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

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

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

Philanthropy or social currency of ‘soft power’

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

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

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

The population … problem?

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

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

The Depo-Provera scandal

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

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

The Maxwell precedent: intelligence and institutional power

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

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

The socialist alternative

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

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

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

A.T.

Agency and responsibility (2026)

From the April 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Controversy surrounded the 2026 BAFTA Film Awards, in which John Davidson, whose life with Tourette’s inspired the film I Swear, involuntarily vocalised a racial slur during the ceremony, thus generating predictable outrage. Social media rapidly framed the incident as an ‘outburst’, implying intent. The assumption of agency was immediate.

Yet Tourette’s syndrome involves involuntary vocalisations, particularly in cases involving coprolalia. Uttering socially taboo words is not a sign of personal belief but a neurological compulsion. Coprolalia occurs in approximately 10-15 percent of people with Tourette’s and involves the brain’s failure to suppress socially inappropriate utterances. The individual has no control over the content; the words that emerge are often those with the most shock value, precisely because the brain’s suppression mechanism has misfired.

Agency under capitalism

The episode offers a useful case study in how capitalist society understands, and misunderstands, responsibility. Capitalism rests heavily on the idea of individual responsibility. Workers are treated as autonomous units of labour power, assumed to be rational, self-regulating, and fully in control of their conduct. Discipline in speech and behaviour is expected as part of employability and public legitimacy.

Where agency is compromised, through illness, disability or neurological variation, this framework strains. Instead of adjusting its assumptions, society often reasserts them more harshly. The presumption of intent remains, even where medical explanation is well documented.

This reveals a contradiction. When an individual is able to conform, their conformity is praised as personal virtue. When they cannot, their difference is interpreted as moral failure.

The policing of speech

Modern capitalism places significant emphasis on regulated language. Public speech is increasingly scrutinised, not only in workplaces but in cultural life. While there are good reasons to challenge genuinely racist or abusive expressions, the framework often operates without regard to material context.

This is not an argument against challenging racist language. When someone with full agency chooses to use slurs, that reveals values and deserves opposition. The point is that agency itself must be established before moral judgment is applied. Treating involuntary and deliberate speech identically serves neither anti-racism nor disability justice.

The Davidson incident illustrates this tension. A word can be socially harmful in its historical weight and impact. But responsibility cannot be abstracted from agency. To treat involuntary neurological discharge as deliberate prejudice collapses an important distinction.

Capitalist society frequently commodifies ‘inspirational’ narratives of disability. Films, awards ceremonies and media profiles celebrate individuals overcoming adversity. Yet this celebration is conditional. It assumes that disability can be packaged into palatable form. When the unfiltered reality appears, tolerance evaporates. The disabled individual is accepted only so long as they remain manageable.

Outrage as commodity

The rapid reaction online was not incidental. Social media platforms reward immediacy and emotional intensity. Speed outruns verification. The platforms profit from engagement regardless of accuracy. A nuanced explanation of Tourette’s generates less interaction than moral outrage. The economic incentive is towards simplification and condemnation, not towards understanding the material reality of neurological conditions.

Under these conditions, moral judgement becomes performative. Expressing indignation is easier than examining neurological evidence. The result is a form of ‘gotcha’ politics that prioritises signalling over understanding.

The paradox of inspiration

Davidson’s presence at the BAFTAs was itself a product of an inspiration narrative, his life ‘overcoming’ Tourette’s packaged as cultural uplift. But inspiration requires disability to be sanitised, controlled, presented as triumph over adversity.

The moment Tourette’s manifested as it actually does, involuntarily, inconveniently, in a way that cannot be neatly celebrated, the sympathy fractured. This reveals what capitalism often means by ‘acceptance’: the disabled must perform their difference in ways that affirm rather than challenge existing norms.

Responsibility reconsidered

A socialist analysis does not abandon the concept of harm. Words carry histories; their impact is real. But an equitable response requires proportionality and context. If an action is involuntary, then moral condemnation is misdirected.

The deeper issue is the rigidity of a society that demands uniform neurological performance in public life. When responsibility is defined without regard to material capacity, it ceases to be rational and becomes punitive.

The BAFTA incident reveals a system that confuses control with virtue and compliance with morality. It treats neurological difference as character defect and involuntary behaviour as moral choice. A materialist analysis rejects this confusion and demands that responsibility be matched to actual agency, not to capitalist fantasies of the self-regulating individual.

Pablo

Cooking The Books: What Epstein reveals (2026)

The Cooking The Books column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Epstein was not just a pimp for the more dissolute members of the global elite. As Gerard Baker wrote in his column in the Times (6 February), headed ‘Epstein saga is a fable of modern capitalism’, ‘sexual scandal aside, the attraction of the financier was that he ran a global network of the rich and powerful’.

Epstein’s email contacts, Baker suggested, would be a representative sample of those in top positions in government, finance, law, media, academia and big tech, ‘the most advantaged individuals [who] moved around a borderless world’ and ‘who have wielded the controlling influence over our lives, our culture, our jobs and much else for most of the last quarter century’:

‘Thanks to Epstein’s crimes, we have been given a glimpse into the way the liberal capitalist global order has worked. And in the process, perhaps, we can see even more clearly why so many people want to sweep it away.’

There is a temptation, amongst those who want this, to see a network like Epstein’s as part of some set-up whereby some global elite make decisions about what happens in the world. Some have not resisted this temptation and have concluded that the world actually is run by a global elite who plan what to do at their meetings in Davos or at the Bilderberg group or on Epstein’s island. Baker adds some credence to this when he wrote of them ‘wielding the controlling influence over our lives’.

In reality, they are not fundamentally in control of what happens under capitalism. They don’t plan booms and slumps or wars or revolutions. Some of them, in their role as the government of a state, do secretly organise — conspire, if you like — to bring about political changes in other countries in the interest of their particular state or group of states. Stock exchange speculators conspire to influence share prices. But nobody controls, or could control, the way the capitalist economic system works; that depends on impersonal market forces which impose themselves, even on the members of the global elite. That’s ‘the controlling influence over our lives’.

Baker corrected himself when he went to write that ‘Epstein enticed them into his web not with his harem of adolescent girls but … the chance for a few words in the ear of someone who could make you even richer, even more powerful; a little inside info, a potential deal…’ That is the limit of what goes on, not some grand conspiracy.

To some extent the situation resembles that described by Marx on the eve of the overthrow of French monarchy in 1848 when under the dominance of the ‘finance aristocracy’:

‘the same prostitution, the same blatant swindling, the same mania for self-enrichment – not from production but by sleight-of-hand with other people’s wealth – was to be found in all spheres of society, from the Court to the Café Borgne. The same unbridled assertion of unhealthy and vicious appetites broke forth, appetites which were in permanent conflict with the bourgeois law itself, and which were to be found particularly in the upper reaches of society, appetites in which the wealth created by financial gambles seeks its natural fulfilment, in which pleasure becomes debauched, in which money, filth and blood commingle. In the way it acquires wealth and enjoys it the financial aristocracy is nothing but the lumpenproletariat reborn at the pinnacle of bourgeois society’ (The Class Struggles in France: 1848 to 1850).

But even if people like them were swept away (as they were in 1848) there would still be capitalism, the real problem and controlling influence.

Coughing up cash (2003)

Charles Ingram

From the June 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism creates much that’s obscene. At times, it generates hilarity born of despair. And an example of the latter was the pursuit of a big win on the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? gameshow made by Celador, and subsequent trial and conviction of the jackpot “winner”, army major Charles Ingram and two accomplices.

In a world of class ownership of the means of living, with people desperate to acquire money because everything costs, bizarre behaviour that causes observers to remark “I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry” isn’t infrequent. From ludicrous get-rich-quick spam to business adverts tattooed on foreheads, people are driven to do whatever it takes to obtain cash.

Charles and his wife Diana owed around £50,000 in loans and credit card payments, while Tecwen Whittock, teacher of business studies at a South Wales college, had a £100,000 mortgage, spent £40,000 on private education for three of his children, and owed around £40,000 (£20,000 on a single credit card bill). Whittock had been in contact with the Ingrams before any of them appeared on the quiz show.

Laughs at the major’s expense from this tragicomic attempt to win big came from him revealing how he sat at home eagerly practising “Fastest Finger First” on a mock-up keypad resting on his knee. How he was reduced to tears in court on hearing a barrister’s humiliating question put to a Celador employee about his frisking after the show: “Did you search his privates?”. But above all, the repeated playing in court of Ingram’s performance recorded on September 10, 2001, “assisted” by Tecwen Whittock’s nineteen “strategically placed coughs”.

Some may be able to cheat the system …

Ingram had struggled the previous day, losing two lifelines to win £4,000, but lack of time caused him to become a “rollover” contestant, meaning Ingram and Whittock were then both present the next evening, enabling a plan to cheat to be carried out. Ingram would read aloud the four possible answers to each question, and Whittock sitting close behind would cough immediately after hearing the correct one.

This crude scheme, perhaps helped by vibrating pagers taped to Whittock’s body, was jeopardised by Ingram’s enthusiasm to answer question 14 unaided. For £500,000, Chris Tarrant asked “Baron Haussmann is best known for his planning of which city? (A), Rome; (B), Paris; (C), Berlin; or (D), Athens.” Ingram said at once “I think it’s Berlin”. And when it seemed Ingram was going to give this as his “final answer”, because Haussmann was a “more German name”, an anxious Whittock resorted to combining a cough with the warning “No!”, which when first played to those in court caused roars of laughter. This warning, followed by more coughs after Ingram twice mentioned Paris while hunting for the correct answer, got him through to the final £1,000,000 question.

The public got their chance to chortle at what the jury saw and heard thanks to a documentary, Millionaire: A Major Fraud, on April 21, which explored the trial and screened the major’s “winning” run. Sadly, most viewers were actually laughing at themselves, as the joke’s on them. They may not have conspired to obtain money with secreted pagers and coded coughs, but they have been partners in a crime against themselves, which is not voting to escape from class domination, exploitation and exclusion, a game which also compels them to chase after money. In this respect, judge Geoffrey Rivlin was wrong to call the trial a “most unusual and exceptional case”.

… but who’s really making a monkey of who?

Game show presenter Chris Tarrant called the coughing for cash “very cynical” and “hugely insulting to the hundreds and hundreds of other contestants who have come on the show, just hoping for much smaller amounts of money”. But what of the cynicism of Celador profiting from millions of premium rate phone calls from people desperate to get on the gameshow to escape from the insult of poverty and deprivation in a supposedly civilised society? What of the documentary, sold to broadcasters worldwide, cynically cashing in on this attempted fraud and which no doubt is hoped to boost the quiz show’s flagging ratings?

Another Tarrant comment was, “It’s unthinkable anyone should think they could go home with the biggest prize of all dishonestly.” What of capitalists going home to luxurious residences, living off vast profits, interest payments and property rents thanks to owning the biggest prize of all, productive assets, which is dishonestly legal thanks to their own system’s laws?

The worst scam of all, that capitalists and their political stooges will never cough to, is that people would be far better off with real socialism, production of goods and services to meet needs, and free access. When it comes to winning the biggest prize for humankind, and you’re faced with those critical 50/50 choices, don’t ask the audience looking down on you. Don’t phone a friend addicted to money. Choose socialism, and make it the final answer.

Max Hess

Crisis and scandal – Happy New Year? (2025)

From the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first few days of 2025 has seen the news dominated by two features, neither of which are anything new. That there is a housing crisis is a frequently covered issue, while, unfortunately, reports of sexual exploitation are all too common.

Friedrich Engels, accounting for the many privations he documents in his 1845 book, The Condition of the Working Class in England, draws what would have been a controversial conclusion. Despite laissez-faire being the dominant economic attitude he voiced the necessity of the state playing a much more active mitigating role.

Subsequent history bore this out. The slums and overcrowded tenements of the new industrial towns Engels saw had, just 45 years later, resulted in government action. The 1890 Housing of the Working Classes Act enabled London councils to begin building houses, with Bethnal Green seeing the first of these in 1896. This initiative was extended to councils outside London by the 1900 Housing of the Working Class Act.

The poor physical health of so many working men revealed by First World War recruitment led to such state intervention being further extended in 1919 by the Housing Act. Also known as the Addison Act, it made housing a national responsibility, requiring local authorities to build 500,000 new homes over three years. The rationale was that healthy homes would furnish a healthy population. How ironic and tragic that over a century later, during a time when health services are being overwhelmed, there is currently a housing crisis.

The present government, echoing the one of 1919, has done what it seems all governments do when facing a serious social problem, it has set a target. 1.5 million homes to be constructed by 2029, around 370,000 a year. That is 140,000 more than the quota set by the previous administration. All well and good, to an extent, if building on that scale actually happens. The real problem ultimately is not housing but wealth, or the lack of it.

A recent radio interview with a woman in Liverpool illustrates the difficulties. She has two young children and presently is having to live with her own mother in her two bedroom home. This means the younger mother and her daughters are required to share a bed. Her local authority has a duty to house this woman and her children. Its failure to do so is due not to malfeasance, but to not having the physical property to supply. Nor does it have the resources to build houses.

Affordable housing, whether to buy or rent, is supposed to be an obligation on builders. However, builders do not build to meet need, they do so to make profit. They are driven by the same ethos as all of capitalism. More modest, cheaper properties do not cost substantially less, pro rata, to build than larger, premium properties that can command higher-end prices. A house, just like a single brick, is a commodity that must return the best possible profit for its maker.

Around Barnsley, for example, there are a number of brownfield sites for which planning permission has been granted. Many of these permissions have subsequently lapsed without a brick being laid. Whatever potential for profit exists or existed on these sites it seems insufficient for the market to act. The local authority has not been unwilling or obstructive, nor is there an absence of housing need. No matter whether targets are set locally or nationally, that need will not be met if there is a more pressing need for money.

No matter how sympathetic the radio interviewer, the listeners, politicians and pressure groups, that Liverpudlian woman and her children are, in brutal capitalist terms, not economically viable. It is quite possible that those children, and all too many like them, are or will become vulnerable. The scandal dominating the news at the moment is the seemingly huge sexual exploitation of children, dating back over decades.

Like the housing crisis this is by no means a new phenomenon. The age of consent to marry, in England in 1700, was 12 for a girl, 14 for boys. The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885, raised the age to 16 for girls, with more severe punishments for those procuring those under 13.

Just as housing need is addressed by politicians setting targets, so they deal with this exploitation through establishing, or calls to establish, enquiries. These meet, gather evidence, propose action and then the story drops from the headlines until it re-emerges years later when little has changed.

How such things are legally considered reflects the prevailing economic structure of society. The 12-year-old requirement referred to the minimum age a girl could marry and was first established in the 13th century. Then the feudal system based on land ownership led to marriages via which estates could be secured and expanded through marriage. The Crown, then being the arbiter of law, determined that minimum age by which a female could wed.

By the time Engels was writing his book capitalism had become, and still is, the system through which social relations are produced. Virtually anything can be turned into a commodity for sale. It is a system based on the exploitation of individuals’ labour.

That labour might be employed in making widgets or supplying a service. Child labour in the UK is mainly prohibited except for a few exceptions that are highly regulated. When it is sex work that’s the issue, and there are children involved, legal and moral disapprobation is invoked.

However, for those so steeped in capitalism’s overriding ethos they are willing to risk repercussions, legislation is an inconvenience to be circumvented. If there’s a demand there will be suppliers. The worldwide trade in illegal drugs is a more visible example.

These crises and scandals are undoubtedly connected. At the root of both is money and the power it confers, or nullifies, depending on a person’s financial circumstances. Houses will be built, young persons traded, if there is profit to be made.

For as long as capitalism is allowed to continue, both legal and illegal pursuit of profit will be the ultimate determinant of whether people’s needs, in all respects, will be met. Political posturing and moral handwringing will not make a fundamental difference. Crises and scandals will remain distressing and recurrent features of headlines.

Dave Alton

Proper Gander: The latest celebrity to be accused (2025)

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

Gregg Wallace MBE used to be most well known for presenting BBC One’s MasterChef cookery competition, but now he’s the latest celebrity to be accused of sexual misconduct. By late November, 13 women had made allegations against him, apparently of sexually harassing-type behaviour and inappropriate comments while they were working on various TV shows. Some of these complaints date back years, raising questions about how they were dealt with at the time, and why any abusive behaviour continued.

At the beginning of December, Wallace posted a video on Instagram denying the allegations and saying his accusers were ‘a handful of middle-class women of a certain age’, which surely he didn’t think would calm the situation down. His accusers reacted by criticising him for his dismissive tone, while other journalists and commentators wore the phrase he used as a badge of honour, and also literally on badges, as well as on t-shirts and mugs. Even the government got involved. After Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy met with the BBC’s senior management, a spokesman for the Prime Minister made a statement that Wallace’s comment was ‘completely inappropriate and misogynistic’. Wallace then posted a self-pitying apology for the offence caused by his remarks, technically not apologising for the remarks themselves. Some future editions of MasterChef were dropped from the schedules and Wallace isn’t likely to be getting any other work pending an investigation. Further allegations of groping and indecent exposure followed.

Right-wing pundits such as Simon Webb of History Debunked and Alex Phillips on Talk TV were critical of the importance placed on Gregg Wallace’s actions in the news, above those days’ other events such as Syria’s Assad government losing control of the city of Aleppo. Of course, to complain about the story’s prominence in the news is to add to its prominence. When right-wing commentators criticise the story they are likely to be doing so because they feel that it’s an example of what they would see as the leftist trend of people being overly offended. Leo Kearse’s flippant stance was that targeting Wallace reveals the hypocrisy of left wingers who ignore non-white male perpetrators. Still, you don’t have to be right wing to notice that the story has been especially prominent on the BBC’s news output.

One reason for this is that the BBC wouldn’t want its reputation to be harmed further by giving the impression it isn’t taking seriously allegations against one of its stars. Only a few months earlier, newsreader Huw Edwards, who was usually called on to present coverage of the state’s most prestigious occasions, was convicted of possessing child pornography. Edwards and Wallace have now both joined the list of TV presenters and actors who have been accused of sexually harassing or abusive behaviour to various extents: Russell Brand, Jay Blades, John Barrowman and Noel Clarke, among others. And the BBC – and the media in general – is still shamed by predators such as Rolf Harris, Stuart Hall, Gary Glitter and Jimmy Savile. Residual guilt about some of these abusers being able to continue for years probably also accounts for the BBC appearing to be so open now about accusations against Wallace.

While the actions of these men aren’t equivalent to each other, there is a pattern behind this type of behaviour. Presumably, the high status these people had in TV circles gave them confidence, a sense of superiority over others and the opportunities to act on this. The power imbalance has led to misdemeanours ranging from crass comments to the most abhorrent crimes. The same pattern is found elsewhere in the media, as shown by film mogul Harvey Weinstein being jailed for rape and sexual abuse offences, and the sexism and sexual violence found in some aspects of hip hop and rap culture. Outside the media industry, allegations of sexual abuse by Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed have come to light after his death, having been curtailed during his lifetime by threats of litigation against complainants. He was one of the few rich enough to buy some secrecy, but otherwise, how high profile a perpetrator is tends to equate to how prominently they are reported on, once the story breaks. A famous name attached to sexual misconduct attracts lucrative newspaper sales, social media posts and clicks on websites. The depressingly high number of other instances of sexual harassment and abuse in different workplaces hasn’t been reported on as widely as the scandals in the media industry.

The TUC’s Still Just A Bit of Banter report from 2016 said that more than one in ten women reported experiencing unwanted sexual touching while at work. And in 2020, the government published the Sexual Harassment Survey, which found that 29 percent of people in employment had experienced some form of sexual harassment through their job. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy is considering introducing new codes of conduct for people working in the arts in an attempt to address abuse in that industry, but the problem exists across all sectors and runs deeper than reforms can control. The power imbalance which lies behind instances of sexual abuse is a consequence of the hierarchies which come with employment. The structure of workplaces in capitalism puts people on different levels, with those in higher positions having influence over those lower down. This creates the conditions for people with damaged and damaging attitudes towards women, children or other groups to act in an abusive way. Addressing this problem means addressing the structures in society which enable it to happen.

Mike Foster

Press Exposure: Make Your Excuses and Leave (1995)

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

On the Richter scale of blatant deception it does not come up to George Orwell’s Newspeak but it is a pretty impressive misnomer, for a newspaper which carries very little proper news and which pays scant attention to what goes on outside these shores to be called the News Of The World.

Not that that has ever worried the people who own it or edit it. Their yardstick for the success or failure of the paper is how much it is talked about in the pubs on a Sunday. And as it has a circulation approaching five million—which means a probable readership of nearly 15 million—it is a fair bet that whenever people are in alcoholic bondage on Sundays there will be some discussion of the News Of The World's latest account of the roller-coaster sex lives of the royals or TV soap stars or famous sportsmen or obscure clergymen.

Of course it might be that the people leaning up against the bars will find other things to interest them. Like the recent WHO report that every year 12.2 million children under five die "because they are poor". Like the training now being given to Job Centre staff to deal with an expected upsurge of violence from claimants made even more desperate by cuts in benefits. Like the revelation that since peace broke out in 1945 there have been three crises in which America and Russia were on the brink of all-out nuclear war. But that is the real world of capitalism, in which the News Of The World has only a limited interest.

Getting close

The paper was born in 1843 and has always been noted for peddling the more sensational style of journalism, giving the full treatment to the likes of Jack the Ripper and Dr Crippen. Aristocratic divorces were a convenient way of catering for its readers’ assumed need for respectable sexual titillation. All of this was driven by the paper’s belief in itself. Emsley Carr, who edited it for 50 years, once asserted that it was ". . . always right. Nothing we did could ever be wrong".

This confidence had something to do with the News Of The World’s knack of getting close to its readers. Free insurance was one way of doing this; another was a missing person’s service (often aimed at funding someone who stood to gain from a will). Most famously of all. it ran the John Hilton Advice Bureau (Hilton was a professor of industrial relations at Cambridge) which helped with readers' problems on pensions, insurance, rent and the like and took up many cases. The spin-off was not just in publicity and higher sales but the fact that the Bureau sometimes opened up an avenue of investigation which could lead to a tasty story. For the News Of The World being close to its readers paid off; in the 1950s its circulation exceeded eight million.

But the readers need to be not only titillated. They had also to be shocked, frightened, amused, outraged—if possible all at once. Too often this has been manipulated by the selective exposure of someone who has been through the courts for sexual offences. It matters little that in so many cases the offender has themself suffered sexual assaults; in the columns of the News Of The World they are less than human— "fiends" or "beasts" or "perverts". And when they leave prison the paper continues to pursue them, protesting hysterically at wherever they live or whatever job they find.

Making excuses

The paper’s preoccupation with crime, the pornography of which they pretend to legitimise, has led it into some contradictory stances. On the one hand they make a lot of denouncing criminals, at times offering rewards for information leading to the conviction of a murderer. On the other they can befriend the notorious "acid bath" killer Haigh and pay for his defence in court after he had given them exclusive rights to his memoirs. More recently this preoccupation has reached the pitch of an obsession to including “dole scroungers’’ who must seem, to the News Of The World readers in the pubs, to be infesting the country and threatening to bring down the Stock Exchange. Lloyds and the money market with the rest of capitalism's class structure.

This obsession might be taken more seriously if the paper had a stronger reputation for respecting the truth. For example in 1991 it ran a story about Clare Short, the Labour MP who was campaigning against the cult of Page Three girls. This story was about a classified advertisement in Tribune which suggested that readers might like to send for a selection of "granddad’s naughty pictures"—the nature of which can easily be imagined. The News Of The World presented this boring, insignificant item—it could hardly be called news—as if Clare Short was in some way responsible for the advertisement when in fact her only connection with it was that she was a Tribune reader.

The sort of "exposures" the paper excels in are normally of some type of prostitution—the wilder and more bizarre the services on offer the better. So carefully have these investigations been arranged and reported that they have added a new phrase to the usage of English. The story begins when a reporter poses as a punter and. as what might be called the crunch approaches, has to extricate himself, complete with hidden tape recorder, from a potentially embarrassing—even dangerous—situation. Breathless readers are told how it is done: "I made my excuses and left."

Since 1968 the News Of The World has been owned by Rupert Murdoch, who is not renowned for upholding high journalistic standards, especially when the lower the standards the higher the sales. Before Murdoch took over, between 1891 and 1970 the paper had six editors. After Murdoch arrived, from 1970 to 1993 there were 23. Perhaps this is part of the paper’s proud boast (it was, after all, an advertising slogan) that All Human Life Is There.

But—all human life? The poverty, famine. fear and disease which is what human life is under capitalism? The futile, posturing leaders who the News Of The World urges us to support according to the whims of its proprietor? The corruption and cynicism of a social system which exploits and degrades its useful people and assumes that they will suffer it all. provided they have a weekly helping of malicious rubbish to wash down with their booze on Sunday?

Time to leave. And no excuses. 

Ivan

Blogger's Note:

The News of the World finally shut up shop in 2011 after the fallout from the phone hacking scandal.

Nothing objectionable ! (1913)

From the April 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “Morand-Morrison” divorce case should give pause to more than one critic of Socialism. In this case a man and woman were, on the authority of Mr. Justice Deane, perfectly happily married. Along comes a rich man—a millionaire—with, of course, a rich man’s appreciation of that sanctity of the home and the marriage tie which Socialists (we are told) are bent upon destroying. He takes a fancy to the woman, having worn the novelty off his own wife, and being a very rich man, used to having his own way in everything, he soon removed all obstacles from his path.

Now the husband brings a case in court, not, of course, as a part of any pre-arranged scheme to provide Captain Morrison with a “free” woman.

What we desire to put on record, however, is the remarkable utterance of the judge in hia direction to the jury, as indicating the position of the law when dealing with the buying and selling of women by rich men.

According to the “Daily Chronicle,” of March. 14, Mr. Priestley, K.C., “for the wife, in answer to Mr. Justice Deane, said it was a question of damages only, and the sum of £5,500 had been agreed upon subject to the approval of his lordship and the jury.”

“Mr. Justice Deane” the “Chronicle” continues, “said there might be cases in which, when the parties lived a cat and dog life, it would be rather a blessing than otherwise that the parties should part. But there was nothing of that sort in this case. Petitioner and his wife were perfectly happy till this trouble began with Captain Morrison giving presents to the lady.”

Having thus established the “glad, beautful, and pure” English home in accordance with the accepted canons of orthodoxy, the judge proceeded to show how obliging and helpful the law is in matters of prostitution and the “White Slave” business when money elevates them from crime to virtue.

“The parties themselves had agreed to the sum of £5,500, and they knew the facts better than anyone else. . ‘As far as they could see, there was nothing of an objectionable character behind petitioner and the other parties. Captain Morrison was a rich man, and he had practically bought this woman for £5,500.”

On the judge’s direction the jury found for the petitioner.

It is a great pity that this will not serve as a peg for the Suffragettes to hang their tale upon. It is a great pity that the power of wealth, which shows its ugly head so obtrusively, cannot be obscured, and that all too visible class line rubbed out. They might then be able to show that this is another instance of the line of cleavage between the sexes, and to prove therefrom that the extension of the franchise to propertied women would be the salvation of society. Alas ! however, the facts of this case, at all events, are too glaring to be obliterated by their specific “dark brown fluid,” or to be obscured by the “Votes for Women” label. It needs no discerning eye to observe that not only a woman, but a man also, has in this case been bought to serve the purpose of the idle rich. So it is as clear as claret that the buying and selling of women does not indicate a sex inequality, calling for the Suffragette, but a class dominance, calling for the Socialist.

J.

The role of the financier. (1927)

From the November 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Finance, we are told, is the sinew of modern industry, the base upon which commercial operations rest, and the controller, in high finance, is one of the worshipful company of captains of industry. Now and again there is a storm in financial circles, one of its star performers comes to ruin, the veil is torn aside, and we get a glimpse of the nature of financial operations.

Such an instance has occurred lately with the ruin and suicide of the financier, James White. A fellow financier, Sir Edward Mackay Edgar, made a statement to the Daily News (2/7/27) from which we extract the following :—

 “Thousands of people will be ruined as the result of the wild speculations of the late Mr. James White. Already two of his closest friends have gone ‘broke,’ and God alone knows what will happen within the next fortnight. It will be the sensation of the 20th century in the matter of finance.

“The British Controlled Oilfields is my baby. I organised it and got it into a fine position. It was the aim of Jimmy White to obtain as many shares as possible and force up the price. Then he hoped to sell and realise a fortune. That was as far back as three years ago. I would not consent because of the advice of technical experts on the spot.

“On the Thursday before Good Friday, Mr. White came to me and asked me to join a pool to force up the price of B.C.O. shares. For five hours I was on my hands and knees in my flat imploring him not to engage in such a mad venture, knowing that disaster could be the only result. He left me that night, and I have only seen him once since.

“He entered upon a bitter campaign to reduce me to financial ruin. He failed in his efforts. He bought shares right and left. He relied upon by group of friends selling short. We never unloaded a single share, but kept them, and we knew that White on June 30th would have to meet his enormous commitments or go ‘broke.’ This last effort of his was a gambler’s last throw of the dice. I knew the crash was coming. All my friends were aware of it.”

The interesting side to us in the above statements is the fact that the foundations of modern industry are so frail that men like White can play ducks and drakes with it and bring chaos where order should reign, by indulging in lawful financial operations. Instances such as this bring to the front the question, “What is the object of industry?” Is it to provide people of a peculiar nature with an outlet for a glorious gamble, or is it to provide society with means to meet the mental and physical needs of the people composing society. Evidently our “great”captains of industry hold the view that the earth and the fulness thereof was made for their sport and enjoyment—and we are merely items too cheap to be worthy of consideration.

Gilmac.

Greasy Pole: Hacking? Who’s hacking? (2011)

The Greasy Pole column from the August 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard 

“Sundays won’t be the same again,” whined the Political Editor. Or rather the ex-political editor of the abruptly defunct, paedophilia-hounding, police officer-corrupting, phone-hacking, record-circulating News Of The World. No more blearily turning the pages for a weekly dose of insight into the chaotic privacy of a select few handily grouped under the shield of celebrity. No more envious excursions into a growingly denser jungle where the more luxurious the undergrowth the larger the financial profit. Never the same again? Are there any who would be ungrateful for such a small mercy? Even accepting that it came swaddled in breathtaking hypocrisy?

 

BSkyB

 The earlier reaction to Rupert Murdoch ending the News Of The World was that it was the tycoon’s punitive response to the exposure of the paper’s habitual intrusion into the private lives of anyone liable to be regarded as newsworthy through hacking into their telephones. However within an hour or so a more acceptable explanation came onto the scene. For some years Murdoch’s News International had been manoeuvring to take over the 61 percent of shares it does not hold in BSkyB, which is estimated to yield them some £1 billion profit during the next financial year. It seemed like good balance-sheet sense to help this process by surrendering the News Of The World’s comparatively modest £12 million annual profit – apart from the prospect of the tighter binding of Murdoch’s relationship with the Tory and Labour leaderships, with all that promises in terms of future concessions for his media machine. It is a long time since political leaders have operated with no regard for the ambitions of that fearsome magnate. A long time since a Prime Minister has omitted to invite Murdoch and his underlings to one of those regularly sickening ventures intro terrified sycophancy among the lawns and terraces of Chequers. And, until the events of recent weeks, it was promising to be a long time before that situation changed. 

 

Gotcha

In essence it was a simple strategy. The party leadership and their advisers paid heed to the prejudices, fears and misconceptions which were stimulated by, and advantageous to, the Murdoch operation and calculated that these could be applied to their electoral advantage. In other words, the Murdoch empire could win elections – a theory which might be said to have fitted in with events in this way:

• 1969 Murdoch buys the News Of The World and the Sun, revamped from the successor to the old Daily Herald. 
• 1979 The Tories under Margaret Thatcher and supported by the Sun win the general election against an exhausted and demoralised Labour Party.
• 1981 Thatcher’s government supports Murdoch’s recently formed News Corporation bid to buy the Times and the Sunday Times – with the predictable guarantees of “editorial independence”.
• 1983 After surviving a number of problems during their early days in power the Tories win an emphatic majority, helped by patriotic hysteria over the Falklands war, marked by the full-page headline in the Sun screaming GOTCHA! over the sinking of the Belgrano. 
• 1987 Another Tory election win, with a majority reduced probably in reaction to Thatcher’s impending replacement by John Major
• 1992 John Major, struggling against the Eurosceptics “bastards” in his party, notches up an unexpected election victory. The Sun helps him on his way by devoting its front page to a request that in the event of Neil Kinnock’s Labour winning “…will the last person to leave Britain…turn out the lights”. Then crows that “It was the Sun wot won it.”
• 1997 With the Tories descending into a confusion of sleaze, economic chaos and scandal Murdoch joins forces with his persistently loyal friend Tony Blair and his party and Labour win the election in a landslide. 
• 2010 After Murdoch defects to support the Tories, Gordon Brown’s Labour Party loses the election, replaced by a fractious Coalition.
• 2011 As the hacking scandal breaks into the open previous assumptions about electoral alliances, governmental stability – and the influence of the Murdoch clan – need to be re-assessed. 

 

Profit

 That ex-Political Editor told us why he grieved at the closing of the News Of The World: “Villains, paedophiles and corrupt politicians will be able to sleep more soundly now that the greatest investigative newspaper on Earth has gone.” He did not mention that such newspapers work so devotedly to unearth their scoops in the cause of higher sales, advertising revenue and investment – or that in that process a significant clutch of criminals and corrupt politicians are enabled to stay active. One investor in News Corporation, the Church of England, held £4 million worth of shares overseen by a body incongruously known as the Ethical Investment Advisory Group which described the News Of The World’s hacking campaign as “utterly reprehensible and unethical”. Compared to that, and in the present crisis in the industry, the advice of Murdoch’s favourite son James, chairman of News International, to the 2009 Edinburgh Television Festival, that “the only guarantee of independence is profit” reads as more illuminating and useful – if menacing. Among the terrified hysteria of Westminster, the panic of laggardly journalists and manipulatory police officers, the figures – an expectation of £135 million a year circulation revenue, £38 million advertising income, and, if the bid for BSkyB succeeded there would be an additional £1.6 billion a year – carried more weight than the exotically titled, smugly gambling excuses of the clerics. The simple fact is that what we know as the media, in all its forms, is no different in its need to conform to the rules and demands of a commodity society. Unavoidably, politicians saw it as a priority to foster such ambitions in the assumption that come the next election it would yield a rich harvest of votes. The sudden flooding of these facts into what is known as ‘the public domain’ provoked widespread outrage. Another example of the urgency for the ‘public’ to react in a proper, reparative manner.

Ivan

Schlock, Payola and Gyp Sellers (1960)

From the May 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live in stirring times. Rockets landing on the moon, bigger and more powerful weapons to ensure peace, and scientifically minded and humane world leaders prepared to use these weapons if peace is no longer possible. Capitalist civilisation in the mid-twentieth century has certainly produced a unique morality and given us poor ignorant workers a set of social values very difficult to live down to.

Consider the advertising profession. Is it not one of the most typical of capitalism’s great institutions, and also one of the most necessary processes between the raw material and the commodity we consume? If there was no advertising, how would we know that our very life depended on our using pink toothpaste? In fact, without advertising, how would we know what to eat, drink, wear, inject, smoke, etc.? We would be completely lost.

But now, of course, we have Commercial Television, and can therefore learn all these vital facts while sitting in a state of complete mental relaxation (or even stupor) in a darkened room before the Magic Screen. It puzzles us considerably how our forefathers existed without television, and yet they seemed to bumble along somehow.

Recent investigations show, however, that television is nowadays assuming its rightful place in the home. A survey of 200 homes in a town in Northern England revealed that three homes had bathtubs, six had hot water, four had their own toilets, but 125 had television sets!

Time magazine of 9/11/59 quotes Mr. Walter Lippmann (a famous American critic) as saying that the U.S. laissez-faire policy has turned TV into "the creature, the servant, and indeed the prostitute, of merchandising.”

Mr. Lippmann’s strong words were uttered following disclosures that certain American TV quiz programmes were “fixed." As is only right and proper when a National God is in danger, a minister of religion (and also a participant in the quiz shows) girded his loins and defended his God (Time, 16/11/59). “Most of us have a great deal of larceny in us," drawled the Rev. Charles ("Stony") Jackson of Tullahoma, Tenn. "The fact that I am an ordained minister does not make me a saint.”

If a licensed representative of the Almighty can fall into temptation, is it any wonder that lesser mortals (including children) were persuaded to collaborate in the deceptions of the quiz shows? The same edition of Time reports that “. . . of 150 quiz witnesses who appeared before the New York County grand jury and swore before God (or on their affirmations) to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no less than 100, said District Attorney Frank Hogan, had lied.. . .” Obviously these upright, honest, American citizens had been well trained by their contact with the elevating atmosphere of Commercial Television, which in turn draws inspiration from the worthy sponsors of its programmes.

A former advertising chief of one firm involved in the “fixed quiz show” saga neatly summed up the whole subject when he thought that producers “ were living between the mixed values of show business and advertising, and moral values were lost sight of ” (Time, same issue).

"Moral values” notwithstanding, it is plain that, under the beneficent influence of this great “free enterprise" system of ours, the marketer of commodity A must employ ail means (fair or foul) to beat the marketer of commodity B to the lion’s share of the market. One of the means he employs is to purchase the talents, the "integrity,” the showing time, etc., of TV networks, which, in turn employ all means (fair or foul) to attract audiences for their programmes.

These recent disclosures of some of the mystical practices and rituals of commercial television have been said to "tarnish" that great institution’s "Image." it is all rather as if someone had testified that the Virgin Mary was not really a virgin at all, and that the "miracle cures 'at Lourdes were faked.

Payola

"Everybody has become so suspicious that if you say ‘Oh, my God!’ on television, people think you're being paid off by the Holy Father." (Famous actor quoted in Time, 23/9/59.) Now actors, like other workers, must live. They must pay their agents and their psychiatrists, pay off their former wives, eat, etc. And, to help make both ends meet, it is only natural for them to look out for some “perks’’—such as the rewards they get for mentioning brand names of commodities (or even making indirect references to such commodities) on television programmes. For instance, one famous comedian said, "Look, Mom, no cavities! ” (the slogan ot a certain brand of toothpaste) on a TV show, and another comedian greeted a guest star with, "What’s this you're wearing—My Sin? ’’ This "plug" was reported to have resulted in "payola" to the tune of $1,000.

If it were not for those gentlemen (called "disk jockeys") who play gramophone records on radio and television, how many of us would ever hear or remember the folk music of our day which emanates from such inspired sources as Archer Street in London? Fortunately for us, these wise men are quick to spot the very best records and then see to it that we hear them over the air at frequent intervals. For the record industry is a thriving one, and record companies will pay a lot of money to sell us excellent records of, say, the amatory aspirations of pre-pubertal boys.

No doubt our readers will by now appreciate that disk-jockeys only tend to “ride” (i.e., ‘plug”) these winning records if they are offered some inducement. Some may consider that the mere playing of these musical treasures would be reward enough, but we regret to state that many disk-jockeys in America have been discovered to have accepted monetary rewards or expensive presents. Some of the more influential disk jockeys have financial interests in record companies and even singers; this may possibly also influence their choice of records.

The latest development in this interesting chapter of honesty and “morality” in American show-business is the emergence of a specialised type of “payola" —to wit, “girl payola” American record companies were recently reported to have shipped two aircraft loads of girls to "entertain" disk-jockeys attending a conference in Miami; doubtless the record companies hoped that, inspired by the love of a good woman, a disk-jockey would oblige by playing (repeatedly) the “right” record on his show after the tiring conference was over. Could business ethics and “morality” be better exemplified?

Despite McCarthy-like government investigations most people involved in the “music business” in America would prefer to retain the status quo, “payola" and all. As Time reports: “The last thing most people in this industry want is to clean it up,” admitted one musician, “ It’s too lucrative for too many people.”

Gypping the Sucker

Thanks to the benign influence of modern commercial television, the fairground quack, the huckster, and the pavement confidence-trickster, have been incorporated in those intellectual offerings of the Silver Screen—the “commercials.” American TV audiences have been so saturated with their high-pressure brand of “commercials” that a special device (called a “blab-off” switch), by which the exhortations of the peddler of a commodity may be summarily silenced, is in great demand. The sale of these “blab-off” switches is much deprecated by the sponsors.

But we digress. Despite apparent differences, the fairground huckster and the TV "commercial" are fundamentally similar: there must be, in both cases, the capitalist duality of seller and buyer. As the chairman of the American Federal Trade Commission investigating alleged dishonesty in advertising methods stated (Time, 4/1/60): "In the blunt language of the street . . . the gyp seller depends on the sucker buyer and can't exist without him." Thus the "gyp seller" and the "sucker buyer" take their place alongside other classical dualities—Holmes and Watson, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and capitalist and worker.

Here are some interesting little deceptions practised by American TV "commercials":

 Sticking food particles to a plate before putting it in a dishpan to demonstrate the inferiority of a competitor’s detergent.

  Lacing breakfast cereal with ice cream so that child models will smile with delight at being served the advertiser’s particular brand. 

  Saturating a sponge with a powerful bleach to prove how one cleanser leaves a stained sink sparkling white, while competing brands leave black smudges.

  Filling a coffee pot with hot wine because real coffee tends to photograph like crankcase sludge.

   Icing a bake-it-yourself cake with shaving cream because real icing melts under hot floodlights.

(Time, 4/1/60.)

Even responsible executives in the American advertising hierarchy feel that deception in advertising methods would be difficult to eradicate. Said one (Time, 4/1/60): “Dishonest advertising is here. It is real. And whatever the percentage, the amount is large and is not diminishing.” The same outspoken executive went on to ask: “How can four different cigarettes all be lowest in nicotine, lowest in tars; how can three different headache remedies all work fastest? ” He has us there.

One of the most important principles of our private property society is “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” Members or representatives of the owning class pay large sums of money in attempts to capture the market from their rivals, and are not greatly concerned about the methods employed. In other words, the end justifies the means; a philosophy which must inevitably lead to trickery, dishonesty and cynicism.

Those who support the private property system would no doubt argue that advertising, “commercial” TV, “show business" (in. short, the topics we have discussed here) are examples of “freedom,” “democracy," and “incentive" — alleged hallmarks of capitalism.

Socialists would rather argue that capitalism, with its inexorable drive for expanding markets and more profits, is forced to foster cheating, sham values, artificial desires, and inequality (both political and economic), in its blind drive to its goal—the sale of the commodity.

This thumb-nail sketch of the kind of world capitalism has made, with its own peculiarly twisted type of "morality," may help to show why ordinary workers, who would normally never dream of cheating at a card game with friends, are drawn into the sordid deceits of “phoney” quiz shows. It is of particular interest to Socialists because the deceits and trickery of the advertising business are only reflections of much larger deceptions—those of the apologists, politicians, and spokesmen of capitalism. Perhaps by aiming our Socialist dart at one target, we may hit both. '

Michael La Touche