Voice From The Back: Kids and Capitalism (2008)

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

Kids and Capitalism

The author of the Harry Potter books JK Rowling recently donated £1 million to the Labour Party because she thought they were doing more to solve the problem of child poverty than the Tories would. She obviously could have not seen the following news item. “Millions of children in the UK are living in, or on the brink of, poverty, a report claims. The Campaign to End Child Poverty says 5.5 million children are in families that are classed as ‘struggling’ – 98% of children in some areas. The campaign classes households as being in poverty if they are living on under £10 per person per day. … The Campaign to End Child Poverty is a coalition of more than 130 organisations including Barnardo’s, Unicef and the NSPCC. According to its research, there are 4,634,000 children in England living in low income families, 297,000 in Wales, 428,000 in Scotland and 198,000 in Northern Ireland. It says 174 of the 646 parliamentary constituencies in Britain have 50% or more of their child population in, or close to, the poverty line.” (BBC News, 30 September) JK Rowling may be a very good writer, but obviously she is not a great thinker.

Capitalist priorities

We live in a society where millions try to survive on a $1.25 a day, where children die for the lack of clean water and yet this society spends billions of dollars trying to find more efficient ways to kill people. The priorities of socialism would be to feed, clothe and shelter its citizens but capitalism has other priorities. “Top U.S. Army officials on Monday said a $160 billion Future Combat Systems modernization program managed by Boeing Co and SAIC Inc was ‘on budget, on track,’ but could see changes over time. Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said the Army was going through a detailed review of 14 separate weapon systems included in the program to ensure that the technologies involved were on schedule. ‘We’re committed to Future Combat Systems. It’s just a question of adjusting as the world changes, and as the need changes,’ Army Secretary Pete Geren told reporters at the annual Association of the U.S. Army meeting. …The Army’s FCS program is a family of 14 manned and unmanned aerial and ground systems, tied together by communications and information links.” (Yahoo News, 6 October) Lots and lots of money to kill, bugger all for starving kids. That is how capitalism operates.

A Much Better Idea

Robert Reich, former US secretary of labour, commenting on the recent economic crisis showed that he understood that China was a capitalist country when he said “There are still only two kinds of capitalism. There’s authoritarian capitalism as in China and Singapore, and there’s democratic capitalism as in US and Europe. If there’s anyone out there who has a better idea, I’m sure the world would love to hear it.” (Newsweek, 13 October) If someone can get us Mr Reich’s address we will send him a subscription to the Socialist Standard so he can learn about the socialist alternative. Although we don’t think he would be too impressed, because we want to get rid of the exploitative system that gives him a privileged existence.

Putting his foot in it

Last year when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown outlined his annual budget speech with these words – “Britain’s growth will continue into its 60th and 61st quarter and beyond . . . Inflation has fallen from 3% to 2.8%, and will fall further this year to 2% . . . Looking ahead to 2008 and 2009 inflation will also be on target. And we will never return to the old boom and burst.” (quoted in Time, 13 October) He was warmly applauded by the Labour benches and praised by the press for his sagacity and prudence. What a difference a year makes. Inflation stands at about 4.7 percent, banks mortgage lenders have been taken over on the verge of bankruptcy and a deep economic recession looks likely. Capitalism is an anarchic, uncontrollable system. Boom and burst are the very foundation of capitalism. No doubt a future Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer will in turn pretend that he can control this mad profit system. Capitalism makes fools of the politicians who claim to be able to control it.

Another Reform of Capitalism?

When socialists see workers cram into buses and underground trains on their way to work, we often remark that if cattle were crammed into transport like that on their way to the slaughterhouse there would be a public outcry by Animal Rights groups. Workers are often treated worse than animals but this latest outburst against the working class takes a bit of beating. “An Australian politician has used his first speech to parliament to call for unemployed idlers to be stung with a cattle prod to get them to work. John Williams, a former truck driver, shearer, farmer and small business owner who only took his place in the Senate on July 1, said he had seen many people living on employment benefits who were ‘determined not to work’. ‘They are simply getting a free ride on behalf of tax payers of Australia and it is about time they received a touch on the backside with a cattle prodder to get them off their butts and actually do some work,’ he said.” (Yahoo News, 16 September) To use his fellow Australians use of the language – what a bahstard!

Depths of alienation (2003)

Book Review from the April 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Culture of Make-Believe. Derrick Jensen, New York, Context Books, 2002

The Future of Success. Robert B. Reich, New York, Knopf, 2001

The stream of books coming out of America on the Holy Global Empire of capitalism continues unabated. The tale is of two classes: arrogant winners and collateral losers, private wealth and public poverty, triumphalist insecurity for the elite and traumatic insecurity for the mass. The system is enthusiastically praised, superficially criticised, but never seriously opposed. There Is No Alternative - or, if you prefer the sporting metaphor, capitalism is the only game in town.

With Derrick Jensen's 700-page blockbuster you get more or less what it says in the blurb: “the atrocities that characterise so much of our culture - from . . .  modern slavery and corporate misdeeds to manufacturing disasters, death squads in developing nations and the destruction of the natural world”. The text is discursive, even gabby. There is no index, which suggests that the author wants you to read it as a novel for entertainment, not a polemic for study.

To give Jensen his due, he's good on slavery:

“. . . the power relationship between slaveholders and slaves can be broken into three components. The first is social, and involves the use or threat of violence by the slaveholder to control the slave. The second is psychological, and has to do with convincing the slaves to perceive their slavery as actually being in their own best interests. The third is cultural, and has to do with transforming force into a right of the powerful and obedience into a duty of the powerless. . .”

He can't bring himself to explicitly oppose wage slavery and the capitalist system of which it is an integral part. Instead he seeks to shock us with the revelation that his solution is to get rid of civilisation. On the last page we get a sanitised biblical story: the appropriately-named Ham, rather than being condemned to perpetual enslavement, feels a happy, fecund sense of freedom.

As an economist, Robert Reich is more upfront about capitalism, which he takes for better and for worse. The good news is for consumers, who can "shift allegiance with the click of a mouse" because they live in "the age of the terrific deal". But the bad news is about quality of non-consuming life: more frenzy, less security, loss of time and energy for friendship, community and self.

Reading through Reich's prose, with its chapter heads like “Of geeks and shrinks” and “The sale of the self”, gives the impression that the author is writing about and for people very much like himself. Of the 6 billion people in the world only perhaps a billion or so have regular employment, and by no means all of those worry about their CV and how they present themselves at interview. Yet Reich asserts that:

“In the new economy, you get ahead not by being well liked but being well marketed… Talented people are even selling shares in themselves… Once, the worst thing that could be said of someone was that he had sold out. Now the worst thing that can be said is that he's not selling”.

By this reckoning, capitalism has plunged depths of alienation that Marx could only have had nightmares about.

Stan Parker