Voice From The Back: Prisoners of want (2002)

The Voice From The Back Column from the March 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Prisoners of want

“One hundred thousand pensioners in old people’s homes are living on allowances of as little as £10 a week. Most are not even receiving the £16 weekly payment to which they are entitled, according to new research. The revelation that legions of old people live on less than many prison inmates will greatly embarrass Ministers, who have boasted of tackling pensioners’ poverty. “We were shocked when we discovered this,” said Lorna Easterbrook, who carried out the study for Help The Aged. “There’s a huge sense of humiliation among these old people. Some are getting £10 of their due allowances, but others are getting just £3 or £4 a week after relatives or homes make deductions.” Observer, 20 January.

The Observer journalist’s view that the Labour government ministers will be “greatly embarrassed” is probably wide of the mark. Nothing could embarrass these vile supporters of capitalism. Fellow workers, this could be your future inside capitalism. If you live beyond your ability to produce surplus value for the blood-sucking capitalist class. A bed pan and a tenner a week.

No cause for celebration

Twenty years ago a British Prime Minister told the Sun, and other slimy tabloid newspapers to “Rejoice” at the victory of the British capitalist class against the Argentine capitalist class. No mention was made at that time about the loss of working class life. We have no figures about the deaths of Argentine workers, but twenty years on, we have some about British workers. 255 British servicemen were killed, but even more awful since that madness, 264 British servicemen, who were involved have committed suicide. (Figures from the Guardian, 19 January.) Excuse us if we don’t rejoice, Thatcher, at the deaths of members of our class in the defence of your system. There are many orphans and widows of the working class today in both Argentine and Britain whose tears make joy impossible.

They like it, My Lord

“A Trade Union Congress report out today estimates that four million people, 16 percent of the workforce, work more than 48 hours a week, the limit set by the 1998 (European Union) directive. Men work the longest weeks with one in four clocking up more than 48 hours; one in ten working 55 hours; and one in 25 working more than 60 hours . . . John Monks, the TUC General Secretary, said: “Britain’s long-hour culture is a national disgrace. It leads to stress, ill-health and family strains.” Times, 4 February. Not everybody would agree with the TUC, though. John Crickland, Deputy Director-General of the CBI offers a defence of the long hours. “Workers want the right to make their own decisions about extra working hours. Managerial workers often work longer hours because they want to.” This defence is rather similar to the Fox Hunting Lobby’s – “The fox enjoys the hunt.”

Science and the profit motive

Inside socialist society the pursuit of knowledge will be free to all. There will be no restrictions on scientific investigation. This is impossible inside capitalism, with its copyright laws and its profit motive. Sir John Sulston, one of the leading researchers in the Human Genome Project has shown how powerful the profit motive is in science-based commerce. “We can’t possibly prohibit discovery. But on the other hand to imagine that we should always exploit, especially if it makes extra money, is insane. I think most reasonable people, including those who run companies, would agree. The trouble is, once people get into a company boardroom, they have no other choice. They have shareholders. I am afraid you have to leave your principles at the door of the boardroom”, he says.” Guardian, 2 February.

Blair, bombast and bombs

At the Labour Party conference last year Tony Blair said: “The state of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world”. Poverty, corruption, famine and war, he thundered like an Old Testament prophet, must be tackled. It went down big with the delegates. It is the sort of thing the Labour Party adore – talking about social problems in sanctimonious moral tones, and then doing nothing about it. But this time they were doing something about it – they were making it worse! “The government was facing condemnation from protesters against the arms trade last night after new figures revealed that the value of arms sales to Africa will more than quadruple by next year . . . High levels of spending on arms are seen as one of the main causes of poverty in Africa. A report by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) reveals that in 1999 African nations received £52 million worth of arms in deals with British firms. That figure rose to £125.5m in 2000 and is set to top £200m next year.” Observer, 3 February.

Post-combat syndrome

A report in the British Medical Journal claimed that post-conflict symptoms had been suffered long before the Gulf War and stretched back as far as the 1889 Boer War. “They concluded: “Post-combat syndromes have arisen in all major wars over the past century, and we can predict that will continue to appear after future conflicts” . . . The researchers said the best way to tackle the illnesses, which have cost subsequent governments considerable sums in financial assistance, was to better understand their characteristics.” Herald, 8 February. Surely, a much better way to deal with the problem is to abolish capitalism, the cause of modern warfare. No conflict = no post-conflict syndrome. You don’t need to be a trained medical researcher to work that one out.

 

Voice From The Back: Carpet sales (2004)

The Voice From The Back Column from the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Carpet sales  

The designer and poet William Morris was a committed socialist who had to live with the irony that, although he wanted the abolition of the wages system, the only people who could afford his carpets, tapestries and furniture were the very rich. The following item in the Independent (6 October) illustrates this. “A William Morris carpet that cost £113 new in 1883 was bought for £193,760 in an auction at Sotheby’s in London yesterday. The flowered design, a synthesis of medieval and eastern motifs, was one of only two examples known with a cream and apricot background. It was made for a house in Holland Park, West London, measuring 17ft 5ins by 13ft 6ins.” £193,000 for a carpet – something to bear in mind when you are looking for a bargain at the January sales!

Embarrassed, moi?

“A giant oil company once headed by Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, used its British subsidiaries to flout American sanctions against Iran . . . Their exports – estimated to be worth more than £30m a year – have continued despite sanctions introduced by the US government nine years ago barring Americans from trading or ‘facilitating business’ with the Islamic state. The new findings will embarrass Cheney, President George W Bush’s running mate in next month’s elections. Cheney has described Iran as ‘one of the world’s most dangerous regimes’” (Times, 17 October). He “earned” $44m during his tenure at Haliburton, continues to collect deferred compensation of $150,000 a year and owns $18m in share options. The gap between political rhetoric and economic reality has never embarrassed hypocrites like Cheney.

Dying for work

A TV programme entitled ‘Britain’s Secret Shame’ (BBC, 3 November) illustrated the extent of corporate manslaughter in this country. It reported that about 250 workers die at work every year due to the negligence of their employers. Prosecutions rarely take place, convictions are even rarer, and then it is usually only smaller firms. Attempts to introduce legislation have all failed because the owning class warn the government that more stringent legislation would be too costly. Just another example of how inside capitalism profits are more important than the workers who produce them.

Dying for profit

“Britain’s largest drug company drew up a secret plan to double sales of the controversial anti-depressant Seroxat by marketing it as a cure for a raft of less serious mental conditions, the Observer can reveal today. The contents of the 250-page document have alarmed health campaigners who accuse the firm, GlaxoSmithKLine (GSK) of putting profits before therapeutic needs by attempting to broaden the market for the drug which has been linked to a series of suicides . . . Concerns about the addictive properties of Seroxat saw the government ban its prescription to people under the age of 18 last year. This followed a review which found children taking it were more likely to self-harm or commit suicide” (Observer, 7 November). It seems the company were attempting to move sales from $1 billion to $2billion by pushing it to people who were not clinically depressed. When there is money like this to be made even the “respectable” shareholders become murderous drug pushers.

Dying with poverty

Under the headline ‘Desperate plight of cancer sufferers living in poverty’ (Times, 9 November) reported as follows: “At least three quarters of the million Britons with cancer suffer from financial hardship brought on by the disease, including enforced job losses, discrimination and poor benefit allowances, according to research. A report by Macmillan Cancer Relief suggests that the disease costs patients hundreds of millions of pounds, for which they have little or no financial cover.” Needless to say this poverty only applies to the working class, as those capitalists unfortunate enough to suffer from the disease have at least the consolation that they will receive the best of care and that their families will not suffer financially.

Who cares?

Twenty years ago an explosion at the chemical factory in Bhopal in central India killed more than 15,000 people, and survivors are still trying to cope with the effects of this horrendous disaster. “Yesterday, half a million people who were in the path of the lethal cloud that spewed out of the chemical plant received a second compensation payment of £300 to £1,200” (Times, 13 November). This is in addition to a first payment of £500 per person from the company responsible Union Carbide. Dow Chemicals, who now own Union Carbide, refuse to clean up the site which still holds 25,000 tons of toxic waste. Another example of capitalism’s priorities. Make a couple of bucks, kill 15,000 and leave an area full of children who have difficulty breathing and are painfully dying, who cares? Socialists do.

"Capitalism just cannot come to terms with the necessity of meeting human needs." (1993)

From the November 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Voice From the Back: The benefits of globalisation (2001)

The Voice From the Back column from the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The benefits of globalisation

“With a “catastrophe” in the world’s trade and many growers facing starvation, a leading coffee buyer appealed to the International Coffee Organisation in London yesterday for a tax of $1 on a 50kg bag to save farmers . . . “It is a huge and wealthy industry, yet the beans are grown almost entirely by very poor people who receive hardly anything for their labours.” . . . Prices have halved to $75 a bag this year, mainly because of a World Bank-financed drive to plant coffee in Vietnam. Production has risen from 4m bags to 16m. Big firms, including Nestle, Procter & Gamble and Sara Lee, which owns Douwe Egberts, have kept prices up to benefit shareholders while the price to growers has halved.” Guardian (27 September). The rich get richer and the impoverished producers get poorer. Sound familiar? The answer isn’t a $1 tax but the complete transformation of society from one based on production for profit to one based on production solely for use.

Futile reforms

“The recovery of the ozone layer could be delayed significantly because the chemicals produced to replace those banned in the Montreal Protocol are proving equally damaging and are not controlled by international law, the UN Environment Programme reported.” Times (17 October). Another example of how reforms often don’t solve the problems of capitalism and another reason to get rid of it.

Save the children

During October the charity organisation Save The Children mounted a massive publicity drive to raise funds. According to their appeal “Around the world today, one in four children live in poverty – poverty serious enough to blight their lives just as they are beginning. Poverty can leave children without enough food to eat, rob them of the chance to go to school and force them into poorly paid work – vulnerable to adult abuse and exploitation.” How abusive can be gauged by the experience of a nine year old who worked for two years as a sari embroiderer, fell sick, was sent home and was paid nothing for 2 years work. The charity’s solution – send £3 a month! If only these well-meaning people would look beyond the effects of poverty to its cause we might really be able to save the children.

Same old Tories

Anyone who thought that two crushing electoral defeats would change the core policies of the Conservative Party can rest assured that the old Tory Party is sticking by its principles – support the rich against the poor. The columnist Matthew Parris writing in the Times (10 October) on their annual conference illustrated that very well when he observed: “The Shadow Chancellor, Michael Howard, railed yesterday against a Government he accused of leaving people to die in the queue for heart treatment – and was met with stony silence. Then he scolded the Government for cheating the shareholders of Railtrack – and was greeted by applause.”

Land of the free?

It reads like an Orwell-inspired dystopia, a nightmarish piece of fiction, but it is a recent letter to the editor of a mass circulation magazine. It reveals the frightening mind-set of some workers scared by the World Trade Towers disaster. Capitalism breeds paranoia and xenophobia, but even by capitalism’s standards the following is pretty scary stuff. “Our people must take an active part in the vigilant protection of our country. Civilians must assume roles in our civil defense as block watchers, neighborhood police, campus observers and providers of information to authorities about those who act suspiciously or who voice anti-American opinions.” Patrick Grant, New York City. Time Magazine (15 October).

More waste makers

Many years ago in his book The Waste Makers, Vance Packard wrote about “planned obsolescence”; the artful dodge of manufacturing products that needed to be replaced all the time. Some 40 years later we have the perfect example of this in the music business. Concerned about the misuse and selling on of the latest singles released to music executives for compiling play lists, the ingenious boffins of the music business have come up with a cunning ploy. “Tornado, the distributor of digital media products, has found a way of making Mission Impossible come to life. It has designed a voice recording that self-destructs after it has been played.” Sunday Times (7 October). There is no limit to the ingenuity of capitalism when it comes to protecting profits. Inside socialism, human inventiveness will be used for something more important than Mission Impossible recordings.

Classless society?

In his recent book Almost Like A Whale the geneticist Steve Jones comes up with some figures on land ownership that would seem to contradict those who argue that we live in a classless society where the barriers of ownership have been broken down. “Half the private land in Scotland is owned by three hundred and fifty people (in a country where half the population has no landed property at all); and the greatest proprietor of all, at a quarter of a million acres, is the Duke of Buccleuch. The Duke’s lesser titles include a couple of Earldoms, a Barony or two – and the Lordship of Eskdale”

Voice From the Back: A Society of contrasts (2008)

The Voice From the Back column from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Society of contrasts

Everywhere you look today the contradictions of capitalism become more and more obvious. Great wealth alongside great poverty, starvation amidst plenty and a technology that makes space travel possible yet is unable to stop the destruction of war. Two recent examples of the obscenity of capitalism leapt from the pages of the media recently. “Caviar House & Prunier, on Piccadilly, has taken delivery of the Almas, a rare golden caviar once reserved for the Tsars of Russia. Despite the price – £920 for limited edition 50g tins – the shop claims a four-year waiting list.” (Times, 19 August) “The price of rat meat has quadrupled in Cambodia this year as inflation has put other meat beyond the reach of poor people, officials said on Wednesday. With consumer price inflation at 37 percent according to the latest central bank estimate, demand has pushed a kilogram of rat meat up to around 5,000 riel (69 pence) from 1,200 riel last year.” (Yahoo News, 27 August) Does this system not disgust you? We must abolish it.

Marx and modernity

Away back in 1867 Karl Marx in Das Capital explained how the so-called primitive accumulation of capital was based on robbery and murder. In Peru today a similar process is taking place. In Britain we had the highland clearances and the enclosure acts, in Peru it is the expulsion of the indigenous population. “Peru is considering sending in the army to break up protests by Amazonian Indians who claim the government is preparing a massive land grab in the country’s remote jungles. … The government has responded to an appeal for talks by declaring a state of emergency in three states and threatening protesters with military action. “Indigenous people are defending themselves against government aggression,” said an Amazon Indian rights campaigner, Alberto Pizango. “This is not an ordinary or everyday demonstration. The Indians have told us they are not afraid. If the government declares a state of emergency they prefer to die there and show that this government violates human rights.” Relations between indigenous groups and the President Alan Garcia have become increasingly hostile as the government has sought to exploit what are thought to be rich oil and gas deposits in lands owned by Amazon Indians. Energy companies have pushed deep into supposedly protected areas in the past year, leading to clashes with some of the most remote tribal peoples left in the world.” (Independent, 21 August)

US gap widens

Socialists often meet with the argument that while capitalism may have been a terrible system in the past, with the awful gap between rich and poor, today we are gradually improving things and such inequalities no longer exists. So what do the anti-socialists make of these recent statistics? “The rich-poor gap also widened with the nation’s top one percent now collecting 23 percent of total income, the biggest disparity since 1928, according to the Economic Policy Institute. One side statistic supplied by the IRS: there are now 47,000 Americans worth $20 million or more, an all-time high.” (San Francisco Chronicle, 2 September) Eighty years of reform and now the gap is even wider.

Behind the rhetoric

Capitalist statesmen often speak of high ideals like freedom and democracy but behind the high-sounding rhetoric there is usually a harsh reality. A recent example was the US vice-president’s speech in Georgia. “Speaking in Georgia on Thursday, Cheney slammed Russia’s “illegitimate, unilateral attempt” to redraw the country’s borders and promised ongoing support for Georgia’s efforts to join NATO. The Vice President’s trip was accompanied by a $1 billion aid package announced in Washington Wednesday, for the purpose of rebuilding Georgia’s shattered economy and infrastructure. Upon arriving in Azerbaijan on Wednesday, Cheney told the people of that country and their neighbors in Georgia and Ukraine that “the United States has a deep and abiding interest in your well-being and security”.” Fine words indeed, but behind them was a more sordid reason than concern for the well-being of the Georgian citizens. “Vice President Dick Cheney, on a tour of former Soviet Republics, was working to shore up U.S. alliances in the wake of Russia’s military humiliation of Georgia – a mission whose outcome could have profound consequences for Washington’s efforts to maintain and expand the flow of oil and natural gas to the West while bypassing Russia. ” (Time, 4 September)

The Indian Rupee trick 

Many Asian countries are depicted as “third-world” where an undeveloped economy leaves millions starving, but here is an example of an Indian capitalist who has learned the trick of exploiting workers to make a fortune.” Vijay Mallya, the founder and chairman of fast-growing Kingfisher Airlines, launched his first international route yesterday linking Heathrow with India’s IT capital Bangalore – a daily service that puts the carrier in head-to-head competition with BA. …The father-of-three, ranked 476th in Fortune’s list of the world’s wealthiest people, has 26 homes around the world and 260 vintage cars. He made his fortune as chairman of Indian drinks group United Breweries, the Kingfisher-beer owner that last year acquired Scotch whisky maker Whyte & Mackay for £595m.” (Daily Telegraph, 5 September)

New Page: The Last Word Column (1997)

As promised, new pages for the blog. These new pages of old Socialist Standard columns will eventually be grouped together in one page at the head of the blog alongside the pages for the current Socialist Standard columns, film reviews and theatre reviews.

The Last Word was a short lived column that appeared on the back page of the Socialist Standard, replacing the long-running Sting in the Tail column. All the columns were written by Steve Coleman, and were usually illustrated with a Peter Rigg cartoon alongside them. Come January 1998, Voice From the Back took over the back page.

1997

Feb: Trained to kill

Mar: The Madness of King George (and the rest!)

Apr: A tale with two characters and two endings

May: And so to bed

Jun: Praise the Fraud

Jul: Moving statues

Aug: The right to eat landowners

Sep: The Undeserving

Oct: No need for cops and robbers

Nov: Why I am a Socialist

Dec: Why Santa should get stuffed

Women, work and wages (1994)

From the August 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 28 April, a large number of schoolgirls spent the day in various workplaces up and down the land. Not because of a wish on the part of our capitalist exploiters to reintroduce child labour to the UK (although it could be argued that child labour never disappeared) but because a would-be charity called "Taking Our Daughters To Work" wished to "develop a forum whereby negative stereotypes about girls and their abilities are challenged and ultimately destroyed".

In a pamphlet entitled Taking our Daughters to Work: Exploring Tomorrow’s Choices, circulated to schools, employers and trades unions, the organisation argued that, due to social conventions instilled into them from birth, girls regard their career options as more circumscribed than boys do their own. Its aim is to encourage parents, teachers and employers to take schoolgirls aged 11 to 15 into a whole range of workplaces for the day, in order to widen the girls’ employment horizons.

In support of their case, the organisation cited statistics compiled by the Equal Opportunities Commission to the effect that, although women represent 45 percent of the current workforce, they account for less than one-third of managerial and administrative positions; and under 40 percent of professionally-qualified jobs. Over 40 percent of working women have no male colleagues, being employed in female employment ghettos, in what have come to be seen as women's jobs — such as typing and secretarial work, cleaning and catering.

Although this is the first time such a scheme has been attempted in Britain, Taking Our Daughters to Work ran a similar exercise in the USA in 1993, when nearly one million American girls took part. The project was greeted, according to their own literature, with enthusiasm by parents and employers, the media and politicians.

Economic imperative

It is the enthusiasm of employers that is of the greatest significance. No doubt many individual employers, as people, genuinely believe that women should be afforded the same opportunities as their male colleagues. But as managers of profit-making enterprises, they cannot treat the employment of women — or any aspect of Equal Opportunities — in a philanthropic manner. The concept of equal opportunities for women, and any initiative taken to further the concept, must be, and is, examined from the point of view of the gains, or likely costs, for the business in question. This is an economic imperative.

Anyone who doubts that this is so need only consider the question of childcare as an equal opportunities issue. During the mid-1980s — boom years for at least some British industry — considerable gains were made by women’s groups and trades unions campaigning for employer-sponsored childcare facilities. Nurseries sprang up in many areas, subsidised by employers, including those run by government departments and local councils. Employers banded together to run holiday playgroups; or issued childcare vouchers, supplied by a subsidiary company of Luncheon Vouchers Ltd. But in the recessionary 1990s, where the demand for an expanded labour force has gone away in most sectors, many schemes have foundered. Certainly, it is a lot more difficult now for a union to persuade an employer to start any new scheme or to increase its investment in an existing one. Labour is in plentiful supply; there is no longer a pressing business need to attract women, in general, into the workplace, so any benefits to a particular company has very often been outstripped by outlay.

The organisers of Taking Our Daughters to Work have recognised the economic imperative. Knowing that they had to get employer support if their scheme was to get off the ground they argued that "the organisations which recognise the skills potential of women will be the ones that benefit". In fact, they were so anxious to press the economic case for their idea, they fell quickly into the trap of making new stereotypes, to replace the ones that they are try ing to overcome, when they went so far as to say that "research has shown that women . . . are more flexible and adaptable and better at team-working, managing change and networking (than men)".

And it seems that quite a number of organisations have bought the line. Participants in the British scheme in 1994 included the BBC, Body Shop, ICI, the Industrial Society, London Underground and Sainsbury.

Of course, they could easily afford to take part. Although any potential benefits will take a long time to come through, the PR may well be valuable. And the cost of hosting a one-day seminar for a few schoolgirls is minimal. At the same time, a sop is thrown to women’s rights activists; and to those trades unions with a record of campaigning for equal opportunities, usually the white-collar unions and the general unions representing unskilled workers. And it enables businesses to do this without committing them to any further action, such as implementing the terms of the Equal Pay Act.

In 1992, the Equal Opportunities Commission found that women in full-time employment earned 75-79 percent of the average hourly earnings of their male counterparts. Groups like Taking Our Daughters to Work and many others, tend to regard that difference as a matter of discrimination. But it is also helpful, and accurate, to view it as a symptom of the exploitation of working people as a whole.

In any event, attempts to improve the lot of women — as with any attempt to reform capitalism — will meet with no success unless there are sound economic reasons for employers to agree to the particular measure being proposed. To use the childcare example again, a Treasury circular to government departments thinking of making such provision instructs Permanent Secretaries and Chief Executives to "ensure that a childcare arrangement returns value for money to (their) organisation". Ways of doing this include "balancing the savings in recruitment and training that result from retention of staff against the cost of providing the childcare arrangement" (Making a Case for Childcare).

Rate of failure

There are those who argue that the pursuit of Equal Opportunities within capitalism is not reformism per se, but will in fact lead to a real and radical shift in attitudes. This view ignores the rate of failure in the pursuit of Equal Opportunities.

The 1970 Equal Pay Act, as amended, makes different treatment of women over remuneration illegal. Yet the Equal Opportunities Commission figures quoted above make it quite clear that this very direct form of discrimination is still prevalent. And of course the campaign for equal pay did not begin in 1970. The Women’s Trade Union League was campaigning for fair treatment on pay, as on other matters, in the early 1900s.

Similarly, in spite of various employment acts, the 1976 Sex Discrimination Act, and the EC Equal Treatment and Equal Pay Directives, a 1994 report of the Office of Science and Technology states that girls accounted for just 22 percent of Physics A-level passes in England and Wales in 1991, 36 percent in Maths and 41 percent in Chemistry. Where women do opt for scientific subjects in Higher Education, the bulk read medicine or a biological science. Those going for other sciences or engineering are still heavily outnumbered by men. And in the engineering industry in 1990, 75 percent of clerical positions were occupied by women, against only 20 percent of administrative and professional posts, and a mere five percent of scientists and technologists jobs (The Rising Tide: A Report on Women in Science, Engineering and Technology, Office of Science and Technology, 1994).

The prime aims of the women’s liberation movement can be identified as a redivision of domestic labour and childcare, an end to the idea of "women’s work", an end to women’s dependence on men, and changes to the ideas relating to gender, sexuality and the family. No socialist can possibly argue with the need to achieve these aims. But — given all that has been said above — it has to be concluded that attempts to reform capitalism so as to achieve them are doomed to failure.

In our Declaration of Principles we state that "the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex". If the Declaration had been written in 1994, instead of 1904, we would have substituted "humanity" for "mankind" but the point remains the same. Men and women are not enemies. The exploiting men and women are the enemies of the exploited men and women. Only in a non-parasitical society, where the profit motive has been abolished, can women and men truly be free — and equal.

Paul Burroughs

Voice From The Back: Child’s play (2003)

The Voice From The Back Column from the July 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Child’s play

It sums up the madness of capitalism’s market system that at a time of falling stock exchange prices and the dismal results of fund market experts, we can learn of the following in the Observer, Business Section (25 May). “Despite falling equity prices, a group of schoolchildren from Oxfordshire put the professionals to shame by reaping a 140 percent profit from shares over seven months. The competition, sponsored by ProShare, shows you don’t have to pay through the nose for advice from experts earning six-figure salaries.” It also shows that we live in a mad house society.

Keep taking the tablets

The government’s medical advisers have agreed to hold an independent inquiry into the risks associated with the antidepressants known as SSRIs, or selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. This is the result of reports of suicides among patients taking the medication, as well as users describing nightmares, tremors and feelings of violence. These drugs have been widely prescribed for 10 years, so how come nothing has been done about it? “The Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority, which oversees drug safety, has been criticised for not holding a proper investigation into SSRIs. An earlier expert group had to be disbanded last year after it emerged that some members were shareholders in the companies involved.” The Observer (25 May) Perhaps the following sales figures would tend to colour the shareholders’ findings. The manufacturer Glaxo-Smith Kline has more than £100 million sales a year in the UK alone. What’s a few suicides to shareholders compared to those figures? Truly, capitalism is a sick society.

Band aids for poverty

Almost 20 years ago Bob Geldorf organised “Band Aid” concerts in London and Philadelphia to help the starving millions in Ethiopia. So what is happening in that country today? Local musicians are organising similar concerts to aid the starving. “Aid agencies estimate 14 million Ethiopians are at risk of starvation after the worst drought in nearly two decades. The United Nations said Ethiopia needs 1.5 million tonnes of food aid this year.” Herald (26 May) In 1984 Ethiopia was devastated by a famine which killed one million people. In 2003 we have 14 million at risk of starvation. So much for charity, so much for well-intentioned reformers. What we need is a complete transformation of society not an elastoplast on a gaping wound.

Body parts for sale

Inside capitalism even items that are not produced for sale take on the form of commodities. Thus a man’s honour or a woman’s body are bought and sold. Perhaps the nadir of this commodification is the sale of human body parts. “Organ harvesting for the black market is most prevalent in India, Turkey and Central and Eastern Europe. Kidneys, lungs, pieces of liver, even corneas, bones, tendons, heart valves and skin are all available for purchase. A donor will be paid about £1,500 for a kidney, but a “broker” can expect to make £150,000 for the same organ. An auction of a human kidney on eBay in February 2000 drew a bid of $100,000 before the company put a stop to it.” Times (27 May) CONTRASTS The following two quotations illustrate the strange values of capitalism. “6,ooo children a day die from unsafe water and sanitation – equivalent to 20 jumbo jets crashing every day – according to the UN.” Observer (1 June) Contrast that with the fashion writer Lucia Van Post in The Times (6 June) prattling on about designer handbags. “One I lust after is the Asprey “race companion” – and have done so ever since I first saw a prototype some two years ago. It is a slim pochette, made of lizard skin, with a clasp that makes a nice, crisp, closing sort of noise. It holds not only a purse and mirror, but also a tiny notebook and a pen – perfect. … Not cheap at £1,250, but delicious.” Does the “nice, crisp closing sound” drown out the sound of those 20 jumbo jet loads of childish death whimpers?

Gongs for the gormless

The fiftieth anniversary of the Coronation was marked by the usual nauseating sycophantic brown-nosing of the press and TV. There is one exception in the Independent (5 June) by John Walsh that we think is worth recording here, if only to assure future generations that the world was not completely insane in 2003. “Then Her Madge decided to give knighthoods to Prince Andrew and Prince Edward. Along with being a Duke and an Earl, they’re now Knight Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order. Don’t ask what feats of intrepid public service justified these glamorous rewards (getting the wife pregnant? Womanising on yachts? Playing a lot of golf? Going bald?), because answer is there none.”

Letter: Socialists 'shying away'? (1996)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists 'shying away'?

Dear Editors,

In May’s Socialist Standard Jonathan Clay writes that "evil” has social roots, rather than being some theologically explicable external force ("Dunblane—a Question of Evil?"). Let’s take "evil" as meaning acts of gross inhumanity, and let’s accept this as a sound argument. As capitalism becomes more effective in undermining our essential humanity as states and companies are increasingly free of restraint on their use of our lives for their purposes, then it seems that random acts of "evil" by individuals become more common.

This makes perfect sense to me, and finds an echo in Erich Fromm’s study of "evil"— Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. In this superb work, Fromm reasons that commercial and corporate life produces certain character types who have a tendency towards sadism as a solution to the draining away of meaning and human contact from their lives. It is a commonplace in psychology that such tendencies are more likely to be actively expressed if the person is subjected to pressure, and who can deny that modern capitalism produces an abundance of stress and pressure on everyone subjected to it?

I wonder, however whether Clay's picture might be incomplete in a vital areas of inquiry. There is a sense of omission here for me which feels important, and which is shared, to do Clay credit, by Fromm’s approach. The omission concerns our incomprehension of how antisocial pathology is actually formed in an individual character. Clay put it this way:

"The formation of an individual is on extremely complex, open-ended process which, even will all possible information about that individual at our disposal, can never be adequately grasped."

Is this so, I wonder? We as Socialists certainly feel that we can arrive at, at least, an "adequate” grasp of social mechanisms, in spite of their complexity and opacity. The fact is that there is a body of work available now which shines a good deal of light into the hitherto dark region of enquiry encompassed by the word "evil’’.

John Bowlby’s work on attachment and loss, in which he built upon insights gained through a study of hospitalised children, has given birth to whole field of investigation called Attachment Theory, which is proving fruitful in the understanding of antisocial behaviour and even acts of gross savagery. For example. it shows that violent rage stems from a disrupted attachment in infancy or early childhood, from a breakdown in a carer’s ability to provide a "secure base" for the child, for whatever reason, we are not talking about judgements here, but about explanations.

Experiments carried out by Ainsworth. Mary Main and others show that even among under-five's it is possible to prove a connection between the quality of attunement and boundary setting provided by a parent for an infant, and that infant's behaviour in an observed play setting. The better the connection the parents are able to offer the child, the more the child will play sociably and as an equal with its peers, whereas infants of parents who are neglectful will be disruptive and perhaps bullying. For an excellent overview, expanding and in my view deepening Fromm’s masterpiece, anyone interested might read Felicity De Zulueta's From Pain to Violence—The Traumatic Roots of Destructiveness (Whurr 1993).

Socialists tend to shy away from such work. They fear that it implies the abandonment of societal explanations for personal ones. We think what we hear is—"society isn’t sick— you are!" We are suspicious because we think such thinking is simply the blaming of the powerless for the abuse of the powerful. the shackling of working-class mothers with the responsibility for all the ills of the world.

This is not so. The understanding of the origins of pathology is not the same thing as judging. Under capitalism in many ways adequate parenting can become almost impossible.

Of course suspicion is healthy here. I’m not arguing for the shifting of responsibility from capitalists onto hard-pressed parents, but let us not turn our backs on new thinking which casts light on, not only gross crimes, but also the psychological mechanisms which help to produce our assent for abuse and exploitation.

I want to look at Jonathan Clay’s description of reality under capitalism for a moment He talks of: "Fragmentation, powerlessness. alienation, anxiety and despair, in a world which is chaotic beyond all our attempts at control."

This accurate description of how capitalist society can feel is also a beautiful and harrowing evocation of how it must feel to be a helpless neglected child. Such a child, as an adult, may well feel driven to inflict those unbearable emotions on others now less powerful than himself. Such logic does not excuse his behaviour, but it may well explain it.

All of the foregoing is not intended to blame the powerless or shift the spotlight off capitalist society, but with gaining a better understanding of abuse power, which is, surely, the essence of capitalism. Abusive power masquerading as its opposite.

Clay quotes Camus, saying “Children will still die unjustly, even in a perfect society." Well, maybe we as Socialists have more to offer in illuminating this problem than Jonathan Clay thinks, at least if we can be more open to, and less afraid of. the more intimate "people sciences". To paraphrase him— "Do we really want to understand less?"

Peter Rigg, 

Nelson, Lancs

Voice From The Back: The rat race (2003)

The Voice From The Back Column from the June 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

The rat race

Inside a socialist society we could all engage in useful, productive work with much shorter hours. What a contrast to the rat race of today. “A report by the Mental Health Foundation (MHF) released this week, will say that despite much talk about “work-life balance”, many people are still working 50-60 hours a week and feel their lives are out of control. Work follows us home. The MHF’s study found a correlation between the number of hours worked and the number of hours spent thinking or worrying about work outside working hours. The more you work, the less free time you have and the more of your free time you spend worrying about work” Sunday Times (20 April).

Refugee hypocrisy

According to the Glaswegian (1 May) more than 100 refugees in Glasgow are being forced to return to Afghanistan in line with the government’s policy to slash the number of refugees in the UK by 50 percent. “Sally Daghlian of the Scottish Refugee Council said the Foreign Office was still advising against all non-essential travel to Kabul and against travel to other parts of Afghanistan.” On the one hand the FO is telling refugees it is safe to go back but warning its own citizens to avoid it because it is still war-torn and subject to the ravages of various warlords. Another piece of political vote-catching with no regard for the safety of the workers who are being deported under armed guard.

A double tragedy

A correspondent to the letters page in the Herald (7 May) tells of a terrible personal tragedy. “The cynically named National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) was set up by the Labour Government to ration healthcare. Its guidelines are stringent in the extreme and are binding on all medical practitioners . . . The availability of NHS drugs was the final straw for me in terms of my allegiance to the Labour Party. My 32 years’ link was severed on the death of my wife last year. She was denied the drug Temodal on grounds of cost. This drug could have extended her life and would have most assuredly have lessened her distress in the final three months of it.” If the writer of that letter had been a member of the owning class his wife would have had a less awful existence. It is tragic that this woman died but it is even more tragic that millions of humans are doomed to die because of their lack of money.

Political porkies

Politicians lie; and that is official according to a recent government-funded report. “Politics should be regarded as less like an exercise in producing truthful statements and more like a poker game,” said author Glen Newey, reader in politics at the University of Strathclyde. “And there is an expectation by a poker player that you try to deceive them as part of the game.” . . . “Newey’s report – published by by the government-funded Economic and Social Research Council – adds that not only is lying ‘sometimes justifiable’ where there is a public interest, for instance where national security is at risk, but voters even have a ‘right to be lied to’ about things where they would rather not know what had happened, such as what was done during a war” Observer (18 May).

A leader speaks

Here is one of your leaders speaking. Speaking in the usual doublespeak of political waffle. In this case it is the leader of the Conservative Party, Ian Smith revealing his deep intellectual abilities. “Britain needs a government that understands that more people are left behind when more people are held back. It needs a government that stands back in order for its people to step forward” Times (14 May). Eh?

Another market triumph

Socialists are always being told how wonderful the market system of capitalism is by its supporters, but how do they defend the following? “The catastrophic collapse of the coffee prices – at a 100 year low in real terms – is forcing Latin American farmers to grow coca, the plant from which cocaine is made. Mounting evidence that Peruvian farmers in particular are turning to cocaine to escape from poverty will be presented by Oxfam tomorrow in a crisis meeting of World Bank and European Union officials together with banks, traders and representatives from the 25 million people who depend on coffee production for their livelihood” Observer (18 May).

Voice From The Back: Spaced out (2001)

The Voice From The Back Column from the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spaced out

The US multi-millionaire Dennis Tito returned to earth on 6 May after his trip on a Russian space flight. He paid about $20 million dollars for the privilege; well American capitalists have got to do something with the surplus value that they have extracted from the working class. The awful thing is that while he was away in space for a week the capital that he has invested in the exploitation of the working class made him even richer than he was when he left the planet earth. As he is estimated to have a fortune of $200 million at present that is bloody rich. If every capitalist in the world was given a one way ticket into space, it would make no difference to the wealth produced on this planet, it would of course cut the consumption of wealth quite considerably.

Is democracy ghastly?

The Trade Union movement, in one of its worst moves ever, assisted in the development of the Labour Party. The outcome of that decision is that former railway workers, coal miners and factory hands are calling themselves Lords, dining at the Savoy and discussing the merits of Bollinger ’57 champagne. And are the legions of present and former Labour MPs grateful for the soft living they procured with the help of the TUs? Not a bit of it.

“Teachers unions should end the “ghastly ritual” of their Easter Conferences because they turn off would-be recruits, the chairman of the Commons education committee said last night. Labour MP Barry Sheerman said he was dismayed by the behaviour of some delegates at the National Union of Teachers’ conference in Cardiff, who jeered and held up placards when education secretary, David Blunkett, addressed them.” Guardian 17 April.

Art for cash’s sake

The art world was excited by the re-emergence of a “lost” painting of Claude Monet entitled Haystacks, Last Rays of the Sun. It is a painting that has not been seen in public since 1895. It goes under the hammer at Southeby’s next month and is expected to fetch £5 million. So where has this masterpiece been for over a hundred years? In private hands, where its various owners have kept it safe from the prying eyes of the great unwashed. This is not an unusual fate for artistic works. The very rich, and quite often the very stupid, hoard them under lock and key, often not even looking at them for years on end. These are the people Wilde described as “knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing”. Inside a socialist society all works of art will be available for the public to enjoy, not for millionaires to store in vaults.

Strange bedfellows

The news from Scotland that the Socialist Workers Party will cease to exist and that its 272 members will transfer to the Scottish Socialist Party illustrates the complete lack of principles of both parties. The SSP stand for an independent Scotland, the SWP in the past have always ridiculed this as narrow nationalism. We predict that a battle for supremacy between these two Leninist factions will probably break out in the future. They have certain views in common though. They are opposed to the concept of a class-less, trade-less, money-less society and of course see themselves as the self-appointed leaders of a working class too stupid to get socialism for themselves for “five hundred years”. A plague on both their houses.

Slaughter of the innocents

Capitalism is an awful social system, the old, the infirm and the handicapped are particularly unfortunate recipients of its competitive uncaring nature, but a recent report by the United Nations Children’s Fund shows how terrible is the fate of many children inside capitalism:

“Two million children have been killed by conflict over the last 10 years; 12 million children have been made homeless; six million children have been injured or disabled. Of the world’s 40 million displaced, 20 million are children. Up to 10,000 children each year are killed by landmines” Observer, 6 May.

Situations vacant

From the majestic mountains and glens of Scotland we are delighted to inform our readers of the wonderful career opportunities that are available in Tony Blair’s modern, cool Britannia. “Grouse Beaters wanted. Male and female accommodation. Meals provided. Apply in writing to the Head-keeper, Corrybrough Estate, Tomatin, Inverness-shire IV13 7XY” Herald, 8 May. “Accommodation” AND “meals provided” – Wow! “Near Utopian conditions for the lower orders, your Lordship.” For how long are we going to let these arrogant swine get away with these insults?

Enlightened self-interest

When 39 drug firms dropped their case against South Africa importing cheaper anti-Aids drugs, it was hailed as a victory for humanity over profit. It wasn’t that simple though, because the firms had only bowed to public opinion when it seemed that the import of cheaper drugs into Africa seemed inevitable. The South African government have refused to provide retroviral drugs through the public health system despite this apparent victory. The London-based mining giant Anglo-American is now negotiating with an Indian pharmaceutical company to purchase cheap Aids drugs for its HIV-positive workers in South Africa. An altruistic gesture by big business? Not quite. “Businesses say the pandemic will have a devastating effect on the economy, and research has shown that providing workers with drugs is cheaper than paying for absenteeism, loss of productivity, hospital treatment, funerals, and replacing and retraining staff” Herald, 7 May.

Voice From The Back: Masters of deception (2002)

The Voice From The Back Column from the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Masters of deception

We are led to believe, by the media, that the men and women who make up the government are motivated by the highest moral standards of honesty and decency. So what are we to make of Robert Cooper, a senior British diplomat who wrote the following essay published by The Foreign Policy Centre and reported in the Observer (7 April)? “The postmodern world has to start to get used to double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But, when dealing with old-fashioned states outside the postmodern world continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era – force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself.”

State of the nation?

It is said that clear thinking leads to clear speaking. That clarity of thought is reflected in lucid communication. If that is so, what must the US President’s thought process be like? Here he is reported by Newsweek (22 April) as he tries to communicate something or other. Your guess is as good as ours as to what he is on about: “And so, in my State of the – my State of the Union – or state – my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation – I asked Americans to give 4,000 years – 4,000 hours over the next – the rest of your life – of service to America.” Eh?.

Arms and hypocrisy

The journalist Alex Bell recently gave an update on the British arms trade in the Herald (6 May): “One of those statistics that lodges in the mind and rarely gets revised is the one about Britain being the third largest exporter of arms in the world. Time to update it, as we’re the second largest. In the last twenty years our arms industry has grown by a factor of 10. According to the Institute for Strategic Studies, revenues from the arms trade were more than $5 billion in 2000, or twice as much as France and Germany combined. They were around $500m in the mid-1970s . . . Don’t forget that just as Tony Blair was trying to calm the border dispute in January between Pakistan and India, he was in Delhi trying to flog jets.” So what happened to that much vaunted “ethical foreign policy”?

The childhood destroyer

Capitalism has only one drive – make profits. In that ruthless drive the planet is poisoned by pollution, the rivers and lakes are turned into sewers and human life is stunted, broken and destroyed. Perhaps the greatest indictment of this Frankenstein society is the way it treats the old, the disabled and the most vulnerable group of all the world’s children: “One child in eight has to do work that could harm them physically or mentally, the UN labour agency claimed. Some 246 million children are in unacceptable forms of child labour, with 179 million in hazardous mining, fishing and construction, says the ILO, but 8.4 million children are caught up in slavery, trafficking, forced recruitment for battle, prostitution, and pornography.” Herald (7 May)

Tory braveheart

The Scottish Parliament over the years has illustrated that it can be just as silly as Westminster when dealing with social problems. In a country that has all the usual features of capitalism – poverty, drug addiction and homelessness all this backwoodsman Tory could proffer to the parliament’s deliberations was the following piece of nonsense: “A Tory MSP has lodged a motion in the Scottish Parliament, calling for William Wallace to be officially recognised as a “patriot” before the 700th anniversary of his death in August 1305. Phil Gallie, the Tory constitutional affairs spokesman, said the anniversary of Wallace’s death was an opportunity to ‘right wrong’.” Times (9 May)

God and mammon

According to a recent Church of Scotland report they are losing 17,000 punters a year and, unless this trend is dealt with, they could cease to exist by 2050. So concerned are they about the potential drop in income that the Moderator commissioned a journalist to produce a book entitled Outside Verdict; An Old Kirk in a New Scotland. The author proposes tithing members’ salaries and flogging off manses and overseas churches:. The book states: “There are too many people in the kirk who refuse to think of it as a business, who think that because this money is being used for God’s work, contemporary business practice need not apply.” Sunday Times (12 May). But isn’t it also the business of the Church to tell gullible workers on a Sunday morning not to thirst after the material things of this world, to be content with their lot and look for their reward in the next world?

Voice From The Back: Profits And Oily Words (2006)

The Voice From The Back Column from the December 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Profits And Oily Words

You have seen advertisements by oil companies that express concern for the environment and claim they fight global warming. It is of course a fraud. “Britain’s leading scientists have challenged the US oil company Exxon-Mobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change. In an unprecedented step, the Royal Society, Britain premier scientific academy, has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have “misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence.” (Guardian, 20 September) Capitalists are only interested in profits, they don’t give a damn about your children or their children’s future. That is capitalism.

A Toxic Society

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimate at least 90,000 people die every year of asbestos related diseases but that didn’t stop the manufacture of the obnoxious material. “Chrysotile asbestos, a known human carcinogen, will remain off a global “watch list” of toxic substances for at least two more years after countries led by Canada blocked consensus in United Nations talks on Friday. … Canada, whose French-speaking Quebec province is a major asbestos producer and exporter, led opposition to its addition to the list, according to environmentalists tracking the talks. Canadian officials say puting chrysotile asbestos on the list would be tantamount to banning international trade in it and threaten jobs.” (Yahoo! News, 13 October) 90,000 deaths a year is a mere inconvenience compared to a couple of bucks for the owning class who make their money from death and disease. That is why we are socialists, also some of us once worked in shipyards, where they used asbestos, and we have difficulty breathing.

Cut Price Killers

“BP, the British oil group, had a “check-book mentality” towards safety and was aware of maintenance backlogs and unsafe equipment at its Texas City refinery years before the fire there in 2005 in which 15 workers died, according to findings from US safety officials. .. Safety was compromised by a succession of budget cuts … The company implemented a 25 per cut on fixed costs between 1998 and 2000 which adversely affected maintenance expenditure at the refinery.” (Times, 31 October) In order to compete inside capitalism firms are constantly trying to cut overheads. In this case leading to the death and injury of many workers. That is how capitalism operates. Nasty aint it?

Gangster Talk

The recent electoral losses of the Republican Party in the USA have led to the Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quitting his post. His political demise led to newspapers running articles on him. Here are a couple of his past statements that were quoted. “Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war” and “You get a lot more with a kind word and a gun than you do with a kind word alone.” (Times, 9 November) It is significant that this last statement of Runsfeld was a quote from the gangster Al Capone. We can understand why a US Defence Secretary would have admired a murderous gangster chief, after all they both lived in a capitalist society based on violence.

Bull In A China Shop

The media mogul Rupert Murdoch has been making strenous efforts to break in to the Chinese market, but in 1993 he made a mess of it by stating, “Advances in the technology of telecommunications are an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere.” The Chinese took this threat seriously and imposed strict rules on satellite dishes thus depriving Murdoch’s Star TV of the huge Chinese's potential audience. “The following year Star removed BBC World Television from its Chinese service, in a move that was regarded by many as a sop to the Chinese government.” (Observer, 12 November) Last month Murdoch was in China trying to sweet talk his way in with government officials. When it comes to making money democratic views take a back seat with capitalists like Murdoch. What is suppression of political ideas, imprisonment, torture and death compared with more money to a billionaire? Very little it seems.

An American Myth

Supporters of the profit system often site the USA as a good example of how democratic capitalism really is. They give us the old homily about “log cabin to White House” although today it should probably be “trailer park to White House”. It is of course a complete fallacy as the following item about the recent mid-term election illustrates. “This election proved that it pays to spend big(ger). The average House winner burned through about $1 million on the stump – and the candidate who spent the most won in 93% of House races. The most expensive victory was, oddly, one of the Dems’ safe bets: New York Senator Hillary Clinton, who won a second term with 67% of the vote – and $35.9 million.” (Time, 20 November) Forget the myths, for a lot of Americans it is “trailer park to trailer park”.

Voice From The Back: Californian Nightmare (2007)

The Voice From The Back Column from the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Californian Nightmare

The dreadful fires in California that led to death and destruction were well reported in the British press, but what was hardly covered was the plight of the immigrant workers. “Out of the burning brush, from behind canyon rocks, several immigrants bolted toward a group of firefighters, chased not by the border police but by the onrush of flames from one of the biggest wildfires this week. … Immigrants from south of the border, many illegal, provide the backbone of menial labor in San Diego, picking fruit, cleaning hotel rooms, sweeping walks and mowing lawns. The wildfires, one of the biggest disasters to strike the county, exposed their often-invisible existence in ways that were sometimes deadly. The four bodies were found in a burned area in southeastern San Diego County, a region known for intense illegal immigration. …Terri Trujillo, who helps the immigrants, checked on those in the canyons, urging them to leave, too, when she left her house in Rancho Peñasquitos ahead of the fires. Ms. Trujillo and others who help the immigrants said they saw several out in the fields as the fires approached and ash fell on them. She said many were afraid to lose their jobs. ‘There were Mercedeses and Jaguars pulling out, people evacuating, and the migrants were still working,’ said Enrique Morones, who takes food and blankets to the immigrants’ camps. ‘It’s outrageous.’ Some of the illegal workers who sought help from the authorities were arrested and deported.” (New York Times, 27 October) What a comment on capitalism, some workers live in such poverty and insecurity they give up their lives in an attempt to keep a menial weekly wage.

Wall Street Shuffle

We are always being told that capitalism is a competitive system that rewards success and punishes failure, but what are we to make of the following? “Merrill Lynch’s directors may be weighing E. Stanley O’Neal’s future, but one thing is already guaranteed: a payday of at least $159 million if he steps down. Mr. O’Neal, the company’s chairman and chief executive, is entitled to $30 million in retirement benefits as well as $129 million in stock and option holdings, according to an analysis by James F. Reda & Associates using yesterday’s share price of $66.09. That would be on top of the roughly $160 million he took home in his nearly five years on the job. Under Mr. O’Neal, Merrill moved aggressively into lucrative businesses like the packaging of subprime mortgages and other complex debt securities. …But those big bets appeared to go bust this week. Merrill announced an $8.4 billion write-down, raising questions about whether Mr. O’Neal will keep his job. One thing that he surely will hold onto, though, are the giant paychecks he has collected. ‘I lay the blame at the foot of the board,” Frederick E. Rowe Jr., a money manager and president of Investors for Director Accountability. “He was paid a tremendous amount of money to create a loss that is mind-boggling, and he obviously took risks that should never have been taken.’” (New York Times, 27 October) He managed to lose $8.4 billion for the company and can claim $159 million for his efforts. Who says capitalism isn’t crazy?

This Is Communism?

“The United States has more billionaires than any other country: 415 by the last count of Forbes magazine. No. 2, and closing fast? China. A year ago, there were 15 billionaires in China. Now, there are more than 100, according to the widely watched Hurun Report. Forbes has documented 66. ..As much as the bounty of billionaires is a source of pride, it is also a potential cause for concern in a nominally Communist country. Per capita income in China is less than $1,000 a year.” (New York Times, 7 November) China is a fast developing capitalist country and just like any other capitalist economy the gap between the rich and the poor is immense.

Chinese Statistics

One of the effects of the rapid expansion of Chinese capitalism is the pollution of the atmosphere and drinking water. This has led to these horrendous statistics. “40% – Percentage by which birth defects among Chinese infants have risen since 2001, according to a government report, which linked the rise to environmental pollution. 460,000 – Number of Chinese who die prematurely every year from exposure to pollution and dirty water.” (Time, 12 November) This expansion may be leading to the creation of more billionaires, but it is also producing more corpses.