Classic Reprint: Gus has a shock (1985)

A Classic Reprint from the Spring 1985 issue of the World Socialist

The lies, distortions and omissions which characterise the bosses' press are hallmarks of a system which can only survive by ensuring the political slumber of the majority class. Anyone who thinks that capitalism is a genuinely democratic social system has only to look at the minority ownership and control of the means of communication to understand just how unfree present-day society is. In a socialist society the technology of social communication will be at the disposal of all members of society, and there will be neither owners (private or state) nor advertisers to determine what may be published. Indeed, any opponents of socialism will have free access to the press and other media, for the socialist majority will have nothing to fear from the open expression of the ridiculous case for capitalism. (Indeed, party political broadcasts might be shown on television as comedy entertainment.) 

The following classic reprint was written by F. C. Watts, one of the finest writers of the early years of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and was published in the Socialist Standard in January 1907.

GUS: You socialists ought to be grateful for the glorious institution of the free press instead of criticising the great newspapers as you do.

WILL: Grateful to whom? The so-called freedom of the press is, in reality, painfully limited; but such as it is, it was granted because absolutely necessary to commercial development. Material interests dictated it; not any love of the people. The capitalist class give us nothing but what it is to their interest to give, either to increase their profits or stave off their defeat, and we know from bitter experience that we have most to fear when our enemies profess a regard for us. 

GUS: But can you deny that the great daily newspapers are glorious and beneficient institutions, fearlessly standing out for truth and purity in public life? 

WILL: I emphatically and entirely deny every word of it!

GUS: Do you mean to say that the modern press is not free, or that it suppresses or perverts the truth?

WILL: I mean to say that the modern newspaper, by its very nature as a commercial venture, cannot exist except by perverting the truth; and that it is absolutely the slave of capitalist interests.

GUS: You surprise me. Explain yourself.

WILL: With pleasure. Now, newspapers are run by limited liability companies to obtain a profit, are they not?

GUS: That is so.

WILL: To get a profit they must sell; to sell they must please, to please they must suit themselves to the prejudices, ignorance or interests of their supporters.

     (Gus opens his eyes)

WILL: They cannot, then, afford to continue any line of policy when it does not pay, or when it is unpopular with the public or with that section of which they have constituted themselves the mouthpiece. To get the largest circulation and the greatest percentage of profit they must say what their readers or supporters want them to say, or else go under.

     (Gus looks startled)

WILL: Nor is that all; they have an even more important person to cater for — the advertiser. He is partly satisfied if the journal panders successfully to a large number of the public; but as a manufacturer he has important capitalist interests, and therefore would not support, by his advertisement, any journal that, through a love of truth, attacked his interests in any way.

    (Gus looks frightened)

WILL: Further, the various sections of the capitalist party have enormous campaign funds, and the newspapers, being run for profit, must slavishly support their capitalist party interest or forgo their reward. And the journalists who run the papers are the wage-slaves of the proprietors, compelled to utter, not what they think, but what their employers consider will sell best, and will please most the capitalist interest.

   (Gus tries to hide himself, Will holds him back)

WILL: Don’t run away, I’ve not done yet. The modern newspaper is thus, in the main, the reflection of the commonest, most superficial and most servile opinions of the public, and at the same time the advocate of the interests of its capitalist owners and advertisers. It is, therefore, against the financial policy of the modern newspaper to enlighten the working class; particularly in any direction that runs counter to capitalist interests. To satisfy its principal clients, the great advertisers and the political leaders, it must expound the views of the ruling class (or of a section thereof) and so doctor these views that the people may easily swallow them. It must, whenever the workers show a tendency to think clearly, carefully draw the wool over their eyes in order to keep them at the tail of the capitalist party and ignorant of the things that should concern them. For the rest, in order to earn its profits, the newspaper must batten on the ignorance and folly of its public.

GUS (who feels that the scales have fallen from his eyes): Well, but how can we alter it?

WILL: Only by abolishing the profit system. But we can help this on by doing all in our power to spread enlightenment among the workers and so show them the utter worthlessness of capitalist journalism; we can help by organising the workers for the overthrow of capitalist domination, and by pointing out that it is their duty to support a press of their own, not run by an individual or company (or profit, but owned and controlled by a genuine working-class organisation for the propagation of definite working-class principles. Thus alone can the education and emancipation of the working class be accomplished, and the freedom of the press from the curse of profit and capitalist domination become a fact.

F. C. Watts

Deciphering Disinformation (2023)

Book Review from the December 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hot Planet, Cool Media. By Stephen Harper. Clairview, 2023

As described by its subtitle, this is a compilation of socialist polemics on war, propaganda and popular culture, written between 2011 and 2022. In this near-decade, marked by populism, austerity and the smartphone, ‘the morbid symptoms of a decrepit social system and the corresponding expressions of public anger and despair became more acute’.

The book’s title, taken from one of its essays, refers to the gap between the state of the world and the media’s inapt and inept interpretations of it. A principle which underpins the book is that a constructive way to react to society’s grim events is to understand how and why information about them, in all its forms, is presented to us in the way it is. Many of the essays take war as an example: 2013’s Back To Iraq examines how the format of a BBC documentary about the war in Iraq enabled Western politicians to promote their account unchallenged, while ignoring economic considerations. Several insightful reviews of war films are included, such as Unbroken (2014), which displays a ‘national chauvinism’ that simplifies war into good versus bad. The formula common across most movies smooths out complications and reasserts traditional narratives, such as portraying the American army as always heroic.

Mainstream media, almost by definition, backs up the narrative most favourable to those with power and wealth: ‘Whether conservative or liberal, the loudest voices in the media are those of the ruling class’. As the essays explain, acceptance of our current social system lies beneath almost all political discourse, whether left or right wing. What are presented as alternatives to the status quo can still only act within the constraints of capitalism, such as when politicians and journalists ‘talk excitedly of ‘radical’ reforms’ or when the left lionises ‘social-democratic saviour-figures’ such as Barack Obama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Jeremy Corbyn and Jacinda Ardern.

The partiality and misinformation which permeate mainstream and social media impact on us and how we relate to the world. Some people react by turning to ‘conspiracy theories’ which, as the 2020 essay Making A Conspiracy Out Of A Crisis argues, to dismiss outright is as misguided as fanatically adhering to them. When people act by rioting, this is a reaction to ‘the deeply felt but unarticulated experiences of social alienation and inequality’, which the media glosses over with talk of ‘yobs’. Mental distress is a more widespread response to our circumstances, although its social origins are downplayed when it is regarded and treated as a biological illness, according to the 2013 essay Mental Illness And The Media.

The essays in Hot Planet, Cool Media usefully help us see and then see through the narratives dominant across the media. Once the biases of those on our screens are recognised, then the underlying social, economic and political causes of events and trends are revealed. Next is needed ‘collective and conscious political action to abolish the system’ that generates problems such as racism, war, alienation and climate change. This route to revolutionary consciousness is described with a welcome clarity and groundedness across the book’s 66 essays. Hot Planet, Cool Media is definitely recommended to anyone wanting to make sense of the previous decade and how it has shaped the world today.

As his focus is on other people’s interpretations, Stephen Harper doesn’t write much about his own experiences. A lively exception is the 2019 essay Election Reflection, about when he took part in hustings for the Socialist Party’s European Parliament Election campaign. He recounts (on p.160) that after one event ‘one of the independent candidates turned to me and made a cryptic but intriguing comment: ”you’re right … but you’re too early”. I was tempted to reply that with capitalism destroying the biosphere at an alarming rate, it’s not a moment too soon for socialism.’

Mike Foster

The Scented Spray of Capitalist Propaganda (1944)

From the June 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the present time slogans and cartoons abound in an effort to attract the attention of the working class and obtain their collaboration for ruling class objectives. Two of these propaganda posters frequently seen in public transport vehicles supply both question and capitalist answer. They read, “What does the common cold cost?'”—”In one year the common cold and ‘flu cost the country 40,000,000 work days.”

The cost of a cold to a worker, since the majority lose pay for absence, is the loss of so many days’ pay plus any addition which may be spent on medical treatment, etc. But this is not the capitalists’ grief; they have not the slightest concern regarding the workers’ illness for the workers’ sake. The capitalists’ concern is shown in the answer they have provided, and which more accurately reads: “In one year the common cold cost US 40,000,000 days’ profit.”

To his regret, the capitalist cannot run the worker unceasingly, as he can his machines, but is obliged to permit him time for rest and the recuperation of his labour-power, and whilst the worker is resting the capitalist is obliged to allow his machines to remain idle, or to employ more labour-power to keep them running. But in addition to these problems which burden capital, the worker at intervals dares to be ill and leave the capitalist high and dry. At times when the labour market is well stocked, the capitalist would speedily replace the absent labour unit with another, and the sick worker would then have the added aid to health in the knowledge that he was sacked. Under the present conditions, when labour power is scarce and under various Government restrictions, the capitalist is unable to obtain substitutes for workers absent through sickness, so that he loses the profit which would have been gained from the exploitation of each absent worker.

The capitalists are particularly alarmed when the country, as recently, is swept by an epidemic, for they know only too well that the food the workers obtain under war-time conditions provides them with little resistance to illness, and the capitalistic mind formulates the mental picture of a further 40,000,000 days (or more) of profit losses.

Whilst the recent influenza epidemic was sweeping the country, at least one Government Department provided a worker, complete with a disinfectant spray to go among the workers at intervals and eject into the air a chemical with a pine odour. The Medical Officer’s comment on this process was that, whilst the disinfectant had not the slightest effect on any germs, it undoubtedly had a great psychological value.

The workers, in explainable ignorance, believe that a squirt into the air of a pungent smelling fluid will safeguard their health, and a psychological effect frequently produces a material result.

This incident brought to the writer a realisation of the frequency with which the workers are duped by psychological effects owing to their lack of political and economic understanding. When the present war concludes (in its military phase) there are going to be a number of germs (very old ones) that will attack the workers’ standard of life—unemployment, insecurity, low wages, competition, etc —and the Government being totally unable within the existing system to destroy these germs, has prepared a spray of palliatives to be ejected into the air of workers’ economic problems. Beveridge will most probably be handed the political spray for the first few squirts in his plan to reorganise poverty. If this should not produce the desired psychological effect, Lord Woolton will have a few squirts with his “New World” mixture, and so the spray will be handed on. Unfortunately, in their lack of political and economic knowledge, many members of the working class will smell the odour of empty promises and futile reforms with which the economic atmosphere has been sprayed, and, bracing their shoulders like a sergeant-major in mufti, will endeavour to console themselves that the world is becoming more healthy for wage slaves.

With the passing of time and the fact that workers are still falling by the wayside of social security will come the realisation that these social germs are as virile as ever, despite all the political squirting.

The necessary research for the total destruction of these social germs and their absolute abolition, has already been successfully achieved by a small section of the working class of the world in their study of the lifetime’s work of the two social scientists, Karl Marx and Fredk. Engels. This organisation of workers is the SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN and their companion Parties in America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. These organisations appeal for the assistance of their fellow-workers throughout the world to abolish the germ-ridden system of capitalism, which has a total disregard of human life, by the establishment of Socialism, which means the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production. Only within a Socialist system of society will workers’ problems be solved and the dangers to social and physical health be prevented. With the acquiring of Socialist knowledge world society will be enabled to enjoy to the full the products of its labour, and the psychological squirting capitalist politicians will be unable to side-track the workers from their objective and ultimate achievement. The Socialist Party of Great Britain is showing the workers the route to Socialism from its public platforms and in its literature. It has no leaders, for upon the workers themselves lies this historic task of establishing UNIVERSAL SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM.

C. G. C.

Buddhism—a big zero (1998)

Book Review from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Compassionate Revolution: Radical Politics and Buddhism by David Edwards, Green Books, 228 pages, £9.99.

It is well worth reading this book, or at least around two-thirds of it. Much of Edwards’s work revolves around an incisive analysis of US foreign policy and the nature and operation of the media industry.

The sheer scale of what successive American governments have done to further the “national interest” (i.e. the creation of market-friendly world conditions overseen by effective client states) is exposed at some length. From the installation by military coups and coercion of murderous regimes throughout the South and Central Americas, to the subsequent official training and funding of the state death squads of those regimes, to the more indirect support given to other “friendly nations” (Algeria, Indonesia etc) who maintain conditions favourable to US capital through mass murder; the whole story of America’s fight for “democracy and freedom” is shown in all its bloody reality. Indeed, if you were so inclined, you could write a whole new chapter on it every month of every year. You could include the headings “Panama” and “Somalia”, two other parts of Planet Capitalism where the World’s Copper has recently been to restore Law and Order. In both, atrocious destruction and loss of civilian life was the result. However, for public consumption these onslaughts were labelled “removing dictatorship” (installed, incidentally, by the US) and “peace-keeping”—labelled and packaged for the proles by the media, that is.

Which brings us to Edwards’s analysis of the role of the media, which he credits largely to Noam Chomsky’s Propaganda Model. Essentially, hideous acts of state terrorism are generally presented as noble quests for justice, not because of some conspiracy or official state censorship, but because of the basic operation of capitalism. It’s all about money after all: the ruthless securing of markets, trade routes, raw materials to make the world safe for the profit system-and the media (as it is vaguely termed) is part of that system. Edwards puts it well:

“The modern mass media is not, as some . . . like to remark, controlled by corporations; it is corporations. Businesses do not control the car industry; the car industry is big business. Likewise, the media is made up of large corporations, all in the business of maximising profits . . . This immediately suggests that, at the very least, media corporations might have a tendency to be sympathetic to the status quo, to other corporations, and to the profit-maximising motive of the corporate system . . .” (p.62).

Far from some Orwellian vision of state control ITN, the Guardian, and pals are voluntarily “on message” because this is in the long-term interest of their product. Although the odd “exposé” of “scandals” is acceptable (the cleaning up of the system’s image can only make it more secure after all), an attack on the foundations of their system is unimaginable. As Edwards puts it, the media operates in such a way as to ensure that “something remains ‘missing in the middle'”. By their very nature media corporations could hardly provide their consumers with the missing analysis that links corporations and western governments with massacres in Guatemala and starving children.

Sad to say that after an approach such as this the final third of Edwards’s book is so infuriating. The contrast actually seems disconcertingly odd, but then this reviewer is a socialist. I will restrain myself from actual anger if only because Edwards informs us that the “real enemy . . . is anger itself”. Earlier he identifies problems, such as the rape of Latin America, and their cause: capitalism. His conclusion, though, is not the abolition of that system; and therefore the book’s title is misleading. Edwards counsels that we, as individuals, practice compassion and meditation in the Buddhist tradition. Rather than urging us to relieve the capitalist class of their power to oppress and destroy us he advises us to pity and nurture them, because then they will surely stop their anti-human activities.

To summarise, he argues that “rich and poor are united by suffering” and that if the rich became a bit kinder by way of the individual promotion of “compassion for . . . both rich and poor”, then our problems would just melt away.

So what has Buddhism got to do with revolution? Nothing at all apparently, as Edwards sees nothing wrong with the rule of a parasitic elite, just as long as they are nice about it, and the approach he suggests can only lead to the continuation of the abusive system he has previously bemoaned. Compassion for the bosses? This book itself contains enough reasons why we should give the lot of them the boot immediately.

Ben Malcolm

Say What You Mean (2006)

Book Review from the June 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Unspeak’, by Steven Poole. (Little, Brown £9.99)

Which word would best describe those who use violence to oppose the US-UK occupation of Iraq? ‘Terrorists’ is condemnatory, while ‘resistance’ (with its echoes of those who opposed Nazi occupation in Europe) may register approval. Perhaps the most neutral term is ‘insurgents’. This is one of the examples that Steven Poole uses to show that choice of words is important, that the labels attached to people or ideas can affect attitudes towards them.

Socialists are well aware of this, of course, the very word ‘Socialism’ having been dragged through the mud of dictatorship and Labour Party politics. But Poole does have some instructive examples to discuss. For instance, Republicans in the US have been advised to talk about ‘climate change’, rather than ‘global warming’, on the grounds that the former is less frightening.

The UN General Assembly had in fact already used the euphemism of climate change, which does not specify in which direction the change is proceeding, under pressure from Saudi Arabia and the US, both which of which have interest in playing down the effects of burning fossil fuels.

Equally, ‘genetically engineered’ has often been replaced by cosier-sounding terms such as ‘genetically modified’ (usually shortened to ‘GM’), ‘genetically enhanced’ and ‘biotechnology foods’. And ‘ethnic cleansing’ sounds so much less nasty than the straightforward ‘genocide’.

In the mealy-mouthed platitudes of capitalism’s apologists, even military operations have to be given nice-looking names. Hence Operation Enduring Freedom (US invasion of Afghanistan) and Operation Just Cause (the invasion of Panama in 1989). The invasion of Iraq was going to be called Operation Iraqi Liberation, till someone realised that the initials spelled OIL!

The ‘war on terror’ is another snappy phrase, one which Poole regards as absurd because you can’t have a war against a tactic or technique. And this ‘war’ has itself given rise to a great many mendacious expressions. Think of ‘extraordinary rendition’, which refers to transporting supposed enemies to countries where they will be tortured: ‘rendering’ is a word used in industrial meat-processing, so perhaps the phrase is not so inaccurate after all.

‘Sleep management’ is what is more honestly known as ‘sleep deprivation’. And ‘abuse’ is used in place of the taboo word ‘torture’, so that the government responsible for torturing prisoners can take refuge in the position that it’s really only subjecting them to abuse.

It needs to be said that the reality of capitalism and its works is what’s really objectionable, not  the names that smell of roses but cover up the filth beneath.

Socialists have always called a spade a spade, not being frightened to expose capitalism and the capitalist class. But Poole’s book is a useful reminder of some of the ways in which defenders of the status quo go about their business.

Paul Bennett

Capitalism and the Internet (3) (2000)

From the March 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2

Despite a clear tendency towards enlightening social relations, the Internet does not promise to give revolutionaries their socialist society on a plate. In fact, it offers us the parallel “disinformation revolution” as well. Unlike misinformation, disinformation is deliberate.

 Although mass propaganda can be expected to decrease quantitatively, customised propaganda may increase qualitatively. Propaganda and spin could become more, not less, powerful, as mass media gives way to “mess media” and a proliferation of micro-channels, micro-markets and perhaps micro-cultures makes the targeting of disinformation against selected individuals more feasible. It’s as if the ultimate dream of the free-marketeers is of six billion separate Earths, a doppelganger for each of us, and consensus or revolution impossible in any of them. But humans aren’t so easy to control, nor communication so easy to stop. The right-wing utopians forget about our critical faculties and our propensity to gossip amongst ourselves:

The hypnotic spell of years of television and its intense public relations is broken as people learn to deconstruct and recombine the images intended to persuade them. The result is that the population at large gains the freedom to re-examine previously accepted policies and prejudices” (Rushkoff, Cyberia, p.55-6).

Micro-propaganda just isn’t going to cut it unless we collectively agree to brick up our windows and doors and never go out. Realistically, the ideology of capitalism will not be able to rely on permanent, large-scale disinformation. The best it can expect is to muddy the waters.

The danger of participation is that there are . . . thousands of potentially critical eyes watching every entry. A faulty fact will be challenged, a lie will be uncovered, plagiarism will be discovered. Cyberspace is a truth serum (Rushkoff, p.18).

Monocultural studies 

As global monoculture advances upon us in the real world of Wal-Mart and McDonalds, cyberspace , in contradistinction, is going the opposite way by reinventing diversity. There is a double irony at work. First, the right-wing free marketeers parade their hypocritical “cult of the individual” as a justification for a sociopathic mentality of self-centred consumerism, while at the same time making every effort to destroy cultures and reduce individuals to a grinding uniformity of alienated clones. Second, their own system is producing an atomised multicultural cybersociety which may yet undo their work. Where capitalism tried to keep us apart while making us the same, cyber-capitalism will have the effect of bringing us all together while making us different.

Trouble at’ McMill 

Yet if this view of capitalism’s future seems to have a rosy tint, it’s probably a bloodstain. There is likely to be a ferocious and global scramble for the ever-decreasing number of real jobs in the hi-tech labour market. The “digerati” may get excited about their hi-tech utopias but the future looks grim for workers. The former proletariat may become the future sophisticated “cognitariat” (Toffler), but they are going to be mostly underemployed part-timers battling each other for short contracts. Meanwhile the rest of the population will presumably be fighting for work in leisure malls, call centres and other dispiriting and low-paid McJobs. And when things get really bad, workers tend to wake up from the American Dream and smell a rat. Carl Davidson, editor of Cy Rev, a “Journal of Cybernetic Revolution, Sustainable Socialism & Radical Democracy”, sounds a warning:

 In 1992 the size of the world labor force was something like 1.76 billion people; by 2025, if current trends stay more or less what they are, the world labor force is going to be 3.1 billion people. That means every year for the next thirty years the world economy needs to create 38 to 40 million new jobs. And it’s got to do that at a time when the main technological trend is going in the opposite direction of net job liquidation” (http://www.eff.org/pub/Publications/E-journals/CyRev).

What then of free-market philosophy, this wonderful doctrine from two centuries ago which thinks capitalism would work fine and dandy if the stupid politicians would just go away? Free-market capitalists think the poor don’t matter and will obligingly roll over and die, but when the first riots start, these same capitalists will remember pretty quick what they were paying the state for in the first place. Civil unrest may be most cheaply staved off by bread and circuses, and excuses, as it once was in ancient Rome, but for these angry modern workers the bread will have to be good and the circuses had better be terrific, since the excuses, as usual, will be lousy.

Virtual Unreality 

Of course, the entertainment will be awesome, if nasty, after capitalism’s tastes. Frighteningly convincing graphics and sensory experiences will create seamless mirages, a virtual unreality that might forever close the door to political change. Certainly it is curious to note that technology has brought the “circus” ever closer, from arena to stage to screen to TV to PC monitor. Ultimately we will watch our little mirages on “drop-down” corneal displays, a final triumph of the circus as it climbs right inside our heads. Better still, with full-body virtual reality, the viewer gets to climb right into the ring. But for all that, the charade, however mindbending, has to stop sometime. Circuses pall, just ask any overworked clown. Humans will never really lose sight of the distinction between real and virtual, unless they can be made to forget that they are rational animals. Besides, so much of their reality is patently bullshit that nothing short of mass lobotomy could disguise it.

Credo Greedo

And bullshit is what lies at the heart of capitalist ideology. Even capitalists themselves believe it. On Page One of every school economics textbook it says that resources are limited but wants are unlimited. As wants are satisfied, new wants always appear. Now if this were true, socialism would be impossible. Relying on this anti-human and quite unsubstantiated prejudice the capitalists, knowing the extremely short shelf-life of information commodities, expect to be able to produce new commodities indefinitely, to replace old ones that have become free or nearly so. Yet here is their mistake, for wants are not infinite. As more things become free (for example, MS Explorer, Netscape, Winzip, Apache, Acrobat, Linux and a thousand other useful programs) they expect us to keep paying for upgrades, assuming we will always want more, but we won’t. Instead, we will reach a satisfaction threshold. And then, we’ll just start expecting everything else to be free too. And why not? With modern robotised manufacturing, costs are falling in all sectors of commodity production. If they cost next to nothing to produce, why should we pay at all? Kevin Kelly, founder editor of Wired, doesn’t see a problem for capitalism in this, and argues that businesses should give their products away for free, in order to reap later returns:

Ubiquity drives increasing returns in the network economy. The question becomes: what is the most cost-effective way to achieve ubiquity? And the answer is: give things away. Make them free (New Rules for the New Economy, Fourth Estate, 1998).

One can only hope that all capitalists, convinced of our insatiable natures, are daft enough to follow Kelly’s advice, and indeed many companies are doing just this, and not just with software, (free mobile phones, free calls, free satellite decoders). Even if this loss-leader strategy just makes a loss, it plants another expectation in the public mind, and subtly undermines its own creators. Things can be free. There is such a thing as enough. Abundance does exist.

It may be that the sacred cows of capitalism and property society will be sent to the slaughterhouse one by one. Even that feared and revered symbol of ultimate power, the coin, may lose its lustre, its relevance reduced to a meaningless abstraction. Where once we bartered real things like sheep or sacks of salt, then paid with iron bars, gold ingots or copper coins, then latterly with decorated scraps of paper, now we will be held to ransom by mere electronic digits. The case for abolishing digits may not seem so far fetched in the future when nobody handles real cash anymore and the fetishised idol no longer has even a visible face.

The Socialist Virus

As well as the notion of insatiable greed, the ideology of capitalism also rests on the notion of natural inequality, the cult of the leader and of the expert. The better educated workers become, the more this cult suffers. As contempt for our politicians rides as high as voting figures sink low, the idea that we must rely on the unique expertise of superior individuals is beginning already to look decidedly comical. But in the wired network consciousness, where “no-one is as smart as everyone” (Kelly, p.14) the expert and the leader may become positively antiquated concepts. The days may be dying when the “ignorant masses” can be led, misled and mystified by some “social elite” who know better. Instead, the wired world may experience a new renaissance of democratised creative thinking, as good ideas begin to spread through the ports and wires of a billion terminals, the electronic synapses of a revolution: “You don’t attack the monster. You infect him, like a virus.” (Rushkoff, p142). And small ideas can grow big in cyberspace, as Kelly, in a backhanded paraphrase of William Morris, makes clear:

 The network economy has set into motion the power of hobby tribes and informed peers . . . The law of increasing returns can feed a small interest into a mid-sized interest. Whereas once there was a lone fanatic for every notion, now there is a devoted website for every fanatic notion; soon there can be 10,000 fellow enthusiasts for every fascination (Kelly, p.105).

Internet disinformation

Yet disinformation remains for the time being the best weapon against workers. When the truth can no longer hide in the dark, the logical thing is to dazzle us with data. It doesn’t even have to be false data, just so long as it’s irrelevant and it wastes precious time. And as the Nobel economist Herbert Simon points out: “What information consumes is rather obvious. It consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of knowledge creates a poverty of attention.” (Kelly, p.59). The grim truth is that this crude strategy will probably work, for a while at least. According to the Critical Art Ensemble, who may be perhaps thinking primarily in the short term, the vast majority of Internet users will be passive consumers, rather than active participants:

They will be playing computer games, watching interactive TV, and shopping in virtual malls. The stratified distribution of education will act as the guardian of the virtual border between the passive and the active user, and prevent those populations participating in multi-directional interactivity from increasing in any significant numbers (Alinta Thornton, Ch.5, http://www.wr.com.au/democracy/thesis1).

If this sounds depressing, one has to remember that it is a conservative estimation of human behaviour as it is now, schooled into a passive consumption of goods, news, ideas and entertainment. If there is one key hallmark of pre-internet mass society it is probably this conditioned passivity. Our pre-internet generation cannot in all fairness be expected to adapt thoroughly to such a major cultural innovation, and will certainly fail to exploit its real long-term potential. A second-generation wired society is likely to be very different, more individualistic yet better integrated, more critical and proactive, and with higher expectations. The longer capitalism lasts, the more bolshie the workers are likely to become.

For now, like everything else in capitalism, any attempt at disinformation overload will work only partially and unreliably, if it works at all, and cannot depend on any conscious or systematic conspiracy by the owning class. Conversely, we as workers have no free ticket to easy victory through the Internet. When all is said and done, it is an instrument only, an “enabling technology”. The printed word didn’t liberate us either, but it made a huge difference, and so will this, if we learn how to use it properly. With the means of knowledge—the key to the means of production—now out of the private bag and in the public domain, it is fair to say that the working class has never been in a stronger position to take control of its own future.

Revolutions are made by people, not machines, people working together, people in communities. Much is made of supposed “online communities”, but it is precisely in the real physical world of community, rather than its ersatz virtual counterparts, that the revolutionary potential of the Internet may be storing up its greatest surprise.

Paddy Shannon

(Next month, in the concluding article, we examine the Internet and Community.)

Link to Part 4

The Crisis: don’t read about it! (2009)

From the May 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Sun newspaper should be no more abhorrent to socialists than any other capitalist propaganda rag. In a spirit of intellectual equanimity I occasionally take the wretched organ along with more sober rags of the ruling elite in order to gainsay and refute the views of supporters of the profit system.

Now, as the world capitalist system moves inexorably towards another catastrophic slump it behoves the class traitor scribblers of the “popular press” to divert our attention from the problems facing us as a consequence of capitalism’s irresolvable internal contradictions.

But don’t worry - the Sun has a “Happy Page”:

“The pound crumbles, the economy tumbles and Gordon Brown finally rumbles that we are heading for the big recession.
So to take your mind off the sad economic tidings there are plenty of cheery stories scattered throughout The Sun.
And for uninterrupted fun turn to Page 20 our new Happy Page.
If you have any stories or photos that will raise British spirits why not send them to us and do your bit in the War against Gloom effort.”

As the “Real Economy” goes into recession and people lose their jobs, homes and belief in the future of their communities we are exhorted by the Sun to turn to page 20 and have a chortle as workers’ lives under capitalism crumble around our ears.

Socialists have long understood the function of the reactionary media in the intellectual conditioning of capitalist society. Workers are bombarded by propaganda on a myriad of fronts. In the last 30 years the Sun has cornered the market in combining “politics”, gambling and tits with criminal and celebrity witch hunts.

Whilst the world working class is entering a period in which there will be a sustained, angry and possibly violent attack upon our meagre living standards and individual rights by the ruling class, we must challenge the “official” media at every turn, the more apparently “learned” daily journals such as the Guardian, Independent or Telegraph as well as the Sun.

At this time the fanciful notion that “taxpayers money” is being used to stave off capitalist crisis is being promulgated by the mainstream media. Whilst, in reality the capitalist class is using State funds generated on the backs of the labour of workers to prop up the profit system and to provide them with a surplus. The capitalist media are also wrestling all their capacity to prepare us for yet another period of belt-tightening.

The reasons for the failings of capitalism, and the potential to resolve the problems caused to people under the grip of the system are often very near to the grasp of workers’ thinking, both individually and collectively. My trajectory towards socialist consciousness began as a very young man witnessing the “shaking out” of staff at R.M. Douglas Construction Ltd of Birmingham in 1992. I saw proud middle-aged, “company” men, some with over 25 years service, cry openly as they were told they were surplus to requirements for the firm.

So, as the reality of capitalist recession imposes itself once more on the already beleaguered working class the last thing we need to do is to read “Happy News” on Page 20 of The Sun newspaper.

Andy P. Davies

Whose news? (2009)

From the May 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Why are high house prices and high profits considered good news?

We are all used to hearing from the TV or radio that what we are about to experience is the ‘news’. Preceded by a little tune supposed to promote gravitas and/or imply the very latest fast technological process of news gathering we are presented with a sober middle-class gent or couple sporting sensible hair, grey suits and dazzling white smiles. A stranger to our culture may be very surprised that whichever channel is chosen the content of the news is almost identical. Indeed the choice of headlines is nearly always the same; a little odd considering that in this country we have over 100 digital channels! What can be the reason for such a strange phenomena? Could it be that there is total unanimity concerning what is important in human behaviour (this would be the only example of such total agreement within our species) or is there some agenda shared by those who own and operate our media?

It would be fair to say that the mainstream media in this country (TV, radio and newspapers) are owned by a tiny minority. Socialists have always maintained that the media’s obsessions reflect those of the ruling class who own them. The fact that high house prices and high profits are considered good news when it is the majority who are exploited even more as a result gives you an idea of the values shared by the owners of the media. The main disagreements (at least within the newspapers) concern the different commercial interests within the owning class – the dreary and unending European Union debate being an obvious example.

Another element that is thought to contribute to the ‘news’ is topicality – the story should reflect a perspective on a contemporary value or popular obsession. For our general readers it is obviously important that our analysis should begin with a reflection on contemporary events. However part of that analysis for us is a proof of the illusion of novelty/topicality of events within the anachronistic culture of capitalism.

A friend of mine has recently given up his subscription to a newspaper on the grounds that it merely repeats the same old propaganda values whatever the story. This is the essence of ‘the news’ in today’s media. It seeks only to find different stories to ‘prove’ its own value system. The ‘credit crunch’ is either the result of greedy bankers or lack of government supervision of the financial services. It could never be a proof of the instability and irrational nature of capitalism itself.

There arises an inevitable contradiction within journalism between the observation of change and its reporting when restricted by the use of reactionary values and language. It is the nature of language to struggle to find new concepts and metaphors to describe the changing world we live in. When change is accelerated during a revolutionary period this tension can create linguistic confusion and creativity (Christopher Hill’s book The World Turned Upside Down illustrates this wonderfully using examples from the English Revolution).

It is important to emphasise that propaganda is not always consciously produced by a conspiracy of journalists and press barons. I remember Michael Parkinson saying that he never experienced owner/editorial interference during his journalistic career. This, of course, merely emphasises the care taken to employ only political ‘fellow travellers’ rather than proof of the non-propagandist nature of the media. Within the commercial media the usual worker and owner tension can destroy real journalism under the profit and propaganda imperatives of our authoritarian culture.

What is really corrosive to good journalism is to be completely unaware of the political bias that is inherent in any interpretation of events (the news). Of course this is to give the benefit of the doubt to journalists and not to accuse them of downright lies. My father once found himself, in his role as a union shop steward, in the centre of a local news story. After an interview he gave to a journalist he was outraged by what was subsequently printed. This was, in part, testament to his political naivety but it also emphasises that what is printed must fit within the propaganda value of ‘the story’ even if this necessitates downright lies.

What would qualify as news for a future socialist media? Of course when we are in a position to produce stories for the mass media the world will begin to be a very different place. Reporting will surely emphasise the relationship between the rising political awareness of the population and the activities this provokes. Presumably what remains of the present media will portray the changing political landscape as a disaster for the world and everyone in it. A socialist media will initially have to counter this increasingly hysterical propaganda. Then the production of a forum for debate will become ever more important as the need for information to make democratic decisions becomes vital.

As the need to counter reactionary propaganda recedes then the media will transform itself into a vehicle of information and entertainment. Because the need for ‘escapist’ entertainment will also recede I suspect a different, possibly more ‘mature’ kind of fiction will replace it. I hope to live to see a world where fictional characters deal with important political dilemmas rather than personal and romantic ones. And what of sports? I hear the reader say fearfully. Perhaps, at last, competition between those who wish to compete will be confined to the sports arena where they belong.  By this time your writer will be enjoying a cricket game in Jamaica in his role as your Caribbean sports reporter (editors permitting).

Wez.

The Virus Media Perspective: Televisual Tripe (2020)

From the May 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Covid-19 and the Media: Myths and Mystifications

Perhaps I’m not the best person to be writing this article. Quarantined at home for the last few weeks, my media consumption has mainly revolved around my three-year-old son’s favourite TV animations. But in between episodes of Paw Patrol and Peppa Pig, I’ve been watching the Covid-19 news narrative unfold. Every crisis brings opportunity for a few and recently the news media have benefitted big time from a locked-down public hungry for information. The audience for television news, especially on BBC, has skyrocketed. And while their print circulations have been in long-term decline, the big newspapers have also strongly influenced public debate about the pandemic, providing many of the stories we access through social media.

Much of the mainstream coverage of this emergency has been informative and it’s not necessarily true that journalists have simply been fuelling panic or fear about the coronavirus. There is some room for debate about how much ‘overreaction’ there might have been to Covid-19 and experts are far from unanimous on this question. But this is a genuine crisis, if only because the capitalist states it is impacting have been so badly prepared for it: placing profits before people, they completely failed to invest in the scientific research and healthcare equipment needed to cope with this widely foreseen pandemic.

Nevertheless, there’s much to criticise in the media coverage of the emergency. After all, a media system owned and directed by the exploiting class is bound to discuss Covid-19 in ways that reflect capitalist interests and ideologies. Here are just a few of those ways.

Fighting Talk

Many media and political discussions of this crisis have been wrapped in the language of patriotism and war. Trump called Covid-19 the ‘invisible enemy’ and across the major media outlets, journalists have routinely talked of the ‘fight’ or ‘battle’ against the virus. ‘WAR ON CORONA’ went the headline of Scotland’s Sunday Mail on 15 March. Other British papers have praised the ‘Dunkirk spirit’ of the population. Of course, war metaphors are always popular among politicians and journalists seeking dramatic effect, especially when the state perceives a threat to its authority (British newspapers were full of them during the 2011 riots) and no doubt Boris Johnson talked about ‘beating’ the enemy of Covid-19 in order to project his strength and ‘leadership’ skills at a time when even other members of his class were questioning his abilities.

All this war talk may have distorted public perceptions of the crisis, however. In one of their online broadcasts in March, Novara media showed footage of an elderly Londoner (a woman clearly in the ‘high risk’ category) declaring that she would not stay at home to curb the spread of infection because that would be ‘giving in to the virus’ – as though Covid-19 were a group of jihadists hell-bent on destroying ‘our way of life’! Presenting the coronavirus crisis as a ‘war’ also conditions the public to accept the tougher new policing and surveillance measures being put in place by governments across the world and which many people fear will continue after the lockdown has ended.

Finally, militarist language tends to channel workers’ dissatisfaction with capitalism into admiration for the nation state. Before the first ‘Clap for our Carers’ event which swept across Britain on 26 March (and which then became a weekly occurrence), Leo McKinstry of the right-wing Express came over all Churchillian, asking readers to ‘salute our NHS heroes in this their finest hour’. And after the event, the front page of the left-leaning Mirror newspaper was given over to photographs of smiling NHS workers being publicly applauded. ‘Your country LOVES you, gushed the newspaper, along with ‘NATION SALUTES VIRUS HEROES’. Not to be outdone, the BBC’s Breakfast programme started a daily Hero Half Hour segment, in which viewers were invited to share praise for key workers ‘on the frontline’.

But there’s something fishy about this newfound love for often low-paid workers and as for NHS ‘heroism’, perhaps we should recall Albert Camus’ novel The Plague, whose central protagonist, a doctor called Bernard Rieux, states that his work ‘is not about heroism’, but about doing what’s necessary in an absurd situation. In fact, ‘Clap for our Carers’ has been a well-camouflaged propaganda campaign. It has certainly tapped into positive public feelings of solidarity with hard-pressed healthcare workers who are saving lives under difficult circumstances; however, those circumstances are due in no small measure to healthcare cuts imposed by successive governments, including the present one. The media’s militarist and nationalist framing of the event has tended to obscure such facts, deflecting any criticism of the state with the feel-good message ‘we’re all in this together’.

China Crisis

Britain’s tabloid newspapers have a global reputation for sensationalism and racism and they have not disappointed during this emergency. Back in January, for example, the Daily Mail and other mainstream media sources published lurid images of a Chinese woman eating a bat in what some claimed was a Wuhan restaurant, although the pictures turned out to have been taken in 2016 in a restaurant in Palau and were therefore not connected with the recent outbreak. But that did not matter. The ‘fake news’ story went viral, no doubt because it appealed to racist Western stereotypes of exotic Orientals with bizarre habits.

It’s hard to prove that the media affects attitudes or behaviours in the real world, but it seems likely that the anti-Chinese messaging of the tabloids has contributed to the present climate of xenophobic hostility towards East Asian people. This has led to harassment and sometimes brutal physical assaults. On the 3 March a Singaporean student was left needing facial reconstructive surgery after being attacked in London. And on 14 March an Asian-American family, including a two-year-old girl, were stabbed in a retail outlet in Texas by a man who apparently feared that the victims were infectious. Being the cynics that they are, politicians such as Johnson and Trump, who has referred to Covid-19 as the ‘Chinese virus’, might be hoping to benefit from this popular anti-Chinese sentiment, as they try to sidestep responsibility for their failures in handling the outbreak by shifting the blame onto China – even to the point of asking for ‘reparations’.

In parts of the left-leaning media, meanwhile, the China card has been played in a very different, but equally dishonest way. During an interview on the Kremlin-supporting Russia Today television news channel, Stalin enthusiasts George Galloway and Ranjeet Brar heaped praise on the efficient and organised Chinese response to the outbreak. This is reasonable up to a point. After all, a case could be made that China marshalled its immense state apparatus to deal with the coronavirus outbreak more effectively than many other countries and it seems to have kept its death toll low. Then again, we surely ought to be suspicious of health-related statistics reported by the authoritarian Chinese state. And Galloway and Brar conveniently forgot that the Chinese government had initially tried to suppress the warnings of medical professionals about the spread of the virus. None of this has stopped left-wing ‘anti-imperialist’ publications from praising the glorious People’s Republic. The People’s Dispatch even published an article with the title ‘How Chinese Socialism is Defeating the Coronavirus Outbreak’. I can only recommend that the authors of this piece actually visit China to witness its obscene wealth gap, rural poverty and hyper-exploited workers. Some socialism!

Corona Communism

Some very odd ideas about socialism have also been aired in more mainstream media. On 20 March, in the right-wing Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard urged that ‘Boris must embrace socialism immediately to save the liberal free market’. But this only shows the capitalist press’s confusion about the meaning of socialism. For Evans-Pritchard, socialism means the state taking over control of the economy from private industry. This has of course happened with dizzying speed in recent months, with the nationalisation of the hospitals in Ireland and the suspension of the rail franchise system in the UK, to give just two examples. Genuine socialism, however, means a world without classes, commodities, money and borders. What we have been seeing over recent weeks is not socialism, but the capitalist state putting in place measures to cover a proportion of workers’ wages, bail out businesses and keep key services running. The state is simply doing what it must in order to head off any ‘social unrest’ that might arise during the epidemic and to ensure that the wheels of production can grind back into motion afterwards. To a limited extent, governments have been ‘putting their arms around workers’ – but only so that they can get their hands back around our necks when normal business resumes.

Another, particularly daft media myth has been that the virus is a social leveller. This idea gained some traction in the major media when, on 25 March, the British public learned that the virus had pulled off its most audacious stunt so far, shamelessly infecting the first in line to the throne, Prince Charles. In the Express, Dr Hilary Jones was quoted as saying that the virus ‘is a great leveller’ that is ‘just as virulent for politicians and celebrities and the monarchy as it will the homeless and destitute’. A few days later, Clare Foges of The Times waxed lyrical on the theme, writing: Coronavirus: the great leveller. Infecting princes and prime ministers, making hermits of most, hushing the concrete council estate and the millionaires’ leafy square’.

Fortunately, not many people seem to have been fooled by this sort of twaddle. Sceptics on social media have argued that Prince Charles, who had shown only minor symptoms of C-19, had ‘jumped the queue’, having been given a coronavirus test despite NHS guidance that only hospitalised patients could receive one. The public have also given short shrift to celebrities claiming to be ‘just like us’ when faced with the threat of the virus. Wonder Woman actress Gal Gadot’s attempt to prove that ‘we’re all in this together’ by leading a star-studded singalong to John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ was widely ridiculed on social media. And megastar Madonna, the world’s wealthiest female musician, was mocked for an Instagram video in which she called Covid-19 ‘the great equaliser’ while sitting in a petal-filled bathtub.

Far from thrusting us towards socialism or uniting the celebs with the plebs, the corona emergency has brought the savagely class-divided nature of our world into sharp focus. While it is true that anybody can catch the virus (this is surely one reason why the capitalist class is taking it very seriously), this has been a tale of two pandemics. On the one side, the super-rich have headed for their disaster bunkers in private jets; on the other, workers on temporary or insecure contracts have faced destitution (by early April in Britain there had been a staggering one million new registrations for Universal Credit), while the most vulnerable groups in society, such as refugees, homeless people, those with pre-existing conditions, or the many low-paid key workers who cannot simply ‘stay at home’, are widely exposed to the virus.

Their Media and Ours

Despite all of these myths and mystifications, the mainstream media are not entirely bad. Tough questions have sometimes been asked of the government. For example, on 26 March the editor of The Lancet, Richard Horton, appeared on the BBC’s Question Time discussion panel, condemning Britain’s unreadiness for the pandemic as a ‘scandal’. And at the time of writing in mid-April, much of the British media has spent weeks castigating the government’s inability to guarantee adequate testing and protective equipment for NHS workers. But it has been primarily through the social media that working-class people have found solidarity via community information and support groups. And only socialist publications such as our own have managed to cut through the nationalist claptrap and geopolitical blame games of the mainstream media to expose the underlying problem: the global capitalist system, which exists to protect profits rather than human life.

S.H.

Bread Cast Upon The Waters. (1921)

From the March 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the midst of the terrible want, disease, and stark misery that the workers of to-day are getting inured to, that they are generally acquiescent in as being a condition of things utterly inseparable from the existence of their class, it is interesting to notice how much money is being spent on various forms of education, and by whom it is spent.

For some time past, prominence has been given in the columns of the "Daily Telegraph" to an appeal for funds, under the patronage of the Prince of Wales, to effect general improvement in the organisation of the Boy Scout movement.

A casual glance down the lists of subscribers of sums of £5 and over, as published in the "Daily Telegraph" of Feb. 5th and 7th (to take two days at random) will reveal the fact that roughly three out of every four subscribers are large business firms.

Now this is rather startling, for it is a rare thing to find these "captains of industry" falling over each other to give money away, but astonishment evaporates when the inevitable reason for this "generosity" is disclosed.

Investigation shows that the various sums donated to this movement are, briefly, investments. They are expected to yield a profit.

No doubt a good many people would wonder how on earth a subscription to the Boy Scout movement can be called a profitable investment for these capitalists, but the words of the investors themselves, in fact the words of the Chief Scout, Baden-Powell, himself, will remove any doubts on that score.

Appealing for funds at a large gathering of business men at Manchester, "B.P." said: "We will find from experience that the boys who cultivate the ideas and habits of the Boy Scouts prove more useful to employers of labour." — ("Manchester Guardian," 1.7.14.)—A cogent and potent reason, which resulted in substantial subscriptions from those interested in increasing the "usefulness" of future workers.

To-day, nearly seven years after the meeting and speech referred to, we find the "educating" of embryonic workers through the medium of the Boy Scouts has proved so valuable to employers of labour that they "part up" with subscriptions with an alacrity positively staggering to those unacquainted with the reason for such "free-hearted" stunts.

Another kind-hearted man by the name of "The Lord Dewar" (what a smell of whisky !) delivers himself of this :

  Sir,—I have pleasure in enclosing cheque for £1,000 towards what I consider a national cause of first importance, believing, as I do, that the Boy Scout movement is a sure foundation upon which to build the best ideals of citizenship, and the best medium to inculcate into the minds of the rising generation courtesy, discipline, courage, and resource. The results of this movement will be of inestimable benefit to the British Empire in future generations.—("Daily Telegraph," 5.2.21.)

This is a letter which reads at first sight as though £1,000 was a very casual and common gift, but which is pregnant with meaning to those who care to find it.

The "best ideals of citizenship" from the point of view of this purveyor of lunatic broth combine in the worker a keen intelligence in making the wheels of production run smoothly and prolifically, an unquestioning acceptance of dire poverty when further production is stopped by the master class because it does not pay, and a deadly dull and apathetic lack of understanding of the worker's true position in society.

That Lord Dewar thoroughly appreciates the benefits that he and his class enjoy as a result of cheerful endurance and unquestioning obedience to authority on the part of the workers is shown by the magnitude of his "gift."

There is every reason to believe that the brutal plainness of expression contained in the following extract from a letter is the cause of the writer's desire to remain anonymous under the horribly suggestive and admissive pen-name of "Lone Wolf," who writes thus :

  There is only one class in the scout movement, the best. That is what makes it so enormously superior in its results to trade unions and middle-class unions and leagues of nations. And the underlying secret? It is, I honestly believe, practically the only great movement of the present time which has realised the practical necessity of subordinating the personal interests of its members to the needs of the community. . . Most people who do not want other people taught to think for themselves have some very good reason for it,—that it is easier to prey upon ignorance, for instance."—("Daily Telegraph," 5.2.21. Italics mine.)

Well, we know who the "community" is. Lliar George did his best to teach us at the times when the railwaymen and miners, besides several other combinations of workers, were doing their best to maintain the already poor standard they "enjoyed" by means of strikes. It was dinned into our ears incessantly that these men were fighting the "community."

Apparently this bare-fanged "Wolf" is one of the "community" and is desirous of having the thoughts of the rising generation trained in the way he indicates.

And yet we find that, through some tortuous and peculiarly kinked up process of "reasoning," the vast majority of workers fully believe that they are members of the "community" that the Welsh twister speaks of so glibly. The Georgian community is composed of people who matter in the present system of society, and the worker of to day who thinks that that includes him is indulging in a pretty but suicidal conceit.

Those capitalists who have not previously taken a long enough view of the enormous power that can be wielded through the Boy Scout organisation, in the manufacture of complaisant wage-slaves are shown where their interests lie in the following extract from an article published in the "Daily Telegraph" as part of the appeal for funds :

  No expression of approval is more welcome to those at the head of the Boy Scout movement than that which comes from business men (28.1.21).

Mr. Wilde, headmaster, Blakely Municipal School, Manchester—a gentleman not prone to making wild statements, writes, concerning the average Boy Scout:

  He subordinates his own desires to a sense of honour and of loyalty and obligation to authority. He perseveres, and does not slack off. . . Surely a movement that is worth developing (38.1.21).

Which is a strong recommendation—from the point of view of any exploiter of labour!

What a game !

In these days the close observer sees that no movement that is in the interest of the workers generally gets a free advertisement in the columns of the Press like this Boy Scout business does. It is not to be expected that the owners and controllers of the profit-seeking (yet "free") Press will allow any thing to appear in their columns that is in any way detrimental to the interests of themselves as a class. That things do happen, too great to be ignored, yet against the interest of the capitalist class, is true.

Then subtlety gets full play, sometimes taking the form of bare-faced distortion of truth, sometimes "damning with faint praise," again deliberately suppressing vital facts, and in ways scarcely discernible, the capitalist class guard their own interests all the time, even making their position stronger by spreading plausible misconceptions which ultimately take the aspect of absolute truth.

A worker who used his intelligence on his own behalf and has become class-conscious, that is, realises that the interests of the workers and the interests of the masters, or capitalists, are diametrically opposed, smells a rat as soon as ever he sees a thing boosted in the Press as this Boy Scout movement has been, and a short search soon discloses the object of the boost.

Penny-a-liners, journalistic place-hunters, religious and lunatic sufferers from "scribearrhoea," soon have the grim features of their works laid bare by the worker of normal mind who has used his intelligence in discovering his own true position in the present terribly cruel system of society.

Then does the Boy Scout movement, shorn of all its ribbons, badges, and sentimental trappings, stand out in its true light as a highly developed organisation for the production of wage slaves whose minds will have been moulded to such a degree of complaisant obedience to authority that the woes suffered by the capitalists of to-day (as a result of the workers trying to think for themselves in even the vague, groping, inadequate way that they do) will be entirely eliminated from their scheme of things, and labour troubles will be practically unknown.

We, as Socialists, know to our bitter chagrin what a hard task it is to dislodge ideas that have been grafted into people during their earlier years, and to day we are face to face with a most successful effort to still further influence the minds of the young against their true interests, a fact hidden from the children and their parents with unscrupulous subtlety.

The prosecution of the Boy Scout movement has in view the cultivation of all the "virtues" in the minds of the boys, but never a word is breathed to them about the abominable evil of a system that ensures the whole of their future being insecure until death.

Selim.

Editorial: The Masters' New Offensive. (1921)

Editorial from the January 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is symptomatic of the pressure which the gradual awakening of the workers is putting on the master class that the latter is adopting a policy of systematic anti-Socialist propaganda and education in political economy among the workers. For generations the capitalists have been content to leave the doping of their slaves to the parson, the novelist, and the prostitute of the Press, all of whom worked by the general distortion of the vision, and generally left economics alone. But to-day we find all and sundry among capitalist agents developing into professors of social science for the benefit of the working class, and, more significant than all the rest put together, the great capitalists are making it a personal matter, and, probably counting upon the glamour of their names to cover the weakness of their arguments, have essayed to teach the workers the kind of economics they would like them to know.

The late Andrew Carnegie was a notable case in point; later Lord Leverhulme addresses working class audiences all over the country, and tries to tell the proletarians "What is Capital" in a ludicrous pamphlet of that title, and so we could go on.

Well, we welcome these pamphleteers and platform pounders with open arms. If you pitch a roped ring and put one human fighting cock in it no one takes much notice; but directly you put a second man in the ring the town flocks to see. We have been the lonely figure in the ring years enough—is it possible that at last our enemy is coming out to fight ?

A few days ago the editorial in the "Daily Chronicle" tried to show the workers that low production means high prices, high prices mean smaller purchasing power, smaller purchasing power means lessened demand, which completes the circle with increased unemployment—a plausible enough tale if one forgets that, in spite of all arguments, and regardless of high prices or low, it is the surplus-value, the difference between what the workers are paid (and therefore are able to consume) and what they produce, that causes unemployment, a fundamental fact that the capitalist sophists have never been able to dispose of and never will.

In "Lloyd's Sunday News" of Jan. 9,1921, the Right Hon. C. A. McCurdy, K.C., M.P., Food Controller, tries to do his little bit toward the general bamboozling of the workers in an article entitled: "Your Food Prices in 1921." He strikes the right note at the commencement when he says "The people of Great Britain, I think, deserve some word of recognition, if not of thanks, for the progress which has been made in this country towards restoration of commercial prosperity . . ."

"Commercial prosperity," mark you, in the face of a million hungry unemployed! One would have thought this touched the limit, but the [editor] of the same paper, in the same issue, goes one better. "Our money is going to be worth more this year than last, and it is going to be easier to make ends meet," he says. It is pretty evident that the writer of that optimistic passage is not unduly oppressed by the flood of unemployment which, even his own leaders recognise, is about to sweep down upon the working class of this country.

Mr. McCurdy, of course, takes up the old cry beloved of capitalist papers, capitalist statesmen, and those capitalist henchmen, the labour leaders (who are strangely quiet upon the point now that the inevitable result we prophesied has been arrived at). He declares, "The price the British housewife will be called upon to pay in 1921 for many commodities will depend in part, of course, upon the continued progress of our own people in increasing production . . ." A little later he says: "Europe wants the goods, we want the wages; why is it, then, that an exchange cannot be made which would be so profitable to both ? The answer is that the war . . . has also dislocated and choked the rivers and channels through which international trade flowed freely in time of peace."

With channels and rivers dislocated and choked the way to avoid floods is not to clear the channels, but to pray Gord to increase the output of rain !

We hope to have an article shortly dealing at length with this subject.

Mr Cube The Economist (1951)

Tate & Lyle's Mr. Cube

From the April 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tate &  Lyle, Ltd., have recently had a large size advertisement appearing in the daily press. The advertisement consists of a series of cartoons entitled, “Where all the money went in 1950.”

It is an attempt to show that out of a gross income for the year amounting to £84,435,000 only £618,000 was left for net dividends to stockholders, equal to 1/7 of a farthing for each pound of sugar sold.

The advertisement states that, “ Tate & Lyle, Ltd., employ 8,500 workers.” If you divide the net dividend of £618,000 by the 8,500 workers you find it amounts to over £72 per head.

Taxation on profits amounted to £1,228,000 which again divided by the number of employees equals over £144 per head. This is used for running the capitalist state machine.

The total profits before taxation amounted to £2,196,000, wages and employees benefits totalled £3,700,000 which with the so called Prosperity Sharing Scheme made a total of £3,818,000 paid to the workers.

This can be expressed as £2,196,000 Unpaid Labour over £3,818,000 Paid Labour.

The rate of Surplus value being just over 57 per cent.

This is being generous to Mr. Cube, as one cartoon states that “£1,770,000 went in overheads and special expenses which includes money spent in self-defence.”

Special expenses can cover a multitude of sins. (One of them is the advertisement). One thing that can be certain is that the workers produced the wealth for these expenses.

The series of cartoons can easily mislead workers who do not look into the figures closely, however the expression unpaid labour over paid labour clearly shows why Mr. Cube takes such an interest in economics. —He is a bright little chap.

D. W. Lock

Blogger's Note:

Mr. Cube (see the above illustration) was a genuine cartoon character devised as a clever and effective company propaganda ploy by Tate & Lyle against the Labour Government's supposed threat to nationalize the British Sugar Industry. More details on this obscure bit of British political history can be found at the following link, Mr Cube the sugar lump.

The Reason of It. (1920)

From the October 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

To save the next generation is, according to "Lloyd's News" (8.8.20) the mission of a tearing campaign through London, that is to be inaugurated by a "distinguished body" representing all denominations and young people's organisations, headed by Mr. Lloyd George and the Bishops of Barking and Stepney.

These gentlemen, fresh from the contemplation of the divine spectacle of the butchery of millions of working men, the starvation of millions of working-class women and children, the drowning of thousands of seamen, the murder of miners, the atrocity of Amritsar, recoil with horror from the "paganism" of the rising generation.

Therefore, fellow workers, Lloyd George and Co. would fain lead your little ones away from the "appalling examples of licentiousness all around them." To do this they will not consider such sordid material things as tenement life, child factory labour, insufficient and adulterated food, clothing, etc., in short, the beastly conditions in which the children are reared. No! They will appeal to the heart, because to admit that conditions are responsible would of necessity involve the alteration of those conditions.

David, however, is not concerned about the vices or virtues of the workers, but, as the representative of the capitalist class, he is perturbed at the growing tendency of the workers to question and criticise the institutions of capitalism.

Mr. George knows that in view of the more frequent and more violent manifestations of the class struggle, greater attention must be paid to the dulling of the intellects of the potential wage slaves. Those beautiful dreams; Homes for Heroes; Fields of Waving Corn, have failed to materialise. Instead there are the keener competition of children with their parents, a growing army of unemployed, prostitution, famine, and disease rampant, dark clouds hovering over the industrial field, and the probability of more wars. No wonder that our children will have need of the "corrective of the self discipline of Christianity."

So our far-seeing capitalists see to it that every inducement is made to working-class children, to entice them into the wage-slave organisations—the boy scouts, girl guides, bands of dope and glory, etc. Our children must be taught to believe in the humility of man, the sanctity of poverty, the shame of idleness, the chastening influence of disease— for the workers. Yes ! Because the capitalist class desires "good and faithful servants," cheap, docile, and ignorant wage slaves. And to get them there is no better preparative than religion.

While the worker's head is full of such notions as God, the devil, and the hereafter, to him his slave condition on this planet is a minor affair. He looks upon his revolting conditions as heaven-sent and unchangeable. That his life and destiny should be controlled in just the same way as the machine which he is compelled to tend gives him no food for thought. The ownership by a small section of society of the economic resources of the whole community, "always has been and always will be"—in his mind.

The Socialist, however, has analysed society from top to bottom. He knows and understands the laws of the development of the social organism. Religion he explains as having its origin in ancestor worship, and owing its development to the changing economic conditions, which will also be responsible for its disappearance in the future. The poverty and degradation of the working class to-day he knows is due to the private ownership of the means of life.

Therefore, reader, he suggests to you that instead of thinking about "changing your heart," you should consider the alteration of the basis of society—to establish in place of the present system, one based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of producing and distributing wealth.

What is your view?

A. H.

You Can Help (1920)

From the August 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

One or more capitalist groups or individuals have been busy of late issuing pamphlets and leaflets pretending to combat Socialism. Lord Leverhulme’s pamphlet “What is Capital” is a case in point. These lucubrations bear the name of no organisation or individual as the issuer, hence it is difficult to find out who the responsible parties are. In all cases that have come before our notice the effort at capitalist propaganda is so comically poor that there is no wonder no one can be found to publicly father the miserable weakling. It seems, however, that many large employers are thinking it worth their while to get these leaflets circulated, more or less surreptitiously, among their workpeople.

This, of course, is sufficient reason for us to find out just what is going on, and we shall be glad if friends who are fortunate (!) enough to share in these generous gifts from their masters would forward them to the Editorial Committee of the Socialist Standard, at the Head Office of the Party, giving fullest particulars as to how they came by them.

We would point out to our friends that there can hardly be any finer antidote to this sneakish capitalist propaganda than our Manifesto, of which we have just issued the Sixth Edition.