Globalisation: the left on the coat-tails of liberalism (2003)

Book Review from the January 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two recent books, Globalization: Neoliberal Challenge, Radical Responses by Robert Went and The Twilight of Globalization: Property, State and Capitalism by Boris Kagarlitsky highlight the long-standing history of globalisation of trade, changing imperial relations and the failure of the modern left to come to any effective strategy to combat its renewed assertive neo-liberal ideology. In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century the left was able to delineate a clear position between its own anti-imperialist stance and the pro-imperialist and apologist liberal positions. By the second half of the twentieth-century, however, after the experience of running capitalism (with its consequent disillusioning impact on principles) and the disorientating policies of supporting “progressive” struggles over “reactionary” ones, the left is in a muddle. For example, a significant section of the British left backed the NATO bombing of Serbia and the support of the Labour Party for the hegemonic ambitions of the US shows how much politics has seemingly changed in the course of a century.

Or does it? The tradition of leftism in Britain, rather than being an alternative to capitalism has, when negotiating for political power been liberal rather than anything approaching socialist. The 1945 “settlement” was not based on the ideas of the Labour movement but on a programme of social-security and nationalisation that had long been part of the liberal agenda, being synthesised in the 1942 Beveridge Report (which was also incidentally supported by the Communist Party). During the twenty years following the second world war the “social-compromise” of the welfare-state and Keynesianism become the accepted centre ground of British politics.

However, following the long-term decline in economic growth liberal opinion swung away from the Keynesian orthodoxy to a new one based in classical economic theory. The left, increasingly isolated from mainstream economics, first led a failed counter-attack in the early 1980s and then slowly surrendered on all fronts under Neil Kinnock and finally the right-wing bully Tony Blair. There is and always has been, it is true, a radical left aiming at arriving at state-capitalism through the Labour Party but the “socialising” impact of the post-war nationalisations was virtually non-existent. Such measures were not accepted by the political centre as necessary on the grounds of radical social and economic ambition but because it could be defended – to an extent – in terms of the overall efficiency of capitalism.

Privatisations, pursued ideologically against perceived excess government economic activity, have generally failed and sometimes cost business more than the old nationalised equivalents. The state remains, despite globalisation, a strong social, economic and political force, which is no doubt why transnational corporations spend billions of pounds globally in influencing their decisions. This despite the continuing ideological attack on the state even to the point of damaging the stability of the capitalist state itself. Privatisation has seen the domination of ideology over pragmatism for capitalist government. A European Commission report of 1992 (quoted by Kagarlitsky) failed to find any advantage and in fact an additional cost to be borne for capitalism. The reason given, to reduce the economic role of the state and thus to reduce state expenditure has singularly failed to occur; in Russia, for example, it was said that a reduction in the state economic sector of one-tenth required an increase of the state apparatus by one-third. States are not reducing in size or reducing their role but are merely changing with an increase of unaccountable quangos and so on. Similarly the increasing role of international organisations have not been met by a reduction in the role of national governments. The situation may be summed up with the phrase “freer markets and more rules”. Thus the use of the state is open to a different approach and is open to the left, which is currently unwilling to use it.

Further, the social inequalities engendered by neo-liberal capitalism can threaten to undermine the basis of capitalist government itself. A strong state involvement in the economy has historically been a boon for, rather than the bain of, capitalism. It is essential for the creation of a social consensus for capitalist relations:

“Because the capitalist market cannot get by without non-market institutions, the state as a non-commercial entity plays a key role, not only financing public bodies but also overseeing the interaction between the development of the economy and that of the various structures of the social sphere… Without a certain consent by the governed, the state could hardly perform its class function. But this means that the state system, as an instrument of the ruling class, cannot fail to take account of the interests of other social layers as well. When the institutions of power prove incapable of this, the state system enters into crisis” (Kagarlitsky, The Twilight, p.8).

Increasing inequalities are likely to lead, if not to outright conflict, then to tensions and an increasing political demand and therefore political will, where representative democracies exist, to a likely challenge to the unapologetic inegalitarian capitalism of recent decades. Robert Went reveals that the ratio of income between the top 20 per cent and the bottom 20 per cent of the world population was 60:1 in the early 1990s and predicted to decline to 50:1 by 2010 if all went well with the world economy; given the crises of the 1990s the ratio is far likely to increase rather than decrease. Went argues that the prospects for workers globally of the continuation of current trends is bleak indeed:

“there will be a greater and more dominant dictatorship of the markets, particularly over countries that wish to attract capital; greater social inequality as a result of a dual process of polarisation, within countries and on a world scale, among countries; progressive levelling down of wages, working conditions and social security; ecological destruction and deterioration; a greater role for unaccountable international institutions and blocs; and a further undermining of democracy” (Went, p.108).

The state has also tended to be a great source of innovation in the field of technology, which is not, as widely reported, the cause of globalisation but merely facilitates it. Not least of these developments was the internet, which originated in the 1960s in the US Defence Department but also includes space technology, infrastructure and education.

The confidence of global finance capital was somewhat shaken by the capital-flow and currency crises in Mexico in 1994 and Asia in 1997, which produced several calls for international regulation of global capital flows. Further crises are likely to induce regulation if severe enough. Current actions to solve financial crises are tied to austerity packages, which avoid the global impact of such incidences but create problems of development for those countries which are subject to them. While the share of world trade of developing countries has increased from 20 per cent to 30 per cent in the post-war period, economic growth has in the main been restricted to the EU, US and Japan. The imposition of export-led growth on the resource rich developing countries means that to develop a break with neo-liberalism is needed. A degree of protectionism is needed for national capitalist economies to prioritise industrial development. Such a growth, of course, could well be a stimulus for the global economy were it not geared to the interests of finance capital in the developed world.

Successful development has generally taken place in countries or regions where the interventionist state is the norm and not under conditions of anything approaching free-trade. Selective intervention in the world economy has been the basis of most industrial growth, from the British cotton-trade to South Korea and Taiwan in the 1960s who, without government protection of the domestic market tied to export performances of amongst others the clothing industry, would still be exporting rice as its export mainstay. Protectionism then most probably must play a prominent part in any meaningful economic growth in the non-western world – the west of course being still well acquainted with it, despite its rhetoric.

In the light of the utter failure of the Kyoto agreement to result in meaningful regulation it is also clear that for any serious recognition of environmental sustainability there must be a proliferation of regulation and state-led implementation of clean-technologies and the innovation of new ones. If humans are to survive on the earth then this must be done. If ecological disaster is not to be averted by socialism then capitalism must clearly adopt such an approach.

What then is to be done? Went is clear that capitalist relations are flawed:

“It is not possible within the existing economic logic, in which profit maximization comes first, to solve the most important problems that humanity faces. Under capitalism, the individual interests of speculators, employers or investors determine what they do. The partial rationality of their actions clashes with the general social interest of present and future generations.

In fact, capitalism is becoming more and more irrational. The discrepancy between what is economically and socially possible and what is actually happening has never been greater than it is today” (Robert Went, Globalization, p.121).

Kagarlitsky is also clear that the old state driven approaches to the problems of capitalism are also little hope for the future:

“The old Big Brother is dead, meet the New Big Brother. Now Big Brother is global or multinational, but even more faceless and even less accountable than before. It is no surprise that after experiencing what globalization has in store, so many people world-wide are becoming nostalgic for the old Big Brother” (Boris Kagarlitsky, The Twilight, p.2).

It seems strange then that despite the attention that both Went and Kagarlitsky pay to the need for an adequate response to capitalism and its current ideology that both see the answer in progressive reforms, or what Kagarlitsky calls “revolutionary reforms”. Following the massive defeat of leftism across the world, it is clear that socialist revolution can well do without the pursuit of reforms. Such an attitude also ignores the extent to which any challenge to neo-liberalism will most likely be led by an ideological shift back to liberal social-pragmatism – in other words, a shift motivated not in the interests of labour but of capital.

Colin Skelly

Greasy Pole: Plain Words (2003)

The Greasy Pole column from the January 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nobody in their right mind – that is to say nobody who has an inkling of how this social system operates –would have been impressed by the assurances that the Bain enquiry into the firefighters’ pay claim was really “independent”. (There are a number of words in this article in inverted commas. This may irritate some readers, much as it does the writer. The purpose is to encourage scepticism about the use of such words.) As a start, let us assert that the whole concept of “independence” is false, just as the popular idea of a “fair” wage, a “deserved” pay rise are false. These are delusions resting on the assumption that wages are fixed by how useful the wage earners’ work is and that somewhere and somehow out there there is a wage which is “fair” because it exactly reflects that usefulness, or how strenuous someone’s work is and how it compares to other, similar, jobs. There is no way that any enquiry, no matter how “independent”, could make any sense of this, no way it could untangle such a mish-mash of delusions.

So they don’t try. Enquiries into wage claims have a number of other uses. Firstly they are often a ruse by which employers and governments representing the employing class to postpone the time for a decision, allowing them to strengthen their defences. When the firefighters called their first, two-day, strike they were denounced by ministers from Tony Blair downwards for acting with unreasonable haste when they should have waited for the Bain report in the confidence that it would be “fair” to them because it was “independent”. The firefighters were right to be sceptical because what Bain had been set to do was to lay down the case for a lower pay rise while the Fire Service was “modernised” – in other words while it co-operated in cutting its work force.

Firefighters and Bankers

There was much anger during the strike because of the feeling that the firefighters’ pay did not properly reflect their “worth”. In fact this anger, although it was supportive of the strikers, was misplaced. Wages do not rely on the worth of what a person does. If they were measured in that way firefighters and nurses and sewage workers, instead of bankers, currency dealers and royals, would be turning up for work in Rolls Royces. The only way to make sense of this apparent anomaly is to recognise that all wages are essentially determined, at any one time, by the relationship between the forces of supply of, and demand for, the labour power of the workers concerned. If the demand for nurses’ working ability outstrips the supply of it (always providing that the nurses assert their bargaining power) their wages will rise. If the opposite applies there will be a downward influence on their wages.

This reality is often used to justify companies offering big money to their higher management. “We have to do this,” runs the argument, “in order to attract people of the right calibre to run this great company of ours.” And it is used when MPs are debating whether to accept a proposal (from another, but rather different, “fair” and “independent” enquiry) to give themselves the kind of rise firefighters can only dream about, to attract highly qualified and capable people away from industry, commerce or the law or wherever to govern this great country of ours. This was how it was put by Robin Cook, Leader of the Commons, on 5 July 2002 when the Members were discussing (it was hardly a debate) the suggestion that they award themselves a 42 per cent rise:

“I do not think we impress the public if we set too low a value on our own worth . . . if we believe our work here is important we should not shrink from putting a proper value on it.”

This was not the kind of argument which the government would allow for the firefighters. And it was not how Bain saw the situation:

“Even allowing for the risks and dangers of the service, firefighters compare well with similar jobs in the public and private sectors . . .When holidays, pension arrangements and job security are taken into account, they are even better placed. This is borne out by the recruitment and retention figures, which show large numbers of applicants for each Fire service vacancy, even during a period of steady economic growth.”

In other words, the firefighters’ claim was undermined because the supply of their labour power outstrips the demand for it.

Candidates

There is, however, a contradiction here, which goes some way to illustrate the implacable way in which the wage labour economy of capitalism works and the cynicism of the system’s rulers. Because if there is one job in which there is a surplus of supply over demand, it is that of an MP. To begin with there is the matter of the number of candidates standing for each seat; lots of competition there. In the 2001 general election it was a rare constituency which had less than five on the list. Seven or eight was not unusual. There is no record of any heckler suggesting that, as there was such competition in the matter of aspirant MPs, whoever won the seat should take a cut in wages. Then there is the fact that, at least in the bigger parties, there had often been a fierce struggle to get the nomination in the first place, with a large number of runners whittled down to a short list.

This process was illustrated in the case of Ted Heath, who after the 1945 election scratched around from one seat to another in Kent before he was adopted for Bexley. The Tories in Ashford rejected him because he would not agree to give up his command of a Territorial Army regiment and to refuse the offer of a ministerial job in a future government. (The successful candidate later told him that he lost the vote because he turned up for his crucial interview on a Saturday morning improperly dressed, in a dark blue suit and a stiff collar. Heath grumpily recalled that he did not then possess either article.) At Rochester and Chatham they said they wanted an MP who would make it into the Cabinet and “I am afraid,” said the Tory chairman, “that we do not think that you will ever hold an office of any kind.” At Sevenoaks it was rather simpler; Heath turned up late and made a bad speech.

Heseltine and Clark

Michael Heseltine had to show willing by contesting some safe Labour seats – Gower and Coventry North – before he got the chance of a safe seat at Tavistock. Even then the decision hung in the balance because he upset the straighter-laced Tavistock Tories when a men’s fashion magazine he owned – Town – featured that month an Ursula Andress lookalike on its cover. After he had won the nomination he heard from some women that they had voted for him because they liked his wife’s hat. When Tavistock disappeared under the knife of the Boundary Commission in 1970 he failed to get the nod at Mid Oxfordshire, where he was not even short–listed and then Mid Sussex before the Tories of Henley took him – and perhaps his wife’s hats – to their bosoms.

The odious Alan Clark tried to get himself selected from the late 1960s, trawling through what he called “a Litany of constituency names” in his notebook before he succeeded in Plymouth Sutton. This success required his attendance at a cocktail party with his wife – sorely tried, ever supportive as Tory wives are supposed to be. Let us hope they let him off lightly in the subsequent question-and-answer session for it must have been a grave affront to the conceit of that callous, arrogant man who seemed to despise and hate a considerable mass of the human race including – especially including – those in his own party. “That shower” was how he described the Tories at Ashchurch. “Imprisoned . . . by their own guilt” was how he saw the local party executive at Langstone. For the Tories in Plymouth Sutton he reserved some special venom: “Total shits . . . no purpose in life other than to bicker and back bite – degrade everything above a certain level of mediocrity.”

Modernising

It is not only in the matter of failing to accept that their wages should be set by the forces of supply and demand that MPs fail to keep to the standards they try to set down for the rest of us. Nick Raynsford, the minister responsible for the Fire Service, is a man who has outraged some of his former admirers who never thought him capable of the breathtaking cynicism he displayed in his transformation into an ardent Blairite. He was notably brutal and overbearing in his verbal assaults on the firefighters. A recurring theme of his comments was what he saw as the FBU’s refusal to move to “more streamlined, focussed and flexible” working arrangements. Coming from an MP, that was a bit rich. The House of Commons cannot move to its business, which is supposed to be so vital to the interests of us all, without the security of a load of archaic symbolism and rituals – like bowing to the Speaker, going in procession to the House of Lords after someone in knee britches called Black Rod has knocked three times on the door of the chamber – or perhaps he is called Black Door and knocks on three rods – unable to do anything unless the Mace is in its place on the table, never using each other’s names because they must address people they know to be ruthless scoundrels as “Honourable Members”, never calling anyone a liar because they can only refer to “misleading the House”. For outdated practises the FBU has nothing on Parliament.

We can stumble around this maze of apparent contradictions, blind alleys and deceit (which is what wage negotiations often do) for a long time when the matter is essentially simple. This social system depends on wage labour – on the exploitation of one class by the other. The “worth” of what we work at, what we produce or organise, is simply not in the equation of how much we are paid. Neither are “justice” or “fairness”. These are concepts introduced to cloud over the basic fact that capitalism exists in the interests of only the ruling class and that obscure language is too often used to that end.

Ivan

50 Years Ago: Reaching for the Moon (2003)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fantastic as it may sound, a question has arisen regarding the ownership of the moon. Sooner or later it was bound to happen in a world dedicated to the idol of private ownership.

On 27th November 1952, Nancy Spain writing in the Daily Express brings to our notice an American book, written by various authors entitled “Across the Space Frontier” (Sidgwick and Jackson, 21/-). One of the authors is Dr Wernher von Braun, co-designer of the V2 Rocket and now technical director of the Army Ordnance Guided Missile Development Group, Alabama. We learn that a detailed plan has been drawn up for a Space Station and space travel. If the money were available and work put in hand at once it could be ready within 10 to 15 years. In fact, the American rocket engineers and scientists deem this project a number one priority. They say it is essential that the United States should be first in this field because a “less peaceably-minded” nation may beat them to it. (According to the Editor, Cornelius Ryan, the Russians have admitted that their engineers are also working along these lines.)

(. . .)

It is pointed out that great strides would be made in our knowledge of the stars, cosmic radiation and the structure of the earth, also that weather could be correctly predicted for months ahead. The emphasis, however, seems to be on the military value of the Space Station. It is said “In the hands of a ruthless power, no part of the earth would be safe from attack by guided missiles. No troop, air, or sea movements could be hidden from the all-seeing eye of the Station’s telescopes”.

[From an article by F.M.R., Socialist Standard, January 1953]

Editorial: Another Winter of Discontent? (2003)

Editorial from the January 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently the news media has been dominated by one story – the wave of strikes that have occurred across Britain, and more particularly, the firefighters’ strike. Most newspapers have been supportive of the government in their attempt to hold down pay increases, especially in the state sector – and that includes some newspapers that traditionally claim to be part of the “liberal press” and therefore generally on the side of the workers, such as the Observer. The justifications given by the supporters of the government for this are varied – though the notion that giving in to the firefighters would be “setting a dangerous precedent” is a common one, this being allied with the idea that pay increases for wage and salary earners are somehow “inflationary” and will wreck the economy.

The way in which the government and their friends in the press have set up convoluted arguments designed to frighten people into turning against “militants” and “troublemakers” in the trade unions is an example of history repeating itself. The last Labour government under Jim Callaghan in the late 1970s did exactly the same thing, when the bogeymen of the press were the workers at Ford, striking state sector workers in local government and the hospitals and – interestingly – the firefighters. They were all, so it was said at the time, out to pursue their own petty interests without consideration to the impact they would have on others. Margaret Thatcher went further still in railing against these supposedly inconsiderate wreckers in the unions, famously calling the striking miners in 1984-5 “the enemy within”.

Given this, if one thing should be crystal clear from the recent history of British industrial relations, it is that whichever government is in power – Labour or Conservative, Left or Right – their observable tendency is to resist attempts by the organised working class to increase wages and salaries and improve conditions. No matter what they may say at other times, governments are there primarily to defend the interests of the owners and controllers of wealth in society – the people they call the “wealth creators” but who in actual fact merely accumulate the wealth and riches that are created by others, namely the working class.

When governments talk about safeguarding the economy, they are really talking about safeguarding the people who own the economy. In a way, this is all perfectly sensible, as the capitalism system can only run on the basis of a minority owning the bulk of the wealth and getting the rest of the population to work for them: in the market economy there is no other way. When the profits of the owning class are hit, the system ceases to function efficiently.

This is the problem with big pay claims. The government (or at least some members of it) might ordinarily claim to be on the side of the workers, but when it comes down to it, they have to protect the interests of the owners and controllers of wealth, as that is one of the inherent functions of government. Their entire language is skewed that way too.

When the firefighters make their pay claim, we are told that is going to be “inflationary”. And that will mean higher interest rates and then falling property prices, apparently. But, funnily enough, when share prices go up and dividends go up, the government breathes a sigh of relief all round. In distinction to wage and salary rises, they are apparently good news and a sign of a buoyant economy. In other words, not inflationary at all. It is a peculiar function indeed of the wages and salaries of the working class that they – and they alone – appear to be the only form of income received by people in society that have the peculiar and harmful effect of pushing up prices. That, in itself, is something which rather gives the game away.

As we explore in our main feature article this month, governments actually cause inflation, not workers. From the point of view of the working class, there is no reason to shy away from supporting other workers struggling to improve their conditions and pay (or in some cases, just struggling to make sure things don’t get worse). We are all in the same position regarding pay increases and towards the end of a boom – when profits have been high – is historically the best time to force the issue.

Forget all Blair’s guff about a harmonious, classless society in Britain – recent weeks have been vivid demonstration of the fact that there is a class war going on, and there comes a time in all our lives when we have to make a decision about whose side we are on, ours or theirs.

Whose side are you on?

Whatever happened to Free Trade? (2003)

From the January 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the illusions that modern capitalist governments like to foster is that they are in favour of “free trade”. Mr Bush, Mr Blair and just about every political leader in Western European countries, thunder on about its wondrous benefits. They pose as champions of liberalisation, of tariff busting and global freedom of trade. The reality is somewhat different.

“The past year has been lousy for free trade. The Americans have ratcheted up farm subsidies and slapped new import duties on foreign steel. A European summit made little progress towards reform of the common agricultural policy (CAP); indeed, the French managed to secure agreement to preserve CAP spending at present levels. Poor countries are despairing over the outlook for the Doha round of trade negotiations, which was intended to benefit them. Just this week, negotiations between rich and poor countries over access to patented drugs through “compulsory licensing”, a big aim of poor countries, stalled” Economist, 30 November.

So how do we explain this apparent contradiction? The politicians are all for anti-protectionism and yet at the same time we get more and more trade barriers, more trade quotas and more restrictions on imports According to Mr Bush's trade representative Robert Zoellick all this can be changed. He is a man with a plan and he states his plan in a very concrete fashion.

By 2010, WTO members would reduce all tariffs to below 8 per cent, and scrap altogether those that are now less than 5 per cent. By 2015, all tariffs on manufactured goods would be reduced to zero. Splendid free trade rhetoric you may think; but of course it is all about manufactured goods. Mr Bush's trade representative remains strangely silent about the farming industry. For a very good reason.

“Sadly absent from the plan is any more discussion of farm goods, which form the basis of the poorest countries economics. Admittedly in July Mr Zoellick put forward a proposal to scrap many farm subsidies, but there is little sign that American farmers will support this. Rich countries' tariffs on factory goods are already low – typically less than 5 per cent – while their subsidies and tariffs on farm goods are in general far higher.”

So let us get this quite clear. Some members of the owning class, whose wealth is dependent on the exploitation of a highly skilled industrial work force, are in favour of free trade in such goods that they can sell cheaper than their competitors, but opposed to free trade when they fear that their competitors may undersell them. Politicians are just so many hired hands, hired to be in favour of free trade one minute and opposed to “dumpimg” the next, depending on their master's whim.

As a member of the only useful class in society – the working class, don't you think it is time to get rid of your exploiters and their apologists?

Richard Donnelly

World View: Tibet – from feudal theocracy to a market economy (2003)

From the January 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Prior to AD 600, when Buddhism first began to penetrate Tibet its central doctrine had already been perverted into what came to be called Lamaism. The idea of a saving Buddha who reappears every 5,000 years as a man, and who through successive reincarnations has gained perfection, was being vulgarised into a phantom hovering between heaven and earth, attended by a host of demons. Moreover, the discipline imposed by Buddha of conversion by means of meditation had largely given place to a formal monasticism. This degeneration had, since the religion established itself in Tibet, advanced through its contact with the original demon-worship which, for a time, succeeded in driving Buddhism underground. By the 15th and 16th centuries the metamorphosis into Lamaism was complete.

A Dalai Lama, who is supposed to be the reincarnated Buddha of India, was at once a king and a High Priest. He ruled despotically in both civil and religious affairs, with an ordered series of “spiritual” officers and monks. At one time, about one man in every six or seven was a monk. The whole force of the Tibetan state was directed towards obtaining revenues which maintained the monasteries, their land, and the privileged lamas or officials. When a Dalai Lama dies, and his successor is elected, he in turn becomes a Buddha.

In 1897, a British explorer, A. Henry Savage Landor, spent about six harrowing months in the country. On his return to Britain he wrote two large volumes entitled: In The Forbidden Land – An account of a journey in Tibet, Capture by the Tibet Authorities, Imprisonment, torture, and Ultimate Release. (Victorian explorers rarely wrote short books with snappy titles.)

Of the lamaseries (monasteries), Landor observed that they are usually very rich, and that the Lamas

“are not backward in learning how to exhort money from the ignorant worshippers under pretences of all kinds. Besides attending to their religious functions, the Lamas are traders at large, carrying on a smart business, and charging a very high interest rate, which falls every month. If this is not paid, all the property of the borrower is confiscated, and if this proves insufficient to repay the loan the debtor becomes a slave of the monastery”.

The Lamas, noted Landor, lived in comparative luxury. And, he added:

“The larger lamaseries receive a yearly Government allowance, and considerable sums are collected from the oblations of the faithful, while other moneys are obtained by all sorts of devices which, in any country less religious than Tibet, would be considered hardly honourable and often even altogether criminal. To anyone acquainted with Tibet, it is a well-known fact that, except in larger towns, nearly all the people besides brigands and Lamas are absolutely poor, while the monks themselves and their agents live and prosper on the fat of the land. The masses are maintained in complete ignorance, and seldom is a layman found who can write or even read. Thus everything has to go through the Lamas' hands before it can be sanctioned.”

The lamaseries and the Lamas, and all the property belonging to them, were absolutely free from all taxes and dues to the state. Each monastery had a number of “depraved Lamas” who were slaves of the Grand Lama. Indeed, as early as the tenth century,

“Powerful monastic orders became major players in the fragmented power structure. Feudal leaders sent their sons into Buddhist institutions as a way of ensuring the maintenance of family authority. These local noble families became an increasingly strong force in the monasteries. Often the position of abbot was no longer chosen from among the monks, but was passed down within families from uncle to nephew . . . By the 13th century monastic dynasties controlled much of Tibet” (Lee Feigon, Demystifying Tibet).

Very little had changed by as late as the beginning of the 20th century.

During the latter part of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, Tibet's trade, principally in wool, but also in salt, gold and silver, increased considerably, despite the fact that there were no roads in the country. Many of the traders, however, were Nepalese, Chinese or Indian. Tibetan farmers and herdsmen exchanged their products, sometimes using various currencies, for industrially-produced commodities. Nevertheless, commodity production was, as yet, far from universal in Tibet. Most production was in the form of handicrafts or for personal and family use. And prior to 1950, there were still 2,5000 monasteries in the country.

Imperialist rivalries

But by the end of the 19th century, Tibet had become a focus of imperialist rivalries. The Dalai Lama began to edge the country closer to an alliance with Tsarist Russia, whilst the Panchen Lama favoured China. The British feared a Russian plot to undermine their domination of India and elsewhere in Asia. However, by 1906, the British largely gave up what they had previously gained, except for a number of trade missions and, sometime later, three permanent Postal Agencies. China continued to send their armed forces into eastern Tibet.

In 1913 the Dalai Lama had fewer than 3,000 ill-trained troops to combat the Chinese incursions, or to quash internal rebellions and banditry. But shortly after, Britain supplied the Dalai Lama with 5,000 modern rifles as well as military training for the Tibetan army. In 1917 the Tibetans defeated a Chinese force in Kham, and extended their border as far as the Upper Yangtze river. Besides the Dalai Lama's modern army there was Tibet's older armed forces provided by the ruling monasteries, armed only with bows and arrows, spears and a few 17th-century muzzle loaders. Of the situation, Feigon commented:

“the contrast between the two armies had begun to excite opposition. Most of the money needed to fund the new army's expansion came from a land tax. Virtually all land in Tibet was owned by either aristocrats or monasteries and was worked by serfs. The more the need to support the military grew, the more taxes were increased on these estates. In effect, the old aristocracy was paying for the army that would in turn diminish the nobility's authority. Moreover, military leaders often came from families of low social position . . . These new leaders did not always approve of the nobility's traditional privileges . . . Like Tibet's aristocracy, its religious establishment opposed the army's growing influence. Before the twentieth century, almost all government revenues funded the monasteries, not the military. Monks became resentful of the army . . . The foreign manners and dress of the new troops exacerbated the situation.”

A destroyed monastery: the Chinese hoped to break the power of the lamas by breaking their hold over Tibetan minds

By 1920 the animosity grew strongest in eastern Tibet, where the Lhasa government had stationed 10,000 troops, virtually the entire army; and where the taxes imposed were the most severe. Conflict erupted between the Dalai Lama, who commanded the new army, and the Panchen Lama who was the owner of a large estate. The two had long been at odds. In 1922 the Panchen Lama appealed to the British to help him resist the Dalai Lama. When the British refused, the Panchen Lama fled to China, where he remained for the next fourteen years. The so-called reformers, led by the Dalai Lama, soon began to fight among themselves, and the reforms ground to a halt by 1925. By 1930 the Tibetan government lost eastern Tibet to the local Chinese warlord. The Dalai Lama was forced to reduce the size of the army; and by 1932, the Chinese had pushed the Tibetans back west of the Yangtze river. “As the Tibetan government weakened and the Chinese government strengthened, Tibet assumed an increasingly vulnerable position” (Feigon). In 1933 Britain established a new, permanent mission to Lhasa in an attempt to counter Chinese influence. They even tried to introduce golf and soccer to Tibet. And shortly after, Himmler, on behalf of Nazi Germany, sent an expedition, led by Ernst Schaefer, to Tibet in an attempt to prove that the Tibetans were a lost Aryan race.

From 1927 until 1949, there was a civil war between the Nationalist forces of the Koumintang (KMT) and the Chinese Red Army, led by the "Communist" Party. By 1949, the Chinese Red Army had driven the KMT from the Chinese mainland, and the Communist Party now controlled the country. As direct British influence had been removed from India by 1947, so Mao Tse-tung decided that time was ripe for China to assert her authority over Tibet and in 1950 the Red Army invaded. They met little resistance from the Tibetan army, although the Khams, a fierce, warlike tribe, gave the Chinese forces some trouble. Fearful of exile, the Tibetan establishment pressured the Dalai Lama to remain in the country. On 28 September the Tibetan National Assembly ratified the agreement, and the Dalai Lama returned to Lhasa and the Potala Palace.

During the early part of the 1950s the Chinese authorities did not control internal policy in Tibet. However although they refrained from interfering in central Tibet they began to transform eastern and outer Tibet. In 1954 the Dalai Lama accepted an invitation to visit China and, against the advice of his ministers, stayed there for almost one year. Whilst there, he seems to have been influenced by Maoist ideas. On his return, he wanted to divide the monastic lands among the Tibetan peasants, but was surprised when the Chinese authorities opposed his plan and supported the Tibetan landowning class. The Chinese constructed an airfield 60 miles north of Lhasa. They also began to cut down the forests, for timber, in the eastern part of the country. Many former Tibetan serfs now became wage-workers, employed by Chinese contractors in the timber camps and on road building. Numerous nomads began to settle down. By 1956 there was unrest in Kham and other areas of eastern Tibet. In the words of John Prados:

“Economic development, industrial, production, even the introduction of money, required fundamental changes in a society that had used barter as a primary form of exchange . . . The Chinese situation worsened in Kham . . . the people rose up against the lowland Chinese. Khampa partisans managed to block the Kamgting road at three points . . . Kham and Ambo were the provinces the Chinese attempted to split off from Tibet, calling them Inner Tibet and incorporating them into the Chinese provinces of Sikiang and Tsinghai . . . by 1956, unrest was spreading” (Presidents' Secret Wars).

Unsurprisingly, the United States assisted the revolt. In 1956 the CIA supplied the rebels with weapons and other equipment; it trained commando squads, first in Taiwan and then in America, where it conducted special classes and, later, smuggled and parachuted Tibetan commandos into eastern Tibet. The Dalai Lama, helped by the CIA, fled to India, but returned shortly after. By 1957 there was open warfare in Kham. The Chinese airforce bombed a number of villages; and the CIA sent more and more arms into eastern Tibet. In 1959 unrest spread to Lhasa, where there were large demonstrations against the Chinese occupation. These were violently crushed. Again, the Dalai Lama fled to India.

The Chinese government sent in troops in large numbers and took complete control of the country. It confiscated land owned by “rebels” and officially abolished serfdom. War was declared on the monasteries, and many monks, nuns and former aristocrats were jailed. Thousands fled to India and Nepal. The CIA supported the rebels well into the 1970s. On 9 September 1965 Tibet became an “Autonomous Region” of the People's Republic of China.

Industrial and radical change

During the so-called Cultural Revolution (1966-77) the Chinese Red Guards destroyed 80 percent of central Tibet's monasteries. By 1978 only eight monasteries remained out of two thousand. Many were destroyed brick by brick. The political and economic power of the monks was completely destroyed. In 1990 the population of the Autonomous Region of Tibet was unofficially put at 2.5 million of whom 100,000 were Chinese (Han) workers. Unofficially, there were, and probably still are, between 100,000 and 250,000 Chinese troops in the country.

By the standards of Western Europe or North America, Tibet is not as yet heavily industrialised. Nevertheless, capitalism and a market economy now prevail. In 1992 the Chinese expanded Lhasa airport. The government approved 41 joint-partner enterprises with Nepal, Malaysia, Germany and a number of other countries. Export enterprises, including ones specialising in traditional handicrafts, grew. Indeed, according the Lee Feigon, “Chinese businessmen and manufacturers have even copied traditional Tibetan handicrafts, and begun to mass-produce them.” Han entrepreneurs have pioneered many investments, opening businesses throughout Tibet. By 1994 the Tibet Trust and Investment Company's shares were traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Although not on a large scale, Tibet now has an iron and steel industry, and motor repair factories and factories manufacturing farm implements. Gyangtze has a large carpet factory, mass-producing “traditional” Tibetan carpets.

According to John Gittings, writing in the Guardian (17 June 2001), the Chinese authorities in Tibet aim to make the country “a market economy which will allow private enterprises to become the most dynamic factor in Tibet”. Gittings adds, however, that economic reforms in Lhasa “have created a city where corruption co-exists with hard-nosed commercialism, where prostitution thrives in areas previously better known as places of spiritual pilgrimage and where citizens may own computers and wide-screen TVs, but not necessarily toilets or running water”. The Chinese admitted last year that the standard of living of “ethnic Tibetans”, including “farmers and herdsmen”, was only half the national Chinese average.

In 1990 the exiled Dalai Lama accused China of “wantonly cutting down the vast forests, strip-mining the soil, overgrazing the plains, and using agricultural pesticides and chemical fertilizers that have destroyed the delicate ecology of his (sic) country”. He proposed that Tibet “should become the planet's largest natural, reserve”, and that the country “could return to the simple life of its ancestors”. What a hope! Tibet, including the so-called Autonomous Region, and the eastern part of the country incorporated into China proper, is now wholly an integral component of the world market, capitalist, system. There can be no turning back to the “simple life” of feudalism.

Peter E. Newell

Open Letter To Michael Moore (2003)

From the January 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Mike,

I owe you, man. I've been watching your work for years now, from the first series of TV Nation onwards. I've enjoyed your rigour, integrity and sense of rye humour. I've been to see Bowling for Columbine – twice! By my calculations that means I've personally given you 48p. I got my hands, however, on a free "damaged" copy of Stupid White Men through a friend of mine. My calculations on that are that I've probably just cost you £1.50. So I owe you £1.02. Well, first off, let me tell you about the Socialist Standard. OK, that's free on the web, but if you bought the magazine, it'd have cost you a quid. So that's square. That leaves a wee bit left over, though. So I reckon I'll give you my twopenneth.

No one can doubt your heart is in the right place, nor your commitment. Your palpable anger at the destruction of communities by big business; at the bullying of the poor and defenceless by the rich and powerful; at the hypocrisy of our rulers; shows clearly in all your work. Yet, the answers that you present, your suggested course of action, I feel, just aren't enough. It's entirely laudable to say "Just get involved" – after all, if people don't get involved at all, then nothing will ever change. You've shown in yourself how simply turning up and noisily making demands can make the rich and powerful bend and twist to do the popular thing.

The problem is, however, that unless the people "getting involved" have some clear idea about where they are going, and what they want, they'll just end up pestering our masters for different crumbs from the table for ever: as those devious buggers spin and turn in the wind, giving just enough to stay in power. When the workers of St. Louis took control of the city in 1871, for instance, they had free reign to do as they pleased, to work for their own betterment. They came to power though, without any ideas, with no plan for running their own lives, and so slowly melted away again, to return to ordinary drudgery on the railroads.

Of course, America is the country that brought us philosophical pragmatism. This tells in your approach, taking whatever chances are available. In Stupid White Men you tell of how you tried to persuade the Green faction of the Capitalist Party's presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, to bargain from his position of holding the swing vote. "We hold all the power" you told them. What, though, did that power amount to? It amounted to being in a position to wring a few concessions from candidates from other sections of the Capitalist Party, dragging them "'to the left".

This maximum power for your candidate was only scheduled to last "for the next week or so", before handing absolute power over to someone who would "keep no promises". After all, once leaders are firmly ensconced in power, what need have they for king makers, whether other candidates or mere voters? The whole point of being a leader is to exercise power as you see fit. Bargaining with leaders is like letting a prisoner out for a stroll, and expecting them to come back.

You yourself admit there is not much difference in voting between different wings of the Capitalist Party. As you point out, Ronald "Evil Empire" Regan imposed stricter controls on car manufacturers on miles per gallon usage of petrol than "Slick Willy" Clinton. You could go further, and show how Eisenhower stuck by the welfare state as much as Johnson, who in turn was just as Hawkish as Cheney. In fact, you could show that, despite their protestations that the opposing faction are the paragon of all evil, that both sides are always prepared to steal each others' policies. Your list of how the Democratic faction of the Capitalist Party's voting records accord with the Republican faction's shows as much.

The reason for this is not hard to find – they're not really in charge at all. Any policy they may impose will have to accord with the ongoing operation of capitalism, and the rules of that system, or they won't work at all. After all, Reagan controlled miles per gallon because the world was still dealing with the effects of the 1972 oil shock and recession. Clinton was dealing with a time when oil was flowing free and constraints on use would have been constraints on profit rather than a support. So, Nader's maximum moment of power amounted to being able to ask for a few concessions from someone whose maximum moment of power would be asking for a few concessions from the people who really own the world.

No wonder politicians prefer to ape the noises of these parasites. They might as well make the right sounds so that they can kid themselves that they really are part of the gang in charge, and that the policies they are implementing really are their own. Who wants to sound like they are championing the cause of ineffectual groups?

Any leader is going to find themself in this position. Imagine (just for a second) that Nader did win the presidency (no, seriously), committed as he was to the continued existence of capitalism with a green face. He would have to make policies that conformed with one logical premise – the law of no profit, no production. All his policies would have to allow the owners of America to make at least the average rate of profit from their investments, or else they would launch a capital strike, declining to invest in industries or even withdrawing altogether. That is, no matter what he is like as a man, no matter how honest his followers, or their determination, he would have to adapt his policies to running capitalism the only way it can be run, in the interests of them as own it.

Even were (for some odd reason) someone to come to power in the US and nationalise everything that moved, just as in the state-capitalist states in the old Soviet bloc (and we all know how well that worked), they would still be subject to this self same law. Whilst they might not face the same irritating bunch of rich people, they would still need to operate the circulation of goods produced by waged-labour at a profit as a first condition of their policies.

This law afflicts even our rulers. As Lord Byron said, "there can be no freedom, even for the masters, among slaves". Even though you state that "there is no recession, my friends. No downturn," but that it is a deliberate machiavellian ploy by our masters to prevent us asking for a share of their wealth, the fact is that they are compelled into cutting back by the logic of their system.

If they did not disinvest, cut back, rationalise and downsize, any competitor who did so would get the better of them, and thus drive them out of the market. They may still be rolling in money themselves, but they cannot use it to create any more jobs. If they allowed their profits to fall behind relative to the size of their capital advanced, they would risk losing the lot (poor diddums). They just aren't going to allow that to happen.

The fact is that the crime of capitalism is not that some have money and refuse to give it to others - and the money is, as you rightly point out, there. No, the crime is that the rules of the system mean that all that money must uselessly slush around – protecting the stakes advanced by the capitalists – rather than going into doing the useful things that communities like Flint Michigan require. This inevitable waste stems from the law of no profit no production, and the whole system of producing commodities for exchange on the market (like SUV's) to be bought, rather than produced directly to fulfil a need.

So, bang goes your whole strategy. Badgering the rich and powerful like a toddler pulling at their parent's trousers – mummy, mummy, we want some welfare! Despite your call to get involved, to go out and get for ourselves, the result is that it involves going like naughty children up to some corporate master, and hassling them (preferably with an embarrassing film crew present to broadcast their perfidy and meanness to the world – no wonder Neil (brother of George) Bush was so relieved to run into you without your camera. It must be irritating for them to subjected to even that level of public scrutiny and expectation.

Your whole attempt to portray welfare as in the interests of our masters reveals the truth behind the welfare state that has gone before (Chapter Four "Kill Whitey"). They precisely instituted the welfare state on the expectation that it would increase their profits and help their system run smoother. Administering a share of the wealth to the workers, rather than allowing the market to do it, lest freak market conditions result in sections of the working class getting more than our masters' need for profits could allow. Now it has become less profitable to run (as well as too rigid), they have tried (quite successfully) to cut it back. So, we can see that any gains our masters may grant (because they are either in, or at least not against, their interest) can be revoked and re-instated as they see fit. Things may well get better again for places like Flint, only to be blighted again the next time the law of no profit no production demands it.

So, what's with badgering you, then? Why my twopenneth? Am I just getting on at someone powerful to try and get them to help promote my cause? Well, no. I was short of material for this month's magazine and you presented an opportunity of providing me with a focus for a simple message. If, as you most certainly do, you care about the widespread poverty and misery produced by US capitalism, then you need to go down to first principles.

Reject leaders. You don't need to be a cheer leader for Nader, it doesn't matter what he's like as a human. Both the capitalist system and the whole relationship of leader to led means that one is going to betray the other pretty quickly after assuming power (usually followers betraying leaders by actually expecting them to be able to fulfil their promises). We have enough strength in our own communities without having to bow and scrape to our masters.

Go beyond capitalism. Recognise that it is the whole system of producing things for a chaotic market that produces inequality and poverty, and think about how we could go about making the change to a situation in which we use all that idle talent, ability and imagination that you reveal and revel in your documentaries, to produce things directly for people's needs.

If we reach out across the workers of the world, who share more in common with you than any American capitalist, then we can create a co-operative commonwealth spanning the globe, which will put an end to all the wars, violence and strife caused by the competition between capitalist rivals, and which spill over into our communities and our schools. That commonwealth though, always starts with individuals, individuals like you, and anyone else who might read this open letter.

That's my twopenneth, I consider the debt settled.

For World Socialism,

Pik Smeet.