Voice From The Back: Our unelected bosses (2003)

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

Our unelected bosses

We are often told that we live in an egalitarian, democratic society, where we can tell our leaders what to do, and if they don’t do it, sack them. In a political sense there is some truth to that, but, when it comes to wealth and control, capitalism leaves us all powerless. A good example of this was recently supplied by a survey conducted by the Times (15 October). They analysed the personnel of the FTSE 100 boardrooms and showed the immense power that these unelected men and women have over our lives.

“None of the people included in the Power 100 is a household name. Few are all that well known among close followers of business and stock market affairs. The most powerful man, Sir Robert Wilson, is more likely to elicit a response of ‘who he?’ than sage nods of familiarity.”

Here are some of the entities under his control (with his salaries in brackets). Chairman of Rio Tinto (£1,410,000), non-executive director Diageo (£68,000), BG Group (£35,000). Such people decide where factories and offices are built and where they are closed. They decide whether you work or not and inside capitalism you are powerless to do anything about it. Some democracy. Some equality.

The killer system

In 2000 the UN pledged to cut the death rate for the under five year olds by two-thirds and halve the number of people suffering from hunger, but now concede that these targets are unlikely to be realised because of the import of subsidised Western food with the consequent ruin of under-developed countries’ farmers and cuts in aid programmes. In the most scientific survey held to date Unicef have revealed a heart breaking picture.

“More than one billion young people in the developing world are now living in conditions of severe deprivation, according to a report for the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef). Tens of millions of children in developing countries still do not have access to basic human needs such as food, water and sanitation, the study found. …. Professor Dave Gordon from the University of Bristol (one of the repor’ts authors) said: ‘Many of the children surveyed who were living in absolute poverty will have died or had their health profoundly damaged by the time this report is published, as a direct consequence of their appalling living conditions’” (Independent, 22 October).

One billion reasons for getting rid of capitalism. One billion reasons for organising for socialism.

Market in misery

The misery that is capitalism is summed up by the desperate plight of workers in Moldovia selling their kidney in order to survive.

“’Every month someone walks into my office begging to sell an organ,’ says Dr Adrian Tanase, of the Renal Transplant Section in the City Hospital of Chisinau. ‘This has not been done for a long time in developed countries but here you buy or sell everything.’ …. The demand for kidneys is as strong as ever and the poverty in this virtually lawless main donor country is deepening” (Times, 25 October).

A rotten system

Capitalism is a system based on exploitation so it is hardly surprising that those respectable men in suits on Wall Street are up to their elbows in fraud and deception; but don’t take our word for it here is one of their top dogs on the subject.

“Mutual-fund managers have suddenly joined the long parade of suits in handcuffs that began with Enron two years ago and has led to monster fines, complex trials and a video of at least one multimillion-dollar toga party. It was bad enough when mutual-fund returns were pummeled by a two-year-long bear market that started to thaw only this spring. Then, in September, a few funds came under fire from New York State attorney general Eliot Spitzer for allowing big, sophisticated investors to game the system. The abuses are turning out to be so prevalent that regulatory officials predict a big shake-out. ‘There are going to be criminal cases brought in considerable number down the road’, Spitzer told Time. ‘It’s not one or two bad apples. The whole crate seems to have gone rotten’”(Time, 17 November).

High anxiety

We all have to face the problems of mortgage payments, credit card debt, fear of redundancy and just the day to day grind of working inside capitalism; so the following is probably no great surprise.

“Britain is becoming a nation kept artificially happy by pills, with doctors handing out eight million more prescriptions for depression, anxiety and stress than five years ago. About two million people are estimated to be taking anti-depressants every year, costing the NHS more than £380 million, according to government figures” (Times, 20 October).

Capitalism seems to be driving an awful lot of us round the bend.

Voice From The Back: Statistics (2004)

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

Statistics

From an American learned journal Mental Health Journal of the Berkshires (Spring 2004) comes an interesting review of James Gillespie’s book Preventing Violence (published by Thames and Hudson). Dr Gilligan is a trained psychoanalyst who has worked in the Massachusetts prison mental health system interviewing violent inmates, for 25 years. “Unemployment breeds both poverty and shame . . . and as Gilligan reports, for every one percent increase in unemployment, there is a 6 percent increase in violence. Statistics show the US has the greatest gap between rich and poor of any of the developed countries: the richest 225 families have $1 trillion (that is 1,000 billion dollars!), equal to the total wealth of 47 percent of the world.”

Debtors

“Personal debt is about to break through the £1 trillion ceiling in the UK for the first time, realising the worst fears of consumer bodies. The Bank of England said yesterday that UK mortgage lending increased by a record £9.8bn in April, leading City economists to predict that total outstanding debt would breach the thousand billion pound threshold” Herald (3 June). Behind these cold facts and figures lie the reality of many men and women of the working class living with anxiety and fear. Wasn’t capitalism supposed to lead to happiness and prosperity? So why in such a wonderful world do so many men and women of the working class find themselves in a desperate debt situation?  

 

Students

Capitalism is a very competitive society. It sets capitalist against capitalist, hence war. It sets worker against capitalist, hence strikes and lock-outs. It sets worker against worker, hence nationalism and racialism. There is another aspect of competition that effects young workers. Trying to convince potential employers that they are better material for exploitation than their rivals has led to some workers doping themselves up. “The number of teenagers relying on drugs such as Prozac to see them through GSCEs and A-levels has soared with prescriptions reaching 140,000 in less than a decade . . . The statistics – from the government’s watchdog, the MHRA – also highlight the pressure being put on students by the exam system. They say how that in 1995, 46,000 anti-depressants prescriptions were given to teenagers between 16 and 18 in full-time education. By last year this had risen to 140,000, more than treble the amount” Observer (6 June).

 

Death of a nobody

That capitalism is a cruel and uncaring society was well illustrated by a news item in the Times (11 June) reporting the death of a Japanese worker in his Tokyo flat. ”Only one thing distinguished it from hundreds of other lonely deaths that occur in Japan every year – the dead man’s body was two decades old. The newspaper by his side was dated February 20, 1984. In a busy residential district of the world’s biggest city, he had lain undisturbed and unidentified for 20 years.”

 

Nice for some

“Millionaires around the world saw their ranks swell to 7.7 million last year as economic growth quickened and stock markets recovered. The world’s wealthiest people were worth an estimated £15.8 trillion in 2003, with their riches forecast to grow, according to an investment bank survey known as the World Wealth Report” Herald (16 June)

Prozac Logic (1995)

From the September 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

There's an old aphorism which says that a pessimist is just a well informed optimist. According to Dr James Goodwin, the so-called "Pied Piper of Prozac", however, a pessimist is a chemically deficient optimist!

Dr Goodwin, a psychologist in Washington state in America, claims that the anti-depressant Prozac has beneficial effects for virtually anyone who takes it, because everyone is a little depressed without realising it. He attributes this melancholy tendency to a chemical imbalance in the brain, a lack of “joy juice” if you will, and argues that everyone should be entitled to have their balance restored.

There are of course many who hold views opposed to those of Dr Goodwin, and critics have accused him of serious misconduct, ranging from incompetence to drug-pushing. Psychiatrist Dr Peter Breggin went as far as arguing against the prescribing of anti-depressants on moral grounds; he wants to see suffering remain as an acceptable and necessary fact of life, pointing out that some degree of angst and insecurity is necessary to the human condition, and is very much part of what we are.

But surely there is a much more fundamental point to be recognised when discussing whether, and if so why, people arc unnecessarily negative or unhappy. Dr Goodwin’s theory presupposes that we live in an ideal world where everyone should be happy and contented, and therefore the question is, why aren’t they? This is like asking why there is hunger in a world with the potential for abundance; the simplistic answer is there must be an imbalance between supply and demand, so let’s grow more food. Alas, anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of capitalist economics is aware that food is not produced to be eaten, but instead to be exchanged for money with a view to realising a profit; if you don’t have the lolly, you don’t get the bread. So it is with Dr Goodwin’s “Prozac logic”. Problems in the emotional department? There must be a chemical imbalance, therefore add more “joy juice”. However, as anyone who has worked in the psychiatric field knows, the hunger for happiness often can only be satiated if you can “buy” the joy with satisfaction.

It can be argued that for most of us, life is a tedious existence consisting of days spent doing an often mundane, uninspiring job week in, week out, punctuated by brief spells of recreation, socialising and occasionally a holiday. Even those workers who produce useful or essential goods and services are alienated from any fulfilment because of the negative nature of the employment relationship. Work is generally regarded as a necessary evil into which we are coerced by the need to earn a “living”, and all the concomitant imperatives associated with employment—such as time-keeping, paying taxes, fear of unemployment, etc.—prevent the majority of us from enjoying the positive aspects of work and its relationships. As George Orwell wrote in The Road to Wigan Pier: “A thousand influences constantly press a working man into a passive role. He does not act, he is acted upon.”

It’s been suggested that Dr Goodwin’s method is not unlike treating a disease such as diabetes, i.e. if a person has a chemical deficiency in any other organ it is corrected—so why not in the brain? But there is another anomaly which should also be raised concerning the prevention of ill- health. Despite the many rules, regulations and laws designed to prevent employers from exposing workers to practices or conditions that are potentially injurious to the body, there are no such requirements for protection of the conscious mind. For mental health we must rely largely on our own emotional resources with a dose of entertainment thrown in, usually in the form of sport or television. It’s also significant that taking a holiday has now become an essential part of working life, but “getting away from it all” is not done for its own sake, but as a positive, enjoyable counter-balance to the negative, disparaging drudgery endured for the rest of the year. The need to take a holiday illustrates the negative attitude most of us have towards employment; if our year-round, day-to-day lives were rewarding and consummating, a source of contentment, there would be no need to get away in the first place.

Dr Goodwin is approaching the problem from the wrong angle. He sees apathy and pessimism as a physical ailment to be treated with chemicals, like diabetes. But isn’t it possible to argue with equal conviction that a general tendency towards a negative outlook has more to do with low self-esteem and poverty (whether relative or absolute)? In the modern industrialised world, the socio-economic structure rewards the few high achievers with great economic freedom to which is attached a high degree of respect and influence. Conversely, the average citizen, though perhaps employed performing a very productive task, usually occupies a low social position and lacks any real control over his or her life; thus “basically the problem with poverty is not lack of money, but the inability to enjoy the multiple advantages associated with affluence” (Key to Psychiatry, 1973). As a riposte to the anti-drug lobby, it’s been suggested that there is a difference between Prozac and the so-called recreational drugs in that Prozac does not provide pleasure but restores the capacity for pleasure. However, does any healthy person really lack the capacity for pleasure, or is it that socio-economic circumstances prevent us from experiencing that pleasure?

If Dr Goodwin is correct and people’s negative tendencies can be “neutralised” by application of a chemical compound, it could of course have fundamental implications for the foundations of society. In contrast to the view that suffering should be a necessary fact of life, the establishment could regard a docile, optimistic population at case with itself as much more malleable; in other words the “Brave New' World” scenario. Just imagine the benefits of removing the inconvenience of strikes, crime, environmentalism, pressure groups . . .  a ruler’s dream come true!

Nick Brunskill