Scientists, Satellites and Socialism (1953)

From the October 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

There have been several letters to the press recently complaining about the lack of enthusiasm shown by scientists in finding an effective means of fog-prevention. It has been suggested that those scientists who are at present investigating ways and means of exploring the moon should turn their attention to preventing fog.

This is a little unfair to the scientists. The majority of those engaged upon astronautical research are better suited to the exploration of outer-space than to the more mundane problem of clearing the smoke-laden atmosphere of London.

Quite apart from this the problem is not so complicated as it may seem. Cities such as New York have dealt with it quite simply by forbidding the burning of smoke-producing fuels. The boffin is not required to produce an involved formula for this. In any case, the decision as to whether preference should be given to fog-prevention or inter-planetary travel depends not upon consideration for the welfare of the community, but rather upon which is likely to be die more valuable from the military or commercial point of view.

If a scientist is fortunate he pursues a line of research which is of interest to him, but usually he is directed to follow a line dictated by the interests of capitalism.

We have readied a stage in the evolution of human society where we are on the threshold of journeys into outer-space. It is not a new idea. As long ago as the seventeenth century Cyrano de Bergerac was dreaming of journeys to the moon with rockets. Now that space travel seems to be almost within our grasp and the idea gaining greater public appreciation, other considerations are troubling the more thoughtful scientists.

There are, unfortunately, too many workers who are overawed by the views of the professors. They are thought to be men whose mental powers are far greater than those of the rest of us. A conception which many scientists take pains to foster.

As a justification for the amount of time and money devoted to astronautics the scientists, many of whom are quite sincere, suggest that artificial satellites revolving around the earth at regular intervals could be used as observation platforms from which it would be possible to see whether any nation were preparing for an atomic attack and, if so, to prevent it.

To a Socialist, no utterance could be more naive than this, nor less scientific. It takes us back to the old argument that every nation should sink its differences and, in order to ensure that no one violated the treaty, an international police force be organised.

If the working class is waiting for someone to hand them security on a plate they should discount the backroom boys.

An astronaut, Oscar Schachter, writing in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society for January, 1952, introduced some opinions which were both pathetic and laughable. He was concerned about the violation of sovereign rights by artificial asteroids. In other words, he projected the problems of capitalism with its nautical three-mile limit into outer-space, where he could foresee legal difficulties arising from the passage every few hours of a satellite over someone else’s territory.

If workers incline to the same views as this scientist let them remember the League of Nations and its modern counterpart, the United Nations. Every day the United Nations become more disunited and doomed, like their predecessors, to end in complete impotence.

One of the greatest mathematicians of the age, Albert Einstein, revealed his complete lack of political understanding a few years ago in a book entitled “The World As I See it ”(Watts). In this he put forward the view that wars originate from ideological conflicts and that all nations should come to an understanding and agree not to fight. International control is the solution, according to Einstein.

Such schemes as this are foredoomed to failure and show as little fundamental knowledge as the child who thinks that the earth is fiat.

Those who support these Utopian schemes are ignorant of the fact that war is a logical outcome of the capitalist system. So long as wealth is produced to be sold in the world market, wars will ensue, regardless of pacts and declarations of friendship.

If travel to the moon and elsewhere becomes an established fact before the end of capitalism, the workers of the world will only be killed in greater quantities in the scramble for new sources of raw materials.

If we conquer space after the establishment of Socialism we will not be troubled by frontiers and boundaries and extra-territorial rights. Furthermore, life on earth will be so much more enjoyable that the people in America who have already reserved their seats in the first space-ship to the moon will probably cancel their reservations.

It is the workers of the world, the scientists included, who must solve the problems of production and distribution, but they must have the necessary knowledge.

To help them achieve their ends there exists the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion parties abroad.

Study our case and join with us in order that we may create a world in which all effort is for the common good.

Chester.

 

Blogger's Note: 

I don't believe Oscar Schachter was an astronaut. Try "American international law and diplomacy professor, and United Nations aide." [Wiki]

Fog prevention was a real issue in London - and other industrial centres in Britain - in the early 1950s. It was estimated that the Great Smog of London in December 1952 had resulted in 4,000 deaths.

Pathfinders: Moon madness (2026)

The Pathfinders Column from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to media hoopla last month, the NASA Artemis 2 flight round the Moon generated enormous public interest around the world. Did it really? Anecdotal evidence seemed pretty thin on the ground.

Okay, so maybe those old enough to remember the first-time round weren’t impressed. A fly-by is not a landing, after all. Back then the Apollo programme really did look like something out of science fiction and seemed to herald a new era of space conquest. Never mind that it was all blatant anti-Soviet swagger, after the US had been humiliated by first Sputnik and then Yuri Gagarin. Some things are bigger than politics.

The fascination was huge. The few state TV and radio channels were awash with space updates for weeks. Poor kids watched it all through snowy static on monochrome TV sets, while kids with rich parents played with plastic Saturn V model rockets with real detachable launch stages, plus model Moon landers on cratered terrains, crewed by Action Man astronaut dolls. Every magazine had special issue pull-out posters to plaster across bedroom walls. And then the landing. Neil Armstrong’s crackly, matter-of-fact voice held the world in breathless thrall as, between technical beeps, he announced the legendary step. Nobody used the word ‘singularity’ back then, but it felt like one. And that wasn’t even the greatest drama. Candlelight rallies and school assemblies across the world offered up fervent prayers during the hour-by-hour knuckle-gnawing crisis of Apollo 13. For a time it seemed like there was no another topic of conversation to be had. The world was of a single mind.

The illusion couldn’t last, of course, and neither could the budget. The Soviets had been bested, the world lost interest, and Apollo was cancelled. The space age failed to materialise and the notion of colonising other planets evaporated from the world’s travel plans. If today’s oldies are unimpressed, it won’t just be that humans have ‘been there, done that’, but rather that FA resulted from it. This time round the political swagger is aimed at China, which has announced that it intends to have a crewed moon-base by 2030. To any US president and especially King Donald, now modestly lecturing the Pope and presenting as Jesus, such an upset is beyond unthinkable.

Compared to the steely-eyed Cold War of the Apollo era, today’s world looks positively unhinged, with infantile megalomaniacs in charge of infantilised populations, and god-knows-what disaster right around the corner. If the Moon was habitable, perhaps we’d all be queuing up. As it is, opinions on Artemis among younger generations seem divided. Some argue on Reddit that they have enough to worry about ‘down here’ as it is, though one commentator makes a despairing case for distraction: ‘I (like most people) need something to be excited about right now. I refuse to not be excited for this just because life fuckin sucks at the moment lol’.

Recent YouGov polling finds that ‘57% of Britons feel returning to the Moon is of little to no importance for humanity’ and only ‘37% of Britons believe it’s likely that humans will land on Mars in their lifetime’. This appears to reflect a reasonable sense of priorities rather than any profound loss of interest in science, with ‘just 21% of Britons believing it’s of little to no importance for humanity to explore space for scientific purposes’.

Maybe the UK perspective is not representative, given that Britain never really had a dog in the space race, but opinions across the pond also seem divided. According to one source, ‘most polls show that as many as 90 percent of Americans don’t care about returning to the Moon or establishing a presence there’.

This however is in sharp contrast to a recent Ipsos poll which found that 62 percent of US adults thought sending people into space was worth the money (though interestingly the percentage dropped by 20 points when the phrase ‘billions of dollars’ was mentioned), with NASA earning 80 percent approval, a rating which Trump himself, currently on 38 percent, probably thinks he shares.

You might expect scientists devoted to popularising science to be in favour, at least. But astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson is scathing in his dismissal of the Artemis programme as a waste of time and money, and future Mars expeditions as ‘vanity projects’. Then there’s Martin Rees, the UK’s Astronomer Royal, who argues that in the age of AI and robotics there is simply no point in humans running the considerable risks of interplanetary spaceflight except possibly as ‘an ultra-expensive sport’ for billionaires.

NASA knew, of course, that they faced a potential public engagement problem, especially during a cost-of-living crisis, so they embarked on an extensive PR campaign in order to justify the $100bn+ budget which, though only a fraction of the US defence budget, could still fund ten years of the UN World Food Programme that feeds 150 million people across 120 countries. Thus, NASA devoted much time to workshopping ‘ethical and social considerations’ in a bid to persuade voters that the whole venture was a worthwhile expense. As NASA flight director Zebulon Scoville put it, ‘This program will be over if people don’t buy it and they don’t come with us’.

Capitalists and state politicians do have ulterior motives though for Earth’s ‘eighth continent’. The great powers will happily ignore the Outer Space Treaty if they can feasibly extract the mineral deposits thought to be there. And with water now believed to exist at the poles, nuclear-powered crewed bases are viable, which could serve as low-gravity launch stations to Mars using electrolysis to generate oxygen rocket fuel. But in true Cold-War MAD style, these bases could also bristle with hard-to-hit nuclear missiles, as well as being out of range of prospective satellite wars. That, in short, is how capitalism on Earth could turn the Man in the Moon into our collective nemesis.

Paddy Shannon

Under-population? (2025)

Book Review from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire. By Henry Gee, Picador, 2025. 279pp.

This book takes a long view of human history. Going back to the very dawn of hominid existence, it charts the rise of one species of human – our own – among many and looks ahead to where the current slowing down of population growth and the widely expected future decline in population may lead us. Extinction, in fact, is what the author thinks is our likely destination, since smaller populations will find it difficult to summon up sufficient expertise to manage the challenges of an inimical environment and shortage of core resources. The only long-term solution to avoid extinction, he argues – and he doesn’t do it jokingly – is to branch out into space. He insists that, unless we are able to do this, the end for humanity will come within 10,000 years at the most.

As for the present and the less far-flung future, Gee, senior editor at Nature magazine and author of the prize-winning A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, has what can be regarded as an enlightened take on many facets of social organisation, in which, as he puts it ‘homo sapiens faces a series of political, social, biological and environmental crises unique in its evolutionary history’. For example, he kills stone dead the myths of current over-population and never-ending population rise and at the same time welcomes migrations of people seeking better lives elsewhere (‘the natural state of humanity’, as he puts it). This is not only for their own well-being but also because of the likely benefits for the places they migrate to, since ‘technological advancement requires a substantial resource base in the form of human brains’ and ‘fewer brains mean technological stagnation’. He celebrates too ‘the reproductive and educational empowerment of women’ that has spread to significant parts of the world. Nor does he fail to point out that the way society has been organised for the past 10,000 years (ie settled agriculture, private property, states, rulers and ruled) constitutes a tiny time period in the 315,000-year history of modern humans, little more than 3 percent in fact. And before that settled agriculture period, humans lived without leaders, states, private property and material inequality.

In addition to his view that ‘humans are running out of genetic resilience’ (ie, there won’t be enough of us), another reason he looks at space migration as a future recourse for humanity is that, in his view, climate change will bring upsets such as flooding, storms and droughts that will become increasingly difficult to deal with and are likely to cause high levels of food insecurity. He points to some food insecurity existing already, but he sees it as having ‘more to do with such human foibles as poor governance, corruption and warfare than crop failure per se’. This is undeniable, since, as multiple indicators show, there already exists enough potential food (and all the other necessaries of life) to satisfy the current population, and probably a far larger one. If it does not seem like that, this is because, as this book glimpses but does not delve into, the world’s money economy (and the rationing and conflict over resources that go with it) denies reasonable access to the means of living to a significant proportion of people. So if, as Gee has it, ‘famine is riding down hard on us, faster than ever’, this is not for lack of food or the means to produce and distribute it. It’s to do with the economic system – capitalism (a word never mentioned in this book) – that currently rules the world and causes so many ‘to starve at the banquet’. Unfortunately, this book’s unspoken assumption is that we are stuck with the form of social organisation that causes this.

For all that, however, it remains a fascinating and immensely readable piece of work, wearing its expert and up-to-date knowledge lightly over a wide range of scientific fields. It is written with verve, brio and no little humour. Particularly fascinating to some will be its depiction of a possible space settlement in the far-flung future where a hollowed asteroid is the habitat of a city or cities transported from the earth’s surface and ways have been found of creating artificial gravity – a project described by the author as ‘not insuperable’ with people by then having come to think of it as ‘entirely natural’. Who knows?

But what about the nearer future, ie, before the time comes when we, according to the author, will have to make a choice between reaching for space or becoming extinct? Well, despite his ultimate pessimism about life on earth, he does have some clear ideas about how he would like to see things pan out in the meantime. He suggests, for example, that the strain on the planet’s biological diversity could be reduced by the use of hydroponic farming, so cutting back on the need for farmland. He also recommends reducing ‘meat on the hoof carnivory’, since ‘by eating plants directly, rather than eating animals that eat plants’, humans would use ‘less of the earth’s natural bounty’ and more people could be fed.

But could they? While it’s true that the system we live under has allowed a far greater proportion of the planet’s population to live more comfortably than at any time in the past 10,000 years, that system is, by its very nature, always going to give priority to profit-making over meeting people’s needs. The author perceives quite rightly that homo sapiens has a knack ‘for getting himself out of trouble’, but surely this lies in the more ’united earth’ that Henry Gee says he wishes for rather than in humanity seeking refuge in space. Yet a ‘united earth’ will only be truly possible once we reject the profit system that currently rules humanity and in its place establish a society of common ownership and cooperative organisation with free access for everyone to the ‘earth’s natural bounty’.

Howard Moss

Voice From The Back: Spaced out (2001)

The Voice From The Back Column from the June 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spaced out

The US multi-millionaire Dennis Tito returned to earth on 6 May after his trip on a Russian space flight. He paid about $20 million dollars for the privilege; well American capitalists have got to do something with the surplus value that they have extracted from the working class. The awful thing is that while he was away in space for a week the capital that he has invested in the exploitation of the working class made him even richer than he was when he left the planet earth. As he is estimated to have a fortune of $200 million at present that is bloody rich. If every capitalist in the world was given a one way ticket into space, it would make no difference to the wealth produced on this planet, it would of course cut the consumption of wealth quite considerably.

Is democracy ghastly?

The Trade Union movement, in one of its worst moves ever, assisted in the development of the Labour Party. The outcome of that decision is that former railway workers, coal miners and factory hands are calling themselves Lords, dining at the Savoy and discussing the merits of Bollinger ’57 champagne. And are the legions of present and former Labour MPs grateful for the soft living they procured with the help of the TUs? Not a bit of it.

“Teachers unions should end the “ghastly ritual” of their Easter Conferences because they turn off would-be recruits, the chairman of the Commons education committee said last night. Labour MP Barry Sheerman said he was dismayed by the behaviour of some delegates at the National Union of Teachers’ conference in Cardiff, who jeered and held up placards when education secretary, David Blunkett, addressed them.” Guardian 17 April.

Art for cash’s sake

The art world was excited by the re-emergence of a “lost” painting of Claude Monet entitled Haystacks, Last Rays of the Sun. It is a painting that has not been seen in public since 1895. It goes under the hammer at Southeby’s next month and is expected to fetch £5 million. So where has this masterpiece been for over a hundred years? In private hands, where its various owners have kept it safe from the prying eyes of the great unwashed. This is not an unusual fate for artistic works. The very rich, and quite often the very stupid, hoard them under lock and key, often not even looking at them for years on end. These are the people Wilde described as “knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing”. Inside a socialist society all works of art will be available for the public to enjoy, not for millionaires to store in vaults.

Strange bedfellows

The news from Scotland that the Socialist Workers Party will cease to exist and that its 272 members will transfer to the Scottish Socialist Party illustrates the complete lack of principles of both parties. The SSP stand for an independent Scotland, the SWP in the past have always ridiculed this as narrow nationalism. We predict that a battle for supremacy between these two Leninist factions will probably break out in the future. They have certain views in common though. They are opposed to the concept of a class-less, trade-less, money-less society and of course see themselves as the self-appointed leaders of a working class too stupid to get socialism for themselves for “five hundred years”. A plague on both their houses.

Slaughter of the innocents

Capitalism is an awful social system, the old, the infirm and the handicapped are particularly unfortunate recipients of its competitive uncaring nature, but a recent report by the United Nations Children’s Fund shows how terrible is the fate of many children inside capitalism:

“Two million children have been killed by conflict over the last 10 years; 12 million children have been made homeless; six million children have been injured or disabled. Of the world’s 40 million displaced, 20 million are children. Up to 10,000 children each year are killed by landmines” Observer, 6 May.

Situations vacant

From the majestic mountains and glens of Scotland we are delighted to inform our readers of the wonderful career opportunities that are available in Tony Blair’s modern, cool Britannia. “Grouse Beaters wanted. Male and female accommodation. Meals provided. Apply in writing to the Head-keeper, Corrybrough Estate, Tomatin, Inverness-shire IV13 7XY” Herald, 8 May. “Accommodation” AND “meals provided” – Wow! “Near Utopian conditions for the lower orders, your Lordship.” For how long are we going to let these arrogant swine get away with these insults?

Enlightened self-interest

When 39 drug firms dropped their case against South Africa importing cheaper anti-Aids drugs, it was hailed as a victory for humanity over profit. It wasn’t that simple though, because the firms had only bowed to public opinion when it seemed that the import of cheaper drugs into Africa seemed inevitable. The South African government have refused to provide retroviral drugs through the public health system despite this apparent victory. The London-based mining giant Anglo-American is now negotiating with an Indian pharmaceutical company to purchase cheap Aids drugs for its HIV-positive workers in South Africa. An altruistic gesture by big business? Not quite. “Businesses say the pandemic will have a devastating effect on the economy, and research has shown that providing workers with drugs is cheaper than paying for absenteeism, loss of productivity, hospital treatment, funerals, and replacing and retraining staff” Herald, 7 May.

Anti-climax (1951)

From the March 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the past year our attention has been turned to the skys in many ways. We had Fred Hoyle’s Lectures (broadcast by the B.B.C.) on the New Cosmology, giving many of us a fascinating insight into the wonders of the universe. In a B.B.C. broadcast we also learned that Societies exist to plan trips to the moon and later to mars, although it is stressed that many years will elapse before they can actually be attempted. In the same programme (Focus on Interplanetary Travel), we were taken on an imaginary trip (by rocket) to the moon.

A book was published entitled, “The Conquest of Space.”  W. Ley had collected technical information on this subject and presented it with pictures (by Chesney Borestell) based on the latest authentic research. The trips to the various planets in the book were, of course, purely imaginary. Becoming “sky-conscious” Hollywood gave us a brace of films, “Destination Moon” and “Rocketship X-M.,” but the most spectacular appeal to public attention was made by the “ Flying Saucers.” This elusive and much publicised phenomena caught the public imagination and the most extraordinary rumours were circulated regarding their speed, manoeuverability and brilliant light, particularly in America where they mostly appeared, although people in British Isles claimed to have seen them.

On 7th October, following much advance publicity, the Sunday Express featured a series of articles on the subject entitled (rather dramatically) “Is another world watching us?” The author, Gerald Heard, was introduced as “distinguished writer and well-known broadcaster,” and the articles were extracts from his book, “The Riddle of the Flying Saucers.” He certainly spread himself at length on the subject as the series did not finish till 3rd December. First a mass of testimony was brought forth by those who claimed to have witnessed the phenomena. Then it was said. “The question of their speed seems to rule out any human designer. . . from a quiet brooding to a speed of 18,000 miles per hour.” Heard put forth an astonishing assortment of suggestions quite seriously, the most fantastic being that they were “manned” by insects from outer space. (Insects being able to withstand the pressure of the tremendous acceleration). Each planet of our solar system was solemnly examined and mars singled out as the only one upon which insect life could exist.

We were told that U.S. Army and Navy denied all knowledge of the saucers: surely Mr. Heard could not be so naive as to accept that as conclusive? A child of average intelligence would realise that if It were a military or naval “ top secret ” it would be disowned rather than acknowledged prematurely.

The conclusion of the articles is more fantastic than all that has gone before and we really question whether Mr. Heard is indulging in that pastime, colloquially known as pulling our legs. He quotes earlier on that “No form of life as we know it could exist on mars, but insect life.” Nevertheless he concludes in the following extraordinary manner:—“The earths rind of rock (the lithosphere) may not be at all thick. It may be possible with our 'modem atom power explosion to burst through it. Then, quite likely, out would come our molten insects. Martians might well have strong views about planets that explode themselves. For turning ourselves into a dust belt filling our entire orbit with a thick mist of fragments we might cut off a dangerously large amount of the all- too-little sunlight they now get . . . When we twice struck Japan and then not to slaughter but to astound— made the Pacific spout, when we, time and again sent up great super-thunderheads of smoke, spray and the wreckage of human industry and human bodies right up into the stratosphere, then we put out a finger to beckon attention on any watching fellow planet that we were the little fellow out for trouble and able and itching to give it. They could hardly have failed to see that defiant wanton signal. Does that close the question Why Now?”

Well! Here comes the anti-climax, the secret is out—flying saucers are atom test balloons. The information was released by the chief of Nuclear Research, U.S. Navy (Daily Herald, 13/2/51).

Shades of Jules Verne. On 31st December, 1950, the Sunday Express patted itself smugly on the back that it had led the field with articles on “that interesting topic Flying Saucers ” and were much flattered that other newspapers were following their lead. They can claim no credit, rather the reverse, for sponsoring these articles as a serious attempt to solve the mystery.

The Astronomer Royal (Sir Harold Spencer Jones) took a dim view of the whole thing and said (when questioned about flying saucers) “It is very significant that most of the reports appear to have come from a country where mass hysteria is rather prevalent.”

We will close by following Mr. Heard’s lead and indulge a short flight of fancy. Supposing that space ships brought beings from another planet. One imagines they would be fleeting visitors to this miserable world of conflicts, and want alongside potential plenty. Interplanetary travel presupposes a more intellectual and very much farther advanced form of life, the outcome of which we should presume to be a classless society, where all the evils that are the outcome of capitalist society could not exist. The inevitable and ultimate goal of all human endeavours.

Many of us would want to “thumb a lift” for the journey back.

F. M. Robins

Pathfinders: Boeing: out in the cold (2024)

The Pathfinders Column from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

After nearly three months on the International Space Station, two astronauts are to be marooned there until next February as their proposed transport home, Boeing’s Starliner capsule, remains out of service after a host of thruster failures, software glitches, parachute problems and helium leaks. The astronauts are being philosophical about it, but Boeing will be aggrieved at losing credibility points to its arch-rival NASA co-contractor, the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, which will now take on the responsibility for bringing the astronauts home (tinyurl.com/3bj3ua2t).

Boeing is fast becoming a byword for ‘omnishambles’ with a recent history that showcases just how capitalist competition and corporate profit-chasing can result in highly uncreative destruction.

When Boeing swallowed up the last of its US aviation rivals in the 1990s, it saw the chance to adopt a less product-oriented and more shareholder-focused and monopolistic approach which sought to maximise returns by outsourcing not just part production but the cost of part development too, while also extorting price reductions. This put the squeeze on suppliers, who were faced with a Hobson’s Choice of a bad deal or no deal at all. But outsourcing creates complexity, and this compartmentalised approach on the wide-bodied 787 Dreamliner resulted in delays and overruns and never delivered the savings expected (tinyurl.com/fsmbd8mz).

While Boeing wrestled with a problem of its own making, its major European rival, the joint venture Airbus, announced the re-engined narrow-body A320neo, which it claimed could cut fuel use by up to 35 percent. This caused consternation at Boeing, whose 50-year-old 737 had previously dominated the core-segment single-aisle market. To compete, Boeing really needed a brand new plane, but the lead-time to mass production of an all-new design, outsourced or not, would be far too long, and Boeing were already haemorrhaging buyers to Airbus. So bosses resorted to the least-worst option, to re-engine the 737. Morgan Stanley said of this ‘reactionary’ solution, ‘Boeing’s hasty decision to re-engine the B737 is a clear indication of the success and strong competitive positioning of the A320neo’ while another business analyst was ‘astounded at the Airbus smackdown’ (tinyurl.com/36rkdsrr).

Enter the 737 MAX. But when you put new and bigger engines on a 100-ton aircraft they alter its centre of gravity and flight characteristics. Normally this would necessitate costly flight simulator retraining and recertification of pilots. Instead Boeing used a background software fix known as the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which altered the plane’s rear flaps in response to sensor signals. As long as it worked properly, they reasoned, the pilots didn’t need to know about it. So Boeing did not tell them about MCAS or include it in the pilot manual. The Federal Aviation Administration wasn’t too worried, despite whistleblower allegations of its regulatory capture by Boeing, and agreed with the company to give pilots just an hour of training on an iPad, without mentioning MCAS. Boeing weren’t worried either. They had calculated the likelihood of a ‘major failure’ (one not resulting in the loss of a plane, which is termed ‘catastrophic’) as once in every 223 trillion flight hours – around 2 billion years of annual MAX fleet service (tinyurl.com/549z2ahj).

In the event they had two catastrophic failures in less than 6 months. The sensors and control panel light didn’t work properly, and pilots did not know about MCAS or how to override it when it malfunctioned. In October 2018 a Lion Air 737 MAX 8 crashed in the Java Sea, killing all 189 people. Airily dismissing this as ground crew and pilot incompetence, Boeing announced record $100bn earnings the following January. But in March 2019 an Ethiopian Airlines MAX 8 also fell out of the sky, killing all 157 on board. Clearly this was no coincidence, and Boeing immediately saw its orders, stock prices and reputation plummet. Its CEO promptly resigned, though with a cosy retirement package of $80m in stock options (tinyurl.com/498cvau4), and the new CEO issued a mea culpa to the US Senate, accepting the company’s responsibility for the deaths and agreeing to pay compensation and submit to regulators.

And then, despite all the regulation, a door panel blew off an Alaska Airlines flight in January this year, because bolts were missing. How could this happen? Multiple whistleblowers had faced company reprisals after drawing attention to falsified inspection reports and a string of unsafe practices due to cost-cutting and inadequate staff training. In July Boeing pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy after being found to violate the terms of the regulatory agreement, meaning the company now has a criminal record (tinyurl.com/mv4av7m2).

On top of that, Boeing workers have been on strike against a union-busting and bullying culture, pay rates that have not increased in 16 years as the cash-strapped company grinds down on its own workforce, and ‘panic mode’ as managers hound staff to keep quiet over quality concerns (tinyurl.com/ysjh9mnc).

Now Boeing has $60bn of debt and is ‘one level above being potentially downgraded to non-investment grade status – junk status’. But nobody wants Boeing to collapse, not the airlines, who are faced with a global shortage of aircraft and fear an Airbus monopoly even more than the current Boeing-Airbus duopoly, and not the US government, which relies on Boeing’s aerospace defence arm and fears market capture by a major Chinese competitor like Comac (Economist, 20 June).

Airbus has seen A220-300 engine failures, diversions, groundings and supply chain problems but no crashes, and its stock has gone up, not down. The story of Boeing shows what can happen when market competition tightens the screws, and things like quality control, adequate training, product performance and company honesty begin to crack and splinter. Accidents will still happen in non-market socialism, but not because someone is eyeing the balance sheet instead of the safety inspection reports.

Meanwhile the astronauts continue to float in the ISS, patiently above it all. Compared to what many others have suffered at Boeing’s hands, they might consider themselves lucky only to be left out in the cold.

Paddy Shannon

Is anybody up there? (1982)

From the November 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last year the American government published the proceedings of a conference in California in June 1979 whose ostensible purpose was to explore the prospects for research into the nature and distribution of life in the universe (Life in the Universe, NASA Conference Publication 2156. US Government Printing Office). While the case for the establishment of a sane and harmonious society here on earth is obviously not dependent on such findings, the papers do contain much of interest to socialists.

The conference considered the origin of life, life supporting environments, the evolution of complex life, the detectability of technically advanced civilisations and the problem of locating extraterrestrial intelligence. Two different though complementary approaches are encompassed here. The first seeks to develop an understanding of life and the environments necessary to support it. Such research cannot, of course, uniquely determine the existence of life outside the planet earth, but will enable attention to be focused on the more promising candidates among the heavenly bodies. The second approach has already been christened SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), and involves listening for potential radio transmissions from intelligent life, and an examination of suitable stars for target. A research programme has been established to pursue these aims.

The advance in thinking in this branch of science since Darwin wrote The Origin of Species is as immense as that made in the same period in the design of weapons of war. The two are in fact linked, as illustrated by the development of nuclear bombs and the use of space-craft for reconnaissance and, potentially at least, for other military purposes. It is a mistake to think of this advance of science in terms of increasing the number of solved problems (with a corresponding reduction of those unsolved), although there is a sense in which this is a valid viewpoint. Attempts to attack one particular problem often lead to unexpected results which themselves cause new questions to be posed and fresh problems identified as requiring solutions. An example of this was the bringing back to earth for analysis of samples from the moon. The results have been somewhat misleadingly reported as having caused confusion among scientists. In fact the longterm result is an enlargement of horizons and an enrichment of understanding.

Certainly this aspect of scientific research can be irritating. It requires the modification of theories in the face of new evidence, often the abandonment of what had appeared to be promising lines of enquiry. Thus the appearance can easily be given that no progress is being made. It is here that the sniping movement calling itself Creation Science has found its opportunity. There have surely been few organisations to which the word reactionary can be more appropriately applied. Claiming that science has failed to provide the answers, it advocates a return to the old creation theories of religion. Its adherents focus on biological evolution and Darwin's work and pose the question, “Was Darwin right?”, as though they were continuing the famous debate between Bishop Wilberforce and T.H. Huxley. Their claim that the fossil record does not support Darwin is technically correct although rather impertinent. Darwin as was understandable in his time, saw evolution as proceeding at a much more constant rate than present-day evidence will support. In fact, as presented by Valentine [1], what now appears to have happened is lengthy periods of relative stability with small changes (microevolution) interspersed with intervals where more revolutionary events happened (macroevolution). Valentine writes: "A large mutation can produce a descendant which is infertile with members of its parental species, including its parents. If it can fertilise itself, however, it may propagate and thrive”. In the human species mutations are produced which differ considerably from their parents. This occurred with much greater frequency immediately following the atomic bombardment of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Like most mutations these were tragic, one-off cases and where they survived they did so only because human society can now prevent natural selection operating. The point is, however, that it was the normal human reproductive process which brought forth these ‘children’, and to claim that a ‘creator’ is at work here is worse than ridiculous.

The concept of concurrent micro and macroevolution appears to be well supported by the fossil record. Indeed in the last 20 years one of the main arguments used by “creationists' has disappeared. As reported by Margolis and Havelock [2], it used to be thought that the Precambrian rocks of the Ediacaran period (700 million to 570 million years ago approximately) did not contain a fossil record. The pioneering work of Elso Barghoorn and Stanley Tyler of Harvard University has shown that this is not the case, the difficulty having been related to detection techniques and scientific expectation. Margolis and Havelock put it thus: “These investigators realised that the conspicuous fossil record of large organisms must have been preceded by something smaller. Such ideas led them to microscopic studies of thin sections of unaltered sedimentary rocks”. Far from supporting biblical or neo-biblical viewpoint, modern science is dealing it ever more crushing blows. This message is forcefully conveyed in nearly all the papers presented at the conference. ‘Creation science', incorporating as it does a complete misunderstanding of modern scientific method, must be largely motivated by its own deadly fear of the consequences of driving God out of the heavens. The complexity of the universe, as it is now understood, shows more clearly than ever before that the idea that we can ‘know all the answers' is a religious and not a scientific one. How could the inert matter which preceded life on earth have left sign-points to show us how it came to be where it was?

When talking about the possibility of detecting the existence of life outside our own planet, we of course mean life as we know it’; that is. life that has evolved in much the same way from much the same material conditions and resources as has life here on earth. We cannot, of course, even begin to discuss any other possible method of life evolution as it would be totally outside our experience and knowledge. All that can be said is that while this possibility cannot be entirely ruled out, the chances do seem to be extremely small. The phrase ‘conditions which will support life’ must also be taken to mean ‘conditions similar to those on earth’.

The space exploration which has already taken place certainly appears to have ruled out any chance of life at the present time anywhere else in the solar system. No attempt was made by sensate beings to intercept or communicate with the spacecraft, and nowhere was a life supporting environment detected. However Chang [3] suggests that Venus and Mars may have supported some form of life in the past. As for the chances of life further afield, this appears to boil down to which is the greater of two very large numbers. The odds against all the requirements of organic life appearing on another plant, or perhaps a satellite, in much the same proportions as on earth, are obviously very great. Equally vast however is the number of heavenly bodies in the universe. The biblical writer who compared their abundance to that of sand on the seashore was considerably more right than he knew. He probably did not believe what he wrote, but he has proved not to be far out. There has even been speculation that the planet earth may not be unique — that is to say. there may be another bloke called Edge writing at this instant about life in the universe for another journal called Socialist Standard on an identical planet many light years away! Opinion at the conference was divided on this issue. Drake [4] states: “The current consensus concerning extraterrestrial life is that it exists in abundance in the universe". However in the present state of knowledge the opinion of Lovejoy [5] seems more realistic: “I think it quite reasonable to suppose that despite the immensity of the known universe, the specificity in the physiostructure of any organism is so great and its immensely complex pathway of progression so ancient that the probability of re-expression is simply infinitesimal". This, needless to say. has nothing in common with the religious view of man as the special creation of God. Lovejoy’s comments are the product of more than a century of dedicated scientific observation.

What is the real purpose of this conference? In his introductory remarks Frosch [6] said: "The ‘golden fleece' idea that searches, gropings for knowledge whose purpose we do not understand are silly and some kind of rip off, results from sheer lack of understanding, lack of imagination and lack of perception of the meaning of the history of the human race". As far as it went, this was very well said. However, it would be naive indeed to accept that the gathering was concerned with pure research for the long-term benefit of humanity. Under the present social system funds are not provided for such studies. Certain capitalist interests, of course, stand to benefit in the short term from the construction of the high technology instruments required to scan the universe for life. Spacecraft travelling up to the speed of light have been envisaged. Generally speaking, however, such interests, despite all their lobbying, are unlikely by themselves to generate enough pressure to force governments, considering the interests of the capitalist class as a whole, to provide them with the necessary finance. Not surprisingly, “earth politics" is ignored in all of the papers. This is an indication, however, that the participants implicitly accepted not only that there is no feasible alternative to the capitalist system here on earth, but that the advanced civilisations which they hope to find elsewhere will be capitalist in character also.

In discussing how such advanced civilisations may be detected, Braccwell [7] unwittingly and grimly admits this when he says, "incidental signals offer more interesting grounds for speculation. There is of course the possibility of emission from bomb explosions. Sustained nuclear reactions for the purpose of power generation do not seem a likely source because leakage would represent waste”. Unlike CND, it would appear that this author holds justifiably pessimistic views of the possibility of removing the threat of nuclear war while retaining the system that causes it. It can reasonably be assumed that the conference would have been no more optimistic about the prospect of tackling the problems of pollution and depletion of natural resources. These are also insoluble within capitalism, and are seriously worrying the more thinking among our rulers.

There are perhaps two obvious ways in which such people may see communication with other life-supporting planets as offering a way out. First, there is the hope that some "super intelligence” may be contacted who could point to solutions which have escaped dumb earthlings. However socialists see this as another form of the "great man" idea, and thus doomed to failure. Secondly, and perhaps the speculation on long-distance space travel is indicative, there is the possibility of transplanting earth capitalism to another site (and eventually wrecking this place in the way the earth is now being wrecked). This may prove to be a more practical proposition than trying to establish life support systems on other members of the solar system which are at present inimical to life. Such a migration could involve war. not only with existing inhabitants, but fierce conflict between the rival capitalist groups on earth as they try to extend their space colonies at each other's expense, just as happened here. This scepticism over motives however does not detract from the value of this publication as an abundant source of information and valuable insight into current scientific thinking.

E. C. Edge

References

(All references are taken from NASA Conference Publication 2156)

1. Emergence and Radiation of Multicellular Organisms; James W. Valentine (University of California)

2. Atmosphere and Evolution; Lynn Margolis (Boston University) and James E. Lovelock (Reading University, UK)

3. Organic Chemical Evolution; Sherwood Chang (Ames Research Centre. NASA)

4. Comments by Frank D. Drake (Professor of Astronomy. Cornell University) as session chairman for session 5.

5. Evolution of Man and its Implications for General Principles of the Evolution of Intelligent Life; C. Owen Lovejoy (Kent State University, Ohio)

6. Introductory remarks by Robert A. Frosch (President of the American Association of Engineering Societies)

7. Manifestations of Advanced Civilisations; Ronald N. Braccwell (Stanford University, California)

Pathfinders: Up for grabs (2024)

The Pathfinders Column from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Party politics may have been grabbing the UK headlines in the past few weeks, and continue to do so worldwide as 2024 sees a record 2 billion voters going to the polls in 50 countries, but behind the scenes, capitalist states and corporations are continuing their efforts to grab everything they can get their hands on in a relentless pursuit of future profits.

Billed somewhat improbably is ‘the biggest story of the 21st century’, a new documentary called The Grab goes into detail about how, overnight, a Chinese firm became the owner of almost one in four American pigs, while Saudi Arabian investors were behind land acquisitions in Arizona and Zambia, and various other state and corporate actors have been busily acquiring overseas food and water resources in a bid to fence in future supplies that are set to be as contested as oil was in the last century (tinyurl.com/2p8setzp).

It’s hard though to see this as genuinely ‘shocking’ unless one genuinely has no idea how capitalism works. Capitalism is all about grabbing, plundering and poaching, much of it routinely under-reported. Take species extinction, driven by climate change but further exacerbated by retail markets. Wild endangered species are being poached for bushmeat, with the accelerator effect that the rarer the animal becomes, the more valuable it is as a commodity.

The black rhino is now critically endangered due to poaching, with a population collapse of 96 percent. Endangered pangolins are the world’s most poached animal, for use in Chinese so-called traditional medicine or to make American handbags and cowboy boots, while African elephants are predicted to go extinct within 50 years. In Uganda and Rwanda, a perpetual war over gorilla poaching claims lives every year as national park rangers face being murdered by poachers who themselves have no realistic alternative sources of income. In the Congo five million tonnes of bushmeat are exported every year, mostly for the wealthy Asia market. Bonobos – that iconic species much admired for their non-violent and non-hierarchical behaviour – are now endangered by devastating poaching. To this toll can be added antelopes, buffalo, African grey parrots (99 percent population crash in Ghana), orang-utans, chimps and gibbons, lions, tigers, turtles and a variety of less well-known species (tinyurl.com/y8y9bkxt).

Animals don’t even have to be alive to be poached. A recent story detailed how the private and often illegal trade in fossils is getting in the way of genuine science, because the dollar value of big-ticket items, like a recently discovered complete Stegosaurus fossil, mean that museums often can’t afford to outbid private collectors and so lose much valuable research material. Even worse is the ruthless plundering that accompanies illegal digs, with bones being smashed and fossils removed with no documentation to show where they came from, rendering them useless for future research purposes (tinyurl.com/mvtkehmd).

It would be pointless to blame the individuals behind all this, who are simply being pragmatic about what they need to do to survive and thrive in capitalism, just as corporations do. If we collectively abolish the right of private individuals to own socially necessary resources, and thus remove at a stroke the basis of the buying and selling money system, all of the above would cease in an instant.

But while the dollar signs are flashing, there will be no signs of improvement, in any field of endeavour. Readers of this magazine may recall previous articles (eg, December 2015) on the mysterious archaeological site of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, whose discovery threw the materialist ‘standard model’ of human social development into utter disarray. At the time, only 5 percent of the extensive site had been excavated, with the 95 percent remainder concealing who-knew-what assumption-busting discoveries. So, nearly ten years on, how much more of the site has been excavated and what new exciting things do we know? The answers are none and nothing, thanks to private sector management. A deal with the World Economic Forum has resulted in the site being left ‘for future generations’, which is a thinly veiled excuse to stop funding research and instead start monetising what little has been exposed with the erection of enclosures and walkways, which involve driving huge steel spikes into unexamined archaeology for the purpose of generating tourist dollars (tinyurl.com/sz538uzm).

But perhaps the biggest indictment of capitalism’s disregard of decency in favour of dosh is right above our heads, on most nights of the year. Last month China unfurled its flag on the dark side of the moon, which in the last year has seen landings by India and Japan, along with private US firm Intuitive Machines. Nasa is aiming for a 2026 crewed landing, while China plans to send humans there by 2030, with all parties keen to build permanent bases using frozen water assumed to be in deep craters at the moon’s South Pole. And what of the venerable 1967 Outer Space Treaty, signed by 100 countries to the effect that no nation could own the Moon? Well, that was when nobody had even got there, and the likelihood of finding anything useful there was the faintest of moon glimmers. But now that large quantities of rare earth minerals, iron, titanium and helium-3 are known to be there, states are taking a much less high-minded view. The US in 2015 passed a law allowing itself to mine and sell any space material, and other countries are scrambling to give themselves similar ‘legal’ permissions (tinyurl.com/5n8avhxc). Really, capitalism ought to be called ‘The Grab’. But for all workers who live under the moon, what’s really up for grabs is a vastly better collective future without it.

Paddy Shannon

Tiny Tips (2024)

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

World’s 5 Richest Men Have Added $14M to Their Wealth Every Hour Since 2020.

[tinyurl.com/bdh2vxyt]

Green capitalism is a con. Only Marxism can save the planet.

[tinyurl.com/mpdpwp54]

A member of the Chinese Communist Party is the second-largest foreign owner of US land, according to the Daily Caller. Billionaire Chen Tianqiao, founder, chairman and CEO of Shanda Group, owns around 200,000 acres of land in Oregon.

[tinyurl.com/2mztxehy]

…the Deng drive produced a de facto capitalist economy presided by a bureaucratic bourgeoisie: ‘As has been true of the histories of all capitalist economies, the power of the state was very much involved in establishing China’s labor market. Indeed, in China a highly repressive state apparatus played a particularly direct and coercive role in the commodification of labor, a process that has proceeded with a rapidity and on a scale that is historically unprecedented’.

[tinyurl.com/yc44v6sw]

Since gaining power five years ago, the civil-military-religious alliance headed by Nobel Peace Prize winner and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, has waged two major wars against its citizens.

[tinyurl.com/43tkkrej]

Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, spoke… to extol the “outstanding” performance of the Israeli military in Gaza.

[tinyurl.com/yss442ke]

Some of the riches that these countries and companies seek include rare-earth metals and the isotope helium-3, which, while rare on Earth, is abundant on the moon and can theoretically be used to power nuclear fusion reactors.

[tinyurl.com/3j84pnu5]

It can be argued that Lenin only followed a pattern set by the Tsars, whose ruthlessness and autocratic rule had defined and despoiled Russia for centuries. Yet sitting in his seat at the British Museum, Lenin had fancied he could fashion a better, more peaceful, more equal Russia – only for the reality of exercising power in that vast country and his determination to force a reluctant population into line, whatever the cost, to turn him into a tsar in all but name and every bit as terrible as his predecessors.

[tinyurl.com/52b2sf7f]

Life expectancy for a Russian man is only 65. Mr Putin’s regime is trying to turn getting killed into an economically rational choice.

[tinyurl.com/49hfwte2]

In Pretoria… President Cyril Ramaphosa was seen warmly shaking the blood-soaked hand of Hemedti, a one-time leader of the Janjaweed, which holds the dubious distinction of carrying out the first genocide of the 21st century in Darfur.

[tinyurl.com/bdf87ucw]

Homeless rise sees young person become destitute every four minutes, research finds.

[tinyurl.com/nusjjuw3]

The specific piece of equipment, a plug door that broke off a Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft during Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 from Portland on Friday night, in fact illustrates many of the broader trends in the airline industry today: the desire to cram more passengers into finite space, the standardization of production across outsourced subcontractors, and the lack of oversight from federal regulators into these increasingly dangerous schemes.

[tinyurl.com/bhsjrwd2]

As MAGA devotion to Donald Trump grows within the evangelical community, once politically powerful religious leaders are losing sway over followers who have convinced themselves that Trump is the new savior.

[tinyurl.com/2p8xesnz]

50 Years Ago: Reaching for the Moon (2003)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fantastic as it may sound, a question has arisen regarding the ownership of the moon. Sooner or later it was bound to happen in a world dedicated to the idol of private ownership.

On 27th November 1952, Nancy Spain writing in the Daily Express brings to our notice an American book, written by various authors entitled “Across the Space Frontier” (Sidgwick and Jackson, 21/-). One of the authors is Dr Wernher von Braun, co-designer of the V2 Rocket and now technical director of the Army Ordnance Guided Missile Development Group, Alabama. We learn that a detailed plan has been drawn up for a Space Station and space travel. If the money were available and work put in hand at once it could be ready within 10 to 15 years. In fact, the American rocket engineers and scientists deem this project a number one priority. They say it is essential that the United States should be first in this field because a “less peaceably-minded” nation may beat them to it. (According to the Editor, Cornelius Ryan, the Russians have admitted that their engineers are also working along these lines.)

(. . .)

It is pointed out that great strides would be made in our knowledge of the stars, cosmic radiation and the structure of the earth, also that weather could be correctly predicted for months ahead. The emphasis, however, seems to be on the military value of the Space Station. It is said “In the hands of a ruthless power, no part of the earth would be safe from attack by guided missiles. No troop, air, or sea movements could be hidden from the all-seeing eye of the Station’s telescopes”.

[From an article by F.M.R., Socialist Standard, January 1953]

Geopolitics (2023)

Book Review from the September 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Future of Geography: How Power and Politics in Space Will Change Our World. By Tim Marshall (Elliot and Thompson, 2023)

Marshall has written a few books on geography and politics. In this work he argues that it is helpful to see outer space as a place with geography: it has corridors suited to travel, regions with key natural assets, land on which to build and dangerous hazards to avoid. In the twentieth century, the three main spacefaring nations were the USA, China and Russia. The USA is now the dominant player, with China catching up and Russia falling away. Each has their own version of a ‘Space Force’ to provide military capabilities for their forces on land, sea and air. In 2021 NATO established a Space Centre in Germany. Increasingly important are the capacities to attack and defend satellites which provide those capabilities.

The UK Space Command was created in 2021 and is based at RAF High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. From there it controls their Skynet satellite communications system (not to be confused with the rogue AI system, also called Skynet, in the Terminator series of films). Its commander, Air Vice-Marshall Paul Godfrey, declared that ‘One of our goals is to protect and defend our assets in and through space’.

Since this book was published Brigadier General Jesse Morehouse at US Space Command has claimed that Russian aggression and China’s vision to become the dominant space power by mid-century, had left the US with ‘no choice’ but to prepare for orbital skirmishes. Morehouse said: ‘The United States of America is ready to fight tonight in space if we have to’ (Guardian, 28 May).

Elon Musk’s SpaceX company has Starlink satellites and has distributed more than 10,000 broadband terminals (what Starlink engineers call ‘Dishy McFlatfaces’) to Ukraine and this has proved invaluable in fighting Russian forces. It could be argued that SpaceX was a third party from a country that was fighting a proxy war. If Russia shot down the satellites orbiting over Ukraine would America respond militarily? Nobody is sure what would happen.

The history of capitalism is the history of wars. Specifically, it is competition over markets, sources of raw materials, energy supplies, trade routes and areas of strategic importance. Space is no exception. As Marshall points out, ‘There’s money to be made in space’. As long as capitalism lasts it is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’ there will be a war in space. Such a conflict would be unlikely to be confined to space.

Marshall argues that China has asserted ‘the superiority of communism’. He quotes the historian Barbara Tuchman writing in 1972 on the ‘fact’ that China is ‘communist’ and Marshall adds: ‘Tuchman’s words are as true now as then’. China is ruled by a ‘Communist’ Party dictatorship, but neither it nor any other state has claimed to have established a communist society. Marshall is by no means alone in making this error but it is worth emphasising — no country in the world has claimed to have established communism. Ever.

Lew Higgins

Pathfinders: Ad Astra (2023)

The Pathfinders Column from the May 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

What with rocketing bills, mortgages, interest rates and general life stress, most people last month very likely paid no attention to the fact that the European Space Agency launched a satellite to visit the planetary system of Jupiter (bbc.in/3MYXRnf).

The assembled scientists and officials all jumped up and down and hugged each other as the Juice satellite launched successfully and later phoned home to say it had unfurled its 98 square yards of solar panels. They were obviously pleased that their collective investment of time, effort and £1.4bn had not blown up. ‘But I do have to remind everyone, there’s still a long way to go’, the ESA Director General pointed out. Well indeed. Jupiter is a long way, especially for a craft with only the power of a domestic microwave oven, and which has to travel by an extremely circuitous 8.5-year and 4.1 billion-mile route around the inner planets before being slung out to the gas giant in 2031.

But it’s not the gas giant itself that they’re interested in. The Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (Juice) is off to take a close look at Jupiter’s moons, specifically Europa, Callisto and Ganymede, the three little buggers that got Galileo into such bad odour with the Church back in 1610. If there’s life anywhere out there in the solar system, scientists think, it’s likely to be beneath the icy crusts of these moons. Juice is just the first step. Nasa is sending its Clipper satellite to Europa next year. After that there’s the question of a lander, and lastly something that’s capable of drilling through perhaps tens of miles of ice crust. Below that ice, Europa is believed to have an ocean 60 miles deep, ten times the depth of any ocean on Earth, despite only being one quarter its size. That means a relatively small rocky core that could be easily squeezed, scrunched and heated by the massive gravity of Jupiter, with the possibility of volcanic vents generating a rich chemical soup that might be the origin of life, as they are thought to have been on Earth.

There’s a lot of ‘mights’ and ‘perhapses’ in that paragraph, as there will be with any leading-edge scientific endeavour. What would it mean to find living organisms on one of these moons? In one sense, not a lot. It would make no difference to people’s lives on Earth, beyond being an interesting talking point in pubs or over dinner. Nobody is hoping for anything more than amino acids or micro-organisms at best, and certainly not little green frogmen or intelligent squid. But still, it would be the greatest scientific discovery of all time, proof that life on Earth wasn’t some singular anomaly in the universe, and strong evidence that, as most scientists already assume, our galaxy must be teeming with life. If you can find two separate instances of life orbiting one star in a galaxy containing 100 billion stars, and in a universe now thought to contain of up to 20 trillion galaxies, the concept of extraterrestrial zoology becomes a no-brainer.

All that would surely change humanity’s perception of itself in the cosmos. Instead of ‘us and them’ meaning competing nationalities, ethnic groups, gender identities or even warring social classes, we could have a sense of terrestrial unity for the first time, ‘us’ being all life on Earth, and ‘them’ being all life on other planets.

But before we get too starry-eyed and visionary, there is the ugly fact that we still live in capitalism, an astoundingly divisive and destructive economic system in which most humans are reduced to virtual slavery in the service of a rich and idle super-elite, and which relentlessly exploits global resources even at the risk of turning the planet into a toxic lifeless desert. Never mind what we humans think or feel about the cosmos, what does the logic of our present social system dictate?

The logic of capitalism is to exploit for profit whatever it can get its hands on. If it can get its hands on life on other moons or planets, it will treat it with the same wanton rapaciousness as it treats everything on Earth.

Humans will try to prevent it, of course. There will be moratoriums, new Outer Space Treaties, and an agreed respect for the ‘rights’ of extraterrestrial organisms. But if the potential for profit exists, the moratoriums will be ignored, the treaties broken, the respect disregarded. By hook or by crook, capitalist logic will be exported, virus-like, to new worlds and virgin environments to wreak its mindless havoc.

We have to stop that from happening, before any potential micro-organism is discovered on Europa or Ganymede. Humans on Earth must first put their own house in order. We have a responsibility, as intelligent custodians of our planet, to make sure that the destructive behaviour of our present class-divided society can never infect any other planet. We need to turn our social system upside down, and learn to operate sustainably as an egalitarian global community that collectively and sensibly manages its planetary resources, where things are made for direct use and not to be sold as commodities in a money system, and where the future belongs to all humanity instead of being slowly strangled by a parasitical property-owning elite. The only alternative to a money system is a non-money system. The only alternative to capitalism is post-capitalist common ownership. It’s not just a starry-eyed ambition, it’s a real scientific necessity. As Carl Sagan famously said, ‘If we are willing to contemplate nuclear war and the wholesale destruction of our emerging global society, should we not also be willing to contemplate a wholesale restructuring of our societies?’ The time to launch that restructuring is right now, before we launch any more spaceships.

Paddy Shannon

Pathfinders: Sky high and ocean deep (2023)

The Pathfinders Column from the February 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Do we really need this? Is it sustainable? Two questions that capitalism never seriously asks. At present the only question that matters is, can we make money out of this? All other considerations currently fall outside the projected calculation matrix, as an average CEO might blandly put it. And two recent news stories offer an illustration of this.

British news media were cock-a-hoop last month to report a home-grown ‘space industry’ story with the planned horizontal launch from Newquay in Cornwall of a suite of satellites via a rocket attached to one of Mad Dick Branson’s old Virgin jumbo jets (bbc.in/3VXUmON). ‘What people have seen is a small team deliver something quite incredible’ puffed the breathless CEO of Spaceport Cornwall, speaking live from the Mission Control shed just before the mission pancaked.

What they were planning on delivering was nine shoebox-sized satellites whose various space-based functions were such that their owners were willing to shell out hefty launch fees. It’s a burgeoning market, and other space freight companies in Shetland and Sutherland in Scotland are also keen to get in on the action. If Elon Musk can send mega-rockets to the moon, they ought to be able to manage a shoebox or two. Sadly the mission to hurl yet more space junk into orbit failed on this occasion, but the heroic British pioneers won’t be deterred from making future attempts.

As of January 2022, there were an estimated 8,261 satellites orbiting the Earth, of which 42 percent are already defunct (bit.ly/3irc1kv). But that’s small potatoes compared to the ‘mega-constellations’ of miniature CubeSats being planned by firms like SpaceX and OneWeb, which intend to upchuck around 65,000 in the next few years. Space tech is ‘dual use’, i,e, civilian and military, and the key military advantages of CubeSats are cheapness (especially when launched via reusable SpaceX rockets), small size, replaceability and proliferation, making them nearly impossible for an adversary to knock out. Elon Musk’s own Starlink system is being relied on by Ukrainian forces, meaning the Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX boss is now also in the war business and with such influence that he has personally vetoed Starlink operations over Crimea (bit.ly/3ZCiPw5).

Being nearer the ground, low-orbit off-the-peg CubeSats mean lower-latency (i.e, faster) connections than high-orbit heavy-duty satellites, while the swarm numbers mean near-comprehensive global internet coverage. A comparatively minor consideration is the predicted increase in visual ‘noise’ for astronomers (bit.ly/3W1baEQ ). But what’s sickening from a socialist perspective is that it’s not just one constellation to be shared by everyone, as would be the case in socialism, it’s multiple duplicate systems, because each competing state wants its own GPS and communications networks in space and does not want to rely on another’s satellites any more than on another’s energy supplies. One of socialism’s medium-term goals will probably be the challenge of hoovering up all this redundant and dangerous space scrap.

Meanwhile, you may be aware that the sea floors of the world are carpeted with small, potato-like polymetallic objects known as manganese nodules, first discovered in the 19th century and in July this year set to become a red-hot-button topic.

Imagine you are out for a walk in the wilds, on a break from your capitalist employment, and you happen across a huge wishing pond that is magically packed with a treasure trove of ancient gold denarii, duckets and dubloons. There is no sign saying Private Property – Keep Out. A quick check on your smartphone reveals not only that this pond doesn’t belong to anybody, but also that there is no mention of it in any statutes or local by-laws. Understandably, you’re keen to fill your boots with as much plunder as you can carry away. In fact, seeing as there are no rules, you might as well hire a mechanical digger to plough the entire pond right up, and make yourself a fortune. But as you start dialling the machine hire number, strong hands grab you by the arms and a voice says ‘Alright matey, not so fast, we were here first’.

Such is the situation with manganese nodules, found in gigantic quantities on sea beds in international waters. They are a potential bonanza for capitalist manufacturing, containing not just manganese, but also nickel, copper, iron, cobalt, titanium, silicon and aluminium among others, elements of immense importance in steel production, EV car batteries and other green tech. Average metallic content varies (15 – 30 percent), and a ballpark valuation for this content is given as $484/tonne (bit.ly/3IOHcAG). The potential global supply of nodules was estimated in the 1980s at roughly 500bn tonnes. At a minimum 15 percent average metal content, one could be talking about an industry worth upwards of $36tn.

Given this, you may wonder how come the gold rush has not already started. In effect, the lack of rules has resulted in a default Hands-Off stalemate as governments and UN regulator the International Seabed Authority have stalled for 20 years over a common regulatory framework, even though a clause in the existing 2000 treaty gave them just two years to create one. Mining companies are slavering to have at the prize, and equally keen to stop each other getting a head start. Now one company, in league with the Pacific island of Nauru, has announced that, if no regulation is in place by the end of the two-year period in July, they are technically entitled to send in the submarine bulldozers, and devil take the hindmost (bit.ly/3X5e7p0). A strip-mine frenzy will then ensue as the sea floors of the world, whose species, habitats and bio-environments are barely known at all, face a holocaust. The effects of this on global oceanic ecosystems together with the irrevocable loss of species and new science cannot even be guessed at. Governments, who have failed to do anything to fix climate change since the first COP in 1995, have until July to fix this. Don’t hold your breath.

This is not to say that a socialist society would never mine seabed nodules under any circumstances, any more than saying it would never launch a satellite. Humans use the resources of nature all the time, and this is an abundant source of extremely useful metals. But first it would ask the two questions we started with. It may be that in socialism we can devise green tech that does not require so much mining, or even devise acceptable social arrangements that don’t require so much green tech. But in capitalism, nobody even asks. If it’s not about the profit, it’s not part of the equation.

Paddy Shannon