Voice From The Back: Watch the parking meters (2005)

The Voice From The Back Column from the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Watch the parking meters

 

In a strange couplet Bob Dylan once sang “Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters.” It seemed a weird rhyme, although the advice about leadership was sound; but a recent report on the Duke of Westminster may have given some substance to Dylan’s advice. “The duke, who is 53, is Britain’s second-richest man, whose wealth is based on tracts of land in Central London, including 200 acres in Belgravia and 100 acres in Mayfair. The land is so valuable that the Grosvenor Group sold a parking space in Mayfair for £65,000 in 2002” The Times (25 January). Nice one, Bob. We won’t be allowed to park there, will we?

Telling it like it is

It is not often that capitalists tell the truth about their system, so we couldn’t resist recording the following rare statement. “Governments, not oil companies, must act now on global warning or there will be a ‘disaster’, the chairman of Shell’s UK arm warned last night. … ‘Whether you like it or not, we live in a capitalist society. If we at Shell ceased to find and extract and market fossil fuel products while there was a demand for them, we would fail as a company. Shell would disappear as any kind of economic force,’ Lord Oxburgh maintained” The Independent (26 January). Even the owning class know this society doesn’t work. It sucks.   

Human rights adviser?

“Elliott Abrams, a special assistant to the president and an assistant secretary of state in the Reagan administration, has been appointed deputy national security adviser with a focus on promoting global democracy and human rights” Associated Press (2 February). This is the same Abrams who was indicted by the Iran-Contra special prosecutor for giving false testimony about his role in illicitly raising money for the contras, but he pleaded guilty to two lesser offences (including withholding information from the Congress) in order to avoid a trial and a possible jail sentence.

The Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory said of him, “Members of Congress remember Abram’s snarling appearance at committee hearings, defending death squads and dictators, denying massacres, lying about illegal US activities in support of the Nicaraguan contras.” Wow, we have a real champion of human rights here.

Its a mad, mad world

“Laura Bush – or ‘First Fashionista’ as the New York Post has dubbed her – was posing for a photo opportunity on a catwalk next to designers Caroline Herrera and Oscar de la Renta. Her arrival turned Bryant Park, the temporary Midtown home of the fashion circus, into a twilight zone. The homeless people had disappeared, policemen dotted the pavement instead. A large black van was parked ostentatiously in a pedestrian area, and filled with men in suits emblazoned with the words “secret service” in white capital letters” The Observer (6 February). This prompts us to ask two questions: where had the homeless people disappeared to?, and how secret is a secret seviceman with a secret service label? We imagine the homeless will have been put out of camera shot, and none of them allowed to speak. This is called democracy?

An ill wind

Two items from the same magazine illustrate what a hellish society capitalism is. They show the awful consequence of a social disaster like world poverty and how even a natural disaster can be a money-making opportunity. “Poverty is a man-made tsunami. ‘The biggest tyranny in the world is the tyranny of an empty stomach.’ John Samuels, a founding member of Global Call to Action Against Poverty, launched at the World Social Forum.” “$300 Market price, before the tsunami, to rent a house with indoor plumbing in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, for one month. $4,000 Current market price, due to increased demand from aid workers and journalists” Time (7 February). Making money out of human misery is disgusting, but then capitalism is a disgusting society.

Letters: Earth’s Destruction Necessary for Socialism? (2005)

Letters to the Editors from the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Earth’s Destruction Necessary for Socialism?

Dear Editors

In at least one area my understanding of Marxian economics may be weak, so perhaps you can enlighten me. As you know in the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy Marx wrote: “No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society”.

I have no problem understanding the second part of that sentence, but the first puzzles me a little. All previous economic systems were not dynamic systems. They developed to a certain point, beyond which they stagnated, while the new society matured in the proverbial womb of the old. Capitalism is different to all previous systems because it is a dynamic system constantly inventing new tools of production and constantly improving all previous inventions.

My problem here is to analyse what this portends in relation to the first part of the above sentence. Does it mean, I wonder, that we are stuck with capitalism (a lovely thought) until such time as it has destroyed the world with its ongoing murder of the environment? Could it be, I wonder, that the only way socialism can be brought about is by people realising they have to live in a co-operative way or perish? And, if so, when will they realise it? Will it be when capitalism has about 90 percent wrecked this planet?

The Socialist Party have always emphasised and insisted the need for socialist understanding as a precondition for socialism. But has society ever changed because mankind in general considered such changes desirable? I’m sure the medieval manufacturers, traders, bankers, etc never said to each “Let’s invent a new society and call it capitalism.” They were behaving in a certain manner which was in accordance with their economic interests; the sum of such behaviour over two or three centuries brought capitalism into being.

In the Communist Manifesto the authors say in effect that the general, prevailing level of opinions and beliefs of a given society will always be that of the ruling class. We all know changes in the tools of production change the way people think, but we also know it only goes to a certain point, beyond which they still believe in the existence of private property based society.

My sincerest wish is that the working class both understand and establish socialism before capitalism has destroyed this planet  and consequently most species on it, but I can’t envisage this happening. I know I paint a proverbial gloomy picture, but I hope you can show me that my understanding is wide of the mark.

Steve Shannon, 

Mississauga, Canada

Reply:

We agree that, if taken on its own and interpreted literally, the passage that puzzles you could give the impression that Marx thought that capitalism would not disappear so long as it was capable of developing to any extent the productivity of the forces of production. But this can’t have been Marx’s view, otherwise why would he have worked for the abolition of capitalism at a time when it was still capable of developing productivity (as, indeed, it still is, and still does)?

To make sense of it, it should be read in conjunction with what follows (“and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society”) and which you say you have no problem understanding. And also with what immediately follows: “Therefore, humanity always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; indeed, on closer examination, it will always be found that the task itself only arises when the material conditions for its solution already exist or at least are in the process of formation”.

Marx was talking not just about a change from capitalism to socialism but about actual historical changes of social system that had taken place in the past, but in relation to capitalism he probably simply meant that, in developing modern industry and its potential, capitalism had created the material basis for socialism and that, therefore, the establishment of socialism had appeared on humanity’s agenda (as witnessed by the emergence of the working class movement). Once capitalism had developed the forces of production to the point where an abundance was possible, it was open for abolition. Socialism wasn’t possible before then, so until then capitalism had still had a progressive role to play. But Marx was just one socialist and not much is to be gained from poring over every word he wrote to try to understand today’s world. Socialists should be, and are, capable of doing this for themselves.

We, too, conclude that, as capitalism has created the material basis for socialism, socialism is a practical possibility and has been for over a hundred years now and that this is what people should be working for if they wish to avoid the gloomy end you fear. Will people do it? That’s up to them, not us. All we can do is to try to ensure, that when people discuss humanity’s future, part of their experience is hearing the argument that the only way out is to establish a world community without frontiers based the natural and industrial resources of the Earth having become the common heritage of all humanity. – Editors.

 

Bush & Co.

Dear Editors

Regarding your editorial in the December 2004 issue of Socialist Standard, ‘A missed opportunity’:

 

You are quite correct about one thing. The people in the US who voted for Bush & Company knew what they were doing. They were not seduced. They were not misled. They understood what the issues were and they made their choice.

I live in Cleveland, Ohio. When I realized, about a month before the election, that Bush was going to win, I started to talk with Bush supporters, gently and with tolerance, in an effort to get them to open up and tell me why they had taken such a stance. On the whole, I found that the knowledge and understanding among the Bush supporters was about equal to that among the voters on the other side.

There has been a lot of talk about the role of religion in the motivation of the voters but I think it would be easy to give too much weight to this factor. It is true that a lot of religious people voted for Bush but it is also true that a lot of religious people voted against him. Some of the religious people who were and are anti-Bush say he talks about his love for God and then turns around and does the devil’s work.

I feel that the election was a referendum on war. About half the people in this country like being at war, especially if someone else is doing the fighting. They know that the war in Iraq was started under false pretenses but they like the idea of war anyway. They like the idea of telling other nations where to get off and then using the US military to enforce the US point of view.

 

Perhaps being at war makes them feel like winners. The US military machine is impressive. It can go out and “kick butt” on a regular basis. The US usually wins every battle. But I think it will lose the war in Iraq. It might even lose the war in Afghanistan, as it looks like the drug lords will actually win control in that area.

Those of us who were against Bush & Company are still struggling with feelings of loss, of disappointment, and even a sort of grief. We did the best we could but we lost and we are hurting.

Linda Featheringill, 

Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

Reply:

Fair enough, but we hope you didn’t go so far as to vote for the other millionaire (whose name we forget). As if it would have made any difference if he had won instead. Governments don’t control capitalism. It’s the workings of capitalism, and the interests of a country’s capitalist class, which determines how governments act. Things won’t change till a majority act to change the economic and social system rather than the personnel who fill the top posts in government –Editors.

Red Snapper: Sound bites and unsound nibbles (2005)

The Red Snapper column from the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sound bites and unsound nibbles

"We're not flying over frigging Iran."  

- U.S. military official on the practice of sending U.S. military aircraft into Iranian air space to test its defences and spot potential targets. Guardian, Jan 29th.

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"As a general rule the more extreme the circumstances and the fear felt, the more force you can lawfully use in self defence." 

- From the new Government’s new guidelines about the self-defence and the defence of property. Daily Telegraph, Feb. 2nd.

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"I think Japanese nationals would welcome a female monarch in the present era." 

- Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on the proposal to allow female succcession to the Japanese throne. BBC News Online, Jan 25th

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"We have had people sent here who I would not trust at all. I have discovered that the Americans have made no checks on these men. Do you wonder why police stations and army barracks get blown up?"  

-An Iraqi police colonel on the recruitment of defence forces in Iraq. The Independent, Feb 14th.

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"Disaster is too polite a word".

- David Isenberg, an analyst at the British and American Security Council, on the US's efforts to train Iraqi forces. The Independent, Feb 14th.

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"You raise your voice. I raise mine. Some of you throw a bit of crockery."

- Tony [Blair] on his marital spats with the electorate, all media, Sunday February 13

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"When you're Secretary of State for Transport you don't tend to get inundated with gifts.”

Alistair Darling, S of S for T, in response to audience question on ministers having to declare any gift over £250 in Register of Members' Interests. Any Questions, BBC Radio 4, Sat, February 5.

 

Global poverty and the UN: Natural disasters (2005)

From the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

If there’s one thing the UN is good at, it’s compiling authoritative figures, and the UN’s data on global poverty underlines the desperation of the world’s poor. But what chance do campaigners really have to make history, by making poverty history?

In January the United Nations Millennium Project published a 3000 page report entitled ‘Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals.’ The report calls on industrialised countries to assist  in “halving world poverty” by 2015 by increasing aid from its present level of £12 billion to a sum approaching £80 billion per year.  The Independent (18 January) reporting on the publication of this report carried the headline: “UN  unveils 10 year plan to lift 500 million out of misery. Many proposals are cheap, and could transform lives now.” The report concluded: “Only investment on that scale will help prevent 700 million slip further into preventable disease and extreme poverty.”

The strategy outlined in the UN report forms part of a wider set of initiatives agreed at the UN Millennium Summit  in September 2000, aimed at making the world a fairer place to live by apparently eradicating poverty. As a background  to world poverty, the Independent reported on the same day that 11 million children (mainly under 5) die each year, 6 million from preventable diseases, while “Every day, HIV/Aids kills another 6,000 people and another 8,200 become infected with the virus” and “Every 3.6 seconds, someone dies of starvation.”

The report’s author, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, candidly said in defence of his proposals:  “The system is not working right now – let’s be clear.” He explained: “There’s a tremendous imbalance of focus on  the issues of war and peace, and less on dying and suffering of the poor who have no voice. The overwhelming reality on our planet is that impoverished people get sick and die for lack of access to basic practical means that could help keep them alive and do more than that – help them achieve livelihoods and escape from poverty.” Sachs pointed out: “We have the world’s eyes focused on the tsunami of the Indian Ocean, but the world continues to overlook the silent tsunamis of deaths from malaria which take every month the number of people that died in the Asian tragedy. Every month, 150,000 children in Africa, if not more, are dying from the silent tsunami of malaria, a largely preventable and utterly treatable disease.” Elsewhere the article states that malaria can be prevented with a treated bed net costing less than £1.

Sachs’s concern that the Indian Ocean disaster has overshadowed permanent poverty and deprivation is echoed by pleas from charities working elsewhere in the world. The earthquake and resultant tsunami, killing perhaps up to 200,000 people in twelve countries, has siphoned donations away from these charities and threatens to end their money raising activities for good. But the tragic loss of life and devastation caused by the tsunami has been given so much prominence precisely because it was caused by a natural disaster, where no guilt can be apportioned.

Equally, as the Economist observed: “involvement in the disaster of so many resorts favoured by tourists from rich countries in the West and the richer parts of north-east Asia has given it more prominence in these countries than the sheer horror of the fatalities would have produced” (1-7 January) The class that lives by profit has no wish to be reminded of the loss of life and devastation attributed solely to the relentless pursuit of profit and is content to see attention deflected away such things.

Disasters – natural or otherwise – provide unexpected opportunities to those who live by making profits. As with the unnatural tragedy of the Iraq invasion where up to 100,000 people have been killed, companies engaged in the provision of food, housing, construction, energy, transportation, communications, engineering and so on, can expect to reap bumper profits. Aid and money cannot be injected into class society in a neutral way and is either directed to the working class or the owning class, generally the latter. We learn that money is urgently needed to restore the tourist industry and the profits it generates for the shareholders that own the hotels and tourist attractions, especially in Thailand where tourism generates 12 percent of GDP. Tourists have been urged to return to these holiday destinations with the lure that the only way to help the poor is by making them employable once more, which means making the tourist industry profitable once again.

The only consideration is profit. But while investors in Asian tourism may have lost, others have been more fortunate. The same issue of the Economist reported: “Insurers at least will be relieved that most of those whose livelihoods have been destroyed were not covered. Some hoteliers will make claims, as will families of western tourists who were covered by life insurance. Their bill, however, is likely to be far lower than followed the hurricanes in Florida and its neighbouring states earlier in 2004.”

Avoidable

It goes without saying that major disasters causing loss of life are always tragic. But while some disasters cannot always be avoided, as in the Indian Ocean, others are completely avoidable and there can be no excuse. The UN Report aims to significantly reduce world poverty without attacking its root cause. According to Sachs, “Billions more could enjoy the fruits of the global economy. Tens of millions of lives could be saved” (Independent, 18 January).  Millions of people, it seems, are to be lifted from poverty by trade arising from the globalisation of capital, a process that hitherto has been remarkably unsuccessful in doing anything more than spreading poverty from country to country and making enormous profits for investors. Globalisation is a particularly pernicious form of capitalist development, which has decimated the lives of millions of people in undeveloped countries.  Yet the UN plan is proposing more of the same, calling for initiatives that “involve both civil society organisations and the private sector,” and urging that “rich countries must open markets to exports from developing countries.”

Predictably the plan urges that ‘rich countries’ must “invest more in the very poorest countries through electricity supplies and roads.” (Independent, 18 January). In practice the report does no more than advocate concerted action by corporations and companies under the umbrella of their national governments to transform people into wage slaves. There are no poor countries, only poor people.

It can be no coincidence that both Blair and Brown have suddenly become interested in the continent of Africa – or rather the opportunities it can bring to the owning class they represent. Brown claims he will make sub-Saharan Africa his priority in 2005 while Blair says he will use Britain’s Presidency of the G8 to “focus on progress” in the eradication of African poverty as well as countering other potential but less desirable developments. Blair explains: “Famine in Africa will affect our countries because it will be a trigger for mass migration. Conflict, too, drives millions to flee their homes. Both create the conditions for terrorism and fanaticism to take root and spread directly to Europe, to North America and to Asia” (Economist, 1-7 January).

Like the UN Report Blair proposes ‘more of the same’. He writes: “We also need to tackle trade barriers

which push up prices to our consumers, prevent African countries exporting their products and see Europe spending more on subsidising its own farmers than on aid to Africa.” He concludes, as does the UN Report that aid will provide assistance in “building the infrastructure needed for private-sector growth.”

The forces are gathering and the strategy is in place. Capitalism is to make a concerted move into the African continent to provide opportunities for investment and profit from the glut of aid proposed by the UN and the resultant ‘opening-up’ of the continent. A market economy based on the domination of outside corporations or perhaps indigenous capitalists will obviate migration of cheap labour, forcing the indigenous people to become wage slaves, to join, in the words of the Independent, the “one billion people [who] live on less than $1 a day. Another 2.7 billion survive on less than $2 a day.” A further intention is to nullify the spread of religious fundamentalism that could interfere with profit taking. Like every other attempt to alleviate poverty it will fail. This is because the plan is less about poverty and more about profits. The plan’s success will be measured in dollars not lives saved.

If there was ever an indictment of capitalism it is world poverty. People die in Africa and elsewhere because there is simply no profit in saving them. Conversely, action to limit this barbarism only occurs when the companies and corporations owned by the capitalist class ‘sense a kill,’ an opportunity to expand profits. £81 billion in aid – if it ever arrives – is a good starting point. Many African countries have already a foretaste of foreign investment that directs that food be grown for export alongside a population on the brink of starvation. But this no inconsistency, simply market forces in action. We live in a world of plenty where scarcity and rationing through the market and money system is unnecessary and anti-human. It must stop.

The Independent editorial column hit the nail on the head. It reads, “The world must seize the opportunity and work together to fight the scourge of poverty, disease and hopelessness.”  But what it does not say

is that this can never be achieved under capitalism. The world’s working people must, as the editorial urges, seize the opportunity to end poverty — not by trying to reform an economic system that cannot be reformed but by abolishing it. The UN proposal that reinforces the institutional requirement to make and increase profits regardless of its human consequences is monstrous – a licence to make profit from human misery.

Steve Trott

Fit For a King (2005)

From the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

King Mswati III of Swaziland has just bought himself another car; not any old car, but a brand new Daimler-Chrysler Maybach 62, powered by a six-litre bioturbo engine, and fitted out with a television, a 21-speaker surround sound system, a heated steering wheel, champagne flutes within reach of the fully reclining seats, a refrigerator, a cordless telephone, a gold bag and a pollen and dust filter. And the cost? Almost £400,000.

And the country over which King Mswati III rules?

Swaziland, entirely surrounded by South Africa and Mozambique, one of the smallest countries in Africa with an area of 6,700 square miles, has a population of fewer than one million, of whom more than 80 percent exist on one US dollar a day, and almost 40 percent of adults have HIV/AIDS, the highest rate in the world. According to the World Food Programme, about a third of the population require, and will probably receive, emergency food assistance this year. According to the WFP (Guardian, 14 December) absolutely poverty, unemployment, HIV/AIDS and poor farming practices, “has left large numbers of households with no food stocks, or unable to provide for themselves”.

Swaziland, moreover, has been in a state of emergency since 1973, when the so-called constitutional monarchy imposed by Great Britain became absolute. However, the king is supposedly adored by his subjects, and the country is a tourist haven, mainly for affluent South Africans.

So that all right then!…

Peter E. Newell

Cooking the Books: Lies, damned lies, and statistics (2005)

The Cooking The Books column from the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx argued that by his day economics had declined from a genuine attempt to understand the workings of capitalism as, for instance, with Adam Smith and David Ricardo, into a thinly disguised apology for capitalism. Just look at any modern textbook – with their claim that scarcity is eternal because human wants are infinite and their introduction of “entrepreneurship” as being as essential to production as natural resources, labour and machinery – and you can see how right he was.

In one field of economics, however, there has been some progress since Marx’s day: in measuring national income and output. Since the 1940s governments have published figures for these. Everybody has heard of “GDP” (Gross Domestic Product) and “growth” (which is the increase of GDP from one year to the next) and Marx would surely have loved to have had such figures. But there are shortcomings here too.

In particular how to treat government spending has been a problem, as was again highlighted by a report published at the end of January by Sir Tony Atkinson (who as plain A. B. Atkinson used to usefully concern himself with statistics on the unequal distribution of wealth ownership) for the Office of National Statistics on “The Measurement of Government Output and Productivity for the National Accounts”.

Government Output? What output — surely the government as such produces nothing, just consumes the output of the sector of the economy where labour-power is applied to materials that originally came from nature to produce commodities for sale? Yes, that’s just the point. But the figure for GDP (which is supposed to be a measure of total output) is obtained by counting spending by individuals on consumer goods and services, by firms on new equipment, and by the government, and adding them together. Including government spending in this involves double-counting. This is recognised to some extent in the official figures in that the payment of pensions, the dole, income support and the like as well as the payment of interest on the National Debt are excluded from government spending as being “transfer payments”. But, logically, so too are the wages and salaries of government employees, yet these are not excluded. Similarly, other government spending (as on purchasing computers and bombers) is already included via the amount for indirect taxes that enters into the prices of what individuals and firms buy.

The artifice that the government statisticians found to get out of this has been to treat government spending as productive, as resulting in a “product” (education, health care, administration, law and order, “defence”, though not “social security”). As a result, national output is inflated by as much as 20 percent. The former state capitalist countries of Russia and Eastern Europe did not count such government spending as productive, i.e. did not double count it as part of output, and when they adopted the same national  accounting system as in the rest of the capitalist world their GDPs jumped by 18-24 percent depending on the country.

Why did statisticians in the West go down the road of pretending that all government activity is productive? Probably because national accounting developed at the same time as Keynesian economic policies were first applied (and could even be said to have been developed to underpin them), and Keynes attributed a key role to government spending. Keynesian economics is now rejected, but not the counting of government spending as an addition to output. Instead of getting itself out of this hole by abandoning this statistical practice,  the government decided to keep on digging and appointed Sir Tony to come up with ways of measuring government “output” in such a way as to be able to take into account increasing “productivity” (the politicians’ “value for money”).

If the Atkinson report’s recommendations are accepted this will inflate GDP even more by artificially (and arbitrarily) increasing yet further government “output”. Talk about cooking the books.

Meat, Money and Malnutrition (2005)

From the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Vegetarians International Voice for Animals (VIVA) make the claim that meat causes famine. Is this really the case, or does the real problem lie in the profit system? Rob Stafford investigates.

The Bristol-based charity Viva! in a recent pamphlet Join Viva! Join the Fight for Life claim that “millions of children in the developing world die from hunger alongside fields of high quality food, destined for the West’s farmed animals. The startling truth is that meat causes starvation.” Despite claiming that they monitor “the latest research from all over the world in the environment and development issues and argues for change with hard science” Viva provide absolutely no supporting evidence for their contention. Furthermore, a request for such material has yet to be answered.

Viva’s position is accepted as a common truth by other campaigning groups and individuals including Animal Aid, George Monbiot, Peter Singer, and repeated in some sections of the press, such as the Guardian and New Internationalist. While there is no doubt that growing crops as a source of food for the production of meat rather than feeding humans directly is less efficient in terms of land and energy, is there a direct relationship between meat and starvation? Consider a field of corn standing next to a group of starving children. The corn is destined for export as animal feed. Hence meat causes starvation. But if the corn was not grown for use as animal feed would the children be free to eat it? Indeed, would it even be grown in the first place? Simply because two effects (corn, starving children) are found side by side does not imply that one caused the other. Perhaps, however, the supporters of this position consider we have reached the limit of agriculture on this planet and therefore because some people eat meat fed on grain others, as a direct result of this practice, starve.

Over twenty years ago WHO stated that the technology existed to feed a global population twelve times its (then) size. The American Association for the Advancement of Science reported in 1997 that 78 percent of all malnourished children under the age of five in the developing world live in countries with a food surplus. Just over five years ago the United Nations reported that Africa could easily feed a population five times its current size if western technology were introduced. (And what of future technology?)

There is, in fact, a wealth of evidence to support the view that “famine exists largely because the hungry cannot afford to buy food, not because there is insufficient food produced” (New Scientist, 3 September 1994). Agricultural economist M. S. Swaminathan stated earlier this year that the “problem of undernutrition . . . is a lack of purchasing power” (Newsweek, 31 January). Even an establishment figure such as Sir Jonathan Porritt in his introduction to Compassion in World Farming’s report entitled The Global Benefits of Eating Less Meat (2004) is not blind to such facts. He quotes approvingly from Colin Tudge’s recent book, So Shall We Reap, and states that the author “develops an eloquent argument demonstrating that contemporary food and farming policy has very little to do with meeting human needs, guaranteeing food security, providing high and consistent levels of nutrition and food safety…Much more simply, it’s all about profit: squeezing the maximum financial yield out of every link in the food chain to benefit a tiny number of an already inconceivably rich minority of citizens” .

And those inconceivably rich do not just live in the West as Porritt states. For example, at the peak of the 1984 famine in Ethiopia such people enjoyed the benefits of exporting crops to the UK and taking delivery of Scottish malt whisky. This was just business as usual. Thus it should come as no surprise to learn that although the value of food exported by Ethiopia and other countries in the Horn of Africa during 1983 exceeded imports by $1 billion, hunger in this region increased (World Hunger: Twelve Myths. Frances Moore Lappe et al, Earthscan, 1998).

 

For some – but certainly not the 840 million malnourished (or the more than a billion existing in a state described by the UN as absolute poverty) – the ‘problem’ is an inconceivable embarrass de richesses. Try and imagine yourself as one of the 225 individuals owning wealth equivalent to that of 47 percent of the world’s population. Consider that the wealth of just three of these individuals exceeds the Gross National Product of the world’s 47 poorest nations. And that for four percent of the combined income of the three wealthiest people we could provide universal access to basic education, health care, adequate food as well as safe water and sanitation for all.

 

OK, so is it perhaps not meat on its own that causes starvation, but that it is one of a number of possible factors including problems relating to distribution, drought and natural disaster as well as war and poverty caused by unfair trade, third world debt, insufficient aid, etc? Well, the US recently was able within a few months to send 130,000 people (with supplies) half way across the world. Alas, their mission was one of death and destruction rather than to rescue, provide food, shelter and deliver other essentials to the suffering multitudes. War and poverty even after hundreds of years of social activism are still, patently, with us. But why? Oscar Wilde, writing over a hundred years ago about charity, provides some clues. “[T]heir remedies do not cure the disease; they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease. They try to solve the problem of poverty for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible” (The Soul of Man under Socialism).

It is to be hoped that historians living today will in the not distant future look at present day society and recognize that by failing to see starvation as one of many symptomatic problems that no amount of ‘band aids’ could cure, Viva and other well intentioned but misguided groups delayed the use of effective treatment. The activities of such groups will however probably be seen as benign in comparison with the likes of the Animal Liberation Front and PETA – who have more in common with companies such as Monsanto than either would like to admit – and other Malthusian-inspired misanthropes. All will be on record as failing to see the economic law which transcends government and companies however large or powerful: no profit, no production: can’t pay can’t have.

These future historians will indeed be deeply saddened that we took so long to see the link between this law and a myriad of contradictions (clues) in plain view today: people starving while food rots; brick mountains and empty homes existing alongside unemployed builders and the homeless; millions dying of curable diseases. On this last point, pharmaceutical chemist Dr Victoria Hale has made the telling observation that  “parasites and poverty are inextricably linked”. Referring to conditions such as leishmaniasis and Chagas disease, found almost exclusively in areas of the world where grinding poverty for the vast majority is the normal way of life (and death), she went on to say: “People with these diseases are not in sight as they cannot pay” (New Scientist, 25 September 2004).

Revealingly, Tudge is on record as proposing that if food production were designed to feed people rather than make a profit, then there would be no problem. Eureka! Imagine that: a world in which everything is produced for need, not profit! However, in asking “why we, humanity, allow the world to be run by people who have long since lost the plot?” (New Scientist, 13 March 2004) Tudge implies a change in leadership might suffice. But, two hundred years earlier, the Marquis De Sade saw through leadership and in doing so glimpsed the answer to securing “a saner sustainable future”: “You can only govern men by deceiving them; one must be hypocritical to deceive them; the enlightened man will never let himself be led, therefore it is necessary to deprive him of enlightenment to lead him as we want”.

Rob Stafford

Socialist Party 101st Conference 2005 (2005)

Party News from the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Socialist Party is a democratic party run by its members without leaders of any sort, and the way we make decisions is open for all to see at our twice yearly general meetings. This Easter weekend we will be discussing a variety of issues including the following:

• Far from being all of the same mind on every topic, members are very diverse in their opinions and interests, so would it be a good idea to set up a special discussion journal so we can debate controversial ideas among ourselves?
• The Declaration of Principles was written in 1904, over a hundred years ago. Some members think the language is antiquated and could do with modernising. For instance, while we oppose reformist movements the use of the word 'hostile' might give the wrong impression. Alternatively, others feel that it is a historical document that should be left as written.
• Should we oblige ourselves to pay dues, or could we get rid of a whole lot of unnecessary bureaucracy if we dumped the dues rule and adopted a system of voluntary contribution?
• Other items: why we keep overspending, colour-coded politics, a press letter network, the word 'ordinary' as a class descriptor, reports from departments, challenging the government ban on political advertising, putting more speculation into the Standard, wrecking amendments and ideas for more adventurous publicity.

101st Annual Conference of The Socialist Party at Head Office, 52 Clapham High St. London SW4 on Friday 25th March 2005, 10.30 to 6.30 pm and Saturday 26th March 2005, 11 to 6 pm. All visitors welcome, admission and refreshments free. Social on Friday evening at Bread & Roses, Clapham (TBC).

Changing the System (2005)

From the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

If you have no freedom to change your life you may as well be in prison. Workers in capitalism get more porridge than empowerment.

In the comedy show Porridge the drama takes place in Slade prison. There are prisoners and warders; the warders have varying personalities, from the ‘hard but fair’ MacKay, to the liberal Barraclough, and a selection of lesser unsavoury screws. The prisoners also have their various characteristics, all of them in their varying ways trying to make the best of their lot.

Here, then, we have the prison system. As a prisoner you would, by and large, prefer to have Barraclough to MacKay, and MacKay to the more sadistic screws, especially when trying to obtain some kind of favour, or minor change to prison routine such as a film showing every week. Barraclough might do it, MacKay might not. But on the subject of imprisonment itself, all of the screws are united in upholding the prison system, the idea of prison, and the wider social idea of just imprisonment. There is no negotiation that can take place for the prisoners to release themselves, convert the prison to an open one, or otherwise interfere with the prison’s core function of imprisonment.

Imprisonment is a social fact, harder than the walls and bars that are erected on its foundation (though of course mutually reinforced by them). Without a system of imprisonment, there can be no prisons. In the same way capitalism’s own prison has its own rules, its areas of compromise, and its areas that are non-negotiable. The leaders of capitalism can change how capitalism works, within limits, but cannot change the fact of capitalism.

Capitalism as a social fact is written into every one of our lives, every moment of the day, and we reinforce it every time we work for a wage and pay for our own goods with those wages. Even if a leader were to want to change matters they would be trapped by our own resistance to change. If there is to be change it must come from us.

It is sometimes thought that socialists have a conspiracy theory regarding the state and leaders – that they are all plotting to do us in, regardless of political colour. In fact, all we have to say is this: that they are bound to observe the system which they find themselves in. Some, of course, are corrupt bastards. Others can cut various deals with each other, and specifically can join in the fight between capitalists over whether finance or manufacturing capital is to do better from the current administration, or decide whether to maximise profit in the short, medium or longer term, but all must maintain the production of profits from us, the subject class, and defend those profits against all comers, whether it be us (by using the police) or capitalists of other states (with the armed forces).

So, appeals to leaders are not the answer, on a matter so integral to capitalism as the defence of profits. You may as well ask for more liberal laws on shoplifting. There is, however, the possibility yet to be considered of a popular ‘political’ movement without an attack on the economics of capitalism. Again, this falls as flat on its face. Let’s return to our prison example. The prisoners decide to bypass the screws and hold a meeting in the prison yard about how bad prisons are. If the meeting is about entertainment, for example, the screws may be intimidated into providing something, even unasked for, such as a prison library; but discussion of liberty will bring out the truncheons. Prison riots don’t provoke early release: they provoke savage repression, beatings and subsequent lockdown. Imprisonment is non-negotiable, because it is fundamental to the prison itself, and you would have to attack the social structure of prisons and imprisonment to make any change. In the same way, any movement to change a fundamental feature of capitalism, as with disarmament, must address the basis of the system itself rather than engaging in wishful thinking.

Thinking about it, the very word ‘Defence’ should be sufficient clue as to how much input we are meant to have with the issue. We are not even allowed to call it what it is. Not ‘attack’, not ‘bands of hired killers’, not ‘death factory’, not ‘organised murder’, but defence, something which we are to be forced to accept as an integral part of our lives. In the same way, we are expected to be glad of a job rather than resentful of our exploitation, and happy to be protected by the police rather than disturbed by the presence of blue-clad armed thugs defending their masters’ ill-gotten profits from us at the bank and at the supermarket.

So, while there is leeway in capitalism for change on minor issues, there is little or none for its basics of profitmaking and defence of those profits – the extraction of wealth from us and the defence of this wealth against all comers. Bodies of armed thugs and killers are basic to private property itself, even in previous epochs, not just its latest manifestation in capitalism. Any appeal to the goodwill of our masters, or the leniency of their foremen, is futile.

In short, the making of profits out of us, the subject class, and defending these against us, their rightful owners, and fighting over these profits between themselves – all these things are non-negotiable, social facts as solid as iron bars and prison walls, and cannot be changed by appeal to leaders or by political action that does not address the fundamental problem from which warfare springs – class society, where social wealth is a private thing, spoils to be fought over rather than shared. Whilst wealth is private property, to be fought over, it will be fought over, and preparations for these conflicts will continue apace.

What, then, as they say, is to be done? As mentioned, the basis of the system in which we live and are currently trapped is the making of profits from us, the working class. Our time at work not spent reproducing our own existence – building modest houses, growing food, producing light and power to keep our machines and computers humming into the night – is a social surplus, appropriated by the capitalists through their waving deeds of ownership, stocks and shares, pieces of paper and the like. Everything that we make, over and above that required to keep us coming back through the factory gates or the office door on a Monday morning for another week of drudgery, is appropriated and turned to the following purposes: reproducing the factories and offices in which we work; reproducing the class structure of police, prisons, cash tills and banks, to keep us in our places; defending their ill-gotten gains against other capitalists at home and abroad, with government and warfare; and only then can what remains be spent on gin-palaces, cocaine and, soon, day trips to outer space.

The way to stop these expenditures should be obvious: take back the surplus! We produced it, after all, if anyone is feeling legalistic. Put the wealth in our hands! Whilst there is a structural reason for capitalists to prepare for and go to war against each other, we have no reason to fight each other – maybe individually over some resentment, but to put a million men a side into trenches drenched in poison gas or drop fire on children from the sky takes capitalism. Every fraction of social wealth that is returned to our hands is wealth not put to slaughter or to extravagant capitalist consumption.

We in the Socialist Party stand for such a position. We address the problem of disarmament, along with other unpleasant effects of capitalism, by looking to their root, in a class-divided society, which divisions create the institutional misery of war and arms production, as well as overwork, alienation and suicide, and the starvation of millions around the globe who in any sane society would be given the resources to realise their potential, not as an act of charity but from a simple sense of solidarity and a self-interest in every member of society being able to fully contribute.

All you will get with an appeal to the rich and supposedly powerful, to end arms production and spend money on the poor, is empty promises, disdain, and probably a sense of relief that once more the slaves are not yet powerful enough to rebel against their masters and must still beg for crumbs for themselves and their fellows.

If you think that the appeal to these leaders is rational, the answer will come back, perhaps sotto voce: “This is rational!” War is the logic of the capitalist state, just as policing is the logic of the class struggle at home, and the starvation and physical deprivation of more than a billion is likewise part of the logic of capitalism where if you do not produce a profit you cannot enter the economy and thus must starve.

No, we must work for ourselves, and we must address the problem at its root. The problem lies with capitalism, not with one of its features, and can only be resolved by grasping this root and tearing it from the ground.

SJW

Kyoto: fiddling while Rome burns (2005)

From the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The beginning of February saw the world’s top experts on climatic change descend on the Met Office’s HQ in Exeter for a meeting called by Tony Blair and in advance of the coming into force of the Kyoto Protocol two weeks later. They painted a picture of a world not unlike that portrayed in the film The Day After Tomorrow, where humans have destroyed their own planet through their disregard for the environment – melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels, global warming, and drought.

Evidence was presented by Professor Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, showing that the West Antarctic ice sheet is beginning to melt, threatening eventually to raise sea levels by 15ft. He reminded his audience that 90 per cent of the world’s people live near current sea levels.

Other scientists presented evidence that the world’s oceans are turning acidic, threatening marine life and there were many experts on hand ready to present their latest findings on the effects of global warming on ecosystems. Significantly, the number of scientific papers that have recorded changes in ecosystems due to global warming have increased from 14 to over a thousand in just five years.

Blair did not need to call a meeting in Exeter to find about the threat to the environment. Experts from every field have been flailing their arms around frantically for years trying to get governments to sit up and notice.

While Blair pursues policies aimed at securing Britain’s share of Iraq’s oil stores for the foreseeable future, we are warned by scientists that oil production will peak within 10 years; that half of the Earth’s available oil is estimated to by used by then, and that within another 20 years countries like China and India will have huge demands that will far outstrip supply. Consider the conflicts this will create.

Far worse than a shortage of oil is a shortage of water. We already know that 500 million people live in regions prone now to chronic drought. Scientists now warn us that within 20 years that figure is expected to increase fivefold to between 2.5 billion and 3.5 billion people. Already over 5 million people die – including 2 million children – from diseases caused by drinking contaminated water. Again, what desolation does this foreshadow for the human race?

In the oceans, almost 50 percent of fish stocks are fully exploited, 20 percent are over-exploited, and only 2 percent are recovering. On land, soil erosion and degradation mean that half a billion people live in countries whose arable land can no longer support their own crops. The natural habitats of many animal species are being lost on an alarming scale, which with the decline of bird species, plants, forests – on which, ultimately, the human race depends – signals a real crisis for biodiversity.

Leaky Treaty

Back in 1997, to head off some of these problems, governments met in Kyoto, Japan, to negotiate a treaty according to which the industrialised countries each agreed a target to control emissions of six gases know to cause global warming.

The Kyoto protocol, for those countries which have ratified it, came into effect on 16t February this year, with Russia finally signing up after a EU bribe in order for the 55 percent quorum to be reached before the treaty could come into effect, but minus the support of the USA who, with only 5 percent of the world’s population produces 36 percent of carbon emissions. And the reason for US obstinacy? They simply felt that China and other developing countries, not facing the costs of cutting emissions, would gain a competitive edge on them.

The agreement, the first “legally binding” treaty on the environment, gives each of the industrialised and ratifying countries of the world their own limit to the greenhouse gas emissions they can pump into the atmosphere. It is envisaged that this will eventually lead to a situation in which the world produces no more greenhouse gasses than the environment can tolerate.

Will the Kyoto treaty stave off the unimaginable? Well, it would seem that not only are the treaty’s formal greenhouse gas emission reduction objectives wholly inadequate compared to what scientists say is actually necessary, the treaty’s corporate-friendly, market-based mechanisms to achieve these reductions appear counterproductive.

To start with, the treaty requires that Annex One countries (the industrialised countries), which have hitherto been the biggest polluters, reduce their greenhouse gas emissions on average to just 5.2 percent below their 1990 levels by 2012. However, even though a 60-80 percent reduction is said to be needed by 2050, no additional reduction goals or timetables are in place for beyond the year 2012.

Plenty of opportunity is provided by the treaty’s “flexible mechanisms” for the governments of richer countries to indulge in creative accounting. It is possible for governments, with a bit of nifty handwork, to claim cutbacks in their country’s overall greenhouse gas emissions although actual reductions may not have taken place. Furthermore, a country might even increase its emissions and still be credited with a reduction.

Industrialised countries who find they have in fact made reductions in greenhouse gas emissions below that required of them  are moreover  entitled to sell on their spare polluter credits to those countries either unable or unwilling to adhere to their own set reduction targets. This arrangement – to sell the right to pollute – also became the privilege of corporations in January when European carbon markets became operational.

Emission measurements are by and large taken from a starting date of 1990, and the targets for each country must be reached by the period 2008-12. Former state capitalist countries (i.e. the former Soviet Union) , referred to in Kyoto jargon as “countries in transition”, were allowed to chose a different date since, after the collapse of the Kremlin’s empire, a lot of heavy industry closed, resulting in a 40 per cent fall in emissions. This means that countries such as Russia and Ukraine will be in a position to sell other Annex One countries the right to increase their greenhouse gas emissions by that figure.

There are numerous accountancy tricks that help countries reach their Kyoto commitments, without them actually reducing their very own emissions. For instance, corporations investing in new technology will be able to palm their decrepit technology off onto poor countries, to whom such technology is an advance on what they currently have, and again demand emission credits. And of course, there is further logic to this - with such outdated technology, factories in poorer countries are hardly going to steal a competitive edge on their western counterparts.

Greenhouse gasses are suddenly commodities to be bought and sold on the world market, a market in which the underdeveloped countries are duped by the richer ones and their corporate elites. And when the time comes for underdeveloped countries to make reductions they will find themselves in a fix, unable to afford the technology needed to curb their own rampant pollution.

What happens after 2012?

Kyoto is hardly going to save the planet as it stands. For one thing it was only ever foreseen as a first step to curb global warming and to be replaced after 2012 with tougher legislation. But even in seven years time there will be trouble.  At last year’s climate summit in Buenos Aires, China and India could be found joining the US, the major villain of Kyoto, in an attempt to scupper any post-2012 agreements.

Interestingly, and as The Christian Science Monitor recently noted, by 2012 coal-fired plants in those three same countries will be emitting 2.5 billion tonnes of  CO2 annually, five times the cuts ordered by the Kyoto protocol. Add to this projections from the International Energy Agency that there will be a 60 per cent rise in global energy within 25 years, the bulk of this coming from carbon-emitting fuels and you begin to wonder just what lies ahead.

Currently, global CO2 levels are the highest they have been for 20 million years. Meanwhile the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change predicts that by the year 2100 temperatures will have risen by anything up to 5.8 degrees centigrade.

Kyoto looks nothing more than some environmental monopoly board on which governments can buy and sell and trade the air we breathe.

Ironically, whilst the world’s governments will heed calls for such an early warning system that can warn of natural disaster which we have no control over – such as one warning of tsunamis in the Indian ocean – they are somewhat deaf when it comes to those blaring in our ears, the early warning systems scientists have been shouting about for decades: acid rain, soil erosion, poisonous seas, melting glaciers, a hole in the ozone layer, etc.

And it’s not as if these are new problems - the world has known about them for so long that the facts seem hackneyed. The point is, these early warning systems are ringing non-stop. Capitalism’s problems are hitting the human race with the force of many tsunamis a day, killing millions, and more, threatening global disaster. Yet governments believe the problem can be traded away, camouflaged by a creative accounting that ‘mother nature’ won’t notice.

And the simple truth is that we place our trust in governments to solve environmental problems within the context of capitalism at our peril. They serve to administer the present system on behalf of a minority for whom environmental protection is an obstacle to profit, to whom any means is legitimate in the pursuit of that profit.

When you consider the future of the planet you are faced with two choices. You can continue to support the defenders of capitalism – they come in many disguises – and acquiesce in the destruction of the natural global environment or stand in their way by joining the struggle for socialism and the destruction of a system that will nonchalantly prioritises profit over not only human well-being but the world we live in. But, hey, don’t wait until your living room is a foot deep in water to make up your mind. Think hard and now. Capitalism, and with it the worsening of every environmental problem we cite, or socialism, a world social system that places control of the Earth in the hands of  a global majority who will tend to it with respect and without the barriers profit places in the path of production?

John Bissett

Monkey Business (2005)

Book Review from the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

‘What It Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes, People and Their Genes’, by Jonathan Marks. (University of California Press. Paperback)

Marks’s answer to the finding that humans share 98 percent of so of their DNA with chimps is that it doesn’t mean much more than we already knew and certainly not what some read into it. It confirms that millions of year ago (7 million is the generally accepted estimate) humans and chimps had a common ancestor. More generally, since all life-forms are built up of DNA, it confirms Darwin’s view that all those that exist and have existed on Earth evolved from a single original form. On the other hand, it does not mean that humans are 98 percent chimpanzee (any more than the fact that we share 35 percent of our DNA with daffodils means that we are 35 percent daffodil) and that therefore the study of chimpanzee behaviour is relevant to the study of human behaviour. As Marks puts it succinctly, “you can’t get at human nature from chimpanzees. They’re not human.” We are not naked apes, but clothed humans; which makes all the difference.

Marks goes for those who think that genes are the most important factor in human behaviour (the Social Darwinists and the eugenicists in the past and the behavioural geneticists, sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists today), making the simple, but often ignored, point that we don’t actually know how any gene works. We know that genes produce proteins for the cells that constitute the body but not yet how this translates into a person’s physical attributes let alone (if it does) into any mental traits. What we know at the moment is that certain defects in certain genes result in certain abnormal conditions (such as cystic fibrosis), but not how a non-defective gene produces a normal condition.

This is why, Marks insists, when someone makes a claim to have discovered a gene for something, for instance homosexuality, they can’t just point to statistical correlations or even similar brain structures, they would need to produce a verifiable and verified causal explanation of precisely how the gene in question translates into the particular behaviour pattern. As he puts it, “what is widespread is not necessarily innate” and “genetic conclusions require genetic data”:

  “The fact that something is consistently observed does not imply that it has a genetic cause. We know that. If you want to argue about science and about genetics, you need controlled data and genetic data.”

He warns modern geneticists about the dangers of making claims that go well beyond the existing (genetic) evidence, by pointing to the dominant view amongst geneticists in the 1920s which was racist and justified the forced sterilisation of “mental defectives” (not just in Nazi Germany but in America and even in Sweden). They were wrong and the practical consequences were disastrous. Seeing that we don’t yet know how normal genes translate into physical attributes, modern geneticists should, he suggests, show a little more humility before propagating their speculations about human behaviour being genetically determined as if it were an established scientific fact.

Marks is also good on the myth of race. “Race”, he says, “turns out to be an optical illusion”:

  “[W]e can, of course, make comparisons between groups of people and study their differences. The problem is invariably what meaning to assign to those differences. If we know that there are gradients, not boundaries; that human variation is patterned locally, not transcontinentally; that the extremes are not the purest representatives of anything, but simply the most divergent; that populations are invariably mixed with their neighbors, and in the last half-millennium with people from far away; and that clustering populations into larger units is a cultural act that values some differences as important and submerges others – then race evaporates as a natural unit.”

We have to record, however, that in the last five of the book’s twelve chapters Marks embraces some strange positions, such as defending the right of a North American Indian tribe to veto research on a 9,000-year old skeleton found on their former tribal territory as this conflicted with their “spiritual” values (much as the Mediaeval Church had “spiritual” reasons for frowning on the dissection of human bodies).  Similarly, he defends the refusal of certain indigenous people in other parts of the world to have their DNA recorded. Here, if it true, they may have a legitimate point about it being patented and used by others to make money, but this is a distortion due to the existence of capitalism. In principle, there is nothing wrong with recording the DNA of peoples who have been relatively isolated from the rest of humanity.

Adam Buick

Cooking the Books: Vice’s homage to virtue (2005)

The Cooking The Books column from the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

At their annual “World Economic Forum” jamboree in the Swiss ski resort of Davos in the last week of January, the world’s political and business leaders vied with each other to strike an “ethical” pose. It was, commented one newspaper, a case of ethics with everything.

There is even a magazine called the Ethical Corporation. At the time of the Tsunami its Asia-Pacific editor, James Rose, was active in the Australian press. “Put profits aside in the rebuilding” read the headline of one of his articles, “Shareholders should let companies assist in the post-tsunami reconstruction” (Australian, 4 January). “Companies must look beyond the bottom line” read another, “Corporate leaders see only profits as important. They must change” (Melbourne Age, 7 January).

Shareholders in construction companies would be only too willing to let them assist in the rebuilding. In fact, shares in them went up in anticipation of juicy reconstruction contracts. But this was not what Rose had in mind. Supply lines for aid, he wrote, “could be usefully shortened if corporations went in and did more of the work themselves, gratis, under the direction of the charity groups on the ground”, and:

  “What we need here is for corporations to throw off the cloak of self-interest. The best thing they could do is to approach the situation as it now stands as if it were a legitimate business opportunity, apart from one important factor: they will expect no financial or brand rewards”.

It’s a nice thought. The skills and the techniques are there, there are people in need, so why not bring the two together without any thought of profit? But it’s not going to happen, because that’s not the way capitalism works or could ever work.

Capitalism is a profit-making system and capitalist corporations have no choice but to put profits first. Not because the top executives are selfish or greedy or insensitive but because that’s the economic logic of the system. Corporate executives are merely what Marx once called “personifications of capital” and capitalism is an impersonal economic mechanism of the accumulation of capital out of profits which those in charge have to apply irrespective of their personal opinions or preferences.

Rose is aware of what he is up against as he wrote in the same issue of The Australian:

  “What is a corporation? On one level, it’s a pure money-making machine. There is solid opinion to say that’s all it can be. Even if a corporation wants to be a paragon of the New Age, it is constrained by the fiduciary obligations to its shareholders. It is legally constructed to focus on its and its owners’ self-interest”.

That opinion is indeed solid, very solid. Corporations don’t seek to maximise profits just because this is laid down by the law, as Rose suggests. The law merely reflects the underlying reality of capitalism. It’s not the law that needs changing – it never will  be on this point – but the whole profit system that needs dumping.

Go Tell the Spartans (2005)

TV Review from the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Time Commanders, BBC2, Sunday 7.45pm

There's no doubt that the rapid development of computer graphic imaging has done wonders for livening up history documentaries that used to rely on bearded men lyricising over lumps of masonry in a field. By filling in all the visual blanks it has opened up a fascinating subject to a generation of new enthusiasts who find archaeology a bore and Tony Robinson terminally aggravating. But even with CGI there's a limit to how gripping you can make an Iron Age settlement or an Egyptian temple complex. Now, perhaps inevitably, comes the adrenalin-fuelled rush of a real time video game crossover where teams of men (well, it's a man thing) take on the roles of ancient generals and refight famous battles on a huge computer screen.

In the first series Eddie Mair, normally lugubrious even on the radio, looked positively tragic as he watched suburban Essex car salesmen pretending to be world-conquering military leaders and throwing away their virtual armies in clueless abandon. In the second series Richard Hammond bounds around like a boy scout cheering on all the corking good fun and offering pointlessly inane advice like "don't let them get you in the flank!", while two dour bona-fide experts sit upstairs and witter grumpily about everything the 'generals' are doing wrong. Occasionally the teams even win, but even so it rarely seems that they have much idea what they are doing.

To anyone who imagines that historical battles were gigantic chessgames played out by masterminds this game reflects the truer historical picture, which is that battles were usually ugly and confusing messes presided over by frequently incompetent generals who were there by virtue of birth rather than merit.

The popularity of this show can scarcely have anything to do with any widespread knowledge of or interest in the history behind these battles or of the times in which they occurred. The vicarious thrill of being a general in charge of mass slaughter is perhaps bound to appeal to individuals who have no real power in society and whose only realistic experience of battle would ever be as cannon-food. It’s only a bit of fun, yet the concept is surprisingly repulsive.

All through history soldiers like these were 'spent' like so much disposable currency on the whim of human beings behaving like gods in the interests of wealth and power. For all their clockwork clone appearance these virtual soldiers are good enough to represent those historical but nameless human beings whose cruel lives and terrible deaths are being played out for our amusement. And as the graphics improve and the mutilation and gore acquire better and more prurient detail, the savagery of power and powerlessness becomes ever more poignant, and the pity of war ever more pitiable.

What really sticks in the craw and what this show inadvertently emphasizes is the thought that everything that holds meaning and value in our lives is actually meaningless and valueless to our rulers. Indeed the computer graphic algorithms reinforce this in a way since they simply create one virtual soldier and then make multiple identical copies to form the virtual armies. One can't escape the feeling that the owning class of the world must see us in largely the same way, as essentially wealth-producing bacteria without names, faces, rights or identity, cultured on their slides in order to grow them new wealth, and to be disposed of whenever we become unproductive. What is even more chilling is the idea that we ourselves might even adopt in some sense their view of us, certainly enough to fight all the savage battles of the future on their behalf. No wonder socialists oppose all wars.

Paddy Shannon

50 Years Ago: Atheism on the Air (2005)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard  

It would appear that in over 30 years of its existence the B.B.C. has never once permitted anybody to voice an opinion in favour of Atheism in any shape or form, until one evening in January when Mrs. Margaret Knight (lecturer in Psychology at Aberdeen University), was permitted to state in her broadcast on “Morality without Religion” that we should tell our children that we no longer believed in God although some people still do. She compared God with Santa Claus and referred to the Christian myths as useless for moral instruction. In her opinion if we taught children these biblical myths, when they grew up and learnt that they were at variance with the facts, they would be easy bait for Communism. The problem of evil was one point which she dealt with by declaring that an infinitely wise and all powerful God would not create evil. “If God cannot prevent evil then he is not all powerful, and if he will not, then he is not all Good.” The answer that many Christians give is that evil is man-made and nothing to do with God, or that its existence proves that man has departed from God. But here she said that there are a lot of evil things among the animals for which mankind certainly is not responsible. “The cat,” she said, “takes delight in playing with a mouse and inflicting torture on it until the mouse dies after a long drawn out and painful death.” The rest of the talk was about what she called “scientific humanism” and the education of children without the traditional religious beliefs.

The next day the Press was shocked and upset. The News Chronicle's leading article was headed “Atheism on the Air” in which it declared “Should she have been allowed to put and press her points without a balancing exposition of Christian beliefs? That is where we think the B.B.C. went wrong .” (14/1/55.)

Why this wonderful tolerant idea of a balancing exposition? Has not the B.B.C. been broadcasting religious beliefs for 30 years every day and often several times a day on all programmes and by thousands of exponents? Have they not a committee that on religious broadcasts see that we are all well soaked in traditional religious ideology?

Letters to the Press poured in by the thousand; such an hysterical outburst of injured religious pride has not been seen for a long time. 

(From an article by H. Jarvis, Socialist Standard, March, 1955)

Election News (2005)

Party News from the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

By the time you read this the general election campaign might be officially under way. As announced, the Socialist Party is standing a candidate in the Vauxhall constituency in South London. Our Head Office, which is in the constituency, is serving as the campaign rooms. If you want to help get the socialist message across against the Gang of Three (Labour, Liberal, Tory: Same Old Futile Story) and their apprentices in the Green Party (and other would-be managers of capitalism such as RESPECT and VANITAS), phone 0207 622 3811 or call in at 52 Clapham High St, SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North).

If you are connected to the internet you can also follow the campaign on a daily basis by visiting the site of our campaign blog "Vaux Populi" at http://spgb.blogspot.com

Brown Reorganises Poverty (2005)

From the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

They don’t give out more money, they just give out the same money in different directions. And the more they change the systems, the less the system changes.

The Labour government is in the process of introducing new measures through the inclusion in the social security system of tax credits which more than likely will not only deter workers from claiming their full entitlement to benefits, but not claim any at all.

Gordon Brown and his team in the Treasury are trying their hardest to put over the image that these new measures are a direct assault on child poverty when in fact all they are doing is keeping the annual budget for social security stable around the figure of £100 billion, knowing full well that once it starts going over this amount his future career in politics will be on the line. So despite the fact that politicians go through the pretence of improving certain features of social security, it is nothing else than shadow boxing around the issue of child poverty. For there’s no intention, so far as this government (or any other whatever its political hue) is concerned, of doling out any new money.

By the time the full package of the current social security overhaul is completed a new means of administering and calculating entitlement to social security benefits will be in place, where the emphasis will be on the introduction of further means-tested benefits rather than on non-means-tested benefits.  Means-tested benefits, besides being far more costly to administer than non-means-tested ones, are subject to bureaucratic hold-ups where the claimant suffers the consequences of waiting anything from 6 to 13 weeks for their claim to be processed, leading to a crisis period when you’re unsure if your claim will be successful or not.

 

Ever since its introduction in 1948 the social security system and in particular its means-tested benefits has been notoriously associated with compulsion, complexity and confusion and it’s likely that the outcome of these changes will mean more of the same.  Indeed, for many claimants the benefits system is in total and permanent disarray where the possibility of obtaining a ‘fair shake’ in an effort to maximize their full entitlement to benefits depends on their individual skills in negotiating a legal minefield with sanity intact.

 

So it is no surprise that the bureaucratic nightmare associated with social security claims has resulted in a significant increase in the percentage of workers finding it is not worth the hassle.  For example, in Rhondda Cynon Taf alone, it is estimated by the census that there are some 6,000 individuals who despite being entitled to some kind of social security do not claim any whatsoever.  Nationally, there are also estimates of approximately 800,000 pensioners who fail to claim their full entitlement to a various array of benefits.  These are just some of the many reasons why £6.2 billion was returned to the Treasury in 2002-3 in unclaimed benefits. But these figures also suggest that, when considered as a whole, the barriers of compulsion, complexity and confusion are inherent to the social security system. As such they are proving to be effective bureaucratic deterrents for claimants, thus keeping the burden on the capitalist class of meeting the cost of maintenance and reproduction of the non-working section of the working class below what they have estimated. These estimates are in any event is based on a growing domestic economy and, when this is no longer the case, historically social security is hit the first and hardest.

The introduction of tax credits also includes major changes in the administration and payment of social security, and especially who is legally responsible for any mistakes that are made by either the claimants or bureaucrats. Whilst both benefits and tax credits are part and parcel of the social security system, currently the Department of Works and Pensions (DWP) are responsible for the paper chase and payment of benefits, and only responsible for the administration of tax credits, whilst the Inland Revenue is solely responsible for the payment of tax credits.  Eventually, it is planned that the DWP will deal only with the administration of benefits and tax credits and the Inland Revenue with the payments of all social security and tax credits. Obviously, during this transition period there is a considerable amount of bureaucratic and legal overlap between the DWP and the Inland Revenue, resulting in further increases in the miscalculation of benefits.

Under the previous Department of Social Security, any overpayments were the responsibility of the local office to correct and if the overpayment was through a miscalculation – made by them – it effectively meant that under the law, as it then stood; the claimant was not compelled to make a repayment. Although this obvious loophole must have cost millions in lost revenue, it most certainly left many a claimant with a knowing smile every giro day. For under the previous law the claimant could not be punished or held responsible for someone else’s mistake.   The change in the law now means that the claimant is held responsible for notifying the DWP of the miscalculation even when it’s the department’s mistake.  But even when the miscalculation is corrected, the problems for the claimants – especially those on Working Tax Credit (WTC) – don’t end there for the overpayments in tax credits can go on being paid until the end of the tax year.  This means in effect that WTC claimants in particular can face a comparative mountain of debt, whether they are responsible for it or not.

But the problems for the 6 million claimants of WTC still don’t stop there. On its introduction Gordon Brown hailed it as a radical step forward in providing a stepping-stone out of the dependency and poverty trap by granting those on low wages a top-up, dependent on their circumstances. What he didn’t say was that when the claimant actually took that step to increase their financial prospects in the labour market they enter a new tax bracket, which is then calculated over the whole year and also puts them outside the scope of WTC. Which meant for the former WTC claimant who followed Brown’s advice, the Inland Revenue could in effect penalize them to the tune of £2000 to £3000 in backdated overpayments of WTC, thus wiping out any corresponding increases in wages.

For the WTC claimant it means, if they don’t want to be faced with a hefty demand from the Inland Revenue, to fine-tune any changes in the job market so that their income corresponds to the yearly tax demand. Presently, approximately 2 million claimants, or around 33 percent of the total claimants for WTC, are facing the prospect of paying these repayments within the next twelve months. If they fail to meet this deadline, which undoubtedly many of them will, they face being saddled with a further bill for the interest on the amount still owing – which is usually over the basic rate of interest charged by the banks. Gordon Brown, the CEO of Financial Operations GB plc, with a client base of 2 million, has probably created the biggest loan-shark business in Europe, feeding off the poverty of those workers who are trying their hardest to improve their means of living.

Brian Johnson