Letter: Crime Passionel (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Crime Passionel

Ref. the January issue of the Socialist Standard and the article “The Real World Outside”.

The writer of the article says, quote: “Socialist society will have no more need of prisons, than it will have of bombs”. Whilst agreeing with this statement, and the fact that 90-odd per cent of imprisonments are inflicted on people for theft, or for acts committed in the pursuance of them, which would not happen in a Socialist Society.

In a Socialist society however, some misdemeanours will still occur. How are these to be dealt with?

For one example, crime passionel, i.e.: A man desires a woman, but the woman rejects the man’s advances, preferring to live with another man, and not at all interested in the rejected one at all. In blind jealousy, the rejected man inflicts bodily harm, possibly death on the favoured one, or on the woman herself, or on both. Would nothing be done by society in a case like this? Would it be treated purely as a personal affair between the parties involved?

Regarding the criminally insane. Severely mentally disturbed people of a violent nature, would still have to be locked away, in a prison of one sort or another. No doubt with better conditions and facilities than at present, but a prison nevertheless.

J. Cardin

Merseyside.

Reply

J. Cardin raises so many interesting points that we would need a whole issue of the Socialist Standard to deal with them fully. Within the space available, we can only say this: the example of “crime passionel” is dangerously loaded with the prejudices of capitalist society. For example, you assume it is a man (not a woman) who is blindly jealous. Why? Can we suggest it is because so much of the advertizing etc. we see round us, shows woman as part of the complete man, instead of a full human being in her own right? This “blind jealousy” you talk of is usually the result of the conditioning of a perverse environment, where man assumes property rights over “his woman”. And “blind jealousy” is a phrase leaving so many questions unanswered. Why do people go off their rockers? May we suggest that one of the fundamental causes must be life under capitalism with all its stresses, and distorted values.

Why assume that the rejected one would “inflict bodily harm” on the former lover and his or her new lover? If you love someone, you don’t inflict harm on that person, or on the object of his or her affection. And if you don’t love, will you care enough to inflict harm? It is only property society which overloads basic human emotions with absurd and dangerous complications, causing absurd and dangerous reactions.

You do contradict yourself! You agree with our point that Socialist society will not need prisons in your second sentence, and then in your last sentence assume there will be prisons in Socialist society. Let us solve the riddle. There will be no prisons in Socialist society. If people commit violent acts upon their fellows it is almost certain they are mentally ill. If people are mentally sick (“criminally insane” is a brutal expression of property society) they will receive the same attention as the physically sick that is the best treatment possible.

Finally may we refer J. Cardin to the September 1974 Socialist Standard where some of these points are dealt with at more length in the article “Law and Society.”

Editors.

Private lives (1977)

From the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent in Greater Manchester asks a series of questions beginning: ‘‘What is the socialist view of the regulation and control (if any) of sexual activity within a Socialist society? Please deal individually with the questions of marriage, divorce and its family consequences, the age of consent, homosexuality (male and female), rape.” Further questions are who would have the say in the bringing-up of children, and would children be ‘‘disciplined” as now to make them conform; on individual rights to privacy, quietness, etc.; and finally, whether Socialism would not need some enforcement machinery for these matters.

They all represent aspects of the individual’s relationship to the community—but putting it that way distorts things at the outset. The basic social relationships are created by the structure of society itself. A complex of subsidiary relationships grows within them, with ideas attached. Yet these ideas in turn react on society; they produce endless changes of detail, and also the desire for new relationships which can only be obtained by developing society further. Thus, the socialist view is not that we shall have common ownership and then try to improve existing relationships. It is that with the end of class society, the relationships and attitudes which are parts of it also end, and entirely new ones grow up on the basis of common ownership.

The social pattern of sexual activity has changed from one society to another: for an account of it, read Engels’s The Origin of the Family. Within the “pairing” marriage changes have taken place. The “extended” family which included all close relatives has given way to the “nuclear” family of one couple and its children, and the social importance of this in turn has declined. The reasons are simply economic: division of labour makes the experience and life-style of one generation alien to the next. Along with this goes the separation of sexual pleasure from reproduction, which is by no means a modern idea but has been scientifically perfected in the 20th century.

What will happen in Socialism is that people will live together without having to seek a licence and part if and when they want to. A good many attempt this today, within the limits of convenience and approval allowed by capitalism. Those limits are removed when property society is abolished: social relations of equality and freedom make personal ones possible.

It is the question of parting that causes concern, of course — the “family consequences”. The paramount factor among them is one which will be absent from Socialist society: money, unending worries over it, the need for it to keep a family housed, clothed and fed. In capitalist society the break-up of a marriage almost invariably causes hardship in those terms, and divorce and separation proceedings are chiefly about financial provisions to support the individuals who are “dependent” under the existing family system. But this takes us back to the foundation of the relationship. When it involves material dependence it clearly is not an equal partnership, and it isn’t surprising that resentment is common.

Other consequences cannot be separated from material ones. Children (like adults) want stability and affection, and in present-day society those things are associated with a conventional home-life. There is no reason why they should not be had, fully, in different arrangements. This is not a case of one regime replacing another, but of being able to make choices which capitalism does not allow. Socialism will be a responsible society precisely because it means freedom to choose. Class-based, authoritarian society gives no such freedom; the choices are imposed, and the individual has to be exhorted into responsibility towards them. When they are made personally or communally, with knowledge and without coercion, true responsibility is felt and exercised.

Not much joy

Sex is both a natural impulse and a supreme pleasure. What sort of world is it whose “regulation of sexual activity” denies satisfaction to large numbers of people, and persuades many more that it is intrinsically shameful? In recent years emphasis has been laid on frankness about sex. Whatever the merits of this, it has produced —inevitably, in capitalism—the commercial exploitation of desires which society does not let be fulfilled. It is impossible to have the best from this area of life without decent material conditions. Privacy, hot water, warmth and some degree of comfort, and not being worried or tired, are the minimum requirements; simple as they sound, they add up to a standard of housing and general well-being which the majority of working people cannot get.

Change this, and there is no need to argue for a right to privacy. Our correspondent links it with “a place of one’s own”, and asks if that does not presuppose private property; but owner-occupiers generally are no better off than council-house tenants in this respect. Of course sexual satisfaction (and the enjoyment of life in many other respects) is heavily obstructed by living between cardboard-thin walls through which the neighbours or the children can hear every word and creak. The privacy problem is a matter of bricks-and-mortar environment, the result of a class-divided society and production for profit. Houses built for use instead of money will embody different assumptions.

There is another aspect of this. Privacy, like its opposite, is not supposed to be a permanent situation; lonely people would say they get too much of it. It is a field for the choice which capitalism refuses, except to the privileged minority. There are times when any of us needs to be alone and undisturbed, other times when company and noise are desired. It is a striking indictment of our society that relatively few can choose like that, and a great many lead thoroughly miserable lives because they are condemned to one position or the other.

The age of consent, homosexuality and rape are run together inappropriately by our correspondent, presumably because they all appear as “problems” to do with sex. The first is a matter of social custom which varies from country to country, and its legal force is bound up with the definition of persons below their majority as “minors” or “infants”. Would such a rule be necessary in Socialism, with the same ostensible purpose of protecting the immature? It does not “protect” them now from sexual experience if they have it in mind. But maturity has cultural as well as physical components: sexual pressure on little girls of nine comes not from hormones but from big business (watch the TV advertisements). The sex drive makes itself known sharply at puberty, but the situation in society as a whole determines the direction it takes. It will be the absence of exploitation that shapes conduct in Socialism, not the absence of laws.

Homosexuality is an offence against social custom (its legalization “in private between consenting adults” has not stopped day-after-day prosecutions of homosexuals who cannot arrange the needed privacy). There is no space here for such questions as whether it is a genetic or an environmental phenomenon; but if we accept that it is constitutional in some people and will therefore exist in Socialism, the only remark to make is that it will be regarded as nobody’s concern except those involved. It is worth recalling the scheme of the early socialist Fourier to cater for sexual variations, which he thought Socialism would accommodate cheerfully: each person with a “mania” would carry a card naming it, to facilitate finding partners.

Rape falls into a different category, because it is an act of delinquency with a sexual content. As delinquency, its roots are similar to those of other forms; it is a deliberately injurious reaction against society in general. The particular expression of the reaction shows what has been learned from society, and in that connection the novelist Jacky Gillott wrote recently in a women’s magazine that rape was “just a surface marker indicating a vast and tangled undergrowth of mythologies, resentments and ignorance that still persisted beneath the unspoken—and often unconscious—views men and women have of one another” (Cosmopolitan, September 1977).

Because Socialism will not have the resentment-breeding divisions which cause delinquency, or an “undergrowth of mythologies” obscuring relationships, we believe it will be free of ugly marks like rape. However, it must be made clear that socialists do not imagine everybody will be automatically made “good” once common ownership is established; or, alternatively, that any individual may do his own thing to the detriment of others. Socialism means a democratic organization of society in which the wishes of the majority prevail. Of course there will be problems; but in that sort of society we shall be able to deal with them as capitalism cannot.

Growing up

Last, about the upbringing of children. Our correspondent asks what is “the socialist psychology” in this matter. We haven’t one; possibly, when we are nearer to establishing Socialism, it will appear. The important thing, however, is not just possessing the insights but being able to put them into practice. A chronic frustration for teachers of all age-groups today is to be clearly aware of what needs to be done and to know also that it is impossible in the present system. As regards obtaining conformity by force, the dominant ideas of an age are, as Marx said, those of its ruling class; force is the method of class rule, reflected in (and so re-created through) its everyday conduct. Socialists do not need that.

Who will make the decisions about children—well, who makes them now? The working class have to accept the dominance of the state education system (the wealthy in general get rid of handling their children, first to nannies and then to schools away from home). Certainly, in any social system children have to learn basic skills required by society and for themselves; under capitalism, because its education is geared to the value of labour-power, the outcome for a high proportion is abysmal and recalls Mr. Weller’s question “vether it’s worth goin’ through so much to learn so little”. We do not envisage a sane society trying to impose a single mode of upbringing and learning for all children—that is the capitalist sausage-machine. The “decisions” are choices, which children and parents and their associates will make in different ways at different times.

Robert Barltrop

Justice isn’t for us (2025)

From the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

We love watching cop shows where the rugged dick wins. The bad guy gets caught, everyone breathes a sigh of relief, and law and order are secured for another day, again. The detective’s a heavy drinking, chain-smoking, emotionally wrecked mess, but somehow they get the bad guy. Usually some rich, powerful bastard who almost gets away with it, but justice wins in the final act. We get to feel good. Satisfied.

But that’s not how it works in real life. For the working class the justice system doesn’t exist to deliver truth or fairness. It’s a system: a system under capital, a system that serves capital. It protects property, not people. It punishes survival. It targets the working class, the dispossessed, the traumatised, those who’ve already been hurt by other material conditions this system throws at them.

The real bad guys: wife-beaters, rapists, the corrupt bosses, the violent cops, they often walk free. Or they don’t even get looked at.

The victims? They’re ignored, re-traumatised through the courts, blamed, left to pick up the pieces with no support.

Let’s have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth: most ‘crime’ is shaped by class and trauma. People with Borderline Personality Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Complex PTSD, … people who’ve been through it are more likely to end up in front of a judge than behind a desk. And when the harm is personal – sexual assault, domestic abuse, assault, the eyes of the system glaze over. Victims are told to report online, just trust the police, wait for justice, hope the Crown Prosecution Service thinks its viable… but ‘justice’ almost never comes. And when the abuser is the police? Only then, when it’s inescapably public, when it’s, PC Wayne Couzens, murderer and rapist, enabled by his position as a police constable, does the system act. It feels more like it’s PR.

Scotland Yard recently declared violence against women and girls to be a national epidemic. Where was that energy before it became another Met. Police media scandal? Survivors have been shouting into the void for decades. Justice isn’t something you find in a courtroom, not under this system.

Movements like MeToo (the campaign against sexual abuse) show the cracks — how deep the rot goes. But even they hit a wall. Restorative justice circles gain popularity then vanish again or end up doing more harm than good because they are operated by the enthusiastic but unqualified. We need systemic change, but the structures we live under fight revolution in every way.

The system fails over and over: the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the Met’s decades-long cover-up; the brutal killing of Sarah Everard by a serving officer known as ‘The Rapist’ among the force. Survivors of rape still face a system where only one percent of reported cases lead to charges. The Grenfell fire exposed how working-class lives are treated as disposable, wrapped in flammable cladding and sacrificed for profit. The Hillsborough disaster showed how the state lies to protect itself while victims’ families are left to fight for truth alone. These aren’t one-offs — they’re symptoms of a system doing exactly what it was built to do: protect power, property, and profit.

So what does socialism offer? Not more punishment. Not longer sentences. Not more cops with better PR. Socialism means we stop asking a broken system to fix what it’s built to ignore. It means no one has to live in the material conditions that cause crime in the first instance: poverty, trauma, insecurity, isolation. It’s built so that people who’ve been harmed are actually cared for. And people who’ve done harm are made to take responsibility, not locked in a cage, but made to understand, repair, change.

Justice under capitalism tends to protect power and often reinforces it. We’ve seen enough to know the courts won’t save us. But we also know that we’re not powerless and can bring change. This starts when we stop pretending this system works and start building something better ourselves.

A.T.

By The Way: The Labour Government’s Communist Friends (1945)

The By The Way Column from the November 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Government’s Communist Friends

The Communist Party helped Labour M.P.s everywhere at the July elections, rejoiced in their success and is backing the Labour Government. Now read what choice epithets they applied to the last Labour Government.

“It shoots down the workers and peasants in India; it imprisons such gallant workers as the Meerut prisoners, who have fought for the economic and political freedom of the Indian workers and peasants; it sends warships to intimidate the Egyptians; warships and soldiers to China. The Labour Government is the most open and blatant tool of imperialism, both in its attacks on the workers at home and in its policy of bloodshed and violence abroad.”—(Mr. Harry Pollitt in “The Workers' Charter,” published in 1930, by the National Minority Movement).

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Communists Denounced Nationalisation and Now Support it

The Communists now approve of the Labour Government's nationalisation schemes, but read what the Communists said about the schemes when they were drawn op.

“The Labour Party and the trade union leaders try to hide their policy of surrendering the workers’ daily interests to the capitalists, by using socialist phrases, so called Socialist schemes, such as were adopted at the Leicester and Newcastle Conferences.

“All their schemes for the 'control of banking system,’ 'public control of industry land trade,’ 'transport boards’ are schemes of capitalist reorganisation, designed to strengthen capitalist monopoly at the expense of the working class.” 

(From “Resolutions adopted by the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Great Britain.”—Published by the C.P.G.B., 1932. Pago 6)

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“A Third Labour Government Will be Even Worse than the Second ”

After the collapse of the second Labour Government, when MacDonald had joined the National Government and the 1931 Election was in progress the Communist Party published “The Workers’ Answer to the Crisis,” by R. P. Dutt.

Here are some extracts: —

“But the policy of the Labour Party was and remains the policy of maintaining capitalism, of attempting reforms within the framework of capitalism, of taking over the capitalist state, of administering capitalism, of denial of the class struggle, of unity with capitalism. . . . The outcome for the workers who trust the Labour Party is disaster. The talk of socialism and reforms becomes only deceiving the workers, because the practice is capitalism.

“This is the lesson of the two Labour Governments.” And again:—

“Will a Third Labour Government be any better than the second Labour Government? Will a Henderson Labour Government be any better than a MacDonald Labour Government?

No, a third Labour Government will be even worse than the second Labour Government, because of the greater intensity of the crisis of capitalism, will deal even heavier blows against the workers, will lead to worsening of the crisis and end in intensified capitalist dictatorship. . . .

What are the promises of the Labour Party worth ? Nothing, as experience has abundantly shown. The Labour Party speak of ’socialism,’ of ’Nationalisation of the banks/ of ' public ownership and control ’ of the key industries. This is a paper programme of promises to deceive the workers. . . . It is meaningless deception so long as the capitalist exploiters are in fact to be left secure.”

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Less Compensation for Coal owners

“After the discovery of atomic energy we are unlikely to want coal as a source of power 20 years hence. If the mines stayed in private ownership, their value would be small. When they are nationalised it would be ridiculous to compensate the shareholders at anything like the present Stock Exchange prices. The railways will probably be obsolete in another 30 years, so the same applies to them.” —Prof. J. B. S. Haldane in Daily Worker, 2.8.45.

Was it not Professor Blackett who said on the wireless in 1935 in discussion on Science with Julian Huxley that “scientists, if in the position of politicians, would act like politicians”? So a man of Haldane’s unquestionable scientific ability—because harnessed to the C.P.-Labour Party policy of compensation for poor capitalists—can see nothing more in the supercession of the old forms of production and transport by atomic energy than a haggling point to pay less compensation.

The Communist Party, which started by “taking the Labour Party by the throat,” now pleads for lest compensation.

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Too Unreliable

Gangsters for Commandos.

Proposal Was Dropped.

“Among recruiting suggestions considered in the early days of the commandos was whether it would be better to use real toughs or gangsters either from the United States or British cities rather than soldiers. The view taken, it is revealed in 'Soldier,' the British Army magazine, by Brig. Dudley W. Clarke, who recruited the first commandos, was that the gangster was too unreliable. The idea was dropped.

“So, too, was a proposal from a convict who offered to form a commando of convicts And warders.”—Sunday Times, August 12, 1945.

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Liberation

German charges that Moroccans attacked Girls. 

“Rumours arising out of German allegations that more than 1,000 women were raped by Moroccan troops during the first few days of the French occupation are still growing in the German city of Stuttgart. Hundreds of girls in the city were Poles or Russians brought there by the Germans as slave labour.

“The German police chief in the new administration working under U.S. occupation, Karl Weber, said most of the women were attacked in their own homes by the dark-skinned, turbaned Moroccan troops, who broke down doors in looting forays.

“The official German police report lists 1,198 rape cases involving women whose ages ranged from 14 to 74. Weber claims that each case has been verified and estimates that twice that number of women were attacked but were ashamed to report.—Sunday Express, August 12, 1945.

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Reluctant “Comrades"

A correspondent of the Manchester Guardian reports the extremely difficult problems which repatriation of Russian “displaced persons” involves. First, he points out that by the Yalta agreement the Soviet authorities do not recognise “ non-repatriables” like the other powers—i.e., they insist on the handing over of all Russian citizens. 

Secondly, and more importantly,

“Apart, however, from certain questions of principle involved, there are practical difficulties about doing this, as some are prepared to fight rather than be arrested. Individuals or groups may well have arms, and there is an obvious reluctance to risk the lives of British or American soldiers for what is essentially a matter of internal Russian policy.”—Manchester Guardian, August 31, 1945.

So what does emerge is that thousands of former Russian citizens, having escaped the “Socialist Fatherland” during the war, are prepared to risk their lives fighting to avoid repatriation to the Soviet Utopia.

We have a splendid solution! Let all those hysterical and vociferous Communists who haunt Socialist Party meetings volunteer to go back to Russia in place of the missing Russian nationals in Germany, who will remain where they prefer. A good time will then be had by all! We wonder!

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Strikers Shout Down Officials!

The Telegraph for July 30th reports that officials were shouted down at a railway strikers’ meeting. Delegates called for nationalisation of the railways.

A Birkenhead representative declared: “If we continue our present (strike) action the new Government will be able to turn to the companies and tell them they cannot manage their business. It would then be an easy step towards nationalisation. ’'

He got his answer on July 31st, one day later, when “three hundred soldiers swept in through the Surrey Commercial Docks at 1 p.m. to-day in lorries to take over loading and unloading of ships which had been at a standstill because of the dockers 'go slow.’ ”—Evening News, July 31.)

Strike action of itself will never achieve nationalisation of the railways or any other industry—even if nationalisation were in the interests of the workers. Only political power can do that, because it involves the State. The Labour Government will “nationalise” certain industries because it has a mandate (power) from the electorate to do so. It has persuaded working-class electors that it does so in their interests—though it is actually the policy of some of the industrial capitalists. Strike action against the State-brings the Army in to do the job, and breaks the strike.

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Bombs and Trade

“Post-war trade relations in the Far East are being rewritten by B.29 Super Fortresses and India’s Industrial future—particularly in textiles—looks extremely rosy in the glow of firebombs on Japan, 'Every time the Superforts hit Osaka’ said a leading Indian textile operator, ' I say to myself: There’s another year free of Jap competition in the Indian textile market.’ ”—(New York Herald Tribune, June 13th, 1945. Quoted in Plebs, September, 1945).

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That Odd Bird the Labour Party

Mr. Laski is reported to have said: “The bright bird of Socialism needs two wings—it can’t fly on a right wing only, or a left wing only.”—(Daily Mail, September 4th).

If Mr. Laski had stopped to consider the kind of progress made by a bird with oddly assorted wings, one pushing forward and the other pulling back, he would have realised that his analogy is very apt though not in the sense he intended.

Horatio.

Tiny (URL) Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the October 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some women who were raped at the US’s Abu Ghraib prison facility in Iraq were later “honor killed” by their families, says a Jordanian reporter who writes on women’s issues. “In Abu Ghraib, women were tortured by the Americans much more than the men,” Lima Nabil told The Independent. “One woman said she witnessed five girls being raped. Most of the women in the prison were raped – some of them left prison pregnant. Families killed some of these women – because of the shame.” Nabil, who has reported extensively on the status of women in the Arab world and runs a home for runaway girls, made the comments to renowned foreign correspondent Robert Fisk in an article on honor killings in Jordan. Nabil did not expand on her comments in the article. Fisk reported that a “very accurate source in Washington” in close contact with military personnel has confirmed “terrible stories of gang rape” by US forces at the now-notorious prison:

[Dead Link]

Former CIA agents have confirmed for the first time that the agency tortured prisoners at a “black site” detention center in north-eastern Poland at the height of the war on terror. According to the Associated Press, a former CIA agent identified only as “Albert” tortured the terror suspect Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri multiple times with an electric drill at the converted Stare Kiejkuty military base near Szymany in the Masuria region of Poland:

[Link]

The new “saddle” seat, to be unveiled at a conference this week, increases the number of seats an airline can have in its economy class. Shaped similar to a horse saddle, passengers sit at an angle, with their weight taken on by their legs. It allows seats to be overlapped. The seats would also offer storage space including a shelf for carry-on bags and hooks to hang a jacket or a handbag…The makers say the seat would allow budget airlines, such as Ryanair, to cram more passengers into their tight cabins:

[Link]

Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary has for years endured complaints from passengers about his famously no-frills Irish airline. Now a senior Ryanair pilot has taken the rare step of publicly challenging his boss after the outspoken chief executive said he was trying to convince authorities to let his aircraft fly with only one pilot. A flight attendant could do the job of a co-pilot if needed, Mr O’Leary said last week, because “the computer does most of the flying now”. Captain Morgan Fischer, who trains other pilots at Ryanair’s Marseilles base, says he knows the airline is dedicated to keeping its costs as low as possible, so why not go one better – and replace Mr O’Leary with a junior flight attendant? “I would propose that Ryanair replace the CEO with a probationary cabin crew member currently earning approximately €13,200 net per annum,” Capt Fischer has written in a letter to the Financial Times, which reported Mr O’Leary’s comments last week. “Ryanair would benefit by saving millions of euros in salary, benefits and stock options,” the captain said, and there would be no need for approval from the authorities.

[Link]

Proper Gander: Exploitation at work (2023)

The Proper Gander TV column from the April 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

When we buy a product, it’s easy not to think about the long journey it has made to reach us, through the combined effort of countless people across the world. A cup of tea often starts out in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley, where its tea leaves are grown and picked before being sent on for processing and packing. The workers who pick the leaves which eventually end up in our morning cuppa tend to be women living close to poverty. Like many in the primary sector, their work on the tea plantations involves lengthy, repetitive shifts for low pay, made even worse for them by a culture where sexual abuse is common.

This was the focus of a disturbing edition of BBC One’s Panorama: Sex For Work: The True Cost Of Our Tea. The documentary investigated plantations in Kenya owned by two British companies – Unilever and James Finlay & Co – which produce half the tea drunk in the UK, sold under brands such as PG Tips, Lipton and Sainsbury’s Red Label. Researchers interviewed a hundred women tea pickers, and as many as 75 said they had suffered sexual harassment by managers at their workplace.

Heading the programme is journalist Tom Odula, but credit should go to the undercover reporter who put herself at risk by applying for work on the plantations. Much of the documentary comprises footage filmed on a hidden camera by ‘Katie’. This shows that women being pushed into having sex with senior staff is rife, despite the problem being recognised at least as far back as 2011. Then, a report was published by the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations about the extent of sexual abuse in Unilever’s operations, which led to them introducing a new ‘zero tolerance’ policy and reporting system. These are put to the test when Katie applies for a job at a Unilever plantation and gets asked by a Divisional Manager, Jeremiah Koskei, to meet in a bar. There, she records him talking about how they could spend the night at his home, following a pattern described by other women seeking work on the plantation. ‘It felt pretty transactional’ says Katie later. Despite rejecting his advances, she gets employed and is assigned the gruelling task of weeding for up to 10 hours a day, at a rate of the equivalent of £25 for a six-day week. When Katie asks for different duties, supervisor Samuel Yebei sees this as an opportunity to pressure her to sleep with him in return. After she resists, he gives up, and five weeks later she hasn’t been moved to a better role. One of the women Odula interviews says that she was in such a desperate situation that she was coerced into having sex with Yebei to keep her job and then contracted HIV. We’re told that one reason Yebei has got away with his behaviour is that he is close to Koskei, but complaints have been dismissed before they even reach them. When Katie reports them both to the company’s sexual harassment officer, instead of looking into the matter he just advises her to protect herself. While the documentary was being made, Unilever sold its tea brands and fields to a venture capital company, now operating as Lipton Teas and Infusions, which has suspended the two managers pending an investigation.

A similar culture was found in plantations owned by James Finlay & Co, whose tea is sold by Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Starbucks. Odula speaks with a woman (already suffering from an injury from her work) who refused to have sex with a manager in order to get a job, and regrets that her daughters didn’t make the same decision. She reported harassment but hasn’t had a response. Many of the women interviewed name John Chebochok, a recruiter for James Finlay & Co, as a predator. Katie goes to meet him for a job interview, which she is told will be held in a hotel room. There, he says he will give her money and a job if she has sex with him, which escalates to him pinning her against a window before he gives up and goes. After three months of undercover reporting, Katie quits the plantations and receives counselling. Finlays later said it suspended and reported Chebochok to the police, and is now investigating whether its operation has ‘an endemic issue with sexual violence’.

Panorama’s report from Kenya recalls exposés of similar practices in other organisations. Women in Haiti in poorly paid jobs making clothes for American brands were pressurised by their managers to have sex or have their contracts ended, according to an article published by the Guardian (23 June). In Congo, more than 50 women alleged that aid workers, including some from the World Health Organisation, had demanded sex from them to get or keep jobs as cooks, cleaners and community workers during an Ebola crisis (Reuters, 29/09/20). As in Kenya, the poverty the women were living in often meant they had little choice.

The hierarchies which are built into the capitalist structures of organisations put people like Chebochok, Yebei and Koskei in positions of power. And the wider economic system makes people – women who rely on wages from any work they can get, in this instance – vulnerable to being used by this predatory type of man for their own gratification. Because these managers are enforcing the exploitation of the women through their employment, they also feel entitled to exploit them sexually. They see and treat the women as objects because the system creates the conditions in which this can happen. Reforms and a shift in culture may eventually lessen the threat of sexual abuse for women such as those on the plantations, but won’t address the root cause of the problem.

Mike Foster

Between the Lines: Male violence (1993)

The Between the Lines column from the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Male violence

Channel Four's Brookside (Mon and Wed 8pm, Fri 8.30pm) has woken from its recent slumbers in a controversial attempt to lift its ratings, now down to little over three million. By introducing the gruesome Trevor Jordache character—a wife beater and child abuser— Brookside has once again set the daytime TV shows a-chattering. And with good reason. Brookside have simply introduced the best (and most original) storyline into a British soap for ages.

The background to the story has been that the Jordache family, of mother and two teenage daughters, had previously been moved to get [away from] husband and father Trevor, convicted of physical assault and sexual abuse. After ferrying them around bedsits for two years, the authorities have now found the Jordaches an inadequate “safe house” on Brookside Close. Unfortunately they have been beset by Trevor's unwelcome attentions once again on his release from prison. Having wiled his way back into the Jordache household with a cry of poverty, the plot has essentially been revolving around Trevor's increasingly hideous behaviour and the plans of the desperate mother and eldest daughter to kill him rather than face his continued assaults—or the alternative of eviction from their new "safe house” on Brookside Close if the authorities find out about Trevor’s return.

The portrayal of this sticky situation has been graphic, bringing into the homes of millions the torment suffered by those women and children with a monster in their midst, a monster mentally equipped for his wrong-doing by a society where sex is cheap and dirty and where violence appears as the "easy” solution to problems. The most interesting aspect of the story is the way in which, beyond the ratings hype, it has illustrated how monumentally badly capitalism copes with the situations it itself has helped create.

Viewers may well ask themselves whether a two-year spell couped up in a dingy prison cell was appropriate for a man whose actions towards those he professes to love have persistently bordered on the pathological. Dealing with any such individuals in a socialist society would not be easy, and no-one pretends it would be, but as Brookside has amply demonstrated, capitalism is at a complete loss, unable to provide the institutional framework to help those individuals who may not be able to help their own actions, let alone provide a situation where mother and children can live in safety and comfort.

Life should never be as brutal as it is for the imaginary Jordaches of Brookside, but unfortunately for thousands of families in the real world of capitalism, it most certainly is.

Female equality

If any show has demonstrated why feminism on its own is not enough it was BBC2’s “Ladies in Lines". Forty Minutes (4 May 9.50pm).This documentary about a platoon of raw female recruits into the Australian army showed why "equality” under capitalism is not generally much of an equality worth having. In this particular instance it was, to be charitable, equal opportunity to be treated like a lump of shit.

The young women involved, arriving with parents, boyfriends and teddybears were subjected to a daily routine that would not have been entirely out of place in a Stalinist labour camp. A quarter of those who started the basic training with the ritual hair-cropping were unable to compile the course and many who did seemed to spend a fair proportion of their time in the charge room, in tears, or both.

Why these individuals should have chosen to enter the army is a tribute to the strength of the society-wide propaganda which eulogizes the virtues of discipline, aggression and competition—supposedly "male values”—above all others. Indeed, virtually all the young women involved testified to an identity crisis. Although they knew they were really women, they were forced to behave as they imagined men behaved.

All in all it proved to be an unedifying sight. Many of the women eventually proved that they could be like male soldiers. but no one, including the women themselves, were really prepared to suggest why this might be a good thing. Beyond correctly identifying the emptiness of the life offered in civvy street, none seemed able to give a credible reason for their presence as women in the army.

In truth, this was not really their fault, as no such reason exists. How on earth can there be a realistic salvation for women under capitalism through simply acting as maniacally as men have so often being trained to behave? Could female soldiers really be the giant step forward for womankind that was implied? Surely not.

As socialists have always suspected, capitalism's reaction to an inequality is invariably to sink those previously at a more humane level to a more barbaric one. thereby giving the appearance of evening things out a bit. Across the world capitalism’s tendency has been to barbarise those who are most vulnerable to its unyielding propaganda, and the "ladies in lines" were as good an example of this as is possible to get.

Dave Perrin

Proper Gander: Police And Abuse (2021)

The Proper Gander column from the November 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Police And Abuse

In September, police constable Wayne Couzens was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison for the horrific rape and murder of Sarah Everard. Couzens, employed in the division which guards government and diplomatic buildings, used his position as a police officer to falsely arrest Sarah while she was walking home, under the pretence of breaching Covid-19 regulations. Not long after Couzens’ sentencing, Dispatches documentary Cops On Trial (Channel 4) highlighted the wider problem of police who use their role for twisted motives, in particular their own sexual gratification. Reporter Ellie Flynn interviewed victims of predatory officers, and also looked at research showing the extent of the issue. Requests using the Freedom of Information Act brought in responses from 39 police forces (out of 45 in the UK) stating that in four years nearly 2,000 officers, special constables and PCSOs were accused of sexual misconduct. Bournemouth University also collated 514 proven cases of sexual misconduct by police officers in 33 forces over the last five years.

Couzens’ actions were particularly vicious and didn’t follow the usual pattern found when police officers target women. The research cited in the documentary showed that the most common type of abuse is when an officer uses his role to instigate an ongoing sexual relationship. This tends to happen when a woman reports a crime and is then visited at home by an investigating officer who pretends to be empathetic and understanding while being motivated by his own sexual gains. The perpetrators exploit how their police uniform gives the impression both that they can be trusted and that they have authority. The women they target are all in vulnerable situations: according to the research 40 per cent were victims of previous domestic abuse, 20 per cent had mental health issues and a quarter had suffered sexual assault. The perpetrators find those who are most susceptible to being manipulated, meaning that although the subsequent relationships are apparently consensual, they’re abusive. This inevitably causes the women to be traumatised further, when abuse escalates and when the relationship is exposed and investigated.

While Cops On Trial is timely in highlighting how Wayne Couzens wasn’t alone in misusing his position, it isn’t revealing the problem for the first time. In 2016, a report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary identified 436 claims of sexual abuse against police officers over two years. Less than half of these incidents were referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission and, as the report worded it, there was a ‘disconnect’ between the numbers of alleged cases and sackings (tinyurl.com/kynyucty). Across Police Scotland, for example, 166 officers have more recently been accused of sexual misconduct, and none have been dismissed. One way which many perpetrators have avoided the consequences of their actions is to resign before they get sacked, which also means they keep their pensions. Those police officers arrested and charged with domestic abuse are a third less likely to be found guilty than other people, with a conviction rate even lower than four per cent. Police know how the investigation procedure and legal system work, and they can use this to their advantage. They can also protect each other, using connections and contacts with the investigators. As Nogah Ofer from the Centre for Women’s Justice points out in the documentary, the system is on the side of the abuser.

One way in which abusive behaviour has been perpetuated has been by other staff missing ‘red flags’ or not taking sufficient action when there are concerns about an officer. According to Bournemouth University’s research, of more than 500 proven cases of sexual misconduct by police, each of the officers involved had an average of six disciplinaries or allegations on their records, and half had warning markers about their sexual behaviour. Couzens had previously been reported for indecent exposure and was nicknamed ‘the rapist’ by colleagues. That these warning signs didn’t lead to action which prevented behaviour from escalating indicates that the police force hasn’t taken risks to women seriously. Susannah Fish, formerly the Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire Police, says that she worked in a culture which was testosterone-fuelled and macho, and therefore not able to resolve or even recognise the problem.

Unfortunately, Cops On Trial doesn’t spend enough time on the questions of why this culture persists and why some officers use their role to abuse others. Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe, the National Police Chiefs’ Council Lead for Domestic Abuse, gives a succinct enough answer by saying that ‘a small number of people are attracted to policing because of the power, the control and opportunity it affords them’. Police are there to exercise power and control on behalf of the state, according to the laws which are supposed to keep our unequal, divisive society in order. So, even when police stick to the law and the code of conduct for their role, they are working in a framework which involves coercion. The minority of predatory police officers have used this framework as an opportunity to abuse others, and found that it’s enabled them. Tighter vetting, training and disciplinary procedures could weed out some of the predatory officers and prevent some future tragedies repeating what Sarah Everard and other women have suffered. Measures like these will no doubt be recommended by the inquiries which have been commissioned to examine the standards and culture of the Metropolitan Police, where Couzens worked. But reforms can only tweak how the police force runs, they can’t change what it is: an institution with built-in opportunities to exert power and control. So it’s always going to attract a number of people who want to exploit these opportunities for themselves. The more fundamental issue is what causes some people to act in abusive, manipulative ways, a problem much too wide to be affected by any future changes to how the police operate.

Mike Foster

Between the Lines: Primitive . . . (1989)

The Between the Lines column from the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Primitive . . .

Marx wrote about the increasing misery of the working class. By this he did not mean, as some who have tried to refute him have suggested, that wages would fall lower and lower, material conditions ever more harsh. Marx was right: the quality of living under capitalism becomes ever-more impoverished.

Country File (C4) provides a pleasant diversion on the bleakest of urban Sunday lunchtimes. It has features on farming and conservation and the world of animals: it reminds the viewer that, stuck with the noise and dirt of an artificial city, there is an environment beyond which is richer in what is natural and more in harmony with the senses. On 8 January it had a report about a growing social problem: rural violence committed by young frustrated workers in small country towns and villages — the children of the land whose daddies do not own the fields and whose futures are in the cities, where there is more chance of jobs. Others involved in recent acts of rural criminality are farm labourers whose jobs have been made more tedious by mechanisation and who are often paid below-poverty wages for making landowners rich. A police officer from Avon and Somerset spoke of how Saturday-night gangs were terrorising villages and vandalising beauty spots. There have even been reports in the press of the senseless slaughter of farm animals for fun.

No doubt there were irritated viewers in Devon or Yorkshire who switched on expecting to see how big turnips can be and how green fields can look in the right light. Such people would do well to ponder that life is becoming increasingly empty for vast numbers of young workers, squashed as they are between the obscenities of the bomb and the social mind of a world which is civilised only to degree that it offers hope when there is a likely profit attached.

The following evening World In Action (ITV, 8.30 pm) reported the results of a nationwide survey which revealed that women were more afraid of violent assault in the streets than death from cancer, being killed on the roads or nuclear war. Ninety per cent feared being attacked if they went out at night. Sixty-seven per cent said that they never go out at night alone. What an indictment of a so-called civilised society it is that the majority of women — the majority of the population — are too frightened to go out alone in the evening. This is the social-pay-off of the competitive society. The streets become a jungle where anyone with money, however old, frightened or disabled, is prey to the muggers. Women workers are right to be scared. Street assaults are frequent: more dangerous weapons are now used by the muggers (in imitation of our rulers who also like to sophisticate their murder instruments regularly); and most of us live in badly lit environments, which assist the fast-money attackers. The thief thieves because it is an easy way to make money. Ethics do not enter into it; he is a reflection of the economic motives of the more successful robbers in the City, whose activities are strictly legal.

It is not just that women are likely to be attacked, but that they feel threatened. Every walk in the dark streets feels like preparation for an attack. Young men are eight times more likely to be mugged than women, but this is a deceptive statistic: women are less likely to be mugged because so many are forced to seek refuge in their homes every night. They are under curfew. There is no way that a society which scares its inhabitants to that extent can ever be worthy of the description of “civilisation". The simple-minded blame the muggers, as if knife-carrying kids have chosen such a way of life as an alternative to the gentlemen's club. Socialists blame the profit system.

. . . and civilised

The same people that the profit system twists into muggers could, in different material circumstances, behave like the people of the Baka tribe, shown in three programmes by Channel Four called Baka — People Of The Rainforest. Modern society sneers at such primitive social relationships. The programmes allowed us to glimpse into the moneyless, wageless, stateless world of one of the few extant pre-property societies. Of course, the Baka are productively unsophisticated and have to work harder than they would need to do had they access to labour-saving technology. They are still innocently religious, regarding Nature as something above them and largely beyond control. It would be foolishly romantic — although very tempting — to depict primitive communism as The Way We Should Live. But what if we took all of the machinery of production which exists in modern Britain (where women are afraid to walk city streets and rural areas are echoing to the sound of furious working-class frustration) and combined it with the human relations of classless equality which characterise primitive communities? That is the prospect which world socialism holds before us now. We could have a society where people co-operate to produce the best that there can be to satisfy the needs of all; instead we have a society shown to us in a documentary by Clive James called Postcard From Chicago (11 January, BBC1, 9.30 pm) in which we were introduced to the gangs which inhabit the city's slum areas. These gangs — The People and The Folk — do not merely shout abuse at each other. They shoot — to kill.

Gang warfare, born of urban poverty, is a game that ends in murder. Often the killers and killed are in their mid-teens. Now. James is one of those "witty" types who likes to enchant the half-witted with empty aphorisms. It's seductive viewing, but a lot of tripe is squeezed into the maxims. For example, in watching workers making hamburgers in Chicago (note: you will always see James watching people work) he stated that “Marx had it all wrong”. There is no alienation; these descendants of Polish immigrants feel close to their work and are grateful to be close to food — unlike in Poland where they would have to queue for it. This self-evident rubbish is supposed to pass for serious social commentary. By the same reasoning. Rolls Royce car producers are not alienated from the luxury cars they produce — even though they may travel home from work in a second-hand Cortina. Clive James is, in fact, a virulent anti-socialist. That he is witty and entertaining makes him an all the more potent one.

Is Britain free?

Panorama (BBC1, 9.25 pm. 9 January) was all about the diminishing freedom which many of us perceive in Britain at the moment. The government, in the name of freedom, has made numerous moves to curtail trade union and civil freedoms which workers fought hard to win. But even without the much-discussed Thatcherite assault, a society without free access to goods and services can never be free. That conception of freedom was not once mentioned in the programme. It is as if the fullest extent of “freedom" can only ever mean a loosening of the chains. I fell asleep after ten minutes of the great debate about whether Britain is unfree, woke up to see Willie Whitelaw sounding silly and switched over to Minder (ITV), where one can see a far more vivid picture of phoney freedom and increasing misery under the capitalist social system.

Steve Coleman

Blogger's Note:

For some reason the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard misnamed 'Baka — People Of The Rainforest' as 'Baka — Children Of The Rain Forest'. I'm not sure what happened there. In 2012 the writer/director of the original documentary, Phil Agland, wrote and directed a follow up documentary entitled, 'Baka: A Cry from the Rainforest'. It can be viewed at the following link.

How we civilise the ‘heathen.' (1927)

From the February 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent asks for authoritative evidence to refute the suggestion that the introduction of Christianity and western civilisation into “backward” countries provides the benefit of a higher moral code. Our correspondent realises with us that this aspect is relatively a minor one subordinate always to the dominating fact that the lust which took white traders and factory owners to the lands of the black and yellow races is the same as that which governs their relations with white workers at home—the lust to exploit. The results, though they may vary in certain respects, are much the same and include in both cases the use of the whip of poverty to compel working-class women to sell their bodies for the pleasure of their masters.

During 1924 a question was raised on many occasions in the House of Commons as to the system of maintaining officially registered brothels in Hong Kong. Thus in reply to Lady Astor the Colonial Secretary, Mr. J. H. Thomas, stated (Hansard, July 15th, 1924) “the total number of registered brothels in 1923 was 296, but I am not aware of the dates at which any of them were opened.”

Earlier in the year (Hansard, March 17th), Mr. Snell asked Mr. Thomas “whether he is aware that it is part of the duties of a Government official in Hong Kong to pass young girls into the various classes of brothels in that colony ; and whether he proposes taking any action in the matter?”

To this plain question Mr. J. H. Thomas returned the following evasive answer : “The object of the practice to which my Hon. Friend refers is purely protective,” and on March 24th when again asked if he would abolish the system Mr. Thomas replied “We have to deal with it in a commonsense way.” On that day he also disclosed the fact that our Government carried on the same State enterprise in Malaya.

It is an old story but perhaps in this connection it may not be out of place to refer to the activities in this direction of the late Lord Roberts of infamous memory.

In 1886 he sent out to every quartermaster in the Indian army a circular memorandum containing the following instructions :—

“In the regimental bazaars it is necessary to have a sufficient number of women, to take care they are sufficiently attractive, to provide them with proper houses, and above all to insist upon means of ablution being always available.

“If young soldiers are carefully advised in regard to the advantage of ablution and recognise that convenient arrangements exist in the regimental bazaar they may be expected to avoid the risks involved in association with women who are not recognised by the regimental authorities.”

(It may be remarked in passing that the results for the young soldiers were almost as deadly as for the unfortunate women.)

Full particulars of this practice in India are contained in “The Queen’s Daughters in India,” from which the above and the following quotations are taken :—

“The orders specified were faithfully carried out under the supervision of commanding officers, and were to this effect. The commanding officer gave orders to his quartermaster to arrange with the regimental official to take two policemen (without uniform) and go into the villages and take from the houses of these poor people their daughters from fourteen years upward, about 12 to 15 girls at a time. They were to select the best looking. Next morning they were all put in front of the colonel and quartermaster. The former made his selection of the number required. They were then presented with a pass or licence and then made over to the old woman in charge of this house of vice under the Government. The women already there who were found diseased had their passes taken away from them and were then removed by the police out of the cantonment and these fresh, innocent girls put in their places—to go the same way home.”

In conclusion it only needs to be pointed out that this particular expression of the higher Christian morality is not the monopoly of Great Britain.

Edgar Hardcastle

Material World: Blame the old for being alive (2021)

The Material World Column from the January 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Society’s treatment of many old people is shameful. Shut away in institutions, out of sight and out of mind, treated as expendable and collateral damage. The claim that we live in a civilised society is challenged by the miserable manner present-day society looks after old people. Too often the attitude is that ‘senior citizens’ are already living on borrowed time as a result of modern medical skills that extend their lives and therefore they should not receive any priority to prolong life.

The callous way that capitalism has developed ‘care’ of the elderly is shown in the manner where all of those with poor immune systems are placed together in one institution so when an infection strikes, it spreads through the unfortunate residents. As with dementia, take patients away from the one place they know and feel comfortable in, and place them with similarly confused people, in unfamiliar surroundings and then wonder why the dementia then deteriorates.

The number of cases of abuse is projected to increase of the aged whose needs may not be fully met due to lack of resources and insufficiently trained staff. The WHO reports that globally around 1 in 6 people 60 years and older experienced some form of abuse in community settings during the past year with levels of abuse high in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, with 2 in 3 staff reporting that they have committed abuse in the past year.

As many as one in five people in the UK over the age of 65 have been abused. The charity Hourglass, in a survey it conducted, said that more than a third of people did not believe that ‘inappropriate sexual acts directed at older people’ counted as abuse. 30 percent did not view ‘pushing, hitting, or beating an older person’ as abuse. 32 percent did not believe that ‘taking precious items from an older relative’s home without asking’ constituted abuse.

And not just the UK. An Australian Royal Commission has uncovered widespread mistreatment. Overall, investigators estimated that over 32,000 assaults – physical, sexual and emotional had occurred in a year in such homes. The abuse was perpetrated by carers as well as other residents. They said about 2,520 sexual assaults had happened in residential nursing homes in 2018-2019, an estimated 50 sexual assaults occur each week. ‘Unlawful sexual conduct’ is believed to have affected 13-18 percent of aged care residents.

The pandemic has exacerbated problems. Worldwide, the elderly in care homes were initially designated as low priority but it was the continuation of a trend that began with care becoming a for-profit industry.

In the last week of November, Covid-19 has claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people who lived and worked in long-term care facilities in the United States. According to public health expert Michael Barnett, one in 13 have now died as a result of Covid-19. So far, at least 75 percent of Australia’s coronavirus deaths have been aged care residents.

When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived, Julio Croda, from Brazil’s Department Of Immunisation And Transmissible Diseases, said he experienced a lack of urgency from the government when his department predicted that the elderly would bear the brunt of the coronavirus and would be more likely to die from the disease. Solange Vieira, who helped restructure Brazil’s pension system, said the quiet bit out aloud, ‘It’s good that deaths are concentrated among the old. That will improve our economic performance as it will reduce our pension deficit.’ In Britain too the pandemic has been an ill wind, with the Office for Budget Responsibility calculating that:

'The Government will save over £600m in state pension payments this year following a steep rise in excess deaths among the elderly, according to the budget watchdog’ (Daily Telegraph, 25 November).

Even in ‘progressive’ Sweden, its policy of promoting herd immunity led to older people being acceptable sacrifices. The ‘herd’ will survive, but what about the weaker and frail members of society? Anders Tegnell, the chief epidemiologist at Sweden’s Public Health Agency, answered, ‘Unfortunately the mortality rate is high due to the introduction [of the virus] in elderly care homes.’

Yet long before the present pandemic, back in 2013 the then Japanese finance minister, Taro Aso, at a meeting discussing social security reforms said that the elderly should be enabled to ‘hurry up and die’ to relieve pressure on the state to pay for their care (Guardian, 22 January 2013).

Society traditionally emphasised respect towards the elderly but as families and communities became increasingly atomised, abuse and abandonment has increased and our elders have been more and more stripped of their dignity. Is it really an exaggeration to claim that in today’s world old people are seen as disposable, to be discarded when the need arises?

Providing for the infirm and elderly is a social responsibility which all the able-bodied members of working age should share in equally. ‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’, no matter their age. A socialist world will not treat old folk like machines that have been rendered obsolete and fit only for the scrap heap. Only a socialist society is capable of supporting the increasing longevity of its people and honouring and respecting our aged fellow-workers.

ALJO

Tiny Tips (2009)

The Tiny Tips column from the July 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

A collection of more than 3,000 inverted stamps has sold at auction in New York for more than $5 million:

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One billion people throughout the world suffer from hunger, a figure which has increased by 100 million because of the global financial crisis, says the UN:

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Cancer is a silent disease in Africa and in the developing world. World Health Organization (WHO) statistics shows that cancer kills more people in Africa than HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria combined. This is not a well-known fact, and a very disturbing one, especially since cancer diagnostics and treatment are of very poor standard in most African countries. Take for example Ghana – a country with more than 23 million people. They only have four oncologists to diagnose and treat cancer patients. WHO estimates that if we don’t take act now, more than 11 million Africans may die of cancer in 2020:

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One in four men in South Africa have admitted to rape and many confess to attacking more than one victim, according to a study that exposes the country’s endemic culture of sexual violence

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The Dalai Lama has encouraged Tibetans in exile to embrace the democratic system of electing a leader, saying it was essential to keep step with the larger world and to ensure the continuity of their government:

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Uganda has lost nearly a third of its forest cover since 1990 due to expanding farmlands, a rapidly growing human population and increased urbanisation, a government report said

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The Senate unanimously passed a resolution yesterday apologizing for slavery, making way for a joint congressional resolution and the latest attempt by the federal government to take responsibility for 2½ centuries of slavery

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Nearly twice as many US army soldiers today are either alcoholic or engage in damaging behaviour such as binge drinking than six years ago, and experts blame the rise on repeated tours in war zones:

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President Hugo Chavez is standing by his man in the Middle East, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, even as hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iranians took to the streets Wednesday for the fifth straight day to protest his claim to a landslide reelection

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Zimbabwe is suffering “persistent and serious” human rights violations despite the formation of a unity government four months ago, Amnesty International’s Secretary General Irene Khansaid

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Material World: Gender oppression in India (2021)

The Material World Column from the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard 

In the past couple of months we have witnessed a massacre in Atlanta USA targeting Asian women, the New York Governor accused of being a serial harasser of his female employees, police forcibly dispersing a women’s protest against femicide in London, and large marches in Australian cities highlighting the violence against women. In Mexico, there have been protests against the government’s support for a political ally accused of rape as well as widespread police inaction concerning the assaults and murders of women. While in Turkey nationwide demonstrations took place as President Erdogan withdrew Turkey from an international agreement to prevent violence against women. With such resistance from women against the violence inflicted upon them now featuring in the media, we should not forget other forms of repression and oppression of females.

In India, dowry is another form of injustice done to women and it is an ubiquitous system alongside the pernicious arranged marriages where daughters are traded as property and a commodity. The heavy toll demanded by dowry prices has resulted in female foetuses being aborted to ensure families have boys.

Dowry is the tradition when a new bride from all kinds of families and backgrounds will present the groom and his family with property, gold, money, household appliances, a motorbike or car, and in rural districts, livestock. The dowry system has been prevalent in South Asian countries for centuries. Among the Adivasi tribes and in other nations such as Thailand, the dowry system works in the reverse direction, the groom’s family pays the dowry price.

India has an alarming rate of crime over dowry and great numbers of suicides of women. It is essentially a commercial contract between the family of the bride and the family of the groom. There are countless other stories of abuse, and dowry-related deaths if the contractual agreement is not completely fulfilled. The man’s family’s honour and status are seen to be impinged.

Statistics show that every 16 minutes there is a rape, one death in each hour and 20 women die in a day. There were 7,000 dowry-related deaths in 2017. However, these are only the reported figures and they do not include deaths from ‘kitchen fires’ and other suspicious ‘accidents’.

Dowry persists as part of India’s marriage customs although its form and the damage to women vary according to the norms of the different communities. Dowry in India is not limited to any specific religion. Although dowry is primarily associated with marriages in Hindu society it has permeated over the generations into other religions such as Muslims, Christians and to some extent also the Sikh community. Religions have reinforced male domination where the woman is subject to her husband and her in-laws. In addition, the dowries and consequent elaborate wedding ceremonies bring financial debts that can rarely be paid off.

India has already enacted legislation in attempts to counter the problems of dowry. 60 years have elapsed since the Dowry Prohibition Act was passed to prohibit the practice of giving or receiving dowry and has been subsequently amended to curb the practice of dowry. To further strengthen the anti-dowry law and to stop offences of cruelty by the husband or his relatives against the wife, new provisions were added to the Indian Penal Code to provide extra protection from dowry harassment. India also passed legislation specifically for Muslim women, while Bangladesh passed a Dowry Prohibition Act in 1980. This law legally banned dowries and imposed sanctions by declaring that accepting dowry could land someone in jail, or a fine, or both.

Those laws have not put an end to dowry. It is an understatement to say that dowry-violence-related laws have failed, as India still has the cruel reality of dowries and dowry-related crime. These laws have been largely ignored or not effectively enforced and when prosecutions do occur the acquittal rate is high with the dowry disguised as a ‘voluntary contribution’ to the wedding expenses. It is a cultural convention which cannot be eradicated solely by law alone. In India, patriarchal practices have relegated millions of women to mere procreation and performing the household chores.

Legislation is an inadequate tool to ensure that women who marry stay unharmed and alive. Such a conclusion also applies globally with violence against women endemic in every country and culture even where there exists no dowry system. Violence against women can only end with education, empowerment and the emancipation of all humanity. Socialism will be the source of the freedom of a life without fear.

ALJO

Educating our sons (2021)

From the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard 

In the last few years the abuse of women and girls has been prominent in the news and on social media. From the ‘Me Too’ movement which started in 2016 but gained momentum with the Harvey Weinstein affair, to the highlighted significant increase in domestic violence in the current lockdown, to the Sarah Everard protests where at least one placard read ‘Educate your sons’. Well, it seems our sons have been getting the wrong kind of education.

Soma Sara is a 22-year-old young woman and founder of the Everyone’s Invited website set up in 2020 and where she shared her personal experience of what she describes as ‘rape culture’. In a few days there were over 10,000 posts, testimonies of abuse, harassment and assaults in schools and universities from pupils and ex-pupils. The majority of reports were from girls and young women but a few from boys and young men.

‘Rape culture’ is the normalising and trivialising of sexual violence, from inappropriate sexual language, misogyny and non-consensual touching through to assault and rape. Many of the posts were initially from posh private schools and mainly in London but reports quickly showed the problem to be country wide and equally prevalent in state schools. Heads have been accused of covering up the problem regarded by some as an ‘open secret’, and even some teachers have been accused of sexual harassment.

Most incidents of a more serious nature occur outside of school, at friends’ houses or at parties, and the stories make disturbing reading. Date rape is not an uncommon experience especially in universities. The vast majority of assaults are not reported for various reasons, embarrassment, not wanting to cause trouble, not being believed or simply accepting that these things happen. Inappropriate sexual behaviour towards others has even been observed and reported in primary schools.

How did we get here? Sex sells. It is a cynical and manipulative exploitation of a basic human need. Pre-teens are targeted and sexualised by cosmetic and clothing companies and dumbed down and mirror imaged on social media. The porn industry is a multi-billion-dollar concern and its most violent and degrading content is readily available to young boys on their smart phones. Gone are the seemingly innocuous images of the 1940s pin-up girls and gone are the porn mags on the top shelf of the local newsagents, embarrassingly purchased and packaged in concealing brown paper. Most likely young boys wouldn’t have been able to afford too many and would probably find it harder, with an eagle-eyed parent about, to keep it secret.

Parents who have or have had teenagers know that they are online almost constantly. A 2018 Ofcom report revealed that more than 450,000 children aged 12 to 15 spend between 6 and 8 hours a day online at weekends. A survey commissioned by BBC3 of over 1000 young people aged between 16 and 21 showed that one in four had seen online pornography by the age of 12. Gender differences were clear with one in five of the young women questioned saying they had never seen internet pornography, but only 4 percent of young men saying the same. A common response given in the survey was that young men expect young women to behave like porn stars and that porn also gave young men unrealistic ideas of women’s bodies. Often a young person sees online sexual images by accident or through natural curiosity looks it up for the first time, however, thanks to internet algorithms it’s not long before sexual content will just pop up without initiation and gradually get more explicit and violent as it goes on.

The online world is giving boys some very clear but misleading messages about women, sexual violence, feminism and sexism. Anti-feminist jokes, memes and videos on social media can be extremely unpleasant, and peer pressure from messages from online forums perpetuate dangerous assumptions, such as that women are lying about sexual assaults. The boundary between online and offline becomes increasingly blurred.

How are young men supposed to develop healthy, loving and consensual sexual relationships when women are objectified and abused? Trying to choke a girl while having sex, as described by one young woman on the Everyone’s Invited site, is shockingly not the way to do it. How far removed is a desensitised attitude to abusing women from the explosion in global domestic violence? Pornography on smart phones has been cited as a contributory cause of rape in countries like India, named the rape capital of the world though cultural attitudes towards women and girls are doubtless also responsible. Despite national poverty most young men there have or have access to smart phones where they can share often violent images.

Sex and relationship education is still not compulsory in all schools and plans to introduce it will give faith schools an opt-out. Hopefully it is not – or will not be – restricted to the mechanics of sex and contraception, but will include education on sexual attitudes to the ‘other’ and mutual consent. It would seem something is going horribly wrong. A report into the issue of sexual harassment and violence in schools, and overseen by Conservative MP Maria Miller was published in 2016 by the Women and Equalities Commission, but it appears nothing has been done since. Instead we are continuing to see peer abuse in schools with the authorities either ignoring the problem or trying to cover it up.

These issues reflect a systemic power structure whose hegemony filters down and becomes part of our culture almost as if we invented it ourselves. We live in a violent world and a society where everything is for use or sale including men and women. Instead of co-operation and empathy we have competition and exploitation and women and girls seem to be at the bottom of the pecking order. Gender stereotyping and sexist attitudes can start young, boys being seen as stronger and more technical, girls being the weaker and more caring sex. We’ve all heard the jokes about the mother-in-law and women drivers, and women’s aptitude for housework. It seems harmless but it’s a drip-by-drip reflection of the power men often have over women in capitalist society.

Until all power structures are dismantled both social and economic, until we live in a world as equals, where buying and selling is obsolete and respect for the ‘other’ is universal, these problems will not go away. Men and women have to work together but as long as there is distrust and disrespect between the sexes, as long as there is sexism and fear of the ‘other’, women may not always feel totally included in the struggle for socialism and as women make up over 50 percent of the working class that could mean no socialism for anybody.

Carla D.