Cooking the Books: The Moral Mess (2023)

The Cooking The Books column from the March 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

The subject of the Moral Maze on BBC Radio 4 on 8 February was billed as ‘Would the World be Better off Without Money?’ It turned out to be mostly about whether it was moral for the rich to have lots of money. Charlie Mullins, the proletarian founder of Pimlico Plumbers, said it was, because most of them reinvested it and so provided people with jobs and the government with taxes. Ash Sarkar said it wasn’t, because all wealth was produced by workers who were robbed of most of it by the rich. Darren McGarvey, the Scottish rapper, said there was nothing wrong with money as such; it was just that it wasn’t distributed fairly. He favoured Universal Basic Income. Sarkar seemed to favour cooperatives in which workers all got the same pay, missing the chance to argue for the ‘fully automated luxury communism’ she is supposed to be in favour of.

Up to this point, the assumption was that money was part of ‘the world as it is’ and the best that could be done was to distribute it differently.

A Czech economist, Tomas Sedlacek, finally addressed the question, arguing that the world would not be better off without money: the failure of past attempts to live without it showed that there was no practicable alternative to using money.

He and the Rev Giles Fraser got into an argument about the difference between price and value. But this was not about value in the economic sense of exchange-value but about use-value. What is useful is a matter of opinion or moral judgement. Sedlacek, who was an out-and-out defender of capitalism, made the point that price and use-value can never be the same — the buyer always places a higher (use) value on what they were buying than the seller does; otherwise there would be no sale.

This is a valid point which Marx made in chapter 3 of Capital on ‘Exchange’ where he wrote of the owner of an item for sale:

‘His commodity possesses for himself no immediate use-value. Otherwise, he would not bring it to the market. It has use-value for others; but for himself its only direct use-value is that of being a depository of exchange-value’.

An argument between an economist concerned with exchange-value (price) and a priest more concerned with use-value was never going to get very far. It did, however, bring out the contradiction between exchange-value and use-value that is a feature of the money system where goods are produced to be sold and not directly to be used.

The case for a world without money was put by Anitra Nelson, author of Beyond Money. She pointed out that ‘production for trade’ led both to people’s needs being neglected and to ecological upsets. She envisaged a world of relatively small-scale and more or less self-sufficient, democratically-organised moneyless communities, where households would be asked what their needs were going to be over a given period and then the community would organise itself to produce or acquire what was required, with people being able to access them without having to pay.

The right-wing journalist Melanie Phillips came up with the original objection that this was against human nature: it wouldn’t work because humans were naturally greedy and aggressive. Spiked editor Ella Whelan meanwhile denounced Nelson’s proposal rather unfairly as ‘austerity’ and ‘middle class miserabilism’ which the working class would never accept.

That was the problem. All those taking part seemed only to envisage a moneyless society as existing in small-scale communities, not even at national let alone world level. In some ways though, Nelson was on the right track. Organising production and distribution without money is essentially a question of assessing needs and then organising to produce to meet them. Given the level of development attained by the forces of production, this is only possible today on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth’s natural and industrial resources.

Being Lazy (2023)

Book Review from the March 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Right to be Lazy and Other Writings. By Paul Lafargue. Selected and translated by Alex Andriesse. New York Review of Books. 2023.

Paul Lafargue’s classic satire on the obsession with work and the working class’s demand that they should be given work as a ‘right’ was first translated into English by the left-wing publisher Charles Kerr in 1907, so a modern translation is not out of place. This one, by Alex Andriesse, reads better in general than Kerr’s, if only because today is 2023 and language changes.

Not all the changes are improvements. Why, for instance, ‘preachings’ into ‘preachments’, ‘idleness’ into ‘otium’? Other changes reflect a lack of understanding of socialist terminology as when ‘wages’ is changed to ‘salaries’ and, on two occasions ‘working class’ to ‘working classes’ (Lafargue wrote ‘classe ouvrière’). While Andriesse’s ‘peacefully if possible, violently if not’ is the more literal, Kerr’s ‘peacefully if we may, forcibly if we must’ reflects how this view was expressed in the English-speaking working-class movement.

The Right to be Lazy is a pamphlet and only takes up 39 pages of this 120-page book. The rest is made up of A Capitalist Catechism, a skit based on the Catholic church’s catechism, The Legend of Victor Hugo, a demolition job on the author of Les Misérables who at the time seems to have been known just as much for his poetry as for his prose writing, and Memoires of Karl Marx (Lafargue was married to one of Marx’s daughters and so knew Marx well).

As this edition is published by the prestigious New York Review of Books it should reach a new audience and have a wider circulation than versions and selections (such as ours) published by small radical or socialist groups. Which can’t be bad.

Adam Buick

Just Stop Capitalism (2023)

From the March 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the ‘Just Stop Oil’ public meeting advertised at my local University, the speakers argued for ‘direct action’ to halt the use of fossil fuels. To a rapt, mainly student audience they listed a series of direct action campaigns, for example Civil Rights, Anti-Apartheid, Occupy, Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain, which Just Stop Oil was following in the wake of. Supporting their campaign was, they insisted, the only way to deal with climate change, to save the environment and to save the world.

The first thing to say is that single-issue actions like this are nothing if not commendable for their concern for human welfare and their sincere intentions. They really are trying to make the world a better place. But can a campaign like Just Stop Oil hope to succeed in its objectives? And, if it does, how much will actually be changed? It may be said that some of the previous protest activities mentioned by the speakers have had some impact on society and on social attitudes and it is possible that the changes advocated by Just Stop Oil, if adopted, might help to alleviate climate change. However, sad as it may be, that will not happen with the aim of saving the world but only if the system of production for profit which rules the world sees it as necessary for its own survival and entrenchment.

This same rule applies to all the ‘single issues’ that groups of people get together to try and resolve within the system we live in. This is a system which exists to make profits for the small minority who own and control the bulk of the wealth with the vast majority owning nothing but their energies and skills which they need to sell to survive. So all the time, effort and energy expended by the speakers at the Just Stop Oil meeting will have one of two inevitable outcomes. Either they will be unsuccessful because, whatever the rationality of their arguments or the sincerity of their cause, the system continues to privilege the use of fossil fuels rather than other forms of energy as a way of making profit. Or they will be successful in the sense that the use of oil may be moderated or even halted because the capitalist system itself dictates the necessity of doing this for its own survival. But whichever of these outcomes prevails, the system which has produced this problem and produces the manifold other problems which beset humanity will continue and the end of fossil fuels will just be the latest in a list of never-ending reforms that capitalism has always needed to implement to facilitate its operation.

A wider view of how society works than adopted by single-issue campaigners is needed. One that focuses not on individual social or economic change but on a complete change from a society of production for profit to one of production for need based on common ownership of the world’s resources and free access to all goods and services. So don’t just stop oil, stop capitalism.

South Wales Branch

50 Years Ago: Crisis and revolution (2023)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Left is saying the crisis is coming; and from that crisis the workers will rise to overthrow, cast off the yoke, destroy the juggernaut of capital, et cetera. There comes to mind, irresistibly, the futile drama of all the times before. The Communist speaker of the ’thirties, proclaiming that civilisation now stood at the brink, imparting to his hearers that the capitalist system was tottering and all that was needed was a good push. Syndicalist doomster in the post-war years, impressively pointing to the approaching crisis as one of capitalism itself: the phrase conveying certainty that the machine would now grind to a halt, its cogs gummed-up with (probably) an excess of the seeds of its own decay.

This continual resurrection of old beliefs is one of the many chronic diseases of the Left. Each generation rediscovers the theories which proved sterile for its predecessors. The failure is never attributed to the error of the theory itself. Those who followed it were “betrayed”, or the time was unforeseeably not ripe; but now it will be written on banners to make the revolution. Yet this theory of the climacteric crisis—“the death agony of capitalism”—and its revolutionary consequence is perhaps the most hopeless of all. What is involved is dual misunderstanding: of the nature of economic crises and the nature of the socialist revolution.

The form of the argument today is as follows. Capitalism is now acutely pressed between a falling rate of profit and workers’ wage demands (…)

The easy assumption is that extreme poverty will make workers rebel against capitalism and flock to “revolutionary” leaders. All the evidence is against it. If it were true the Gorbals, Liverpool, Falls Road and the tied farm cottages of England would be full of revolutionaries. (…) Unpalatable as it may be, what the unemployed worker seeks is work and relief from his acute immediate problem, not to be assaulted further in an ideological battle. (…)

That does not mean conditions are irrelevant. Socialist consciousness starts from indignation at the consequences of capitalism; but until feeling has given way to understanding, consciousness does not exist. The aim of the crisis-struck Left is to foster blind revolt, from which not Socialism but only defeat and disillusionment can result. The real need is for working men and women to comprehend that, in or out of crisis, the capitalist system must always frustrate hopes of a satisfactory life.

[Socialist Standard, March 1973]

Editorial: The alternative pro-profit government in waiting (2023)

Editorial from the March 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party leaders regard themselves as a government in waiting in the expectation that, after the next general election, they will be the ones driven around in ministerial cars on ministerial salaries.

If they do win that election it won’t be on the basis of their election promises. People know these are worthless, whichever party makes them. It will be because they agree without illusions with ageing pop-star (and Tory millionaire) Sir Rod Stewart that it is time to ‘give the Labour Party a go at it’ (Link.).

This is a view shared by business people too, fed up with the corruption and incompetence of recent Tory prime ministers and convinced that Labour is sincerely pro-capitalist. The Independent (14 February, tinyurl.com/5n7h7a3a) carried an article by ex-CBI chief Paul Dreschler in which he praised Labour for having ‘set about convincing business that they are encouraging entrepreneurs and enterprise (and, whisper it quietly: profit)’ (which the paper interpreted as him saying that Labour was ‘the party of profit’), adding ‘I know a lot of influential people in business who feel the same as I do.’

All previous Labour governments have ended up encouraging profit-making but, until Blair, only after failing to impose some other priority on capitalism. In any event, since the Labour Party intends to leave the commanding heights of the economy in private hands this will continue to be driven by private capitalist enterprises seeking to maximise their profits. In this circumstance any government has to be pro-business and give priority to profit-making and maintaining the conditions for this or risk provoking an economic downturn.

This wasn’t always what the Labour Party thought. At one time they believed that a Labour government would be able to control the way the economy worked by having an important nationalised (state capitalist) sector. Nationalisation proved to be a failure both from this point of view and for the workers in them. Under Tony Blair, even a paper commitment to this was abandoned; which left the Labour Party as firmly committed to the existing capitalist status quo as the Tory party, as in fact the alternative management team for UK plc. Business now considers it time for the Outs to become the Ins for a while. Alternating governments has the advantage for them of preventing entrenched cronyism at their expense.

Who is in and who is out doesn’t make any difference to the wage-working class. There is no lesser evil. They are both as useless as each other. Come the general election, we shan’t be saying Vote Labour but ‘A plague on both your houses’. Capitalism can’t be humanised or made to serve the interest of the majority. It can’t be mended. It has to be ended.

Socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, with production and distribution directly to meet people’s needs and not for sale or profit, remains the only way out and the only goal worth voting for.

The best of times, the worst of times (2023)

From the February 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Perhaps it is the nature of ‘the news’ and its love of drama but most commentators seem to concur that we are living in the worst of times. The ‘obvious’ decline of this country parallels the disasters endured by many others of past and present. The anarchic reality of capitalism lies behind most of our contemporary problems but remains hidden beneath moral outrage and politically sectarian invective. There has never been a time when the NHS has not been in crisis and where a war has not raged somewhere on the planet; there has never been a time when a child is not dying for lack of clean water and an unpolluted environment; there has never been a time when the rich suffered and the poor did not – this is normal for all class-divided cultures. As the memories of an imaginary ‘golden age’ fade and are replaced by a shared sense of doom and despair for the future we might ask if our species has a predilection for self-destruction and somehow relishes the thought of disaster.

The Armageddon zeitgeist of popular culture has spawned numerous variations on how the world might end; from zombies and plagues to meteorite impacts and nuclear holocausts it’s hard to find an optimistic narrative when it comes to imagining humanity’s future. To some degree this reflects the failure of capitalism to deliver its promise of economic progress and security for all – the culture just seems to have run its course with nowhere else to go. After the Second World War there was an optimism that things would change and the baby-boomers of the 1960s were in the forefront of political activism that focused on reforming the economic system to bring some measure of equality and justice, at least in the West. Working-class culture blossomed with innovative forms of music, fashion, film and TV. This was all predicated on the belief that things would change for the better; when this proved to be an illusion and the forces of reaction were brought back to power as the result of reformist failure the road to disaster seemed almost inevitable. Thatcher and Reagan were symbols of this failure – theirs was the politics of atavistic hatred. The neo-con ideology took on the Orwellian role of turning facts into fiction and vice-versa. We still live with this legacy today only it has accelerated and evolved into the monster of ‘fake news’ fuelled by the global internet.

Propaganda has always taken advantage of whatever media are available. The Nazis were one of the first groups to see the potential of the mass media of radio and film – we still look back on Goebbels as the paradigm of propagandists. He would have adored the opportunities afforded by the internet. Unfortunately the online producers of ‘news’ are as in love with dramatic headlines as are the pulp mainstream media – of course many of them are sponsored and produced by the very same people. However if you have the patience you can find authentic voices of dissent who can provide a very different perspective. The world has become a smaller place where the suffering and conflicts everywhere are accessible in your home which only adds to the sense of unease and foreboding created by the tension of events in our everyday lives. Some embrace the cynicism of not believing in anything whilst others are caught up in the shifting sands of the impotent and meaningless debates between Left and Right. All too often these online arguments end up being merely egotistical slanging matches that produce much heat without any light. Is the internet just the latest example of a medium being used as a vehicle for ideological propaganda or has its very quantity of information changed its quality? Instead of relying on your favourite newspaper columnist or TV news show you have to make an effort to research alternative voices if your opinion is to have any value. The cultural zeitgeist has become irrevocably international.

The voice of doom has become universal and resonates in every corner of the globe. Betrayed hopes fuel the never-ending discovery of new reasons and causes of a seemingly inevitable end for our species. Will the children of today look back on their childhood fondly as a ‘golden age’ as many of the older generation do? Socialists have optimism built into their DNA but even we struggle to find an upbeat answer to Rosa Luxemburg’s question: ‘Is it to be socialism or barbarism?’ Of course it hasn’t come to that yet but we fear that time is running out. Many people in the past also felt an impending sense that ‘the end is nigh’ but this was based on the assumption that the battle between good and evil would be resolved one way or another. But instead of the dramatic human finale of Armageddon predicted by so many our species might just fade into oblivion within a sea of political cynicism and apathy leaving the rich to count their ever increasing wealth until one day they find they have nothing to buy with it.

The Dickens quote, part of which heads this article, seems to describe my life and times (born in the mid 1950s) as I suspect it would for many of my generation and is worth repeating in full:

‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair’ (A Tale of Two Cities).

Wez.

The Admiral’s speech (2023)

From the February 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the ways the mass media propaganda system works is through emphasis and de-emphasis of stories. Sometimes a story might be reported, and a piece is put in a small corner of their content (so they can always say later that they did cover it), but if something is emphasised, it becomes screaming headline news. For example, the massacres by the Wagner group in Mali in March this year barely caused a ripple in the UK press (months later, the Guardian would report them, as part of an anti-Russian stance). To take another example, the Susan Hussey scandal, indicative as it was of racial and cultural attitudes among the royal entourage, was blasted to full-bore front-page coverage by the BBC and other outlets, presumably because of the potential Harry and Meghan angle. In some ways, it probably deserved a couple of inches in the gossip columns.

A side effect of this, is when insiders are talking to each other, they can safely say scandalous things that many may find objectionable, but they will never be reported (or, in some instances, will be held onto and reported at a later date, when scandal becomes convenient to one faction or other). To take a recent example: Tony Radakin, the Chief of Defence Staff (the highest ranked officer in the armed forces) gave a speech at the Mansion House of the City of London on 19 October last year. The full text is online here.

The City of London itself is an interesting body of insiders: although it is a local authority of a kind with the usual powers of such, it has corporate electors (nominated employees of firms based in the City). As such, it is intimately bound up with the globe-spanning businesses of the financial centre of London. As the journalist Matt Kannard in the muck-raking website Declassified has noted (without whose output, Radakin’s speech may have gone unnoticed too):

‘The Corporation recently blocked Declassified’s request for the release of information about the foreign schedule of its leader, the Lord Mayor, but we have managed to see his 2019-20 agenda. This saw him planning to visit an average of three different foreign countries every month, considerably more than the foreign secretary typically does’ (tinyurl.com/yehtryxf).

They argued that as the trips were privately funded, freedom of information laws do not apply. Kennard was told: ‘It is the role of the national government to lead on foreign policy. It is the role of City of London Corporation to support the City. As part of this role the City Corporation engages with business partners across the world and throughout the year’. That the Lord Mayor of London also liaises with the Foreign Secretary on a regular basis shows just how influential this business clique is.

So, when addressed by the head of the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom, it is unsurprising that an honest and frank description of the state of the world is to be expected.

As he attests, international order and the rule of law:

‘matter here in the City of London too, because markets thrive on stability, and our prosperity rests on a world that is safe for the passage of trade’.

‘And when the rules are broken, volatility and instability follow. When aggression is left unchecked the costs ricochet through global markets. This affects people everywhere, and especially the world’s poorest.’

This is a voice of the very pinnacle of the defence establishment clearly stating that the purpose of having armed forces is to help benefit the commercial relations of capitalists within the UK. He emphasises:

‘The role of the United Kingdom Armed Forces, even with a war in Europe, is more than just focusing on defending the nation’.

‘It is about a maximalist approach to the military instrument. Using our power and influence in all its guises: both to further our security and prosperity. But especially – when we get it right – to add to the agency and authority of the British Government and the nation.’

‘Agency and authority’ are the very arguments Putin uses to justify his approach to foreign policy too. A lot of voters in the UK might sincerely believe that the military exists to protect their lives and their homes, and might, rightly, be expected to object to a notion that the military exists to help corporations make deals worldwide. That, after all, is pure gangsterism. Indeed, the propaganda in movies and TV is exactly that the military exists to ensure we ‘sleep safe in our beds’, not to make money overseas. But:

‘We spend more than £20 billion with British industry every year. And in 2020 we generated almost £8 billion in defence exports, more than any other European country.’

The defence exports are part of the leverage, creating friendly states bound by military ties, and in turn supporting the existence of governments whose own military is there to protect the leaders from the people. But it is still interesting to see the economic aspects of Britain’s war machine being so clearly laid out.

Radakin also notes: ‘Britain is an expeditionary rather than a continental power’. This might be expected of an Admiral. After all, the rivalry between the services is about funding, and a purely defensive British defence strategy would have less need for the clout of a big navy.

There is an element of hypocrisy too. He notes Putin’s ‘nuclear rhetoric’. As the Peace Campaigner Milan Rai has noted:

‘Daniel Ellsberg, the US military analyst who leaked the Pentagon’s secret internal history of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers, wrote in 1981: “Again and again, generally in secret from the American public, US nuclear weapons have been used, for quite different purposes: in the precise way that a gun is used when you point it at someone’s head in a direct confrontation, whether or not the trigger is pulled.” Britain has used its nuclear weapons in the same way, repeatedly’ (tinyurl.com/2cksf6ex ).

The armed forces are a gun pointed at the world’s head, for the benefit of the owners of society, and it is refreshing to hear them admit it.

Pik Smeet

Cooking the Books: Taking back what control? (2023)

The Cooking the Books Column from the February 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his New Year speech on 5 January, the Labour Leader, Sir Keith Starmer, uttered the following empty promise about what a future Labour government would bring about:

‘A fairer, greener, more dynamic country with an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. And a politics which trusts communities with the power to control their destiny’ (bit.ly/3w3XtKL).

In other words, the same old reformist illusion that a Labour government can change the capitalist economy so that it ‘works for everyone, not just those at the top.’ As if previous Labour governments hadn’t repeatedly tried and failed to do this. They failed because it is a ‘Mission Impossible’ to make capitalism work other than as a profit system for the benefit of the profit-takers and to the detriment of those who work for wages.

Starmer made it quite clear that a future Labour government would accept the profit system, declaring at one point that ‘for national renewal, there is no substitute for a robust private sector, creating wealth in every community’.

He denounced the Tories for practising ‘sticking-plaster politics’ which ‘sometimes delivers relief. But the long-term cure – that always eludes us’. But that is precisely what the Labour Party has always aspired to do. To try to mitigate the effects of capitalism that confront the wage-working class while leaving the cause — the class ownership of productive resources and production for the market with a view to profit — unchanged. In short, to patch up capitalism by sticking plaster over its effects.

But it wasn’t just the Tories that Starmer said were engaged in ‘sticker-plaster politics’ but ‘the whole Westminster system’.

His solution? To carry out yet another re-organisation of local government in Britain: ‘a huge power shift out of Westminster can transform our economy, our politics and our democracy.’ This would change politics to some extent, if only by providing more paid posts for professional politicians, but how will it ‘transform’ the economy?

The economy will remain capitalist, which will mean that those making political and economic decisions, whoever or wherever they are, will still have to take into account that profits must be the priority as the pursuit of profits is what drives the capitalist economy. It doesn’t make any difference who makes these decisions or where.

Starmer is making the same mistake here as the Scottish and Welsh nationalists, who think that the problems of workers in those regions are caused not by capitalism but by the decisions about how capitalism has to be run being taken in London rather than in Edinburgh or Cardiff. He thinks that it will make a difference to the way capitalism works if the decisions are made in Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Bristol, etc. instead of in London. But it won’t. And it certainly won’t give those living there ‘the power to control their destiny.’

In a cynical move to win back Brexit voters, he promised a ‘Take Back Control’ Bill that would even be ‘a centrepiece of our first King’s speech’. A stupid title anyway since people never had any control in the first place to take back. Even national governments can’t control the way capitalism works, local mayors and councils even less. It is the other way around. Capitalism controls what governments can do, by obliging them to abide by its economic law of ‘profits first’ on pain of provoking an economic downturn.

It’s why they all fail and why the promises they make are empty. And why changing governments changes nothing, or, to borrow Starmer’s own words, when this happens ‘nothing has changed, but the circus moves on. Rinse and repeat’.

Bird’s Eye View: Many a true word is spoken in jest (2023)

The Bird’s Eye View Column from the February 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many a true word is spoken in jest

‘The Islamic religion not only bans pork and booze; Islamic governments are totally anti-LGBTQ. In Muslim countries you are not allowed to eat, drink or be Mary. It was interesting to watch the Qatar team score its first goal. When the players got excited about it and celebrated by hugging each other, it was surprising they were not immediately stoned by authorities. Karl Marx was not right about much, but he hit the nail on the head when he said, “Religion is the opium of the people”’ (Daily Caller, 1 December, bit.ly/3VQdv5P).

Indonesia today, unlike Qatar, is an example of what passes for democracy under capitalism, yet its recently amended penal code would not look out of place there. Both say there is no room for the proliferation of the LGBT movement. Even worse:

‘Spreading communist, Marxist, or Leninist ideologies, or philosophies deviating from the national ideology of pancasila—five largely secular guidelines for Indonesian life introduced by the country’s first president—will be punishable by up to 10 years in prison. And the country’s rules on blasphemy will be expanded to include apostasy (persuading a believer of one of Indonesia’s six recognized religions—Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism—to become a nonbeliever), punishable by up to four years in prison’ (Time, 6 December, bit.ly/3iDfpIC).

Verily, the past lies like a nightmare upon the present. Worse still, the growth of socialist knowledge, the mass understanding and conscious change at which we aim, can only be hindered by such legislation. Marx said, 175 years ago in the Communist Manifesto, ‘law, morality, religion are to him [the working class] so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests’. In other words, the ruling class will employ any moralistic ideals at its disposal to tape over the brutal system of exploitation which we run in their interest.

As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly

China Miéville, author of A Spectre, Haunting, On the Communist Manifesto (2022) stated recently:

‘I constantly look around at the world and I think this cannot be as good as we can do. This can’t be as good as we can do and there are only so many times we can say if you just let us tinker with that a little bit, it’ll get better. And when that keeps failing, and keeps failing and keeps failing, we have to say to ourselves there is something in this structure that is leading to this. And when the structure itself says our driving energy is profit, not human need, it is not rocket science to think this might be related to the problems of the world’ (MSNBC, 7 December, bit.ly/3ULNQu2).

This voice of reason makes a welcome change from what passes for informed comment in, for example the American Thinker (sic!):

‘On a personal note, I know these clowns don’t read the book, because I ask every time I meet one; I have yet to find a “communist” who has actually read the Manifesto. (There’s really no excuse given the fact it’s basically a pamphlet, and contains an ideology responsible for the deaths of more than 100 million people, so what could they possibly have going on that’s more important than getting to the bottom of it, especially if they’re actively advocating and voting for communist policies that pave the way for more of the most horrendous tyranny known to man; but what do I know?)’ (American Thinker, 2 December, bit.ly/3Bp9eym).

Echoing the Manifesto’s ‘Society can no longer live under the bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society,’ Miéville states in a by far better, earlier interview:

‘Marxism isn’t about saying you’ll get a perfect world: it’s about saying we can get a better world than this one, and it’s hard to imagine, no matter how many mistakes we make, that it could be much worse than the mass starvation, war, oppression, and exploitation we have now. In a world where 30,000 to 40,000 children die of malnutrition daily while grain ships are designed to dump food into the sea if the price dips too low, it’s worth the risk’ (Science Fiction Studies, November 2003, bit.ly/3PerFvx).

The pen is mightier than the sword

‘In her 50 years of filmmaking, Reichert won two Primetime Emmy Awards and was nominated for four Oscars, winning one with her partner Steven Bognar for “American Factory” in 2020. She quoted “The Communist Manifesto” in her speech, saying “things will get better when workers of the world unite”‘ (abcnews, 2 December, bit.ly/3XRF5RC).

Indeed. But what then, you may well ask, will be socialism’s attitude to existing religions?

‘All religions so far have been the expression of historical stages of development of individual peoples or groups of peoples. But communism is the stage of historical development which makes all existing religions superfluous and brings about their disappearance.’

And, to be clear for the old trope-believing American Thinkers out there:

‘Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat’.

Liberation, not elimination! To be fair, those Thinkers probably have not read The Principles Of Communism in which these passages appear, one of Engels’ two early drafts of what would become the Communist Manifesto (bit.ly/3hbg3wL). In fact, setting to one side the capitalist measures at the end of section 2 (which Marx and Engels in their joint preface to the 1872 edition declared obsolete) there is still much that socialists today would incorporate into a Manifesto for this century including:

‘The working men have no country. We cannot take away from them what they have not got.’

‘…every class struggle is a political struggle.’

'The struggle for socialism ‘is the independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority.’

‘The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.’

‘Workers of the world, unite!’

Enough is enough is not enough (2023)

From the February 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Over the past decades, employers have been fierce and unrelenting. Companies laid off workers, attacked unions and demanded concessions. Governments of all stripes helped by eroding labour standards, de-regulating industries, privatising services and permitting job out-sourcing. Being in a weak position the union leaders recoiled from the prospect of waging an all-out class war to challenge the employers so they accepted the new contracts, no matter how damaging, in the hope that lost ground could be regained. Emboldened by this, employers demanded workers forfeit more established practices, even as the stock market boomed and profits soared. With few notable exceptions, strikes were defeated, union recruitment drives failed and workers became demoralised.

But now trade union militancy and strikes have returned to the forefront of British politics. The Socialist Party does not minimise the necessity and importance of workers keeping up the struggle to maintain the level of wages and protect working conditions. There are now once again some signs that general combativeness is rising. Unions are the single most effective way organised workers can counter the bosses. Workers who risked their lives during the Covid pandemic and are now suffering from a cost of living crisis not of their making say they deserve substantial pay raises, and are prepared to go on strike to try to get it. Employers can no longer expect their workforce to compliantly roll over and be strong-armed into conceding cuts in wages and conditions. Increasing numbers of workers across all sectors are saying enough is enough. The current labour shortage means they have a bit more leverage. It has got the bosses worried.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government intends to introduce new laws that are aimed at trade union industrial action by insisting key workers must maintain essential services during any strike. The government wants to make it more difficult for ordinary working people, firefighters, nurses and teachers to express their democratic wishes and to take industrial action in defence of their jobs and pay. Make no mistake. The government’s legislative plans are an assault in the class war on workers’ ability to resist the employers’ offensive. Trade unions are workers’ front line of defence against their employers under capitalism.

The legislation will permit employers to sue unions and sack employees if legal minimum service levels are not met. Union members who are instructed by the employers to work and refuse to do so could lose their jobs. The new law will also back employers bringing an injunction to prevent strikes or seeking damages afterwards if they go ahead with unions facing court actions and possible sequestration of funds.

When workers strike or work to rule, the bosses find out who really runs the workplace, who keeps the machines humming, production going, and the money flowing. But that said, it’s important to clarify that the employers have the power of the state behind them and when push comes to shove, they do not hesitate to bring that powerful institution to bear upon the workers. In addition, most workers have practically no savings, so cannot afford to stop working for long.

Hence the strategy of a series of short strike stoppages. Adapting to match the new reality, rather than calling for a general strike, individual unions seek to coordinate their actions for increased effect. Solidarity is one of the greatest weapons we possess. Many workers are realising that it is the worker and the worker alone who has to take care of their economic interests, as they’ll get nothing from the politicians who fill parliamentary seats and cabinet posts or the bureaucrats in their professional union posts.

When the government goes on the offensive against workers on behalf of the capitalist class, this may lead workers’ organisations to more radical actions, to the capitalist society exposing its class nature, to the general public opening up to revolutionary ideas, and consequently, to the class struggle becoming conscious and political rather than just defensive and economic.

To be sure, participation in strikes does not automatically make workers class-conscious. Even when workers acquire revolutionary consciousness they are still compelled to engage in the non-revolutionary struggle. As workers we fight in the here and now, where we are and where we can. We don’t see such day-to-day struggles as a diversion.

Our preferred trade union strategy is to be active in unions where they exist, but not to do it with a parochial perspective but with a class-wide viewpoint that involves all groups in society that have no opportunity to participate in unions and to engage them as much as possible in a conscious class struggle. The strike weapon is not a sure means of victory for workers in disputes with employers. There are many cases of workers being compelled to return to work without gains, even sometimes with losses. Strikes should not be employed recklessly but should be entered into with strategy in mind.

Socialism demands the revolutionising of the workers themselves. This does not mean that workers should sit back and do nothing, the struggle over wages and conditions must go on. Workers are learning the hard lessons and it is becoming clearer that this is a secondary, defensive activity. The real struggle is to take the means of wealth production and distribution – the factories, farms, offices, mines etc. – into common ownership. That is the larger, political struggle.

Pathfinders: Sky high and ocean deep (2023)

The Pathfinders Column from the February 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Do we really need this? Is it sustainable? Two questions that capitalism never seriously asks. At present the only question that matters is, can we make money out of this? All other considerations currently fall outside the projected calculation matrix, as an average CEO might blandly put it. And two recent news stories offer an illustration of this.

British news media were cock-a-hoop last month to report a home-grown ‘space industry’ story with the planned horizontal launch from Newquay in Cornwall of a suite of satellites via a rocket attached to one of Mad Dick Branson’s old Virgin jumbo jets (bbc.in/3VXUmON). ‘What people have seen is a small team deliver something quite incredible’ puffed the breathless CEO of Spaceport Cornwall, speaking live from the Mission Control shed just before the mission pancaked.

What they were planning on delivering was nine shoebox-sized satellites whose various space-based functions were such that their owners were willing to shell out hefty launch fees. It’s a burgeoning market, and other space freight companies in Shetland and Sutherland in Scotland are also keen to get in on the action. If Elon Musk can send mega-rockets to the moon, they ought to be able to manage a shoebox or two. Sadly the mission to hurl yet more space junk into orbit failed on this occasion, but the heroic British pioneers won’t be deterred from making future attempts.

As of January 2022, there were an estimated 8,261 satellites orbiting the Earth, of which 42 percent are already defunct (bit.ly/3irc1kv). But that’s small potatoes compared to the ‘mega-constellations’ of miniature CubeSats being planned by firms like SpaceX and OneWeb, which intend to upchuck around 65,000 in the next few years. Space tech is ‘dual use’, i,e, civilian and military, and the key military advantages of CubeSats are cheapness (especially when launched via reusable SpaceX rockets), small size, replaceability and proliferation, making them nearly impossible for an adversary to knock out. Elon Musk’s own Starlink system is being relied on by Ukrainian forces, meaning the Tesla, Twitter and SpaceX boss is now also in the war business and with such influence that he has personally vetoed Starlink operations over Crimea (bit.ly/3ZCiPw5).

Being nearer the ground, low-orbit off-the-peg CubeSats mean lower-latency (i.e, faster) connections than high-orbit heavy-duty satellites, while the swarm numbers mean near-comprehensive global internet coverage. A comparatively minor consideration is the predicted increase in visual ‘noise’ for astronomers (bit.ly/3W1baEQ ). But what’s sickening from a socialist perspective is that it’s not just one constellation to be shared by everyone, as would be the case in socialism, it’s multiple duplicate systems, because each competing state wants its own GPS and communications networks in space and does not want to rely on another’s satellites any more than on another’s energy supplies. One of socialism’s medium-term goals will probably be the challenge of hoovering up all this redundant and dangerous space scrap.

Meanwhile, you may be aware that the sea floors of the world are carpeted with small, potato-like polymetallic objects known as manganese nodules, first discovered in the 19th century and in July this year set to become a red-hot-button topic.

Imagine you are out for a walk in the wilds, on a break from your capitalist employment, and you happen across a huge wishing pond that is magically packed with a treasure trove of ancient gold denarii, duckets and dubloons. There is no sign saying Private Property – Keep Out. A quick check on your smartphone reveals not only that this pond doesn’t belong to anybody, but also that there is no mention of it in any statutes or local by-laws. Understandably, you’re keen to fill your boots with as much plunder as you can carry away. In fact, seeing as there are no rules, you might as well hire a mechanical digger to plough the entire pond right up, and make yourself a fortune. But as you start dialling the machine hire number, strong hands grab you by the arms and a voice says ‘Alright matey, not so fast, we were here first’.

Such is the situation with manganese nodules, found in gigantic quantities on sea beds in international waters. They are a potential bonanza for capitalist manufacturing, containing not just manganese, but also nickel, copper, iron, cobalt, titanium, silicon and aluminium among others, elements of immense importance in steel production, EV car batteries and other green tech. Average metallic content varies (15 – 30 percent), and a ballpark valuation for this content is given as $484/tonne (bit.ly/3IOHcAG). The potential global supply of nodules was estimated in the 1980s at roughly 500bn tonnes. At a minimum 15 percent average metal content, one could be talking about an industry worth upwards of $36tn.

Given this, you may wonder how come the gold rush has not already started. In effect, the lack of rules has resulted in a default Hands-Off stalemate as governments and UN regulator the International Seabed Authority have stalled for 20 years over a common regulatory framework, even though a clause in the existing 2000 treaty gave them just two years to create one. Mining companies are slavering to have at the prize, and equally keen to stop each other getting a head start. Now one company, in league with the Pacific island of Nauru, has announced that, if no regulation is in place by the end of the two-year period in July, they are technically entitled to send in the submarine bulldozers, and devil take the hindmost (bit.ly/3X5e7p0). A strip-mine frenzy will then ensue as the sea floors of the world, whose species, habitats and bio-environments are barely known at all, face a holocaust. The effects of this on global oceanic ecosystems together with the irrevocable loss of species and new science cannot even be guessed at. Governments, who have failed to do anything to fix climate change since the first COP in 1995, have until July to fix this. Don’t hold your breath.

This is not to say that a socialist society would never mine seabed nodules under any circumstances, any more than saying it would never launch a satellite. Humans use the resources of nature all the time, and this is an abundant source of extremely useful metals. But first it would ask the two questions we started with. It may be that in socialism we can devise green tech that does not require so much mining, or even devise acceptable social arrangements that don’t require so much green tech. But in capitalism, nobody even asks. If it’s not about the profit, it’s not part of the equation.

Paddy Shannon

Editorial: Doom and gloom? Think again (2023)

Editorial from the February 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 2020 the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year was ‘doomscrolling’, ie, masochistically tormenting yourself with an endless diet of bad news. As several articles in this issue show, some groups tend to ‘catastrophise’ capitalism, which can only lead to a doomscrolling feedback loop.

A recently published 80-year study suggests that 50 percent of our general mood is genetic, 10 percent due to circumstances, and 40 percent within our conscious control (bit.ly/3IOihNZ). Given that depressed people don’t go out and change the world, we think it’s more useful to be positive.

There are signs that attitudes are finally changing. People are starting to realise that the market system is not some innocent bystander in the environmental, economic and social chaos, it’s the cause of the chaos, and it’s making the chaos worse. Commentators like George Monbiot and Greta Thunberg make no bones about capitalism’s responsibility for climate change and species extinction. If public opinion were a court of law and capitalism in the dock, chances are it would be found guilty by a thumping majority.

On top of that, there’s a slew of new books out in the past few years proposing a life after capitalism and reviewed in this magazine, many of them practically making our case for us. We are no longer the lone voice we once were. Socialism seems to be catching on.

Things we say that used to astonish people are now generally regarded as common knowledge. It’s almost a truism to say that wars are about money or resources, not principles. It’s a mere commonplace to hear talk of rampant inequality, oligarchs and the 1 percent. Many people now agree that Labour and Tory, indeed all capitalist parties, are essentially the same. No serious person any longer denies that human-caused global warming is a real and serious threat. Even mainstream media sources now accept that China is not really communist, but actually capitalist as we said all along, and many young people are realising that ‘socialism’ isn’t the dirty word they were told it was. And now, strikes everywhere are proving that the working class has not surrendered in the class war, despite all attempts by capital to crush the resistance out of it.

We’re not there yet by any means, but there are plenty of reasons to think the global zeitgeist is shifting in our direction. And with modern technology, it’s never been easier for word to spread. So if there was ever a time to stop being negative, get off your butt and start helping to mainstream the socialist case, it’s right now, before capitalism really does do something our societies can’t survive. Create podcasts or videos for YouTube or TikTok, write leaflets or articles, put out messages or memes on Facebook and Twitter, help organise an online or local town meeting, and get someone you know to read this magazine.

Do it now. You’ve got nothing to lose. But you do have a world to win.

Those Who Fish in Troubled Waters (1945)

From the February 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1847 Marx and Engels threw the Communist Manifesto at the feet of the capitalist world.

In less than one hundred years the Socialist movement has made its voice heard and its presence felt in every country on the planet.

The manifesto commenced with the statement, “A spectre is haunting Europe”; to-day in 1944 we can say without exaggeration that the spectre is haunting the ruling class, not only of Europe, but of every land, and awakening everywhere to conscious activity the oppressed and suffering proletariat. Socialism to the capitalist class is the phantom that beckons them to their grave: to their tortured wage slaves. Socialism unfolds the glorious promise of a new and brighter life.

In a modern war the working class are so fixed by moving circumstances they are compelled to fight the enemies of their enemies; there is no escape from this until the wage slaves beeome conscious of their class position, and fully comprehend what is involved in the slogan, “Working men of all countries, unite.”

The war will undoubtedly speed up the economic development of capitalism, but will it assist us in our task of educating those who live by selling their labour-power to an understanding of what they are called upon to do ?

A letter appeared in the Daily Telegraph of December 1st which should be carefully studied by all those who are interested in the answer to the above question. The letter is headed “Wounds of Paris,” and contains among other things the following : —

“But, in France, the worst damage is invisible : it has been done to the soul of the nation. The passionate desire to get rid of the abhorred presence of the enemy has compelled the French to make use of all sorts of deceit and cheating in their relations with the aggressor. In an invaded country such foul play is perfectly legitimate, for the ethics of war widely diverge from those of peace. In war the crime of killing one’s fellowman is not only condoned but rewarded.

These normally pernicious habits, however, gradually permeate a man’s mind until they become ingrained and can, at best, only be eliminated gradually and very slowly. Men and women who, by sheer force of circumstance have grown used to violating daily the laws of human decency in their relations with the enemy are bound to resort to them in their dealings with their compatriots and their Allies. This, of course, applies particularly to the young who have never known anything better and whom it will be extremely difficult to nurse back to sanity.

—Yours, etc.,

F. Boillot, 

Member of the French Provisional Consultative Assembly, Paris.”

Socialism cannot be brought into being by a political party composed of individuals who hold the view that the end justifies the means. A society composed of men and women who consider it legitimate to lie, to cheat, and deceive each other is hardly worth while living in, as we know to our cost. The party to which we belong holds the view that it must be open and honest in all it says and does. It is heartbreaking work sometimes dealing fairly with unscrupulous opponents, but we know it is the only way to the attainment of our goal. We must make men and women into Socialists before we can bring into being a Socialist society. We have our compensation in the knowledge that what we are doing is for the lasting benefit of mankind as a whole. We can at all times reconcile our conscience with our intellect because we desire nothing for ourselves we are not prepared to allow others to obtain.

At the same time we must realise that the moral code of the exploiter is not necessarily in harmony with the interests or well being of his victim.

When we judge any action taken by a group composed of members of the wage slave fraternity we must view it from the standpoint of working class interests. The class struggle is the guide to tactics and to policy. We approve of those acts that aid in the fight against capitalism and condemn those that strengthen the power of labour’s foes. We adhere strictly to legality because, as Engels says. “We thrive on it.” The capitalist is forced from time to time to break his promises, and even the laws he is largely responsible for formulating.

“The mocking devil in his blood,

That bids him make the law he flouts

That bids him flout the law he makes.”

In Greece, France, Italy, Belgium and other countries there is at the time of writing dissatisfaction and disorder : the “liberators” are being attacked by some of those they have “freed” from the Hun—the former being accused by the latter of trying to impose a government upon them they do not want. The situation is approaching chaos.

The “communists” are reported to be very busy in these flare-ups, and there is much speculation as to whose hand they are playing. The Comintern has been dissolved, so they say; Russia is now a member of the Allies. What nation or party, then, is responsible for launching a series of activities that go so far as even to threaten civil war ? The struggle is not precipitated to attempt to establish Socialism but for the enthronement of leaders controlled by those who are pulling the strings. Greece, Egypt, Palestine and Persia are seething with intrigue, but not one of the groups involved is struggling for the common ownership of the means of life and the establishment of a system of production for use; they are all struggling for capitalist ends.

It is very enlightening to study the history of the Paris Commune of 1871. One writer described it as the rehearsal of the social revolution. The capitalist class will act to-day as they did then, should they consider it necessary. The phrase “law and order will be maintained” simply means that, unless the working class obey the decrees of their masters willingly, they will be made to do so. No ruling class anywhere will allow their workers to carry arms if there is the slightest danger of the workers using these in their own interests. Sometimes working men are forced into a position where they are compelled to fight, as in Austria some years ago : these situations develop out of conditions and the ignorance of leaders. We honour those who fall fighting honourably for what they believed to be a workers’ cause, but we deplore the circumstances which brought this about and resulted in the shedding of working-class blood. We do not hesitate, however, to denounce as criminals those individuals who take advantage of a political situation to lead workers to a bloodbath in order that those in whose employment the criminals are may benefit.

The struggle in Greece is not a direct manifestation of the class struggle. The latter is unfolding amid the confusion : out of the fermenting vat the pure spirit is being distilled.

The “communists” are accused of attempting to establish a dictatorship with their own bunch as dictators. Their opponents are trying to restore a state of things similar to that existing in Greece before the war. The proletarian wave may rise to a great height and strike a revolutionary note, but we do not think the working class in Greece will be able to obtain and retain power at the present juncture. It is true, however, that in revolution and in war men learn quickly. We are with the oppressed section, and hope a strong Socialist Party will emerge with sufficient backing to enable well informed class-conscious comrades to guide the course of events. The situation is fraught with peril. If it gets out of hand, it will be “woe to the vanquished.”

When Marx formed the First International he was asked how he and his colleagues were going to bring about ‘the social revolution’ and he replied ‘by moral and intellectual force.’ Bakunin fought Marx for the leadership. The dispute between them was in connection with the State. Bakunin took the stand that the State had to be destroyed. Marx, on the other hand, held to the view that the State had to be captured and used. Bakunin was a Jesuit—that is to say, he believed that the end justifies the means. The communists owe much more to Bakunin than to Marx. The Bolsheviks faithfully followed in the steps of Bakunin, and the tactics they adopted as a consequence enabled them to overthrow the Czar and the remnants of the feudal nobility. But such tactics are reactionary in a country where capitalism is firmly established.

In other words, a minority is unable to impose Socialism upon an unwilling and ignorant majority.

It is true the political freedom we enjoy under capitalism is limited, but it is sufficient to enable the working class to accomplish its purpose by political means in this country. We were told years ago by communists that heavy civil war was the only way of bringing into being the new social order. Here, although there may be disorder from time to time, the transition from capitalism to Socialism is likely to take place without much violence or bloodshed. With understanding, a peaceful solution is possible, and it is our duty to proceed upon peaceful lines. We keep ever before us the fact that the proletariat are enslaved because they do not understand their class position or the nature of capitalism.

Consider the position. The average working man does not even know that he sells his labour; he thinks he gets paid for his labour. If he receives what he calls a fair wage, which is at best but a bare existence, he blesses his boss and is thankful. He has not the slightest idea that he is being exploited.

Shakespeare says : —

“He that being robbed misses not that he is robbed of,

Let him not know it and he’s not robbed at all.”

How can men who ask for nothing more than work and wages abolish the wages system ? All the trade unions in this country now act in such a way as to give the impression that they have a vested interest in maintaining labour power in its present category.

It is an educational problem we have to solve. The capitalist class impose their ideas upon those they exploit; the wage slave looks at life in a similar way to his master. His conception of right and wrong is what his pastors have placed in his mind.

He knows nothing of the real history of mankind; his knowledge of history is confined to what his masters would have him believe. We cannot expect him to support us until he realises he has been hoodwinked. By honourably expounding and standing for our own principles, by conscientiously stating the truth in regard to other political parties and existing conditions, we gradually make headway. Enthusiasm for the cause and the fellowship of those who support it compensate in no small measure for the woes we struggle through. Socialism has an ennobling influence upon those who work for it; its appeal is to the best that is in them both in an intellectual and moral sense. When it leavens the whole working class movement, as it will do, we shall have done our duty ! The workers will be so conscious of their manhood and worth that they will respond to the call of history and carry out the task that is exclusively theirs.

Marx says : “Even when a society has got on the track of the laws governing its social development, it can neither clear by bold leaps nor remove by legal enactments the obstacles that stand in the path, but it can shorten the birth pangs.”

Many things happening in Britain indicate that an ever-increasing number of observant and thinking persons are beginning to see the fundamental cause of our social problems. The result will be a conscious effort in the right, direction. Human society will not perish; like every other organism, it will struggle to maintain its existence. It can only do so by adopting a higher form. We may be at the beginning of a revolutionary period—a revolutionary period is a period in which evolutionary process can be perceived.

We have perhaps built better than we knew. In less than one hundred years Socialism has transformed the outlook of the thinking section of mankind. We can await confidently the consequences of the ideas we have helped to generate and spread.

Capitalism is caught in a cleft stick: those who profit by the system are becoming ever less; those who will benefit by its overthrow are for ever increasing in numbers. When society as a whole knows where it is heading for, it won’t take long to get there.

Charles Lestor

A Study in Social Importance (1945)

From the February 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Daily Express, November 30th, we read of how Earl Poulett complained in the House of Lords about the time he and his missus were travelling by train from London to Scotland. Three persons in all occupied their compartment. It is possible to guess how many occupied the other compartments from the story. The train stopped at a station. A British officer approached with two prisoners, took over the compartment., and ejected the Earl and his missus.

After much pushing and squeezing the three were seated elsewhere. The Earl’s missus found it impossible. She couldn’t sit it out, so she stood it out in the corridor for the remaining five hours of the journey.

What an epic for Hollywood. The darkened train rushing through the wet, cold night. The still quiet figure in the corridor. A grim foreboding look on her face, making the gloomy shadows gloomier still. Is it surprising that her better half aired the grievance in the House of Lords?

My job as a worker takes me daily into many homes. Most of these homes are an insult to humanity. Overcrowded, inadequate sanitary arrangements, horrible hovels mis-called homes.

Let us make a call. I knock at the door. I speak as I do my business. “Good morning, Mrs. —, how is the baby?” She replies, “Not so good; his food won’t lie in his stomach and he has severe diarrhoea. I have sent for the doctor.” I express my wishes for a speedy recovery and depart. Next week I call again, put the same question. The reply is different: “Baby died in hospital.”

So I see many babies of the working class being destroyed before my eyes. Sometimes a few days’ illness; sometimes the babies struggle for weeks trying to survive.

Some quotations from the report of Sir Alexander M’Gregor, Medical Officer of Health for Glasgow, to a subcommittee of the corporation gives a clearer picture : —

“296 infants out of 522 cases died from gastroenteritis in Glasgow between the beginning of August and the middle of October.

The investigation has shown that no single specific factor can be distinguished as the cause, but two facts do emerge—that the incidence was highest where the housing conditions are the poorest, and the great majority of cases occurred in babies who were artificially fed.”— (Daily Express, November 4th—italics ours.)

296 tragedies occur in working-class homes—space dealing with it in the Daily Express, 3 inches of a column. An Earl’s wife stands 5 hours in a train—9½ inches of a column in the same paper.

Earl Poulett comments on how British soldiers after Dunkirk had to march and were squeezed into cattle trucks, and he is sure it was time our people were shown a little consideration. Exactly whom he means by our people, I leave the reader to guess. Nobody points out how the fathers of some of the unfortunate babies are busy killing the enemy while the babies are killed by the unknown specific factor at home. Sir Alexander can’t find this factor. The Daily Express is likewise mute.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is not a medical authority. The Party is an authority on political economy. They know what the specific factor is. We can enlighten Sir Alexander, the Daily Express, and the working class— particularly the working class, for they alone can apply the cure.

Miserable housing, malnutrition, disease—in this case gastro-enteritis—are directly the result of poverty. To eliminate these evils, poverty must be abolished. Poverty is the specific factor.

Poverty is caused through a small minority class owning the means of wealth production and distribution; as a consequence, they also own the wealth produced by the sweat and toil of the working class. But the workers must exist, and they do—in poverty.

The cure for poverty is simple. Here are the directions on the label.

Let the working class organise for Socialism. Make use of their votes to gain control of Parliament and thus control of the armed forces. Eject the owners of the means of production from their ownership. Make the instruments of wealth production the common property of all, and the wealth produced by the community free of access to all.

Then a complete change in the economic basis of society will be achieved. Poverty and its ills, as well as war, will become for all times a thing of the past.

Web.

Editorial: What to do with the World’s Frontiers? (1945)

Editorial from the February 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not only the fighting men whose occupation ceases when a war ends; the same fate overtakes the armchair strategists, who can no longer recount each day where General X and Admiral Y were at fault the day before. But by an admirable principle of compensation the armchair strategists, notably those with which Labour’s “left wing” is graced, will at once be provided with another occupation for which their self-certified talent at placing and removing large masses of human beings without their knowledge and consent will specially qualify them. They will be able to unroll the maps of Europe—indeed, of the world—and tell the statesmen just how to redraw all the frontiers and solve all the problems of minorities. It will be the years of the last peace settlement all over again—but with a few differences. The same old schemes based on language, on religion, on history, and on the consent of the people concerned will be argued and criticised, statistics will be produced and disputed, and the claims of the big Powers for spheres of interest and special rights will be heard. Among the notable differences is, above all, the fact that Russia, weak and ignored in 1919, is now powerful and must be treated as such. So the Russian spokesmen no longer talk the language of Lenin, of “no annexations” and “self-determination.” Instead, we find Mr. W. P. Coates, of the Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee, in a discussion about Poland’s frontiers, quite frankly proclaiming that what Russia has she holds :—

“The Soviet Union has already re-incorporated all the territories up to the Curzon Line. Soviet administration has been established in those territories, and no power under heaven can alter that fact, so that’s that.”— (Letter to Forward, November 11th, 1944.)

This is, of course, only the customary attitude of all capitalist governments when they believe themselves possessed of sufficient force to make their policy effective, and the gulf that lies between modern Russian policy and the early professions of the Bolshevists can be seen from another letter written by Mr. Coates, in which he actually threw in as a reason why Russia should have certain territory until recently held by Poland, the alleged fact that “it was originally Russian territory and was seized by Poland during the Tartar invasion of Russia in 1340.” (Times, December 22nd, 1944.) Yes, 1340 is the date mentioned !

We wait to learn that the Communist Party is going to claim back America for the British Empire, recall the descendants of Caesar to London, put back the Moors in Spain, and make a few other changes based on what happened 1,000 or 2,000 years ago.

However, let us make our attitude clear. We have no scheme for drawing frontiers or solving minority problems. We recognise the fact that many people are much concerned with religious or language or other differences, but we do not believe that these are the cause of national friction and hatreds. If one Power wants oil or some other mineral that happens to be within the territory of a weaker Power, no doubt it is a very useful propaganda weapon to recall what happened in 1066, or to work up agitation on religious or language grounds, but these are the excuses; the cause is the capitalist lust for profit. The propaganda would rarely range more than a ripple but for the alleged economic interests that are woven into it. It is capitalism that causes the poverty of the mass of the population, on both sides of all frontiers, and it is capitalism that threatens the worker always with unemployment: but how convenient it is for the capitalist to hold up the foreigner as the cause of it all ! If the foreign worker stays at home we are told he is destroying “our” industry by his cheap labour. If the foreign worker happens to be a minority group inside the frontier, he is taking “our” job and is moreover helping some foreign Power. If a man who speaks our language is in a minority group in some other country, he is told he can only find prosperity and happiness by agitating to rejoin the land of his fathers.

The problem of making all countries fit for all people to live in will not be solved by shifting frontiers. The new attempt will be just as faulty as the much lauded attempt after the last war. When there is no longer a profit-seeking privileged class to bedevil relationships between peoples, and when there is no exploited class to suffer poverty and unemployment, the frontier problem will be solved, but that means Socialism and no frontiers.