Proper Gander: Theroux the keyhole (2026)

The Proper Gander column from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Louis Theroux has built up his career as a documentary-maker since the 1990s, with his trademark approach being to patiently spend time among society’s stranger subcultures to learn about what motivates the people within. The subjects of his latest film are prominent figures in the ‘manosphere’, a loose online network which upholds hard-line versions of masculinity. Netflix’s Inside The Manosphere follows Theroux as he meets influencers who have amassed millions of young male fans through their social media platforms, livestreams and podcasts. Their content extols their values of conspicuous wealth, sexism and conspiracy theories, with the influencers all living extravagant lifestyles and exuding confidence, giving their views plausibility among their impressionable followers.

In Marbella, Theroux visits Harrison Sullivan (aka HSTikkyTokky) and Ed Matthews, whose online content includes videos of macho fitness tips and ‘predator stings’ confronting alleged paedophiles. Sullivan becomes suspicious that Theroux is trying to catch him out and cuts short the time he agreed to spend being interviewed, although he later backtracks after his videos about their first meeting attract more clicks. While Sullivan and Matthews represent the ‘laddish’ style of influencer, Justin Waller from Louisiana is more measured, wearing tailored suits as he drives Theroux around in his Lamborghini. Waller’s material combines business advice with a disdain for feminism, saying women tend to prefer traditional family roles. He and his wife are in a ‘one-sided monogamous’ relationship, and it’s not him who’s monogamous. This arrangement is also a preference of the Miami-based influencer known as Myron Gaines, who claims women ‘want a guy that can lead them and dominate them’. Theroux sits in during Gaines’ Fresh & Fit podcast in which his female guests get objectified, belittled and embarrassed. As Theroux later comments, many of the influencers ‘advocate for traditional values while at the same time wanting to be seen with scantily-clad models’.

The confidence which influencers have in their derisory beliefs about women’s roles comes from their ‘red pill’ ideology. This is a reference to the 1999 film The Matrix, which we’re told in this context means seeing through the mainstream media’s discrimination against men, although ‘redpilling’ is usually shorthand for adopting a far-right viewpoint. New Yorker Sneako is among the more politicised of the influencers Theroux meets. Alongside being a Muslim Trump-supporter, he claims satanists run the world, leaving clues in pictures of celebrities using ‘one eye’ symbolism and telling people such as singer Sam Smith to become transgender. Predictably, he adds that the aim of this satanic cabal is to establish a single global government. While Sneako denies this is Jewish, other influencers share the conviction that a small group of Jews are behind a plan to promote degeneracy through manipulating culture, especially gender politics.

The outlook spun by the influencers is really a convoluted way of enticing people to buy the financial products they have a stake in. Theroux tests one of Sullivan’s investment opportunities and loses most of the £500 he paid in. Sullivan is at least honest in admitting that what drives his material is what makes money for him rather than what is considered right or wrong. An example is when he says he was ‘clip-farming’ by including antisemitic content while not believing it, as he knew this would generate attention. Getting exposure in order to gain more supporters and therefore customers is the priority. The notion that ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’ would apparently be confirmed after Inside The Manosphere was released, with Sullivan accruing more followers because of the coverage it has given him, according to an article in the Metro (7 April), which itself represents more promotion.

As the focus of the show is Theroux meeting people, not much time is spent analysing the manosphere’s place in society. This approach either admirably allows the viewer to reach their own conclusions or disappointingly makes the programme feel shallow. Theroux posits how the upbringing of the influencers may have contributed to their mindset in that many of them lacked a supportive father figure, perhaps affecting their attitudes to relationships, such as ‘one-sided monogamy’. More widely, he says they are ‘products of a culture – growing up online in a world that’s changing at dizzying speed’ with long-established male roles challenged. He adds that they now project their trauma by ‘spewing hate’ to an audience of young men looking for something to feel they belong to, preferably with money to buy financial products. The fans of the influencers we see in the documentary clearly feel empowered by what their heroes advocate. Theroux recognises that while the influencers offer hope to troubled men, it comes with a belief that they are living in ‘a matrix purposely designed to make men fail’. He suggests ‘the matrix they rail against more accurately describes the algorithmic prison they’ve created for their followers, an illusion of endless wealth and power that actually only enriches a few at the top’.

The personal traumas which shaped the mindsets of each influencer and follower happened in a world which is ‘designed to make men fail’ (and women too, often in different ways). This is the divisive world of capitalism, driven by aspirations of wealth amid poverty and power amid powerlessness. They have misinterpreted this, though, and don’t identify the economic system itself as structurally creating (nearly all) people’s disadvantaged position, but instead blame the ‘matrix’ of feminism and a supposed Jewish cabal. This poisonous stance has proved lucrative for the influencers because it attracts attention online among vulnerable men, reinforcing a worrying association between wealth and bigotry. The confidence with which this mentality is promoted disguises its errors and contradictions, such as its ridiculous ‘evidence’ for a Jewish / satanic conspiracy and the hypocrisy of its attitudes to women. For an ideology apparently based on dogged independence it relies heavily on fan worship of the influencers. The ‘manosphere’ is both an expression of the alienation which comes with living in capitalist society and a dangerously misguided attempt at compensating for that alienation.

Mike Foster

SPGB Meetings (1955)

Party News from the September 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pathfinders: Future al Fresco, or the House of Cards that Jacque built (2008)

The Pathfinders Column from the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone watching the online documentary film Zeitgeist (2007) would be advised to borrow Occam’s razor for some editorial cutting. A well-made and interesting film, Zeitgeist nonetheless makes history more mysterious than it needs to be. You can explain what goes on in capitalism quite easily without making a giant secret conspiracy of it. So, when the sequel, Zeitgeist Addendum, came out in October of this year, socialists were expecting more conspiracy stuff and dodgy bank-credit economics.

Addendum turns out to be a surprise. To be sure, it does reiterate the dodgy economics, overlooking the fact that when banks do try to create money out of nothing, they crash and burn, as has been happening recently. But then the film gets really interesting, because it proposes, as an alternative to capitalism, a global resource-based society of common ownership, without governments, hierarchies, markets, trading or money. Were the makers explicitly to use the term ‘world socialism’ most socialists would scarcely blink.

Not that there’s any such reference, or indication of Marxian antecedents. Clearly the intention is to avoid triggering any knee-jerk reflexes from audiences schooled in the evils of soviet ‘socialism’. Instead, they’re offered the sci-fi version, with supersonic mag-lev trains, floating intelligent cities, nanotechnology and megamachines. The future is bigger, better and brighter, even if it does look a bit like Thunderbirds Are Go. The point being drummed in is that it’s steam-age capitalism that’s holding back technology, as well as creating a social and environmental hell-hole. Without capitalism, we can reach for the stars.

This is the Venus Project, futuristic creation of Jacque Fresco, engineer, architect and designer, a man on a laudable mission to persuade the world to ditch capitalism and create a practical cooperative alternative. For socialists to come across such a well-worked model which accords so closely with their own is a rare thing, so it seems almost churlish to suggest that the technology may be a bit over-done. It’s not only that this kind of chrome-plated futurism looks paradoxically dated, like rocket ship stories of the 1950’s, or that it may be off-putting to those yearning for William Morris-like rural idylls. More troublesome is the heavy emphasis placed on science and technology as the source of progress, for instance, as here: “The application of scientific principles… accounts for every single advance that has improved people’s lives” (Designing the Future, at www.venusproject.com). Trust a techie to say that. But what about the role of workers, in unions or campaign groups, to raise wages and working conditions, or reduce the working day, or demand civil rights? Did technology have anything to do with recognition of race or gender equality, or gay liberation, or legislation against slavery or child-labour? Instead of recognising that workers won those rights by organised force, Fresco seems to think all improvements in civil rights were ‘privileges’ which have been ‘granted’ by the ruling elite (p.4).

This gives a clue to Fresco’s attitude to ‘responsibility’ and ‘democracy’. Technology, he thinks, will obviate the need for these. Laws against drink-driving, for example, can be abolished if cars drive themselves. True enough. But can one find a technological fix for every situation requiring humans to have an awareness of their own social responsibility, and even if we could, would we want to? Responsibility is not a burden, after all, it is empowerment, it is personal growth. Make humans responsible, and they become mature adults. Instead, Fresco would let this human quality atrophy.

Similarly, Fresco seems wedded to the strange idea that humans don’t want to make decisions. Thus he envisages a ‘global neural network’ that does our thinking for us, a marriage of automation and cybernetic intelligence called ‘cybernation’. This column has recently referred to self-adjusting production systems (Sept 08), but running an entire social system that way is surely a leap too far. In answer to the question: Who makes the decisions in a resource-based economy? Fresco gives the bizarre response: No one does. Apparently the cybernation system will decide what we want to produce, as well as how to produce it, because we humans just aren’t up to the job.

What emerges sounds less like a socialist society of responsible adults and more like a Tracey Island playground for hedonistic infants with no tough decisions to make and no responsibilities to shoulder. Socialists place participatory democracy at the very core of our social model, irrespective of the technology. For Fresco, it seems to be the other way round. In answer to the question, would there be a government? Fresco answers that there would be a transitional administration of expert technicians, before the process of ‘cybernation’ is complete. He adds that “They will not dictate the policies or have any more advantage than other people.” But how does he know that? What mechanisms would prevent a technocracy maintaining power in perpetuity? Fresco is leaving the matter to trust. Worse still, in avoiding the whole issue of democratic organisation and class action, Fresco has no way to address the even more pressing question, how to overcome the certain opposition of the ruling class. So he dodges it by arguing that there will be no need to, since capitalism will collapse of its own accord. Leaving aside the extreme improbability of this, it begs the question: what should we do then, while we’re waiting for that to happen? Spread the ideas perhaps, as socialists advocate? Apparently not! “True social change is not brought about by men and women of reason and good will on a personal level. The notion that one can sit and talk to individuals and alter their values is highly improbable” (www.venusproject. com/intro_main /essay.htm). Ever the technophile, Fresco has his eye on something more worthy of an engineer, the building of an experimental city in South America, in order to show his society in action. Thus, we have a future, non-market, non-money society with no human decision-making, existing as a sealed bubble inside capitalism, and on a continent famous for its CIA-backed counter-revolutionary guerrilla forces. Well, lots of luck, but this ain’t a horse we would back.

Socialists rarely have anything good to say about post-modernism, but Fresco’s starry-eyed fixation with technology reminds us what was wrong with modernity in the first place. It was enlightenment thinking gone light-headed, before the hangover set in and we realised that, actually, science can’t save us from ourselves, in fact science and technology have got bugger all to do with it. Mass consciousness and democratic organisation are what it takes, not fantastical gadgets and optimistic faith in the imminent and obliging demise of capitalism. If you’re wrong about that, you’ve got nothing. Without class action, there’s no foundation, no plan, no clear road. It’s a house of cards floating in the air.

Fresco and his friends deserve huge credit for the work they have done in setting out a vision of post-capitalist common ownership, and if nothing else, the Venus Project should remind us that such ideas are not unique to us. But visions born of conspiracy theories tend to preclude the idea of democratic mass action, and that is a weakness. For socialists, not only is mass action possible, it is essential. Capitalism will not collapse. It has to be pulled down. And machines won’t do that for us.

Paddy Shannon

Between the Lines: From the people who brought you John Wayne (1990)

The Between the Lines column from the September 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the people who brought you John Wayne

When all that stands between us and the mass annihilation of a third world war are a few hours on the clock, who will we have to turn to and find out what is going on? Who will be telling us that it is right to fight? Who will say that the enemy is satanic and must be defeated at all costs7 Who will insist that the wasted lives of war are heroic gestures? Who will scream at us from morning to night that war is noble, that 'our side' has god on its side, that 'they' will never win. even if most of us must die to stop them?

It is one of the sickest ironies of capitalism that if there is a third world war, fought over the interests of the competing millionaires and billionaires, it will be the media, which is largely paid for and almost totally ideologically obedient to those billionaires and millionaires, that will have the monopoly on explaining what is going on. The capitalists not only possess the power to blow us up, but they have the power to con us into believing that it is right and necessary that we should be blown up.

The power of the media is never more dangerous than in time of war. It is then that the lies become bigger, the audacious assaults upon our intelligence greater, the resorts to half-truths and historical distortions grosser. If the news broadcasts are always but an echo of the interests of our masters in their world affairs, in war time the news becomes a blasting verbal cannon-fire of propaganda

In this war in the Middle East the TV newsreaders have done everything but put on uniforms. They have been recruited to the task of justifying the military force of 'our side' and attacking without explanation the 'madness' of the newfound enemy, to whom Britain used to be a major arms supplier. It is like Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four: four years ago Saddam was the friendly dictator who could be relied upon to kill the Iranians: now that he is the official enemy people who have never even heard of him before must be taught to hate him with a passion that only the media can whip up.

Who will the next hate figure be? What further methods will the media use to brutalise us into screaming that we want war? It is a dangerous box which workers have invited into the corners of their living rooms: it emits the poison gas of pro-war propaganda. Never mind all the reports of on links between TV violence and real violence — what about the link between news reporters who glorify war and tho widespread support for the indiscriminate slaughter of warfare which that generates? Or is that a legitimate use of TV to corrupt the minds of tho vulnerable7

Turning women into thugs

Speaking of corrupted minds and also of war — the two are closely linked — Channel Four showed a truly frightening documentary called Soldier Girls (16 August, 11pm). It was directed by Nicholas Broomfield and Joan Churchill. (Broomfield must be one of the most powerful and perceptive makers of documentaries depicting the lunacy of nationalism and militarism) The documentary was about the training of women to become soldiers in the US army. There are few things more disgusting to see than rows and rows of women, capable of producing life, lined up with guns and idiot's uniforms, learning how to destroy life. The documentary showed with awesome clarity just how these trainee thugs are brutalised, their sense of dignity and decency is forced out of them as they learn to become nothing but unfeeling cogs in the killing machine. Those who do not conform are punished by crazed officers whom the Iraqi army could only hope to match for madness.

One trainee, Private Johnson, made it clear from the start that the lunacy of army life was not for her. The officers tried everything to push her into line. What angered them most was that she kept on smiling as they shouted at her. Soldiers are not meant to smile. They punished her, they lectured her, they verbally assaulted her, and still she smiled when she should not have done. In one part of the documentary Johnson is taken into a room by two officers for what is laughably called 'counselling'.

A uniformed female officer and a male nutcase scream and shout at her The latter tells her: "Every time I look at you, Johnson, you got that same smart-arse look on your face, that same silly little smile. And then you got the gall to tell the lieutenant that you want to stay in my goddam army — and not do a damn thing for it. That's what irks me, Johnson You don't give a damn. The troops can't stand you. I mean, even our worst troops out there can't stand you. They don't even want to be around you. You are the type that irritates people just by your presence, without oven opening your mouth. Haven't you realised, Johnson, that you have that capacity to piss someone off just by standing there? Just the way you stand radiates total apathy, complete uncaring about god, man, animal, life water . . ." Incidentally. Johnson was black and the two officers were white. At the end of the documentary Johnson is seen leaving the army; if there are medals for smiling in the face of military madness. Johnson should receive one.

The only difference between training US killers and training Iraqi ones is that the latter are more likely to be killed. Perhaps the Middle East lunatics talk more about the god who is not there; the American screwballs talk about red. white and blue rags on poles which they would die for. It is all crazy — and those who deliver its messages are crazier still.

Steve Coleman

The Hitler film (1954)

Film Review from the July 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The full title of the motion picture is The Eva Braun and Hitler Story. It is made up of actual photographs of people and events, and a large number of shots were taken in Hitler’s own domestic circle.

Why this picture was not brought out years ago is a trifle puzzling since all the filming took place up to 1945. Perhaps the answer is to be found in the warning tagged on the end of the title on the screen, “it must never happen again.”

One thing that stood out from start to finish of the film was that it was meant to spotlight the military aspects of Hitler Germany and to say as little as possible about working class conditions there. In the light of up-to-date events in Germany, the propaganda of the period of the picture shows the complete hypocrisy of capitalist propaganda. During the showing, when one had just got used to seeing German military uniforms, the scene suddenly switched to a conference of “Allied” war men, amongst them Eisenhower and Montgomery, and for a moment apart from knowing the faces, one could see no difference.

The scenes when Hitler drove through the streets lined on both sides with cheering, flag-waving workers, were quite similar to those witnessed when members of the Royal family and political leaders do the same thing here and elsewhere throughout the world. The spirit of nationalism and patriotism is built and fostered in all cases.

A lot was made of the privilege and comfort enjoyed by Eva Braun and the children, whilst other Germans faced privation and hardship, particularly after D-day and the air-raids on German cities. We are presumably supposed to think that the allied rulers were different in this respect.

The film tries to convince us that it was merely the dreams of Hiller and his “love of power” that drove Germany to war, as if the need to expand and find markets and resources in a capitalist world had had nothing to do with it. Under capitalism each nation grabs what it can in territories, resources, markets and trade-routes and although these things are the concern of the capitalist class they are a ways prepared to “grab” or “defend” them with working-class lives. After Germany’s defeat in the 1914-18 blood bath for profits, the pickings of Europe were taken. The idea of keeping Germany out of the game lasted until French capitalism showed signs of having ambitions of its own. Then the “balance of power” policy was reverted to. When Hitler came along he adapted himself to the prevailing conditions by promising work to the unemployed and revival to the thwarted industrialists. The war-machine and the State dictatorship were to be the means to expand. The fact that from the earliest days Hitler’s Germany was building warships and going ahead with rearmament far in excess of what was permitted under the treaties, was very well known. The slogan “expand or bust,” applies to all capitalist nations. That is why there are always new rivals, new line-ups, and new wars being planned.

To expand is to develop industry and production, which means the creation of vast surpluses of goods for which markets must be found—or bust, which means slump, crisis and depression. Since the markets and resources of Europe were already being exploited, to “expand” for Germany meant arming and marching. The film under review was really nothing more than a record of the process whereby Germany shook off the restraints of defeat and reasserted herself as an industrial power. Who was it that said “history repeats itself?”

The commentator, during a conference between Hitler and Mussolini, referred to them as these “Fascist” leaders, but no comment was made on Churchill’s one-time admiration for these figures (particularly Mussolini) in pre-war days.

Our case as Socialists is that capitalism is rotten and ugly wherever it may be, in that it rests on the exploitation of the many by the few and all the pacts and alliances are nothing but manoeuvres for position amongst the thieves. We said in 1936: “No frontier is worth the life of a single worker” (P. 4 “War and the Working Class”). Years before this at the outbreak of the 1914-18 war we made similar statements, and to-day we say exactly the same.

In spite of the denunciations of one Power by another, opposing groups are prepared to line up together if it suits their purpose. Did not the British and American capitalists, while affecting to despise one dictatorship, line up with another—Russia? We know it is claimed that this was only done to “smash Fascism,” but now the ex-allies are planning to smash one-another with half the ex-Fascists on each side. Surely the complete farce of capitalism is self-evident.

No film of Hitler's Germany would be complete without some reference being made to the persecution of the Jews. Let it be recognised, however, that racial discrimination is not something of which Germany alone was guilty. Though, of course, not to be compared with the mass brutalities perpetrated in Germany in the name of race, race prejudice exists everywhere. Even at the time of writing certain states in the U.S.A., for example, are talking of forcibly resisting the High Courts order to end segregation in American schools.

The conclusion we come to is that if any propaganda film tells the truth in full it will expose the foul deeds of its own side as well as those of its opponents. Truth then can never be the stock-in-trade of capitalist propagandists; the stories are always told with the slant of whatever national capitalist group puts them over.

As Socialists we do not merely find fault with this or that capitalist country. We say that where there is capitalism, i.e. class ownership of the means of living, buying and selling, wage-labour and profits, there is poverty, misery and drudgery, and in no country do the working class own anything to die for. The fight of the world’s workers is the fight to get the capitalist class off their backs by introducing Socialism—i.e.. a world system with no wages, profits, buying or selling, where all the means of living are held in common and war and war propaganda are things of the past.

Harry Baldwin

Blogger's Note:

I'm not actually sure what film this is that is being reviewed. The title listed above does not throw anything up on the internet. It could be the French language documentary 'Autant en emporte l'histoire - La vie privée d'Hitler et d'Eva Braun' from 1949, but don't quote me on it.

The Reverend Bigot, I Presume? (1998)

TV Review from the June 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

When socialists have engaged reactionaries and fascists in debate before now, our critics on the left-wing of capitalism’s political apparatus have opposed us and, on occasion, tried to break-up our meetings. We have always insisted that the best way to effectively oppose reactionary ideas is to give them critical, public exposure to the socialist viewpoint.

Preventing free speech is neither democratic (and socialists are democrats–indeed the democrats) nor an effective way of preventing the spread of dangerous ideas and political illusions. While the left have been correct to assert the view that giving repugnant ideas exposure can sometimes assist them gain credence, it does very much depend how those views are conveyed. There has been no better illustration of this process than the recent Witness programme for Channel Four entitled “Dr Paisley, I Presume”, first shown at the end of April and then repeated due to popular demand in mid-May.

This was a programme in which one of Britain’s foremost bigots and racists was made to look the complete and utter fool many us already know him to be. It was entertaining, intelligently done, and merciless.

The focus of this programme was, of course, the Reverend Ian Paisley, or “Dr” Paisley to you. Dr Paisley was filmed—”fly-on-the-wall” documentary style–on a trip as a missionary to central Africa. The programme, though a one-off, took as its reference point the recent spate of serial documentaries previously commented upon in this column, such as BBC1’s Hotel about The Adelphi in Liverpool, or its series about Unijet’s holiday reps. Just like these programmes, it was not an overt assassination–it was much more subtle than that. It was the filming of a slow and painful suicide.

It’s a jungle out there

It would be a very brave or foolish person who would voluntarily submit themselves to the intrusion of a ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentary camera crew. If you have as many personal foibles and outrageous opinions as the Reverend Doctor Ian Paisley, then you would have to be very brave or exceedingly foolish. (It is likely, incidentally, that Paisley is both of these things, remembering that there is no intrinsic merit in bravery anyway as any failed kamikaze pilot could tell you.) Realising this, it is probable that most of the people watching this programme anticipated what was delivered by the programme’s makers–Paisley’s self-inflicted crucifixion. In truth, this must have been one of the easiest jobs in television.

How could it be otherwise when the object of this documentary, followed around by a journalist of Jewish origins at the head of the camera crew, would only address him as “the Jew” or “the Israelite” while insisting that everyone refer to himself at all times as “Dr Paisley”? And how could it be otherwise when Paisley communicated via walkie-talkie with this Jewish journalist with the opening line “Germany calling! Germany calling!”? The fact that he went on to explain such behaviour with the comment that “there is a little bit of the racist in all of us” did nothing more to help his cause. Neither did his patronising and self-serving attitude towards the Africans he met assist him much either.

But where this documentary departed from those like Hotel and Reps was in the attitude engendered among viewers towards the victims of this arrogance and foolishness. It was possible to feel a great deal of sympathy towards the victims of the profit-hungry Britannia group who run Liverpool’s Adelphi, but Paisley’s victims were of a different type. The most pathetic victim of all was Paisley’s right-hand side-kick, the quintessential hen-pecked husband married to the Racist Reverend (only metaphorically speaking of course). Rarely outside of the Cabinet Room of Number Ten Downing Street has such a pathetic sycophant been given such timely exposure. Tending to Dr Paisley’s every whim and desire without apparently one questioning thought entering his head, here was a man who had found his true vocation in life as arselicker-in-chief to the Bullshitter General Persuviant.

This man (who we shall not name for fear of detracting attention from his under-exposed and misunderstood master) is in need of help and socialists are, naturally enough, here to help him and those like him. There are people all over the world just like this man, whose life’s ambition has been to turn themselves into human clones of Dolly the sheep. But luckily for them all, socialists have the wherewithal to reverse this terrible affliction and make these people truly human again. We have, one might say, the technology–and it is our duty to use it wherever and whenever it is needed. Let the Free Presbyterian Church be one of our starting points.

Dave Perrin

The Yes Men (2005)

Film Review from the May 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Yes Men, Cornerhouse, Manchester, (now available on DVD)

Less overtly manipulative than Fahrenheit 451 but in a similarly subversive vein, The Yes Men is an attempt to wake up the public to all the corporate crap that is going on around the world in the name of the WTO. The film shows Andy and Mike, The Yes Men, impersonating or “correcting” the identity of their targets, turning up the volume’ on the aims of the WTO by exaggerating them to ludicrous extents. This is illustrated perfectly by their brief rundown of the rise of the textile industry in 19th century America thanks to “involuntarily imported labour” in the South, or by their proposal that the poor eat their own shit via recycled burgers.

The publicity blurb is promising enough, and the stunts are well represented but a lot of coverage is given to redundant talking-through, lengthening the introduction and giving more background detail on the preparation for the corporate leisure suit with huge phallic appendage than was strictly necessary. The first half of the film is taken up by the Yesmen’s talk at a textile conference in Tampere, leaving the camera to trail unevenly along to two other events which are less well covered in the second half.

This unevenness of treatment is a shame, because the idea behind the Yesmen is a good one, and could be an effective way of breaking through the hard capitalist coat of unthinking obedience to The Market. Of course, it is vastly entertaining to follow Andy and Mike as they prepare to take on a textile conference in Finland, stopping off in Paris to pick up little extras like the finishing touch for the manager’s leisure suit, and as they meet up with fellow activists around the States for other stints.

The underlying idea that subterfuge in the form of chameleon-like parodies will challenge those in power in the economic arena, or at least wake up a few conference goers, is laudable but hard work; in the capitalist world too many of these expensive conferences’ are attended by too many real yesmen’ and, unsurprisingly, there are few hostile reactions to the outrageous proposals that Andy and Mike make. Even the appearance of Andy on CNBC masquerading as GATT representative Granwyth Hulatberi,’ spouting about the might of the rich compared to the poor who are wrong “because they are poor”, fails to ring any alarm bells with the producer, even after the broadcast has gone out.

The one moment of hope comes when the Yesmen go to Sydney to address a meeting of the Certified Practicing Accountants Association of Australia. Andy, speaking again as a WTO representative, has gone for the serious approach, telling it its wrongs by helping people, not business. The accountants lap it up and seem genuinely excited by this prospect and eager to do their bit. Although this interest from such a normally conservative crowd could be explained by the uncritical reaction that the Yesmen’s parodic interventions usually get, it could also be more proof that humanity would embrace a more humane society, given half the chance.

LF

What’s got to go (2011)

Film Review from the March 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Zeitgeist: Moving Forward (2011)

“…I’m 94 years old now and I’m afraid my disposition is the same as it was 74 years ago, THIS SHIT’S GOT TO GO!”

And so begins Zeitgeist: Moving Forward the third film in a series of independently produced and distributed films by Peter Joseph. For those unfamiliar with these films, which have enjoyed considerable success on the internet, perhaps a quick recap will be useful.

In 2007, following on from a live music and visual production, the film Zeitgeist was released on the internet. The content of the film was concerned with religion, 9/11 conspiracy theories, and fractional reserve banking. After viewing this film ‘social designer’ and ex-Technocrat Jacques Fresco contacted Joseph with details of his techno-utopian life work known as The Venus Project. Peter Joseph was so impressed by this that he devoted a large part of his next film the Addendum, and his subsequent life, to expounding these ideas.

In the closing lines of this second film, and as an apparent near afterthought, contained the words ‘Join the Zeitgeist Movement dot com’. On the back of this Joseph has been able to amass a large following on the web and through this fan base co-ordinate an international release comprising of 341 screenings without the association of a major distributor.

Moving Forward itself follows a similar format to the last film in that it is composed of interviews with various academics and journalists, though the range of interviewees is wider this time. There has also been the addition of cartoon animated sequences and other light-hearted sequences that help break the film up giving it a well rounded feel.

The first section of the film is concerned with how society affects physiology and psychology. The film criticises concepts such as ‘human nature’, genetic determinism, nature versus nurture in a way that would be acceptable to socialists, indeed in places covering issues close to those in the Socialist Party pamphlet Are We Prisoners of Our Genes? Nothing too ground breaking or controversial here but so far so good. Unfortunately things go rather downhill after this.

The shaky economic analysis of the first two films makes a re-appearance. Apparently private property originates not with the beginnings of agriculture but with the works of John Locke. Capitalism starts not with the rise of the mercantile class and the creation of a landless proletariat but with the works of Adam Smith. We are told that the current economic system is characterised by ‘cyclical consumption’ as if consumption under any other system of production could ever be anything other than cyclical, all goods get used up or wear out eventually.

An unfortunate consequence of this section is that it gives the impression that monetary reform would be at least some kind of partial solution. We are told that the problem is that the ‘life cycle’ of commodity production has become dis-attached from the ‘money cycle’ of the market and that people are forced to work because of the debt created by fiat currency; as if the market was ever primarily about human need and people didn’t have to work before the advent of consumer credit and the abandonment of the gold standard.

The fact is that a more thorough and scientific analysis of the capitalist system has already been undertaken, and well over 100 years ago, in the works of Marx; the makers of the film seem ignorant of this probably as they imagine he advocated the continuation of the money system. In fact Marx, along with all true socialists, recognised that money would pass away with the passing away of private property and capitalism.

Though, to be fair, despite these false beginnings the analysis is at least on the right track. In the closing lines of this sequence the narrator states that the fundamental problem facing humanity is not to do with greedy bankers or a secret ruling elite but ‘is in fact the socio-economic system itself at its very foundation’.

The next section of the film, entitled ‘project earth’ is mainly concerned with the Venus Project’s proposed technical solutions to the world’s problems. Anyone who has seen the Addendum would be familiar with what’s on offer here. Hi-tech circular cities, vertical hydroponic farms and suchlike are suggested as ways of producing enough means of subsistence for the world’s population to live comfortably; and perhaps they will be, but such ideas can only be taken as vague suggestions as it is impossible to know what other technological possibilities would have come into fruition by the time such a society becomes a real possibility. The underlying message here is that the technological means for the manufacture of abundance are already in existence, again something which socialists would not disagree with or haven’t said before.

A weakness of the film is that there is no mention of how to get from here to there. Democracy is written off as a fraud since monetary interests are the real guiding force in society. Whilst we would say this is true of all major parties we would also add that a popular movement aimed solely at the transformation of society would be able to exploit the democratic system to its advantage. The closing words of the film are; “The in group will do all it can to stay in power and that’s what you gotta keep in mind. They’ll use the army and navy and lies or whatever they have to use to keep in power. They are not about to give it up because they don’t know of any other system to perpetuate their kind”.

For socialists it can only be heartening that a film questioning the material basis of modern society has enjoyed such success. But it is important not to get too carried away. The ‘Zeitgeist Movement’ has certain attracted many well-meaning people though to the extent that this represents a cohesive organisation is debatable. Peter Joseph is solely responsible for the content of the films leaving the ‘movement’ to take a more or less passive role. If the movement is going to transform itself into an active agent for change it may well involve it becoming something else.

DJP

Proper Gander: An Emotional History (2021)

The Proper Gander TV column from the March 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Adam Curtis’s latest documentary, Can’t Get You Out Of My Head (BBC iPlayer), is a fascinating watch, weaving together eight hours of archive footage, music and narration, delivered in Curtis’s serious, concerned style.

The six-part series describes itself as ‘an emotional history of the modern world’, telling how fear and paranoia shaped global events since the start of the Cold War. In Britain, this took the form of post-colonial racism and retreating into a romanticised vision of village greens and red telephone boxes. America promoted itself as proudly individualistic, defined against the image of Soviet citizens as a grey, uniform mass. But America’s individualists were living in anonymous suburbs, numbed by post-Vietnam anxieties and suppressed by valium, oxycontin and crack cocaine. The brutal regimes in China and Russia replaced their figureheads and spoke of progress, but each new set of rulers operated with the same divisive motivations as their predecessors. The ideologies which propped up society were based on misconceptions and antagonisms, resulting in aggression.

According to Curtis, then came the failure of world leaders to predict the fall of the Soviet Union, and the later realisation of the threat of climate change, which further weakened confidence to explain events using stories or ideologies, unless they were conspiracy theories. Abstract systems were increasingly used to try and rationalise a chaotic world. When computers harvest and process data they can find patterns, but they can’t link them together as stories, and therefore meaning is irrelevant. And where data-processing is applied, it’s used to watch over, control or manipulate people. So although the technology is new, the aim remains to exercise power.

Curtis’s style of film-making counters the data-crunching method, as he follows the personal stories which emerge from our experiences of authority. The characters he chooses to illustrate his points aren’t those you’d expect; Margaret Thatcher, for example, only appears briefly to tell us about her preferred way of ironing the hem of a dress. Chinese leader Mao Zedong takes up much less screen-time than his wife, Jiang Qing, who, like the documentary’s other main players, held a pivotal role which might otherwise stay under-acknowledged and which expresses wider trends.

Jiang Qing wielded considerable influence during China’s ‘Cultural Revolution’ of the 1960s and 70s, including over state propaganda, and in which enemies of the government and herself were hunted down by the Red Guards militia. Mao turned on Qing, having used her to destroy his opponents. She was one of the Gang of Four, a faction of the Chinese Communist Party who were convicted of treasonous offences soon after Mao’s death in 1976. Qing is portrayed as ruthless, ambitious and individualistic, her approach just a reaction against existing power networks without changing anything fundamental. The same applies to Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping with his economic reforms, making it clear by the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 that if China no longer even pretends to believe in democracy what does it believe in apart from money?

The other people featured in the series are mostly radicals and would-be radicals, including Eduard Limonov, Michael X, and Afeni and Tupac Shakur. Through each of their stories Curtis explains how they all set out to challenge those with power, but they revealed old conflicts lurking underneath, fuelled by anger and resentment. And each failed because they couldn’t or wouldn’t escape from the power structures they knew.

Eduard Limonov was a Russian dissident who lived for a time in a poor neighbourhood in 70s New York, the setting of his novel It’s Me, Eddie. This argued that people think they are free and living in a democracy, but it’s all a sham and we follow the rules set by the money system. Despite this promising view, Limonov slid into believing that nationalism is the way to convey collective strength. So, after returning to Russia he founded the National Bolshevik Party as a grim fusion of fascism and ‘communism’, with the goal of reawakening oppressive ideas.

Michael de Freitas arrived in London from Trinidad in 1957. He found work as an enforcer for notorious slum landlord Peter Rachman, and discovered a callousness behind British society. Renamed Michael X, he joined the Black Power movement in Notting Hill. His activism led to him being sent to prison for inciting racial hatred (at the same time as Enoch Powell made his racist speeches as an MP) and when he was released he found that his previous support among white liberals had gone. They had instead turned their energies to setting up community centres, which made Michael believe that now, black people in Notting Hill were being treated as subjects to measure and manage by liberals with their own position to protect. He decided to set up short-lived communes where, Curtis tells us, he reverted to old ways to gain influence he learnt working for Rachman – extortion and violence.

From the mid-1960s, Afeni Shakur was prominent in the New York Black Panthers, a group infiltrated and pushed towards a bombing campaign by undercover police. Her son, Tupac, later aimed to revive the movement through his music. He began by wanting to turn hostility outwards from gang culture to be directed at those who oppress, but ended up being more cynical and self-promoting. According to Curtis, he intensified aggression rather than changing anything, driven by individualism.

As with his prior film HyperNormalisation (2016), Curtis argues that lacking a vision of a different, future society holds back real change, both on a personal and collective level. The characters he describes failed because of this, only acting within existing antagonistic frameworks. Unfortunately, Curtis doesn’t go into enough detail about what these structures are. He hasn’t taken the next step, on screen at least, of directly criticising the economic root causes of power struggles, nor explaining what kind of future society he would advocate. Despite this, and his loose use of the term ‘revolution’, Can’t Get You Out Of My Head is refreshingly provocative, and worth getting into your head.

Mike Foster

TV Review: Worker co-operatives (1981)

TV Review from the January 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Worker co-operatives

“They have abolished the distinction between capital and labour” was the outlandish claim made recently by a BBC Horizon documentary, The Mondragon Experiment. The people in question were the workers in a conglomeration of about 80 “industrial co-operatives” in the Basque country. Commodities such as refrigerators and washing-machines are manufactured for sale at a profit as elsewhere, but the internal organisation is somewhat different.

Each worker joining a co-operative provides £2,000 for the company’s funds. This is increased by 6 per cent each year from the wealth the workers produce. They then receive a standard monthly salary. The higher paid workers may receive up to three times as much as lower paid workers. Then 10 per cent of the profits is spent on schools and so on, 20 per cent is paid pack, into company funds and the other 70 per cent is divided among the workers. There are two significant features of this “distribution of profits”. Firstly, these profits are allocated in the same proportions as the salaries The workers who were paid three times the wages of their colleagues each week are also allocated three times as much profit. Secondly, none of these “profit bonuses” can be withdrawn from the company capital (including the £2,000 original contribution) unless the worker leaves the co-operative.

Capital is wealth used to make more wealth; it is an accumulation of labour used to employ more labour, in order to realise a profit. In capitalism, wealth takes the form of commodities, articles produced for sale in the market at a profit. Capital is by definition divided from the labour it consumes. Workers receive wages or salaries which are generally just enough for them to replenish their energies and live in a way which is determined by place and time. They are then able to produce wealth greater in value than that represented by their wages or salaries. In a week a worker can make more than he himself requires. This surplus wealth created belongs to the employer, to capital.

This process can clearly be seen in Mondragon. The salaries paid were said by the reporter to be the “going rate for the job in the Basque country”, in other words, co-operative workers “pay themselves” just enough to live like other workers. The surplus they create is accumulated as capital. They can only get hold of their individual small share of that capital by leaving their job, and even then, the workers on higher salaries have much larger shares of it. Managers are elected by all workers, but so is a Social Council whose job it is to negotiate with the managers over wages, conditions and so on, just as trade unions do elsewhere.

There are some similarities between this form of capitalism and state-capitalist nations like the USSR. In both cases, the old set-up of private shareholders has been replaced by a complex bureaucratic structure, where specially inflated salaries for certain managers are used as a means of channelling the wealth to a privileged minority. In both cases the world market system of capitalism remains, so in periodic recessions production is restricted. But in Mondragon they are not made redundant. “Instead they send them back to school” said the reporter. In Russia they can put them in the army. The restrictions of the profit system remain. Both Russia and Mondragon are examples of capitalism where no specific shareholding capitalists are clearly in evidence.

These industrial co-operatives are said to be more successful as capitalist enterprises than other companies, firstly because almost all the resources are ploughed back without any dividends being paid, but also because the workers supervise themselves, without having to employ any foremen. So most of the workers are directly productive.

What if the co-operative workers democratically vote one week to pay themselves twice or three times as much, of the wealth they create? The frantic process of capital accumulation would be held up and the co-operative would lose ground in the vicious rat-race of capitalism. This is unavoidable in a worldwide system of buying and selling, or production for profit.

The way in which these workers are searching for co-operative work, though, and the degree to which they have succeeded in organising themselves without external investors or directors, is certainly a hopeful sign. It shows how the working class of the world can organise itself to produce wealth. But why retain this system of wages and profits, labour and capital? What is needed is a global political movement to replace the whole market system with planned production, co-operative production, without the fetters of wages, prices and profit.

Miss World contest

In this age of mass commodity consumerism, beauty is definitely NOT in the eye of the beholder. It is in the hands of the mass media. In commercial society, where commodities and money are mystified and personified, and where people are turned into objects, physical beauty is defined by conformity to a norm. Fashions, from lipstick to stilettoes, complete the conveyor-belt conversion in which workers are forced to go and sell themselves, as objects, to employers.

A few weeks ago, the ITV cameras were present in the Albert-Hall, where sixty-seven “beautiful girls”, representing sixty-seven nation-states (Warsaw Pact countries were excluded) were assembled to compete for the absurd title of "Miss World”. As with other sports, the spirt of fierce nationalist competition was in evidence, with the first stage of the contest consisting of a parade by the participants in their “national” costumes. Regional culture transformed into national rivalry. The trade figureheads parade past like plastic marionettes. “Miss Bolivia, Miss Turkey, Miss Zimbabwe, Miss Chile, Miss Jamaica . . .” While in each of these countries hundreds of people are dying in the political wranglings of the demagogues who own the resources, these painted puppets, moulded by a depraved society, stroll up and down smiling in their desperate efforts to conform to the norm. Red lips, blue eyelids, high heels and a frozen smile. This is a beauty contest, don’t forget. Place your bets. You can’t guess wrong, because whoever gets the prize, capitalist normality will have won.

The most touching moment was when all the participants sang together:

I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony,
I’d like to hold it in my arms, and keep it company.
I’d like to see the world for once, standing hand in hand
And hear the echo through the hills of peace throughout the land.

Sexual preoccupations are created and encouraged with promises of a “swimsuit” parade to come later. “Miss India” dances in a talent contest and Anthony Newley comments: “Makes you sorry we lost India doesn’t it”. The only thing he’s ever lost, as we were to find out subsequently, is his singing voice. Workers owned India no more than they own Ireland or ICI. Then the judges are wheeled on. Alan Minter, boxer, Denis Waterman, actor, Bruce Forsyth and the wife of the Swaziland High Commissioner. We don’t know where she came from, perhaps a friend of the organiser, Eric Morley. Presumably these people are trained experts on the oppressively narrow conception of “beauty” inculcated through constant exposure to media and advertising. We live more than ever in a social system which is insidiously restrictive. Individuality is stamped out. Social conformity is stamped in, at an early age, through what they call “education”. Beauty becomes a convention, a composite moulded from the mix of a million faces. And this is the very ideal to be attained in schools and in discotheques as much as in “Beauty” contests.

Out of the blue, Dame Vera Lynn appeared on the screen singing, “When you’re smiling . . . the whole world smiles with you”. Then, when called upon to actually speak, the beauty queens mouthed typically constricted ambitions such as “travelling” or “speaking a language”. In a co-operative system of society, individual and cultural development will be fostered, free from the prejudiced moral constraints imposed when social power is concentrated in the hands of a minority. Until real social democracy is established, with no class division or national frontiers, it will be true to say “When you’re different . . . the whole world sneers at you”.

Clifford Slapper

Proper Gander: From WAGs to Riches (2011)

The Proper Gander column from the September 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Watching a BBC3 documentary and expecting it to give you a deep insight into capitalist society is like going into a sweet shop hoping to get a three-course meal. In both cases, you end up with something sugary and gaudy instead of nourishing. Cherry’s Cash Dilemmas was therefore like a bag of liquorice allsorts. It was the latest show from Cherry Healey, the unthinking-person’s investigative journalist. She spent a day each with five women who have different kinds of relationship with money. WAG wannabe Esma believes that “it’s the man’s job to bring in the money and the woman’s job to look nice”, and by ‘nice’ she means being bronzed and vajazzled. Amanda made her fortune inventing and selling potties but was too busy making money from other people’s children to be around her own kids. ‘Freegan’ Katharine avoids spending money by raiding bin bags, looking for food needlessly thrown away by cafés and takeaways. Claire struggles to feed her family of nine on wages of £150 a week. And Birgit went from the Hollywood high life to a council flat in London, and feels that ‘karma’ has caught up with her.

Presumably it was assumed that the viewers would have the attention span of an amnesiac goldfish, as the programme only spent ten minutes with each interviewee. But behind the hyperactive editing and Cherry’s wide-eyed zeal were some interesting observations about how people feel about money. In particular, the show revealed a correlation between how much someone fetishises money and how self-absorbed and irritating they are. Katharine, Claire and Birgit have learnt, unfortunately the hard way, that money is less important than fulfilling, warm relationships. And they have become kinder and more thoughtful as a result. But Esma and Amanda, who have allowed their alienation to take them over, just come across as tanned robots with bling. Whether or not money can buy you happiness, the love of money only seems to buy you shallowness.

Mike Foster

Enterprising I.C.I. (1959)

Film Review from the February 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

All the Old Fallacies

On Sunday, 14th December, a most interesting film was shown at Head Office as part of our winter propaganda series. The film was called Enterprise and was made by the Imperial Chemical Industries about itself.

Although the film ran only for 22 minutes, it must have been quite costly to make, since it was entirely in cartoon form and in colour. As an attempt to justify the profit motive, from a Socialist point of view it was an elaborate waste of time. All the time-honoured catchphrases and phoney ideals, so dear to the hearts of the Capitalist Class, were put over with the most subtle propaganda technique.

Of course, one major weakness in films which set out to “sell” Capitalism as the best system possible is, that if it was really so good and in the best interest of everyone, it would not be necessary to “plug” it all the time. If the set-up existing between employers and employees, the owners and non-owners of the means of living, was so in accordance with man's nature that there was no antagonism or conflict of interest, there would be no need to keep turning out expensive sugar-coated propaganda.

What we are expected to swallow by the film is that giant concerns like I.C.I. exist for the purpose of doing things “for us.” We are told, via the commentator, that the Capitalists “risk" their money in a community-minded spirit to “produce for our use.” It is with heartfelt desire to serve “us” that the £220,000,000 capital of I.C.I. is set into motion. To produce, with the “maximum efficiency and speed the things we need” is the noble objective of the selfless Capitalist.

It is readily admitted by the film that the Capitalist makes profits, but, of course, this is his just “reward” for “risking” his money in our interest. Although the film several times makes reference to this “reward,” nothing is said about its origin. It is almost as though a good fairy recognises the kindly nature of the Capitalist and, with a wave of her wand, his “reward” materializes out of thin air. Considering that in 1957 I.C.I. made £27 million net profit, that must be some fairy. From the standpoint of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, these notions are the purest drivel. We would not waste time on such arguments except for the fact that they are expected to be, and too often are, taken seriously by members of the working class.

Another phrase used in the film was. that I.C.I. is a “community in unity.” In fact the whole commentary is made to rhyme, but we felt more as though the commentator was spinning us a yarn than reciting poetry. There is no basis for unity between the working-class and the capitalist class. It is from the wealth produced by the workers that the profits of the Capitalist arise. The words "efficiency and speed” merely try to mask the employer’s determination to exploit his wage-slaves to the maximum possible extent.

The film started by depicting an ancient potter, who not only made the pots himself but, when times were hard, also went out and found new markets for them: if through HIS efforts HE got rich, good luck to him. Then we are brought forward in time to I.C.I., and they try to make the parallel that those who get profits out of I.C.I., too, are the ones who do the work. We are shown few workers and lots of board-rooms, executives, and costings departments. The ancient potter owned the implements he worked with, but under modern Capitalist production work and ownership of implements are separated. This fact lies at the bottom of all the major social problems facing mankind to-day.

How different from all this things would be under Socialism. When the means of production are held in common by all, the word “community” will have a real meaning. In a classless system, costings departments and board-rooms will have no place. It will not be necessary to calculate costs in order to maintain profits when society is no longer concerned with monetary systems. Under Capitalism, the first consideration is ‘‘Will it sell?” "Will it be profitable?” With Socialism, the first and only consideration will be human well-being, the democratic organisation of production for use on the basis of free access.

The Stock Exchange Year Book for 1958 gives an impressive list of about 20 countries in which I.C.I. have holdings. When the competition for markets, minerals and trade-routes, etc., leads the various ruling class groups to war it is possible for workers to fight for I.C.I.’s interests in almost every part of the world.

Much is made in the film of the vast number of shareholders in I.C.I. This is another stock argument of Capitalist defenders which only shows how shallow they really are. It is as good as admitting that it is anti-social for a few to own the means of society’s living, so if they can make it sound a lot it has a better effect. As if it matters to workers being exploited whether the wealth they produce above their wages is shared by many or few Capitalists. When the official figures show that 10 per cent. of the population own 90 per cent. of the accumulated wealth, one does not need to be a genius at maths, to find out what property interests or investments the working-class has.

A fact not mentioned in the film is that it is a regular practice of I.C.I. to make large donations to Scientific Education. In one of their own publications. I.C.I. Review for 1957, we are told that the amount for that year was £300,000 The review adds that the object is “to increase the amount and quality of Scientific and Technical work in the country generally, from which the Company itself will undoubtedly benefit.”

When workers begin to understand their true position in present-day society and start to see the need for Socialism, they will not be so easily deceived by Capitalist propaganda. They will read the Press, listen to the radio and watch films and television in the light of their growing class-consciousness. The days of production for the profit of a few will then be on the way out.

Harry Baldwin

Sicko (2007)

Film Review in the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sicko (Directed by Michael Moore)

What a devastating indictment of the US health care system this film is! Fifty million Americans have no health insurance, and eighteen thousand die because of this each year. The focus of the film, however, is on those who do have such insurance — and are therefore not the most badly off — but find it of little use when they need it most.

The insurance is with health maintenance organisations or HMOs, though they should really be called wealth maintenance organisations, as they are most concerned about the wealth of their owners and top executives. People pay for health insurance or have it provided by their employer but, when it comes to the crunch and they fall ill or have an accident, the HMO will try every trick in the book to avoid paying up. Surgical procedures may be categorised as experimental and therefore not covered, or people may be denied treatment because they did not disclose some prior medical condition or even failed to diagnose it themselves.

It is the individual cases Moore presents that give the film its impact. One child died because the HMO insisted she be treated in one of their own establishments rather than the hospital that the ambulance had taken her to. A man who had lost the tips of two fingers in an accident with a saw had to choose which one should be replaced, as he could not afford both. A sick and disoriented woman was dumped in the street by the hospital when she could not pay her bills.

Moore contrasts the American system with those in Canada, Cuba, France and the UK. He makes great play with the fact that the cashier in an NHS hospital doesn’t receive payments from patients but instead pays out, reimbursing some of them for their travel expenses. The original NHS idea of free treatment is trotted out, courtesy of Tony Benn, but disappointingly there is no discussion of the extent to which it no longer applies. Further, there’s little if any investigation of the real quality of health treatment in these countries.

All in all, though, this is a forceful attack on the idea that medical treatment should be based on considerations of profit. And just before the end comes a refreshing thought, that society should be more concerned with ‘we’ than with ‘me’.

Paul Bennett

The Savage Eye (1960)

Film Review from the January 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

THE SAVAGE EYE, at present showing at the Curzon, is something of an emotional block-buster. Staggering out into the neon lighting, the dazed cinema-goer finds himself asking, “Is life really as dreadful as this, are people usually so hopeless and despairing?” or worse still, "Am I one of them?”.

Certainly the eye is savage enough giving a conducted tour of present-day society as seen by a bitter, disillusioned and dejected divorcee. Finding herself in a spiritual vacuum, she wanders about the city, draws her alimony cheque regularly, and spends much of her boredom increasing her disgust at the behaviour of human beings. Sourly she views the world at large from the pavement, and a singularly depressing view it is. Bad debts at the dog tracks, screams for blood at wrestling matches, vicious brawls in pubs. Men looking for women, women looking for men. and fat ladies pedalling wildly on stationary bicycles in a beauty parlour. Candid shots of gaping mouths, sagging waists and false smiles. Yet beneath their phony, gilt-edged pretensions, people struggling for recognition, love and affection. Even in one of the most pitiful and truly horrific scenes of the film struggling for their health at a faith healing ceremony ("Dear God, it's her liver. Move along friend and pray awhile.”) During all of this she conducts a cynical and at times slightly pretentious dialogue with a resonant manly voice that identifies itself as “Your inner self, your angel,” and the unhappy wanderer is finally persuaded to face reality and come to terms with the people she despises so much.

The film shows you nothing new. People are seen doing the things you know that they do, living the life that you know they live. But it does make clear the fact that society is made up of people, and that people within modern society need more than new flats, health insurance and hair driers to make them feel that life is worth living. They need to belong, to feel that they are doing something considered worthwhile to the community, to give and to receive. In a society such as ours it is quite obvious that these needs are for the greater part unrealised. Our world is dominated by fear, hatred and confusion, where cash, profit and ‘‘What's in it for me?” are so often the criteria for doing anything. When half the population do not even have their basic requirements of food, clothing and shelter met, much less their emotional needs, how can they find personal satisfaction and harmony in their every-day lives? To retain a sense of ordinary humane values requires a conscious effort. Divorced from emotional security at home, in spite of vast housing estates and modern gadgets: alienated from pride at work, for all the new machinery: still there is little sense of achievement and pleasure.

This is all shown clearly, but the film offers no solution to the problems. Surely to reorganise society on a basis of common humanity and the social considerations of the well-being of all human beings is not such a difficult task. While Socialists may feel that The Savage Eye does not look far enough, it is none the less well worth seeing for it does extend an invitation to its audience to (misquoting the faith healer) “Move along friend and think a while."

John Higgins

Between the Lines: Beyond the dark (1988)

The Between the Lines Column from the September 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Beyond the dark

In case you can't find enough Tory dogma stuffed down the columns of your morning newspaper, Channel Four has provided just that added touch of repulsion at the end of the week, in the form of a new Friday-night discussion programme, Right Talk (a 10pm)

A Tory Lord chaired the first in the series. "Well", he began, "after nine years of Thatcherism we have all made lots of money . . . "; one immediately knew it was going to be one of those discussions. Lord Blake, who looked like an extra from Brideshead Revisited, couldn't be sure whether Thatcher's ideas owed more to Gladstone the Liberal or Disraeli the Tory. The participants drank orange juice out of glasses in silver holders (handling the glass itself might have seemed a touch too close to feeding themselves) and debated whether society really exists or, as Thatcher has suggested, we are all no more than a collection of individuals, united at most by family ties. Of course, the notion that there is no society is pretty handy when you are running one in which eight million workers arc dependent on state welfare payments, all of whom you choose to ignore. 

The discussion was frighteningly smug, which should perhaps be expected when a bunch of like minded doctrinaires get together and look at the world. I kept hoping that a socialist would burst in on the discussion (maybe Channel Four would send one in to collect the glass-holders), take on the whole pack of them and still drink his orange juice But the door never opened, and as the inane chatter continued I couldn't help thinking that the Tory party conference must he an awful place to be if you have a mind of your own.

Laughing at the riff-raff

In 1974 a BBC producer made an innovative fly-on-the-wall documentary called The Family. In July BBC2 re-screened it. Watching it the second time round, it became clear just how bloody wretched the lives of many workers are, a wretchedness which transcends any poverty statistics. The Wilkins family were not Victorian beasts who lived in one room and had arses hanging out of their trousers. That eight of them inhabited one pokey house in Reading was bad enough — bad enough indeed for two of the them to be rehoused in the course of the series, leaving only six of them to luxuriate in the palatial residence But it was not just the grimness of an impoverished family existence which made the Wilkins' predicament especially sad. It was the fact that these people had clearly been brought up to know their place in the world a mean and humble place, where complaining is in order but "you can't do nothing about it". In the course of the series I did not once see a single Wilkin reading a book, which is not a patronising jibe but a comment on the cultural impoverishment of many of our fellow workers. No books, but plenty of tabloid newspapers were in evidence As the series progressed the family became both more likeable and more pathetic One imagined a capitalist family watching the programme, mystified that people can live such pinched, cramped, repressed lives without wanting a revolution and laughing their heads off at the foolish antics of these simple slum-folk

Like many other viewers, I enjoyed watching Tom, the drunken, comical son-in-law whose native wit seemed to sustain the Wilkins in their ceaseless battle against the troubles of life. In the last episode Tom said that he had enjoyed the notoriety winch the series had given him, he thought he might now try his hand as a stand-up comedian. Unless he has disguised himself, the quest for stardom does not seem to have led to much in the last fifteen years Tom would have been better becoming a stand-up socialist; he could certainly have taught the Wilkins family a thing or two about how to change their situation.

One postscript on the series: its repeat showing led to a revival of public interest in the family Three of them were invited on to the Wogan show to tell us what had been happening since 1974. Every one of them had since been divorced. Mother and father were no longer together. Tom's wife had divorced him and married twice more, the son had divorced his wife, the teenage girl, unmarried in 1974, has been through several fathers for her children And all of this under a social system which, according to Mrs Thatcher, ties people together through the sacred knot of the family.

Through the keyhole

Back in 1974 there were doubts about the ethics of having a TV crew move in with a family for several months and observe their every move. The defence was that the Wilkins family knew what they were letting themselves in for. Even so, speaking in 1988. the mother of the family complained that they had been awfully underpaid for having been so used by the BBC. But what they did is nothing in comparison with the latest brand of voyeurism put out by ITV to please the advertisers. Family Affairs (6.30pm Fridays) is possibly one of the most tasteless ideas for a TV series ever conceived (And no. I haven't forgotten Cilla and her Blind Date.) Each week the presenter, Mike Smith, invites a couple to sit on a stage before an invited audience and argue about their most intimate problems. In one episode a black husband and a white wife are on the point of divorce; he will divorce her unless she slops seeing her racist father, who refuses to treat his black son-in law as an equal or, indeed, as a human being. She sees his point, but can’t bring herself to make the break. The audience, like over-emotional spectators at a street brawl, shout their advice. "Tell her father to go to hell." “If you loved him you'd give up your dad." "Be a man and take no notice of her old man., it's her you've married." On hand is marriage counsellor, Philip Hodson, whose sole function seems to be to make embarrassing, platitudinous statements like "Listen, why don't you turn to her now and tell her you love her." Oh yes, that will definitely save the marriage. Does this guy get paid for mouthing such banalities? It is a truly sick format which is likely to run and run.

Dictatorship games

As you read this column you may be submerged in 24-hour coverage of the Olympic Games from Korea, a country with a truly disgusting dictatorship You will recall that when the Games were in Moscow the USA would not go and Thatcher, who believes that politics should be kept out of sport, advised British athletes to stay away or whistle for an OBE. When the Games were in Los Angeles the Russian government ordered its boys and girls to stay at home. Now, by any standards, Korea is a worse hell hole and a fouler police state than either the USA or Russia. But both superpowers are sending their workers to compete there. Within a few weeks you will know the American national anthem down to the last beat; you will probably become pretty familiar will the Russian and East German ones as well. As for die British idiot-song — well, you had better stick to watching BBC closing down because "our' team is going to demonstrate what it means to have virtually no sports funding. Alternatively, you could keep watching Right Talk on Channel Four. I've just got this horrible feeling that any week now they're all going to burst into a solemn rendition of "God Save the Queen".

Steve Coleman