How shall we vote? (2010)

From the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part of the deal for the Tory-LibDem coalition government is that there’s to be a referendum on electoral reform. But is electoral reform really necessary?

We might as well give our answer straightaway: No, it isn't. A majority seeking to replace capitalism by socialism only requires one thing of an electoral system under capitalism – that it should allow a majority opinion to reflect itself as a majority of seats in parliament. Socialists are not interested in whether the system ensures a strong and stable government of capitalism nor in whether it ensures a fair representation of capitalist political parties. As the existing electoral system in Britain does allow a majority viewpoint to be translated into a majority of seats, we see no point in diverting any of our energies from our task of working towards the emergence of a socialist majority to supporting electoral reform within capitalism.

Voting in socialism
However, since socialism will be a fully democratic society we do have an interest in what is and what is not a fair electoral system since such a system will be an essential part of the democratic decision-making and administrative structure of socialist society.

From the point of view of democratic theory, an electoral system should ensure that the persons elected really are representative. The case against the first-past-the-post system that applies in Britain is that it does not necessarily do this when there are more than two candidates. This is because it allows a candidate to be elected with less than 50 percent of the votes (that is to say, against the will of a majority of the voters), as were most MPs, of all parties, in the recent general election.

There are various ways of avoiding this. Organising a run-off between the top two candidates in a second ballot (as in France) or, what amounts to the same thing, allowing voters to place the candidates in order of preference (1, 2, 3, 4, etc) and, if no candidate gets 50 percent, to eliminate the bottom candidates and redistribute their votes amongst the others until one of them does reach this figure. This system, known as the Alternative Vote (the mysterious AV the media talks about), is widely used in trade unions for the election of their officials and is the system that is to be voted on in the proposed referendum.

A variant of AV, known as the Supplementary Vote or Instant Run-off, is already used in England for the election of mayors. Under it voters vote 1, 2 only (or just “1” if they want) and, if no candidate gets 50 percent, then the No 2 votes of the third and other candidates are redistributed between the top two. In other words, there is no chance of the candidate finishing third getting elected, as is possible under pure AV.

The system favoured by the Liberals is neither of these but the Single Transferable Vote (STV), which is used in regional and local elections in Northern Ireland and in local elections in Scotland. Under it voters again place the candidates in order of preference but in a multi-member rather than a single-member constituency. A candidate is not elected unless, and until, after successive redistributions of the votes of the bottom candidates, they obtain a certain quota of votes. It is frequently described as a system of proportional representation even by its partisans but in fact it is not. It is essentially a system, like the Second Ballot and the Alternative Vote, for ensuring that those elected attain a minimum level of representativity. It is only incidentally that, in a context of competing political parties, it ensures the representation of minority parties enjoying a certain minimum, but not necessarily low, level of support amongst voters.

As all the above systems are compatible with democratic theory, no doubt, depending on historically-inherited circumstances and the preferences of people in a particular area, they will continue into socialist society for the various delegate bodies that will form part of its democratic decision-making structure, along with other systems such as choice by lot (as for juries today).

Party Representation
Proportional representation, properly so-called, is a different matter as it presupposes the existence of competing political parties and was in fact devised precisely for such parties. It requires multi-member constituencies (which can be the whole country, as in Israel and in Scotland and Wales for the election of MEPs) and party lists rather than individual candidates. A great variety of PR systems exist (a different version, mixed with first-past-the-post, is used in mainland Britain for the election of regional assemblies in Scotland, Wales and London) but these are all based on the principle that the seats should be allocated to parties in more or less strict proportion to the number of votes obtained.

The essence of democracy is popular participation not competing parties. In socialism elections will not be about deciding which particular party is to come to ‘power’ and form the government. Politics in socialism will not be about coercive power and its exercise and so won't really be politics at all in its present-day sense of the ‘art and practice of government’ or ‘the conduct of state affairs’. Being a classless society of free and equal men and women, socialism will not have a coercive state machine nor a government to control it. The conduct of public affairs in socialism will be about people participating in the running of their lives in a non-antagonistic context of co-operation to further the common good.

Socialist democracy will be a participatory democracy rather than the choice every four or five years, with or without proportional representation, between rival bands of professional politicians that passes for democracy today.

Adam Buick

Cooking the Books: How capitalism moves (2010)

A Cooking the Books column from the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month’s general election was dominated by “the economy” but the politicians never learn. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they were still claiming to be able to control the way the capitalist economy works.

You might have thought that the Labour Party would have become more cautious about such claims following the exploding of Gordon Brown’s claim to have put an end to boom and bust. But no. “The economy is coming out of recession thanks to Labour’s measures”, claimed a leaflet put out for the Labour candidate in Streatham.

The economy does seem to be beginning to come out of the biggest slump since the end of the last world war, but this was bound to occur sooner or later as the movement of the capitalist economy is cyclical. A period of recession and stagnation is followed by a period of expansion just as a period of expansion is followed by a period of recession, each period creating the conditions for the other. This in accordance “the economic law of motion of modern society” which Marx said in his Preface to Capital he had set out to lay bare.

The Labour government happened to be in office when the recovery stage of the cycle showed some modest signs of beginning. But if they want to claim credit for this by virtue of simply been in office at the time, then they should also accept responsibility for the recession that preceded it when they were also in office. In fact they and their policies were responsible for neither. Uncontrollable capitalism was.

The other parties, naturally, claimed that the Labour government had been responsible for the recession – and that their policies would bring it to an end.

“We’ll cut Gordon Brown’s waste and debt to get our economy moving”, promised the election address of the Tory candidate in Vauxhall, “Labour are now the party of unemployment. Conservatives will get Britain working again by boosting enterprise”.

The LibDems were no different. “Labour promised us economic stability, but they have failed”, said a leaflet put out on behalf of their candidate for Richmond Park. “Only the Lib Dems and Shadow Chancellor Vince Cable have a plan that will get our economy moving forward again.”

But no government has the power to get the economy “moving”. All governments do is preside over the workings of the capitalist economy as it moves forward and backwards of its own accord, irrespective of what they may or may not do.

So why do politicians claim to have a power they do not have and make promises on this basis? There are only two possible answers. They either take us for fools or they are fools themselves.

Socialists in the election (2010)

From the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the general election the Socialist Party stood one candidate, if only to show that we hold that a socialist-minded wage and salary working class can use the ballot box in the course of establishing socialism. Elsewhere we advocated a write-in vote for “World Socialism”.

The constituency, Vauxhall, just south of the Thames in central London, is one we had contested a number of times before. We had expected our opponents to be only the ordinary capitalist parties – Labour, Tory, LibDems and Greens – but in the event there were also candidates from the Christian Party (an attempt to introduce the US “Christian Right” here), the English Democrats (who want a separate parliament for England), the Animal Protection Party (hunt saboteurs challenging the sitting Labour MP, Kate Hoey, who is chair of the pro-hunting Countryside Alliance), and Workers Power (a breakaway Trotskyist group).

We met most of these candidates in three well-attended hustings, the last one in a church near the Oval attracting up to 200 people. The Post Office distributed 56,000 of our manifestos to households in the constituency.

As the Green Party candidate said he was an ‘ecosocialist’, this meant that there were three candidates saying they stood for socialism. This provided a case study of the difference between our and their approaches. The Green Party is not of course a socialist party and does not claim to be, even if individual members such as their candidate in Vauxhall do. Basically, the Green Party stands for a return to small-scale capitalism. Their election address made the same sort of promises as the main capitalist parties, only even less realistic – a minimum wage of £8.10 an hour, a non-means tested pension of £170 a week, a million new jobs installing free insulation in “every single home” and (of course) “protect our NHS”.

The Trotskyist candidate made even wilder promises (seemingly on the basis of take what the openly capitalist parties are offering and multiply by three), such as:

“Create three million new jobs – tax the rich to fund a huge programme of public works.

£9 an hour minimum wage for all.

Six weeks paid holiday as a minimum for all workers.

Cancel mortgage interest for working people.

Scrap council tax – for a local wealth tax.

Jobs for all, funded by taxing the rich and taking over the banks

Benefits to be at level of minimum wage.

Stop fare rises – slash bus and tube prices – make it free by taxing the rich.

For pensions tied to average male earnings.

Automatic and total payment [for pensioners] of all utility bills - gas, electricity, telephone and internet connection.

(from The Anticapitalist Manifesto for Vauxhall)

All of this assumes the continued existence of the rich who are to be taxed – and so the continuation of capitalism as a society where there are rich people, whose income comes from the exploitation of workers.

We, on the other hand, argued that, as capitalism was the cause of the problems, the only way to lastingly solve them was to replace capitalism and its production for profit and wages system with socialism, a society of common ownership, democratic control, production solely for use, and distribution according to the principle ‘from each their ability, to each their needs’. We didn’t advocate any reforms to capitalism, just socialism.

As a German group put it in a comment on the election they sent to us:

“Even fringe left-wing parties like Respect bow to the dictates of ‘realism’ and respect private property through their demands of ‘taxation on the big corporations and the wealthy to fund public services’ – a demand which requires big corporations to make the kind of profits which can then be taxed” (See Here).

Precisely. So, all the measures in the Trotskyist manifesto were supposed to be implemented under capitalism. Ridiculous. We doubt whether even their proposers believed this possible. In the event nobody else did either. True, we didn’t do much better but the point is: when Trotskyists with their programme of “transitional” reforms are getting the same sort of vote as us who are advocating only socialism, what’s the point of advocating reforms and not socialism? You might as well advocate taking over the bakery (and the wheatfields) rather than bigger and better crumbs.

The result was: Hoey (Labour) 21,498; Pidgeon (LD) 10,847; Chambers (Con) 9,301; Healey (Green) 708; Navarro (English Democrats) 289; Martin (Christian) 200; Lambert (Soc) 143, Drinkall (Workers Power) 109; Kapetanos (Animal Protection) 96.

Material World: Christian Fascism: the best response (2010)

The Material World column from the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

In American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (Free Press, 2006), Chris Hedges warns of the danger presented by the section of the US political spectrum usually known as the Christian right – a danger to democracy, tolerance, science and intellectual freedom. His warning concerns not Christian revivalism in general (traditional evangelists like Billy Graham, he points out, were concerned with saving souls not politics) but a specific highly political tendency called “dominionism” that aims to establish the world empire of a reborn “Christian America”.

Dominionist preachers like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, R.J. Rushdoony and Rod Parseley propagate their worldview through a vast array of “megachurches” and publishing houses, home schools and universities, museums and broadcasting outlets. (The programming of Paul and Jan Crouch’s Trinity Broadcasting Network is carried on over 6,000 television stations at home and abroad.) Theirs is a relentlessly simplistic worldview, supposedly based on the Bible as the literal Word of God, that denounces all opponents as servants of Satan and eagerly anticipates the miraculous horrors of the Apocalypse.

The dominionists are hostile to real science and deny global warming as well as evolution. Their “Gospel of Prosperity” celebrates unbridled capitalism and extravagant consumption. A long-term aim is government based on biblical law.

A purely American Fascism
Hedges makes out a convincing case for regarding dominionism as a variety of totalitarianism and fascism. In certain ways, however, the dominionists differ from earlier generations of fascists in the United States, even though they too used the Christian label. Dominionist symbols are purely American; they admit to no connection with classical foreign fascisms (Italian, German etc.).

Comparing the new Christian fascists with the Ku Klux Klan, for instance, we find that each focuses on a quite different set of enemies. They renounce hatred for blacks, Catholics and Jews – the three bugbears of WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) bigotry. Instead, they appeal to Christians across racial lines, work with Catholics on issues such as abortion and prayer in schools, and cultivate a close alliance of convenience with the Zionist religious right, despite the divergent apocalyptic expectations of the two groups. The main targets of their hostility are those they call “secular humanists” – a catch-all for all who oppose them, non-fundamentalist Christians as well as atheists and agnostics – and also Islam.

A highly lucrative business
How do the dominionist preachers finance their activities? Partly by fleecing their flocks, who pay a “tithe” of 10 percent of income in addition to other donations. Other money comes from sympathetic capitalists, including Amway founder Richard DeVos and beer baron Joseph Coors. Finally, the Bush Administration, with which they had close ties through the Council for National Policy, enabled them to tap federal funds for “faith-based” social service initiatives – an arrangement that Obama has left intact.

We may reasonably doubt whether the big capitalists and politicians who support the dominionists care all that deeply about religious dogma. Their main interest presumably lies in the prospect of intensified control over and exploitation of the working class.

Indeed, for the preachers themselves religion is, apart from anything else, a highly lucrative business. Their opulent lifestyles suggest that they divert a significant portion of the various cash flows into their own bank accounts. Evidently they have overlooked certain biblical passages – for instance, Jesus’ well-known remark about the camel who tried to pass through the eye of a needle.

Our attitude as socialists
The danger presented by “Christian fascism” is a real one. It threatens us as socialists at least as much as it threatens all other “servants of Satan”. Our ability to spread our ideas depends on tolerance of minority opinions. Moreover, people whose minds have been addled by belief in magic, miracles and divine texts are unlikely to be receptive to socialist ideas.

So we cannot say: “It doesn’t matter which group of capitalists have the upper hand; they are all equally bad because they all represent capitalism.” Of course it matters.

Faced with the threat of fascism, socialists share a certain amount of common ground with non-socialists concerned to defend democracy and science. Both, for example, seek to debunk “creationism” and explain current scientific thinking about evolution.

However, we must not jeopardise our identity as socialists by joining broad “anti-fascist” blocs that inevitably accept the continued existence of capitalism. One reason is that as socialists we have a unique contribution to make to effective action against fascism.

Real versus illusory community
In his book Hedges describes how vulnerable people are recruited into dominionist churches. The target of “seduction” is someone whose history and circumstances (family breakdown, abuse, addiction, isolation, etc.) make it especially hard to bear the absence of community in capitalism. The church offers an illusion of community and the victim snatches at the bait, only later to discover, when escape has become very difficult, that he or she has paid a high price in submission for yet another illusion.

The soil in which fascism grows is the impersonal and alienating conditions of life under capitalism, especially at times of crisis. Hedges appears to understand this. But there is a disconnect between analysis and conclusion. He calls for more determined resistance to Christian fascism, but offers no hope of a more communal way of life that might counter the emotional appeal of fascism. Only socialists, by holding out the prospect of real community, can act effectively to undermine the illusory community of fascism.

Stefan

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 147

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 147th our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1568 friends!

Recent blogs:

Unrealistic alternatives

Trade unionist extraordinary

Democracy – and ‘democracy’

Quote for the week:

"Only by the propaganda of Socialism among the rank and file of the trade unions will they be made capable of understanding their position as wage slaves, and the consequent necessity for the abolition of capitalism, and not of patching it up, as advocated with monotonous persistence by the misleaders we have been dealing with. Having arrived at this understanding, the workers will recognise that their political power must be put to an infinitely better use than that of providing fat jobs for nimble-tongued tricksters, shepherds put over them by their wily masters—the achievement of their own emancipation, to wit. Then the workers will at once wrench themselves free from the strangle-hold of these Labour garroters, and hurl them to perdition together with that system of labour-exploitation of which they are part and parcel." Jack Fitzgerald, Labour Leaders and their Prey, 1909.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!
Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

The race to the bottom (2010)

From the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Could Western corporations do without sweatshop production?

Sweatshops are workplaces where the working conditions are extremely poor and health and safety laws are not enforced or are non-existent. News reports of fires which have killed dozens of people because fire doors were locked in sweatshop factories are not uncommon. Wages are very low, there may be bullying and intimidation, especially of anyone trying to improve conditions. Hours are long and the work itself may be very demanding and even dangerous. Sick workers cannot take time off and are penalised if they leave the factory. Sub-contractors for European, Japanese and American corporations refuse their staff breaks, monitoring the times they go to the toilet and harassing and humiliating staff. Profit comes before safety, before any quality of life the workers may have, before any idea of comfort.

Developing countries are producing an increasing amount of the world’s manufacturing production. This is symptomatic of the new international division of labour, whereby Western countries close their factories at home, where wages rates are higher, and invest in factories in the ‘Third World’ as the labour costs are so much lower. Unfortunately for the ‘Third world’ workers, it was not undiluted joy at the prospect of having jobs and a bit of money. The labour costs might be cheaper because the cost of living is cheaper, but the wage rates can be so low that workers find it hard to survive in Thailand and Cambodia for instance.

Western corporations used to be able to distance themselves to a certain extent from the conditions in their sub-contractors assembly plants, because of the geographical distance between, say, Britain and China. People in Britain did not necessarily realise that when they bought an item of clothing from Umbro, a British company, it was actually made in China in sweatshop conditions, conditions that would just not be acceptable in modern day Britain.

Campaigns by Human Rights agencies, such as Oxfam and the Clean Clothes Campaign, have publicised the conditions suffered by workers in the sweatshops. Although companies may try to say that they are not responsible for the conditions of work in the firms they sub-contract out to, campaigners have appealed to the sense of fair play and compassion in consumers. Although not all consumers are worried by the idea of sweatshop conditions for the people who make their clothes, the corporations do not want a bad image in the media and have produced corporate ‘codes of conduct’ and company policies which try to improve their standing in the public eye as well as (maybe) alleviate some of the worst problems.

How far they have managed to clean up their image or help people in sweatshops in the developing world is debatable. According to Oxfam, the ‘race to the bottom’ was inevitable as you cannot have very cheap clothes and also give your workers a decent standard of living. Although British workers also suffered from sweatshops in the past, a mixture of increased unionisation, philanthropy and labour laws helped to improve conditions for the working class.

The question of how far can Western corporations distance themselves from sweatshop production can only really be understood by looking at the bigger picture, which is: why is the pursuit of profit, to the detriment of all the finer things in life for the working class, so all pervasive?

The main goal in capitalism is the pursuit of profit. Profit is put before needs. This is why millions of people do not have enough to eat – they simply don’t have the money to buy food. The world is quite capable of growing enough food for everyone and more, but no money means no food for poor people. Poor people are stuck if they cannot improve their wages and conditions due to merciless capitalists, unless they either migrate legally or illegally to another better paid job in another country.

According to philosopher Iris Marion Young, we cannot blame consumers directly for the misfortune of the sweatshop workers, but we can accept political responsibility and change the process. She said that, although many individuals are involved, from the manufacturers to the consumers, they should all play their part in improving the lot of the ‘Third World’ workers. This is unrealistic in a capitalist world. Capitalist corporations are there to make money and all we can do is alleviate the symptoms – unless we cure it completely by changing the economic system in which we live. There will always be someone who wants to make even more profit, by forcing poor conditions on the workers, or moving the factory elsewhere to where the labour laws are laxer, as happened from Mexico to China, when some macquiladoras (or assembly plants) in Mexico were closed so the capitalist corporations could find cheaper labour elsewhere. And consumers may not even know where else to buy their clothes.

So, although Oxfam and the Clean Clothes campaign have brought the attention of the media to the practices of manufacturers, still people cannot see it for themselves ‘next door’ so are immune to the suffering. The suffering is too far away. They would help their next door neighbour but that is in close proximity. People at a distance are ‘out of sight, out of mind’. When even photos can be taken different ways, people would be overwhelmed if they did not block out some charitable appeals.

Some people think that the third world workers can work themselves out of poverty, in the way of the ‘Asian tigers’, without realising that the odds are stacked against them and they cannot repeat the success story of say, Hong Kong. The workers are very much subjugated and repressed in these assembly plants. It is difficult to see where they could help themselves, anyone found trying to start a union is quickly out of a job.

The Western corporations are just trying to do what they have to do in capitalism: make the biggest profit they can. If they don’t their rivals will undercut them and they will eventually go out of business or be taken over. It is a dog-eat-dog world, and whereas people have to acquire visas and passports, corporations and capital have relative ease of flows across the world. Money eases the wheels of commerce, but the migration of people can be very much resented and resisted, as in Mexico with the self-styled American Border Patrol.

Capitalists, who make up the richest 5 percent or so in the world, may not be ‘bad’ people: they may give to charity, go to church and be kind to children and animals. But back at work, the system makes them behave in a ruthless race to make the biggest profits. If they don’t, they go under. Charities like Oxfam and the Clean Clothes Campaign are just whistling in the wind. They may dampen down the worst excesses of the capitalist profit-seeking, but they can never stop exploitation until and unless they help to usher in a world, where people are free to enjoy their lives instead of making millions for the very few rich capitalists at the top.

Veronica Clanchy

Helping to Survive (2010)

Book Review from the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why We Cooperate. By Michael Tomasello: MIT Press

Young children are cooperative and helpful. At the age of eighteen months, almost all children will try to help an adult they have just met, for instance by opening a cupboard door if the adult’s hands are full. This is one of the findings from experimental studies carried out with colleagues that Tomasello, a psychologist, reports in this short but informative volume.

Before they can be helpful like this, a child has to be able to perceive what another person wants to do, and to have the altruistic motive to help. Assisting others in this way seems to emerge naturally, before children have been trained by parents to behave in this manner. Moreover, concrete rewards undermine this helping, rather than stimulating it.

Helping is only one of three kinds of altruistic behaviour. The second is informing others by providing and sharing information, which children do naturally at twelve months (lying comes much later, and assumes pre-existing trust and cooperation). The third kind is sharing goods such as food, which again young children do in a reasonably generous way. Children are far more cooperative than chimpanzees, who do try to help humans in experimental situations but are less keen to share food or to inform fellow chimps.

From the age of around three years, children become more discerning in their altruism. For instance, they may share more with someone who was previously nice to them, or are more helpful to those who help others. The eventual outcome will be mutualism, where we all benefit from working together towards a common goal. Underlying this is a sense of ‘we’, a sense which is uniquely human.

If our closest primate relatives, then, do not cooperate to anything like the extent that humans do, the question arises as to how and why this cooperativeness arose. Answers here must be less definitive, but Tomasello sees cooperative foraging for food as playing an essential role in making us, in his terminology, ‘obligate collaborators’.

So in answer to claims that it is ‘human nature’ to be competitive, just say that no, we are by nature cooperative beings.

Paul Bennett

Editorial: Michael Portillo tells the truth (2010)

Editorial from the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

The time between the close of polls on general election day and before the return to ‘business as usual’ is an interesting one politically. It’s a brief space of freedom from bullshit, and the mainstream media reports it fairly well. Politicians are briefly free from the need to hoodwink voters (the votes are in and being counted) or to dress up business exploitation and war in the language of individual liberty and choice (that’s on tomorrow’s agenda). If you listen carefully during this brief period of freedom, you’ll hear our political masters tell it as it is. We hope all those people who voted for the main political parties were paying close attention.

Take the former Tory MP and cabinet minister Michael Portillo, for example, interviewed by BBC News on 8 May after the general election. An important part of the ‘socialist case’ is to propagate the ‘capitalist case’, stripped of the fine words and verbiage, among ordinary working people, so they can be informed about exactly what it is they are voting for and unconsciously working to support. They will then be in a better position to make informed, democratic choices. Our candidate in the general election was not interviewed by the BBC, but Portillo was kind enough to put the Socialist Party’s case (or at least aspects of it) for us.

Portillo said that, whatever else was going on behind closed doors in the negotiations about who was to form the next government, there was one key issue that that government would have to face – namely, the economy and the deficit. And on this point, said Portillo, it didn’t really matter which party formed the government: Britain’s policy would inevitably be dictated by ‘events’ in the market, and by the actions of international ‘investors’ (the capitalist class). In other words, what was more important than the result of the democratic process was the needs of a small minority of humanity to find profitable investment opportunities, and the democratic process was inevitably subordinated to that fact.

The BBC interviewer, who had perhaps been daft enough to fall for all the pre-election spin and bullshit, expressed surprise at this comment, and reiterated the propaganda point that the parties did differ on this issue, disagreeing about the timing of the Thatcher-style cuts in public services that all parties had promised. Portillo haughtily dismissed this, and said the timing would be dictated to the government by those all-powerful ‘investors’.

On this issue, Portillo was putting the Socialist Party case. We agree with him that democracy under capitalism is all about choosing between different management teams, all of which are committed to serving the interests of ‘investors’, however much they may differ in style and on other comparatively minor points of policy. That means that, whoever you vote for, the government faithfully promises to put first the interests of the rich minority who profit from investment, not the majority who work under their control for a relatively meagre wage. That’s the ‘capitalist case’, and you should bear it in mind next time you head to the polls.

Pieces Together: Housing Madness (2010)

From the May 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

HOUSING MADNESS

"Charities are demanding an urgent rethink of government housing policy after a Guardian investigation found that almost half a million homes are lying empty in the UK enough to put a roof over the heads of a quarter of the families on council house waiting lists. The startling picture of neglect (we estimate that more than 450,000 properties have been empty for at least six months at a time when there is an acute housing shortage) was pieced together using information gathered from local councils under the Freedom of Information Act" (Guardian, 4 April).


TAX DODGERS INC.

"As you work on your taxes this month, here's something to raise your hackles: Some of the world's biggest, most profitable corporations enjoy a far lower tax rate than you do – that is, if they pay taxes at all. The most egregious example is General Electric. Last year the conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion. Avoiding taxes is nothing new for General Electric. In 2008 its effective tax rate was 5.3%; in 2007 it was 15%. The marginal U.S. corporate rate is 35%” (Forbes.com, 1 April).


BUSINESS AS USUAL

"German carmaker Daimler has pleaded guilty to corruption in the US and will pay $185m (£121m) to settle the case. The charges relate to US Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission investigations into the company's global sales practices. Daimler, the owner of Mercedes-Benz, admitted to paying tens of millions of dollars of bribes to foreign government officials in at least 22 countries" (BBC News 1 April).


THIS SPORTING LIFE

"Thousands of homeless people are being forced off the streets of South Africa to hide the scale of poverty there from World Cup fans. More than 800 tramps, beggars and street children have already been removed from Johannesburg and sent to remote settlements hundreds of miles away. And in Cape Town, where England face Algeria on June 18, up to 300 have been moved to Blikkiesdorp camp where 1,450 families are crammed in a settlement of tin huts designed for just 650 people. Johannesburg councillor Sipho Masigo was unrepentant. ‘Homelessness and begging are big problems in the city,’ he said. ‘You have to clean your house before you have guests. There is nothing wrong with that’" (Daily Mirror, 28 March).

Puppets on a string (2010)

From the May 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite women-only lists and quotas for minorities does it matter who the politicians running capitalism are?

Capitalism, without a doubt, is unpopular. It would be strange if it were anything else. A system under which a small percentage of the people own just about everything worth owning, while everyone else has to spend his or her time working for the support of this small minority of owners, could hardly expect to win any popularity stakes. That is why everyone trying to seize power, whether in democratic countries or in despotisms, always proclaims that change is desperately needed. (When did you hear of any new leaders taking over a country with the slogan, “Let’s keep everything just as it is”?)

It is true that some changes, some reforms, may benefit some groups, though at the same time other groups may be worse off. It is also true that some changes may benefit some groups in some ways, but make those same groups worse off in other ways. One big change certainly is needed – a change from capitalism to socialism, that is to say abandoning a system organised for the advantage of a small minority, and introducing a system that works for the good of all: but since enormous propaganda machines are operating full-time to persuade people that any change like that is not possible, the result is that the reforms introduced with such fanfares are doomed to be futile, or at best merely cosmetic. If most of the people in Parliament, or in the government, are white, then the cry arises – let’s have more black people. If most of the people running the country are men – then let’s have more women. If most of the top politicians are Christian – then let’s have Muslims, or Buddhists, or Hindus, or atheists. Whatever they are now, let’s have the opposite. If most people in Parliament were women, the cry would probably arise for more men; if most were black, people might well demand more white faces; if most were Muslim, the cry would go up for more Christians, and so on.

If we are talking about the future of Britain, or of the world, then a person’s skin-colour, sex, religious or cultural background, or any other consideration, is of small importance compared with the question of what that person does. A person’s actions, which follow on from their ideas and their attitudes – these are the things that matter.

Take the case which is exercising the government, and the courts, and the newspapers, at the moment: the case of Binyam Mahomed, who is an Ethiopian who lived in Britain from the time he was fifteen. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of being a terrorist; he was then smuggled out by the Americans to Morocco and Afghanistan, finally being imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay in 2004, where he stayed for the next five years, without trial. During that time he was tortured by the Americans, or by their allies. Last year a US District Court judge accepted as accurate Mahomed’s account of his treatment, which “included being beaten with a leather strap, subjected to a mock execution by shooting, being punched and kicked, listening to other prisoners screaming and being cut on his chest, penis and testicles with a scalpel. He was also deprived of sleep and had drugs put into his food” (London Times, 11 February).

The UK Court of Appeal has agreed with “Mr Mahomed’s assertion that the UK authorities had been involved in and facilitated the ill treatment and torture to which he was subjected while under the control of the US authorities”. The Master of the Rolls, presiding at the court, also said in his draft judgment that MI5, the British security service, “operated a culture of suppression and disregard for human rights; that it deliberately misled a Parliamentary committee and that its assurances could not be trusted”. The Foreign Secretary sent high-paid lawyers to the court to get this criticism cut out of the judgment. The British government, indeed, has been trying to keep everything secret, on the grounds that the US government would be annoyed if these things came out – despite the publication of the judgment of the US District Court. The American government would not be so friendly and co-operative, thinks Gordon Brown, if everyone knew how they behaved; which raises the question, how friendly and co-operative do you want to be with a government that tortures its prisoners – and imprisons them without trial?

So we have the unedifying spectacle of a member of the Labour government, the Foreign Secretary David Miliband, defending the collaboration of Britain’s “security” services in the torture by the Americans, or their allies, of a “terrorism” suspect. This is justified by officialdom because of the need to preserve our democratic freedoms. In other words, Britain is justified in going along with torture, to make sure we are not overwhelmed by other states, which use completely unacceptable methods such as torture. It is justifiable to use torture in order to save us from – torture. If the Foreign Secretary really believes this, he is in line for a starring role at the next Clowns’ Reunion.

There are in Britain numerous racial or religious or cultural minorities: in fact everyone belongs to a minority of one kind or another. David Miliband is from a Jewish background; his forebears came from eastern Europe, with its grim history of racialism, of oppression, of pogroms against minorities. Who, in the past centuries in Europe, has suffered more than the Jews from despotic regimes which think you can justify torture if you look at from the right angle? But David Miliband has become Foreign Secretary by joining a party which in effect appeals for support at election times by declaring it will run capitalism better than the other contenders for the job. If it is thought that the interests of the British capitalist state demand kow-towing to the Americans, then the British government – including Miliband – kow-tows to the Americans, even to the extent of accepting and colluding in the torture of its own residents. Having a Foreign Secretary from one of the many UK minorities makes absolutely no difference to the final result.

Black people, too, have suffered horribly under the private-property system of society, to the extent that many Africans were actually violently seized and forcibly made into private property, slaves who were owned by – for example – the American and West Indian landed gentry. Surely if a black person was running affairs (it was once said), things must improve. Well, the President of the United States is now black – his father was a Kenyan African. Does anyone think American capitalism is now somehow less capitalist? And many African states which were once ruled by foreign white empires now have black leaders. In South Africa, for example, Nelson Mandela became president, and was succeeded by Thabo Mbeki and then by Jacob Zuma. Numbers of people with black skins appear to have done very well out of the change-over. “Last year South Africa overtook Brazil as the country with the biggest gap between rich and poor” (London Times, 11 February).

We also used to hear that capitalism would somehow be more tolerable – more kindly, more benign – to the vast majority of non-capitalists if a woman was running it. But in the last few decades we have seen numbers of women running countries – among those who have risen to the top of the political pile have been Isabel Peron in Argentina, Gro Brundtland in Norway, Sirimavo Bandaranaike in Ceylon, Indira Gandhi in India, Golda Meir in Israel, Angela Merkel in Germany, and of course Margaret, now Lady, Thatcher in Britain. What difference did it make?

In 1975 Isabel Peron ordered the Argentine armed forces and its secret services to “annihilate . . . subversive elements”, and there followed more than a thousand kidnappings, assassinations, and “disappearances” of people who either opposed the government or who it was thought might oppose it in future. (Isabel Peron’s allies abroad included the benign and kindly quartet Ceausescu of Romania, Gaddafi of Libya, Mobutu of Zaire, and the Shah of Iran; she fled to Spain after leaving office, and two years ago the present Argentine authorities tried, but failed, to get her extradited.) The history of Mrs Thatcher alone would explain why the so-called “feminist” argument – that a woman Prime Minister would somehow make capitalism softer, gentler, more acceptable – has now been exploded. In fact it is the accepted view now that the methods of the Thatcherite cabinet were tougher and harsher than those of most other governments which had men as Prime Ministers.

If you are running capitalism, the fact that you are a Jew or a Gentile, or black or white, or Christian or Muslim, or Hindu or atheist, or male or female, is completely irrelevant. Whoever you are, you can’t run a turkey farm for the benefit of the turkeys.

Alwyn Edgar

Bullshitters (2010)

Book Review from the May 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bad Science. By Ben Goldacre. Fourth Estate

In 1986 an American philosopher called Harry Frankfurt wrote an essay “On Bullshit” in which, according to Goldacre who writes a “Bad Science” column for the Guardian, he drew a distinction between lying and bullshitting. A liar knows the truth and seeks to disguise it. A bullshitter doesn’t know or even care about the truth but is out to impress.

Most of those Goldacre criticises in this book are bullshitters rather than liars – though not all, there are some genuine fakes and frauds amongst them. He starts with an easy target, homeopathy, which is patently absurd (as if bottles of diluted water shaken in a particular way could cure anything) but relatively innocuous (drinking diluted water won’t harm you). Some homeopathic practitioners, however, are not and, Goldacre reports, can be very nasty towards critics.

Their argument – and that of all the other ‘alternative’ medicines – is that their treatments work. They certainly seem to in some cases. People do get better after taking the pills or whatever. But the question that needs to be answered is why. Is it because of the pills or is there some other reason? There are a number of possible explanations other than the theory of the ‘alternative’ practitioners. Sometimes the body recovers spontaneously. Some ailments go in cycles, so a bad period will be followed by a less bad one. In others, any therapy, no matter what the theory behind it, will work: any therapy or even sympathetic listening will help. Then there is the ‘placebo’ effect (people getting better because they believe they are being given a certain treatment when in fact they haven’t been) which Goldacre discusses in interesting detail.

Much of the book is devoted to his criticism of popular TV and other ‘nutritionists’, who he identifies as prize bullshitters. Why? Because there is no verified, or even verifiable, evidence for their claims. Some of them may sincerely believe in what they say but their main aim is to make money. Goldacre is quick to add that the same applies to the pharmaceutical companies who are always inventing new ‘syndromes’ for which their pills are the best cure.

Goldacre also criticises scientifically-illiterate journalists who are more interested in a story that will keep readers or pander to their prejudices, so maintaining newspaper or magazine sales, than with the real situation. This can be dangerous as over the MMR scandal as it was because of them that a number of parents left their kids unprotected against measles which they and others later contracted.
The socialist angle on all this is that under capitalism people are forced to make money, one way or another, in order to live and, given this, some will adopt dubious and even dangerous ways of doing this. And that there’ll be no snake-oil salesmen in socialism.

Adam Buick

Cooking the Books: Much ado about nics (2010)

The Cooking the Books column from the May 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shortly before the election was announced a mock fight broke out between Labour and the Tories over an increase in National Insurance contributions from 2011 announced in the budget. The Tories said that, if elected, they would reduce the increase and wheeled out a number of their business donators to support their position. Labour, unwisely, retorted that these business leaders had been deceived. Which brought protests from more of them. And so the saga went on for weeks.

The employers hadn’t been deceived. They knew exactly what they were doing – opposing a measure that would eat into their profits even if only modestly. National Insurance contributions are formally a payment, made by both employers and workers, into a notional fund out of which pensions, incapacity and other benefits are paid. In practice they are a tax, and indeed the “tax on jobs” that employers and the Tories claim, which by increasing labour costs decreases profits. Which is why the employers squealed.

But that’s not how things were presented. The Daily Telegraph (28 March) wrote:

“Economists say that rises in employer Nics are effectively passed on to workers in the form of lower wages or job cuts.”

Naturally, employers will seek to avoid a decrease in their profits by trying to reduce their labour costs but, if this was that easy, the question arises as to why they hadn’t done this before. The answer must be that they can’t reduce wages just like that. For a start, it would provoke the active or passive resistance of their workforce leading to a reduction in production and productivity, so turning out to be counter-productive. The pressure will be the other way too. An increase in the workers’ part of Nics means a decrease in their take-home pay, the effective price of their labour-power, what they have to live on to reproduce their working skills.

In the end the matter will be settled by the balance of forces on the labour market. It’s called the class struggle.

But what about “job cuts”? In German the word for employer is Arbeitgeber, literally “work-giver” (correspondingly, the word for employee is Arbeitnehmer or “work-taker”). Counter-intuitive as this is, since it’s workers that give their labour and employers who take it, it accurately sums up the position. Jobs belong to employers, not workers, and are for them to give and take away. Employers give workers jobs not because they are philanthropists who recognise that workers need a job to get money to live on, but in the hope of making a profit out of their labour. They can’t do without workers as it’s the unpaid labour of workers that’s the source of their profits.

Their professed concern for jobs in this instance is the height of hypocrisy. They want the government to find the money they accept is necessary to repay their fellow-capitalists who own the National Debt by … cutting civil service and local government jobs.

The whole episode was a charade because employers are not protesting against the lesser increase proposed by the Tories which, according to their arguments, ought also to have a harmful effect on wages and jobs even if not so much. They are prepared to absorb the Tory increase because they are making profits – those that weren’t and had no hope of recovery have gone out of business with their sales passing to their competitors – and so can afford to. They can afford the Labour increase too but, like any interest group, were protesting in the hope they won’t come off too badly.

Suffer, little children (2010)

From the May 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

There really is no reason why society could not provide for, care for and value all children, but capitalist society doesn’t.

One thing I am certain of is that I would give my life for my children, such is the power of my feelings for them. I did not take to the nappy changing or the enforced insomnia and as they grew older I resigned myself to the fact that during their teens I was embarrassment personified to them; so much so that I had to drop them a few hundred yards from the school gates in case 'someone might think they knew me'. I tried to explain that for the past fourteen years their mother had led me to believe that I was their father, particularly in financial matters, so it was not unreasonable to conclude that I did know them. They have now reached their twenties and, it would be fair to say, have come a full circle and I don't think I would be unduly flattering myself if I say that they are slightly proud of me.

Given the bond between parents and their children why is it, then, that those who have power and control over our society fail to comprehend that the untold damage wrought on our fragile environment will be there as a legacy for their own children as well as ours? Does it not strike them as disturbing that their children are likely to witness irreversible and escalating environmental catastrophes, possibly beyond our imagination?

Even if we give the politicians, the huge corporations and those whose decisions so directly and terrifyingly affect the rest of society, the benefit of the doubt and assume that they genuinely believe that the way we currently order our world society might, eventually, prove capable of solving the manifestly awful aspects of this arrangement, surely they must now be questioning the very safety of their children, when scientists of all disciplines are talking in tens of years when describing the time we have before our seas become too acid to support life, our primary forests disappear along with countless species, glaciers retreat or disappear causing massive water shortages and temperatures rise to levels that would prevent successful pollination of rice, one of the world's staple food crops.

But then why should I feel surprised? After all, this is a society that allows innocent children to die in their thousands every day; If not by allowing them to slowly starve to death or die of easily cured diseases, then by literally blowing them apart. Are the mothers of those children less likely to feel the pain and anguish of losing a child any less than we would?

There really is no reason why a society could not provide for, care for and value all children. But while human beings are prepared to accept a system that values profit and business interests before children then we can expect to go on hearing of dying children all over the world until we become so numb to the awfulness that we begin to believe that it is a natural state of affairs and accept it with no more thought than the sunrise at the start of the day.

Postscript
I occasionally make notes in my diary of odd news reports; for most of us these are heard and quickly forgotten. Here are a few from early last year which perhaps exemplify how children fare under capitalism.

• Food companies have started to realise that it might be more profitable to work with groups to encourage children to eat more healthily. At present, within a short time, 90 percent of children will be obese due to junk food, lack of exercise etc. and will die 10 years earlier. Therefore food companies that produce junk food have realised that killing children is not such a good idea as if they live 10 years longer they will buy more food thus producing more profit for the companies.(BBC Radio 4 news: 2 January 2009)
• The Prince's Trust found that 10 percent of children see no reason to live and 25% are depressed. (BBC Radio 4 news: 5 January 2009)
• 1000 people were killed in Gaza; 400 of which were innocent women and children. (BBC Radio 4 news: 13 January 2009)
• Every year, in Africa, 6,000,000 children die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday. (World Bank Stats.)
• Unicef's website describes the deaths of millions of children that could easily be averted as 'baffling'.
• Food giant Nestlé actively promotes artificial infant feeding around the World, breaking the World Health Organisation's code of marketing and, in pursuit of profit, contributes to a child dying every 30 seconds as a result of unsafe bottle feeding. (www.babymilkaction.org.)
• John Simpson reported recently on BBC Radio 4 that 1,000 children a year in Falluja are being born with deformities. (One baby was born with three heads.) It is thought that they are as a result of depleted uranium left from the bombing of 2004 (when white phosphorous was used). Bombed houses were bulldozed into the river which is used for drinking water.
• 200,000 child slaves are sold every year in Africa. (Source United Nations.)

This list could go on and on. Anyway, on a brighter note (although it will be of little use to the children of India and sub-Saharan Africa), the British government are introducing 'Personal Financial Management' into the primary school national curriculum this September – may as well get them to understand the importance of profit early on in case they begin to use that innocent logic common to children and ask too many awkward questions.

Glenn Morris

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 146

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 146th our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

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Quote for the week:

"I have continued directing the unpopular fight for the rights of agitation, as director of the American Civil Liberties Union.... I am for socialism, disarmament and ultimately for abolishing the state itself as an instrument of violence and compulsion. I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control by those who produce wealth. Communism is, of course, the goal." Roger Nash Baldwin, 1935.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!
Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Life On Earth (2010)

Book Review from the May 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ground Control. By Anna Minton. (Penguin Books)

As new shopping malls and blocks of flats are built in city centres, they represent an extension of ownership by investors and private companies at the expense of local councils. Docklands in London, for instance, is privately-owned, and the flats there are mostly in gated enclaves. The Liverpool One shopping development belongs to Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminster’s property company. These places are patrolled by private security guards and rigidly control what is or is not allowed to be done there (skateboarding, for instance, or selling political journals).

These and similar changes are the focus of Minton’s book, which gives a good overview of the situation, particularly with regard to housing and general control of behaviour in public. Despite the spread of CCTV (Britain has more cameras than the rest of Europe put together), people do not feel safer in the streets; in fact, fear of crime has been increasing as crime rates themselves fall. Stop-and-search powers are used more and more, but overwhelmingly in poorer areas. Breaching an ASBO can lead to a prison sentence for doing something which was not in itself a crime.

As far as housing is concerned, one consequence of gated communities is increased control over tenants. For instance, people may be forbidden from hanging out their washing or placing pots on exterior window sills. More seriously, profits for builders and property companies take priority over satisfying people’s housing needs. As Minton says, ‘house builders have greater guarantees of profits if they limit supply and so keep prices high’. The government’s Pathfinder programme is intended to solve problems that the market cannot tackle, but in practice it can mean houses being demolished and replaced by new ones that can be sold at higher prices. If a council declares that an area is due for demolition, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with residents keen to move away and others unwilling to move in. At the same time, newly-built homes are unsold, as mortgages are much harder to obtain during the credit crunch.

The number of official homeless is nearly 100,000, though councils restrict who counts as ‘homeless’ in order to avoid their rehousing responsibilities. The bottom of the private rented sector includes many, many properties that are damp and overcrowded. In the worst cases, this can lead to ‘buggy babies’, left in their buggy all the time because there is no proper room for them to sit or play. Their heads may get misshapen because they spend so much time lying down. What a comment on the realities of destitution under capitalism.

Paul Bennett