Letter From Vienna: Postscript on Skopje (1963)

From the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

When I learned of the earthquake in Yugoslavia and the terrible fate of the victims, it brought back to mind my own terrifying experiences in Vienna, as it must have reminded millions of others in the world, who survived the bombing of their homes and the carnage in the 1940s. The blind forces of nature could not then be blamed for it. No, these deeds were unspeakable crimes perpetrated by deliberate human design, scientifically organized and directed by the managers and other hirelings of capitalism, supported and blessed by the church!

That 20 years later this ogre of capitalist war should still have been able to stalk the earth, openly parade his armour, and boast of the ever-growing destructive power of the megation bombs and Polaris craft, will probably be one of the phenomena incomprehensible to a future society no longer afflicted with political mental inertia.

The suffering of the survivors of the earthquake in Yugoslavia has been temporarily mitigated, as usual under capitalism, by charity. Collections and other assistance have been organised by many countries, but when these helpful channels dry up, the surviving victims will, as usual, be left to their wretched fate.

Some details in connection with this disaster should be put on record, if only to nail the lie and show the hollowness of the assertion that capitalism has been abolished somewhere and replaced by a new and better social system. You may indeed ask how the mass of the people in Yugoslavia can be made to now accept a regime of despotism equal to that of Hitler—the squashing of democracy, the setting up of a Yugoslav Gestapo, forced labour camps, and prison for political opponents of the regime, supply the answer to that question. It is fear of persecution—the fate of Milovan Djilas' (seven years’ prison for free expression of opinion and publishing a book The New Class) it is government terror that makes people under ruthless dictatorship acquiesce in the horrible regime of State capitalism masquerading under the name of communism.

Among the many helpers of the earthquake victims, neighbouring Austria showed a quite remarkable zeal in assisting the great efforts to alleviate the distress. even though there is at all times great poverty, homelessness and helplessness in her own country. Poignant tales of human misery' and tragedies fill the columns of the daily Press. Who here has not read of evicted families with eight and more children seeking to spend the night in public parks or in ruined houses before being removed by the Police to some barracks? Every autumn every house in Vienna carries a big poster appealing for funds to help the needs and destitute by supporting the innumerable charitable institutions up and down the country. Our letter boxes are constantly filled with appeals for assistance to the countless local poor. But how much greater is the poverty behind the iron curtain and the helplessness in emergencies such as an earthquake!

So, in addition to all the funds the Viennese business firms and newspapers collected, and the trucks full of clothing, bedding, blankets, tents and toys sent to Skopje, a Welfare organisation under the auspices of the Arbeiler-Zeitung also invited seventy orphans to come to Vienna, where they would be taken care of as the guests of the organisation. Everything was prepared down to the minutest detail, and the children duly arrived at Marburg on the iron curtain border, where Austrian officials had previously arrived to receive the children and see them safely to Vienna. Here also the children were to have a grand reception by the Bürgermeister and a staff of welfare officials.

But—sad to relate the orphans never got beyond Marburg. Instead of proceeding to Vienna, they had to go back to the communist paradise. Not that there are no wonderful places in Yugoslavia, but these are not for the poverty-stricken wage slaves or the victims of earthquakes—they are for the new class, the new bourgeoisie.

Why had the orphaned children to be sent back?

Apparently the Yugoslav dictator and his close circle had been too busy with the preparations for a right royal reception of their Soviet visitors to he able to supervise and check up on all arrangements made by their underlings. Anyway, when the higher quarters learned of these particular welfare arrangement, the children’s exit from the communist paradise and their journey to “capitalist Austria” was stopped. The underlings in charge of the Skopje victims had received their instructions, plus lessons in communist superior “statesmanship" and diplomacy, the orphans had to remain in Yugoslavia, and Tito's preparations for his trip abroad (this time to America) on his luxury yacht, as befits a ruler, could proceed without further worries. What does the disappointment of poor children—not to speak of the zealous welfare organizers—matter to communist despots with axes to grind?

With humble expressions of regret, but undeterred by this snub, the Arbeiter-Zeitung sent all the clothing in a big truck-load to the Yugoslav children who of course were overjoyed with the gifts. According to a reporter, the coats and other garments were the first they had had in their lives. Obligingly, hardly any other newspaper commented on this episode and on the embarrassment of a so called communist government in its utter failure to cope with an emergency. With the exception of belatedly refusing the foreign help offered to the seventy Skopje orphans, this “communist ” government was not too proud to decline other western assistance and gifts to its poor people.

If, after 46 years of existence, further evidence was still needed to show the cold-blooded swindle, and demolish the impudent assertion that Yugoslavia, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania and China are communist, recent developments and experiences there should provide that final evidence. Or will the working class, of Czechoslovakia, for example, for ever ignore such almost unbelievable episodes as those of the nine of the eleven prominent Czech communist politicians hanged in 1952, and now rehabilitated as not guilty of the accusations levelled against them 11 years ago? And will the fiasco of the Moscow so called Ideological Conference also be passed over in true capitalist style, like world-wars, as all in the days work?

Rudolf Frank

A Look Round. (1906)

From the May 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month the “Progressive” London County Council took over the tramways of the North Metropolitan Company and immediately signalised the march of “progress” by withdrawing a privilege that passengers had hitherto enjoyed.

o o o

Under the Company management two-journey tickets were issued at the rate of three-fourths of two “all-the-way” fares. The return portion of the ticket was available by any route at any time ; but, so soon as ownership and control by the public capitalists was substituted for that of the private ones, notices were exhibited in each car stating that these would be available on the day of issue only.

o o o

Such is the “progressive” policy of Messrs. Benn, Crooks, Burns, Isaac Mitchell & Co.

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Eastwood & Co. have introduced a new process of making bricks at their works at Conyer, near Sittingbourne, by which bricks of good quality are now turned out by machinery in seven days, against three months under the old hand-made process.

o o o

There are “reformers” who, amongst other wild ideas, propose to solve the “problem” of the unemployed by a revival and extension of the apprenticeship system. By it, for example, they would increase the number of expert brick-makers, and then, even before then—along comes a machine which does all their work in one-thirteenth of the time !

o o o

Some people would argue that it would be better to put aside the machine and make the bricks by hand ; but these are usually people who have never made nor attempted to make any bricks. They are not Socialists. Socialists are working for the elimination of waste, for the greatest economy in the production and distribution of wealth. The difference between Socialism and Capitalism as regards machinery is that under Socialism machinery will be a real labour saver, reducing the hours of necessary work of all the wealth producers in the community, whilst under Capitalism machinery simply reduces the wages bill of the capitalist and intensities the unemployed question.

o o o

It is not, of course, wise to dogmatise as to the extent of the reduction of hours of labour that will be effected by the industrial organisation that will obtain under Socialism, but it is easy to see that when all useless occupations, such as those which are the necessary concomitants of the competitive system, are eliminated, and those engaged therein are performing their share of the useful labour ; when those who are now chronically unemployed or are in the ranks of the predatory professionals (or should it be the professional predatorists ?) are also helping, what an enormous reduction of each worker’s hours will be possible.

o o o

It is sometimes suggested that people under Socialism, having reduced the necessary labour to a minimum, will not know what to do with themselves in the leisure hours. It doesn’t strike me that way. In the summer time, at any rate, I can always enjoy a “laze,” stretched with my “back-to-the-land” by the side of a stream or the sea, and if I were living under a Socialist State, and had done my fair share of the necessary work, I don’t think time would hang very heavily on my hands. I have yet to learn that I am constituted much differently to other folk.

o o o

A book which is often mentioned when discussions arise concerning the hours of labour under Socialism is “Our National Resources and how they are wasted.” It was written by William Hoyle and published in 1871. The writer said (page 50), “Assuming every person did their share, a total of 1¼ hours’ daily labour would suffice to supply us in abundance with all the comforts of life.” He added, “The progress of invention and the increasing application of machinery, are daily reducing even this amount of labour, so that the part which has now mainly to be played by man is simply to superintend the machinery which does the work.” That was nearly 40 years ago.

o o o

Speaking of Wm. Hoyle reminds me of the shock which the rabid teetotallers have recently received. They glibly assert that “drink is the chief cause of crime,” and that “drink fills our prisons,” etc. Dr. Emile Keich has proved, by quotations from the United States Census Report on Crime, Pauperism, and Benevolence, that total abstainers committed more crimes than drunkards, and now we have a Special Correspondent of The Tribune declaring that, as a result of his investigations at Dartmoor, “the bulk of these specialists in crime, who represent the Genius of Evil, are confirmed teetotallers.”

o o o

Farther than this, the Daily News, the anti-alcohol, pro-cocoa, organ, last week reviewed the Criminal Statistics for England and Wales in 1904 and said, “Summarising the results, drunkenness is regarded as stationary, but minor offences of dishonesty and serious frauds and breaches of trust have increased, while offences of the vagrancy class are declared to be growing rapidly.” And if “drink fills our lunatic asylums” how is it that the consumption has seriously declined in recent years, but the number of lunatics has considerably increased ?

o o o

“The deepest root of the evils and iniquities which fill the industrial world is … the subjection of labour to capital and the enormous share which the possessors of the instruments of industry are able to take from the produce.” J. S. Mill.

o o o

Those who think that imprisonment for debt is one of the barbarisms of the past may be interested in the fact that 19,217 debtors went to prison in 1904, the figures for the four previous years being 17,598, 15,710, 13,635, and 12,875 respectively.

o o o

The recent earthquake and resulting fires in San Francisco have considerably affected the shares of many British and German Fire Insurance Companies. In these countries, as well as in America and others, the workers are exhorted to “support home industries,” “keep the money in the country,” etc. But these considerations do not weigh with the employing class. They know no lines of demarcation, whether geographical, national, or racial. And American capitalists are quite as willing to pay premiums to British Insurance Companies when it suits their purpose as British ones are to invest in industrial concerns abroad to compete against British productions.

o o o

But the fact that a seismic upheaval, as the “penny-a-liners” have it, occurring miles away, has caused the price of certain British shares to considerably decline on the London Stock Exchange, has a greater interest for the working class than at first sight appears. It shows the internationalism of capitalism.

o o o

This has of course been shown before. When Mr. Joseph Leiter was operating in Chicago with the object of cornering the world’s wheat supply, the price of wheat, flour, and bread rose, not only in America, but all over the civilized world, and in Southern Europe starving workers who were parading the streets unable to obtain bread, because of the prohibitive prices, were shot down by the national defenders of international capitalism. This was dealt with in detail in the article “Invasion or Starvation,” which appeared in the Socialist Standard in July last.

o o o

Capitalism has long since ceased to be local and national. It is international. The workers are hoodwinked by the capitalist class and their henchmen into thinking that workmen of other districts, of other countries, of other races, are their enemies. But the capitalists draw no distinction. They set out to exploit the working class irrespective of race, creed, or colour. They organise, but as a class against the working-class. The working class have not yet learned the lesson placed before them by their masters.

o o o

It is to the capitalists’ interests that the workers should be disunited, but that if organised they should be organised sectionally, even to the extent of workers in different departments of the same industry forming separate Unions and often blacklegging each other. This suits the so-called Labour Leader as well as the employing class. The more Unions the more jobs, the more joint conferences with the employers, and the more drawings of expenses by the “representatives of the men,” etc. And when some Trade Unionist arises to urge that so many Unions are inadvisable and prejudicial to the workers’ interest, that they involve more paid ollicials than are really necessary and are used by the capitalist class against each other, the “leaders” always find insurmountable difficulties against amalgamation, and if something must be done, they effect a Federation, and create some more well-paid jobs for their own kidney.

o o o

The “General Federation of Trade Unions” job will be fresh in the minds of most readers.

o o o

There is no hope for the workers until they became class-conscious, that is, until they recognise that their interests, like their masters’, are not sectional, trade, or national, but class, and that they must organise, as a class, as the international proletariat, “to the end” in the words of our Declaration of Principles,* “that a speedy termination may be wrought to the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour and that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom.”

o o o

Writing in the Labour Leader the Gateshead I.L.P. express the opinion “that the reason that Socialism is not making the progress we have a right to expect is largely to be found in the matter served up to their audiences by our I.L.P. Lecturers.”

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Truth will sometimes out ! If the I.L.P. lecturers were Socialists, intent upon imparting to the working class a clear understanding of the principles of Socialism, the matter served up would be different. But, as we have proved, to go no further back than the General Election, the I.L.P. leaders threw over their principles when they found that if they adhered to them they would fail to reach the above-all-things coveted seat in the House of Commons.

o o o

“Thank God,” writes the editor of the Labour Leader, “we are not logicians.” Thank God, say we, we are guiltless of laying that charge to their door.

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In the course of the recent action for slander brought by Mr. J. Pitt Hardacre against Mr. Joseph Beavor Williams, a Labour member of the Manchester City Council, and prominent by his connection with the Musicians’ Union, the defendant admitted that when addressing meetings at Openshaw, in Manchester, he had not confined himself strictly to the truth.

o o o

It will go hard with lying labour “leaders” when the workers get hold of the truth !

J. Kay

Material World: Disasters, natural and unnatural (2023)

The Material World column from the March 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again the world shudders at the news of another ‘natural’ disaster, as the death toll climbs from the Turkish-Syrian earthquake. It is again apparent that even a ‘natural’ disaster can be mitigated. Similar misfortunes are invariably presented in the media as unavoidable and to a certain degree, this is true. But it ignores the consequences of the pursuit of profit at the expense of prevention and it is not a coincidence that the number of victims of various disasters such as tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes is clearly related to the extent of their poverty. What all the casualties share is that they are mostly poor and it was their apartment blocks tumbling down and reduced to rubble.

It is necessary to understand why the poor suffer more even in natural calamities. Earthquakes are inevitable, but the accompanying casualty figures are not. It is falling buildings that take lives, not the tremors in the ground. No matter how severe an earthquake is on the Richter Scale, if buildings were correctly constructed many people would survive. This does not happen in the poorer countries of the earthquake-prone regions because precautionary guidelines to make them more resistant are seldom followed.

The world is structured in such a way that poor people are and will always be the most susceptible to disasters. They are unable to prevent disasters and lack the reserves to recover when they hit. Poorer communities take far longer to rebuild and are far more likely to be affected by subsequent disease outbreaks such as cholera. They grow further impoverished because they cannot afford to rebuild.

Many modern buildings have been equipped to withstand seismic shocks. In wealthy countries, architects have designed ’active’ buildings, some mounted on top of massive rubber shock absorbers or other systems to counteract seismic shaking. What’s the likelihood of such sophisticated technology being used for dwellings in poverty-stricken areas? Using elaborate building methods and materials, there is no reason why there should be any undue loss of life or major destruction after experiencing even the most powerful of earthquakes.

Having witnessed the tragedy unfolding in Turkey and Syria, we see how people are endowed with the ability to sympathise and empathise with others and even in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis contribute to charities to alleviate some of the suffering being experienced. People are at their best when things are at their worst. When a major catastrophe strikes, we can always rely on people responding with whatever they can give towards the relief of the survivors. Volunteers are never lacking nor slow in coming forward to offer whatever help they can.

If there is any good that comes from this catastrophe and other calamities it is that human beings show themselves as an inherently caring species. One reason capitalism persists is that it fosters a lack of confidence and conviction in working people’s deep compassion for others. It seems our society has been influenced to believe that nothing can be done. That big death tolls from quakes, volcanoes or floods are inevitable. Unlike the media, socialists strive to explain capitalism’s culpability and socialism’s solutions.

Being poor means having very little control over your own existence. While some disasters cannot be avoided, others are completely preventable. Is it controversial to argue that capitalism, with its emphasis on profit, means that any disasters which do happen are likely to be more serious and harmful than would otherwise be the case?

Most dangers from Nature are well known and there is no need to leave communities exposed to them. Earthquakes are natural phenomena. It is known where they are likely to happen but not when. So society could take action to minimise the impact and it makes no sense deliberately to court disaster.

One reason earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and floods kill so many people is that people live and work in known danger zones. Under capitalism, it is a question of necessity which stops people from moving to safer lands.

It must be clear that nobody would voluntarily live alongside a ticking time-bomb, and given the freedom of movement implied by the abolition of private property, we can surmise the largest contribution to protecting lives in a socialist world will come from populations changing locations away from high-risk areas. A massive mobilisation of people to other regions would be inconceivable today but not necessarily in socialism.

Contingency plans should exist throughout the world for the relief of any catastrophe. Saving lives could become a new ‘un-armed forces’ raison d’être. Bodies of fit, well-trained, well-resourced, motivated men and women available to deal with the effects of natural disasters and unexpected calamities would be one of a number of ways to deploy willing volunteers, for humanitarian intervention. Emergency stocks of food, clean water, and medical supplies would be maintained at strategic points whilst machinery, equipment and helpers would be moved quickly to the area of crisis. Appeals for money are an insufficient substitute for releasing real resources. Capitalism exacerbates supposedly ‘natural’ disasters. The best disaster relief is offered through solidarity.

The best disaster preparedness we can have is to build the kinds of communities we want and seek to live in anyway. What kept many alive after floods, hurricanes or earthquakes, and is keeping them alive today, is a culture of solidarity and mutual aid. Social solidarity is a strategy through which marginal communities survive, and through which relationships thrive. Volunteers, neighbours and strangers alike from the community come forward as first and second responders.

ALJO

Political schizophrenia (1989)

From the January 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

ON THE ONE HAND, all over the world people are deeply saddened by the magnitude of the Armenian disaster. 100,000 workers, many living in matchbox housing built on the cheap, were killed in what insurance companies call an "Act of God". (Sure must be a good god who puts on these murderous acts.) The thought of men. women and children, just like us and those we know, being killed instantly or left in the rubble of collapsed cities and towns makes us weep.

ON THE OTHER HAND, the same people who weep over 100,000 Armenian dead vote for a "defence" policy based on the principle that "our" security can be best achieved by threatening to bomb the Russian Empire (of which Armenia is a part) and kill hundreds of thousands of workers. The Armenians live and die under a state dictatorship; they do not vote for their foreign policy. But most British workers vote on the basis that it is quite reasonable to murder men, women and children and turn the towns and cities in which they live to dust.

ON THE ONE HAND, democracy means that a majority is allowed to have its way. We would not call an election democratic if 10 percent of electors voted for A and 50 percent voted for B — and A won.

ON THE OTHER HAND, Britain’s “freedom-loving" government has passed a Housing Act which calls a democratic election one in which the views of the minority can prevail. If a local council wants to sell off its council estates to private landlords, the new law states that a referendum must be taken of the tenants involved. Votes in favour of selling to a private landlord may be far fewer than those against, but those tenants not voting at all have their votes added to the "fors". so that a majority of "againsts" can be defeated by a minority of “fors" plus the abstentions. Torbay Council has already conducted a referendum on the basis of this new definition of democracy.

ON THE ONE HAND, the government is in favour of the deregulation of franchises for TV channels. They say that the public should be allowed to decide what they view. To the allegation that running TV on the same basis as the press will lead to TV barons producing tabloid trash, the government says that people are free to watch what they like.

ON THE OTHER HAND, the government has banned the advocates of certain ideas from being allowed on TV because viewers may be taken in by them. This act of censorship is defended by those who say that workers' minds should not be exposed to the defenders of illegal terrorism.

ON THE ONE HAND, prices are supposed to be an indication of what people need. All economics text books explain that without prices, high and low. to reflect demand for goods there could be no rational allocation of resources.

ON THE OTHER HAND, 15 million children starve to death annually in a world of food mountains. They cannot afford the price of food. In the eyes of the market they are invisible because they cannot pay the market price and give the food owners a profit. “Rational allocation" under the profit system equals mass starvation, while farmers are paid not to grow food.

ON THE ONE HAND, all decent people deplore child abuse, particularly of a sexual nature. The News of the World (6 December) — went into the horrific details of how twisted men indecently abused a young teenage girl.

ON THE OTHER HAND, the same issue of the newspaper displayed a virtually nude photograph of a thirteen-year-old girl who readers are told has exciting sexual fantasies. For whom was such a picture included, if not the very men who regard children as sexual objects?

ON THE ONE HAND, defenders of capitalism say that socialism could never work because human co-operation runs contrary to human nature. Despite the fact that whenever there is a social disaster floods of workers rush to help the victims, they say that humans are basically selfish and anti-social.

ON THE OTHER HAND, defenders of capitalism are constantly asking workers to act more co-operatively towards their bosses. They point out, quite rightly, that capitalism would not be able to make profits without workers agreeing to behave in a relatively selfless, co-operative, social spirit.

ON THE ONE HAND, psychiatrists define schizophrenia as an illness involving the perception of contradictory realities in the one mind.

ON THE OTHER HAND, the ideas which defend capitalism seem to fall into exactly that category. You can only defend the ideas of this crazy social system if you push all of your more reasoned, experience-based ideas to the back of your mind. Capitalism does not refer to such thinking as a psychiatric disorder which needs to be remedied; it sees such ideas as "common sense" and encourages workers to entertain such absurd contradictions in their minds.

SOCIALISTS

- offer sympathy to the victims of the Armenian catastrophe, but do not advocate a policy of killing even more Armenians at a later date.

- maintain that democracy means the majority having its way, always doing its best to make room for the wishes of the minority in any situation.

- favour TV output which will give viewers free access to all ideas and images they may choose to see. and oppose all bans on what we are allowed to see.

- reject the economics of capitalism, which assert that we need buying and selling and prices to determine what people need; priceless, free access to all goods and services for everyone is the only way to allocate goods efficiently.

- are sickened by the abuse of children, and by millionaires like Murdoch who make a profit by selling child porn in their so-called newspapers.

- repudiate the myth that humans are inherently anti-social and uncooperative, and state emphatically that human nature is no barrier to a sane, socialist society.

If you think the same way. then why not find out more about The Socialist Party with a view to joining us?

Steve Coleman

Editorial: Disaster from profit and profit from disaster. (1923)

Editorial from the November 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

The risks of capital ! How often are the dividends of the idle justified on the plea that the investor is entitled to a “fair” return on the capital he has ”risked” ? When workers ask for an increase in the beggarly pittances they receive as wages then risks on the workers’ part are forgotten, and “what the industry can stand” becomes the watchword; the first charge on industry being an adequate return on the capital invested.

In the inquiry into the coal industry of a few years back employers spoke much of the risks of capital and but little of the risks of the wage worker. The fate of the bulk of the 42 miners entombed in the Redding Pit, Falkirk, on September 25th, is an illustration of the risks the workers run; they risk their lives, and they do so merely for bread and butter. Not only does the miner risk his life, but the miner’s family risks the loss of its mainstay.

Disaster after disaster have overtaken the mine workers, due in the main (as instance the Whitehaven disaster some years ago) to the cheese-paring economy of the mine owners in their desire to extract, the maximum of profit out of the coalmining industry. And yet, in spite of the ever-present dangers to limb and life, the miner only gets in return for his labour, in the best of cases, little more than sufficient to keep himself and his dependants from actual starvation.

In mine and factory, and on the seas, the workers risk their lives daily in order that capital may have a “fair” profit. Not in order that society may obtain the necessaries of life; because where profit is not forthcoming the wheels of industry cease to turn, though society may be groaning for the goods that do not come.

Disasters to humanity are often but sources of profit for the ghouls that control this misery-making function of wealth.

The earthquake in Japan that caused so much havoc a short time ago provides an instance of how precious property is in the eyes of its owners, and also how the economic advantages of a disaster become of more importance to capitalists than pity for misery suffered.

Only a little while ago we read harrowing tales of Japanese misery and a cry was raised to help those who suffered from the earthquake. Later information, however, reduces the protestations to a sham.

The Manchester Guardian Weekly of October 12th publishes an article from their correspondent in Kobe on the “Economic Effects of the Earthquake,” which opens up with the following paragraph :—

  “The immediate economic consequence of the earthquake is that 1,500 Europeans have come into Kobe, where a somewhat smaller number have fed, lodged, and clothed them. And no sooner were they comforted, than they organised two ‘expeditions’ (neither of which has sailed at the time of writing, exactly one week after the earthquake) to proceed to Yokohama and protect not only what movable property may have escaped the fire and the enterprising looter (who soon had the military on his track), but titles to land and so forth” (italics ours).

How much more important in the eyes of these gentlemen was private property than the misery of the poor Japanese, whom they appear to have forgotten !

A further quotation from this correspondent should interest those who believe in the idealism of the profit-seeking capitalist.

  “Of course, between profiteering and ruin the authorities are between the devil and the deep sea. If they have reconstruction they must let the profiteer get his percentage. It is a necessary part of the capitalist system. Big firms here have been advised that the earthquake here had no sooner happened than Japanese in England did their best to get a good grip on the metal market, but not very successfully. Everybody is on the watch for developments, and there is, in spite of the slump, quite a tense awaiting of the revival. The revival of Tokio means the rebuilding of Yokohama. It would be a disaster if, because of temporary embarrassments, British holders of original perpetual leases or even those of ordinary leases were to be forced to sell their holdings, as this would be a blow to British trade. It would be inadvisable for the Government to subsidise them as one subsidy only leads to another. But it is worth while for British firms to lay out money to gain or maintain a footing in the trade that is to come.”

In the eyes of the capitalist, then, the most important fact arising out of the earthquake is not the misery it has brought to those involved in the earthquake, but the profit it promises to those who “risk” their capital.

What a monster is this capital, brother, that it grows fat out of human misery, and dulls in its owners the human feeling of pity ! Doth it not reek with the blood of our fellows, and is it not time that the monster was buried ? Then join with us in digging the grave and burying for ever the exploitation of the many by the few, and with it all the misery and suffering that capital has called into existence.

TV Review: Apocalypse Not Yet (2005)

TV Review from the April 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Supervolcano, Sun 13th and Mon 14th March, BBC1

Supervolcano: The Truth About Yellowstone Sun 13th and Mon 14th March, BBC2

Considering that science is a constant adventure of astonishing discovery it’s amazing how many people have no interest in it, a fact which explains why ‘serious’ programmes like BBC Horizon are nevertheless obliged to adopt a relentlessly sensational and tabloid approach to everything they do. Drama documentaries about super-eruptions killing off most of the USA are the apotheosis of TV schedulers’ attempts to tick their public service education boxes and still keep the viewers. ‘Super-volcano overdue!’ they cry. ‘Millions dead!’ ‘Civilisation in ruins!’ Buried underneath a hundred feet of hyperbole, like a dead dog at Pompeii, is the prosaic fact that this event is only really expected some time in the next 60,000 years and that meanwhile there may be more pressing concerns facing us all.

One wonders if viewers would be so interested if the offending volcano was one of those in the Sumatra chain, like the Toba volcano that apparently brought us to the edge of extinction 74,000 years ago. Or does the idea of cataclysm in the heart of the world’s only superpower carry with it the extra frisson of schadenfreude, as we contemplate the Americans being spectacularly trashed instead of dishing it out for a change? Perhaps it is simply logical that a major disaster in America would have more far-reaching effects across the world because as we all know America is the prop holding up global civilisation.

Interest in supervolcanoes and Yellowstone in particular was sparked by Horizon two years ago, but the recent tsunami has primed the TV viewer for a big ‘what-if’ docu-drama and the sleeping giant in Wyoming is clearly an irresistible subject. Besides, Hollywood proved with ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ that disaster sells, especially if you sex up the boring facts a little. Given that capitalism is such a miserable struggle for existence for most people there’s a strong psychological impulsion to comfort oneself in the knowledge that things could be a lot worse, and for morale’s sake it’s best to find something that can’t be blamed on capitalism.

But for all the Armageddon prophesying, what would really be the result of such an event? The four horsemen of the apocalypse would have to ride forth and ravage the New World in their spare time, since they’re already so busy elsewhere. Imagine making a programme with the idea that five million kids were going to die pointlessly because they couldn’t get decent drinking water. Viewers would switch over to Pop Idols immediately. Natural disasters like that happen already, so what’s exciting about that? Besides, goes the secret thinking, they’re just poor black kids and they’ve all got AIDS anyway.

What would make a programme like this truly scary is if it was made in the context of a cooperative socialist society. Then it would run like this: first you get the disaster, then you get the breakdown of society and the halting of production, then (shock horror!) it might get so bad that you collapse backwards into the barbarity, cruelty and unequal distribution of resources that characterised the previous age – of capitalism. If socialists wanted to give each other nightmares, they couldn’t do better than paint millenarian scenarios of a return to capitalism to each other. But of course, people in a socialist society would be life-affirming and positive about the future, not paranoid and neurotic neurasthenics paralysed into hopeless contemplation of a society that is in reality one long slow-motion train-wreck. Yellowstone wouldn’t kill a fraction of the people that capitalism routinely kills every year. Capitalism is the world’s worst natural disaster bar none. Now, where’s the drama documentary about that?

Paddy Shannon

Haiti – an un-natural disaster (2010)

From the February 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Earthquakes are inevitable, but the death toll is not

The earthquake in Haiti and similar misfortunes are presented as unavoidable natural disasters. To some extent, this is true. But it ignores the consequences of the deliberate pursuit of profit at the expense of environmental protection. It is not a coincidence that the number of victims of recent disasters such as the Asian tsunami and the Katrina hurricane and now Haiti are clearly related to the degree of their poverty.

The reality with earthquakes is they kill only if we let them. They are inevitable, but the death toll is not.

It is collapsing buildings that take lives, not tremors in the ground. Throughout the animal kingdom, creatures have adapted to survive in their surroundings, but in our environment, where earthquakes are a fact of life, though nature challenges us to do something to protect ourselves, capitalism compels us to surrender safety to monetary profits and savings. No matter how severe earthquakes are, if buildings were properly built in the first place, then the vast majority of people would survive.

This does not happen under capitalism, particularly in poorer countries, since the unavoidable pressure to make and save money affects what does, or more importantly, does not happen. There are pressures to build quickly and slapdashly to meet housing needs by landless labourers forced by poverty to find work in urban areas; inferior materials and construction methods are used in accordance with market forces, with poor people getting poorly-built homes; building inspectors are persuaded by politicians or back-handers to ignore breaches of rules so that businesses get the cheap employees they want and workers get hovels they can afford; landowners lobby governments, hand over party ‘donations’ or resort to simple bribery to have new housing built on their land, even if it is unsuitable or downright dangerous. With, moneyless, socialism human needs and safety come second to nothing.

Though seismologists don’t know precisely where or when earthquakes may strike, general areas of risk are identifiable. In a socialist society, how we respond to this information would be very different. There would be far greater freedom for those in danger to move to safer areas—action under capitalism that can involve huge financial losses from writing off unsafe homes, shifting businesses to where workers then live, adapting that region’s infrastructure to aid in exploiting the new workforce etc. And those who, for whatever reason, chose to reside in seismic zones, they would then have access to the best buildings capable of withstanding the most powerful of quakes.

Although Japanese and Californian architects have designed ‘active buildings‘, some on top of massive rubber shock absorbers or with computerised counterbalancing systems that identify and counteract seismic shocks, what’s the likelihood of such sophisticated technology being used under capitalism on multi-storey dwellings in poverty-stricken areas for workers on subsistence wages? Using superior designs, building methods and materials, there is no reason why populated areas should suffer any loss of life or major disruption after experiencing very powerful quakes.

The surviving victims of the disaster in Haiti need food, fresh water, clothing, medication and many other items. Some of those needs are being met, but not nearly enough. Governments of the richer countries have offered niggardly help. Ordinary citizens, appalled by the extent of the tragedy as revealed by the media, have responded generously to appeals by the charities. In times of natural disasters volunteers are never lacking, nor slow to offer assistance, whether practical or monetary. Humans are endowed with the ability to sympathise and empathise with their fellow humans. Humans derive great pleasure from doing good, are at their best when faced with the worst and will go to extraordinary lengths to help alleviate the suffering of others.

Most natural dangers are well known and socialism would not need to leave communities exposed to them. This would avoid many disasters. Also, contingency plans would exist throughout the regions and at a world level for the relief of any catastrophe. Emergency supplies of food, clean water, medical supplies would be maintained at strategic points whilst machinery, equipment and helpers would be moved quickly to the area of crisis. The present appeals for money are a pathetic substitute for the availability of real resources and the freedom that communities in socialism would have to immediately use them.

We have access to more comprehensive information and news coverage about world disasters than any previous generation of humans, and yet it appears that people don’t feel driven to bring about an end to such catastrophes. It seems our society has been influenced to believe that nothing can be done. That big death tolls from quakes, volcanoes or droughts are inevitable. What efforts do the media make to change this, by explaining both capitalism’s culpability and socialism’s solutions? If people don’t understand, then all there will be are yet more channel-changing ‘Not-another-disaster. There’s-nothing-I-can-do’ indifference.

– from the Socialist Party’s blog Socialism or Your Money Back .

Aftermath of the Tsunami: Querying ‘American Values in Action’ (2005)

From the February 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

  The tsunami in South-East Asia provoked very different responses from western governments and the populations they supposedly represent. The US state was obliged to raise its donation more than 20- fold in the light of public reaction, but arguably too late to disguise the politicians' real agenda.

Realising that upwards of 100,000 of the then estimate of 165,000 victims of the Tsunami disaster were Muslims, the US wasted no time in sending US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the scene of the devastation. There was much to gain from this mission at a time when the US has been accused of an anti-Muslim crusade in the wake of the devastation it has wrought on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Powell was keen to show the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims that the Bush administration is not islamophobic, even if its military machine did seem to have a penchant for the slaughter of Muslims. He said “We’d be doing it [participating in the relief effort] regardless of religion, but I think it does give the Muslim world and the rest of the world an opportunity to see American generosity, American values in action.”

As for the US “values” Powell’s mission aimed to promote, we need only mention Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay for starters before moving on to the myriad international treaties, on gun control, nuclear proliferation, the environment, human rights etc. that the Bush administration has flicked the proverbial two fingers to since 2000.

US “values” have prompted successive White House administrations to support dictators and tyrannical regimes on every continent, from Pol Pot and Suharto to Saddam Hussein and Papa Doc Duvalier. Between 1945 and 1999, this same defender of global well-being toppled forty governments and helped crush thirty populist movements, assassinated scores of prominent individuals and perverted elections in every corner of the globe. During this period the US armed terrorists, trained right-wing guerrilla movements in the art of torture and financed armies intent on overthrowing democratically elected governments. Some values!

When asked on US television whether the death of 500,000 Iraqi children as a consequence of Western sanctions was acceptable, Madeleine Albright, Powell’s predecessor under President Clinton, replied: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”

It seems there are American “values” and “values”. Those Powell is charged with furthering are those of a corrupt elite operating in the interests of corporate America. He was certainly not sent to Indonesia on a show of hands of the US public. His attempt to seek political capital out of present US offers of help to the disaster region is thus opportunistic and utterly despicable, nay, nauseating.

Powell further commented in Indonesia: “I’ve been in war and I’ve been through a number of hurricanes, tornadoes and other relief operations, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”  This from the man who rose to prominence trying to cover up the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, when US forces slaughtered 500 Vietnamese women and children, part of a larger conflict that left 2 million dead, many from the use of napalm and agent orange. We can only assume that Powell is suffering from selective amnesia.

While he feels a surge of pride in the knowledge the US government has promised $350 million to the stricken areas, what is to be made of the fact that this is only a minute fraction of the amount spent on the US invasion and occupation of Iraq? Or, to put it another way, the world is meant to applaud the Bush administration for paying out $350 million with one hand to help people in Asia, while forking out $150 billion (http://costofwar.com/) with the other to kill people in the Middle East.

If you consider that we err in comparing the war in Iraq with the rescue mission in the Indian Ocean, then remember the reason for the invasion of Iraq. Bush and Blair both claimed that this was a humanitarian intervention, a rescue mission, aimed at restoring democracy and freeing the Iraqi people from years of oppression. On this count it stands as the most expensive humanitarian mission in history, considering the size of the Iraqi population — and what does this make of the people who opposed that invasion, the 35 million across the world who marched and protested at the Bush/Blair rescue mission to Iraq in February of 2003?

When Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief co-ordinator, criticised the initial US offer of $15 million in aid as “stingy”, Bush’s response was to claim Egeland was “very misguided and ill-informed”. Bush later had the figure raised to $35 million, with this figure later increased tenfold – a figure, incidentally, now dwarfed by private donations in the US. All Egeland was saying was that in times of disaster Western governments do in fact appear parsimonious.

Many radical commentators backed Egeland’s “stingy” claim, pointing out that the Bush administration would be spending far more on the president’s inaugural celebration on January 20th and how the Republican Convention in New York last year cost a staggering $166 million (inclusive of $70,000 for donuts and coffee for the press). We can perhaps better set the US aid promise in context by  considering that the occupation of Iraq is costing the US an estimated $270 million per day, and that the Pentagon’s military budget is $1.5 billion per day – this spent with a view to killing people, not saving them. What else are guns and bombs, tanks and warships for? One F22 Raptor fighter costs $225 million. It does not carry food parcels and medicines but surface to air missiles and cannons. According to the US-based International Action Centre’s estimates, “for what the US is spending for less than one second of bombing and destruction, it could construct a system that could have prevented thousands of needless deaths [caused by the Tsunami].”

As in Britain, so too in the US have the general public humiliated their governments with their generosity. If we accept that the invasion of Iraq was a humanitarian step, that Bush and Blair were motivated solely by the plight of the suffering Iraqi people under Saddam, why did they not set up a charity and see how much the public would have donated to this mother of all rescue missions? Simple, because they realise that people, though often conned at election time, are just not that stupid, and that they couldn’t have collected enough to feed a regiment’s mascot goat.

The generosity shown towards the victims of the Tsunami disaster is not the Bush administration’s “values”, which Powell seems to have been implying in his damage limitation exercise in Indonesia, but rather the basic values of human beings in America, indeed the world over. Unlike other animals, humans are endowed with the ability to sympathise and empathise with their fellow beings. Humans derive great pleasure from doing good, are at their best when faced with the worst and will go to extraordinary lengths to help alleviate the suffering of others. Across the US, as in other countries, there have been all manner of fundraising events, in all sections of society, inclusive of nursery schools, prisons, universities and impoverished communities. In some instances people have queued for over an hour to put money in a plastic collection bucket.

Americans are generous with their time as well. According to a survey by Independent Sector, a US coalition of non-profit organisations, the percentage of volunteers in America is the largest of any country, almost 56%. The average hours volunteered per week by an individual is 3.5 hours. According to Charity America, donations to charity for 2002 were $241 billion, 76.3 per cent of this given by individuals.

If governments depended for their existence on us promoting our real values, they wouldn’t last a week. That is why they spend so much time trying to divide us as a class, lying to us, instilling in us false needs, a false consciousness, appealing to patriotism and the rest of the rot. When it comes to values, there are only class values, ours and theirs. That Powell had to go to Indonesia to try to hijack any US-initiated relief effort, before it was credited to the workers of the US, shows perhaps that they fear not only class solidarity across the world but the very values that have come to the surface in recent weeks.

John Bissett

Floods of tears (2005)

From the February 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean on 26 December, and the ensuing tidal wave or tsunami, have devastated many areas in South and South-East Asia. At the time of writing, deaths are estimated at 225,000, a figure likely to rise, with millions having lost their homes and most of their possessions, and disease likely to increase the number of fatalities. Across the world, people have watched fascinated as their TV screens showed dramatic shots of the tidal wave hitting coastal areas, only to be appalled by the resulting devastation.

Such catastrophes make many reflect on their cause and what this reveals about the world. The religious strove to reconcile the notion of a loving god with the apparent evidence of uncaring brutality. While science can explain how and why these things happen, mystics and other believers have nothing to offer but nauseating platitudes. The secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain opined that ‘People of faith need to have a very firm belief in God almighty… It is for the betterment of mankind at large.’ Of course he neglected to explain how the deaths of so many can benefit humanity. The leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales was no better, saying that Christians ‘trust that prayers and belief in an omnipotent God will bring good out of seeming evil and senselessness’. But again he failed to suggest how this might happen. 

While natural forces were responsible for the quake and tsunami, it is at least possible that an early-warning system could have been installed, which would have saved many lives, but of course the issue of cost was a real problem. And its effects have been magnified in many places (in southern India, for example) by developments taking place (in the name of profit) right on the beach, thus destroying natural protective barriers such as sand dunes and mangrove forests.

The Aceh area of Indonesia has been one of the hardest hit. But little attention has been paid in the media to Aceh’s situation before the earthquake. Despite its rich gas resources, its people have been blighted by poverty and malnutrition, as these resources have been exploited for the profit of Exxon Mobil and the Indonesian government. Aceh has also been subject to military occupation for years, with assassination and kidnapping rife, since the government refuses to allow a referendum on independence from Indonesia and persecutes anyone who advocates this. The Indonesian government and army have taken control of aid supplies shipped in to the local airport, and are only distributing these to those who support them.

Of course socialism will still see natural disasters, since it will not involve any kind of ‘mastery’ over nature. But their effect will be minimised by sensible precautions unencumbered by the profit motive. Action to relieve distress will be unhampered by nationalistic and military considerations, and will make use of well-established regional and global frameworks for cooperation and responding to emergencies. It is clear that such disasters call for working together rather than against each other and provision according to need rather than ability to pay.

Paul Bennett

Material World: Japan’s unnatural disaster (2011)

The Material World Column from the April 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Earthquakes and tsunamis are natural phenomena. But it is known where – if not when – they are going to strike. So in principle society could take action to minimise the human impact.

It was known that the seabed off the northeastern coast of Honshu (the main island of the Japanese archipelago) is prone to earthquakes. It was known that a sufficiently powerful offshore earthquake would generate a tsunami. So why not leave the endangered coastal area uninhabited?

Crammed into the danger zone

This earthquake and most of its aftershocks were offshore. However, the next major earthquake may well occur, as long predicted, on land. It is a matter of when, not whether.

The area at greatest risk is the southern coastal strip of Honshu that stretches west from Tokyo – a city already devastated by earthquakes in 1891 and 1923. And yet the eastern half of this strip, up to Osaka, covering a mere 6 percent of Japan’s land area, is the country’s industrial powerhouse, with 45 percent of its population of 127.5 million. Tokyo and its outlying cities alone contain 30 percent of the country’s population. Would a rational society cram so many people and resources into the zone of maximum danger?

It is true that many modern buildings have been equipped to withstand seismic shocks. But most older buildings are much more poorly designed. For one glaring example, look at some photos of Tokyo street scenes and count the bulky signboards attached to storefronts at a single point, just waiting for a jolt to break free and fall on the heads of the people below.

To accommodate urban growth, about a quarter of Tokyo Bay (150 square miles) has been reclaimed from the sea. When the earth shakes, as it has recently, the loose soil of this reclaimed land undergoes liquefaction (becomes liquid). The shaking is also liable to spill and set ablaze the oil and toxic chemicals stored in the numerous tanks that line the shore of Tokyo Bay. Fires still rage up and down the coast, including a conflagration at the Cosmo oil refinery in Ichihara City.

Suicide bomber

The ultimate in insanity, however, is Japan’s growing reliance on nuclear power, driven by the desire of its ruling class to overcome reliance on energy imports, especially oil from the Middle East. Nuclear power currently supplies 30 percent of the country’s energy – a figure projected to rise to 50 percent by 2030. Fukushima, where a Chernobyl-type disaster is still unfolding, is one of a dozen nuclear plants located on the coastal strip of northeastern Honshu, in the path of tsunamis from offshore earthquakes. The Hamaoka plant, to the southwest of Tokyo, perches on an active fault line.

Katsuhiko Ishibashi of Kobe University, a seismologist who resigned from a committee setting safety guidelines for nuclear reactors in 2005 when his concerns over building nuclear plants on earthquake fault lines were ignored, put it this way: “Japan is an earthquake-prone archipelago, and lining its waterfront are 54 nuclear plants. It’s like a suicide bomber wearing grenades around his belt.”

It is not only Japan that generates nuclear power in earthquake-prone areas. Some 20 percent of the world’s 443 nuclear reactors are located in seismic zones. There are two nuclear power plants at risk from earthquakes in China’s Fujian Province, one in Turkey, and one in Armenia. In the United States several nuclear power plants are in places that have experienced earthquakes, hurricanes or tornadoes. Another tsunami-triggered disaster like that at Fukushima is waiting to happen in San Diego, California, where a nuclear power plant stands right on the beach, facing an active fault line a few miles offshore.

There were also technical problems with the design and operation of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima complex. The company that owns the complex, Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), has a record of covering up safety issues. The complex was built by Toshiba, using a reduced-cost design by General Electric with a relatively small containment structure.

Does it make sense?

From the perspective of a truly human community – that is, socialism – it makes no sense deliberately to court disaster in this manner. But does it make sense even from a capitalist point of view, considering the enormous losses borne by the companies most affected by the devastation? After all, capital craves its own expansion, not annihilation. It does not really share the death wish of the suicide bomber.

One answer is that most investors are concerned solely with expected short-term profits – and they never expect disaster, even though they must know it is always a possibility. Moreover, high-speed communications and data processing make it easy to move capital around almost instantaneously in search of maximum short-term profits. By giving priority to reducing risk, a company would have to accept higher costs and lower profits in the short term. It would soon find itself short of capital and might face hostile takeover or bankruptcy.

Another factor may be at work here – namely, the psychological mechanism called denial. Instead of carefully assessing risks and consciously accepting them, a capitalist may avoid stress by closing his mind in advance to considerations of risk that he fears will jeopardise his profits. He may persuade himself that those who draw attention to risks have a hidden political agenda. This applies especially to risks that are posed by nature. To take nature and its requirements seriously might jeopardise not only profits but the whole profit system.

Stefan

Indian Earthquake: Did it really kill? (2001)

From the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

In January, a 42-day long Indian religious festival began at Allahabad, 500 miles east of New Delhi. The Kumbh Mela attracted over 70 million Hindu pilgrims and believers, the largest gathering of humanity in history. Around one million “holy” men trekked from their remote hideaways in caves, forests and walled ashrams to be there, some revealing acts of devotion which along with the more traditional maintaining of absolute silence and sleeping on beds of nails, has included hanging upside down over smouldering fires, sitting under pots of dripping water, standing on one leg for years, staring at the sun for long periods, keeping arms permanently raised until they atrophied and in pursuit of total celibacy, having their penises enclosed in cages or fitted atop with iron rings. Such penances apparently bestow special powers, as demonstrated at the festival by the pulling along of heavy vehicles by sacred John Thomases. On one day, 24 January, over 30 million Hindu followers plunged joyously into the River Ganges to gain salvation, immortality and miraculously wash away their sins and diseases. According to the stars, this particular day had been determined to be the festival’s most auspicious time. And how did the Hindu gods respond to this immense display of spiritual faith, devotion and self-punishment with its high point of a mass dip in “sanctifying” waters where devotees prayed for “Mother Ganges” to bless them? With a 7.9 Richter earthquake just 48 hours later devastating Gujarat and killing over 30,000 people.

According to a Naga priest “bathing in the Ganges will accelerate the road to illumination”, so one might expect that following this disaster, a great many people will now stop believing in ridiculous fairy tales about divine nectar of immortality having spilled from a Kumbh (pitcher) into the confluence of three rivers (one invisible!) and thereafter becoming active every 12 years. Dedication and respect by humankind should go towards humankind, not any supernatural being or phenomenon which even if it did exist, manifestly has no inclination or ability whatsoever to prevent death, disease, poverty, hunger, exploitation, wars and numerous other everyday troubles. If thought of as an earthquake from god, and conveying a message, then it would be loud and clear: if the living want to go on living and be free of such horrors and suffering, they should forget all about religion, and act to look after themselves. Something applying as much to India’s Muslim minority who were soon praying to Mecca amidst the quake’s dead, dying and devastation, as it does to the Hindu majority.

If people let others deceive and persuade them into giving priority to belief in an almighty being, life after death and acceptance that loss of life and suffering from natural forces, conflicts, authoritarian control, hard work and the like are the will of god, then those religious leaders and governments claiming to be god’s Earthly assistants possess immense power, freedom to exploit and abuse that power and immunity for social failings. Such extreme influence, class privileges and infallibility explains why religion has existed for thousands of years and continues into the twenty-first century. But if those seeking to brainwash and manipulate us—and young impressionable minds especially—are rejected, and people instead give priority to looking after themselves and their needs collectively through socialism, then we prevent religious leaders from ruling and ruining our lives, along with political, military or any other type of would-be chiefs.

Reality

The reality with earthquakes is they kill only if we let them. They are inevitable, but death is not. It is collapsing buildings that take lives, not tremors in the ground. Throughout the animal kingdom, creatures have adapted to survive in their surroundings, but in our environment, where earthquakes are a fact of life, though nature challenges us to do something to protect ourselves, capitalism compels us to surrender safety to monetary profits and savings. No matter how severe earthquakes are, if buildings were properly built in the first place, then the vast majority of people would survive. This does not happen under capitalism, particularly in poorer countries, since the unavoidable pressure to make and save money affects what does, or more importantly, does not happen. There are pressures to build quickly and slapdashly to meet housing needs by landless labourers forced by poverty to find work in urban areas; inferior materials and construction methods are used in accordance with market forces, with poor people getting poorly-built homes; building inspectors are persuaded by politicians or back-handers to ignore breaches of rules so that businesses get the cheap employees they want and workers get hovels they can afford; landowners lobby governments, hand over party “donations” or resort to simple bribery to have new housing built on their land, even if it is unsuitable or downright dangerous; Mafia groups will drive away more legitimate building constructors. With, moneyless, socialism all such potentially lethal activity is avoided. Human needs and safety come second to nothing.

Even in rich countries like America, money can degrade safety. Multi-storey housing and office premises reach high into the sky despite earthquake risks because maximum profit comes from maximum exploitation of available ground. That means tall buildings crammed with residents or employees of capitalism’s banks, insurers, law firms etc, but high casualties if a major quake brings them down. But even where structures are well-built and designed to withstand quakes, it is usually because owners have decided that far more money would be lost than saved should damage arise from poor construction work or non-adherence to building codes. It might be said that the Japanese earthquake at Kobe in 1995 was an example of economic failure in weighing up money saved to potential losses. At $100bn, it was the most expensive “natural” disaster ever with 6,400 lives lost and 300,000 people made homeless. However, if the cost for achieving maximum safety and structural endurance had been $500bn, then Japanese capitalists acted “correctly”, and the dead were a “price worth paying”. The point is that where residents or workers find they have better survival prospects in better buildings; with capitalism, it is often more incidental than intentional.

Though seismologists don’t know precisely where or when earthquakes may strike, general areas of risk are identifiable. In a socialist society, how we respond to this information would be very different. There would be far greater freedom for those in danger to move to safer areas—action under capitalism that can involve huge financial losses from writing off unsafe homes, shifting businesses to where workers then live, adapting that region’s infrastructure to aid in exploiting the new workforce etc. And those who, for whatever reason, chose to reside in seismic zones, they would then have access to the best buildings capable of withstanding the most powerful of quakes. Although Japanese and Californian architects have designed “active buildings”, some on top of massive rubber shock absorbers or with computerised counterbalancing systems that identify and counteract seismic shocks, what’s the likelihood of such sophisticated technology being used under capitalism on multi-storey dwellings in poverty-stricken areas for workers on subsistence wages? And whereas with capitalism it is nuclear submarines, military satellites, stealth bombers, tanks and the like which get “properly” designed and rigorously tested beforehand to prevent any failures when they’re built in bulk, with socialism such diligence would then be applied to endangered homes and workplaces. Using superior designs, building methods and materials, there is no reason why populated areas should suffer any loss of life or major disruption after experiencing very powerful quakes.

Avoidable catastrophes

In a united socialist world, people would be able to move in large numbers if necessary to completely different regions of the world without any of today’s “them” and “us” animosity and violence created by capitalist exclusive assets, property rights and market-supporting politicians, as witnessed world-wide in places like Northern Ireland, the West Bank, Kosovo, Rwanda etc etc. Not forgetting India’s own continuing divisive caste system with “untouchables” lowest down, ranked as society’s toilet cleaners, 8,000 of whom were employed as “turd pickers” at the Kumbh Mela festival. India’s divisive internal Hindu-Muslim tensions which left thousands dead in riots when Hindu zealots destroyed an ancient mosque in Ayodhya in 1992, and which may soon erupt into further bloody confrontation if a planned new Hindu temple gets built there. And the on-off divisive dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir, a struggle that could claim many times the 26 January death toll in less than the short while the earthquake lasted, thanks to both sides’ possession of nuclear weapons.

We have access to more comprehensive information and news coverage about world disasters than any previous generation of humans, and yet it appears that people don’t feel driven to bring about an end to such catastrophes. Some may be moved to send money to charities or hand over old clothes and blankets, while others are assumed to have compassion fatigue. So why no sizeable political activity for real progress? It seems our society has been influenced to believe that nothing can be done. That big death tolls from quakes, famines, droughts, conflicts etc are inevitable. What efforts do schools and the media make to change this, by explaining both capitalism’s culpability and socialism’s solutions? If people don’t understand, then all there will be are yet more generations of children brainwashed on how to obtain “suitable” employment and use money, and endless TV reports of global tragedies, quickly downgraded by ratings concerns for the next show-biz marriage break-up or rich person’s demise. Brief public interest at best, or channel-changing “Not-another-disaster. There’s-nothing-I-can-do-is-there” indifference at worst. Of course, that suits capitalists and politicians just fine, but it’s only a matter of time before those far-away populations that we feel incapable of helping now will themselves one day be shrugging their shoulders while watching pictures of immense death, destruction and suffering in our part of the capitalist world. A major disaster is heading our way, and the only way to stop it is through widespread realisation that human needs can and must be prioritised, and collective political action for the social change that brings that about.

Max Hess

Pathfinders: Bones of Contention (2011)

The Pathfinders Column from the November 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bones of Contention

You’ll often find that socialists take a special interest in history and the ancient past. It’s something to do with taking the ‘long view’.  But you don’t have to be a socialist (or 6 years old) to be interested in dinosaurs, and with today’s computer generated images (CGI), it’s all a lot more fun than it ever used to be. The BBC’s new series Planet Dinosaur uses the kind of Hollywood-style special effects that made its 1999 Walking With Dinosaurs such a success. New technology and new discoveries have added hugely to the knowledge about dinosaurs in recent years, and the show’s star attraction will no doubt be the representation of feathered dinosaurs, until very recently the subject of heated controversy.

In the 1999 series too many unqualified assertions were made about dinosaur behaviour which could only have been guesses. This time the BBC has been careful to back up claims with evidence, letting the viewer follow the chain of reasoning, and making proper distinctions between fact and conjecture.

Yet still there’s a propaganda gloss on the scientific process, as if the audience somehow wouldn’t buy the real thing. The obsession with carnivorous monsters, and heavy repetition of words like ‘killer’ and ‘deadly hunter’, seem to assume the audience is on a five-second boredom timer and can only be motivated by blood and guts (ie that we are 6 years old). There is a curious moment when, in magisterial tones, we are informed that the fearsomely spiked tail of a stegosaurus is known as a ‘thagomiser’. What they don’t tell us is that this term started life as a joke by Gary Larson, in whose Far Side cartoon the caveman professor explains to the class that it is named ‘after the late Thag Simmons’. The Smithsonian Institute, having a sense of humour and no prior name of its own, promptly adopted Larson’s term, which is now semi-official. Joke names abound in science, but the BBC seems to disapprove.

What’s even more interesting than feathered dinosaurs is the row that scientists have been having about them. Consider the archaeoraptor debacle. When this fossil turned up from China in 1999, National Geographic reported that it was the missing link between birds and dinosaurs. This elicited a furious response from the Smithsonian which, losing its sense of humour for once, accused the magazine of reaching ‘an all-time low for engaging in sensationalistic, unsubstantiated, tabloid journalism’.  Why were they so upset? First, the link between dinosaurs and birds was at that time highly speculative; second, the article had preceded the scientific paper into print, meaning that according to the rule of precedent the rightful naming of the species had been effectively filched by the magazine; third, a term like ‘proto-feather’ committed the teleological fallacy, as if genes had a sense of predestination; fourth, the fossil had been illegally exported and should not have been touched by any reputable institution anyway.

Embarrassingly, the fossil turned out to be a fake, a fact that National Geographic might have learned if it hadn’t been in such a fever to publish. The story was reported with glee by the creationist lobby, ever desperate to find leverage. Though the dinosaur-bird link has since been established, the real scandal that came to light was not only the rampant trade in illegal and stolen fossils but the large numbers of forgeries that were appearing on the international market, mainly from unregulated China. The trade in fossils continues unabated, to the continued frustration of real knowledge, as much of the traffic is destined for the private collections of the rich and is thus unavailable for study.

You don’t have to be a 6 year old to like dinosaurs, but you do have to be a socialist to understand a world where people will steal and fake old fossils for the sake of a few dollars or yuan.  ‘Archaeoraptor’, by the way, means ‘old robber’.

E=MC3?

It’s something when you go down the pub or the supermarket and everyone’s talking Einstein. But it happened recently after a world headline splash that some CERN physicists had sent some neutrinos on a faster-than-light trip through an Italian mountain. Not that anybody could make any sense of the story, not even the expert commentators. Assuming it wasn’t a mistake, either it was possible to travel faster than light, in which case the standard model of physics was in trouble, or the neutrinos were somehow skipping out the side window of another dimension and back in again, in which case the standard model of physics was still in trouble. Cosmology is in big trouble anyway, as 97 percent of the universe is officially missing (dark matter, dark energy) and large chunks supposedly keep disappearing (dark flow). And the quantum theorists are ready to string themselves up too, not having had a sniff of a decent theory in 30 years. Could life get any worse for physicists? Well, let them take a lesson from socialists. We’re optimists. We look forward to the day when everybody down the pub is talking Marx. That’s when the standard model of capitalism will be in serious trouble.

Finding fault among the fault finders

Where there’s blame there’s a claim, so now they’re prosecuting scientists for not predicting an earthquake (www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/science/04quake.html). This seems a tad unfair since nobody is suing the bankers for not predicting a global economic disaster, even though they helped cause it.

“No one expected to be told the exact time of the quake”, said one plaintiff, “We just wanted to be warned that we were sitting on a bomb.”

You would have thought that 400 tremors in the previous 6 months would be a sizeable clue, and that only a lit and sparking fuse leading directly up into the rectal cavity could give greater cause for alarm. But you’d be wrong, because the local seismic survey team reported that the risk was still low. This low risk was however translated by local officials into ‘no risk’, a prediction which turned out to be spectacularly wrong, and the writs started landing before the masonry had finished falling. The problem was that people wanted a categorical yes or no statement, and the fact that you can’t expect that kind of answer from a seismologist somehow got lost in the ensuing uproar.

People have strange ideas about science. Half the time they hate it and don’t believe a word of it, the rest of the time they seem to think it is capable of performing miracles. A bit like how people see capitalist politicians, come to think of it. It seems inconceivable that any law court would really convict the scientists, but if they do then presumably we can all start suing the Met Office every time the rain ruins our washing.

Paddy Shannon

Running Commentary: Top people (1985)

The Running Commentary column from the November 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Top people
In the same week as the official number of unemployed rose to 3,346,000. and as the Secretary of State for Employment, the unelected Lord Young, called for a ban on all wage rises unless they were linked to increases in productivity, a report was published on executives' salaries and fringe benefits.

It shows that managing directors' total average earnings, including bonuses and shares in profits, went up last year by 13.7 per cent — twice the rate of inflation. The average top director's salary is now £37,588. In addition the average executive can expect to receive a company car, subsidised meals, life insurance, medical insurance and a bonus.

For those of us whose rate of pay is nearer £5,000, or whose only source of income is the social; for those likely to get no nearer to a company car than the works bus, no nearer to expense account lunches than free school meals for our children, and whose life insurance is likely to just about pay for our burial — for people like us. the working class, we may even have difficulty reading about how the capitalists live. For if The Times (4 October) is to be believed, it would need a managing director's salary just to buy the report since it costs £125. No doubt they can claim it against tax!


The dispossessed
The Duke of Westminster, the richest man in Britain, has gone to the European Court of Human Rights complaining that a piece of "socialist" legislation has dispossessed him of £2,500,000.

So what is this "socialist" legislation that has sent him whimpering to Strasbourg? Have the rich been dispossessed without the working class noticing? The Act to which the Duke has taken such exception was introduced by that notorious dispossessor of the rich — Harold Wilson. In 1967 his government introduced the Leasehold Reform Act. which was designed to protect poor communities, especially those in the mining villages of South Wales, from losing their homes without compensation when their Victorian ground leases ran out. Freeholders were to be compelled to sell the lease to long-standing tenants at discounted prices.

The Duke of Westminster does not, as far as we know, own any pit cottages in South Wales, but he does have 200 acres of prime real estate in Belgravia in the centre of London. The desirable residences in this area — a little out of the price range of most mining families — are inhabited by members of the capitalist class who were only too pleased that Wilson's "socialist" legislation enabled them to buy their leaseholds at knock-down prices. Hence the Duke's cries of "foul" to the European Court.

While sections of the capitalist class are scrapping it out in front of 21 judges of the European Court, leading to a bonanza for the legal profession, we can't help wondering what has happened to those mining families whom the Act was supposed to serve. Did they manage to buy the leaseholds on their cottages before they were thrown out of work by pit closures? If they did, can they now afford to maintain them? Do they wonder at the antics of the ruling class fighting over the results of a reform intended to benefit them?


Unnatural causes
Socialists would never claim that the establishment of a society based on common ownership and production for use will see an end to all of the world's problems. There will still be events over which we cannot possibly have any control — such as earthquakes. But even so, deaths from such natural disasters will be minimised in socialism in a way that they cannot be now.

Most of the deaths that occurred in the recent Mexico City earthquake took place because buildings collapsed with their inhabitants trapped inside. But why did these buildings collapse? A reporter writing in the Observer (29 September) noted that among all the rubble and devastation many older buildings such as churches and palaces had remained intact and relatively undamaged. Why was it that these buildings withstood the quake and more modern ones did not? Many people are now beginning to ask the same questions. Why is it that when we have the knowledge and the skills to construct buildings that will not fall down in notorious earthquake zones like Mexico City, so many thousands died as soon as the tremor started? The simple and obvious answer is cost. It is more expensive to build houses, offices, hospitals and schools which can withstand earthquakes. In socialism, nobody's life will ever again be sacrificed on the altar of profitability.


Protest limit
In the 1960s the streets of Berlin, as in other cities in Europe and North America, rang with cries of youthful protest. Many protestors focused attention on Axel Caesar Springer, a West German newspaper owner, who died at the end of September this year. He started his first newspaper in the ruins of Hamburg in 1948 with official British encouragement because of his virulent anti-communism. Springer went on to build a newspaper empire — Die Welt, Bild-Zeitung, Hamburger Abendblatt — and also acquired a huge publishing company. His newspapers went in for populist anti-socialist, anti-intellectual slogans heavily laced with sex, scandal and sentiment — a West German equivalent of the English tabloids.

During the late 1960s Springer became a "hate figure" for the youth movements which demanded the dismantling of his empire — the "dispossess Springer" campaign. Demonstrators tried to stop the distribution of his newspapers; writers refused to contribute to them; and people wore badges saying "Bild macht Dumm" — Bild makes you stupid.

But Springer wasn’t dispossessed; the protestors returned to university, and no doubt many of them later entered the corridors of power about which they were so scathing in their youth; and a small minority, including Ulrike Meinhof (herself once a newspaper reporter — she wrote of Springer: "his newspapers have more influence on German workers than their trade unions"), showed their contempt for established political processes by using the futile weapon of violence to make their political points. The demonstrations had achieved nothing: the capitalist class, including Springer, were still firmly in control; the repressive forces of the state had been increased to enable them to deal both with terrorism and peaceful "political extremists” (by means of the Berufsverbot, the notorious legislation which banned anyone with "left wing" views from working for the state, even in the capacity of teacher or social worker).

In the end, to take to the streets to demonstrate against just one symbol of capitalism the concentration of the media in the hands of the few, or the police, or nuclear weapons — is politically futile. What is needed is a political organisation of the whole working class which offers a clear programme of democratic action aimed at destroying capitalism itself.