Cooking the Books: How To Undermine Socialism (2007)

The Cooking the Books Column from the September 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the "Dear Economist" column of the Financial Times Magazine (4/5 August) a correspondent asked:

"I suffer ridicule from economist friends when visiting a local restaurant. The restaurant supplies complimentary tissues and toothpicks to customers. My friends freely use them and even take some for later use. I feel this is wasteful and not 'playing the game' but their arguments seem more logical - there's no extra cost to taking more, it is included in the costing for the meal, and I'm the mug subsidising everyone else. How can I overcome my hang-up and become a maximising consumer?"

In his somewhat tongue-0n-cheek reply Economist wrote:

"You have already realised that your friends are correct. Perhaps more persuasive than the pure logic is the knowledge that by grabbing tissues and toothpicks, they are holding back the forces of communism. I dimly recall - but have not been able to confirm - that Lenin held up free condiments as an example of the way goods could be free and yet not rationed. It is up to right-thinking people to prove him wrong by walking off with the entire stock. By grabbing toothpicks, your friends are chipping away not only at bits of salad but at the ideological foundations of communism. They deserve your support."

Very funny. But there is a serious point here. In socialism, where not just condiments but nearly all available goods and services will be there for people to take and use freely, if people did try to behave as the "maximising consumers" in the economics textbooks then socialism (or communism, the same thing) would collapse. People would not necessarily take more than they needed, but they would make the "rational choice" for them as individuals of not working to help produce things but leave this to the "mugs" who didn't exploit the fact that they could get something for nothing. In other words, they would be free-loaders.

But this just shows how wrong is the theory that people do (and should) behave as "maximising consumers", only taking into account their own perceived short-term narrow self-interest. People don't behave in this way even under capitalism and no society, not even capitalism, could survive if they did, precisely because it wouldn't be a "society", but simply a mass of competing, back-stabbing individuals.

Human beings are social animals. All our social attitudes and behaviours are derived, in one way or another, from the society we were born into, brought up in and live in. Certainly, as individuals we want to live the best life we can, and, certainly, we are capable of making rational choices and, at the individual level, do so most of the time. But would free-loading be a rational choice in a society of free access?

Those who had just established a socialist society must be assumed to have done so because they wanted to live in such a society and to have understood that it could not survive on the basis simply of "to each according to needs" without its counterpart of "from each according to ability". In these circumstances to choose not to contribute to producing what was needed would be an irrational choice. Not that all work would be the "pain" that bourgeois economics assumes it must be, the "cost" we must pay for the "pleasure" of consumption. That's another myth propagated in economics textbooks.

Even "games theory", which starts from the typically capitalist assumption of a group of isolated self-seeking individuals, ends up concluding that "reciprocal altruism" – do as you would be done by or, more vulgarly, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours - would be "the rational choice".

The FT's witty economist is right on one thing: the "maximising consumer" would have no place in socialism.

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (10)

Feel free to repost or forward on.

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (10)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 10th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain@MySpace.

We now have 706 friends!

Recent blogs:

- Maximising Consumers
- The end of pre-history
- The Utopists

This week's top quote:

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National city Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested."Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (1881-1940)

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Can Capitalism Ever Be Green? (2007)

From the September 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Can capitalism ever be green?

Yes, say a new school of green economists. No, say socialists.

During the last hundred years more irreversible damage has been done to the natural environment by human action than in any previous period in recorded history. Rarely a day goes by when our attention is not drawn to the various issues of environmental degradation and how the increase in human activity is impacting on large areas of the natural environment globally. Among these are: climate change; the increase in pollution; the depletion of fish stocks; over-reliance on fossil fuels; nuclear energy; soil erosion and desertification; the pace of species extinction; the increase in skin cancer; forest and wetland depletion; etc.

This has led a dedicated band of economists, with an ecological bent, to make a study of natural resources (which they label "natural capital") and of the long-term, societal and possible profitable benefits resulting from their careful management. Their premise is that, if capitalism continues on its present course of destroying natural resources by continuing to ignore the real "costs" of the negative effects on the natural environmental and human health, in the long-term it will lose out big time.

Which is a fair conclusion but comes as no surprise to anyone who understands the basic economics of capitalism. However, what these "green economists" propose as a supposedly viable solution - and one which is being vigorously advocated globally - is the creation of an artificial cost-benefit market by the international enforcement of a mixture of environmental taxes and regulations, so there is long-term protection and management of natural resources through market forces. The present trade-offs of carbon emissions is just one example of putting these proposals into practice, and it has been taken up by those who are of the opinion that market forces hold all the solutions to the problem of environmental and health "external costs", i.e. the money that has to be paid for clearing up the environment or on health care that don't have to be paid for by capitalist firms whose activities cause them.

There's a lot more of such proposals in the pipeline, but when stripped of their jargon, in practice it means that for capitalism to go green it must factor in all the possible and the expected environmental and health "external costs" and in effect set limits on the accumulation of capital. If the green economists have their way - and it's a very big if - it would mean that a brand new set of market conditions will have to be enforced, ignoring the realities of how capitalism actually operates.

The two most difficult problems that would have to be confronted are measuring the value of these external costs and tracking the specific offenders. Obviously to try putting a price tag on natural resources is going to be extremely difficult for several reasons. How do you arrive at a monetary value of the air we breath when it is freely available? Or measure the value of the disappearance of a particular species of wildlife? Or even of a view of a snow-capped mountain peak? What exactly are you going to compare and value it against?

The green economists are seemingly unaware that a measure of value can only be ascertained once labour power is employed to transform 'natural capital' into a commodity. For instance, the deserts of the world have little or no value. However, once labour power is used to make them productive and profitable by extracting the mineral properties that deserts may contain either below or above ground, they come to have a use value and exchange value. Until then they remain deserts. In short, it is only possible to measure and apply value through the use and exchange of commodities. Anything outside of this, like attempting to measure the true external costs - and especially as regards the natural environment and human health - only arrives at a value which is largely subjective.

Cooperation versus competition
This lack of understanding of the workings of capitalism and the production of commodities does not stop here because the premise of the green economists also includes the false assumption that a so-called 'common interest to protect natural capital' can be created within capitalism and adopted by society as a whole. Obviously, no sensible person is going to deny that the sooner we work with nature, rather than against it, the better. By increasing our understanding of the interaction between the natural environment and the impact of human activity, society will be in a better position to minimise the damage on natural resources, and be able to arrive at rational judgements on whether or not any interference in the natural environment is justified and warranted.

But capitalism is not a rational system when you consider that the capitalist class have their own agenda which is totally blind to the creation of a common interest. The only interest the capitalist class have is to obtain profits through the quickest and easiest way possible so that the accumulation of capital continues. A fundamental contradiction of capitalism is that although the capitalist have a common interest - as a class - to cooperate to keep the system going, by necessity they also have to compete within the market. If they don't compete they go under or are at best taken over by other capitalists.

This built-in rivalry between the sections of the capitalist class always results in casualties in some form or another. At one end we have the everyday casualties of lay-offs and redundancies. Whilst at the other end from time to time inter-capitalist rivalry erupts into a full scale war - with extensive human casualties, refugees, communities being destroyed - and extensive damage to the environment and the destruction of wealth on a tremendous scale.

It is these conditions of competition which make it extremely difficult to reach any regulatory agreement which can have a global application. But not impossible. When it has been in the common capitalist interest to facilitate an expansion in the global market capitalist governments have drawn up international agreements, for example on postal services, maritime law, air traffic control, scientific research at the poles, etc. These agreements are generally abided by, specifically because they do not reduce the rate of profit. It's when any such proposals come into conflict with the rate of profit that the competitive self-interest of the various national sections of the capitalist class becomes focused on the problems of winners and losers appears. This is usually announced in the media as, "There was a failure to reach an agreement over who is to pay the bill".

If they do arrive at some agreement on the international regulation of environmental external costs they can only adopt one of two options. Either an approximation of the real external costs is to be shared out amongst the global capitalist class as a whole through a general environmental taxation. Or the costs are to be paid by the individual capitalists, and managed through the nation-states acting as the main agents and international bodies set up to supervise payments and trade-offs and also to regulate environmental impacts and damage. It's the latter that's in the early stages of being adopted with the "carbon trading".

Conundrum
If market forces essentially cause and create environmental damage by literally encouraging an irrational human impact, how can you realistically expect those self-same forces to solve it? This conundrum will almost certainly intensify if globalisation picks up pace and the competition gets even tougher for the possession of scarce resources, especially energy and water. But the conundrum does not end there since the system of capitalism is also dependent on economic growth and the accumulation of capital on a larger and larger global scale. And in order to achieve an accumulation of capital, market forces must not only create and produce commodities on a mass scale but also destroy them in a systematic fashion never known in human history. When confronted by barriers of environmental legislation which are designed to diminish the rate of expected profits and the accumulation of capital, the capitalists will do what they have always done in their search for short-term profits: finding or creating loopholes, moving the goalposts, corrupting officials, trying to bribe the local population with empty promises, or shifting the whole concern to an area or region where a more favourable reception is expected and profits maintained.

Unlike the green economists, socialists conclude that in a class-divided society where the means of living are used to serve the interests of the owners of private property any talk of finding a 'common interest', so that there is a change of course of market forces and consequently a greening of capitalism, is a fool's errand. We have, therefore, consistently argued that, where classes exist, there are class divisions in the production and distribution of wealth with the subsequent inequality manifesting itself in a class struggle between two classes with diametrically opposed interests.

Arising out of this analysis we recognise the need for a majority of the workers to actively engage in a political struggle to bring about a revolutionary change in the social relationships - from private property ownership to a system of common ownership, a society of free access where wage slavery has been abolished, money is obsolete, hierarchical structures pointless, class laws transformed into social rules, and production is geared to satisfying human needs. Only when we are living in such a society will we be in a position to minimise any environmental damage caused by human activity.

Once we have reach this stage in human development and social evolution - where our interaction with the natural environment not only enhances our understanding of ourselves but also converges with a social recognition that we are as much dependent on nature as is nature dependent on us - so we will be able to start to tackle a rational clean up of the environmental damage which capitalism will have left in its wake.

Brian Johnson

Misplaced Admiration (1997)

Blogger's Note:

The following article appeared in the Socialist Standard ten years ago, in the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana. It is reproduced here from the pamphlet, 'A Socialist Life -  a collection of articles from the Socialist Standard 1995-2000' by Heather Ball.

From the October 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Do I care that Diana Spencer was killed in a car crash in Paris? I do, but not to order and never in the way I am expected to care. In almost all cases we humans are saddened by death. We know that without any doubt we must all come to an end and to know how this will take place or where or when is probably at the back of most of our minds. But I find it incomprehensible that I should be expected to grieve to distraction over a woman I have never met, was never likely to meet and had no desire to meet. Not only that but I now find that an assumption is made that I will automatically become involved in some of the sickening hypocrisy that we have all witnessed in the wake of her death, and I must say I find this deeply insulting to my intelligence.

If Diana preached that we should not discriminate against people with AIDS, so what? If she told us that land mines should not be used to kill civilians, so what? Is there something intrinsically clever or wise about this? So many of us have said the same. But Diana was listened to and admired because like everything else under capitalism she had been "packaged", her money and her position entitling her to be "right" in the eyes of those people who are impressed by such things.

She was a princess and princesses, unlike other people, apparently, KNOW these things. Wealth had made her attractive and interesting, ensuring therefore, that when she spoke about AIDS victims, the homeless children, then she would be taken much more seriously than when we lesser mortals give voice on similar subjects.

So only the successful and the wealthy have that priority of wisdom, while the rest of us are seldom consulted except for one day every five years when we have the dubious honour of being invited to put a cross against the name of some remote person who knows and understands less than we do.

So what is it about human beings that they often cannot differentiate between what is real and matters and what is cosmetic, contrived and overly sentimental? Centuries of conditioning must be one of the reasons why the human race resorts to adulation of the rich and the powerful, the sages, the clever ones, those who know what is best for us, whom we allow to enslave us, resulting in an almost innate inferiority. The media and the system under which we all live encourage this. It is to their advantage.

Many of us will have worked all our lives to change this system of society, while others believe that belonging to a trade union or joining the Labour Party will increase the chances of a better life for the working class, believing that reform will bring about change and benefit us all. Socialists know that only by eradicating capitalism can we begin to redress injustice and poverty and look towards a sensible and rational life for us and our children and their children.

Meanwhile, my heart aches for those who do not dare to trust their own judgement, who fawn on the shallow figures in our society and make gods and goddesses of them because they have never considered that the power to change what is sick in this world lies in their own hands.

Heather Ball

Hope Over Experience (2007)

Book Review from the September 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pirates of the Caribbean – Axis of Hope. Tariq Ali. (Verso Press)

A need to "counter systematic disinformation by the corporate media networks" coupled with the "revival of hope and the emergence of a modest alternative to the status quo" is the stated motivation for this book. One wouldn't expect neutral views on any topic from Tariq Ali, but however strongly he presents them they are backed up with ample evidence of and references to the truths he is presenting. What one would expect and what one gets is a well-written, clearly argued book exploring the growing movements (mainly in South America) against the Washington Consensus which "can allow no enemies of globalization."

Included is a reminder of the ravages of primitive accumulation affecting the whole continent; a brief history of Venezuela's politics, dictatorships juxtaposed with spells of democracy and the odd coup thrown in; military control; states of emergency; mass protests following IMF restructuring; massacres and decades of exclusion for 80+ percent of the population. The background to the founding of the Bolivarian groups (in the army and air force starting in 1978) by young army officers including Chavez. Ali's sources telling of the programme of political interventions in Venezuela are many, including one 1960s senior CIA officer. He lists books, documents and websites for those wishing to delve further. Two of the many interesting footnotes, one re: V .S. Naipaul's refusal to be drawn into the disinformation racket after the 2002 coup attempt and the other re: a soon to be published book by Gregory Wilpert which totally supports "with a wealth of facts" the Irish documentary film "The Revolution will not be Televised."

Ali is overtly supportive of the moves in South America against the Washington Consensus and points to the ways the balance of power is changing.

There is a section on Bolivia outlining the struggle of the people to oust Bechtel and their water privatization scheme described as the democracy from below that is feared by neo-liberal elites everywhere. Also offered is an insight into Evo Morales' search for "a form of radical social democracy that is totally unacceptable to the Washington Consensus and its institutions." Ali suggests we should all look at strength in unity (e.g. Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia), "All Andean paths that divert from the neo-liberal motorway will be worth exploring." He gives some details of his first trip to Cuba in 2005 and reminds us of the 1962 Second Declaration of Havana expounding that their struggle was continental and anti-imperialist, as Chavez and Morales say now. Visiting the University of Information Technology he discovered Richard Stallman's free software GNU/Linux to be the system of choice. When Ali met Stallman earlier in Caracas, at which time Stallman was 'Linuxing the country' and looking to do the same in Cuba, Stallman told him that China, too, had been very interested until they learned they couldn't charge users for the facility.

The appendices prove informative too, with first-hand information, straight from the mouths of several involved horses, information we are not privy to from the general media. Evo Morales' speech 'In Defence of Humanity' in Mexico City talks of ending selfishness and creating solidarity and mutual aid, of organizing and uniting against the (neo-liberal, imperialist) system, of strengthening the power of the people. The messages from this book are rousing, loud and clear, if, unfortunately, they are not the whole story; end of neo-liberalism and of empire, but no mention of the end of capitalism. According to Tariq Ali, "Hope has been reborn and that is half the battle won." However inspirational it may be socialists suspect that this will in all likelihood be another triumph of hope over experience.

Janet Surman

People Who Obsess Over Political Personalities

Reproduced with kind permission from the Commie Curmudgeon Blog:

People Who Obsess Over Political Personalities: Why Do They Even Bother, and Why Do They Call It Politics?

Trying to get some inspiration for my more political blog here . . . and the resources are scarce. I've been thinking lately about how a lot of people who consider themselves to be concerned about politics, and who are talked about as being "political," spend so much time talking about or targeting some politician or political leader or political leader's dirty tricks . . . This seems to be a particularly favorite pastime of some "political" journalists. Yet, to me, this stuff gets pretty boring, and it isn't even really politics.

I'm getting pretty tired of people obsessing over Bush and his corrupt cronies or some evil character in the Bush administration. (Same goes for lower-level politicians, of course.). It's true that we have a particularly nasty and mostly stupid character in the highest office, but it would be more interesting to me, rather than talking about what an evil or stupid bastard he is, to talk about how he got there in the first place, what system we live under that would grant someone such power - or grant anyone such power, for that matter - and what function those in power serve in the bigger scheme of things.

If I'm interested at all in politics (and at times I've been told that I was obsessed with politics, of a sort), then it's not the kind of "politics" which focuses endlessly on this or that crook or murderer and all the sad little scandals surrounding him or her. If I want to think about a political or social situation in terms of individuals, I'd rather focus on the individuals who don't have fame and power, who have to struggle from day to day. And this is not just, solely a product of my political beliefs (I don't think) or some idealistic desire to stand up for the "ordinary" person. Frankly, I just find focusing on that "ordinary" person, somebody who almost nobody knows about, to be much more interesting, especially when I can start thinking about how that individual's struggle relates to the bigger social picture.

And if I want to think about making political changes, it's interesting to me only if I can think about the bigger picture, rather than just targeting some powerful individual as though stamping out that individual is going to change things in the long run; that is, in any truly political sense.

It is true that it can be gratifying to see the demise of this or that evil, stupid bastard. But in the long run, unless we think about changing the whole system, what's the point? Eliminate one petty dictator or crook and another one will come up to replace him (or her, of course) soon enough. As the saying goes, it's kind of like stamping out cockroaches - and ultimately, just about as interesting.

Richard S.

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (9)

Please feel free to repost or forward the message below:
Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (9)
Dear Friends,
Welcome to the ninth of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.
We now have 678 friends!
Recent blogs:

(1) Death of a child
(2) Maximilien Rubel: Anti-Bolshevik Marxist
(3) Beggar's belief

This week's top quote:

"That which comes directly face to face with the possessor of money on the market, is in fact not labour, but the labourer. What the latter sells is his labour-power. As soon as his labour actually begins, it has already ceased to belong to him; it can therefore no longer be sold by him. Labour is the substance, and the immanent measure of value, but has itself no value. ... That in their appearance things often represent themselves in inverted form is pretty well known in every science except Political Economy." Marx, Das Kapital, Volume 1, Chapter 19.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!
Robert and Piers
Socialist Party of Great Britain

Princess Diana - 10 years on

Latest post from the SPGB blog, Socialism Or Your Money Back:

Princess Di and Lord Louis - under the socialist microscope

Hope people find it of interest. Feel free to repost or forward on.

all the best,
Darren

Letter: Free Access to What? Some Problems of Consumption in Socialism - a follow up (2007)

Letter to the Editors from the August 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

Might I make one or two observations on Stefan's excellent thought-provoking article (Free Access to What? Some Problems of Consumption in Socialism ) in the July 2007 issue. While free access to goods and services is a distinctive - indeed, defining - feature of genuine socialism, there is a danger of reading too much into this. We sometimes talk about this institution of free access being underpinned by material abundance - or the technological capacity to produce such abundance - but this can create a somewhat misleading and unfortunate impression of socialism being some kind of cornucopian consumer paradise in which our every whim will be accommodated. This is not so and I would hate to imagine that the case for socialism might be perversely interpreted as lending unintentional ideological support to the consumerist values that animate capitalism.

We need to distance ourselves from these kinds of unfortunate connotations that the term "free access" might conjure up. By "free access" is simply meant the absence of any kind of quid pro quo exchange relationship that underlies access to goods and services in capitalism. While one's access to goods and services in socialism will not be linked to one's productive input this does not mean a severing of consumption and production. Even today, in a capitalist society, producers are not really a separate set of individuals from consumers. Yes, I know there is the complicating factor of the non-productive capitalist class of conspicuous consumers, but by large most people are both consumers and producers. However, the atomistic tendencies within capitalism foster a kind of schizoid attitude towards production and consumption in as much as we see these as quite separate spheres with wage labour in the productive sphere being merely a means to an end - to gain an income with which we can purchase commodities in the consumption sphere.

In socialism, this conceptual split between consumption and production will tend to disappear along with an atomistic or egocentric view of the world inculcated by market competition itself. In socialism, of necessity, we will recognise far more clearly and starkly than is the case today that we mutually depend upon each other and that we all benefit by ensuring the needs of our fellows are met. Such empathetic understanding will promote a kind of virtuous circle of sustainable development and is precisely why I would characterise socialism as a moral economy.

In practical terms that might well mean ceasing or curtailing the production of certain kinds of goods - as Stefan suggests - in order to ensure the increased output of higher priority goods. Indeed, a socially agreed hierarchy of production goals will be a very important influence on the allocation of relatively scarce resources. A self regulating system of stock control will reveal the availability of different factor inputs and enable decision makers to identify those inputs which most constrain or limit the output of any given good. If the supply of a particular input is scarce in relation to the different demands placed upon it, it makes sense to be able to sort these different demands into some sort of order in which they ought to be met. This is precisely where a socially agreed hierarchy of production goals will come into play with priority in resource allocation being given to important goals such as meeting basic human needs (like providing adequate nutrition and housing) possibly at the expense of other less important goals such as the production of certain luxury goods. The less important such goals are the more likely are they to be starved of the necessary resources for their manufacture.

Which leads me to my final point. Stefan refers to the possibility of "restricted access" to certain goods possibly involving a coupon system. It occurs to me that an important criteria for such restricted access may derive from what I call a "compensation model". Basically it boils down to this - that in socialism we will inherit many of the spatial inequalities of capitalism and indeed may have to cope with this for some time. An obvious example of this is in the form of housing stock. Houses today are highly variable in quality. For a while at least, some people will still have to live in relatively poor quality housing.

The compensation model suggests that, in return for having to put up with living under these relatively disadvantageous circumstances, such individuals should be compensated in terms of having priority access to those goods at the luxury or frivolous end of the socially agreed hierarchy of production of goals. This is not only a question of natural justice; it will help to ease some of latent tensions that might arise in the development towards a fully rounded and mature socialist society.

Robin Cox, 
Alpujarras, 
Spain.

Pathfinders: Conspiracy of Dunces (2007)

The Pathfinders column from the August 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whatever is the point of psychology? Is it really a science if most of its theories are not testable, its tests not controllable and its predictions not reliable? Worse, it takes no account of cultural and political context, focussing on the individual as if they live alone on a desert island, which removes the very large but, for psychologists, awkward possibility that society and not the individual is the problem. Whatever useful insights it may have afforded over the years could be as nothing to the damage it has done to individuals and to social preconceptions about individuals, condemning people in droves to a panoply of 'isms' and 'ologies' and 'opathies' rather as Soviet doctors used to diagnose political dissent as a mental illness to be treated by hospital confinement in a gulag. Generations of mentally unstable people may well have been relentlessly tortured by well-meaning practitioners of 'obvious' truths which could turn out to be wrong, such as the idea that it is best to relive your childhood potty traumas instead of letting sleeping dogs lie (New Scientist, February 3). Small wonder many recovered mental health patients themselves regard 'therapist' as two words.

Psychology, like string theory, exists in the grey hinterland somewhere out of reach of mainstream science but still disproportionately influential in the intellectual zeitgeist, somehow not quite untrue enough to disregard completely, but frustratingly beyond any concrete and reliable quantification. But whereas the nutty and mind-bending world of quantum mechanics can at least point to its equations as evidence of its roots in solid ground, psychology has its feet in shadow and its head in the clouds, as amorphous and elusive as the mind-states of the individuals it claims to illuminate.

A recent article in New Scientist about the perennial phenomenon of conspiracy theories inadvertently underlines just how bovine psychologists can be in their mutual conspiracy to ignore the real world around them (July 14). Beginning with the mildly interesting observation that those who believe one conspiracy theory are more likely to believe others, and that the 18-35 age range, and those in the lower income brackets, are the most susceptible, the article goes on to propose the intriguing idea that major events cannot, in the popular mind, have trivial causes, because our worldview cannot allow it. Positing ourselves as rational creatures in a supposedly ordered and rational universe, we shy away from the hideous tyranny of randomness, that force of nature which defies our control and thus denies us our sense of meaning and 'place'. Thus, Princess Diana didn't die because a driver got drunk, it was all a vast conspiracy involving the top echelons of power. Ditto JFK, who ninety percent of Americans believe could not possibly have been offed by one lone nutter with a rifle and some personal issues but rather good eyesight. Ditto 9/11, whose reverberations spanned the globe like Krakatoa, and which clearly couldn't have been simply the work of a few homicidal amateurs who got very, very lucky.

As with so many arguments in psychology, there is something in all of this, though not much. True, people like a sense of order, and in an ordered world, effects ought not to be wildly disproportionate to their causes. Yet people don't automatically create a conspiracy theory out of their children getting randomly run over in the street, or losing their job, or suffering some other deep and personal tragedy. And why not? Because in these cases, they are usually in possession of the facts. And this is the key social difference which, as usual, the psychological explanation removes from consideration.

People don't fall for conspiracy theories because of some metaphysical hunger for proportionality, but because they know - and those in the lower economic reaches know particularly well - that the working class in general, like the proverbial mushrooms, are kept in the dark and fed on shit, and that in such solitary confinement, imposed by shadowy jailers with almost biblical power over the means of communication, almost anything might be true.

So, no real need to invoke psychology at all. Put any sentient, self-aware animal in an environment where they can't trust their senses, and pretty soon they'll stop functioning 'rationally' and display all the signs of being mad as hatters.

What is particularly unfortunate about conspiracy theories is not that they foster a view of the world as hopelessly in thrall to some shadowy elite with god-like power, because this is largely true. What it incorrectly encourages is the much more damaging idea that this elite is actually much cleverer than the rest of us.

In fact, politics, even geo-politics, is not brain surgery, and world leaders, despite their privileged backgrounds, are not exceptionally gifted individuals. Anyone who can run a corner shop could run a country, given the same infrastructure and advisors as the present incumbents, and allowing the same level of incompetence in an economic system which is anyway chaotic, unpredictable and accident-prone. They may not do any better, but they wouldn't do any worse.

And thus the central mistake of conspiracy theorists is the notion that anyone is really in control of anything. Did Blair force the UK population into war with Iraq against their will, based on power and intelligence they didn't have? No, he lied through his teeth and then held his nerve, while the protestors held a couple of big demos and then gave up, satisfied that they had done their bit. He didn't really have the power to go to war, he just bluffed the working class into believing he did.

And the resulting quagmire of blood in Iraq illustrates perfectly why the cultural institution of leadership, based as it is on this assumption that there are 'experts' who know better than us, can be so catastrophic. Just as science in the US cannot advance until the reactionary moron in the White House is removed, so it is only with the retiring of Blair that a new administration can start to make tentative noises about 'reconsidering' the Iraqi affair. A socialist democracy is one which presupposes that everyone is in possession of the facts and that there is no leader whose decisions cannot be reversed, even when the disastrous consequences are screaming at everyone.

Yet the notion that those in control know what they're doing is hard to shift, even as news comes that many biohazard centres have failed to report accidents and leaks, because there is a culture of silence, reinforced by the unexpected jailing of one scientist who did report losing some vials of plague (New Scientist, July 14), and that you can buy dirty bomb materials like caesium in the US because nobody checks your credentials (New Scientist, July 27).

Fortunately perhaps, those whose messianic task is to attack the institutions of 'western imperialism' by removing limbs and heads from innocent workers, are no more competent than anyone else. What is overwhelmingly apparent from the recent stories of the failed London bombers, with their rucksacks full of soggy chapatti flour, and the bizarre and shambolic episode of the two doctors and their astonishingly low-tech attempt to set fire to Glasgow airport, is the towering ineptness of these suicidal warriors of the new order. As New Scientist couldn't help wondering, with their medical knowledge and access to drugs and radioactive material, why on earth the two Glasgow doctors couldn't have come up with something more imaginative than a Range Rover with a few gallons of petrol on board. Still, on reading the protestations of innocence made by those other men who were amazed to find themselves being prosecuted, and just recently jailed, for loudly and persistently advocating mass-murder in the wake of the Mohammed Cartoons affair (they claimed they were making 'a joke'), it is clear that IQ is not an inexhaustible commodity among terrorists any more than it is in the establishment.

Can all this possibly be explained by the Peter Principle, we ask? This is the famous idea, formulated in his 1968 book by Dr Lawrence J. Peter, that in a hierarchy every member tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence. The subversive corollary of this, which Dr Peter took some care to avoid stating explicitly, concerned as he was primarily with business organisations, is that all hierarchical organisations, including the capitalist system itself, are necessarily run by idiots.

Surely not, you protest. Wouldn't such a world be insanely self-destructive, out of control and in defiance of every principle of common sense and good management? It cannot be so. The conspiracy theorists, for one, would never allow it.

Paddy Shannon

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (8)

Dear Friends,

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

We now have 656 friends!

Recent blogs:

1) Engels on Thomas Muenzer
2) Boom goes bust

This week's top quote:

"Indeed, in my opinion, nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of Socialism as the belief that Russia is a Socialist country and that every act of its rulers must be excused, if not imitated.
And so for the past ten years I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the Socialist movement." George Orwell, Preface to the Ukrainian Edition of Animal Farm, March 1947.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Chomsky on Class

Recent post from the socialist blog, Mailstrom:
Chomsky on Class

Borders Crossed (2007)

From the August 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Does immigration cause working-class problems, or is rather that capitalism needs immigration?

It is all too easy to blame immigrants for causing or at least aggravating problems such as unemployment, bad housing or crime. Whether it is a matter of people from Eastern Europe or South Asia in Britain, or Hispanics in the United States, or Germans in Switzerland, a finger can always be pointed at 'them' for making things worse for 'us'. Socialists, however, prefer to take a wider view, to see processes like immigration as part of world capitalism and its historical development.

In the first place, there are many arguments in favour of immigration made by supporters of capitalism. Workers are more productive in developed than in so-called developing countries, so migrants can produce more in the UK or US than in (say) Mexico or Indonesia, causing the global economy to expand. It tends to be the younger, brighter, more adventurous who migrate, and they are prepared to do the 3D jobs (dirty, difficult, dangerous) that other workers are reluctant to take on — in transport or the hotel industry, for instance. Migrants send remittances to their families back home, thus boosting the local standard of living, and (unlike much official aid) such remittances genuinely go to workers and peasants rather than to bureaucrats or corrupt dictators. Population in the country that migrants go to is kept up by younger migrants, so avoiding the supposed problem of disproportionately many elderly. Allegedly, then, everybody benefits from migration, and free movement is moreover a basic 'human right'. Some writers would compare restrictions on migration to apartheid in South Africa, one of the cornerstones of which was strict laws about where black people could live and work.

Arguments along these lines are found in books such as Philippe Legrain's Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them — which should really be called Immigrants: Capitalism Needs Them. For that is what is really being claimed. Migrants provide capitalists with a supply of cheap, flexible labour, which they have not had to pay to educate, into the bargain. Even before capitalism, there were labour shortages, solved by immigration — the period after the Black Death in the fourteenth century is an example. But capitalism, with its insatiable appetite for labour power, is the true era of increased demand. Acute shortage of workers after the Second World War led to the importation of workers from the West Indies. During the oil boom in the Gulf, large numbers of cheap labourers migrated, including nearly five million to Saudi Arabia. Lebanon, too, has many immigrant workers from Syria, who perform much of the unskilled labour. In Scotland many employers are concerned that the country's population has fallen below five million, and look to immigrants to make up the shortfall. This year, British farms have lost large parts of their strawberry crop, because there are not enough immigrant workers prepared to come and pick the fruit, which highlights the fact that capitalism sometimes needs immigrant workers to keep profits up.

Rival capitalists, however, take different views on the usefulness or otherwise of immigrant labour. In the US, Bush recently attempted to set up a formal guest worker system. 'Illegal' immigrants currently there would have been allowed to apply for citizenship, at a price of course. But the Senate defeated the bill, preferring to maintain border security. One employer who supported the reform commented that its opponents were 'destroying the economy to save the US border' (BBC News Online, 29 June).

Over the centuries many different peoples have migrated to the British Isles, from Vikings to Italians, Jews to Africans. In both World Wars the British Army contained many troops from overseas (almost a third in the Great War). Many cherished British institutions were developed by migrants — not just Marks and Spencer but Moss Bros, Burton's, ICI and meals on wheels. Even the figureheads at the top of the tree are migrants: the royal family was French after the Norman Conquest, and later German. Queen Victoria, often seen as one of the greatest British monarchs, had almost all German ancestors, and she and Prince Albert spoke German to each other.

As such examples might suggest, movement across national frontiers was once less encumbered than it is now. The Aliens Act of 1905 and the imposition of passports during the First World War led to all the paraphernalia of visas, border controls, illegal immigration and so on. Immigrant ships could now be turned back, and customs officers could refuse entry to those deemed unable to support themselves. But the whole border and migration system is very expensive to maintain, another reason why many capitalists dislike it. In 1999, for instance, the Immigration and Naturalization Sevice in the US had a budget of over $4 billion, mostly spent on the border with Mexico.

It is often objected that migrants move from one country to another in order to claim benefits and live off the backs of 'indigenous' people. But there is no reason to think this is true in the vast majority of cases. Benefits are low, and most migrants are not entitled to them anyway. The migration journey can be expensive and hard, often indeed fatal, with many dying at sea on leaky boats or while trying to cross a frontier. Migrants are rarely well off in the country they move to, forming an underclass with little if any security of employment or housing. A committee of the British parliament described official attitudes to migrants and paying benefits to them as 'a deliberate policy of destitution', a rare example of straight talking from such a body.

Margaret Thatcher famously talked of people afraid of being 'swamped' by immigrants, a refrain taken up by the British National Party and MigrationWatch. The latter want strict limits on numbers of migrants, while the BNP want to stop immigration to the UK completely and start a programme of 'voluntary' resettlement. Even workers who do not support such ideas may still blame migrants as convenient scapegoats. This is often based on totally wrong ideas, such as that the proportion of immigrants in the British population is far higher than its true figure of four percent, or that asylum-seekers receive much more in benefits than the measly sum they actually get.

The Socialist response to all this is simply to point out that poverty and social disruption are caused by capitalism, a social system which requires the vast majority of the population to rely on selling their labour power to survive. With or without immigration there will be unemployment, homelessness, crime. Migration is the other side of globalisation, the massive increase in the interdependence of various parts of the planet. Investment is directed overseas, as capitalists look for the biggest profit they can extract and build factories or sweatshops in China, Thailand, and so on. But at the same time some jobs have to be done in the developed world — foodstuffs can be grown half way around the world, but the cooks, waiters and dishwashers have to work in restaurants in London or Manchester.

Equally, talk about migration undermining indigenous culture is so much hogwash. A nation is not something natural but an artificial idea that has been constructed over the centuries, based on accidents of geography and history. From fish and chips to curry and pizza, food in Britain is a mixture just as much as the inhabitants of these islands are. Globalisation may be leading to a unitary world culture, but Starbucks and American television are more responsible for this than migration.

"Open borders" is a capitalist slogan, not one that Socialists endorse. Socialism will be a world without borders and with no concept of migration, where we will all be at home anywhere.

Paul Bennett

Howard Zinn’s ’Marx in Soho’

"Marx in Soho – A Play on History" Howard Zinn. South End Press

Witty, imaginative, to the point, with the ability to stir the emotions from frustration and anger to amusement, hilarity even, this was originally conceived as a traditional play which Zinn later reworked into this monologue. Zinn read Das Kapital (Volume 1 at least) before the age of twenty and was excited to recognize "certain core truths" about the value of labour, surplus value and the division of the classes, i.e. labour was the source of all value; labour produced a value beyond its meagre wages; surplus value went into the pockets of the capitalist class.

The play was written at the time when the collapse of the Soviet Union brought on much gloating from the media and politicians because "not only was 'the enemy' gone, but the ideas of Marxism were discredited." Zinn wanted to show "that Marx's critique of capitalism remains fundamentally true in our time." The opening of the play has Marx, having been granted an hour to return to Earth to defend his stance of a century and a half earlier, arriving in the wrong Soho – New York, not London – to point out the relevancy of his writing to today's working population (the audience). Zinn states that the major events are historically accurate but that there is some literary licence regarding his meetings with Bakunin and the relationships within his own family (especially with Jenny and Eleanor) and although most of the dialogue is invented he uses Marx's own words liberally.

This is a refreshingly different approach to bringing the fundamental ideas of Marx home, stressing, by using humour, just how relevant the principles of Das Kapital still are. "Did I not say 150 years ago that capitalism would enormously increase the wealth of society but that this wealth would be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands?---(reads from newspaper)—'Giant merger of Chemical Bank and Chase Manhattan Bank. 12,000 workers will lose jobs---Stocks rise.' And they say my ideas are dead."

Commonly held confusions about communism and socialism are laid bare here with Marx becoming angrier as he (from this end of the 20th century perspective) looks back at Stalin's legacy. He barks out "Socialism is not supposed to reproduce the stupidities of capitalism." Industry, war, national borders, prisons, the Paris Commune, education, all subjects are covered with relevant jibes at the current political situation – "because people voted, it was thought they had a democracy. A common mistake."

Marx's anger builds as he remonstrates at the slowness of succeeding generations to accept and act on what he foretold but, realizing that he only has limited time to get his message across at this, his second coming, he mellows somewhat, reiterates the basic premises and leaves us with hope for the future – if we get off our asses!

This book is fun and will serve both to rekindle and enliven the tired socialist spirit and to encourage and further motivate active participation by armchair socialists.

Janet Surman

Red Crosses for Johnson & Johnson

From the Socialist Courier blog:

Capitalism cares little for society other than as a milk-cow for profits and further profits. Socialists are rarely shocked by the depths of decency that capitalists will go to accrue profits.

Johnson and Johnson is suing the American Red Cross, alleging the charity has misused the famous red cross symbol for commercial purposes. The lawsuit asks for sales of disputed products - also including medical gloves, nail clippers, combs and toothbrushes - to be stopped and unsold items to be handed over to Johnson and Johnson. The firm is also seeking damages equivalent to the value of such goods sold in supermarkets such as Wal-Mart.

Johnson and Johnson claim a deal with the charity's founder in 1895 gave it the "exclusive use" of the symbol as a trademark for drug, chemical and surgical products. It said American Red Cross had violated this agreement by licensing the symbol to other firms to sell certain goods. The lawsuit argues that the firm reached an agreement with the charity's founder Clara Barton about the commercial use of the symbol for certain products. It maintains that the charter did not give the charity the right to engage in commercial activities which would conflict with a private company.

The American Red Cross described the lawsuit as "obscene", adding that it believed the firm's actions were financially motivated.

It said many of the products at issue were health and safety kits and that profits from their sale had been used to support disaster-relief campaigns.

Alan Johnstone