Sting in the Tail: An Unmarried Father (1992)

The Sting in the Tail column from the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Unmarried Father

The Bishop of Galway once attacked clergymen who had four figure bank accounts as Immoral. And unlike some hypocrites in the Church it seems that the reverend gentleman practised what he preached.

According to press reports this godly man sent £65,340 from his bank account to a Ms Murphy in the USA to assist in the rearing of her son. This was in addition to regular monthly payments he had been making for 15 years. It would seem that when this American kid addressed him as "father” he was doing so in both senses.

Here at least is one catholic that does not use contraception. A man of principle and a glowing example to all his flock.

Unfortunately his Irish parishioners have lost this paragon of virtue. He has moved to South America where with less than a four figure bank account he will minister unto the poor!

Untutored Fathead

Another man of principle the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey has attacked greed and short sightedness among industrialists.

The saintly Archbishop is certainly not of this world when he is reported in The Independent (11 May) as follows:

Dr Carey said the purpose of trade and industry was to benefit humanity, "not to make profits for shareholders . . ."

”Within our own society, our collective commitment to industrial enterprise will remain underpowered if the fruits of success appear to be concentrated too heavily in the pockets of shareholders and senior executives. For example, massive individual pay rises during a recession do not encourage public support for wealth creation."

With falling church attendances the miracle business could be said to be in recession, but this does not deter Carey living in a palace and riding around in a chaffeur driven Roller!

We Are Not Amused

As head of the Church of England, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth must get a little annoyed from time to time by such upstarts as the Archbishop going on about greed.

In the good old days of course, It would have been off to the Tower with him and good riddance. But in these democratic days one has got to keep up the pretence that one actually gives a shit about what these loyal objects say.

The Archbishop was very careful to attack only shareholders, industrialists and senior executives in his sermon. No mention of such obscenities as the Queen reputably the richest person In Britain with an estate of £6,500M or the noble Duke of Westminster with a mere £3,500M.

More Classy Antics

It needs little comment from Scorpion. It should be required reading for any dupe of Major's classless society. We refer to Andrew Rawnsley's account of the State Opening of Parliament in The Guardian of 7 May.

The Lord Chancellor was trying to walk backwards without tripping over the Rouge Dragon Pursuivant, animated playing cards were blowing trumpets, Black Rod was getting the door slammed In his face like a Jehovah's Witness . . . the new leader of the House of Lords had landed the trickiest role in the whole ceremonial, that of bearing the Cap of Maintenance. This involves half an hour holding up a pole bearing a purple velvet cap which looks most like a medieval condom...

As Beaumont Herald Extraordinary, Gold Stick In Waiting, The Keeper Of The Gilded Bidet and the rest of the cast of lolanthe did their stuff before an audience of dukes, earls, marquesses and viscounts, Her Majesty outlined her government's plans to create a modern, open and classless society.

Workers Can Fight

For decades West Germany's trade unions have been held up as a shining example to British workers. Instead of going on strike West German unions would simply sit down with the employers and settle matters in a civilised way.

Now that cosy scene is shattered as those same unions are having a show-down with government and business over pay. Postal workers, public sector workers and even the police have struck, with rail and construction workers likely to follow.

The unions complain that their members are being made to pay the cost of German unification.

The liberal weekly newspaper, Die Zeit, concerned that Germany's famed consensus between labour and capital was cracking, accused Kohl of trying to wring money out of the weakest group — workers —rather than fighting rich and powerful lobbies.

The Guardian 25 April

So the "consensus" between workers and employers is over and that nasty old class-struggle, which we were assured was dead and buried in West Germany, has risen from the grave once again.

So Can Bosses

Meanwhile in France the limitation of successful industrial action by workers is being shown once more.

The wages and conditions won by French dockers over the years are under attack and the dockers have come out on strike against a reform proposed by the "socialist” government which would reduce wages and increase hours.

The employers claim that those wages and conditions drive away shipping to cheaper facilities at Antwerp and Rotterdam and have cost 6,000 dockers jobs in the last 10 years.

This is the situation which arises from gains made by workers anywhere. Their success prods capital into finding ways of regaining what it has lost, usually by cutting jobs and introducing new work practices. The workers will, of course, try to improve their lot when circumstances permit.

And so it goes on, this constant struggle in which workers must run fast just to stand still. Political action to replace capitalism by socialism is the way to get off this treadmill.

Socialism and nature (1992)

From the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

We publish below a criticism from a Marxist viewpoint of the so-called “Deep Greens” or “Deep Ecologists” who see nature as a force to which humans must submit.

Our ecological crisis, say the “deep” Greens, stems from a fundamentally unhealthy relationship between society and nature. In this relationship, inherited from attitudes and philosophies developed during the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution, we regard ourselves as separate from and superior to nature. We think we can constantly change, develop and destroy it for material benefit. Such alienation and exploitation result, Deep Greens say, from human arrogance and greed, which are displayed equally in capitalism and socialism.

They argue that a healthy, holistic, organic relationship with nature would, by contrast, regard humans as part of it, not separate from it—subject, like any other species, to the same ecological laws. We therefore must observe the natural limits on human activity imposed by finite resources. We should respect, celebrate and revere nature in its own right (the “bioethic”)—regardless of its use value to us. This means abandoning materialism and “living lightly on the earth”, while conserving virtually all species from highest to lowest.

Socialists, too, condemn Western attitudes to nature. However we relate them not to human “sin” but to the specific workings of capitalist economics (state or private). We reject the Deep Ecology approach in favour of a dialectical Marxist one.

Dialectical approach

A dialectical view of the society-nature relationship says, first, that there is no separation between them. They are part of a unity. There is not a self-contained “humanity” counterposed to a self-contained “non-human” world. The two are so un-self-contained that you cannot define one without the other (try it!). They are really aspects of one another: what humans do is natural, while nature is socially produced.

Second, as they develop they constantly interact to change each other, in a circular, mutually affecting way. “Non-human” nature, and human perceptions of it, affect and change human society. The latter then changes nature, which, changed, affects society to further change it, and so on.

Underlying human interactions with nature is the process of production, which is a defining characteristic of being human. In production we change nature with forethought, into forms more useful to us than in their “natural” state. Labour incorporates our essential human forces into nature, which therefore gains social quality in the form of use values. Under capitalism, of course, the value of nature is not judged simply by its use, material or aesthetic. It is expressed as exchange value: the value which its products realise when bought and sold in a market place.

Over time, our work on a nature which existed before humans were present—a “first nature”—has produced the material creations of society together with its institutions, ideas and values—a “second nature”. Here, we should recognise something which most Deep Ecologists do not (or if they do, they do not welcome it—see Bill McKibben’s Death of Nature). This is that wherever there are humans it is no longer meaningful to distinguish between first or second nature: everything is the latter. Marx certainly recognised this:

Animals and plants, which we are accustomed to consider as products of nature, are, in their present form, not only products of, say, last year’s labour, but the results of a gradual transformation, continued through many generations, under man’s superintendence and by means of his labour. (Capital Vol. I).

The nature that preceded human history . . . today no longer exists anywhere . . .

(German Ideology).

In these days of concern about ubiquitous global atmospheric modification the truth of these observations becomes clear upon a moment’s reflection. Even “wilderness” areas and wildlife preserves are not “natural”. They have been artificially segregated from normal development processes by human decisions.

Because socialists accept all this with equanimity, Deep Ecologists often accuse them of sharing with capitalism an arrogance towards the rest of nature. And, indeed, Marxism was, like liberalism, born of the Enlightenment view that saw nature as something to be understood in order to use its laws, principles and resources for the material benefit of humans.

But the society-nature dialectic does also acknowledge human dependence on non-human nature as well as vice versa. This is fundamental in the recognition of nature as one of the forces of production: a recognition which should beget, in socialists, sensitivity to the objective existence of ecological laws. It should also beget kindness and humane (i.e. like humanity) treatment of animals. For, if in changing nature we change ourselves, then acts of cruelty to animals create cruel humans.

This all means that as the productive forces of technology develop, what it is to be human and to be “natural” both change. In production

Man sets in motion arms and legs, head and hands—the natural forces of his body—in order to appropriate nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. (Marx. Capital).

So through learning how to farm nature’s products we changed ourselves from nomadic hunter/gatherers to sedentary humans. Through learning how to manufacture things we changed ourselves to an industrial society. As our ability to use resources has grown we have developed new needs: housing, energy, telecommunication. As we have changed our power to do things (e.g. via transport and computers) we have changed the things we want and need to do (e.g. travel).

This interaction is not just material. Through changing nature and making things, we have changed ourselves into creatures who appreciate the beauty of what we create: buildings, machines, art, landscapes. Included in all this are our intellectual senses. As we transform nature, we get to know nature’s laws in order to do it more effectively and usefully. As this happens we develop our own intelligence.

Lewis Mumford described aspects of this dialectic, in Technics and Civilisation. He argued that creating machines produced new moral values in Western societies. These elevated practicality, thus favouring a meritocracy which swept aside a feudal caste system. And new cultural values were created. Nature was transformed into a human work of art: its beauty and wonder being augmented by the quantitative and analytic appreciation which a machine culture induces. The human imagination has also been enlarged by scientific, technological fantasising, and by a new machine aesthetic: a second nature of cranes, skyscrapers and microscopes. Cubism was the first style to reflect the beauty of the machine. Photography enhanced our appreciation of pure form in nature, while films brought distant environments near, recreating symbolically a world beyond our immediate reach.

This unfolding society-nature dialectic is an evolutionary process. In it, industrial, technological society is not some unnatural aberration, but a natural stage in social development and a social stage in the development of nature. It follows that changing our nature changes our needs. If most needs are thus socially produced, so too are the resources to fill them. Coal, oil, quartz, then, are not fundamental, basic resources: they did not become resources until we developed the technologies to use them. So we should be less concerned about whether they are going to run out. Rather, we should ask whether we wish to fulfil needs for energy, transport and telecommunication through these particular resources or others. Alternatively, we may wish to change our view of what we need; consequently our view of what constitutes “resources”. The point is that the choice is ours: we are not the helpless playthings of natural or economic forces that Greens sometimes would have us believe.

We should appreciate that this dialectical perspective is profoundly holistic. It contains no dualism of society and nature, but a monism in which both are defined by each other and are constantly co-cvolving:

Nature is man’s inorganic body—nature, that is, in so far as it is not itself the human body. “Man lives on nature” means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous intercourse if he is not to die. That man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is part of nature . . . (Marx: Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts).

As Fritjof Capra, the Deep Ecology physicist who is not a friend of Marxism, has conceded, this is a deeply ecological view of the society-nature relationship.

Alienation from nature

The socialist conception of nature, then, is not as a mere stock of economic goods (capitalism), nor as a source of intrinsic worth or good (deep ecology), nor as an endangered ecosystem (tragedy of the commons survivalism). It conceives of nature as a social category: though there was an “objective” nature it has been reshaped and reinterpreted by one aspect of itself, human society.

Since alienation means separation from aspects of the self, then alienation from nature means a failure to realise that it is an aspect of the self, i.e. a social creation. This implies that the environmental crisis results from failing to see nature as our own creation and to understand that we can exercise conscious social control over this creation in order to make it a more desirable environment. Instead, we tend to view change towards unpleasant environments as substantially inevitable—a result of economic and technological forces (like the market and mechanisation) that are (we imagine) largely beyond our control. Reformist environmentalists and politicians try to wrestle with such forces, introducing taxes and legislation to soften their environmental impact. But they consider that a truly socialist society—an egalitarian, productive community of society and nature in which both are mutually benign—is quite beyond their reach.

For Deep Greens, “alienation” from nature means something quite different. It means asserting the naturalness of humans by “living in harmony with nature”, i.e. effectively conceding that natural laws (c.g. carrying capacity) have immediate determining power over us. Nature is seen as the source of worth (it “knows best”) and we endanger it unless we follow its rules. This view, says Steven Vogel, by seeing human activity as encroachment on or violation of nature

seems to be curiously guilty of just the sort of dualism it ascribes to the project of dominating nature. Somehow the activity of humans in transforming their environmcnt, alone of all other species, is ‘‘unnatural". ("Marx and Alienation from Nature", Social Theory and Practice, Vol 14, No3).

Vogel might well be thinking of Greenpeace's 1990 recruiting leaflet, which accuses “man” of multiplying “his numbers to plague proportions . . . and now stands like a brutish infant, gloating over this metcroric rise to ascendency".

Deep Ecologists would have us revere nature, preserving it to acknowledge our “one-ness” with it. But, as Murray Bookchin suggests, such worship mystifies nature, actually placing humanity far apart from it. It is a "Supernature with its shamans, priests, priestesses and fanciful deities". Reverent mystification really separates us from nature: we the “impotent and terrified mortal before a jealous and angry god", Gaia as an inhuman force we cannot change but to which we must adjust for our survival.

So Deep Ecology’s view of alienation from nature really rests on a dualistic conception of the human-nature relationship: a conception it is supposed to reject. The socialist dialectic, however, is not dualistic, and therefore, as Vogel says, “the question is not whether what we do ‘accords with nature’, it is whether we like what we have wrought”. And, as Reiner Grundmann says, in communism (socialism) humans will “dominate” nature but only in the sense of being in total control of their relationship with it. This in fact is the precondition for avoiding ecological crises.

David Pepper

A warmer world? (1992)

From the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Global warming, the prospect of a slow but consistent increase in average world temperatures, is one of the most frequently talked-of ecological problems. It has wide-ranging implications for climatic and other conditions during the next century, and is linked to capitalism's reckless exploitation of cheap energy sources.

It is now generally accepted that global warming is a real phenomenon, and that the 1980s were around one degree Celsius warmer than the 1880s, and contained the six warmest years of the century. It must be said, however, that some scientists cast doubt on the figures, on the grounds that earlier temperature records are unreliable, and that too many weather stations are sited near cities, which produce their own heat. Moreover, some places, including Britain, probably got a little cooler between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s. On the whole, though, it does seem likely that global warming is genuine, and certainly it will not do to ignore the warnings.

Predictions about the future course of world temperatures must be treated skeptically, if only because not too long ago there were widespread claims of global cooling, often by the same scientists who predict global warming! For instance, it was argued that there would be a cooling period for up to 100 years before the warming trend set in. Nowadays, though, even the most optimistic of those who accept global warming believe that temperatures will increase by 1.5 degrees by 2050 (and pessimistic views at least double this figure). These rises may seem very small, but the last Ice Age was only four to five degrees colder than now, and small changes in temperature can have very large consequences.

Greenhouse gases

The basic cause of global warming is the Greenhouse Effect, which means that a number of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere allow sunlight to enter but do not allow the heat reflected back from the ground to escape. So the heat is trapped in the atmosphere and the planet becomes warmer. Without the Greenhouse Effect, Earth would be about 35 degrees colder than it in fact is, and life would be impossible (as it is on the Moon, which has no atmosphere at all). The Greenhouse Effect itself, then, has played, and continues to play, an essential part in the development of life on Earth. However, over the last couple of centuries, the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased quite dramatically, leading to even more heat being trapped and the temperature rising to give what is now recognised as global warming.

The main greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide; it is estimated that since the late eighteenth century the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased by around 25 percent. This increase is partly due to the chopping-down of forests, but mostly to the burning of fossil fuels (i.e. coal, oil, gas and lignite, which release carbon dioxide when burned). These carbon dioxide emissions are responsible for about half of the Greenhouse Effect, but there are other important greenhouse gases too: methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). CFCs contribute to global warming quite separately from their effect in weakening the ozone layer, which is responsible for increased skin cancers and cataracts. Deforestation, the destruction of trees in such places as the Amazon rain forest, is relevant in that trees absorb carbon, and fewer trees means more carbon is around to form carbon dioxide and so add to the Greenhouse Effect.

Climatic changes

The consequences of warming are many and varied, and some may be here already: droughts in the US and north Africa may well be due to temperature increases, though it is impossible to isolate a single cause. Overall, however, a rise in temperature is likely to mean more rainfall, though many places will indeed get less rain. Some areas may benefit from the longer growing seasons caused by warming, but in others drought will lead to a drastic fall in crop yields. Water expands when it warms, and the sea level is likely to rise by at least 30 centimetres (maybe far more) by 2030, flooding many coastal areas such as the Nile delta. The rise in sea-level could also mean contamination of drinking water and the spread of waterborne diseases. Hurricanes are likely to become both stronger and more frequent. Forests in temperate zones may be partially destroyed, thus leading to more warming. The general alteration in the world’s climate will be too fast for many forms of vegetation to cope with, causing them to die out—crops can adapt to changes in rainfall and temperature, but not if the changes are too rapid. If people move in large numbers to cooler, wetter areas, there will be vast social changes to cope with. So global warming means not just sultrier summers but droughts, alterations in the pattern of agricultural production, loss of vegetation, rise in sea-level, increased pollution, and possibly big population movements. There have been some claims that global warming is a good thing, but the balance of evidence is very much against this notion.

The Greenhouse Effect is permanent, and cannot be done away with, but we can ask whether it is possible to stop or reverse the current global warming trend. Clearly the answer is to drastically reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, but this is easier said than done. Unlike CFCs, for which substitutes are readily available (even if not profitable to introduce), processes which produce most of the greenhouse gases cannot be simply abandoned or drastically modified. One claim is that carbon dioxide emissions must be cut by at least 50 percent in order to lessen the rate of warming to 0.1 degree per decade, which will be more manageable as far as natural ecosystems are concerned.

Capitalism tinkers

There are plenty of renewable energy sources which can be tapped, and which have minimal environmental impact. Wind turbines, tidal barrages, solar heating, the burning of biomass (various kinds of vegetation), and geothermal energy (using heat stored inside the Earth) all have great potential for supplying energy needs. Under capitalism, few resources are put into developing them, so they remain economically unviable. But there are many alternative sources of energy besides the burning of fossil fuels, and a socialist society, untrammelled by considerations of profit, could give priority to developing existing sources and discovering new ones.

Capitalism can do no more than tinker with the problem. The British government recently announced the aim of cutting back carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. But this is an astonishingly modest target, and makes little contribution to reducing emissions to an ecologically-acceptable level, even if it were to be achieved. Moreover, it leaves out the other greenhouse gases.

Of all the ways in which capitalism has interfered with the environment, the processes which lead to global warming are potentially the most disastrous. The very unpredictability of the consequences makes it vital to bring the situation under human control. But capitalism is the worst possible social system for the kind of rational, integrated action which is needed. Socialism, in contrast, will provide the kind of framework within which global warming, and other ecological problems can be tackled and solved by that marvellous resource—human ingenuity.

Paul Bennett

Park Bench Blues (1992)

 From the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

The rich get richer (1992)

From the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

One further aspect needs to be dealt with in this the last in our series of articles on the concentration of wealth ownership in Britain, and that is the question of what happens over time. Do the richer get richer?

From the point of view of economic theory, this is what you would expect to happen. Capitalism is based on the concentration into the hands of a tiny minority of the population of the ownership of the means of production. These function as capital for them in the sense of providing them with an unearned income. The source of this unearned income that accrues to capital is the labour of those who operate the means of production and actually produce wealth.

Ownership of capital, in other words, confers the right to appropriate a part of the new wealth that is being produced every day. Most of this new wealth—around 80 percent in fact—is used as means of consumption, by workers from their wages and salaries, by capitalists from their rent, interest and dividends, and by the state from the taxes it levies. The rest, under the spur of competition between capitalist firms to maximise profits, is accumulated as means of production, as further capital to yield an unearned income for their owners. This accumulation of capital out of profits produced by those who operate the means of production is what capitalism is all about. Capitalism is an economic system under which means of production are accumulated in the form of profit-yielding capital.

In concrete terms what this means is that the stock both of physical means of production (factories, machinery, plant, materials, etc) and of its monetary form, capital, grows over time. This is by no means a steady process—it is halted and even reversed from time to time, as in wars (when wealth is physically destroyed) and in slumps (when the same thing happens and when the value of the rest falls)—but the long term trend is upward. This must mean that in the long run those who own the means of production—the rich—get to own more means of production, more capital, i. e. get richer.

Changing estimates

So much for the theory, but is it confirmed by the facts? For all but the recent past the facts are not easy to come by. In Britain they nearly all come from the statistics about estates left in wills which the Inland Revenue has been collecting since death duties were introduced in 1894. Until 1960 it was left to individual academics to convert these into figures for the ownership of wealth by the living. They often used different methods, which meant that their estimates were not always comparable, but there was broad agreement that until the Second World War the top 1 percent owned about 60 percent and the top 10 percent about 90 percent of personal wealth, as a study quoted by the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth in its first report in 1975 showed (Table 1).

This slow long-term fall in the percentage shares of the top groups should not be equated with a fall in the amount of wealth they owned, but rather, as we shall see, with a slower rate of increase in their wealth than that of other groups.

From 1960 the Inland Revenue began producing its own yearly estimates. According to these, between 1960 and 1975 the share of the top 1 percent declined from 38 percent to 23 percent, that of the top 5 percent from 64 percent to 47 percent and that of the top 10 percent from 77 percent to 62 percent.

These figures were challenged by those who argued that they underestimated the concentration of wealth ownership. The critics correctly pointed out that the figures, being based on wealth declared to the Inland Revenue for death duty purposes, inevitably left out the wealth of the rich that was placed in discretionary trusts and other such devices or given to relatives before death precisely to avoid paying death duties. Defenders of capitalism, on the other hand, argued that the figures overestimated the degree of inequality as they did not take into account the wealth owned by the 60 percent or so of the population whose estates did not have to be declared to the Inland Revenue because they were too small. Individually the amounts were small but, in view of the millions of individuals involved, when added together made up a significant amount.

The Labour government that came into office in 1974 set up a Royal Commission, in the time honoured way, to bury its promises “to launch a fundamental attack on the principle of the hereditary transmission of great wealth, with its associated power and privilege” and “to bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families”. (Did the Labour Party once really talk like this?). This recommended that both types of non-included wealth should be taken into account, and the Inland Revenue now produces each year adjusted figures which do this. This new series of statistics began in 1976 and in fact shows that the distribution of wealth has changed very little since then (Table 2).

So the change between 1975, when the top 10 percent were said to own 62 percent, and 1976, when they were said to own 50 percent, resulted purely from a change in the way the statistics were calculated. Calculated on the old basis the figure for the top 10 percent in 1989 would still be between 60 and 70 percent.

Statistical illusion

But this is not the only purely statistical factor that is involved in the figures. What the figures show are the percentage shares, and not the actual amounts of wealth, of the various categories. These shares are shares in a cake (the stock of wealth) which, as we saw, expands in the long run. This means that, for one group to maintain its share, it must get the same share of the new wealth that is being accumulated. Thus if, as is generally assumed, before the First World War the top 10 percent owned 90 percent of accumulated wealth, then, for them to maintain their share, 90 percent of the newly accumulating wealth would also have to go to them. That they were in fact able to more or less maintain this share until the Second World War (see Table 1) is a testimony to the poverty of the rest of the population whose incomes were so low that they had to spend most of it on items of immediate consumption.

If during this period the other 90 percent had between them been able to accumulate more than 10 percent of the newly accumulated wealth, then the share of the top 10 percent would have fallen, despite the fact that they were continuing to accumulate wealth and even to accumulate more of it in real (as opposed to percentage) terms than the rest of the population.

It was precisely this situation that did occur from the 1950s on. Regular and more or less steadily-rising real wages and salaries meant that the non-rich began to acquire more wealth in the form of household goods, cars and houses. When included in the figures this had the effect of reducing the share of the rich, but this is the only effect it has had and it is purely statistical.

Independently of what has happened to the non-rich, the rich have gone on accumulating wealth and so getting richer. The November 1991 issue of the official government publication Economic Trends contained a table which showed how the total amount of “marketable wealth”, broken down by category, had changed each year from 1976 to 1988, all in 1988 money so as to be comparable. The general trend was upward, though there was a fall in 1981 corresponding to the last recession; the total increased from £752 billion in 1976 to £1317 billion in 1988. Of this extra £565 billion, 13 percent went to the top 1 percent, 39 percent to the top 5 percent and a massive 58 percent to the top 10 percent (which explains why their share increased over the period from 50 percent to 53 per cent), while a meagre 4 percent went to be shared amongst the 22 million in the bottom 50 percent.

What is even more interesting than how the total amount was divided amongst the categories is how the average amounts of wealth held by each person in the categories changed (Table 3). As can be seen, despite a smaller percentage increase than the rest of the top 50 percent, the average holding of those in the top 1 percent increased by some £132,000, more than that of those in any of the other groups. So the gap between the amount of wealth held by the individual members of top 1 percent and that held by the rest of the population increased. There is no reason to suppose that these years were exceptional in this respect, except perhaps that in some earlier years the gap between the average holding of the top 1 percent and that of the top 5 percent may have narrowed.

So the conclusion can only be that the so-called decline of the rich this century is a statistical illusion. Their share has only fallen, and then only after the Second World War, because the non-rich came to acquire more wealth. But this acquisition of wealth by the non-rich made no difference whatsoever to the position of the rich. They continued to get richer in the sense of coming to own more wealth in real terms (the only meaningful sense of the word “richer”). But not only this their average holding of wealth increased more in real terms than that of the non-rich. Defenders of capitalism who say that the rich have not got richer are conveying misinformation.

Adam Buick

Correction: the first column of Table 2 in last month’s article should have read, as was clear from the context. Top 1%, Top 2%, Top 5%, etc and not Top 1%, 1-2%, 3-5%, etc.

Uranium mining exposed (1992)

Book Review from the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Past Exposure. By Greg Dropkin and David Clark. Namibia Support Committee in association with People Against Rio Tinto Zinc, 37-39 Great Guildford St, London SE1 OES. £8.90 (post paid).

Inspired and encouraged by the Mineworkers’ Union of Namibia, Past Exposure is a highly technical yet eminently accessible expose of the deadly health and environmental hazards associated with the world’s largest opencast uranium mine, Rossing Uranium in Namibia which is largely owned by Rio Tinto Zinc.

Rossing’s manager of corporate affairs has dismissed the book as “a collection of distortions and half-truths cunningly woven together into a plausible text”. But the authors, Greg Dropkin and David Clark, use highly confidential internal company documents, personal testimonies made by mineworkers, and up-to-date environmental and medical research into the effects of uranium mining, to show that it is in fact Rossing Uranium which has been economical with the truth over a period of many years.

Dropkin and Clark demonstrate that, despite the company’s claims to operate within recognised international standards of health and safety, workers have been continually exposed to excessively high levels of silica dust and of uranium dust and radiation which cause, amongst other things, diseases of the chest and lungs, kidney failure, and cancer and hinder the mental and physical development of unborn babies.

In the case of radioactive radiation the authors show that there is no such thing as a safe level of exposure and that, even if there was, the company has not, despite its claims to the contrary, been properly measuring and monitoring the levels of radiation doses received by workers. The workers most exposed to silica dust and other health hazards tend to be black. The specialist in charge of monitoring chest complaints ascribes these to smoking and “ethnic" differences!

The detailed discussion of water pollution caused by uranium mining completely demolishes any company statement that it has not polluted any groundwater systems or the Khan river. Radioactive waste from uranium mills is stored in tailings dams. It leaks into the surrounding air and water and develops a serious long-term environmental problem. It seeps into the soil and enters food chains as well as poisoning the water. Rossing’s water management data is a well-kept secret but Dropkin and Clark estimate that

780 million gallons of tailings liquid seeped out in a twelve-month period . . . the contamination may be anywhere from the ground-water system to the Khan and/or Swakop rivers reaching the sea at Swakopmund.

Past Exposure has two main objectives. Its first is to empower the workers at Rossing Uranium in their efforts to negotiate a health and safety agreement with RTZ in line with agreements at other uranium mines, mostly notably Rio Algom, RTZ’s Canadian uranium mine. At this mine, as the authors point out in some detail, far superior though by no means perfect standards of health and safety prevail as a result of sustained and informed pressure put on the mining company by the Canadian mineworkers.

The publication of the book has already caused a stir in Namibia. Extracts were published in The Namibian newspaper which has as a result faced threats of legal action from the mining company. Since the publication of the book the Namibian government has requested the International Atomic Energy Agency in conjunction with the World Health Organisation to investigate issues of health, radiation exposure and waste disposal at the mine.

The book’s second main objective is to raise awareness about the hazards of the nuclear industry of which uranium mining is a primary feature. In the present economic recession miners are not only fighting for better health and safety agreements but also for their jobs in the face of savage redundancies. Like many workers around the world they are caught in that cruel contradiction of having to fight for a job that is useless or dangerous producing a commodity that is useless or dangerous, or face the prospect of unemployment.

This is a contradiction which the authors, as long-standing opponents of the nuclear power industry, acknowledge; and while they themselves would wish to see the end of the nuclear industry they point out that it is “most important that the workers employed at Rossing and elsewhere in the nuclear industry' should be engaged in a real debate about its future”.

It is difficult to see how the Namibia Support Committee who co-publishcd this book can square their anti-nuclear position and their obviously sincere support for the mineworkers of Namibia with their long history of support for SWAPO, the government of the Namibian state which gained its independence in 1990.

SWAPO does not appear to be interested in engaging in any serious debate over the future of the Namibian workers without a uranium mine. Nor would it be in its interests to do so. The nuclear industry is highly profitable and controlled on a global scale by a few multinational conglomerates. The Namibian economy is heavily dependent on uranium mining. If any Namibian government is to successfully ensure its position then it does so by working closely with those multinationals who control uranium mining.

As early as 1975 SWAPO was in negotiation with RTZ when they asked the company to issue a statement recognising SWAPO as the prospective Namibian government. In 1985, despite calling on all multinational companies to quit Namibia forthwith because they “fuel Pretoria’s war machine”, SWAPO made the following statement:

When Namibia is free we will certainly reach an agreement with [the multinationals] which will be beneficial to all of us. (Quoted in Plunder by R. Moody).

Beneficial to all but the workers in the Uranium mines and ordinary people around the world who in growing numbers watch with dismay as the world’s resources are plundered to fill the pockets of'a few leaving a trail of human and environmental devastation, the effects of which will be felt for generations to come.

Kerima Mohideen

"The company keeps saying that the uranium we work with is harmless but I never had a skin ailment until I started working in this area. Because they have never taken interest I conclude that Rossing are concerned about profits and not the health of workers. We desperately need outside expertise to tell us about the short-term and long-term effects of working with uranium. For this we need international help, especially from the international trade union movement'’.

—statement made by worker at Rossing Uranium mine in Namibia.

Notes from an ex—hippie (1992)

A Short Story from the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the 1960s, I became what was then known as a “hippie”. I grew my hair long, and wore some rather odd, shabby clothes like old, tattered blue jeans with flared bellbottoms and fringes, brightly-striped tee-shirts, Indian love-beads, Afghan coats and so forth. I went travelling around England, drifting from town to town, from squat to squat, and from commune to commune. In 1966 I smoked my first joint of cannabis, outside a pub in the West End of London. I met many beatniks and hippies; they told me things I d never known before about society, the law, politics, the police.

We did have some good times, we had plenty of harmless fun; we didn’t hurt other people. The "Beat Generation”, as it was called, were all for Peace, Love and Brotherhood—but things didn't turn out the way we planned.

Our movement soon came under the scrutiny of the police; politicians of the day such as Harold Wilson and his Home Secretary regarded us with profound hostility and contempt, but then, the feeling was mutual!

Among the things I learned from the hippies was that human beings are capable of living together peacefully and harmoniously on a basis of co-operation—if there is no impediment such as property or class division in the community to cause deep contradiction and strife. The hippies also taught me that all politics and governments are bad, they cannot find real solutions to society’s problems and only pretend that they can. That was why I didn't vote at all for many years, until I learned about Socialism—the only thing worth voting for.

I once encountered a certain police officer in London who showed a little more sympathy for us than most. He wasn’t too bad. When he asked me where I was going late one night in Trafalgar Square, I said, “I’m just going to sit down for a while. I'm tired.” We had a bit of a chat for a few minutes. I asked him, “What made you decide to be a copper, then?”

He said immediately, "Because I wanted to do something good for society—to protect honest people against criminals.”

I said, ’’But couldn’t you do something better than put people away in nick? That doesn’t solve or prevent crime; and it doesn’t protect anyone either, because there’s always more crime going on the whole time. D’you think there’s an alternative?”

The young copper scratched his chin and said, “Not really . . . What else can we do?”

I said, “Well, for one thing, you only get crime against property if society has property as an institution in the first place: if there were no such thing as minority class ownership there’d be no crime either, would there?”

He shook his head. “But there’s always been murder and violence; you can’t stop that—it’ll go on anyway, and if there weren’t any laws, it'd be even worse.”

“It doesn’t follow,” I replied patiently. “The historical records show that in past ages, when there were fewer restrictions and less property law, serious violence in society was much less a problem than it is now. And the primitive tribal societies arc known to be far more peaceful than our most advanced ones. They have virtually no crime at all; they rarely kill one another. Haven’t you seen David Attenborough’s documentaries on TV?”

“Well ... I grant you that . . . But—”

“But what?”

He pulled himself up to his full height, and turned away. “Mind how you go," he said over his shoulder as he strode off across the square.

I never saw him again.

D. E. F.

Letters: Bloodsports (1992)

Letters to the Editors from the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bloodsports

Dear Editors,

I was amused by your article (April Socialist Standard) on Alan Clark who is standing down as an MP. All of what you said was true and accurate but Clark has one redeeming feature. He is passionately opposed to blood sports and was one of the 27 Tory MPs who voted in favour of Kevin Macnamara's anti-hunting bill.

The real humbugs in Westminster are Kinnock, Ashdown, Steel, Major. Heseltine et al. At least with Clark and Ridley you knew exactly what they stood for.

Morris Kelly 

Stockport

Reply:

Alan Clark may be against killing animals for sport but is all in favour of killing humans for profit, since he was Minister of State at the Ministry of Defence at the time of the Gulf War and so bears a direct personal responsibility for organising the killings that war involved.

Editors.

Some Answers

Dear Friends,

I read with interest your articles in the Socialist Standard. I am relieved to see that Alan Clark is retiring (about time). From reading Anti-Nazi League literature I have learnt about his activities. How can a blatant racist be allowed to represent people in parliament, when socialists are condemned?

I liked the article “Accepters Anonymous”. The questions you raised set me thinking that no political party in Britain will benefit the majority of the people. In the end, whatever the party they will pamper to the rich’s needs.

Answer to Question 1: They make false promises to keep people sweet when they are going to do exactly what they want anyway.

Answer to Question 2: The building contractors can only think of profit and how much money they are earning. They would rather earn nothing for doing nothing than offer “free” houses to the homeless.

Answer to Question 3: Again this boils down to profit. Governments are greedy for money and would rather let food go to waste than offer it to Third World countries.

The governments could stop world poverty instead of asking people who probably can’t afford it to give money. Why these people give money is because they are made to feel guilty when really it is the governments who are guilty and our own “dear” royal family!

Louise Hampton 

Wolverhampton

Between the Lines: Fear on the Dole (1992)

The Between the Lines column from the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fear on the Dole

Hysteria is ever-present on The Oprah Winfrey Show. They scream about child abuse and rock stars and women who had babies without realising they were pregnant. They scream, they clap, they weep, they bawl, they sigh. Oprah Winfrey is America's therapist; her show is a condensed session of yelled collective introspection. If anyone wants to know what America is like they would do well to watch The Oprah Winfrey Show.

On 6 May (Channel Four, 5 pm) the topic was unemployment. The format was the usual mix of victims and experts—the victims weepy and public about their intimate miseries: the experts victims of their own political ignorance. The victims gave eloquent testimony to the anger and sadness of being a human statistic, cast upon the alter of profit as sacrifices of the recession. One spoke of how she would sit at home crying uncontrollably. Another spoke of his anger at feeling impotent in the face of the "The Economy". An audience member, displaying the statutory Winfreyesque flood of tears, spoke of his rage at being told that he was not wanted as a skilled worker and how unemployment had strained his marriage and forced him to seek the aid of a psychiatrist.

Oprah's experts were worse than useless. They were witch doctors, offering remedies for a disease which they did not begin to understand. A loud financial columnist spoke how the unemployed must accept in their own minds that the worst that will happen to them is a cut in their standard of living. Her message was to "be realistic" and plan for poverty. What insulting crap! Poverty of the worst kind can mean your kids dying because you can’t afford medical attention for them; it means having to eat bad junk food; it means having your home taken away; it means depression and humiliation and, sometimes, suicide. The other expert, an editor of a magazine called Psychology Today, rambled on about the need not to feel like a failure if you lose your job. But as a wage or salary slave you are a failure if you cannot sell your labour power for a wage or salary. He is right to tell the system's victims not to blame themselves. but self-respect doesn't pay the rent.

Oprah herself—who is a millionairess owner of a TV company—urged the unemployed to see the problem of losing their livelihoods as an opportunity. Her pompously stated "spiritual" philosophy is that every new problem creates a chance to move on to new life chances. The American wet dream is alive and well, as is the nightmare of despair which keeps awake millions of American workers who do not know where the money will come from to pay the bills which are the weights around our necks under capitalism. The show treated unemployment as if it was a natural catastrophe, like an earthquake or a plague. Nobody said that it was an inevitable effect of a removable cause: The Profit System. Nobody said that the way out of the rut is for workers to organise consciously and democratically to create a world where all may work and none may work for an employer. Neither the cause of the malady nor its cure were even touched upon. And they wept and they trembled and they raged and they bore witness. All to no effect.

Christ's College, USA

Staying in The Land of the Unfree (USA Ltd). Everyman ( BBC1, 3 May. 10.25 pm) had a worthwhile documentary about religious fundamentalism in America. Featured was the bizarre Bob Jones University where male and female students are forbidden to touch each other, students from different "races" are segregated, women are given classes in how to submit to their husbands and every lecturer has a Bible in his hand.

The so-called university is a theological nut-house created for people who want to acquire faith in place of knowledge. The extremities of the Bob Jones style of indoctrination is but a magnified version of what has gone on in Sunday schools and compulsory Religious Education lessons in schools for generations. The fundamentalists are simply taking to its illogical conclusion what is inherent in all religious dogma.

There was a frightening degree of organisation amongst these dangerous cranks: they run holiday camps at which kids are driven mad by preachers and they force handicapped people, many of whom are unable to walk away from them, to endure their relentless nonsense. A girl who received awful burns in an accident was told that this was god's will and that if he had meant her to have hands (which were burnt away in the accident) he would have let her keep them. The girl's father, an evangelist ranter, screamed at his congregants that they were all sinners: it is as natural for humans to sin as for dogs to bark— our only course is to repent. The audience screamed out to god, repenting for crimes that they probably lacked the imagination to commit.

With Bob Jones running a university and Oprah Winfrey as their therapist it is little wonder that the frustration which ignites murderous street riots is the order of the day in capitalism's showpiece nation.

Steve Coleman

SPGB Meetings and Debates (1992)

Party News from the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who needs money? (1992)

Book Review from the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money & Survival. By Melvin Chapman. Third Millenium Press. £5.85.

The basic proposition of this book is that money is the organising force in society but that it is inefficient, wasteful and inhumane and should be dispensed with before nuclear war or ecological disaster overwhelm human beings.

Many of the topics Melvin Chapman deals with, such as education, crime, human nature, production for need, and the wastefulness of the financial system are familiar to socialists. What they will find lacking, however, is any acknowledgement of the historical development of capitalism which gave rise to the universal power of money with which he is so concerned; any examination of the class structure of modern society which has been responsible for the unsatisfying and mainly unhappy lives of most of the population—the working class.

A disproportionate amount of space (twenty-two pages) early in the book is devoted to an examination of the social losses resulting from the running down of the railway system in Britain. Many readers (including this one) will be unable to judge whether his figures for tonnages of freight carried and passenger miles travelled help to justify his conclusions that the British transport system has been less efficient overall as a result. And the impact of the chapter is further weakened by his use of the term “money” to cover almost every aspect of capitalist economics. What he is trying to show, presumably, is that profitability is not the same thing as efficiency and often works against it, in spite of the loud claims made by politicians and economists. But he should have said so.

A similar obscurity or reticence blunts many of the other points made in the book. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of acute perception here of the workings of modern society and the way in which life would change when money was no longer regulating production, consumption and behaviour.

In not giving any attention to the fact that society's means of production and distribution are owned and controlled by a small section of the population, Melvin Chapman helps to make his arguments for a moneyless society seem unrealistic, and that is a pity. When he deals with the question of property he considers little other than personal property and sees no reason why the owners of fortunes should not be allowed to keep them. He does not seem to realise that the poverty and the drudgery of the working class is caused by the profits, rents and interest extracted by these fortunes from unpaid labour. Nowhere, in other words, does he consider the nature of capital.

Without this class dimension, Melvin Chapman has no suggestion of a social force to bring about his moneyless society other than the power of a "good idea”. Subscribing, if only tacitly, to the myth that ours is a united society with common interests, he lays the responsibility for the piecemeal removal of money upon "The Government”, without questioning how it is that governments have never yet made the economy operate in the interests of the whole population.

Money & Survival is interesting to socialists in that it makes a wide-ranging indictment of capitalist society without, apparently, owing anything to the Marxian tradition. But it demonstrates, yet again, how crucial was the contribution of Marx and Engels in identifying and analysing the class nature of capital.

Ron Cook

Action Replay: Bastia Disaster (1992)

From the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

“I have done it again. 

One year in every ten 

I manage it.” (Sylvia Plath).

Sadly, one year in ten is not frequent enough for the exploiters of the public’s taste for football to draw blood in their pursuit of profit. Three years, almost to the month, after Hillsborough we have what appears to be an action replay. Once again a cup semi-final; once again avoidable casualties; once again preposterous attempts at victim-blaming; once again inadequate medical provision.

Let us make no bones about it—the Furiani stadium bloodbath in Bastia was caused by the profit motive proving too strong for the authorities to adequately consider safety aspects which most of us would regard as more important. Like the ram-raider who causes damage ten times worth what he steals, they couldn’t resist the temptation to sell 10,000 more tickets even though they must have known there was a grave risk in erecting a temporary stand for such a game.

That they knew is (at least circumstantially) evidenced by the fact that warnings were given to the crowd not to stamp in unison in that stand. The outrageous suggestion that you can expect a cup-tie crowd to behave like a chamber concert audience insults the intelligence of all but the dourest apologists for unbridled capitalism.

The parallels with Hillsborough continued when we saw the players taking down the perimeter fencing which, if there had been a quite understandable panic in the crowd, would have prevented their escape to safety.

The emergency services, to their credit, were fairly quickly on the scene at Furiani but hospital facilities for the dying and injured were far from close to hand. The nearest hospital was five kilometres away in the mountains and utterly incapable of coping with the scale of the disaster.

Again, as at Hillsborough, the dignity of the plain people of Bastia made a sharp contrast with the posturing of those in charge. The same newspaper which shows a crippled victim of the disaster attending the funeral of one of the dead reports that efforts were being made to stage a makeshift cup-final between Monaco and Marseille. The chief consideration in the timing of this event appeared to be when it was convenient for Mitterrand to grace the proceedings with his presence.

Have we learned nothing? Socialists would argue that we should have learnt never to trust a capitalist who is in a position to make a few bob. Have the capitalists learned nothing? We would argue that the rules of capitalism don’t permit them to learn any more than they need to know to make a profit.

John Usher

50 Years Ago: Japanese Background (1992)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Japan’s chief obstacle to the establishment of the “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere" is the presence in the Far East of the Great Western Powers:—

  "Altogether the U.S. alone has invested 800 million dollars in the whole Orient."

Japanese imperialism challenges the hitherto undisputed right of the great Western powers to exploit the vast resources and peoples of the Far East. This right Japan claims for herself, hence, her military expenditure for 1940/1, added to most of the new capital issues which went to finance war industries, amounted to no more or less than 37 per cent. of the total national income.

The Pacific rivalries were not permitted to obstruct legitimate business, thus to quote Deva: “It is said that during the last two years Japan bought 85 per cent. of her war material from Britain, United States and the Netherlands East Indies." Business, after all, is business, and appeasement is an important political policy.

[From a review of "Japan's Kampf' by Jaya Deva, Socialist Standard, June 1942.]

Obituary: George East (1992)

Obituary from the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

George East, who died in March at the age of 79, received his introduction to socialist knowledge when he became a temporary agricultural worker at the beginning of World War Two. Associated with the People Pledge Union for some time before the war, he had been registered as a CO on condition that he worked on the land. In the rural areas of Barnet, he had the good fortune to find himself working alongside a number of Party members. Meal times and inclement weather provided opportunities for discussion, and as a result he became a member of the Party in 1942. He was among those who formed the Edgware branch, which for a number of years held very successful indoor and outdoor meetings. George acted as secretary and treasurer at various times during the life of the branch. His early years as a sign-writer made him a useful and valued member of the Party subcommittee advising on design and lay-out for posters and pamphlets. An amiable comrade, he will be remembered with affection by all who knew him. Our condolences go to his family and friends.

A. P.

Saving the Earth (1992)

Editorial from the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Will capitalism bring the world to the brink of ecological disaster? It is certainly having a good try. Its pursuit of profits and its competitive pressures to keep costs down have led to all sorts of inappropriate methods and materials being used in production.

Two of these in particular are threatening the stability of the biosphere as the environment that sustains life on Earth. One is the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which are known to have caused holes in the ozone layer. The other is the burning of fossil fuels which releases abnormal amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and which could cause a global over-warming.

The ozone layer is vital to life on Earth since it protects the life-forms that have evolved here from ultra-violet rays from the Sun. So the appearance of holes in the ozone layer is a serious matter. It is in the vital interests of us all that everything be done to stop them growing and then to close them. In concrete terms, this means immediately stopping the production of all CFCs.

A rise in the world's average temperature would have disastrous consequences on the present patterns of human life. The sea level would rise, flooding areas which now supply much of the world's food would no longer be able to do so. Once again, what must be done is known. Steps must be taken to reduce current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. First, by dramatically cutting back on the burning of fossil fuels in power stations and in cars, trains, ships and planes. Second, by stopping further deforestation as trees absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide.

So will capitalism step back from the brink? Will it be able to prevent its drive for profit from destroying the environment? At least the two problems are recognised. At least a world conference has been called. But recognising a problem and calling a conference is one thing; agreeing on and implementing effective measures to remedy the situation is another.

The Conference that is taking place in Brazil this month has been hyped by the media as "the Earth Summit" but is nothing of the sort. It is merely a conference of the leaders of the various capitalist states into which the world is artificially divided. All those present are supporters—indeed administrators—of the capitalist system which caused the problems in the first place. Each of them is there to defend their own particular sectional, national capitalist interests. In these circumstances whatever is decided will be totally inadequate.

Look at the record so far. In 1987 twenty-three industrialized countries met in Montreal and agreed to phase out the production of CFCs by 1999. The United States was the keenest—because it had a virtual monopoly on the production of substitutes. The other countries wanted time to catch up with this technology. Hence the delay to 1999. But many countries, particularly in the co-called Third World, refused to sign, on the grounds that they couldn't afford the substitutes (estimated to be at least three times more expensive). Some of these states can be expected to eventually begin production of CFCs themselves.

It's the same story with the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Here it is those countries with above average dependence on coal- and oil- fired power stations who, led by the United States, have been dragging their feet. Paying for filters or building other types of power stations would raise their industrial costs and put them at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their competitors on world markets. So any treaty on global warming that might emerge from Brazil will be an inadequate compromise between rival capitalist states full of loopholes and get-out clauses to protect vested interests.

Before anything constructive can be done, capitalism must go and, with it, the artificial division of the world into separate, competing states. The Earth, and all its natural and industrial resources, must become the common heritage of all humanity. A democratic structure for making decisions at world as well as at local levels must come into being. 

When such a united world has been established (or is about to be established) a real Earth Conference can be called to decide how to repair the damage capitalism has done to the biosphere. Then what scientists already know should be done can be done, and humanity can begin to organise its relationship with the rest of nature in a genuinely sustainable way.

Green Party embraces the market (1992)

From the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the Green Party finally gave into media pressure and decided to have leaders one of the two they appointed was Dr Richard Lawson. He stood as their candidate in the general election in Weston-Super-Mare where he got 1262 votes.

Last year he wrote an article in the magazine Greening the Planet entitled "Notes towards a Green Theory of Money" in which he tried to argue that "given the right political guidance, money, although a tyrannical master can be a useful servant in the cause of greening the planet". This is to ignore the role that money plays within the capitalist economic system where everything is valued in money terms and where the aim of producing things is to make more money.

Capitalism is based on the ownership of productive resources by a tiny minority of the population. Under it goods and services are produced, not directly to meet human needs but for sale on a market with a view to profit. This unleashes economic forces—"market forces", "the power of money", as they have been called—which come to confront those who take economic decisions as if they were coercive laws, forcing them to to give priority to profit-making both over satisfying needs and over achieving a sustainable relationship with the rest of nature, as well as to accumulate most of these profits as more and more capital. The capital accumulation is of course the "blind economic growth" that Greens see as overloading nature's ability to adjust to human productive activity.

Socialists draw the conclusion that if the environment is to be safeguarded then capitalism must go, to be replaced by a system where productive resources are owned in common under the democratic control of all the people. This must mean the complete disappearance of the market and money. Production for sale and profit gives way to production for use and need. Buying and selling are replaced by giving and taking; people give to society directly in the form of work and take from society directly in the form of useful goods and services to satisfy their needs.

This is not how Dr Lawson see things. In his article the joint leader of the Green Party outlined what he called "a green philosophy of the market" which teaches that the market and money can be controlled by the government and made to function in accordance with economic principles:

We seek not a free market, nor a social market (whatever that may be), and certainly not a command economy but a guided market, the guidance coming from rational consideration of the interaction of economics and ecology, and realised through creative taxation and regulation. Creative taxation weighs heavily on elements that are econegative and gives tax breaks to elements that are ecopositive.

Given the amply recorded failure of all other attempts to use taxes to change the way the market system works—notably the Labour Party's long since abandoned attempt to redistribute income and wealth in favour of the workers—this illustrates an incredible poverty of thought. But it does confirm what we have always said about the Green Party: its policy is the reformist, and ultimately futile, one of trying to work within the present system to "green the planet". It won't work and it can't work.

The only way to green the planet is to first make it the common heritage of all of us. Then we will be freed from the tyranny of market forces and money and in a position to consciously regulate our relationship with the rest of nature in an ecologically acceptable way.

Adam Buick

LA Law or class war? (1992)

From the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Riots and anger on the streets of LA. What ignited the flame? The frustration of poverty. In the USA today one in five families live below the official poverty line; the majority of these are non-white. The American Constitution claims that all men are born equal but in 1992 black workers stand more chance of being in prison than in college. In Washington DC 42 per cent of blacks between the ages 18 and 35 are either in prison or on parole. In Harlem, New York City, the life expectancy of a black male is lower than in Third World Bangladesh.

The riots have added fuel to various spurious theories about violence in society. White socio-biologists, wedded to outdated notions of human nature as determinants of anti-social behaviour, have argued that rioters are over-endowed with violent genes. For example, Mark and Ervin Violence and the Brain published with the support of the US Law Enforcement Assisance Agency argue that:

The kind of violent behaviour related to brain malfunction may have its origins in the environment, but once the brain structure has been permanently affected the violent behaviour can no longer be modified by manipulating psychological or social influences.

 Perhaps the authors of this crass rationalisation can explain why such violent brain cells seem to evolve amongst poor unemployed hopeless wage slaves and not amongst the rich people, both black and white, in Beverly Hills, Greenwich Village or Knightsbridge.

The long-held racist ideology of the USA is a reflexion of the fact that chattel slavery ended in the 1860s but that wage slavery persists in the 1990s. The brutality of the plantation owner has given way to the profit-grabbing claim to inherent superiority by the capitalist owners and controllers of the means of wealth production and distribution. Capitalism does not have inequality and divisiveness as an accidental and eradicable feature. Inequality and division are endemic to all class societies.

Some black political activists have seen the division in American society in terms of race or skin colour rather than class and in doing so they are avoiding the root cause. As early as 1865 a black convention in Charleston formulated an "Address to the White Inhabitants of the State of South Carolina" which called for an elusive equality amongst all men:

We simply ask that we shall be recognised as men; that there be no obstruction placed in our way; that the same laws which govern white men shall govern black men; that we have the right of trial by jury of our peers; that schools be established for the education of coloured children as well as white; and that the advantages of both colours shall, in this respect, be equal; that no impediment be put in the way of our acquiring homesteads for ourselves and our people; that, in short, we shall be dealt with as others are—in equity and justice.

This statement assumes that there is one human race rather than that society is divided into antagonistic interests on the basis of property possession. In 1965 the Watts riots in Los Angeles shattered the self-deception of American ideologists who thought that they lived in a land of equality where the wretchedly impoverished would never embarrass them by resisting publicly. Vincent Harding describes the Watts riots:

For five days fighting went on; blacks attacked police, firemen, white stores—but no white civilians. The flames from dozens of fires lighted the nighttime sky; bullets, tear gas shells, screaming sirens, shouting of men and women poured out a cascade of sounds closely approximating those of battlefields and it was. When police and 13,000 national guardsmen finally quelled the uprising 34 persons were dead, more than 1000 wounded and nearly $40 million of property had been destroyed.  (The Other American Revolution).

The then President, Lyndon B. Johnson, responded to the display of working class indignation by making pious reformist noises about The Great Society which would be created out of so-called equal rights legislation. The exhibition of police and court racism in LA is proof that the Great Society was a fiction utterly unrealisable within a system which creates economic waste and an environment unfit for human habitation.

The Bush government will not learn from the LA riots nor can it learn except how to contain its subjects more successfully. The rioters will have gained little from the riots but for some looted cheap goods and a sense of being noticed. And the results of the riots are more working class wounds; the enmity of wage slaves against wage slaves, many left dead. Workers will get nowhere fighting each other and calling for capitalist justice. What we must do is unite anger with understanding and turn these upon the real enemy: those who rob us of the fruits of our labour.

Steve Coleman