Tiny Tips (2026)

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

Global real worker pay fell 12 percent while real CEO pay surged 54 percent between 2019 and 2025. At least four CEOs of major corporations each pocketed over $100 million in pay and bonuses last year. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan led the pack at over $205 million. Billionaires were paid $2,500 per second in dividends in 2025. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and Oxfam are calling for urgent action to rein in extreme wealth, including higher, fairer taxes on the richest and binding limits on CEO pay.

[Common Dreams]

In 2011, he spent 81 days detained in China for criticizing the government following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in which 90,000 people died. Ai Weiwei worked with hundreds of anonymous volunteers to identify and publish the names of more than 5,000 children who died under the rubble of poorly constructed schools, information that the government sought to censor. 

[El Pais]

…. the Housing and Land Rights Network, have argued that the real numbers are significantly higher and estimate at 3 million…Shelters, where available, are frequently inadequate, overcrowded, unsanitary, unsafe for women, or located far from work opportunities. Instead of treating shelter as a right linked to dignity, many city administrations treat it as temporary charity. During mega-events such as the Commonwealth Games 2010 or the G20 Summit gatherings hosted in India, homeless people are often subjected to eviction drives in the name of beautification. Pavements are cleared, encampments removed, and poverty hidden so that cities may appear modern to visitors.

[Countercurrents]

The right to life in Kenya is often treated as if it begins at conception and ends at birth. As in much of the world, self-described ‘pro-lifers’ claim to defend life at all costs – yet too often stop short of defending the lives already being lived, and those cut short too early.

[openDemocracy]

…the central question of his book, which is built around a concept Marx called ‘disposable time’—the time left over after workers have completed the labor necessary to sustain themselves and their families. Marx traced this idea back to an obscure 1821 pamphlet he discovered in the British Museum, in which the author argued that a nation’s true wealth lies not in gold or goods but in free time: ‘Wealth is disposable time, and nothing more’.

[People’s World]

The communist revolution, if it arrives in the nick of time to prevent humankind’s suicide, is a seismic event that changes everything. It is difficult to imagine it but it will leave nothing untouched. People will change. In the heat of the struggle for survival, proletarians will come together and become the self-conscious collective worker, which he/she already was but didn’t know it. All human relationships (between producers, family members, men-women, young-old, teachers-students and more) change in the process. The entire way in which society reproduces itself changes. Work changes. It no longer means labor.

[Internationalist Perspective]

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

Notes by the Way: This Millionaire Business (1948)

The Notes by the Way Column from the May 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

This Millionaire Business

Mr. Bernard Harris, of the Sunday Express, is worried because under Labour Government (he calls it “Socialism”) “you have no chance to-day of starting a business in Britain which will make you a millionaire before you die.” (Sunday Express, April 11th, 1948.) It seems that the harvest of millionaires has been falling for generations so that to-day “there are only 244 millionaires in Britain. They are the people with incomes of £50,000 a year or more.”

Mr. Harris does not go so far as to say that there will be no new millionaires, but he fears they won’t be hard-working lads like their fathers, but will become millionaires the easy way, “by inheritance or out-and-out speculation.”

“The self-made millionaire, in the sense of the man who has created a vast business from small beginnings, is a fast disappearing species. And he is the only valuable kind.”

He quotes an unnamed jam millionaire who was asked 50 years ago “to give 12 rules for making a million,” and replied, “Repeat ‘hard work’ 12 times.”

So the good millionaires make their money by hard work, and the other millionaires are not good ones. This leads to some curious conclusions. Lord Derby, who died in February last, left property valued at £1,937,838 (Evening Standard, April 8th, 1948), but though he inherited his estates and therefore does not fall into Mr. Harris’s group of valuable millionaires, we do not recall that the Sunday Express ever condemned him as an example of a no-good rich man. Nor did Lord Derby think it of himself. When he was Tory Postmaster-General in 1905 it was the postmen whom he thought were no good. He had nasty things to say about some of them who were trying to work up electoral opposition to him and other M.P.s because, after a Committee appointed by the Government had recommended increases of pay, the Government would not carry out the whole of the recommendations. Lord Derby called the postmen blackmailers and bloodsuckers though later he withdrew the “bloodsuckers” when he found what a storm of criticism it produced The postmen, most of them earning probably between 25s. and 30s. a week, were certainly hard-working— their employer saw to that—but it never got them anywhere.

Mr. Harris also tells us that “there were the Wills, of tobacco fame. Eleven members of that family have died since 1909 leaving a total of £38,000,000 between them.”

In November last Sir William Churchman, a director of the Imperial Tobacco Co. and partner in Churchman’s, died worth £1,102,719. (Evening Standard, 7/2/48).

These ladies and gentlemen got their wealth out of business, in the way Mr. Harris approves but if hard work is the explanation one wonders why the hard-working cigarette makers never get into the millionaire group like their employers.

The truth is, of course, that all great fortunes, whether inherited or acquired during the owner’s lifetime, came out of the unpaid labour of the working class.

* * *

The Garibaldi Communists

When Communists fight elections it is on the principle that no dishonesty is barred provided it gets votes. In Italy, according to a correspondent of the Sunday Express (11/4/48), they are appealing to patriotic sentiment.

“The Red Flag is nowhere to be seen; no hammer and sickle signs disfigure the walls. With a lack of scruple that takes the breath away they proclaim Garibaldi their hero. His head appears on most of their posters.”

However, it seems that Garibaldi’s 81-year-old daughter is still alive and she objects to Communists “hiding behind her father’s picture.”

“Her father,” she said, “never approved of Communism.” “It was founded by a German (Marx) who always hated Garibaldi.” (Daily Mail, 12/4/48.)

* * *

“Freedom of the Press” in Russia

In Russia no political party is legal except the Communist Party and no publication is permitted that opposes the Communist Party. At the United Nations Conference at Geneva on 29th March, 1948, an American delegate, Mr. Harry Martin, president of the American Newspaper Guild, was challenged to produce proof of his statement that in Russia the press is controlled by the Government. According to a Reuter and Associated Press report Manchester Guardian, 30/3/48) he did so by reading out the Statute which in 1931 gave control of publications to a State organisation known as “Gavlit.”

“It authorised the Gavlit administration to forbid the publication of any works containing ‘agitation and propaganda against the Soviet authority and the dictatorship of the proletariat.’ It entrusted Gavlit with ‘preliminary and subsequent control over published literature both from the political-ideological and from the military and economic viewpoints,’ and authorised confiscation of disapproved publications and the prosecution of persons ‘violating the demands of Gavlit, its organs and authorised representatives’.” (Manchester Guardian 30/3/48.)

The News Chronicle's own correspondent at Geneva reported that although the Russian delegate addressed the Conference after the above had been quoted “he made no reference to Mr. Martin’s quotation.” (News Chronicle, 30/3/48.)

* * *

Japan’s the Friend, not China

Honor Tracy, correspondent in Japan of the Observer, reports that American policy has taken a new turn. “Under this policy Japanese economy is to be restored as quickly as possible, with liberal American help, in the hope of creating better conditions, not only in Japan herself but in the Far East as a whole. Japan is thus to become ‘the workshop of Asia’ as she has always claimed is her proper function.” (Observer, 11/4/48.)

The Report continues :

“Travellers returning to Tokyo from China report . . . indignation that the proposed grants and loans to Japan during the present year should be so much greater than what is being offered to China. The American view, on the other hand, is that China is now disintegrating so fast as to make outside help ineffective.”

It looks as if the “brave Eastern allies” in next war may be the Japs, while China qualifies for the position of a horrid dictatorship.

* * *

Lancashire’s Exports

Mr. Harold Wilson, President of the Board of Trade, speaking in London on 9th April, 1948, referred to the struggle to find markets abroad for textiles. “Although the problem of production of textiles this year’ is going to be the biggest problem this country has ever faced, the problem of selling them is going to be even greater, particularly in face of the enormous import restrictions in three-quarters of the trading world. We have put strong diplomatic pressure on every country which is imposing restrictions against us and we have in our various trade negotiations made it a cardinal point to try to open the market wherever possible …” (Manchester Guardian, 10/4/48.)

One of Lancashire’s competitors is Japan and another is U.S.A. Mr. Ewing, Chairman of the Bradford Dyers’ Association, according to a Manchester Guardian report of a speech, “was worried about Japanese competition. Exports of Japanese cotton textiles increased rapidly during 1947 and were equal to three-quarters of Lancashire’s trade. The United States was also developing export trade. Mr. Ewing therefore stressed the need for quality and inventiveness.” (Manchester Guardian, 12/4/48.)

In the meantime, while Japan fights to sell more textiles outside Japan, U.S.A. to sell more textiles outside U.S.A., and Britain to sell more outside Britain, the President of the Board of Trade tells us that “if textile, production does not buck up the clothing ration may have to be reduced.” (Daily Mail, 13/4/48.)

* * *

Is the Church an Essential Industry?

A News Chronicle reporter tells readers that “latest figures show that only 4,000 vicars and rectors have a net income of between £400 and £500 a year. Five thousand earn less than £400—and some hundreds have even less than £300. (News Chronicle, 10/4/48.) He says that parents today will not enter their sons for the Church because of the low pay and “a drive has begun to establish a £500 minimum for vicars and £260 for assistant curates.”

This is all very well but is the Church so other worldly that it hasn’t heard about “wage-freezing” and the policy of allowing increases only in essential industries or where there is increased production?

* * *

Social Reform is not Socialism

While the Daily Express (8/4/48) tells us that things are worse here than in America because “in Britain we have Socialism,” the Daily Mail will have none of it. Criticising a speech in which Mr. Attlee claimed we have had our Socialist social revolution the Mail wrote (24/1/48) :

“For such claptrap read ordinary ‘social reform.’ Bigger names stand upon that role than those of Attlee and Bevin. We cite Disraeli, Chamberlain, Asquith, Lloyd George, Churchill, Baldwin.”

We can leave them to fight out the issue which party achieved more reforms of capitalism. As Socialists we heartily endorse the statement that it is claptrap to describe social reform as Socialism.

* * *

The “Daily Worker” is disappointed with Indian Capitalism

Socialists never supported the Indian Nationalist movement, knowing well that the propertied interests which financed and controlled it were only concerned with making India safe for Indian capitalism. Not so the Communists. They urged Indian workers to support Nehru and the Congress Party. Now the Daily Worker professes to be astonished because Nehru’s government treats the Indian workers in the same way that they were treated under British rule.

“What is happening in India? The British trade unionist may well rub his eyes in astonishment. Trade union leaders are being arrested and repressive action is being taken against the Communist Party . . .

“Such happenings were frequent under British rule, but India is now said to be free . . . The plain fact is that little has changed in India except that it is now ruled directly by the Indian capitalists, landlords and princes by grace of the British Imperialists.” (Daily Worker, 9/4/48.)

There is nothing to cause astonishment in the discovery that Indian capitalism is like any other hut how comes it that the Daily Worker should ever have supposed that it would he different?

Edgar Hardcastle

Tiny Tips (2026)

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

A youth panel at the conference examined how Germany’s political establishment is pressuring young people into the armed forces not only through direct reforms, but also through policies that attack livelihoods. The situation imposed onto young workers and students today amounts to ‘economic blackmail’ for those without wealthy families to support them, argued Max Radtke of the trade union ver.di…The reintroduction of conscription should be understood as a question of class interests, added David Christner of Junge Linke (Young Left). He emphasized the need for a sharper analysis of ‘who is being sent to kill and die, and for whose interests’, saying that the political imperative at this point is to develop a ‘practical alternative to repression and militarization’. 

[peoples dispatch]

How Does Yoga Alleviate Child Poverty in India? Yoga classes can offer several benefits, particularly for children living in poverty. They: 1. Provide mindfulness and resilience. These sessions provide a break from daily life, where minds are taken off of hardship outside. Students gradually develop inner strength and willpower that they can take home with them. 2. Build a community. Children feel safe making friends and coming out of their shells. They will feel less alone and it makes the day-to-day that little bit easier. 3. Improve physical health. By building physical strength, students are less likely to contract illnesses and injuries, thereby increasing attendance at school and reducing stress on health care systems. 

[The Borgen Project]

Wide-scale desertions and 2 million draft-dodgers are among a raft of challenges facing Ukraine’s military. 

[AP]

People are now openly confronting the authorities, with a few lucky ones escaping conscription. Sadly, other videos show men being forced into vehicles by recruiters or beaten to death. This past summer, József Sebestyén, a Hungarian from Transcarpathia, died during his forced conscription. The Ukrainian authorities tried by all means to cover up his case. In the video, recorded in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, a crowd of civilians surrounds a police car in which a man has been placed. In the recording, people can be heard protesting, standing in front of the car, and preventing the vehicle from leaving the scene. Ukrainians are fed up with war and even more fed up with having to see their loved ones die for it. They are now openly speaking out against family members, friends, and neighbors being dragged away.

[ZeroHedge]

. . . one of Beckert’s more arresting contentions is that for most human beings, through most of history, the idea of working full-time, not for their own provisions but for cash, was utterly alien: the proletariat almost always had to be forced into being. Sometimes this involved slavery or indentured labour, but just as often it was accomplished by undermining the traditional basis for subsistence production. By enclosing, for example, common lands in Georgian England, or indeed through more recent restrictions on access to the plains of Ethiopia or the forests of Indonesia. 

[Prospect]

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

Cooking the Books: Wages for housework? (2026)

The Cooking the Books Column from the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The BBC News website carried an article on 9 December headed ‘A wage for housework? India’s sweeping experiment in paying women’ which described schemes in various Indian states under which some poorer women were given a regular monthly payment by the state. The International Wages for Housework campaign trumpeted this as a victory for their campaign, issuing a media statement that ‘after more than 50 years of campaigning, wages for housework is becoming a reality – in India and elsewhere’.

They date the beginning of their campaign to when Selma James raised their demand at a women’s liberation conference in Manchester in March 1972 but went further back to ‘the work of Eleanor Rathbone, the Independent MP who won Family Allowances (now Child Benefit) in the UK’. The payments under the Indian schemes are not ‘wages’ at all but, like family allowances and child benefits, a handout from the state. The whole ‘wages for housework’ campaign is basically a campaign for this social reform; not necessarily a bad reform, as paying the money directly to the woman rather than her husband is an advance. Even so, it is still a social reform and, as with all reforms that involve the state paying workers money, one that has unintended consequences.

When, during the last world war, a scheme for family allowances became practical politics thanks in large part to Eleanor Rathbone, the Socialist Party brought out a pamphlet Family Allowances: A Socialist Analysis which argued that ‘family allowances will lower the workers’ standards of living instead of raising them’. This was based on what wages are and what ultimately determines their level.

Wages are a price of what workers have to sell: their mental and physical energies. Their amount reflects the cost of buying the goods and services required to produce and reproduce this. In the days before family allowances, this included an element to raise future workers and so covered, at least partially, the cost of maintaining a ‘housewife’ and bringing up children. The economic effect of paying family allowances would be to reduce the amount that the employer needed to pay workers to reproduce their labour power and raise a family. As the pamphlet put it:

‘Once it is established that the children (or some of the children) of the workers have been “provided for” by other means, the tendency will be for wage levels to sink to new standards which will not include the cost of maintaining such children’.

Thirty years later we made the same point in commenting on James’s pamphlet Women, the Unions and Work. Her demand for ‘wages for housework’, the May 1973 Socialist Standard said, ‘seems a little naive’:

‘Wages are the price for which workers sell their labour power. That price will be generally sufficient to keep a worker, and his family, at a socially accepted standard. Payment made for housework, like family allowances or free transport, would act as a brake on wages’.

The payments to poor women in India are likely in time to put a brake on wages too, even if, through being paid directly to women, they represent an improvement for the women concerned in making them less dependent on a man.

Selma James had been a Trotskyist (though of a group that recognised that Russia was state capitalist) and quoted Marx, but Marxian economics was not her strong point. Marx would have advised her to change the reformist slogan ‘Wages for Housework’ to the revolutionary watchword ‘Abolish The Wages System’. Then both men and women would have access on the same basis to what they needed to live and enjoy life.

Voice From The Back: Carpet sales (2004)

The Voice From The Back Column from the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Carpet sales  

The designer and poet William Morris was a committed socialist who had to live with the irony that, although he wanted the abolition of the wages system, the only people who could afford his carpets, tapestries and furniture were the very rich. The following item in the Independent (6 October) illustrates this. “A William Morris carpet that cost £113 new in 1883 was bought for £193,760 in an auction at Sotheby’s in London yesterday. The flowered design, a synthesis of medieval and eastern motifs, was one of only two examples known with a cream and apricot background. It was made for a house in Holland Park, West London, measuring 17ft 5ins by 13ft 6ins.” £193,000 for a carpet – something to bear in mind when you are looking for a bargain at the January sales!

Embarrassed, moi?

“A giant oil company once headed by Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, used its British subsidiaries to flout American sanctions against Iran . . . Their exports – estimated to be worth more than £30m a year – have continued despite sanctions introduced by the US government nine years ago barring Americans from trading or ‘facilitating business’ with the Islamic state. The new findings will embarrass Cheney, President George W Bush’s running mate in next month’s elections. Cheney has described Iran as ‘one of the world’s most dangerous regimes’” (Times, 17 October). He “earned” $44m during his tenure at Haliburton, continues to collect deferred compensation of $150,000 a year and owns $18m in share options. The gap between political rhetoric and economic reality has never embarrassed hypocrites like Cheney.

Dying for work

A TV programme entitled ‘Britain’s Secret Shame’ (BBC, 3 November) illustrated the extent of corporate manslaughter in this country. It reported that about 250 workers die at work every year due to the negligence of their employers. Prosecutions rarely take place, convictions are even rarer, and then it is usually only smaller firms. Attempts to introduce legislation have all failed because the owning class warn the government that more stringent legislation would be too costly. Just another example of how inside capitalism profits are more important than the workers who produce them.

Dying for profit

“Britain’s largest drug company drew up a secret plan to double sales of the controversial anti-depressant Seroxat by marketing it as a cure for a raft of less serious mental conditions, the Observer can reveal today. The contents of the 250-page document have alarmed health campaigners who accuse the firm, GlaxoSmithKLine (GSK) of putting profits before therapeutic needs by attempting to broaden the market for the drug which has been linked to a series of suicides . . . Concerns about the addictive properties of Seroxat saw the government ban its prescription to people under the age of 18 last year. This followed a review which found children taking it were more likely to self-harm or commit suicide” (Observer, 7 November). It seems the company were attempting to move sales from $1 billion to $2billion by pushing it to people who were not clinically depressed. When there is money like this to be made even the “respectable” shareholders become murderous drug pushers.

Dying with poverty

Under the headline ‘Desperate plight of cancer sufferers living in poverty’ (Times, 9 November) reported as follows: “At least three quarters of the million Britons with cancer suffer from financial hardship brought on by the disease, including enforced job losses, discrimination and poor benefit allowances, according to research. A report by Macmillan Cancer Relief suggests that the disease costs patients hundreds of millions of pounds, for which they have little or no financial cover.” Needless to say this poverty only applies to the working class, as those capitalists unfortunate enough to suffer from the disease have at least the consolation that they will receive the best of care and that their families will not suffer financially.

Who cares?

Twenty years ago an explosion at the chemical factory in Bhopal in central India killed more than 15,000 people, and survivors are still trying to cope with the effects of this horrendous disaster. “Yesterday, half a million people who were in the path of the lethal cloud that spewed out of the chemical plant received a second compensation payment of £300 to £1,200” (Times, 13 November). This is in addition to a first payment of £500 per person from the company responsible Union Carbide. Dow Chemicals, who now own Union Carbide, refuse to clean up the site which still holds 25,000 tons of toxic waste. Another example of capitalism’s priorities. Make a couple of bucks, kill 15,000 and leave an area full of children who have difficulty breathing and are painfully dying, who cares? Socialists do.

Notes by the Way: Do You Trust Colonel Nasser? (1956)

The Notes by the Way Column from the October 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Do You Trust Colonel Nasser?

Much of the propaganda about the Suez dispute has been concerned with whether Colonel Nasser is to be be trusted. Sir Anthony Eden says no; and the Colonel says he doesn’t trust the Western Powers. Many of the Labourites who oppose the Government’s policy affect to believe that British Capitalism can rest content with the Colonel’s promise not to interfere with the unfettered passage of the Canal.

Which of them is right? The answer is that they are all wrong. History is littered with binding treaties which turned out to be scraps of paper; with treacheries and forsworn promises even when the signatories, at the time they pledged their word; had every intention of keeping it.

The truth is that where vital economic and military interests are concerned it is so easy for the party to the agreement, who finds it becoming an obstacle, to convince himself that altered circumstances justify him in repudiating his obligations. (There is a lot to be said for the attitude of those Quakers who, on moral grounds, refuse to pledge their future conduct lest this should happen).

It was British governments which occupied Egypt "temporarily" and stayed there for over half a century and British governments which have not paid off the hundreds of millions of pounds they pledged themselves after her World War I to repay to America.

All governments, when they find it highly convenient to do so, and provided they can get away with it, break their promises. They do it, too, in home politics with election pledges and it is the height of simplicity or hypocrisy for Labour opponents of Eden to pretend that we all ought to trust one another. They are indeed “all honourable men.” but does the Labour Party trust Eden when he makes election pledges? or does he trust them?

About that High Dam and American Cotton

It happens that Egyptian plans for a new dam on the Nile provide an example of how promises come to be broken. What sparked off the Suez dispute was the action of Mr. Dulles in suddenly withdrawing the promise he had made to supply millions of American dollars to help Egypt meet the estimated £120 million cost of the new high dam at Aswan. The excuse given by Dulles was that the American Government believed Egypt's own financial resources to be insufficient to meet the rest of the cost, particularly since Egypt had been mortgaging its resources to buy costly arms from Russia. The British Government followed Dulles’ lead in withdrawing an offer of aid.

But an American reader of the Manchester Guardian, writing from San Francisco, gives a different reason. Mr. Dulles’ Republican Party, needs every vote it can in the forthcoming Presidential election, including the votes of American cotton growers, already worried about large unsold stocks of cotton, they do not like the idea of an Egyptian dam which will greatly extend the irrigated area on which Egyptian cotton can be grown and put on the world market in competition with American cotton. The San Francisco reader writes:—

"The reason given by Mr. Dulles for the last-minute refusal was that Egypt was not able to fulfil its part of the contract. Whether Egypt was able or not, I do not know, but the more likely reason is that the State Department heard protests from the cotton growers of Louisiana and Mississippi. This is the year of a Presidential election, and in election years American foreign policy is always uncertain." !

(Manchester Guardian, 29/8/56.) 

The same writer also dismissed any notion that Mr. Dulles has developed scruples about using force in international disputes, and 'that this explains his caution over Suez:—

"When American canal interests were endangered by a recent revolution in Guatemala, America acted not with caution but with decision, and the revolt was quickly put down."

And what about Colonel Nasser’s pretence that it is only the Western Powers whom he cannot trust and that the African Powers are full of mutual love and confidence? Does the Colonel trust his fellow religionists in the Sudan or his fellow Africans in Ethiopia? Not on your life! The Government of the Sudan does not like the Egyptian plan and can advance seemingly weighty technical reasons. They would prefer dams and irrigation schemes higher up the Nile and its tributaries, under a joint operation in which Ethiopia, Uganda, the Belgian Congo, would join with the Sudan and Egypt. But the Colonel does not trust them any more than British Capitalism trusts the Colonel. He fears quite reasonably, that if Egypt puts up a lot of money to build dams not inside Egyptian frontiers, his Sudanese brothers may be tempted to take advantage of it. Mr. C. L. Hartnoll, wrote on the subject in The Arab World, which is the organ of the Anglo-Arab Association and sympathetic to the Egyptian point of view, with the Egyptian Ambassador as one of its patrons. The article, written before the Suez dispute blew up. contains the following:—

“The most probable explanation of Egypt’s insistence on the superior merits of the High Dam is, therefore, most probably a political one. No doubt she feels that if she has to put up the money anyway, she might as well have full control of the whole undertakings on Egyptian territory rather than disperse control by foreign engineers at various points in the Sudan, Ethiopia Uganda and the Belgian Congo. Strategically she has always felt at the mercy of any power controlling the upper waters of the Nile but at least at Aswan she would have the control in her own hands. Also, of course, the prestige value of the High Dam to the Revolution and its leaders is not without its attraction." (The Arab World, July, 1956.)

For while Egyptian Capitalism masks its financial interests under a high falutin imperialist principle called “the natural unity of the Nile Valley,” which includes the ambition of Egyptian control of territories all the way up the River, some of the equally ambitious Sudanese have dreams of achieving this “natural unity” at Egypt’s expense.

The Sudanese do not like the idea of Nile control, vital to themselves, being in Egyptian hands at Aswan. And the Colonel for his part may reasonably fear that if Egypt puts up money for dams higher up the Nile the Sudan or Ethiopia might “do a Nasser on him.” This is what Capitalism does to human relations.

Unearthly Socialism

In Labour Party journals and on their platforms, lots of pens and voices are calling for means to recapture the “lost spirit of the movement.” One lifelong supporter knows an unexpected direction in which to look. Writing in The People (April 8, 19.56), Mr. Hannen Swaffer had this:—

“I am, in religion, a Spiritualist and a Socialist. To me both these words mean the same thing. By this I mean that I have learned from the Spirit world to understand something of the creative force which is behind all creation, and that, knowing it to be my duty to try to carry out. during my earth life, the furthering of that creative principle in this world, I can see only in the adoption of Socialist principles the means."

He went on to affirm his belief that “Spiritualism and Socialism, when joined in the practice of the lives of all of us, will abolish all creedal differences, and all class and caste hatreds, join us all in one great human family. . . ”

We can accept that Mr. Swaffer assiduously plugs Spiritualism and mixes it in with his already muddled notions of Socialism because it is the thing he really relieves it, but the same excuse cannot be made for the Daily Herald's recent addition of horoscopes to its columns. The worried workers, seeking respite from the daily harassments of the Welfare State, can now consult “Your Lucky Stars” as interpreted by Diana. Another recent addition to the horoscope Press is the News Chronicle (“Seeing Stars,” with the help of Leon Petulengro)..

If they change to the Express, the Mail, or the two morning picture papers, their needs are likewise cared for and almost all of the cheaper Sunday papers are in the heavenly swim. But why no horoscopes in the evening papers?

Before the war the Beaverbrook Press, high mindedly and with a loud banging of trumpets, announced that it would ,no longer pander to this “ignorant superstition but after a lapse of time the horoscopes crept back again.

The purpose, of course, is to whip up circulation and the publicity experts are clearly convinced that you can’t get into the big circulation without horoscopes.

The Reverend Donald Soper on Nasser

Among his admirers the Reverend Donald Soper is credited with understanding Socialism and being a Socialist. A speech delivered by him at Caxton Hall on August 14th, 1956, shows how little there is in the claim (speech published in the Arab News Letter Arab Students Union, September, 1956)).

On the superficial things such as the hypocrisy of the British Government; the failure of the Labour Party (of which he is a supporter) to see the real issues; the non-existence of the “international law” to which the Government appeals; and the failure of the Church to seek “peace on earth and goodwill among men,” on these he was plausible enough, but when it came to putting a Socialist point of view he was silent. He had absolutely nothing to say about world-wide Capitalism and the forces that drive all the nations into conflict. The nearest he got to reality—and this was seeing symptoms instead of causes—was to see evil in the existence of “nation states.” But his remedy for this is “world government” and United Nations; much as if to say that as banditry is bad let us hope that the bandits can unite into one central bandit and in the meantime let us make rules of conduct for the bandits. So he demanded that while these “nation states” endure “there must not be privileges for some and rejections of these privileges for others.” . In other words “Fair play for ail the bandits.”

He dwelt on the slums and poverty alongside great wealth in Cairo and, quite fairly, marked this up against the former British rulers of Egypt; but is he really so naive as to suppose that the ruling class behind dictator Nasser are taking the Canal for the sake of the Egyptian workers they exploit? Apparently he is that naive or had his tongue in his cheek, for he called on the Church to support Nasser.

“I want to say in the name of Christianity that this Nasser ought to be encouraged and not be repressed, because I believe the root of the matter in him is good, and because it is good, it is our business to evoke it by corresponding good, and not to repress it by threats of violence.”

What evidence can Mr. Soper bring forward for his implication that when a home grown ruling class runs Capitalism itself after ousting foreigners that their aim is any less the perpetuation of exploitation and the resulting poverty of the masses? British Capitalism has been run by home-grown rulers (including years of the Labour Party that Soper supports) and it hasn’t touched the class ownership of accumulated wealth. And Mr. Soper shouldn’t have far to look in his own neighbourhood to find some of the million slum dwellings.

He ended his speech with a call to throw out the Tory Government. His solitary piece of lip service to what he supposes is Socialism, being a plea for the introduction of “a truly Socialist Government.”

Embarrassed by his difficulty in fully endorsing the Labour Party he declared that “by the grace of God, even the Labour Party can become a Socialist Government which surely is hardly flattering to his God. Why must God (whose “will,” incidentally Mr. Soper claimed that he knows!) have to act in this roundabout fashion? Why can’t the “grace of God” turn the Tory Party into a “Socialist Government?” It shouldn’t be any more difficult.

Of course Mr. Soper knows that “divine grace” isn’t going to solve the problem. He also knows that delivering Socialist truths would help. What, then, is his excuse, as a self-styled Socialist, for not delivering them at that meeting?

Automation, 1830

The rich have always been able cheerfully and patiently to bear the hardship of the poor and urge them to be equally patient. We now have the politicians and economists telling the workers who may lose their jobs through “automation” to reflect that in the long run it will all be for the best, and anyway it is inevitable. In 1830 the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge published an Address to the Labourers on the subject of Destroying Machinery. Here is a typical passage: —

“It is undoubtedly true that all machinery which spares human labour, unavoidably, on its first invention and on beginning of its work, throws some persons out of the employment in which they had been engaged, and they must seek their means of support in some other way; this is the necessary consequence of the introduction into use of the most simple instrument, and of all improvements in art. But, on the whole, the public, and every individual in it, are in the end infinitely the gainers.”

A caustic cartoon, also published in 1830, and believed to have been the work of the brother of the better-known Cruikshank, dealt with the unemployment caused by the incoming machinery as one of a series called “Living Made Easy,” The “machines” it portrayed were “Charity tubes to convey the smell from the tables of the rich, for the benefit of poor operatives.”

It showed humble bare-headed workers permitted by a livened flunkey to stand over the open ends of iron tubes which conveyed the smell of food into the courtyard of some palatial mansion. It was “particularly recommended to the philanthropy of those who have made large fortunes by machinery.”

Mr. MacMillan on Paper Pounds

In a speech on inflation in which he warned that if wage increases went on the Government might devalue the pound again as did the Labour Government in 1949. He asked the trade unions

"Do you want more paper money to handle or more goods and services to enjoy? ”

(Daily Mail, August 30, 1956.)

This is indeed a classic example of the devil rebuking sin. It is not the trade unions but Mr. Macmillan and other Chancellors of the Exchequer who determine the amount of the note issue. And what is their record at setting the printing press at work making more and more paper money? In 1938 the amount in issue was £529 million and in 1945 £1,311 million. The Labour Government stepped it up to £1,383 million and the Tories since they came in in 1951 have added another £300 million, making the present total £1,662 million.

Not, of course, that it makes any material difference to the workers position under Capitalism. They were just as poor and just as much exploited in 1938 with pounds fewer and wages lower, as they are now with wages trebled and each pound buying about one third of what it then bought.

They Cant Afford a Holiday

The British Travel and Holidays Association in a survey of the holidays of Britain’s population tell us that “about half the population of Britain took no holiday away from home in 1955. Of those who did travel, only 8 per cent. went abroad: 77 per cent. of the population has never been outside Britain” (Manchester Guardian, August 31, 1956).

“Expense was given as the main reason why people stayed at home during their holidays.”

What Nina did not say

Nina, the Russian athlete, who was alleged to have taken hats worth 32s. 11d., missed a fine opportunity by not appearing in court. Why did she not get up and tell the British workers that under Socialism in Russia you just go along and take what hats you need without this Capitalist nonsense of paying for them?

The answer, in case anyone is in doubt, is of course that there isn’t any Socialism in Russia, the claim that there is being one of the lies of the Communists.

Mr. Nehru Again

In his attitude on the use of military force to crush the Naga independence movement in India Mr. Nehru gets more and more like Sir John Harding in Cyprus.

A Naga M.P. in the India Parliament made a long statement on the suppression of the Nagas.

“As a result of military operations, Mr. Keishang said, 2,000 people were forced to stay in the jungles. Most of the villages of the Mokukchang area had been burnt by the army, between 30 and 50 villages had been burnt in the Megkukchange area, and four-fifths of the villages in other areas had been burnt. He said that 397 Nagas had been killed, and troops had also killed Dr. N. Haralu, a respected doctor of Kohima, who had been “ hunted in the streets of Kohima and shot down.

“More than five hundred Nagas are in prison, including students and children aged between 1 and 13. The Army tries to terrorise the Nagas by carrying a naked corpse, bound hand and foot, through the streets of Kohima, and bodies are burnt in spite of the fact that the Nagas never burn bodies. Is this behaviour of the Government better than that shown by the Nagas ? . .. The spirit of revenge will persist for generations, even if the Nagas are defeated.” (Manchester Guardian, August 24, 1956.)

Mr. Keishang chided Mr. Nehru with failing to show at home the “spirit of peaceful negotiation” he is always recommending to other governments. But Mr. Nehru was not to be moved. He won’t even discuss the matter.

“Mr. Nehru, winding up the debate, admitted that some mistakes had been made, but said that the attitude towards the Nagas had been human and not completely a military one. He repeated that the Government could not talk with the Nagas until they gave up their demand for an independent state.

“There is no question of prestige. India is far too big for her prestige to suffer in such dealings. We are not prepared to talk independence, and we demand that the Nagas must give up violence."

Mr. Nehru is another of the reformists to demonstrate that there aren’t any different ways of running Capitalism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Blogger's Note:

I believe that the 1830 cartoon that Hardcastle is referring to in his column is the one posted below. The only sticking point is that he mentions it was by Isaac Robert Cruikshank but the internet is telling me that it was by Thomas Mclean .

The Scientist's dilemma (1952)

From the October 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

A spectre is haunting Asia—the spectre of Malthusianism. It so haunted Professor A. V. Hill, this year’s president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science as to virtually turn his address into a 1952 edition of Malthus’ “Essay on Population.”

Stating that the greatest problem to-day was the unrestricted growth of population—he had in view the Asiatic population—he said better medical services, prolongation of the span of life, lowering infant mortality, are accelerating the rate of population. "There is much discussion,” he went on to say, “of human rights, but do they extend to unlimited reproduction? Might not the consequences of such beliefs lead to soil exhaustion, international tensions and disorders which would threaten civilisation itself? ” He then asked “If ethical principles deny our right to do evil are we justified in doing good when the foreseeable consequences are evil? ” That, said the Professor, constitutes the ethical dilemma of science.

Professor Hill thus shares with Malthus and the Neo Malthusians the belief that population is in itself a potential source of evil which can actualise in overpopulation and result in widespread hunger, destitution and disease.

Malthus, a good Whig, but mostly a bad economist, also believed that. Living in what was perhaps the most pitiless period in English history—the Industrial Revolution—he held that the social misery it engendered was due to the fact that there were too many mouths and too little means with which to feed them. He stated that poverty and vice were due to over-population. Professor Hill switches the picture to Asia and arrives at the same conclusion. Just as Malthus declared that the giving of public charity would only aggravate the problem of over-population, so Professor Hill suggests that medical services and other aids to the peoples of Asia might have the same effect.

The growth of population is not of course governed by exclusive “Natural Laws.” In Western Capitalism, where the nature and tempo of production demands certain nutritional standards, these nutritional standards have not led, as predicted by Malthus and his followers, to accelerating the increase in population. In fact for decades now fertility has shown signs of declining. To the bogey of over-population there has been contrasted the bogey of under-population whose effects the “experts” have proclaimed would be almost as catastrophic.

Undoubtedly the higher nutritional levels and greater leisure of the workers of Western Capitalism as contrasted with the workers and peasants of India and China have made sex a less important emotional factor in their lives. Further, the insecurity of the wage worker in Western Capitalism and such things as unemployment, war, the housing situation, etc., are elements in family limitation. The entry of women into industry and the desire on their part to be relieved of the age-long burden of large families, have exercised a powerful influence on family limitation. The laws of population, as Marx pointed out, are not to be found in natural laws, but in a given historical situation. We may add that the world has never lived on the perilous margin between increasing population and food supplies which Malthusian doctrine would indicate.

A superficial survey might lead to the conclusion that the miserable living standards of the peoples of India and China are due to over-population. Professor Hill notes with dismay the five million yearly increase in the population of India where even with present plans for social aid, pre-war standards will hardly be restored. de Castro in “A Geography of Hunger,” puts the rate of increase at 4 million yearly, which amounts to a 1 per cent. increase, a figure, he adds, not very different from the European rate since 1900.

India, like Western Capitalism, is a place of contrast. It is a place of poverty for the many. It is also a place of vast wealth for the few. When the British ruling class added what was known as the Jewel of the Empire to their glittering colonial collection they did little or nothing during their stay there to improve the lot of the Indian people. When Professor Hill speaks of the impulses of decent humanity which insist that suffering should be relieved, history shows that the pukka Sahib was notoriously deficient in these things. It might also be interesting to note how much British rule was responsible for retarding the economic development of India and thus contributing to the distressing state of affairs that obtain there to-day.

In the past the native rulers of India and the British colonisers have evinced no real desire to raise the level of the masses. Thus Indian agriculture has remained in an intolerably primitive condition. It has been estimated that only 43 per cent, of the country is cultivated. One might think that an attempt to utilise for productive purposes the remaining portion by the application of Western resources and scientific techniques would constitute a challenge to those decent impulses of humanity instead of leading to the ethical dilemma in which Professor Hill finds himself.

Where there is poverty and degradation high birth rates and high death rates will inevitably occur. As Ritchie Calder said in the News Chronicle (4/9/52), “Men who live like animals breed like animals,” and we could add, die like them as well.

To suggest, as many Neo Malthusians do, that birth control is an answer to the problem, ignores the fact that a population could not by the mere act of reducing itself supply the necessary increased muscular energy that would be needed for an increased production of economic resources necessary for higher living standards. It could be held that where productivity is low and the death rate and ill health of people are high, large families are an inevitable and necessary feature of the. situation. It can be shown then, as de Castro emphasises in “ A Geography of Hunger,” that it is not over-population that leads to poverty, but the reverse. No wonder Marx caustically referred to Malthusian doctrines as “a libel on the human race.” We may add also that in a world where the privileged few exploit the unprivileged many, and that includes China and India, there can be no dominant social motive for the betterment of the vast majority by the use of all the economic resources available.

Again the class character of income distribution, inherent in Capitalism, compels it, if profits are threatened, to throw fish back into the sea, burn grain and coffee and generally restrict production no matter how crying the needs of the peoples of the world might be. And if further evidence was needed to show the misdirection of wealth production in Capitalism, a fellow scientist of Professor Hill, Sir Boyd Orr, has told us that soil exhaustion and erosion and the waste of labour and material on armaments threatens the world with famine.

It is perhaps pathetic to witness Professor Hill, a competent scientist in his own field, applying to complex social problems, not the appropriate level of scientific judgment, but a vague and amorphous ethical one.

Because of his lack of understanding of the nature of the world he lives in, the future for him is sinister and uncertain. Like Malthus he propounds a philosophy of social pessimism. We are optimistic enough to believe that economic and social development will falsify his gloomy prognosis as they falsified that of Malthus.

It would seem that fear and uncertainty of the future lead Professor Hill to sec in the “over-populated" a threat to Western ideas and the ordered existence of one’s life. Thus for him the withholding of economic resources from undeveloped countries might be one way of ensuring Western supremacy. The world will then still be the White Man’s World. From that assumption it is only a short step to a belief in a Master Race. Such assumptions, if widely held, help to prepare the ground for its realisation.

Perhaps that is why Professor Hill relegated the atomic bomb to a second place in world problems. It would seem, however, that Professor Hill does not like the idea of killing. He thus raises a dilemma unnoticed by himself. While he is opposed on moral grounds to killing, dying by hunger might be a necessary evil. Apparently, like Pope, he holds—"Thou shall’st not kill but need’st not strive, officiously, to keep alive.”

One might say in conclusion, looking at the ethically minded and their inhuman suggestions for the salvation of man, one sighs for the humanity of the anthropoid ape.

Ted Wilmott

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)

The Passing Show: The Same Everywhere (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the October 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Same Everywhere

The Balance of Payments. Four words which have meant a headache for every British government for umpteen years. “Our” gold and dollar reserves are too low. “Our” imports are too high. “We” are paying ourselves more than “we” are earning. “We” are heavily in debt. And so the moans go on and on. So much so that you could be forgiven for thinking that it is a peculiarly British situation, almost as if the rest of the world was flowing with milk and honey for the average inhabitant. Well, let’s take a look at it.

First of all, if you’re thinking that high exports and a favourable balance of trade mean that we could all sit back and relax, a little bit of history reading will do much to dispel that notion. Indeed, at a time when Britain was just about the most powerful nation in the world, ruling the waves militarily and commercially, working people lived under the most shocking conditions. But come a little more up-to-date if you like, and remember that only a few years ago West Germany had a gigantic balance of trade surplus (“embarrassingly large” one commentator once called it), yet her workers had to struggle just as hard for improvements in wages and conditions, and there have been some really bitter strikes there in recent times.

And today? The German capitalists have been getting jittery about the state of their economy. According to Chancellor Erhard, wages have been rising too fast (it’s always too fast—never too slow), since 1963 by 8½ per cent, while productivity has gone up by only four per cent. He has not been slow to threaten Wilson-like measures: —

. . .  we still have things under control. However, if we let them drift, then the same will have to happen to us, that is, a wages freeze, a prices freeze, a considerable rise in the cost of living, indeed even partial balance of payments control. (Guardian, 6/8/66)

It has been favourite with some people to recommend that British workers take a leaf out of their German brothers' book and work as hard. Doesn’t seem to have made much difference, does it? The cry for them, as for us, is still “work harder and pull your belts in!”

Just to show you that capitalism’s problems are similar, wherever you go, let us take another example, this time from one of the “poorer” countries—a rising power since the end of the war. India. There the government has published its fourth five-year plan, envisaging some £10,000 millions investment; yet even if it comes to fruition, the planners admit it will mean:—

. . . every Indian will have a bare two metres more of cloth each year, and three ounces more of food each day.

Not much to write home about? Ah, but even this miserable achievement has a backhanded slap to accompany it.

A massive export drive, if necessary by curbing consumption at home, and Additional taxation . . . are considered essential. (Guardian, 30/8/66)

This, by the way, is one of the countries figuring prominently in the Oxfam appeals, and there is no doubt about the poverty, squalor and starvation of many millions of its inhabitants. But developing Indian capitalism is interested in this only incidentally. Its prime concern is the sale of its goods on the world market. And if this means that the Indian workers have to make do with even less than they get now, the government and employers will not shed many tears—except a few crocodile ones.

Want to be a Postman?

There is a delightfully colourful set of brochures which you can get from any post office, listing the delights of a career with the G.P.O. Read it, and discover that when you work as a postman you “enjoy” such perks as “ a safe job” and “a steady wage”, to say nothing of “an easy mind” and “a friendly atmosphere”. Just think, at 23 and over, you can earn the princely sum of £15 11 s. a week, basic, if you work within four miles radius of Charing Cross, and the opportunity to work overtime.

Perhaps like me, you have your doubts about the adequacy of such a wage, especially if you have a wife and children to think about. But, of course, you can’t expect the Post Office to introduce such a discordant note into their literature, which reads like a song of self-praise from beginning to end. In fact, if everything in the postman’s garden is so lovely, why you may ask, does the G.P.O. have to try so hard to entice you into it with such garish and elaborately printed leaflets?

The answer lies not so much in what has been said as in what has been left out. Shift work in all weathers, for example. And the fact that even the present miserable rate of £15 11s. a week has been won only after a determined strike two or three years ago—the first in the Post Office for more than, half a century. The G.P.O. leaflet is typical of much of the stuff you will find in the Situations Vacant column of any newspaper. No employer, particularly in times of labour shortage, is going to lead off with a list of snags. They will become obvious only when you start working for him. Then, in the manner of Orwell “interesting” becomes “boring” and you find that those “gd. wages and conds” are not really enough after all.

But that’s the outcome of a wages system. No matter what honeyed words your employer uses, your wages are always a problem to him, and to you, too.

Thoughts on Crime

But not very deep ones. I’m afraid, from the Evening Standard leader writer of August 24. He was no doubt prompted by the recent outbreaks of violent crime, and gently chided Lord Butler and the present Home Secretary, Mr. Jenkins, for their “bafflement over the causes of crime in an affluent society”. Yet for all the contribution to our knowledge in this particular editorial, the writer might just as well have left his pen in his pocket.

He makes some sweeping and quite unsupported assertions in his attempts to cover this pressing problem in about 10 column inches, and ends up just as much without a real answer as when he started. “Man is a basically aggressive and pugnacious animal,” he writes, but gives no evidence for this, or for his quite startling suggestion that the object of wars, military training, etc., is to provide a safety valve for the pent-up feelings of bored youngsters.

This editorial caught my eye for its complete refusal to ask one simple question—why? If young people are bored, what is the reason, especially in a rapidly changing world? Isn’t the prospect of a lifetime of wage work enough to make anyone bored? And what do people fight about anyway? This is the question the writer should have begun by asking, but never did. We agree with him that poverty is not the cause of crime, though it may aggravate the situation at times. People fight and knock each other about for very material reasons, when you get down to the bottom of things. Over private property, in fact.

The outbreak of violence is just one aspect of the general competitive struggle which affects each one of us throughout his life. We are all jockeying for economic elbow room, and on the international field, this throws whole nations against each other in massive armed conflict. That, by The Evening Standard’s criteria, should be classified as the biggest and most violent crime of all, involving wholesale murder and robbery, yet the editorial never touched it. A crime, apparently, is a crime when it does not have the blessing of your own ruling class. Rob and murder on their behalf, and you might even get a medal for it. Under any other circumstances, a nice long stretch behind bars.

Gaspers

"The Treasury has received several hundred pounds in cash contributions from members of the public since the Prime Minister announced his measures to deal with the economic crisis.”

(Guardian, 12/8/66)

"I won't retire—I wouldn’t know what to do all day.” (Mr. H. Jennings, winner of over £92,000 in Vernons Pools. Daily Mail Advert, 18/8/66)

‘The pressure of events is remorselessly leading towards a major war, while efforts to reverse that trend are lagging disastrously behind.” (U Thant’s statement to the United Nations, 1/9/66)

“The government spent £3,600,000 in assisting the Potato Marketing Board to take potatoes off the market and push up prices for the remainder last year . . .

(Daily Telegraph, 26/8/66)

Eddie Critchfield

Cuttings and Critiques. (1908)

From the June 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Social-Democratic “Victory.”

____________

In reporting the return to the Barking District Council of Mr. Edwards of the S.D.P., Justice claimed that he ran as a straight Socialist. Below we reproduce a “revolutionary” appeal issued by Mr. Edwards :—

To the Electors of the West Ward.

____________

Vote For A Man.

Who will support your interests as a working man, not a man who, if you ask him for a job, should say “Aye, mon, let’s look at your honds?”

What price

Working or a gasholder at 6d. per hour

in all winds and weathers. Is this the type of a man who supporting Contractors and others in the undercurrent which is now so prevalent on the Council, the man for the West Ward ? Show your disgust by

Voting For 

Edwards.

* * *

The Tariff Reform propaganda is certainly compelling the Liberals to make some very interesting admissions, in their efforts to show that the existing unemployment and poverty are not due to that Free Trade which they claim has brought so much prosperity to this country. Thus in the House of Commons on April 14th Mr. Lloyd George declared that we are to-day producing the same quantity of hops as hitherto, but out of a smaller acreage—due to improved methods of production. Those engaged in the industry are suffering, he said, because of these improved methods and machinery, which have enabled a great saving of labour to be effected. In a similar strain the Daily Chronicle wrote in connection with the Wolverhampton bye-election. Local unemployment, it declared, was to some extent due to improved machinery and machine tools. The output is greater than ever, but owing to methods of standardisation, the cost of production is decreased, and less labour is required.

* * *

The manufacturers are doing well, it added. Of course they are, and always will so long as they own the machinery which the workers improve and operate. No fiscal arrangements or rearrangements under capitalism will affect the workers’ position.

* * *

Some idea of the extent to which that “Peasants’ Charter,” otherwise the Small Holdings Act, will “solve the land problem” may be gathered from the reports in the Liberal Press of the recent floods. Some recently laid down allotment land in Upper Caversham, wrote the Daily News on April 30th, is submerged to a considerable depth, which means a heavy loss to those working men who have rented the ground and who have already planted for the season. It also reported that allotment holders around Towcaster and in other parts had suffered considerably.

* * *

And yet some folk still continue to swear by these pills for the earthquake.

* * *

According to the Anglo-Indian Temperance Association, the revenue from intoxicants in India continues to rise, having reached £6,510,000 in 1907. In 1875 it was £1,755,000. This of course has taken place side by side with an increase in the number of conversions to Christianity.

* * *

In reply to a correspondent who asserted (inter alia) that everybody knew the I.L.P. was a Socialist Party, the Editor of the Western Clarion (Vancouver), in the issue of that paper for April 25th, 1908, writes as follows :—

“He is mistaken in stating that we all know the I.L.P. Is a Socialist Party. We all don’t know that a party is a Socialist Party which has for its leading lights and parliamentary representatives men who, like Ramsay MacDonald and Shackleton, favour child-labour and advocate the lowering of the school age to thirteen years so that the child-slaves may be available to the profit mills of capitalism at as early an age as possible; or men who, like Henderson, oppose the eight-hour law ; or who condone a rifle diet for hungry strikers, like the whole precious bunch of them. Socialists ? Why, no Whig or Tory could serve capitalism better.”

* * *

The reply is commended to the careful attention of the Western Clarion’s English namesake. It is not expected that the organ of the house of Blatchford will enthusiastically endorse the views so definitely expressed in the Vancouver journal, but it does not follow therefore that the views are not true. Rather the contrary.

* * *

The recent election at Dundee provides yet another illustration of the compromising tactics of the “Labour” Party. The manner in which the officials of the Labour Party acted was directly opposed to the “Labour” nominee. It is well known that Mr. James Ramsay MacDonald went down to Manchester to interview Mr. Winston S. Churchill, and assured the Liberal Cabinet Minister that no opposition would be forthcoming from the Labour Party at Dundee. Is this the reason why Mr. MacDonald and the senior member for Dundee, Alex. Wilkie, did not speak on Mr. G. Stuart’s behalf and did not send a message to him ? What a curious lot ! And what “Independence ” !

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Global warming is not the inevitable result of “‘human nature,”’ argues economist Parrique in this blistering debut study. Instead, “‘the primary cause of ecological derailment is… capitalism,”’ more specifically “‘the frantic pursuit of growth,”’ or increased production. 

[Publishers Weekly]

When challenges combatting the majority in India, from unemployment, lack of basic amenities, threat of their houses being demolished or being actually razed to the ground and more are taken note of, each is a pointer to the hard reality –- that of bleak future for those already facing hard circumstances. In essence, these certainly are not suggestive of their being raised above their present economic status. They certainly cannot be counted among those who seem to have been raised above the index of extreme poverty. 

[Counter Punch]

The regime has systematically abandoned United Nations agencies that have questioned its rule. First came the Food and Agriculture Organization in February, after it ranked Nicaragua among the countries with the highest levels of hunger in the world… The logic is simple: the regime rejects any body that questions it, seeking to consolidate absolute control by eliminating all external oversight.

[Civicus Lens]

In a new report, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said the government has missed most of its key targets to tackle AMR [antimicrobial resistance]. It’s also dropped the ball on its surveillance programme, on improving environmental protection and on engaging with other countries on the subject. Instead of taking responsibility, the PAC said, the government is dialling down what it actually wants to achieve. “‘There is arguably no more haunting silhouette on the horizon for the entire world than AMR,”’ the committee’s chair, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, said. “‘If left unchecked, it could rewind medical progress by a century.”’ 

[TBJ Uncovered]

Trump deported, via removals and returns, approximately 1.8 million people during his first term. By comparison, Biden oversaw approximately 2 million deportations, excluding Title 42 order expulsions. Obama, once labeled as “‘deporter in chief,”’, removed about 5.2 million over his eight years. In his current term, Trump has struggled to meet internal ICE targets…. The more Trump lashes out, the more it becomes clear he cannot control the system he claims to command.

[The Hill]

Trump’s approach is not new, and criticisms of it are not either. As labor organizer Emma Goldman wrote over a century ago, “‘The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature.”’ Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are charlatans selling us a lie about people in our communities being inherently dangerous. Just like Hitler, who used similar language about “‘blood poisoning”’ to justify his atrocities. Every despot in history has had to first convince people that other humans aren’t worthy of moral consideration… And every act of solidarity proves what despots fear most: that true power is our commitment to one another, our refusal to dehumanize and discard anyone in our community.

[Common Dreams]

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