Letter: Without conflict? (1970)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrades,

An article in the January Socialist Standard concludes: "Socialism . . .  will be a society . . . without conflict." I fear that may play into the hands of those who accuse us of planning to construct a "perfect society."

Though of course Socialism will eliminate economic and military conflict, the word "conflict" does have a broader usage. Socialism will not, for instance, abolish conflict of opinions, tastes or personalities.

Yours for Socialism,

D. R. Steele

(Birmingham Branch)

Pathfinders: Fully automated luxury . . . capitalism (2019)

The Pathfinders Column from the June 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

This issue looks at some models of post-capitalist society that might sound futuristic – until you realise how fast capitalism is already moving. From extraction to manufacturing, distribution and retail, changes are taking place at a startling rate as industry, sensor technology and artificial intelligence converge in a process that’s become known as the fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0.

Let’s start at the outlets, where people shop. That’s probably where you’ll have noticed a difference. If you’re still adjusting to the novelty of contactless card payments, you might not be quite ready for Asda’s new ‘Scan and Go’ hand scanners. You use these to scan barcodes yourself as you go along, automatically totting up your basket items and your spend and saving you time at the check-out queue. This is part of a huge global trend towards cashless and cashierless retail, but hand scanners are just the clunky overture to the main performance. Walmart and Microsoft are working on ‘Grab and Go’ stores similar to Amazon Go ‘Just walk out’ stores where you just pick up stuff and leave, the whole transaction worked out invisibly by a combination of tech that might include smartphone, QR codes, RFID tags, or (in China anyway) face recognition. One company is developing a ‘nanostore’, which is a container-sized walk-in 24/7 retail pod which unlocks when you flash your phone, uses shelf sensors to register what groceries you pick up, and automatically debits your account before locking up on exit, no doubt having invited you by name to have a nice evening and to call again soon.

Smart retail is still at an early stage, but the cost and time savings to business owners hardly need to be laboured. Amazon Go has plans to open 3,000 stores in the next few years, and sector investment has tripled since 2017. The convenience to consumers, however, is more nuanced. 24/7 accessibility sounds impressive, but not many people are likely to want to buy bread, socks or rawl-plugs at 4 am. Meanwhile, people who enjoy some human interaction in their day and don’t like to be railroaded won’t necessarily appreciate cashierless retail, which is essentially about the speed of throughput. Perhaps the appeal is more psychological. Smart retail emulates the socialist obliteration of the money transaction. It feels like it’s free, even though you know it isn’t. Perhaps in turn that helps you feel like you’re free, even though you know you aren’t. With a feel-good rush of dopamine and no price labels in sight, you’ll be keen to keep spending. You’ll be what capitalism wants you to be – a consumer junkie.

So what’s happening at the back-end, to supply the junkies with their junk? To begin with, the traditional capital and labour-intensive extractive industries are getting an AI makeover. Seismic surveying using delicate sensor equipment allows firms to zero in on likely deposits in a fraction of the time, cost and labour of older methods, while computerised drilling operations keep accuracy and efficiency optimal while increasing yield and reducing health and safety risks. Advances in robotics and autonomous ‘intelligent’ machines are widely expected to develop extraction methodology to planet-plundering perfection.

Meanwhile, the factory production line is being refitted for 5G as sensors are placed on every physical component to report on its condition and failure potential. The aggregation of this mass of data creates a ‘digital twin’ of the entire plant so that a human, or perhaps an AI, can oversee the entire production flow and anticipate weaknesses or failures before they even occur, maintaining throughput and cutting expensive downtime and service interventions. It can also run virtual tests and experiments on alternative process configurations without incurring real costs or risking damage. Where spare parts are needed they can often be 3D-printed on site or close by, further reducing costs. Smart manufacturing also involves engineering flexibility into the productive system to achieve ‘mass customisation’, i.e. goods personalised for the customer but at mass-production standards of cost and reliability.

At the same time, distribution is being revolutionised by autonomous road transport vehicles and also by ‘last-mile delivery’ technology which includes delivery robots, drones and even smart front doors, which open a panel to accept packages.

It goes without saying that none of this matters if you don’t have money to spend and you don’t constitute ‘effective demand’. But it does show how capitalism is using technology to engineer the inefficiencies (including the people) out of the productive process. It is fully automated luxury capitalism – driven by profit, of course, but entirely amenable to full-scale socialist adoption.

Meanwhile, what happens to the workers displaced by machines? According to the World Economic Forum, 50 per cent of workplace jobs will be done by machines by 2025, up from 29 per cent today. All the low-end, low-skilled jobs are disappearing, and future employability is likely to involve running faster and faster just to stand still. The WEF says that workers will on average need 101 days of retraining by 2022. Workers know which way the wind is blowing, and are desperate to get this training, even if it means paying for it themselves. A 2016 survey of 19,000 young workers across 25 countries showed that 95 per cent would be willing to pay for their own up-skilling. This must be music to the ears of bosses, of course.

To make money, capitalism panders to the needs and desires of the paying customer, ignoring as far as inhumanly possible various externalities including the needs and desires of the working employee. The paradox is at that customer and employee are frequently the same person. Thus the peculiar dualistic experience of modern workers, pampered at the weekend and punished in the week. The more stressed and desperate we become, the more we need our booze and bling and big TVs. We are locked in a cycle of abuse and excess, addicted to our luxury fixes and paying for them with poverty and slavery.

Technology is just a tool. We can let capitalism use it against us and in total disregard for the environment, or we can take it away from its elite owners and start using it democratically and sustainably across the world. We don’t have to fully automate socialism if we don’t want to, because too much leisure might become stultifying, but it’s good to know we have technological options.

Paddy Shannon

We Want The Bakery (2019)

From the June 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our approach to the European elections was the same as our approach to national elections, which is that we would take our seats if elected, but we would use it as a platform or tribune to advocate solely for socialism.

The limited freedom of movement that the EU has afforded some workers is one of the few benefits of EU membership for ordinary people; but let’s also remember that the EU is preventing freedom of movement elsewhere, effectively drowning refugees in the Mediterranean. The question of who ‘we’ (i.e. capitalists) will find to exploit if EU workers are not here is not our concern as socialists representing the working class. We want a world without any exploitation.

What exists today is a limited political democracy (although elections are massively subverted by donations and vested interests). But there’s no economic democracy: we must all work for an employer who will exploit us, or we will starve. And no democracy in distribution – 8 men have as much wealth as half the world’s population. So we need a truly democratic society where ordinary people control production and distribution.

We are a party with a fully democratic structure that reflects the kind of society we want – no leader, run by members, no personality cult.

We have no intention of trying to reform capitalism, an approach that cannot work. We don’t advocate a mere ‘reorganisation of poverty’. We live right now in a society of potential abundance. Therefore we don’t need a system of rationing, which is all that a money system is. We need to unlock the wealth that is being kept from us and use it to transform society.

We don’t want crumbs, we want the bakery.

Half the World (2019)

Book Review from the June 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Dawn of Eurasia: On the Trail of the New World Order by Bruno Maçães Penguin £9.99.

The boundary between Europe and Asia is not clearly marked, unlike those between other continents, so it is hardly surprising that people have long referred to a ‘supercontinent’ termed Eurasia. Nor is it surprising that a region which contains Japan, China, India, Russia and the European Union is likely to play a crucial strategic and economic role in future years. So the general point of this book, written by a former Portuguese politician, is not very original, but it does contain some interesting specific discussions, partly based on a six-month journey that Maçães took around parts of Eurasia in 2015–16.

Events in Ukraine have increased tensions between Russia and the West, leading Russia to closer ties with China, as an export market and a source of investment. Russia will supply natural gas to​ China for a period of thirty years, and the construction of the pipeline has begun. Rather than war being the continuation of politics, as Clausewitz claimed, now ‘Pipelines are the continuation of war by other means’.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative naturally receives a lot of attention here, but there are also references to potential problems. So India’s participation is in doubt, on the grounds of unsustainable debt burdens being created. Things have become more problematic recently, with India not attending the project’s summit meeting held this April, and many calling for less reliance on coal and less emphasis on China as the sole mover behind the Belt and Road. Yet it is also intended to expand the project, with plans in Russia and China for an ‘Ice Silk Road’ across the Arctic, which would give China an alternative sea route to Western Europe and the Atlantic.

Russia is the moving force behind the Eurasian Economic Union, formed in 2015, aimed at free trade and compatible regulations. Its other members are Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia (which, under Russian pressure, abandoned any intentions to join the European Union). As for India, it could become a considerable naval power, helping to defend massive infrastructure undertakings along the Indian Ocean coastline to facilitate trade between India and China.

On his trip round parts of Eurasia, Maçães visited Yiwu, a city two hours by train south from Shanghai. Traders come there from Pakistan, the Middle East and Africa to purchase Chinese goods. It is a big market for toys, among other things, with around 100,000 stalls in total, and has a direct train connection to Madrid. He talked to a Chinese woman and her Indian husband, who met at the market and now sell glass hardware; their daughter is ‘a product of Indian and Chinese collaboration’.

Paul Bennett

When Profit Is All (2019)

From the June 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Urban-Rural Imbalance?

Current global facts and figures on the urban-rural divide reveal disturbing numbers of people in both urban and rural locations living in desperate situations. The capitalist agenda is to profit from whatever scheme is dreamed up and implemented without regard for the externalities which, in this case, are people. There are plans being implemented around the world to remove millions of individuals from millions of acres of productive farmland, to empty the land of people in favour of huge agribusiness projects which can reap significant profits for corporations from mono-crops using vastly reduced labour numbers and, therefore, costs.

The typical plan is to move those uprooted into, or more often to the edge of, ever-expanding towns and cities as cheap labour. The plan may work well for the owners, the companies and their shareholders, but what of the disenfranchised, the millions uprooted and forced into unknown environments where they have no useful skills, how well does it work for them? They are being forced there ostensibly to work in construction, manufacturing and the service sector but it has become obvious that there is a huge insufficiency of employment available for the massive numbers and consequently millions of those displaced live in abject poverty.

This is exactly what the World Bank had directed India to do in 1996. It wanted India to move 400 million people from rural to urban areas by 2015. These are ‘agricultural refugees’ swarming into the cities looking for menial jobs. It is primarily through this decision that over the years, in addition to more or less static farm incomes, public sector investments in agriculture were also kept low, hovering between 0.3 to 0.5 percent of GDP during the period 2011 to 2017. Total investments, both public and private, have also been declining steadily – from 3.1 percent of GDP in 2011-12 to 2.2 percent in 2016-17. Compare this with the tax concessions being given to industry, which is in the region of 5 percent of GDP. Agriculture, which employs 50 percent of the country’s population, has simply been starved of public sector investments in order to achieve the desired results.

The Indian Congress has now admitted that direct income support is urgently required to lift the poorest of the poor from abject poverty, these poorest being a large proportion of small and marginal farmers. The Economic Survey 2016 revealed the average income of farming families in 17 states of India, approximately half the country, is about £220 per annum, less than £20 per month (for perspective this is similar to the amount granted to defence service employees and also to officers of the Supreme Court as their laundry allowance). For some international comparison, average domestic support per farmer, country by country: US $60,586, Canada $16,562, Japan $10,149, EU $6,762, China $863, Brazil $345, India $227.

With regard to India as one example, a quote from a British colonial administrator, Lord Metcalfe, in 1830, is illustrative: ‘Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down but the village community remains the same. It is in a high degree conducive to their happiness, and to the enjoyment of a great portion of freedom and independence’. His idea was that to control India the British would need to undermine this independence of the rural majority – which they did. And following independence India’s subsequent leaders continued on this path of control and subservience through several generations to the present. The current Prime Minister Modi has announced that India is one of the most ‘business friendly’ countries in the world (India is now in compliance with World Bank directives on ‘Ease of Doing Business’ and ‘Enabling the Business of Agriculture’). When we see terms like these we are looking at capitalist-framed initiatives and minimal research shows that both of these directives promote environment-destroying policies, have little regard for local populations, and are based on global free market principles.

Many environmentalists from around the world will be aware of the horrifying numbers of farmers’ deaths in India from suicide, something in the region of 400,000 over the recent 20 years – 20,000 every year. The most significant reason being overwhelming debt. And, in fact, the government declined to publish the number of deaths for the last two years.

In addition to the numbers of farmers being displaced, in April of this year international environmental organisations appealed to India’s Supreme Court and UN organisations to prevent forced evictions of millions of Indian’s forest dwellers from their traditional, ancestral lands.

Health or Wealth?

Farming worldwide has, especially in the last four decades, become more and more of a burden for individual farmers around the globe, who are always under pressure for reasons out of their control. Studies on the harm done to the environment and the contamination of water, earth and consequently food – are these to be ignored too because profit comes first?

As new studies continue to point to a direct link between the widely-used glyphosate herbicide and various forms of cancer, the agribusiness lobby fights relentlessly to ignore or discredit evidence of damage to humans and other entities. Bayer AG, which now owns Monsanto, is currently facing something in the order of 11,000 cases in US courts brought by individuals claiming serious health effects from exposure to the chemical glyphosate found in the herbicide Roundup. Several recent cases have found in favour of the plaintiffs who have been awarded millions and even billions of dollars in compensation.

In a long-term animal study several years ago by a French team headed by Eric Seralini it was demonstrated that even ultra-low levels of glyphosate herbicides cause non-alcoholic liver disease. The levels rats were exposed to, per kg of body weight, were far lower than what is allowed in the US food supply. According to the Mayo Clinic currently, after four decades or more of pervasive use of glyphosate, 100 million – one in three Americans – now have liver disease. These diagnoses are in some individuals as young as 8 years old.

“The jury saw for themselves internal company documents demonstrating that, from day one, Monsanto has never had any interest in finding out whether Roundup is safe,” an attorney for the couple, R. Brent Wisner, said in a statement sent to CBS News. “Instead of investing in sound science, they invested millions in attacking science that threatened their business agenda.” Source: CBS News link

While most attention is understandably drawn to the human effects of exposure to glyphosate, the most widely-used agriculture chemical in the world today, independent scientists are beginning to look at another alarming effect of the agrochemical– its effect on essential soil nutrients. In a study of the health of soils in the EU, the online journal Politico.eu found that the effects of spraying glyphosate on the major crops in European agriculture is having disastrous consequences on soil health.

Scientists at Austria’s University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna showed that casting activity of earthworms had nearly disappeared from the surface of farmland within three weeks of glyphosate application. Casting, being the process of worms pushing fertile soils to the surface as they burrow, is vital for healthy soil and plant nutrition. A study at Holland’s Wageningen University of topsoil samples from more than 300 soil sites across the EU found that 83 percent of the soils contained one or more pesticide residues. Evidence of soil experts is increasingly revealing clear links between the use of pesticides such as glyphosate and dramatic drops in soil fertility and the collapse of microbe systems essential to healthy soil. Worms are one of the most essential. It’s well-established that earthworms play a vital role in healthy soil nutrients. Soils lacking these are soils that deprive us of the essentials we need for healthy diets. This is a pandemic problem of soil depletion emerging globally over the past four decades, notably the same time frame that use of pesticides and herbicides has exploded worldwide. Earthworms are beneficial as they enhance soil nutrient cycling and enhance other beneficial soil micro-organisms, and the concentration of large quantities of nutrients easily assimilated by plants. In addition to its effects on earthworms it has also been established that glyphosate can kill specific fungi and bacteria that plants need to suck up nutrients.

While average yields of major grains such as rice, wheat and maize have more than doubled since 1960, the use of glyphosate-based herbicides has risen 15-20 fold. Glyphosate is the base chemical component for some 750 different brands of herbicide worldwide in addition to Monsanto-Bayer’s Roundup. Glyphosate residues have been found in tap water, orange juice, children’s urine, breast milk, snacks, beer, wine, cereals, eggs, oatmeal, wheat products, and most conventional foods tested. Since the Monsanto Roundup patent expired it is clear that regulatory bodies in the US, EU and China (which now produces more glyphosate than Monsanto) among others, are ignoring the various dangers which have been proved.

Capitalism’s Miseries

In January the Oakland Institute sounded the alarm on the latest attack by the World Bank on poor and indigenous people around the world. The World Bank’s Scheme to Privatize the Commons details how the Bank’s prescribed reforms, via a new land indicator in the Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) project, promotes large-scale land acquisitions and the expansion of agribusinesses in the developing world. This new indicator is now a key element of the larger EBA project, which dictates pro-business reforms that governments should conduct in the agricultural sector. Initiated as a pilot in 38 countries in 2017, the land indicator is expected to be expanded to 80 countries in 2019. The project is funded by US and UK governments and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The EBA’s main recommendations to governments include formalising private property rights, easing the sale and lease of land for commercial use, systematising the sale of public land by auction to the highest bidder, and improving procedures for expropriation. Countries are scored on how well they implement the Bank’s policy advice. The scores then help determine the volume of aid money and foreign investment they receive.

Amidst flaws detailed in the report is the Bank’s prescription to developing countries’ governments, particularly in Africa, to transfer public lands with ‘potential economic value’ to private, commercial use, so that the land can be put to its supposed ‘best use’. Claiming that low-income countries do not manage public land in an effective manner, the Bank pushes for the privatization of public land as the way forward. This ignores the fact that millions of rural poor live and work on these lands, which are essential for their livelihoods while representing ancestral assets with deep social and cultural significance. It also ignores the basic fact that these small farmers have more than fulfilled the needs of the population for generations and it is the principles of capitalism that is being upset by them.

French think tank Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) has shown that agro-ecological farming alone has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Europe by 47 per cent and thereby keep global temperature rise below 2 degrees. Another important factor revealed shows that a transition from intensive farming to agro-ecological farming will bring down pesticides consumption by 380,000 tonnes per year in Europe alone. What could that figure be globally?

Most climate mitigation studies point to more crop intensification which means a hyper-intensive farming system leading to more toxic soils, more water mining resulting in more empty aquifers, and more contamination of the food chain. This methodology was behind the launch of the ‘New Vision for Agriculture’ at the World Economic Forum 2009 aiming at increasing food production by 20 percent, decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent, and reducing rural poverty by 20 percent every decade. The list of companies ready to initiate the ‘New Vision for Agriculture’ clearly shows that this ‘new vision’ is simply another version of the ‘old vision’ – capitalist necessity for profit. Included in the list are Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), BASF, Bunge Limited, Cargill, Coca-Cola, DuPont, General Mills, Kraft Foods, Metro AG, Monsanto, Nestlé, PepsiCo, SABMiller, Syngenta, Unilever, Wal-Mart, and Yara International.

Chemical or Ecological?

The UN-sponsored TEEB initiative – The Economics of Ecosystems and  Biodiversity – for agriculture and food, has in its latest study warned of a significant contribution to greenhouse gas emissions emanating from farming practices, from cutting down forests to make land available for cultivation to food waste dumped in landfills, accounting for between 47 to 51 percent of global gas emissions. Contrary to the ‘New Vision for Agriculture’ the IDDRI study mentioned above addresses these problems with the aim of eliminating them.

Returning to India new studies investigating the relationship between intensive agriculture and organic farming with regard to climate change and crop yield have revealed some interesting truths, contrary to many earlier claims by transnational corporations. A major initiative was launched when village elders in Punnukula village in Khamam district of Andhra Pradesh came together more than 15 years ago to stop the use of chemical pesticides. This local initiative led to the introduction of Non-Pesticides Management (NPM) under the Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture (CMSA) expanding to 3.6 million acres without the use of pesticides.

Following local enthusiasm and acceptance by the state, Andhra Pradesh launched Zero Budget Natural Farming (ZBNF) aiming to bring non-chemical agriculture to its nearly 6 million farmers by the end of the year 2024. Just one year after the introduction of Zero Budget Natural Farming a study by Azim Premji University showed that crop yields in fact had gone up from 11 to 79 percent – 11 percent in rice and the highest, 79 percent, in aubergine.

The challenges both facing and threatening the vast majority of the global population stem from the totally encompassing capitalist system. The questions to be asked are crucial for the well-being of the planet, from plankton to human. How shall we approach the challenges of global warming? Should populations be forced to move from their homes? Can we accept being poisoned by what we eat and drink? These and other issues all require answers. We have a single answer to them all – the solution is socialism.

Janet Surman

Seeing Visions (2019)

From the June 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

What comes to mind when you think of the word ‘revolution’? A spinning vinyl disc, a marketing cliché, heroic Bolsheviks clambering over iron railings, or queues of innocents being lined up for the firing squad?

The reason why more people don’t consider revolution as a serious political option is because their thoughts are instantly derailed by the mental pictures that this conjures up. Either revolution is meaningless because everything nowadays is a ‘revolution’ of some sort or other, or it is a blood-soaked Armageddon where nobody wants to go, no matter how desperate things get.

Arguably the lack of a mainstreamed, coherent vision of revolution, or of the society made possible by it, is what holds people back more than anything else. People already know that capitalism is a miserable system that’s rigged by and for the rich, and they don’t need to be told over and over again. But who’s offering a clear, understandable alternative, with a roadmap for how to get there?

The Socialist Party has, over the years, attempted to fill in this blank, however, we’ve always been reluctant to speculate too wildly, for several reasons. First, technology changes almost by the day, and what’s possible changes along with it. If we’d cared to describe our vision of a future socialist society, when we started out back in 1904, we would no doubt have been thrilling at talk of gas lamps in every street and a telephone in every town hall. Second, taste is a very time and culture-specific thing. What appeals to you might be off-putting to someone else, and there’s no point deterring people from building a free society simply because of idle speculation about what some of the furniture might look like. Third, and most importantly, it’s not up to us anyway, it’s up to the people who will establish socialism, which is you and people like you. If you want to live in bucolic forested idylls, as William Morris supposed back in the industrial 1890s, then doubtless you’ll make the arrangements. If you hanker for futuristic circular cities and gadgets galore, as Jacque Fresco and Zeitgeist imagined ten or so years back, then you’ll do what’s necessary to make it so. Or perhaps you’ll do both.

Not everyone shares our reservations about building castles in the air. In this issue, we consider two other images or ‘models’ of non-market socialism, which come at the subject from very different perspectives. First, there is the notion of fully automated luxury communism (FALC) devised by Aaron Bastani and James Butler of the alternative news outlet Novara Media. The idea of this is simple: machines are going to do all the work so we can just kick back and relax – once we’ve relieved the capitalist class of global control, that is.

Without rehearsing any of the criticisms that follow, or rehashing earlier ones (see Pathfinders, May 2015), it’s worth asking ‘is this the right strategic vision to put to workers’? FALC is a very clever approach in that it challenges head-on the idea of inevitable scarcity which is drilled into us today as part of capitalism’s manufactured artificial reality, and thus informs people’s too-ready assumptions about revolution as a time of misery, shortages, hard work and self-denial. Moreover, it imparts an appealing tongue-in-cheek humour to a subject more often plastered with a po-faced puritan frown. It feels young and fresh, and new, and now, in a way, no Marxist tract ever seems to. Trouble is, it might be going too far to the other extreme and risk looking like a Pollyanna paradise that’s got drunk on its own optimism. Workers might be seduced by a vision of luxury communism that makes it all sound easy and fun, but on the other hand, they may recall that if a thing sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Are they going to gamble everything on an idea of revolution that doesn’t seem to have considered all the externalities?

Externalities are also a problem in the second view, the model of ‘Walmart-socialism’. This is the idea that if a huge global company with hundreds of thousands of staff can operate perfectly well without its own internal market, then so could the entire planet, and that large global companies are in fact leading the way towards this new social reality. Leaving aside the whole question of central planning which we look at elsewhere, one or two obvious differences between a capitalist megacorp and socialist society present themselves. In the first place, capitalist companies are not democratic but autocratic, even if some limited decision-making is distributed through the system. ‘Citizens’ (ie workers) are not free not to do as they’re told, or free to do something else, or free to change their mind or walk off the job. No matter how managers like to pretend otherwise, a coercive element runs through capitalist companies like Brighton through a stick of rock. This is in stark contrast to socialist society which is predicated on the idea of nobody being anybody’s boss. Secondly, companies like Walmart are not obliged to factor in their wider impact on society, people, or the environment, when devising their future growth strategies. The only thing that really counts in a capitalist business is money, and how much they are going to make over their overheads. What this means is that people, society and the environment are inevitably pushed down the list of priorities, and they suffer accordingly. That’s why we have global warming, and the ‘bottom billion’, and famines and wars. In this sense using a capitalist enterprise as a model of a kind of proto-socialism seems more than bizarre, it’s a travesty.

All in all though, it’s good that people are discussing visions of the future, even if they can’t always agree on the details. Despite the risks inherent in such speculations, workers arguably have to see the goal before they can kick the ball in that direction. Hopefully, this discussion will help to focus minds, without moving the goalposts too often.

Paddy Shannon

The Strange World of FALC: Consumer Fantasy? (2019)

Book Review from the June 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

The conquest of scarcity

Aaron Bastani, co-founder and senior editor at the alternative media organisation Novara Media, argues in his book Fully Automated Luxury Communism (published by Verso this month) that current technological advances are on the way toward overcoming scarcity and making ‘luxury communism’ – a society of abundance for all – possible for the first time. What Marx foresaw as the hypothetical result of further development of the productive forces is now rapidly turning into reality. On this basic point, the author is in full agreement with the World Socialist Movement, although there is scope for debate over exactly when a society of abundance became or will become possible.

In Section I of the book Bastani provides an overview of social development, with an emphasis on three great turning points or ‘disruptions’ – the first associated with the birth of agriculture, the second with the emergence of machine industry, and the third with the new information-based technologies whose inherent tendency (because ‘information wants to be free’) is to give rise to ‘fully automated luxury communism’, or FALC.

Section II is by far the best argued and most valuable part of the book. Its five chapters are devoted to each of the spheres of technology that are playing major roles in the ‘third disruption’:

• automation – not only of manual labour but also of many intellectual activities;
• renewable energy (mainly solar);
• ‘mining the sky’ – that is, extracting resources from heavenly bodies (initially, the moon and near-earth asteroids);
• genetic engineering to ‘edit’ disease-related segments out of the human genome;
• genetic engineering of organic tissues to brew ‘food without animals’ (substitutes for meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, etc).

Developments in these spheres are set to create ‘extreme supply’ and thereby banish scarcity in labour, energy, resources, healthcare and nutrition, respectively. At the same time, they point the way toward improving the environment, mitigating global warming, coping with demographic trends like an aging population and ending cruelty to animals.

More attention might have been given to the potential risks as well as benefits of the new technologies. One wonders about plans to pull a passing mineral-rich asteroid into earth orbit for ease of access, and whether a miscalculation might send it hurtling down and crashing into the Earth. One wonders about proposals to remove disease-related segments from the human genome, and whether the ‘editors’ might inadvertently remove genetic material that performs essential functions for the organism.

Bastani acknowledges that the emergence of the technological preconditions for communism will not be enough in itself to bring the new society into existence. The political preconditions are just as essential. In the absence of a vast popular movement for communism, some at least of the new technologies are indeed likely to widen social inequalities. For instance, automation could well generate mass unemployment on a scale hitherto unknown, while benefits to health and longevity from human genetic engineering will accrue mostly to the wealthy.

Thus Section III of the book focuses on how to build up a popular movement for FALC. Like most left-wing writers, the author aims to achieve revolutionary change by promoting reforms rather than by directly spreading revolutionary ideas, his unspoken expectation being that ordinary people will not be receptive to such ideas. However, some of his reform proposals do have the merit of prefiguring the new society. In particular, he is critical of the demand for a Universal Basic Income, preferring to campaign instead for the expansion of Universal Basic Services – that is, freely available public services like healthcare, transport, education and information.

Especially from the point of view of readers in other countries, the singular focus on British politics is unfortunate. It is unclear whether he fully appreciates the need to organise for communism at the global level – a need dictated by the global nature of capitalism itself.

Perhaps the author’s concept of communism is a little simplistic. The new society will not necessarily be fully automated. Even if near-complete automation is technically possible, people may well prefer not to implement it. They may choose to automate only work that is boring and unpleasant while preserving human activities that are – or can be made to be – interesting and satisfying. Partial automation (PALC not FALC) may be accompanied by a revival of handicrafts, assisted as convenient by high-tech gadgets.

There are also reasons to be less sanguine than Bastani concerning the  impact of climate chaos and the prospects for rapidly restoring the planet’s ecosphere. No doubt the falling price of solar energy facilitates the transition away from fossil fuels, but the oil, gas and coal bosses are still able to hold back this process by various means, such as using their political clout to block or eliminate state subsidies for renewables while maximising state subsidies for fossil fuel companies. And how much more damage will terrestrial mining do to our environment by the time mining is moved off-planet? Even when we do achieve communism the ‘paradise’ promised in the title of Section III may not be within reach any time soon.

Stefan

Prosecuting Capitalism: The Case For and Against (2019)

From the June 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

We look at some arguments that might be presented in defence of capitalism and provide answers to them.

* Capitalism has had an overwhelmingly positive influence on the world. Three hundred years ago, before the development of capitalism, most people lived lives of unremitting toil, in near-destitution. They suffered poor health and had far shorter lifespans than today. They enjoyed none of the conveniences of modern times, hardly travelled to other places and had little by way of entertainment or relaxation. Capitalism is not perfect, but it has undoubtedly transformed people’s lives massively for the better.

– There is no denying capitalism’s impact on people and the world we inhabit, but this needs to be put into context. The development of capitalism involved wars and genocide, as colonialism led to the conquest of most of the world and rival states fought each other. Slavery and the slave trade caused untold misery and were an integral part of the rise of capitalism. There has been huge environmental damage, and the conditions of famine and starvation that affect hundreds of millions now are human-made, not natural. Even in developed countries, there is widespread poverty, as shown by the increase in food banks. Moreover, pre-capitalist societies were by no means as dreadful as claimed, with hunter-gatherer economies having been described as ‘the original affluent society’, since they could satisfy their material wants through a few hours’ labour each day.


* Capitalism emphasises personal responsibility and ensures that rewards depend on a person’s own contributions. Lazy people who take no responsibility for their actions and lifestyle do not deserve to do well.

– Capitalism absolutely does not mean that people are rewarded on the basis of their own efforts. For one thing, capitalism stops many from working, as they cannot be employed in such a way as to create profits for an employer. For another, plenty of people work hard throughout their lives and end up with next to nothing. Lastly, those who really benefit, in terms of both wealth and power, do not do so on the basis of their own work but by exploiting others. Nobody becomes a billionaire by working ten thousand times harder than the average worker.


* Capitalism offers equality of opportunity. Everyone has the same chance to make a success of their life. It is not a rigid society ruled by an aristocratic elite that nobody else can join.

– There is simply no equality of opportunity under capitalism. Some people inherit fortunes and benefit from expensive educations, while others are born in poverty and suffer from their youngest days from ill health and dreadful living conditions, and racism and sexism also prevent many from realising their potential. A very few people start out poor and become extremely rich, but that does not alter the fact that capitalism is in no way a ‘level playing field’, and that it necessarily involves massive inequalities of outcome.


* All attempts to replace capitalism with an alternative have ended in disaster. Look at Russia after 1917 and China after 1949: vicious dictatorships with reigns of terror that led to millions of deaths.

– Despite the rhetoric surrounding them, these were not in fact alternatives to capitalism at all. In Russia and China, far more people were forced to become wage workers, and the system of commodities, where goods and services are produced for sale, was greatly expanded. The state-owned the main means of production (land, factories, offices, etc) and the minority who controlled the state effectively became the capitalist class. This was a system of state capitalism, which differed in some ways from private capitalism, but still retained the main features of all varieties of capitalism.


* Some impractical dreamers do talk about a world without capitalism and the wages system, where there would supposedly be free access to what has been produced. But this would never function in the way envisaged, as most people would simply not perform any work and would just leave that to a few keen types while doing nothing themselves.

– Even under capitalism, there are many many examples of people doing voluntary work, from charities and sports clubs to lifeboats and mountain rescue. They perform this work because they know it is useful and for the companionship it offers. Moreover, it has been shown that volunteering is good for volunteers, in terms of their health and their social contacts. In a society without wages and employment, steps would be taken to make work as enjoyable and rewarding as possible, including shorter working hours.


* In any case, there is simply no prospect of a system like that ever coming into existence. While they grumble and want small changes here and there, the vast majority of people are – quite rightly – content with capitalism and do not wish to see it replaced.

– But ideas do change over time. No one believes any longer in the divine right of kings; nobody in a developed capitalist country nowadays would argue that women should not have the vote; cremation was once looked on as completely unacceptable; ideas relating to gay and lesbian relationships have changed enormously over the last half-century or so; racist views, while still influential, are far less prevalent than they were a couple of generations ago; religion no longer plays the central role in almost everyone’s life that it once did; awareness of environmental issues has increased enormously in recent years. Ideas and opinions do alter, if not always as quickly as some of us would like. Currently, most people are indeed content with capitalism, but people’s ideas are not set in stone, and the examples above and the shift away from allegiance to traditional parties show that they can certainly change.

Paul Bennett

More FALC: The Walmart hypothesis (2019)

Book Review from the June 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Can Walmart Tell Us Anything About Socialism?

Internationally, there is a resurgence in discussing socialism, not just in the American sense of faintly looking at a welfare state, but credibly and seriously taking on the idea of a co-operative democratic abolition of market allocation of goods and resources. Books like Four futures: life after capitalism by Peter Frase have already lead the way, including among the options a world of abundance without money (although reading the text, it seems the author’s preferred or most likely future was some sort of regulated market in a post-ecological-collapse world). That book sprang from Jacobin magazine, and it seems that other contributors to that magazine are beginning to produce other useful examinations of the way towards a market-free world.

The latest example is Philips and Rozworski’s The People’s Republic of Walmart: how late-stage capitalism gives way to early-stage fully automated luxury communism. This book puts forward the simple case that firms like Walmart are in effect massive planned economies, close to the size and scale of the Soviet Union in terms of the number of products and processes they have to employ to run their enterprise. They also note how 3rd party firms that trade with them are effectively locked into their productive ecosystem.

Much of this is achieved algorithmically, with resources being poured into tracking stock through the system, knowing where it is at all times, and using vast storage capacity. The algorithms calculate what resources are available nearest to the point at which they are required, and how to get them there quickly. The authors give the counter example of Sears, which imploded after implementing an internal market and competition within its firm (under libertarian ideological commitment from its directors).

Of course, Walmart and Amazon are planning to exploit, and get the most out of, their workers and advantages over commercial rivals. It is not so much an example to be emulated, but a living demonstration that wide-scale economic allocation via planned structures works. Further evidence is found in a nuanced description of the history of the NHS, noting how it has gone from an ad hoc replication of existing structures, without conscious planning to serve community needs, to being carved up by an internal market. The authors note that it has always existed as a hybrid between the firms of GPs and the hospitals and the pharmaceutical industry, and that attempts to implement society-wide input and control were stymied at Westminster.

Democracy is seen as an inherent good and a necessity for wide-scale planning in an economy, if it is to serve people’s needs. Phillips and Rozworski note that a significant part of the failure of the Soviet Union’s planned economy was because of dictatorial intervention preventing the free flow of information between productive units, and removing their capacity to respond. The other living example they cite is Project Cybersyne in Chile.

British cyberneticist Stafford Beer was called in to help the Allende government implement a planned economy. Given the state of the country at the time, he had to improvise a system of telex and phone lines. His systems were credited with enabling the government to defeat a crippling lorry drivers’ strike, by routing key resources around disruptions and allocating available lorries. The principles behind Beer’s cybernetics were thus not all about enslaving people to the machine, but allowing distributed horizontal decision-making between relatively autonomous units with oversight and regulation to achieve common ends.

If all of this sounds remarkably familiar, it is because this is what we have been saying in our slightly less fashionably way since we were formed. Indeed, our pamphlet Socialism as a Practical Alternative, largely written by the late Pieter Lawrence, based a description of socialism on using the regulated stock control models already developed by the likes of Walmart, coupled with formation clearing houses to allow communities and groups to work to enable production for needs.

It’s clear, though, that while technology has advanced, along with the experience of wide-scale economic organisation, this is not a prerequisite for socialism. Pencil and paper-based systems could have handled the work (and probably still could), but the fact that machines and computers allow us to do it faster, and are increasingly presenting the possibility of co-ordinated democratic production in people’s minds, is making the topic more popular.

Philips and Rozworski cite the work of Scottish academic Paul Cockshott with his demonstration that an economy-wide plan is computable (especially if we exclude millions of null combinations of goods, arguably Walmart does not compute all the possible combinations of goods, but works with what it has and approximates efficient allocation-adjusting over time). Cockshott is not alone in academia, and he and collaborators have made impressive inroads into the possibilities of computational planning through vertical integration of sub-systems. It would be well to think what would be the result of the combined efforts of the best and brightest computational minds being directed towards co-operative economics and the satisfaction of needs, rather than algorithmic stock trading.

We have discussed in these pages before the types of innovations in thought and process that will enable us to make socialism work on a worldwide scale: Leonid Kantarovich’s linear programming; Gale and Shaply’s stable matching algorithm; Brams and Taylor’s envy-free cake-cutting algorithm, etc. The intellectual progress for the machinery of co-ordinating activity is improving, even if the political co-ordination to pick it up and use it is not yet as developed. It is good that these obscure and complex lines of enquiry are beginning to get serious popular attention.

Some commentators have begun to compare capitalism (and/or corporations) to a vast out-of-control Artificial Intelligence, programmed to maximise profit. This is potentially a powerful way of depicting capitalism: but the risk is, in coming up with algorithms and procedures to create a planned economy, that we would end up replacing capitalism with simply a rival AI, rather than returning to a human-centred system.

Demonstrating that we can plan and rationalise resources in the way that capitalism can and does is not a clincher for socialism: it could be argued that in an ends-based economy, using labour inefficiently could well become a goal (as William Morris pictured in his utopian novel News from Nowhere). The most powerful message we can send is that there is not one way to run an economy, and the only real limit is the power of our imaginations.

The tag-line of ‘fully automated luxury communism’ that is gaining some popularity may help raise the profile of consciously planning the economy co-operatively.

Pik Smeet

Editorial: Boanerges Belligerent. (1908)

Editorials from the April 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Boanerges Belligerent.

In other words, John Burns rampant. In fact, he is overdoing it

His greatness, John Burns himself admits; but it is evident that it was not the “Great Man’’ himself, but the workers who followed him, who were sold to the Liberal Government for lucrative office.

And the capitalist Press is at times cynically frank in discussing the merits of its faithful servants. Thus the Observer, doing the “candid friend,” said (15/3/08)

  Mr. Burns may play a strong role in the national struggle against Socialism, and we like his unstooping courage. But he overdoes the part of Boanerges belligerent. We do not want him to lose his influence over the masses. We want him to retain it; but unless he modifies his later manner his words will carry less weight with the masses than those of any man in England. Once that is seen, his present popularity with plutocrats will fade. These are not pleasant things to say, but they must be said if the President of the Local Government Board is to be prevented from spoiling his career by excess of temperament.

Clearly if John is not careful he will have j nothing left to sell.

Rival Paradises.

General Booth says: “The Socialists want to make the world a paradise without having a paradise people.” Is the General fearful of the competition of a paradise here below with his problematic paradise to come? Or does he expect hell to breed angels ?

The Socialist knows that a paradise people could only be born of paradise conditions; but Christians expect figs to grow on thistles.

And does not this reveal a fundamental cleavage between Socialism and Christianity? The Christian looks on man as the creator of his circumstances; the Socialist looks on man as the product, without, of course, ignoring the reflex action of past environment through the individual.

The environment is almost all powerful, and the secret of the promise of man’s future mastery lies in his growing knowledge of the laws of material development and his consequent greater adaptability to these laws.

To the Christian, evolution is man made ; to the Socialist, evolution has made man.

Well does the General serve his masters by directing the gaze of the poor from material conditions to mansions in the sky; but his chief merit must be, in the eyes of the masters, to have organised the greatest '‘free labour” association in existence.

The Doom of the Small Baker. (1908)

From the April 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Effect of an Eight Hours Day on Small Masters.

The officials of the Bakers’ Union continue to make pathetic appeals for working-class support for their poor little bantling, the Eight Hours Bill for Bakers, on the grounds that it would, if carried into law, solve the unemployed problem so far as bakers are concerned.

Now as the large number of small bakers still carrying on business in London and the large towns are themselves working much longer and harder than their overwrought employees, and spend their Sabbath, when not in Chapel seeking business, posting up their books and doing other necessary clerical work, and are yet unable to keep in a state of solvency, the forcing up of their wages bill by the enactment of a legal eight hour day, would be, in many instances, the last straw, and their shops would be closed forthwith. Even now the journeymen, after working a “night’’ of eighteen or twenty hours on Friday-Saturday, often cannot get their wages when they finish, but have to call round late on Saturday night, after the barrowman has brought money in from the rounds.

Immediately, therefore, the new conditions began to operate, the factory owner would scoop in the trade of the struggling masters, with the inevitable result that in a very short time the already large army of unemployed bakers would be augmented to an enormous extent.

The baking industry a few months ago was all agog because of the wonderful machinery on view at Islington. Since that time that “labor saver” has been installed in various factories in London and the provinces, and now several balance sheets are going the rounds of the Baking Trade showing the capacity of such machinery in actual every night practice. In one particular factory five hundred sacks of flour are being turned into one hundred thousand loaves by eleven men, and in another four- hundred and eighty to five hundred sacks are done by fifteen men, the extra four men being required in this instance because the bread made is “fancy.” To-day the small master has a difficulty in squeezing thirteen sacks out of each man he employs. Obviously, therefore, it is only a question of time and the small man must finally disappear altogether, even under the present conditions of unlimited hours for a limited wage, and any change whatsoever can only result in speeding the departing guest into the ranks of the proletariat. In the factory bakers are not wanted: any “unskilled” man of average intelligence can do what is required, and for laborers’ wages.

The eight hour day will come, whether it be legalised or not, in fact, it is here in many instances because the capitalist has found that after that period labour is dear at nothing an hour. He can suck all the labour force out of a man in that time, and just as he has no use for superseded machinery made of steel, he has no use for the human machine until it has recuperated. It does not pay him to run expensive machinery with men from whom all the energy has been pumped. He therefore selects a new gang from the large crowd who are always waiting at the gate, in all weathers, night and day. If by any chance he retains a gang for a short period over the normal day, so alive is he to the quality of their labour that he actually pays them at a lower rate for overtime—in some instances as low as 2d. per hour, and even then by a pretty “wangle” is able to comply with the Trade Union clause in bis contracts with Boards of Guardians and other public bodies.

The “big pot” in the trade is in favour of a legal eight hour day, and the reason is not because he is bubbling over with the milk of human kindness and sympathy for the journeymen bakers, but because he has everything to gain from it, and the poor devil who is hanging on by his eyebrows stands to lose what little he has.

What are we to think of those posing as leaders who are holding up such a palpable sham as a remedy for the miseries of the working baker? Happily an ever increasing number are embracing the only remedy,—Socialism.

W. Watts.

Party Notes. (1908)

Party News from the April 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Clarion of February 7th (Manchester Edition) appeared a Report of the meeting held by the Manchester Central I.L.P. The Report stated that the usual opposition was provided by representatives of the S.P.G.B.

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The Secretary of the Manchester S.P.G.B. wrote the Clarion pointing out that the “usual” opposition was given because the I.L.P. in Manchester (like the Clarion Van in London) does not accept criticism from the S.P.G.B. He held that the time and place to correct misstatements was when and where they were made, and if the I.L.P. wanted unusual opposition all they had to do was to place their platform at the close of the lecture, open to opponents.

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The Clarion said “ Sorry, no room.”

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We think we have heard that before.

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In the same column of answers to correspondents the Clarion said, replying to “The Clarion prides itself on fair play. We want our opponents to let us know their views."

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The Socialist Standard has frequently been complimented on being the best printed and turned-out paper connected with what can be very generally called the Labour movement. There is a new arrival in the shape of the Industrial Unionist, which is probably the worst printed production in the “movement.” In places the errors bristle so thickly as to make the intended meaning difficult to discover.

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The methods of discussion are not the cleanest, for in the first article on the Bankruptcy of Parliamentary Socialism, Labourism and Socialism are used as synonymous terms, and Socialism is made responsible for the political fudge of the Labour Party. This is about as reasonable as blaming Industrial Unionism for the sins of Craft Unionism.

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The S.D.P. in Battersea are evidently not tainted with ” Impossiblism.” On the 11th of March, J. R. McDonald journeyed to Battersea on behalf of the Labour Party. Mr. W. H. Humphreys, S.D.P., “proposed a resolution appreciating the efforts of the Labour Party in the House of Commons, also welcoming the local branch of the Labour Party and wishing it every success."

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An amendment was proposed to the effect that “the meeting fully realised the folly of supporting the political representatives of the capitalist class, Liberal and Tory, and was not content with a mere independent Labour Party, but declared for a pure Socialist Party.”

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The amendment was seconded by D. Carmichael, also of the S.D.P.

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Justice of March 14th contained a report of the Hastings Branch which stated that S.P.G.B’ers had taken part in the bye-election on behalf of the Liberal candidate. This is entirely untrue. Enquires have shown that no member of the S.P.G.B. went to Hastings, and no member of the S.P.G.B. assisted the Liberal candidate.

Dick Kent

Secret Political Funds. (1908)

From the April 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Twenty Labour members voted in the division on Secret Political Funds; ten for the motion and ten against. Thus was “ Labour’s Unity ” demonstrated.

A Resolution on Unity and the Socialist Answer. (1908)

Party News from the April 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Social Democratic Party, 

Tooting Branch.

16/2/08.

Dear Comrade, 

This branch of the S.D.P. considers that the time is ripe for concerted action on the part of all Socialist bodies in the Borough of Wandsworth in the matter of elections and propaganda. I have therefore been instructed to ask you to send two delegates to a meeting to be held at above address on Monday, Feb. 24th at 8, to consider the advisability of forming a Socialist Council on the lines of Battersea and elsewhere. Hoping you may be able to do this.—Yours fraternally,

J. Butchart.

Tooting Branch S.P.G.B. 

23/2/1908.

Dear Sir,—I beg to acknowledge the receipt of yours of the 16th inst. re concerted action on the part of ourselves and other organisations in the district and also asking us to send two delegates to a meeting called to consider the advisability of forming a local Socialist Council.

At the meeting of the Tooting Branch of the S.P.G.B. held on the 19th inst your letter was considered and I was instructed to reply as follows:—

  The Declaration of Principles adopted by the Socialist Party of Great Britain at its formation in 1904 (a copy of which is enclosed) definitely lays it down that we are in hostility to all other political parties, and therefore the Tooting Branch of the S.P.G.B. believing those principles to hold as good to-day as on the first day of their adoption must decline to violate those principles by sending delegates as requested.

  That these principles are amply justified from a Socialist point of view is easily seen without going further afield for evidence than the Borough of Wandsworth. On the 1st November, 1906, there was an election of Borough Councillors for the Tooting Ward. There ran three candidates on a Socialist platform with Socialism as their object and with Socialism as their election programme. There also ran three Labour candidates on whose election programme no word about Socialism appeared, but instead were more than 34 items, the carrying out of the whole of which would have left the workers where they are—in wage slavery. Both the S.D.P. (then S.D.F.) and the I.L.P. publicly supported the "in wage slavery" programme and therefore necessarily opposed the Socialist programme, thereby showing the difference in the object of the parties named and justifying the hostile attitude of the S.P.G.B. towards them. Obviously common ground for election and propaganda purposes does not exist.—Yours sincerely,

Paul Dumenil

Branch Secretary.

Answers To Correspondents. (1908)

From the April 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

N.B. (Manchester).—Since you hold that "The life and teaching of Christ himself were those of a Socialist," you misunderstand both Socialism and the religion of Christ. The Socialist policy is outlined in our Declaration of Principles, and the contention is that these principles are irreconcilable with the cardinal tenets of Christianity. Can you disprove that ?

J.B. (Hulme).—Thanks. Have made use of material where possible.

J.H.H. (Paris).—Thanks.   Translation held over.