Material World: A pox on capitalism (2022)

The Material World column from the November 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vaccine shortages in poorer countries have revealed the callous nature of the capitalist profit system and its inability to protect the lives of vulnerable people and avert unnecessary preventable deaths and suffering from health inequality. Shortages of vaccines are endemic to capitalism. One would have thought the mistakes made during the Covid-19 pandemic would have improved the distribution of vital medicines. Apparently not when it comes to the recent spread of the monkeypox virus.

According to Christian Happi, director of the African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases, ‘Our lives are not the same; their lives are worth more than ours…’ Happi continued, ‘Any outbreak anywhere should concern the whole world, which is not how they are dealing with it now’ (bit.ly/3QhwNOy).

‘In the Covid-19 pandemic, world leaders have allowed pharmaceutical companies to place extraordinary profits ahead of saving lives,’ said the People’s Vaccine Alliance’s Mohga Kamal-Yanni. ‘And we have seen the huge impact on life and livelihoods in lower-income countries that is far more than in rich countries. Unless we change course, the world’s response to a crisis like monkeypox will be just as brutally unequal’ (bit.ly/3A0fvAr).

Prof Chris Beyrer of Johns Hopkins University and a member of the medical journal Lancet’s commission on health and human rights, pointed out that ‘It turns out that monkeypox emerged out of its central African endemic zone into west Africa in 2017, five years ago, and that outbreak has been ongoing for five years with no urgency, no response, no WHO engagement around vaccines in those countries. Now that it has gone from six endemic countries to 76, and is the new emerging global health threat in the wealthy world, we have this sense of urgency’ (bit.ly/3BGyIs3).

Meg Doherty, WHO’s director of Global HIV, Hepatitis and Sexually Transmitted Infections Programmes, said, ‘We can’t have a monkeypox response that’s only responding to the UK, Canada, the United States. We need a response that also addresses what’s happening in the DRC right now; in Nigeria where cases are going up.’

Are the limited supplies of vaccines being rushed to Africa?

Unlike when COVID first spread, vaccines for monkeypox already exist. A new vaccine called Jynneos is available, plus millions of doses of ACAM2000, an older smallpox vaccine that also works against monkeypox. Of the 16.4m doses of Jynneos that existed in July, low-income countries are already losing the race to buy sufficient doses.

The American government has the world’s largest stockpile of monkeypox vaccine, which includes stored vaccine bulk that could be converted to more than 10 million doses. In addition, the US holds nearly 80 percent of the Jynneos vaccine used to fight monkeypox, despite having only 36 percent of the global monkeypox cases, even as many countries go without access to any doses. The US has 22 times more doses than the EU and the UK. For every monkeypox case reported in the US, sixty-six doses are available. No countries in Africa have any doses (bit.ly/3pXOI1E).

Naïké Ledan, associate director of international policy and advocacy at HealthGAP protested at the 24th International AIDS Conference in Montreal, ‘We’re demanding immediate equitable global sharing of supplies of testing, treatments, and vaccines. We’re demanding rejection of any and all intellectual property, because it’s a global crisis, not an opportunity to make money again’ (bit.ly/3QhxuYa).

While rich countries have ordered millions of vaccines to stop monkeypox within their borders, none have announced plans to share doses with Africa.

‘The mistakes we saw during the Covid-19 pandemic are already being repeated,’ said Dr. Boghuma Kabisen Titanji, an assistant professor of medicine at Emory University (bit.ly/3P23nmo).

‘Africa is still not benefiting from either monkeypox vaccines or the antiviral treatments,’ said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s Africa director (bit.ly/3LO4kyK).

If only the problem was just monkeypox.

Politicians and pharmaceutical CEOs boasted of the speed at which the Covid-19 vaccine was developed, put into production and distributed. Much less has been said on their tardy roll-out of a new malaria vaccine.

A new vaccine R21 could eradicate malaria. And has already shown to be 77 percent effective after the initial doses and maintains its high efficacy after a single booster jab. It could help to reduce deaths from the disease by 70 percent by 2030 and eradicate it by 2040. Good news. The bad news is, delivering it to millions of African children who most need it is presently without sufficient funding.

And, of course, deaths from HIV/AIDS still persist. In Africa 460,000 people died from HIV-related causes in 2020. A new long-acting drug called Cabotegravir works by blocking the HIV genome, which means that the virus is prevented from integrating itself into human DNA and that stops it from replicating. So, it can’t spread and take hold in the body. Yet, WHO notes it is too expensive for poorer nations to afford.

‘While many in the global north are getting access to long-acting HIV prevention tools and medicines, Africans are overwhelmingly denied the opportunity… As long as the price is unaffordably high for our governments and for funders to purchase, we will continue to be locked out from being able to access them. They are vital to preventing new HIV infections and they could become transformational in treatment. Our message is simple: all of our lives matter,’ said Lilian Mworeko, regional coordinator of the International Community of Women Living with HIV Eastern Africa (bit.ly/3d8X96Z).

Socialists say it is possible for the world to cooperate and collaborate for the common good. The basic networks such as the WHO already exist. Once socialism is established, it and similar agencies can re-focus and re-prioritise to serve communities and not corporations. 

ALJO

Bird’s Eye View: Democratic, Stateless, Commonwealth (2022)

The Bird’s Eye View Column from the November 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism: Democratic

‘The curtailment of the rights of local government began back in the 1990s. In 1993, liberal reformers, represented by President Boris Yeltsin, came into conflict with the system of councils that was left over from revolutionary times and given a new lease of life during Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika’ (Jacobin, 11 September,).

Actually the rot set in over a century ago with the forceful dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in 1918. Ironically, one supporter of this measure provided an excellent account of why the Social Revolutionary Party, representing the peasants, who were in a large majority, should be denied their victory:

‘It may certainly appear as a monstrous crime against democracy on the part of a regime which regards itself as Socialist to have suppressed an institution which had been the dream of generations, which the Bolsheviks themselves had been championing ever since the first revolution of 1905 with more enthusiasm than any other party… What better proof could have been furnished that the Bolsheviks were trampling on the people’s will in a manner hitherto exhibited by the worst tyrants in history, that they were afraid of the verdict of the nation gathered through its representatives in the highest assembly known to democracy …?” (The Bolshevik Revolution, Maxim Litvinoff, 1918).

For a contemporary account, see our article ‘The Revolution in Russia: Where it Fails’ (Socialist Standard, August 1918). With regard to Gorbachev and life in state capitalist Russia post 1917, this candid comment from journalist Vitali Vitaliev is worth repeating:

‘The main mistake of Western analysts trying to assess Gorbachev’s career is the attempt to treat him as a kind of God-sent Messiah who emerged to save Russia from ‘socialism’. Nothing can be further from reality. Throughout his political career Gorbachev was part and parcel of the apparat. He came not to dismantle ‘socialism’ but to preserve it. I am putting ‘socialism’ into inverted commas because there has never been anything of the kind in Russia. No other country is so far from the ideas of equality and fraternity as the Soviet Union. If there was a socialism, or even a Communism at all, it was only for the ruling elite who lived and are still living in a separate world. It is a world of privileges, starting from birth (special maternity homes) going on all through their lives (special shops, hospitals, hairdressers’ salons, canteens, toilets and what not) and not ending even with the end of their physical existence (special cemeteries). Yes, yes, special cemeteries for the rulers of ‘the first working-class State in the world’, where workers are not supposed to be buried’ (Observer, 11 March 1990).

Stateless

Margaret Thatcher in a meeting with Gorbachev reportedly argued at one stage about the merits of capitalism versus ‘communism’ and she told him ”’We are all capitalists. The only difference is that for you it’s the state that invests, while for us it’s private individuals.” Gorbachev was apparently flummoxed’ (Mission to Moscow, Sunday Times 5 April 1987).

She was correct. Capitalist hallmarks, such as class society, commodity production, profit motive, exploitation of wage labour, markets, etc., exist in Russia, both pre- and post-Gorbachev, as they do worldwide. The very idea of socialism in one country is akin to being a little bit pregnant! People who insist otherwise are living in a world of make believe, which is home, alas, to billions, including fans of the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea.

‘The North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly gathered for its first session on Wednesday. According to state news agency KCNA, the chamber agreed to adopt laws on landscaping and rural development. However, it also pledged to help turn the nation into a “beautiful and civilised socialist fairyland”. The two laws are intended to help advance efforts made by the governing party to bring about “a radical turn in the rural community and its policy on landscaping to achieve a rapid development of the Korean-style socialist rural community and spruce up the country into a beautiful and civilised socialist fairyland”. Kim Jong-un, who did not attend the parliamentary event, also promised to improve people’s livelihoods and boost rural development amid spiralling economic crises. Economic difficulties have been blamed on self-imposed Covid-19 lockdowns, international sanctions over the country’s nuclear weapons programme and also natural disasters’ (Daily Express, September 8).

The February 2012 Socialist Standard’s cover features a young-looking ‘Great Successor’ under the title ‘Kim, All Ye Faithful. Leaders in the Land Time Forgot’ and related article ‘Death of a Dictator’.

Commonwealth

‘Everything seems to tick in “Unrest” the latest effort from Zurich-born writer/director Cyril Schäublin. “Unrest” depicts the working lives of 19th century anarchist watchmakers in the Swiss mountains, laying bare the absurdities of the wage system’ (Roger Ebert.com, 12 September). During the interview, Schäublin states: ‘Kropotkin, contra Karl Marx… believed in the abolition of any kind of wage labor whatsoever.’ Au contraire. In Value, Price and Profit (1865) Marx stated:

‘At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerrilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!”

Cooking the Books: ‘Ignorant and mistaken’ (2022)

The Cooking the Books column from the November 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

The irony of it! A government with a free-marketeer Prime Minister and Chancellor punished by ‘the markets’. This normally happens to reformist governments that have promised to spend money on improving conditions for the workers. The 1929-31 Labour government was said to have been brought down by a ‘bankers’ ramp’. In France the term used was that such governments came up against a ‘wall of money’. Harold Wilson in the 1960s blamed ‘the gnomes of Zurich’.

The villains in question are international speculators – sometimes politely called ‘international investors’ – who buy and sell the bonds issued by different governments. Governments borrow money by selling bonds. These have a face-value and a rate of interest fixed as a percentage of this. Say, £100 at 5 percent. However, while the amount of interest payable remains the same (in the example, £5), the price at which the bonds are bought and sold on the bond market varies. So, if the price falls to £90 the interest is still £5, but 5/90 is 5.56 percent. If the price rises to £110, this ‘yield’ (interest/selling price) is 4.5 percent. When the government sells new bonds it has to take into account the yield on existing bonds and offer that as the rate of interest.

When on 23 September Kwarteng announced tax cuts to be funded by borrowing, the speculators perceived the new government as behaving like a reformist one. Cutting taxes without reducing government spending and covering the extra deficit by borrowing was seen as no different from increasing government spending by extra borrowing. So they sold UK government bonds. With more sellers than buyers, the price of these fell and the ‘yield’ went up, meaning that government has to pay a higher rate of interest to borrow.

This had an unintended side-effect. Some pension fund managers had been persuaded by clever City financiers to borrow money by effectively betting on the price of government bonds they hold not falling significantly. They lost the bet and were required to pay cash to settle. This they could only get by selling some of their bonds, so driving their price further down. To prevent the pension funds becoming insolvent and the risk of this leading to a wider financial crash, the Bank of England stepped in to buy bonds and keep their price up.

This was a classic case of how a central bank has to deal with a dash for cash – it makes more cash available to prevent the whole financial system clogging up. Marx came across this in his time. Under the 1844 Bank Charter Act, the Bank of England was allowed to issue money not backed by gold in its vaults only up to a certain amount. However, in the financial crises of 1857 and 1866 the Act had to be suspended to permit the Bank to make more cash available. Gordon Brown thought he had invented the wheel – and saved the world – when he followed this long-established practice during the Crash of 2008.

Marx’s comment was:

‘Ignorant and mistaken bank legislation, such as that of 1844-45, can intensify this money crisis. But no kind of bank legislation can eliminate a crisis’ (Capital, Vol 3, ch. 30).

Governments can’t make things better but they can make things worse, as we have just seen. Starmer tweeted that ‘the government has lost control of the economy’ (2.02pm, 28 September). But governments don’t control the economy. It’s the other way around, as he will find out if ever he gets the chance to have a go.

Socialist Stewardship? (2022)

From the November 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The question ‘Who should own the Earth?’ is a common one in political theory. To the capitalists, their private ownership of the land and the wealth they’ve stolen from the workers justifies their class collectively deciding the fate of the planet. The socialist response to the capitalists’ private ownership is that the Earth should be commonly owned by all and managed in the best interest of all. However, common ownership doesn’t solve all the issues which capitalist private ownership of the planet has created; profit over the welfare of the Earth has created a climate crisis (which at this point might be far too late to reverse regardless of the system) but, under a misguided interpretation of the idea, common ownership in the interest of all could lead to this same crisis. If you understand “in the interest of all” as meaning maintaining the ease of travel by car or plane you could justify maintaining the current rate of use of fossil fuels which is destroying the ecosystem.

This is the greatest flaw of the general understanding of common ownership, no group can truly own the planet. As humans we’re merely a part of nature and we have a duty to care for the Earth for future generations; this idea is known as stewardship. If we wish to maintain our planet for us and future generations, we must integrate it into our ideas of common ownership. If we as a species collectively own everything then it must be understood that ownership comes with the priority of maintaining and improving its condition. Simply put, private ownership is killing our planet for economic profit and common ownership can’t make the mistake of killing our planet for short-term conveniences or improvement in our material conditions; instead socialists must embrace the duty to protect the environment and repair the Earth after the ecological trauma of private ownership.

SHERIFF

Selfish by nature? (2022)

From the November 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard 

About 30 years ago, I was feeling a bit pleased with myself. My tiny donor booklet told me that I was on my tenth visit to a mobile blood donation unit. I can’t remember if I was still on the bed or having my brew and biscuit but I’ll never forget the spontaneous acclaim from everyone in that hall when a nurse announced that a donor had turned up to give blood for the fiftieth time. The contribution of most of us there must have paled into insignificance against that of the newcomer. So what? We were all there doing a Good Thing. And it felt good too.

I think we can safely assume that the 10,000 who responded to October’s blood supply alert were acting out of a sense of solidarity, public duty, call it what you will. They did a Good Thing, and will rightly feel good about it too.

Such behaviour sits very badly with the tale that we’re all hard-wired for selfishness and competition rather than for cooperation, that capitalism is our natural state.

Solidarity is no new thing either – a recent report in Nature reveals that, 31,000 years ago, one of our kind, probably in childhood, had part of a lower leg surgically removed. Apart from the wow! factor of the approximate date (previous evidence for surgery dated to ‘only’ 7,000 years ago), what’s significant is that the amputee survived for at least 6 years in mountainous terrain which, the archaeologists infer, could only have been possible with ‘a high degree of community care’.

Our close relatives were at it too some 50,000 years ago. A 2017 study of a Neanderthal‘s skeletal remains shows that he survived into late adulthood despite a missing forearm, profound deafness – unhelpful when there are loads of predators around – and other severe physical problems. Again, the only inference that the researchers could draw was that his survival would only have been possible with continuous social support. In other words, Neanderthals could care for each other too.

Co-operation and sociability appear to have even deeper roots in the history of our species, as Penny Spikins, an archaeology professor at York University, argues in her newly published book Hidden Depths: The origins of human connection. We shall be reviewing this book in future no doubt but here is a taster from her conclusions:

‘We are innately wired to care for living and non-living things, to seek emotional comfort and to reach out to form connections. When the going gets tough, we tend to help each other.’

So it’s not just ‘human nature’ that capitalism’s supporters have got wrong – they misunderstand (or distort) what it means to be part of the genus Homo. Increasingly, scientific research shows that ‘the way we are’ is no barrier to socialism.

S. F.

Pathfinders: Ancient wisdom (2022)

The Pathfinders Column from the November 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

After last month’s shit-show by the UK Tory leadership, you have to ask yourself why people believe in following leaders at all, when the consequences of doing so can be disappointing at best, at worst spectacularly awful.

Many scientists think we’re programmed to. Leaders perch at the top of hierarchies, and if you look the word up you’ll find the common claim that hierarchies are built into us, and not just us but all animals. ‘Social groups across species rapidly self-organize into hierarchies, where members vary in their level of power, influence, skill, or dominance… A wealth of evidence indicates social hierarchies are endemic, innate, and most likely, evolved to support survival within a group-living context’ (bit.ly/3yOkGCa).

If this is so, how can we advocate a classless and egalitarian social system? Doesn’t hierarchy scupper socialism?

If by hierarchy we are talking about royal rulers and the oppressive machinery of class societies, palaces, slaves, and all the rest of it, then it is obvious that these are not built into humans, because good evidence for this highly stratified behaviour is only seen within the last 10,000 years, a mere thirtieth of the 300,000 years that anatomically modern humans have existed.

Prior to this, human activity mainly consisted in immediate-return hunting and gathering (HG), an uncomplicated and egalitarian lifestyle sometimes called ‘primitive communism’ and based on sharing resources. HG bands were typically small and mobile, though they may have been part of regional and even continental communities, and any property that did exist was little more than tools and trinkets. Interestingly, studies of modern HG groups show that they often find domineering behaviour insufferable, and actively combat it using tactics like ‘reverse dominance’. Anthropologist Richard Lee quotes one HG member: ‘When a young man kills much meat, he comes to think of himself as a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his inferiors. We can’t accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. In this way, we cool his heart and make him gentle’ (bit.ly/3yNeWJ9). What this suggests is that an innate tendency to hierarchy might exist but that, other things being equal, human groups have no problem keeping it in check and under control.

What happened to humans 10,000 years ago to disrupt aeons of peaceful coexistence? This period saw the shift from hunting and gathering to settled farming, a radical change in the mode of production. With farming, you have to stay in one place and work it, and investing labour in a plot of land creates a ‘value’, both in terms of sunk cost and of productive potential. This value might only be notional in a situation of abundance, but it becomes worth preserving and defending where scarcity enters the equation, which may happen with rising populations. At first the ‘property’ might be shared, but a ruthless warrior elite will have the incentive to monopolise it and then use artificial scarcity as a power base. At this point, whatever social customs exist to keep latent hierarchical tendencies under control are overwhelmed. One way or another, farming historically ushered in all the oppressive apparatus of property ownership including ruling elites, religion, civil administration, money forms, social stratification, massive inequality, slavery and organised warfare.

Today, defenders of capitalist privilege are happy to justify all this, in a kind of broken-eggs-and-omelettes way, by pointing to the modern benefits of civilisation, and by ignoring the role that artificial scarcity continues to make in shoring up these hierarchies. They also may hay with the word primitive in the term primitive communism, arguing that HG groups were only egalitarian because they were incapable of anything more complex, and that any non-hierarchical alternative to capitalist inequality must necessarily be a retrograde step that would undo civilisation and take us back to living in huts.

In the first place, we have seen that egalitarianism is not some passive factory default but an active process of collective social management. HGs like it that way, and work to keep it that way.

Secondly, archaeology has some bearing on this. If HG groups were primitive and incapable of complex culture and social organisation, then large-scale projects such as monument building were clearly out of the question. But excavations at the 12,000-year-old site of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey are overturning this assumption. Not only does it appear that HGs were indeed able to build monuments, but also that large-scale organisation and interaction were possible before the mechanisms of settled farming, property and social stratification existed. Bottom line: you don’t need hierarchies to do fancy stuff.

If a ‘dominance drive’ is universal and innate among animal species, it seems to be more like a dial than an on/off switch. In some animals, like elephants, manatees, bonobos, bats, the dial is set low. In others, the dial is turned right up to despotic. Some interplay of genetic and environmental factors is clearly at work. Humans don’t have just one behaviour, we’re very adaptable, and as a highly social animal, good at cooperating. But hierarchies don’t help, if anything they get in the way. A study cited in Nature suggests that hierarchies actually hinder the process of cooperation: ‘Compared to a condition lacking hierarchy, cooperation declined in the presence of a hierarchy due to a decrease in investment by lower ranked individuals.’ And it doesn’t matter whether the hierarchy is deemed justifiable or not: ‘hierarchy was detrimental to cooperation regardless of whether it was earned or arbitrary’.

And this is to say nothing of the strong case, eg, Michael Marmot’s 2004 Status Syndrome, that hierarchies cause massive stress, ill health, low fertility and high mortality. Rather than being a rocket booster to civilisation, hierarchies hobble us, make us ill and piss us off. Hunter gatherers weren’t daft. They always knew hierarchies caused trouble, and were best avoided. Socialism would simply apply the same ancient wisdom.

Paddy Shannon

Editorial: That’s not all, folks! (2022)

Editorial from the November 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month the world looked on with bemused fascination as the UK Tory leadership attempted to handle the economy the same way the iceberg handled the Titanic, reminding everybody once again, as if Trump and Bojo were not lesson enough, that it’s possible for people to get into positions of power who really have no idea what they’re doing.

The markets dived, pundits gaped and soberer heads than Liz Truss, like Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un, scratched their heads and wondered if the British state had been taken over by Warner cartoon characters. An anvil dropped on the old Chancellor after he pulled the trigger on his Trust the Market bazooka, Keir Starmer rocketed like Wile E. Coyote into the stratosphere and the Tory PM ran out of road and fell off a cliff. The new Chancellor, who had been hastily whistled up to deploy an Acme Damage Limitation gizmo, started unpromisingly by conceding in his first speech that ‘governments do not control markets’.

We’ve been saying all along that governments can’t do this, although never underestimate their ability to make things worse (see Cooking the Books, this issue). Markets don’t deliver public benefit, they deliver profit for a few and cause misery for many and destruction for the planet. And if they deliver an earthquake, governments normally prefer to blame the opposition, or the unions, or latterly Putin, or their own staff. You can hardly blame the system one minute, and then ask people to vote you into office to control the system the next. The fact that Jeremy Hunt has admitted this shows you what a desperate hole they were in. The only thing they can hope for come next election is a large dose of public amnesia.

Most people will simply shrug and say, that’s what happens when you put criminals or idiots in charge. The next lot will be better, they say, because they couldn’t be any worse. Experience suggests otherwise. Whole government institutions, not just leaders, can display surprising levels of incompetence, as we discover with the British intelligence services (see Spycatchers, this issue). And why follow leaders anyway? Much better not to put anyone in charge, but instead take collective charge ourselves (see Pathfinders, this issue).

The alternative left-wing media outlet Double Down News provided some fun in the form of an exquisitely venomous take-down of Truss and Kwarteng by former Daily Telegraph journalist Peter Oborne, in which he argued that the vainglorious duo had sold out common sense and political reality in order to promote the interests of their favourite hedge fund managers and super-rich oligarchs. But one wonders what he thinks political leaders do the rest of the time. Serving the interests of the rich and powerful is what all governments do, no matter how progressive and reformist their speeches might look, because once they’re in power they have to run capitalism and that means doing what the rich want them to. And that’s not all, folks. Until we get rid of this system, the capitalist cartoon disasters will run and run.

October's "Done & Dusted"

"Another quiet month. I wouldn't be surprised if it continued to be quiet for the rest of the year."

Cue cut and paste . . . 

A new feature on the blog . . . and like all new features on the blog, one that I should have put in place about 10 years ago. (It's the same with the Pages that I'm slowly introducing to the top of the blog's homepage).

It's perfectly simple. Here's a list of the Socialist Standards that were completed on the blog in the month of October 2022. Slowly but surely the digitization of the Standard is *cough* nearing completion. If I'd hazard a guess, I'd say it will be finished by the end of 2024. Famous last words, and all that. 

They are broken up into separate decades for the hard of hearing.

October 2022's "Done & Dusted"

January 1905

August 1929

September 1929

July 1943

August 1943

September 1943

October 1945

October 1946

October 1958

October 1971

October 1979

October 1981

October 1987

October 2005

October 2007

October 2009

September 2022

World Socialist Number 1.

Note to self: No note. Just make it to the end of the year. That'll do.

Where to buy the Socialist Standard (1971)

From the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

ABERDEEN: J. G. Bisset’s, 99 High St.. Old Aberdeen (also pamphlets sold). Bisset’s, 12-14 Upper Kirkgate. Bisset’s, College of Education, Hilton Place. Watt & Grant's, 247 Union Street. College Bookshop, 191 Holbom Street. M. Vallance, Room 21, Johnston Hall, College Bounds. Old Aberdeen. (Also pamphlets sold). 

BELFAST: The Paperback-Shop, Gresham Street.

BIRMINGHAM: Reference Library, every weekday, evenings only. The Ramp, New Street Station, every Saturday.

BRIGHTON: The News-stand, London Road Unicorn Bookshop, Gloucester Road. 

DUNDEE: James Finnie, 10 Kinnaird Street. 

EDINBURGH: David Balfour, West Nicholson St. Better Books, Forest Road. Moondan, 18 Stephen St., Stockbridge Cross, Westport Row. Cross Market. Every Saturday 11 a.m. -5 p.m. in Princes St., at the East End beside the Duke of Wellington Statue, at the West End in front of Binns, and halfway along Princes St. at the Mound. At the Mound every Sunday. 

GLASGOW: Bryson’s, Byres Road, W.l. Clyde Book Shop, High Street. Macdonalds, Maryhill Road at Cromwell Street.

HULL: Robinsons, 80 Cottingham Road. Robinsons, Newstall University Union. Browns Bookshop University.

LEHAM-BY-FORFAR: Roger Wilkie, 8 Blairs Road.

LIVERPOOL: Wilson’s Bookshop, Church Alley, off Church Street, Liverpool. Bob's Newsbox, Brown-low Hill, Liverpool 3. 

LONDON: News-stand outside Midland Bank, High Holbom, WC1. The Compendium, 240 Camden High Street. NW1. News Stores, 10 Coptic Street, WC1 (near British Museum). Collet’s, Charing Cross Road, WC2. Housman’s, 5 Caledonian Road, Nl. News-stand, Notting Hill Gate Tube Station (near Burtons). Until II pm SPGB, 52 Clapham High Street. SW4 (all literature). And at Hyde Park every Sunday. 

MANCHESTER: Percival, Oxford Road; also Percival’s at St. Peter's Square and Wilmslow Road, Didsbury

SWANSEA: Dylan’s Bookshop, 75 High St. (near High St. Station). Tel. 59664. Central Library 10.30-12.00.

WOOLWICH: W. Tyler, 30 Woolwich High Street. SE18.

Books Received (1971)

From the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

• For Marx. L. Althusser. Allen Lane.
• The Rise of Fascism. F. L. Carsten. Methuen. 80p.
• Marx in His Own Words. Ernst Fischer. Allen Lane. £1.50.
• New Fabian Essays. Dent. £1.75.
• Mao Papers. Edited by Jerome Ch’en. OUP. £2.75.
• Europe versus America. E. Mandel. NLB. £2.00.
• Sexuality and Class Struggle. Reimut Reiche. NLB. £2.00.
• Social Consequences of Conviction. J. P. Martin and D. Webster. Heinemann Educational. £4.50.
• Suspended Sentence. Marc Ansel. Heinemann Educational. £1.50.
• The Enthusiasts. L. Thompson. Gollancz. £3.00.
• Ted Heath: A Latterday Charlemagne. Donald Johnson. Johnson Publications. 50p.

Don't be fooled by words (1971)

From the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

“All I want to see, is my country free, happiness peace and prosperity." A theme, with variations, that has headed the top ten of the political hit parade with unceasing regularity during the last century.

The chorus master on this occasion is Joe Cahill who has been described as “the militant leader of the Belfast wing of the provisional IRA" after his release from detention in Dublin. At this point we will stop the satire; the part played over the decades by political “leaders" with their message of national independence has proved too tragic and disastrous to joke about.

The working class of Ireland, that is to say of Eire and Northern Ireland, as indeed workers wherever they may reside, should think seriously about such phrases as “Freedom", “My country", “Prosperity" and “Peace". Let’s see what they really mean.

Freedom: In capitalist society means the right of the vast majority to be propertyless wage workers producing wealth to be sold on a market with a view to profit.

My country : The countries of the world are owned by a privileged minority. The working class has problems and interests that are produced by capitalism and not by the existence of national barriers. 

Prosperity: All workers are poor, some are destitute. A prosperous working class is a contradiction in terms. Capitalism is as incapable of producing a working class that is prosperous as it is of producing a government that is popular.

Peace: Even if the shooting stopped the class war would remain, that is the struggle which goes on all the time over the ownership of the wealth of society, whether it be in a so called “United" Ireland, the “United" States, the “United" Kingdom, the “United” Arab Republic. Russia, Africa, in fact wherever capitalism is the predominating form of society.

S. L. L.

50 Years Ago: Futile Appeals For Disarmament (1971)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

A demonstration was held on Thursday October 13th at the Central Hall, to further the agitation for disarmament. It should be obvious that the capitalist governments of the world arm against each other because they must, war being the logical and necessary outcome of their economic rivalry. While, therefore, the prospect of economising, by mutual agreement to limit expenditure, is attractive to the employing class who have to bear the burden, to appeal to a national group of capitalists to give up their only defence against their like-minded predatory neighbours and against the workers from whose robbery the privileged position of the capitalist class arises, is to ask them to commit suicide, and will naturally be given the amount of consideration such a proposal would deserve. Is it to be expected that our capitalist rulers, armed to the teeth to defend their private property, will scrap their armaments and voluntarily sacrifice their hold on the world's wealth merely.in response from muddle-headed reformers?

* * *

The Bishop of London distinguished for his Christianly ferocious thirst for blood in the late war, asked God's blessing on the Washington Conference meaning no doubt that he hopes the Empire would find favour in the sight of the Lord to get a thumping big share of the spoils in the partition of China. The speakers . . . were no doubt doing their duty by the ruling class in talking platitudes about peace in .the present interlude between the 'last war’ and the next ‘last war’, because at the moment it is desirable to distract working class attention from the lining-up for the conflict to decide the mastery of the Pacific.

(From an article The Peace Society’, by E.R.H., Socialist Standard, November 1921).

Now they say there’s too much electricity (1971)

From the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is facing another problem linked with the coming of potential abundance, this time in the field of electricity supply.

Nuclear power stations—which at present use the heat of nuclear fission to raise steam to drive the turbines generating electricity — can produce so much electricity that as more and more of them are built the problem is arising of what to do with the “surplus” produced during the hours of off-peak demand.

According to Keith Richardson, Industrial Editor of the Sunday Times in an article “Will they have to give electricity away free” (26 September), this was one of the matters discussed at a recent conference in Geneva on the peaceful uses of atomic energy. Since, apparently, nuclear power stations cannot be easily damped down from time to time in the way coal and oil-fired stations can, two possible solutions were discussed. One was to quite literally give away the “surplus” electricity free during off peak hours; the other was to waste the heat produced during this period by releasing it into the atmosphere. If capitalism’s past experience is anything to go by, there should be little doubt as to what will happen.

Free electricity, free transport, free goods and services generally—this is the way modern technology points. But all this is impossible under capitalism with its class monopoly of the means of Iife and its profit motive. Capitalism cannot digest abundance and has to seek ways to prevent and pervert its progress. Only when all the resources of the earth, natural and man-made, are owned in common by all the people of the world can they be used in a rational way – to provide an abundance of goods services which people can take and use freely as and when they need to.

Letter: The Key to History (1959)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Sir,

E.W., in his reply to my letter, assumes that I have no evidence for claiming that Marx believed that history was governed by laws which operate independent of the will of man; but his assumption, I don't think, is based on a proper understanding of Marxism, for when we turn to the Author's Prefaces in Capital we find this written: “Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence ” On page 789 of the same book, that is (the Moore and Aveling translation Capital) there is written: “The Capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the Capitalist mode of production, produces Capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of the proprietor. But Capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of nature, its own negation.” Here we have Marx dealing with impersonal forces which operate independent of the wills of the Capitalists, that is, the laws inherent in Capitalist production which, according to Marx, are not willed by men.

It is true that Marx did not view history as something apart from men, but nevertheless he did not believe that men created the laws of history and directed the social movement according to their wills; for according to Marx it is impersonal forces working outside of will, consciousness and intelligence that force men to play a certain role in history. [It is true that ends are not always realized merely because men will them, but nevertheless, the motivation towards their realisation could not exist independent of their wills.] E.W. says that it is only when conditions are fulfilled can the will to exploit become effective, but he seems to forget here that these conditions for exploitation are willed by men. Capitalism no more came into existence independent of the will of men than Feudalism went out independent of their wills. E.W. talks about objective conditions, but does not state what these objective conditions are. The objective conditions of Capitalist production are created by the subjective content and can therefore only be understood and motivated through subjectivity.

However, there is nothing wrong m speaking about objective conditions relating to Capitalist production as long as this is understood. The objective conditions of industry do not come out of the blue, they are created by men. E.W. would have us believe that objective conditions arise out of unwilled activities. This is true of climate, etc., but not of things created by men.

E.W. says that the absence of certain conditions made Socialism impossible 500 years ago, and that the presence of certain objective conditions make it possible today, but he seems to forget that the presence of certain objective conditions today make world destruction more of a possibility than the establishment of Socialism, and in that respect these objective conditions, which we have today for the realisation of Socialism, are worse than the objective conditions of 500 years ago; for, although it may not have been possible to realise Socialism at that time, it was at least impossible for them to realise the possibility of world destruction. However, seeing that E.W. believes that there is a key to history, he will no doubt believe that all the destructive objective conditions of today will, in the end, bring men nearer to the realisation of Socialism. But then again, this view is not founded on fact, but only belief which is opposed to facts as they stand today.

R. Smith

Dundee.

Reply:

If Mr. Smith believes that history is the outcome of the projection of the wills of individuals, how explain the fact that men’s historical activities have developed along definite lines, expressed in particular and class relations—Slavery—Feudalism—Capitalism? Mr. Smith himself offers neither evidence nor explanation for his views. Social classes are not created by the wills of individuals, they are the outcome of prior economic development. The way wealth is organised and distributed between classes—the social relation of production—is dependent on a given stage of social development. The fact that at different times, men have found themselves, slave owner or slave, feudal lord or serf, employer or employee, expresses a definite historic mode of production, independent of the wills of those who participate in it and regardless of their good or bad intent. Different men are born in different social situations, hence unwilled by them. It is the degree of ’economic development corresponding to a given social situation which provides the objective possibilities for individuals having common economic aims, i.e., class aims, to further their interests. The material basis for existence and its degree of economic development in which men find themselves are the indispensable conditions for the continuance and furtherance of their productive activities. The material basis for mens existence is not, as Mr. Smith imagines, the creation of men’s subjective processes i.e., their personal wishes, wills or desires; Individuals did not will themselves to become feudal lords no more than serfs willed serfdom. Nor did the bourgeois who for centuries were weaker than the feudal lords suddenly vanquish Feudalism by merely willing it out of existence.

Mr. Smith offers two quotes from Capital, neither of which gives support to his assertion that Marx held history to be an impersonal process. is method of quoting leaves much to be desired. The first quote —"which treats of social movements, governed by laws independent of human will or consciousness ” are not Marx words, but those of a reviewer of Capital, describing what he believed to be Marx's historical method. Nevertheless, it is a fact that laws which are expressions (often approximate) of objective regularities discoverable in events do not depend on our will or consciousness or the law of gravity, etc., although by understanding them, they can be used in practical life. Again, the law of value which regulates present exchange relations is not dependent on the will or consciousness of the Capitalist. It is true the Capitalist via exploitation wills to expand his capital. If he did not attempt to do both these things he would cease to be a Capitalist. Thus the Capitalist “will” moves within the bounds of iron compulsions.

In Mr. Smith's second quote, Marx is pointing out that small scattered private property is transformed into large-scale Capitalist property and this in turn would be transformed into common property as inexorably as a law of nature. Marx showed that the economic development which dissolved Feudalism and with it petty private production inevitably led to Capitalism. No historian has been able to show that there could have been any major social alternative to Capitalism. Yet so far as men being puppets of an impersonal economic process, it was this economic development, culminating in Capitalism, which gave rise to an unparalled scope and intensity for men's activities, although it was class activities for class ends.

Again, Capitalism produces the will for Socialism and the economic conditions for making it effective, just as Capitalism alone makes it possible to devastate the world with the hydrogen bomb. That is why Socialism and the hydrogen bomb were impossible 500 years ago. As Mr. Smith unwittingly admits this was because the objective conditions were different then. Socialism is the only alternative to Capitalism and it is this path which the working class must take if they are to achieve their class emancipation. Such is the nature of historic inevitability.

How little this second quote of Mr. Smith's has to do with fatalism is seen by the fact that the quote is lifted from a whole passage in which Marx makes human effort and moral indignation indispensable features of the social revolution.

Marx not only said men make history he exemplified it in his own actions. Again, his works Class Struggles and 18th Brumaire are brilliant illustrations of his dictum. What Mr. Smith should have done was to show through Marx's voluminous works where he even once said, “ men do not make history.” But this Mr. Smith cannot do.

Ted Wilmott

How Not To Get Socialism. (1930)

From the February 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Way of the Communists. 

The “Daily News,” on January 16th, reported Dr. Brown, President of the Baptist Union, as having said that the Baptists last year lost 4,450 church members and 11,000 Sunday School scholars; in ten years, he added, they would at that rate be “as dead as the dodo.”

This is bad news for the Baptists, and we believe it will also be bad news for the Communist Party. For it appears that when they were hard at work preaching the “United Front,” Baptist ministers as well as the Labour Party were to be brought within the fold. Those who think that there must be a limit to the silliness even of the Communists are asked to read the following. It is a letter printed on the front page of the “Workers’ Weekly,” on December 7th, 1923, at a time when a general election was in progress. It is headed, “Helping Ramsay Mac.,” and is signed by J. Stokes, of Portabbot:—

“There is a straight fight in the constituency between Byass, the Capitalist candidate (Unionist), and Ramsay MacDonald. Ramsay MacDonald has all the way to go ; if he gets there, that will be all.

We had a meeting here on November 19th with Ramsay MacDonald, who had three Baptist Ministers on the platform. It was a jolly meeting, and I was most pleased to hear these fellows speaking. We Communists here are doing our best to help Ramsay MacDonald to beat the Capitalist candidate.”

Deeds, not words.

The same issue of the “Workers’ Life” contains many other delightful sidelights on Communist activities. There is, for example, an illustration of what is meant by that favourite slogan of the Communist Party : “Now is the time for action.”

“Comrade Mowatt” writes from Barrow to say that the local Communist Party were working hard to get Mr. J, Bromley returned to Parliament as Labour M.P., and he adds, “all our illusions and theoretical deductions have been hung out on the clothes line to dry.”

We never regarded their “theoretical deductions” as other than unsound, but such candid admission from themselves as to the usefulness of their theories is refreshing.

Having abandoned their theories the Communists were then free to get down to action. Mr. J. McHendrick, of Rutherglen, obligingly tells us what kind of action.

“It was arranged that the addressing of envelopes should be done by team work, and anyone who saw this work being done would have to admit that the Communist Party is a working party.”

And to think that the Soviet Government borrows money at high rates of interest from Russian capitalists and then spends part of it paying British Communists to “help Ramsay Mac.” at elections and address envelopes for Labour Party candidates !

The Mass Party.

The justification given by the Communists for supporting MacDonald, whom they described as a “faithful servant of capital,” was that this was the way to build up a “mass Communist Party.”

In the “Communist Review” (October, 1929) the Tyneside District Party Committee publishes a statement on the condition of the Communist Party as a whole.

This is what they say :—

“After ten years of strenuous effort, the Communist Party of Great Britain finds itself with a financial membership which cannot be placed at a higher figure than 2,500, It is doubtful if even this number of financial members would be found to exist were a careful examination made . . . our Party has never been so weak in membership or influence.”

The significance of this admission will be appreciated when it is remembered that the C.P.G.B. claimed to start with about 10,000 members and that, in addition to thousands of members who joined individually, it claimed to have won over in 1921 5,000 members of the l.L.P. en bloc.

It must indeed be disappointing to spend 10 years helping the Capitalist candidates against the Capitalist candidates, and addressing envelopes in Labour Party committee rooms and then find your membership smaller by three-quarters than when you began.

The stock Communist argument against using the vote as the means of gaining political control for the establishment of Socialism, is that the vote is a “Capitalist instrument,” so that instead of using the vote for that purpose they hasten to use it to “help Ramsay Mac.” administer Capitalism. The vote is a means of attaining power, and as such is neither Capitalist nor Socialist, but it is indeed useless to the workers under Communist guidance.

The Communist Street Fighters.

We have often remarked on the danger to the working-class of the Communist policy of street-fighting, that is, the pitting of practically unarmed men against the colossal weapons of modern warfare in the hands of trained soldiers.

At the Congress of the Communist Party of Great Britain, held at Leeds at the end of November, 1929, fresh evidence was given of the dangerously reactionary nature of Communist methods.

A special correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian” reports a speech in which Mr. H. Pollitt, the prominent Communist and member of the Communist Party Executive, said : —

“Only through social revolution, only through armed insurrection, can the workers gain power.” —(“Manchester Guardian,” 2nd Dec..)

In the “Workers’ Life” (6th December) is a report of a speech delivered at the Congress by Mr. W. Gallacher, another prominent Communist, and also a member of the Central Committee. In it he said :—

“They had talked of a Revolutionary Workers’ Government, but did they realise what was implied ? Would the organisation of the workers for the revolutionary government be a legal one ? The task of fighting for a revolutionary government would be a task of bringing the workers out on to the streets against the armed forces of Capitalism.”

Having assisted their friend “Ramsay Mac.” into office and placed his Government in control of the armed forces, the Communists now talk of leading the workers into the streets against those same armed forces !

This sort of lunacy they call “tactics.”

Last May Day in Berlin we had an example of this street fighting. Large numbers of young Communists “armed” with a few revolvers and one dummy machine-gun suffered heavy casualties at the hands of a fully-equipped, semi-military, police force.

Recently the same suicidal policy has been tried out again, also in Germany. On this occasion a number of Communists were killed and many were more or less seriously wounded by the police, who were armed with revolvers, machine-guns and armoured cars. (See “Manchester Guardian” and “Daily Express,” 16th January.)

The Communists, according to the accounts in the two newspapers referred to above, were “armed” with a few revolvers, plus “bricks,” “stones,” “planks” and “knuckle-dusters” !

We have only one comment to make. Whenever Pollitt and Gallacher intend throwing stones at a machine-gun or hitting a tank with knuckle-dusters we hope they will let us know so that we can be there to see.

Enter the Proletarian Peashooters.

We are now unreliably informed of new developments in the Communist Party. According to this report that Party is now discussing a question which divided the military experts several hundreds of years ago. The question is that concerning the relative merits of the Crossbow and the Long bow. The old controversy was finally settled by the perfecting of firearms, it being found that both crossbowmen and long-bowmen were as good as dead against the gun.

The present dispute among the “street-fighters” is, however, in danger of being side-tracked by yet another school of thought which has on its side two unanswerable arguments. One is that it is possible for workers to die heroically and perfectly uselessly up against armed forces without going to the trouble of having either longbows or cross-bows, dummy machine guns or knuckle-dusters; and the second is that the cheap and homely pea-shooter, while entirely useless, is a weapon which, unlike the vote, has not been besmirched by being used by the Capitalists, Hence the rumoured formation of an entirely new corps of “Proletarian Peashooters.” Pollitt and Gallacher are to be in command of the new force, ably supported by three unemployed Baptist chaplains.

P. S.