Remember Panama? (1991)

Book Review from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Panama: Made in the USA. By John Weeks and Phil Goodman. Latin America Bureau. £4.99.

This is a timely reminder of President Bush’s hypocrisy in denouncing Saddam Hussein for “violating international law” with his invasion of Kuwait. The previous such violation had occurred in December 1989—when Bush ordered 24,000 US troops to invade Panama, capture its dictator and install a friendly puppet regime.

Panama, in fact, has in common with Kuwait the fact of being artificially created by an imperialist power in pursuit of its economic and strategic interests. Just as Kuwait was set up by Britain in 1899, so Panama was created by the US in 1903 as a breakaway from Colombia to provide a client state that would allow it to build—and then completely control—the Panama Canal. Ever since, as described in this booklet, the US has done what it liked there.

Blogger's Note:

An unsigned book review - which is annoying - but there's an outside chance it was written by Philip Bentley, who was known to review books published by the Latin American Bureau. 

The total spending chart (see above) appeared directly below the review in the original Standard, so I'm presuming it was in some way connected to the book review. 'Presuming' is a bit of a stretch. 

South African domination (1986)

Book Review from the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Apartheid's Second Front: South Africa's War Against Its Neighbours by Joseph Hanlon. (Penguin 1986).

As South Africa once again dominates the news, Hanlon's study provides a valuable addition to the analysis of the situation that exists there. South Africa's aim of domination within this area involves a mixture of military, political and economic action against its neighbours to create a buffer for the system of apartheid. South Africa's destabilisation policy has involved it in a war which has not hit the headlines but which has since 1980 "cost more than 100.000 lives and £10,000 million, and has made at least one million people homeless". This is part of the nightmare of South Africa. The aim of the war is to force dependency on South Africa by undermining the effectiveness of the economic organisation of the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC). Victims of that destabilisation have included Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi and Angola. South Africa also sees itself as a crusader against what it believes to be the rising tide of "Marxism" and for this reason it is prepared to back Unita forces opposed to Angola's so-called Marxist government. Lesotho and Swaziland are totally surrounded by South Africa and use the rand as their currency Along with Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland are also part of the customs union with South Africa. This is a system administered by South Africa in which there is free flow of goods within the four states with high tariffs on imports. Effectively this ensures South African domination because most businesses are located in South Africa and the high tariff rates necessitate purchase of goods from South Africa. SADCC attempts to relieve this reliance on South Africa by an integrated development including coordination and transport but all the neighbouring states are still integrally linked to South Africa. One aspect of this dependence can be seen in energy. South Africa is energy deficient but it still dominates. Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland purchase all petroleum products from South Africa which also supplies significant amounts to Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia even though that oil is as much as 50 per cent dearer than world market prices. Similarly about 50 per cent of SADCC imports and exports go through South Africa although this is partly guaranteed by the fact that South Africa has bombed Angolan and Mozambiquan railways so that they could not carry traffic to and from ports in those countries.

The benefits to the South African ruling class of its destabilisation policy are fourfold. They ensure "security" insofar as they involve punitive attacks against ANC bases and escalate the notion of an outside threat. The creation of chaos and instability in neighbouring states allows South Africa to claim that alternatives to the apartheid system are less successful economically. The fact of economic dependence does not permit of a more aggressive policy against South Africa. Chaos elsewhere also makes South Africa appear as a bastion of stability in an economically backward area. Hence they can cry out against sanctions because, as Hanlon argues. “P. W. Botha talks of South Africa bringing 'salvation' to the neighbouring states, and of the west preventing this by actions against apartheid". The irony is that South Africa claims that it is being destabilised by the actions of its neighbours, by supporting the ANC and calling for boycotts and sanctions. It also justifies South Africa's destabilisation programme as retaliation. This includes arming rebels in Mozambique, Angola, Lesotho and Zimbabwe and cutting food supplies, as in Mozambique, Zambia and Lesotho in order that the indigenous populations would direct their frustrations at the individual governments. There have also been varied economic destabilisation tactics that have included limiting access to South Africa's railways, restricting migrant labour, closing borders, curbing imports, regulating exports and cutting electricity. This ensures South Africa's regional dominance, making the neighbouring states "a buffer against sanctions — just as Pretoria hopes to make them a barrier against liberation movements" This is why South Africa is opposed to SADCC which would free the neighbouring states from such reliance.

South Africa sees itself as the regional power of Southern Africa in the same way that USA operates in Latin America and USSR in Eastern Europe. Its incursions into neighbouring territories have been many and as Hanlon points out "commandos have raided seven of the neighbouring capitals and tried to assassinate two prime ministers". Only Malawi and Tanzania have escaped military insurgence. South Africa funds Unita, Mozambique National Resistance, the Lesotho Liberation Army and dissidents in Matabeleland in Zimbabwe. This adds to the claim that majority rule does not work.

There has been verbal support for SADCC from USA. Britain and West Germany but these countries have been less favourable to the notion of breaking with South Africa. Actual support for SADCC has come from countries without substantial investment in South Africa and have included Scandinavia, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium, while the USA, Britain and West Germany are more concerned about "their existing investments. markets and sources of minerals" in South Africa. Destabilisation may be a short term answer to South Africa's paranoia but it requires markets for its products and chaotic economies are not such markets. Developing capitalism in South Africa will bring divisions based on class rather than racial differences and a population capable of acting as a market. Hanlon's argument is that, although limited in their effect, sanctions, boycotts and disinvestment should be pursued against South Africa. Sometimes this is a facade pursued by countries, as is the case with Japan who bans investment but allows licences and technology transfer "so Japan is now South Africa's second largest trading partner and Japanese firms have 40 per cent of the South African market". For Britain and USA there has been a reluctance to impose sanctions, not that this is a point of principle (USA has wide ranging sanctions against Poland and Britain has done the same to Argentina). Hanlon argues that Britain must be prepared to suffer as a result of imposing sanctions and that this is a moral question. For Hanlon it is also a belief that this might constitute a long term investment for future majority rule might not look favourably on a Britain that was unwilling to take up such a moral stance There has been a high price to pay and SADCC in its report to OAU in mid 1985 said that between 1980 and 1984 destabilisation cost SADCC member states a total of £7,000 million as a result of war damage, higher transport costs, sanctions imposed by South Africa, production and export losses and caring for the many refugees. SADCC calls for sanctions even at the risk of its own suffering. The case that sanctions against South Africa will cause harm to the "frontline" states is the latest that South Africa has created to ensure its continued existence. It forces dependency as an act of calculated cynicism. Hanlon's answer is to replace one form of exploitation by another in the hope that capitalism without South Africa and apartheid will be an improvement. The dilemma for capitalism is the extent to which South Africa can survive with limited markets. For western capitalism the question of sanctions is one in which vested interests must be weighed against the possibility of future interests. In these economic arguments morality has a very minor role to play As for the majority black community they are merely the pawns calling for a voice in a world of rival capitalist interests.

Philip Bentley

Acid Rain (1987)

Book Review from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Acid Rain by Fred Pearce,  Penguin (Harmondsworth, 1987)

Acid rain kills trees, eats away at stone, brick, paper and rubber, kills soils and fish and humans. This study attempts to explain how acid rain affects the environment and what causes it. It is not a new phenomenon for, as Pearce points out, the London pea soup fog of 1952 that killed some 4,000 people contained "water droplets. . . nearly as acid as the water in a car battery". The problem is exacerbated by the complexity of the chemical reaction. Ozone is formed in sunlight from hydrocarbons and nitrogen dioxide. It damages trees and acts as an irritant to human lungs. Ozone also helps in the conversion of gases to acid rain. We have begun to understand how the chemical soups are formed and we also have the technology to deal with that problem. The question is whether the political and economic will exists to carry out the necessary measures.

There has been much talk of acid rain but the actual extent of the environmental consequences are perhaps less well known. Sixty seven per cent of Norway's lakes have lost their stocks of brown trout during the century. Much of the poisoning emanates from the world's largest concentration of coal-fired power stations in a 20 kilometre stretch of the Aire valley. Drax, Eggborough and Ferrybridge combined pump out 600,000 tonnes of sulphur dioxide each year. The problem is not restricted to the interchange between Britain and Scandinavia. West Germany exports 500,000 tonnes of sulphur each year — and receives about the same amount. There is also as much nitrogen dioxide in circulation, from the many cars on which our transportation system is reliant. Sulphur dioxide is converted to sulphuric acid while nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide are converted to nitric acid. Nitrogen oxides are also a key ingredient in the formation of ozone. Such acids are no respecters of national frontiers:

Around 17 per cent of the acid that falls on Norway comes from Britain. About 20 per cent of that falling on Sweden comes from Eastern Europe. It leaps oceans, too. Perhaps five per cent of the add falling in Europe has blown across the Atlantic from North America (p. 23)

Britain has made strides in reducing sulphur emissions mostly through the Clean Air Acts. The pea soup fogs no longer happen. The dominant players in the league table of filthy air are now East Germany, Czechoslovakia. Poland and Russia. As an example 20 per cent of Polish people live in areas with sulphur dioxide levels in excess of permitted government levels (which are in any case four times higher than levels set in the USA.) Sunshine levels in Cracow have been reduced from an average of five hours a day in 1945 to about three hours at present. Twelve per cent of East Germany's forests are now damaged by pollution. We are fully aware of the extent to which acid is capable of eating into buildings. Marble is converted by acid into gypsum which is washed away by rainfall. The problem of attaching a price to aesthetics and history is an additional complication. Another estimate has suggested that the medieval glass of Europe may "disappear within a generation". At a more basic level the corrosion of Britain's water-mains is being exacerbated by the action of acidic water. More frighteningly the action of acidic water has attendant consequences. Pearce says of Scotland that:

Millions of people live in areas where the public water supply comes from reservoirs where the water is soft and acid, partly because of acid rain. This water scours the lead from the old lead pipes and tanks that are still found in millions of homes in Scotland and all over Britain. The lead, in a highly digestable form, comes out of the tap. (p.87)

A study by the Greater Glasgow Health Board in the early 1980s pointed out that some ten per cent of all new born babies in Glasgow had more lead in their blood than was considered safe for adults. Lead drunk by mothers is able to cross the placental barrier and so accumulate in the foetus. The more obvious consequences of this process can be still births or children born mentally retarded. The intention is that by 1990 British water will be dosed with lime to counteract the acid. There are also unknown elements such as aluminium washed from soil by acid rain. At present parts of Birmingham. Manchester and South Yorkshire are among areas whose aluminium tap water content is greater than European Community limits.

The damage to European trees has been well documented although there are still arguments over the actual mechanism whereby the damage takes place. West Germany's fir trees have an 87 per cent damage classification with some two thirds considered by foresters to be in the most severe categories. It ought not to be forgotten that food crops are also sensitive, in particular to ozone which has become more widespread in the past ten years. Damage to plants can occur with ozone levels of 50 parts per billion (ppb). In the summer of 1976 (notable for its heat — a prime ingredient in ozone production) levels of 200-260 ppb were recorded. For a factory worker 80 ppb is considered the safety margin for working. A main contributor to ozone is the car with its emissions of nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons. A possible consequence will be that the ozone will act as a "greenhouse", absorbing the sun's radiation and acting as a thermal blanket.

The traditional response to any pollution problem is the concept of disposal through dilution. It is compounded by two attitudes, that of the cheapskate and the optimist. The cheapskate says that there is a mass of water and air and so anything deposited will become insignificant by dilution. The optimist adds that if a problem should occur some future generation will have the technology to deal with it. To add credibility to these attitudes the role of the scientific vacillators is necessary. They propound other theories and hypotheses in order to confuse or more importantly to deny the facts of any one perspective. This suits capitalism well for it means that it need not invest excessive resources in dealing with a problem that is not fully accepted or understood. Ironically there are occasional reversals of the pollution syndrome. During the early years of the Thatcher administration the decline in manufacturing led to a 25 per cent reduction in the amount of sulphur dioxide put into the atmosphere although the CEGB estimate a 30 per cent rise by the end of the century- Such hiccups merely hide the reality of what is taking place:

Today there is more pollution than ever before. It is chemically much more reactive. And its reach has extended from the industrial heartlands of the continent to the most remote comers. There are no refuges. Nowhere is untainted. (p. 128)

The British Electricity Authority stated in 1954 that sulphur dioxide was one of the most harmful of all pollutants. The response has been a recognition of the need for flue gas desulphurisation but this was replaced by the building of big chimneys. Britain has still not been prepared to join the 30 per cent club (those nations committed to a 30 per cent reduction in sulphur dioxide emissions) although a programme of flue gas desulphurisation is to be undertaken. Sulphur dioxide can also be reduced by burning low sulphur coal. Such coal can be found in Scotland and South Wales where British Coal appears to be closing mines as fast as possible. This inconsistency is a direct consequence of the economic demands of capitalism.

We live in a society of misconceived priorities. How do we attach values to the alternative demands of trees, crops, fish, humanity, architecture? The profit system puts all at risk because the treatment of one issue must be made at the priority cost of profit. Even if we deal with sulphur dioxide it is probable that nitrogen oxides will be a greater danger and. in any event the faster growing problem. This will be the next debate for the vacillators. In the meantime the waste remains and kills.

Philip Bentley

Not Peru's failure (1985)

Book Review from the June 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peru: Paths to Poverty by Michael Reid  (Latin American Bureau, London, 1984).

Peru’s prominence in the modern world began with a period of boom in the nineteenth century based on the export of guano. Its economy has always struggled and as early as 1879, after attempting to pay off foreign loans by printing money, it declared itself bankrupt. The pattern that gradually emerged was one in which power came increasingly to be held by a small proportion of the population with interests in sugar and mining. It was also dominated by foreign capital, particularly American, and this trend continued until General Velasco took power in 1968.

The Velasco government, a military regime, expanded the role of the state in the economy through a series of nationalisations and takeovers of foreign and oligarchic enterprises. This was done partly out of fear that the poverty of the population might lead to insurrection, but more importantly represented a transfer of economic power from one section of capitalists to another. Reid sees this as radical and contrary to "capitalist orthodoxy” but does not explain how either process would have been beneficial or detrimental to the interests of workers. In the event, the interests of private capital were rejected in favour of a state controlled economy, although there were those who criticised the government "under the banner of anti-communism” (p.54). Such propaganda merely feeds the confusion over what is essentially a conflict between state and private capitalism and it is a fault of this work that it tends to be descriptive rather than analytical.

By 1974 the Peruvian economy was suffering the effects of economic stagnation and the government responded by printing money and taking on board foreign loans. In 1975 it began cutting wages to reduce the budget deficit, restricted public investment and devalued the currency. Reid provides a clear picture of the increasing poverty of most of the population as government spending on health and education was cut but arms purchases from abroad were increased. Popular protest continued to be met with repression.

Under Fernando Beluande in 1980 there was a transfer of resources to private ownership and a series of mini-devaluations to maintain the international competitiveness of Peruvian exports. Peru continued to fund state spending by foreign loans and printing money but by 1983 the former had dried up and the country was entrenched in a deep recession. As usual, those who suffered most were the impoverished majority. The government equated strikes with the subversion of democracy and the failure of the system to satisfy human needs was covered up by blaming those who suffer its consequences the most. Within Peru the unions have become ineffectual and this pinpoints the weakness of trade unionism as a means of coming to terms with capitalism.

The book does not explain why capitalism has failed to fulfil the Peruvian people's needs or even offer a practical alternative. The main response described by Reid is Sendero Luminoso, which seeks violent insurrection and a "rejection of the capitalist money economy in favour of barter” (p. 109). It also rejects modern technology as a tool of imperialist penetration and desires a return to some "golden age” before the advent of capitalism. What is really needed is a strategy of revolutionary transformation of society. Peru has failed to generate internal sources of capital development and this has exacerbated its problems at a time of world recession. It is not Peru’s failure, however, but that of world capitalism.

Philip Bentley

Russian empire (1983)

Book Review from the March 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Gerard Chaliand, Report From Afghanistan (Penguin, 1982).

Based on two visits made to Afghanistan in October and November 1980. this report is a condemnation of Russia as “the bloodiest and most deceptive caricature in modern history, a cruel parody of the ideas that supposedly inspire it" (p. 7). Chaliand claims that all peoples have the right to self-determination, as defined by United Nations charter, and that Russia has violated that right.

Afghanistan is the only country outside the Warsaw Pact to have been occupied by Russian troops since the Second World War. Although the justification of the intervention of December 1979 was the threatened collapse of socialism in Afghanistan, the reality is that Russia now guards the Pakistani frontier only a few hundred kilometres from the Indian Ocean and also has a significant presence on Iran’s western border.

Modern Afghanistan was created towards the end of the nineteenth century as a buffer state between Tsarist Russia and the British Empire and has remained since that period largely undeveloped. The rural population is dominated by the mullahs, who have for decades opposed any reform which might threaten their influence or undermine traditional customs. In 1950 Russia and Afghanistan signed an economic agreement whereby Russia would provide sugar, cotton and oil in exchange for wool and raw cotton; $740 million of aid was provided for Afghanistan between 1954 and 1968 and in 1955 the Russo-Afghan Treaty of Neutrality and Non-Aggression was signed. There was the building of an airport at Kabul and a road through the Salang Pass from the Russian border to Kabul (the road used by Soviet troops in 1979). In 1967 Afghanistan and Russia signed a protocol guaranteeing the delivery of Afghan natural gas from 1967-1985.

On 24 April 1978 President Daud was overthrown and executed while attempting to arrest leading members of the Afghan left including Nur Mohammad Taraki, Babrak Karmal and Hafizullah Amin of the Democratic Party of the People of Afghanistan. The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was proclaimed and recognised by Russia on 30 April with Taraki as President. There followed a breakdown between the Khalq and Parcham factions of the Party and hostility to the government from the population. Hafizullah Amin’s secret police and army troops were sent to subdue the resistance. On 27 July 1979 Amin became secretary of the Party and Central Committee and minister of defence. He was also prime minister and overseer of the secret police.

On 10 September Taraki, while visiting Moscow, agreed with Brezhnev to institute a programme of democratic nationalism and to invite the Parcham faction to rejoin the government. They had been ousted from key government posts in July 1978 with Karmal being sent as ambassador to Prague. Meanwhile Amin, who totally controlled the Khalq faction, arranged for the arrest of Taraki on 14 September. Taraki was then executed some weeks later. Amin now became head of state. Repression continued under Amin's rule, as did hostility to his government. The Russian military intervention began on 25 December 1979 and by 27 December Russian troops occupied Kabul. Amin was immediately overthrown and executed and Babrak Karmal was proclaimed president and prime minister.

Opposition to the government continued but Chaliand points out that because of "its leadership organisation, coordination and strategy . . . [it] is one of the weakest liberation struggles in the world today” (p. 47). The opposition is conservative in that it expresses no political alternative other than the retention of traditional customs and religious values. No reforms have been posited other than opposition to government and herein lies its weakness. There is no coordination of strategy among the individual factions which remain regionally based and regionally ambitious.

Chaliand argues that the Russians have not followed the strategy adopted by the Americans in Vietnam and have only sufficient troops to control the cities and principal roads. The strategy is one in which Russia

expects to draw the country into its economic sphere, taking advantage of the unexploited and underexploited natural resources like oil, uranium, chrome, manganese, copper, coal, iron, and semiprecious stones . . . during 1979 and 1980 the Soviets launched a number of economic projects to strengthen the industrial infrastructure of Afghanistan and increase its trade with Russia (p.66)

Opposition has been restricted to sabotaging roads, skirmishes outside forts and fortified villages and terrorist strikes on towns. Chaliand says that the West must recognise that this resistance is one of “a people fighting for their liberty" (p. 71) and that it should be supported. In this he is taking sides in a conflict of interests between rival capitalist spheres of influence.

Afghanistan is seen as a step in Russia's expansion of its empire by conquering neighbouring territories and in that it adds to the "tarnished image of socialism" (p. 76). This is a basic flaw in Chaliand’s argument. His major concern is in drawing attention to the shift of the regional balance in Western Asia away from the interests of Western Europe and America. He calls on the West to challenge Russia whenever and wherever it is necessary for we are entering an era of "open competition and antagonism between East and West” (p. 88). But that competition is not between “tarnished” socialism and free capitalism but between conflicting capitalist interests. Russia may hypocritically claim to have cast off the mantle of Tsarist imperialism but its action in seizing economic and political control of Afghanistan is no less imperialist in its outcome.

Chaliand’s report recognises the cynicism of Russia's position but ascribes that to a corrupted socialism rather than as another manifestation of the Soviet Union’s essential capitalism. To take sides in the conflict between opposing spheres of capitalist interests is to give credibility to the system which generates the very conditions that Chaliand laments. Rather he should emphasise the reality of capitalism at its most cynical; it is manifested in the annexation of Afghanistan.

Philip Bentley

The Great Tin Crash (1987)

Book Review from the September 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Great Tin Crash. Bolivia and the World Tin Market by John Crabtree, Gavan Duffy,  Jenny Pearce.  (Latin American Bureau, London, 1987)

1985 saw the collapse of the world tin market with the price of tin falling from over £8.000 a tonne to less than £4,000 in October alone. A market surplus of tin had been occurring for some years but changes in dollar and sterling exchange rates exacerbated the market collapse. The repercussions were felt in areas as wide apart as Cornwall and Bolivia, where tin miners lost their jobs.

But capitalism takes no account of the human misery it causes as this book makes clear. It quotes Eduardo Galeano as saying that:

Bolivians die with rotten lungs so that the world may consume cheap tin. Tinplate is made from tin and the tin is worth nothing: a half dozen people fix its global price.

Seventy per cent of workers in Bolivia’s state mining company, Comibol, lost their jobs and this in a country where poverty is second only to that in Haiti in the Western hemisphere. Bolivia is a country in debt. It has been estimated that as many as 50 per cent of the population may be unemployed. It is also a country unable to compete effectively — a victim of new technology, of changes in consumption patterns and of economic recession. But the authors of this book also point out that Bolivia is a victim of capitalism, a "system [which] is fundamentally wasteful of the resource which lies at its very foundation: human beings".

But the human tragedies created by poverty are not the concern of the London Metal Exchange which dominates the world metal market. It ensures that consumers are not dependent on a single producer and guarantees a single price for metal of a given type and quality, regardless of source. But the metals market has been subject to the economic recession that has affected all aspects of the world economy. Demand for tin has fallen and so only low-cost tin producers could survive. The International Tin Association attempted to maintain the price of tin by the operation of a stockpile: during periods of shortage tin was released onto the market and during periods when demand was low tin was purchased for the stockpile.

Bolivia is a high cost tin producer and its position has been worsened by competition from Brazil — a major low cost producer — and a fall in the amount of tin sold on the world market due to substitution, technological change and the use of alternative materials for packaging. In addition. Bolivia was more vulnerable because of its dependence on tin production — in 1980 tin made up about 40 per cent of Bolivia's exports — and its generally weak economy. In 1985 the inflation rate was 8,163.5 per cent. The exchange rate fell from 25 peso to the dollar in 1980 to over one million peso in September 1985. In an attempt to stabilise the economy the government froze wages (but not those for members of parliament or the military). It is little wonder that many Bolivians turned to coca cultivation where money could be made preparing cocaine paste for export to USA. The tin miners' response to the wage freeze and the removal of subsidies on food was to organise mass underground hunger strikes. The response of the management at Comibol was to be grateful to be freed from their contractual responsibility to pay wages.

Bolivia's future looks bleak. It will perhaps be able to weather the present crisis because of the informal economy — one estimate suggests that the production of coca has risen to 160.000 tonnes in 1985, enough to produce 437 tonnes of cocaine. But, as with other exports, it is the American sellers who make the profits. Nevertheless it does provide employment, with as many as one in six families engaged in coca production. Meanwhile the Bolivian miners' union. FSTMB. still argues that losses at Comibol have been exaggerated by the government and they reject "the closure of any mine without a prior technical and economic survey", a rearguard campaign not unlike that waged by the NUM in Britain over pit closures. But increasingly the role of the FSTMB has been one of negotiating compensation for redundant miners.

The precarious situation of tin miners in Bolivia is typical of workers in any industrial nation. The FSTMB has long been a thorn in the flesh of the Bolivian government and the present administration of Paz Estenssoro has been happy to see a weakening of the miners' influence. At the same time the competition for employment has turned miner against miner within Bolivia and. internationally, the insecure future of tin mining divides workers between countries.

This book claims that the failure of the rich nations to maintain stable exchange rates and to support the International Tin Council means that they must "bear the considerable responsibility for this hardship". The use of tin is undergoing a profound change and the management of that change is harsh because capitalism permits change to occur regardless of human cost.

 Under capitalism, however, not only are the benefits not shared but the very process of change itself generates losses and hardships to its victims. National agreements in the third world do not have the resources to compensate their citizens for changes in the international division of labour. The tin crash has shown the importance of sharing the costs of a crisis of this dimension equitably, with wealthy consumer nations assuming more of the burden.

Benevolent capitalism, as suggested here, is a pious hope. The authors call for "a more humane and democratic world order" and "a genuine transfer of economic power and wealth". Neither are possible without the abolition of the capitalist system which, they recognise, takes no account of the needs of human beings.

Philip Bentley

Obituary: Pat Bentley (2021)

Obituary from the April 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

After a long illness, sadly our Comrade Pat Bentley died at the beginning of March. Pat, along with her husband Philip Bentley, was an enthusiastic member of Bolton Branch, having joined in 1978. On moving to Shropshire, they remained Bolton Branch members, attending meetings whenever possible. Along with other Bolton members, Pat and Philip later transferred to Manchester Branch, where she continued to attend meetings.

At this sad time, our sympathy goes out to Philip and their daughter Eleanor.

Manchester Branch

Up the arsenal (1983)

Book Review from the December 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Philip Webber. Graeme Wilkinson. Barry Rubin: Crisis Over Cruise: a Plain Guide to the New Weapons (Penguin. 1983).

This study opens by pointing out that during the last 38 years there has been a steady increase in the size, diversity and sophistication of nuclear weapons and that no treaty has been able to arrest that growth. The world now has "the equivalent of over three tons of high explosive for every man. woman and child on the earth" (p. 10). The authors argue that the superpowers attempt to use propaganda in order to secure the tacit approval for nuclear weapons. The issue of cruise missiles has brought about a new fear of the implications of possessing such weapons and therefore thrust the whole question of nuclear arms into the arena of public debate.

The book argues that the development of cruise missiles marks the biggest escalation of the arms race since the development of multiple warheads on ballistic missiles. The major significance of the new missiles is their extreme accuracy and their positioning within Europe. The use of European sites for cruise missiles is also accompanied by the European siting of the new Pershing II ballistic missile. The accuracy of these weapons, according to the authors, is greater than that needed for a specifically deterrent role. At the same time the Russians have developed their most sophisticated missile yet, the SS 20, and have deployed it west of the Urals. These missiles could strike at any part of Western Europe.

The fact that cruise missiles will be under American control is, the authors say. "tantamount to relinquishing national sovereignty" (p.44) and they are keen that such sovereignty be maintained. They also argue that the new missiles are not required because Britain has its own force in Polaris. Polaris, they say, is deterrent enough and any new weapon will pose unacceptable risks of a limited nuclear war and its inevitable conclusion, full-scale nuclear war. The authors argue the case for unilateral disarmament because:

unilateral reductions in nuclear weapons would be a trust-building exercise which could only lead to greater mutual security, (p.54)

The current stance of the British government on nuclear weapons negotiations has two facets. On the one hand it claims to maintain an independent armoury in Polaris (to be replaced by Trident) while adopting Cruise as part of a NATO strategy. It is this, and the nature of the propaganda exercise undertaken by all governments, that hide the facts of the nuclear arms race. While accepting that nuclear arms represent an awesome threat to the future of humanity, it is difficult to draw much comfort from this book which never fully analyses the causes of war. Too much attention is paid to the notion that wars occur as a result of having weapons and manipulating propaganda rather than to economic considerations. The authors do recognise that each superpower is "engaged in a power struggle to maintain its spheres of influence and extend its own interests" (p.64) but do not grasp the implications of this fact. In arguing the case against nuclear weapons the authors even give some credence to the currently popular but facile belief that the retention of weapons and the use of them is primarily a masculine characteristic.

For the future the authors argue that countries should begin to reduce their nuclear arsenals. Given the tremendous overkill of weapons in existence this would not undermine the "deterrent” value of the weapons retained. They would like to sec an "immediate bilateral nuclear weapons freeze" (p.82) and the setting up of a UN agency to control and ensure treaty verification. They argue for a nuclear test ban and the establishment of “a battlefield-nuclear-weapon-free zone in Europe” (p.83). Should we understand the implication of this to be that non-nuclear battlefields are acceptable? They also argue for bans on the development of space weapons, the production of high grade fissionable nuclear material for weapons and a world wide ban on nuclear weapons research and development. It would be interesting to see how this treaty would solve the problems that have beaten previous treaties. In that sense the authors are only offering more radical treaties to the minor ones which have already failed to halt the arms race.

It is only towards the end of the book that the authors go beyond attempting to reform the problems that have occurred as a result of conflicting capitalist interests when they say that:

  ultimate and lasting change can only come through radical changes in perspectives, perceptions and interactions of people on a very individual level which will occur hand in hand with the reorganisation of society and nations on a local and global scale (p.87)

How this is achieved is not discussed in any depth except in terms of changing consciousness. The authors also talk of the need for “revolutionary change" (p.88) but do not explain how such a revolutionary change is to be brought about. They also avoid suggesting on what basis that change will be made. It is not sufficient to talk about revolutionising society unless there is some perception as to how that revolution can be achieved and how the future society will be organised. It is for this reason that, while accepting that the book provides a useful factual description of the new weapons and a concise history of the development of the nuclear arsenal, it provides little in the way of practical advice on how to combat the threat of nuclear annihilation. Taking the issue of Cruise missiles as a reform programme leading to a revolutionary transformation of society is to limit the terms of reference in which a revolutionary programme can be considered. The arms race has occurred as a result of the conflicting interests of rival economic units. To focus attention solely on the nuclear issue is to detract attention from the real problem.

Philip Bentley

Housing division (1988)

Book Review from the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Property Owning Democracy? Housing in Britain. M.J. Daunton (Faber and Faber. London 1987)

In the hierarchy of needs that confronts humanity, housing or shelter is a fundamental requirement. It has been at the forefront of Conservative Party thinking since 1979 as being the so-called right of people to own their own property. This has been a very fashionable concept but it ought not to be forgotten that the pattern of house ownership has undergone many changes, as Daunton points out in his conclusion:

  There is nothing sacrosanct or immutable about the pattern of provision and ownership of housing . . . The last 70 years have seen the fall of the private landlord, the emergence of the owner-occupier to dominance, the rise and fall of the council house.

Owner occupation is not the dream that it might appear to be. We are confronted with soaring house prices, easy credit and high levels of foreclosures. It is no easy matter to enter the house buying market for the first time, particularly when your over-extended commitment may be gazumped by someone more fortunate or more foolhardy. We live in a period in which we are told that "popular capitalism" means access to share ownership allied to home ownership. More importantly it may simply represent an attempt to "break down the antithesis of profits and wages and to create an identity of interest between entrepreneurial success and social benefit".

Public housing has suffered as a consequence of the image of the grotesque and repulsive high rise developments which have been seen as an economic and social nightmare. The changes arising out of the new pattern of home ownership have had their costs with private housing expenditure, in conjunction with fuel and power, accounting for 21.7 per cent of household budgets in 1981 compared to 15.8 per cent in 1964. The comparable figures for Germany and France for 1981 stood at 17.9 per cent and 17 per cent respectively. A consequence is that employers are pressurised to provide increased wages which conflict with the need to produce maximum profit. Nor should it be forgotten that, as employees, home ownership may represent a fetter to social mobility at a time when employment and home location are at variance. It should also be remembered that, according to the Nationwide Building Society, 30 per cent of the population cannot afford to move into owner occupation.

An attempt to manipulate the population through housing into the processes of the system may be the aim of current legislation. This is no new concern. The production of housing by industrialists in the nineteenth century can be seen as an attempt to instil control and discipline in employees. A national commitment to housing provision and standards can be interpreted as the state s concern with the social efficiency of the nation in contributing a healthy workforce to ensure the productivity of the firm. The debate in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries between those arguing that wages should rise in order to pay the rents as against those advocating lower rents consistent with wages is typical of the reformist arguments which obscure the actual needs of those who simply continue to suffer. The reality was and still is that many workers cannot afford access to adequate housing.

The current Conservative hostility to council housing is a new perspective in the party. The Labour Party continues its commitment towards council housing although they have not rejected the apparent political popularity of private home ownership. What the Conservative Party has achieved is a reduction in council housing by limiting its commitment to construction and by selling existing stocks. Daunton argues that since 1980:

  reductions in the contribution of central government to local authority housing, and changes in accounting procedures have led to an increase in the basic rent. This provides an added incentive to better-off tenants to buy, the increase being offset for the poorer tenants by means-tested rent rebates.

Owner occupation seems to be considered morally superior and to engender the correct social attitudes. This is not seen as being granted a stake in the system but of engendering social acquiescence as a result of mortgage commitments. One myth that Daunton does destroy is the notion that owner occupation is a "natural right”. The study shows clearly that the desire for property "can only be understood in the context of a housing market which was biased in certain ways by government policy" and that this has been an ongoing debate. The reality of home ownership has not drastically altered. Wealth and security of income represent the only guarantees of safeguards in this society. The promise of home ownership is only another burden to bear. As said above it may even be a guarantee of continued disadvantage in reducing mobility or by over-extending limited income in offsetting repairs, deterioration and debt repayments. We might even question the whole notion of owner occupation and its function within society. In 1980 Switzerland had 30 per cent owner occupation whereas the Philippines had achieved 89 per cent by 1970. West Germany had 37 per cent owner occupation in 1978 whereas Bangladesh had 90 per cent in 1981 Daunton argues that there is little similarity between owner occupation of a terraced house in Liverpool and a detached property in Surrey:

  the experience of the tenure does not emerge from the tenure itself so much as from the tenants’ income level and social status which define the way in which the tenure is experienced.

Yet even this is only partially correct. Those who are marginalised by the system may suffer disproportionately yet the relationship between individuals and access to property is the same regardless of the level of provision. A consequence is to create another divisive way in which competition is enforced between sections of workers. The struggle for access to property and participation in the process of maintaining property values diverts attention from the profit system. Any notion of an allegiance arising out of methods of housing provision or levels of that provision are as arbitrary and as contrary to working-class interests as allegiances based on race or sex. Houses are a commodity. As a commodity housing has been manipulated by the demands of different political persuasions. One irony of the present administration is that although advocating a free-market economy it has engendered "a financial system which distorts in favour of one type of asset". The reality of housing as a commodity for the present administration in its notion of "popular capitalism" has been a reduction of commitment of central government to provide housing for those unable to buy. "Between 1979/80 and 1983/4 expenditure on housing was cut by 39 per cent in money or 89 per cent in real terms." There has been a price to pay for the dream of owner occupation — a partial abandonment of those least able to survive in the housing market. For those participating in the struggle for owner occupation there is the increased burden of financing the venture and the likelihood of suffering the consequences of social acquiescence to a system whose existence is contrary to their real interests.

Philip Bentley

Soft Drink, Hard Labour (1987)

Book Review from the December 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Soft Drink Hard Labour: Guatemalan Workers Take on Coca Cola. Mike Gatehouse and Miguel Angel Reyes (Latin American Bureau London. 1987).

Guatemala is a country of violent repression. According to a British Parliamentary Delegation who visited the country in 1984 as many as 100,000 people had been killed and 38,000 had disappeared in the previous thirty years. Guatemala is also a country of poverty in which 63 per cent of the population live below the official poverty line and in which 2 per cent of the population own 65 per cent of the land. Against this background the study examines the industrial dispute that took place over a nine-year period involving Coca Cola workers and their union STEGAC and the owners of the Coca Cola bottling plant in Guatemala City.

Coca Cola does not directly own or manage local companies but allows franchise contracts to bottlers. In this particular case it was Embotelladora Guatemalteca SA (EGSA), owned originally by a Texan family, the Flemings of Houston. In 1975 the workers in the company attempted to re-establish a trade union which had been crushed after the military coup of 1954. The process is complex and involves legal registration of a union followed by recognition and granting of bargaining rights by an employer The factory manager, John C. Trotter, attempted various tactics to stop the union, including physical violence and intimidation. He hired members of the Mobile Military Police to act as armed guards, based on a fixed charge per day per guard payable to the army:

EGSA managers began to make explicit threats to Coke workers active in the union. On 10 February 1977 the personnel manager threatened Angel Villeda and Oscar Humberto Sarti. On 1 March, both were shot and wounded. The following day. the Coke workers' lawyers, the Torres, were seriously injured when their car was deliberately bumped and forced off the road by a jeep driven by a government employee, (p.8)

Worse was to follow. Manual López Balam, STEGAC General Secretary, was killed by a group armed with knives and iron bars while he was delivering crates of Coca Cola. The 16-year-old daughter of a union lawyer was arrested, beaten, raped, tortured and temporarily blinded. Further workers and union officials were killed or disappeared or were violently assaulted, as in the case of Amulfo Gómez Segura whose lips were slashed with a razor, his tongue cut out and placed in his shirt pocket.

Pressure was put on Coca Cola including that by the Interfaith Centre for Corporate Responsibility, a group of shareholders from churches and religious orders. They were responsible for bringing Israel Márquez, a STEGAC General Secretary, to Coca Cola's AGM in 1979. It was Márquez who coined the phrase "in Guatemala, Coca Cola is a name for murder". There was also pressure from the Geneva based International Union of Food and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF). Coca Cola denied responsibility, maintaining that franchisees were independent operators. Nonetheless cooperation between Coca Cola and the licence holders was seen to constitute complicity. The IUF called on its affiliates to put pressure on Coca Cola which controls 44 per cent of the world's soft drinks sales. The effect of that pressure was to give bad publicity to the image of Coca Cola and it was this to which the company responded. The EGSA franchise was transferred to new owners and a new management team was brought in. The backlash for Coca Cola was that they were increasingly criticised by the business world for allowing "the dangerous precedent of multinational trade union intervention (the IUF) in multinational corporation affairs".

Meanwhile the new management at EGSA were gradually undermining the company, a policy which could not have gone unnoticed by Coca Cola as they held overall financial control. Under threatened closure the workers occupied the factory in February 1984. A new policy was adopted to deal with the dispute. Further bloodshed would have looked bad for Coca Cola who were that year major sponsors of the Olympic Games. The Government of General Mejia Victores was looking for foreign aid and loans and was promising elections for a Constituent Assembly so again bad publicity was not desired. The occupation of EGSA is a testimony to working-class self-organisation. There were some unusual elements. There is the ironic detail, quoted from Jim Wilson of the IUF. that "every day a sympathetic priest comes in from the outside to say mass before a makeshift altar surrounded by high stacks of Coca Cola crates". Yet the ability to maintain that occupation for a year in a land of poverty and violent repression cannot be underestimated. Nor should the ability to withstand the economic pressure brought to bear by EGSA/Coca Cola. Again there was multinational trade union support for the Guatemalan workers and finally Coca Cola re-negotiated with STEGAC, although insisting that the IUF must not be involved in any settlement.

There are lessons to be learned from this study. A multinational corporation was pressurised into allowing a victory, although limited, to the Guatemalan workers. The occupation testified to the resilience and persistence of a group of workers in establishing and maintaining a trade union against awesome odds. The discipline of those workers during the occupation ensured a majority support and a willingness to sustain the daily routine of maintenance, cleaning, guard duty, assemblies and education and leisure activity. Yet we ought not to forget that no victory guarantees the future while capitalism is maintained. Guatemala may have an elected government but the military bureaucracy still exists. With more than 50 per cent of Guatemala's workforce without permanent employment many fear that contact with a trade union can only take place at the expense of employment. It may be that the security forces are also biding their time. In the struggle for reforms it is the effects that are tackled and not their causes.

Philip Bentley

A Killing (1983)

Book Review from the October 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tam Dalyell. Thatcher's Torpedo: The Sinking of the ‘Belgrano' (Cecil Woolf, 1983).

Tam Dalyell's book is not an analysis of why hostilities arose between the British and the Argentinian governments over the Falklands but an indictment of the strategy adopted by the Thatcher government. According to Paul Rogers in his introduction to the book a harsh campaign of economic sanctions could have been directed against Argentina but the British government “embarked on the killing war within 36 hours of the declaration of US political and economic support". Dalyell goes on to argue that although there was a possibility of a negotiated peace settlement through the intervention of the Peruvian government, the policy of the British government was in opposition to such a settlement:

  The charge laid at the door of the British Prime Minister could hardly be more grave. It is specifically that, along with her Defence Secretary and the Chairman of the Conservative Party, but in the absence of the Foreign Secretary, she coldly and deliberately gave the orders to sink the Belgrano, in the knowledge that an honourable peace was on offer and in the expectation — all too justified — that the Conqueror's torpedoes would torpedo the peace negotiations.

The reason for this seemingly calculated act of cynicism is seen by Dalyell as a means by which the nation would rally behind Thatcher and in order to secure Thatcher's continued leadership of the Conservative Party. Dalyell is not opposed to war; he says of the Falklands that “the conditions for a just war were not met". He does not explain what conditions would give rise to a “just war", given that he secs the first responsibility of politicians as avoiding war. What he does lament is the consequent cost of undertaking military action over the Falklands:

  The £880 million for Stanley airport is only the most dramatic item of expenditure in a horrendous list of costs associated with Fortress Falklands.

One important point that Dalyell does make, but does not develop sufficiently, is his argument that “we live, do we not, in an age of misinformation". His attempts to uncover the events leading up to the sinking of the Belgrano attest to that fact but more importantly it is the selective use of information that is fed to the working class in order to secure its support that should be considered.

The whole concept of democracy within capitalism comes into question when our view of the world is being dictated by the government in the so-called interests of the nation. The working class do not have the opportunity to negotiate whether they will fight and the Falklands emphasised the manipulation of the working class to gain its support. Dalyell argues that he raises the question of the sinking of the Belgrano because “I believe the good name of Britain has been besmirched". He should rather lament the spilling of working-class blood, both British and Argentinian, in order to secure economic influence over a group of South Atlantic islands.

Dalyell can lament the lack of parliamentary democracy in being unable to discover the facts behind government strategy but there are larger questions to consider. It is members of the working class who must fight wars on the instruction of their parliamentary leaders but it is the working class who will receive no benefit as a result of those wars.

Philip Bentley

Banana Republic (1986)

Book Review from the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Richard Lapper. Honduras: State for Sale. Latin American Bureau (London. 1985)

Honduras is the archetypal "Banana Republic" according to the author of this study. Its history can be seen as a series of colonial, political and economic domination from elsewhere and internally the country has been prey to various corrupt administrations. It was a Spanish colony until 1821 when it became politically independent but economically dependent on British financial investment. That British influence waned throughout the nineteenth century as America became increasingly dominant. The Honduran authorities believed that foreign investment would increasingly reap benefits to the whole country but it was Standard Fruit, the Cuyamel Fruit Company and United Fruit who became the dominant forces. By 1918 75 per cent of banana lands were owned by these three companies. Their attitude is epitomised by a letter from H.V. Rolston of United Fruit to his lawyer in 1920 where he laid out his plan for Honduras. This included the need to: 

   take possession of as much state-owned and private land as possible, and acquire as much wealth as we have the capacity and power to absorb . . . secure every possibility of exploiting new areas of operations . . . draw up such irreversible contracts that nobody can compete with us, not even in the distant future . . .
  secure concessions, privileges and exemptions from tariffs and custom duties . . . free ourselves from all public taxes and all those obligations and responsibilities which reduce our earnings
   make it our concern that the privileged class, whom we will need for our exclusive benefit, bend itself to our will. (Quoted p.23)

In this environment the only notion of a state was represented by the companies and their plantations. The success of their operations ensured that internal politics could not be distinguished from the activities of the fruit companies. It was United Fruit who finally emerged as the dominant force after 1929 and this brought an end to the company-backed civil wars that affected Honduras during the 1920s. The banana companies reaped profit of some US $412.5m between 1925 and 1950 and it is estimated that through tax exemptions alone the government lost 50 per cent of its potential revenue.

With increased industrialisation came a rise in working-class trade union activity. But like so much of Honduran life, this activity was influenced by American involvement. In particular ORIT (the Inter-American Regional Organisation of Labour) and AIFLD (the American Institute for Free Labour Development) began to train union leaders into an "anti-communist" pro-American view of the world. At the same time USAID pumped large amounts of money into a number of unions including STRATERCO. the United Fruit Workers' Union. AIFLD is funded by Washington and American corporations (including United Fruit) while ORIT works closely with the State Department.

Politically the military has been the dominant force within Honduras since the mid-1950s. As the author points out, the Honduran elite have been weak because their "political and economic power had been historically eclipsed by the US multinationals" (p.42). The army too has been in close relationship with America since a treaty of 1954. America takes raw materials and semi-processed goods from Honduras in return for military schools, scholarships and military equipment. In 1957 the army had written into the constitution a clause allowing them to disregard presidential orders which it considered unconstitutional and in 1963 the army seized political control. The country has been largely ruled by corrupt military leaders since that time.

By 1980 68 per cent of rural households had insufficient income to cover basic consumption while 10 per cent of the population received 50 per cent of the national income. Five per cent of the population owned more than 50 per cent of the land and seven multinationals controlled 80 per cent of the economy. As part of America's backyard Honduras has increasingly become what the author describes as a "Pentagon Republic" and it is this military dependence that dominates Honduran life throughout the 1980s. Honduras was seen as an ally in combating change in Central America particularly after the Nicaraguan revolution of 1979. Under American pressure elections took place in April 1980 although that has not relaxed the military control of political life in the country. The Honduras/Nicaragua frontier has been described by Ronald Reagan as the "fourth border of the United States" (quoted p.74). Aid has been primarily economic from USAID but also aid for International Military Education and Training. For the Reagan administration Central America represents the battleground between East and West. Honduras is seen as a buffer against the FMLN in El Salvador but it is also a "springboard for the destabilisation of Nicaragua through a US-financed counter-revolutionary force and a base for US military operations in the region" (p.82). Since 1983 US troops in Honduras have numbered 700-800 but have at times increased to several thousand including, in May 1984, a series of naval and land exercises involving some 33.000 troops. This was followed by Big Pine III from February to May 1985. The function of the operation was not only to intimidate the Sandinistas but to prepare for possible invasion. The effect of these operations has been the upgrading of three airports, the construction of ten military bases, the establishment of two radar stations, a military hospital, new roads, communications centres and port facilities. The Honduran government maintained minimal control of American personnel. By mid-1985 it is estimated that at least 11.000 American military personnel were permanently stationed in the country. The study records that:

  Honduras' strategic value remained the priority for the Reagan administration, and not its desperate poverty, (p. 118).

This is capitalism at its most cynical. In 1985 health and education represented seven per cent of the national budget whilst military spending accounted for 30 per cent of total expenditure. In 1984 the Ministry of Health reported the closure of 210 out of 362 of its rural health centres because of lack of medicines, equipment and personnel. Priority is not the fulfilment of human needs but the military and political aspirations of the dominant American economic unit. Honduras is accustomed to this manipulation in terms of its economy, politics and trade union organistions. It epitomises the subjugation of individual nations by dominant economic interests. The people of Honduras have been exploited to satisfy the economic fulfilment of a minority and Honduras as a nation has been exploited for the political and military aspirations of a dominant economy concerned solely for its own self-perpetuation, whatever the level of poverty of the indigenous population. This is a typical manifestation of capitalism. Honduras is the unacceptable interface between East and West. Its domination by America economically, politically, militarily and socially has done little to relieve Honduran poverty. In the propaganda war between the conflicting capitalist interests striving for domination in Central America Honduras is a casualty obscured by the high tech sophistication of the American military machine

Philip Bentley

Kibbutz conflict (1988)

Book Review from the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Status. Power and Conflict in the Kibbutz by Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Avebury 1988

The first kibbutz was established in 1910 and the movement now involves about 3.5 per cent of the population of Israel. This study is concerned with systems of stratification that have arisen in Kibbutzim and not with an overall analysis of their social organisation.

Kibbutzim are democratic to the extent that all members are entitled to participate in all debates and top executive positions are elected bi- or tri- annually. The absence of private ownership of the means of production and the irrelevance of money in defining status also make the kibbutz an interesting phenomenon. Yet we ought not to forget the existence of hired workers, who participate in the production process but are not commune members. With an average membership of 300-400 the kibbutz is also a very limited alternative.

The absence of wages or shares ensures that material differentials do not create social distinctions. although social status exists as "a function of one's prestige (esteem and sympathy) and power (influence, authority and independence)" (p.33). The fact that kibbutzim are entrepreneurial also means that prevailing social perspectives are carried through to the workings of the kibbutz, with top executive posts often limited to those with specialist abilities.

Ben-Rafael argues that the kibbutz represents a conflict between the spirit of democracy" and the "spirit of capitalism"; increasingly it is the latter that prevails. This affects not only internal stratification but the relationship of the kibbutz to its environment. Increasingly, due to professionalisation of jobs, members must look beyond the kibbutz for employment. The philosophy of the kibbutz has also undergone changes — the family is reasserted and early notions of equality between the sexes have not been achieved. In short, capitalism has inevitably had its way.

Philip Bentley

White Law (1983)

1965 cover.

Book Review from the April 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

117 Days: An Account of Confinement and Interrogation under the South African 90-Day Detention Law by Ruth First (Penguin. 1982).

Originally published in 1965, 117 Days has been reissued following Ruth First's death last year in Maputo, Mozambique. She was killed by a letter bomb which, according to Ronald Segal in his preface to this new edition, was issued by “those guards of the South African regime . . . not swaggering in their uniforms but in a seemingly safe package which had been treated to blow her apart". Ruth First was well known to the South African authorities before her imprisonment in 1963 because she had published accounts of the use of forced labour on the farms of the Transvaal and exposed the conditions under which migrant labourers worked in the gold mines of South Africa.

First was arrested under the General Law Amendment Act of 1963. A person could be arrested without warrant if they were suspected of having committed or intending to commit any offence under the Suppression of Communism Act (1950), or if suspected of sabotage or in possession of any information relating to such an offence. The person could be detained for a period not in excess of ninety days or until that person, in the opinion of the Commissioner of the South African Police, had satisfactorily answered all questions during interrogation. The act became known as the "90-Day Law".

Ruth First was arrested under suspicion without warrant and without facing trial. After her initial arrest she was released just within the period of ninety days, only to be immediately rearrested. She spent a total of 117 days in solitary confinement undergoing repeated interrogation. She had already been banned "from writing, from compiling any material for publication, from entering newspaper premises . . . I had worked for five publications and each had, in turn, been banned or driven out of existence by the Nationalist Government". She had in her home, at the time of her arrest, a copy of Fighting Talk, a publication she had edited for nine years and possession of which was punishable by imprisonment for a minimum of one year.

First was originally imprisoned in Marshall Square. The conditions under which she was detained are described in horrific detail and with touches of irony:

   I, a prisoner held under top security conditions, was forbidden books, visitors, contact with any other prisoner; but like any white South African Madam I sat in bed each morning, and Africans did the cleaning for the “missus".

Even the bucket of hot water for washing, a concession for “Ninety-Dayers". was brought to the cell by the African inmates until a shower was finally installed in the prison during her two months at Marshall Square. She was then moved to Pretoria Central Prison for the next twenty-eight days before being returned to Marshall Square.

Although never charged. First was aware that the Security Police knew of the magazine at her home and that she had attended meetings at Rivonia with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and others. Interrogation took a number of forms and ranged from threats such as "this is the first period of ninety days; there can be another after that, and yet another" to cajolements such as “we’re not holding you, you’re holding yourself. You have the key to your release. Answer our questions, tell us what we want to know , and you will turn the key in the door".

Ruth First’s portrait of prison is not limited to her experiences but covers the experiences of many others including Looksmart Solwandle Ngudle, who committed suicide during imprisonment, and Isaac Tlale who revealed evidence concerning his own torture during “90-Days" imprisonment and of the torture of Ngudle:

  Looksmart by his death and Tlale by his courage had lifted the lid for the first time on the systematic resort to torture of Ninety-Day detainees by the Security Branch.

First focuses attention on the South African prison system’s concern with vengeance. She herself attempted suicide during her second period of detention. Her conclusion is that "these amateurs in political sleuthing who seized books because they had ‘black’ or ‘red’ in the title had developed into sophisticated sadistic mind-breakers in the matter of a few years”. This is a savage indictment of the South African policies of apartheid and the suppression of any ideas conflicting with the status quo in that country.

Philip Bentley

Bloodsucker flees (1986)

Book Review from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Haiti: Family Business by Rod Prince Latin American Bureau (London. 1985)

The recent political unrest in Haiti, resulting in the flight of pitiless dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier. makes this study particularly timely. A byword for terror and corruption, the country has a history of armed intervention by governments and an undeveloped political system in which presidents have been wholely corrupt. Prince shows that the people of Haiti have been suppressed by arrest, brutality and imprisonment and that this pattern has been consistent since its establishment as a French colonial possession in the seventeenth century.

Haiti has been independent since 1804. although it was in debt to France until 1922 and has been financially dependent on the United States throughout the twentieth century. François Duvalier was elected president in 1957 and proclaimed life president in 1964. The dynasty was continued after "Papa Doc" died in 1971 and his son Jean-Gaude ("Baby Doc") was proclaimed President-for-Life in the same year.

Prince describes Duvalierism as "a black nationalist ideology with a radical rhetoric" which claims to be opposed to the "ideological intolerance of a levelling and inhuman communism" (p.28). The regime controlled national finances for personal gain without feeling a need to reveal the extent of its tax income or disbursements. As Prince points out:

the continually widening gulf between the corrupt and luxurious lifestyle of the elite and the wretched conditions of the mass of the people has produced further tensions, (p.34)

Duvalier's power base was dependent on the United States and the business elite of Haiti. Security was maintained by the Voluntaries de la Securité Nationale, who did not receive salaries and consequently practised widespread extortion of cash, goods and crops. Their efforts tended to concentrate on political party leaders, journalists, trade union activists, church figures and community development workers. After 1977 there was some cosmetic relaxation of oppression but in May 1984 all political activity, except that in support of Duvalier. was banned. In April 1985 there was a concession allowing political parties, but subject to the guarantee of Duvalier's Presidency-for-Life. There was a promise of elections in 1987 but only approved political parties would be allowed to participate. In other words, the system did not permit serious opposition but only variations of Duvalier.

According to the World Bank, 78 per cent of the rural population and 55 per cent of the urban live at or below the level of absolute poverty. In a country where the state is the largest landowner the Duvaliers were the main beneficiaries. At the same time Haiti is the recipient of massive foreign aid. primarily from the United States. This actually adds to Haiti's problems for, according to Prince, the distribution of free food undermines the market so that "aid actually exacerbates problems of poverty and dependence" (p.46). There is also the problem of "free" food being sold in the market place.

Haiti epitomises the corruption of capitalism at its most blatant:

One pet cent of the population receives 44 per cent of national income but pays only 3.5 per cent in taxes. An IMF team which visited Port-au-Prince early in 1981 found that US$16 million had disappeared from various state bodies over the previous three months They also found that President Duvalier had obtained US$20 million from government funds for his personal use in December 1980. and the central bank had been instructed to pay his wife Michèle a salary of US$100,000 a month, (p.51)

This is a country whose gross external debt in 1983 was estimated at US$859 million and in which 90 per cent of the population live in destitution and squalor with an income of less than the minimum wage of US$3.00 a day.

The United States has an uneasy relationship with Haiti, condemning its corruption and incompetence yet maintaining close ties because of its "friendly government" status.

One grotesque aspect of Haiti's poverty was the export of blood. With infant mortality so high, surviving Haitians are rich in anti-bodies:

At different times an estimated 6.000 donors sold their blood at US$3.00 a litre, and five tons of blood a month were shipped to US laboratories run by companies such as Armour Pharmaceutical. Cutter Laboratories and Dow Chemicals. (p.80)

There is no depth of poverty that capitalism is not capable of exploiting

Philip Bentley

Unemployment (1984)

Book Review from the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unemployment by Kevin Hawkins (Penguin. 1984)

It may be one of life's sick jokes to explain to the unemployed why unemployment exists; and to show how one form of poverty can more effectively be replaced by another. Hawkins begins his work by dismissing some of the myths as to why there is unemployment. It does not occur as a result of "the provision of generous welfare payments nor any other such diversionary nonsense" (p. 5). He points out that labour shortages can exist alongside unemployment. This is not because generous welfare payments make the unemployed too clumsy but often because there is a mismatch between the skills of the unemployed and the requirements of labour. Similarly. the existence of "scroungers" does not explain current high levels of unemployment. This myth can be exploded by examination of the levels of benefit which are supposedly being "scrounged”. Between 1971 and 1980, levels of unemployment benefit "fell from 70 per cent to 46 per cent . . .  of average earnings" (p. 26). Without earnings related supplement the figure dropped from 45 per cent to 33 per cent of average earnings.

Hawkins, as Director of the West Midlands CBI, views the problem of unemployment from the standpoint of the industrialist. He talks of the necessary "professional approach to the use of resources, especially manpower" (p. 78) that has arisen out of the current recession. Manpower is simply a resource that must be manipulated for the prime good of a social ethos whose only consideration is profit and “efficiency".

Hawkins accepts unemployment as a prominent feature of British society for the rest of the decade. This may seem to offer little comfort to the long-term unemployed but he does suggest some measures which he believes will alleviate the problem. He claims that his strategy to reduce unemployment is based on principles that are “humanitarian, economic and political in character" (p. 107), yet the humanitarian approach takes a nose dive two pages later when we are told that the rationale must be assessed “not by their effect on the unemployment figures but by the contribution they make towards improving the supply-side performance of the economy” (p. 109).

Hawkins' plan for the future lies in reducing business costs not generated by market forces, and by these he means taxes on employment. He argues that government must stimulate employment in roads and railways and that it should cease subsidising specific firms and increase the supply of highly-skilled manpower. His big plan for the future is to reduce the costs of labour — the main ingredient in this economic soup. He argues that wage costs must be adjusted to the current level, a sufficiently vague phrase which he explains “in more common language, until workers ‘price themselves back into jobs'” (p. 115). This is the old old story of when in doubt blame the workers. We are expected to accept the old adage of what is good for industry is good for the people.

Hawkins calls for an immediate wage freeze that will shock workers into a new sense of realism and keep them in their place. His alternative strategy is to further weaken the power of the unions, presumably to enable industry to dictate all conditions of service and levels of pay. He also advocates the subsidising of employment by central government and applauds the Community Programme Scheme. It is interesting to note the extent to which the humanitarian approach has given way to economic and political considerations when he says:

It has also been argued that the financial incentive to apply for a CPS place is inadequate insofar as the average wage of £60 a week on the scheme is less than the benefit income which a married man with several children can draw. Rather than increase the average wage to take it above the benefit ceiling, thereby increasing the gross cost of the scheme, the remedy may well be to expand the number of places available at the current wage and simultaneously reduce the benefit income. (P 124)

This is allied to such schemes as job-sharing in which the wage is split between two persons, supposedly to ensure a statistical reduction in unemployment but more realistically a statistical increase in poverty. To ensure that even this does not burden the employer by increased paperwork it is suggested that a grant be made available to implement the scheme. Hawkins recognises that his policies may well increase inequalities and social division but “no apology is made on this account", for he has already explained that he is concerned with “the importance of wealth-creation, as distinct from wealth-distribution” (p. 132). In this the book reads like some latter-day Capitalist Manifesto. The working class are punished for the inefficiencies of capitalism and its inability to satisfy the needs of society's members. To cling in desperation to such a system seems absurd. To justify that system by a more systematic exploitation of the working class is contemptible.

Philip Bentley