Let’s End Charity (1981)

From the March 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

What do you do when someone comes to your door and say, It’s for the blind” or “I’m collecting for Cancer Research” or “we’re asking people to give to Oxfam”?

The easiest thing is to dip into your pocket, put a few coppers in their envelope and get back to whatever you were doing. That way you get rid of your unwanted caller and at the same time put at rest any conscience that may have been pricked. Harder by far is it to refuse those few coppers, and indeed few people do.

But does the money you’ve given really serve a useful purpose? Well first of all, although you may wonder how much of it actually gets to the unfortunates in whose name it was collected, you’re fairly sure that the benefit of your donation will be felt at least in some small way by a needy person somewhere. Secondly you’re reassured that the world isn’t such a bad place after all, that there are people doing something about its problems.

Not many people get further than this in their thoughts on charities, and very few indeed get as far as asking whether charities ever actually solve basic problems like hunger, homelessness and disease. In fact charities never do; think of any one you like and you’ll find that, despite the funds it’s collected in the past, its need for funds is greater-than ever. And although charities occasionally pack up, they hardly ever do so because the cause for which they were collecting has ceased to exist. On the contrary, new causes are springing up all the time.

The sad thing is that charities, despite the enormous amount of human energy and goodwill that go into them, can rarely do more than touch the surface of the problems they were set up to deal with. They can never get to the root of these problems. Only political action aimed at revolutionising the whole structure of society and abolishing its profit system can wipe out the problems that give rise to charities. Yet, in law, the benefits and privileges (like tax exemption) of a recognised charity are conditional upon its abstinence from political activity. In other words to be recognised as a charity you are forbidden to do anything which might conceivably tackle the problems of need and. suffering at their root.

Another irony is that, while for most people charity seems to be a sacred institution, the world we live in could not be more uncharitable. Apart from such large-scale horrors as food being dumped or left to rot in some parts of the world while people starve in others and human beings engaging in or turning a blind eye to the mass slaughter of other human beings, our day-to-day existence is based on the assumption that we will try to get as much as possible for as little as possible. So we will squeeze our employer for the highest wage or salary we think he can afford and he will squeeze us too, to produce as much for him as possible for as little money as he thinks we will to accept. When we go shopping we would never dream of paying double the marked price for the goods we need. On the contrary we usually try to find places where we can get the goods we need for as low a price as possible. And most of us spend time comparing prices and complaining about how little we get for our money. All this is the exact opposite of charity. None of it could be further from the ethic of “giving to help others”.

What it amounts to is that in a society which is bound to be overwhelmingly uncharitable because of the shortages and rivalries built into its buying and selling system, charity can never be more than a small closed compartment of life.

We want to persuade people of the severe limitations of organised charity and also of the unfortunate effect it has in wrongly suggesting to people that, by giving money, they are doing something about solving the world’s problems. What charities never suggest is the plain truth that the perpetual calamities and suffering they exist to cope with are due not to any inevitable defects in man’s capacity for organising the world but to a social system which puts profits-and armaments to guard these profits-before human welfare.

Charity will end when we get socialism. People won’t need it then. It’s something worth thinking about next time you slip those coppers into that envelope.

Howard Moss

Letters: Class Struggle in Poland (1981)

Letters to the Editors from the July 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class Struggle in Poland

Dear Editors

I was astounded when I read the article in your December (1980) issue, "The Class Struggle in Poland". I not only find it nonsensical. but hypocritical. During the 1950s and the 1960s I attended many of your meetings and debates in Manchester and your speakers constantly attacked the trade union movement as part and parcel of the capitalist system. Now I see you support the new so-called Polish independent trade union. Solidarity. If you think that this struggle is a workers’ united movement for socialism, as printed on your front page, you must be a lot of political illiterates. Who are the people backing them? The Catholic Church and Right wing organisations all over the world who are filling their coffers with capitalistic money. To find that the SPGB have found new allies with the Catholic Church and some of the most reactionary capitalist organisations in the world, the pioneers of the SPGB must be turning over in their graves.

I. Brown 

Manchester

Reply

It is ironic that I. Brown refers to us as illiterates. when it is his own failure to read the front cover of the December 1980 Socialist Standard which leads him to imagine that the setting up of independent trades unions in Poland is seen by the SPGB as a workers’ united movement for socialism. Nothing of the kind was said. The EC statement which was published in the Socialist Standard pointed out the severe limitations of a purely defensive struggle, while recognising the important uses of trade unions. It has never been the case that SPGB speakers have attacked the existence of trade unions. Far from it, we recognise the use which they can have and have had.

Indeed, there are many Solidarity members who follow the Catholic Church, although for some of them it may be only for tactical reasons. But there is no evidence to show that the Church, as such, is backing the new union and there is some evidence to show that the Church is in league with the Polish government. The following article, which appeared in the West German newspaper, Der Spiegel, in January 1981, provides evidence of the Catholic Church’s real role in the recent developments:

  Ever since early September 1980 there have been secret contacts between the Soviet leadership and the Vatican. The aim has been to find a method of damming up the revolt in Poland which has been inconvenient for both sides. One of Moscow's first emissaries to Rome was one of the directors of the foreign dept., of the CPSU, who in September met the Vatican representative responsible for Eastern policy together with Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, Secretary of the Curia . . . the secret talks were mainly concerned with the situation in Poland. Cascroli assured the Moscow representative that the Pope and the Vatican would do everything possible “to ward off the misfortune facing Poland”.

The SPGB has not changed its position regarding the uses and limitations of trade unions, although we suspect that I. Brown, after years of listening to SPGB speakers without hearing what they were saying, has at last understood where we stand.

Editors

End Charity

Dear Editors

This week 1 read for the first time The Socialist Standard and I was struck by the quality of its articles: well thought-out and well written. However, I disagree with the article, "Let’s End Charity’’ because I don’t think charities pretend to “solve" basic problems, but to solve the problems or at least alleviate the fate of individuals or communities crushed by the world situation or by official machinery. They have not the time to wait until the whole world has turned socialist. I see that my copy bears the number 918, vol. 77 and that vol. 27 appeared 50 years ago. The Socialist Standard hasn’t changed the world nor solved the basic problem. Meanwhile Oxfam has been digging wells in India and saved hundreds from starvation. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has saved many of them. Dr. Barnardo has housed orphans; Shelter has found shelter for quite a few people without roofs over their heads. All partial benefits, I agree. But benefits all the same and for some of the beneficiaries it made the difference between life and death. And, come to think of it, if I hadn’t taken pity on the chap who was peddling your periodical in front of the tube station I would not have had the pleasure of coming to know it. Made me feel good . . .

R. Leys

Dorset

Reply

Thank you for the compliments and we hope that you will become a regular reader. You are correct when you say that the SPGB has been working for a long time and yet socialism has not been established. But at least we can say that the work we have done has helped to build up a principled socialist movement and that we are now nearer to establishing socialism than we were when we started. Oxfam and the other charities have been going for a long time too. They have had larger funds than the SPGB, many more supporters and much greater official approval. And yet they are further from eradicating poverty now than when they started. More people are starving throughout the world today than when Oxfam was formed. More communities are being destroyed. More poverty exists worldwide, in both absolute and relative terms, than it did fifty years ago. Indeed, the NSPCC, which you mention, has recently had to appeal for funds in The Guardian not so as to stop parents beating children (and why do parents beat children?), but so as to pay the salaries of their full-time officials and keep the administrative machine going. Charities have done a great deal of hard work and achieved many specific beneficial results. But the general problems of the working class are more important than specific examples of amelioration. The point is that the profit system as a whole is bigger and more ferocious than the goodwill of charities. Capitalism cannot be humanised by the rich giving to the poor. What is needed is for the class which is poor to dispossess the class which is rich so that we may have a society in which we will all live in a condition of security and equality. If every worker who donated time, energy and money to charitable causes would have been working for socialism we would now be much nearer to such a condition. So, our message to R. Leys is that he should stop feeling sorry for others and start looking after his own material interest. When he does that he will realise that there are millions of workers throughout the world who are impoverished due to their own acquiescence in a system which robs them of the fruits of their labour.

Editors

Different Socialisms

Dear Editors

Because there are several different kinds of socialism available to the casual reader, I am somewhat confused as to the real meaning of socialism. I do not really understand why there are several different kinds of truth (socialism) instead of just one. People want a better life. That is a single, simple truth. If people could work together, co-operatively, towards a common goal, they could possible achieve a better life. Is there a difference between socialism and the co-operative movement, or sharing together in a group for the common good? I feel that capitalism will no longer be an effective method for improving society, but neither is argument between socialist groups.

The Soviets believe that they are socialist, which means total government control. I think local control is a better method, but competition between groups could result in one group taking control of another, which would not be local control. A larger food co-op can buy products cheaper than a small co-op, but how big is too big?

I am not theoretical and do not care to read theoretical articles which result in more useless verbiage. People talk and write as they will, but the poor are today in great need. The point should be to stop talking and move towards a common goal, such as a workers’ co-operative in an agricultural setting, where the people are as self-sufficient as possible, and even export food and clothing for sale to the outside. That would be socialism in action, which would be an example for all the world to examine.

I should think that co-operative socialism would, in fact, be revolutionary, because it would give hope to the members Books and magazines are important, but socialist groups have been talking for years and I can’t see any real, visible progress towards socialism. If some sort of progress isn’t made within a few years it will be too late. Reagan and Haig seem to be determined to destroy the world in their own way, and I believe that to form a workers’ cooperative movement is the only way out of this capitalistic retrogression.

I enclose a contribution, not for your magazine, but for your general fund, because I can buy your magazine at a nearby store and I don't wish to read articles that can’t be put to immediate practical use. Time is short, as mentioned. We don’t have time to read and argue. There is only time to do. Socialism must be promoted by whatever means possible, even on the BBC and I TV.

Tom Todd 

Moseley, Birmingham

Reply

We do not accept that there are different kinds of socialism. There is either capitalism (production for profit) which exists throughout the world today, including the misnamed communist countries, or socialism (production solely for human need) which the SPGB is the only party in this country standing for. Socialism will be a worldwide co-operative community and will replace the worldwide system of production and distribution which capitalism has created. Some aspects of socialist living will be localised for the sake of convenience, but the primary concern of socialist society will be to provide for the complete needs and desires of the people of the world.

Your ideal of an island of socialism within the sea of capitalism will not be achieved so long as the resources of the earth, and the means of producing and distributing wealth, are the private property of a minority class. You refer to workers’ co-operatives selling food and clothing to the outside world. But production for sale is a feature of capitalism. Where would the co-operative get the capital to invest in production? How much would it sell its commodities for? Would it have trade unions to protect the wages and conditions of those working on the co-operative? What would the co-operative do if a rival firm produced goods at a cheaper rate? In short, how could a community within capitalism detach itself from the inherent features of that society? It could not.

What is needed is a worldwide movement of the people who produce all of the wealth of society (the working class) to take political action to gain control of the productive and distributive machinery of society. Then we can have world socialism. Practical action is useless without theory and Tom Todd is advised to visit the Birmingham branch of the SPGB and help to turn the vision of socialism into an immediate, practical reality.

Editors

50 Years Ago: Russian Illusions (1981)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is claimed by many that the Russian Government has discovered a means of developing Russian industry on Socialist lines and free from the disturbing effects of the world trading conditions that affect the other capitalist countries. Actually, the more Russian industry enters into the world market as importer and exporter, the more Russian industrial conditions will be affected by conditions outside.

For example, the world slump in prices has hit Russian industry as badly as any, and has necessitated hasty and difficult modifications of the so-called Five-Year Plan. Estimates were based upon the exporting of certain quantities of goods at certain prices, the yield from which was to be used for machinery and other imports. Owing to the unforeseen slump, Russian exports in January and February of 1931 decreased in value by nearly one-fifth as compared with the corresponding period of 1930, and this in spite of a big increase in the quantities of goods exported. The output of the exporting industries had to be increased above the planned amount owing to the fall in the prices obtained for the exported goods in the world market, and in order to pay for the imports. The machinery and other imports either have not fallen in price at all, have not fallen as heavily, or have been contracted for at a stated price. The final result has been that imports have had to be curtailed. The imports for January and February, 1931, were one-third below those for January and February, 1930. Thus does capitalism frustrate attempts at planning.

Mr. Fenner Brockway, the new Chairman of the I.L.P., writing in the New Leader (April 17th), assumes that Russian industry is being run on a “ Socialist basis.” This is quite incorrect and indicates either a misreading of the Russian industrial system or—more probably—a failure to grasp what constitutes Socialism. In Russia, as elsewhere, goods are produced, not for use, but for sale. The producers are a wage-earning class with no effective control over the machinery of production. There is great inequality, as in other capitalist countries. The first charge on industry is the payment of interest to the investors in the State loans. The way in which inequality of wealth is growing is shown by the increasing yield from the graduated income tax. Already the yield is over £60 millions a year. The Government is now itself catering for the wants of monied people by opening shops at which goods are sold at rates far above the official prices.

(Editorial from the July 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard)

Running Commentary: Behind the Iron Curtain (1981)

The Running Commentary Column from the July 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Behind the Iron Curtain

On 8 June, Panorama (BBC television) showed a film called “Behind The Curtain” made by Antoine Fournier, which consisted of interviews with workers in Moscow. The similarity with life in the West was quite remarkable, as the camera panned over Coca-Cola adverts, horse- and car-racing and amusement arcades. One assistant salesman on £45 a month explained how he is forced to try to earn some money “on the side” dealing in the black market. Another, dealing in the foreign clothes market, explained:

  Underground market is a very popular thing in the Soviet Union. All the young people I know do the things I do because, for two reasons. The first is a great profit, and the second is a simple interest to connect with foreigners. But there are lots of police in civil clothes who control the situation and if they catch you with the clothes, they never take you to the police station, they simply take your clothes and then resell them. Policemen have a little salary too, so we can understand them.

Here are some more excerpts from the interviews.

Can we film you at work? The bosses would never allow it.
Do you get good wages? Good pay? You must be joking . . . If I make 150 roubles a month. I’m doing alright . . . I’m just slaving away.
Do many women do your job? What can I say? There are so many of them. They need money, or they want to get a flat. But we're told a pack of lies. They’ve been lying for five years now about the flat, saying they’re going to give it to us. But we’re still living in a room like this one, we still haven’t a flat, just a room. When will you get your flat? We haven’t any idea. That depends on the boss. Go and ask him yourself. Looks like we haven’t earned it yet so they haven’t given it to us.
Are you going to vote tomorrow? Of course (they laugh) what a stupid question!
And who are you going to vote for? Don’t you have an easier question? (They all laugh cynically.) The portrait of our deputy is already hung up in the entrance!
What about Party members? If somebody joins the Party, either that means he’s a careerist, that he's already decided he wants to make a career of it, or, well it means that he’s just no good.
And Western people? First of all, I think they shouldn’t be afraid of us. We are people just like them. We live like they do.

Brixton

The hysteria over the Brixton riots has faded now, but with unemployment and resentment mounting all the time, it is quite possible that there will be further outbreaks of violence in inner-city areas. Brixton was quite clearly not a “race riot”; the police were attacked as representatives of state harassment and authority. But in the aftermath, references to the “black community” in the press suggested that the main division is between blacks and whites. In fact, the whole community, black and white, is divided into two classes. There are both black and white investors, property-owners, who profit from the poverty suffered by black and white workers.

For example, a Nigerian called Chief Francis Nzeribe has said he wants to invest money in Brixton. Some people in Brixton will be allowed to have jobs, to get wages which are just enough to live one, while Nzeribe will own all of the wealth they produce for him. He owns £50 million worth of assets around the world, and heads twenty-seven companies. He has been a private arms dealer and lives in a flat in Mayfair. He has said of his plans for Brixton: “I see this as an opportunity to make money” (New Standard, 5/5/81). Colour is irrelevant.

Gluts

A few years ago, the media were stirring up a popular fear that oil resources were going to run out. There was a danger of a shortage. Now the tune has changed, and they are getting worried about a “glut”. OPFC and other representatives of oil interests are complaining about the threat of falling prices and profits as hundreds of barrels of oil pour out from the Middle Fast each week, to say nothing of all of the other sources in the world. Because of the recession, world market demand is down, so supply seems to be too high to satisfy the profit demands of the owners.

Resources today are not measured by simple human needs, any more than production is controlled by them. The market rules. This is why today's glut becomes tomorrow’s scarcity. The present crisis in world capitalism is not just affecting oil, though. America has a “butter mountain” which is “growing by ten million pounds a week” (Guardian, 30/5/81); and on 26 May a Guardian article entitled: “There's an awful lot of coffee” referred to “the prospect that the world is likely to be oversupplied with coffee during the next twelve months or so”. But in today’s insane system, that will not prevent millions of people from starving to death this year, and millions more from drinking tea because it is cheaper.

China-Cola

China is supposed to be a People’s Republic. Its government claims to have saved its workers from the ravages of capitalist exploitation. So it is rather odd that on 15 April, Coca-Cola, the epitome of world capitalism, opened a bottling plant in Peking. But the Chinese workers will, it seems, be saved from this danger by their benevolent masters after all. At first, the drink will only be sold to people with hard currency (the Chinese ruling class). Later it may be available for “ordinary” Chinese people (the working class), but probably at a price well over what most of them could afford, (Times, 16/4/81) so thoroughly are they being drained dry by the “People’s” Parasites.

Capitalism's Casualties

Dr. Jay Herbert, chairman of the Hospital Doctors’ Association, remarked recently that more than half the country’s junior doctors work more than eighty hours a week, and that their resulting tiredness was a major cause of death in hospitals (Guardian 30/5/81). He pointed to Sunday evenings as a critical time, and said that the massive amount of overtime worked by doctors was allowed to continue for economic reasons: “Juniors are still expected to work for an overtime rate of one-third the basic rate. It is cheaper for hospitals to employ fewer doctors for longer hours than more doctors.”

Clifford Slapper

Voice From the Back: Empty Rhetoric (2013)

The  Voice From The Back column from the July 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Empty Rhetoric

Politicians always emphasise the importance of new legislation and of course their own importance. 'The Child Poverty Act of 2010 holds the government accountable for reducing child poverty. On Wednesday, new figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that not only are they failing to do so, the numbers of children living in poverty will actually rise, from 2.4 million to 3.4 million by 2020 – the date that was set for the elimination of child poverty in the UK' (Guardian, 8 May). So after all that pompous talk and so-called erudition what is the result? More kids are living in poverty than before the brilliant legislation.

It's A Mad, Mad World

Many opponents of the world socialist movement think we are a little mad. A world based on production for use? No profits? No Money? Crazy! But what of present day society? 'A racing pigeon named Bolt officially became the most expensive pigeon in the world earlier this week when a Chinese businessman bought him at auction for $400,000' (Business Insider, 22 May). We live in a society wherein millions of people try to exist on less than $2 a day and yet a member of the capitalist class can spend $400,000 on a pigeon. Who are the mad people?

A Greek Tragedy

David Smith in an otherwise critical review of the book The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills praises the authors for this piece of information. 'Take Greece, the worst-hit of Europe's crisis economies, which is now in its sixth year of recession. With unemployment at 27 per cent, the suicide rate has soared. Deep cuts in health spending have led to not only to a severe rationing of basic treatments and medicines, but also to an increase in suicides, malaria and HIV' (Sunday Times, 26 May). An increase in suicides, malaria and HIV – isn't capitalism wonderful.

The Killer Society

There are many reasons to abolish capitalism. War, poverty, racialism and nationalism, to mention but a few, but here’s another powerful reason. 'Malnutrition is responsible for 45 per cent of the global deaths of children under the age of five, research published in the Lancet medical journal suggests. Poor nutrition leads to the death of about 3.1 million under-fives, annually, it says' (BBC News, 6 June). Capitalism is a baby killer – we must get rid of it.

Cause for Celebration?

We can understand workers celebrating joyous occasions like a birthday or a wedding but this commemoration astounds us. 'Britain is to mark the centenary of the First World War with cultural events and an act of reconciliation with Germany on the battlefield. Maria Miller, the culture secretary, will announce the appointment of one of the leaders of the £20m programme tomorrow' (Sunday Times, 9 June). They are spending £20 million to commemorate a war that annihilated 16 million lives. Truly capitalism is a sick society.

Progressing Backwards

The illusion nurtured by supporters of capitalism that workers are constantly improving their financial position is shattered by another study by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Wages have fallen more in real terms in the current economic downturn than ever before, according to their recent report. 'On top of rising cost of living, one third of workers who stayed in the same job saw a wage cut or freeze between 2010 and 2011, said the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). ……. In 2009, the average public sector worker earned about £16.60 per hour, which dropped to about £15.80 in 2011, the IFS said. Meanwhile, hourly pay for private sector workers in 2009 was just over £15.10 and dropped to £13.60 in 2011' (BBC News, 12 June). Even the capitalist class institutions like the IFS know that the worker’s position is getting worse off.

A Prince And A Pauper

Prince Charles as a future king of England is forced to attend all sorts of press shows and say all sorts of nonsense to all sorts of cringing, sycophantic journalists but even he must have felt a little sick at this utterance. 'The Prince, known in Scotland as the Duke of Rothesay, met recovering servicemen and women at the Edinburgh House personnel recovery centre. …. Among those he met was Paul Lambert, 32, who lost both legs in Afghanistan in 2009. The Prince praised him as a "great example"' (Times, 14 June). You own absolutely nothing. You go into a conflict that has nothing to do with you. You have both your legs blown off. Your life is ruined. A ‘great example’ of working class stupidity is what we would call it.

Is Europe to Blame? (2013)

Book Review from the July 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

James Heartfield’s new book The European Union and the End of Politics (Zero Books) is about the evolving relationship between the European Union and its constituent member countries. It is a mix of political science, recent European history and a call for agitation from the people of the continent.

Conventional consensus

The basic premise is that across Europe, over the last 30 years or so, there has been a decline in active, popular participation in national politics and that in most countries the mass mainstream parties of right and left are in real decline as meaningful movements. This is reflected in the great reduction in party membership and in public interest and involvement in policy debate and formulation. According to Heartfield, the fundamental reason behind this phenomenon is that most conventional political parties no longer have any major ideological divisions between each other and generally have adopted a consensual position on the desirability of having a regulated but free market as the basis of the economy accompanied by a modest investment in the welfare state. For the parties of the Left, even talk of an aspirational nature of aiming for a major transformation to the basis of society has long since evaporated. Hence the debate in national parliaments is mostly ritualised and meaningless and the coverage of politics by the mainstream media generally focuses on personalities, scandals, government cock-ups and associated ‘stories’. Into this vacuum of real politics have stepped the institutions of the European Union. The lives of the people of Europe are increasingly determined by policies emanating from Brussels.

Heartfield points out, though, that in many cases this reduction in national decision-making has a cynical origin. Governments are relieved to use the official need to conform to EU rules and directives to explain and justify the necessity of implementing reforms (in the areas of the economy, environment, immigration etc.) that are electorally unpopular but necessary for the smooth functioning of capitalism across the continent. As an example, writing as a socialist based in Ireland, where the power of the European Union is clear particularly since the economic meltdown of 2009 and the need for the country’s finances to be ‘rescued’ by the EU and IMF, all budget cuts and increases in taxation are said to be inevitable for Ireland to remain part of the system. However even before that it was obvious how much decision-making had been transferred to Brussels. Government ministers from most Departments make very regular visits to Brussels to consult with EU officials and their fellow ministers to return and announce a policy which is then rubber-stamped by parliament.

Recent European history

Much of the book is taken up with an analysis of issues that have concerned the European Union since its inception: the legacy of World War Two, the influence of the Cold War on its formation and development, growing integration between the member states, the increase in the number of member countries, the relationship with the United States, the global positioning of the EU, the stresses resulting from the adoption of a common currency by some of its constituent entities, etc. Like much analysis of recent history, the reader is free to agree or disagree with the author’s interpretations on any particular issue. Some of the material in the book will be of interest to any person concerned with contemporary politics though other sections (particularly Chapters 7 and 8 where the ‘theory’ of European integration is examined from a variety of perspectives) will only probably only excite those with a professional remit in this field.

One small criticism is that when the author discusses the antagonistic relationship between some individual countries and the European Union, it is not clear what is precisely meant by the latter term. Is it the institutions and bureaucracy in Brussels or is it the governments of the major states, principally Germany? Heartfield’s own opinion on Europe is divulged in the final, Conclusions chapter of the book. Although throughout the book, the reader is given the impression that he regards the nation-state as the superior basis for political organisation and decision-making, it seems that he is not a nationalist but is in favour of a pan-European framework for the continent. However he feels the current European Union can have no place in such a project given its complete lack of popular democracy or genuine sovereignty. To implement a new type of Europe firstly requires the regeneration of popular politics and mass mobilisation in the national arena of its people.

Shallow debate

The socialist objective transcends the issues discussed in the book. As socialists we seek the replacement of the current basis of society, capitalism, by a new fundamentally different basis, socialism. This will be a world-wide society not based on countries or continents or superpowers. So we are not concerned as to whether capitalism is organised on a national or trans-national basis. The EU is clearly a capitalist construct where the dominant elements of the capitalist class in Europe see an advantage in organising the politics and economy of Europe on a continent-wide basis. The reason the existence of the EU generates political heat is that such an artifice brings no advantages to some elements of the capitalist class within each country, yet they feel they must bear a proportion of the costs, so they oppose it.

The issue of the relationship between member states and the EU is probably most controversial in the UK. However the shallowness of this debate can be quickly exposed. In 2014 there will be a referendum on Scottish Independence from the UK while in 2017 or so there may be a referendum on British ‘Independence’ from the EU. Does anyone really believe the day to day lives of ordinary people in Scotland or England will be significantly affected by the outcome of these referenda? Of course, as with the ebb and flow of capitalist politics, there will be temporary winners and losers amongst the working people of Britain. Those British workers who live and work or are retired in Europe, gain some minor benefits from British membership of the EU. It’s much easier to travel to another member country without the need to change currency (Eurozone only), obtain visas, satisfy custom requirements, organise emergency health care, etc. As against that, other sections of the working class in Britain may benefit from an exit from the Union; those employed in sectors where they are competing with migrants from Europe to sell their labour power. However the basic position of the vast majority of the people in Britain will be unaffected by the manoeuvring of politicians on either side of these campaigns. Ultimately only the transformation of the economic basis of society and the scrapping of national and supra-national based identities can do that.

Kevin Cronin

Mixed Media: ‘Edwin Butler Bayliss‘ (2013)

Tipping the Slag

The Mixed Media column from the July 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wolverhampton Art Gallery recently showed the industrial landscapes of Edwin Butler Bayliss (1874-1950), ‘poet painter of the Black Country’ (Birmingham Gazette 1918) who was prolific in the early twentieth century. Bayliss was the son of industrial capitalist Samuel Bayliss who owned iron foundries in the Black Country which Bayliss painted along with the blast furnaces, steel works and coal mines owned by Tory MP and baronet Sir Alfred Hickman.

Tipping the Slag portrays a grey industrial landscape with smouldering slag heaps and smoking chimneys. Slag was the impurities from smelting iron drained from the molten iron during the smelting process and is painted in vivid orange against the grey wasteland. Blast Furnaces, Night is a black and grey industrial landscape with blast furnaces and chimneys and flecks of orange flame against the black and grey sky.

The Black Country is defined by geology; a 30 foot coal seam plus seams of coal, iron, limestone and clay which supported the development of coal mines, coking plants, iron foundries, and steel mills in the towns of Sandwell, Dudley, Walsall and Wolverhampton. In the Victorian period   it was the beating heart of   industrial capitalism, the industries of iron-making, steel production and coalmining forming the bedrock for the ‘workshop of the world’ showcased at the Great Exhibition of 1851. In 1866 Queen Victoria visited Wolverhampton and knighted the Mayor Sir John Morris.

Charles Dickens wrote in 1841 that the industries ‘poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light, and made foul the melancholy air’ while the US consul visiting in 1862 wrote that the area was ‘black by day and red by night’. By 1860 within five miles of Dudley there were 441 pits, 181 blast furnaces, 118 iron works, 79 rolling mills and 1,500 puddling furnaces. Blast Furnaces, Bilston, Hickman’s from the Canal and In the Gin Pit (coal mined near to the surface) portray the ‘beauty in the Black Country’.

In the Black Country depicts a black and grey industrial landscape of blast furnaces and chimneys against a smoky sky with a worker struggling across the landscape. Evening in the Black Country shows three workers trudging up a dirt track between areas of dirty green vegetation towards industrial buildings and smoking chimneys.

The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 by Friedrich Engels details ‘an industrial revolution, a revolution which at the same time changed the whole of civil society’. This industrial capitalism meant the working class endured ‘filth, ruin and uninhabitableness’ in ‘the frightful condition of this Hell upon Earth’.

Steve Clayton

Pathfinders: Symptoms of Anachronitis (2013)

The Pathfinders column from the July 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

A revolutionary change is currently sending shockwaves through the US Navy, to wit, the announcement that they are dropping the requirement for all official communications to be issued in capital letters (BBC News Technology, 13 June). A message sent to all commands (in capitals, naturally) has advised that in future signals may use a mixture of upper and lower cases. This is part of a cost-cutting initiative to move much of the Navy’s information traffic to common-or-garden email systems. A wag at a London-based think tank observes sardonically ‘The US Navy has made up its mind that not everything is a crisis and some messages are just normal,’ but then, clearly unable to resist outright sarcasm, ‘This will introduce a degree of literary criticism into military communication… many senior officers think that the younger ones don’t know how to use capitals anyway, which is to say they either use far too many or not at all.’

Email users know very well that ALL CAPS FEELS LIKE SHOUTING, so US sailors must be a browbeaten lot, but the real reason behind the traditional use of capitals was simply that the original 19th century teletype machines did not have lower case letters. It’s what they call a legacy system. By a curious coincidence, the world is only now about to see its last telegram, as the India state telegraph service finally shuts down its operations this month.

Legacy is a funny thing. One of the innovations introduced by Steve Jobs at Apple was to make computer icons resemble real world objects in order for their functions to be more intuitive, a device known as skeuomorphism. Thus a delete function was represented by a wastepaper basket, a recording facility by a microphone and so on. Often the icons were somewhat whimsically old-fashioned, so that a word processing program could be represented by a quill pen, for example, or a show desktop function by, mysteriously, an ink blotter. This skeuomorphic principle is currently in the process of being jettisoned at Apple, where mandarins are keen on a post-Jobsworth design reboot partly because, they say, the younger generation is failing to recognise what the icons represent as their real world counterparts fall into disuse.

Not everyone is convinced that people under the age of forty have no idea what a reel-to-reel tape recorder looks like, or are unable to recognise an old-fashioned Bakelite telephone icon in the era of smartphones. Young people watch old movies, don’t they? But what rings true in principle is not only the fact that things become obsolete and we fail to recognise them as such, but that when we do recognise things as obsolete we perversely love them all the more for it. The old and knackered are reborn as sentimental icons, antiques and shabby chic, and not just material goods. Our civilisation is marinated in the obsolete, rotten with it, in language, law, logic and tradition, a kind of social anachronitis.

Why else do graduates ponce around in absurd Batman capes with silly hats, holding ‘scrolls’? Why else, in an age of digital photography, would the physicist Peter Higgs be ‘honoured’ recently by having his portrait painted? Why do judges, in an effort to be taken seriously, wear 18th century-style fancy dress? Our most atavistic impulses seem to lurk in the deepest parts of our brain, right down in the reptilian cortex, where our conscious rational minds have no dominion.

Can you see where this argument is going yet? Chief reptile David Cameron has lately struck a limp blow for frontal lobe thinking by announcing a £1m ‘grand innovation prize’ to solve the ‘biggest problem of our time’ (BBC News Politics, 14 June). And just what might that problem be, the pundits ask? That, declares the Prime Minister, is a matter ‘to be identified by the public’. Well, trust a millionaire not to know.

The ‘biggest problem of our time’ and the ‘grand innovation’ to solve it? Let’s see…

Ok, you know what’s coming next, don’t you? Of course you do. Capitalism itself, an economic system based on competitive selfishness in a world that can’t afford it any more, an anachronistic legacy of scarcity and the age of steam, that’s the ‘biggest problem’ by far. An economy that sets human against human and country against country to create a few gilded sultans amid a sea of squalor, that is the problemo numero uno that the public should identify. And the innovation? It follows naturally enough – the abolition of the private property basis of this economy, and with it trading, markets, money, banks, hierarchical nation states, and all the rest of it.

That’s what we would say, isn’t it?

But summon our arguments how we may, we’re not going to win that prize money, no sirree. And why? Because it’s an unfair contest and Cameron’s Cast of Clowns hates socialists? Nope, because we’re wrong.

Capitalism isn’t the biggest problem of our time, because there’s an even bigger problem, and it’s already been alluded to. We are addicted to the past. We stand before the past like an actor against a backdrop and think that it defines us and determines what we are. We think we need the past and that we can’t be anything without it. We don’t see the world for what it is because we are obsessed with what it was. People say our civilisation is backward but that’s not right. It’s pathologically backwardly compatible.

There is a saying that the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, but that’s not always true. Sometimes there’s an obstacle in front of you. What’s required then is not a step, but a jump. The single greatest difficulty, and also the greatest virtue, of the socialist case is that it demands a leap to clear the entanglements of the legacy-strewn present. But to make the leap, unless it’s some blind and mad leap of faith, requires looking ahead into the future, coolly and clearly, and gauging the distance and the necessary run-up.

That’s what science aims to do, and that’s just what society isn’t doing. That’s why reformists are on a treadmill of sameness, forever in motion but never moving. That’s why we are buried up to our necks in useless legacy. Capitalism is not the biggest problem, because that could be overthrown tomorrow. How to make people look forward instead of back, that’s the real challenge of our times.

Paddy Shannon

Failure and Success (2013)

Book Review from the July 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why Nations Fail: the Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. Profile, £10.99

Why do some countries have a higher standard of living for most of their population than others have? The authors’ answer relies on a distinction between inclusive and extractive institutions at both the political and economic level. For further discussion of the book and replies to reviews, see whynationsfail.com.

Politically, inclusive institutions are both centralised and pluralistic. This means, firstly, that they involve sufficient power of coercion in state hands to defend law and order and enforce property rights; this is in contrast to chaotic countries such as Somalia, which lack any true government power (they are sometimes called anocracies). Secondly, power is spread around to some extent rather than being concentrated in the hands of a few, whether a monarch and aristocracy or a dictator and his cronies. Extractive political institutions are either non-pluralistic or non-centralised. Economically, inclusive institutions foster productive activity and innovation rather than (as extractive institutions do) siphoning off wealth for the benefit of a small clique and stifling new ideas and developments as a challenge to the status quo.

There is claimed to be a ‘synergy’ between economics and politics in that inclusive and extractive types tend to go together. But ‘it is politics and political institutions that determine what economic institutions a country has.’ Economic growth is more likely under inclusive institutions; it is possible under extractive ones but is likely to be short-lived, as in the former ‘Soviet’ Union and today’s China (where the authors predict that either the country will become more pluralistic or the growth will peter out). The richer countries nowadays are those that began industrialisation in the nineteenth century, while the poorer ones did not.

The book contains a number of instructive case studies, which we cannot discuss properly here. Let’s just look at a couple. In 1945 the two parts of Korea were pretty similar, but then extractive institutions in the North led to stagnation and starvation, while South Korea adopted inclusive institutions and became an economic powerhouse, home to global corporations such as Samsung. Acemoglu and Robinson accept that the South was not a democracy and had ‘authoritarian presidents’, but they massively understate the extent of the dictatorship there (such as torturing strikers and firing on demonstrators) and also the amount of US support and investment. So there is little evidence from South Korea for the determining force of politics.

The Industrial Revolution is always a crucial issue in such broad-scope histories. In 1589 Elizabeth I refused a patent for a kind of knitting machine on the grounds that the introduction of such technology would lead to wide-scale impoverishment; in fact, she was probably afraid of any resulting instability and its threat to her status. But the Glorious Revolution of 1688 ended this concentration of monarchical power and gave much more say to the rising merchant and capitalist classes. From the middle of the eighteenth century many technological innovations were introduced in Britain as the Industrial Revolution took off. As the authors see it, the events of 1688 created inclusive political institutions, and these underpinned the inclusive economic institutions of property rights and efficient financial markets. But they are well aware that even the forms of democracy were very limited at the time, and that the capitalist class were able to use their new power to have textile imports from India banned. As this last example shows, inclusive institutions can be used to defend the interests of a small class of factory owners and to constrain production elsewhere.

In fact the whole idea of the institution types is not as straightforward as the authors seem to think. It is argued that inclusive economic institutions ‘allow and encourage participation by the great mass of people in economic activities that make best use of their talents and skills and that enable individuals to make the choices they wish’. It is hard to see how this fits any version of capitalism, since most people are forced to take dead-end or menial jobs (if they can find them) that make scant use of their skills, and so they have little choice in how they live their lives. Inclusive institutions benefit the capitalist class in general, not those who perform the labour that makes the owners wealthy.

Paul Bennett

Proper Gander: Quizzing the Whizzkids (2013)

The Proper Gander column from the July 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Could you talk in sentences when you were only eight months old? Or perhaps you had written four novels by the age of ten? If not, then you wouldn’t have fitted in with the brainy bairns appearing on Channel 4’s Child Genius, two of whom boast these achievements.

The show follows some of the seven to eleven year-olds who have qualified for Mensa’s ‘child genius of the year’ competition. Of course, these clever-clog kids didn’t get this far by themselves. Eight year-old Josh’s mother makes him play chess for fifty hours a week so he can be a grand master before he reaches thirteen. And little Longyin’s father has put together a strict timetable of sport and studies in half-hour instalments, including ‘controlled failure situations’ to motivate his son to succeed. The less pushy parents seem slightly bewildered and drained by their offsprings’ abilities and never-ending energy.

At the competition, maths and logic questions are fired at each whizzkid while they stand at a podium, watched tensely by the cameras, their parents and the other contestants. The pressure gets to some of the miniature masterminds, raising questions about what effects the label ‘IQ in the top 0.1% of the population’ has on people so young. For example, many of the children face difficulties in relating to others because of their intellect.

Most of the child geniuses (genii?) come from families wealthy enough to afford extras like the weekly private tuition with a chess master which Josh enjoys. And good luck to them; of course parents should encourage their spawns’ strengths. But this gets you wondering why few of the competing prodigies have emerged from more humble backgrounds. As a rule, the less money you have, the fewer opportunities you get. So, the contest isn’t really just testing innate abilities. It’s also a competition between families and how much they can afford to invest in their kids. Regardless of their IQs, will the children think about their good fortune in this way?

Mike Foster

Letter: Postcard from the Peaks (2013)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

We never said (Socialist Standard, June) that using ropes or oxygen is like walking. Using ropes is part of climbing, it keeps us alive, and we use them all the time. I’m also not sure that I ever said that I despised any restrictions. There are no restrictions on the mountain so saying that I despise them is a bit over the top if they don’t even exist? Also the Nepalese Govt never intervened. No one was ever arrested, I never saw a single policeman. The ringleader sherpas were back working on the mountain almost straight away!

Jon Griffith (by email)

Reply: 

Accounts differ. Jon Griffith was one of three European mountaineers who in late April were at some 21,000 feet up Mount Everest, working to establish a new route to the summit unassisted by ropes or oxygen, when they were attacked by a group of Sherpas who were laying some fixed ropes nearby. The incident was reported by, among others, Oliver Thring in the Sunday Times of 5 May. In that report Griffith was quoted as saying ‘For people like us the normal route to climb Everest is just like walking.’ He was also reported as expressing negative feelings about those he called ‘commercial climbers’ – presumably referring to people who pay a lot of money to be luxuriously accommodated before being respectfully guided up the mountain. And then there were his thoughts on the restrictions which arise from such arrangements: ‘Being told not to climb on a certain day just because other people are there is against the freedom of the hills.’

Jon Griffith also questions the statement in the article that the Nepalese government had intervened. But a report by Ed Douglas in the Guardian on 1 May stated that the Nepalese authorities had intervened, by trying to involve all parties to concede that mistakes had been made and that there would be no more violence. But the Europeans rejected the offer and returned home with Griffith saying that he no longer felt safe above base camp on the mountain. In addition the Nepalese police arrested three Sherpas.

In its entirety the piece was intended to set out one of many examples of how Mount Everest, once regarded on one side as holy ground side and on the other as a supreme test of moral fortitude, has deteriorated into just another sideshow in capitalism’s commodity culture. – Editors

From proletarian to prat (2013)

Book Review from the July 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

This Boy: A Memoir of a Childhood by Alan Johnson. Bantham Press, 2013.

When former Home Secretary Alan Johnson told Prime Minister Tony Blair that he was married with three children before he was twenty years old, Blair replied ‘You really are working class’. Alan Johnson is one of those rare things, a member of the proletariat who climbed the greasy pole to reach high political office.

This Boy tells of his childhood in the 1950s and 60s, growing up in North Kensington in London W10 in ‘a street whose buildings had been condemned in the 1930s’. The Johnson family were abandoned by their father, and their lives were filled with a ‘grinding poverty’ which comprised second hand clothes from ‘the Lane’ (Petticoat Lane market), debts, outside lavatories, no television or labour-saving devices, buying groceries ‘on the tick’, hiding from the ‘tally man’, and free school meals. In 1959 Macmillan said the working class had ‘never had it so good’.

1950s North Kensington was captured in the photographs of Roger Mayne who portrayed the ‘squalor and vibrancy of life there’ and also the arrival of immigrants from the West Indies who would be exploited by Rachman landlordism. Johnson recalls the ‘Teddy Boy’ riots in Notting Hill, the unsolved murder (Johnson says he knows the culprit) of West Indian Kelso Cochrane in 1959, and Oswald Mosley as Fascist candidate for North Kensington at the 1959 General Election.

Johnson’s book features a portrait of his mother who died when he was thirteen. She was a Liverpudlian who admired Suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst, Liberal leader Jo Grimond, disliked Churchill, and worked as a ‘charlady in the posh houses of South Kensington’. His mother and elder sister kept the family going in a period of the Welfare State when benefit entitlements were administered through the head of a family (ie. the man).

Johnson describes his passion for Queens Park Rangers who had a golden era in the 1960s which culminated in winning the football League Cup in 1967. Music was a passion from the skiffle of Lonnie Donegan to the Beatles and Stones and discovering Chicago blues. Johnson details the influential books and authors in his life which included Shane by Jack Schaefer, Mark Twain, HG Wells, Arnold Bennett and George Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying.

Johnson passed his 11-plus and went to grammar school in Chelsea but left school at 15 eventually becoming a postman. He joined the Labour Party in 1971 although he considered himself a ‘Marxist in the CPGB style’. He also joined his trade union becoming the CWU General Secretary in 1992. He was the only senior trade unionist to support the New Labour abolition of Clause IV, and a safe parliamentary seat was found for him in 1997. He held various cabinet posts under Blair and then Brown. As Education Minister he introduced differential university tuition fees, and as Home Secretary he sacked Professor David Nutt, Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs who had accused the government of ‘distorting’ and ‘devaluing’ research evidence in the debates about Ecstasy and cannabis.

Steve Clayton

Stereotypes (2013)

From the July 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

On countless occasions I have been asked a question like: ‘Do you like children?’ or ‘Do you like dogs?’ Each time my answer has invariably been greeted by a sigh of frustration as if, somehow, I’m avoiding the question. My reply is that I like some children and not others (the same with dogs). Because I do not care to generalise my questioner cannot designate me as a ‘dog lover’ or someone who gets on with children. The need to generalise or ‘stereotype’ a person seems to be at the very heart of a popular conception of identity. Although these examples are trivial, unfortunately this need sometimes transfers itself to cultural, racial or gender descriptions. If people have personal trouble with a racial or cultural minority this is quite likely to affect their view of the whole group or culture. A woman once complained bitterly about the noise generated by the ‘Nigerians’ next door, forgetting that indigenous people can also be bad neighbours. My contention has always been that there exists ‘the Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ in all cultures and races.

The same cannot readily be said about politics – it is hard to find some redeeming feature in Fascism and its adherents since, in most part, the whole ideology is based on racial stereotypes. Perhaps this represents the ultimate ideological destination for anyone who persists in seeing others in this simplistic way? Another side effect of this kind of relationship with people is what is sometimes called ‘internalisation.’ A person comes to believe his or her own stereotype. If you are a male of a big build you must be ‘tough’ and ‘macho’; if you are a ‘pretty’ woman you must be delicate and feminine, etc. One of the most pernicious examples of this is when someone is persistently referred to as ‘thick’ or unintelligent, resulting in an intellectual insecurity, where they come to believe it themselves and so cease to develop.

The working class have always been told that they do not understand the complexities of the world and so need leaders to tell them what to do – and many have come to believe this nonsense. The reader may have noticed the use of a generalisation in that last statement – the term ‘working class’. Is this a meaningless stereotype used by socialists in their propaganda? Indeed, is it ever productive to make such a designation of a group of people in society?

The cult of ‘individualism’ would seem to ‘personify’ the opposite perspective to the stereotyping I have just been condemning. Paradoxically, when I speak with most people, who nearly all think of themselves as individuals, they articulate the very same stereotyping, as outlined earlier, in their political thoughts. If you consider this in any depth it becomes obvious that what individualism really means in a capitalist context is usually merely consumerism. So-called individualism is simply political conformism and any rejection of it makes you truly individual!

So by emphasising what we all have in common rather than what divides us socialists advocate a society where true individualism is really possible. The revolution will forever end the class struggle and humanity will no longer be divided into the parasites and the exploited (the ultimate stereotypes). The primary motivation for the propaganda of individualism is to weaken class consciousness within the majority. There is no such lack within the ruling class who always act together against any threat to their wealth and power (one reason for the existence of the Tory party). How is this propagation of conformity masquerading as individualism achieved? One of its main vehicles, unsurprisingly, is the media. Drama especially, on TV, radio and movies almost always contains stereotyped characters – the ’soap operas’ being a supreme example.

As we have seen, many people characterise others in terms of stereotypes but themselves as individuals. Emotional alliances with people are mainly achieved by their identification with the ego – partners, children, parents etc. In other words people are seen primarily as extensions of the self. If their appearance or values and behaviour are very different from the self, they become the ‘other’ which invariably leads to suspicion and competition. These alliances and the inevitable betrayals are the fodder of soap operas. We use the term ’inevitable betrayals’ because if you only identify with another in terms of your own needs then a tension will be caused by the expression of the other person’s needs.

This is a basic contradiction within capitalist culture – your individualism depends on other peoples’ suppression of their own. This is a reflection of consumerism since your choices condemn others and yourself to the unending quest for fulfilment through the products of alienated labour. Relationships become commodities with labels on them like ‘love’, ‘security’, ‘status’ and ‘success’. Within such dramas this endless cycle of the quest for relationships, money and power –and the inevitable failure, is repeated again and again. This, by implication, is the human condition with seemingly no consciousness of the use of stereotypes to emphasise capitalist values let alone the possibility of an alternative. So this is the model that many use to understand themselves. Depressing in the extreme, but fortunately some drama does exist that, at least partially, is conscious of these contradictions.

Recently I watched a film about a ‘whistle blower’ within the tobacco industry. He was aware that nicotine had been added to make the cigarettes more addictive. What followed was a drama about the security of his family versus his need to produce something of value (a definition of our humanity). This was an extreme example because cigarettes can and do kill people but the basic stereotypes of family man, loyal employee and citizen were examined.

There is a tradition in Hollywood movies of the ‘David and Goliath’ narratives where the persecuted underdog is successful in taking on the big bad corporations –something that rarely, if ever, happens in real life. But the majority in America desperately need to believe in justice and, given its absence in their everyday life, Hollywood provides it. This is, of course, the need that socialists depend on for the majority to get off their knees and make it a reality. Stereotyping others helps to prevent the consciousness of what all of us need – respect and comradeship.  Without that we can never be truly human.

Wez

Material World: Big Pharma – Pushing Harmful Drugs (2013)

The Material World column from the July 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last January Material World wrote about the rebellious teenagers ‘diagnosed’ with the newly invented Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) and the highly profitable industry that has grown up to ‘treat’ – that is, abuse – them. The American Psychiatric Association has included ODD in the latest edition of its authoritative handbook, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), together with Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder, for people who get angry too often, and Hoarding Disorder, for people who don’t like to throw things away.

The biomedical model

In early May the Division of Clinical Psychology of the British Psychological Society called for a halt in the process of defining all sorts of deviant or inconvenient behaviours as physical illnesses that can be treated using drugs. In the view of many psychologists and other critics of psychiatry, one important reason for the prevalence of this ‘biomedical model’ of mental distress is that psychiatrists and their associations are financially dependent on – in other words, bribed and corrupted by – the big pharmaceutical companies (see Jamie Doward in the Guardian Weekly, 24 May). Plus, of course, it is much easier for psychiatrists to scribble a prescription than try to get to the bottom of the troubles of some obnoxious stranger – and they still get paid very handsomely for their time. 

The British doctor Ben Goldacre levels a similar accusation against the medical profession as a whole in his book Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients (Faber and Faber, 2012). He clearly documents the control that the drug companies exercise – sometimes openly, often secretly – over the testing of their drugs and over the flow of drug-related information. Various devices, some quite ingenious, are used to rig clinical trials. If, as sometimes happens, the rigging fails and results are still different from those desired, then they are simply suppressed. Companies have extensive rights over data that are, after all, recognised as their property.  

Easy prey

Even the most conscientious doctors are therefore in no position to form balanced judgments about the relative advantages and disadvantages of the various drugs on offer for a given medical condition. They are easy prey for the orchestrated and persistent sales efforts of Big Pharma and its hordes of hired drug pushers, more widely known as ‘drug reps’ – perhaps as many as one drug rep for every three doctors. ‘Drug rep’, by the way, is one of those wasteful occupations that will not be needed in socialism.

Suppressed data often includes information sent in by doctors about dangerous or even fatal side effects suffered by patients taking a drug. True, such information eventually leaks out and becomes public knowledge. At that point the company adopts the pose of a ‘responsible corporate citizen’ and dramatically withdraws the drug from the market, pretending that it has only just become aware of the danger and is taking prompt action. 

In Tom Nesi’s Poison Pills: The Untold Story of the Vioxx Drug Scandal (St. Martin’s Press, 2008), a writer with long experience in the pharmaceuticals industry tells the inside story of Vioxx, a painkiller used at the height of its success by tens of millions of people in a score of countries. Vioxx was launched by Merck with great fanfare in May 1999. Over time evidence accumulated to the effect that while Vioxx might do less harm to the stomach than competing painkillers – a major selling point – it did entail increased risks of heart and kidney disease and stroke. After years of doing everything possible to conceal these dangers, including vicious smear campaigns against whistleblowers, Merck finally acknowledged the evidence and took Vioxx off the market in September 2004.

A business expense

A company that continues promoting and selling a drug after it is known to be dangerous may well end up being sued and paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. However, this has no discernible deterrent effect because a really successful drug – a ‘blockbuster’ like Vioxx or Pfizer’s anticonvulsant Neurontin – makes profits reckoned not in the hundreds of millions but in the billions of dollars annually. Payment of damages can be calmly contemplated as one business expense among others.

So can the fines that companies routinely pay for breaking the law. The Danish professor Peter Gotzsche recently published an article in the British Medical Journal (December 14, 2012) entitled ‘Big Pharma often commits corporate crime, and this must be stopped’. Gotzsche easily collected information on numerous crimes by googling the names of each of the ten largest drug companies in combination with the word ‘fraud’. The most common crimes, he tells us, are ‘illegal marketing by recommending drugs for non-approved (off-label) uses, misrepresentation of research results, hiding data on harms, and Medicaid and Medicare fraud’. Crimes are ‘widespread and repetitive [and] probably committed deliberately – because crime pays’. Fines are large, but profits are larger.

Evidence-based medicine

Dr. Goldacre calls for ‘evidence-based medicine’ – a system in which medical decisions are systematically based on all the knowledge currently in existence. Such a system would require free, rapid and universal access to widely pooled information. The development of computerised systems makes this goal increasingly feasible in technical terms. What blocks its achievement is capitalist property relations, which inevitably encompass information as well as material commodities.

Thus, only a socialist society can create the basic conditions under which evidence-based medicine can flourish. Scientists and physicians will be able to cooperate freely to develop drugs and treatments that are safe, comfortable and effective.

Stefan

Mixed Media: ‘The Low Road’ (2013)

The Mixed Media column from the July 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The Low Road’ by Bruce Norris

The Low Road by American playwright Bruce Norris was recently produced by Dominic Cooke at the Royal Court Theatre in London. The play seems inspired by 18th century picaresque novels such as Candide by Voltaire, Tom Jones by Henry Fielding or more probably Thackeray’s work The Luck of Barry Lyndon.

The Low Road is the low road of profitability rather than the high road of principle, and the amoral anti-hero Jim Trumpet played with viciousness and without any charm by Johnny Flynn follows the former course in pre-revolutionary America. Jim expounds the economic individualism of Scottish political economist Adam Smith. Smith is himself the narrator and part character in the play and is played with relish and Brechtian flourishes by Bill Paterson.

Jim quotes Adam Smith from his seminal work of bourgeois political economy The Wealth of Nations: ‘every individual endeavours as much as he can to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry. He neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, led by an invisible hand to promote an end that was never part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it’. To which Norris adds ‘and once his prosperity is thus achieved, the rest of the damnable world can stick it up their fucking arsehole’. Marx identified that to Adam Smith ‘the means of production are to him from the outset ‘capital’, labour is from the outset wage-labour’.

Jim is forced to avail himself of the ‘christian communism’ of the New Light of Zion Colony where he engages in arguments with the congregants; ‘for if one’s coins sit idle there can be no growth, and without growth there can never be profit’ to which Constance replies that ‘all profit is theft’ and ‘to take from each, according to his ability’ is the mantra of the colony. Constance sees Jim’s financial dealings as ‘usury, money-lending and Jesus drove the moneylenders from the Temple’ but Jim believes ’tis speculation, finance and Jesus was an asshole’.

Constance says of capitalist society; ‘there never was justice in this world. There was only ever violence and gold’. The Low Road is witty, perceptive, indeed it is a rip-roaring blast and a very clever take on the nature of capitalism. Constance’s parting words to the capitalist ideology of Adam Smith personified by Jim Trumpet are ‘Damned be your soul and damned your fucking lies’.

Steve Clayton