Coughing up cash (2003)

Charles Ingram

From the June 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism creates much that’s obscene. At times, it generates hilarity born of despair. And an example of the latter was the pursuit of a big win on the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? gameshow made by Celador, and subsequent trial and conviction of the jackpot “winner”, army major Charles Ingram and two accomplices.

In a world of class ownership of the means of living, with people desperate to acquire money because everything costs, bizarre behaviour that causes observers to remark “I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry” isn’t infrequent. From ludicrous get-rich-quick spam to business adverts tattooed on foreheads, people are driven to do whatever it takes to obtain cash.

Charles and his wife Diana owed around £50,000 in loans and credit card payments, while Tecwen Whittock, teacher of business studies at a South Wales college, had a £100,000 mortgage, spent £40,000 on private education for three of his children, and owed around £40,000 (£20,000 on a single credit card bill). Whittock had been in contact with the Ingrams before any of them appeared on the quiz show.

Laughs at the major’s expense from this tragicomic attempt to win big came from him revealing how he sat at home eagerly practising “Fastest Finger First” on a mock-up keypad resting on his knee. How he was reduced to tears in court on hearing a barrister’s humiliating question put to a Celador employee about his frisking after the show: “Did you search his privates?”. But above all, the repeated playing in court of Ingram’s performance recorded on September 10, 2001, “assisted” by Tecwen Whittock’s nineteen “strategically placed coughs”.

Some may be able to cheat the system …

Ingram had struggled the previous day, losing two lifelines to win £4,000, but lack of time caused him to become a “rollover” contestant, meaning Ingram and Whittock were then both present the next evening, enabling a plan to cheat to be carried out. Ingram would read aloud the four possible answers to each question, and Whittock sitting close behind would cough immediately after hearing the correct one.

This crude scheme, perhaps helped by vibrating pagers taped to Whittock’s body, was jeopardised by Ingram’s enthusiasm to answer question 14 unaided. For £500,000, Chris Tarrant asked “Baron Haussmann is best known for his planning of which city? (A), Rome; (B), Paris; (C), Berlin; or (D), Athens.” Ingram said at once “I think it’s Berlin”. And when it seemed Ingram was going to give this as his “final answer”, because Haussmann was a “more German name”, an anxious Whittock resorted to combining a cough with the warning “No!”, which when first played to those in court caused roars of laughter. This warning, followed by more coughs after Ingram twice mentioned Paris while hunting for the correct answer, got him through to the final £1,000,000 question.

The public got their chance to chortle at what the jury saw and heard thanks to a documentary, Millionaire: A Major Fraud, on April 21, which explored the trial and screened the major’s “winning” run. Sadly, most viewers were actually laughing at themselves, as the joke’s on them. They may not have conspired to obtain money with secreted pagers and coded coughs, but they have been partners in a crime against themselves, which is not voting to escape from class domination, exploitation and exclusion, a game which also compels them to chase after money. In this respect, judge Geoffrey Rivlin was wrong to call the trial a “most unusual and exceptional case”.

… but who’s really making a monkey of who?

Game show presenter Chris Tarrant called the coughing for cash “very cynical” and “hugely insulting to the hundreds and hundreds of other contestants who have come on the show, just hoping for much smaller amounts of money”. But what of the cynicism of Celador profiting from millions of premium rate phone calls from people desperate to get on the gameshow to escape from the insult of poverty and deprivation in a supposedly civilised society? What of the documentary, sold to broadcasters worldwide, cynically cashing in on this attempted fraud and which no doubt is hoped to boost the quiz show’s flagging ratings?

Another Tarrant comment was, “It’s unthinkable anyone should think they could go home with the biggest prize of all dishonestly.” What of capitalists going home to luxurious residences, living off vast profits, interest payments and property rents thanks to owning the biggest prize of all, productive assets, which is dishonestly legal thanks to their own system’s laws?

The worst scam of all, that capitalists and their political stooges will never cough to, is that people would be far better off with real socialism, production of goods and services to meet needs, and free access. When it comes to winning the biggest prize for humankind, and you’re faced with those critical 50/50 choices, don’t ask the audience looking down on you. Don’t phone a friend addicted to money. Choose socialism, and make it the final answer.

Max Hess

Running Commentary: Excitement (1987)

The Running Commentary column from the May 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Excitement

Oscar Wilde once wrote that a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Marxists might think this description perfectly fits economists, the apologists for capitalism. Despite their education, these political science "experts" appear to have missed the lectures dealing with Marx's Labour Theory of Value. As a result of this gap in their knowledge, they have a lot in common with the contestants in The Price is Right.

For those with the good fortune not to have seen it this programme is a prime example of the rubbish that masquerades as TV entertainment. As a reward for guessing the price of particular commodities, the hyped-up, frenzied workers taking part win themselves shoddy prizes. The euphoria that generates results in a further exhibition of hysterical behaviour by all in the studio.

How many viewers of The Price is Right also tune in to Antiques Roadshow? First impressions suggest that the two programmes have little in common. Antiques Roadshow aims to project a genteel atmosphere. A quietly spoken expert gives a potted history of the antique in question. Delight in the craftsmanship of the exhibited article is not, however, the programme's appeal. What concentrates the attention of all involved is the solemn pronouncement of the price the item now commands in the market-place. As in a film cartoon, the pound signs flash in the antique owner's eyes.

Second impressions confirm that the factor common to both programmes is the underlying assumption that the accumulation of wealth is the main object of human life. This object must be pursued ruthlessly by the capitalist class, leaving the worker to the dubious pleasure of participating in idiotic gameshows. or selling off the family EPNS.

Under the guise of entertainment, the ruling class continues to propagate their message that there is no alternative to capitalism. The alternative does exist — it is Socialism. Now that really is worth getting excited about.

Expanding police powers

On 1 April the new Public Order Act came into effect. The requirement that organisers of marches must notify police in advance has been in force since the beginning of the year. Implementation of the other provisions contained in the Act means that the police now have wider powers to control marches and demonstrations. They can re-route marches if they consider there is a risk of serious damage to property, or if there is a risk of intimidation or disruption to the community.

Although "static" demonstrations will not need permission in advance from the police, the police will have the right to move people on and to restrict the numbers of people participating. This will inevitably affect pickets and outdoor political meetings and rallies.

In addition, the Act has created new statutory public order offences of riot, violent disorder, threatening behaviour and disorderly conduct (although the Act is very vague about what behaviour would actually constitute an offence of this kind), and corresponding tougher penalties for offenders.

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the new Act is that not only does it represent one more nail in the coffin of civil liberties, but it has also given the police enormous new discretionary powers to decide when a Public Order offence has been committed.

Blood on the coal

Despite recent conflicts within the NUM over new working arrangements agreed by the South Wales miners, it now seems likely that the new Margam super-pit will go ahead in South Wales. It will be one of British Coal's new, high technology, capital-intensive mines like that at Selby.

British Coal argue that the industry can only be profitable if productivity per miner is increased. The opening of the new Margam pit will be part of the latest phase in the process that began with the pit closure programme that sparked off the year-long strike of 1984-85. Since the end of that dispute countless small and "uneconomic" pits (those which did not produce high enough profits) have been closed. Instead, capital has been concentrated in the new generation mines — large coal fields which use the very latest technology and have been able to intensify the rate of coal extraction. But the new capital-intensive pits cannot become really profitable if the expensive new machinery is left idle at weekends. As a result, the decision to go ahead with Margam was made conditional on the South Wales miners agreeing to work a six-day week and eight-hour shifts to enable the machinery to be in almost continuous use.

Faced with the devastation that has been caused by the closure of the old South Wales pits, it is not surprising that the union has been forced to agree to the new shift system. However there are now fears, especially in Nacods — the pit deputies' and supervisors' union — that the new working practices will lead to a drop in safety standards in an industry which already has a horrifying record for injuries and fatalities.

In addition to the new machinery, which itself poses new problems for health and safety, and the longer shifts, incentive schemes will encourage miners to cut corners in order to speed up production. But Nacods claims that if British Coal is to go ahead with all of its proposed changes, then it will first have to get the government to pass amendments to the 1954 Mines and Quarries Act which presently regulates health and safety standards in mines. British Coal argue that the 1954 Act is anyway out of date and instead advocate new regulations which would have no statutory force but would only constitute a "code of practice". This would mean, for example, that existing regulations which set a minimum height for underground roadways would be scrapped; it would permit the use of roof bolts which, Nacods argues, are highly dangerous as the sole means of support; it would allow the use of free-steered vehicles in mines which American authorities have banned as too dangerous for use in pits because of their carcinogenic emissions.

So, in other words, "de-regulation" of the mining industry will not only mean fewer miners being forced to work harder to produce more coal more cheaply and so enhance the profits of British Coal, but they will be putting their health and their lives at risk in the process.

Between the Lines: Sinn Fein, Game Shows and Live Aid (1985)

The Between the Lines Column from the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sinn Feigners

Beatrix Campbell, in Diverse Reports (C4, 3 July), sought to portray Sinn Fein as a progressive, caring, reforming party—an image it seeks to put across to electors. It should not be surprising that a programme showed Sinn Fein's policies without constant reference to the party's support for nationalist murderers; after all, the Tory and Labour parties support national armies committed to obscene acts of violence, but this is not mentioned every time there is a programme about their policies.

And having seen the uncensored picture, what are we to conclude? Quite simply, that Sinn Fein is just another party of reformist politicians who want to run capitalism. As the party's leader Gerry Adams, said, "All we can do is  . . . achieve those very small gains by working along with the people within the system". So much for Assembly member, Danny Morrison's throwaway comment that Sinn Fein is "a revolutionary party". From Adams we heard the usual vague claims of a reformist leader: first the nationalist movement must be built up to oppose British rule, and then after the British have withdrawn and Ireland is independent there will be "the beginnings of a socialist society". What does this mean? Uncensored Adams neglected to tell us. Campbell, who is a feminist, asked Adams what the position of women would be once Ireland had achieved Home/Rome Rule; she stated that "for women this happens to be one of the most repressive cultures you can think of." But Gerry told her that her question was based on "cultural imperialism" and she, being English, should learn that Irish people are different.

At the end of the programme one was left with the clear impression of a political party based on the twin confusions of nationalist illusion and reformist promise. If there ever is a united Ireland, presided over by Sinn Fein, it will be another capitalist state and the workers living under it will detest Adams and his fellow would-be rulers as much as they do their present representatives.

Even without the terrorist violence, which socialist unequivocally condemn, there was plenty shown about Sinn Fein to justify the unreserved hostility of socialists towards them.

Money sickness

It was D. H. Lawrence who referred to "the collective money-madness of mankind",  and where better to  observe that madness than in the gambling establishments of Las Vegas. Showdown at Glitter Gulch was a documentary about the world poker championship (BBC1, 3 July)  - an event where the winner gets a million dollars. It was an obscene spectacle, all these idlers throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars on to a table while millions of workers go without a decent supper and millions more die for lack of money for food. It was not "human nature" which led these men to indulge in an insane monetary ritual — it was a social system which elevates money into the god of life and trains those with more of it than sense to invest their energies in acquiring more. A mad system drives men mad and this programme was a peep through the window of one of the top-class asylums.

The price is indignity

The same "collective money-madness", but at a cheaper rate for the proles, is The Price is Right (don't know or care when it's on). The programme succeeds in being the ultimate in tasteless money fetishism. Crowds of impoverished workers scream and throw dignity to the wind as the prospect of guessing the price of an electric carving knife turns them into human cash registers. The aim of the game is to guess how much commodities are worth and if the guess is near enough to the price you win. Game shows generally portray capitalism as its most grotesque, and the trouble with watching them is that we are supposed to applaud contestants for doing well.

Live aid

Live Aid for Africa (BBC, 13 July) demonstrated several things that it did not intend, The purpose of the concert was to raise money to stop people starving to death in Africa. Yet its effect will be minimal, negligible, crumbs thrown into an ocean of despair. What then did the event show? First of all, that workers, even when motivated by immense goodwill and collective concern, cannot solve capitalism's problems. During the course of the sixteen-hour concert British workers donated a mere £4 million in telephone pledges, less than the British Government spends on the military machine every three hours every day; less than the richest woman in Britain (the Queen( receives as interest on her personal investments in one week. Workers were 'phoning up and saying that they would sell their cars and donate their precious savings to the worthy cause — but asking the impoverished in Britain to feed the starving of Africa solves precisely nothing.

Secondly, the show demonstrated just how superficial is the moralising self-righteousness of those who do not understand the capitalist system. Periodically we would be urged — by millionaires who became rich by dressing up in fancy costumes and singing about love through sore throats — to "feed the world". But why is food dumped while people starve? Why do some people have banquets while others do not? In short, the whole event was an invitation to weep at the symptoms, and to hell with any concern about the disease. Indeed, Bob Geldof (who may be sincere, but it certainly naive to a dangerous degree) was seen repeatedly throwing his arms in the air, like a man who feels something but does not know what, and declaring that governments should "do something". In fact, governments are doing something: running capitalism and feeding the capitalists' hunger for profits.

Thirdly, the show proved just how musicians have become incapable of performing without record producers to twiddle knobs and make them sound any good. Some of the sets from Wembley and Philadelphia, presented without the benefit of studio treatment, ranged from not very good to pathetic. Demonstrated above all, however, was the power of communication technology: fourteen international satellites beamed the show to 50 million TV sets, reaching an estimated audience of 1.5 billion people. But just as this technology can unite millions of workers for a lofty, if ultimately futile, moral cause, so too can it bind them together for more sinister propaganda messages, such as those demanded for example in the build-up to war. Left in the hands of the capitalist minority the means of mass communication are a potent weapon. But used for socialist purposes, think of how the worldwide unity forged by Live Aid could be turned into an instrument for making democracy work within the global village.

Watching the show until the final performance by Bob Dylan (not an occasion worthy of the wait, as it turned out), I was struck by an overwhelming sense of depression — not just at the thought that fellow human beings are starving to death, although that is good enough reason for a sleepless night, but because all the goodwill, energy, determination and technological know-how put into "doing something about it" will not feed the world. Despite Geldof's moral crusade the obscenity of mass human misery will go on and on and on until Elvis Costello stops singing "all you need is love" and the workers realise that the world os ours for the taking. And finally the national anthem came on, and by the time it got to "Long To Reign Over Us" I was fast asleep.

Steve Coleman 

Capitalism: no deal (2008)

From the July 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under capitalism most people must be losers.

Daytime telly is a form of wallpaper: meaningless moving pictures to fill the time between adverts selling insurance or offering to unlock the equity in your home. The prime example of this form is the endless Deal or no Deal, fronted by the great survivor of light entertainment, Noel Edmonds. Ridiculous though the show is, it serves as an unwitting allegory of capitalism.

The premise is that 22 boxes containing a card each detailing a monetary sum between 1p and £250,000 are distributed among the players. One player is selected, and they will win the money represented in their box. The complication is that before they do that, they have to open everyone else’s box, and at various stages a character called “the fat banker” will ring a phone and offer to buy the player’s box.

The game is obviously entirely random – once the boxes are distributed, there is nothing more the player can do – at most, if they play it right, they can negotiate a good deal with the bank; but even that is down to the luck of which boxes are eliminated (the more lower score boxes are eliminated, the higher the banker’s offers). To emphasise this mechanistic process, if a player accepts the offer from the bank, they are asked to keep on playing as they would have done, to see what they could have been offered, and see whether they could have won more. Players are shown what money could have been theirs, and encouraged to believe that they have lost that money they never had.

If this sounds dull (and it is) the players are encouraged to pad the show out by devising complicated patterns of selecting boxes to eliminate. Even more, they are encouraged to give each other pep talks and egg each other on to think positively. Obliquely, this is associated with Edmonds’ own advocacy of “cosmic ordering”, by which you ask the universe for something and it gets delivered. All of which serves to pad out what is essentially a fairground game of chance into an hour of television.

So, just like capitalism, the wealth – in the boxes – is distributed randomly and unfairly, with only one player having more wealth than the rest put together in their box. Like a market, players have to try and sell their box without knowing what other boxes are out there, but they are encouraged to try and reach for the maximum prize. The players are tantalised and mesmerised by the prospect of £250,000, and very often go on to lose because the contents of their box, as eventually opened, are less than they were previously offered.

Like capitalism, the game disguises its true inhuman mechanics through a mixture of hope and delusion. The slim chance that one person can win is enough to entice the players to keep going, and to keep believing in their cranky positive thinking systems.

The fact is, in capitalism, the fact of birth sets the opportunities available, and is as random as the distribution of boxes. Of course, a few people do manage to climb out of their situation – but it helps if a decent sum was dealt in the first place, and the way they play the game depends as much on luck as it does on their own skill; but the idea that they are self made, and got where they are today entirely through merit is entirely believed by the people who too wish to make the big win like they have. Just as many lose the game, entirely through no fault of their own, but are left with the lingering memory of what the banker said they were worth, and what they have lost.

It is just such thinking that the Tory Party rely upon. Until recently, they have been trailing massively in the polls. The good betting was that at the next election, the most they could hope for was a hung parliament (possibly with themselves as the biggest party). After all, the electoral system is currently against them, they need more votes absolutely to win enough seats to have an overall majority than the Labour party needs.

After years of assiduously refusing to give the Tories any leverage on tax, Labour slipped up, and abolished the 10p basic rate of income tax they had introduced – effectively raising the rate of tax on the lowest earners. That some of that was off-set by rises in the minimum wage, and (less obviously) by the increase in statutory holiday entitlement from 20 to 24 days. Such mathematical factors, though, weigh very little against the conscious fact that people will see the deductions on their payslip increasing in size, and they can be told that it is the government snatching their money away.

This is grist to the Tory mill – they were able to return to their old refrain of being for cutting taxes, and telling people how the highway robbers of Labour were taking their hard earned money and squandering it. Suddenly, they were able to spring into a massive lead in the polls, and romp to a massive victory in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. A victory so massive, that were the swing to hold to the next general election, the Tories would be guaranteed a massive overall win. Suddenly, the hug a hoody and cod greenery were cast off, as the Tories found that their old dog whistle was working once more, and the promise of cuts and cuts and cuts of taxes became the effective way to make friends and influence voters.

Simultaneously, it shattered Labour’s capacity to claim to be on the side of the poor – appearing to throw the burden of a tax cut on the poorest in the land. After all, it was to fund a cut in the 22 percent band that the 10 percent was abolished – Labour couldn’t even point to a reform that the tax increase paid for. So, of course, the leftist rivals of Labour (and the party’s own left wing) managed to jump on the bandwagon and launch an attack on the tax cut, which benefited the Tories by playing into their game. Labour have paid the price for claiming to be able to run the game capitalism better than their Tory rivals.

The secret of the Tories success is that they can simultaneously feed off hope and despair. The hope that one day, with a bit of hard work, you too can make it if you’re left to your own devices. The despair that you’re being robbed by the government through taxes and that your money is being given to those who are living the life of Riley while you slog away. This is the political equivalent of cosmic ordering, of positive thinking. You have a chance – it doesn’t matter how the boxes have been dealt, if you play the game right, you will make it in the end. The same thoughts animate the hopes of all those who pay the prole tax to phone into TV game shows, or buy national lottery tickets, for their big break out of their rut.

Of course, what people don’t see is that they’ve been robbed before the tax man even arrives. Those who work for a wage or a salary are being taken for the value of their unpaid labour that their employer extracts from them through the sleight of hand that is the wages system. Just as the sleight of hand in Deal or no Deal is that the production company, Endemol, make many times more than they give away in prize money, and indeed, wouldn’t even run the game unless they did so. Recognising that, though, would require shattering the illusion of the game.

Seeing that the distribution of wealth means that there must be losers, that those who win got there by luck, that those who lose got there by luck, destroys the game itself. Destroy the cosmic ordering and you remove the incentive to keep playing the game. That the game of capitalism is itself pernicious and destructive demands that it be removed outright, not played as best you can. If a game is inherently unfair, no tweaking of the rules, no aspirations, no change of player is going to alter that.

It is socialists’ job to arm our fellow workers with such knowledge and be a voice to cancel out the obscurantists calls for “thinking wealth” or other such mind candy that is the modern opiate of the masses. Latching on to tax campaigns, whether to relieve the poor or tax the rich, means keeping truck with the rules of capital – the game in which the winners are fixed before hand. So, when the fat banker asks us, “Capitalism: deal or no deal?” No deal! We say.

Pik Smeet