Obituary: Carol Taylor (2008)

Obituary from the December 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was with sadness that we learned in mid-October of the death of Carol Taylor, and at a relatively young age. Carol will be best remembered for her work on the now popular socialist film Capitalism and Other Kids Stuff, on which she worked as director and editor.

Though no longer formally a member, she had no actual disagreement with the Party case. She was always a fervent defender of the socialist cause and an ardent critic of capitalism, always keen to expose the insanity of the profit system in whatever way she could. On the discussion forum she attached to the initial Socialist TV website she created specifically to promote Kids Stuff she spent hours a day articulately defending the socialist case against our detractors who left messages, and there was a fair few.

Carol can be heard introducing the first ever film we did together here, a short film introducing the Socialist Party and actually put together within an hour.

I worked with her on a few films, including one on the “G8” meeting filmed up in Scotland a few years ago, and we spent a lot of time together collecting stock footage we felt we could use on future socialist films. I fondly remember the many encounters we had with the police who tried to stop us filming around London, often under threat of arrest, particularly the day we tried to get footage of HRH and entourage during the State opening of Parliament and the angry argument Carol gave to the police who came to escort us away from the area and, indeed, the way she cleverly managed to blag us media passes to get on to the press wagon at Teeside Airport when George Bush came for his £1 million fish supper in Tony Blair’s north eastern constituency.

I’m please to have known Carol closely and will remember her as quite a magnanimous person, warm and affectionate, loathing injustice, deceit and fraud and ever ready to speak out against it.

John Bissett

Proper Gander: YouTube And You (2020)

The Proper Gander TV column from the February 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the five-or-so minutes it’ll take to read this article, some 2,500 hours of new videos will be uploaded to YouTube. The website hosts videos of just about anything which anyone with the facilities wants to post. This means that we have instant access not only to obscure pop videos from 40 years ago and films of cats playing pianos, but also to views and experiences outside those of the mainstream media. YouTube is one of the most useful parts of the internet. But in practice, it’s tainted by having to be a money-making machine which uses sly methods to draw in more viewers. Videos often get rudely interrupted by adverts and there’s the vaguely unsettling way the site seems to know what else we might like to watch. Our previous searches for videos are turned into algorithms which then find similar content to suggest back to us. While this can be handy, it also has its downsides, especially with political content. Being prompted to watch more and more of the same set of opinions without comparing them to others can reinforce dodgy ideologies among any naïve viewers.

This has been exploited by right wing groups and individuals, whose YouTube content seems to heavily outnumber that of the left and often has slicker production values. It’s easier to find videos mocking ‘social justice warriors’ than videos by ‘social justice warriors’ themselves. Fearing that association with far right wing views might tarnish its brand, and therefore its profitability, YouTube has adjusted its algorithms to reduce bias towards far right content, stopped some uploaders from getting money through adverts and banned others.

But as well as the political dross, YouTube has a wealth of videos exploring revolutionary and radical ideas. A good enough starting point as any is a quick and brief debunking of the most common arguments defending capitalism, found in the video Top Ten Capitalist Arguments . One of these is the claim that ‘capitalism promotes innovation’, refuted by research saying that financial incentives don’t really work and that more creativity happens when people believe their activity has intrinsic value, rather than just being a means to get money. Another argument is that ‘markets [are] a rational means of organising economic life’, disproved because about a third of food produced is wasted while people are starving, and also because some commodities have built-in obsolescence, being designed to stop working so we’ll go out and buy a replacement. The video also counters the notion that ‘capitalism is a result of human nature’ by pointing out that humans have existed for hundreds of thousands of years whereas capitalism has only been around for a few hundred. 

The ‘human nature’ issue is addressed in more detail in Wired For Culture – The Natural History of Human Co-operation, a lecture from the RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce). In this, evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel explains how ‘human nature’ is fundamentally co-operative, rather than competitive. Both these traits developed from our distant ancestors living in and protecting their tribal communities. Although these early communities could be hostile to other groups, overall, co-operation has won out because it benefits us more than competition does.

But our drive to co-operate is frustrated by the divisions built in to capitalist society, and one way to explain this is through Karl Marx’s theory of alienation, covered by several videos on YouTube. Alienation is the way that capitalism, and especially employment, distances us from important aspects of our lives. The four types of alienation which class society leads to – alienation from the products of our labour, from our labour itself, from others and ourselves – are succinctly explained in a five minute video from Sociology Live. A more emotive short introduction is K is for Karl – Alienation, presented by journalist Paul Mason. He explains how the roots of alienation are in how capitalist institutions are privately owned, straight away estranging workers from them, further reinforced by their hierarchies.

Of course, the antidote to alienation is a society based not on the private ownership of production, but on it being owned in common and democratically managed. Such a society would not need money, and would instead be based on free access to goods and services. A world without money is explored in a video of a TED talk at the University of Edinburgh given by political writer Jade Saab. He gives an engaging summary of SPGB-style views about the benefits of a moneyless society, but then he goes and spoils it all by saying something stupid about governments. He doesn’t use the word ‘state’ but he seems to assume that governments can remain in a moneyless society. This might be sloppy wording on his part, as articles on his website suggest a more progressive view. For example, he says a moneyless society ‘would require a fundamental change in our economic system away from the private ownership of the means of production, towards a democratic model where citizens and workers can determine how the means of production are managed and what is done with them. Only through the democratic control of the means of production can we then democratically decide how access to goods and services produced can be managed’. He adds that a moneyless society would ‘challenge our very notion of what ‘countries’ are and how they function. I do not believe that a ‘world government’ will evolve but collaboration would naturally lead to forms of federation where resources, their extraction, transformation, and distribution is discussed through democratic systems. The UN and the EU provide interesting templates of what these collaborative ‘super-structures’ may look like’ [LINK]. Saab’s viewpoint would benefit from a bit more class consciousness and imagination to think beyond capitalist structures, but otherwise much of what he says is familiar to socialists. As YouTube shows, radical ideas are out there waiting to be found, helping to counter reactionary views from both the right and left. The Socialist Party’s own videos can be found on the YouTube channels ‘TheSPGB1904’, ‘pfbcarlisle’ and ‘Liverpool SPGB’, among others. However, searching for ‘SPGB’ occasionally also brings up videos of SpongeBob SquarePants, presumably thanks to a stray algorithm.

Mike Foster

Closing in on the Real Scroungers (2011)

From the October 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

If there’s one thing workers hate it’s seeing some lazy bugger living it up without getting a proper job. Quite right too. But instead of blaming the rare ‘benefits scrounger’, skiving on the fiddle for 65 quid a week, how about blaming the real lazy buggers, the idle rich who own everything? None of them have got a proper job – in fact life for them is a permanent holiday, and they’re raking in a lot more than 65 quid a week!

And how do they get to be so rich? Where does their money come from? It comes from the work you do, where else? You work so that they can enjoy. You give so that they can receive. You slave your whole life so that they can enjoy fine lifestyles, cars, jets, booze and sex you could never imagine in your wildest dreams – and all at your expense.

Workers like you produce all the useful wealth of the world, but the rich own and control it and you barely get any say at all. And when their politicians and their bankers play one reckless gamble too many, no prizes for guessing who pays the price. You lose your job, your income, maybe your house, maybe even your life. What do they lose? Nothing!

They’ve bought the politicians because they don’t want you to act. And they’ve bought the media because they don’t want you to think. If you vote for their politicians, whether Tory or Labour, you’re letting them win. if you buy into their ‘debates’ you’re letting them win. But if you turn your back on the whole business in disgust, guess what, you’re still letting them win! And as long as they keep winning, you’re going to keep losing.

Of course workers fight back. But it’s no good fighting just against this cut or that war. The global capitalist system is a game that’s rigged to keep the rich in their place and you in yours, so it’s the capitalist system that’s your real enemy. And that takes a different kind of fighting. The kind you do with your mind.

You could start by watching the video Capitalism and Other Kids’ Stuff 

Watch Comment: Channel 4, Wednesday 7 August, 7.50pm (1985)

From the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

A bit of a problem with regards to this notice which appeared in the pages of the August 1985 Socialist Standard: the problem is that I don't know which SPGB Comment speaker the notice is referring to.

It could be either Clifford Slapper or Brian Montague. Both appeared in this 5-minute slot on Channel 4 in the mid-80s. So, not taking any chances, I've decided to post both clips .

Socialist Euro-election Campaign (2014)

Party News from the June 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

In last month’s festival of xenophobia that the European elections were the Socialist Party mounted its biggest election campaign yet, emphasising by contrast the world nature of any solution by putting ‘World Socialist Movement’ on the ballot paper alongside our name . We contested two regions, South East England and Wales. Contesting Wales entitled us to our first ever Party Election Broadcast. This can be viewed on Youtube here:



The South East Region is the largest in the country with an electorate of over 6 million in 4 million households. Royal Mail delivered election leaflets to 984,000 households in 20 selected constituencies such as Oxford, Brighton, Southampton, Reading, Canterbury, and Dover. A further 16,000 were distributed by members and sympathisers. In Wales Royal Mail delivered our manifesto to 342,000 households in 9 constituencies with a further 8,000 being distributed by us. In all, a total of 1.35 million, the biggest ever campaign to publicise the case for a classless, stateless, moneyless world community without frontiers.

There was some good media coverage, especially from local TV and radio stations in both regions.  One fall-out from our standing was that one of our candidates was interviewed on BBC2’s Daily Politics Show, which would have had a much wider audience than our election broadcast in Wales. It can be seen at



Press coverage was more patchy but a number of local papers did give us a chance to present our case in more than a sound-bite. A couple of examples can be read here:

Canterbury Times

www.carmarthenjournal.co.uk/gets-Euro-vote/story-21065363-detail/story.html

We got 5454 votes in the South East and 1384 in Wales.

How Can a Real Revolution Be Achieved (1987)

Debate between Dick Donnelly, SPGB, and Albert Meltzer, 'Black Flag' (anarchist) Duke of York, Islington, London, 12-02-1987.