Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (40)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 40th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1215 friends!

Recent blogs:

Poles Apart: Capitalism and Socialism

Are You a Socialist?

Utopian Socialism

This week's top quote:

"The worst kind of non-smokers are the ones that come up to you and cough. That's pretty fucking cruel isn't it? Do you go up to cripples and dance too?" Bill Hicks

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Blame culture (2008)

Theatre Review from the April 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Popcorn, recently performed at the Grand Theatre, Lancaster, is a play based on a 1996 novel by Ben Elton and is perhaps a satirical tribute to Oliver Stone’s 1994 film, Natural Born Killers which portrays violence, family upbringing and abuse as factors in creating killers. That film’s self-conscious portrayal of media-propelled voyeurism was maybe intended to get audiences to question whether in viewing the film they are becoming implicit in promoting and excusing violence. Natural Born Killers was initially banned in England, apparently because it glamorised serial killing. In America, critic John Grisham went so far as to suggest that film makers should be made legally accountable for inspiring real life murders after a couple went on a killing spree in Texas. At the time I remember thinking that what was more likely to cause offence to those who controlled the media was its powerful attack on the media through, for example, its satirical use of a TV-style comedy perspective to represent sexual abuse within the family as being jovially dysfunctional.

Popcorn centres on a film director, Bruce Delamitri, who makes movies which are said to glamorise violence. It mainly takes place at his after-award ceremony party which is hi-jacked by a couple, “The Mall Murderers”, on a copy-cat killing spree which is seen to mimic that of characters in his films. The play is perhaps a less morally loaded critique of the media than Natural Born Killers and more a critique of wider society’s blame culture.

Within Popcorn, film director Bruce Delamitri faces widespread criticism for inspiring murder through portraying it as cool. However his films are still in high demand and he wins a prestigious award. In this sense the audiences of his films can be seen to condone their violence by consuming not rejecting the films. To counter his critics, he presents the well-used argument that human beings are not passive recipients. They do not simply process his films as instructions and then go out killing in robotic like fashion. Violence has always been in society, he argues. Like Delamitri, however, “The Mall Murderers” also do not take any responsibility for the killings, blaming them both on Delamitri’s films and on past abuse and a dysfunctional family background. In fact no one takes responsibility for anything, “the story is full of witticism and when some one dies you feel nothing”. (Wikipedia)

In order to feel, the creators of Popcorn are perhaps asking us to take back responsibility. Take back responsibility as consumers and as actors and to take responsibility for society as a whole. Saying that that’s how things have always been or will always be is not an excuse.

Whether or not violence on TV, the theatre or in computer games can play a part in promoting violence in wider society, as socialists we believe that a large amount of violence that does exist is a characteristic of class society. In class society institutionalised violence lies at its foundations in the power of the military and the police. In class society an economic system cherishes money and power to the detriment of human beings. Commodity is valued over community and well-being, so that we grow up to be insecure while surrounding signals tell us that consuming products will make us better – by the age of thirteen, 75 percent of what children are told about themselves is negative.

I work with young people, a significant percentage of who have been labelled as “growing up in deprivation.” Many of these young people have been the victims of violence and many have learnt to stop feeling by disassociating themselves from their experiences. Furthermore, some have learnt to disassociate themselves from their own behaviour enabling them to hold the view that their current behaviour and actions are not their fault. This way of looking at the world is supported by a prevailing culture of blame. While the violence they faced certainly wasn’t their fault and one can never underestimate how difficult it may be to survive, it is crucial for the future well-being of these young people for them to learn to recognise that how they choose to behave now, within the limits of capitalism, is their choice. They do not, for example, need to continue a family history of violence. Tragically some choose prison over the violence of poverty and the purposeless they experience outside. What is critical, however, for these young people and for those whose lives have not been so damaged, what is critical for all of us to move in a positive direction is the need to begin to take responsibility for actions and the society we are part of. Simply blaming the socio-cultural environment we grew up in for the world we live in can be an excuse for inaction and a barrier to change.

Of course Popcorn doesn’t go far enough. Taking personal responsibility will not necessarily free us from alienation, poverty and violence, but it is a start. Of course we know that boycotting a product, going on a demo, recycling our rubbish or giving to a charity won’t change things either, apart from perhaps creating a sense of individual smugness. How many people ‘did their bit’ in the Poll Tax riots or Reclaim The Streets marches and now sit on their imaginary laurels passing the buck? It is easy to critique capitalism. It may be easy for us to blame our own behaviour on it and it is not always easy to feel motivated to organise for change, especially after a hard day of wage slavery. However, the only way to bring about radical social change is for us to take responsibility for our lives and take responsibility for organising for a socialist world. We have no desire to reform a system which depends on violence and control over others but to build one based on common ownership and mutual cooperation.

Lorna Stevens

Material World: Selecting a US President: the invisible primaries (2008)

The Material World column from the April 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

The expression “invisible primary” comes from Arthur T. Hadley, The Invisible Primary (Prentice-Hall, 1976). A more recent study refers to the “money primary” (Michael J. Goff, The Money Primary, Rowman & Littlefield, 2004). The two terms refer to the same process: the efforts of would-be candidates to gather support, raise funds and cultivate the media in the year before a presidential election, before the “visible” primaries begin.

Charles Lewis, director of the Center for Public Integrity, defines the phenomenon as “a private referendum in which the wealthiest Americans substantially preselect and predetermine who our next president will be… The hottest candidate in the check-writing sweepstakes is deemed ‘worthy’ by the major media via hundreds of news stories… All others are dubbed losers before the first [public] votes are cast.”

This slightly overstates the case. The number of candidates deemed worthy may, as this time round, be two or three. But the great majority of would-be candidates are indeed thrown out.

Money and media coverage
So to get through the invisible primary you need two things: money and media coverage (lots of both). Let’s look at this a bit more closely.

Money and media coverage are closely connected – partly because money can buy media coverage in the form of political advertising, partly because (as Lewis notes) the media treat fundraising success as an important criterion of “credibility.” And also because both money and media coverage are allocated mainly by members of the same class, the capitalist class. They make most of the large financial contributions and some of them own and control the media.

This is not to say that money and media coverage are perfectly correlated. A candidate needs money for many other purposes besides media coverage, such as to hire staff, pay travel expenses, and bribe uncommitted convention delegates. Nor does media coverage depend solely on fundraising success. For instance, the bosses of Fox, CBS, and NBC also take into account candidates’ political positions when deciding who will be allowed to take part in televised “debates” (actually, grillings by TV journalists) and what questions, if any, each participant will be asked.

In terms of the analogy of a referendum of the capitalist class, it is a referendum in which the media owners have the casting vote.

No challenge to corporate interests
What makes the political positions of a candidate acceptable or unacceptable to the media owners?
They would certainly judge any opposition to the capitalist system unacceptable. But the limits are in fact much narrower than that. In order to pass the test a candidate must not convey an “anti-corporate message” or challenge any significant corporate interest. That means in effect that he or she cannot advocate any serious reform.

I reached this conclusion by observing what happened to the most “left-wing” of the Democratic Party candidates – Dennis Kucinich, the Congressional Representative for Cleveland. Kucinich is not against capitalism, though unlike the general run of American politicians he appears to be independent of specific business interests. (As mayor of Cleveland he resisted pressure to privatize the city’s public utility system.) Like Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, with whose tradition he associates himself, he aspires to “save capitalism from itself” by instituting long-overdue reforms. He was the only candidate to stand for a “single-payer” system of healthcare finance that would eliminate the parasitic health insurance companies. Similarly, he was the only candidate to challenge the military-industrial complex by calling for big cuts in “defence” spending. These reforms are readily justified in capitalist terms, as essential to restore the competitiveness of U.S. civilian industry.

The media did their best to ignore Kucinich, except to ridicule him as a “kook” because, like Carter and Reagan, he says he once saw a UFO. The networks excluded him from TV debates, even when that required changing their own rules. (He sued NBC, but the courts upheld its right to exclude him.) As a result most Americans were unaware of his candidacy, although polls indicate that the policies he advocates enjoy wide support. In January he withdrew from the race, but has managed to hold onto his seat in congress.

Change as a mantra
In order to get through the invisible and the visible primaries, a candidate, and especially a Democratic Party candidate, has to engage in vague and deceptive rhetoric. Obama and Hilary Clinton talk endlessly about change because that is what the voters to whom they appeal are looking for. They are fed up with sending their children to war, with layoffs and home foreclosures, with escalating health costs. Obama repeats the word “change” so often that it has been called his mantra. But just check out what specific changes Clinton and Obama have in mind and you can count on being underwhelmed. They would not have got through the invisible primary had they been determined on serious change.

For example, Obama and Clinton convey the impression that they are finally going to make proper healthcare available to everyone. But this turns out to mean only that everyone will have access to health insurance. You will still have to pay for it. Well, in that sense the U.S. already has “universal healthcare”! OK, they will make the health insurance companies introduce a wider variety of more affordable schemes. That may reduce the number of uninsured somewhat. But cheaper schemes are schemes with poorer coverage and/or higher co-pays and deductibles. (A co-pay is the part of a charge for services that is paid by the patient, not the insurance company. A deductible is the amount that the patient has to pay before the insurance company starts to make any contribution at all.) And some people won’t be able to afford even the cheapest schemes on offer.

The media and the candidates themselves relieve the strain and frustration of trying to assess and compare policy positions by distracting us with trite pseudo-issues such as the relative merits of “youth” and “experience” and whether the U.S. is “ready” for a nonwhite or female president.

Media reform?
Socialists consider most of what passes for “democracy” in the U.S. and other “democratic” countries to be phoney and corrupt – “the best democracy that money can buy.” But we do not deny the existence of some democratic elements in the political system of these countries. One such element is the suffrage itself, which we hope will eventually play a role in establishing the fuller democracy of socialism. The strength of these democratic elements changes over time, and the direction of change cannot be a matter of indifference to socialists.

A crucial factor is the extent to which the capitalist class is able effectively to silence critics of capitalism by monopolizing control over communications media. Until the mid-20th century outdoor public speaking was an important medium of free political discussion, through which socialists could reach quite a large audience. This democratic medium was displaced by television, to which socialists had virtually no access. Now the internet is starting to undermine the monopoly of the corporate mass media, although its impact so far has been modest.

Stefan

Poles Apart: Capitalism and Socialism As The Planet Heats Up

Socialist Party of Great Britain London Day School

We are pleased to inform you that the Socialist Party will be holding a half-day school on the politics of Climate Change at the Conway Hall, Holborn (nearest Tube station is Holborn) on Saturday the 5th of April 1pm - 5 pm.

There will be a guest speaker followed by a speaker from the Socialist Party, plus plenty of opportunity for questions and discussion on this critically-important topic. We aim to make this event engaging, educational and thought provoking.

The guest speaker, Glenn Morris of Arctic Voice, is a frequent visitor to Greenland and during the last 20 years has stayed with the indigenous Inuit people as a guest and a valued friend of the community. Glenn confirmed it was possible for the Inuit to travel through the pack ice by kayak by completing himself a 2000 km journey through the North West passage from Inuvik to Greenland. During his visits to the Inuit he has witnessed the disappearance of their traditional culture and how the impact of consumerism and market forces is bringing about rapid social change between generations and even within families. His presentation will focus on how climate change influences social change, including having a profound impact on the Inuit concept of the common ownership of land and the natural resources of Greenland.

Brian Gardner from the Socialist Party will then look at how capitalism is coping with the political, social and economic challenges of a rapidly-warming planet. Is there a solution available within the market and money system? What sort of society would socialism have to be to address this global challenge? And will Climate Change threaten or assist the likelihood of a global socialist society being established.

During the evening there will be a social - with free food and refreshments and possible entertainment - at the Head Office of the Socialist Party: 52 Clapham High St. All we ask is that if possible you make a small contribution to cover the cost.

For further information contact:

The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UN
Tel: 0207 622 3811
Email: spgb@worldsocialism.org
www.worldsocialism.org/spgb

Ronald Raygun

From the SPGB blog, Socialism Or Your Money Back:

On this day in 1981 newspapers and other media outlets were filled with reports concerning the shooting of President Reagan. By way of contrast, the event received scant and scathing coverage in the Socialist Standard of May that year:

"As for the shooting of Ronald Reagan, we have no sympathy for the figureheads of the most violent and barbaric society the world has ever known: world capitalism. America is one of hundreds of states competing to see who can exploit their population most efficiently, and organising wars all in the interests of the privileged minorities (including Reagan himself) who profit from expanding markets. American expenditure on weapons of violent destruction is rapidly approaching $400 billion a year, that is more than twenty million pounds an hour. Massive military aid is given to murderous military regimes such as that in El Salvador. Each year millions die of starvation, while millionaires like Reagan are prepared to use any kind of violence to defend their privilege and profits. He represents a system in which those with power are free to kill, free to exploit.

So we will not shed any tears over Reagan's wounds; unlike his fellow capitalist rulers, President Brezhnev sent a telegram from Russia: "I wish you, Mr. President, a full and early recovery". President Zhao Ziyang of China was "shocked to hear of your being wounded...I wish you a speedy recovery", while the Pope and Prince Philip both organised prayers for Reagan...there are thousands of others being murdered all the time, for it is the poverty, the coercion and the frustration of the present system which provokes theft, despair and violence. Let Reagan think of that the next time he orders the murder of a few thousand people from Latin America or Vietnam or anywhere else in the name of "freedom".

RS

Editorial: Don't Vote For What You Don't Want (2008)

Editorial from the forthcoming April 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

We don’t have to accept the self-fulfilling prophecy that “capitalism is the only game in town”.

Imagine that all the people in the world made a set of informed, collective and democratic decisions about what kind of system would best meet their needs and solve global problems. Would they choose a money and property system that forced nearly half their total number to try to survive on a dollar a day? Or would they prefer to organise production and distribution of goods and services on the basis of what they need, without the profit system?

Would they, if and when given the chance to vote, do so overwhelmingly for candidates who—whatever labels they attached to themselves or their parties—stood for the continuation of some form of capitalism? Or would they elect delegates, from among their own number, to initiate the process of setting up and running a fundamentally new form of world society, a system based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution?

Would they embrace nationalism, involving armed forces paid to kill and injure other groups (“the enemy”) with whom they have no quarrel? Or would they regard themselves and behave as citizens of the world, regardless of any geographical, cultural or philosophical attachments they may feel?

Would they divide themselves into classes, rich and poor, leaders and led, privileged and unprivileged, dominant and submissive, superordinate and subordinate, master and servant, powerful and powerless? Or would they, despite individual differences in abilities, personalities, interests, tastes, likes and dislikes, think and behave as members of the one human race, not perfect, sometimes fallible or irrational, but never deliberately cruel or anti-social?

Whatever words they use to explain or sloganise their ideologies, all parties except the Socialist Party stand for the continuation of some form of capitalism. From their point of view, a vote for their own candidate is best; a vote for one of their competitors is second best. Not voting could be a worrying sign of alienation from the system. Worst of all, a vote for the Socialist Party candidate – or, where none stands, writing “Socialism” across the ballot paper – would indicate the beginning of a resolution to replace capitalism with socialism.

Don’t forget:
Before the first Labour government came into power, and when some members and supporters used to profess socialism as their eventual goal, there was some justification for the argument that: “The Labour hell is one degree cooler than the Tory hell.” So “Choose the lesser of two evils.”

Today, after successive administrations of the same system, the difference in temperature is too small to get excited about. The same applies to others lining up to be our government—the Lib Dems, etc. We don’t want them and we don’t need them.

Support for socialism isn’t a matter of campaigning to make the poor rich in today’s terms of material consumption. That wouldn’t be environmentally sustainable. The socialist aim isn’t even equality in the sense of sameness, like amounts of work contributed or goods and services consumed. Socialism is essentially about social equality, encouraging and enabling every human being to realise their full potential as giver and taker, not buyer and seller, in the context of society itself moving towards reaching its full potential.

Anarchists against democracy (2008)

Book Review from the March 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anarchy Alive! Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory. By Uri Gordon. Pluto Press

There are many currents of anarchism; some, often called anarcho-communist, hold political ideas not so different from our own. The course of the twentieth century, however, saw these currents fade, and by far the most common ‘anarchist’ today is the individualist or libertarian.

Because they start from the premise that individuals exist independently of society and that the freedom of the individual ego is the most important thing in the world, these anarchists have always had a problem with democracy. They have never been able to see why anybody should be bound by a majority decision; the individual must be free to ignore or even defy such a decision if he or she wants to, otherwise they would be being oppressed. That would be “the tyranny of the majority”. Some anarchists have been able to overcome this prejudice and try to practise democratic forms of organisation: but not Gordon, who launches a head-on attack on the whole concept of democratic control and accountability.

"“Democratic discourse assumes without exception that the political process results, at some point, in collectively binding decisions. That these decisions can be the result of free and open debate by all those affected does not change the fact that the outcome is seen to have a mandatory nature. Saying that something is collectively binding makes no sense if each person is to make up their own mind over whether they are bound by it. Binding means enforceable, and enforceability is a background assumption of democracy. But the outcomes of anarchist process are inherently impossible to enforce. That is why the process is not ‘democratic’ at all, since in democracy the point of equal participation in determining decisions is that this is what legitimates these decisions’ subsequent enforcement – or simply sweetens the pill. Anarchism, then, represents not the most radical form of democracy, but an altogether different paradigm of collective action”.

Socialism, on the other hand, does represent the most radical form of democracy. The socialist justification for accepting majority decision-making is that people are not isolated individuals but only exist in and through society, and that when there is a genuine community (either society as a whole or some collectivity within society) the best method of deciding what it should do, on matters of common interest to it as a community, is by a vote of its members after a full and free discussion. Of course the field of community activity has its limits and some decisions should be left to the individual (what to wear and eat, for instance), but we are talking about matters which concern the community as a community with a common interest.

Capitalism resolves the problem by leaving common goods (basically, the means of production) in minority hands, so there is no popular debate about their use; socialism holds these goods in common, under democratic control; the anarchist trend is to minimise these common goods by wanting them small scale and being anti-technology, which as we can now see is more to do with a failure to resolve the democratic issue than a particular dislike of technology per se. Why do these anarchists like laptops but hate computer factories? The answer is a dislike of democracy.

Gordon’s book is an attempt to give some theoretical coherence to the tactics and ideas of the anti-authority wing of the amorphous anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation movement. He openly admits they do not function democratically and is proud of it. They come together loosely – organise wouldn’t be the right word – in networks which do hold meetings with each other from time to time to discuss some activity. But those attending are not mandated delegates from their group, and no group is bound by any decision that might be reached; they are free to take it or leave it. Some do, some don’t. At demonstrations some will give out leaflets to the general public arguing a case, others will throw stones at the police. Hence the “pluralism” which Gordon celebrates but which is really a cop-out.

Gordon goes further and argues that no individual anarchist or group of anarchists should be held accountable to anyone for what they do; they are quite free to take any action they like and that is how it should be. In answer to Jo Freeman’s important 1970 pamphlet The Tyranny of Structurelessness in which she argued that the absence of formal, democratic structures leads to domination by informal elites, Gordon says “Freeman’s proposals run against the grain of anarchist priorities”. He sees nothing wrong with some informal group of anarchists taking the initiative, it being up to others to decide whether or not to go along with it. The latter seem suspiciously like followers to us but in Gordon’s eyes they are merely showing “solidarity” with the unaccountable group. He doesn’t seem to realise that the same might be said of those who vote for some capitalist politician or party.

Gordon also discusses other matters such as the attitude of anarchists towards violence, technology and nationalism, which are just as confused – or “pluralist” – as over decision-making. But his book is well-written and can be read on a know-your-opponent basis.

Adam Buick

Pathfinders: The Socialist Gene (2008)

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

Is there a gene for socialism? Are we hard-wired to organise a communal society, share everything and live a peaceful and democratic life in harmonious coexistence with nature and other species? Is anybody asking this question? If not, why not?

Let’s face it, people have asked much sillier questions. Recent examples have included: is there a gene for aggression, or ‘obedience’, or ‘homosexuality’, or whatever human behavioural tic is currently inspiring tabloid copy-editors. Usually they are on the lookout for ways of explaining away character traits which their readers regard as undesirable, and which through cod-genetics can be made to look like evolutionary flaws or dead-ends, or else alibis by which the readers can avoid taking any personal responsibility. Serious researchers do ask questions about cooperation, altruism, sacrifice and other socially more admirable traits, but of course, ‘serious’ research is all a matter of what funding bodies are willing to pay for, so while the military will certainly be interested in studies which show aggression to be innate, and which thereby affirm the importance of the military, it is hard to see who, in a capitalist world, would be very keen to bankroll research pointing to the desirability of abolishing banks.

What’s odd about these questions is that they run counter to the trend of all the evidence, which suggests that genes do not operate in isolation but in matrices, and that one single gene can never be identified as being attributable to one single and discrete characteristic, either mental or physical.

This is strange when you consider how the brain works, and how it is popularly supposed to work. Nobody expects to be able to extract a single brain cell and find, encoded within it, a phrase from Romeo and Juliet or a picture of a Ford Mondeo. We realise the brain doesn’t work like that. With a hundred trillion neural connections to play with, the brain distributes its memory and cognitive processes in various different places at once, operating as an integrated network which, like the internet, is even capable to some extent of rerouting round damage and adapting spare parts to new uses.

The nature and adaptability of the brain ought to be a clue. Humans are so adaptable that it is doubtful if anything beyond basic bodily functions can be ascribed to nature. But this doesn’t stop the speculation, because there is a small window of opportunity, via the study of identical twins, to explore the ‘nature’ side of the nature-nurture debate. For, argue people like Steven Pinker, we are not born a ‘blank slate’, so something must be genetically already in there. Something, but what? That’s the trouble. Until some intelligent life form is discovered in the cosmos, which can be studied and compared, there is no way to guess what is natural and what isn’t.

A recent article in New Scientist illustrates the problem, when it asks whether political leanings are encoded in the genes (Feb 2). Some disparity between voting habits of identical twins is cited in support of this outlandish claim, which is being seized on by political scientists as a potential magic key to unlock the voter’s brain. Identical twins, it seems, are more likely to give the same answers to political questions than non-identical ones. While interesting, this is hardly ‘startling’, as the article puts it. If identical twins are truly identical, and if they are brought up together, it is not very surprising that they would develop the same views. The article does not mention identical twins who were brought up separately, however. If one twin is brought up in an impoverished mining town and the other in a mansion, would they still hold the same political views? If they did, this really would be startling. And where non-identical twins hold different views, no mention is made of a comparison with non-identical non-twins and whether the two correlate. This is significant because different siblings within a family experience that family differently, and differential experiences of attention, affection, expectation and responsibilities may well affect their subsequent political development. Lastly, we are told that identical twins tend to give the same answers, but we are not told what these answers are. Logically, of the 30,000 twins studied over two decades in Virginia, one would expect by random chance a greater number either of Democrats or Republicans. This information is not provided, possibly because the obvious conclusion to be drawn from either case is that humans are genetically disposed to be one or the other, which is plainly nonsense.

Genetics has made huge strides in understanding the biological basis of many diseases which afflict humanity. Less successful have been attempts to investigate the supposed biological basis of human behaviour. As has often been stated in this magazine, our ability to think may be innate. What we think about, and what we then do about it, are not. Were it otherwise, there would be no point anyone discussing anything.

Paddy Shannon

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (39)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 39th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1213 friends!

Recent blogs:

Labour, the state and the market

Can the media be made democratic?

"Their Country Needs You"

This week's top quote:

"We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies . . . The world is a collage of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable laws of business. The world is a business . . . !!" [Jensen in Network by Sam Hedrin, 1977.]

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

The Visible Man

From the Marx and Coca-Cola blog:

Last week Barack Obama gave a big speech in Philly on race in America, mostly to distance himself from comments made by his former pastor (apparently when you run for president the opinions of people you know automatically become your own). At the risk of losing my ultra-leftist street cred, I have to say that some of his speech was not all together wrong. It will probably be the only thing intelligent this entire presidential campaign season.

Before I get into the speech I should talk about how race is treated in this country. America likes to think of itself as a classless society. Instead we have race, which has become a short-hand for class. Black equals poor, and white equals rich, and we ignore the other races. While it's true that black people make up a disproportionally percentage of the poor, we ignore the fact that 75% of black people live above the federal poverty line. We also ignore the fact that the majority of people below the poverty line are white. If you are black and have a job, or are white and have trouble paying your rent, you don't exist. And starting after the repeal of Jim Crow, and accelerating in the 80's, this view has been the consensus in politics and the media. It has turned public policy (and consciousness) away from important economic issues to one of trifling identity politics. And that brings me back to Barack's speech:

About 16 minutes into it he actually challenges the liberal consensus of race (the speech itself is 37 minutes long. About 36:30 longer than the typical campaign speech). He starts by doing something I've never seen a politician do, and probably never will again: he puts an issue in historical context.

"But we do need to remind ourselves that so many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.

Legalized discrimination -- where blacks were prevented, often through violence, from owning property, or loans were not granted to African-American business owners, or black homeowners could not access FHA mortgages, or blacks were excluded from unions, or the police force, or fire departments -- meant that black families could not amass any meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations.

That history helps explain the wealth and income gap between black and white, and the concentrated pockets of poverty that persists in so many of today's urban and rural communities....And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods -- parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement -- all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us."

This pretty much sums up where we are today. While slavery and Jim Crow where embodied in the legal code, and since the laws where changed are now gone forever. The problems today are economic. They are built into the capitalist system, and they can't be legislated away. And like all issues of class it's an issue of power and opportunities. That's why things are slow to get better. Liberals like to attack racism today like racism of old; through busing or affirmative action or other legislative programs. It rarely helps though. The hardships facing working class black people today are the same facing all people of the working class. Barack touches on this:

"But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race.
Their experience is the immigrant experience -- as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch. They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor.

They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense.

So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time."

He goes on to explain how this misplaced anger fueled the rise of Reaganism. And he is right. Since black equals poor concerns about closing factories, failing schools, and substandard health care aren't important to white voters. They only care about flag burning or gay marriage or whatever. That's why in the last four years we've seen Democrats move away from identity politics back to economic populism; they got tired of losing elections. Obama especially can't be seen as the "black candidate" if he wants to win. In the primary so far he's done really well with guilty upper class whites, and poorly with working class whites.

"Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle-class squeeze -- a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many.

And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns -- this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding."

In this speech at least Barack seems to understand that the economic infrastructure is the root of the problems in America, though he characterizes capitalism-as-usual as some defect in an otherwise healthy system. Like most politicians he will only mention the "c-word" (that's "class" get your mind out of the gutter) if he talking about that mythical "middle-class" every likes to think they belong to. As long as the working class anger is directed at other races, and not at the capitalist system "a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many." will continue. Towards the end he gives this prescription for what ails us:

"This time we want to talk about how the lines in the emergency room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care, who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life.

This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag.

We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned."

But talking is all he's going to do. Poking around his website it appears to me that his reforms are rather weak. He talks a lot about tax breaks. Tax breaks for "working families" (I guess us single people don't work. We just sit around in front of our laptops all day.), tax breaks for college students, tax breaks to strengthen marriages, blah blah blah tax breaks. His health care plan seems to consist of expanding medicaid, and putting a cap on private insurance premiums. He wants to make NAFTA friendlier not end it. He pays the typical Democratic lip service to labor unions and welfare programs. Nothing I would call "change".

I have the audacity of hoping that Barack's speech is part of a larger change in the way Americans are thinking about society. There seems to be a movement in thought towards a politics of class. Instead of looking at a world split up between races or genders or civilizations or whatever we need to look at a world divided between those who control the wealth and those that labor to create it. Only if we can unite for our economic interest can we have real change we can believe in.

But what do I know. I'm just a poor white dude. I don't really exist.

JM

Check out Marx and Coca-Cola Blog

Basic Income: a dangerous reform (2008)

Book Review from the March 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Green Party’s idea of paying everyone a minimum income whether or not they are working might seem attractive, but it won’t necessarily leave us better off.

In 1795 the magistrates of Speenhamland in Berkshire started a system under which farm labourers on poverty wages had their income supplemented from the poor-rates. The result was predictable. Farmers were encouraged to keep, and even to extend, paying low wages. The payment from the poor-rates became a wage subsidy to employers. Today, the Green Party wants to revive this under the name of “Citizen’s Income”, which they describe as “an automatic, unconditional payment sufficient to cover basic needs of every individual, working or not”.

This is more commonly called a “Basic Income”. Daniel Raventós, whose study (and advocacy) of the proposal has just been published by Pluto Press, goes into more detail:

“Basic Income is an income paid by the state to each full member or accredited resident of a society, regardless of whether or not he or she wishes to engage in paid employment, or is rich or poor or, in other words, independently of any other sources of income that person might have, and irrespective of cohabitation arrangements in the domestic sphere” (Basic Income: The Material Conditions of Freedom).

He lists various things in its favour: that it would abolish poverty, enable us to better balance our lives between voluntary, domestic and paid work, empower women, and “offer workers a resistance fund to maintain strikes that are presently difficult to sustain because of the salary cuts they involve”.

Maybe it would do some of these things, but two linked questions arise. Where’s the money going to come from, and how likely is it to be introduced in the form its advocates want?

Abolishing means-tested benefits such as income support (in Britain) and paying every citizen a state income equal to the official poverty line (of 60 percent of average after-tax income) wouldn’t be cheap. Raventós, basing himself on income tax returns in his native Catalonia, calculates that it could be done by means of a 50 percent flat-rate tax on all incomes. Others have suggested that it might be financed by a wealth tax or by a tax on pollution, but Raventós wants to show that his scheme could be financed merely by redistributing the money the state already collects and spends on family allowances, pensions and means-tested benefits, without any extra taxes. In other words: that the total amount of money paid by the state either as benefits or tax concessions would remain the same, merely distributed differently amongst workers. As we said of the 1943 Beveridge Report that laid the foundations of the post-war “Welfare State” in Britain: it would be “a reorganisation of poverty”.

Raventós lists various objections to the Basic Income scheme, basically that it would reduce the incentive to work, an argument he is able to refute; but he misses the main objection that, like the Speenhamland system, it would be a wage subsidy to employers. To understand this, we need to look at the economics of wage labour in some detail.

Labour market forces bring it about that the income of workers is more or less what they need to keep their working skills up to scratch and to raise a new generation of workers. At one time, in the early days of capitalism, workers’ incomes were made up exclusively of what their employer paid them. Since the introduction of pay-as-you-earn income tax and the “Welfare State” matters have become more complicated. The income of many workers is now made up not only of their take-home pay from their employers but also of various payments from the state, mainly family allowances but also tax credits for the worst paid.

If a basic state income of say, £200 a week (or £10,000 a year), was brought in, this would upset the balance: market forces would tend to bring about a new equilibrium, with those workers who currently get no extra income from the state (those without a dependant family) seeing their take-home pay from employers tend to fall by £10,000. Of course it wouldn’t be as simple as this since in many cases the extra state payment would be compensating for the abolition of family allowances, but there would in general be a strong downward pressure on wages and salaries.

That there would be a tendency for something like this to happen has been recognised by less naïve advocates of Basic Income than Raventós. C. M. A. Clark, who wrote a study of the effects of the introduction of a partial Basic Income scheme in Ireland (The Basic Income Guarantee: Ensuring Progress and Prosperity in the 21st Century, 2002), admitted this was a possibility. In a previous article in the American Journal of Economic Issues in June 1996 he and fellow author Catherine Kavanagh had gone into more detail. They described part of the “conservative case for a Basic Income” as follows:

“By partially separating income from work, the incentive of workers to fight against wage reductions is considerably reduced, thus making labour markets more flexible. This allows wages, and hence labor costs, to adjust more readily to changing economic conditions” (See Here).

And “the liberal argument against Basic Income” as being that:

“if a Basic Income policy is seen as a substitute for a full employment policy in the traditional Keynesian sense, then it is a major step backward and would harm all workers. The Basic Income would, in effect, subsidize employers, allowing them to lower wages . . .”.

Clark and Kavanagh conclude, rather over-optimistically:

“Whether a Basic Income policy would weaken or strengthen workers’ power in the labor market is a more difficult question to answer. It would depend on the context in which the Basic Income policy was instituted and the support workers already received from the state. The existence of a minimum wage, strong unions, and enforced pro-labor legislation might be essential to preventing the Basic Income from becoming a wage subsidization policy”.

Clark and Kavanagh are being over-optimistic because no union can be that strong and because no state could sustain “pro-labor legislation” for any length of time that adversely affected profits.

Unions do have some power, but it is limited to working with favourable labour market forces to get higher wages and better working conditions. When, however, labour market conditions are against them the most they can do is to slow down the worsening of wages and working conditions. If all workers got a basic income from the state of £5000, let alone £10,000, a year, this would change labour market conditions in favour of employers. In pay negotiations they would point to the state payment as evidence that they did not need to pay so much in wages or salaries to maintain their employees’ accustomed standard of living. The workers and their unions would realise this and the negotiations would be about what the reduction in wages and salaries should be. If the reduction was less than the Basic Income then the unions would be able to cry victory, but a reduction there would be. It is just inconceivable that a state payment to everybody in work would not adversely affect wages and salaries.

As to “pro-labor legislation”, this presumably means that the state should take the side of workers against employers. Many Labour and similar governments have come into office promising to benefit wage and salary earners, and all of them have left office without doing this; most in fact have done the opposite and have ended up restraining wages and cutting state benefits. Why? It is not because they were sell-outs or were not determined or resolute enough. It was because they were attempting the impossible: to make capitalism work in the interest of the wage and salary working class.

Capitalism runs on profits, derived from the unpaid labour of workers, and can only run as a profit-making and profit-accumulating system in the interest of those who live off profits, i.e., the capitalist class who own the means of production and employ others to operate them. Any government has to accept this and that, if it’s not to provoke an artificial economic crisis, it has to give priority to profit-making over “pro-labor” legislation. This is why Labour and similar governments have always failed.

In fact, insofar as Basic Income is seen as a “pro-labor” measure as it is by Raventós, then that is a reason why it is never likely to be introduced, at least not in the form that people like him want. As we saw, Raventós puts forward as an argument for Basic Income that it would “offer workers a resistance fund to maintain strikes that are presently difficult to sustain because of the salary cuts they involve”. But can anyone realistically imagine that any government would bring in a measure that would make striking easier for workers? Already, today, there are provisions to cut state benefits paid to strikers. No state is going to shoot itself in the foot by undermining in this way the profitability and so the competitiveness of enterprises operating from within its borders.

So, if a Basic Income scheme is ever introduced, it’s not likely to be more than some limited reform of the tax and benefits system. But even it were to be introduced in full it could turn out to be counter-productive for the working class by leading to an across-the-board decrease in wages.

Adam Buick

War: the socialist attitude (2008)

From the March 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since our formation in 1904 our response to the problem of war has clearly distinguished us from other organisations claiming descent from Marx and Engels and the early socialist pioneers.

We analyse social affairs in class terms. We approach problems in the field of economics and politics from a consideration of what we see as being the real interests of the world working class. It is our contention that there are only two classes in present day society. Firstly, the working class, who collectively produce the wealth of society and who, in order to live, have to sell their ability to work for a wage or a salary. Secondly, the capitalist class who accumulate profit through the economic exploitation of the working class.

This situation leads to an inevitable conflict of interests and the generation of social and economic problems that cannot be solved while capitalism of whatever form continues. Commodity production (production of wealth for sale with a view to profit) inevitably brings conflict over access to markets and sources of raw materials, and for the control of trade routes, and for strategic point around the globe. Attempts are made to resolve these conflicts through discussion and diplomacy. Where diplomacy fails there remains the threat of force of arms to get what is wanted. From time to time this clash of interests breaks out in armed conflict. For the Socialist Party “capitalism and war are inseparable. There can be no capitalism without conflicts of economic interest.” ( SPGB: War and the Working Class. 1936. p.1)

Within a year of our founding the Party published an article putting forward our view on war. In it the author wrote:

“I do not think it will be questioned by any socialist that it is his duty to oppose the wars of the ruling class of one nation with the ruling class of another, and refuse to participate in them.” (‘The curse of national prestige.’ Socialist Standard, August 1905.)

This has been our consistent view ever since. So long as the working class continue to support capitalism so long will its wars, and preparations for war, continue. Before the mass slaughter of the First World War we argued that because wars were the outcome of economic and strategic conflicts between the capitalists of the various nations any attempt to abolish war while those economic conflicts remained was bound to be futile. International meetings passing pious resolutions aimed at achieving “universal disarmament” were doomed to failure. This is what one early member wrote in December 1910 about a pre-World War I peace campaign:

“[That] the ‘anti-war campaign’, as such, is, from the working class standpoint, absurd. Just as the class struggle cannot be abolished save by abolishing classes, so it is impossible for capitalist nations to get rid of the grim spectre of war, for Capitalism presupposes economic conflicts which must finally be fought out with the aid of the armed forces of the State.” (‘Socialism and the anti-war campaign.’ Socialist Standard, December 1910.)

The only solution to war and the myriad other problems that face the workers of the world is to abolish capitalism and replace it with socialism. This involves democratic political action by a majority of the working class who understand the need for change and know how to bring it about.

We do not call for people to love one another (though we are not opposed to that of course) rather we appeal to the workers of this and other countries to recognise their common class interest and to organise consciously and politically to gain the political power necessary to dispossess the owning class – to strip them of their right to own the means of life – and to put in its place a system of common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production – socialism.

Socialism will be a classless, propertyless and moneyless world community of production directly for use without the mediation of buying and selling. Nothing else will suffice. Abolition of class ownership will result in the abolition of conflicts of interest both between the owners and the non-owners and also between competing national groups of owners organised politically into armed nation states. We can conceive of no situation in which we would give our support to either side in any of capitalism’s armed struggles.

The role of the Socialist Party in helping bring socialism about is one of agitation and education. We are an instrument to be used by a conscious working class once the need for a revolutionary social change is recognised. Because they don’t stand for socialism, we are “hostile to every other Party”, even to those which claim to have socialism as their goal.

Much of our argument with the left-wing revolves around their demands for reforms. Most radical left-wing parties say (or in the case of the Labour Party used to say) that their goal is “socialism“. However they also pursue reforms of capitalism as “stepping stones” to socialism. Any political party doing this soon find themselves saddled with the problems inevitably associated with the running of capitalism.

In an article written in the Journal of Modern History on the eve of the Second World War the historian Harry J. Marks dealt with the collapse of the German Social Democratic Party as a revolutionary party in 1914. He encapsulated and highlighted the dangers to a working class movement inherent in the pursuit of reforms. The author wrote that:

“By accepting the policy of the German Government on August 4, 1914, as fundamentally its own, the role of this enormous organisation as an independent factor in world history sank to insignificance and became no more than that of a cog to gear the labour movement into the German war machine.” (Harry J. Marks: ‘Sources of Reformism in the SDP of Germany 1890-1914.’ Journal of Modern History XI (1939) p. 334.)

Our hostility therefore is no mere semantic quibble. It goes to the heart of our case against adopting the “something now” approach to problems, including the problem of war. Unlike those on the left who are choosy as to which wars they object to, we in the Socialist Party are against all of capitalism’s wars. Nor do we single out one or two aspects of war – atomic weapons, or land mines, or poison gas, or the use of child soldiers – we oppose the system that give rise to these things.

Both the established capitalist class and those intent on joining them by force of arms need these weapons to defend and advance their interests against threats from competing groups of capitalists also armed to the teeth to defend their interests. The working class on the other hand have no such interests to defend. The workers have no country. What they do have is a common interest in making the world the common heritage of all who live in it.

Gwynn Thomas

Water Wars

From the Class Warfare blog:

Foreign Policy In Focus reprints an excerpt from Chapter 5 in Maude Barlow's latest book, Blue Covenant The Global water crisis and the coming battle for the right to water:

“The three water crises – dwindling freshwater supplies, inequitable access to water and the corporate control of water – pose the greatest threat of our time to the planet and to our survival. Together with impending climate change from fossil fuel emissions, the water crises impose some life-or-death decisions on us all. Unless we collectively change our behaviour, we are heading toward a world of deepening conflict and potential wars over the dwindling supplies of freshwater – between nations, between rich and poor, between the public and the private interest, between rural and urban populations, and between the competing needs of the natural world and industrialized humans.”

At the moment, 215 major rivers and 300 groundwater basins and aquifers are shared by two or more countries, creating tensions over ownership and use of the precious waters they contain. Coming across this link I was immediately reminded by Fred Pearce’s piece in last November’s New Statesman.

Pearce observes that in the last three decades, the global population has doubled and water consumption has increased threefold. - “largely because, tonne-for-tonne, modern ‘high-yielding’ crop varieties often need more water than the old crops” - sparking a real danger that quarrels over the most necessary of resources could erupt into violence.

Says Pearce:

“A typical Westerner consumes, directly and through thirsty products like food, about a hundred times their own weight in water every day. That is why some of the great rivers of the world, such as the Nile, Indus, Yellow River and Colorado, no longer reach the sea in any appreciable volume. All their water is taken”

“Many parts of the world, notably the Middle East, are running out of water to feed themselves. In response, a vast global trade is emerging. Not in water itself, but in thirsty crops like grains and sugar and cotton. Effectively the UK imports 45 cubic kilometres of water every year embodied in such crops – much of it from poor and arid lands.

“Economists call this the ‘virtual water trade’. Many countries would starve without it. But as more and more countries run short of water, the trade will be disrupted. And the threat of wars over water will grow."

Focusing on the crisis in the Middle East, Pearce notes: “Israel’s relations with its other neighbours are poisoned by its insistence on controlling the watershed of the River Jordan, its main source of water. The 1967 Six Day War was, according to former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s memoirs, fought as much for control of the River Jordan as for land. Israel hangs onto the Golan Heights less for military reasons than because it is where the river rises.”

A cursory reading of the broadsheets uncovers a constant “constant drip-drip of stories about water riots in Pakistan, Mexico, India, China, Indonesia and elsewhere. The world is awash too with disputes over international rivers that threaten to become full-blown wars as water shortages grow”.

Many a current water-fuelled dispute is the legacy of colonial rule argues Pearce:

“The 1947 partitioning of India split control of the River Indus. Now India and Pakistan are at odds over a new Indian hydroelectric plant that, Pakistan claims, threatens its British-built irrigation schemes, which supply most of the country’s food. India’s control over the Ganges causes both floods and droughts in downstream Bangladesh.

“In Africa, Britain left behind a Nile treaty that gives all the waters of a river that flows through ten countries to the two most downstream: Egypt and Sudan. Egypt now threatens to wage war on anyone upstream -- such as Ethiopia - who takes so much as a pint pot of water from the river.”

Meanwhile, ongoing quarrels concern Chinese dams being built on the Mekong in Southeast Asia, and complex conflicts in central Asia, where upstream hydroelectric dams that keep the people of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan warm in winter disrupt water supplies for the huge cotton plantations of downstream Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

Elsewhere the Iraqi and Syrian government are set to contest Turkish dams upstream on the Tigris and Euphrates and which threatens the water supply to millions.

In a section of her book, Maude Barlow focuses on the how the water problem is becoming a major issue for US foreign policy planners, and which is worth quoting at length:

“Water has recently (and suddenly) become a key strategic security and foreign policy priority for the United States. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9-11, protection of U.S. waterways and drinking water supplies from terrorist attack became vitally important to the White House. When Congress created the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, it gave the department responsibility for securing the nation’s water infrastructure and allocated US$548 million in appropriations for security of water infrastructure facilities, funding that was increased in subsequent years. The Environmental Protection Agency created a National Homeland Security Research Center to develop the scientific foundations and tools to be used in the event of an attack on the nation’s water systems, and a Water Security Division was established to train water utility personnel on security issues. It also created a Water Information Sharing and Analysis Center for dissemination of alerts about potential threats to drinking water and, with the American Water Works Association, a rapid e-mail notification system for professionals called the Water Security Channel. Ever true to market economy ideology, the Department of Homeland Security’s mandate includes promoting public-private partnerships in protecting the nation’s water security.

“…Water is becoming as important a strategic issue as energy in Washington. In an August 2004 briefing note for the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a think tank that focuses on the link between energy and security, Dr. Allan R. Hoffman, a senior analyst for the U.S. Department of Energy, declared that the energy security of the United States actually depends on the state of its water resources and warns of a growing water-security crisis worldwide. “Just as energy security became a national priority in the period following the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973–74, water security is destined to become a national and global priority in the decades ahead,” says Hoffman. He notes that central to addressing water security issues is finding the energy to extract water from underground aquifers, transport water through pipelines and canals, manage and treat water for reuse and desalinate brackish and sea water – all technologies now being promoted by U.S. government partnerships with American companies. He also points out that the U.S. energy interests in the Middle East could be threatened by water conflicts in the region: “Water conflicts add to the instability of a region on which the U.S. depends heavily for oil.

“Continuation or inflammation of these conflicts could subject U.S. energy supplies to blackmail again, as occurred in the 1970s.” Water shortages and global warning pose a “serious threat” to America’s national security, top retired military leaders told the president in an April 2007 report published by the national security think tank CNA Corporation. Six retired admirals and five retired generals warned of a future of rampant water wars into which the United States will be dragged. Erik Peterson, director of the Global Strategy Institute of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research organization in Washington that calls itself a “strategic planning partner for the government,” says that the United States must make water a top priority in foreign policy. “There is a very, very critical dimension to all these global water problems here at home,” he told Voice of America News. “The first is that it’s in our national interest to see stability and security and economic development in key areas of the world, and water is a big factor with that whole set of challenges.” His centre has joined forces with ITT Industries, the giant water technology company; Proctor & Gamble, which has created a home water purifier called PUR and is working with the UN in a joint public-private venture in developing countries; Coca-Cola; and Sandia National Laboratories to launch a joint-research institute called Global Water Futures (GWF). Sandia, whose motto is “securing a peaceful and free world through technology” and that works to “maintain U.S. military and nuclear superiority,” is contracted out to weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin by the U.S. government, to operate, thus linking water security to military security in a direct way.

“The mandate of Global Water Futures is twofold: to affect U.S. strategy and policy regarding the global water crisis and to develop the technology necessary to advance the solution. In a September 2005 report, Global Water Futures warned that the global water crisis is driving the world toward “a tipping point in human history,” and elaborated on the need for the United States to start taking water security more seriously: “In light of the global trends in water, it is clear that water quality and water management will affect almost every major U.S. strategic priority in every key region of the world. Addressing the world’s water needs will go well beyond humanitarian and economic development interests. . . . Policies focused on water in regions across the planet must be regarded as a critical element in U.S. national security strategy. Such policies should be part of a broader, comprehensive, and integrated U.S. strategy toward the global water challenges.”

“Innovations in policy and technology must be tightly linked, says the report, no doubt music to the ears of the corporations that sponsored it. GWF calls for closer innovation and cooperation between governments and the private sector and “redoubled” efforts to mobilize public-private partnerships in the development of technological solutions. And, in language that will be familiar to critics of the Bush administration who argue that the United States is not in Iraq to promote democracy, but rather to secure oil resources and make huge profits for American companies in the “rebuilding” effort, the report links upholding American values of democracy with the profit to be gained in the process: “Water issues are critical to U.S. national security and integral to upholding American values of humanitarianism and democratic development. Moreover, engagement with international water issues guarantees business opportunity for the U.S. private sector, which is well positioned to contribute to development and reap economic reward.” Listed among the U.S. government agencies engaged in water issues in the report is the Department of Commerce, which “facilitates U.S. water businesses and market research, and improves U.S. competitiveness in the international water market.””

The latter paragraph says much. There’s profits to be had! And note Coca-Cola’s ominous and timely entrance. What is of key importance to the main players here is less that clean and fresh water is available to humanity – they don’t give a fuck for human life, evidenced by US foreign policy since 1945 to say the least – but the amount of bloody profit the trade in water can generate. If they could not make a cent, they’d show no interest at all and sod the millions dying of thirst. If they’re thirsty they can always buy coca-cola.

In an age when we have the scientific and technological know how to enable us to solve almost all our problems, it is indeed an indictment on capitalism that so many humans, living on a planet, seven eighths of which is covered in water, have so little access to it; more, that a tiny minority wish to profit by controlling our access to it.

A sane, moneyless society, in which the artificial constraints of profit have been removed from production, in which the satisfying of human need is paramount, in which people have free access to the benefits of civilisation, humanity would address water shortages with the building of more reservoirs, water channels, water desalination plants, making obsolete all current processes that waste water.

John Bissett

Jockeying to avoid being put at a competitive disadvantage

In a interview with the (London) Times (13 March) just before the summit of EU leaders in Brussels over the weekend, José Manuel Barroso, the (ex-maoist) President of the Europe Commission, revealed, perhaps inadvertently, one of the built-in obstacles under capitalism standing in the way of international agreement about what to do about the threat of climate change brought about by global warming.

Barroso told the Times that:

“. . . the EU could take protective measures sector by sector to safeguard European production of cement or steel. We do not want to put our energy-intensive industries in a situation of disadvantage in competitive terms, so that is why we will have measures that we are ready to take if there is not a global [climate] agreement”.

What the EU wants to avoid, the report stated, was “big companies relocating from Europe to countries that refuse to join a post-2012 climate change agreement in order to avoid the EU’s tough CO₂ targets” and so “gain a competitive advantage by continuing to allow cheap, high-pollution production”.

Who’s going to get a competitive advantage? That’s the bottom line in the negotiations between capitalist states about what to do about global warming. America refused to sign up to Kyoto because its government reckoned that to do so would place it at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis China (which was not required to sign) and Europe (which burns proportionately less fossil fuels for energy than the US). They were probably right that this would have been the case. As an alternative way to reduce CO₂ emissions than cutting back on burning fossil fuels, the US, which has easy access to coal and oil within its borders, proposes to continue burning them but to develop a way of extracting the CO₂ before it is released into the atmosphere.

The EU seems to have decided that this time China, which has access to huge reserves of coal, has to be included along with other big developing capitalist countries. In fact the Times report, headlined “EU threatens to punish climate deal rebels”, made it clear that China as well as America was in their sights. “America and China”, it began, “face trade protection measures from Europe if they fail to join a global climate deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol”.

Kyoto expires in 2012 but the EU has already committed itself to reducing CO₂ emissions after that date. But it is beginning to be concerned that this commitment may put its energy-intensive industries - particularly cement and steel, as mentioned by Barroso - at a competitive disadvantage if some countries refuse to sign up to a new Kyoto. Clearly influenced by intense lobbying by the European capitalist corporations with money invested in steel producing and cement making, Barroso was clear enough:

“We want a binding decision now that we will take measures to protect these industries in 2012 in case there is not agreement. It would be completely foolish for the European Union to export the pollution and the jobs because globally the effects on climate change will be just the same, only we lose the jobs and our industry”.

True, if steel production and cement making were transferred from Europe to some country with no or lesser restrictions on CO₂ pollution this would leave overall world CO₂ pollution the same. This is known as “carbon leakage” and the EU leaders, in a statement issued after their summit, backed Barroso’s threat, declaring that they “recognize[d] that in a global context of competitive markets, the risk of carbon leakage is a concern in certain sectors such as energy intensive industries particularly exposed to international competition that needs to be analysed and addressed . . . so that if international negotiations fail, appropriate measures can be taken”.

So, watch out then for tough negotiations at the conference in Copenhagen in 2009 when a replacement to the Kyoto Protocol is supposed to be negotiated, when each capitalist state will be trying to ensure that it is not put at a competitive disadvantage by what is agreed. Will an agreement be reached? Perhaps. Will it go as far as scientists say it should? That must be open to serious doubt.

Adam Buick

Greasy Pole: Flint’s Hard Line (2008)

From the March 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

“She prefers to ignore the real complications hampering so many people when they must face the need to survive through employment”

Anyone with a surname like hers will need to become insensitive to pedestrian jokes about it so we shall not risk adding to Caroline Flint’s irritation with feeble cracks about her being hard and unyielding or liable to strike sparks to light your fag. In any case it is clear that her confidence is more than enough to brush off such attempts at humour; for example on a recent episode of The Politics Show she showed herself to be a match for the suffocating conceit of Andrew Neill, persisting in making her point – albeit a typically weary New Labour one – in spite of the presenter’s contemptuous interruptions. Obviously, this Blair Babe will not easily be shaken off her ascent of the Greasy Pole. So it was significant that, as the newly-promoted Minister of State for Housing and Planning she should choose to make her first serious bid for self-publicity with a proposal that unemployed council house tenants who fail to display the appropriate energy in looking for work should risk eviction. This was serious stuff, a challenge to the crustier of Labour’s dogmatists.

Housing
In any effective sense, council housing originated just after the 1914/18 War, when councils were able to build on a large scale by access to government subsidies. Massive slum clearance was encouraged by the 1930 Housing Act and the housing shortage after the Second World War saw the peak of council building, including huge inner-city estates some of which have acquired such grim reputations. Flint acknowledged that her speech was likely to stimulate a “strong debate”. That should be a warning to us all for in the mouths of New Labour leaders “debate” does not mean a free discussion culminating in a popular, constructive conclusion. Rather it serves notice that, to keep favour with as many voters as possible, there will be an enforced policy change emphatic enough to amount to a denial of what once stood as the party’s inviolable, defining principles. Council housing was originally designed to provide homes built to standards way above those of profit-hungry private contractors to be available at rents, set by the democratically elected council, affordable by the ordinary, working people in their area. This article of faith for Labour supporters encouraged numerous architects’ fantasies of sensitively designed estates where the lucky inhabitants could take their ease in safely pedestrianised areas beneath lush green trees. For the tenants an estate address was not supposed to act as a status symbol; but more a badge of communal security.

Unemployment
As she is the Minister for Housing, it has to be assumed that Flint is aware of councils’ statutory duty to provide for homeless people (although the exact definition of “homeless” can vary from one council to another and from time to time). In fact this legal obligation has caused families and individuals with what are known as “multiple problems” – mental and physical illness, addictive personalities, a history of institutional care – being placed by councils in their own, more easily available, accommodation, thus creating the dreaded “sink estates”. It is common for unemployment to be a contributory symptom of those other problems, which may be behind Flint’s sneer at the “no one works around here” culture which she said takes a grip on some communities. The most casual of visits to some estates can impress with the aimless apathy there, too often taken out in assaults on the fabric of the area. In one such high-rise hell in West London people hang dazedly around as the entrails of telephone junction boxes lie strewn across the pavement. A tenant who had just emerged from a long prison sentence was welcomed home by a TV set aimed at him from an upper level balcony (it missed – he later beat up the person responsible). Such places have a stigma of their own, often originating in the very sense of a supportive community which the estate pattern of living was supposed to encourage. A recent letter in the Guardian recalled that when the writer first moved to York she was advised that to try for a job with her address on the Tang Hall estate was to ensure that her application would be ignored; much more hopeful to say she lived in Heworth, which had a happier reputation.

Contracts
Flint suggests that this can be dealt with by making new council tenants sign a “commitment contract” to seek and participate in skills training programmes with a view to employment. She did not say whether the opposite process would apply – whether anyone who had demonstrated their commitment by training and getting a job would then be entitled to council housing. She prefers to ignore the real complications hampering so many people when they must face the need to survive through employment. Her argument was effectively exposed by Adam Sampson, chief executive of Shelter:

“The government wants to return Britain’s unemployed to the workhouse by throwing them onto the streets. What is being proposed would destroy families and communities and add to the thousands who are already homeless.”

In many cases a worker who is unemployed, untrained and aimless, finds their situation complicated by their making unwise life choices. Flint herself should be aware of this and should take it into account when she is ranting about the unemployed and the homeless. When she was 23, a trainee manager at the Greater London Council who had been through college where, like so many other prospective Labour ministers, she smoked cannabis, she met a man while on holiday in Tunisia. Perhaps it was his commitment to training and employment, and that of his family, which impressed her; his father was Tunisia’s Attorney General and he himself was a high earning stock market dealer. At any rate, she said he swept her off her feet; two children were born to them but the man’s family disapproved and eventually the couple married hastily in London where the reality of family life in poverty confronted them and essentially destroyed their relationship. Alleging that he had two convictions for violence, one of them against the police, Flint obtained a Restraining Order against him and soon afterwards he was arrested and deported on the grounds that he had no permanent home in this country. A year later they were divorced, leaving Flint to brush off the experience as an event which “unfortunately didn’t work out”.

Blears
In any case the episode did not hamper her career, which took her through jobs in local government and the GMB trade union until she was elected for Don Valley in the Labour landslide of 1997. In the Commons she voted as the whips required on matters such as Trident renewal, ID cards, the war in Iraq, justifying Andrew Roth’s assessment of her in the Guardian as a “loyal Blairite with a soft line in stooge questions” - which shows just how hard an operator she really is. She held a series of minor jobs until in the reshuffle of January this year she was appointed to Housing and Planning, a job which entails her attending the Cabinet. She may prefer to forget her victory in a 2007 poll to find “The Sexiest Female Politician” as well as her experience as Campaign manager for Hazel Blears’s attempts to become the Deputy Leader, in which Blears came sixth. Unless she takes consolation from the fact that this may have opened the way for her own attempt at a top job some time in the future.

Ivan