Voice From The Back: A Wasteful Society (2015)

The Voice From The Back column from the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Wasteful Society

The mad wastefulness of capitalism is staggering. Take the expenditure of the USA in their recent military efforts. ‘President Barrack Obama will ask lawmakers on Friday for an additional $3.2 billion to pay for the war against the Islamic State group in Iraq officials said Thursday …. The air war in Syria and Iraq – which commanders say could last years –  has involved thousands of sorties and hundreds of bombing raids, at a daily cost of $8.3 million, according to the Pentagon’ (Hindustan Times, 2 December). This immense expenditure represents a lot of human effort and energy. Think what that could mean inside a socialist society producing food, clothing and shelter for all. 

Troubles Ahead

Despite the picture the government is trying to draw about how they are coping with the economic crisis, some economic institutions are drawing vastly different conclusions. ‘The plans set out by George Osborne in the Autumn Statement on Wednesday will require government spending cuts “on a colossal scale” after the election, an independent forecaster has warned. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said just £35bn of cuts had already happened, with £55bn yet to come. The detail of reductions had not yet been spelled out, IFS director Paul Johnson said’ (BBC News, 4 December). The reason for the vagueness about future welfare cuts is of course the approaching election.

Capitalism And Cuts

The increasing rationing of state-funded care, as councils attempted to slash costs, has left growing numbers of elderly people without access to the care system. In turn it has forced millions of family members to step in, many of them giving up their own jobs. ‘The acute shortage of care for older people in Britain is exposed in official figures showing how the population of care homes was left virtually unchanged during a decade which saw the biggest expansion in the overall elderly population ever. According to a study published by the Office for National Statistics the number of people in care homes in England and Wales rose by only 0.3 per cent in the decade between the 2001 and 2011 censuses, standing at just short of 291,000. But the overall number of over 65s jumped by 11 per cent in the same period – 37 times faster’ (Daily Telegraph, 6 December). Having suffered a life of exploitation and poverty old workers’ misery continues.

God And Mammon

The Christian churches are adamant that they care nothing for the material aspects of this world and concentrate on spiritual values. The Roman Catholic Church, with its new Pope is particularly concerned about its recent past history. ‘The Vatican’s bank – which he threatened to shut down – is now closing hundreds of suspect accounts as it tries to shrug off its scandalous reputation after decades in which it was a by-word for money laundering and tax evasion’ (Times, 5 December).

A Torturing Society (1)

Torture according to the press is something carried out by unscrupulous foreigners but just isn’t British. So how come a letter discovered in Downing Street at the National Archives has placed Britain in the dock at European Court of Human Rights accused of torturing detainees in Northern Ireland in the 1970s? ‘The confidential memo written in March 1977 by Merlyn Rees, then Labour Home Secretary, states that, six years earlier, Tory ministers had authorised the use of torture in Ulster. Mr Rees told Prime Minister James Callaghan that he thought individuals or soldiers should not be prosecuted because “a political decision was taken” to use the so-called deep interrogation techniques’ (Times, 6 December). These techniques included wall standing in stress positions, white noise, hooding, sleep deprivation and withholding of food and water.                                

A Torturing Society (2)

It is not only Britain of the so-called free nations that carries out torture as the US has recently confessed. ‘The CIA carried out “brutal” interrogations of al-Qaeda suspects in the years after the 9/11 attacks on the US, a US senate report has said. The summary of the report compiled by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee said that the CIA misled Americans about what it said it was doing’ (BBC News, 9 December).

50 Years Ago: Churchill’s Birthday (2015)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Here, it was obvious, was what they call a great man. Propped-up, glassy eyed, at the window, flapping his hand at the crowd outside. Oozing in his senility, like the old Disraeli with his corsets and lacquered hair. Famous visitors came and went. An enormous cake was carried in, with sacks full of cards and telegrams. The flashlights popped and the television cameras Chirred. Winston Churchill was ninety years old.

Most people were agreed that this was a remarkable achievement. Perhaps it was, in a way. An impressive feature of the many newspaper reminiscences of the old man in his heyday was the amount of hard liquor which he has put down. One article said that when he was Prime Minister, he drank champagne and brandy with every meal and sipped at tumblers of whisky and soda all through the day. A man of lesser constitution would almost certainly have been killed by such a deluge of alcohol.

Churchill’s consumption of drink is typical of the gusto with which he has lived his life, and it is this gusto which has been the subject of much recent hypocrisy. First, the business of those ninety years. It is too obvious that to be born into a family like the Churchills gives a person a built in advantage in their prospects of longevity because, everything else being equal they are going to get the best of everything. The best food. A secure and comfortable home. The best education and, if they want it, an interesting job.

It is a different matter for the people who were cheering so enthusiastically outside Churchill’s window on his birthday and it is worthwhile to take a look at how they live.  Their lives may be summed up in one word poverty, although it is a different kind from the poverty their parents knew, in the days when Churchill was a young man. They are, first of all, the people who make the wealth of the world.

(from article by Ivan, Socialist Standard, January 1965)

Too Much Ado About: Primitive Fables, Hallucinations, Dreams, Myths (2015)

From the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every race, nation, tribe had/has its portion of these, the Zezuru, Zulu, Xhosa, Nyanja, Sena (Southern Africa) are no exception but, sadly unlike the Jews, Greeks, Romans etc, literacy came much too late to this region. Add the inferiority complex, the psychological defeat and awe of the conqueror. How can the subdued, timid, submissive, inferior native ever have confidence in himself or his defeated elder? Moreover, the aforementioned aliens have their myths well written down.

The local myths are not written down to date… our ancestors when hungry, would just go under a tree, clap their hands, tell the creator their needs and immediately food presented to them… that their neighbour can go from Harare to London and back within 3 hours in a rusero (winnowing tray) – an aeroplane takes two days  – and in most cases a person alleged to have such mystical powers is among the poorest and cannot point to Harare, let alone London, on a map.

But after consulting some prophet such a person might be axed to death. ‘Our daughter was doing very well in England until that their witch made the “visitation” … So, any wonder that people who can believe such silly tales are very cheap prey to the highly propagated, highly mystified Jesus who is but forever coming yesterday! The everlasting lie of course! While most Africans, due to wishful thinking are convinced by the silly eternal lie, in Zim in 2001, at 3.00 o’clock on 15 June (or was it 3rd June) and again (was it 9 December 2002) at 9.00 am, the much criticised scientists accurately forecast the eclipse of the sun, the exact date, the exact hour and duration. Which of the biblical wafflings has come true?

Poor backward Africa! While the West, Russia and China have learnt that all phenomena considered mysterious and transcendental can be mathematically and scientifically proved or disproved, the majority of Africans are still (in mentality) in the era of the Christian believers who shun reality, like the condemners of the Galileo Group. As such, as Galileo said that recanting would never make the Earth flat, the Jews were never wrong for dismissing the Christ Myth. And, like all dead people, he will not arise. In fact the catch trick (to fool weak minds, the timid and gullible) is in (a) John 14:19, (b) Acts 1:6, 10, 11.

Anyway, by saying that such utterances are from God (and not from cunning, dogmatic/despotic humans) are you (Christians) not depicting the same kind of loving/fair God as worse than a primitive ritualist (sacrificing his only son to end sin which has since multiplied) a tribalist, a liar who did not even know that before the 21st century there would be no more war of horses and swords but missiles from the Pentagon, Sandhurst, Seoul etc?

Godwin Hatitye

Harare, Zimbabwe

Defending the indefensible (2015)

The Halo Halo! column from the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

HRH Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Lord of the Isles, etc. etc. is obviously a man with a liking for job titles, and his collection so far is only overshadowed by the collection of military medals and uniforms he wears to go with them. And, despite his less than impressive record of any actual employment so far he’s looking forward to getting a new one.

‘Defender of faith’ he wants to be known as rather than ‘Defender of the faith’ when the family business, consisting of travelling around the world waving at the natives, is finally handed to him. And this makes perfect sense. The current title seems to imply that there’s only one faith that needs defending, whereas of course, they’re all at each other’s throats, and so need defending from each other. There’s also the fact that he and his chums who collectively own the planet don’t give a sod which faith the proles go for, as long as they can be kept in a state of obedient, religious stupor by believing in one of them.

In the good old days, of course, the gods were omnipotent and could easily defend themselves. Thor had a ruddy great hammer to show who was boss and Zeus was known for hurling thunderbolts at anyone who crossed his path. But now, it seems, they need a mortal to consult with and advise them on the defence of their various faiths. And Charlie, the man who has devoted so much of his life to talking to plants and studying quack herbal remedies is apparently uniquely qualified to do it.

And now someone is taking his wish to become ‘defender of faith’ to all the gods seriously. Lord Harries, a former Bishop of Oxford, and a ‘leading CofE liberal thinker’ according to the Daily Mail (28 November) suggests that Charles’s coronation service should be opened with a reading from the Koran. Unsurprisingly, many of his colleagues strongly disagree.

In any event, one passage it may be wise to avoid will be Surah 5 verse 51: ‘O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is one of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk’.

Lord Harries is sure, however, that it would be ‘a creative act of accommodation’ and make Muslims feel ‘embraced’ by the nation. Whether some of the more extreme Islamists of Isis, for example, who want an Islamic state and prefer to deal with those of a different persuasion by beheading them feel the need to be ‘embraced’ or have their faith ‘defended’ by the new King Charlie of the UK is another matter.

A report on the World Bulletin website (11 November) suggests that in Egypt, at least, panicking Moslems and Christians are being forced to join forces to fight what they see as a new danger: a ‘growing trend of atheism’ which has ‘alarmed the country’s religious institutions’. It seems that since the 2011 uprising many young Egyptians have begun to openly declare their atheist views.

Strange, isn’t it, that after being divided for centuries by their religions it’s the rejection of religion that’s getting them together? Funny old world isn’t it? Perhaps now that they’ve found this new understanding they can tell us which god is the real one, and which the imposter.

NW

Change everything (2015)

Book Review from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate’, by Naomi Klein, Allen Lane, 2014, £20

Oh what a bittersweet day: a book that makes you want to jump for joy about a topic which occasions floods of tears. Naomi Klein’s latest work should be widely read. She is bang on the money: the climate change argument is about capitalism. In short, free markets and sustainability are mutually exclusive, and either capitalism or the ecosystem has had its day. The slew of evidence on display is impressive – Klein is nothing if not a thorough case builder – and the whole book can be seen as a superb illustration of the class system at work.  She catalogues examples of the narratives being bent to suit vested interests and the dominant ideology: many parts of this we could not have written better ourselves. Talk about capitalism bearing the seeds of its own destruction.

It has always struck me as odd that so many of the rich and powerful behaved as if they had another planet to escape to, or that somehow they could end up breathing their own wealth if the atmosphere became problematic. Why on earth were they funding climate change denial movements if they themselves would also suffer when the stuff hits the fan – as 97 percent of those who know have agreed is going to happen? Klein solves this one: the climate challenge is such a threat to their ideology that they simply cannot tolerate it: the measures necessary to forestall disaster require such concerted effort that it would be essential to curtail the very market freedoms so dear to them and their position. Much like the dictators of yore, they’d rather bring all down with them than give up power; or maybe more like Magda Goebbels, the world was not worth living in for her or her family without the primacy of their Weltanschaung. Having spent the last 30 years unleashing the tiger of the neoliberal agenda, they were not going to let some bunch of green eggheads spoil the party.  This would be intolerably bad for business and thereby very bad for their interests.

As someone concerned about the environment since my teens (don’t ask…), I ended up in the Green Party.  However I left a while back as I was unconvinced about their attitude to power: how they would force vested interests to toe the line.  I came to the same general conclusion as Klein – capitalism has to go – and realised that without this step, all else on the environmental agenda is playing for time.  However here is where she and I might part company: the way forward and the alternative political landscape offered in her book is too hazy.  It is as if she pulls her punches in the last round for fear of scaring off the readers – the book is after all aimed at the mainstream  – or perhaps she really has not thought it through properly.

Her suggestion that protests and actions will emerge which must be exploited to promote the agenda is too haphazard and hazy. What is the over-arching political philosophy which will give such emergent forces any direction apart from the environment and opposition to capitalism?  The peg on which to hang the clothing of serious change is lacking in this book. Come on Naomi, at heart you’re one of us, if only you’d realise it – you can’t offer a solution without socialism.  Ducking the real question seems a bit odd after what you have written and what you plainly believe.  But  I still welcome this book like few others. In the current climate anyone who starts asking the right questions has to be congratulated.

Howard Pilott

Mixed Media: Heresy (2015)

The Mixed Media column from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Heresy by Tilo Ulbricht, performed at the Tabard theatre in Chiswick, London, last year, is based on The Grand Inquisitor chapter in the Dostoyevsky novel The Brothers Karamazov. Ulbricht’s play is set in sixteenth century Spain ‘during the most terrible time of the Inquisition, when fires were lighted every day throughout the land to the glory of God and in the splendid autos-da-fé wicked heretics were burnt by the Cardinal, the Grand Inquisitor’ (Dostoyevsky).

Catholic philosophy pondered such questions as ‘whether angels have navels?’ or ‘ how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?’ Thomas Aquinas’s position on heresy provided the doctrinal basis for the Inquisition: ‘in God’s tribunal, those who return are always received, because God is a searcher of hearts, and knows those who return in sincerity. But the Church cannot imitate God in this, for she presumes that those who relapse after being once received, are not sincere in their return; hence she does not debar them from the way of salvation, but neither does she protect them from the sentence of death’ (Summa Theologica).

Catholic philosophy did not allow the questioning of doctrine. As Bertrand Russell pointed out, Aquinas ‘does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in an inquiry… before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation’ (A History of Western Philosophy).

The major theme of Heresy is ‘what is Truth?’ but Catholic philosophy can never ascertain what Truth is as there is no such thing as Absolute Truth. Marx identified that ‘the criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism… the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics  . . it is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world’ (Introduction to A Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right).

Dostoyevsky in The Grand Inquisitor identified the danger of socialism for religion: ‘humanity will proclaim by the lips of their sages that there is no crime, and therefore no sin; but there are only hungry people. Feed them first, and then demand virtue of them! – that is what they will inscribe on their banner, which they will raise against you, and which will destroy your temple . . . you promised them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread?’ Dostoyevsky later commented ‘by the stones and the loaves of bread, I meant our present social problems. Present-day socialism in Europe sets Christ aside and is first of all concerned about bread. It appeals to science and maintains that the cause of all human misfortune is poverty, the struggle for existence and the wrong kind of environment’ (Philosophy in Literature). In Heresy, Jesus is arrested by ‘the Cardinal himself, the Grand Inquisitor, an old man of nearly ninety, tall and erect, with a shrivelled face and sunken eyes, from which, though, a light like a fiery spark still gleams’ (Dostoyevsky). Peter Saracen delivers a commanding central performance as the Grand Inquisitor in Tilo Ulbricht’s play.

Ludwig Feuerbach argued in his 1841 work, The Essence of Christianity, that it is important for religion that its object should be radically distinct from humanity; and that it was equally necessary that it come down to Earth if it is to be religiously relevant. For this reason, Christianity teaches the Incarnation where God suffers the indignity of birth, the pain of suffering, and the emptiness of death out of love for humankind. With Incarnation, Feuerbach finds the ultimate expression of human self-love and the surest indication that religion is a human projection: in religion humanity has relation only to its own nature, only to itself, the clearest proof of this is ‘the love of God’, i.e. of projected humanity, for humanity, as before, the basis and central point of religion. With Incarnation, Feuerbach argues humans receive back all that they have surrendered to God. By worshipping God, people unconsciously worship themselves as in Spinoza’s ‘homo homini deus’ (Man is a God to Man).

Marx wrote to Feuerbach that he had intentionally or not ‘given Socialism a philosophical foundation’ (Gesammelte Werke, W. Schuffenhauer, Ed.), by exposing the mystified nature of religion, the alienated subject-object relation can be reversed, God brought down to Earth, and humanity made whole, putting social humanity in its rightful place at the centre of things. In 1870 Feuerbach read Marx’s Capital and joined the German Social Democratic Workers’ Party. Engels concluded that the ‘working class movement is the heir to classical German philosophy’ (Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy).

Steve Clayton

Cooking the Books: The Onward March of Globalisation (2015)

The Cooking the Books column from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

For years the World Trade Organisation has been trying to change the rules of global trade in the interests of global investors. The US in particular wants to ease the out-sourcing and off-shoring of jobs, permitting employers to seek the lowest wages and weakest government oversight protections around the world; and to incorporate patent and intellectual ownership rules that will further restrict access to medicines for millions and could be expanded to include even surgical procedures and not just drug treatments.

Overall, it is a bid to implement a globalisation policy of trade harmony at the lowest common denominator that will further the interests of global investors by relaxing various standards to weaker levels of consumer and public protection. It would represent a further reduction in the ‘sovereignty’ of national governments and their already weak power to resist the dictates of the world market. But these negotiations have not yet reached a conclusion because some countries do not want to open their doors too much to multinational corporations.

At the same time the EU and the US are negotiating a ‘Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership’. One of the points under discussion is a mechanism known as ‘Investor-State Dispute Settlement’ (ISDS), which would give corporations the right to challenge a country’s laws. Clearly, this is something more than a mere ‘free-trade’ deal.

Even if a new reform or policy applies equally to domestic and foreign investors, ISDS proposes to allow corporations to receive compensation for the absence of a ‘predictable regulatory environment.’  Already under existing WTO ‘free-trade’ rules this type of argument has been used to attack clean energy, mining, land use, health, labour, and other policies. More than $14 billion in the 16 claims are now under litigation in the US; all relate to environmental, energy, financial regulation, public health, land use and transportation policies, which are not traditional trade issues. EU investors have attacked Egypt’s minimum-wage increase, and a US corporation has attacked the Peruvian government’s decision to regulate toxic waste and close a dangerously polluting smelter. In one of the most notorious cases, US tobacco giant Philip Morris launched investor-state cases challenging anti-smoking laws in Uruguay and Australia after failing to undermine the health laws in domestic courts.

Another proposal in TTIP is for ‘regulatory cooperation’ which would give big business lobby groups wide opportunities to influence decision-making, outside the normal democratic decision-making processes on both sides of the Atlantic. The clear intention is to allow business to in effect ‘co-write’ international regulations, as already happens at national level.

All new relevant US or EU proposals for legislation or regulation would have to be screened first for their impacts on trade. A report has to be made to that effect, to make sure legislators don’t adopt anything that would be detrimental to business. Even before a proposal is launched, say by the European Commission, the US has to be notified, and vice versa. This opens the door to intense lobbying and also to all sorts of pre-emptive pressure – for example a threat of litigation under the ISDS mechanism.

The socialist attitude is that, at the end of it all, the arguments within the WTO which have so far prevented agreement are a dispute between vying capitalist factions, free-trader versus protectionist, foreign versus native capitalist – competitors, fighting to defend or create conditions that offer them the best return. Even so, among the casualties are working people the world over, who will end up as collateral damage, more powerless and more vulnerable than ever in the face of global capitalism.

ALJO

Party News: Marx’s London Walk (2015)

Dean Street, London.

Party News from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 7 January, a short walk was made by socialists around Soho and Fitzrovia. Despite the midday, mid-week timing, necessary to coincide with the visit of visitors from Sweden, there was a good turnout. We viewed the old Red Lion pub, where the iconic Communist Manifesto was presented to the Communist Workers’ Education Society, Marx’s house in Dean Street, scene of the dire poverty which killed off three of his children, and the home of the First International in Greek Street, which, as one comrade reminded us, was the venue for the first reading of the socialist classic Value, Price and Profit. We then proceeded across Soho Square and Oxford Street to the vicinity of Fitzroy Square, for nigh forty years around the turn of the last century, stomping ground of the Communist Club. The latter, the guide explained, was the successor to the Communist Worker’s Education Society, habituated by friends of Marx, as well as other late nineteenth century notables, such as William Morris. The club was also the first headquarters of our own Party, thus forming a neat link between past and present.

How the Ruling Class Rule in Britain (2015)

From the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Critics of the Socialist Party often ask why we would want to bother standing for election, when the real power is in the hands of the Establishment, and if an election went against their wishes, they’d just suspend democracy. Our answer has always been simple: the capitalist class is not united, but competing one against the other. They cannot trust each other with state power, because the temptations of cheating and corruption are too great. They need the political democracy and its openness in order to have a reliable machine to protect their general interests of property and contract. They need the army of workers who run the state to work for them.

Recent research by the University College London Constitution Unit shows how integral the elected parts of the state are. Their reports The Policy Impact of House of Commons Select Committees and The Policy Impact of Parliament on Legislation use a combination of empirical and interview research to assess how much influence parliament has on the policy over the executive and on the laws as finally produced by the state.

They found ‘Committees are highly prolific, and producing increasing numbers of reports. Between 1997 and 2010 select committees probably produced almost 1,500 inquiry reports (or 110 a year) and almost 40,000 recommendations and conclusions, of which 19,000 (or 1450 a year) were aimed at central government.’ Further, according to their examination of that work ‘around 40% of recommendations are accepted by government, and a similar proportion go on to be implemented. Calls for small policy change are more likely to be accepted and implemented, but around a third of recommendations calling for significant policy changes succeed.’

Further, their interviews with civil servants found that the question of ‘How could this policy be defended in front of a select committee’ loomed large in their minds at the policy formulation level. Indeed, the Constitution Unit’s work ‘identifies seven additional types of influence: contribution to wider debate, drawing together evidence, spotlighting issues and changing ministerial priorities, brokering (improving transparency within and between departments), accountability, exposure, and generating fear’(LINK). These layers of influence are important, as Select Committees have no formal (i.e. legal) means of enforcing their findings, their power is informal and political.

Detailed research on the Parliamentary process also illustrates how much power parliamentarians possess. Between 1999 and 2012 the House of Lords voted against the government 506 times, with around 130 (about 40 percent) of those defeats being upheld. Some of these issues were core government matters, such as jury trials, ID cards and detention without trial. In many ways, this demonstrates the important power of this unelected chamber, but, again, its power was informal, as the Commons could have overruled it. The number of defeats for the coalition government is lower, as they have greater representation in the unelected house (LINK).

In fact, as the Constitution unit found, government Ministers would often try to negotiate with peers and Commons back-benchers, because ‘the last thing they want is a vote’. Indeed, the executive operates a sophisticated parliamentary management policy to try and ensure that it is not defeated, making sure that it doesn’t propose anything that parliamentarians will not wear. The appearance of an almighty executive holding sway over parliament is very much that, appearance, and it is one that an executive must work hard to maintain. The first job of government is to look like it is in charge.

The academics found that around 60 percent of amendments to acts of parliament originated with non-government parliamentarians, despite being officially government proposed amendments to its own legislation.

Claiming legitimacy

This is the detailed impact of Parliament on the running of the country. Of course, the executive constitutionally can only be formed based on holding onto a majority in the House of Commons, which in turn means retaining the support of the largest section of the population at large (and usually a majority). Whatever the detail and objective effects of government policy, they can legitimately claim to have the support of the population, albeit with a sophisticated electorate management strategy as well.

The influence of parliament as a body stretches deep into the civil service and the daily operations of government. Its influence lies not in observable command control, but in the minds and imaginations of state actors, who are habituated to at least showing deference to their elected masters. This cannot simply be turned off at the flick of a switch: political democracy is well entrenched within the British state, and a great many politicians and civil servants (as well as their respective hangers-on) have a great deal of interest in maintaining political democracy. To put it bluntly, a lot of people have too much to lose to simply end democracy overnight.

Of course, parliament itself is limited in what it can do. It cannot act in such a way as to destroy its popular support. At the minimum, the politicians would lose elections and lose their jobs. In more extreme circumstances there would be riots and strikes or capital flight. They also have to act, ultimately, in line with the reified reality of the markets. The reliance on state borrowing means they have to placate the owners of debt and property.

To the extent that the executive retains immense patronage, able to buy off cronies with jobs, titles and entry into the revolving door of corporate boardrooms and consultancy work, it retains secretive, unaccountable power. A movement to promote democracy, to throw open the operations of government and to convert them from being government of people into the democratic administration of things will be able to cut off such chains of patronage.

Indeed, the relatively recent innovation on parliamentary votes on war (again, this has an informal status that has been elevated into what constitutional experts call a convention, since state actors behave as if they have to abide by it even if it isn’t enforceable), shows this power, with the defeat over military action in Syria. That is a massive inroad into the peremptory rights of the executive.

None of this is to fetishise parliament  nor its procedures, but instead to show how political democracy is central to the operation of the British state, despite occasional appearances to the contrary. It shows how human relations lie behind the surface machinery of state. Currently the majority continue to support capitalist politicians and parties, but if they were to turn into a movement for socialism, the democratic process is no barrier to them getting their way.

Pik Smeet

What about Chile?

Often, opponents of democratic socialist revolution cite the example of Chile, but that doesn’t bear up to scrutiny. In 1970 Salvador Allende was elected with 36.6 percent of the vote. According to the Constitution, if no candidate achieved more than 50 percent of the vote, the Chilean Legislature had to choose a President (usually the one with the most votes), and in Allende’s case, the Christian Democrats eventually backed him. At that point, the coalition of parties that backed Allende, the Unidad Popular, did not have a majority in neither the Senate nor the Chamber of Deputies.

In 1973, a parliamentary election saw the Unidad Popular defeated, and the Christian Democrats joined the Confederation of Democracy. The right were then able to use their parliamentary majority to harass Allende, and to claim legitimacy. Prior to the coup that ousted Allende, both the legislature and the courts accused him of acting unconstitutionally and undemocratically.

Nonetheless, before Pinochet could launch his coup, he had to assassinate his way through the military chain of command, so committed were the top generals to the constitutional process.

Allende was defeated by a conspiratorial coup, backed by the United States, but this was only possible with widespread popular support. At no point did Allende have an outright majority, not even a preponderant plurality.

50 Years Ago: Away With Hanging (2015)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘They pull the lever and away he goes,’ Mr. Albert Pierrepoint, public hangman, in evidence to the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment.

One of the conclusions of the last Royal Commission on Capital Punishment was that, in the words of one of its witnesses, hanging is ‘… certain, painless, simple and expeditious’.

Whatever the truth of this (and there are some horrible rumours which contradict it) the fact is that hanging was not originally designed as a quick and humane method of dispatching a criminal. The poor man was often dead before they hung him up. The idea was to display him in as humiliating a way as possible, strung up in public for the mob to spit and jeer at – and to take warning from.

Thus hanging was regarded as a particularly abject and dishonourable form of execution. Beheading used to be considered more dignified and soldiers, immersed in the fatuities of military chivalry, still prefer the firing squad.

(…)

The end of public hanging still left a lot of gruesome ritual, which has been slowly dismantled. No longer is a black flag hoisted and a bell tolled, or a notice posted, at a prison after an execution. No longer does the executed person suffer the last indignity of being left hanging for an hour after his death.

These reforms left the execution a cleaner, more clinical affair, but still a ritual. The condemned prisoner had to be weighed and measured, and secretly observed by the hangman, before the length of his drop could be calculated. (There is an official table on which this calculation was done). The execution had to be rehearsed with a bag of sand as a stand-in. Finally, amid unbearable tension within the prison, the execution itself.

Now, it seems, the whole thing is finished. After about 150 years of battle, the abolitionists appear to have won. Unless something unexpected – and, let us be clear, unplanned for – happens in the House of Lords, Mr Sydney Silverman’s private member’s Bill will soon become law. The hangman’s noose has rattled and jerked in this country for the last time.

(Socialist Standard, Feb 1965)

Voice From the Back: Hungry kids in the USA (2015)

The Voice From The Back column from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hungry kids in the USA

Poverty is usually associated with countries in Africa and Asia not the highly developed USA, but here are the facts. ‘about 16 million kids relied on the US government supplemental nutrition assistance program according to census bureau data released Wednesday, up from 15.6 million a year earlier’ (Huffington Post, 28 January). Capitalism is a world-wide system and it has world-wide problems.


Kobani carnage

‘The Kurdish forces’ unexpected victory in this north Syrian town marked a huge strategic and propaganda loss for Isis, which once seemed unstoppable in their rampage across the region’ (Observer, 1 February). There is no sense of triumph for these troops as Kobani is completely destroyed. Thousands massacred, all that remains is a bombed-out shell. In the yawning craters left by US air strikes buildings have vanished during months of heavy shelling. One side street is blocked by the bodies of Isis fighters, rotting where they fell – a pile of bones marked only by a foul smell. This is the inevitable product of capitalism’s rivalries.


A strange communism

According to the Hurun Global Rich List 2015 the world now has a record 2,089 billionaires – and for the first time, India has more of them than Britain or Russia. ‘The list charts every dollar billionaire currently living in the world. It shows an additional 222 billionaires were created last year, almost a third of whom were in China. The US still holds the crown for most mega-wealthy residents, at 537. But China conditions are not far behind with 430, having acquired 72 new billionaires in 2014’ (Daily Telegraph, 5 February). Somewhat comically the Chinese government still claims to be communist.


A fortune in stamps

Capitalism is a crazy system that can condemn working men and women and their families to starvation for the want of a few pounds while this madness occurs. ‘a few stamps which lay together in a cigar box in a dusty attic for a century are set to fetch £250,000 when next auctioned’ (Sunday Express, 8 February). Scraps of paper worth more than human existence. Crazy.


An obvious statement

It hardly needed a high-powered business survey to tell us the following. ‘Big UK firms face a ‘crisis of trust’ and the next government must prioritise better ethics, a lobby group has said. In a survey, the Forum of Private Business (FPB) found that over three-quarters of respondents think big firms put profits before ethical standards’ (BBC News, 9 February). Tax avoidance, treatment of suppliers, and late payment were all areas of concern we can easily understand that the poll of 2,000 people found, but business putting profits before ethics? Wow, what a surprise!


Crime and capitalism

TV programmes and the national press are fond of depicting the police as dealing successfully with the problem of crime, alas that is a complete fallacy. The advent of cheap heroin in Chicago has led to an increase in crime undreamt of by Al Capone and his contemporaries. ‘In the 1920s, 227 gangsters were said to have been killed in the city in the space of four years. Last year there were 424 murders in Chicago, most of them said to be gang-related’ (Times, 9 February), an increase of almost double in a quarter of the time. Some progress.


Profit and pollution

Details released at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science show that about eight million tonnes of plastic waste find their way into the world’s oceans each year. ‘The new study is said to be the best effort yet to quantify just how much of this debris is being dumped, blown or simply washed out to sea. Eight million tonnes is like covering an area 34 times the size of New York’s Manhattan Island to ankle depth’ (BBC News, 12 February). In the battle between profit and pollution there is a clear winner.


Desperate workers

According to the UN at least 300 migrants are feared to have drowned after attempting to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa this week in rough seas. ‘UNHCT official Vincent Cochetel said it was a ‘tragedy on an enormous scale’. Survivors brought to the Italian island of Lampedusa said they were forced to risk the bad weather on ill-equipped vessels by human traffickers in Libya’ (BBC News, 11 February). Desperate workers are prepared to take enormous risks just to get a job.

Senseless slaughter (2015)

Book Review from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Barroux, Line of Fire, Phoenix Yard Books, 2014.  Ivan Petrus, The Nieuport Gathering, Lannoo, 2011. Jacques Tardi,  It Was the War of the Trenches, Fantagraphics, 2011

Those interested in the literature of the First World War may have come across other ‘graphics’ (with such gruesome contents one can hardly use the word ‘comic’) similar to Charley’s War (reviewed in the August 2014 Socialist Standard). Most of these were originally French language. France, unlike the UK, still has a thriving ‘graphic’ scene. In contrast to Charley’s War or American works, in French language publications the artist and writer are identical and the material was not originally produced as weekly or monthly part works but as a single unit. There should be, therefore, a unity that English language ‘graphics’ lack.

In Michael Morpurgo’s introduction to the Barroux book he comments about the diarist from whose notes the work is derived: “He is the unknown soldier and these are his words. Read them and weep.” Unfortunately there is little to spark such a reaction. The carrot noses are an irritating novelty.

The Nieuport Gathering is the story of a pledge of three men of different nationalities to meet after war and how those three men met their deaths. The historical treatment of the shocking events combined with saccharine Spielburgesque sentimentality means, that like the other contemporary book, it does not engage.

The War of the Trenches, on the other hand, cannot but. Originally published in 1994, this is a work burns with feeling. The senseless slaughter was still then a live issue. Particularly vivid is the contrast between priestly class cant (“Joyful are those families whose blood flows for their country”) and the feelings of a ‘real’ soldier (“Bastards, bastards, miserable fucking bastards! Fuck the army! France can kiss my arse!”). This is a non-chronological sequence of episodes, impressionistic in the best sense of the word. One may disagree with author’s view of human nature (“men are sheep . . .  victims of their own docility”) but one cannot help but be impressed by this immaculately researched and beautifully illustrated book. Tardi concludes “We are all of us, still down here, down in the trenches”: Even now the vicious warmongers are inciting hatred, not of fellow Europeans but of fellow workers, stirring up the necessary background for their oil wars. War, then and now, is about profit for the ruling class . . . and loss for the working class.

Keith Scholey

Dreams and Nightmares (2015)

Book Review from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

David Goodhart: The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-War Immigration. Atlantic £9.99

This is a real mixed bag of a book, a curate’s egg as you might say. It combines some interesting observations about migration with some rather unconvincing arguments.

Goodhart points out that many of the outcomes of immigration to Britain were unplanned and not those envisaged; but this after all is what happens with much government legislation under capitalism. The Salman Rushdie affair of 1989, arising from the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, led to a boost in the authority of Muslim leaders in Britain, and ‘began to mark out Muslims as a special, and in some ways especially problematic, minority’. Satellite television has played an important role in slowing down the integration of immigrants into mainstream British culture, as it enabled people to watch news and soaps from ‘back home’ (Turkey, for instance) rather than the BBC.

Goodhart sees himself as a Labour-supporting ‘progressive’ but as one impressed by Conservative politician David Willetts’ claim that cultural diversity undermines the legitimacy of a universal welfare state. This just illustrates how little difference there is between Labour and Tory policies, and it is also part of the current attack on benefits for those at the bottom of the pile. He observes that forty percent of ethnic minority Britons (not all of whom are immigrants, of course) are poor but he has little idea of the capitalist framework within which migration and the struggle for jobs and housing occur. He refers quite often to ‘the elite’, but this seems to mean the political and media establishment rather than the capitalist class. Moreover, last year’s Sunday Times Rich List featured nine immigrant individuals or families in its top twelve, but the extent of inequality gets almost no mention here.

The two biggest sets of arrivals in the last decade are Poles and Somalis, neither of whom Goodhart regards as ‘model immigrants’ (which presumably would mean causing no problems and producing plenty of profits for the owners of industry). The Poles are mostly hard workers but (though no real evidence for this is provided) have helped to drive down wages for the unskilled. Moreover they ‘mainly have a guest worker mentality and many have no particular interest in joining British society’. As for Somalis, they are highly dependent on welfare, and as a group have retreated into themselves. So refusing to integrate (whatever that might mean exactly) is seen as a major problem. Perhaps, if they lived in grand mansions in some posh part of London and consequently had little contact with the average worker, that kind of non-integration would be acceptable.

Paul Bennett

Commercialising Water in Ireland (2015)

From the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s a funny thing. The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) contains a clause that says: ‘Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control’(Article 25). Yet this has never been given effect by the states concerned. Instead they tend to try and manage markets so that people can try to secure their standard of living by buying it. Also, curiously, although food is mentioned, water isn’t. The UDHR was adopted in 1948. It took until 2010 for the toothless United Nations to declare that water is a right too.

We can see how effective this change of heart has been, over in Ireland. Here, as the BBC notes: ‘Tap water in the Republic of Ireland until now has been free’. The government there, however, is intent on introducing water charges and water meters. As the info sheet from Irish Water explains: ‘Water is a valuable resource but it is expensive to deliver. It is costing €1.2 billion every year to run the public water system, with €1 billion of this funding coming from the Exchequer. This current funding model is no longer sustainable. In addition our infrastructure is badly in need of an overhaul’. So, water is plentiful in Ireland, but treating it costs effort and in capitalism, effort means money.

Seeking profits

Note, they do not explain why this current funding model is becoming unsustainable, or how charging households directly is more sustainable. They say that under the current system, those who pay more taxes are paying, pro-rata, more of the costs of the infrastructure and that this is unfair, and so those who have to count their pennies should be made to pay a wedge or lose their access to water. So much for the right to water in Ireland. Of course, this change is about commercialising water: ‘This transition will ensure that Ireland is well positioned to attract foreign and indigenous investment, creating real potential for new jobs within the country’. So, as a ‘semi-state’ company, it will be attracting investment and profits from the water that hitherto was in effect a necessity of life to which everybody had free access.

Of course, this is hardly uncontroversial, and there have been demonstrations tens of thousands strong on the streets of Dublin against the charges. It is doing significant damage to the Fine Gael/Labour coalition government’s popularity. There have also been reports of communities and activists blocking the installation of water meters, and sabotaging those that have been installed. Such actions are widespread, and being reported widely on social media. There are also widespread threats to boycott the charge and refuse to pay it.

Naturally, the government has tried to make concessions, giving people an uncharged allowance of 30,000 litres, and rebates in the form of a €100 water conservation grant to all households. Clearly, such concessions are designed to mitigate the transition to charging, whilst retaining the core principle that water has become a commercialised commodity in the hands of Irish Water.

There are formal campaigns at a national level as well. Right2Water is a campaign backed by Irish trade unions, and it was responsible for the main marches back in December 2014 that attracted 80,000 in Dublin marchers and around 200,000 overall across the country. As might be expected with such campaigns, the left parties, such as the Workers Party and the Communist Party are a formal part of the alliance.

Additionally, the Irish SWP has also been involved in promoting these protests, through their People Before Profit campaign, while the so-called Socialist Party (really another Trotskyist group) are engaging in their own boycott campaign. Whilst they are involved in the formal organisations, it seems clear that the real impetus on the ground is coming from the communities themselves, and all parties are running to keep up.

Stealing clothes

The far-left’s main success has been to win a by-election in Dublin South. The Anti-Austerity Alliance (which some accuse of being broadly controlled by the ‘Socialist Party’) won a by-election there in October, thanks largely to their opposition to the water charges.

This has been a strong test of the tactic of using popular discontent and campaigns for reforms in order to win support for anti-capitalist organisations. Whilst it may seem that winning a seat in parliament is a vindication of this tactic, it also illustrates its weakness. Sinn Fein had been expected to win the Dublin South seat, and were stung by the defeat. They are an opposition party in the Dáil, and one that is expected to gain significantly in the coming general election, feeding off discontent with the government and austerity.

They had previously been relatively quiet on the water charge issue, but their defeat stung them into action. They mobilised their supporters for the big protest marches, and ensured that Gerry Adams was given a significant platform. In effect, they walked up and stole the issue from the Trotskyists. This is a clear example of the way in which reforms to capitalism can be appropriated by any opposition party with sufficient freedom to manoeuvre, and the way in which they do not guarantee any advance in support for socialism in itself.

Of course, if the ‘Shinners’ win the next election, with their anti-austerity agenda, they are going to have to make good all their promises, and that means governing within capitalism. They will find that the requirement to attract funds for all activities they want the state to fund means in some sense either accommodating to the markets or international bodies. Another party will come along and capitalise on the discontent with their policies (and, again, the advantage lies with the established parties with networks of support, it is unlikely to be a swing to the left that will follow them).

Actual socialism would, of course, have to find the materials and effort to maintain a water infrastructure. Maybe all the time and effort that goes into protesting could be instead spent on real solutions. Certainly, the actual expense and effort of administering taxes and soliciting investment, collecting charges, taking people to court, and so on, could be done away with. Instead, we could, and should guarantee every man, woman and child on earth their right to clean water.

Pik Smeet

Homelessness and Health (2015)

From the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Homelessness isn’t just a housing issue. Struggling without a home usually also means struggling with poor health, and being unable to find enough support.

If asked what the three most important aspects of our lives are, most of us would say something like having reasonable health, somewhere comfortable to live and people we’re close to. But what happens if we have none of these? Poor health may rule out employment, which means having to rely on benefit payments, which limits what accommodation is affordable. And our health needs may mean that many types of housing are inaccessible or impractical. If we don’t have friends or family in a position to help, we would expect the health service, councils, and other organisations to provide a safety net. However, the support services industry has failed to provide for the complex needs of people with both health and housing problems. This is despite a definite relationship between homelessness and poor health. Research from St Mungo’s Broadway and Homeless Link found that 73 percent of homeless people have a physical health problem, and 80 percent have mental health issues (p.3). To what extent poor health is a cause or an effect of homelessness is hard to determine; for most homeless people, it’s probably both. What is clearer is that many people struggle to access often insufficient help from services lacking enough staff and resources.

The definition of homelessness includes people in many different situations. The most extreme, and visible, aspect of homelessness is sleeping rough on the streets. A conservative estimate of the number of rough sleepers in England was 2,414 in 2013. Many more people are in various types of temporary housing, including homeless hostels, bed-and-breakfast accommodation, and staying with friends or relatives. Ten years ago, Crisis estimated that there were 380,000 of these ‘hidden homeless’, which is more than the total population of Leicester (p.3).

Despite their varying circumstances, all homeless people will have an unsettled way of life which exacerbates other problems, especially health. The most obvious, and stark, way of summing up the additional health concerns affecting homeless people is by looking at mortality rates. The average age at death of a homeless person is 47 years old, compared to 77 for the wider population. Homeless women, on average, live until they’re only 43, whereas in the wider population, women tend to live longer than men (p.2, Homelessness: A Silent Killer, Crisis, 2011).

One reason why homeless peoples’ wellbeing suffers is because of difficulties with accessing healthcare. Although there are no upfront charges to use NHS services, and prescription fees are waived for people on a low income, the bureaucracy of the NHS makes it hard for homeless people to navigate the system. The usual way to access healthcare is to make an appointment with your GP, who can then make referrals to hospitals or clinics for particular treatment. To register with a GP, you need a stable address, which creates the first barrier for homeless people. Without easy access to a GP, medical conditions could go undiagnosed or untreated. As a result, when a homeless person’s health deteriorates, they are more likely to approach a hospital directly.

A&E

Homeless people attend Accident & Emergency, or Casualty, departments six times more often than the general population (p.2, Healthcare for the Homeless, Deloitte Centre For Health Solutions, 2012). The numbers of homeless people attending A&E has been flagged up in the context of unbearable pressures on hospitals. The efficiency of A&E departments is measured against the government target of 95 percent of patients being treated within four hours, lowered from 98 percent in 2010. This winter, the mainstream media reported on how many hospitals have failed to meet this target. At the start of 2015, only 86.7 percent of patients in England were seen within four hours (BBC News, 14/1/15), with worse figures in other parts of the UK. Eight hospitals declared ‘major incidents’ because demand on A&E units had increased to more than could be managed.

The four hour target will be prominent in the minds of all A&E staff, alongside the stress of the excessive workload. The constant pressure to process patients quickly means that underlying health problems could be ignored. And the shortage of hospital beds means that not enough people will be admitted to a ward. Consequently, homeless people, especially rough sleepers, often get discharged from A&E straight back into a situation unlikely to promote their recovery. So, when their health deteriorates again, they will probably return to hospital in the near future. People trapped in this cycle of needing to go back to A&E again and again are called ‘frequent flyers’. One in ten homeless people use A&E at least once a month (p.5, Healthcare for the Homeless, Deloitte Centre For Health Solutions, 2012), with some returning partly because they have nowhere else to go, and a hospital is somewhere warm, dry and reassuring.

Not all homeless people who come in to hospital fit this profile of repeat visitors not registered at a GP, though. Lots of people first become homeless at the same time that they enter hospital, usually as the result of a crisis. If someone has had a stroke or an amputation, then it may not be possible or practical for them to return to their previous home. Or, the trauma of being evicted may have pushed someone to attempt suicide.

On the ward

If a homeless person is admitted into hospital, they’re likely to stay there three times longer than the general population (p.2, Healthcare for the Homeless, Deloitte Centre For Health Solutions, 2012). This is partly because homeless people – especially the long-term homeless – often have multiple and complicated health problems, particularly liver damage, asthma, pneumonia, tuberculosis, epilepsy, diabetes, malnourishment, trench foot, wound infection and blood-borne viruses like hepatitis C, especially among intravenous drug users. Drugs and alcohol are often used as a coping strategy by homeless people, and heavy use can lead to cirrhosis of the liver, infections and dependency. This creates a vicious cycle where homelessness both leads to and is prolonged by addiction. 40 percent of homeless heavy alcohol users believe that a lack of stable housing is the main barrier to their recovery. Over a third of homeless people die due to alcohol or drug misuse (p.2, Homelessness: A Silent Killer, Crisis, 2011). The crisis of becoming homeless or struggling with homelessness as a way of life is also often linked with mental health problems. Someone with depression or schizophrenia is less likely to fit in to the expected routines which come with having a job and a ‘normal’ lifestyle. As a result, they are often pushed into homelessness, which will exacerbate their condition.

Another reason why homeless people remain in hospital longer than average is delays in discharging them. The aim is for a patient to leave hospital when they’re judged ‘medically fit’ to do so. They may still need longer to recover, but they can do this in the reassuringly familiar surroundings of their own home. This isn’t going to be possible if the patient is homeless. There have been many instances of homeless people being discharged from hospital in a taxi straight to a council office or a hostel, with no prior notice. This is particularly unsettling for the person, who has left the hospital without knowing whether they will get anywhere to stay, at a time when their health still makes them vulnerable. The practice of wards discharging homeless patients in this way has become less accepted in recent years. However, if a ward doesn’t discharge a patient because they don’t have anywhere suitable to go, then this creates the problem of ‘bed blocking’. When someone who is medically fit to leave hospital remains in a hospital bed, it prevents someone else from having it and creates additional expense.

Discharged where?

If a patient needs to be discharged to a care home, a nurse would refer them to a social worker to make the necessary arrangements. But only people with severely reduced capabilities qualify for this assistance. Presumably, if hospital social services departments and care homes had more staff and resources, they would be able to support more people, and the criteria for accessing them could be relaxed. As the situation is at the moment, many homeless people who would benefit from social services assistance aren’t eligible. Instead, it’s usually left to nurses to try and find accommodation to discharge a homeless person to. They may approach the local council, although the criteria for qualifying for statutory assistance excludes many single people except those judged extremely vulnerable. Even if a disabled homeless person is eligible for assistance under council criteria, then there still might not be anywhere appropriate for them. Temporary accommodation often means a placement in bed and breakfast accommodation, which is notoriously shabby and intimidating, and unsuitable for someone with poor mobility or little resilience. Council staff are aware that they are working within a frugal, inadequate system, and will try to compensate by interpreting their guidelines broadly and with some sympathy. So, temporary accommodation may be arranged in empty flats, care homes or hotels.

If there isn’t an arrangement with the council, or if the homeless patient doesn’t qualify for assistance from them, then the usual option would be direct access hostel accommodation. However, hostels can be almost as intimidating as bed and breakfasts, and are unlikely to be accessible for disabled people. They may have stairs, shared bathrooms and kitchens which could make them unsuitable. If someone can get into a hostel, then they would usually be able to stay there until they can find long-term housing, such as a flat rented from the council or a housing association. This could still take many months, but at least they would have the benefit of staff support.

If a homeless patient is in the country unofficially and has no recourse to public funds, councils and housing providers are very unlikely to help. Not being able to claim benefits or work legally will mean that they can’t afford rented accommodation, including hostels and B&Bs, and will be left destitute.

Generally, the worse someone’s health is, the harder it is for them to get suitable accommodation, especially at short notice. The situation is eased once someone turns 55, as this is the age that sheltered housing usually becomes available. But for younger people, unless they have a profoundly limiting disability which makes them eligible for statutory support, there is very little available. In other words, there is a lack of accommodation for people whose needs are too high for usual homeless provision but too low for social services involvement. The types of people that would be worst affected by this gap in services are those who have had strokes, amputations, suicide attempts, a diagnosis of schizophrenia, or drug and alcohol addiction. Most would also suffer from depression.

The bottom line

Costs accrued by bed blocking and the complex medical issues of homeless people mean that the average cost of a hospital stay for a homeless person is nearly five times higher than that for other people. More precisely, a homeless person will cost the NHS almost £1,900 per hospital stay on average, compared with £391 for the general population (p.6, Healthcare for the Homeless, Deloitte Centre For Health Solutions, 2012). The NHS is always being pushed to reduce its spending to cope with funding cuts. So, it was recognised that investing in more support for homeless patients would reduce costs in the long run. Looked at this way, the homeless are an economic problem, rather than people in need. In 2013, the government announced funding of £10 million to improve support for homeless people being discharged from English hospitals. This involved recruiting specialist staff to arrange discharges into suitable accommodation with ongoing support. This led to reductions in both bed-blocking and frequent flyers. But this wasn’t enough for funding to be extended, and many of these services are no longer running. The solution was only temporary.

To some extent, a society can be judged on how well it treats its most vulnerable people. The problem of homelessness only arises in a society where adequate housing is only available to those who can afford it and, as we’ve seen, people with poor health face additional barriers. These difficulties reflect wider problems in society:

1. The bureaucracy of the NHS, councils and support services, which makes it hard for some people to access help in a more planned way. This problem can’t be solved just by ‘cutting red tape’ or simplifying procedures. The NHS, councils and support services all have to operate in the same economic market as any other institution, so they have to be run like any other. This involves bureaucracy to ration and restrict who qualifies to use them.
2. The lack of resources in hospitals, whether a shortage of beds, nurses, mental health staff, social workers or support workers. Again, this problem can’t be solved within capitalism because the economy can never support enough funding to meet everyone’s needs. Money tends to go where it can be re-invested to create more wealth, and the NHS isn’t an attractive investment for the elite. The economic downturn and climate of government spending cuts only highlight an ongoing problem.
3. The lack of accommodation which is both suitable for and available to disabled people. This is part of the overall housing shortage. It costs more to build or adapt accommodation for people with poor mobility, and landlords may be reluctant to invest the extra money if they don’t think it will end up profitable. When houses are built to be sold or rented, rather than because people need them, then anyone without enough money will struggle.

All of these problems are built in to the way our society is structured. When society is driven by economic forces, rather than what people want and need, then some people inevitably suffer. Increased funding, new services, or reformed procedures may help a few people in the short-term, but they can’t address the causes of the problem.

Clive Hendry

Letters: Timeless Leninism? (2015)

Letters to the Editors from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Timeless Leninism?

Dear Editors

I think a careful reading of my document and of my biography of Tony Cliff would respond adequately to all your points (‘Where Leadership Leads’, February Socialist Standard). Indeed your author seems to have been rather careless in checking his facts – What is to be Done? was published in 1902 not 1903; much more seriously, your author simply disregards the arguments developed not only by Cliff, but by Hal Draper, Pierre Broué, Lars T Lih and many others about the place of What Is to be Done? in Lenin’s work, and whether it can be considered as a timeless statement of ‘Leninism’. Likewise the IS did not adopt the slate system until 1975, which rather undermines the claim that it is a central tenet of Leninism.  As for ‘what we’ve been saying for over 100 years’, that may well be true, but with what results? It is easy enough to point to the limited achievements of the Leninist left, but since your own achievements are equally thin on the ground, a more modest tone might be called for.

Ian Birchall

Reply:

We are aware that there is a school of historical revisionists who try to argue that Lenin was merely a left-wing Social Democrat. This may well be how he appeared when he participated in discussions within the Second International, but inside Russia he never gave up the idea that the revolution there would have to be led by a vanguard party of full-time revolutionaries organised on the lines he had outlined in his 1902 pamphlet and which had shocked other revolutionaries at the time such as Rosa Luxemburg and even Trotsky.

That he still held this view to the end can be seen from his other notorious pamphlet, Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, that came out in 1920. In chapter II, headed ‘One of the Basic Prerequisites for the Success of the Bolsheviks’, he wrote repeatedly about ‘absolute centralisation’ and ‘iron discipline’ and attributed the Bolsheviks’ success to this. He still clearly thought in terms of a centralised and disciplined vanguard party ‘leading and attracting the backward masses.’ The chapter can be read on the internet here.

There is also the fact that, historically, all parties and groups descended from the Bolshevik Party under Lenin, Trotskyist as well as Stalinist, have been organised as vanguard parties along the lines of his 1902 pamphlet. Frankly, we cannot understand how anyone can seriously argue that Lenin did not advocate a centralised and highly disciplined party of full-time revolutionaries.–Editors.

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More on Syriza

Dear Editors

I agree with the article written on page 10 of February Socialist Standard about Syriza. But Syriza is not simply a coalition of various left and green, etc. There are also various splits from the socialist party (like the Labour in England) and more important inside Syriza the most solid ideologically group are  the one of the ex-eurocommunist party of Greece that gave also to Syriza the ideological guidelines in a eurocommunist way like the 70s. The thinktank of Syriza is called ‘Nikos Poulantzas’. If somebody is sect-maniac I can send you a list of the groups that consist Syriza!

Anyway I think the next thing to be analyzed is why Syriza collaborated with a populist party to rule the country, but this is strictly a Greek peculiarity…

Theodore Desponis, 

Greece