Effect of the Russian Government's currency changes (1948)

From the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Economist (20/12/47) in an article on the Russian Government’s financial changes summarises the effect as follows :

“The main effect of the reform is a redistribution of purchasing power, primarily between towns and countryside, in favour of the town. In the towns, the highest stratum of the privileged bureaucracy and intelligentsia has been shorn of some of its power to snatch scarce goods and amenities of life from the mass of the employees and workers. It would, however, be an exaggeration to say that Soviet policy has now gone hack to the uravnilovka, the egalitarian principles of the early years of the Soviet regime. What is being redressed is a social balance that has been gravely upset by the war. The reform eliminates the gross inequalities that have spontaneously grown up until recently, and that, moreover, the rulers could not but tolerate or even encourage. Having now done away with these anomalies, the Government continues to base the plans for the economic development of the country on the accepted system of incentive wages and salaries.

“This conclusion emerges clearly from a brief analysis of the new wages and prices policy embodied in the reform. ‘While the currency reform is being effected,’ says the decree signed by Stalin and Zhdanov, ‘the wages of workers and employees, as well as the incomes of peasants from deliveries to the State, and other earned incomes of all sections of the population, will not be affected by the reform. They will be paid in the new currency at the previous rates.’ The purchasing power of workers and employees will thus be relatively strengthened by comparison with the purchasing power of the peasantry. But the differential scale of wages and salaries remain in force. The reform of wages adopted early this year (see the Economist, of March 22nd and 29th, 1947) provided for a drastic extension of incentive wages ; it raised the minimum rates of output per worker by 20 to 25 per cent., and it replaced time rates by piece rates in those branches of industry and in agriculture where time rates had still been prevalent. The Stakhanovite has forfeited cash and savings which would have given him an enormous start over his less fortunate or less industrious fellow-workers in the competition for scarce goods ; but he is still able to recoup himself and to maintain a relatively high standard of living if he goes on beating records in output. The present reform is likely to make the system of incentive wages more, and not less effective than it has been hitherto.”

Press Cuttings (1948)

From the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

One-third of Recruits Unfit

“Field-Marshal Viscount Montgomery, C.I.G.S., yesterday said at the annual meeting of the Royal Eye Hospital, Southwark, of which he is president, that about 19 per cent. of the age group eligible for national service would be unfit for the post-war Regular Army. A further 15 per cent. would not be fit for full military duties.

” ‘There are many causes why a third of those eligible for service are suffering from such a degree of disability,’ he added. ‘They include housing, bad nutrition, and, not least, the preoccupation of the medical profession with disease rather than with the promotion of physical fitness’.” — (Daily Telegraph 10/10/47.)

#    #    #    #

Great Men

“Here are some of the things Sylvester, for 30 years Lloyd George’s personal assistant says about his master :

“He was often peevish and childish; strangely lacking in physical courage; no greater autocrat ever lived; a most unholy muddler, and just a spoiled child.”—(News of the World, 28/9/47.)

#    #    #    #

Labour Party and the House of Lords

“The Party stands, as heretofore . . . for the complete abolition of the House of Lords . . .”—(“Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.12.)

“Since our last report the following have been welcomed to our ranks: Lord Citrine (Sir Walter Citrine), Lord Dukeston (Mr. Charles Dukes), Viscount Hall (Mr. George Hall, M.P.), Lord Kershaw (Mr. Fred Kershaw), Lord Lucas (Mr. G. W. Lucas), Lord Shepherd (Mr. G. R. Shepherd), Lord Simon (Sir E. D. Simon), Lord Trefgarne (Mr. G. M. Garro-Jones), Lord Uvedale (Sir Ambrose Woodall) . . . Our total strength is 46.”—(From Labour Party Report on Labour Strength in the House of Lords. Conference Report, 1947, p.65.)

What Bernard Shaw thought 60 years ago (1948)

From the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The division into classes with various standards of comfort which always occurs among slaves, and which is due to the necessity for educating and maintaining the slave who is a doctor or barrister very much better than the slave who is a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water, makes the highly skilled slave despise the unskilled, the unskilled hate and envy the skilled ; makes the upper regard classification with the lower as an intolerable degradation, and the lower spurn classification with the higher as a hypocritical effort to reconcile him to his inferiority. Organisation of the proletariat, and recognition by them of their common interest, is thus defeated by class feeling, which is always bitterest among the worst off. It is doubtful whether dukes habitually despise beggars; but it is certain that butlers despise scullions, artisans labourers and professional men tradesmen. The solicitor’s daughter must not know the young lady from Peter Robinson’s nor will the “amalgamated engineer” permit his wife to demean herself by visiting the spouse of the carman. The proprietors, on the other hand, though their properties vary in size, seem to understand that they belong to the same class ; and so, whatever petty jealousies and disputes as to precedence may arise between them, they are always united against the proletariat. There is a saying that a man can be no more than a gentleman (a gentleman being one who lives by robbing the poor). There is no such saying as that a man can be no more than a worker : there is on the contrary, a widely spread feeling that he cannot be much less, short of being a convict or a pauper. Hence the proprietors succeed in maintaining their privileges against enormous odds in point of numbers. The proletariat, excepting the fragment in the trade unions, are a mere mob ; and even the trade union regiments seem to mistrust one another far more than they hate the enemy, to whose ranks everyone of their individual members is eager to desert if a commission there be offered to him.”— (George Bernard Shaw in “Our Corner,” September. 1887).

The Russian Church and its money (1948)

From the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unlike workers and peasants who lost nine-tenths of their cash at the recent calling-in of the old rouble currency “Reuter” reports (Sunday Express, 21/12/47) that the Church received preferential treatment:

“The Russian Church has, for purposes of the recent rouble exchange, been treated as a ‘State organisation,’ and has had all its money exchanged at one new rouble for one old – Reuter.”

SPGB Meetings (1948)

Party News from the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

'January, February, I don't understand . . . ' *

This should have been the first post on the blog for 2026. It wasn't. Life intervened.

Briefly looking back on the figures for the blog in 2025, the plus point is that there were more posts on the blog in 2025 in comparison to the previous year (1543 to 1359). The minus point is that it's still not enough. The completion of the digitisation of the Socialist Standard is still behind schedule. Hopefully, we can break the back of it in 2026.

Listed below are the 21 most popular posts on the blog for 2025. Yes, 21 rather than 20. For some reason there was a glitch in the stats and the  "In the year 2025, if man is still alive . . . "  post wasn't showing up, despite the fact that I knew it was one of the most popular posts on the blog in 2025. So, I inserted it in anyway in its correct spot. If you want to compare the 2025 End of the Year stats with previous years posted, feel free to click on the link.

21. Death of a Clown (1949)

20. No let up (2025)

19. Obituary: Richard Headicar (2025)

18. Farage — opportunist supreme (2025)

17. Running Commentary: Catch ’em young (1986)

16. Marx: a critical view by Brian Crozier (1983)

15. Karl Marx and the abolition of money (1980)

14. British fascists online (2022)

13. 'It's Clichéd to Be Cynical at Christmas* . . .'

12. Unwillingly to school (1950)

11. George Orwell, Spain and anti-fascism (1997)

10. Letter: Vodka-Cola (1980)

9. What price energy? (1986)

8. Papal bull (1979)

7. The Menace of Aerial Warfare - Part 3 (1936)

6. Standard Leeds OK (1979)

5. "In the year 2025, if man is still alive . . . "

4. A Page of History: the 1834 Canut Revolt in Lyon (2015)

3. How we live and how we might live - Part 8 (2025)

2. The ghost of Christmas yet to come (1995)

1. Book Review: The End of the Megamachine. A Brief History Of A Failing Civilization by Fabian Scheidler (2020)

 

 

*With apologies to Ms. Barbara Dickson

Another New Year party (2026)

From the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Following the turn of the year I am pleased to announce the emergence of a new political force, Barnsley Social Action. As I was an enthusiastic biker back in the ‘60s BSA seems appropriate. The focus for this exciting political initiative will be to fight for Barnsley’s independence from the overpowering political behemoth that is Westminster and the regional dominance of Yorkshire. ‘Let the Tykes Take Power!’

I am, of course, appreciative of the Socialist Standard for so willingly providing an initial platform for this, my ambitious project. The first task will be to ensure that no small boats will be redirected from the south coast to sail up the Dearne.

At this point I consider it most important to state without equivocation that all of the above is utter nonsense. Actually such a statement surely can’t have been necessary. Who would set up a political party on such a narrow (minded) basis?

Ex-Reform UK MP Rupert Lowe, now sitting as an independent, has – at time of writing – launched Great Yarmouth First (GYF) with the stated aim of promoting the specific interests of his constituency. This is surely a basic requirement of any MP, whatever the party affiliation, within the considerable limitations imposed by the requirements of capitalism.

Lowe claims 500 residents have already signed up and he has personally funded the fees for all these new members for a year. Quite how committed this cohort of supporters are may well become apparent in twelve months when renewal time comes around.

The specific political purpose of GYF is according to Lowe, ‘completely focused on doing what is right for Great Yarmouth, not what is right for Norwich or London’. This new party is needed because not only have national governments let people down, ‘the rot extends to local government as well’.

How fortunate for the citizens of Great Yarmouth such an immaculate political messiah was chosen by the electorate at the last election. However, his vision does extend beyond the locally myopic to the rest of the country. Not only does he head GYF, Lowe also leads Restore Britain. The headline aims of this organisation are low taxes, small state, slash immigration, restore Christian principles, fight wokery and so it goes on…and on.

The multi-millionaire Lowe is quoted in the Great Yarmouth Mercury saying ‘We are building a powerful local movement that will fight for local priorities. No petty national politics, just local politics for local people’. This statement seems to stand in contradiction to the obviously national and nationalist Restore Britain. The basic premise of both of Lowe’s groups is to play up, and on, prejudices unfortunately held by too many people looking for simple solutions to their many political, economic and social problems.

While it might seem an organisation such as Great Yarmouth First must be of limited political significance, it does reflect an underlying feature of more widespread popular discourse. A competitor for Barnsley Social Action would be The Yorkshire Party. The website of the would-be governors of Britain’s largest county refers to things socialists recognise, such as: ‘This isn’t about left or right’, ‘Our rivers shouldn’t be profit streams for offshore companies’, ‘Subsidiarity – decisions made as close to the people as possible’, ‘Dignity – respect for every person and community’, ‘Community – working together’, ‘Cooperation – shared goals…’

There is also mention of values such as fairer, stronger and more democratic, though specifically in Yorkshire. Most of what is offered is fairly standard social democratic fare that Labour, Liberal Democrat and even reasonable Conservative (if that’s not too much of an oxymoron) supporters could subscribe to.

It certainly doesn’t read as being rabidly explicitly nationalistic, except, of course, its focus is narrowly on Yorkshire. As often with local political groupings The Yorkshire Party seems fuelled by resentment of a perceived national, for which read Westminster, bias against the county, especially in economic terms.

There is certainly good reason for people to feel economically aggrieved, to rail against the failings of the NHS, to be very much aware of the democratic deficit whereby voting, locally and nationally, changes very little for the better. However justified these feelings, however worthy the aspirations, none of this applies specifically to Yorkshire alone. The social democratic style solutions, along with a Yorkshire parliament to enact them, are aspirations that can never be realised even if the entire White Rose vote went to this party.

The fundamental problem that every party, local, regional or national, cannot overcome is capitalism. No matter how sincere or well intentioned, the scope for positive political action is severely curtailed by market economics, the undeniable drive to realise profits. Even such an explicit adherent to capitalism as former Prime Minister Liz Truss could be evicted from Number 10 Downing Street within about a month and a half of taking up residence. She wasn’t even proposing some wildly radical social reforms. Just showing her Conservative intentions as ill thought-out and economically inimical to market interests was enough.

A perfect example of the democratic deficit in that Truss was toppled from power not by the ballot box, but, in effect, the workings of the market. She wasn’t even in power long enough for a conspiracy to be formulated against her. Capitalism doesn’t really need conspiracies or coups d’état. If bond prices fall or share prices tumble so do the politicians or policies that are perceived as being the cause. Certainly no requirement for an election.

So for Great Yarmouth First, The Yorkshire Party – you can also read the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru or similar, Reform UK, the seemingly shambolic Your Party, The Green Party or the three main Westminster parties. Because whatever their political differences they are all the same in one essential feature. They can only act as far as capitalism and its imperatives allow.

The achievement of real change would mean an economic arrangement in which the means of production are held in common so ensure people’s needs are met uninhibited by the profit motive, in a truly democratic society in which people freely contribute without any requirement for money. In a word, socialism. Such is only achievable on a worldwide basis. Of course, people will always relate to their localities, but they have no need of being located within national boundaries. A time when communities were fairly static are long passed.

There is a deal of archaeological evidence showing that even in prehistory Neolithic trading links between widely separated communities existed, when the concept of national boundaries didn’t exist and wouldn’t for thousands of years. Indeed, from the earliest days of the emergence of humankind migration has been a feature. The idea of being defined by location in nation states is but a brief moment in our collective history. So the prospect of a worldwide cooperative community cannot be dismissed as fanciful or a contradiction of human nature.

But people have to want this, have to be actively involved in working through the details, accepting there can be no leader or party that can do it for them.

Until then there is always Barnsley Social Action – no one from Doncaster need apply.

Dave Alton

The Russian Revolution (2026)

Book Review from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blood on the Snow: The Russian Revolution 1914-1924. By Robert Service ISBN 9781529065855

Continuing his popular histories of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Robert Service seeks to look more broadly at events, rather than through personalities and political decisions alone. Rather, he seeks to ‘explore […] how ‘ordinary’ people coped – or failed to cope – with the shattering dislocation of Russian and global affairs’ during the revolutionary period.

He utilises the diaries of the likes of Alexei Shtukaturov, a worker who was conscripted into the Imperial Army, and Alexander Zamaraev, a peasant, too old to be conscripted. Embedded within the stories of events, their own words reveal frustrations and aspirations. In part, this helps unveil the political sophistication of those often dismissed as ignorant peasants (as Service notes, ‘peasant’ was a legal, rather than an economic category). Nonetheless, the frustrations of the peasants form a significant backdrop to the events of the revolution.

Zamaraev lived in Totma district, Vologda, where 92 percent of agricultural land belonged to the state, church, and Imperial family. His diaries reveal concern over conscription, support for the Tsar and for the war, and over access to food as the war continued.

Service effectively brings home the conditions under Tsarism during the war, and helps show how common people were far from passive objects during these great events. At this time, one-third of European Russia was placed under martial law, and 13 million men went through the army (Service notes its harsh discipline.) Many others also laboured in the civilian economy. This fact, and the way that previously toothless local government bodies took on increasing responsibility for welfare provision, such as food and medicine, in a co-ordinated fashion (later to be joined by industrial committees) prefigured the kind of state that was to come out of the war.

Service is critical of Tsar Nicholas, especially his war aim of trying to gain Istanbul (or Tsargrad, as they referred to it) for the Russian empire. Service also notes the racist suppression of Jews and Poles within the Empire, the Tsar’s failure to grapple with its massive structural problems, and the way he vigorously resisted the changes needed to fight a modern mechanised war.

He notes that the Bolsheviks did not expect or want the specific revolution that they found themselves involved in, but that the line of party discipline and a one-party state were part of their core ideas from the very beginning: ‘They opted for force over persuasion; for central authority over democratic accountability’. They had no more legitimacy than the provisional government of Kerensky, but they were more prepared to use force to get their way.

The book draws out the role of the peasants, economically, politically and legally, and the way their frustrations formed a significant part of the backdrop to the drama against which the political leaders played their parts. In his assessments, though, Service does not look at whether there was any alternative path available which could have led to a different outcome.

Pik Smeet

Abolish the wages system (2026)

From the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is based on minority ownership and control of the means of production (land, railways, factories, food distribution, etc), that is, the means to produce what we need to survive and flourish. Production is for profit not human need. If something isn’t profitable it isn’t produced. Work is done by people who are forced by economic necessity to sell their ability to work for a wage.

How did the wages system come about? Well, it depends on who you ask, and whereabouts in the world you go to ask the question. If you ask the capitalist propagandists they will say it is because human beings decided to trade with one another and money was a way of doing this more efficiently. This is a lie that ignores the numerous indigenous communities from America to Africa to Australia whose land was forcibly and violently taken.

America is a land stolen from a people and built with the labour of other people whose land was stolen from them. In Britain, we had the Enclosure Acts of the 18th and 19th centuries in which roughly 5.5 million acres of common land was forcibly taken and placed into private hands, with mass evictions of agricultural communities. In Scotland in the Highland Clearances between 1750 and 1830 roughly 70,000 to over 150,000 people were ‘cleared’ from the land.

This story of enclosure and clearances was a win-win for the ruling class: communal land was turned into profit, specifically sheep farming in Scotland, and a mass of dispossessed people was created who owned nothing but their ability to labour, which they were forced to sell to survive. In 1750 Glasgow’s population was 32,000. By 1851 it was over 300,000. That’s the scale of the operation.

Marx wrote that capital comes into the world dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt. That is the real story of how the wages system came into existence.

Why abolish the wages system? Because it is exploitative. The surplus value of our labour is taken from us by the capitalist parasites in the form of profit. It is also alienating in a number of ways.

Alienation from the product: we don’t own or control what we make; it ends up feeling like something outside us — even something used against us. We’re forced to buy back the products of our labour from the capitalists.

Alienation from the labour process: we don’t shape how we work; the pace, purpose, and methods are set by others, so our work is disconnected from who we are.

Alienation from other people: we’re pushed into competition and treated as commodities, which strains our relationships and weakens solidarity.

Alienation from nature: we’re cut off from the natural world; nature is reduced to a resource for profit, creating a rupture between how we live and the environment we depend on.

Alienation from our species-being: we lose the chance to express our creativity and human potential; work becomes just survival, not self-realisation.

Endless economic growth on a finite planet threatens ecological disaster. In 2024 alone, about 8.1 million hectares of forest were lost globally — roughly an area the size of England. Over 47,000 species are currently threatened with extinction. Wildlife populations have plummeted over recent decades: on average, global wildlife populations have dropped by about 73 percent over the last 50 years — a collapse driven by habitat destruction, pollution, deforestation, and industrial exploitation of nature.

War is an extension of the war of the market place involving different gangs of capitalists. Socialists were among the brave class-conscious workers who refused to murder their fellow workers in the first and second world wars, declaring instead the socialist mantra: ‘a bayonet is a weapon with a worker at both ends’.

The Socialist Party was formed in 1904 as a breakaway from the reformist and authoritarian Social Democratic Federation. We are a leaderless organisation that holds, like Marx, that ‘the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself’. We, also like Marx, define socialism as a stateless, moneyless society based on production for human need (as opposed to sale on the market) in which people will no longer have to work for wages.

Left-wingers don’t offer a real alternative. Lenin combined the state and the wages system into one tyrannical regime. Corbyn and Zarah Sultana claim to be socialists but what they’re actually advocating for is an impossibly humanised capitalism.

The only viable and practical solution to the world’s problems is socialism, a moneyless stateless society based on production for human need. Apologists for capitalism tell us that we’re greedy, selfish, bloodthirsty. Let the parasite class speak for themselves! Workers demonstrate their moral character every day through small acts of workplace solidarity. We can and will organise ourselves into a leaderless organisation of the working class for the working class when, as Marx put it, we take off our banners the conservative motto ‘a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work’ and inscribe instead the revolutionary watchword ‘abolish the wages system’.

Johnny Mercer

Blogger's Note:

Though it isn't mentioned in the text, I believe this article is partly based on the talk that Johnny gave in London last November. An audio recording of that talk is available at the following link.

Halo Halo (2026)

The Halo Halo! column from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

When singer/songwriter John Lennon was penning the 1971 song that envisaged a world with no states, but common ownership of the means and instruments for distributing wealth and no religious societal power, can he have imagined the furore that it would generate in some future quarters? If he had been familiar with the Socialist Party he might have included a nod to a moneyless, leaderless society too but given the strong nod within the song to a rational sane society different to the one we have then we might easily surmise that the necessary elements of a socialist society were contained therein.

Reasonable to say that Lennon was an advocate of Make Love, Not War, and Jaw Jaw is better than War War. As youngsters we were aware that it was far better to engage in a ‘verbal’ punch up rather than a physical altercation.

‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words cannot hurt me’ was the riposte in the school playground when insults or spite were being hurled at one’s person. Slightly provocative perhaps if one’s adversary was still determined to show that sufficient might does overcome right. As we now know, hurty words can result in hurty feelings. Which may result in a van load of the ‘you’ve hurt their feelings thought police’ arriving on your doorstep, or, if you’ve really shaken someone’s beliefs to the core, the arrival of the riot squad or equivalent.

Back in 2006 children at a church-run primary school must have been a little miffed and confused when their headteacher pulled the plug on a particular song they had been rehearsing because some of its lines were, ‘not appropriate words to be sung at the Church of England school for four to eleven-year-olds. Was it ‘Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll’ by Ian Dury?

The local curate fully backed the decision; ‘The song was not suitable for the occasion. It has an appealing sentiment of love but its vision is of a world in which people do not need religion.’ A school governor said, ‘The song expresses longing for a different world and for eternal happiness. But it says you can have this without religion.’

The headteacher said, ‘We have not banned the song. We chose not to perform it at our public concert but to perform another song we had practised which better reflected the theme of Songs for A Green Earth. We are a Church school and we believe God is the foundation of all we do. As such we did not feel that was an appropriate song to perform at a public concert’.

Sophistry! It wasn’t censorship, but it was. What lesson did the pupils of the school draw from the whole happening? God’s a music bigot? A life lived without the constraints that religion implants in it is a much happier one.

‘Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try, No hell below us, above us, only sky.’ ‘No religion too.’

DC

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you make $60,000 a year after taxes, in order to make $700 billion, you’d need to work for nearly 12 million years. ‘The richest 1% own half the stock market (49.9%), while the bottom half of the U.S. owns just 1.1% of the stock market’. ‘The richest 0.0001% control a greater share of wealth than in the Gilded Age, an era of U.S. history defined by extreme inequality’. 

[Consortium News]

The toilet, by Maurizio Cattelan — the provocative Italian artist known for taping a banana to a wall — went up for auction Tuesday evening at Sotheby’s in New York. The starting bid for the 223-pound, 18-karat-gold work was about $10 million. Cattelan has said the piece, titled ‘America’ satirizes superwealth. ‘Whatever you eat, a $200 lunch or a $2 hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise’, he once said. 

[Yahoo]

Mother Teresa is still praised around the world for her charity work, but her legacy is deeply controversial. Reports from former volunteers and medical professionals claimed that many of her care homes were unsanitary and neglectful, with patients denied pain relief because she believed suffering brought people closer to God. Despite receiving millions in donations, her organization frequently failed to provide proper medical treatment or transparency regarding the use of the funds. She also accepted money and praise from dictators and was firmly against abortion, contraception, and divorce, even in extreme cases.

[Yahoo]

There are still people who say that Marx is outdated because Russian socialism collapsed … In Russia, capitalism was interpreted as being about private property and private ownership of the means of production, and the Soviets’ proposal was, ‘What if we nationalize everything?’ Then they found that state control ended up being absolute. If you look at the situation of the workers, it didn’t change that much from one system to another. In capitalism, it’s the employers who exploit the workers. During Soviet socialism, the workers were exploited by the Communist Party or by the bureaucrats. 

[ara]

The Russian communist party has awarded North Korean leader Kim Jong Un the “Lenin Prize” for his outstanding contributions to ‘socialist construction’, praising him for standing up against ‘imperialist aggression’ by supporting the invasion of Ukraine. 

[NK News]

The cobbled streets of Newport in Middlesbrough survive from the Victorian era. The staggering levels of child poverty here also feel like they belong in a different time. Six out of every seven children in Newport are classified as living in poverty. 

[Sky News]

It’s time to stop settling. ‘The working class is going to have to look at itself as a whole and say, “Our divisions in race, politics, religion, sectors of the workforce — all that will have to be laid aside,” he says. “It’s a ‘workers of the world, unite’ situation. We’re all in it together against the billionaire class, and it’s going to take that in the fight to win”’. 

[In These Times]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Planlessness (2026)

Book Review from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Economic Consequences of Mr Trump: What the Trade War Means for the World. By Philip Coggan. Profile £7.99.

A first reaction to this book is that it was likely to be out of date by the time it was published. Given Trump’s tendency to change his mind, anything said would probably no longer apply after a month or two. The author does indeed record Trump’s decisions about tariffs and his repeated revisions of them, describing him as ‘a man without a plan’ who based the calculation of tariff rates on an absurd formula. But he also notes some ideas that underlie Trump’s policies.

The main reason seems to be the intention to return manufacturing industries (and jobs) to the US, but this is unlikely to be successful. In 2013, as an illustration, Motorola opened a smartphone factory in Texas, but it closed after a year because of high costs. Even when it does pay off, building new factories takes time and the US has a shortage of factory workers; they might come from abroad, but of course Trump is clamping down on immigration. The US will simply not re-enter ‘a golden age of manufacturing employment’.

On the whole Coggan adopts an orthodox economic perspective, arguing, for example, that tariffs interfere with market signals about the causes of rising and falling prices. Tariffs have varied over the centuries and protectionism was more widespread between the two world wars. But since the 1960s tariffs have generally been falling, from a global average of 14 percent then to 10.9 per cent in 2000 and 2.5 per cent in 2021. Free trade, he says, is good for an economy, though there has rarely been completely free trade.

One good point he makes is about the interconnectedness of global production, with long and complex supply chains. An iPhone is based on 187 suppliers across twenty-eight countries, while cars imported to the US from Mexico consist largely of components made in the US. Around eighty per cent of the toys sold in US shops are made in China, so the massive tariffs Trump wanted to impose on imports from China were a non-starter, and they have now been scaled back in a major way. American workers are already complaining about higher food prices as a result of the various tariffs, such as bread doubling in price (Guardian 19 October).

The whole world, Coggan suggests at the end of this short volume, ‘will suffer the adverse economic consequences of Mr Trump’. But really these are the consequences of the capitalist system, not the result of the idiosyncrasies of one man.

Paul Bennett

Action Replay: Warming up (2026)

The Action Replay column from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The UN has a programme called Sports for Climate Action, described as ‘a global movement harnessing the unifying power of sport to address climate change and build a more sustainable and resilient future’ (unfccc.int). Sport can be adversely affected by climate change, pollution and loss of biodiversity, but supposedly it can also be an agent for promoting collective action. Sport, it is claimed, needs to adapt to the impacts of global warming and also to engage its global audience to make their own contribution to fighting climate change.

All very well, of course, but a look at some of the environmental impact of professional sport paints a rather different picture. In motor racing, Formula 1 (F1) will be moving from the use of fossil fuels to an allegedly sustainable fuel from next season, fuel which might then be used in ordinary cars. But, as noted in the November 2025 Science Focus, there are major issues involved here. The new fuels may be low in carbon emissions but still emit many other pollutants, hence not really being sustainable. The synthetic fuels may in fact involve CO2 emissions in the process of producing hydrogen from natural gas, so the overall climate impact is not at all clear. In any case, fuel from races is only a tiny part of F1’s total carbon footprint, with massive amounts of global travel playing a far larger part. Carbon emissions in the logistics side of F1 have already been reduced, but there is still a long way to go to achieve real sustainability.

Another example would be this year’s football World Cup, which will be played in the US, Canada and Mexico, in stadiums from Vancouver to Mexico City, so meaning much long-distance travel. It will involve 48 teams and 104 matches (sixteen more teams and forty more games than previous tournaments). Scotland, for instance, will play their group matches in Boston and Miami, which are well over a thousand miles apart. One estimate is that the tournament will generate over nine million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, almost double what previous ones have produced.

In addition, the heat will mean that many of the venues will be effectively unplayable during the afternoon. Many top players have already suffered while playing in hot conditions in the US, as in last year’s Club World Cup, and also there will be hundreds of thousands of supporters, plus backroom staff and media workers who will have to endure extreme heat at many matches, reaching over thirty degrees or perhaps even forty. FIFA are apparently keeping ‘an open mind’ on all this, which presumably means they won’t be making any significant decisions quite yet, if at all.

So global warming can affect not just people’s living conditions, but various kinds of leisure activity too. And sport can exacerbate climate change, as well as (just possibly) help to combat it.

Paul Bennett

Party News – YP conference (2026)

Party News from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

YP- Labour 2.0?

Just to demonstrate our northern hardiness, members went out in uninviting November weather to Manchester and Liverpool to dish out 500 leaflets on the occasion of the first national conference of Your Party (now its official moniker). Previously, other members had done likewise at YP events in Huddersfield, Bolton, Preston, Stroud, Swansea, Cardiff, Newport, Brighton, Oxford, Gillingham, and London (all compass points).

The Liverpool conference was hastily convened to thrash out questions like its name, its constitution, its aims, and in particular who was going to be in charge of it. All this amid breathless drama after Corbyn’s faction summarily expelled Trot entryists from the SWP, on the (actually incorrect) argument that they were registered as a different party with the Electoral Commission and therefore ineligible for membership. At this, Zarah Sultana promptly boycotted the first day of the meeting, which does not bode well for the future of YP but must have tickled Zack Polanski, the Greens’ new ‘socialist’ snake-oil salesman, who is seeing a significant bump in membership as a result of these antics.

Our leaflet was called ‘YP – Labour 2.0?’ and argued that even if Your Party was ever able to form a government, it would inevitably suffer the same fate as the original Labour Party, meaning that YP would not change capitalism, capitalism would change YP. It’s quite possibly no coincidence that we handed Zarah Sultana a leaflet in person, after which a YouTube video appeared in which she specifically denied that Your Party would turn into Labour 2.0.

One resentful but revealing comment heard from a conference participant was ‘SPGB? Oh yes. None of us are ever good enough, are we?’ This must have been a reference to our so-called ‘purist’ reputation among the left, in contrast to their customary ‘pragmatic’ approach. But we’re not purist, just principled. We’ve been telling the left for generations not to keep doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result, but they keep doing it, and now they’re doing it again with Your Party – trying to reform capitalism into something that works for humanity instead of against it. It drives them mad when we tell them that they’re wasting their time trying to fix the unfixable. It must drive them madder still that we’re always somehow proved right when their strenuous efforts fall apart. We wish it wasn’t so, but it will continue to be so until the left, and workers in general, acknowledge the elephant in the room, which is that capitalism needs to be abolished, and replaced with a democratic system of free access for all and collective ownership and control of the Earth’s resources.

PJS

SPGB January Events (2026)

Party News from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

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