Socialist Sonnet No.178: Trump Cards (2025)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Trump Cards 

When did billionaires become so blatant?

Such shufflers and dealers of influence

In full public view, not even pretence

Of discretion, extolling noxious cant

As reasoned argument. Not just tearing

The veil of democracy, but ripping

It down and casting it aside, stripping

Politicians naked while appearing

To promote their infallibility,

Denying any counter arguments

To stakes calculated in dollars and cents:

Values traded as exchange currency.

When it comes to egos and the nation,

The danger is runaway inflation.

 D.A.

On Buying Out the Capitalist. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

[From “The Concentration of Wealth” by Henry Laurence Call, a paper read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, at Columbia College, New York, Dec. 1906.]

The purchase of public utilities from the corporations is, indeed, now generally advocated ; and we presume the same alternative will be proposed with regard to the trusts, when the people shall have become thoroughly aroused as to what they mean, as also to the futility, as well as the inadequacy, of all attempts to curb or smash them. But this acknowledges the right in these corporations to insist upon such terms as they please, or even absolutely to refuse to sell until their franchises and privileges shall have expired ; thus postponing indefinitely, and rendering practically null, any attempt at a real remedy. The proposition is, moreover, in any just estimate, deliciously ludicrous. The simplicity of the countryman who “locked the stable door after the horse was stolen,” was sage wisdom by comparison. It is as though that countryman, with the thief parading his stolen horse in his plain sight, should have hypnotised himself into the belief that the possession of that thief was evidence of property, and sacred ; and while still in that hypnotic state, should have proposed to mortgage his farm and future labour in order to purchase back his stolen property.

If, through the misconduct of their public servants, the people have been defrauded of the possession of their public highways, as also of industry itself, then their right to repossess themselves of these properties and franchises is the same as that of the individual to repossess himself of his property, whether lost or stolen. The deprivations and wrongs of the past can never be remedied ; and all the wealth that has thus far gone to supply the lavish and sinful waste of these arch plunderers of the industrial world may not be restored to the people ; but all the plundered wealth that yet remains, including the franchises and properties, is theirs to recover and possess.

To attempt such purchase would, indeed, entail upon industrial society an impossible burden.

It is stated that the income of John D. Rockefeller is 72,000,000 dollars per year. If this is true, then the wealth of that individual alone, judged by its earning power, is to-day not far from 2,500,000,000 dollars; and before any reform can be effected will undoubtedly be 3,000,000,000 dollars. Now, inasmuch as the net earnings of the whole (American) people are only 3,000,000,000 dollars per annum, it would require all the earnings of all the people of the nation for a whole year, to satisfy the demands of this one individual alone, in the event of such purchase. But he is only one of thousands of the enormously rich ; and the class, of which he is representative, possess practically ninety per cent. of the 106,000,000,000 dollars given as our national wealth. Not all the labour of all the people would, then, suffice ; . . . as well might a slave, all whose toil belongs to an absolute master, hope to purchase its freedom, as industrial society to undertake such purchase, and then hope even to lighten its debt burden.

Aside from the contradiction it implies, and the hardship it must entail, the purchase by society of these possessions would perpetuate an aristocracy of wealth, having no occupation but the search for pleasure and power, and quite as formidable then as now. It would take all the profits from production and industry, leaving the whole of industrial society in the future, as at present, but “hewers of wood and drawers of water” for these lords of the industrial world. It would convert this into an immense corruption fund, in the hands of an idle class trained to ambition and power. Many might be content with this perpetual mortgage upon the labour of the whole nation, and spend their incomes upon pleasure ; but who can doubt that the great lords of finance who now dominate the industrial world, would still thirst for power, and, conversant with all the corrupt methods of our politics, would use the same criminal methods to build up a newer power, as those employed to build up their present possessions and power ?

Besides, such half-way action, or compromise, would be as wrong and unjust as it would be impolitic. All these possessions have been created alone by the labour of industrial society ; and to it, and it alone, they justly belong.

If, therefore, these possessions have found their way into the hands of the present possessors through unjust laws, through bribery, corruption, fraud, and other criminal misconduct, which the people could not see or prevent, then the people cannot do less than demand a full return both of the properties and all the accumulated wealth therefrom. Their right to this wealth is exactly commensurate with their right to take possession of the properties themselves. The return of the goods of which they have been despoiled is quite as important and altogether as just, as the prevention of further spoliation. It is enough that they have been so long defrauded of their just possessions, and compelled to toil in the service, and at the dictation, of the wrongful appropriators ; without assuming this voluntary and dangerous additional burden of perpetual toil, in order to come into possession of their own again, or rather into what would be but a hollow mockery of that possession. This wealth, thus plundered from a nation’s toil, either belongs to these plunderers or to the society from which they have plundered it; and to one or the other it must go in the end. Industrial society must make its choice between the two horns of the dilemma ; it must be the judge of its own rights, as also the enforcer of its own decrees ; and from its decision there is no appeal, as no recourse from its action.

The corporation, then, in all its ramifications, industrial, financial, and public service, should be taken from under the control of private interests, and made co-operative in the workers, by them to be administered for the common good; it should be, in fact, a social, not a selfish institution.

These Foolish Things: It takes your breath away (1995)

The Scavenger column from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

It takes your breath away

Orimulsion is a cheaper fuel for electricity power stations. It is based upon bitumen and is imported from Venezuela. Since it has been used at Merton power station, near Ramsgate, asthma attacks in the area have quadrupled. Because it is cheap there are plans to introduce it at a number of other power stations.

So what's new?

They throw the most lavish parties. Last year they air-freighted more than £13 billion in cash into the country to satisfy the popular demand for foreign currency. Their offices are already extravagant temples to Mammon. But now Russia's bankers want more.

With the Kremlin’s help they arc amassing enormous political power. In short. Russia's new plutocracy can boast of wealth and influence to rival the Medicis or the Rothschilds. Sunday Telegraph 16 April.

Current account

In the first five years of private operation, the regional electricity companies accumulated £1 billion surplus funds, instead of reducing charges to customers. Professor Stephen Littlechild, the highly-paid regulator appointed to prevent such excesses, either knew nothing about this or chose not to take any action. Whichever was the ease, he was useless.

The Thatcher nightmare

House prices have fallen by 25 percent in real terms since 1990 and experts believe that they have much further to fall. Over a million people in Britain arc caught in the negative equity trap, where they currently owe an average of £7.000 more in mortgage repayments than their home is worth on the market. Apart from the debt burden, this makes it extremely difficult for them to move house. During Margaret Thatcher’s rule, with her campaign for a “home-owning democracy” and income tax relief on mortgage interest payments, house prices doubled in seven years. Now the market is swinging back again.

True Brits

National Grid, the electricity transmission company being privatised, has avoided paying almost £2m in tax by setting up a financial arm in Dublin.

The company ladled £160m of its cash flow into the tax avoidance scheme before the government stepped in to make the arrangement less attractive.

A National Grid spokesman yesterday confirmed the existence of the "special purpose” firm and defended it as: “a tax-efficient way of managing the company’s money which is our duty on behalf of the shareholders. It is part of our treasury function, and normal practice for UK companies that have big cash flows” Independent on Sunday, 2 April.

The Scavenger

Material World: I Wannabe a Plutocrat! (2013)

The Material World Column from the August 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Material World, 

My life’s dream is to become a fully paid-up member of the capitalist class. Do you have any advice? How much money do I need to join? I am willing to work hard, but I need some guidance. 

Greed is good! 

Wannabe Plutocrat

Dear Wannabee Plutocrat,

Your greed and ambition are commendable, but your ‘willingness to work hard’ suggests a certain naivety. What sort of attitude is that for a would-be capitalist? The so-called ‘work ethic’ is strictly for the proles. The key to becoming a capitalist – seeing that you lacked the good sense to be born to rich parents – is to get other people working hard for you!

I am sure you will understand why I cannot possibly give away specific advice on how to make money. But you happen to be in luck, because I still have a few copies left of my invaluable Swindler’s Handbook: Never Give a Sucker an Even Break ($99 plus sales tax, postage free). And you have my assurance that every technique described in the handbook is completely legal.

There is no annual charge for membership in the capitalist class. But you do need to have enough money for you and your family to live in comfort – or, better yet, luxury – without ever finding yourself in the humiliating situation of having to sell your ability to work.

For detailed information on the various strata of the capitalist class in the United States, I recommend the ‘Who Rules America?’ website maintained by Professor G. William Domhoff of the University of California at Santa Cruz (www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica) and especially the paper contributed anonymously by an investment manager who serves wealthy clients.   

The Occupy Wall Street movement has popularised the idea of ‘the top 1 percent’. The anonymous investment manager advises that you enter the top 1 percent when your financial assets exceed $1.2 million. He warns, however, that the bottom half of the top 1 percent is full of such small fry as lawyers, physicians, upper middle managers and small business owners.

The adult population of the US is currently about 236 million (75 percent of a total population of 315 million). So there are well over two million adults in that top 1 percent – hardly a very exclusive club! If you want to be a plutocrat, you must set your sights higher than that.   

Fortunately, for just $2 million you can join the top half of the top 1 percent. For $3 million you can join the top quarter of the top 1 percent. For $5.5 million you can join the top 0.1 percent, and for $24.4 million the top 0.01 percent. At this rarefied level you will belong to a club of only 20,000 or so truly wealthy individuals. And besides being free of all financial worries you will enjoy ready access to the corridors of power, with politicians at your beck and call. You will have achieved your life’s dream, for you will be not just an ordinary capitalist but a member of the ruling circles, a real plutocrat!

Sincerely,

Material World

************************************************************

It is almost half a century since the first publication of Ferdinand Lundberg’s best-selling The Rich and the Super-Rich: A Study in the Power of Money Today (Lyle Stuart, 1968). Lundberg’s basic argument remains as valid as ever. In fact, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny minority is considerably greater today than it was then.

Chapter 1, entitled ‘The Elect and the Damned’, starts as follows:

  “Most Americans – citizens of the wealthiest, most powerful and most ideal-swathed country in the world – by a very wide margin own nothing more than their household goods, a few glittering gadgets such as automobiles and television sets (usually purchased on the instalment plan, many at second hand) and the clothes on their backs. A horde if not a majority of Americans live in shacks, cabins, hovels, shanties, hand-me-down Victorian eyesores, rickety tenements and flaky apartment buildings… 

  At the same time, a relative handful of Americans are extravagantly endowed, like princes in the Arabian Nights tales. Their agents deafen a baffled world with a never-ceasing chant about the occult merits of private-property ownership … and the vaulting puissance of the American owners. 

  It would be difficult … for a large majority of Americans to show fewer significant possessions if the country had long laboured under a grasping dictatorship… 

  Most adult Americans in the quasi-affluent society of today … are nothing more than employees. For the most part they are precariously situated; nearly all of them are menials…”

Statements such as the foregoing on the rare occasions when they are ventured (although strictly true and by no means new) are bound to be challenged by the alert propaganda watchdogs of the established order. These propagandists, when hard pressed, offer an incantation about a mythical high American standard of living which on inspection turns out to be no more than a standard of gross consumption. The statements must therefore … be monumentally and precisely documented and re-documented. Not that this will deter the watchdogs, who have limitless resources of casuistry and dialectic to fall back upon as well as an endless supply of white paper from denuded forests.

Stefan

The Top of the One Percent (2014)

Book Review from the March 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Plutocrats: the Rise of the New Global Super-Rich by Chrystia Freeland  (Penguin £9.99.)

Chrystia Freeland has no objection to the current social system and those who benefit from it: ‘we need capitalists, because we need capitalism’, she writes. And she is now a Liberal MP in Canada. But her book does have some interesting things to say about the very wealthiest people in society and the increase in inequality. 

It is quite common nowadays to refer to the 1 percent who form the top of the class pyramid. But even within this 1 percent there is a distinction between a plutocratic super-elite (which is overwhelmingly male) and those who are ‘merely wealthy’. In 2005, for instance, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett had a combined wealth of $90bn, not far short of that of the 120 million people who formed the bottom 40 percent of the US population. In 2008, the top 2 percent of the 1 percent in Britain, which must be only about ten thousand people, received almost one-seventh of the income of the 1 percent. The super-elite set up ‘philanthropic’ foundations, such as the Gates Foundation, as status symbols.

Also, the higher echelons of the elite mostly operate at a truly global level, with English as their lingua franca. Its members may have been born in one country and educated in another (quite likely at a university such as Harvard or Oxford). They may own a multi-national company with its headquarters in a third country and have homes on two or three continents. So possibly the biggest capitalists are becoming less tied to particular countries and identify less with a national capitalist class. But many of them make sure to attend top British social events, such as Ascot and Wimbledon.

More controversially, Freeland claims that many plutocrats are the ‘working rich’. They are chief executive officers or top bankers or lawyers, rather than just people who own masses of shares. Though few come from truly impoverished backgrounds, their enormous wealth is not inherited, so they are supposedly ‘self-made men’. They mostly work in newish industries such as computing or other kinds of technology, or else in finance. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that these ‘alpha geeks’ often had some idea for a website or a piece of software, but they were just lucky in getting into a position where they could exploit others, and that is what really made them so fantastically wealthy.

So Freeland’s book does have some interesting things to say on ways in which capitalism is changing, and on how it is not.

Paul Bennett

Sir Richard Acland in a Muddle (1940)

From the November 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sir Richard Acland, M.P., is a Liberal who advocates what he believes to be radical and practical reforms of the capitalist system. All the same he has not got very far in his understanding of capitalism. In a letter to the News Chronicle (November 1st, 1940) he argues that this country’s property institutions must be changed drastically in order to win the propaganda war against Dr. Goebbels.

  What I submit we have got to do is to answer the Nazi taunt of “Pluto-democracy.” While more than 50 per cent. of our property is owned by less than 1 per cent, of the population and while the effective control over our economic policy is in the hands of an even smaller number of people, there is far too much truth behind this taunt for comfort, and whatever we may say, the Nazis will have a powerful weapon with which to turn small men and workers everywhere against us.

Two observations may be made on this. One is that Socialists have always had an unanswerable case against capitalism, and it has nothing to do with what Goebbels may have to say about it. The second is that Sir Richard Acland seems to have fallen for that piece of Nazi propaganda which represents Germany as a State which is run on principles other than those of “pluto- democracy.” There is not an atom of truth in it. Behind the screen of State control those ungentle grafters, the Nazi leaders and their capitalist big-business backers are running Germany for their own ends on the usual exploiting lines.

It may be said, however, that at least Sir R. Acland does want to see inequalities of ownership in Great Britain done away with, but when we read further in his letter we realise that he is only continuing the Lloyd George propaganda of 30 years ago, and the result will be the same. He asks that after the war the men who manage our giant resources “must be in some way or other chosen by all of us to work in the interests of all of us, and must not be chosen in any way by the owners of invested capital to work in the interests of the owners of invested capital.” 

Sir R. Acland probably does not see the fatal flaw in his pious proposal. He proposes that there shall still be “owners of invested capital,” i.e., people who live on property-incomes, but asks that the property from which they get their property-incomes shall not be worked in their interests! Just as a defender of slavery might have urged that slavery should not be abolished, but should be run in the interests of all! Let it be noted, therefore, that the interest of the workers is to get rid of the private ownership and control of the means of production and distribution. Short of that, and the introduction of Socialism, the more “pluto-democracy” changes the more it will be the same.

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: Andrew Carnegie, brain sucker (1969)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the 12th of August the death of Andrew Carnegie was reported, and all the capitalist newspapers united to diffuse an odour of sanctity around the man whose fortune—like all other great fortunes—was built up by the sucking of other men's brains.

It was on the shoulders of others that Carnegie climbed to affluence. Unscrupulous, alike in his dealings with his fellow capitalists and his workmen, he crushed out all who stood in his path, until he came up against a more powerful combination than his own, then he stepped quietly down and out of business, leaving Morgan, Rockefeller & Co. a clear field.

Carnegie came at the first flush of the era of speculation and "high finance" in America, and the tide swept him along with it. The keystone of his success was his ability in appropriating the product of other men's brains (as well, of course, as the product of their hands), or, as he himself repeatedly expressed it in relation to his managers, finding better men to look after his interests.

The man who is set up as a model of "self-help" was helped by others all his life. The only direction in which he exercised self-help was in helping himself to the the product of the work of others. A quotation from the full-page effusion on Carnegie's life in the Daily Telegraph (Aug. 12th) gives in a nutshell the story of his life and the cause of his success.

He began the world without a penny. He retired from business sixty years after one of the richest men in the world—to put it no higher—with a fortune of some £90,000,000 . . . It was won by a man who had no training for his life-work. The greatest of iron masters knew nothing of metallurgy.

(From an article 'The Passing of a Brain Sucker' by G. McClatchie in the Socialist Standard, September 1919).

The passing of a brain-sucker. (1919)

From the September 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the 12th of August the death of Andrew Carnegie was reported, and all the capitalist newspapers united to diffuse an odour of sanctity around the man whose fortune—like all other great fortunes—was built up by the sucking of other men's brains.

It was on the shoulders of others that Carnegie climbed to affluence. Unscrupulous, alike in his dealings with his fellow capitalists and his workmen, he crushed out all who stood in his path, until he came up against a more powerful combination than his own, then he stepped quietly down and out of business, leaving Morgan, Rockefeller & Co. a clear field.

Carnegie came at the first flush of the era of speculation and "high finance" in America, and the tide swept him along with it. The keystone of his success was his ability in appropriating the product of other men's brains (as well, of course, as the product of their hands), or, as he himself repeatedly expressed it in relation to his managers, finding better men to look after his interests.

The man who is set up as a model of "self-help" was helped by others all his life. The only direction in which he exercised self-help was in helping himself to the the product of the work of others.

A quotation from the full-page effusion on Carnegie's life in the "Daily Telegraph" (Aug. 12th) gives in a nutshell the story of his life and the cause of his success.

He began the world without a penny. He retired from business sixty years after one of the richest men in the world—to put it no higher—with a fortune of some £90,000,000 . . . It was won by a man who had no training for his life-work. The greatest of iron masters knew nothing of metallurgy.

(Italics mine.) No money—no knowledge of iron—yet the greatest iron master! How did he do it?

To the progress of the industrial revolution, to the stupendous development of mechanical and scientific methods in manufacture, Andrew Carnegie owed his millions.

Here we have it. Carnegie's wealth was built up by the ingenious brains and hands of working men. In other words, the departed saint stole the product of others' toil. And what of the workers and thinkers whose discoveries brought about the industrial revolution? The main figures in it—Crompton, Cartwright, Stephenson, Kay, Jacquard, Harrington, Lavoisier, Koening, Roberts, Trevithick, Gutenburg, Cart, Bourseul, and a host of others, either died in poverty after lives of struggle against starvation, or—in the case of a very few—gained a niggardly recognition when they were on the brink of the grave.

Now let us see where the self-help came in. Carnegie's first "start" in life was due to another person. To quote again from the "Daily Telegraph":

And now came the tide in Carnegie's life which, taken at the flood, led on to fortune . . . It was Col. Scott who first taught the youth how to make money earn more money . . . His mother mortgaged their house, into which had gone all the family savings. With the $600 thus raised Andrew bought Adams Express Stock, on his astute employer's advice.

Of course the stock paid well: Scott was in the "swim."

Carnegie's next step was to introduce to the Pennsylvania Railroad, through the agency of Scott (who was president of the company) T. T. Woodruff's invention of a sleeping berth (the forerunner of the Pullman car). He borrowed the money for his shares, and was "let in on the ground floor," "but the cars afterwards paid handsome dividends!" "Thus," he wrote, "did I get my foot on fortune's ladder. It was easy to climb after that."

Thus did he vindicate the glorious principle of self help! I may add that I find no record of Woodruff's name as one of those who got their feet on fortune's ladder. No doubt he went the usual way of inventors.

During the Civil War Carnegie's pal Scott (now Assistant Secretary for War) found him a lucrative job in the service of the Northern wage slave owners, and at the conclusion of the war he utilised the wealth he had acquired to go in for oil and "struck it rich."

Like Mr. Rockefeller, he was in at the start. In 1862, with several associates, he purchase the Storey Farm, on Oil Creek, Pennsylvania for $40,000. It proved what prospectors call a bonanza, and in one year paid $1,000,000 in cash dividends.

Having gained the early plums of the oil trade, the "self-made man" in the making turned his attention to steel. On a visit to England he saw the steel rails that were the result of the new Bessemer process (a process discovered by one of Bessemer's workmen whose name even is  not known!) introduced them into America, and another chunk was added to his fortune.

The process of the Trust in which Carnegie had the preponderating influence was largely due to the valuable patents which they controlled. The men who were responsible for the subjects of these patents, however, were but pawns in the hands of the financiers.

Working men have proverbially short memories, yet the name "Homestead" should suffice to recall to the mind the bludgeoning and shooting of working men that took place at Carnegie's works during the "Homestead" strike, when Pinkerton and his gunmen were called in. Though daily waxing richer Andrew the philanthropist (!) was not satisfied, and laid plans to increase the working hours. The men organised to resist the project, so he retaliated by refusing to employ any but non-union workers. According to the "Telegraph" "the strike was soon the crux of one of the ugliest scenes in all the bloodstained history of American labour quarrels." The military (to the number of some 8,000 soldiers) were eventually sent to the vampire's assistance "to restore order"! And such was the man who professed to be the ardent anti-militarist and apostle of peace, and who presented to the world the "Palaces of Peace." Like others of his kidney, he did not want war when it interfered with his accumulation of wealth, but when it suited his purse (as when he took part in the Civil War) his objections vanished.

By the irony of circumstance, the same day the papers were applauding the incarnation of self-help and genius in the shape of Carnegie, they devoted a few lines to recording the tragic death of poor Blakelocke, the American landscape painter. His life "was the story of genius doomed to poverty," says the "Evening News" (13.8.19). His greatest works were sold by him for a few paltry pounds to keep his wife and family from starvation. The same works were afterwards sold for hundreds of pounds. The same paper further states: "Worry and the hard struggle for existence eventually produced a break-down, and he was removed to an asylum."

Blakelocke is now looked upon as one of the greatest landscape painters of America, but his genius only brought him poverty and the lunatic asylum.

What a contrast! The unscrupulous and slimy Carnegie dies in the midst of vast riches, while the fine artist dies in the asylum! Self-help, forsooth!

After officially stepping out of business (although still drawing his dividends), Carnegie set out to make a name for himself in a new direction. He made arrangements to distribute libraries in various places to assist in the education of working men. It appears strange that one who was such a determined antagonist of his employees should suddenly blossom forth as their benefactor. The strangeness, however, disappears as soon as we look below the surface. Carnegie and his class require workpeople who have sharp brains and a good technical knowledge, as these make the most efficient wage-slaves—hence the library stunt.

Since 1901 Carnegie has been throwing millions away and doing his damnedest to spend his money, but all to no purpose: he dies worth nearly as much as in 1901! What a power of wealth this one man must have robbed the workers of, and yet they try to kid us that we do not produce enough!

Away with dreams and delusions; let us wake up and produce for ourselves. Perish the parasites and vampires.

Gilmac.