Pathfinders: Getting Twitchy about copyright (2019)

The Pathfinders Column from the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s a well-known fact that a new TV or fridge doesn’t spring fully-formed from a hole in the ground but is usually produced in stages, from ore extraction to delivery, with different parts constructed by different people, often on different sites at different times. Thus the UK jobs impact of the recent Airbus decision to stop producing the underselling A380 superjumbo, whose wings (but not the rest of it) are made in Britain.

When describing how capitalism works, Marxists talk about the value of products as containing embodied or ‘dead’ labour which has to be accounted for in the final price. For instance, so much for resource extraction, refinement, power, distribution, parts manufacture and shipping, and so forth. Socialists don’t pretend that you can separate and cost out all these elements of dead labour from the finished product. That would be like trying to unbake a cake back into its starting ingredients. The argument only stipulates that the final price has to reflect all this labour otherwise the continued production and sale of this good, at this price, will not be viable.

Where this gets interesting is new developments in EU copyright law, which is in the process of being revised because of the internet revolution, and specifically the impact of hosting sites like YouTube and the various social media giants.

One element of the proposed EU Copyright Directive, Article 13, has Google positively gargling in horror: ‘Article 13 of the EU Copyright Directive states services such as YouTube could be held responsible if their users upload copyright-protected movies and music’ (BBC Online, 14 February). Think how many times (come on, admit it) you’ve wasted hours watching old excerpts of Monty Python, The Good Life, Citizen Smith, Yes Minister and Fawlty Towers on YouTube. All of that stuff, and a billion other things, are of course copyrighted, but so far nobody has raised too much of a stink about it. Article 13 could scupper all that.

But here’s the twister. What if someone films themselves playing a computer game and then uploads the film to YouTube or Twitch as an original publication for others to watch? Yes, people really do that, and they have millions of followers. They own the copyright on their film, but what about the copyright belonging to the game owners? That is embedded or ‘dead’ labour which the EU Directive is expecting to ‘unbake’ and price up, which as we’ve seen above, is going to give EU policy-makers a severe headache.

Technology has so far superseded European law that currently there exists only a state of unofficial consensus whereby copyright is not enforced in cases of what’s considered ‘fair use’ (eg for criticism, reviews, satire etc). But this consensus has no legal status in Europe, unlike in the USA, and so far there have been no court cases to establish a precedent. Hosting companies could be in the situation of having to buy licences for any copyrighted content their users upload, perhaps as well as any other copyrighted material contained within it. No wonder they’re horrified.

The point of all this? Not only is property society a terrible arrangement from the perspective of the 99 percent who don’t own any, it’s sometimes damnably difficult to apply its rules to figure out exactly who owns what and who should be paying whom. That at least is one arcane and intractable problem that socialism could laughingly throw to the winds.

Cause and effect

A recent meta-study has shown a significant link between depression and teenage cannabis use, with ‘robust’ evidence showing that ‘using the drug in adolescence increased the risk of developing depression in adulthood by 37%’ (BBC Online, 13 February). The wording here is, unusually for the BBC, careless and misleading, because it states baldly that the one directly causes the other, which is not shown by the evidence at all, as the article goes on to admit. Tabloid journalists in particular ought to be dragged outside and beaten with the mantra ‘correlation is not causation’. Instead the line should have read ‘using the drug in adolescence is associated with an increased risk of developing depression…’

Anyone alive today in capitalism has multiple reasons to get depressed without even reaching for the Rizlas, and that probably goes double for young people, who generally have a worse time of it economically, socially, psychologically and sexually than older people with settled lives and paid-for houses. Maybe that’s why they say life begins at 40 – because it’s mostly sheer hell until that point, if not after as well.

It certainly could be that cannabis has a deleterious effect on young developing brains. It could also be that depression-prone teens are more likely to resort to cannabis in the first place. Perhaps heavy cannabis use among teens is associated with a raft of other, depression-inducing social behaviours and circumstances. Anyone with long experience of poverty and unemployment knows that skinning up a spliff with mates is a lot cheaper than almost any other social option. Far from causing depression in this situation, cannabis may be the only silver lining in an otherwise black cloud. Ganja-bashing continues to make good headlines, but that doesn’t mean journalists should let their critical faculties go up in smoke.

A recent article in the webzine Dissident Voice also plays fast and loose with causation, when it claims that our serotonin system fuels aggression and so means that a socialist or anarchist non-hierarchical society is impossible. Despite pronouncing in impressively sciencey terms about the metabolic biochemistry of the monoamine neurotransmitter, the author Denis Rancourt (who by the way is not a neurobiologist but a retired physicist) offers not a shred of evidence for his argument that the hormone ‘locks’ humans into either dominant or subservient roles, and indeed his example of dominant social climbers who ‘kiss ass’ to get up the corporate ladder seems to flatly contradict his own case. Too much is wrong with his discussion of serotonin to go into here, but in a nutshell it comes down to correlation and causation again. He cites several academic studies in support of his case, but if you read what they say they don’t support his claim either. In fact one luminary, Robert Sapolsky, is scathing of such thinking in a fascinating YouTube lecture, where he says within the first few minutes that because genetically humans are almost identical with all other animals even including fruit flies, ‘Genetics and neurotransmitters etc tell us nothing about what makes humans humans’. He then drives home the point that we are not genetically fixed by citing his own study of a troop of baboons who, after all the aggressive males accidentally died of TB, exhibited an astonishing change in behaviour, becoming socially friendlier and more affectionate, with males even grooming each other – unheard of for wild baboons. One wonders if Sapolsky and the other cited authorities realise they are being cited in support of an argument they would heartily oppose.

Paddy Shannon

Profit crisis? (2019)

Book Review from the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘World In Crisis: a global analysis of Marx’s law of profitability’. Edited by Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts (Haymarket books. 2018)

The stated purpose of this collection of essays is to advance the theory that the tendency of the rate of profit is to fall within the capitalist mode of production, according to Marx. More specifically, that the fall of the rate of profit is an observable long-term trend, and that the rate of profit is the key factor in economic crises. Roberts notes that there is disagreement within Marxian economics as to whether the declining rate of profit can be empirically observed. This book is premised on the fact that it can be.

For Marx the rate of profit is the excess of value of a commodity over its cost price, which he expresses as the formula s/(c+v) (‘s’ is surplus value, ‘c’ is constant capital, the cost of machinery and components, ‘v’ is variable capital, the wages of workers whose labour adds value to the product).

Competition between capitalists tends towards equalising this rate of profit, as each capitalist seeks to invest in those branches of industry that are generating the highest returns. Technological improvement gives a competitive edge to capitalists, so there is a tendency to increase the ‘c’ part of that formula. In the long run this means that the total capital will rise in proportion to the surplus value being produced, and the rate of profit will tend to fall.

What Roberts, Carchedi and their contributors observe in their data is that this is precisely what is happening. There are problems, though, as many of the data tables/graphs are attributed to ‘author’s calculation’ and there are no links given to data sets or any indication of how these representations were derived.

It is difficult to observe the working of these Marxian formulas in the real world, because, even leaving aside any political incentive to misrepresent the reality of the situation, the categories Marx described may not correspond with any specific data set. For example, some surplus value manifests itself as inflated salaries for directors, and ‘profit sharing’ schemes would manifest as profit, rather than being part of wages, as they really are.

This is not necessarily fatal, so long as the data used is consistent, and then at least it is showing some real world trends from which the Marxian categories can emerge as shadows. An observable, consistent decline in the empirical rate of profit, though, does not necessarily mean that Marx’s tendency is observed in action. Other factors may be in play (which these essays sometimes mention, without exploring).

There is little or no discussion of primary accumulation — what the Marxist geographer David Harvey describes as accumulation by dispossession. That is, wealth that is acquired not by market rules, but by fraud or force (the great historical example being slavery). This gap is puzzling, especially as the central plank of the crisis theory presented is that the fire sale of the capital of bankrupts is necessary to restart profitability and accumulation. The nearest any articles come to addressing this matter is by hand-waving mentions of ‘imperialism’. The point is, though, that the logical effects of falling profitability would be for capitalists to abandon market accumulation and resort to other forces, rather than continue to let profits fall through the floor.

One other force is rent seeking. Incredibly, rent is not even mentioned in the index of this book. Carchedi does partially address rent, discussing monopolies as a potential response of capitalists to falling profitability. He correctly notes that the underlying effect of technical compositions of capital (the ratios of capital to labour) means that real surplus profit rates will vary among monopolies. What he misses, however, is that such differential surplus profits will be often invisible, and that the monopolists would lack the means to observe different rates of profit, or to pursue improved ones. This was essentially one of the significant problems historically encountered by Eastern Bloc state capitalism.

The power of the idea of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall lies not in the observed phenomena of declining profitability, but, like the dog that didn’t bark in the night, in the steps the ruling class may take to avoid its effects. Rather than simply pointing to periodic crises of capitalism, we are in some ways better pointing to the inevitable need to periodically disrupt society and dismantle existing social relations in order to engage in a new spurt of profitability for one faction or another of capitalists.

Notwithstanding this, there are useful chapters on derivatives and algorithmic trading which do some useful work in dismantling the idea that crises are caused by bankers and spivs in the city. It also provides a useful overview of the state of worldwide capitalism.

Pik Smeet

Letter: A Writer Writes . . . (2019)

Letter to the Editors from the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

1. First, I never argue (book review of Cleaver’s Rupturing the Dialectic – the Struggle Against Work, Money and Financialization in January Socialist Standard) that capitalists are not interested in profits, on the contrary precisely because I argue their system is based on putting people to work, profits are essential to maintaining and expanding the imposition of work. Second, writing ‘It’s a point of view but not that of Marx’ is simple assertion but makes no argument to convince the reader. It also smacks of sectarianism: all Marxists whose interpretations differ from mine are not Marxists at all.

2. First, the superficiality of the reading is apparent in ascribing to me the ‘classic error’ of underconsumptionism (i.e., ‘workers not being able to buy back all they produce as the cause of crises’) given that the inadequacy of consumption demand is clearly treated as only one of many causes of ruptures in the circuits of capital, not ‘the’ cause of crises. Second, saying that I make the mistake of seeing taxes as simply a burden on workers, while ignoring the discussion in the book of how some of what taxes pay for is not only of use to workers but are programs and services we have fought for, is another misrepresentation.

3. First, it’s odd that you seem to accept the idea that getting rid of money and markets are essential elements in getting rid of capitalism, but dismiss efforts to marginalize money. In the absence of an actual argument against ‘marginalizing money’ I’m left with the impression that the dismissal is based on the oh-so-revolutionary rejection of ‘reformism’. Second, leaving aside evaluation of your list of reforms as accurate representation of the struggles I discuss in the book, I must say that simply dismissing struggles for reforms of use to workers with no rationale hardly constitutes an argument. At least Weston – mentioned on page 235 of the book, in the section on ‘Reform or Revolution’, made a case for dismissing struggles for higher wages – a case that Marx refuted with counterarguments as to why such struggles were important. Arguments with which I agree in the book – one of those many moments that you would have to counter to make a convincing argument that what I have written is ‘not Marx’. Third, there’s no ‘paradox’ in supporting both lower costs of living and higher wages, they are complementary and both buy time (and energy) for struggle.

4. First, the assertion that success in lowering consumer prices or making some goods and services free automatically implies that wages will fall just doesn’t hold water. This assertion ignores how both the value of labor power and the level of wages/income are determined by struggle. I do not ‘assume’ workers ‘could successfully resist’ efforts to lower wages, only that they generally try to resist. There are plenty of historical examples in the book of workers failing to resist as well as of successful resistance. Second, the last line about one idea of autonomist Marxists contains, once again, only pure assertions with no demonstration or argument that might lead the reader to take them seriously, ie, the assertion about what they think/imagine and the assertion about the idea being a  ‘mistake’.

Had I been editor of your newsletter, I would have sent the published text back when still a draft along with comments like the above – and suggestions about how to do the job in a more convincing manner.

Harry Cleaver

Reply:

1. We never said you argued that the capitalists weren’t interested in profits, only that you said that they were more interested in controlling workers and that making profits was a means towards this end. The particular passages we had in mind were these: ‘… socially and politically speaking, profit making is merely the capitalist means to its social aim of controlling us by forcing us to work’ (p. 83) and ‘Marx focussed on the dialectical character of the struggle within capitalism between those who impose work and those who resist’ (p. 72). There is no evidence that this was Marx’s view on what the struggle was and who it was between, and there is nothing ‘sectarian’ about pointing this out. It’s a question of fact, not opinion.

2. On p.55 you do indeed use the workers-can’t-buy-back argument, which can’t be an explanation of crises since it is the case that the workers cannot buy back out of their wages what they produce all the time, even during a boom. And how can it be ‘misrepresentation’ when we didn’t represent anything about the conclusion you draw from the notion you accept that taxes are a burden on workers as well as on capitalists? We willingly grant though that you draw the logical conclusion from this mistaken premise that workers should get involved in disputes within the capitalist class over which section of them should bear more or less the burden of taxation.

3. You seem to have missed our point completely. While free services and free access to use-values even under capitalism show that people adapt to this by only taking what they need (rather than grabbing and hoarding), under capitalism these measures have the economic effect of reducing the cost of reproducing labour-power and so exercise a downward pressure on money wages. Our view is that the best way to combat this is the trade-union struggle. We don’t accept the view of ‘Citizen Weston’, which Marx refuted in his talk to British trade unionists in 1865 later published as Value, Price and Profit, that struggles to increase wages are pointless as they merely lead to a rise in prices leaving workers no better off. That is a fallacy. For us, the struggle to get the highest price possible (what the labour market will bear) while not revolutionary is not ‘reformist’. We say workers should wage this struggle and our members take part in it, even if it is purely defensive and never-ending.

4. We always thought that so-called ‘autonomist Marxists’ criticised what they imagined was the ‘economic determinist’ position of those who argue that there are narrow limits to what workers can achieve under capitalism by their struggles. Are we wrong about their/your ‘voluntarist’ position on this question, not dissimilar to that of common or garden reformists, that this is not the case and that your disagreement with them is instead only over method (direct action rather than parliamentary action)?

– Editors

Not Changing the world (2019)

Book Review from the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World’. By Anand Giridharadas. (Alfred A. Knopf, 2018)

‘The Ideas Industry’. By Daniel W. Drezner. (Oxford University Press, 2017)

‘The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age’. By David Callahan. (Alfred A. Knopf, 2017)

The capitalist class controls not only the means of production but also many other important spheres of social life. The authors of these books give us close-up views of how capitalists, aided by servitors of various kinds, control two of these spheres: the formulation and dissemination of ‘new’ ideas and the activity that goes by the name of philanthropy (from the Greek words for ‘love’ and ‘human’). Drezner examines the ‘ideas industry’ and Callahan philanthropy; Giridharadas provides an overview of both.

By and large, these authors focus on just one of the two wings of today’s capitalist class – the so-called ‘globalists’ – cosmopolitans who constantly move around the world, believe in open borders and the free movement of goods, capital and labor and profess liberal views on issues like race, gender and religion. For corresponding portrayals of the other – nationalist, protectionist or ‘conservative’ – wing it is necessary to look elsewhere.

The ‘globalist’ plutocrats and their sidekicks inhabit an ‘intellectual cocoon’ that Giridharadas dubs MarketWorld. In MarketWorld there is endless and mostly vacuous chatter about ‘changing the world’ that never contemplates changing the world (at least not in any very significant way). ‘You can talk about our common problems, but don’t be political, don’t focus on root causes, don’t go after bogeymen’ (i.e., don’t blame anything on anyone in particular). For instance, you can talk about poverty but not about inequality.

MarketWorld elevates to stardom charismatic ‘thought leaders’ whose superficial mantras supplant the debates of public intellectuals. Their ‘charade’ fills a space that might otherwise be infected with systemic criticism. At the same time, it salves the consciences of the ‘winners’, encouraging them to ‘feel that they are change agents, solutions rather than the problem’. MarketWorld also provides a few jobs to young careerists who want not just to make money but to feel good about themselves while doing so.

The image that emerges of the capitalist is decidedly one of dual-identity, with abrupt alternation between Dr. Jekyll the benevolent philanthropist and Mr. Hyde the ruthless and rapacious tycoon. The theoretical basis of this mental disorder was first presented by steel magnate Andrew Carnegie in his 1889 essay The Gospel of Wealth. According to Carnegie, the ideal capitalist accumulates as much wealth as he can, using whatever means may be necessary, but he accumulates that wealth not for his own benefit – he himself lives modestly – but rather in order to redistribute it in the best interests of society – interests that he is uniquely equipped to judge (after all, he has proven himself a brilliant organiser). That is why Carnegie made his workers toil such long hours at such low pay in the heat of his steel mills – in order to fund public libraries.

Capitalists evidently do not mind being told to do more good. What they do not like is being told to do less harm. Some of the most celebrated philanthropists do the most harm in their role as businesspeople. One example is the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, whose highly profitable painkillers allegedly fueled the opioid addiction crisis (they also stand to profit from addiction treatment).

Perhaps, however, these authors place too much blame on capitalists as individuals and focus too little on capitalism as a system. As Giridharadas points out, a company that is not run solely in the interests of shareholders risks lawsuits from its investors. Even in the handful of jurisdictions where new corporate laws have been passed to permit the creation of ‘socially responsible’ firms (B companies), such firms have difficulty in attracting and retaining capital and remain few and far between.

Stefan

Sanctions: Waging war without bullets (2019)

From the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Western powers promote sanctions as an alternative to war, holding that if sanctions can impose costs that exceed the benefits of objectionable policies of another country, there will be a change of those policies and if the targeted government declines to change, the affected population will protest, forcing their government to change. Economic sanctions are viewed as a useful tool to apply pressure on another country to mend its ways or as a punitive measure for its behaviour which avoids outright war. No matter how devastating the detrimental effects on the economy and the civilian population, sanctions are not as successful as claimed in achieving its objectives.

Who now recalls the cost on ordinary people of the UN-imposed sanctions against Saddam’s Iraq? Who remembers when the then US Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, was asked, ‘We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?’ Albright answered, ‘we think the price is worth it’. The half million figure has since been judged as inflated but at the time it was seen as a credible figure.

Denis Halliday, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator, resigned after a 34-year career explaining he no longer wished ‘to be identified with a United Nations that is… maintaining a sanctions programme …which kills and maims people through chronic malnutrition… and continues this programme knowingly’, saying ‘I don’t want to administer a programme that satisfies the definition of genocide’. Halliday’s successor, Hans von Sponeck, subsequently also resigned in protest, calling the effects of the sanctions a ‘true human tragedy’. The resignation of Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Program in Iraq, soon followed, stating, ‘I fully support what Mr von Sponeck was saying. It is a true humanitarian tragedy what is happening here and I believe any human being who looks at the facts and the impact of the sanctions on the population will not deny that he is right.’ Agam Hasmy, Malaysia’s UN Ambassador, remarked at the UN Security Council in 2000 ‘How ironic is it that the same policy that is supposed to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction has itself become a weapon of mass destruction!’ Throughout history, starvation and disease have killed more people than all other weapons of war.

Too often sanctions are applied to soften up a foe and is a precursor of war. Sanctions can even be used as a justification for war such as when Tony Blair, in his testimony to the Chilcot Inquiry, argued that ending the sanctions was one of the benefits of the war.

Economic warfare has been part and parcel of conflicts since time immemorial with city sieges and naval blockades. We can date economic sanctions back at least to the Megarian decree of Athens in 435 BC, before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. But later we had the Napoleonic Wars, the World Wars, the American long-enforced trade embargo on Cuba and the anti-apartheid boycott of South Africa. Presently there are sanctions against North Korea, Iran and Venezuela. This article is not concerned about bans on financial transactions of named individuals but those that inflict suffering on the general population. Sanctions are viewed as an instrument of diplomacy, designed to pressure and to undermine a ruling regime. The purpose of sanctions is to cause a breakdown in the fabric of civil society.

On 23 March 2018, the Human Rights Council condemned unilateral coercive measures by a vote of 28 in favour, 15 against and 3 abstentions, because economic sanctions created economic crises, disrupted the production and distribution of food and medicine, and resulted in refugees.

Alfred De Zayas, a former secretary of the UN Human Rights Council, has said ‘Sanctions kill’ and that they fall most heavily on the poorest people. ‘Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with medieval sieges of towns with the intention of forcing them to surrender. Twenty-first-century sanctions attempt to bring not just a town, but sovereign countries to their knees. A difference, perhaps, is that twenty-first-century sanctions are accompanied by the manipulation of public opinion through “fake news”, aggressive public relations and a pseudo-human rights rhetoric so as to give the impression that a human rights “end” justifies the criminal means’ (LINK).

Siege economy

John Pilger’s conclusion was that the sanctions were ‘One of the greatest acts of aggression: the medieval siege of Iraq.’

Patrick Cockburn wrote on the sanctions affecting Syria: ‘Economic sanctions are like a medieval siege but with a modern PR apparatus attached to justify what is being done. A difference is that such sieges used to be directed at starving out a single town or city while now they are aimed at squeezing whole countries into submission. An attraction for politicians is that sanctions can be sold to the public, though of course not to people at the receiving end, as more humane than military action. There is usually a pretence that foodstuffs and medical equipment are being allowed through freely and no mention is made of the financial and other regulatory obstacles making it impossible to deliver them’ (LINK).

The difficulty in processing SWIFT transactions, the banking system’s clearing house for international money transfers, has hindered the import of medicines and other necessities so many of the biggest pharmaceutical companies refuse to do business with the country.

The Spanish economist Alfredo Serrano, head of the Centro Estratégico Latinoamericano de Geopolítica, drew attention to the reluctance of banks to process Venezuelan international transactions, creating an obstacle in obtaining insulin and other medicines such as anti-retroviral and anti-malaria drugs.

The Lancet medical journal reported in July 2018 that sanctions against Iran jeopardised cancer patients and cancer research.

Sanctions have a snowballing effect. Foreign businesses, fearing they might unknowingly cross a line into impermissible activities, prefer to shy away even from authorised trade. Transaction costs particularly related to food and medicine escalate, while access to foreign currency to trade has diminished. Sanctions lead to unprecedented levels of inflation and spikes in the price of basic goods like milk and vegetable oil.

Sanctions can and do kill the innocent. Sanctions rarely harm the decision-makers but have caused extreme hardship to those who are the weakest, the most vulnerable and the least political. Members of the elite with greatest access to government privileges are best positioned to survive and can even thrive. Under the sanctions, there are those who are savvy enough to exploit others’ deprivation for a profit. They function as middlemen and brokers becoming wealthy. Smuggling and clandestine networks arise and result in a shadow economy in which corrupt officials are fully complicit.

Between 1945 and 1990, the UN had imposed sanctions only twice but now sanctions are being imposed with increasing frequency, with the United States either the key player in instigating them or taking the initiative by imposing its own sanctions unilaterally. The United States uses its global economic power as leverage to pressure other nations into compliance with its sanction policies. The United States has the sovereign right to refuse to enter into commerce with other states, but not to exercise pressure on third-party states in order to harm their targets, and attempting to do this is a violation of the United Nations Charter. But as always ‘might is right.’

Obvious Vengeyi from the University of Zimbabwe makes a direct comparison with siege warfare:

  ‘The desperate conditions that the besieged populations of Samaria and Jerusalem were exposed to are similar to what Zimbabweans experienced as a result of sanctions… Similar to the sieges of Samaria and Jerusalem therefore, the Western siege of Zimbabwe through economic sanctions affected the ordinary people more than the so-called targeted individuals… As the military siege on Samaria and Jerusalem, Western sanctions were imposed on the ordinary people of Zimbabwe. The intention was to starve the ordinary people of Zimbabwe in order for them to vote out the ruling party… The logic was to incapacitate the state to provide basic services to the ordinary people in order to instigate a revolt against the government… As observed with ancient Near Eastern military strategy of siege, this is usually the intention of the besieging aggressor; to create tensions in the besieged society in order to weaken it’.

Collective sanctions

There exists a glaring anomaly. It is illegal in war-time, a violation of the Geneva Convention e.g. the 1977 Additional Protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions prohibit any wartime measure that has the effect of depriving a civilian population of objects indispensable to its survival; Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians in wartime, for example, prohibits ‘collective penalties’. Yet under peace-time conditions economic sanctions are perfectly valid. Economic sanctions inflict collective punishment upon ordinary people when they have no connection to or control over the actions of the government whose actions have led to them being punished. Sanctions are inherently anti-humanitarian. As in siege warfare, it is the population and those least responsible for the state’s action – children, the elderly, the sick – who bear the worst consequences. When countries are called ‘rogue states’ or ‘the axis of evil’, Western countries proceed to put economic sanctions on them. But the victims are invariably the common people and not the ruling dictator they have been complaining about – whether it was Saddam Hussein then or Assad or Kim Jong-Un now.

Economic sanctions imposed on authoritarian regimes often fail to bring about the political change they are meant to create even though the people had to bear the pain of sanctions.

Lee Jones, a senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, stated that according to the accepted figure, sanctions succeed in about one third of instances. But a political scientist, Robert Pape, looked at these figures and argued that often the outcome was not caused by sanctions; it was caused instead by domestic insurgencies or by military threats, and if you take away those cases, then sanctions only succeed in fewer than 5 percent of cases. The ‘success’ story of South Africa is often cited to show that sanctions can work yet many commentators have suggested that the end of apartheid was due to internal political movements as much as to international sanctions. Politicians employ economic sanctions despite the evidence that they do not work – simply because the cost of military action is too high a price to pay. Cheaper to incite the civil population to revolt by driving them to take desperate measures.

It is generally accepted that you should not be a judge in your own case; that the law must be clearly stated, and consistently applied; that individuals can only be punished for their acts, not their nature or their potential acts. However, states interpret and impose the law as they wish, without restraint. This means that a whole population is harmed with the approval of ‘international law’. Sanctions imposed on a whole nation share all the characteristics of siege warfare such as blurring the distinction between the battlefield and by-standers, engulfing civilians in the violence of war through the destruction of society’s infrastructure. Those who defend sanctions share the same belief as a kidnapper who refuses food and water to his victim because the victim’s family declines to pay the ransom demand. The siege tactic  deliberately targets a civilian population with fatal consequences by withholding supplies and starving them yet it is a form of warfare which is considered legal and acceptable.

ALJO

Nostalgia (2019)

The Wood for the Trees Column from the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

As adults almost all of us have memories from our childhood and adolescence that produce intense emotion; for this reason they cannot to be relied upon as representing some kind of accurate chronicle of the actions of the self and others in the past. They are, however, essential for the development of the identity of the individual. It is the synthesis of the emotional development of identity and these memories of the past that produce the bitter-sweet phenomena we call nostalgia. It seems that as we get older this particular emotion becomes ever stronger until, with some, it almost entirely eclipses the ideas and emotions of their contemporary experience. This can be seen as one of the reasons for the political conservatism of the older generation within any population. Memories that have been selected and processed are, of course, safer and far more stable than the continual confusion and challenge that everyday life confronts us with. We find comfort in the illusory feelings of safety and structure that some memories provide; but there are also other memories that can pose a threat to this illusion and for this reason we process them in a very different way – we usually repress them. We tend to choose the memories that sustain the identity we want to believe in rather than those that can reveal another side of our character that we are not so comfortable with. This complex internal struggle is often at the very core of our political beliefs and can be revealed by the nature and type of nostalgia that we embrace.

My father’s nostalgia for the kind of football played in the 1960s that allowed England to win the World Cup was very different from my own – he saw it as a triumph for the old-fashioned authoritarianism of the England manager (Alf Ramsey) and I saw it as an expression of the cultural liberation inherent in the ‘swinging sixties’. The decadence that he perceived (in contrast to his belief in the authoritarianism that, for him, had won the Second World War) was to become my ‘golden age’ of nostalgia. Conversely I also have a nostalgia associated with his work as a union shop steward and his role within the working class community that flourished at that time. It would seem that most cultures, like individuals, have a memory of a ‘golden age’ that generates part of its identity. Of course the cultural and the individual are engaged in a reciprocal relationship which enabled my father to embrace his ‘Englishness’ and me to reject mine. Listening to the music and watching TV shows from that time will always evoke nostalgia in me but I’m very aware of the danger of an uncritical and quasi romantic embrace of what they represent. I love the hope and confidence but dislike the naivety and superficiality.

In retrospect one of the most obvious elements of naivety can be seen in the narratives that many of the films and TV of that time possessed. There always had to be a resolution that punished the wrongdoer and rewarded the ‘good guys’. Undoubtedly this fed into the politics of the time and seemed to render a ‘black and white’ solution to the problems of the age. This moral illusion lies at the heart of a lot of nostalgia – a belief in a simpler time when there was a shared consensus in terms of social values. The moral ‘high ground’ that had justified the militarism used to defeat fascism was now utilised to defend the use of violence against the much more ambivalent ‘enemies’ of the moral morass that was the ‘cold war’. In the 1969 movie The Bridge at Remagen a German officer who is about to be shot as an enemy of the Reich looks up at the sky and seeing aircraft he asks: ‘Ours or theirs?’. The SS attending officer replies, ‘Enemy planes, sir!’ ‘But who is the enemy?’ muses the officer – surely a sentiment born of the many wars of ‘national liberation’ that were raging during the making of the film.

In contemporary TV we see a stranger kind of nostalgia that reaches back even further to the pre-war Edwardian period. In shows like Downton Abbey and Berkeley Square we see an undisguised enthusiasm for portraying the rigid class system of the time when everyone knew their place. The English working class seems to indulge and even delight in the excesses of the aristocracy. There is certainly an element of class envy but it goes much deeper to the very essence of the identity of what it is to be English; the contemporary casual dismissal of the importance of class identity hides a deep obsession with it. The royal family has become the paradigm of celebrity soap operas due to nostalgia and its obsession with class – there still lurks a suspicion that there must be some reason for their ‘entitlement’ other than the accident of birth. Theirs is the most celebrated ‘family tree’ and many who research their own family history secretly nurse a deep longing to find a connection with it.

Undoubtedly there were periods in history that possessed elements superior to our ‘post-modern’ social context but this is not really the origin of the intense emotion we call nostalgia. It is much more akin to religion where what is absent (justice, moral integrity, meaning, structure etc.) are projected into a supernatural realm; nostalgia likewise finds a place for such a longing in a non-existent past.

Wez

Don’t sweat the small stuff (2019)

From the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

We’ve been hearing a lot about traditional politics being ‘broken’. There is deep dissatisfaction and disillusionment with all political parties, with their failed promises, their increasingly transparent dishonesty, the personal ambition of their representatives, and their idiotic circus of privileged shouting matches in the Palace of Westminster. But beneath the surface, our discontent is really a frustration at the social system itself, and its perpetual inability to deliver genuine comfort and security for all, regardless of which party has its hands on the wheel.

This is an era of profound social crisis, both culturally and economically. We are witnessing new levels of corruption, decadence and mendacity in public life. Decades of intelligent discourse and positive social evolution seem to be unravelling in front of our eyes. Frustration with the way things are is leading to a new surge in irrationality and abuse. The past year has seen a dramatic increase in the number of violent racist attacks in the USA, Britain and throughout Europe. The gap between rich and poor widens, and the rich and powerful are succeeding in persuading large numbers of the impoverished to scapegoat those even poorer or more vulnerable, rather than focus on their actual exploiters.

More and more the issues facing us are global and deadly in their urgency. In that context, the petty squabbles within the British Labour and Conservative parties are irrelevant and absurd in their self-importance and pomposity. There is an increasing risk of major and possibly nuclear conflict, which could kill millions. Even though Britain is one of the world’s most developed states, the figures for poverty are chronic and worsening. Confidence in the democratic process is plummeting to new lows. There is evidence of the French gilet jaunes, who started by protesting against fuel price rises, now being partly hijacked by expressions of anti-semitism, whilst groups of political thugs in Britain have also donned high-vis tunics in a crude, confused and blunt protest against the so-called ‘liberal elite’.

The social problems which have vexed us throughout modern history could have been solved long ago, by a radical and imaginative change in the basis of society, but true radicalism has at each turn been dismissed, as much by the Left as by conservatives, in the name of ‘realism’ and reasonable expectations. We inhabit a social system of brutal capital accumulation and dehumanisation which can only get worse, and periodically implode as it is doing now. This could be a time for a great positive change, if we question and replace the underlying economic system – or for a plunge into the abyss, if once again we don’t.

Whilst Labour and Tory seem to be falling apart at the seams, the new groupings are essentially no better. There was a very telling moment when Kirsty Wark interviewed Anna Soubry for Newsnight about the new Independent Group. Wark pressed her on what they stood for and she had absolutely no answer. Eventually, she actually paused and laughed patronisingly at Wark, pityingly saying: ‘You see, you’re still in the old way of doing things. This is something new!’ However, she then admitted that they had ‘no policies’ yet. Pushed again, she said they ‘believe in sound economic policies, and a sound economy’. So, that’s clear, then! That moment when she tried to reverse roles and criticise the reporter questioning her was similar to what Trump does, attacking reporters for asking the right questions, turning the question back on them, switching roles in order to avoid scrutiny.

Within three hours of being formed, one of the Independent Group, Angela Smith MP, referred to ‘people of a funny tinge’ in the context of saying that discrimination against minority ethnic groups was not just about colour, and had to apologise for her offensive phrase.

On a much more positive note, February saw the beginnings of a new global movement for change from school students, with strikes and protests about the lack of action on climate change. Inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who protests every Friday outside her country’s parliament, the British action (Youth Strike 4 Climate) was swiftly condemned by Theresa May and others as ‘wasting time’! – wanting to avert global catastrophe is clearly sneered at by these dinosaurs of political depravity. These advocates of a rotten and murderous system, who would herald a new dark age if we let them, should be held in utter contempt.

There is one thing which ties all of this together, and overshadows the petty, parochial politics of Britain, Brexit, Labour, Tory, Independent Group and all of the other intellectual pygmies bleating to sell us into slavery on the altar of the profits of a few. The uniting thread running through all of these crises, of climate change, militarism and war, insecurity, racism, violence and political cynicism is the unspoken, open secret of ownership and control. On this, Karl Marx was spot on, and the clarity of his observations is even now becoming more and more compelling. Capitalism is still the social system which exists throughout the world and its effects get worse every day that it staggers on. Wealth concentration is now even more extreme than it was in his day, increasing the already extreme social power of a tiny and largely anonymous elite, which cuts across every country and culture.

Such an absurd system can only continue to cultivate support and acceptance by persuading us to see a world divided into rival states, cultures and religions rather than realise that the absolutely fundamental divide, between the billionaire class and the rest, between capital and labour, in fact cuts across such cultural contrasts and is blind to them. British billionaires like James Dyson and James Ratcliffe of Ineos (Britain’s richest man) supported Brexit, but have recently both moved their headquarters and assets away from Britain in order to protect their value. This simple point is often missed. For example, why do so many industries, businesses, and governments resist the need to reduce carbon emissions? Because they believe that to do so might cut into certain profit flows. Because we inhabit a system which depends, regardless even of the greed or kindness of individual investors, on maximising profits.

To resolve the climate change crisis will absolutely necessitate ending the economic system of minority ownership and of profit. Likewise, wars are fought between rival groups of those who own and control the planet’s resources. More than 99 percent of us have no real stake in any country. We are already ‘the dispossessed’. All of our problems in society will be solved by dispossessing the tiny but all-powerful global minority, and replacing private and/or state ownership of the world and all its resources with a new and thoroughly democratic system of common ownership, democratic control and production not for profit, but instead purely to meet needs.

Clifford Slapper

Proper Gander: The Hand-Made Tale (2019)

The Proper Gander Column from the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

When we’re stuck at work, stressed out and fed up with the usual hierarchies and procedures, who hasn’t daydreamed about doing something more imaginative and fulfilling? Days spent not being a small cog in someone else’s machine, but doing what we’re passionate about to make an end product of which we can be proud.

The Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries recognised that work could be more satisfying than what it has become in capitalism. This movement was a reaction to the growth of industrialism, which at that time meant ever-increasing numbers of smoky, dirty mills and factories. Its prominent members were artists and socialists who railed against how industry, and mass production in particular, churned out both dull, impersonal commodities and alienated, exploited workers. It harked back to a romanticised view of mediaeval times, when production meant individually-crafted pottery, furniture and ornaments. Emphasising how making things by hand brings us closer to what we produce, it aimed to encourage people to find pleasure again in being creative. Arts and Crafts designs were simple, light and airy, in contrast to the dominant fashion for wealthier Victorians’ homes to be cluttered, dark and stuffy. Patterns were often inspired by nature, such as in the floral motifs of William Morris’ wallpaper and William De Morgan’s pot and tile designs.

Trying to recreate both the artworks and the working practices of the movement was the premise behind BBC2’s The Victorian House Of Arts And Crafts. In this show, six craftsmen and women spend a month living and working together, each week using traditional methods to make Arts and Crafts-inspired items for a particular room of the house.

Charles Robert Ashbee (1863-1942)

The idea of craftspeople working together as a community comes from The Guild and School of Handicraft, founded by Charles Robert Ashbee in 1888. This was a collective of workshops run with the aim of seeking ‘not only to set a higher standard of craftsmanship, but at the same time, and in so doing, to protect the status of the craftsman’. The programme aims to reconstruct such a place, where artists can bounce ideas off each other, share knowledge and experience, and find ways of working well together. Although they are already skilled in trades such as metalwork, woodwork, pottery and textiles, the show’s six participants will only be using materials, tools and techniques from the 19th century. Through the weeks their tasks include manually printing wallpaper from carved blocks and making a chair by weaving its seat from reeds and using a pole lathe to turn wood for the legs.

As well as using practical methods most of us are unfamiliar with, the Arts and Crafts movement also championed styles of work which differ from that which many of us endure. For example, rest was important to the movement, as it makes work more dignified and allows time for ideas to develop. In capitalist workplaces, where time is money, any breaks we don’t end up working through are usually just long enough to gather up enough energy to last out the rest of the day.

Unfortunately, the programme imposes tight deadlines on the artists to complete their pieces, so they have to work with more intensity and less leisurely enjoyment than the Arts and Crafts ideal. And it predictably uses another TV trope of picking a winner each week, which again seems to go against the movement’s ethos. But despite this, the participants are in the enviable position of being able to sketch their ideas while sitting in the garden before heading to a workshop to make them real. Having the opportunity to collaborate, experiment and be creative is a nourishing experience for them, echoing the movement’s belief in the therapeutic benefits of crafting by hand.

Inevitably, the programme focuses much more on art than on the movement’s political ideas. Rather than just being nostalgic for previous ways of working, the movement aimed for a new society where work could again be personal and satisfying. This doesn’t have to mean only using old techniques. As Charles Robert Ashbee said, ‘We do not reject the machine, we welcome it. But we would desire to see it mastered’. The movement’s political views were shaped particularly by John Ruskin and William Morris. Ruskin criticised the alienating nature of employment during the industrial revolution, but naively believed that society’s ills could be cured by a ‘noble’ class of philanthropic industrialists (see Socialist Standard, June 2000). Morris’ views were more imaginative and perceptive, recognising that the drudgery and exploitation of employment will remain as long as employment itself exists. His vision of the future, detailed in News From Nowhere (1890) is of a world where work is pleasurable and voluntary, as it would be if services and industry were owned and democratically run by the community as a whole. The Arts and Crafts movement remains relevant today, not just for anyone who wants to design and print their own wallpaper, but for anyone who wants a better way of living and working. The Victorian House Of Arts And Crafts was a welcome reminder of a movement which isn’t just stuck in the past.

Mike Foster

Materialism for children (2019)

Book Review from the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Everything Is Connected’. By Jason Gruhl (Illustrations by Ignasi Font. Shambhala, 2019. Hardback £12.99)

As a materialist I am thrilled to see this publication of a book for children, impressing them with the importance of openness to all life and the truth that all life is connected and all living beings part of a rich kaleidoscope. As Carl Sagan pointed out, we are all star stuff.

The publishers regularly make available works from a Buddhist perspective, and if Buddhists generally dislike what they think of as materialism, it is because the word is associated mostly with the mechanism and reductionism of traditional post-Christian western thought. Materialists, in fact, should oppose such reductionism, and be consistent – embracing the liberating realisation that all of us are the universe, that nothing is separate or outside of it, and that our atoms have made up trillions of living beings before us, and will make up trillions after us. All organisms are relatives, and the atoms that were once part of a T-Rex or a blue whale are now part of you!

For socialists too, the universe as here presented for children can help us show that physical reality can be more beautiful and wondrous than myths, and truth more colourful and resplendent than fiction.

A. W.

Rear View: Trump the Saviour (2019)

The Rear View Column from the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trump the Saviour

Given that we the people have elected the likes of Viktor Orban, Rodrigo Duterte, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Daniel Ortega, the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front, even Adolf Hitler, it’s little wonder that some people have turned to prayer. Well, for many Christians, including Sarah Sanders, the White House Press Secretary, those prayers have been answered and we have been blessed with Donald Trump. ‘I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that He wanted Donald Trump to become president. And that’s why he’s there. And I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about’ (cnsnews.com, 31 January). One contributor to the site, MJ, went so far as to state: ‘I definitely agree that God chose Donald Trump to be our president! The devil and hordes of his demons have done everything they know to try and hinder and stop him from accomplishing God’s purposes, yet he remains in office. Why? Because he has given his life to God and desires to restore Christian values to our nation to make it great again. Bless him, Lord!’

Cortez the Redeemer

The religious Left is no better. In a commentary titled ‘The Biblical Values of Ocasio-Cortez’s Democratic Socialism’ (sojo.net, 31 January) we are informed ‘The Bible envisions a just and equitable social order. As King explained, “God never intended for some of his children to live in inordinate superfluous wealth while others live in abject, deadening poverty.” Democratic socialism seeks to build a more humane society, not by force or compulsion, but by way of the age-old democratic practice of “one person, one vote.” For this reason, democratic socialist policies can only move forward if the American people understand their value and vote for them.’ Surprisingly, there is a kernel of truth here: genuine socialism can only come about through majority understanding. But, religion, be it of the Left or Right, supports the status quo. Quotations from the Bible are offered in support of healthcare for all, a fair wage and a minimum one for all, as well as fair treatment of workers. The real message is, however, you’ll get pie in the sky when you die!

Worship Me or Die

‘Christianity is virtually outlawed in North Korea, where dictator Kim Jong Un is the subject of a personality cult that treats him like a god. The possession of Bibles, open religious services and any attempt to build underground church networks could mean torture, lengthy prison terms or execution’ (cruxnow.com, 1 February). If you have ever seen North Korea from the heavens, thanks to a satellite image and technology developed by the 99 percent, the contrast with the South is astonishing. Schopenhauer wrote that ‘religions are like glow worms; they shine only when it is dark’. Atheism, whether state sponsored or not, is ultimately another blind alley. So the fight continues on two fronts, to replace religion and supersede atheism through socialist understanding.

No Gods, no Masters

Marx (1847): ‘The social principles of Christianity have had eighteen centuries in which to develop, and have no need to undergo further development at the hands of Prussian consistorial councillors. The social principles of Christianity justified the slavery of classical days; they glorified mediaeval serfdom; and they are able when needs must to defend the oppression of the proletariat, though with a somewhat crestfallen air. The social principles of Christianity proclaim the need for the existence of a ruling class and a subjugated class, being content to express the pious hope that the former will deal philanthropically with the latter. The social principles of Christianity assume that there will be compensation in heaven for all the infamies committed on earth, and thereby justify the persistence of these infamies here below. The social principles of Christianity explain that the atrocities perpetrated by the oppressors on the oppressed are either just punishments for original and other sins, or else trials which the Lord in His wisdom ordains for the Redeemed. The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word, all the qualities of the canaille; and the proletariat which will not allow itself to be treated as canaille, needs courage, self-confidence, pride, a sense of personal dignity and independence, even more than it needs daily bread. The social principles of Christianity are lick-spittle, whereas the proletariat is revolutionary. So much for the social principles of Christianity’ (Otto Rühle, Karl Marx: His Life and Works, 1929).

Material World: Ethnic cleansing the desert (2019)

The Material World Column from the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Israel/Palestine there exist communities of what some call the ‘Invisible Citizens’ and with echoes of past justifications for the establishment of Israel assert that the Negev desert where they dwell is vacant and undeveloped. These are the Bedouin who make up around 3.5 percent of Israel’s population and thousands of Bedouin serve in the Israeli army. Although sharing a common language and some traditions there are significant cultural differences between the Bedouin and Palestinian Arabs.

The Bedouin comprise the youngest population in Israeli society – about 54 percent of the Bedouin population is younger than 14 and in 2003 the Israeli daily Ma’ariv published an article entitled ‘Special Report: Polygamy is a Security Threat’, detailing a report put forth by the Director of the Population Administration at the time, Herzl Gedj, which described polygamy in the Bedouin sector as a ‘security threat’ and advocated means of reducing the birth rate. Israel outlawed polygamy but it is widespread among the Bedouin. Israel is now trying to end the custom, prosecuting suspected Bedouin polygamists. But it is seen only as a ploy to curb their population growth and criminalise their community members.

‘It’s simple: polygamy means more Bedouin children, and that means more demographic concerns from a Zionist perspective,’ said human rights lawyer Rawia Aburabia.

The proposed mass expulsion of Bedouin under the Prawer Plan raised concerns from human rights groups. In 2013, the Israeli government shelved the plan to forcibly relocate about 40,000 Bedouin Arabs to government designated towns. One of the plan’s architects stated that the Bedouin had neither been consulted nor agreed to the move. ‘I didn’t tell anyone that the Bedouin agreed to my plan. I couldn’t say that because I didn’t present the plan to them,’ said the former minister Benny Begin.

While the Prawer Plan as originally conceived has been thwarted, demolition of homes and the displacement of Bedouins has continued albeit in piecemeal form through a process of ‘development’ and building ‘infrastructure’. Israel approved an $800 million redevelopment project in 2017 as it moved two huge military bases into its southern desert.

‘We’re always hearing about billion dollar budgets but we only see more demolitions, more police, and more Jewish settlements,’ said Bedouin lawyer Khalil Alamour.

The Housing and Construction Ministry launched a plan for housing units in the Negev as ‘a significant step towards realising the Zionist vision of settlement’. The then minister Yoaf Galant said ‘We must not lose our hold on the south. I have been in the southern sector for many years. Today, when I come to the Negev and look at the surroundings of Be’er Sheva, I am shocked by the amount of illegal Bedouin construction in recent years.’ He stated that, ‘For all of us, a national home is the Land of Israel. In addition to building houses, we in the Construction and Housing Ministry see as a mission the construction of the Zionist youth spirit that builds and settles the land and I pin my hopes on our excellent youth, who will lead the development and settlement of the country in all its parts.’ He later told the Knesset: ‘The south is under attack not only from Gaza – the illegal and hostile construction in the rural Bedouin areas in the Negev… has spun out of control… The programme to reinforce Jewish settlement in the Negev constitutes a long term and stable solution for a Jewish hold over the region.’

Rafat Abu Aish told Al Jazeera how his home village of Laqiya is hemmed in by Israeli military infrastructure and the Jewish community of Carmit, ‘leaving no room for the village to grow… Soon you will find that between all the Bedouin communities are Jewish communities or army bases separating us from each other’, adding ‘it’s very planned.’

As many as 1,000 Bedouin Palestinian families are threatened with forcible relocation by government plans for a major new highway, Road 6. Originally 100 Bedouin families were to be moved but in December 2018, Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel declared he intended to take advantage of the situation to expel a further 900 families. ‘The government is committed to demonstrating governance in the Negev,’ Ariel declared, describing the construction of the road as an opportunity to ‘return to the state huge tracts of land’.

There are several other large-scale infrastructure plans that will displace Bedouin, including a rail line that will swallow up extensive tracts of land and impact on the 1,400-strong Bedouin community of Rahma. A new phosphate mine will also entail the forced relocation of at least 10,000 Bedouin citizens. The Israeli armament corporation IMI is locating a massive testing facility in the Negev which will put some 1,200 Bedouin homes and other buildings at risk of forced displacement.

Israeli government policy towards the Bedouin has remained constant. The Goldberg report described it as a three-part plan: ‘No recognition of Bedouin rights over the land, a willingness to offer land claimants compensation ‘beyond the letter of the law,’ and conditioning the payment of compensation on the evacuation of the land and transfer to one of the recognised settlements’.

Israel’s Bedouins have a daunting struggle to preserve their land, their homes and livelihood in the face of a formidable foe.

ALJO

Climate change: capitalism can’t cope (2019)

From the March 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last October the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a report on what they consider would have to be done, and by when, to avoid average global temperature rising by the end of the century by more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. They concluded that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions would have to be stabilised by 2030, in the sense of no more being released into the atmosphere than can be absorbed by nature or by human action. Hence the headlines about only twelve years left to avoid disaster. Then, in December, a full-scale two-week conference on climate change, with delegates from the 190 states that had signed the 2015 Paris Agreement to take measures aimed at limiting the rise to 2°C, was held in Katowice in Poland.

The facts

1. That the amount of CO2in the atmosphere has gone up since pre-industrial times (from 280 parts per million to 410 ppm today).

2. That the average global temperature has also gone up since records began in the 1850s (by about 1°C, to about 15°C or 59°F today).

3. That this is not just an accidental correlation but that the first has caused the second. CO2is a greenhouse gas, i.e., a gas that absorbs heat from the Sun; in fact without it and the other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (especially water vapour, i.e. clouds) the Earth’s temperature would be –18°

4. That most of the increase in CO2is the result of human activity, in particular the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) since the mid-nineteenth century to generate energy and power transport. In one sense this is a good thing because it means that it is easier for humans to stop it than if it were some natural phenomenon.

5. That a rise in the average global temperature has various effects, the main ones being:

• a rise in sea levels as oceans warm up and so expand and as the polar icecaps begin to melt;
• more stormy weather in some regions due to more energy being in the atmosphere;
• changes in regional agriculture conditions and ecology, disastrous in some places though not necessarily negative everywhere.

Guestimates

We know definitely that, unless the rate of emission of CO2 is stabilised, average global temperature is going to continue to rise and that this will affect sea levels, the weather, and regional agricultural and ecological conditions. (In fact it will continue to rise for a while even if emissions were stabilised tomorrow, as an effect of past emissions). The question is by how much and to what extent. This is where the speculation begins.

Not, however, wild speculation but speculation based on certain assumptions. In drawing up scenarios of what might happen in the future, scientists have to make two basic assumptions. First, about the link between a rise in CO2 in the atmosphere and the rise in average global temperature. Second, about what humans do, or do not do, to reduce or compensate for CO2 emissions.

As to the first, nobody knows with certainty what it is. The standard that scientists have chosen is an estimate of by how much the global average temperature would rise if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere doubled. This is not easy to calculate as there are feedbacks. Once these have been taken into account, the figure they come up with is anything between 1.5°C and 4.5°C, variously described as ‘the best estimate’, ‘most likely’, or even ‘the best guess’. It is in fact a ‘guestimate’, albeit an informed one.

Polar ice-core records show that in the pre-industrial past the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was for centuries 280 ppm. Today it is 410 ppm. If present trends continue it will reach 560 ppm, i.e., double, by 2050. In that case, in the period after that date until the end of the century average global temperature would gradually rise to 1.5°C or by 4.5°C above pre-industrial levels or by anything in between.

As average global temperature has already gone up by about 1°C since pre-industrial times we are talking about a possible further rise by the end of the century of between 0.5°C and 3.5°C.  That’s as accurate as you can get. The trouble is that there would be a huge difference in effects between the lower and the higher figure. All we can safely say is that if CO2 emissions continue to increase, so global average temperature will go up and so the effects of this will be felt. Since most of these effects will be negative, CO2 emissions should be reduced in any event.

But how? One suggested way focuses on individuals changing their individual behaviour, as by not driving a car, not travelling by air, eating less or no meat, turning the temperature of their home down and wearing a sweater, etc. Clearly this would not be sufficient, quite apart from the fact that the level of popular consumption is linked to the state of the economy which in turn is linked to the prospects for making and accumulating of profits as more capital. The tail can’t wag the dog. What is required is action at global level to deal with production methods that involve directly emitting CO2 into the atmosphere.

Nest of vipers

Co-ordinated global action is what is needed, but capitalism impedes this. Capitalism is a world system under which capitalist enterprises and states compete against each other to secure markets and sources of raw materials. It is driven by an economic imperative that imposes itself on those organising production to use the cheapest available methods so as to survive in the struggle to make and accumulate profits. ‘Growth’ of production is built-in to it.

Energy is a key input of all production; its cost affects the competitiveness on both home and world markets of goods produced within the frontiers of a state. This is why states are particularly concerned with the cost of energy and its security of supply. At the moment coal, oil and natural gas are still cheaper than alternatives such as renewables and nuclear, which is why they were used in the past and continue to be used.

When Trump says that he is not going to accept any measures that are ‘bad for business’ he is expressing the position that all states take and have to take. No state is going to decide unilaterally not to use its cheapest source of energy, even if it is one that emits CO2, as that would increase its energy costs and undermine its competitiveness internally as well as on world markets. So the states into which the capitalist world is divided have agreed that the United Nations should take the initiative. However, the various climate change conferences that the UN has organised have shown that the ‘nations’ are far from being ‘united’. They have proved to be a veritable nest of vipers as each state tries not only to advantage itself but to disadvantage its rivals.

The only agreement that has been possible – in fact, given capitalism, the only one that is possible – is one which disadvantages no one compared to everyone else. This was the outcome of the 2015 conference in Paris which agreed that all states should commit themselves to reducing emissions so as to avoid average global temperature rising 2°C above pre-industrial levels (a further 1°C from today) by the end of the century. However, as the UN is toothless and can’t impose anything on states, it left to each state to decide, in the light of its particular circumstances, what measures it would take to contribute towards this.

In November the journal Nature Communications published an article analysing the measures pledged by states in pursuit of the Paris Agreement, one of whose conclusions the Guardian (16 November) summarised as:

  ‘Under the Paris agreement, there is no top-down consensus on what is a fair share of responsibility. Instead each nation sets its own bottom-up targets according to a number of different factors, including political will, level of industrialisation, ability to pay, population size, historical responsibility for emissions. Almost every government, the authors say, selects an interpretation of equity that serves their own interests and allows them to achieve a relative gain on other nations.’

The conference in Katowice didn’t alter this but just worked out common rules for verifying whether the self-determined measures were being implemented and to what extent. It left unchanged a state’s right to decide what measures to adopt.

Lowest level consensus

Under capitalism, the best that can be achieved is some non-binding inter-governmental agreement that would disadvantage nobody commercially. Clearly, this is pretty minimalist, a consensus at the lowest level. The promised measures, if adopted, will have some effect in slowing down global warming, which should mean the IPCC’s worst case scenario of a further rise in average global temperature of 3.8°C by 2100 won’t be realised, even if they are not enough to limit the rise to a further 1°C (making the rise 2°C since pre-industrial times).

It is looking highly unlikely, if capitalism continues, that the rise in average global temperature this century is going to be held to this limit. This would bring other problems which would be more acute the more the limit is exceeded and which capitalism would be equally incapable of coping with, in particular the population displacements due to rising sea levels and worsened agricultural conditions in some parts of the world. Co-ordinated global action would also be required to deal with this, but once again capitalism’s division into competing capitalist states will impede this.

The lesson is that those concerned about global overwarming should direct their efforts to getting rid of capitalism and replacing it with a system where the Earth’s natural and industrial resources will have become the common heritage of all humanity. This will put a stop to the operation of the current economic imperative to seek and accumulate profits and will provide the framework for co-ordinated global action to deal not only with global warming but other current problems such as world poverty and constant war somewhere in the world.

Adam Buick