Letter: Socialism in a single country? (1995)

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

Socialism in a single country?

Dear Editors,

As a newcomer, while supporting the goal of socialism globally, I question your rejection of the idea that it cannot or should not occur in one country beforehand, especially as this appears incompatible with the declared principle of a "speedy termination" of capitalism.

Given that formidable beneficiaries and advocates of capitalism world-wide are united in their determination to maintain their system, attempting to overcome them all simultaneously does not seem the best use of limited resources, nor does it provide a tangible stimulus to the world’s exploited to break free from lifelong restraint.

To use a demolition analogy: it's unnecessary to destroy a dam by exhaustively coating the entire surface with voluminous plastic explosive in order to shatter every part synchronously.

The same result is achievable by concentrating a limited charge in one place, so allowing what is constrained to first break free with such drive that the rest of the barrier steadily wears away in conjunction with an increasing rate of escape.

One nation succeeding through socialism would make the advantages so clear to others, so quickly, that any countermeasures to bolster the international profit system would be swept away by the dynamic surge for the same benefits.

A sufficiently developed nation could go it alone and meet all its needs and requirements through socialism without being isolated from the rest of the world (though even isolation— as duress to reconform—would fail since retaining global ties would be preferable rather than essential).

Any raw materials that had to be imported could be bartered for. And if necessary, by exporting surplus goods, foreign currencies could be obtained for maintaining world-wide communications and transport links etc.

Preserving these international relations would not be a betrayal of socialist values nor an act of reformation. It would be a means to and end. whereby the baby gains protection and its diet is supplemented, while also enabling all to observe it swiftly growing strong, healthy and contented.

Without any financial restraints, wastage of resources and dog-eat-dog disunity, the full benefits of common ownership could be realised throughout the pioneer nation, transforming and improving lives to such an extent that a socialist chain reaction would inevitably be triggered across the planet.

By insisting on simultaneous global socialism, or none at all, time might run out due to capitalism’s destructiveness before the former can be achieved. 

Max Hess, 

Folkestone, Kent

Reply:

We don't say that socialism should not be established in one country but that it can't be. If it could, then we wouldn't be opposed to this, but it can’t because capitalism is a world system. not just in the sense of being dominated by the operation of world market forces but also in terms of the underlying technical conditions of production and world-wide division of labour which socialism will inherit.

No one country could be self-sufficient not even the most developed country in the world, the United States, nor the largest Russia, nor the most populous, China, nor Japan, nor even a multi-country trading bloc like the Common Market And the idea of any other part of the world going it alone is just ludicrous.

What this means is that no one part of the world can opt out, at least not without suffering a drastic reduction in the amount and variety of goods and services available to satisfy the needs and wants of those living there. People would be deprived of products from other part of the world or would have to work longer and devote more resources than otherwise to producing them.

In these circumstances, even if private property and the profit motive were to be eliminated within its frontiers, the country concerned would hardly provide the attractive model you assume for people in other countries to want to follow.

You say that this drawback could be got round by bartering with the outside, capitalist world, but have you thought this through? The products to be acquired from the outside world would have to be paid for (whether in money or in kind) at the full market price. But these outside products would not be able to be acquired unless some products produced in the country had first been exchanged on the world market. For this to happen they would have to be competitive in terms of quality and price with the same products produced in the capitalist world, otherwise no other country would want to buy or barter for them.

So already, to participate in the world market, the isolated would-be socialist country would have to behave capitalistically, striving to keep labour costs down and so further restricting the already reduced standard of living of the population. As people would be unlikely to agree to this voluntarily a new ruling class to enforce this would be likely to emerge. The end result would be not "socialism in one country" but state capitalism in one country.

There is another point you overlook. Abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism is not like demolishing a dam. It requires the existence of an active and participating socialist majority. Without this there can be no socialism, so for socialism to be attempted in just one country there would have to emerged a socialist majority in just that country. But how likely is this to happen in practice?

We think it is highly unlikely. Given the fact that social conditions and problems are basically the same all over the world, and given that socialism is the idea of a world society where the resources of the Earth belong in common to all humanity, we can see no reason why socialist ideas, when they begin to catch on, should only spread in one particular country and not in others.

In our view it is much more reasonable to assume that socialist ideas will spread more or less evenly in all countries. In which case, apart from being impossible to achieve anyway but the problem of perhaps having to try to establish socialism in one country won’t even arise.

Editors.

Letters: Who’s afraid of socialism? (1999)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who’s afraid of socialism?

Dear Editors,

As a sympathiser but not yet a member of the Socialist Party I have been interested in the discussion about the “S” word. When one considers the diverse characters who have misused the word—Hitler, Stalin, Mao down to Wilson, Kinnock, Scargill, Hatton and many many more, there is no wonder that many people are deaf to preachings in the name of Socialism.

In my opinion it has become imperative that an alternative terms must be adopted. May I suggest Common Wealth Party? (Not Commonwealth!). this is descriptive of aims and “fresh” sounding—stimulating further interest instead of instant dismissal by a potential convert to our cause.

I believe this subject deserves more serious consideration as a means to obtaining more sympathetic listeners to our message.

Robert Coleman, 

Wellington, Somerset

Reply:

Actually, there was once a party called the Common Wealth Party. It even had an MP, but he ended up defecting to the Labour Party.- Editors

That word again

Dear Editors,

I can’t help but feel that the term “socialism” has become a scapegoat.

The concept of socialism is just as vulnerable to prejudice and misunderstanding as the term we use to denote it. Those who associate “socialism” with bolshevism or the Labour Party are almost always incapable of envisaging a system of common ownership and instinctively equate it with nationalisation of one form or another. Changing our terminology will not alter the fact that many people cannot imagine an alternative to capitalism even when they have it explained to them. To imagine that it would is to accept the simplistic logic of political correctness.

Besides, abandoning the term “socialism” would bring us numerous disadvantages. We risk appearing to have broken away from our past. Our record of arguing the case for socialism is a distinction which we cannot afford to lose.

Equally, we risk appearing to have modified our views, or the suspicion that we have something to hide. We risk appearing to have succumbed to a New Labour-style victory of style over substance, or the duplicity of renamed factions of the former Communist Party. Socialism is a righting word; One World, Free Access and the like sound like Women’s Institute sub-committees.

In any case, the word socialism will always be associated with Karl Marx and his ideas, ideas which bring many people to the Socialist Party. I knew I was a socialist because that’s what Marx was and he made far more sense than anyone I’d heard of before. That’s why I bothered contacting the Socialist Party.

The irony of all this is that the problem is actually decreasing. You don’t meet many 20-year-olds who would call the Labour Party “socialist”. When I put the case for socialism to people my own age it is rare for them even to mention the USSR. I used to point out the difference between socialism and bolshevism; now most people pre-empt me.

The end of the Cold War is prompting many people to go back to Marx and re-evaluate his ideas. There is increasing interest in what most people will still call “socialism”. Now is the time to cling to that name more tenaciously than ever.

Matthew Vaughan-Wilson 

Southampton

And again

Dear Editors,

I fully accept Max Hess’s main arguments that it is better not to mention the word Socialism initially and that the positive personal benefits of socialism need more stress. I must disagree however with his conclusions regarding the Party name. Like many members I was attracted to the Socialist Party by its name rather than put off (at 14 I carefully scrutinised Tony Benn’s “Arguments for Socialism” in a vain attempt to find arguments for socialism!). Changing the name, e.g. to the “Free Access Party” (which sounds like an undergraduate debating society) or something to do with “Autonarchy” (some sort of bizarre S&M?) would be a catastrophe. For a start we would lose all rights to the Party’s history—which some of us are proud of.

Other organisations have similar problems—the anarchists for instance have a constant battle regarding the bomb-throwing jibe—yet they haven’t got this constant navel-gazing obsession with titles.

If anything it is the fake “socialists” who should be asked to change their name not us (the SWP becoming the SCMTP—State Capitalist Mostly Teachers Party, the ex-Militants becoming the RNSP—Reformist Name Stealing Party, etc).

If we’re not making socialists as rapidly as we might hope there is a case for re-examining the effectiveness of our propaganda. However the Socialist Party has never had any time for the theatricality of “spinning” (name changing included). What we say is what we are.

Keith Scholey, 

Hull

Letter: Free access (1999)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Free access

Dear Editors,

Regarding recent letters urging socialists to avoid using the S-word, the Socialist Party should take account of Tom Jones’s article about life being so “dull and hopeless that a lot of people hope for nothing more”. And how “psychological effects of many tiring, boring hours has a knock-on effect” in that “workers are unable to imagine a world free from the drudgery of wage slavery” (June Socialist Standard).

While agreeing with your February view that it’s wrong to “surrender the word”, I think most socialists accept Paul Azzario’s April letter point that “socialism” can evoke an immediate disapproving “Pavlovian reaction”. And this conditioned negative response (which a very influential media is still reinforcing today) combined with today’s widespread pessimistic indifference does require an apposite approach. Not a Basil Fawlty “Don’t mention the S-word”—just avoiding using it too soon.

One feature that can overcome disinterest, pessimism and any latter negative reaction to the S-word is the free access to food, goods and services that common ownership brings. Concentrating foremost on promoting shopping without paying; free homes, cars, overseas travel etc; and all public services being available without any cost is a promise that cuts through social despair and attracts interest, even if with disbelief more often than not. Supported by the basic explanation of collective asset-owning resulting in an equal right to everything produced, together with other significant benefits, means voters find socialism—far better than socialism trying to find voters with premature S-word use, and detailed meanings which, given Tom Jones’s accurate report of downbeat thought processes, inevitably turns people off. Getting major advantages across first and why they aren’t pie-in-the-sky, then gradually introducing the S-word no longer unintentionally puts backs up. As Aki Orr’s February letter said, “adapt language and tactics” to promote socialism. Capitalism’s hopelessness has necessitated spin doctors to conceal defects and lack of substance. But the Socialist Party must also spin socialism to break through with trumpeted benefits and supporting content—not raising an immediate S-word obstacle which does regrettably stop socialists from communicating and the exploited from listening.

Regarding the Socialist Party name, despite its fundamental truth and long existence, is it not credible that a title-change to Free Access Party (or whatever) could ironically help increase socialist awareness and party support considerably? I cannot see a changed title causing upset as socialists will only be concerned with completing the journey as soon as possible—not the vehicle’s name conveying them (and which is to be abandoned once socialism’s established). Is a membership vote on this possible to settle matters and avoid further doubts and distractions?

Max Hess, 

Folkestone, Kent

Dial 118 for Murder (2003)

From the June 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

BT’s 192 directory enquiries service is closing in August, and we are told to be grateful for new competing services. Instead of an easy-to-remember 3-figure number, there’ll now be dozens of companies offering over 300 different 6-figure numbers beginning with 118.

Have people really got the time or inclination to work out who’s best by comparing all the different charges for land lines and mobiles, standing charges, minimum charges and costs per minute? And what’s the point, they’ll only keep changing in the rivalrous pursuit of profit, just as credit card companies keep trying to take more market share with constantly altering offers.

118??? callers will, doubtless, have even more of their precious time within capitalism used up by time-wasting tactics, resulting in bigger dividends for shareholders from higher per-minute charges for users. Yet more time will be wasted as newspapers fight for our attention with adverts, and TV and radio broadcasts fill our heads with ‘catchy’ images and inane jingles. “One-one-eight — four-three-two — buy from us brain-washing you”, probably won’t be heard.

Capitalism tells us that competition offers us more choice and lower prices, but it’s lies. Sure, companies like BT, having switched call centre jobs from the UK to India, where wages are as little as £5 a day compared to around £5 an hour in Britain, will cut costs. But these savings will be used to increase profits. And after years of this wearisome ridiculousness involving constantly changing prices, 118 business competition will have knocked out the weaker firms leaving just one or two dominating, who will not then be under pressure to sell cheaply.

A competitive society does not benefit the exploited working class majority. Even if capitalism could maintain pressure on businesses to always sell at the lowest possible prices, capitalists would still be the winners, as market forces also apply to employment. With less money needed to buy goods and services, workers’ demands can be supplied by lower pay, and that’s precisely what a competitive work market brings about, leaving most people, as always, constantly struggling through life until they finally get to rest, in their coffins.

There is no so-called “freedom” to “shop around” for competing businesses offering directory inquiries, credit cards, gas, electricity, telephones, insurance, loans, life insurance, car insurance, home insurance etc. All this activity is actually a debilitating cancer that eats away at those parts of your life not already consumed by profit-taking capitalists, or by time spent bill checking, bill paying, bank statement checking, tax form filling, benefit form completing, cash till queuing and all the other money-associated madness.

And while people maintain a junkie-like addiction to moolah, comparing RRP resin, using COD crack, sampling APR angel dust, getting high on HP horse and regularly dropping ATM acid into wallets and purses, they will be easy prey for the profit-taking, parliamentary and advertising pushers forever telling them they’ve got just what they need. And those totally hooked will fail to see or care that money peddlers control them, or how, and so will just go on feeding their habit by selling themselves and their acquiescence for a wage or state handout.

Stop making those attempts at complex monetary calculations which companies deliberately make complicated so customers can’t easily figure things out, and give up, submissively paying out to avoid stress and hassle. Dial 020 7622 3811 for details of real socialism.

Max Hess

Coughing up cash (2003)

Charles Ingram

From the June 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism creates much that’s obscene. At times, it generates hilarity born of despair. And an example of the latter was the pursuit of a big win on the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? gameshow made by Celador, and subsequent trial and conviction of the jackpot “winner”, army major Charles Ingram and two accomplices.

In a world of class ownership of the means of living, with people desperate to acquire money because everything costs, bizarre behaviour that causes observers to remark “I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry” isn’t infrequent. From ludicrous get-rich-quick spam to business adverts tattooed on foreheads, people are driven to do whatever it takes to obtain cash.

Charles and his wife Diana owed around £50,000 in loans and credit card payments, while Tecwen Whittock, teacher of business studies at a South Wales college, had a £100,000 mortgage, spent £40,000 on private education for three of his children, and owed around £40,000 (£20,000 on a single credit card bill). Whittock had been in contact with the Ingrams before any of them appeared on the quiz show.

Laughs at the major’s expense from this tragicomic attempt to win big came from him revealing how he sat at home eagerly practising “Fastest Finger First” on a mock-up keypad resting on his knee. How he was reduced to tears in court on hearing a barrister’s humiliating question put to a Celador employee about his frisking after the show: “Did you search his privates?”. But above all, the repeated playing in court of Ingram’s performance recorded on September 10, 2001, “assisted” by Tecwen Whittock’s nineteen “strategically placed coughs”.

Some may be able to cheat the system …

Ingram had struggled the previous day, losing two lifelines to win £4,000, but lack of time caused him to become a “rollover” contestant, meaning Ingram and Whittock were then both present the next evening, enabling a plan to cheat to be carried out. Ingram would read aloud the four possible answers to each question, and Whittock sitting close behind would cough immediately after hearing the correct one.

This crude scheme, perhaps helped by vibrating pagers taped to Whittock’s body, was jeopardised by Ingram’s enthusiasm to answer question 14 unaided. For £500,000, Chris Tarrant asked “Baron Haussmann is best known for his planning of which city? (A), Rome; (B), Paris; (C), Berlin; or (D), Athens.” Ingram said at once “I think it’s Berlin”. And when it seemed Ingram was going to give this as his “final answer”, because Haussmann was a “more German name”, an anxious Whittock resorted to combining a cough with the warning “No!”, which when first played to those in court caused roars of laughter. This warning, followed by more coughs after Ingram twice mentioned Paris while hunting for the correct answer, got him through to the final £1,000,000 question.

The public got their chance to chortle at what the jury saw and heard thanks to a documentary, Millionaire: A Major Fraud, on April 21, which explored the trial and screened the major’s “winning” run. Sadly, most viewers were actually laughing at themselves, as the joke’s on them. They may not have conspired to obtain money with secreted pagers and coded coughs, but they have been partners in a crime against themselves, which is not voting to escape from class domination, exploitation and exclusion, a game which also compels them to chase after money. In this respect, judge Geoffrey Rivlin was wrong to call the trial a “most unusual and exceptional case”.

… but who’s really making a monkey of who?

Game show presenter Chris Tarrant called the coughing for cash “very cynical” and “hugely insulting to the hundreds and hundreds of other contestants who have come on the show, just hoping for much smaller amounts of money”. But what of the cynicism of Celador profiting from millions of premium rate phone calls from people desperate to get on the gameshow to escape from the insult of poverty and deprivation in a supposedly civilised society? What of the documentary, sold to broadcasters worldwide, cynically cashing in on this attempted fraud and which no doubt is hoped to boost the quiz show’s flagging ratings?

Another Tarrant comment was, “It’s unthinkable anyone should think they could go home with the biggest prize of all dishonestly.” What of capitalists going home to luxurious residences, living off vast profits, interest payments and property rents thanks to owning the biggest prize of all, productive assets, which is dishonestly legal thanks to their own system’s laws?

The worst scam of all, that capitalists and their political stooges will never cough to, is that people would be far better off with real socialism, production of goods and services to meet needs, and free access. When it comes to winning the biggest prize for humankind, and you’re faced with those critical 50/50 choices, don’t ask the audience looking down on you. Don’t phone a friend addicted to money. Choose socialism, and make it the final answer.

Max Hess

Socialist election activity (2025)

Party News from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party stood four candidates in the local elections at the beginning of May. Below are their election addresses

Kent County Council Election Folkestone

Human needs or profit first?

We live in an economic system, capitalism, that ensures nothing gets built or created unless someone, somewhere expects to make a handsome profit. Human needs come very much second.

That is why Folkestone’s stunning harbour is going to be submerged in ugly blocks of concrete and glass. They are built, not for the needs of local people, but to make a profit for the developers and the owners of the land. No surprise there. That is how capitalism works.

All around us everything crumbles, from schools to libraries and social services, even as the vast wealth of a tiny minority continues to increase. And this will go on so long as we keep voting for political parties which think this absurd and cruel system can be reformed.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has for the last 120 years advocated a quite different society built on the common, democratic ownership of the planet and its resources. A society in which every one of us gets to participate in decisions like the building of new houses, the planting of crops, how we get our energy. A truly human society where sustainable decisions are made based on human needs and the need to maintain a healthy planet.

At current levels of science and technology the earth can easily provide an abundance of resources for everyone to live a happy and fulfilled life. Then there will be no need to artificially ration the necessities of life with money. We will contribute our physical and mental labour freely and take freely from the common store.

That will need a world revolution. And every revolution starts somewhere. Why not Folkestone?

If you agree VOTE SOCIALIST.

Gloucestershire County Council elections Stroud

Capitalism or Socialism?

This might be the last Gloucestershire County Council Election. The government seems intent on reorganising the County and District Councils. This will result in fewer representatives and a concentration of strategic power in the hands of a regional Mayor.

This is democracy in the capitalist system: a choice between candidates for office with only marginally different sets of policies. Once elected those in office can tinker with the system but not the rules of capitalism: those without wealth are beholden to those who do, profit comes first not human needs, and can’t pay – can’t have.

But what can we do? Unlike the architects of local government devolution, socialists believe not that there is too much democracy, but that there isn’t enough. The rules of capitalism have not been in place for all of human history and we don’t need them in future. Getting rid of the rules of capitalism and creating a real democratic future can’t be brought about from above. It has to come from a majority of people.

You can show support for real democracy, socialism, by voting for the Socialist Party of Great Britain on May 1st.

Socialism is a classless, stateless, wageless, moneyless society or, a democracy in which free and socially equal men and women co-operate to produce the things they need to live and enjoy life, to which they have free access: ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’.

The Socialist Party is like no other political party in Britain. It is made up of people who have joined together because we want to get rid of the profit system and establish real socialism.

Our aim is to encourage others to become socialist and act for themselves, organising democratically and without leaders, to bring about the kind of society that we advocate.

We are solely concerned with building a movement of socialists for socialism. We are not a reformist party with a programme of policies to patch up capitalism.

If elected, Piers Hobson will work for socialism at every opportunity, vote on issues according to the democratic decisions of his branch of the Socialist Party and always be for socialism and nothing else.

Lambeth Council by-election London

Real change, not damage limitation

Fellow workers,

They call it democracy but it’s nothing of the sort.

Labour didn’t even want this by-election. They’d rather stitch it up behind closed doors than face a real challenge. This isn’t about serving the people, it’s about protecting their grip on power. Councillors are parachuted in, selections are stage-managed, and decisions are made long before you ever see a ballot paper.

Meanwhile, rents rise, wages stagnate, benefits are cut, food banks multiply and estates are handed over to developers. Labour’s record in Lambeth is clear enough.

Now they ask for your vote again. So do the Greens, Lib Dems and others who promise change but only offer better management of a system built on exploitation. They won’t end your problems. They won’t challenge the class system. They won’t stop capitalism — they serve it.

No confidence in their system. No votes for our bosses’ parties.

Until we end capitalism, nothing changes.

That’s why the Socialist Party is standing in this election. Not for tweaks or token reforms, but for real change. Common ownership, democratic control, production for need not profit.

If you want that, you can show it by voting for the SOCIALIST CANDIDATE.

Spending challenge (2010)

From the November 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

To prepare the cuts announced on 20 October the Treasury issued a “Spending Challenge” on its website for members of the public to suggest savings. Here’s a socialist reply.

The capitalist system has become obsolete for most purposes. It cannot prevent large numbers of the world’s population from experiencing worsening deprivation and misery. This includes Britain, where we face deteriorating living standards as the rich capitalist minority require governments to keep cracking down on the working class majority so that their pig troughs are kept as full as possible. The incomes of the many will keep being squeezed by whichever government is in office so that the incomes of the few on top can be protected and increased. Politicians will tell us all that is needed is better money management, and no doubt, some members of the public will fall for this, and go along with monetary cuts directed against others in their own (working) class.

In reality, what is needed is something that will strike most people as being bizarre and scary when they first hear it. A complete end to money, and the outdated capitalist system that requires it! Here’s a surprising fact. We, the working class majority, do NOT need money to produce all the goods and services that a modern society requires. Only capitalists need money to carry out their exploitation of those able to work and everyone else.

If we reject capitalism and money, and choose a new system (“moneyless real socialism”), how would the jobs that need doing get done? Well, when we are all the direct collective owners of the means of production and distribution (factories, farmland, power stations, rail systems, sources of raw materials etc) we will also collectively own everything that is produced and provided. The food produced in factories and on farms will be ours. The electricity from the power stations will be ours. The trains will be ours. Iron ore and all the other minerals mined from the planet will be ours. You do not have to buy what’s already your property, and therefore, everything that we have to pay for today will be freely available. Obviously, the work will still have to be done, but by doing so, everyone will have the right to a home of their own, the right to take whatever they need from shops (this will not result in blind greed because taking more than is needed will then be daft and pointless), everyone will be entitled to free travel, free medical care and education of the highest standard possible, and much more.

Won’t we have to work far harder? Absolutely not. The opposite, in fact. In Britain alone, there are millions of people doing fundamentally useless money-related jobs only necessary under capitalism (making money, manufacturing cash machines, sales, insurance, welfare benefits, banking, accountancy, debt recovery etc). When capitalism and money are dumped, all these millions of people will then become available to contribute something of real benefit to society. Furthermore, without money- related problems, arguments and crimes, many more people involved in policing, prison work, social work, solicitors, courts etc will also be freed up to contribute. All these millions of extra people, added to the millions of unemployed not wanted by capitalist employers, will mean that the average working week will be considerably shorter than it is now.

Money is not the answer. It, and the outdated system that requires it, is the problem. We need a new economic system, and moneyless real socialism is the only option.

Max Hess

We all need asylum (2001)

From the October 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eurotunnel’s September announcement that they had appointed a former army general, Sir Roger Wheeler, to help keep out asylum seekers trying to reach Britain through the Channel Tunnel via the company’s French compound at Coquelles seemed most apt just days after Daily Mail headlines screaming about “The Chunnel under siege”, “The storming of the Chunnel” and “Invasion”.

No doubt such militaristic lingo will in future include further metaphors describing how Wheeler is deciding “tactics” for the best “attacks” and “defences” as he “spearheads” a “fight” against the “enemy” until eventual “victory”. This however is not mere warlike figure of speech without material substance, since with miles of razor-wire fencing, security patrols, guard dogs, searchlights and look out towers equipped with infra red and CCTV cameras, the Coquelles terminal resembles a World War 2 prisoner-of-war camp. Not one, though, with prisoners forcibly kept on the inside, but restrained from gaining entry.

But jailbirds is precisely what asylum seekers are—inmates of capitalism’s global choky, convicted of being “bogus” and “illegal” because of non-ownership of money-making assets, and so sentenced to life imprisonment of predominantly suffering, exclusion and exploitation. Not that us natives in “our” country have much more freedom, seeing how Britain’s means of production and distribution most definitely are not ours, leaving us banged up in the selfsame suppressive manipulative clink.

By not owning and controlling raw materials, power stations, factories, transport systems etc, the majority must work and live their lives according to the needs, and dictates to government puppets, of the minority who do. The “middle class” (forced to sell themselves, working class in reality) may imagine they’re better off than others on lower pay, though examining the real cost to their families and health from work pressures, employment insecurity, pollution, environmental destruction and the fundamental instability and competitive dangers of markets and money, reveals their “gains” to be illusory.

The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, has sought to adopt a conciliatory approach, expressing a desire to see migrants able to obtain work permits to contribute to UK society. Yet if he paid heed to the state of the global economy, with a worldwide recession looking unavoidable, it’s clear that permits to work are idiotically pointless if businesses have sacked millions of employees because a whole heap of capitalist work has suddenly become unprofitable. So while many of those seeking to enter the UK might be well-qualified machine operators, engineers, builders, doctors etc (as they are), if the capitalist economy is going through yet another of its inevitable cyclical crises, there’ll be no employers or money to pay for these much-needed workers.

Such economic crises make migrants unwanted. They put politicians under maximum pressure to keep them out to minimise state expenditure, spending which reduces the nation’s profitability the bigger it gets, and is especially disliked when making profits is then as difficult as it gets. Increased racism and nationalism also become more likely as high unemployment and poverty produce considerable social suffering, provoking the pained to find and lash out at those they think responsible, and politicians in need of scapegoats, chauvinistic bigots and money-mad tabloids all eager to point some out.

Besides, is Blunkett unconcerned that offering work permits tends to result in cherry picking of the most employable and skilled workers from areas of conflict and deprivation? Because only they will have been most able to save up income, or successfully borrow the money necessary to pay for their travel arrangements, resulting in war-torn and poverty-stricken regions being left without people vital for their improvement and essential services.

The answer to people fleeing conflict, deprivation and brutal regimes is to remove the root causes of such nastiness—minority ownership and control of productive resources which generates rivalry for the upper hand, and restricts provision of, and access to, goods and services according to available profits and ability to pay. It is this exclusive possession and control of resources that also divides the world into separate competing countries and blocs, and the need for associated borders to prevent others from attempting to acquire these valuable assets by armed force, subversion or, in the case of migrants during economic downturns, “excess” demand (i.e., too many unemployed and unemployable people burdening state finances). And since these means of production responsible are possessed and run by ruling classes in all countries worldwide, worldwide socialism is the only solution.

Not only does global minority ownership and control of productive assets cause people to flee and seek better lives elsewhere, it also influences where such migrants try to reach. Politicians and media commentators have concentrated on irrelevant criticism of the Red Cross refugee centre in Calais, from which migrants set out to jump on UK-bound trains (amputated limbs and death occurring in the process), and on nauseating nit-picking about asylum seekers not staying in the “first safe country” they reach, accusing them of seeing Britain as a “soft touch”. Apart from the fact that no country is “safe” from capitalism, just as this economic system became global because that was beneficial to capital, so too has there been economic pressure for one global language to facilitate efficiency in the markets. And since America has been, and remains the dominant economic power—along with other significant economies also having English as their principal language—governments and astute parents in other countries with different native tongues have felt impelled to teach children to speak English in order to be able to compete.

Hence, migrants with even a smattering of English, and a desire to work for a bearable living standard or to pay off debts to people-traffickers, choose countries like Britain. Or Australia, where with a national election imminent, the sickening response of John Howard’s government was to pander to apparently widespread racist sentiment and send in armed troops to force a Norwegian freighter, the Tampa, to take its undesirable shipwrecked cargo of over 400 mainly Afghans away from cobber-filled Oz—a country ironically founded by boatloads of undesirables.

On 7 September, a High Court judge annoyed politicians and tabloids by ruling that detaining refugees at Oakington “Reception” Centre in Cambridgeshire for a week or so, while their asylum claims were being decided, amounted to illegal imprisonment under the Human Rights Act. Not that Mr Justice Collins merits praise, since he also stated it was still legal to detain anyone thought likely to abscond to avoid deportation. So, as usual, who and what’s legal or illegal remains dependent upon what’s acceptable or unacceptable to capitalism.

“Illegal” remains a class-based description that politicians, through their two-faced cant and deceit, will continue to attach to asylum seekers entering the UK for “economic reasons” rather than “genuinely fleeing persecution”. Yet just you try to take what you need from a shop without paying, because you’re skint. How long before the police drag you away, and a magistrate probably locks you away, each insisting that you, too, were “illegal”? And which British employees toiling for inadequate incomes in the longest working week in the EU aren’t forced to sell themselves for “economic reasons”, and have never considered such wage slavery to be “persecution” from which they’d also like to escape?

Those travelling long distances through fear or desperation are people no different to ourselves, since under capitalism, we are all asylum seekers. Only those owning substantial capital that generates enough money to pay for whatever needs they may have, without ever having to work, need not seek asylum from capitalism. Multimillionaires and billionaires, thanks to exploitation of the working class majority, able to fly first-class anywhere in the world at a whim are the real migrant “spongers” who need to be kicked out.

Max Hess

Desperate lies (2006)

From the September 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

The man who faced the choice of dropping dead while waiting on the NHS list or bluffing.

Early in August, a story broke about retired painter and decorator, Roy Thayers, having to lie in order to be free of terrible pain he’d been suffering for years, because of heart trouble.

A cardiac specialist warned the 77-year-old that he needed a lifesaving operation as soon as possible, because he was in danger of having a fatal heart attack at any time. He was told the coronary angioplasty treatment he required would not be available from the NHS for nine months because of a waiting list, but added that by going private, Roy could have the operation within a week. Being penniless, Roy had the option of dropping dead while waiting on the NHS list or bluffing. He chose the latter, and said he’d pay, when he knew he couldn’t.

He managed to stall requests for payment by hospital administrators, claiming he mislaid his chequebook. His operation took place quickly, he wrote out a “Mickey Mouse cheque” for the £8,500 cost the very next day, knowing he’d have to face the consequences later.

Speaking of his ploy, Roy said: “I love life, I love my dogs, I love fishing – why should I die for the sake of money?” Indeed, why should bits of paper decide who lives and who dies, or who eats and who starves, or who has a comfortable home and who has a stinking hovel, and so on?

 

It’s sick and idiotic. But seeing how, under capitalism, goods and services are provided to make profit – not meet needs – this system has created a universal comparison commodity (a.k.a. money) against which other commodities can be measured. Comprising paper notes, metal discs or mere digital data, this comparison commodity exists in order that those with something others need can make its supply dependent upon receiving a specified amount of this measuring tool. No money, no provision.

When Tony Blair developed a dicky ticker, naturally, he got treated very quickly. No long delay for the likes of him. Not forgetting that the Oxford Radcliffe NHS Trust, having provided the PM with his cardiac catheter ablation operation, shortly afterwards decided to deny this treatment to others in order to cut costs and meet the government’s six-month waiting-list targets.

Of course, Roy hasn’t managed to defeat capitalism by writing his rubber cheque. For a start, as he said himself, “I paid into the NHS for years to look after me, but the doctors were telling me they wouldn’t, so who’s robbing who?” Furthermore, the Primary Care Trust (PCT) in charge of the hospital that treated him was soon threatening to send in the bailiffs, and he eventually settled on repaying his debt at £25 a week from his meagre pension.

No doubt, private health care enterprises will now do their utmost to ensure people have sufficient funds before they get treated in future. So although the money-loving Sun tabloid praised Roy for being “canny”, and the profit-hungry Mirror said “well done”, don’t count on acquiring desperately needed medical care by the same method.

The fact is, no one should have to come up with devious methods to obtain critical health care or any other essential services and goods. In a decent and rational world these would be available according to need – not how much money people have depending on how much, or little, capitalism has allowed them to have in return for their exploitation and control by a minority ruling class.

The only reason this appalling and damaging situation continues is because we allow it. If all those unhappy and irate with the way they’re made to live, work and struggle on pitiful pensions came together with the aim of getting rid of the system which allows a super rich minority and their money mechanism to control, deprive and manipulate this majority, then capitalism would be in serious trouble.

Roy Thayers is also quoted as saying: “The real working classes of this country – the ones who have very little money – have been abandoned by their own government.” From his own experience, Roy might well now accept that this government (and those before it) has never had the needs of the electorate as its priority. The main concern has always been looking after British capitalists, not the working class majority.

The answer isn’t more money for the NHS – since in a competitive world, there’ll always be pressure on all governments to keep cutting back on state funding, and increasingly make people pay directly for what they need. No. The answer is a society with no money at all.

That’s the only way to end the idiocy where, these days, NHS hospital employees are being told by PCTs to stop “overperforming” by providing treatment too quickly, because the government then financially penalises the Trusts for not adhering to minimum waiting times (as a result, one gynaecologist said he now spent more time doing sudoku puzzles than treating patients). And a moneyless society is also the only way to end the obscenity of driving people to desperate lies and deceit to obtain vital life-saving treatment that should be available to all – not just those sufficiently well off or powerful.

Max Hess

Letter: Withering away of money? (2010)

Letter to the Editors from the August 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Withering away of money?

Dear Editors,

Responding to Max Hess’s article ‘Capitalist Money Madness’ (Socialist Standard, May) a suggestion. Perhaps, a way a Socialist government (if there ever was one ) could bring about a moneyless economy is to print the stuff in abundance and pay it out in salaries and wages. Everyone would be employed in goods and services and use money to buy whatever they needed, or thought they needed. Meanwhile, everyone would be working to produce and provide the goods and services but no one would ever be without enough dosh to ‘purchase’ whatever they wanted because they would have access to as much of the stuff that they wanted.

Of course, in no time at all there’d be run-away inflation but it wouldn’t matter if there were no money markets, exchange and financial institutions, there’d be no capitalist institutions because there would be nothing for them to do. As Max says, also no need for police, military, bankers, lawyers, prisons and prison officers  … a whole swathe of jobs related to money, it’s use and misuse.

People would soon realize that money isn’t necessary to maintain an economy. It’s just a method used by a profit system that was perhaps necessary in times past but now no longer appropriate, needed or wanted. They’d only need to continue doing what they always did do…work and consume without the need to use paper and metal tokens to do it.

If other capitalist countries wanted to trade with Britain we’d provide them with goods and services in exchange for what we needed of theirs. Their workers would soon see what ours have got up to and would bring about the same change in their countries. When people see that they don’t need money to maintain their standards of living and even raise them to heights only ever dreamed of they’d wonder why it was never thought of before.

Then they’d realize the great thievery that had been perpetrated upon them for centuries and resolve to never again allow capitalism to raise its fanged head again. Then, and only then, would a truly international common global economy evolve. Then, and only then, would mankind advance to the utopian world dreamt of by our ancestors .

Of course, things wouldn’t run smoothly at first but society by its very nature is a moral system and just as today layabouts and petty thieves are disdained and rejected, so too in a sane socialist system dissenters would have no argument and find it hard going to feel self respect and acceptance.

Am I right or am I right ?

Leo Aliferis (by email)

Reply:

You’re right that when people realise they don’t need money to maintain a very good standard of living, they’ll wonder why it was never thought of before. But that awareness can’t be achieved through a leftwing ‘socialist government’, which would have campaigned for, and been elected to, supervise capitalism — not abolish it.

In the highly unlikely event that such a government, led by a Trotskyist-style vanguard, sabotaged the profit-wages-money system by deliberately bringing about hyperinflation and economic chaos, the population would neither expect nor want this. All voters would then focus on is the ensuing financial turmoil and they’d be extremely alarmed by what was happening and they’d throw that government out of office at the earliest opportunity. Deliberately subjecting a pro-money population to economic chaos, as a means of supposedly leading them to socialist awareness, is doomed to fail.

Whereas, if a clear majority of the electorate vote for moneyless real socialism, because they have come to understand what it is and consciously want this system instead of capitalism, then there’d be no need to continue with a means of exchange. They would already “realize that money isn’t necessary to maintain an economy”. And after a clear majority of people have voted for real socialism in a general election, then plans and preparations to bring this about can be acted upon immediately without any widespread rejection and resistance that would be associated with trying to impose it on an unready and averse population from above.

Given the dire condition clapped-out capitalism is now in, and that we’re heading for a prolonged period of additional working class suffering and misery, mainstream party politicians will be trying harder than ever to dupe people into believing that money management offers the answer to alleviating and solving these capitalism-caused problems. They’ll want people submissively accepting worsening state-funded services. They’ll want those without jobs submissively accepting any low-paid work they are offered. They’ll want those with jobs submissively accepting pay restraint and cuts. They’ll want people turning against supposedly less-deserving recipients of welfare benefits.

We need to get people to completely reject this bogus capitalist agenda that managing money better is in our best interests. It isn’t. Abolishing money, and the capitalist system that requires it, is in our best interests.

We are not “all in this together”, as Cameron farcically states. Capitalists and their political stooges are in it for as much as they can get out of it. Everyone else is required to keep the pig trough as full as possible.  – Editors.

World View: The sinking of the Kursk (2000)

From the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

At 10.31am on Saturday August 12, a rocket-propelled torpedo on a Russian submarine misfired during the launch routine, and its highly volatile fuel exploded. A desperate effort was then made by surviving crew members to bring the damaged and endangered vessel to the surface. But just two and one quarter minutes later, a second catastrophic blast with a force of two tons of TNT blew the bow apart when the torpedo warhead detonated, and sea water plunged in. That massive explosion sent the Kursk to the bed of the Barents Sea, where it had been participating in summer exercises.

This, according to American spying activities, appears to be what happened. But while that Saturday morning brought the end for all on board, for relatives, friends and a news-aware Russian working class, it was to become the beginning of a tragic drama of common solidarity, and a striking demonstration of the power of a largely unrestricted post-Soviet media.

For families of Kursk submariners, energetic media probing of the tragedy exposed official deceit, misinformation and confusion. After two days of silence, the navy said there had been a “malfunction”. That the Kursk had “descended voluntarily”. That “contact with the crew had been established”. That “everyone on board is alive”. That a “foreign” submarine caused a collision. Perhaps worst of all, relatives and the public were led to believe that the Russian navy was making serious attempts to save any survivors by sending down their own submersible rescue craft. But it transpired that this was futile from the outset, because deep-sea divers were essential to help guide this craft by hand over the Kursk’s rescue hatch so the mini-sub could properly lock on to it, and the cash-strapped navy had disbanded all these specially trained diving teams.

Four days were lost before Putin asked for outside help, and days more before it arrived. Even an agonising wait by sailors’ families to learn whether or not their own fathers, brothers and sons were on board the Kursk only ended when the tabloid newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published the names, after bribing a high-ranking navy officer with 18,000 roubles (£450) for the list stamped “Top Secret”. There was also public anger that president Putin remained on holiday in Sochi on the Black Sea, while loved ones were imagined to be struggling for air as the submarine’s oxygen ran out.

The reality was that the huge onboard explosion killed most of the Kursk’s crew quickly, though it is possible some survived a short while longer in the stern, before the entire submarine became flooded due to structural damage making watertightness impossible. The pressure of deep water outside the submarine would have caused more blast energy to be directed internally, causing increased hull and bulkhead damage.

To make matters worse for Putin—who won the presidential election by portraying himself as a revitalising strongman who would improve Russia’s armed forces, crack down on crime and restore stability—August brought not only the Kursk’s sinking. A terrorist bomb exploded beforehand in Moscow killing 12 and maiming dozens. And afterwards, the capital’s prestigious Ostankino television tower caught fire, disrupting the viewing habits of ten million Muscovites. These events together, and Russian journalists’ recent ability to comment freely no doubt account for much of the media’s fierce and sustained criticism of the President, but many were already unhappy with the leader because of a crackdown on media organisations which had followed negative comments about Russian fighting in Chechnya—something which damaged the government during the last such war.

Furthermore, some media barons and business tycoons no longer see eye to eye with Putin, and may be concerned that a politician they empowered and made their puppet, just might harbour a notion to sever his strings. Putin has sought to blame the “oligarchs” for the Kursk tragedy, accusing them of having robbed “the army, navy and the country blind”. If the public, who already despise the super-rich businessmen, can be led to believe that their greed has crippled and endangered the armed forces, then Putin will have scapegoats, popular and military support, and the power to exert more control over privatised assets at the very least. Perhaps even order a change of ownership if so inclined.

Orgy of self-enrichment

In the eight years since Russia followed Western advice from free market touts to establish a private banking system and start privatising the state assets, a small number of people with links to officialdom became phenomenally rich. During Boris Yeltsin’s early years in power, they were preoccupied with making money. But as the 1996 presidential election approached, Russia’s new capitalists grew fearful that their orgy of self-enrichment might end. The “Communist” party candidate had a real chance of winning, so they poured money into both Yeltsin’s campaign and an anti-“Communist” media offensive, and successfully got their man into the Kremlin. When Yeltsin was coming to the end of his reign, and was intent on protecting himself and his family’s sizeable amount of grasped wealth, he had to choose both a loyalist successor and someone acceptable to the nabobs.

Enter Vladimir Putin, who hours after becoming Prime Minister was asked by the Kommersant newspaper about his relationship with the asset-owning rich, and replied “I have never quarreled with any of the oligarchs”. Clearly, someone who knew where real power then lay, and who he had to curry favour with in order to improve his career prospects. But having achieved presidential power, Putin has sought to strengthen the Russian state and reassert Kremlin control of its 89 regions and republics, where nepotism, corruption and crime abound.

One of his first decrees ordered the resurrection of compulsory military training. More money has been promised to the armed forces. He has expressed admiration of the KGB, and last August appointed a former KGB colonel as Prime Minister. He recently unveiled a plaque honouring Russia’s war heroes which had Stalin’s name listed foremost. A commemorative coin bearing Stalin’s face has also been issued, and a new bust of the Soviet tyrant is planned for Russia’s main war memorial. This increased militarisation of society, tributes to authoritarianism, centralising of power, bonding with military chiefs and tendency to see others as being either state or anti-state—just as in the USSR era when everything was categorised as Soviet or anti-Soviet—might mean President Putin has a desire to return to Stalinist-style oppressive rule. If so, the power and privileges presently enjoyed by the oligarchs could shift Putin’s way, as he and his own associates became the next capitalist elite.

But is there not a contradiction between Putin’s expressed detest of the oligarchs, and his simultaneous commitment to improve the armed forces? After all, just whose valuable assets and territory is the Russian military defending and favouring these days? Which brings us to why armed forces and their barbaric weaponry even exist in a supposedly civilised intelligence-valued twenty-first century. It is because, just as governments compete economically to help their own nation’s businesses (keeping wages, taxes and welfare low, weakening trade unions etc), so they must compete militaristically, if they are to avoid others obtaining easy commercial advantages through armed intimidation and attack. Hence, 500 odd submarines from different countries lurk and stealthily traverse the world’s oceans today.

Training for tomorrow’s wars

What were those “exercises” the Kursk was taking part in actually for, if not training to fight tomorrow’s wars which today’s capitalism make a serious possibility? It is true that by strengthening the armed forces, Putin can also gain some electoral advantage from nationalistic prestige and pride engendered in the population, but the overriding purpose of military units and armaments is to assist the possessors of productive assets. Witness Uncle Sam’s ability to inflict the greatest level of death and destruction of all, which has meant that American capital can—does get—what it wants in the global market.

As for the Kursk, much press comment concentrated on how, after becoming a basket-case economy, Russia now has very little money to safely maintain its armed forces or decommission the growing armada of rusting nuclear submarines lying in ports of the Kola peninsula in north-west Russia. But this implies that much more cash would improve things. But is having a greater number of efficient nuclear warships in service, ready to deliver mass murder when so ordered, and enriched uranium from old sub reactors recycled into new nuclear weaponry, really a better situation? Far better to remove what brings about these killing machines and the instructions to use them.

However Putin rules in the future, the Russian people will continue to suffer from exploitation, poverty, deprivation, early deaths and assorted other troubles—including further dead sailors, soldiers and pilots. They and their weaponry only exist because there is minority ownership and control of manufacturing, utilities, natural resources and the like. What a few possess—and benefit greatly from—they wish to defend, capitalise on and add to through intimidation, and violent force if necessary. Hence, the reason murderous vessels like the Kursk come to be made. So when Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, commander of the Northern Fleet, said “I will strive all my life to look in the eyes of the man who caused this tragedy” (Independent, 23 August), he need only locate and peer into the nearest mirror, for as a military leader acting together with others in maintaining minority possession of productive property, he certainly carries some of the blame.

Because there are groups of these capitalists all over the world, there are groups of armed forces all over the world, and populations are encouraged to see one another as “us” and “them”, or “the enemy”. One day, you have John Spellar, Britain’s armed forces minister, saying that “we” are sending a rescue vehicle to the Barents Sea because Britons “are delighted to be able to assist in trying to save sailors from an awful fate and one that is of concern to all right thinking people all around the world” (Guardian, 17 August). Another day, another year, and “us” and “them” may be unleashing great death and destruction upon each other. Surely it is “of concern to all right thinking people” that we avoid that particular “awful fate”?

So we can, by disempowering all the presidents, the admirals, the generals, the ministers, the tycoons and any other minority who wants ownership and control of resources and people, choosing instead to possess and run these means of living ourselves. No more propertied class. No more leaders. No more us and them. No more Kursks.

Max Hess

Why should we have to pay for things? (2000)

From the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the bogey word “socialist” gets you annoyed, please give us a chance to explain why, though we are called the Socialist Party, we are not supporters of what other “socialists” call for.

Has socialism been tried already? No! In dictionaries it’s “common ownership of the means of production and distribution”. That is, manufacturing, utilities, transport, fuel, etc owned by the people. But at no time, in no country, has a population directly owned and controlled these productive assets. Private and/or state owners have always possessed and run these, and consequently—surprise, surprise—they’ve benefited most.

Does ownership of these assets really matter? Yes! Increasing cancers and illnesses due to pollution and unsafe food; no or inadequate essential services due to profit-making and cost cutting; excessive or dislikeable work; burglaries; homelessness; robberies; ageism; no free time; inequality; unemployment; racism; wars; mortgages, bills, rent, taxes etc. With genuine socialism, all those worries would end—not just get a little better. Take cash troubles. If we all owned tomorrow what a few do today, money would then be obsolete. Directly owning those vital assets means we would also own all the food, goods and services that these provide. And as one of the new collective owners, you’d then have a right to these as required. So, real socialism would bring free access to whatever you need.

Free access would not mean people grabbing everything in sight, because the whole purpose of working would have then changed from today’s provision of goods and services for sale (causing artificial shortages and exclusion for the non-wealthy), to provision of goods and services purely to meet needs.

No more money might seem bizarre—even frightening—but what’s money for? It’s for buying things others own, and those owning what people need most (capitalists) benefit most. We are led to see money as offering freedom from worries, when in reality, it deliberately and barbarically maintains them. By making money essential for life, asset owners can then compel those able to work to become their employees (governments help out by imposing very low and hard to get unemployment benefits, and “educating” children to accept money and wages etc). Workers must then buy what they actually produced in the first place. Even working hard, they can’t earn enough to quit for good, because if they could, capitalists would then be unable to use them to make profits. Money is basically just one part of a big scam to control and exploit the majority.

Obviously, cash is needed while this scam goes on, but if we want a far more agreeable, healthier, plentiful free-access society, we only have to take care over who we support and how we vote. Most people certainly would gain. Even those now with reassuring incomes and savings would benefit from this new system—not experience worse lives as a result of millions of others obtaining better ones. However, after a lifetime hooked on must-have money, we know this radical change to cashless co-operation can be hard to take in. But if you can calmly weigh up the facts, then we can show why socialism would be much better.

Would free access to what we need mean harder work? No! Ending capitalism also ends its unemployment, so millions of people unwanted because employers can’t profit from exploiting their abilities could then participate. With no private asset rights to protect, or money, millions more, soldiers, solicitors, bureaucrats etc and those just tinkering with cash in retailing, banking, insurance etc, would all then be freed to contribute something of real value. What’s more, many repetitive jobs could be done by automation, which won’t happen today unless it’s “cost-effective”. For these reasons, real socialism would bring a far shorter working week, and jobs that people enjoy—and are never again forced to do for money, or by governments.

Instead of getting money—which for most is too little and never makes up for all the harm and misery that capitalism causes—those who work, the sick and elderly would all have: entirely free food, appliances, housing, health care, car, rail and bus travel, electricity, water, gas, phones, TV etc, as required; far more spare time; fast progress due to no financial restraints; a safe, unpolluted, stress-free environment. And much more.

Today, work is for profits, but this means employees aren’t paid the true value of their labour. Someone working six days may have done enough after two or three to cover their wages, but is kept at it so shareholders can sponge off profits, and owners can retain a viable firm. Even a “good” boss must exploit workers to buy better equipment, premises, advertising etc to remain competitive. So, to some extent, all employees are cheated.

Exploitation of workers is unavoidable with capitalism, as without it, the system won’t work. This in-built abuse happens here now, just as it did in a supposedly “socialist” Russia. In reality, old Soviet Russia was capitalist too. It had employers (the state), money, wages, profits, inequality, leaders etc. None of these would exist if genuine socialism was established—a fact elitist “left-wingers” choose to ignore even today.

No point in tinkering

It’s the 21st century, yet these groups and individuals still absurdly claim to be “socialist” while calling for “Full employment”, “Strong trade unions”, “Higher top-earner taxes” and “Nationalisation”. What they are therefore supporting is capitalism continuing, since waged work, labour bargaining, taxation and full-blown state ownership of productive assets are all features of a capitalist system. Even replacing private bosses with state bosses changes nothing, as work will still be profit-driven. These would-be reformers may hope to change market capitalism into something better, but they’ll never succeed. The Labour Party has proved this. They, too, set out wanting to gradually reform capitalism until we achieved socialism. But in the end, it was unchangeable capitalism which reformed Labour—into yet another “New” Tory party.

These naive let’s-make-it-nicer fiddlers are quick to claim that capitalism can help those suffering if more money is taken off the rich, or if it’s governed “properly”. Now this may sound good, but it’s just tosh that ignores the only way capitalism can operate: exploiting assets in the most profitable way. If firms are made to pay higher wages, more tax for state services and welfare, use the very best food ingredients etc, then companies can’t compete in a global market. As profits suffer, businesses go broke. Investment shifts overseas. The economy fails. Public services collapse. Unemployment and poverty rise. Even more people suffer, and the government of the day probably get booted out of office. So, no matter who governs, capitalism can never be run to benefit a suffering majority, as majority exploitation is its unavoidable fundamental purpose—for the chief benefit of a grasping minority.

Due to this fundamental bias, the Socialist Party do not seek to govern—only to enable voters to both obtain direct ownership of productive assets, and elect themselves to power, by voting for real socialism (once established, having served its purpose, the party will then cease to exist). We say that together, we are capable of running our own lives. That we should all be able to decide (e.g., through occasional electronic referenda) how assets are used—not just a privileged few, aided by egocentric two-faced puppet politicians.

Today’s rat race requires a me-first, devil-take-the-hindmost attitude to get by or “succeed”. This also happens to strengthen and delight capitalists, because it causes disunity, a lack of faith in one another and pessimism about ever achieving a real change. Are the fat cats right to feel jubilant and invincible? Has distrust and dog-eat-dog living left you crushed or cynical about human co-operation for shared gain? Is your choice merely to go on paying, until the very end? Whose future and benefit—yours or theirs?

Max Hess

Food: why we don’t get the best (1999)

From the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Food matters to everyone. People have been led to revolt if unable to obtain enough. But quality, rather than quantity, is just as important. Politicians, their profit-chasing overlords and the marketplace that unites them, are attracting unfavourable scrutiny after successive well-publicised poisonings, adulterations, scams and animal abuse cases. 

Following salmonella, E. coli, BSE and a spate of more recent food scandals, people are unsurprisingly alarmed over just what they are eating and just what can be done to ensure meals are safe. Here are just four disturbing news reports of late which emerged in less than one week: 

The [Pesticide Safety Directorate] working party on pesticide residues found that some of the largest retailers, including Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Safeway, sold produce that had levels of pesticides above the maximum residues limit, including illegal growth regulators and known carcinogens (Guardian, 17 September). 

Food hygiene inspectors from the European Commission are to start an urgent investigation into standards in French rendering plants following allegations that untreated water, blood and discharges from animal carcasses, and sewage have been used in making poultry and pig feed. The Commission and the French government have been anxious to play down the accusation for fear of sparking a new European food crisis . . . The common factor in this summer’s crises has been manufacturers’ failure to maintain hygiene standards in the highly competitive food industry (Guardian, 18 August) 

Children who eat fishfingers are being fed ‘undesirable’ levels of two of the world’s most feared poisons, reveals an official report. Dioxins and PCBs—believed to cause cancer and have ‘gender bending’ effects—were found by Government researchers in all the samples of fishfingers bought in different supermarkets. Higher levels were found in the fresh fish on sale, particularly in oily fish such as herring which the Government has been urging people to eat for health reasons . . . Despite the fears, the Government has decided against issuing any warnings when the research—the first of its kind by the Agriculture Ministry—was published quietly in August on an official website (Daily Mail, 20 September). 

Belgium yesterday warned the EU that tests carried out on meat for export . . . show that livestock reared on farms near industrial plants carries higher levels of dioxin contamination . . . Belgium’s food crisis in May caused consumer panic after the revelation that animal feed had been contaminated by potentially cancer-causing dioxins at a food plant in Flanders which allegedly mixed motor oil with fats to bind the feed . . . the Belgian crisis of confidence in food safety worsened yesterday after revelations that sewerage sludge had been mixed into fodder, as in France . . . sludge from toilets and showers, water from slaughterhouses and cleaning products had got into the food chain (Guardian, 22 September). 

The September 18 “highly competitive food industry” reference says it all, and should enlighten concerned shoppers to the total incompatibility between access to continuously high-quality comestibles and competitive production for financial gain, due to market forces always tending to value profits ahead of excellence. 

There will never be a time when most people become wealthy enough to buy only the very best, since while competitive production exists so, too, will competitive employment. And with competing employers, driven by those same market forces to hold down wages and salaries (and taxes that provide welfare benefits) so as to favour profits and stay in businesses, there will always exist a great many working and non-working people with limited incomes who nevertheless must purchase sustenance. This section will vary in size according to the needs of capital. 

Official DSS figures released in February showed that, after deducting housing costs, no fewer than 14.1 million people had below half the average income. While food producers are going to be keen to obtain this poorly-paid group’s money, competition to grab a greater market share by supplying the least expensive food means there will be an ever-present pressure to minimise quality, because superior ingredients, more thorough procedures, better trained employees, etc all cost more. Include today’s international intensification of competitiveness through deregulation and the steady removal of tariffs, trade barriers and subsidies in pursuit of a correctly functioning global market, and the seemingly endless appalling procession of scandalous headlines becomes perfectly clear. 

Uncompetitive regulations 

The Blair Government knows that inferior and dangerous food means antagonistic voters; a situation to be earnestly avoided. Labour certainly doesn’t want to end up like the former Belgium government of Jean-Luc Dehaene—booted out of office largely due to carcinogenic dioxin at up to 700 times permitted “acceptable limits” being found in eggs, chickens and then pigs, just weeks before a general election. So what’s their approach? A proposed “independent” Food Standards Agency. 

The FSA proposal emerged not long after Blair came to power. Large retail firms and manufacturing interests were soon applying pressure, insisting the agency be made less regulatory. Then businesses caused the agency to remain on the drawing board longer by complaining that the FSA should not be funded through levies on their food outlets. And despite the BSE catastrophe under Tory rule, the Ministry of Agriculture—which former minister Edwina Currie said “had long ago set itself up as a trade union for producers”-was once again siding with the food industry. Yum, yum: prole food Yum, yum: prole food. 

There is to be publication of an annual report from the Working Party on Pesticide Residues, who will have a small number of food samples tested, and name retailers selling produce with residues above the “maximum residue limit”, and identify the goods concerned. However, this can be nothing more than a show to dispel the public crisis of confidence in food. 

Can consumers turn to organic foods? Perhaps some will be able to keep paying higher prices to reduce their contamination levels (except from equally dangerous airborne chemicals). But the majority can never have high quality organic food and freedom from various other sources of pollution, because of the international competition that is an integral feature of capitalism. Britain cannot go “green” alone. The additional financial burden on capital to establish and maintain a far safer and healthier environment would result in an economic crisis in no time. Britain simply cannot impose rigorous standards on producers without increasing their costs, and in a global market, that would spell disaster for UK firms. 

Everyone concerned about avoiding dangerous and inferior produce has to ask themselves this question: “What did I vote for at election time?” Since, whenever the electorate empower yet another bunch of politicians to—unavoidably—cater to the needs of business as the priority, the very conditions that give rise to food scandals will remain in place. If different competing groups retain ownership of productive resources, they must continue exploiting those assets in the most profitable manner in order to sell and prosper from what is produced. One result? BSE and 43 people dead (that we know of), and a renewed chilling warning this September from Professor Liam Donaldson, the government’s own chief medical officer: “What is absolutely certain is that the present relatively low number of cases [of nv-CJD] should not lead anyone to conclude that the worst is over. Levels of human exposure at the height of the BSE epidemic would have been high.” 

Misuse of GM technology; pesticide-induced cancers; animal maltreatment; cover-ups; no or inadequate labelling; abysmal hygiene standards. None of these need happen. We do not have to futilely hope profit-biased governments will impose uncompetitive regulations and strict enforcement. There is another option to capitalism’s inability to deliver continuously high-quality food for all. If we all own the means of producing food, then we all own the produce, which means never buying it or having any financial restraints on its quality.

Max Hess