Running Commentary: Famine Relief (1986)

The Running Commentary column from the November 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Famine Relief

In a hangar at Khartoum airport in the Sudan, an aeroplane sits loaded with milk powder, butter oil, high protein biscuits and medical supplies. Elsewhere in the same city warehouses contain enough food to meet the basic needs of several thousand people for a number of months. Lorries able to transport the food to where it is needed also stand idle.

Meanwhile on the outskirts of Juba, several hundred miles south of Khartoum, at least 50,000 refugees are camped with a further 40,000 expected to arrive from the countryside in the ensuing days and weeks. There is food in Juba's shops but the refugees have no money with which to buy it. They are dependent on emergency food supplies handed out by the aid agencies which are now almost exhausted.

The plane in the airport at Khartoum cannot take off and air-lift the food supplies into places like Juba in the south because no company can be found that is willing to insure it. No company will insure it because the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) has said that it will shoot down any plane that tries to land in the towns of Wau, Malakal or Juba. This is no idle threat: the SPLA claims to have shot down 24 planes over southern Sudan in the past three years. The trucks cannot move the food because it is feared that they will be attacked or diverted by fighting between Ugandan government troops and Sudanese rebels.

So while politicians and the military play their war games, while insurance companies haggle over premiums, innocent refugees must die of starvation — unwitting victims of power struggles in which they play no part.

Political circus

As another summer season drew to a close and the holiday entertainers packed their bags and headed for home, some seaside towns prepared for the arrival of the circus. Not the usual big top and sawdust affair but a collection of clowns, jugglers and illusionists who make up the political circus, each group demonstrating that no one party has the monopoly of political ignorance.

Possibly, with the media providing saturation coverage, many workers were deluded into believing that these events should be taken seriously. But whatever importance a minority of the working class attached to these proceedings for the vast majority the speeches, interviews and standing ovations were of little significance. After all, once you have seen one circus you have seen them all.

How many times have we watched the juggler with the unemployment figures. Up they go higher and higher, out of control then suddenly they drop when a new set are plucked out of the magician's hat.

Year in, year out it is the same old material. Even when it is borrowed or stolen from one of the other parties, it is always presented as something new. Dress an elephant in a tutu, parade it around the ring and it will still be an elephant. Do the same with some forgotten economic theory and in the crazy world of the political circus it becomes a wondrous new idea capable of solving all manner of problems.

To some people a man with a red nose and baggy trousers who talks nonsense, squabbles with his partners and makes rude noises is a clown, but to others he is an elected representative entrusted with the responsibilities of running the country. A figure of fun he may appear to be but his contribution to the greatest illusion of all is no laughing matter.

For the famous "Make Capitalism Operate in the Workers' Interest" trick is one that has kept the clown and other buffoons employed for a long time Like all good illusions this one relies heavily on deception and the willing participation of the audience. It is not in performing the trick that the deception lies but in convincing the audience that it can be done. For their part the audience has possibly assisted in the deception. Duped into supporting the very system that causes the problems around them the answer must lie with themselves. Because of their acquiescence capitalism continues. In a world of potential abundance this sickening farce should have no place.

It is up to the working class to bring down the curtain on the present economic system and introduce socialism. Only then will the world be able to live in peaceful co-existence freed from the constraints of the profit- motive and the absurd posturings of a small band of professional idiots will be as out of place as a one-legged cyclist in a present day circus.

Independent It’s Not

The new "quality" newspaper the Independent is, we are told, politically, financially and editorially independent. So is this the breakthrough we socialists have been waiting for? A chance to put across our ideas to workers through the columns of a newspaper that claims to be politically non-partisan?

Well, this socialist hasn't actually tried submitting an article to the Independent putting the socialist viewpoint, but then I haven't much confidence in the "independence" of a newspaper whose editor. Andreas Whittam Smith, previously worked on the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Investors Chronicle and who is described by those who claim to know as a "wet Tory or Social Democrat". An editor who had relatively little trouble in raising the £18 million necessary to start the new paper because he enjoyed the confidence of City investors with whom he had developed extensive contacts when working for the FT etc.

It is hard to believe that a newspaper that has such close ties with the capitalist class can really be taken seriously as independent. If the Independent gives good factual news coverage on a wide range of issues so that people can make up their own minds about those issues, then that would be a small step forwards. But the question will still remain which facts are we being given; on what basis are they being selected; and by whom? The Independent may be politically unaffiliated and editorially independent, despite the editor's personal political views; it might even be financially independent in that a number of investors have bought shares in it rather than just one member of the capitalist class owning it outright; what is extremely unlikely is that it will offer us anything like an alternative perspective on the world around us.

Warnings and alerts (2024)

From the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Fund for Peace, as it is called, is supported financially by a number of donors, including various US government agencies and companies such as Exxon and Chevron. Each year it publishes a Fragile States Index (fragilestatesindex.org). A total of 179 countries are assessed on the basis of a range of criteria, with four kinds of ‘indicator’ being employed, in order to measure their supposed vulnerability to collapse. Cohesion indicators deal with areas such as the extent of organised crime and how much trust people have in domestic security. Economic indicators include inflation and productivity, while political ones cover whether elections are considered as free and fair, how corrupt officials are, and so on. What are termed social and cross-cutting indicators include infant mortality, food supply, environmental policies etc.

The 2023 report divides countries into eleven categories, from ‘Very sustainable’ via ‘Warning’ to ‘Very high alert’. This last category had just one member, Somalia. The highest-ranking included Norway and Iceland, with Germany and France in ‘Sustainable’ and the UK and US in the fourth category of ‘More stable’. The UK has been slipping down the ratings since 2010, while France has been improving a bit recently, despite the regular protests and the unpopularity of President Macron. Under ‘Stable’ came Kuwait and Cuba. China and Saudi Arabia were classified into ‘Warning’, with South Africa and India in ‘Elevated Warning’. Russia, North Korea and Rwanda were in ‘High warning’, Venezuela and Iraq in ‘Alert’ and Haiti and Syria in ‘High alert’.

One of the more interesting aspects of the work is the list of countries that have worsened or improved since 2022. A few have improved slightly, such as Yemen and Bolivia, while others have become worse, headed by Ukraine, Sri Lanka and Russia. Russia has become more authoritarian and thousands have fled conscription: ‘While Russia’s expansionism was an attempt to consolidate power and influence, the effect has been a weakening both domestically and abroad’.

Ukraine of course is given plenty of attention. It moved in a year from being the 92nd most fragile to the 18th, and its situation is having a major impact on global food supply chains. Energy prices generally have risen, and there has been a massive outflow of Ukrainian refugees. Funding and supplies may be redirected to Ukraine from countries such as Yemen and Ethiopia.

Sudan has consistently been ranked in the ten most fragile countries, and the 2021 coup led to a military-run government, though protests continued in the capital, Khartoum. Since it became ‘independent’ from Britain and Egypt, Sudan has been subjected to various conflicts between the government and regional groups, the result often being ‘peace agreements that are in fact power-sharing agreements that benefit the top ranks of the armed groups’.

What does it matter? What does it reveal? Governments and various members of ruling classes often need to know how volatile a country is, for both military and economic reasons. How reliable is this place as a trading or manufacturing partner? What are the chances of it descending into civil war, or some kind of coup taking place? Is there any possibility of no longer being able to access resources or products? More generally, what impact might it have on profits? Questions like this are no doubt very worrying to those who seek to ensure their continued exercise of wealth and power.

For the rest of us, though, it shows, not so much how fragile particular countries are, but what a state the world is in, that things are not simply getting better, as some claim, and how so many people live dangerous and insecure lives. And how urgent a major change is.

Paul Bennett

Artificial Scarcity (1981)

From the October 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Food, like everything else under capitalism, is not produced for use. It is not produced to be eaten but to be sold, with a view to profit, on a market, a local market, a regional market and, increasingly, the world market.

When there is production for the market it is only market demand, not real need, that is satisfied and it is this that, in the context of food production, condemns millions of people in the world to go hungry or be badly fed and others to actually die of starvation. These people are malnourished, or die, not because it is technically impossible to produce enough food to feed the whole world’s population, but because the present world economic and social system capitalism-produces only to satisfy profitable market demand and not human needs. It is as simple as that. These people don’t starve to death; they are starved to death, by capitalism.

All scientists who have studied world food production potential are agreed that the world could, from a technical point of view, produce enough food to feed the present world population of 4,000 million, and more. We could quote pages and pages from scientists to this effect, but will confine ourselves to two who contributed to the September 1976 issue of the Scientific American on ‘Food and Agriculture’:

Considering only such natural factors (biology, soil and climate] one can say that with the present base of arable land, with a largely vegetarian diet based on yields that could be achieved with present knowledge and with a substantial amount of energy and human effort the world could support a human population of 50 billion or more (Robert S. Loomis, “billion” in the US sense, so 12 times the present world population).

The southern half of the Sudan is potentially one of the richest farming regions in the world, with the soil, sunlight and water resources to produce enormous quantities of food-as much, perhaps, as the entire world now produces! . . . If its glacial waters and rainfall were harnessed and its farmers better supported by modern off-farm services, the 40 million hectares of the Indus-Ganges-Brahmaputra plain of Pakistan, Bangladesh and India could be made to yield upward of 20 metric tons of cereal per hectare per year, or about 80 per cent of the world’s present cereal output (W. David Hooper).

So this point is not open to argument. The world can produce enough to feed all its present inhabitants and many more. The fact that at the moment it does not do so is to be placed at the door of the present world economic and social system.

But world capitalism, as a system of production for sale on a market with a view to profit, not only ignores needs that can’t be paid for, but it also distorts the pattern of world food production, as has been well-explained in Susan George’s How the Other Half Dies (Penguin).

The farmers in the so-called Third World have been increasingly drawn into producing for the world market (“cash crops”) at the expense of producing for themselves or for local markets (“food crops”). Everybody has heard of the banana republics of Central America, but scattered throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America are coffee republics, sugar republics, soya republics, cocoa republics states producing essentially a single crop for sale on the world market and who are thereby at the mercy of the purchaser of this crop, generally a multinational company.

Reactionaries denounce “multinational” companies for being multinational rather than national, but in fact they are inevitable under capitalism and a sign that it is already an international system and so ripe for the change-over to world socialism. A multi-national company has the same objective as any “national” company: to make profits and accumulate capital. If they support and encourage the distortion of world food production towards satisfying the market for processed foods in the industrialised parts of the world at the expense of producing food to satisfy the needs of the people of its agricultural parts, this is because the former is more profitable than the latter. In this they are behaving perfectly logically, given that we are living in a capitalist world. As George puts it:

The rub is that agribusiness and private banks cannot be expected to invest in anything that is not profitable—this is simply not the nature of the beast. This is where the question of the individual sincerity of industry leaders is answered: they themselves—even if they are corporations with the best will in the world—are not free agents. They must, under the logic of their system, market produce in countries that can best pay for it; they must get the best possible return on investment, which means either cheap labour and more amortisable machinery; they must control all the facts of food production and distribution for maximum profitability from field to supermarket shelf.

The countries of the Third World are caught in a vicious circle. In order to modernise themselves they must have funds to invest. How do they get these funds? By selling on the world market the crops that they are apparently best qualified to produce. This means forcing their peasants and farmers to stop producing to satisfy their own needs or local markets and turn to producing the cash crop in question. This in turn means that money has to be spent on importing fertilisers and food crops, paid for by the profits from the exports of the cash crops!

And, if the price of the cash crop on the world market falls? Then they do not have enough money to import enough food and the world hears about a “famine” somewhere caused by some “natural” disaster. The disaster, however, is really a social and economic disaster caused by capitalism. We have already seen how two areas which suffer most from famine—Bangladesh and the Sudan (a Sahel country)—could, under appropriate social and technical conditions, easily produce enough food to feed their populations. These famines, we repeat, are not natural but artificial in the sense that they could be avoided if we had a social system geared to satisfying needs rather than profitable sales.

Susan George is right: this is a crazy way to run the world. Her proposed solution, however, is very disappointing. She recommends Third World States to try to cut themselves off from the world market and concentrate on food production for internal consumption (as she imagines China and Vietnam tried to do for a while). But this can’t work precisely because, both from an economic and from a technological point of view, there already exists a world system. No one area of the world can isolate itself.

The only solution is a change of social system at world level, to one where the resources of the Earth, man-made and natural, would become the common heritage and be used purely and simply to satisfy human needs. In other words, the abolition of frontiers and Nation-States, the abolition of markets and production for profits, the abolition of banks and of companies, multi-national and national. Only on this basis can the technical potential to produce enough to adequately feed, clothe and shelter every single man, woman and child in the world realised.

Adam Buick

Bird’s Eye View: Shelley: In His Way, One Of Us (2022)

The Bird’s Eye View Column from the September 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shelley: In His Way, One Of Us

A century ago, this journal carried an article so titled (Socialist Standard, September 1922). Two centuries have passed along with generations of socialists and other workers since Percy Bysshe Shelley’s untimely demise. What would he make of the world today? There can be little doubt that for all the scientific advances made since his death he would soon realise that this world remains theirs not ours, and our ‘great awakening’ has yet to take place. Like Friedrich Engels and William Morris, he ‘… played his part in the great awakening of men, just as Marx played his, as we play ours, as all our readers can play theirs. The scientist, philosopher, and singer, age by age, so far as the development of Society would permit, have contributed to the freeing of our thoughts. They have given us ecstacy and knowledge. And the selfish ruling class cannot understand this. Ecstacy and knowledge, music and wisdom mean as little to such people as Gallipoli and Russia or work and wages. Shelley liked such people much as we do; much as G.B.S. likes roast pork and a bottle of Bass.’

‘The Rights of Universal Citizenship’

‘GBS’ was the playwright, vegetarian and teetotaller George Bernard Shaw. He is still wrongly viewed as a socialist and supported capitalist conflict (during WWI he declared ‘England is a guardian of the world’s liberty’) and in the pamphlet Fabianism and the Empire advocated the right of a capitalist state to acquire territory which it may consider backward, in the name of efficiency. He constantly beat the imperialist drum for bigger armaments; advocated a large army and military conscription. By contrast, Shelley in his Declaration of Rights stated ‘Man has no right to kill his brother, it is no excuse that he does so in uniform. He only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder’ (Article 19 , 1812).

We read: ‘Latvia’s defense ministry said on Monday that the Baltic country is bringing back its military draft to ward off a Russian attack — a move prompted by Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine’ (yahoo, 11 July).

There is no doubt that Shelley would oppose conscription. And stand with the workers in Russia and Ukraine seeking to avoid working as paid murderers.

‘Danila Davydov said he left Russia within weeks of the Kremlin sending troops into Ukraine because he feared having to fight in a war he doesn’t support. The 22-year-old left St. Petersburg and is now working in Kazakhstan. “We feared President Putin would declare a mobilization and then everyone, young and old, would be called up to the army. I absolutely didn’t want to go and fight”. Davydov is among what some lawyers and rights advocates say is an increased number of young Russian men looking to avoid the country’s mandatory military service since the conflict with Ukraine, which Russia calls a “special military operation”, started in late February. That is despite the risk of facing fines or up to two years in prison. In Russia, military service is mandatory for young men aged 18 to 27’ (yahoo, 8 July).

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away’

(from Shelley’s sonnet Ozymandias, 1819).

‘There is No God’

PBS had no lack of imagination, yet it is doubtful that he could envision a world of war and want still existing when one of peace and plenty had long been possible. Even Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, would likely be shocked by the very real threat of Armageddon. The Shelleys were almost certainly spared nightmares of the MAD contrast between death by exotic weapons or stoning:

‘A 20-year-old woman in Sudan has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, marking the first known case in the northeast African country for a decade… Iran has the world’s highest rate of execution by stoning and the Middle Eastern country regularly makes headlines for its employment of the practice, which came into force after the 1979 revolution. The Library of Congress believes that around 150 people were stoned to death in Iran between 1980 and 2009, although the reported numbers are probably lower than the actual figures’ (The Week, 14 July).

PBS by contrast thought ‘A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each other. Any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection, would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration’ (Queen Mab, 1813). His blasphemous freethinking got him expelled from Oxford University. And still today such thoughts can result in the death penalty in thirteen countries. For PBS, ‘Design must be proved before a designer can be inferred’ (The Necessity of Atheism, 1811). He would have been fascinated by our current understanding of human biology. We are an evolutionary hodgepodge made largely of bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea. Our eyes see less than 1 percent of the light spectrum, and retinas detach easily – even the humble shrimp has better vision. We are also fitted with sub-optimal plumbing (breathing, eating, excretory and reproductive) and, yes, programmed to die – unlike Turritopsis dohrnii, the immortal jellyfish.

‘The Masque of Anarchy’

We wasted the last century and unless we act, capitalism will likely lay waste to this one. So:

‘Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number —

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you —

Ye are many — they are few’

                                                    (1819).

Sickness and the system (2000)

From the November 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who are drugs and medicines produced for and why are they produced? The rational answer (in a rational scheme of things) would be that they are to prevent or cure illness and promote well-being. However, we live under capitalism and, as we know, this means things don’t work that way. A striking example of the priorities of drug production in the capitalist system was given the Channel 4 programme Unreported World on 22 September.

This programme was about the rising incidence of sleeping sickness, a lethal disease carried by the Tsetse fly, in Sudan. After being almost eradicated during the 1960s this horrible disease is back with a vengeance. The situation is grim and you might be forgiven for thinking this might be because there is no effective treatment. In fact there is. it is known as DFMO. However, it is not an option as it is not being manufactured at an affordable price. In short, no pharmaceutical company is actually producing an existing treatment for sleeping sickness as there would be no profit in doing so. While it is needed desperately this medicine is thus withheld and for the lack of DFMO medical workers are forced to treat people using arsenic, of all things.

Some interesting facts came out during the report. Only one in every hundred drugs is developed for what are known as tropical diseases (diseases, that is, which occur in areas of the world where the majority of humanity lives). Of those that are, apparently many are by-products of different research. As there is seen to be no profit in producing drugs for people and health services who have little or nothing to buy them with the research is just not done. it is known for instance that really effective protection against malaria is a scientific possibility, but that it won’t see the light of day because the research wouldn’t be profitable for drug companies. The breakthroughs which could be achieved if scientific knowledge was not enslaved by the profit system don’t take much imagining.

The sick twist in the tale of sleeping sickness in Sudan was that the only hope of DFMO becoming an affordable treatment for those who need it there is the drug’s other known property—it slows facial hair growth. It is possible that DFMO may be marketed by Gillette as a cosmetic product and that this might lead to the price dropping enough for it to be affordable for the treatment of sleeping sickness. After the heart-breaking sight of a little child in terrible distress being given a spinal tap to see if the disease had entered her brain the truly disgusting nature of the upside-down priorities of capitalism could hardly be clearer. The answer to the earlier question is of course that drugs and medicines are produced with a view to yielding a profit. If people’s needs don’t fit in with this, then so much the worse for us.

During a chat I was having recently my mum, a professional nurse, commented that if people weren’t allowed medicines then what was the bloody point of making them. We were talking about a similar no profit—no treatment situation here in this country: namely working-class people with Multiple Sclerosis being denied access to the drug Interferon due to it being “too expensive”. The same goes for everything else; food, housing, clothes, electrical goods—if people can’t have them then what is the point of producing them? To sell or withhold them in the pursuit of profit as the boss class decides. All that wealth, produce and technology utterly wasted when it could be used for the benefit of us all.

The real question is not about whether we can afford medicine. It is about whether we can afford the profit system and the capitalist class. Whether we live in Sudan or in England, the answer is no. The sooner we get on and dump them the better.

Ben Malcolm

Running Commentary: Too old at 35 (1985)

The Running Commentary column from the June 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Too old at 35

Capitalist ideology is underpinned by many lies and delusions. Expressed simply, this is one of them: "If you work hard at passing your exams and at your job, security and prosperity will be yours". Along with this delusion goes the notion that a worker can somehow be elevated by passing exams, into an imaginary "middle-class" status. In fact there is no middle-class; anyone who faces the indignity of having to sell their labour power for a wage or a salary is in the working class, no matter what their educational qualifications. A particularly cruel reminder of this appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 25 March 1985:

Fifty advanced computer scientists and technicians carrying out research for Philips Electronics have lost their jobs because "they are too old at 50". The management of Philips Research Laboratories at Redhill. Surrey, are taking on young graduates to replace them. They [union officials] accused the company of following the example of the Japanese electrical firm Hitachi, which tried last December to get all workers over 35 at its Hirwaun colour TV plant in South Wales to take redundancy.

Hitachi said in a letter to all employees that staff over 35 were slow, prone to sickness, had poor eyesight and were more resistant to change.

The article went on to say that "graduates cost less than older staff' — one more example of the ruthless, cost-cutting nature of capitalism.

How inconvenient to the capitalist class that workers still want to go on living — with the expense of redundancy pay, unemployment benefit and pensions this entails — after their abilities have been consumed and they find themselves discarded.

Price of gold

The South African government has recently offered a sop to reform by committing itself to abolition of the obnoxious laws which prohibit sex and marriage between men and women of different racial origin. This reform is rendered virtually meaningless by other laws on racial segregation which remain, such as the Group Areas Act, which segregates residential and business areas along racial lines. This means that despite the abolition of the "immorality" laws, a man and a woman of different races involved in a sexual relationship will still be unable to set up home together.

Those people who see this legal change as the first step towards liberalisation of South African society must surely have had their hopes dashed by another event in South Africa last month which demonstrated yet again the odious policies of the South African ruling class.

The event was the dismissal of 17,000 black gold miners who were sacked by their employers. Anglo-American Corporation, for causing stoppages and disruption in protest at the sacking of trade union officials. Not only have these workers lost their jobs; they have also been transported back to various "tribal homelands". Under South African law the majority of black gold miners are forced to live as migrants, without their families, in work camps close to the mines.

These gold mines produce the commodity that is the basis of the enormous wealth of the South African ruling class. One of the mines where workers have been sacked — the Vaal Reefs mine in the western Transvaal — is the biggest gold mine in the world and produces 13 per cent of South African gold. In a situation where there are many poor workers, mostly black but increasingly white too. desperate to work, it is only too easy for the capitalist class to replace sacked miners with others who they hope will be less militant.

It is the grossest form of hypocrisy for the South African ruling class to talk of liberalisation in a society in which workers continue to be repressed in this way. No one should be taken in by the cosmetic changes taking place in South Africa at the moment which are intended to appease international opinion and so open up more markets for South African goods. The oppressive structures of both apartheid and capitalism remain intact.

Coup in Sudan

While President Nimeiri was busy trying to rally support for his regime among American leaders the Sudanese army, supported by other sections of the Sudanese ruling class, seized governmental power in a manner that is only too familiar in countries where the absence of democratic institutions means that the only way of changing government personnel is through a coup d'état. Of course this military government, like many others, is promising a quick return to civilian rule as soon as conditions permit the holding of elections.

The complaint of the army and its supporters was that Nimeiri, after sixteen years in power, was mismanaging the economy. The ruling class was also angry at the way in which Nimeiri had imposed the barbaric Islamic code of law in order to secure his own political ends by courting the support of the fundamentalist Moslem Brotherhood. This marriage of convenience was. however, short-lived. Fearing a challenge to his power from Islamic leaders, Nimeiri had purged the Moslem Brotherhood and imprisoned its leaders, blaming them for unpopular policies. As a result Nimeiri lost his only real power base in Sudanese society, leaving him vulnerable to a coup from rival sections of the Sudanese ruling class.

Sudan is a desperately poor country currently ravaged by widespread drought which has exacerbated agricultural policies intended to produce quick profits for the landowners at the expense of both land and people. Its scarce food resources are under increasing pressure due to the huge influx of refugees from Ethiopia, themselves trying to escape famine. In the south of the country there has been a civil war in progress led by a rival Christian army officer. The majority of the population are totally dependent on American grain shipments if they are to avoid starvation. This American "aid" is granted in return for Sudan maintaining a pro-western stance in an area that is of great strategic importance because of its proximity to important oil supplies.

What is certain in these murky waters of political intrigue and double-dealing is that the lives of the vast majority of Sudan’s 22 million people will be largely unaffected by these shufflings of official positions among the Sudanese ruling class. Drought now affects 4 million native farmers and relief workers are currently predicting that one million people will die in Sudan in the coming year (The Times, 9 April 1985). It matters not one jot to them, nor will it affect their chances of survival, that they are now being ruled by a military rather than a civilian government.

Voice From The Back: Capitalist profits (1998)

The Voice From The Back Column from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalist profits

From December 1, when the second stage of this year’s pay award is implemented, a D-grade staff nurse will earn a basic of between £12,855 and £14,705. Starting salaries for teachers are £14,500 and for police constables £15,500. Guardian, 6 August.

Full Marx!

Karl Marx’s theories may not be much appreciated in police forces, but his observation that under capitalism everything eventually becomes a commodity may strike a few chords in the Los Angeles police department: it is registering its initials LAPD as a trademark. Guardian, 6 August.

Value for money

Barbara [Corcoran] says that in Manhattan, where she lives, her annual £45,000 investment in her looks is de rigeur. There, she says, “looking good is more important than being good . . .” “People judge you down to the tiniest detail, the cut of your suit shoulder, the size of the pearl in your earring, even how you apply your make up.” Express, 20 July.

This secret society

Gun Mart, a magazine for shooters, has a particular concern about the confiscation of the majority of private hand guns following the Dunblane massacre. In its August issue it draws attention to the fact that the police report on Thomas Hamilton, made to the Procurator Fiscal before the mass shooting of the school children, will not be put into the Library of the House of Commons. In fact, Lord Cullen, for the government, has recommended that a 100 year closure be placed upon this and related documents. Not even most war secrets are suppressed for this long. What are they hiding? Gross negligence is one possibility. A real excuse for the banning of guns is another.

Political starvation

“The country’s [Sudan’s] 15-year civil, war has uprooted millions. The UN World Food Programme predicted the food emergency last September. But a worsening drought, lack of interest in the international community, widespread fighting and a ban on relief flights by the Sudanese government have resulted in a much worse crisis today . . . people are dying, at an average of 50 a day in Wau, one of the hardest hit areas.” Catherine Bertini, Executive Director, UN World Food Programme.

Feelgood factor 1

Keith Bradley, Professor of international management at the Open University Business School was doing his bit for the class struggle in the Financial Mail on Sunday, 16 August. He said, “Chief secretary to the Treasury Stephen Byers touched a raw nerve last week when he hit out at ‘greedy’ power and water bosses whose massive pay rises of up to 70 percent fuel anger amongst ordinary workers. But while fat cats are easily pilloried, there is little doubt that huge pay disparities are here to stay. Indeed, the rich are likely to get richer-and deservedly so . . . In today’s world there is a massive difference between winning and coming second. Nearly winning a legal battle, nearly scoring a goal, or nearly completing a business deal are all worlds apart from actually achieving these things.”

Feelgood factor 2

Earlier this year, when he was anticipating, and perhaps trying to influence, the Labour government’s budget, Martin Taylor, chief executive of Barclays Bank, told the Commons social security Select Committee that the working families tax credit (WFTC), which was expected to replace the in-work family credit, would have “important psychological effects on the way people feel about work”. Delivered through the pay packet rather than the benefits system, it would change the attitudes to living on welfare by associating state aid with work, said Mr Taylor. “If welfare to work succeeds, and I expect it will, there are going to be a lot more people in relatively low paid jobs . . .” “It’s important that they should feel good about that and that society as a whole should feel good.” Mr Taylor was doing his bit for the class war—on behalf of his class.

Feelbad factor

In May, the Boston Sheraton hotel in Massachusetts had to pay $200,000 (£120,000) in a lawsuit in which employees said they were videotaped in a changing room, and a California trucking firm’s employees discovered a video camera in the men’s toilet. Every aspect of employment becomes disputed territory in the class war.

Pollute and be damned

Asbestos pollution is one of the biggest environmental health problems in the world, according to the Johannesburg Star, and South Africa is the global epicentre of asbestos-related disease (ARD), in particular mesothelioma, which is a cancer related specifically to asbestos exposure. It was estimated that 30 to 40 percent of people who worked in SA’s asbestos mines for more than 20 years developed ARD. A study of the town of Mafefe in Northern Province revealed that half the adult population of 12,000 had ARD.

World View: Bogeyman or diversion? (1998)

From the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

By now, most will be aware that on 20 August the US carried out air-strikes against alleged “terrorist facilities” in Afghanistan and Sudan and that the launch of 75 Tomahawk missiles was reputedly a response to bomb attacks on US embassies in Africa orchestrated by rogue Saudi millionaire-cum-terrorist Osama bin Laden and his Islamic International Front Against Jews and Crusaders.

Likewise, most will be familiar now with the popular view that the US air strikes were in fact an attempt by the Clinton regime to get the Monica Lewinsky story off the front page. And if you’re into conspiracy theories, then you will have chanced upon the one that has the US bombing its own embassies to provide it with the pretext to attack militant Islam.

But would Clinton and his Joint Chiefs of Staff be so blatant as to carry out such military strikes while his sexual excesses were being contemplated by a Grand Jury, or is there a larger game plan?

The entire episode seems to have been sparked by testimony allegedly extracted from Mohamed Saddiq Omeh, a Palestinian and friend of bin Laden, extradited from Pakistan by the FBI and CIA in the wake of the Nairobi and Dar-es-Salem bombings, caught en-route to Afghanistan. Not that bin Laden had helped matters He had, after all, issued a fatwa against US interests back in February.

Whether bin Laden is actually behind the bombings in Africa is anyone’s guess, but in the perpetual US hunt for new bogey-men to protect us from he certainly warranted a punishment beating. And why not? Afghanistan is, after all, one of the poorest countries on earth with little means of defending itself against a more powerful enemy. It is a country of which 90 per cent is controlled by the much feared Taliban, pursuing a Pushtu version of Islam that makes Iran look secular. And is not Afghanistan too close for comfort to the oil fields of the Middle East and the Caspian?

At a time when upstarts in North Korea, the former Yugoslavia and Iraq have been thumbing their noses at the US, the attacks carried out by the US may best be explained as a message to bogeymen, one and all, perhaps Islam in particular, not to get ideas above their station. It can also be interpreted as a message to the possessors of the new “Islamic Bomb”, an unstable Pakistani regime heading towards shariah law, and to anyone else paying attention: “the US is still in charge. Don’t fool with our interests.”

In the past, too many countries have found themselves as US patsies, the threats to global peace we all needed defending from: Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Cuba to name a few.

The episode, coming at the close of the 20th century, is also a timely reminder to the world, no matter how much we wish to dispute it, that the US will, as has been the case for 50 years, be calling the shots in the 21st Century. Britain has, for half a century, danced the trans-Atlantic tune with most of Europe happy to hum along.

In the wake of the Sudanese bombing there was no shortage of western experts, many who had actually worked at the now levelled Shifa pharmaceutical plant, prepared to come forward to counter US intelligence claims that the factory produced nothing more than harmless medicines, many intended for Iraq, and that the VX nerve gas precursors, allegedly found by US agents in soil samples taken at the factory, are also used in the manufacture of beer and cherry-flavoured sweets.

Though Clinton claimed the US had “irrefutable proof” that Shifa was producing nerve gas, the FBI refused to make soil samples available to a wider body of international experts. And guess, incidentally, which country has the biggest stockpile of VX nerve gas? Yup, the US have 1,700 tons stockpiled at the Newport weapons depot in Indiana.

As could be expected, the US was quick to cite Article 51 of the UN Charter, as they have done so many times in the past, as justification for the 20 August attacks. Properly interpreted, however, Article 51 applies to situations when the state is in imminent danger and when there is no time to consult the UN Security Council.

Obviously, the US itself was not in imminent danger and the issue could easily have been discussed at the Security Council. Moreover, the UN action flies in the face of a UN Resolution of April 1964, adopted by the Security Council, and which states unambiguously that such reprisals are “incompatible with the purpose and principles of the UN”.

So it’s a bold claim indeed when Clinton asserts that the US is leading the fight against international terrorism, for if ever any country could be labelled the world’s number one terrorist state then it is the US.

Not only have the US supported tyrants like Saddam, Ceaucescu, Trujillo, Marcos, Amin, Duvalier and Mobutu, they have backed the Contras in Nicaragua and financed terrorist proxies from El Salvador and Guatemala to Israel. For almost 40 years they have terrorised Cuba and Indochina, backing the Khmer Rouge for instance, and in this period the CIA have helped topple almost 30 governments.

Indeed, it was not so long ago—during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, that the CIA were hailing bin Laden and the Mojahedin as great freedom fighters, supplying them with blow-pipe surface-to-air missiles, building camps in Khast, distributing US Marine training manuals and providing info on Soviet troop movements.

What effects the air strikes will have on those in direst need in Afghanistan and Sudan remains to be seen. As US flags continue to burn across the Islamic world, and as the voices of preachers continue to boom out anti-Western sentiments in a myriad mosques, we are left with two choices. We can settle down in our arm chairs and follow the interminable discussions about the Lewinsky affair or we can contemplate the real nature of the politics of power and unite to take it away from those who will always use it to further the interests of the few, at the expense of the many.

John Bissett

The Future of the Sudan (1959)

From the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Commentary on the recent coup d'état in the Sudan has been curiously limited. It is true that the seizure of power in mid-November by a military council was accomplished in unspectacular bloodless fashion; nevertheless, the overthrow of a government in so close proximity to the centre of recent world troubles ought, one thinks, to have made bigger news. Even the serious informational papers had not much to say. The Observer provided only 26 column-inches about it in two issues and the Manchester Guardian, though it gave most of all, did so largely in reference to the northern cotton market.

The reason is not hard to see. Events are quickly told, but the commentary on them must depend chiefly on their consequences—and the consequences of the Sudan happening are not yet apparent. The new government is politically unrevealed so far, and what fresh relationship may arise between the Sudan and the western world is still unknown. General Abboud may take the stage as a second Nasser to be hissed for a foxy schemer from the galleries of the west, or contrariwise as the golden-haired lad bearing freedom’s banner. For that, we must wait and see.

What is much more to the point is to ask what has happened and why. Briefly to go over recent events, the coup was announced on November 17th. The coalition government of Abdullah Khalil was known to be on its way out. Its two factors, the People’s Democratic Party and the Umma party, were in disagreement over the Sudan’s relations with Egypt: mainly, it is said, over fresh Egyptian plans for the Aswan High Dam made in the light of the proferred Russian loan. The new régime, in which General Abboud holds supreme power, announced itself as working “in the interest of no party or group” but aiming at “the elimination of incompetence and corruption among politicians in general,” with a hint about knowing the way to good terms with Egypt (Manchester Guardian, 18th November, 1958).

This has come in the face not only of Egyptian pressure, however, but also of economic troubles. The Sudan is a cotton-producing country. Eighty per cent of its exports are of cotton (largely to Lancashire), and the present condition of the world’s cotton markets has meant a huge unsaleable surplus, stated by the Observer correspondent in Khartoum to include 48.000 tons left over from 1957. Under the Anglo-Egyptian regime big sums were invested in irrigation projects and plans for government-assisted peasant production to develop the cotton yield, so that the Sudan is dependent always on world prices for its staple crop. Before the war the Sudanese people were considered better-off than the natives of most other colonized parts of Africa; now the country’s economy is in a critical phase without much prospect of improvement.

The growth and the varied outlooks of the Sudanese political parties have come partly through economic development and partly from the patterns set by the fifty-eight years of joint British and Egyptian rule which ended in 1956. The history of this companionate rule is in fact a series of quarrels over who should really rule a country which bordered the Suez canal and enclosed the upper Nile. The existence of pro-British and pro-Egyptian parties comes from this period, when each of the dual rulers tried to create its own body of support in the Sudan. The Umma is descended from the Mahdi’s followers who drove out Turco-Egyptian rule and is thus traditionally anti-Egyptian; the P.D.P., on the other hand, is an offshoot of the National Unity Party which has always seen advantage in alliance with Egypt.

As in all other colonial countries, a powerful vein of nationalism appeared with the vista of economic independence that the development schemes afforded. (It is an irony of imperialism that the leaders of nationalist movements are produced by the imperialists’ own needs for officials, technical assistants and the rest of the new “middle classes” which this stage of economic progress must turn out.) All the Sudanese parties, including the “Socialist” National Unity Party and the Anti-Imperialist Front (the Communists) are shot through with this strong desire for “national independence,” and the new military government lost no time in stating that it did not differ from them. The day after assuming power. General Abboud said his regime would “accept anything it considered in the interests of the country, but would reject anything which might harm its independence and sovereignty.”

The truth is, however, that the Sudan cannot be independent except in the nominal sense of not being any other nation’s colony. The change which has just taken place was forced by external conditions and happenings, and the policies of the Abboud government—even the vague ones which were immediately announced—are bound to be determined almost wholly from outside. The resuscitation of the limping Sudanese economy depends on, more than anything else at the present time, the government’s negotiations with Egypt and (a not-unconnected matter) its success in playing-off America and Russia to attract loans from either or both. On November 30th the Foreign Minister announced that “foreign capital without strings would be welcomed.” and that his government had already taken 15 million dollars' worth of foreign exchange from America (Manchester Guardian, 1st December. 1958).

The outstanding questions between Egypt and the Sudan are the Aswan Dam project and the frontiers. To the Egyptian government the Dam, with its promise of irrigation and electric power, is vital for maintaining the economy (with its already desperate population problem) and making the economy maintain the army. Now, with the promise of Russian aid. it appears within reach, but there must first be agreement with the government of Sudan. From Egypt’s point of view a compliant Sudan would be the answer; Mr. Khalil, indeed, alleged in London last September that there were forces working to this end within the Sudanese government. For the Sudan, on the other hand, agreement can only mean a share in the benefits of the Dam.

What of the Sudanese people? Here, when one asks this question, stands forth a remarkable example of the stupidity and cruelty of commercialism and nationalism. For the Sudanese people are desperately, pitifully poor. In nearly three years of “independence” they have been governed by the National Unity “Socialists,” a coalition, and now the military—and none has made a scrap of difference to their poverty. It is worth pointing out that the Egyptian people have had the same experience: they were poverty-stricken under fat Farouk, and are equally so under Nasser. What have the political pretensions of their government done for them?

Assuming, however, that the building of the new High Dam would lighten these peoples’ burdens, the approaches to it have been made entirely in terms of not those but the rulers’ interests. First, there has to be money—obvious enough, but in itself a condemnation of the entire modern world where the need is pressing, the materials and labour plentiful, yet the fulfilment must wait on the djinn of this idiotic Aladdin’s lamp. When it was offered to Egypt by the West, the offer was based and then foundered on considerations of political advantage in the cold war. Now it appears again from Russia, with similar considerations in view (while a team of “American aid experts ” descends on the Sudan).

Who, then, cares about the Sudanese people? It is not that this or the preceding governments, or the government of Egypt, is deliberately negligent; on the contrary, it would be to the rulers’ benefit to have the support of prosperous and satisfied populations. The Sudan, however, has been pulled into the whirlpool of Capitalist world politics. From a colony in the once-majestic scheme of British imperialism, developed to make its cotton contribution to British trade, it has become another nation forced to struggle for advantage in the pitiless dogfights of world markets and big politics.

The future of the Sudan is bound up in the future of the world. Economic development and political contact have opened the windows for this country on the amenities of modern civilization, hence the nationalism, the reformist politics, and the anxiety to benefit by “getting in” on the bigger powers’ calculated generosity. Ideally, the Sudanese people stand to gain in every way from contact and interchange—in a word, “progress.” But modern civilization is far from ideal. Whatever progress is made will be directed at furthering only the interests of the property-owners of the Sudan: the important thing to recognize about the Abboud regime is that, whatever is said about ending corruption and the rest, this is its prime aim. However good a proportion of the High Dam potentialities is obtained for the Sudan, the sad fact is that the Dam is really wanted as a source of power and profits for the commercial class.

There is no sanity in this. It is not only in the Sudan, but everywhere; this small flare-up illumines a little more of what is going on all over the world. Nationalism and the political game are impediments to genuine productive development, standing in the way of what could be done by man for man—but they are parts of the superstructure of Capitalist society, which limits human activity to what will yield the best profits. The real trouble for the people of the Sudan is the profit system, and the only future which can hold anything worth while for them—and for everyone else—is Socialism all over the world.

Robert Barltrop

Observations: Two steps forward; two steps back (1986)

The Observations Column from the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two steps forward; two steps back

Well over twelve months later, and the Band Aid-Wagon keeps rolling on . . . US Aid for Africa, Live Aid, Fashion Aid and Classical Aid have all occupied a lot of publicity, not to mention time and energy. In the course of this they have raised a sum of money immense to the average reader of the Socialist Standard, but insignificant when placed alongside the priorities of capitalism. For example, the amount of money raised (over £100 million), is still a fraction of the one billion pounds spent in Europe every year to keep the food mountains frozen and stored. And what else could you spend the whole proceeds from the various charities on? How about one-and-a-half Buccaneer fighter planes, such is the logic of capitalism.

The lunacy of the buying and selling system is such that while Live Aid is trying to get more food to Africa, a similar fund-raising concert. "Farming Aid" is trying to reduce the amount of food being produced.

Bob Geldof recently warned that two-and-a-half million people will run out of food in the Western Sudan, and that the situation in Ethiopia is as bad as it was before Band Aid started. And just as the problem will not go away, neither it seems will the spectacularly futile attempts to deal with it. The latest event, which of course, must be sufficiently entertaining to satisfy the media's hunger for good pictures, is Sports Aid. which has had everyone running round in circles to raise money to send food to Africa while it is money and markets which stop the food from reaching the hungry in the first place.

In the course of such campaigns as Sports Aid — which try to deal with the problems of capitalism while leaving the cause intact — reformists always end up tying themselves in knots: the Save the Children Fund ended up at the end of last year asking that food should not be sent, as it would cause "economic chaos" in Sudan . . . it 's all very well peasants suffering but not the market, seems to be the suggestion. The Oxfam report on "Sudan: the roots of famine" gives the same shortsighted solutions with the ludicrous request to Western governments to prevent "the dumping of surpluses such as sugar on to world markets', when it is in fact the buying and selling system that can produce poverty amidst plenty. starvation alongside "surpluses”.

Now most people are aware of the contradictions between starving millions and the food mountains like the beef, cereals and skimmed milk in two hundred warehouses around Britain. But, so the argument goes, we must "do something now". The same was said for the famines in the Seventies in Biafra and elsewhere, and now, ten years on, the charities, the politicians and the bureaucrats are back where they started. Whether we shall be in the same position in another ten years' time — with a world of even greater productive capacity, and world hunger falling in the TV ratings depends on whether we start running society sanely, or just end up running on the spot.

Police accountability

The Labour Party has frequently offered "accountability" as a solution to the problem of abuses of power within the police force. Currently this is being down-played a bit as Labour tries to rival the Tories in its attempts to court the Police Federation (who are playing hard-to-get), woo the electorate (with promises of gifts of burglar alarms and window-locks) and convince us that they too are "a party of law and order ", in time for the next general election.

The limits of accountability as a strategy for curtailing the activities of the police were made plain recently when Douglas Hurd, the Home Secretary, announced that chief constables could over-ride the decision of their local police authorities and obtain stocks of plastic bullets, water cannon, and CS gas. At present police forces are, in theory, local in that they are answerable to a police authority which oversees spending. Police authorities have in some areas (especially Greater Manchester, West and South Yorkshire) been reluctant to allow the police to increase their para military hardware through the acquisition of these items. Chief Constables are now going to be able to side-step the authorities to which they are supposed to be accountable in order to get the equipment that they want and which the Home Secretary clearly wants them to have. So much for police accountability!

Whose house?

More and more workers have been persuaded to buy their own homes because of offers they can't refuse: no more council house building and existing council houses being sold to tenants at knock-down prices; building societies offering 100 per cent mortgages to just about anyone who wants one; and the lack of privately rented housing forcing people to "buy" whether they really want to or whether they can really afford it.

Owning your own home has long been sold to workers as a mark of status, a sign that they've made it to the ranks of the "middle classes". But those workers who bought that line when they "bought" their home are in for a nasty shock. The government is about to give them a reminder that they are workers after all with the same interests and problems as all workers under capitalism.

This blow to "middle class" pretensions comes from a proposal announced by Norman Fowler, Social Services secretary, that unemployed home-owners will lose their right to claim Supplementary Benefit to cover half their mortgage interest payments. These changes are likely to affect 90,000 claimants at any one time, forcing them to renegotiate mortgage repayments with their banks or building societies. This comes at a time when the numbers of people in arrears with their mortgages has increased rapidly (as have repossessions of houses by building societies because of non-payment of mortgages) as a result both of unemployment and the policy to force people through lack of choice to take out mortgages they can't really afford.

This change, if it is accepted, can only lead to more workers being evicted from the homes they thought they owned — a sharp reminder of how little workers really own under capitalism.

Postal code

An item in the Mail on Sunday on 1 June 1986 reveals that the Post Office is recruiting two stress counsellors to combat illness amongst harassed staff. Professor Cary Cooper of Manchester University Science and Technology Institute, who is helping to select the counsellors, believes improving the general well-being of the work force will help boost productivity and overall performance at work. He adds "When you overload people it has an adverse effect on production and leads to bad decisions and absence through sickness". What you might call putting capitalism's stamp on your health.

Pathfinders: Blackout in Sudan (2019)

The Pathfinders Column from the August 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blackout in Sudan

Last month’s BBC Panorama shock exposé of anti-semitism in the Labour Party created quite a stir, but also left a lot of people wondering why the BBC has not chosen to do an equivalent exposé of the rampant and well-documented islamophobia in the Tory Party. Balanced unbiased news reporting, in line with the BBC’s own charter? Corbynistas will be fuming about a stitch-up, and not without reason.

The BBC is probably more balanced when reporting overseas conflicts in which the UK government has no direct interest. BBC’s Africa Eye has provided some decent coverage of the Sudan uprising, including a fascinating video report which, in another kind of stitching, put together a patchwork of over 300 phone videos of the June 3 slaughter in Khartoum, when the military junta’s special forces opened fire on peaceful protesters (‘Sudan’s Livestream Massacre’, BBC News, 12 July ).

The report made the point that, while phones can’t stop bullets, the near-ubiquity of mobile phones means that the world has eyes everywhere, and no junta can keep its massacres a secret anymore. Not that public exposure will necessarily deter a ruthless regime, however in the globalised trading era it’s bad advertising which makes a country look weak and unstable, and will deter foreign investment.

If the military rulers in Sudan expected a massacre to clear the streets and stop the protests, they were right, but not for long. Within a fortnight the protests were back, and bigger than ever. The junta responded by shutting down the internet, forcing protest organisers to rely on text SMS or land-line telephone, a fiddly and expensive business which could reach only a fraction of its target audience. But while the blackout impeded the protesters, it was catastrophic for the Sudanese economy, costing hundreds of millions in lost trade. Was this nevertheless a pyrrhic victory for the junta, the BBC wondered later that month (‘Has an internet blackout killed Sudan’s revolution?’, BBC News, 21 June ). No, as it turned out. In July the military rulers climbed down and acceded to partial civilian rule. The point to take from this is that while modern communications technology is a wonderful force for democratisation, it can always be censored or shut down, and so should not be relied upon. But none of that matters if the courage and determination of workers is strong enough, as in Sudan.

This is your capitalist brain on drugs

Drug firm Pfizer has discovered that its own arthritis treatment drug Enbrel also seems to cut the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by up to 64 percent (New Scientist, 15 June, p7). Great, you might think. Over to Pfizer to start cranking out Enbrel by the container load.

Oh but wait, says Pfizer. Actually, our patent on this is due to expire soon, so we won’t be proceeding with this.

What, you say, you mean you’re not going to make any?

Pfizer shakes its head.

But a 64 percent risk reduction – are you kidding? That blows every other Alzheimer drug out of the water!

Sorry, says Pfizer, no can do. If we don’t make the profit, we don’t make the drug.

But surely you can get your patent extended, you insist. Old drug, new use, it’s been done before.

Yeah well, says Pfizer, we don’t really believe our own data anyway.

Alright, you argue, run proper clinical trials then.

Pfizer bites its lip. Thing is, trials cost, and we’ve all lost a packet on failed clinical trials before. All previous Alzheimer’s trials have failed, which is why all the major drug firms have closed their Alzheimer’s research units. Basically it’s a huge money sink.

Well, you ask in increasing desperation, can’t you get government funding to cover this?

Pfizer smiles. Yeah, good luck with that. Voters want low taxes more than happy granddads.

Well, can’t you release the patent and let another firm make the stuff then?

Pfizer looks shocked. But that wouldn’t be fair – it’s our drug!

Alzheimer’s affects 37 million people worldwide. But capitalism says no.

Why not make a cystic fibrosis drug instead? Drug firm Vertex charges £100,000 a year for the treatment Orkambi, which the NHS won’t pay for, so kids die (New Scientist, 15 June, p9). But because Vertex doesn’t have a valid patent in Argentina, a local firm is producing the drug at the bargain rate of £23,000 pa. Vertex is furious, of course, claiming that their sale price is a fair reflection of the billions they sank into R&D. Meanwhile the parents of kids with cystic fibrosis have been forced to create a ‘buyers club’ in order to buy wholesale and get the cost down further, a move clinicians describe as ‘a desperate act’.

Patents in capitalism are intended to reward and defend intellectual effort and financial investment. But the flip side is that patents also kill people either by setting unaffordable prices or stopping production at source. In socialism you might get the kudos for an invention, but you wouldn’t get a patent.

This is your capitalist brain on dregs

Two bumper harvests in Brazil have flooded the international market with so much coffee that the price farmers can get has plummeted to below $1 a pound (BBC News, 11 July ). Since coffee is a cash crop that farmers sell instead of growing food they could actually eat, when the price hits the floor farmers will turn to other cash crops or else subsistence. Add in the number of farmers also going bust or abandoning farming, and you’re looking at a massive scaling back of future coffee production. Enjoy that cappuccino while you may, because in a few years’ time you might only be able to afford re-boiled dregs. How can a good harvest turn into a disaster? That’s capitalist ‘logic’ for you.

Paddy Shannon

War on the Nile? (2014)

From the May 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Egypt’s now deposed president Mohamed Morsi said in June 2013 that ‘all options’ including military intervention were on the table if Ethiopia continued to develop dams on the Nile River, many dismissed it as posturing. But some experts claim Cairo is deadly serious about defending its historic water allotment, and if Ethiopia proceeds with construction of what is set to become Africa’s largest hydroelectric dam, a military strike is not out of the question.

Last May some Egyptian parliamentarians were calling for sending commandos or arming local insurgents to sabotage the dam project unless Ethiopia halts construction of its £2.9 billion ($4.2 bn) Grand Renaissance Dam in 2011. Former president Hosni Mubarak made plans for an air strike on any dam that Ethiopia built on the Nile, and in 2010 established an airbase in southeastern Sudan as a staging point for just such an operation, according to emails from Wikileaks. Sudan however now backs Ethiopia’s plans so that military option is no longer available.

‘It is a matter of life or death, a national security issue that can never be compromised on,’ says foreign ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty (www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-26679225).

Egypt is totally dependent on the Nile. Without it, there effectively is no Egypt. To Ethiopia, the new dam is a source of national pride and the hydro-electric power it will produce is essential to its economic future.

‘Ethiopia’s move was unprecedented. Never before has an upstream state unilaterally built a dam without downstream approval,’ Ayman Shabaana of the Cairo-based Institute for Africa Studies had told IPS news agency last June. ‘If other upstream countries follow suit, Egypt will have a serious water emergency on its hands’ (www.ipsnews.net/2014/03/egypt-prepares-force-nile-flow)

Egypt fears that the new dam, which will begin operation in 2017, will reduce the downstream flow of the Nile, on which 85 million Egyptians rely for almost all of their water needs. Citing a pair of colonial-era treaties, Egypt argues that it is entitled to no less than two-thirds of the Nile’s water and has veto power over any upstream water projects such as dams or irrigation networks. Accords drawn up by the British in 1929 and amended in 1959 divvied up the Nile’s waters between Egypt and Sudan without ever consulting the upstream states that were the source of those waters. The 1959 agreement awarded Egypt 55.5 billion cubic metres of the Nile’s 84 billion cubic metre average annual flow, while Sudan received 18.5 billion cubic metres. Another 10 billion cubic metres is lost to evaporation in Lake Nasser, which was created by Egypt’s Aswan High Dam in the 1970s, leaving barely a drop for the nine other states that share the Nile’s waters.

The desire for a more equitable distribution of Nile water rights resulted in the 2010 Entebbe Agreement, which replaces water quotas with a clause that permits all activities provided they do not ‘significantly’ impact the water security of other Nile Basin states. Five upstream countries – Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda – signed the accord. Burundi signed a year later. Egypt rejected the new treaty outright. Cairo now finds itself in the uncomfortable position of watching its mastery over the Nile’s waters slip through its fingers.

While the treaty’s water allocations appear gravely unfair to upstream Nile states, analysts point out that unlike the mountainous equatorial countries, which have alternative sources of water, the desert countries of Egypt and Sudan rely almost entirely on the Nile for their water needs. But upstream African states have their own growing populations to feed, and the thought of tapping the Nile for their agriculture or drinking water needs is all too tempting.

As we said in an earlier article: ‘Scarcity of any resource that is vital for the production of profits could be, and has been, seen by states as a reason to go to war’ (Socialist Standard, December 2012). The waters of the Nile may well be the cause of another conflict.

ALJO

Spoiling Egyptians: British Capitalism and Egyptian Nationalism. (1929)

Book Review from the March 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

British Imperialism in Egypt. By Elinor Burns.
 No. 5, Colonial Series. Published by the Labour Research Department. 72 pp. Price 6d.

This book is a very succinct and useful account of British control in Egypt from about 1850 to the present day.

From 1517 to 1914, Egypt was nominally under Turkish rule, and was required to pay an annual tribute, fixed in 1873 at £675,000, but during the 19th century a new overlord entered Egypt—the foreign financier—who demanded tribute on an immensely larger and ever-increasing scale.

Foreign capital was given its first opportunity by the construction of the Suez Canal during the reign of the Khedive Ismail, who was the first Egyptian ruler to foresee prospects of wealth and power by developing the country’s resources on West European lines. The first twelve years of Ismail’s reign call to mind the famous tribute to the “ bourgeoisie ” in the Communist Manifesto for, during this period, the following, among many other works, were completed: The construction of the Suez Canal and 8,400 miles of irrigation canals; over 900 miles of railways and 5,000 miles of telegraph ; the building of 430 bridges and numerous houses in Cairo; the Alexandria harbour and the Suez Docks; the construction of roads, including a special road to the Pyramids; and the completion of 15 lighthouses and 64 sugar mills. Irrigation increased the area of arable land from four million to nearly five-and-a-half million acres. Most of these works were carried out by British capitalists who lent the money at immense interest and obtained enormous profits on their contracts. In a short space of time these capitalists were owed by the Egyptian State more than a half of the money lent, and the bulk of revenue was required for debt redemption. More and more loans were contracted to pay off other loans, and the finances of the country became in such a hopeless condition that excuse was afforded for the British Government to “step in” in the interest of its “nationals”—the bondholders and financiers. The Khedive in 1875 was compelled by the creditors to sell his shares in the Suez Canal to the British Government for £4,000,000, and a financial mission was sent to Egypt “to assist in remedying the confusion.’’ Following this decision, Goschen, the representative of the bondholders, and the financial mission, forced upon the Khedive a scheme which included the appointment of two Controllers-General (one British, one French), and the consolidation of the debt at 7 per cent. interest (except on the loans of Goschen’s firm on which the old rates of 10 and 12 per cent. were to be paid!) Ruthless pressure was put upon the peasants to keep the State finances solvent. Crops were forestalled, and customs dues and railway rates were increased. Despite the occurrence of a cattle plague and a failure of crops, which led to a holocaust of deaths from starvation and disease, the British Government would not allow even postponement of interest payments. Repercussions followed elsewhere; salaries of soldiers and Civil Servants were unpaid and their numbers seriously reduced. The Egyptian Finance Minister who protested against foreign control, was “put out of the way.” At last, in 1879, a revolt in the Army and widespread discontent, compelled the Khedive to dismiss the foreign ministers and to institute, through an elected assembly of Sheiks and others, a native government. This gave birth to a National Party, whose slogan was “Egypt for the Egyptians.”

However, High Finance was not prepared to take this blow “lying down.” The British Government induced the Sultan of Turkey to depose the Khedive Ismail and to appoint Tewfik, a tool of the foreign interests, as his successor. A few weeks later the foreign Controllers General were re-installed in office, and agitation for Egyptian Independence received a further stimulus.

The Army, now the only native institution within the State machine, was the leading force in this movement, and an officer named Arabi, a former “ranker” of peasant origin, became its storm centre. The movement received support also from |he landlords, who objected to foreign exploitation of Egypt’s new resources, and the peasants, who were being bled white by taxes for debt service. A programme was drawn up, which included the dismissal of all ministers, the granting of a constitution, and an increase in the strength of the Army. To stifle the agitation, the Khedive ordered Arabi and his regiment to the provinces, but Arabi refused to go, and instead marched his troops to the Palace and compelled the Khedive to appoint a new Anti-Imperialist Ministry.

Shortly after the events recorded above a massacre of Christians by a hired band of Bedouins took place at Alexandria. Whether the massacre was instigated by the British or the Turks is obscure, but the effect was harmful from a British point of view, for the European residents demanded the recognition of Arabi and the setting up of a joint conference of the six Powers having interests in Egypt—France, England, Italy, Germany, Austria and Russia.

The conference met at Constantinople in June, 1882, and a protocol was signed on behalf of the respective governments renouncing exclusive territorial and commercial privileges, and agreeing that none of the Powers should take isolated action in Egypt except in case of special emergency. As exclusive British control was impossible under this arrangement, it was imperative that a “special emergency," should arise and a pretext was soon found to justify a British occupation of Egypt. The repairing of some forts at Alexandria by the Egyptians was seized upon by the British Government as an excuse to bombard Alexandria by warships on July 11th, 1882, troops were landed to “restore order" on the Nile, and Arabi and his followers, who showed resistance, were finally routed at Tel-el-Kebir. Thus the British occupation became an accomplished fact, and the other Powers were not at the time in a position to assert their own “rights" under the protocol. The dual control was abolished, and the Egyptian constitution and Assembly were replaced by councils whose powers were merely advisory. Egypt for the next 25 years was treated to the “humane" administration of the British Consul-General, Sir Evelyn Baring, a London financier, who was afterwards made Lord Cromer for “services rendered."

The Baring regime introduced a new era of economic development. It was seen that the continued impoverishment of the peasants would lead to loss of revenue through land going out of cultivation. Accordingly the production of cotton on a greater scale for export was encouraged. This, in turn, created a demand for products of British heavy industry, for vast irrigation works and light railways, and, strangely enough, for foodstuffs, which were not now a paying proposition for the Egyptian peasant. In 1907 the exports of cotton were worth £30,000,000 as against £8,000,000 in 1892; and in 1908 foodstuffs to the value of £5,000,000 were imported, though a few years previously Egypt was a self-supporting country. It would be impossible in this article to trace the rapid industrialisation of Egypt to the present day, but some idea may be obtained from the estimate of the amount of British capital invested in Egypt, which is stated in this book to be about £200,000,000, on which the sum taken by British capitalists in interest and profits is given as £20,000,000.

Under the Baring administration the “key” positions in the Civil Service, Local Administration and the Army were held by Britishers, but as time went on it was found necessary to placate the class of rising Egyptian capitalists and large landowners which capitalist development had brought into being, and concessions had to be made continually to these sections. Saad Zaghlul Pasha, for example, was made Minister of Public Instruction in 1906. Nevertheless, control of the Egyptian State machine has never been relaxed by the British capitalist interests, and a persistent struggle between the Egyptian native capitalists and the British capitalists has been going on up to the present day. The political history of Egypt since 1906 has been a record of demonstrations, strikes, assassinations, riots and armed revolts on the one hand and of bloody repression, judicial atrocities, bombings, imprisonments, martial law, deportations; interspersed with attempts at compromise, on the other. Prior to the European War, Mustapha Kernel had been largely instrumental in organising the students, and by street demonstrations and the publication of newspapers, which had large circulations, the question of Egyptian "independence” was kept to the fore. By 1914 the movement had become so menacing that in November of that year Egypt was put under martial law. A rigorous press censorship was instituted; in December a British Protectorate was declared, and the pro-Turkish Khedive Abbas was deposed in favour of Hussein, who was given the title of Sultan. Although the British Government declared publicly that Egyptians would not be required for war service, yet within a year tens of thousands of peasants and workers were “rounded up" and compelled to join the Labour Corps and the Camel Transport Corps. The total number computed to have been enlisted in this manner in the various forces was about 1,000,000. Such measures as these induced violent hatred of British rule and popular support of the Nationalist movement. Further, the hypocritical talk in Allied journals about “self-determination” and the rights of “small nationalities” was seized upon by the Nationalists as imflammable propaganda and in order to harass the Government. Soon after the Armistice an Egyptian delegation (Wafd) was formed under Zaghlul Pasha to proceed to London in order to discuss the question of Egyptian “independence” with the British Government, but passports were refused and Zaghlul and three members of the Wafd were subsequently arrested and deported to Malta on March 8th, 1919. Open revolt followed this act, but was crushed with barbarous severity by brand, bomb and bullet. Attempts to break up the Wafd organisation failed, and as the country continued to be in a state of unrest and turmoil, the British Government at last conceded a constitution to the Egyptians. The first elections (January, 1924) gave an overwhelming majority to the Zaghlulists.

In recent years the dominating question at issue between the Egyptian native capitalists and the British Government is the control of the Sudan. This huge area of over a million square miles lying south of Egypt, bordering Uganda on the south and Abyssinia on the east, was annexed by the British Government in 1898. Since that date a similar story of capitalistic penetration to that of Egypt has to be recorded. Now Egypt is entirely dependent upon the Nile, and the Sudan controls the Upper Nile. A hostile power in the Sudan, therefore, could easily render Egypt impotent by changing the course of the Nile. Further, the sheep and cattle of the Sudan supply Egypt with much of its food, and the development of cotton production must inevitably react on Egyptian conditions. In addition, future Egyptian industrial progress is dependent upon electricity supplied from Sudanese water power, for Egypt has no coal, and poor oil resources. It will be seen, therefore, that, economically, Egypt and the Sudan are inseparable, and Egyptian capitalist interests are endangered by British control of the Sudan. But the Sudan is of equal importance to British capitalist interests apart from internal economic exploitation, for its coastline along the Red Sea forms an important link in Empire communication.

When Zaghlul took office in 1924 he thought that the British Labour Government, then in office, would help the movement for Egyptian Independence, but he was soon to learn that lip opposition to imperialist principles did not imply action along those lines. MacDonald, in fact, told the British High Commissioner in Egypt in a despatch that they (the British Government) “regard their responsibilities as a trust for the Sudan people; there can be no question of their abandoning the Sudan until their work is done”; and in the interview with Zaghlul in London he was very sympathetic with the “sufferings ” of the holders of the Turkish Government’s bonds, payment on which had been stopped since the War by the Turkish Government. The first British Labour Government also showed its “Labour” principles by condoning domestic slavery in the Sudan. So much for Labour professions!

But if the British Labour Government proved an “eye-opener” to the Egyptian Nationalists, the actions of the latter when in power proved their utter worthlessness so far as the peasants and workers in Egypt were concerned. The whole of the legislation put through by the Zaghlul ministry was favourable to the Egyptian capitalists, and one of its first actions was the replacement of the Militant Trade Unions, which had grown up after the 1919 rising, by organisations controlled by the Wafd, whose members held all the important positions. Strikes were frequent, but these were suppressed by the usual capitalist methods of imprisonment and deportation. It is deserving of notice that at the present time more than one-half of the persons engaged in agriculture are wage workers, and tobacco, silk, railway, constructional and transport workers are organised in Trade Unions.

Recent events in Egypt will doubtless be familiar to our readers. The struggle between the native and British capitalist interests becomes ever more acute. “Crisis” has succeeded “crisis,” and on July 19th, 1928, the Egyptian Parliament was suspended for three years and a complete dictatorship has been established, which has prohibited meetings of the Wafd, and exercises a rigid censorship over their press.

Apart from some little glorification of  Communist “leaders," the book is free from the expression of personal opinions. There is much statistical data, and the diction is clear and devoid of literary “frillings.” It concludes with the following passage:—

  It is evident that no solution of the Egyptian problem has been reached. For imperialism there can be no solution, because the satisfaction of its own needs inevitably fosters the growth of native capitalism, brings into being the working class, robs the Egyptian peasantry of the very means of existence, and thus strengthens the forces which are drawn into the anti-imperialist struggle.

If, after their previous experiences, the Egyptian workers and peasants are again drawn into this struggle between two sections of their exploiters, they will have themselves to blame, and it should be clear that the workers here have nothing to gain by lending their support to capitalist national movements in any land.

W. J.