Five Benefits of Not Having Money (2008)

From the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist society will have no need for money. This will profoundly affect all aspects of life.

Removing money from the current economic equation would strike most people as impossible, unthinkable, absolutely imponderable. Everything we do, every transaction we make, from a simple cup of tea to sending a space probe to Mars, from birth to death and at every step in between, money has become a necessary part of getting what we require. It has become an accepted, entrenched method of acquiring anything and everything but it wasn’t always so and in a genuine socialist system money will be shown to have been an unnecessary, wasteful and divisive way of ordering world communities.

When initially presented with the notion of a world without money the first imperative is the willingness to contemplate a huge paradigm shift, to put aside all familiar long-held views and preconceived notions and to enter into an adventure of discovery that there is a place for all at the table, that it doesn’t entail regression to the Dark Ages and that the welfare and progress of people doesn’t have to come at cost to the environment.

1. Work

It is well recognised by experts in the health arena that work is one of the most stressful areas of life for reasons such as long hours, extended travelling time to and from place of employment, risk of job loss, lack of security of tenure including competition both within and without, inflexible working practices, difficulty getting release for major personal events such as bereavement, long-term illness of a spouse or partner, or even short-term care of a sick child. Loss of employment can put stress on the whole family, sinking it into debt, causing day-to-day difficulties with the budget and in many cases leading to loss of the home.

When money is not required in exchange for work and when, instead, all contribute their skills, expertise and/or manpower in return for open access to the requirements of life then we can begin to see a different motivation enter the whole concept of the “work” scenario. A moneyless world will free up millions of workers now tied to some very stressful occupations dealing only in (other people’s) money – banking, mortgage brokering, insurance; those occupied in the collection of rates, taxes and utility payments; those in security work such as guards and armoured truck staff engaged only in protecting and moving money and other “valuables” – millions of workers who, when considered logically, currently fulfil no useful function and contribute nothing to society that improves that society.

Right now, worldwide, are millions of would-be workers who are sidelined in one way or another, without employment or scratching on the edges of a black economy and in some of the more “developed” countries we find some termed “scroungers” in current-day parlance.

Within the capitalist system there has to be a pool of workers unable to find work in order to keep the bargaining power in favour of the employers who strive to keep wage levels down, whereas if there is a shortage of suitable labour the bargaining power switches to the employees who try to force wage levels up. The fact that a few “developed” countries have systems which pay a percentage of workers to remain unemployed (receive benefits) is a price the capitalists are prepared to pay to maintain the tensions in society. Encouraging the employed to think that they are the ones subsidising the benefits system maintains one fissure within the working class. Also, allowing a large number of unemployed to be without benefits would cause too many problems for the capitalists with possibilities of mass looting, rioting and damage to their property

2. Increased Leisure Time

With so many extra hands on deck working hours will be able to be considerably reduced which, with the knowledge that one’s work is not tied to the ability to feed and clothe the family, to house them and provide all the other requirements of life, is to remove the stress at a stroke.

Decreased time, but working for the common good rather than increased time working only for personal remuneration. Less working time was the oft-repeated refrain in the early days of the technology era. Workers were to benefit from machine-operated production systems, computers would be able to handle many of the mundane operations previously done manually, the working week would be much reduced, maybe even leading to job-sharing and part-time employment. In fact this state of affairs never materialised and more employees found longer working hours became part of their conditions of employment, earlier agreements having been gradually eroded to the benefit of the employers.

In socialism, with millions released from wage slavery in the then redundant financial sector free to be a part of the production, distribution and services sectors, with the black economy and “illegals” no longer threatening paid workers (pay being redundant) there will be a huge reduction in individual necessary work time. When there is no profit incentive the emphasis will be on the production of quality goods from quality materials and no one need choose an inferior item based on cost. Providers of utilities such as electricity and gas, water and communications will be able to have sufficient workers to install, service, repair and develop their installations more efficiently and effectively. If there is work that no one is prepared to undertake then an alternative will need to be found democratically.

Without the constraints that we have today the workplace will become a different place, one of cooperation not competition, where we work for the benefit of all, not for the profit of a few. The lines between work and leisure may well be much more blurred than in today’s scenario. People will have time, time to be creative, to learn different and multiple skills and to enjoy the time they spend working. Leisure activities seen as hobbies now – vehicle maintenance, gardening, DIY home improvements, baking, the making of all kinds of hand-made items, giving or receiving educational and training courses – could well form part of one’s service to the community, bringing a greater satisfaction and contributing to individual development generally, one of the aims of socialism. With more leisure time available it is also highly likely that more ‘work’ would be created in the leisure area, whether sports complexes, theatrical and music productions and educational courses in the widest sense and with unlimited opportunities for the active participation of those who choose it.

3. Housing

Adequate shelter, a “right” for all enshrined in the United Nations Charter, is still unavailable to millions (billions, probably). There is absolutely no automatic right to housing within the capitalist system. All must pay. To pay, all must work. It is no matter that you work long and hard and that your children work long and hard and don’t go to school. All that matters is that you have enough to buy or rent or build. Maybe you did have enough before the housing market bubble burst and the “worth” of your house went down while the interest rates went up. Well, tough! Look around you. See the empty houses and FOR SALE and foreclosure signs. These people must be living somewhere now. There is always housing stock available – if you can pay the going rate.

This is one very obvious benefit of not having money. The recent economic crisis has focussed many home-owners’ minds. Why should anyone be secure one month and the next find themselves in queer street? Can anybody justify one individual’s multiple home ownership while others live in slums, in cars, in cardboard boxes on the streets? Please! When the majority of us have eventually decided that this scenario is unacceptably obscene we can at last begin to move to a humanitarian way of ordering our societies. Housing for all. Decent housing for all. Materials that are free and belong to all of us. Our architects, builders, plumbers, plasterers, electricians, etc. etc. will all work for free – they also need homes to live in. New housing can be built to the best specifications using appropriate materials, incorporating adequate insulation and services with regard to environmental protection and best use of alternative energy.

Respect for people and respect for the environment. Decisions made democratically as to best use of urban space vacated by the money businesses; by communities wanting to refurbish or upgrade their older stock. The balance between urban and rural will no doubt change. In some parts of the world there will be a mass exodus back to productive farmland, reclaimed for local use and consumption rather than continuing to grow cash crops for export. Decisions will be taken based on the well-being of communities and determined by the requirements of those communities and there will be no constraints or limitations linked to profit for a third party.

4. Health care

As a result of huge stress reduction, no more worrying about salary or wages from the job, no more worrying about keeping up the payments on the house, increased leisure time – all these various factors will surely result in improved relationships all round and, quite soon, a healthier workforce.

At present there are huge variations in standards of health care around the world and also massive discrepancies in availability and monetary cost to the recipients, Universal health care simply dos not exist. Again it is tied in to the ability to pay. Let’s remove this barrier to good health and care of the sick by removing the money element and offer all services, treatments, drugs and medicines free of charge. Hospitals and clinics then will be free of top-heavy budget management and will be able to access resources, whether manpower, equipment or drugs, according to their requirements and not limited by financial constraints. Medical researchers, now mostly tied to global corporations and limited by them in the areas of their research, will be able to concentrate on eradicating disease and providing the best remedies for all comers, not just those with insurance. World diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and polio will soon be a thing of the past when money, too, is history.

Work and training in one of the many varied avenues of health care will be open to those from the pool of post-money redundant sectors. With the shift from a market economy to societies geared to fulfilling human needs there will probably be more priority given to preventive medicine and appropriate information on suitable diet and healthy living, which leads us to consider the topic of food.

5. Food

Currently the growing, processing and distribution of food is largely dominated by transnational corporations solely in the pursuit of profit. The consumer appears to have a huge choice of goods and numerous decisions to make at each aisle of the supermarket but often the choices are superficial, not actually the choices being sought. For instance, notice the difficulty of buying a processed food which doesn’t contain soya. The soya has probably been genetically modified and the labelling could be unhelpful. The choice becomes buy in ignorance or acceptance, or do without.

It’s well known that products are laced with added sugar, salt, monosodium glutamate etc. to create a certain dependency and craving for more. Last year’s problems of melamine-laced pet foods which caused animal deaths in the importing countries were followed this year by melamine-laced milk products causing infant deaths and multiple illnesses in China, spreading fear to importing countries. There can be only one reason for food to be contaminated deliberately (apart from a mass assassination attempt or the desire to spread fear among the population) and that is in the pursuit of greater profit.

Africa, a net exporter of food until the post-colonial days of the 1960s, became a victim again, indebted to the World Bank and IMF. Recipient of highly subsidised dumping of food from rich countries (US and Europe) the result has been that the countries there have to grow cash crops for export in order to pay off some of the growing debt creating food shortages for the domestic population, many of whom had been forced off ancestral lands (for the growing of cash crops) and who were then without the means of subsistence. There have been a number of studies which reveal there is no problem feeding a world population considerably larger than today’s. There is an enormous wastage of food in the rich world. The major problem for the hungry in the poorest countries is lack of cash.

Food, if regarded simply as fuel for the body, should be clean – free from contaminants, chemicals and the like; fresh – the more local the better; and nutritious. Free food for all would come with the bonus of knowing there would no longer be any incentive to adulterate ingredients. The question of “FAIR TRADE” wouldn’t arise as all along the line farmers, producers, pickers, packers and distributors would have the same motivation to provide good clean food knowing they have the same access as the consumers. This has to be a win-win situation. Another winner in this scenario would be the environment.

Janet Surman

Next month, five more benefits from not having to have money.

Letter: But What Can I Do? (2007)

Letter to the Editors from the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

But What Can I Do?

“But what can I do?” How many times do you hear that or similar phrases from people too overwhelmed by the enormity of the task that they can’t see the wood for the trees?

Socialism isn’t going to be born overnight, that has long been agreed. It’s going to be a long uphill struggle by those with enough conviction against the million and one forces stacked against it, and I’m not talking about the forces of the imperial armies or the might of the transnational corporations, I’m talking about the likes of your brother-in-law who can only see as far as the next pay day and a six-pack in front of the TV, or the woman at work who can’t understand that you won’t buy a lottery ticket because winning the jackpot won’t exactly mean you beat the system. Life can get tedious explaining the same old obvious thing to yet one more sceptical punter, however, if we don’t………?

This is about one of my bêtes-noires, which is, why do so many people drink Coca  Cola? (insert your own pet-hate here.) Not only does this company have a terrible track record for union busting around the world even going so far as to be involved in killings by private militia, for depriving some Indian villages of water and poisoning wells through over-extraction in others, but it’s so full of sugar and junk that it tastes horrible and it’s harmful to health to boot.

All the restaurants, cafes and bars in the tourist areas close to here offer Coke or Pepsi whichever concession is dominant in the particular vicinity and it follows that their other soft drinks and bottled water are purchased through the same concession. In towns and villages outside the tourist areas it is unusual to be offered bottled water at restaurants, coffee houses, bus station cafeterias and the like.

Water comes in a jug from the tap. Village water here is clean, unadulterated and abundant. Many townfolk can be observed stopping at their favourite spring by the roadside to stock up with several days’ supply of what is considered the best drinking water. In the towns where chlorine etc is used in the public supply local shops deliver large containers of natural spring water (the preferred option) to homes and businesses.

In our very local favourite restaurant which served water bottled by the Coca Cola Co. here in Turkey (acknowledged in letters so small as to require both good light and good eyesight to see it and which has been guilty of union-busting here too), we would ask for a jug of village water from the tap, – no Coca Cola bottled water for us thankyou!

Over time and with a few more Turkish lessons under our belt we painstakingly explained our position to a number of employees and to the owners. One tack they understood and warmed to was that there are a number of small local water bottling plants, soft drink manufacturers and fruit juice companies (for the environment generally speaking local is better than national and national better than international). Very soon we noticed the presence of a local company’s bottled water on the tables in place of the  earlier offence to the eye and the conscience. And my water from the tap now tastes  even sweeter.

We’ve had similar results with another restaurant we patronise, up in the mountains by a fast-flowing river. All the food served here comes from within just a few miles and now that includes the bottled water too.

So, 2 down, 999,998 to go. A drop in the ocean? Yes. A message in a bottle? Maybe.

Janet Surman, 

Turkey.

Material World: Famine in the Horn of Africa… Again (2011)

The Material World Column from the September 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Although the current drought conditions are affecting a wide area in the Horn of Africa including Kenya and Ethiopia, the main media focus has once again fallen on Somalia, a country with a complicated and turbulent colonial history. The story is always the same: following a devastating drought there is a famine; the problem is not lack of food but lack of the ability to pay for food or lack of access to land to grow it. The world is stockpiled with food but giving it away would negatively affect the market.

This time around we hear that 3.5 million Somalis and 12 million Ethiopians within the drought region are under threat of starvation. Droughts are not new to the region, they are a regularly occurring phenomenon, but with the UN Famine Early Warning System in place for a number of years now, expectations would surely have increased for improved handling of the situation. Warnings did go out early this year predicting starving millions in the south of Ethiopia but the regime continued with its policy of selling and leasing great swathes of land to other countries to grow crops for foreign consumption. Last year 10,000 tons of rice were exported to Saudi Arabia alone.

Thomas Mountain, a US journalist who has lived in Eritrea since 2006, comments that while southern Ethiopians are suffering the worst drought and famine for 60 years those in the north are hungry because of ‘near record high food prices.’ This he contrasts with what is happening in neighbouring Eritrea, which is a result of totally different governmental policies. Here, within a handful of years, a move from rain-fed crops to a micro dam-fed irrigation system has led to better, more secure crops and dramatically falling prices of staple grains. According to the World Bank, life-expectancy improvements are ‘dramatic’ and Eritrea is one of the countries which will meet the Millennium Development Goals especially in the areas of children’s health, malaria mortality prevention and AIDS reduction. (http://www.countercurrents.org/mountain050811.htm)

News coverage of unfolding events in the area is patchy and can be biased according to allegiances or contracts of employment. Reports of facts on the ground are often distorted, depending on who’s pulling the strings. Currently Eritrea is a ‘state sponsor of terror’ according to Hillary Clinton who claims it supplies weapons to Al-Shabaab in Somalia. As a result, the media can say nothing positive about it.

Without doubt, the ongoing civil war in Somalia is exacerbating the crisis affecting so many of its people. The most problematic areas of Somalia for needy recipients of food aid are controlled by Al-Shabaab, a ‘rebel organisation with links to Al Qaeda’, which is unwilling to allow a number of food-aid agencies access for fear they are infiltrated by the CIA. The CIA is working closely with the official Somalian central government in Mogadishu, a government widely recognised to be in control of only a portion of the country. 

The whole of this region has suffered long and hard throughout its colonial history and is continuing to suffer as colonial powers attempt to subjugate regimes or leaders of regimes in pursuit of profit through the exploitation of natural resources and land accumulation. As explained succinctly in the article ‘Africa, starvation and speculation’ in last month’s Socialist Standard, the small elites in control of natural resources are only too happy to profit personally while exposing millions to penury and starvation by driving them from their land through international land deals. Different regions of the Horn of Africa are affected in different ways by the diverse conditions on the ground – but whichever way the story is spun, the competition for profit and accumulation underlies the neglect of the population’s needs.

Droughts are a well-known fact of life in a number of regions of the world and will continue to affect this region of Africa. Forecasts predict they will become more severe as problems with climate change increase. But it is not inevitable that there should be famine after drought. Famine results from the denial of land, placing restrictions of the free movement of populations, treating food as commodities and the growing commercialisation of agriculture, especially for export. All this is compounded by bad planning, inadequate water storage and management, poor infrastructure and logistical organisation. Socialism could not prevent natural events such as lack of rainfall (but it could prevent droughts by an adequate infrastructure) but in those circumstances, no one would starve as food would simply be released from warehouses or transported from other parts of the world.

Janet Surman

I Believe . . . (2007)

From the November 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

It appears there has been a recent proliferation of books published (none of which I have read) on the subject of defending or promoting atheism or giving the case against religion and an even greater number of words written about them in reviews, newspaper articles and journals, of which I have skimmed a few. My main wonder is what all the fuss is about.

Except for creationists or similar it is generally accepted that the Universe, of which Earth is one tiny speck, has been around for many billions of years. Of the approximately two million years that humans  in some form have inhabited the earth, it is only a few thousand years ago that their development led some groups to believe they could influence nature by offering prayers and/or sacrifices. Eventually there developed the various religions as we know them around the world today which recognise either many gods, one god or none at all.

The Peters World Atlas 2002 reveals interesting statistics. The ‘one god’ school has numbers for Christianity at 22 percent and Islam 11 percent with Hinduism (many deities) at 10 percent. This shows 43 percent of the world’s population have belief in a religion which recognises a god or gods. Interestingly there is no mention of Judaism because it accounts for less than 1 percent of world population. A search on the web shows Judaism to be ranked 12th with about 14 million adherents worldwide which is less than ¼ percent of world population. With other religions factored in, Buddhism 5 percent (no concept of God), Confucianism 3 percent (ethical principles and no hereafter), ‘Natural’ religions 4 percent and Shintoism 1 percent (worship of ancestors and nature), it is shown that there is about 43 percent of the world’s population with no theist faith at all.

Historically coercion has been used to persuade the masses to accept one religion or another. Military coercion in the form of raids and invasions to expand territory resulting in gradual conversion of populations, economic coercion in the form of higher taxes for non-adherents and political coercion as in England between Catholic and Protestant monarchs and later in communist states where all religion was supposedly banned. Helping to keep the masses under the control of the elites included such threats as excommunication, fear of not winning a place in heaven – or worse, everlasting hell, or even death by execution for reneging on the faith as during the Catholic Inquisition and also in Islam.

Presumably much of the egocentricity in the west, with so much emphasis on the three religions of the same god, Yahweh, God and Allah (together accounting for 33 percent of world-wide population), is geographical. In India the antagonism is mainly between Hinduism and Islam. Different locations reveal different local problems as currently in the Middle East between Islam and Judaism and also the sectarianism problems between Shi’a and Sunni.

Wherever the accident of birth sees each child born, each individual is born totally dependent and without language or religion. A child develops speaking the language of its home. A child raised in a religion-free zone will not acquire religious knowledge. For this to occur it would need to be exposed habitually to ideas, concepts and beliefs by those around it. How many people make a conscious choice of religion and how many simply continue with what they were born into as part of their traditional culture, religious or not?

As evolution marched on there came a point when this particular species – human kind – developed the power of thought, separating it forever from other species. Then came the questions. Why? What does it all mean? What is life’s purpose? Perhaps this is where the divergence between believers (in a theist sense) and believers (in a non-theist sense) causes the greatest difficulties. Religionists usually talk of atheists or those without religion in a negative sense as if they have no belief or have rejected their (the religionists’) notions of a god. I see it a different way. As an atheist I do have belief, – it is a positive belief – in the universe as it is, as it evolved and as it will continue to do. I could accuse the religionists of denigrating my belief when they say that isn’t enough, but why bother, I don’t need their validation.

I believe we don’t need to be intellectuals, philosophers, academics, students of theology or popular authors to know how we feel about religion and why we feel the way we do about world issues.

I believe that we should try to leave the world a better place than the one into which we were born.

Janet Surman

Blogger's Note:

From the same issue of the Socialist Standard, see the following.

Peace? In Capitalism? (2020)

From the November 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

To mark the retirement earlier this year of David Krieger, founder and director for 38 years of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (NAPF), The Spokesman published a special issue, Waging Peace. The Spokesman itself is a publication of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation which was founded in 1963. The general aim of both these foundations is that of maintaining peace in a nuclear era world and to work to bring about the reduction, if not total abolition, of nuclear weapons.

This particular edition offers much good evidence of the need to stop war (of all kinds) but socialists have a number of points of issue to address that can demonstrate the clear need for recognising the imperative of superseding the capitalist system in order to achieve this goal. However, the publication refers to capitalism per se only occasionally as one of the stumbling blocks but never puts it directly in the spotlight.

Elephant in the room

Waging Peace contains twelve articles which have a common view of a world of states accepted as the norm, not questioned. The crying need to explore the reasons of how and why separate states develop animosity towards others is the elephant in the room waiting to present the socialist case. For instance Richard Falk, Senior Vice President at the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and who has acted as counsel before the International Court of Justice states that geopolitical factors are not generally considered. He states that geopolitics subverts ‘the major premise of state-centric world order; namely, the equality of sovereign states’ (Article 2.1 of the UN Charter). ‘The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its members.’ However, Falk reveals serious flaws in a policy of so-called juridical equality:

‘A primary ingredient of sovereignty is the unconditional authority of states to determine their own security policy, especially in response to threats. The irony of the managerial approach is that the two states with the most plausible security justifications for recourse to nuclear deterrence, Iran and North Korea, are the only states under pressure to forgo or renounce such weaponry[…] Instead of juridical equality, nuclear weapons policy is geopolitically hierarchical’.

Another contributor, Daisaku Ikeda of Japan, founder of several international institutions promoting peace, culture and education, wrote in 2011 that we should abolish and dismantle not just nuclear weapons but ‘the war system itself’. He follows this with suggestions of how to measure military spending comparing this with what other, better, things could be done with that money for the good of populations around the world. Two examples: three hours’ equivalent worth of global military spending was what it cost the World Health Organization to eliminate smallpox; and three days’ worth of global military spending in 2011 could have taught the 275 million illiterate children of the world to read and write. Later he talks of the cold war and the fact that more than half of the world’s physicists were engaged in military research in order to manufacture more than enough nuclear weapons capable of annihilating the human race many times over. And then he declares ‘What absurdity! What an incredible waste of human resources!’ Well, absolutely, but the socialist answer to this would be that dismantling the profit system would have a much more solid assurance of improving, by abolishing, the various negatives listed in his article. Instead of a cry to dismantle the war system we say dismantle the whole profit system because this is what prolongs the inequalities and inadequacies facing us.

Commander Robert Green served in the British Royal Navy between 1967 and 1982 and was well acquainted with nuclear weapons. After retirement he talks of how, as a former operator of British nuclear weapons, he came to a gradual rejection of pro-nuclear deterrence indoctrination. He is author of Security Without Nuclear Deterrence published in 2018 by Spokesman Books. One of the points he raises about deterrence or reduction of nuclear weapons is that of a ‘new world role for the UK’. He sets out a case for the UK, as the smallest member of the P5 (the five permanent members of the UN security council which were the first five nuclear states) to claim a new world role by unilaterally declaring a rejection of nuclear deterrence. If they were to do so he writes that ‘an overwhelming majority of world opinion would erupt in support’ and ‘the UK would gain a global role in which it would be welcomed as truly a “force for good.”’ This may be a great rallying call but hardly seems realistic with the current global hegemonic order as it is.

Possible nuclear Armageddon is hardly something to view lightly but a writer of one of the articles certainly has an optimistic viewpoint offering two lights on the horizon. First, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the achievement of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) ‘is an essential and long overdue first step to the total elimination of nuclear weapons.’ This treaty is seen as a complement to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and supposedly reinforces the commitment of its parties to non-proliferation.

The second light on the horizon is Global Zero which, among other things, has ‘developed a plan for the phased and verified removal of all nuclear weapons from military arsenals of the nuclear-armed countries by 2030 with continuing verification and transparency requirements for the entire process of dismantlement to total elimination.’ Again, no mention of the absolute imperative of capitalism and capitalist companies to continue making profit from sales of these to-be-eliminated weapons and all that goes with them.

An article titled ‘If weapons had been the answer’ by Fredrick S. Heffermehl addresses the manipulation and distortion over the years of Alfred Nobel’s statement on the establishment of the ‘Peace Prize’. It appears that Nobel’s words were about such things as disarmament, creating the brotherhood of nations and promoting the ideas of the peace congresses of the 1890s and, in fact, Nobel made specific mention of disarmament in his will. Heffermehl discusses the distortion of Nobel’s wishes as the prize is given regularly for reasons having nothing to do with his original intentions but is subject to ‘political and diplomatic pressure and a decay of justice’. Two examples of individual prize winners who can hardly be listed as peace activists – Henry Kissinger and Barack Obama.

The Inseparables

Three quarters of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s existence has been post-cold war and in those years there has been, globally, an enormous proliferation of all manner of weapons of war and especially the most dangerous of them – nuclear weapons. Treaties have been made and treaties continue to be broken, assuring us of negative progress. Why is that? Could it be linked to one of the biggest bugbears of socialists – reformism? So much of ‘Waging Peace’ is about reforming the system we have into one supposedly more favourable to the whole world’s population.

In 1984, during the cold war and just a handful of years before NAPF was established, a book was published addressing just that – The Futility of Reformism. The author, Samuel Leight, a member of the World Socialist Party of the US, headed Chapter 13 ‘The Inseparables (Capitalism and War)’ which ably and convincingly addresses all the problems raised above.

The book had an appendix of 36 pages, solely pertinent to this chapter, concerning the statistics of war from 1945 to the end of 1983. Leight gathered together information from encyclopaedias and various other sources including newspapers and listed them in chronological order, some of the events lasting for years, some for days and others going on intermittently. In addition to well-known international wars these include coups, invasions and general hostilities, most of them resulting in loss of civilian lives and wrecked communities with hardly a day going by without conflict somewhere in the world.

Leight drew attention early in the chapter to the month of July in 1983 when an article was published, ‘Even in ‘Peacetime’, 40 Wars Are Going On’ and that these hostilities claimed as many as five million lives. Certainly politicians worldwide claim to want peace and abhor war whilst building up their ‘capabilities’ for defence, never for attack, and they are always ready to blame the other party for provocation. Worldwide budgets for defence have risen year on year and international sales of war materiel continue to increase annually assisted by armies of lobbyists – layer upon layer of profit to be made throughout the whole continuous and continuing procedure.

Also in 1983 referencing a Los Angeles Times 16-page supplement ‘Servants or Masters? Revisiting the Military Industrial Complex’ Leight drew attention to statistics pertaining to the numbers of specialists engaged in Reagan’s five-year plan of expansion of ‘defence’ spending. Workers in the military industrial complex included 30+ percent of the country’s mathematicians, 25 percent of the country’s physicists, 47 percent of the aero/astronautic engineers and 11 percent of computer programmers. Nearly 40 years later no doubt the numbers in these areas will have changed as technology has changed considerably but it certainly holds true that a huge percentage of the workforce will still be working in this area of research, development and production. And, as in all areas of employment globally, individuals rely on this work to support their lives.

Leight wrote about the various treaties, especially relating to nuclear weapons that have been signed by different countries at different times only to be broken by one or other of the signatories at some future date, just as the contributors to Waging Peace also do. Some of his references were to older treaties such as one from 1925 on chemical and toxic weapons which have been broken by one or more signatories over the years as they discover even better (more lethal) options, leading him to point out the fact that ‘not only can governments not be trusted but the measures they support are not reliable or practical for their intended purposes.’

With regard to the various nuclear deterrence treaties signed (and reneged on) over the years, there has been a common factor which is that nuclear weapons only make sense as a means of deterring nuclear aggression by a potential enemy (whilst decades go by with increased yields of these weapons – greater deterrence?). Leight pointed out what should be abundantly clear to any thinking person – a nuclear war cannot be planned with the aim of winning it.

A brief look at active wars at the time this book was written – Iran and Iraq, Lebanon’s civil war, Afghanistan and USSR, Libya v. Chad, the Basque separatist conflict, Northern Ireland’s ‘troubles’, just to mention some, and all of these ‘Even in Peacetime’.

The final words from Samuel Leight: ‘As always, capitalism and war go hand in hand. “The inseparables” can never be separated. To get rid of one is to get rid of the other.’

Janet Surman

Enough food for all (2020)

From the October 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Malnutrition is caused by “the lack of access to sufficient, nutritious and safe food” due to poverty’ (UN Food and Agriculture Organisation 2017).

Within the current political system planning ahead on whatever front, the main goal will be in some way or another connected to the financial aspect. Housing, for instance, is a major problem for millions around the world even though it is designated by a UN resolution as a basic human right. In ‘normal’ non-Covid times the UK, with less than one percent and the US, with less than five percent of the global population, both have significant numbers of people living rough on the streets or in hostels whilst more than enough housing remains empty but unavailable to them. On a global level we can only make estimates of the whole picture but there is no doubt that too many millions of people are without one of the basic necessities of life.

Even larger numbers of individuals struggle to get enough to eat, especially nutritious food that would help to keep them healthy and, in most cases, that is also linked to their financial situation. Whether the poor in faraway undeveloped places, both urban and rural, or the poor in supposedly more affluent Western countries, the divisions between haves and have-nots are there in plain sight. Another supposedly human right is not available to them.

Air, water, food and shelter. The four absolute necessities for humankind. Currently a minority has these in plenty but the majority, on a sliding scale, is limited on their access to clean air, enough clean water, sufficient, varied food and shelter suitable to their environment and family needs. Again, all these are limited by a person’s financial situation.

If we value our own being as an individual in this world then surely we recognise a similar value for each and every other human being? And wherever one lives in this world, urban or rural, all have these similar basic requirements.

Imagining removing the financial aspect from our lives is the key to discovering just how different all lives could be, how decision-making becomes inclusive and relevant for all, how this could free people up from a boring and hateful treadmill to creative and inclusive new ways of organising and planning. To be able to move ahead in a way which eliminates all the major negative facts and stress which face humanity right now, to confront them with the aim of protecting both people and planet for the long term.

Cash crops

There is enough food produced currently to feed the global population but much is lost as waste from homes, from shops and from storage facilities. Much food is kept off the market, in storage, to maintain price levels. It is a criminal act, to know that people are dying for lack of food and to deny them access for lack of money. There is food for all but all are not getting it, so something radical has to change to make that happen.

Food has long been a commodity, promoted non-stop in the media – but usually as a processed product rather than a fruit, vegetable, cereal crop, animal or fish. It is something bought in a supermarket in a package. In poorer areas of large towns and cities it has become common to see customers’ baskets filled only with these processed foods because it is cheaper to feed the family this way. Also it becomes more difficult to find fresh produce in these areas – most of the locals could not afford it anyway. Those living in large urban areas may not even have access to a market where fresh food can be found. The more up-market towns may have a ‘farmers market’ weekly or seasonally but the prices tend to be out of reach of many. Globally there are very many different local situations, however similar effects and results will be found according to the earning power of the customer.

The all-consuming hype of mega-corporations and mainstream media, which are paid to push their particular brands of food, is an obstacle that should be easy to overcome when there will be no profit from such advertisements. Associations, foundations, charities and the like will all become redundant when no one is without food or housing.

A current problem in large areas of the world is that of corporate takeover, removing huge populations from productive land in favour of growing crops for profit rather than crops for food. ‘The Green Revolution ‘of the 1960s and 70s which was heralded as the solution to world hunger is a good example of this. What happened over a period of a few years was that a new modified rice, supposedly more nutritious, was grown over huge areas in India, and other parts of Asia, the seed pressed on local farmers and grown by corporations as monocrops. In Asia – the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, there are thousands of varieties of rice and this vast area is considered as the most biodiverse in the world for vegetables, fruit, root crops and cereals. The new rice, as many other genetically modified crops, required large amounts of nitrogen fertilisers and irrigation. The change over some years was revealed by the huge rise in diabetes, the new white rice having a high glycaemic index, with 60 percent of global diabetes occurring in Asia. Plus increasing numbers of people had reduced access to a varied diet as a result of poverty.

Now in 2020 we find another move to push yet another rice as a supposed miracle crop:

‘Agrochemical transnationals (TNCs) and collaborating institutions such as the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) are using concerns over food security during the pandemic to push for an industrial agricultural system that is already discredited’ (theecologist.org/2020/aug/19/ golden-rice-trojan-horse).

The message needed to counter this increasing control of global food is that of the enormous diversity of crops, whether grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts or livestock – fish and meat – and the health benefits of food uncontaminated by chemicals of any kind. There is evidence that much of food production over the previous few decades is proving harmful to humans through allergies, obesity and downright slow poisoning. There are numerous court cases internationally pending from farm workers suffering serious illnesses from exposure to herbicides and pesticides; ongoing information related to corporations attempting to increase the spread of genetically modified crops against the will of many farmers and illegally in some countries.

One example, India, is covered in detail by Colin Todhunter at Countercurrents (bit.ly/3bEsoCc). Recently revealed are details of the revolving door between developers, patent-holders and regulators – nothing new there then. With regard to GM brinjal (aubergine) Bangladesh is now being targeted as both India and the Philippines have so far rejected it. Although India has officially accepted only one GM crop, cotton about 20 years ago, there are examples of other trials taking place without official approval.

Without the profit motive

Without the profit motive there could be no incentive to force these various changes and communities would be free to choose their own way when looking to the future. Wide-ranging discussions would take place between all stakeholders and experts as to the efficacy of trials and possible implementation. Certainly without the current global political system true democracy could at last raise its head and provide populations with the diversity of multiple food stuffs and do it in ways which don’t pollute our water and our soil, whilst also reducing the harmful gases emitted.

UN estimates for the next 30 years show a worldwide increase in the percentage of populations living in urban areas. For the UK it is projected to be 90 percent by 2050. No doubt this will be linked to work-related projections for the convenience and most profitable conditions for the capitalist system’s way of working. Now, during the Covid pandemic, there has been an increase in UK urban areas of applications for allotments – up by 300 percent in one area. When moving towards changing to a socialist system there are a number of positives from an increase in local crop cultivation. Gardens, rooftops, walls, underground spaces (there has been one for several years under Clapham High Street) are all being used for food crops. Most of these can benefit the urban environment from increased biodiversity with plenty of scope for improving environments whilst also being productive. There is a short but interesting article on this topic at https://bit.ly/3bFYIo9.

The system we are living in now is unsustainable. The top one percent of EU households have carbon footprints 22 times larger than climate targets allow. Only about 5 percent of EU households live within the required limits. A reduction per person of 2.5 tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030 is required to reach this target. The EU average per person is 8 tonnes, the top one percent produce 55 tonnes. A global problem being given scant political attention.

According to James Hansen of Columbia University, regarding climate change, ‘the agonising efforts of scientists to avoid provoking accusations of alarmism have led to an innate optimism bias – sometimes leading to cautious underestimates.’

Until we can move away from the entrenched format of everything for profit there is little to no chance of changing the direction the planet is headed. Removing the capitalist approach to life is a better scenario for all global inhabitants, human and other. Then choices can and will be made for the benefit of all. What choice of food to be grown will be discussed and decided by people who have the right information. Releasing us from the many constraints of money will enhance lives positively. Our future choice of urban or rural living will be made freely, fulfilling personal goals. Looking ahead to the collective goal of socialism we acknowledge the vast diversity of cultures around the globe and the need to recognise and welcome all variations. After all we are just one small part of a vast, beautiful, ancient tapestry of human life. We don’t know just how all the myriad global communities will organise together but we are well aware that all the skills available will be welcomed far and wide. We need each other to protect our future generations’ well-being and whole environment.

Janet Surman

Carbon trading or social change? (2006)

From the October 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

July brought two publications coincidentally including articles on the same subject. Couched in terms so, so soothing to the save-the-planet-sympathisers, Roughnews advises us that “we all need to limit our personal impact on global warming” and whilst supporting responsible tourism we should give thought to “how we can redress the environmental damage caused by travel – in particular flights, the fastest growing contributor to global warming”. Great! Excellent idea! This has to be good news. We can continue to fly, as often, as far as we choose and can also redress the environmental damage. And the solution? Offset your use of carbon taken from the ground by enabling a tree to be planted somewhere in the world – and on a short haul flight this “costs no more than the price of a drink”.

Rough Guides is also publishing a book in October, called Climate Change which, miracle of miracles, is actually a ‘climate neutral’ book meaning that “the amount of CO2 emitted in the book’s production and distribution, including everything from paper manufacture to the computers used by the author and editor and the estimated carbon footprint of the book’s physical distribution has been calculated” by the carbon offset company Climate Care. To what end? So that Rough Guides (through increased retail price of the book, presumably) will pay Climate Care to ‘offset’ the carbon emissions by planting some trees somewhere, or by installing energy-saving light bulbs somewhere else, or a similar scheme supposed to mop up the carbon released. Apparently Rough Guides offsets all its authors’ travel by paying Climate Care to take care of it. No mention of how Climate Care benefits from the arrangement. It seems one can ‘offset’ all manner of nasties now, from flying, car rental, to producing CDs, all the while feeling good about ‘putting something back’ and being lulled into believing you have repaired the damage done. (The World Bank estimated the global carbon market to be worth $11 billion at the end of 2005, 10 times the previous year’s value.)

However, the second July publication, New Internationalist, has a different story to tell. It reminds us that by unlocking the carbon in fossil fuels by mining it, burning it and releasing it as active carbon it disrupts the balance of carbon in air, soil and seas. What is needed to address the problem of too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is to reduce the amount of carbon released. Oliver Rackham, a Cambridge University botanist and landscape historian is quoted thus, “Telling people to plant trees (to solve climate change) is like telling them to drink more water to keep down rising sea levels.” Adam Ma’anit, the author of the article, gets to grips with reality and shows offsetting for what it is – companies being formed to take advantage of the gullible consumer, established companies jumping on the bandwagon to increase their share of the market and the misinformed punter alleviating their guilt whilst doing nothing to actually cut carbon emissions. Adam Ma’anit: “Climate change is an issue we shouldn’t be ‘neutral’ on. Carbon offsets are at best a distraction and at worst a grandiose carbon laundering scheme.” And, “The solution to climate change is social change.” Any seconders?

Janet Surman

A Post-Conflict World (2009)

From the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Imagine a world without war

Focus on conflict; spiralling to encompass more and more areas of the world; bringing “terror” into all cities east, west, north, south; wreaking chaos on whole countries; creating friction between different sections of the population — between people who previously had no reason to be suspicious or fearful of the other. This is what those in power around the world would subject us to and in this they are having no small success.

Now focus on how it could be if the majority of the world’s people were to have their say, and imagine a world without conflict following a transformation in thinking. A transformation in thinking that comes about through the realisation and understanding by individuals who alone or in small numbers have little influence over what they can achieve against the powers of a state but when working together for common aims can bring the power to the people where it belongs. Not military power. Not economic power. Decision-making power.

States, i.e. governments, (or even small sections of government) have the prerogative of violence. All means are in their control and they allow themselves the sole right to use violence, to use police and armed forces against whomever they label as enemies, as a threat to the state or as a threat to national security. The citizenry can’t be a party to the details. In fact even discussing making them a party to the details in itself will be heralded as risking national security further and giving them the excuse to restrict us even more. But, imagine gradually more and more people, seeking an egalitarian and peaceful society, protesting at their government’s armed interventions in other countries, as for example today in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And more and more daring to protest at the level of violence at home perpetrated by the authorities towards citizens on the streets. More letters written to more newspapers and to representatives of the people at all levels; more emails flashing around the globe to encourage others to get involved; more websites and blogs to which people can add their name to show dissidence; more meetings and demonstrations displaying withdrawal of support by the masses for their so-called leaders. Bertrand Russell told CND many years ago, “If all those who disapprove of government policy were to join massive demonstrations of civil disobedience they could render government folly impossible.” It’s not impossible to believe that numbers could become such that members of the forces of repression and armed aggression decide that they will no longer act against fellow citizens or against citizens of another nation. Significant numbers have already spoken out against such aggression, more of them beginning to feel the pressure of society, a society of which they are a part, (not apart from!) a society made up of their friends, family members, school mates, neighbours, a society whose interests they are supposedly engaged in defending. In the case of civil disturbances, strikes and demonstrations they will now join ranks with their own masses preventing repression at home and opposing interference in the destinies of other societies which conversely have no argument with them.

Imagine the power falling away from those who have used it recklessly around the world and into the hands of this majority seeking an egalitarian and peaceful society. Imagine the armed forces, now under the democratic control of the people, committed to securing all weapons, armaments, vehicles, planes, helicopters, ships, submarines, war materiel of all kinds including factories and depots; securing them from any further use whilst and until they can be dismantled, recycled or made safe.

 Are people to stand by passively observing societies descend into the dystopian dissolution that many see as inevitable or shall they stand up together against aggression in all its manifestations in a process of struggle and achievement? Imagine this amazing specimen of revolution, this fantastic human organism, coming together at last to realise its full potential – for what the preamble to the UN Declaration of Human Rights refers to as dignity and worth, freedom, justice and peace.

As Edward Said has written, “There is always the possibility of another social model.”

Janet Surman

From each according to their ability (2007)

From the September 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard 

“I don’t want to take £1 billion pounds to the grave with me.”  (Sir Tom Hunter, Daily Telegraph, 18 July 18).

Andrew Carnegie, Bill Clinton, Bob Geldof et al would no doubt agree that there can be only a small percentage of financial, business, sport or artistic successes in any one generation. There just isn’t space at the top of any profession or vocation for the majority of the population. The system doesn’t work like that. A pyramid requires a very broad, solid base made up of multitudinous blocks rising in successively smaller layers to the apex. The financial structure of the world is the same; the many enabling the few to amass their fortunes. In sport or art, whether through talent or promotion, a similar structure exists.

Whilst the super-rich can afford to give away much of their monetary wealth without hardship or set up trusts, charities, concerts and the like to alleviate some of the world’s worst conditions (and the rest of us can donate much smaller amounts according to our individual situation and whim), the plain facts are that each year, year in, year out, millions more around the world find themselves in abject poverty. Whatever is given in aid, grants or donations is never, and will never be, sufficient to “make poverty history”.

Sir Tom Hunter appears not at all gloomy about the world situation and claims “he gets a bigger buzz from a successful philanthropic venture than from his businesses”. There is an obvious satisfaction to be gained from personally being able to bring positive solutions to problems of those less fortunate than oneself; however, even supposing all the world’s billionaires were to prove as altruistic in ministering to the world’s needy, it would only result in a partial cure of humanity’s sores rather than total elimination of the disease.

The Daily Telegraph article ends with Carnegie’s assertion that “all personal wealth beyond that required to supply the needs of one’s family should be regarded as a trust fund to be administered for the benefit of the community.” Which is not all that different from Karl Marx’s dictum “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need”. However, the poor of the world don’t need a hand-out. They simply need to be a part of a world system that doesn’t exploit them and with the universal right to nutritious food and clean water, shelter, responsibility for self-determination, all long recognized as prerequisites for a fulfilling life.

With “from each according to ability, to each according to need” applied globally it will not only be possible but achievable in the foreseeable future to eliminate poverty, malnutrition and the other ills inherent in global capitalism.

When doctors, teachers, musicians, scientists, technicians, farmers, entrepreneurs use their expertise solely for the benefit of the (world) community; when the Earth’s rich resources are used for people, not profit; when all citizens of the world are seen to have equal, intrinsic worth regardless of background, intelligence or class; when our collective aims are truly altruistic rather than accumulative then there would be no worries about taking money to the grave. Wealth would be real, not virtual; the Earth’s resources would belong to all, not to be pillaged for profit for the minority; talent, skills and human endeavour would be the wealth to be spent by all for the benefit of all.

How satisfying to go to the grave fully used up with absolutely nothing going to waste.

Janet Surman

The single issue (2007)

From the September 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

The futility of the ever-increasing single issue campaigns is clear for all to see. Could it be because they are being reactive rather than proactive?

Who can’t relate to the feeling that life, sometimes, bogs you down? Every day many tasks, chores, activities lie waiting to be taken care of, from getting up to going to bed again. Food to be prepared, children to be readied for school, laundry to be organized, the car to be refuelled or put in for service and all before arriving at work for another stimulating day adding to the coffers of the wealthy. Issues there range from the state of the toilet facilities, whether there is flexibility in the flexi-time to who’ll get the next promotion and who the chop. Home alone to an empty flat or home to a house filled with family, stopping to shop on the way, there are still all manner of jobs lined up waiting their turn, defiant in their refusal to just go away. The garden, the grass, the dog, the shower head that keeps falling off the wall; better put the rubbish out, but what rubbish – black bin, green bin, blue box or paper collection? Freshly prepared evening meal, micro-waved dinner or take-away followed by a well-deserved rest – oh, better just sort out that unpaid bill, answer a few emails and return a phone call, help with homework, wash up, maybe get it done before the news starts,—-and so on till bedtime.

Life is full of these single issues; eating, work, health, education, transport, recreation, shopping – for food, clothes, household needs. Single issues, each a part of the big picture, a part of life, the parts constituting a whole. What we choose as the parts and how we put them together probably defines our character in large part. It’s not what’s thrown at you but how you react to what’s thrown at you that reveals your personality. Being proactive rather than reactive will mean being better organized and more in control of one’s time, resources and emotions; however, proactive or reactive, issues are what make up our days, years, whole lives. Most of us will prioritise, knowing that ultimately all will need to be dealt with; some can be passed over lightly or shared or delayed, others, more pressing, will receive our urgent attention.

Our cerebral life would find little to exercise it within the confines of daily life as just described but there is the much wider swathe of issues out there engaging those who are in contact with their conscience. So-called political issues. Single issues.

Poverty: North/South, rich/poor, majority world/minority world, aid, IMF, World Bank, transnationals.

Immigration: problems for asylum seekers and refugees, unequal opportunities for people of different nationalities raising issues of racism, nationalism and xenophobia.

Health: HIV aids, malaria, lack of sufficient potable water and many-tiered systems for access to health treatment.

War: anti-war, anti-nuclear, arms sales and despoliation, depleted uranium and mines.

Women’s Rights: Children’s Rights: Labour Issues: Agro-business and Big Pharma.

Anti-Globalisation: free trade anomalies, farm subsidies, land rights.

Trafficking: involving traffickers, carriers, users, and addicts. Contraband includes drugs, arms, children, women, body parts, animal parts and diamonds.

Natural Resources: oil, coal, aluminium, gold, water, uranium, all with connected environmental problems. Qualified people from Least Developed Countries transferring to richest countries and out-sourcing of jobs to cheapest labour wherever it is, further impoverishing the poor.

Wealth: transferred from poor world to rich world and from rich world to off-shore tax havens.

There are many people who work full time on their chosen most important issue for years. There are many more the world over who volunteer part time endeavouring to make a difference on one or more of these never-ending single issues. These are good people, believing they have something to offer, wanting to make the world a better place, wanting to create a level playing field. So, why is it that there are now more of them than ever before in history, trying to reverse the march of ever-widening divisions? If what they were doing was working there would be need for less of them, there would be positive indications from statistics, not year on year reports of increasing anomalies. The futility of the ever-increasing single issue campaigns is clear for all to see. Could it be because they are being reactive rather than proactive? Could it be that their perceptions of these issues as ‘single’ issues is working against them?

As in life, it isn’t possible to be involved with all these issues separately. As with life’s issues, the single ‘political’ issues add up to the whole. What is required is a philosophy, a way of life that addresses the sum total of all the issues, large and small. Democracy could be the short answer to all these and other issues. Democracy, not of the voting candidates in or out every 4 or 5 years on spurious promises variety, but simply the democracy of supporting delegates who are charged with upholding truly democratic principles to continue strengthening community welfare worldwide.

Socialism is the natural umbrella for humanity, the vast majority of which desires a peaceful world. All the single issues are seen by socialists as effects, the cause of which is capitalism. Effects can be ameliorated but it is better to eliminate the cause and prevent the effects returning. Once the decision is made by the majority to press forward to cooperative life in a peaceful world based upon the common ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole community people will be in place who have the knowledge, skills and passion to bring reality to their long-held dreams of solutions to each single issue, in full recognition that theirs is just one small but significant part of an entity much greater than the sum of its parts.

Janet Surman

Land Grab: win-win or win-lose? (2010)

From the August 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Corporate self-regulation or total system change?

Following the recent growing interest in land acquisition and investment in land around the world for which there are no binding regulations and also, apparently, no agreement by private industry as to whether or how to adopt voluntary self-regulation, the World Bank with the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the Institute for Food and Development, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) convened a meeting to discuss this issue. Titled ‘Principles for responsible agricultural investment that respects rights, livelihoods and resources’ the discussion notes from the September/October 2009 meeting were published in January.

A set of seven principles was drawn up highlighting the main risks, which were perceived to be displacement of populations and undermining or negating existing rights. The first two principles were concerned mainly with not jeopardising existing land rights and ensuring that food security would not be threatened in the targeted areas.

Two more principles were focussed on transparency at all stages of the process when accessing land or other resources, to ensure that all stakeholders would be kept within the information loop. Consultation and participation were to be such that all those materially affected should be consulted and agreements from consultations would be recorded and enforced.

The remaining principles were concerned with ‘responsible’ investing, respect for rule of law, use of industry best practice and to balance returns for shareholders with significant positive outcomes for the host nation. Both social and environmental sustainability were considered important, with the need for environmental impact studies written in and the recognition that there should be no negative impacts on local populations.

In conclusion it was noted that agreement had been reached that a set of principles was necessary and that the seven drawn up were the right ones.

Response by UN Special Rapporteur

This proposed voluntary code was responded to on 26 April at a high level session of UNCTAD and the Commission on Investment Enterprise and Development in Geneva by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter. He is independent of any government or organisation and reports to the Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly. His response was lengthy and apprehensive especially with regard to item five on the agenda – Investment in the agricultural sector with a view to building productive capacities – concerning the seven principles above. ‘I am worried,’ he began before going on to expound his many reasons. In a number of areas he felt that the focus was wrong, that it should be on rural development and increased incomes, not on boosting production, He referred to the ‘Green Revolution’ of the 1970s when food production increased per capita by 9 percent in South Asia 1970-1990 but the increase of hungry people was also 9 percent and in South America in the same period food production per capita increased 8 percent but the hungry increased by 19 percent.

Another concern was that with agricultural investment there was a tendency to antagonise groups of farmers who are involved in different kinds of farming, especially the small land owners who, although generally more productive, can in no way compete with the bigger mechanised farms. A further worry came from knowledge of earlier projects when land rights had been violated in investments in plantations for fuel crops, dams, tourism and large scale infrastructure projects.

His conclusion: ‘We cannot afford more dispossessed, greater inequalities, more leaving the land because it has become unviable – pastoralists to lose access to grazing, fishers cut off from their fishing grounds, forest destruction or fencing in for carbon sequestration.’

The World Bank’s and their associates’ statement and principles all sound quite reasonable if we are able to lay aside cynicism for a fleeting moment. However, if it is as trustworthy and dependable as it appears to be – transparent, fair, considerate of all parties etc etc – why does Olivier De Schutter feel the need to report that he is worried and to further expand on the principles and explain where they can go wrong? Remember the original principles were an attempt to provide merely a voluntary code to which De Schutter was compelled to call for added regulation or more careful wording, discerning the probability of win-lose scenarios.

Note there was no discussion of binding the principles in law, merely a suggestion that respecting any current laws would be favourable. The very fact that it is considered necessary to implement a (voluntary) code of conduct implies that previously (and currently as this code of conduct has not yet been agreed) dubious practices have been rife. We have to conclude that it is not the need for voluntary or mandatory regulations to protect what may be vulnerable, whether animal, vegetable or mineral, that are required but the removal of each and every agent that causes these vulnerabilities.

Few people are naïve enough in the 21st century to believe that investor agencies, corporate, financial or whatever, are altruistic in their dealings with the (mostly) developing countries being discussed in their absence. We recognise that their first consideration will be the timescale of the profit potential. Maybe the following response can throw some light onto a better way to deal with this matter if we are to be serious about focussing on benefits rather than profits. The way to make it possible for all possible third parties to benefit materially in exchange for a signature is to eliminate the profit motive. This is also the sure fire way to ensure that any outside agencies are there to assist positively rather than to profit personally. The guarantee that all communities around the world will be empowered to organise their own affairs according to their own self-determined aspirations will come from the rejection of the capitalist system in favour of a world socialist system; from the democratic decision of a majority world population desirous of a world of free association and access.

(World Bank guidelines and De Schutter’s response originally sourced from www.farmlandgrab.org)

Janet Surman

Letter: Self-Determination (2005)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Self-Determination

Dear Editors

The last two decades have witnessed an increasing number of anti-capitalist, anti-globalisation movements seeking a voice through protest and opposition to the damaging practices of trans-national corporations and the World Bank, IMF and WTO. The probability is that the vast majority of these individuals have never studied economics or politics and don’t understand much of the workings of current economic policies, but they certainly do see and feel the results and negative effects of these policies and they have a feel for what is unjust. They share a common desire for a better world, a fairer world. They may not have identified clearly or explicitly what it is they want in this other, better world, but they have undoubtedly recognised much of what they don’t want. Their protests and their slogans are demands to be heard; these are ways of expressing anger, frustration and disagreement with the status quo.

Around the world such groups are voicing many different grievances from many different angles. Bolivians grabbing their water rights back from Bechtel, who are now suing the Bolivian government for compensation for what they would have earned in the future. Hundreds of thousands of Indians being forced off their fertile productive farmland in favour of huge dams which promise fat profits for fat cats. Millions of AIDs sufferers denied access to life-giving treatments for lack of cash.  Empathisers in the minority world protesting against the methods and results of worldwide capitalist business.

So many different reasons from so many different perspectives; different stages of anger, deprivation, disenfranchisement. It would be unrealistic to make broad generalisations about the myriad individual goals but it’s certainly possible to gather the separate bits and pieces together and view them as discrete perspectives with converging aims. All these fingers may not be poised over exactly the right button but at least they are scrabbling in the right area. Surely, better something rather than sitting in a darkened room absorbing more mind-numbing images from another evening’s bombardment courtesy of the capitalist media?

It’s about choices. People’s first choice should be socialism. It seems such a small step from the examples given here, but a huge paradigm shift. For people focused on life’s necessities – enough food for the family everyday, somewhere safe to sleep, healthcare and childcare for increasing numbers of chronically ill, a job this month, next year that will pay the bills – it’s hard to focus on the light at the end when the tunnel is long and dark. So, as socialists, how do we address this last little push, this yawning gap? Let’s not criticise those who haven’t figured it out yet. Let’s harness their strengths and energies. We need first to get people to see the light, recognize it for what it is and then to keep focused on heading for it through the long dark tunnel of capitalism, in growing numbers, with growing strength in the knowledge that there is a better world, a fairer world, a socialist world.

Janet Surman, 

Turkey.

The disease that is capitalism (2009)

Book Review from the October 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

What’s better – treating the symptoms or dealing with the cause?

When a person is ill a competent doctor will attempt to identify all relevant symptoms: high temperature, site of aches and pains, loss of appetite, heart-rate, blood pressure, etc. etc. Following diagnosis, treatment will be offered in the form of dietary advice, physiotherapy, drugs, surgery or some combination of these or other remedies. If the aim is to cure the illness and prevent its return then the causes of the disease will need to be identified and eliminated. Effective treatment can only follow correct diagnosis of the cause. The doctor will seek to understand family history, working conditions, living conditions, e.g. is the patient living in an area threatened by any form of pollution, etc. Regular check-ups and preventive care are the surest way to avoid the onset of serious illness and an appropriate regimen leading to a healthy lifestyle will more likely ensure non-return of the previous disease.

 Political commentary on and diagnosis of society’s ills, however, tend to focus on discussion of how to treat the symptoms with scant regard to eliminating the causes. Reform rather than structural change. There continues to be a plethora of books published both criticising and offering reforms to the capitalist system; so many, in fact, that it points to the fact that there is a large audience of readers dissatisfied with the status quo, knowing the current system doesn’t work for them. An audience aspiring to structural changes?

 One World, Ready or Not – The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism by William Greider (US writer on economics and politics over several decades, contributor to The Nation and former editor of Rolling Stone) is one such book. Greider succeeds brilliantly in proving his contention that the global economy is sowing “creative destruction” everywhere by explaining symptom after symptom of capitalism’s failure of the majority. What are some of the symptoms of the disease that is capitalism? Widening gaps between haves and have-nots; rising poverty nationally and internationally; rising unemployment – ditto; no lasting gains from union activity extending over a century; a ban on unionised work in many countries; more temporary workers replacing former permanent positions; increasing poverty, hunger and homelessness; declining health care for many; serious environmental problems, etc. etc. Greider exposes all these symptoms and more with detailed background evidence and numerous examples from most parts of the globe.

 The book is a fine resource of investigation and enlightening statistics including details of interviews with workers, corporate CEOs, government officials and economists. Common cures (reforms) recommended include regulating finance capital, increasing, decreasing or shifting the weighting ratio of tax from one sector to another, regulating trade differently, implementing and honouring stronger workers’ and human rights, the restructuring of the World Bank, the IMF and central banks. Greider’s recommendations here can be likened to increasing the dose of palliative medicines without treating the cause. Implement radical reforms of the system in an attempt to rein in the most divisive runaway aspects of capitalism (the most invasive aspects of the disease) but leave the system in place and hope it won’t run amok again or get hijacked by more pesky capitalists at a later date.

 Treating only the symptoms, i.e. reforming the system, is ultimately doomed to failure in society as in the patient. Capital has no interest in that which is not in its own interest. Governments are limited in their ability to implement reforms anyway as they are pulled in various directions by the power of capital’s demands and the need to appease their constituents enough to remain in power in the short term. Greider’s proposed reforms are laid out with the caveat that he has no expectations that any of them would be implemented (in his case by the US government) and with the additional observation that much of what the government does is useless or harmful to broadly shared prosperity. In other words it allows or even encourages the disease to spread. Markets, money and money markets don’t play by rules endorsed or understood by consumers.

“Whilst claiming to promote human freedom capitalism profits concretely from the denial of freedom, especially of the workers employed by capitalist enterprise.”

“Consumer boycotts can be an effective way to mobilise the political issue but the true target should be the systems of human repression.” – There – he said it!

 Social consequences are largely ignored by capital. Evidence of this is everywhere from the countries with the richest economies to dirt-poor nations with all populations exploited or deliberately abandoned for economic reasons by local and global capital. More families and individuals are impoverished, hungry and made homeless each successive year in countries from Africa, Asia, Europe to the Americas and the general public are afraid that they, too, may fall victim to the disease as they tighten their belts and try and take precautions; but they have been taught to see capitalism as a system “too big to fail.” They have also been taught to be afraid of considering the alternative of dismantling the system and they continue to shout “reform.” Yes, they willingly keep taking the palliative medicine rather than working together to eradicate the disease for the benefit of themselves and future generations.

 Greider’s final chapter includes some notes on possible surgery and examples of individuals giving out preventive advice; promoting true sustainable development; evidence from environmental technologists which confirms that saving the world is possible at such time that there is steady-state equilibrium with the natural world. This surgery is possible but not on any agenda to be undertaken by the monetary, for-profit, capitalist system.

 What needs to be recognised much more widely is that the whole set-up (capitalism/the free-market economy/monetarism) is one enormous scam against those who produce the wealth, whether globally or locally. Those who produce the wealth are currently all part of a huge lottery; this year, this place, I’m in work; next year, some other place, maybe you’ll be in work. But, just like a game of chance, some manage to stay lucky and others never get a look in. If you are one of the multitude who has needed to work in order to live, you have been duped. The causes of the disease have been identified. It’s time to remove them completely. Only a structural change will do.

Janet Surman

Blogger's Note:

William Greider's book had previously been reviewed in the October 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard. I thought it rang a bell.