So They Say: Surplus to Requirements (1975)

The So They Say Column from the July 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Surplus to Requirements

The pollution free oil tanker is with us. The ships, very large crude carriers (VLCCs) are already in existence and extend in some cases to well over 250,000 dead weight tonnage. Furthermore the increase in world tonnage of the VLCCs is estimated to be 1 million tons per week from the present time to the end of 1977, unless immediate cancellations of orders are made. And why should such cancellations be made? — it is the same reason as that behind their being pollution free — the ships cannot be used.

The disastrous slump in demand for big tanker capacity which has dozens of 150,000-ton and 250,000-ton vessels laid up in moorings from the Hebrides to the Pacific, is no temporary aberration, the report (by one of Britain’s major oil companies) says. It will not reach bottom, even on an optimistic assumption on oil usage until 1979 or 1980.

Sunday Times, 15th June 75.

H. P. Drewery (Shipping Consultants) estimated in March that up to 40 million tons of oil tanker tonnage could be laid up by the end of 1975 (Shipping Statistics & Economics) and the writers of the recent report recommend that every VLCC “on order from the world’s shipyards — apart from those actually now being built — should be cancelled immediately” in order to avoid a “surplus to requirements” tonnage in excess of 110 millions by 1980.

So we have it: the classic solution to the classic problem. While the prospects for profit were good the owners rushed capital into the field, each desperate to claim as large a share of the market as possible, now the market is glutted they have a problem — there are no more profits to be found. The Sunday Times on 18th May referred to this “boom and bust” phenomenon as a “grotesque reversal of normality,” but we would disagree. Given the capitalist’s jungle there is nothing unusual here; What is to be condemned is that the jungle still exists.

A Sordid Indictment

The recent case of the fatal virus disease, Lassa Fever, brought into Britain has caused the authorities to build a “Close security laboratory” at the Microbiological Research Establishment in Porton Down, Wiltshire, to study the disease. This wing will also attempt to learn more about other similar diseases for which there are no known antidotes. The laboratory was formally opened on 9th May by its director Professor Robert Harris who said at the time:

Smallpox is child’s play when handling Lassa fever virus. There is no immunization and so people working with the agents are to some extent on their own.

Times, 10th May 1975.

It is certainly a tribute to the determination of science through the individual workers on the project that they are prepared to run such risks in order to overcome a potentially serious hazard to the health of others, but things are not so straightforward in class society. The newspaper report continued :

Asked about the possible military significance, Professor Harris said the question whether Lassa fever would make a good biological weapon depended on how much people wanted to commit suicide.

It is a sordid indictment of capitalism when medical men have to be asked if their researches might prove valuable for warfare. The journalist who asked the question cannot be accused of any personal perversity — if he had not asked it he would be failing in his (limited) function to find facts, or at least, newsprint. It reaches further when we consider that Professor Harris’ team would also be failing in their jobs should they refuse to make their findings known to the masters of the laboratory — the Ministry of Defence.

Not Important

The following piece appeared in the London Evening Standard on 5th June:

Technology and resources exist to produce enough food to supply developing countries up to the year 2000 and possibly for a generation beyond, Mr. Walter Pawley, director of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation said in Toronto.

“But,” he added “if you ask me whether I think production will in fact increase in accordance with the resources and technological possibilities, I must say I am pessimistic.''

It warranted 1½" of type. So much for these “united” nations.

The Capitalist Disease

J. B. Priestley the author had some profound comments to make in the Sunday Times of 15th June. Writing in the Opinion column he relieved himself of a stream of ill-reasoned verbiage. His topic was the “English Disease” — an imaginary ailment which Priestley, along with other self-righteous “thinkers” attribute to the English working class.

I mean English not British, because I am not prepared to discuss the problems of the Scots and the Welsh. (As for the Ulster folk, too many of them refuse to come out of the 17th Century.)

Although he fails to define the nature of the disease, the inference is clearly made that the English simply don’t work hard enough. His solution? — Self discipline.

In times gone by, he argues, the English (good table-thumping stuff this) were disciplined by circumstance. This he defines as “grim hard facts (which) shaped their lives.” We take it that he means working class poverty. But not any more however:

If they are slack and lazy, nobody is telling them to clear out and starve.

In his anxiety to point a finger at the offenders, without in turn offending the “decent” folk among whom he classes himself, he picks upon "the younger set.”

They are not on the way to self discipline, ready to transform themselves into sensible reliable citizens. Their freedom only entangles them with whims and fancies, silliness and self-indulgence. And it is largely they who are responsible for that malaise, that English disease . . .

We allow for the possibility that Priestley has entered the seventh age of man, but he really should be prepared to read other copy apart from his own. On page 53 of the same newspaper we leave the realms of fiction and return to the “grim hard facts” of capitalism. The following is the first paragraph from the article “Is your child heading for the dole?”

During the next few weeks 500,000 British school-leavers will get their first taste of working life. For a record number of them this will mean going straight to the end of a dole queue. When unemployment rises, the young always fare the worst. With almost worldwide recession, this summer’s crop of graduates and school-leavers face the least hopeful prospects since before the war.

A prospect guaranteed to be no less severe now that Britain has confirmed its membership of the EEC — an aim supported by “Writers for Europe” among those numbers the prim sage Priestley figured.

Alan D'Arcy

The Price of Nationality (1975)

From the July 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is worth noting that anyone can acquire British nationality in the usual way we buy other “commodities”, in this case by paying down a mere £40.

The Home Secretary has decided to raise the fee for the naturalisation of a foreign national as a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies from £30 to £40.

(Home Office Press Notice 18th Feb. 75)

For the foreign wives of UK citizens the price is still a paltry £10.

Considering that men are sometimes expected to get themselves killed to protect our sacred Britishness, you’d think they’d put a rather higher price on this rare treasure — Nationality. At present the equation works out at L = N = £40, where L — lives (any number) and N = nationality. So much for defending the Red, White and Blue !

Charmian Skelton

The Size of the cake (1975)

From the July 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

A popular and specious argument against Socialists is that — “if all the wealth in the world were shared out equally amongst the world’s population,” (a) all the individuals would still be poverty-stricken and (b) in a short time the “clever” people would be rich again and the “not-so-clever” would once more be poor. Both arguments reveal a total ignorance and misconception of the scientific Socialism as elucidated by Marx and propounded by the SPGB and its counterparts in other parts of the world.

To start with, Socialists never make the slightest suggestion that we shall “make people equal” by giving them equal amounts of the world’s wealth. We mean that they’ll take not an equal amount of that available, but an amount desired and needed by each one as an individual. Each will take freely according to his or her needs. Under these circumstances it is absurd to say that “after a while the clever will get a lot and the not-so-clever only a little.”

The argument about the “share of the cake” each would receive under present economic circumstances is equally irrelevant. There certainly is not enough to go round under capitalism, because its production is geared to what can be sold for profit and not what is needed by the world population. But just consider how big "the cake” could be were capitalism abolished and a sane, benevolent order of society substituted.

First, look at the teeming millions of the world's population who, at present, are completely unproductive, or, outright destructively employed. Armies of clerical workers adding up wages, profits, rents, interest on investments, or employed in advertizing, insurance, customs and excise, salesmanship, real estate, banking, stock exchange, shops, stores and supermarkets, or in millions in armies, navies, air and police forces, and many more besides — would be liberated from these useless and degrading occupations to do something creative and productive of their own choice and enjoyment.

Food and other wealth would not be destroyed on a gigantic scale the world over in order to preserve high prices, nor vast tracts of land laid waste in peace and war, as is the case under capitalism. Moreover, products made for use, rather than for sale, would be made to last rather than to wear out by the time the guarantee expires. Only the best and most durable would be produced, no effort being wasted on the manufacture of the cheap and nasty for “the poor people”.

We are aware of the fact that many inventions capable of enormous increases of wealth and energy are not made available to the community because patents have been bought by capitalists in order to suppress their potential rather than to utilize it. Just how many more wonders of science we are denied we do not know. It could be that we only see the “tip of the iceberg”.

Quite right, under capitalism there isn’t enough to go around. But the potential size of the cake is staggering in its super-abundance.

R. B. Gill

50 Years Ago: The Failure of the Labour Colleges (1975)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

By dint of strenuous and persistent agitation the National Council of Labour Colleges (NCLC) has won its fight for recognition by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress. It and the London Labour College are to be permitted to take part in an Educational Scheme in co-operation with their old enemies the Workers’ Educational Association, Ruskin College and the Co-operative Educational Committee.

Elated by being recognized, the Plebs League and other supporters of the NCLC appear not to have recognized that this event has a quite other significance . . . the death of an idea, it gives the final blow to the theory of Independent Working Class Education which they have proclaimed and popularized. The scheme means co-operation with the organizations which in the past have been denounced by the NCLC and the Plebs League as camouflaged instruments of capitalist propaganda.

★

The hard truth is that independence can be had only at a price. You cannot base an educational system on the urgent need for the overthrow of capitalism and yet honestly gain the financial support of Trade Unions whose members would not approve the overthrow of capitalism . . . the NCLC and the Plebs have just decided that the price is too great.

(From an editorial Working Class Education — the Failure of the Labour Colleges, published in the Socialist Standard, July 1925.)

FOOTNOTE: In The Times, 2nd May 1975, Mr. J. P. M. Millar, General Secretary of the NCLC had an article “How the Labour Colleges were Destroyed” detailing the way in which the TUC, once it got control, closed down almost all the activities of the NCLC and has caused the Plebs magazine to cease publication.

Letters: Trade Unions & Jobs (1975)

Letters to the Editors from the July 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trade Unions & Jobs

You have repeatedly pointed out, in the SS that membership of a Political Party, other than the SPGB, only strengthens Capitalism and brings Socialism not a wit nearer. Your reasoning compels me to accept the logic of this viewpoint. The Labour Party, beloved by so many of the working class, has proved itself a hypocritical fraud on innumerable occasions.

One of the main props of the Labour Party, the Trades Unions, must also support Capitalism as they are a reformist body and nowhere do they support Socialism, therefore it follows that membership of the SPGB and any Trade Union are irreconcilable, or so I should have thought. Could I have your thoughts on this.

I should also like your views on another point that has been bothering me. In the April edition of the SS paragraph 3 page 63, R. Barltrop says that unemployment means a loss of respect for the worker. As I am unemployed I would concur, but how can you advocate employment when to work degrades us to the position of being a mere wage slave. Surely the SPGB should not concern itself with employment, full or otherwise. The object of the Party is the establishment of Socialism, there are plenty of other parties to concern themselves with such things.

P. Steed,

Tyne & Wear

Reply

We are aware of the limitations of Trade Unions but workers are in a better position to bargain over pay and conditions if they are organized in a Union. The jobs of some of our members may necessitate their Union membership. No Socialist pays the political levy to the Labour Party.

In the article you mention, past Labour Party aims concerning unemployment were contrasted with the fact that, despite the Welfare State, unemployment is still a dread prospect for the working class. It is essential to be well informed about capitalism the better to show that the system has outlived its usefulness. This does not mean we advocate reform of the problems we analyze. You will not find Socialists in the ranks of those demanding “the right to work”. In fact the article said that reform cannot remove a problem “in-built in capitalism”. As you rightly say the object of the SPGB is Socialism.

Editors.

Can We Predict ?

The article “Is Socialism Inevitable?” is a model of left-wing revolutionary positivism, and underlines the crude deterministic interpretation given by the SPGB to the Materialist Conception of History.

Let me remind your readers of the sentiments expressed. “Socialist society will be the result of historical necessity. There is a law of social development which traces the birth, growth and decay of social systems . . . its scientific validity has been demonstrated repeatedly . . . Socialist ideas are indestructible and cannot be destroyed any more than you can abolish the law of gravity”.

Comparison is therefore made between the “laws” of natural science and those social laws of development supposedly discovered by Marx and Engels. As the Law of Gravity enables us to predict with certainty that the apple will fall, so the social laws enable us to predict with equal certainty the eventual fall of capitalism.

Such is the stuff of which dreams (and SPGB dogma) are made. Evolutionary positivism, with its portrayal of nature and a vast mechanical structure operated by the laws of science now long since expired — put out of its misery by Planck and Einstein. Events can no longer be predicted with certainty only with a degree of statistical probability. The apple does not necessarily fall, neither do men necessarily become “conscious of the need for social change”.

But this is perhaps a philosophical (do I hear you say bourgeois?) quibble. A more serious objection to be made against assertions such as “There is a social law of development which traces the birth, growth and decay of social systems” is that no distinction is made therein between a law and a trend. A law is a statement of regularity such that of two classes of event the occurrence of an event of the other kind. A knowledge of the laws which hold in a given situation is never by itself sufficient to enable us to predict. To predict we must know both the relevant laws, which enable us to infer correctly from the occurrence of certain causes, the occurrence of certain effects — and in addition, the antecedent and concomitant conditions which hold. A man who tries to make predictions without a knowledge of these is a man who tries to infer the conclusion “an event of type Y (e.g. men changing society) will occur”, with the premise whenever an event of type X occurs (e.g. men seeking and gaining Socialist knowledge), an event of type Y will occur, without seeing that he can only derive his conclusion validly if he is also able to assert that “an event of type X will occur” — and to do this he must be certain that no external interests will prevent the occurrence of an event of type X. Can you be certain that these will not occur, can you be certain for instance that reformist propaganda will not continue to spread?

A trend is a sequence of historical events moving in a certain uniform direction. Clearly one cannot predict a trend without knowledge of both the relevant laws and the relevant antecedent and concomitant conditions; when the SPGB and its mentor Engels try to predict trends unconditionally that is, independently of antecedent and accompanying circumstances, they are both mistaken.

T. J. Caulfield, 

Manchester

Reply

Our correspondent’s criticism amounts to this: (1) the SPGB interprets the Materialist Conception of History is a crude deterministic way: (2) that it is impossible to predict the eventual fall of capitalism: (3) that men do not necessarily become conscious of the need for social change; (4) we do not distinguish between a law and a trend.

Our correspondent objects to our maintaining that there is a social law governing the activities of men living in society. The law referred to in the text of the article is the law of social growth known as the Materialist Conception of History, which explains the rise, growth and decay of social systems throughout history, and the reasons why social change occurs. He appears to recognize the existence of the MCH but attacks us because of our alleged crude deterministic interpretation of the theory. We are left in the dark as to what his interpretation is, as he offers no evidence, nor does he state his own view. He claims that we predict the demise of capitalism without having any knowledge of the factors involved. Again, he does not name the factors which we have failed to take into account. He accuses us of confusing laws with trends: a trend he tells us is a “sequence of historical events moving in a uniform direction”, but he adds that you cannot predict this trend without knowledge of the relevant law. But even this is insufficient. We must also know the antecedent and concomitant conditions in addition to knowing the law. We find this very confusing. The law of social growth to which the article refers is a scientific proposition and as such takes into account all the factors dealing with the evolution of society, past, present and future. It is these factors which go to make up the law. Whoever heard of a metereologist predicting the weather without taking into account all the factors involved — wind, sun, time of year, local conditions, etc? It is part of the science of metereology that everything that relates to that particular science is considered. So it is with the science of socialism. It is a historical fact that men, again and again, socially organized in different social classes, did take part did become conscious of their conflicting interests in class struggles, did change the basis of society, and did promote the unrestricted development of the productive forces. What is there to prevent men doing this again? Surely, if through a study of the evolution of human society you are able to identify a pattern of social change and development, and the causes responsible, you are entitled to arrive at certain conclusions as to the future course of social change. We predict correctly that capitalism causes unemployment, crises, war and poverty. We explain the laws governing its operation. In the same way we predict that we will get control of the political machinery when we have a majority of Socialists. At the moment we do not know the speed of the socialist revolution but we do know its specific direction. We are certain of our goal and of the efficacy of the methods we use to achieve it.

The substance of our correspondent’s letter suggests to us that the writer does not wish to be hampered in his criticism by the existence of the laws of history and economics, and would prefer to keep his purely negative criticism on some academic philosophical level. For our part, the simple issue is — are the historical conditions present which will enable Socialism to be established; can the workers understand Socialism and establish it, and where are the factors which prevent it?

Editors.

Fair Comment

Let no-one say the readers of the Socialist Standard are uncritical! In the May issue, in writing of the “Myth of the Middle Class”, I commented: “There’s no such thing as fairness in fixing the price of labour-power, any more than in the fixing of the market price of any other commodity.”

In case these words seem ambiguous (and I have at least one critic sharpening his hatchet), I wish to stress that I was not saying that wages are unfair. In general, labour-power is sold at or around its value — like other commodities.

The point I was trying to make is that all talk of fairness (or unfairness) in connection with wages, the price of our labour-power, is as irrelevant as talk of a fair or just price for a house. The question of fairness just doesn’t come into the picture. Perhaps it ought to, but that’s not how capitalism works.

I would like to add that capitalism’s inefficiency is, if anything, understated in the Socialist Standard. For instance, in the article on “The Housing Shortage”, we learn that it takes almost 21 months to complete a dwelling for local authorities and over 14 months to completion in the private sector. Yet on a Woking site some houses on a prepared site were built in May from start to finish in the course of one week. I repeat, one week. On the assumption that site preparation took about 3 weeks on average, that gives 4-6 weeks as necessary time from the production side. The rest of these endless months are presumably frittered away in legal and financial haggling, tax juggling and the like. Meanwhile the tele-pundits wring their hands and wonder why there are battered wives and battered babies, broken families and millions taking pills for unhappiness and depression . . .

Finally we should note that capitalism does one thing very well indeed. It is continually producing evidence to support our arguments. In April I wrote that “even Civil Servants go on strike”. By the time the May Standard reached its readers, the university dons and professors had followed suit, and as of now the hospital consultants are still in dispute with the NHS. No wonder John Gorst’s Middle Class Association was still-born!

C. Sultan, 

Woking

The Helping Hand

I read with great interest your article “Charity begins and never ends”. As a receiver and a giver of capitalist charity you put me in a great dilemma. Looking at the problem of the homeless from both sides I ask myself how does one get these humans politically orientated towards a socialist programme. I find the answer, sad as it may seem, negative. Do I now await the great day while my friends on the embankment die of exposure and malnutrition, or do I continue to try and rehouse and feed these unfortunate people? I would like your opinion on this.

One point about your article; you state the Salvation Army provided 8,001,323 meals and 1,636,578 beds. This is very misleading. The Sally Army charge extortionate prices for the food and shelter; dormitory accommodation at 80p a night, tea at 5p a cup etc. which is another example of capitalist exploitation.

George Watts,

London S.W.1

Reply

Over the years we have been asked many times about the plight of those in desperate need, the implication being that solving their problems could not wait for Socialism. So decades of well-meaning effort have been wasted in attempts to solve the problems in isolation from their cause. Socialists are not different from other individuals in that we will give in a personal way such help as we are able to those we find in distress — but one of the reasons why we are in the Socialist Party is our awareness that the distress remains as a social problem. When attempts to relieve distress are put on an organized basis, the inevitable result is reform movements perpetuating it. A little help to friends is part of being human, but not to be confused with the need to change society.

Editors.

Population & Plumage

You should be ashamed of yourselves for attacking Thomas Malthus. By attacking Malthus you are helping the Catholic Church and also the so-called Communist Party. The wise man has always had bother from the masses as well as the boss-class. You should know the boss-class like the ignorant masses to have big families so they can get more cheap labour.

Your Party does rather keep within the bounds of legality. One good way to refute that reputation would be for Party members to be more non-conformist in dress. Most people are cowardly conformist in dress. Why not some Marxist clothing? I should like to see garments with “Abolition of the wages system”, "Why tolerate buying and selling?” and the head of Karl Marx. Why not be different?

J. E. Catercole,

London N.4.

Reply

The Catholic Church does not oppose birth-control from enthusiasm for Malthus, but for its own reasons. The argument that by attacking a false theory one is helping different opponents of it would, if heeded, prevent any criticism of anything. We criticize Malthus because he was wrong.

The Socialist Party keeps “within the bounds of legality” because that is the means to attain our Object, not for the sake of reputation. If you like garments with slogans and pictures, by all means wear them; but don’t imagine that conformity or non-conformity in dress has anything to do with working for Socialism.

Editors.

More About Art

Your reply to my letter “Art and the Ruling Class” (May SS) seemed to me to be quite superficial. Because of your assumption that Historical Materialism can explain all art and aesthetic tastes then, no doubt, from your point of view I am confused.

You say if the ideas embodied in Beethoven’s music — or Shakespeare’s plays or Burns’s poems — did not come from society, where did they come from? The obvious answer to that is from the minds of these creative men of genius. Can you explain Burn’s “Tam O’Shanter” through economics? And what had Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” to do with capitalist society?

And again, why did the Muslims who believed in the same God as the Christians build mosques and not cathedrals? What is the historical materialistic explanation of the aesthetic taste of the Muslims? And why did the Chinese prefer pagodas to Indian temples?

You also talk about Socialist art, but where is it, and what is it?

Ron Smith,

Dundee

Reply

Part of your letter is not reproduced because it only repeats assertions made in the previous one. It will be in place here to recall a line from Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village:

E’en though vanquish’d, he could argue still.

We do not at all dispute that there are differences in ability among people: good poets, composers, engineers, etc., while the capabilities of others run in different directions. Do you imagine that Socialists don’t appreciate Shakespeare, Beethoven and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner? We say of the arts what Marx said of all human activity: “Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole cloth, he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out of conditions such as he finds close at hand.”

This is opposite to your sweeping claim that it all comes from “the minds of these creative men of genius”. You do not mention Shelley, but he wrote: “The mass of capabilities remains at every period materially the same; the circumstances which awaken it to action perpetually change.”

Variations in architecture arise from the technical means available: in particular the local materials and the state of scientific knowledge. Building a pointed arch requires the solving of a mathematical problem (which precedes “aesthetic taste” in the matter). Classical Greek architecture was the elaboration of the one arch-shape available — the lintel — in the material available. Its magnificence shows those restrictions caused by the organization of society to have been the source of what you would call works of genius.

Likewise, other architectural forms have been the making grandiose of one of two shapes which were technically possible — the round arch, the ogee, and so on — and of structural necessities like the buttress. Why the ancient Egyptians did not build a St. Paul’s can be explained from their stage of society, but not by words like “preference”.

Socialist art is the products of man in the Socialist future.

Editors.

Women's Lib, Go Home

When the equal pay for Women Law becomes operative hell will be let loose, and Speaker’s Corner (where the SPGB speak). Charing X Road and Lincoln Inn Fields won’t be in the picture !

Women only use the industrial field as a stop-gap till such times as they get married, then the men become enslaved and tied up with capitalism more than ever!

The capitalist class don’t fear women on the industrial field as they can easily be used, thus increasing the profits of the capitalist class.

Women under capitalism play a rôle, a dominant middle rôle, and playing a rôle is not the same as being a product of capitalism. If my remarks are correct, then it is the duty of all men to avoid and not work with women on the economic jungle.

R. J. Todd,

London S.E.17

Reply

We hope you will soon feel better. In the meantime, give some thought to the following.

First, women have had equal pay in a number of occupations for several years. Have you noticed hell being let loose among teachers or Civil Servants?

Second, you want women out of "the economic jungle” but say that marriage makes men worse enslaved in capitalism. If you had your way on the first count you would be still more discontented on the second: men would then have to support not only wives but non-working daughters, sisters and others.

Third, you do not explain how women getting equal pay would increase the profits of the capitalist class. The latter do not seem to be grasping the opportunity you discern. The Equal Pay Act has been on the statute book since 1970, and the complaint of those specially interested in it is of lack of progress and a general lack of concern on the part of employers.

We do not understand your remarks about “a dominant middle rôle”. Middle of what?

Editors.

The Labour Party and Social Democracy (1975)

From the July 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent years the so-called right-wing of the Labour Party has taken to calling themselves “social democrats”. The term is also used by some of those — such as Dick Taverne, Christopher Mayhew and Lord Chalfont — who have left the Labour Party because they feel it has become too much dominated by its “left wing”.

What, then, is a social democrat supposed to be? Before the First World War it was almost a synonym for Socialist, even though Engels never liked the word — and, indeed, in origin it did mean a democrat who also favoured social reforms, as opposed to a democrat pure and simple. On the other hand, “social democracy” could be an alternative name for Socialism — as a society characterised not only by a democratic administration, but also by democratic control of all aspects of social life, including the use of the means of production — and was indeed used as such in the very early issues of the Socialist Standard.

But those who call themselves “social democrats” in the Labour Party certainly do not want to suggest that they stand for a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by the whole community. Quite the contrary. They want to make it clear that they accept legal, private property rights, as one of them, Ashley Bramall, a Labour GLC leader wrote in a letter to The Times:

Social democracy involves the acceptance of a mixed economy, but a mixed economy in which public ownership is the predominant and not the subordinate form of ownership. It involves far greater equality than exists at present.

Social democrats are, 1 suppose, distinguished from some other socialists by believing (1) that socialism is to be obtained only by the processes of democracy; (2) that democratically enacted laws are to be obeyed, and (3) that property should not be acquired without compensation.

In other words, they are using the word to mean a democrat who wished to reform capitalism by a certain amount of state control and intervention.

Bramall claims to be a “socialist” as well. We in the Socialist Party of Great Britain are not alone in rejecting this claim. The journalist Peter Jenkins discussed this in an article in the New Statesman called “The Social Democratic Dilemma”. He wrote:

“Now it is of no practical importance, and of small ideological significance, whether the Labour Party chooses to call itself ‘socialist ’or ‘social democratic’. But for our purpose here we must be clear as to what we mean. The word Socialism originally had a quite precise meaning and the late George Lichtheim’s uncompromising formulation is historically the correct one. He wrote: ‘Anything that falls short of abolishing the wage relation has no claim to being described as socialism, although it may be station on the way thereto".

(New Statesman 24 Sept. 1974)

We cannot agree that it is possible to have any “station on the way” to Socialism — either you have capitalism or you have Socialism, you cannot have anything between — but otherwise Lichtheim’s point about Socialism being a wageless society is very important. Wages are a price, the price of a person’s ability to work. But the very fact that most people’s ability to work has a price shows that it is a commodity and that they are excluded from the ownership and control of the means of production and have to sell their ability to work in order to live. Socialists even before the time of Marx denounced the wages system and called for its abolition. Today the wages system can only be abolished by the conversion of the means of production into the common property of society and their democratic control by the people who make up society. Then the producers would cease to be wage-earners and instead become free and equal men and women cooperating to produce what they needed to live and enjoy life.

Jenkins went on to suggest a definition of “social democracy”. He wrote :

“. . . we should mean a form of policies or economic organisation of society which does not envisage, or indeed intend, the achievement of socialism in a future however distant. Whether this is ideologically congenial or not it is surely an accurate enough description of reality. Can it, then, be seriously contended that the Labour Party is working towards or envisages the achievement of socialism?”

Of course, not. Jenkins realizes that the Labour Party stands for trying to reform capitalism and has never stood for the abolition of the wages system.

Adam Buick

Party News: The Socialist Party's Summer School (2023)

Work, in all its forms, is what keeps society running. At best, our own work can be interesting and creative, if we're not stuck in an unfulfilling role. Capitalism turns work into employment, with our job roles shaped by how profitable or cost-effective they are likely to be, more than by how useful or manageable they are. Even so, countless important tasks rely on volunteers and other unpaid labour.

Poor conditions and pay have pushed an increased number of employees to go on strike. But how effective can industrial action be when workers don't own or control the places we work in? Alongside the impact of the state and the economy on how we work, technology has had a massive influence, from the most basic tools to the latest advances in computing.

In a socialist society, work would be freed from the constraints of money and the exploitation of employment, and would instead be driven directly by people's needs and wants. This would entail workplaces being owned in common and run democratically. But how could this happen in practice?

Summer School Meetings

The Mysteries of the Pyramids

Ancient monuments are a testament to the skills and abilities of humanity through the ages: and they are also clues as to how and why people laboured in the past. This talk will look at some of this evidence, and use it to discuss how human labour time is a constant factor in historical modes of production whilst also varying in how and why it was used. It will also look at how this evidence of human ingenuity is refracted through a modern ideological prism.

Speaker: Bill Martin

AI and the Future of Work

Much as we hate capitalist employment, our lives depend on finding it. So what are we to make of the impending Artificial Intelligence revolution which, combined with robotics, threatens to destroy up to 30% of all jobs by the mid-2030s? 90% of the world’s most successful companies are already investing in AI, so is the future for workers going to be rosy, with high pay and abundant leisure time, a hellish Dickensian nightmare, or the much-vaunted Singularity beyond which capitalism as we know it may not even exist?

Speaker: Paddy Shannon

Work: Paid and Unpaid

This talk will look at the nature of the work, paid and unpaid, that the speaker and others close to him have engaged in over the years and draw conclusions about the experience of that in the context of the system we live under. It will then reflect on some of the implications of that for the possible nature of work in a future socialist society.

Speaker: Howard Moss

The Need For Work – And How To Avoid It

Why should I let the toad work / Squat on my life? / Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork / And drive the brute off? Philip Larkin

Work has a complex and curious history, one that’s central to human experience. Yet what is it? And why does it seem so contradictory? Work is obligatory. We desire it. We rely on it for a sense of purpose and belonging, maybe even for identity. And yet as Sunday draws to a close and Monday approaches the thought of it can leave us clammy and hollow inside. Perhaps…

This is a lightning tour through the story of work, from the open Savannah to the open-plan office and beyond. On the way it attempts to throw some light on the brutish toad and maybe offers a pitchfork or two in consolation.

Speaker: Richard Field

The Socialist Party's weekend of talks and discussion looks at different aspects of work, and what they tell us about the society we live in. The event also includes an exclusive publication, exhibition and bookstall.

Our venue is Woodbrooke, 1046 Bristol Road, Birmingham, B29 6U. Full residential cost (including accommodation and meals Friday evening to Sunday afternoon) is £200; the concessionary rate is £100. Book online at www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/summer-school-2023/ or send a cheque (payable to the Socialist Party of Great Britain) with your contact details to Summer School, The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UN. Day visitors are welcome, but please e-mail for details in advance. Send enquiries to spgbschool@yahoo.co.uk.

The times they need a-changin’ (2023)

 

From the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the recent first public meeting of the newly formed Yorkshire Branch, a Socialist Party speaker presented a well-informed and powerful case against capitalism and for socialism as the only viable alternative for the meeting of all people’s needs.

As a social element the folk trio of which I’m one third played a selection of ‘Celtic’ tunes. As the other two thirds of our group are members of other political parties, Labour and Green, they gave me some insight on the drive home, into the effectiveness of the talk. The Green Party member is from what might be termed the Old Labour tradition. He feels the Labour Party has betrayed its socialist past which is why he joined the Greens. Interestingly, his expressed political views are in many ways similar to those espoused by us.

He is vehement about capitalism being the root of the world’s ills, be that poverty, climate change and related issues. For him it’s not just love of money that’s the root of all evil, but money itself. Unsurprisingly he found himself in virtually complete agreement with all the speaker had to say. However, despite referring to himself, even before the meeting, as a socialist he continues to support the Green Party. While disavowing money he continues to advocate a basic income scheme as a palliative to the difficulties the money system causes. Similarly, he supports environmentalist actions as a response to the climate crisis even though he accepts that capitalism cannot be changed from pursuit of profit with all that entails, to meeting needs.

The reforms enacted by the post-Second World War Labour government remain for him socialist markers that have been, and are still being, undone to some extent by recent Labour policies, and all the more so by pernicious Conservative administrations. This is someone who, despite residual illusions about previous Labour governments, has grasped the socialist case, but cannot take the next step, away from the lure of immediate reforms, the need to feel he is taking action now that might garner electoral support.

The disconnect is a deep-seated disbelief that it is actually possible to motivate people on a world-wide scale to act in concert to profoundly change the way the world is for the common good. For him the principles of the Socialist Party are correct, but in theory only. To stand by them may be principled, but unlikely to be acted on in the foreseeable future. In the meanwhile, and who knows how long that meanwhile may be, what could be done to make life a little better in the present, rather than some unspecified future?

My Labour Party colleague again had no disagreement with the spokesman’s critique of capitalism. Yet, for all its flaws, which he accepts are real, he continues to see Labour as a more benign alternative to the iniquitous Tories, for all the failings of the Starmer leadership. Labour, for him, is the only alternative, in the practical sense, of removing the Tories from office, his primary political objective. It is irrelevant how correct the Socialist Party may be because the party is in no position to actually change anything.

If, very hypothetically, the Socialist Party were to win an overwhelming majority of MPs in a general election, his point is that unless this was repeated simultaneously throughout the world, those MPs would have to compromise to deal with the immediate situation, or stand aside. As that hypothesis is unlikely to be realised, there is no prospect of any realistic change in the foreseeable. There is a disconnect between the analysis of society’s present structure and any impending practical solution.

He felt as if he was being asked, by implication, to not participate come the next election. This, for him, would be tantamount, if it became widespread amongst Labour supporters, to leaving the door to 10 Downing Street wide open for the Tories to stroll through again.

While none of this is novel, it does illustrate an abiding conundrum for socialists. That is, while the case for socialism may well be more widely acceptable than it presently appears, the personal may be a huge block against it becoming a mass movement. A casual conversation is not scientific evidence, but still it seems to me that they expressed views that are commonly articulated. The apparent size of the task overwhelms sustained engagement.

After all, no matter how large or widespread a mass movement becomes, its component parts are individuals, and their personal perspectives, whether profound, petty or both, are significant. The influence of capitalist ideology through mass and social media weighs heavily on personal concerns. There is also the not inconsiderable conservatism of preferring to stick with what is known, however disagreeable some of it is.

Socialists are going to have to find ways of dealing with this. Making the case for socialism is difficult enough as large numbers of people do not come into meaningful contact with socialists or their sources of information. It may well be some factor beyond just the general case for socialism, such as the increasing climate crisis, that begins to focus general thinking to consider and act to bring about profound change. This may especially be so if the main political parties are perceived to be powerless in increasingly urgent circumstances.

While socialism may seem a better alternative to what presently exists, it remains in the view of all too many merely an idea that’s attractive but uncertain, lacking in anything other than the broadest of outlines. For socialists there remains the painstaking prospect of continuing to make the case, the steady erosion of the ideological wall built by capitalism. Because of the public meeting in a South Yorkshire pub, a few more, including my two band mates, have looked over that wall.

They have seen beyond and like the look of the prospect. Now the challenge is to get them to start demolishing that wall so they can take steps beyond it towards a truly democratic society that meets need not greed.

Dave Alton

Karma and the Bible (2023)

The Halo Halo! column from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Karma is a bummer. Karma is a Buddhist concept allied to reincarnation. Be nice this time and your next life will be good. Be an illegitimate so-and-so in this life and look out buddy because who knows what you might come back as.

This column eschews karma and all religious fairy tales but seeing someone get bitten on the bum for previous unkindness is gratifying to the atheistic too. For future reference, we do not endorse schadenfreude. Well maybe just this once. American censors, it’s you we mean.

At the mention of Galileo, Freddie Mercury and Queen fans, and others, will start singing to themselves, ‘Thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening me, Galileo, Galileo, Figaro – magnificoo,’ from Bohemian Rhapsody. Galileo Galilei was a sixteenth/seventeenth century Italian astronomer who came into conflict with the Catholic Church. His support of Copernican heliocentrism, ie, the planets revolve around the Sun, and not the prevailing religious view that the Earth was the centre of the universe put Galileo on a collision course with the Catholic hierarchy. He was fortunate to get out of it without serious bodily injury.

Nobody expects the Roman Inquisition! Whether Galileo did or not expect it, when science contradicted theological mumbo-jumbo, a heap of trouble was the result. Founded in 1542 the Roman Inquisition is still going strong. It’s now known as the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Among other things, Galileo found himself on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, which is a list of books catholics were forbidden to read. The index was discontinued in 1966. History is littered with examples of censorship of all kinds. It never bodes well for someone or other. Which brings us to the present day.

An American writers’ organisation, Pen America (Guardian, 20 April) has been monitoring the incidence of book banning and, over a period of six months, has seen a 28 percent increase in such activities within American public schools.

Shades of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Sounds like the USA is determined to carry on the fine traditions of the Soviets and the NSDAP to name but a few.

Won’t somebody think of the children! Helen Lovejoy, wife of the Reverend Lovejoy, was forever crying out in The Simpsons. She sounds like the sort of person who would use that as emotional blackmail to impose their own views upon others.

Pen America says that bans are more common in states that are Republican-run.

A Utah school district – home of the Mormon church and a place that Joe Hill didn’t want to be seen dead in after Utah executed him – has banned the Bible (for vulgarity and violence) from school libraries and is considering banning the Book of Mormon too. (Guardian, 3 June). That’ll teach the proselytising equivalent of the Jehovah’s Witnesses! Your fairy story got banned! How’d you like that evangelists? Guess you reap what you sow. Last word to the Simpsons’ Nelson Munz: ‘Ha Ha!’

DC

Cooking the Books: Another extinction rebellion? (2023)

The Cooking the Books column from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

This time a pre-emptive strike against intelligent robots before they become too intelligent? This, at least, was the impression given by the front page headline ‘AI PIONEERS FEAR EXTINCTION’ (Times, 30 May). It said:

‘More than 350 of the world’s experts in artificial intelligence […] have warned of the possibility that the technology could lead to the extinction of humanity’.

The 22-word statement itself doesn’t actually say this. It merely said:

‘Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war’ (tinyurl.com/2p8ka9yv).

As this doesn’t say what ‘the risk of extinction’ is we are left guessing. The Times speculated:

‘Some computer scientists fear that a super-intelligent AI with interests misaligned to those of humans could supplant, or unwittingly destroy us’.

That’s a ‘possibility’ — a lot of things are — but a rather remote one, if only because no such ‘super-intelligent AI’ exists (if it ever does).

Earlier a number of tech company bosses had called for research on AI to be suspended while regulations were drawn up. That’s not going to happen, even if it was desirable. It’s too late. As with nuclear physics, the genie is out of the bottle. The knowledge is there and is already being applied.

Dan Hendrycks, the director of the Centre for AI Safety (CAIS) in San Francisco, who organised the signatures, was himself quoted as saying:

‘We are currently in an AI arms race in industry, where companies have concerns about safety but they are forced to prioritise making them more powerful more quickly […] We’re going to be rapidly automating more and more, giving more and more decision-making control to systems. If corporations don’t do that, they get outcompeted’.

If that is really the case, as it will be if the use of AI means lower production costs, then it will spread. That’s what happens under capitalism. One company finds a way of reducing costs and makes super-profits till its competitors follow suit and the new method becomes the norm.

Actually, there literally is an arms race over AI going on. Another article in the Times (1 June), by Iain Martin, was headlined ‘To defend the West we must win this AI race’. Arguing against pausing AI research, Martin deployed the same arguments for developing ever more intelligent AI weapons as for developing the H Bomb — if we don’t, they will and then where will we be? If, he wrote, the West fails to win the AI arms race:

‘we will be at the mercy of dictators who can swarm us with 20,000 drones, communicating with each other rather than humans, and picking their own targets. Vast computer power can relentlessly seek for weaknesses through which to launch cyber attacks and shut down our financial system or turn out the lights’.

Meanwhile, the West’s rivals over raw material resources, markets, investment outlets, trade routes and strategic points and areas to protect these will be making similar calculations. The world has not yet reached Martin’s nightmare stage but the line of march is towards it. If capitalism continues that point will be reached, probably sooner rather than later.

All this is not a result of AI as such, but of its misuse under capitalism. In a socialist society, further-developed AI could be of immense help in taking decisions about allocating resources, what, how and where to produce wealth. What threatens humanity is not AI but capitalism, with its competitive struggle for profits and ‘might is right’ in relations between capitalist states. If only the 350 experts had used their intelligence to make that point.

Proper Gander: Splashing out on drip (2023)

The Proper Gander column from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wearing designer clothing and flashy accessories to show off wealth is nothing new; it’s the particular styles and favoured brands which come and go, along with the terminology used. The word ‘bling’ became as unfashionable as neon legwarmers once it picked up connotations of tackiness. Since around 2018, ‘drip’ has steadily come into vogue, meaning blatantly fashionable, proven only by owning eye-wateringly expensive clothes, shoes, jewellery or watches of the right brands. The term comes from ‘dripping’ with money, enough to fork out £5,500 on a Chanel bag, for example.

Presenter and comedian David Whitely, also known as Sideman, explores the ‘drip’ lifestyle in a documentary shown as part of Channel 4’s Untold strand. Addicted to Drip is aimed at viewers aged 16 to 34, those most likely to be attracted to the trend. The research liberally quoted throughout the show is from a study of 2,000 people in that age range carried out by financial coaching company Claro Wellbeing.

Addicted To Drip follows a usual template for documentaries, starting with a rapid round of clips from the show ahead, patronisingly expecting people not to stay tuned in unless they already know what they’ll be watching. The rest of the programme keeps to the familiar pattern of the presenter meeting people affected, serious points made by experts and occasional bouts of worrying stats. The presenter is expected to go on a personal journey while making a documentary like this, which is just Whitely finding out whether he becomes inclined towards a drip-fed lifestyle and deciding ‘no’.

One of the people Whitely talks with is Samantha, who says she tried ‘to fill some kind of void’ after bereavements with spending sprees on clothes and accessories using her inheritance money. When she reached the point of having thousands of pounds worth of designer gear but not enough funds to buy a train ticket, she came to believe she was wasting money and her life. Others have got into debt in order to buy into drip: one in ten young people are taking out credit at least monthly to fuel their spending on designer brands. Not all of the under-35s surveyed would have heard of the term ‘drip’, but regardless, almost half are in debt from purchasing luxury goods, and almost a third have less than £100 in savings. The kind of pressure this can involve causes problems beyond the fiscal. Although being in debt has been normalised, especially since prices shot up, 58 percent feel stressed about their financial situation. For some, the effects are worse: Whitely meets fashion influencer Michelle, whose mental health declined from trying to live up to the lifestyle to the extent of ending up in hospital.

Whitely also speaks with some of those who have done well for themselves financially through drip. Drew dropped out of studying medicine, realising he could make more money building up his business as an influencer with his own clothing brand. ‘Godfather of Drip’ Chiefer has a well-established and lucrative business selling jewellery to celebs. He says that most people who are into drip weren’t born into wealth, and wear designer clothes now because they weren’t able to have them when they were growing up. Being motivated to have an affluent lifestyle by wanting to escape from past hardship seems to be one of the characteristics of drip.

Drip-friendly brands tend to be pitched at younger people, especially those still living with their parents and who don’t have the financial commitments which come with having children. Once a drip product is launched, much of its promotion is put together and spread by its own customers, which is a capitalist’s dream come true. Those living the drip life market themselves and what they’re wearing through social media, aiming for an image which will be popular enough to bring in enough of an income.

The up-front role of omnipresent smartphones is what makes the drip lifestyle different to previous niche wealth-based groups, such as ‘sloanes’. As Stacey Lowman of Claro Wellbeing tells us, there’s a ‘perfect storm’ of social media, advertising strategies and online banking these days. Technology has been shaped to pair up products with customers, so that their money can easily move, largely upwards, with just a few taps on a screen. Some people have become rich and happy through this, others have suffered both financially and emotionally, as shown on Addicted To Drip.

Wanting to have nice things isn’t the issue in itself; problems lie with what drives this. In capitalism, ‘nice things’ get reduced to a series of wealth-related values. The people interviewed by Whitely may be bashful about how much they’ve spent on togs and trinkets, but the exorbitant prices are themselves a selling point, weirdly. Everything else in the process can also be boiled down to a monetary amount, from whatever wages those who make the commodities receive, to the spending power of customers following a social media influencer, to, ultimately, the amount of profit made by those at the top of the food chain. For them, the money’s coming in more like a flood than a drip.

Mike Foster

Badged and Kebabbed (2023)

Book Review from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Badgeland. By Steve Rayson. Bavant Press. 2023.

This is an engaging and well-written account of a life spent in left-wing politics during the 1980s, mainly in the Labour Party and also in Militant for a time, referencing a variety of Trotskyist and leftist groups from the era, together with their preoccupations and campaigns. Hence the Badgeland title – from ‘Rock Against Racism’ to ‘Coal Not Dole’.

Rayson starts as a schoolkid with an interest in politics in his home town of Swindon before moving on to be a student radical at Bath University and then after graduation to various management positions, initially at the former Greater London Council (GLC) before its abolition by Thatcher.

He charts an emerging disjunction in his life between the metropolitan sophistication of London and its progressive social liberalism and the visits he makes back to his working class roots in Swindon to visit family. There, the working men’s club frequented by his father and his friends has little time or interest in the radical left. Much to Rayson’s dismay they instead developed much more of an interest in buying their council houses and making a quick buck by joining in the various share-offerings of the privatized utilities. It is a tale that reflects a fundamental and wider shift at the time, when former working class trade unionists became seduced by the alleged benefits of the ‘property-owning democracy’ promoted by Thatcher’s Tories.

The book is funny by turn and sad at others, and in essence charts his frustrations at the failure of most of the campaigns he got involved in, from CND and the Miners’ Strike to the fight to save the GLC. He also traces the parallel tendencies within the left that were to emerge as New Labour, making an accommodation with Thatcherism that Rayson was uncomfortable with.

Eventually, after his time as a manager in local government, Rayson became an entrepreneur himself and in the ultimate irony claims that his life in and around Trotskyist groups prepared him well for the task, incongruous though that may sound. Part of a recalled conversation with a left-wing friend at the time is worth repeating:

‘I think all start-up founders should join a Trotskyist group as a teenager. It is far more valuable than studying for an MBA. They run weekly education sessions, they give you homework and individual mentors. They make you do presentations and coach you in the art of public speaking.

Okay, you have to moderate the hand movements and stop referring to everyone as comrade… But seriously it was Trotskyists who helped me achieve my ‘A’ Level grades to get to university…

Trotskyists teach you sales skills the hard way. They put you outside M & S with newspapers saying ‘Smash the Capitalist System’ and challenge you to sell as many copies as you can. It is the sink or swim school of sales training and better than any selling course…

They demonstrate how to build organisational capacity and communicate a consistent vision to their members. They generate revenues that are out of all proportion to their small size and are incredibly resilient. They create and publish national newspapers. They are also experts at guerrilla marketing which is a required skill for entrepreneurs.’ (pp.352-3).

In this he’s not entirely wrong of course, and others have made successful careers in public sector management for themselves based on some of these skills. Rayson has also worked in that sector and as a consultant too, and clearly still has an interest in radical politics.

These days, despite his various campaigning disappointments, he says he tends to vote for the most radical candidate on offer. Perhaps he’s even voted for the SPGB. Strangely enough, there is an argument that our commitment to a society of abundance and free access to wealth without a coercive state means that socialism as we see it could be the most creative and ‘entrepreneurial’ society of all. But then again, he would never have learnt any of that from Militant or the RCP.

DAP

50 Years Ago: What Socialism Means (2023)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

The object of socialism is to unite humanity and to solve social problems by building a society which can satisfy the universal need for co-operation and material security.

Socialism involves a creative outlook concerned with the quality of life. In association with others, the individual will develop himself as a social being. With enlightenment and knowledge, man will replace the ignorance, false illusions and prejudice from which he suffers in our own day. Socialism is the form of society most compatible with the needs of man. Its necessity springs from the enduring problems, the economic contradictions and social conflicts of present-day society. Socialist society must be based upon the common ownership and democratic control by the whole community of the means of life.

Life will be based on human relationships of equality and co-operation. Through these relationships, man will produce useful things, construct amenities and establish desirable institutions. Socialism will resolve the conflicts which at present divide man from man. Regardless of ethnic or cultural differences, the whole world community will share a common interest.

Under capitalism the whole apparatus of production are either privately owned, as in America, or state controlled by a privileged minority, as in Russia. The economies of some countries combine both private and state control. Both forms are alien to the interests of the majority, since the priorities of trade and commerce, exploitation and profit-making, dominate life. Under both forms, production for sale on the market is organized primarily for the benefit of a privileged minority.

The building of Socialism requires a social reorganization where the earth’s resources and the apparatus of production are held in common by the whole community. Instead of serving sectional interests, they are made freely accessible to society as a whole. Production will be organized at world level with co-ordination of its differing parts down to local levels.

In Socialism there will be no market, trade or barter. In the absence of a system of exchange, money will have no function to perform. Individuals will participate freely in production and take what they need from what is produced . . . 

(Socialist Standard, Special issue on Socialism, July 1973)

Obituary: Trevor Lovatt (2023)

Obituary from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trevor Lovatt, a member of the World Socialist Party (NZ) for many years, passed away last October at the age of 85. He was a hard working socialist who would not under any circumstances compromise his knowledge of the Party’s case. Trevor was initially a Social Credit Party supporter. Upon meeting and discussing politics with Peter Furey (a member of the WSPNZ) in the 1980’s Trevor’s views were forever changed and he joined the WSPNZ. His contribution to promoting and expanding the idea of a ‘World of Free Access’ was relentless. Trevor would continually question, and supply his views on why the socialist alternative was not being taken onboard by society as a whole. As well as being a regular voice of the WSPNZ’s talkback programme on Access Community Radio Auckland (1990s) , he was also involved with the WSPNZ’s Radio Imagine, which operated for many years from the Party’s HQ in Auckland. Trevor was a keen weightlifter and loved country music.

World Socialist Party (NZ)

Editorial: Politicians all serve the one percent (2023)

Editorial from the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the world today, the richest 1 percent now own almost half the world’s wealth, whilst the poorest half of the world’s population own between them less than 1 percent of the wealth: just 81 billionaires hold between them more wealth than 4 billion of the world’s population combined.. In Britain, the four richest individuals have more wealth than the poorest 20 million people combined. Perhaps most significantly, in recent years the richest 1 percent of people have accumulated nearly two thirds of all new wealth created around the world. A total of $42 trillion in new wealth was created since 2020, with $26 trillion, or 63 percent, of that being amassed by the top 1 percent, the ultra-rich. The remaining 99 percent of the global population collected just $16 trillion of all of that new wealth.

This goes to the heart of the social system we live within. You can be sure that the 99 percent making do with only a third of the produce we create includes all of the most productive and useful people in society: the nurses, builders, teachers, doctors, engineers, programmers, IT architects, transport workers, factory workers, miners, and so on. So we have an all-encompassing global social system in which there are two classes. One class, the vast majority, works to actually create wealth, but then is forced to survive on a fraction of what we have created. The majority of what we create, we are forced (by the current laws of society which we have collectively endorsed and accepted, implicitly) to hand over to a miniscule minority. They then use that wealth to increase their stranglehold over the whole process.

Returning to British politics in 2023, what are Sunak, Starmer or any other of the political leaders or parties on offer proposing to do about this? The core social system stands utterly unquestioned, unthreatened by them all. Jeremy Corbyn was seen by many as standing for a ‘socialist alternative’, but if you actually look at all of the policies he has ever endorsed, what they really consisted of was a reform, a modification of this capitalist system, in which more sectors would be state-controlled, and a more generous or comprehensive slate of social benefits might be attempted. But like all ‘left-wing’ regimes which have come to power in various parts of the world, that would also be doomed to fail in chaos. Furthermore, Corbyn never stood for real socialism, which means not state ownership but genuine and democratic community control of all resources. It would also entail the end of the market system and the beginning of production for need, for use, not for profit or sale.

Until we have a majority ready to implement that, by doing it themselves instead of trusting politicians, we are stuck with this rotten system where ninety-nine people do all the hard graft… and one person gets all the pleasure and benefit, week after week, without end.