The Middle East powder keg explodes (2026)

From the September 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

President Trump probably didn’t realise it but when the United States joined Israel in an attack on Iran at the end of February he lit a fuse that caused the Middle East powder keg to explode and with it his ridiculous dream of getting the Nobel Peace Prize. Since then, every single country in the region — Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Israel and even, on one occasion, Egypt — has been bombed. At stake has been control of the oil and natural gas resources of the region and the trade routes taking these and their by-products out to other parts of the world.

The Carter Doctrine

In his State of the Union message to Congress in January 1980 President Jimmy Carter read out what has since come to be known as the Carter Doctrine. It was a reaction to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

He set out the reasoning behind the doctrine:

‘The region which is now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan is of great strategic importance: It contains more than two-thirds of the world’s exportable oil. The Soviet effort to dominate Afghanistan has brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Straits [sic] of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world’s oil must flow. The Soviet Union is now attempting to consolidate a strategic position, therefore, that poses a grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil.’

And concluded:

‘Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force’.

The United States had already built up, and paid for, the military power of Israel to be its proxy in the region. Following the overthrow of the self-styled Shah of Iran in 1979 in an ‘Islamic revolution’ which installed a hostile regime under Ayatollah Khomeini, Israel was the only powerfully armed state in the region that they could rely on. The US also had established a permanent military base in all the Gulf states except for Oman.

Taking out Iraq

In the end it wasn’t military action by Russia that led to the Carter Doctrine being activated. By the beginning of the 1990s the state-capitalist regime there was collapsing, on the way to the final dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. It was the action of Iraq, whose leaders decided in August 1990 to invade and annex Kuwait in order to get free access to the Persian Gulf for its oil exports. This led to the First Gulf War in which Iraq was driven out of Kuwait by a United Nations authorised coalition led by the US. The coalition stopped after driving Iraq out of Kuwait, leaving the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein still in power.

The US continued to regard the Iraq regime as a threat to its interests in the region and in 2003 decided to finish the job on the pretext that Iraq was developing ‘weapons of mass destruction’, including nuclear ones. This time they didn’t get UN support, only that of Tony Blair’s Labour government. The Second Gulf War was a walkover and Saddam Hussein was quickly overthrown. No WMDs were discovered but a regime opposed to US control of the region had been eliminated.

This turned out to have an unintended consequence. The Saddam regime, which was Sunni Muslim, had repressed the Shia majority in the South as well as the Kurds in the North. With that regime gone, the exclusion of the Shia majority in Iraq ended, opening the way for the Shia Islamic regime in Iran to gain influence there. In short, it strengthened another regime that threatened US control of the Gulf.

The current line-up

Just as the US had established a string of bases in the Middle East so in effect did Iran, made up of Shia militias in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. There are Shias in other Arab states. Bahrain has a Shia majority while Saudi Arabia’s oil fields are situated in a Shia majority area. Both dynastic regimes ruled by Sunni despots severely suppress any sign of Shia political activity.

The regime in Iran had always seen Israel as a key element in maintaining US domination of the Gulf, denouncing it as a ‘Zionist entity’ to be wiped off the map. This was couched in religious terms, but behind it were strategic considerations to do with control of the Gulf. Israel returned the compliment and regarded the Iran regime as an existential threat to be destroyed.

The scene, then, was set for any military confrontation. On the one side the US with military bases in friendly Sunni Arab states and Israel as its (unruly) attack dog and, on the other, Iran with proxy Shia militias in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. Israel took the initiative in June last year when it bombed Iran, resulting in a twelve-day war between the two states, in which the US joined to bomb nuclear sites in Iran.

The pretext was that Iran was developing a nuclear bomb. That might or might not be true but, in terms of the principle of ‘might is right’ that governs relations between capitalist states, it wouldn’t be surprising if it was true. Iran would have an interest in having the Bomb just as the US would have an interest in it not having one.  A nuclear Iran would shift the balance of power in the Middle East in its favour. Trump’s claim that if Iran had the Bomb it would use it on Israel is most likely nonsense, especially as Israel is a nuclear power too. States acquire nuclear weapons not necessarily to use them but more as a deterrent and to increase their might, and so their bargaining power, in relations with other states.

Better than the Bomb

At the end of February, Israel and the US again attacked Iran for the same reason. Again, this has had an unintended consequence. Iran discovered that it has a better bargaining chip than the Bomb and one which it could actually use — the capacity to disrupt traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the trade route which, as Carter noted, vital exports for the world economy of oil and natural gas from the Gulf have to take. Which it has used to its advantage. Trump has egg on his face while Israel is frustrated and may be tempted to have another go.

Socialists have always contended that wars break out when one side considers vital capitalist interests are at stake, over control of natural resources, trade routes, markets and investment outlets and strategic points and areas to acquire or protect these. The killings and destruction in the Middle East are a textbook confirmation of this.

Adam Buick

From America: The Panama Canal and the right of free access (1977)

From the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the hottest pieces for conversation in America these days is the Carter Administration’s treaty with Panama, scheduled for a pomp-and-ceremonial signing on Wednesday, Sept. 7, in Washington, with a glittering crowd of little Latin-American dictators and other dignitaries in attendance. Ownership of the Panama Canal is to be transferred to the Panamanian Government, effective as of 1999, albeit with continuing US rights in the area of military defense. As of this writing, opinion polls indicate that a sizeable majority of the US population opposes the deal and that, in the end, the US Senate will refuse to ratify. The Government is mounting an all-out propaganda blitz to win over popular sentiment and save the Treaty.

In a nutshell, the positions are: Pro: in the final analysis, it is free access and not ownership that is important. Panamanians in particular, and Latin Americans, in general, are said to feel that 75 years of US ownership of a waterway in their area is enough. Good public relations between US and the latinos demand the transfer. Con: “We” (the us Government) built the Canal and paid for it. It makes no sense to give it away to a tinhorn dictatorship. Surely American military muscle can easily handle the hostile guerrilla action by anti-Yanqui latinos, but to surrender it to Panama would be to invite trouble from the Communist world — particularly Soviet Russia — which might seize control.

There is much meat here for socialists to chew on. But first it may be helpful to have a look at some bare facts concerning the history of the Canal, facts which are easily verified in the history books. To begin with, the “sovereign” nation of Panama came into being just 75 years ago as the fruit of a conspiracy involving a French capitalist consortium, the Government of President Theodore Roosevelt, and Panamanian revolutionists who sought independence from Columbia of which the Isthmus of Panama was a part.

The French capitalist group had recently abandoned its attempt at building a canal across the Isthmus after sinking some $260 million. A major, insurmountable, obstacle for them was malaria-bearing mosquitoes that devastated the work force. Roosevelt's government now commenced negotiations with the Columbian Government to pick up the rights from the French after agreeing to pay some $40 million for their franchise and unfinished work. But the Columbian Parliament stalled, attempting to raise their ante, and the US Congress hemmed and hawed. Then, enter the conspirators, and a Gilbert & Sullivan-type production ensued.

The group of Panamanian rebel-nationalists was set in motion on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus and the flag of independence was raised. At the same time, three US warships showed up at Colon and Marines were landed to “restore order”. The entire Columbian military force on the Pacific side was bought off, privates receiving $50 a head and officers more, and the revolution was over — bloodless save for the accidental killing of a Chinaman. The news reached Washington at 11.30 in the morning of Nov. 6, 1903, and the Republic of Panama was recognised before one o’ clock of the same day.

There is much more, of course, to this fascinating tale of intrigue in high circles but the foregoing are, at least, among the more salient facts. American capitalism licked the malaria problem by draining the swamps that provided the breeding ground for the mosquitoes. In other words, rather than waste time swatting the critters or spraying them with the 1903 equivalent of Flit, the US got down to bed-rock — the source — and corrected it, a tactic we can hardly expect capitalism to pursue in its perpetual confrontation with problems such as poverty-in-the-midst-of-porential- abundance; war; discrimination, etc.

Now, what should we make of all this noise about the Canal, today? Does it really matter either to Panamanian or American workers which nation possesses the deed of ownership? President Carter tells us, soberly, that it is not ownership but free access that is really important. Aside from our feeling that this move is an attempt by US capitalism to get further out of the more overt type of colonialism, we can only wish that the majority would apply such reasoning to all of wealth-producing property. The reason that the Treaty is of no import either to American or Panamanian workers is that ownership and free access, under capitalism, is generally confined to the capitalist class, even in cases of government-owned and government-operated industry.

But in the face of this truth there is something strange, even weird, about capitalism. Whether or not the Panama Canal will actually become the property of the Panamanian capitalist class depends on how successful the political leaders are in selling a bill of goods to American and Panamanian workers in order to provide the necessary pressures on the politicians to pass and to ratify the legislation.

Socialists maintain, then, that there are three rather than two positions on the Panama Canal Treaty: (1) Agreement; (2) opposition; (3) a simple working-class declaration: It is not our property so don’t bother us. But think carefully about that point made by President Carter on ownership vs. free access. And apply it to the world situation. The answer is inescapable: World Socialism will mean the end of ownership in the sense of class ownership. And common ownership can only spell free access to all that is in and on the earth, even the Panama Canal, by all mankind.

Harry Morrison, 

WSP, Boston. 

Rise of American Civilisation, Beard 

A New American History, Woodward

The Politicians and the crisis: Part 2 (1977)

From the September 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

These are the times when unthinking workers look for scapegoats, as they did in Germany in the latter period of the Weimar Republic. There the once proud and powerful Social Democratic Party (SPD) were in government; they unwittingly paved the way for the Nazis. Hence, the concern of the political leaders of Western Europe, North America and Japan. They reason as follows.

The slump of the early ’thirties undermined the established regimes in places like Germany and Japan and many other less powerful countries too. Imitative fascist-type parties sprang up all over Europe (some holding power), gaining support from disenchanted workers. In the case of Germany the Nazis gained power through the ballot box in 1933. In Japan the militarists managed to mobilize popular support against the existing Liberal administration because of the economic situation—unemployment and deflation—not, as now, inflation. The new regime began reflation in 1932 and before the bottom of the world slump had been reached Japanese industry began to recover being propelled along by an aggressive drive in export markets.

This was bad news for capitalist interests whose markets were being successfully penetrated by Japan, e.g. the colonial possessions of the Western industrial states were taking an increasing volume of textiles. This was one of the reasons for “protectionism” of the 1930s, which the governments now wish to avoid. This encouraged Japanese capitalism, with militarists firmly in the saddle, to possess colonies of their own. In 1937 they attacked China, having as early as 1932 driven the Chinese out of Manchuria without any formal declaration of war.

War economy

Germany from 1933 onwards pursued a twin policy of re-armament and so-called "economic self-sufficiency”. Unemployment decreased (although it was still above 1 million in 1936) and the armaments industry and its adjuncts, like the new autobahns and airfields, increased. Many workers were employed on the work connected with numerous Nazi rallies; the 1936 Nuremberg Rally alone cost £2,000,000 to stage. To limit imports, license schemes were introduced and synthetic materials developed, partly to deal with Germany’s balance of trade problem and also geared to their “war economy”.

Germany entered into trade arrangements with countries in South-East Europe and Latin America. These countries agreed to take more exports from Germany in exchange for imports from them, but their volume was only 69 per cent. above 1929; whereas Britain’s exports were then 83 per cent. above that year. Britain had achieved this advantage by bi-lateral arrangements with various countries. The Commonwealth and Empire countries increased their import preferences for each others’ goods and as mentioned above placed restrictive quotas on textiles from Japan.

In spite of all this, unemployment in Britain was still over 1.3 million in 1937. In the June 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard was the following:

When Hitler for the German capitalists says that Germany must expand or explode, find markets or perish, he meets his opposite in Mr. Hudson. British Secretary for Overseas Trade who said in Warsaw on March 21st [1939] that “we are not going to give up any markets to anyone . . . Great Britain is strong enough to fight for markets abroad. Britain is now definitely going to take a greater interest in Eastern Europe”. (From News Chronicle, March 22, 1939). Fighting that at present takes the form of words, trade agreements, loans, guarantees against aggression etc. may. as in 1914 turn into an armed conflict, and that armed conflict will be yet another war produced by capitalist rivalries.

This area of Eastern Europe was Germany’s existing and expanding sphere of influence, for recovering territory lost in the previous imperial conflict—the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, Danzig and the Polish Corridor, and Memeland from Lithuania. Germany also had eyes on the Rumanian oilfields (hence the British guarantee to that country in spite of the fascist regime there), and the wheat-growing areas of the Ukraine, in Russia and Poland.

These brief references are to the seeds which helped produce the second world war, and the politicians at the recent London summit conference said so quite openly. By any sense of logic working-class ears should be pricking up at these statements, questions should be asked and conclusions drawn. The Socialist Party does its best to help draw these conclusions and to develop a Socialist awareness.

It was noteworthy that Mr. Fukuda was particularly alive to the dangers of the present slump. He was a young diplomat in London in 1933 at the time of the World Economic Conference which broke up solving nothing, to be followed by “beggar thy neighbour” policies which were already under way prior to the conference. One of the major factors preventing even formal agreement was America’s refusal to stabilize the dollar; Roosevelt having taken them off the Gold Standard with a view to raising US commodity prices as an inducement for investment by the industrialists. This caused the US dollar to fluctuate wildly in the foreign exchanges. The delegates from the other countries at the conference wanted America to stabilize back on the Gold Standard: this Roosevelt refused to do, being pre-occupied with the domestic effects of the Depression.

Crisis capitalism

This was and is crisis capitalism. Predicament—the conflict between national economic interests and the stability of the international trading and monetary systems. This was recognized well enough in 1933. 

The journal The Round Table declared, some months before the Conference at the time of the Imperial Economic Conference at Ottawa, that "within a few months, conclusions must be reached in the financial and economic field, the effect of which will probably be decisive for or against the happiness of at least one generation of human beings all over the world.”

In September 1933, two months after the conference broke up, the same journal commented: ‘‘The great international conferences have come to little. The pulse of the Disarmament Conference is beating feebly (which began in June 1932) . . . The World Economic Conference has failed to reduce the obstructions to international trade, or even to make a tentative approach to agreement upon a solution of the world’s monetary problems”.

In the Daily Telegraph of May 9th, 1977, the day after this year’s conference, in an Economic Commentary article ‘‘Best view of the summit in few months” the author, Rodney Lord, stated: ‘‘It is idle to expect any great progress on persuading countries to regulate their economies for the general benefit of international stability. Politicians look first to the interests of the people who elected them.” The latter part of that quotation cannot go unchallenged of course—but we know what he means.

Politicians are the custodians of nation-states in a competitive world—that is, custodians for the capitalist class of their particular countries. At the same time they depend on the working class to go along with the arrangement, and have to try to placate them when it is necessary.

Conflicts of ‘national interest’

This conflict of national interest and international stability, with its inherent dangers, was demonstrated in Tokyo only four days after the end of the Economic Summit.

There were reports of a fire in an oilfield in Saudi Arabia which supplies over 30 per cent. of Japan’s crude oil imports. Prices fell on the Tokyo stock market and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry assured the Press that the fire would probably not have a serious effect on Japan’s supplies in the long run.

At the same time Mr. Fukuda, the Prime Minister, told a meeting of business leaders that the government is to press the case for Japan to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. He said that at London he had the ‘‘strong impression” that it will be difficult to get America’s approval because of President Carter’s “deep-rooted opposition”. However, Mr. Fukuda assured the businessmen that he was “most determined” to negotiate the issue with the US independently of other countries. The Japanese, apparently, have been shocked by the American President’s nuclear energy policy (from a report in the Daily Telegraph, May 13th).

An indication of Japan’s problems—even though being currently the world’s most successful economy— is the news that from the end of 1971 to the end of 1976, 30,000 shipyard workers lost their jobs. It is estimated that another 25,000 will go before the end of 1978, which is nearly the total workforce in British yards. (From the AUEW journal for May 1977.)

On May 9th the Daily Telegraph reported that British TV manufacturers were protesting to the Government that Japanese TV manufacturers were “bent on destroying” the British industry. This was in response to the plans of the Hitachi Company to build a factory at Tyne and Wear.

Commercial ‘aggrandisement’

The British businessmen said that there was already over-capacity in the industry. 1,751,000 sets were made in 1976 as against 3,000,000 in 1973, and Hitachi’s arrival would increase to 400,000 the number of Japanese colour sets made in Britain. Two other Japanese companies are already established here. Many more jobs would be lost—up to 6,000—than would be created, it was claimed. Hitachi had already a 20 per cent. interest in a Finnish company which is expected to export to Britain for assembly a substantial part of 800,000 total output of colour tubes. It is part of a policy of “commercial aggrandisement” in Europe, say the British capitalists.

No wonder Mr. Fukuda and the other statesmen are worried.

Frank Simkins

To be concluded

The Politicians and the crisis: Part 1 (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Sunday May 8th, in London the seven-nation conference of heads of state ended. Present with their aides were the Prime Ministers of Canada, Italy, Japan, UK, the Presidents of USA and France, and the Chancellor of West Germany; and on the final day Roy Jenkins in his capacity as President of the EEC.

The Conference was the latest of a series of similar conferences to appraise and look for solutions to the very real and increasingly dangerous problems facing the West European industrial countries, North America and Japan, and the rest of the avowedly capitalist world, i.e. Australasia. Latin America and so on, plus and by no means least the primary producing countries of the “Third World”, who are themselves at various stages of industrialization.

The problems discussed were primarily the world trade recession, with its unemployment. particularly amongst the young, inflation, energy, imbalance in international payments, the expected $45,000 million surplus of the oil-producing countries grouped in OPEC, the debts of the developing (non-oil producing) states, the “necessary” increase in nuclear energy (and its attendant dangers, political and military), “aid” to developing countries in which the Eastern (Soviet) bloc trade organization Comecon was urged to follow suit.

Carter, the US President, also raised the question of illegalities which had hitherto been condoned in certain banking, multi-national business and political circles. (The former Japanese Prime Minister, Mr. Tanaka, in relation to bribes from the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation was very involved.) This latter matter was not mentioned in the final declaration of “7 Pledges” to revitalize capitalism’s ailing economies, possibly because although not unimportant, it was regarded as peripheral to the major problems. To raise it officially would have also meant an explicit reference to companies and individuals. But does the conference have any significance for the working class of the world?

It can be safely said that modern society rarely appears to have stability for more than about two consecutive fortnights at a time, and that countless conferences and meetings have come and gone. Like many things it is all relative . . . and yet the newspaper headlines must at least have indicated something of magnitude — e.g. “7 Pledges to stop chaos” (Daily Telegraph, 9th May) and the politicians’ view on what could happen if these problems are not solved, must mean something. Put it this way: Carter, Callaghan and the rest wish to present as good a face as possible on the existing system whether they choose to call it capitalism, the “mixed economy”, a “free market”, a “social market” economy, the “free world” (i.e. capitalism with some sort of parliamentary democracy), partly because they are obliged to continue with it and also perhaps because they like the trappings of political power. As Carter said at the end of the conference: “We have to remember that making decisions, even unanimously, is not a guarantee that our decisions will be consummated. In many ways our own reputations are at stake.” As an article in the Daily Telegraph on Friday 6th May (the day before the beginning of the heads-of-state meeting) under the heading “Outlook for the World Summit — Hidden Threats to the World Economy” stated in its opening paragraph:

Chancellor Schmidt probably expressed the inner thoughts of all the European leaders when he said on Wednesday that he was looking to the London summit this weekend, mainly to bolster confidence. By this he meant the leaders' self-confidence and their electorates’ confidence in them, both of which are indeed at a low ebb.

Why this dual lack of confidence then? Because the politicians always aim to convince themselves and in turn the electorate that the capitalist system has found a way of stabilizing itself, and that despite its many imperfections it could at least avoid a catastrophe of the 1930s’ slump dimensions. They imagined that with their versions of Keynesian economics they had eradicated the deeper troughs of the business cycle.

However, from the mid-sixties onwards their policies have been demonstrated to be futile and unsound. It has been a gradual process, this dawning on the part of capitalism’s politicians.

Perhaps more to the point, among their advisors in the corridors of power, the higher echelons of the Civil Service, this bewilderment was exemplified in an article entitled “Whitehall at its wits’ end” (Sunday Telegraph, 24th April):

‘Everyone is baffled’ confesses one Permanent Secretary. “The old levers just don’t do the trick any more. We’re living in a world we didn’t make and don’t understand’. The Treasury has according to one senior Labour Minister (unnamed) ‘a very marked loss of confidence’, which reveals itself ‘to the discerning eye’ by the presence of competing economic ideologies. Before the Treasury served up only the pure milk of Keynesianism; now Keynes and Friedman are both on offer.

Graham Turner, the author of the article, states that “Whitehall is at its wits’ end . . . like the rest of us — they have not the faintest idea where Britain is going”.

The British politicians, their advisors and their counterparts in other countries may not know where the British and world economies are heading, but they do know, from personal experience and from the reading of history, where the 1930s’ crisis led.

The fact that they spoke at the Summit conference as candidly as they did demonstrates the seriousness of capitalism’s present difficulties.

The Japanese Prime Minister said “the world economic situation was now as serious as that of the early 1930s when leading industrial nations failed to act in time to prevent a slide into the 1939-45 war. History should not be allowed to repeat itself. Western nations had to co-operate more energetically in tackling economic problems” (Sunday Telegraph, 8th May).

He also recalled the fiasco of the 1933 London Economic Conference when no agreement was reached and a communique not even issued. “The difficulties today are greater and are compounded by new problems”.

The French President, Giscard d’Estaing. recalled that the ending of the 1977 conference coincided with the anniversary of the end of the 1939-45 war! “Sombre and pessimistic pictures were sometimes drawn of the present state of the world, but the cooperation at such conferences make it possible to avoid the mistakes [!] that helped to bring on that war.”

Helmut Schmidt of West Germany spoke on similar lines and “thought that they had avoided the results of complete selfishness” — by avoiding the “traps of the 1930’s.” President Carter like the other heads of state was concerned that decisions reached should not be merely pious, but recognized that making decisions and implementing them was not one and the same thing. "Sometimes heads of State tend to over-emphasize their own importance,” he said.

Callaghan considered that continuing unemployment carried political risks, not merely by the replacement of one party by another (naturally he does not want to lose his job) in Parliament — but that political democracy could be threatened. He is obviously concerned regarding the growth of the National Front, with racialism as the main plank of its support, and it is obvious there is a parallel here with the Nazis’ anti-semitism, which was copied in this country by the pre-war British Union of Fascists (although in recent years Sir Oswald Mosley has tried to obscure his organization’s former position on this subject).

It would seem inconceivable that the British working class could en masse support an organization tainted with fascism. Some of NF’s leaders were given to dressing up in Nazi-style uniforms before the organization was formed, and their arguments for economic nationalism — “self-sufficiency” — were advocated by the Nazis. However, it seemed improbable at the time that the Nazis would make much headway.

It can be justifiably argued that Britain in the 1970s, even with inflation and high unemployment is not the same as Germany in the early 1930s at the height of the depression with 6 million unemployed and the dire poverty it meant. However, in spite of the lower percentage of unemployed compared with that period and the lesser relative hardship of today’s unemployed, there is apathy and cynicism to politics and politicians generally, which though understandable is far from healthy — and also a good deal of resentment on the part of some of the young. This is why the established politicians are concerned wondering whether, if the crisis continues irrespective of the party in power, some of the youngsters might transfer their violent support from football teams to organizations like National Front. After all most of the workers of today know little of the 1930s; they make comparisons within this period, and as to whether the politicians’ promises and policies ring true. Over 400,000 of the present unemployed in Britain are in the 16-to-25 age group. In the rest of Western Europe the percentage is a little lower, and in the USA it is higher than in this country.

The major parties of British capitalism are discredited and the growth of the National Front directly arises from this. It is a particular indictment of Labour-style reformism and its inability to deal with capitalism’s problems, heightened as they are in times of crises.

Frank Simkins

(To be continued)

Editorial: The Middle East: capitalist powder keg (2024)

Editorial from the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The tit for tat rocket attacks between Israel and Iran have brought to the surface the real issue in the Middle East — whether the US and its allies should or should not control the fossil reserves and the trade routes in the area, which are vital to the operation of capitalism in their parts of the world.

The US position was clearly spelt out in 1980 by President Carter in his State of the Union message:

‘An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force’.

This wasn’t just words. In 1991 the US waged the Gulf War after Iraq invaded Kuwait and in 2003 the Iraq War that led to the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime there. This allowed the US to establish bases in Iraq to add to those in the Gulf states. The civil war in Syria allowed it to establish one there too. Its main asset in the region, however, has been Israel, its support for which has been ‘ironclad’ and which it has armed to the teeth.

With the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, the threat to US domination has come from Iran where, in 1979, the pro-US regime was overthrown and replaced by a brutal theocracy. The economic system there remained capitalist and the new regime aggressively pursued Iran’s national capitalist interests against those of the US. Iran, too, has its ‘bases’ throughout the region in the form of ‘proxy’ militias, in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. Iran is opposed to Israel ostensibly on religious grounds but essentially because Israel is US’s main asset in the region that needs to be destroyed if US control is to be ended.

Israel, as a capitalist state in its own right, has its own agenda. Its present rulers aspire to protect its existence as a separate state, to establish its rule over the whole of the former Ottoman province of Palestine; which involves the permanent political repression of the non-Jewish population living there. As far as the US is concerned, this is a diversion from why it supports Israel and undermines Israel’s usefulness to them.

In this sense Israel’s savage war of retaliation on Hamas and the whole population of Gaza for Hamas’s massacre of Israeli citizens on 7 October is a horrific sideshow.

Where all this will end is unclear. But one thing is not. The Middle East is a powder keg as a result of a conflict between capitalist states over who shall control raw material resources, and the trade routes to transport these out of the region. Capitalism’s competitive struggle for profits breeds such conflicts. Wars, the threat of war, and the waste of armaments will exist as long as capitalism does.

‘Defence diplomacy’ (2024)

From the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Christmas Eve the Ministry of ‘Defence’ announced that a Royal Navy warship, HMS Trent, would be deployed to Guyana in South America. Sky News described the ship as one used for ‘defence diplomacy’ (tinyurl.com/cysxnpyf).

What, then, was the diplomacy that required the deployment of a gunboat in support? The one-word answer is ‘oil’. The Harvard International Review (27 September) noted:

‘In 2015, the oil giant Exxon Mobil discovered 11 billion barrels of oil off the coast of the small Latin American country. The discovery promises to change Guyana forever, catapulting the country and its people to new heights of power and wealth. Oil already generates US$1 billion in revenues annually for the government and will produce an estimated US$7.5 billion by 2040. By these forecasts, Guyana—the impoverished, rainforest-covered country of just 800,000 people—will become the fourth largest offshore oil producer in the world.’

The discovery was off the coast of a part of Guyana which has been the object of a territorial dispute with its neighbour, Venezuela, since the middle of the 19th century when Guyana was part of the British Empire. In 1899 an international court of arbitration awarded the disputed area to Britain. It’s an area comprising some 75 percent of present-day Guyana. Venezuela never accepted the decision, alleging that it was rigged, but didn’t insist too much in pursuing its claim until now.

On 3 December the Venezuelan government, under Hugo Chávez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro, held a referendum throughout the country about whether or not to reject the 1899 ruling and to incorporate the area as a new province. The result was a huge majority for, but on a low turnout, and the government duly established the new province, on paper.

Venezuela, much as it would like to acquire control of the new oilfield, is unlikely to try to actually annex the disputed area. The referendum had more to do with the presidential elections later this year and as a way of trying to win votes for Maduro by beating the nationalist drum. In any event, it is not the land, mainly tropical forest with a few gold mines, that Venezuela really would like so much as the territorial waters off the area’s coast where the oil is. Diplomatic talks have begun, with the US and Britain backing Guyana. Hence the dispatch of the Royal Navy warship to carry out its role in ‘defence diplomacy’.

Diplomacy is not a matter of working out what is the fair solution to a dispute between states. An important factor affecting the outcome is the relative strength of the two sides. In relations between states might is right. Venezuela may be stronger than Guyana and so could seize the land it claims. But Guyana is backed by the US and Britain, because they don’t want a state with a nationalist anti-American government to control the new oilfield (they want a friendly state to) or to extend its territory (in fact they have been working to overthrow the government there), and Venezuela is in no position to take them on any more than it was to challenge the British Empire in 1899.

The cannons roar

In another part of the world another Royal Navy warship, HMS Diamond, has also been engaged in ‘defence diplomacy,’ in the Red Sea. In fact it actually used its weapons. As the Royal Navy’s website boasted on 19 December:

‘Diamond’s actions in the small hours of Saturday morning is the first time a Type 45’s Sea Viper missile has been used in action and the first such shootdown by the Royal Navy since the 1990-91 Gulf War’.

The British Minister of War, Grant Schapps, later threatened more ‘direct action’ than shooting down a few drones (Daily Telegraph, 1 January). On 11 January Britain carried out this threat by joining the US by bombing Yemen, escalating the war in the region.

What is going on in the Red Sea is an aspect of the question of who controls the Persian Gulf, its oilfields and the trade route out of it. In 1980 President Carter laid down the Carter Doctrine that: ‘Gulf oil reserves were of vital interest to the US and the US would therefore be justified in preventing outside domination of the region by military intervention’. This was invoked against Iraq in 1991 and in 2003. Now the threat is from Iran, with the US relying on Israel to counter this. Indeed Israel has already bombed Iran on a number of occasions.

Israel is currently engaged in a war of revenge against the Hamas administration in Gaza. The West supports this because Hamas is an enemy of Israel, its asset in the region, only cynically advising Israel not too kill too many Gazans.

Iran and its allies and proxies see the Gaza war as a chance to weaken Israel as the West’s asset. The pro-Iran government of Yemen has been attacking ships bound for Israel or owned by Israeli capitalists. This has led major shipping companies to re-route their ships round Africa, with serious consequences for international trade.

As the Royal Navy’s website explained:

‘An estimated 23,000 merchant vessels pass through the Bab-al-Mandeb choke point – with Suez the gateway to the Middle East and beyond for shipping from Europe… and for Europe from shipping from the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. Vice-Admiral Brad Cooper, the US officer commanding the Combined Maritime Forces from their headquarters in Bahrain, underlined that safe passage of the Red Sea was “crucial for the world economy”. He continued: “More than 10% of global trade transits the waters anchored by two globally strategic waterways – the Suez Canal and the Strait of Bab-al-Mandeb. Regionally, it has even greater impact, channelling trade across more than half the globe, ranging from Europe to Asia.”’

HMS Diamond’s commanding officer was quoted as saying: ‘The Royal Navy has always been committed to the protection of maritime trade’. By force if necessary. In this case in the context of the wider conflict of economic interest in the Middle East between the West and Iran over who controls oil in the Gulf and the trade route out of it.

Adam Buick

Earth Summits – a record of failure (2002)

From the October 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The record of Earth summits prior to Johannesburg can be summed up in four words: high hopes, poor results. The first such summit took place in Stockholm in 1972, following the first Earth Day centred in New York in 1970. The 1970s became known by optimistic environmental reformers as the Decade of the Environment. In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was set up to co-ordinate and manage federal pollution control programmes. Much legislation was passed setting out standards for the reduction of air and water pollution, but the industrial polluters did not disappear.

When President Carter introduced tougher dumping regulations there was a big increase in illegal midnight dumpings, and exporting toxic waste to the Third World became a sudden growth industry. The Earth Day celebrated the modest and mostly temporary environmental gains that had been made. The following year the incoming Reagan administration packed the EPA with environmental lobbyists and lawyers whose chief function was to dismantle environmental legislation or to make it ineffective.

In 1987 delegates from twenty-three industrialised countries met in Montreal and agreed to phase out the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by 1999. The US was keenest because it had a virtual monopoly on the production of substitutes. The other countries wanted time to catch up on the technology. But many of them refused to sign, on the grounds that they couldn’t afford the substitutes (estimated to be at least three times as expensive).

It was the same story with carbon dioxide emissions. Those countries with above average dependence on coal and oil-fired power stations, led by the US, dragged their feet. Paying for filters or building other types of power stations would have raised their costs and put them at a disadvantage in competing with other countries on world markets. So any treaty on global warming that might have emerged would have been an inadequate compromise between rival capitalist states, full of loopholes and get-out clauses to protect vested interests.

Rio

The second Earth summit was held in Rio in 1992. Here a blueprint was drawn up for reversing the growing environmental damage to the planet and for narrowing the gap between richer and poorer nations and people in the twenty-first century. The leaders solemnly pledged themselves to implement Agenda 21, a document that had much to say about how environmental protection and economic development had to go hand in hand, but, as Fred Pearce recently remarked in the Independent (31 August), said next to nothing about combating the real impediments of money and politics.

The optimism generated by the Rio Summit soon faded as the problems, far from being solved, went on growing. Global warming continued to increase (eight of the hottest ten years recorded have been since 1992), topsoil continued to be lost (nearly a third of the world’s land area is degraded and at risk of becoming desert), forests continued to be felled and species to become extinct.

Richer countries failed to fulfil their promise to provide aid to help poorer ones change course and develop in a more sustainable manner. Wealth owners in the richer countries have enjoyed a bonanza since Rio, with the world economy growing by more than a third to $42 trillion (£27,600 billion). But aid to poorer countries did not just fail to rise – it fell like a stone. Between the Rio Summit and the millennium, aid dropped by more than a quarter in real terms. Every developed country except Denmark cut it. Instead it was Third World debt that rose – by a third to $2.5 trillion (£1,600 billion).

Five years ago there was another Earth summit, this time in New York. It was only ever going to be a re-enactment of the Rio Summit. The delegates from the world’s leading nations failed to agree on new targets for carbon dioxide emissions. The Rio delegates had agreed to return to pre-1990 CO2 levels by the end of the decade. But between 1992 and 1997 such emissions had in fact spiralled and went on doing so. The industrialised countries were as usual the worst perpetrators.

The Rio guidelines to protect the world’s forests were not adhered to, with about 10m hectares of forest vanishing every year, accompanied by the loss of about 130,000 species of life. At Rio the industrialised countries had agreed to increase their proportion of overseas aid to 0.7 percent of GDP. What happened was that aid fell by 20 percent between 1992 and 1995. In that period global poverty had increased, with the poorest 20 percent of the world’s people sharing less than 1.1 percent of global income, compared with 2.3 percent in 1960.

The Rio Summit had pledged $125 billion a year in aid initiatives for projects aimed at helping the environment. Few have been carried out and some have resulted in human misery. In Uganda, for instance, 35,000 inhabitants of the Kabale forest region were forcibly ejected from their homes in order that tourism could be encouraged and the forests protected. Those who resisted were either shot or burned alive in their homes.

In the five years between the Rio and New York summits the world’s fishing grounds were further depleted. The whole ecosystem faced, and still faces, an increased threat from oil and gas companies who are now exploiting the deeper oceans in their endless pursuit of profit. The day after the New York Summit closed the Guardian reported that it had ended in a shambles with no clear agreement on its main goals of new aid for developing countries or protecting forests.

Kyoto

Then later in 1997 came the Climatic Change Conference in Kyoto, Japan. A protocol was adopted which set specific targets for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. The targets varied from country to country. In March 2001, to the dismay of the international community, the US administration announced that it would not implement the protocol on the grounds that it is not the right tool to deal with the challenge of climate change at a global level.

As an alternative the Bush administration proposed a cap and trade system that would set limits for emissions of three major air pollutants – but not carbon dioxide. Whereas Kyoto set out mandatory reductions, under the Bush plan permits would be assigned for each ton of pollution. By cutting emissions, firms would be able to trade these permits with other businesses. The European Union estimated that the Bush plan would allow the US to actually increase emissions by up to 33 percent.

World condemnation of the US proposal followed and was unanimous. No one has the right to declare Kyoto dead, declared Sweden’s Environment Minister. President Bush was unrepentant: I appreciate your point of view, but this is the American position because it’s right for America. Right for America should in fact be interpreted as right for American business interests. America, however, is not the only culprit in the process of environmental degradation – just the currently most powerful and with the greatest corporate interests to protect.

The idea of a world meeting to discuss world problems is not in itself wrong. Quite the opposite, in fact. It is a recognition that problems such as environmental degradation, global warming, the hole in the ozone layer, world hunger, poverty, ill-health and ignorance are global problems that can only be tackled by action on a world-scale. The problem is that under capitalism, with its built-in competitive struggle for profits, the necessary unity of purpose and co-operative action is impossible to achieve. Under capitalism the most that can possibly emerge from such meetings are trade-offs between competing sectional interests.

Only when capitalism has gone and the resources of the Earth have become the common heritage of all humanity can a meeting of representatives from all parts of the world be a success in terms both of being able to decide the urgent action needed and of being to implement it quickly and effectively.

Stan Parker

Running Commentary: Carter's Collapse? (1979)

The Running Commentary column from the August 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Carter's Collapse?

After the blue-chinned scowl of Nixon and the fumbling, stumbling of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter’s grin was meant to represent a new era in American politics.

They said Carter was clean — no hint of a Watergate hung about him. He was clever — no after-effects of playing too much American football without a helmet clogged up his mental processes. He was energetic, skipping from his campaign ’plane with the spring of a young deer.

And his smile — open, warm, ready, friendly. With his pretty wife and his photogenic daughter, he just had to be the greatest president since Roosevelt dominated American politics from his wheelchair.

Carter started as if he intended to be different, running his Cabinet meetings in open-necked sportswear and with the press watching. This, we were told, was truly open government, as if there has ever been, or is likely ever to be, a capitalist state which really allowed its secrets to be open to public scrutiny.

And then Carter kept talking about human rights, as if this was his own original discovery, and as if a politician mouthing about human rights had any significance for those humans.

Well, it has all collapsed very quickly, and the news from America indicates that the voters there are disillusioned with their grinning president, whose hold on his position gets more precarious each day.

Carter, it is said, fumbles and delays, changing his mind almost day by day over issues like the fuel shortage which is so hot in America. His financial policy is described as indecisive and inconsistent. Meanwhile, American capitalism gets deeper into crisis, with the threat of worse to come.

Even if Carter were decisive, clear and firm, it would make absolutely no difference to the grim realities of life under capitalism for the American workers. That is one lesson for them to learn from this, the collapse of their latest idol. Another is that all politicians are powerless in the face of the anarchy of capitalism, which means that the ecstasy with which their coming to power is greeted always turns soon to disillusionment and then to despair.

Jimmy Carter’s grin won a lot of votes, but for the American workers it is no laughing matter.

Crueller Cuts?

Like the Flanders swamps of 1914-18, there are many much fought-over fields in the politics of capitalism. One of these is so-called public expenditure, about which there promises to be an increasingly fearsome battle during the Tories' period of office.

The term public expenditure generally refers to money spent by government and councils. About this there are many myths, one of them being that public expenditure is good; it means hospitals, social services and — something beloved by millions of workers — big new roads.

Because of this, public expenditure is supposed to actually create something also beloved by millions of workers — jobs. (There is no actual record from earlier societies of slaves ever welcoming the making of new chains for themselves, but let that pass.)

One thing which must be said is that public expenditure also finances agencies like the police and the prisons which are, perhaps, not beloved by quite so many workers, and armed forces and armaments, which are beloved only by those workers who take sides in the matter.

But a myth we are going to hear a lot of over the next few years is that since public expenditure is good, it is something favoured only by the Labour Party and which the wicked Tories will do their best to abolish.

Memories in politics are notoriously short, so it is useful to remind ourselves that the last Labour government, like all its predecessors, made consistently savage cuts in public spending.

As a result of these cuts, hospitals were shut in the face of strong objections, social services were severely restricted, schooling was cut back. A Conservative government could hardly have been more Scrooge-like in its zeal.

This fact of history was clearly illustrated in a recent (June 19) article in The Guardian by Joel Barnett, who was Chief Secretary to the Treasury in Callaghan's government. This article, by a typical Labour sleight of word, was both an attack on the Tories for their planned cuts and a justification of those imposed by Labour:

I don’t believe present levels of public expenditure should be sacrosanct, nor that every programme should be, as it were, untouchable, and free from cuts.

In the battles to come, and in the increasing pressures on their living standards, workers will — as usual — be bombarded by lies, myths, distortions. It is vital that they remember: both Tories and Labour run capitalism as savagely as they need to. And capitalism cannot be coaxed out of its own basic savagery into benignity by spending money, public or private, big or small.

Anti-Social Insecurity

It is not often that any person — and still less, any capitalist agency — is given the gift to see themselves as others see them. It is even more surprising that this should happen to, of all things, the Department of Health and Social Security (for such it is described).

To explain this strange happening, let us go back a little into recent history. During the last war, the British capitalist class realised that mere patriotism was not enough to persuade the workers to accept what they were required to endure.

Something more was needed: a mixture of threats and promises. Out of this latter grew the assurances that after the war capitalism would bend all its efforts to building a better society, free of the mistakes which were made before 1939.

And out of that came the famous Beveridge Report, parent of the National Health Service and the National Insurance Scheme introduced by the post-war Labour government. A central principle of National Insurance was that its benefits would be available as of right to anyone in need — in other words, without being subject to the notorious Means Test — and that they would be enough to meet all needs. It was envisaged that a small minority of people in rare cases would need extra help, and for those there would be the Supplementary Benefits, which would be means tested.

Well, it has not worked out like that at all, and now the original idea of Beveridge is in tatters. About one-tenth of the population — something like six million people — need to apply for Supplementary Benefit, which pays out some £2 billion a year.

This increasing reliance on what was supposed to be only a safety net has meant that the scheme has become more and more complex something unwelcome to workers who are sick or old or infirm, and who need a simpler method of claiming benefit.

A recent report by the Supplementary Benefits Commission called attention to this crisis and suggested that, to meet the needs of applicants, the scheme needs an extra £200 million a year. The Commission chairman described the need as “urgent” and said that unless the government acted swiftly, “it will be impossible to maintain standards of service for people in Britain who are in real need . . .”

Those workers who rely on Social Security will be amazed to learn that the treatment they get from the DHSS is called a service and that it aspires to standards. On the receiving end, they know how this patch-up job of capitalism simply does not work. They may get some consolation to know that the SBC now thinks the same.

Would that some ghostie would give the same gift, of seeing themselves as others see them, to all the agencies of so-called reform within capitalism.

Running Commentary: How much are you worth? (1979)

The Running Commentary column from the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

How much are you worth?

Have you ever thought about the man who emptied your dustbin having the power to bring Civilised Life As We Know It to a halt? Or the woman who washed the floor in the hospital ward? Or the person who unlocked your child's school in the morning?

We only ask these questions because of the hysterical denunciation in what is politely known as the media—but which was once, more healthily, called the gutter press—of the recent strikes as acts of crass irresponsibility which would lead to millions dying or being unable to read and write or something similarly dreadful.

It is, of course, perfectly true that a disruption of hospital services, or an accumulation of garbage, or an interference with the water supply, could quickly produce a number of serious problems.

But so far the gutter press has not followed up its flash of insight into the value of these workers by concluding that this very fact must make them worth a very high wage indeed.

Of course this does not apply to everyone. Incensed by the strikes. Spike Milligan, described as a comedian, threatened to go on strike himself, which means he would stop telling jokes—something discerning people thought had happened already. Then there are people like the Royal Family who receive more in a month than the strikers will get in a lifetime and who could threaten to stop making silly speeches and trying to live in half a dozen palaces at once.

Or Roddy Llewellyn could really put the pressure on by refusing to lie in the sun in the West Indies or trying to sing.

In fact, if the entire capitalist class went on social strike tomorrow, by ceasing to exist as a class, the world would not notice the difference except that we would be free of a dead weight of parasitism and could get on with building a society where everyone stood equally.

This is one thing the gutter press will hold its silence over. The useful people in society are the working class; they have only to learn to run the world in their interests and not in that of the parasites.

A Cry For Help

Does this latest Pope really see himself in the role of King Canute, persuaded to try to hold back the inexorable tide?

For some time now religions of all sorts have attempted to disguise the fact that their theoretical justification (if it could ever be said to have existed) has been destroyed, by involving themselves in social problems.

The Salvation Army is perhaps the best known example of this, dispensing their own brand of nonsense along with shelter for drunks, battered children and the like. (The drunks may argue about the description of what they are offered as shelter.)

Other groups have followed the same line; in the more developed countries even the Roman Catholic Church has been able to contain priests who, making their own interpretation of their dogma, have seemed almost as interested in homelessness and vagrancy as in the catechism.

To do this, they have usually needed to put a pretty selective slant on what was allegedly said and done by the person known in certain writings as Jesus Christ. As the pressure of problems in modern society has built up the quasi political priest has become an increasingly evident spectacle.

Now. it seems, the Pope has had enough of this nonsense. On a recent tour of Latin America, he spoke out against those Catholics who are intellectually nimble enough to somehow relate Christianity with "Marxism” and to conceive Jesus Christ as a sort of Che Guevera.

The facts need to be stated. Religion remains, as when it was so described by Marx, the opiate of the people. It aims to divert workers from the immediate priority, of changing the social order here on earth, persuading them instead to accept the chaos of capitalism in the hope that there is a supernatural something after death reserved for those who have done so, with humility

This theory is constantly battered by reality. Can—or should—someone who is starving, or someone degraded and poverty stricken, accept this as natural and tolerable? Religion tries to make this adjustment, to have the best of both worlds. It tries the dishonest, the insupportable, the impossible.

Clearly, it was very unkind of the Pope to be so blunt to those of his followers who, in their desperation, are driven to try this trick. They are in need of help rather than criticism.

Is It Catching?

Whenever a City Editor is stuck for something to fill his column, he can always run off a few paragraphs on something he calls the British Disease.

This Disease takes different forms at different times but one unvarying symptom of it is that it is caused by British workers' unmanageable greed and laziness; another is that it damages British industry in its efforts to compete with that of other countries.

As we all know, the British Disease is at present characterised by inflation which, as all City Editors are agreed, is caused by workers who are greedy, lazy, etc., etc. . . .

This theory, popular as it may be. is not supported by the facts. Inflation, apart from not being caused by workers getting higher wages, is not peculiar to British capitalism.

President Carter recently took himself along to the Capitol to tell the American people (his speech was televised) all about the State of the Union. Some of his speech was devoted to a catalogue of America’s nuclear armaments and of how they can wipe out “every large and medium-sized city in the Soviet Union".

Apart from this joyful news, Carter also has a lot to say (although he did not call it the American Sickness) about inflation in the United States. Inflation, he said, is his overriding domestic priority; he urged Congress to approve the Budget he had sent them which was designed, just like Healey’s, to end inflation for ever.

Carter also addressed himself to the American workers. Without actually calling them greedy, lazy, etc. etc. ... he admonished them: “We cannot afford to live beyond our means, to create programmes we cannot manage or finance, or to waste our natural resources."

So not only does America suffer from this same disease of inflation as Britain: it also has to endure the same fatuous “remedies” being mouthed by its politicians.

Anyone who worries about inflation being contagious, spreading like some virile baccillus across the Atlantic, can take heart. It is caused by a deliberate act of government policy, as a method of eroding wages which cannot be held back in actual monetary terms.

It leaves workers chasing their tails— which is what it is meant to do. At anytime, a government can stop inflation, and replace it with other policies also designed to hold back wages. Whoever heard of a disease which the patients inflict upon themselves?

What sort of state is Israel? (2021)

From the June 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

There appears to be more of an understanding that the state of Israel seeks to establish a form of religious apartheid but which supporters of Israel vigorously deny.

In our analysis of the South African regime of racial apartheid, we were perhaps unique in our hopeful anticipation of its dismantling because we considered that the capitalists running the country’s industry themselves found such a strict racial divide an obstacle to their profits. It was not because of any global boycott but rather the need to fully integrate the nation’s black population into the economy as productive workers and lucrative consumers.

We pointed out in one of our pamphlets:

 ‘Apartheid is essentially a pre-capitalist form of oppression; it is an attempt to impose the colour patterns of a frontier farming community onto a modern industrial economy. It will never work properly because what the government is trying to separate the economy keeps bringing together… South Africa’s big capitalists want to encourage this tendency of capitalism so that they can make more profits on the basis of a modern wages system and a stable, integrated urban working class. They recognise apartheid as an obstacle to this and oppose it’.

However, the situation in Israel is not the same. When the first Intifada in 1987 exposed the vulnerability of a reliance upon daily West Bank workers for Israel’s business, the policy of importing migrants from the Far East and Eastern Europe was adopted to bolster the labour supply, all hired on temporary contracts, denying them any chance of permanent residency. There are currently over 300,000 migrant workers in Israel who were described in 2003 by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network and the International Federation for Human Rights report as ‘contemporary form of slavery’ (fidh.org).

Similarly, the outright rejection of 35,000 or more, mainly African, asylum-seeking applicants demonstrates a bias against non-Jewish newcomers who are nevertheless employed in menial jobs replacing West Bank Palestinian workers who are increasingly superfluous to the labour needs of Israel’s capitalist economy.

In March 2019 we reported on how the Israeli government is displacing (to use the polite word for ethnically cleansing) its own Bedouin second-class citizens. How much worse it is for those who are considered captive civilians.

In 2006, former American president, Jimmy Carter, wrote a book called Palestine: Peace or Apartheid? and remarked in an interview:

‘When Israel does occupy this territory deep within the West Bank, and connects the 200-or-so settlements with each other, with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or in many cases even crossing the road, this perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa’ (bit.ly/3f640f4).

In 2011, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine ‘found grounds to conclude that Israel’s rule over the Palestinian people under its jurisdiction, regardless of their zone of residence, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid’ (ohchr.org).

Then in 2017 a report (bit.ly/3f640f4) was published by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) which described Israel as an apartheid state. The diplomatic pressure from Israel’s allies very quickly buried that report and it disappeared from the public discourse.

The Israeli human rights organisation, Yesh Din, published a legal opinion in 2020 where it argued that apartheid was being practised. ‘The crime of apartheid is being committed in the West Bank because, in this context of a regime of domination and oppression of one national group by another, the Israeli authorities implement policies and practices that constitute inhuman acts as the term is defined in international law’.

Another Israeli human rights campaign group, B’Tselem, issued their findings in January 2021, A Regime of Jewish Supremacy From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. This is Apartheid. It said ‘B’Tselem rejects the perception of Israel as a democracy (inside the Green Line) that simultaneously upholds a temporary military occupation (beyond it). B’Tselem reached the conclusion that the bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians’.

The report describes how Israel systemically privileges Jews over Palestinians: permitting immigration for Jews only; appropriating land for Jews while crowding Palestinians into enclaves; restricting Palestinian freedom of movement, and denying Palestinians the right to political participation. The report also points to the 2018 nation-state law, which establishes ‘Jewish settlement as a national value’ and enshrines the Jewish people’s ‘unique’ right to self-determination to the exclusion of all others.

The international rights body, Human Rights Watch, in its April report is the latest to level the charge of apartheid against Israel. HRW stated that:

 ‘Israeli authorities use a series of policies and practices to methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and repress Palestinians. The severity of the repression carried out in the OPT [occupied territories] amounts to ‘systematic oppression’ by one racial group over another, a key component for the crime of apartheid as set out in both the Rome Statute and Apartheid Convention.’

Answers are not found in segregating peoples and enforcing separation by decree such as with the American Jim Crow laws. Nor do solutions lie in the creation of sovereign states, nor in retaining them, but rather in their complete elimination.

ALJO

Too Much Food (1980)

From the June 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism has outlived its usefulness; it has developed the means of production and distribution to a point where abundance is within our grasp. Yet as the twentieth century totters to a close, we still have to contend with the same old problems that were a feature at the turn of the century —unemployment, poverty, bad housing, war and so on, and, in some parts of the world, starvation wipes out thousands of human beings. If these deaths were the result of an unbountiful Nature, of the world being incapable of producing sufficient food for its people, we would be faced with a very difficult problem. But this is not the case.

Capitalism is a system of commodity production — of buying, selling, profit. Sometimes the wheels grind to a halt, with too many cars, carpets, ships, suits or whatever to meet market needs. And "too much" food, even when so many go without; but food, like a car, is a commodity. If too much is produced for the market to absorb production is cut back.

When Russia invaded Afghanistan President Carter, waxing indignant, decreed an embargo on US exports of grain to the Soviet Union, which is heavily dependent on this feedstuff to increase cattle population. The American farmers, who for long have looked on the Russian market as a profitable channel for their surplus grain crops, hummed and hawed, did a bit of tooth sucking but eventually agreed to support Carter. It was supposed to be their sacrifice for the nation's good — but the farmers were not about to turn a shotgun on themselves. It was of course agreed at the time, that the US government would compensate them by itself buying this grain.

The American government has just completed the purchase of 156 million bushels of grain at a cost of 600 million dollars. With this amount of grain around, storage space is at a premium and there is a constant search for any odd corner where the stuff can be dumped. The bottom fell out of the market and as a result many American farmers have gone bankrupt. As those still in business (the majority) plan their sowing schedule for this year, the high cost of borrowing money (US Bank Rate around 20 per cent) for seed and fertilisers is having its effect on the total acreage to be planted. This cost, and the large surplus of grain available, has led one Chicago grain analyst to say . . . "It would be economic suicide to plant at these prices". Prudential Insurance of Chicago, one of the largest agricultural finance houses, has already stopped loans to farmers and does not know when they will recommence.

Food production and selling is big international business. To add to the woes of the American farmer, Canada is planning this year a 6 per cent increase in planting acreage; the Indian harvest looks good; Brazil has just gathered the largest soya bean crop for years and the world stock of grain is the highest for 15 years.

Anyone who thinks this promises well for the starving millions should remember: in the past, grain stocks have been high and yet people died through lack of food. In the Guardian (17 April) a large advert stated that harvest failure has led to a new crisis in Kampuchea. This country desperately needs food to survive, but the profit motive of capitalism ensures that it does not get enough of it. As long as food is produced for sale and profit, then so long shall we have these futile appeals.

When food is produced for the sole reason that people need it then we shall have socialism —a world community based upon common ownership of the means of production and distribution. It will be a way of life divorced from the stupidities of a wages and monetary system. For the good of all, the earth with its riches and potential, harnessed with humanity's creative ability, will provide what we need for a full and meaningful life.

Cyril May

Trade unions and the law (1978)

From the May 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trade unions arise out of the class struggle between those who own the means of living and the working class, "between those who possess but do not produce and those who produce but do not possess".

On the industrial field the struggle takes the form of agitation and the use of strikes to influence bargaining over wages and working conditions. Eventually political action will be taken to establish a system of society based upon common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution by, and in the interest of, the whole community—the purpose for which the Socialist Party of Great Britain exists.

United front

Workers early realised that they could strengthen their position by forming organisations to present a united front to the employers, to conduct strikes or resist lock-outs, and to give protection to individual members against victimisation. This did not mean that the struggle became one between equal forces, for in the background was the government, always there to use its control of the legislature, the police and armed forces, to protect capitalist ownership. Power is in the hands of the government but how, and with what degree of ruthlessness they use it depends on a variety of political and other considerations. In the general capitalist interest they will, on occasion, put pressure on particular employers to make concessions to strikers (as President Carter is reported to have done in the American Miners’ Strike) but never so as to jeopardise capitalism. It was possible in India for Mrs. Gandhi’s government to break a strike by ordering the arrest of tens of thousands of railwaymen, but it was not practicable for President Carter’s administration to contemplate arresting 160,000 miners, even though they defied a court order to return to work. In Britain we have seen a Labour Government use troops to break a firemen’s strike.

Alongside the general purpose for which Governments use their power in industrial disputes is the question of the extent to which, and the way in which, practice is governed by trade union laws. A simple, but erroneous, view held by some politicians and some trade unionists, is that the law is the last word on any trade union activity, so that if the law prohibits something it will not take place and that if the law permits something all will be well.

It is erroneous because there are occasions when masses of angry workers will strike in defiance of even savage penalties. During the two world wars there were large numbers of illegal strikes many of them successful. Governments sometimes chose to turn a blind eye and refrain from enforcing laws, as with the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875 and 1919, which prescribed a fine or imprisonment on electricity and gas workers for certain strikes. It was hardly ever used, and when the Labour Government in 1950 prosecuted some gas workers under that Act and under Emergency Power Regulations and a conviction was obtained, the Government had second thoughts in face of protests from their supporters, and the proceedings were dropped. (These provisions were repealed by the Heath Government.) Also, it is hardly necessary to say that the fact that strikes are legal does not mean that the workers are bound to win.

Limitations of law

The early history of British trade unions shows the limitations of the law. Before 1824 trade unions were illegal under the Combination Laws, but they went on being formed and operating.

  "That was the difficulty which both the employers and the government faced. Pass laws against Combinations as they might, spy on the workers as they in fact did, nothing could stop the workpeople from organising to resist the degradation of heir standard of life”. (Two centuries of Trade Unionism, TUC 1952, p. 15)

The question of trade union law has been raised again by a court decision, confirmed in appeal to the House of Lords, that under the Post Office Act, postal workers commit an offence if they ‘‘wilfully delay or detain the mails”, and therefore cannot legally strike. A Bill to remove this disability is before Parliament with Government backing.

Periodic setbacks

This repeats a familiar pattern in trade union history; a pattern of relaxation of trade union law, interrupted however by periodic setbacks, often brought about by court decisions upsetting accepted interpretations; as for example the court decision in 1867, depriving Unions of legal protection against theft of their funds and the decision in 1906 in favour of the Taff Vale Railway Company in its action for damages against the railway unions. The way in which these setbacks have been dealt with through amending legislation also follows a pattern; that of the unions doing a deal with a political party; with the Liberals in 1906 and 1913; with the Labour Party in 1946 (repeal of the 1927 Trade Disputes and Trade Union Act, passed by the Tories after the General Strike) and with the Labour Party in 1974 (repeal of the Tory Industrial Relations Act).

The concessions in the form of relaxations of the law made during the past two centuries have not been made without expectation of compensatory gain; some members of the government which legalised strikes in 1824 had even been persuaded that unions would not take advantage of it. When a political party has made a deal with the unions about amending the law, it has counted on electoral support in return, but the employers have also had an interest. As the unions established themselves under the protection of the law and increased their membership, the big employers of labour not only came to terms with the unions, but saw that they too have need of trade union organisation because they must have some body with which to negotiate, and because unions can be drawn into schemes for raising productivity.

Frederick Engels, surveying the changes in the second half of the nineteenth century, had already noticed the new attitudes of employers. While commenting on the way the conditions of the workers organised in trade unions had “remarkably improved since 1848” Engels had this to say about the employers:-

  Thus a gradual change came over the relations between the classes. The Factory Acts, once the bugbear of all manufacturers, were not only willingly submitted to, but their expansion into Acts regulating almost all trades was tolerated. Trades Unions, hitherto considered inventions of the devil himself, were now petted and patronised as perfectly legitimate institutions, and as useful means of spreading sound economical doctrines amongst the workers. Even strikes, than which nothing had been more nefarious up to 1848, were now gradually found out to be occasionally very useful, especially when provoked by the masters themselves at their own time. (1892 Preface to Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1844).

The process has gone further since Engels wrote.

Running capitalism

The unions are more occupied with promoting productivity schemes and export drives and more closely involved with the Labour Party in the running of capitalism than ever they were with the Liberal Party in its heyday. Spreading (capitalistically) “sound economical doctrines” among the workers through the unions flourishes still, as witness the way the “wage restraint” has been put over by successive Labour and Tory Governments.

Edgar Hardcastle