Development: the shattered illusion (1997)

From the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The stereotype is that we live in a world of haves and have-nots: a prosperous "First World" alongside an impoverished "Third World".

The reality, however, is more complicated. For wherever you look you will find rich and poor people alike. Indeed, the growing disparity in GNP between rich and poor states in recent years has been matched by the growth of inequality within each. That said, there arc undeniably huge differences in material circumstances of the average worker in Britain and their counterparts in, say, Bangladesh. But how did this come about and what, if anything, can be done about it within global capitalism?

Modernisation
Since the Second World War there has been a concerted effort by national governments and international agencies to "develop" the so-called Third World. At the outset this was linked with de-colonisation; it would help make political independence more "meaningful". According to the prevailing "modernisation" theory, development meant less developed countries passing through a scries of stages mirroring the economic history of developed countries. But while favourable circumstances had allowed the latter to reach the final stage of "mass consumption", a number of internal factors prevented the former from progressing towards "take-off into self-sustaining growth”.

Most important was a supposed shortage of capital. This had to be tackled on two fronts. Firstly, savings as a proportion of GNP had to be increased. As the "propensity to save" was thought to be highest among the rich, gross inequalities were justified on the grounds that they facilitated savings. Secondly, as less developed countries were thought unlikely to generate sufficient capital internally, foreign capital needed to be mobilised for inward investment along the lines of the famous Marshall Plan which helped rebuild the war-torn economies of Western Europe.

For modernisation theorists, this shortage of capital necessitated a policy of "unbalanced growth": concentrating investment where it realised the greatest return and hence the most rapid accumulation of capital. Following the example of the First World countries, developing nations embarked on a programme of industrialisation. At a time when Keynesian orthodoxy still held sway with its implicit distrust of unfettered markets, a policy of import-substitution was pursued to protect budding industries from foreign competition behind a wall of tariffs.

As well as promoting rapid growth, industrialisation was supposed to assist the structural transformation of these countries’ economies. Typically, these were thought to exhibit an essentially dualistic structure: a small modern urban-industrial sector alongside a large traditional, mainly pre-capitalist, rural sector. The latter was supposedly characterised by low productivity and an abundance of surplus labour. Industrialisation would enable this surplus labour to find employment in the modern sector and indirectly help boost local agriculture: the exodus of labour from the rural areas would draw farmers into the emerging cash economy, compelling them to buy agricultural inputs, like machinery and fertilisers, to meet the growing demand for food in the towns. In due course, the benefits of economic growth hitherto confined to the modern sector would automatically "trickle-down" to the impoverished backwaters: the "dual economy” would be replaced by a structurally-integrated modern capitalist economy.

It was not long before cracks in this scenario began to appear. The prohibitive costs of agricultural inputs meant many small farmers were unable to increase output, while growing labour shortages caused by urban migration seriously impaired the productivity of traditional labour-intensive farming. As for the urban sector, modern methods of industrial production, being highly capital-intensive, required only a relatively small workforce. Thus, increasing urban migration in fact led to rising unemployment while the importation of these First World technologies imposed a growing debt burden.

Dependency

By the 1960s modernisation theory had reached an impasse. A new scenario of development emerged: dependency theory. Contrary to the previous conventional wisdom that the economic backwardness of less developed countries was attributable to their incomplete incorporation into global capitalism, it was portrayed instead as an inevitable consequence of capitalist penetration of the Third World which left it increasingly dependent on the First. This shifted attention from internal to external factors affecting the development of national economics.

For dependency theory, the "world trading system" was a hierarchical order in which the dominant or "core” countries with their technological, economic and political superiority, are able to impose their needs on the "peripheral" countries. These dictate that the latter should become markets for the products of industrial countries, not rival producers, supplying them with raw materials for processing into finished goods. In short, industrial development and economic diversification in the less developed countries became effectively blocked within an externally imposed global division of labour.

The basic mechanism that condemned them to a state of perpetual "underdevelopment" has been said to be the continual outflow of economic surpluses—notably in the form of debt repayments and expatriated profits. So, far from foreign aid and investment compensating for the lack of local capital, they caused this to happen. This had been compounded in recent years by the declining terms of trade with the value of Third World exports falling sharply against manufactured imports. Political independence made little difference to their plight: it simply enabled the First World to divest itself of the cost of administering these territories while co-opting an emergent class of "comprador bourgeoisie" into this process of neocolonial exploitation.

To break this stranglehold less developed countries would have to "delink" as far as possible from the international economy and pursue "self-reliance", while nationalising the economy to staunch the likely outflow of capital this would incur. In short, a marriage of convenience between Third World nationalism and Leninist state capitalism.

However such an approach has been problematic for several reasons. Firstly, the structure of production which many of these countries inherited was heavily oriented towards exportation of cash crops or minerals and could not easily be re-oriented towards local needs. Secondly, an autarkic policy favouring economic diversification has to contend with local markets being insufficiently large, particularly in small countries, to justify investment in certain lines of production where economies of scale may be critical. Thirdly, increasing state intervention is likely to lead to the growth of an unproductive bureaucracy, further impairing an already impoverished economy while increasing the scope for corruption.

Getting worse

The 1970s oil crisis made matters worse for the less developed countries by massively increasing import costs but in the short term it produced a flood of "petrodollars" loaned to them via western banks. Between 1973 and 1981 these loans increased nine-fold. The spending spree this unleashed helped maintain relatively high growth rates though much of this investment tended to be channelled into grandiose projects which did little to alleviate poverty.

Then, as the long post-war boom petered out, the bubble burst. The 1980s in particular witnessed a steep decline in Third World incomes. Growing poverty led to eruptions of popular unrest to which governments responded with increased military repression. Yet ironically increased military spending only exacerbated the problem, diverting scarce resources away from development projects. In the 32 poorest countries in the world (apart from India and China) such expenditures amounted on average to twice what was spent on education and seven times that on health.

Global recession also signalled a profound change in the political climate. Growing disenchantment with Keynesian policies in the late 1970s and the sudden collapse of the Soviet bloc in the late 1980s ushered in an age of "market triumphalism". Blind faith in market forces replaced blind faith in the efficacy of state intervention.

The concept of development had by then already undergone a subtle mutation. No longer crudely equated with GNP growth it began to also incorporate notions of redistribution and empowerment. In this broader sense, development came to be increasingly linked with concern for the environment, following the emergence of the environmental movement in the early 1970s.

As the global economy went into recession interest in environmental issues diminished but it re-emerged in the late 1980s under the rubric of “sustainable development". Popularised by the 1987 Brundtland report Our Common Future, sustainable development meant a form of development that met "the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Environmental deterioration and economic decline were perceived as being mutually reinforcing. Since poverty caused people to over-exploit their natural resources, a more equitable distribution of wealth would help ensure more sustainable use of those resources. Although this represented an advance on earlier environmental thinking, it failed to address the real problem: it is not the poor who are the main culprits of environmental vandalism: more often than not they are victims of destructive decisions made by remote governments and multinational corporations who in turn are driven by the logic of market competition.

Contradictions

Yet it was this self-same logic which the less developed countries were now being urged to apply. With the growing threat of debt defaults in the early 1980s, the IMF and World Bank took on a more aggressive role as watchdogs of international capitalism. Structural Adjustment Programmes were imposed in exchange for rescheduling debts and further aid. This involved privatisation of state enterprises, public spending cuts and price liberalisation. If the stated intention of such reforms was "economic stabilisation", their real purpose was to ensure that these countries were better able to fulfil their debt obligations. To that end, greater emphasis was placed on boosting exports with the less developed countries reverting to their traditional role as suppliers of raw materials as prescribed by the theory of comparative advantage within a global trading system progressively shorn of protectionist features.

Predictably, the results have been disappointing. But then that is the nature of reformism: “solving" one problem within capitalism only seems to generate another. For example, while the new GATT treaty prohibited developing countries from dumping subsidised food onto Third World markets, this meant the less developed countries having to pay more for food imports. More expensive imports means getting ever deeper into debt which in turn intensifies the drive towards export production at the expense of domestic food production. Furthermore, with many other producer countries in the same boat yet prevented by free trade agreements from forming cartels to bargain for higher prices, the markets for such exports are soon saturated. So, prices decline and hence also the capacity of less developed countries to service their debts. It's a case of protectionist swings or free market roundabouts.

Meanwhile, the problems of poverty and environmental destruction escalate in tandem. The same pressures that force governments to inflict austerity programmes on populations in the name of “structural adjustment” compel them to drastically cut their meagre environmental protection budgets—at a time when the drive to increase exports poses a growing threat to the environment. Similarly, the increasing mobility of international capital in an era of free markets has enhanced its bargaining position vis-a-vis labour in both developed and less developed countries alike while enabling it to circumvent even limited attempts by states to impose environmental cost constraints by relocating (or threatening to relocate) to countries where environmental standards may be lower.

Not that things could have turned out much different given the nature of capitalism. There can be no turning back to the discredited models of development of the past. State interventionism could never provide a solution to poverty and environmental destruction. Even if this were theoretically conceivable, capitalism's globalising tendencies have put paid to that option. Arguably, the neo-liberal order we now have is the irresistible outcome of such tendencies but in any event it too can offer no hope of real progress.

In short, the system has exhausted every possibility of meaningful development. To move forward the dispossessed majority across the world must now look beyond the artificial barriers of nation-states and regional blocs, to perceive a common identity and purpose. There is in reality only one world. It is high time we reclaimed it.

Robin Cox

Shame about the words (1997)

Book Review from the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The People's Party. The History of the Labour Party by Tony Wright and Matt Carter. (Thames and Hudson. 1997.)

This purports to be a history of the Labour Party. As responsible history it bears about as much resemblance to the Labour Party as the notorious official history of the CPSU published in Moscow in 1939 did to the Communist Party of Russia. In short it is a propaganda blurb and hardly to be treated seriously by anyone who wishes to understand what the Labour Party is all about. Some examples of inaccuracies and convenient omissions are that the Socialist League disaffiliated in 1937, when it disbanded under threat of expulsion: no mention is made of Foot’s attack on Peter Tatchell, Kinnock’s attack on the miners’ pickets, the expulsion of MPs Nellist and Fields: the disbanding (several times) of the youth section; the block on Liz Davies as candidate in Leeds. One could go on.

However, it may be interesting to note the various ways in which the authors, one a Labour MP, the other a tutor in politics at York University, and prospective MP (a job for which he is more suited, judging by his efforts here) have glossed over the past embarrassing anti-working class actions of previous Labour governments.These include their use of troops to break strikes, the introduction of conscription in peace time, the record of wage freezes by several of their governments, all that to a genuine socialist are shameful acts have been turned into virtues.

Claims for Labour as a socialist party are numerously sprinkled throughout the book. They even have the cheek to lay claim to William Morris, and then call him a “Utopian Socialist". Nowhere is any attempt made to define what socialism is and a nationalist outlook is adopted throughout, with no conception that nationalism is of no interest to the working class and only operates for the benefit of the capitalists. When the word socialism is deployed it is used as meaning more government intervention in the running of capitalism and the lives of the people. Socialism of course means the end of government since there will be no minority class who need state power to maintain their dominance.

Throughout they casually mention reforms and socialism as though they were synonymous. When it comes to the famous Clause 4 on which the Labour Party staked its claim to stand for the interests of the working class, and which in practice has no other meaning than nationalisation, they are silent on the fact that nationalisation has proved to be an abject failure for the workers, especially the miners, and has been dropped by the Labour Party itself in favour of a hymn of praise to the capitalist market.

They scrupulously detail every piece of legislation ever carried out by Labour governments, from the Open University (possibly the best thing they have ever done, but was it designed for workers’ needs or for the needs of industry?) to Race Relations Acts and safety at work legislation.

Some of these are well-meaning reforms, but do the authors realise how the day-to- day operation of capitalism turns well meaning reforms into a nonsense? Employers will always find a way round legislation by introducing alternative working practices. Short contract labour as a way round pension schemes, or cheap illegal immigrant workers who are not covered by legislation are just two that spring to mind. Do they realise that mass unemployment which no capitalist government can prevent when there is a worldwide slump, favours the employer in reducing wage rates and worsening conditions of work? These things have been covered exhaustively in previous issues of this journal and do not need to be elaborated in a review, but suffice to say that such political naivety is bad enough in someone who teaches politics in a university, let alone someone who practices it at Westminster.

They follow the usual practice of capitalist political parties in crediting everything they deem to be "good", such as full employment, to their own polices, and everything that goes against them to the unpredictable workings of fate. They treat the EU as being of significance when of course it has no relevance to us as workers who have no country, and which is only meaningful to the various sections of the capitalist class who decide whether they will make more or less profit from being in or out.

Prominence is also given to another factor which should be of no interest to the workers—leadership. They have a morbid concern with the never-ending power struggles for the leadership of their party. The authors would no doubt claim this to be fair enough as history but they seem oblivious to the fact that battles for leadership are themselves a refutation of Labour as a socialist party.

There are some lovely photographs, quite a few oddly enough depicting activities the Labour Party has always been anxious to distance itself from. Shame about the words.

Cyril Evans

The Money Barrier (1997)

Book Review from the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Universal Impediment. By “Chappie”, (Third Millennium Press, 51 Newton Rd, Bath BA2 1RW.)

The universal impediment is, of course, money. The author demolishes the arguments used by conventional economists to defend money, that it is a simple tool that facilitates in the most efficient way possible the production and exchange of goods and services.

Money is certainly better than barter, the author concedes, but goes on to point out that the money system requires a large and wasteful bureaucracy to control its operation, from those involved in the production and control of the currency through those concerned with tracking down and trying to suppress financial fraud (indeed, 90 percent of all crimes) to all those whose job it is to take in or pay out or count or stand guard over money. All this wastes resources and distorts production. “Money is not", he concludes, "the catalyst essential to growth and progress or to the creation of wealth, it follows or impedes them. It is their wasteful and inefficient impediment".

The author looks forward to the time when the money system will have disappeared: "With lack of funding impeding progress no longer, and the complexities of the money system replaced by the simple manipulation of quantities, of production and distribution tailored to environmental and human needs, and with information, undistorted by advertising, freely available, the possibilities would be limitless".

The author doesn’t write as a Socialist. In fact he repudiates socialism which he sees as a project, not to abolish money, but to take money from the rich to give to the poor. To be honest, since most of those who have called (and call) themselves socialists have taken this position, it is an understandable enough mistake. It also needs to be underlined that the aim of Socialists is not to simply abolish money as such but to establish the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, which will have as one of its consequences the disappearance of money.

The great weakness of this book is how the author sees a world moneyless society coming into being. He repudiates the class struggle and the winning of political power by a socialist party and instead envisages money gradually falling out of use following the establishment of a single world currency (which, somewhat strangely, he sees as a step on the road to the eventual disappearance of money).

This process is to be initiated by the UN and its agencies. No doubt when socialism is established such administrative structures will play a key role in balancing production and needs but the UN is made up of capitalist states. For it to change, political power in those states will have to pass out of the hands of their capitalist ruling class and into the hands of the working class—the vast majority of their populations constrained to work for a wage or salary.

So it comes back to the need for a consciously socialist majority to win control of political power after all. This is an essential precondition for the establishment of a world socialist society, the only basis on which Chappie's vision of a world without money can come into being.

Adam Buick

Earth Summit II—Another UN Failure (1997)

From the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Earth Summit ends in failure, ran a Guardian headline on 28 June this year—a headline any socialist could have written with prophetic accuracy weeks earlier.

Indeed, the failure of Earth Summit II which opened in New York on 23 June was only ever going to be a reenactment of a similar summit held in Rio five years previously.This much we could glean from the G7 gathering days earlier which closed with the heads of the world's leading nations failing to agree on new targets for carbon dioxide emissions.

Carbon dioxide emissions have been a core problem at both Earth Summits. Back in 1992, the 125 delegates at Rio agreed to return to pre-1990 C02 levels by the end of the decade. But in the past five years such emissions have in fact spiralled and are forecast to increase, with the industrialised nations—making up 15 percent of the world population, yet responsible for 50 percent of emissions—being the worst perpetrator. And China’s C02 emissions are expected to exceed those of the US within eight years.

Similarly, the Rio guidelines to protect the world’s forests have not been adhered to, with about 10 million hectares of forest vanishing every year—an area equivalent to the size of South Korea—with the loss of an estimated 130.000 species of life.

You name it and the delegates at Rio have reneged on it—climate, deserts, bio-diversity, even aid for the developing world.

At Rio it was agreed that the industrialised world should increase their portion of overseas aid to 0.7 percent of GDR. What happened was that aid fell by 20 percent between 1992 and 1995 (from 0.33 percent to 0.27 percent).And in that period global poverty has increased with the poorest 20 percent of the world's people sharing less than 1.1 percent of global income (compared with 2.3 percent in I960) with the richest 20 percent sharing over 85 percent.

Principle I of the Rio summit had been a pledge of $125 billion a year in aid initiatives and projects aimed at helping the environment. Few have been observed and many have resulted in misery. In Uganda, for instance. 35.000 inhabitants of the Kabale forest region were forcibly ejected from their homes in order that tourism could be encouraged and the forests protected. Those who resisted were either shot or burnt alive in their homes. In Kenya, a huge road project spewed up so much dust that thousands were left with irreparable lung damage.

Fishing around for profit
Were this not bad enough, in the past five years the world’s fishing grounds have become further depleted and whole eco-system faces an increased threat from oil and gas companies who are now exploiting the deeper oceans in their endless pursuit of profit.

This, then, had been the result of Rio in 1992, a summit that had taken 20 years and 30 million pieces of paper to get off the ground.

What added insult to injury at this year’s summit was that G7 scapegoating of the industrial world dominated so much of the meeting that constructive debate on saving the environment was precluded. Little wonder that the day after the summit closed the Guardian (28 June) could report of the summit ending "in a shambles with no clear agreements on its main goals of new aid for developing countries or protecting forests".

Talks on climate collapsed and have effectively been deferred until the Climatic Change Conference in Kyoto. Japan, this December. A text which highlighted targets to reduce C02 emissions had been agreed by a working group one evening, but came to nought when the group fell out over lunch some 12 hours later.

We may well ask that if the Rio summit resulted in a score of promises that were eventually broken, and if the latest summit ended in failure, then what future for planet Earth?

Commentators have tended to cite a growing governmental awareness of environmental issues as one positive spin-off of such summits.They point to the likes of Tony Blair, who believes C02 emissions should be reduced to below 15 percent of 1990 levels by 2010, as proof that governments are really beginning to care.

Like true apologists for capitalism, they continue to fail to locate global problems in a wider social and economic context, in capitalism itself, as if the profit motive was incidental to environmental concerns.

Profit is in fact the biggest stumbling block encountered by delegates at Earth summits and this journal has wasted no time in exposing similar summits in the past as the farces they are (see, for instance, our issues for June 1992 and July 1996). At Rio, evidence could be found during discussions on bio-diversity, with the US refusing to back an agreement to safeguard animal and plant diversity for no other reason than this would have curbed the excesses of the mainly US transnational corporations.

At the recent Earth Summit, a hoped-for agreement on a global tax on aviation fuel, aimed at improving engine efficiency and consequently reducing pollution, failed to materialise, with the US opposing new taxes. OPEC fearing a loss of revenue and developing nations fearful that increased prices would result in a drop in tourism.

You do not need a vivid imagination to envisage the environment and development report that will be prepared for the next Earth Summit in 2002. or indeed the outcome of the Conference on Climatic Change to be held later this year. If the past is anything to go on the delegates would be better advised to stay at home and plant saplings.

Their ideas of a world compatible with a profit-driven market economy are illusory and their prospects for reform in the interests of humans and the environment a fallacy.

Were they to take the idea of socialism with them to future summits, however, the world would stand a far better chance of survival in the 21st century.

John Bissett

Passage to Poverty (1997)

The TV Review column from the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

David Dimbleby’s India (BBC2. 12 July) should have been enough to remind anyone with any doubts why this planet needs a social revolution. Dimbleby himself—a pillar of the British establishment— ironically demonstrated how relatively little of real worth has changed in India since the days of the Raj. The social and economic movement that there has been has done little if anything to benefit the vast majority of India’s teeming population.

Dimbleby’s programme started with one or two "success’’ stories brought about by the intrusion of capitalism into India’s backward economic structure. The very fact that these were painted as examples of real progress told the viewer everything one needed to know, both about the programme’s general ideological thrust and the state of the rest of India. "Successful’’ young computer software executives were shown imbibing the dubious advantages of western-style wage-slavery, all for the princely sum of £40 per month. Interestingly, some other would-be wage-slaves showed themselves unconsciously sceptical of the benefits of capitalism, including the schoolgirl who stated when asked about her ambitions: "I want to be an accountant—and apart from that have an enjoyable life." Well, quite.

Where Dimbleby's programme was telling, however was in its portrayal of India’s traditionalist/ modernist dichotomy. The tension between the demands of capitalism and the stifling structure of the centuries-old caste system was brought out quite well and not even Dimbleby—skilled broadcaster that he is—could disguise the awful truth that in many respects Indians are experiencing not the best of both worlds but the worst of both.

Infanticide and gangsterism 
As the need to compete in the world economy pushes down the meagre income of millions of Indian workers so they find it increasingly difficult to meet the obligations demanded of them by their culture and traditions. In many instances this has led to some quite dreadful consequences. Parents with young girls, for instance, are less able to afford the dowry payments expected from them on their daughter’s marriage and so parents look upon the birth of baby girls as a financial disaster waiting to happen. Almost unbelievably, this has provoked the return of mass infanticide as poverty-stricken young Indians, particularly in the north of the country, feel that the only way they can ensure their own survival is by terminating the lives of their own children. Relatively few can bring themselves to do such a deed, so amazingly, they scrape together a few rupees to pay somebody else to take the children away and do it for them. In this way traditional Indian culture meets the joys of Western free enterprise with a vengeance.

The dangerous mix of traditional authoritarian and patriarchal cultures with the market economy has brutally given rise to other social problems too. Many of these are common to the majority of the "developing" world, but as is so often the case. India probably demonstrates them better than anywhere. As the poison of the market soaks in to infect an already cancerous organism, crime, corruption, gangsterism, violence and massacres are the order of the day across huge swathes of this beautiful country. Such is the level of patronage, ignorance and illiteracy that hundreds of thousands have been known to gather to defend those politicians and criminals (the dividing line is hazy) who have been systematically defrauding and robbing them. In these circumstances it has been left to other members of the capitalist class to take action against those—and there are plenty of them— who have been refusing to play the game according to Hoyle.

In several regions of India slavery still unofficially exists. Millions of children are “economically bonded" to shopkeepers, artisans and factory owners, working for nothing apart from enough food to ensure that they can put a bit of wealth into their masters’ pockets the next day. This—yet another happy victory for traditional values in a modern setting—shows no real sign of abating. Even under India’s old neo-state-capitalist economic arrangements child slavery was still rife: anyone who expects a great improvement since the recent move towards a more free market economy would be foolish indeed.

Given that India is in a number of respects so typical of much of the world it is astounding that people exist who still think that capitalism is the best of all worlds, a progressive social system that is the best on offer. If watching TV programmes about India is not enough perhaps they should visit it and open their eyes. Then they might know what socialists have learnt—that capitalism is now a planetary disaster.

Dave Perrin

Letter: Back to the land? (1997)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

What would the members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain do with the money, if they unwittingly won (through a third party perhaps) millions of pounds on the Lottery. Pools or suchlike?

Would they (1) take large tracts of land out of conventional land ownership (and use), and live and share the resources of that land according to Socialist principles as much as is possible, in their own lives, more than they do at present, and amongst increasing numbers of new members further increasing their share of land, or (2) put the money towards doing what they do at present and that is to pay for the use of capitalist "machinery" to spread socialist knowledge and awareness, paying their members capitalist expenses, paying capitalist printing costs, hire of halls, and other capitalist expenses that it takes to run a political party and magazine, postage, telephone, stationery, etc.?

Personally speaking I would say (1) would be better and the most effective, because you could still do no. (2). i.e. spread awareness, but at increasingly less and less money cost because "true" socialists would begin to own collectively more and more socialist and not capitalist resources, such as their own energy supplies, wood, recycled paper, mills, etc. to use, as well as their own moneyless food supplies, etc. thus allowing more effective use of what money is available, and have a much greater impact on the increase of the present activities of the Socialist Party.

This land which would be the physical practical place of where socialists arc practising socialism (albeit constrained by the limits of capitalism that we are all forced to live under) and would be an interesting, inspiring enjoyable place to visit, and also given that you do stick to socialist principles, would not this land, lands, unlike Animal Farm stay socialist? And another thing—you have already spent the time and energy put in by your loyal members.You in fact could be doing two things at the same time—creating socialism and educating socialism.

Frank Bowman,

Flint

Reply:

If we were to obtain such a windfall, since we are a democratic organisation the decisions as to how to use it would be taken democratically by the membership. We can’t see our membership, however, deciding to spend it on the sort of land project you have in mind since that would be contrary to our conception of how socialism will come about.

We imagine the money would be spent on doing what we do now better and on a bigger scale. We could obtain our own printing press and perhaps bring out a weekly paper as well as a glossy monthly. We could pay socialists to work full-time as journalists, designers, printers and experts in distribution. We could put organisers in the field. We could start a publishing house to bring out books and pamphlets, both reprints and new material. We could contest more seats at elections and run a more high-profile campaign: if we put up more than 50 candidates we could have party election broadcasts which we would have the money to do well. We could help our companion parties and socialist groups in other parts of the world expand their activities too. We could step up our advertising and publicity.

Such a windfall would enable us to redress a bit the present imbalance in favour of pro-capitalist propaganda. It would enable us to convince more and more people that socialism is the only lasting solution to the problems they face and that socialism can only be established when a majority of people have come to want and understand it and organise to take democratic political action to achieve it.

That—democratic political action by a majority that wants and understands socialism—is the way we see socialism coming about, not by "socialistic land colonies gradually becoming more and more self-sufficient and eventually squeezing out entirely capitalist production for profit.

This argument amongst those who want a classless moneyless society of common ownership and democratic control goes back a long time, right back to the origins of the modern socialist movement in the first part of the last century. On the one side was Robert Owen, who spent (and lost) the fortune he had made as a textile capitalist on founding communistic colonics in Britain and America. On the other were the Chartists, whose position was later supported by Marx and Engels, who argued that political action for social change was the most effective way to achieve a co-operative commonwealth.

It might be more pleasant to live in the moneyless communistic community you envisage, at least to start with, but the trouble is they never last. Not because communism is against human nature as opponents claim, but because they can’t escape from the surrounding capitalist environment. Far from them overwhelming capitalism it’s been the other way round.

Either they isolate themselves as much as they can from capitalism, in which case they arc only able to offer a very frugal existence, or they engage with the surrounding capitalist economy, for instance by selling their products, in which case they get more and more sucked into capitalist ways of doing things.

The kibbutzim in Israel are a good example of this. Some of them did start out as communities which didn’t use money internally and in which affairs were run democratically with everyone having an equal say. But over the years they have not only competed successfully on the capitalist market as sellers; they have also taken to employing non-members as wage workers, i.e. become capitalist enterprises.

Two further points. First, we are not saying that people shouldn’t live in communistic communities if they want to—we are not in the business of telling people how they should live their lives under capitalism—only that it’s not the way socialism is going to come. Second, we can imagine that, when socialists are measured in millions rather than thousands so that it has become clear that sooner or later socialism will be established in the near future, people will be making all sorts of plans and experiments in anticipation of the coming of socialism and that this will include communal living in the countryside as well as in towns, but we are not there yet since this presupposes the existence of a mass socialist movement which must come first. So at the moment we need to concentrate on spreading socialist ideas rather than promoting experiments in "socialist” living—Editors.

Greasy Pole: Video Nasty (1997)

The Greasy Pole column from the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who enjoyed gloating over what happened to the Conservative Party on 1 May will want to get their hands on the BBC video Election 97, which describes itself as “the most memorable highlights of one of the most dramatic election nights ever."

Memorable indeed. Jeremy Paxman savaging Cecil Parkinson who, before he was able to compose himself to the reality of his party’s plight, looked as if—in John Major’s phrase—he was a sandwich short of a picnic. David Dimbleby brutally interrupting a glowering Michael Heseltine. to ask what he meant by “regrouping’’. David Mellor and James Goldsmith behaving, at the count at Putney, like children squabbling in the playground. Michael Portillo, as the voting figures were read out, trying desperately to smile. And at Tatton the odious Hamiltons. their anger held in check except in their eyes, where you could read an uncomprehending contempt for it all.

Tony Blair was not—of course— supposed to be odious. He was on a platform assuring us how moved he was by the trust placed in him by all those votes and how he would not let us down. And just to show how sincere and trustworthy he is he had beside him his father, who was once a Tory but changed sides in time for his son to become a Labour prime minister. And Tony made a speech saying with a catch in his voice how much he wishes his mother could have been there that night, and all over the country thousands of people went "Ahhhhh ..." or at least were meant to.

The Morning After
Come the morning there were the comings and goings at the Palace with John Major being shown in by some uniformed flunky as Prime Minister and shown out as a man heading as fast as he could to obscurity. Then Blair accompanying the uniform through the door to kiss hands and walk out backwards and do all the things which are so necessary to let the Queen know that there had been this glorious revolution to give power and prosperity to all the people.

And the people showed what they thought of this by jamming the pavements around Downing Street to cheer themselves hoarse and sing Labour’s election anthem that Things Can Only Get Better. Except that there was something distinctly odd about those apparently ecstatic crowds-until it dawned that they were really Labour supporters who had made the long and perilous journey from party headquarters in Millbank to Whitehall, stopping on the way to equip themselves with thousands of conveniently available Union Jacks. Labour stage-managed things to the end.

In the City they were not quite so ecstatic because that is not how they do these things but neither was there a steady stream of fearful financiers taking the lift up to the 26th floor to throw themselves [out] of the window. At one stockbrokers the Labour victory was greeted nonchalantly:". . . Blair has come across quite well in the campaign. He seems sincere . . ." A trader at a German-owned investment house put it: "They have a massive majority, but they do not appear to have any radical motives.” The FTSE 100 index, which offers some kind of guide to the level of optimism or pessimism among investors, ended the day at an all-time closing high.

Tycoons 
Well it’s nice to see honest endeavour rewarded and endeavour is that the Labour Party have put into recruiting the support and co-operation of some of the stars of the business world and to reassuring them that a Labour government is not going to do anything nasty like dispossess the owning class or even try a little redistribution of wealth. It is not so long ago that Labour prime ministers were accustomed to sort out British industry's problems with union leaders over beer and sandwiches at Number Ten. It would be difficult now for the trade unionists of get through the door for the crush of tycoons quaffing champagne and smoked salmon.

David Simon, the million-pound-a-year chairman of BP. was invited to become Minister for Trade and Competitiveness in Europe and a life peer into the bargain. Martin Taylor, chief executive of Barclays Bank, was put in charge of a task force which will advise on reforming the tax and benefits system. There is no evidence that Taylor has any experience of trying to live on benefit, or has any idea of the stress of doing so. In any case nobody in their right mind expects his Task Force to recommend an easier life for all those scroungers who could easily get a job but choose to undermine the fortunes of firms like BP and Barclays Bank by living in the lap of luxury on the Job Seekers Allowance or whatever.

It will be useful if all those people who gloated over Election 97 keep it and view it again in a year's time, when the cheering has finally died and Labour’s honeymoon is over and the businessmen are really making themselves felt in Downing Street.

Manifesto
What will it be like then? What was it like, the last time the Labour Party lost power? What effect had they had, on the problems of the working class which they had pledged themselves to ease or even eliminate? After five years of power the best they could claim for themselves, in their 1979 election manifesto was that “in an uncertain world, suffering the worst economic trouble for forty years, we have pointed the way forward . . . Our purpose is to overcome the evils of inequality, poverty, racial bigotry, and to make Britain truly one nation.”

There might then have been people who had voted Labour in 1974 to ask why Labour had not used their time in power to "overcome" those "evils” and why all they could offer was to point the way forward. Perhaps in the near future, if those ecstatic, flag-waving people are not too far gone in their delusions, we shall be hearing the same kinds of questions. And if we do hear them this time we shall not have, to use in reply, a boring manifesto but a real, live Technicolor, all-singing and cheering video to show how it was and how it was supposed to be—to match against how it really is.

Ivan

These Foolish Things: New Colonialism (1997)

The Scavenger column from the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

New colonialism

Since 1982, the level of debt in sub-Saharan Africa has doubled to more than 100 percent of GDP. The economic injustice represented by the debt mountain is a subject to which the Archbishop of Capetown, The Most Reverend Njongonkulu Ndungane, will refer with particular force today. He will berate the countries of the First World for saddling poorer regions with crippling debt, punitive tariffs against exports and a restrictive macroeconomic stance. As a result, he will argue, that those bearing the debt burden are swamped by malnourishment. famine and disease and. in some cases, war. (Guardian, 24 April.)


Wasting brain power

Many banks have sophisticated operations in derivatives products, which were pioneered in the early Eighties. Derivatives are so called because they are contracts relating to underlying assets such as commodities, currencies or interest rates—they derive from those assets, such as dollars for delivery in three months’ time, or an option to buy or sell gilt-edged stock. As these contracts can often be combined with one another to create complex structures designed to meet the needs of client companies, they attract computer-literate people, preferably with mathematics-based degrees. (Financial Mail on Sunday. 15 June.)


The capitalist view

Fear. Greed. Sex. Psychologists say they make people tick. A Virgin Personal Pension can satisfy 2 out of 3 of them. The other's up to you. Advert by Virgin Direct Personal Financial Services Ltd.


Expediency rules

The prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, will be visiting South Africa next month. Nelson Mandela is familiar with the system of government in Malaysia . . .  its detention without trial, censorship and hostility towards trade unions. But, although the South African president has dedicated his life to freedom, he will reportedly be bestowing on Dr Mahathir one of the highest civilian awards in his gift, the Order of Good Hope. The explanation is not difficult to find. There were the contributions to the African National Congress’s war chest in the 1994 elections—estimated to be 33 million rand (£4.6 million); a recent RI.9 billion investment by the Malaysian state oil company; and Malaysian involvement in a $4 billion scheme to rejuvenate Johannesburg. Malaysia’s expected purchase of Rooivalk helicopters could boost the struggling South African arms industry. Malaysia wants these ’’attack" craft only for "defence”. Mr Mandela assured critics recently. (Guardian, 24 April.)


Feelbad factor

Poverty is rising faster in Britain than in any other major industrialised country, an authoritative new United Nations report reveals. The report also shows that the poor are poorer here than in any other western country for which figures have been collected and that a higher proportion of old people live in poverty than anywhere else in the West. Britain’s child poverty rate, moreover, is second only to the United States. This devastating indictment—which Clare Short, Secretary of State for International Development, describes as “worrying”—contrasts sharply with progress in the fight against poverty in much of the rest of the world. (Independent on Sunday, 16 June.)


Vested interest

Last year the Government scooped £610.2 million from the Lottery in taxes; 12 percent of every pound spent by the public. (Mail on Sunday, 1 June.)

The Scavenger

Gilded Socialism (2005)

Book Review from the November 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Beyond Hegemony by Darrow Schechter (Manchester University Press. £55.)

This turns out to be an attempt to work out a philosophical and sometimes nearly incomprehensible (at least outside the little world of academia) basis for an alternative to liberal democracy (free-market capitalism), social-democracy (regulated capitalism) and what Schechter calls “state socialism” (state capitalism).

Schechter identifies that what is wrong with these is that all three of them involve commodity production and consumption (“production for exchange and the generation of money and capital rather than direct use”), and that the alternative has to be a system where there is production directly for use. Unfortunately, he sees the answer in the Utopian scheme devised in the 1920s by the Labour historian (and Labour Party activist) G.D.H. Cole, which he called “Guild Socialism”. Although Cole’s blueprint did provide for close links between consumers and producers which could be interpreted as “production directly for use”, it still envisaged the continuation of finance, prices and incomes. And it was to come into being through the guilds eventually outcompeting capitalist industries in the marketplace (though, to be fair to Schechter, he doesn’t explicitly endorse this and may well not support it).

But if Schechter stands for “Guild Socialism” why doesn’t he just campaign for it? Does it really need the elaborate philosophical basis he has constructed for it? Perhaps it’s just that university lecturers have to publish to justify their jobs.

Adam Buick

Pathfinders: Space Oddity (2018)

The Pathfinders Column from the March 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

A dummy dressed as an astronaut rides a red Tesla Roadster into space (with Bowie’s Space Oddity playing on a loop on the in-car stereo), courtesy of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, and leaves a smoke-trail of divided opinion behind it. It was a publicity stunt worthy of the Marvel character Tony Stark, and indeed SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been credited as the inspiration behind Robert Downey Jr’s portrayal in the films (Musk even had a cameo part in Iron Man 2). Fans of SpaceX enthuse on the ability of private capital to do what NASA and its Russian equivalent Rocosmos never did and build a cheap reusable rocket, although this isn’t strictly fair as SpaceX is NASA-funded. Still, it is undoubtedly impressive to see two of the booster rockets make perfect synchronised landings. Ideally it should have been three but the other one crashed. As Musk only gave the initial launch a 50:50 chance of not blowing up on the launch pad, this nevertheless has to be counted a resounding success.

In the interests of balance someone had to gainsay this billionaire-boy-and-his-toys story though, and Van Badham no doubt spoke for many with the observation that ‘space exploration should be an initiative of nations, not just some rich guy’ (Guardian, 9 February). Socialists would quarrel with the word ‘nations’ of course, since nations don’t represent the people as liberal journalists carelessly assume, but are run in the interest of rich guys. But this is the whole problem with the capitalist entrepreneur / visionary / philanthropist thing – it’s always the agenda set by the rich guy, never as a result of collective or democratic debate. Even when they’re trying to do good things, like Bill Gates and his malaria programmes, it’s still essentially a vanity project by a rich guy, not a consensual project by a world community. You wouldn’t run a local club like that, but for some reason it’s ok to run the world that way.

Opinions remain divided between those who think Musk is a modern-day Edison, and those who think he’s a workaholic wacko with an amazing ability to solicit huge amounts of investment and then lose it. His Tesla Roadster may have ridden triumphantly into the heavens, but his Tesla company has been riding in the opposite direction after posting a $2bn loss for 2017. Whether ultimately he hits paydirt or the skids, the very fact that he has the power to launch junk into space without public involvement, debate or oversight is an indictment of capitalism’s glorification of the rich and its perverse tendency to let the super-elite tail wag the social dog.

The next big thing? You must have blinked...

Science is only separated from science fiction by time, luck and lab work, but the predicted Singularity – that epoch-making culmination of exponential tech growth first mentioned in this column in January, 2006 – has so far failed to appear.  While futurologists continue to throw darts at calendars to produce arrive-by dates for this supposed big-tech-bang, detractors have instead dared to suggest that the pace of tech growth, far from being exponential, is stalling and even slowing down (Link). They point to a tech-driven economic revolution between 1870 and 1970 that changed workers’ lives so fundamentally that any subsequent change has been comparatively cosmetic. Though the internet and social media have been a huge cultural change, their economic effect has been ‘disruptive’ within existing markets rather than productive in new ones, while real wages have gone down in some places since 1972. Still it would be a curmudgeonly capitalist who reduced the benefits of technology to a dry profit and loss balance sheet. Artificial Intelligence – the usual suspect in singularity theories – is today all around us, and while its ability to beat the world’s top chess and Go players may have only limited real-world application, it works pretty well for Amazon and Google searches.

Wired Magazinet hinks that 2018’s next big thing might go unnoticed because people won’t recognise it for what it is (Link). But maybe we’ve already missed it. What if we’re already inside the Singularity, and just don’t realize it? After all and contrary to prediction, it doesn’t have to be an AI-led event, nor does it have to be just one thing, or happen all at once. The printing press took around seven decades to spread across Western Europe. Few people in the 1450s would have realised that a technological revolution was taking place. Perhaps we are equally oblivious, or perhaps we’re simply good at taking things in our stride. Three quarters of the UK population now possess a low-cost pocket tool into which hundreds of other tools have been folded in a way that just a generation ago would have been inconceivable. Like a Swiss Army knife with an infinite number of extensions, today’s smart phone is a recorder, video camera, GPS navigator, alarm clock, egg timer, diary, juke box, book library, games hub, TV, mini-cinema and radio player, payment card, banking service, translator and world encyclopaedia. You can tune your guitar with it, check how late your train is and whether it’s raining at your destination, you can use it as a spirit level or a torch, and point it at speakers so it’ll tell you what song is playing. And of course you can phone or text people or join conferences via Skype. Older readers who remember slide rules might be amused to learn that if today’s 256gb iPhone X had been built in 1957 it would have been the size of a 3-kilometer-wide hundred-storey building, cost one and a half times the world’s GDP, and required 30 times the world’s total energy capacity (Link).

The singularity, however it is defined, represents an event beyond which human civilisation will change in unfathomable ways. In this sense, socialism is a political singularity. Currently all the intellectual and creative power of the world’s population is stunted by being forced through the bottleneck of property relations and the market, yet the pressure against this bottleneck is growing along with the individual’s access to communications. Once this bottleneck breaks and the gigantic potential of human capability is released, we may then consider that the singularity began much earlier than we ever realised, when we got that first phone contract.

Paddy Shannon

50 Years Ago: Why Can't We All Get Together (1997)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our object is Socialism, defined as a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole community. Our definition is not a mere insistence on a formula. We work for Socialism and oppose Capitalism—including nationalisation or State Capitalism—because only Socialism will solve the problem facing the working class. The Labour Party miscalls State Capitalism “Socialism”, as also do the Communists. The I.L.P. used to do so although at the moment it places more emphasis on the equally false proposition that State Capitalism is a useful stepping stone on the way to Socialism. When therefore the unity-seeker asks why cannot the S.P.G.B. get together with others who want “Socialism” he is letting the misuse of a word deceive him. We do not want State Capitalism and therefore have no interest in associating with those who do. The fact that they call it “Socialism” only makes their activities more dangerous to the workers.

(From front page article by 'H', Socialist Standard, August 1947.)

No such thing as a free bus? (1997)

From the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the beginning of July the people of Hasselt, a town in Northern Belgium with a population of 60,000, have been able to travel free on the buses.

No, socialism has not been established there. This is just one of a number of such experiments that have been carried out in various places over the years. In this case the aim is to encourage people to use public transport rather than their cars when they come to work or shop in the town centre so that the costs of renovating a ring road can be avoided. The free transport experiment, which will run for two years, will cost the town 38 million Belgian francs (£6.6 million), but renovating the ring road would cost hundreds of millions of francs. So, on the principle that “free is cheaper”, the mayor opted for free buses.

Socialists don't advocate free transport under capitalism—we only advocate it as part of the general free access that will apply in socialism—but the same arguments are put against free transport as are against general free access.

When socialists say that in socialism people will be able to give, in terms of work, according to their abilities and then take from the common store of wealth according to their needs as they decide them, the supporter of capitalism's typical reaction is: people are greedy so they would grab more than they need and shortages would soon develop again.

But why? Greed is not a built-in part of human nature but a behaviour pattern under certain specific social conditions.When a ship was wrecked in the Seilly Isles recently people rushed to grab what they could.They did this because they knew that the supply of free goods was a one-off and was not going to last.

Where people know that the free supply is going to last they adjust their behaviour accordingly. They no longer frantically seek to grab what they can. Instead, they wait till their current supply runs out and then they go and get some more or, in the case of a service, they wait till they need it and then they go and use it.

All the experience of free goods and services even under capitalism confirms this. Of course it is true that "there is no such thing as a free lunch" under capitalism: everything has to be paid for in the end, in one way or another. Water supply is paid for in Britain through water rates: free local phone calls in some US and Canadian cities through high telephone rental charges: and free transport through local or national taxes.

But this is not the relevant point here. The water, the local phone calls and the buses or trains are free at the time of use: people pay nothing when they use them and they can use them as much as they like. According to the "greedy person" theory, under these circumstances people should be hoarding water, making as many phone calls as they can. and travelling round and round on the buses just to get in as many free rides as possible. But of course this doesn't happen. People adjust their behaviour to the permanent situation of free use and only use these services when they need them.

Supporters of capitalism don't want to accept this because they don't want to believe that it is possible for humans to behave in this sensible way. This prejudice came out in the debate in Belgium over free transport that the mayor of Hasselt's decision provoked.

The Brussels Region Communications Minister, Hervé Husquin. a Liberal (but Liberals on the Continent are still living in the 19th century), was quoted as saying:

  "People don't respect what they can get for free. Not only does vandalism grow but the motivation to use the car remains. They profit from it. Cheap tickets on the other hand, where people pay a kind of contribution, is the right way to get people to use public transport more often" (Het Nieuwsblad, 22 May).

He may turn out to be right about free public transport not working in the sense of not discouraging people from using their cars (that remains to be seen), but what's all this nonsense about vandalism increasing? Husquin's objection here is, clearly, ideological. According to him, if anything is free people must abuse it because that's human nature. However, as yet there have been no reports from Hasselt of people boarding the buses to slash the seats because they can now do this without paying.

Husquin is a university professor but that seems to be qualification for talking nonsense on this subject. Two lecturers from a university in Antwerp came up with an equally silly objection.

Starting from the premise that humans are, or ought to be.,walking calculating machines who if they had all the facts would decide to spend their money in such a way that the marginal price/benefit ratio of everything they consumed was the same (yes, such are the nutty ideas that circulate in university economics departments and that students arc required to at least pretend to subscribe to if they want to pass the exams), they argue that free transport is not desirable as it distorts people's judgements. When something is free this registers on the calculating machine in their heads as a price equal to zero and encourages them to use more of it than they would want if they knew all the facts, i.e. the "marginal social cost" of the free service.

So. say the nutty professors:

   "Rather than subsidising public transport, economists propose to apply to the whole transport sector the principle of pricing at marginal social cost" (Le Soir, 4 June).

They admit that this will mean an increase in the average amount charged for transport, more for the car user than for the public transport user but more for the public transport user too.

The logic of this argument—and the proof that it is wrong—is that everything should be charged for. Everything should have a price tag on it. Nothing should ever be free. Not just water, phone calls and buses, but not libraries, museums or parks. In the transport sector roads should not be free.Tolls should be reintroduced not just for roads but for pavements too since it costs money to clean and maintain them.

As Robert Tressell pointed out in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, if these people could find a way of doing it they would charge us for the air we breathe.

Adam Buick

Put This In Your Collection of Golden Deeds. (1924)

From the December 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

You will of course have the Boudel Massacre, the Amritsar Horror, the Congo Rubber Atrocities, etc., duly docketed. The following extract from Mark Twain’s recently published Autobiography, quoted in the "Daily News,” October 25th, is a useful addition to Capitalism’s Book of Golden Deeds.

Mark Twain was roused to a white heat of anger by the killing of six hundred Moros by American soldiers in the Philippine Islands in 1906.

   "With six hundred engaged on each side, we lost fifteen men killed outright and we had thirty-two wounded.  . . . The enemy numbered six hundred—including women and children—and we abolished them utterly leaving not even a baby alive to cry for its dead mother.
   "This is incomparably the greatest victory that was ever achieved by the Christian soldiers of the United States.”

President Roosevelt sent a formal message of congratulation to the commanding officer. "His whole utterance is merely a convention,” comments Mark Twain. "Not a word of what he said came out of his heart. He knew perfectly well that to pen six hundred helpless and weaponless savages in a hole like rats in a trap and massacre them in detail during a stretch of a day and a half from a safe position on the heights above was no brilliant feat of arms, and would not have been a brilliant feat of arms even if Christian America, represented by its salaried soldiers had shot them down with Bibles and Golden Rules instead of bullets.”—From Mark Twain Autobiography extract in "Daily News,” 25/10/24.

A World of Waste, War and Want (1997)

From the March 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

We continue our series of articles describing why capitalism is a reactionary, decadent social system ripe for its abolition and replacement by a genuine socialist society.

In order to end the contradiction at the heart of capitalism between socially interconnected production carried out by the majority (the working class who produce but don’t possess) and private ownership of the means of living by a tiny minority (the capitalists who possess but don’t produce), socialists argue that the working class must become conscious of their real class interests. This means they must become conscious of the need for socialism, a new system of society based on common rather than class ownership, democratic control rather than minority power and leadership, and production for use rather than for sale and profit. If capitalism with its manifold inadequacies and contradictions is to be ended, the working class must organise itself for the capture of political power from the dominant capitalist class, and then must transform the economic structure of society by abolishing the capitalists' ownership and control of the means of living

In putting forward such an analysis of society and reasons for fundamental social change, socialists are not advancing a disembodied theory which reality does not match. This is because the material conditions for socialism already exist, having been created by capitalism itself. Firstly, there is a highly developed productive potential in the world, so much so that capitalist agencies like the United Nations and its Food and Agricultural Organisation declare that given the level of productive development brought about by the working class under capitalism, there is no reason why anyone on this planet should not live a full and satisfying life free from hunger, poverty or preventable disease.

Secondly, a class exists which has a clear material interest in bringing about a new social arrangement based on common ownership and production for use, where human activity is geared solely towards meeting people’s needs and desires. This class—the working class— exists the world over, is the largest class in society, and performs all necessary social functions, making, administering and distributing all the goods and services that exist in capitalism, not directly for themselves but for the enrichment of the capitalists.

Because of these two factors socialists maintain that capitalism has created the conditions for its own abolition. In a political sense it is now an unprogressive, decadent social system, wracked by its own contradictions and ripe for replacement by a more advanced social order. Today it is no longer natural scarcity or humankind’s inability to master nature which causes death, poverty, stress and insecurity, let alone the other evils of modem life—it is the way in which society is organised.

Production for profit, the very thing which spurred on capitalism to conquer the world and develop technology to the level it is now at, is precisely the factor which prevents that technology and productive potential from being used to satisfy the needs of the majority in society. Illustrations of this abound, and this journal for one is always full of them. Hundreds of thousands of building workers on the dole while there is a major housing problem and homeless roaming the streets; famine and starvation amid overproduction of foodstuffs across large sectors of the globe; millions dying from preventable diseases while the most advanced medical technology that has ever existed could cure them—these are all the inevitable products of a system based on the competitive accumulation of profit for the capitalists rather than for the wider satisfaction of social need. And none of it is either inevitable or natural.

Contradictory system 
It is clear that the system of ownership land distribution that exists in capitalism is entirely inappropriate and outdated given the level of the productive forces in society. For this reason alone capitalism can be termed ‘decadent’, and it probably has been a decadent social system acting as a real barrier to human progress since the beginning of this century—and most certainly by the time of the First World War in 1914. At this time a highly developed global productive system had been developed on the basis of the world market and an international division of labour The factor preventing the establishment of socialism from this point on was political rather than technical, specifically the lack of socialist consciousness among the world's working class.

That the working class has not succeeded in overthrowing capitalism has been the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century. However, human organisation has not frozen at this point and the development of capitalism did not grind to a halt at the moment it created the potential for its own demise. Indeed, it was at the advent of capitalism as a truly world system that the contradictions of capitalism started to become most pronounced and its obsolescence most apparent. For instance, it has been in the period since capitalism has become in a political sense decadent that economic crises and slumps—which have always been endemic to the system of production for profit—have become truly world events plunging the working class into greater misery while production of useful articles is curtailed, not because too much has been produced for need, but too much for the market at an adequate rate of profit.

In the progressive, ascendant capitalism of the nineteenth century, crises and slumps tended to be more localised. The crises of 1848, 1873 and 1895—the most severe and significant in that they extended well beyond one region or country—were not sufficient to halt the overall growth of the productive forces being built up under the reign of the market economy. Though these crises seemed severe at the time and had devastating enough consequences for the working class, it was only in the decadent capitalism of the twentieth century that an event such as the October 1929 Wall Street Crash could have occurred with the subsequent massive world slump and banking crisis of the early 1930‘s. On that occasion total world production fell catastrophically, registering significant declines in all the major industrialised countries, while world trade fell by a colossal two thirds from its 1929 level.

As capitalism has become more interconnected on a world basis, economic crises have had the opportunity to spread and deepen more than previously, shaking virtually the whole system itself rather than just a minority of its component parts. The sectors of the globe not under the hold of the market have diminished rapidly this century, providing less opportunity than in capitalism’s heyday for the system to plunder at little cost vast resources from undeveloped areas. This phenomenon played an important part in kick-starting the rapid (and still unprecedented) period of capitalist development in the fifty or sixty years after 1850, but its influence has waned considerably and nearly all capitalist growth is now “internal” to the system itself—in other words, dependent purely on the exploitation of wage labour rather than annexation and imperialist plunder.

Since capitalism became a world system the only sustained period when real overall production increased at anything like the rate of the last half of the nineteenth century was in the wake of the massive post-WWII reconstruction. Since then capitalism has entered another phase of periodic world crises—1968, 1974-5, 1980-2, and 1990-3, with only a comparative handful of developing countries on the Pacific Rim being in any way able to buck the effects. These countries have had the advantage of cheap labour and have been unencumbered by welfare payments and other sources of high state expenditure, all of which the more advanced states have sought to cut back on to bolster sagging profit rates.

During this time of renewed global economic crisis, world inequality, poverty and indebtedness have grown at an unprecedented rate. Just 358 people in the world now own as much wealth as half of the rest of the global population put together—2,800,000,000. Meanwhile the majority in society exist on inadequate diets with insufficient medical care, with hundreds of millions living in appalling conditions of absolute poverty. Large tracts of the planet—over 100 countries—see their real incomes falling year on year, with little sign of improvement. Never before has the gap between the wealth of the richest and the poorest on this planet been so huge, or the consequences of it so disabling and destructive.

Law of the jungle

Decadent capitalism is the system that has brought about devastating world economic crises and it is also the system that has brought with it another new phenomenon—the world war. In decadent capitalism the world is entirely divided up between competing capitals and nation states. Since the imperialist scramble of the late nineteenth century there has simply been nowhere else left to conquer. Wars were barbarous enough in capitalism's ascendancy with several million killed in conflicts ranging from Crimea, to China, to the civil war in the United States. But given the increased tensions and competition that have appeared as the capitalist class has vied for control of an already carved-up planet, the twentieth century has seen the very existence of the human race put in jeopardy. This century has become the era of truly world wars and twice already the world has been plunged into orgies of destruction and barbarity the scale of which has never before been experienced. The 1914- 18 conflict left at least ten million dead, the 1939-45 war at least 40 million. 

According to the politicians whose job it is to deceive us, the period since 1945 has been one of unprecedented peace. This view, in actuality, could not be further from the truth. Since WWII the wars between the various capitalist states and blocs haven’t stopped and since 1945 there have been over 150 major armed conflicts. Indeed, since 1945 there has not been a single day’s peace on this planet. Today, at least 25 wars are raging across the globe.

On an average yearly basis the number of deaths from war in this period has been more than double that of the nineteenth century and seven times greater than in the eighteenth century. This has reflected the greater populations involved in wars and the more destructive nature of the weaponry involved, although significant medical advances have meant that many lives have been saved during wars that would have certainly been lost in earlier conflicts.

The nature of warfare has changed in many ways in decadent capitalism. In particular, civilian casualties have increased dramatically. As an illustration, over 2 million children have been killed in wars in the last decade alone, actually more than the number of soldiers killed. However, the key point is this—whereas periods of decadence in earlier systems of society led to the devastation of entire countries or even empires, world capitalism threatens the whole planet with annihilation, increasingly tailoring its production towards destruction and the development of ever more hideous weapons of war. It is horrendous enough that the policeman of the world, the United States, should be stocked up with nuclear warheads and other mass instruments of death. That the up-and-coming gangster states from the Middle East, the Far East, Africa and Latin America are developing such capabilities is a truly chilling thought And even more chilling still is that it is now only a matter of time before a terrorist organisation gets its hands on them. Terrorists in Japan have already been prepared to use chemical weapons. Who will be first with a nuclear device?

Nuclear capability for the land of Walt Disney is terrifying indeed, for the gangster states and terrorist groups it may be of literally earth-shattering import. In the light of such prospects socialists say what the ruling class increasingly think but are usually afraid to admit to the mass of the population—a society with such awesome weapons of destruction in the hands of Iraq, Iran, North Korea or even one day the IRA or the US militia men is not a society that offers humankind a serious future.

Dave Perrin

The Last Word: The Madness of King George (and the rest!) (1997)

Cartoon by Peter Rigg.

The Last Word column from the March 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The news reports that the premier of Ecuador is off his rocker have been amongst the sunnier moments in a generally frosty political climate. The months before an election are always depressing and never more so than when you are in what is effectively a one-party state where all the policy “choices” on offer are not even disguised to appear other than identical. Waiting for the election is rather like waiting for the millennium. You know it will come and you know what the outcome will be and you know that a week later it will feel much the same as a week before.

The alleged insanity of the Ecuadorian premier who, by all accounts, referred to himself as El Loco (The Lunatic) and told those who voted for him that he could not remember what his policies were, was merely following a long tradition of rulers who were manifestly off their heads. George III was accused of being mad for taking too much interest in science and scratching himself too much because he had a skin disease. In fact, it was the psychiatrists treating him who were the real nutters, and in the end they killed him. The latest Royal to be so accused is our very own Queen of hearts. A Tory minister suggested that she was “a loose cannon” for speaking out against land mines which blow off children’s legs. No doubt, the same minister would stand to attention and salute if a bemedalled general, whose expertise was blowing up children entered his presence. When Reagan was President his wife employed a Rasputin-like astrologer to advise on the future. Millions of people voted for Reagan, not realising that the fate of the nuclear button rested upon the whims of a White House Mystic Meg. Thatcher, before they took her away, began to look as if she had been off her medication for far too long. At least the premier of Ecuador admits he’s barmy.

I once met a deck-chair attendant who insisted that he was the rightful heir to the kingdom of Albania. He was either a nutcase or an underemployed monarch. The sad point was that it didn’t matter. As a nutcase he made a perfectly good deckchair attendant. (The very idea of charging people for sitting on a chair by the sea is itself a plea of insanity.) As a king he appeared much better off getting some fresh air by the sea than sitting on a throne in a state of permanent ceremonial redundancy. The idea of Prince Charles organising the deck-chairs on Brighton beach has a definite appeal to it. How much more sane it would be than imagining himself to own Cornwall and be in charge of Wales.

The more you look at people who think they are ruling us, the more obvious it is that they would be better off doing something else. John Major would make an ideal lollipop man. There is much greater dignity in crossing children over the road safely than closing down their schools. Tony Blair should present an easy-listening music show on RadioTwo. You could fall asleep listening to him spinning discs by Bing Crosby and The Northern Light Orchestra playing instrumental versions of Tom Jones songs. Michael Howard could do something useful, like shovelling raw sewage.

At the Member’s entrance of the House of Commons one sees groups of people gathered around to wait for the leaders’ limousines to shoot past. Few of them are tourists. They are workers who believe that the sight of a famous politician will be something to tell their grandchildren about. Some of them travel in on coaches from Essex and other distant territories so that they can take photos of Big Ben and say that they caught a glimpse of whatsisname who was once on the news because he said something about something or other. I once saw Norman Lamont walk straight through such a group and nobody even noticed him. He had been forgotten; not even accorded the fame of the Ecuadorian premier who at least will be the best known inmate in the asylum.

Desmoulins once said that the great only appear great because the poor are on their knees. James Connolly is usually credited with the quote, but the truth is that he heard it and repeated it as if it were his own. The origins of the remark are unimportant. The fact is that there isn’t actually anything great about “the Great and the Good”. They have simply done a bloody good propaganda job convincing everyone else that the majority is good for nothing better than to be governed. No doubt the premier of Ecuador seemed like a thoroughly reasonable chap until it gradually dawned on people that he was round the bend. History is littered with examples of Great Men who were discovered to have been pathetic little parasites, hanging on to power by gripping tight to the greatness of the multitude they despised. Which pretty well sums up the next election. Those who run society from top to bottom, by hand and by brain, will be called upon to choose which of a gang of Nobodys is best to rule over us. The truth, of course, is that we are the best people to rule over ourselves.

Steve Coleman