Tit-bits from the Capitalist Stewpot (1941)

From the June 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard 

What Mr. Ford thinks.

“Making his annual visit to his plantation here (in Georgia), Mr. Henry Ford again gave expression to his peculiar view of the war, saying that the United States should supply both sides until they collapsed.

Voicing the ‘sincere hope’ that neither side would win, he declared that the suggestion that Germany might one day attack the United States was ‘pure nonsense—a hoax with the sole purpose of getting us into the war.’

‘There is no righteousness in either cause,’ said Mr. Ford. ‘Both are motivated by the same evil impulse, which is greed’.”—(Daily Telegraph, February 17th, 1941.)

Mr. Ford should know something about capitalist greed, for in times of depression he has been quite unscrupulous in discharging workers or putting them on half-time. And to supply both sides—at a profit—is that not also greed ?

* * *

Rowton Houses make a Dividend.

People who think of Rowton Houses as philanthropic institutions, providing cheap beds for extra-poor workers, may have had a shock on reading in The Times (April i7th, 1941) that for 1940 a net profit of £5,455 was made, permitting a dividend of 4 per cent. This compares unfavourably with the previous year, when a £14,621 profit enabled a 4 per cent, tax free dividend to be declared. Though Rowton Houses have evidently been hit by the war, it is clear that there are still plenty of people who are too poor to be able to afford more luxurious accommodation.

* * *

Business in the Far East.

Despite an all-embracing censorship, company reports are still worth reading, and that of the Hong-kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (The Times, March 26th, 1941) is of particular interest. We quote the following extracts: —

“In view of their bearing on exchange and trade balances, I should here mention the various credits and loans which China has received during the year from foreign sources. Detailed particulars have not been made public, but you must be aware that such loans were made chiefly for political reasons. The published announcement dealing with the most recent of the United States loans showed that the donors were desirous that ‘arrangements for purposes of monetary protection and management’ [the words actually used] should be completed. That is satisfactory so far as it goes, but that is all the information which is at present available.”

“As regards Japan, recent regulations issued there seem to be designed to restrict or to drive foreign banks out of business altogether in the same way as banks in Manchuria have already been restricted and, in some cases, driven out. The position awaits further clarification, but in the meantime we have notified our diplomatic authorities, as their intervention seems to be the only action now possible. I will, therefore, say no more about this, nor will I deal with trade in Japan, since it is now under very comprehensive Governmental control.”

* * *

The “Classical” Doctrine.

Writing from Berlin six months before the start of the war, the French Ambassador, M. Coulondre, is quoted as stating, in a despatch to M. Bonnet, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs: —

“In other words, will the Führer be tempted to return to the idea expressed by the author of ‘Mein Kampf’ which, be it said, is identical with the classic doctrine held by the German General Staff, according to which Germany cannot accomplish her high destiny in the East until France has been crushed and, as a consequence, Britain reduced to impotence on the Continent?—(French Yellow Book, Hutchinson, page 91.)

* * *

A Baron’s Romance.

The Star (March 7th, 1941) reports the interesting case of a wealthy baron who induced a young woman to live with him on the understanding that if she did so, he would further her stage ambitions. She was about 18 at the time, and at first refused, so then the baron lived with a more complaisant lady. The young woman, however, subsequently changed her mind, and the union was a fruitful one. The really interesting point about his case, however, is that the newspaper report refers to it as a “romance.” If an affair on somewhat similar lines had occurred in a lower strata of society, we can imagine that it may well have been described in less rosy terms.

* * *

Paint white—Paint black.

For some reason known only to themselves, Graham and Gillies, the advertising agents, republished in The Times (March 1st, 1941) and other papers an advertisement issued by J. Hatchard, of Piccadilly, in 1805, when Bonaparte, not Hitler, was the enemy. The advertisement takes the form of a supposed dialogue between John Bull and Boney. Space forbids us to quote the advertisement in full, but after implying that John Bull wished to remain at peace and that Bonaparte was an enemy of the liberty of the Press and of religion, the dialogue continued : —

“John Bull: Why have you suffered your soldiers to burn so many towns, shed so much innocent blood, destroy cottages as well as palaces so indiscriminately, murder in cold blood thousands of poor men, and ravish thousands of poor women in Italy, in Egypt, in Syria, and lately in Hanover?

Bonaparte: Foolish again, John. I did not merely suffer it—I encouraged it. My object has always been to strike terror. I don’t mince matters. Witness the deliberate massacre of four thousand Turks at Jaffa, who were my prisoners; and my poisoning several hundred of my own soldiers, who were of no use to me.”

To say the least of this advertisement, it is surely a rather indelicate compliment to General de Gaulle and the “Free French Forces.”

R. M.

Notes by the Way: Starvation as an Incentive. (1941)

The Notes by the Way Column from the June 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Starvation as an Incentive.

Correspondence has been going on in The Times as to whether it is possible to run industry without the profit motive. One contributor, Sir Francis Lindley, maintained that the great majority of the human race, when not enslaved, have worked for profit. To which Mr. Julian Huxley replied, pointing out (April 29th, 1941) that “the great majority of men in primitive societies worked for subsistence, and in advanced societies for wages or salaries.”

Some remarks made recently by Mr. Bevin, Minister of Labour, have bearing on this capitalist illusion that workers work because of the prospect of making a profit. Speaking in the House of Commons on April 2nd, Mr. Bevin referred to an M.P. who had said that industry relies on the power of dismissal to maintain discipline. Then he continued : —

“What does that mean ? It means that there is an economic drive on the workman to work, the ability to force your will on another by the imposition of starvation, which inculcates fear and resentment in the other man’s mind. That means that the basic condition upon which your system is run has been starvation or the ability to make another citizen unemployed. Well, that has meant war.”

Speaking on the same subject in a broadcast to America, reported in the Daily Herald (April 26th, 1941), he claimed that experience had shown that an improvement takes place when the threat of the sack is removed: —

“A factor that is becoming apparent is you get better discipline and loyalty with fear of dismissal removed than you do by the threat of it.”

If this improvement can take place under existing conditions, it is an indication of what would be possible when, under Socialism, production is carried on solely for the common good.

The Sunday Express (March 30th, 1941) published a story showing the capacity of the workers to carry on production in the absence of the employer. The latter, an Italian, was interned for nine months, and while he was away ‘his British employees have been running his factory admirably.’ The absent employer, who has not yet been permitted to visit his factory, received a letter from his 200 employees assuring him ‘that they would carry on in my interests until I was able to take charge again.'”

He remarks: “They have done magnificently.”

* * * *

Why the Workers Save

The Times (April 21st 1941) published an article based on first-hand knowledge of the workers’ attitude towards the Government savings campaign. The writer comments on the fact that many workers save in order to be able to face the anticipated depression after the war. “A majority of the working-class expect hard times after the war,” he writes, and quotes a Bradford weaver, who said : —

“I think there’ll be a big slump. I was in t’last slump; it was a terrible time. People didn’t save anything. I was always telling them, if it’s only two or three shillings, don’t spend more than you need. If it’s anything like the last, God help them.”

The naive writer of the article is rather surprised to learn that the attitude of the workers towards saving is not like that of the capitalist: —

“It is only in a very few instances that a working man is putting by money as a form of capital accumulation, which will eventually enable him to invest in property or become a small trader. Most often saving is a form of insurance against known contingencies : marriage, sickness, death, unemployment, old age, hard times . . . even at the poverty level families frequently save, at the expense of their elementary subsistence needs . . . ”—(The Times, April 21st, 1941.)

In short, the capitalist saves out of his superfluity in order to accumulate capital; the worker saves out of his insufficiency in order to protect himself against capitalism and the capitalist.

* * * *

Re-assuring the U.S.A.

One of the questions Mr. Wendell Willkie kept asking while in this country was: “Is it true England is going Red?” The answers he received must have convinced him that he had been somewhat misinformed.—(News-Chronicle, February 25th, 1941.)

“To suggest Britain will go Communist, Socialist or Totalitarian, is fantastic.”—Lord Halifax (News-Chronicle, April 4th, 1941).

* * * *

Catholicism and the Social Order

In a letter to the Manchester Guardian (May I7th, 1941), a director of the Catholic Social Guild summarised the declarations made by the Papacy on social problems. He stated that it is 50 years since Pope Leo XIII protested against the maldistribution of wealth by which “a few very rich men lay upon the labouring poor a yoke little better than slavery.” Leo, and later on Pius XI, “laid the blame on economic liberalism and opportunist politics by which social and political relationships were divorced from morality.”

The Catholic Church nowadays, while condemning socialism, also condemns capitalism, and makes the claim that the Catholic proposals are a practicable and superior alternative. It is a fair criticism to point out that within the half-century since Leo’s declaration there have been long periods during which professedly Catholic governments have ruled over predominantly Catholic countries. Spain and Italy are two examples. Can it be said that these countries have been In any way superior to other capitalist countries from the standpoint of social relationship? The Catholic authorities in those countries did not get rid of capitalism and did not rescue the labouring poor from their yoke of slavery to the rich. Indeed, some at least of the Italian and Spanish workers have gained the impression that the Catholic Church was as much interested in maintaining’ capitalism as any of the non-Catholic governments.

As for the point about political relationship being based on morality, it is interesting to see The Times (March 1st, 1941) stating that the late King Alfonso of Spain, and the Spanish Dictator General Primo de Rivera—both of them Catholics—”had undoubtedly violated the Constitution of the Realm, and their enemies made a particular point of the fact that King Alfonso had broken his oath to respect it.”

Edgar Hardcastle

Honest writing . . . (1941)

From the June 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

“He held that honest writing needed not to carry, and could not carry, any weight but the weight of the argument, to the validity of which the name of the arguer could add nothing.”—(Thomas Barnes, Editor of The Times, early in the 19th century.—The Times, May 7th, 1941.)

Voice From The Back: We also tell lies (1998)

The Voice From The Back Column from the July 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

We also tell lies

First we set you free. Now we set new standards. Total freedom. A state rarely achieved and much sought after. For some it’s symbolised by the vastness of the ocean. For others, it’s the call of the open road. At Mazda it’s a guiding philosophy. Which is why we were the only car company . . . After all, nothing should stand between you and total freedom. Advertisement.

Capitalism’s realities

Russia’s foreign debt stood at more than £78 billion in January. Rescheduling delayed repayment until this year, and in 2003 Moscow is due to start paying back the billions borrowed by the Soviet Union. The backlog of unpaid wages has grown inexorably. The private sector owes employees £5.7 billion, while the state sector owes £700 million in wages. The backlog of pensions in both sectors has reached £8.8 billion. Meanwhile, the popular daily newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda reported yesterday that the presidential administration was secretly spending millions of pounds on an exclusive leisure centre—including indoor tennis courts, weights and a sauna—inside the Kremlin. Guardian, 2 April.

In case you wondered . . .

. . . the latest initiative from [French Prime Minister] Jospin is a true piece of backward-thinking madness—a proposed 35-hour week to be introduced by 2000. Jospin promises it will ease rocketing unemployment, but it is more likely to exacerbate the problem by hurting the competitiveness of French companies. “The notion of reducing unemployment through a shorter week is just farcical,” says Rob Hayward, senior economist at Bank of America in London. Financial Mail on Sunday, 19 April.

Death merchants

A report by Oxfam singles out Britain as a key player in the small-arms market, exporting to more than 100 countries in the past two years. Despite obsessive official secrecy, it has identified at least 120 British companies involved in the trade. The call for tough controls coincides with threats by the United States to block the export to Britain of more than 14,000 handguns which it believes are to be re-exported to war zones or used in organised crime. In the past year the government has sanctioned at least 11 small-arms export licences to Kenya and at least 20 to Turkey, Oxfam says. In 1995, it estimates, about three-quarters of African countries importing small arms from Britain were suffering political violence and other conflicts. Licences for small arms cover a wide category of weapons, including machine guns, mortars, grenades, shoulder-launched rockets and “chemical irritant” weapons. Guardian, 23 April.

Capitalism needs drugs

In Birmingham there are estimated to be around 22,000 men who are depressed, finding it difficult to motivate themselves to carry on with work, or maintain relationship with their family. But a new prescription anti-depressant drug called Edionax which works on replacing a substance in the brain called noradrenaline is offering new hope. Evening Mail, 24 April.

Drugs make profits

The government is attempting to block a Brussels move to cut the price of medicines. Its motive is to protect the multi-billion-pound profits earned by the UK’s drugs industry. Lord Simon, Minister for trade and Competitiveness in Europe, will defend Britain’s drugmakers at a key meeting of trade ministers that he is chairing next month. He fears that relaxing drug price controls in the European Union would unleash a flood of cheap imports into Britain from southern Europe, slashing profits for UK drug companies . . . It would bring down the prices that the National Health Service pays for pharmaceuticals to the cheaper levels of Spain and Italy. Financial Mail on Sunday, 26 April.

Inherently unstable

In the 10 months since the Asian economic crisis first burst on us, Asian governments have so far managed to contain the anger of their peoples. The crisis itself, and the measures which the West and the world’s financial institutions insisted were necessary to deal with it, have brought bankruptcy, unemployment, and privation on a large scale to societies which only a little time ago thought they had joined the ranks of the world’s winners. How, with the first deaths in Indonesian rioting, which had until now kept this side of serious street violence, and with the confrontation between government and labour in South Korea, a period of increased danger has obviously begun. Guardian, 7 May.

Doing time

BBC researchers in London are looking for three Birmingham volunteers to help make a TV programme about time . . . BBC researcher Mick Conefrey said: “We are interested in people who would be willing to try out time management techniques. People often say there isn’t enough time in the day but now there are people who say ‘yes there is’ and they will show you how to use it.” Mr Conefrey said that American companies were “really obsessed” with time management techniques. British firms were now becoming interested, he added. Evening Mail, 8 May.

How succinct!

We’re meant to accept that in this post-communist (or, as I prefer to think of it, pre-communist) world nothing comes for free, and everything has its price. Julie Burchill, Guardian Weekend, 28 February.

Editorial: Ireland—is it all over? (1998)

Editorial from the July 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

A wit once claimed that he asked an Ulster Unionist if it was true that the political vocabulary of Unionism was confined to the word “no!” The angry Unionist replied "no. it isn’t!" But before and since the referenda on the Good Friday Agreement the word “democracy” has been peddled so much by Paisley and the hard-line unionists as their justification for opposing the Agreement that it could now be thought to have taken over from the bitter "no!" which covered the policy of all the Unionist parties for three decades.

It should be explained that "democracy” to the Unionists traditionally means that the state of Northern Ireland, tortuously carved out by the British government in 1921 to ensure protestant hegemony, contains about 20 percent more protestants than catholics, which according to the Unionist interpretation of democracy—should allow the former absolute and total political control over the latter. Whatever else, the Agreement demonstrated that the Unionist majority now doubts that this particular definition of democracy is a truly sustainable one.

Appeals to higher authorities and principles than the hatred, violence and competition that have characterised Northern Irish politics have not been confined to the Unionists though. Despite its image, the IRA has always had a moral and legal formula which it claimed gave it the right of a national army to wage war in defence of the Irish Republic. The Republic, in the IRA's view, was established in 1916 at the outset of the Easter Rising and given a mandate by the majority vote of the people of the entire island of Ireland in the elections of 1918—the last time such an all-Ireland election was held. This theory served as a moral platform for the IRA, a Catholic organisation whose individual members are normally obedient to the strictures of their church. Now, for the first time since 1918, the all-Ireland referenda showed an 85.46 per cent vote in favour of the Agreement and thus removed the quasi-moral and legal contention that has supported the argument for Irish nationalist violence.

Not that anyone can be sure that the violence has really ended or that the life of the working class in Northern Ireland is going to hugely improve. The referenda proved that the majority do not want violence but then again, the majority have never wanted violence. The real test applies as ever to the paramilitary groups on both sides, now ever more entwined in more "conventional” forms of illegality, from protection rackets to drug-dealing.

The dispute in Northern Ireland has always, at root, been a turf war. Whether this continues in the form it has previously taken we shall see. But one thing is for sure—until such competitive turf wars have ended there can be no guarantee of a peace worthy of the name in Ireland or, for that matter, any of the other “trouble-spots" which pepper the political map of world capitalism.

Letter: A vanguardist writes (1998)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

A vanguardist writes

Dear Editors,

With reference to the February 1998 issue of your journal, most modestly I want to raise a few questions on the articles published on “The Communist Manifesto” written by Lew Higgins and Gwynn Thomas respectively.

The article by Higgins

(1) fails to trace the historical background of the Communist Manifesto and at the time of the Communist League. Both were mainly the product of the Chartist movement. It is implicit in Marx’s realisation that “the proletarian movement is the independent movement of the immense majority in the interest of immense majority” which has been expressed in the manifesto.

(2) Based on this false premise, Higgins has arrived at a false hypothesis that “the Manifesto was written with Germany in mind”. Whereas the Manifesto has been working as guideline for Communist Parties of the World for the last 150 years, he further writes that it was written for a particular organisation with particular purpose. This is not only unjustifiable, but also it is a biased opinion that tends to misinterpret the Manifesto.

(3) In the concluding part, Higgins has found out six ideas of the Manifesto valid for the 21st century. But in the second point he appears to make one believe that Marx wants to replace the class society through democracy. This idea has also been expressed in another place of the article. But, if one looks at the fourth point, one will find that the change must be brought about by revolutionary political action of the working class. Both the points put together may lead to the idea that Marx’s views were contradictory. But the fact is that Higgins’s views are rather contradictory.

(4) That communism must be world-wide as the system it replaces, i.e. capitalism, is world-wide is a fact, as maintained in the third point; but simultaneously it is also true that the proletariat of one country can not wait for their unprepared counterparts outside their own territorial limit and postpone their struggle even if the conditions in their country are favourable for them. That is why the Manifesto rightly states that proletariat of one country must battle against the bourgeoisie of their own country. The line can not be ignored.

(5) In the penultimate point, Higgins observes that the revolution must be brought about by the majority of the working class, not a minority. The idea is not merely contrary to the science of dialectics that the forces of progress or development, though minority at present, must emerge as the winner, it is also subjective. In order to negate the fact that the November Revolution of 1917 was a socialist revolution and, that though a minority, the working class was in a position to lead the revolution, the notion has been placed. That there may be different phases of Socialist Revolution, as happened in China, has also been deliberately ignored by the author. The attempt is highly condemnable.

(6) The last point as it is written appears to be contradictory in itself. It is beyond my knowledge, if the Communists are being the most organised and political section of the proletariat, why they cannot be the vanguard of the working class. It is almost like the views of anarchist Bakunin.

The less said about the article by G. Thomas, the better. In the very beginning of para 2 under the sub-heading “From Capitalism to Socialism” he writes “. . . Socialist Revolution must be world-wide and cannot be achieved in one country alone”. Marx, while expressing such a view in the Manifesto, also observes, as I wrote earlier that the proletariat of a country has to win the battle with the bourgeoisie of that country at first. Thus the view observed by Thomas is misleading, such view is that of Trotsky, who whatever may he be, was not a Marxist.

In the penultimate sentence of the same paragraph he writes “The Bolsheviks had no possibility of introducing Socialism.” I personally do not agree with the view because I think, though a minority, the proletariat can be and had become the vanguard. The basis of my views is the science of dialectics (as mentioned earlier) which, I suppose, has been ignored in this respect.

From the two articles, it has appeared in my mind that, in the name of Socialism, the World Socialist Party, if it represents the views expressed in them, is a mere petty bourgeois party. It preaches the petty-bourgeois view in the name of Socialism. And that’s why the Socialist Standard does not deserve any attraction for me.

Prof Sakiranjan Basu, 

Bishnupur, India

Reply:

1. The article did give a paragraph on the historical background to the Manifesto. The Chartist movement did have an influence on the Communist League, though it is an exaggeration to say the League and Manifesto were both “mainly the product of the Chartist movement”.

2. The article did say that the Manifesto was written with Germany in mind, “though not exclusively”. The article also did say that in the final section of the Manifesto we can read that in 1848 “Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution”. So the Manifesto was written for a particular organisation with particular purposes, such as the measures for a bourgeois-democratic revolution at the end of the second section. You offer no evidence for your claim that this is unjustifiable, biased and a misinterpretation. But if necessary we can provide plenty of evidence that the so-called Communist Parties of the world have consistently misinterpreted the Manifesto.

3. In the concluding part of the article, the second point refers to the replacement of class society with a democratic society. Nevertheless, it is true that this must be brought about democratically, for as the Manifesto pointed out “the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, which is the struggle of democracy”. You appear to think that democratic political action cannot be revolutionary. Or perhaps you think revolution is synonymous with minority violence and so cannot be democratic? Marx thought a socialist revolution must involve the working class in a democratic struggle. So do we, and the force of numbers means the revolution can be peaceful. We and our comrades in India and elsewhere are living proof of democratic revolutionary political action for socialism.

4. You are right that the Manifesto says the working class must defeat the capitalist class of their own country. That is why we are organised as a political party. It is why we and our companion parties around the world are working for the democratic capture of state power and the replacement of international capitalism with world socialism. However, you would be wrong in supposing that one country alone could throw off capitalism under a global capitalist system of society. The Manifesto does not suggest it and the 150 years since have shown that it was right not to.

5. The working class struggle for socialism, as you note in (1), “is the independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority” (Communist Manifesto). You now say this is contrary to “the science of dialectics” and subjective because the minority must emerge as the winner. You offer the experiences of the Russian and Chinese revolutions, where the working class was a minority of the population in both cases. But this is the dialectical opposite of what Marx argued. Socialism is not possible in one country, especially a semi-feudal country with an overwhelmingly peasant population, where only a minority of the working class supported those who falsely called themselves Communists.

6. There can be no socialism without socialists. Socialism, which can only be democratic world, must be brought about democratically. This point should become obvious if you think about it. Democracy rules out leadership and self-appointed vanguards. Socialists who know what they want and how to get it do not need leaders to tell them what to do.

The capture of power has to be done on a state-by-state basis because this is the way political power is structured in the world today. As the Manifesto pointed out, it will first be necessary for the working class of a country to win the struggle of democracy over the capitalists in that country. But this does not mean that there can be socialism in one country. Nor does it mean that we can expect the workers of one country to be ready for socialism while the rest of the world lags behind. The idea of world socialism cannot be confined to one country.

You disagree with our argument that the Bolsheviks could not introduce socialism because it is your personal view that the working class had become the vanguard. Again you base this on “the science of dialectics”, whatever you may mean by this.—Editors.

Bulgakov's 'Flight' (1998)

Theatre Review from the July 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Flight, National Theatre, Olivier.

Flight, by Mikhail Bulgakov, is a knockout. For sheer exuberant theatricality, high octane ensemble playing, and dramatic frisson, I have seen nothing like it for years. And the text is so dense and rewarding that a second visit revealed much that in the excitement of the first occasion we had missed. Rarely does a play provide such a whirligig of different emotions which sit so comfortably together. Through the evening the audience is presented with moments of terror, hope, apprehension, side-splitting humour, poignancy and despair, through all of which shines an indomitable will to survive.

The play, which is set in Russia, Turkey and France in the years immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, is a biting commentary on the tragedy and absurdity of civil war. It follows the chaotic journey of two refugees caught in the war between the White Russian Army of the Ukraine and the advancing Red Army, whose fates become enmeshed with the Ukrainians. Called a play in dreams the first act dramatises the bitterness of losing; the second act describes what Lesley Milne calls, “the wish-fulfilment dream of winning”. The style is reminiscent of Bertolt Brecht. Just when you think you have grasped the narrative—the essentials of the plot—Bulgakov throws sand in your eyes. Given the world in which we live, he seems to be saying life is unpredictable.

And Bulgakov, who was born in Kiev in 1891, seems to have enjoyed (or, perhaps more properly, endured) the kind of chaotic existence so typical of many of the characters in Flight. In 1919 he qualified as a doctor and was forcibly recruited into the Ukrainian Republican Arms. He escaped, returned to Kiev and was immediately mobilised by the White Army and sent to the Caucasus. Discharged the next year he began a career in literature, writing a string of novels and plays, many of which were banned or censored.

Small wonder then that Flight, written between 1926 and 1928, was not performed in his lifetime. It is a damning critique of Soviet revolutionary politics; a heart-rending account of the way in which most of the Russian population were little more than pawns in a cruel struggle for power between the emerging Soviet state and the residual White Russian Army. And to think that as recently as the last decade there were so-called communists living in Britain who thought that what happened in Russia in 1917 and the following 70-odd years, had something to do with the triumph of socialism.

As a socialist I loved the final moments. In the last dream one of the White Russians, having won a fortune in a French gambling salon, invests it all on a horse. Standing centre-stage, arms outstretched, Charnota's words end the play. "Put everything on Shooting Star to win!" Occasionally, like Charnota, we need to dream if we are to fight the good fight.

Michael Gill

When the "Lions" Roar (1998)

'Propah Nawty'

TV Review from the July 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the last couple of weeks it has been difficult to miss the World Cup, even if it has been possible to miss the football aspect of it. This is because most of the news and current affairs coverage has had nothing intrinsically to do with the game of soccer at all; rather it has been about some of the people who watch it-the England soccer hooligans.

Wednesday Night Live, an ITV series of debates hosted by Nicky Campbell and Mary Nightingale, led the field. What made it interesting was that, as is usual with these sort of sensationalist “debate” shows, a potentially combustible mix had been cobbled together by way of a studio audience. In this instance the audience included both former and still practising hooligans, including some recently returned from the Battle of Marseilles.

Chief among the former (or should it be “retired”?) hooligans was a character called Dougie Brimson, a former Watford-supporting thug who has co-authored a series of books about soccer violence with his equally bizarre brother, Eddy. When Mary Nightingale asked Brimson whether he had any regrets about his hooligan activities he professed none, arguing that “it just happened”.While adding that he wasn’t particularly proud of what he had done either, he obviously had in the back of his mind all the money he had been able to make out of it. Indeed, the Brimson brothers have been nothing if not prolific, with the pen as much as the boot. In the last two years they have had no less than four books published, each one selling tens of thousands of copies. No wonder they have no regrets.

The Brimsons epitomise the way the popular media approaches problems like soccer violence, and it was entirely fitting that one of them should have been on this programme. Their forte has been to claim to abhor soccer violence, and to have the solution to it, while at the same time making money from recounting all its glorious and gory details. Their books are replete with descriptions of major “offs” and battles between Britain’s rival soccer gangs (known, interestingly, as “firms”), they explain how the soccer gangs are organised and how they operate, and one even contains a list of the most fearsome and prolific gangs, from the likes of West Ham’s notorious Inter-City Firm (ICF) to Bolton’s prosaically named Mongoose Cuckoo Boys and Bradford’s equally bizarre The Ointment.

Murder, she wrote

The approach of the Brimsons, replicated in this debate to an extent, has now become dominant. No longer confined to those authors who profess repugnance at death and murder while making millions out of retelling all the details, it has now well and truly infected the news media at all levels. Both BBC and ITV news programmes showed the violence perpetrated by English soccer fans in France at length. On Wednesday Night Live it was left to Michael Knighton, football “entrepreneur”, to make the point that much of the film shown on British TV had been carefully edited to create a certain story, portray the desired image and reinforce the chosen moral of the day all at one stroke in a style the tabloids can barely hope to keep up with.

For make no mistake about it, while pious TV journalists get all sanctimonious about the Sun and the Star, television is where most people now get their information, and this was a story the news networks were determined to ram down everybody’s throat.

This is not to say that such scenes of violence should be censored, of course—just that the popular news media makes no serious attempt to understand this problem, what causes it and why it is likely to occur time after time as it has in the past. The television approach is essentially no different to that of the tabloids —“tut, tut, isn’t it a disgrace? Look-here’s another picture, with lots of blood this time too.”

Given the ruling morality in the capitalist world it is difficult to know how many people can have a serious difficulty with soccer violence anyhow, and it is surely a subconscious recognition of this which is the basis for so much of the media coverage. How can people who support murder and mayhem in the Gulf or the Falklands seriously take exception to the antics of England’s other “invaders”, the organised soccer firms? Certainly not if they were only “defending themselves”, they can’t, as so many—including Tory MP Alan Clark—claimed they were in France.

Wednesday Night Live had a handful of Paras in the audience who said they were disgusted by the soccer thugs, who made them ashamed to be “British”. They were so convinced of the dichotomy between state-sponsored violence and soccer violence that they suggested that “national service” actually represented the cure for the entire problem. Unfortunately, Dougie Brimson intervened to point out that several of those arrested in “the first wave” at Marseilles were in the forces and that he himself had been in the RAF for years, serving in both the Falklands and the Gulf.

The real problem was only fleetingly referred to, once by a psychologist and once by Mary Nightingale, who made the startling point that in the end it all seemed to boil down to nationalism of one form or another. And that, of course, is the undoubted truth. Next time the news media cares to laud “our boys” as they come back from a glorious victory over devious and untrustworthy foreigners they may care to spare a thought for the poor old English soccer hooligan who they purport to despise in the cynical ratings war. The regiments and the “firms”, after all, believe in the very same nationalism, have the self-same conceptions of honour, brotherhood and loyalty, and, in more than a few instances, are actually made up of one and the same people.

Dave Perrin

Correction (1998)

From the July 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Due to a computer error a whole passage was omitted from the third paragraph of the review of Butler and Kavanagh's The British General Election of 1997 in the May Socialist Standard, leaving the impression that the authors argued that the fact that most of the press supported Labour "helped Nicholas Budgen in Wolverhampton". This is of course a contradiction since Budgen was a Tory and lost.

The passage should have read: "Possibly its most interesting chapter is the one on the press and how Labour managed to win over the affections of Wapping and Fleet Street (which helped avoid the press's anti-Labour excesses of the previous election). Another feature highlighted was the lack of success of those candidates who played the race card (such as Nicholas Budgen in Wolverhampton) and the relative lack of hostility to ethnic minority candidates generally."

The Rear View: Same the whole world over (2021)

The Rear View Column from the November 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Same the whole world over

‘The Green Party, the Socialist Left and the Marxist-inspired Reds – all pro-environmental – are all expected to make gains and will seek to influence the next government, as will the rural Centre Party. Climate, wealth gap in focus as Norway go to polls’ (yahoo.com, 9 September). A similar Red-Green Coalition ruled 2005-2013 with Labour Party leader Jens Stoltenburg as Prime Minister. He has since become NATO’s General Secretary. The party’s current leader is the capitalist Jonas Gahr Støre. Once upon a time, Labour was considered ‘radical’: in 1919 it joined the Third International which had its headquarters in Moscow. Similarly, the Green Party was once concerned with alternative economics (who remembers BD Brochmann?), alternatives to military service, alternative energy, partial opposition to whaling (whale meat is still for sale) as well as going some distance towards the decriminalisation of certain drugs. The Socialist Left, formed in 1975, has its origins in a group which left the Labour Party over NATO membership. Interestingly, they were predictably against the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq but the Party leadership favoured NATO air strikes against Serbia over that country’s role in Kosovo (killing thousands and causing as many as 1.5 million people to flee as refugees). The ‘Marxist inspired’ Reds are, as history shows, anything but. The Red Electoral Alliance was formed in 1973 as an electoral front organisation for the Workers’ Communist Party. Much can be said about the WCP, but the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten’s headline from 28 August 2005 probably cannot be bettered: ‘They worshipped Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot’. And one Vidkun Quisling was a Minister in government for the populist Centre Party’s earlier incarnation as the Farmer’s Party. He later led Nazi-occupied Norway. Eugene Debs’ WW1 remark remains apposite: ‘Yes, a change is certainly needed, not merely a change of party but a change of system, a change from slavery to freedom and from despotism to democracy, wide as the world’.

A Better World is Possible

This is the title of an essay by Dr. Cesar Chelala, which concludes: ‘We have the resources. What we need is a new look at life and its wondrous possibilities. I may be called naïve. But those who are not naïve are the ones that have led us into these wars. We can create a better world, if we truly want it’ (counterpunch.org, 3 September). Indeed. This call echoes others made in the past:

1859: ‘There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery…’ (Marx in the New York Daily Tribune, 16 September). He observed that the ‘Irish famine of 1846 killed more than 1,000,000 people, but it killed poor devils only. To the wealth of the country it did not the slightest damage’ (Capital, Vol. 1, ch. 25).

1898: ‘Hence it has happened that the development of steam navigation, of railroads and telegraphs, of mechanical and chemical science, and the growth of the population, while enormously increasing productive power and the amount of material products—that is, of real wealth—at least ten times faster than the growth of the population, has given that enormous increase almost wholly to one class, comprising the landlords and capitalists, leaving the actual producers of it—the industrial workers and inventors—little, if any, better off than before’ (Alfred Russel Wallace, The Demon of Greed).

1923: ‘Such a great [socialist] production is already possible, with the knowledge already possessed by mankind’ (Sylvia Pankhurst).

1948: ‘A world of peace and friendship, a world with the plenty which modern science had made possible was a great ideal. But those in power had no patience with such an ideal. They said it was not practical politics’ (John Boyd Orr, former director of the Food and Agriculture Organisation).

1951: ‘It is time for mankind to ensure itself of material abundance by establishing a free, self-managed world society of productive labour, thereby freeing its mental powers for perfecting its knowledge of nature and the universe’ (Anton Pannekoek, A History of Astronomy).

All that is missing from achieving this is ‘the conscious will and action of the majority of the proletariat’ (Rosa Luxemburg).

Comrade Speaker?

‘You cannot have a system where the success of some springs from the exploitation of the workers and springs from the exploitation of the environment and the rest, and we have to correct that’ (yahoo.com, 17 September). Indeed, but our fellow socialists in the WSP(US) do not expect Nancy Pelosi to join them anytime soon as she makes clear elsewhere that she wishes to reform capitalism, not replace it. Other, sadly long-dead Democrats stated: ‘ All men are brethren. We denounce all political and hereditary inequalities and distinctions of castes… We believe the earth, with all its natural productions, to be the common property of all… We believe that the present state of society, which permits its idlers and schemers to monopolise the fruits of the earth and, the production of industry, and compels the working class to labour for inadequate rewards, and even condemns them to social slavery, destitution, and degradation, to be essentially unjust… We condemn national hatreds which have hitherto divided mankind… Convinced that national prejudices have been, at all ages, taken advantage of by the people’s oppressors to set them tearing the throats of each other when they should have been working together for their common good, this society repudiates the term ‘foreigner.’ We recognise our fellow-men, without regard to country, as members of one family, the human race, and citizens of one commonwealth, the world’ (Manifesto of the Fraternal Democrats, 1845).

Pathfinders: Let’s start the real debate about climate change (2021)

The Pathfinders Column from the November 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who cares about the environment and global warming (which ought to be everyone) must have been appalled by news stories late last month that illustrate how the vast majority can want one thing while governments do the complete opposite. The fact that global fossil fuel production is not going to go down but up in the next decade, despite all the IPCC reports, the Paris Agreement, and all the pledges, shows that when it comes down to it, there’s no stopping the juggernaut of capitalism. Oil, gas, even coal use are expected to rise to double the level required by the Paris Agreement, making the 1.5°C threshold look increasingly like a bad joke.

But what are countries that derive their income largely from fossil extraction supposed to do? Of course they will mouth platitudes at COP meetings but they’re not seriously going to gut their own economies for the sake of the global common good. Quite the opposite, they’re going to increase production if there’s money in it, with the result that ‘governments continue to plan for and support levels of fossil fuel production that are vastly in excess of what we can safely burn’ (bbc.in/3vubcZZ).

Even the Queen recently felt compelled to note how irritated she was that politicians do a lot of talking about the climate but don’t DO anything, a point that would have been fair comment from anyone else but is a pretty staggering piece of hypocrisy from someone who, as Marina Hyde pointed out in the Guardian, travels everywhere by helicopter and private jet and ‘whose lawyers very recently lobbied the Scottish government in secret to change a draft law to exempt her private estates from a major carbon-cutting initiative’ (bit.ly/2Z8VVla).

Not only is no country on track to meet its climate targets, no country has any credible way of doing so. The UK’s best-case scenario is to achieve about a fifth of what it needs to do. If it even manages that it will be miraculous.

Is this just because governments are clueless and don’t care? No, it’s because capitalist economics is clueless and doesn’t care. Its logic is straight out of Alice in Wonderland. As an example, the UK is a world leader in offshore wind and has pledged to quadruple capacity to 40GW by 2030, potentially supplying electricity to every UK home (at least when the wind is blowing). Great, so what’s the problem? Well, the more there is of something, the lower the price falls, thus wind companies face a declining incentive to invest in more capacity (bbc.in/3vrBhc8). Abundance is great for people but terrible for business. That’s why there’s a gas shortage. That’s why oil prices are high. Capitalism depends on keeping things in short supply, even to the extent of destroying food and burning clothes. And when oil prices are high, people invest in alternatives like renewable energy, which you might think is good, but it also means more Arctic oil drilling and more deforestation. In climate terms, there is no ‘ideal’ capitalist situation. A win is always a lose somewhere else.

While climate campaigners have the luxury of making absurdly unrealistic demands, like net-zero by 2025, governments know they have to manage a system that puts profits first, and simply cannot back any reform which endangers this. So the UK government – so keen to position itself as a global leader on climate action – has recently defanged its own ‘landmark’ Environment Bill by rejecting virtually all the changes that environmentalists wanted, such as protection for ancient woodland, legal pressure to stop water companies polluting rivers, and not exempting the armed forces (a huge source of GHG emissions) from environmental restrictions (bbc.in/30NyVJH). Perish the thought that the army can’t drive its obsolete tanks or the navy its plane-less aircraft carriers because of namby-pamby climate concerns!

Governments exist to keep capitalism going, not to undermine it. Just as the poorest find their Universal Credit being cut in the name of the gigantic Covid deficit, chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced he’s cutting corporation tax surcharge on banks from 8 to 3 percent to keep the City competitive (bit.ly/3aV7SxI).

Meanwhile, as if to add insult to injury, the media is full of news stories about how you yourself can ‘save energy at home and help the planet’ with meaningless little gestures that George Monbiot describes as ‘micro-consumerist bollocks’, and expensive domestic modifications that none but the well-off can afford. Now the government has announced a ban on new gas heaters from 2035, which means that if you’re a young couple now, even in the unlikely event you can afford a house, your gas boiler will be just about ready for replacement when the ban comes in. Then the poor who can’t afford the approximately £6-18,000 for a heat pump will presumably have to dance all winter to stay warm (not to mention run all the way to work because they can’t afford an electric car either). But fear not, the government’s recent announcement of a £5k subsidy for heat pumps means that anyone with a spare £10k to spend will be quids in.

Capitalism isn’t going to change how it operates for anyone. Instead governments rely on greenwash announcements about what increasingly cynical Greta Thunberg calls ‘fantasy-scaled, currently barely-existing, negative emissions technologies.’ Or, as she puts it even more succinctly, ‘blah blah blah’.

The 2007 Stern Report called climate change ‘the biggest market failure the world has seen’. In September this year even the UK business secretary admitted that it was a ‘market failure’ (bit.ly/3AYHQUI). Is it so hard, in the light of all the above, to conclude that markets simply don’t work, that capitalism is a ‘weapon pointed at the world’, as Monbiot says? The alternative isn’t soviet state capitalism or living in caves, it’s democratic common ownership where there is no out-of-control growth caused by the perpetual race for profit because there will be no markets and no money system. Capitalism’s greatest success is that it has made itself obsolete by delivering the technology, the communications and the know-how for us to actually turn the world into a giant volunteer cooperative, with no rich and poor, where we can all be free of the worst that capitalism dishes out and instead enjoy the best that life can offer. Why buy when you can just have? Why sell when you can just give? That’s not a utopia, it’s a practical and sustainable alternative to a system that is doing its best to destroy everything. There are a huge number of things we could do right now to limit climate change, halt species extinction, stop wars for oil or profit and stop terrible human misery and deprivation. But first we need to get real about the thing that, above all else, is driving these problems in the first place. It’s not human production, it’s human production for profit. We need to get real about capitalism. Instead of appealing to useless governments to ‘fix’ it, we need to start mainstreaming the debate about progressing beyond it altogether.

Paddy Shannon

Sharing, But Not Alike (2021)

From the November 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Share the World’s Resources is an interesting-sounding name for an organisation. Their website is sharing.org, and it contains a lot of material, reports, blogs, and so on. However, what they have in mind is not a society where people in reality share the Earth. Let’s look first at the document A Primer on Global Economic Sharing, dating from 2014.

This begins positively, by pointing out that people are not selfish by nature and that humans are predisposed to co-operate and share. Increasing use is now being made of collaborative consumption, which is based on sharing rather than ownership, whether of cars or office space. Sharing cannot be national, but must take place on a planetary scale, and bridging the gap between rich and poor countries is advocated. The UN (once it has been made properly democratic) is seen as a major means for introducing the supposed world of sharing. The failure to share is responsible for conflict over land and other resources. Either the ‘environmental commons’ should be shared more equitably, or there will be increased competition for resources, accelerated climate change, and maybe even another world war.

Further, the report goes on, action absolutely needs to be taken, as each day forty thousand people are likely to die from ‘avoidable poverty-related causes’. In a world of massive inequalities of wealth and a barely credible extent of poverty, there is a need for a ‘fairer distribution of wealth, power and resources on a worldwide basis’. More than enough food is produced to meet the needs of every human being, yet famines still occur. This is because food is grown for profit, not human need. Natural resources are ‘part of our shared commons’, and what is needed is neither private nor state ownership but a form of management ‘based on non-ownership and trusteeship’. The ‘global public’ must participate in a reform that ‘extends beyond national borders’.

Yet the report undermines some of the reasonable claims made by lamenting that no ‘global community of nations’ has been created, which implies that a world divided into countries is still envisaged, as does the reliance on the UN. Also, the response to the current food situation is a call for ‘fairer regional and global trade arrangements’, and a demand that governments accept responsibility for guaranteeing access to food for all. Market mechanisms are supposedly rejected, along with charitable giving, to be replaced in part by redistributive government policies. Sadly, all this shows little awareness of the real aims and purposes of governments, which are to defend the interests of the rich and powerful.

This report, then, is a mixture of some good points in criticising the current world system and a very unrealistic view of the future, largely owing to the fact that STWR does not truly reject the present system, only its most obviously unacceptable consequences. Sharing is fine, but a world still divided into countries cannot be genuinely based on sharing, nor can one which retains trade and money.

There is only one passing reference to capitalism in this report, but for more on this we can turn to another STWR document, Heralding Article 25: a People’s Strategy for World Transformation, by Mohammed Sofiane Mesbahi, the organisation’s founder. The reference in the title is to article 25 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that everyone has a right to an adequate standard of living, an idea that is said to be meaningful even to those who have never heard the word ‘capitalism’. But what is said there about capitalism is, to put it mildly, bizarre. It is, the reader is told, a divisive term, and there is really no such entity, ‘only people in the world who hide behind ideas or abuse principles for their own devious intentions.’ The principle of capitalism, Mesbahi argues, is not synonymous with inequality, for what we see around us is not capitalism but the consequences of some people’s motivations. Communism, too, has been corrupted by authoritarian regimes, thus wrongly equating communism/socialism with the state capitalist Bolshevik systems. It is not principles that are to blame for the world’s problems, but ‘man himself’.

Mesbahi also argues that we should look at the ideas underlying different social systems ‘with a more spiritual understanding’. He rejects the notion of a revolution, and, in order to put less emphasis on antagonisms, prefers to say ‘not with’ rather than ‘against’ (but what difference would that make?). Do not be conditioned by ‘isms and ideology’, instead choose a ‘spiritual revolution’ (so he is not against all revolutions).

It is hard to make sense of something expressed in such woolly terms, let alone discuss and evaluate it. Being charitable, we might think that his spiritual revolution could mean a change in people’s ideas, akin to a growth in socialist consciousness among workers. But there is nothing here about what the supposed future society would look like in concrete terms, nor any conception of just how to get there other than holding demonstrations in support of article 25. This would achieve precisely nothing, and the vaguely described world of sharing that STWR advocate does not begin to address the real problems or to show how they can be overcome. The organisation is asking some of the right questions, but providing little if anything by way of viable answers.

Paul Bennett

Material World: Coal Nationalism versus the Climate (2021)

The Material World column from the November 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

In China there have been well-publicised electric outages that have led to a contraction in factory output, a failure in fulfilling new orders, a slow-down in exports and rising manufacturing costs. The cuts in the electric supply have been the unintended consequence of the shift away from coal to meet its CO2 emission targets. Despite China being one of the dominant players in alternative energy sources it cannot fully substitute for the need for coal. So high is the demand from industry that mining companies are now increasing coal supply (tinyurl.com/a92x87s4).

In October the National Energy Commission met. Afterwards, the Chinese prime minister, Li Keqiang, presented a statement which declared:

‘Energy security should be the premise on which a modern energy system is built and the capacity for energy self-supply should be enhanced. Given the predominant place of coal in the country’s energy and resource endowment, it is important to optimise the layout for the coal production capacity, build advanced coal-fired power plants as appropriate in line with development needs, and continue to phase out outdated coal plants in an orderly fashion. Domestic oil and gas exploration will be intensified.’ (Guardian, 12 October)

According to Michael Meidan of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies: ‘The short-term reality is China is still going to double the size of its economy, it’s still urbanising, energy demand is still increasing. There is still an imperative for growth.’ Isabel Hilton of the think-tank China Dialogue describes China’s recently approved five-year plan as ‘a great disappointment’ as regards its carbon-intensity targets (a measure of emissions per unit of electricity generated) and its continued coal power expansion.

China is not alone. India too struggles to achieve the balance between meeting the demand for electricity and calls to reduce burning coal for its power. Power cuts have taken place there too. India already has plans to boost its domestic coal production to 1bn tons by 2024. 55 new coal mines are planned and expansion projects for 193 existing mines are to be expanded.

Indonesia, the world’s top exporter of coal for power stations, generates 60 percent of its power by burning coal. It is also the world’s eighth-biggest carbon emitter. It has brought forward its goal for net-zero emissions from 2070 to 2060 and announced plans to stop commissioning new coal-fired power plants. It faces the dilemma of how to balance its environmental targets with the cost of phasing out an industry that contributed $38 billion in export earnings in the first seven months of 2021 (tinyurl.com/3vs3377j). It will be under economic pressure tol follow China and India’s lead.

In South Africa, Gwede Mantashe, the Mining and Energy Minister, has said that it must manage its transition away from coal-fired power generation systematically and not rush to renewable energy sources: ‘We are not a developed economy, we don’t have all alternative sources, …we must not collapse our economy…’ (tinyurl.com/cteddxey).

The United Nations is imploring all OECD nations to phase out coal from their power grids by 2030, and for non-OECD countries to do so by 2040. Nevertheless, Australia has rebuffed this call to phase out coal, their Resources Minister Keith Pitt declaring ’The future of this crucial industry will be decided by the Australian government, …. not a foreign body that wants to shut it down, costing thousands of jobs and billions of export dollars for our economy’. He has proposed setting up a government-run US$180 billion lending facility for the country’s coal industry so the government can be the ‘lender of last resort’ to the mining sector to fund and underwrite the industry.

All these coal-rich states are going to be reluctant to agree to or to comply with any international agreement that risks the prosperity of their coal industry. They will reason like China that ‘given the predominant place of coal in the country’s energy and resource endowment, it is important to optimise the layout for the coal production capacity, build advanced coal-fired power plants as appropriate in line with development needs.’

If they didn’t do this, they would be placing themselves at a disadvantage in terms both of energy security and of competitiveness. So for years to come coal will continue to be burned.

In this way, competition between capitalist states, with different energy mixes, is going to prevent the rational, world-wide response that is required to deal with the climate change crisis.

ALJO

What Kind of System Change? (2021)

From the November 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much is being written at present both in this country and elsewhere about the evils of capitalism and the need to do away with that system and establish a different kind of society. Indeed, capitalism deserves blame not just for the massive economic inequality between people and peoples, but also for the wars and violence that constantly blight so many lives, the refugee problems often caused by those wars, the Covid pandemic and other epidemics that have broken out affecting millions and which almost certainly have as their root the quest for profit and, of course, the world’s climate and environmental crisis which threatens to devastate life on the planet. That’s why socialists try to spread the idea of an entirely different kind of society to replace capitalism, one which we call socialism.

Unfortunately very few of those who argue for ‘system change’ actually share the idea of socialism that we have been putting forward since 1904. What we want is a moneyless society of free access, without buying and selling, which is based on from each according to ability, to each according to needs. Many people who also call themselves ‘socialists’ come close to this notion, but do not follow it through to its revolutionary conclusion, and instead end up arguing for and advocating something less, essentially a different, more ‘benign’ kind of capitalism, which is both futile and unachievable.

An example is in the arguments put forward by a group of ‘anti-capitalists’ called System Change Not Climate Change: An Anti-Capitalist Ecosocialist Network (bit.ly/3mq8TTA), whose focus is on the ecological damage caused by the capitalist system and the need to organise society differently to save the planet. One of their most recent expressions of this is in a well-written article by mathematical physicist David Klein called What Might an Ecosocialist Society Look Like? (bit.ly/3uAWhNg). This is especially interesting for socialists who are often asked about how a future society based on needs not profit would be organised, and who are always open to ideas on this topic.

Before attempting to portray what ‘ecosocialism’ would look like, the author seeks to explain why a different kind of society is needed in the first place. This he does this with both clarity and brio. He focuses on the ‘threat to life on Earth posed by the climate and ecological crises’ due to the use of fossil fuels and to global warming. He points to ‘habitat destruction, toxic dumping, plastic pollution in the oceans, radiation poisoning, and other customary products of the global capitalist economy’ all taking place despite widespread knowledge about it and despite ‘the flood of warnings from scientists’. He talks of food production for the advanced capitalist world relying on ‘heavily exploited human beings brought in from poorer countries’ and capitalism’s profit drive leading to ‘a system of animal slaughter and sequestration through factory farms of unprecedented efficiency, volume of production, and unspeakable cruelty’, while all at the same time failing to give decent food and shelter to large swathes of the global population. Nor is this due to lack of technology allowing people to be fed, housed, kept warm, transported and all else that provides a decent, comfortable life, in ways that are sustainable both for humanity and for the biodiversity of the planet. It is due rather, Klein argues, to capitalism’s built-in need for ‘unending economic growth’, consisting of ‘commodity production, escalating resource extraction, increasing trash and toxic dumping, and ever-increasing energy production’. Capitalism cannot solve the environmental crisis it has caused and in fact ‘can only make matters worse’.

So far we agree. But what of David Klein’s solution to the situation he describes? ‘Ecosocialism’ is the name he gives to what he calls his ‘vision for the future’. He states from the outset that there is ‘no universally agreed blueprint’, but he does suggest certain fundamental elements that could form the basis of the system he proposes. These include zero economic growth, ‘free’ services of certain kinds (eg, health care, education, transport), widespread community facilities, energy efficient housing, government control and coordination of large-scale industry, ‘publicly owned banks’, free basic foods and a ‘certain small income’ for all. He also sees such a system as doing away with fossil-fuel-driven industrial farming and the processing of unhealthy foods, and reducing the carbon footprint by ‘moving food production to the perimeters of cities, establishing urban and vertical food farms, promoting cuisines based on locally produced foods in season, and making food preservation a part of these systems’.

How will this vision be realised in practical terms? According to the author, by using a ‘Green New Deal’ approach involving policies like nationalisation of fossil fuels, renewable and energy conservation programmes and ‘a federal public-works program, similar to FDR’s 1930 depression programs’, all leading to ‘a new sustainable economy with higher wages and benefits’.

Some elements of the prescription outlined above (eg, local food production with a low carbon footprint) coincide with our view of how a post-capitalist society would work, but a good many others do not, and for good reason. The notion of certain kinds of ‘free services’ clearly implies that there will be some services that are not free, whereas socialists insist on free access to all goods and services. Then the mention of ‘government controlled banks’ and ‘higher wages and benefits’ makes it even clearer that what is in fact being proposed is not a different kind of society at all, but a variation of the present capitalist one, in the hope that it will be more benign. This is not a socialist society, since socialism is a society (and a world society, not the US-centric one the author seems to be presenting) without governments, without buying and selling, and certainly without banks. So long as these elements exist – money, banks, buying and selling – then as David Klein himself recognises, the core of capitalism, which is surplus value, will also exist, even if it is the state rather than private corporations that extracts this surplus from workers and invests it as capital.

We can of course agree with Klein – as with others who write in similar vein – of the need for ‘a revolutionary struggle to overturn capitalism and build a survivable system of human relations’. We also agree with him that this needs to be done by a united class of wage and salary workers and not by a focus on identity politics or the like. But we cannot agree that this can be done by campaigning for smaller or larger reforms within the existing system of money and wages, buying and selling, states and governments or by joining with some of the reformist organisations he recommends support for – Democratic Socialists of America, Food and Water Action, Sunrise Movement, System Change not Climate Change. Supporting the aims of these organisations within capitalism as a ‘meantime’ strategy can only prolong the agony that the system inflicts and postpone indefinitely the moment when a working-class majority democratically votes capitalism out of existence and brings in a genuine socialist society. In the end a genuine socialist (or ecosocialist) society can only be a moneyless society of free access without buying and selling, a society in which, as another commentator has written ‘everyone can go to the social storehouses and service centers and take what they need’. Anything else is a pipe dream. Socialism has to be a world of planned cooperation which takes advantage of existing technologies in a sustainable way and in which everyone can develop their interests and abilities with full social support and live without the ever-present threat of material insecurity – a true realm of freedom. A system that includes money, banks, governments and states can only mean more of what we’ve got already – inequality, rich and poor, environmental degradation, and antagonisms of all kinds.

Howard Moss

Nature, production and system change (2021)

From the November 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

System change not climate change. Yes, but how and why do social systems change? What is behind this?

What do we mean when we say we ‘produce’ something? What are we doing? Basically, we are changing the form of something that originally came from nature (or, rather, the rest of nature, since of course we are part of it ourselves). We are changing nature, with the ultimate aim of surviving better within it. All animals, in fact all living things, do. Nature is not something static. Like everything else, it is changing all the time – not just through physical forces like the weather, volcanic activity, solar activity, but also through the activity of living things, both plants and animals.

All living things work, in the sense of expending energy, to extract from the rest of nature what they need to survive. Humans are no exception. We have to as well.

Although other animals are better at doing many things with their bodies than humans are (better eyesight, hearing, sense of smell, but also other abilities we don’t possess), our particular nature as an animal (symbolic thought, vocalisation, writing, prolonged maturation and passing on knowledge) gives us one advantage over all other animals. We are not dependent just on our own bodies – our hands, arms, legs, etc – to extract what we need from the rest of nature. We can make instruments (from materials found in nature) to help us do this:

‘The use and construction of instruments of labour, although present in germ among certain species of animals, is characteristic of the specifically human labour process, and Franklin therefore defines man as ‘a tool-making animal’ (Marx, Capital, Vol 1, ch 7).

Benjamin Franklin’s definition is a good one. We are tool-making animals, i.e, we are animals, but specifically animals which make and use tools. These tools have evolved and developed over time:

‘Darwin has directed attention to the history of natural technology, i.e, the formation of the organs of plants and animals, which serve as instruments of production for sustaining their life. Does not the history of the productive organs of man in society, of organs that are the material basis of every particular organisation of society, deserve equal attention?’ (Marx, ch 15, section 1).

It does, because:

‘Technology reveals the active relation of man to nature, the direct process of the production of his life, and thereby it also lays bare the process of the production of the social relations of his life, and of the mental conceptions that flow from those relations.’

This is the ‘materialist conception of history’. Today, all serious theories of history are ‘materialist’ in the sense that they analyse history in terms of material causes. The idea that history is the working out of some god’s plan or that some god intervenes in history – what might be called ‘the creationist conception of history’ – is as absurd as creationism is in biology.

The ‘matter’ of the materialist conception of history is how humans are organised to meet their material needs, how they are organised to produce these from the rest of nature. The different technologies used by human societies to obtain from nature what they need give rise to different forms of society and as technology changes so does society; in fact as technology develops and progresses so does human society.

But how exactly do changes in technology – changes in the way humans interact with nature to live – lead to a change in the structure of society?

Chapter 1 of the Communist Manifesto of 1848 famously opens with: ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.’ How, then, are class struggles related to changes in technology?

‘It is the development of tools, of these technical aids which men direct, which is the main cause, the propelling force of all social development. It is self-understood that the people are ever trying to improve these tools so that their labour be easier and more productive, and the practice they acquire in using these tools, leads their thoughts upon further improvements. Owing to this development, a slow or quick progress of technique takes place, which at the same time changes the social forms of labour. This leads to new class relations, new social institutions and new classes. At the same time social, ie, political struggles arise. Those classes predominating under the old process of production try to preserve artificially their institutions, while the rising classes try to promote the new process of production; and by waging the class struggles against the ruling class and by conquering them they pave the way for the further unhindered development of technique’ (Anton Pannekoek, Marxism and Darwinism, 1909, Chapter II).

The materialist conception of history explains the change from one system of society to another, not just in terms of slow technological changes, but in terms also of a class struggle, with one class championing a new technology against an entrenched class benefiting from institutions relevant to an outdated technology. Such a disconnect exists today, and has done for some 150 years, between already ‘socialised’ methods of production, a vast cooperative effort linking people working in different parts of the world, and property institutions dating from a time when production was still local and individual. Before humanity can organise its current relationship with the rest of nature in a rational and sustainable way this contradiction has to be ended.

Adam Buick