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

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

A Society of contrasts

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

Marx and modernity

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

US gap widens

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

Behind the rhetoric

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

The Indian Rupee trick 

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

Hungry for Socialism (2008)

Book Review from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hunger. By Raymond Tallis. Acumen, 2008.

Raymond Tallis, a physician turned philosopher, has delivered a thoughtful if slightly anarchic book in The Art Of Living series. In 164 pages he discusses several different concepts and manifestations of hunger. Starting with the nature and evolution of biological hunger in animals and humans, he goes on to trace how the pleasure of meeting nutritional needs has spawned for humans a multitude of other pleasures.

The author looks at how the hunger for food develops into what he calls hunger for others. There comes, for at least some people, the hunger for meaning and significance. Tallis’s final chapter “asks how we might manage our individual and collective hungers better so that we shall be less possessed by them and more concerned with the suffering of those to whom even subsistence is denied”.

The author makes several references to Marx, mainly on the fetishism of commodities and humans producing their own means of subsistence, but he nowhere expresses a hunger for revolutionary change. He does, however, take issue with another philosopher, John Gray, for whom planet earth has been doomed by the arrogance of human beings (“Homo rapiens”). Tallis points out that when humans regard their species as no more than animals they are inclined to treat one another even worse than hitherto.

As the author notes, the world we live in demands that we consume many things beyond our bodily needs. It is “a world where many have little or nothing to eat while many more are eating far too much and are in hot pursuit of a multitude of secondary and elective hungers”. Tallis doesn’t talk about a socialist future but he does say a few words about utopia: “The central presupposition of utopian [is] that our hungers will somehow serve our fellow men and not set one against another, that there are fundamental desires that will drive us to work for the common good.”

We drink to that!

Stan Parker

New Pamphlet: An Inconvenient Question. Socialism and the Environment (2008)

Party News from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent years the environment has become a major political issue. And rightly so, because a serious environmental crisis really does exist. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat have all become contaminated to a greater or lesser extent. Ecology - the branch of biology that studies the relationships of living organisms to their environment - is important, as it is concerned with explaining exactly what has been happening and what is likely to happen if present trends continue.

Since the publication of our Ecology and Socialism pamphlet in 1990 environmental problems facing the planet have got much worse. We said then that attempts to solve those problems within capitalism would meet with failure, and that is precisely what has happened. Recent research on increasing environmental degradation has painted an alarming picture of the likely future if the profit system continues to hold sway. Voices claiming that the proper use of market forces will solve the problem can still be heard, but as time goes on the emerging facts of what is happening serve only to contradict those voices.

In this pamphlet we begin with a brief review of the development of Earth and of humankind’s progress on it so far. We then examine the mounting evidence that the planet is now under threat of a worsening, dangerous environment for human and other forms of life. The motor of capitalism is profit for the minority capitalist class to add to their capital, or capital accumulation. Environmental concerns, if considered at all, always come a poor second. The waste of human and other resources used in the market system is prodigious, adding to the problems and standing in the way of their solution.

Earth Summits over the last few decades show a consistent record of failure - unjustifiably high hopes and pitifully poor results sum them up. The Green Party and other environmental bodies propose reforms of capitalism that haven’t worked or have made very little real difference in the past. Socialists can see no reason why it should be any different in the future. Finally we discuss the need, with respect to the ecology of the planet, for a revolution that is both based on socialist principles of common ownership and production solely for needs, and environmental principles of conserving — not destroying — the wealth and amenities of the planet.

Contents

Introduction

What is ecology?

Earth under threat

Profit wins, the environment also ran The waste of capitalism

Earth Summits - a record of failure Green reformism

Socialism - an inconvenient question?

To get a copy by post send a cheque or postal order for £2.50 (made out to “The Socialist Party of Great Britain”) to: The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.

The pamphlet will be launched at a public meeting: Saturday 25 October, 6pm

SOCIALISM AND THE ENVIRONMENT 

Speakers: Brian Morris (guest speaker) and Adam Buick (Socialist Party)

Chair: Gwynn Thomas (Socialist Party)

Forum followed by discussion.

Socialist Party Head Office, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North).

Socialist Party Merchandise (2008)

Advert from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Letter: Olympic Retrospect (2008)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Olympic Retrospect

I started watching the Olympics and at first was just taken by how well the participants excelled in their particular activities. Then an unease about the whole show leaked through. The elitism, the flag waving and the full-on nationalism made me switch off. Better the athletes, etc had competed in the name of their multinational sponsors or pharmaceutical company than this hideous exhibition of national identity. Backed up by officials and commentators winding up the patriotic fervour, even that stupid chump Adrian Chiles and other media prostitutes, screaming for “their” country. Doubtless the same was happening in all the other countries’ media. I expect the 1936 Olympics was much like this.

Stuart Gibson,

Bournemouth

Letter: Not Standard terminology? (2008)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not Standard terminology?

I have long been impressed by the range and quality of writing in the Socialist Standard, but in “The Irish No” (September) Declan Ganley is described as a ‘self-made millionaire’ and reference is made to ‘former Communist countries’. Unqualified use of such terms, repeated ad nauseam in the capitalist media, is surely something to be avoided in a socialist journal..

Robert Stafford,

Norway

Reply: 

You’re right of course. No millionaire is “self-made” as they get rich by exploiting workers. And the so-called “Communist” countries were not communist but state-capitalist. Apologies for the missing inverted commas.– Editors

Voice From The Back: Poverty Recruits (2008)

The Voice From The Back Column from the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Poverty Recruits

“The economic crisis could help the military recruit and retain troops, Pentagon officials said Friday, potentially ending years of extraordinary bonuses and waivers that have become necessary to keep enough troops to fight two wars. “We do benefit when things look less positive in civil society,” said David S.C. Chu , undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.” (Yahoo News, 10 October) In other words, when young workers are desperate enough they join the armed services. The best recruiting agency for the armed forces is poverty. You need to eat? – go kill. That is capitalism for you.

War is Mental

We are all familiar with the TV ads for the British Army that portray an exciting, fulfilling career but what many of the impoverished youths at whom the ads are aimed may not be aware of are the following facts. “The number of British military personnel discharged from the armed forces following a nervous breakdown has risen by 30 per cent since the start of the Afghan war. More than 1,300 have been medically discharged since 2001 when operation first began against the Taliban, new figures revealed. Of these, 770 belong to the army, which has borne the brunt of overseas operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. …The rising numbers of service personnel leaving for psychological reasons will fuel concerns that thousands of soldiers face being traumatised by their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. Health charities claim that as many as one in 10 soldiers will develop a mental health problem from the horrors of combat.” (Observer,19 October)

 

The Same Difference

Amidst the misguided euphoria about the election of a Democratic Party president it is a sobering thought that whether there is a Republican or Democratic legislation capitalism carries on as usual. “Although there is a widespread belief that Wall Street prefers Republican presidents, most studies show that the market has actually done better under Democrats. Since 1901, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 7.2 percent a year on average under Democratic presidents and 3.2 percent under Republicans, according to Ned Davis Research. Looking at a more recent time period – 1944 through mid-2008 – the S&P was up 10.7 percent a year on average with a Democrat in the White House versus 8 percent with a Republican, according to International Strategy & Investment.” (San Francisco Chronicle, 4 November) Changing the ruling party doesn’t change the exploitation system that is capitalism.

 

Another Market Guru

Mr Brown blames the unregulated stock dealers, Mr Cameron blames Mr Brown and socialists blame the slump/boom cycle of capitalism, but here is someone with yet another explanation. “From his base in India’s financial capital Mumbai, Raj Kumar Sharma has been tracking the turbulence in the world stock markets and has come to one firm conclusion — it was written in the stars. As an astro-finance specialist, he has made a career on predicting whether the Bombay Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, Dow Jones or FTSE-100 will go up or down by studying favourable or unfavourable planetary alignments. Where many blame banks overstretching themselves or inadequate financial controls and policy, Sharma sees a clash between fiery Saturn and its arch enemy Leo as a key factor in the recent financial turmoil. ‘Leo is the sign of the sun and the sun is the father in Indian astrology,’ he told AFP. ‘But the son (Saturn) and his father (the sun) don’t get along, so whenever they are sitting in the same house together, they always fight and create ill-will and danger in the market,’ he said.” (TIME.com, 16 October)

 

Vatican Bonuses

“The Vatican has reintroduced a system of clocking in, nearly 50 years after it was last phased out. Senior clerics will have to swipe plastic cards when entering and leaving, all in a drive to improve time-keeping and efficiency. … Lay and ecclesiastical staff working in the tiny city state, are now using the swipe cards. The cards have been issued to everyone from the lowest office staff to the heads of departments, even if they are priests and archbishops, though there has been no mention if Pope Benedict XVI carries one. …It is all part of a drive to increase efficiency and to make the Vatican more meritocratic. Next year there are plans to introduce performance-related pay.” (BBC News, 3 November) Capitalism is a social system that needs concepts like “performance-related pay”, but we wonder how it will operate in the Vatican. One miracle equals how many euros? Two visions equal more or less than one miracle? We foresee some difficulties when disputes go to arbitration.

Five Benefits of Not Having Money (2008)

From the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist society will have no need for money. This will profoundly affect all aspects of life.

Removing money from the current economic equation would strike most people as impossible, unthinkable, absolutely imponderable. Everything we do, every transaction we make, from a simple cup of tea to sending a space probe to Mars, from birth to death and at every step in between, money has become a necessary part of getting what we require. It has become an accepted, entrenched method of acquiring anything and everything but it wasn’t always so and in a genuine socialist system money will be shown to have been an unnecessary, wasteful and divisive way of ordering world communities.

When initially presented with the notion of a world without money the first imperative is the willingness to contemplate a huge paradigm shift, to put aside all familiar long-held views and preconceived notions and to enter into an adventure of discovery that there is a place for all at the table, that it doesn’t entail regression to the Dark Ages and that the welfare and progress of people doesn’t have to come at cost to the environment.

1. Work

It is well recognised by experts in the health arena that work is one of the most stressful areas of life for reasons such as long hours, extended travelling time to and from place of employment, risk of job loss, lack of security of tenure including competition both within and without, inflexible working practices, difficulty getting release for major personal events such as bereavement, long-term illness of a spouse or partner, or even short-term care of a sick child. Loss of employment can put stress on the whole family, sinking it into debt, causing day-to-day difficulties with the budget and in many cases leading to loss of the home.

When money is not required in exchange for work and when, instead, all contribute their skills, expertise and/or manpower in return for open access to the requirements of life then we can begin to see a different motivation enter the whole concept of the “work” scenario. A moneyless world will free up millions of workers now tied to some very stressful occupations dealing only in (other people’s) money – banking, mortgage brokering, insurance; those occupied in the collection of rates, taxes and utility payments; those in security work such as guards and armoured truck staff engaged only in protecting and moving money and other “valuables” – millions of workers who, when considered logically, currently fulfil no useful function and contribute nothing to society that improves that society.

Right now, worldwide, are millions of would-be workers who are sidelined in one way or another, without employment or scratching on the edges of a black economy and in some of the more “developed” countries we find some termed “scroungers” in current-day parlance.

Within the capitalist system there has to be a pool of workers unable to find work in order to keep the bargaining power in favour of the employers who strive to keep wage levels down, whereas if there is a shortage of suitable labour the bargaining power switches to the employees who try to force wage levels up. The fact that a few “developed” countries have systems which pay a percentage of workers to remain unemployed (receive benefits) is a price the capitalists are prepared to pay to maintain the tensions in society. Encouraging the employed to think that they are the ones subsidising the benefits system maintains one fissure within the working class. Also, allowing a large number of unemployed to be without benefits would cause too many problems for the capitalists with possibilities of mass looting, rioting and damage to their property

2. Increased Leisure Time

With so many extra hands on deck working hours will be able to be considerably reduced which, with the knowledge that one’s work is not tied to the ability to feed and clothe the family, to house them and provide all the other requirements of life, is to remove the stress at a stroke.

Decreased time, but working for the common good rather than increased time working only for personal remuneration. Less working time was the oft-repeated refrain in the early days of the technology era. Workers were to benefit from machine-operated production systems, computers would be able to handle many of the mundane operations previously done manually, the working week would be much reduced, maybe even leading to job-sharing and part-time employment. In fact this state of affairs never materialised and more employees found longer working hours became part of their conditions of employment, earlier agreements having been gradually eroded to the benefit of the employers.

In socialism, with millions released from wage slavery in the then redundant financial sector free to be a part of the production, distribution and services sectors, with the black economy and “illegals” no longer threatening paid workers (pay being redundant) there will be a huge reduction in individual necessary work time. When there is no profit incentive the emphasis will be on the production of quality goods from quality materials and no one need choose an inferior item based on cost. Providers of utilities such as electricity and gas, water and communications will be able to have sufficient workers to install, service, repair and develop their installations more efficiently and effectively. If there is work that no one is prepared to undertake then an alternative will need to be found democratically.

Without the constraints that we have today the workplace will become a different place, one of cooperation not competition, where we work for the benefit of all, not for the profit of a few. The lines between work and leisure may well be much more blurred than in today’s scenario. People will have time, time to be creative, to learn different and multiple skills and to enjoy the time they spend working. Leisure activities seen as hobbies now – vehicle maintenance, gardening, DIY home improvements, baking, the making of all kinds of hand-made items, giving or receiving educational and training courses – could well form part of one’s service to the community, bringing a greater satisfaction and contributing to individual development generally, one of the aims of socialism. With more leisure time available it is also highly likely that more ‘work’ would be created in the leisure area, whether sports complexes, theatrical and music productions and educational courses in the widest sense and with unlimited opportunities for the active participation of those who choose it.

3. Housing

Adequate shelter, a “right” for all enshrined in the United Nations Charter, is still unavailable to millions (billions, probably). There is absolutely no automatic right to housing within the capitalist system. All must pay. To pay, all must work. It is no matter that you work long and hard and that your children work long and hard and don’t go to school. All that matters is that you have enough to buy or rent or build. Maybe you did have enough before the housing market bubble burst and the “worth” of your house went down while the interest rates went up. Well, tough! Look around you. See the empty houses and FOR SALE and foreclosure signs. These people must be living somewhere now. There is always housing stock available – if you can pay the going rate.

This is one very obvious benefit of not having money. The recent economic crisis has focussed many home-owners’ minds. Why should anyone be secure one month and the next find themselves in queer street? Can anybody justify one individual’s multiple home ownership while others live in slums, in cars, in cardboard boxes on the streets? Please! When the majority of us have eventually decided that this scenario is unacceptably obscene we can at last begin to move to a humanitarian way of ordering our societies. Housing for all. Decent housing for all. Materials that are free and belong to all of us. Our architects, builders, plumbers, plasterers, electricians, etc. etc. will all work for free – they also need homes to live in. New housing can be built to the best specifications using appropriate materials, incorporating adequate insulation and services with regard to environmental protection and best use of alternative energy.

Respect for people and respect for the environment. Decisions made democratically as to best use of urban space vacated by the money businesses; by communities wanting to refurbish or upgrade their older stock. The balance between urban and rural will no doubt change. In some parts of the world there will be a mass exodus back to productive farmland, reclaimed for local use and consumption rather than continuing to grow cash crops for export. Decisions will be taken based on the well-being of communities and determined by the requirements of those communities and there will be no constraints or limitations linked to profit for a third party.

4. Health care

As a result of huge stress reduction, no more worrying about salary or wages from the job, no more worrying about keeping up the payments on the house, increased leisure time – all these various factors will surely result in improved relationships all round and, quite soon, a healthier workforce.

At present there are huge variations in standards of health care around the world and also massive discrepancies in availability and monetary cost to the recipients, Universal health care simply dos not exist. Again it is tied in to the ability to pay. Let’s remove this barrier to good health and care of the sick by removing the money element and offer all services, treatments, drugs and medicines free of charge. Hospitals and clinics then will be free of top-heavy budget management and will be able to access resources, whether manpower, equipment or drugs, according to their requirements and not limited by financial constraints. Medical researchers, now mostly tied to global corporations and limited by them in the areas of their research, will be able to concentrate on eradicating disease and providing the best remedies for all comers, not just those with insurance. World diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and polio will soon be a thing of the past when money, too, is history.

Work and training in one of the many varied avenues of health care will be open to those from the pool of post-money redundant sectors. With the shift from a market economy to societies geared to fulfilling human needs there will probably be more priority given to preventive medicine and appropriate information on suitable diet and healthy living, which leads us to consider the topic of food.

5. Food

Currently the growing, processing and distribution of food is largely dominated by transnational corporations solely in the pursuit of profit. The consumer appears to have a huge choice of goods and numerous decisions to make at each aisle of the supermarket but often the choices are superficial, not actually the choices being sought. For instance, notice the difficulty of buying a processed food which doesn’t contain soya. The soya has probably been genetically modified and the labelling could be unhelpful. The choice becomes buy in ignorance or acceptance, or do without.

It’s well known that products are laced with added sugar, salt, monosodium glutamate etc. to create a certain dependency and craving for more. Last year’s problems of melamine-laced pet foods which caused animal deaths in the importing countries were followed this year by melamine-laced milk products causing infant deaths and multiple illnesses in China, spreading fear to importing countries. There can be only one reason for food to be contaminated deliberately (apart from a mass assassination attempt or the desire to spread fear among the population) and that is in the pursuit of greater profit.

Africa, a net exporter of food until the post-colonial days of the 1960s, became a victim again, indebted to the World Bank and IMF. Recipient of highly subsidised dumping of food from rich countries (US and Europe) the result has been that the countries there have to grow cash crops for export in order to pay off some of the growing debt creating food shortages for the domestic population, many of whom had been forced off ancestral lands (for the growing of cash crops) and who were then without the means of subsistence. There have been a number of studies which reveal there is no problem feeding a world population considerably larger than today’s. There is an enormous wastage of food in the rich world. The major problem for the hungry in the poorest countries is lack of cash.

Food, if regarded simply as fuel for the body, should be clean – free from contaminants, chemicals and the like; fresh – the more local the better; and nutritious. Free food for all would come with the bonus of knowing there would no longer be any incentive to adulterate ingredients. The question of “FAIR TRADE” wouldn’t arise as all along the line farmers, producers, pickers, packers and distributors would have the same motivation to provide good clean food knowing they have the same access as the consumers. This has to be a win-win situation. Another winner in this scenario would be the environment.

Janet Surman

Next month, five more benefits from not having to have money.

The Ire Of The Irate Itinerant (2008)

From the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Greasy Pole: Lucky Gordon? (2008)

The Greasy Pole column from the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Gordon Brown’s new Golden Age

Some things are helpful, if not actually essential, to top politicians or to those who are high enough up the greasy pole to feel threatened by a fall. There is, for example, what might loosely be termed luck – an unpredicted change of circumstances which so affects a situation that it puts the politician in an unexpectedly favourable light. But as a son of the manse Gordon Brown has to believe in something rather more ritualistic than luck. He would not dream of gambling, especially where his political fortunes are at stake. All through the nail-biting perils of the past year he has carried stolidly on, diverting criticism and the prospects of a catastrophic electoral defeat with ponderous recitations of what he insists are the historic, enduring achievements of New Labour, particularly of himself at the Treasury. While he did this his poll rating sank lower and lower, he was humiliated at one by-election after another and terrified, sullen rebellion simmered along the benches behind him.

Credit Crunch

And then came the credit crunch and Northern Rock and Lehman and, across the Atlantic, in the financial fortress of 21st century capitalism, the fall of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Suddenly all those precariously mortgaged homes and image-boosting loans ceased to be symbols of comfort; they disintegrated into menace.

There was talk of 21st Century South Seas Bubble. Gordon Brown would not, in public at any rate, have called it luck, and neither would anyone with so much as a glimmering about the chaotic workings of the property based system, but the timing of it for him was – well, lucky. Apparently transformed in personality, he coined the phrase, as the climax of his conference speech, which summed up his hope for survival: “Take it from me, this is no time for a novice”.

This was said in the knowledge that Brown would have no problem, in finding and naming the villains who have fed off the groundless dreams of unsuspecting wage earners until the whole diseased edifice of lies and fraud came crashing down. There were enough of them – the bankers, the financiers, the traders in the City whose ideas of a hard, constructive day’s work has been pushing other people’s money around on paper and betting on the movement, up or down, of share prices. Brown rubbed salt into their wounds when, as part of the package of state investment in the ailing banks, he ensured that certain City favourites were removed from the boardrooms. This was accompanied by Brown calling for “responsible” behaviour by the banks and then Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling calling in their top people to lean on them to pass on the 1.5 percent reduction in the Bank of England lending rate. More recently Brown has used that word again, demanding “a new, responsible approach”: by the credit card companies. “I think”, he said “we have got to bring the credit card industry (yes, they call it an ‘industry’) in to talk (yes, the call it ‘talk’) to them to join with us in establishing clear principles to apply to the costs people face on their existing debts”. And in case any bank should still not have understood Peter (sorry, Lord) Mandelson will be meeting them to draw up a “guide on behaviour” (yes, they call it ‘behaviour’).

There may be some questions about Mandelson’s suitability to instruct others in such a matter. He is, after all, the man who made himself famous by informing the City that New Labour are “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”. Then there was his cosying up to top Tory George Osborne on the yacht of the Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who did not amass his fortune through considerate reticence towards his rivals. Lord Mayor’s Banquet Mandelson’s boss in Number Ten has a consistent record of sucking up to the overfed parasites of the City, when mellowed by a slap-up

Lord Mayor’s banquet.

There was a time when Brown would make some kind of obscure, ineffective point by refusing to wear the traditional evening suit at this event, turning up in a work-a-day lounge suit. Now that he is Prime Minister he does sartorially as he is told – although he looks far from comfortable in black tie and tails and in any case says roughly the same as before. Here he is in 1998: “London is a city that is creative and responds to change. It has excelled because of the hard work and skills of the workforce and these are the essential British qualities – creativity, adaptability, a belief in hard work, fair play and openness”. In recent times his sycophancy has been more open: in 2005 he blathered “For three centuries … your enterprise as businesses, your unique innovative skills, your courage and steadfastness and your outward looking internationalism have …helped Britain lead the rest of the world”. And last June, as the recession was stirring, quite obviously, into life: “Britain needs more of the vigour, ingenuity and aspiration that you already demonstrate. Thanks to your remarkable achievements we have the huge privilege to live in an era that history will record as the beginning of a new Golden Age”. In fact Brown’s Golden Age was ushering in what is expected to be the widest deepest, most destructive slump since the 1930s. While Brown was bowing and scraping to the City it was at the centre of a veritable culture of mis-selling, over-mortgaging workers’ homes and tempting workers to take on loans which they simply could not afford to repay.

 When the South Sea Bubble burst in 1720 a number of the people who were considered responsible, including Chancellor of the Exchequer John Aisable, were sent to the Tower and part of their estate was taken to help the company back into business. There is no need to go quite so far; there would be no point in punishing Mandelson and Brown and the rest for capitalism’s brutal chaos.

Ivan

Studs Terkel (2008)

From the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Studs Terkel, a prolific American writer and broadcaster over several decades,  died at the end October at the age of 96. His style and approach is well illustrated by the sub-title of his 1975 book Working: People talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do. Besides the subject of work, he dealt with leisure, family and education, culture and sub-culture. An article partly based on his writings appeared in the Socialist Standard for August 2003.

Some of Terkel’s nine thousand interviews — especially the broadcast ones — were with celebrities of various kinds. But his books were mainly about the life experiences of everyday men and women. He quoted these graphic words of an assembly-line worker: “I stand in one spot, about two or three feet area all night . . . it don’t stop. It just goes and goes. I bet there’s men who lived and died out there, never seen the end of that line.” Or again: “They give better care to that machine than they will to you . . . If that machine breaks down, there’s somebody out there to fix it right away. If I break down, I’m just pushed over to the other side till another man takes my place. The only thing they have on their mind is to keep that line running.”

Terkel also captured people’s memories of the Depression years and the Second World War. Again and again the themes of solidarity and sharing shine through amidst the destitution and suffering. A woman born in 1911 recalls the ’20s in a mining town in Illinois: “we’d go out picnics, we’d go out fishing, all families. Everything for the picnic. And then when you went to the picnic, there was no money exchanged, no commercial, everything like one big family. They’d cook a pot of mulligan stew and everybody’d share out of that. That was a picnic. Today you go on a picnic, what is it? It’s commercial. You buy your ticket, you buy your popcorn, you buy your beer. If you haven’t got a fistful of money, you haven’t got no picnic.”

As Oliver Sacks once said, “There is no one in the world who can listen like Studs Terkel.” Reading his books provides an unforgettable picture of working-class American life and shows that, contrary to what may sometimes appear, American workers are dissatisfied with their lot and more than prepared to fight for better times.

Blogger's Note:

A version of this article first appeared on the Socialism or Your Money blog in November 2008.

Obituary: Carol Taylor (2008)

Obituary from the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was with sadness that we learned in mid-October of the death of Carol Taylor, and at a relatively young age. Carol will be best remembered for her work on the now popular socialist film Capitalism and Other Kids Stuff, on which she worked as director and editor.

Though no longer formally a member, she had no actual disagreement with the Party case. She was always a fervent defender of the socialist cause and an ardent critic of capitalism, always keen to expose the insanity of the profit system in whatever way she could. On the discussion forum she attached to the initial Socialist TV website she created specifically to promote Kids Stuff she spent hours a day articulately defending the socialist case against our detractors who left messages, and there was a fair few.

Carol can be heard introducing the first ever film we did together here, a short film introducing the Socialist Party and actually put together within an hour.

I worked with her on a few films, including one on the “G8” meeting filmed up in Scotland a few years ago, and we spent a lot of time together collecting stock footage we felt we could use on future socialist films. I fondly remember the many encounters we had with the police who tried to stop us filming around London, often under threat of arrest, particularly the day we tried to get footage of HRH and entourage during the State opening of Parliament and the angry argument Carol gave to the police who came to escort us away from the area and, indeed, the way she cleverly managed to blag us media passes to get on to the press wagon at Teeside Airport when George Bush came for his £1 million fish supper in Tony Blair’s north eastern constituency.

I’m please to have known Carol closely and will remember her as quite a magnanimous person, warm and affectionate, loathing injustice, deceit and fraud and ever ready to speak out against it.

John Bissett

From poverty to power (2008)

Book Review from the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

How Active Citizens and Effective States can Change the World by Duncan Green (Oxfam Publishing 2008)

Duncan Green defines an effective state as one that “can guarantee security and the rule of law,” and has an effective strategy “to ensure inclusive economic growth”. Such a state should be accountable to citizens and able to guarantee their rights. Active citizens are linked to the state by a “combination of rights and obligations”: making use of these rights to improve their conditions.

He argues that it is the combination of poor men and women and their national governments that provide the main actors in the fight against poverty and inequality. Case studies are given to illustrate how even the poorest people have by their organised and persistent actions brought about beneficent change in their circumstances. Like the Chiquitanos people of Bolivia who after 12 years of “unremitting and often frustrating struggle” won legal title to the 1m-hectare indigenous territory of Monteverde.

He is aware that the scales are weighted against the poor in all areas. For example, research is dominated by the private sector: in agriculture 5 large multinational corporations spend $7.3bn per year on agricultural research on high value, high profit products while the staple foods of poor communities are “likely to be overlooked.” In biotechnology the picture is the same with GM crops being genetically engineered to meet the needs of large scale farms. There is no serious investment in the five most important semi-arid and tropical crops.

Half of the world’s population lives in the countryside and the majority of people in absolute poverty live in the rural areas. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) sources are given for the claim that over the past 20 years aid donors and governments have effectively withdrawn from the countryside. Mention is made of the well known ‘structural development programmes’ which imposed a ‘radical free market’ on debtor countries.

Agricultural growth, Green argues, reduces poverty but is most effective when small farmers are able to capture a fair share of the benefits. Local farmers, he says, should be helped to improve the quality of their produce so that for example retail giants like McDonalds and Pizza Hut use local produce instead of importing produce from the USA. Here his ‘active’ citizens would be small farmers “organising their ability to negotiate a fair deal”. However when it comes to buying fertilizer or seeds, or selling produce or their labour, small producers are dominated by the large corporations. Small farmers are “de facto employees”.

In Green’s view efficient states should take the environment and the enhancement of the daily lives of the poor as prime considerations. Global governance (the “web of international institutions, laws regulations, and agreements”) could help, and the 8 main ways he lists include managing the global economy, redistributing wealth through aid or international taxation, averting health threats and avoiding war. However global governance fails to live up to its ideals. “The WTO is frozen, regional trade agreements are proliferating and introducing profoundly unfair trade and investment rules, the G8 is failing to keep its promises on aid…”, then there is the threat of climate change and “a looming financial crisis”.

The book is well sourced with a 24-page bibliography and three further pages listing background papers. There is much useful information covering more areas than can be dealt with in a review. However Duncan Green takes a moral stance whereas under capitalism the prime consideration cannot be the welfare of citizens active or otherwise, but sale and profit; this drives development (forget sustainable) – and can also inhibit it. And the state that in his view is supposed to facilitate change will only do so to the extent that the interests of the owning class are served.

Pat Deutz

Letter: Money must go (2008)

Letter to the Editors from the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money must go

Dear Editors

The existence of money and property ownership has become a choke point in the further evolution of mankind.

We, in the United Kingdom, as one of the wealthiest nations on this planet, can’t afford to keep our pensioners at a level much above abject poverty, and over the next twenty years this will become more acute. We close down hospital wards because next year’s budget isn’t due yet, despite being able to fill them many times over with people who urgently require treatment. We allow people in the third world to die in the most degrading circumstances, because it is more profitable to cheat them out of their national resources. We stand by and watch helplessly, as the drug barons infect out richest resource, our children. Big business rapes and pollutes the limited resources of our planet and encourages us to keep buying, and wasting, to keep the cash flowing.

It doesn’t make sense.

Fortunately, there is a solution which can wipe out these ills and many more.

The two root causes of most human misery are money and violence, and the existence of money is the catalyst for most violence. By removing money and the individual ownership of any and all of Earth’s resources from existence, we instantly remove the barriers to the further evolution of mankind. An evolution away from war, crime, and inequality. An evolution toward global prosperity, universal peace and understanding.

So how could this be peacefully achieved, and what would be the net effect? All we have to do is to decide, as a species, that at a pre-determined point in time, we will stop using money. From that time on, changes will begin to occur which will positively enhance our existence on this planet. All we have to do is keep working, to produce all the goods and services that we need and want. But instead of producing poor quality goods, we can take the decision to produce the best quality, most up to date goods we can imagine, for everyone.

Constricted only by the paramount rules of ensuring the safe availability of the raw materials we require, the safety of the people producing them and the overriding factor of its minimal impact on our planet.

With expert planning, and the positive will of all the people of the Earth, we can build new communities with safe, efficient, integrated transport, energy, waste management, health and entertainment systems, sited in the most geologically and climatically stable environments on the planet, using fully recyclable materials. For all of us.

We can detoxify areas of our planet which have been previously adulterated by industry. We can grow unadulterated food all year round, using the most fertile and suitable areas of our planet for our crops. We can provide first class training for everyone to carry out their job efficiently and knowledgably. We can make those jobs as safe and pleasant as possible, with hours and holiday entitlements pre-calculated by statisticians, so that we do enough to maintain and improve our environment without it impinging too much on our new found social life.

We can gather the finest minds on the planet, equip them with all the materials and technology and help they require, and stand back in awe as they produce solutions to whatever befalls us. If it is humanly possible, and good for our planet and our species then why not? We, the human species can have all of this, and so much more.

As soon as we realise that we are all intimately related. We are one family, estranged by time, distance, environment and philosophy. And as soon as we realise that here on Earth, we are living in a life support system which is, to our certain knowledge, unique. Because it contains the only species in the known universe with which we can fully communicate, and it is composed of all the raw materials we will (hopefully) ever need.

We already have the world we dream about, we can award ourselves undreamt of fringe benefits. The only questions you really need to ask yourself are – why not…..and when?

Ken Scragg, 

Livingston, West Lothian

 

Reply: 

We of course agree that the production and distribution of wealth could, and should, take place without money, but we don’t think it will as easy to get there as you seem to imply. We will need to organise to struggle politically against those who currently own and control the means for producing wealth and benefit from the money-wages-profits system. There will have to be an (essentially peaceful) democratic social revolution to end their monopoly and make the means of production the common heritage of all, which will make money redundant. This done, the benefits you mention will become possible – Editors.

50 Years Ago: Borstal Boy (2008)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Brendan Behan at the age of sixteen came from Dublin to Liverpool with an I.R.A. “do it yourself kit,” for the purpose of blowing up Cammell Lairds. He was arrested, and after a stay in Walton Detention Prison, Liverpool, was sent for three years to a Borstal Institution in East Anglia. The book (published by Hutchinson) tells of his experiences in these places. (…)

In spite of all the tumult and violence of the book, it has a monastic quality in that nothing of any significance from the outside world ever seeps in. not even the war which was going on at the time is mentioned, in fact, the author never seems to have really noticed it. There is no serious discussion, not even about Ireland. Behan indulges in rodomontade about Irish politics, religion and history, but never indicates that he has any grasp of the underlying economic and factors of Irish history. (…)

Behan at least went to Borstal wearing a slightly glamorised would-be Martyr’s crown. He came out none the worse, perhaps even a little better for it. But what of the mal-adjusted, the misfits and the unfortunates; what happened to them? That, perhaps, is the most disquieting thing of all, but Behan never mentions it.

He has nothing to say against patriotism or nationalism either of the English, Irish or any other variety. He seems to regard many Englishmen as stiff-necked and arrogant, but sees no reason why they should not be either in their native country or to people who come from other countries. But in a world of conflicting national interests, being pro Irish, English or American, means even at the best of times being negatively anti-something else. In the worst times such feelings take on an active and hostile form.

[From book review by E.W., Socialist Standard, December 1958]

Cooking the Books: The myth of magic money (2008)

The Cooking the Books column from the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

One thing that the current banking crisis has done is to explode the myth about banks being able to create credit, i.e. money to lend out at interest, by a mere stroke of the pen. Events have clearly confirmed that banks are financial intermediaries which can only lend out either what has been deposited with them or what they have themselves borrowed or their own reserves. As the US Federal Reserve put it in one of its educational documents:

“Banks borrow funds from their depositors (those with savings) and in turn lend those funds to the banks’ borrowers (those in need of funds). Banks make money by charging borrowers more for a loan (a higher percentage interest rate) than is paid to depositors for use of their money.” (Dead Link. p. 57)

Actually, banks don’t just borrow from individual depositors, or “retail”. They also borrow “wholesale” from the money market. It is in fact the difficulties they have experienced here that has revealed that they cannot create credit out of nothing.

Because some banks had burnt their fingers by buying securities based on sub-prime mortgages in America, other banks were reluctant to lend on the money market for fear that the borrowing bank might turn out to be insolvent. Which meant that one source of money for the banks to re-lend to their customers had shrunk. Or at least had become too expensive as interest rates had risen too high compared with the rate banks could charge their borrowers to allow them to make a profit or enough profit. So, deprived of this source of money, the banks had less to lend out themselves. Which of course wouldn’t have been a problem if they really did have the power to create money to lend out of nothing.

But at least one person was unable to see what should have been obvious. On 15 October the Times printed a letter from a Malcolm Parkin, in which he wrote:

“Only 3 per cent of money exists as cash. Therefore the rest is magic money conjured into existence, and issued as debt by banks, at a ratio of about 33 magic pounds to 1 real pound, by the quite legal means of fractional reserve banking. In a rising market, it follows that anybody able to create such money, at such a ratio, can soon get rich.”

The “fractional reserve” he mentions is the proportion of retail deposits that a bank keeps as cash to handle likely withdrawals. Fifty years ago in Britain it was 8 percent. But, as banks resorted more and more to the wholesale money market to get money to relend, the percentage of cash to loans became almost irrelevant. Parkin’s figure of 3 percent is the percentage of cash banks hold compared to total loans, including those based on money borrowed from the money market (which even on his definition is not “magic money“).

What a “fractional reserve”, or “cash ratio”, of say, 10 percent means, is that if £100 is deposited in a bank that bank has to keep £10 as cash and can lend out £90. Parkin has misunderstood this to mean that a bank can lend out £900 – and charge interest on it. Easy money, as he says, if it were true. But it isn’t.

The theory of “fractional reserve banking” is that an initial deposit of £100 can lead to the whole banking system, but not a single bank, being able to make loans totalling £900. The argument is that the initial £90 will eventually be re-deposited in some bank (not necessarily the bank that made the loan), which can then lend out 90 percent of this, i.e. £81, which in turn will be re-deposited, and so on, until in the end a total of £900 has been loaned out.

This is theoretically the case as one of the key features of capitalism is that money circulates, but what the theorists never emphasise is that this is based on the assumption that the same money is used and re-used to create new deposits. If this does not happen then the process cannot work or continue. So, the banking system has not created any “magic money” out of nothing. It is still dependent on individual banks only being able to lend out what has been deposited with them or what they themselves have borrowed – they cannot magically lend out vast multiples of this, as poor Malcolm Parkin assumed.

Cooking the Books: Keynes rides again (2008)

The Cooking the Books column from the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not just the ideas of Marx that the current crisis is getting people to look at again. It’s also those of Keynes. In fact it now seems to be official government policy. In October the Chancellor Alistair Darling declared that “much of what Keynes wrote still makes sense” (Sunday Telegraph, 19 October). Then last month Gordon Brown himself, in America for a summit of the G20, “invoked the memory of John Maynard Keynes”, according to the Financial Times (15/16 November), proposing a typically Keynesian approach to the current crisis, right down to exactly the same terminology:

“Gordon Brown yesterday heralded an anti-recession strategy founded on tax cuts for low earners and further cuts in interest rates, in the hope that Britain will spend its way out of the downturn. Mr Brown . . . suggested that the government would use tax credits to help poor families since they were more likely to spend any money handed out. People on low income had ‘a higher propensity to spend if their credits are higher’, Mr. Brown said.”

Keynes was an inter-war years economist who was at one time credited with having saved capitalism. He argued that capitalism did not automatically tend towards full employment and that government intervention to increase spending was needed to ensure this. He was himself a Liberal, but his ideas were embraced by all three main parties in Britain. He was particularly liked in Labour Party circles as his theories seems to justify their reformist attempt to redistribute income from the rich to the poor with their “higher propensity to spend”.

As it happened, post-war Britain did have more or less full employment for twenty or so years after the war, but this was more due to the expansion of world markets than to Keynesian “demand management” policies. When, in the mid-1970s, world market conditions changed, Keynes’s policies were shown not to work. Instead of stimulating a revival of industrial production they added a new problem – rising prices through currency inflation, which in turn led to periodic devaluations of the pound. In all previous slumps prices had fallen, but the implementation of Keynesian policies in the 1970s meant that they continued to rise. A new word was invented to describe the result: “stagflation”.

In Britain the funeral oration on Keynesianism (Keynes himself had died in 1946) was delivered by the then Labour Party Prime Minister, James Callaghan, at the 1976 Labour Party Conference:

“We used to think that you could just spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you, in all candour, that that option no longer exists and that in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting bigger doses of inflation into the economy, followed by higher levels of unemployment” (Times, 29 September 1976).

Or, as Keynes’s biographer Lord Skidelsky put it, “Then Keynesian policies suddenly became obsolete and the theory that backed it was condemned to history’s dustbin” (Times, 23 October).

It is a sign of the desperation of Brown and his government that they have been forced to rummage through the dustbin of history for a policy to deal with the current financial crisis and coming depression. Spending your way out of a crisis was tried by the last Labour government and, as Callaghan was forced to admit, it didn’t work. There’s no reason to believe it will this time either.

Material World: The End Of National Sovereignty? (2008)

The Material World Column from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Globalization versus National Capitalism

In 1648 the first modern diplomatic congress established a new political order in Europe, based for the first time on the principle of “national sovereignty.” This principle drew a sharp dividing line between foreign and domestic affairs. Each “national sovereign” was given free rein within the internationally recognized borders of his state. No outsider had any right to interfere. Recognized borders were inviolable. The “sovereign” was originally simply a prince; later the term was applied to any effective government.

National sovereignty facilitated the undisturbed development of separate national capitalisms – British, French, German, American, and so on. Interstate boundaries were stabilized. Governments were able to take protectionist measures to defend home manufacturers against foreign competition.

Even today the principle of national sovereignty is far from dead. It is enshrined in the United Nations Charter: Chapter VII authorizes the Security Council to impose sanctions or use armed force only in the event of a “threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression.”

National sovereignty undermined

But in practice national sovereignty has been deeply undermined – first of all, by the emergence of a global economy dominated by huge transnational corporations. International financial institutions such as the World Trade Organization and IMF have largely taken over economic policy making. Indebtedness leaves many states with merely the formal husk of independence.

Some groups of states have “pooled” part of their sovereignty in supranational regional institutions. The prime example is the European Union.

The old interstate system has also been destabilised by the breakup of Yugoslavia and the USSR into 26 new states, four of which lack international recognition. The decision of the West to recognize the independence of Kosovo from Serbia has set a precedent that makes it easier to carve up other states. Of course, the “independence” of Kosovo – occupied by NATO forces, governed by officials from the European Union, its constitution drafted at the US State Department – is purely notional. Russia has now retaliated by recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Although this will encourage secessionist movements inside Russia, blocking Georgia’s accession to NATO is evidently a higher priority (see September’s Material World).

Legitimising aggression

National sovereignty is not only undermined in practice, but also contested in theory.

Thus, in recent years the United States and its closest allies have sought to legitimise their military attacks on other states. True, such attacks are nothing new. What is new is open advocacy of the principle of aggression. The main rationales used are the prevention of nuclear proliferation, counter-terrorism and humanitarian intervention (see August’s Material World).

It is instructive to compare the Gulf War of 1991 with the current war against Iraq. The Gulf War, at least ostensibly, was launched in defence of the principle of national sovereignty, violated by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The elder Bush resisted pressure to “finish the job” – occupy Iraq and throw out the Ba’athist regime – out of concern that it would lead to the breakup of Iraq and, in particular, a new Kurdish state that would destabilise the whole region. Such considerations have not deterred his son.

Globalisation of capital, fragmentation of states

Paradoxically, the fragmentation of states is a natural corollary of the globalisation of capital. From the point of view of the transnational corporations, states no longer have important policy-making functions. It is enough if they enforce property rights and maintain basic infrastructure in areas important for business. Small states can do these jobs as well as large ones. In fact, they have definite advantages. They are more easily controlled, less likely to develop the will or capacity to challenge the prerogatives of global capital.

Global versus national capitalism

All the same, there is nothing inevitable about globalisation. It has lost impetus recently, and may even have passed its zenith. One sign is the disarray within the WTO. Another is Russia’s change of direction: in contrast to the Yeltsin administration, which was politically submissive and kept the country wide open to global capital, the Putin regime reasserted national sovereignty, expelled foreign firms from strategic sectors of the economy, and ensured the dominant position of national (state and private) capital.

Global versus national capitalism has emerged as an important divide in world politics. This divide exists, first of all, within the capitalist class of individual countries. Thus, even in the US, the citadel of globalisation, some capitalists – currently excluded from power – are oriented toward the home market and favour national capitalism. And even in Russia some capitalists support globalisation.

Nevertheless, the pattern of political forces differs from country to country, and as a result the global/national divide is reflected in international relations. Here the “globalisers,” led by the US, confront in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Russia, China and the Central Asian states) an embryonic alliance of national capitals bent on restoring the principle of national sovereignty to its former place in the interstate system.

A different perspective

This context clarifies the difference between our perspective as socialists and the attitude of anti-globalisation activists. Being against capitalist globalisation is not the same as being against capitalism in general. We have ample past experience of a world of competing national capitalisms – quite enough to demonstrate that there is no good reason for preferring such a world to a world under the sway of global capital. The main problem with the movement against globalisation is that it can be mobilized so easily in the interests of national capital, whatever the intentions of its supporters.

To be fair, some anti-globalisation activists are aware of this danger. Acknowledging that humanity faces urgent problems that can only be tackled effectively at the global level, they emphasize that they are not against globalisation as such: they are only against the sort of globalisation that serves the interests of the transnational corporations. This then leads them to explore ideas of globalisation of an “alternative” kind. These ideas at least point in the right direction. Socialism is also an alternative form of globalisation – a globalisation of human community that abolishes capital.

Stefan

Pathfinders: Future al Fresco, or the House of Cards that Jacque built (2008)

The Pathfinders Column from the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone watching the online documentary film Zeitgeist (2007) would be advised to borrow Occam’s razor for some editorial cutting. A well-made and interesting film, Zeitgeist nonetheless makes history more mysterious than it needs to be. You can explain what goes on in capitalism quite easily without making a giant secret conspiracy of it. So, when the sequel, Zeitgeist Addendum, came out in October of this year, socialists were expecting more conspiracy stuff and dodgy bank-credit economics.

Addendum turns out to be a surprise. To be sure, it does reiterate the dodgy economics, overlooking the fact that when banks do try to create money out of nothing, they crash and burn, as has been happening recently. But then the film gets really interesting, because it proposes, as an alternative to capitalism, a global resource-based society of common ownership, without governments, hierarchies, markets, trading or money. Were the makers explicitly to use the term ‘world socialism’ most socialists would scarcely blink.

Not that there’s any such reference, or indication of Marxian antecedents. Clearly the intention is to avoid triggering any knee-jerk reflexes from audiences schooled in the evils of soviet ‘socialism’. Instead, they’re offered the sci-fi version, with supersonic mag-lev trains, floating intelligent cities, nanotechnology and megamachines. The future is bigger, better and brighter, even if it does look a bit like Thunderbirds Are Go. The point being drummed in is that it’s steam-age capitalism that’s holding back technology, as well as creating a social and environmental hell-hole. Without capitalism, we can reach for the stars.

This is the Venus Project, futuristic creation of Jacque Fresco, engineer, architect and designer, a man on a laudable mission to persuade the world to ditch capitalism and create a practical cooperative alternative. For socialists to come across such a well-worked model which accords so closely with their own is a rare thing, so it seems almost churlish to suggest that the technology may be a bit over-done. It’s not only that this kind of chrome-plated futurism looks paradoxically dated, like rocket ship stories of the 1950’s, or that it may be off-putting to those yearning for William Morris-like rural idylls. More troublesome is the heavy emphasis placed on science and technology as the source of progress, for instance, as here: “The application of scientific principles… accounts for every single advance that has improved people’s lives” (Designing the Future, at www.venusproject.com). Trust a techie to say that. But what about the role of workers, in unions or campaign groups, to raise wages and working conditions, or reduce the working day, or demand civil rights? Did technology have anything to do with recognition of race or gender equality, or gay liberation, or legislation against slavery or child-labour? Instead of recognising that workers won those rights by organised force, Fresco seems to think all improvements in civil rights were ‘privileges’ which have been ‘granted’ by the ruling elite (p.4).

This gives a clue to Fresco’s attitude to ‘responsibility’ and ‘democracy’. Technology, he thinks, will obviate the need for these. Laws against drink-driving, for example, can be abolished if cars drive themselves. True enough. But can one find a technological fix for every situation requiring humans to have an awareness of their own social responsibility, and even if we could, would we want to? Responsibility is not a burden, after all, it is empowerment, it is personal growth. Make humans responsible, and they become mature adults. Instead, Fresco would let this human quality atrophy.

Similarly, Fresco seems wedded to the strange idea that humans don’t want to make decisions. Thus he envisages a ‘global neural network’ that does our thinking for us, a marriage of automation and cybernetic intelligence called ‘cybernation’. This column has recently referred to self-adjusting production systems (Sept 08), but running an entire social system that way is surely a leap too far. In answer to the question: Who makes the decisions in a resource-based economy? Fresco gives the bizarre response: No one does. Apparently the cybernation system will decide what we want to produce, as well as how to produce it, because we humans just aren’t up to the job.

What emerges sounds less like a socialist society of responsible adults and more like a Tracey Island playground for hedonistic infants with no tough decisions to make and no responsibilities to shoulder. Socialists place participatory democracy at the very core of our social model, irrespective of the technology. For Fresco, it seems to be the other way round. In answer to the question, would there be a government? Fresco answers that there would be a transitional administration of expert technicians, before the process of ‘cybernation’ is complete. He adds that “They will not dictate the policies or have any more advantage than other people.” But how does he know that? What mechanisms would prevent a technocracy maintaining power in perpetuity? Fresco is leaving the matter to trust. Worse still, in avoiding the whole issue of democratic organisation and class action, Fresco has no way to address the even more pressing question, how to overcome the certain opposition of the ruling class. So he dodges it by arguing that there will be no need to, since capitalism will collapse of its own accord. Leaving aside the extreme improbability of this, it begs the question: what should we do then, while we’re waiting for that to happen? Spread the ideas perhaps, as socialists advocate? Apparently not! “True social change is not brought about by men and women of reason and good will on a personal level. The notion that one can sit and talk to individuals and alter their values is highly improbable” (www.venusproject. com/intro_main /essay.htm). Ever the technophile, Fresco has his eye on something more worthy of an engineer, the building of an experimental city in South America, in order to show his society in action. Thus, we have a future, non-market, non-money society with no human decision-making, existing as a sealed bubble inside capitalism, and on a continent famous for its CIA-backed counter-revolutionary guerrilla forces. Well, lots of luck, but this ain’t a horse we would back.

Socialists rarely have anything good to say about post-modernism, but Fresco’s starry-eyed fixation with technology reminds us what was wrong with modernity in the first place. It was enlightenment thinking gone light-headed, before the hangover set in and we realised that, actually, science can’t save us from ourselves, in fact science and technology have got bugger all to do with it. Mass consciousness and democratic organisation are what it takes, not fantastical gadgets and optimistic faith in the imminent and obliging demise of capitalism. If you’re wrong about that, you’ve got nothing. Without class action, there’s no foundation, no plan, no clear road. It’s a house of cards floating in the air.

Fresco and his friends deserve huge credit for the work they have done in setting out a vision of post-capitalist common ownership, and if nothing else, the Venus Project should remind us that such ideas are not unique to us. But visions born of conspiracy theories tend to preclude the idea of democratic mass action, and that is a weakness. For socialists, not only is mass action possible, it is essential. Capitalism will not collapse. It has to be pulled down. And machines won’t do that for us.

Paddy Shannon