Running Commentary: Sweet talk (1988)

The Running Commentary Column from the July 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rowntrees, the confectionery firm, have been "fighting off" take-over bids from nasty foreign rivals Nestlé and Suchard, defending our native Kit Kat and the like. But I am puzzled; surely the name Nestlé (we always called it "Nessels") is familiar from childhood. and inextricably wedded to the experience of losing your shillings in the chocolate machine? What is really astounding is that no one has asked the opinion of the foremost expert on the subject — Sandra Boynton. Her book Chocolate: the Consuming Passion (Methuen. 1982) reveals an extraordinarily wide knowledge (and I consider myself no slouch on the subject). Showing a firm grasp of economics, she says "It was the capitalists who first realised that it does not really matter whether chocolate exists or not. as long as people buy it". In the present "crisis" the vital question is whether the general consumer (for example me) will still be able to afford sufficient quantities of this essential commodity. To quote again: "If the current unequal distribution of chocolate continues unchecked, we increasingly run the risk of general depression. Chocolate is not a privilege: it is a right. As such, it must be provided as a readily-available service in every community throughout the civilised world." I couldn't have put it better myself.

AEB

News in Review: Take-overs and Big Money (1962)

The News in Review column from the June 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Take-overs and Big Money

In big business, in many spheres, the mergers go on, involving sums of money large enough to be quite remote from any working class reality.

Beer. Whitbreads is bringing off a £47 million merger with Flowers, one of the first firms to go into the keg beer market. Whitbreads already hold some shares in Flowers and have a trading agreement with them. In the past, they seemed content to leave it at that. But last December, in similar circumstances, they took over Tennants: that, and the latest merger, seem to indicate a change of policy at Whitbreads. Month by month the brewing firms get fewer and bigger. The Flowers take-over might be followed by a hot battle for the remaining independent companies.

Food. Nestlé, the big beverage and chocolate firm, have set up a £16 million company by taking over the Swedish frozen food group Marabou-Findus-Freia. Nestlé already own the Crosse and Blackwell tinned food concern and the Maggi soup business. The latest merger puts them into the British frozen food market, to challenge the sixty-four per cent. hold which Unilever have on it at the moment. The sales of frozen food in this country have leaped from £13 million in 1956 to £57 million a year today. Nestlé will be hoping that they will live up to expectations and reach £100 million by 1964. If this does not happen, Nestlé will not go broke: The Guardian reports them as one of the ten largest companies in the world.

Building. Twenty million pounds was involved in the merger between the Rugby Portland Cement Company and Eastwoods, the brick firm. Rugby, who have subsidiaries in Australia and the West Indies, have not taken over any firm for the last sixteen years. Their latest profit of over £2 million was a record for them, although like so many other companies their margins are under pressure

As Capitalism gets older it gets bigger and more concentrated. As it does so. the worker grows more remote and personally insignificant. This is what Karl Marx, said would happen, over a century ago. Nobody listened much to him then and nobody listens much now.

Terrorism

The official peace in Algeria hangs upon a slender thread.

The FLN control the countryside except for the oilfields, where the Europeans strongly support the Secret Army Organisation. In the cities the OAS continue to run riot, killing and provoking.

The popular theory, that if the French government could capture Salan they would finish the OAS. has been disproved. Events have shown that the nationalism of the colons has deeper roots. The colonels, said to be more ruthless than Salan, have taken over with reported sighs of relief that the ex-general no longer impedes them in the business of really serious terrorism.

The Moslems are suffering fearful provocation and strain coupled with chronic unemployment and. for some of them, near starvation. So far their obedience to the FLN policy of restraint has been remarkable, but it is anybody's guess how long it will hold out. The FLN leaders are themselves divided on the issue, with some of them sticking out for moving the Algerian army into the cities to clean up the OAS.

Algeria, in short, is a horrible mess. The original reasons for the conflict seem to have been somewhat blurred. Basically, they are: the Algerians want to run the country themselves, under their own ruling class, who will own the country's resources and exploit its workers. The French, who used to do this themselves, want to hang on to their possessions and rights.

For the workers on both sides no interests nor benefits are involved in this struggle. It should not concern an Algerian worker, nor a French one, that there is about to be a change in the nationality of the class which owns and exploits Algeria.

But nationalism, patriotism and simple ignorance can persuade workers all over the world to join in Capitalism's bloodbaths.

They can persuade them to perform disgusting acts of terrorism. They persuaded the FLN to do this and they persuaded the OAS as well.

Homeless

It is a long time since the late Aneurin Bevan promised that the housing situation would not be an issue at a future general election.

As usual with a politician’s snappy phrase, it is difficult to get at Bevan's exact meaning. He may have been saying that, whatever hardships the workers met in their housing, they would forget them when the election came along. This is not an unsound assumption; working class voters forget many worse problems. That is one of the reasons they keep Capitalism in existence.

But perhaps Bevan meant that during the few years after 1945 the housing problem would be solved. If he did his promise, like so many others, has been discredited by the social system he tried to administer.

The London Council Council now has seven hundred and eighty-two homeless families, made up of 3,726 people, in its care. This is the most ever. The figure has been climbing steadily since the turn of the year; at the end of January the homeless families numbered six hundred and forty-seven.

This situation has forced the LCC to go back on its decision to close the emergency accommodation provided in places like Newington Lodge and Luxborough Lodge. These buildings came in for some heavy criticism a few months ago: they are old and exceedingly depressing places. The emergency centres will take only women and children, which means that, on top of their other worries, the homeless families are split up.

Here is a very bitter problem, which is not untypical in the sense that it is at the very heart of the degradation which poverty brings to the entire working class.

This is the class with a housing problem, because their living, and their

standards of living, depend upon their wages. Capitalists, who get their living from their ownership of society's means of production, are simply too rich to suffer bad housing.

Working class poverty is an inescapable part of Capitalism, which means that housing will always be a sore spot for the workers

Lots of well-meaning reformers have tried to solve this problem and have been beaten by it. So have quite a few, perhaps less well-meaning, politicians.

Voice From The Back: A Fruit And Nut Case (2012)

The Voice From The Back Column from the November 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Fruit And Nut Case

Capitalism is a social system based on class ownership, and sections of the owning class are always in disputes over this ownership. They have legal battles, sometimes leading to military battles, over the ownership and access to sources of raw materials and markets. Recently there has been a legal dispute over the ownership of a particular colour. “Is chocolate the first thing you think of when you see Pantone 2685C? It might be if I tell you that it is the technical name for Cadbury Dairy Milk’s distinctive purple. And it does indeed ‘belong’ to Cadbury, after a decision in the High Court yesterday that the confectioner’s purple packaging constitutes a trademark” (Times, 2 October). This dispute arose over Cadbury’s rival Nestlé’s objection to Cadbury registering the colour as a trademark in 2004. Nestlé had already lost in 2008 but decided to appeal the judgement of the Registrar of Trade Marks. Only capitalism with its emphasis on ownership could have highly trained legal minds battling for years over who ‘owns’ a colour. Madness.

The Whip Hand

Whenever there is a slump and mass unemployment, the employers’ hand is strengthened, as a recent report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development shows: “Millions of workers are ‘too frightened’ about losing their job to take time off work when they are sick, even if they are very ill, a report reveals today. The authoritative report says a culture of ‘presenteeism’ is sweeping Britain as workers decide to come into the office, rather than stay home in bed. A third of bosses have seen an increase in the number of workers ‘who struggle into work when unwell’ over the last year, according to the report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development” (Daily Mail, 9 October).

Some Good News

Every day in the newspapers socialists can read all the bad news that capitalism throws up. Millions starve while food is destroyed; children dying for lack of clean water; and lately a 14-year-old girl shot in the head by some Pakistani religious zealot because she dared to attend a school. So what is the good news? “The number of people with no religious affiliations is growing at an unprecedented rate, according to research. A third of adults under 30 in the US now say they have no faith. …. The US study was undertaken by the Pew Research Centre, a Washington based think tank. According to the latest British Social Attitude Survey, published last month, religious affiliation among Britons has fallen from 68 per cent in 1983 to 53 per cent in 2011” (Times, 10 October).

A Deadly Social System

In its unending drive for more and more profit the capitalist system ruins lives but it also ruins the world’s environment and biodiversity. “Reducing the risk of extinction for threatened species and establishing protected areas for nature will cost the world over $76bn dollars annually. Researchers say it is needed to meet globally agreed conservation targets by 2020. The scientists say the daunting number is just a fifth of what the world spends on soft drinks annually. And it amounts to just 1% of the value of ecosystems being lost every year, they report in the journal Science. Back in 2002, governments around the world agreed that they would achieve a significant reduction in biodiversity loss by 2010. But the deadline came and went and the rate of loss increased” (BBC News, 12 October). Governments can make sympathetic noises and even pass pious resolutions but profit making comes before biodiversity so more and more species of flora and fauna are doomed.

Recession? What Recession?

During the current economic recession it is commonplace to hear of workers being unable to sell their houses because of tumbling prices and difficulties in obtaining mortgages, but one part of the housing market is unaffected by economic difficulties. “An estate agent to the rich and famous is celebrating after selling £3 billion worth of property – on the same London street. Trevor Abrahmsohn has cornered the market on one of the world’s wealthiest roads, The Bishops Avenue in Hampstead Garden Suburb, north London – known as ‘Billionaires’ Row’. Over the last 35 years he has handled 150 house sales on the street at an average value of £20million at today’s prices” (Daily Mail, 12 October). To those members of the owning class who think nothing of spending £20 million on a house there is no economic crisis.

Proper Gander: Delicious Chips For Their Tea (2018)

The Proper Gander Column from the March 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Co-op has recently announced that it will open a hundred new food stores across the UK, although you won’t be able to shop in one of these unless you’re a fictional character. That’s because it’s going to open on Coronation Street, as part of ITV’s biggest product placement deal to date. The plans also include a branch of Costa Coffee appearing in Weatherfield for Gail and Ken to buy their skinny lattes from. Soaps have always had an association with sponsorship – the term ‘soap opera’ comes from how early serial dramas used to be funded by soap manufacturers.

Product placement, or embedded marketing, is when a company pays for its commodity or brand to be included within a medium, especially a TV programme, film and, these days, YouTube video. This marketing strategy has been around since the 19th century, with rumours that works by Jules Verne and Eduoard Manet of all people featured real-life brands they had been paid to include. American movies and television shows have incorporated paid-for promotion of products for as long as the media have been around. For example, the characters in One Tree Hill often have cans of Sunkist soft drinks in their fridges, courtesy of a marketing deal. Historically, product placement has been illegal in Britain, although this didn’t stop advertisers getting their brands within programmes, such as coverage of sponsored sports events.

The law changed in 2011, and the first deal involved Nestle paying for a coffee machine to appear in ITV’s magazine show This Morning. The regulations were probably relaxed to keep commercial television more attractive to advertisers who might otherwise turn their attention to the ever-expanding marketing opportunity that is the internet. By late 2015, ITV alone had broadcast over 4,000 hours of programmes featuring product placement, including viewer-magnets like The Only Way Is Essex, The X-Factor and I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, as well as soap operas. ITV Media’s website contains a wealth of vomit-inducing corporate-speak: 

  ‘Add to basket offers a truly unique marketing opportunity as products are showcased within natural settings more relatable to viewers and in turn, providing inspiration or in some cases, validation for purchase choices’.

The website helpfully gives some examples: 

  ‘Emmerdale residents were thrilled to discover that David’s shop had now begun stocking McCain’s frozen foods, and on-screen families were soon seen tucking into delicious chips for their tea’. And it proudly boasts about the first instance of ‘behaviour placement’ in a deal between Visa and Corrie: ‘the action of contactless payment was … threaded through into the storylines, with completely natural interactions; impacting even the most resistant non-users. Not only did Visa show characters using the card machine (complete with the beep sound you’d hear in real life!), but they also placed stickers in key locations. What could make the action seem more everyday than Norris using Contactless to buy his milk from Dev’s shop?’.

Telecommunications regulator Ofcom has set guidelines for how product placement can be practiced in the UK. Some products (such as alcohol, tobacco, baby milk and medicine) and programmes (like the news, children’s shows or any on the BBC) can’t be used in this way, and broadcasters must display a ‘PP’ logo on-screen for a few seconds in relevant shows. A placement must be ‘editorially justified’ and not give ‘undue prominence’ to the product, although these terms could be open to interpretation. And the rules don’t apply to films or programmes made elsewhere and if no payment or deal involves the broadcaster, which is why, for instance, the BBC can transmit the film Cast Away, despite it prominently including the FedEx brand. It’s also why all the mentions of the Co-op, Visa, McCain’s etc in this article don’t count as product placement, as these firms haven’t coughed up to the SPGB to promote their wares (and aren’t likely to).

When product placement is too noticeable, then it jars. The 1988 film Mac and Me wasn’t received well partly because its placed products were so blatant, with Coca-Cola, Sears, Skittles or McDonald’s featuring in what seems like every scene. More recently, advertisers have been a bit more sophisticated in their approaches. The American sitcom Black-ish has had a plotline paid for by Procter & Gamble, in which the characters are inspired by P&G’s own real-world campaign to raise awareness of racism. The show has often discussed social issues, and so it should, but there’s something odd with a debate about racism being commercialised in this way. Ofcom’s guidelines wouldn’t allow something to be made in Britain with the levels of product placement seen in Mac and Me or Black-ish (yet), but when the tactic is more subtle, then it’s arguably more insidious. When Rita in Corrie gets back home from shopping and unpacks a Co-op bag while she’s chatting with Gemma, the advertising is almost subliminal. It’s one thing to know you’re being enticed to buy a product, it’s another to be unaware you’re being manipulated.

We’ve got used to the commercial breaks which interrupt what we watch on most channels, but they don’t invade the programmes in the same way as product placement does. We pay a visit to Coronation Street for the characters, plots and ideas, and expect it to somehow be ‘above’ being cheapened by advertising. But TV shows and films aren’t made in a bubble away from market forces, they have to get funding, attract viewers and make money. The market system reaches into anywhere there’s a buck to be made, even into places that aren’t real.

Mike Foster

Rear View: Is it Nestlé that is the enemy? (2018)

The Rear View Column from the February 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is it Nestlé that is the enemy?
Listverse.com (3 January) detail ’10 Outrageous Nestlé Scandals’. Before the list even starts, Nestlé’s use of child labour is mentioned along with a plea not to turn a blind eye and ‘continue poking for Nestlé to be better’. Anyone reading about Nestlé’s nefarious activities for the first time will likely be shocked, but socialists not so much. We have long known breast is best, but for Nestlé, like any other company, profit comes first. ‘During a campaign that has stretched over several decades’ it is alleged that the world’s largest food company bribed medical practitioners to provide mothers in hospitals with formula milk which, with their natural lactation declining as a result, left them reliant on Nestlé’s products.


Water, water, everywhere
In many areas of the world, from America to Zimbabwe, our class lack access to safe water,  something which can be fatal, particularly for infants being nursed with reconstituted formula milk. And that safe water is quite possibly owned by Nestlé. At the World Water Forum in 2000, the then Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe was quoted as saying, ‘access to water should not be a public right.’ There was some consequent clarification about this remark, but not the ethical progress reformist groups are always clamouring for.


Nestlé Newspeak
In October 2008 Nestlé stated ‘bottled water is the most environmentally responsible consumer product in the world’ That very month Taiwan banned the importation of milk products, including Nestlé’s, from China as a result of them being contaminated. Was this an industrial accident or deliberate? ‘Melamine can easily be mistaken for protein. Thus, Chinese dairy manufacturers illegally claimed higher levels of protein in their products through the use of cheaper melamine. In baby formulas, where protein amounts are so important, this led to severe deficiencies.’


Modern day slavery
Nestlé’s tentacles reach out for our babies and cats. Yes, feeding Tibbles Purina ‘may have also helped to support Nestlé’s use of slave labor in Thailand . . . Usually, the workers are immigrants, brought in from Thailand’s even poorer neighbors Myanmar (Burma) and Cambodia. For the privilege of a Thai job, they are charged an illegal fee and trapped into working within the fishing industry to pay off heavy debt. A Burmese worker describes their working conditions: “Sometimes, the net is too heavy and workers get pulled into the water and just disappear. When someone dies, he gets thrown into the water.” ‘

The sickly sweet smell of profit
Nestlé also profits from our class labouring in the chocolate industry —  ‘an ugly affair, littered with allegations of malfeasance.’ We are told that the deforestation crisis in Ghana and the Ivory Coast continues and that cocoa beans are grown illegally in protected forests. Numbers of chimpanzees and elephants have also decreased dramatically. Both countries plan to stop all new deforestation after theguardian.com report (8 November, 2017) found that the cocoa industry was responsible.


A world without Nestlé
Reformists cannot see the wood for the trees. Nestlé ignoring European Union and American sanctions against Zimbabwe by buying milk from an expropriated farm given to Grace Mugabe, mislabelling the source of bottled water as Poland Spring, apparently being part of the price fixing of chocolate, and chasing the Ethiopian regime for losses of around $6 million during one of the region’s unnecessary famines, all these are of great interest to reformists who champion all sorts of quack cures, temporary measures and moral crusades for such issues yet only serve to delay meaningful change. Anti-slavery traders ignore wage slavery, fair trade & free trade advocates fail to envision a world without trade, and arms controllers want peace in a capitalist world where war is endemic. The list goes on and on.


A practical wants list
A socialist world of production for use and allocation according to self-defined need will end, reduce or eliminate many of today’s ‘problems’. Agriculture feeds everyone with far less environmental impact than seen today. War ends in a world without states competing over areas of domination, resources and trade routes. Slums and homelessness are eliminated when housing is built to meet need. Many diseases have cures but not all sufferers constitute a market – only a world of free access ends this ‘problem’. Education for life replaces schooling. Work and play are likely to be indistinguishable with monotony and unnecessary risk reduced. Crime and punishment, economics, harmful cultural practices, lack of access to clean water, religion and even the Socialist Party are subjects of historical curiosity.