Blog update

As you might have noticed, posts on the blog have dried up in recent weeks. Apologies for that, but it couldn't he helped. A combination of a creaky old laptop and problems with the scanning in software that I use has meant that the blog's been paralysed . . . so to speak. Sadly, the timing is especially awful as the Socialism or Your Money Back blog has been temporarily taken down whilst some 'housekeeping' needs to be done. Hopefully, it will be back online in the fullness of time.

In the meantime - as a stop-gap - I've taken the opportunity to build up the activity of promoting the Socialist Standard elsewhere on social media. At the moment, primarily on Facebook but occasionally I've been dipping my toes into Twitter and Reddit. 

Posted blow is a partial list of the articles and reviews posted on Facebook in recent months. The purpose in posting the list is twofold: Firstly, it's a good opportunity to revisit old articles and reviews from the Socialist press that deserve a second, third and fourth airing. We should never be shy in dipping into our extensive archive. And, secondly, if any readers of the blog have suggestions for other old articles and reviews that deserve to be rediscovered, then please contact me at imposs1916@gmail.com with links, etc.

Facebook Socialist articles and reviews

Socialist Standard

Dec 1908: Why the Unemployed are Necessary under Capitalism by A. E. Jacomb

Dec 1920: Editorial - The Latest Humbug

May 1930: Tolstoy On Work

Jul 1938: Our Practical Policy by Harry Waite

Sep 1938: Why I Joined the SPGB by Sid Rubin

Sep 1940: Dictatorship and Democracy in the Ancient World  by Gilmac

Oct 1940: Dictatorship and Democracy in the Ancient World - Part 2  by Gilmac

Jun 1945: So You Want To Be A Capitalist? by Samuel Leight

Jun 1950: Book Review - Richard Crossman's 'The God That Failed' (Reviewed by Ted Wimott)

Apr 1953: From Lenin to Stalin by Ted Wilmott

Jun 1958: May Day and the Class Struggle by Ted Wilmott

Sep 1964: Labour theory of value by Ivan

Nov 1965: Confusion on the left  by Ivan

Jul 1966: Film Review - Peter Watkins' 'The War Game'  (Reviewed by Harry Baldwin)

Jun 1974: 70 Years for Socialism by Robert Barltrop

Feb 1975: Book Review - Walter Greenwood's 'Love on the Dole' (Reviewed by Alf Atkinson)

Apr 1978: Rosa Luxemburg and the National Question by Adam Buick

Jun 1978: Down Coronation Street by Steve Coleman

Dec 1980: Book Review - Anton Pannokoek's 'Socialism is the enemy of Nationalism' (Reviewed by Adam Buick)

Aug 1982: Marx and the workers’ movement by Adam Buick

Oct 1982: Film Review - Pink Floyd’s The Wall (Reviewed by LEVAR)

Dec 1983: Proud to be British? by Steve Coleman

May 1987: Leo Tolstoy: author and anarchist by Carl Pinel

Aug 1993: But Flies Are Not Human  by Steve Coleman

Jun 1995: The Three Pillars of Marxism by John Bissett

Nov 1997: Theatre Review - Arnold Wesker's 'Chips With Everything' (Reviewed by Michael Gill)

Apr 2001: Book Review - Howard Zinn's 'Marx in Soho' (Reviewed by by John Bissett)

Jun 2003: How We Live and How We Could Live by Adam Buick

Apr 2005: What Socialism Means by Pieter Lawrence

Nov 2005: Editorial - Forget, forget the 5th of November – and Trafalgar Day

Dec 2005: Cooking the Books: Who needs the rich?

Dec 2006: Co-operation Not Competition by Paul Bennett

Nov 2008: Material World - The War Business: Why do capitalist states prepare for and wage war?  by Stefan

Mar 2009: The Real Dirty Work by Paul Bennett

Aug 2010: Material World: Waste and Want: Grapes of Wrath revisited by Stefan

Sep 2012: Material World: Greenland – A New Field for Capitalist Exploitation by Stefan

Jul 2013: Iain M Banks and The Culture by Rob Stafford

Feb 2014: The Throwaway System by Alan Johnstone

May 2015: Cooking the Books: Cashless is Not Moneyless

Oct 2015: Peter Watkins: A Revolutionary Film-Maker (part 1) by Mike Foster

Nov 2015: Peter Watkins: A Revolutionary Film-Maker (part 2) by Mike Foster

Mar 2017: Who’s to Blame for Capitalism? by Binay Sarkar

April 2017: Cooking the Books: Never Been Tried

Feb 2018: Bitcoin: What Would Marx Think? by Cesco

Aug 2018: Angelica Balabanoff: To Bolshevism and back by Cesco

Dec 2018: Cooking the Books: Fukuyama goes reformist

Feb 2019: Material World: Trump – Not Happy with his Lot as World Policeman? by Alan Johnstone

Sep 2020: Cooking the Books: What is poverty?

Dec 2020: Book Review - Fabian Scheidler's 'The End of the Megamachine. A Brief History Of A Failing Civilization' (Reviewed by Janet Surman)

Apr 2021: Socialism, Free Speech and ‘Cancel Culture’ by S. H.

Jan 2022: Cooking the Books: Marx and the City

Jan 2023: Book Review - Matthew Holten's 'Moneyless Society' (Reviewed by Howard Moss)

Oct 2023: Cooking the Books: AI in perspective

Aug 2024: Material World: The politics of envy by Robin Cox

Sep 2024: Cooking the Books: Trumponomics

Dec 2024: Book Review - Jack Margolin's 'The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army' (Reviewed by Paul Bennett)

Jan 2025: Material World – Will capitalism implode? by Robin Cox

Jan 2025: What is socialism? by South Wales Branch

Mar 2025: Book Review - Aidan Beatty's 'The Party is Always Right' (Reviewed by DAP)

May 2025: Book Review - Kohei Saito's 'Slow Down: How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth' (Reviewed by Paul Bennett)

Jun 2025: Editorial: Starmer goes nativist

Jun 2025: Proper Gander: Looking into Black Mirror by Mike Foster

Jul 2025: Farage — opportunist supreme by Howard Moss

Aug 2025: Book Review Ash Sarkar's 'Minority Rule. Adventures in the Culture War' (Reviewed by Howard Moss)

Sep 2025: Editorial: None of the above

Sep 2025: Letter - Capitalism is mental by Pablo Wilcox

Sep 2025: Pathfinders: A wealth of hallucinations by Paddy Shannon

Sep 2025: Cooking the Books: Corbyn’s crumbs of comfort

Oct 2025: Away with all national flags! by Robin Cox

Oct 2025: Book Review - Walter Kendall's 'The Revolutionary Movement in Britain 1900–21. The Origins of British Communism' (Reviewed by Adam Buick)

Oct 2025: Cooking the Books: Has Trump gone state-capitalist?

Oct 2025: Letter - Conditions for Socialism by Pablo Wilcox

Oct 2025: Book Review Thomas Piketty’s 'Equality. What It Means and Why It Matters' (Reviewed by Howard Moss)

Nov 2025: Cooking the Books: No such thing as free buses 

Dec 2025: Cooking the Books: Capitalism – an irrational system 

Dec 2025: Material World: Life without money by Adam Buick

Jan 2026: Material World: Paycheck to pay check by Howard Moss

Jan 2026: Cooking the Books: Capitalist musings on money 

Feb 2026: Editorial: Iran’s cry of the oppressed 

Mar 2026: Letter: A View from the Hospital Basement by Pablo Wilcox

Mar 2026: Material World: Right, left and fake communism by Juan Morel Perez

Apr 2026: Cooking the Books: AI, profits and Engels

May 2026: Proper Gander: Theroux the keyhole by Mike Foster

May 2026: Cooking the Books: Who does capitalism work for? 

May 2026: The General Strike by Pik Smeet

May 2026: Pathfinders: Moon madness by Paddy Shannon

May 2026: Book Review - Rutger Bregman's 'Moral Ambition. Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference' (Reviewed by Howard Moss)

Letter From Europe page

World Socialist Journal

World Socialist No. 4: D. H. Lawrence and the abolition of money (1985-6)

Careless Society (2026)

Book Review from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Careless People: Power, Greed, Madness. A story of where I used to work. By Sarah Wynn-Williams (2025, 4th Estate)

Remember the Metaverse? Funny that you don’t hear much about it these days. This was going to be the Next Big Thing, the fully immersive virtual reality (VR) heaven where we all spent every waking moment, in our aspirational avatar forms, shopping, meeting people, swanning around in flying cars, and never going outside to see the real sky, or indeed talk to a real person. Unappealing as all this might sound to jaded old cynics and doubters, Mark Zuckerberg was so excited by his own visionary virtual universe that he changed his company name from Facebook to Meta, hired thousands of engineers and invested $36bn in development. As might be expected, tech firms chucked in plenty of money too, just in case it ever took off, and even manufacturers and high-street businesses like HSBC, Skechers, Bosch, Next and Heineken. Seoul City Council even went so far as to build a VR community space where people could ‘take advantage of public services 24/7 all year round and even visit the virtual mayor’s office and library’, as well as availing themselves of ‘various administrative services such as economy, education, and tax affairs’.

It’s hard to imagine a duller advertisement for the Metaverse than, ‘Hey, you can use it to pay your taxes!’ For once, the doubters were on the money. It turned out people didn’t want to spend their lives indoors wearing silly Oculus headsets. Sales flopped, followed by investments, until Zuckerberg quietly dropped the whole project.

One indication of how preposterous the whole thing was, and also why apparently nobody told Zuck this at the time, is the fact that in her tell-all exposé of her five years as a top Facebook executive, Sarah Wynn-Williams doesn’t bother to mention the Metaverse once. But she does have plenty to say about Facebook’s dirty off-book activities. One of these, which Facebook publicly denied to the consternation of their own marketing teams who were using it as a selling point, was to target vulnerable teenagers who had just deleted a selfie by thrusting beauty ads at them, on the assumption that they must hate the way they look. Though often funny, the darkest part of the book is where Zuck finally realises how the Trump campaign has used Facebook’s comprehensive data tools in an ingenious and targeted misinformation offensive in order to win the 2016 election. What’s dark about this is that Zuck and the other FB execs are not horrified, they are impressed. Zuck allegedly even begins to form his own plans to use the same techniques to run for president himself. After all, he’s so rich he wouldn’t even need to fund-raise.

The take-home gist is that, whereas FB starts off as a maladroit mix of idealists and nerdy technicians with no concept of the political reverberations they are about to unleash on the world, the more wealth and power they acquire, the less they give a damn about anyone or anything, a point rammed home by their casual indifference to the FB-driven massacres in Myanmar. Nobody comes out of this book looking good, including in some ways the author. The corruption, hypocrisy, sexual harassment and megalomania are laid bare for all to see. Some of these people would probably have been jailed, except that capitalism doesn’t jail people this stupendously rich. Zuckerberg, increasingly isolated in a protective shell of fawning sycophants, comes across as having had any trace of humanity surgically removed. He is never told that any of his ideas (like the Metaverse?) are just dumb and won’t work, because FB ‘ices out’ and then fires anyone who dares. He’s actually tried to have this book banned in the USA, a truly stupid move because of the ‘Streisand effect’, where attempts to suppress tend to backfire in spectacular fashion. To no one’s surprise, the free-speech champion’s attempt at censorship has sent the book to the top of the bestseller list.

But in truth, apart from showing how dysfunctional the business is, there are no real revelations that weren’t already out there. Yes, Zuck lied to Congress. Yes, FB are manipulative bastards out to make money out of your data. No, they have no scruples whatsoever. We knew or could guess all that. It’s a fun read, but socialists won’t be surprised by any of it. It’s just the reality of capitalist business with the veneer removed.

Paddy Shannon

Pathfinders: Bad apples (2025)

The Pathfinders Column from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

There’s a popular saying, origin uncertain, that ‘America innovates, China imitates and Europe regulates’. That’s not true anymore in the case of China, which is leading from the front these days in AI and green tech. But Europe continues to live up to its reputation, last month by fining Apple and Meta €500m and €200m respectively for certain dubious business practices deemed to be in breach of the 2022 Digital Markets Act (DMA), the EU’s attempt at levelling the online playing field. The European Commission declared that Apple was guilty of anti-competitive behaviour with its App Store, specifically by ‘restricting app developers in their ability to inform customers of alternative offers or marketplaces that could be found outside its own and steer them towards purchases.’ Meanwhile Meta had erred by introducing a ‘consent or pay’ model which invites users to take out a monthly subscription or else let Meta hoover up all their Facebook and Instagram user data for sale to third parties (BBC news, 7 July).

The Meta model is a typical example of how firms exploit audience capture. They’ve got their customers hooked, so now’s the time to take the piss out of them with extra charges. It’s a bit like what the big streaming services have been doing lately by introducing adverts into paid subscriptions, and then inviting subscribers to pay extra to go ad-free, all in the name of ‘choice’. But is Meta really offering a choice? One might suspect that the real deal is ‘pay up and we’ll plunder your data anyway.’

Apple have always been known for being control freakish and attempting to lock their customer base into their own exclusive ecosystem, including a special patent-protected charging cable that no one else is allowed to make and which doesn’t work with any third-party device.

People say that capitalism drives brilliant technical innovation, but when you look at the way this happens, ‘brilliant’ is not the word that comes to mind. It is chaotic, spontaneous, unplanned and secretive, with profligate waste and duplication. Under the pressure of competition, each developer adopts a walled-garden approach, for the sole purpose of protecting future profits. Most will eventually fail, and the few successes which do emerge are of course incompatible with each other. Producers have every incentive to maintain this incompatibility, make their products impossible to repair, lock in customers, and oppose any move towards component standardisation. In the ensuing market battle, the ultimate victor may not be the best technical product but the one with the biggest marketing muscle. When you decide to ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’, you can end up with a cactus instead of an orchid.

Take electric cars, for instance. What’s deterring buyers, apart from up-front cost, is range anxiety related to lack of charging infrastructure, and long charge times. The real problem is the vast range of models, sizes and batteries being produced. Logically, producers could have cooperated in the first place to produce just one standard battery for all cars, together with standardised quick-replacement mechanisms, so you could swap them out at any garage in mere minutes. But capitalism doesn’t do logic. That’s not to say that EV battery standardisation won’t ever happen, but the battle for profits comes first, and never mind the waste.

Recent EU regulations have been an attempt to override the jarring contradiction between what producers do for profit and what people actually want. So for example, there are regulations to ban designed obsolescence, ban greenwashing, and enforce a ‘right to repair’. These are all worthy enough measures from an environmental perspective, but they are likely to damage the bloc’s overall competitiveness with the less scrupulous USA and China. The Wall Street Journal tartly responded with a 2024 article entitled ‘Europe Regulates Its Way to Last Place‘.

So it was that in 2022, in an effort to reduce much electronic waste due to the multiplicity of different charging cables, the EU put a stop to Apple’s proprietary Lightning port and forced the firm to change its Euro-market products to use the industry-standard USB-C charging port. Now Apple are hopping mad about the new DMA fine over its restrictive App Store, and have lodged an appeal. Perhaps they will argue that if the ruling were applied to offline traders, Tesco would be legally bound to advertise Sainsbury’s products, Asda to advertise Aldi, and so on.

Apple boss Tim Cook reportedly got on the whine-line to US President Donald Trump to complain about all this, presumably in the hope that Agent Orange would put the squeeze on the EU mandarins via more tariff threats. Trump might be less than enthusiastic though. He is thought to be greatly dischuffed at Cook’s polite but steadfast refusal to cave in to his demand that Apple ‘reshore’ all its production facilities to the US. From Cook’s perspective, this would be an utterly bonkers move which would cut a gigantic hole in Apple’s profits, given that US workers cost a lot more than Chinese or Indian ones. Moreover, it would require several years of intense planning, making it scarcely worth consideration given that Trump’s effective time in office could expire as soon as November 2026 with the US mid-term elections. So, appeal or not, Apple may decide to suck it up and pay the fine. €500m is a drop in the bucket to Apple, and a lot cheaper than eviscerating a $3tn empire just to give Trump a few good headlines.

If capitalism really worked in humanity’s benefit, there wouldn’t be any need to keep making laws to curb its natural tendencies. All capitalist producers are bad apples in this sense. Meanwhile attempts at regulation can often mean states or trading blocs are shooting themselves in the foot in terms of global competitiveness. The world has long since socialised production. What it now needs to do is socialise ownership and control of that production too. If it doesn’t, the spiralling chaos will continue, with disastrous prospects for humanity and the planet.

Paddy Shannon

Big Tech and the state (2025)

From the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is Big Tech? How did it get so big? Has Big Tech got too big for the rest of the capitalist class?

Big Tech is a loose definition to describe the largest digital technology-based enterprises – it always includes Google (Alphabet), Facebook (Meta), Amazon and Apple. Microsoft is usually included now, sometimes Tesla, the electric car manufacturer, and Nvidia, the semiconductor manufacturer, and some perspectives will include the Asian firms: Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi – who by their nature and size fulfil a similar role.

As socialists we understand the integral role of technology in capitalism. In the Socialist Standard No 9 in 1905 we said:

‘The capitalist-class, the most revolutionary class that has ever oppressed human society, cannot increase its riches but by incessantly revolutionising the means of production by the never-ending introduction of new applications of the mechanical, physical, and chemical sciences to the industrial tool. Its thirst for inventions is so insatiable that it has created factories of inventions.’

Whilst most employees in Big Tech are supporting existing products rather than being inventors – factories of inventions seems like a suitable description of commercial research departments or startup companies.

And of course many years earlier Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto wrote:

‘The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.’

Marx also wrote at length about Machinery and Modern Industry in Capital Volume 1.

Whilst many analysts of the left and right sides of capitalism have defined capitalism in our current era variously as platform capitalism, the app economy, surveillance capitalism, and techno-feudalism. The fundamentals of capitalism in terms of social relations are the same and the driving forces are the same, but they are right to recognise that capitalist enterprises have organised themselves differently from other eras.

Technology in perspective

We are not living in a world where most of society is working in information technology, but many use it as part of their jobs.

The Office for National Statistics report UK Digital Economic Research: 2020 showed that using the OECD’s ‘narrow’ definition of the digital economy, digital products accounted for 5 percent of Gross Value Added (GVA) in 2020. Using the wider OECD definition, products significantly affected by digitisation accounted for up to 20.7 percent in 2020, down from a revised figure of 21.2 percent in 2019. This report showed that research, health, finance, retail, manufacturing and real estate industries are all larger than the digital products sector in terms of GVA.

You can’t eat technology for dinner, it doesn’t keep the rain off and you can’t ride it into town, but technology helps produce food, houses and transportation – more and more efficiently with every iteration. The massive amounts of quantitative analysis, the number crunching, and instant communication, has enabled production at scales and efficiencies not seen before.

Productivity figures from sweatshops in Cambodia, for instance, can be analysed in air-conditioned offices in California and decisions made and responses delivered in a matter of seconds.

Some of the Big Tech enterprises are in direct competition: Google and Facebook (which includes Instagram and Whatsapp) are selling ads, giving opportunities to platforms that want to gather information about you to puts ads right in your face. Google and Facebook are said to share a duopoly in online advertising.

Amazon is mainly known for its online retail and delivery business, but most of its operating profit is in ‘the cloud’ (tinyurl.com/yc2j3s4h) – that is data centres where it rents out disk space and computing power. Second in the data-centre business is Microsoft (MS), which is primarily about business software and operating systems (OS), and Google is also pushing into the data centre market.

Apple is primarily in consumer hardware including iPhones, iPads, laptops and desktop computers. In the developed world the iPhone is the dominant mobile phone technology. In the less developed world, Google’s Android OS dominates but the hardware comes from different suppliers.

How did big tech get so big?

Analysts have identified four phenomena that allowed Big Tech to emerge: deregulation, financialisation, globalisation and technological convergence.

Often cited as the key piece of deregulation that paved the way for social media was Section 230 of the 1996 US Telecommunications Act which stated:

‘No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider’.

Social media sites, it can be argued, are fulfilling the same role as paper publishers who are responsible for what they publish, but for social media after Section 230 it was considered that anything posted on them was ‘user-generated content’ – and users were responsible, not publishers.

Software rarely has the regulatory safeguards that physical products have – think of trying to sell a car with no brakes or a kettle that catches on fire. Fujitsu has paid private compensation for its part in the UK Post Office scandal and, unusually, is also facing criminal proceedings (tinyurl.com/u2xz9zx7). In July this year 8.5 million MS Windows servers were made inoperable due to a faulty software update from an anti-virus company. Delta Airlines, whose operations were massively disrupted, are suing the anti-virus company claiming the outage cost them $500 million, with 1.8 million passengers affected (tinyurl.com/4kaj3s2x). Only those who can afford to sue them will get any money back.

Perhaps ‘lack of regulation’ is a better term – it’s largely a case of legislation not being able to keep up with the rapid innovation of digital services.

The expectation of profits means big tech firms don’t have to look far for sources of investment, which means they can expand in-house, or alternatively acquire smaller firms to increase market share either by embracing or extinguishing a rival technology. A current example is OpenAI, owners of ChatGPT, with an estimated $2 billion in revenue in 2024, though yet to turn a profit due to the huge cost of training AI models (tinyurl.com/2cub8my8). Twitter, for example, made profits in 2018 and 2019, the first since its inception in 2012. Since Elon Musk took over and renamed it, revenue has fallen sharply and ‘X’ has massive debts (tinyurl.com/rbtsh74f).

Globalisation allowed Big Tech companies to minimise their tax burden and move production to places with lower wages. They often have European headquarters in low-tax Ireland. Many consumers are familiar with Microsoft’s Indian Tech Support call centre, while the Foxconn City Factory complex in Shenzhen, China, makes parts for Apple products, and a global army of content moderators work for Facebook and ChatGPT in less developed parts of the world.

Technical convergence basically means devices doing more and more and being linked over the internet. Whilst a telephone handset makes calls, a camera takes pictures, a torch shines a light and a computer runs apps, in a smartphone these roles are combined into one device. These hardware functions rely on software to work, providing apps through app stores, and gateways to other services such as shops, entertainment and games. Both Google Play Store and Apple App Store charge a fee to stock software in their stores, and up to 30 percent commission on app sales and in-app purchases. This is a part of what is known as platformisation (tinyurl.com/5ybrxmdv).

Too big?

Any casual follower of the industry will have noticed that the tide seems to be turning. The section on the Wall St Journal website providing advice for potential investors warns that:

‘Governments around the world are evaluating the impacts that massive tech platforms and social networks have on businesses and consumers. In the coming months, regulations in the European Union and the United States will likely take effect, pushing tech companies to prioritise data protection, harm reduction, the ethical use of AI, and commitment to sustainability goals.’

Over the years there have been a number of skirmishes but the 2023 EU Digital Markets Act, and the EU Product Liability Directive currently being revised to include digital technology, are more significant. A US federal judge ruled in August that Google had violated US antitrust (anti-monopoly) law by maintaining an internet search monopoly. In October the US Department of Justice said in a petition to the court that it may recommend dismantling Google’s core businesses, writing that:

‘That would prevent Google from using products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to advantage Google search and Google search-related products and features — including emerging search access points and features, such as artificial intelligence — over rivals or new entrants.’

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is an EU regulation that aims to make the digital economy ‘fairer’ and more contestable. It became applicable in May 2023. The DMA aims to ensure a higher degree of competition in European digital markets by preventing large companies from abusing their market power and by allowing new players to enter the market.

Twenty-two services across six companies – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft – were identified as ‘core platform services’ by the EU in September 2023. The companies are known as ‘gatekeepers’ due to the ‘durable market position in some digital sectors’ and because they also meet certain criteria related to the number of users, their revenue, or size.

However, there have been accusations from US-based commentators that the rules were carefully constructed so as not to affect European companies and that it is purely about protectionism. As one example, Spotify, a Swedish company which trades on the New York Stock Exchange via a company in Luxembourg, could well have been on the list.

Almost 40 years after it came into force, the European Union is undertaking a major revision of the Product Liability Directive (Directive 85/374/EEC). The aim of this reform is to adapt ‘the standards to the conditions and needs of the digital single market’. To this end, software will in future be considered as a product.

The UK government prior to the general election this year also passed the Digital Markets, Competition, and Consumers Act (DMCC), a similar piece of legislation which surprisingly is the only one to include some protection for consumers, specifically for mis-selling and secondary ticket-pricing, such as the recent fiasco with the tickets for Oasis concerts.

We know there is a to and fro that goes on between lawmakers and Big Tech whilst the laws are being drafted, as Big Tech tries to make sure the legislation, if it has to exist at all, isn’t too damaging.

What’s in store for Big Tech in the future? Will we see monopolies destroyed, and how much will that affect the working class as a whole? Of particular interest to us is, how will it affect us as socialists?

Does it matter?

So in the current era of capitalism we have seen the immensely innovative system undergo great changes in the forces of production, and these changes are ongoing. Perhaps monopolies in certain markets will be broken, or perhaps it is a tendency for states always to be reactive and too slow.

As socialists the monopoly we are mainly concerned with is the monopoly that the capitalist class has over the means of producing wealth, and creating a socialist society where no such monopoly is possible, as everything in and on the world will be owned in common and managed democratically.

Here and now our job as socialists is to make socialists, and digital technology is a major method of promoting socialist ideas – so with changes in the platforms and networks we use there could be profound effects for spreading socialism. There might be profound effects if and when the socialist movement gets big enough to become a threat to capitalism, and when we do win there might be big consequences in having forces of production so complex and powerful at our disposal. Then the factories of invention will go from merely servicing the capitalist system to becoming communities for finding creative solutions to fulfil human needs.

PDH

Life and Times: 4-Wheel Drive Toyota Tundra (2024)

The Life and Times column from the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s Bolton Central Library on an evening in late November 1984. The large meeting room is full for a debate between myself representing the Socialist Party and the local Tory MP, Tom Sackville. The subject is ‘Is socialism compatible with freedom?’ and a well-known local cleric is in the chair. We both have 20 minutes to put our respective cases and another 10 minutes to respond. We do that, and then it’s thrown open to the floor. The hands go up for questions and observations and we both respond. I’m gratified that a lot of the discussion focuses on the definition and description of socialism I’ve tried to communicate – a democratically run society of voluntary cooperation, a moneyless, wageless, stateless world of free access to all goods and services based on the principle of from each according to ability to each according to need.

I was worried that we might get bogged down in discussing the old 57 varieties of ‘socialism’ (Russia, China, Cuba, Scandinavia, social reform, etc.), so I did my best to dismiss all that quickly at the beginning. And it seems to have worked, since hardly anyone – not even my Tory opponent – is trying to tar socialism with any of those brushes. I’m pleased too that it’s all calm, civil and good-natured, since those are always the best conditions for rational argument and useful exchange of ideas. At the end it probably can’t be said that anyone is the winner, but importantly, from my point of view, the socialist case has been aired clearly and unambiguously in front of a large audience. As an enthusiastic member of the Party’s local branch says to me afterwards: ‘I’ve never been to a meeting of this kind where the constant focus was on our view of socialism.’

That was a long time ago. Yet we’ve not stopped debating, since debating is our life blood as socialists. We’ve been doing it for the whole 120 years of our existence. But, apart from hustings at election times, face-to-face debate has become more and more difficult to organise in recent years, as discussion of all kinds increasingly takes place online. But though this lacks the immediacy (and often the politeness) of face-to-face exchange, it does not prevent discussion from continuing and, in fact, can reach far wider and more faraway audiences than is possible in a debating hall. The Socialist Party has adapted to this by having its own website and Facebook page and its members often participate in discussion and debate taking place on other sites organised by groups in various parts of the world with similar or closely allied ideas.

One of these is Moneyless Society, whose aim is ‘obsoleting money’, so sharing a key element of the society we are looking to see established. To give an example, a recent discussion on the Moneyless Society site involved a range of people, including SPGB members, debating with a distinctly non-socialist contributor. Casey began by quoting approvingly words from early 20th century free-market theorist, Ludwig von Mises, and then argued that we should be pleased with the market economy because it ‘puts the common man in the driving seat’ and ‘we average Joes get to enjoy luxuries not even conceived of 100 years ago thanks to the innovation capitalism breeds’. He added that he’d ‘like to hear from socialists in this bunch what’s wrong with this statement’. So not just an echo chamber, and a provocative start which sparked quick responses. The first one in fact was from me, stating: ‘The main thing to be said about the “average Joe” is that, far from being “in the driving seat”, he spends most of his life hanging on to the job he’s got (if he’s got one) and hoping and praying that the market system he lives in doesn’t determine he’ll lose it.’ Casey’s not ill-considered response was: ‘So society should allow Joe to continue working an obsolete job that no longer serves a purpose?’ At this point someone called David intervened to comment on how technology, both before and during the capitalist era, has made it possible to produce more with less work. And then it got a little tetchy when Casey mentioned, as evidence of the success of the market system, that he has a ’four-wheel drive Toyota Tundra with tons of features’ and so ‘capitalism for the win’. David’s sarcastic reply was: ‘I humbly suggest that we disband this list. After all, Casey says he drives a Toyota Tundra. What possible argument in favor of socialism could ever top that?’

But then it became more serious with Casey putting the argument that modern-day vehicles have many features that previous ones didn’t have and that make them more appealing. This has been achieved by competition, and so, ‘because of that we all benefit’. A further contributor, Michael, then intervened to dispute Casey’s earlier assertion that ‘capitalism breeds innovation’, arguing that ‘collective ownership’ can innovate just as well as ‘private ownership’. At this point it wasn’t clear whether for Michael ‘collective ownership’ meant state ownership (ie nationalisation) or socialism in our terms (ie, a common ownership and free access society). But Casey seized on this anyway to bring up the Soviet bogeyman and suggested a comparison between ‘the US and the USSR and the advancement of everyday life for everyday citizens’, together with a story about Boris Yeltsin being amazed as he toured a grocery store in Houston.

At this stage I felt obliged to jump in again myself and say: ‘What on earth has Yeltsin got to do with socialism? Absolutely nothing.’ The closing ‘speeches’ had Casey stating that ‘we are all better off for Bill Gates becoming a billionaire, not the other way round’, and two late contributors weighing in, the first one, Paul, saying that, in capitalism, ‘people are forced to buy not what they want but what they can afford, even if it’s cheap and nasty, out of what it’s profitable for companies to produce’, The second, Steven, on a slightly different tack: ’Less than 100 […] people in the world today own the equivalent of that owned by the poorest 50% – that’s 4 billion people. If that doesn’t tell you something is wrong, what will it take?’

All this is a far cry from Bolton Central Library in 1984. But what it shows is that debate still goes on, argument still goes back and forth and, if anything, now that most of it is online, it has a potentially bigger, more receptive and geographically wide audience than in the pre-internet days of outdoor platforms in town centres or parks or draughty meeting rooms in libraries or halls.

Howard Moss

Life and Times: What An Example! (2023)

The Life and Times column from the January 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

A short time ago I was trying to park my car in a shopping area near where I live when things didn’t entirely go to plan. What happened is explained in the message that I subsequently posted on the local community Facebook group I’m a member of. My post read as follows:

What an example! 

Yesterday I was involved in a slight road accident at the beginning of Beechwood Rd just after the Car Wash. I won’t go into details except to say that it was a real 50-50 thing between my car and another one, ie, you couldn’t say that either of us were really to blame. The young chap in the other car had a couple of scrapes on his bumper and so did I. He didn’t seem angry (and neither was I), but he told me he’d just had the bumper replaced. So a difficult situation. Then the young fellow from the Car Wash (some of you must know him) came up and said: ‘No point involving the insurance. Just wait a second’. He came back armed with a cloth and what I can only describe as some miracle stuff which he used on the scrapes and somehow completely removed them – and they haven’t come back. The other driver and I were both happy. We shook hands and agreed to leave it at that. What a relief! But now comes the big thing. I offered £20 to the young Car Wash man and he said no. I tried to insist, but he still absolutely refused. He said: ‘Look, next time you need a car wash, come here.’ All I can say is what a brilliant human being. 

Most readers will know that local community Facebook groups are normally populated with messages about lost pets, badly parked cars, yoga classes, street lighting, rubbish collection, activities in the local park, etc. My news was a little bit different, but it still seemed a good forum to let the local community know about a fantastic example of human togetherness unsullied by the idea of gain or material reward. It was also a way of my thanking the Car Wash fellow for being such a decent individual (and also maybe giving his business a bit of publicity).

But what I didn’t anticipate was what happened next. Within less than half an hour of my posting, there’d been over 70 replies – either ‘likes’, ‘loves’ or messages. After that the numbers only multiplied and by the following day there had been over 600 responses from people expressing approval, admiration, and various other kinds of thumbs-up. Examples of the various things people wrote were:

You are a good man and your company and workers are wonderful members of the community

I will take my car there next time, just for his kind gesture

Next time I need the car washed I’ll go there too. What a brilliant man!

My chariot is long overdue for a wash, I’ll have to bring it down

How fantastic

A little kindness goes a long way

Yes, I was nearby and witnessed the incident and was struck by the decency and generosity of the people involved. Surely a great example of how wonderful humanity can be when we choose to cooperate with each other. Thumbs up to the young man

There is kindness around us. We just need to look

Aww how lovely …. my next car wash will be there too!

Nothing compares to human kindness, well done young man x

What a lovely story, and what a kind person. When I need a car wash, I’m goin there!

What a great outcome,,,made me a bit tearful

What a lovely thing to do

I witnessed yesterday, wow I’m impressed

He is awesome

There are still lovely humans in the world

Gives such hope in our fellow human beings. If only it was normal behaviour

The Car Wash man responded too: ‘Thank you for your kind words. It honestly meant a lot. I could see the situation was getting a bit stressful, so I thought I’d help the situation. More than welcome anytime’.

What to say about this? Well, the fact that around two thirds of the 900+ members of the Facebook responded in this way was nothing if not heartening. How strongly it militates against the view we often hear expressed that looking after number one and the greed, selfishness and competition that goes with it is somehow all there is to ‘human nature’. That’s an idea expressed in a lot of what has been said, written and published over much of human history. Yet the tide seems to have definitely turned now with many studies coming to the opposite conclusion, ie, that not only are human beings capable of manifesting peaceful and cooperative behaviour rather than being hostile and competitive with one another but are more likely to behave in that way if conditions allow it. It all depends on the circumstances. This view sees humans as eminently flexible beings who will prefer to make common cause with their fellow creatures unless they are pushed into doing otherwise by conditioning or situation. Of course empathy and cooperation may not ‘make news’ as effectively as negative, selfish or uncooperative behaviour, but that’s largely because caring cooperative activities are so everyday, so common, far outnumbering negative behaviours, and so tend to get taken for granted and go unmentioned.

All this was borne out by a recent study (2021-22) based on online questionnaires (‘The Kindness Test’), carried out by psychology researchers from the University of Sussex in collaboration with the BBC. Its ‘take home’ was that, despite the competitive ethic of current society, human beings are fundamentally a kind species generally prepared to cooperate with and help one another in their daily lives and activities. This was manifested in apparently banal but obviously important findings such as most people being readily prepared to do favours for others, helping strangers to pick up things they’d dropped, or having concerned feelings for people less fortunate than themselves. A further finding was that people who regularly carry out kind acts or even just notice that other people are carrying out kind acts also have higher levels of well-being.

And doesn’t the ‘Car Wash’ story back this up? A person who was prepared to do what he saw as ‘the right thing’ to help total strangers. And most other people, as shown in the Facebook responses, admired him for behaving in this way. Isn’t the implication that, in a society organised in an entirely different way from the current capitalist one (the one that we call socialism), people would not have the slightest problem in operating in a harmonious and cooperative way most if not all of the time. In such a society, one of common ownership, free access to all goods and services and democratic organisation, the natural human tendency to share and cooperate will surely come into its own.

Howard Moss

Bird’s Eye View: Wilde, Orwell, Douglass and Banks

The Bird’s Eye View Column from the October 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing’.

The Socialist Party is very rarely mentioned in mainstream media, even during elections in which we campaign, leaving us to agree with Oscar Wilde when he stated ‘the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about’. Wilde, however, was never ‘fact checked’.

‘Media Bias Fact Check selects and publishes fact checks from around the world. We only utilize fact-checkers that are either a signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) or have been verified as credible by MBFC. Further, we review each fact check for accuracy before publishing. We fact-check the fact-checkers and let you know their bias. When appropriate, we explain the rating and/or offer our own rating if we disagree with the fact-checker’ (Media Bias/Fact Check, 13 August, bit.ly/3C0Qo1L).

The Socialist Standard is found wanting: not always credible or reliable and biased to the Left. No doubt the ‘… current editors .. Edgar Hardcastle and Gilbert McClatchie’ would scoff at such nonsense. Alas, they are no longer with us. In fact, having two supercentenarians in Britain’s oldest socialist party would certainly bring us some much needed attention. McClatchie (1890-1976) in an article titled ‘A “Living Wage”. I.L.P. Moonshine’ (Socialist Standard, June 1925) wrote ‘The Independent Labour Party [1893-1975] has kept the workers’ attention fixed upon questions of Taxation, Credit Banks, Nationalisation, and a thousand and one other things in which the remedies proposed would bring no appreciable improvement in the general position of the workers’ – true of the Left today as then.

‘It is quite possible that we are descending into an age in which two plus two will make five when the Leader says so’.

‘In the Socialist Party of Great Britain we are all members of the working class, and cannot hope that our articles will always be finely phrased, but we shall at least endeavour to lay before you on every occasion a sane and sound pronouncement on all matters affecting the welfare of the working class. What we lack in refinement of style we shall make good by the depth of our sincerity and by the truth of our principles.’

This statement taken from the first edition of the Socialist Standard in September 1904 remains true today, as does a quote attributed to Orwell: ‘during times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act’.‘ We are not alone. Other groups and individuals reveal pertinent truths too, at least some of the time.

‘…it should be uncontroversial to assert the anti-racist principle, anchored in basic biology, that we are one species. There are observable differences in such things as skin color and hair texture, as well as some patterns in predisposition to disease based on ancestors’ geographic origins, but the idea of separate races was created by humans and is not found in nature. There are no known biologically based differences in intellectual, psychological, or moral attributes between human populations from different regions of the world. There is individual variation within any human population in a particular place (obviously, individuals in any society differ in a variety of traits). But there are no meaningful biologically based differences between populations in the way people are capable of thinking, feeling, or making decisions. We are one species. We are all basically the same animal. Although we are one species, there are obvious cultural differences among human populations around the world. Those cultural differences aren’t a product of human biology; that is, they aren’t the product of any one group being significantly different genetically from another, especially in ways that could be labeled cognitively superior or inferior. So why have different cultures developed in different places? The most obvious answer is that it is the result of humans living under different material conditions’ (We Are One Species, Information Clearing House, 4 August).

‘While the forces of repression need to win every time, the progressive elements need only triumph once’.

‘.. the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex.’ This statement is from our Declaration of Principles and is astonishingly forward-looking considering it dates from the formation of the Socialist Party in 1904. ‘Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave‘, said Frederick Douglass. We should fill in the blanks, be alert for media lies, distortions and half-truths, as well as conspiracy theories and ‘alternative facts‘. We should remember Marx’s favourite motto – doubt everything! – and this from his German Ideology (1845): ‘the class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production’.

Today, even bots are showing signs of socialist thought:

‘Meta’s new chatbot has told the BBC that Mark Zuckerberg exploits its users for money. The chatbot, which uses artificial intelligence, was asked what it thought of the company’s CEO and founder and it replied “our country is divided and he didn’t help that at all”. It added: “His company exploits people for money and he doesn’t care. It needs to stop!” Meta said the chatbot was a prototype and might produce offensive responses’ (bbc.com, 13 August).

The hyper-intelligent artificial minds of Iain M Banks’ post-capitalist, post-scarcity, galaxy-spanning Culture are only possible in the far future, yet Socialism As A Practical Alternative has long been possible. In 1948 John Boyd Orr, former director of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, stated ‘a world of peace and friendship, a world with the plenty which modern science had made possible was a great ideal. But those in power had no patience with such an ideal. They said it was not practical politics’ (Daily Herald, 29 July 1948). Let us hasten that day.

Life and Times: Too many people? (2022)

The Life and Times column from the September 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

There’s a Facebook group I’m a member of called ‘Moneyless Society’. Recently someone posted the following message: ‘We could sustainably feed, clothe and house the world five times over. Overpopulation arguments ignore the elephant in the room, which is unequal distribution and consumption of resources. The Earth can support billions but not billionaires’.

This statement, as per usual on social media sites, gave rise to many different and contrasting comments. Samuel Wascuteh, for example, disagreed: ‘The Earth cannot support billions of people living a first world lifestyle, including billionaires. I’d like to see the numbers on the sustainability claim’. Carly Morgan wrote: if every human went back to a hunter gatherer lifestyle, the Earth would still be stripped of its resources faster than they could be replenished’. Eric Fernandez’s reply to this was: ‘Based on what? What in the world are you talking about? Do you realize the entire human population of Earth can live in Texas?’ Derrick Seeto weighed in: ‘Most of our resources are renewable and recyclable. We need to stop using fossil fuel, that’s the only major problem. The second problem is waste, and making sure it’s recycled and gases recaptured. The third is at some point, livestock will have to be limited because of how much it limits food productivity. But none of this has to do with sheer numbers. Our food is solar powered. The limits are probably at least 100 times more people than we have now’. Dave Luxemburg seemed to agree but came at it from a different angle: ‘Population size has nothing to do with it, it’s unequal resource distribution that’s the problem’.

Population bomb?

These opinions probably reflect the kind of divergent views on this topic we find both in the media and among so-called experts. As far back as 1968 a book called The Population Bomb by Paul and Anne Ehrlich latched on to talk of ‘population explosion’ by predicting that the two decades to come would bring mass starvation due to overpopulation. That didn’t happen and doesn’t show signs of happening now, but it hasn’t put an end to widespread fear of things falling apart owing to there being too many people for available resources. That is illustrated in some of the social media posts above and also argued by such well-supported and ‘respectable’ organisations as ‘Population Matters’ (David Attenborough is one of its patrons).

The population has of course grown considerably since the Ehrlichs wrote their book. Then, over 50 years ago, it was close to 4 billion compared with 7.7 billion now. But growth has been slower than they predicted, and of course the development of technology has brought an increase of resources and production to help provide, at least in part, for the increase in the number of people. And most well-evidenced predictions now are that, in the years to come, population growth will be slower still owing to factors such as the spread of methods of birth control and increased education for and empowerment of women, the latter being the strongest determinant of falling birth rates. The United Nations’ forecast is that by 2100 humans will reach peak population of 10.9 billion, while a study from The Lancet last year suggested that global population will peak at 9.7 billion in the 2060s and be well below 9 billion by 2100.

Unequal access

But is the supply of goods and services nevertheless being outstripped by the growth of population, as Thomas Malthus, in his famous 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population, wrote would always happen? Will there always not be enough to go around? Is evidence of this that even today (according to a Food and Agriculture Organisation estimate) 9 percent of the global population is suffering extreme hunger with an estimated 11 people every minute dying from malnutrition? And is overpopulation the cause of this? Or is the ‘elephant in the room’ mentioned by one of the Facebook writers (i.e. ‘unequal distribution and consumption of resources’) the important factor here? In other words, is enough actually already available to feed, clothe and house the world perhaps many times over, but without there being equal access to it?

Many believable sources say that this is the case and that this needs to change. But can it change in a system where production and distribution take place with the aim of selling goods and services for profit on the market? All experience suggests that it cannot and that decent survival will always be limited to those who have the means to buy what is essential for them to live comfortably. The supermarkets may be groaning with goods, but we can only get them if we have money. It’s can’t pay, can’t have. This brings us back to Dave Luxemburg’s point that ‘population size has nothing to do with it, it’s unequal resource distribution that’s the problem’, a point emphasised in even stronger terms by another, so far unmentioned, contributor to that Facebook discussion. Thomas Fouquet St Clair states flatly, and perhaps somewhat despairingly: ‘The problem has never been overpopulation but in fact mismanagement of the Earth and its resources. I have said that forever, but now it seems that people are still brainwashed to see otherwise’.

Mismanagement and brainwashing

And this comment on ‘brainwashing’ seems to hit the nail on the head. People’s attention is easily diverted from the real problem – the way society is organised. The ‘overpopulation’ problem is really a misuse-of-resources problem. Capitalism, as a system of rationing via the market, is justified in people’s minds by a belief in scarcity and the idea that ‘there isn’t enough to go around’. Yet, whatever the future rate of population growth, what is abundantly clear is that, if resources were utilised rationally on the basis of production for use rather than profit in a properly democratic system of moneyless, wageless co-operation, everyone’s reasonable needs could be satisfied the world over.

So ‘overpopulation’ is just another distraction from the need to focus on the real problem – getting rid of the senseless, irrational system that builds in rationing of goods and everything else according to the money an individual happens to have in their pocket or their bank account. Socialist society will use the resources of the Earth to ensure that every man, woman and child is amply fed, clothed and sheltered. The current system of society – capitalism – cannot do this, quite simply because it does not exist for that purpose.

Howard Moss

Cooking the Books: Profit-sharing Aussie-style (2021)

The Cooking the Books column from the April 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

When in February Facebook temporarily stopped Australian users seeing, posting or sharing articles from Australian newspapers there was widespread condemnation, and not just from Australia. Most presented it as a case of the people versus a tech giant. Julian Knight, the Tory chairman of the House of Commons Digital, Culture and Sports Committee, declared ‘We represent the people and I’m sorry but you can’t run a bulldozer over that’, adding, sounding like a left-wing activist, ‘and if Facebook thinks it’ll do that it will face the same long-term ire as the likes of big oil and tobacco companies’ (reut.rs/38n7cQJ).

The GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) tech giants are unpopular in left-wing circles for a number of reasons: being multinationals, their tax-dodging, and for the way they mine their users’ personal information to attract advertisers by allowing these to aim ads tailored to the individual user. So, many anti-corporation activists joined in the dispute on the side of the Australian government. In fact, however, the issue was not the people versus a tech giant but a conflict of interest between two groups of capitalists over sharing out the revenue and profits from advertising.

Facebook depends for a large part of its income on selling space to advertisers. So do newspapers. As Facebook and Google’s audiences are larger and growing these tech giants have been more successful than newspapers whose sales have been dwindling. Some, however, of the advertising is placed alongside articles produced by newspapers. Newspaper owners have long complained about this:

  ‘For years, news organisations around the world have been pushing for fairer profit-sharing between themselves and the likes of Facebook and Google on news content distributed on social media platforms. Some of the industry’s leaders, like Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, have won government support to propose relevant regulations’ (bit.ly/3qty4F9).

It was no accident, then, that the first move to try to force Facebook and Google to share some of their profits should have come from Australia as who there says ‘newspapers’ also says ‘Murdoch’. In April last year the government responded by proposing a law to force Facebook and Google to share some of their advertising revenue with Australian news corporations. Google complied but Facebook put on a show of strength. The government compromised by amending the legislation to provide for voluntary revenue and profit-sharing agreements to be tried first. The first one that Facebook negotiated was with Murdoch’s News Corp. The details have not been disclosed but no doubt Murdoch will be satisfied with his share.

That the issue was not one of the people versus a tech giant but one capitalist group against another should have been evident from the fact that the legislation was introduced by an openly pro-capitalist government which had no particular ‘ire’ against big corporations. Far from it. It was acting on behalf of one. Just as governments in Britain, Canada and other countries will be if/when they introduce similar legislation.

The Australian government made no attempt to disguise what it had in mind:

  ‘Australian authorities say they drew up the legislation to ‘level the playing field’ on profits between the tech giants and struggling publishers. Of every A$100 (£56; $77) spent on digital advertising in Australian media, A$81 goes to Google and Facebook’ (bbc.in/3kWcVSI).

Activists who joined in the chorus against Facebook were being used to help pick chestnuts out of the fire for the newspaper corporations, while Julian Knight is just a windbag.

A Lesson from Trump (2020)

From the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The day after the outcome of the American presidential election became clear, someone wrote on our party’s Facebook page: ‘I can’t help but feel a lot happier this morning, knowing that the odious vile strange orange man has been sent packing’. There can be no doubt that, on a visceral level at least, many other workers worldwide felt a similar sense of relief that the unspeakable individual in charge of America had been dismissed from office. When I wrote to my sister-in-law the same day to wish her a happy birthday, she replied that ‘getting rid of the monster is the best possible present’. On a political level too many people were relieved, in view of the widely expressed claim that, if re-elected, Trump would have proceeded to establish some kind of dictatorship stamping on all dissent and in particular taking draconian measures, Mussolini or even Hitler style, against all ‘progressive’ forces.

Yet could this actually have happened? There is no doubt that Trump showed psychopathic traits similar to dictators like Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin – arrogant, narcissistic, bigoted, racist, authoritarian, demagogic, etc. But could he have gone ahead and taken control of the American state in the same way as former dictators have taken over their state and wreaked havoc on those who they opposed or who opposed them even to the point of genocide? Part of the answer to that lies in what actually happened in the American elections. What happened was that Trump, would-be dictator or not, was dismissed from office via that country’s democratic electoral process, in much the same way as many other leaders have often been dismissed from office in advanced capitalist democracies. The point is that the US has a well-entrenched mechanism for doing that regardless of whether the incumbent leaves quietly or, as Trump, kicking and screaming. It also has a mechanism (many mechanisms) for preventing an individual, whether deranged or loathsome or anything else, from exercising personal unrestrained power. This means that, even had the result gone the other way and Trump had strutted on as before, he could not have installed himself as the kind of ruthless dictator who rides roughshod over all opposition as Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin did and as others still do today in places where capitalist democracies have not yet – or not yet fully – emerged.

So, continuing the comparison with Mussolini and Hitler, why then were those dictators able to take over in Italy in the 1920s and Germany in the 1930s? They were able to because Italy and Germany had not at that time reached the same relatively secure level of capitalist economic and political development of countries as the US (and others such as the UK, Germany, France, Holland, Sweden, etc.) has today. Italy and Germany in that era did not have the same well-rooted system of political administration that exists today both in those countries and elsewhere and so were always a possible prey to the nationalist demagoguery of a dictator promising to cure all ills while spreading division and crushing opposition.

That same kind of demagoguery has of course echoed favourably with the over 70 million Americans who voted for Trump. And that can only be dispiriting for socialists who see as a prerequisite for the kind of society we advocate – leaderless, moneyless, wageless, frontierless and entirely democratic – the active agreement and support for that society by the majority of the world’s workers. What has happened in the US seems aeons away from that, especially as even the half of the electorate that voted for Biden were only choosing at best a ‘lesser evil’. That ‘lesser evil’, the Democrat Party, will, by the very nature of the system it is in charge of, continue to run that system in a business-as-usual way, i.e. in the profit-seeking interests of the tiny minority who monopolise the majority of the wealth. And this will continue to be the case as long as most wage and salary workers continue to have a mindset that supports, or at least acquiesces in, capitalism and the profit-seeking force that drives it.

Yet, having said that, what the example of Trump’s fall from office has shown is that in the US, as in other advanced capitalist countries, there is a well-entrenched system of democratic voting in place which, when the time comes, can be used by a socialist majority to ‘vote in’ socialism when the necessary consciousness has spread sufficiently for that to happen. And when it does, no would-be demagogue or dictator will be able to do anything to prevent the majority from making it happen.

Howard Moss

The Virus: Our Perspective – Covid and Class (2020)

From the May 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you were to compile a list of essential workers that your community has been reliant on during the Coronavirus crisis, you’d very likely not include billionaires, CEOs, businessmen, bankers, economists or the royals or that class of people who live off rent, interest and profit. Your list would include workers we encounter every day and whose occupations we had hitherto taken for granted. Your list would undoubtedly include medical workers, shop staff, ‘bin men’, delivery drivers, those working in power plants or working in front-line maintenance of the technology society needs etc. In short, you’d cite members of the class that sells its physical and mental abilities for a wage or salary in order to live – the working class. In her recent address to the nation about the coronavirus crisis, the queen began her brief message with a recognition of the importance of such workers to a society in crisis and, unwittingly, revealing the utter uselessness of her own institution to society.

We keep the world going

This class, the working class, runs the world and it is important to grasp this fact. It is we, members of this majority class, who build the cities and railway networks, the bridges and roads, the docks and airports. It is we who staff the hospitals and schools, who empty the bins and go down the sewers. It is we who fish the oceans and tend the forests, work the farm and till the land and plantations. It is we, the working class, who produce everything society needs from a pin to an oil-rig, who provide all of its services. If we can do all of this off our own bats, then assuredly, we can continue to do so without a profit-greedy minority watching over us and, more, in our own interests.

To be sure, the ruling class of capitalists and their executive, the governments of the world, have no monopoly on our skills and abilities. These belong to us. Moreover, it is we who are responsible for the inventions that have benefited humanity and the improvements in productive techniques. Most inventions and improvements are the result of those who do the actual work, thinking up easier and faster ways of completing a task, the result of ideas being passed down from generation to generation, each one improving the techniques of the previous. If those who work have given the world so much, in the past say 2,000 years, then how much more are we capable of providing in a world devoid of the artificial constraints of profit? Needless to say, any vaccine for the coronavirus will be the result of the hard work of salary-earning scientists, not some fat-arsed apologist for the profit system.

It is easy to cite the advantages of capitalism over previous economic systems. Many people believe that capitalism, though not perfect, is the only system possible. One thing is certain, though – if we follow the capitalist trajectory, we’re in for some pretty troublesome times. Capitalism has undoubtedly raised the productive potential of humanity and it is now quite possible to provide a comfortable standard of living for every human on the planet. But, to reiterate, capitalism now stands as a barrier to the full and improved use of the world’s productive and distributive forces. In a world of potential abundance, the unceasing quest for profit imposes on our global society widespread artificial scarcity. Hundreds of millions of humans are consigned to a life of abject poverty, whilst the majority live lives filled with uncertainty.

Our ability to imagine has brought us so very far, from the days when our ancestors chipped away at flint to produce the first tools, to the sending of scientific probes to the surface of Mars, the setting up of the worldwide web, and the mapping of the human genome. Is it really such a huge leap of the imagination to now envisage a social system that can take over from the present capitalist order of things? Is it just too daring to imagine humans consigning poverty, disease, hunger and war to some pre-historic age?

Do we really need leaders deciding our lives for us, when collectively we are far more capable of deciding what is best? Do we really need governments administering our lives when what is really needed is the administration of the things we need to live in peace and security? Must every decision made by our elites be first of all weighed on the scales of profit, tilted always in their favour?

Can’t be reformed to work for us

One thing is certain: capitalism cannot be reformed in the interests of the world’s suffering billions, because reform does not address the basic contradiction between profit and need. The world’s leaders cannot be depended upon because they can only ever act as the executive of corporate capitalism. The expansion of democracy, while welcome, serves little function if all candidates at election time can only offer variations on the same basic set of policies that keep capitalism in the ascendancy.

Capitalism must be abolished if we as a species are to thrive, if the planet is to survive. No amount of reform, however great, will work. Change must be global and irreversible. It must involve all of us. We need to erase borders and frontiers; to abolish states and governments and false concepts of nationalism. We need to abolish our money systems, and with it buying, selling and exchange. And in place of this we need to establish a different global social system – a society in which there is common ownership and true democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources. A society where the everyday things we need to live in comfort are produced and distributed freely and for no other reason than that they are needed – socialism.

It is now no utopian fantasy to suggest we can live in a world without waste or want or war, in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation. That much is assured. We certainly have the science, the technology and the know-how. All that is missing is the will – the global desire for change that can make that next great historical advance possible; a belief in ourselves as masters of our own destiny; a belief that it is possible to free production from the artificial constraints of profit and to fashion a world in our own interests. And how soon this happens depends upon us all – each and every one of us.

Of course, many, even our detractors, will agree that such a socialist world would be a beautiful place to live in, but that ‘human nature’ will always be a barrier to its establishment, because humans are ‘by nature’ greedy, selfish and aggressive. It quickly becomes apparent that what they are describing is not human nature as such, but various traits of human behaviour exhibited under particular circumstances. Socialists maintain that human behaviour is shaped by the kind of system people are brought up to live in – that it is not our consciousness that determines our social existence but our social existence which determines our consciousness. Nobody is born a racist or a patriot, a bigot or with a belief in gods. Nobody is born a murderer, a robber or a rapist, and our alleged greed for money is no more a function of the natural human thought process than were slavery or witch burning.

In general, the ideas the common people hold have been acquired second-hand, passed down from the ruling class above us. This is because the class which owns and controls the productive process also controls the intellectual life process in general. Any anti-social behaviour is likewise influenced by our social circumstances at any given time, i.e., when we are poor, depressed, afraid, lonely, angry and frustrated.

In most cases, those who produce the world’s wealth (some 95 percent of the world’s population) have had that second-rate education that makes free thought difficult – an upbringing that conditions us to accept without question the ideas of our betters and superiors. Indeed, the education system is geared to perpetuate the rule of an elite, insofar as it never encourages children to question and take issue with the status quo. Children may well recite that 8 times 8 equals 64, but how many will ask about the cause of wars or query the destruction of food?

Socialists hold that because we can adapt our behaviour, the desire to cooperate should not be viewed as irrational. We hold that humans are, ‘by nature’, cooperative and that we work best when faced with the worst and that our humanity shines through when the odds are stacked against us. There are millions of cases of people donating their blood and organs to complete strangers, sacrificing their lives for others, of people giving countless hours of their free time to charitable work – all of this without financial incentive.

When the call went out for volunteers to help the NHS during the current crisis, over 700,000 offered their services. Elsewhere, in Britain and around the world, countless millions have stepped forward to help the most vulnerable in society and in every way imaginable and with social media flooded with countless acts of selflessness and solidarity and, often, carried out by those with the least to give.

Today, world capitalism threatens the human race with extinction, if not through existential threats to the planet through nuclear war and climate change, then through the threat of pandemics which lays bare the utter incompetence of the profit system when faced with crisis. The reason this obnoxious system survives is because we have been conditioned to accept it, but we are not born to perpetuate it. Rest assured, no gene inclines us to defend the profit system.

Normality is not normal

It is perhaps ‘natural’ for people to want to return to something resembling a pre-Covid-19 world, to get ‘back to normal’, for family and friends to meet up and continue as before, to love and to care and to share, which is the essence of human nature. But let’s remember what this normality really means for many of us. It is a world where every aspect of life is subordinated to the worst excesses of the drive to make profit on the part of a minority owning and controlling class.

Normality is a world where almost 800 million are chronically malnourished and where 25,000 children die each day from hunger or related illness. At the same time, the governments of the world order the destruction of vast mountains of food to keep prices high, stockpile food until it rots and pay farmers to take land out of production because the laws of supply and demand insist that overproduction is bad for the market.

Normality is a world where some 150 million of our fellow humans are homeless, many sleeping rough on the streets of the world’s cities, with 1.6 billion lacking adequate housing, yet there is no shortage of vacant buildings – countless millions of acres of empty living space in the major cities of the world – and certainly no shortage of building materials or skilled builders and craftsmen presently out of work. Again, we find that the market not only dictates who does and does not eat, but who does and does not sleep comfortably.

Normality is a planet on which over one billion of our fellow humans have no access to clean water and 2.6 billion lack adequate sanitation, and the growing scarcity of fresh water is calculated to spark many wars across the globe in the coming decades. Meanwhile, the technology exists to desalinate millions of gallons each day and to set up treatment plants capable of cleaning the dirtiest water. However, there is not much profit in selling something which covers five-sixths of the planet, so the investment never comes.

While millions of children die each year of curable diseases and while we still await breakthroughs in medical science that can cure the presently incurable, we find there are literally thousands of scientists around the world employed in weapons programmes – paid by their respective governments to devise new methods of murder, including germ warfare, the deaths from which could dwarf those of the current pandemic.

The list is as endless as it is insane. At every turn we find evidence of how capitalism destroys us physically and mentally, retarding real human development. At every turn we come smack up against the iron law of our age – ‘can’t pay, can’t have’. At every turn we find capitalism running wild like a rabid dog, infecting all it comes into contact with, a pandemic that is rarely recognised for what it is.

If we return to ‘normality’, let’s hope it is with an increased awareness of our own worth, capabilities and potential, a recognition that it’s the workers who run the world, no matter how seemingly menial the job, and how interdependent we are on each other. Whilst our leaders, in the face of crisis, resemble more each day the character in Edvard Munch’s The Scream, let us not lose sight of the fact it was the workers who kept society going and rid the world of Covid-19.

John Bissett