Voice From The Back: The rat race (2003)

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

The rat race

Inside a socialist society we could all engage in useful, productive work with much shorter hours. What a contrast to the rat race of today. “A report by the Mental Health Foundation (MHF) released this week, will say that despite much talk about “work-life balance”, many people are still working 50-60 hours a week and feel their lives are out of control. Work follows us home. The MHF’s study found a correlation between the number of hours worked and the number of hours spent thinking or worrying about work outside working hours. The more you work, the less free time you have and the more of your free time you spend worrying about work” Sunday Times (20 April).

Refugee hypocrisy

According to the Glaswegian (1 May) more than 100 refugees in Glasgow are being forced to return to Afghanistan in line with the government’s policy to slash the number of refugees in the UK by 50 percent. “Sally Daghlian of the Scottish Refugee Council said the Foreign Office was still advising against all non-essential travel to Kabul and against travel to other parts of Afghanistan.” On the one hand the FO is telling refugees it is safe to go back but warning its own citizens to avoid it because it is still war-torn and subject to the ravages of various warlords. Another piece of political vote-catching with no regard for the safety of the workers who are being deported under armed guard.

A double tragedy

A correspondent to the letters page in the Herald (7 May) tells of a terrible personal tragedy. “The cynically named National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) was set up by the Labour Government to ration healthcare. Its guidelines are stringent in the extreme and are binding on all medical practitioners . . . The availability of NHS drugs was the final straw for me in terms of my allegiance to the Labour Party. My 32 years’ link was severed on the death of my wife last year. She was denied the drug Temodal on grounds of cost. This drug could have extended her life and would have most assuredly have lessened her distress in the final three months of it.” If the writer of that letter had been a member of the owning class his wife would have had a less awful existence. It is tragic that this woman died but it is even more tragic that millions of humans are doomed to die because of their lack of money.

Political porkies

Politicians lie; and that is official according to a recent government-funded report. “Politics should be regarded as less like an exercise in producing truthful statements and more like a poker game,” said author Glen Newey, reader in politics at the University of Strathclyde. “And there is an expectation by a poker player that you try to deceive them as part of the game.” . . . “Newey’s report – published by by the government-funded Economic and Social Research Council – adds that not only is lying ‘sometimes justifiable’ where there is a public interest, for instance where national security is at risk, but voters even have a ‘right to be lied to’ about things where they would rather not know what had happened, such as what was done during a war” Observer (18 May).

A leader speaks

Here is one of your leaders speaking. Speaking in the usual doublespeak of political waffle. In this case it is the leader of the Conservative Party, Ian Smith revealing his deep intellectual abilities. “Britain needs a government that understands that more people are left behind when more people are held back. It needs a government that stands back in order for its people to step forward” Times (14 May). Eh?

Another market triumph

Socialists are always being told how wonderful the market system of capitalism is by its supporters, but how do they defend the following? “The catastrophic collapse of the coffee prices – at a 100 year low in real terms – is forcing Latin American farmers to grow coca, the plant from which cocaine is made. Mounting evidence that Peruvian farmers in particular are turning to cocaine to escape from poverty will be presented by Oxfam tomorrow in a crisis meeting of World Bank and European Union officials together with banks, traders and representatives from the 25 million people who depend on coffee production for their livelihood” Observer (18 May).

Socialist Sonnet No. 145: Human Relations (2024)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Human Relations

All the hot air in parliament inflates

Small boats wallowing over the Channel

Into problems, fetching those who might steal

Low paid jobs from Saint George and his mates,

Foreign fathers and mothers recklessly

Risking drowning their children to evade

Regulations. So, a stand must be made

To staunch this dire influx, especially

If there are votes to be quite cheaply won

By cultivating old prejudices,

Any visceral view that dismisses

Common humanity, once reason’s gone.

Should heated rhetoric be deflated,

Revelation! We are all related.

D. A.

Editorial: World poverty, boats and borders (2023)

Editorial from the October 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

The government has pledged to stop the flow of people crossing the channel in coffin boats, with little sign of success. The opposition, anxious to rebuild its Red Wall, is accusing them of doing nothing about it for too long.

How are the boat people to be described? The government calls them ‘illegal immigrants’. Charities prefer ‘refugees’ on the grounds that people will have more sympathy for them. Some will be (anybody from Afghanistan, for instance — who wouldn’t want to flee that hell-hole ruled by religious fanatics?). For others, they are ‘economic migrants’. Many, perhaps most, will be. For us as socialists, that doesn’t make any difference — they are fellow workers moving in a bid to find a better economic future under capitalism. They still have our sympathy.

We are living under capitalism which is a worldwide economic system, but divided politically into states (some 200 at the last count), and it is unrealistic to expect them to allow unrestricted immigration into their territory. It would cause them all sorts of economic and political problems. That doesn’t mean that they are against immigration as such. What they want is to control it.

The United States is known as a ‘nation of immigrants’. Britain is one too, with a population and working class that includes descendants of migrants first from Ireland and then from the other parts of its former empire. The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary are obvious examples. Even today, 40 percent of the population of London was born outside Britain.

With a declining birth rate, most European states still need, and actually want, more workers so as to keep and step up the flow of profits. What they don’t want is unregulated, disorderly immigration. But with conditions in other parts of the world so dire they can’t do much to stop it. In theory it might help if they stopped bombing or imposing sanctions on selected countries but geo-political rivalries rule that out. It’s a global problem to which there are no national solutions.

The slogan ‘No Borders’ is good in expressing an aspiration but is unrealistic under capitalism. It can be achieved only when we get socialism. As long as capitalism lasts there will be borders and border controls. The most that can be expected is capitalism coming to be organised into bigger and bigger political units within which there is free movement, as in the US and the EU.

Gary Lineker got it right. There is some scapegoating going on like in Germany in the 1930s. But not just like then. The same thing happened in Britain in the 1960s and 70s to scapegoat (legal) immigrants and, going further back, the anti ‘alien’ agitation of the first decade of the last century. Nationalism has never had anything going for it. It’s not only divisive but stupid.

As socialists we denounce all nationalist ideologies and the borders between so-called ‘nation states’, while pointing out that only a socialist world of common ownership can provide the framework within which global poverty can be eliminated once and for all.

Editorial: Palestine, the Arabs and the Zionists (1946)

Editorial from the August 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

As Socialists we are determined to end for all time the exploitation of one class by another. We sympathise with all the victims of capitalism, the exploited workers and peasants, the men and women robbed of loved ones or maimed in capitalism’s wars whether in the "victorious” or the vanquished countries, and the hundreds of thousands of homeless refugees. Among the latter are many Jewish people who seek escape from their present miserable plight by leaving the European countries where they have known much suffering and sorrow. Some among them would go to any country that offered them refuge, but most of the governments, faced with problems of housing shortage and threatening unemployment, not to mention the prejudice that still greets “foreigners," are more apt at expressing sympathy than at welcoming refugees. In one instance, that of Austria, where the Government has welcomed the application of 2,000 Austrian Jews to return to Austria from Palestine, the opposition comes from local authorities, the mayors of twenty-two principal towns having jointly protested for "economic reasons" (Manchester Guardian, 15/7/46).

Other Jewish refugees look only to Palestine for refuge, and some of these Zionists have as their declared aim to make Palestine a Jewish State. They are, in short, "nationalists," looking to solve their problems not by abolishing capitalism, but by creating one more national state in a capitalist world of national states and empires. Zionist nationalism, as such, is not different from the other nationalisms and we, as Socialists, are opposed to them all, British, Russian, American, Polish, Indian and the rest. The most that could be said for nationalist movements where directed against alien rulers was the argument that, with alien rule ended, it would be easier for the workers to grasp the fact that their enemy is capitalism, whether the capitalists are aliens or not. It is, however, clear, from the experience of the last half-century, that the exploiting class of each country finds it about as easy to set the workers against the workers of other countries as it was to set them against a foreign ruling class. It is only necessary to look at the national antagonisms stirred up between the workers of the countries of Europe to see how illusory was the old belief that when Czecho-Slovaks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Poles and others were freed from their respective foreign oppressors they would live amicably side by side. To the Socialist, what has happened is not surprising. What are called nationalist movements are essentially the movements of capitalist groups striving to drive out foreign exploiters so that they can mount the vacant saddle. Having achieved that aim capitalism continues to range one national group against another in the competition for markets and the endeavour to secure lines of transport and communications, sources of raw materials and strategic frontiers.

The spokesmen of nationalist movements do not in the main declare their capitalist objectives. British capitalism talks of bringing peace to the Middle East, or of helping the Jews and Arabs. Actually British Imperialism is in Palestine for reasons of Imperial strategy and to protect oil interests in that region, doubly important now that the base in Egypt is being evacuated and since, in recent years, enormous and cheaply accessible reserves of oil have been discovered in the Middle East Alongside the imperialist or investment interests of Britain, U.S.A., Russia and France in the Arabic-speaking countries a new factor is becoming of increasing importance. Among the 40 million Arabic-speaking peoples the old social structure and ways of life are being broken down by the development of communications, by trade, and by the growth of the petroleum and other industries. Capitalist industrialisation is making headway and with it its usual expression, nationalist movements.

It is against this background that the demand is made for the settlement of Jewish people in Palestine, with the usual irrelevant arguments so beloved of all nationalisms. The Principal Rabbi of the Federation of Synagogues, Kopul Rosen, writing to the Times (13/7/46), claims that those who work for the return of the Jewish people to Zion, "whether they be Zionists or non-Zionists, are fulfilling not a secular ambition, but the Divine will as revealed in the visions of Israel's prophets." Moslem Arabs can, of course, invoke a like Divine mission.

The spokesmen of some Zionist groups talk in a less fantastic but more threatening tone. In August, 1944, David Ben-Gurion, a Zionist leader, made the following belligerent declaration:—

"We shall go to Palestine in order to become a majority there. If need be we shall take the country by force. If Palestine proves too small . . . her frontiers will have to be extended."

(Quoted in Manchester Guardian, 3/7/46.) 

Such threats to crush Arab resistance and to annex neighbouring territory can, of course, be paralleled with statements of a like belligerency by some Arab nationalists. Like all stirring-up of nationalist antagonisms, these statements hinder development towards Socialism, the world’s only line of progress. Even on the short view of helping the homeless refugees their wisdom is more than doubtful. The Arabic-speaking lands claim that their record in the treatment of Jewish minorities is better than that of most countries. It is certain to deteriorate if the situation moves towards civil war in Palestine, for the reason, among others, that the Arab nationalists see behind the entry of Jewish refugees something else, invasion by more and more Anglo-American capital seeking to control the developing industries of the whole Middle East. 

If we had a Socialist world the population in all countries would welcome men and women rendered homeless by some failure of resources in the land they lived in. There would be no problem. Only capitalism and its wars, and the prejudices it engenders, make it a problem to-day, but at least the organised workers in all countries should have the insight and the humanity to realise their obligation to make it clear that they are willing to receive refugees. If unemployment is the fear, it is a mistaken one. Unemployment is a by-product of capitalism and is not caused or, in the long run, even aggravated by immigration.

On the vital question of the welfare of the working class and the Socialist Movement, we urge all workers, Jewish, Arab and others, to recognise their common interest in standing together as a class for the overthrow of capitalism. There are no circumstances justifying working-class support of capitalist governments or movements, including those that masquerade under the name of nationalism.

Morocco's Goal in the Western Sahara (2022)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back Blog

The media headlines are prominently declaring Morocco has made sporting history by becoming the first African nation to reach the semi-finals of the World Cup.

There has, however, been very little news coverage over the conflict between Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) which is aspiring for independence for Western Sahara. Morocco had tried to annex the former Spanish colony of Western Sahara in 1975 and a bloody civil war ensued. An UN-brokered ceasefire has been in place since 1991 with a planned referendum left in limbo leaving the conflict unresolved.  Much of the population has been expelled by force, with many tens of thousands living in refugee camps in the desert. Morocco’s occupation is against international law, which accords the Saharawi people the right to self-determination. Over 100 UN resolutions have called for this right to self-determination. Furthermore, the International Court of Justice has stated that there are no ties of sovereignty between Morocco and Western Sahara,

Morocco has become one of the Arab League countries to agree to normalise relations with Israel. In return, the USA under Trump recognised Morocco's claim over the disputed Western Sahara territory.  Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. government would maintain that Morocco has sovereignty over Western Sahara and is one of only a few Western countries to recognise Morocco’s claim to sovereignty over Western Sahara.

Africa’s wealth is being appropriated by foreign interests whose operations are leaving a devastating trail of social, environmental and human rights abuses in their wake and mineral-rich Western Sahara is a key example.  

Despite the Sahrawi people’s claim to self-determination and for control of the resources and international criticism, foreign nations are signing trade deals with Morocco. Nations are being allowed to fish in the territorial waters of the Sahrawi Republic. Oil companies are receiving permits to drill on Sahrawi land.

More important, is the presence of phosphates which along with nitrogen, makes synthetic fertilizer for farming. This gives Morocco a powerful influence over world food production. There is no doubt that the occupation of Western Sahara is largely about the presence of natural resources—especially phosphates.

Another neglected aspect is the future renewable green energy potential of the region.

There is a planned £18bn project to provide 8% of Britain’s energy supplies through a 2,360-mile undersea cable linking a vast wind and solar farm in the Sahara with the UK, powering 7m homes by 2030. The solar and wind site will be in the Guelmim-Oued Noun region which is located in a part of the disputed area of Western Sahara claimed by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.

Perhaps, the Moroccan national football team will go on to make even more World Cup history. But the media will persist in its ignorance and hypocrisy of relegating the struggle of the Sahrawi people to irrelevance. 

Voice From The Back: Poisoned, not bombed (2000)

The Voice From The Back Column from the February 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Poisoned, not bombed 

For the first time, more people are leaving their homes because of environmental factors than because of war. The world now has 25 million environmental refugees, compared with 21 million war-related refugees. The crisis is largely the result of more than half of the world’s rivers drying up or becoming seriously polluted, according to a report from the World Commission on Water for the 21st Century. The Amazon and the Congo are the two healthiest of the world’s 500 major rivers—probably because they have few industrial centres near their banks, the commission suggests. It blames abuse of land and water resources and poor management by regional authorities for the problem. Guardian, Science, 2 December.

Asking dangerous questions 

The only way to judge the success of an agent of change would be to ask: is it affecting the human condition? Does the internet move food and supplies around the world to the people who need them? Does it relieve human suffering, make us more aware of political prisoners, change the plight of refugees? The role of computers as agents of change is to administer the planet properly, and help us figure out, for example, why farmers in some countries are paid to burn food while people in others starve to death. Or to co-ordinate human effort around the globe in a way that hasn’t been achieved before. Guardian online, 2 December.

Capitalist art 

It isn’t just the bitchiness which, judging by her book, is endemic in ballet. The pain is no joke either: like her fellow ballerinas, [Darcey] Bussell hates giving in to injury partly because ballet is such a short career, and will dance on if humanly possible, smiling through the pain . . . There is also the mental pressure. Criticism in ballet is unrelenting, intense emphasis is placed on the body, and at every stage girls are weeded out and dumped. No doubt this is why, as Bussell observes, “dancers are neurotically unsure of themselves”. Add to this the internecine competition for roles or just to retain a three-month contract, and you have a very nasty environment. But, as Bussell explains, “we can’t be too nice because it’s the rivalry that keeps us hungry and drives our careers”. Night & Day, 21 November.

Where can it go? 

“Capitalism is a force that moves, but it does not know where it is going.” Lionel Jospin, Prime Minister of France, Yorkshire Post, 20 November.

It goes this way 

As the world enters a new millennium, children are continuing to be killed and exposed to abuse in flagrant violation of their rights, according to the executive director of Unicef, Ms Carol Bellamy . . . Despite unprecedented wealth in the global economy, where currency markets exchange $1.5 trillion a day, more than 1.2 billion people struggle to survive on less than $1 a day and more than 600 million are children. Per capita income, adjusted for inflation, is lower today in 80 countries than it was a decade ago. Herald, 13 December.

So much for rights! 

A year after the UN approved a declaration to protect human rights activists, repression has increased throughout the world, according to findings published in Paris today. The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders said more than 200 activists had been executed, tortured or arbitrarily arrested since the UN vote. But the picture was incomplete as nearly a dozen countries made it impossible for independent associations to operate, while a further 30 states systematically obstructed investigations. Guardian, 8 December.

Games 

America is taking the threat of terrorism at the Olympic Games in Sydney next year so seriously that a US navy battlegroup, with an aircraft carrier, destroyer and submarine will be on stand-by off the Australian coast throughout the games. They will be in international waters ready to respond to any attack with force, including biological and chemical warfare units. Times, 15 December.

Class war casualties 

Up to 55 cases of corporate manslaughter a year should be brought against companies and directors where employees have been killed in the workplace, according to new research. Gary Slapper, director of the law programme at the Open University, said the law needed to be changed and a tougher approach taken to fatal safety lapses in the workplace . . . “When a reckless company kills, the legal system usually just yawns and turns away. There is virtually no deterrent,” he said . . . Since 1965, 25,000 people have been killed at work or in major commercial disasters. Health and Safety Executive reports suggest that 70 percent of these deaths resulted from a management failure. Dr Slapper’s research also shows that 60 percent of deaths were attributable to economic factors, cutting corners to save money as opposed to simple ignorance about safety. Independent, 29 November.

Hard times 

The Duke of Westminster’s nine-year-old heir, the Earl Grosvenor, has been named on a High Court writ. The reason? The lad’s £1 billion inheritance. Thankfully, young Hugh is not about to be cut out of his father’s will. The move, says Jeremy Newsum, the chief executive of Grosvenor Estate Holdings, is “a bit of housekeeping”. This has been made necessary because of dramatic changes in the way the family’s assets, estimated at £1.75 billion, now have to be managed. Times, 15 December. 

The Goal of the Class Conscious (1941)

From the June 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

The conflict now raging has now reached a more serious stage, and the working-class, compelled by circumstances to fight the enemy of their masters, are naturally somewhat anxious regarding the duration, even though they may, in Britain, at least, have no misgivings in regard to the outcome of the fighting.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when our masters were not so much concerned about Democracy as they appear to be at present. For instance, when the Social Democrats of Vienna were shot down by Dollfuss at the command of Mussolini; the deed received the blessing, tacitly, of the ruling class of both Britain and France. There was no protest except a pious, hypocritical gesture. Surely, if any group of men ever sacrificed their lives in the interests of Democracy it was those of the Karl Marx Flats. The Social Democrats were not revolutionaries, but they believed in liberty. They offered to give their support to Dollfuss on condition that he would restore the Democratic Constitution. He refused because Mussolini, whose tool he was, wanted to get control of Austria ahead of the Nazis. Hitler out-manoeuvred them both, and Dollfuss was assassinated.

The events now taking place in Crete and the Atlantic are so breath-absorbing that we are not very observant in regard to what is happening in the profit-making sphere. The war is as exciting as a circus, and it may be to our advantage if we look at the actions of some of the wire-pullers behind the scenes.

The United States is in the picture just now and has recently unearthed a few interesting things by means of certain investigations made by the U.S. Department of Justice.

These have been condensed in an article from the pen of Albert H. Jenkins, which appeared in the Federationist (Vancouver, May 1st): —

“War or no war, Big Business men of all nations do business with each other “as usual,” regardless of the results to their own countries. That was proved by shocking disclosures after the last World War. It is being revealed again by sensational grand jury probes now being conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice.

There are three of these investigations. First came the inquiry showing that the Mellon Aluminium Company of America’s tie-up with a German firm resulted in a serious shortage of aluminium and magnesium for aeroplanes and other defence needs of the country, while production of those strategic light metals went ahead by leaps and bounds in Germany.

Second is a probe of the drug industry, begun last July, and third, is an investigation of the chemical industry, begun this week by a grand jury in New York.

COMBINED AGAINST U.S.

The facts which are being brought out show how American and foreign corporations got together to limit production and fix prices of important products the world around, by means of patents and secret agreements, with results harmful to the interests of the United States. These international combines include many other foreign firms beside those in Germany, but the latter are particularly significant because of war and defence developments.

The latest action by the grand jury was to subpoena the books of five companies—General Aniline, Sterling Products, Winthrop Chemical, Sobering and the Swiss Bank Corporation. The subpoenas also require these companies to give the jury full information about their relations and dealings with 100 other big concerns in the United States, Germany, England, France, Italy, South America and other countries.

GIANTS UNDER FIRE.

Among these companies are such giants as duPont, Dow Chemical, American Cynamid, Lever Brothers, and practically all the other leading American and foreign drug and chemical corporations.

Grand juries do not disclose their findings until they make indictments, but some idea of what the Department of Justice officials are after can be obtained from their recent testimony before the Monopoly Committee and the House Appropriations and Patents Committees, where they were describing this probe and asking for more money to carry it on.

One of them, who was talking “off the record” and does not want his name mentioned, told the Appropriations Committee that “the German chemical trust has in this country eight affiliates, one of which is a $30,000,000 investment trust.”

UNCLE SAM IS “STOOGE.”

Since the war shut Germany off from South American markets, he said, the German chemical companies are having American companies fill their orders from South American customers. The American products are “packed in such a way that they look like German stuff.”

Thus the American companies are handling the South American markets for the German concerns, so the latter can take back those markets after the war, despite the Roosevelt administration’s attempt to expand the U.S. trade with South America.

Moreover, he continued, the American chemical companies pay “millions of dollars a year” in patent royalties to the German concerns. Some of this money is being sent secretly to Germany, and much of it is sent to South America, where the Germans use it for “penetration” of South American countries.

OTHER CONSPIRACIES PROBED

In addition to the aluminium, magnesium, drug and chemical probes, the Justice Department is acting against similar “conspiracies” involving other products which are vital to national defence.

The situation on several of these other products was described at the same House Committee hearings. One case is “an agreement between the General Electric Company of the United States and Krupp, a big German trust.”

This agreement, the witness said, covers “tungsten carbide, the key to the whole German machine-tool industry. It is harder than diamond.” Because of the agreement. “Germany produces 20 times as much tungsten carbide as the United States.”

Another interesting item in the same paper indicates that Uncle Sam is not in full sympathy with Democracy everywhere. The prosecution of the Social Democrats of Germany in Spain could be stopped if the United States made an appropriate gesture. The following is worth noting: —

“The Mexican Government has protested strongly to Vichy against the violation of the agreement that Spanish refugees were to be protected by the French Government and permitted to emigrate to Mexico.

Undoubtedly there has been connivery with Franco, who is unwilling to allow Loyalist leaders to escape, because he is afraid that one day they will return and lead a revolt against him, and is hoping that ultimately France will deliver them over to his vengeance. Progressive Americans point out that Washington could help by refusing to send foodships to Vichy or to Madrid, unless those ships could carry back the refugees to Mexico.

The fate of anti-Nazi German refugees in France is not less tragic. Recently two able German intellectuals of the Social-Democratic Party who held high office in the Weimar Republic, Breitsheid and Hilferding, were handed over to the Germans by the Vichy Government; by this time they may be dead. No one will bemoan the fate of the capitalist Thyssen, through whose money Hitler came to power and who recently was handed over by Vichy and died in a concentration camp. The betrayal of the anti-Fascist refugees to their enemies is the lowest act that Vichy has committed.”

The ruling class of this and all other countries will endeavour to do their utmost to make the world safe for capitalism after the war. Their great new world is a profit world. But there is one thing they cannot do, and that is reconcile the contradictions the present system produces. These will become ever more glaring and ever more irreconcilable.

War Savings Weeks are a means of lowering the real wages of the class to which we belong: real wages are food, clothing and shelter; these are declining in quantity and quality.

We are told that our savings will help us tide over the trying period that will follow the cessation of hostilities. This means when unemployment comes you will be able to exist on what you couldn’t buy during the war.

There is one thing, however, the ruling class forget, and that is the increased knowledge that is being imbibed by those who live by selling their labour power. The wage slaves are not all asleep. The conversations one overhears in cars, in restaurants, on the job, in fact wherever workers are gathered together, induces one to conclude they will not readily go back to the bread line after the war.

This is as it should be. The material conditions have reached the stage when the present system of production is a fetter on production. A sure harbinger of a new, and, let us hope, a better form of society, in which there will be neither wage-slave nor capitalist, nor private property in the means of life. The Socialist has heretofore lacked encouragement, but he has builded better than he realised. The issue between the capitalist-class and the working-class has been kept clear, and moving circumstance has now brought into being those conditions which make Socialism practical politics. It is the only policy that unquestionably offers peace and plenty to all mankind. It is the only policy that can be advocated honestly and without equivocation. It is true. Its triumph is inevitable. Whatever its enemies attempt in another direction will be exposed as inadequate and harmful. The common ownership of the means of life and production solely for use is our goal. Those who ask for less condone exploitation and betray the class to which we belong.

Charles Lestor

Material World: One World, One People (2022)

The Material World column from the May 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Ubi bene, ibi patria’ 

‘Where it goes well with me, there is my country’

Millions of vulnerable and damaged people are making perilous, life-threatening journeys to seek a safe refuge.

It was only a matter of a few months ago that some countries were constructing razor-wire fences along their borders to keep out foreigners hoping to reach sanctuary in Europe. Refugees were dying on the frontier from exposure and hypothermia from extreme winter conditions. Many people showed little understanding or support for those asylum seekers and did not want to accept outsiders. Growing xenophobic attitudes have given rise to far-right populism. When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, Nigel Farage spoke of an impending flood of its refugees: ‘You can now see a wave of people leaving Afghanistan, and we already have numbers we quite simply can’t cope with.’

Now, how different is the reception that desperate and vulnerable men, women and children are now receiving. Europe generously embraces Ukrainian refugees fleeing the Russian invasion. Many humanitarian-minded individuals have rushed to do what they can to help Ukrainians, yet, forgetting or ignoring that refugees from elsewhere are still being pushed back or caged in detention camps.

Socialists share the sentiments of the environmentalist movement, Fridays For Future, when it explained, ‘While Ukrainians deserve immediate peace and all our support, so do the people from Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and all war-torn regions. Empathy, justice, and compassion should be for everyone. Refugees should not have to be white to be heard and seen.’ Fridays for Future went on to say ‘People only desire to live and exist safely. Let it become a door-opening moment where we demand justice for everyone independent of their nationality and skin colour.’

Millions of Ukrainians have joined the 84 million other people in need of security around the world (2021 UNHCR data). If they were all to form their own country, it would be the 17th largest on Earth, slightly bigger than Germany. If we were to add to those figures migrants forced by dire economic conditions to cross borders, the number is well over one billion people.

The population of the forcibly displaced is now more than double the number of Europeans driven from their homes by World War Two, six times the number of those displaced by the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, 100-fold more than the number of Vietnamese Boat People following the Vietnam War.

To put it another way, about one in every 95 people on this planet is involuntarily on the move. Add in those driven by economic imperatives and one out of every 30 people on Earth is now a refugee or a migrant.

In contrast to media perceptions it has not been the wealthy developed countries hosting refugees. In 2014, about nine million of the world’s displaced lived in low-income countries. Today, that number stands at an estimated 36 million and is forecast, by the Danish Refugee Council, to increase to 40 million by the end of 2023. The displacement crisis ‘disproportionally affects poorer countries and areas that already have enough on their plate,’ said the Council’s Charlotte Slente.

There are currently 5.7 million registered Syrian refugees stranded in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, 1.2 million Rohingya in the camps at Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh, 2.2 million Afghan refugees still in Iran and Pakistan, 2 million South Sudanese, 4 million displaced in Yemen while Honduras has 937,000 displaced people, the highest number in Central America.

Since 2015, a fifth of Venezuela’s population has left, one of the largest displacements in the world. On average, 2,000 Venezuelans crossed into Colombia every day in 2021 which now hosts 1.8 million Venezuelans.

Behind these numbers are people with personal stories of tragic loss and pain, all hoping for a chance at a better future. They think it is worth risking their lives if it leads to an opportunity of a decent life for them and their families.

However, we also witness a UK government passing draconian new nationality and borders legislation to restrict the rights of refugees and for those who endeavour to enter the country ‘unlawfully’, and they will be criminally prosecuted to add to all the other miseries that have already been inflicted upon them.

The UK government has now announced it intends to deport – or should that be ‘transport’? – those accused of ‘illegally’ arriving to claim asylum to Rwanda, in the middle of Africa, 4,500 miles away. How different from the humanitarian welcome being offered to Ukrainians fleeing war in what is now effectively becoming an unequal two-tier refugee policy.

Socialists do not hold with making a ‘league table’ of suffering and to differentiate between the more deserving or the less deserving for our charity and compassion. There should be no competition or contests for our concern. But in today’s world, such a conflict of interests exists when it comes to attitudes and policies in regard to refugees.

The World Socialist Movement’s position is that we are all equal worthy members of the human family and when it comes to looking after ‘our own’, none should be excluded and rejected, no exceptions nor special cases. Humanity is One. We are indivisible.

ALJO

Refugees: No safe place (2022)

From the January 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

To be a worker in capitalist society is to be deprived of any form of ownership of the means of living and therefore of having any real control of your own life. Being forced to sell your labour-power to an employer can lead to a precarious existence where you may end up becoming unemployed or even homeless. If you are unlucky enough to live in a war zone, you may be forced to flee your home and attempt to seek a new life elsewhere. You would then fall prey to ruthless smuggling gangs and come up against the brutality of state forces ranged against you. Sadly, this was the fate of 27 refugees who drowned while trying to make the treacherous crossing over the Channel on 24 November. This tragedy was not unforeseen, in fact it was one waiting to happen given the heavy traffic in the Channel. These were not the first deaths arising from these crossings nor will they be the last. Like the unemployed and the homeless, refugees and migrants are vilified as scroungers and ne’er-do-wells.

Political pawns

The response of the political leaders to the refugee crisis in Calais reveals the paucity of thinking that characterises modern capitalist politics. The rational course of action would have been for the UK and French governments to co-operate to find a solution to this problem. However, Boris Johnson’s government came to power on the basis of ‘Get Brexit Done’ and ‘to take back control of the UK’s borders’. To keep his more xenophobic supporters on board a little bit of Euro bashing did not go amiss. Emmanuel Macron, with his eye on next April’s presidential election and the need to play the patriotic card to see off his rivals on the far right, Eric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen, was more than eager to pick up the gauntlet. Boris Johnson sent Macron an open letter outlining proposals he knew that he would not accept, such as joint patrols by both British and French forces on the French coast. Macron’s response was to withdraw an invitation for the British Home Secretary to attend a meeting to discuss the movement between people in the sea between France and the UK. The refugees in Calais had become pawns in this game of tit for tat.

The UK government has used demeaning terms such as ‘economic migrants’ to refer to refugees and when they do arrive on British shores they are classified as illegal immigrants. Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, had the not too bright idea of the British Border patrol to push back the refugee boats to France. Any ramming by ships of these overloaded dinghies would likely cause them to capsize and their occupants drown. It is unlikely that many skippers would want to stand trial for murder or manslaughter. The forthcoming Nationalities and Borders bill will further tighten restrictions. One clause seeks to deport refugees if it is found that they passed through a ‘safe’ country.

Boris Johnson’s government shed crocodile tears over the drownings and offered their condolences to the victims’ families. Both the French and UK governments diverted attention from their own culpability by blaming the people smugglers, which ignored the fact that closing off the legal routes for refugees to come to the UK had gifted opportunities to the smugglers to make profits out of people’s miseries.

Demonisation

This tragedy has not ended the demonisation of refugees. In this op-ed piece for RT dated 25 November: ‘The four star hotels, the free healthcare and the generous benefits system have, according to French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, made the UK an ‘El Dorado’ for would-be migrants. I hate to say it, but I agree with him’ (‘I predicted a migrant tragedy months ago. Why didn’t the UK and France prevent it?’, former UKIP leader Paul Nuttall).

Kevin Hurley, a retired British police officer, in another op-ed piece about the situation in Calais, seems to suggest that the local people find many of the refugees menacing: ‘Yes, I saw some tragic Kurdish families, but they were few and far between compared to the hordes of young men loitering about or just staring. I found it frightening (‘As an ex-cop, I know how hard it is to stop the flow of illegal migrants into Britain’, RT, 30 November).

If you read the press and listen to the politicians all you will learn is that the refugees want to come here to help themselves to our goodies and what measures can we take to stop them. What you do not hear so much of is what drives them to risk their lives to come to the West.

Forced to migrate

It is no surprise to find that most of the refugees come from these countries – Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Three of them have been embroiled in wars of various kinds. Two of them were occupied by the US and the UK. However, it is not just the military warfare that is driving some of the workers in these countries to seek a better life abroad, but the economic warfare waged mainly by the Western powers. Since the first Gulf war, the US and Britain have imposed economic sanctions on the Iraqi regime. Sanctions were also imposed on Syria and Iran. The economic cost weighed most heavily on the workers, with the political leaders remaining relatively unaffected. Many of the 27 who drowned were Kurds from northern Iraq. That many of the refugees are Kurds from Iraq, Syria and Iran is no accident. They are oppressed minorities in these countries. In Iraq and Syria Kurdish forces fought with western forces against Isis. When they were no longer of use to the West, they were abandoned to their fate (‘The West has played its part in driving migrants from home’, Patrick Cockburn, i weekend, 27/28 November 2021).

The liberal left talk about how refugees should be treated more humanely and that more legal channels should be opened up for them to come to the UK and make their claims. This, they argue, would reduce the risk of deaths. The SWP blames the Tory government for the deaths in the Channel. They claim ‘Anti-racists have to demand open borders and a welcome for refugees’ (Socialist Worker, 24 November). However, even the SWP acknowledges that the Labour Party is also in favour of taking action to stop Channel crossings.

More political pawns

Sadly, it is not just Calais that is a flashpoint in the refugee crisis. We have witnessed violent confrontations between refugees and border guards on the border between Poland and Belarus. Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, cynically encouraged refugees to come into Belarus and attempt to cross the Polish border, where they have met fierce resistance from the Polish border patrols. As we have seen with the situation in Calais, the refugees are being used as pawns in a dispute between two capitalist powers. Lukashenko wishes to put pressure on the EU to remove the sanctions that they imposed on his regime following his rigged election last year. It appears that Russia is backing him and may have their own interests in this game.

This conflict affords an opportunity for the Polish capitalist leaders to gain political kudos from the EU, with which they have been in dispute over their judicial reforms, by appearing to be defending the EU border against outsiders. The EU’s high-minded ideals of freedom of movement and respect for human dignity do not seem to apply to these refugees. They are hell-bent on keeping them out and there was even talk of building a wall (sounds familiar). Erdoğan, the Turkish president, also used the refugees as bargaining chips when he threatened to unleash them on the Greek border. The Moroccan government also made similar threats of doing the same at the Spanish border.

World-wide

As with every crisis in capitalist society – unemployment, homelessness and workers relying on food banks – the refugee crisis has become ‘normalised’, yet there is nothing normal about it.

The refugee crisis spans the globe. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees there are more than 20 million refugees worldwide. As we have seen, war is a major driver for migration, but it is not the only one. Climate change is another which is rendering large parts of the globe, particularly the poorer parts, uninhabitable. And there is large-scale poverty.

The response of the major capitalist powers has been to tighten up their borders. Workers in these countries are encouraged to view immigrants and refugees as the other. Rather than see them as fellow workers with common interests, they regard them as competitors for jobs, welfare and health services. In the US, under Trump, a wall on the border with Mexico was partially built and migrant children were locked in cages. In the UK, a hostile environment towards immigrants was created which led to the Windrush scandal. The worldwide refugee crisis lays bare the utter brutality and cynicism of capitalism.

The leftist demands to create legal processes that treat migrants more humanely and calls for the sacking of right-wing governments can only scratch the surface. The fundamental problem is capitalism itself. In its drive for profits and division of the world into competing nation states, it creates the conditions that give rise to the wars, climate disasters and poverty that compel workers to leave their homes and seek sanctuary in safer places. What the world working class needs to do is combine democratically to obtain political power on a world scale to abolish capitalism and replace it with world socialism. National frontiers will be abolished and there will be one world community where everyone will be able to participate equally. There will be no wars or poverty and no need for people to flee their homes and seek refuge elsewhere.

Oliver Bond

Material World: Climate Refugees (2021)

The Material World Column from the June 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Climate change is reshaping our planet. Coastlines are encroaching further inland, deserts are expanding, the range of plant and animal species are declining. The climatic change that is making parts of the world unliveable is another example of people in poorer parts of the world paying the price for capitalism.

Scientists forewarned that the effects of global warming would result in massive migrations of peoples. No nation is immune from the consequences of climate change but it is the poorest and most vulnerable communities – those least culpable for the environmental crisis – who are being the hardest hit. We are already witnessing the number of climate refugees rise.

Being a migrant involves risks and costs yet the media’s attention is centred upon the effects upon the host nation rather than the harrowing experiences of the migrants themselves and, worryingly, because of the absence of focus upon the reasons families uproot themselves from familiar surroundings, sympathy and understanding is lacking. Instead of welcoming the opportunity to help fellow human beings, hostility is shown towards newcomers, particularly if they are of a different colour or religion. The World Socialist Movement explains that we are one planet, one people, a human family, and as brothers and sisters we must look out for one another.

In 2014, there was a rise in migration from Central America due to drought and the spread of crop disease. The mass exodus has continued unabated with the USA militarising its southern border to halt the desperate fleeing the intensification of climate change upon what is termed the ‘Dry Corridor.’ In Africa there has been an escalating conflict between the contending cultures of herders and farmers as they competed for dwindling resources.

The problem has become worse as drought conditions persisted and many of the Sahel nations are now engaged in civil wars.

If it is not drought and crop failures that force large numbers of people to flee, it will be rising sea levels.

In Bangladesh, we have seen frequent typhoons and flooding of the country’s low-lying coastal districts. National Geographic describes the reason for the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi from their homes to the cities as driven by climate change and experts expect that figure to rise to millions as water levels rise (on.natgeo.com/2Q3p5hy).

Likewise, high tides will submerge much of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, now home to 18 million people, by the latter half of the century.

The climate refugee emergency is here and capitalism’s system of nation-states is incapable of addressing the crisis of climate refugees, sadly a status not legally acknowledged by governments or the UN, preferring to describe those fleeing the impact of environmental destruction as economic migrants.

Accepting that models of future migration are based upon educated guesswork and informed assumptions, full of possible pitfalls, the only way to efficiently mitigate the detrimental effects of mass migration is to prepare for the worst.

Breaches of their national borders may be what the developed countries fear the most, requiring them to fortify their frontiers, but the problem begins when people abandon their farms for the city. Most people don’t want to leave their homes so initially they relocate to larger towns and cities. Mega-cities are multiplying in number and urban services have broken down. When that strategy fails, they then take hazardous journeys to re-settle in a foreign land where they are treated as economic parasites and pariahs by the locals.

In 2018, the World Bank estimated that three regions (Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and South-east Asia) will generate 143 million climate migrants by 2050. A worst-case scenario by the Institute for Economics and Peace thinktank suggests that perhaps a billion people by 2050 will be subjected to the pressure of global warming to relocate even if not all will act upon it. The pessimistic predictions of some scientists predict that heatwaves and humidity will become so extreme in various parts of the world that people without air conditioning will simply die.

A report based on interviews with senior US military experts concludes that climate change will create far more refugees than have fled the Syrian civil war.

‘What we are talking about here is an existential threat to our civilisation in the longer term,’ Brigadier General Stephen A. Cheney observed. ‘In the short term, it carries all sorts of risks as well and it requires a human response on a scale that has never been achieved before. If Europe thinks they have a problem with migration today, wait 20 years and see what happens when climate change drives people out of Africa – the Sahel especially’ (bit.ly/3heX3uF).

The need for socialist ideas is greater than ever, and we can only urge people to look deeply into the problems of capitalist society, deeper than the slogans on their banners. Socialists combine two remarkable human capacities, the emotional and the rational, in order to take things into our own hands and run our own world, in the interest of all humanity. Peoples’ histories may be different but we all share our future in common.

ALJO

Forty Million Refugees (1960)

Book Review from the June 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are no less than forty million refugees in the world today. Forty million people living in misery and hopelessness. Such is the appalling truth revealed in a little book recently published—Refugees 1960 (Penguin Books. 2s. 6d.).

It is written by Kaye Webb with sketches by Ronald Searle, and covers forty-eight pages. In no sense, therefore, can it be described as an exhaustive work, but in the available space, the authors at least leave us in no doubt about the plight of these our fellow humans, condemned to rot away their pathetic lives in squalor and degradation. Disused army barracks, decaying hotels and (grimly ironical) even former concentration camps—in fact, any old building the authorities can lay hands on have been pressed into use to accommodate these poor souls. Ill-fed, ill-clothed and ill-housed, it is small wonder that the health of many of them suffers, and with it their chance of escape.

For it is the lucky few only who manage to break through the mass of regulations and restrictions which the various powers insist on observing before they will allow a refugee to settle within their boundaries. For instance, they must not be too old or too young. They must not be ill. They must not be “immoral,” nor illegitimate children. These are just some of the obstacles to overcome before the unfortunate person can gain entry into one of the major capitalist states.

Generally, the fairly young and healthy are the ones who manage to get away, because as the book tells us, they represent an economic gain to the state which accepts them. In other words, they can be employed profitably and the majority of those who remain, cannot. Socialists find this hardly surprising. Human considerations take a back seat in an inhuman world, where our whole lives are dominated by the profit motive.

The smallest camp in Greece has fifty-seven families of Assyrians who came from Mesopotamia forty years ago, and whose youngsters recently refused to emigrate rather than leave their sick and aged relatives behind. This is a reminder that, like many of capitalism's evils, the refugee problem is not new. It is still with us, only more so than before, having been greatly accentuated by the last great war and the carve-up which followed. Many more were then “displaced” and will probably never be able to return to their former homes. And as we have seen, the chances of making a new home for themselves elsewhere are pretty slim.

Yet, despite this, the authors fondly hope that in this world refugee year, the camps can be emptied and the conscience of the capitalist world stirred so deeply that every man, woman and child will be resettled. Just listen to this:

  Every country with room to spare should ease open its bureaucratic door and undertake to accept without “ifs" or "buts" a percentage of the sick or economically useless human beings, to balance what they have gained from the young, healthy immigrants who will be benefiting their economy without any cost to them in education or training.

A tall order indeed. It is hopeless to appeal to the conscience of a society which has been directly responsible for such a monstrosity. Far better to have a world where man can be free to travel over its surface without the futile restrictions of nationality, and where he can satisfy his needs from a sufficiency of wealth that only Socialism can make available.

But when all this has been said. It is still worthwhile to read Refugees 1960. Mainly, it is a plain, straightforward statement of very unpalatable facts, and no attempt has been made to grind a political axe. Yet by its very simplicity of style and presentation, this book shouts a condemnation of capitalist society from every page.

Eddie Critchfield

Whalebone of contention (1979)

From the September 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why all the fuss about whales? Does it matter that the largest living mammal is about to become one of the largest extinct mammals? Well, it is not just ageing pop stars, fading comedians and second rate TV actors who take part in this new protest movement. In July a Friends of the Whale meeting filled Trafalgar Square. The usual media-catching effects were on display; Save the Whale T shirts, placards proclaiming ‘Extinction is forever’, and a 110 ft. balloon whale. It was not intended that way, but a good time was had by all.

The chances of there being any whales left at the end of this century seem remote. The conservation organisation Friends of the Earth estimate that there are now only some six thousand blue whales left and not many of the other species. Of all the whaling countries, Japan is the biggest villain. Friends of the Earth calculate that one blue whale is worth about £100,000—that, in other words, whales are big business.

The main efforts of the protesters are directed towards the so-called International Whaling Commission (established in 1946). This unlikely body has the task of supervising all whaling but as with other international bodies, its effectiveness is slight. And, of course, some of the members of the IWC are the chief whalers, which makes it hardly likely that they will sympathise with the whales. As a result some conservationists are now going in for a little direct action. One New York Group recently hired a boat and rammed a whaler, putting it out of action for a few months.

No one doubts the sincerity of those involved in this campaign. But while they are scouring the high seas for mammals to save, they might set their nautical sights a little higher. If they did, they would notice another mammal with even less chance of survival than the whale. In leaking, overcrowded boats, usually with little water and less food, thousands of Vietnamese refugees are drowning every month — (it is suggested that one is drowned each minute). The prospects of the fortunate few who get to dry land are little better: those who reach Malaysia are callously shoved out to sea again on their rotten rafts; those who reach Hong Kong fare only slightly better, many spend ages in overcrowded, insanitary conditions.

Friends of the Earth calculate that, in the last 100 years, the blue whale population has declined from 195,000 to its present 6,000—solely by the actions of the human hunter. Yet that slaughter is trivial compared to that of the human being. In recent months more than thirty children have been killed and eaten by hyenas in the slums of Lucknow, India (Daily Telegraph, 27 July 1979.) Capitalism subjects its people to intolerable conditions as well as to appalling cruelty.

The real conservation movement is to end a social system that imposes unnecessary suffering on the majority of people—and on its other species—as part of the everyday normal routine. The Friends of the Earth should consider this society, in which mass suffering is as commonplace as the rising of the sun. Their considerable talents and energies could be more usefully employed.

Ronnie Warrington

Running Commentary: About hanging (1979)

The Running Commentary column from the July 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

About hanging

Who cares about hanging? Perhaps the thousand-odd people serving life sentences, who may have hanged before 1965, care. Probably a few million workers who, we are informed by such weighty organs as the News of the World, are seething with vengeful intent towards murderers, care. And perhaps those politicians who, although they are able to eat hearty dinners after taking decisions which will result in thousands of deaths, enjoy a public display of what they call their conscience — perhaps they too care.

Since hanging was abolished in this country in 1965, there has been a statistical battle over whether such a cruel and final penalty has any effect on the frequency of the crime which it punished.

This battle has been rather more civilised in tone than the mob hysteria which demands that one killing be expiated by another (how many politicians would, in all justice, survive for long if that were strictly applied?), and which assumes that the harsher the penalty the more effective the deterrent.

If this were so, the job of capitalism’s crime fighters would be a lot simpler. There would be no need for a massive structure of laws detailing sentences. All that would be needed would be one sentence for all offences — something like prolonged torture, followed by public execution, preferably by slow strangulation. That would abolish crime at a stroke.

In fact, human motivations are not so simple. And crime — even the most violent and ruthless — is not the acts of wicked people. Much of it springs from the very conditions which capitalism foists upon us — the slums, the degrading lifetime of exploitation, the mediocrity, the despair.

At the moment, the abolitionists seem to have won the statistical battle, which leaves only the hysteria to be debated. And it is in this that politicians will be able to show us (hoping we will remember it, come the next election) how tortured is their conscience over this great moral dilemma.

In this debate, an important fact is liable to be overlooked. Even if hanging is brought back, it would mean only a handful of people being executed each year. Sickening as that prospect is, it must be seen in proportion to the fact that capitalist continuously organises the deaths of millions of people — in war, famine, avoidable illness, in ‘accidents’.

No politician’s conscience ever suffers over that. The hanging debate will provoke a lot of nonsense, from both sides. As always, it is essential that the working class (to use an inappropriate phrase) keep their heads.


Paradise in Brazil

Brazil, one of the world’s foremost football countries, is now also climbing the economic league table. It has the eighth most powerful economy in the world, and at the present rate of development will by the year 2000 be inferior only to the USA, Russia and Japan. What does this mean to the Brazilian people? Do they reap the rewards of this, and live in plenty and freedom?

The truth is very different. Brazil’s climb began with the military coup in 1964, in which the trade unions and free political activity were effectively abolished and strikes were outlawed. Under this dictatorship, the Brazilian workers squirm as the exploitation screw is turned ever tighter upon them.

As a recent television programme and an article in The Observer highlighted, in Sao Paulo millions of workers live in appalling slums, while just a short distance away there are glittering shops and international banks, evidence of the foreign investment in the country. The child mortality rate increases remorselessly, and hundreds of thousands of children, their parents unable to afford to feed them, are abandoned to roam the streets as beggars, prostitutes or thieves.

Above this desperate misery a small, parasitic minority of capitalists live in apparently boundless luxury. It is a blatant assertion of the reality of the social system — of the fact that the majority of people work, and are exploited, to perpetuate the privileges of the ruling class, and therefore their own servitude to that class.

Brazil has a lesson for the workers in Britain which has nothing to do with their superior football team. Much of the political debate here is about the allegedly irresponsible attitudes of British workers. The implication of all this is that a disciplined, compliant working class would also be a prosperous working class, sharing in the extra profits which their docility brought their masters.

The experience of the people of Brazil provides yet more evidence to disprove this comfortable (for the capitalists) theory. It illustrates the opposition of interests between the classes and the necessity for the workers to struggle in trade unions to protect their interests.
And finally, it shows that capitalism is a society where profits take precedence over people a society which merits only implacable hostility until the day it is swept away.


What the eye doesn't see . . .

We have all heard of the many refugees leaving Vietnam in small boats and getting into trouble at sea. If they are lucky they get picked up by (mainly) British boats and taken to Hong Kong. Being already almost unbearably overcrowded, the Colony is understandably reluctant to allow them to land. They therefore spend weeks — sometimes months — on board ship, lying offshore while one or other government finally, reluctantly, agrees to accept them. The latest and most publicised were the nearly 1,000 aboard the Sibonga. After some haggling they have been allowed to come to England. However, Margaret Thatcher quickly pointed out that in permitting them to come she was not setting a precedent, and other such refugees would have to look elsewhere for a new home.

One effect of all this had not been mentioned until an item in the Daily Telegraph of 31.5.79 by Ian Ward, under the heading “British Ships Will Avoid Refugee Routes”.

For a ship the size of the Sibonga, every day spent waiting for someone to agree to take the refugees means a loss of £7,000, and there is no way of recovering this money. On the other hand, it is a ‘law of the sea’ that ships pick up people in distress.

It has not taken British owners long to find a solution (it is said that owners in other countries thought of it some time ago) — re-route the ships. Apparently most of the emergencies occur in the first two hundred miles from the Vietnam coast. Admittedly, re-routing to avoid this area means extra fuel costs, but these represent far less expense than that incurred for days wasted at anchor waiting to offload the ship’s human cargo.

Refugees will of course continue to find themselves in danger and distress, but, to use another old saying, ‘time is money’. If, by re-routing, the ship isn’t there, no-one can blame it for not picking up drowning men, women and children.

50 Years Ago: Forty Million Refugees (2010)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are no less than forty million refugees in the world today. Forty million people living in misery and hopelessness. Such is the appalling truth revealed in a little book recently published—Refugees 1960 (Penguin Books, 2s. 6d.). (…)

[T]he authors fondly hope that in this world refugee year, the camps can be emptied and the conscience of the capitalist world stirred so deeply that every man, woman and child will be resettled. Just listen to this:

  “Every country with room to spare should ease open its bureaucratic door and undertake to accept without ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’ a percentage of the sick or economically useless human beings, to balance what they have gained from the young, healthy immigrants who will be benefiting their economy without any cost to them in education or training.”

A tall order indeed. It is hopeless to appeal to the conscience of a society which has been directly responsible for such a monstrosity. Far better to have a world where man can be free to travel over its surface without the futile restrictions of nationality, and where he can satisfy his needs from a sufficiency of wealth that only Socialism can make available.

But when all this has been said, it is still worthwhile to read Refugees 1960. Mainly, it is a plain, straightforward statement of very unpalatable facts, and no attempt has been made to grind a political axe. Yet by its very simplicity of style and presentation, this book shouts a condemnation of capitalist society from every page.

(From book review by E.T.C., Socialist Standard, June 1960)

Rear View: It started with a twit or rather a tweet (2020)

The Rear View Column from the February 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

It started with a twit or rather a tweet

During the season of goodwill, one Jamie Evans saw a jigsaw map of Great Britain and tweeted ‘is there any reason Wales has suddenly become part of England?’ The Daily Mirror (24 December), along with others, covered the story: ‘M&S blasted for £8 jigsaw of the UK that offends “absolutely everyone”‘. Jamie, a Plaid Cymru councillor in Neath, said it’s not the first time the store had forgotten about Wales. He hit out: ‘During the 2016 European football championships, which Wales were in, M&S put up posters urging people to support England. We’re used to it in Wales now, being subjected to that nonsense’. The nonsense is manifold. The original map dates from the 1800s. Whether Ireland (then a colony), Scotland, Wales, even Cornwall are independent matters not. Plaid Cymru deny that our problems are caused by the class monopoly of the means of production, in short, by capitalism. The solution lies not in nationalism, which is a delusion and a snare, but in world socialism.

Countries come and go, borders change, capitalism persists

Remember Refugia, the Utopian island between Italy and Tunisia, proposed as a solution to the ‘refugee and migrant crisis’ by two Oxford dons in 2016? The idea is going nowhere and that of No Borders fading: noborder.org has been dormant since mid-2013 and noborders.org.uk not updated since early November last year. Their slogans are worth recalling: No Border, No Nation, Stop Deportations! and No one is Illegal. Remember Biafra? The war for independence from Nigeria lasted over two and a half years and more than one million people lost their lives. Also worth recalling is that ‘Nigeria is an entirely artificial, colonial construct created by the British Empire (and bounded by the French Empire). Its boundaries bear no relation to internal national entities, and it is huge. The strange thing is that these totally artificial colonial constructs of states generate a genuine and fierce patriotism among their citizens…. ‘ (ICH. 14 March 2015). And: ‘Less than two decades after the painstaking removal of a massive border fence designed to keep people in, Bulgarian authorities are just as painstakingly building a new fence along the rugged Turkish border, this time to keep people out’ (New York Times, 5 April 2015).

Time For a New ‘Christmas Truce‘?

 ‘They lived in similar squalor, shared the same God, and celebrated the same holidays. It was December 24, 1914, Christmas Eve, and – though they spoke different languages and had ruthlessly killed one another for over four months – the British and German soldiers in the opposing trench lines had much in common’ (truthdig.com, 25 December). 

The author makes the same point about shared interests of those involved in conflicts in the 100 years since then. Indeed, the vast majority of those existing in countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Germany, Iraq, Libya, Russia and Syria have far more in common than they do with their respective generals, politicians and economic overlords, a fact recognised before, during and after the war to end all wars:

  ‘…The poor have no country, in all lands, they suffer from the same evils, and they, therefore, realise that the barriers put up by the powers that be the more thoroughly to enslave the people must fall’ (International Working Men’s Association, 1866). 

  ‘In a class society, “the nation” as a homogeneous socio-political entity does not exist. Rather, there exist within each nation, classes with antagonistic interests and “rights”’ (Rosa Luxemburg, The National Question, 1909). 

  ‘I have no country to fight for; my country is the Earth, and I am a citizen of the World’ (Eugene Debs, 1915). 

  ‘The old lie: It is sweet and right to die for one’s country’ (Wilfred Owen, 1918). 

  ‘.. [no] policy for settling minority problems and international rivalries within the framework of capitalism is capable of bringing peace and democracy to the peoples of the world. Another war would be followed by new treaties forced on the vanquished by the victors, and by preparations for further wars, new dictatorships and terrorism. The Socialist Party… reiterates the call it issued in 1914: “Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our goodwill and socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of Socialism“’ (Socialist Party, September 1939). 

  Imagine there’s no countries; It isn’t hard to do; Nothing to kill or die for; And no religion, too (Imagine, John Lennon, 1971).

Voice From the Back: The Control Of Ideas (2012)

The Voice From the Back column from the August 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Control Of Ideas

The New Yorker magazine (7 June) asked a worthwhile question recently. “Last week, Gallup announced the results of their latest survey on Americans and evolution. The numbers were a stark blow to high-school science teachers everywhere: forty-six per cent of adults said they believed that ‘God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years.’ Only fifteen per cent agreed with the statement that humans had evolved without the guidance of a divine power. …. Such poll data raises questions: Why are some scientific ideas hard to believe in? What makes the human mind so resistant to certain kinds of facts, even when these facts are buttressed by vast amounts of evidence?” We would suggest that one of the factors that stops the flow of scientific ideas to the minds of workers is the control that religious and political factions have over the education and communication facilities. The owning class in the USA spend billions of dollars ensuring that their workers don’t understand the society they live in.

The Realities Of War 

We are all aware of the Hollywood depiction of wartime bravery and noble sacrifice in battle, but one aspect of war is never dealt with by the cinema. “Suicides are surging among America’s troops, averaging nearly one a day this year — the fastest pace in the nation’s decade of war. The 154 suicides for active-duty troops in the first 155 days of the year far outdistance the U.S. forces killed in action in Afghanistan — about 50 per cent more — according to Pentagon statistics obtained by The Associated Press” (Associated Press, 8 June). More suicides than those killed by the enemy! No wonder those portraying war as something admirable keep quiet about the suicide rate.

Hard Work

One of the myths espoused by supporters of capitalism is that the present economic downturn is caused by the laziness of the working class. Far from this being the case thousands of workers are desperate for a job as can be seen by the following statistics. “Leading companies are being flooded by 73 applications for each graduate vacancy, a major report reveals today. That figure is an average and the number is even higher in some sectors, with 154 chasing each post in retail and 142 vying for a single job in investment banking. The report says that it is even harder to find work this year as openings are down on 2011 amid the economic uncertainty worsened by the eurozone crisis” (Daily Mail, 4 July).

Desperate Workers

In their desperate struggle to survive, many workers from Africa try to get to Europe by any means possible. “The only survivor of 54 Africans who tried to cross to Italy in an inflatable boat has described throwing overboard the bodies of fellow passengers who died during the voyage. Abbes Settou, from Eritrea, who was rescued by Tunisian fishermen, said the migrants, including three members of his family, and ten women, slowly died of hunger, thirst and exhaustion” (Times, 12 July). According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) some 170 migrants have died attempting the Mediterranean crossing this year. Capitalism’s hellish conditions force workers into unbearable situations.

Spend, Spend, Spend

All over the world capitalism is experiencing an economic recession. Even formerly booming Japan is feeling the pinch with markets in free-fall. Amidst this period of uncertainty and fear there is of course one section of the population that continues to spend, spend, spend as usual. “An apartment that is believed to be the most expensive one-bedroom property in the world is on sale in Tokyo with a price tag of a cool Y1.8 billion (£14.72 million). …. The price means that 1 square foot of the property costs £3,320.33. The owner of the penthouse apartment – whom Sotheby’s would only identify as a successful and married businessman – spent 18 months completely refurbishing the property from a four-bedroom family home” (Daily Telegraph, 13 July). The owning class continue to indulge themselves no matter the economic world climate.