Change everything (2015)

Book Review from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate’, by Naomi Klein, Allen Lane, 2014, £20

Oh what a bittersweet day: a book that makes you want to jump for joy about a topic which occasions floods of tears. Naomi Klein’s latest work should be widely read. She is bang on the money: the climate change argument is about capitalism. In short, free markets and sustainability are mutually exclusive, and either capitalism or the ecosystem has had its day. The slew of evidence on display is impressive – Klein is nothing if not a thorough case builder – and the whole book can be seen as a superb illustration of the class system at work.  She catalogues examples of the narratives being bent to suit vested interests and the dominant ideology: many parts of this we could not have written better ourselves. Talk about capitalism bearing the seeds of its own destruction.

It has always struck me as odd that so many of the rich and powerful behaved as if they had another planet to escape to, or that somehow they could end up breathing their own wealth if the atmosphere became problematic. Why on earth were they funding climate change denial movements if they themselves would also suffer when the stuff hits the fan – as 97 percent of those who know have agreed is going to happen? Klein solves this one: the climate challenge is such a threat to their ideology that they simply cannot tolerate it: the measures necessary to forestall disaster require such concerted effort that it would be essential to curtail the very market freedoms so dear to them and their position. Much like the dictators of yore, they’d rather bring all down with them than give up power; or maybe more like Magda Goebbels, the world was not worth living in for her or her family without the primacy of their Weltanschaung. Having spent the last 30 years unleashing the tiger of the neoliberal agenda, they were not going to let some bunch of green eggheads spoil the party.  This would be intolerably bad for business and thereby very bad for their interests.

As someone concerned about the environment since my teens (don’t ask…), I ended up in the Green Party.  However I left a while back as I was unconvinced about their attitude to power: how they would force vested interests to toe the line.  I came to the same general conclusion as Klein – capitalism has to go – and realised that without this step, all else on the environmental agenda is playing for time.  However here is where she and I might part company: the way forward and the alternative political landscape offered in her book is too hazy.  It is as if she pulls her punches in the last round for fear of scaring off the readers – the book is after all aimed at the mainstream  – or perhaps she really has not thought it through properly.

Her suggestion that protests and actions will emerge which must be exploited to promote the agenda is too haphazard and hazy. What is the over-arching political philosophy which will give such emergent forces any direction apart from the environment and opposition to capitalism?  The peg on which to hang the clothing of serious change is lacking in this book. Come on Naomi, at heart you’re one of us, if only you’d realise it – you can’t offer a solution without socialism.  Ducking the real question seems a bit odd after what you have written and what you plainly believe.  But  I still welcome this book like few others. In the current climate anyone who starts asking the right questions has to be congratulated.

Howard Pilott

"The environment will force the hand of the world (2015)

Interview of Howard Pilott, The Socialist Party's Brighton candidate in the last election and a member of the Brighton Discussion Group by the University of Sussex Students' Newspaper, The Badger.

It doesn’t feel like the setting for talk of revolution. It’s a rainy day in Lewes, and I’m sat in Howard Pilott’s large open plan kitchen as he stands distractedly making tea. His springer spaniel Rose nestles against my leg, and I’m a little intimidated by the affluence of my surroundings. He dismisses the idea that this conflicts with his socialist ideals: “In order to advance the case of the working class in this society I’m not sure it particularly serves for me to say: Right, I’ve got to live in sackcloth and ashes for the rest of my life”.

Pilott is passionate about socialism, that much is clear; a self-confessed ‘political-butterfly’ (he’s been a member of both the Labour and Green Party), Howard Pilott contested Caroline Lucas’ seat for Brighton Pavilion in the 2015 general election for the Socialist Party of Great Britain. What does socialism mean for him? He’s clear that it is, and will be (although not within his lifetime he wearily concedes), a  leaderless movement. He looks at me seriously as he discusses how our government is structured towards the representation of vested interests, a system supported through clever spin and media monopolies, and yet “there seems to be this consensus that there is no alternative”.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain envision instead a system of local organisation: “Decisions about what are in the interests of the majority of the population should be taken by the majority of the population; local collectives organising on a local basis with other local collectives”. There’s no monetary system, no particular political agendas: “People freely choose what they aspire to, what needs to be made. They contribute what they can”.

I ask Pilott if his running for MP was in line with this conception of a leaderless movement, and whether the change for which he speaks, a socialist revolution, the end of capitalism, is something that could be achieved by working from within: “Voting for me wasn’t about my intentions to become an MP, to go to the House of Commons, be a backbencher…It’s not that kind of thing. A vote for us is a statement of rejection of the current society. Saying you want something very different. To reject capitalism. A rejection of the idea that power is in the hands of the few”.

“We’d gradually get a large sector of the community turning round and saying ‘we don’t want this’. That a large part of the population are outside of this [system of governance]. At some point sooner or later the majority of the population will have to seize power; turn around and say, actually we’re not playing by these rules anymore”. Pilott maintains the necessity of a peaceful revolution, and he’s evidently wary of being associated with the legacies of former communist states: “To seize power tends to conjure up images of storming the Winter Palace. I don’t think it would be like that – violent revolutions don’t get you very far”. He reflects on Iraq, Serbia and Afghanistan, observing that violence is cyclical and self-repeating; a poor foundation for an egalitarian society: “If you start off being violent, it’s hard to stop – you’re on the road to notown”.

When I first heard Howard Pilott talk, during the first waves of Corbyn mania, I was surprised by his hostility to the new Labour leader and the wider Labour party, which he criticises enthusiastically and with a seemingly greater regularity than the Conservatives; is this an explication of the much lamented fracturing among the British political left? The problem with Jeremy Corbyn, according to Pilott, is that he represents “a kind of sense of false hope. Joining the Labour party may be a bit like giving to charity or buying a copy of the Big Issue in order to change things – because they’re in bed with capital”. He contends that the Labour party is tearing itself apart: “It has got this really difficult path to tread, because it’s not talking about abolishing capitalism, it’s talking about running capitalism a bit more nicely than the Tories can”. However, Corbyn is not entirely dismissed: “I welcome the existence of everybody on the Left, because they may be asking the right questions”, although Pilott wrily adds that Labour’s solutions are often “half-baked”. Either way, for Howard Pilott, questioning the system will eventually lead to answers; to the structural change anticipated by the SPGB.

Indeed, Pilott considers that Jeremy Corbyn may be the recruitment drive the SPGB desperately needs. He contends that newer members of the Labour party, enthused for a new voice platforming popular dissatisfaction with mainstream politics, will begin to see that in actual fact Corbyn’s Labour represents more of “the same old same old; squabbling over Trident, talking about bombing Syria, not doing anything about tuition fees”. To be in Labour, according to Pilott, is to be “bogged down in the minutiae of managing capitalism”. Yet, despite Howard Pilott’s passions for the advancement of socialist ‘rationalism’, the SPGB struggles with attendance at public meetings, even in Brighton. Does he get dejected? “It’s a bit demotivating at times. We’re not a big party at the moment (he laughs, adding that he only got 88 votes in the general election), we’re not going to make a major dent in the world”.

“I think it’s a bit like ‘what did you do in the war Daddy?’, ‘what’s the bit you’re doing towards the environment?’ It’s about what you’re doing in these areas on a personal level. I think it’s really important to keep the flag flying. We’re still here: this is the alternative, opportunities are available for you”. Whilst Howard Pilott thinks that there’s “not a chance” capitalism will end within his lifetime, he thinks there’s already steps being taken: “The thing that is going to force the hand of the world is the environment. Even Bill Gates now has said that he doesn’t think the market system can deliver [a solution to climate change]. What will happen is that there will be an increasing polarity of interests”.

The consequence of environmental pressures could go either way, Pilott says, according to this polarity; he’s afraid of the alternative: “Society could become more oppressive, more fascistic”. Yet he’s mentioned previously that socialists should vote Tory. He laughs when I ask him about this, but admits that “this is something I’ve always struggled with. I subscribe to the Marxist idea of false consciousness – people are arguing in favour of things that are not in their interest”. He ascribes UKIP’s popularity to this notion: “What is Nigel Farage? A city trader, a millionaire. They think that because he’s got a pint and a fag in his hand he’s one of them. What does he want to do? Cut taxes for the rich”.

If there is a false consciousness, as Howard Pilott attributes, how can there be the break necessary for a socialist revolution? Pilott smiles, “well you can talk to them, which my party has tried to do for 110 years. Or alternatively, you can wait for capitalism to do its work for you. For things to begin to get so bad that people start to become more agitated”. This is his logic behind the idea of voting Tory – the necessity to shock people from their inertia: “You get more full-blown capitalism [under a Tory government], less of the amelioration of a welfare state; workers rights are removed, social provision is scrapped, markets are let rip…Maybe what would happen is that the inequalities, the deprivations this creates will wake people up”. Pilott’s uncertain however of this tactic: “That was a facetious remark I made – I don’t know whether or not it’s true”.

One thing is clear for Howard Pilott though: we are reaching the final crises of capitalism. He thinks people need to be shocked in order to ‘wake up’ to the oppression and inequality inhered in a capitalist system, and that this will happen through environmental pressures, through climate change, as we fail to take effective mitigative action: “The environment will certainly wake people up, but the trouble is, it may wake them up too late”.

Is there no hope then for socialism? Howard Pilott I think is quietly optimistic; he possesses the certain dogged idealism necessary for the contemporary socialist, trusting in the ‘ingenuity of humankind’: “I don’t believe that a society which can come up with triple heart bypass surgery, that can effectively bring people back from the dead, can take a piece of machinery on this planet, fire it at another planet that is further away than the sun and get it to land on an asteroid smaller than Lewes, can’t arrange things on this planet other than a way where a handful of people have to own half of it, and millions of people have to starve. I simply don’t believe it. It doesn’t strike me as sensible, rational or intelligent, and I’m sure actually we’re beyond that”.

Kathryn Cheeseman

The False Promise That is Jeremy Corbyn (2015)

From the December 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whilst John McDonnell might put 'generally fermenting the overthrow of capitalism' as his interest in his Who’s Who entry, sadly that isn’t enough to make a socialist of the man. It takes more than verbal flourishes to emancipate the working class. Rather than socialism, his talk is of working in partnership with enterprise and business to ensure economic growth, as in his Labour conference speech. Whilst we hear promises of nationalisation of the railways and possibly even some utilities, it seems this state ownership stops short of the real productive capacity of the country. But what is this state ownership anyway? Will rail travel be free once the crony capitalists are ousted and denied their bonuses? Hardly. The likelihood is that the railways will simply be a business run by agents of the government and probably on some form of commercial basis.

But what has Corbyn, the great herald of the new New (or Old?) Labour himself said? Well, at the conference he said he’d be the champion of the self-employed. But in fact he didn’t say much about the economy, rather gave a kind of framing speech to provide an overall sense of his position and counter some of the accusations in the media: he loved his country; believed in open discussion; wanted more for the many not the few, etc. Not much actual flesh on the bones of this advert. The idea was that John McDonnell would open that black box, as above.

What can we charitably infer? He’ll try to tax the rich a bit more, try to make corporations pay some more tax, build some more houses and control business (certainly the utilities) a bit more. Oh, and maybe reduce tuition fees. And, oh yes, there might be some quantitative easing – printing money, to you and me – to give the economy a bit of a push, as he thinks growth is a good thing.

Does any of this ring any bells with anyone? Haven’t we been here before? Or, is this the time when they really mean it: when they will really make a difference? This brings up two questions: what makes this brand of Labour significantly different to any of the others? And, will what is on offer have any chance of really making a lasting difference?

Previous Labour governments

There have been eleven previous Labour governments. We can choose from those led by Ramsay MacDonald, Clem Atlee, Harold Wilson, and Tony Blair.

The first period, before World War Two, can be called cohabitation. The first Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald was a minority administration propped up by the Liberal Party lasting 11 months and so it's not really surprising they didn't achieve very much. In fact it was little more than what were called the Wheatley houses, which was a programme of cheap council housing. Nice but not exactly earth-shattering.

Ramsay McDonald was back in office in 1929 and this administration lasted until 1931 but again another minority government. This one vacillated about Keynesian-style measures of public works to address large-scale unemployment. However it fell apart and led to the National government which addressed the recession by means of the type of austerity that we currently see: cutting benefits and government spending to get out of recession. This man of promise called himself socialist and he ended up implementing these kinds of measures as part of that government, and was actually expelled from the Labour Party.

The Attlee period might be called 'the land fit for heroes'. This is probably regarded as the most radical and successful Labour government that was elected after World War Two. Their offer to the voters was to destroy the five ‘Giants’ of Want, Squalor, Disease, Ignorance, and Unemployment. This government was certainly committed to improving the lot of the working class. The creation of the welfare state, and rebalancing the economy to address poverty were priorities. They nationalised about 20 percent of the economy but abandoned plans to nationalise farming. However the senior staff in the nationalised industries remained in place. It was simply a case of new owners, or perhaps old wine in new bottles. There was no worker control on offer. Additionally industries nationalised were mostly those that were completely run into the ground from lack of investment and the War effort.

Trying to square the circle for this bankrupt economy with social aspirations was never going to work. Joining the Korean War did not help, and by 1950 health prescription charges appeared; so much for free cradle to grave healthcare. Then there was the formation of NATO and the nuclear weapons programme. It is worth noting that Attlee signed up to the terms of the Marshall Plan which required a large measure of the regulation for business to be removed, which is quite similar to the way in which the IMF operates today. American capitalism seldom comes without large strings attached. But give them their due, the Attlee government set up a variety of welfare structures that many of the baby boomers benefited from, and endured mostly intact until the so-called 'sweeping away of socialism' under Thatcher.

Harold Wilson's first administration was 'the acceptable face of capitalism'. Wilson was elected in 1964 with a minority government and a platform called New Britain. A second election in 1966 brought a majority administration which lasted through to 1970. Nobody really claims this regime was socialism although it did do major work on social reform: education, housing, social security and workers’ rights. But ultimately the economy faltered; which led to cuts including school milk in secondary schools (that wasn’t Thatcher), dental charges, increased National Insurance deductions, benefits not linked to average wages, prescription charges being scrapped but then reintroduced, tax allowances being cut, and a doomed programme of building cheap high-rise flats. Their attempt at playing the money markets went wrong with the devaluation crises from which the government never really recovered.

The first Wilson administration can certainly lay claim to a number of major pieces of social reform, for instance the repeal of the death penalty, decriminalisation of homosexuality, changes in the law regarding divorce, abortion and race. However this is social tinkering. It is not changing the relationship of power in any meaningful way.

Harold Wilson's next regime, which led into James Callaghan's, can be termed 'the period of walking a tight rope'. The first was in a minority administration and re-election in 1974 saw a wafer thin majority of four. This meant the government was never in a particularly powerful position and effectively its five years in office were spent riding the storm of an economic recession brought about largely by the oil price hike and the bursting of the Barber boom. Again, the major impact was a series of social tinkerings: tenancy rights, improved benefits, Sex Discrimination Act, prices commission, and workers’ rights. However the government finally ground itself out in the so-called Winter of Discontent, after borrowing from the IMF (again) led to large cuts in government expenditure.

Which brings us to Tony Blair. New Labour had set out its stall as the party of capitalism when at conference Tony Blair called for the abolition of Clause Four, probably the last vestige of anything resembling socialist intent within the Labour Party structure. In 1997 there was a pledge card provided to voters which didn't offer much in terms of radical social change – which was pretty much the overall picture of the Blair administration. They promised to cut class sizes, fast track offenders, cut NHS waiting times, reduce under 25s unemployment and have tough rules for Government spending. What was on offer was a managerial approach to capitalism: we can run it better than the Tories.

So we got the minimum wage (at a very low level) and Sure Start but we also got PFIs, Iraq, the rich got richer, and corporations got much more powerful and they also paid less tax. We were told this was a new kind of economy where boom and bust was beaten for good – but this hubris crashed in the banking crisis of 2008.

Could Corbyn be any different?

Not much of a record for eleven election victories: not much socialism anywhere in the picture. Not much of a basis to think Corbyn will make a massive impact. Has he distanced himself from all that? Apart from apologies promised for Iraq (even Blair is working on that now), it sounds very much like he’s offering a Wilson Mark 2: bits of nationalisation, taxing the rich, government spending and more welfare. Even Denis Healy, a right winger, as Chancellor offered to tax the rich until their pips squeaked. Not much of that kind of talk here.

So, will it work anyway? What Labour is trying to effect is a benign and responsible capitalism: a system where they accept there is an unequal distribution of wealth and power but where the state is enabled to act as an arbitrator and redistributor thereby minimising the impact of this inequality within certain limits. This is all the while still remaining a member of all sorts of capitalist power blocks (e.g. WTO, EU) because they want to maintain global trade. So the theory must be that while the rest of the world carries on trying to lower costs and hence wages, Britain will manage to continue trading with them and somehow maintain decent wages and conditions. Presumably, this is predicated on the notion that they will somehow be able to redistribute the excessive profits of business and have lots of internationally desirable commodities and services for sale, cheaply enough to maintain Britain's position as the sixth or seventh largest economy in the world. One wonders at what point does this wonderful government start to dismantle the financial services industry which makes a huge contribution to the economy but contributes not one iota to production?

The point is if you want a bigger economy, the last thing you are going to do is start making life too difficult for big players. You have to find some way to coexist with these capitalist enterprises, which means you have to recognise their interests in one way or another. Sure, you’ll try to curtail the egregious excesses but in reality you’ll let them get on with it in some regulatory framework or another.

We have regulatory frameworks at the moment for all sorts of things: Ofwat, Ofgen, Ofcom, Ofsted, Ofrail. Accepting that these ones are charades and that Corbyn will introduce big tough ones, the problem is that governments only last five years at most. Someone else can come in later and water them down. What has been the trajectory of the NHS since inception? What was the trajectory of the nationalised industries? All have started with great aspirations and fallen under the millstone of government funding decisions. Just a little bit of prescription charging to start with and then where do we go?

Here’s the rub, then. Even if Corbyn did manage to tame the forces of capital enough to raise the economic condition of the bottom 50 percent and similarly reduce differentials in Britain, he would not really be addressing the distribution of power. Sooner or later that power would reassert itself, particularly if there was an economic downturn. What would stop the rich choosing to take their money elsewhere or to simply sit on it? To stop the investment and the trickle down supply and whatever else? Desperate not to have them do that, there would be all sorts of concessions. What would stop the large corporations, foreign and UK, simply moving their activity overseas? Unless this remains a country friendly enough to business, business will prefer to be somewhere else.

Remember the event during the Major government called Black Friday? International currency speculators bet against the pound staying in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (a precursor of the euro) and forced Britain out. Having a financial system which runs on credit and borrowing as Britain does, the government has to borrow money to make ends meet. We have seen the effects this circus can have on countries’ abilities to run themselves – Greece is a recent example. Unless your government is self-sufficient (as none is), sooner or later you’ll need to go to the money men and offer them a proposition that they like. Otherwise you will go without and their money will go to someone else.

Sad but true. The truth is that unless this whole approach is entirely rethought and scrapped for a better system, we’re onto a loser. How fortunate then that help is at hand: socialism. Abolishing money and the whole financial exchange mechanism means those who have large amounts of wealth and influence are suddenly deprived of all that power: they could make hats out of their bank notes for all the difference it would make. A system of production for use as determined democratically is the only way by which the working class can achieve emancipation. Jeremy Corbyn may look like a breath of fresh air but he’s as stale as the party he now leads.

Howard Pilott

Economics, Politics and Climate Change (2015)

From the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Damage to the environment is a major threat to the stability of human life on this planet, and moreover this is directly attributable to human activity. The truth is that we as human beings interfere with our environment – and this is not always with the most long-term awareness. From the forest clearances of the Neolithic and early Bronze Age through to the planned exploitation of the melting North Pole, we interact with this planet in a way which has a major impact on existing ecosystems. This is nothing new however – what is new is the extent to which we are now doing things which may be pushing us towards environmental tipping points and which may cause irreversible damage to the world we inhabit.

Human beings are not passively compliant with the environment. We are constantly intervening in and altering it, with profound consequences for other species. By some estimates, 140,000 species are going extinct every year, leading some to describe the modern era as the sixth great mass extinction event. We have to find some means by which we can ensure that this unavoidable interfering activity does not prejudice our continued safe existence on this planet.

Accepting that the environmental problems we face at the moment are as a result of human activity, some important questions arise. Firstly, what kind of economy and what kind of material expectations can we have that would enable us to live sustainably? Secondly, questions relating to the politics of any society that might persist in order to promote such sustainability.

A bit of biochemistry

Material consumption on this planet undertook a step change starting with the industrial revolution in Britain, powered by cheap and accessible coal. Coal is fossilised wood from the Carboniferous period. The reason why there is so much wood from this period is that when trees first appeared on the planet the particular substance which gives wood its hardness, namely lignin, was something which no animal or plant was able to digest, and therefore for many millions of years when trees fell down, there were no bacteria or microorganisms that could recycle the wood into anything else, so they just stayed there and built up generation upon generation of trees on top of each other, finally being covered up and compressed under the earth and turning after millions of years to coal.

Trees and plant life are means of storing carbon. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen, and a simple look at the chemical equation demonstrates that the carbon is missing. The carbon is trapped within the tree and when a tree decomposes or is burnt the carbon is given off and recombines with oxygen to give CO2. The Carboniferous period therefore represents a time when a huge amount of atmospheric carbon was removed and stored. This resulted in a very oxygen rich atmosphere which may in turn have allowed air breathing animals to emerge from the water. Since the dawn of the industrial revolution we have been burning fossil fuels and returning this trapped carbon to the atmosphere.

The foregoing is a quick and dirty outline of what has led us to the problem of the greenhouse effect: the atmosphere acts like glass in a greenhouse, letting in light from the sun during the day, but preventing the resulting heat from dissipating into space at night. This means that, as carbon and other greenhouse gases increase, the planet is warming up… and much of life on Earth is adapted to temperatures below those to which our global temperature appears to be heading. This should sound alarm bells. However this is simply one aspect of the corrosive impact of our activity on this planet. There is also toxicity in the air, earth and water; increasing acidification of the seas and air; degradation of our top soil and loss of drinking water. The list goes on with agrichemicals, hormones, antibiotics, radioactive waste, noise and light pollution…. Suffice to say we have arrived at a situation where we could well be on a downward slide.

Markets and short-termism

As the world has become progressively global and markets especially so, much attention has centred on the actions of ‘hot money’; hot because it doesn’t stay in your hands for very long. Large amounts of this money swoop in and out of particular markets because there is a quick kill in sight. Commodities, financial markets and stock markets, futures, all variety of assets – any of these can be prey to a sudden rush or a loss of interest by investors. Financial investment computer packages are now built to identify these and play them accordingly. These minute fluctuations can result in huge payouts for big investors and large bonuses for the guy executing the deal. It’s the casino economy in operation. This metaphor reveals much about the nature of this business, because few who enter a casino are looking to the longer term. Likewise, those who execute a split second investment decision are unlikely to be thinking about the potential impact it might have on the employees, or anyone else at all come to that. They are almost certainly not thinking about how this will play out in several months, and certainly not in years: rather grab the winnings and get out quick before something goes wrong.

Politicians of all colours repeatedly talk of ‘rebalancing’ this economy because so much of this nation’s earnings arise from exactly this kind of activity and, as the banking crisis showed, it can have its downside. However the power and attraction of City finance, of working on fine margins, of split second deals, are both too attractive and too lucrative: amongst the reasons that the greatly trumpeted market reforms amounted to not very much. Moreover these very financiers are often the funders of political parties and want those parties to reflect their interests in return for the cash donations.

But it reveals something deep about the thinking of our society; the thinking behind the throne in our society. It shows that the precept is to make money today and not think about tomorrow. And supposedly there is a theory to support it: as long as markets are free and traders can do what they want, then what happens will reflect the priorities of the active agents: supply and demand ensures that we get what we want and need. Or so we are told. But how is the future factored into this? How are the interests of our children added into the calculation? Where does their demand figure?

Viewed collectively, we are living in a great mansion where we are ripping out parts of the floor and walls to sling on the fires and are not worrying because the house has not yet fallen down. We are carrying on smoking because we haven’t developed lung cancer yet…

If you have ever looked at a set of company accounts you’ll notice that there is hardly ever anything beyond a five-year projection. Just to add to the mix, governments seldom last for more than 4-5 years. We want results, folks, and we want ‘em now: what government ever swept to power on the ticket that things will be better in 25 years?

Supplying Demand

Adam Smith is the daddy of much capitalist ideology and his view of supply and demand is seen to underpin much of the rhetoric which argues in support of the market system. However, even accepting the theory, for supply and demand to operate correctly all active agents must have perfect information: buyers must know all available options and their relative merits, and this information must be accurate and timely. However Adam Smith was writing in the days before the advent of the PR industry.

Starting in the 20^th century, the science of psychology was utilised in the cause of shaping public opinion, both spawning the PR world and heavily influencing advertising/propaganda. Welcome to the world of false consciousness writ large, a world where in the UK 98 percent of climate scientists assert the reality of human-made global warming whereas many people still think it’s a con. Perhaps as an example the fact that Exxon can offer $10k to any scientist who publicly criticises the International Panel on Climate Change shows the way they can distort the picture…

Fossil fuel companies have an amazing track record of funding genuine-sounding groups with the sole intention of spreading confusion about climate change. In the same way that tobacco companies knew the dangers of their products way before they were revealed by Richard Doll's research in the 1950s, and pharma companies suppress negative test results, so we have fossil fuel giants distorting the debate with misinformation, personal diatribes, threats of legal action, and simple lies. The problem with supply and demand is that it assumes everyone is equally able to access information; it doesn’t work if key players can tilt the playing field to their advantage. And as fossil fuel companies are in the game to make money, and as climate change information represents a threat to their money-making potential, they will use their power to damage it and deflect it; to minimise its impact on their business.

What is hard to understand about the climate change deniers is how they can reconcile their activities with the fact that they are exacerbating a problem which threatens them also, as well as their children and so forth. How can they act as if in some sense they might be able to breathe all this money they have made; or they can buy another planet to live on? If there is anything in this climate change stuff – and everyone must accept it sounds like a risk – then do they not worry about the future at all? How can they park all these potential concerns?

Naomi Klein has suggested, plausibly, that it is because they cannot conceive of a world unlike this one; and so cannot countenance the idea that it has to change. Essentially they grasp that this system and environmental degradation are synonymous but that this system is the only means to support the life style and world view they have and therefore this system of consumption must be defended at all costs, even if that involves bringing down everything with it. Like the crazed old dictators of history who would rather the entire empire collapsed than they relinquished power, these capitalist titans would rather have it all smashed to smithereens than share any of it. Classic dog in a manger attitude, but with far worse consequences: I’d rather watch it all destroyed than hand it over and become like the rest of you…

Where do we go from here

So, to summarise:

(1) Climate change (amongst other environmental threats) is happening and is a serious problem for all of us.

(2) Climate change has resulted from human activity.

(3) Capitalism by focussing on the short term is unlikely to take the longer term, and hence the environment, into account

(4) Capitalists and corporations will seek to distort the facts of the matter so they can carry on as usual

(5) Capitalists are ideologically blinkered against climate change since it exposes the dangers of capitalism as an environmental threat

What does this mean?

Firstly, that we cannot expect the problems to be solved within capitalism; all the powers tilt the opposite way. Consider the fact that this has been on the international agenda for 30 years and nothing has been achieved; emissions have increased over this period (and were only halted as an effect of the global recession). Additionally, note that the government has publicly stated that the environment must come second to the economy – but isn’t that what got us into this mess?

Secondly, we cannot believe much of what we hear in the mainstream media.

Thirdly, the agenda of all Green groups and so-called leftwing parties, who seek to change things without completely scrapping this system, is a hiding to nothing. The approach advocated by the Green Party of tough regulation is a sham. If regulation worked, wouldn’t big corporations be paying their taxes? The legal systems which govern these matters end up as the preserve of well-paid lawyers of whom the corporations have more than the governments.

Ultimately the issue of the environment is an issue of power: who has the power to determine what happens to this planet? Only in a society where we have the power to determine what can and cannot be done will we be able to stop this headlong rush to environmental devastation. That means a world of common ownership and democratic control. Anything else which anyone offers is merely using an Elastoplast to seal a volcano. Only socialism can deliver on the environment.

Howard Pilott

Socialist Meeting in Brighton: 'The Environment and Red/Green Politics' (2015)

Socialist Party Meeting

The Environment and Red/Green Politics

Speaker: Howard Pilott 

(SPGB former parliamentary candidate for the Brighton Pavilion constituency)

Tuesday, 15 September 2015

7:30pm - 9:30pm

The Brighthelm Centre (Activities Hall - Lower Ground Floor), North Road, 

Brighton BN1 1YD.

Website: SPGB

Email: spgb@worldsocialism.org

Confessions of a Baby Boomer (2015)

From the July 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

I couldn’t give a monkey’s about the inheritance tax proposal.  Not to say I have anything against Mr & Mrs Concerned – with tuition fees, housing costs, insecure employment, and poor social services (among other things). It’s a rough world out there and I can see why you’d want to do the best for your kids. I love my kids too, and I don’t want them exposed to the chill winds coming from the future. However I think the best way of future-proofing them doesn’t revolve around petty reforms like this. Unfortunately it is big picture time … or else.

As a baby boomer I’m one of the lucky ones. I and my peers grew up in a world where we were still carried on the tide of the post-war settlement which gave us a reasonably secure place to grow up in. Put aside the cold war (and the proxy third  world war being waged in Vietnam, Angola, etc) and the so-called industrial strife and there was a society which had plenty of jobs with often life-long security giving enough money to meet your needs and a little bit more; there was plenty of council housing; school places for all the children; cheap widespread public transport; predominantly free health service and not too much of a wait for treatment; free higher education with grants (remember those?). We weren’t bombarded with adverts reminding us of our inadequacies, to be solved by material acquisition or bodily adjustments.

I grew up in London where most of my friends were like me – in rented accommodation and none too affluent – and before you ask, about 50 percent  non-white UK. Learning in my first year of secondary school about pollution came as a bit of a shock to me: everything seemed fine so what a shame there was this issue. But despite the fact that it was known about in the late 60s, as we all know nothing of any significant value has been done about it; reckoning was still a long way off. The 60s and 70s, despite what the Tory rewrites of history tell you, were by comparison to today, fairly optimistic times: things did not get really dark until the 80s and Thatcher. Remember, prior to the Falklands and her magnificent PR exercise, hers was the most unpopular government that century, more unpopular than anyone else in the 70s.

Whilst I do think my parents’ generation have things to answer for, I think we possibly have more. What has happened since the 70s? An orgy of consumption, largely fuelled by debt. Surprise surprise, the wheels came off with the banking crisis. Which was then used as an excuse for a rightwing agenda that the Tories had all along: shrink the state and transfer more from the poor to the rich. But I get ahead of myself. What happened in those intervening years? I think we need to go back again, and the question is what happened since the 1945 Attlee government. The massive state welfare edifice they created came about for a number of temporally unique conditions. These include a memory of the 30s and the rise of fascism, both amongst the workers and the rich; a very powerful state able to enact massive change; a disposition of states to spend money; in England at least a cabinet-in-waiting who were able to plan everything in advance of office. Here’s the chance to create a ‘capitalism with an acceptable face’, and whilst I would argue that in fact they did not, nonetheless they created a society which gave us an attenuated version of it: some of the harsh corners had been blunted. Allied to this fact was the existence of the USSR which plainly offered an alternative view of the world; our society couldn’t be that rough as otherwise it might encourage the serfs to go over to the other side.

Reforming capitalism doesn’t work because you haven’t changed the power base. Sooner or later the power of money will reassert itself and this gradually happened over the next 35 years, although it was disguised by the economic growth associated with peacetime expansion and record defence spending. But even in the 70s differentials were not that great. I even recall the Tories arguing that the top rate of tax should be cut because high top rates meant that senior staff asked for greater pay rises as they saw less of it… (as history shows us, cutting the top rate in fact led to the explosion of top pay – greed once allowed knows no bounds, eh?). Labour’s ‘In Place of Strife’, and Heath’s Industrial Relations Act started to erode labour power, i.e. reassert the power of business. Then the Barber boom, leading to the start of the property market boom, and the IMF bail-out, slashing public sector spending – as ever with the IMF –, together with the nationalised industries withering on the vine of bad management and planning, and the clock is going backwards.

Enter Mrs Thatcher with her crusade of sweeping away the ‘nanny state’ and any vestiges of ‘socialism’ – the markets were let off the leash – and how many millions unemployed? The unemployed paid the price; the start of the increasing transfer of wealth from poor to rich and the creation of a large sub-working class. More importantly perhaps was the PR-isation of everything: selling the message that great wealth was nothing to be ashamed of, and poverty was to be sneered at – recall Lord Young: the homeless were something you trod on when you came out of the opera? A return to the Victorian values you can read about in Jayne Eyre and Hard Times.

And just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, the fall of the USSR. Don’t get me wrong I was not a fan: Leninism is a blind alley, as elites breed elites. However it was an alternative of sorts. When it was deservedly placed on the ash heap of history we get Fukuyama and the End of History; the triumph of capitalism… and then all restraint went. Hello debt-fuelled consumer-driven turbo capitalism replete with uber-rich movers and shakers at Davos and Bilderberg and their agents at WTO and GATT and IMF. Well there was never any such thing as society anyway, eh? Everyone for themselves. Spend, spend, spend and get, get, get: that’s the societal mores – the more you get the more you are. (Funny how I have never seen written on an epitaph ‘he had lots of stuff’ or ‘she was soooo wealthy’).

I quite liked the world I grew up in; I felt a kinship with most people I knew. Somehow that seems to have gone. People now seem to come together despite rather than because of the system, often in opposition to it. Game shows, celebs and loads of stuff; junk food and booze and legal highs; porn and more porn and endless pap on the multi-channel TV – 57 channels and nothing on, Springsteen said correctly. Zero hours contracts; poverty wages; housing crisis; student debts; most expensive rail fares in Europe; 4hrs+ waits in A&E; mis-selling PPI, worthless private pensions, and selling your own house to pay for your elderly care. And then there’s the environment.

This is the inheritance that matters; a dysfunctional world which is heading for an environmental disaster; where because of the power of big corporation PR, despite the overwhelming majority of those in the know agreeing about climate change, many of the public – perhaps even a majority – think it’s a con. The sea is become too acidic, our soil denuded of vital nutrients, our world in all senses becoming all used up and wrecked. Also we’re running out of clean water. The thing that tells you all you need to know is that when the North Pole melts due to climate change, instead of that being the alarm bell getting us to stop, business wants to dig it up for oil. Big business will only worry about things when it impacts on profits: the movers and shakers are so ideologically blinkered that they would rather the whole thing came down than they surrendered their power or changed courses - if they think about it at all. Probably too busy enjoying the fruits of enormous wealth.

So let’s stop for a moment and reflect (not popular I know). If you are really worried about your legacy to your children, a bit less tax here or there is tangible and looks nice but you are being sold a pup. With the magnitude of the storm coming their way, it is going to be of slight comfort. If however you reject this entire social structure – if you look to a socialist alternative – you might be bequeathing something of real value to your children and future generations.

Howard Pilott

Party News: Our Election Campaign (2015)

From the June 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the first time since 1997 we fielded more than a single token candidate in a general election. In 1997 it was 5; this time it was 10. Although this was not enough to qualify for a Party Election Broadcast (a party needs over 100 for that) it was enough, at least for the BBC, to grant us a couple of five-minute interviews on the BBC2 Daily Politics Show and on the BBC Parliament channel, respectively at:

At this stage the main purpose of us contesting elections is to put the socialist case to more people than usual as well as to build up and consolidate socialist activity in and around the places contested. A total of a half-million leaflets were distributed, mainly free by Royal Mail, in the ten constituencies. In addition, local members and sympathisers held street stalls, took part in hustings (sometimes attended by over 200 people), wrote to and were interviewed by the local press and radio. A new feature was the number of emails from pressure groups, from 38 Degrees in particular. This provided an audience of self-selected participants. 3000 or so email replies must have been sent (the modern equivalent, and not so time consuming, of knocking on doors).

In terms of votes, these confirmed that only about 1 in a thousand are prepared to vote for socialism. Over 300 in a thousand were not prepared to vote for any of the capitalist parties, no doubt largely because they knew from experience that it would make no difference to their daily life.

Scrap Capitalism (2014)

From the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is time to forever scrap forever this cock-eyed system that takes from the poor and  gives to the rich; that preaches austerity for the 95 percent whilst the elite get yet richer; where millionaire leaders shed crocodile tears over poverty as they live in luxury. Somehow it has been sold to us that this is usual – moreover it is the only way to organise society, and it is good and healthy. You could not make it up.

We could share all the world. Scrap capitalism, abolish the monetary system and suddenly the playing field is not so uneven. We will not have achieved utopia but many of the idiocies of the current system will have gone: life will not be quite so problematic. No longer would the accountant who finds havens for the rich to hide their wealth to avoid tax earn a thousand times more than the carers looking after the health of your old aunt – because there would no longer be wages. No more wages slavery, just imagine. You’d be able to do what you do and be able to take what you need.

You will no doubt be told it’s mad and totally unachievable. But think what would have been said about the internet or triple heart bypass surgery 50 years ago. Human beings are incredibly intelligent – just look at how much and how quickly we can achieve things when we set our minds to it – and we in the Socialist Party are simply saying the world can be organised in a more intelligent way. It cannot be seen as either intelligent or necessary that most of the wealth of the world is given to so few.

All the other parties offer you some variant of what we have already – possibly a few more checks and balances. Sadly history shows that, whatever the government, the rich come out on top. We are here to say it need not be like this.

Howard Pilott