Letter: Airbrushed (2014)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Airbrushed

Dear Editors

On 12th July at Sheffield Anarchist Bookfair the Communist Workers Organisation (CWO) held a meeting titled ‘The only war which is worth fighting is the class war’. The subject was the First World War and at 8 minutes 21 seconds in, the speaker representing the CWO stated ‘I won’t go into the various British ones today but the only group – and it was a group rather than an organisation – that can claim to have had any real anti-war policy completely was the Socialist Labour Party’.

In Revolutionary Perspectives issue 4 (Journal of the CWO) dated Summer 2014, the article ‘Social Democracy, the First World War and the Working-class in Britain’ starting on page 14 discusses ‘The Response of Socialists in Britain’ even discussing the Socialist Labour Party (De Leonist) on page 18.

For all the CWO airbrushing of consistent SPGB opposition to the First World War, it is ironic the same CWO speaker once debated the SPGB accusing the SPGB of being ‘schooled in Stalinism’.

Jon D. White 

(by email)

Reply:

Strange indeed, and for two reasons. The first being the clear and principled opposition to the war from the SPGB (on the basis that it was a capitalist war and not in the slightest about the interests of the working class).  Second, the SLP was split into two factions, one pro-war, the other anti-war (with articles in their paper The Socialist reflecting this division at the start of the conflict). It was only some months into the war that the anti-war faction won out and the SLP clearly stated its opposition to the slaughter. We know that the CWO as ‘left communists’ venerate the SLP because after the conflict the majority of its membership left to join the pro-Bolshevik Communist Party of Great Britain at its foundation, but the SLP’s attitude to the war has been well documented and there is no excuse for such shoddy historical revisionism. – Editors.

Mixed Media: Richard Hamilton at the Tate Modern (2014)

The Mixed Media Column from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Richard Hamilton at the Tate Modern

There was a major retrospective of the work of Richard Hamilton at the Tate Modern in 2014. He is acknowledged as the inventor of 'Pop Art' which he described as 'popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business.'

The exhibition reconstructs his installation Fun House, originally shown as part of the Whitechapel Gallery’s 1956 show This Is Tomorrow. It incorporates film, music, distorted architecture, op art and Hollywood film imagery and pin-ups such as Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Marilyn Monroe, and Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet. It is an homage to 'Americana', as well as a celebration of the new youth and 'pop' culture of 1950s capitalism.

In his 1956 collage Just What is it that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing? Hamilton has a muscle-man provocatively holding a lolly with the word POP and a woman with bare breasts wearing a lampshade hat, surrounded by emblems of the affluence of 1950s capitalism from a vacuum cleaner to a large canned ham. Capitalism is portrayed as 'cool', it was riding high in its 'golden age' of the post-war economic boom, the reformists believed capitalism could work in the interests of the working class, and Macmillan proclaimed 'people have never had it so good.' Hamilton particularly admired the German electrical company Braun and its Chief Design Officer Dieter Rams whose 'consumer products came to occupy a place in my heart and consciousness that Mont Sainte-Victoire did in Cézannes', and in 1964 he began to base works on Braun's marketing images.

After the failure of Keynesian capitalism in the 1970s, Hamilton was horrified by the 1980s capitalist restructuring under Thatcher, and the reintroduction of unfettered free market capitalism. His 1984 installation Treatment Room is inspired by the bleak, clinical style of the capitalist state reflected in the DHSS office or NHS hospital waiting room. A TV monitor where the X-ray machine would be repeats footage of Thatcher from the 1983 Tory Party Conference. His War Games (1991-92) used TV news footage of the 1991 Gulf War which portrayed the war as a sport for viewers and reminds us of the BBC Newsnight coverage with Peter Snow's sandpit and models. Later Hamilton portrays 'war criminal' Tony Blair as a gun-toting cowboy against a backdrop of military inferno in Shock and Awe (2010).

The Hamilton retrospective has some salutary lessons: you cannot 'reform' capitalism to work in the interests of the working class, and war is endemic to capitalism due to competition between capitalist groups for raw materials such as oil in the Middle East.

Steve Clayton

Poverty Excludes (2014)

From the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

  We look at different concepts of poverty, at the idea of social exclusion and at how governments have tried and failed to eradicate these.

Poverty need not imply destitution, the situation where a person simply cannot provide for themselves. Many asylum-seekers are forced to survive on £5 a day and so can genuinely be described as destitute, or as in absolute or extreme poverty. An alternative notion is that of relative poverty, living below a poverty line usually defined as a household receiving less than 60 percent of the median household income. Thus in 2011-12, the median household income in the UK was £23,200 (down from £24,100 in 2007-8): 60 percent of this would be £14,460. Naturally, such figures need to be adjusted to take account of differences in terms of family size and the cost of living in different parts of the country. That same year, more than one child in four lived in a household with income below the 60 percent poverty line after housing costs were taken into account. The extent of poverty is also revealed by increases in the numbers resorting to food banks and to petty shoplifting, even from pound stores, and by rises in cases of malnutrition treated in hospitals (over five thousand in 2012).

An alternative approach defines poverty in relation to typical living standards:

  ‘Individuals, families and groups in the population can be said to be in poverty when they lack resources to obtain the type of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or at least widely encouraged and approved, in the societies in which they belong’ (Peter Townsend, quoted from www.cpag.org.uk/content/what-is-poverty).

This is often described as social exclusion: ‘being unable to access the things in life that most people take for granted’ (definition from Age Concern). At the very least this would mean: decent housing which was not overcrowded and which people could afford to heat; eating healthy and nutritious food, without worrying about skimping towards the end of the week and resorting to food banks; buying warm and functional clothes, without relying on hand-me-downs and charity shops; access to good-quality health care; having the chance to perform useful and rewarding work; being able to afford bus and train fares; enjoying some basic leisure activities, such as a trip to the cinema or a day in the country; having an annual holiday that is more than just staying with relatives. Not too much to ask, you might think, given the capabilities of modern society, but in fact beyond the reach of millions.

In his 2010 book Injustice, Daniel Dorling claimed that one-sixth of households in Britain count as poor, with debt as the main problem that prevents them from affording necessities, arguing that ‘People spend and get into debt to maintain their social position not out of envy of the rich, but out of the necessity to maintain self-respect.’ You cannot keep up your self-respect if you truly are excluded from the normal standards of present-day living.

It is sometimes said, not just that the 60 percent figure is arbitrary, but that relative poverty, and the concept of social exclusion too, can give a very false impression, as under them people can still be regarded as poor even if their standard of living is well above that of poor people a generation or two before. And even those who are not destitute may have the use of gadgets and technology that did not even exist a couple of decades ago. If you have a big colour television, the argument goes, how can you be poor? One response is that you can still be socially excluded in the way sketched above; another would be that the comparison should be with the very richest people in society, who have prospered very nicely in spite of the recession; and finally, that the true comparison should be with the possibilities for life in a socialist world.

Reformist governments have of course addressed the problem of poverty. In 1999 Tony Blair proclaimed a commitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020, but this has not been going well, with the interim target of halving child poverty by 2010-11 being missed. It was only cut by about a third, and even this reduction was partly due to a drop in the median income and hence the poverty line being lower. And as in other areas, government terminology did not quite mean what it appeared to. Just as ‘full employment’ does not imply that everyone who wants a job has one, so ‘eradicating’ child poverty does not mean getting rid of it altogether. Rather, it was intended that fewer than 10 percent of children should live in families below the poverty line.

This specific target, along with others, was enshrined in Labour’s Child Poverty Act of March 2010. The other big parties supported it, though the Tories complained that it tackled the symptoms of poverty rather than the causes. Shortly after the 2010 election, when poverty statistics for 2008-9 were published, Iain Duncan Smith stated:

  Millions of children, adults and pensioners are daily experiencing the crushing disadvantage that poverty brings. They are living at the margins of society, unable to achieve their aspirations and trapped in dependency. … Vast sums of money have been poured into the benefits system over the last decade in an attempt to address poverty, but today’s statistics clearly show that this approach has failed.

The point about dealing with symptoms rather than causes was correct, but that after all is essentially what every government does. The Tory idea of the causes of poverty is also rather different from that of socialists: Duncan Smith later argued that the Labour government ‘did not do enough to make work pay’, though he is of course not suggesting that the Coalition should act to increase wages.

The cause of poverty, however defined, is not that the benefits system encourages  dependency and undermines any ambitions that people have. Nor is it that the tax system penalises those who earn relatively little when they start earning a bit more. The fundamental cause is the way that society is organised, with a small minority owning the means of production and the overwhelming majority forced to sell their labour power for a wage in order to survive. The degree of inequality this gives rise to is scarcely credible: the five richest families in Britain own more wealth then the poorest fifth of the population.

To be more accurate, workers are forced to attempt to sell their labour power, since there will not always be a capitalist in a position to exploit a worker and therefore willing to employ them. Workers may sometimes be able to maintain a reasonable standard of living, while at other times they may be excluded from what is by any criterion a basically acceptable way of life. But we are always excluded from true empowerment over our lives and those of our families – and that is not something that can be achieved under the present social system.

Paul Bennett

Goodbye, Piccadilly (2014)

Book Review from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Joseph O’Neill: ‘Manchester in the Great War'. Pen and Sword £9.99.

This is a better book than first seemed, given the unpleasant remarks made in the Introduction. O’Neill claims that the generation of 1914 were motivated by ‘municipal pride and love of country’, values that people have since been taught to hate. The educational establishment have supposedly emphasised multiculturalism, and so white working-class children have been cut off from their roots. Fortunately such bigoted attitudes do not surface in the rest of the book.

There was a rush to join up among many workers when war was declared in August 1914. This was sometimes on political grounds (‘poor little Belgium’), but also for economic and other reasons (not much patriotism, then). Life expectancy in Manchester was below the national average, with men generally not making it into their fifties. For many, enlisting offered an escape from unemployment or tedious badly-paid work. In the case of one 16-year-old living in a one-room house on Oldham Road, the war was ‘a grand opportunity to join the army and see the world’ (one wonders if he saw much more than the inside of a trench).

There was much social pressure on those who did not volunteer, but by late 1915 the enthusiasm to join up was waning. The announcement that conscription was likely to be introduced led to many single men applying for jobs in munitions factories, on the grounds that such work would be likely to exempt them from the call-up. By the end of 1916 more than half the local population were involved in turning out war materials.

But there was also a great deal of industrial unrest, with strikes aimed at countering the effects of rent increases and massive price rises, especially for food and clothes. In 1915 thirty-two men from a factory in Reddish were fined for striking without going to the Board of Trade for arbitration first. The blackout imposed from March that year was enormously unpopular, since there was a view that it turned canals and rivers into death traps. There was a general fall in crime, with the exception, strangely enough, of bigamy. By early 1918, the food shortages were so bad that there were rumours that Britain might be forced to end the war in order to avoid starvation.

Even the capitalist press could not entirely whitewash the grim nature of the fighting. The first list of local men wounded appeared on 5 September 1914. During the Battle of the Somme in July 1916, the headlines in the Manchester Evening News went in a week from ‘Kitchener’s Boys: New Armies Make Good’ to ‘Heavy Toll of the City Units’.

Anti-war protest was difficult, since meetings and demos were often either banned by the police or broken up by the so-called British Workers’ League. Plenty of people appealed against being conscripted, on various grounds. O’Neill writes that appellants were generally excused combat service if they were ‘resolute and reasonably articulate’, though he gives no evidence or statistics to support this (one major weakness of the book is that it has no notes, references or bibliography, making it impossible to know the source of any of the statements made).

O’Neill says that by the end of 1915 Manchester was ‘totally given over to war’, and that more than any other city it was ‘transformed by the war’. The 22,000 men from Manchester and Salford killed in fighting for the interests of their rulers certainly had their lives more than transformed. 

Paul Bennett

What about Marx? (2014)

Book Review from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘What About Me? The Struggle for Identity in a Market–Based Society’, By Paul Verhaeghe. Scribe.

This book, written by a Belgian academic and translated from the Dutch, is fundamentally an attack on ‘neo-liberalism’. He sees it as psychologically extremely destructive and socialists would concur with his withering critique. The great problem is that without any political understanding (which Marx would have provided) he sees this ideology as something new rather than merely the latest propaganda that seeks to justify the continuation of capitalism. One is tempted to think that his scorn is generated (as he indicates) by the penetration of the ideology into his own realm of teaching and psychotherapy ; industrial workers might say, with some justification: ‘welcome to our world’.

With its attempt to measure everything and so turn quality into quantity capitalism famously knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Another flaw in Verhaeghe’s analysis is the contention that human identity is wholly dependent on the relationship with parents who represent moral and ethical values. Socialists would contend that man’s relationship with nature through his desire to constructively change it (his or her work) is fundamental to all human identity and its absence in capitalism is the real genesis of alienation. Verhaeghe has not understood that working to make profits for the parasite class is fundamental to capitalism and as such can never offer mankind the kind of meaningful fulfilling work that he advocates. And so he joins the countless other critics who want to reform the system without really understanding it. His dismisses socialism which conflates with the leftist regimes of the past.

Verhaeghe’s knowledge of Freud is extensive (as one would expect) but it does serve as a warning that a purely psychological approach to mankind’s travails can be very misguided. The work of Erich Fromm and Herbert Marcuse is infinitely superior to this short book because, although dealing with the same subject, the political knowledge expressed is on a par with their psychological understanding. With the exception of one passing reference to Theodore Adorno the author would seem oblivious to the work of the Frankfurt School. This is very odd since they were focused on the very same subject of the book.

Unfortunately the author of this book has no political weaponry with which to destroy  the system that he so clearly despises.

Wez.

Voice From the Back: Chinese Hypocrisy (2014)

The Voice From the Back column from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chinese Hypocrisy                                                             

Wealthy Chinese tourists are splashing out up to £100,000 on hunting trips to Scotland, so they can feel like Downton Abbey’s Earl of Grantham. Inspired by the ITV series, hunting parties from China are hiring out castles with butlers and staff included so they can try their hand at bagging some of the biggest game roaming the countryside. ‘Among those visiting is Jack Ma, one of China’s richest men. He recently hired out Aldourie Castle near Loch Ness for £36,000. Mr Ma spent a week with 11 friends on the 500 acre estate, also hiring staff including a butler and cook’ (Daily Mail, 11 August). Mr Ma is reckoned to have a fortune of over £6 billion. Oh, by the way the Chinese government claims they have communism in China!

Class Contempt                                                 

It is always interesting to know what the owning class think about the working class and Michael O’Leary the outspoken CEO of Ryanair makes no secret of his contempt. ‘MBA students come out with “My staff is my most important asset”. Bullshit. Staff is usually your biggest cost. We all employ some lazy bastards who need a kick up the backside’ (Times, 16 August). This contempt is staggering when all the owning class’s profits including Mr O’Leary’s are the result of the exploitation of the working class.

Getting Away With It                                           

Britain’s top executives are now paid 143 times the wages of an average employee, according to a study. Executive salaries have increased dramatically in relation to most workers, said the High Pay Centre. ‘The think tank has called on the Government to act after it found that in 1998 the average chief executive of a FTSE 100 was paid 47 times the pay of their average employee. The Centre’s director Deborah Hargreaves said: ’Britain’s executives have not got so much better over the past two decades. The only reason why their pay has increased so rapidly compared to their employees is that they are able to get away with it’ (Daily Express, 18 August). So much for the notion that there is some sort of morality behind the jungle warfare of the wages and profit system.

Recovery For Whom?                                        

The press and TV are lauding the government for what they are describing as an economic recovery, but what has been a period of boom for the capitalist class has seen a worsening of conditions for many wage earners. ‘The cost of borrowing will increase before workers benefit from a real rise in their wages, the governor of the Bank of England said yesterday. Mark Carney said that interest rates were likely to rise from their record low of 0.5 per cent in the  spring of next year, possibly before the general election in May’ (Times, 10 September). He went on to say to the TUC in Liverpool that inflation-proof wage increases would not arrive until the following summer, indicating a financial squeeze on homeowners with mortgages.

The Drive For Profits                                          

All sorts of well-meaning organisations exist in efforts to stop the deforestation of the Amazon basis, the melting of the Arctic region and other examples of how capitalism worsens the environment. Alas they are doomed to failure. ‘The rate of destruction of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil has increased for a second year running. Brazilian government figures show deforestation was up by 29% in the 12 months up to the end of July 2013. Satellite data showed that almost 6,000 sq km (2,315 sq miles) of forest were cleared during that period’ (BBC News, 11 September). In its ruthless drive for profit capitalism cares little about the environment.

A Crazy System                                                 

It was just a short article in the daily press but it sums up what a crazy system capitalism really is. ‘A treasure trove of art, jewellery and other valuables from the estate of the reclusive heiress Rachel “Bunny” Mellon will go on sale at auction following  her death earlier this year at the age of 103.  Experts invited to assess her collection at her country home of Oak Spring Farms, in Upperville, Virginia, were stunned at the scale of the riches she had amassed, including little-seen Picassos and Van Goghs, personalised Chanel handbags and even a vintage 1950s fire engine’ (Sunday Telegraph, 14 September). Mellon never worked for this fortune, she inherited her vast wealth from her grandfather. It is estimated that her fortune is probably worth about $100 million although countless hard-working people are trying to survive on less than $2 a day.

Letter: Scotch Myth? (2014)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Scotch Myth?

Dear Editors

Regrettably ‘Myths of Scottish Nationalism’ (Socialist Standard, August) ended on a low note as no matter how flawed nationalism is, it is not responsible for the prevailing opinion that the Covenanters were freedom fighters. It is a widely held view.

The current SNP would be strange bedfellows with a Covenanting movement, as according to Professor Alan MacInnes the Covenanters had a radical view of Britain that was federal and constitutional.

The article commented on the Battle of Bothwell Bridge, omitting that the majority of Covenanters there made public declaration that they wanted a free General Assembly and free Parliament. The monument to the battle, which was erected by public subscription, is quite clear that the Covenanters stood for Civil and Religious Liberty.

What resulted from the sacrifice and sufferings of so many ordinary Scots and others was not an inquisition but a democratic Church that was acceptable to the majority, a free Parliament and a Bill of Rights that gave us liberties and freedoms much in advance of the rest of Europe. These were the foundations on which our democracy has evolved. That Bill of Rights was a foundation stone for the evolution of our European Human Rights, which ensures liberty of expression and assembly for minority political and religious groups. Fortunately history shows that totalitarian systems are doomed to failure be it long or short term.

David Bryce, 

Hamilton.

Reply:

The purpose of the series was to demonstrate that a Scottish national history is invented and the image presented of the Covenanter movement is one such an example. The Covenanter Movement was not a unified movement and was riven by schisms, not unlike the current Islamic Movement but, for sure, the article was not making the claim that the SNP’s and its nationalism are the legitimate heirs to the Covenanters. It is possible to argue that the details of the 1707 Union fulfilled much of the Covenanter demands and ended any future of the Scottish Kirk being the base for radicalism, its low point, a call for the deportation of Irish catholic immigrants during the 1930s.

As the article acknowledged, there are many who argue that the Covenanters were progressive and revolutionary but by no means is it a universal endorsement, as you would seem to suggest. Gerard Cairns on the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement website, arguing from a ‘catholic gael’ perspective, could write:

  It may seem very Marxist to argue that the Covenanters were class warriors, a mass movement against an absolutist regime. That really would be an example of the mechanical Marxism which tries to hammer a square peg into a round hole. Can we really turn bigots into revolutionaries? …A movement from below led by pedagogues on high who wanted a monolithic Scotland and/or Britain based on Presbyterianism. Everything else was secondary. (LINK) 

  ‘Whereas, Allan Armstrong on the Republican Communist Network website, considers the Cameronian wing of the Covenanters as a proto-Red Army’ (LINK)

Alistair Livingston, however, writes more objectively of this period:

   'In Scotland Charles I managed to piss off both the nobility, who had gained huge chunks of church lands – by threatening to reclaim all previous ‘gifts’ of such lands, and the reformers, by trying to re-impose what they saw as the ‘corrupt’ religious practices of Catholicism on the Reformed church. The result was an unholy alliance between landowners who wanted to hang on to the huge tracts of church land they had got their paws on and the religious types who wanted a spiritual reformation of Christianity. This unholy alliance led to a Holy Covenant between the people of Scotland and God. (There were two Covenants – a National one and a Solemn one)… The belief held by some Muslims that a ‘Godly state’ can be created is not some weird un-British aberration – it was a belief strongly held by thousands of Brits – Scottish and English in the 17th century and created a bloody and violent civil war in which tens of thousands died.’ (LINK)

Capitalism Can Never be Made to Work for Us (2014)

From the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every election is the same. Your vote is needed to clear up the present issue of the day and the party asking for it is the only party who can sort it out.

But for all the promises nothing ever gets better. Nothing ever gets resolved. The solution isn’t around the corner. This has gone on for ages. The political parties are like someone trying to clean a window with a dirty  cloth and rather than swap it for a new one they harangue each other about how they use it.

The Conservatives see nothing wrong with the dirty cloth, all that we need for a brighter British window is to apply it more firmly, roll up our sleeves and try a little harder. UKIP see nothing wrong with the dirty cloth either, but feel its use should be guided by a purely British hand. Labour is appalled! Labour feels that by wringing out the cloth and changing how it’s applied will lead to a fairer, more prosperous window. The Left feels this doesn’t go far enough, only by cleansing the cloth and a complete reorganisation of how the window is scrubbed will do. Of course, the BNP couldn’t care less about the state of the cloth, only what colour it allows the window to become.

No matter who takes charge the vision of the future remains dull, there is only so much that can be done with a dirty cloth.

The Socialist Party challenges all other parties because it knows that capitalism can only be run in the interest of the few. For us the question isn’t whether it’s in the nation’s interest to stay in, or out, of the EU. It’s whether the nation’s interests and the people’s interests are the same. The answer is no.

The Socialist Party is part of the World Socialist Movement. For 110 years we have organised without leaders practising real democracy. Our goal is not to run capitalism for you in the interest of individual nations. Our goal is to unite the people of the world so that we, the people, can run it in the interest of ourselves.

We will not stand for starvation in a world that can feed everyone more than adequately. We will not see those who work and create the wealth struggle while those who manipulate thrive. We will not see the environment destroyed in the name of profits. We will not see honest, hard working people turned against each other in war to serve a minority’s interests.

Sean Deegan

Gullibility: Any Known Cure? (2014)

The Halo Halo! column from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

As this is being written (a few weeks before publication) the number of known deaths due to the West African Ebola outbreak – for which there is, as yet, no known cure has passed the 1,400 mark. The number of infections is put at over 2,600 although many more are suspected to be going undetected. By the time you read it the statistics will be much worse.

Unless, of course, in the meantime God steps in with a miracle to sort it out – which, presumably, he could if he wanted to. He did, after all, in the case of Dr Kent Brantly. Brantly, an American medical missionary working in Liberia is one of the fortunate ones who, after contacting the disease, made a full recovery. ‘God saved my life’ he assured a press conference after being released from hospital.

The way God did this, it seems, is by arranging for Brantly to be one of the first to receive the very scarce and experimental serum known as Zmapp, and whisking him back to a modern hospital in the US where he received another dose, and the best possible medical care available. 

How effective the Zmapp was in his cure we can only guess at this stage, or what Dr Brantly’s views of it are, but he is in no doubt that it was God who saved his life. Why did God single out Dr Brantly to be saved, we might wonder? Why didn’t he carry out a similar miracle for some, at least, of the other 1,400 victims, including many other committed medical volunteers? Why was it necessary for God to allow the outbreak to occur in the first place? Maybe Dr Brantly knows the answer to these questions, maybe he doesn’t, but of one thing he is absolutely certain. ‘God saved my life’.

To assist God in carrying out further miracles of this sort another, more unorthodox, treatment for Ebola has been prescribed by ‘Prophet’ T B Joshua, one of Nigeria’s five wealthiest preachers. Prophet Joshua, whose fortune has been estimated at between 10 and 15 million dollars byForbes magazine (although that sum is dwarfed by others on the list), has flown 4,000 bottles of his amazing ‘holy anointing water’ to Sierra Leone for use in treating the Ebola virus.

This magical water which is produced at his church’s headquarters is obviously potent stuff. It is more usually taken among his followers for the treatment of such complaints as barrenness, cancer, paralysis and the AIDS virus, although one even confirms that whilst being attacked in his car one night by ten armed bandits his car suddenly became bulletproof and he was saved. You’d give a fortune to get your hands on a bottle of that wouldn’t you? Well, some people obviously do.

‘By using the anointing water, you are symbolically setting yourself apart for Jesus Christ’s special attention as you pray in faith’ he says. ‘I mean, you are positioned for mercy, favour, healing, deliverance blessing, prosperity and fruitfulness’. And it sounds good, you must admit, especially the ‘prosperity and fruitfulness’ bit.

However, there may be a snag. It’s guaranteed to work of course – as long as you ‘pray in faith’, but as with all religious guarantees, if the punter doesn’t have the required amount of faith – well, that could bugger the whole miracle up.

And it’s even been suggested by some, who obviously have nowhere near enough faith in Joshua and his Jesus juice, that it is simply salt water. Obviously this is an outrageous slur. No multi-millionaire preacher would ever carry out such a scam would they?

Hopefully he does provide full instructions for use with the magic liquid though. You obviously need to know whether to drink it or pour it into your car’s radiator. It’s all very well making your old banger bulletproof, but if it’s saltwater you’re pouring in, it could corrode the cooling system internals and make it leak like a bloody sieve. Not exactly the kind of holiness you want in your radiator.

NW

50 Years Ago: Tweedledee or ‘dum (2014)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the 1964 General Election, as in those of the past, the capitalist political parties have encouraged us to believe that fundamental issues are at stake.

This is far from the truth. The Labour and Conservative Parties are argue over trifles—the fight between them is sham. On the vital issues of the day are one.

This is reflected in many ways. It is reflected in the basic agreement in the parties’ policies. It is reflected in the fact that, although each side presents its leader as a paragon of honesty, knowledge and strength, none of them take the fundamentally different stand of opposing leadership in principle.

Home or Wilson? Landed aristocrat or Grammar schoolboy made good? Amiable elegance or rumpled, chubby purpose? The voters are asked to make their choice between these two representatives of capitalism, on the assumption that leaders are necessary, because without them we poor dunderheads would lose our way in the treacherous maze of the wicked world.

It is not difficult to penetrate this sham. The most casual investigation of leaders past and present reveals them as hard, cynical men dedicated to the ruthless administration of the capitalist system. It also shows up the game of leadership as a dirty business.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home has recently joined in the game for whatever advantage his party can get out of it. On the other side Harold Wilson has shown that a leader’s most valuable asset is a cold, professional determination.

It is no coincidence, and not entirely due to the General Election, that since Wilson became leader the Labour Party has kept its splits plastered over. So smooth has his political handling been that his public relations men are trying now to dispel the image of him as too clever, as the cocksure, calculating political climber.

(from editorial, Socialist Standard, October 1964)

Ripping off the Patient (2014)

From the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The president of the Zambia Medical Association Dr Munjajati recently revealed that the current health delivery system in the country cannot protect patients seeking private medical attention from flagrant overcharging. His remarks tend to highlight the fact that Zambia has a two-tier health system within public hospitals. Fee-paying hospital wards were introduced in 1980 by the UNIP government of Dr Kaunda. Those with enough money could be hospitalized in fee-paying wards in order to receive proper medical treatment .

The reluctance of the current Patriotic Front government to boldly check and regulate the operations of privately-owned hospitals and clinics is because to do so would be against the government’s policy of economic liberalization. Private health care is encouraged in the belief that an increased role for entrepreneurs and competition in the delivery of healthcare will result in a more efficient and effective healthcare system. Thus the search for financial gain determines the quality of healthcare systems. But the values of free enterprises and the economic benefits that may flow from a more efficient healthcare system can only be achieved at the cost of other and more important values – including a concern for fairness, the dignity of people and community-centred ethics that places people before profits.

Caring or looking after the sick is a calling of special dignity and importance. The striking nurses were dismissed by the Labour Minister in 2013 on the allegation that they had failed to uphold the oath of allegiance they swore when they graduated from Health College – to serve others out of compassion. To go on strike for reasons of salary increments was anathema to the values that guide governments and their civil servants. This is the oath to serve the people out of love and compassion, without regard to the standard of prevailing salaries and poor conditions of service. In that case, by the same standard, it would be the task of every government to make access to healthcare as free as possible. But they don’t.

There are relatively small amounts of legislation regulating the operations of health facilities compared to laws governing health personnel. The existing legislation regulating the operations of both private and public health hospitals was introduced by President Michael Sata when he was minister of health. In 2002 the MMD government went on to introduce consultation and medical fees in both public hospitals and clinics. Economic liberalisation entailed the acceptance of the lurid fact that free health care and education was a cost to the government. Hospitals, schools and colleges were de-centralised under health and education boards.

Under the system of private healthcare, the opportunities for ripping off patients seems endless. There is nothing in place to regulate the prices that are charged by service providers and hence the price differences in goods and services from one private health provider to another. Grading of private health facilities does not exist on the ground due to the salient professional ethic surrounding medicine. Due to the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and the mystery surrounding the disease and its causes, Zambia has seen a proliferation of traditional herbal therapies and traditional healers. It is not illegal in Zambia today to sell and advertise traditional herbal medicines that have not even undergone a laboratory scrutiny.

The introduction of free male circumcision in public hospitals emphasises that lack of a regulatory framework. The public health system exists in a state of corruption. Private surgeries are stocked with medicines siphoned from public hospitals. There is no treatment protocol and this results in over-servicing; a private doctor will prescribe ten supplementary drugs for the sake of advertising his business. Most private hospitals are under the control of lay managers whose primary interest is to make a profit. Thus under the system of private health care doctors promote profit-producing drugs, surgeries and tests. Medical treatments and counselling that lack profit potential are discouraged. The commercialization of private healthcare has led to the abandonment of human virtues that are essential for a community – caring for old people, compassion and charity, especially for the less privileged members of the community.

The zeal and altruism that is displayed by doctors and nurses in their primary concern for the alleviation of pain and sickness has been hijacked by the profit motive. Indeed the prevailing ideology says that political states or governments have a duty to protect the interests of the citizenry, through providing them with law, security and healthcare. But the provision of healthcare under capitalism is hamstrung by the principle of free enterprise with its competition and profit. The income and wealth disparities between the working and capitalist classes translate themselves into standardized economic, political and social programmes. The vision of free healthcare, and other services cannot obtain under a capitalist state. It is only in socialist society that health care will be characterized by its capacity to serve the good of every member of society. The sense of responsibility by those engaging in providing free medical care will demonstrate the individual and social virtues necessary for the wellbeing of a classless, moneyless and stateless society – socialism.

Kephas Mulenga

Gospel of Karl (2014)

A Short Story from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

 An ancient papyrus scroll, recently found lying unnoticed on our General Secretary’s desk for nearly 2,000 years, has been examined and identified as a previously unknown ‘Gospel of Karl’.

And it came to pass that there was great discontent in the land. For they who were the capitalist class and owneth the factories, the farms and the means of production, and their fathers before them, and their father’s fathers before them, were a host of robbing parasites.

And lo, the people cried out to the Lord that they had no rest from their labours, that they were fed upon offal burgers and fries, draped in shoddy garments from the land of Primark, and up to their ruddy necks in debt. And he heard them not.

And they sayeth one unto the other ‘Verily, what hath come to pass? Why are we, who floggeth our guts out to produce all the wealth up the bloody creek without a paddle, while they who owneth the wealth do sod all and liveth the life of Riley? It is surely a sign from the Lord that we toil not hard enough’.

And Moses heard their cries and came down the mountain saying unto them ‘Verily, I have tabloids of stone from the High Priest Murdoch, and upon them is scribed the commandments which thou shall keep for all thy days, and if thou question them thou shalt surely be cast out of the paradise in which thy live’. And they were sorely afraid and knew not what to do.

Then cometh amongst them a wise man whose name was called Karl, and he sayeth unto them ‘Workers of the world unite, ye have nothing to lose but thy chains’. And they trembled with fear.

‘Who art thou who cometh to cause discontent amongst us?’ they asked, ‘Some kind of bloody commie?’

And again he spake unto them saying, ‘Fear not, for I bring ye glad tidings of great joy. If ye just bloody listen for five minutes I will explain. He that employeth thee and payeth thee thy wages is surely ripping thee off. Ye needeth him like ye needeth a bloody hole in the head’.

And lo, they were confused and sore afraid and trembled in their socks. ‘How shalt we live if they giveth us not our wages?’ they sayeth.

‘Jesus Christ!’ he exclaimed, ‘thou art bloody slow on the uptake’. ‘Verily, I say unto thee, ye toil unto them simply because ye owneth not. Thy wages are just enough to keepeth thee alive and maketh sure ye come back to bloody work next week’.

‘But’ they cryeth, ‘It is surely the way of the Lord. And anyway, it was written long ago that the meek shall inherit the earth’.

‘In thy bloody dreams cock’ sayeth he whose name was called Karl. ‘Thou shalt inherit bugger all until thou stoppeth being so bloody meek’.

‘Take no notice of him’ sayeth the High Priest. ‘Verily it shall come to pass, but not until thy next life, for thou art sinful and must first be punished. Yet for a fee we can prayeth for thee unto the invisible God and guarantee thee a place in paradise, but it will cost thee many pieces of silver’.

‘But how canst we knoweth that the invisible god doth exist’ they asketh.

‘We have proof’ sayeth the priest. ‘Doth not the fact that nobody hath ever seen him not prooveth that he is invisible?

‘Bloody hell’ sayeth the people, ‘we never thought of that. Thou art either a genius or a total bloody dickhead, but we knoweth not which’.

And the priest replied unto them saying ‘Praise be to the Lord’.

And the people wept saying ‘Yea, we are of a sinful nature and must not interfere with what the Lord hath ordained’. And they turneth one unto another saying ‘Verily, if the Lord hath not intended us to be poor he would hath provided us with slaves’.

‘Yea’, sayeth their companions, ‘Just like he did for the capitalist class’.

Then again spake he whose name was called Karl. ‘Christ alive! this is going to taketh longer than I thought: From whence does thou think thy employer getteth the loot from which he payeth thy wages?’

‘It is a mystery’ they replied unto him’.

‘A mystery, my arse’, He replied. ‘He owneth everything that thou hath laboured to produce and he selleth it: And from whence doth he getteth the loot from which he payeth his bills and maketh all his profits?’

And they looketh one to another in awe. ‘Bloody hell.’ they sayeth. ‘We who toil all of our days do provide the bloody lot’.

‘I thinketh that at last the penny hath dropped’ sayeth he whose name was called Karl, and he went on his way rejoicing.

Nick White

Scrap Capitalism (2014)

From the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is time to forever scrap forever this cock-eyed system that takes from the poor and  gives to the rich; that preaches austerity for the 95 percent whilst the elite get yet richer; where millionaire leaders shed crocodile tears over poverty as they live in luxury. Somehow it has been sold to us that this is usual – moreover it is the only way to organise society, and it is good and healthy. You could not make it up.

We could share all the world. Scrap capitalism, abolish the monetary system and suddenly the playing field is not so uneven. We will not have achieved utopia but many of the idiocies of the current system will have gone: life will not be quite so problematic. No longer would the accountant who finds havens for the rich to hide their wealth to avoid tax earn a thousand times more than the carers looking after the health of your old aunt – because there would no longer be wages. No more wages slavery, just imagine. You’d be able to do what you do and be able to take what you need.

You will no doubt be told it’s mad and totally unachievable. But think what would have been said about the internet or triple heart bypass surgery 50 years ago. Human beings are incredibly intelligent – just look at how much and how quickly we can achieve things when we set our minds to it – and we in the Socialist Party are simply saying the world can be organised in a more intelligent way. It cannot be seen as either intelligent or necessary that most of the wealth of the world is given to so few.

All the other parties offer you some variant of what we have already – possibly a few more checks and balances. Sadly history shows that, whatever the government, the rich come out on top. We are here to say it need not be like this.

Howard Pilott

Mixed Media: Marx in Soho (2014)

The Mixed Media Column from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx in Soho

Marx in Soho, the 1995 one-man play by Howard Zinn was recently produced at the Marx Library in London directed by Sergio Amigo and starring Daniel Kelly as Marx. Zinn portrays 'Marx as few people knew him, as a family man, struggling to support his wife and children' in a 'fantasy' where Marx returns but due to a bureaucratic error not to Soho, London where he lived, but to Soho in New York City. Marx has returned 'to clear my name!'

Zinn drew on insights into Marx's private life in Yvonne Kapp's biography of Eleanor Marx. Marx speaks of life in Soho: 'we were living in London. Jenny and I and the little ones. Plus two dogs, three cats, and two birds. Barely living. A flat on Dean Street, near where they dumped the city's sewage.' Marx speaks about his favourite daughter Eleanor, 'a precociously brilliant child' nicknamed 'Tussy' who is 'a revolutionary at the age of eight', plays chess with 'the Moor' (the family nickname for Marx 'because of my dark complexion'), drinks, smokes, and is enamoured of the Irish struggle which she learned from Lizzie Burns.

Marx is very witty: 'Marx is dead! Well I am … and I am not. That's dialectics for you', 'Understand one thing – I'm not a Marxist. I said that once to Pieper and he almost croaked' and 'My Ricardo! You pawned my Ricardo!' Zinn invents a visit to his home by the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, no record of such a visit exists although they had met in Paris in 1844. Bakunin was an irrepressible revolutionary who arrived in London in 1861 at Alexander Herzen's home, bursting into the drawing-room where the family was having supper. 'What! Are you sitting down eating oysters! Well! Tell me the news. What is happening, and where?!'

Zinn portrays 'Marx angry that his theories had been so distorted as to stand for Stalinist cruelties and to rescue Marx from those who now gloated over the triumph of capitalism.' Zinn concludes the play with Marx proclaiming we should be 'using the incredible wealth of the earth for human beings. Give people what they need: food, medicine, clean air, pure water, trees and grass, pleasant homes to live in, some hours of work, more hours of leisure. Don't ask who deserves it. Every human being deserves it.'

Marx in Soho is highly recommended for socialist theatre-goers: 'Look at it this way. It is the second coming. Christ couldn't make it, so Marx came . . .'

Steve Clayton

Pathfinders: The Dark Rebellion (2014)

The Pathfinders Column from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

10 years ago this month the British worker Ken Bigley was murdered in a video beheading by the leader of an Iraqi insurgency group, one Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, despite appeals and interventions from, among others, Yasser Arafat, King Abdullah of Jordan, the Muslim Council of Britain, the Republic of Ireland, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and even Libyan dictator Colonel Gadaffi.

Zarqawi’s group affiliated to Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network at this same time, and became known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). The following year, 2005, Zarqawi received a letter from Bin Laden’s military commander, Ayman al-Zawahiri, outlining al-Qaeda’s four-stage strategic plan for expanding the Iraq war. The stages were, first, expel the Americans and their allies, then establish an Islamic caliphate, widen the conflict to engulf neighbouring states, and finally declare war on Israel.

Zarqawi continued to run AQI, specialising in extortion, kidnappings, hotel bombings and hostage beheadings, until a US Air Force F-16 dropped 460kg of high explosive on his safe-house in 2006. AQI lived on, however, and the same year merged with several other groups to form the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).

AQI thereafter became increasingly unpopular because of its targeting of Iraqi civilians, and open war developed between AQI and other Sunni groups. Bin Laden himself was said to regard the brutality of AQI’s video beheadings as counter-productive, and his commander, Zawahiri, had also criticised Zarqawi for recklessly squandering civilian sympathy and support. The US in 2007 began arming rival Sunni militias who agreed to fight AQI instead of the Americans (Guardian, 12 June 2007). This resulted in the ‘Anbar Awakening’ of Sunni counter-attacks, and by 2008 the ISI described itself as being in a state of ‘extraordinary crisis’.

With the withdrawal of US troops in 2009, AQI’s fortunes started to pick up again. They began blowing up government offices in a bid to destroy the Iraqi administration and sabotage the 2010 elections. But they hit problems again as communications with al-Qaeda in Pakistan were cut and, it was estimated, around 80 percent of their leadership were captured or blown up.

But like the mythical Hydra, AQI could grow heads as well as cut them off. The new leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, began recruiting Saddam Hussein’s former military staff, and thereafter pursued an energetic campaign of highly successful prison breaks to free veteran insurgents held at, among other places, the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

And then, the Arab Spring fell upon Baghdadi like manna from heaven. Suddenly the regional strongmen who were able to contain and maintain regional stability fell or were in trouble. Baghdadi seized the moment and began planting ISI seeds in Syria which sprouted into the al-Nusra Front. This Syrian group, unlike ISI, was not interested in establishing caliphates but only in ousting Assad, and recruited its foreign fighters solely on this basis. In April 2013 Baghdadi announced, without consulting either al-Nusra or al-Qaeda, that al-Nusra and ISI were merging as the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (Isis or Isil). It was the equivalent of a hostile business merger, and the al-Nusra Front leader protested vociferously. Al-Qaeda promptly ruled against Baghdadi and ordered Isis to be disbanded. After months of argument, al-Qaeda got nowhere and severed all connections with Isis. After more months of internecine conflict, al-Qaeda resignedly told al-Nusra to stop fighting Isis. Elements of al-Nusra subsequently saw no option but to go over to Isis, as did parts of the Free Syrian Army, JMA and other anti-Assad groups. In June this year Isis declared itself a caliphate with Baghdadi as its caliph.

The brutality of what followed has been of biblical proportions. The Islamic State rolled over Mosul and cleared out its bank vaults, while crucifying opponents and non-Sunni Muslims, eviscerating women and reputedly executing children and putting their heads on spikes on Mosul Park. The West has looked on aghast at the scale of the atrocities.

Despite its chilling barbarity the Islamic State seems to know what it’s doing. With an estimated fund of US$2m it is building all the infrastructure of a new state with efficiently-functioning public services and administrative and military control systems amid continued revenues from robbing banks, ransoming hostages and allegedly, selling captured Syrian energy supplies back to the Syrian government. It is noted for its unusually professional management of social media and even its harrowing beheading videos, clearly a key part of its conception of asymmetric warfare, are described as looking increasingly slick and well-produced. It employs if not ‘awe’ then certainly ‘shock’ in its campaign to subdue opposition and deter western and regional powers from intervening.

Some commentators speculate that the brutality is so excessive that the world’s Muslim communities will recoil from it, if they haven’t already done so, forcing IS towards moderating its behaviour in the future. But this is the legacy of the killer of Ken Bigley ten years ago, and they didn’t get where they are today by being moderate.

A recent edition of New Scientist (13 September) carried two articles that bear on the subject. In the first,Lifting the black mask, academics have been demanding access to US intelligence data as part of studies to establish the factors which go towards radicalising western-based jihadists. Some conclusions are already in, however, in particular that the idea of jihadists being ‘brainwashed’ by recruiters or radical imams is wrong. These young people who go to fight for Isis have simply absorbed and applied the views of their own circle of friends and family. Socialists say that capitalism, in oppressing workers everywhere, spontaneously assists the spread of socialist ideas. What we also have to acknowledge is that capitalism is also fostering a ‘dark rebellion’ which is, in many ways, the antithesis of everything that socialism stands for. Capitalism plays the same hateful pop song on an endless loop, while socialists aim to press Fast Forward, but there are also those who are keen to press Fast Rewind, all the way back to the Middle Ages.

The second article concerns a reappraisal of two notorious and now considered unethical psychology studies, which now suggests that acts of deliberate cruelty are not perpetrated as a matter of routine by ordinary people who are ‘just following orders’, an argument known as the Nuremberg Defence, but only by individuals who can be characterised as ‘committed’ believers.

In the 1960s series of ‘shock’ obedience studies conducted at Yale by Stanley Milgram, it turns out that participants were regularly badgered to administer electric shocks, and that up to 50 percent refused, while in the 1971 Stanford prison experiment, participant ‘guards’ were heavily coached to mistreat ‘prisoners’ by having forms of mistreatment suggested to them. In both studies participants were repeatedly told to conform and obey ‘in the interests of science’. The reappraisal suggests that those who bought into this formulation of the ‘science ethic’ tended to conform, while ‘non-believers’ did not.

Capitalist ideology loves to demonise ‘human nature’, and media reports of torture and murder barely seen outside the Old Testament seem almost to justify that demonisation. But we don’t just do what we’re told, like mindless zombies. It matters what we believe. Whatever excesses the world’s unhinged fanatics manage to drive themselves to, the capacity for evil does not, after all, lie dormant in the banal heart of humanity.

PJS

Material World: Desperately Seeking Safety (2014)

The Material World Column from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Racism and xenophobia are not specifically Australian personality traits, for racism isn't biological or innate. It was created to rationalise and justify slavery and colonialism, exploiting pseudo-science to persuade people that racial superiority is natural. There is nothing natural about it. The attitude of today’s government contrasts with the reception given to the Vietnamese boat-people in the 70s and 80s. Back then, Australia honoured its obligation as a signatory to the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The 2006 census recorded 173,663 Australian people of Vietnamese ancestry who were first or second generation Australians. The logistics of accommodating newcomers is something that Australia has repeatedly demonstrated it is capable of achieving.

Hamid Kehazaei, a young Iranian asylum seeker, has been declared brain-dead following his emergency medical evacuation from the Manus island detention centre. Dr Peter Young, the former director of mental health services at IHMS and one of the most senior doctors working in immigration detention, explained he would not be surprised if there were delays to Kehazaei’s medical care.

'Whenever people are placed in a remote place like this, where there isn’t access to local services on the ground, it inevitably creates a situation in which there are going to be delays when people have deteriorating conditions and when higher level, tertiary care is required. That’s just a characteristic of being in a remote location and that’s leaving aside the issues of the logistics when someone needs to be moved out and the bureaucratic delays when approval needs to be sought through multiple agencies' (theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/03/).

Draconian immigration policies are increasingly being imposed by various countries around the world. Australia detains refugees who arrive by boat to seek political asylum on Christmas Island and in camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Australian governments, both Liberal and Labour parties, have demonised boat people for 15 years, defying international law.

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the new United Nations high commissioner for human rights, accused Australia of causing human rights violations through its policy of detaining asylum seekers offshore:

 'Australia’s policy of offshore processing for asylum seekers arriving by sea, and its interception and turning back of vessels, is leading to a chain of human rights violations, including arbitrary detention and possible torture following return to home countries. It could also lead to the resettlement of migrants in countries that are not adequately equipped... Human rights are not reserved for citizens only, or for people with visas. They are the inalienable rights of every individual, regardless of his or her location and migration status.' he declares (Sydney Morning Herald, 7 September).

Admiral Chris Barrie, responsible for border protection under the Howard government, said the demonising of asylum seekers in Australia's detention centres was a central concern for him:

'I'm not sure we should continue to use the term 'mandatory detention' when we actually mean jail. At least in Australian jails the incarcerated have rights of access to legal support and representation. In these jails no such rights exist.' He continued: 'Australians are doing their utmost to extinguish hope, the most powerful of human emotions' (Sydney Morning Herald, 4 September).

Why do some Australians 'hate' asylum seekers? Many are led to believe they are one of society's biggest problems. Little wonder. The media claims Australia is under siege from asylum seekers and they are blamed for higher taxes, increasing crime, rising house prices, longer hospital waits, cheap labour, as well as terrorism and disease. Mainstream politicians promote such stories.

Even if all the boats were stopped, even if they were all sent back into Indonesian waters, even if all asylum seekers were locked up in detention camps situated in puppet countries, none of that would increase wages or pensions, increase the numbers of nurses and doctors in public hospitals, make the education system any better, or make more affordable housing available. The campaign against asylum seekers won't lead to a single affordable house, a single hospital or a single school being built. Everybody knows this deep down, yet asylum seekers are the scapegoat for the ignorant and aggrieved. It is a campaign of fear to cover-up the failures of capitalism.

ALJO

The Rise and Decline of Capitalism (2014)

From the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism was progressive during its ascendance i.e. in its formative stage. During this phase all its necessary formations and reformations were progressive, even though it emerged having been drenched in blood and gore. Both the capitalist and working classes were sprouting, growing – evolving. All the productive forces – means of production, instruments of labour and labour power - were developing within the womb of the new born relations of production. Hence here the working class movements for formation/reformation were progressive simply because elimination of capitalist relations, which were just taking shapes, was out of the question, even though consciousness about its negation i.e. socialism, began to appear as working class ideas and interests alongside the ruling ideas and interests of the capitalist class. Both classes were involved in severing feudal relations of production and installing capitalist ones. This was the epoch of bourgeois democratic revolution.

For world socialist revolution to occur two interrelated conditions must mature – the subjective condition i.e. the revolutionary will and organization of the working class on a world scale and the objective condition i.e. a comprehensive material maturity of the productive forces for abundance. Until the end of the 19th century the revolutionary replacement of capitalism was impossible since these necessary conditions were not yet ripe.

However, by the beginning of the 20th century, the situation reversed. Capitalism entered into its era of decadence. Decadence – because, from then onwards, the revolutionary situation (objective condition) remains ready but the revolution has not happened owing to immaturity of working class consciousness and organization (subjective condition).

Thus, humankind has reached the ‘era of social revolution’ but the revolution is yet to begin. Capitalism has gone into its phase of global crisis cycles and anarchy leading to world wars involving capital against capital, fomenting national prejudices and pitting workers against workers to slaughter one another, destroying productive forces on all contending sides and producing misery, poverty, waste, pollution and environment destruction. This is, however, not to say that capital has come to a dead halt. Capital’s nature of exploitation, appropriation and accumulation of surplus value continues as long as it exists.

Capital develops unevenly through concentration and centralization. And for that matter capital is still going on accumulating globally whereby one capital kills many giving rise to gigantic conglomerates. Accumulation is going through destruction and annihilation. This is reactionary. This is decadence

Productive forces have developed to the stage of both actual and potential abundance for all. But the working class consciousness and organization have remained subdued under the domination of capitalist ideas and interests – constantly and crushingly campaigned by all pervading 'right', 'left', 'centre' chronicles and ideologies. They comprise all various belligerent factions of capital. Although they use different names and slogans on their banners, they don’t have any scientific alternative to capital’s devastatingly continued reproduction. They are mere reformists of all various hues. We have experienced enough of such things. And enough is enough! They have given capitalism a century long anachronistic existence. Measures which were once very necessary and useful for maturation of the system have already more or less accomplished their tasks and grown old and outdated. The material productive forces of society have come into conflict with the existing relations of production. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations have turned into their fetters or, in other words, the productive forces have outgrown the production relations.

The history of the past hundred years has shown us that the reformist movements around the world have not only been futile, but also have increasingly grown reactionary by providing capitalism with a new lease of life by the entire capitalist media which has baffled the people as a whole. Moreover the leftists and the Leninists have further confused the workers and actually defended capitalism. Now we need a change – a radical change at the foundation of society – and more – a change of the base-structure-superstructure of society – lock, stock, and barrel.

The precise task of socialists today is to hasten the revolution by raising class consciousness through education and organization of the working class world-wide. The working class is not required to establish any eternal truth, or to realize any far-fetched ideal, but to set free the elements of the new society with which the old decadent capitalist society itself is pregnant. ‘… the proletariat can and must emancipate itself. But it cannot emancipate itself without abolishing the conditions of its own life. It cannot abolish the conditions of its own life without abolishing all the inhuman conditions of life of society today, which are summed up in its own situation.’ (Marx and Engels, The Holy Family, 1845, CW, Vol. 4, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1975, p. 37). And from the Communist Manifesto: ‘The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation.’

And remember Marx’s famous pronouncement: ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it’ (Theses on Feuerbach, 1845).

Binay Sarkar

What Labour is Really Worth (2014)

From the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What every thing is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people.”

“Labour alone, therefore, never varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared. It is their real price; money is their nominal price only."

These are the words of Adam Smith about the system we inhabit currently but what would they mean if anything in the alternative system we may choose for the future?

Take money for instance, what does it mean to most people? Simply a means of acquiring the things they need and want, in fact most things throughout life and for the majority that isn't easily attained. And in many cases there is never enough, however hard they try. How much one needs for an average life for an average lifetime who knows? On an average wage, wherever you live on the planet, who can imagine what it means to be a millionaire or a billionaire (the numbers of which are rising fast)?

Counting at the rate of one dollar, pound or euro per second it will take twelve days to count a million and thirty one years to count a billion. Longer if you stop for the necessities of life. And as for a trillion, a number bandied about more frequently of late, with the expectation that within a few short years the first trillionaire will hit the headlines, simple maths shows us that 31,000 years would be required. That's an awful lot of toil and trouble, potentially an awful lot of labour.

It is the predatory nature of capitalism that has, in recent years, awakened increasing numbers to question what it is that is happening around the world and to feel aggrieved enough to protest in their thousands. From believing they lived in functioning democracies we are now aware that that belief has been overturned as demonstration after demonstration reveals the deeper awareness of masses of people. It is now commonly recognised that governments are running countries for the benefit of business and that business is extremely friendly to compliant governments. Revolving doors, hefty donations, lecture tours for ex-politicians, seats on boards, fees for access, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. We know how the system works and for whom it works best, so the question for the great majority for whom it doesn't work becomes 'what are we going to do about it?'

Who can have failed to notice how the sphere of things that used to be freely available has shrunk, has been taken away by force for the benefit of capitalists and corporations? Here cost comes into play. The cost to the public in general of the loss of the commons is impossible to put a price tag on. Water, land and hitherto public spaces have been acquired from the public sphere as money-making ventures: factories, mines, building projects, dams, monocrops for feed or biofuel; town centres, former public land and playing fields, even the ground underneath housing is vulnerable to takeover. The air we breathe is highly susceptible to pollution as an externality of the market system we endure. The polluters are also the beneficiaries of the profits from their businesses but they readily pass on the costs of that pollution to workers as externalities. The costs are borne by people living locally as air, water, ground and food is contaminated – and by those living far away as poisoned waste is shipped thousands of miles to be dealt with at a fraction of the cost it would be in the producing country. Huge health costs to be borne by those in the recipient neighbourhoods.

Accumulatively there are costs from loss of space, loss of freedom to use such spaces, health costs, loss of individual privacy and freedom of speech, loss of choice in all manner of areas signifying both personal and collective costs - all whilst the capitalist minority continues to steal more and more of the common wealth and influence law making. Current politics is far from inclusive and certainly not democratic in many eyes.

Those with money are the ones with influence. They are free to buy whatever it is they want – material goods and the time and labour of others. However, in the grand scheme of things, they are the minority. Those with little – and we are many – are the labour.

Giving value to labour, in the broadest sense – those of us who work for our living, whether manual in farming, fishing, factory or mine, on road, rail or the high seas, or indoors in health, education, administration or any other kind of service industry – when we recognise the value of giving value to labour, to our labour and the labour of all the others like us, we will be on the path to answering the earlier question – 'what are we going to do about it?'

Removing the money element from our labour will remove the money from all of our transactions. It will also remove the profit seekers and corporations from any further equations. No more banks, investment companies, mortgage, rent and insurances creating endless headaches and the anxiety of indebtedness. No more middlemen and consumer ideology warping our minds and persuading us against our better judgment to consume, consume, consume. Labour, working together across the world, retaking and rebuilding the commons in the best interests of the common good. Labour, recognising its individual and collective value, working together to secure a democratic world community.

Janet Surman