of

reasons.

• It is based on the never-ending search for profits through competition, which manifests itself as rivalry between companies, regions and social and economic interest groups. Just the fact that the world is divided into about two hundred countries at the last count is example enough. The majority of them are divided again into numerous regions each with their own elites who in turn are divided into various factions due to historical, cultural or regional developments. This can only result in unequal economic development as resources go to areas of greatest potential profit or patronage rather than to areas of greatest economic need. This economic confusion and instability caused by capitalism leads to threatened or actual armed conflict between economic rivals on a grim and regular basis.
• The economic cycle of boom and slump caused by the tendency of capitalism to over-produce during a boom and thus reduce the rate of profit causing a slump. This cycle tends to hit the most economically and socially vulnerable harder in a slump and benefit the wealthy most in a boom.
• The division of society into two opposing and unequal classes. The minority owns the means of production and obtains profit by extracting unpaid labour from the majority who have only their labour power to sell. This fundamental difference of needs automatically results in conflict, class conflict, a never-ending, daily war of attrition that manifests itself in various ways. The most obvious is continual industrial disputes throughout every sector of the capitalist economy as workers attempt to defend or improve their economic position and are resisted at every step by the employers intent on improving their profit margins.

Thus, because the economic base of society is unstable, it is logical to assume that the social and political structure which rests on this base is also unstable. The facts prove this assumption correct. The supposed separation of powers in liberal democratic governments between the judiciary, legislature and executive, rather than acting as checks and balances on each other, are just the tools or conduits through which rival groups compete for access to power and resources. Indeed the American government, which is supposed to be the prime example of the separation of powers, can also be the prime example of a government in thrall to graft and corruption from lowly congressmen up to the President and riven by rivalry between the regions and social groups.

So what of the future? Well it's business as usual. The political theatre may provide entertainment but, as one economic commentator mentioned at the height of the crisis, who is in government has very little impact on the workings of the capitalist system. The iron laws of competition, profit and class conflict will remain as long as capitalism remains together with the disastrous global ramifications that this entails.

Jonathan Meakin

Such good chaps (2024)

Book Review from the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Good Chaps. By Simon Kuper. Profile Books. 2024. £9.99

This is effectively the sequel to Kuper’s excellent Chums, reviewed in the September 2022 Socialist Standard. The focus this time is the idea that English gentlemen (and it’s usually men) have always been trusted to follow the rules and ‘play the game’, this being an intrinsic tenet of a public school and Oxbridge upbringing. Kuper catalogues how in recent years this seems to have gone very badly awry.

In the 1960s and 70s, these types started to get rather pushed out of politics and the upper echelons of the civil service and other professions, though far from disappearing entirely. Under David Cameron (Eton and Oxford) they started to reassert their natural right to govern again, but with a twist – this being that the gentlemen’s code they had abided by in earlier eras had largely been eroded by the type of ruthless competition that capitalism promotes, and the narcissism and inflated egos that go with it. It found ultimate expression, of course, in the tawdry and shambolic government of Boris Johnson (Eton and Oxford).

Of particular interest to Kuper is the financial base to this political superstructure – exemplified by the buccaneer capitalists that massaged Johnson’s ego so thoroughly and who have sought influence through the connections to which they can buy access. Many of these have been arriviste Mayfair hedge-fund managers and private equity tycoons – the same types of people behind the likes of Reform UK and GB News (often people bizarrely casting themselves as ‘outsiders’ to the traditional City of London and media establishments). And of even more interest still, many in these circles have been Russian oligarchs. As ever, Kuper sums up this type of development beautifully:

‘The moment Russians became British citizens, they were allowed to give to political parties. From about 2012 through 2022, they were the foreign nationality that topped the list of British political donations. Naturally, they gave to the ruling party rather than the powerless Opposition.

The Tories were delighted. It was as if extraterrestrials had stepped out of a spaceship on Parliament Square and inexplicably begun handing them money. The Russian you met over whiskies in 5 Hertford Street was charming. Of course he wasn’t working for the Kremlin! Don’t go all Le Carré on me. And if you did make the effort to perform the most basic due diligence on where his money came from, well that might get in the way of taking it’ (p.94).

Kuper details many instances of Russian donations and influence to the Tory Party. To cite just one example, these include Lubov Chernukhin, whose husband became – at the tender age of 32 – deputy finance minister under Putin and later chair of the Russian state development bank. By 2023, she had donated £2.4 million to the Tories and was a member of the Party’s secretive ‘Advisory Board’ which was restricted to mega-donors who were entitled to monthly meetings with the Prime Minister and Chancellor. This is just one of several instances of this type and in case you are wondering, the embarrassing connections with the father-and-son press magnates the Lebedevs are also described in all their glory.

As the Tories fell from grace in the last couple of years (and some of the Russian connections became embarrassing after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine) the money started to dry up. There’s an interesting chapter on how Labour started to hoover up significant donations before the General Election instead, including from David Sainsbury, Dale Vince and Gary Lubner (of the family that own Autoglass and who reportedly gave £5 million alone). Kuper says Labour’s donors tend to have more of an obvious ideological affinity with them (rather than being people who will simply cosy up to whoever is in power) though it will be fascinating to see whose interests ‘the government of service’ will effectively serve – even if rather more indirectly. We think we can guess.

Dave Perrin

A Look Round. (1907)

From the August 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

John E. Williams has been elected a member of the West Ham Board of Guardians. Whilst avoiding in his election address many of the pitfalls usually associated with S.D.F. candidatures, he could not refrain from promising that which he knew he could not perform. “I say frankly,” he declared, ”that if elected I go to the Board to force my former colleague in the Dock, the Rt. Hon. John Burns, M.P., to do his duty to the countless poor of Canning Town.” Fiddlesticks ! J. B’s “duty” is to the folks who gave him his present job.

—++—

On the day following his election, Williams was congratulated at Tower Hill, and informed his hearers that one of his first steps would be to call a conference of all the Poor Law authorities with the object of pressing the Government to nationalise the Poor Rate. But if the working class do not pay the rates, and if, to quote Mr. W. Thome, M.P., it would make no difference to the working class if the rates went up to 20/- in the £, what concern is it to men who “have nothing to lose but their chains” whether the Poor Law is nationalised or not ?

—++—

There is one thing the advocates of this “reform” never mention—the question of control. If the central government will consent to the abolition of local rates, to the raising of all charges for the Poor Law, Education, etc., out of national funds, is it to be expected that they will permit such funds to be administered locally ? Not a bit of it. And so with the nationalisation of the Poor Rate must come the withdrawal of all local spending powers and the extension of the L.G.B. to deal with the funds. Is this what Mr. Williams is aiming at ?

—++—

Even if the Liberals have discharged men from Woolwich, say Liberal papers, the Tories were as bad and worse. What are the facts ? Between June 1st, 1902, and November 30th, 1905, 4,567 men were discharged, an average of about 108 per month. Between December 1st, 1906, and June 22nd, 1907, the discharges numbered 2.473, equal to about 370 per month ! There is no doubt that Codlin’s the friend, not Short.

—++—

In a statement issued by the committee “formed to protect the holders of Debentures secured upon Breweries and licensed properties,” Sir John. Ellerman, chairman of a large London Brewery Co. is reported to have said: “Capital is a shy bird and, if unduly oppressed, it has a knack of seeking employment in other countries where the capitalist is more fairly treated, to the benefit of the country where it is employed.” Now, why can’t the people whose security is threatened by the introduction of a time limit present their case without twaddle of this sort?

—++—

Imagine a Brewery Company, for example, shifting its Brewery and plant to, say, Germany, where the people are quite satisfied with the German brew. Of course the thing is impossible. Before they could withdraw their capital they would have to sell out and they could only sell out, at ruinous prices, to others, on whose behalf the businsss would be continued as before.

—++—

Mr. Lever, says “P.W.W.” in the Parliamentary column of the Daily News, “makes no pretence that the building of Port Sunlight was an act of benevolence or philanthropy. ‘A successful business,’ he explains, ‘must have physically efficient workpeople.'” Quite so, Mr. Lever is a cute capitalist.

—++—

A Blue Book has been issued giving the report of the Textile Factories (India) Labour Committee appointed in December, 1906. The Committee recommend that the hours of labour should be reduced to 72 per week !

—++—

The Liberal Press in particular is still booming our growing trade and alleged unprecedented prosperity, due to Free Trade. It is, therefore, somewhat unkind for Sir James Crichton Browne to declare that “except as an occasional luxury, meat is beyond the reach of the working class of this country and it is therefore necessary that they should be taught what is the best substitute for it.” He declared himself, at the Mansion House on June 26th, a firm believer in the value of the mutton chop, and would like to see a sirloin on the Sunday dinner table of every family in the land.

—++—

After this it is easy to understand why a movement to improve the health of the people by abolishing luxuries from the table is to be started in Bethnal Green. The Simple Life is somewhat of a chestnut there.

—++—

And now a par from London Opinion will not be amiss : —

“I see it stated that the keepers of City restaurants find their meat bills decreasing owing to the lighter luncheons which are being taken by the clerks and other office workers. The fashion for commercial men to take only the lightest of meals is alleged to be increasing. I do not believe a word of it. Whenever an Englishman has money in his pocket he is prepared to eat meat, and if City workers abandon it, that is simply because of the want of money. How some of the toilers manage to buy a lunch at all is a mystery to me.”

—++—

Sir Jas. Crichton Browne also said that he would like to see all proved adulterators of food electrocuted. One of these days the working class may remember his words. But if a Socialist were to advise that those who are battening and fattening upon the misery of the poor should be shot, or hanged, or electrocuted, he would be charged with inciting to murder and sedition.

—++—

As a property-owner, writes Mr. George Cadbury in the Daily News for July 16th, I have no fear whatever of the success of Labour men . . . I believe that so far as this country is concerned the stability of the Throne and of the institutions of our country will be secured, not by resistance to ameliorative measures, but by doing justice to those who produce its wealth.

—++—

In these sentiments Mr. Cadbury, who is a member of the I.L.P., expresses the feelings of many of the members of that body. The “institutions of our country” are the State, the Church, the Law, etc. These capitalist institutions are not to be abolished, but secured, if only the other capitalists will become as cute as Mr. Cadbury and Mr. Lever and introduce “ameliorative measures.” Instead of working for the establishment of a community of free citizens, co-operating as social equals, contributing, according to their ability, to the necessary work and enjoying, according to their needs, the good things of life, many of those posing as Socialists are merely striving after the establishment of the rule of a benevolent plutocracy, under which the workers may be well-fed, well-housed, and well-clothed, but will still be wage-slaves, subject to a master class.

—++—

That such a state of affairs may develope out of existing capitalist conditions is not at all improbable. The persistent advocacy of palliatives by the S.D.F., I.L.P., and other reform parties, the growth of the Garden City movement, the increasing number of capitalists who recognise that it pays to take “an interest” in their wage-slaves, the establishment of “model” factories, “model” villages, etc., all tend in this direction, and unless the issue is kept clear, the workers will be side-tracked again. Hence the need for the S.P.G.B.

—++—

The merchant princes of the Cardiff Docks, says the Evening News correspondent, have decided to inaugurate a fund for the purchase of an annuity for the “Labour” Knight, and have subscribed £1000. Mr Clifford Cory, M.P., being at the head of the movement, which is certain to succeed, Sir William Crossman being a most popular man by reason of his moderation as an advocate of labour. . . . The idea now is to get sufficient money invested to ensure him a reasonable annuity. The new knight does not fear going back to work, but, naturally, he would prefer an annuity. What ho!

—++—

"The great political struggle of the future will be a struggle in which the Radical party will have no place. The issues will be fought out between the principles of Socialism on the one hand and Imperialism on the other."—Rt. Hon. J. H. M. Campbell, K.C., M.P., at United Club banquet.

—++—

Mr. Churchill, replying to Mr. Myer in the House of Commons, said in April last there were in the Transvaal mines 17,886 whites, 114,470 coloured labourers, and 53,114 Chinese. For April, 1906, the figures were 18,035 whites, 93,793 coloured, and 49,832 Chinese, showing a decrease of 149 whites, an increase of 20,731 coloured labourers, and of 3,282 Chinese.

And this is eighteen mouths since Sir H. C. Bannerman declared “we have abolished Chinese labour” !

—++—

The industrious, steady working man, who works hard through a long life, and brings up his family with affection and care, is a real national asset, he is, indeed, among the most valued possessions of any country, and since it is almost impossible for him to put by enough money to ensure his livelihood when work is no longer possible, he has a moral right to demand from the community comfort and sustenance in the evening of his days.

—++—

Thus the Pearson Paralyser. But what becomes of their argument that the Post Office, Building Society, Co-operative Society and other deposits represent working-class thrift, if it is almost impossible for the industrious, steady working man, who works hard through a long life, to put by etc. ?

—++—

A few months ago capitalist politicians and writers were holding up their hands in pious horror at the revelations with regard to “graft” in America, declaring that English politics were so pure, you know.

—++—

Yet the letter of Mr. C. H. Lea, Liberal member for East St. Pancras, compelled some of them to make admissions. Mr. Lea accused the Government of selling peerages and other “honours” for contributions to the Party war chest. This war chest was used to help poor candidates whose votes, if elected, are looked upon as secure, “no matter what the issue, or what pledges may have been given to the constituents.” To us it was no wonder that these practices of the Liberals should have been defended by the Tories, whose mouthpiece was Lord Robert Cecil.

—++—

Commenting on the debate the Daily Graphic said : it is an open secret that those who want titles must contribute to the Party funds. . . Any respectable citizen who contributes handsomely to the fundsof one or other of the political parties may, in the fulness of time, claim a title and get it. … We have established what we call democratic institutions, and we can only keep the machine running by the sale of aristocratic titles.

—++—

The Daily News also said: The practice of rewarding those who pay heavily to the party funds by giving them honours is not confined to one party. It is a recognised and rather squalid phase of the normal political game.

The liberation of Africa (1978)

From the October 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

It might as well be made clear at once. The title of this article is black humour. In the whole of this mighty continent (Europe would fit into a corner), from Cairo to the Cape, there is hardly a square mile of liberty—even of the capitalist brand such as exists in places like Britain where the proletariat is at least able to organise itself into trade unions and political parties (and where the SPGB can publish, and you can read, this journal).

For a hundred years and more, almost the entire continent was carved up among the powers of Europe, mainly England and France but also including Portugal, Belgium, Italy and pre-1914 Germany). The European imperialists had little difficulty in ousting the native rulers who were in many cases barely out of the Stone Age—but who, like all ruling classes, had treated the subject classes with horrifying oppression and exploitation. It would be anybody’s guess whether the mass of the African peoples were subjected to more vicious exploitation under the Europeans than they were under their own native rulers (some of whom, among other delights, were always ready to sell their subjects for transportation to slavery). However, there grew up in the African countries (just as in India and South America) a movement to liberate the Africans from the European capitalists—a movement which was eagerly supported by European leftists of the Fenner Brockway ilk (it may be news to some readers that this ancient ILPer, a colleague of such as Maxton whose names sound like history lessons, is alive and well in the Lords where he occasionally pontificates about Africa without the slightest sign of realising that he spent his life helping to con the Africans from a white-ruled hell to the black-ruled hell that they have to endure now). We in the SPGB always did our best to point out that nationalism, whether in Ireland or India or Africa, was simply a trap for the working class and that those who laid down their lives for this cause were merely substituting a native ruling class for a foreign one. With the kind of "benefits” that are made so horrifyingly clear every time you open a paper or switch on the news.

It may be worthwhile to have a very brief look at a few of the dozens of countries where nationalism has won the day. In the north there is Egypt where the lot of the mass of the people is at least as degraded as it was in British days and where, only a year ago, President Sadat rewarded the poor devils who crossed the Suez Canal in the teeth of Israeli guns in the Yom Kippur War by decreeing a massive increase in the prices of the poor basic foods that they subsisted on—with no comparable increase in wages. As these workers were already only just about subsisting, there were riots in Cairo and Alexandria which were put down with at least as much brutality as was used by the British. And the "ring-leaders” (the name the ruling class always gives to workers who have the cheek to kick against the pricks) are still rotting in gaol—as though rotting in the normal poverty of Cairo’s slums is not bad enough. That should teach the Egyptian workers to fight their masters’ wars against Israel. (Sadly, there is no reason to think it will. Any more than in the case of British workers.)

Sadat recently had the impudence to hold a referendum where the voters were given the chance to say they thought there was too much political freedom! And, according to Sadat, said it. There is of course no freedom whatsoever in the land of Egyptian “Socialism”. (Almost all these countries now have the nerve to call themselves socialist.) Except the freedom of a small ruling class to get inordinately rich while the people who produce the wealth live in abject poverty.

Similar conditions obtain in the other countries of the north of the continent, in the former French colonies, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Senegal, all of which have divested themselves of European rulers since the war. In all of them the position of the working-class is one of wage slavery compounded by the opposition of the native rulers to the formation of trade unions or independent political parties. One day, the workers will no doubt succeed in getting them. But meanwhile, their fate is deplorable. And as we move south of the Sahara, conditions are even more appalling. The very names of places like Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the “Central African Empire” (ruled by a murderous megalomaniac called Bokassa, formerly a soldier in the French army, another General Amin) are enough to give nightmares to anyone with the slightest knowledge of the excesses that are perpetrated there. Then we have Zaire, formerly the Belgian Congo. One might have thought that the atrocities committed by King Leopold in pre-1914 days—his speciality was to cut off the hands of natives who impeded his quest for profits—would be unequalled. But the former Belgian soldier, Mobutu, who now rules in Kinshasa (formerly Leopoldville) can compare with the worst of them. And to some purpose. The fortune that he has spirited out of the country (against the day when he may have to get out in a hurry) is reputed to make him one of the richest men in the world. And this brings us to Angola with whose president, Netto, Mobutu has apparently come to terms recently after the wars and massacres that have taken place in the copper-rich province of Zaire, twice invaded recently by rebel forces stationed in Angola. Angola, like all the worst hell-holes, is now a "Marxist” state if you please. Marx repudiated Marxists in his time, but he could never have dreamt that his name would be purloined by the kind of regimes that exist in Angola and Ethiopia where mass murder and constant terror—against their own subjects, as well as against neighbouring black countries—are worthy of Genghiz Khan.

In Nigeria, the largest and potentially the richest country in the continent, once again there is not a vestige of freedom and the lot of the workers can be gauged by an item which was mentioned in the Socialist Standard some years ago but is worth repeating in the present context. The government of this rich country, which had recently finished off a war attempted secession by Biafra (and finished off around a million people by guns and starvation) had the effrontery to put an advert in that well-known liberal paper, the Guardian, calling on British capitalists to invest in factories in Nigeria where the main advantage was “the cheapest wages in Africa”—seven cents an hour. Just enough to keep a monkey in peanuts. So much for black workers in independent Africa. The black capitalists make royalty look like beggars. At the very time when Biafran workers were literally starving to death (and when all fighting had ended) the Nigerian chief, General Gowon, got married. The papers were full of the stories about planes coming in from France carrying tons of the most delectable foods—and French chefs to deal with them for the delectation of the ruling class wedding guests. Yet only a few days before this article was written, there was an article by the editor-in-chief of the Observer, Conor Cruise O’Brien, saying what a nice chap Gowon is and how graciously he accepted the coup that kicked him out—so that he could live in Hampstead on the millions he had salted away!

We can only just glance in passing at such details as the war between “Marxist” Somalia (formerly backed by “Marxist” Russia but now armed by America) and “Marxist” Ethiopia (formerly backed by America and now backed by “Marxist” Russia). Suffice it to say that thousands of poor people fight and die in places like the Danakil desert where, in temperatures that go up to 150F in the shade, life is just about on the margin even in peace time. And Kenya. Here, we have just ben regaled with the story of the funeral of M’zee, the Grand Old Man and Father of the People, Jomo Kenyatta. Some of us knew Kenyatta in the ’40s when he was in Manchester; our word for him was “four-flusher”. He played the leading rôle in getting rid of the British in Kenya so that now there is, as always, a small, exceedingly rich, black capitalist class and a mass of liberated black workers who are suffering at least as much poverty, unemployment etc. as they ever did. And let anyone who criticises the leadership beware. Even an MP who had the nerve to open his mouth in Parliament was kidnapped by Kenyatta’s guards and his body found dumped in a ravine. The Commission of Enquiry is still sitting!

Still, these poor Third World countries do get aid from places like Sweden; a herd of magnificent Swedish cattle, each beast being worth a hundred men in hard cash, was donated to improve the Kenyan stock. No doubt it improved the stock on the farm belonging to Kenyatta’s sister where the entire herd ended up. Then, a year or two later, a proud announcement was made by Tiny Rowland the chairman of Lonhro, the British firm trading mainly in Africa (the actual “unacceptable face of capitalism”—Heath): "We have appointed the first black man onto our Board”. Great news for the downtrodden proletariat. Especially when the new director was the son of the same Kenyatta’s same sister. How many African workers, conned by leftists of all colours, were made to suffer privation and even death in rebellions like the Mau Mau so that a few blacks should own the country instead of a few whites? And who will win the election to succeed Kenyatta? Nobody. No election, see.

All of which leaves us but little space to deal with the appalling state of affairs in Rhodesia which is now filling the papers (not to mention the cemeteries). The white capitalists have undoubtedly treated the black people in unspeakable fashion ever since the days of the unspeakable Rhodes. And now there are massacres of blacks and whites so as to sort out which black leaders will come out on top in the struggle for power when the whites are dethroned. Which will get the black Mercedes and which the hearses. There is no more principle involved than in the struggle between A1 Capone and Jack Diamond —or Stalin and Trotsky. At the time of writing, the favourite for the role of Stalin is a gang-leader called Mugabe, backed by Nyerere of Tanzania (another black “socialist” dictator who has an enormous number of political prisoners rotting away in his gaols). Mugabe has been most honest for a politician. He has made it perfectly clear that there will be no freedom to oppose him once he gets power. One man one vote —for Mugabe, or else. He has also made it clear that there is a grisly fate awaiting those who are now opposing him—which means huge numbers of ordinary blacks as well as leaders (and ordinary whites). And when there was a debate in the Commons about a dreadful massacre of missionaries and their families, a loud-mouthed leftie, a former actor called Faulds, blamed the massacre on those who failed to give “one man one vote”. Knowing full well Mugabe and Co have declined to take part in elections. Saying in effect: We have got the guns. We are going to take power on our terms and to hell with democracy. And if a lot of “our" blacks are going to get killed in the process, who cares?

And while on that note it is apposite to mention the role of our former “socialist” Premier, Sir Harold Wilson. When sanctions were first proclaimed against the Smith regime many years ago, he boasted they would bring down the white regime “in weeks, not months". And the British navy have mounted a blockade outside Beira ever since. And now even a paper like the Observer (Sep 3) calls Wilson a hypocrite because he was at that very time conniving in supplies of oil—the heart of the matter—being pumped into Rhodesia by British government-owned BP in order to defeat those very sanctions. Still, as the paper says, some hypocrisy is essential in government; it is merely a matter of how much! Wilson went too far! And the dreadful thing is that the majority of workers, of all colours, just swallow the hypocrisy of capitalism as though no other system is possible.

L. E. Weidberg

Uganda’s politics of alcohol, soap, salt and sugar (2001)

From the October 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

At last, like the presidential elections, the parliamentary elections are over. This was a month of violence, harassment, intimidation and torture on one side and merrymaking (in a form of “gifts”—alcohol, salt pieces of soap, sugar and cash in exchange for votes) on the other hand. The campaigns attracted many people, especially the rallies of those candidates who were well and easy on their pockets. Here, like anywhere else, the standard by which men and women are judged is their material possessions. Even if you have ideas or initiative, if you are broke you must go without. Those without money dwell in the darkness of inescapable poverty (despite being in the midst of potential plenty), ever wrestling with the torment of survival in a world dominated by the fast buck. So it would have appeared a miracle for a poor but reasonable person to sail through and make it to parliament.

On the other hand, there was controversy when the president turned out and started campaigning in favour of some candidate and campaigning against some others on grounds that the favoured ones were “pro-movement”. In some parts of the country the electoral process was militarised. This was mostly in places where supporters of multiparty politics were contesting along with the historicals of president’s movement system and/or his personal friends. This resulted in violence where some people lost their lives.

Most contestants bribed voters to the extend of buying the poor needy voters, blankets, mattresses, bicycles and hoes, in the expectation that out of which excitement the poor voters would eventually not resist voting for such candidates even if it was clear that the candidate was a non-performer. This is not surprising given that recently Transparency International ranked Uganda as the third most corrupt country in the world. In fact some candidates went as far as spending over U shs 900 millions (£360,000).

Most manifestos centred on poverty, as if the contestants had a formula to eliminate it or as if they had just realised that they were living with poor people. Their opportunity was to capitalise on this biting poverty in most Uganda’s homes. Their elaboration of how poverty could be eliminated was insincere on the candidates’ part, given that poverty cannot be eliminated under capitalism and especially in a country like Uganda where a majority don’t have enough and the right education and civilisation.

There was talk about health programmes, education, security and peace yet in some places these rallies could not take place because of insecurity – due to rebel activities. The candidates came with programmes for bringing health to all yet since about twenty years ago the Ministry of Health has been running an advert in the name of “Health for all by the year 2000”. This is 2001 and most people here in Uganda are still dying of curable diseases such as typhoid, dysentery and malaria.

So their manifestos seem to be disabled ones.

Then we come to voting day. Most of the candidates and their supporters saw this as a day determining between life and death. They became aggressive so as to win the election. Winning indeed would be the only way by which they could recover the money used in bribing voters. Once elected they could get access to public funds and embezzle it. They could, as well, get high salaries and allowances. On polling day voters who supported poor candidates and those candidates who were not favoured by the president were harassed and intimidated. Some were even refused voting but the supporters of the favoured and rich candidates were allowed to vote more than once, to vote in other people’s names – the dead and the absent.

Uganda is a country that has been infested with wars before and after the so-called independence. It seems here the needs of democracy are planted on unfertile grounds. Most folk here don’t have a proper understanding and education of the world we live in, capitalistic society based on profit and competition, and the next stage of society—socialism that will depend on contribution to society by individuals based on individuals’ ability and where individuals take from society according to their self-determined needs. No ruler and no ruled, then and only then would be true democracy, a proper voting process and would there be value of the vote.

Weijagye Justus

Impeach Capitalism (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

All over America and, indeed, throughout much of the world the question is being bruited about: To Impeach or not to Impeach, referring — of course — to President Nixon. If one were to measure importance by the quantity of coverage by the mass media there would be no doubt that the scandals generally listed under the heading Watergate are more important than any other problem existing today. Even, apparently, more of consequence than the Mideast War and certainly far more newsworthy than the Energy Crisis or the worsening economic conditions of those who depend upon wages and salaries for a living. And so, on the one hand, there are the politicians and pundits and leaders of Organized Labor who are mounting a clamor for Congress to impeach and try the President for high crimes and misdemeanors with a view to ousting him (unless he bows to the outcry and resigns), while, on the other, are the loud and sometimes strident voices of Mr. Nixon’s defenders, urging him to hang in there.

The Marxists of the World Socialist Party regard this sound and fury as much ado about nothing, insofar as working class interests are concerned We maintain that the high crimes and misdemeanors that Mr. Nixon might well be guilty of are crimes against his fellow capitalists. Given the premise that the arrangement of dividing society into economic classes is correct and fitting — a premise socialists do not hold — any added unpleasantness suffered by the working class is, generally incidental. Whether Mr. Nixon or any other Individual — regardless of political persuasion — occupies the White House and tends to the affairs of U. S. capitalism is six of one and half a dozen of the other. A glance at current and past history should make it apparent that the problems and miseries of most of us are due to something much more fundamental than any high crimes and misdemeanors of any President or government, present or past.

Even the Republican attempts to wipe out Constitutional freedoms are not that all-important to the working class as an Issue to get excited about The freedoms of the Bill of Rights were not designed to safeguard the rights of the masses of the poor, to begin with. The capitalist class, as a whole, will undoubtedly continue to defend whatever liberties are consistent with and beneficial to their system from the depredations of any section of the population. The task of the socialists is to use such freedoms to the fullest extent possible in order to spread the message of genuine freedom, world socialism. Which is why we insist that the important job ahead is not the impeachment of Nixon but the impeachment and ousting of capitalism.

Now how does one go about working towards such a goal? It should be obvious by now, even though it doesn't seem to be, that the one essential need today is an awareness on the part of millions of working people that production for sale with view to profit is the root cause of problems such as poverty, war, chicanery and all high crimes and misdemeanors by elected officials. The only task that makes sense for socialists is to systematically attempt to raise the level of political understanding of the working class in whatever way and to whatever extent is possible. For, as we insist, there can be no impeachment and ousting of capitalism without millions and millions of working people who understand the basics of and are determined to institute socialism. This is the first and most important task of the socialist movement.

With an increasing political awareness and understanding will come a strong socialist political movement, made up of the overwhelming majority of the population, that will ultimately capture control of all central organs of political power — city, state and national — utilizing the only means possible, the ballot. Only when this has been done will capitalism be impeached and ousted. There are no short cuts to socialism.

How Liberals win Elections. (1905)

From the June 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Writing upon the Boer War, Mr. Dooley observed that if he had been in control there would have been no fighting. He would have conceded the Uitlanders’ demand for the vote, but he would have done the counting ! The Liberals are never tired of professing their desire to enfranchise the workers, but it is rarely that they make such a muddle of their schemes for depriving the workers of any use which the franchise might be to them as they did recently in Canada. In an interesting article in “The Co-operative News,” Mr. Edward Porritt states that a scandal already in the courts arises out of what is known as ballot box stuffing. It was done in the interest of a Liberal candidate in one of the rural ridings of Ontario. The facts are no longer in dispute, and they show callousness to moral considerations, daring and ingenuity. The Ontario ballot boxes were most ingenious. They were provided with a double side and a trap door. With the connivance of a deputy returning-officer, some of them were substituted for the official boxes, and before the polling began they were loaded with votes concealed in the double side, and marked in favour of the Liberal candidates. The ballots were marked in the names of men known to be Tories, and when these Tories came to vote, their votes, by means of a spring, were thrown into the false side of the box, in the place of the concealed ballots, which had been passed through the trap door into the box proper. The newspapers were full of this Ontario scandal just when Earl Grey took possession of Rideau Hall.

The second scandal turns on a plot by a handful of financiers and promoters to defeat the Laurier Government, in order, it is believed, to secure from an incoming Tory Government such a revision of the Act for building the Grand Trunk Railway as would enable these men to plunder the railway by means of a constructors’ company similar to that by which millions of dollars passed to an American syndicate when the Canadian Pacific Railway was carried across the Continent.

Mr. Blair (the ex-Minister of Railways) is the central figure in this scandal. While he was Minister of Railways he opposed in the Cabinet and in the House of Commons the Government plan for a second Trans-Continental Railway. On account of this opposition, he dropped out of the Cabinet and out of the House. He was made chairman of a newly-created Commission for settling railway freights and other questions between the public and the railway companies. His pay was ten thousand dollars a year—as much as the Premier receives; and it was understood when he accepted the office that he bid good-bye to politics. About ten days before the general election, however, Blair suddenly resigned his place on the Commission, and the same day it was announced in a New Brunswick paper that he was to take the stump against the Laurier Government and the Railway scheme during the few days before the polling. This astonishing news was telegraphed from St. John to every newspaper in Canada, and for a week or more Canadians were eagerly looking for Blair’s appearance on the Tory platform, and for the red-hot shot which he was to fire into the Laurier Government and its railway scheme.

No such shot from the Blair guns was fired. Blair was dumb until the election was over, and since then the question has interested all Canada, “At what point and why did the plot against the Laurier Government fail ?” For the Laurier Government was returned with a larger majority in the House of Commons than any Liberal Government has had since Confederation.

The question has not been answered, but much of the plot has been uncovered. It has been ascertained that Blair was persuaded to resign by a young company promoter named Russell. Blair was to have some position in the gift of Russell, worth more than ten thousand a year. Russell is almost young enough to be Blair’s grandson ; but he was wily enough to persuade Blair to resign and to make other plans for the overthrow of Laurier. He bought three daily papers as part of the scheme—two in St. John and a third in Montreal. It is also openly said by men whose position in Canadian politics warrants acceptance of their word that on the eve of the election three members of the Laurier Government were to be arrested for malversation in office, and that ten or fifteen Liberal candidates in Quebec were to be paid 2,000 dollars each to resign as a protest against this Ministerial scandal. They were to resign on such short notice that the Liberal organisation would have no time to nominate other candidates.

About much of this remarkable plot there is no longer any doubt. Blair admits that he was persuaded by Russell to resign, and the purchase of three daily papers by Russell is a matter of legal record. What Canada wants to know now is why Blair came back, and it wants to be quite sure that the Trans-Continental Railway construction was the game for which Russell and his moneyed associates were playing. More must come out when Parliament meets.

At Quebec, the so-called Liberal premier is so much a tool of the monopoly interests at Montreal that the Liberal Party is in revolt, and anything may happen when the newly-elected Provincial Legislature begins its Session. The ugliest incident in the Quebec election was the attempt of an attorney of a Light and Power Company—a concern with forty millions of capital—much of it water—which controls all the public utilities of Montreal, to secure re-election to the legislature. Montreal is the most monopoly-ridden city in the British Empire. It pays more for heat, light, and power than any city in the United States—not excluding Tammany-ridden New York—and this monopoly is so well entrenched at Quebec, the Provincial capital, that the people of Montreal have resigned themselves to despair.

All this only emphasises that which we Socialists persistently endeavour to impress upon the workers. As long as the means of life are owned and controlled by a class, that class will dominate all institutions, whether political, religious, or social. The only remedy for “scandals” such as these is to organise in the International Socialist Party for the complete overthrow of capitalist domination, by the only means, the realisation of the object of The Socialist Party of Great Britain.

K.

Blogger's Note:

'K'. was the occasional pen name of Adolph Kohn but I don't think it was Kohn who wrote this article. Why? 1) I don't think Kohn was a member of the SPGB in 1905 & 2) The subject matter of the article. My guess is that this 'K'. was either a member of the Socialist Party of Canada or an SPGBer residing in Canada.