Editorial: Slavery and slavery (2007)

Editorial from the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

This month low-key ceremonies are taking place to mark the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. Slavery continued, with imported slaves replaced by plantation-bred ones, and was not abolished till 1833. It continued for a further 30 or so years in the Southern States of the USA.

By slavery in this context is meant “chattel slavery”, where humans were owned as the legal property of other humans just like any other movable property. It had been widespread in Ancient Greece and Rome where some slaves were used as domestics but the great bulk were put to work in agriculture and mining. As they were themselves the property of their masters so was the product of their labour. In other words, they were exploited by having what they produced taken from them. This was again the situation on the sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations of North and South America and the West Indies from the 16th to the 19th century.

Early capitalism benefited from the slave trade not only because it stimulated world trade generally but also because it contributed to the primitive accumulation of capital that was later invested in industrial production. But chattel slavery was not a suitable form of labour exploitation for capitalism. Which was why, in the end, it was abolished.

Capitalist factory-owners needed a flexible labour force and a reserve of workers they could draw on in times of expansion and who could be discarded in times of slump. They did not want to own their workers, precisely because they wanted, when business took a downturn, to be free of any obligation to maintain them as they would have had to with chattel slaves. They favoured “free” labour. They were only interested in buying their workers’ ability to work for a limited period.

“Free” labour meant more than that the worker was just not a chattel slave. It meant that he or she was also not tied to the land either as a peasant or a serf. It means that the only productive resource they own is their ability to work, their labour-power, which they are “free” to sell to some capitalist employer or other.

But capitalists are not philanthropists. They only buy labour-power if they think they can make a profit from using it. Karl Marx was the first to point out that while the capitalist paid the worker the full value of what the worker sold – that the wage  bargain was a commercial contract in which like any other equal value was exchanged for equal value – the wage worker was nevertheless exploited just as much as the chattel slave was.

The explanation lay in the fact that there is a difference between the value of what the workers sold – their labour-power – and the higher value of what they produced. Having purchased the worker’s labour-power the capitalist employer was just as legally entitled to the product of the exercise of that labour power as the slave-owner had been to the product of his chattel slaves.

The early working class in the first decades of the 19th century didn’t need Marx to tell them what this meant. They realised that they too were slaves robbed of the product of their labour. It it was they who coined the term “wage-slavery”, not to describe the fact that they were paid low wages but that they had to work for wages at all. It was they, too, who raised the slogan “Abolition of the Wages System”.

Chattel slavery was abolished in the British Empire over 170 years ago, but slavery still continued – and continues – in the form of wage slavery. Socialists are modern-day Abolitionists. We want the wage-workers of the world to act to abolish their slavery. To organise to make the means of wealth production – the land, farms, farms, warehouses, means of transport and communication, etc – the common property of the whole of society, so that one group of humans will no longer be dependent on another to live and no group will be able to appropriate the labour of another. A world without slavery in any form.

Party News (2007)

Party News from the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 30 and 31 January Comrade Miller of Central London Branch gave two talks hosted by the Edinburgh and Glasgow branches, respectively. Both talks were on the subject of intellectual property and Free Software. The Edinburgh talk was attended by about 15 people, over half of them first-time visitors. Many of the visitors were avid users and developers of Free Software, and the talk was followed by a long and generally positive discussion. The Glasgow talk also had a similar-sized audience, with two visitors.

Comrade Miller began the talk by introducing and comparing the concepts of physical property and intellectual property (IP), explaining how the law treats them much the same despite the fact that IP requires practically no labour to reproduce and does not spoil or wear out. The primary purpose of laws preventing people from copying music, software, literature, and other information, then, is to effect an artificial scarcity which helps secure profits for IP owners.

Comrade Miller explained how independent software developers, angry with the restrictions imposed by commercial IP owners, began to voluntarily license their software copyrights under terms which guaranteed that the software would always be free for others to use, study, copy, and modify. Since most new software is created by refining and combining existing pieces of software, this licensing scheme essentially returned control of the means of production of software to the community.

The Free Software licencing scheme has since been popularised and adapted to other forms of IP, most notably artwork and literature. Comrade Miller examined as a case study Wikipedia, a large online encyclopaedia which is collaboratively edited by thousands of volunteers from all over the world. The facts that editors contribute voluntarily and without compensation, and that the project operates in a largely democratic fashion without a government, serve to refute the common anti-socialist argument that people will not work and cooperate without coercion.

Though Wikipedia and other free content projects are not socialism, they are illustrative of how certain aspects of socialism could operate. If the artificial scarcity capitalism imposes on physical resources were abolished, as free licensing has done with certain informational resources, then what would be left to stop us from running the whole world through voluntary labour and free access?

Cooking the Books: Venture or vulture (2007)

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

According to the GMB and T&G unions, the Sainsbury supermarket chain is under threat. It’s reported that the Sainsbury family – including former Labour minister and Labour Party bank-roller, Lord Sainsbury – want to withdraw their capital and that  “venture capitalists” are grouping to buy them out. That’s what they call themselves. Others have different names for them. A GMB official called them “plunderers” while one from the T&G said they “do not create wealth; they extract it for their shareholders” (Times, February). A German minister once called them “locusts”. Other choice descriptions are “corporate raiders”, “predators”, “vultures” and “asset strippers”. 

Socialists apply some of these descriptions to all capitalists, but what have these particular kind of capitalists done to earn such epithets even from non-socialists?

Basically, they borrow money to set up a short-term fund (usually for 5 to 7 years) which they invest in other companies either to start them up or take them over. The venture capitalists then run the business  hoping to make enough money over the period to pay a higher than normal rate of interest to those who put up the money and to make a profit over and over this for themselves. Rates of up to 40 percent a year have been mentioned.

The immediate effect on the business they take over is that its indebtedness increases. Ordinary shareholders only have to be paid a dividend if the directors think enough profit is being made. Lenders have to be paid interest irrespective of whether or not the company makes a profit. Venture capitalists are in effect agents for lenders who take over running the company to ensure that these get their pound of flesh and over a relatively short period of time Then they move on to the next company.

It is easy to see why the unions don’t like this since the main means venture capitalists use to increase the short-term profits they are after is to hive off or close down the less profitable sections of the business with resultant job losses, so as to concentrate on the most profitable ones. The screws are then tightened on the remaining workforce to extract more work – and surplus value – from them than before.

The unions have promised an “ultimate showdown” with any venture capitalists that might assume control of Sainsbury’s. It is not evident that they have the industrial clout to organise and sustain the sort of strike this implies. More probably this is just a bluff to try to deter the venture capitalists from proceeding. The unions are also lobbying to end the tax concession on the money that venture capitalists borrow; in this they have the support of some ordinary capitalists who feel discriminated against when it comes to taking over other companies.

In the end, nothing much is likely to be done about “venture capitalism”. After all, from capitalism’s point of view, they are not doing anything wrong. In fact, they are only doing what comes naturally to capitalists: trying to make the biggest profit they can.

This land is your land (or maybe not) (2007)

Book Review from the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Author Kevin Cahill is wrong. Wider landowning is not the answer as we are excluded from ownership of the means of production in general not just land

So you’ve paid off your mortgage and now you own your house and the land on which it stands. No, you don’t — the land still belongs to the queen, who is the sole legal owner of land in the United Kingdom. So-called freeholds are actually leases from the Crown. This is one of many startling facts revealed by Kevin Cahill in Who Owns the [World] (published by Mainstream at the end of last year).

In fact the queen also owns all the land in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and a number of other Commonwealth countries. In all, according to Cahill, she owns well over six billion acres (one-sixth of the earth’s land surface), making her by far the largest landowner on the planet. She’s not the only monarch who claims ultimate ownership of their country’s land, and various kings, sultans and sheikhs make up the rest of the list of the largest landowners. Countries without kings or queens may still operate on a comparable principle: in Ireland the state is the sole owner of land.

When there is no such system of legal ownership by a monarch or state, there can still be massive landholdings. The Catholic church, for instance, is the second-largest  landowner in New York, and the other big religions are pretty wealthy too. Although they are in theory just tenants of the queen, the British aristocracy own plenty of land — around a billion euros’ worth in the case of the Dukes of Atholl and Westminster. The biggest landowner in the US is Ted Turner of CNN fame, though other individuals or families have more valuable holdings as the land is in richer areas. Fewer than one-fiftieth of one percent of the population of Europe (77,000 people) own 5 percent of the farmland and receive massive subsidies from the government.

At the same time, all this massive concentration of landownership is largely concealed from the general public. Few countries have comprehensive, accurate and easily available land registries, so it is difficult, if not impossible, to discover who owns what. A comprehensive account for the UK (then including the whole of Ireland) was published in 1872-6, as The Return of the Owners of Land. At that time, 96 percent of the population, over 27 million people, owned no land at all, while a third of a million owned more than an acre. Nothing of comparable scope has been published since then. But in 2006, Cahill argues, only 30 percent owned nothing, while 70 percent had a stake in land, i.e. a home. This is one of the themes of his book, the way in which private home-ownership has increased and so made most people relatively prosperous.

If Cahill had simply compiled and organised a mass of information about landownership throughout the world, his book would still have been a most useful work of reference. And there’s no doubt that that is what it is. If you want to find out, say, the largest landowners in Estonia, this is the place to look (it’s the Estonian state, a Finnish milk cooperative and IKEA). However, the book is far more than that: it is also written in support of a particular analysis of capitalism and a programme for change. The argument, basically, is that enabling people to own land and a home outright, with a proper free market in land, will lead to ‘universal prosperity’. Further, it ‘creates the essential condition for the universalisation and democratisation of capital.’ The claims here need to be assessed very critically.

For a start, what difference does it really make if in the last analysis the queen owns the land your house is on, supposedly making you and everyone else serfs rather than free individuals? In Britain the government can no longer legally seize land in the name of the Crown, but in theory the queen could sell Canada (just as Russia sold Alaska to the US in 1867). However, converting land to be genuine private property of its owner rather than something held on a kind of sufferance from the monarch would have not the slightest impact on workers’ daily lives. Those who now really owned a bit of land would still have to work for a living, just as they do now, and just as those in rented accommodation have to under any system.

Furthermore, home-ownership, whether true ownership or via Crown lease, is not all that it’s cracked up to be. It does not in itself remove a person’s status as a wage worker, and a mortgage is an enormous burden on most workers (witness the number of repossessions). Cahill asserts that increased home ownership leads to increased prosperity, but he never considers that the causality might be the other way round, that higher wages might lead to more workers owning their homes. In fact, from a comparative viewpoint, there seems to be no necessary connection here at all: his figures for owner-occupation in Europe show that Ireland, Spain and Greece have the highest rates (over 70 percent), while Sweden, Germany and France are at or just under 50 percent. Cahill’s bizarre description of Ireland as ‘the most advanced capitalist country on earth’ only makes sense on the basis of a very odd idea of how to measure such advancement.

He also goes wrong in describing a home as ‘capital’: the house you live in is not used for investment or productive purposes. And there is no such thing as a right to shelter, nor any point in putting such a ‘right’ in a country’s constitution. What matters is the effective ability to buy or rent a house or flat, not some abstract unenforceable ‘right’.

Much of this book is directed at landowners, complaining about the kind of subsidies they get from the taxpayer, which means other members of the ruling class. The capitalists think that landowners are unproductive and merely monopolise something which is in short supply and can therefore receive massively high rents, which are a drain on the capitalists’ profits. The idea of taxing land values as a way of hitting landowners and cutting taxes on other capitalists has been around for many years and was recently revived as a way to ‘make the New Labour project actually work’ (Ashley Seager, Guardian, 8 January). Socialists have always refused to take sides in debates about how the capitalist class distribute the paying of tax among themselves.

Cahill’s pro-capitalist views are clear from a throw-away remark about the unions having been out of control and needing to be tamed by Thatcher. He does at one point come close to seeing the real problem, when he writes that poverty is caused by exclusion, specifically by exclusion from ownership and use of, and access to, land. However, there is an extra step (or giant stride) which needs to be taken, to realise that this exclusion must be seen in terms of workers being excluded from ownership and access in the means of production in general, not just land but also factories, offices, shops, warehouses, etc. It would be unreasonable in the extreme to think that one book, written by one individual, could have assembled information about the ownership of all this as well as the land. But increasing home ownership and letting people own land directly will make no impression on the capitalist class’s monopoly of the means of production, and that is what needs to be done away with.

Paul Bennett

Burberry applies the law of profit (2007)

From the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last September Burberry announced that its Treorchy factory was no longer viable and would close this March with the loss of 309 jobs

Until the summer of 2006, it is probably true to say that the village of Treorchy was little known outside Wales – except to devoted enthusiasts of Welsh male voice choirs. Nestling in the shadow of steep and rocky hills, the village lies at the head of the Rhondda Valley and is typical of the abandoned communities that were originally established to mine the now worked-out coal of the South Wales valleys.

The Rhondda Valley is today an area of demoralising deprivation, characterised by dire poverty, poor housing and a drug problem that is almost out of control. Many of Treorchy’s ageing 8,000 strong community have chronic health and anxiety conditions. Unemployment is abnormally high and such local jobs as exist, mainly in retail, are difficult to come by. The village has one large employer of note – the factory owned by the iconic brand name Burberry.

Burberry was established in the middle of the nineteenth century when its founder Thomas Burberry invented a method of waterproofing cloth, which he called gabardine. Since the 1980s the company has successfully expanded the brand into a variety of luxury and fashion goods, including clothing, sportswear, watches, and perfumes and has enjoyed rapid international growth. Burberry’s first half results to September 2006 showed an increase in the company’s turnover of 10 percent to nearly £400 million and an increase in operating profit of 7 percent to £84 million. (burberryplc.com, 14 November 2006 .) The employees of Burberry in Treorchy had every reason to feel assured – after all, it had been their sacrifices that had contributed to the company’s startling success. But the events that were about to unfold showed their confidence had been seriously misplaced.

At the beginning of September Burberry announced that its Treorchy factory was no longer viable and that it would close in March 2007 with the loss of 309 jobs. The company said that rising costs could no longer be recovered by raising worker productivity and that skill shortages and a decline in the local supplier network meant that the factory no longer had a future. Burberry had been the community’s main employer for generations, and its workers, many of whom had been employed for 40 years, were stunned. Their union, the GMB, had received no warning of the closure or of company plans to transfer the production of designer polo shirts to China.

Outraged Burberry workers and their union organised themselves to resist the closure. While public protests against factory closures are not new, what was different about this campaign was its success in turning the threat of closure into a public relations battle that rapidly mobilised public opinion. They lobbied politicians and successfully sought the support of celebrities to keep the issue in the public eye to shame the company into reconsidering and to persuade customers not to buy the its products. The campaign quickly became a public debate about whether a successful company hailed as a British icon and already enjoying healthy profits should simply be ‘allowed’ to pack up and abandon a small community.

Burberry is heavily dependent on the sales of its goods in other countries. In these countries the company has always marketed itself as a quintessentially ‘British’ brand, an appeal that has been summed up by the journalist Janet Street-Porter with the words, ‘To many, Burberry is just as British as the Union Jack’. Burberry workers and politicians have endeavoured to exploit this connection to argue that if the company’s success is so dependent on its ‘Britishness’, then it has an obligation to take care of its workers in Britain and treat them ‘fairly.’ Such appeals to economic patriotism have invoked issues of corporate accountability and nurtured a view amongst politicians that, while this type of behaviour may be expected from ‘foreign’ companies, this does not mean it is acceptable from a British employer.

The support from celebrity figures, many representative of the kind of people who have the money to buy the Burberry brand, has been an important factor in keeping the closure in the news. Amongst those who have offered their support – promoting their ‘Welsh credentials’ and enhancing their own public image in the process – are Bryn Terfel, Emma Thompson, and actor Ioan Gruffudd, who until recently modelled Burberry fashionware. More recently the tax exile entertainer Tom Jones, who hasn’t lived in Wales for decades, has added his support and Manchester United’s Sir Alex Ferguson has also lent his name to the campaign. Other objectors include the Prince of Wales and interestingly the Church of England, which has investments in the company and has written to Burberry questioning its proposals to close its factory. There is no evidence, however that, as a shareholder in the company, the Church is offering to forgo its dividend if Burberry keeps its factory open.

The politicians – with an eye on this May’s Welsh National Assembly elections – have also been trumpeting their support for the stricken workforce. In October last year Leighton Andrews, Assembly Member for Rhondda, put a ‘Statement of Opinion’ to the Welsh Assembly deploring the closure, and Rhondda MP Chris Bryant put down an Early Day Motion at Westminster calling for Burberry to reconsider its decision.

In November 2006 the workers gained further publicity by staging a public protest outside the company’s prestige New Bond Street store in London. After he had seen which way the wind was blowing, muted criticism also came from Wales and Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain, who said such an ‘iconic British brand’ should not be made abroad.

The public relations battle continued in January 2007, when Burberry chairman John Peace and its chief executive Angela Ahrendts were called before the Commons Welsh Affairs Select Committee to give evidence to its inquiry on globalisation. This intervention followed criticism of Burberry bosses over the insensitivity of Christmas bonuses given to its Treorchy workers – a Burberry scarf and a £30 voucher to spend in its stores. As well as this, Chris Bryant MP is urging Parliament to revoke Burberry’s Royal Warrant if the company proceeds with the closure, asserting that these should only go to British companies with a ‘fair employment policy’ (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/6305703.stm). The issue has even gone to the European Parliament, MEP Jill Evans saying, ‘I will be calling for corporate social responsibility to be made legally binding’ (South Wales Echo, 9 January 007). It is hard, however, to see these activities as other than cynical and meaningless gestures designed to placate disgruntled voters who are threatening to give Labour politicians in Wales a rough ride in May.

Burberry, for its part, has continued to resolutely defend its ‘Britishness’, recently saying, ‘We are proud of our British heritage and we continue to design and manufacture in the UK’ (Observer, January). The company has been keen to point out that after the closure it will still employ some 2,000 workers at its Castleford and Rotherham factories in Yorkshire. Its third quarter results for 2006 (announced in January 2007), show, furthermore, that the high profile campaign against the brand has done little to dent sales and profitability. Chief executive Ahrendts said, ‘This outstanding quarter has been led by Burberry’s strong retail performance,’ prompting broker Merrill Lynch to hail the company as ‘one of the most promising stories in the sector’ leading to forecasts that Burberry revenue could exceed the £1 bn mark by March 2009 (www.yorkshiretoday. co.uk, January). Burberry’s management appears to have correctly calculated that the bad publicity arising from the closure of its Treorchy factory would not arrest rising sales and profitability. This is because Burberry is a brand that is aimed almost exclusively at an elite of shoppers who mainly live in other countries. Its products are outside the purchasing power of the average working class shopper and the company has nothing to fear from a boycott by workers on the minimum wage, including those employed at its British factories.

The anticipated closure of the factory bringing the prospect of hardship, misery and trauma to Treorchy should of course be condemned, not only in South Wales but everywhere where workers daily suffer a similar fate. But however well meaning and sincere this condemnation, it is not enough, and cannot alter the mechanisms that make such events an accepted part of the economic system in which we live.

The workers at Burberry are engaged in a battle against capital, which like workers everywhere they ultimately cannot win. Employment is created only when there is an expectation that the goods produced by workers will realise profit when sold on the market. Profit comes from the employment of working people and continued employment is dependent on continued profitability. Capital investment follows profitability, which means that if profitability cannot be maintained or the prospect of greater profit arises elsewhere, then the jobs upon which wage and salary earners are reliant will be terminated.

Like many other successful brand names, Burberry is looking to divest itself of its traditional productive workforce and, through sub-contracting mechanisms, to have the actual production of its goods take place in Asian sweatshops. Although labour costs represents a minimal proportion of its total costs, every penny saved in the production of its goods means a penny added to profits and more importantly improves the company’s attractiveness for future investment.

In capitalism such decisions are inevitable because profit is more important than people’s welfare. Decisions must be taken without regard for the social consequences or for patriotism, which amounts to a misguided notion that as a British registered company Burberry should have some allegiance to the country where it was established or where many of its employees live. The fact that Wales already suffers dire poverty and that comparable jobs will be virtually impossible to find is of no consequence on the balance sheet, where the only consideration can be the bottom line. Companies have but one goal – the maximisation of profits for their shareholders.

The proposed Burberry closure shows how the interests of wage and salary earners are everywhere diametrically opposed to the interests of the owners of the means of production. But it also shows something about capitalist politicians. The politicians do not condemn Burberry for exploiting the workforce that is the source of the company’s rising profits. Nor do they condemn a system that brings prosperity to the few by perpetuating the poverty and insecurity of the many, by reducing wage and salary earners to conditions not much better than slavery, and whose very wellbeing is dependent on how successfully they can be exploited. Legally binding ‘corporate social responsibility’ that would restrict a company’s ‘flexibility’ will not be allowed to happen because this would effect capital accumulation and lead directly to a migration of capital to other less restrictive and more profitable parts of the world.

The experiences of the Burberry workers have happened time and again in the past and will be repeated time and again in the future, for as long as the working class believes that there is no alternative to the capitalist economic system. Working people everywhere would do well to reflect on the fact that capitalism cannot operate in any other way and is incapable of being reformed to do so.

Steve Trott

Who caused global warming? (2007)

From the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Global warming is caused by mankind, is here to stay and is getting worse, leading scientists have concluded”.

So the Times (3 February) summarised the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued at the beginning of February. As the IPCC is made up of hundreds of scientists from all over the world, specialists in the field, its findings are fairly authoritative.

However, blaming “mankind” in general for causing the problem is misleading since this suggests that people have deliberately chosen to engage in the activities that have led and are still leading to global warming. Whereas this is not the case. Most humans performing these are just carrying out the orders of those organising them while these latter are in turn constrained to act in the way they do by the economic laws of the capitalist system that currently dominates the world.

Capitalism is the impersonal process of the accumulation of capital out of the surplus value produced by the wageworking class and involves competition to transform this surplus value into money by selling the products in which it is embodied. This battle is won by those enterprises that can sell their products at the lowest price due to their employment of more productive methods. This investment in new productive methods depends on making enough profits (converting enough surplus value into money). So, capitalism is the pursuit of profits to accumulate as more capital. Such “growth” is built into it and cannot be stopped. If ever it was, the whole system would seize up and there’d by massive worldwide unemployment.

It is capitalism that has forced some humans to organise and order other humans to burn fossil fuels, cut down tropical forests, etc because this is cheaper and more competitive than the alternatives. So, the real conclusion of the IPCC report is that, to the extent that it is “anthropogenic” (as they put in scientific language) rather than caused by solar radiation, volcanic activity or some other force outside human control, “global warming is caused by capitalism”.

Six storylines

The IPPC report (Summary for Policymakers at www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf) offers six scenarios, or “storylines”, of what could happen by the year 2100. All of them assume the continuation of capitalism. Given this assumption, however, four of the scenarios can be dismissed as unrealistic in that they are incompatible with the way capitalism works. Two of them are those favoured by Greens and assume, respectively, that “the underlying theme is self-reliance and preservation of local identities” (which the report labels A2) or that “the emphasis is on local solutions to economic, social and environmental sustainability” (B2); both imply a slower rate of capital accumulation than hitherto (and also a slower decline in the rate of population growth). A third (B1) assumes a “rapid change in economic structures toward a service and information economy, with reductions in material intensity and the introduction of clean and resource efficient technologies. The emphasis is on global solutions to economic, social and environmental sustainability, including improved equity”. But this just isn’t going to happen under capitalism and would require the establishment of a world socialist system to be applied.

The fourth unrealistic scenario (A1T) envisages “a future world of very rapid economic growth, global population that peaks in mid-century and declines thereafter, and the rapid introduction of new and more efficient technologies” but where the technological emphasis is on “non-fossil energy sources”. What’s unrealistic about this is not the first part – which is likely, if not so “rapid” as assumed (see later) – but the second, i.e.,the early abandoning of the use of fossil fuels to generate energy. Fossil fuels are currently cheaper than the alternatives, and will be for a while, and so will continue to be used for as long as this is the case. The two remaining scenarios share the assumption of the fourth about economic growth and the introduction of new technologies but assume that the technological emphasis will be “fossil intensive” (A1F1) (the present situation) or “a balance across all [energy] sources” (A1B). The latter seems the more likely, if only because as fossil fuels become rarer their price will rise relatively to non-fossilsources so making the latter relatively cheaper.

The IPCC report gives a “best estimate” for the likely rise in world surface temperature by 2100 compared with the 1980-1999 average for each of the six scenarios (see Table). As can be seen, the best in terms of lowest temperature rise is B1 (1.8 degrees Centigrade). The worst is A1F1 (4 degrees Centigrade). The one that an understanding of the way capitalism works suggests is the most likely (A1B) gives a rise of 2.8 degrees Centigrade. It is interesting to note that the two localist, Green scenarios come out badly at 3.4 and 2.4 degrees Centigrade respectively. “Think globally, act locally” doesn’t seem such a good idea after all.

A 2.8 degrees Centigrade rise in average temperature is going to cause many problems – melting ice-caps, rising sea-levels, droughts, migrations – which capitalism, because it is divided politically into competing states, will be unable to tackle rationally; in fact, in some cases they are likely to lead to wars. These problems could only be tackled successfully within the framework of a world socialist system where there would no longer be armed states or frontiers but a global administration able to take effective global action.

Saved by a slump?

Ironically, the only thing that may save the world from the problems that a 2.8 degrees Centigrade rise would cause is that the economic growth and technological innovation will not be as rapid as the IPCC report assumes. Economic growth (the accumulation of capital) is the general trend of capitalism – in fact that’s what it’s all been about – but, although the long-term trend is upward, the graph of this growth is by no means a steady, continuous line. Due to the uncontrolled and uncontrollable, anarchic nature of capitalist production, the accumulation of capital proceeds by fits and starts so that the graph is rather a series of peaks and troughs with each succeeding peak normally higher than the previous one.

The assumption that there will be no world economic slump or prolonged period of stagnation between now and 2100 is quite unrealistic. Given capitalism, something like this is bound to happen during this period, so that the use of fossil fuels won’t be as rapid as this IPCC’s scenario assumes. So, perhaps, global temperatures won’t rise so much either. But the fact that the accumulation of capital won’t be as rapid as assumed is hardly a reason for retaining capitalism and would not be offered as one by its supporters.

What is required to stabilise the rise in temperature is a worldwide political and social revolution to end capitalism and put “mankind” in full charge of its interaction with the rest of nature (production). Which can only be done on the basis of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources becoming the common heritage of all Humanity.

Adam Buick

Red Rhymes (2007)

Book Review from the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bob Dixon: Make Capitalism History: Poems and Other Communications, Artery Publications £4.50. (available from 38 Pembroke Road, Bromley, Kent, BR1 2RU)

Socialists have made rather little use of poetry as a way of putting our ideas over, so a book of poems (and a few prose pieces) with such a title is at least eye-catching. Dixon is in fact an old hand at political poetry, and one of his previous books was reviewed in the Socialist Standard for May 2000.

The present volume contains some decent stuff: ‘War is of widows, of woe and of weeping . . . war is not glory, not  glinting gold medals.’ A nice deceit depicts ‘colladeral’ as a disease which originated in a US military establishment. A poem titled ‘Demockracy’ contrasts anti-war demonstrators with the lack of those with banners saying ‘WE WANT WAR!’ or ‘POLLUTION IS FUN!’.

Yet there are a couple of problems. One may be gleaned from the title: there is no vision at all of what to replace capitalism with. Another is a tendency to apportion blame in the wrong quarters. The final poem in the book is called ‘To the parents of British soldiers killed in Iraq’, castigating them for not stopping their children from enlisting, and concluding, ‘I cannot extend my sympathy to you.’ This is misplaced — British generals, politicians and rulers more generally should be criticised, not the victims and their relatives.

Paul Bennett

Cooking the Books: Is Ian Paisley a socialist? (2007)

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

It is not often that the business pages of the capitalist press refer to socialism. Past experience suggests that when they do they make fools of themselves. A recent article in the Times ( 9 January) by Tim Hames confirmed this. “Northern Ireland”, he wrote, “is in danger of replacing sectarianism with socialism”.

If only this were true. Unfortunately socialism (common ownership,democratic control, production for use not profit, distribution according to needs) is not on the agenda there and in any event couldn’t be since socialism cannot be established just in one country let alone one province.

But this is not what Hames had in mind. After pointing out that state spending represents 60 percent of all spending in Northern Ireland, he went on: “The Rev Paisley and Mr McGuinness will find little difficulty making common cause in asking for ever larger public spending to be showered, equitably, on their constituencies”.

While it is true that politics in Northern Ireland is characterised by what on the continent of Europe is known as “clientelism” – where different politicians appeal to a different group of identified “clients” on the basis of getting material benefits for them in particular – Hames is wrong in thinking government spending and subsidies on and for the poorer sections of society is socialism. If it did then the Reverend Inane Paisley, with his client basis of poor Protestants, would indeed be a socialist. An absurd conclusion which is proof that the original proposition is wrong in accordance with the principle of logic the Ancient Romans used to call reductio ad absurdum.

Government spending on measures to help the poor has nothing to do with socialism. That’s reformism not socialism. At most Paisley is a reformist, even a “leftwing” reformist compared with the UK Labour Party which used to take up this position (now it cuts back on benefits for the poor).

But if Paisley isn’t a socialist, what about President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela? He features on the business pages more than Paisley. Following his re-election as President in December, Chavez announced plans to (re-)nationalise telecom and power companies in Venezuela. Horrified, the Times (9 January) declared: “Mr Chavez begins his third termtomorrow, promising to complete what he calls  Venezuela’s Socialist Revolution of the 21st century”.

More people would find it easier to regard Chavez as a socialist than Paisley, but this is based on another misconception about socialism – that it means government ownership. If this was socialism then all sorts of people just as unlikely as Paisley would be socialists.

Capitalist governments everywhere, whatever their political colour, whether political dictatorships or political democracies, whether “rightwing” or leftwing”, have had recourse to nationalisation. Very early on socialists, basing themselves on the experience of Imperial Germany under Bismarck, identified this as state capitalism since with government ownership the workers remained exploited and bossed. The 70-year experience of Russia under the dictatorship of the Bolsheviks confirmed this, as did the experience of the nationalisations carried out by the postwar Labour government in Britain.

Nationalisation – government ownership of industry – is state capitalism because it leaves all the essential features of capitalism intact: production for sale with a view to profit, surplus value produced by wage worker, monetary calculation. Only the management changes, from private capitalists or their appointees to state bureaucrats.

Chavez’s renationalisation programme is no different. His “Socialist Revolution of the 21st Century” is the State Capitalism of the 20th Century all over again.

Greasy Pole: If John were Prime Minister (2007)

The Greasy Pole column from the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Withdraw British troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and scrap Trident,” promises John

When the SWP’s wish is granted and Phoney Blair finally goes, there will be a Labour Party election to replace him as Leader by Gordon Brown, the dour son of a Presbyterian minister who wants us all to display the Union Jack on Empire Day or whatever he proposes to call its replacement. But he’s not going to get a free run. There are, apparently, still some people in the Labour Party who consider themselves socialists.

Last year, soon after Blair announced that he’d be stepping down, they selected a champion to do battle with Brown: one John McDonnell, the MP for Hayes and Harlington in West London and chair of the Campaign Group of Labour MPs.

They have prepared leaflets, stickers and videos and are currently trying to recruit people to join the Labour Party just so they can vote for him. “I am campaigning,” he says, “for a Labour Party which puts people before profit, defends jobs and services, and supports peace over war. Join me.”

Until the 1990s this is what Labour used to say when not in office but what they never did when they were elected. John (as we’ve been invited to call him) doesn’t seem to have understood why. He seems to think that the putting of profits before people, cutting jobs and services and supporting war rather than peace which all Labour governments have always done were just mistaken policy choices, rather than something imposed on any government charged, as all governments are, with running the political affairs of a capitalist country in the interest of its capitalists.

All governments have to put profits before people because capitalism, the system within which they have to work, runs on them. They are what makes it go round. If profits are not given priority then problems begin to appear. Capitalist firms don’t have enough incentive to go on investing at the same or a higher level and unemployment and relocation to other countries result.

Rewards

John’s opponent, Gordon, has understood perfectly well that, where you have production in the hands of profit-seeking businesses, to keep production going you’ve got allow these businesses to make profits. As he told an “Enterprise Conference” in 2005: “My message today – and my mission in government – is that Britain should be not only the most stable environment but the most attractive location to do business and to create new businesses . . . We will continue to look at the business tax regime so that we can provide the best possible incentives for investment in wealth creation and rewards for success.” (Times, 4 February 2005)

It is this understanding that businesses must be allowed to do what they exist to do and seek and make profits as “rewards for success” that makes Gordon a far more suitable chief administrator of British Capitalism PLC than John with his illusion that under capitalism people can be put before profit.

Once you’ve given yourself the “mission” – actually, faced up to the realities of governing capitalism – of seeking to create the best conditions for profit-seeking businesses to operate and flourish, the rest follows.

John wants to “defend jobs”, but that’s not the way capitalism works. Competition means that there are losers as well as winners. While the latter enjoy the “rewards for success” in the form of higher profits, the losers suffer the penalty of failure in the form of lower or no profits. Losing firms have either to cut back on production or go out of business altogether or be taken over by more ruthless competitors. In whichever case, the result is job losses. John doesn’t say how he would prevent this but we can guess that it would be either by subsidising loss-making businesses or by trying to protect them from foreign competition behind tariff walls.

This could be done (after Britain had first withdrawn from the EU and the World Trade Organisation) but, now that capitalism is more global than ever before, the results would be disastrous for the economy of any country whose government tried them. There’d be an economic slump and mass unemployment.

Reforms

It’s the same with the reforms John is promising. “I will increase the Basic State Pension to £114 a week and immediately restore the link to earnings”. “I will introduce a Real Living Minimum Wage of at least £7 an hour”. The only chance of these figures being attained is if there’s an inflation of the currency – highly likely under a left wing Labour government – leading to an increase in the general price level.

If they were to be attained by taxing profits to pay for them, this would be a disincentive for businesses to invest. In fact, it is because he doesn’t want to do this that Brown, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, has been seeking to reduce taxes on profits. Which is why he and the present Labour government have been cutting back on public services of every sort, from local libraries, post offices and sports facilities to hospital wards and care for the aged.

A leftwing Labour government would, John promises, “withdraw British troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and scrap Trident”. It is now clear that the Bush and Blair governments made a big mistake, in terms of their aim of ensuring secure and reliable oil supplies for capitalist industry in the West, in invading Iraq. They have made matters worse and are now desperately seeking an exit strategy that will minimise the advantage they have given to Iran, their main rival for hegemony over the Middle East.

John, however, thinks that British capitalism need not be concerned about oil supplies from the Middle East or anywhere else. If I were PM, he says, “I will implement a green energy policy based on renewable power sources”. Easier said than done, given that British capitalism depends on burning fossil fuels for 90 percent of its energy and that (in fact, because) renewable power sources are more expensive. If Britain under John opted to just use wind power, tidal power, hydro power, etc this would so raise production costs generally as to render practically all UK-produced goods completely uncompetitive on the world market and we’d be back to mass unemployment.

John government would have the power to “scrap Trident” nuclear weapons but this would be tantamount to deciding to relegate British capitalism from a second to a third rate power. We don’t know who John is going to appoint as his Foreign Secretary – Jeremy Corbyn, perhaps – but whoever it is will have to realise the worst nightmare of another one-time Labour leftwing firebrand, Nye Bevan, of going naked into the Conference chamber. As Frederick the Great of Prussia, who knew a thing or two about these things, put it, “diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments”.

In short, John and his colleagues are not living on this planet. They have a quite unrealistic programme that, if implemented, would lead to economic chaos and mass unemployment. The only thing that could be said in their favour is that it is not really meant to be implemented. That it’s just a harmless list of pious wishes. So, no John, we shan’t be joining the Labour Party just to vote for you. What would be the point? We have seen the past and it doesn’t work.

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: the Unification of Europe (2007)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

The MacMillan Government, with the general support of the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress, is going ahead with the scheme to associate Britain with a European free trade area that is being built up round a separate, more closely integrated “common market” of Germany, France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg.

The six countries in the “common market” aim by stages to abolish customs barriers and free movements of labour and capital within the area. The larger “free trade area” is a sort of half-way house to full integration; in particular British food production and imports would continue to be on the basis of preference for Commonwealth countries.

The motive for the decision of the Government to go in is the powerful one that British industry cannot afford to keep out. When the European “common market” area is formed, with a protected market of 50 million people,thus enabling mass production industries to operate on a scale that will justify the necessary enormous investments of capital, British manufacturers fear that they will be undercut, not only in Europe, but in world markets; for the 50 million population of Britain is far too small a market to serve as foundation for modernised industry.

For British Capitalism it is a question of getting into the European group or being crushed by the three great production areas that will then exist, America, Russia and United Europe.

(Editorial, Socialist Standard, March 1957) 

‘A Very Short Introduction To . . . Capitalism’ (2007)

Book Review from the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism. A Very Short Introduction, by James Fulcher. Oxford University Press. £6.99

Capitalism is the system of production in which capital prevails. Capital, as Fulcher says, is “essentially the investment of money in the expectation of making a profit”; “money that is invested in order to make more money”. As such it existed even in Ancient Rome and the Middle Ages, but capitalism, as a system, only came into being when capital came to be invested in the production of goods rather than in trading or money-lending. This happened increasingly from the 16th century onwards, accelerating in the 19th century and coming to dominate the world before its end.

All this is well explained in the opening two chapters. Then there’s a rather sudden leap from a discussion as to why capitalism first developed in Europe to modern, 20th century capitalism, which Fulcher calls “managed capitalism”. The state has always intervened in capitalism (that a so called free market capitalism with no state intervention once existed is a myth), but in the 20th century the claim was that this was being done in the interests of all the state’s subjects rather than just the capitalist class, as patently evident before.

Capitalism is, and was from the start, a global system but it has different institutional forms in different countries due to their specific historical and political circumstances. So Fulcher is able to answer his question “Is capitalism everywhere the same?” with a no, different forms of capitalism exist. However, he does not go so far as to include the USSR in its time as having been capitalist. He sees it rather as some non-capitalist alternative, even though money there was invested in the expectation of profit – by the state; hence our view of it as “state capitalism”.

In discussing crises in the final chapter Fulcher points out that “the history of capitalism is . . . littered with crises. Periods of stable economic growth are the exception not the norm. The quarter century of relatively stable economic growth after 1945 may have shaped a generation’s  expectations about capitalist normality but it was not historically typical of capitalism”. But, he says, “particular crises . . .  come to an end” and that “contrary to what some of his followers have thought” Marx did not believe “that capitalism would end in some huge economic collapse. It would come to an end only when overthrown by the workers it exploited”.

Not that he thinks Marx was being realistic here since his book ends on a distinctly pessimistic note: “The search for an alternative to capitalism is fruitless in a world where capitalism has become utterly dominant, and no final crisis is in sight or, short of some ecological catastrophe, even really conceivable . . . Those who wish to reform the world should focus on the potential for change within capitalism”. Naturally, we disagree. That’s been tried  before, and it doesn’t work.

Adam Buick

‘A Very Short Introduction To . . . Socialism’ (2007)

Book Review from the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism: A Very Short Introduction, by Michael Newman. Oxford University Press. £6.99.

We are hard to please when it comes to books on socialism because it is likely they won’t mean by socialism what we do. This book is no exception but if “socialism” is understood as meaning “what has been considered socialism” it’s not too bad.

The definition of socialism we have inherited – a society based on the common ownership by all the people of the means of production – is logically and historically justified, but we don’t want such common ownership for its own sake. What we want primarily is a society where people are socially equal, have an equal say in how things are run, and feel, and are, part of a genuine community with a common interest; in abstract terms, where equality, democracy and community exist, arguing that this can only happen on the basis of the common ownership by all of the means for producing wealth.

Newman says that socialism involves “a belief in the possibility of constructing an alternative egalitarian system based on the values of solidarity and co-operation”, that such a system is not incompatible with human nature and that it can be brought about by conscious human action. We fall into this category, but so do others. Newman uses the word “socialist” in this book to describe all who do.

The two major movements in the last century which claimed to be committed to this were the Social Democratic and Labour parties and the Leninists. The former believed that an “alternative egalitarian system based on the values of solidarity and co-operation” could be gradually introduced through parliamentary action within capitalism; the latter argued (for most of the time) that it could only be done dictatorially, though still gradually, after the seizure of political power by a vanguard party.

Newman examines what he considers the most favourable cases of both strategies: Sweden for the Social Democrats and Cuba for the Leninists. He does conclude that less inequality came to exist in these countries than previously, but suggests that other factors than a desire to establish “socialism” were involved.

Our view is that all Sweden had under the Social Democrats (recently voted out of office again) was a reformed capitalism, while Cuba (Russia, China, North Korea and the rest) were state capitalist dictatorships which had nothing to do with socialism. And that both contributed to the alteration of meaning that the word socialism underwent in the last century.

Searching for more modern contributions to the idea of socialism, Newman comes up with feminism and ecologism. Socialists are of course feminists in the sense that we believe in equality between men and women, but nowadays only a few ageing feminists from the 1960s and 70s still see feminism as having some connexion with socialism; most now see it as meaning that women should be allowed to compete on equal terms in the rat-race capitalism imposes and have an equal chance of ending up capitalists, top politicians or army generals.

Socialists have become more aware of environmental issues than at one time, but most Greens think that these problems can be solved by gradual parliamentary action, and participation in running capitalism, as the old Social Democrat and Labour parties used to think working-class problems could be.  They, too, are doomed to fail.

We can, however, agree with Newman when he says, in his conclusion, that as long as capitalism exists so will socialist ideas: “What can be maintained with confidence is that capitalism will not be able to resolve the problems and injustices it causes, that there will be constant protests in one form or another, and that socialist arguments remain relevant. However, it is the task of socialists to help create that consciousness” rather than assume that socialism will come automatically.

Adam Buick

‘A Very Short Introduction To . . . Anarchism’ (2007)

Book Review from the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anarchism, A Very Short Introduction, by Colin Ward. Oxford University Press. £6.99.

This is a reminder of what anarchists in Britain used to be like before the 1980s when a new breed, borrowing vanguardist tactics from the trotskyists, appeared calling themselves “class struggle anarchists”. Ward puts the case for a pacifist, reformist anarchism, concerned with gradually breaking down authoritarian attitudes in education, sex, the family, prisons, censorship and with promoting decentralization and voluntary self-help even within capitalism.

Adam Buick

The god of the killers (2007)

From the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

When in comes to condoning violence it’s a case of the christian kettle and the muslim pot

Those Muslims who plant car bombs and turn their bodies into human bombs and take the lives of innocent people are not simply proselytising. Of course they believe that Allah will be pleased and rewarding but their action is not simply a religious gesture; it is intended as a political act aimed at a political end - though, of course, Allah‘s approval of their action makes it a sound investment in their perceived ‘hereafter’.

Recently the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, who is apparently second in command, so to speak, of the Anglican Church speculated on the morality of Muslims who do this sort of thing. In fact he asked what conception these people had of their God. It is an excellent question and it implies that the Archbishop wonders how any rational individual could conceive of a good God who would endorse the slaughter of innocent people. That is precisely the sort of question that atheists frequently pose when told that the central purpose in life is to please an omnipotent being, thing or force with the power but not the will to frustrate the events that cause so much grief and pain to us mere human beings.

But the Archbishop’s interest in the Muslim killer’s perception of God would seem to imply a certain moral selectivity on his part; indeed, given the facts, it would seem that what troubles him about suicide bombers, for example, is not the consequences of their action but the means they employ in the performance of their evil deeds.

The United States, Britain and the other major nations of world capitalism spend some 900 billion dollars annually on maintaining armed forces whose purpose is the defence or expansion of the interests of their national capitalist class. Much of this fantastic wealth is devoted to the maintenance and development of aircraft and missiles destined to attack cities and, as we know from experience, kill vast numbers of completely innocent people. The grim total of those innocents murdered by terrorists who plant bombs or use their persons to deliver death over the last century is a very tiny fraction of the innocents murdered by massive sophisticated aerial devices, and it is a fair assumption that many if not most of the flying state killers profess one or other of the Christian faiths.

The Archbishop of York is simply articulating the selective attitude of the churches to the killing business. In fact by confining his speculation to the terrorist’s conception of God he is effectively restricting his condemnation of the killing of innocent people to suicide bombers, car bombers or those who plant bombs as opposed to those who drop massive bombs.

This is not meant to imply that the numbers slaughtered determines the measure of guilt. Numbers do not influence the principle and both legal and illegal military operations don’t confine their anti-human activates within certain ‘morally’ defined limits. Of course, church leaders, like military leaders, deplore war and killing but they make it acceptable by claiming it as an inevitable consequence of what they call the weakness of our ‘human nature’ - which, peculiarly, the ‘human nature’ of socialists seems to lack.

It would be a fairly safe bet that Dr Sentamu’s academic distinction is theology especially Christian theology - effectively, interpreting ancient religious texts to suit the mores of an intellectually superior society. He must at least have read the Bible but surprisingly, while wondering at the barbaric licence a Muslim killer finds in the Koran, he fails to acknowledge the appalling savagery endorsed in the Old Testament by his own God.

Does he, for example, accept that people who break the Sabbath or who are disobedient to their parents or commit adultery should be stoned to death or that the ‘chosen people’ of the Lord should slaughter their enemies? Does he accept the modern Christian view that the slaughter of anonymous innocents can legitimately constitute a ‘just war’ or that the state can set aside the Fifth Commandment?

Socialists can empathise with the Archbishop’s puzzlement at a Muslim killer’s perception of Allah and the fact that he is confused by it manifests what is good in the human condition. Doubtless that goodness would be outraged by the brutal endorsements of the God he believes in but that is part of the complexity of religious belief – no stranger, indeed, than the incantations and prayers of humans supposedly wicked in their nature imploring the compassion of an all-merciful god.

The Archbishop, to his credit, raised a more profane issue when he roundly condemned the current Labour government for its encroaching infringement of civil liberties. As an native of Uganda he probably experienced the dictatorship of Idi Amin and like anyone who values the limited liberties of political democracy he expressed his grave concerns at the growing authoritarianism of the Blair government. Indeed, when you think about it, it might lead you to wonder how the publicly religious Tony Blair conceives of his God.

Richard Montague

Bone of contention (2007)

Book Review from the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bash the Rich by Ian Bone, Tangent Books, £9.99. 2006.

Like the notorious Class War journal he founded and edited, Ian Bone’s autobiography is a rather mixed bag; chaotic, energetic, full of aggro and humour a-plenty, and containing some sharp but sometimes ‘prole-ier than thou’ political observations. Subtitled True-Life Confessions of An Anarchist in the UK, this honest and entertaining book details up to 1986 the political adventures of the man dubbed “the most dangerous ... in Britain” by the excitable Sunday People newspaper. This was at a time when Class War, the paper founded by Bone, was at its peak, baring its political arse at the establishment and urging fellow activists to ‘bash the rich’.

Before arriving at this point, the book explores Bone’s family background and the formative years of his political activity. An early success came when he launched a local paper where he was based in Swansea. After writing a pamphlet detailing the corruption of the local council, Bone and his allies produced Alarm, a paper which reached sales of up to 5000 a week. Having built up impressive momentum, Bone and three comrades stood in local council elections, but it’s a surprising omission of the book that the results are not mentioned here. Bone describes the paper as “an organ of organised class hatred;” one which focused on corruption, gossip and scandal, and made a virtue of its lack of political theory.

Whilst in some ways a welcome antidote to the convoluted and often po-faced theoretical treatises beloved of the Left, this lack of political oversight was a weakness, and one which was only partly overcome by Bone’s most successful project, Class War. He had come to recognise the limits of localised activities, and Class War was launched with the specific aim of putting “class and violence back at the top of the agenda.”  The idea was to link up those who were prepared to physically confront the State, from innercity rioters and miners’ ‘hit squads’ to animal rights activists and the occasional football hooligan.

In case it all seems to be about the (understandable) politics of revenge, Bone suggests that Class War was merely following in the hallowed tradition of popular mob violence. Aggressive direct action was not just intended to unnerve the well-to do, but to act as a rallying cry to a largely disinterested majority. However, the book isn’t really explicit enough on what kind of society the author wants direct action to lead to. It’s obvious what he’s ‘anti’, but the ‘pro’ bit needs fleshing out. This links to the issue of how such a society can be brought about, and what social force is necessary to achieve this.

One of the most thoughtful chapters comes near the end when Bone discusses the problems revolutionaries face in getting our fellow workers to take an interest in noncapitalist politics. He asserts that groups like the Anarchist Federation and the SWP seem to think that rational explanations of what’s wrong with capitalism are all that’s needed to effect revolutionary consciousness. “The truth, of course, is that people do not respond in a rational way, so painstakingly explaining injustice in rational terms gets you nowhere.” He then quotes with approval  Wilhelm Reich’s view that revolutionaries, “must find the connection with the petty, banal, primitive, simple everyday life of the broadest mass of the people...”. For Class War, a good old scrap was as good a method as any to achieve this.

Such methods, however, can backfire and alienate. If a classless, moneyless, stateless society is to be attained, it surely needs the conscious understanding and desire of a large majority. To be fair, the author does state that “violence wasn’t the answer to every question...” In fact Bone cites the 1985 riots of Broadwater Farm and the death of P.C. Keith Blacklock as a turning point for Class War, although the organisation wasn’t involved there. “We needed to embrace our class not marginalise ourselves by walking into the ‘loonie category’ noose being dangled before us.” According to Bone, Class War’s scabrous column, Hospitalised Copper “was funny. ‘Dead Copper’ wasn’t funny.”

Unfortunately, the book ends rather suddenly, on the eve of the Wapping Dispute in early 1986. Questions of tactics and direction were exercising the Class War collective, but it had some years yet to run before eventually coming to a halt. Maybe a volume two is in the pipeline, and if so it will hopefully also combine this refreshing mix of humour and politics. Bone has certainly had a great deal of fun along the way, and made sure that such enjoyment was reflected in the various projects he was involved in. To end with an example, the first two Class War conferences are said to have been preoccupied with sexual politics, and Bone recounts with wry discomfort how one contributor earnestly proposed  ‘forced bisexuality’ as a way of breaking with bourgeois convention.

Robert Whitfield

Voice From The Back: The Sick Society (2007)

From the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Sick Society

These two items appeared in the same newspaper on the same day. "Patients are being denied basic operations, including treatments for varicose veins, wisdom teeth and bad backs, as hospitals try frantically to balance the books by the end of the financial year. . . . NHS trusts throughout the country are making sweeping cuts to services and delaying appointments in an attempt to address their debts before the end of March." and "Thousands of doctors qualified to become consultants could face unemployment instead, the NHS says. A leaked copy of the Government's pay and workforce strategy reveals that by 2011 there will be 3,200 more consultants than there are jobs." (Times, 4 January) What a crazy society - people left to suffer health problems while health workers are out of a job.

A Brave New World?

The World Watch Institute in Washington paints a gloomy picture of the future in its recent report. "The population of the world's slums is set to soar by more than 500 million within 25 years experts said yesterday . . . And half the extra people will be crammed into ghettoes and shanty towns, unless plans for urban renewal are speeded up, forecasters warned. . . . David Satterthwaite, of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development, said a shake-up of urban government would be the most pressing issue over the next 20 years. "Without this, cities become among the most polluted and dangerous places, where one in four children dies before the age of five." he added." (Metro, 10 January) Even Aldous Huxley and George Orwell could not have imagined such a future, but then they were only novelists and not scientific socialists.

The Distortion Of Science (1)

The motive behind capitalism is to make a profit and to hell with all other consideration. A perfect example of this is the following news item. "Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate report due to be published today. Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an Exxon-Mobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)." (Guardian, 2 February) Could anything be more obvious? Here is a couple of bucks just do as you are told.

The Distortion Of Science (2)

It is not only oil companies that seek to distort scientific research in the interests of profits, here is a recent example of the pharmaceutical industry at the same game. "According to a study published last week by accountancy group PwC, the public, doctors and health insurers believe the industry has put profits before patients, abandoning its original vision of improving health and alleviating pain. . . . All over the world, drugs companies are in an expensive race with each other to come up with new treatments and market them, sometimes aggressively, to health specialists. The public backlash comes after a number of high-profile drugs were withdrawn following allegations of dangerous side-effects." (Observer, 4 February) For a couple of bucks these companies will do anything.

The Distortion Of Art

Artists like Van Gogh and Modogliani may have died in poverty and their modern equivalents may share a similar fate, but that was not a considerations at the latest Sotheby's auction. "Up to £140 million is expected to exchange hands this week in a series of sales of Impressionists, modern and contemporary works, well in excess of the £89.45 million achieved last February and the £109.3 million in June. ... Although the weak dollar may in turn have deterred some American collectors from buying last night, few expect it to dent the enthusiasm of the richest regulars such as Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder, Steve Winn, a Las Vegas casino owner, and Steve Cohen, the Wall Street hedge-fund billionaire who is believed to have spent about $500 million (£250 million) on art in recent years." (Times, 6 February) Artists may die in a garret, so what? It helps the rich to increase their portofolio of wealth. As someone once said - "They know the price of everything but the value of nothing."

The Distortion Of Honesty

All workers are taught at school the importance of honesty and integrity, but it is obviously a lesson that is not on the curriculum of the schools that capitalists attend, to judge from this news item about events in South Korea. "The chairman of Hyundai Motor Group, the sixth largest carmaker in the world, was sentenced yesterday to three years in jail after being convicted of embezzlement and breach of trust. . . . Chung was accused of embezzling 103.4 billion won (£56 million) from company affiliates." (Times, 6 February) The report went on to mention other chairmen that had been caught with their hands in the till. Chung Tae So, of Hanoi, sentenced to 15 years' jail for bribery. Chung Ming Hun, of Hyundai Asian, kills himself awaiting trial. Lee Kun He, of Samsung, apologises for corporate misgoverned and alleged bribery by making big charity donation. Kim Woo Choom, founder of Daewoo, receives ten-year jail term for fraud. Fellow workers, perhaps as we contemplate this week's pay packet or giro cheque we may ponder the wisdom of our old school teacher. We could ask ourselves, how many were not caught in this country and how many of them get away with it?

And Now For The Good News

Every day in the newspapers and television we are bombarded with stories of war, crime and world hunger. So after extensive research we have come across a news item that will hearten workers instead of depressing them. In 1961 there were nearly 55,000 christian churches in England and Wales. "By 2005 the number of churches had fallen to 47,600. According to the organisation Christian Research, another 4,000 are likely to go in the next 15 years. In the Church of England alone, which still has 16.000 churches, 1,700 have been made redundant since 1969." (Times, 10 February)

Pathfinders Column: Particles of Faith (2007)

From the March 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to legend the ancient Greek natural philosopher Democritus was eating a piece of cake one day, and with a knife idly cutting it into sections, when he embarked on a thought experiment. Suppose, he wondered, one had a knife that was infinitely sharp and infinitely thin, how many times could one divide a section of cake until the resulting piece was something so small no knife could ever cut it. Would this piece represent the ultimate building block of all matter? He supposed that it would, and he gave to this hypothetical building block the term 'a-om', meaning 'will not cut', and to posterity he gave the solid beginnings of atomic theory.

Since Rutherford cut the 'uncuttable' and split the atom in 1913 scientists have pursued the quest to find the smallest irreducible particle, and they still haven't managed it. While this may seem only of mild interest to the non-scientific public, what does seem rather astounding is the eye-watering budgets which this continuing, some think Quixotic, quest seems to attract from what are, after all, capitalist governments with more interest in profits than proton colliders.

Great excitement is being stirred up at the moment by the imminent firing up of the biggest and most expensive research installation the world has everseen, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the Centre for European Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. While the physics and engineering are state-of-the-art, the concept behind LHC couldn't be more old-fashioned. If you send two particles flying around a long tube in opposite directions and smash them into each other at stupendous speed, you get an explosion of bits and pieces flying off, and some of these bits and pieces might be new particles unknown to physics.

Why does this matter so much to physicists? Because, with its two intractable paradoxes of dark matter (which nobody can find) and dark energy (which nobody can find) forming essential cornerstones supporting the 'standard model' of physics upon which everything from Einstein upwards is based, physics can reasonably be said to be in a new dark age. It is enough to make anybody's head ache.

Either Einstein's general relativity is wrong or quantum mechanics is wrong, but they have both passed every known test and fulfilled every known prediction. The essential problem is that of the four known forces, three, the electromagnetic, and the strong and weak nuclear forces, are mediated by particles. The fourth, gravity, is apparently not.

Gravity is the black sheep of the family in other ways too, being thirty orders of magnitude weaker than the other forces (think of fridge magnets), and uniquely exerting the same force on all objects regardless of weight (keeping both you and an ant on the ground). What possible Unifying Principle can be behind all this? To which the physicists reply: we have no idea, but give us billions of dollars and let us smash things up, there must be some more particles out there somewhere.

But why does this matter so much to the rest of us? The answer, perhaps shockingly, is that it doesn't matter a damn. If the arguments between the handfuls of people worldwide who really understand the various brands of string or quantum gravity theory are ever resolved, nobody else will understand the answer anyway. What will, ahem, 'normal' people get out of it? Nothing, in all probability.

Bear in mind that nobody is arguing for investment on the promise of profits from by-product technology, as we saw from the space race with such things as digital watches and vastly better computers, and even Velcro. There is no known military application. There is no suggestion of being able to harness or use the energy involved for practical purposes. To be sure, government investors are being kept on the hook with tantalising talk of 'quantum computers', a concept which might reduce super computers from filing cabinet to fingernail size, despite the fact that the physics is hotly disputed, it is a paper-only theory and no experiment has provided even proof of principle never mind an actual demonstration of viability. But there must be an angle here somewhere, surely? Hard-nosed governments know better than to throw away billions on vague guesswork. Don't they?

No, they don't. Capitalists, and the governments who mediate their interests, don't invest in horizon science because they believe it will go anywhere, but because they can't be entirely sure that it won't. It's a modern form of Pascal's wager, which proposed that the risk of being wrong if one worshipped God and he didn't exist was as nothing to the risk if one didn't and he did. If anything ever came of this atom-smashing malarkey in Switzerland, what capitalist wouldn't want a piece of the quantum action? And if nothing comes of it, well then, they've all lost money equally.

What all this does of course is to play into the hands of a small handful of physicists who want big toys and who can invent impenetrable arguments which capitalists can't fathom and don't dare ignore. Moreover, these same physicists are in a position, with lofty talk of understanding 'where the universe came from and where it's going', to browbeat the rest of us with a quest that is so transcendently awesome that all other quests for knowledge or human improvement appear to pale into insignificance. Quite simply, and with the entire history of scientific enquiry and endeavour stacked up against us, we don't dare ask the question 'what does it matter?'

That it matters, in some profound philosophical sense, is of course unarguable. But the question we, as socialists and as scientifically-minded members of the modern age, should be asking is, does it matter now? In a world already half-destroyed by the consequences of a steam-age political system, is this really what we should be spending our time and effort looking into? Aren't there more pressing things for science to be doing?

This is all pure heresy, of course. But in a recent New Scientist review of Oliver James' book Affluenza, which describes western capitalist populations' unhappy love affair with consumerism, the reviewer constantly demands more evidence and better research before accepting the validity, albeit intuitively acknowledged, of much of what James has to say about the meaningless of a life lived for material gain alone. A cynic might conclude that when scientists are not interested in the debate, they demand impossible amounts of evidence while making no useful suggestions about what evidence would satisfy them or what methodologies would be acceptable. When the debate concerns their own fascinations, however, they rely heavily on funders being willing to speculate wildly, without any evidence nor any guarantee of success.

Democritus is referred to as a 'natural philosopher'. The term 'scientist' was not coined until 833, at which point the deep-seated respect for the 'polymath' who was good at lots of things was replaced by a new Enlightenment-age adoration of the person who did just one thing. 'Scientist' describes what a person doesn;t do as well as what they do, a single-tasking paradigm which tries to exclude the real world and its values, from the simple and 'pure' mono-dimensional thought-process.

We need scientists to join the rest of us in the real world, and help us do the research and find the evidence we need to prove to the world that a non-market economy can work better than what we have, or conversely, prove that it can't. But it seems they are too busy chasing bucks and bits of quanta, all in the Nobel cause of selfless enquiry.

Another ancient story has it that Archimedes, he who expressed such delight in flooding his bathroom, was so absorbed in mathematical calculations that he ignored, in the middle of the battle for Syracuse, an invading Roman centurion who was demanding his attention with extreme prejudice. The Roman, evidently miffed at the other's lack of social graces, shoved his sword in the mathematician and killed him. Which just goes to show, if you don't pay attention to the world around you, things can get very sticky.

Paddy Shannon