Material World: The closed world of billionaire power (2026)

The Material World column from the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

You can’t throw a brick these days without hitting one… philanthropic billionaires. One of them has been in the capitalists’ news cycles: Bill Gates has been in the news recently not so much for the atrocious spyware-laden Windows 11 operating system, but for his business ties and friendship with serial child exploiter Jeffrey Epstein. Yet Gates is still treated by the media as a kind of global saviour. A benevolent technocrat. A trusted voice on health, population, food, and development.

Philanthropy or social currency of ‘soft power’

Gates’s relationship with Epstein reveals the closed world of billionaire power. According to recently released documents, Epstein first contacted Gates in 2013 to propose a ‘donor-advised fund’ that would serve as ‘cloud computing for the giving world’, a vehicle to attract ‘the most money any charity has ever had’. Over 18 months, Gates’s family office head and foundation general counsel engaged in extensive correspondence with the convicted sex offender about this charitable vehicle.

But here’s the thing: why did the world’s second wealthiest individual require introductions to wealthy donors from a registered sex offender? The answer lies in understanding that billionaire philanthropy operates not as charity but as a mechanism of class consolidation an exclusive club and you’re not in it. Where the extraction of surplus value is celebrated through tax advantages. Barry Josephson and Epstein revelling through criminal interactions. Bill’s conundrum: what to do about the poor.

And we know exactly what they discussed. In an email exchange, Epstein wrote to an associate: ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about that question that you asked Bill Gates ‘how do we get rid of poor people as a whole’ and I have an answer/ comment regarding that for you’ (from the document provided, dated 3 February, 2011, showing correspondence between Jeffrey Epstein and Barry Josephson). This is what they talk about on the island. This is what billionaire philanthropy really means.

The population … problem?

Gates believes that the problem isn’t over-extraction, capitalism or the profit motive. Greed or billionaires don’t concern him, instead he sees African birth-rates as a threat to global capitalist progress. He has stated in a TED talk that he wants to reduce global population by 15 percent.

The Gates Foundation’s 2024 budget totals $8.6 billion, with family planning separate from the $8.3 billion for ‘fertility management’. Gates pledged $100 billion for this on World Population Day, not International Women’s Day. Fertility management in the Gates Foundation has its own budget and targets: $150 million for 2024 and $143 million for 2025. Not through maternal care or with improving material conditions like clinics that could continue afterwards. The money does not flow from charity to women; it flows from tax sheltered wealth to pharmaceutical corporations.

The Depo-Provera scandal

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), backed by hundreds of billions, claims moral authority to influence the health, agriculture and family lives of millions across Africa and the global south. This is about Sayana Press, Pfizer’s injectable contraceptive, a reformulated version of Depo-Provera that was previously subject to over 2,000 brain tumour lawsuits in Florida. The UK and US government both subsidise the use of this drug.

A 2024 study in the British Medical Journal revealed that women using Depo-Provera face a 550 percent increased risk of developing intracranial meningiomas, AKA brain tumours, requiring invasive surgery, radiation, and often causing permanent neurological damage. Pfizer knew of these risks for decades while failing to warn patients. European and Canadian labels now carry meningioma warnings; the US label was only updated in December 2025 after litigation began.

The Maxwell precedent: intelligence and institutional power

Robert Maxwell, press tycoon, scam artist, and former Labour MP too knew how to create institutional power. He had intelligence contacts in Mossad and with the KGB and did work for British intelligence. He also hobnobbed with the queen, (prince) Charles, Thatcher, Mother Teresa, George Bush and so on. He was the go-to guy for dirt on the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

The Epstein-Gates nexus is modelled on these earlier networks of elite control. Epstein’s own operations, his ‘black book’ of contacts, his mysterious wealth, his lenient 2008 prosecution, suggest similar intelligence community protections. The ‘Lolita Express’ flight logs and island visitors represent not merely criminal activity but the mechanisms through which ruling-class loyalty is ensured through mutual incrimination.

The socialist alternative

Socialists do not oppose access to contraception, nor deny the importance of reproductive choice. On the contrary, we insist that women must be free from economic compulsion in deciding whether and when to have children. The Gates Foundation model, in which pharmaceutical corporations, backed by billionaire ‘donations’ and government co-funding, experiment on vulnerable populations, represents the antithesis of reproductive freedom.

True reproductive freedom requires the social ownership of pharmaceutical production, democratic control over healthcare priorities, and the elimination of economic coercion in all its forms. When contraceptives are developed through producer-controlled research, distributed through publicly accountable health systems, and provided as genuine choices rather than population control measures, then we will have achieved something worth calling family planning.

Until then, we must recognise billionaire philanthropy for what it is: the velvet glove of the ruling elite sanitising exploitation while the iron fist of king capital maintains its grip.

A.T.

Voice From The Back: The rich get richer (2005)

The Voice From The Back Column from the November 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The rich get richer

"The US's richest tycoons increased their personal wealth in the past year, with the top 400 worth $1.13 trillion (£640bn), says Forbes magazine.... To make this year's list of the top 400 fortunes in the US a minimum net worth of $900m was required — up from $750m last year." (BBC News, 23 September) The old popular song "Aint We Got Fun" cynically stated "The rich get rich and the poor get children", but it is no laughing matter.

Your two cents worth

An analysis of the gap between the rich and poor in Manhattan by Dr Beveridge of the City University of New York is revealing. "Income Disparity in City Matches Namibia. Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue is only about 60 blocks from the Wagner Houses, a public housing project in East Harlem, but they might as well be light years apart. They epitomise the highest and lowest earning tracts in Manhattan, where the disparity between rich and poor is now greater than any county in the country. . . .  The top fifth of earners in Manhattan make 52 times what the lowest fifth make — $365,826 compared with $7,047 — roughly comparable to the income disparity in Namibia. . . .  Put another way, for every dollar made by households in the top fifth of Manhattan earners, households in the bottom fifth made about 2 cents." (New York Times, 17 September)

Big Spender

"The minute he walked in the joint, they could tell he was a real big spender. . . .  By the time he left the Aviva bar in the five-star Baglioni Hotel in Kensington,West London, on Thursday night, he had spent nearly £36,000. He bought 851 cocktails, emptied the place of Louis Roederer Cristal champagne, and gave a waitress a £3,000 tip. (Times, 1 October) This hedge fund manager from New York spent £16,500 on champagne and £6,000 on a variety of cocktails. It can be safely assumed this high-roller does not live in the Wagner housing project in East Harlem.

Doublethink

According to George Orwell in 1984, doublethink is the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. This spectacular mental gymnastic feat seems to have been accomplished by Karen Hughes, a public relations spokesperson for President Bush in her recent trip to the Middle East. Trying to sugar the pill for her Turkish listeners she came out with this classic of Doublespeak. "To preserve peace, sometimes my country believes war is necessary." (Observer, 2 October)

Progressing backwards

Some years ago the press and TV was full of conjecture about the wonderful leisure-based life we would have inside capitalism. Futurologists and other media pundits speculated that with the advance of technology we would all be working fewer hours and fewer days per week. The big problem of the future would be how to spend all our leisure hours. Such scenarios have proven completely wrong with many of us now working longer hours and now it seems probably working for many more years. "The state pension age should be raised to 70, the Confederation of British Industry says in light of new figures detailing extended life expectancy." (Times, 4 October)

The dignity of labour

In an edited extract from Maxwell's Fall: An Insider's Account by Roy Greenslade we learn something of the contempt the owning class feel for the working class. When Maxwell took over The Daily Mirror he wanted to speak to Kelvin MacKenzie then the editor of The Sun but his secretary reported that MacKenzie would not accept his call. "Maxwell demanded that the secretary relate the conversation in full, but she was hesitant. "No, no, no," screamed Maxwell. "Tell me everything he said." She said she would prefer not to, but Maxwell shouted: "You will not get into trouble, Patricia. But if you refuse, you will be in trouble. "Well, Mr Maxwell, he said, "I don't want to speak to the fat Czech bastard." Two weeks later Patricia left in tears, escorted from the building by a security man (Times, 6 October).

The decline of religion

It used to be an argument of supporters of capitalism that socialism was impossible because of the working class's adherence to religion. A recent article by the columnist Magnus Linklater seems to give the lie to that notion. "Whereas in 1851 between 40 and 60 per cent of the population went regularly to church, today that figure is less than 7 per cent. In recent years the trend has accelerated — by 28 per cent in the last 20 years for the Catholic Church, and 24 per cent for the Anglican Church; in Scotland, the fall has been so dramatic that the once all-powerful Kirk reported recently that it could well be extinct as an organisation within the next 50 years." (Times, 13 October) Any other arguments against socialism?

Press Exposure: Who's in Charge? (1995)

The Press Exposure column from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peter Jay is regarded by many people including himself—as one of the cleverest men in Britain, if not the world or perhaps the entire history of the human race. So what part of his historically wonderful brain malfunctioned when he accepted the job of chief of staff to Robert Maxwell, who also had a pretty high opinion of his own intellect and who subjected Jay to years of harassment and humiliation?

For example: in 1989 Jay had to get Maxwell to sign a cheque, a contribution towards the support the Mirror boss had promised to the Commonwealth Games. Maxwell loved this kind of situation. "I will decide when that cheque is paid," he told his cerebral chief-of-staff, “Now fuck off out of here."

The longer Jay stayed on Maxwell's payroll the more harassed and ragged he became, the more he drank and smoked. Hardly a week went by without him having to sack some secretary, receptionist or telephonist—until it was his turn to be fired. In spite of all this he could later say about his time with Maxwell: “Nothing happened that was outside what I expected or regarded as legitimate." (At the time Maxwell was alive: after his death Jay described him as “this crazy guy".)

Sarf London boy

Flamboyant characters are what the newspaper industry is notorious for. While Maxwell was terrorising the staff at the Mirror (if he asked what time it was the wise response was "What time would you like it to be, Bob?") Kelvin Mackenzie was imposing a similar regime at the Sun, where office life was a continual turmoil of abuse, threats and humiliation. Mackenzie took a delight in playing up to his self-image as a Sarf-London-boy-made-good or -bad, depending on whether you were on the receiving end of his ranting temper. He seemed unable to speak a sentence which did not have the word "fuck" in it at least once. He seemed unable to get through a day which did not involve the ritual reduction of some hapless staff member to a trembling, stammering wreck. With all this Mackenzie turned out a newspaper whose circulation climbed up and up, far above its nearest rival. So behind the shrieking and the swearing and the abuse there was a diabolically shrewd journalist—which not everyone would regard as a compliment Mackenzie was very different from the press lords who once dominated the British newspaper industry, passing the ownership from one generation to another to protect what they thought was the highest standards of journalism. This meant (didn't it?) that newspapers always told the truth, always respected privacy, never resorted to salacious exploitation of their readers’ sadder repressions.

Screws of the world

For over 70 years, until it was taken over by Rupert Murdoch, the News of the World was owned by the Carr family. During that time the newspaper became famous, not for its reporting of international events but for its rollicking exposure of vicars (the older the better) who had affairs with their secretaries or parishioners (the younger the better). When the paper was losing so much money that it had to be sold or put to sleep Robert Maxwell tried to take it over, resisted by the editor who claimed that his tawdry conglomeration of sensationalism and juvenile smut was "as British as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. . . this is a British newspaper run by British people. Let’s keep it that way". But then money spoke louder than jingoism and the Carrs sold out to Murdoch, who was as Australian as a kangaroo meat barbie on Bondi Beach.

The Berry family are another lot to have been ousted in recent years—in their case from ownership of the Daily Telegraph. This paper always had a shrewd eye for its market, apart from its small ads for jobs which were combed through regularly by ambitious managers, it appealed to the tea-shop regulars in places like Cheltenham and Tunbridge Wells. This gave a certain allure to its letter columns, which were rather like a primeval mental swamp. Such a distaste for ideas meant that generally the Telegraph’s news coverage was better than average—which included regular in-depth reporting of any scandal or sexual misdemeanour, especially if they involved members of the ruling class whose behaviour had let the side down.

A bit of a con

One family to hang on has been the Harmsworths. associated with the Daily Mail whose politics, they say, have not changed for over 80 years (they must have forgotten that in the 1930s the Mail supported Mosley’s British Union of Fascists). The Daily Mail is not famous for an addiction to the truth. A few years ago they eagerly joined in the Bingo war with rivals like the Sun and the Mirror, claiming to make some lucky people Mail Millionaires. In fact the statistical chance of a millionaire emerging from playing the "game" in the Mail was once in about 400 years. This impressed even Lord Rothermere, who admitted the whole thing was "a bit of a con”.

And that really sums it up. Newspapers are not there to inform us but to be sold, to make profits for the likes of Murdoch and the Rothermeres. The important issue is what is implied by the market they operate in. Do the readers of the Sun, the Mail, the Telegraph and the rest really want nothing better than the world as presented to them in the newspapers? Reading the press should be enough to change the mind of anyone who doubts the urgent need to change society.

Ivan

Press Exposure: Winners and Losers (1995)

The Press Exposure column from the July 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

What do you want from your newspaper? Do you want a comprehensive, insightful report on what is happening in the world to help you form your opinion on whether we need to run things differently and if so how? Or masses of analysis and policy to help you come to the same conclusions as the writer? Or would you prefer, along with page-after-page of sport (which usually means page-after-page about the off-field foibles of the sportspeople) and dedicated probing of the sexual meanderings of pop stars. politicians and aristocrats, the chance to take part in some sort of competition which promises a chance of making you rich beyond your maddest dreams?

Competitions have been a consistent feature in the press. There is, for example, the humble (although that can depend on which newspaper it is in) crossword which occasionally offers the sort of prize—like a dictionary—which will not make you rich for the rest of your life. In the past there was a peculiar competition called Bullets, giving prizes for constructing apparently meaningful responses to obviously meaningless phrases. It seemed densely indecipherable but was very popular. Some newspapers have run competitions with a car as the prize, or enough petrol to run a car far into the future. Others have offered to pay the mortgage on a house. The so-called quality press has not been immune from this: the Sunday Times has run competitions—one was about post-war test cricketers—which were little more than lotteries and the Times has run one involving the phantom buying of shares. And of course there is good old bingo, which in the newspapers came in different styles. Sometimes the player had to get a card from a newsagent, sometimes the card came through the letterbox with all the other junk mail. All that you had to do then was buy the newspaper which published the numbers to be crossed off the card. It promised big prizes—perhaps a million pounds but there was a loophole. As both cards and numbers were produced by the newspaper and the "game" was not played openly as it is somewhere like a working men’s club, there was nothing to prevent the cards and numbers being designed so that nobody even won the jackpot.

If you think this is farfetched consider the case of Spot-The-Ball. This was another popular, long-running, competition in which the newspaper published an action photograph of a football game, with players leaping and thrashing about—without a ball. Competitors had to mark a cross where they thought the ball was. Addicts of Spot-The-Ball could spend a lot of time with a magnifying glass and a ruler, trying to work out where the players’ eyes were focused and where their boots were aimed at (assuming they were looking at the ball and trying to kick it; which is not always the case) and drawing lines in the hope that the point of intersection would be the winning spot.

In 1990 the Sun ran a Spot-The-Ball competition, in which the photograph was draw up into a grid. The unlikely to prize was £5 million. This desperate venture was quickly copied by the Daily Mirror, then stumbling under the even more desperate ownership of Robert Maxwell. In the Mirror contest readers had to Spot-The-Ball on five consecutive days: the promised top prize was £1 million.

The snag

It all seemed very exciting and enticing but there was a snag. The competition would be judged—that is to say the position of the ball would be decided—after the Mirror had all the entries. This would be done by a panel of judges (on the first occasion chaired by none other than Maxwell himself) who could put the ball in a square which nobody had marked. And that is what happened. Maxwell had instructed his editor "Make sure it doesn’t cost me any money" and, apart from a few "second’’ prizes of £10,000 that is what happened. The whole thing was a fraud on readers of the Mirror who were gullible enough to believe that a newspaper would help them solve their money problems in that way.

When this sort of trickery is exposed—as Maxwell’s Spot-The-Ball was exposed in a subsequent Panorama—we are subjected to a lot of indignation from people who seem to expect the press always to be honest, always to tell the truth. Which brings us back to the original question of what we want from the papers. Imagine for a moment what would happen, if the press suddenly dropped its unwavering support for capitalism and began to publish material which could be sustained by serious argument. What if they stopped treating every pronouncement by political leaders with such grovelling respect? It is difficult to believe that journalists listening to some revered figure churning out yet another discredited placebo for society’s problems do not reflect that that have heard it all before. Difficult to believe that they don't realise that capitalism’s spokespeople have nothing fresh or effective to say and that they should admit to their impotence and advise us to swamp them out in a social revolution.

Fraud

Because capitalism itself is a massive fraud, in which millions of useful people allow themselves to be exploited to sustain a parasite minority and a social system which cannot be organised in the interests of its people. Beside that, a newspaper's bogus bingo, Win-A-Car, or Spot-The-Ball are so trivial that in the history of fraud they won’t rate so much as a column inch.

Ivan

The Yesterday League (1987)

From the September 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

With Wimbledon well in the past and the first class cricket season nearing its end, we must be approaching winter and the beginning of the football season. So get out your scarf and woolly hat and get yourself ready for another nine months of cliches and clobbering.

How you view the new season may depend on whether you live in Scarborough or Lincoln. The innovation of automatic promotion and relegation between Division Four and the GM Vauxhall Conference was intended to catch perennial strugglers like Rochdale and Halifax: instead it ensnared Lincoln City, who the previous season had only just been relegated from Division Three and who now find themselves cast into something approaching outer darkness. Their replacement is not a team from the desirable commuter suburbs like Altrincham or Barnet but down-market Scarborough, who are pledged to try and survive by continuing to play part-time. As league clubs cut their playing staff to the bare minimum, the difference between Division Four and top non-league clubs diminishes all the time anyway.

At the other end of soccer's ladder of success. the pre-season headlines were made by the moves of Howard Kendall. Peter Shilton and Peter Beardsley. Kendall, having managed Everton to the League Championship, has been lured by the pesetas of Athletic Bilbao. Even if he returns to Britain after a couple of years, he is likely to be a millionaire by then — easily so if Bilbao win a trophy or two. So he may not stay long enough to need to learn Spanish (or Basque for that matter).

The rest of the transfer market has concerned players rather than managers. Glenn Hoddle left Spurs to join Monaco, who. according to the Guardian, play on the fourth floor of a shopping precinct before crowds of just over four thousand. Shilton has gone from Southampton to newly-promoted Derby County, in a deal widely described as worth a million pounds (most of which will apparently find its way into the bank account of Shilton himself rather than that of Southampton). This is the first big purchase at Derby since publicity-hungry capitalist Robert Maxwell took over as chairman from his son and it surely will not be the last.

Maxwell, in case you didn't know, is also owner of the Daily Mirror. It's an interesting combination, as football clubs and newspapers have a lot in common besides relying on each other for publicity and sales. Both are often poor investments from the ordinary capitalist standpoint, delivering more losses than profits (the continuing ban of English clubs from the European competitions sharply limits the profit-making possibilities). But both can be attractive toys to play with, providing publicity, excitement and a chance to impress people and do down the opposition.

The most shattering pre-season event was the abrupt withdrawal of the League sponsorship by Rupert Murdoch's Today. This proved that Murdoch's rivalry with Maxwell is unlikely to extend to the field of sport-, the big boss of the Sunday Times, News of the World and the rest is interested in the glamour only of a healthy balance sheet. Todays withdrawal may lead to legal action by the League to get some of the money it presumed was coming its way through the sponsorship. This one will run and run.

An extra bit of excitement was added at the end of last season by the promotion/relegation play-offs (a return to something very like the system originally abolished in 1898). While the introduction of these coincided with changes to the sizes of the top two divisions, this could easily have been achieved simply by adjusting appropriately the numbers of teams promoted and relegated. The play-offs were in fact set up purely for financial reasons — which is bad news for. say, Oldham, who got sizeable crowds at playoffs but thereby lost out on a lucrative promotion to Division One. Automatic relegation from Division Four may have helped boost some end-of-season gates too — at least. Burnley don't draw crowds of fifteen thousand for any other reason any longer.

As they say, may the best team win. Sometimes, of course, the best team may win. but more often it's the one with the richest chairman.

Paul Bennett

Letter: Eastern Europe (2008)

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

Dear Editors

I was interested to read Gwynn Thomas’s article on Kosovo (and Soros) in the April issue.

In the 1990s, the OSCE created a democracy fund to ‘democratise’ East Europe. Reagan and Hurd ‘warned’ Rumania and the GDR, respectively, in their elections, that unless opposition parties enjoyed “reasonable access” to (state-control-led) media, the resulting administration would not enjoy access to low-interest loans from Western banks.

As an enthusiastic investor in/supporter of “democratic” capitalism, Bob Maxwell donated (with others’ money?) to the OSCE fund—and ‘emerged’ with a Polish TV station and a Hungarian newspaper, if I recollect.

And, in the 1996 Bosnian election, a fascist candidate was able to access the OSCE fund, for politicking/propagandising purposes. The Foreign Office denied it had contributed to the support fund, but claimed Italy had provided the funds.

I thought all funds were usually contributed to pro-rata (Guardian article and Foreign Office correspondence to me.)

D. Shepherd, 

London NW4

50 Years Ago: Hippies: An abortion of Socialist Understanding (2019)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever since the explosion of “Flower Power” in Summer 67, the world’s working-class has been aware of the Hippy movement, or as it is now more frequently called, “The Underground”. Attitudes to the hippies have varied from amused fascination to angry revulsion. Many people have grown more hostile to them over the past two years, as their emphasis on such harmless-sounding words as “Love” and “Beautiful People” has declined, and their tendency to smoke pot has become more widely publicised.

In Britain the occupation of 144 Piccadilly confirmed the hippies’ bad reputation—though the occupiers were not typical of the Underground by any means. TV news announcers put on their frowns for this item, were careful to identify the occupation with soccer hooliganism (both were “violence to property”), and equally careful to avoid dragging in irrelevant details like the fact of empty houses alongside homeless people.

A wave of horror swept the country at the realisation that there were people who not only wore long hair (and obviously smelt foul, as anyone could see by looking at their TV screens), but actually believed they had a right to live without working. In one television programme, David Frost, Hughie Green and Robert Maxwell—those highly productive labourers who toil so usefully to justify their existence—led an attack on the hippies for their conscientious objection to work. When Richard Neville (editor of the Underground magazine Oz) suggested that the idea of work as a duty hadn’t a very ancient historical pedigree, that work in the modern world was “really a form of slavery,” and that with today’s productive techniques there could easily be more than enough wealth for everyone, he was devastated by Frost’s crisply intelligent retorts: “Very high‑ flown I’m sure” and “I really am an old fuddy-duddy you know.”

The hippy phenomenon is a movement, a set of attitudes, a subculture or a nuisance, according to your point of view. It consists of several hundred thousand people, drawn mostly from the working class, in the advanced regions of Capitalism. It is vaguely defined, fuzzy-edged—no one can draw up a hippy manifesto; no one can specify who is a hippy and who isn’t.

(From the Socialist Standard, December 1969)

Happy Birthday, Mr Maxwell (1985)

Editorial from the July 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was just a year ago that Robert Maxwell took over the Mirror Group of newspapers, with the declared intention ". . . to restore the Daily Mirror to its rightful place as Britain’s biggest-selling paper" and in the process consigned executives like Clive Thornton to what he considered their rightful place, in exile from the Mirror.

Since then, there have been changes. The price of the Mirror has come down and gone back up, bingo has waxed and waned, uncertain policy has meant that readers who get their buzz from photographed female breasts have not been sure, from one day to the next, whether they were to be gratified or not. Some long-running strip cartoons have gone and Jane is back — a 1980s, jet-travelling, spaceage, more explicit version of her innocent predecessor of the 1930s and 1940s.

So far Maxwell has not achieved his declared aim. The Mirror circulation in May was 3,230,000. over a quarter of a million down on last May. Profits, which were £5.7 million for the Group last year, were at one time expected to amount to £1 million but are now likely to be £800,000. The other papers in the Group are faring no better; the Sunday Mirror's sales were 500,000 down compared to May 1984 and the Sunday People's down 333,000.

The Mirror Group is struggling, it need hardly be said, partly because of the savagely competitive nature of the media world, particularly that of the newspapers. Maxwell's great rival is News International, owned by Rupert Murdoch especially the Sun on weekdays and the News of the World on Sundays. Murdoch's papers are not having too easy a time of it either; the Sun's circulation fell by 134,000 from last May but the News of the World's appeal through salacious revelations wrapped up in mock moral outrage continues as strongly as ever; its sales in May were 4,826,000 — an increase of 400,000 over May 1984.

Socialists weep no tears for the difficulties of the great newspaper combines; the end of one organ of capitalist opinion merely opens a gap which will be filled by another. We operate on other assumptions; what matters to us is the material these papers disseminate, how it is received, how popular it is — and why. This approach is not confined to the so-called popular press, for the ideas pushed out by people like Maxwell and Murdoch are often no more than a brilliantly economical version of those to be found, in more sonorous terms, in the "quality" press.

All these organs of opinion are produced, from the first outlines in the reporters' notebooks to the finished product streaming off the presses, on the basic assumption that the capitalist social system is fundamentally in line with human interests. Of course, there are a few problems like wars, slums, famine, social alienation, diseases, but these are matters for regret. With the correct intentions on the part of our rulers they can all be put to rights. Meanwhile, a little hard-nosed exposure, and reporting, of the problems can be useful in boosting circulation.

So the press are at one in joining the debate over which way to reform capitalism and who is best to do it. None of them dissent from the proposition that the outcome of the debate is significant to human beings. At election times, for example, they plug away in support of one capitalist party or another, promoting the leaders of their chosen side as the wisest, most learned, most sincere (as well as having the happiest family life, the bonniest children, the shaggiest dogs . . .) None of them ever states the opposite case — that all of these parties have obviously failed to cure modern society of its ailments, none of their leaders has had the slightest effect on capitalism's inhuman course and that, therefore, it is logical and constructive to look elsewhere if we are concerned about human welfare.

There is, to be sure, one discernible difference between the "popular" and the "quality" press and that is the unflagging optimism of the former. However desperate the problem, however calamitous the disaster a newspaper like the Mirror reports, it will do so with an implied confidence that the essential goodness of Mr and Mrs Average Briton will overcome it all. In fact, so false is this attitude that it is the darkest pessimism; it offers no hope for the human future.

For real hope, for valid optimism, we have to turn to the socialist movement. Socialists have, at present, no great media resources and our publications consist of the Socialist Standard, the organs which our companion parties abroad are able to publish. our pamphlets and a succession of supporting leaflets on day-to-day issues. Besides the Mirror, the Sun and the rest these are puny but the case they state is the most powerful thing, for its consistency and its validity.

Working class ideas may be temporarily fashioned by, but will often act against all the hysterical denunciations of the press, the TV and the rest. At the moment there is overwhelming support for capitalism, with dissent occasionally being directed towards policies for some tinkering reforms of the system. It is not enough to hope that the system does not have to be abolished but can be reformed out of character. The remorseless. everyday experience of capitalism works to change these ideas, to enlighten the working class as to their true interests and to the need for a social revolution to bring capitalism to an end.

This is no mechanical process, which socialists can sit back and watch. The human race makes its own history and socialists strive to encourage, to stimulate and to accelerate the trend towards the understanding which will bring about the revolution. In this, a kind of battle of ideas, communication is vital. In numbers alone, the capitalist class at present have the advantage. But the ideas of socialism are too powerful to be denied.

Maxwell should enjoy his birthday. While he can.

Running Commentary: Comic cuts (1986)

The Running Commentary column from the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Comic cuts

The newspaper business has been going through some changes recently, most noticeably the movement of Murdoch's News International to Fortress Wapping. In the process, Murdoch managed to engineer the sacking of 5.000 printworkers. His titles, including the Sun and The Times, are now being printed by members of the electricians' union.

Murdoch's manoeuvres have brought much condemnation from many Labour MPs, outraged at his tactics in deceiving the workers and saving on redundancy payments (although these tactics can hardly be said to be new to capitalism). The Sun has long been a target of left-wingers, who find its gutter journalism, cheap titillation and especially its patriotic. pro-Thatcher jingoism. offensive.

Murdoch's competitors in the newspaper business are concerned about the increased levels of profitability and efficiency he has gained. Robert Maxwell, who owns the Mirror Group, is in the most direct competition with Murdoch: he produces the same kind of comic. The Mirror also has a high proportion of scandal stories although, in an effort to appear refined, Maxwell recently ordered his Page 3 Lovelies to cover up their nipples.

In order to meet the challenge of News International, Maxwell recently imposed a change in working practices at his two publications in Glasgow, the Daily Record (which still shows nipples) and the Sunday Mail (which doesn't). The workers at these papers did not fancy a deterioration in their working conditions and being forced to produce an Irish copy of the Daily Mirror. Maxwell decided that these workers had sacked themselves — strange behaviour with four million on the dole so he shut down his Scottish operation and locked the workers out.

The reaction of Labour MPs in Scotland was not to condemn Maxwell despite his high-handed management. Murdoch was called the Dirty Digger, and an interfering foreigner (after all he is Australian). But the shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, Donald Dewar, John Smith and many other Labour MPs expressed "concern" over the breakdown in "communication", and stressed the need to get these rags, which for years have spread anti-working class filth across Scotland, back to giving their "specific contribution” to the Scottish political scene.

So what is the difference between the lies of Maxwell's distorting Mirror and the Wapping-great lies of Murdoch's Sun that warrants such selective outrage from Labour MPs? Of course it could be the fact that Murdoch is a supporter of the Tories, while the "socialist millionaire" supports the Labour Party and so is courted by Kinnock & Co. at their conferences. But Labour would never betray workers' interests just to get cheap political support, would they?

The effort of the Labour MPs managed to get Maxwell back to the negotiating table, and the Daily Record back to the gutters. But not for long — while workers allow parasites like Murdoch and Maxwell to remain in positions of power and influence then we will continue to be insulted and insecure.

Sounds familiar

At the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union held in February, the Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev spent much time talking about the need to reform the Russian economy. In his calls for expansion, modernisation and efficiency he sounded astonishingly like Thatcher. Factories which regularly make losses are to be allowed to go bust: "The state will not be responsible for their debts and losses", he said (all quotes. Guardian, 26 February). This could be Thatcher talking about "lame- ducks" being a burden on the Great British Taxpayer.

Managers and workers who produce unsold goods that end up in warehouses are to suffer loss of pay and bonuses. Wage increases must be earned — they must be related to the quantity of work done. Again, Thatcher has had a lot of experience of berating workers for taking “unearned" pay rises. Since the workers produce all the wealth in society, it is difficult to see how their wages — a fraction of what they produce anyway — can be unearned.

Gorbachev also called for less central interference from the state planning agency Gosplan, in the day-to-day running of the economy. They must "allow industrial management to get on with the job". The "right" of management to manage is a common cry of government ministers and of parasites such as Murdoch and MacGregor. What this "right to manage" usually amounts to is pay cuts and job losses.

Many of the current problems with the Russian economy were blamed on failures of the past. The stagnation and inertia, bureaucracy and corruption of the Brezhnev years in the seventies are the root of today's problems, according to Gorbachev. This is one that politicians often rely on. The current problems are blamed on the failures of the previous administration, whether Labour or Tory, Republican or Democrat, or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The fact is that capitalism produces problems by its very nature, regardless of the extent of state control. Whatever reforms Gorbachev rushes through it is clear that the workers in Russia will do the hard work and suffering, while the ruling class relax in their dachas and bemoan how lazy the workers are.

The strangest thing about Gorbachev's speech to the Congress was the fact that he cracked jokes (about Lenin!). Of course Mikhail — like "our" Maggie or Neil — is very conscious of his image, liking to appear as a humorous, concerned person. He's even been compared to the "great communicator" (or bullshitter). Ronald Reagan. Now what's the Russian for Saatchi and Saatchi?

Whitewash

How much longer can Botha and the ruling National Party in South Africa get away with promising reforms and then failing to deliver the goods?

Botha's latest promise was made in a recent speech in which he admitted that South Africa had "outgrown the outdated concept of apartheid". But he then went on to restate the belief basic to apartheid: that South Africa consists of separate tribal peoples or nations, each of which must have jurisdiction over its own affairs while the whites retain overall control. What this means in practice is the policy of "independent” tribal homelands for the blacks — Bantustans — poverty-stricken reservations with nominal autonomy which provide a ready supply of cheap black labour for the predominantly white ruling class.

The "reforms" outlined by Botha include the restoration of South African citizenship to those who lost it when the Bantustans were granted "independence"; the extension of self-government to the remaining non-independent homelands; limited rights of property ownership for blacks in the townships; amendments to the Pass Laws so that everyone in South Africa would have to carry identity papers; and the establishment of a new National Advisory Council that is to include blacks.

Most black workers in South Africa will recognise these "reforms" as worthless, since they leave the main institutions of apartheid intact. For example, the proposed amendments to the Pass Laws would still enable the police arbitrarily to arrest blacks for being in the "wrong" area and it is likely that black access to the cities will continue to be dependent on a job and accommodation. The proposed Advisory Council represents the same kind of tokenism as the constitutional amendments which gave Indians and Coloureds separate national assemblies while the real power remains in the hands of the white ruling class.


Free speech

You would have thought that the Left had learned its lesson from last year's events at North London Poly when the Socialist Workers' Party orchestrated such favourable publicity for the National Front by trying to prevent Patrick Harrington from attending classes. But no, the Right are yet again being granted the moral high ground as defenders of free speech, as this year's intake of students conforms to the Left stereotype. Having found their feet as student radicals, they are now attempting to prevent selected demons of the Right from speaking on university and polytechnic platforms. Michael Fallon, Tory MP, was given a rough ride at Sunderland Poly, as was John Carlisle at Bradford University. An invitation to the philosopher of the new right, Roger Scruton, was withdrawn when Leeds City Council said that they could not guarantee his safety. And even tapes of American anti-Semite, Louis Farrakhan, were banned at the South Bank Poly in London.

Meanwhile, students at Bristol University have just discovered that John Vincent, Professor of History, has an alter ego as a reactionary columnist for the Sun newspaper. The word went out and the Left picketed his lectures, resulting in the involvement of the police and local publicity more favourable to the "victimised Professor Vincent" than to the "lefty student yobs". Why, you might ask, if it is his column in the Sun to which they object, are they picketing his history lectures at Bristol University? Their argument is that he is using his position as an academic to lend spurious credibility to his journalistic efforts. But never mind the finer details — picketing is so much more fun than lectures and, after all, John Vincent is right wing and therefore a legitimate target for emotional tirades about racism, fascism, the Sun newspaper . . . And let's not worry too much about free speech, or the damage being done to serious opponents of capitalism.

Running Commentary: Book-keeping (1985)

The Running Commentary Column from the January 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Book-keeping

Although they are not actually on the picket lines, the accountants are in a titanic clash over the coal strike, on the issue of whether the mines are really losing money or not. On one side, arguing that the National Coal Board has got it wrong because it doesn't keep its books properly, are two professors of accounting and financial management (yes, there are such people). The development of the professors' argument is that if the NCB kept its books differently the coal mines would be seen to be making a profit. Then the NCB could stop closing pits, it might even re-open some which it has already closed and the strikers could all go back down the mines.

The argument apparently revolves around something called fixed or central overheads, which have nothing to do with pit props but which are of vital concern to accountants. The Coal Board calculates that these overheads are saved if a pit is shut down but the professors assert that they are merely reallocated among surviving pits. Applying this argument to Cortonwood colliery, where the present dispute began and which the strikers have called their Alamo, would mean that the pit showed a profit of £5.5 a tonne instead of a loss of £6.2 a tonne.

The accountants are in battle over an issue of great significance to capitalism because coal, like all other wealth, is at present turned out with the motive of making a profit. But to anyone whose concern is with human welfare, there is another significance. Whatever the book-keeping system, whether the coal mines are in the accounts as making a profit or a loss, the production of coal has continued, by the human process of applying the miners' working skills to natural materials. This illustrates the true nature of capitalism's need to produce profit and to accumulate capital — an encumbrance on society's productivity which a sane world will not tolerate.

Apathy

Lurking somewhere among the pin-striped ranks of MPs. merchant bankers and stockbrokers there are quite a few people who were once in open revolt against institutions like Parliament and the City. Mostly, they expressed their anger in the student riots of the 1960s, which were written up as the beginning of the end of the acquisitive society — the short, sharp shock to get socialism without the tiresome wait for the working class to understand and want it.

At the time this sounded pretty seductive, especially to youngsters who enjoyed shocking others or being shocked themselves. However, over the years the revolutionary ardour of the rioters has cooled as they have submerged themselves in the daily grind of getting a living or the less arduous business of raking in the dividends.

What about the rioters' heirs, the young people who now populate the universities? Among the ancient stones and the dozing spires there is a similar tranquil acceptance of the priorities of capitalism. The universities, to put it another way, are no longer hot-beds of dissent. All is quiet at Essex; in deepest Sussex they are not stirring. "We are concerned." says one report about the undergraduates of Cambridge, "about current political apathy on the part of students in the presence of numerous national and international problems". In Oxford the students are compliant enough to give the "bulldogs" — who are appointed by the university to police the undergraduates — an unusually easy life.

There are indeed plenty of reasons for the students to protest. They stay quiet, the only noise from them being the industrious scratch of pens, the devoted turning of pages, the gentle hum of labouring brains, because they are disciplined to be like that from the fear of not being able to get a job when they graduate. Unemployment, says the president of the Cambridge students' union, and the fierce competition it brings, concentrates the students' minds on their work.

So were those famous riots no more than futile ephemera? They did not bring capitalism down; they did not change the system's priorities; they did not "raise consciousness". What they did was to divert workers' attentions and energies away from the real work of understanding this iniquitous social system and using that understanding to abolish it.

Shabby

Quite a few Labour Party members would like to see the back of one of their most illustrious recruits, but the person concerned won't go of his own accord. This is not surprising because the Most Illustrious Recruit in question is that famous millionaire and benefactor of the starving Ethiopians, Robert Maxwell, who is not well known for bending to the wishes or the opinions of those around him.

Maxwell, it may be remembered, is the man who was not deterred by his Czechoslovak origins from originating the I'm Backing Britain campaign. He was also the Labour MP for Buckingham and is now owner of the Pergamon Press and the Daily Mirror and, if not the owner at any rate the chairman of, Oxford United Football Club.

None of these interests, however, seem to have bothered the members of Oxford East Labour Party where, we must assume, they pride themselves on their socialist principles or at least on what passes for them. What makes them want to get rid of Maxwell is the fact that he resorted to the courts to evict redundant print workers who were occupying his London plant.

The members are outraged that someone they should be greeting as a fellow socialist should use the provisions of the Tory Employment Act against his workers. The fellow socialist is sure that he didn't need Tory laws; he used some of the legislation which was on the Statute Book under the last Labour government, kept there to protect the property rights of the British ruling class.

The passions of the Oxford East members seem spent to no avail because, according to the Guardian (19 November 1984) Maxwell's place in the Labour Party is safeguarded by his ownership of the Daily Mirror, the one mass-circulation paper to support the party. Who would want to upset so valuable a vote-winner?

Whatever the outcome of this shabby dispute, the members of the Oxford East Labour Party might ask themselves a few questions about the nature of their party, about its capacity to include someone with the political opinions of Robert Maxwell and about why it is reluctant to expel him. Can such a party lay claim to be socialist? As Maxwell's Mirror might put it. the answer is NO!!!

Opportunity Knocks (1992)

From the July 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Crowds don't often come much bigger than those they expect to get in St Peters Square in the Vatican but even at that it was an impressively large gathering, a couple of months ago. which witnessed the beatification of Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer. The occasion was not without controversy because de Balaguer was a bit of a fascist in his time, a keen supporter of Franco and not averse to the Nazis either. None of this seemed to affect the Pope, who has the job of announcing these things to the crowd from the balcony. “A joyful celebration”, he called it, “an auspicious occasion”. Meanwhile in the dense, weeping, hysterical crowd others were interpreting the words “joyful" and "auspicious" in their own way; pickpockets trawled through the delirious worshippers, stealing hundreds of wallets and purses.

This was a prime example of how vulnerable people make themselves, while they give their attention to a mythical heaven above, to being robbed on the real material world on Earth. The pickpockets, consciously or not, were working on the assumption that this is a social system in which success goes to those who take their chances—and, until someone else got the beatification treatment, there were unlikely to be many better chances on offer than that.

This has its relevance to John Major—who is not in the same class as a crowd puller as the Pope—and his classless society. It is not entirely clear where Major got his idea from nor what he means, but it is safe to assume that by “classless” he doesn’t actually mean a society without classes but one in which anyone can rise from a lower class to the higher. So "classless society” means that anyone with ability can succeed—they can make a lot of money, live in bigger and bigger houses and travel in bigger and bigger cars and be more and more powerful. Like Robert Maxwell. But of course for anyone to get on in that way they must not only have ability. They must also seize their chances when they see them and be willing to take risks to do so. Like those thieves in St Peters Square.

Romantic delusion
In essential Majors dream society sounds very simple. You work hard and save some money. Then you invest it, starting your own business. Of course there is the problem that you may find your business in competition with some gigantic concern which has the resources to crush you overnight, but with a lot of hard work you can make your business grow. As the profits roll in you begin to expand. Then again and again until you are a multi-millionaire, with the power to crush up-and-coming businesses like yours used to be. You are rich and famous, with a country estate or two, your own private jet and your yacht in the Mediterranean. You are a living example of taking your chance in the classless society.

This romantic delusion seduces millions of people into supporting this supposed society of opportunity where the social and intellectual cream rises to the top—which proves that anyone who does not get to the top must thereby be of inferior quality. However reality is a lot less romantic; there are failures as well as successes, poverty as well as riches, despair as well as fulfillment.

As anyone who reads anything other than the Sun and the Daily Mail will know, we live now in a time of recession. One effect of the recession is to cause a lot of misery to a lot of people whose big mistake was to take what they thought was their big chance when they thought the time was right. In fact it was not a mistake because by capitalism’s standards the chance was there and the time was right. Impressed by the Thatcher government’s assurances that the economy was under tight control and had been steered into perpetual boom by the disdainful brilliance of Nigel Lawson, they committed themselves to a massive debt in order to buy somewhere to live. They were confident that the market would continue to rise so their home would increase in price. They simply couldn't lose, they told each other over their gin and tonics.

We all know what happened next. The economic situation which Lawson claimed to have designed and constructed to work to the eternal benefit of everyone ready to take their chance, and which would last for ever, abruptly changed. Lawson at first called the change a “blip” but blips are momentary diversions; this one went on for years. Interest rates rose to the point at which many mortgage repayments which had once been manageable became cruelly impossible. In many cases things were made worse by redundancies among the mortgagees or their family, whose wages were needed to pay the mortgage. The banks and building societies took action to “repossess” properties which had never been out of their ownership anyway; “repossess" is a polite way of talking about evicting people from homes they had been persuaded to call their own.

Among the evicted John Major’s classless society was celebrated in bitterness. Some dropped the keys of their home through the building society’s letterbox and ran away. One man stripped his home of everything possible—doors, shelves, light fittings, radiators, the bath, sinks—leaving just a shell. Another set fire to the place, killing his baby daughter.

The financial tomorrow
Desperate at this situation is, it is not the whole story for it is not only individual workers, struggling to get themselves somewhere to live, who have seen what looked like a golden opportunity turn to disaster. This recession has reaped a rich harvest of big combines whose collapse has discredited some of capitalism’s current heroes. After the crash of Polly Peck, the fate of Asil Nadir is awaited with interest, in expectation that it holds something extremely unpleasant for him. In Australia Alan Bond is not only bankrupt but with time to reflect on it in his prison cell. Robert Maxwell has been exposed as one of the most unpleasant scoundrels ever to have harried and abused his employees on his way to riches; not content with the legal theft on which capitalism is based he was greedy enough to try the illegal sort as well. The latest in the line of Titanic-like commercial disasters has been Olympia and York, whose Canary Wharf stands as an embarrassing memorial to the anarchy of capitalism.

Illustration by George Meddemmen.

There is now no shortage of experts to tell us what went wrong for the likes of Maxwell and Nadir. They borrowed too much money. They ran their affairs like there was no financial tomorrow. Maxwell borrowed money to expand into American publishing. Nadir to buy up concerns like Del Monte. This presented few problems as long as the boom lasted, as long as sales went up taking profits with them. But when the slump began to bite, the big borrowers had difficulty in just paying the interest on their massive debts. They borrowed to seize what looked like a great opportunity; in the event it turned out to be a trap.

So what of the lenders, the banks who stood for such huge sums at risk? Polly Peck were said to owe something like £1.3 billion; Maxwells empire had debts of over £1.5 billion. With hindsight—and that has recently become one of the well-used phrases in the world of finance—they agree that what they did was unwise, in the sense that it cost them a lot of money when they should have been concerned with making profit. Last February the deputy governor of the Bank of England, Eddie George (how did a man with so demotic a name ever get past the doorman at the Bank, let alone become a governor?) slated the banks about this but in the process he revealed how they had little choice:

  [Borrowers and lenders] now tend to blame the authorities for allowing, or even encouraging, the party to get out of hand—though I seem to remember they rather enjoyed it at the time . . . Had we been more successful in keeping “animal spirits” on a shorter leash at the time, the subsequent damage to bank capital and the subsequent economic and social trauma would, of course, have been less.

Another way of saying that is that when the banks were lending so freely it was boom time; had it continued like that, as it was from 1986 to 1988, there would have been a different story. Pressure of competition pushed the banks into lending; if one backed off there were plenty of others only too willing to exploit what they saw as an unending source of profit.

The banks have now been brought face to face with the realities of capitalism— that it is a system of unpredictable swings, falls and rises, not to be controlled by financial experts or economists or politicians. At times it seems to offer the opportunity to some individuals or some firms to get rich fast. If they missed the opportunity they would not be working the system as they should. With luck it comes out right for them; in other circumstances there is disaster. And none of them, from Robin Leigh-Pemberton to the manager of your local branch shows that they understand how the system works and that it cannot be controlled.

Ivan

They Said It . . . (1992)

From the July 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

• I've never known her pay for anything— Friend of Jimmy Goldsmith’s daughter Isabel.
• A child dies every 2.4 seconds for one simple reason: poverty—Oxfam Appeal.
• What this summit is all about is money— ITN report on the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
• When I first met him, he gave me a big kiss and told me I had a job for life—Ivy Needham, redundant ex-employee of one of Robert Maxwell’s firms, on Maxwell.
• No-one likes seeing details of their private life brought into the open— Andrew Neil, editor of the Sunday Times.

Print unions fight for survival (1986)

From the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not for the first time The Times newspaper is at the centre of a bitter industrial dispute. In November 1978 Lord Thomson, then owner of the paper, decided that he was no longer willing to run it at a loss. He demanded from the unions agreement to accept new printing technology, the elimination of “unofficial" strikes and a big reduction of staff. Failing to get agreement he locked out the workers and The Times was off the streets for nearly a year. When work was resumed it was on terms far short of what Thomson wanted and two years later he pulled out and sold to Rupert Murdoch. In January 1986 Murdoch took the printing of his papers, The Times, Sunday Times, Sun and News of the World out of Fleet Street to his new plants at Wapping and Glasgow.

At Wapping printing is being carried on by 500 workers belonging to the electrical workers' union and the print unions, in place of the former 5,000 members of the print unions, all of whom were sacked when they came out on strike. Murdoch admitted that the changes had not been fully effective. There was a fall in the number of copies printed and considerable difficulty arose over distribution, in spite of the fact that in London it was taken over by a new fleet of vans. Murdoch said he was confident that all the difficulties would be overcome in a few weeks. Print union officials said it was only the beginning of a struggle which could go on for months.

Much had happened since 1978 to change the position of the unions and the management, including the building of the Wapping plant at a cost of £100 million of which £7 million was spent on American computer equipment. The law governing strikes and picketing had been tightened by the Thatcher government, and the print unions had already been defeated in their resistance to the use of the new technology by Eddy Shah, who is publishing a new paper in March without employing members of those unions. Conflict with the law in that battle had already cost the National Graphical Association heavily. The Financial Times (27 December 1985) estimated that the cost, including further court claims still pending, may reach £2.000,000.

A similar struggle over new technology was going on at the same time between the print unions and other newspaper proprietors including Robert Maxwell, owner of the Mirror group of papers. That dispute was settled by agreement with the unions, which led Maxwell to say rude things in the Mirror (27 January) about his rival. Whereas, said Maxwell, he had followed ‘The British Way" of negotiating with the unions. Rupert Murdoch, importing brutal tactics from Australia and America, "prefers to destroy them". Lest it be thought that "The British Way" differs essentially in its purpose from the Murdoch way. it should be noted that the Mirror has also got rid of 2.000 printers, "most by early retirement or voluntary redundancy".

At the time of writing it is not possible to know with certainty what will be the outcome of the dispute but the prospects for the unions look extremely bleak. They were counting on the help of the TUC and other unions, but already most of the journalists, though against the instructions of their own union, have accepted Murdoch's terms. The printers are hoping that the Transport and General Workers' Union will succeed in blacking the distribution of Murdoch s papers and that the TUC will condemn and possibly expel the Electrical Workers' Union, which however shows no sign at present of obeying TUC instructions. Many transport workers too, are ignoring the instructions of their union not to carry Murdoch's papers.

Basically what the struggle is all about is the ceaseless development of new techniques as a feature of capitalism in the search for cheaper methods of production. The capitalists who adopt the new and cheaper methods capture the market. Those who fail to do so go out of business, as has happened with several newspapers and threatens others. There have been many such developments in the history of printing: from the hand compositor setting individual letters, to the keyboard monotype and linotype and latterly to the new system which enables journalists to print the final product without the involvement of compositors. The writing on the wall for the London newspapers is the claim by Eddy Shah that he will be able to sell his newspapers at less than half the price of existing papers. The whole newspaper industry has to adopt the new technology or face bankruptcy, because the advertisers' money will flow to the cheaper journals.

Workers in every occupation have always been affected by this aspect of capitalism. The railways almost destroyed the canal companies and horse transport, only to be hit themselves by motor and air transport. Sailing ships were replaced by coal fired steamships and then by oil burning ships. The inland telegraph service has gone. There has been an enormous reduction in the numbers of coal miners and farm workers. Along with having to meet competition from oil, gas and nuclear power the coal industry has seen a change which replaces men in the pits by workers in other industries. Before the newly opened Selby pit produced a single ton of coal, £1,000 million had been spent on new coal cutting machines and other appliances. In agriculture the old. nearly self-sufficient farms have been replaced by those dependent on a vast input of fertilisers, weed-killers and pesticides from the chemical industry. Jobs on farms have been replaced by jobs in the chemical industry.

The trade unions, in seeking to protect their members' jobs, have had to make a hard choice. They can hope to delay the introduction of the new techniques and can often do so, as have the Fleet Street printers, but at the end of the road they either have to negotiate a reduction of jobs, as on Maxwell's Mirror, or risk losing all the jobs as on Murdoch's Times group of papers.

The stock argument of capitalist economists has always been that workers should not resist the new techniques but welcome them on the ground that if the price of the product is reduced its market will expand and there will be more, not fewer, jobs. In a limited way this is sometimes true. Following the publication of the Daily Mail in 1896. and other cheaper papers with wider circulations the numbers of workers employed in the printing and paper trades continued to increase. And it is reported from America (Sunday Times 19 January) that a similar development has taken place there, following the use of new technology.

  The new technology revolution in American newspapers has brought increased circulations. a wider range of publications, and an increase in newspaper jobs — in spite of reduced manning in the composing rooms.

The increase of other jobs is of course no cause for gratification to the compositors whose jobs have gone. In general, technical developments hit hardest at older workers, unable to adapt to the new requirements.

And the argument of the capitalist economists ignores the fact that not only is capitalism always creating some unemployment but periodically it rises to peak levels, as at present and the parties of capitalism can do absolutely nothing to prevent it.

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: Take Over (2019)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sunday is supposed to be the day of rest and church-going. In fact, it is the day when about ten million British people excite themselves by reading in the News of the World all about sex sins of famous actresses and obscure country vicars.

The paper recently described itself as ‘as British as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding’ and perhaps, in a way, that is true. Little wonder, then, that when Pergamon Press launched its takeover bid the fight for the shares was a matter of popular concern.

It was one of the hardest fought of all takeovers. The News of the World warned darkly that ‘Mr. Robert Maxwell, a Socialist M.P., is trying to take . . . over’ and was careful enough to remind its readers that Maxwell (who was responsible for the Back Britain campaign) was ‘formerly Jan Ludwig Hoch.’

The NOW, it was clear, thought that the worst thing that could happen to British workers would be to have their favourite Sunday scandal sheet taken over by a naturalised Labour M.P.

Maxwell himself has never been famous for a reluctance to join the in-fighting. His delicate description of the man who defeated him — Australian newspaper owner Rupert Murdoch — was ‘motheaten kangaroo’, and after the shareholders’ votes had gone against him he (of all people) mourned that ‘the law of the jungle has won.’

These dignified exchanges should be remembered, the next time Maxwell, or the News of the World, complain about the alleged childishness of striking workers. In the meantime, let us extricate ourselves from the mire of the battle between rival capitalists so anxious to protect their bank balances and take a look at the real issue.

Modern capitalism is a society of unrelenting insecurity and poverty. Such is the degradation of its people that millions of them greedily swallow the muck dished out by rags like the News of the World.

It pays to produce this muck. The real issue is not who owns the muck-making machine, but what about the nature of a society which makes it worthwhile to produce it, and which stimulates the need for it?

(Socialist Standard, February 1969)

The Review Column: Take Over (1969)

The Review Column from the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Take Over

Sunday is supposed to be the day of rest and church-going. In fact, it is the day when about ten million British people excite themselves by reading in the News of the World all about sex sins of famous actresses and obscure country vicars.

The paper recently described itself as “as British as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding" and perhaps, in a way, that is true. Little wonder, then, that when Pergamon Press launched its take over bid the fight for the shares was a matter of popular concern.

It was one of the hardest fought of all take overs. The News of the World warned darkly that “Mr. Robert Maxwell, a Socialist M.P., is trying to take . . . over” and was careful enough to remind its readers that Maxwell (who was responsible for the Back Britain campaign) was “formerly Jan Ludwig Hoch."

The NOW, it was clear, thought that the worst thing that could happen to British workers would be to have their favourite Sunday scandal sheet taken over by a naturalised Labour M.P.

Maxwell himself has never been famous for a reluctance to join the infighting. His delicate description of the man who defeated him — Australian newspaper owner Robert Murdoch — was “mothbeaten kangaroo”, and after the shareholders’ votes had gone against him he (of all people) mourned that “the law of the jungle has won.”

These dignified exchanges should be remembered, the next time Maxwell, or the News of the World, complain about the alleged childishness of striking workers. In the meantime, let us extricate ourselves from the mire of the battle between rival capitalists so anxious to protect their bank balances and take a look at the real issue.

Modern capitalism is a society of unrelenting insecurity and poverty. Such is the degradation of its people that millions of them greedily swallow the muck dished out by rags like the News of the World.

It pays to produce this muck. The real issue is not who owns the muck-making machine, but what about the nature of a society which makes it worthwhile to produce it, and which stimulates the need for it?

The Dark Side of Space

Space flights, we are promised, have brought us all sorts of benefits — anti-corrosive fluids, improved transistors, non-stick frying pans. That seems to be the limit — no space technician has yet been able to show that, say, a solution to the deadly riddle of cancer is likely to result from the exploits of those daring young men circling the moon.

But before we start cheering about the frying pans we should reflect on the other results of the space programme. One thing which is obvious is that no world power is ever willing to spend the sort of money which is being poured into the Apollo flights in order to make life any easier.

The only justification capitalism will recognise for that sort of spending is military or economic. We already know that any improvements in rocket power and guidance systems are applied to the delivery systems of nuclear missiles. We have also heard that the space powers can now orbit nuclear bombs above the earth, selecting the point at which they will come back through the atmosphere and onto their target.

There is also the possibility — and how strong this may be is one of the things the Americans and the Russian are not in a hurry to publicise — that the moon and other planets contain valuable minerals, it is not far fetched, then, to imagine a power struggle for possession of the planets, in space and so for dominance over the space lanes.

These should have been sobering thoughts for the world, as it goggled at the fantastic pictures coming back from Apollo 8 over Christmas. The glamour and excitement of it all obscured the cold, unpleasant realities but one day they will have to be faced, just as we have had to face the realities of the exploits of the Wright brothers.

The crew of Apollo 8 are brave men, dedicated to what they believe is the advance of humanity. This is not the first time capitalism has taken such useful instincts and perverted them for its own inhuman purposes.

Getting Tough

Whenever she is pressed on the point, Barbara Castle stubbornly insists that she is a left wing socialist — which in her vocabulary means the very opposite of someone who acts as she does in her job as boss of the Department of Employment and Productivity.

After her determined axing of wage claims under the Prices and Incomes Act, Castle is now getting ready for what might be her biggest fight so far. The government are preparing legislation which, under the name “reform”, will be nothing other than another restriction on the unions.

Castle wants a 28 day cooling off period before some strikes and compulsory balloting before official national strikes, with prosecution and fines for those who break the law.

Both sides of industry are pressing for changes in these proposals; the employers want them tougher and the unions are timidly asking for some relaxations.

Whatever happens, we are clearly in for another step in what may be one of Labour’s dearest ambitions — the control of wages. It is reasonable to wonder whether the government is clinging to office, in face of the humiliating election results, only long enough to attempt that particular piece of dirty work for the British capitalist class.

The government are justifying their proposals with the weary argument that if they don’t do it the Tories will — which is a clear admission that Labour is as much the enemy of the unions as the Tories.

Then there is the case put up for the ballots — that it is the democratic way of doing it, that a national strike which affects millions of people should not be decided upon by a handful of men.

In practice, the ballot might be a two edged weapon. In the meantime, may we ask how far Labour will carry this democratic idea? When they want to take a decision on something which will affect millions of people — like devaluation, prescription charges and so on, will they arrange a ballot before they act?

No prizes are offered for the answer to that question.