Notes by the Way: A Spot of Bother for the Dean of Canterbury (1949)

The Notes by the Way Column from the August 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Spot of Bother for the Dean of Canterbury

In that wrongly named book “The Socialist Sixth of the World” the Dean of Canterbury endeavoured to show that all is for the best in state capitalist Russia. On page 212 of the 1944 issue (Gollancz edition) the Dean had something to say about the leaping production of “Socialist” tobacco and cigarettes.

“Tobacco is in demand in Russia as in other lands. The supply was short so long as tobacco was imported. Today the Soviet Union produces its own tobacco, the collective farms of Abkazia grow leaf equal to the finest Turkish brands, and Soviet cigars, an innovation, rapidly find favour. Variety of brands is large and increases. Professor Hanson remarked, as we stood in a tobacco shop in the Crimea, whereas two years previously he had counted a dozen varieties, today he observed a dozen times as many in that one shop alone. In 1937 the Soviet factories turned out 89,000 million cigarettes. The Soviet Union stands second in the world amongst tobacco-producing lands.”

Now read this from the News-Chronicle (24/6/49):

“The capitalist habit of smoking must be shunned by young Russians, says Dr. A. Kuznetsov in a Soviet youth magazine.

“Russian youths, he complains, tend to ‘use nicotine’ more, though they have the brightest of futures—unlike the children of capitalist countries ‘who are led to smoke by hunger, need and despair.’

” ‘In capitalist countries where the entire pattern of life drives a man to narcotics the urge for smoking can be understood,’ says Dr. Kuznetsov. But Russians do not need it. Youth must be instructed in the harmfulness of tobacco.”

Of course we do not know what is the explanation of the Doctor’s attack on smoking by Russians. Maybe the Russian Government merely wants to cut down smoking at home in order to export the tobacco; or perhaps Kuznetsov is only giving his own view and may shortly “confess” that he is a fascist-capitalist propagandist. Until the matter is straightened out the Dean will be wondering whether he ought to go on singing the praises of Russian tobacco or whether he should just cut the passage out of his next edition.

* * *

How much Unemployment is necessary to Capitalism?

An argument is going on about the amount of unemployment necessary to compel the workers to work harder. The Labour Government’s view was and presumably still is that the present condition with relatively little unemployment gives maximum production. Nevertheless all the Ministers keep on making speeches about the necessity of getting more production.

The Economist representing the tough capitalist viewpoint has long argued that unless there is a considerable amount of unemployment the workers won’t put their backs into it. In the issue for 4th June, 1949, the Economist repeated this: “As the Economist has said more than once in the past, full employment will not work without a million unemployed.”

The Economist returned to the subject in the issue of 9th July, 1949. The Economist urged the Labour Government to recognise and act on the overriding necessity of cheaper production, and said that if the Labour Government was alive to the urgency of the problem “it would insist on payment by results in every industry where a scheme could possibly be introduced. And if there were no other way of persuading the unions and their members to give value for money, it would welcome the therapeutic effect of a moderate degree of unemployment.”

The same article disclosed another interesting aspect of the capitalist attitude to the Labour Government— they think the Labour Party can put the screw on with less trouble than could a Conservative government:

“One must hope that the Labour Party will screw up its courage to undertake something of this order—for if anybody else has to do it, there is risk of serious civil commotion.”

* * *

The Capitalist Cycle : War—Trade War—War.

“Washington, Thursday.—Mr. Willard Thorp, Assistant Secretary of State, said today: ‘ Rivalries and conflicts are again beginning to appear in the world trade picture.

” ‘Some nations and interests are seeking to take over particular markets and exclude competitors.

” ‘The post-war honeymoon in international economic relations is drawing to a close.

” ‘The U.S. has made efforts to put Germany and Japan on their feet again. But those efforts conflict with the hopes of people who wish to prevent the return of those countries into the foreign trade field.’:—Express News Service.” (Daily Express, 26/6/49.)

* * *

The Workers and Nationalisation.

When the advocates of Railway Nationalisation first started their organised propaganda the chief emphasis was laid on the argument that Nationalisation would eliminate waste and overlapping, lead to economies and reduced staffs and thus provide efficient and cheaper transport. As this was not much of an inducement to railway workers propaganda turned more towards the alleged benefits nationalisation would bring to the workers.

Now that the railways are nationalised and are running at a loss the demand has gone forth for economies so that the losses can be wiped out and a profit realised. One of the Labour M.P’s, who supports railway nationalisation, Mr. Ernest Davies (Enfield), wrote to the Times (8/7/49) agreeing with another correspondent who had said that “the most hopeful source of substantial and lasting economies in the working of British Railways lies in a reduction of the total wage and salaries bill,” and that if the average wage rate is to be maintained, man-power must be reduced.

Where Mr. Davies differs from the other correspondent. Dr. Gilbert Walker, is that he does not think it possible to cut labour costs now, it must wait until the Transport Commission has complete control of the whole of the rail and road transport system of the country.

We can leave those two disputants to argue about the best way of running capitalism but the railwaymen may well ask what they have got or will get out of nationalisation.

As a footnote we may add the following:

“Tokio, Tuesday.—The Japanese State Railways today began distributing dismissal notices to another 63,000 railway workers.” (Daily Mail,13/7/49.)

* * *

Cripps on the Standard of Living.

“The Chancellor declared that for the greatest proportion of the population we had today a better standard of living than ever before. It was fantastic to say that they were worse off.” (Daily Herald, 19/5/49, report of Cripps’ speech in House of Commons.)

* * *

Drastic Strike Powers used by Australian Labour Government.

The Australian Labour Party, administering capitalism in Australia, has got into the same kind of mess as its companion party in Britain. The coal miners having made claims for shorter hours and higher pay to the Arbitration Tribunal decided to go on strike without waiting for the award. This the Government holds to be illegal and amidst a familiar denunciation of Communist agitators it took legal proceedings to freeze the funds of the Miners’ Federation.

The following is from the Times (15/7/49):

“From our correspondent, Sydney, July 14th.— Four hundred police, including more than 200 from Sydney, are tonight spread out over the coalfields as a protective force for tomorrow, when an attempt is likely to be made to move large stocks of coal standing in trucks on the coalfields to help maintain Sydney’s lean electricity and gas ration.

“There are now six union leaders in prison, including William Parkinson, acting general president of the Miners’ Federation, and Morris Michael Fitzgibbon, secretary-treasurer of the southern miners’ district, who were both sentenced today by-Judge Foster to 12 months’ imprisonment with light labour for contempt of court by failing to produce £A4,200 withdrawn from the bank and intended to aid the strikers. Parkinson had been acting president for only a day having been chosen when the president, Idris Williams, was sent to prison.”

One Feature of the Australian Strike Deserves Notice. 

Here the Government and the Press denounce strikes because they are “unofficial.” The Australian strike is officially conducted by the Union—but it is condemned just the same.

* * *

Food Production—What Could be Done.

The following news item from Rome is taken from a Report submitted to member governments by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation:

“World food production could be almost doubled in ‘a relatively short time’ by the use of modern technology.

“This estimate is made in a report of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation issued here today.

“Unexplored stretches of sea await the application of modern fishery methods to unlock new food resources, it said.

“World livestock could be stepped up by at least 25 per cent, in ten years through the general application of modern breeding methods.” (News Chronicle, 13/7/49.)

Edgar Hardcastle 

Portrait of a Monopoly: The British Match Industry (1953)

From the July 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The arrangements we have described above form a complete and integrated monopoly . . . and the system as a whole operates, and is likely to operate, against the public interest as respects the supply both of matches and of match-making machinery.”

In these forthright terms the Monopolies Commission sums up its report on the British match industry, the sixth and latest of its investigations into restrictive practices in the United Kingdom.

The information now made public by the Commission throws revealing light on the way monopolies develop and operate, and on how they are maintained. It shows also what profitable ventures they can be for those capitalists able to form them and keep them going successfully. Drawing on the Commission's report, and using it to illustrate the practices common to all monopolies, let us examine the monopoly that has grown up inside the British match industry.

The Foundations of Monopoly

The first objective of any company seeking to carve out a monopoly must be to obtain control over the production and distribution of the particular commodity it is interested in. It must make itself, for all practical purposes, the only firm in the industry. In the British match industry, one company has succeeded in doing this.

This company is the British Match Corporation, otherwise known as B.M.C. Formed in 1927 as a holding company from the amalgamation of Bryant and May (and its subsidiaries) with Masters. Ltd., it is today responsible for almost the whole of the British home output of matches—about two-thirds of total consumption.

Linked with B.M.C. is another monopoly—the Swedish Match Company. Older readers may remember it in connection with the activities of Ivar Kreuger, the Swedish millionaire—speculator. It is this combine, with ramifications throughout the world, that provides the. remainder of the matches required in the U.K. These imports, it should be noted, are in turn controlled and distributed in this country by B.M.C. Taking home production and imports together, it is therefore obvious that B.M.C. is in almost complete control of the British market; for the mathematically-minded, the exact proportion is 92 per cent. These figures show clearly that the essential foundation of a monopoly—a stranglehold on output and distribution—has been most successfully obtained by B.M.C.

Also to be noted is the fact that Swedish Match, with 30 per cent. of the Ordinary shares in is actually its largest single shareholder. With this voting power behind it, it can of course wield considerable influence should the need ever arise.

Preserving a Monopoly

It is difficult enough to succeed in establishing a monopoly: it is even more difficult to maintain it and keep it thriving.

First and foremost, there must always be a careful watch for possible rivals. These must be rooted out quickly and dealt with ruthlessly. The record shows B.M.C. and Swedish Match to have been adept at this and it is most interesting to see how both partners have played their part in dealing with the threats of competition that have arisen from time to time.

On the home front, B.M.C. has made use of two methods, both very simple and both very effective. The first has been to undersell its competitors by offering cheaper brands of imported matches at reduced prices in selected areas whilst keeping the general level of its prices unchanged. In this way it has succeeded in keeping down competition at very little cost to itself. The second and perhaps even better method has been to charge its competitors high prices for essential raw materials, of which it again happens to be the sole controller. On this particular point the Commission found that B.M.C. was charging its competitors 77 per cent. more for certain chemicals than its own subsidiaries.

The part played by Swedish Match has been just as effective, by virtue of the fact that in its turn it has a monopoly over the machinery used in match-making. This has been more than enough to keep potential large-scale competition in check, as the following will show.

In its report the Commission mentions that two attempts have been made by other firms to start manufacturing matches on a large scale. The first of these was the Co-operative Wholesale Society, which in 1932 thought of setting up its own factory. In the subsequent negotiations in which Bryant and May became involved, the Society was actually offered some shares and Debenture stock in B.M.C. This offer was not taken up, and in 1936 the Society came to a definite decision to begin the manufacture of matches on its own account. Its efforts in this direction were completely unsuccessful as it found itself unable to obtain the necessary machinery. In 1938 it approached Bryant and May for permission to use certain machinery the rights in which, it understood, were held by that firm. The reply, which can hardly have been unexpected, was: “we hardly think you can expect us to assist you to obtain machinery which is destined to replace some, at least, of the goods we have hitherto supplied to the Societies.” Instead they proposed a deal between the Society and one of their subsidiaries, whereby profits would be divided between the two. This proposal was rejected by the Society, and it made a further attempt to get the necessary machinery. It was again unsuccessful.

Yet another concern tried for five years prior to 1934 to start manufacture on a commercial scale, again without success. In this year a most remarkable letter was sent to B.M.C. from the President of the Diamond Match Company of America (he was also a director of B.M.C. and of Bryant and May) reporting that he had arranged for some “friends” to employ an American technical expert who happened to be already under contract to this concern. The agreement reached with this expert included an understanding that he would “tactfully and earnestly work to discourage” the concern. His “consideration” for this agreement was $600 per month, to which Diamond had agreed to contribute one third, and the letter asked B.M.C. to make a contribution. This letter is so revealing of what goes on behind the scenes where monopolies are concerned that it is worth reproducing in full:—

"I have arranged to have friends employ Mr. . . . . on some experimental work that has nothing: whatever to do with the British Match Industry and will not affect to the slightest degree any of the operations abroad in which you are interested. My friends have had to reach a definite understanding and make a confidential agreement with [Mr. . . .]. which under no condition must be given publicity either here or in Britain. They have obligated themselves to pay him S600.00 per month. It is understood that [Mr.  . . .] may be called from the United States to work for . . . Ltd. [an English company]), and if he is called to go to England to do work for these people with whom he has a prior contract, he will not be paid by my friends. It has also been agreed, however, that he will tactfully and earnestly work to discourage . . . Ltd., that he will do nothing to get out of his contract with [. . . Ltd.] which would encourage them to hire some other expert or have machines made for them elsewhere. If he succeeds in discouraging [. . . Ltd.] and in getting out of his obligation to these people, then he will work exclusively for my friends for a period of three years and during this period of time will not do any outside work for any other interest whatsoever. [Mr.  . . .] has told my friends that he personally is tired of the English company, who have been continuously deceiving him, putting him off, and have been unable to date to get responsible people on your side to go forward with matters as promised and outlined. [Mr.  . . .] thinks that in the near future that he will be able to drop all connections with [. . . Ltd.] and that [ . . . Ltd.] will cease to exist as a living match producing possibility.

“In confidence, permit me to say that of this S600.00 my Company will contribute one-third of this monthly amount just so long as [Mr. . . . ] does no work whatsoever for [ . . . Ltd.] or any company interested in match making in Britain or Canada. Do you care to make any contribution in this matter?"—Report, page 120.

The result of this appeal was that B.M.C. also agreed to make a contribution of one-third. It continued making regular monthly payments until May, 1943, by which time, presumably, no further trouble was to be expected from the concern in question.

The Rewards of Monopoly

Finally we come to consider the rewards of monopoly. They are indeed substantial and worth all the effort put in to obtain them. On the manufacturing side, for example, Bryant and May's profit before the war averaged 35 per cent. annually, and that of its main subsidiary (Moreland) 45 per cent. The average profit of Masters was about 26 per cent. In 1950, according to the Commission's calculations, Bryant and May's profit was 16 per cent., Moreland's 34 per cent., and Masters' 30 per cent., the lower figures reflecting the operation of Government price control. On the import side, where distribution only is involved, pre-war profits averaged 10 per cent. dropping to 4½ per cent, in 1950.

The Commission’s strictures on B.M.C's costs and profits were most severe:

"The profit on sales of all three B.M.C. manufactures whose costs were examined was very high before the introduction of statutory price control, and the profit of the two lower cost manufacturers was still very high, having regard to the relative slight trading risk. B.M.C. has told us that it is its policy to make as much profit as it can, and that in its view competition insures that the prices charged are fair. Since it is clear that B.M.C. has taken all possible steps to eliminate competition, with marked success, and there is, in our opinion, virtually no competition in this trade, this safeguard is illusory, and it is not surprising that profits have been high.

“We conclude that there is scope for the reduction of both costs and profits of B.M.C. and that it is unlikely that either would have remained as high as they have if there had been any effective competition.”

The Commission’s Remedy

The remedy put forward by the Commission is, not unexpectedly, a dose of State intervention. Some of its members, however, disagree on the strength of the dose to be administered. Three of them, who state their views in a minority report, are all for a more “drastic” remedy than that prescribed by the other members of the Commission. This, they suggest, should take the form of a Government buying agency, armed with exclusive powers to buy all matches, whether home-produced or imported. In effect, they seek to oppose a monopoly seller with a monopoly buyer.

The majority of the Commission, however, are not impressed by this “drastic remedy.” In their opinion, it would lead to still greater rigidity in the trade and might not result in cheaper matches anyway. This latter Observation is certainly borne out by the results of State interference so far, and should be particularly noted by Labourites who so airily assume that State-control reduces prices. The majority’s preference is for a more thorough system of price-control on the part of the Government. This, they themselves admit, is only a partial remedy, and they agree that it would leave the present market-sharing arrangements between B.M.C. and Swedish match untouched.

Nobody can be very impressed with either of these remedies, not even the most ardent supporter of capitalism judging all issues by the direct and immediate effect they have on his pocket.

The Real Remedy

The Commission’s report is now with the Government, and it will be interesting to see what the Tory defenders of private enterprise and free competition finally decide to do with it. As for the Labour Party, hard up for policy and feeling rather out of things, they will probably do their best to blow it up to be something of much greater importance than it actually is.

For our part, we would make just one point. Monopoly is nothing new to capitalism; indeed it is inseparable from it. It is the logical outcome of the drive for profit, and experience has shown all over the capitalist world that as fast as one monopoly has been suppressed, another springs up elsewhere. The history of “trust-busting” in the United States is a perfect example of this. The remedy of bringing in the State does not put an end to monopoly; all it does is to replace private monopoly by the monopoly of the State. Whatever the advantages a State monopoly may have for the capitalist class, it is nothing for the working-class to get excited about. They should have had enough experience of the workings of State control by now to realise this.

Monopolies will disappear only when capitalism disappears. It is not monopoly, but capitalism, that is the issue. Socialism, the real remedy, will do away with both. When, as seems likely before long, the Labour and Conservative Parties create yet another storm in a teacup over what is to be done with the British match industry, workers should remember this.

Stan Hampson

Editorial: Tobacco workers' dilemma (1953)

Editorial from the July 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the annual conference of the Tobacco Workers' Union, held in London in June, the delegates were discussing unemployment which has recently increased in the industry. The president of the Union, Mr. D. G. Bowry, drew attention to a problem affecting tobacco workers.

“In a number of our factories we have had to endure short time. We have seen the elimination of certain smaller manufacturers with certain dismissals of staff. Yet we are told that if we are to survive we must produce more. It seems to me that we in our industry are tossing up with a double-headed penny. If we produce more we are faced with redundancy, and if we produce less we are faced with the same medicine.”—(Manchester Guardian, 12th June, 1953.)

The point was neatly put; but Mr. Bowry did not state the problem fully and did not offer a solution.

Stating the problem fully he would have included all industries everywhere, not merely the tobacco industry in this country. He would not have called the factories “ours,” for in no country do the factories belong to the workers or to the community as a whole; in all countries all industries, including those run on nationalised capitalist lines, are run for profit not solely for use.

Consequently it is all workers, in all countries, who are tossing up with the double-headed penny. If they produce too little they get the sack; if they produce too much they work some of their number out of their jobs. And if they follow a happy mean their fate is just the same whenever an industry (or all industries) suffers from one of capitalism's chaotic phases of “overproduction” in relation to the market as did textiles last year. Nowhere at all are the workers free from poverty and safe against insecurity.

This is not what the workers are told. All governments and employers, and many labour leaders, tell the workers that if they produce more they will be better off and will be safeguarding themselves against unemployment.

As it happened, a day or two after the Tobacco Workers’ conference the Sunday Express (14 June) published an article by Dr. Ludwig Erhard, Minister for Economic Affairs in the West German government. In it Dr. Erhard offered to Britain and the British workers the advice he offers to the workers in Germany. Recently, “travelling in his fast Mercedes car he went round the Ruhr urging more steel production," and he would tell the British workers:—

“ It is no use for a working man to say, ‘I’m safe whether I work hard or not.’ It is no use saying: 'I won’t go without food even if I’m not worth a job ’ . . . But I would also add this: If you work hard you should eat well. If you eat well, you will work.”

Dr. Erhard thinks that British industry has nothing to fear from German competition as “there is room in the world for both British and German exports." He notes just one difference between Britain and Germany: “ our men work harder and faster.”

But one thing Dr. Erhard forgot to mention is that in West Germany there were at the end of March 1,392,870 registered unemployed!

So far what we have said could only strengthen Mr. Bowry in his conviction that we live in a hard, cruel world, for we have not yet attended to the remark he made at the end of his speech, that he would be “quite happy to hear the solution to this dilemma."

We are quite happy to supply the solution though surprised that among those tobacco workers there was nobody able to do so on the spot.

The dilemma glimpsed by Mr. Bowry is just an aspect, an inevitable one, of capitalism. And the only cure for capitalism is Socialism.

If, as so often happens, the tobacco workers hear the solution and then dismiss it from their minds on the ground that Socialism calls for a radical change of thought and action and is therefore difficult to grasp and endorse, they should remember that that difficulty will be as nothing compared with the miseries of poverty, unemployment and war they will undoubtedly suffer if they go on hoping that social reforms and Labour Governments and nationalised capitalism will get them out of the mess they are in.

These Foolish Things: The system dictates (1996)

The Scavenger column from the June 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

The system dictates

[PilkingtonJ is one of the few UK companies to have accepted that works councils, the elected consultative bodies beloved of the European Union, aree a good way to build consensus on key strategic issues. When it comes to sacking people, however, Pilkington found that the rules governing the release of price-sensitive information to the stock exchange, meant that the first that Pilkington’s workforce knew of this particular strategic decision [to axe 1,900 jobs] was on the radio rather than through any consultative mechanism. Guardian, 28 March.

Are jobs bad for prosperity?

Another healthy rise in American jobs yesterday sent the Treasury bond market into a bout of heavy selling again and appeared to rule out any further cuts in the US interest rates in the short term. The economy created 140,000 jobs in the non-farm sector in March, many more than Wall Street economists had been expecting, this followed a rise of 624,000 jobs in February', revised from last month’s initial estimate of 705,000, which had sent the Dow Jones industrial average into a 171-point plunge and wiped three full points off bond prices. Times, 6 April.

Smoking, poverty and profits

BAT unveiled record pre-tax profits of $2.4 billion for 1994, fuelled by the sales of 670 billion cigarettes worldwide . . . Among the countries where BAT cigarette sales have started to increase are: Poland, Romania, Russia, Uzbekistan, Hungary and Vietnam. Guardian, 7 March.

Capitalism’s iron fist

The International Monetary Fund, the Treasurers of world capitalism, has prescribed even more grinding poverty for the world’s working class. Its recently published World Economic Outlook stated that there would need to be further cuts in spending on health and pension benefits by the governments of industrialised nations in order to reduce the high interest rates which damage the profitability of capital. Tax increases, the report said, would not solve the problem because that would hit capitalists.

Telling figures

Car-makers spent a record £515 million on advertising last year. With 1,945,366 sold in Britain, that made the average spend per new car £265 . . . More than half [the cars] went to fleets, say industry sources, so the cost for every private sale was an incredible £1,800-plus. Financial Mail on Sunday. 14 April.

Both couples remain friends

Carlo Giambrone was “gobsmacked” [at being on the same divorce list as the Yorks). The unemployed mechanic arrived at court No. 1 in Somerset House yesterday in a bomber jacket and jeans to tell the judge he could not afford to pay the costs awarded him after his divorce . . . “I have my kids every' weekend. I shall carry on giving my wife what support I can, though at the moment I’m only getting £74 benefit every two weeks . . ." Few observers believe that the £2 million settlement, £500,000 of which has been set aside for the Duchess, will be sufficient to keep her in the lavish lifestyle she has become accustomed to. Guardian, 18 April.

The Scavenger

Mr Bryan and the Trusts. (1906)

From the November 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

When, at. the end of August, Mr. Bryan, the Democratic candidate for the Presidency of the United States, returned from his tour of the world, he made a remarkable speech that should have been commented on in these columns before. He stated that “Landlordism was the curse of Europe, but it was an innocent institution compared with the trust system carried to its logical conclusion. . . . He hoped the trusts would be exterminated root and branch. . . He declared that the time was ripe for the overthrow of plutocracy, which, he asserted, was already sapping the strength of the nation, vulgarising social life, and making a mockery of morals.” But the most remarkable aspect of the matter is what is described by the Tribune as a “remarkably effective method of dealing with the monopolist trust.” The method as explained in the same organ is “that where a trust has achieved an internal monopoly in production the tariff wall should be broken down so as to admit of foreign competition. Free trade in trust articles is an adroit, a politic, and a just proposal. A capitalistic society is tolerable only when free competition protects the public interests. . . . When once the trust system has been formed, State ownership is indeed the only tolerable alternative to competition. Mr. Bryan’s scheme is ingenious and economically sound. Its failure would mean, we imagine, the growth of some third party, with a definitely socialistic aim.”

The third party has already grown in anticipation of the failure of any scheme of the nature of Mr. Bryan’s. I wonder if the writer of the above quoted article has forgotten the Tobacco War, or whether he learned the lesson that had to teach ? The entry into British markets of the products of the American Tobacco Trust had its first effect in bringing British tobacco manufacturers together into the Imperial Tobacco Company. The two trusts did not compete long—they combined; and today the Imperial Tobacco Company and the American Tobacco Trust are a united body. May we not expect the same thing to happen in America. The only foreign competition the trust could feel would be that of an organisation sufficiently strong to bear the disadvantages of the extra cost of transit involved. It would have to be a case of the American trust v. a Foreign trust. Such a battle of the giants would not last long and would most certainly result in the achievement of the next step in economic progress after the National trust, viz. the International trust. The “only tolerable alternative” to which will be State ownership—when the State has been democratised. We seem indeed to be approaching the beginning of the end.

Dick Kent

Warning — this system is dangerous (1971)

From the December 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peter Simple, the columnist who plugs a consistently comfortable, almost invulnerable, reactionary line in the Daily Telegraph, has often turned his acid pen against the people who sought to prove with their statistics and experiments and surveys that cigarette smoking is a factor in causing death by lung cancer. It was not simply a matter of an individual’s right to puff his way into an early grave if he wanted; to Simple, smoking was part of the slow, feudalistic way of life which he imagines (and it is only imagination) was once lived by the people of this country.

So any fan of the column must have turned to it with trembling hands, after the most recent anti-smoking report from the Royal College of Physicians. Sure enough, there was a passage on the report. But at the end of an unusually mild attack, Peter Simple had to confess himself baffled by it all; why did they attack smoking? Why? Why? It was all rather disappointing, especially as it showed that the columnist had not read even the press reports of the document, some of which quoted the vital reason for it all: 

Government and Parliament must decide between an easy source of revenue and the preservation of the lives, health and productive capacity of the people they serve. 

Now what this quotation from the report indicates is that we have here a case just like many which have gone before. “Productive capacity” is vital to industry, to employers; since it depends upon the lives and health of the producers then any employer who keeps the most casual eye on his profits must start to worry if he has reason to think that the lives and health of his employees are being threatened.

The only chance of a large, official campaign against smoking was that there would be enough evidence that it was damaging the profits of the employers. The evidence about the possible effects of it on health has been there for a long time; the crucial point is when it is likely that there are also effects on productive capacity, or profits, or some other aspect of the worker/employee relationship. It was the same with the Clean Air Acts and with the measures aimed against noise, pollution and the like. It is the same, still, with the countless combined eyesores and threats to safety such as the coal tips in South Wales, where the “economic” case for removal is not officially considered to have been made out four years after Aberfan.

We can approach this point from another direction, by looking at one of the report’s ideas to persuade people to stop smoking. This was to print on all packets a warning of the possible effect of smoking. This has already been put into practice and nobody can now draw out a cigarette without being confronted with the awful words "Warning — smoking can damage your health”. This may or may not be an effective idea; there is a case that the words of warning might only go to make the smoke more enjoyable, spicing it with thrills of guilt and danger.

But the main point is that it is surprising that this technique should be confined to cigarettes. An average of something like twenty people are killed on the roads every day, but nobody has yet suggested daubing the doors of all road vehicles with the words “Caution — this machine is potentially lethal.” And while we are on the subject of death, what are they doing, allowing all those advertisements for the armed forces and none of them with a warning that the forces’ job is to train killers to protect the interests of their master class?

And what about the other, innumerable, ways in which capitalism, in the name of profit and the rights of a privileged society, simply murders people? We are thinking here not so much of the quick, easily identifiable death like the road accident and the battle but the slow erosion of life — the coal miner with his lungs gradually filling up with dust; the asbestos worker with a horrible death in prospect; and all of us, whoever we are and wherever we live or work, who are subject to the atmosphere which is foully polluted because at present capitalism thinks it is cheaper to pump its muck into the air than to find other ways of dealing with it.

Every factory, then, every mine, every aircraft, almost everything which capitalism uses in the march of its profit-based activity, should have some sort of warning on it, shouting out the damage which it does to us — and the reason it happens. Food which is devitalised and adulterated to make it more easily marketable should carry a label telling us what has happened to it and what is likely to happen to us if we consume it. The homes we live in should have a notice on their door, telling us that they are inferior buildings which are uncomfortable and cramped and are full of dangers to health and life (the home is at present the biggest killer of all — it is all done, they say, by “accident”.)

Then there are the health hazards which are even less identifiable, which are insidious but none the less deadly. These are often matters of pressure upon us, matters of the sheer struggle to live, to survive, to get to and from work, to keep out of debt, to raise children, to hold a job. Sometimes it is even a matter of finding somewhere to live. Not so long ago, there was a case in the Appeal Court in which nine homeless families who were squatting in some houses owned by the Southwark Borough Council were ordered to move out. There was no doubt about the desperate plight of these people; the council’s man in court said their conditions were “heart rending”. But the judges did their job; one of them summed it up with the words:

It must be in the interests of law and order to protect the title of property such as these.

Yet at the same time the judges were also saying how sorry they were for the squatters. They were using words like “deepest sympathy” and “deep depression and oppression”. Unusual perhaps for words like that to come down from the bench; but if that was how the judges felt, how did the situation affect the squatters? How much of their health, their life, was simply worn away by a desperate plight which had to stay like that to protect the title of property?

But of course such situations can only be known to a certain social type. The inferior standards of living, the life without privilege, without security, without comfort, is the life of the worker. He is the person who has to struggle and who is never far from the razor edge, if not actually balanced on it or indeed toppled off it. He is the person whose health and life suffer because he is simply not permitted, by his social station, to live free. He must be suppressed and degraded; he must accept second, third, fourth best. And it makes no difference, that he is in the majority and that he makes up all the socially useful people in society.

What it amounts to is that capitalism should wear one great big label, warning everyone of what it is doing to them. It should tell them that it is a system in which only a few have the opportunity to live like human beings and they do this on the backs of the many. It should tell them that it is a society where everything we need is made so that a minority can profit by it, which means that all our welfares and lives are under continual assault and in constant danger. It should tell us that all the health hazards and all the tensions can be ascribed to the basic inhumanity and craziness of capitalism.

All members of the working class should have these labels, and they should have them from the day they are born because it is from then that the assault of capitalism upon them begins in earnest. And it carries on until they are in their graves.

Ivan

Voice From The Back: Same old story (2003)

The Voice From The Back Column from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Same old story

The announcement that R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings, the makers of Camel cigarettes, is to cut 2,600 jobs – close to half its workforce – has come as a great shock to the town of Winston-Salem in North Carolina. Between 1,600 and 1,700 of the jobs are in the town. Bad news for the shareholders? Well, no, not really. “The company shocked Wall Street yesterday morning as it unveiled the plan to cut 40 percent of its workforce, although traders welcomed the prospect of cost-cutting and marked the shares 12 per cent higher to $38.24 by midday” (Times 18 September).

The rich get richer

One of the myths expounded by apologists for capitalism is that there are no longer classes in society and that poverty is gradually disappearing. According to the BBC News Online (25 September) the exact opposite seems to be occurring in the USA. “The gap between rich and poor in America is the widest in 70 years, according to a new study published by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. The research, based on newly released figures from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, shows that the top one percent of Americans – who earn an average of $862,000 each after tax (or $1.3 m before tax) – receive more money than the 110m Americans in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution, whose income averages $21,350 each year. The income going to the richest one percent has gone up threefold in real terms in the past twenty years, while the income of the poorest 40 percent went up by a more modest 11 percent.”

Spare parts for sale

Everything inside capitalism takes the form of a commodity, so it should come as no surprise to learn that there is a brisk trade in desperately poor people selling their kidneys. The going price paid to young people in eastern Europe for one kidney is $2,500 to $3,000 and patients receiving the kidneys have paid between $100,000 and $200,000 for a transplant. “John Dark, a transplant surgeon at the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle, said it was difficult to draw a moral difference between the physical harm inflicted on someone paid for a kidney or paid to work in a Third World sweat shop . . . An impoverished man trying to support his family by selling his kidney is no different to putting in shifts down a diamond mine. Society has moved on from where paying for harm was unthinkable. We do it every day when we buy a pair of trainers” (Independent, 30 September).

Compassionate Tories

The Conservative Party at present are going through a crisis as they try to cobble together a series of reforms that might prove popular at the next election. They are making noises about being a caring, compassionate party, so it is interesting to see what one of the delegates to last month’s Tory conference had to say. “Mr Metcalfe, who has ambitions of becoming a Tory MP at the next election, received a rousing ovation when he insisted the way to combat crime was to make it not worth the price. He told the conference: “make prison a genuine punishment. Bring back solitary confinement, take away their TVs and snooker tables and let them earn privileges.” And there was more, “Bring back birching for young tearaways that terrorise council estates and vandalise graveyards, castrate paedophiles and bring back hanging” (Herald, 8 October). Phew, some caring – some compassion.

War aims

Mr Bush was very clear what the US war aims were in Iraq – topple the wicked dictator – build a prosperous democracy – and 100 percent foreign ownership of many of the state’s resources. Wait a minute, you don’t remember the third aim? Neither do we, but it seems that third aim is going to be realised long before the second one. “Controversial plans to privatise all of Iraq’s non-oil assets have been attacked by Nobel-prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz . . . The laws approved by the Coalition Provisional chief Paul Bremer, allow 100 percent foreign ownership of all state assets apart from natural resources. Trade tariffs and taxes have also been slashed, and the Central Bank of Iraq has been made operationally independent. `This is an extreme version of Republican ideology,` said Stiglitz. ‘Of course it is nothing we would do at home (US), because we’re actually quite protectionist`” (Observer, 12 October).

Pathfinders: Capitalism by gaslight (2020)

The Pathfinders Column from the October 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the 1944 film Gaslight, a young couple (Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman) move back into the house of her aunt, murdered years before. The wife is an ordinary and intelligent woman, however she is subtly undermined by her husband’s constant references to her forgetfulness, silly anxieties and overactive imagination. He says these things so often, she thinks they must be true. When she starts to hear strange noises in the ceiling, he clucks soothingly, tells her she’s tired and advises her to get better rest. When the lights keep going down on the gas lamps, he expresses heartfelt concern that she’s becoming overwrought, and needs medication. He makes her doubt the evidence of her senses. He makes her think she’s going mad. In fact, he is doing it all on purpose. The plan is to have her committed to a mental institution so he can steal her inheritance from the aunt he murdered. He is foiled in the end, of course, but she is left a traumatised wreck.

The term gaslighting has come to describe a ‘form of psychological manipulation in which a person . . .  covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual… making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment, often evoking in them… low self-esteem. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and misinformation, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilise the victim and delegitimise the victim’s beliefs’ (Wikipedia).

The Wikipedia entry describes how sociopaths and narcissists use gaslighting as a tactic in mental abuse, and how victims develop anxiety, depression, self-hatred and ‘a sense of learned helplessness’. Feminists have highlighted this as a feature of some abusive male behaviour within the context of power-relationships and domestic violence, however it does not seem to be especially gendered and it is also a feature of some parent-child relationships.

The psychological damage caused by this behaviour ranges from self-doubt to suicide. The reasons for the behaviour lie in various personality disorders involved in deflecting blame and controlling others.

A recent BBC article shows how entire industries can emulate the behaviour of such a personality disorder in order to deflect criticism (‘How the oil industry made us doubt climate change’, BBC Online, 20 September – bbc.in/3iMRTUL). A climate academic and former Exxon employee describes how Exxon denied the evidence of their own world-class research: ‘What they did was immoral. They spread doubt about the dangers of climate change when their own researchers were confirming how serious a threat it was.’ In internal emails, Exxon told employees to ‘emphasise the uncertainty’ in the scientific consensus, and ‘urge a balanced scientific approach’. What they meant was deflect, misdirect, contradict, misinform, and gaslight the public.

It wasn’t just Exxon, the whole fossil fuel industry was at it, aiming to ‘reposition global warming as theory (not fact)’, much as creationists have tried to do with evolution. The Mad Men of Marketing identified their target audiences. One was ‘older, lesser educated males from larger households who are not typically information seekers.’ The other was ‘younger, low-income women, who could be targeted with bespoke adverts which would liken those who talked about climate change to a hysterical doom-saying cartoon chicken.’ The aim wasn’t to refute the facts with lies, because lies would be exposed. Instead, they sought to drown the facts in noise, in order to baffle and confuse the public.

In short, they followed the classic ‘tobacco playbook’ and mounted a ‘whitecoat project’, in which they hired or induced supposedly independent scientific consultants to press the argument that the science was uncertain and that the need for action was exaggerated. Bribes weren’t always necessary. Though it would be nice to think scientists generally rely on evidence-based thinking in their political attitudes, right-wing bigots do exist, and are willing to subvert science in pursuit of political agendas. A former vice president of the right-wing Cato Institute, in a belated mea culpa, admitted to gaslighting for the oil industry: ‘For 25 years, climate sceptics like me made it a core matter of ideological identity that if you believe in climate change, then you are by definition a socialist. That is what climate sceptics have done.’

Surprisingly, or maybe not, it turned out that some of these politically motivated scientists – and non-experts in the field in question, were the same people who had spoken out years before on behalf of the tobacco industry and against the anti-smoking lobby. This, it became clear, was a very old and well-rehearsed strategy. As a tobacco firm put it, back in the 1950s, ‘Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public.’

Apart from trivial references to some American political shenanigans from the likes of Clinton and latterly Trump, and a nod to other presidents like Putin, the Wikipedia article currently does not expand on the large-scale use of gaslighting by industries like oil and gas, or tobacco, or those of pesticides, sugar, plastics and many others. But there are limits to what any single article can cover. This psychological manipulation is part of the fabric of capitalist ideology itself.

Think about how often you, as an intelligent human being and wage slave in capitalism, have been induced to doubt your own knowledge and judgment, how often you’ve been persuaded that you don’t know enough and should leave important matters to politicians. Think how often you’ve wrestled with the baffling complexities of complicated public debates until you’ve simply given up. Think how bad you’ve felt about your own failings, your own silly anxieties, your own inadequacies at work, at home, in school, in relationships, in your emotions and in your social life. Think how often you’ve felt dismissed, disregarded, put down, ignored, condescended to, lied to and patronised. Think how you’ve been made to think it’s just you, that nobody else has a problem or can even be trusted to understand, that maybe you need help or treatment or drugs or counselling because you just can’t cope. Think about how often you blame yourself, you should have tried harder, you should have believed in yourself more, you shouldn’t have been so weak, you shouldn’t have let yourself or others down.

All of this is what it feels like to be gaslighted. Your problem isn’t that you’re inadequate, it’s that you’re being ruthlessly and expertly manipulated by a rich and powerful regime which aims to stay rich and powerful, even if the world burns, by keeping you in a state of learned helplessness, where you do what you’re told and vote for leaders to think for you.

Socialists want a revolution to abolish capitalism before the world burns, but we also get something out of being socialists right now. Specifically, we get the opposite of gaslighting. We thrive in a community of mutual respect and support, where we each have a voice, where nobody is the boss, and where we can relax in the company of people who understand exactly how we think and feel, because they are workers too. If you’re sick of the gaslit world out there, try some daylight with us.

Paddy Shannon

These Foolish Things: “Scientific” research (1995)

The Scavenger column from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The basic contradictions in capitalism cause widespread death, destruction, pollution, poverty and waste. But this is to take the world view. Most of us experience day-to-day capitalism as a series of small stupidities, irritations and frustrations. Here are a few. If you encounter any worth a wry smile, please send them to The Scavenger who will publish the best.

“Scientific” research

Increasingly, large companies are shedding their own research departments and “buying in” research from specialists. The obvious advantage of this is that work does not have to be found for idle researchers.

But, more importantly, the external professionals can be assumed to be impartial in their findings. On the other hand, any findings they produce which are not to the liking of the commissioning firm can be referred back for “further confirmation”.

Gray Robertson, President of Healthy Buildings International, USA, a research company, did not wait for this. He personally altered the figures his researchers had established for cigarette smoke levels in buildings. He crossed out the figures and wrote in numbers half as high. This made it possible for the American Tobacco Company to deny knowledge of the addictive and damaging qualities of their products.

The annual budget for the US intelligence empire is S29 billion.

Transporting live cattle

The Transport Minister, Stephen Norris, has opposed the pressure for the government to spend large amounts of money on public transport systems to cut vehicle exhaust pollution. He said that the private car was: “extraordinarily convenient. You have you own company, your own temperature control, your own music and you don’t have to put up with dreadful human beings sitting alongside you.”

Know your place

This month, at the beginning of the new tax year, the government is abolishing the 120-year-old rate levied on field sports—or, more precisely, on the land used for shooting and fishing.

This should raise the market value of thousands of acres of wild, uncultivatable land in Scotland where the price has been depressed in the last few years. Estate agents calculate the value of such land by averaging the number of grouse shot, deer killed or salmon caught. The current value of a brace of grouse in this calculation is about £2,500, a stag at about £18,000 and a salmon in rich rivers at anything up to £10,000.

This is the main reason why Kristiansen (the Lego manufacturer) recently paid around £3 million for the Strathconon estate. The 20,000-acre Tulchan estate in Morayshire fetched £12 million and the rich 32,000-acre Yorkshire estate of Gunnerside was bought by Robert Miller, the American, for approximately £10 million. If you want to enjoy the same sort of freedom to slaughter wildlife, the 6,000-acre Lyon estate in Perthshire is on the market at £2.5 million. A bargain, by the look of it, because it has its own hydroelectric plant.

To be fair, not all such landowners buy the land for blood sports. For some, the objective is simply guaranteed privacy. They want to leave behind the places—and the people—that their wealth comes from. They want that essential quality of private property—to keep everyone else out

“The salary of the chief executive of the large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself ” John Kenneth Galbraith. .

The Scavenger

Tit-Bits from the Press (1941)

From the October 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

The American Navy.

“When the day of Hitler’s defeat comes, sea-power will again be dominant, and the centre of it will not be in London but in Washington, D.C. Never again will we permit even the British to excel us in sea-power.”—(From a speech by Mr. Knox, Secretary to the U.S. Navy, quoted in Life, March 10th, 1941.)

* * * *

One Suit since the War.

Lord Dulverton, chairman of the Imperial Tobacco Company, is quoted in the Daily Telegraph, of July 15th, as stating that he had bought only one new suit of clothes since the war broke out. If the non-purchase of suits is a measure of patriotism, the writer of these notes can score one off Lord Dulverton, because he hasn’t bought a single suit since the war started. In his case, however, the reason is different. He couldn’t afford it.

Ramo.

Voice From The Back: A Money Saver (2005)

The Voice From The Back Column from the June 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Money Saver

To mark the retirement, at 92 years of age, of Sir Richard Doll, one of the scientists who helped to propagate the connection between lung cancer and smoking, The Observer Magazine (24 April) ran an article on the subject. It recalls that Doll’s report of 1956 met a very unenthusiastic response from the government. “The Department of Health considered the report for a year. They set up an interdepartmental  Committee to advise on what should be done”, Professor Doll recalls. “This said — and I’ve seen the report — that it should be very serious if  smoking was reduced, not  because tax would decrease, but because they like people to die off at 65 to save their pensions.”

Could the cynicism of the ruling class’s lackeys be more obvious? Their idea of the perfect worker is one who left school at 15 years of age, worked for 50 years, two nights and a Sunday overtime and the day he was due to collect his old age pension dropped dead in the Post Office.           

Money Making Kills

A couple of workers, one from Invergowrie and one from Fife died in a horrific “so called” accident. They died trying to get a couple of bob for their wives and kids. They died on an off-shore “accident”. Here is what the regional officer of Amicus, the trade union had to say:

  “In March 2003 myself and another official put a complaint in about the lack of maintenance on Shell’s Brent Charlie and Delta platforms. The Health and Safety Executive then stated in August 2003 that there was no immediate risk. Three weeks later, two guys were killed.” The Times (28 April).

We should mention that Shell were fined £900,000 for negligence, although as the TU official mentioned, “In just an hour Shell will have made more than what they were fined.” But, what about the guys that died, and what about their families?

Told you, didn’t we?

After all the nonsense about “weapons of mass destruction” and “regime change”, the real reason for the conflict in Iraq has emerged. It is interesting to note that when Gordon Brown eventually came clean. The Guardian was not shocked or indignant, but could make a feeble joke about the deception. “Speaking on BBC1’s Breakfast programme about the war in Iraq, Gordon Brown said the government had done what it thought was best for Britain. ‘We believed we were making the right decisions in the British national economic interests,’ the Chancellor added. So was Michael Moore right that it was all about oil? Or is the city commodities market going heavily into date and palm-nut futures?” The Guardian (4 May).

Our Betters (1)

Here are a couple of examples from the same newspaper of how the owning class live. “In a nation (India) where the average income is still less than £300 a year, Rolls  Royce has opened a dealership to sell its £256,000 Phantom car after an absence of more than half a century.”

… “Princess Michael of Kent, the loose cannon of the Royal Family, has fired another embarrassing salvo, this time claiming she may leave Britain and that life is too boring now foxhunting is banned. The news that she dreams of moving to France where hunting is legal, will doubtless delight critics of the gaffe-prone Princess, who once allegedly told a group of noisy black diners in a New York restaurant to “go back to the colonies” The Times (9 May). Off to France are you sweetheart? Bon voyage, Princess.

Our Betters (2)

The owner of British Home Stores has a reason to celebrate — it is his son’s bar mitzvah, so he doesn’t want to look penny-pinching. “Phillip Green, the wealthiest and quite probably the most flamboyant man in British retailing history, has flown more than 200 guests to the south of France for his son’s bar mitzvah”  The Times (14 May). According to their report Mr Green will spend about £4 million on the bash. We reckon that this is considerably more than the salesgirls in British Home Stores will spend on their nights out in a lifetime of toil in his stores, but then Mr Green has a reputed fortune of £3.3 billion. We imagine that this is a great deal more wealth than his minimum, or slightly above it, wage earners have  managed to accumulate. There are many aspects of capitalism that make us vomit, this is one of them. Another is that he has engaged Beyonce and Destiny’s Child to perform at the shindig. Serves his son right, at least his daddy’s wage slaves would have shown better taste.

Tiny Tips (2011)

The Tiny Tips column from the November 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jenny Nicholson is tired of hearing how the poor are poor because they make poor choices. Let’s see what kind of choices you make when it’s your turn to be flattened by the economy. That’s the idea behind Spent, an online game Nicholson created to challenge popular misconceptions about poverty. Play it at www.playspent.org.

[LINK]

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Some children in the North [of China] live ferally: they are known as kotjebi, or “fluttering swallows”, and roam in packs. When they cannot steal in the markets, they eat dead dogs and rotten food (reportedly chewing toothpaste in the belief that it prevents food poisoning).

[Dead Link]

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A typical prize for a children’s contest might be a backpack, a lunchbox or maybe some toys. But not in Somalia. Over the weekend, a Somali radio station run by the Shabab, the most powerful Islamist  militant group in the war-ravaged country, held an awards ceremony to honor children who were experts at Shabab trivia and at reciting the Koran . The prizes? Fully automatic assault rifles and live hand grenades.

[LINK]

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What makes individual stockbrokers blow billions in financial markets with criminal trading schemes? According to a new study conducted at a Swiss university, it may be because share traders behave  more recklessly and are more manipulative than psychopaths:

[LINK]

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A Saudi Arabian ministry statement carried by the state news agency, SPA, stated that Abdul Hamid al-Fakki “practiced witchcraft and sorcery,” which are illegal under Saudi Arabia’s Islamic sharia law. Al-Fakki was beheaded in the western city of Medina on Monday, the interior ministry announced:

[LINK]

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Mr. Daisey’s trip to Shenzhen, China, where he posed as a wealthy businessman to infiltrate factories where Apple products and other electronics are made. He says he witnessed inhumane conditions and interviewed workers outside of factories who said they were as young as 12.

   ‘What was shocking to me was the level of dehumanization built into the systems that have been put into place by American corporations in collusion with suppliers…… There’s a hunger in very controlling companies like Apple to create planned obsolescences sooner rather than later, so it will become more and more difficult to stay functional’:

[LINK]

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Eight in 10 British workers are overweight or living with long-term illnesses that limit their productivity, according to early findings of a 25-year study of people’s wellbeing:

[LINK]

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Tobacco companies knew that cigarettes contained a radioactive substance called polonium-210, but hid that knowledge from the public for over four decades, a new study of historical documents revealed:

[LINK]

Between the Lines: And Now For Our Younger Viewers . . . (1992)

The Between the Lines column from the July 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

And Now For Our Younger Viewers . . . 

During the Earth Summit last month it was hard to switch on the telly without encountering some green reformist or another uttering tales of woe about "our" planet. They even gave Jonathan Porritt his own series, modestly titled How To Save The World. Salvation via Porritt’s greenery involves leaving the profit system intact and picking off the scabs which it inevitably breeds. It was salvation for the simple-minded, a sort of secular, modernist Jesus Is Coming message. Switch on BBC's Going Live on a Saturday morning and you will be highly likely to bump into Jason Donovan or Jonathan Porritt; the former can’t sing and the latter can’t offer solutions, only pathetic reforms. The destruction of the environment has assumed the proportions of a children's issue; those talking about it are free to indulge in the sugary platitudes of reformers for whom caring renders unnecessary the requirement for being logical. Saving the rain forests in the late 1990’s is getting to be like collecting pennies to ’save black babies’ which Catholic schools did recently as the 1960’s. One of the most urgent problems of our time, which is the global destruction of the social environment, is reduced to nursery rhyme reasoning and Porritesque posturing.

News Mystification

The ecological crisis is no joke; it could be capitalism's literally most foul attack upon us. but it is reported in terms which mystify rather than illuminate. So, instead of talking about how whole species are being wiped out for the sake of profit, the talk is of "biodiversity". Instead of getting to grips with the industrial poisoning of the atmosphere we are told of "CFC emission levels". In short, the simple and the comprehensible is converted into scientifically grandiose terms to frighten us away from thinking that it is ours to solve. No, such convoluting problems had better be left to statesman and state scientists. Economists have long performed the same task in relation to production, turning starving millions into "the underdeveloped South" and food mountains into "regional agro-over-production". What sounds like an explanation becomes mystification, the result of which is to distance the viewer of TV from a sense of power in questioning or rejecting the self-appointed experts.

The Pushers

First Tuesday (2 June, 10.30pm, ITV) was about drug pushing on a grand scale. These were not gangs making a few million in an illegal market. Here were multi-million dollar companies going into Asian countries and promoting their addiction. In Malaysia packets of of the drug are given free to people in shopping centres. In Taiwan, where it is illegal to advertise drugs, the companies ignore the law by using the drug logo to advertise holidays, even though the companies are not in business to sell holidays. The expansion of this drug pushing into Asia has led to a corresponding increase in fatal diseases there, far outstripping those caused by heroin addiction. A US Congressman from Kentucky, the main state where the drug is grown, defended the pushing campaign into Asia on the grounds that, although it can ruin people's health and will certainly kill many, it is important that Asian consumers have the freedom to choose what they buy. We did not hear the Kentucky Congressman’s views on the right of Kentucky courts to imprison people for choosing to smoke cannabis. Oh, the drug in question was not dope, but tobacco.

Steve Coleman

Profits from diseases (1986)

From the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

All over the world ill-health and premature death are caused by capitalism's ruthless drive for profits. It is tragic that this should be the case, given technological advances and medical knowledge of the causes of major diseases in both the "underdeveloped" and industrialised countries.

Cancers are a common cause of death in the West but are mainly preventable, being related to smoking, occupational hazards, environmental pollution or diet. Every year more than 50.000 people in Britain die prematurely as a result of cigarette smoking, or from diseases to which cigarette smoking substantially contributes. Although the habit is known to be directly linked with lung cancer, heart disease and chronic bronchitis there has never been any attempt to regulate the highly profitable tobacco industry. The treasury receives about £4,000 million a year from tobacco tax and in return makes a token gesture of warning the public of the dangers of smoking. By contrast the tobacco industry spends £80 million a year on advertising to persuade the public that smoking is either manly or the hallmark of sophistication and success.

In underdeveloped countries the problem is worse: in the absence of information of the health dangers of tobacco consumption and unrestricted advertising, cigarettes, often with a high tar content, are marketed in a quite unscrupulous way. The expansion of tobacco growing has also taken land from socially more necessary but less profitable food production.

In Britain there are about 2,000 deaths a year as a direct result of working in the asbestos industry or living near an asbestos factory. The industry employs over 20.000 people and is worth £200 million. But in spite of knowledge of the dangers of asbestos for the last eighty years, regulations to control the levels of asbestos dust have only been introduced gradually and inadequately since 1932 and. in a number of cases, not properly enforced. The Asbestos Information Committee, faced with public pressure and fears over the dangers of asbestos in the 1970s. spent about £500,000 advertising the cheapness, usefulness and "safeness" of the material. But public anxiety over blue asbestos led to the closure of some British factories and the transfer of mining to countries where the absence of regulations allows greater profits to be made, at the cost of workers' lives.

A number of other industrial processes are hazardous. Exposure to benzene can cause leukaemia; angiosarcoma (a rare liver cancer), cancers of the lung, digestive tract and brain can be caused by working with vinyl chloride; working with acrylic fibres increases the risk of developing lung and colon cancer; pesticides, particularly 2,4,5.—T, are dangerous carcinogens and. in some cases, cause severe birth defects in later generations.

The response of the chemical industry has been unvarying: to deny the health risk; to withhold information (the report on the causes of the Seveso explosion was not made available to the Health and Safety Executive in Britain or the trade unions); to put pressure on governments by claiming that the cost of pre-market testing and implementing safer working methods would be too expensive and lead to factory closures. And, as was the case with mining blue asbestos, multinational firms often move their factories to countries where controls are more lax if profitability is threatened. The tragedies of Bhopal and Seveso illustrate the devious ways in which multinational industries evade safety regulations in countries like Britain and the United States by exploiting workers who are inadequately protected by safety laws.

  . . . by offering compensation, the state recognises the risk to workers. However, it also accepts the continuation of the risk at its existing level and as a result it is the British worker who bears the burden of proof. Such flagrant discrepancies are not due to lack of information. but reflect the influence of industry on the regulatory process and a lack of commitment by government bodies to the removal of unnecessary cancer hazards from the workplace (L. Doyal and S. Epstein (Eds). Cancer in Britain, Pluto Press)

A number of food additives have been shown to cause cancer in animals yet they continue to be used to make food more attractive. mould resistant, or sugar-free in the case of saccharin. The production of food is grotesquely and artificially manipulated under capitalism to provide maximum profits. The European Economic Community maintains a policy of restricted food production. having recently cut back milk production by nine per cent, while 82 million acres of land were taken out of food production in the United States in 1982.

All of this happens despite millions of deaths from starvation or diseases associated with malnutrition because it is the ability to pay, and not social needs, that determines who will eat under capitalism. But, in the more “affluent" countries profits are increased by extending the number of processes which food undergoes. Easily digested junk-foods with a low-fibre, high-fat and high-sugar content are sold at inflated prices. Obesity, heart disease, bad teeth, constipation and cancer of the bowel are all problems which have, in some degree, been blamed on the refined foods consumed in industrialised countries. The health conscious person can buy — usually at a higher price — products such as bran, which have been originally removed in the refining process. To charge more for not adulterating food must be one of the most brazen forms of profiteering imaginable.

There are nearly 7,500 drug preparations available, a figure which has more than doubled in the last 20 years in spite of the fact that the majority of health problems could be treated with less than 200 drugs. The proliferation of drugs has not been due to their effectiveness; indeed, the reverse is the case, with nearly one in thirty hospital patients in Britain being admitted as a result of the side-effects of drugs.

Drugs such as Thalidomide and Debendox have caused severe birth defects; oral and injectable contraceptives have caused cancers of the liver, breast and uterus; female sex hormones have led to birth defects and cancers; anti-arthritic drugs frequently lead to ulcers, and "Opren" resulted in 61 deaths in a two-year period. Products of dubious benefit, or even those which are positively dangerous, are marketed with callous disregard for the well-being of the consumer. Drugs which are only available on prescription or restricted in Britain are sold over the counter in underdeveloped countries, allowing extra profits to be made at the cost of people's health.

The environment has been damaged in the quest to produce goods as cheaply as possible to undercut competitors. Inner city pollution leads to higher rates of chest diseases such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema; the smogs of the 1950s forced some legislation to control smoke emission from factories, but with competition to produce goods more cheaply in a time of recession there have been calls to relax environmental controls. Dangerous chemicals and radioactive waste are dumped with scant regard for public well-being, while in the vicinity of nuclear power stations deaths from leukaemia exceed the national average.

Ill health and premature death are inexorably tied to the profit system; drugs could be safer; dangerous food additives need not be used; the pressure on young people to smoke and the stresses of employment which reinforce the habit could be removed; food could be produced for all of the world's population; working with chemicals could be safer; pollution of the environment is not inevitable; the elderly need not die from the cold. But it will require the abolition of capitalism and of production for profit: only a society which produces for human needs can stop workers' lives being squandered.

Carl Pinel

Rear View: A Load of Koch (2016)

The Rear View Column from the July 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Load of Koch

If you wish to have some understanding of what is happening and how the 99 percent are suffering in Venezuela, who better to call than Daniel Mitchell? He has a PhD in economics and is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, originally known as the Charles Koch Foundation. With such a background, Mitchell’s musings should come as no surprise: ‘I feel sorry for the Venezuelan people, but I’m perversely glad that the country is collapsing. That’s because it’s nice to have proof that Margaret Thatcher was right when she famously warned that the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money. To be sure, we already had proof from Greece, France, the Soviet Union, Brazil, and many other places. But it’s still nice to have another piece of evidence that big government eventually produces very dire results. I also confess that I’m enjoying Venezuela’s economic decay because I get a warm feeling of Schadenfreude when watching leftists try to explain what’s happening in that formerly rich nation ‘(cnsnews.com, 2 June).

Mitchell takes pleasure in the suffering of our class but conveniently forgets to mention that a small minority continue to enjoy the comforts available in what blogger Agustin Otxotorena describes as the ‘upscale sectors of Caracas’. Shopping shelves there are not empty as elsewhere. ‘If you have money’ there is champagne, vodka, Belgian chocolates, lobster, brand-name clothes, etc. Exclusive restaurants, nightclubs, beaches, yachts, golf clubs, private schools and universities form ‘a whole country within a country where there are no poor’ – other than those working there. Such ostentatious privilege exists regardless of the government’s orientation – left, right or centre.

Thatcher was right, at least when she stated: ‘There is only one economic system in the world, and that is capitalism. The difference lies in whether the capital is in the hands of the State or whether the greater part of it is in the hands of people outside of State control’ (House of Commons speech, 24 November, 1976). Venezuela is not and never has been socialist. Neither are or were Brazil, Greece, France or the Soviet Union. Lenin wrote of Russia in 1918: ‘reality says that State capitalism would be a step forward for us; if we were able to bring about State capitalism in a short time it would be a victory for us’ (The Chief Task of Our Time). That same year, the old lie about Russia being socialist or communist (Marx and Engels used the terms interchangeably) was exposed in the August 1918 edition of this very journal. The idea of socialism in one country is rather like being a little bit pregnant.

Parasites beget parasites

The 1 percent exist worldwide, in Russia and Venezuela, Norway and Italy. ‘The world’s youngest billionaire is worth an eye-popping $1.2 billion, around £862 million. Alexandra Andresen comes in as one of the richest people on the planet, after inheriting millions from her businessman father Johan Andresen. The Andresen family own Ferd, a long-running private investment company’ (mirror.co.uk, 2 June). We are also informed later of one major reason for Alexandra’s wealth. ‘her great-great-great grandfather bought J.L. Tiedemanns tobacco factory in 1849, which later became the country’s market-leading cigarette maker.’

Elsewhere (aljazeera.com, 4 June), we learn that ‘the tobacco industry has annual revenues of nearly $500bn. The number of cigarettes manufactured and sold has risen to six trillion every year worldwide – nearly double what it was four decades ago. Tobacco stocks outperformed the market in 2015 and have in fact done so for the past decade. The . . . electronic cigarette market is now worth $7.5bn.’ Our labour, that of adults and children as young as five years old, is the source of this wealth. The tobacco products are then sold back to us at a profit and kill an estimated six million of us annually.

Wealth is product of human labour, acting upon nature-given materials, that is capable of satisfying needs. We work, they take and pass on. Some of today’s capitalists have many centuries of legalised theft behind them. The richest families in Florence have been at it for the past 600 years. This fact was confirmed recently by two economists doing useful work for a change. Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti studied the records of Florentine taxpayers in 1427 with those in 2011 and after comparing the family wealth to those with the same surname today, concluded the richest families in Florence six centuries ago remain the same now.