Material World: The advance of capitalism (2009)

The Material World column from the December 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The advance of capitalism throughout Europe proved to be a disaster to all the old institutions of feudalism. The feudal landlord was displaced by a capitalist one. The once all-powerful land owners were now to be rivalled for power by the merchants and industrialists of modern capitalism. In a series of epoch making changes in Britain we had the Enclosure Acts and the Highland Clearances. In many places centuries old villages were replaced by sheep enclosures as agricultural labourers were forced into the growing towns and cities of capitalism to seek a pitiful existence. It’s what Marx described in Capital in 1867 as the "so-called primitive accumulation". As he so aptly put it: "The expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil, is the basis of the whole process." It is still going on in parts of the world.

Primitive accumulation
A recent Channel 4 programme entitled Unreported World, Peru: Blood and Oil, depicted the bloodshed and military violence that has accompanied the Peruvian government’s decision to auction off large parts of the Amazon countryside that has been used for thousands of years by the indigenous people. "For the first time isolated indigenous groups are uniting to fight the government's plans to auction off 75% of the Amazon - which accounts for nearly two thirds of the country's territory - to oil, gas and mining companies. ... These would allow companies to bypass indigenous communities to obtain permits for exploration and extraction of natural resources, logging and the building of hydroelectric dams." (London Times, 9 October).

In another part of the Amazon region capitalism’s lust for profit was carried to an even more awful extreme – the complete destruction of the Akuntsu people. A once proud group of several hundred now have only five survivors. "Much of the Akuntsus' story is – for obvious reasons – undocumented. For millennia, they lived in obscurity, deep in the rainforest of Rondonia state, a remote region of western Brazil near the Bolivian border. They hunted wild pig, agoutis and tapir, and had small gardens in their villages, where they would grow manioc (or cassava) and corn. Then, in the 1980s, their death warrant was effectively signed: farmers and loggers were invited to begin exploring the region, cutting roads deep into the forest, and turning the once verdant wilderness into lucrative soya fields and cattle ranches. ... The only way to prevent the government finding out about this indigenous community was to wipe them off the map. At some point, believed to be around 1990, scores of Akuntsu were massacred at a site roughly five hours' drive from the town of Vilhena. Only seven members of the tribe escaped, retreating deeper into the wilderness to survive." (Independent, 13 October)

Ruthless system
The recent speed-up of the development of capitalism inside China has also led to even more misery for the working population of that part of the world. In an effort to compete with more established industrial nations the Chinese owning class have ruthlessly swept aside small peasant-like production for the mass production of modern capitalism. The resultant displacing of labourers and the mammoth increase in water and air pollution has led to a near catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.

The World Bank recently estimated that China has experienced an annual industrial growth of 10 percent over the last 25 years, and reckoned the number of deaths from pollution alone in 2007 as 760,000. To grasp an inkling of this social disaster it is probably better to look at two local horror stories than quote mere statistics.

"The residents of Shuangqiao village say that their homes are now nothing but places in which to wait for death. In the paddy fields surrounding this small community in Hunan province, southern China, the rice is neglected and strewn with weeds. The vegetable plots stand empty, stripped of the green beans and cabbages that were grown as cash crops. Underfoot, the earth has been poisoned to a depth of 20cm (8in). The water in the wells is undrinkable. Tragedies like this – the legacy of China's rush to get rich – are all too common. Yesterday more than 600 children in Shaanxi province were found to be suffering from lead poisoning caused by a nearby lead and zinc smelter. The plight of Shuangqiao, however where three people have died and 509 are sick from poisoning by the heavy metals cadmium and indium, produced by a nearby factory, has drawn wide-spread attention since residents took to the internet to air their grievances." (London Times, 15 August)

What lies behind this seemingly callous action by the owning class on their own national working population? It cannot be mere coincidence that the price of indium soared from $600 (£360) a kilogram in 2003 to $1,000 by 2006. China now meets 30 per cent of world demand and at its peak the Xianghe factory produced 300 kg of indium a month. Capitalism is an insatiable monster as far as profits are concerned. Human misery is of no concern where the profit motive reigns supreme.

One farmer's plight summed up the hopelessness of the situation when he was told by officials that his land would be unusable for 60 years but that he could grow non-edible crops such as cotton or trees to clean the soil. "Farmer Yang has abandoned hope, "It's the children, the children," he lamented. "We want our children to have a future. We have to leave."

RD

On modern life (Eric Fromm ) (2009)

From the December 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Capitalistic society is based on the principle of political freedom on the one hand, and of the market as the regulator of all economic, hence social, relations, on the other. The commodity market determines the conditions under which commodities are exchanged, the labour market regulates the acquisition and sale of labour. Both useful things and useful energy and skill are transformed into commodities which are exchanged without the use of force and without fraud under the conditions of the market.”

“Modern capitalism needs men who cooperate smoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more and more; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influenced and anticipated. It needs men who feel free and independent, not subject to any authority or principle or conscience—yet willing to be commanded, to do what is expected of them, to fit into the social machine without friction; who can be guided without force, led without leaders, prompted without aim—except the one to make good, to be on the move, to function, to go ahead.
What is the outcome? Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions. Human relations are essentially those of alienated automatons, each basing his security on staying close to the herd, and not being different in thought, feeling or action.”

“Man becomes a ‘nine to fiver,’ he is part of the labour force, or the bureaucratic force of clerks and managers. He has little initiative, his tasks are prescribed by the organization of the work; there is even little difference between those high up on the ladder and those on the bottom. They all perform tasks prescribed by the whole structure of the organization, at a prescribed speed, and in a prescribed manner. Even the feelings are prescribed: cheerfulness, tolerance, reliability, ambition, and an ability to get along with everybody without friction.”

“From birth to death, from Monday to Monday, from morning to evening – all activities are reutilised and prefabricated. How should a man caught in this net of routine not forget that he is a man, a unique individual, one who is given only this one chance of living, with hopes and disappointments, with sorrow and fear, with the long for love and the dread of the nothing and of separateness?”

“In the modern work process of a clerk, the worker on the endless belt, little is left of this uniting quality of work. The worker becomes an appendix to the machine or to the bureaucratic organization.”

(from The Art of Loving, 1956)

See Also: To Have or To Be . . .

Pieces Together: Capitalist Paradox (2009)

From the December 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

CAPITALIST PARADOX

"Scientists and development experts across the globe are racing to increase food production by 50 percent over the next two decades to feed the world’s growing population, yet many doubt their chances despite a broad consensus that enough land, water and expertise exist. The number of hungry people in the world rose to 1.02 billion this year, or nearly one in seven people, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, despite a 12-year concentrated effort to cut the number. The global financial recession added at least 100 million people by depriving them of the means to buy enough food, but the numbers were inching up even before the crisis, the United Nations noted in a report last week. “The way we manage the global agriculture and food security system doesn’t work,” said Kostas G. Stamoulis, a senior economist at the organization. “There is this paradox of increasing global food production, even in developing countries, yet there is hunger.” (New York Times, 22 October)

DRUG PUSHERS PAY OFF

"Could you imagine how much money you would have to have to be able to spend $609,000 a day? What would you expect to receive for that amount of money? Who has that kind of money to spend, especially during a “recession”? According to the latest issue of Time magazine, in the first 6 months of this year, the pharmaceutical industry spent about $609,000 a day to influence lawmakers. Can you imagine the financial payoff they must expect to get to be able to spend that kind of money. This does not include all the money they spend on advertising as well. The drug industry has 1,228 registered lobbyists. This equals 2.3 lobbyists for every member of congress. Obviously, the pharmaceutical industry does not want to be left out of the current healthcare reform debate and are willing to pay handsomely to make sure they aren’t. The return on that investment has already been considerable. As drug lobbyist Jim Greenwood says, “we’ve done very well.” (Dr Brian's Blog, 26 October)

ALL RIGHT FOR SOME

"As workers up and down the UK sat at home last week worrying about whether they would still have a job in a month's time, a raucous crowd of hedge fund managers and investment bankers at the Whisky Mist nightclub in Mayfair pulled yet more vodka out of their huge ice bucket and called for the waiter to bring another bottle of Dom Perignon, served with a sparkler. ...In London nightspots last week, the City's finest were spending with a swagger. ...As City workers once again prepare for corporate excess, and investment banks such as Goldman Sachs get ready to pay record bonuses, new bars, restaurants and nightclubs are springing up around the office tower blocks in the City and Canary Wharf to feed demand." (Observer, 1 November)

Market analyst (2009)

Book Review from the December 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why not socialism? By G. A. Cohen. Princeton University Press, 2009

This pocket-size 83-page book is easy to read and it’s easy to agree with some of what the author writes. But it’s hard to see him as he no doubt saw himself (he died in August just before the book came out): someone who understands the different between capitalism and socialism.

First the positive things in the book. These mostly centre around Cohen’s critical remarks about some aspects of capitalism: “I give as little service as I can in exchange for as much service as I can get: I want to buy cheap and sell dear”. And although he favours market ‘socialism’ he does recognise how similar it is to market capitalism: “exchange under market socialism is no less market exchange than it is under capitalism”.

Now the longer list of things to disagree with: “it is a familiar socialist policy to insist on equality of both income and hours of work”. No, that isn’t a socialist policy. In socialism there won’t be (money) incomes or insistence that we all work the same hours.

Cohen claims that socialism is infeasible “even if people are, or could become, in the right culture, sufficiently generous, we do not know how to harness that generosity: we do not know how, through appropriate rules and stimuli, to make generosity turn the wheels of the economy”. In socialism we shall treat each other as fellow humans not as commodities. It has nothing to do with harnessing generosity or turning the wheels of the economy.

“Market socialism does not fully satisfy socialist standards of distributive justice, but it scores far better by those standards than market capitalism does, and is therefore an eminently worthwhile project, from a socialist point of view.” No, it isn’t.

To sum up, Cohen writes of “We socialists.” But he should really say “We ‘market socialists’ who muddy the water about what socialism means…”

Stan Parker

Greasy Pole: BNP – Question Time Without Answers (2009)

The Greasy Pole column from the December 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

We were promised that it would be as entertaining and as cleansing as a mediaeval execution, with the prisoner ritually humiliated then swiftly finished off by the muscular man with the axe. But the BBC's Question Time on 29 October last was less watchable than that because, while condemned man Nick Griffin of the British National Party was surprisingly unprepared for the predictable lines of attack on him, his appointed tormentors on the panel – like Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor Jack Straw and Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesman Chris Huhne – were similarly feeble. The announcement that the BBC had invited Griffin to take part in the programme provoked a storm of protest avowedly because the BNP, for its racism and nostalgia for the Holocaust, is in the line of descent from the Nazis. If that argument had been sustained, it would have provided ammunition enough to liquidate Griffin but in the event what was substituted was little more than a sample of mob hysteria. Perhaps that suited the purposes of the BBC, embarrassed by the protests and anxious to validate their anti-fascist credentials. It would also explain why Question Master David Dimbleby ran the event with no pretence at being impartial; indeed, by confronting Griffin with inconvenient quotes and facts he emerged as something like the BNP's most effective opponent. Which means that, as an example of the frustration of rabble politics, the programme left us with some unanswered questions.

Fascism
The programme was not at all helpful in answering questions about the nature of the BNP. To begin with, Griffin denies that it is fascist – just as groups like the Union for British Freedom and the British League of Ex-Servicemen, which in the immediate post-war years sprang from the ruins of Mosley's British Union of Fascists, argued that fascism was out of date when their concept of the future lay with European Union. Griffin also shows symptoms – in public at any rate – of an unclear attitude to racism. In 1993 the BNP Deputy Leader agreed that “We are 100 percent racist, yes” but this policy has been somewhat modified by Griffin into “ethno nationalism” – which in other circumstances, bearing in mind the reputation of some BNP members, could be as menacing as a “final solution”. Discussing the Holocaust, Griffin is on record as concluding that “. . . the 'extermination' tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter witch-hysteria” – the kind of statement the origins of which, under pressure from Dimbleby, he said he could not understand. The common thread in all this apparent confusion is Griffin's policy of trying to improve the BNP's electoral prospects by modifying their more extreme tendencies, for example the policy of enforced repatriation has become one of “firm but voluntary incentives for immigrants and their descendants to return home” .

Elections
As things stand, he can claim some success. The BNP has the organisation to nominate hundreds of candidates in local elections; in 2007 there were 754 of them and at the end of that year after resignations, expulsions and the like, they held 42 seats. In May 2008 they won a seat in the London Assembly and in last year's Euro Elections Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons polled enough votes to see them elected – which apart from other things led to Griffin being invited to take part in Any Questions. Unsurprisingly, the BNP gained from the Westminster expenses scandal, which encouraged outraged voters to look outside the established parties in the unsupported belief that somewhere, somehow there were others who would behave differently if they were in power. And that goes some way to explain the appeal of the BNP and to what success they have so far had – the impression they promote that, among the turmoil and cupidity of the other parties they alone make themselves aware of the complaints and concerns in the everyday, persistent struggles of the working class. In April 2006 Margaret Hodge, MP for Barking (a paid-up, devoted member of the New Labour Islington Tony Blair Fan Club) told the Sunday Telegraph that 8 out of ten white workers in her constituency may be tempted to vote for the BNP in the coming local elections – because “no one else is listening to them” about unemployment, high house prices and the like. She was strongly criticised for these remarks, which may have been linked to her helpful advice to some sacked MG Rover workers to look for jobs at the local Tesco. Meanwhile the BNP saluted their success in winning 12 of the 13 seats they contested by gratefully delivering her a bunch of roses. The only valid response to this evidence of the poisonous results of combining political confusion with prejudice was that the last thing needed by workers in their struggles is advice or sympathy from politicians.

Lies
The other members of the Question Time panel – and a clear majority of the audience – seemed to have proceeded from the assumption that if the BNP had a case it was too feeble – ill-constructed, chaotically developed, driven by malice – to be worth any serious attention. Instead, their comments were moulded from a mix of sweeping assertions and straightforward abuse, on the lines of the BNP being “...filthy, disgusting...” Perhaps this was their method of evading the truth that organisations like the BNP – discriminatory, repressive, as brutal as they wished to be – appeal to voters who are in despair at the manipulative impotence and deceit of the other parties. So Jack Straw sat blathering before the cameras in denial of his government's miserable failure to deal with the social scars of recession, poverty, crime and capitalism's persistent waste of human talents. He did not acknowledge that their making war on Iraq and Afghanistan was based on purposive lies. Their wretched failure invalidates the claims of all capitalism's political parties to be an effective opposition against the likes of the BNP. We have heard enough of such questions; we need some answers.

Ivan

Down and out in Mayfair (2009)

From the December 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

We still live in a society that if you don’t have the ability to pay you ‘goes’ without.

Paying fuel bills can be hard at the best of times but you are twice as likely to fall into fuel poverty if you’ve recently been treated for cancer, according to new research from Macmillan Cancer Support. Following diagnosis, three-quarters of cancer patients in active treatment need to use their heating more, yet those under 60 do not qualify for any help to pay for it. Fuel poverty – having to spend more than 10 percent of your income on heating – is a relatively new phenomenon that is beginning to grip Britain faster than the spread of swine flu and serves as the cold reminder that we still live in a society that if you don’t have the ability to pay you go without.

The true extent of such hardship and poverty in Britain and its impact is conveniently bypassed and generally ignored by mainstream politicians who have more to peevishly whinge about when it comes to their own expenses. As we come to almost the end of this the first decade of the 21st centaury it’s as if the hands on the clock of time have been turned backwards. If it wasn’t for the constant sight of all manner of technology’s advancement from transport to the smallest iPods, cyberspace and the internet you would not be wrong to conclude that some things change but much, very much just stays the same, as I’m constantly reminded when I visit and spend time with my many friends who live their lives out and on the streets of London, the capital city in this the fifth richest nation in the world.

Homeless
The people that I speak of are the visible homeless that no one seems to see. Their numbers are hard to place a finger on, they live in hostels, squats and a growing number sleep rough on our streets. Keeping warm in winter is a battle waged every year by the rough sleeper in his or her skip, but truth is every season brings its problems when you’re forced to share the outdoor life with the birds, urban foxes and city rats.

A great many of my friends on the street live and rely solely upon street handouts and day centres for food, laundry and bathing facilities. Many refuse to claim entitled benefits, preferring not to be a part of a welfare system that incessantly strong-arms the unemployed into taking low paid employment with the use of sanctions and penalties. This is in complete contrast to what Richard Bacon, a Tory MP on the committee which acts as a watchdog over public spending, said:

"The Department for Work and Pensions does not know how many people are out of work by choice, rather than by chance. Properly targeted help must be put in place for those who want to work. Only then will the Government be able to flush out the shirkers who are sticking up two fingers at hard-working families and treating the benefit system like a cash machine." (Daily Mail)

How can anyone not be moved by the spectacle and lines of men and women who gather every night in London’s Lincoln Inn Fields for a meal provided by the Hari Khrisnas or a Jamaican Christian Church. On some occasions I’ve counted up to three hundred people who arrive hours in advance with all their worldly pocessions rammed in to rucksacks and carrier bags, sleeping bags and their wind-up radio. This is no easy life. The streets are fraught with danger for many homeless people; over the last few years people living on the streets have become more vulnerable to violence and attack; this threat can be from other street users and from those who are intoxicated through alcohol and/or drugs.

Rough sleepers are 13 times more likely to experience crime and 47 times likely to be the victim of theft. Crime, and the perception of crime, can play a major role in the decisions of rough sleepers in not only where they sleep but also where they take part in daytime activities. Many rough sleepers avoid danger and stay clear of violence by using the London night bus service to get some rest, as one friend told me: “You take the longest route say to Heathrow Airport and back that kills 4 hours and before you know it it’s morning.” Female rough sleepers are particularly vulnerable to physical attack and abuse, and to protect themselves they tend to be amongst the most hidden.

Rough sleepers are met with a mixture of emotions from the general public ranging from pity and support to anger and distrust. But one thing almost goes unasked and that’s why are people, fellow human beings living, existing on our rich streets; streets that are not paved with gold.

London has seen a big increase in the number of migrant workers left homeless and destitute in the city, without access to benefits or housing help. The effects of the economic downturn, as well as a legal block preventing migrants from certain countries claiming benefits, has meant increased numbers of rough sleepers in the city from eastern European countries.

Every year an official head count of rough sleepers within Westminster is carried out and recorded for official purposesî In recent years allegations of tactics designed to reduce the figure have been made. The Simon Community, an organisation that works and lives with the homeless on the streets, undertook its own street head count at the end of October, and found 247 people sleeping rough in the City of Westminster, almost 100 more than official figures now state. The Simon Community along with some rough sleepers have claimed that diversionary tactics were put in place days before the street count took place. A number of known rough sleepers were offered travel warrants by Police and community officers, in an attempt to transfer them out of the area. In a BBC report on the issue of travel warrants being handed out, the Metropolitan Police denied the allegation that they were shifting people out of the area, saying that they regularly issue travel warrants for homeless people, particularly during the winter months. Allegations have also been made that local authorities exerted harsh measures against homeless people, according to the Simon Community. They received information about a group of homeless people being physically moved out of the Victoria Street area by Police. Similarly, there are accusations of doorways used to bed down in were hosed by cleaners to make them unusable.

There are claims that charities were also instructed to make beds available in their hostels ahead of the count, and emergency accommodation was opened up on the week the count took place.

Reality entertainment
During the summer the BBC screened a very different type of reality television; this involved celebrities who were asked to partake in the programme ‘Famous, Rich & Homeless’. This TV documentary, described as thought-provoking, recruited five famous volunteers who were asked to experience the life of a homeless person on the streets of London for a few days (ten) during the winter of 2008. When I say famous, what I mean by that is household names drawn from the entertainment and media industry. The Marquess of Blandford, the One Show’s Hardeep Singh Kholi, journalist Rosie Boycott, former Coronation Street actor Bruce Jones and tennis commentator Annabel Croft all swapped their lavish privileged lifestyles, their fame and fortune for a time; for a world of soup runs and hostels.

They were helped and manoeuvred throughout by Big Issue founder John A Bird and Craig Last, a former youth worker for the charity Centrepoint. Having watched the show myself; I came away thinking that this type of reality entertainment achieves nothing more than accepting and approving that the daily struggle for life’s existence at the bottom of the pile is a normal part of the structure of society. But the best response to the show came from a homeless person writing in the letters page of Pavement the free monthly magazine produced for London's homeless; they said:

“I found it quite ironic that ‘Famous, Rich and Homeless’ was shown on the BBC. I spent seven months living rough on London's streets, often at All Souls' Church in Portland Place. Having crashed there for several months, rough sleeping with the full knowledge and permission of the church authorities, I was woken one night and "moved on" by a couple of Westminster police officers. When I enquired about the incident at the church reception the following morning, I was informed by a staffer that the alleged complaint had not been lodged by the church authorities but by BBC security staff at Broadcasting House, directly across the road, no doubt because they were irritated by having to constantly step over cardboard boxes whilst filming fearless, hard-hitting documentaries about the plight of London's homeless.”

About the same time as these programmes were broadcast, The Wall Street Journal (15 July) reported; that in the London Borough of Westminster, where Mayfair is located, homes can cost up to £50 million. Yet Westminster is fifth among London's 33 boroughs in the number of unoccupied properties. In 2008, 1,737 homes had been vacant for six months or more, the third highest number among all London boroughs, according to the Empty Homes Agency, a non-profit group that seeks to put empty homes back into use.

Westminster Council have placed according to its website (at the time of writing) 3.000 homeless families into temporary accommodation. Many have been exported to the poorer boroughs of East London because they claim there are not enough temporary in Westminster.

The high concentration of rundown, empty homes is striking for a posh Mayfair, with its ornately gated manses. The hub of aristocratic society before World War II, Mayfair's modern-day image is demonstrated by its prominent place on the British Monopoly board.

Mayfair's homeowners aren't down on their luck, far from it. Rather, there properties serve as investments for owners who pay the bills to keep them empty – something the neighbours and council object to when the homes fall into disrepair. Many owners decline to rent the homes due to local council tax rules, with tax on properties at a lower rate if they are empty and unfurnished, which is a loophole that helps the filthy rich. As the number of homes now priced at more than £1m has fallen by a third during the past two years the problems surrounding the abandonment of posh homes may get worse.

The whole business of empty homes came to light last winter when a group of young squatters occupied two £20 million homes on Park Lane overlooking Hyde Park. Before the squatters settled in, the homes had been empty for seven years. During that time, the Council had tried three times to contact their British Virgin Islands-based property owners: Red Line Ltd. and Perfectil Ltd. Following two years of silence, the property owners surfaced once newspaper reports outed the squatters. The result of such media reports has meant that wealthy homeowners have turned to private security firms to protect their empty London properties from squatters at a cost of up £2,600 a week while according to the Empty Homes Agency there are more than 80,000 empty properties in London (Evening Standard, 11 November). In the recession this is one business that may prove to be very lucrative as a growing number of homes are bought by foreign investors who want a secure asset but continue to live elsewhere.

In our daily press we read much about the housing problem, about lost homes repossessed by the banks and the so-called housing shortage, with thousands stranded and languishing for years on the council housing waiting list or simply held hostage to the private landlord, the cry goes out for more affordable homes or a proposed programme of public works that embraces house building as the desired solution, peddled by those who still offer the dried-out old fig leaf of failed reform. Over a hundred years ago Frederick Engels wrote in the Housing Question: “This shortage is not something peculiar to the present; it is not even one of the sufferings peculiar to the modern proletariat in contradistinction to all earlier oppressed classes. On the contrary, all oppressed classes in all periods suffered more or less uniformly from it.”

And then Engels gave an answer to this age old problem. He said, and I repeat, to end the housing shortage there is only one means: to abolish altogether the exploitation and oppression of the working class by the ruling class.

NL

Editorial: Copenhagen: another predictable failure (2009)

Editorial from the December 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The most recent IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) findings say that rich, industrial countries must cut emissions from 1990 levels by 25-40 percent by 2020 if the world is to have a fair chance of avoiding dangerous climate change.

In July the G-8 leaders agreed to limit the global temperature rise to 2 degrees C above the pre-industrial level at which human civilisation developed. Pre-Copenhagen the EU has pledged 20 percent cuts by 2020, but will increase this to 30 percent if others – like the US – do likewise. Japan has pledged 25 percent reductions by 2020 if others will do the same. Chinese president Hu pledged to cut emissions ‘by a notable margin’ by 2020. The US has given no assurances but a bill Obama has said he supports (the Waxman-Markey bill) would give less than 5 percent reductions by 2020.

Also in July, the findings of a newly completed study by WBGU (a German acronym) – the chairman of which, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, is chief climate adviser to the German government – were given for the first time to an invitation only conference in the Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico. The study has since been published. This WBGU study says the US must stop all CO2 emissions by 2020; Germany,Italy and other industrial nations by 2025-30 and China by 2035, with the whole world needing to be carbonemissions- free by 2050. The study would allow the big polluters to delay their slowdown by buying emissions rights from developing countries, enabling possible extension times of around a decade for some. A fundamental principle of the study is the ‘per capita principle’, meaning that the right to emit greenhouse gases is shared equally by all people on Earth. Applied to a world population of seven billion, each person on earth would have a quota of 2.7 tons of CO2, whereas currently US citizens emit 20 tons per capita.

Schellnhuber claims that meeting these criteria will give humanity a two in three chance of staying within that 2 degrees C limit – although there is no guarantee. To increase the odds in favour carbon emissions would have to end sooner; delaying another decade or so before halting all emissions would reduce the odds to fifty-fifty. Odds are that whatever is promoted at Copenhagen there will be much jockeying and positioning, many fine words and ifs and buts by selfimportant world leaders and another decade down the ever-more polluted and climate change-affected road we’ll look back and see another abject failure – just like Rio, Kyoto, Johannesburg, etc. ad infinitum. What more can we expect from a system which makes a habit of fouling its own and everybody else’s backyard as long as it’s making money by blind pursuit of growth? Come 2020 the King Canutes of capitalism will still be trying to hold back the waves with empty gestures.

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 126

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 126th of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1563 friends!

Recent blogs:

The illusion of freedom

WSPUS Manifesto on the War, 1917

1789: France’s bourgeois revolution

Coming Events:

Radical Film Forum

Sundays 6pm - 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.

29th November - Sicko

13th December - Earthlings

Quote for the week:

"Scientific socialism considers our views dependent upon our material needs, and our political standpoint dependent upon the economic position of the class we belong to. Moreover, this conception corresponds with the aspirations of the masses whose needs are in the first place material, while the ruling class must necessarily base itself on the deductive principle, on the preconceived unscientific notion that the spiritual salvation and the mental training of the masses are to precede the solution of the social question." Joseph Dietzgen, Scientific Socialism, 1873.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Pathfinders: Gullibility Travels (2009)

The Pathfinders Column from the November 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

One has to feel a bit sorry for Graham Mace who, keen to improve his car’s green performance, bought an online ‘hydrofuel conversion kit’ in the hope that it would save 30 per cent on fuel consumption, only to find that it ran on snake oil instead (‘Fuel boost device ‘does not work’’, BBC Online, 19 Oct). After chucking £700 at this miracle device he hadn’t saved so much as a dribble of fuel, at which point a BBC investigation revealed the awful truth. It was a con.

But one wonders at the thinking here. Didn’t it occur to him to wonder why none of his friends knew about this ingenious gadget, why garages or motor suppliers didn’t stock it, or why it wasn’t fitted as standard at the factory? And what possessed him, after shelling out the original £290 with no success, to spend a further £400 on ‘upgrades’ rather than cut his losses? Even if it had worked, he’d have had to drive to Vladivostok and back to make up for the outlay. What on earth was going on?

Consumer programmes regularly trot out the old standard: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. But throw in a bit of seductive science and the consumer just seems to melt like warm butter, effectively separated from their money and common sense in equal measure. New Scientist notes that dodgy online companies think they can sell anything if they put the word ‘quantum’ in their blurb, like the ‘quantum pulse device’ that powers a ‘human generator’ and retails for a mere €420,000 (17 October). Hard to believe that anyone is dumb enough to fall for this supposed immortality machine, but you would only need one or two gullible net-travellers and you’d be made for life, so such stuff is always worth a punt to the scruple-free. If people can’t summon the wit to do a bit of comparative research, one feels that they deserve everything they get (or rather, don’t get) for their money.

Daft pseudo-scientific ideas have been around a long time though. Who hasn’t been assured with huge confidence by someone wearing a copper bracelet that it helps them enormously with their arthritis? But in the first properly controlled trial, at York University, these often expensive jewellery accessories fared no better than placebos (‘Bracelets ‘useless’ in arthritis’, BBC Online, 16 October). What undoubtedly explains the popularity, and durability, of such urban myths is the effect of ‘authority’, whether it comes from one’s peers, one’s elders or one’s newspaper, even though not one of these can be trusted as far as you can throw a grandad or a printing press.

As the Observer reminds us in relation to current fears concerning the rise of racism (18 October), we are horribly suggestible. We know, for instance, that we would rather give wrong answers than right ones if it means fitting in better (Asch conformity experiment, 1951), that the ‘only following orders’ defence at Nuremberg is more than a mere excuse (the Milgram pain-inflicting experiment, 1961, and the Stanford prison experiment, 1971), and that it’s a whole lot easier to start a Nazi party among liberal students than anyone would believe possible (Ron Jones and the ‘Third Wave’ experiment, 1967).

It’s not our fault. We’re a social species, with an outsize brain as mad as it is miraculous, and science is about as natural to us as an abacus to a baboon. Gullibility is only another word for ‘faith’ or ‘conviction’, part of the social glue that binds us. It travels by express while reason has to plod on foot. But that’s all the more reason to make an effort with our reasoning capacity, both in buying products and buying into ideas.

Improbability drivers
Who would believe - a vegetarian spider and a stingless wasp? Both of these turned out to be true, in a ‘truth is stranger than April fool’ kind of way, as was the story about the Maldives politicians who held a cabinet meeting under water. While this excellent innovation should be made compulsory for all politicians (minus scuba gear) we look forward to a story about a ‘benevolent species of capitalist’ discovered lurking somewhere north of Basingstoke and miraculously still in business.

Wackier still is the theory put forward by two CERN physicists, that the Large Hadron Collider is being sabotaged by ripples in time returning from some future cataclysm where, oh cripes, they really do find the Higgs boson and nature revolts (‘The Collider, the Particle and a Theory About Fate’, New York Times, 12 October). That’s the thing about quantum theory. It’s so improbable anyway that theoretical physicists, like celebs, can talk any bollocks they like and still get serious media attention. Maybe we should start talking about ‘quantum socialism’ and thereby grab a few headlines.

Time to call time
After the runaway success of Europe-wide anti-smoking legislation, much is now being made about ‘passive drinking’ as states gear up for a similar assault on that other popular working-class pastime.

Despite efforts by the UK government chief advisor on health, Liam Donaldson, to incite a wholesome evangelism among the public by tarring all drinkers as potential wife-beaters or lager louts, the concept of ‘passive drinking’ is just not going to hold its whiskey and water.

Anyone who’s ever been in a pub knows perfectly well that wild-west saloon brawls do not break out as a rule nor do most customers get arrested or fall off buildings pretending to be superheroes.

The fact that more than half the UK’s population ignore the government safety limits on alcohol (Observer, 18 October) may be because a), the limits are too low to be of any practical value and b), the government has banned every other drug for spurious reasons so nobody believes anything they say. The half who stay below the limits are probably lying about it anyway.

It’s not that there isn’t a problem, of course there is. But the bigger problem is a patronising establishment which, not content with screwing workers into the ground, then presumes to lecture us about what’s good for us using dubious arguments they fully intend to ignore themselves. For let’s not be in any doubt, this is not about anti-drinking among the ruling classes. Let them swill their port and champers and snort their coke until they’re cross-eyed and drooling over the chambermaids. This is about controlling the workforce, saving some police and hospital A&E expenses, and cutting absenteeism in the dark satanic wage-mills.

Maybe alcohol is the fifth biggest cause of premature death and disability worldwide (New Scientist, 14 October), but workers know damn well that capitalism is responsible for the other four, and that’s what drives them to drink in the first place. Capitalists think they can save money by forcing puritanical self-denial on workers, but with the stress of exploitation we face, we don’t need temperance, we need to lose our tempers.

Paddy Shannon

My road to socialism (2006)

From the May 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

I first encountered the Socialist Party in a South Wales valley town. It was late 1972, and I was at a loose end politically. Years before, I had flirted with the Communist Party, to the outrage of my parents, despite my maternal grandparents having been CP supporters from the time of the Russian Revolution.

I used to read Soviet Weekly, and a lavishly illustrated magazine sent to me direct from Moscow, Soviet Union, full of happy smiling Russian workers on their way to exceeding the norms of the latest Five Year Plan. Nothing about Stalin having murdered thirty million or so of his own people. Nothing about the string of slave labour camps dotted around the Arctic Circle, Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, where political dissidents ended up.

What cured me of Bolshevism was the outbreak of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. My family possessed one of the few televisions in our street in those days. Here was film, direct from Budapest, of Russian tanks slaughtering Hungarian workers, whose only offence was to try to shake off Soviet tyranny. I wrote a blistering letter to Soviet Weekly but, of course, I never got a reply. One of the maxims of capitalist society is obviously ‘when faced with the truth, ignore it.’

For the next sixteen years, except for one brief episode, I was more or less in the political wilderness. My father was a lifelong member of the NUM and its local predecessor, the South Wales Miners’ Federation, the “Fed” whose subs had to be paid in secret, lest you ended up on the colliery owner’s blacklist, then being unable to get a job in any colliery in the valley. Dad was an admirer of Aneurin Bevan, the Labour Health Minister, a former miner himself, and MP for a local constituency, Ebbw Vale. Bevan’s stock went even higher in our house when he described the Conservatives as “lower than vermin”.

The watershed came in 1964. For the first time since 1951 a Labour government was elected. But it didn’t turn out to be the promised land that some had thought. Far from it. Labour proved itself incapable of solving the intractable issues of capitalism, unemployment, poverty, homelessness, warfare and a host of other working class problems too.

Somewhere between 1964 and 1972, still looking for an alternative to capitalism, I joined Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party. Out of the frying pan into the fire! Some forty years later there are only one or two aspects of their policies I can recollect. They regarded themselves as a socialist party, by which they meant state capitalism, and they had the curious belief that the little countries of Europe were all doing better than the larger ones, as if capitalism was particularly considerate in this respect. Of course, it was twaddle. What Plaid didn’t say was that in an independent Wales, the situation of the worker would be no different from in a larger political unit, i.e. they would have only their ability to work to sell, and so would be shut out from the wealth of society, which would be appropriated by a Welsh capitalist class. For the worker, nationalism is a total waste of time.

And so to 1972. On a November day I picked up a copy of the Socialist Standard in the local library. It came like a political thunderbolt. Here were ideas I had never encountered before. Free access to the wealth of society. Production for use. The workers have no country. Abolition of money. No more governments, no more states, no more frontiers, no armies, no war.

For the first time in my life, I felt politically free.

Greenie

Stopping short (2005)

Book Review from the December 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Babylon and Beyond: the Economics of Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Globalist and Radical Green Movements. by Derek Wall (Pluto Press)

This is a textbook-like survey of various trends in the anti-globalisation movement. As such, it covers a great deal of material in less than 200 pages, from avowed supporters of capitalism such as Joseph Stiglitz to autonomists like Toni Negri, via Naomi Klein and (but why?) Major Douglas and social credit. There are too many direct quotations, and too many typos (e.g. references to Lenin on imperialism as 'the highest state of capitalism'). But not many readers will be familiar with all the writers and activists mentioned here, so the book does serve a useful purpose, though it is scarcely a full guide to the ideas of particular thinkers.

On the whole Wall summarises other views rather than expressing opinions of his own, but he does sometimes let his own attitudes show through. For instance, he is sceptical about the ideas of some 'green localists' that a decentralised economy would naturally lead to ecological sustainability and social justice.

The chapter on 'Marxisms' (note the plural) starts well, with a photo of the Socialist Party's founding conference, but ends weakly with references to Russia, Cuba, etc., as if these dictatorships constituted a valid reason for rejecting Marx's ideas. He discerns a 'pro-globalisation strand of Marx's thought', which is correct to the extent that Marx saw capitalism as expanding into more and more parts of the world, but it is simplistic to transfer what he wrote in this regard 150 years ago to the present day.

Capitalism has long been a world system and created the potential for abundance, so there is no need for further globalisation and the concomitant wars and impoverishment.

As a Green Party member, Wall himself seems to support what he calls 'ecosocialism'. Certainly we can accept that Socialism needs to include ecological concerns, indeed that this will be a crucial aspect of a society based on common ownership. We can also agree with his description of the ideas of Joel Kovel: "The use of what is useful and beautiful must be pursued, while exchange values must be rejected. . . . The rejection of exchange values is essential to reducing resource consumption and human alienation."

Unfortunately Wall stops short of advocating the abolition of the wages system, and it's just not clear what sort of society he does stand for. There are some remarks about "moving beyond the market" and "extending the commons", and some praise for the open source software movement, where software is put on the web for free (Wall suggests that Marx would have used the open source browser Firefox!). This is OK as far as it goes, but it needs to be taken that crucial bit further.

Paul Bennett

Babies and bombs

From the Socialist Courier blog

The charity World Vision is running an appeal for funds that it calls Child Health Now.

It recently took a full page advertisement in The London Times (16 November) that illustrated the plight of the world's poorest children. It reported that twins in Zambia had severe diarrhea but that the clinic they attended had only enough drugs to treat one of them. The untreated one consequently died and joined the estimated two million children that die every year of this untreated condition.

The advertisement then went on to point out "A simple mixture of salt, sugar and water that costs just a few pence can save a child's life, without requiring hospital treatment." The death of a child for the lack of something costing a few pence is shocking enough but the charity then claimed "Today, World Vision launches its Child Health Now campaign, calling for an end to preventable child deaths. ...If the UK government, and the international community, channeled more aid into simple community provisions, like vitamins and rehydration salts for children cut off from health systems, the lives of six million children a year could be saved."

What the well intentioned World Vision do not understand is that we live inside a capitalist society where the priority is making profit not saving children. As we reported in the July 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard "Military spending worldwide rose by 4 per cent to $1.46 trillion."

Immense expenditure to protect markets, sources of raw materials and profits, yet millions of kids die for the lack of a few pence.

Richard Donnelly

Workers State? Pull the other one (2009)

From the November 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

How could anyone have seriously argued that the workers ruled in Russia?

Incredible as it might seem millions believed that Russia under Stalin and his successors was some sort of “Workers State”. Most – those in and around the official “Communist” parties – thought it was a workers’ paradise, socialism even. A minority – the Trotskyists – wanted to have their cake and eat it: to claim credit for what they saw as Russia’s achievements but to repudiate the things they didn’t like. They called it a “degenerate Workers State”. One of these was the Belgian journalist and academic, Ernest Mandel (1923-1995), a biography of whom by Jan Willem Stutje Ernest Mandel, A Rebel’s Dream Deferred has just been published in English translation by Verso.

“Workers State” is a bit of a contradiction in terms, but if it is to mean anything it would have to mean that the workers controlled the state; which could only be done through some democratic mechanism. But the workers never controlled the state in Russia. Within a few years of the Bolsheviks seizing power in November 1917 they had suppressed all other parties and established a one-party dictatorship. While he was a member of the government Trotsky justified the description “Workers State” by arguing that the Bolshevik Party, which controlled the state, was the party of the workers who therefore controlled the state through it. When, however, he and his followers were banned too he could no longer use that argument. So, in the Revolution Betrayed (1936) he came up with another: that Russia was still a “Workers State” because most industry was nationalised, there was central planning and a state monopoly of foreign trade. This, despite his admission that state power was actually controlled by a privileged “bureaucracy” and his producing statistics to show that the workers were badly off and oppressed

This argument was so absurd that it soon aroused criticism within the ranks of his own followers. Some refused to described a state in which the workers were oppressed and powerless as a “Workers State”. They disagreed about what to call it – some saw it as a new exploitative class society, others as “state capitalism” – but agreed that it wasn’t any kind of “Workers State”, not even a degenerate one. Trotsky stuck to his “degenerate Workers State” theory till one of its agents assassinated him in 1940.

Mandel had become a Trotskyist while still a teenager and during the war took part in underground Trotskyist activity in Belgium where his family lived. He was caught in 1944 and spent the remainder of the war in labour camps in Germany. After the war he emerged as one of the leaders of the Trotskyist “Fourth International”. One of the photos in this book is of a meeting of six leaders of this organisation in Paris in 1948. Of the six two had or came to regard Russia as state-capitalist. But not Mandel. He stuck to Trotsky’s dogma, and even extended it, describing the puppet regimes Russia set up in eastern Europe as “deformed Workers States”.

Dogma
In 1969, in a polemic against Michael Kidron, of the International Socialism group of Trotskyists (later the SWP) who argued that Russia was state capitalist, Mandel wrote:

“Ever since social-democratic opponents of the Russian October revolution hatched the theory of ‘capitalism’ continuing to exist in the Soviet Union, supporters of that theory have been faced with a difficult choice. Either they consider that Russian ‘capitalism’ has all the basic features of classic capitalism as analysed by Marx, to start with generalized commodity production, and that it also shows all the basic contradictions of capitalism, including capitalist crisis of overproduction— and then they have a hard time discovering evidence for this. Or they admit the obvious fact that most of these features are absent from the Soviet economy, and they then have to contend that these features are not ‘basic’ to capitalism anyhow, which in the last analysis only means exploitation of wage-labour by ‘accumulators’.” (The Inconsistencies of State Capitalism, p. 11).

As a matter of fact the social and economic system in Russia did exhibit the basic features of capitalism: minority control of the means of production (via nationalisation); generalised commodity production (i.e. generalised production for sale and the use of money); the accumulated of capital valued in money out of profits; and, in particular, yes, the exploitation of wage-labour by those who monopolised the means of production. Of course there were differences from what Mandel called here “classic” capitalism, due to the specific circumstances under which the system had come into being and developed which had resulted in a hugely increased economic role for the state. Hence state capitalism. In any event, even if Mandel’s narrow definition of capitalism as private enterprise is accepted, that would not make Russia into any kind of “Workers State”, only some new form of exploitative class society.

Disappointment
After discussing the “increasing rights for factory managers” then being granted as part of economic reforms introduced by the Russian government, Mandel declared:

“We are therefore convinced that capitalism could be restored in the Soviet Union or in any Eastern European country only after breaking the fierce resistance of the working class. ( …) Given the present constellation of social forces, both nationally and internationally, we think it very unlikely that this resistance could actually be broken under these conditions, and that capitalism could be restored either in the Soviet Union, or in Yugoslavia, or in any other bureaucratically degenerated or deformed workers' state.” (p. 16)

When this happened (and we, neither, saw this happening within twenty years) the working class put up no resistance to the transition from state capitalism to a more “classic” type of capitalism. Clearly, they did not share the same illusion as Mandel about Russia and its satellites being some sort of workers’ regime and so worth defending. Because Mandel and his Fourth International did believe the workers would resist, they placed great hope in the outcome of events in eastern Europe in the 1980s, trying to establish Trotskyist cells there. According to Stutje, they had some rather limited success in Poland and Czechoslovakia. But the outcome – a full return to “classic” capitalism rather than a regenerated “Workers State” – must have been a great disappointment. In fact, reading between the lines of this biography, Mandel never seems to have recovered from it.

Earlier Mandel had offered his expert advice as an economists to one of the “deformed Workers States” – Cuba when Che Guevara was Minister of Industry between 1961 and 1964. He visited Cuba a number of times and supported Guevara’s view that enterprises should be financed by direct grants from the central government and not be instructed to balance the books from their own activities. In other words, he was in favour of a much more centralised form of state capitalism than existed (or was eventually adopted).

Having said this, when it came to writing about “classic” capitalism Mandel was not too bad. In his Marxist Economic Theory (1962 in French, 1968 in English translation) he set out to show, on the basis of contemporary facts (and not just on the facts from the 1850s and 1860s that Marx had used), how Marx’s analysis of capitalism was still valid. The English hardback edition was divided into two volumes, the first of which, dealing with Marx’s theories, can still be recommended (the second part, dealing with the theories of Lenin and Trotsky and the nature of Russian society relapsed into Trotskyist scholasticism). His introductions to the Penguin edition of the three volumes of Capital are also good, as is his short pamphlet An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory, even though it introduces the dubious concept of “neo-capitalism”, which he later called “late capitalism”.

Duplicity
Politically, Mandel was a dyed-in-the-wool Trotskyist, explaining every working class failure by a lack of the right leadership, i.e. of a Trotskyist vanguard. He also practised the dishonest Trotskyist tactic of “entryism”, joining the reformist Belgian “Socialist” Party in 1951, with a view to winning a leftwing following which he hoped to lead out of the party to form an open Trotskyist vanguard party. He achieved some success, even rising to be for a short while the editor of the BSP’s daily paper, Le Peuple. He lost this post when another paper he helped edit, La Gauche, criticised the party’s leadership. La Gauche advocated “structural reforms” of capitalism, basically the nationalisation of the holding companies which dominated the Belgian economy. This was popular amongst many workers in the coal, steel and manufacturing industries of the French-speaking part of Belgium, and Mandel managed to get the support of some of the union leaders and local politicians there.

According to Stutje, it was not until 1961 that Mandel told one of the trade union leaders that he was a Trotskyist:

“Until now Mandel had always kept quiet about his membership of the Fourth International. Now it was time to break the silence. He went to Yerna’s office and confessed to his bewildered friend, ‘I need to tell you the truth. I am a member of the Fourth International.’ Yerna was disappointed that his comrade had not trusted him sooner” (pp. 80-1).

In the end, as later with Militant in Britain, the inevitable happened. In 1964 Mandel and his followers were booted out of the BSP. In a letter to Ken Coates (then a fellow Trotskyist, later a Labour MEP) that year he told him: “A left wing had been built in the Socialist Party from 1961 on, accompanied by an autonomous, clandestine Trotskyist core group” (emphasis added).
According to Stutje,

“The question of when, where and how to leave the SP was clearly on the agenda from the early 1960s. Mandel had only wanted to make sure they left with a substantial group – and by that he meant thousands” (p. 85).

In the event, the main trade union leader he had relied on went off at a tangent and embraced Walloon (i.e. French-speaker) nationalism and Mandel left with a few hundred only. But a new bandwagon soon came along – student unrest – and he was able to jump on that, influencing student leaders such as Alain Krivine in France, Tariq Ali in Britain (both of whom became Trotskyists) and, to a lesser extent, Rudi Dutschke in Germany (who didn’t but, like Daniel Cohn-Bendit, eventually joined the Greens). Tariq Ali, though no longer a Trotskyist but still an admirer of Mandel, has written the foreword to Stutje’s biography.
Mandel was perfectly aware of what socialism really was as he had written in his polemic with Kidron:

“[S]ocialism means a classless society. It therefore presupposes not only the suppression of private property of the means of production, henceforth managed in a planned way by the associate producers themselves, but it also calls for a level of development of the productive forces which makes possible the withering away of commodity production, of money, and of the state.” (p. 17)

According to him, however, the productive forces had not yet reached the necessary level of development, so socialism was not an immediate possibility. Only a new society – based on nationalisation, planning and a state monopoly of foreign trade – was. He called it “transitional society” but it would only have been a form of state capitalism and state capitalism is not, as the experience of Russia in the last century showed, a step towards socialism. It turned out to be, in the joke circulating towards the end of the regime, “the longest route between capitalism and capitalism”.

Adam Buick

No logic (2003)

Book Review from the May 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fences and Windows. By Naomi Klein. Flamingo, 2002.

The protests in Seattle, London, Genoa and many other places between 1999 and 2001 gave rise not just to labels such as J18 but also to a widespread movement known variously as anti-corporate, anti-globalisation and even anti-capitalist. Naomi Klein's book No Logo came to be seen as a manifesto for this movement, and Klein herself as a spokesperson for it, despite her protestations to the contrary on both counts. No Logo (on which see the Socialist Standard for December 2000 and August 2001) chronicled the rise of massive global companies such as Nike and McDonalds, and of resistance to them. Klein's latest book is explicitly not a follow-up to her earlier work, though inevitably it deals with similar issues.

Fences and Windows consists of a selection of Klein's journalism and speeches, mainly from 2000 and 2001, and this is both its strength and its weakness. It gains immediacy from having been written in the midst or the aftermath of demos, protests and large-scale discussions, but lacks any overall theme or coherence. Nevertheless, a number of topics that it deals with can be singled out. The fences of the title are the (literal and metaphorical) barriers that prevent people from protesting, from using various resources and from gaining access to education and so on. And the windows are the various kinds of opposition, from mass efforts at direct democracy to landless Brazilian farmers cutting down fences around unused land.

A chapter written in Prague is interesting for what it reveals of the views of many young Czechs. They see both capitalism and “communism” (read: state capitalism) as centralising power in the hands of a few and of treating people as less than fully human. The issue is not whether the state or multinationals are in power, but of how power is distributed. As argued in other pieces, poor countries are required to follow the economic rules laid down by the rich – who then disregard them themselves when they see fit. Post 9/11, even Canada has been forced by the US to toughen security at its borders, and give up a great deal of control over them to US security officials.

The power-holders have of course not just sat idly by while the protesters make their protests. As a way to avoid the objectors, they have moved some of their meetings to virtually inaccessible places. More worryingly, protest and dissent have themselves been criminalised, with police violence becoming more or less the norm, with prominent resisters being arrested on trumped-up charges and so kept out of the way during demonstrations, and with all civil disobedience being equated with violence. (This has become worse since the invasion of Iraq, especially in the US, with any protest regarded as helping “the nation's enemies”.)

The final section of the book turns to positive proposals. A chapter entitled “Limits of Political Parties” attacks the New Democratic Party, Canada's nearest equivalent of the Labour Party (Klein is herself Canadian, and this piece originally appeared in a Toronto newspaper). Klein notes that the most socially excluded parts of Canada's population support “an idea entirely absent from the mainstream left: a deep distrust of the state”. While the NDP advocates strong interventionist central government, a true left-wing party should “articulate a different vision, one founded on local democracy and sustainable economic development”. The last chapter proposes a merger of two forces, international anti-globalisation activists and community-based organizations.

But there is still no real picture of a society to replace capitalism, or of what the real implications of local democracy and sustainability might be. These cannot be valued or implemented in a world divided along the lines of class and nation, where profit is the priority. A thoroughgoing change to a world without classes, nations, governments or profit is needed. Sadly, Klein and the rest of the anti-globalisation movement, despite the sincerity and effectiveness of much of their critique of capitalism, have taken the first steps but have yet to see through to the genuine alternative.

Paul Bennett

Cooking the Books: Spot the difference (2009)

The Cooking the Books column from the July 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British National Party has an economic policy? Apparently, and it's not just send all non-white people (and Poles) back to where they came from and give their jobs to British workers. Their manifesto for last month's European elections said:

“All the old parties are in the pockets of the banks and big business. Lab-Lib-Con all pretend to be worried about job losses but have allowed globalisation to destroy jobs and drag down wages . . . We will protect British jobs from cut-throat foreign competition and put British workers first – every time!”

How they propose to do this can be found on their website:

“Globalisation has caused the export of jobs and industries to the Far East, and has brought ruin and unemployment to British industries and the communities who depend on them. Accordingly, the BNP calls for the selective exclusion of foreign-made goods from British markets and the reduction of foreign imports. We will ensure that our manufactured goods are, wherever possible, produced in British factories, employing British workers. When this is done, unemployment in this country will be brought to an end and secure, well-paid employment will flourish.” (http://bnp.org.uk/tag/bnp-economic-policy/)

That's easier said than done. Basically, it's a proposal to try to isolate capitalist Britain from the world market. But this couldn't be done without making things worse.
It is naïve to assume that if a British government imposed a "selective exclusion of foreign-made goods", i.e. protectionism, the governments of other capitalist countries would just take this lying down. They would adopt similar measures aimed at selectively excluding British, i.e. for them "foreign", imports. British manufacturing exports would be bound to suffer. Unemployment would return (if it ever disappeared) and "secure, well-paid employment" would wither not flourish.
The BNP was not the only party to advocate such a pie-in-the-sky policy as a supposed way to secure jobs and end unemployment. Here is what the No2EU list, led by Bob Crow of the RMT union and supported by the Communist Party of Britain (Morning Star) and the ex-Militant Tendency Trotskyists:

“Nation states with the right to self-determination and their governments are the only institutions that can control the movement of big capital and clip the wings of the trans-national corporations and banks. . . . To revitalise the economy, Britain must return to creating wealth based especially in manufacturing, hi-tech and trade across the world . . . To return to an economy based on manufacturing requires massive investment and where appropriate protection of home industries. It is the only way to ensure jobs and a decent safe future for the peoples of Britain.” (http://www.no2eu.com/economiccrisis.html)

They don’t explain any more than the BNP where the profitable market for these extra manufacturing goods is to come from. They, too, dream of a national capitalism permanently providing high wages and steady jobs.
No wonder the groups that made up No2EU refuse to debate with the BNP. When it comes to economic policy, it wouldn't be much of a debate as they wouldn't find much to disagree about, especially as the BNP also advocates "the renationalisation of monopoly utilities and services, compensating only individual investors and pension funds". We, on the other hand, are prepared to debate against both of them (together if need be, to save time) and put the socialist case that, as capitalism is already a world system, there are no national solutions to the problems it causes for workers and that the only answer is go forward to world-wide socialism not back to the Nation State.

For more on the BNP, see:

From the July 2009 Socialist Standard, 'Who's afraid of the BNP?'