Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

In almost all regions of the world, the top 1% of the population is richer than the combined 90%. Wealth inequality increases further with each passing day, mostly due to the lack of political will to stop it.

[Popular Resistance]

In China, inequality remains high… The top 10% of earners capture about 43% of national income, while the bottom 50% receive just 14%. Wealth disparities are particularly large, with the richest 10% holding nearly 68% of total wealth and the top 1% about 30%. 

[World Inequality Report]

Nearly half of Kenyans live in extreme poverty, i.e., on less than KES 130 [£0.75] per day. Yet a few have amassed enormous wealth. The richest 125 Kenyans have more wealth than more than three-quarters of Kenyans, about 43 million people. 

[Oxfam]

We celebrate the ‘recovery’ of fish populations that are stabilized at 5% or 10% of their historical population, mistaking the management of ruins for conservation. To understand the magnitude of what has been stolen, we must look back before the industrial age. In the 17th century, the ocean was a different planet. When Christopher Columbus sailed through the Caribbean in the late 15th century, he described the seas near Cuba as being ‘thick with turtles’, so numerous that it seemed his ships would run aground on them… in numbers estimated between 33 and 39 million adults in the Caribbean alone. They were a biological dominance that defined the seascape. Today, those populations are a shadow of the ‘mother sea’ that once existed. This report is an autopsy of the decline. It is an investigation into the specific species that the fishing industry has sacrificed on the altar of commerce. 

[Sea Piracy]

As both the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) monitor and Reuters noted, Poland is among multiple state parties in the process of ditching the Mine Ban Treaty. Citing the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the news agency reported that “antipersonnel mine production could begin once the treaty’s six month withdrawal period is completed on February 20, 2026”. 

[Common Dreams]

Greenpeace is a strong example, having emerged from ecological protest movements in the 1970s and 1980s, but having eased into largely cooperating with capitalist corporations and governments over time and giving legitimacy to their propaganda about individual lifestyle choices being the way to solve climate change.

[Counterfire]

The Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid, which has previously slammed vaccine skeptic Kennedy as a ‘paranoid kook’ whose ‘tinfoil hat is blocking out all sense’, tore into the Trump Cabinet member for his war on what it called ‘one of the biggest public health wins of the last century: the widespread use of disease-eradicating vaccines’. 

[HuffPost]

Therefore, we do not offer any support to wars waged by any capitalist state or any faction aimed at creating or strengthening a new state, whether aggressor or aggressed, whether or not they describe themselves as ‘socialist’ or ‘democratic’. 

[Internationalist Perspective]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Escape to Happiness (or drama on the Trans-Siberian Railway) (1986)

A Short Story from the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

This summer I took a party of tourists to Lake Baikol and Irkutsk, the capital of Siberia. Any professional "courier'' will tell you that every package tour has its "freaks", and this one had two — both young women with college degrees in — "surprise, surprise" — sociology. One, who was quite small and looked like death warmed up. said "she was not getting enough fibre". The other, larger, with a huge shock of fair curly hair, shuffled around in a voluminous covering like a pair of old curtains — and large, soft, fluffy boots. She could have just escaped from the local pantomime, playing Widow Twanky. They were both engaged in local community projects. One was forming a group in Hounslow to help people "analyse their dreams

They were (or had been) "into" everything. of course, running the gamut of the so-called "Left Wing": ex-Socialist Workers Party; CND; Battered Wives; Women's Liberation; Greenham Common — and now "Animal Rights". The little one had been prosecuted for disrupting a fur auction, but did not believe in "violent action" (her boyfriend was doing six months for it) and now the very latest — they were "vegans'; not just vegetarians — but vegans. No meat, fish, eggs, butter. milk, bread or cakes baked with animal fat. etc. etc.

The manager on the dining car of the train (Trans-Siberian Railway) just could not grasp it. "Then what the hell do they eat?", he asked plaintively. The usual Russian attitude to vegetarians is very practical. They just take a knife and scrape the meat off the plate. Not with vegans they don't! They actually sent back an excellent Borsht (beetroot soup) because one suspected a sliver of meat in it — which is just not possible.

Nevertheless, all went well until we reached Ormsk. Here a handsome, almost beautiful Russian lady boarded our train with an enormous quantity (even for Russians) of luggage, including possibly a washing machine, and certainly a child's pram, and three very good-looking children. A boy of ten. a girl of five and a baby of a few months.

There are four berths to a compartment (second-class), obviously two up. two down. The newcomer with a small baby, two other children, and terrifying luggage was quite flustered, almost hysterical with anxiety. With that frank openness so typical of Russians, especially when travelling, she naturally assumed that she would be granted the bottom berths, whatever the tickets said, on account of the children, especially the tiny one.

Our vegans had omitted to master the Russian language prior to their trip, so that no dialogue or explanations were possible. She just plonked herself, her kids, the cradle, and her bags on the bottom berths, pointing heavenwards to indicate her proposal that our two "liberators" move up to oblige.

But no! Not a bit of it! Why should we move? They could not move their luggage. "These are our seats." "Besides", said Widow Twanky, "I've got a bad back"! A "bad back"? How many millions of working days are skived every year with "bad backs"? The one undiagnosable. indefinable gimmick known to all for a couple of days off.

By this time our Russian visitor found everything just too much — and with a voluble stream of rich Russian invective, rudely shoved poor little fibre-less No. 1 violently out into the corridor. Screams, tears, kids sobbing, everyone shouting, with calls for the unfortunate "courier" to "do something'. Calmly surveying the scene I announced portentously: "It's dinner time! Come along! We'll sort all this out later!!" Once our freaks left the compartment, their chance of retaining the bottom bunks was about as likely as snow in the Sahara.

Safely shepherded half-way up the quarter-mile-long train to the Diner, I was able to divert attention and calm hysteria by guaranteeing that the "Schee" (cabbage soup) was utterly meatless. So it was; the meat had been given to somebody else. "Now really". I started persuasively, "You are animal lovers. so am I! So are we all! But little children are animals too! Don't you think? Have they no rights? Is their mother wrong to want to care for them?" No dice. I was talking to a brick wall. "Yes. but we paid for our ticket! They are our seats! She should not be allowed to travel with all that luggage with children. Why should we have to move?" Argument was obviously futile.

But a solution was to hand. Our handsome newcomer had told me, through her tears, that she was joining her husband, an Army officer, in Budapest. This was my cue. Lowering my voice and wagging a finger. I whispered mysteriously "Do you know what I think?" They were agog. "I've suspected it from the start", I murmured. "She's escaping from the KGB." This completely flattened them. After a long pause, little Miss No-Fibre whispered. “Does this happen very often?" "Often", I breathed heavily, "almost every other day or night. We've got to help her. for the sake of the kids." The result was magic. All their sentimental longings for some practical worthy cause were aroused. They obediently and efficiently transferred to the top bunks, proud members of a dramatic liberation conspiracy. Harmony reigned. The Russian lady was now treated with reverential respect, more deeply convinced than ever that the English were nuts.

I am sure that for many months to come the local Community Centre at Ruislip will thrill to the story of how they helped a beautiful Russian lady with her three lovely children to escape the dreaded KGB. But 1 must be getting absent-minded, for 1 clean forgot to tell them that what I had meant was Kinky Girls from Britain.

SPUTNIK

Blogger's Note:

Mmm, what were the SSPC thinking? I grew up reading The Sun newspaper in the 1980s, and I was getting flashbacks as I was scanning this in. Understandably, this short story stirred up quite a bit of controversy amongst the readership at the time, and the following letter from John Usher appeared in the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard:

Escape to happiness 

Comrades, 

As a party member I would like to ask what purpose was served by the publication of Sputnik's article in the October Standard. As far as I can see no socialist viewpoint is advanced, rather the contrary; to suggest that "scraping the meat off the plate" is a practical attitude to vegetarians is obtuse and. in practical terms, counter effective. Further, stereotyping of the kind employed can do nothing other than alienate interested neutrals. A propagandist of experience must surely know that stereotypes are no more effective when purportedly factual than avowedly imaginary. Although this should make no difference, the article is not even funny; on my reading it did not even raise the involuntary and quickly regretted chuckle sometimes elicited by sick jokes. 

If I did not know that Sputnik had published excellent articles under another name, I would suggest that he sends his next offering to Punch, a magazine long renowned for bridging the gap between seriousness and humour by eschewing both.

John Usher

London SW4

 

Reply: 

We have received many letters in a similar vein and note the points made.

Editors.

I believe 'Sputnik' was a one-off pen-name for Harry Young ('Horatio' in the Socialist Standard).

Letter: LETS all not get excited! (1995)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

LETS all not get excited!

Dear Editors,

I read with interest your article on the LETS scheme. This was first brought to my attention several years ago when, as I understand it. the system was in its infancy. (It would seem, incidentally. that it has done little growing up since.) I was attending a dinner party of sorts with a group of friends who do their views and ideas no justice by clinging to their '60s hippie image whilst expecting to be taken seriously as local and national political figures (Green Party, etc.).

Anyhow, they were raving about this revolutionary “no money scheme". Obviously I listened with anticipation. My heart sank, and they could not understand when I said simply “For LETS read pounds sterling". They had convinced themselves of the wondrous nature of the system and seemed under the delusion that, although accumulation of credit, book-keeping and cheque books were all relevant factors, by changing the name of the currency they had abolished money. The final shot in the foot for them after several hours of debate was that in order to initially join the scheme you paid a fee in sterling. This was to cover costs of operation of the scheme.

So intense was their belief in the system that they could not understand my scepticism. It is sometimes upsetting that the indoctrination of society is so deep that even those with good and honest intent cannot throw away the shackles of capitalism.

Neil Pettitt, 

Bristol

Reply:

Thanks. We were beginning to need a bit of support.  - Editors

Should ‘we’ consume less? (2024)

From the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his recently published book Slow Down: How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth, Kohei Saito contends that:

‘Almost every one of us living in a developed country belongs to the world’s richest 20 percent’ and that our exploitative ‘imperial mode of living’ allows us enjoy an ‘extravagant lifestyle’ at the expense of workers in the Global South – an echo of the discredited Leninist theory of the ‘labour aristocracy’.

Moreover, suggests Saito, it is ‘we’ who are ‘coddled by the invisibility of our lifestyle’s costs’ who inflict far more damage on the environment than do they – our fellow workers on the other side of the planet. ‘We’ will ‘not be able to truly combat climate change if we all fail to participate, as directly interested parties, in the radical transformation of the Imperial Mode of Living’. That means disengaging, starting now under capitalism, from consumer culture ‘while also reducing the volume of everything we consume’. At the end of the day there seems to be little here to distinguish Saito from what the de-growth eco-pessimists have to say, apart from his invocation of ‘communism’.

Matt Huber and Leigh Phillips make a valid point in their review of Saito’s book:

"Saito also sees this primarily not as a battle between classes of workers and capitalists, but global regions: “the injustice of socially vulnerable people in the Global South countries bearing the brunt of climate change although the carbon dioxide was emitted, for the most part, by the Global North, which brought on this disaster.”

When it comes to who in the Global North is responsible, Saito is more liable to point at himself and other workers than capital: “Our rich lifestyles would be impossible without the plundered natural resources and exploited labor power of the Global South”’ (Jacobin, 9 March 2024,).

Was Marx productivist?

Saito also claims that, as far as Marx was concerned, there was an ‘epistemological break’ in the latter´s writings that began sometimes during the 1860s.

This epistemological break has been characterised as representing a move away from a ‘“linear, progressive view” of history, marked by “productivism” and “Eurocentrism”, and towards a new vision of communism’. Saito does at least accept that ‘communism’ means a moneyless, wageless, classless and stateless alternative to capitalism which is based on the twin principles of free access to socially produced wealth and voluntaristic labour as the basis of wealth production.

In short Marx, according to Saito, abandoned historical materialism and the acceptance of capitalist technological progress in favour of ‘de-growth communism’ in which the needs of the population would be catered for within clear limits imposed by nature itself.

Marx did indeed acknowledge the necessity and importance of capitalist technological progress in preparing the ground for a future communist society, but his standpoint cannot plausibly be called a ‘productivist’ one. There are many passages in the early writings of both Marx and Engels that suggest a deep concern with the environmental impact of economic growth and are hardly compatible with the kind of Promethean or productivist outlook sometimes attributed to them. Their assessment of capitalist technological advancement as being ‘progressive’ was contingent inasmuch as it suggests there will come a point when it could no longer be characterised as such. At this point it would become redundant or even reactionary as a mode of production.

Limits to lifestyle changes

You cannot expect capitalism to gradually disappear through the incremental accumulation of minor adjustments to the way we live and do things. The whole system is fundamentally held together and underpinned by the brute fact of minority ownership and control of the means of wealth production and the consequent alienation of the great majority from these means. It is only when the latter take matters in hand and seek to democratically bring about fundamental change from the bottom up that capitalism will finally disappear.

We cannot hope to bring about the fundamental change required through mere lifestyle changes within the framework of existing capitalist society. This is not meant to discourage individuals from wanting to make such changes. These could conceivably help even if only in symbolic, more than practical, terms. But the basic problem we face as a society is not really the result of individuals somehow having made the wrong lifestyle choice.

Saito is not entirely wrong, however. ‘Lifestyle choices’ matter up to a point insofar as they are bound up with the question of social values. After all, a working class, still receptive or responsive to the values that underpin a capitalist consumer ideology, would surely not yet be ready to undertake the transformation of society itself. Their readiness to do that surely presupposes a transformed worldview on their part. In other words, a shift in values.

It is difficult to see how a strategy of, today within capitalism, ‘reducing the volume of everything we consume’ is going to succeed. Reducing consumption means reducing the market demand for the good in question. Normally, the response of businesses in these circumstances would be to reduce the price of this good. In other words, to reboot or stimulate market demand.

You as one individual might indeed have the strength of will and moral resolve to resist the lure of a bargain offer but there is nothing to say that your neighbour will follow suit. This is the problem with the system; it has the uncanny knack of being able to pick us off one by one so long as we confine our thinking to its conceptual parameters.

We cannot buck the market while we live in a market economy. It is this that sets limits on what we can achieve by way of lifestyle changes. Only by eliminating capitalism will we be in a position to adapt how we produce and consume in ways that suit ourselves and our long-term future on this planet.

Robin Cox

Artificial scarcity (2024)

From the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

We’re often encouraged to make changes in our personal lifestyle on the grounds that this can help change things or at least do something to help us move in the right direction. We should make sure we know, for example, where the food we eat is grown, how ‘sustainable’ its production and distribution methods are, and, if possible, to ‘buy local’. The idea is that our food buying choices will help reduce carbon emissions and contribute to the battle against ecological deterioration and global warming. It is also suggested that more radical lifestyle choices like vegetarianism or veganism can play a part in this by freeing up for direct food production land currently used for crops to feed the vast number of animals raised and slaughtered everywhere in the world.

And it’s true that, if large numbers of people made such choices, it might indeed lead to different methods and types of food production, reduce the mass slaughter of living creatures and also have some impact on climate change. But none of this would make any appreciable difference to the day-to-day problems faced by many millions of people throughout the world. These are such problems as poverty, homelessness or precarious housing, and, above all, the need for the vast majority of us to sell our energies to an employer for a wage or salary day in day out or find ourselves without the means to live decently. The fact is that, whatever the method of production or the goods produced, so long as this happens with a view to the goods being sold on the market and people needing money to buy them, we will still have the system we call capitalism and all the problems and contradictions it throws up.

The main contradiction is that we now have the means to produce enough food and all else to sustain the whole world at a decent level several times over and to do so without polluting the environment or changing the climate, yet under the capitalist system of production for profit this cannot happen. Instead it creates artificial scarcity, causing millions to go hungry and many more to live insecure or highly stressed existences. A new report by Unicef published in June this year (Child Food Poverty: Nutrition Deprivation in Early Childhood) revealed that around 181 million children worldwide under 5 years of age – or 1 in 4 – are experiencing severe child food poverty, making them up to 50 percent more likely to experience wasting, a life-threatening form of malnutrition. To make things worse, capitalism’s methods of production put massive stress on the ecosystem, fast pushing it, according to some, to the brink of collapse.

Time therefore for workers throughout the world to vote collectively to change that system and move to a moneyless, marketless society of free access and voluntary cooperation – which we call socialism. In that society people will put their natural human capacity for cooperation and collaboration to work and use the resources of the earth to secure a decent life for all while maintaining the environment so as to ensure a steady state of ecological balance.

Howard Moss

World View: Voluntary Simplicity (1996)

From the June 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

A large number of Americans are turning away from commuting back and forth from "stressful” and “unfulfilling" jobs and rejecting the world of consumerism in favour of environmentally friendly lifestyles. They are adopting a new set of values: "The Three S's"—sustainability, spirituality and satisfaction, while searching for “meaning" and "aesthetic expression." This is the picture presented by Duane Elgin of the "voluntary simplicity" movement in the US at a recent debate of the Oxford Centre for Ethics and the Environment. The question for debate was “Does voluntary simplicity provide a realistic path toward ecological sustainability?" Elgin’s answer to this question was “yes".

Like many in the environmental movement, Elgin talks about changing society solely in terms of the consumer’s values changing. Dr Juliet Schor, author of The Overworked American who debated Elgin argued for changing the economic structure of society. Schor who has helped set up the New Party in America, advocates a collective "downshifting” by western industrial nations. "Downshifting" is defined as making a "lifestyle decision" which reduces the amount of paid employment you do and/or reduces the money you earn in the hope of "regaining control" over your life. In a survey, 28 percent of Americans of working age said that, in the last five years, they had decided to “downshift" in this sense. Indeed. This trend among workers has been reported to have worried the stock markets, being a far broader phenomenon than that of mothers giving up work to look after children. The trend, says Schor, can be seen among both sexes, whether or not people have children and across all age groups up to those in their 50s and all income spectra.

The stereotyped view of America as a country having swallowed materialist/consumerist values whole is thus misleading, even among relatively wealthy US workers (and Schor’s statistics do not tell us how many non-downshifters remain unhappy with their “lifestyles"). Ninety-five percent of all downshifters, she explains, say they are now happier than they were before.

New Party, Old System

The ideas of Schor’s New Party are reminiscent of those of the Green Party in Britain. Schor advocates that Britain should opt for slower, “sustainable" growth (about one percent per year) and, in exchange, spend more on health and education. This assumption that capitalist economies can simply pick and choose their growth rate is naive. The economies of Britain, France and Germany, for example, are currently trying to cut back on welfare expenditure at the same time as they try desperately to boost their growth rates up and out of this current uncertain period.

Another fundamental problem with the "voluntary simplicity"/downshifting response to society’s current problems (of which the ecological crisis is just one) is obviously that most of the world’s people do not have the choice of such a "lifestyle change” open to them. Duane Elgin tells u how he was able to move to a more "modest" house in order to fund his book Voluntary Simplicity. Clearly, not everyone has a house which they can sell, or a job from which they could "downshift". Most parts of the world do not even have a welfare state that they can "downshift" into. The only kind of simplicity available to the majority of the world’s population is of an entirely involuntary nature. It involves no choice about how fulfilling one’s work will be or whether the capitalist one works for will use their resources "ethically". (It is debatable whether the capitalists have much choice about this themselves if they are to get a good return from their investments.)

The debate was billed as a confrontation of the question of how we create an ecologically sustainable society. It seems that, in answer to this, the ever-growing environmental literature, research and discussion such as that of Elgin and Schor will talk about everything other than the world’s population gaining common ownership and control over the world's resources as a necessary first step. 

Dan Greenwood

Life and Times: Lifestyle choices: does it make a difference? (2024)

The Life and Times column from the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

We’re often told that we can help to change things or at least move in the right direction by each of us making changes in our personal lifestyle. We’re encouraged for example to make sure we know where our food is grown, how ‘sustainable’ its production and distribution methods are, and, if possible, to ‘buy local’. The idea is that our food buying choices will help to reduce carbon emissions and contribute to the battle against ecological deterioration and global warming. It’s also suggested that more radical lifestyle choices like vegetarianism or veganism can play a part in this by freeing up for direct food production land currently used for crops to feed the vast number of animals raised and slaughtered everywhere in the world.

This was the theme of a recent ‘opinion’ piece in one of the website bulletins from the Scientific American magazine which regularly arrive in my email inbox and usually contain items which are both interesting and thought-provoking. This particular piece, written by Sarah C. Hull, assistant professor of cardiology at the Yale School of Medicine, was entitled ‘A Meatless Diet is Better for You – and the Planet’ . Its summary states that ‘vegetarian and especially vegan diets can promote better health, help mitigate climate change and reduce inhumane factory farming’ and it puts forward various, seemingly plausible arguments against certain commonly held beliefs about diet, for example that plant-based food does not contain enough protein and iron for adequate nourishment and that dairy products are necessary to obtain enough dietary calcium. It then goes on to talk about health benefits of a non-meat or low-meat diet referring to scientific evidence that points to a significantly lower risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Further arguments are then presented regarding the inevitable cruelty to animals involved in factory farming, the risk of epidemics or pandemics associated with the overcrowding of livestock, and the often poor conditions of work for the human beings themselves involved in this activity. Finally the point is made that meat consumption contributes significantly to climate change through deforestation and methane emissions, with food systems making up a third of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity (tinyurl.com/2p9dtht6), and animal-based foods contributing twice the emissions of plant-based foods (tinyurl.com/bde8nzs6). Personal dietary carbon emissions, it concludes, can be reduced by 30 percent with a vegetarian diet and by up to 85 per cent with a vegan one.

So do we all go vegetarian or vegan? It sounds a good idea to me personally, but thinking about it carefully, I can’t avoid the question of how much difference it would really make within the confines of the buying and selling system we all live in. Professor Hull clearly thinks it would make a difference. She talks about the need for people to adopt at least a ‘flexitarian approach to meal planning that de-centers meat as the focal point of meals’ and to consider that ‘even modest reductions in meat consumption and progress toward a more plant-forward diet can yield significant health and environmental benefits.’ She also quotes from the 2019 EAT-Lancet Commission report on ‘globally sustainable diets’ which states: ‘Food is the single strongest lever to optimize human health and environmental sustainability on Earth’.

Yet while such choices might indeed lead to different methods and types of food production, reduce the mass slaughter of living creatures and also have some impact on climate change, how much difference would they actually make to the day-to-day problems faced by many millions of people throughout the world? I’m thinking here about such problems as poverty, homelessness or precarious housing, and, above all, the need for the vast majority of us to sell our energies to an employer for a wage day in day out or find ourselves without the means to live decently. What I’m saying is whatever the method of production or the goods produced, so long as production takes place with a view to goods being sold on the market and maximising profit and people needing money to buy those things, we will still have the system we call capitalism and all the problems and contradictions it throws up. The major contradiction is that the means do actually exist to sustain all the world’s people at a decent level several times over in food and other essentials and this without polluting the environment or changing the climate. And this is the case whether we are meat eaters or go vegan. Yet, under the capitalist system of production for profit and buying and selling, those who do not have money to buy will go hungry, many more will lead insecure and highly stressed existences, human health will not be safeguarded, and the ecosystem will continue to be in imminent danger of collapse.

To be fair, Professor Hull’s apparent solution to this is not just lifestyle changes by individuals but also – and more importantly in her view – what she calls ‘large-scale, well-coordinated national and international action’ and ‘pressure on governments and organisations to enact meaningful change in this direction’. Nevertheless, however much change we are able to implement either in our personal lives or by forms of collective pressure, it stands to reason that, as long as we continue to do this within the constraints of the profit system that is capitalism, any progress will be necessarily limited. It’s a little like clamouring for freedom on the basis of slavery. So while we can’t deny that, as she says, ‘societies change when enough individuals within them alter their behaviour’, it’s not the kind of behavioural change she is referring to that’s needed, but rather change in political behaviour, or put a different way, in consciousness.

So while there’s no doubt that magazines like Scientific American can teach us a lot about how things work in the world, they are sadly no more advanced than most of those who read them when it comes to seeing beyond the social and political system in which we exist. Isn’t it time therefore for workers throughout the world to switch on to the consciousness needed to do that and to vote collectively to change that system and move to a moneyless, marketless society of free access and voluntary cooperation – which we call socialism? In that society people will put their natural human capacity for cooperation and collaboration to work and use the resources of the earth to make sure that everyone – whether they choose to be vegan, vegetarian or otherwise – has enough healthy food to eat and to secure a decent life for all.

Howard Moss

Cooking the Books: Back to the Iron Age? (2007)

The Cooking the Books column from the October 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

“They eat food from skips, wear discarded clothes and want to topple capitalism”, wrote Brian O’Connell in an article headed “Masters of free lunch” in the Irish Times  (4 September). He was describing the activities of a group of people who call themselves “freegans” – “a combination of the words free and vegan, whose aim is to live as non-commercially as possible”. They “don’t believe in working for money”, nor in paying for the things they need to live.

Socialists don’t either, but in the context of a society based on the common ownership of the means of life where there’d be no need for money or buying and selling, not as a lifestyle choice within capitalism. No doubt it is theoretically possible to live within capitalism without using money, but to what end? Not even 5 percent of the population (and that’s probably an exaggeration), let alone a majority, could live like that. Not that skip diving for food and other things needed to survive is ever likely to appeal to more than a tiny handful of people.

So, we are talking about an inevitably very marginal activity, and one that depends on most other people working for wages and producing the wealth of society, including the thrown-away products the freegans gather and consume. As everything produced under capitalism is the result of exploitation, they are carrying to its logical extreme the practice of those who refrain from buying certain products on ethical grounds. They see themselves as the ultimate “ethical consumers”, even if they are doing through voluntary choice what a number of others are obliged to do through economic necessity.

But how is such a lifestyle going to “topple capitalism”? We can’t deny that they are against capitalism or what one of them is quoted as calling “a profit-driven commodities economy”. The trouble is that that’s not all they are against. They also denounce “industrialism” and “globalism”. They want to renounce the real and potential benefits of industrial production and go back to living a simple agricultural life with an Iron Age technology but without using animals.

According to O’Connell:

“Freeganism has its roots in traditional activities such as gleaning, or historical collectives such as the Diggers, a group of agrarian communists who flourished in mid-17th-century England . . . [T]he first official use of the word ‘freegan’ appeared in 2000 and began to gain popularity through a website, Freegan.info, set up in New York by Adam Weissman and Wendy Sher in 2003”.

Hang on a minute! Website? Doesn’t that assume the existence of “industrialism” and in fact a highly developed technology? And is not the internet one of the more prominent aspects of “globalism”?

The freegans are right, however, to want to recreate the social relationships of early human society, which were co-operative and sharing and based on giving and taking rather than buying and selling. Socialists want this too, but we say this can be done without having to renounce the advances in sanitation, medicine and comfort that modern science and technology have brought, including the ability to find ecologically-acceptable techniques of energy generation and industrial production. We want to restore the original common ownership of the Earth’s resources – for the Earth to become, as the Diggers put it, “a common Treasury for All” –  and the social relationships that went with it, while retaining both industrialism and globalism.

We say system change is the only way out . . . But what about Lifestyle changes? (2021)

From the November 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s often said that we can help to change things or at least move in the right direction by each of us making changes in our personal lifestyle. We are encouraged for example to make sure we know where the food is grown, how ‘sustainable’ its production and distribution methods are, and, if possible, to ‘buy local’. Would that work?

Millions throughout the world face the need to sell their energies to an employer for a wage month in month out, day in day out, or find themselves without the means to live decently. Some face additional problems such as poverty, homelessness or precarious housing. They cannot afford to change their lifestyle if this is going to cost them more. Maybe some lifestyle changes, if they could be widely practised, could lead to a change in the method of production or the goods produced and so have some impact. However, so long as production takes place for the market and so long as people need money to buy those things, we will still have the capitalist system and all the problems and contradictions it throws up.

The main contradiction is that we now have the means to produce enough food and all else to sustain the whole world at a decent level several times over and to do so without recklessly polluting the environment or changing the climate, yet under the capitalist system of production for profit this cannot happen. Instead millions go hungry, many more millions live insecure or highly stressed existences and the ecosystem is in imminent danger of collapse. It's time therefore to act collectively to change the social system and move to a society of free access and voluntary cooperation without money or markets. In this socialist system people will put their natural human capacity for cooperation and collaboration to work and use the resources of the planet to secure a decent life for all its inhabitants.   

Anyone know a lifestyle anarchist? (2011)

From the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Keep a look-out for people who are chock-full of undirected, ill-informed revolutionary gusto, but empty of any desire to organise their views into a coherent critique of the world.

Are they easily bored by drab Marxian theory, with its ‘materialist conception of history’ and its ‘labour theory of value’? Do they feel guilty because their parents managed to scrape a bit more out of capitalism than the average wage-slave? Do they feel the need to rebel against daddy’s ‘inbuilt patriarchal mentality’ and mother’s lack of ability to cut the apron strings? Perhaps they like to wear bands around their wrist bearing slogans like ‘make poverty history’ or even better ‘make poverty herstory’. They might feel a sudden urge to grow dreadlocks, wear low crotched shorts, and backpack around the world. They may feel the need to say every damn thing as if it was a question, constantly inserting the word ‘like’ while offering self-righteous homilies about how they ‘just really want to like help the world?’ and how ‘we’ve like got to find like a new way of living?’

They may, in short, be on the verge of becoming a ‘lifestyle anarchist’.

Lifestyle anarchism can best be described as the malformed grandchild of that senile old bat, the sixties hippy movement. It sits in an uncomfortable position somewhere between Che Guevara and Ghandi, Bakunin and the Dalai Lama. Lifestyle anarchists like to engage in what they pretentiously call things like ‘grass roots happenings’ and ‘autonomous eco-resistance.’ To be a lifestyle anarchist you have do things like ‘dumpster diving’ or ‘skipping’ basically taking egotistical pleasure in a society that reduces you to eating out of a bin.

Don’t let a lifestyle anarchist hear you complain about the rent, it’s much cooler to ‘squat’ or even better ‘couch surf’. When university tuition fees get raised again or the trees in the park are chopped down in order to build yet another supermarket, it wouldn’t do to put it down to the shitty social system we live under and then actively encourage fellow workers to help get rid of it, oh no. For the lifestyle anarchist it’s much better to ‘occupy’ a lecture hall or chain themselves to an oak. That is of course until they get dragged away by a policeman, at which point they can really impress all their lifestyle anarchist mates by telling the copper what a ‘brutal like fascist like pig’ he is ‘working for like the man like that’.

Ah yes ‘the man’, is this the start of an understanding of what us socialists mean when we say the capitalist class? Not really, the enemy to the lifestyle anarchist is some sort of white European male, intent on keeping us all in a little box by flying planes into world trade centres then blaming it on really nice guys like the Taliban who only ever wanted to fight oppression. These are just some of the reasons among many why the lifestyle anarchists score very high on the rest of the working class’s bullshit radar.

Many lifestyle anarchists don’t ever seem to work at all, raising the question: when the squats get evicted and the ‘skipping’ is getting harder, where does all the money come from? One lifestyle anarchist I met was very vague about how she actually kept herself financially afloat, for the year or so she had spent hitch-hiking around Europe, preferring to answer the question with a patronising ‘you don’t actually need lots of money you know’. ‘Yes.’ I felt like saying, ‘but then you didn’t find your two iPods and your laptop in a skip now did you?’ I never found out what her parents did for a living, (or didn’t do in the case of the capitalist class). I was forced to leave it, we were ‘couch surfing’ in her house at the time and I suspected that if I really chose to assert my kindly granted ‘right to free speech’ it wouldn’t be long before she asserted her ‘right to private property’. It is for this reason that I am tempted to make my first experience of ‘couch surfing’ also my last.

What other anarchists think

Trotsky once described anarchists as ‘liberals with bombs’, whereas the lifestyle anarchists would be better described as ‘liberals with bins’. Trotsky of course had good reason to dislike anarchists, like Bakunin for example who for all his faults provided some very useful warnings about the dangers of authoritarianism in the working class movement, warnings a lot less applicable to Marx than to the likes of Lenin and Trotsky. While the lifestyle anarchists are keen to point out how ‘free from dogma’ they are, their complete lack of theory means they are prepared to uncritically help in the campaigns of any pseudo-socialist, Leninist party going.

It is of course unfair to equate lifestyle anarchism directly with the anarchist movement as a whole. For all its faults at least most strands of anarchism attempt a class analysis. At least some anarchists see the problems inherent in society as stemming from the fundamental features of that society, i.e., wage labour, production for profit, class rule, and the solution lying in the abolition of these same things. Indeed it is interesting to see the old dog anarchists’ reaction to this silly and incessantly annoying puppy chasing its own tail. On the one hand they like to encourage it for its ‘direct action’ and ‘grass roots defiance’ but even they are compelled to comment on the futility of it all.

Of course we socialists have nothing against people who want to raid through supermarket skips in order to help cut down on food bills. Having done it myself I can honestly say it’s incredible what supermarkets chuck away.  I once found a bin bag full of popcorn that was only a week out of date in a Marks and Spencer skip.

Nor do we have anything against those that choose to squat.  It’s another example of the ridiculous nature of capitalism that perfectly good homes should stay unoccupied while people sleep on the streets, just so a landlord can wait till the property prices rise. Where we have a problem is that for all the talk that lifestyle anarchists and others like them make about their actions being a means to an end, it invariably becomes an end in itself – people preferring to pose with their heads in skips or faces wrapped in kaftans without ever trying to actually understand why the world is the way it is.

Johnny Mercer

Letters: Lifestyle socialism? (2012)

Letters to the Editors from the September 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lifestyle socialism?

Dear Editors

I have just been re-reading the article entitled “Why Jesus was not a socialist” in the June issue of the Socialist Standard. I still don’t really understand it, and I’m left wondering how you define “a socialist”; which presumably is the description which SPGB members apply to themselves, today, as individuals living in capitalist societies. When members declare themselves as “socialist”, is this purely because of their intellectual conviction and knowledge; or is it because they have adopted distinctive attitudes and behaviour within our present societies – in relationships with other people and the environment? Do members confine their socialism to seeking to persuade others verbally to become socialists? To make an extreme case, could someone continue in everyday life to be a capitalist while having convinced the SPGB intellectually that he/she understands and accepts the case for socialism – and thereby be called a socialist?

I have supposed that socialism is basically “From each according to their ability; to each according to their need.” Should we each be trying now to live that way – however impracticable and futile that might seem to be; or may we feel free to join as much as we can in the ways of capitalism, hoping to get our own “snouts in the trough”, until world-wide socialism comes?

Andrew Durrant, 

Garvestone, Norwich

Reply:

We call ourselves “socialists”because we want to see socialism established, i.e., a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production by the whole community. So, yes, if you put it that way, it is basically because of our “intellectual conviction and knowledge”rather than because we “have adopted distinctive attitudes and behaviour within our present system.”

Obviously, the fact that our members want socialism will to a certain extent reflect itself in how they behave under capitalism, but this doesn‘t include not working for money. Given that we are living under capitalism where what you need has to be bought, it is not possible to live without trying to get money –and getting it. There’s no choice.

All those excluded from owning means of production, including socialists, are forced to work for money, even if we don’t have to accept that the pursuit of money is the most important thing in life. Most people, even if they are not socialists, don’t think this but unless you are prepared to lead a precarious existence on the margins of society you have to obtain money. And it is only above a certain level of income that people can choose to renounce getting as much as they could.

Can someone who is a capitalist be a socialist? Yes. Two examples would be Frederick Engels and William Morris. For them to have given up their wealth to live as workers would not have helped the cause of socialism. As it happened, both of them gave generously to the socialist movement. 

Editors.

Olympics?

Dear Editors

Isn’t the Olympic “Games” a bit of a misnomer?

In the midst of the festival of chauvinism dedicated to UK Capitalism plc, at least the BBC is honest enough to admit what it’s really all about in the article “Olympic success: How much does an Olympic gold medal cost?” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19144983).

So much for Pierre de Coubertin’s Olympic Creed “Le plus important aux Jeux olympiques n’est pas de gagner mais de participer, car l’important dans la vie ce n’est point le triomphe mais le combat; l’essentiel, ce n’est pas d’avoir vaincu mais de s’être bien battu.” [“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part, because the important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.”]

It seems to have been replaced by the tenet “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.”

Still, capitalism poisons everything, so why should sport be immune.

Martyn Dunmore, 

Brussels

Ken Smith

Dear Editors

Thank you for the obituary of Ken Smith in the August Standard. Ken was a very lively presence at Bristol Branch meetings in the 1980s. He was a wonderful example of someone who knew that it wasn’t enough to be against capitalism but also necessary to be in favour of socialism. He and his wife Mavis held a number of memorable socialist discussion weekends at their self-built home in May Hill in Gloucestershire. Ken was fond of saying that their annual income had never been lower and their quality of life had never been higher – brought about by non-market exchanges with likeminded people in the surrounding area. There was always lively discussion, plenty to think about and plenty to eat and drink. Ken was one of the most life-affirming characters I’ve ever met and he was a force for socialism and for good. Those of us whose lives were touched by him were very lucky to have known him.

Keith Graham. 

Bristol

Debt

David Graeber has emailed comments on our review of his book Debt in the August Socialist Standard. We will publish it, together with our reply, in the October issue.

Panic in the Fields (1986)

From the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The severity of a crisis cannot always be gauged by a government's public response to it. That is why, at times of obvious threat to our well being, we might be officially assured that there is no great cause for concern.

This is the case with the current level of unemployment, which is tightening the screw of poverty ever tighter on the working class but which merits the attention of only a minor minister, whose main function seems to tell us about the latest additions to the dole queues. It also applies to world famine, which needlessly kills tens of millions a year but which can apparently be left to be solved by charitable joggers and rock music devotees. The unimaginable menace of nuclear war need not deprive us of any sleep because wise Ronald Reagan and resolute Margaret Thatcher have got the balance of power into so fine an adjustment that the weapons will never be used. The explosion at Chernobyl caused a few worried moments but, after all, human beings were being bombarded by natural radioactivity long, long before anyone had even heard of the atom. In any case nuclear power stations in this country are (like Windscale) Made In Britain, which means they will never blow up or leak or run out of control.

So don't worry, is the official message. The public should keep calm. There is no reason for undue alarm.

And then somebody called "the hippy" bursts on the scene, causing feverish panic where before all was tranquil reassurance. Hippies, we are told, are a cause for concern. They are like a plague sweeping across the country. They seem to have taken all those Thatcher speeches about individual liberty a bit too seriously. They choose not to wash or comb their hair, they don't send their children to school to be indoctrinated into an acceptance of wage slavery. They don't live in mortgaged semis or in council high rise estates, they don 't stuff themselves into rush hour trains and buses and traffic jams. They don't have a regular job in factory, office or supermarket. Clearly, they are a menace to civilised society and every right-minded Britisher will agree with the government taking the most stringent measures to suppress them.

It is true that hippies sometimes join up in a convoy of slow, ramshackle vehicles which is liable to block the road and they pitch in fields without the owner's permission, perhaps leaving the place in a bit of a mess. One of the gutter press drew on its resources of instant hysteria to describe them as "the world's most famous blot on the landscape"—worse, presumably, than the effects of the military practising their tanks and guns over vast tracts of the countryside, worse than the ripping out of miles of hedgerows and the ploughing up of ancient downlands by farmers who, in their lust to climb aboard the grain subsidy bandwagon, create huge eyesores of prairies.

Douglas Hurd, who is said to be a kindly, moderate man. did his kind, moderate best to stoke up the panic about the hippies by likening them to medieval brigands. This phrase should come easily to an aristocratic, ex-Etonian, member of the British ruling class, who may be gratefully aware that some of his class owe their privileged position to the activities of medieval brigands. Others came to riches through the pitiless enclosures and clearances of the land in other words, stealing it from the local people Then there was the slave trade, which enriched ports such as Bristol. London and Liverpool, which built many an opulent mansion among lush landscaped estates and which provided some of the capital for the Industrial Revolution, with its slums and its ruthless working of pregnant women and children, literally to the point of exhaustion or even death.

It is an affront to all workers, that a member of the class whose position originated in these offences against humanity should presume to denounce this small band of ragged people.

In any case, what does this hippy threat amount to? There is no evidence that they are dangerous criminals; so far none has been arrested for murder, or mugging a pensioner. or raping a child. Even their efforts to claim Supplementary Benefit are hardly likely to bankrupt the DHSS. So why has there been so hysterical a response? Even a government as quick as this one to harvest the votes which sprout from the issue of Law and Order can hardly justify the large, relentless and meticulously organised police operation to drive hundreds of people, including their children, into homelessness. How can a government which has pledged itself to "fight crime" justify sending hundreds of police to deal with these uncriminal. unresisting people? In such situations, it is not uncommon for the police to commit illegal acts and for Chief Constables to reveal some alarming ambitions about curtailing civil liberties. But even at that the government have some very far-fetched plans, including a new law which promises to be so catch-all as to affect the tradition that a hunt may trample wherever they will.

The hippies will reply that all this is happening because, yes, they are a threat to property society. They have, they say, seen through it all and have dropped out of the sham material obsessions which dominate the lives of the majority. No-one can be criticised for doubting the morality of capitalism, based as it is on the class ownership of the means of life, the production of wealth for sale and profit and the exploitation of the majority by a parasitic minority. But it is not possible to opt out of the system, in fact the hippies don't even try, since they know they depend on many things—modern communications. services like clean piped water, the internal combustion engine—which capitalism has developed. They must buy and sell, or scrounge, in order to survive. In spite of what they think, somewhere they are on file. Like some other socially peripheral groups, the hippies attempt to blanket their confusion with religious and mystical obscurities, in idle debates about ley lines, reincarnation, the phases of the moon . . .

But none of this can be remotely construed as a threat to capitalist law and order — to the property rights which it is the job of the police to uphold and defend. It is difficult to believe that any government would seriously regard this pathetic, impecunious bunch as any more than a minor eccentric nuisance, not worthy of being spoken of in Downing Street as public disrupters in the same breath as miners or print workers. The real menace of the situation is more likely to be that hippies have made themselves available as convenient scapegoats for workers who are mindful of poverty, famine, the nuclear threat and who are too ready to displace their fears and confusion onto someone. Scapegoats, like royal weddings, like the sick hypocrisy of the media, are useful to capitalism because they divert attention from the real problems of this society. That is why the hysterical panic about the hippies will be matched by a hysteria of false joy when the two foolish parasites Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson—who live off a different type of social security—get married.

The problem with setting up scapegoats, however, is that the campaign against them may get out of control and lead to capitalism being organised almost exclusively in panic. Nazi Germany is only one example of this. All workers, then, would do well to ponder what is implied by the persecution of the hippies. So should the hippies themselves; whatever it is they aspire to, cannot be realised under capitalism, which dragoons us all into some measure of wage slavery. Indictment of what this society does to people is not enough; opting out is an admission of failure. Success means organising together to end it and all its inhuman works.

Ivan

A Glastonbury Tale (1997)

Party News from the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Camping is not really meant to be enjoyable, but rather more like horror films, a sort of cathartic process from which you only really derive benefit at the end. Camping explains why you work the rest of the year to keep a bloody roof over your head. It’s to remind you of what it was really like to live in an Iron Age village and thank god you don't have to. It's the townie’s quick fix, paganism for a weekend, nature-loving all the way to Monday. And it enables every camper to think themselves rugged and outdoorsy, before returning to the ruddy indoors again. And during this ritual self-denial the last thing you expect to do is argue politics.

Glastonbury in a sea of mud is a funny place to be putting the socialist case. For one thing, everyone looks stoned on something, even the coppers. No-one has slept or washed in days and the toilets hum louder than the stage PA system. The myriad colourful stalls are selling, selling, selling at a furious rate while the punters are drinking, drinking, being sick and drinking at no less a pace. But over in the "Green Fields" a different, more sober air obtains. There is a healing field, for the "cosmic" set, and a Green Futures field for the more down-to-earth groups with ecologically-oriented proposals to make about the future, or else nostalgia-oriented proposals dredged up out of the past.

In this latter camp we find the Green Anarchists. Clearly a camping enthusiast, their representative informs us that they are opposed to all modern technology and factory production methods, and looks forward to a society of small self-sufficient farming groups whose every article is handmade by the community. This is interesting, for we note that the gentleman is wearing not only machine-made clothing from head-to-toe. but also spectacles. To the suggestion that he is condemning himself to a life of walking around bollock-naked and banging into trees he is impervious, and responds that he hopes to rely on his friends to guide him from place-to-place. Later they eat baked beans for tea. out of a tin. Using a machine-made tin-opener, naturally.

Another stall reminds us that This Land is Our Land, as in the Woody Guthrie song, but turns out to be a co-op land-reform venture whose most rebellious suggestion appears to be that you hire a good solicitor when buying your acreage. There are lifestylists galore in this most hip of hippy nests, and many too hip to have an opinion.

But not a sign of the Leninists, or the left in general. This inexplicable delight is due apparently to the anarchist leanings of the organisers, who have little sympathy for the authoritarian and leadership ideas which are an almost universal feature of such groups.

Over four days people stream past our stall, and turn, caught in the eddies of others who have stopped at a signboard, paused to write graffiti on our blackboard. We might have fifteen or twenty people in front of the stall, talking, arguing, swapping jokes or experiences, some puzzled and some intrigued by what they seem to see as a controversial statement. Abolish the money and property system? Think what you like, but no-one else is doing or saying that, either in this field or any other. What does it mean? Is it barter-systems they're after? Surely not. but what then? How would it work? What about lazy people? What about the rich? It can’t be serious.They can’t be for real.

And yet we were there, with a site at the biggest party in the world. They had to take us seriously, and many of them were smiling as they talked, and many were nodding agreement. We may have stood there with wet feet at times, craving the home comforts, but the conversations we had were heart-warming, and that gave us comfort aplenty.

Someone said in a tent: Just imagine if these 150.000 people decided they wanted to stay here for ever, well, they could do it, couldn't they? People smiled. We are suggesting something similar, but on a larger scale. Festivals may be a form of escapism, but sometimes when people escape it is when they are able to look around themselves and see a little further than usual. And when that happens, some funny ideas are bound to come out. We were lucky to be there. We made an impact. And this is just the beginning.

P. J. Shannon

Designer politics (1987)

From the April 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are many ways to try to persuade people to buy a magazine: from putting a picture of a glamorous celebrity on the cover to promising a "shock, horror" story inside. Other magazines and journals try to attract readers by advertising special offers and free gifts. For organisations whose main concern is profit this comes as no surprise. The competition for readers is intense not least because a large circulation will attract profitable advertising. It is little wonder that the packaging and the gimmicks become as important as the content.

So, bearing that in mind try to guess which monthly journal in a recent issue contained within its stylish covers a special offer for unisex boxer shorts ("They're stylish! They're fashionable!"); another offer for "extra strength" condoms ("Teatless for the aesthetic among us"); and a feature on what to buy and where to go on Valentine's Day? A number of possible candidates come to mind. City Limits or Time Out perhaps whose main purpose is to inform young Londoners where to go or what to see? Or one of those glossy magazines like Cosmopolitan directed at the "liberated" woman-about-town? Or a spoof article in Private Eye maybe? 

No! It was the magazine that still refers to itself as the "Theoretical and discussion journal of the Communist Party" - Marxism Today. To be fair there was an attempt to try to give the boxer shorts some political significance. The reader was offered a choice of two styles - one with the word "Proletariat" in cyrillic lettering printed all over them; the other featuring the Aeroflot logo! (No, this really wasn't a Private Eye spoof). It was perhaps slightly surprising that Marxism Today was selling boxer shorts with an apparently pro-Soviet appeal since it is the journal of the Euro-communist lot in the CP. Or maybe it was a closet gesture of support for Gorbachev, who, if the western media are to be believed, is as trendy and style-conscious as Marxism Today. It was harder to try to discern any kind of political message behind the ad for the condoms, although they are, we are told, "brought to you exclusively by Red Stripe".

The Valentine's Day feature began with an overt attempt at making a political connection by suggesting that "the obvious gift for an activist" is a telephone answering machine. "Late for meetings?" it continued, "buy them Stephen Rotholz Icon watches". Or perhaps a £650 hand-made bicycle is more up your street as a present for your "Valentine"? Or a piece of Lalique glassware costing, we are helpfully informed, from £50 to £15,000. And for that special Valentine's night out? How about dinner for two at a Burmese restaurant which will cost you £30? Marxism Today even comes up with a suggestion to fill the pregnant pauses should the after-dinner conversation begin to flag. Shares and share fluctuations, of course! And for anyone with a conscience then Marxism Today helps us off the hook by announcing that "popular capitalism may be subverted with information from Stewardship Unit Trust, who will invest your money in ventures which don't have connections with alcohol, tobacco or defence industries". Well that's okay then. Ideologically sound shares!

Marxism Today claims to be a serious political journal. It's true that in between all the trivia quoted above there were some serious political articles aimed mostly at the trendy broad left rainbow coalition of good causes. Class politics are out. Life-style politics are most definitely in. Forget about trying to change society in any meaningful way and concentrate instead on changing your image and Marxism Today will tell you how. Design, presentation and packaging are being used to disguise the emptiness of their politics in much the same way as Conservative, Labour and Alliance parties which give as much attention to the colours, logos and wrappings of their policies as they do to the content in their attempt to sell them to the punters. The idea that you can win people over to your side by the packaging rather than the content of policies is nothing new. Elections, in particular, have always been long on fine-sounding rhetoric and short on incisive political analysis. Offering their readers designer Marxism Today condoms and boxer shorts is just the 1980s' version of politicians "buying" workers' support with free beer.

Marxism Today must be totally out of touch with the lives of the majority of workers in this country for whom whether to buy Lalique glassware or an answering machine as a Valentine's Day present is not a decision that they are likely to be losing much sleep over. Most people do not lead the lives of trendy lefties giving support to a handful of "good causes" because they've received the ideologically sound seal of approval from the political "style" gurus. Trying to win support and readers with gimmicks like boxer shorts and condoms shows contempt for workers and is no substitute for sound analysis of capitalism and convincing arguments for socialism. The Communist Party has always been short of both so perhaps, after all, it's not surprising that they've given up trying to sell politics and have turned to selling "lifestyles" instead.

Janie Percy-Smith