Material World: It’s the Economy, Stupid! (2026)

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

So said James Carville, a political strategist on Bill Clinton’s successful campaign to win the American presidency in 1992. It was written up on a whiteboard in Clinton’s Little Rock headquarters, as a reminder to campaign workers to remain focused on the recession then affecting voters.

A decade and a half earlier the Italian historian, Carlo M. Cipolla, wrote his essay, ‘The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity’. His basic contention was that everyone always underestimates the number of stupid people there are.

Stupidity is generally defined as acting foolishly or carelessly, in an apparently stunned or blank manner, or being ridiculous to an extreme degree. It is important at this point to establish that Cipolla wasn’t using stupidity as a synonym for idiocy or lack of intelligence. But rather it is a human feature of many, perhaps all, whatever an individual’s mental acuity.

Everyone, if they are honest with themselves, will be able to identify personal examples of their own stupidity, indeed they are likely to be many and various. Usually, they do not result in anything too serious, more often nothing worse than inconvenience or embarrassment. Occasionally, though there is injury, or worse

At the Kremlin

Consider two presidents, one Russian, the other American and their current wars. If there is one huge lesson the Second World War should have taught Russia’s present leader it’s that a powerful military force can be thwarted by a determined population.

Stalingrad was thoroughly bombed, shelled and otherwise blasted for over five months. 90 percent of the city was taken by the aggressors with almost half a million military and 40,000 civilian casualties. Yet not only did it not surrender but became the instance from which the invaders suffered ultimate defeat. Four decades later the Russians became the insurgent force in Afghanistan only to suffer defeat and expulsion at the hands of a seemingly inferior military.

So what induces the present Kremlin incumbent to consider victory in Ukraine likely? Dreadful as they are, the missiles and drones launched against the cities are not anything like the razing of Stalingrad. If the intention was to thwart NATO, the consequence has been to strengthen its resolve and expand it. To have expected otherwise, in the face of previous experiences, appears to be an exemplar of stupidity, at an awful and avoidable cost.

In the White House

Meanwhile, in the White House, stupidity seems to be the order of the day. The Vietnam War is not so long ago its conduct and outcome can have been forgotten. B52 bombers that were to return Hanoi to the Stone Age proved far less effective than bicycles down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. America’s own, more recent, experience in Afghanistan, with the eventual return to government of the Taliban should have highlighted how all too easy it is to become embroiled in bellicose misadventures.

The setting aside once more of historical experience has ensnared the Commander in Chief in a conflict he is having great difficulty in extricating himself from. Indeed, it could well lead to the regime in Tehran becoming stronger. Stupidity wrapped in stars and stripes.

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to identify any war the outcome of which was an unmitigated success for a winner. For any supposed winner there may be some short-term spoils, but any such resolution is subsequently unravelled by further conflict arising directly or indirectly from that martial discord.

Following leaders

The present system is driven by the accumulation of capital, which requires nation states to compete for resources, trade routes and markets, competition that all too often manifests as armed conflict. Governments of all types have to serve the interests of capital, the unfettered, as far as possible, pursuit of profit. It doesn’t matter what governments or politicians promise their citizens – better welfare at home or conquests abroad – the imperative of profit will be the deciding factor.

There are of course those for whom war is not stupidity writ large, the arms manufacturers. A huge industry worldwide it consumes massive amounts of scientific research time, resources and labour power, as well as the lives of multitudinous casualties military and civilian.

Consider how humanity worldwide would benefit if that effort was focused on meeting people’s needs rather than profiting from their deaths. It must be stupidity to persevere with maintaining a system that cannot be anything other than careless of human need.

Any campaigning against the arms industry is opposed not only by shareholders who want their dividend from the profits, governments covetous of tax revenue and, also, the trade unions of those employed in the industry. Yet the best interests of all, even the shareholders, would be in establishing a cooperative worldwide society that wasn’t riven by nationalism, wars, terrorism and all such manifestations of inhumanity.

However, for as long as people continue to lend their support, via the ballot box or other means, to political individuals or parties while expecting, or hoping for, better outcomes they are denying their own experiences. Rather than accepting the need to play an active part in determining a very different society, they continue to be passive recipients of whatever capitalism deigns to spare them. This is not congenital, but elective, which means it is eminently possible to choose otherwise.

One of the basic laws Cipolla formulated in his pamphlet was ‘A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or a group of persons while himself deriving no gain or even possibly incurring losses’.

Consider the two leaders referred to above, along with leaders in general, in the light of Ciprolla’s law. How long is humanity to be subjected to leadership stupidity? How long is humanity going to continue the stupidity of following leaders?

James Carville was certainly no socialist, but he unintentionally acceded to socialist understanding. Because it is the economy, the worldwide economy that is ultimately the determining factor of the quality of life to be shared by all.

D. A.

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Ukraine is being devastated… The threat of escalation to nuclear war intensifies. Perhaps worst of all, in terms of long-term consequences, the meager efforts to address global heating have been largely reversed. Some are doing fine. The US military and fossil fuel industries are drowning in profit, with great prospects for their missions of destruction many years ahead… Meanwhile, scarce resources that are desperately needed to salvage a livable world, and to create a much better one, are being wasted in destruction and slaughter, and planning for even greater catastrophes’.

[CounterPunch]

‘We really don’t have time for the Marxists, Leninists, Trotskyists, Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Spartacists, Revolutionary Communists or whatever sect in Your Party to get their shit together in order to take on the challenges we face – they might never overcome their miniscule differences or the battle of the £1 newspapers,’ Mish Rahman, a former Labour politician-turned-Your-Party-insider who defected to the Greens last month, told Novara Media. Rahman said he doubts the differences between the two camps are as substantive as they’re made out: ‘[Sultana and Corbyn] are not far off each other [politically], it’s just a proxy war for control’. 

[NovaraMedia]

‘”They say they don’t have enough homes, but look at how many empty ones there are – [the council] just doesn’t want to fix and repair them,” says mother-of-one Vanessa. She lives on Central Hill estate in Lambeth but only in temporary accommodation and says she’s been left “in limbo”. Dozens of properties on the south London estate are unoccupied, one for eight years, and yet the borough has the third-highest housing waiting lists in the capital – something that Vanessa, who has been waiting for a social home for three years, describes as “outrageous”’. 

[BBC]

Los Angeles spent about $418 million on homelessness programs in 2025, yet only a small share went toward helping people leave the streets for good, according to the New York Post. A recent City Hall report suggests most of the money supports short-term services that manage homelessness rather than resolve it. 

[ZeroHedge]

In 2021, there were only two diagnosed silicosis cases in California. In 2025 there were 214. ‘The number of cases is rising rapidly’ Dr. Michaels wrote to me, ‘That’s the important point’. Here’s the more tearful description from Dr. Michaels..: The hallmarks of the disease: shortness of breath and diminished exercise capacity that progresses to an inability to climb even one flight of stairs. A short walk that should take just 20 minutes can take an hour. Working is difficult or impossible. People cough incessantly. They can’t sleep because it is difficult to breathe and they are kept awake coughing. Over time, people with more advanced silicosis require supplemental oxygen and can’t leave home without an oxygen tank. And they are at increased risk of dying from lung cancer. The crime behind this slaughter is that safer, profitable substitutes are available. 

[Common Dreams]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

A youth panel at the conference examined how Germany’s political establishment is pressuring young people into the armed forces not only through direct reforms, but also through policies that attack livelihoods. The situation imposed onto young workers and students today amounts to ‘economic blackmail’ for those without wealthy families to support them, argued Max Radtke of the trade union ver.di…The reintroduction of conscription should be understood as a question of class interests, added David Christner of Junge Linke (Young Left). He emphasized the need for a sharper analysis of ‘who is being sent to kill and die, and for whose interests’, saying that the political imperative at this point is to develop a ‘practical alternative to repression and militarization’. 

[peoples dispatch]

How Does Yoga Alleviate Child Poverty in India? Yoga classes can offer several benefits, particularly for children living in poverty. They: 1. Provide mindfulness and resilience. These sessions provide a break from daily life, where minds are taken off of hardship outside. Students gradually develop inner strength and willpower that they can take home with them. 2. Build a community. Children feel safe making friends and coming out of their shells. They will feel less alone and it makes the day-to-day that little bit easier. 3. Improve physical health. By building physical strength, students are less likely to contract illnesses and injuries, thereby increasing attendance at school and reducing stress on health care systems. 

[The Borgen Project]

Wide-scale desertions and 2 million draft-dodgers are among a raft of challenges facing Ukraine’s military. 

[AP]

People are now openly confronting the authorities, with a few lucky ones escaping conscription. Sadly, other videos show men being forced into vehicles by recruiters or beaten to death. This past summer, József Sebestyén, a Hungarian from Transcarpathia, died during his forced conscription. The Ukrainian authorities tried by all means to cover up his case. In the video, recorded in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine, a crowd of civilians surrounds a police car in which a man has been placed. In the recording, people can be heard protesting, standing in front of the car, and preventing the vehicle from leaving the scene. Ukrainians are fed up with war and even more fed up with having to see their loved ones die for it. They are now openly speaking out against family members, friends, and neighbors being dragged away.

[ZeroHedge]

. . . one of Beckert’s more arresting contentions is that for most human beings, through most of history, the idea of working full-time, not for their own provisions but for cash, was utterly alien: the proletariat almost always had to be forced into being. Sometimes this involved slavery or indentured labour, but just as often it was accomplished by undermining the traditional basis for subsistence production. By enclosing, for example, common lands in Georgian England, or indeed through more recent restrictions on access to the plains of Ethiopia or the forests of Indonesia. 

[Prospect]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Editorial: New year, same shit . . . (2026)

Editorial from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last year, 2025, could only be considered a success story for capitalism in the sense that the world didn’t end in total destruction. For many though, it was a disaster. Think Gaza, where survivors starve among the ruins after a genocidal slaughter that will only cause further wars. No wonder states don’t want to pay to rebuild Gaza, just to see it levelled again. Think Darfur and South Sudan, with massacres committed by the Rapid Support Force using weapons purchased by the United Arab Emirates from western states including the UK, and allegedly donated as part of an arms-for-gold deal. The gold mines of Darfur have been a ghastly resource curse. The locals have paid with their lives so that capitalist deals get done.

Two corrupt power blocs on the European landmass continued putting human beings into the meat grinder of war, while the very people elected or appointed to serve the Ukrainian people instead trousered over a hundred million dollars intended to protect energy infrastructure and keep the winter lights on. This is what nationalism gets you. Workers die in trenches while the bosses find ways to get rich out of it.

Many other wars got less media coverage, including the ongoing multi-sided slaughter in Myanmar, a real-world example of the Hobbesian ‘war of all against all’. When a big earthquake struck the country in March, killing around 5,000 people, some rebel groups called for a ceasefire as they sent aid workers into affected areas. The military junta, according to reports, had no such humanitarian concerns and instead bombed and strafed the aid workers.

Despite glimmers of hopeful news as Generation Z protesters overthrew a brutal regime in Nepal, world politics in 2025 seemed to be all about tearing up of the rules-based order, led with orgiastic zeal by Donald Trump and his coterie of talentless sycophants. Seeing the world’s politicians cravenly kissing this man’s feet in the hope of favours was stomach-turning, and it didn’t work anyway. The far-right in almost every country has been given a huge boost as this deluded Caligula lays waste to every human principle of fairness and decency, merit and reason, equality and environmental safety. No capitalist politician is ever going to ‘fix’ capitalism, but some seem determined to make it worse. The name of Trump may come to be spat on by posterity as a loathsome icon of narcissism, ‘grab ’em by the pussy’ sexism, and kleptocratic greed. He’s already being sued over his stupid ballroom, so maybe that will be demolished too.

But in a way Trump has done the world a favour, by ripping off the civilised veneer and showing everyone what capitalism really is, instead of what it pretends to be. It was never a rules-based order. It’s always been ‘might equals right’ and screw the little guy.

Meanwhile over in the UK, the fractured left try once again to unite around a vague wish-list of reforms aimed at making capitalism just a tiny bit less awful. What they should be doing is calling for the end of capitalism, because that’s the only thing that will work. Instead they clamber back on the carousel horse of reformism to go round one more time, learning nothing, changing nothing, in a perpetual triumph of hope over experience. This year, if you can find a way, help us get the message across: end capitalism, before it ends us.

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the November 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The unrest reflected much deeper frustrations, including high unemployment, particularly among young people, growing poverty and anger at corruption and mismanagement. People see public resources channelled into luxury spending and infrastructure deals benefiting a few powerful figures connected to the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), while basic services and jobs are neglected.

[Inter Press Service News Agency]

In 1978, Clive James reviewed the official biography of Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982) by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, CPSU Central Committee. “I read the whole thing from start to finish, waiting for the inevitable slip-up which would result in a living sentence. It never happened.” James found it so dull that “If you were to recite even a single page in the open air, birds would fall out of the sky and dogs drop dead.” 

[MSN]

The announced $7 billion would be the biggest official tranche of funding to Ukraine’s drone industry so far. It’s close to the $6 billion that Ukraine’s defense minister, Denys Shmyhal, has said Kyiv needs to cover this year’s production of first-person-view drones, interceptors, long-range drones, and missiles. While new, Ukraine’s drone industry has increasingly been in the spotlight for producing cheap but effective weapons regularly being used to destroy Russian loitering munitions, armor, artillery, and production facilities. 

[Yahoo]

From an anarcho-communist perspective, this moment is not simply about one man’s death. It is about the world that produced both Charlie Kirk and the man who killed him. It is about capitalism’s ever-present violence, about the state’s monopoly on force, about the way political antagonisms are escalating into open bloodshed. It is about what happens when a society soaks every interaction in hierarchy, coercion, alienation, and humiliation, and then acts shocked when someone pulls a trigger…Wage labour itself is enforced by violence. If you refuse to work, you starve, or you are policed, or imprisoned. The entire edifice of private property rests on threat and force. 

[The Slow Burning Fuse]

North Korea’s Kim vows to build a ‘socialist paradise’ [sic]. 

[Morning Star]

Having a home of our own is essential to leading a dignified life, but in Venezuela, where access to housing is enshrined as a right in the Constitution, renting adequate accommodation is an unattainable luxury for hundreds of thousands of families, and buying property is almost impossible. Not only do market prices far exceed the average household income but inflation has also wiped out home loans, leaving citizens without access to financing. 

[Equal Times]

There is no genetic or biological basis for dividing the human race into distinct “races”. There are just groups of human beings — all of whom came from Africa originally — who developed slightly different physical characteristics over time as they travelled to, and adapted to, different climates and environments. 

[The Conversation]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Proper Gander: Being informed about informers (2025)

The Proper Gander column from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was probably a coincidence that a BBC documentary about the tyrannical Russian state was released on the same day as the government’s Defence Secretary John Healey announced increased investment to move the UK to ‘war-fighting readiness’, especially against Russia. While its timing gave the programme a propagandist tinge, it doesn’t consider how the Russian state may be a danger to those of us in the UK, but rather how it oppresses those living under its rule.

The threat of being ‘denounced’, to the extent it exists in Russia, isn’t something easy to empathise with elsewhere. Aspects of what it means to be ‘denounced’ are found in any country, as all have legislation covering what politically-motivated acts are deemed unacceptable, and anyone risks the consequences for their employment, for instance, of being publicly ‘shamed’. However, in Russia, the laws are especially strict and the state monitors dissent from its decrees closely, and so to be ‘denounced’ for transgressing them can mean particularly harsh punishments. One way which supposedly subversive activities come to the state’s attention is through informers. The two featured in the documentary Informers: Hunting The Enemy Within aren’t employed in this role, which they’ve taken on like an enthusiastically-pursued hobby. They gather up information online and in the media about would-be dissenters and often alongside targeting them directly, notify the state regulator, who may then further investigate and prosecute.

One of the informers is Valentin Botzvin, an armed forces veteran who has become ‘self-appointed guardians of Russia’s soul’, as the narration puts it. He targets those who he says ‘are forming an anti-peace system with different values’, including Alisa Gorshenina, who contributed to the design for a video by activist band Pussy Riot. The other snout featured in the programme – Anna Korobkova – is more prolific, claiming to have written 1,000 denouncements. One victim was Alexandra Arkhipova, a social anthropologist at a Russian university. In 2022, Anna sent Alexandra’s employers a letter about her ‘immoral act’ discrediting the military through her academic work, and some of her friends and colleagues were also similarly accused. Alexandra fled to France and began investigating Anna’s real identity, such as by looking for patterns in their style of writing and comparing them with other texts. The camera used for photos on Anna’s Wikipedia entry was tracked to a man called Ivan Abaturov. Alexandra found a written denouncement signed by Ivan which resembled one sent by Anna, and both were traced back to one computer IP address. When challenged, Ivan replied denying he was Anna, in the same writing style. He is described as having been a troublemaker while at university and as himself has posted on social media talking about denouncements.

While revealing ‘Anna”s true identity gives the documentary a narrative and an air of espionage, Valentin the veteran is quite open about informing. As a member of Russia’s military, he had already developed a loyalty to the state, which no doubt gave him the drive to snitch in his retirement. That there are younger people, such as Ivan, who are as keen to denounce others shows how this creed has permeated out. While they may sincerely believe that what they are doing is morally right, this is because they have adopted a belief system which just so happens to align with that of the ruling elite, even if it is against their class interests.

The mindset of those who are at risk of being informed upon is different. As Alisa explains, the threat of retribution for expressing nonconformist views makes her fearful and paranoid. Alexandra felt she had to leave Russia, as did Noize MC, a rapper who was being monitored for his ‘sharp, socially conscious lyrics’, with some of his gigs being cancelled by officials. Alisa chose to remain in Russia, saying that to leave would be to have something else taken away from her, along with her rights. A caption at the end of the programme says that she was arrested, detained and found guilty of displaying an ‘extremist’ rainbow emoji and insulting the army, for which she was fined. We’re also told that by the end of 2024, almost 3,000 critics of the war against Ukraine were being prosecuted, while almost 300,000 denunciations were registered with the state regulator in the first year of the conflict.

When a state criminalises disagreement with its ideology, this shows a weakness in any arguments for it. But this weakness is eclipsed by the strength wielded by the state through its legislation and punishments. These are applied randomly in Russia, as Alexandra explains, in that one person may avoid any sanctions for writing a provocative social media post, while others may get prosecuted just for clicking ‘like’ on one. This may be due to gaps in the resources available to the state, but as Alexandra says, this inconsistency contributes to the threat. For those who question the way they have to live, anxiety about being denounced adds pressure to self-censor. Music acts such as Pussy Riot and Noize MC bravely attempt to express some anti-state sentiment, which represents a little optimism. Unfortunately, at the moment, state oppression and limited class consciousness would make any movement for genuine change in Russia difficult to establish.

According to its iPlayer page, the BBC Eye strand offers ‘high-impact investigations and in-depth reporting from our award-winning World Service team’. With a running time of only 22 minutes, there’s a limit to how in-depth Informers: Hunting The Enemy Within could be. So the documentary doesn’t consider the context much beyond saying that denouncers threaten to ‘bring back ghosts from Russia’s past’, particularly during Stalin’s rule. Throughout the decades between then and now, the state has remained, and even when it has been less autocratic it has still enforced and engendered acceptance to maintain itself. These ‘ghosts’ may now be more active, but they’ve always haunted those living under the regime.

Mike Foster

Halo, Halo! (2025)

The Halo Halo Column from the April 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, now hopefully coming to an end, the Russian Orthodox Church had 300 military clergy there with the Russian armed forces.

A metropolitan high-ranking bishop was concerned that this number was far too low. 1,500 priests controlling the ‘sinful spirit of revenge’ that apparently soldiers are heir to having seen their comrades killed and mutilated in front of their eyes is a moral and spiritual challenge that the priests are there to rectify. As Thomas Hobbes said in another context, the life of a combatant in any conflict can be short, brutish and nasty.

Apparently ‘neo-paganism’ is viewed by the Church as a serious issue because this stimulates ‘animalistic qualities’. In other words, they commit atrocities, we commit atrocities. Anyone who condemns war would agree that horrible things shouldn’t happen but conflicts don’t occur using Queensbury rules.

The Orthodox church is more concerned that such actions put those committing them into a state of ‘sin’. Here’s the cruncher: ‘A believer finds it easier to face the line of fire and defy death’ (Kommersant).

Monty Python famously lampooned religious fanaticism in their film, Life of Brian, as well as their sketch in which ‘nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition’. The Inquisition, established by Catholic Pope Gregory IX in 1231 initially authorised Dominican and Franciscan friars to investigate and suppress heresy. From 1252 torture was used to extract confessions, This was licenced by Pope Innocent IV. A misnomer as innocents who chose to have different beliefs were tormented into accepting the status quo.

The Roman Inquisition formed in 1542 is said to have been less violent, concentrating on suppressing ideas which the Church did not like. In 1633 Galileo was forced to retract his work which disproved the orthodoxy that the Earth was the centre of the universe. The Spanish Inquisition, founded in 1478 by Ferdinand and Isabella, is well known historically for its extreme violence toward those who came under its influence.

Protestantism had its own unhealthy obsession – witches. The 1968 film, Witchfinder General, based upon the activities of Matthew Hopkins, offers none of the light relief of Monty Python. It is a horror film which depicts the fearfulness that arises when power, allied to religious zealotry, impacts the lives of those who just want to be left in peace. It is believed that over a three-year period Hopkins was responsible for the deaths of around 300 people. These were mainly women. It’s estimated that perhaps eighty percent of witch-trial victims were women. Misogyny looms large in religions.

In Africa, the senseless behaviour of centuries ago is still being enacted. Once, so-called witches were dunked under water and if they survived were presumed guilty, but innocent if they drowned. In Angola, in 2024, people were forced to drink poison in order to prove their innocence of witchcraft accusations made against them. 50 people died.

Who says that religion is about love and peace?

DC

Editorial: An end to the war in Ukraine? (2025)

Editorial from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hopefully the war in Ukraine will end quickly. Ideally, it should end immediately and unconditionally — in the interest of humanity in general and the working class in particular, the killing and destruction should just stop — but this is not how wars end. Unless one side wins outright, there are negotiations based on the perceived balance of force between the two sides.

Russia claims the main issue at stake in Ukraine has been whether or not the country should join NATO, with the rulers of the Russian state arguably perceiving this as an existential threat in the same way that in 1962 the rulers of the USA saw the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba. On that occasion Russia backed down and the crisis was defused. In 2022 the US and its allies in NATO refused to back down. So did Russia and they decided to invade.

Normally, wars are fought to win but the US declared that its aim was limited to weakening Russia by forcing it to divert resources into fighting a war without end. Russia has been waging war to win, perhaps not necessarily to conquer the whole of Ukraine but certainly to conquer as much as it can along its frontier and to force Ukraine to sue for peace.

Russia would certainly like to capture Odessa and Kharkov too but it looks as if they will have to settle for the 20 percent of mineral-rich Ukraine that they have already taken, if only on condition that what’s left of Ukraine doesn’t join NATO (or, ideally, the EU either). A block on NATO membership seems to be what Trump has offered Putin as the basis for a settlement, which has come as shock both to the Ukrainian government and the European members of NATO.

The European leaders were also shocked at the US exploiting Ukraine’s weakness to extract free access to rare earth metals there. They saw this as ‘transactional’ and said NATO was about ‘defending democracy’ rather than such sordid considerations. Maybe NATO is not primarily economic but this was no shock to socialists. It’s how we would expect a state engaged in the competitive struggle for profits to behave given half a chance,

Why this change of US attitude? We can only speculate. America seems to have decided that Ukraine’s joining NATO is not after all that strategically important from its point of view, especially when it has other, more important strategic considerations in East Asia and the South China Sea and has arguably been pulling back from many of its foreign commitments for years, the latest being Afghanistan.

Since the complete defeat of the USSR in the Cold War, represented by its break-up into independent states at the end of December 1991, what was left as Russia has not constituted too much of a threat to the US as such. No doubt there are revanchists among Russia’s ruling elite who dream of re-incorporating the parts of the former USSR such as the Baltic statelets, but not necessarily to overrun the whole of the rest of Europe, as claimed by war-mongering generals and fabulating politicians.

The US has decided that that’s not its problem but Europe’s to deal with — and, more particularly, to pay for. European governments, including Labour here, are to increase military spending. Another example of how capitalism wastes resources that, in a different world, could be used to meet people’s needs.

Paid to Kill (2024)

Book Review from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Wagner Group: Inside Russia’s Mercenary Army. By Jack Margolin. Reaktion Books £15.99.

Mercenaries have existed through much of history, at least since Ancient Greek times. A well-known recent example was the US firm Blackwater, which has since undergone a number of name changes after some of its employees killed seventeen Iraqi civilians in 2007 (the killers were imprisoned, but later pardoned by Trump). The term ‘private military contractor’ is sometimes used as supposedly sounding less nasty. Here Jack Margolin recounts the history of the Wagner organisation; his work is diligently researched, though quite a lot remains unclear.

The boss of Wagner was Evgeniy Prigozhin, a thug who had spent nine years in prison for theft but later became a business-owner. After the collapse of the USSR, private military companies began to flourish, often doing the dirty work that state security services preferred to steer clear of. Wagner seems to have originated in eastern Ukraine in 2014, as pro-Russia separatists endeavoured to set up regimes not linked to Kyiv, and it may even have been created by the Russian state.

In 2015-6 Wagner soldiers fought in Syria, defending the Assad government on behalf of Russia but also making a profit from Syrian oil. Many front companies were put in place then and later, and an agreement was signed with the Syrian regime that entitled Wagner to up to a quarter of the revenue from oil extracted at sites they had ‘liberated’. Attention was then turned to Africa, fighting and making profits in Sudan and then the Central African Republic with its sizeable mineral resources. Wagner established a regional hub in Libya and in 2022 its fighters were responsible for a massacre at Moura in Mali, where at least five hundred people were killed and women and girls were raped. It is not possible to put a figure on Wagner’s income from government payments (including the Russian state) and its profiting from resource exploitation.

Wagner probably became most notorious for its part in the Russian invasion of Ukraine from 2022, though it took a few weeks for it to play any role. It was allowed to recruit from prisons, promising amnesty to those who ‘volunteered’. They had perhaps five thousand fighting in Ukraine, most of them convicts, which helped the Putin regime to avoid introducing conscription. Deserters were killed, often with a sledgehammer, which became a kind of symbol of Wagner.

But as the invasion wore on, Wagner and Prigozhin began to distrust Russia’s military leadership, a feeling that was mutual. In June 2023 it was decreed that private military companies would have to sign a contract with the Ministry of Defence. This would put Wagner and others in a subordinate role, Prigozhin refused to accept it, and a mutiny or putsch took place. A convoy of Wagner vehicles and fighters occupied the city of Rostov, in the hope that Russian army soldiers would join them. A march towards Moscow started, but this was abandoned after an intervention from Aleksandr Lukashenko, president of Belarus (though it is not clear precisely what happened). Wagner forces were evicted from Russia and moved to Belarus. Then in August a plane carrying Prigozhin and other Wagner leaders crashed north of Moscow, killing all those on board. According to Margolin, it is pretty likely, though not absolutely certain, that it was Putin who ordered Prigozhin’s assassination, just as other rivals and critical journalists have been killed.

Margolin suggests that embattled governments may well continue to make use of private military forces, as will rebels too, with the state not having an absolute monopoly on violence. But whoever does the fighting, it will be in the interest of rulers or would-be rulers of one kind and another, and it will be ordinary people who will suffer and be killed.

Paul Bennett

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘I cried deep inside of my heart’, said Nisa, now 32, recounting her first contract wedding. ‘Who wants to sleep with an old man? I did this purely for the money, so my parents can eat and my siblings can go to school.’ With her encouragement, her sister also became a contract bride, bringing in a dowry of $3,000 for her first marriage because she was a virgin. Nisa estimated that she herself has been in 20 contract marriages (‘Sex tourism in Indonesia sells itself as Islamic temporary marriage’.) 

(Los Angeles Times).

‘Interestingly, some of these people were supporters of the communist regime only a few years ago. There are of course others who are still convinced by CCP propaganda, who believe that China is the safest place in the world and that everywhere else is in chaos’, Cui adds. He attributes China’s economic development to “the hard work of the people” who are exploited by Party leaders. As an example of the lack of political rights, he cites the fact that the regime has taken away the freedom and wealth of nouveau riche figures like Xu Jiayin and Jack Ma. He cites the words of late Premier Li Keqiang, who made public in 2020 that some 600 million Chinese live on less than US$140 a month. 

(Equal Times)

As for national liberation, all one can say is that with friends like Hamas, Palestinians do not need enemies. Rather than freedom, the so-called ‘Islamic Resistance’ has nothing to offer them but poverty and bloodshed. Hamas’s position is crystal clear. ‘These are necessary sacrifices’, military commander Yahya Sinwar said of the mass. destruction in Gaza in a communication with fellow Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar. 

(Daniel Lazere)

‘While Ukraine presses on with its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, its troops are still losing precious ground along the country’s eastern front – a grim erosion that military commanders blame in part on poorly trained recruits drawn from a recent mobilization drive, as well as Russia’s clear superiority in ammunition and air power. “Some people don’t want to shoot. They see the enemy in the firing position in trenches but don’t open fire. … That is why our men are dying,” said a frustrated battalion commander in Ukraine’s 47th Brigade’. 

(Libcom)

Ahn Chang-ho, who opposes anti-discrimination laws, also rejects the theory of evolution and wants creationism lessons in schools. A former judge nominated to lead South Korea’s human rights body has sparked outrage with his comments against the LGBTQ community and the theory of evolution, with observers citing him as proof of the country’s flawed system for official appointments. Ahn Chang-ho, 67, is under scrutiny for his statements in parliament suggesting that homosexuality is a tool used by communists to incite revolution. 

(MSN)

In a healthy ecosystem, the various sets of animal … get along with each other without the need of any system of authority or dominance—indeed, without overriding structure or organization of any kind soever. 

(Counterpunch)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The richest 1% of Norwegians held 22% of net wealth in 2022, according to Statistics Norway. That compares with 34% in the US, 30% in Germany and 21% in the UK. 

(MSN)

Senior Chinese leaders… are engaged in corruption and hiding hundreds of millions of dollars in wealth by using relatives to disguise their activities, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. By 2012, Mr. Xi had amassed at least $376 million in company investments, an indirect 18% stake in a rare-earth mineral company worth more than $311 million, and $20.2 million holdings in a technology company, according to a CRS report based on published information from news outlets about the hidden wealth. 

(The Washington Times)

Among the 2,300 sewer cleaners under the employment of the KWSC, to do manual scavenging to unclog the drains, he claims to have taught Adil the dos and don’ts of diving into the slush. ‘You have to be smart to outdo death, which is our companion as we go down,’ he says. It is not the army of cockroaches and the stink that greets you when you open the manhole lid to get in, or the rats swimming in filthy water, but the blades and used syringes floating that are a cause for concern for many as they go down to bring up the rocks and the buckets of filthy silt.

(Inter Press Service)

Umm Shadi, 50, called for Hamas to ‘end the war immediately without seeking to control and rule Gaza’. ‘What have we gained from this war except killing, destruction, extermination and starvation?’ she asked. ‘Every day the war on Gaza increases, our pain and the pain of the people increases. What is Hamas waiting for?’. 

(France24)

The military leader of Hamas has said he believes he has gained the upper hand over Israel and that the spiralling civilian death toll in Gaza would work in the militant group’s favor, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal, citing leaked messages the newspaper said it had seen. ‘We have the Israelis right where we want them,’ Yahya Sinwar told other Hamas leaders recently, according to one of the messages… In another, Sinwar is said to have described civilian deaths as ‘necessary sacrifices’ while citing past independence-related conflicts in countries like Algeria. 

(CNN)

Graham stressed that helping Ukraine in its fight against Russia could also have strategic economic benefits for the U.S. and Western countries. ‘They’re sitting on $10-12 trillion of critical minerals in Ukraine. They could be the richest country in all of Europe. We don’t want to give that money and assets to Putin to share with China,’ he told Brennan on Sunday. ‘If we help Ukraine now, they could become the best business partner we ever dreamed of. They’re sitting on a goal mine. To give Putin $10-12 trillion that he will share with China is ridiculous’. 

(MSN)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Cannon fodder needed (2024)

From the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In The Big Engine, by sci-fi writer Fritz Leiber, the protagonist posits his theory that people were ‘just machines, set to do a certain job and then quietly rust away.’

So no surprise to find a capitalist-supporting politician appealing to the hang ‘em, flog ‘em brigade who begrudges ‘their’ taxes keeping the ‘work-shy’ in supposed idle luxury whilst they themselves resent their wage slavery drudgery.

‘Young jobseekers who repeatedly turn down work should be conscripted for two years’, a Tory MP has said. Richard Drax, a member of the Commons Defence Select Committee, said there is a growing issue with work-shy youngsters: ‘In some cases, particularly among some of the young, they have got to a point where, for whatever reason, they’re not prepared to contribute to our country and to serve their country. If they can’t be encouraged to do that, then maybe we’ve got to a point where they should be told to do so.’

What would, once upon a time, be surprising is that Labour Party politicians, (not even making a pretence at being a working-class party any more), is as evangelistic in its support for the capitalist system and for capitalists.

Not only does capitalism need bodies, to produce and to be exploited, but it also needs cannon fodder.

The ‘war machines’ are becoming more vociferous and more insistent. Many more establishment voices, here and abroad, are ingraining the idea of a forthcoming war – probably with Russia and the necessity to protect the Motherland, ie, capitalist interests, either through voluntary swelling of the military or through compulsion. Understandable if, as an exploited class, you ask, in the manner of the The People’s Front of Judea, what’s the motherland ever done for us?

Richard Drax lays it out plainly – ‘And if they’ve refused three offers of a job, or whatever the number would be, and they say ‘I’m sorry, I’m not doing any of that’, you then say – in which case you must go and do two years in the Armed Forces’ (Daily Express 12 March).

Sir Alex Younger, an ex-head of MI6: ‘Britons have been “infantilised” since the end of the Cold War and the Government should consider having the power to “compel” people to serve’ (MailOnline 5 April).

General Sir Patrick Sanders, the outgoing Chief of the General Staff opined that ‘British citizens should be ‘trained and equipped’ to fight in a potential war with Russia – as Moscow plans on ‘defeating our system and way of life.’ It’s not known if he was pointing his finger Lord Kitchener style when warning that ‘increasing army numbers in preparation for a potential conflict would need to be a ‘whole-of-nation undertaking’.’

SkyNews said the comments are being read as a warning that British men and women should be ready for a call-up to the armed forces if NATO goes to war with Russia. It comes after Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said in a speech earlier that we are ‘moving from a post-war to pre-war world’ and the UK must ensure its ‘entire defence ecosystem is ready’ to defend its homeland.’

The Estonians, no friends of Russia given their history, are also adding fuel to the conflagration. The Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said in a BBC interview: ‘We have a reserve army of 44,000 people. That would equal for Great Britain around two million people. Two million people who would be ready to defend their country, who know what they have to do’ (Daily Express 4 April).

In Ukraine at the beginning of the year, the former Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s army Valerii Zaluzhnyi said that the army needed another 500,000 soldiers: ‘Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a law that will lower the country’s minimum conscription age from 27 to 25, potentially boosting the number of men available to fight Russia’s invasion. A statement published by Parliament upon passing the law in 2023 said it was “inappropriate” that “a significant number of citizens” who were fit for military service could not be called up, despite the present need, under martial law. Martial law also prohibits most men between the ages 18 and 60 from leaving Ukraine, unless they are deemed unfit for military service for health reasons or have an exemption’ (CNN 2 April).

Sensibly following the example of many American young men who, during the Vietnam war, chose to absent themselves from America, many Ukrainians have adopted ‘flight not fight’: ‘Approximately 650,000 Ukrainian men aged 18-60 have left Ukraine for Europe since the start of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022′, BBC Ukraine reported. Citing data provided by Eurostat a report notes over half a million male refugees are currently residing in the 27 EU member states, as well as Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Norway, many of whom are undocumented. In Germany, it is estimated that 100,000 unregistered individuals are residing in the country, while in Austria at least 14,000 Ukrainian men arrived using forged documents or the services of smugglers.

Under martial law, Ukrainian men between the ages of 18–60, with some exceptions, are not allowed to leave the country because they could be called up for military service. As Ukraine faces the challenge of maintaining adequate military personnel, recent reports indicate that nearly 20,000 Ukrainian men have managed to evade conscription, finding various routes to leave the country’ (Kyiv Independent).

John Richards’s song, Don’t Despise The Deserter, about a soldier who is executed by his country, has historical precedents. Three hundred and six British and Commonwealth soldiers were executed by the state in World War One.

‘So I ran from the fighting, and I threw down my gun,

I ran by the moon, and I slept with the sun.

Arrested by government, charged by the king,

To be shot, ’cause I can’t kill in order to bring

Peace to a foreign land.’

Less about peace and more about capitalism.

Don’t let yourself be persuaded to become cannon fodder for the capitalist class.

Dave Coggan

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The princes are nothing but tyrants who flay the people; they fritter away our blood and sweat on their pomp and whoring and knavery.’ These were the words of Thomas Müntzer at the head of the massed ranks of a peasant army in the year 1525. Ranged against him was the might of the princes of the German Nation. How did Müntzer, the son of a coin maker from central Germany, rise in just a few short years to become one of the most feared revolutionaries in early modern Europe? 

(Penguin Random House)

Like many of Myanmar’s young men and women, Ko Naing said he had no intention of answering the call and would instead do whatever it takes to avoid the draft. ‘The one sure thing is I won’t serve. If I’m drafted by the military, I will try to move to the remote areas or to another country,’ Ko Naing told Al Jazeera from Myanmar. ‘Not only me, I think everyone in Myanmar is not willing to serve in the military under the conscription law’, he said. 

(Al Jazeera)

The ‘one land, two peoples’ analysis of the situation is nonsensical. The land does not belong to the people [proletariat], anywhere in the world. It belongs to those [bourgeoisie] who own it. This might seem very theoretical, but the mere existence of social relations on the ground shows to whom the idea of two camps belongs, ie, the ruling [bourgeois] class.

(libcom.org)

South Africa’s Western Cape is known for its dramatic coastlines and acres of wineland. But behind the blue skies and rolling hills, the province is grappling with a heartbreaking health crisis. The area has the highest rate of foetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) in the world – a group of debilitating and life-long disabilities caused when a mother drinks during pregnancy. Whilst FASD affects about 0.7 per cent of the world’s population, in the Western Cape rates are as high as 31 per cent, and across South Africa, it’s estimated that 11 per cent of all newborns are affected each year.

(The Telegraph)

As BBC Ukraine reported in November, 650,000 Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 years old have left Ukraine for Europe since the start of the war. Zelensky’s former adviser Alexey Arestovich recently claimed that 4.5 million Ukrainian men, nearly half of the Ukrainian male population, had fled abroad to avoid military service, and that 30 to 70 percent of military units consist of ‘refuseniks’ who have gone absent without official leave (AWOL) .

(WSWS.ORG)

‘And if they’ve refused three offers of a job, or whatever the number would be, and they say ‘I’m sorry, I’m not doing any of that’, you then say – in which case you must go and do two years in the Armed Forces’. 

(Daily Express)

‘Universities should be havens for robust debate, discussion, and learning—not sites of censorship where administrators, donors, and politicians squash political discourse they don’t approve of’ said the head of the NYCLU.

(Common Dreams)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

War and rumours of war (2024)

From the March 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Barely two months into a New Year and the ghost of Lord Kitchener has begun to haunt the news agenda. General Nick Carter, former army officer and Chief of the Defence Staff, was quoted (4 February) as saying the British Army would rapidly ‘exhaust their chief capabilities after the first couple of months of engagement.’

This was in response to a report of the Commons Defence Select Committee concluding that ammunition supplies are ‘far below the level required to counter with certainty a threat from the Russian army’.

That there has ever been any certainty, other than a mutual slaughter, in any conflict is risible. Every November what is termed an act of remembrance seems more like a collusion in amnesia. Whatever happened to the war to end all wars?

The very idea perished in the rubble of the blitz, Dresden and Hiroshima, the blood-soaked land around Stalingrad, on the beaches of Normandy. Then, just five years later Korea, closely followed by Vietnam, became the killing ground.

Russia and the USA facing off over and around Cuba in 1962 made the prospect of nuclear war a serious concern. Subsequently, there has been an incessant state of war around the world with, in modern parlance, pop-up conflicts of varying scope and intensity.

It has been argued that the designations of First and Second World Wars are erroneous, that what occurred in 1939 was simply a continuation, after a pause, of what began in 1914. There is a precedent of this in that the Hundred Years War was one of sporadic, not continuous, conflicts.

In which case, it is arguable that the present manifestations of bellicosity are episodes in a Hundred Years+ World War. The original Hundred Years War was the result of competing feudal powers for control of wealth-generating land, mainly in France.

The cause and sustaining factor of the present international nature of armed confrontations is, at base, again economic, only now it is capitalism that’s the dominating system. Land, and its resources, is still worth competing for, as are markets, trade routes and productive capacity.

Then there is war itself as an economic instrument. Armaments have developed dramatically since the longbow proved decisive at Agincourt. Rather than showers of barbarously tipped arrows the air is shredded by military drones and cruise missiles.

Yet, the bloody battlefields of the Somme and Ypres haven’t been completely deserted as the seeming stand-off between Russia and Ukraine demonstrates, with trenches, artillery bombardments and massed assaults over open ground.

Meanwhile, in Gaza, Dresden is being re-enacted as towns and cities are reduced to rubble with civilians being by far the greatest number of casualties killed and maimed. The justification, as if there can be any for mass killing of children, is the wickedness of those lording it over the victims: Hamas in Gaza, Nazis in Dresden, but civilians dying in huge numbers in the cellars.

The response of politicians and their media mouthpieces, such as compliant journalists and retired generals, to perceptions of war to come, is more munitions, more men, and now women. In Britain this is often reinforced with reference to the bogey of appeasement.

All leaders of regimes deemed to be a threat to freedom and democracy in general, and Britain in particular are apparently exemplars of reincarnation, in that each is apparently Hitler reborn. For example, unless Ukraine is successfully defended Putin will direct his forces into wider Europe.

If Putin really is Hitler transmogrified he wouldn’t have learned anything from previous experience should he pursue such a policy. As the rather more limited present military adventure is proving, war is a no-win/no-win situation, with dreadful costs both financial and in lives.

Even a declared victory has undeterminable consequences such as a revitalised Germany and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. Thousand year Reichs tend to be rather shorter in duration, as the British Empire showed.

If the perceived enemy is not personalised by an evil Fuhrer then it is terrorist, an organisation of fanatics, religious or political or both. As such, extra-judicial assassination is justified, with missile or drone strikes across the borders of presently non-belligerent countries, or even nominally allied ones.

When American soldiers are killed in their Middle Eastern base, the Commander in Chief directs his forces to exact vengeance on alleged perpetrators without the inconvenience of having to legally establish guilt. The question is rarely posed as to why American boots are stationed on the ground so far from home territory.

An irony is that the UK military can be deployed in such ‘anti-terrorist’ operations despite the fact that capital punishment has been abolished even for murderers who are proven guilty of crimes analogous to the outcomes of terrorist actions.

Are we really looking to return to the fearful nonsense of ‘Protect and Survive’, that 1970s – and 80s guide at the height of the Cold War, to surviving a nuclear attack by unscrewing a door, leaning it against a wall and huddling beneath it. ‘What wall?’ might well have been the question.

Unspecified experts have opined that the country is woefully unprepared for conflict on British soil. Plans are required for developing cover from air attacks, evacuation, rationing and appropriate technology (whatever that might be).

As to the armed forces, presently apparently underfunded despite an additional £2 billion funding last year, it seems there is a larger number of personnel leaving the army than are being recruited. This has led to, again unspecified, senior military officials speculating about some form of conscription.

There can surely be no doubt that the root cause of war is economic. Israel and Gaza land is the issue, and has been since 1948, with the economic implications of being deprived of it. The fighting over Ukraine has historical roots stretching back to pre-capitalist times.

Developing animosity between the USA and China is very obviously economic competition threatening to become military. Trade routes over the Red Sea are contentious for disrupting western capitalism, while enabling those least favoured by capital to flex their somewhat diminished military muscles.

It is natural for people to wish to protect themselves and survive, but war is the very antithesis of such an outcome. The only way towards any real prospect for peace is removing the fomenter of war, which is capitalism.

While the driving force behind politics remains the pursuit of profit by competing capitalists, often expressed as bellicose nationalism, war will continue to a lesser or greater extent. The achievement of real peace, not just an absence of war, requires socialism.

The ending of wealth creation for private advantage, replaced by a system meeting people’s needs without the rationing effect of money, itself a spark of conflict. By necessity, the system will have to be worldwide, with abolition of nations and their contentious borders.

Then war will no longer be even a rumour, but merely an exemplar for future generations of how people used to allow their own suffering by following leaders and failed ideologies, rather than acting together in their mutual best interests.

Dave Alton

Letter: Will anything good come out of the war in Israel? (2024)

Letter to the Editors from the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

I remember dancing and singing Hava Nagila with my two Jewish roommates in our college dorm in 1978, when Israel and Egypt signed the Camp David Accords. Time has shown how naïve we were to rejoice. Sadly, decades will pass again, and it will probably not matter whether or not the current fighting ended with the signing of a major ‘two-state’ accord.

The broad mass of the public is not galvanized either way by what is happening in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The weak and underprivileged, the working poor and the lower middle class aren’t taking sides. They know that the wars are taxing their pockets and that nothing positive can follow if they balloon into regional wars and the price of oil exceeds 150 dollars a barrel.

The ideological battle lines around the wars in Israel and Ukraine do not follow class lines. Most people on either side are white. This is an identity crisis at the top of society. These fissures and divides reflect the declining international strength of the United States and its inability to guarantee that Globalization 2 does not crumble and collapse. This is a conflict between those who support Palestinians against Israeli apartheid, and those who are attracted by Israel’s apartheid treatment of non-Europeans (never mind that most Israelis today are Mizrahi with origins in the Middle East and North Africa rather than Ashkenazi, or European Jews). Incidentally, the supporters of Palestine must be very careful around their new political bedfellows. A person carrying a Pride flag at a recent pro-Palestine rally in London was angrily chased away by other demonstrators.

Proponents of the idea of statehood for Palestine are drawn to the cause as one of ‘national liberation.’ They forget that the bourgeois revolutions ended in the mid-nineteenth century and that although numerous new nations emerged in the twentieth century, their significance was no longer a struggle against a pre-capitalist mode of production. The so-called ‘national liberation struggles’ and ‘anti-colonial’ or ‘anti-imperialist struggles’ of the twentieth century all turned out to be wars between capitalist powers. Every ‘liberation’ movement since the early 1920s has been harsh on all forms of democratic and autonomous groups, particularly among workers. And ‘liberation from imperialism’ always seems to involve subjugation to the imperialism of another superpower (in today’s world, that is the United States on the one hand, and China, Russia, and Iran, on the other).

The backers of Netanyahu’s Israel tend to be connected with the military industrial complex and traditional sectors of the economy. Among them are radical conservatives like Elon Musk and Donald Trump, who do not want to succumb to the authority of the politically correct supporters of Palestine. Also supporting Israel are far-right groups. Who would have thought this possible? Does this mean that anti-Semitism—racism in general—is a biproduct of the disease, and not the disease itself? Holocaust or no, right-wing fanatics around the world are openly voicing their support for Netanyahu’s government because they appreciate the harsh way it deals with non-whites. But doesn’t a class aspect usually lie behind any manifestation of racism? The Nazi hatred of the Jews, for instance, can be seen as a socio-psychological transformation and generalized expression of the fear the German middle class had for both large capital and labor.

What advantage can simple Palestinians derive from the existence of a homeland for themselves? The worst calamities befall simple people during periods of enforced national unity in war. What can they gain from the existence of a Palestinian state other than more war, death, and destruction? The champions of a two-state solution— which includes many liberal Jews, particularly in North America—are unwittingly supporting the freedom of simple Palestinians to be exploited by their Hamas masters or whatever replacement is found for them in the future.

Is a lasting peace in the Middle East possible? Theoretically speaking, yes. It’s a long shot, but it’s out of the box and obvious. It requires no war, no blood, no creation of a Palestinian state, and no Israel as we know it. Naturally, the starting point would have to be the ouster of the Netanyahu government in Jerusalem and the end of the rule of Hamas in Gaza. Peace will remain a pipe dream until the corrupt monster states in the region—and that includes Netanyahu’s government—fall and are replaced by something new and truly democratic. Only resistance by the people of the Middle East (and Eastern Europe) against their own governments can lead the way to permanent peace. It is impossible to predict what exact form this new ‘people power’ might take. Who knows? Perhaps it might be something along the lines of a unitary republic of workers’ councils. That might work.

Evel Economakis, 

Greece.

Reply: 

Yes, but only if we are talking about democratically elected popular councils on the basis of the common ownership of the means of living; which of course couldn’t exist just in one province of the former Ottoman Empire. 

Editors.

New Year Party (2024)

From the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unusually for an article in this magazine we are going to begin by consulting a god, Janus being the deity in question. Having the supernatural capacity to look backwards and forwards at the same moment he seems a worthy informant.

Actually, it does not require omniscience or 20/20 hindsight to see that 2023 was not a great year for humanity. Most recently an armed group of self-styled martyrs and freedom fighters demonstrated their military prowess by storming a pop festival and randomly killing teenagers before moving on to kill and kidnap across a wide area.

This provoked regressive nationalist ideologues into their brutal response, a protracted arbitrary slaughter of children, and civilians in general. In the insane gamble of war, atrocity is all too often matched and raised by greater atrocity.

In Britain this moved political leaders of the main parliamentary parties to declare their unwavering support for this ‘self-defence’. Does this mean that if you’re assaulted by your neighbour it’s legitimate for you to burn his house down with his family in it?

Meanwhile young, and perhaps not so young, Ukrainians and Russians continued to kill each other on behalf of their respective capitalisms. NATO countries seemingly have whole orchards of money trees allowing them lavish expenditure on the arms industry to continually supply weaponry freely to Ukraine.

Although the money trees of the USA are seemingly becoming less abundant as politicians of one wing of capitalist government refuse to endorse further funding. This is driven by the search for populist appeal in the forthcoming presidential election. Firm, unwavering support is suddenly trumped (forgive the pun) by pragmatic expediency.

In Britain also there seems to be rather less cash available from the fiscal orchard for growing numbers of families struggling with serious poverty, amassing rent/mortgage arrears along with other debts, becoming dependent on food banks even as actual banks continue to profit massively.

Similarly, the NHS is severely restricted from using technology that could prevent so many premature deaths and cure conditions or, at least, alleviate suffering caused by treatable ailments. With such advances being increasingly expensive in a profit-driven world, cost-effectiveness not diagnosis becomes the deciding cynical, clinical factor.

Climate change continues to demand attention. Wild fires flare, there’s drought and flood, storms rage as never before and the death toll rises. There seems no sense of irony amongst national leaders who fly around the world to attend climate change conferences. And it turns out many of the delegates are actually representatives of fossil fuel industries.

Through the natural instinct for self-preservation, people, individually or as families, flee from hot spots of war, extreme poverty and environmental degradation. At this point, of course, they stop being people and become migrants.

Migrants are subdivided into legal and illegal. Legal migrants can be just about tolerated as long as they accept being cheap labour doing jobs few others are willing to do for such poor wages. Illegal migrants though are anathema.

Underlying all this misery is capitalism that went its merry way unhindered, other than by its own contradictions, throughout yet another year. For a system now long since past its sell-by date, it persists despite the stench of its rottenness, but only because the great majority of world’s population, the workers who create the wealth, have yet to choose to dispense with it.

Our consultation with Janus as to forthcoming prospects is not encouraging. Looking forwards it doesn’t take a futurologist to foresee that radical change does not appear likely, at least in the short term.

There will be a general election which could be at least an indicator of an upsurge of enthusiasm for and interest in breaking with the established political pattern. The problem is there will be no clear way for such a change of consciousness to be clearly marked.

A significant vote for the few Socialist Party candidates would be a start. Mass spoiling of ballot papers, just writing ‘Socialism’ or ‘SPGB’ across them, would be a positive act, rather than just not voting which could suggest apathy rather than engagement.

It is often argued, correctly, that the right to vote is valuable and many people in the past suffered and fought for it, therefore it should be used. Indeed it should, but simply voting for one of the main parties, or one of their left/right-wing outliers, is truly wasting the vote as nothing will fundamentally change.

If you really consider your vote to be valuable then seriously consider to whom you will entrust it. How can it become the means to bring about significant and profound change? Capitalism lies at the root of the all the misery outlined above as experienced throughout 2023.

The alternative is a worldwide democratic commonwealth in which production is to meet everyone’s needs, not a small minority’s profit. A society without national borders and armies to defend or attack them. A world that can face up to climate change unencumbered by the need to continually produce commodities for sale.

Politics will no longer be split into rival factions of left and right. Despite the postures of many groups, sects and parties who misappropriate the word, socialism is not a left- wing cause. The left/right split is very much part of the politics of capitalism, originating in the national assembly of the late eighteenth-century French Revolution.

Socialists intend society to move beyond such notions as divide people, rather hoping to unite them in common cause to take control, and thereby improve, their economic, political and social prospects.

The New Year Party is the one that presently stands up and holds out for this change, this revolution including via the ballot box, understanding that it cannot be achieved through compromise. It is clear that people must develop the means to bring this about because no party can do it for them.

No small task to be sure. It will require a New Year resolution of the majority to actively work towards the realisation of socialism. Will it be this year? Next year? Sometime? Never? That depends entirely on what people decide. True democracy.

Or is Janus doomed to find his double vision blurred by tears shed for the suffering of the world at every turn of the year in perpetuity?

Dave Alton

Editorial: No capitalism without war (2024)

Editorial from the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The year 2024 opens with at least two major ongoing wars in which the most up-to-date weapons of mass (and individual) destruction are being employed, resulting in the deliberate destruction of infrastructure on which societies depend, and in social regression rather than the progress that defenders of capitalism claim it provides.

The competitive struggle for profits is built into capitalism, but that this should require the manufacture of the most sophisticated weapons of war and destruction is in itself a condemnation of the system.

Capitalist competition involves not just economic entities but also states as armed bodies serving the interests of the businesses operating from within their frontiers. The states’ external role is to secure and protect sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets and investment outlets for these firms.

When disputes arise, as inevitably they do, states seek to settle them by diplomacy. The aim of diplomacy is not to find a ‘fair’ or ‘just’ solution but to bargain, with the outcome reflecting the relative bargaining position of the sides. ‘Might is right’, and is the reason why states seek to equip themselves with the most destructive and up-to-date weapons that they can afford.

Even if no war were ever to break out, the nature of capitalism would still require productive resources to be devoted to the manufacture and maintenance of armed forces. This anti-human waste of resources is built into capitalism and cannot be avoided as long as capitalism lasts.

But wars do break out.

The object of diplomacy is to avoid war as each side assesses where the real balance of power is. But diplomacy doesn’t always work. When this fails the balance of power between two states is tested by actual war. States don’t resort to this lightly as war is risky and expensive. This is why the state that starts it has to feel that it has no alternative but to make a stand. The rulers of the Russian state evidently thought that the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO represented such a threat.

Israel has been armed by the United States as its proxy in the Middle East where the issue has always been oil. It’s to increase its ‘might’ in the area to counterbalance Iran. But Israel is using these weapons to crush a comparatively weak armed insurgency in defence of its own ambition to rule over an area from the sea to the river.

In both Ukraine and Gaza we are seeing the horrors that result from the use of the most modern weapons of killing and destruction whose development and existence capitalism requires. Their existence is supposed to act as a deterrent to rivals and as bargaining chips in diplomacy, as they are most of the time. But not always. From time to time they are deployed to kill and destroy, adding to the charge-sheet against capitalism.

If you want peace, prepare for socialism.