SPGB Snippets: Money down the drain (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

April 22, 2026

People often defend the capitalist market system on the grounds that the ‘price mechanism’ is the most effective and realistic way to regulate production and consumption. But because price only reflects paying potential, not actual need, this often leads to bonkers outcomes, like milk being poured down drains.

Right now there’s a global energy crisis, due to the Iran war. But UK electricity providers are telling consumers to use more power, not less. Why? Because the government expects a glut of renewable power this summer, and will have to shut down solar and wind plants, and reimburse providers for lost revenue via expensive ‘constraint payments’ (Guardian, 14 April).

Socialism, where everything is free, would be so much simpler!

Notes by the Way: “No Reparations, No Indemnities” (1948)

The Notes by the Way Column from the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

“No Reparations, No Indemnities”

At the time the Communists seized power in Russia their favourite slogan for winning the support of the war-weary workers of Europe was “No Reparations : No Indemnities.” They bitterly attacked the Allied victors for trying to collect vast reparations from the defeated Central Powers, opposed the Versailles Treaty and encouraged the rebuilding of Germany as a great power. As Foreign Commissar Molotov was still saying after the outbreak of war in 1939, but before Russia was attacked, “We have always held that a strong Germany is an indispensable condition for a durable peace in Europe.” (Speech to Supreme Soviet, 31/10/39.) In 1929 the British Communists put forward the same plea at the General Election. They demanded “repudiation of all imperialist treaties and pacts—the Versailles Treaty, the Locarno Pact, the Kellog Pact” and “annulment of the Dawes Plan ” (a plan for the collection of reparations from Germany).

Now the tune is altered. Russia’s demand is for the payment by Germany of 10,000 million dollars as reparations. (Manchester Guardian, 15/12-’47.) Curiously the Daily Worker during the meetings of the four Foreign Ministers in London in December, while this was being discussed, was very coy about reporting it and managed on more than one occasion to report the debates without mentioning the figure. Perhaps they have a fear that readers may remember what they used to say about the futility and iniquity of reparations.

* * *

Why Workers Read the “Daily Worker”

The following is a notice issued by the Daily Worker and published by them as an advertisement in the News and ‘Book Trade Review and Stationers’ Gazette (6/12/47). It needs no comment.

“IT GETS AROUND. 

News has a habit of spreading. People soon get to know what’s happening. For instance, there’s a lot of talk in the sporting world about the consistent success of Cayton, the Daily Worker’s racing tipster. After all, 752 winners in the flat racing season is worth talking about! So you will understand why more people are asking for the Daily Worker. If you have difficulty in getting copies get in touch with us, we might be able to help.”

* * *

Some “Austerity” Fortunes

Among the fortunes reported in the Press recently on the death of the holders are the following:

Mr. H. Mountain, £1,122,616;

Sir W. McLintoch, £410,203;

Mr. Hermann Marx, £1,262,492;

Marquess of Lansdowne, £1,023,792;

Mr. Frank Hodges, one-time Secretary of the Miners’ Federation, £132,959.

Mr. Frank Hodges after leaving the trade, union movement went into the more lucrative occupation of company director.

All of the amounts given above are before payment of death duties

Another interesting news item recently was a comment by the City Editor of the Evening Standard (9/12/47) on the Ellerman fortune. After stating that Lord Ellerman holds £519,000 Deferred Stock of the Ellerman Shipping Lines, his holding being estimated to have a present value of over £2,500,000, and also holdings in a group of investment and brewery companies worth another £1,050,000 the Editor goes on as follows about the total present value of all investments :

“No firm estimate can be made of the Ellerman fortune today, but many people in the City believe that he would not lose in the comparison with his father. The first Sir John left £40 million.” (Evening Standard, 9/12/47.)

* * *

Grain Shortage?

”BUENOS AIRES, Wednesday. — The Argentine has been forced to burn £125,000,000 worth of crops, chiefly maize, says a Government statement tonight.

“It blames an economic blockade which keeps out machinery, cars, and rolling stock.

“Ports and railway terminals are jammed with grain which cannot he loaded in ships.” (Daily Express, 30/10/47.)

* * *

Growing Imperial Importance of Equatorial Africa

The following is an extract from an article on Equatorial Africa in the Times (14/11/47).

“As the British Empire in its old significance tends to shrink, with the gradual advance of its peoples to self-government and with the transfer to United Nations trusteeship of responsibility for certain territories at present administered by Britain, attention must he increasingly directed to the remaining British Colonies. That several of these are to be found in Africa is a fortunate fact in view of the withdrawal of British power from Egypt, the uncertain future of Palestine, and the consequent insecurity of the Mediterranean and Suez Canal route to those parts of the Commonwealth and Empire lying in the East.

“The search for alternative routes more secure from attack and for areas more conveniently situated for the disposition of imperial military resources must focus attention on West and East Africa, where there are great territories which, on examination, may be found to provide in great measure alternatives capable of making up for losses elsewhere. It might on the face of it seem that from a general move southwards into Africa only military advantages would accrue, such as safer lines of communication, areas suitable for British troops, and even alternative resources of man-power to succeed those lost by the changing conditions in India.”

* * *

Echo from Bikini

“King Juda of Bikini and his 165 subjects are to be uprooted afresh and shipped to a new island. Eighteen months ago their ancient atoll home was sacrificed to the atom bomb tests. Now, in the words of an official American Navy report, they are ‘a destitute, defeated, frustrated, poverty-stricken and hungry people.’

“Before the bombs exploded they were persuaded to make their ‘contribution to the advancement of science.’ Lock, stock and barrel they were moved to Rongerik Island, 120 miles away.

“There they found: 416 acres, instead of the 1,500 they were used to ; fire, which devastated their coconut trees ; and a lagoon with poisoned fish.

“They were driven to cutting palms and eating the leaves.” (News-Chronicle, 4/10/47.)

* * *

“The Greatest Social Reform Parliament in History.”

The Labour Party likes to make the claim that it is a Socialist party committed to the introduction of a Socialist system of society, but whenever its leaders set out to defend themselves against the Tory Opposition their line is always the very different one that they are a better social reform party than any of their predecessors. In a speech at Bermondsey Mr. Herbert Morrison is reported by the Daily Mirror (16/12/47) as making the claim thai “the present Parliament is destined to be the greatest social reform Parliament in history.”

He may prove to he right but the workers will discover that after all the Labour Party reforms have been put into operation Capitalism will still be with us.

* * *

I.L.P. History

In the Socialist Leader (6/12/47) Mr. F. A. Ridley writes an article on the theme “Had Rosa Luxemburg lived, Stalin might never have come to power in Russia, nor Hitler in Germany.” He writes:

“For had that amazing woman survived, she, at the head of German Communism, might have been able to establish a ‘Balance of Power’ in the new International which would have offset the Russian domination that subsequently monopolised it, in other words the ‘Third International’ might have become really international.”

Without going into elaborate arguments to answer this too-easy re-writing of history it should surely be obvious that as Socialism was impossible in 1918 because there were too few Socialists inside and outside of Russia, the Russian Government, if it had failed to control its instrument, the Third International, would have scrapped it and created other instruments for carrying out its foreign policy. We might just as well say that if Ramsay MacDonald had not been born or had succeeded in his first ambition, that of becoming a Liberal M.P., the Labour Party might have been Socialist.

Or perhaps now that Mr. Ridley has shown Stalin where he is wrong Stalin will mend his ways and do what Ridley thinks Luxemburg would have done.

* * *

A.R.P. Again

The following is from an Editorial, “Atom Age A.R.P.,” in the Daily Mail (12/12/47).

“To most people the revival of the A.R.P. service on a national scale is like a blow between the eyes. 

” ‘It is little more than two years since the end of the last war,’ they say, ‘ and now we seem to be getting ready for the next one. Has the world gone mad?’

“No, it has not gone mad, because it always was in that condition. But there are degrees of lunacy, and the wild state of this age is shown by the extent of the new Civil Defence plans.

“The aim in future is that everyone shall be trained in these warlike duties. The professional element will be provided by a full-time force of A.R.P. ‘commandos’ ready to move anywhere at a moment’s notice. An ‘incident’ in a future war may be the blotting-out of an entire town.”

In the meantime the war-time allies have finally ended the London meeting of the four Foreign Ministers quite unable to agree about the future of Germany. More or less open hostility now replaces the protestations of everlasting friendship. And the remedy is not more A.R.P. but the abolition of Capitalism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Burn the mountains, say Euro experts (1986)

From the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

A secret report by Common Market officials recommends destroying huge stocks of surplus butter, milk powder, beef and cereals and writing off more than £1.700 million of taxpayers' money. 

The report, by the European Commission's market management experts in the agricultural directorate argues that there never will be a market for a large proportion of the surplus stocks.

Agra Europe, said much of the surplus would be inedible long before it could be sold and that the food mountains were a huge burden on international markets.

Destroying them by burning or some other means would cut the Community's costs by eliminating storage charges and cutting interest payments.

(Western Daily Press 12 September 1986)

Notes by the Way: For Heaven’s Sake Don’t Shoot! (1948)

The Notes by the Way Column from the November 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

For Heaven’s Sake Don’t Shoot!

In a speech in London on 24th September, Mr. Herbert Morrison elaborated a familiar Labour Party theme, which is that the workers have now got what they wanted and must be very careful not to do anything to endanger their triumph:—

“Mr. Herbert Morrison, Lord President of the Council, declaring that the ball was now at the feet of the worker, said in London to-night that if he exploited his advantage against the needs of the community as selfishly as the old employer did when he was on top, the great victories of trade unionism would melt away, and would deserve to melt.” (Manchester Guardian, 25/9/48.)

Which prompts the natural question, if the workers really have got the ball at their feet and just when they are about to score a goal, their captain bawls out, “For heaven’s sake don’t shoot,” what was the use of starting the game at all?

* * *

Mr. Horner’s Bluff

In the row between Mr. Arthur Horner, Communist and secretary of the Miners’ Union, and the other officials of the union who are Labour Government supporters, his opponents argued that it was his duty to keep to the declared policy of the Union which is in favour of the Marshall Plan. Instead he supported the strike of the French coal miners which his Labour opponents maintain was a Russian inspired move to prevent European recovery, though ostensibly a strike for higher wages.

Mr. Horner defended his action on the ground of international working-class solidarity. He said that the French miners’ wages are lower than the wages of British miners, and that “if French miners are allowed to stay at their present level it will threaten the standards of existence of British miners.” (Observer, 17/10/48.) He told a Daily Express correspondent (16/10/48) that he would have supported the strike on its merits even if it had not been backed by the Communists—”I would on principle support the workers if they thought they were justified in refusing their wages.”

So far so good, but let us test the claim by Mr. Horner’s actions in other directions. Only 12 months ago members of Mr. Horner’s union were on strike at Grimethorpe colliery. Did Mr. Horner support them? Not at all. He opposed the strike, told them they were wrong, and accused them of wrecking union policy. This, of course, was before the Communists had switched over to their campaign against the Labour Government.

And what about the miners and other workers in Czechoslovakia who were honoured by a visit from Mr. Horner just before he went to France? On his return he admitted that “wage standards were lower than in Britain and the tempo of work harder ” (Daily Worker, 4/10/48), and that the Czechs work “six eight-hour days a week. (Manchester Guardian, 4/10/48.)

Since the Czech workers work longer hours than British miners and are lower paid, why doesn’t Mr. Horner offer his support to a strike of Czech miners and other workers to improve their position?

The reason is obvious. In Czechoslovakia the Government that enforces these low wages and long hours is a Communist Government, so Mr. Horner is against the workers and for the Government. In France the Communists are not in power, so it suits Russia to back the strike.

During the row Mr. Horner confirmed that he had been offered, and refused, a job on the Coal Board at £5,000 a year (five times his present salary). He also told the Sunday Express (17/10/48), “I would sooner go back to the pit than have another year of this torture.”

The tragedy of the whole business is that the trade union movement is being divided over the issue whether to line up with American private capitalism or Russian State capitalism. Mr. Thurtle, Labour M.P., forecasting Mr. Horner’s defeat, actually put it in the terms, “British patriotism will triumph over alien ideology.” (Sunday Express, 17/10/48.) Is it too much to hope that the miners themselves will remind all their officials that the union is supposed to exist to look after the interests of the members, and that at one time there was at least some conception of international solidarity, not with governments but with the workers everywhere against all their exploiters?

* * *

The United Nations—Promise and Reality

In his speech on world affairs at the Tory Conference at Llandudno, Mr. Winston Churchill opened up with a description of the purpose served by the United Nations Organisation.

“The Assembly of the United Nations, which we fondly hoped would be the majestic centre of world security and, later on, of world co-operation, and, finally, of world government, has been reduced to a mere cockpit in which the representatives of mighty nations and ancient States hurl reproaches, taunts and insults at one another to marshal public opinion and inflame the passions of their peoples, in order to arouse and prepare them for what seems to be a remorselessly approaching third world war.” (Evening Standard, 9th October, 1948.)

* * *

The Juicy Orange

The following is from the News Chronicle (4/10/48) :

“Millions of oranges are being buried every week in the Murrumbidgee area of New South Wales.

“Bulldozers turn them into trenches 100ft. long, 20ft. wide and 7ft. deep.

“Growers say the oranges are second grade and are dumped because only the best are saleable, yet they would be labelled ‘choice in fruit shops here and sell at 3d. and 4d. each.

“The growers blame the local marketing system and say they would like to give the oranges to schools, but packing and railway costs are too high.”

* * *

“Daily Worker” Reporting

The Communists complain, with good reason, that reports in the capitalist press are often biassed and distorted. The careful reader of the Daily Worker will find that the Communists do pretty well themselves. One of the things the Worker is reluctant to let its readers know is the enormous amount spent by Russia in the armaments race, though it keeps them well posted about the expenditure of the other Imperialist powers.

On 8th October the Worker published what purported to be a report of speeches made on that subject by Mr. Vyshinsky and Mr. Hector McNeil at the Paris meeting of the United Nations Committee on disarmament.

According to The Times (8/10/48) Mr. McNeil made the following statement: —

“Could anyone say—even, perhaps, countries in the closest relationship with Soviet Russia—that they knew the forces the Soviets deployed to-day, or what was spent on them last year?

“Soviet military estimates to-day amounted to 66.1 milliard roubles, against 17.5 milliard roubles in 1937, to say nothing of an estimated surplus of 41 milliards, the destination of which was unknown.”

Mr. McNeil’s statement may be right or wrong (the critically minded would ask for much more information before accepting the apparent conclusion that the Russian Government is spending four times as much as in 1937; and probably the value of the rouble is less), but his intended point is clear enough, that the admitted expenditure of 66.1 milliards might have been added to out of the 41 milliard budget surplus.

Now observe how the Worker suppressed the figures entirely and reduced these passages in the speech to the following mangled version: —

“After quoting figures of Soviet military expenditure, which he admitted he was not himself sure of, Mr. McNeil declared…..”

What have Professor Haldane and Mr. L. C. White and the other members of the Editorial Board to say about this?

* * *

‘Twill be a Glorious Victory

Some time not far off, the political Olympic teams will run their general election race. They are at present training and preparing, inspecting the track in the constituencies, and watching the political weather reports from the by-elections, all in anticipation of the great day. It will be a glorious victory for Labour over Tory or for Tory over Labour, unless, of course, the international situation produces another coalition. In that event it will prove to be what Lewis Carroll’s Dodo defined as a “Caucus-race,” one in which all parties win and all get prizes.

At the 1945 election nationalisation was a big issue, but just now, though nearly all preparations for the elections are made, there is one thing missing—something substantial to fight about. Liberals, Labour and the Tories fall over each other in their anxiety to agree about foreign policy and Western Union, about opposition to Russia, about detestation of Communists and Fascists and love of democracy. At home they all claim to have fathered the National Insurance scheme and to be in favour of social reform, more houses, more production, more exports and more wages—but not now. It used long ago to be said of the Labour M.P.s that they were hardly distinguishable from Liberals. Now it seems that the epithet Lib-Lab has to be broadened to Con-Lib-Lab so that it covers all three parties. Early in October the Tories held their annual conference at Llandudno. This is the summing-up made by the Political Correspondent of the Observer (10/10/.18) : —

“No one can read this programme without being struck by one singular fact: the wide agreement that exists between the Tory and Labour Parties. The Iron and Steel Bill may change all that, but at the moment the Tories have no real quarrel with either Sir Stafford Cripps or Mr. Ernest Bevin. There would be few fundamental changes if they were returned to power. They have accepted the Nationalisation of coal, gas, electricity, transport and the Bank of England, either implicitly or explicitly. They may try to unscramble … air transport, but that is not very important. They would keep up the export targets and reluctantly continue austerity. There would be changes in emphasis, private enterprise would be encouraged and not bullied, and there would, of course, be a change in leadership. But the fundamentals would remain because the present economic situation puts any Government in a strait-jacket.”

So much for the Tory and Labour Parties. Within a week of that assessment the Liberal Party published its “Programme for Britain,” and this is what the Liberals say in it about Nationalisation: —

“The profit motive is not wrong. On the other hand, unrestricted private enterprise does not give the best results, from the community’s point of view, in every industry. Liberals believe that postal services, railways, gas, electricity, and coal should be publicly owned. Competitive private enterprise should, however, be encouraged in many fields, and Liberals are utterly opposed to the Nationalisation of all the means of production, distribution, and exchange.” (Manchester Guardian, 15/10/48.)

In default of any other issue to bemuse the electors perhaps the three parties will agree to re-inflate the old bogey, the House of Lords, and stage a smashing exhibition of shadow-boxing about that.

* * *

Nationalisation and Wage-slavery

In a speech very briefly reported in the Evening News (24/8/48) Sir Geoffrey Vickers, V.C., who is Coal Board member for Manpower and Welfare, is said to have claimed that the Coal Board “were trying to abolish ‘wage slavery’ just as human slavery had been abolished.”

Sir Geoffrey is an optimist to say the least of it. Perhaps the kindest explanation is that he uses the term without knowing what it means. In the meantime the Coal Board (was it the Manpower and Welfare Department?) prosecuted 96 miners at Chorley, Lancashire, on 13th August for taking part in an unofficial strike. Fines of £10 were imposed on 87 of them. (Daily Mail, 14/8/48.)

We notice that the workers’ discovery that nationalisation or State Capitalism is much the same as private capitalism, has even reached Mr. Ernest Thurtle, Labour M.P., who writes every Sunday in the Sunday Express. “It is a plain fact that there is much disappointment among the workers in these industries at the way in which the changeover from private ownership has worked out.” (Sunday Express, 29/8/48.)

The former coal owners are being looked after. In its report on the three months April to June, 1948, the Coal Board states that it paid £3,900,000 to the Government as interest on loans and on “interim income” (pending settlement of compensation) to former coal owners.

* * *

Workers who worked too hard

The following was published in the Manchester Guardian (3/9/48) :

“Sixty workers at a Merthyr factory making agricultural machinery have had to be dismissed through ‘ redundancy’ although the works this year has produced more combine harvesters a day than ever before. This is due, said the manager (Mr. C. R. Light), yesterday, to a stiffening in the home market and currency regulations which prevent the delivery of foreign orders, some of which have been completed.

“More than 2,200 people are unemployed in the borough.”

* * *

Civilisation comes to Ethiopia

In an article on the Administration of the law in Abyssinia, published in the New Statesman (29/8/48), Mr. Elwyn Jones, M.P., has this:

“There are still public hangings in the capital for the more serious crimes. In the Addis Ababa jail an electric chair has been installed. I was assured that this was a gift from U.N.R.R.A.— which, if it is true, must surely be the grisliest manifestation of ‘relief and rehabilitation’ of all time.”

Edgar Hardcastle

Mixing the drinks (1948)

From the November 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

CALIFORNIA, Saturday.—More than 124,000 gallons of beer have been pumped into the Pacific because a judge thought the brewery, involved in receivership proceedings, would not make profit if the beer was bottled.— Reuter. (From Evening Standard, 28/8/48.)

Profits before food . . . (1984)

From the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

In June a Danish MEP, Jens-Peter Bonde, put down a written question in the European Parliament to the Common Market Commissioner for Agriculture, asking him to state what proportion of fruit bought by the Common Market to maintain price levels “was distributed free of charge, processed to make alcohol, used as animal fodder or destroyed in 1983” and adding, “when does the Commission intend to stop destroying people’s food?”

In his reply the Commissioner, Poul Dalsager, tried to argue that no food had actually been destroyed; it was just that some of the food bought to maintain prices “became unfit for use” before it could be turned into alcohol or used in other ways. This is pure hypocrisy: the food was deliberately allowed to rot — destroyed — because as Dalsager went on to explain, “an increase in the number of possible uses cannot be achieved without the risk of interfering in the normal distribution channels or of distorting competition between the various commercial operators”. In other words, if too much is given away to hospitals and other institutions or used as animal fodder or turned into alcohol, the profits of food merchants, animal feed producers and other alcohol distillers would be threatened.

The figures quoted by Dalsager allow us to work out how much food was destroyed in the ten Common Market countries in the year 1982/83 (April to April). For comparison we also give the figures for the amount given away free as this very neatly illustrates capitalism's priorities.

Adam Buick

Letter: Pour milk down the sink? (2003)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pour milk down the sink?

Dear Editors

I write with regard to the suggestion in your August edition that Oxfam wants to pour milk down the sink, further to the publication in the Herald of a letter from myself.

The point I was trying to make was not that the EU should destroy excess agricultural produce, but that it should stop subsidising its farmers for overproduction? and therefore not produce excess agricultural produce in the first place! Through the Common Agricultural Policy the EU (and hence EU taxpayers) pay large subsidies (mainly to the richest farmers) for milk production. This results in overproduction and an excess of milk (amongst other produce) which would not arise if farmers were receiving the going market rate for their produce.

The resulting glut of milk results in very cheap exports from the EU to developing countries, undercutting the produce of local farmers and pushing them further into poverty. Three-quarters of those surviving on less than $1 a day live and work as small farmers. These farmers have to compete with the $1billion each day that rich countries spend protecting their own agriculture.

Oxfam don’t want milk poured down the sink, we want a system where the world’s poorest people are given the opportunity to help pull themselves out of poverty. Readers of the Socialist Standard can find out more about Oxfam’s campaigns for fair trade at www.maketradefair.com

Angela O’Hagan, 

Campaigns and Communications Manager, 

Oxfam in Scotland, Glasgow.

Reply:

It is not so much the reformist policies of politico-charities such as Oxfam that we criticise as the whole market system, under which people can only get access to the things they need if they have money and where most people can only get money by selling either their ability to work or the product of their work (the rest, a tiny minority, get it by owning property that yields them a non-work income in the form rent, interest or profit). Oxfam accepts this system and its logic which rules out giving away market surpluses to the needy as this only makes things worse, by undermining the market for the products in question even further. Hence their proposal, which we commented on in our January issue, to destroy “surplus” coffee. The obvious solution is to institute a system where production is geared to meeting people’s needs, not for sale on a market; that way, people’s needs would be met as a matter of right without needing to pay for them – and without organisations like Oxfam having to devise ways of trying to ensure a adequate monetary income for poor farmers in “developing countries” 

Editors.

Running Commentary: Plenty (1986)

The Running Commentary column from the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Plenty

Just as the news came in of yet another desperate famine in Africa, it was reported that the EEC are about to try to reduce their 1,360,000 tonne butter mountain by selling the stuff, at 3p a pound, as food for calves. EEC officials argue that this is the best way to dispose of the butter — best because it is cheaper than stockpiling it.

You did not need to be exceptionally perceptive to work out that what is being suggested is that the butter, after being kept in store for some time, be fed back to the animals who produced it in the first place.

There is nothing unreasonable or illogical about this. It fits in perfectly well with the assumptions and needs of commodity production — the turning out of wealth for sale on the market so as to yield a profit for the class who own the means of life. In this system the market — not human needs — decides when there is a shortage or a surplus. That the EEC is grappling with the problem of mountains and lakes of stuff which could feed human beings does not mean that everyone in the world is properly fed. It simply means that the market has more than it can profitably deal with, which is a very different matter.

It is by no means uncommon for food to be stockpiled or, if the market demands it, destroyed while there is an urgent human need for it. Sometimes — like the butter — it is returned where it came from. Vegetables are ploughed into the earth or fish thrown back into the sea. A neat, circular solution you might think — just what all those highly trained experts and economists are paid to think up. Until you look at the pictures of those people starving; the children only hours away from death staring out from shrunken, fly-swarming eyes, the emaciated adults squatting in their final apathy.

Then you know that something is wrong, that somewhere there is an obvious answer which is being evaded. And you are right. But think about it a bit more and ask yourself, who is doing the evading?

Cut price ignorance

Anyone who is thinking about buying a few shares in newly privatised concerns like British Gas, Jaguar and the National Freight Corporation had better brace themselves to receive a letter from Norman Tebbit. The Tory Party chairman, presumably believing that the most impoverished of workers can be kidded that owning some shares makes them a capitalist, will be trying to scare them with bogeyman stories about Labour snatching their dividends to give to lazy dole-queue scroungers.

If you think this smacks of desperation, what about the other scheme at Tory HQ. to attract new recruits by offering them a clutch of cut-price offers? Sign on the blue dotted line and you'll be eligible for a cheap subscription rate to the Countdown discount organisation; the chance to buy gift hampers; membership of a wine society; copies of Jeffrey Archer's books, personally signed by the world's greatest living writer (it is not clear whether this is intended to persuade people into the Tory Party or the Workers' Revolutionary Party).

Of course Labour supporters are having a great time poking fun at all this, on the lines that the Tory Party which was once a marriage bureau is now a mail order company. Well, nobody can argue with that but they should remember that all capitalist parties use a variety of tricks and inducements to get workers to join them.

You can join the Labour Party, for example. by simply signing a form brandished at you by some canvasser on your doorstep. A few minutes later, if you were getting a lot of attention from canvassers, you could join the Conservative Party in the same way. Your opinions need not come into it; the capitalist parties are interested in your support — your vote, your money, your membership.

It is difficult to understand, or to empathise with, workers who fall for this, who allow their intelligence to be insulted in this way and who regard so lightly their political power to transform society.

Capitalism's problems can be solved only by a social revolution. That needs mass consciousness. leading to a deliberate act by the world working class. That is fundamentally different from the sordid grubbing for votes which absorbs so much of the energy of the likes of the Labour and Tory Parties. The question is — how long will the workers allow themselves to be seduced away from their historic role by tawdry offers of cheap wine, food and political thrills? How long will they abandon their revolutionary function for a mess of Jeffrey Archer?

Kick off

Every schoolchild brought up on Henry Newbolt's foolish poem about playing the game knows that the British are great ones for courtesy and sporting behaviour. It is something to do with character building on the playing fields of Eton, and the historic mission of the British Empire to bring civilisation to the lesser breeds without the law.

The snag is that most of the people of this country did not go to Eton, or to any school like it. Their character was built in the sort of neighbourhoods and schools which Newbolt did not care much to write about. They get their living in ways which essentially deprive them of the satisfaction of a sense of affinity with what they must devote most of their waking hours to.

This alienation extends beyond the workplace. into every part of our lives. In a world which is owned and controlled by "them", what does it matter if the saplings which were planted to give a little relief to the eyes amid a wasteland of concrete are tom up? Or if the street lamps which are there to make the pavements safer to walk along are smashed? Or if the ugly slabs of building which they call home are defaced with spray- can graffiti?

It also permeates what might be called their leisure time activities, when for a brief time they may forget their lowly status in society and the aridity of their social prospects. Where better to do this than on the terraces at some football game, with its excitement, glamour and its aura of quick riches?

British followers of the game are famous, not for their sporting attitudes but for such activities as running riot (although not as wildly as the media would have it) in one of the plushest of those floating duty-free supermarkets which ply between this country and the Continent.

This sort of behaviour has now reached the status of a ritual without which no self-respecting football (and soon, perhaps, cricket) match is complete The responses, too, are ritualistic, spurred on by headline-hungry journalists. The popular assumption, for which evidence is conspicuously lacking, is that sterner punishment and more vicious judicial violence are the only measures which can be trusted to bear in on the minds of the riotous football fans.

The people who call for hooligans to be beaten into servility forget those times when worse than yobbishness against foreign workers is officially encouraged — when, for example, the habit of Ghurka soldiers in the Falklands to kill any Argentinians who surrendered to them was gloatingly reported as good, clean, military fun.

It is capitalism which alienates us all — a social system of privilege and repression which is maintained with ritualistic support from the working class: "I vote Labour because my father always did '; "My husband's a Conservative and I can't go against him. can I?"

All this viciousness and self-destruction is protected in swathes of cynicism, from the beginning of our lives until the end. That is why schoolchildren are still being encouraged to absorb patriotic ravings like Newbolt's. Play up. and play the game? Ugh.

They said it . . . (1992)

From the September 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

We had women on every platform daring the election, hat the party used them like decorative potted plants—Labour MP Ann Clwyd on women and the Labour Party.

#    #    #    #

I did it because they were going to repossess my Sky dish—David Kernaghan, explaining the armed robbery which brought him a seven-year gaol sentence.

#    #    #    #

You should not believe everything you read in the newspapers—Robert Clark, chairman of Mirror Group Newspapers. 

#    #    #    #

It is quite a work to dredge out of the English language pejoratives strong enough to describe their vulgarity, brutishness and maladroitness—Former Tory Minister Alan Clark on the royal family.

#    #    #    #

Nobody was going to throw the first brick because there were too many people living in glass houses—Norman Tebbit on the Mellor scandal.

#    #    #    #

With low coffee prices a symptom of stocks rather than supply, a stock destruction plan by producers would have a greater effect on the world market price than anything else— Lawrence Eagles, commodity analyst.

Waste (1950)

From the July 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Waste, ruthless and rife, is indisputably one of the outstanding characteristics of present-day capitalistic society.

War, of course, is synonymous with waste; some of it’s recognisable features being the mass destruction of useful lives, the squandering of human energy and the prostitution of scientific achievements so laboriously acquired through long years of intensive social effort. Man’s age-long struggles with Nature culminating in the vast areas of habitable territory and the useful buildings of the times fall swift prey to the ravages of war.

So man must work, and war must take! “War and Waste” could fill the pages of quite a hefty tome but as it is not the title of this particular article we will proceed on more general lines.

Recent reports have appeared telling of unrestrained and deliberate acts of food destruction in the U.S.A. in particular and elsewhere wherever the profit motive in production prevails. That makes one wince most for the intake of food being man's strongest impulse coupled with the tragic fact that hundreds of millions of the world’s inhabitants are at the present time, in the throes of actual and partial starvation—or else in the relatively happier condition of never having really enough to eat!

Waste is apparent in the distribution of most things in most places. Individual needs are ignored in homage to capitalism’s lust for keeping markets “open” and prices “right.”

A particular example looms up into memory as these words are being written, which occurred about three years ago. Following the Peace-that-was-to-have-been-Eternal, the War Office found itself with about sixty thousand surplus, but good and usable, radio-sets on its hands. The Press and other mediums were then, as they still do from time to time, featuring appeals from interested individuals and welfare organisations asking that free sets should be issued to the chronic bed-ridden, T.B. sufferers, old-age pensioners and others who are for the most part confined to the home, and could not possibly afford to buy sets out of their meagre pensions.

Were those surplus thousands diverted to that necessitous channel?

Not a bit of it! For away in the West Country were some nice, disused and apparently inaccessible quarries deemed by His Majesty’s Labour Government —War Department, to be even more worthy recipients!

In passing, it should be noted that the issue of free wireless-sets to the registered blind has no connection with the disposal of governmental stocks. These sets are bought new direct from the makers with funds raised by charitable associations formed for that express purpose.

So the halt and the lame and the chronic bed-ridden are still without, for the most part, whilst those disused quarry-pits in far-away-places hold fast to what should have been the means of bringing much needed music and mirth (the latter in more senses than one!) into dreary lives.

But it should not be imagined that it is only the industrial rejects who are too poor to buy necessities. The great majority of the workers in this country are, for the present, in constant work and yet cannot afford to buy the requirements of a decent existence.

The harvest of work and wages (such as they are) engendered by the War is steadily petering out. Soon the relatively small acts of, say, throwing edible fish back into the seas as takes place frequently in this country and the destruction of good wheat in the Argentine will magnify and accelerate into far greater dimensions than ever before encountered. For, with the development of capitalism the workers progressively receive relatively less of the total wealth they produce.

It is not to be inferred that it is only the concrete commodities that are wasted, for look at the many and varied ways in which labour-power is dissipated on services that would have no place in a socialist system of society.

They are so very numerous that it is difficult to know where to begin. But as we have already touched on the subject of war and waste it may be as well to commence with those unfortunate fellow-workers, who are mainly forced into the armed forces by economic pressure or legal conscription. In addition, there are all those engaged in the making of all manner of destructive weapons and equipment for the war-machine. Amongst the exceedingly large number of unproductive occupations are those of the police-force, prison-warders. workhouse attendants, burglars, forgers, arson-mongers, "black” and "white” marketeers and spivs generally. Stock-exchange and insurance workers; politicians and trade-union officials; bankers and pawnbrokers; priests, pimps and parsons besides the advertising and time-motion-study parasites. Then there is the enormous gambling fraternity, all those engaged in whatever capacity in horse and hound racing, football pools (such an enormous industry) etc., and the terrific army of printers, clerks, electricians and telephonists involved.

The long procession of unproductive workers continue on and on and on . . . but the pages of the Socialist Standard do not so we will strike a concluding note with a reference to those large numbers of domestic workers; cooks, charwomen, boot-blacks, waiters and waitresses, chamber-maids and so on who slave for those usually in a far better position to do their own chores than the servants themselves through having superior material conditions under which to live.

Man, that creature with the sensitive hands, the agile brain and the keen senses, has already done much that is useful and good under severely limited social conditions. How much more will he do; will he want to do; when the earth and all that is on it—and can be on it—with all avoidable waste eliminated, becomes the common property of all mankind?

That state of Affairs will be known as Socialism and it is up to you to help hasten the day.

Linda.

Hunger and plenty (1949)

From the November 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

"If the nations of the world were really to attack the problem of food, it would prevent them attacking each other. A plan now before the sixty Governments of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation opens the way to a beginning by dealing with one aspect—the fear of slumps, which has always kept the world production far below world needs.

Half of the people of the world have never had enough to eat. That figure is given in a United Nations calculation of how the world fared in 1939.

A couple of years ago it was estimated that 462,000 children were seriously short of food and in Europe itself 60,000,000 were on the danger list.

Yet everyone old enough will remember how in various countries during the 1930s vast stocks of food were destroyed and farmers were brought to bankruptcy because they had produced more than people could buy.

Bonfires were made of many millions of pounds worth of grain and coffee, to keep the prices up. Milk was poured down drains. The U.S. Government once ordered the slaughter of 3,000,000 young pigs because there was ‘ too much bacon.’ Denmark and Holland did similar things.

In a world where millions were starving, all sorts of arrangements were made to keep down the production of food.”

(Daily Mirror (26/9/49) Editorial column).

The correspondent then goes on to say that what we need is a United Nations plan to set up a clearing house for surpluses, which would enable countries to buy in their own currencies if they were short of dollars for instance. First of all there is a contradiction in that statement. In the opening remarks he states that because people were unable to buy back what they had produced, there arose a surplus.

He goes on to say, however, that these clearing houses would get over the difficulty of countries needing the food because if they were short, say, of dollars they could pay in their own currencies.

If you notice, their first remarks were referring to 1939 and the years before that. Was there a dollar shortage then? No. It is therefore obvious that whether there is a dollar shortage or not the position remains the same. Like many others, they make the mistake of thinking that in some way or other Capitalism can be made to work in the interest of humanity. What they fail to see is that so long as goods are produced for a market with a view to profit, this insane situation where vast stocks of food are destroyed because workers have produced more than they can buy back, will once again loom on the not so far distant horizon.

Slumps, booms, war and unemployment are.part and parcel of the capitalist system, and so long as workers support various reforms. United Nations plans and the like, which only tinker around with Capitalism and do not solve these problems, so long will they have to put up with the evils which go with that system.

Workers—don’t bury your heads in the sand. Get to grips with the capitalist system and understand how it works, and then, only then, can you overthrow that system and establish Socialism in which goods will be produced solely in order to satisfy human needs.

J.P.

Food, insecure food (2024)

From the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

It goes without saying that food is the most basic need of human beings. Survival, health, growth: all depend on sufficient quality and amounts of food. Indeed, human history can in part be seen as an effort to acquire adequate food, whether from gathering, hunting or growing.

But despite the advances in technology, plenty of people today still struggle to provide enough food for themselves and their family. They suffer from food poverty or food insecurity, which can be defined as ‘when a person is without reliable access to enough affordable, nutritious, healthy food’ (redcross.org.uk), or as ‘insufficient or insecure access to food due to resource constraints’ (sustainweb.org). This does not only apply in the global South, but in so-called developed countries too. It has been estimated that over seven million people in the UK were living in ‘food insecure households’ in the UK in 2022–3 (an increase of 2.5 million over the previous year). This included one child in six and one working-age adult in nine. One solution that has been proposed is to provide free school meals to all children. Things may get worse if some farmers reduce production, as may happen, largely due to labour supply problems.

In the US the situation is also deteriorating. In 2023, almost 18 per cent of households with children were food-insecure, a small rise from the previous year. In 2009, the proportion was just over one in five; the figure fell after the financial crisis but then began to rise again during Covid when school lunches came to an end.

Yet it is in underdeveloped parts of the world that food insecurity is at its most serious. A recent UNICEF report stated that 181 million children worldwide under the age of five lived in severe food poverty (one child in four). Global food security deteriorated between 2019 and 2022, worst of all in Syria, Haiti and Venezuela. Large parts of Africa are in really dire straits, as is much of South Asia. In Somalia almost two-thirds of children live in ‘extreme food poverty’, while in Gaza the figure is nine children out of ten.

Famine, as defined by the UN World Food Programme, involves such criteria as 30 percent of children suffering from acute malnutrition, which is far more severe than food poverty. No countries currently meet the definition, but that does not stop the overall food situation from being dreadful.

The UN Environment Programme recently issued a Food Waste Index Report 2024, which contains some quite astonishing facts and figures. Globally, over a trillion US dollars’ worth of food is thrown away each year; this leads to perhaps a tenth of greenhouse gas emissions and occupies nearly thirty per event of agricultural land. The waste occurs in various places, including households, retail and supply chains, though it has to be remembered that the data in middle- and low-income countries is probably pretty unreliable. And some inedible matter is included, as the distinction between edible and inedible is not always clear. Reducing food waste is obviously a good thing, but in a world based on profit and with billions of impoverished people it is not straightforward.

According to Action Against Hunger, 733 million people (one person in eleven) go hungry. Rising temperatures and extreme weather have worsened the crisis, as have Covid and conflicts. But, as they say, ‘There’s more than enough food produced in the world to feed everyone on the planet.’ It does not reach all those who need it, partly because of food waste, but also because of poverty. The UN Environment Programme states that it is perfectly possible to feed ten billion people, if the world population reaches that figure. Reducing CO2 ‘could positively impact the nutritional value of the food produced’, while restoring biodiversity would make it easier to cope with pests and disease. An increase in plant-based diets would produce less greenhouse gas and need less water. Replacing monoculture with regenerative farming, using rotational methods, would restore wildlife and soil.

One of the immediate priorities in a socialist world will be ensuring that there is enough food for everyone, that nobody suffers from food insecurity. We cannot say now just how this will be carried out, as we do not know what the food situation will be at the time that socialism is established. But we can say that scientists and farmers know how to go about growing enough good-quality food for all, and know how to co-operate with others to make food insecurity a thing of the past.

Paul Bennett

50 Years Ago: Subsidizing food destruction (2024)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the first pieces of legislation to be presented to the House of Commons this session has been the Horticulture (Special Payments) Bill. The intention of this bill is to provide for payments to be made to commercial growers of horticultural products, especially growers of apples and pears, facing ‘special difficulties’ as a result of Britain’s entry into the Common Market.(…..)

As we have pointed out before, governments, of whatever political persuasion, exist to protect the interests of the capitalist class (ie, the owners of the means of life). This they do in a number of ways — tariff barriers and subsidies to producers for example — always bearing in mind that by such measures they expect a healthier national capitalism to be the outcome.

The Horticulture (Special Payments) Bill is just such a measure, and has been welcomed as such. Payments are to be made to growers of apples and pears who discontinue production. The scheme is expected to cost £4.5 million to £5 million over the period 1974-78. This figure is far in excess of the £440,000 spent up to mid 1972 under a similar scheme (see Socialist Standard January 1973). There are to be checks on the growers who apply for the ‘grubbing up’ subsidy to ensure that the orchards dug up are not replanted for at least five years. In effect the government are subsidising the destruction of productive resources.

In this way, it is hoped, the competitive efficiency of British horticulture will be improved by reducing the amount of produce reaching the market. As a result market prices are expected to continue their upward trend after a period during the ’sixties when prices stagnated while costs increased. ‘Surpluses’, that is more being produced than the market can absorb profitably, could upset this state of affairs. As Roger Moate, M.P. for the Kent constituency of Faversham, pointed out:

‘It needs only a small amount of surplus at any moment to disrupt the market entirely, and a grower can quickly lose almost his annual profit because of the disruption’ (Hansard, 16 November, 1973).

So once again, in a world where food is short, market considerations get priority over the needs of people. All we need now is for a cynic to point out that the trees dug up could help to alleviate the fuel crisis.

(From the article Subsidizing Food Destruction by Gwynn Thomas, Socialist Standard, January 1974)

Malicious Damage (1971)

From the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every working day, Bob drives down the long, straight arterial road to the big factory where he peels away from the rest of the swarming cars. He parks his new Escort in the car park which he is allowed to use by virtue of the small circular sticker on his windscreen which the firm give only to the staff. Sometimes the uniformed security man says “Good morning” or even salutes him, which makes Bob feel more like a member of the staff than ever. Through the side door of the huge building he climbs quickly up the stairs to the office which runs the entire length of the building and, although his desk and chair and filing cabinet are exactly identical to the hundreds of others, he finds his way unerringly to his place. He always arrives about ten minutes early so that by the official starting time his desk is perfectly prepared and he has actually started work.

From the filing cabinet he takes out a large bundle of invoices from other firms. Each invoice has an allocation tag stuck to its lower edge and Bob’s job is to sort them out into their various allocations. Some invoices are for production material; others for services like transport, maintenance and so on; some for customs duty or agency. Bob carefully sorts each invoice into its separate tray and every so often a girl comes up to his desk to clear out one of the trays and take away her share of the invoices for processing. And every so often another girl comes, from the mailing department, with another bundle of invoices to be sorted and labelled. The flow never stops and Bob often says, at lunch in the staff canteen which is separate from the works cafeteria where the factory workers and the lower office employees eat, that no matter how hard he goes at it he never goes home with an empty tray.

Sometimes there is a break in the routine; perhaps a question from another department about a missing invoice or a telephone call from a supplier about one which is unpaid. Bob is always meticulous in his investigations of such matters and if he finds that one of the girls has made a mistake he lets her know all about the trouble and extra work she has caused him.

At the end of the day he clears his desk into the filing cabinet and rejoins the swarm weaving down the big road. He is often very tired but usually finds the energy to do any gardening or decorating which is needed. He is an attentive husband and a caring father; a decent, dependable man who wastes the vast part of his waking life in thoroughly useless, monotonous, unproductive, degrading drudgery.

There are millions of others like him. They work in banks, insurance offices, merchant houses; they are salesmen, advertising men, accountants. Their job is to organise the commercial affairs of capitalism — its buying and selling, collecting and paying out money, processing its vast financial machine. To the capitalist system, which produces its wealth for sale, such jobs are very necessary but they contribute nothing to society’s wealth.

For capitalism, which claims to be the most rational social system known to man, wastes most of its productive resources in the field of human labour. Sometimes this takes the form of the slow, grinding waste, like Bob with his invoices. Sometimes it is more spectacular, even bizarre, as food is ploughed into the ground or burnt. For some time, governments have realised that, in the age of Oxfam, the open destruction of food can be politically unwise. From this realisation has sprung the better, more stealthy but equally wasteful, method of simply not producing the stuff.

From this it was only a small step for governments actually to pay food producers for not producing food. Of course this requires a certain amount of administration and somewhere there must be people like Bob who process paper showing how much each farmer who is in the great non-production scheme has not produced and how much he is to be paid for keeping his land idle. Then there must be some check on the few dishonest people (for this, remember, is capitalism) who are sufficiently mean and ungrateful to claim for not growing food when all the time they are growing it.

This is exactly what has happened in the case of the potato growers, who are proving so dishonest that a number of quite advanced checking methods have had to be applied against them. Now potatoes are a popular, nutritious food which might do something towards feeding people, even these like old age pensioners who can’t afford to spend too much on the tiresome business of keeping alive. But when potatoes are produced in plenty they come pouring onto the market, which causes their price to fall and, instead of making things easier for the pensioner, this only makes them harder for the farmer because his produce can’t be sold profitably. The government at present try to protect the farmers from too catastrophic a loss by guaranteeing a price of about £15 a ton but this does not prevent the kind of situation we had in August, when something like half a million tons were destroyed because the market could not absorb them profitably.

This guarantee comes into operation if another scheme, run by the Potato Marketing Board, fails. Under this scheme, growers are supposed to register with the Board the land they want to use for growing potatoes and the Board then decides how much acreage they can each be allowed for this production. In deciding on the land quotas, of course, human needs are not an influence; the size of the market and the expectations of profit are what count. A grower who exceeds his quota can be fined by the Board, who now have a light aircraft equipped with long range cameras spying out the countryside for pirate potato growers. Presumably, if the spying succeeds the price of potatoes will be kept stable — and profitable.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, people are dying of starvation and declining through malnutrition. The effects of the restriction of food production upon them are all too obvious; but what about the effect upon those, better fed, who do the restricting? In the case of the potatoes, for example, the aircraft brings back its photographs which are then marked with potato growing areas and compared with maps showing the areas covered by growing quotas. If the two don’t coincide, a pirate has been caught. What is the effect upon the people who process the photographs and compare them with the maps, who are doing a good job when they catch out a farmer who is producing food, who write up the reports for his prosecution?

Human behaviour is a matter of learning; we take in experiences and sensations which, provided we are capable of absorbing and processing them, modify and fashion our attitudes and our behaviour. This can, and ideally should, be a maturing process in which we acquire knowledge and skills but it can also be inhibiting, for example in the case of the battered baby who as a result of the cruelty it has experienced is withdrawn and mistrustful.

Extending this reasoning, we can ask what effect their work has upon people like Bob and those who work for organisations like the Potato Marketing Board. Is it maturing or inhibiting? Do they flourish or wither, under the burden of their socially useless drudgery? In many cases they respond with a fervent support for the capitalist society which condemns them to their drudgery. In the dormitory area where Bob lives the poor old Labour Party is regarded as dangerously revolutionary. These intelligent people take this unreasoned attitude not entirely in the conviction that in their semi, their insurance policy and their Escort they have something worth defending. Like the beaten child, Bob reacts with a defence mechanism; he denies his problems, denies that his job is useless and boring. He has to believe that he contributes something significant to the social wellbeing because the alternative is too horrible to face.

The erection of this defence may serve its immediate purpose but, again like the child, this is achieved only at some cost. Bob is a damaged person who can be absorbed, even obsessed, with trivia — the hunt for a missing invoice, the tidiness of his desk, the gleaming newness of his car. He is not fulfilling his potential as a person; indeed he would even deny that he had any and adapts himself to wasting his abilities and his very life seated between the in tray and the out tray. A decent man, rather than lower his defences he will accept and defend the obscenities which capitalism perpetrates in the name of profit — starvation, poverty, murder, repression, deceit.

The depressing fact about Bob is that he is representative of his kind; in one way or another capitalism damages all its people and one of the great advances which will come when the system is swept away will be their release. This will not be only a matter of them realising their potential to produce wealth, to design and to beautify. It is also a matter of their development as human personalities, as people. Under capitalism we can hardly guess at what a human being is really like and the world has yet to experience what we are capable of, in terms of co-operation and caring, when we are free.

Ivan

Sting in the Tail: Capitalism obscene? Never? (1995)

The Sting in the Tail column from the October 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism obscene? Never?

Although the European Union still has its butter, beef and grain mountains, it destroyed nearly 3 millions tons of perishable food in 1993.

According to the Daily Mail (7 August), this consisted of apples, peaches, oranges, cauliflower, tomatoes and many other fruits and vegetables which were pulped as part of the EU’s policy of supporting farm prices.

Labour MP for Wallsend Stephen Byers declared “this is obscene”, a sentiment echoed by the Mail's editorial. But what both found “obscene” was the cost of this policy to “the British taxpayer”, which is only their way of describing British capitalism, and never, never the social system in which such insanity is rooted.

Pragmatism down under

The fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War Two was called VJ Day in Britain and America but not in all of Japan's wartime enemies:

“In many countries ‘Victory-Japan or VJ Day, has been quietly transformed into ‘Victory-Pacific’, or VP Day. In New Zealand and Australia the celebrations will be muted by the realisation that Japan is now the major trading partner and must not be offended. Elsewhere in the Pacific there is a reluctance even to acknowledge the victory " (Guardian, 7 August).

Australia changed the name because it “did not want to ruffle feathers with their greatest export market” while New Zealand was “concerned that the huge numbers of Japanese tourists who flock to its golf courses might take offence and disappear”.

In future, when Binyon's familiar "Lines" are spoken at remembrance services Down Under they should be changed to:

"They shall not grow old as we 

who are left grow old, nor the

 years condemn

   But at the going down of the

profits from exports and tourism

We shall remember on which side 

our bread is buttered."

They won't go away

During the Thatcherite 80’s we were assured that large chunks of the working class were being absorbed into an ever-expanding middle class which could look forward to a secure and prosperous future, and that the old conflict between capital and labour was dead.

Now, Larry Elliott has debunked this theory in the Guardian (21 August):

“Certainly popular capitalism seems to have lost its lustre. The middle classes, who believed their loyalty to the corporation meant a job for life, are living in fear of the sack. The skilled working classes have seen their homes repossessed. ”

He also notes that:

“There is no sense that management and workforce are on the same side, and why should there be, given the disparities of income and the knowledge that the redundancy notices will be handed out at the first sign of trouble. ”

Elliott concludes that all this, plus a growing awareness that most workers are “just one pay packet away” from penury, is fostering the belief that “we’re all working class now”. To paraphrase Mark Twain; reports of the death of the working class and the class struggle are greatly exaggerated.

Breathless business

If you ever wondered why it is that in a society capable of great scientific innovations and medical advances, some disorders never seem to be cured and, in the ease of asthma, become more widespread, then ponder the priorities capitalism puts on medical research. Rhone-Poulene-Rorer, a French/American enterprise that markets steroids, a second-line attack against asthma, plans to spend £1.7 billion, not in research to combat asthma but to buy out Fisons, a firm that produces a first-line attack, namely inhalers. Why this mammoth expenditure?

“Asthma is big business—a £6 billion world-wide market. It is growing rapidly, faster than the industry as a whole. And there is no cure. Just treatments’’ (Observer Business, 27 August).

So while asthma kills one Briton every five hours and more than 9 million suffer from it, including 2 million children, the big players are much more anxious to get a bigger slice of the “big business” than research means of beating the disorder.

Football and capitalism

The origins of football are obscure. Some claim that it was played in the Americas by the Plains Indians before the European invasion; others that it originated in Britain in the 14th century. But, whatever its origin, it is generally agreed that it was a healthy, enjoyable social activity. It was fun.

However, inside capitalism, a good example of what it has become is provided by Barry Hearn, the millionaire snooker and boxing promoter, who recently bought the football club Leyton Orient.

“I'm coming in with a great deal of experience in how to exploit sport, commercially and through the media. And I find this very motivating. Thats why I am in it: for me. You see I am not a football fan. I don't think I can sit through 90 minutes. It’s the business that's the buzz ’’ (Independent Magazine, 19 August).

Voice From The Back: Polluting for profit (2002)

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

Polluting for profit

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

DIY hanging

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

The close circuit society

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

Exporting destruction

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

The Voice of America?

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

Oxfam’s solution to famine

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

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