Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the September 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money may not grow on trees, but according to Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), it appears to be growing exceptionally well for a tiny fraction of Americans. In a recent post on X, Sanders renewed his long-running criticism of wealth concentration in the U.S. ‘Never before have we had so much income inequality’, he wrote. ‘Last year, the bottom 50% saw their income go down by $27, on average, while the top 0.01% gained $2.9 million’, Sanders continued. ‘And the top 0.001%? They saw their income go up by $20 million. In a single year. “Yes. We must tax the rich,”’ 

[Yahoo]

‘“Democratic Socialist” is to the Communist what “National Socialist” was to the Nazi’, reality TV star and former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt [sic] posted on X. 

[Fox News]

Zinn expressed the source of his motivations. ‘I’m worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel – let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they’re doing’, he said. ‘I’m concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that’s handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers’. 

[Portside]

… Petrograd’s local Soviet government and Bolshevik Party organizations struggled to implement the Bolshevik Party program, fight domestic and foreign counterrevolutionaries, quiet labor unrest, and provide food, fuel, and education to the local population. The methods and strategies used by the government and party organizations to organize public life and fight enemies, domestic and foreign, not only preserved the infant Soviet regime but proved to be the first manifestation of what would become the one-party authoritarian Soviet political system. 

[The Bolsheviks Survive. Petrograd 1919. By Alexander Rabinowitch]

We emphasized, with Marx, that the proletarian revolution is not only necessary to overthrow capitalist rule but also to change the proletarians, so that they become fit to transform the world. Through the experience of prolonged collective struggle and being forced to reinvent their social practices to survive, proletarians throw off ‘the muck of ages’ as Marx put it, the weight of capitalist and pre-capitalist ideology and practices. Fredo thinks it is utopian to put that much ‘faith in revolutionary transformation of attitudes’. But isn’t it utopian to think that the revolution can succeed without attitudes and social practices being thoroughly transformed? 

[Internationalist Perspective]

The fear of acting incorrectly, of causing harm, or of being criticized by others can become politically paralyzing. One interviewee captured this dynamic succinctly when she explained that she would rather refrain from acting than risk doing something wrong. Such statements reveal an important contradiction. The ethical demand to act responsibly can, under certain conditions, undermine political action itself. This is not because ethical concerns are inherently conservative. Nor is it because criticism lacks political value. The problem is rather that individualized responsibility offers a weak response to problems that are fundamentally collective.

[Jacobin]

(These links are provided for information, target sites don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Voice From the Back: A Society of contrasts (2008)

The Voice From the Back column from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Society of contrasts

Everywhere you look today the contradictions of capitalism become more and more obvious. Great wealth alongside great poverty, starvation amidst plenty and a technology that makes space travel possible yet is unable to stop the destruction of war. Two recent examples of the obscenity of capitalism leapt from the pages of the media recently. “Caviar House & Prunier, on Piccadilly, has taken delivery of the Almas, a rare golden caviar once reserved for the Tsars of Russia. Despite the price – £920 for limited edition 50g tins – the shop claims a four-year waiting list.” (Times, 19 August) “The price of rat meat has quadrupled in Cambodia this year as inflation has put other meat beyond the reach of poor people, officials said on Wednesday. With consumer price inflation at 37 percent according to the latest central bank estimate, demand has pushed a kilogram of rat meat up to around 5,000 riel (69 pence) from 1,200 riel last year.” (Yahoo News, 27 August) Does this system not disgust you? We must abolish it.

Marx and modernity

Away back in 1867 Karl Marx in Das Capital explained how the so-called primitive accumulation of capital was based on robbery and murder. In Peru today a similar process is taking place. In Britain we had the highland clearances and the enclosure acts, in Peru it is the expulsion of the indigenous population. “Peru is considering sending in the army to break up protests by Amazonian Indians who claim the government is preparing a massive land grab in the country’s remote jungles. … The government has responded to an appeal for talks by declaring a state of emergency in three states and threatening protesters with military action. “Indigenous people are defending themselves against government aggression,” said an Amazon Indian rights campaigner, Alberto Pizango. “This is not an ordinary or everyday demonstration. The Indians have told us they are not afraid. If the government declares a state of emergency they prefer to die there and show that this government violates human rights.” Relations between indigenous groups and the President Alan Garcia have become increasingly hostile as the government has sought to exploit what are thought to be rich oil and gas deposits in lands owned by Amazon Indians. Energy companies have pushed deep into supposedly protected areas in the past year, leading to clashes with some of the most remote tribal peoples left in the world.” (Independent, 21 August)

US gap widens

Socialists often meet with the argument that while capitalism may have been a terrible system in the past, with the awful gap between rich and poor, today we are gradually improving things and such inequalities no longer exists. So what do the anti-socialists make of these recent statistics? “The rich-poor gap also widened with the nation’s top one percent now collecting 23 percent of total income, the biggest disparity since 1928, according to the Economic Policy Institute. One side statistic supplied by the IRS: there are now 47,000 Americans worth $20 million or more, an all-time high.” (San Francisco Chronicle, 2 September) Eighty years of reform and now the gap is even wider.

Behind the rhetoric

Capitalist statesmen often speak of high ideals like freedom and democracy but behind the high-sounding rhetoric there is usually a harsh reality. A recent example was the US vice-president’s speech in Georgia. “Speaking in Georgia on Thursday, Cheney slammed Russia’s “illegitimate, unilateral attempt” to redraw the country’s borders and promised ongoing support for Georgia’s efforts to join NATO. The Vice President’s trip was accompanied by a $1 billion aid package announced in Washington Wednesday, for the purpose of rebuilding Georgia’s shattered economy and infrastructure. Upon arriving in Azerbaijan on Wednesday, Cheney told the people of that country and their neighbors in Georgia and Ukraine that “the United States has a deep and abiding interest in your well-being and security”.” Fine words indeed, but behind them was a more sordid reason than concern for the well-being of the Georgian citizens. “Vice President Dick Cheney, on a tour of former Soviet Republics, was working to shore up U.S. alliances in the wake of Russia’s military humiliation of Georgia – a mission whose outcome could have profound consequences for Washington’s efforts to maintain and expand the flow of oil and natural gas to the West while bypassing Russia. ” (Time, 4 September)

The Indian Rupee trick 

Many Asian countries are depicted as “third-world” where an undeveloped economy leaves millions starving, but here is an example of an Indian capitalist who has learned the trick of exploiting workers to make a fortune.” Vijay Mallya, the founder and chairman of fast-growing Kingfisher Airlines, launched his first international route yesterday linking Heathrow with India’s IT capital Bangalore – a daily service that puts the carrier in head-to-head competition with BA. …The father-of-three, ranked 476th in Fortune’s list of the world’s wealthiest people, has 26 homes around the world and 260 vintage cars. He made his fortune as chairman of Indian drinks group United Breweries, the Kingfisher-beer owner that last year acquired Scotch whisky maker Whyte & Mackay for £595m.” (Daily Telegraph, 5 September)

Cooking the Books: Corbyn’s crumbs of comfort (2025)

The Cooking the Books column from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘We will only fix the crises in our society with a mass redistribution of wealth and power. That means taxing the very richest in our society’, tweeted Corbyn on 24 July announcing the launch of a new political party.

That sounds radical but a ‘mass’ redistribution of wealth is not the same as a ‘massive’ redistribution, only a redistribution to some mass of people. Interpreted literally, it would mean that some of the wealth of the very richest is to be taken from them through taxation and distributed amongst a large number of individuals. Let us say from the top 1 percent to those in the bottom 50 percent.

According to the Office for National Statistics, ‘In the April 2020 to March 2022 period, the wealthiest 1% of households held 10% of all household wealth in Great Britain, which was the same as the proportion held by the least wealthy 50% of households combined’.

The wealth tax proposed by former Labour leader Neil (now Lord) Kinnock and others of 2 percent of wealth holdings of over £10 million has been estimated to raise £24 billion a year. The total number of households in the UK is about 28 million, so 50 percent is 14 million. £24 billion divided by 14 million is about £1,714 (£33 a week) per household. No doubt a welcome amount for the families concerned but hardly enough to bring about any permanent improvement in their condition. Even if it is used to improve services rather than as a cash payment, £24 billion divided amongst 14 million is not going to be able to provide much of an improvement.

But perhaps the ‘mass’ that is to benefit from this redistribution is not to be as large as that. In an article in the Guardian (30 July) introducing the new party, Corbyn wrote that one of its policies would be to make ‘the wealthiest in society pay a bit more in tax to ensure that everyone should live in dignity’. About 20 percent of the population are considered to live in poverty. If the £24 billion were to be divided only amongst the bottom 20 percent, some 5.6 million, the amount per household would be £4,286, or an extra £82.42 a week. This would certainly help but whether it would be enough to allow them to live in dignity is another matter.

The original tweet went on to say the ‘mass redistribution of wealth and power’ intended to ‘fix the crises in our society’ would mean ‘bring[ing] energy, water, rail and mail into public ownership’. But what about the rest of production? Seemingly that is to rest in private capitalist hands, so the ‘our society’ the new party is talking about is present-day capitalist society of minority class ownership and production for profit.

Creating an egalitarian society through a redistribution of wealth within capitalism is a pipe-dream as it goes against the logic of the system. Capitalism is based on a minority owning the means of wealth production and on these being used to generate profits that are accumulated as more wealth for the owners. Inequality of wealth ownership and the tendency for the wealthy to get wealthier are built into the system.

Attempting to counter this will mean that the new party will end up being a mere party of protest, spending its time criticising the government for not doing what it ‘demands’ and ‘resisting’ when the workings of the capitalist economy force the government to make things worse.

Shall We Work Harder? (1909)

From the August 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. W. H. Lever, M.P., writing in the Anti-Socialist says,

“The more consideration I give to the aims and objects of the Socialists the more I am confirmed in my opinion that Socialism cannot possibly achieve social betterment and increased social happiness.

“Whatever poverty we have to-day is entirely due to the fact that the world is not producing sufficient commodities to satisfy the world’s requirements. Not until we have a greater production of all that goes to make for social well-being shall we have a more even distribution of social well-being and comforts and less poverty.”

Now to see if poverty is due to an insufficiency of wealth to meet the world’s requirements.

Mr. Chiozza Money informs us in his “Riches and Poverty” that the annual aggregate income of the United Kingdom amounts to, roughly, £1,700,000,000 or £40 per head of the population, or, assuming that each family on the average consists of five persons, £200 per family.

But is the annual income so distributed that each family receives £200 per annum, or a proportionate sum according to its number ? The answer is obvious to any member of the working class. About half the wealth produced (and corresponding income), or £830,000,000, is taken by about 1 million persons, each with an income of over £160 or, again assuming that each of these persons is the head of a family of live we get 5 million people, while the other half, or £880,000,000, is taken by 38 million persons, all of whom are in receipt of less than £160 per family yearly. But if we extend our investigation a little further we shall find that 1,250,000 persons enjoy an aggregate annual income of £585,000,000. At one end of the social ladder we have ”one third of our population living on the verge of hunger,” while at the other end we have 250,000 persons, or with their dependents, 1,250,000 persons, enjoying an aggregate income of about £450 per head or £2,250 per family.

Yet Mr. “Millionaire” Lever informs us that he is of the opinion that we must first increase the amount of material wealth before we can “achieve increased social betterment.” 

Increase the means of wealth production to any extent you like and it can be shown that the workers would be where they are to-day—in poverty. (An instance is recorded in our issue of March last under the heading “A Cutting Cutting” where a surplus of textile products provided a splendid opportunity for a lock-out of the operatives and a little more starvation.) The introduction of new and cheaper methods of production, and therefore, means of producing wealth in greater abundance, to-day only results in the throwing out of employment many of the workers engaged in the particular industry in which the new methods are introduced, an increase in the army of the unemployed, greater poverty and misery for the workers. True, a reduction in the time necessary for the production of the necessaries of life means the cheapening of the cost of living ; but a fall in the cost of living results in the cheapening of the production and maintenance of the worker. The continued and enhanced competition of the workers for jobs soon reduces wages to the new cost of subsistence, while a decrease in wages results in the increased exploitation of the worker, a greater amount of surplus-value or profit for the employers, and an even greater disparity between the two classes. So then, while the means of production and distribution remain in the hands of a small section of the community, any new inventions that may arise to lessen the time necessary for the production of wealth only results in increased affluence and luxury for the few while the great bulk of the people remain in a perpetual state of poverty.

Not until the whole of the means and implements of production and distribution are owned and controlled by, and in the interest of, the entire community, will the great mass of the people enjoy the advantages that accrue from an improvement in the means of wealth production. Then, and not until then, will every new invention be hailed as an advantage to all, either to reduce the collective labour of the community or to increase the comforts and opportunities of its members.

If then, it is possible to produce sufficient wealth to satisfy the requirements of the whole community under the present wasteful competitive system, how much more within the bounds of possibility will it be under a system where competition for existence will be entirely eliminated and where industry will be so organised that only that labour which is absolutely necessary for the production of wealth will be expended, where the large army of people now engaged in the advertising trade, as travellers, policemen, soldiers, man-‘o-warsmen, workhouse officials, flunkeys, judges, lawyers, clerks, priests, and a host of others would be employed in useful, productive labour. These trades and professions arise out of and are necessary under a system based upon the private monopoly of the means of life, and will disappear with their transformation from private to social property.

Mr. Lever continues “The natural order of social progress must inevitably be first to produce material comfort, followed by intellectual, moral and social advancement.” It is something for a member of the capitalist class to recognise the necessity for satisfying the material wants and requirements of the community before any improvement in the intellectual and moral status of the people can be effected. When the means of decent living are assured to all, then and only then will the great mass of the people be elevated from the physical, intellectual and moral enslavement in which they are enveloped to-day. The means of life can only be assured to the whole of society by the demolition of Capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. This can be achieved when the workers get to understand their true class position, see the necessity for the change and determine to emancipate themselves from the slavery in which they exist to-day, brush aside the idea that “Socialism will not come in our time,” and realise the fact that as soon as the workers, who outnumber the other class by about eight to one, understand and determine to have Socialism, they will get it. As the late Lord Salisbury once said, “Nothing can go against the voice of the people.”

So then, join the S.P.G.B. immediately you understand and agree with its principles, and make one more pillar in the foundation of the Socialist Republic.

H. A. Young

Material World: Poverty and taxing the rich (2024)

The Material World column from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Oxfam regularly publishes reports about global poverty. Its most recent one points to how ‘the richest 1% have more wealth than the bottom 95% of the world’s population put together’. It accuses the ‘ultra wealthy and powerful corporations of tax dodging and exercising monopoly control of important products such as Covid vaccines to increase profitability’. As a result, it goes on, the pandemic has resulted in the emergence of at least 40 new vaccine billionaires. The charity complains that its efforts to reduce world poverty are being undermined by large corporations and the ultra-rich who, with their control over the global economy, are responsible for exacerbating problems like extreme inequality and climate change. In an interview with the Voice of America (VOA) radio network, Nabil Ahmed, director of economic and racial justice at Oxfam America, states: ‘The wealth of the world’s five richest men has doubled since the start of this decade. And nearly five billion people have got poorer’.

So what does this report, as well as others produced by Oxfam, advocate to tackle the problems it carefully documents and makes public? As often before, Oxfam puts emphasis on what it calls ‘fair taxes’. To be precise, it calls for ‘fairer taxation of large corporations and the ultra-wealthy’. In his VOA interview, Nabil Ahmed is quoted as saying: ‘We live in a world in which mega-corporations are paying next to or little to no tax’. They are, he says, ‘shaping the rules in their favour … at the expense of ordinary people’ and ‘fuelling inequality within and between countries’. He argues that governments should ‘claw back’ revenues from the rich ‘to be able to invest in their people, to be able to meet their rights’.

Superficially such an approach may seem sensible and desirable, and the Oxfam report praises a campaign proposed by Brazil’s government in favour of a 2 percent minimum tax on the world’s richest billionaires. This, it claims would raise up to $250 billion from around 3,000 individuals and would pay for food, healthcare, education and tackling climate change. However, this fails to consider several crucial factors. First of all, any ‘extra’ taxation money raised by governments from their capitalist class is just as likely to be used to pay off state debt as to help workers or to ease climate change. Then, more importantly, it will always be impossible for governments collectively to agree to universal tax levies, largely because they will all be looking to carry out their duty of encouraging ‘growth’ in their own country at the expense of other states and of supporting their own capitalist class at the expense of others. Nor is the capitalist system as a whole controlled by individual governments or by governments collectively, and disagreements easily break out between them as they seek to defend their own ‘patch’ in the world of competition and profit – something we see happening in many places right now.

It is no surprise, therefore, that, while the Brazil proposal apparently has the support of some countries, for example South Africa, France and Spain, it is opposed by others, including the United States, whose treasury secretary Janet Yellen stated at a G20 meeting last July: ‘Tax policy is very difficult to coordinate globally and we don’t see a need or really think it’s desirable to try to negotiate a global agreement on that’. So a solution along the lines suggested by Oxfam to tax the mega-rich and cancel debt burdens seems in fact little more than a well-meaning pipe dream.

And we can also see that, since the 1980s, when Oxfam changed its approach from being a mere money-collector to putting a lot more effort and resources into trying to offer explanations (if not always well founded) as to the causes of world hunger and deprivation, not a great deal has changed. Oxfam continues to devote considerable time and effort into proposing what it sees as explanations for the ills afflicting society, but, unfortunately, it still can’t come up with viable remedies. This is not for want of trying but because it fails to pinpoint the fundamental cause of those ills, which is that, in the system we live under, profit will in the end always trump need. And governments, no matter what their intentions, can never remedy that, since they are the system’s servants not its masters.

What is needed is a switch in perception, a new consciousness, not by the super-rich or governments but by the majority of those who have to sell our energies for a wage or salary – ie, most of us. This is a switch that will enable humanity as a whole to see the necessity of organising things differently, of using the resources of the whole planet sanely and rationally and in the interests of all its inhabitants – on the basis, that is, of a classless, worldwide society without frontiers which produces goods and services cooperatively and solely for human need not profit.

Howard Moss

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard 

… a tiny minority of about 0.6 percent of the population, own 45 percent of the country’s total wealth. For workers… the situation in Germany, is becoming increasingly precarious. 

(WSWS)

… support for Hezbollah — as well as opposition to it — still fall primarily along sectarian lines. Polling by The Washington Institute late last year found that 34% of Sunni Muslims and 29% of Christians expressed a positive view of Hezbollah, while 93% of Shias said they approved of the group. 

(NBC)

As he watches the world go by each day from the shade of his porch in southern Havana, Ramone Monteagudo, 72, a retired history teacher, has a front-row seat for the wreckage… Now flies swarm over a sea of rubbish in the sticky heat. He watches some of his poorer neighbors — who until a few years ago had enough to eat — pick leftover food out of the rot. ‘When it comes to food and medicine, we’re living through an extraordinarily difficult situation’. 

(Truthdig)

It was done for the Viet Cong in numerous countries during the US involvement in Vietnam. It was done for the African National Congress (ANC). It was done for the Irish Revolutionary (sic) Army (IRA). Across the United States, Europe and Australasia, all three organisations, demonised as terrorist outfits, received tacit, symbolic support from protestors. In some cases, support was genuine and pecuniary. Now, the Lebanese Shia militant and political group Hezbollah, designated a terrorist organisation in a number of Western states, has inspired flag holders to appear at protests against the expanding conflict in Gaza and Lebanon.

(Dissident Voice)

Saudi Arabia has executed 213 people so far in 2024, more than it has in any other calendar year on record, as the kingdom competes for a seat at the UN Human Rights Council. 

(Middle East Eye)

‘. . . The ratepayers’ association and the ANC led municipality are working together to evict poor black people, to destroy our homes and communities. They say that our presence reduces the value of the land, as if value is just a question of the price of the land and has nothing to do with the value of land for the human beings who live on it. They say that we must be removed because we are a health hazard as we must use the bush to relieve ourselves whereas the obvious solution to the lack of sanitation is to provide sanitation. They say that we are ‘chasing tourists away’. The strong element of racism driving all this is often openly displayed on the social media used by the white residents of the gated communities. The black elites who live in the gated communities are silent about this racism”.

(Dissident Voice)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

The Rich get Richer (1995)

From the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite John Major's claim that it is his aim to create a classless society there is hardly a day goes by without new revelations coming to light concerning the fact that capitalism in Britain is as class-divided as ever between the rich and the poor.

Two recent publications confirm the inequality in the ownership of capital that is the basis of capitalism. The first is the 1995 edition of Social Trends, an official government publication. The second is the report on Income and Wealth published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The Rowntree Report is mainly about the distribution of income but it contains a chapter on the distribution of wealth based on recent research as well as on government statistics.

The part on inequality in the distribution of income demolishes the misleading view put forward by the Tories (but not just by them) that because real incomes rose by 36 percent between 1979 and 1992 this meant that everybody became better off by that amount over the period. When the figure is broken down into income groups it becomes clear that only the top 30 percent had an increase of 36 percent or more; the great bulk of people didn't get this; 50 percent got less than this, 10 percent got no increase at all. while the bottom 10 percent ended up worse off in real terms, i.e. their standard of living actually fell; they had less to consume. Given these figures even the capitalist press was obliged to talk of the “rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer”.

When it comes to the distribution of wealth the first problem is the definition of “wealth”. There are at least four different definitions used by the government: (1) "marketable wealth”, or assets owned by persons that can be sold or cashed in; (2) "marketable wealth less value of dwellings”, which takes the value of privately-owned houses and flats out of the first figure; (3) marketable wealth plus the notional capitalised value of people’s accrued occupational pension rights, and (4) marketable wealth plus the notional capitalised value of both occupational and state pension rights.

The last two of these—sometimes called “personal wealth”—are quite useless as it is invalid to regard future pension rights as a capital sum belonging to the pensioner. These rights are not marketable and so this sum is entirely notional as far as the individual is concerned; they can't sell it or bequeath it. As far as they are concerned it isn’t part of their wealth, so it doesn’t make sense to say that they own it. All they have is the right to be paid a pension, which is what a pension right is and nothing more.

The absurdity of converting the legal right to an income into a notional lump sum which the person concerned is then said to own can be seen by looking at “income support" The law lays down that everybody has the right to have their income made up to a certain minimum level; if they have no other income then they have the right to be paid an income from the state equal to this level. Yet nobody has suggested that a person’s income support should be converted into a notional capital sum and attributed to them as their wealth. The absurdity of doing this is so obvious; these people are destitute, they have no wealth; that’s why the state has to pay them something. But there’s no difference in principle between a pension right and the right to income support. What is absurd in the one case is just as absurd in the other.

Adding notional sums for pension rights to the real assets that "marketable wealth” represents distorts the figures completely and makes people appear much richer than they actually are. For instance, a table in the Rowntree Report (Figure 50) shows that in 1992 total marketable wealth amounted to £1,689 billion. When a notional capital sum for pension rights and another for secure tenancies at below market rents are added the figure for “total wealth" increases to £3,325 billion, i.e. nearly doubles.

What this means is that nearly half of total so-called personal wealth is fictional as far as the persons who are supposed to own it are concerned. It has no real existence for them.

In fact most of it has no real existence at all since there are no real assets in the economy that correspond to it. It is true that this doesn’t apply to funded pension schemes but their value is only about a third of the value of the capitalised pension rights attributed to individuals in these government statistics and, in any event, it makes more sense to see the really-existing assets these funds represent as belonging to the employer who set up the scheme rather than to the future pensioners.

The way these false figures distort the facts can easily be demonstrated. The bottom half of adults own between them only 8 percent of marketable wealth, or an average of about £600 each. When all the fictional, non-marketable “wealth” is added their percentage share rises to 17 percent of a figure nearly twice as big. This increases their average “wealth”-holding to around £2,500. Suddenly, by the stroke of the statistician’s pen, they can be portrayed as more than four times wealthier than they actually are. It's all a nonsense but it is easy to see the political motivation behind it.

Wealth and capital

The only meaningful figures for the distribution of wealth are the first two: those showing the concentration of personal marketable assets and those showing this minus the value of houses and flats. The difference between these two can be seen from table 5.23 in the 1995 edition of Social Trends which gives the provisional figures for 1992:

For some purposes, the first column is valid—to show how much personal property individuals actually possess whether they invest it or whether they are consuming it. But, for demonstrating the inequality that is at the basis of capitalism, the second column is the more valid since socialists contend that capitalism is based on the inequality of ownership of wealth that provides an unearned income (i.e. on wealth that is invested as capital) rather than of all wealth, some of which is used for consumption (as are most houses).

What the second column shows is that the top 1 percent (less than half-a-million individuals) own nearly five times as much income-providing assets as the bottom 50 percent (some 22 million people). And that the top 5 percent own more (53%) than the bottom 95 percent (47%). Or, put differently, that out of every 20 people one of them owns more than the other 19 added together.

These figures haven’t changed much since 1976. If anything the rich have got richer, relatively as well as absolutely. In 1976 the top 5 percent owned 47%; they now own 53%; while the share of the bottom 50 percent has fallen from 12% to 6%.

Actually, even this second column doesn’t give the true picture of the inequality of capital ownership since it is only concerned with capital that is personally owned, i.e. that is attributable to individuals. An appreciable amount of capital, however, cannot be attributed to identifiable individuals as individuals; it is owned collectively as by the government, by trusts and by pension funds; it also includes any part of the assets of companies that is not attributable to shareholders.

This non-personal capital is equally part of total capital and when taken into account reduces the share of capital owned by the bottom 95 percent of the population. Capitalism really is based on their exclusion from the ownership and control of all but negligible amounts of capital.

How poor are you?

Just how negligible can be seen from a revealing 1994 study, quoted by the Rowntree Report, by three researchers based on data obtained by the 1991-2 Financial Research Survey carried out by National Opinion Polls (The Distribution of Wealth in the UK, James Barker, Andrew Dinot and Hamish Low, Institute of Fiscal Studies Commentary No 45, 1994). This shows (Figure 54) just how few financial assets most people own:

This means, as the Rowntree Report put it, that “half of all families had financial assets of less than £500 in a 1991-2 survey, and 90 percent less than £8,000”. This certainly puts things into perspective. Most people only receive trivial amounts of unearned income since their holdings of financial assets are so small.

Owning or buying your house and having an extra £10,000 - £15,000 invested somewhere is probably the height of most people’s ambition (though only a few of them are going to attain it, and then only within ten years of their deaths). But it is still not enough to get you into the top 5 percent and, if you are below pension age, it is certainly not enough to allow you to live on your unearned income and so free you from the necessity to seek an employer.

The income from an investment of £15,000 (which is the upper limit for the bottom 95 percent of the population) might top up your income if you’re retired but it’s only peanuts as far as those on the top 1 percent are concerned. There the lower limit is £36,801 and the upper limit is the sky, as the latest Sunday Times's (14 May) list of "Britain’s Richest 500" shows. Number One on the list are the Rausing brothers owning £4,000 millions-worth of wealth, followed by the Sainsbury family with £2,520 million. Fourth is the Duke of Westminster with £1,500 million. Mrs Windsor is seventeenth with a mere £450 million.

Adam Buick

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The gap between rich and poor has widened particularly in countries that have become more integrated into the global economy, such as China, Russia and some Eastern European countries…. ‘The influence of globalization on income inequalities worldwide was greater than we had expected’, summarizes Valentin Lang, junior professor of International Political Economy at the University of Mannheim and author of the study. ’We were particularly surprised that these differences were mainly due to the gains of the richest and that the lower income groups benefited little or not at all’. 

(ZeroHedge)

Still, over the years the men have been re-considering many of the customs they took for granted in their youth. This includes even female genital mutilation – which is practiced on daughters as a rite of passage. ‘We’ve noticed that it makes our girls weak’, says Lengees. With hindsight, Lengees says he wishes he could have traded his past Moran life for an education. ‘Look at this phone my children gave me’, says Lengees, holding it out. ‘I only know how to press this button to answer it if someone is calling me. I can’t even call out.’ Being illiterate, he says, ‘is like being a deaf person. You don’t understand the language people are using. It’s like you’re not even fully in the world’. 

(NPR)

….Topham noted how the Smurfs live in a Kibbutz-like farming community and rely on self-sufficient methods of means and production. Moreover, the Smurfs coexist happily without using money, sacrificing themselves for the greater good of the community.

(Movieweb)

‘New study in Nature confirms that if we want to avoid the next pandemic—we should stop destroying biodiversity, heating, and polluting the planet’, Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, who leads the World Health Organization’s climate change unit and was not involved with the study, wrote on social media. ‘Just one more reason to go for a greener, healthier future’.

(Common Dreams)

Salman Rushdie says free Palestinian state would be ‘Taliban-like'.

(Middle East Eye)

‘Millions of children across the country do not have anywhere safe and decent to call home. These children are living without space to study, play or even have a good night’s sleep; while their parents struggle to afford essentials like food and clothes’. 

(wsws.org,)

It is a system driven not by human needs and wants, but by the pursuit of profit that has no end. This system has only been around for a few hundred years. But in that short time it has reshaped the world with new technologies, infrastructures and innovations. This has given us the potential to truly meet the needs of everyone, to give everyone a life of freedom and fulfilment. 

(Communist Future)

The US government is currently considering a reclassification of Vietnam under the US Tariff Law as a “market economy,” which would provide Vietnam major economic benefits, even though Vietnam does not satisfy basic labor rights standards. 

(Human Rights Watch)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Limitarianism (2024)

Book Review from the April 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Enough. Why It’s Time to Abolish the Super-Rich. By Luke Hildyard. Pluto Press. 2024

Luke Hildyard, director of the think-tank the High Pay Centre, shows that the super-rich (the top 1 percent) don’t need most of their income and refutes all the arguments that they deserve it all. He also shows that, if they were reduced to being merely rich (a maximum income of £187,000 a year), then there would be enough money available for other uses, in particular improving the standard of living of others. This, he says, could be done both by redistribution (taxation) and by what he calls ‘pre-distribution’ (preventing too much income going to them in the first place). An average figure of around £2,500 a year per adult for everyone else is floated at one point. The money is definitely there but could it be diverted in the way he wants?

He favours the money going mostly to those currently with the lowest incomes. In fact, he sees the amount available being enough to ‘eliminate poverty pay at a stroke’. This would be done by raising the minimum wage, which, by reducing profits, would prevent so much income flowing to the super-rich.

But that’s not how the capitalist system works. It runs on profits and any reduction in profits would reduce the incentive and the amount to invest and risk proving an economic slowdown if not a recession. On the other hand, the aim of capitalist production is not the consumption of the rich owners of productive resources. It is the accumulation of profits as more and more capital invested for profit. In this sense, a disproportionate amount of profits going to the super-rich to spend on a personal super-luxurious lifestyle (yachts, private jets, bunkers, 40-bedroom mansions, lavish parties, etc) is a drag on capital accumulation. This in fact is what Hildyard argues in chapter 3 on ‘The Economic Case for Equality’, though a better title would have been ‘The Capitalist Case for Less Income Inequality’ since that’s what in effect he is arguing for.

Two other ‘pre-distributive’ measures that he advocates are worker-directors and profit-sharing. He thinks that workers on the board is likely to mean less exorbitant executive salaries. Maybe, but that wouldn’t mean that the money saved would go to increase wages. Profit-sharing is a snare which, besides tying workers to their employers, also means that they have an unpredictable income from year to year rather than a secure contracted amount.

As to the money raised by taxing the consumption income of the super-rich, this could in theory be used to provide improved public services and amenities but, capitalism not being geared to meeting people’s needs, is more likely to be used to reduce taxes on businesses or spent on capitalist priorities such as the armed forces.

Capitalism is based on the exclusion of the vast majority of the population from the ownership of productive resources, thereby obliging them to get a living by working for the tiny minority which does own them. Inequality in the ownership of productive resources is thus built into the system. This results in inequality in incomes too since profits are shared by a small number, giving each a high income. As capital accumulates, through the reinvestment under the pressure of competition of most profits, so does the wealth and income of the owners. The tendency, then, is for the rich as a whole to get richer. Reformist measures to redistribute wealth and income are up against this tendency which wins out in the long run.

Despite its naive reformism, the book is very readable and, as you would expect from the director of a think-tank devoted full-time to the issue, is well researched and referenced and so a useful source of information on the inequality of income and wealth ownership built into capitalism.

Adam Buick

Cooking the Books: Capitalism: whose bonanza? (2024)

The Cooking the Books column from the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Few ideas are more unshakable than the notion that the rich keep getting richer while ordinary folks fall ever further behind. The belief that capitalism is rigged to benefit the wealthy and punish the workers has shaped how millions view the world, whom they vote for and whom they shake their fists at.’ 

So began the editorial in the Economist, 30 November.

The editorial went on to argue against this view by saying that the facts showed that income inequality, in the sense of the ‘wage gap’ between the lowest paid and the highest paid workers has not increased and that it is likely to decrease in coming years, describing this as a ‘blue-collar bonanza’. But this is a sleight of hand as it leaves out the incomes of the few who enjoy a privileged, non-work income from owning means of production.

Of course the owners keep getting richer. That is what the capitalist system is all about. It’s about money being invested in production with a view to making a profit. Competitive pressures ensure that most profit is re-invested in further production for profit. So capital accumulates and those who possess what it is invested in come to own more; they get richer. So, yes, capitalism is rigged — structurally determined — to benefit the wealthy as a class, however the proceeds might be divided amongst them.

Does capitalism ‘punish the workers’? Yes, though that’s a novel way of putting it. The source of profit is what wage-workers produce over and above what it costs them to produce and maintain their working skills. A part of what they produce is kept by their employer and subsequently divided into various privileged non-work incomes. In other words, they are economically exploited. Which could be described as a punishment. In any event, it’s a built-in part of the capitalist economic system.

But does the gap between the lower and higher paid workers have to increase? There is nothing built into capitalism that means it should. Wage differentials exist because the different kinds of working skills that workers sell command a different price, due both to their different costs of production and maintenance and to the varying demand for them. Sometimes the gap increases. Sometimes it decreases. Sometimes it stays the same. It depends on the job structure and labour market conditions in any period.

The editorial itself gives a good example of how changing labour market conditions can affect wage differentials:

‘At the end of the 20th century the information revolution vastly increased the demand for college graduates with brains and computing skills. From Wall Street to Walmart these stars were put to work transforming how firms did business, making use of new tools including email and spreadsheets. By the mid-2010s, however, the revolution had matured and the college wage premium began to shrink. In 2015 the average rich-world worker with a bachelor’s degree or more was paid two-thirds more than the average high-school leaver; four years later, the gap had narrowed to a half.’

At the same time there is a labour shortage for certain manual jobs. But will this really amount to a bonanza for blue-collar workers or just the prospect of a modest increase in wages due to their being in a better bargaining position? And what about the other section of the wage-working class that is losing out? It could just amount to no more than a redistribution within the broad working class. In any event, it doesn’t put an end to workers’ economic exploitation for profit. Meanwhile capitalism remains a bonanza for those who own the means of living.

Pieces Together: Pay Up or Burn Down (2010)

The Pieces Together column from the December 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pay Up or Burn Down                                          

“A small rural community in western Tennessee is outraged and the fire chief is nursing a black eye after firefighters stood by and watched a mobile home burn to the ground because the homeowner hadn’t paid a $75 municipal fee. South Fulton city firefighters – equipped with trucks, hoses and other firefighting equipment – didn’t intervene to save Gene Cranick’s doublewide trailer home when it caught fire last week. But they did arrive on the scene to protect the house of a neighbor, who had paid his fire subscription fee. ‘I just forgot to pay my $75,’ said Cranick.  ‘I did it last year, the year before. … It slipped my mind.’ Later that day, Cranick’s son Timothy went to the fire station to complain, and punched the fire chief in the face.” (AOL News, 6 October)

The Rich Get Richer                                           

“The shift of income to the top has occurred in the most prosperous English-speaking nations, such as Australia, Britain, and Canada. But it has been most pronounced in the United States. Thirty years ago, the richest 1 percent of Americans got 9 percent of total national income. By 2007, they had 23 percent. Last year, new census data show, the rich-poor income gap was the widest on record. Wealth is more unevenly distributed. The top 20 percent of wealth-holders own 84 percent of America’s wealth.” (Christian Science Monitor, 18 October)

Capital Gains

“The bosses of Britain’s largest companies are enjoying lavish pay rises despite the wobbly economic recovery, with most of the surge in rewards coming from long-term incentive schemes and gains from share options. The chief executives of FTSE 100 companies have seen their pay surge by 55% in a year, according to a report released yesterday by research group Incomes Data Services (IDS), while across the top 350 listed companies, total board pay rose by an average of 45%.” (Guardian, 29 October)

Situations Vacant                                          

“In Baltimore this weekend more than a hundred Roman Catholic bishops and priests gathered to discuss a skills shortage within their congregation; it seems there are simply not enough exorcists. Just as US industry has suffered a lack of engineers, the number of men capable of casting out demons has declined, even as demand for their services has increased. In parts of the country they are now harder to find than a good plumber.” (Times, 15 November)

Voice From The Back: Same old story (2003)

The Voice From The Back Column from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Same old story

The announcement that R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings, the makers of Camel cigarettes, is to cut 2,600 jobs – close to half its workforce – has come as a great shock to the town of Winston-Salem in North Carolina. Between 1,600 and 1,700 of the jobs are in the town. Bad news for the shareholders? Well, no, not really. “The company shocked Wall Street yesterday morning as it unveiled the plan to cut 40 percent of its workforce, although traders welcomed the prospect of cost-cutting and marked the shares 12 per cent higher to $38.24 by midday” (Times 18 September).

The rich get richer

One of the myths expounded by apologists for capitalism is that there are no longer classes in society and that poverty is gradually disappearing. According to the BBC News Online (25 September) the exact opposite seems to be occurring in the USA. “The gap between rich and poor in America is the widest in 70 years, according to a new study published by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. The research, based on newly released figures from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, shows that the top one percent of Americans – who earn an average of $862,000 each after tax (or $1.3 m before tax) – receive more money than the 110m Americans in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution, whose income averages $21,350 each year. The income going to the richest one percent has gone up threefold in real terms in the past twenty years, while the income of the poorest 40 percent went up by a more modest 11 percent.”

Spare parts for sale

Everything inside capitalism takes the form of a commodity, so it should come as no surprise to learn that there is a brisk trade in desperately poor people selling their kidneys. The going price paid to young people in eastern Europe for one kidney is $2,500 to $3,000 and patients receiving the kidneys have paid between $100,000 and $200,000 for a transplant. “John Dark, a transplant surgeon at the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle, said it was difficult to draw a moral difference between the physical harm inflicted on someone paid for a kidney or paid to work in a Third World sweat shop . . . An impoverished man trying to support his family by selling his kidney is no different to putting in shifts down a diamond mine. Society has moved on from where paying for harm was unthinkable. We do it every day when we buy a pair of trainers” (Independent, 30 September).

Compassionate Tories

The Conservative Party at present are going through a crisis as they try to cobble together a series of reforms that might prove popular at the next election. They are making noises about being a caring, compassionate party, so it is interesting to see what one of the delegates to last month’s Tory conference had to say. “Mr Metcalfe, who has ambitions of becoming a Tory MP at the next election, received a rousing ovation when he insisted the way to combat crime was to make it not worth the price. He told the conference: “make prison a genuine punishment. Bring back solitary confinement, take away their TVs and snooker tables and let them earn privileges.” And there was more, “Bring back birching for young tearaways that terrorise council estates and vandalise graveyards, castrate paedophiles and bring back hanging” (Herald, 8 October). Phew, some caring – some compassion.

War aims

Mr Bush was very clear what the US war aims were in Iraq – topple the wicked dictator – build a prosperous democracy – and 100 percent foreign ownership of many of the state’s resources. Wait a minute, you don’t remember the third aim? Neither do we, but it seems that third aim is going to be realised long before the second one. “Controversial plans to privatise all of Iraq’s non-oil assets have been attacked by Nobel-prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz . . . The laws approved by the Coalition Provisional chief Paul Bremer, allow 100 percent foreign ownership of all state assets apart from natural resources. Trade tariffs and taxes have also been slashed, and the Central Bank of Iraq has been made operationally independent. `This is an extreme version of Republican ideology,` said Stiglitz. ‘Of course it is nothing we would do at home (US), because we’re actually quite protectionist`” (Observer, 12 October).

Voice From The Back: The rich get richer (2005)

The Voice From The Back Column from the November 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The rich get richer

"The US's richest tycoons increased their personal wealth in the past year, with the top 400 worth $1.13 trillion (£640bn), says Forbes magazine.... To make this year's list of the top 400 fortunes in the US a minimum net worth of $900m was required — up from $750m last year." (BBC News, 23 September) The old popular song "Aint We Got Fun" cynically stated "The rich get rich and the poor get children", but it is no laughing matter.

Your two cents worth

An analysis of the gap between the rich and poor in Manhattan by Dr Beveridge of the City University of New York is revealing. "Income Disparity in City Matches Namibia. Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue is only about 60 blocks from the Wagner Houses, a public housing project in East Harlem, but they might as well be light years apart. They epitomise the highest and lowest earning tracts in Manhattan, where the disparity between rich and poor is now greater than any county in the country. . . .  The top fifth of earners in Manhattan make 52 times what the lowest fifth make — $365,826 compared with $7,047 — roughly comparable to the income disparity in Namibia. . . .  Put another way, for every dollar made by households in the top fifth of Manhattan earners, households in the bottom fifth made about 2 cents." (New York Times, 17 September)

Big Spender

"The minute he walked in the joint, they could tell he was a real big spender. . . .  By the time he left the Aviva bar in the five-star Baglioni Hotel in Kensington,West London, on Thursday night, he had spent nearly £36,000. He bought 851 cocktails, emptied the place of Louis Roederer Cristal champagne, and gave a waitress a £3,000 tip. (Times, 1 October) This hedge fund manager from New York spent £16,500 on champagne and £6,000 on a variety of cocktails. It can be safely assumed this high-roller does not live in the Wagner housing project in East Harlem.

Doublethink

According to George Orwell in 1984, doublethink is the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. This spectacular mental gymnastic feat seems to have been accomplished by Karen Hughes, a public relations spokesperson for President Bush in her recent trip to the Middle East. Trying to sugar the pill for her Turkish listeners she came out with this classic of Doublespeak. "To preserve peace, sometimes my country believes war is necessary." (Observer, 2 October)

Progressing backwards

Some years ago the press and TV was full of conjecture about the wonderful leisure-based life we would have inside capitalism. Futurologists and other media pundits speculated that with the advance of technology we would all be working fewer hours and fewer days per week. The big problem of the future would be how to spend all our leisure hours. Such scenarios have proven completely wrong with many of us now working longer hours and now it seems probably working for many more years. "The state pension age should be raised to 70, the Confederation of British Industry says in light of new figures detailing extended life expectancy." (Times, 4 October)

The dignity of labour

In an edited extract from Maxwell's Fall: An Insider's Account by Roy Greenslade we learn something of the contempt the owning class feel for the working class. When Maxwell took over The Daily Mirror he wanted to speak to Kelvin MacKenzie then the editor of The Sun but his secretary reported that MacKenzie would not accept his call. "Maxwell demanded that the secretary relate the conversation in full, but she was hesitant. "No, no, no," screamed Maxwell. "Tell me everything he said." She said she would prefer not to, but Maxwell shouted: "You will not get into trouble, Patricia. But if you refuse, you will be in trouble. "Well, Mr Maxwell, he said, "I don't want to speak to the fat Czech bastard." Two weeks later Patricia left in tears, escorted from the building by a security man (Times, 6 October).

The decline of religion

It used to be an argument of supporters of capitalism that socialism was impossible because of the working class's adherence to religion. A recent article by the columnist Magnus Linklater seems to give the lie to that notion. "Whereas in 1851 between 40 and 60 per cent of the population went regularly to church, today that figure is less than 7 per cent. In recent years the trend has accelerated — by 28 per cent in the last 20 years for the Catholic Church, and 24 per cent for the Anglican Church; in Scotland, the fall has been so dramatic that the once all-powerful Kirk reported recently that it could well be extinct as an organisation within the next 50 years." (Times, 13 October) Any other arguments against socialism?

Some publications: Riches and Poverty. (1906)

Book Review from the March 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

Riches and Poverty, by L. C. Chiozza Money, 5/- nett.

A valuable book. A very valuable book—up to a point. A most effective arrangement of startling figures. An armoury of facts for the propagandist,—facts which the Socialist can use to most excellent purpose. A really splendid compilation of comparative tables so clearly set out that the wayfaring man, though a fool, can see he is being robbed. But the wayfaring man will not see the figures unless they are extracted for him and reproduced in some cheaper publication. The book is too dear.

That is the first criticism we have to offer. Its price puts it out of the range of the possibilities of the purse of that portion of the proletariat who purchase such publications for perusal.

The second criticism is that the book is only valuable up to a point. That point is reached where the tables leave off. After that point the book is still interesting as showing how close a man can sail to the Socialist position without being forced to concede that nothing short of Socialism can suffice to effect that change in the distribution of wealth which Mr. Money desires; as shewing how a man may cut the ground clean from under him and yet proceed apparently indifferent to the fact that he is dancing upon nothing. Mr. Money’s work frequently conveys the same impression. It is as though he sets out with the best of intentions determined that he will not again be baulked in his purpose ; determined to argue his case logically from effect to cause and to put his findings upon record, only to find that a something or somebody lies in wait within that radius which marks the utmost limit of the area over which the capitalist scribe may operate, to prevent his further advance and by the exercise of a power against which he has never apparently prevailed, to turn him back by a painfully circuitous course to the point from which he started. What that something is may be a matter of conjecture—to some. Those unfamiliar with his work might ascribe it to Mr. Money’s lack of knowledge. But we do not share that view. Whatever else it may be it is not ignorance. But it is always successful in its endeavours to head Mr. Money off.

And so it comes about that having compiled valuable data for the Socialist, having given an excellent summary of the national balance sheet and, which is almost equally valuable, shewn how he has arrived at his figures for the different items, having formulated an unanswerable indictment of the present system and made quite clear—by inference—that the system is absolutely rotten at its base and that things as they are can only be materially improved by the destruction of the foundations and the erection of an entirely new social edifice upon a new foundation,—having done this he peters out in a recital of petty-fogging and miserably inadequate proposals, none of which go down to root causes and all of which when realised would, therefore, hardly make any appreciable impression upon the problems they were designed to solve.

The consideration of these proposals occupy one half the book. They are not valuable suggestions. They are not new. They may all be found in the programmes of the many reform organisations whose existence and whose work operate so disastrously to the confusion of the working-class mind. Our concern is for a clear working-class mind. The working class must understand their position and the reasons why that position is so hazardous and unhappy. Because the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class themselves. And if they are inveigled into the belief that Mr. Money’s “remedial” measures matter, they are led into a mental bog from which they must extricate themselves before they can organise their strength for the overthrow of the system which causes their misery. While they are doing that they are wasting time and expending their force uselessly.

Therefore, while gladly admitting the value of Mr. Money’s statistics, we consider the last half of his work highly mischievous. He should issue it in two volumes—the statistical part for sale at a few pence; the other part at a few pounds. We make him a present of the suggestion and hope he will act upon it.

A. J. M. Gray

Voice From The Back: The Inequalities Of Capitalism (2006)

The Voice From The Back Column from the October 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Inequalities Of Capitalism

A good example of the class division in modern society can be seen when we look at the wealth of the top 0.1 percent of the population in the USA. “An analysis by David Cay Johnston in the New York Times found that the average annual inflation-adjusted income of this group increased by 2.5 times, to $3 million (£1.6 million), from 1980 to 2002. The average net worth of those on the Forbes 400 list has mushroomed in the past 20 years, rising from $390 million (£206 million) to $2.8 billion (£1.48 billion)” (Times, 17 August).  As for you and your family, “inflation adjusted” how are you doing? A little less than $3 million this year I would imagine.

Pardon Our French

Nothing sums up capitalism better than the article that appeared in the Observer Magazine (27 August) when dealing with the former member of the Workers Revolutionary Party John Bird, who it describes as an entrepreneur. We think this might mean con man but we never went to French classes. This enterprising person may be more familiar to you as the owner of the magazine The Big Issue – yes the one you bought because you felt sorry for the lady outside the bus station.

Here is the owner of that magazine on the homeless and how he feels about it. “Fifty years ago a homeless person wasn’t allowed to sleep rough or beg. They’d get a menial job but they were part of society. Nowadays they pay nothing. They are infantilised. And it costs us £60,000 to keep each one of them in that state.” We must go to French classes. Perhaps entrepreneur really means “arrogant owning class bastard.”

Exploitation

It is a basic premise of socialists that all wealth that is produced inside modern capitalism is the product of the working class and that the capitalist class live off the surplus value that the working class produce. Now we have such pillars of capitalist society as the Observer and Reuters agreeing with us. “The 20 largest quoted companies in the UK make an average of over £96,000 pre-tax profit per employee, according to research carried out by the Observer. … BG, formerly British Gas, made by far the most – approximately £445,000 ..” (Observer, 27 August). Are you understanding these figures? On average your employer cons you out of more than £1,800 a week and in the case of BG over £8,000 a week. Why aren’t you a socialist? Are you a shareholder in BG?

The American Dream

There is a popular misconception about that as the USA is the world’s most developed capitalist country and the most productive the American workers must be well off. A recent report from the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute shows that this is not true.

“Adjusted for inflation, average wages in the US are now lower than they were in 2000 – so the benefits of the rapid increases in productivity . . .  are not being passed to the workers. In fact, as the New York Times reported last week, official figures show that wages and salaries now make up the smallest part of GDP since records began in 1947 . . .  In 1965, CEOs earned 24 times more than the average worker; by 2005 it was 262 times. . . . The top 20 per cent of asset-holders now control 85 per cent of all America’s wealth.” (Observer, 3 September)

Bones of Contention

The National Museum of Kenya is to reopen next year after extensive renovations. It will feature a special exhibit The Origins Of Man which will display the key fossil finds of Africa’s Great Rift Valley – considered by many to be the cradle of humanity. All round celebrations locally, you may imagine. Not a bit of it. “It’s creating a big weapon against Christians that’s killing our faith,” said Bishop Boniface Adoyo, who is leading the hide-the-bones-campaign.” (Observer, 10 September). This individual is chairman of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya, which claims to represent churches of 35 denominations with 9 million members. No surprise there, he is carrying on the long tradition of Christian suppression of scientific enquiry.

 

Big Brother Is Watching You

George Orwell’s 1984 was a dystopia where every move of the worker was monitored, but Orwell’s nightmare has arrived. “Learn that truth, and learn it well; what you do at work is the boss’s business. Xora and SurfControl are just some of the new technologies that have sprung up in the past two years peddling products and services – software, GPS video and phone surveillance, even investigators – that let managers get to know you really well. The worst mole sits right on your desk. Your computer can be rigged to lock down work files, restrict Web searches and flag e-mailed jokes about the CEO’s wife. ‘Virtually nothing you do at work on your computer can’t be monitored’, says Jeremy Gruber, legal director of the US National Workrights Institute, which advocates work place privacy” (Time, 11 September). The article goes on to quantify how widespread this snooping is. 76 percent of employers watch your use of the Web, 36 percent track the content and time spent on the keyboard. 38 percent hire staff to sift through your e-mail and 38 percent have fired workers over the last 12 months for misuse of the email.

Globalisation – what does it mean? (2006)

From the September 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

The second part of our article analysing capitalist globalisation. Last month we looked at how this affected capital. This month we examine its impact on the world’s population at large

The continuing surge in globalisation has had profound human and social effects on vast numbers of people, the fundamental nature of these effects depending on their class position in society, i.e. whether they are capitalists or workers. On the one hand the opportunities for the capitalist class to accumulate wealth has increased multilaterally with, for example, politicians and civil servants in the poorer states quite happy to find the funding for trade fairs, economic surveys, development studies, and visits by heads of state in an effort to increase the profits of that class from the global market.

On the other hand this global frenzy is resulting in upheaval for whole communities, while the transition from rural to urban living is in turn altering human geography radically with rural areas either becoming human deserts or concentrated industrial sprawl. Likewise most global housing areas resemble one another to such an extent that even the shantytowns are becoming uniform in the type of building materials used.

When these social transformations are combined with factors like the increasing mobility of labour – mobility from the peasantry to the modernity of wage slavery – they come with well known costs for the disempowered majority: misery, destitution, family breakdown and homelessness. The most visible aspects of this are to be seen with thousands of families living on the streets of Calcutta, or those families forced to scrape an existence by living on a waste tip in San Paulo, or perhaps a PhD from Addis Ababa University driving a cab in New York city, let alone those staffing a call centre in New Delhi alongside a wall full of useless diplomas.

Such potential human resources being wasted to further the interests of profit maximisation cannot but have an impact on rising social expectations and aspirations. These then come into conflict with people’s sense of achievement. Consequently, we are witnessing a sharp rise in the incidence of mental health problems. And the resulting increase in cases of anxiety, depression, insomnia, mood swings and stress, are to be evidenced in the packed waiting areas of the mental health clinics, along with the expanding appointments for the services of psychotherapists. Add this to the overcrowded waiting lists for the physically sick in the developed and developing countries and many global health services there are in crisis management mode.

Inequality

Whilst this human tragedy unfolds our political masters are still chanting the mantra that some of the wealth created will eventually ‘trickle down’ to those 2.8 billion people living on less than $2 a day and also to those 1.3 billion living in even more extreme poverty. Unable to solve the problem of absolute and relative poverty, the global politicians have now agreed in their misguided wisdom to try and tackle the problems and issues of extreme poverty only. By this they mean those 1.3 billion people who have to their cost found that the system of wage slavery holds no guarantees of the provision of a living wage, and subsequently finding it impossible to exist on less than a dollar a day. And where the material difference between relative, absolute and, and if you so wish extreme poverty, is so profoundly stark that it creates a sense of inevitability and disempowerment, it is invariably accompanied by disillusionment. This is especially so in cultural terms, with millions being forced from the rural poverty of subsistence living into becoming a landless peasant within an urban environment dominated by the tyranny of wages and surrounded by the advertising of mass consumerism.

The WHO, UN, World Bank, and Jubilee 2000 have reported many of the indicators of global inequality in recent years, and summarised they are:

• One-fifth of the world’s population is living in extreme poverty.
• 100 million children live or work on the street.
• Half the world’s population are lacking access to the most essential medicines.
• The combined wealth of the world’s 200 richest people reached $1 trillion in 1999; the combined income of 582 million living in the 43 least developed countries is $146b.
• 70 per cent of the world’s poor and two thirds of the worlds illiterate are women.
• An estimated 827.5m people are undernourished. Of which 647m, or over one third (37 percent) consist of the world’s children.
• More than 30,000 children die each day from easily preventable diseases.
• The top fifth own 86 per cent of the world’s wealth, while the lowest fifth own just one per cent.
• The wealth of the world’s three wealthiest billionaires is more than that of the GNP of all the least developing countries and their 600 million people.
• When Argentina defaulted on its debts, 300,000 people were forced to live off the garbage dumps surrounding the city of Buenos Aires.
• The number of people living in extreme poverty has actually risen by 28m.

Yet it is not only developing and undeveloped countries who are experiencing issues of inequality; even in the major developed countries, like the US, income inequality is now on the increase with one report claiming: 

“The gap between rich and poor in America is the widest in 70 years, according to a new study published by the Center for the Budget and Policy Priorities The research, based on newly released figures from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, shows that the top 1 percent of Americans – who earn an average of $862,000 each after tax (or $1.3m before tax) – receive more money than the 110m Americans in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution, whose income averages $21,350 each year. The income going to the richest 1 percent has gone threefold in real terms in the past twenty years, while the income of the poorest 40 percent went up by a more modest 11 percent” (BBC News Online, 25 September, 2003 : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3138232.stm ).

Much the same picture is painted in the UK with the figures from the National Statistics Office and Inland Revenue for 2002/3 showing that the richest 5 percent owned 43 percent of the wealth, while the poorest 50 percent owned just 6 percent; similarly the top 2.4m households owned assets worth around £1,300b, while the bottom 12m owned assets of around £150m. Also according to a Policy Institute report last year, 22 percent of the UK population are still living below the poverty line, including 3.8m children (or 30 percent of all children), 2.2m pensioners, and 6.6m working age adults.

In effect a total of 12.6m people in the UK population are confronted with higher mortality; lower education outcomes; less decent homes; and financial exclusion, due to surviving on, or below 60 percent of median income after housing costs.

On a much more local scale the Child Poverty Action Group revealed in their publication ‘Poverty – the Facts (5th edition)’ that over 80 percent of the children living in the Townhill district of Swansea were defined as poor; benefits make up a larger proportion of total income in Wales than in England or Scotland, with a higher proportion of children living in households claiming income support – 18.9 percent – compared to the UK-wide figure of 13.5 percent; and 32 percent of pensioners in Inner London were affected by income poverty, and children in London are even worse off than those in Wales with 24 percent of households in receipt of income support, or other means tested benefits.

Socialist Outlook

These are just some of the facts and figures that are considered normal to the modern workings of capitalism. They help to serve the purpose of illustrating that the globalisation of capitalism has masked a growing polarisation both within and between countries and that local circumstances are merely a reflection of the global situation where ‘trickle-down’ economics has in reality turned into a flood of inequality, destitution and instability. This confirms what Marxists have consistently stated that the prosperity for the few is dependant on the deprivation of the many. Indeed, despite the huge amounts of abundant wealth created by workers within capitalism, the system is incapable of accounting for the fact that the cases of millions of people dying through malnourishment, or because they lack clean water, adequate shelter, and health care is on the increase. This alone serves as a damning confirmation that there hasn’t been any fundamental shift in the ownership of wealth. It also reaffirms our position that this state of affairs is likely to continue, besides endorsing the contention that the capitalist class will use either system of trading – protectionism or free trade – when it suits their purpose to accumulate wealth.

Failure to grasp the revolutionary challenge this analysis poses has led to the formation of the anti-globalisation protest movement which campaigns on the issues of extreme poverty, world debt and the adoption of protectionist measures for those developing and undeveloped countries who have found that the reality of ‘free trade’ only applies primarily to the G8 nations. Whilst there is no denying that such campaigns have made tremendous strides in highlighting the effects of globalisation, when it comes to outlining proposals for viable alternatives to capitalism, their mindset is locked onto the belief that a ‘fairer’ global society is possible within the framework of capitalism.

Their main tactic is to bring mass protest to bear on politicians and on institutions like the G8, WTO, IMF and World Bank, despite the fact that such a mindset of working towards a ‘fairer’ global society has a long history of failure, based as it is on the false assumption that capitalism can be made to work in the interest of all – rich and poor alike.

Although the effects of globalisation with the human suffering it brings can lead to bleak and negative conclusions about the future, it is also possible to draw different conclusions, ones that are far more positive and meaningful. For what comes out of this rather gloomy picture is the certainty that capitalism has outlived its usefulness as a progressive mode of production. For it reached its early retirement at the turn of the 20th Century – once it had established itself as a global system consisting of integrated and interdependent productive units. As soon as it reached this point it had fulfilled its purpose and turned into a global monster of uncontrollable destructiveness.

With capitalism failing to deliver for the majority it has become more obvious that now is the time to move on to a system of common ownership that is capable of meeting the self-defined needs of the great majority and not just the interests of a wealthy minority. In order to attain such a system of free access an essential prerequisite is for a majority of the global working class to reach an understanding that their sense of social achievement can only be fulfilled by becoming conscious in class terms that capitalism can never be made to operate in their interests. Once they have reached this revolutionary conclusion – and only then – will capitalism lose its basis of support and be replaced by socialism.

Brian Johnson