Upton Sinclair and The Jungle (2006)

From the November 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

The centenary of an anti-capitalist classic.

A hundred years ago, in the summer of 1906, the American author Upton Sinclair completed a novel called The Jungle. The work, a 'muckraking' account of labour and unsanitary conditions in the Chicago stockyards, quickly established itself as a classic denunciation of industrial capitalism and one of the most revolutionary novels of the age.

Originally commissioned for serialisation by the radical American journal Appeal to Reason, The Jungle catapulted Sinclair to international prominence and placed him at centre of a radical social movement that sought to resist the acceleration of monopoly capitalism during the 'Progressive Era' in early twentieth century America. The dominant theme of this movement was the attempt, through works of literature, to arouse resistance to the escalating dominance of a political and economic elite whose control over the media stifled public awareness, debate, and activism.

The Jungle was written in a turbulent age. When Theodore Roosevelt became President in 1901, America was a country deeply divided by the extremes of wealth and poverty. The period since the Civil War had been overshadowed by the rapid development of capitalism and an ebb and flow in the workers' bitter struggle to organise the defence of working conditions against the onslaught of capital. After the mass strike of 1877, employers' repression of labour was aided by the courts and the enactment of anti-union conspiracy laws as well as the revival of state militias (later to be renamed the National Guard) as the instrument to break strikes. Open class warfare intensified after the 1886 Haymarket incident, when police attacked a Chicago demonstration demanding the 8-hour working day. In the resulting chaos a bomb was thrown, police and protesters were killed, and the leaders of the radical groups involved arrested, charged and seven of their number subsequently executed for murder. The newspapers whipped up public hysteria against the labour movement and the violent suppression of strikes by armed troops and private armies became widespread across America. Blacklisting, strike-breaking, the murder of trade unionists and police harassment were orchestrated by the business and political elite to prevent the formation of a mass working class organisation. The offices of trade unions and radical groups were often raided and ransacked, leaders arrested, printing presses destroyed and armed vigilante groups were organised by business to break-up meetings.

The Jungle captured the brutality of the era and not unexpectedly Sinclair had difficulty finding a publisher for his devastating novel. An employee at the publishers Macmillan wrote, "I advise without hesitation and unreservedly against the publication of this book which is gloom and horror unrelieved. One feels that what is at the bottom of his fierceness is not nearly so much desire to help the poor as hatred of the rich." Undaunted, Sinclair self-published and the novel immediately caused uproar, but not in the way he had hoped.

Sinclair's intention in writing the novel had been to draw attention to the appalling conditions and squalor of wage-labourers under capitalism by unfolding the tragedy of his central character, Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant working in the meat packing houses of Packingtown, a suburb of Chicago. But his objective was lost on the public, overshadowed by his descriptions of the unsanitary conditions and inadequate regulation in the meat processing plants. Creating a fear that public indignation would lead to a collapse in confidence and hence in the profits of the Beef Trusts, the nauseating detail exposed in The Jungle prompted instead the intervention of President Roosevelt and the subsequent passage of the Meat Inspection Act of 1906. Sinclair would later lament, "I aimed for their hearts, and hit their stomachs."

Widely read
Although failing to accomplish his immediate goal, Sinclair remained a highly acclaimed and widely read author, whose other works included King Coal (1917) and The Profits of Religion (1918). But in 1919 he completed The Brass Check, which he considered "the most important and most dangerous book I have ever written" (8th edition 1920, p. 429.). The work was a devastating critique of the contradiction of capitalist newspaper production for profit and a so-called "free press." It accused American journalism of being a class institution serving the rich in which "Politics, Journalism, and Big Business work hand in hand for the hoodwinking of the public and the plundering of labour." (The Brass Check, p.153). In 1942 he wrote Dragon's Teeth, a novel on the rise of Nazism that won him the 1945 Pulitzer Prize. A prodigious writer, he completed, ninety-two books and twenty-nine pamphlets attacking all aspects of social injustice until his death in 1968 at the age of 90.

But for all Sinclair's criticism of the capitalist economic system, he naively clung to the belief that capitalism could be reformed and made to organise in the interests of the working class. He held a deep 'moralistic' view that capitalism could be tamed by social justice and was strongly influenced by the 'reformism' propagated by the Socialist Party of America (established in 1901) which he had joined in 1902. The Socialist Party of America regarded its immediate task as building a mass party to ameliorate the excesses of capitalism and consequently attracted members with a wide variety of reformist opinions.

Like all parties of capitalism that have revolutionary pretensions, the Socialist Party of America was never able to offer a unified response to a number of important questions and in the course of the next 40 years would be torn apart. In the early years the membership held conflicting views on trade unionism, (in particular its relationship with the American Federation of Labour and the IWW) entry into the War, the social reforms of the 'Progressive Era' under Woodrow Wilson's administration and the 1917 Russian Revolution.

In the 1930s the Party would split over its response to Stalinism and the rise of Fascism in Europe. But it was the government's legislation to shore up American capitalism under Roosevelt's New Deal, that finally sapped the Party's remaining support and by 1937 the Socialist Party of America was a spent force. The confusion sown by Party propaganda caused many workers to regard the legislation of the New Deal as the embodiment of the "socialistic" principles that seemed to overlap with the Party's own "immediate demands" for social reform.

Sinclair too must take a share of the responsibility for misguiding the American working class. When America entered the First World War he wrote an article in the radical journal The Masses, that argued that America should enter the war to defeat anti-democratic German militarism and, together with others including Charles Edward Russell and A. M. Simons, resigned his Party membership in protest against the Party's anti-war position. He wrote, "If Germany be allowed to win this war - then we in America shall have to drop every other activity and devote the next twenty or thirty years to preparing for a last-ditch defence of the democratic principle."

Woodrow Wilson's decision to enter the war and its aftermath effectively crushed the American radical labour movement. The Espionage Act of 1917 legitimised government repression by banning radical journals, imposing crippling fines and exposing labour leaders to beatings and arrests. Eugene Debs, once leader of the Socialist Party of America, was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment after making his famous anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio in 1918. In 1927 Sinclair wrote an article for The Nation in which he recanted his view and conceded that his earlier stance on the First World War had been incorrect.

Ran for Governor
In the 1920s Sinclair, a firm supporter of Prohibition, helped to establish the Californian chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and after rejoining the Socialist Party of America he became their unsuccessful candidate for governor of California in 1926. In 1934 he again stood for governor but this time he abandoned his own party and entered the Democratic Party Primary, winning on a platform known as EPIC (End Poverty in California). In his election proclamation Sinclair maintained that capitalism had gone into permanent crisis and proposed the utopian establishment of a co-operative system for Americas ten million unemployed, "producing everything which they themselves consume and exchanging those goods among themselves by a method of barter, using warehouse receipts or labour certificates." (The Literary Digest, October 13, 1934).

Although he lost the election, Sinclair received considerable support, polling over 879,000 votes (37 percent) but split both the Democratic Party and the Socialist Party of America. Many of his colleagues were appalled by his action, and Sinclair's son David accused him of "insane opportunism," to which Sinclair mildly replied that he was just trying to "educate" the public. After his defeat Sinclair largely abandoned EPIC and returned to his writing.

Sinclair, like the political party he supported, was riddled with contradictions. A scathing critic of capitalism he never once demanded its abolition, preferring instead to compromise with capitalism and pursue abstract notions of 'social justice'. He claimed to be a socialist and yet for much of his life was a member of a political party that would only have administered the capitalist system. He supported America's entry into the war - and the murder of American workers - while acknowledging that the war had nothing to do with the American working class. He was prepared to make alliances with the capitalist organisations including the Democratic Party despite believing that, in the American two party system, elections were when people "go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the candidates of their exploiters." (The Brass Check, p.222.) He claimed to be a friend of the working class but would occasionally display racist and nationalistic tendencies in his works.

Sinclair displayed immense talent when he wrote The Jungle. The novel brought him fame and position of influence but his naivety and muddled thinking in the political sphere did little to advance the cause of workers in America.

Steve Trott

The Labour Party Leadership Battle

Reproduced from A Revolutionary Act, which is the personal blog of John Bissett, who is a regular writer for the Socialist Standard.

Countless column inches and seemingly endless hours of news reports have been given over to the leadership crisis the Labour Party is currently engulfed in. Speaking up for Prime Minister Tony Blair, Home Secretary Charles Clarke said Blair would stand down when he was good and ready to do so and he accused Chancellor Gordon Brown of "absolutely stupid" behaviour in challenging Blair, commenting that Brown needed first to prove his fitness to lead.

Fitness to lead? Now there's a thing. It assumes leaders have some special qualification acquired over years of study and self-sacrifice when the only real qualification is the ability to hoodwink others into thinking you possess knowledge and qualities they do not. Unlike other professions - doctors, surgeons, architects, physicists - whose skills come via many years of hard slog - politicians require none whatsoever. The only requisite credentials needed when standing for election are that you are over 21 years of age, not insane and with no recent prison record.

Despite this, many workers think we cannot function without leaders. This is a fallacy and one perpetuated by the master class to help them maintain their rule over our lives. Indeed, so prevalent is this philosophy, that from the cradle to the grave we are taught to mistrust our own intelligence and to feel somewhat inadequate, to look up to our 'betters and superiors' (schools, church, politicians, parents etc) for their expert guidance and to accept without question the plans they draw up for our future.

Moreover, the whole concept of leadership and the need to choose the candidate most fitted for the post of leader is keenly promoted by aspiring leaders. In truth, history confirms them to be pitiable exemplars of honesty, integrity and compassion, forever paying lip service to truth and justice and other grand notions equated with leadership.

Blair has proved to be just as deceitful, dishonest and corrupt as every British prime minister that preceded him, ready always to defend power and privilege over the real needs of the people who elected him. From the moment he won a fourteen minute standing ovation from a CBI Conference just prior to the 1997 Labour victory, through the myriad scandals his Party has been caught up in, and right through to his perfidious reasoning to invade and occupy an immiserated but oil rich country, he has constantly lied to the electorate, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and bullied anyone bold enough to stand up to him.

Nothing Brown has said or done inclines us to consider he will act any differently. As Prime Minister he will lead the executive of the capitalist class - what else are governments but the national administrative arm of capital? - and as leader he had better be seen to be "batting for Britain", defending the interests of big business at home and abroad. This is the real remit of the leader in capitalist society.

It is assumed by many that leaders run the world. Well, I rather think it is we, the workers, who run the world. Politicians might make government policy, which becomes law, but it is we who build and work the hospitals and schools. It is we who build the bridges, roads and railways, ports and airports; all the products that humans need to survive. It is we who produce everything from a pin to an oil-rig and provide humanity with all the services it requires - we the working class! We don't depend on leaders for these skills or for their guidance. They have no monopoly on our knowledge and intelligence or on the inventions we dream up to enhance the quality of life. If all the worlds' leaders died tomorrow, few would really miss them and society would function just as before.

The concept of leadership has emerged with class society and will end when we abolish class society, when we abolish the capitalist mode of production and all that goes with it. The master class have been allowed to lead because of their control over the means of living and by virtue of their control of the education system and their monopoly of the media and other and information processes.

It doesn't have to be this way. The greatest weapons we posses are our class unity, our intelligence, and our ability to question the status quo and to imagine a world fashioned in our own interests. Leaders perceive all of this to be a threat and so will do anything to keep us in a state of oblivion, dejection and dependency. Our apathy is the victory they celebrate each day. Our unwillingness to unite as a globally exploited majority and to confront them on the battlefield of ideas is the subject of their champagne toasts.

Remember this as the battle for leadership of the Labour Party hots up.

John Bissett

The Edukators (2005)

Film Review from the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Edukators. The Warwick Cinema, Carlisle

Co-written and directed by Hans Weingarten, the eponymous heroes of this film are two young men - radicals, we might perhaps call them - who seem to have fused feng shui with Situationism to create a stylish and esoteric new form of political protest. Their method is to break into the homes of the rich but, rather than steal, they move the furniture into new spaces, or rearrange it into newforms, to create a visual spectacle designed to shock the occupants out of their cash-encrusted apathy. Like high-class catburglars, they leave prominent calling cards stating 'the days of plenty are numbered' or 'you have too much money,' and later read of their exploits in the newspapers.

Played by Daniel Brühl (Jan) and Stipe Erceg (Peter), it starts to go wrong for the Edukators when, unknown to Peter, his girlfriend, Jule, and Jan become an item (never let a woman spoil a good relationship, the film seems to imply). Witness to police brutality, bullied by her manager, bullied by her landlord, and crippled by debt, Jule has been sufficiently radicalised by these experiences to align herself with Peter and Jan and become the unofficial third Edukator.

The kind of Spectaclesque rich bashing they engage in may leave some of their older victims remembering that there's a beach beneath their gravel driveway. Indeed, after the Edukators have been forced to abduct one of their victims they learn that he was once a radical who rubbed shoulders with the prominent Lefties in the glory days of '68. Now a rich entrepreneur, the Edukators - and the audience - are moved to wonder if his revolutionary ideals are now dead, or just dormant. During his captivity he befriends Jan, Jule and Peter; cooking for them, washing their clothes, sharing their drugs, and it seems that the accumulated detritus of thirty years in the business world begins to fall away to reveal, to some extent, the idealist heonce was, or at least a more benign capitalist, a Scrooge on Christmas morning. The Edukators suspect his motives and are alarmed by their developing friendship with their class enemy and 'hostage'. His abduction by the Edukators becomes his education, and he parts company with his captors on friendly terms, letting bygones bebygones and, more importantly, promising not to contact the authorities. But some leopards never change their spots . . .

To some extent the film is reminding us of the generally perceived view that youthfulness and radicalism seem to go hand in hand,whilst 'ageing' and 'conservative' are words which frequently keep each other company. There are many people who claim to have been socialists back in the sixties, yet after a few pints confess that Enoch was right. And some know, and some even perhaps are, former radicals who now vote New Labour and watch the world go by from behind the Financial Times.

As The Edukators should have tried to explore more often, there are probably many reasons why youthful would-be smashers of the state mature into upholders of the status quo. It is often the case that self-styled radicals were never radical in the first place, and a promising career is a great incentive for abandoning one's revolutionary ideals. But as Socialist Party members will evince, radicalism never dies: it simply loses its dress sense.

Neil Windle

Is The Truth Stranger Than Fiction? (2002)

From the July 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever heard the rumour that Paul McCartney was killed in a road crash in 1966? Apparently he was replaced by a double and surreptitious references to this are included on the cover - and in the songs - of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album. If not, perhaps you've heard that the moon landings were really shot in the Nevada desert? Or that Elvis faked his death and was seen, a few years back, working in a Burger King in Kalamazoo?

If you're familiar with any of these rumours then you've come across a major contributory factor in the persistent blurring of truth and fiction now prevalent throughout society: the conspiracy theory. From the Latin word conspirare, conspiracy means literally "to breathe together", but its most common interpretation is more pejorative than that, hinting at secret plots, clandestine illegal activities and mysterious doings away from the public gaze.

It has been a feature of late twentieth and early twenty-first century politics that conspiracy theories have been given more prominence and credence than almost ever before. Indeed, not since the Nazi rise to power in 1930s Germany, with their scare-mongering about "Jewish international finance capital", has the conspiratorial view of the world been in such vogue.

There's someone looking at you
It's not that conspiracy theories are in any way a novel phenomenon - far from it. They can be traced back to biblical times and beyond, with widespread and pervasive conspiracy theories probably arising for the first time during the Crusades. The difference between previous times in history and the modern era is twofold - firstly in the extent to which baseless conspiracy theories have recently proliferated and taken hold even amongst otherwise sophisticated and well-educated sections of the population, secondly because of the way in which virtually no major event or phenomenon can currently unfold without someone crying "conspiracy!" from the rooftops and finding a ready audience. Name a recent historical event - and it was a "conspiracy". Diana's death? A conspiracy, of course. European monetary union? A fiendish conspiracy hatched by un-elected, shadowy forces. September 11? Quite an obvious conspiracy (though by the US government itself apparently, not Al Qaeda).

Indeed, in recent times we seem to have entered an era of paranoid politics. For a whole series of complex reasons that have been charted previously in the pages of this journal, interest in real political ideas seems to have declined in the last ten or twenty years, especially in the so-called "advanced" capitalist states, and hand-in-hand with this has gone a suspicion of all those engaged in the political process.

We live in a technologically complex, sophisticated and supposedly "meritocratic" society and these are influences which have helped strip away much of the mystique previously surrounding our supposed elders and betters in the political elite, in the royal family and among others in the public spotlight. This distrust, which has been fuelled by very real revelations of wrong-doing in high places, has tainted the popular perception of not just the individuals involved but of the entire political process - and this is not just a phenomenon confined to Britain either. Mainland Europe, Japan and the United States (not to mention many of the more developing industrial states) have been gripped by the same distrust. And as any pop psychologist knows, distrust - in the right environment - breeds paranoia.

Postmodernist junk
The "right environment" in question is the one presented by postmodernism, that loose body of thought which contends that interpretation is everything and the truth an ephemera, and that science and reason are merely particular interpretations of events, being "narratives" with no more claim to validity than any other. It is postmodernism and the parallel distrust of science and progress that has arisen in recent years that has opened the way for conspiracy theories to multiply - whether they have a basis in reality or not. At the same time - and without coincidence - various New Age and occultist ideas and practices have gained ground. Postmodernism, irrationality and conspiracy theories now unite to form a bizarre trinity that informs much popular interpretation of historical events and processes.

Given this, it comes as no surprise that those most attracted to New Age and occultist theories are typically those who also give most credence to conspiracism as a systematic way of interpreting events. These are people who do not merely contend that conspiracies of some sort have taken place or have been uncovered (whether it be the JFK assassination or the Roswell UFO crash) but whose entire worldview is a conspiratorial one.

The Nazis, whose worldview was one drenched in anti-semitism to the extent that they thought the world dominated by a cabal of Jewish bankers, were steeped in a mysticism and occultism that had been handed down to them by fellow initiates of secret societies like the Vril Society and Thule Society in the period after the First World War. Modern day paranoid conspiracists are typically little different, blending the irrational theories and practices of the New Age with their conspiracist worldview.

In fact many have gone one step further than the Nazis and earlier conspiracists in thinking that all major conspiracies - real or imagined - together with all secret societies, are intrinsically linked, being but different aspects of the same age-old conspiracy. The current favourite is that they are all linked to the Illuminated Ones or "Illuminati" who were, amongst many other things, allegedly behind the founding of the United States (and its Federal Government), the United Nations, the European Union and other supposedly "centralising", "controlling" bodies.

So it is that in this theory, the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, the Rosicrucians, the Knights Templar, etc are all slowly working towards the achievement of some kind of centralised, totalitarian New World Order, and the clues - as always - lie in their occultist practices. For instance, here's the late William Cooper, a former US naval intelligence operative in his conspiracy-lovers' bible Behold A Pale Horse, illustrating the psychological tie-up beautifully:

"The numbers 3,7, 9,11,13 39 and any multiple of these numbers have special meaning to the Illuminati. Notice that the Bilderberg Group has a core of 39 members who are broken into 3 groups of 13 members in each group. Notice that the core of 39 answers to the 13 who make up the Policy Committee. Take special notice that the 13 members of the Policy Committee answer to the Round Table of Nine. You know that the original number of states in the United States of America was 13. The Constitution has 7 Articles and was signed by 39 members of the Constitutional Convention. The United States was born on July 4, 1776. July is the 7th month of the year. Add 7 (for July) and 4 and you have 11; 1+7+7+6 =21, which is a multiple of 3 and 7. Add 2+1 and you get 3. Look at the numbers in 1776 and you see two 7s and a 6, which is a multiple of 3. Coincidence, you say? I say "Baloney!" and I'd really like to say something a lot stronger". (pp.92-3).

In a similar vein, David Icke's recent works (notably The Robots' Rebellion and The Biggest Secret) are a case study of how spiritualist, astrological, numerological and conspiracist ideas (with a bit of "hollow earth", gaia and ufology thrown in for good measure) can interlock and reinforce one another. He too has jumped on the Illuminati bandwagon, upping-the-ante as only he knows how, claiming that the initiates of this secret group of "controllers" are really shape-shifting reptilians, notably including Ted Heath and the British royal family. And lest anyone think that David Icke and others of his ilk are an irrelevant political joke, his books sell tens of thousands of copies and his public meetings across the world are full and booked-up often months in advance - this being fairly typically of the genre.

Strange world
In some respects, we do indeed live in strange, puzzling and disconcerting times. Mass starvation exists amongst plenty. Wars constantly rage across the globe even though everyone says they want peace. And when "too much" is produced by the factories and farms, people get made unemployed and are plunged into dire poverty, presumably for being too successful.

In this environment, it is no wonder that people look for irrational explanations for seemingly irrational problems. Conspiracy theorists take the view that such a complex organism as modern world society must be controlled from the top - someone, somewhere must be pulling the strings. For instance, unfamiliar with the analysis of Marxian economics, they are yet to realise that at the heart of the capitalist economy is a genuine "anarchy of production" based on ruthless competition, where firms produce goods with only profit in mind and not the needs of other firms or the limits for their particular market - and without an overall external controlling force. This particular blind spot in their conspiracists' perspective can lead them to make ridiculous, unsupported claims like the following, quite typical of its kind:

"In 1929, the Brotherhood [Illuminati] bankers crashed the Wall Street stock-market and caused the Great Depression. From this problem came the solution, the 'New Deal' economic package offered by Roosevelt which won him the Presidential election of 1933. The 'New Deal' was a replica of the economic package offered by Hitler to the German people to solve their manufactured economic problems . . . Soon afterwards, with the American economy now completely under Brotherhood control, Roosevelt put their symbol, the pyramid and all-seeing eye, on the dollar bill. He was saying to the American people 'Gotch-yer'" (The Biggest Secret by David Icke, pp.230-1).

No explanation of this type of argument is ever put forward beyond a re-iteration of the inter-connectedness of some sections of the capitalists class (the Rothschilds and Rockefellers usually attracting particular attention) combined with the hoary old myth about the "mystical" power of the banks being able to create multiples of credit from a given deposit base. And needless to say, while all the evidence points to the economy being essentially beyond the control of politicians, bankers and economic forecasters too, the conspiracy theorists interpret every event (even contradictory ones) as being evidence that everything is under political control to the last detail and that the forecasters are just "playing the game".

In truth, very little concrete evidence is ever put forward for the more far-reaching conspiracy theories that imply a conspiratorial worldview. The stock-in-trade of the conspiracy writers is rumour, innuendo, guilt-by-association and half-knowledge passed off as fact. Take Bilderberg and its ilk as an example. Yes, there is plentiful evidence that organisations like the Bilderberg group exist. Yes, there is evidence that their members are rich and powerful people with their own agendas and quite some influence. But no, there is no evidence that such organisations "rule the world" and carefully manipulate states and economies at will - and no-one has yet provided any.

The dispossessed and disenchanted
Who are the real believers in conspiracy theories like these anyway? Conspiracy theorists are fond of quoting selected people "in the know" to show that the conspirators themselves occasionally admit what they are up to. Carroll Quigley, renowned expert on Anglo-US relations and mentor to Bill Clinton is a favourite, especially his book Tragedy and Hope, though in reality it is a weighty tome that says plenty about cross-Atlantic ruling class networks (The Round Table, Royal Institute for International Affairs, Council on Foreign Relations) but little about global conspiracies. Former British Tory Prime Minister Disraeli is another favourite, especially his statement that "the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes" (Conspiracies, Cover-ups & Crimes by Jonathan Vankin, p.265) but that is a quote that is familiar due to overuse more than anything else that there is to commend it. Disraeli had in fact been intrigued by conspiracy theories and secret societies from his youth and was apt to make phrases like this whether he really believed them or not.

Most conspiracy theories are really believed not by those who come into closest contact with the conspirators but by those at the bottom of the pile who are typically furthest away from them, metaphorically speaking - the disenfranchised and dispossessed. They are most likely to be found on the extreme fringes of capitalism's political spectrum, on the far left and the far right, whether they be anti-globalisation crusties of J-18 fame or the US militiamen polishing their guns in the hills of Montana and Arizona.

Interestingly, many if not most of the famous real-life conspiracies that have been documented beyond reasonable dispute have been hatched not by large, elaborate networks of the rich and powerful (who have a tendency and opportunity to use more subtle means, at least on the whole) but by comparatively small, well-organised groups of political dissenters, from those behind the Gunpowder Plot through to the Bolsheviks and in recent times the perpetrators of 11 September. That can be no surprise - the fewer people that know of a secret, the more chance there is of it being kept under wraps until the appropriate moment arrives.

Conspiracies everywhere?
So do conspiracies actually exist at present? Of course - from minor political conspiracies and plots (e.g. the Tory Party plot a few years ago to depose Margaret Thatcher) to the more renowned activities of political dissenters meeting in secret (the actual origin of most secret societies). There are of course plots and conspiracies by the rich and powerful to cover-up their misdeeds too on occasion (like Watergate) and it almost goes without saying that there have been well-documented clandestine activities by the ruling class and its agents against the organised labour movement, even from before the days of the First International. But we can also say with a fair degree of certainty that:

1. No reliable evidence has ever been furnished in support of a conspiracy "worldview".
2. Such views are typically the product of misplaced theories and perspectives that interlock with, and reinforce, other erroneous ideas (such as with the Illuminati and numerology; anti-semitism and the occult).
3. Postmodernist culture has helped open the floodgates to a swathe of unsound conspiracy theories that seek to systematically interpret world events in a non-rational and unscientific manner.
4. Conspiracy theorists' assertions that a complex, technologically advanced society like capitalism cannot be at root "anarchic" in many of its operations, are misplaced.

So the conspiratorial worldview is certainly not helpful in promoting an understanding of modern society and is itself, in large part, a product of the times we live in.

The organisation of society as it currently exists - capitalism - is certainly not a conspiracy, even if its structure means that conspiracies exist from time to time within it. And for those interested in overthrowing the system which now seemingly leads to secrecy and paranoia almost like night leads to day, a more fundamental approach is needed than that exhibited by the conspiracy theorists. A truly democratic society, where power no longer resides in the hands of a few, and where the incentive for power struggles and subterfuge will decrease accordingly, cannot be built within capitalism, by its very nature. Instead, a democratic socialist revolution, carried out by the majority and in the interests of the majority, will be the time in history when the conspiracy worldview is finally put to bed.

Meanwhile, for those struggling with the complexities and contradictions of life in capitalist society we can certainly say this: the truth is out there somewhere. It is just that it is not generally to be found in the New Age literature and conspiracy quackery currently invading the shelves of high street book stores across much of the western world. And there's definitely no mystery about that.

Dave Perrin

Banksy Punks Disney

Banksy Punks the World and its Brother

9/11 - Five Years On

The following statement was issued by the World Socialist Party of the United States in the immediate aftermath of the horrific terrorist attacks on 9/11/01.

Terrorism, and the greater terrorism

The World Socialist Party of the United States condemns the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We offer our condolences to those who lost family or friends in these attacks. We do not believe that violence is an effective or acceptable means for social change, or change of any kind. We condemn all acts of violence, regardless of who carries them out.

As much as we disavow the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we also denounce the military strikes against Afghanistan, and any other attacks that follow. No capitalist war is worth the shedding of a single drop of blood, on either side.

We urge the people of the United States, that is to say, the working class, to recognize their common interests, and common plight with the people of all other countries, including Afghanistan. These people are not our enemies. The enemy is the capitalist system.

In addition, we urge the workers of America to recognize that fellow workers of Arab or Middle-eastern descent who live in America are not the enemy either. They are trapped in the same anti-human capitalist system as all other workers, both in America and the rest of the world. The workers of America must not take out their anger over the attacks on fellow workers of Arab descent.

We also wish to make it clear that the picture on the cover of our journal, the World Socialist Review, was printed before the September 11 attack on the Pentagon. The picture has nothing to do with the attack.

We are working to abolish the system which allowed and is responsible for these attacks and invite all who wish to permanently end terrorism and all forms of war to join us.

National Administrative Committee. WSPUS

Articles from Socialist Standard on 9/11 and its aftermath:

From the September 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard - 'September 11, 2001: Reflections on a Somewhat Unusual Act of War'

From the October 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard - 'Terrorism versus Terrorism'

From the October 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard - 'Reactions'

From the October 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard - 'The Middle East Connection'

From the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard - 'More Reactions'

From the December 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard - Redefining War

From the April 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard - The War: Capitalism Does it Again

Is Protest Really Enough? (2006)

Demand the Impossible

In coming weeks, people across the country will be attending meetings leading up to the massive "Time To Go" protest which is set to coincide with the Labour Party Conference in Manchester.

No doubt many will be veterans of the mass protest in London over 3 years ago which attracted almost 2 million people - people fully aware at the time that the events of 9/11 had no link to Saddam Hussein and that he posed no military threat to the West. Likewise, the many who marched to Hyde Park that day were right in believing that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction - a fact that has now been proved - and that any war in Iraq would fully destabilise the country. And you would have been in a minority had you not realised the link between the intended war and the fact that beneath the sands of Iraq lay huge oil resources.

Undoubtedly, after over three years of campaigning you will be revolted by the incessant lies of the Blair government as it has tried to justify the occupation of Iraq and its further plunge into chaos. Week in, week out, the government has distorted the truth and sunk to all manner of low tactics to justify its position. And now, after all of your campaigning efforts, the meetings and demos you have attended, the petitions you have signed, the umpteen arguments with your friends and neighbours, you are hereprotesting again, having been proved right, marching today, demanding a withdrawal of US and British forces from Iraq, hoping to halt a looming attack upon Iran, demanding Lebanon be left alone and calling for no replacement for Trident.

Three years of solid protest and your cause is not one inch further forward! Whoa, hold on! Do you not think you might just be wasting your time here today? Granted, the Iraq War has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands and innocent Iraqis are still being killed every day. And yes, Blair has increased the British troop presence in Afghanistan and even kept schtum during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. But do you not think you're asking the wrong questions, making the wrong demands? Repeating the mistakes of the past? We're not saying you are wrong for asking questions, only that you do not ask enough. Indeed, question everything! Were not suggesting you are demanding too muchtoday - in truth, you are not demanding enough.

Whilst this march demands the withdrawal of western forces from Iraq and pleads that Iran is not attacked, it supports the very system that creates war by not questioning the premise of war. War is a bedfellow of the system we know as capitalism, being waged over trade routes, areas of influence, foreign markets, natural resources and the profits that can be had via the same. By not taking issue with the nature of capitalism, and the root of war, this gathering is making the mistake of every previous anti-war demo and meeting and paving the way for more in the future. Wars will continue as long as capitalism exists. By demanding the British and American governments act we further give them legitimacy by acknowledging their right to make war and indeed end it.

Now we're not being churlish here. It is heartening to see so many here today, united in common voice - it reveals the workers can be mobilised around issues they feel are important. But from our experience - and weve had 100 years' experience of observing campaigns and demonstrations and protests around every kind of reform and demand imaginable (were the oldest existing socialist organisation in Britain, having been formed in 1904) - we can confidently say that this demonstration is just one of hundreds over the years that address the symptoms, not the cause of the problem, and will make no significant difference to the established order, either here or in Iraq, or to the way politicians think. Three years ago, two million marched all over Britain; there were demos and vigils every night in opposition to the war. Over one-hundred Labour MPs voted against Blair's war, and to top it all the push for war received no UN sanction, but still the troops were sent. So much for one of the biggest protest movements in labour history!

Consider this. Across the globe there are literally hundreds of thousands of campaigns and protest groups and many more charities, some small, some enormous, all pursuing tens of thousands of issues, and their work involves many millions of sincere workers who care passionately about their individual causes and give their free time to support them unquestioningly. Many will have campaigned on some single issue for years on end with no visible result; others will have celebrated minor victories and then joined another campaign groups, spurred on by that initial success.

And, considering the above, two things stand out: firstly, that many of the problems around us are rooted in the way our society is organised for production, and are problems we have been capable of solving for quite some time, though never within the confines of a profit-driven market system; secondly, that if all of these well meaning people had have directed all their energy - all those tens of billions of human labour hours expended on their myriad single issues - to the task of overthrowing the system that creates a great deal of the problems around us, then none of us would be here today. Instead we would have established a world without borders, without waste or want or war, in which we would all have free access to the benefits of civilisation with problem solving devoid of the artificial constraints of the profit system.

If you are now confused forgive us if we come across blunt, but which part of "to end war we must end capitalism" do you not understand? Its simple! Every aspect of our lives is subordinated to the requirements of profit - from the moment you brush your teeth in the morning with the toothpaste you saw advertised on TV until you crawl into your bed at night. Pick up a newspaper and try locating any problem reported there outside of our "cant pay - cant have system". Crime, the health service, poverty, drug abuse, hunger, disease, homelessness, unemployment, war, insecurity - the list is endless. All attract their campaign groups, all struggling to address these problems, and all of these problems arising because of the inefficient and archaic way we organise our world for production. Youve got it! Were unlike any other group here today out to reform capitalism, who beg governments to be just a little less horrid, who ask our masters to throw us a few more crumbs from the bread we bake. We are not into the politics of compromise and we certainly are not prepared to be satisfied with crumbs. We demand the whole bakery!

We are here today to urge you to stop belittling yourself and your class by making the same age-old demands of the master class. Demand what until now has been considered "the impossible"! Join us in campaigning for a system of society where there are no leaders, no classes, no states or governments, no borders, no force or coercion; a world where the earth's natural and industrial resources are commonly owned and democratically controlled and where production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit and used to the benefit of all; a world of free access to the necessaries of life. Wouldn't such a campaign movement not only address the real root of every campaign and protest currently being waged?

The choice is yours - the struggle for world socialism and an end to our real problems or a lifetime attached to the 'pick-your-cause' brigade and the certainty you will be retracing your footsteps here today in years to come. Please use the contact details below for more information.

The Socialist Party
spgb@worldsocialism.org

"Things Can Only Get Better" (1998)

From the November 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

This was the relentless backing track to an illusion. The Tories had been in power for too long. Labour was different. New. It was brand New Labour. It said just the same sort of things as the Tories, but . . . well, Things Can Only Get Better.

Things Can Only Get Better. Because New Labour was new and Tony was cool and had such a dreamy, cleany smile. He was Clinton without the stink of sleaze; he was Labour without the nasty unions; he was a Tory without eighteen years of capitalist misery to answer for. What could be better than Tony's New Labour? And the inane beat went on: Things Can Only Get Better . . . Better . . . Better . . .

Then came the election. In a ritualistic act of public humiliation tribal leaders were tied to a pole (in fact, a poll) and beaten across the arse with bamboo sticks. The only happy part of watching New Labour's act of monumental fraudulence transpire was the joy of observing the defeat of Thatcher's little errand boys. David Evans, the foul little racist bigot - You're out, son. Olga Maitland, that personification of air-headed educational failure - Bash; you're dead. Rhodes Boyson, the pompous Tory oaf who campaigned for the teachers' right to beat children - Thwack; you're out of a job, kid. And power-hungry, odious Miguel Portillo, the Thatcherites' favoured son, forced to concede defeat and accept a short-term contract making documentaries for the BBC on why the Tories are losers. The immensity of the vote in 1997 was not for New Labour. It was against the Tories. Within days Major faded away into appropriate obscurity and Hague just faded into obscurity. The little boy had inherited the sweet shop, only to discover that he had no teeth with which to chew. For the Tories, things could only get better - eventually. Meanwhile, they look through their telescopes trying to see Europe across a foggy sea, never quite spotting it because their navels get in the way.

But on that famous night of folly and suckers' celebration, who cared about the rotting corpses of fallen Tories? Tony was in. Labour had died and been reborn and now New Labour would build the new Jerusalem in England's green and pleasant . . . not yet though. New Labour had little to say about building a new Jerusalem. Utopians they were not. New Labour "faced reality" more often than Muslims faced Mecca. They worshipped Reality. Capitalism is Reality. You don't have to like it, but it's here . . . it's real . . . it's what we're here to run. And nobody can accuse them of not saying it. No snivelling, whining Trotskyist can drone on about being betrayed and the leadership selling out because New Labour has been to capitalism what a fly is to a lump of shit. New Labour was unapologetically honest: it was out to run the market without illusions. The SWP and its deluded leftist rivals urged workers to vote for New Labour "without illusions" because they too fell for the myth that "Things can only get better". They too were duped by the choice of the lesser evil.

So, the suckers got what they voted for. How they danced in the streets as Tony went to see the Queen to pledge his loyalty as her UK District Manager. The Blairite press reported degrees of ecstasy reminiscent of the climax scene in When Harry Met Sally. Life under New Labour was going to be one long orgasm. Things could only get better.

A few Labour lefties sounded notes of discontent. Scargill's semi-reconstructed Stalinists bleated that this wasn't the sort of Labour Government they'd spent their lives trying to elect. For them, the golden age had been 1945-51 when Labour was Old, Betty Boothroyd was a go-go dancer and false teeth were free. What they neglected to recall was how Attlee's Old Labour had taken Britain into NATO and sent observers to ensure that Hiroshima was bombed to dust and used troops to break up the dockers' strike. The nostalgia for Labour's imagined socialist past was as deluded as the breathless eagerness of New Labour for its ever-modernising future.

And that was the New Labour agenda. Modernise the system. From the House of Windsor to the NHS New Labour stepped into action like a team of time-and-motion experts, out to show the way to lower costs and higher profits. When it all went wrong - as every endeavour to control the capitalist system always will - they blamed the world market and globalisation and an unexpected world recession. You see, the suckers who elected them had failed to sing beyond the first line of the song: Things Can Only Get Better . . . as long as world capitalism doesn't get worse, in which case they can only get worse. So modernisation of the economy gave way to hanging on in the face of difficult economic circumstances, and New Labour started to sound much more like Old: Brown like Healey; Blair like Wilson.

When governments come to realise that they are not in control of the capitalist system, but it controls them, they turn inevitably to matters cosmetic. So, all the big talk about Education Education Education and the NHS and caring for the disabled (by cutting their benefits) was quickly abandoned and in its place came the new panacea: Cool Britannia.

Cold Britannia
In Brezhnev's Russia politically approved pop groups would be recruited from time to time to appear on TV and allow fat party bosses to be seen bopping to them. It was an unseemly site, devised in a pathetic attempt to show that privileged plutocrats were really just like wage slaves in the sausage queues. Cool Britannia was a cynical use of imagery to suggest that Blair's Britain was abuzz with exciting new happenings that were the envy of the world. From The Spice Girls to Oasis to Chris Evans to Grant from East Enders, the great and the grating on your nerves were invited to Number Ten to show what a cool guy Tony really was. Vast sums of advertising expenditure was devoted to telling people that it's cool to be British. The useless, senseless, hideous Dome was the icon of coolness.

For many, life was less than cool. For the pensioners, trying to make it on 65 pounds a week; for the single parents; for the prisoners of the slums called council estates; for the disabled who were told that it was going to be harder to claim benefits under New Labour's tough love; for asylum seekers whose futures were all too easily sacrificed on the altar of tabloid popularity; for nurses who, after eighteen years of waiting, are still facing a fall in real wages; for those stuck in the negative equity trap; for kids who are now being told by the government what time they should go to bed, and against whom the New Labour Minister, Paul Boateng, demands the right of parents to use corporal punishment. What's cool about Britain for these people? What's cool for those destined to sleep in short-term accommodation or on the street? For them, it's cold Britannia.

Maybe things could only get better, but they haven't - and they will not under capitalism. For capitalism is based upon production for the market, not satisfying human needs. Its based upon profit not use. Its based upon the few getting rich because they rob the vast majority who have nothing to sell but our ability to work. There is no alternative within capitalism. There is only an alternative to capitalism.

But Mr Blair has another idea. Perhaps it is to dignify the puffery of empty talk too much to call it an idea, but to be sure it has a name. Mr Blair is an advocate of The Third Way. Neither capitalism nor socialism, but . . . well, capitalism with things getting better. Socialists have had a name for this Big Idea for a long time: it's called Reformism and it does not work. Reformists believe that they can have the capitalist system, with its inherent laws of profit before need, and run it to satisfy both profits and needs. Labour, Tory and Liberal reformists have all believed in this strategy, now renamed The Third Way, and not one of them has been able to manage capitalism so that profits defer to human needs. The Third Way is a new term for sterile old reformism, just as New Labour is a new term for Old Labour's failed reformism.

The Third Way. Cool Britannia. Things Can Only Get Better. Things Go Better With Coke. These are not principles, ideas or policies, but images, propagated like drugs to induce in the gullible a trance-like state of pseudo-security and contentment. Things can only get better? Just Say No. Say no to all the hollow crap of politicians' dope-talk, and ponder the indisputable point that things will only get better once this system is no longer, and the only people who can remove it is you, its victims.

SC

Capitalism and Other Kids Stuff (2005)

From the September 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism and Other Kids Stuff can be viewed here.

To describe a society of common ownership without mentioning the word socialism is undoubtedly difficult. But by no means impossible. For a short film produced by members of the Socialist Party, Capitalism and Other Kids' Stuff, does just that in a language that nevertheless consistently pulls no punches.

Socialists are well aware of the dual purpose on the part of the capitalist media in portraying the class of exploited producers as a mindless, selfish, non-caring mass of individual consumers: to promote profits and create disunity. The film destroys these caricatures right from the start and exposes them for the claptrap they are, by juxtaposing the individual differences of perception with the broad facts of social evolution, human behaviour, and the unique ability of humans to care and share in common despite our cultural differences and lifestyles.

When the producing class engage in widespread discrimination over issues of race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexuality, disability, etc; and take sides over who gets what share of the global market, this is clearly against their interests since they are thereby helping to create the conditions for a wealthy few to control the means of living.

Globally the results are all too familiar with the complexity of private property relationships concealed within a quagmire of disputes over territory and markets, followed by constant eruptions of violent conflict, and ending in misery and destitution on a massive scale. By skilfully crafting the reasons for this complexity of private property relationships to a novel 'kids stuff' analogy the script neatly underlines the importance of gaining a worldview of capitalism by analysing how the rules governing the minority ownership of the 'toys' determines the terms of oppression and the conditions of inequality for the 'toyless producers'.

Although there is an obvious danger such an analogy could be counter-productive, by unintentionally projecting an oversimplification of what constitutes the reality of capitalism, this hurdle is overcome by complementing the linkage to the "reality" of capitalism with a powerful backdrop of words and images, so the overall context underscores a revolutionary outlook on how we might live. These contrasts are further enhanced by comparing the divisions and horrors of capitalism with a society where production is geared to meeting human needs not profit plus the immense benefits to be gained when the world's resources are distributed through a system of production for use and free access so the necessity of social equality become conclusive.

This is maintained throughout the 50 minutes so the viewer is left in no doubt that before a world of common ownership is possible the majority have to gain a level of class consciousness and political understanding. In other words: engaging in a struggle to promote the class interest of the majority to attain and create a society where private property is replaced by common ownership involves acknowledging that the present unequal access to the means of living requires a political solution.

To get this solution across to an apolitical audience successfully in itself is no mean feat, but to also focus attention on the vast amount of social and individual freedom such a revolution will bring about will motivate many viewers to press the replay button over and over again, and so speaks volumes for the professional dedication and attention to detail. Although this is a first in terms of the socialist message being transposed into a film format no doubt it will not be the last. So watch this space, but in the meantime judge for yourself by watching Capitalism and Other Kids' Stuff at www.socialist-tv.com, or alternatively by purchasing a DVD from: Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN. Cost £5 (including post & packaging).

Brian Johnson

September 10, 2001 - America on the Brink

The September Socialist Standard is now online and can be read either as a PDF here or the individual articles and reviews can be read in html by clicking on the links provided below.

With this month being five years since 9/11, I wasn't that surprised to see that the Editorial Committee opted for an article on that monstrous atrocity, and the resultant fall out in the world as its front page article. People might also be interested in the Socialist Standard which was produced the month following the terrorist attack in New York.

I can't help but notice that the late Ted Grant gets a long obituary in this month's Standard, which I guess is par for the course as the late Tony Cliff also got the full length write up in the May 2000 Socialist Standard. I fear the worst if Tony Benn, Michael Foot and Margaret Thatcher were to die over the same period of time - a bumper 72 page issue of the Socialist Standard the following month, made up of an editorial, the Party's object and declaration of principles, and the rest of the issue given over to sticking the political boot in.

Editorial

War, Plots and Civil Liberties

Regular Columns

Pathfinders Odds Uneven

Cooking the Books Doing Business, the World Bank Way & "Mass Unemployment"

Greasy Pole Peter Hain - a Case of Mistaken Identity

50 Years Ago What is Behind the Fight for Suez

Main Articles

September 11, 2001: reflections on a somewhat unusual act of war On the fifth anniversary of the al-Qaeda attack on New York and Washington, we reflect on this act of war and try to place it in its true political and moral context.

After Hezbullah, war with Iran? Was Israel's attack on Hezbullah part of preparations for a coming US attack on Iran?

Globalisation - what does it mean? The second part of our article analysing capitalist globalisation. Last month we looked at how this affected capital. This month we examine its impact on the world's population at large.

Death of a Tendency The recent death of Ted Grant at the age of 93 has been a landmark, albeit a minor one, in British political history.

Political Ideas in Africa A brief look at the history of leftwing ideas in Africa.

Desperate Lies The man who faced the choice of dropping dead while waiting on the NHS list or bluffing.

Reviews and Letters

Book Reviews Glasshouse by Charles Stross; A Rebel's Guide to Gramsci by Chris Bambery

Theatre Review Shakespeare's Coriolanus at the Globe

Letters to the Editors Nuclear Power & Asked and Answered

Voice From The Back

Blinded, Conned, Kicked, Disgusted, Abandoned and Shunned by Capitalism.

Cooking the Books: Doing Business, the World Bank Way (2006)

The Cooking the Books column from the September 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

The World Bank exists to oil the wheels of capitalism: to make funds available for investment and various infrastructure projects. Basically it tries to ensure that things run as smoothly and predictably as possible, and always in the interests of the currently rich and powerful. Of course, this being capitalism, things do not always go as planned.

One of the ways in which the World Bank seeks to serve capitalism is by providing information about investment in different countries. It runs a website, Doing Business, which gives "objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement", so making it easier for capitalists to know the pitfalls of investing in various parts of the world.

The data on the site cover everything from starting a business to paying taxes, enforcing contracts and procedures for bankruptcy. One of the topics dealt with is employing workers, where the indicators, as they are termed, are how difficult it is to hire a new worker, restrictions on expanding or contracting the number of working hours, the difficulty and expense of dismissing a redundant worker and their costs (expressed in weeks of wages).

So we learn that the USA gets a score of zero for difficulty of hiring and rigidity of hours, and a redundant worker costs nothing(!) in terms of firing costs. The UK has higher scores, including 33 weeks' wages as the cost of dismissing a redundant worker. Germany has much higher scores on all these, and 66 weeks' wages as the cost of dismissal. Note that in all cases a higher figure means 'more rigid regulations', so low scores are good as far as the World Bank is concerned - for instance, the US has little to stop an employer cutting or increasing working hours. Russia has a mixture of scores: zero for difficulty of hiring but nearly as high as Germany for rigidity of hours.

From a working class point of view, however, the real issue is not how reliable the scores are or how they differ among continents and countries. Rather, the crucial thing is what they reveal about how the bosses view you and me. We aren't people with families and needs, rather we are just another aspect of doing business.

The ease of acquiring a license or obtaining credit is put on a par with how easy it is to alter our working hours or how easy and expensive it is to dismiss us if we become redundant, i.e. no longer able to produce profits in the way that is required.

For capitalism, members of the working class aren't really human beings, just costs of production, cogs in the great wheel of making a profit and keeping the bosses in the style to which they have become accustomed. A society which is based on production for use will be centred around people, around satisfying our needs as both producers and consumers, as parents and friends. Then we can say goodbye to the World Bank and their offensive economic scores.

Reactions - 5 years after 9/11 (2001)

From the October 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

We reproduce below reactions to what happened on 11 September from Socialists in various parts of the world as posted on the World Socialist Movement Forum.

Today at the community mental health center where I work, as at workplaces all around the United States, work has basically come to a beautifully silent stop. Television has just won a Permanent Revolution, as the news goes from bad to worse, and the number of viewers explodes from the moderate to the extreme.

My workplace just had a prayer vigil for the dead. I chose not to attend, even though I am also feeling sick about the entire affair. But it is only an intensification of the nausea I feel every day living in a market system of owners and nonowners. The collapsing World Trade Center was the symbol of only the temporary fall of the businesses that held offices there.

The Phallus has descended, but only for a short time. After the tragic death of thousands of workers (and capitalists too), there will be a glorious Reconstruction. The Spectacle will see to it. Military efforts will ensure that the guilty are found, and the buildings in Manhattan will be rebuilt, whether or not the city chooses to reconstitute the World Trade Center itself.

Business will go on as usual. In fact, the spirit of reconstruction may even benefit it. Millions of human lives will continue to be sacrificed for the profit of a few. Millions around the world will continue to starve. Millions of children in the United States alone will continue to spend their childhood abused, or neglected in noisy, smelly and dangerous ghettos. We workers will all return to work, and the nightmare of capitalism will resume. Blood will be swiftly donated to the injured by millions of generous citizens. Yet the system too will get its new blood.

I do feel terrible today, profoundly depressed. I really wish I didn't, but I just do, I can't help it. I don't know if some of you are also feeling angry. But underneath there is a gnawing mourning we must all tolerate. "Get a handle on your feelings, man, there is work to be done!" the Spectacle will whisper. "Rebuild Southern Manhattan and the Pentagon, and rekindle your nationalism and hatred of people from other lands." All around us, folks will volunteer their efforts, and the basic goodness and humanity of our species will show its strength and its supportive, loving, quality. But this will not lead to a social revolution from a system of private or state ownership to a moneyless and stateless system of common ownership of the means of life, much as we all could use one badly in this endlessly violent world in which we do not feel safe.

No, the Spectacle will portray the negative image of that glorious vision of freedom and community. For the community action we witness on television will attempt to mask our essential passivity. National togetherness will shroud our apartness. Revenge upon the terrorists will deflect our hatred of work. Our mourning will obliterate our celebration of life. Our trauma will disempower us. Our national strength will weaken us. The world of appearance is as topsy-turvy as Marx and Feuerbach showed Hegel's reality to be.

Which is why we must preserve our critique of the totality. It is also why we must refuse the Spectacle. For only in our critique of the totality will our mourning, our strength, our trauma, our love, be real. Only in our critique of the whole system may we hopefully one day witness the world centers of trade really come down, and not merely the mere illusion of its collapse, even though it was a grander production than even Hollywood could have mustered with the budget of a thousand Towering Infernos. The wasteful dead are lining the streets. Their death sickens me. But in the land of death, they have only come home, while in the land of the living, we have yet to build one.

DV (Chicago) 11 September

September 11

I saw the news this morning
a tower all in in flames
I saw the ones about to die,
I didn't know their names.
I watched the screen in disbelief,
an unbelieving eye.
The questions come into my mind
for who, for what, for why?

Terror is an ugly word
for an ugly hateful hate.
Terror of the madmen
or terror of the State.
Terror from the death squads
or terror from the skies.
No matter where, no matter when
it's the innocents who die.

And the sadness grows, the sadness grows.

An angry mob confronts a child
on her way to school.
The plane crashed into a tower
by a willing fool.
Napalm raining from the skies
for all the world to see.
Dimensions of the madness
are all the same to me.

And the sadness grows, the sadness grows.

From the one who hides behind a desk
to the one behind the gun,
From the one who hides behind a mask
in the hateful deed that's done,
From the one who give the orders
and justifies decrees
to the one who pulls the trigger,
just a matter of degrees.

And the sadness grows, the sadness grows.

The war that's over there
is the war that's brought to home
To reap a bitter harvest
from the seeds that we have sewn.
For religion, dogma, bits of flag
and the things for which men kill,
For the lies that divide us
I'll say I've had my fill.

And the sadness grows, the sadness grows.
The sadness grows, oh the sadness grows.

Music and Words by Len Wallace (Canada)

Reasonable people everywhere will deplore the events of the past few days in New York and will sympathise with those families who have lost someone. They will admire the courage and the unselfish acts that have been demonstrated by firefighters, police, medical workers and ordinary citizens who put their own lives on the line everyday to help other people and often go unrecognised.

We are frequently subjected to only the darker side of human behaviour, the selfishness, such as the despicable acts of deliberately killing thousands of innocent people, the acts of terror to promote a particular end. The people who commit these acts believe that the end justifies the means. The exact opposite of what World Socialists say, that the means and the end must be consistent. That to bring about a truly democratic society it can only be brought about democratically.

Whether these acts of terror are carried out by individuals, private organisations, or acts of war declared by nation-states against other nation-states, (and legitimised by them because they say it is in their interests to act in this way), the terror is exactly the same for the victims.

It is no less a tragedy if wives lose their husbands, children lose their parents, or parents lose their children through the act of a single terrorist or group of terrorists, or through the official government-ordained act of an official military executioner. The end result is the same, tragic and needless loss and human suffering for the victims and their families.

"Legitimate" acts of war are seen as being necessary, and in the interests of a particular nation state that is being threatened directly, or by the economic interests of another nation state, or group of nations. What are the interests that are being threatened? They are either territorial expansion or access to resources. Who is it that requires access to these territories or resources? It is the exploiters of resources, the private corporations who look to local governments to grant them access, for payment, (royalties), or to their own governments to use their coercive powers to "persuade" through denial of access to trade, or other economic embargos. Political groups who resist these pressures are seen as hostile. Those who lie down, who acquiese, are seen as friendly. When these methods fail, threats of aggression, or actual aggression are the legitimate acts of terror - war.

That is the way in which the capitalist system encourages exploitation of the worlds resources, the regular daily need to increase investment and exploit resources drives the aggression of governments to "defend" their interests, wherever they might be on the planet.

The machinery of war, planes, ships, tanks and all of the paraphenalia, are sold aggressively by all of the major powers as a legitimate industry for official acts of war. Land mines despite the horrible damage to innocent victims every day, are a legitimate commodity for governments to invest in. Over 800 billion US dollars a year are invested in the machinery of war according to the United Nations.

Individual capitalists may be opposed to war, many of them would rather have their money used for peaceful means, to "protect" people from war, another legitimate source of profit, and highly moral. Nevertheless, the acts of terror, legitimate or otherwise, are driven by the various groups protecting their right to legitimately expand "their interests", or by others to defend their own.

The loss of lives of innocent victims in war are "regrettable" when they happen to groups other than our own, in far away places, they are "tragic" when they happen on "our own" doorstep, to "our own" people.

New York is one of the melting pots of world society representing all of the world's major cultures, I look forward to the time when people everywhere recognise that we have a common interest in preserving what is good in each of our cultures and sharing it with the world.

For a world society, caring for each other, and sharing with each other. One World and One People.

Robert Malone (New Zealand)

I was in Florida at the time of the attack and a few days after. This enabled me to see how the news was reported and commented on. When I got back to England I was able to make comparisons.

Not much difference really. If anything, the British tabloids were more bloodthirsty and revengeful than the American papers I saw. The letters to the press in both countries reflected majority patriotism and "gung-ho" militarism. But there was a minority who took a more critical view of the causes of violence, whether "terrorist" or governmental. The following, from the St. Petersburg Times of 15 September, is a good example:

"Our nation is now reaping the result of an arrogant, militaristic and interventionist foreign policy. But rather than acknowledge and deal honestly with the root causes of violent terrorist actions, most prefer to pound their fists and expound about a 'declaration of war' . . . This 'war' is clearly not about bringing the perpetrators of the September 11 actions to justice; it will end up being nothing less than a carte blanche for the launching of a military and economic offensive against designated 'enemies'', and to provide a rationale for stifling political dissent at home. The 'war' now being hyped in Washington will increase, not decrease, the probability of future attacks on U.S. targets by those who feel dispossessed and oppressed by U.S. policies."

Stan Parker (UK)

Editorial: War, Plots and Civil Liberties (2006)

Editorial from the September 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Was there really a plot to blow up transatlantic airliners or were the police just using a pretext to fish for information by rounding up and questioning people they suspected were up to something without knowing precisely what? Will ministers eventually say, as they did after the killing of John Charles de Menezes and after the raid on that house in Forest Gate when another innocent man was shot, that its better to err on the side of safety? Better a few innocents are shot than a terrorist act in which hundreds die?

Whatever the truth, the "security alert" last month in which a terrorist attack was said to be "imminent" allowed the state to project itself as the defender of the public. It is no such thing. The state is controlled by pro-capitalist politicians who pursue policies they consider to be in the general interest of British capitalism, even to the extent of putting the lives of the general public at risk.

The present government, led by Blair, has decided that it is in the best interest of the British capitalist class to tag along behind the US government's global pretensions, especially its so-called "War on Terror", which is really a struggle with certain Middle East states and disaffected Arab elites and their supporters for control of that oil-rich region.

The US government is committed to furthering the interests of US capitalism, which don't necessarily coincide with those of British capitalism, and there are pro-capitalist politicians in Britain, some apparently within the cabinet, who think that Blair might have gone too far in his pro-US stance. But it is not up to us as socialists to judge which politicians best represent the interest of the British capitalist class.

It is this pro-US capitalism policy option that has put the "British public" in danger by making them legitimate targets in the eyes of the Islamist opponents of US domination of the Middle East. It is just plain ridiculous for government ministers to try to deny this. What makes it worse is that neither the attack on Iraq nor (even less) giving Israel more time to bomb Lebanon enjoyed majority popular support.

But no government can leave such a vital decision as to whether or not to go to war to a popular vote. This is because the role of governments is to be "the executive committee of the ruling class" and, as the interests of the capitalist ruling class are at variance with those of the rest of us, such a decision cannot be left to us as there is no guarantee that our decision will coincide with what the ruling class judge to be in their interest. In fact, in the case of war, people spontaneously tend to be against it.

It is true that, as most people do support capitalism, if a government launches an effective enough propaganda barrage it can generally persuade people to support a war. But this takes time and decisions about war cannot wait. Blair is on record as saying that as a leader it is his duty to give a lead on going to war, even against majority popular opinion. In Britain, until recently and still formally, going to war was a government decision that didn't require even parliamentary approval.

Democracy and war are in fact incompatible. States have to have a minimal degree of popular support to function, but this need not extend much further than allowing the populace to decide every few years which group of pro-capitalist politicians are to staff the state and, exercising "leadership", use it to further national capitalist interests.

Truth may be the first casualty of war, but civil liberties come a close second. Whether real or manufactured, "terror plots" and "security alerts" provide a pretext for a state to further erode civil liberties inherited from a more liberal past, as the string of laws introduced by the Blair government to increase the powers of the state bears witness.

It can't be denied that there is a conflict going on involving attacks on innocent civilians on both sides. In Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon the US and/or its allies bomb villages and villagers. In America on 11 September five years ago and in Britain last 7 July, the other side killed innocent workers at or on their way to work. Socialists condemn both sides. And we don't swallow the propaganda that the state is there to protect us.

Hurricane Katrina: Reflections of a Socialist on an Unnatural Disaster

As we approach the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, I would like to share a few reflections on the disaster and on the society that produced it. My aim is not to provide a systematic account or analysis, but to highlight and reflect upon various points that I find particularly significant. [1]

Stephen D. Shenfield

A natural disaster?
Heat waves and blizzards, droughts and floods, hurricanes and tsunamis, landslides, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions are usually regarded as "natural disasters" or "acts of God". By implication, the suffering they cause is, at least mainly, the fault of Nature or God. There is no reason to blame human society.

In fact, there are plenty of reasons to blame society.

First point. The irresponsible drive of business for profit is changing the planet's climate -- warming the oceans and the atmosphere, melting icecaps and glaciers, spreading deserts, disturbing rainfall patterns. Specifically, major storms in the Atlantic and Pacific, no longer moderated by cool subsurface waters, have increased in duration and intensity by about 50 percent since the 1970s. Global warming also brings hurricanes closer to centers of population by raising the sea level and contributing to the erosion of coastlines.

Second point. Natural phenomena do not cause human disasters unless people put themselves in harm's way. Volcanic eruptions cause human disasters because people live near volcanoes.[2] Earthquakes cause human disasters because villages, cities, factories, and even nuclear power plants[3] are sited in places known to be prone to earthquakes (and because construction firms do not find it profitable to build housing capable of withstanding tremors).

Most of us are restricted in our choice of where to live. We have to go where we can afford a home, where we can get jobs or a plot of land to farm. The pattern of settlement reflects the social system, not just individual choices. So here too society bears a large part of the blame. In a rational society, one in which human welfare comes first, would people not rearrange the pattern of their settlement with a view to keeping themselves out of harm's way?

The human impact of hurricanes clearly depends on how many people live in or visit the coastal areas most exposed to them. Coastal counties now account for over half of the US population and 10 of the nation's 15 largest cities. Moreover, coastal population is increasing rapidly (by 28 percent between 1980 and 2003).[4] In coastal Louisiana, property development, for housing, tourism, and "entertainment" (e.g., casinos), expands in a self-sustaining dynamic, as the infrastructure built to serve existing development attracts yet more development. Besides putting more and more people at risk, property developers are steadily destroying the remaining coastal wetlands. The wetlands (together with offshore islands) provide New Orleans and the interior with a vital protective buffer against storm surges.

Afraid the hurricane would miss
The tourist trade was implicated in the tragedy in another way. The scale of the threat facing New Orleans and coastal Louisiana became clear in the course of Friday August 26; the hurricane made landfall in the early hours of August 29, Monday morning. The presidents of two coastal parishes, Plaquemines and St. Charles, declared mandatory evacuation at nine on Saturday morning. However, when New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin appeared at a press conference at five that afternoon he failed to order mandatory evacuation, saying that he was still consulting with his legal advisers on the matter. Nagin finally ordered mandatory evacuation at 9.30 Sunday morning. The delay played a crucial role in blocking a proper evacuation, mainly because only a mandatory evacuation order legally obliges local authorities to make provision for those unable to evacuate without help.[5] By declaring mandatory evacuation earlier, Plaquemines and St. Charles achieved 100 percent evacuation.

But why was Nagin so reluctant to act? Personal foibles apart, he was afraid. Not that Hurricane Katrina would hit New Orleans, but that it might, like Hurricane Ivan in 2004, change course and miss! For in that case hotel owners might sue the city for business lost as the result of an evacuation order that turned out to be unnecessary.[6] Nagin has close ties with the tourist trade.

Besides property development and the tourist trade, the oil and gas industry has contributed generously to the effort to prepare ideal conditions for the Katrina tragedy. The Louisiana wetlands are not only a natural buffer against storm surges. They (and not Alaska) are the United States' largest source of crude oil and its second largest source of natural gas. To support and transport this production, the oil and gas companies have carved 8,000 miles of cuts and canals into the wetlands, disrupting the natural flow of waters and facilitating the penetration of saltwater from the Gulf of Mexico. "The whole artificial system works to the detriment of the wetlands. No one claims otherwise."[7]

The ports and shipping industry also bears a share of the responsibility for the disaster. The levees built by the US Army Corps of Engineers along both shores of the Mississippi from Baton Rouge to the sea were designed primarily to serve shipping interests.[8] They provide some immediate protection against flooding, but over the long term they heighten the danger by blocking the flow of much needed silt into the wetlands.

Why such a poor government response?
Many people still ask why the government response to Katrina was so tardy and ineffective. Why was the population of New Orleans not evacuated in time? (I have already mentioned one of the reasons.) Why did the victims have to wait so long for vital supplies to arrive? Why did it take so long to get them out of the disaster zone? Why were flood control measures so inadequate?

Unfavorable comparisons have been made with government performance in similar situations in some other countries. For example:

*Canada. In November 1979 a freight train carrying chemicals was derailed while passing through the city of Mississauga, Ontario. Realizing that toxic gases were being released, local police organized a rapid and efficient evacuation of the population.[9]
*Cuba. In September 2004 Hurricane Ivan swept through the Caribbean. 27 died in Florida and about 100 in Grenada, but western Cuba, which suffered a direct hit, was evacuated in good time and had no casualties, thanks to the coordinated preparations of central and local government.[10]
 *The Netherlands. Following the winter storm of 1953, which caused 1,800 deaths, the Dutch mobilized their resources to build a flood control system that far surpasses that of Louisiana in scope, technological sophistication, and effectiveness.[11]

However, unfavorable comparisons have also been made with the handling of other disasters in the US, such as the rapidly improvised waterborne evacuation of Lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001.[12] Moreover, even in the Katrina disaster some agencies evidently did much worse than others. The accounts I have read are highly critical of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers, but have nothing but praise for the US Coast Guard, which rescued more than 22,000 people. (Many were also rescued by spontaneously formed civic organizations like the NOLA Homeboys and the Cajun Navy.)

All these comparisons need to be taken into account. They imply that some causes may be specific to the US, others specific to the Bush administration, yet others specific to one or another agency. There were several important contextual factors:

* Much of the National Guard was away in Iraq.
* The obsessive "war against terror" led to the domination of a "militarized paradigm" and the neglect of non-military threats, with FEMA subordinated to the huge Department of Homeland Security.[13]
* The flood control budget had been cut drastically -- in large measure thanks to the war in Iraq and the "war against terror".
* The Bush administration is hostile in principle to the idea of the social responsibility of government.

Red tape and lack of professionalism
There are also some very important issues that have to do with the way government operates in practice. I would like to focus on two of these: the issue of red tape and that of professionalism.

Red tape was a major factor in the ineffectiveness of FEMA. Its representatives insisted on sticking to bureaucratic regulations despite the suffering caused by the resulting delays and even if observing regulations was simply impossible. They refused to provide supplies on the basis of oral requests from local officials: the requisite form had to be faxed to head office. However, the fax machines had been damaged in the flood and were not working.

Harvey Molotch offers an interesting analysis of the conditions under which bureaucrats are and are not willing to override regulations in an emergency. To some extent it depends on how much empathy they feel for the victims. But above all they judge the likely reaction of their superiors and the consequences for themselves. If they override regulations, will they be congratulated later for having done the right thing? Or will they be reprimanded and penalized? They make this judgment on the basis of cues from above. If a sense of real urgency is conveyed, regulations won't be allowed to thwart prompt action. When the Twin Towers were attacked this "panic button" was pressed. In the Katrina disaster it wasn't. Molotch suspects that the difference had something to do with racism.[14]

Another reason why FEMA did such a bad job was that it had been deprived of professional leadership. Experts in disaster management had been removed from key positions and replaced by allies and cronies of Bush with no relevant skills or experience and no sense of public service or duty.[15] Some experts had left, and those who remained were demoralized. The agencies that responded more effectively were those which had managed to preserve their professionalism.

The issue of professionalism is linked to that of the administrative structure of American government. Most countries have a permanent high-level civil service staffed by professional administrators and specialists. Governments come and go, but the civil servants remain and provide continuity of memory and experience. The US is unusual in allowing each newly elected politician to fill the entire upper layer of the civil service with his own appointees. What weight, if any, he gives to professional competence in making those appointments is up to him.

Without a permanent and professional civil service, government lacks both coherence and autonomy from special interests. As a polity, the United States is structurally incapable of carrying through a comprehensive flood control program like the one implemented in the Netherlands. Louisiana scientists have devoted enormous efforts to formulating and promoting such a program, based on sound science, for the Gulf Coast, but the political process repeatedly frustrates them, generating instead a ragbag of partial or even irrelevant measures. The real purpose of these measures, which are incapable of solving the problem that they ostensibly address, is to pay off the special interests to which various local politicians are beholden.[17]

Marx proclaimed that "the state is the executive committee of the capitalist class as a whole." On issues of disaster prevention the interests of the capitalist class as a whole overlap with those of society at large. After all, flooding is bad both for business and for the people. Here in the United States, however, government is unable to function in the spirit of Marx's definition of the state: it is not the executive committee of the capitalist class as a whole, but merely a mob of lobbyists for all sorts of special capitalist interests. I find it pertinent that in American usage the term "state" refers to a territorial unit of government, not -- as it does in other countries -- to the permanent entity that underpins and connects successive governments. In this sense the United States is not a "state" at all.

Danger -- looters!
What is the first priority of government in the wake of disaster? Saving lives? Looking after the survivors? Disposing of the dead and preventing epidemics?

Think again. At best these things come second. The first priority of government in the wake of disaster is exactly the same as its first priority at other times: maintaining or restoring "order" -- that is, its powers of coercion. Moreover, the first purpose of "order" is to protect and enforce property rights. From this point of view, the main threat posed by disasters like Hurricane Katrina is not the threat to human life and health, to the environment, or even to the economy. It is the threat of "chaos", the threat to "order" and "civilization", but above all to property, arising from the temporary breakdown of government.

The "looter" symbolizes and dramatizes this threat, conjuring up images of Viking warriors on the rampage, barbaric violence, evil incarnate. Of course, these particular "Vikings" were all the more terrifying for being black. In the days that followed the hurricane, the media stirred up racist fears of the poor black people of New Orleans, spreading rumors (the fashionable expression is "urban myths") later shown to be exaggerated out of all proportion, if not completely unfounded.[18] Fear sells.

All in all, we shouldn't be too shocked or too surprised to learn that at 7 p.m. on Wednesday August 31, 2005 martial law was declared in the flooded city. Mayor Nagin told police officers to stop rescuing people and focus solely on the job of cracking down on looters. This was just two and a half days after the hurricane made landfall and with thousands of people still stranded in attics and on rooftops.

In one heroic encounter, police officers chased down a woman spotted pushing a cart of baby supplies. She fell, they handcuffed her, but what were they to do with her? All the jails were flooded. By the end of the week that problem was solved. A new makeshift jail was set up at the Greyhound bus terminal, with accommodation for 750 prisoners. This was the first institution in the city to resume normal functioning.[19]

True, "looters" used to be treated even more harshly. After the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 people were shot dead as they foraged in the wreckage of their own homes.[20]

Why did people loot? Or to use less loaded language, why did they take things that didn't belong to them without paying for them?

One man answered a TV interviewer who had asked him why he was looting by asking in turn: "Can you see anyone to pay?"[21] The stores had been abandoned by their operators, but people still needed the things stored there. They needed food and fresh water, dressings for their wounds, new clothes to replace those ruined by exposure to the "toxic gumbo" of the floodwaters. Most of the so-called looting was of this kind -- for the satisfaction of desperate need. In any sane society that would be a good enough reason for taking things.

Two paramedics from San Francisco who found themselves trapped in New Orleans wrote about the Walgreens store on the corner of Royal and Iberville Streets in the French quarter. The owners had locked up and fled. Milk, yogurt, and cheese could be seen through the window in the dairy display case, spoiling in the heat.[22]

Should we expect the parents of hungry and thirsty children not to break in, even at the risk of being pursued by the police? Would they have been good parents had they failed to do all in their power to see to their children's needs? And what of storeowners who choose to let food go to waste rather than give it to needy neighbors? My first impulse is to wax lyrical about the sheer meanness of their behavior. But probably they made no such conscious choice. As businesspeople they must have thought of the food and drink in their store not as products for assuaging hunger and thirst, but merely as commodities for profitable sale. If they could no longer be sold they might just as well go to waste.

Social looters and entrepreneurial looters
Some looters -- let's call them "social looters" -- acted not just for themselves and their families but for the benefit of the local community. For instance, the young men who collected medical supplies from a Rite Aid for distribution among elderly neighbors.[23] Or the man who distributed food from a Winn-Dixie store to the 200 or so people holed up at the Grand Palace Hotel. "He was trying to help suffering people, and the idea that he was looting never crossed his mind."[24]

Socially responsible people of this kind are sometimes described as "commandeering" or "requisitioning" the goods they seize. That may well be how they view their own actions. In legal terms, however, only government officials, as representatives of duly constituted authority, have the right to commandeer or requisition property in an emergency. Private citizens who do so, whatever their motives, are engaging in theft and may be penalized accordingly.

Consider the feat of Jabar Gibson. This resourceful young man, purely on his own initiative, found a bus that was still in working order (the city authorities assumed that all buses had been ruined by the floodwater), took charge of it, filled it up with evacuees, and drove them to Houston. This was the first busload of evacuees to reach Houston after the storm (at 10 p.m. on Wednesday August 31). The police were forewarned that a "renegade bus" was on its way; if they had intercepted it Jabar might have been arrested and charged with theft. Fortunately he was in luck: he got through to his destination, to be greeted by Harris County Judge Robert Eckels.[25] Presumably his crime has been forgiven.

Of course, not all looters were responding to real personal, family, or community needs. Some were simply taking a rare opportunity to acquire coveted though nonessential consumer goods. For others looting (and shitting in) fancy stores was a form of social protest or "empowerment," an outlet for pent-up anger against the endlessly advertised world of affluence from which they felt excluded.

Finally, there was a phenomenon that I propose calling "entrepreneurial looting." Entrepreneurial looters gathered assets with a view to later sale. As they got stuff for free, they could sell at any price and still make a profit. For example, "urban foresters" went after valuable lumber.[26] Other entrepreneurs sold looted liquor. The cases of large-scale organized looting by armed groups (their weapons also probably looted) that received so much publicity must, I think, have been of this character.

Brinkley reports an interesting conversation between Lieutenant Colonel Bernard McLaughlin of the Louisiana National Guard and a man selling liquor at a makeshift bar. When McLaughlin tells the bartender he is shutting him down, the man replies that he is "just being entrepreneurial." Why shouldn't he make some money? McLaughlin gets angry at this appeal to "true American" values. "This is looting. You looted that . . . That's a 15-year felony. That's a 3-year mandatory minimum sentence." The man submits and McLaughlin proceeds to smash his bottles one by one. And yet the preceding account makes clear that McLaughlin's real objection to such bars has nothing to do with the provenance of the alcohol. He doesn't want the locals drinking alcohol because it further dehydrates them and makes them quarrelsome and disorderly.[27] Would he have allowed the bar to stay open if it was selling -- or giving away -- only looted fruit juice, soda, and bottled water? Legally, however, looting remains "a 15-year felony," be its social consequences good or bad. Property is sacred.

The bartender might also have tried to point out in his defense that historically all capitalist enterprise is based on looting. Early capitalism looted land and other resources from peasants (in Europe) and from indigenous peoples (throughout the Americas and other colonial territories). The looting even extended to the kidnapping and enslavement of millions of human beings, such as the ancestors of most victims of Hurricane Katrina. Marx called it the primitive accumulation of capital. Looting is as American as cherry pie; the looters of New Orleans are keeping up an old American tradition and should surely receive all the credit due them as good patriots. But . . . it depends on who you loot, doesn't it?

Race and class
With few exceptions, the rich live on higher land ("the house on the hill") while low-lying areas prone to flooding are reserved for the poor. This rule of class geography applied in full to New Orleans, perhaps the most socially polarized city in the US. During the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the city leaders even had a levee dynamited to flood some poor black neighborhoods with a view to saving the rest of the city.[28]

For this as well as other reasons, the victims of Katrina -- the quarter of the city's population still in New Orleans when disaster struck -- were overwhelmingly poor. True, they were also overwhelmingly black, but that wasn't their immediate problem. Better-off blacks were able to look after themselves. It was their position at the bottom of the economic pile that blocked their escape. They did not have bank accounts or credit cards they could draw upon if they left town. Many lacked direct access to news of the approaching storm because they were illiterate and had no TV set. Above all, of course, they had no cars.

Most criticism of the city authorities has focused on their failure to organize the evacuation of the car-less by bus. I would like to draw attention to another failure, one that commentators have failed to notice. Even without specially organized evacuation by bus, the transportation resources needed were readily available and deliberately wasted. The long streams of cars in which better-off New Orleanians fled danger the weekend before the hurricane struck had enough spare room for all the people who did not have cars of their own.[29] The trains that left New Orleans that weekend also had many empty seats.[30]

These resources were readily available physically. Why then did no one even think of using them? The answer lies in the customs, laws, and institutions of capitalism. Few people have any problem with owners of resources surplus to their own needs denying those resources to those who do need them. And deference to the money system with all its absurd paraphernalia is unthinking and automatic.

Similarly, many people have become quite sensitive to discrimination on the basis of race or sex. But discrimination on the basis of economic status or class is hardly noticed, although it is even more pervasive and just as harsh in its effects.[31] It was this kind of discrimination that trapped Katrina's victims.

After the hurricane struck, the importance of economic status for those who remained in New Orleans declined sharply. Money temporarily lost its social power: whether you had money or not, there was no way you could legally buy the things you needed. Even if (to take a hypothetical case) you were a billionaire you had no choice but to "loot." In this situation the relative importance of racial harassment increased. Being black exposed you to more insulting and contemptuous treatment at the hands of the police. It was because you were black, and therefore a "criminal," that police officers pushed you back at gunpoint when you tried to cross the bridge across the Mississippi to the mostly white suburban community of Jefferson Parish on the "West Bank" -- pedestrians' only escape route from the flooded city.[32]

Americans don't live in tents
How important are race and/or class in accounting for government negligence regarding the survival and welfare of the victims of Katrina? Various commentators have argued that black people in the inner cities, being without cars or credit cards, were "off the radar screen" of government planners. In fact, many of those who don't have cars or credit cards are not black and do not live in the inner cities -- poor rural whites in areas like the Appalachians, for example. Presumably they too are "off the radar screen." The general point, however, is right on the mark. Ivor van Heerden of Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center recounts how at a meeting of disaster planning officials he argued that tent cities should be established for refugees, as in other parts of the world. The response was a rising tide of laughter, culminating in a woman exclaiming: "Americans don't live in tents!"[33] If Americans for some reason have to be away from home they stay at hotels, don't they? If they can't afford to do that they obviously aren't Americans. As they are not citizens of any other country either, it follows that they are stateless and therefore more or less without rights.

I don't doubt that racism is alive and well in the United States, but it does seem to me that what we are dealing with here is a combination of race and class prejudice in which the element of class is more important than people generally recognize. Prosperous and "respectable" blacks are not primary targets of this prejudice and may be carriers of it. Mayor Nagin is a case in point. As we have seen, he bears a heavy share of responsibility for the suffering of the Katrina victims, many of whom, misled by an exaggerated race consciousness and an underdeveloped class consciousness, had voted for him.[34]

The comparison with 9/11 is pertinent in this context. Many ordinary working people were killed or injured in the attack on the World Trade Center, but a substantial proportion of the victims were "important" people, more or less prominent members of the capitalist class. I believe that this was a crucial factor in producing such a serious and far-reaching government response. All the victims of Katrina were "unimportant" people, whose interests are never taken much into account.

What next?
The idea of moving New Orleans to a safer location has been indignantly rejected. The city is being restored in the same place as before, using super-exploited migrant labor. Many poor black New Orleanians now dispersed throughout the US lack the resources to return and rebuild their old homes. Some of the land thus vacated will be abandoned; some will be grabbed by property developers for new casinos and hotels.

Due to the political clout of those property developers as well as for budgetary and other reasons, effective flood control measures along the Gulf Coast are not to be expected. There will be new hurricanes, new disasters -- Hurricane Ray? Hurricane George? -- until New Orleans and Southern Louisiana are finally abandoned to the waves. Then everything will be repeated along the new coastal strip 20 miles or so to the north. Assuming business and politics as usual.

Or will a new voice make itself heard? A voice that will say: Enough is enough!

Notes
[1] I have drawn on three main sources:

(a) the scientifically informed analysis of Ivor van Heerden and Mike Bryan, The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina -- the Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist (New York: Penguin, 2006);
(b) the account of Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (New York: HarperCollins, 2006); and
(c) the collection of critical essays by social scientists at the Understanding Katrina website.

[2] This does not apply in full to the most powerful eruptions, which cause damage even at very great distances. Thus, the eruption of the island volcano of Krakatoa (present-day Indonesia) in 1883 set off giant waves that killed over 36,000 and spread dust worldwide, cooling the global atmosphere by 1.2 C. and harming harvests in subsequent years.
[3] The nuclear power plant at Medzamor in Armenia is one example.
[4] Dynes and Rodriguez, Understanding Katrina website.
[5] In addition, many New Orleanians had concluded (rightly or wrongly) from past experience that there was no need to take very seriously warnings not accompanied by a mandatory evacuation order.
[6] Brinkley, pp. 22-3.
[7] Van Heerden and Bryan, pp. 161-2.
[8] The same applies to other work undertaken by the US Army Corps of Engineers, notably dredging. See van Heerden and Bryan, pp. 159-60.
[9] Joseph Scanlon, Understanding Katrina website.
[10] Neil Smith, Understanding Katrina website.
[11] Van Heerden and Bryan, pp. 264-8.
[12] Wachtendorf and Kendra, Understanding Katrina website.
[13] On the situation inside FEMA see the analysis by Graham on the Understanding Katrina website.
[14] Understanding Katrina website.
[15] Even at the height of the disaster the e-mail messages of these political appointees were full of empty chatter and silly jokes. They were concerned to get home on time. See Brinkley and also Jasper, Understanding Katrina website.
[16] This is not, of course, a full discussion. Other factors are involved, such as the structure of the party system. The weakness of party structures leaves American politicians more vulnerable to the pressure of special interests.
[17] Van Heerden and Bryan.
[18] For example, in the week following Katrina the number of murders was average for the city (four). See van Heerden and Bryan, pp. 124-8. [19] Brinkley, p. 202; Understanding Katrina website, Kaufman. 
[20] G. Hansen and E. Condon, Denial of Disaster (San Francisco: Cameron and Co., 1989).
[21] Lukes, Understanding Katrina website.
[22] Kaufman, Understanding Katrina website. See also Dr. Greg Henderson in Counterpunch, 8/1/2005.
[23] Brinkley, p. 378.
[24] Brinkley, p. 278.
[25] Brinkley, pp. 514-5.
[26] Brinkley, p. 307. Entrepreneurial looters also operate in other devastated zones -- in Chechnya, for instance.
[27] Brinkley, pp. 601-602.
[28] Brinkley, pp. 7-8.
[29] A simple calculation demonstrates this. Three-quarters of the population did have cars and used them to get out. Therefore, even assuming that the average number of people in each car was 3 (the usual assumption is 2.5), those cars that were not fully loaded could easily have accommodated the quarter of the population without cars.
[30] The last train before the hurricane departed at 8.30 p.m. on Sunday night with many empty cars (Brinkley, p. 627).
[31] The relationship between class and racial discrimination is a complex matter. They are closely connected and may be fused together in such a way that it is very difficult to disentangle them.
[32] Kaufman, Understanding Katrina website. The local authorities for which these police officers worked gave retrospective approval for this action. The fear of poor city blacks, extending even to women with young children, pervaded the communities around New Orleans. They refused to admit evacuees, making it necessary to transport Katrina victims all over the country.
In floods that occurred in the days before the civil rights movement, the National Guard used to surround the disaster zone in order to prevent blacks fleeing (personal communication).
[33] Van Heerden and Bryan, pp. 65-6. See also the interview with Senator Obama on ABC's This Week quoted by Virginia Dominguez on the Understanding Katrina website.
[34] For further discussion, see Kristen Lavelle and Joe Feagin, "Hurricane Katrina: The Race and Class Debate," Monthly Review, Vol. 58 No. 3, July--August 2006, pp. 52-66. Other articles in this issue also deal with the complex interplay of race and class in American society.