SPGB June Events (2026)

Party News from the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our general discussion meetings are held on Zoom. To connect to a meeting, enter https://zoom.us/wc/join/7421974305 in your browser. Then follow instructions on screen and wait to be admitted to the meeting.

Blogger's Note:

Justin Fairchild's book, Unchained. Living Without Money, was reviewed in the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard.

SPGB March Events (2026)

Party News from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our general discussion meetings are held on Zoom. To connect to a meeting, enter https://zoom.us/wc/join/7421974305 in your browser. Then follow instructions on screen and wait to be admitted to the meeting.

Blogger's Note:

Kate Raworth's 2017 book, Doughnut Economics, has been discussed/reviewed in two recent issues of the Socialist Standard:

• Material World: Looking inside the doughnut (October 2025)
• The Doughnut revisited (November 2025)

South Africa: metals before morals (1986)

From the Summer 1986 issue of the World Socialist

In July of last year at Helsinki there was a meeting of various foreign ministers called to discuss economic sanctions against South Africa. Delivered to the meeting room was a single sheet of paper from the South African government which carried a list of the metals it exports to the rest of the world. The message was crystal clear, and to gentlemen who deal in conniving it needed no explanation: they knew that sanctions against South Africa might provoke the government in Pretoria into cutting vital metal exports and that any pressure contributing to the downfall of the racist government could bring civil disturbances that would disrupt mineral supplies for the Western and other economies.

How desperately do the Western economies need South African metals and what would be the result of a ban in supplies?

Strategic stockpiles

Western Europe and Japan are the most heavily reliant on South African minerals. In most metals, world reliance is not particularly great because other production sources or mineral substitutes are available; but in two metals, chromium and platinum, a disruption of supplies would be grave. The only country to plan for a shortage of metals is the US. Its $38 billion (US) stockpile contains a 3-year supply of "strategic metals" defined as those coming mainly from unstable countries and at the same time being vital to industry and the military. Until recently stockpile planners made no allowance for South African instability, with the result that, in some important metals, stocks are inadequate. The US stockpile, for instance, is badly deficient in platinum.

There are five metals which South Africa produces enough of to seriously matter if output were disrupted: platinum, vanadium, gold, chromium and manganese.

Vandium, normally included in stockpiles, is a strong metal mainly used in steel for pipelines, bridges and high-rise buildings. According to Peter Robbins, director of the International Metal Trade, Unicoal Metals Ltd, a cut in South African vanadium supplies, "would not be an insoluble problem. Other metals such as molybdenum, can be substituted for vanadium. With the decline in pipeline building, there is lots of both metals around at the moment. China is also a big producer. So if there was a disruption of months rather than years in South Africa, it probably wouldn't affect the market at all" (Toronto Globe and Mail, October 1, 1985).

Similarly with manganese which is in glut and available elsewhere. Used in dry-cell batteries and as one of the main ingredients in alloy steel, it is a cheap metal; the quantities added to steel are small. Having to pay higher prices to alternative producers would not be crippling. Neither would there be drastic problems if South African gold production were hit, though gold prices would rise, according to Antony Murray of the Commodities Research Unit, one of the largest international minerals consulting firms:

More than 90 percent of all gold ever mined is still around on the gold markets. Known world gold stocks are more than 20,000 tonnes — equal to more than 30 years of South African production. In uranium, where there is over-supply, it would be a relief if South Africa stopped production. Diamonds are also an embarrassment. Industry need not worry about the diamond supply (Toronto Star, September 30, 1985).

But what about platinum?

The West seems able to cope with any South African disruption except chromium and platinum:

Chrome consumers who use the metal in making high quality steel for aerospace, petroleum and chemical industries, have already persuaded South African producers to store extra supplies abroad, and West German users are turning to the Philippines as an alternative supplier. Even with this added to government stockpiles, disruption would hurt badly, particularly in Western Europe. Though South Africa produces 30 percent of the world's chrome supplies, Britain, for example, depends on it for 60 percent of its consumption. The British government over the years, could, but didn't, find other suppliers such as Albania, which sells its chrome through an agent in Milan (Leslie Plommer, Toronto Globe and Mail, October 1, 1985).

The West could, perhaps, cope with a partial reduction in chromium supplies by substituting other metals where possible. One problem they would have is that the Soviet Union might withhold its chromium from the West, in its attempts to damage their economies. On the other hand, it might sell. During the Vietnam war, Russia sold nickel to the US (when there was a nickel-miners strike), knowing it was being used for production in the war against the North-Vietnamese, who they were backing. Commodities, including raw materials, are made (or mined) for sale at a profit on the market and one market is as good as another.

To what extent a cut-back in chromium supplies would affect Western economies, would be dependant on how long it would last. A one or two-month disruption would be no major problem, though it would force prices up. However, a 6-month break would create major difficulties.

Equally crucial are the expensive platinum group metals (PMG) of which the most important are platinum, palladium and rhodium. Their uses include catalysts for the petro-chemical industry and for reducing toxic-emissions from cars. Platinum is currently in good supply with prices low and palladium is in glut. Rhodium, however, is in short supply as Japanese and US car production has increased. Its price has quadrupled in a year. Demand for the platinum group is soon to increase further as the European community phases in new exhaust regulations for auto-makers starting in 1987. It could be that a disruption in South African supplies might force suspension of laws on auto-emissions in the US and Japan and a delay of the European measures. Rising prices could also induce jewellery owners - who absorb about 10 percent of world production — to sell their bangles for industrial use. At present no country keeps a stockpile of platinum and at the moment there is only a 3-month world supply in stock. Canada, the only significant Western source, produces one-tenth the volume mined by South Africa. With other metals, it may be possible to find ways of getting around shortages, but with platinum it's not possible. There would be a major industrial disruption, causing technology and industry to be redesigned completely.

Fear of losing supplies

Keith Shaw, senior mining analyst for Laing and Cruickshank, one of London's largest stockbrokers, believes Western dependence on South African supplies across a range of minerals is underestimated. "No country is indespensible", he said, "but, if the US gets tucked into Star Wars, there will be a big increase in the importance of South African metals. In an increasingly high-tech world, South Africa is a sensible supplier of these things" (Toronto Globe and Mail, October 2, 1985).

Experts point to another possibility. South Africa has the power to block mineral exports from Zambia, Zaire, and Zimbabwe. These countries, along the African mineral spine, which stretches from the Congo to the Cape, are huge producers of many of the same metals as South Africa and to export them they are dependant on South Africa for locomotives, sea access and port facilities. Any move against them by South Africa would not only ruin their economies, but increase world reliance on South Africa, even more than at present.

Given the profit-oriented nature of capitalism, there are a few basic points we can be sure of. Governments, elected or otherwise, exist primarily to administer the affairs of capitalism. Since capitalism's very death blood is the profit-motive it logically follows that major government decisions, like major business decisions, are with view to profit, both long term as well as short term. To keep business, hence profits, moving smoothly (or as smooth as possible in the anarchy that is capitalism) they must have the necessary raw materials.

No government gives a damn about ethical and moral considerations, not because they are composed of nasty people and not because many of them weren't concerned before they came to power, but because once in power, they quickly find out there is only one thing they can do — run the affairs of capitalism. The dog wags the tail, not the tail the dog. Whatever politicians say and whatever minor steps are taken against South Africa, there will be no major course of action against it for fear of losing needed supplies. Breaking off diplomatic relations can hardly be considered a major course of action if one still buys from them; that's like not having a chat with your butcher when you buy his meat. Nor would economic sanctions solve anything.

History has proven that racial prejudice cannot be eradicated within capitalism, a system which, by its very class divisions and the competitiveness these create, divides worker against worker. Only by recognizing that socialism (as defined below) alone is the answer to the major social problems and that political organization is the way to achieve it, can people really start to remove apartheid, racism and economic sanctions as well as all forms of economic blackmail.

Ray Rawlings

(Canada)

The threat to the Great Lakes (1985-6)

From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist

In recent months there has been antagonism between various Canadian and American politicians concerning access to, and the use of, water from the Great Lakes, with each going to bat for the respective needs of the big-business interests they represent. A conference held in Toronto in June, 1984, solved nothing, though some ideas were voiced that could, in a sane society, be workable.

As far as we know, Samuel de Champlain was the first white man to reach the shores of the Great Lakes in 1615. Though he could not have known it, he had stumbled on to the greatest lake system in the world. Though the lakes could not have known it either, it was the portent of dreadful things to come.

Now, less than 400 years later, its watershed is home to 50 million thirsty folk, with another 100 million even thirstier people casting envious eyes northward. The fact that some US political errand boys, such  as  Governor  Scott Matheson  of Utah,  seem sincere  in  their intentions to quench this rather large thirst, can be explained by the simple word — votes. There are, however, more than Scott's electors who need it and intend by foul means or fouler, to get it; such as farmers in the mid-west who want it for increasing their profits through irrigation. Then there are western coal producers who want to take it out to use for coal slurry pipelines.

These would be new uses for the lakes which for years have been very useful to large companies in other ways — such as a dumping ground for industrial pollution. This is the way Lake Erie was killed; not killed meaning dead of course. It was alive, but with plenty of the wrong things.

It's typical that the effects of capitalism create a problem for its everyday abnormal functioning, then you have its apologists running around panicking because they have a problem.

Wasting what's not renewable

The lakes are immense, covering an area the size of Michigan, Indiana and Ohio combined. In some places, they go to the depth of 1,000 feet. They are, however, fragile, chemical-wise, and must be treated carefully. They were created after the last ice age and are not renewable; only the annual fall of rain and snow is.

Many reports have been presented to the various interested parties, but most stress the qualitative aspect not the quantitative. There is, however, a mean level that must be maintained at all times. If it isn't, shipping, the tourist industry and power generation are affected. That critical level cannot be sustained if more water is taken out than put in.

In   many  areas  of North  America,   man's  withdrawal  from  the watershed and acquirers exceeds nature's deposits. Wells are drying up, river flows are declining, yet businesses waste water continuously. Seeking to solve the problem within capitalism, they are searching for ways to recapture the finite amounts flowing through the water cycle. If they tackle this problem with the same degree of success they've had curbing pollution, the day will come when one will be able to drive from one end of the system to the other on the bed of the lake.

America uses 250 billions of gallons of fresh water a day, over half of it for irrigation, and the US General Accounting Office says that half the water used for irrigation is wasted. Yet, the working Joe wastes very little, 25 percent he drinks, the other 75 percent is used in the bathroom (baths, showers, flushing the toilet).

Of all the world's water, less than 1 per cent is available in North America. It's in the rivers, streams and underground aquifiers. The rest is salty or frozen in polar ice caps. Twenty-five percent of this 1 percent is in the Great Lakes, providing water for 200 towns and cities on its shores and other parts of the continent, keeping large factories going, providing hydro power and supporting a tourism industry generating $50 billion a year.

It seems strange (and it is) to be as concerned, as some conservationists and other sundry do-gooders are, because farm land is being gobbled up for shopping centres and condos, while underneath the water slips beyond their grasp.

A quarter of a million square miles of land above the Ogallala Aquifier, which is the world's largest reservoir of ground water, produces 25 percent of American cotton, 38 percent of the grain sorghum, 16 percent of the wheat and 15 percent of the corn. Forty percent of America's grain-fed beef is fattened and watered here. At the present rate of usage, the Ogallala Aquifier will be dry in 2024. A ten million year old resource wiped out in a few decades.

Conflicts of capitalist interest

The Chicago diversion plan is typical of the anarchy of capitalism. The Great Lakes are used for water supplies, for sewage disposal, for power generation and for navigation. Since these waters are shared by the US and Canada, it is inevitable that given the profit-oriented nature of capitalism, clashes between the ruling class in both countries will occur.

As Lake Michigan is wholly within the US, Ontario and bordering states are dependant on US Supreme Court decrees to control its outflow and as the Chicago diversion would affect levels in the entire system, the future (if any) of the system could well be decided in American courts and not by the International Joint Commission set up under the International Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909, which is made up of officials from both countries and supposedly oversees the use of the Great Lakes system.

This plan would seriously affect water levels in the Great Lakes and the Ontario government is concerned about it, particularly because severe lowering of lake levels would kill a multi-billion dollar shipping industry, and has made it clear that it will not support diversion of waters direct or indirect.

To solve the problem of the Ogallala Aquifier being used for irrigation faster than rainfall can replenish it, it has been suggested by some mid-west Senators to pipe water from Lake Superior, 600 miles to the Missouri River Basin. This is not merely opposed by Canadians involved, but also some Americans. Ex-governor Milliken of Michigan said he would give anyone proposing such ideas a "good drenching." Milliken himself, when in office, was vociferous in his support of conservation. One wonders if the support of Milliken by the 500,000 strong Michigan Conservation Club, had any bearing on it.

Another dilemma is how to ship coal from the western minefields to the industrial areas in the mid-west where it's needed for power. It has been suggested that it be crushed, mixed with water piped from Lake Michigan and pumped through a slurry pipeline to mid-west states.

Recently, there was also talk of increasing the water flow to improve local water quality and to lower Great Lake levels, reducing erosion and flooding damage. A recent study shows that increasing the water flow to 10,000 cubic feet a second would yield "benefits" worth $3.25 million. It also found that the resulting power and navigation losses would total $40 million annually. So, the "experts" are considering an increase to 6,600 cubic feet per second instead.

In each case, the so-called solution is to use Great Lakes water with no care for the consequences. The benefits, meaning profits for businesses, would be short-term and who knows what later; but then, that is the way capitalism must function.

Whatever happens, one thing's for sure, soon big business in the US will need more water, particularly if they wish to continue wasting it at the present rate. Also, the ruling class realize the working class need it in order to continue to be in a fit state to be exploited. Some observers think that the US may start leaning on Canada to buy Canadian water by the turn of the century. It all boils down to whether or not the predicted shortage will reach beyond toilet flushing and showers to such a trickle that it threatens all human survival — capitalist as well as worker.

No concern for the future

If much of the above seems to the reader to be irresponsible to the point of folly, that's because capitalism, through the profit motive, its very death blood, can function in no other way. Profits must be acquired and quickly for a business to survive, regardless of what long-term disasters may do to those businesses in the future. Also, the need of competing sections of the capitalist class for materials for its specific requirements, which in this case means a source of power to run industry, as well as profits concerning the sale of drink, must inevitably bring them into clashes with each other, clashes the working class has no stake in.

In a socialist society, with the abolition of the profit motive, no such screwball situations could exist. Whereas water, and anything else people need, would be moved from one place to another, this would not mean lowering the levels of lakes if it's thought that would create problems. Mankind would use the technology and technical know-how available to find where water is and transport it wherever it's needed without plundering and wasting the resources on which continuing human life on this planet depends.

Ray Rawlings

(Canada)

Weirder than fiction (1986)

Book Review from issue 2 of the World Socialist Review

"Citizen Hughes" by Michael Drosnin, published by Bantam, $4.50, is a classic account of power gone mad.

The author deals mostly with the last decade of Hughes life most of which was spent as a recluse in a blacked-out penthouse in Las Vegas. Drosnin's work is detailed, readable and presents a graphic account of an emaciated, meglomaniac, junky using wealth and power to satisfy his personal whims (such as buying a TV station so he could watch whatever program he wanted, when he wanted) and petty malice; and does not, like some writers, lapse into snivelling, moralizing, suggestions about preventing such men using power recklessly. Drosnin does in fact, portray Hughes as very much a product and a symptom of his times.

From his penthouse lair, the crazy billionaire sought increasingly greater power. It wasn't enough to buy one Las Vegas hotel, he bought all Las Vegas — mafia? — small fry. It wasn't enough to buy Vegas, he bought Nevada; but, it still wasn't enough, the greedy bugger, wanted all 50 states.

There was one sure way to go about it, first — buy the president: however, here things didn't exactly go to plan. Poor old L.B.J., holed up in the White House, afraid to show his face on the street, in case it got shot off, had enough problems — no deal. Nixon took Hughes' money, and with immense gratitude repaid him by testing A Bombs in Nevada and by dumping hundreds of tonnes of nerve gas in the sea off Paradise, Bahamas, while Hughes was involved in negotiations with view to purchasing Paradise.

Dicky boy didn't have the last laugh: it is the author's contention that Watergate was a result of Hughes-Nixon machinations. Larry O'Brien, ex-chairman of the Democratic National Committee, was an employee of Hughes, (how come, is a fascinating story, but I ain't telling you everything here) and as such, might know a heck of a lot about Nixon that he didn't want the whole world knowing. Hence, the screwball burglary aimed at getting info, to 'neutralize' O'Brien, and the whole colossal cock-up of a comic opera, called Watergate.

As symptomatic of Capitalism, Hughes is shown as a man of great contradictions. His company manufactured nuclear weapons, but he fought to prevent them being tested, because of his fear of contamination, even to the ludicrous extent of identifying himself with the peace movement.

His fear of contamination was so great that every document handed to him had to be sterilized first, and his aides, who handled it were required to wash their hands several times in a manner prescribed by him. Yet he never washed, cut his hair, and nails or had the bed sheets changed or washed. His room was never cleaned: there were mountains of dust and used Kleenex everywhere: his hair was lodgings for every flea in Vegas, but boy! gotta watch those germs!

Hughes considered himself anti-establishment, (don't get your eyes checked — you read it correctly), his image of himself was a corporate John Wayne cum Darryl Zanuck — a board room swashbuckler, bucking and swashling all politicians, executives, Capitalists etc., who stood in his way.

Like any Capitalist, he would have liked to have had everything his own way — subservient politicians, a docile working class and no government interference or taxation: and came as close as anyone can to achieving that unblessed state of affairs.

Details are given of which politicians he bought, how much they were paid and how they earned it, by killing or delaying certain bills in senate and congress and which legislation beneficial to Hughes they had forced through, and which illegal takeover deals they had turned a blind eye to.

All books on Hughes will necessarily have the same broad, general thrust — the power of money. It is clearly shown in this one how political office is bought and how Hubert Humphrey failed to become president because he didn't have the loot. The reader is treated to a tear-jerky scene of poor Huby sitting helpless in a stalled, rented bus, broke, weeping tears of anger and frustration as he hears the private Kennedy jet roar overhead, carrying his well-healed opponent to victory in the West Virginia primary in 1960. Humphrey eventually became a Hughes man because he needed — guess what? He didn't beat Nixon in 1968 because Nixon had a lot more of Hughes money.

How the richest man in America was able to evade paying personal income tax for seventeen years, makes fascinating reading, (no kidding), and that ain't all: Hughes Tool, the holding company for his entire empire, avoided corporate income tax for three years. Like other so-called philanthropists, Ford, Rockerfeller, Carnegie, Hughes discovered a way to get great acclaim from the working class for hoarding his wealth and evading taxes, he created a foundation — The Howard Hughes Medical Institute. When legislation was about to be introduced to tax medical foundations, Hughes paid so much in bribes to ensure they would be exempt, one wonders if it wouldn't be cheaper to pay the damn taxes in the first place.

Drosnin gives several examples of how Hughes would become caught in web of his own making, a typical one being when he tried to corner the market on helicopters during the Viet Nam war. He quoted the U.S. government a ridiculously low price to get their orders, which, not surprisingly, he did. He immediately tripled the price, but when various people from congress and senate started asking, "what's going on here?" Howie baby, just as quickly, went back to his original price and lost $90,000,000 dollars.

One event which is of no profound significance, but does underline the sheer lunacy of Capitalism is when Hughes chief gofer, Bob Mahew, was in Miami, planning with the Mafia and C.I.A. an attempted assassination of Fidel Castro. Mafia boss Sam Giancana, wanted to leave Miami for Las Vegas because he'd heard his girlfriend, singer Phyllis McGuire, was having an affair there with comedian Dan Rowan. To keep Giancana in Miami, Mayhew sent a C.I.A. operative to bug Rowan's room. A hotel maid caught the guy, playing with his wires, and called in the F.B.I.

Drosnin sometimes takes his reader along a certain line of thought, but stops short of drawing a conclusion, as if to invite each reader to draw his. Such a case is the killing of Bobby Kennedy: was there a connection with Hughes? One must figure it out for one's self.

Whatever the answer, one thing's for sure, Hughes, his henchmen, political joe-boys and other sundry partners in crime, saw the Kennedys exactly for what they are, (the same thing as most of our folk heroes), glorified hoodlums. It's too bad the working class, as a whole, can't see through them.

In his treatment of people working for him , Hughes was a jerk. He liked to create hostile situations where there was no premise for any and constantly feed his antagonists anger while he put on an innocent, hurt act. Too much space is given to this nonsensical drivel, but if you like listening to little old ladies argue you'll love it.

The author claims that much of his book is in fact, an autobiography because it was culled from Hughes secret papers, which were stolen from his Los Angeles headquarters in June, 1974.

It is the author's contention that either Hughes or his executives acting on their own volition, were responsible for the break-in, possibly because three days previously the Securities and Exchange Commission had subpoenaed all documents relating to Hughes take-over of Air West. Nothing was more threatening to the billionaire since it was one of his more illegal than usual business deals. The Hughes people, unlike Nixon's crowd, enlisted the aid of a guy who was no plumber (and is referred to only as the 'pro'), who, on completion of the job swiped the papers for himself and tried to sell them back to Hughes cronies. They tried to find the pro, but lost interest after they S.E.C. did. Our friend the pro, stuck with his papers, bricked them up in a wall for a few years before giving them to Drosnin.

The author, who I assume, is no socialist, (I'm sure the Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, who he worked for, as a reporter, don't make a habit of employing socialists), does not draw socialist conclusions, but his epitaph for Hughes is deeper than he could have imagined, "he was an American folk hero, a man who lived first the dream, then the nightmare — in that sense, perhaps the single most representative American of the twentieth century."

Ray Rawlings

Building profits versus building homes (Part 2) (1984)

From the Winter 1984 issue of the World Socialist

Link to Part 1.

Housing reform and the profit motive

Housing is probably the one basic need which, were it properly satisfied, would be the most conducive to good emotional and mental health. It is, surely, very pleasant and soothing to relax among pleasant and agreeable surroundings.

The fact remains that such a happy situation only applies to the small minority of the population who have the means to buy beautiful homes. The vast majority suffer a housing problem of one sort or another, whether it be living in slums or near slums or being plagued by the fears and insecurities caused by trying to pay off a mortgage.

Governments do initiate various housing reforms to try to solve these problems, but these always fail. Why is failure so total, especially when the materials, know-how and labour power exist to adequately deal with the problem of providing decent housing for all?

Is it because of stupid or corrupt politicians? Many people believe so and view a particular government's shortcomings in the light of the various abilities and characters of its leading members. But in actual fact these factors play a very subsidiary part and make no fundamental difference. Some politicians and civil servants, assigned various tasks, may be very well-meaning and in some respects efficient, but in the final analysis fail because they cannot succeed.

Under capitalism all production, government-initiated or not, is with a view to profit, not the satisfaction of human needs, material and recreational. Since the profit motive is the very life-blood of the capitalist system, it logically follows that government housing programs will also be introduced with a view to providing a profit for some capitalist group or other. Whether or not the politicians involved be good guys or con-artists is immaterial, because the financial institutions putting up the money for these reforms want a return (sometimes a large one) for their investment.

Urban ruin for profit

Never could the profit motive in a housing reform be so blatantly obvious as in the US Government's National Housing Act of 1968. This Act merged the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Many new laws were introduced as part of this act and the whole thing was launched in an avalanche of hype and ballyhoo to the effect that the government would assist every poor working stiff to buy and easily pay for a really nice house. Things didn't exactly work out like this.

FHA began as a product of the 1930s depression. People could not then get mortgages because financial institutions were afraid to loan money after tens of thousands of homes foreclosed when the buyers had no money to continue paying for them. The purpose of FHA was to be a government insurance company. It didn't make mortgages or loan money for them, but it insured the finance company that loaned the money against losing it if the tenants (one can hardly call them house-owners) defaulted. Part of the interest payments on the loan went to paying the insurance for these cases of default.

One of the 1968 housing reforms allowed the FHA to branch out from mortgage insurance into subsidising interest payments on mortgages. Ostensibly this was to benefit the poorer home-buyer but in practice, due to the generous depreciation terms offered to encourage private investment in housing, it became a subsidy to well-to-do taxpayers looking for a tax loss to offset against their other income. This meant that many small time real-estate companies, loan sharks and other sundry tricksters which are part of capitalist society could enter into get-rich-quick schemes at the expense of the home-buyer. Admittedly we are dealing with illegal as well as legal capitalists here but often the dividing line is blurred, particularly where FHA-HUD was concerned.

A typical situation that occurred under FHA-HUD was when a real-estate operator would buy a property for $6,000, put in $1,000 worth of repairs and then sell it for $10,000, loaning this to the buyer against a mortgage on the property. The speculator would then sell the mortgage to an investor looking for a loss-making asset. As the investor wished to record a loss his interest was to let the property fall into decay. The fall guy in this was of course the home-buyer who found himself on an endless trip of payments for a slum house.

The "success" of FHA-HUD in this respect has been well described by Brian Bayer in his Cities Destroyed for Cash (published by Fallet, Chicago, in 1973). Basing himself on observations made on his travels through such major cities as Detroit, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Saint Louis as well as smaller cities like Seattle and Lubbock, Texas, he described a typical situation:

Half and more of the houses on any given block are boarded up with plywood squares. The gutters hang, rain washes through holes in the roof. Ruined by the elements and gutted by thieves, the houses seem to be disintegrating like the stumps of rotted trees. Fires at night cremate the remains. The next day the family moves out and another house is abandoned and eventually destroyed.

In other words, the FHA-HUD program was not screwed up by ignorance, stupidity and carelessness, or just not caring. It was virtually a deliberate program of urban ruin for profit.

Shady practices

One may wonder why people didn't just rent instead of buy (or attempting to), the answer being that the government told them they would help and that they were encouraged by real-estate and financial companies who said it would be easy.

The methods of these companies weren't exactly the kind that would be openly recommended by the Chamber of Commerce. To establish credit for the potential house-buyer they would get blanks of income tax forms, make up false information and submit this as part of the application for a mortgage. Under FHA-HUD regulations a certain amount of money was required to be on hand, therefore these companies would deposit their own funds in the name of the purchaser (the bigger the mortgage the more proportionately the deposit); so when the check was made the purchaser qualified. The information in the tax forms showed up when there was a credit check. So with a good income, good credit and funds in the bank, the purchaser got a house, and of course the funds were removed from the bank as soon as he did.

Though in many cases people were taken advantage of by their naivety and gullibility, and in many other instances home-buyers knowingly entered into shady deals, all of this is part of the normal functioning (if one can use the word normal) of the capitalist system, and prevails in every country.

It may sound surprising that anyone was able to make much money considering the defaults, but the premise was simply to get rich quick. When one buyer defaulted the real-estate operator could always sell quickly to another at a higher price. This could continue until they found a taxpayer looking for a tax loss to hold the baby; by which time they'd made a killing. The end result was a worse slum than before. Parts of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Harlem and East Detroit are evidence of this.

It should be clear to anyone who studies the reasons things occur in society that all investment, hence production, is with a view to profit, and that the need for profit is so acute in such a competitive jungle of a society as capitalism that it doesn't matter how a business makes a profit, as long as it makes one.

It is pointless, and one would be on a totally wrong premise, to moralise. It is not a question of right or wrong, moral or immoral, good or bad, but of the need to understand the economic workings of capitalism and how it cannot function in the interest of the working class—and what socialism is and how it will solve the major social problems.

When Socialism is established

When socialism is established it will be necessary to set up councils at local, regional and global levels for the administration of social affairs in every aspect of productive activity. Also there will have to be councils whose function will be to co-ordinate the work of the various specific councils. The majority of the people in a local area will make decisions affecting that area specifically, the people in a certain region will make decisions for that region and everyone will make global decisions.

This will mean that everyone must have access to vast amounts of knowledge, concerning what each area produces, where it is stored, how what is needed can be got from one place and moved to another. All this knowledge can be stored in computers which can be hooked up to the TV system, so that people can receive whatever knowledge they wish by pushing a button.

When it comes to voting on specific issues people need go no further than their living room. Even today TV stations invite viewers to phone in their verdicts on alternative programs. The results, which depend on what number is dialled, are quickly computer translated and announced in only a few minutes. If this is possible under capitalism, one can imagine the tremendous advantages that can be made in a socialist society when people will be able to utilise the technology built up under capitalism as well as improve on it.

People could, if they wanted to, check and see how a certain project was progressing by tuning into a computerised-TV-News media, so that whatever was happening could be under the constant scrutiny of society as a whole.

First priorities for housing

When socialism is established it will first have two important projects concerning housing. One will be to find homes for the millions throughout the world who have none. The other will be to clear the world of the horrible slums and shanty towns in which so many of its population live. Therefore an enormous world-wide reconstruction project would begin which would involve the democratic participation of nearly everyone, in one way or another.

It would have to be decided, what region and what local area requires houses, how many, what type or style, what materials they will be made from and how much of each is required. Obviously, with this will go the many and various decisions concerning town planning, roads, recreational facilities, shopping centres (though we may not call it shopping then). Though the work involved may require many people, they will be forthcoming from all the occupations made redundant by the overthrow of capitalism, such as production for war and anything concerning finance, advertising, etc. Schools for training and re-training people in the various skills will be set up, and as far as the productive work goes they will have the machinery capitalism has created plus whatever advances on this the first members of socialist society will make.

People with specific skills related to housing, or those who wish to learn them, can give their names and lists of skills to an administrative office similar to present man-power or labour exchange offices and can be notified where their skills can be used.

In the longer run: an end to urban crowding

After socialism has solved the initial task of clearing away capitalism's rubble in every respect (feeding, clothing, housing, educating, clearing away pollution, curing curable diseases, etc), then it will be apparent that the change in society will be more than just production for use instead of profit, but will entail vast changes from top to bottom in every part of society. Nowhere will this be apparent more than over how we group in communities. Cities as we know them today will probably no longer exist as people won't want or need to be condensed in a particular area.

When starvation has been stopped and when every human being has a roof over their head, then socialist society can turn to satisfying people's needs in a more sophisticated way, and this will certainly be the case in housing.

Whenever there is a need for a new type of house, a town or a building for the use of the community, architects will submit plans and models which can be voted on by the community as a whole in a given area. Though there may be competition between the various architects and planners, it will be from the premise of who can best beautify the locality. One can be certain that there will be new types of dwellings. Along with the disappearance of cities as we know them will also go the high-rises, those up-turned shoe-boxes where people are crammed in like sardines, to be replaced with buildings where people can at least live like humans.

With whatever changes in the family structure the new social conditions will create will also come a need for new types of homes; there may be a type of communal home. And it may be that the design of a building will be determined by its functions, its given physical environment and the materials to be used.

Whatever the case, people will be able to choose their home to suit their.own particular needs concerning physical comfort and recreational requirements.

Who would not want such a society? So why not organise politically "for its speedy establishment?

Ray Rawlings (Canada)

Waste and want—the insane logic of capitalism

From the April 1984 issue of the World Socialist

The vast majority of the population of this planet live in want to one degree or another whether they be industrial workers in Western Europe or North America trying to make ends meet, or beggars on the sidewalk in India, or even beggars on the sidewalk in the USA.

Yet they seem to blindly accept that this is the inevitable consequence of things—and in the particular context of capitalism they are right. Various degrees of want will always exist in a private-property based society where all production is with a view to profit and where the majority sell their labour-power in return for a part only, expressed as wages, of what they produce.

Poverty, hunger, disease

When he advocated Medicare for the aged in 1962, Kennedy spoke of 17 million hungry Americans and said the average American retired with less than $3,000 in assets. In 1964 Fortune Magazine revealed that a survey showed that 6 million people were living in families whose incomes were so low that they qualified for free food from the government, that 7.3 million Americans lived in housing classified as dilapidated, and that there were nearly 2 million families who scraped by on cash incomes of less than $1,000 a year. In 1970 The New York Times spoke of hunger as affecting the health of over 20 million people.

By 1976 the US Census Bureau estimated nearly 26 million people lived in families that were below the then poverty level of $5,500 a year for a family of four. The Census Bureau added that more Americans slid into poverty in 1975 than at any time since the government have been keeping records.

During the years since those to which these figures refer—and also for many years before—various governments, both at federal and state level, have introduced various welfare programmes to eradicate poverty, and failed hopelessly. Some of the politicians behind these plans may well have been well-meaning people, whereas others were certainly trying to win votes, but whichever, it is immaterial as society as it presently exists cannot eliminate poverty let alone provide everybody with a full and happy life.

So far the figures have applied only to the United States because, as the most advanced technological power, as the very heart and pulse beat of capitalism, all the most positive and negative aspects of capitalism appear there in their fullest contradiction. Contradiction it certainly is when the means exist to give everyone a full and happy life yet the vast majority struggle to make ends meet while a substantial minority live in want of the basic necessaries of life.

If this be true, as it is, of the United States, what then can be said of the rest of the world, particularly as the economy of so many countries is tied up with that of the United States? According to a 1982 United Nations report, every 2 seconds a child has to die of disease or lack of food, and if present trends continue there will be at least 600 million undernourished children by the year 2000.

The report written by James Grant, UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) Director, says that despite medical advances offering the opportunity for a revolution in child health, many of the children are worse off than they would haver been years ago. Measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus, polio and TB still kill some 5 million children world wide each year. Tetanus alone kills between 2,500 and 3,000 children a day. The report states that current projections show the proportion of the world's children who live without adequate food, water, health care and education staying about the same until 2000, but the absolute number will grow by 30 per cent to between 600 and 650 million.

Every day of the year, more than 40,000 children have died from malnutrition and infection, the report said. In recent years the percentage of child deaths due to hunger in African, Asian and Latin American countries has been increasing: "The quality of life has actually begun to fall as the economic foothold of their parents begins to crumble". The report went on to estimate that, excluding the cost of measures such as immunizing every child against killer diseases, a direct assault on the worst aspects of hunger and malnutrition would cost $6,000 million a year, "or one per cent of the world's annual expenditure on armaments"—a clear-cut example of capitalism's order of priorities.

World resources

Socialists have consistently maintained that the natural resources, technology and distributive capacity exist to feed, clothe and house the world's population many times over. This however, is impossible in an economic system where all production is geared to profit.

In reality nobody knows how big the earth's absolute supplies of raw materials are. No such investigations have been made. What has been investigated are supplies and resources that capitalism needs, and that is something very different.

In a recent interview in the Times Colonist of Victoria, British Columbia (May 13 1983) geologist Robin Folinsbee, of the University of Alberta, said that concern about dwindling fossil fuels was "greatly exaggerated" and that, besides, there were alternatives to fuels commonly used except that many of these would require too much investment at present to excavate.

About two-thirds of the energy released under present methods of splitting the atom in atomic power plants goes into waste heat—thermal pollution. Problems of coping with this waste heat have yet to be overcome, but the United States is planning floating nuclear reactors which would be used far offshore where the large volumes of water would not be affected by the warming. "Scientists are also working on ways to use the waste heat", Folinsbee says, "warm water created as a by-product might be harnessed to provide central heating for a whole city, then re-used when it had cooled. Then again the huge cost factor must be considered".

Further into the future scientists foresee that technology might utilize some of the sun's energy methods. Using laser beams they are finding ways of squeezing together several atoms with small atomic weights and of harnessing the heat energy given off by this fusion. Fusion of atoms is the opposite of the splitting of heavy atoms of the uranium type, but it also provides fantastic possibilities as an energy source. According to Folinsbee, "We've done it destructively with the hydrogen bomb. Now we must find ways to use it constructively". We would add that this is only one possible future source of energy. There are also proven safe renewable sources that could be developed.

Sir Derek Barton, professor of London's Imperial College, had already said when he visited British Columbia in 1977 that the world's problems of energy, pollution, hunger, overpopulation and the economy were all artificial or imaginary: "The energy crisis was entirely an artificial one, because it had been provoked by an international monopoly of oil-producing States which had arbitrarily and suddenly increased prices". (Vancouver Sun, October 31, 1977) Barton added that 70 to 80 per cent of the natural gas in the world is still to be found.

Deliberate waste

So destitution, starvation and deprivation do not exist because the capacity for producing and distributing wealth is insufficient. The technology to eliminate them does exist but is not applied under capitalism where all production is for profit and which also deliberately wastes and destroys resources.

In 1960 Vance Packard (certainly no Socialist) wrote a book called The Waste Makers which caused a minor disturbance at its publication because it dealt with what he termed "planned obsolescence". Packard showed how firms made shoddy goods, designed to wear out quickly so there would be a market for new ones. He wrote of radios, car parts, television sets which their designers and manufacturers knew could easily be made to last longer. There have even been instances of workers being fired because they took the time to do an excellent job, and so were not profitable.

Capitalism produces not for use but profit; so if wheat farmers, car makers, TV makers, appliance firms, heavy and light engineering companies can make more profit out of waste than by good quality products they will do so. But it is not enough to say that capitalism makes profits through waste. The fact is that the normal functioning of the system wastes an enormous amount of resources. Every year tons of foodstuffs are destroyed.

Wheat and coffee have been burned while millions starved. Fish are thrown back in the sea because the market was glutted (and capitalism is first and foremost a market system), and it was therefore not profitable to sell them. Potatoes have been dumped in order to maintain prices. In the United States several governments, both Republican and Democrat, have paid farmers not to grow wheat, in order to keep prices up.

It was recently reported that while the United States dairy herd is 57 per cent smaller than 40 years ago it is producing more milk (Western Producer, August 18, 1983). The result is a costly dairy surplus. Genetically improved cows and more efficient dairy farms have brought dramatic gains in milk output per cow. US milk production rose to a record 135.8 billion pounds for 1982. The US Department of Agriculture expects 1983 production to climb once again, probably reaching 139 billion pounds or 16 billion gallons of milk—enough to make a 7 million ton mountain of cheese.

At current levels of supply and demand, America's cows produce about 10 per cent more than enough to meet domestic and export market demand for milk, butter, cheese and ice cream. By law the federal government must purchase this surplus, and then incur the cost of storing and preserving these surplus stocks. This of course puts a drain on the federal budget, so the Reagan administration and the dairy industry are agreed on the need to cut milk production. Major milk industry organisations are advocating bonus payments for dairymen who cut their production and cash penalties for dairymen who increase production. On one thing all seem agreed: there must be no price cut, because that would "drive individual producers into increasing output as the only way to maintain their incomes when the price per gallon is reduced".

A similar situation exists in Canada regarding egg production. Here the National Farm Products Marketing Council oversees national marketing "plans" for poultry and eggs but since a market cannot be planned the industry is in a state of chaos. Meanwhile in the fruit and vegetable lands in British Columbia hundreds of cases of tomatoes were thrown away during the summer of 1983 because they could only have been sold at 70 to 80 per cent of what it cost the farmer to grow them.

When we speak of waste, it is not food and raw materials alone that are wasted under capitalism, but millions of workers who become unemployed during the various trade depressions and recessions which are another logical consequence of an illogical system. The devastating wars that are caused by the need of competing sections of the world capitalist class for markets and raw materials are still further proof, if any were needed, of the shocking waste of workers, especially when we consider there were more than 50 million casualties in the Second World War.

The logical insanity of capitalism

No one, whatever their political views, can examine these matters without being appalled at the logical insanity of capitalism. Logical, because these problems are a normal consequence of a society where all production is carried on only with a view to profit on the market. Insanity, because, surely to anyone in their right mind, it is insane that food should be destroyed when people are starving, that houses stand empty where people are homeless, that factories stand idle when workers are unemployed.

Years of tinkering with these problems by politicians, of all parties, well-meaning or not, has not achieved anything and in some instances matters have got worse. There is only one solution; which is for the world's workers to examine the contradictions of capitalism and then organise politically for a society where poverty, hunger, unemployment, pollution, waste, planned obsolescence, war and a host of things not even mentioned in this article will be a thing of the past.

Ray Rawlings (Canada)