Voice From The Back: Bad Day, good day (2001)

The Voice From The Back Column from the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bad Day, good day

It was 1 February when the news broke. Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steel giant, announced that there would be more than 6,000 redundancies at five main sites across the country. An example of how devastating this could be is summed up by Vernon Lewis who worked in Ebbw Vale steel plant for 22 years: “Corus hasn’t just ripped the heart out of a steel works, it has ripped the heart out of [the] community.” Times, 2 February. So widespread gloom throughout the country? Well, no, not quite: “Meanwhile, the city was happy at events with shares in Corus shooting ahead on news of the restructuring. By midday, shares had jumped 10 percent, up 7.75p at 82.5p before closing at 82 percent, Herald, 2 February.

Blairing a new tune

Four years ago our TV screens were filled with a smiling Tony Blair being worshipped by devout Labour supporters to the accompaniment of loudspeakers blaring, “Things Can Only Get Better.” But that was four years ago. Elderly people are waiting for up to 25 hours on trolleys in hospital accident and emergency departments, according to the soon-to-be-abolished Community Health Councils. Nigel Crisp, NHS chief executive, admitted that there was still a “problem” with waiting times. Times, 1 February.

Breakthroughs and heartbreaks

“The principle was accepted last November that insurers would be able to make use of some kinds of genetic testing information. If such tests become more widespread and insurers are given greater access to the results, a lot of the insurance market could disappear altogether in the long run. If building insurers jack up premiums in houses on floodplains, you can bet the same will happen to vulnerable people’s medical cover, permanent health insurance, critical illness, life cover and long-term care plans.” Observer, 21 January. Inside capitalism even scientific breakthroughs turn out nasty for the poor and vulnerable.

Business as usual

Their followers may hate each other and shout about 1690 and 1916, but the leaders of the Unionists and SDLP are co-operative when it comes to the really important issues to Irish capitalism—business and profits. “David Trimble and his Catholic counterpart, SDLP leader Seamus Mallon, are flying into Paris this morning in a bid to drum up investment by French firms in Northern Ireland. They will meet Medef, the French employers’ association, and then head off to the Elysée Palace to see Jacques Chirac, the President.” Times, 31 January.

Drowning not waving

“Government scientists from 99 countries, including major oil producers, have agreed that the earth’s atmosphere is warming faster than expected. In an unprecedented display of unanimity, their evidence points to human activity as the culprit. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) now projects the earth’s average surface temperature will rise 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius between 1990 and 2100, higher than its 1995 estimate of a one to 3.5 degree rise . . . Sea levels are predicted to rise between nine and 88 cm (3.54 and 36.64 inches) from 1990 to 2100, potentially displacing tens of millions of people in low-lying areas such as the Pearl River Delta, Bangladesh and Egypt.” Herald, 23 January. Capitalism in its drive for profits is ruining the planet. Only socialism with production solely for use can save it.

Economy Class Syndrome

“Even though the Observer first warned of the dangers of economy class syndrome two years ago, airlines have refused to act. Now fresh research to be published in the British Medical Journal reveals that a tenth of blood clots treated at one London hospital were caused by sitting immobile on flights. If these figures were represented nationally it would point to 3,000 cases a year and 300 deaths, making death from a blood clot a greater risk than a plane crash.” Observer, 21 January. In their efforts to increase profits airlines are cramming as many people as possible into their aeroplanes. If that means reduced leg room leading to fatal risk—tough.

Letters: Marx and/or Freud? (2001)

Letters to the Editors from the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx and/or Freud?

Dear Editors,

I found the articles and discussion in the January and February issues on ads, capitalist art, psychology and Amos’s letter interesting; indeed one can make a synthesis of all this, which I would like to try and do, basing my discussion on Amos’s confused critique.

Your reply (Letters, January) was one way of answering him: socialism will be able to expand production of useful things in an ecologically defensive manner. There is another approach, and that is to point out how we see socialism being established. We have always stressed the need for majority, working class political action, based on understanding of and desire for socialism.

Capitalism shapes our needs through ads–you are what you own! Socialist society will certainly not be one of massive consumption since we will develop a new ethos; ideas become material forces when they lay hold of the masses, I believe Marx noted. Amos is judging consumption in socialist society through the eyes of a pro-capitalist when he says that everyone should, or would, be on a par with Western workers. Whoever said the lifestyle of Western workers is desirable? Also we certainly agree with Marx’s idea that humans make their own history, but only within the realms of what is materially possible. This is historical materialism, not utopian thinking of post-modernist idealism.

Seen in this light Amos’s view that social democratic parties are the best bet against fascism and barbarism is ludicrous. Concepts like fascism and democracy do not exist in vacuo. Democracy can only be safeguarded and expanded with the growth of socialist consciousness. That is the lesson Germany 1933-45.

That period does, though, raise troubling questions for Marxists. Class consciousness does not arise entirely spontaneously, it would seem. Some irrational factor is at work. Wilhelm Reich saw this as a result of sexual repression and the patriarchal family structure. Reich, however, was an unrepentant Leninist, and if his theory has any credibility it must be applicable to the truly fascist period of Stalinism as well.

A more credible approach is that taken by Erich Fromm (even though he made the mistake of equating nationalisation with socialism). Fromm is a good antidote to the idealist, psychological nonsense being peddled now, despite his works being some 30-50 years old. He took the concept of alienation, to be found in Marx’s philosophical worldview, and attempted to give it a Freudo-style twist. His Fear of Freedom, The Sane Society, and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness are great books.

Homo sapiens is not in control of the products of sinew and brain, relations to each other, has lost himself and his connection to nature. (It is also factually incorrect of Amos to state Marx wasn’t green—he was, and he need only read Marx to find out.) The impersonal forces can leave the individual truly crushed; open to neurosis and inclined to let someone else solve problems. Only by establishing democratic structures and common ownership (socialism) can the individual and society progress. In this respect can Reich’s idea of human emancipation (necessarily involving sexual emancipation) be defensible.

Capitalism creates the material grounding for socialism, but a society of alienated people. The dialectic, socialisation of production but not in society’s interest, will be solved in socialist revolution. As will be the dialectic of mind: rationality and irrationality. This concept answers those who wonder about anti-social behaviour in socialist society; it will regress.

I realise Freudo-Marxism isn’t held as being tenable by fellow comrades, so it is prudent you comment on it.

Yours for a sane society

G.C. Taylor, 

Brabrand, Denmark

Reply: 

It is true that we are Marxians rather than Freudians, historical materialists rather than believers in psychoanalysis. Freud himself of course was not a socialist, but in fact embraced the “human nature objection” in an extreme form. He was a pessimist who believed that without morality and government to channel human sexual energies constructively utter chaos would result. To their credit, some of his followers—Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm—did not go along with him on this and modified his theory to make the existence of a free, socialist society compatible with the Freudian view of human nature.

Reich’s The Sexual Revolution, written in the 1930s, has always been popular because it advocates a more relaxed attitude to sex—which Socialists share—but this message can be accepted without accepting the particular theory Reich put forward to justify it (which was very dubious and eventually led him to claim to have identified and to be able to measure “sexual energy” or “orgone” as he called it). Incidentally, although Reich was a member of the German Communist Party when he wrote it, he was soon expelled, partly because of it. In one of his later works, the pamphlet Listen, Little Man! he uses the term “state capitalism” in relation to Russia.

Marcuse’s Eros and Civilzation, like all his writings, is heavy going but his argument that abundance meant that sexual repression was no longer necessary found an echo amongst some socialists when it appeared in 1955.

You’re probably right about Fromm being the best of them, no doubt because (to the annoyance of the orthodox Freudians and even of Marcuse) he abandoned Freud’s explanations in terms of individual biology for social ones. The books of his you mention have always been popular amongst Socialist Party members—Editors.

Spying on the Trotskyists

Dear Editors,

In the article, “Chatham House and spies” (Socialist Standard, December 2000), I stated that the Security Service (MI5) has monitored, and heavily infiltrated Trotskyist organisations in this country, since 1943. In fact, the government’s Security Executive under the chairmanship of Viscount Swinton, using information obtained from MI5, reported under the heading of “subversive activities” on the British Union of Fascists, the Communist Party, pacifist and conscientious objectors; organisations, as well as Trotskyists, as early as 1941 (PRO: FO 371 32583).

In particular, the Security Executive considered the activities of Trotskyists in Britain, and concluded that nothing should be done to lessen their embarrassment to the Communist Party (PRO: FO 371 344 34416), and (PRO: FO 371 29523). Three years later, when the Trotskyists formed the Revolutionary Communist Party, Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, submitted a memorandum to the War Cabinet, in which he concluded that the Trotskyists had had little success in penetrating the Trade Unions. Among the leaders named was Ted Grant, the future leader of Militant Tendency, later ousted by the present leader, Peter Taaffe.

Peter E. Newell, 

Colchester, Essex

The socialist position on Kosovo vindicated (2001)

From the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Very occasionally, the bourgeois media serve socialists tasy snacks which cut to the reality of how capitalism operates. Hidden away on the comment pages of the Guardian, arch greeny liberal George Monbiot provides a compelling case for how Caspian Sea oil was a major factor in the Kosovan war after all. With one eye on an article by fellow liberal Jonathon Freedland (written at the time of the bombing), which mocked the idea that oil had anything to do with the war effort, Monbiot quotes from various prominent sources to demonstrate the opposite.

The Trans-Balkan oil pipeline (which is coming up for approval) will transport Caspian Sea oil from the Black Sea port of Burgas to the Adriatic, passing through Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania. According to a paper by the US Trade and Development agency, the pipeline will “provide American companies with a key role in developing the vital east-west corridor” and “facilitate rapid integration” of the “Balkans with western Europe”. Monbiot says that there is “no question” that this featured prominently in Balkan war politics. The then US energy secretary said: “This is about America’s energy security . . . We’ve made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it’s very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right.” The pipeline does not pass through the former Yugoslavia, but as the Albanian president said: “no solution confined within Serbian borders will bring lasting peace”. Monbiot adds that “the message could scarcely have been blunter: if you want Albanian consent for the Trans-Balkan pipeline, you had better wrest Kosovo out of the hands of the Serbs”. Subsequently, we can now fully understand the strategic need for “stability” in the Balkans.

The May 1999 Socialist Standard said that “wars are fought over markets, investment outlets, raw material sources and trade routes and strategic points to control them”. Liberals mocked us at the time. Now, after their support for the slaughter of our class in Kosovo, they will have to concede that we were right all along. Thanks George!

World View: Son of Star Wars (2001)

From the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rarely have Americans elected to office a president as impetuous, callous and as indifferent to the well-being of others as George W Bush, who even as a presidential candidate, signing more death warrants than any Governor in history, made no secret of his hawkish ambitions, determined to forge ahead with the “Son of Star Wars” National Missile Defence (NMB) system and to propel the world into another arms race and all the old cold war hostilities that accompany it and, indeed, perhaps signing the future death warrants of hundreds of millions.

The recent Pentagon report Proliferation: Threat and Response came as a godsend for the Bush camp, anxious to rationalise a planned $60 billion increase in defence spending, inclusive of investment in the NMD programme which would deploy thousands of air defence missiles to intercept intercontinental ballistic weapons fired by the proverbial “rogue states”.

The report would have it that the threat to mainland America is as great now as during the Cold War era and that apocalypse is just over the horizon, discerning a credible threat from North Korea within 10 years, Iran within 15 years and Iraq within 20 years. The report is critical of China for its continuing use of arms sales to “advance its strategic and economic interests”, but is silent on the US domination of the global arms market and its related hegemonic aspirations. Likewise, the amnesiacs who compiled the report lambast Iraq for its “pursuit of regional hegemony”, Syria for its excessive $1 billion defence budget (the US defence budget is currently $300 billion) and North Korea for its stockpiling of chemical weapons (when the US has the largest stockpile of chemical weapons on the planet). At every turn, it seems, there’s a rogue state just itching to lob a nuclear or biological weapon at the defender of global peace and democracy, and it is this warped logic that informs the hawkish stance in Washington. No mention is made of the fact that even without NMD, any state stupid enough to throw anything bigger than a grenade at the US would be bombed back into the Stone Age.

Nevertheless, it is talk that is demanding a $60 billion increase in US defence spending (which is actually China’s total military budget), and rhetoric that the cold warriors Bush has given cabinet posts to are more than familiar with. Once a critic of NMD, Colin Powell, of Gulf War fame (a man who came to prominence covering up the My Lai massacre and later up to his neck in the arms for hostages scandal and the illegal supplying of arms to the Contras) is now Secretary of State and the Pentagon’s top NMD salesperson. Other cabinet posts have gone to other Reaganite hawks such as Richard Armitage, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Candaleezza Rice. Bush’s choice for key cabinet posts alone should warn us there is some serious ass kicking is going to be done.

Whereas Bush sees NMD as a “constitutional and moral requisite” (he incidentally also believes humans and fish can coexist peacefully) US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld agrees that “it is in many respects a moral issue”, that NMD is essential to counter “the raw and random violence of the outlaw regime or the rogue state armed with missiles of mass destruction”, that NMD would make the US “less isolationist”, “less vulnerable and more prepared to help its allies”.

At a defence conference in Munich in early February, at which the implications of NMD were discussed, concern was raised that NMD would undoubtedly spark an arms race. Rumsfeld declared that NMD would not destroy arms control agreements including the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, but later suggested the 1972 treaty was “ancient history”.

Arms race

Sergei Ivanov, head of the Russian National Security Council told the conference that “the destruction of the 1972 ABM Treaty will result in annihilation of the whole structure of strategic stability and create prerequisites for a new arms race”. As much, and more, was hinted at back in late 1999 when Republican hawks celebrated a Senate vote not to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and announced their intention to scupper the 1972 ABM Treaty which outlawed Star Wars’ missiles systems capable of intercepting incoming missiles. For it was then that Russian Defence Minister Nikolai Mikolov, acknowledging Russia could not match US technology, declared Russia would simply deploy more warheads capable of overwhelming the US nuclear umbrella system.

In November last year the Kremlin announced plans to cut its number of men under arms by 360,000 and to shift the emphasis from nuclear weapons to conventional arms. This decision has since been shelved and will be reconsidered in March at the earliest. Meanwhile, in direct response to Washington’s announcement that the US intends to go through with the Son of Star Wars anti-missile programme, whatever shape this may be (air-based, sea-based, space-based) and regardless of any objections, Russia has announced it will seek an anti-US diplomatic alliance with China, North Korea and Iran.

As well as Russia, both India and China have expressed concern about the NMD, fearing it will very much provoke an arms race and force them to expand their own nuclear weapons programmes. Whist France and Germany are wholly opposed to NMD, the British government is currently playing its cards close to its chest. Though the MoD and the Foreign Office claim they are “not convinced of the merits” of NMD, Defence Secretary Geoffrey Hoon, asked if the US would be allowed to upgrade their early warning system at Fylingdales in Yorkshire replied: “We share of course US concerns about emerging threats. The US is our closest ally”.

For Tony Blair’s part, whilst it is felt he is bending towards the idea, keen to placate his US cronies, his government is under no pressure to make a decision for several months, which suits New Labour down to the ground. It should also be remembered that Blair is facing a general election this year so has no intentions of losing votes as a result of arguments with anti-nuclear protestors. It is, however, a safe bet that Blair will indeed see an election victory as his mandate to commit Britain to Bush’s wider game plan for global US domination.

It is a fair guess that there is more behind NMD than Washington lets on. For instance, the moment you begin installing a sophisticated missile defence shield is the moment your adversaries begin seeking ways around it. Whilst NMD may well take out the incoming missile, what of the biological or nuclear bomb in the suitcase or the suicide bomber?

A more likely explanation lies in the fears of the Republican right that the only discernible threat to US hegemony in the 21st Century will come from China as it develops into the economic giant many think it capable of—a serious challenger for US profits. What better way to curtail China’s economic ambitions than to compel it to channel more money into defence and away from other social programmes, economically hamstringing it? A similar tactic had been employed against the former Soviet Union during the Reagan administration in the late eighties, forcing state capitalism into an early grave as it found itself unable to meet the costly demands of an escalating arms race weighted heavily in the favour of the US.

It is poignantly ironic that George W Bush is preparing to raise the global security stakes when just over ten years ago his father George Bush, as president, announced to the world the benefits of the coming “peace dividend” in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the “collapse of communism”; a world in which there would no longer be the need for countries to invest heavily in military hardware now the bogeyman had been exorcised—that money was now to be used for health, education and other social programmes. But there again, George senior did announce at his inauguration that the 20th Century had been the “American Century” and that he’d be doing his damnedest to ensure the 21st was also an American century. So maybe George junior is simply following out his father’s promises. Ensuring the 21st century will also be ruled by force and woe betides any one silly enough to mess with US interests.

One thing is sure. The US is deadly serious about possible threats to its strategic and economic interests in the 21st century and has already toyed with a future confrontation with a possible rising superpower. In January, the US air force, along with 250 military and civilian “experts”, completed its first major war games in space at the Space Warfare Centre in Colorado, rehearsing a conflict set in 2017 between China and the US. It is no great leap of the imagination to envisage the projected winner.

As we have announced several times in the past year, if we are to prevent the 21st century becoming a more violent re-run of the 20th, that witnessed two world wars, the first use of nuclear weapons and many hundreds of smaller conflicts—all in the name of profit—it is essential we, the victims, the cannon fodder, the class that has the biggest price to pay to satisfy the whims of the mighty, begin to organise now; not tomorrow when NMD is in place, nor in years to come when the sirens are screaming. We as a class have suffered too much and have too much to lose to leave decisions regarding the future of our planet in the hands of group of arrogant, conceited and profit-crazed individuals. Let’s really organise to take their power away, before it is too late.

John Bissett

In the news (2001)

From the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

More devastation for the working class

Almost immediately after the latest UK/US air strikes on Iraq, it was perhaps quite strange to read in a Guardian headline: “Allies ready to ease Iraq sanctions.” According to Whitehall sources, “Britain and the US have agreed to rethink their policy towards Iraq in the face of mounting hostility from the Arab world, inflamed by airstrikes.”

Was this the final throw of the dice—going out with a bang rather than with a whimper? Perhaps it was a show of strength by the new president, cementing relations with Tony Blair to assure everyone that the special relationship is still intact. This said, the strategic timing could not have been worse given current Arab-Israeli relations (with the remote possibility of a wider regional conflict). We also have to consider the potentially damaging relations with OPEC, which could react by squeezing oil production—thus pushing up oil prices—as Arab opinion becomes ever more hostile to Western interests.

Of course, with it being an open secret that the oil sanctions are already being routinely flouted (especially via the new Iraqi-Syrian pipeline)—combined with the fact that the major players such as France, Russia and China want sanctions to be lifted—it could well be that the US/UK are about to bow to the inevitable and bring Iraqi oil back on tap. The rehabilitation process may have already begun with a new proposal to move towards “smart sanctions”. These sanctions would be predominantly concerned with arms control and controlling the freedom of movement for leading members of the Iraqi regime. However, as the Guardian further points out: “Imports for rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure and oil industry would be allowed.”

We have previously documented the murderous and hypocritical policies of the US/UK towards Iraq with the resulting mass slaughter of the working class and we condemn it once again.

It now appears that the US/UK hegemonic policy is slowly giving way to what the other major powers wanted all along—the rehabilitation of Iraq. But this does not mean that the US/UK strategy has been in vain. On the contrary, it has kept a brutal dictator in power, Iraq’s borders intact (thus also containing Iran) and it has devastated the working class.

Screened for profit

Insurance firms were questioned by members of the House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee on genetic testing on 7 February. The spokesman for Norwich Union said that only tests for Huntingdon’s disease had been carried out by his firm, as agreed by the insurance companies’ self-regulating body.

“But during questioning Mike Urmston, chief actuary at Norwich Union, was forced to explain that breast and ovarian cancer tests were also being used,” says the Times.

Shock, horror and gasps of amazement from the committee. Could this be a capitalist firm putting profits before human wellbeing? Surely not?

“Dr. Ian Gibson, a member of the committee, accused Norwich Union of trying to set up a ‘genetic ghetto’. He called on the Government to stem the tide of genetic testing by insurance companies. Self-regulation is clearly not working. These companies are attempting to identify a genetic underclass which can only lead to them profiting and individuals being discriminated against.”

The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine has also carried a report that such screening was putting people’s lives at risk. “The risk, the authors say, is that people will be discouraged from taking tests with potential medical benefits because they fear insurance companies will discriminate against them.”

The mapping of the human gene code, with its possibilities of a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, breast and ovarian cancers, should be celebrated as a great triumph for humanity. However, we live in a capitalist world where profit is paramount and where human health and happiness count for very little.

The snows of Kilimanjaro and the drive for profit

At least one-third of the massive ice field atop Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa has disappeared or melted in the last dozen years, according to Lonnie Thompson, professor of geological sciences at Ohio University, speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. About 82 per cent of the ice field has been lost since it was first mapped in 1912.

A similar picture emerges from his research for South America, China, Tibet and for glaciers around the world. “These glaciers are very much like the canaries once used in coal mines,” Thompson said. “They’re an indicator of massive changes taking place and a response to the changes in climate in the tropics.”

Dealing with the dramatic loss of glaciers in the Andes, he said: 

“The loss of these frozen reserves threaten water resources for hydroelectric power production in the region, and for crop irrigation and municipal water supplies. What they’re really doing now is cashing in on a bank account that was built over thousands of years but isn’t being replenished. Once it’s gone, it will be diffficult to reform.”

“In such cases, the countries will probably have to switch to burning fossil fuels to meet their power needs. And by doing so, they’ll add more carbon dioxide and water vapour to the atmosphere—two gases that are known to enhance the greenhouse effect and intensify global warming.”

This is typical of capitalist society which, in its drive for profit, uses cheap fossil fuels to deal with the effects of global warming, and thereby causes more global warming. See www.acs.ohio-state.edu/units/research/archive/glasgone.htm.

TV Review: Who wants to be a millionaire? (2001)

TV Review from the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

I have just witnessed what I can only describe as a truly sickening TV spectacle. No, not the Queen’s Christmas speech but an edition of the “couples” version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

Now, normally I enjoy quiz shows (provided they are genuinely based on general knowledge, rather than the truly inane “game shows” which are such a staple of prime-time TV)—indeed, I have been a contestant on Fifteen-to-One. Not because I expected to win it, but because I enjoyed the challenge of seeing how far I could go (not that far, as it happened).

I generally find Millionaire to be an enjoyably tense programme—cynics may sneer at the absurdity of becoming so improbably rich simply by answering quiz questions, but is this really any more absurd than being rich simply because of an accident of birth? Yes, it’s escapism but it offers a route whereby some may escape poverty—although, of course, a socialist society would have no need of such escape routes.

I sat down to watch the “couples” show tonight, naïvely not realising how much conflict might be caused if a couple reached the higher-ranked prizes. Silly me . . .

On two occasions, couples reached £125,000, knowing that a correct answer to the next question would win them £250,000, whilst an incorrect answer would drop them back to £32,000. In both cases, the wife was fairly sure (but not certain) of the answer to the relevant question; in both cases the husband was uncertain and counselled caution. In both cases, the husband got his way, and they took the existing prize money rather than gamble it. (One could speculate on what this may mean about the “normal” balance of power between men and women in contemporary capitalism . . .) However, in neither case was the decision reached smoothly between the couple. Given the potentially life-changing nature of such prize money for the contestants, it was clearly not an easy decision too make, but the almost unbearable tension between the couples was shamelessly played upon by Chris Tarrant as a source of cheap entertainment.

Of course the programme demonstrated quite graphically how the money system can poison human relationships. Knowing how Chris Tarrant enjoys teasing the contestants before giving them the answer, it was naïve of me not to anticipate that he would revel in the couples’ disagreements. However the sight of his grinning face (normally only a minor irritation to me) as he predicted “storms over Birmingham” (the home of one of the couples), or that “she will never forgive him for the rest of his life”, was, quite frankly, nauseating and disgusting.

No doubt Tarrant himself has long since left behind any economic situation where such an amount of money would be significant to him (as shown in a recent programme in which he was incredibly patronising towards a contestant who admitted to never having seen £1,000 before), but is it really unreasonable to expect him to act sympathetically towards couples who disagreed? Sadly, given the perversity of “entertainment” within capitalism, and ITV’s desire for ratings, the answer is probably yes.

Shane Roberts

Socialist? Feminist? (2001)

Pamphlet Review from the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the Ashes of the Old Century, A Better World’s in Birth . By Andrea Bauer. (64 pp. $4.50 from Red Letter Press, 409 Maynard Ave. S., Suite 201, Seattle, WA 98104, USA.)

This is the Political Resolution adopted by the 1999 convention of a US trotskyist organisation called the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP).

I’m not sure which “better world” the title of this pamphlet is referring to, but it is certainly not planet Earth. This is a world where the state capitalist dictatorships of the Soviet bloc were “workers states” and “. . . societies in which the profit system had been overthrown and production and distribution were organized essentially in the interest of working people”. A world where “nationalization of the credit system” is a socialist demand. A world where the working class must be led and directed by “trained, dedicated revolutionaries” rather than rely on our own conscious actions. Most unbelievably of all, a world where workers “. . . respond with anger and pressure, not cynicism and apathy, when the Second Internationalists (Labour and Social Democratic parties) fail to act as their representatives”.

Its somewhat upsetting that the FSP styles itself as a “socialist, feminist” organisation. An organisation which regards itself as feminist while defending state capitalist regimes as “workers states” should ask itself some questions. As a system of society in which the FSP claim the profit system had been overthrown we should expect women to have liberated themselves from the shit capitalism throws (disproportionately) on them. Was this really the case though? Not quite:

“. . . women in Eastern Europe lived under a system of formal, legislated equality. Women had the legal right to work, and most barriers to women’s employment were lifted. Mandated equality, however, is not the same as freedom. Women were not given a choice of lifestyle, but were obligated to work. Since “equality” was imposed by the state, there was no public dialogue about the changes in women’s roles, and sexism and discrimination persisted, both in the public and domestic spheres. Women were still expected to do all of the child rearing and housework, for example, while working the same hours as men.”

In Romania, women were required to bear four, and then later five, children; many died from illegal abortions, or were allowed to bleed to death if they refused to reveal the names of illegal abortionists. (http://civnet.org/journal/issue3/cfbeco.htm)

Life for working class women in the state capitalist/”communist” states was a life not a million miles away from that of a working class woman in the openly capitalist “west”. What sort of liberation is offered by the “workers states” which the FSP see as a model for socialism if we are just going to continue being wage slaves and women are going to continue to be crushed by the burdens of a patriarchal class society?

Even the high percentage of women in national legislatures and public office in eastern bloc countries relative to the west is deceptive when comparison is made with percentages of women in the Party bureaucracy:

“In the bodies which did have real power—the communist parties’ central committees, for instance—there were almost no women” (http://www.oska.org.pl/english/womeninpoland/perpectives/2.html).

Just like the western states these “workers’ states” were systems of minority-class economic, political and social domination, with male authority figures at the top. That women are suffering disproportionately in the changeover period following the collapse of the eastern state capitalist bloc and losing many of what gains were won under state capitalism is an argument for abolishing the capitalist system altogether, not going “back to the future” to a “workers’ paradise” that never existed.

Ben Malcolm

The Budget: rearranging the furniture (2001)

From the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Politicians are sometimes conscious liars—often proudly so. Indeed, that’s their job, to persuade people to support them regardless of their merits rather than because of them, and to justify the actions that the economy demands they make. Politicians confront journalists, grinning from ear-to-ear, knowing their interlocutor knows that they are lying, as they dance through the empty ritual of the media interview. This very fact makes it difficult to estimate what politicians are going to do, and means that they can only be fully understood in retrospect.

This applies especially to the spinmeisters of the Labour Party, who had gone out of their way prior to the election to disguise their intentions under a barrage of rhetoric. With Labour now close to completing its first four-year term, it is possible to look back and examine their period in government by what they have actually done while in office.

The issue of taxation dominates contemporary political debate, with each party competing to be the Party of Low Taxation, whilst simultaneously offering voters higher public services. Tories allege the tax burden has risen, Labour states that tax rates have been cut, endless streams of statistics are hurled viscously in either direction, with illumination being no-one’s goal. In the meantime leftists bleat and demand that Labour “tax the rich and make them pay”. On top of all that, the immense complexity of the taxation system, coupled with intricate shifts in the economy and in methods of presentation, makes it a struggle to try to accurately find out what is really happening.

It has become orthodoxy among Labourites that they lost the 1992 election because of their image of being a tax-raising party, scaring away the affluent workers known as “Middle England”. As a part of their image make-over campaign, and their half-truthful manifesto, they pledged themselves to lower income tax when elected. In the manner of political debate, this allowed their speakers to state that they were going to lower taxes (that is, income tax) even as and when they were going about raising the overall tax burden. Whenever challenged by the Tories, they simply pointed out that the Tories raised taxes 22 times during their period in power.

Taxing problem

Labour have so far succeeded in reducing the starting rate of income tax down to 10 percent. The logic for this is that whilst benefiting the poorest workers, it also cuts taxes for almost everyone else, including the most well-off (since cutting the basic rate lowers the tax paid on that band by all tax payers). Also, as the bulk of income tax nominally falls upon the mid-range of the income scale, reducing the starting rate allows for the appearance of cutting tax for all, without actually costing the government much money. At the same time the state has raked in sizeable sums by ending the IR-35 tax exemption upon self-employed contractors, who though technically selling only their labour power as employees, are able to register as small companies and gain tax benefits.

Reducing the starting rate also has the advantage of tying in with Labour’s employment strategy. Since workers are selling their labour power for a market-defined rate, and will not work for less then that rate, it must be their take-home pay that decides their willingness to work. If their take home pay is lowered, say by taxes, this translates into upwards wage pressures, which ultimately means that the burden for any increase in taxation will fall upon the employers. Conversely, if tax rates are cut, it makes it cheaper to actually employ people, and so cutting the starting rate of tax allows more people to move from unemployment to low paid jobs which can be made profitable.

Labour tied this concept in with their benefits policy, by introducing “The Working Families Tax Credit” (which, they passed off as a tax cut) whereby tax is rebated to low-paid workers, instead of paying them directly in the form of benefits. Whilst this does not affect the overall level of their income, it structures it so that dependence is upon gaining employment rather than claiming state benefits. Essentially, it is using the taxation system as a means of social control to work within the wages system, and to apply labour discipline to the workforce. Thus they can present it as a double coup both of cutting taxes, and also cutting the size of the welfare budget; all by simply rearranging the furniture. Thus, employers are able to exploit cheap labour, without having as great a tax burden to pay.

This reduction in the taxation upon exploiting labour is also reflected in their aim of reducing Corporation Tax as well. The aim is clearly to cut taxes upon production, and so promote investment into those areas. For a long time capital investment in the UK has been problematically low, and the government has sought to ease the burden upon investment via the taxation system. It is in this context that, when they imposed the Climate Change Levy, Labour were keen to point out that it did not represent an additional tax burden, due to offsetting decreases in employer contributions to National Insurance.

Tax farming

The shift from taxation directly on the point production to indirect taxation on consumption has been slowly going on since 1979. The Tories in their final budget observed how nearly half of all taxation came from indirect sources, mostly VAT. Labour has continued this trend, particularly through ever-increasing duties levied on fuel and tobacco.

There are limits, though, to the extent to which a government can exploit a monopoly or oligopoly to levy duties. If businesses are able to pass on the tax increase to the consumer in the form of higher prices this can cause problems. In some circumstances, if the price of a product rises alternative products are sought and demand is choked off. But since both tobacco and fuel, for example, are in their own ways essential with few if any substitute goods available, the result of any price increases caused by tax rises is that black markets and resentment grow up (as the state capitalist regimes in the former Soviet bloc found out). Recently the government has had to increase the amount of money spent on enforcing tobacco excise duty, which has eaten in considerably to its taxation gains. Likewise, the fuel increases resulted in last year’s national blockade and protests. Despite the tantalising promises of politically safe revenue for governments, there are limits to the amounts that can be levied through excise duties.

The reality of the government’s position is that the state is effectively a tax-farming business, and like other businesses, it is entirely subject to the ebbs and flows of the market. It can only raise so much taxation, from any given source and the economy as a whole, as the state of the market will bear. Given that the surplus value siphoned off via taxation is surplus value that cannot be re-invested for capital accumulation by the private sector, taxation represents a restriction upon the capitalist class. Hence, historically, high taxation has been seen as anathema by the capitalists, and much like the small-holder truckers they have organised politically to fight taxation. The amount of tax revenue the state can garner is entirely circumscribed by the needs of profitability.

State spending cannot add to the total of demand in the economy, all it can do is actuate demand, and guide it to overcome consumption problems (e.g. such as sustaining the reserve army of labour). In an economy without nationalised units of production—such as we now have—the best it can do is simply help circulate goods. Capital can tolerate the lost potential valorisation in times of plenty, but when accumulation and profitability slow, it begins to resent the resources lost to unproductive expenditure. Given that taxation has risen from about 9 percent of GDP at the beginning of the century to nearly 40 percent now, a figure that both Labour and Tories seem unable to reduce, it is clear that taxation is becoming too burdensome upon capital.

Labour’s reliance on windfall taxation can be seen in this context. Rather than increase current and general spending which the state will have to sustain in perpetuity, Gordon Brown has chosen to spend large sums on special projects, such as the “New Deal for the Unemployed”, by grabbing the £3 billion “Windfall Levy” from the recently-privatised utilities: a targeted tax which did not affect capital in general, and which did not represent an ongoing drain of surplus value. Likewise, the Chancellor benefited enormously from the sale of the mobile phone frequency licences—a cool £21 billion which can conveniently be accounted as taxation spread throughout the duration of the licence, whilst still being liquidity in the state’s hands.

War chest

Brown’s careful application of taxation, as well as some luck with the economy which has been at the high point of the business cycle, has left the government with a budget surplus, the infamous war chest. Although some money is likely to be spent to create the appearance of a give-away in the March budget, the statements of the government seem to suggest that this surplus will be held to hedge against the next downturn in the economy.

This would be consistent with the government’s whole strategy. Their taxation policies have largely been the usual fare from left of centre social democrats since they all abandoned overt Keynesian practices. What little effect its minor tinkering and readjustments of poverty have, it is always entirely within the scope and allowance of the ongoing workings of the market, and entirely devoid of any capacity to control the economy at a macro level.

Like a ragged, has-been stage magician, the government must keep on performing its budgetary tricks to give the appearance of doing something—anything—to keep hold of some sort of interest in its audience. Taxes go up, go down, and are moved from place to place in a blinding game of find the lady. Underneath it all is a watered-down version of an old illusion—the illusion that the state can control the economy, can direct its course, by playing around with its tax structure. That the act remains the same, time after time, will not stop the show, since the has-beens refuse to stop. They need booing from the stage.

Pik Smeet

50 Years Ago: Socialism on the state? (2001)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are not concerned with discussing the relative merits of state or private ownership in any particular industry, or in general. The basic features of capitalism remain the same in either case—the relation of buyer of labour power to seller, with the propertyless and poverty condition of the latter.

Those workers who expected a better deal from the state than from private employers have been, and are being sadly disillusioned. In rejecting claims for pay increases for railway workers Mr. W. P. Allen for the Railway Executive, recently told a Court of Inquiry “It is possible that far too many of those in our employ expect far too much from nationalisation far too quickly.” (The Star, 8.1.51).

As time goes by it is becoming increasingly clear that the interests of the majority of people cannot be served by any group of leaders who profess to be “on their side” any better than those who avowedly rule them. As Gordon Rattray Taylor puts it, “workers in nationalised industries are slowly waking up to the fact that they have only changed one kind of master for another.” (Are Workers Human?, p.18).

To those who voted Labour last time in the belief that state ownership holds out a solution, or even a step towards it, of their problems we say—profit from your mistake. The only prerequisite to a good life is your understanding its highest expression—a socialist world.

(From article by S. R. Parker, Socialist Standard, March 1951)

Indian Earthquake: Did it really kill? (2001)

From the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

In January, a 42-day long Indian religious festival began at Allahabad, 500 miles east of New Delhi. The Kumbh Mela attracted over 70 million Hindu pilgrims and believers, the largest gathering of humanity in history. Around one million “holy” men trekked from their remote hideaways in caves, forests and walled ashrams to be there, some revealing acts of devotion which along with the more traditional maintaining of absolute silence and sleeping on beds of nails, has included hanging upside down over smouldering fires, sitting under pots of dripping water, standing on one leg for years, staring at the sun for long periods, keeping arms permanently raised until they atrophied and in pursuit of total celibacy, having their penises enclosed in cages or fitted atop with iron rings. Such penances apparently bestow special powers, as demonstrated at the festival by the pulling along of heavy vehicles by sacred John Thomases. On one day, 24 January, over 30 million Hindu followers plunged joyously into the River Ganges to gain salvation, immortality and miraculously wash away their sins and diseases. According to the stars, this particular day had been determined to be the festival’s most auspicious time. And how did the Hindu gods respond to this immense display of spiritual faith, devotion and self-punishment with its high point of a mass dip in “sanctifying” waters where devotees prayed for “Mother Ganges” to bless them? With a 7.9 Richter earthquake just 48 hours later devastating Gujarat and killing over 30,000 people.

According to a Naga priest “bathing in the Ganges will accelerate the road to illumination”, so one might expect that following this disaster, a great many people will now stop believing in ridiculous fairy tales about divine nectar of immortality having spilled from a Kumbh (pitcher) into the confluence of three rivers (one invisible!) and thereafter becoming active every 12 years. Dedication and respect by humankind should go towards humankind, not any supernatural being or phenomenon which even if it did exist, manifestly has no inclination or ability whatsoever to prevent death, disease, poverty, hunger, exploitation, wars and numerous other everyday troubles. If thought of as an earthquake from god, and conveying a message, then it would be loud and clear: if the living want to go on living and be free of such horrors and suffering, they should forget all about religion, and act to look after themselves. Something applying as much to India’s Muslim minority who were soon praying to Mecca amidst the quake’s dead, dying and devastation, as it does to the Hindu majority.

If people let others deceive and persuade them into giving priority to belief in an almighty being, life after death and acceptance that loss of life and suffering from natural forces, conflicts, authoritarian control, hard work and the like are the will of god, then those religious leaders and governments claiming to be god’s Earthly assistants possess immense power, freedom to exploit and abuse that power and immunity for social failings. Such extreme influence, class privileges and infallibility explains why religion has existed for thousands of years and continues into the twenty-first century. But if those seeking to brainwash and manipulate us—and young impressionable minds especially—are rejected, and people instead give priority to looking after themselves and their needs collectively through socialism, then we prevent religious leaders from ruling and ruining our lives, along with political, military or any other type of would-be chiefs.

Reality

The reality with earthquakes is they kill only if we let them. They are inevitable, but death is not. It is collapsing buildings that take lives, not tremors in the ground. Throughout the animal kingdom, creatures have adapted to survive in their surroundings, but in our environment, where earthquakes are a fact of life, though nature challenges us to do something to protect ourselves, capitalism compels us to surrender safety to monetary profits and savings. No matter how severe earthquakes are, if buildings were properly built in the first place, then the vast majority of people would survive. This does not happen under capitalism, particularly in poorer countries, since the unavoidable pressure to make and save money affects what does, or more importantly, does not happen. There are pressures to build quickly and slapdashly to meet housing needs by landless labourers forced by poverty to find work in urban areas; inferior materials and construction methods are used in accordance with market forces, with poor people getting poorly-built homes; building inspectors are persuaded by politicians or back-handers to ignore breaches of rules so that businesses get the cheap employees they want and workers get hovels they can afford; landowners lobby governments, hand over party “donations” or resort to simple bribery to have new housing built on their land, even if it is unsuitable or downright dangerous; Mafia groups will drive away more legitimate building constructors. With, moneyless, socialism all such potentially lethal activity is avoided. Human needs and safety come second to nothing.

Even in rich countries like America, money can degrade safety. Multi-storey housing and office premises reach high into the sky despite earthquake risks because maximum profit comes from maximum exploitation of available ground. That means tall buildings crammed with residents or employees of capitalism’s banks, insurers, law firms etc, but high casualties if a major quake brings them down. But even where structures are well-built and designed to withstand quakes, it is usually because owners have decided that far more money would be lost than saved should damage arise from poor construction work or non-adherence to building codes. It might be said that the Japanese earthquake at Kobe in 1995 was an example of economic failure in weighing up money saved to potential losses. At $100bn, it was the most expensive “natural” disaster ever with 6,400 lives lost and 300,000 people made homeless. However, if the cost for achieving maximum safety and structural endurance had been $500bn, then Japanese capitalists acted “correctly”, and the dead were a “price worth paying”. The point is that where residents or workers find they have better survival prospects in better buildings; with capitalism, it is often more incidental than intentional.

Though seismologists don’t know precisely where or when earthquakes may strike, general areas of risk are identifiable. In a socialist society, how we respond to this information would be very different. There would be far greater freedom for those in danger to move to safer areas—action under capitalism that can involve huge financial losses from writing off unsafe homes, shifting businesses to where workers then live, adapting that region’s infrastructure to aid in exploiting the new workforce etc. And those who, for whatever reason, chose to reside in seismic zones, they would then have access to the best buildings capable of withstanding the most powerful of quakes. Although Japanese and Californian architects have designed “active buildings”, some on top of massive rubber shock absorbers or with computerised counterbalancing systems that identify and counteract seismic shocks, what’s the likelihood of such sophisticated technology being used under capitalism on multi-storey dwellings in poverty-stricken areas for workers on subsistence wages? And whereas with capitalism it is nuclear submarines, military satellites, stealth bombers, tanks and the like which get “properly” designed and rigorously tested beforehand to prevent any failures when they’re built in bulk, with socialism such diligence would then be applied to endangered homes and workplaces. Using superior designs, building methods and materials, there is no reason why populated areas should suffer any loss of life or major disruption after experiencing very powerful quakes.

Avoidable catastrophes

In a united socialist world, people would be able to move in large numbers if necessary to completely different regions of the world without any of today’s “them” and “us” animosity and violence created by capitalist exclusive assets, property rights and market-supporting politicians, as witnessed world-wide in places like Northern Ireland, the West Bank, Kosovo, Rwanda etc etc. Not forgetting India’s own continuing divisive caste system with “untouchables” lowest down, ranked as society’s toilet cleaners, 8,000 of whom were employed as “turd pickers” at the Kumbh Mela festival. India’s divisive internal Hindu-Muslim tensions which left thousands dead in riots when Hindu zealots destroyed an ancient mosque in Ayodhya in 1992, and which may soon erupt into further bloody confrontation if a planned new Hindu temple gets built there. And the on-off divisive dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir, a struggle that could claim many times the 26 January death toll in less than the short while the earthquake lasted, thanks to both sides’ possession of nuclear weapons.

We have access to more comprehensive information and news coverage about world disasters than any previous generation of humans, and yet it appears that people don’t feel driven to bring about an end to such catastrophes. Some may be moved to send money to charities or hand over old clothes and blankets, while others are assumed to have compassion fatigue. So why no sizeable political activity for real progress? It seems our society has been influenced to believe that nothing can be done. That big death tolls from quakes, famines, droughts, conflicts etc are inevitable. What efforts do schools and the media make to change this, by explaining both capitalism’s culpability and socialism’s solutions? If people don’t understand, then all there will be are yet more generations of children brainwashed on how to obtain “suitable” employment and use money, and endless TV reports of global tragedies, quickly downgraded by ratings concerns for the next show-biz marriage break-up or rich person’s demise. Brief public interest at best, or channel-changing “Not-another-disaster. There’s-nothing-I-can-do-is-there” indifference at worst. Of course, that suits capitalists and politicians just fine, but it’s only a matter of time before those far-away populations that we feel incapable of helping now will themselves one day be shrugging their shoulders while watching pictures of immense death, destruction and suffering in our part of the capitalist world. A major disaster is heading our way, and the only way to stop it is through widespread realisation that human needs can and must be prioritised, and collective political action for the social change that brings that about.

Max Hess

World View: The politics of poverty in Zambia (2001)

From the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are approaching the 2001 presidential and general elections and the political situation remains tense. Unemployment, poverty and the lack of viable education and health care has bred outright social discontent and resentment throughout Zambia.

President Frederick Chiluba’s MMD government is still in power and commands majority support in Parliament. The opposition parties remain weak and unable to capture a national consensus, because political allegiance in Zambia is determined by linguistic and tribal affiliations. Thus many of the opposition parties are little known in other provinces or areas. The only notable opposition parties are the UNIP, the Republican Party and the National Party for Democratic Development.

UNIP, after the retirement of Kenneth Kaunda from active politics, is embroiled in a leadership fiasco and stands a slim chance to command a large following. UNIP has a strong regional support in the Eastern province. The Republican Party, led by the local tycoon and former MMD party stalwart, Ben Muria, has a large following in the Copperbelt and Wapula provinces. The National Party for Democratic Development is led by former LONRHO group chairman in Zambia, Anderson Mazoka. This party has managed to scoop a number of parliamentary seats, mainly in the Southern and Western provinces. Its regional base is the Southern province.

An analysis of Zambia’s political scene reveals that the opposition parties have come to concentrate their election campaigns in the Copperbelt Province, especially in Kitwe. This is because historically this province has come to play a dominant role in Zambia’s domestic politics. The mining town of Kitwe is the hub of the copperbelt, inhabited by a vocal and politically aligned working class population. In this semi-industrial and mining town political consciousness and social discontent seem to be expressed more than anywhere else on the copperbelt.

The demise of the copper-mining giant ZCCM has had a marked impact on the commercial and industrial sector in Zambia. Economic development of any kind in Zambia depends upon the export potential of Zambia’s mono-copper-mining sector. Thus the privatisation of the copper mining industry has entailed the loss of revenue to the government. There has occurred a startling decline in overall commercial and industrial production in the copper belt mining towns.

The working class on the copper belt have been subjected to untold misery. The public sector has shed its labour force while those who have remained in active employment receive salaries in arrears and work under shoddy conditions. Privatisation of the public and commercial sector has led to widespread unemployment in Zambia. The surrendering of city council housing units to people paying rent to themselves has deprived the city council of revenue and thus led to a decline in community welfare.

The sale of the council houses was a presidential directive and thus political. But the future consequences were not taken into consideration; nor could these consequences be corrected by the government. Urban cities have been turned into villages overnight, characterised by social poverty, child malnutrition and squalor. This voluntary creation of slum townships is a new development in Zambia and has led to the frantic manoeuvres of President Chiluba to retain a large following.

The city townships have been turned in havens of social poverty. Because those who have purchased council houses cannot go back to rural areas when they retire, this tends to have a marked pressure on land in urban areas. Most of the retrenched working class population remain restricted in the townships, where they engage in household commercial activities of one kind or another. The unpaved roads, unlit streets and unmaintained water and sewage systems means that life in these townships remains hard and unbearable.

In an economy characterised by endemic social poverty and unemployment the MMD government is concentrating on handing out hefty amounts of money through well-timed presidential donations to needy members of society. But this is a naked political campaign gimmick which has brought rebuke upon the MMD government and tarnished the charismatic status of President Chiluba. Recently in Kitwe’s Mindolo township a Catholic priest turned down the presidential donation of K10,000,000 from the MMD Member of Parliament for Nkana constituency. It was an incident that shocked and which had never happened before.

Because the MMD government is heavily funded by mining investors like the Anglo-American Corporation, the opposition political fraternity stands a little chance to compete with the MMD in terms of campaign expenditure. Nor does anyone need to be told what purpose the colossal sums of money realised from the sale of privatised para-statal firms has been used for. If the MMD government is unable to find funds for expenditure on education and health, from where does the president get the money he hands out in donations? The widely publicised calls for a third term of office for President Chiluba are merely designed to create an image of his popularity and thus win the confidence of the overseas private investors, since, legislatively, Chiluba cannot stand for a third presidential term.

In its political composition the MMD government retains its linguistic and provincial allegiances as a party of the Wapula province. Linguistic and provincial allegiances determine the strength and popularity of every political party in Zambia. Thus tribalism acts as an impediment to multi-party politics in Zambia, and political domination comes to depend upon the entrenched historical pattern of linguistic and cultural complexities. Political consciousness is more pronounced among the relatively educated and working class in urban areas, more so than among the backward and static rural traditional societies.

Because the MMD is the ruling party, the large following it can command must be attributed more to curiosity than to sympathetic support as such. A large number of people flock to MMD political rallies just to have a glimpse of President Chiluba. But every politically conscious Zambian is aware that the MMD government has disastrously failed to resuscitate Zambia’s ailing economy.

Kephas Mulenga

Zambia

The biggest rogue (2001)

Book Review from the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs. By Noam Chomsky, Pluto Press, 2000.

Over the years, Chomsky has been described in various ways: as “the medic trying to cure a national endemic of selective amnesia”; as “the most dangerous man in the US”; as “the little boy who told the emperor he was naked” and, more recently by the New York Times, as “an exploder of received truths”. In this, his latest book, we find Chomsky very much living up to this long-standing reputation.

It is often said that if you’ve read one Chomsky book, you’ve read them all, which is perhaps true in so far as he is a relentless critic of US foreign and domestic policy, sinking his teeth deeper into the same old foe like a vengeful rottweiler with each new publication. Rogue States is no departure from the norm—it’s Chomsky doing what he does best.

Through skilful analysis of internal documents combined with historical context, a meticulous scrutiny of the activities of the US State Dept and a thorough gleaning of the quality broadsheets both sides of the pond, Chomsky again sets himself the task of gauging the US and its allies by the standards they use as justification for the interference in the lives of others.

The Balkans, East Timor and Colombia come in for close scrutiny in separate chapters which reveal the extent of US collusion in the ongoing misery there. In Kosovo, observes Chomsky, the US “has chosen a course of action that undermines—perhaps destroys—promising democratic development”. The Clinton regime’s praise for Colombia as “leading democracy” is stringently challenged by Chomsky. Citing Colombia’s human rights record as one of the worst in the world, Chomsky provides ample proof that the Clinton/Blair doctrine of “new humanism”—the self-styled “historic mission of bringing justice and freedom to the suffering people of the world”—is a total sham. Colombia, notorious for its state terror, produces 300,000 refugees and 3,000 deaths per year at the hands of its security forces, yet is presently the biggest recipient of US military aid in Latin America. The same favoured nation status is reserved for Turkey, whose security forces, in their persecution of the Kurdish people, have destroyed 3,500 villages and created three million refugees. Meanwhile, the US is keen to promote the redeeming qualities of resource-rich Indonesia ahead of the political fate of East Timor at the hands of the former.

Chomsky further reveals the US to be wholly contemptuous and dismissive of UN resolutions and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights it helped to bring into existence and to be severely lacking in any credible justification for its policies beyond its own borders. In the regard, Chomsky further highlights the US passion for free trade, pointing to the developing countries compelled not only to accept US cigarettes and other drugs and commodities but also to advertise them under threat of trade sanctions.

Sanctions and indeed debt “is a very powerful weapon of control” says Chomsky, with half the world subject to US unilateral sanctions, a cruel form of economic coercion condemned repeatedly by the UN. In a chapter on the paranoiac US relationship with Cuba, Chomsky reminds us that Cuba has suffered 40 years of embargoes—the longest in history, and in spite of two-thirds of the US population opposing the sanctions and in breach of WTO rules, all of which is dismissed with the defence that Cuba is a threat to US national security.

Though this can at times be a hard-going book for the uninitiated, the mountains of information make it an indispensable reference work and guide to the methods the powerful use to further their own interests to the detriment of so many. It is moreover an invaluable tool for deciphering the rhetoric the powerful use to rationalise their excesses.

John Bissett

Breakdown At The Hague Part 3 of 3 (2001)

From the March 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

In two previous articles we stated the basic reasons why the International Conference on world pollution, held at The Hague last November, broke down in failure and recrimination. The delegations represented rival capitalist states, each driven by the pressures of profit-making and national interests into the continued use of production methods which are destructive of the environment. At present, on balance, the problems resulting from pollution are getting worse. What is required is co-operation between all people and the freedom to set up a safe world energy system.

We also cited the fact that the capitalist system creates vast amounts of energy waste in the military and its socially useless jobs such as marketing, finance and banking which are part of its profit making machine. This waste would not happen in socialism which would be solely concerned to provide for real needs. So, socialism would bring great savings of energy but also increased demand in the work required to raise the living conditions of people throughout the world. However, once this has been achieved it could then be possible for society to settle down to a stable and sustainable way of life working within the natural systems of the planet without being destructive.

The idea of a zero growth, sustainable society is not new and in recent years has been put forward by the Green Movement. But whilst many of the declared aims of the Green Movement appear to be desirable these are contradicted by a fatal flaw in all green policies. They stand for the continuation of the market system. Instead of a society based on voluntary co-operation where all goods and services are produced directly for needs with free access, the Green Movement aims to retain the market system in which goods are produced for sale at a profit. This must mean the continuation of the capitalist system which is the cause of the problems of pollution in the first place. The Green Movement has never been able to answer the question which is how it can achieve a zero growth, sustainable society whilst retaining a market system which includes an irresistible, built in pressure to increase sales for profit and where if sales collapse, society tends to break down in recession, unemployment and financial crisis. The only way in which the aims of the Green Movement could be achieved is through socialism.

When we speak of a stable, sustainable society we do not mean a static society in which there is no development. On the contrary, when liberated from the profit motive of corporate research and the military machines of capitalist states, science will flourish and will serve the interests of all people. Nor do we suggest that new science will not result in new technology. The urgent need for care of the environment will be just one field where research and new technology would be given priority. However, we should also recognise that the abolition of all the economic constraints imposed by the market system on the use of labour will bring enormously increased powers of production. In socialism it will be possible to produce vast amounts of goods. It is in the light of this fact that people in socialism would have to ask if it makes sense to go on and on producing whilst using up the planet's resources or whether there should be voluntary limits to consumption and an eventual scaling down of productive activity.

There is an assumption in our society that increased ownership and consumption of goods leads to increased happiness and should therefore be a central drive in our lives. But whilst we all need to live to a decent standard of comfort and enjoyment the values of our acquisitive society arise from insecurity and competition. We substitute personal ownership for the better human relationships which would express our real needs as social individuals. Our happiness, or otherwise, arises from how we relate to people not from how we relate to material objects as owners.

So whilst we do not presume to lay down in advance what decisions will be made in socialism we can set out a possible way of achieving an eventual zero growth society operating in a stable and ecologically benign way. This could be achieved in three main phases. First, there would have to be emergency action to relieve the worst problems of food shortages, health care and housing which affect billions of people throughout the world. Secondly, longer term action to construct means of production and infrastructures such as transport systems for the supply of permanent housing and durable consumption goods. These could be designed in line with conservation principles, which means they would be made to last for a long time, using materials that where possible could be re-cycled and would require minimum maintenance. Thirdly, with these objectives achieved there could be an eventual fall in production, and society could move into a stable mode. This would achieve a rhythm of daily production in line with daily needs with no significant growth. On this basis, the world community could reconcile two great needs, the need to live in material well being whilst looking after the planet which is our shared home in space.

Although capitalist society appears to place great importance on its material wealth, it sometimes has no hesitation in destroying it in vast quantities and in ways which have no thought for the loss of human life involved. For example, the 20th. Century was one such story of continuous destruction. We have already mentioned the misuse and waste of energy in armaments production, but more energy has then been used to fuel the war machines of the world. These have gone on to destroy vast amounts of means of production and useful structures such as factories with all their machinery, roads, bridges, railways, vehicles, aircraft, and millions of tonnes of shipping. In Vietnam the American Government poisoned entire areas of the country with deadly Agent Orange. The names of Hiroshima, Stalingrad, Berlin, Dresden and Caen are just five of the hundreds of towns and cities that have been reduced to rubble. In the Balkans, even as the century closed we saw installations in Serbia being bombed whilst in Kosovo the homes of people were being shelled and incinerated, together with their occupants. In a sane society, all these means of production and useful structures would be produced and would then serve out their useful lives, which in some cases like houses and bridges could be for hundreds of years.

Some applications of labour have to be constant as, for example, in food production. With food, production and consumption are more or less simultaneous. But with housing, infrastructures and durable means of production, the products of one generation, with subsequent maintenance, can be used by many succeeding generations. In socialism this could mean that the initial work required to solve the problems of capitalism would not have to go on and on. Given that the work was in accordance with conservation principles, that population levels become close to stable, and that communities were content to place voluntary limits to consumption, then there could be an eventual fall in production with all the benefits this would bring to care of the environment.

Seen solely from a technical point of view there are no doubt many ways in which the damage caused by pollution could be reduced with different uses of labour. But before any of these can become real options on which communities can freely make democratic decisions, labour itself must first be liberated. Labour must enjoy its own freedom outside the present enclosed system of commodity exchange in which it is confined to its function of profit making and the accumulation of capital. Not even in the most optimistic dreams of defenders of the free market will the “accumulation of capital” ever be made to equal “care of the environment”.

In the meantime, the play-acting that passed for an International Conference on pollution at The Hague last November, is booked to continue at Bonn in May. But what presents itself as farce is really a tragedy in which we must cease to be a mere audience. How much more time wasting and failure must we see before it is accepted that capitalist politicians are incompetent to deal with the problem. The real powers of action are with the great majority of people. This will be when we decide to create a society in which we will be free to co-operate and to use all our great reserves of energy and ingenuity for our needs. Without doubt, this includes the urgent need to stop the despoliation of our planet.

Pieter Lawrence