The Revolutionary Vote

From the World Socialist Party of the United States website

The vote is a gain, a potential class weapon, a potential “instrument of emancipation” as Marx put it. Despite Lenin’s distortions, Marx and Engels always held that the bourgeois democratic republic was the best political framework for the development and triumph of the socialist movement. This is another pre-1914 socialist position we see no reason to abandon.

Certainly, political democracy under capitalism is not all that it is purported to be by many supporters of the system and it is severely limited, from the point of view of democratic theory, by the very nature of capitalism as an unequal, class-divided society. Certainly, “democracy” has become an ideology used to give capitalist rule a spurious legitimacy . But it is still sufficient to allow the working class to organise politically and economically without too much state interference and also, we would argue, to allow a future socialist majority to gain control of political power.

In a vote between lesser of two evils , ” Vote Cholera or Vote for Typhoid” , ( btw , someone once said “Those who choose the lesser of two evils soon forget that what they chose is an evil” ) Not voting at all is valid, but casting blank ballots or some other form of actively announcing not voting is better. One or two spoilers/blank voters can be ignored, tens of thousands or even millions could not be - especially if backed by a vocal movement explaining the situation. (see the Argentinian example).

In Britain, Canada and most of America, etc I don’t think we’ve any fundamental objection to the electoral system; the provisions for voter registration, nomination of candidates, counting of votes, declaration of result,etc can be inherited by socialism and, with modifications, continue to be used. We also think, of course, that the present electoral mechanisms can be used to express and count, more or less fairly and accurately, a majority desire for socialism. So we’ve no interest in running down the system as such. The way to show that you accept the electoral system but reject the sham choice is to go and use it but not vote for any of the candidates.

There is nothing inherently elitist about the electoral approach. It is how you use that approach that makes it elitist. The World Socialist Movement is not asking people to vote for them so they can solve the problems the electorate have to contend with. The WSM it is saying quite clearly that workers need to understand and support socialism themselves in order for it to come about It cannot be imposed from above. Furthermore, we constantly makes the point to workers in elections that if they dont understand or support socialism then they should not vote for the WSM. The WSM does not propose to come “into office”, ie to form a government and so does not propose “to vote itself into office”. Nor to we propose that other people should “vote us into office” either. What we do propose is that people should, amongst other things, use the vote in the course of the social revolution from capitalism to socialism; that they should, if you like, vote capitalism out of office. To do this they will need to stand recallable mandated delegates at elections but these will be just this: messenger boys and girls, not leaders or would-be government ministers, sent to formally take over and dismantle “the central State”. The situation we envisage in which a majority vote in socialist delegates is one where the revolution ,in respect of socialist ideas has already begun to accelerate.The vote is merely the legitimate stamp which will allow for the dismantling of the repressive apparatus of the States and the end of bourgeois democracy and the establishment of real democracy.It is the Achilles heel of capitalism and makes a non-violent revolution possible.What matters is a conscious socialist majority outside parliament, ready and organised to take over and run industry and society; electing a socialist majority in parliament is essentially just a reflection of this. It is not parliament that establishes socialism, but the socialist working-class majority outside parliament and they do this, not by their votes, but by their active participating beyond this in the transformation of society.

Basically, there are only three ways of winning control of the State: (a) armed insurrection; (b) more or less peaceful mass demonstrations and strikes; (c) using the electoral system.

The early, pre-WWI members of the WSM adopted, in the light of then existing political conditions, for (c), but without ruling out (b) or even (a) should these conditions change (or in other parts of the world where conditions were different).But this was never understood as simply putting an “X” on a ballot paper and letting the Socialist Party and its MPs establish Socialism for workers. The assumption always was that there would be a “conscious” and active Socialist majority outside Parliament, democratically organised both in a mass Socialist political party and, at work, in ex-trade union type organisations ready to keep production going during and immediately after the winning of political control.Having adopted (c), various other options follow. Obviously, if there’s a Socialist candidate people who want Socialism are urged to vote for thatcandidate. But what if there’s no Socialist candidate? Voting for any other candidate is against the principles. So what to do? The basic choice is/was between abstention and spoiling the ballot paper (by writing “Socialism” across it). The policy adopted and confirmed ever since was the latter, ie a sort of write-in vote for Socialism.

The first step towards taking over the means of production, therefore, must be to take over control of the state, and the easiest way to do this is via elections. But elections are merely a technique, a method. The most important precondition to taking political control out of the hands of the owning class is that the useful majority are no longer prepared to be ruled and exploited by a minority; they must withdraw their consent to capitalism and class rule-they must want and understand a socialist society of common ownership and democratic control.We need to organise politically, into a political party, a socialist party. We don’t suffer from delusions of grandeur so we don’t necessary claim that we are that party. What we are talking about is not a small educational and propagandist groupsuch as ourselves , but a mass party that has yet to emerge. It is such a party that will take political control via the ballot box, but since it will in effect be the useful majority organised democratically and politically for socialism it is the useful majority, not the party as such as something separate from that majority, that carries out the socialist transformation of society.

They will neutralise the state and its repressive forces and as stated there is no question of forming a government , and then proceed to take over the means of production for which they will also have organised themselves at their places of work. This done, the repressive state is disbanded and its remaining administrative and service features, reorganised on a democratic basis, are merged with the organisations which the useful majority will have formed to take over and run production, to form the democratic administrative structure of the stateless society of common ownership that socialism will be.

This is perhaps a less romantic idea of the socialist revolution but a thousand times more realistic. Which is why we think this is the way it will happen. When the time comes the socialist majority will use the ballot box since it will be the obvious thing to do, and nobody will be able to prevent them or persuade them not to. At that time it will be the anti-electoralists who will be irrelevant. A real democracy is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of leadership. It is about all of us having a direct say in the decisions that affect us. Leadership means handing over the right to make those decisions to someone else. We have at our disposal today the very means, in the form of modern telecommunications, that could enable us to resuscitate the ancient model of Athenian democracy on a truly global level.

Professor of Dismal Science

From the Socialism Or Your Money Back blog

Everyone wants to know is Barack Obama a socialist? Well, one might be forgiven for thinking so judging by the two million seven hundred and ninety thousand Google results to this question! Whatever, let us suppose you really do want to know - who ya gonna call? Ask whoever you want, and keep asking but be prepared for some confusing and contradictory answers. Perhaps if you are lucky or persistent, you will come across the Crapbusters. They are attracted like flies to anything with a high BS value. A Professor of Economics answering this question about BO in the Christian Science Monitor (sic), is likely to have a Bogus Socialism value that's off the scale. Until the end of last month we were spared such an abortion of socialst understanding.

Professor Boudreaux of George Mason University considers that BO is 'not exactly' a socialist, which is rather like saying that the DPRK isn't exactly democratic. The Professor's next mistake is to say "in the classic sense of the term "Socialism" originally meant government ownership of the major means of production and finance, such as land, coal mines, steel mills, automobile factories, and banks." BS! Actually, the term ‘socialist’ is found for the first time in the Owenite Co-operative Magazine of November 1827, where it stands for a society of common ownership. Marx and Engels used the words ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’ interchangeably to refer to a society of common ownership.

The Professor's goes on to state that a "principal promise of socialism was to replace the alleged uncertainty of markets with the comforting certainty of a central economic plan. No more guessing what consumers will buy next year and how suppliers and rival firms will behave: everyone will be led by government's visible hand to play his and her role in an all-encompassing central plan. The "wastes" of competition, cycles of booms and busts, and the "unfairness" of unequal incomes would be tossed into history's dustbin." Buy? Rival firms? Government? Central plan? None of these are features of Socialism, which the Professor says has utterly failed. By this he must mean efforts taken by the state to control capitalism's boom & bust business cycles, which is true enough.

Invoking the ghosts of Heilbroner and Hayek does not do the Professor any favours, as their understanding of Socialism is no better than his. Similiary, by saying that the collapse of the Iron Curtain has anything to do with Socialism Bourdreaux is digging himself an even deeper hole. Some countries today, as well as the Iron Curtain dictatorships of the past, have a form of state capitalism. The main features of this system are

· State ownership of the principal means of production.

· Generalised wage labour.

· Generalised use of money and money calculation.

· A relatively free market for consumer goods in the form of agricultural products and light industrial products.

· A market for means of production which is closely monitored by the state.

· Wide-scale planning activity, allocating supplies and directing products within the sphere of heavy industry, setting production targets, fixing prices and directing the flows of capital.

· A sizeable black-market.

Later Boudreaux produces another howler: "socialism's requirement that each person behave in ways prescribed by government planners is a recipe for tyranny." We in the World Socialist Movement stick to our principles and the original meaning of socialism: common ownership, democratic control and production solely for use. What place tyranny? More BS! Wealth we are told results chiefly from risk taking and explains how Michael Dell (you might be using one of 'his' computers) became a capitalist. BS! Wealth is, by definition, a product of human labour, acting upon nature-given materials, that is capable of satisfying needs. This identifies wealth with use-value. But capitalism is a society where wealth becomes a commodity having exchange value also, and sometimes only a socially-bounded use-value that is peculiar to this society – as with nuclear weapons.

So, the really important question is not whether we have Tweedledee or Tweedledum with his finger on the nuclear button, or even if BO is full of BS, but rather if you want to side with the Professor of Dismal Science and his capitalist masters in supporting a global system in which war, waste and want are endemic or strive for its replacement with real Socialism?

Material World: The War Business: Why do capitalist states prepare for and wage war? (2008)

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

As we socialists never tire of pointing out, the primary function of military power in capitalism is to protect and expand control over resources, markets and transport routes on behalf of the capitalist class of the country concerned. However, the costs and risks that wars and armaments entail for the capitalists themselves often outweigh the benefits to them.

For example, while the U.S. did have real interests at stake in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, those interests were hardly commensurate with the enormous costs of the war it was waging there. Growing awareness of this fact within the capitalist class eventually led to withdrawal.
In other words, states have a tendency to act in ways that appear to be irrational even in terms of the capitalist interests that they are supposed to represent.

War – a capitalist enterprise
There are various reasons for this apparent irrationality. But the main reason is this. War is not only a service that the state provides to the national capitalist class as a whole. War is also – and increasingly – a massive capitalist enterprise in its own right, a “war business” that wields considerable political clout and has special interests of its own.

The core of the war business, of course, is the so-called military-industrial complex. Arms manufacturers, like other capitalist firms, seek to maximise their profits. It does not concern them whether the weapons they sell have a cogent strategic rationale.

The military-industrial complex has a direct interest not only in the build-up of armaments but in war itself. War is the only way of testing weaponry under battlefield conditions. It uses up and destroys old stocks that then have to be replaced – rearmament is now, for instance, the top priority of the Georgian government – and stimulates demand in general.

But nowadays arms firms are not the only large-scale “merchants of death.” Companies like Blackwater sell combat capability directly as the labour of hired mercenaries. Other companies, such as Halliburton, sell logistics and other war support services.

Resource wars, “strategic” wars
The argument is not that all armed conflicts are irrational in terms of the costs and benefits accruing to national capital. Some undoubtedly make good sense in these terms, as when valuable resources can be acquired at moderate expense. One example might be the “cod wars” of the 1970s between Britain and Iceland over fishing rights in the North Atlantic. Another, perhaps, is the ongoing conflict over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, whose oil and gas deposits are coveted by China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia.

At the other extreme, some wars have no discernible connection with the control of markets and resources. The recent war in Georgia was in this category (see October “Material World”). Although important oil and gas pipelines run through the south of the country, Russia did not contest control over them. Russia’s rationale for war was “strategic” – that is, getting into a better position to fight future wars.

Again, Israel’s wars are senseless from the point of view of the Israeli capitalist class as a whole, which has a clear interest in a peace settlement that will give it full access to the markets and cheap labour of the Middle East. This interest, however, seems unable to prevail against the political stranglehold of Israel’s military-industrial complex.

The nature of the wars that the US and its allies are currently fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan is less clear-cut. Control of resources, markets and transport routes is certainly an important factor, especially in Iraq, but the likely outcome is hardly such as to justify the enormous costs involved. While the ultimate motive for war may be to arrest the decline in the competitive position of the US in the world economy, the actual effect is to accelerate that decline (see May “Material World”).

Capitalism and war: two models
So we end up with two contrasting models of the relationship between capitalism and war. In the first model, war appears as an instrument in the hands of the state, which acts as the “executive committee of the (national) capitalist class as a whole” (Marx). The second model, unlike the first, takes into account the fact that war is evolving from an instrument at the service of the national capitalist class as a whole into a capitalist enterprise in its own right -- what we might call the war business. The war business has special capitalist interests of its own, so it cannot function simply as an instrument of more general capitalist interests.

Does the first model represent capitalism in its “normal” form, while the second model represents an “abnormal” ultra-militaristic mutation of the capitalist system? Is the first model rational, in capitalist if not in human terms, while the second model is irrational? At first sight that seems reasonable.

But is there in fact any good reason to regard one model as any more irrational than the other? Each model represents a possible variant of capitalism and a possible form of capitalist rationality. The difference is that the first model assumes the existence of such a thing as “national capital as a whole,” while the second model envisions only separate capitalist enterprises. Some firms sell sausages, some sell computers – and some sell war.

Stephen Shenfield

Editorial: Is capitalism crumbling? (2008)

The Editorial from the November 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism has never had such a bad press as the last few months. Countless commentators have given more than a passing consideration to the question, will capitalism collapse? Whilst this hopeful question could be expected to emanate from excitable journalists, and from the rump of what remains of the left-wing throughout the world, it should be noted that the likes of Bill Gates and Nicolas Sarkozy have been asking similar questions.

The real challenge to capitalism however is not so much a challenge to its on-going operation – it will carry on in some shape or form regardless. The last few months are after all nothing other than a "market correction", albeit a pretty big and widespread one. Rather, the challenge to capitalism is one that is of more interest to world socialists.

For us worthwhile social change cannot come about blindly in knee-jerk reaction to events, nor in the role of passive bystanders as events unfold around us. What has become crystal clear over the last few weeks is the extent to which the experts of capitalism, the self-styled "Masters of the Universe" were flying by the seat of their silk monogrammed pants, with little idea what they were actually buying and selling.

Genuine social change will require more than just restricting executives' bonuses, or trying to improve regulation of the financial services sector, as many are calling for. Even when it is working right, even when it is booming, the market system fails miserably to do the one thing it claims as its unique selling point. Far from efficiently sending market signals between supply and demand, between producer and consumer, the market system sends confused, unreliable and skewed information.

And of course there are some areas of demand that the economic system is just not interested in even supplying – because of the low profit returns available. World hunger is one example illustrating how the market operates on the basis of profit, not human need. There can surely be few clearer signs of the priorities of capitalism than the contrast between the painfully slow progress made to address world hunger over the last few decades, and the haste with which politicians around the world have responded to the banking crisis. The sums of money hastily committed to increase banks' liquidity and stabilise the sector would – if used to meet real human needs - ensure not one person need die of hunger for the next 23 years.

Capitalism won’t collapse of its own accord. But for many millions it has never functioned to start with. Instead the market system must be dismantled intellectually, ideologically and democratically. A genuine alternative society must be agreed before capitalism can start to be dismantled in reality, with alternative mechanisms emerging to replace both the market and the state.

If we want to get rid of capitalism we will need to work at it. That's why we exist: to try and help as one small part of that massive process. If you want to help out in that process – if you want to become humanity to become a "master" of its universe – then please make contact, and the sooner we may succeed.

What food crisis? (2008)

From the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those suffering most from the “current world food crisis” may not know why they are but they probably do know that they can have very little impact on the outcome as the world is structured currently.

Corporate control
In 1921 36 companies were responsible for 85 percent of US grain exports. By the end of the 70s six companies controlled 90+ percent of Canadian, European, Australian and Argentinian grain and currently Cargill and Continental each control 25 percent of the world's grain trade. While 37 nations have been plunged into food crisis Monsanto has had record sales from herbicides and seeds and Cargill's profit increased by 86 percent. On the one hand these corporations use, wherever there is a perceived advantage, the poorer countries for cash crops, manufacturing using cheap labour, cheaper processing and they take advantage of huge subsidies for which they lobby constantly, and on the other show indifference to the employees and labourers in these countries. Wages are kept as low as can be managed and conditions of employment are almost non-existent. Long working hours, enforced, often unpaid, overtime, no sick-pay non-existent or poor compensation for accidents and no pension.

Of the world's people as a whole, 70 percent earn their livelihood by producing food, their own included. From these a growing number are now producing crops for fodder or alternative fuels, reducing the amount of land available for human food production and thereby increasing its cost. Profit is the bottom line.

Monsanto is huge in soy bean production having a virtual monopoly with their 'Roundup Ready' seeds. Genetically modified seeds grown to be used for cattle feed, fish feed, all manner of industrial uses plus 80 percent of processed foods contain soy bean. Why would you promote an oil-seed that has a relatively low oil yield – 18 percent, compared with coconut (75 percent), groundnut (55 percent) and sesame (50 percent), if it wasn't simply linked to your ownership of the means of their production? The health risks associated with soy bean consumption are becoming clearer, especially an oestrogen problem. One test revealed that soy-based infant formula yields a dose of oestrogen equivalent to 8-12 contraceptive pills daily.

Monsanto (originators of Agent Orange) acquired Unilever's European wheat-breeding business in 1998. They have a large stake in India's largest seed company and have also bought Cargill's international seed operations in Central and Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa thus virtually monopolising production, limiting choice and pushing genetically engineered wheat. Their intellectual property scams, internationally infamous, banning the saving and trading of seed (something done for thousands of years with no problems of ownership attached) have been followed by many court cases usually to the detriment of small farmers in both poor and ‘developed’ world. The infamous 'terminator' gene which makes plants' seeds infertile has perhaps been the most cynical invention, forcing farmers into buying seed every year, putting them in hock to the big corporations and resulting in penury.

Around the world farmers have been pressured by large companies to grow cash crops. Cotton started to displace food crops in India after trade liberalisation was introduced in 1991. Aggressive advertising campaigns were conducted by Monsanto, for one, to introduce hybrid cotton seed which, being more vulnerable to pest attack, required the use of more pesticide than the varieties traditionally grown. Having borrowed on credit for both seed and pesticide and finding themselves in unresolvable debt following crop failures, according to Vandana Shiva in Stolen Harvest, many hundreds of farmers committed suicide by ingesting the very pesticides that were supposed to have protected their crops. Suicide deaths of Indian farmers continue to be a huge problem.

Ecologically unsound
There are ecological issues surrounding the current world food system. Here there are many links between this and the previous section. In their pursuit of profit worldwide mega-corporations have been responsible for some of the worst degradation of land, water, air and sea. Particularly relevant to food production, however, it is being recognised in more quarters that industrial farming damages the environment (as well as concentrating profits in fewer hands) and that small farms are actually more productive and much less damaging. Only this year a UN commission of 400 agricultural experts concluded that the world needs to shift from current agribusiness methods to a more ecological and small-scale approach. It comes as no surprise to learn that neither the US government nor agribusiness agreed to endorse the recommendations. A US dairy farmer allied to Via Campesina which is a global movement of peasant and farm organisations said words to the effect that at last it's recognised that industrial GM crops and globalisation methods have led to more hungry people but why hadn't they listened to farmers instead of corporations in the first place? Good question, to which we know the answer.

The (mainly GM) soy bean comes in for another attack here. To produce its oil requires solvents – bad for the environment; producing it creates saturated fats – bad for health. To ensure that maximum benefit (i.e. maximum profit, not maximum nutrition) is derived from the humble soy bean a US company is now also producing look-alike pulses, lentils etc from some of this bulk. Mono-crops and intensive farming by their very nature create havoc with the land, with the soil, requiring an input of fertilizer to fulfil the role that mixed farming does automatically. The soil gradually becomes impoverished leading to the necessity for more fertilizer, itself a problem from leaching into and contaminating water. Fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides all alter the nature of the soil, the ecological balance, ultimately denuding the area of the very plants, microbes, insects, worms, birds, small animals etc that determine its replenishment in a natural cycle. Traditional farming is shown to be far superior both for the health of the soil and also for crop yield. Animals manure the land, worms and other creatures turn and aerate it, insects assist pollination, other insects, birds and small animals dispose of many of the pests naturally whilst also replenishing the soil with nutrients and crops of different types in rotation take nutrients from and return nutrients to the soil. In many parts of the world the 'weeds' that grow among crops are crops themselves, not to be sprayed and killed but to be picked and eaten by humans and animals or else to be ploughed back into the ground returning natural organic matter.

One obvious negative effect of growing mono-crops for export or as non-food products such as biofuels is that it impacts on the amount of land available for growing food for local consumption, pushing small farmers off the land altogether or to patches of less productive land. Aggressive growth in agricultural exports has been linked to increasing poverty and hunger in the exporting country. Examples include the Philippines where the acreage for growing cut flowers was massively increased with a corresponding decline in acreage for food staples resulting in the destruction of approximately 350,000 livelihoods and increasing rice imports by a factor of ten; Brazil, when soy bean exports increased dramatically (1970s) as animal feed for Japan and Europe, hunger increased from one third to two thirds of the population. By the 90s Brazil became the third largest exporter of soy bean having increased acreage by 37 percent over 15 years displacing millions of small farmers and decreasing rice production by 18 percent further exacerbating hunger and poverty. On this topic Vandana Shiva gets right to the point, “The food security of the US and other wealthy food-importing countries depends largely on the destruction of other people's security” (in Alternative Globalization, ed. By John Cavanagh and Jerry Mander),

Other ecologically unsound farming practices such as raising animals intensively leads to massive problems for the animals, for the humans raising them and eating them and for the environment in which they are kept. For instance, as fish farms have become more extensive in acreage and more intensive in production bacterial infections have spread to fish in the wild. Whereas it used to be recommended to eat fish regularly as part of a healthy diet there are now warnings to limit drastically intake of farmed fish. Shrimp farming is known as a 'rape and run' industry because of its unsustainability and the inevitability that after a handful of years the site will be ecologically devastated and susceptible to massive outbreaks of disease, leaving hectares of former good fishing coastline unfit and unable to supply locals with a catch of any kind – coastal wastelands.

Shrimp farms and fish farms require more wet fish, processed into meal, pro rata than they ultimately produce, consuming more resources than they produce. The fish caught by trawling and purse-seining for the production of meal deprives people of both food and livelihood, depletes fish stocks drastically, kills all kinds of aquatic life – and this to provide shrimp for people living a long way from the devastation and knowing little about it. Mangroves, crucial in many coastal areas for protection against storms, preventing erosion and recognised as important habitat for much marine life have been devastated around the world in order that some of us may eat shrimp. Sri Lanka lost nearly half their mangrove area in 10 years; Vietnam lost more than 100,000 hectares in 4 years; most of Ecuador's shrimp comes from former mangrove swamps; a third of Thailand's lost mangroves was as a result of shrimp farming over 30 years up to 1993. Ecological and environmental man-made disasters. Intensive shrimp farming also leads to permanent salinisation of groundwater and has created water famine in formerly water abundant areas in India, causing death of cattle and gradual contamination of former productive rice paddies. Because of intensive shrimp production in Bangladesh rice production fell from 40,000 to only 36 (not 36 thousand) metric tonnes between 1976-86 with similar losses reported in Thailand. Shrimp and prawn have been 'farmed' traditionally in India for hundreds of years without this serious adverse effect on the ecology. The traditional methods have proved effective and have produced good income for farmers combining paddy growing in the monsoon season with shrimp 'farming' in other seasons when the fields are filled temporarily with saline water. Whether aquaculture or agriculture, natural methods prove to be more economical in terms of input, more productive in terms of output showing biodiversity and labour intensification to be both more efficient and sustainable.

The deregulated global market.
There is a raft of trading practices stacked against the poorer 'developing' countries, which incorporate the majority of the world's population, in favour of corporations in the ‘developed‘ countries. The international monetary organisations, World Bank, World Trade Organisation, International Monetary Fund all function to ensure maximum returns flow into the coffers of and trans-national corporations including agribusinesses. All loans have to be paid back with interest. Aid is tied to agreements, purchases and long-term commitment to remittances back to the donor country. Subsidies to agriculture flow freely in the ‘developed’ world, especially to agribusiness; in the poor world subsidies are called a barrier to free trade and have to be removed. Markets must be open – to subsidised products from the rich. Traditional local production systems have been consistently undermined to favour global corporations causing increased landlessness in the process. Many of these landless, former farmers now work for poverty wages in factories sub-contracted to big-name sportswear labels, unable to grow any food of their own now, just part of the growing number of consumers struggling to buy enough food to put on the table.

Vandana Shiva commented aptly on the root causes of hunger and poverty in 2007 thus, “A combination of loss of land and loss of control of local resources like water, seeds and bio-diversity. All of these are basic to farming communities but are now in the hands of global corporations.” IMF loans to poor countries are channelled into export subsidies for US agribusinesses thus further assisting multinationals to dominate smaller, local businesses whether domestic or foreign.

The main goal of the WTO and its allies has been to remove all and any obstructions which may hamper corporations. National laws, standards and environmental protection rules have been subsumed by the WTO's rulings resulting in laxer rules across the board, reduced labour, environmental, food and health regulations. In effect deregulation has led to decreased local control, a worsening general environment, an increase in poverty and hunger whilst concentrating power, wealth and influence among the global corporations.

Biofuels
Biofuels were originally heralded as the wonder fuel, something to challenge fossil fuels and a way to save the world from its dependence on oil, a greener product, sustainable and easily grown around the world. David Moberg, in an August 2008 article “Let them eat free markets” in ,These Times, writes, “once seen as a way of using up European and US surpluses biofuels are now threatening to become a global, corporate-controlled, industrial farming and export business that could put US SUVs in competition with food for poor people in other countries whilst degrading tropical forests.” So, here again is monoculture on a grand scale, degradation of the environment, cash crops taking the place of food crops and small farmers forced off the land to increase production and profit. A further downside to biofuels and a good reason to take another look at the topic for those who still believe it to be a 'green' fuel is that it actually takes something like 18 percent more energy to process the fuel than will be available in the finished product. Not best use of agricultural land, resources or manpower.

Buying Power
Simple buying power – or rather lack of it – is a fifth factor.. If you're not growing your own food it has to be bought. One way or another customers have to pay. When half or more of your income is already spent on food, as it is for the majority world, then rising prices of basics like rice and wheat are an immediate threat. The priority becomes what can I eat? Not what can I cut out in order that might eat, just what is there I can afford to eat? In 2007 the price of rice on the world market rose 16 percent. Between January and April of 2008 it rose a further 141 percent. Rice is the staple diet of Haitians, Haiti, being one of the poorest nations on the planet, is also one of the countries that was devastated from the loss of domestic farm incomes when highly subsidised US rice was dumped on them following WTO instructions. There is a photograph showing a Haitian woman sitting on the ground mixing and spreading out row upon row of biscuits to dry in the sun. Biscuits made of clay, salt and vegetable fat. Let them eat cake!

Similar stories from around the world reveal how previously solvent farmers have been reduced to penury. Mexicans cannot compete with US maize and cotton. Jamaican dairy farmers can't compete with EU subsidised milk powder. Mali, Benin, Burkino Faso etc. have lost double from the fall in cotton prices than they receive in US foreign aid. All of these and similar unfair practices drastically reduce the buying power of millions of people. According to the environmental pressure group, the International Forum on Globalisation, “The ultimate sustainable agricultural solution is transition to non-corporate, small-scale organic farming as practised for millennia.”

Cause and Effect
What we have seen here are the effects of a system that is structured for the benefit of a few corporations at the expense of the many. Inevitably the food crisis will continue to grow for an ever-increasing number of the world's population unless and until the causes of the crisis are eliminated. Politicians of diverse leanings, human rights advocacy groups and pundits of various persuasions offer a medley of fixes. Level the playing field. Fair trade, not free trade. Restore national sovereignty to international trade. Limit the power of global corporations. Strengthen human rights laws to prevent eviction of people from their land. Allow landless peasants access to and ownership of privately owned, unused land. Make the international institutions more accountable to citizens not to capital. Increase regulation of outsourcing. Force companies despoiling the environment to clean up the mess and pay compensation. Implement tougher environmental standards at all levels.

The problem common to these and other 'solutions' is that none of them are comprehensive, none are for all time and none are for all people. There is already a UN charter for human rights which, in theory, covers all possible scenarios, which is ostensibly for the protection of the well-being of all but which, in practice, cannot work because it is not controlled by the democratic will of the people but by a few strong countries pursuing the economic policies of their elites.

The principles underlying socialism, whilst not offering an immediate panacea, do address all the issues of the rights of all individuals, “by the conversion into the common property of society the means of production and distribution and their democratic control by the whole people.” Unlike the UN and numerous international agreements, multi-lateral accords and protocols which are repeatedly undermined by one or more powerful states consistently overruling decisions and agreements the ethic of socialism is rooted in the people. As more and more of the common wealth is taken from the people more and more people experience the food crisis first hand. Cause and effect. Removing money, the incentive and purpose of accumulation (the raison d’être of capitalism) and transforming world society into one of free access and common ownership – the world belonging to all and to none – will be to eliminate the causes of hunger and to effect an end to further speculation about a world food crisis.

Janet Surman

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (70)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 70th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1375 friends!

Recent blogs:

A professor defends capitalism

A call to action

'The fruits of labour'(John McCain)

Coming Events at SPGB Head Office, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North):

A Season of Free Film nights from Sunday 14th September to Sunday 23rd November at 52 Clapham High Street, London.

All films start at 4 p.m.

Sunday 9 November: Zeitgeist

Sunday 23 November: The War on Democracy

Quote for the week:

"You think this man is the enemy? Huh? This is a worker! Any union keeps this man out ain't a union, it's a goddam club! They got you fightin' white against colored, native against foreign, hollow against hollow, when you know there ain't but two sides in this world - them that work and them that don't. You work, they don't." From Matewan, 1987.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Canadian interested in socialism? Socialist interested in Canada? Read On . . .

Latest issue of 'Imagine', the journal of the Socialist Party of Canada, is now available.

Click on the image for the PDF of the issue.

Articles featured include:

National Ownership Or Common Ownership?

The Long Commute To Nowhere

Free Trade Or A Free World?

Honesty Is The Worst Policy

Tales From The Class War

Via the Socialist Party of Canada website:

Wage Slave News: 2008 Federal Election Comment

$300 million of government money, plus tens of millions of dollars more spent by each party to pay for advertisements that largely attempt to discredit their opponents, has just been spent in an exercise in futility. The new parliament will be almost identical to the last minority government that lasted just two and a half years. The voter turnout was among the lowest on record at just 59%. Why are voters so turned off? In the first place you often hear people say that it doesn’t make a difference. They are right. All the major parties support the current economic system, capitalism. As this system is based on the private ownership of the world’s riches and resources and the mechanisms for turning them into useful goods, all in the interests of those same owners, and as all parties compete to run and maintain that system, then we can say we have a choice between Private Property Party A, B, C, D, or E, i.e. no real difference and no real change. Not one party, outside The Socialist Party of Canada, has proposed any alternative to this current system in which billions live in poverty, millions starve to death or die from easily-treated diseases, hundreds of millions lack adequate housing or medical care, and even in our own rich country, over a million are forced to line up at food banks for paltry hand outs. All this, mind you, in the midst of plenty and signs everywhere of the ostentatious wealth of the owning class.

Secondly, there is a sense that our system is undemocratic. Voting every four years or so doesn’t cut the mustard. The largest voter block was the ‘did not vote’ group at 41%, added to the estimated 8% who don’t bother to get registered, that makes 49%. The Tories got something less than 40% of 51% of voters equals about 22 % of all adults. In other words, practically 4 out of 5 didn’t want Harper as Prime Minister. I’m sure most candidates are genuinely expecting to go to Ottawa to serve their community and country. Alas, they only get to serve a small cadre of party insiders who, with one ear to the capitalist class and their lackeys, the lobbyists, decide party policy. All members are under the discipline of the party whips and are told how and when to vote, as they are needed, and to jump up and shout and applaud whenever their leader speaks in the house. Is this democracy? Don’t they ever disagree with their leader, or think he gave a lousy performance and refuse to act like cheerleaders? The big event of the election season is the leaders’ debate. Elizabeth May of the Green Party, who put candidates in every riding, was refused permission to participate for the second time. Only a large outcry reversed this decision. But what about all the other parties? In a democratic society we should listen to all sides, shouldn’t we? Those who vote and do not back a winner feel that their votes do not count at all and representation does not match the popular vote. The Green Party polled almost one million voters but didn’t get one seat in the House. Proportional Representation would make every vote count but The Toronto Star editorialized against this system on the grounds that groups like Alberta First or religious groups might get represented in parliament! That system wouldn’t, of course, make any difference unless we had real choices to vote for. With universal suffrage, we have the potential for democracy, but our convoluted system, the influence of money, and the bias of the media all converge to prevent any chance of real democracy. When socialism and common ownership are established, there will be no need for political parties as they are expressions of the class system. Socialist parties around the world, when elected to power will use state legislatures, presently the tools of oppression of the working class, as an instrument of emancipation, ending private property, giving power to local councils, and then disbanding. We do not attempt to lay down any blueprint for future generations to follow as that would be undemocratic, but it seems plausible that local elected, accountable, recallable, councils would organize production and distribution of goods based on needs, and their decisions and performances would be subject to daily scrutiny. In other words, real democracy, from the people up will be the order of the day. This can only happen, though, when you, reader, agree with our position and decide to do something about it.

The Socialist Party of Canada

Presents

Socialism as a Practical Alternative

A discussion on the problems of society and how to solve them.

Friday November 14th
5.00pm-6.30pm
The Barrie Public Library
60 Worsley St. (at Owen St.)
(@ blocks north of Dunlop St.

For more information on the Socialist Party of Canada:

Email:canadiansocialism@hotmail.com

Website

MySpace Page

Facebook Page

Cooking the Books: Cuba’s wage system (2008)

The Cooking the Books column from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Earlier this year, when in June the Cuban government, now under Fidel Castro’s brother Raul, announced a new system of wage payments, the Guardian (13 June) wrote that Cuba had “abandoned its egalitarian wages system”. This brought a response (20 June) from Helen Yaffe, author of Ermesto Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution:

“In reality, there has never been an ‘egalitarian wage system’ (i.e. one where every worker was paid the same): Che Guevara himself devised a new salary scale, introduced in 1964, with 24 different basic wage levels, plus a 15% bonus for over-completion”.

In other words, Cuba never had practised wage equality, not even when Guevara was Minister of Industry. Not that socialists favour equal wages. As long as the wages system – the sale of people’s working skills for money – exists there will be a different price for the different types of skill. We want the abolition of the whole wage system, an end to the buying and selling of people’s working abilities, and the application of the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.

Yaffe made a claim about this too:

“Like Marx himself, Che recognised the socialist principle: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his work’ – which your article associates exclusively with Raul. Cuba has never claimed to be communist and therefore never embraced the principle ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need’, which expresses the attainment of communist society”.

While it is true that Marx thought that it would not have been possible to implement “to each according to needs” immediately had a “co-operative society based on the common ownership of the means of production” been established in his day, he never drew a distinction between a socialist society (where this principle couldn’t yet be applied) and a communist society (where it would be). He actually spoke of two “phases” of the same society, which he called “communist society”. Engels and the later socialist movement adopted the term “socialist society”, but both terms referred to the same type of society; they are interchangeable.

In any event, the temporary measure until distribution according to needs became possible which Marx mentioned in the private notes he wrote in 1875 known as The Critique of the Gotha Programme was a system of “labour-time vouchers”. This would probably have proved unworkable but it was not the same as “to each according to their work”. It would have been “to each according to their working time”, with people being given a consumption voucher based on the time spent at work not for the particular kind of work they did. There wouldn’t be 24 different levels, just one. An engineer and a cleaner who put in the same number of hours would get the get the same number of consumption vouchers. In this sense it would have been “egalitarian”.

But what Lenin, Stalin, Castro and Guevara called “socialism” did not even correspond to Marx’s “first phase of communist society” since it was based on the state, not the common, ownership and control of the means of production, the majority remaining propertyless and having to sell their working skills to live. As the state was controlled by the leaders of a minority vanguard party, these leaders became in effect the employers of the excluded majority. As employers they had to devise some system of pricing the different kinds and qualities of labour-power they purchased. Hence schemes such as Guevara’s and the one just introduced in Cuba. This was state capitalism, not socialism/communism.

The Corporation (2004)

Sunday 26th October at 4pm
The Corporation

A film critical of the modern-day corporation, considering it as a class of a person and evaluating its behaviour towards society and the world at large as a psychologist might evaluate an ordinary person. This is explored through specific examples.

A Season of Free Film Evenings

From Sunday 14th September to Sunday 23rd November
Radical Film Forum - 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North)
- Tired of mainstream films?· Bored of the blockbuster?
- Want more than just passive consumption?

Find out about other films featured in the Radical Film Forum season here.

Review of The Corporation from the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard
The Corporation, a recently released film directed by Mark Achban, Jennifer Abbot and Joel Bakan, begins with a little US political history, observing how, in the 19th century, a “corporation” was a “benevolent” association of people with a government charter to serve “the public good”. When, in the late 1860s, the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution recognised the slave as having human rights, the nascent corporate elite of the time had their lawyers stake a claim to the same rights with the Supreme Court. They fought and won, and the state henceforth recognised the corporation as a human being, a person in law, with the same right to life, liberty and property.

This leads to one of the big questions of the film: if corporations are legally defined as people, then what kind of people are they? One way the film addresses this question is to call in the FBI’s Consultant on Psychopaths, Dr Robert Hare. Hare proceeds to run through a check-list of the traits of your run-of-the-mill psychopath before concluding that the modern corporation, bearing no moral responsibility for its actions, is very much the prototypical psychopath.

Much of the remainder of the film is given over to proving this claim beyond all reasonable doubt and many authoritative witnesses are wheeled in to testify. And what a selection of witnesses there are! Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Naomi Klein, Anita Roddick, Vandana Shiva, Michael Moore; experts from every field and all manner of labour rights organisations and grass roots activists, economists such as Milton Friedman and many CEOs. Their statements amount to a damning examination of the nature and personality of the modern corporation, charting its growth, its extending influence and downright indifference to democracy and how, as one commentator observes, it has turned into a “monster, trying to devour as much profit as possible at anyone’s expense.”

No such thing as enough
What we are presented with is an image of all-powerful organisations running wild, rabid with greed, superpowers, for whom there is “no such thing as enough” (Moore), for whom “everything is legitimate in the pursuit of profit” (Roddick). Modern corporations are presented as the “new high priests”, more powerful than governments and accountable only to their shareholders, their brand labels protected by more legislation than covers the rights of the children who sew them onto their overpriced merchandise.

The film pits competing ideas on the modern corporation against one another. We are at one stage shown the offices of the National Labour Committee and hear Executive Director Charles Kernaghan revealing the level of exploitation of workers in the Dominican Republic (who for instance earn 75 cents for each Nike jacket that sells for $178 and 3 cents for a tee shirt that retails at $14.) We are shown the living conditions of those same desperate workers and hear their own testimony as to the level of their destitution and then listen to Michael Walker of the corporate think-tank, the Fraser Institute, expounding his views on the role competitive markets play in providing for the economic and social well-being and how he believes firms such as Nike are an “enormous godsend” to people in the Dominican Republic.

The film contains much that is totally fascinating. One section looks at big business and its penchant for the dictatorial regime. We are shown how a punch card system devised and regularly maintained by IBM (operating out of New York) processed millions of concentration camp victims, and how Coca Cola, faced with the possibility of having its operation curtailed in Nazi Germany, simply changed its name to Fanta. Much evidence is presented as to how corporate allegiance to profit transcends its loyalty to national flags and we are presented with one startling fact: that in one week 57 US companies were fined for trading with enemies of the US. Contemplating big business’s links to tyrannical regimes, one commentator asks “is it narcissism that compels them to seek their reflection in the regimented structure of fascist regimes?”

One of several cases studies the film presents is that relating to Monsanto (famous for Agent Orange and 50,000 birth defects in Vietnam) and its manufacture of Posilac. This was a drug which, when injected into cows, increased their milk yield. That the world was awash with milk did not concern Monsanto; they were far more interested in profits and eventually were supplying a quarter of US dairy herds with the product. But because cows were not meant to produce so much milk, their udders went into overdrive and became infected with mastitis, the pus from which infected the milk. Not only were humans suffering the effects of the chemicals injected into the milk, their milk was now infected with mastitis pus. Monsanto’s reaction was to deny all allegations and to lie like condemned murderers.

Reckless pollution
The modern corporation is perhaps most vilified for its total lack of respect for the environment and biosphere on which all life on Earth depends. Ray Anderson, the CEO of Interface Inc, who has won much acclaim promoting the idea that environmental responsibility makes good business sense, is seen addressing an audience of business leaders in North Carolina. Greeting them as “fellow plunderers”, he goes on to tell them that there is “not an industrial company in the world that is sustainable.”

Robert Weismann of Multinational Monitor reminds us that the cost of getting caught for their corporate transgressions – i.e. environmental pollution – is, more often than not, less than the cost of complying with existing environmental legislation. Dr Vandara Shiva, physicist and ecologist, despairingly contemplates the suicide gene built into new strains of cash crop seeds, the new terminator technology that makes the third world farmer dependent ever on the seed supplier (instead of traditionally putting aside a portion of the harvest as seeds for the following year), and calls them inventions of a ear), and calls them inventions of a “brutal mind”.

For the corporation, nothing is sacred. Even the US Patent Office has conceded defeat in its attempts to stop them patenting life forms, bearing out Roddick’s sentiment that every means is legitimate if the end be profit. Climbing down from one seven-year battle with big business, the Office had this to say: “You can patent anything in the world which is alive except a full birth human being.”

The film nears an end with a case study of the privatisation of the water supply of Cochabamba, Bolivia, at the behest of the World Bank, focusing particularly on the town’s residents and their run in with the forces of the state acting on behalf of Bechtel, a San Francisco based company who bought the water company. So keen were the powers that be to force the people to bow to the power of Bechtel that they demolished their homes for non-payment of their exorbitant water rates and made the collecting of rain water illegal. The frustration spilled onto the streets with huge demonstrations and riots and violent clashes with the police. Eventually, though, Bechtel were forced to pull out of their Bolivian venture, but not before they had put in a claim for $25 million in compensation.

Weakness
It is from this case study and other cited instances of green activism that we are meant to draw inspiration; the message being that the corporation should not underestimate the power of the people, that “the workers, united, can never be defeated”. Of course, corporations are advised to tidy up their act too. Michael Moore tells us that there should be more governmental controls and the film ends with Moore hoping the film will prompt people “to do something, anything, to get the world back in our hands”. This suggests that Moore, and others who promote similar ideas in the film, are missing the point. Granted, it is commendable, heroic even, that workers are prepared to often risk life and limb to defend themselves and to confront the most harrowing acts perpetrated by corporations. But it is a dangerous to believe that such grassroots action amounts to wresting control of the world away from its current owners.

If anyone considers this film a trumpet call for social change, a reveille for revolution, they are mistaken. The capitalist system is left unscathed. Nowhere is the market-driven profit system as such challenged. Nowhere are all of the case studies and criticism of corporate power and abuse rooted in a wider context. Nowhere does a commentator lambast the global “can’t pay, can’t have” society that consigns the greater portion of the population of the planet to lives of abject misery. And no interviewee comes near to demanding the abolition of the capitalist system and its replacement with a system of society based on free access. Capitalism is taken for granted as being immutable and all that is being asked at the end is that corporations wear a smiley face and stop behaving so horridly.

Moore may well contemplate why such films are broadcast by TV corporations, in spite of the fact that they attack corporate power; for the record, he suggests it is because there is profit to be made by them and he may be partly right. But he fails to grasp that this, and similar films like Fahrenheit 911, nowhere query the basis of class society – the set-up that allows the ownership of property by one privileged class, and the consequent enslavement of one class by another, is in no way threatened and the TV company broadcasting programmes that reveal corporate crimes is aware of this.

I don’t really want to rubbish the whole film but, in truth, The Corporation simply echoes the sentiments of the anti-globalisation movement – the demand for greater corporate responsibility, reform of international institutions, expansion of democracy and fairer trading conditions, for instance – while allowing capitalism to carry on perpetrating every social ill that plagues us.

The Corporation is undoubtedly a remarkable exposé of the modern corporation at its ugliest, of the lengths corporations will go to and the depths they will stoop to in the search for profit. The film stands as a brilliant critique of corporate power and everything we associate with it and is a much needed resource in revealing the insanity of the present system. And as far as enthusing green activists and lending weight to the anti-globalisation cause is concerned, the film is a powerful tool. But that’s not the way out.

John Bissett

Greasy Pole: When You’re Smiling . . . (2008)

The Greasy Pole column from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is likely that a lot of people would be noticeably happier if Gordon Brown would stop smiling. Those startling, carefully orchestrated facial arrangements – inflicted on soldiers in Afghanistan looking after the oil supply lines, on Olympic athletes calculating how much their status as gold medalists will be worth when they get back home, on bewildered parents taking their offspring for a quite sea-front stroll in Southwold – are not a pretty sight and convince nobody that the Prime Minister is relaxed and happy with his ability to grapple British capitalism out of its present crisis. Less disturbing would be the funereal countenance recently so characteristic of him.

To take the question further – what is there for Gordon Brown to smile about? Among the “experts” who expect to be trusted to correctly prescribe remedies for the ills of capitalism, there is general agreement that the situation can only get worse and that we are about to be overwhelmed by a slump. A couple of months ago no less a person than the governor of the Bank of England warned us that “The nice years of the 60s are over” – an assessment which would have impressed only those whose memories of those years – the boom and slump economy, the Cuba missile crisis, the war in Vietnam – are anything but “nice”. More recently Alistair Darling, Brown’s choice to succeed him as Chancellor of the Exchequer rocked the governmental boat when he declared, in an interview with the Guardian, that “The economic times we are facing are arguably the worst they’ve been in 60 years and I think it’s going to be more profound and long-lasting than people thought” and later, bemoaning Labour’s fall out of electoral favour “People are pissed off with us”.

Resilient
Chancellors of the Exchequer are not supposed to be so frank about what goes on in the economy, so that Darling’s comments were open to being dismissed as a “gaffe” – which was in fact an admission that his comments were nearer the truth than Brown’s persistent assertion that the government has so effectively strengthened the British economy that it will weather the storm – unless the voters are so ungrateful that they put in a Tory government to undo all his good work. His government, Brown said, is ”resilient” in the way it is dealing with the present problems (expect to hear more of “resilient” – it has all the hallmarks of a word essential to any Labour Party weasel with ambitions to slither up the greasy pole).

The best that Labour MPs can offer in this appalling situation is to grumble that it is all Brown’s fault; get rid of him, by whatever means, and things will get better. The most recent of these was, notably, the discarded, embittered ex-Home Secretary Charles Clarke. The intellectual contortions required in this come easily to the practised amnesiacs on the Labour benches but we should remember that it is not very long ago that these same representatives of the people were clamourous in their praise of Brown as the greatest Chancellor of the Exchequer in history. This was the leader whose superhuman powers had constructed an economy virtually free of unemployment, with an uninflatable price structure and interest rates so low that thousands were tempted to leap into the void of unaffordable mortgages. Now that those happy delusions have been blown away by cruel reality Labour is turning to the equally bankrupt notion that their party’s salvation lies in ridding itself of Brown. Adjustments like that are effective conditioning to the dishonesty inherent in trying to run British capitalism. The problem is that no leader can be any more successful, can cook the books, deny reality and deceive the voting people, any more effectively.

Miliband
This will not prevent them persisting in their endless search for the unobtainable. And while they do this, each one will harbour, somewhere in their feverish self-assessment, the ambition that they are the ideal leader the party has been waiting for – the one with the insight and the power to succeed where historically everyone else has failed. For their own peace of mind, it must be hoped that these delusions will not endure beyond one or two sleepless nights. David Miliband, possibly enjoying in his abrupt promotion to the heady, if cynically seamy, job of Foreign Secretary, recently let it be known that he is ready to accept the crown. In an article in the Guardian he began in the pose as a fearless confronter of reality – although perhaps unsettling more stubbornly myopic Labour supporters– with the admission that “The odds are against us, no question” but then mollified those he had disturbed with a generous measure of re-assuring platitudes: “Every member of the Labour party carries with them the simple guiding mission on the membership card: to put power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many, and not the few” and later he expanded on this platitude with some more “…the challenge to society – to build a genuine sense of belonging and responsibility on the back of greater protection from outside risks and greater control of local issues”. Perhaps, in spite of this, Miliband will succeed to the leadership. But it will not take long for the surge of capitalist society to expose him as just another discredited politician.

This doleful procession of ecstatic expectations followed by rumbling doubts then exposure and rejection, seems to feed on a self-perpetuating energy originating in an apparently limitless capacity for working-class self-deception. There have been many victims of this, of eminent leaders fallen into the dustbin of history. Gordon Brown looks like being only the latest in this dismal line. How long can he keep smiling?

Ivan

Profit versus the Planet (2008)

*Launch of new pamphlet -- Saturday 25 October*

Saturday 25 October, 6pm

SOCIALISM AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Speakers: Brian Morris (guest speaker) and Adam Buick (Socialist Party)
Chair: Gwynn Thomas (Socialist Party)

Forum followed by discussion.
Socialist Party Head Office, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North).

Questions regarding the environment are constantly in the news. If it's not global warming and climate change, there is concern over future energy resources and rain forest depletion. The environmental list seems never-ending with the increasing human impact making serious inroads on finite resources. Hardly a day goes by when politicians, economists, environmentalists and the scientific community are not voicing their opinions and offering various explanations for the continual global degradation. The Oscar winning film by Al Gore, 'An Inconvenient Truth' exemplified not only these concerns but also the solutions on offer. Without exception none of the solutions query the root cause of global environmental destruction. Consequently, all of the solutions are pro-market and pro-profit and the degradation continues unresolved.

Obviously, what is needed is an alternative solution outside of the capitalist mindset and one that takes into consideration the ownership and control of our productive processes; in short the social ownership of the means of life. Only then will we be able to address solutions which will not only benefit all of humanity but also the global environment. To this end the Socialist Party have recently published a pamphlet: 'An Inconvenient Question - Socialism and the Environment' .

You are cordially invited to attend the official launch of the pamphlet at our head office at 52 Clapham High Street, Clapham, London, on Saturday the 25th of October at 6 pm. The guest speaker, Brian Morris is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London and is well known for his fieldwork on human interaction and the environment. The Socialist Party speaker, Adam Buick, has written many articles on the environment, human behaviour and political economy. With both speakers holding different political perspectives, the launch promises some lively discussion on what positive action is required to replace the market incentives of putting profit first and the environment second. If you acknowledge that we are just as much dependent on the environment as the environment is dependent on us you will find this discussion forum educational and engaging.

Free refreshments and free literature.

New Pamphlet

An Inconvenient Question. Socialism and the Environment

In recent years the environment has become a major political issue. And rightly so, because a serious environmental crisis really does exist. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat have all become contaminated to a greater or lesser extent. Ecology - the branch of biology that studies the relationships of living organisms to their environment - is important, as it is concerned with explaining exactly what has been happening and what is likely to happen if present trends continue.

Since the publication of our Ecology and Socialism pamphlet in 1990 environmental problems facing the planet have got much worse. We said then that attempts to solve those problems within capitalism would meet with failure, and that is precisely what has happened. Recent research on increasing environmental degradation has painted an alarming picture of the likely future if the profit system continues to hold sway. Voices claiming that the proper use of market forces will solve the problem can still be heard, but as time goes on the emerging facts of what is happening serve only to contradict those voices.

In this pamphlet we begin with a brief review of the development of Earth and of humankind’s progress on it so far. We then examine the mounting evidence that the planet is now under threat of a worsening, dangerous environment for human and other forms of life. The motor of capitalism is profit for the minority capitalist class to add to their capital, or capital accumulation. Environmental concerns, if considered at all, always come a poor second. The waste of human and other resources used in the market system is prodigious, adding to the problems and standing in the way of their solution.

Earth Summits over the last few decades show a consistent record of failure - unjustifiably high hopes and pitifully poor results sum them up. The Green Party and other environmental bodies propose reforms of capitalism that haven’t worked or have made very little real difference in the past. Socialists can see no reason why it should be any different in the future. Finally we discuss the need, with respect to the ecology of the planet, for a revolution that is both based on socialist principles of common ownership and production solely for needs, and environmental principles of conserving - not destroying - the wealth and amenities of the planet.

Contents
Introduction
What is ecology?
Earth under threat
Profit wins, the environment also ran
The waste of capitalism
Earth Summits - a record of failure
Green reformism
Socialism - an inconvenient question?

To get a copy by post send a cheque or postal order for £2.50 (made out to “The Socialist Party of Great Britain”) to: The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain (69)

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 69th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1371 friends.

Recent blogs:

Ballyhoo and Baloney (US National Conventions)

Gordon Brown’s solution : “ethical” markets

Crime and the causes of crime

Coming Events at SPGB Head Office, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North):

A Season of Free Film nights from Sunday 14th September to Sunday 23rd November at 52 Clapham High Street, London.

All films start at 4 p.m.

Sunday 26 October:The Corporation

Sunday 9 November: Zeitgeist

Sunday 23 November: The War on Democracy

Quote for the week:

"Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?" George Carlin.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Growing old disgracefully (2008)

From the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

In primitive society one of the greatest sources of human survival was the knowledge of the elderly. If you lived in a gathering/hunting society the knowledge of where plants occurred, where animals existed and at what times of the year was essential for human society. Knowledge was power. So much was this the case for human survival that one of the first forms of religion was Ancestor Worship.

We no longer live in a gathering/hunting society, we live in a modern capitalist society. This is a society where the majority work for a wage or a salary and a tiny minority live off the surplus value that they produce. Inside this society attitudes towards the elderly are completely different. If they are poor they are looked upon as a burden by the capitalist class and some sort of creature, that had they any decency would just disappear.

Away back in 1908 when state pensions were first paid in the UK there was the view that this piece of reform would end old-age poverty. People like David Lloyd George and Charles Booth hailed the legislation as a mayor breakthrough on the abolition of old-age poverty.

"Yet 100 years on, 2.5 million pensioners – more than a fifth of all those aged over 65 – still struggle to pay their bills and keep their home warm" (London Times, 31 July). Such is the nature of capitalism and the lick-spittles that operate it that they have come up with a great new idea that will save the owning class millions.

"People will be forced to work until they are aged 70 if the basic state pension is to survive into the next century, according to the Government' s pension supremo. Lord Turner of Ecchinswell, the architect of radical reform in which the retirement age will rise to 68 by 2046, said that with no limit in sight for life expectancy, people are going to have to work even longer than he proposed" (London Times, 31 July).

When I was very young an elderly man taught me about capitalism. One of the lessons he taught me was – the owning class need young men and women to provide for them, but we don't need them. As in primitive society we must heed the elderly – knowledge is power.

Richard Donnelly

The great crash of 1929 (1979)

From the October 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fifty years ago, on Tuesday 29 October, the boom in the price of stocks and shares on the New York stock exchange came to an abrupt end in what has gone down in history as the Great Crash.

Stocks and shares are titles to ownership of part of a business. They entitle their owners to a percentage of the profits of that business in the form of dividends or, in the case of certain kinds of shares, fixed interest payments. In theory the price of a share reflects the value of the firm's assets. In practice it fluctuates with the firm's profit-making record and expected profits. It is this latter that introduces an element of gambling into shareholding, since the firm can never know in advance whether or not it will in actual fact make the hoped-for profits. If it doesn't then the price of its shares will fall and the shareholders will suffer a loss. If it does then the price of its shares will increase and the shareholder will receive a capital gain as well as a dividend.

A stock exchange boom is essentially a period of speculation for capital gains on rising share prices. It need have nothing whatsoever to do with the profit-making record or prospects of the firms whose shares are traded. It is enough that there is a sustained excess of buyers over sellers on the stock market. With prices continually rising, capital gains can be made simply by buying shares one day and selling them the next. A telephone call is all the effort required.

Until October 1929 there was such a boom on the New York stock exchange. Share prices were rising, and everybody expected them to go on rising. Stories of people 'getting rich quick' from buying and selling shares encouraged others to try their luck. Actually, as long as the boom continued it was not a question of luck at all but a matter of having money. If you didn't have ready cash, you could borrow the money to buy the shares. Certainly you needed some collateral, but there were cases of shares already bought on loans - and even of the shares to be bought by that loan — being accepted as collateral.

The trouble with a speculative boom of this sort is that it cannot go on for ever. Sooner or later the excess of buyers over sellers must disappear. Everybody knows this, but investors can't resist the temptation to make easy money.

The Great Crash was followed by a severe industrial depression, summarised by J.K. Galbraith in his very readable book on the subject:

“After the Great Crash came the Great Depression which lasted, with varying severity, for ten years. In 1933, Gross National Product (total production of the economy) was nearly a third less than in 1929. Not until 1937 did the physical volume of production recover to the levels of 1929, and then it promptly slipped back again. Until 1941 the dollar value of production remained below 1929. Between 1930 and 1940 only once, in 1937, did the average number unemployed during the year drop below eight million. In 1933 nearly thirteen million were out of work, or about one in every four in the labour force. In 1938 one person in five was still out of work. (The Great Crash 1929, Pelican, p. 186.)

One school of thought, the monetarists, sees the Great Crash and Great Depression as the outcome of government interference in the 'natural' workings of capitalism. According to them, the stock exchange boom and its inevitable crash were caused by the monetary policy pursued by the US government and central bank (the Federal Reserve Board). What gives monetarist explanations of this crisis, and of crises in general, a semblance of plausibility, is the fact that monetary bungling can aggravate a crisis. And there is no doubt that in the years up to 1929 the Federal Reserve Board, in pursuing a cheap money policy with easy credit and low interest rates, did encourage the stock exchange boom, and so helped make the crash all the greater when it came. A stricter monetary policy might have cut short the boom at a much earlier stage and thus prevented so great a crash, even if not a minor one, but the question is: would it also have avoided the Great Depression?

Here the answer must be no. For a slowing down of economic activity was evident in the summer of 1929, some months before the Crash (a knowledge of this must have been a factor in bringing the stock exchange boom to an end). This downturn was particularly evident in the consumer goods sector, where the firms concerned had overestimated demand and were finding themselves lumbered with excessive stocks. In other words, the depression was going to happen anyway, whether or not there had been the stock exchange boom and crash. More fundamental economic factors were at work than speculations on the stock market or the monetary bungling of the Federal Reserve Board.

An attempt to identify these fundamental economic factors using the categories of Marxian economics has been made by Sydney H. Coontz in Productive Labour and Effective Demand (1965) and by Ernest Mandel.

A depression is the result of an unbalanced growth of one sector of the economy having expanded too fast for the other sectors. Simplifying matters, the economy can be divided into two main sectors, the one producing means of production (sometimes called 'capital goods' or, more accurately, 'producer goods'), and the other producing consumer goods. The conditions for steady, balanced growth under capitalism can then be stated to be:

“The purchase of consumer goods by all the workers and capitalists engaged in producing capital goods must be equivalent to the purchases of capital goods by the capitalists engaged in producing consumer goods (including in both categories the purchases needed to expand production). The constant reproduction of these conditions of equilibrium thus requires a proportional development of the two sectors of production. The periodical occurrence of crises is to be explained only by a periodical break in this proportionality or, in other words, by an uneven development of these two sectors.” (Mandel, Marxist Economy Theory, Vol.1, p.349.)

What happened in America in the 1920s was that the producer goods sector expanded too fast for the consumer goods sector. Production and productivity increased while wages and prices remained comparatively stable. Wages did in fact rise, but the main benefits of the increase in productivity went to the capitalists in the form of increased profits. Most of these additional profits were reinvested in production (though some found their way to the New York stock exchange). It was this that led, according to figures quoted by Galbraith, to the rapid extension of the producer sector as compared with the consumer goods sector:

“During the twenties, the production of capital goods increased at an average annual rate of 6.4 per cent; nondurable consumers' goods, a category which includes such objects of mass consumption as food and clothing, increased at a rate of only 2.8 per cent.” (pp. 192-3)

An expansion of the producer goods sector at a faster rate than the consumer goods sector is not in itself a situation of disproportionate development. Indeed, it has been precisely the historical role of capitalism to build up and develop the means of production at the expense of consumption. But so-called 'production for production's sake' cannot in practice continue indefinitely, since it demands either a sustained series of new inventions and innovations or a continually expanding market for consumer goods.

The relatively full employment in America in the 1920s — unemployment was officially only 0.9 per cent in 1929 — did mean that the market for consumer goods expanded, but the falling share of wages and salaries in National Income meant that this was not going to continue. The expansion of the producer goods sector levelled off, further retracting the market for consumer goods since its workers now had less to spend. Expressed in terms of the formula for balanced growth stated above, the purchase of consumer goods by the workers (and capitalists) in the producer goods sector had come to be less than the purchase of producer goods by the capitalists in the consumer goods sector. In other words, an overcapacity had developed in the consumer goods sector, which expressed itself in an overproduction of consumer goods and the build-up of stocks. As Coontz puts it (using the language of academic economics):

“. . . stagnation in the capital goods industry, the displacement of labour in this sector, meant that worker and entrepreneurial consumption expenditures failed to rise pari passu with investment in the consumer sector. It was this disproportionality that generated the Great Depression.” (p. 154)

The Great Depression — which occurred all over the world and not just in America — was not an accident, but simply capitalism working in a normal way. It exposed capitalism for the irrational, anti-social system that it is. While millions were unemployed and reduced to bare subsistence levels, food was destroyed because it could not be sold profitably. It was in the 1930s that the Roosevelt administration introduced the notorious policy of paying farmers not to grow food, a policy accurately described by a later President, Kennedy, as 'planned underproduction'. Even in limes of boom and prosperity capitalism underproduces, but in times of depression this is even more flagrant.

The Depression eventually came to an end — with the war and preparations war.

Adam Buick

Gordon Brown’s solution : “ethical” markets

From the Socialism Or Your Money Back blog

Writing in today’s Daily Torygraph, he begins by buttering up his Tory readers assuring them that he too is pro-capitalist:

“I admire the market's ability to release the dynamism and enterprise of people and so this new Labour government is pro-business and pro-markets and always will be.”

He then goes on to say that he doesn’t believe in “unbridled free markets” (a rather odd term since if something is “free” then surely it is “unbridled” ?). So he wants to “bridle” free-market capitalism (not that he dares to use the c-word) . . . by ethics, those his father preached as a Presbyterian minister in the local kirk: “fairness, stewardship cooperation” :

“Markets work best when underpinned by an ethic of fairness. The institutions of the market place need to be founded on the ethic of stewardship. And this new interdependent global economy cannot work for the world's people without an ethic of cooperation.”

Markets certainly can and do work without being underpinned by any “ethic” save that of getting the best price and making the most money. They are completely impersonal and work according to the principles of “can’t pay, can’t have” and “no profit, no production”. If Brown thinks his appeal to market operators to apply Presbyterian ethics in their dealings will be heeded he’s just a fool. How in fact this man has achieved a reputation for being a financial and economic genius is hard to understand. His claim to have engineered the end of boom-and-bust cycles has just blown up in his face as Britain and the rest of the world are now faced with the biggest bust for 80 years. And now he is proposing “ethical markets” as the way out.

His “ethical market economy” will go down in history as a joke to rival the “ethical foreign policy” preached by his fellow Scotsman, the late Robin Cook.

Adam Buick