Letter: Squaring the family circle (1975)

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

Squaring the family circle

The article on “The Future of the Family” in the February Socialist Standard gave me food for thought, and I’d like to make some comments.

First, about social groupings in Socialism. P. Deutz says — “People . . . belonging to the community does not have to mean living cheek-by-jowl in an undifferentiated mass! Rather, a mixture of private and communal life in accordance with individual choice.” I think she carries over into the new society the distinction between “private” and “public” life which exists in capitalism.

“Private” life in the nuclear family is often restricting and isolating, but it does have some human qualities — continuity, personal relations etc. — which are lacking in the even more manipulated and alienating forms of “public” life, such as the mass political meeting. In both, workers are kept separated from one another and dominated. No doubt people in a Socialist society will want different degrees of privacy at different times, but there is no need to fear that either the more or the less communal parts of their lives will bear any resemblance to the present-day family or mass events. People will want to break down the huge factory and office work settings into smaller and more friendly workshop-type teams. Discussion and decision-making will most conveniently be done in quite small meetings, linked together by delegate congresses and telecommunications. This will be made possible by automation and computer technology. On the other hand, people will have gained the security, material and emotional, that may enable them to extend their intimate relationships at the same time as improving their responsibility to one another’s needs.

Just as people will want to combine the most satisfying aspects of urban and rural life, so they’ll want to combine the most satisfying aspects of “public” and “private” life. At any rate, I’d want to.

I’m glad that P. Deutz recognizes that men and women will both take a full part in childcare, and whatever housework cannot be eliminated, as well as in production and so on. Finally, don’t the family and lack of Socialist understanding have some connection with one another? (I mean the family as it exists now.) In terms of restricted horizons and concerns for both men and women, the illusions of sex rôles, and all those people in little boxes staring at the goggle-box? Don’t we have to start thinking about the effects that different social institutions have on consciousness, and what we can do about it?

Stephen Stefan

London N2.

Reply

The history of the family shows that its form has adapted to suit prevailing economic conditions and not the other way round. Modern families may be preoccupied with their own affairs but they do not exist in a vacuum. Or do you seriously suggest that people are impervious to any influence from outside their family circle? (Many parents might wish it were so). Even television, as well as puerile slop, beams into workers’ homes pictures of the latest technological success which contrast starkly with other scenes of human deprivation and misery.

The view on the blend of private and public life assumed that in a harmonious society human individuals will still have varying personalities and needs. However congenial the communal life we may still wish to relate to, and live with, others on a more individual basis.

We have always stated that under Socialism men and women will, in accordance with their ability, co-operate to perform the tasks necessary to that society. You have never read anything to the contrary in this journal!

Editors.

Letter: Resource database (2011)

Letter to the Editors from the August 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Resource database

 

Dear Editors,

 

Congratulations to Stefan on the excellent article, ‘Money – a waste of resources’ (Socialist Standard, July). In my view this is just the sort of empirical approach needed to clinch the argument for socialism, and one that I’ve promoted via www.andycox1953.webs.com.

 

Theory has its place, but let’s face it, more often than not, a theoretical exposition on Marx’s labour theory of value or the class struggle is likely to be met with a snort of derision or a glazed expression. Facts on the other hand have a kind of primacy that demands a considered response. Hence the urgent need for a robust, wide-ranging, and up-to-date database which Socialist Party members and others can access. 

 

A word of caution, however, should be added at this juncture: When constructing a database, one is likely to come across countless factual inconsistencies. Stefan’s source, for example, has it that there are ‘145,000 people working at casinos and other gambling joints (in the US)’. In my webs.com database, I cite a source (‘Economic Impacts of Commercial Casinos and On-Line Gambling’ by Alijani, Braden, Omar and Eweni, 2002 (?)) which produces statistics showing that there were 364,804 commercial casino jobs in the US in 2001 (205,151 in Nevada alone). 

Andy Cox (by email)

Letter: Civil Rights Movement (2010)

Letter to the Editors from the August 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Civil Rights Movement

Dear editors

In the March issue, Andrew Armitage described the Civil Rights Movement (CrM) in the US as a “good cause” (in quotation marks). In the June issue, Roy Beat called this attitude “sectarian” because the CrM was “more than just a good cause”. Andrew Armitage responded in July that “socialists recognize the serious limitations” of the CrM in “at best only aspiring to parity” with white workers.

In the decades between reconstruction and the CrM black people in the South were helpless in the face of constant humiliation and terror. Any who might have taken an interest in revolutionary ideas would have been tarred and feathered or lynched as “uppity niggers”. So the “limitations” of the CrM were real but could hardly have been avoided.

This exemplifies the point that 

the struggle for democratic rights 

is an essential precondition of the struggle for socialism. In broad historical perspective, they are two stages in a single struggle for social equality. From this point of view, 

it is indeed sectarian to belittle the progress achieved by the Civil Rights Movement.

Stephen Shenfield, USA

Letter: Pete Seeger again (2010)

Letter to the Editors from the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pete Seeger again

Dear Editors

For a nonagenarian, Pete Seeger sure possesses some staying power. First Roy Beat and now Stephen Shenfield (June and August issues) have gone into print, both missing the main thrust of the March article. Instead, they laser-in on my flippant swipe at the Left’s perennial practice of hijacking every convenient bandwaggon –”good cause” – to promote itself.

In no way was I “dismissing” or “belittling” the Civil Rights Movement as they suggest; merely noting its inbuilt shortcomings. A southern negro could, of course, be summarily lynched for much less than displaying revolutionary tendencies; a reluctance to step into the gutter or an admiring glance (“rape”) sufficing.

All of us abhor Capitalism’s myriad injustices and obscenities but recognise that the solution begins with a rational understanding of the root causes rather than an emotional piecemeal assault on their effects. Is this “Sectarian”? Having pored long and hard over my dictionary, I can only conclude that in commonsense everyday terms it’s nothing of the sort. Personally I’m happier with “Socialist”.

Andrew Armitage

Letter: Naked bonobos? (2007)

Letter to the Editors from the February 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Naked bonobos?

Dear Editors

I agree with much of “Bonobo Fides” (Pathfinders, January), but I would like to take issue on a few significant points.The author follows the sources on which he relies in placing too much emphasis on the power of the “combined females” as a deterrent to male violence. Bonobos of both genders keep the peace mainly by using friendly activities – grooming, play and sharing food as well as frequent sex – to soothe the tensions that might lead to violence. (They don’t “run off into the bushes,” by the way, but have sex in plain view of others. Here the author is mixing up bonobos with humans.) It also helps that with bonobos, unlike chimps, the males can’t tell which females are ovulating, so they are unable to compete to sire offspring.

Bonobos may “live largely as vegetarians,” but they do have a taste for meat. “Like chimpanzees, they are ready to grab and eat small antelope infants. They eat flying squirrels and sometimes earthworms” (Demonic Males, p. 216).

Unlike chimps, however, they never eat monkeys. Instead, bonobos play with monkeys as though they were pets. Monkeys are terrified of chimps but show no fear of bonobos. Apparently, this reflects a cultural taboo against killing and eating fellow primates, and such a taboo may be one reason why bonobos rarely attack and never kill one another. (Local humans have a similar taboo against hunting bonobos.)

Would chimps adopt bonobo behaviour in a bonobo environment and vice versa, “given long enough”? I think this is an exaggeration. Bonobos are a distinct species, not a kind of chimpanzee. (“Pygmy chimp” is a misleading term that dates from the time when this  was not yet recognized.) To the extent that bonobo sociality is a product of genetically  determined characteristics like large sexual organs and always being on heat, environmental change can affect it only to a limited degree. Over a period long enough  for evolution to occur the bonobo might lose these characteristics, but then it would no longer be a bonobo!

Especially for socialists, the good news about the bonobo is how close it is to man. We have 98.7 percent of our genes in common with the bonobo. That’s the same figure as for the chimpanzee, but in numerous respects we – and also, according to physical anthropologist Adrienne Zihlman, our proto-human ancestors living in Africa 3 to 5 million years ago – are closer to bonobos than to chimps. This applies, for example, to bodily proportions, facial appearance (look at the photos in Frans de Waal and Frans Lanting, Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape), posture (bonobos walk upright much of the time, along trails that they make themselves), and of course sexual functioning. In 1967 Desmond Morris gave ammunition to the “human nature” objectors to socialism by “exposing” man as The Naked Ape. It’s not quite so bad if we change that to “the naked bonobo”!

Only a few thousand bonobos are left, all of them in the war-torn Congo. Their extinction would be a tragedy for man too, not least because they are living proof of the positive side of our evolutionary heritage.

Stephen Shenfield (by e-mail)

SPGB Meetings (1974)

Party News from the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Notes:

• 'S. Stefen' was the pen-name/party name of Stephen Shenfield.
• Howard Weaver's obituary was posted elsewhere on the blog.
• Stephen Bodington was the author of the 1973 book, Computers and Socialism. He was associated with the Labour Left.

Material World: The End Of National Sovereignty? (2008)

The Material World Column from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Globalization versus National Capitalism

In 1648 the first modern diplomatic congress established a new political order in Europe, based for the first time on the principle of “national sovereignty.” This principle drew a sharp dividing line between foreign and domestic affairs. Each “national sovereign” was given free rein within the internationally recognized borders of his state. No outsider had any right to interfere. Recognized borders were inviolable. The “sovereign” was originally simply a prince; later the term was applied to any effective government.

National sovereignty facilitated the undisturbed development of separate national capitalisms – British, French, German, American, and so on. Interstate boundaries were stabilized. Governments were able to take protectionist measures to defend home manufacturers against foreign competition.

Even today the principle of national sovereignty is far from dead. It is enshrined in the United Nations Charter: Chapter VII authorizes the Security Council to impose sanctions or use armed force only in the event of a “threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression.”

National sovereignty undermined

But in practice national sovereignty has been deeply undermined – first of all, by the emergence of a global economy dominated by huge transnational corporations. International financial institutions such as the World Trade Organization and IMF have largely taken over economic policy making. Indebtedness leaves many states with merely the formal husk of independence.

Some groups of states have “pooled” part of their sovereignty in supranational regional institutions. The prime example is the European Union.

The old interstate system has also been destabilised by the breakup of Yugoslavia and the USSR into 26 new states, four of which lack international recognition. The decision of the West to recognize the independence of Kosovo from Serbia has set a precedent that makes it easier to carve up other states. Of course, the “independence” of Kosovo – occupied by NATO forces, governed by officials from the European Union, its constitution drafted at the US State Department – is purely notional. Russia has now retaliated by recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Although this will encourage secessionist movements inside Russia, blocking Georgia’s accession to NATO is evidently a higher priority (see September’s Material World).

Legitimising aggression

National sovereignty is not only undermined in practice, but also contested in theory.

Thus, in recent years the United States and its closest allies have sought to legitimise their military attacks on other states. True, such attacks are nothing new. What is new is open advocacy of the principle of aggression. The main rationales used are the prevention of nuclear proliferation, counter-terrorism and humanitarian intervention (see August’s Material World).

It is instructive to compare the Gulf War of 1991 with the current war against Iraq. The Gulf War, at least ostensibly, was launched in defence of the principle of national sovereignty, violated by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The elder Bush resisted pressure to “finish the job” – occupy Iraq and throw out the Ba’athist regime – out of concern that it would lead to the breakup of Iraq and, in particular, a new Kurdish state that would destabilise the whole region. Such considerations have not deterred his son.

Globalisation of capital, fragmentation of states

Paradoxically, the fragmentation of states is a natural corollary of the globalisation of capital. From the point of view of the transnational corporations, states no longer have important policy-making functions. It is enough if they enforce property rights and maintain basic infrastructure in areas important for business. Small states can do these jobs as well as large ones. In fact, they have definite advantages. They are more easily controlled, less likely to develop the will or capacity to challenge the prerogatives of global capital.

Global versus national capitalism

All the same, there is nothing inevitable about globalisation. It has lost impetus recently, and may even have passed its zenith. One sign is the disarray within the WTO. Another is Russia’s change of direction: in contrast to the Yeltsin administration, which was politically submissive and kept the country wide open to global capital, the Putin regime reasserted national sovereignty, expelled foreign firms from strategic sectors of the economy, and ensured the dominant position of national (state and private) capital.

Global versus national capitalism has emerged as an important divide in world politics. This divide exists, first of all, within the capitalist class of individual countries. Thus, even in the US, the citadel of globalisation, some capitalists – currently excluded from power – are oriented toward the home market and favour national capitalism. And even in Russia some capitalists support globalisation.

Nevertheless, the pattern of political forces differs from country to country, and as a result the global/national divide is reflected in international relations. Here the “globalisers,” led by the US, confront in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (Russia, China and the Central Asian states) an embryonic alliance of national capitals bent on restoring the principle of national sovereignty to its former place in the interstate system.

A different perspective

This context clarifies the difference between our perspective as socialists and the attitude of anti-globalisation activists. Being against capitalist globalisation is not the same as being against capitalism in general. We have ample past experience of a world of competing national capitalisms – quite enough to demonstrate that there is no good reason for preferring such a world to a world under the sway of global capital. The main problem with the movement against globalisation is that it can be mobilized so easily in the interests of national capital, whatever the intentions of its supporters.

To be fair, some anti-globalisation activists are aware of this danger. Acknowledging that humanity faces urgent problems that can only be tackled effectively at the global level, they emphasize that they are not against globalisation as such: they are only against the sort of globalisation that serves the interests of the transnational corporations. This then leads them to explore ideas of globalisation of an “alternative” kind. These ideas at least point in the right direction. Socialism is also an alternative form of globalisation – a globalisation of human community that abolishes capital.

Stefan

The trouble with gods (2008)

From the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those fortunate enough to live in relatively secularized societies should not underestimate global power of religion.

Gods do exist, in a certain sense (I use the word “gods” as a gender-neutral term that includes goddesses). Humans create them in their own image, though without being aware of doing so. The fact that gods are male or female in itself strongly suggests that they are creatures of the human imagination. But they infest the mind as powerful, capricious and mysterious beings who demand endless worship and praise, reverence and obedience, devotion and propitiatory sacrifice. The gods in the head of the believer thwart the development of confidence, self-respect, rational enquiry and independent judgment.

In this way the idea of domination and submission is imprinted in the psyche as a model for relationships between beings. That model is then readily applied to social relationships – to the relationship between man and woman, master and slave, and so on. The Moroccan scholar Fatna A. Sabbah has shown how this works in the case of Islam in her brilliant (pseudonymous) study Woman in the Muslim Unconscious (Pergamon Press, 1984), but her analysis applies equally well to the psychology of “God-fearing” Jews and Christians.

The imaginary world of the divine, in turn, draws its inspiration from the real world of human power structures. God is “king of the universe”, the archangels and angels are his ministers and officials, and the devil has the job of running the Gulag.  

My argument is that it is above all these psychological effects, and not specific religious dogmas and practices, which make god worship a bulwark of class society. That, surely, from the socialist point of view is the main trouble with gods.

Objections

It may be objected that some religious beliefs do not seem compatible with the division of society into classes. An obvious example is the idea that “we are all equal in the eyes of God.” Beliefs of this kind have, indeed, inspired peasant uprisings. “When Adam dwelled and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” asked John Ball in the 14th century.

This objection is not completely groundless. Submission to gods does not always and automatically translate into submission to human masters. But surveying the broad sweep of history, I still think that accepting divine authority tends to predispose people to accept human authority as well.  

Another possible objection is that belief in gods predates class society. Primitive people already feared gods who embodied the uncontrollable forces of nature. People were in thrall to gods before they were in thrall to other people. And yet this made them especially vulnerable to oppression and exploitation when other conditions were in place for the transition from primitive communism to class society.

God-kings and priestly castes

Many of the earliest rulers made the most direct use of their subjects’ belief in gods by demanding that they themselves be worshipped as gods (the Roman emperors, for instance) or – more often – as descendants or earthly manifestations of gods. Egyptian pharaohs claimed descent from the creator sun-god Atum or Re. The Inca was descended from the sun god Inti, while the Aztec king represented the fire god Xiuhtecuhtli (Bruce Trigger, Understanding Early Civilizations). The Shinto belief that the Japanese emperor was descended from the sun goddess Amaterasu held sway right up to 1946, when Hirohito renounced divine status.

Some religions directly support the class structure by sanctifying the entire ruling class. The best-known case is the sanctification of the priestly Brahmin caste in Hinduism, although the Indian caste system no longer corresponds precisely to the class structure. Judaism also has its “pure” priestly caste – the cohanim, who trace descent from Moses’ brother Aaron.

Still mighty foes

By and large, however, the mechanisms through which religion supports class society (capitalism) are nowadays indirect. It is still risky to challenge the powers that be, but — except in a few countries like Iran — it no longer counts as sacrilege. The image of God has even started to mutate from that of the irate patriarch to that of the “sympathetic” social worker.   

And yet in large parts of the world religion still occupies a very important place in people’s hearts and minds. Those fortunate enough to live in relatively secularized societies should not underestimate its global power. The gods remain mighty foes of their deluded human creators.

Stefan.

Revolutionary (2010)

Book Review from the December 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary. By Ngo Van. Eds. Ken Knabb and Hélène Fleury. AK Press, 2010.

This book preserves the memory of a part of the history of the class struggle that might otherwise be lost. The author, Ngo Van, was born in 1912 in a village in what was then called Cochinchina – the southernmost of the three sections into which the French colonialists divided Vietnam. He came to maturity at a time of social upheaval. Peasants rose up against landlords and tax collectors, workers struck against atrocious conditions (the death rate on the rubber plantations reached 40 percent a year), and demonstrators demanded independence from France. These rebellions, and their savage repression by the colonial regime, are vividly portrayed in the memoir.

The political groups involved in the upheaval were very diverse. The Stalinist Vietminh were active, especially in the countryside, but there were many other anti-colonial movements that were not yet under their control. In the cities there were also several Trotskyist organizations. Chance contacts and revulsion against the regimentation within the Vietminh drew Ngo Van to Trotskyism and in 1935 he helped to establish a new Trotskyist group – the League of Internationalist Communists.

The Vietnamese Trotskyists were caught literally in the crossfire, hunted down both by the Sûreté (French colonial security police), who tortured and jailed them, and by the Vietminh, who simply killed them. The author was one of the few who survived by escaping abroad. From 1948 until his death in 2005 he lived in France.

While earning a living as an electrician, he remained politically active. In retirement he wrote extensively, mostly on Vietnamese folklore and Vietnamese and Chinese history. Several volumes of his work have been published in French; this is the first to appear in English.

In France Ngo Van progressed beyond Trotskyism to council communism. Articles that he wrote in 1968 on Third World struggles and the war in Vietnam are included in the book and express a point of view very similar to that of the World Socialist Movement. The book also contains helpful background notes and many photos, sketches and paintings by the author, who besides his other talents was an accomplished artist.

Stefan.

Material World: USA: Supporting The “Lesser Evil” (2010)

The Material World Column from the October 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many “anti-capitalist” personalities urge people to support one of the two main capitalist parties, the Democrats, on the grounds that they are a “lesser evil” compared with the Republicans. One example is film maker Michael Moore (see March issue, p. 10). Another is Paul Street, who has written two useful exposés of Obama – Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (2009) and The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama in the Real World of Power (2010) (both from Paradigm Publishers). Although Street calls himself a libertarian socialist, he campaigned for Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.

What they say versus what they do

How much less evil, then, are the Democrats?

A mistake that voters often make, especially during election campaigns, is to compare what the Republicans say and do with what the Democrats say. The relevant comparison is with what the Democrats do. The trouble is that when the Democrats have been out of office for a few years most voters no longer remember what they do. But those familiar with the record of the Clinton administration in the 1990s, for instance, or with Obama’s record as a congressman, might have noticed that between what the Democrats say and what they do yawns a chasm wider than the Grand Canyon.

 

In stump speeches in the mid-West, candidate Obama thundered against regional companies such as Maytag and Exelon. And yet these same companies, justifiably confident that he would do nothing to harm their interests, made large financial contributions to his campaign. Speaking before audiences of workers, Obama would denounce Maytag’s decision in 2004 to close the refrigerator plant in Galesburg, Illinois, entailing the loss of 1,600 jobs to Mexico. But he never raised the issue with Maytag directors Henry and Lester Crown, even though he enjoyed a “special relationship” with them.

Differences that make no difference

Many of the “differences” between Bush and Obama (or between McCain and Obama) make no difference. Or very little.

Obama initially opposed Bush’s military intervention in Iraq – hastening to add that he was not against all wars, God forbid, but only against “dumb” ones. Before leaving office, Bush initiated a gradual and partial withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Obama is pursuing the same course, breaking an earlier promise of rapid and complete withdrawal.

Bush was heading toward war with Iran. Obama is not. Probably. Hopefully. True, he did back off from his promise to meet with Iranian leaders. Commentator Steve Clemons informs us that “while there are individuals in the Obama administration who are flirting with the possibility of military action against Iran, they are fewer in number than existed in the Bush administration” (The Huffington Post, July 23, 2010). How’s that for reassurance?

At least there seemed, before the election, to be a clear-cut difference on the issue of offshore oil. How many people must have voted for Obama in horrified response to the exultant cry of John McCain and Sarah Palin: “Drill, baby, drill!” But in March 2010 Obama broke his campaign pledge and gave the go-ahead to offshore operations. The next month an oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. Another rig caught fire in September.

Obama won trade union support by promising a new law to facilitate union organizing – the Employee Free Choice Act. He also said he would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement to include stronger labour and environmental protections. We have heard nothing more of these things. Obama, we are told, does not want to look “pro-labour.”

And so the sad litany continues.

A political cycle

I do not mean to deny that in some ways or in some situations it may be better to have a Democrat rather than a Republican in the White House. For instance, isn’t it worthwhile just to reduce, even if not eliminate, the probability of an attack on Iran?

For the sake of argument, let us suppose that the Democrats are a significantly lesser evil. In that case, helping them into office does ward off a greater evil. But only in the short term. For once in office, Democrats come under irresistible pressure from their capitalist masters to break their “populist” promises, to disappoint, disillusion and betray the working people who placed their trust and hope in them. Some sink back into apathy and despair, while others fall prey to a racist or fascist backlash. These reactions give the Republicans their chance to return.

 

This is a recognizable political cycle. We have been through it before. Over and over again. Not only in the United States but (with variations of detail) in many other countries. Those who support the lesser evil play an essential role in constantly reproducing the cycle. They share the responsibility for its persistence. Support for the lesser evil also entails support – indirect and delayed, but support nonetheless – for the greater evil.

The difference that matters

For us as earthlings, the difference that matters is that between socialism and capitalism. Will we continue on our present course to the irreversible destruction of our home world? Or will we make the fundamental change needed to give us a decent chance of survival?

From this perspective, the differences between “greater” and “lesser” evils do not matter. Some capitalist politicians are totally subservient to the oil, gas, and coal corporations and recklessly oblivious to the looming danger. In their hands we are doomed. Other capitalist politicians are a little less subservient, show a limited awareness of the situation, and try to do something to mitigate it. Something, but much less than is absolutely essential. In their hands we are still doomed.

 

Pass or fail. The “lesser evil” is simply not good enough.

Stefan

September 11, 2001: reflections on a somewhat unusual act of war (2006)

From the September 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the fifth anniversary of the al-Qaeda attack on New York and Washington, we reflect on this act of war and try to place it in its true political and moral context.

As an act of war, the al-Qaeda attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre was somewhat unusual, though not unprecedented, in three respects. 

First, the method used was non-standard. Standard military practice is to blow things and people up by dropping bombs or firing shells and missiles on them. But flying planes right into the target has been done before. Japanese kamikaze pilots used the technique against US warships in the Pacific during World War Two.

Second, al-Qaeda is a non-state actor. Such actors rarely have the capacity to carry through such a complex and costly operation. Therefore al-Qaeda must have had financial backing from wealthy sponsors – Osama bin Laden himself comes from an extremely wealthy family – and the support, or at least complicity, of one or more powerful states. In general, arranging wars is a pastime for members of the capitalist class, though they get hirelings to do the dirty work for them. Working people don’t command the necessary resources.

Finally, it is a little unusual for the US to be on the receiving end of a military assault from abroad. For a comparable attack on the continental United States, you have to go back to 1814, when the British army entered Washington and burned down theWhite House and the Capitol.

In other ways the attack was not unusual in the least. As an atrocity it was par for the course. The death toll, initially estimated at 6,500, was later revised downward to about 2,800. Atrocities on a similar or larger scale are committed routinely by the US in other countries.

To take just one example, 3-4,000 civilians were killed in the invasion of Panama in December 1989. Even if we start the reckoning with September 11, we find that the US was quick to even the score. According to an independent study, 3,767 Afghan civilians (hardly any of them connected with al-Qaeda) had been killed in bombing raids by 6 December, 2001. This figure does not include the far more numerous indirect casualties resulting from the creation of refugees and the disruption of food and other supplies.

Betrayal

The attack should not have been a total surprise, a bolt out of the blue. After all, it was merely the next step in a war that Osama bin Laden had formally declared on the United States in August 1996. He had built up a far flung network of front companies, banks,”charities,” and NGOs (e.g., the World Union of Moslem Youth) to raise funds and recruit young fighters for the war. He had already attacked American assets abroad, notably the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, and there was ample intelligence warning that a major attack on US soil was in the offing. So the parallel with Pearl Harbor is pretty weak.

And yet September 11 clearly did come as a shock to Bush. That was because the attack came from forces that the US, its sidekicks Britain and Israel, and the Bush family in particular had long regarded as friends, allies and partners. This explains why Bush ignored the warnings – just as Stalin ignored warnings of impending attack by Nazi Germany in 1941 and felt “betrayed” by Hitler when the attack came American, British, and Israeli ruling circles saw the main threats to their economic and strategic interests in the Moslem world as coming from “communists” and secular nationalists backed by the Soviet Union (e.g. Nasser in Egypt, Ghaddafi in Libya, the PLO). When Khomeini’s theocracy took power, Iran was added to the list of enemies, together with associated Shi’ite Islamist movements in other countries. Sunni Islamist movements, however, were encouraged – largely on the principle that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” although also because they seemed more interested in imposing ritual conformity on their own communities and in fighting “communism” than in challenging the substantive interests of the “infidel” powers.

The Islamists were also beneficiaries of the “neo-liberal” economic policies of Western institutions. In Pakistan, for example, the secular state schools collapsed in the 1980s as a result of IMF-mandated public spending cuts. This left the Saudi-financed religious schools (madrassas) as the only educational option available to boys who were not from wealthy families. (Girls, needless to say, didn’t even have that option.) It was from these madrassas that the Taliban drew its recruits.

Moreover, relations with the leading Sunni Islamist power, Saudi Arabia, were and still are vital to Britain and the US in economic terms. The Saudi capitalist class, led by the royal family and influential families like the bin Ladens, not only sells these countries’ oil but uses much of the proceeds to buy arms from them and invest in their economies.

There are close and long-established personal and business ties between wealthy Saudis and British and American capitalists and politicians, including the father of the current US president and several members of his administration.

The Saudi-US alliance also entailed close military cooperation, above all in the fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden went to Pakistan in 1979 as an official of the Saudi intelligence service to finance, organize, and control the anti-Soviet Afghan resistance in collaboration with the CIA. It was here that Osama, who had trained as an engineer and economist with a view to taking part in the family business, acquired his taste for war. 

Osama fell out with the Saudi royal family in 1991 when they allowed the US to set up military bases on the “holy” soil of Arabia following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. But even in exile Osama received frequent visits from relatives, who provided a channel of communication between him and the royal family. An understanding appears to have been reached. Osama would abstain from attacking targets inside Saudi Arabia and in return no action would be taken against his Saudi supporters, who included various members of his own and of other wealthy families (such as Khalid bin Mahfouz, the “banker of terror”) and even certain royal princes. And the Saudi authorities did protect these people, refusing to provide US intelligence agencies with any information that might compromise them. 

So September 11 originated in a “betrayal” by the Saudi capitalist class of their American friends, allies and partners. How can we account for such strange ingratitude to those to whom they owe their vast riches? It probably has to do with the circumstances in which the Saudi capitalist class came into being. It did not make itself through independent entrepreneurial activity. It was made when oil was discovered in Arabia (in 1938) and property rights in that oil were vested in the pre-existing royal house. It is a class of bedouin patriarchs turned rentiers who became capitalists by investing their revenue. As a result, it retains to some extent a pre-capitalist mentality that it expresses in religious terms, and has a deeply ambivalent attitude to the capitalist world in which it now operates.

The endless “war on terror”

Despite the shock effect, US ruling circles did not necessarily regard September 11 as an unalloyed evil. In his book The New Crusade, anti-war analyst Rahul Mahajan draws attention to a document entitled Rebuilding America’s Defenses, issued in September 2000 by the Project for the New American Century, a neo-conservative think tank with links to the Bush administration. The authors call for increased military spending to preserve US “global pre-eminence,” but add that such a programme will be politically impossible unless there is a “catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor”.

The purposes for which the fear generated by the al-Qaeda attack was exploited suggest that it filled this bill. The threat of “terrorism” has been used to push through military programs ranging from anti-missile defence to germ warfare. Thus, a vast lab is being built near Washington called the National Biodefence Analysis and Countermeasures Center, where in violation of the 1972 biological and toxin weapons convention the most lethal bacteria and viruses are to be stockpiled (Guardian Weekly, 4-10 August, 2006). What a tempting target it will make for terrorist infiltration or attack!

The “war on terrorism” unleashed in the aftermath of September 11, against first Afghanistan and then Iraq, is not – so Mahajan argues – a war on terrorism, just as the “war on drugs” is not a war on drugs. Combating terrorism and drugs are both low priorities, and the “wars” against them are covers for the pursuit of higher-priority interests.

In Afghanistan the US had turned against the Taliban (previously welcomed as a force for “stability”), mainly because they were unwilling to host oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia to Pakistan, and was looking for a pretext to overthrow them. Capturing Osama was that pretext, for it was obvious that the chaos of war would create ideal conditions for him to escape.

Iraq was invaded to secure control over its oil and in the hope of establishing a new strategic beachhead in the Middle East. Saddam had no ties with Islamic terrorism, just as he had no nuclear weapons. To the likes of Osama he was not even a genuine Moslem. Bush demanded of his experts that they find ties between Iraq and terrorism; when they replied that there were none, he pretended not to hear and reiterated his demand. In October 2001 Vice President Dick Cheney declared that the war on terrorism”may never end — at least, not in our lifetime”(Washington Post, 21 October, 2001). Am I alone in finding this suspicious? Ordinarily in a war it is considered important for morale to hold out some prospect of victory, however remote. Does Cheney want and need the “war” to go on forever?

The torture system

To sustain the facade of the “war on terror” it is necessary to arrest lots of people. As there is no real evidence against them, they are held without trial in secret facilities throughout the world, where – like the victims of Stalin’s purges – they are tortured to extract the non-existent evidence. In her book The Language of Empire, Lila Rajiva describes for us the sickening tortures at Abu Ghraib, the prison complex outside Baghdad that the US occupation authorities took over from Saddam. The accounts and photos (some taken as exposés, others as souvenirs) are monotonous in their sameness. This is a clue: it strongly suggests that the torture is not a spontaneous practice of jailers and interrogators but a system designed by government experts and approved at the top.

The system goes by the code name R21 and is taught to British and American military intelligence personnel at the British Joint Services Interrogation Centre at Gilbertine Priory, Chicksands, near Bedford (Guardian, May 8, 2004). It is designed to shock Moslem cultural sensibilities. Victims are stripped naked and hooded, savaged by dogs, and forced under threat of beatings to masturbate and simulate sexual acts in front of sniggering female soldiers (another triumph for sexual equality). That’s just for starters, of course; it gets worse. I leave it to the reader to ponder what this means for the relative merits of Western and Middle Eastern “civilization.”

And yet the people who authorize all these horrors know very well who is responsible for terrorism (the Islamist variety, that is) and where they are to be found. But no bombs have been dropped on the wealthy suburbs of Riyadh. No scions of the bin Ladens and bin Mahfouz, no princes of the House of Saud have been stripped naked, set upon by dogs or sexually humiliated. That’s class justice for you! A few incidents, however regrettable, can’t be allowed to spoil British and American relations with a vital ally and business partner.

Stefan

Letters: Nuclear Power (2006)

Letters to the Editors from the September 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nuclear Power

Dear Editors,

I would like to take issue with the Pathfinders article “Radioactive Days” (August Socialist Standard). The anonymous author – shouldn’t articles that do not express a consensus of socialist opinion be signed? – argues that continued reliance on nuclear fission as a major source of energy may be unavoidable, even after the establishment of socialism. However, no account is taken of the widely recognized fact that the supply not only of oil, but also of uranium and plutonium for fission reactors, is likely to run out in the course of the present century.

Conceivably, development of a closed fuel cycle might solve this problem, as well as that of radioactive wastes. It is also conceivable that nuclear fusion will become a viable alternative sooner than some people expect. Or perhaps a way will be found to store solar energy, enabling us to rely on the main fusion reactor in our vicinity–the sun.

Nevertheless, it is quite possible that none of these solutions will materialize in time to avert a real energy crisis. If this proves to be the case, it will not necessarily be because the technological obstacles are insuperable. The most likely cause will be the short time horizons used in capitalist profit calculations.

Given all these uncertainties, we need to think about a wide range of scenarios for energy policy in socialism. A guaranteed abundance of safe and non-polluting fusion or solar energy is one scenario. But humanity may have no choice but to adapt to a low energy way of life.

Stephen Shenfield, 

Providence, USA

Reply:

Actually, the Pathfinders column does not necessarily express a consensus of socialist opinion on every issue, as many of the scientific issues discussed are very much open for debate and development by socialists and others. – Editors.

Asked and answered

Dear Editors,

I’ve spent some time over the past few months reading a lot about political and social structures, for no purpose other than my own interest. I, like many, am discontented with the situation as it stands. The solution proposed by your organisation resonates with me, as few others have. As a result, I have read Marxist works, and much about varied forms of left-wing politics like Leninism and Maoism, etc.

 

 I do, however, keep coming back to your site. I have read all of the available information but still have a few questions I was hoping you could answer. I sincerely hope you can find the time to assist.

1. In a practical sense, how would labour be distributed in a socialist society? I’m not suggesting some jobs are any less important than others, but how would personal ambition (not ambition for material reward, but ambition of a personal nature, to achieve and feel accomplishment in a particular field) be matched with the needs of society? Could I, for example, say ‘I want to be an electrician’ and get trained? And what if, for example, nobody wanted to be a cleaner? Would people be assigned jobs on a take it or take it basis or is there an element of negotiation? If so, how much?

2. What would happen to people who refused to work/contribute?

3. What is your position on the punishment of serious criminals?

4. How are the creative arts perceived?

As a necessary part of a healthy society, or as unnecessary? Could someone be, for example, a full-time writer, in a socialist society as you describe? Even if they were no good at it?

Name and address withheld by request (by email).

Reply:

1. The general principle of socialist society of “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” clearly recognises the obvious fact that different people have different abilities. How will these individual abilities be matched with the social need for particular jobs to be done? We can’t give a blueprint (and don’t want to, since this would be to try to dictate to the future when the details can only be decided democratically at the time), but we can imagine something like the “job centres” of today,only completely freed from any trace of coercion, monetary considerations and stigma.In other words, places where jobs to be done could be advertised and where people could go to volunteer to do them. Or maybe the whole thing could be done via the internet. If there is a shortage of people taking up a particular job,then a special effort would have to be made to encourage people to train for and take up these jobs. We are confident that socialist society will be able to find a practical solution to a practical problem such as this.

 2. We don’t think that, in the context of socialist society where a real community and community spirit will exist, there will be many people, if any, who would refuse to contribute. After all, there is nothing more boring than lying around all day trying to do nothing. Humans are social animals who need to be active as well as appreciated by others.

 3. Since over 90 percent of crimes today are crimes against property and since property and poverty will disappear in socialist society where everybody will automatically be able to satisfy their material needs, the main “crimes” that would remain would be such things as breaking traffic regulations or hosepipe bans. But by “serious criminals” we assume you mean people who kill or harm other people. Any such behaviour is likely to be highly exceptional but, should it occur, the person responsible would have to be stopped and, if need be, detained. We are not sure that “punishment” is the right word since most such instances are likely to be medical cases.

 4. Yes, of course the “creative arts” are a necessary part of any society, but in socialism won’t be confined to such things as opera and poetry. We go along with William Morris in saying that the everyday work of producing something useful can also be creative and art. And we would imagine that most people will want to take advantage of the possibility socialist society will offer them of being able to do a variety of jobs (even in the same week) rather than being tied to the same job, day after day, year after year – Editors.

Material World: Campaigners for humanitarian intervention: “useful idiots” of militarism (2008)

The Material World column from the August 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is nothing new in governments claiming to be motivated by humanitarian concerns when they go to war. To take a couple of old examples: tsarist Russia supposedly fought the Ottoman Empire in order to rescue Armenians from massacre by the Turks, while British intervention following the German invasion of Belgium in 1914 was justified by lurid drawings of “Huns” skewering babies on their bayonets (www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWatrocities.htm). The enemy atrocities might be real, as in the first example, or imaginary, as in the second, but in both cases the claim of humanitarian motivation was fraudulent. Governments decided for or against war on the basis of (sometimes erroneous) calculations of economic and strategic interest.

That remains true today. Never, however, has it been more important for governments to win public support for wars by claiming humanitarian motives. As in the past, some of the “facts” underlying the claims are fabricated. Thus, Tony Blair repeatedly claimed that 400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves, although the number of corpses uncovered was only 5,000.

But again, the claims are false even when the facts are true. Often this is obvious because the atrocity occurred long before foreign governments expressed any outrage over it. Why bring the matter up just now? Britain and the US had no objection when Saddam used poison gas on Kurdish villages in 1988 because at that time he was their ally. The weeks preceding the dispatch of British troops to Afghanistan were marked by a media campaign against the oppression of women in that country, with even Cherie Blair roped in. The issue was then dropped as suddenly as it was raised.

A public movement for humanitarian intervention

What is new is the emergence, within the broader human rights movement, of a loosely organized network that campaigns for military intervention wherever that seems to be the only effective means of halting or preventing genocidal atrocities against some ethnic group. Currently, for example, there is an international campaign for intervention in Darfur (Sudan).

During my non-socialist period, I was involved for a while in one of the organizations that makes up this network: the Institute for the Study of Genocide (ISG). My research, publicized through the ISG, helped to bring the massacres of Bosnian Moslems by Serb militias to the attention of the US media and politicians – including, notably, Bill Clinton, who at that time was campaigning for president. Later Clinton did intervene militarily in Yugoslavia, though over Kosovo rather than Bosnia.

Unlike governments, anti-genocide activists like the ISG have quite genuine humanitarian motives. They recall how “the world sat by” and allowed the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust to proceed. (Though at war with Nazi Germany, the Allied command turned down pleas to bomb the railway lines leading to Auschwitz.) They are determined to establish humanitarian considerations as an integral part of policy making, so that “we” will not let such terrible things happen again.

Any decent person will sympathize with this line of thought. But there is a problem with it. Let us shift our focus from the moral imperative of effective action to the political forces capable of such action. Who is “the world”? Who is “we”? The only “we” capable of intervening is governments with their armed forces. But governments do not exist for humanitarian purposes. They are therefore loathe to intervene for humanitarian reasons, and it is close to impossible to compel them to do so.

Pros and cons

From the point of view of governments, the existence of a public movement for humanitarian intervention has both pros and cons. It is irritating and embarrassing to have to face down emotional public demands to intervene in places where no important “national interests” are at stake – in Rwanda, for instance, or Darfur. On the other hand, when you are inclined to intervene anyway for other, more “important” reasons it is extremely convenient to have a public movement pressing for intervention. That makes it much easier to drum up public support for war, and at the same time you can enhance your democratic credentials by “responding to public opinion.”

In the case of Yugoslavia, the demand to intervene effectively over Bosnia was resisted, but the campaign in which I participated prepared the ground for intervention over Kosovo. The evidence now available suggests that in Kosovo, in contrast to Bosnia, there was never any real danger of genocide (as opposed to the usual ethnic cleansing). In Kosovo, however, and again in contrast to Bosnia, significant interests were at stake, such as a major oil pipeline and metal-mining complex (see April 2008 Socialist Standard).

Illusory success

It may appear to campaigners for humanitarian intervention that they have a certain limited success. They “win some and lose some.” But if we look more deeply into the real interests involved we see that their success is largely illusory. It is by no means clear that their efforts have the net effect of reducing the amount of suffering in the world. In fact, by supporting and helping to legitimize brutal and devastating wars they may well increase the total of suffering.

The epithet “useful idiots” (or “useful fools”) was used to pillory Western pacifists who supposedly served the interests of the Soviet Union, though without intending to do so and for the best of all possible motives. Jean Bricmont borrows the expression for a different purpose, calling campaigners for humanitarian intervention the “useful idiots” of Western militarism and imperialism (Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War, NY: Monthly Review Press, 2006). Again, this is not meant to cast any aspersions on their motives.

As socialists we would only question the stress on “Western.” In principle such people could equally well serve as useful idiots for non-Western (Russian, Chinese, Indian, etc.) militarism and imperialism, though in practice they are active mostly in Western countries.

Calls for humanitarian intervention only make sense in terms of a false conception of the nature and functions of government. They feed a delusion that obscures the reality of our capitalist world, thereby making it harder to overcome that reality.

Stefan

Smile, Smile, Smile! But why? (2007)

From the August 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard 

We are under a constant propaganda onslaught to keep smiling – or, in fancier language, to maintain a “positive outlook”. TV gurus and song lyrics drum the demand into our heads, and we echo them, telling ourselves things like “Mustn’t grumble!” and “Look on the bright side!”

The “keep smiling” agitprop goes back a long way – at least a century. In 1914 men were marched to the slaughter like docile lambs to the cheerful strains of “Pack All Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile!” And in 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, another hit snarled: “Smile, Darn Ya, Smile!!!”

Dale Carnegie’s classic How to Win Friends and Influence People appeared in 1936. His first two pieces of advice were “don’t criticize, condemn or complain” and “give honest and sincere appreciation.” How can you always be honest and sincere if you have to be appreciative, whatever your true feelings may be? Don’t ask me!

The entertainment industry is celebrated as the pacesetter of nonstop smiling in the Irving Berlin song There’s No Business Like Show Business:

There’s no people like show people.

They smile when they are low.

The second verse elaborates:

You get word before the show has started

That your favorite uncle died at dawn.

Top of that, your ma and pa have parted

You’re broken-hearted, but you go on.

From this I infer that you might be let off smiling duty if a parent rather than just an uncle has died. You might get a few days’ “family leave.” But when you return your smile must be firmly back in place.

Besides show business, smiling is a condition of employment in all service jobs involving contact with the public (and to a lesser extent in many other jobs). A waiter, air steward, hotel receptionist or croupier, for example, is expected to keep smiling, however irritating, rude or unpleasant a customer may be to him or her. “I am just not as good at faking that smile as I used to be,” bemoans one service worker. So why do we have to smile?

The song lyrics don’t really explain. Smiling is simply required by fashion:

Don’t start to frown; it’s never in style…

Just do your best to smile, smile, smile!

We are also told: “Smile and the world smiles with you.” In other words, look unhappy and the world will give you the cold shoulder. I suppose it’s true to some extent: I have enough troubles of my own, thank you, don’t burden me with yours! But what does that say about our way of life?

One curious rationale for smiling is the “urban legend” that more facial muscles are used in frowning than in smiling (exact figures vary). Smiling saves effort. According to Dr. David H. Song, the claim is false: a smile uses 12 muscles, a frown only 11 (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040116.html). In any case, isn’t exercising as many different muscles as possible supposed to be good for us?

If you take Dale Carnegie’s advice and “don’t criticize, condemn or complain” about anyone or anything, then you will never develop a critique of the social system or an aspiration to change it. Ultimately, I suspect, that is what the smile propaganda is about. It serves the interests of those who do not have much to complain about themselves but who are natural targets of others’ complaints. That means: the most privileged and powerful section of society.

Stefan

The peril of moralism (2007)

From the August 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Guardian (5 June) ran a story by George Monbiot about pharmaceutical companies’ promotion of baby formula in the Philippines. The article, together with readers’ responses, is online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2095325,00.html.

As in other underdeveloped countries, the majority of the population in the Philippines has access only to polluted water. As formula has to be mixed with water, its widespread use instead of breastfeeding kills thousands of children every year. Nevertheless, the corporations promote it in the most ruthless fashion. For instance, they encourage their saleswomen to dress as nurses to gain the confidence of young mothers. The Philippines government has tried to restrict the promotion of baby formula, but the Pharmaceutical & Healthcare Association of the Philippines (PHAP), representing the manufacturers and backed by the US government and Chamber of Commerce, has led a campaign to thwart the attempt, using lobbying, diplomatic pressure, legal action and (apparently) targeted assassinations.

All this is, indeed, horrifying, and indignation is a natural and healthy reaction. But against who or what should we direct our indignation?

Irrelevance of nationality

Often enough, indignation expresses itself as national hatred, typically as anti-Americanism. America Puts Profit Above Babies’ Lives – runs the headline over the print version of the article. Of course, the American government and American business do put profit above babies’ lives (and above everything else). But the same is true of other countries. Ordinary Americans tend to feel that accusations against “America” are aimed at them too and respond in like manner: “You British are just as bad!”

Nothing could be more irrelevant to the issue than nationality. The first target of activists opposing the promotion of baby formula in underdeveloped countries was Nestlé – a Swiss company. The members that PHAP represents include European, Australian, and Japanese as well as American companies. They are equally ruthless.

Bad guy approach

But blaming “America” – or the Jews or the Japanese, perhaps, or some other nation or ethnic group — is a form of the broader phenomenon called moralism. Alternatively, we might call it “the bad guy approach.” Track down the “baby killers,” the evil people responsible for the evil deeds and do something about them. Do what exactly? Here things generally get fuzzy, but one Guardian reader has an answer: “The world right now needs another Revolution like the Bastille when all these greedy, unprincipled, corrupt and criminal politicians/industrialists are rounded up and are summarily executed.”

That should do the trick! Or would it? The “revolutionary” remedy has already been tried – in France, Russia, China and other countries. And yet there are still plenty of “bad guys” around, in those countries as elsewhere. Why should more shootings help? The more adaptable “bad guys” survive the “revolutions” by switching to the winning side in good time, and any who do get shot are readily replaced. What we have here is obviously an expression of extreme feeling, a fantasy of revenge, rather than a carefully thought-out solution. The moralistic approach stirs up emotions so powerful that thinking is paralysed.

Evil deeds without evil people

Really evil people are few and far between. They are not the crux of the matter. Most of the people involved in making and selling harmful products are not truly or intrinsically evil. The saleswoman dressed as a nurse to sell more baby formula and earn her commission, the Chinese tobacco farmer, the Afghan poppy grower, the armaments worker making land mines that will maim and kill children as they play – they are all doing evil things. Their deeds are evil, but they themselves are not, for they have to make a living somehow. They have to feed and clothe their own children.

Even the corporation executives who organize the evil deeds are not doing evil as a free and deliberate choice. They are required by law to do whatever is necessary to maximize profits for their shareholders. They could, of course, give up their positions and join the working class, but you can understand why so few of them would want to do that! The shareholders, in turn, do not feel obliged to concern themselves with the morality of the businesses that provide their dividends. Everywhere we look we find moral ambiguity. Evil is certainly being done, but no one is clearly to blame – only the social arrangement that we refer to as a system.

Some of us are lucky enough to come by a livelihood that allows us the luxury of a clean conscience (more or less). Some are not so lucky. The appropriate target of our indignation is the system that places people in such excruciating dilemmas, penalises altruistic impulses, rewards ruthless egoism, and inexorably turns “good guys” (or potential “good guys”) into “bad guys.” It is only by understanding the system that we can devise a way of freeing people to heed the voice of their conscience and freely contribute their talents to society, without thereby jeopardising their families’ survival and wellbeing.

Stefan

Material World: Waste and Want: Grapes of Wrath revisited (2010)

The Material World column from the August 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his famous novel The Grapes of Wrath (Chapter 25), John Steinbeck described how food was destroyed during the Great Depression:

“Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people come for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges… A million people hungry, needing the fruit – and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

    

And the smell of rot fills the country.

    

Burn coffee for fuel in the ships… Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out [with nets]. Slaughter the pigs and bury them…

    

And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates – died of malnutrition – because the food must be forced to rot.”

A few more facts. In 1933 alone, the US federal government bought 6 million hogs and destroyed them. Vast quantities of milk were poured down the sewers. 25 million acres of crops (the area of a square with sides 200 miles long) were ploughed under. In Brazil, 69 million bags of coffee, equivalent to two years’ output, were destroyed. All to keep up prices.

What about this time round?

The current depression is the deepest since that of the 1930s, and its end is not yet in sight. As real wages continue to fall and austerity measures bite harder, more and more goods will remain unsold. Falling prices and profits are already leading to scenes reminiscent of those portrayed by Steinbeck.

Leaving strawberries to rot

In March reports appeared that Florida strawberry growers, faced with a flooded market and a sharp collapse in wholesale prices, were leaving huge tracts to rot in the fields. Most of these farmers did not allow people in to pick fruit for themselves. They were afraid that cucumbers and other new crops they were planting between the rows might be harmed.

Not only the strawberries went to waste but also the water used to grow them. Cultivation of the wasted strawberries drained the groundwater and caused local water shortages.

Bulldozing houses

There have been reports from around the United States of the destruction of houses, many of them newly built. Most foreclosed houses can no longer be sold at auction, even for prices as low as $500. They end up in the hands of banks that see no medium-term prospect of reselling them and conclude that the cheapest solution is to tear them down. This happens not only to individual houses but often to whole streets. In May 2009, a bank decided to bulldoze an almost finished housing complex in California rather than spend the few hundred thousand dollars needed to complete it.

Meanwhile the ranks of the homeless continue to swell. They are in desperate need of housing but generate no “effective demand”.

Slashing clothes and shoes

In early January, The New York Times ran a story about two major retail chains, H&M and Wal-Mart, throwing out unsold clothes in trash bags. First they are made unwearable: employees are told to slash garments, slice holes in shoes, cut sleeves off coats, fingers off gloves, etc..

The response to this article included internet testimony from ex-employees of other large stores, revealing how widespread these practices now are.

Cheryl: “I worked at Dillards for several years. They do the same thing. Their logic was that if they donated it [to charity] people would try to bring it back to exchange for other merchandise.”

Martha: “Yeah, I used to work at a store where they would rip the bed sheets, blankets and pillow cases if they couldn’t sell them, then throw them away… I thought it was dumb. I wanted to take it and donate it, but they didn’t let me.”

Nat: “I used to work for H&M and hated to cut the clothing [that] I knew we could have given away to those who needed it. We destroyed EVERYTHING and I found it so stupid. It was such a waste and sad!”

Maryliz: “This just makes me sick. How terrible, especially right now with people freezing to death. They could have been saved if they had sufficient warm clothing. Shame on the companies that do this.”

Maggie: “I got so mad that my managers wouldn’t box up [unsold food] and take it to shelters that I called corporate headquarters… They wouldn’t let the food be donated! Some blather about how that would devalue the brand, because people would just go to that shelter to eat the food instead of coming and paying for it.”

The vintage Steinbeck finishes Chapter 25 with the passage that gives his book its title:

“In the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

There is ample cause for wrath. But wrath is not enough. The managers who got Maggie so angry have to act as they do. (Otherwise they won’t remain managers.) They have to pursue the commercial logic of maximising profit or minimising loss. The idea of giving people what they need, simply because they need it, is inconsistent with this logic. It expresses a different, human logic, which will come into its own once we reorganize society on a different, human basis.     

Stefan

Obituary: Stephen Shenfield (2023)

Obituary from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

We were shocked to learn of the sudden death at the end of April of our American comrade Stephen Shenfield. He was born in England in 1950 and joined the old Haringey branch as a teenager and became an active member, writing for the Socialist Standard and serving for a while on the executive committee. However in 1974 he was one of a group of members who were expelled for breaking the then rule about publishing unauthorised material. He didn’t rejoin the movement till 2006 when he became a member of the World Socialist Party of the US to where he had emigrated in 1989. In the meantime, as a Russian speaker (he had relatives in Kiev), he had become an academic and expert in ‘Soviet studies’, publishing many articles and books on the subject. After rejoining he kept in touch with individuals and groups in Russia that were critical of capitalism. He resumed contributing to this journal (as ‘Stefan’). At the time of his death he was the general secretary of the American party (an administrative not a leadership post in our parties). The movement has lost an active member. Our condolences go to his wife and family.

Blogger's Note:

A longer obituary by his family can be viewed here.

Material World: Why they keep piling up manure: the psychology of wealth accumulation (2009)

The Material World column from the October 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money is like manure.  If you spread it around, it does a lot of good, but if you pile it up in one place, it stinks like hell.

I can’t trace the original author, but it seems to be a popular motto among rich “philanthropists”. It has been attributed, in slightly variant wordings, to steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, New York “socialite” Brooke Astor, Clint W. Murchison (chairman of Tecon Corporation) and Kenneth Langone (founder of The Home Depot).

Two questions spring to mind.

First, if these people so hate the smell of manure, why do they keep piling it up? After all, they are free to stop at any time.

Second, what do they want all that money for anyway? Surely a few hundred million should suffice to buy all the luxuries anyone could want? So why chase after the billions?

An addiction to extravagance

One answer is offered by Eric Schoenberg of Columbia Business School (on the site of Forbes magazine). Driving your first Rolls Royce is a fantastic experience, he explains, but as you get used to it you no longer enjoy it so much. So you have to look for new experiences, which for some reason are always more and more expensive.

 Presumably, an obsession with money spoils the enjoyment of anything that does not cost a lot of it. The result is an addiction to extravagance that reinforces the drive to make more money.

Kudos

Besides addiction to extravagance, the most common motive for accumulating wealth appears to be simply the desire to be admired by others. Kudos, however, depends less on absolute wealth than on place in the pecking order, as indicated by lists like the Forbes 400. Only Number One can feel fully confident of his superior status – and even he must beware of rivals overtaking him.

 Astonishing but true: many people honestly think – indeed, assume – that being rich is something worthy of pride and admiration. They consider having more money than anyone else the greatest of all conceivable human achievements. Never mind where the money came from, how it was acquired. To be a “winner” is glorious, to be a “loser” shameful and pitiable. They were brought up to think so, and can hardly imagine that anyone might be sincere in thinking otherwise.

 We might expect there to be an element of subtlety or mystery in the driving impulse at the core of a dynamic that spawns so much evil. Instead, we find something insufferably boring and trivial, the ultimate in banality.

The “philanthropists”

And yet the worship of wealth need not wholly exclude other social values. Many people feel that just being rich is not sufficiently glorious in itself: in addition, one should “do good”. As a result, some wealthy individuals wish also to be “great humanitarians and philanthropists”.

 There is actually a special business that makes money by selling “philanthropic” fame. For a fixed sum you can have a concert hall, museum, hospital, college or whatever named after you (or a relative of yours). For example, Brown University named its Institute of International Studies, where I used to work, in honour of Tom Watson of IBM in exchange for $25 million.

 The publicity given to large “philanthropic” donations suggests that in certain circles kudos may now depend on how much money you give as well as how much you have. It is like the potlatch among the Kwakiutl of western Canada, where the wealthy gain kudos by making generous gifts.

Guilt feelings?

While “philanthropy” is often just a means of cultivating a favourable public image, some wealthy people may be sincere in wanting to “do good”. Some authors even attribute the giving of certain individuals to guilt feelings about how their fortunes were made.

 Thus, it is claimed that Brooke Astor was ashamed of her family’s reputation as New York’s biggest slumlords. Carnegie, we are told, felt guilt over the workers killed in the suppression of the Homestead strike of 1892. Yet he also wanted “Carnegie Steel to come out on top” – and that feeling proved stronger than any sense of guilt.

 Ashamed or not, Astor gave nothing to the victims of her family’s rack-renting. Instead, she gave $200 million to cultural institutions. Similarly, Carnegie endowed the arts and academia, but gave nothing back to the workers who slaved in the heat of his steel mills at poverty line wages – twelve hours a day, every single day of the year except 4 July

 

 The ruthless capitalist precedes, makes possible and is vindicated by the “generous philanthropist”. The capitalist drives the system that causes the misery; the “philanthropist” then does a little to ameliorate that misery. Strangely enough, the capitalist and the “philanthropist” turn out to be one and the same person.

Piling up and spreading out

Why keep piling up manure just to spread it out again? It seems senseless – even if the manure does not end up exactly where it was before.

 Yes, it seems senseless when we focus on outcome. But when we shift our attention to process, it starts to make more sense.

 Piling up brings one sort of kudos, then spreading out brings another. One sort does not cancel out the other.

 Both piling up and spreading out give the satisfaction of exercising power, making decisions that affect millions of lives – on the sole qualification of the possession of wealth.

 So it all makes perfect sense. From a certain point of view.

Stefan