Cooking the Books: Uninvestible (2024)

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

That was the word used by Chris Weston, the CEO of Thames Water, to describe how the business was regarded by its shareholders in the absence of the water companies’ regulator, Ofwat, allowing an increase in the price charged to customers (Times, 29 March).

It’s an odd word, not to be confused with ‘uninvestable’ (with an a) which refers to some item of value that cannot be invested because it cannot be money-capital. ‘Uninvestible’ (with an i) refers to a project which those with money-capital won’t invest in.

Last year the US Commerce Secretary said that businesses had told her that China had become ‘uninvestible’ because it was too risky due to interference from the government there. In the case of Thames Water it is simply a euphemism for ‘not profitable enough’:

‘Thames Water Plc said its £18.7 billion ($22.7 billion) plan to strengthen its finances won’t get funding from investors unless the regulator changes the rules to allow fatter returns. The UK’s largest water company said delivering on its full business plan, published belatedly on Thursday, rests on getting £2.5 billion additional equity from shareholders for 2025 to 2030. However, it warned that investors can get better returns in UK gilts and investment grade corporate bonds. It called on the Water Services Regulation Authority, Ofwat, to make significant changes to the rate of returns allowed for regulated water companies. (…) Thames Water called for a “material move up in the allowed rate of return” set by Ofwat in its initial guidance’ (Bloomberg).

There is little sympathy from other capitalists for the shareholders (one of which is, ironically, the Chinese sovereign wealth fund). Jacob Rees-Mogg, a capitalist as well as an MP, tweeted:

‘Thames Water ought to be allowed to go bankrupt. It would continue to be run by an administrator, the shareholders would lose their equity but they took too much cash out so deserve no sympathy and the bond holders would face a partial loss. This is capitalism, it won’t affect the water supply.’

Monopolies such as the essential utilities —there can only be one national grid for electricity, gas or water — present capitalism with a problem. If left in private hands, the capitalists who own the distribution system are in a position to hold the rest of the capitalist class to ransom by charging a monopoly price. The way the other capitalists found round this has been either nationalisation, where the state runs the industry keeping prices down, or regulation, where the state imposes a limit on the amount of profit that the privately owned utilities can make.

Historically, the US chose regulation while Britain chose nationalisation until, that is, the Thatcher government in the 1980s switched to regulation. One reason for this switch was to attract outside capital to invest in them, which made the change as much ‘internationalisation’ as privatisation. This part worked, as illustrated by the fact that, besides China, another of the owners of Thames Water is a Canadian pensions fund.

With regulation, the private owners are not in a completely weak position as they can, if they are not allowed to make enough profits, simply walk away, as the owners of Thames Water are threatening to do.

There is a lesson here for the future Labour government whose plan for growth relies on offering private capitalist enterprises an incentive to invest in some project by the state part-financing it. These enterprises, too, will be in a position to put pressure on the government by dubbing some project uninvestible unless they are allowed ‘fat returns’.

Greasy Pole: A Kick in the Worst Nightmares (2012)

The Greasy Pole column from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

A few weeks ago Nadine Dorries, obsessively thespian Tory MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, sneered that David Cameron and George Osborne are two arrogant posh boys who don’t know the price of milk.  This was aimed to hit Cameron where it should hurt – his determined campaign to convince us that being an Old Etonian heir to a posh-boy family fortune need not get in the way of his being sympathetic about the emergencies of survival confronting what he and his clique condescend to call decent, hard-working people and their families. And as for what it costs to get some milk onto those stricken meal tables – well, he knows all about that from his regular shopping trips to Chipping Norton with his intimidatingly aristocratic and solvent wife. It would probably be comforting to Cameron in promoting this self-image if he led a party churning out that same cant. But many Tories out there in the wide world insist on having other ideas: to be governed by harshly nostalgic concepts about society and who should represent them in Parliament.

SAS Training

The Honourable Jacob William Rees-Mogg is undoubtedly posh but says he does not regret it. He is the son of Baron Rees-Mogg whose time in career journalism peaked with his editorship during 1967 to 1981 of The Times, when he was a regular source of material for Private Eye. Jacob, who was gratifyingly precocious, wrote his first letter to the Financial Times when he was twelve and went first to Eton and then Oxford before spending 15 years in the City in his firm called Capital Management. It was unsurprising that he should have ambitions about getting into Parliament. 

This required him to survive an SAS-like training by first standing in the kind of Labour seats where Tories had become the rarest of species. His first such venture was in 1997 in Fife Central, which could be characterised by the fact that it had been the last constituency to elect a Communist Party MP – in 1935 and 1945 – and where unemployment stood at 9 percent. His campaign, feeble as it was, could not have been helped by his canvassing with his nanny (who had, he said, come to Eton “ . . . to change my sheets every week and bring me anything I needed”) and his unwavering accent (“. . . whatever I happened to be speaking about the number of votes in my favour dropped as soon as I opened my mouth”). As for the result, ‘obliterated’ would be a more useful word than ‘defeated’ and he hung on to his deposit by a whisker. He was given another chance at The Wrekin – a key seat – in 2001 where the outcome was close enough to give him some optimism about his future in politics.

Cosy Electioneering

This optimism seemed to have been justified in May 2006 when he was selected by the Tories in North-East Somerset as their candidate for the next election. The fact that his sister Annunziata was selected soon afterwards as the candidate for the adjoining Somerton and Frome might have made for cosy family electioneering except that the effect was seen by those closer to the scene as rather less comfortable for Cameron. One correspondent likened the selections as “a kick in the cobblers … for Cameron’s new-look Tories”.  After Rees-Mogg had compared pupils of state schools to “potted plants”, a friend admitted that he was “not an expert media performer”. That same year he strayed into the field of economics with his analysis that it was “…about time we had a recession”.  The remark was not apparently based on any world-wide assessment but on the assumption that it would not affect his gold stocks. In March 2009 he was again instructing us on economics and finance when he sent round his constituency a newsletter mentioning the “crashing pound” and “soaring unemployment”, The newsletter’s content was revealed to have been substantially lifted unacknowledged from an article in the Sun – of all newspapers – by Trevor Kavanagh, the Associate Editor.

Another Rees-Mogg effort at leafleting, ironically entitled Honesty On The Economy, contained a picture of him as the candidate talking to “a lady in Midsomer Norton”. The implications of that title were intriguing because that “lady”, assumed to be a constituent, was in fact an employee in his London office, allowed to make a 206-mile round journey to take part in that feeble deception. Another photograph probably intended to prove his credentials as a devoted countryman tackling a farmyard stile (in a smart city suit) looked as if he had been caught out urinating on the obstruction rather than climbing over it. Considering Rees Mogg’s obdurate tendency to attract such damagingly negative publicity it was little wonder that during the 2010 election – he won the seat in North-East Somerset by 4914 votes – The Times saw him as threatening to turn out as “David Cameron’s worst nightmare”.

Strategies

Well, in his public appearances Cameron does now convey the impression, too often for his own reassurance, of being under a degree of stress typical of a political leader striving to dress up his party image – the presentation of outworn, discredited policies – as the offspring of fresh and effective thinking. This dismal aspect of managing our lives is part of what is called politics, a politics in which there is also Rees Mogg, known as “a toff beyond caricature”, struggling to assert his obsolete style of the privileges of capitalism against those already in operation in Westminster. A clash between these two methods is not due to any divergence of principles, for they are solidly together in support of this cruel, stagnant society. Anyone concerned with a valid remedy for progress must stand aside, and move on from this sterile squabble in which our lot is to be kicked where it most hurts.

Ivan

Mogg/Corbyn: Duelling Dinosaurs (2019)

From the June 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jacob Rees-Mogg has called Jeremy Corbyn a ‘Marxist’ on more than one occasion. Is this delusion or cynicism? This ‘known Marxist’ is a politician who campaigned to remain in a capitalist trade bloc, their current political stance to nit-pick over the EU Customs Union.

The election of a ‘left-wing’ candidate as Party Leader has laid Labour bare as equal managers of capitalism in Britain. The fundamental belief held within the Labour Party is that what is good for business is good for workers. 

It is the absence of Marxist economic theory and the approach associated with this which renders Corbyn and his followers intrinsically incapable of challenging capitalist and reformist politicians in the Labour Party. By the same logic, it has also left Corbyn’s Labour unable to differentiate their position from the classic arguments for nationalisation and increased funding for the NHS.

This should not come as a surprise. Corbyn and his kind have consistently been far more interested in foreign policy debates than in Marxist political economy. For as long as state capitalist regimes and religious conflicts remain a priority to the British left, false titles such as Marxist will remain easily attributable to these politicians. This of course also applies to minor ‘Socialist’ parties who seek to influence Labour from the outside, unwilling to even stand candidates against a party which wouldn’t have them as members.

Instead of debating foreign policy, the welfare state and customs unions, a ‘known’ Marxist would be putting forward a class-based approach to contemporary capitalism. Known Marxists would argue that the exploitation of human labour is inherent in the capitalist system and that the interests of capital and labour are fundamentally opposed. In short, a known Marxist would argue for a new, socialist system of society. They would not argue for reforms to capitalism or state control of a capitalist economy.

The likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg will always scaremonger with regards to social democracy, reformism and state capitalism. Despite rhetoric of a return to a fabled decent society of years gone by, their intention by this is to drum up contemporary support for further liberalised capitalism. 

Regardless of their ideological posturing, many capitalist politicians appear well aware of the polarised interests of capital and labour and the exclusive role that the exploitation of the working class plays in generating profits. Evidently, the same cannot be said of the Labour Party. This can come as no surprise, as reformism is a capitalist ideology. Whether this is conscious, or derives from ignorance, is of course a question similar to this article’s premise.

Rhetoric continues to hide the real nature of the capitalist political debate. What level of working class compensation best facilitates the reproduction of the capitalist system? Should capitalists pursue profits without state interference or should the state apply restraint to protect capitalism’s interests as a whole? Social democracy or conservatism? Free markets or protectionism? 

The only way out of these reformist binaries is socialism. Socialism is a world without wages, money and profit; in short, it is a world without economic exploitation which by nature cannot exist under the current system. In this respect it is nonsensical to call Corbyn a socialist, and it is even more absurd to call him a Marxist. However, socialists should be aware of the right-wing cynicism behind these absurd statements.

James Clark

Letters: Getting Rid of Capitalism (2018)

Letters to the Editors from the November 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Getting Rid of Capitalism

Hi,

Doesn’t seem like there’s much to reply to, you mention the book in the first paragraph (‘How to destroy capitalism’, Socialist Standard, September 2018) but don’t actually discuss any of the points it makes.

A question for you: in the last 150 odd years, Marxist approaches to creating ‘society wide political and workplace action’ haven’t been successful to say the least. Capitalism is still very much alive and kicking. You say ending capitalism will come from a majority vote, but a tiny and shrinking handful of people vote for socialist programmes. What reasons do you have to think the same slogans and organising models will be more successful in the future?

Cheers,

Shahin (author of ‘Capitalism. What It Is and How Can We Destroy It?’)

Reply:

The article was not meant specifically to be a review of your book, only to answer the same question you posed in the title.

We can’t deny that capitalism is still alive and kicking, but this means that all the various theories as to how to get rid of capitalism have not been successful, not just Marxist, but anarchist, syndicalist, Leninist and reformist ones too.

We do indeed say that capitalism can only be ended when a majority is in favour of this and takes deliberate, democratic action to bring it about; which involves more than merely voting for it – it also involves organising democratically outside parliament. This is because socialism, as a society without economic or political coercion, could only be sustained by people willingly cooperating and participating in its running. Socialism is a democratic cooperative society that can only come into being democratically, i.e., with majority support and participation.

That is what we are working towards. There is no other way. If such a majority does not emerge then socialism won’t and capitalism will continue. – Editors.

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Bone and Mogg

What does the SPGB have to say about the debacle on LBC radio in September about Ian Bone re Jacob Rees-Mogg and his crappy children? From what I heard on LBC Ian Bone called Mogg ‘a horrible person’ and said it to his children. LBC demonised Ian Bone for this.

J.S., 

London SW4

Reply:

Ian Bone and Class War have always specialised in anti-rich stunts but it is the capitalist system that is to blame for the lot of the majority class of wage and salary workers not individual members of the capitalist class such as Jacob Rees-Mogg. He may (or may not) be a horrible person – he comes across as a caricature of a toff and so an obvious target for a Class War stunt – but that is completely irrelevant. Remove him and replace him by a ‘nice’ capitalist and it would make no difference. Should Ian Bone have targeted Mogg’s children? Maybe, but only to tell them that capitalism is a horrible system – Editors.

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Correction

Hi,

The September Socialist Standard and its obituary of Ron Stone states that he was a poet and wrote the poem ‘Wage Restraint’ which was published in the Eighties.

That particular poem was actually written by Roger Woddis under the title of, ‘How They Solved the Economic Crisis’ and was published in either the New Statesman or Punch. It later appeared in the book, The Woddis Collection first published in 1978 by Barrie & Jenkins 24 Highbury Crescent, London, N5 1RX.

Richard Layton

Greasy Pole: How Do You Like Your Leaders? (2016)

The Greasy Pole column from the September 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

As we were asked again and again, while one Westminster aspirant after another withered from their unnourished ambitions until Labour had only Jeremy Corbyn and Owen Smith left in contention for their party members’ votes – while the Tories were compelled to accept Theresa May and her deliberate technique of fostering or stifling the careers of her party underlings.

For Labour the conflict was particularly distressful; when Ed Miliband gave up the leadership there was a brood of competing successors – Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Tristram Hunt … remember them? And those others, hoping that some rival’s spectacular failure would give them an opening. And the rest? One by one they were ground away until they were conclusively despatched by the simple, predictable process of the overwhelming votes of their party supporters for the hitherto obscure Jeremy Corbyn. Remember him? The locally  popular MP who persistently voted against party instructions while stolidly grappling with the problems his constituency voters passed on to him? Who thereby amassed a formidable, unforeseen growth of simple popularity among the local people which infected the Party membership at large.

That was when David Cameron, deluded by expected success in the EU Referendum, revelled in stirring up his Back Benchers’ hysterical rapture with his corny jibes from the Despatch Box. Take your pick from a library of his feeble sallies. But somewhere among your choice will be the jibe about Ma Corbyn giving advice to Her Majesty’s Loyal Leader of the Opposition to pay more attention to adjusting the hang of his trousers, to smoothing his shirt front and to keeping his hair placidly combed. The Tories hungrily adored it. But it was actually ineffective.

Fife

Consider, to begin with, the matter of the Honourable Jacob William Rees-Mogg, son of a now-deceased life peer and editor of the Times. An offspring of a family who grew rich from the labour of Somerset people in their coalmines and who at school wallowed in the absorptions of Eton College before enriching himself in his City of London company by the name of Somerset Capital Management - the function of which needs little imagination. At the age of 38 Rees-Mogg failed to persuade the voters of the (at that time) obdurately Labour constituency of Central Fife to welcome him as their representative in Westminster by touring the poorer districts in what was said to be a Bentley car, accompanied by a woman who had been his ‘nanny’ during the luxury of his childhood in the family stately home. But there were other, less demanding constituencies and in the 2010 election he won the new North East Somerset constituency with a majority of almost 5000.

The point is that Jacob Rees –Mogg is also noted for being the very opposite of Jeremy Corbyn for his appearance, with his double breasted suit immaculately smooth and controlled, an appropriate tie and shirt and hair. How significant is this in relation to his performance? One of his campaigns as an MP was to legislate so that the county of Somerset should have its own time zone, 15 minutes behind London. He supports zero hours contracts for their ‘flexibility’, disregarding those desperate unemployed workers who have no choice but to conform to this additionally exploitative device. He is against same-sex marriage and in favour of state-financed repatriation of immigrants to return them to their ‘natural homelands’. And, in case it is not by now obvious, he describes himself as ‘a monarchist’. All of which emphasises that it is most urgently obvious that all leaders must be judged on matters other than their appearance.

Riots

And on that basis where does Jeremy Corbyn stand? There is no shortage of promises from him on every relevant problem. But then both of the big parties, as well as the smaller, equally squirreling, groups compete for votes with programmes which at first sight may offer straightforward strategies and foresight to adjust capitalist society into being problem free. This grim fact exists and flourishes despite the evidence conclusively against it. For example on the currently dominating matter of public disorder in reaction to the stress of urban life, Tim Newburn, Professor of Criminology at the London School of Economics, who has a dominant reputation in the subject, spoke recently on the fifth anniversary of the 2011 riots: ‘The underlying conditions for those riots still persist… There’s no real sign that things have improved for the lives of the kinds of people who were involved and caught up in the riots. Certainly it’s not implausible that there could be more riots’. (Guardian 6 August). And amid this morbid chaos all those previous, short-lived hopefuls for the Labour Party leadership have been replaced by Owen Smith, the MP for Pontypridd.

Smith was first elected in 2010 and was allocated to a succession of Shadow Ministerships including as Secretary of State for Wales. Previously he had a career which included a spell as Head of Policy and Government Relations for the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer – who, he ominously said, were ‘extremely supportive’ of his ambitions for political advancement. With this encouragement, during his first effort to get into Parliament at a by-election in 2006, he came out in support of the Private Financial Initiative in the NHS, with its promise of rich profits for private companies such as Pfizer. He was once a member of the CND, with typical reservations about the Trident programme but he later reversed this into support for that devastating weapon. During his campaign for the Party leadership he called for the constitution to refer specifically to tackling inequality ‘… right at the heart of everything that we do’ and he later announced this as ‘… a British New Deal for every part of Britain’.  In terms of promises to reform the agonies of capitalism there is nothing novel or stimulating about Owen Smith. He is simply the latest in a history of futile, hopeless imposters

So how do we like our leaders? And how do they like us? We endure this social system – pervading, dominant and repressive – where one group possesses all that is essential to human lives. In this our function is to keep relationships operating in that way and, when we are allowed to express our response, to confirm that we support it all at whatever cost to human interests. In this the politicians’ role is to operate a machinery to persuade us that it would be impossible to have it any other way. But in truth we can change it so that the likes of Rees-Mogg, Corbyn, and Owen Smith are part of a bitter history.

Ivan

Objections Overruled (1982)

From the March 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the most frequent objections to socialism is "That's all very well in theory, but you can't change human nature".

What exactly is meant by this? That human beings naturally do not want to share, co-operate, to be happy themselves and contribute to the happiness of others? That they must by their very nature snatch and grab, kick each other in the teeth, hate and maim and kill? If human nature is indeed like this, then it has to be said that there is an extraordinary number of freaks about—freaks who by some strange altruistic perversion actually stop at the scene of accidents to offer their help, rally around their neighbours in times of trouble, assist old ladies across roads, take lost children to the police station. It is the way society is based and organised which causes the distortions labelled as "human nature" by those with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and declaring socialism to be unworkable; or by those brainwashed to believe that the present system is the only system.

Under capitalism, one hundredth of the population own over eighty per cent of shares, while for the remainder it's a case of he who kicks hardest and fights the dirtiest wins most of whatever little is left. The wonder of it is not that perversions of human behaviour exist but that they are not a great deal more widespread. It is surprising, under such a system,  that people still do react pleasantly, decently and caringly towards their fellow human beings. Most men will not rape every woman they see on the streets after midnight, most blacks will not mug old ladies, most gangs of unemployed youths will not smash windows and bash in your head with a brick.

Human beings are not inherently vicious and violent. They become so only under certain conditions-stress, for example. The stress of chronic insecurity and appalling living conditions, of lack of opportunity and self-fulfillment. Where the world's wealth is owned by the few and denied to the many, then an attitude of grab-what-you-can and devil-take-the-hindmost is inculcated. Pleasure, for most people, comes essentially from sharing, be it sharing a good meal, or watching a good football match, or listening to a good concert. Human beings are naturally gregarious, and gregariousness does not square with the sort of antisocial behaviour represented as "human nature".

It now appears quite "natural" for the capitalists to tolerate the spectacle of workers suffering hideous industrial diseases, from pnemonoconiosis to cancer, in order that they might continue to rake in their profits. What could be more hideously inhuman than the manufacture of nuclear weapons? Such weapons would be indefensible even if they protected "us" against "them" (currently the Russians, whose "human nature" is apparently so debased that they are only awaiting their opportunity to massacre us).

In fact, it is not "the Russians" but the Russian ruling class, and it is not to protect "us" but to protect the interests of one ruling class against the depredations of another. Three thousand "top people" are to be rushed out of London to hide themselves in deep shelters "somewhere in Oxfordshire" as soon as a nuclear war threatens. These "top people" are the very ones who have howled loudest for the continuation of nuclear, and indeed of all other kinds, of armaments. They are to be preserved: we, the working class, are the one who are to be sacrificed.

Maybe among the select few who currently organise our lives for us "human nature" has indeed become permanently distorted. No one who heard the recent BBC interview with Master Jacob Rees-Mogg, the precocious schoolboy son of the former editor of The Times, can be in much doubt that the capitalist class are making a pretty thorough job of perverting the "nature" of their progeny. This is a child who, at the tender age of twelve is already dabbling in the Stock Market, has "rather good stockbrokers" and a helpful assistant bank manager, whose main professed interest is in the making of profit (which profit he prudently invests in antique silver) and whose first question on being invited to do a radio interview was "How much will I get paid for it?"

For us, the working class, who do not have the opportunity to share the Rees-Mogg's fascination with exploiting the labour of his fellow human beings, socialism will suit our natures very well. When there is a sufficiency for all, and all have equal access to it, we shall be quite content to take what we need, just as we shall contribute what we can according to our individual and social abilities. Being human beings, and possessing human natures, we shall doubtless still quarrel and still lose our tempers; but this will not be inflamed by the chronic insecurities, the constant fear of loss of livelihood, of degradation and poverty, which are endemic under the capitalist system. Socialism will have no "masters", backed by their accumulations of wealth, to incite us into rising against our fellow workers, to destroy each other with the nuclear bombs and missiles which we have made on their behalf to do their battles for them.

Under capitalism, while there exists the potential for a sufficiency—indeed, for an abundance—the system will not allow the potential ever to be fulfilled. Indeed, if there is the least danger of such a thing happening, then steps are very quickly taken to put a stop to it: sooner burn good food than let the starving get their hands on it. In socialism, where production will be for need rather than for profit, there will be no "market forces" operating to justify such obscenities. There will no longer be some of us condemned to go hungry while others glut, nor some who must remain homeless while others occupy palaces. Socialism, in short, is concerned solely to change the nature of our social organisation, not the "nature"of the human beings who make up that organisation.

Jean Ure