Cages for animals - boxes for workers

From the Socialism Or Your Money Back blog:

Mary Riddell is just one of many journalists who have passed comment of late on the 'nasty, short and brutish life' of the factory farmed chicken. She is certain that Jamie Oliver's and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's related tv programmes will convince people to pay an extra £1 for the 'high-welfare' variety. Jim Plumley, head of sales and marketing for the Channel Islands Co-operative Society, disagrees:

"There are people who are less fortunate than others and are concerned about the price of free range chickens,' he said. 'People who are perhaps more fortunate will have a better choice."

Indeed. People starve while food rots. But what is interesting about Riddell's position in the reformist quagmire is that she goes on to compare the cramped living conditions of the 855 million meat chickens reared in the UK every year with those often suicidal unfortunates in that country's overcrowded prisons. This is, alas, as far as it goes. She does not come close to recognizing that the profit system is the cause of such animal and human suffering. As D.H.Lawrence said, earning a wage is a prison occupation. She does not, therefore, make the more pertinent comparison: cages for animals - boxes for workers:

"...But bad living conditions are not suffered by animals only. Look around the world and see the shanty towns, tenements, back-to-back slums, tower blocks and jerry built council and private estates. The majority of the working class live and die in cramped, overcrowded, unhealthy conditions, lacking privacy or quiet, and often in an environment of depressing ugliness. There are some workers who can negotiate a set of wages that allows them to live in some degree of comfort, rather as the race-horse or pedigree breeding animal may be housed in special quarters. More than a century agitation and legislation have not however eradicated cramped and inadequate living conditions for the majority of humans.
"Yet it would seem a simple matter to provide comfortable living conditions for people - and for animals. The arguments against doing so are couched in accountant's jargon -alternative methods are dismissed as 'uneconomic', 'too labour intensive', 'not viable', 'unprofitable'. Members of the working class hardly need reminding that resistance to higher wages is the first principle in the code of every employer. Economic self-interest and competition override all finer feelings.

". . . The human race and society are not superior to,or apart from, nature but a product of of the universal process of evolution. As the only living creatures on this planet capable of consciously changing the environment and with an insight into the laws of nature we have a special interest in protecting and conserving the earth which is our means of life. Such an outlook will permeate socialist society - a true respect for our environment and fellow living creatures." (From the article, 'Livestock Liberation', Socialist Standard, June 1979)

Rob Stafford

Material World: Iran in the crosshairs (2008)

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

Preparations for a US attack on Iran are well advanced. American planes probe the country's air defences. Commandos infiltrate Iran on sabotage and reconnaissance missions. A new military base is built close to the Iraq/Iran border at Badrah. The Fifth Fleet patrols in the Gulf and along Iran's southern coast.

Political preparations also continue. Accusations against Iran are elaborated and repeated ad nauseam. Pressure is exerted (with variable success) on other countries to assist in the war plans. Aid and encouragement are given to separatists in ethnic-minority areas of Iran: Arab Khuzestan in the southwest, "southern Azerbaijan" in the northwest. Resolutions are pushed through at the U.N. Security Council and in the US Congress to create a "legal" justification for aggression.

Why are the dominant capitalist interests in the US so bent on war with Iran? The war propaganda provides a highly distorted and incomplete picture of the real reasons.


"War against terror" – Stage 3?
An attack on Iran will be sold as the next stage, after Afghanistan and Iraq, of the "war against terror." What does this mean?

As with the attack on Iraq, the claim may be made, explicitly or implicitly, that the Iranian regime is connected in some way with Al-Qaeda. This time round the claim would be even more deceptive, as Iranian leaders denounced 9/11 and helped the US depose the Taliban in Afghanistan. The terrorism charge is also based on the real Iranian support of Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. This, however, means enlarging the meaning of "terrorist" to cover any armed movement that opposes the regional interests of the US and its allies. Finally, the US Congress has passed a resolution – supported, incidentally, by leading Democratic presidential contender Senator Hilary Clinton – declaring Iran's Revolutionary Guards (an elite section of its armed forces) a terrorist organization. This justifies military action against them as part of the "war against terror."


Another "disarmament war"?
Above all, the Bush administration claims that Iran is very close to acquiring nuclear weapons and that a nuclear-armed Iran would be an unprecedented threat to world peace. The same claim was used to justify the attack on Iraq. No nuclear weapons capability was discovered after the invasion, but the claim had served its purpose. Iran is enriching uranium for a civilian nuclear power program under IAEA supervision, but there is no evidence that its leaders seek nuclear weapons and it will not be in a position to produce them for several (perhaps ten) years. This is a consensus view of specialists not only at the IAEA but also at the CIA and Pentagon.

Nevertheless, Iran is a rising power with ambitions of exerting influence in a region crowded with nuclear powers (Israel, Pakistan, India, Russia and China, not to mention the US nuclear presence). As such it is very likely to acquire nuclear weapons at some point. It might be willing to barter the nuclear weapons option for international recognition of its status as a regional power, but that is precisely what the US and its allies are unwilling to grant.

While the risk of accident or miscalculation does increase with the number of nuclear powers, there is no serious reason to suppose that Iran would be more dangerous than any other state with nuclear weapons. All nuclear states are prepared to resort to nuclear weapons under certain circumstances.

"Nuclear non-proliferation" started as an international agreement to confine nuclear weapons to the members of a small exclusive club. It has now come to mean "disarmament wars" to deny nuclear weapons status selectively to regimes considered hostile to US interests (listen to an interview with Jonathan Schell on www.therealnews.com). The US seeks to prevent Iran from going nuclear because it would shift the balance of power in the Middle East, making American nuclear capabilities less intimidating and depriving Israel of its regional nuclear monopoly.


Oil and gas, dollars and euros
While the US does want to prevent Iran from eventually acquiring nuclear weapons, this does not explain the urgency of the preparations for war. The key factor is control over resources, in particular oil and natural gas. The US seeks to restore and maintain control over the hydrocarbon resources of the Middle East, a region that contains 55 percent of the world's oil and 40 percent of its gas.

The occupation of Iraq marks an important step toward this goal. The petroleum law that the US is imposing on Iraq will give foreign companies direct control of its oilfields through "production sharing agreements". Iran, which alone accounts for 10 percent of world oil and 16 percent of world gas, is the main remaining obstacle to regional domination.

Control over oil has various aspects. One is control over price – gaining the leverage to ensure the continued flow of cheap oil to the American economy. Another is control over who buys the oil. The country that buys the most oil from Iran is now China, a situation that upsets those in the US who view China as a major rival and future adversary. Arguably, however, the most important issue is which currency is used to price and sell oil.

As the position of the dollar in relation to other currencies weakens, the dollar is ceasing to function as the world's main reserve currency. Countries are shifting their foreign exchange reserves away from dollar assets toward assets denominated in other currencies, especially the euro. Dollar assets now constitute only 20 percent of Iran's reserves.

Similarly, oil producers increasingly prefer not to receive dollars for their oil. In late 2006 China began paying for Iranian oil in euros, while in September 2007 Japan's Nippon Oil agreed to pay for Iranian oil in yen. Continuation of this trend will flood the US economy with petrodollars, fuelling inflation and further weakening the dollar. It is feared that the result will be a deep recession.

Occupying oil-producing countries may seem like an obvious way to buck the trend, although the effect is bound to be temporary. In 2000 Iraq began selling oil for euros; subsequently it converted its reserves to euros. Since the US invasion it has gone back to using dollars. This may be an important motive for attacking Iran too.


The shifting geopolitical map
The collapse of the Soviet Union enabled the US to establish a temporary global geopolitical predominance, though at the cost of enormous military expenditure that exceeds that of all other countries combined. Like the dominant position of the dollar, this cannot last very much longer in view of the progressive economic decline of the US.

The geopolitical map of the world has begun to shift, and Iran occupies a central place in this process. The framework of a potential anti-U.S. axis exists in the shape of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which brings together Russia, China and post-Soviet Central Asia. American strategists fear further consolidation and militarization of the SCO and its expansion to draw in other major Asian states and, first of all, Iran, which already has close ties with both Russia and China. (India, though for the time being firmly aligned with the US, may follow.) So here too attacking Iran may be seen as a way of averting a threat to US predominance.

Senseless wars
There is a certain logic to the motives that drove the US to war in Iraq and may drive it to war with Iran. Nevertheless, these wars make no sense even in capitalist terms (let alone from the working class and human point of view). It is not just that costs are likely to exceed benefits, as was the case in Vietnam, for instance. They are senseless because under current world conditions the goal of securing long-term US predominance is unattainable. At most, the loss of economic and geopolitical primacy may be deferred for a few years, but it will be all the more precipitous when it does come.

The faction of the American capitalist class currently in power refuses to recognize this reality. Even their "mainstream" opponents in the "Democratic" Party are rather reluctant to do so. Admittedly, the top brass do not want another quagmire. Perhaps their resistance will save the day.

Stefan

MoD denies recruiting school kids for the state’s killing machine

From the Class Warfare blog

Jimmy, over at Patience and Perseverance, alerts us to a piece that appeared in Monday's Independent and relating to criticism levelled against the Ministry of Defence over the way it 'glamorizes war'.

The Independent tells how a new report by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust reveals that "young people are being recruited into the Army with misleading marketing, and the disillusionment which follows has led to a huge number of them leaving the service."

The report claims that MoD advertising campaigns "glamorise warfare, omit vital information and fail to point out the risks and responsibilities associated with a forces career." It goes on to say that promises made to those enlisting in the forces are often not kept and the recruits are also not told of their legal rights. Moreover, the report claims that army recruitment teams are targeting kids as young as seven, observing that the UK is the only EU state to recruit those aged 16.

The MoD, however, denies recruiting in schools. Lying bastards! Even I know they do! The report claims: "The Ministry of Defence's youth policy contradicts this, describing military curricular activities in educational establishments as a 'powerful tool for facilitating recruitment especially if the skills developed through curricular activities have a direct bearing on military requirements'."

I've been to a few parents/careers evenings at the local comprehensive school over the years – three of my kids have been pupils there and one still is. The first people you meet when you enter the doors of the building where they host such events are bloody soldiers, or rather teenagers in army uniforms, handing out brochures promoting the benefits of enlisting in the state's killing machine; kids in uniform who, by the looks of them, couldn't punch their way out of a paper bag. Brushing aside their outstretched leaflets I'll turn to my child and, quite audibly, inform them that I'll kick their arse if they ever contemplate joining this bunch of hired killers.

So, there they stand, apple pie faces, clearly not even old enough to vote by the looks of them, in their gang colours, trying to lure kids, stressed out with exams and the pressures to hurry up and get exploited by some capitalist, into their ranks. Which figure of authority sends them to the school is beyond me, for they are always totally bamboozled by the questions I ask them; there again, I'd imagine their higher ups would be bamboozled by the same questions. But they'll always hook some kid, aware of their own lack of prospects and who can be conned into believing that an honest living can be had by killing for your country.

Now and again they'll have some display on view, exalting the merits of "joining up" - how you can learn a trade, get a decent salary that you can bank-up for when you come out (coz the army provides you with clothes and shelter and food), and there'll be photos of soldiers playing rugby and paddling about in canoes and abseiling down mountains and having a right old merry time of it. And missing from this display are the photos of death and destruction that armies bring in their wake, the blood and guts and tears and mourning, the homelessness and waste and carnage. Missing too are the true facts about life in the army, the ones about the suicides (since the Falklands War and since the invasion of Iraq, more soldiers have committed suicide coming home from those battles than have been killed by the "enemy") and the mass desertions (i.e. in Vietnam and Iraq) and which the army would rather were kept hush-hush.

And they're standing there happily recruiting, not really knowing why, because a small group of people - known only as the capitalist class - rely on violence to enforce their rule over patches of the Earth's surface and the people living on it. They need muscle to keep their power, and to wrest power from others.

Think about it: whatever gang war in history wasn't started over some competition for turf or property? The Gulf War was fought over oil, the Falklands War over naval access to the south pacific, the Second World War over access to the raw materials required by competing industrials nations. Like any mobster, the capitalists will tell you the war was fought for honour, justice, for family, but ultimately, it's always just business.

So, there's no point blaming the hired killers, they're just latching onto a very profitable business, a business the competition of the world capitalist system promotes. If you don't like the idea of your kids being murderers, or if you don't want to see them end up as collateral damage or the victims of "friendly fire", then the answer is for them not to join in these wars, or start a new one against these gangs, but to struggle to abolish the basis for their wars.

The common and democratic ownership of the wealth of the world by the entire population of the world would eradicate the incentive to fight. Why struggle to control resources which you can co-operatively use to your own and everyone's mutual benefit? It would give kids the hope and prospects for themselves that they would no longer see the murder of their fellows as a valid career move. The hired killers don't have to be about forever.

But don't wait for the people at the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust to use this critique against recruitment, or to offer some class-conscious analysis of war. As the Independent tells us, they have no qualms with the killing machine as such for they recommend "sweeping changes to the MoD's current policy, including a new charter setting out the responsibility of the state; a radical review of recruitment literature; phasing out the recruitment of minors and new rights for recruits to leave the services."

The report entitled Informed Choice can be downloaded here in pdf format.

John Bissett

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (28)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 28th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1142 friends!

Recent blogs:

Science versus spoon-benders

Questions Answered - and Asked

The waste of maintaining capitalism

This week's top quote:

"The idea that the "Soviet system" is equal to a definitive break with all the former, bourgeois, forms of revolution, therefore, serves as a screen behind which - imposed by exterior factors and the inner conformation of the proletariat - there are again set in motion methods that have featured the bourgeois revolutions. And those revolutions have always been accomplished by transferring the power of a "conscious minority, supporting itself on an unconscious majority," to another minority finding itself in an identical situation." Julius Martov, Decomposition or Conquest of the State, 1921.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

The Iowa caucuses: Wrong end of the crystal ball? (2008)

From the WSPUS MySpace page

We read in the Boston Globe (Friday, January 4th) that the results of the Iowa caucuses among Democrats and Republicans are important for the unprecedentedly intense grassroots interest they reveal in the upcoming presidential election. But more to the point, to the extent voters in Iowa are still trying to make those two creaky old suits of armor work, they remain profoundly clueless.

On the surface, they appear to be lining up once more to perform the symbolic ritual of Throwing the Rascals Out. This time, it is true, the Rascals are a smelly bunch of radical pro-corporates quaintly christened "neoconservatives" - but who are in fact capitalist revolutionaries in the service of the military-industrial complex, out to stack the transnational energy deck in its favor. They have teamed up with an early protg, Osama bin Laden, to give political insurgency a slick new retro cachet, privatizing terrorism, which before the era of liberation struggles had always been the prerogative of the state. Now the whole corporate sham is tottering at the hustings.

The Iowa Democrats who made Barack Obama's day have never learned that the capitalist system is not designed to deliver the goods to the Little People who make up the working class. Nor have they learned that the same system has no compelling need to balance the interests of conflicting economic sectors. Gazing into the Globe's statistical crystal ball, we notice that "affluent, highly-educated voters" and blue-collar workers have seemingly patched up their quibbles of the 1960s. While this sounds superficially encouraging, that they have joined forces against a common enemy matters far less than that they still see the future as a little box in which capital rules their lives.

Iowa Republicans who on the other hand swooned over Mike Huckabee, the Baptist minister from Arkansas, portend a dark thundercloud of antagonism, a constituency that feels the Corporates in the Republican Party have swindled them. Huckabee's success brings the threat of a split to the policy level. The Cheney/Bush faction's last best hope, Mitt Romney, threw an awful lot of money down a hole in a frantic effort to sew the corporate-evangelical alliance back together again. Without the religious right there to deliver the votes, rolling back the New Deal will die on the vine, and Republicans will have to resume jumping through their Moderate hoops.

The only big question for the moment, therefore, is not whether workers will finally wake up and realize that capitalism is a bad system that is going to kick their butts no matter whom they elect, but only whether they will manage to reinstate economic issues as a political vehicle and end the Great Hijack of the ballot box launched by the New Right in 1960. With global warming heating up political dialogues around the world, moral character is going to seem like an awfully stale talking point anyway to a majority that approaches, with a sick feeling in the pit of its stomach, the question of whether human society still has a future. But in the meantime it has a certain sci-fi feel to see the media drawing such absurdly tiny conclusions from such enormous questions.

Ron Elbert

Further Reading:

WSPUS website

Thought For Food

What could the production of food be like in a society without the need for profit, without competition from big businesses, without promotional advertising, without any money changing hands?

Capitalism has been and continues to be, the cause of tens of thousands of people worldwide moving into towns and cities on a daily basis, seeking to find a replacement for income and livelihood lost in the countryside. Likewise economic decisions tempt millions into international migration in the hope of gaining access to the means of producing a livelihood in more prosperous regions. The vast majority of both internal and international émigrés, if assured of a comfortable, fulfilling life for themselves and their families in their "home" region would no doubt prefer to return to where the culture fits them like a glove. Capitalism denies or overrides local needs and wishes and is responsible for the devastation of farmers and farming communities worldwide, evidence the year on year increase in suicide by farmers in both developed and developing countries. In the present system many, many people living in cities are employed in work that is irrelevant to socialism, non-productive jobs entailing transactions with money. In socialism these will be people freed up, a huge labour resource free to live and work in a location of their choice unrestricted by commercial constraints. It is probable that demographics would change quite rapidly and dramatically, with the outflow of citizens making choices that will affect their lives positively.

One of the first tasks of socialism will be to rectify the worst effects of capitalism on populations, to ensure that local needs are satisfied in all locations. On the agricultural issue this may, at least initially, curtail the growing of (now-called) "cash" crops such as tea, coffee, tobacco or bananas whilst local populations stabilise their ability to feed all their own inhabitants. Emphasis would be placed on the quality, health and fertility of the soil, sustainability being paramount. Farmers in the developed world would be freed from the constraints of capital, quotas, restrictions and above all competition, enabling them to produce foods required by the local populace and, if need be, in other parts of the world.

The technology and infrastructure for moving food around is currently well established globally, although in capitalist hands. (Where it is not well established then it will be a priority to increase or establish it.) Processing plants, packing houses, transport vehicles from local to international, cold storage, warehousing facilities, stock keeping know-how, all the necessary components are already on hand with individuals well-versed in logistics adjusting supply to demand and ensuring sufficient supplies for each and every area, the main difference from now will be satisfying need not profit.

The local scene

Where capitalism hasn't yet forced farmers to grow cash crops for sale on world markets, local food needs are still largely met locally. This could continue in socialism, though without markets and buying and selling. For instance, here in one small, typical rural area in Turkey some distance from any large towns, small farmers are not materially rich but large, extended families live comfortably, with daily work shared. Women mostly take care of the animals – cows, goats, sheep, chickens, whilst the men do the field work – ploughing, harrowing, sowing etc. The high intensity seasonal work brings everyone out en masse, often in the hottest weather. Their own dietary needs are taken care of to a large extent. The cow provides milk for home consumption and to be turned into yoghurt, butter and cheese with any surplus being sold daily to the milkman who collects it and sends it on to the processing plant. In return the cow is fed on home grown maize, barley and wheat and in springtime taken for a leisurely walk around the lush green edges of fields and lanes. The grain from the cereals will be milled locally for producing home made bread. The hens run free range anywhere and everywhere and produce abundant eggs and chicks several times a year.

There are fruit orchards – citrus, pomegranate and olive – and greenhouses for succession crops or vegetables and salad stuff for own use and for selling to the local wholesaler. Olives can be pressed for oil locally and many are stored in jars for yearlong eating. Beehives are all around and they say the pine honey is the best in the world. One free and abundant crop is "ot" – wild herbs, vegetables, leaves and berries from trees and bushes. No one goes walking without a knife and a bag or two in hand. Meat isn't eaten daily. Rice, bulgur wheat, pasta and bread are the staples with seasonal vegetables, salads and always fresh dairy foods for the daily fare. The occasional chicken will have its neck slit and a larger animal will be sacrificed on high days and holidays. It's a way of life.

Animals are generally tethered so it's rare to find an enclosed field or orchard. Often the shortest distance between two points is across someone else's land but it is not seen as trespassing, far from it. If spotted, visitors, neighbours and even strangers will be pressed into helping themselves to whatever produce is available and, if reluctant, the owner will no doubt produce a bag and fill it with whatever is going, saying words to the effect that "my garden is your garden."

Local town markets are supplied by local and regional farmers. Very few imports are seen in this region, notably year-round bananas from Central America. What is available is an abundance of fruit and vegetables in season with cold stores to lengthen the season for fruit. These towns, populations up to 20,000, have markets once a week on different days as most of the stallholders travel the rounds between several of them, 4 or 5 days on, 2 or 3 days off. Some stalls are run by middlemen who buy from the wholesaler and sell on but the most interesting are the stalls manned by "village people" who bring their own produce which may include home produced bread, butter, cheese, yoghurt, milk, eggs, honey, dried beans, grain, peanuts, pumpkin slices, olives, oil and various items picked from the hedgerows and around the trees in the orchards. These attractive displays of produce give eating food in season a definite appeal.

After the summer heat, when choice dwindles to three or four varieties of peppers, aubergines, courgettes, umpteen varieties of beans, masses of salad greens, cucumbers, red, juicy tomatoes, peaches and melons, nectarines and grapes, it's time to look forward to the autumn vegetables – new potatoes and onions from the yayla (high meadow areas), spinach, leafy greens and huge cabbages (if they're too big then pickle some or give half to a neighbour), caulis, broccoli and radishes the size of turnips. Now the summer vegetables are offered as a course soup mix after being baked in a dough mixed with yoghurt, dried in the sun and ground into crumbs. And dried food of all kinds is available, legumes, fruits, aubergines, peppers, okra, nuts, figs, etc. The winter will be well supplied. When shopping the trick is not to go with a specific shopping list, just a loose idea of veg, fruit, salad, then wander around to see what looks good and plan menus after the event rather than before as you can't guarantee you'll find all your requirements every time. Buying local is almost an imperative. The best broccoli, figs and walnuts come from four hours north, bananas four hours east, potatoes and apples from the high land three hours away. Rice has possibly the longest journey – from the northeast. Meat is local, beef, goat and lamb except for factory chickens – fresh, live ones are available at a premium price.

The wider world

Out in the wider world, different hemispheres and different climates yield different crops and different staples and according to the United Nations Food Organisation (and other studies) all but the most hostile regions are capable of sustaining their populations. In areas where there are sometimes crises causing malnutrition for some and starvation for others the problem is not lack of food but lack of will to transport food into these areas because the customers have no money. In many areas there are food shortages because farmers have become trapped in the cash-crop market for economic reasons. Without the burden of having directly or indirectly to produce crops for bio-fuels, heroin, cocaine, flowers and unnecessary food crops for elite markets people would have ample land for meeting their own and others' needs. Without coercion from state governments millions of people would continue to farm their land and feed their families rather than move to make way for mega-dams or building projects to house the newly rich or create vast new factory complexes.

Taking care of the environment is what farmers (not agri-businesses) are all about. Protecting the health of the soil to ensure sustainability and putting local needs first. Which is better for both human health and the environment – fresh food or processed? local foods or transported in food? Whilst it may be useful and even advisable to process certain types of foods to preserve them, fresh foods are generally more health giving and place less stress on the environment. Local foods will always be fresher and therefore healthier than transported food – and transportation is one of the biggest problems for the environment.

Consider the production of food in a society without the need for profit, without the competition from big businesses, without promotional advertising, without any money changing hands. How might eating habits change? Without sponsorship and freebies as at sports events, music festivals, even some educational establishments, how could tastes change? In some areas there is already a rejection of the fast-food syndrome with a renaissance of the appreciation of good food in the form of the 'Slow Food Movement', started in Italy a few years ago and now sprouting up in various other countries. Farmers markets are expanding in numbers in Europe and US, more people are demanding fresh, home produced, organic foods with a groundswell of opinion pushing the movement against genetically modified food, use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers.

People are deciding what they want to eat and feed to their children rather than be dictated to by big name manufacturers pushing their profitable lines. It is these same companies which are responsible for dreadful waste and rape of the planet with excessive packaging simply to catch the eye of the customer. Not to protect the item, simply to make it more appealing, more marketable. In fact packaging could be reduced enormously and will be when people decide it will be so. Certain foods, for instance rice, lentils, sugar, dried food of all kinds could simply be dispensed from huge, hygienic hoppers directly into one's own reusable containers, standard sizes not necessary, just let the individual take what's required for their particular situation.

With emphasis on quality of environment and quality of life rather than on the rat-race, with more opportunities and choices open for all in how to contribute to society rather than scramble for dead-end jobs or work that takes over life rather than enhances it, maybe food would have a different emphasis for vastly more people. No one would go without. There would be absolutely no reason to. More would see it as a necessary route to a healthy life. Cooking and eating as a social activity to be shared and enjoyed. You are what you eat after all. It's food for thought.

Janet Surman

Re: Are you an optimist or a pessimist? (1999)

A bit of a departure for the page. The following is a contribution to the WSM discussion forum on yahoo, and dates from the summer of 1999.
I thought it was worthwhile posting because I've always admired the knowledge and writing style of the author, but also because it addresses questions that I'm sure many regular readers of the page have asked themselves down the years.

It also doesn't let the political tradition that the Socialist Standard is a part of off the hook, by asking the pointed question of what we as socialists can we do in the here and now, and also acknowledging that at times our longstanding commitment to revolutionary socialism can sometimes lay us open to the charge that we are unnecessarily off putting to those workers were are trying to reach out to.

For the record, at the time of writing, Len Wallace was a long standing member of the Socialist Party of Canada, but in recent years has been a supporter of the World in Common group. Then, as now, he was an activist in the IWW.
- Darren

From the World Socialist Movement Forum, Wed Jun 16, 1999 6:04 am
Hello comrades!

Thought I'd put a few words in concerning optimism and pessimism.
I consider myself a "cynical optimist". Cynical about the way the world stands and the so-called "solutions" and reforms proposed to supposedly change it. I am optimistic that, in the end, workers will make the right choice and choose Socialism.

I understand the depression one can feel by not seeing things move fast enough, arguing with other workers, feeling they haven't and indeed sometimes cannot grasp the issues.

The problem with being a Socialist is that we view the world differently. Once one becomes a Socialist it is as if a "click" happens, a light comes on and that viewpoint or understanding colours everything we look at. And, too often, we are alone. Simply, there are too few of us right now and we have to build the movement, make it vibrant so that we can at least have a community of like minded people around us to share views, meet, communicate our ideas. Alone and isolated, it is a struggle.

I spend a lot of my time studying the movement, its early years and historical formation. Every time I do this, I see the need for more organisation, more members so that we can carry on our important work.

It is essential that more people are brought into the movement. In Canada at least there are too few and the space between members so geographically far. I would give my eye teeth to have ten people in my hometown of Windsor, Ontario who are party members so that meetings could be held, publicity worked out, more contacts made. It is in that kind of work that people can feel optimistic.

As far as "world politics" is concerned, I do indeed see signs of hope. Of course workers worldwide demonstrate for reforms, hold many illusions, have seemed to accept the wage system as "natural", but my feeling is even though they have not yet become politically (socialistically) conscious, their very acts of resistance indicates that they are grappling to seek ways out. They may not understand the system, but many do learn to understand that they need not accept the world the way it is. And we have to be there with them - at the demos, at the rallies, on the strike lines, talking with them, handing out leaflets, publications, listening to what they have to say.

I feel that sometimes we almost speak as if from an ivory tower, talking down to the workers. We cannot get our ideas out to the working class unless we are there with them. They won't buy our publications off a news stand or wherever by the mere fact that we call ourselves Socialist.

I am a musician and am often called to perform for workers on strike lines. Almost every time, I come away feeling a sense of hope. One example - a few years back the Public Service Employees went on strike here in Ontario and were out for many weeks.

Here in Windsor, the strikers were predominantly women, never really involved in the union, never really thinking of themselves as "working class", thinking workers and employers were "friends", never ever having been on a picket line or thought much about other workers ever being on strike.

I sang to them on the line and spoke to them. Although far from becoming socialists, I can recall so many telling me - "You know, I never thought it
would come to this . . . but I look at things a bit differently now. I realize I'm a worker like every other. I will never cross a picket line again in my life. I understand the need to support the union and other workers."

You could almost see a lightbulb light up above their heads as they talked this out. Again, they did not become Socialists, but it was a small victory. I may have seen it as only a small step forward in becoming class conscious, but it was a big step for them.

I have also written in this past year for the University of Windsor student newspaper. Twenty years ago, as a student there I wrote a similar column and was consistently seen as someone from another planet because of my explicitly socialist views. Twenty years later, I am amazed at how many people have come up to me and exclaimed that "Ya know, I never looked at the world in that way before! There's some stuff that I really have to think about, but I agree more and more with what you have to say!"

People are searching for answers . . . Our role is to provide them. And I agree that they have to be done in a positive way.

And that positiveness means we cannot put forward the idea that offers no hope for the workers. I myself am turned off by those articles which hold no hope for the working class - We do offer hope - and that is to join in the fight for Socialism.

We simply have to get the word out again and again. Workers have to hear our ideas. Doing it once won't do it, it means consistently being there with them. We understand that our ideas make sense. We have to prove it to them. That means prying through the muck of ideas they've been taught all their lives.

To reiterate one last point, I think we can present things in a positive light. Much too often I feel that we look upon worker's struggles as hopeless to the point that it almost appears as if we are saying - "Sorry, there is no hope for the working class as long as you don't agree with us. And, you're struggle is laughable."

We don't have to agree with the movement for reform, or hold out illusions - our role is to explain in a way that it supportive of them as a class and as individuals, to help them understand. That help cannot be done in a negative way as if we come from an ivory tower of superior knowledge.

Let me end with these two quotations:

"Critical communism does not manufacture revolutions, it does not prepare insurrections, it does not furnish arms for revolts. It mingles with the proletarian movement, but it sees and supports the movement in the full intelligence of the connection which it has, which it can have, and which it must have, with all the relations of social life as a whole. In a word it is not a seminary in which superior officers of the proletarian revolution are trained, but it is neither more nor less than the consciousness of this revolution and especially the consciousness of its difficulties." - Antonio Labriola, "In Memory of the Communist Manifesto", from his Essays on the Materialistic Conception of History, Charles H. Kerr, 1908
"Let us develop new principles for the world out of its own principles. Let us not say to it 'Cease your nonsensical struggles, we will give you something real to fight for.' Let us simply show the world what it is really fighting for, and this is something the world must come to know, whether it wishes it or not. The reform of consciousness consists only in the world becoming aware of its own consciousness, awakening it from vague dreams of itself and showing it what its true activity is . . . Then it will be seen that the world has long been dreaming of things that it only needs to become aware of in order to possess them in reality." - Karl Marx to Ruge, 1843

For the cause that never dies,

Len Wallace

Further Reading:

Socialist Party of Canada

Len Wallace's Personal Website

January Socialist Standard 2008: Democracy Gets A Re-tread

January 2008 Socialist Standard

Editorial

Why the Green Party is wrong

Regular Columns

Pathfinders Why the minus 16.3 percent happy face?

Cooking the Books 1 Dreaming of a super cycle

Cooking the Books 2 Bottom line building

Material World Iran in the crosshairs

Greasy Pole Money, Money, Money...

50 Years Ago Upset in Accra: Dr. Nkrumah upsets his friends

Main Articles

Jack London's The Iron Heel London's widely read book of this title was published a hundred years ago. But how realistic was it and how much of a socialist was Jack London?

And they call this Democracy? "It's a truism, but one that needs to be constantly stressed, that capitalism and democracy are ultimately quite incompatible." (Noam Chomsky).

The nature of human nature The cultural anthropologist Ashley Montagu once said that what cultural anthropologists were really interested in was "the nature of human nature". So what do they think it is?

"Socialism is Illogical and Irrational" Free-market capitalism, left to its own chaotic and predatory devices would self-destruct in very short order.

The thoughts of Premier Brown (thirty years ago) In 1975 Gordon Brown edited The Red Paper on Scotland, a collection of articles by leftwing Labour activists.

The trouble with gods Those fortunate enough to live in relatively secularized societies should not underestimate global power of religion

What they did to Thomas Hardy The writer Thomas Hardy died, eighty years ago, in January 1928. Here's what we said at the time.

Simon the Sociobiologist Cartoon strip

Letters, Reviews, Obituary & Meetings

Letters to the Editor: 'Silly Ceremony'

Book Reviews: 'Chew On This' by Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson; 'All Knees and Elbows of Susceptibility and Refusal' Edited by Anthony Iles and Tom Roberts; 'The Class War Radical History Tour of Notting Hill' by Tom Vague

Obituary: Edmund Grant

Socialist Party Meetings: Birmingham, Central London, Manchester, Norwich, Salisbury & West London

Voice From The Back

Land of the Free; Death in a Harsh Society; Heiress on the Run; Old Age Fears; Promises, Promises; The Price of Gold

And They Call This Democracy? (2008)

From the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

"It's a truism, but one that needs to be constantly stressed, that capitalism and democracy are ultimately quite incompatible." (Noam Chomsky, Feb.1970 at a talk at the Poetry Centre, New York)

To present a random sample of examples to back up this statement: Received opinion in the so-called 'developed' countries would have one believe that democracy is grounded in the electoral system; that if one can cast a vote periodically then representation of the people is taking place and one can't grumble. However, even at that level the electorate are fooled at best and cheated at worst. Fooled into believing they elected a government of the majority of the electorate, as with Blair and New Labour and cheated – twice – by Bush who effectively stole both of his presidential terms at the expense of thousands of disenfranchised voters. Once in power it's quite simple to strengthen that power. Bush conveniently sacked unfriendly District Attorneys in favour of more right-leaning, cooperative allies during his term but was then surprised and disappointed when one of his international allies against terrorism in Pakistan recently followed his example and sacked his judiciary because they dared question his constitutional right to a further term as president/dictator. On the healthcare issue in the US, specifically the attempt to bring free healthcare to millions of poor children, Bush simply and brazenly said that whatever Congress voted he would veto it – democracy in action.

Deliberate lies and misinformation were promulgated about the use of depleted uranium during the first Gulf war and later in the Balkans conflict. A US army report released six months before the first Gulf war detailing the risks of depleted uranium use was suppressed and only unearthed later by a researcher, revealing that the army failed to follow regulations which obliged them to give medical tests to soldiers exposed to or wounded by DU munitions. When forced into admission that soldiers had been in contact with contaminated equipment they initially owned up to a few dozen individuals and it took activists and the media seven years before the Department of Defense acknowledged the thousands of unnecessary exposures. Similarly in the Balkans, the US and NATO initially denied the use of DU and then refused to reveal where it had been used, resulting in delays in clean-up operations and ongoing exposure for many more citizens. How many servicemen and civilians have been exposed in the most recent conflict in Iraq is undetermined. There is still a veil being drawn over the issue by the 'authorities' and many affected servicemen are still not receiving compensation or allowances whilst a callous indifference is being shown to the number of children being born with horrible deformities in Iraq.

It's interesting how many democracies give great favours to their elected representatives. You'd think that a fat salary, an expense account, numerous junkets around the world and revolving doors into consultancies and directorships would be ample reward, but no, let's throw in immunity from prosecution for crimes whilst in office. Why? There have been no good reasons proffered for this stance and generally citizens – the voting public, those on the receiving end of democracy – are outraged by such overt hypocrisy and elitism. It's recently been announced that Jacques Chirac, former President of France, is to be investigated for alleged corruption while mayor of Paris. In Turkey, whilst MPs have full judicial immunity when in office, the citizenry mustn't criticise the military, the flag nor the founder of the Republic or be seen or heard to be insulting Turkishness, whatever that is. Similar examples around the globe abound. There is an anecdote in Howard Zinn's A Power Governments Cannot Suppress about a question asked of the judge by a juror in the case of a break-in to steal draft records as a protest against the Vietnam war. Zinn had testified for several hours about the Vietnam war not being fought for freedom and democracy but for "tin, rubber, oil as repeatedly specified in internal memoranda of the government" and Samuel Braithwaite, the juror, a veteran of 11 years in the US army, asked "If, when a citizen violates the law he is punished by the government, who does the punishing when the government violates the law?" Good question.

When governments or regimes aren't quite to the liking of the richer democracies then a little help in getting it right doesn't go amiss. Money can be channelled in through lobbyists, media groups and NGOs. Western-leaning candidates can be hailed and promoted and propped up until they run out of uses or worse, transgress the controller's rules at which time, in an Orwellian switch, regime change becomes necessary yet again.

The long-running saga (open sore) of Palestine/Israel continues. The most recent history of these lands shows that democracy is acceptable for some but not for others. Even after the overwhelming victory of Hamas in the internationally acclaimed free and fair elections the big powers couldn't accept this as a suitable democracy. Democracy must fit into strict parameters condoned by the powerful. Funds were withdrawn by the EU, the US backed Israel's withholding of payments, even when Hamas agreed to include members from the losing party Fatah to attempt to make a unity government.

The world's largest democracy, India, has a few pertinent examples of how capitalism and democracy are incompatible. Arundhati Roy (novelist and activist) is a well known critic of the governments there, both local and national and is a defender of people's rights on the issue of big dams. In her book The Cost of Living, on the topic of the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada River, she says that what began 10 years previously as a fight for one river valley eventually "began to raise doubts about an entire political system. What is at issue now is the very nature of our democracy. Who owns this land?" The dam site and adjacent areas were already under the Indian Official Secrets Act when in September 1989 50,000 people from all over India gathered in the valley pledging to fight 'destructive development'. What followed was more democracy in action. The site was "clamped under section 144 which prohibits the gathering of groups of more than 5 people." Local people continued to protest and many pledged to drown rather than move from their homes. The Japanese Friends of the Earth's campaign resulted in getting their government to withdraw 27 billion yen loan to finance the project and more international pressure mounted on the World Bank. The democratic knock-on was more repression in the valley with government policy being described by one minister as to "flood the valley with khaki." At stake were huge contracts involving important and already wealthy people. Never mind that big dams have long been discredited for reasons including devastation of farmlands and forests, sedimentation creating shorter than estimated life spans, salination and waterlogging of land irrigated downstream, etc etc. It's even questionable whether there will be enough water to reach Gujarat's towns at the end of the chain – the original stated purpose from as long ago as the early 1960s. At stake also were the lives and livelihoods ultimately of millions of people, but these people had little or no money so couldn't be part of the equation. They were simply disposable and although supposed to be compensated or given new land this simply isn't happening. Democracy forges ahead, enriching minorities and further impoverishing millions.

In the free world, in the long-established democracies, in the newly fledged wannabe democracies, the virus of the anti-terrorism crusade is spreading fast bringing tighter laws and increased controls, reining in freedoms with world-wide use of police and/or troops against civil protest, laws akin to those foretold by Orwell and Huxley – too weird to be thought true by many. Take care of being suspected of even thinking about committing a subversive act. This really brings to life one of Joseph Heller's characters of some 40 years ago who "was jeopardising his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them." Complacent populations allow it to happen. Uninformed, ignorant populations allow it to happen. People have accepted the one-sided terms and conditions with little or no question, without signing a contract. There is no contract, just a one-way edict. It's commonly said that everyone has an equal chance in life, something that, to anyone with a working brain bigger than a peanut, is patently not true. A system so stacked in favour of a few over many can't be seen as just. How has this crumbling edifice called democracy managed to stand for so long? "Nothing's perfect," people say. No, but how long do you wait before you pull a rotten tooth? Are these governments and their democracies relevant to their populaces? Are they credible?

This has all been said before, in other ways, in other places, by other people but it seems not loudly enough yet, not often enough yet, not yet by enough people. "Is it monstrous to think about how to create the possibility of human relationships based on equality, on social justice and on solidarity and relationships from which the use of violence, terrorism and war is excluded by common accord?" wrote Gino Strada, an Italian war surgeon for ten or so years, in his book Green Parrots.

Enough people speaking out and acting in accord with their conscience, not cowed down, refusing to be brainwashed, not suffering from the comfort of amnesia or the ostrich syndrome can bring about social change. Howard Zinn stresses that "our most deadly enemies may not be hiding in caves and compounds abroad but in the corporate boardrooms and government offices where decisions are made that consign millions to death and misery – not deliberately but as collateral damage of the lust for power and profit."

When and where, if ever, was a population last asked how they would define democracy? We, the people, in countries large and small, are told that we have democracy. We are told this by leaders who say we should trust them, who keep information from us because that's in our best interest, who deliberately lie to us, who can have us stopped and searched in the interest of national security, who have us watched night and day in our town centres, who listen in to telephone conversations, who have access to more and more of our personal information, bank details etc., who can put blocks on our access to the internet, who have centralised computer records to use, (or lose) as they choose, who can rein us in and let us out with special measures, who decide whether we can show dissent. And they call this democracy. And people buy it.

Nearly 40 years on from Chomsky's talk at the New York Poetry Centre what can be said about the incompatibility of capital and democracy? That capital continues to widen the rifts between people, between sections of community, between countries; that capitalism is enabling a tiny minority to own an ever-increasing share of the world's wealth to the detriment of billions of people; that capitalism turns a blind eye to democracy, preferring simple acquisition.

Democracy needs no self-aggrandizing leaders with big egos to polish, no experts and specialists with projects linked to big business and personal gain as motivation. Democracy needs no rallying cries causing flag-waving nationalism. Democracy, in essence, is simple and easily understood. Democracy speaks the whole truth (without an oath), reveals all the evidence, enables informed discussion and decisions and requires inclusion for all in dialogue. Democracy means common ownership and control of the world's assets for the benefit of and in the interests of all. Democracy's responsibility is to every member of the world community.

Janet Surman

Classic Reprint: What they did to Thomas Hardy (2008)

From the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

The writer Thomas Hardy died, eighty years ago, in January 1928. Here's what we said at the time.

Primarily this journal is an organ of political propaganda. As such, any attempt to appraise the work of the late Thomas Hardy would be somewhat out of place. But there is one feature connected with his death which needs underlining and emphasising. We refer to the attitude of that old enemy of mankind, the Church. Here was a man who throughout most of a long and thoughtful life, had no use for the Church and its teaching whatever. Although at one time an orthodox Churchman, he has since confessed he found no happiness therein. As an artist in life, he truthfully portrayed the part played by the Church in rural conditions. He recognised its utility to certain primitive, immature minds. But, as a man, he had no need of it. He saw men and women as the puppets of circumstance. He saw life as a

"Chequerboard of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays."

And to Destiny he imputed an almost impish irony. Throughout his works, like a theme, there runs this thread of cynical frustration.

But it seems there are heights of irony of which even Hardy never dreamed. For hardly had he breathed his last, before the Church, whose teachings he had repulsed in life, claimed his corpse for her own. Apart from the fact that he was a known Agnostic, Hardy had specifically recorded in the opening sentence of his will, his desire to be buried with his own folk at Stinsford. No matter, he was a great man, too great for the Church to attempt to belittle, so they annexed him. There was a further difficulty : Hardy was known to have opposed cremation, and cremation is necessary before burial in the Abbey. The way out of that dilemma was easy. Ignore it. Hardy was dead anyway. What of his relatives, his friends? Yes! they were opposed to the old man's last wishes being trampled on. The Daily News correspondent interviewed his brother Henry, his sister Kate, and a cousin, Teresa Hardy. He records :—"They were all very emphatic in declaring their disappointment at Hardy being taken away from them. . . . Teresa Hardy, when I asked her if she did not appreciate the honour done to her cousin, said : 'There is nothing in honour. He wanted to be buried in Stinsford Churchyard, and I think it is cruel not to do as he wished.' " Even the Mayor of Dorchester, Mr. W. F. Hodges, said the proposed Abbey burial would leave a sore feeling in the town.

No matter! The Church must have its poppy-show. An ingenious expedient was suggested. As they could not have Hardy's body buried with his ancestors, the local Rector suggested they might have a piece of him, and it was hurriedly arranged that poor old Hardy's heart should be cut out and buried at Stinsford. As all the world knows, this was done. What Hardy would have thought of the whole proceeding, one can imagine. It is difficult to conceive anything more repulsive and disgusting, in an age which so constantly claims to be "enlightened," and the comments of posterity should be worth reading. Sentiment still plays an important part in human affairs, and possibly will so continue for many years to come. But it is hard to imagine the sentimental majority of people viewing the barbaric mutilation of gentle old Hardy's body with any feelings other than loathing.

W.T. Hopley

The 1982 ’Socialist Thinkers – People Who History Made’ Lecture Series

Links to the all the talks in one handy post:

Bronterre O'Brien and Working Class Radicalism

Joseph Dietzgen and Dialectical Thought

Plekhanov and the Materialist Conception of History

Karl Kautsky and the Socialist Critique of Religion

Belfort Bax and the "Ethics of Socialism"

William Morris's Vision of Socialism

Julius Martov and the Anti-Bolshevik Approach To Revolution

Pathfinders: Why the minus 16.3 percent happy face? (2008)

The Pathfinders column from the January 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

In today's science lesson, boys and girls, we are going to discover that if you put a Mentos mint into a large plastic bottle of cola, you get a huge explosion that sends a geyser rocketing into the sky. Then, when you have wiped fizzy rain off your school blazers, we're going to debate whether the Mentos mint company are using this curious fact in their school programme, Put the Fizz Back into Science, in order to advance scientific interest among you little ones because none of you like science anymore (New Scientist, Dec 1) or whether they are shamelessly marketing their sugary sweets through the school back-door, under the disguise of education (The commercialisation of our classrooms, BBC Online, Dec 9). And don't you listen to silly old NUT teachers who got the government to ban junk food ads on children's hour TV last year. We don't want to spoil all your fun, that's why we left in a 'spike' of alcohol ads between 4pm and 6pm instead, because we know that one in five of you little darlings under 15 regularly gets drunk.

Our science head believes in telling you the facts of life, which are that advertisers spend 300 million pounds a year targeting the classroom, because they know you clever little boys and girls will recognize 400 brands before you are 10, and that brand loyalty starts young (Adverts impact on children, BBC Online, Dec 9). In fact, you young 'uns are so foxy and grown-up that ASDA have been naughtily selling black and pink lace lingerie for children and Tesco have been saucily selling pole-dancing kits in their toy section (BBC Online, April 6).

But it's not all pants, poles and paedophilia, children. Next we're going to show you some serious programmes from the BBC Learning Zone which tell you all about how wonderful and safe nuclear power is and how much money you can earn if you work for the industry when you grow up. Don't pay any attention to grumpy old independent nuclear consultant John Large when he says "It's a blatant piece of propaganda, that's not an educational tool." What does he know? And don't worry if the BBC say it was a mistake and they didn't mean to do it. Well honestly, they put the programme out twice, didn't they?! (BBC Online, Dec 9).

Oh look, and now poor Ann-Marie is crying big wet tears because she just failed her SATS, the little loser. Well, children, science can do anything now. So let's have some fun and measure how sad she is!

If you want to see a picture of the world of tomorrow, look at a child of today, and you're looking at an ideological war zone. Leave aside all that has been written about child poverty across the globe, and the UNICEF estimate that 9.7 million children under 5 die every year because of completely preventable causes, half of them related to hunger (Link). Leave aside armed children in wars, and child prostitution, and child slavery. Leave aside child abuse and torture. Leave aside even underperforming poor black children in richer countries. Just how happy is the modern, 'western', well-adjusted child of an advanced capitalist country, the focus of all well-meaning social endeavour, of state laws of protection, of cultural and social sanctity, and increasingly, the target of ruthless commercialism, of Christian or Islamist fundamentalist brainwashing, and of pressurised vocational harassment? And while you're asking that, is it possible to measure it scientifically?

A hint of an answer to the first of these questions can be glimpsed from a report by the Institute of Public Policy Research in Nov 2006, which stated that the UK, one of five countries in western Europe with a trillion dollar economy, hosts the worst-behaved youth in Europe, and concludes: "Commentators fear that British youth is on the verge of mental breakdown, at risk from anti-social behaviour, self-harm, drug and alcohol abuse" (BBC Online, Nov 2, 2006).

"The true measure of a nation's standing is how well it attends to its children – their health and safety, their material security, their education and socialization, and their sense of being loved, valued, and included in the families and societies into which they are born." With these words, UNICEF prefaces its new report entitled Child poverty in perspective: An overview of child well-being in rich countries 2007 (http://...com/3yvz8b). It is a statistical survey, an approach explained in the introduction: 'To improve something, first measure it.' 40 indicators are spread across six categories, namely: material well-being, family and peer relationships, health and safety, behaviour and risks, and children's own sense of well-being (educational and subjective). Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the UK finds itself overall bottom of the league, at number 21 out of 21 countries. The UK and the USA find themselves in the bottom third of the rankings for five out of the six categories.
UNICEF concludes: 'There is no obvious relationship between levels of child well-being and GDP per capita' (p.5)' And indeed, looking at the figures, no such relationship stands out. Moreover, taking into account surveys of children themselves, contained in the report, one might think material conditions had nothing to do with it: "Material goods and leisure activities were not, in general, seen as top priority by children. Relationships with family were seen as the most important determinant of well-being, followed by friends, school and pets" although children's understandable lack of grasp of certain hard realities was indicated in the next phrase: "the fact that 'health and safety' did not feature highly in children's priorities shows that there is still a place for adult input in the selection of indicators." (P.43)

The theme emerging from the UNICEF report is that, essentially, money can't buy your child happiness. Interestingly, this rather anti-materialist theme has been echoed by various other statistical studies based around the new 'science' of measuring happiness. For example, the 178-nation 'Happy Planet Index' lists the south Pacific island of Vanuatu as the happiest nation on the planet, while the UK is ranked 108th. This survey, compiled by think-tank the New Economics Foundation (NEF), notes that Vanuatu is ranked 207th out of 233 economies when measured against Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and suggests that 'people can live long, happy lives without consuming large amounts of the Earth's resources' (BBC Online, July 12, 2006). Scientifically speaking, the NEF survey is probably worthless, given that Vanuatu has a population of just 209,000, which means that to get an equivalent rating the UK has to produce 300 happy Brits to every one happy Vanuatuan, a statistically unlikely achievement. If Vanuatu had a king, for example, Britain would have to find 300 kings.

Scientifically speaking, in fact, these surveys aren't very scientific at all. They involve the following in-depth analytical procedure: "It may sound silly but we ask people 'How happy are you?'" And in case this doesn't sound very clever, Ed Diener, Professor of Psychology at Illinois University, defends the approach thus: "The measures are not perfect yet I think they are in many ways as good as the measures economists use" (http://...com/ftkaw). To socialists, this is no recommendation at all, given that capitalist economics has roughly the same predictive power as astrology.

What further undermines the effort to make a science out of the pleasure principle is the fact that there is no agreement over categories or parameters, so that numerous surveys come up with different and sometimes contradictory results. The World Values Survey of 2005 cites Iceland as happiest country, at 94 percent happy, followed by most of Northern Europe, deteriorating the further south or east one goes, ending with Bulgaria at 'minus 24 percent happy' (http://...com/39awdb). If one feels minus a percent or two happy about this result, one could perhaps turn to the survey by the University of Leicester in 2006, in which Denmark emerges as happiest country despite having the second worst suicide rate in Europe (Independent, Aug 1, 2006).

Obviously nobody is suggesting that if wealth doesn't make you happy, try poverty. But the correlation of wealth and well-being ceases beyond a certain point. As Professor Daniel Kahneman of the University of Princeton puts it: "Standard of living has increased dramatically and happiness has increased not at all, and in some cases has diminished slightly. There is a lot of evidence that being richer... isn't making us happier."

Yet another survey in the UK found that 81% of the UK population agreed that the Government's primary objective should be the creation of happiness rather than wealth, although this looks suspiciously like a weighted response to a loaded question. Other studies have shown that the most reliable happiness indicators are friendship, marriage, life-meaning, and life-goals. But so as not to drift too close to common sense, pseudo-science must interject again. One economist, Professor Oswald at Warwick University, worked out a formula to calculate how much extra cash someone would need to compensate for not having friends. The answer was, apparently, 50,000 pounds (http://...com/2tafc9). The money would be tempting. Friends aside, most workers have to sell themselves for much less.

Children and adults are not all that different. As the various surveys show, extreme deprivation aside, they all want the same kinds of 'soft' reinforcements, not the 'hard' currencies of materialism. But capitalist culture inflicts a ruthless and reckless propaganda war on its people, aiming its sharpest spears at the young and defenceless. Then, in an effort to show that it cares, it invokes a parody of science, counting tears, measuring trauma, like a psychoanalyst with a pocket calculator. Governments don't mind if you cry, so long as you buy. If one hundred percent of children, and adults, reported being one hundred percent 'minus happy' with capitalism, it would not change anything. What will change things is when those people stop being statistics, and start being statistically significant, by showing one hundred percent minus cooperation with their tormentors.

Paddy Shannon

Poverty in the USA

From the Class Warfare blog:

The US Conference of Mayors' 23-city Hunger and Homelessness Survey, released in late December shows that the number of homeless and hungry people in the US rose again in 2007 (pdf available here).

This report documents the problem of hunger and homelessness during the period of November 1, 2006 through October 31, 2007 based on information provided by the following U.S. cities: Boston, MA; Charleston, SC; Charlotte, SC; Chicago, IL; Cleveland, OH; Denver, CO; Des Moines, IA; Detroit, MI; Kansas City, MO; Los Angeles, CA; Louisville, KY; Miami, FL; Nashville, TN; Philadelphia, PA; Phoenix, AZ; Portland, OR; Providence, RI; Salt Lake City, UT; San Francisco, CA; Santa Monica, CA; Seattle, WA; St. Paul, MN; and Trenton, NJ

Notably, the report cites high housing costs and the lack of affordable housing as a chief cause of homelessness in households with children, as well as a major cause of hunger. The survey also notes the recent spike in foreclosures, the increased cost of living in general and the increased cost of food as major causes of hunger in America. In other words – as in the US, as elsewhere on the planet, the golden rule applies can't pay, can't have. If you're poor then you don't constitute a market.

Unlike past reports, this year's report contains individual profiles of hunger and homelessness for each city that participated in the 2007 survey, as well as contact information for service providers in those cities. Overall, cities reported that they are not able to meet the need for providing shelter for homeless persons. Indeed, twelve cities (52 percent) stated that they turn people away some or all of the time. And this in a land where there are millions of acres of vacant office space and hundreds of thousands of empty homes.

Additionally, cities reported a limited ability to meet the need for emergency food assistance. Across the survey cities, 17 percent of all people in need of food assistance and 15 percent of households with children are not receiving it. Nineteen cities expect demand for food assistance to increase in 2008. Again, this in a land that pays farmers to take land out of production and pays others to grow crops for bio-fuel production.

Meanwhile, Information Clearing House today carries a story entitled Welcome to Third World USA.

The piece commences with a quote Paul Krugman that appeared in the New York Times, Feb. 27, 2006:

"What we're seeing (in the U.S.) isn't the rise of a fairly broad class of knowledge workers. Instead, we're seeing the rise of a narrow oligarchy: Income and wealth are becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small, privileged elite ... It's time to face up to the fact that rising inequality is driven by the giant income gains of a tiny elite, not the modest gains of college graduates."

Say the writers, commenting on the USA's poor ranking in the last UN Human Development Index, which positions countries in terms of life expectancy, literacy, education and standard of living

"…the U.S. today has many more features in common with Third World status than Canada ever did back in the mid-1990s.

"What is usually meant by a Third World economy? A half-century ago, the term was associated with the economically underdeveloped countries of Africa, Asia, South America and Oceania. The common characteristics of these Third World countries were high levels of poverty, income inequality, high birth rates and an economic dependence upon the advanced countries. Third World countries were simply not as industrialized or technologically advanced as Western countries.

"But what are some of the distinguishing characteristics of contemporary Third World countries? They go beyond these nations' fiscal position or undue concentration on natural resource exports.

"The glaring features today include poverty, lack of democratic institutions, controlling oligarchies and the unequal distribution of income and wealth. In other words, the few enjoy a rich lifestyle while the many share subpar incomes and poverty.

"Another characteristic of Third World countries is that a major portion of their fiscal expenditures is allocated to the military. In many Third World countries, the military is controlled by an elite or a small collection of the wealthy.

"Finally, in many Third World countries one finds that leadership is passed from one generation to the next, often via a close relative."

The sad fact is that if such findings, as listed above, were reported on every TV and in every paper in the US, come election time the workers would still be arguing over the merits of voting for the democrats or the repukes, failing to acknowledge that whichever party gets into power their first duty is to the master class, to ensure the profits keep rolling.

The 'American dream' exists alright, unfortunately for many it means the right to dream about not being on the streets or knowing where your next meal is coming from.

John Bissett

A joke about anarchists and marxists

Via Mitchell Cohen's pamphlet, 'How to Spot a Vanguardist at Twenty Yards'

"An incorrigible anarchist was on her deathbed when she'd announced that she'd become a marxist. Her affinity group was shocked! They spraypainted slogans all over her room, threw rocks through the windows, slamdanced to blasting MDC, and paraded around her bed with a black flag. Finally, one of her lovers asked: "After all these years and all we've been through, how could you become a marxist?"

"Well," said the turncoat, "my time is up. So I says to myself, if anyone's going to die, let it be one of them marxist bastards."

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (27)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 27th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1132 friends!

Recent blogs:

The nature of human nature

Martov V Lenin

Robert Tressell and the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

This week's top quote:

"Superstitions die hard. The absoluteness of the individual ethically, apparently still finds supporters is quarters where the absoluteness of the individual economically has been given up. Socialism proclaims the regeneration of the individual in and through a regenerate society. For Socialism there is no effective moralising or raising of the individual that is not the result of changed economic and social conditions."E. Belfort Bax, The Ethics of Socialism, 1889.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers


Socialist Party of Great Britain