Booms and Slums (2007)

From the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who has read Frederick Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England will long remember much of what it says. Page after page describes the lives of workers in the big cities in 1844. Two boys in London, for instance, were arrested for stealing a half-cooked calf’s foot from a shop: the magistrate discovered that their mother had sold or pawned all the family’s possessions in order to buy food. Many others had little or no furniture and slept on the floor, covered in rags.

The accounts of slum dwellings are sometimes hard to believe. Perhaps the worst was the Little Ireland area of Manchester, where four thousand people lived in overcrowded, unsanitary, decrepit cottages and the filth and stench were all but intolerable. Similar conditions were found in Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford, Glasgow, and so on. It is difficult to disagree with Engels’ statement that working people were enduring ‘a condition unworthy of human beings’.

In 1971 Robert Roberts published The Classic Slum, an account of his upbringing in Salford in the early twentieth century. In 1910, he records, his mother cajoled their landlord into installing a cast-iron bath (which meant an extra shilling a week in rent). Several neighbours came to look at the bath, its taps and so on: they had never used or even seen a bath before. Workers scrimped and saved to afford a rag rug and a couple of framed pictures, let alone ‘luxuries’ such as a watch or a bike. Getting by from week to week often relied on pawning their Sunday best clothes. In looking back at his childhood and the lives of his neighbours, Roberts refers to ‘the spoiled complexions, the mouths full of rotten teeth, the varicose veins, the ignorance of simple hygiene, the intelligence stifled and the endless battle merely to keep clean’. Such were the good old days amid the flourishing of the British Empire.

And is it all just in the Victorian and Edwardian past? While homelessness and bad housing still exist, can it be said that slums — crowded, filthy, nasty — are no longer the lot of most? Mike Davis’ book Planet of Slums describes a world where one in three of the urban population, mainly in the ‘Third World’, live in slums. It goes without saying that slum life is bad for your health and life expectancy. Landslides, floods and earthquakes threaten those who live in shoddy housing in marginal areas. Fires, whether accidental or deliberately set by property developers, can spread so fast that nobody can escape.

Sanitation is another disaster area, with the situation having changed little since Engels’ day. Sewage systems are virtually non-existent in many cities: Davis cites one slum area in Nairobi which had just ten working toilets for forty thousand people. But there is hope for the future, as in some places pay toilets have become a hugely profitable growth industry — though of course they’re not so convenient for the millions who cannot afford to use them.

Profiting from poverty is widespread. Such is the population density in slums that landlords make plenty of money from even the poorest neighbourhoods. Many cities in Asia and Africa are effectively owned by small numbers of landlords, and those who rent from them are the most powerless of all. Squatting becomes increasingly difficult as vacant land is developed and forcible evictions increase: over three-quarters of a million evicted in Harare in 2005, for instance. Slum-dwellers often have little choice but to fight back by building their own homes or resorting to food riots.

Cities like Manchester in Engels’ time were essentially the result of the Industrial Revolution. But in contrast, Davis argues, the growth of megacities and hence of megaslums over the last twenty years or so has been marked by deindustrialisation, as factories have closed in places such as Mumbai, Johannesburg and Sao Paulo. Like Mexico City and Jakarta, these have enormous populations but far smaller economies. The new slums are also mostly on the peripheries of the cities rather than in inner-city areas, and so usually lack any half-way decent transport infrastructure.

The financial institutions of global capitalism have played a major role in maintaining the regime of slum living. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have helped finance slum ‘improvement’ programmes in city after city, via privatisation of housing supply and the ending of food subsidies. The result has not been to eradicate slums, of course, but to spread ‘informal’ employment which lacks contracts and bargaining power. Along with this has come an expansion of child labour along the lines recorded by Engels and Dickens.

The development of capitalism, then, has not done away with the horrors of slums. Inadequate housing continues to exist in ‘advanced’ countries, with an estimated 100,000 homeless people in Los Angeles and one child in seven growing up in bad housing in the UK. Perhaps two million American families will lose their homes over the next couple of years, as the sub-prime crisis bites. Worldwide, as many as one billion people live — or do their best to create some kind of life — in slums. While the rich reside in their gated communities, the poor dwell in conditions of scarcely-imaginable squalor, marginalised in terms of work and family life. A Socialist society would face a tremendous task in replacing slums with decent housing, but that is a problem that capitalism can never tackle let alone solve.

Paul Bennett

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.)

Who will do the dirty work? (1947)

From the May 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most Socialists will agree that, of all the questions put to them in their attempt to explain Socialism to their fellow-workers, this is among the most common. In fact, sooner or later during the process of convincing a worker, it is almost certain to come up.

We all know what is meant by the question. The enquirer is not alluding to the sharp practices of his masters, the betrayals of his leaders, nor yet to his own exploitation. He refers to some of the jobs that are looked upon as dirty and degrading, and to which many of his fellow workers seem doomed by the very nature of things.

It is not all dirty jobs that worry the questioners—for example they never ask about doctors and coroners—but only the badly paid dirty work, a favourite being the work of dustmen. The following extracts from a Government report show what could be done about that work now if cost were not the deciding factor. Under Socialism health, comfort and safety will be first considerations.

 “At Quarry Hill flats in Leeds . . . we inspected what we believe to be the only installation in this country of a water-borne system of refuse disposal whereby the refuse is conveyed direct from the kitchen sink of each flat by means of large bore pipes. The specially constructed sink is combined with a large circular hopper into which the refuse is placed. The hopper is then filled with water and when the tenant raises a plunger it discharges its contents in much the same way as an ordinary w.c. The refuse, which may include without damage to the system ashes;, tins and bottles, is then conveyed by suction through underground pipes to a central chamber. Here the liquids and solids are mechanically separated, the liquids discharging into the ordinary sewerage system and the solids being burnt in the furnaces which heat the water for the communal laundry. The system appears to work extremely satisfactorily . . . (“Design of Dwellings,” H.M.S.O., 1944, p. 21.)

However, let not any dustmen among our readers imagine that they will soon be out of work. To the best of our knowledge the system of refuse disposal described above was first installed in blocks of flats near Paris in 1932. The Quarry Hill flats in Leeds were built in 1935 and appears to have been, in 1944, the only scheme of flats in this country where such a system was employed. It does not look as if dustmen are on their way out just yet. The next paragraph in the report may suggest why: —

“Owing to the cost of equipping the central chamber, which contains an expensive plant, a  water-borne system of refuse disposal would scarcely be a practical proposition except on a large-scale development. But at Quarry Hill, with its 938 flats, the average cost of maintaining the system does not exceed 1.7 pence per week per flat." 

The all too familiar reason: too expensive. Atomic bomb plants, yes. Refuse disposal plants, no.

However, dustmen should not despair. Since the local authorities who pay their wages are also building the flats, it may occur to them that a mechanical system of refuse disposal might be cheaper. In that case we can anticipate many fine speeches about the progressiveness of public authorities in abolishing an unpleasant task.

Would it be churlish to ask whether the dustmen will be found other work? Or will it be a case of "off the dust cart, on to the dole"?

John Moore

Rear View: Dirty (2021)

The Rear View Column from the February 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dirty

Writing of manual scavenging – ‘the age-old unfortunate practice of cleaning, carrying, and disposing human excreta from dry latrines or sewers into the disposal sites’ – in India (countercurrents.org, 24 December), Ashish Joshi notes that ‘. . . despite prohibitive legislations in place, a government survey from 2019, carried out across 170 districts, found that over 54,000 people actively engage in the practice. In 2019 alone, 110 people died while cleaning septic tanks and sewers. For a job that has been outlawed for years, the manual practice continues without providing even the essential safety equipment that must be provided to the people engaging in this dangerous job. It is regrettable for a country that has been to Mars and back that we still have not eradicated this sordid practice from our societal fabric’. Eclipsing the Mars mission in terms of speed and potential is the development of vaccines against a pandemic that daily kills 10,000 people. Mainstream media, however, largely ignores the 25,000 who die every day from unnecessary starvation, the 3,000 children who die every day from preventable malaria, and the 10,000 people who die every day because they are denied healthcare. Neglected tropical diseases are common in 149 countries, and affect more than 1.4 billion people (including over 500 million children). Their eradication is possible but not profitable.

Rotten

‘There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery . . .’ This comment is as valid today, quite possibly more so, than when it first appeared as part of the introductory sentence to an article penned by Marx in the New York Daily Tribune of 16 September 1859. He observed that the ‘Irish famine of 1846 killed more than 1,000,000 people, but it killed poor devils only. To the wealth of the country it did not the slightest damage’ (Capital, Vol. 1, p.658). Fast forward 175 years and we learn that despite the misery of millions, the ‘net worth of US billionaires has soared by $1 trillion to total of $4 trillion since pandemic began’ (americansfortaxfairness.org, 9 December 2020). ‘Their pandemic profits are so immense that America’s billionaires could pay for a major Covid relief bill and still not lose a dime of their pre-virus riches. Their wealth growth is so great that they alone could provide a $3,000 stimulus payment to every man, woman and child in the country, and still be richer than they were nine months ago.’ The journalist A R MacLeod tweeted (21 December): ‘The word “missile” appears 19 times in the COVID Relief Bill. “Aircraft” appears 208 times. “Munition” 46 times. “weapon” 46 times. “Healthcare” = 24. “doctor”/”nurse” = 5. “masks” = 0.’ And asked: ‘Who and what exactly is this bill really for?’ Indeed.

System

Comparing Boris Johnson’s ‘incompetence’ with that of WWI General Haig, Patrick Cockburn (counterpunch.org, 22 December) writes: ‘The estimate for excess deaths in Britain caused by government failings during the first and second waves of the epidemic now total about 50,000 people, adding together the estimates from Sir David King and the Sunday Times report, a number that will inevitably increase in the coming months.’ Johnson’s failings are really those of capitalism at work and are found worldwide. Mexico’s excess deaths passed 250,000 in December, and ‘Overall, a lower survival from COVID-19 was evident in the poorest population groups. Therefore, combating extreme poverty deserves to be a central prophylactic strategy’ (mdlinx.com, 24 December 2020). Mexico is just one of many countries where our class has a worse survival rate because of poverty. Band-aids, whether plasters or pop stars, offer no solution. Neither do platitudes from Oxfam: ‘No one should be blocked from getting a life-saving vaccine because of the country they live in or the amount of money in their pocket. But unless something changes dramatically, billions of people around the world will not receive a safe and effective vaccine for COVID-19 for years to come’ (medicalnewstoday.com, 18 December). Dr. Rosa Luxemburg offered us a prescription in 1918: ‘During the four years of the imperialist slaughter of peoples streams and rivers of blood have flowed. Now we must cherish every drop of this precious juice as in a crystal glass. The most sweeping revolutionary action and the most profound humanity—that is the true spirit of socialism. A whole world is to be changed. But every tear that is shed, when it could have been staunched, accuses us’.

System change 

Professor Riccardo Petrella in an article titled Health for all? (wsimag.com, 21 December 2020) writes: ‘The fight against impoverishment remains a policy of aid, of charity, not a fight to eradicate the structural factors that cause impoverishment; the countries that signed the Treaty of Paris undertook to allocate 100 billion a year from 2020 to the fight against climate disaster. Well, none of the powerful dare to say where the 100 billion is; we know, however, by whom and where the trillion and 800 billion were spent in 2019 on armaments, 25 percent of which would be enough to cover all the above-mentioned financial needs. Finally, we know that military spending will not decrease in 2020.’ John Boyd Orr, former director of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, was candid in stating: ‘a world of peace and friendship, a world with the plenty which modern science had made possible was a great ideal. But those in power had no patience with such an ideal. They said it was not practical politics’ (Daily Herald, 29 July 1948). A post-capitalist world of peace and plenty has long been possible. Let us make it so.

Pathfinders: Heavenly Gates (2012)

The Pathfinders Column from the September 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

It must be a great feeling for anyone with a social conscience to be so ridiculously rich that they can spend their entire time doing something to alleviate a major global problem and actually feel that they are achieving something lasting and significant. Talk about the buzz, it must be a high that those seedy Russian oligarchs can never experience no matter how many yachtfuls of champagne they swim in or campaigning journalists they have knocked off by their hit-men. Cash-with-conscience philanthropists with billion dollar bank accounts must feel like the messiahs of the hi-tech age, second only to the great saints but without the unpleasantness of a stake-burning  or a crucifixion to earn their place in the pantheon of the Blessed.

Bill Gates, through his charitable Foundation, is one such saint, who has poured billions into agricultural R & D, malaria, polio and a host of other third world problems and who is a leading light in the Giving Pledge, a club of super-philanthropists dedicated to giving up the lion’s share of their wealth to solve problems of poverty, starvation and preventable disease among the world’s poorest ‘bottom billion’. Just last month the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation hosted a Reinvent the Toilet fair at their Seattle campus, a successful competition to find a design of lavatory that operates without running water, electricity or a septic system, at a running cost of no more than 3p a day and which captures or recycles energy. The applications of such a non-water-based design in many of the world’s poorest and resource-starved countries are too obvious to need spelling out. Poor sanitation kills 1.5 million children a year, and causes 50 percent of hospital admissions across the developing world. Bill Gates has the Midas touch. Every social ill he turns his attention to instantly sprouts solutions. He can even turn poo into gold.

How could even the most jaded and cynical socialist find anything to criticise in the activities of such a man? Churlish in the extreme to whinge about the often ruthless methods by which St Bill got to be so rich in the first place. Here’s a man who cares, really cares about the world’s poor, and is so stupifyingly rich that he has no need to impress anyone by pretending fake concern. Ditto Warren Buffett, possibly the most class-conscious benefactor in the super-philanthropist club and famous for complaining that he pays less tax than his secretary. Ditto Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire owner of Facebook who is barely out of his teens but whose ability to wield an economic power fifty countries would go to war to possess is mitigated, mercifully, by an apparently decent character and youthful save-the-world idealism. Arguably the force behind the super-philanthropy of the Giving Pledge is the ghost of Andrew Carnegie, in whose essay The Gospel of Wealth are to be found the arguments most influential in the thinking of these plutocrats. Carnegie’s view was that of the enlightened plutocrat, the sort who knows he can’t take it with him, the sort who has ceased to yearn for loot and now yearns for legacy. Carnegie, it must be said, meant well, and indeed even implied at one point that a future society might be built along egalitarian lines which would render his conception of top-down charity redundant. Given such a mentor, how could anyone gainsay the efforts of the 81 members of the billionaire club of the Giving Pledge, apart from perhaps suggesting mildly that all their money combined still won’t go as far as they hope or achieve as much as they think?

To return to the poo competition, a team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine submitted an entry which uses a black soldier fly larva to eat the organic waste and turn it into environmentally-friendly animal feed. This toilet is now being field tested. The winning design from Caltech is solar powered and generates hydrogen fuel and electricity. These and other designs are fantastically useful and there is no question that with implementation they will improve the lives of millions across the world. Bill and Melinda score another home run.

But there is a sense in which Bill’s public-spirited generosity has an insidious dimension. It’s the sense in which he functions as capitalism’s PR agent, always accentuating the positives, the successes, the achievements, the progress. Is it an achievement, for instance, to get 81 of the world’s billionaires to join the Giving Pledge? Undoubtedly, and the best of luck to them. But what are we to make of the other 1145 billionaires (at 2012 estimates) who have not signed up? Some are perhaps hesitating. Many will have simply turned their noses up at the chance to give a little back. Socialists are always pointing out that the enemy of humanity is a system, a set of abstract social agreements, not any real living individual. However that doesn’t alter the fact that many of the super-rich are evil, squalid little shits who, if there turned out to be a Hell, fully deserve to rot in it. Bill can’t very well admit this in public since he acts as unofficial ambassador for these manicured Mafiosi. He’s like Cliff Richard trying to front a death metal band. You only have to browse through the Forbes list (www.forbes.com/billionaires) and compare it to the Giving Pledge list (LINK) to see how the vast majority of these paper princelings tend to regard the pressing issues of world poverty and hunger – they couldn’t give a flying shite into a Bill Gates organic supertoilet.

But Bill’s PR work doesn’t simply consist of putting a nice face on a lot of nasty bastards. He also has ringing praise for the social system which put him where he is today: ‘Capitalism is a phenomenal system because it’s generated so much innovation.  Other systems don’t allow that to happen. There is no other system that’s improved humanity, whether on a hundred year scale or a ten year scale. The world is better off…’ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16738888).  Compared to what, feudalism? That’s like saying that the NHS is better than witch-burning.  Compared to Soviet ‘communism’? That was nothing but state-run capitalism in disguise, like British Rail on a bad day but with show trials. What are these ‘other systems’ against which capitalism has performed so miraculously? Bill doesn’t say and of course Bill doesn’t know. It’s just a rhetorical device. The only reason capitalism looks like a winner is because capitalism is the only horse running, a sure-fire bet that Bill and his friends won their money on. The real talent, the one that will make capitalism as obsolete as the Hansom cab, the future system Carnegie suspected might be possible, remains locked in the stables while Bill’s earnest propaganda helps to keep it there.

What, to a socialist, is the real indictment of capitalism behind the Poo Competition in Seattle is the fact that any of these university teams could have come up with any of these designs without the Gates Dollar to spur them to heights of inventiveness, but they didn’t. Why didn’t they? Because scientists don’t care? No. Because science has to do what money says and, except for the rare occasion when someone like Gates comes along with a wad of it, money doesn’t care.  Bill Gates thinks that money solves problems, but these are problems all created by money in the first place. Capitalism creates an apocalypse and then picks its way across the corpses rescuing the odd orphan, trumpeting its own philanthropy as it goes. Bill Gates surely knows this. They all do.  Though it isn’t nice to speak ill of the dead well off, in this sense, Bill and his friends are as full of shit as his toilets.

Paddy Shannon

Sting in the Tail: 30 Wasted Years (1991)

The Sting in the Tail column from the October 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

30 Wasted Years

The Labour Party is often described as "the mass party of the working class" yet the national membership of its youth wing, the Young Socialists, is now only 350.

When the YS was formed 30 years ago various Trotskyist groups moved in to control it. Recently it has been dominated by Militant but in earlier days It was Keep Left, another group of Trots who were dominant

This Trotskyist influence has been such an embarrassment to the Labour Party that it will probably be glad when the YS finally dies.

So it's goodbye to those bear-garden conferences where the YS passed all those resolutions denouncing the party leaders along with just about every bit of Labour Party policy.

And what did all the rebelliousness mean? Absolutely nothing. Indeed many YS are now staid Labour Party officials, councillors and even MPs, the same kind of people they once spent so much time attacking. It would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic.

Shop Steward's Dream

Tommy is a typical shop steward we know. When he speaks about "bread and butter" issues like overtime, sick pay and holidays he makes good sense, but on most other subjects he is a fount of prejudice and ignorance.

Prejudice? Jews are his pet hate although the Arabs ran them close during the Gulf war and you should hear him on about "Darkies"! By the way, Tommy always votes Labour.

Ignorance? The other day he was on about health -

  The rich aren't any healthier than us. You're either born with good health or you aren't. Money doesn't come into it.

Of course the left-wing with their absurdly idealised view of shop stewards would see Tommy as part of the "industrial vanguard in the struggle against capitalism".

But Tommy’s ideas are little different from those of most other workers or even shop stewards. His vision of a better world goes no further than society as it is but with more job security, a few pence extra on the hourly rate and Neil Kinnock in Downing Street

You Dirty Rat

Alastair Cooke, in his "Letter from America", (Radio 4) told an interesting story about the mayor of New York who, faced with a massive deficit, announced the probable slashing of public spending (surprise, surprise).

Among the possible casualties could be the sanitation department, which could result, according to experts, in an increase in the rat population of one million.

The mayor, who is either a shrewd vote-catcher or very naive, came up with what he undoubtedly thought was a unique proposal. He invited the "ordinary" people to come and tell him the solution to the city's problems. So for one week they queued up outside his office to lay it on him.

However, since there have been no reported cries of "Eureka" or the hip equivalent emanating from the inner sanctum, we can safely assume that none of the queuing hopefuls came up with the only solution; the abolition of the buying and selling system. All of which must have come as a relief to the capitalist class, not to mention the rats.

Caring Capitalism

Nowadays when capitalism is widely regarded as the altruistic saviour of mankind it comes as a pleasant surprise when someone sees it in its true colours.

Writing in The Independent (5 September) Suzanne Moore observes that while Gerald Ratner honestly described the cheap jewellery his shops sell as "crap", Anita Roddick of the Body Shop wraps her products in a haze of mysticism, 1960’s idealism and 1980's green awareness. By using her products you can, apparently, be healthier and do some ecological good at the same time.

Suzanne Moore sees Anita Roddick's guff as part of the growing trend to portray 1990's capitalism as a marriage of material values and spiritual good. Believe that, she says, and ". . . you'll believe that capitalism really can be "caring." and warns that behind this newer, softer, gentler-on-the-skin approach "business Is still basically about buying and selling."

She is mistaken, however, In thinking that — "any idea of a genuine alternative to capitalism is collapsing."

Socialists propose that capitalism be replaced by a classless, moneyless, worldwide society of production for use. Now, Suzanne Moore that really would be a genuine alternative, wouldn’t it?

Cold Comfort

The thermal underwear company Damart in conjunction with the organisation Help the Aged recently produced a little leaflet entitled Hypothermia - The Chilling Facts.

Chilling facts indeed; the leaflet points out that compared with the number of summer time deaths an extra 40,000 elderly persons will die in a mild winter and in a harsh winter this will rise to 80,000.

In a section entitled So, Who Is At Risk? it has this to say:

  We know that two groups of older people are particularly 'at risk'. They are the very elderly — from late seventies onwards — who are more likely, because of the ageing process, to have low body temperatures.
  And they are the pensioners who receive supplementary benefits — studies show that they are more likely to be living alone, less likely to have central heating, less likely to use electric blankets and more likely to be underweight — all these factors can lead to a lower body temperature.

Among the proposed solutions to the problem the leaflet lists warm clothing, adequate domestic heating systems and a better diet. All of which isn't much consolation for those who are on supplementary benefit. The fact is that it is poor people who are dying from hypothermia.

It is not more legislation or better hand-outs the elderly poor need. What they must have if this scandalous state of affairs is to be ended is World Socialism.

That is the only society in which everyone young and elderly can have unrestricted access to all the food, clothing and heating that society can provide.

A Racist Utopia?

There Is a sunny utopia called Oranla. Scores of workers have gone there on the promise of a better life and hundreds more are expected soon.

In case any reader is tempted to follow them we should explain that Orania is a small "white homeland" in South Africa. It is owned by some rich Afrikaners who have ejected all the black people and imported unemployed white South Africans to do the menial jobs previously done by the blacks.

These white workers now complain that, besides being underpaid, their bosses, regard them as "white kaffirs"-

  "We can’t even sit down and have a smoke break or a chat. It's just work, work and more work all day long"

The Sunday Times (1 September) 

The bosses answer to this is a familiar one — there is no room for laziness in creating the new white nation. The Sunday Times says of Orania -

  It has a lot of appeal for blue-collar workers who have the most to lose from the new South Africa but what they don't realise is that they are going to have to do for the well-off, upper-class Afrikaners what the blacks used to do. A system of servitude based on race is being replaced by one based on class.

Material World: Shit news (2015)

The Material World Column from the August 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 193-member General Assembly, the UN’s highest policy-making body, declared water and sanitation a basic human right in July 2010. The United States, Britain, Australia, Austria, Canada, Greece, Sweden, Japan, Israel, South Korea, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Ireland all abstained. It has remained a pious resolution, a human ‘right’ that is yet to be implemented. Most developing nations have fallen short of meeting their goals on sanitation and the world’s poorest countries have been lagging far behind, according to a UN report.

The world has missed the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target by nearly 700 million people. The UN has now vowed that the practice of open defecation must be totally eliminated by 2025 (yet another example of wishful thinking).  One in three people, or 2.4 billion worldwide, are still without sanitation facilities – including 946 million people who defecate in the open. The report says progress on sanitation has been hampered by inadequate investments in behaviour-change campaigns, lack of affordable products for the poor, and social norms which accept or even encourage open defecation. Today, only 68 percent of the world’s population uses an improved sanitation facility – below the MDG target of 77 per cent. At present rates of progress it would take 300 years for everyone in Sub-Saharan Africa to get access to a sanitary toilet, said the report. More optimistically in Cambodia latrine coverage has been increasing by 1.3 percent per year– a growth rate at which it could take more than 60 years for the country to be ‘Open Defecation Free.’

There are 41 million people who do not have access to a toilet in Pakistan and as a result they are defecating in the open. In India alone, there are nearly 600 million people (out of a total population of over 1.2 billion) without access to sanitation, according to the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council. The Indian 2011 census found that nearly 70 percent of rural households, as well as over 18 percent of homes in towns and cities, don’t have toilets.

The study says diarrheal disease, largely caused by poor sanitation and hygiene, is a leading cause of malnutrition, stunting and child mortality, claiming nearly 600,000 under-five lives every year. Where there is open defecation, pathogens spread quickly, causing diarrhoea, cholera, bilharzia (caused by freshwater worms) and other diseases. More than 1,400 children die each day of diarrhoea-related diseases linked to a lack of safe water, basic sanitation and good hygiene.

Inadequate facilities also affect education and economic productivity and impact the dignity and personal safety of women and girls. Women across rural India are stalked by sexual predators and raped or molested when they venture out into the fields at night. In one such incident two teenage girls from the village of Katra Shadatganj (228 km southwest of New Delhi), were raped and hung from trees. Since then, at least four other similar cases have been reported in the same region. It subsequently emerged that each of these women came from homes that did not have toilets, and were accosted while attempting to relieve themselves at night. The truth is that the ruling elite (that's the government and multinational corporations who own the country) do not care for those living in abject destitution. India is the world's biggest arms importer. It budgets tens of millions on a Mars space programme. It is spending its money on crap. As far back as 1925 Gandhi said ‘Sanitation is more important than independence’.

The spectacle of ‘socialists’ seeking to improve capitalism on behalf of the ruling class has a long history. During the early 20^th century in America grew a movement called ‘sewer socialism.’ In the Britain the term was ‘municipal socialism’. It sought to reform capitalism on the local level by cleaning up neighbourhoods with new sanitation systems and municipally-owned water supplies. But ‘sewer socialism’ has gone down the stinking drain as a step in the direction of socialism. The socialist transformation of the political and economic system is absolutely necessary to stop the waste of valuable resources on senseless wars and to raise the living standards and quality of life of the vast majority of the population. A socialist party deserves the name only to the extent that it acts towards that necessary social revolution, nothing less. Capitalism is shit: let’s flush it down the toilet.

ALJO