The Passing Show: Crime and Punishment (1954)

The Passing Show Column from the June 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Crime and Punishment

The recent campaign in the Soviet Union against crime, including the restoration of the death penalty for murder, is being taken in some circles to show that crime is something “inherent in human nature,” and that the early Socialist pioneers were wrong when they said that in a Socialist society there would be no crime. But the people who take up this point of view do not see that in order for their reasoning to be valid, they must first show that there is a Socialist society in the Soviet Union. Far from the existence of crime proving anything about Socialism, it is itself another demonstration that there cannot be Socialism in Russia. The Stalinists themselves, who profess to believe that there is Socialism in Russia, abandon—as they have often done before—their materialist philosophy in order to explain it, and say it is due to elements which are corrupt or hostile to the regime. But before Socialism can be established, it is necessary to have a great majority who understand and want it, and to whom therefore the notion of crime is foreign; and Socialism will abolish crime because it will abolish the material conditions which cause it.

When Stalinists admit that there is crime in Russia they are admitting the falseness of their own view of the nature of Russian society.

On Guard

During the recent correspondence in The Times about the hydrogen bomb, one reader wrote that “the British Army remains unruffled. This last week-end I attended Territorial Army training—the morning was passed with lectures on the use and effect of the atomic bomb; in the afternoon we practised sword drill" (10-4-54). It is good to know that our generals are directing their minds to the problems that beset us.

Presumably, in the last ghastly moment of atomic annihilation, we are supposed to cry “‘Touché !” The present regime cannot guarantee that we will survive; but it is at least trying to teach us how to die like gentlemen.

Joshua.

A Special Commemorative Number of the "Socialist Standard" (1954)

Party News from the June 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

In September, 1904, the first number of the "Socialist Standard” came out. This September we are bringing out a special number to commemorate fifty years of its existence.

The special number will have a colour-designed cover and will contain articles relating to our attitude to war in 1914 and 1939; Russia in 1917; the General Strike in 1926; The Woman Question, Ireland, etc, in the early years. There will also be articles on the Declaration of Principles; Style and Invective over the years; changes in theory, internally and externally; the Birth of the Party and the circumstances of the time; our attitude in the various elections from the early days; the world situation in 1904 and to-day; Propaganda in war time; some Reminiscences of members and events; and a number of other subjects.

This special number will contain 32 pages against the 
present 16 pages, and it is proposed to print 10,000 copies.
 We want to make this a production worthy of the occasion and to do the job properly the estimated cost will be in the region of £300, and as the price of each copy will remain as at present the loss will run into over £200. We therefore appeal to members and sympathisers to send along as large donations as they can to enable us to fulfil our proposals. If we cannot raise enough money to carry out the proposals we will have to cut down our ideas.

Will members and sympathisers send along to the Party Treasurer, E. Lake, as much as they can immediately so that we will be in a position to know how much we can do to make the special number really worth while.

Party News Briefs (1954)

Party News from the June 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Fiftieth Anniversary Rally of the Party is being held on Sunday, 13th June, at St. Pancras Town Hall, Euston Road. London. Will members and friends make a note of the date and rally round and help to ensure a successful evening.

* * *

Ealing Branch took the opportunity during May to organise a special all-out drive to sell the Socialist Standard. A rainy Sunday morning during the first week abruptly curtailed activities, but fine weather on the two following Sundays gave canvassers several hours of uninterrupted selling time. Sales by the middle of May, as we go to press, have already reached 21 dozen, and given fine weather for the remainder of the month the Branch is hopeful that the previous best monthly sale (32 dozen) will be exceeded.

A start is once more being made in selling the S.S. and pamphlets outside stations, and if first experiments at Hammersmith Broadway are successful, this type of activity will be extended and put on a regular and organised basis.

Finally, we are hoping that a good outdoor propaganda season at Ealing Green and Heron Court. Richmond, will also play a part in stepping-up sales and make it our most successful literature season so far.

Our experience has shown that the results from canvassing vary in strictly arithmetical ratio with the number of canvassers taking part. In other words, given twice the number of canvassers, we could step up sales to 50-60 dozen without any difficulty. It is most rewarding and productive work, and it is not beyond the capacity of any member of the Branch (and the Party for that matter) to devote one Sunday morning a month to it. The results are there for everyone to see. and the field has hardly been touched.

An appeal is made to every Branch member to contact the Literature Secretary, or any member of the Literature Committee, and find out how, when, and where he or she can help.

* * *

May Day Sunday in London was marred by rain and cold. Party members did their best under the circumstances to sell literature along the route of the Trades Unions' procession to Hyde Park. Our meeting in the Park was dampened by the rain.

However, a good indoor meeting was held in the evening at Conway Hall.

* * *

West Ham Branch members have renewed their canvassing drive and during April on one evening alone a hundred houses were called upon and twenty copies of the Socialist Standard were sold. The work has continued in May but figures of results are not yet available.

The Branch urges members to make every effort to assist in this work which is well worth while.

The canvassing party meets outside the “Boleyn” (corner of Green Street and Barking Road), East Ham, every Wednesday evening between 7.30 p.m. and 7.40 p.m.

Sunday evening outdoor meetings are held at this spot at 8 p.m. As the station is a new one, members should do all they can to support these meetings.

Friday evenings at 8 p.m. meetings are held at Station Road, Ilford.

Meanwhile Branch lectures will continue to be held on alternate Thursday evenings at Salisbury Road School, Manor Park Broadway. Details of meetings elsewhere in this issue.

A few tickets are available for the coach trip to Brighton which is being arranged by West Ham Branch. If members are interested please contact Branch Social Committee or telephone Ilford 2884. Date: Sunday, 27th June. A Propaganda Meeting will be held on the beach, in conjunction with Brighton Branch members.

Phyllis Howard

Prejudice (2009)

A Short Story from the June 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

A true tale from a kebab shop

I was serving a regular customer; a person who is showing me a lot of respect. The boss of the kebab shop doesn’t like it when I talk to the customers because he thinks I am his slave and that I should behave like a robot. He came over and he told me, “Serve him quick and don’t talk to him; he’s gay”, but he spoke in his language so the man wouldn’t understand.

The gentleman, he felt something is wrong and he said to me, “Is everything all right?” The Boss answered, “Yes Mike, everything is all right.” The man, he said, “I’m not Mike, I’m Howard.” I explained him that the boss means “mate” but he can’t pronounce it. Howard smiled and said, “thank you” to him and he left a two-pound tip for me then went out, but he left his umbrella. My Boss took the tip and told me, “I’ll buy a bulb for your room.” I said, “This is my money. That man he always leave a tip.” But the Boss is a hard man who treat his workers like slaves, so I say to him, “If you want to take it why don’t you buy toilet paper? I have a bulb in my room.” Then to patronize me he said, “Maybe you like to join Mr Howard tonight” with winking his eye.

At this point two people came in, each holding a bottle of beer. They were big chubby men with bald heads and they were so drunk that they couldn’t control their movements. They are shouting, “Fucking foreigners” to each other so my Boss said to me, “Be very nice with them. If they said, ‘Fuck you’, your answer will be ‘thank you very much, do you like anything else?'” I told him, “I can’t do that and I can’t serve them”, so he said, “When they have ordered, you do the order – I’ll speak with them.”

The men came up to the counter and one of them said, “Why did you come here, fucking donkey shagger?” The boss in his pronunciation, said, “Calm down, mike.” The man replied, “Fuck off, I’m not Mike, I’m Nick” and the other one he says, “They come here to shag young girls and marry them to get citizenship.”

The Boss, who thinks he is a great important man, couldn’t get rid of two bullyboys. He said, “No mike, I’m a religious person; it is not in my culture to shag girls.” This makes the second man very angry and he shouted, “He’s not Mike you c***.” And then he says to the Boss, “So you’re Muslim?” and he replies that he is. This drunk man then said, “I thought you lot weren’t supposed to eat pork, why are you selling it then?” The Boss says back to him, “That’s business.”

Now the first man is more angry even than the other one and he threw his bottle and it breaks into pieces; spread over the shop, and he said, “You got a problem, Mohammed?” The Boss said to him, “I am not Mohammed, I am Mustapha, my friend”. The first drunk man shouted, “He’s not your friend, he’s my friend.” The boss, he replied to him, “Ok, mate.” But he said “mike” again because he cannot pronounce, “mate”. This man, he was very drunk, he said to him, “My name’s not fucking Mike. Fuck you!” The boss he say, “Thank you very much, what you like?”

The second man say, “That’s what he calls his donkey when he’s shagging it!” Then he was holding onto the counter and he was pretended to be having sex that way; like Mustapha and his donkey, called Mike. He was saying, “Oh Mike, oh Mike”. At this moment Howard comes back for his umbrella. He realised there is something wrong and he becomes a mediator between my Boss and them when he explained to them when he saying to you “Mike” he is means “mate”.

Before the two boys leave the kebab shop one of them says to the Boss raising his voice, “The customer’s always right Mike!” The boss said, “Yes, yes, yes”. Howard advised him he should call the police. The Boss says “many times event like that happened to me – when I call police they come too late and when they come they accuse me instead of them.” I said, “And we are all fucking illegal immigrants and by their police law we are the crime-makers.”

Howard said, “I understand now. Good luck for you.” and he left the shop. I say to the boss, “Now can you see?”

I. I.

Cooking the Books: No growth area (2009)

The Cooking the Books column from the June 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Wednesday 22 April, Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, took his snout out of the trough for a while to deliver the budget speech. He ended it with what he must have thought was a brilliant soundbite:

  “You can grow your way out of a recession. You cannot cut your way out”.

Well, er, yes. A recession is a period when there is no growth, when in fact there is a fall in production, what the spin-doctors called “negative growth”. So, obviously, a recession comes to an end when growth resumes. The big question is: can a government do anything to make this happen?

But what is “growth” anyway? For government statisticians it is an increase in the Gross Domestic Product. GDP is made up of what capitalist firms invest + what consumers spend + what the government spends. For Marxists, the key part of this is capital accumulation, the part of profits that capitalist firms re-invest in production, the motor of the capitalist economy and which determines the level of consumer spending.

While governments can influence GDP – if only by increasing their own expenditure – they cannot do anything to increase capital accumulation. That depends on the amount of profits that capitalist firms expect to make, which in turn depends on market conditions, which governments can’t control.

An increase in GDP brought about by an increase in government spending – which is the government’s plan to get out of what Darling delicately calls “the recession” – can only come in the long run out of profits, the source of funds for capital accumulation. In the short run it’s only a statistical illusion. It doesn’t increase capital accumulation and so doesn’t result in growth in actual production..

Even here, though, Darling is not expecting GDP to go up until some time towards the end of next year. In the meantime, he estimated, GDP would have fallen by 3.5 percent. Not everybody agrees on this figure. In its latest quarterly Inflation Report published in May, the Bank of England “now expects that this year’s slump will lead the economy to shrink by up to 4.5 per cent on its main view, marking the most brutal drop in GDP since 1946” (Times, 14 May). The 1946 drop was caused, it should be noted, not by an economic crisis, not by any actual fall in production, but simply by the government no longer having to spend money on fighting a war. Three monthly earlier, however, the Bank had been ever more optimistic than Darling, expecting a fall of only 3 percent.

Basically, they don’t know. As Mervyn King, the Bank’s Governor, put it:

“We may well get a recovery that proves to be sustained, then again, we may not” (Times, 14 May).

True. And how very profound.

Pieces Together: A Grateful Nation? (2009)

The Pieces Together column from the June 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Grateful Nation?

“It is only when darkness falls on the streets of London that the plight of many veterans of the Armed Forces becomes fully apparent. More than 1,000 of them are homeless. Until a couple of months ago Ray (not his real name) was one of them living on the streets. He had enlisted in the Royal Green Jackets (Light Division) in 1993 and saw service in Northern Ireland. He left the Army in November 2001 but found civvy street a harsh place. … “You think after serving your time in the Army society will accept you,” he says, “but they don’t and no one helps.” (Times, 25 April)

Hard Times?

“Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson is reported to have lost 56% of his wealth, shedding £1.5bn and is now worth £1.2bn. Meanwhile, Formula 1 motor racing chief Bernie Ecclestone lost £934m, leaving him at £1.46bn, the list reported. The richest British-born billionaire is the land and property owning Duke of Westminster, who has seen his wealth shrink to £6.5bn from £7bn. In fourth spot are Ernesto and Kirsty Bertarelli: the former Miss UK winner and her husband have a £5.6bn fortune based on pharmaceuticals. Their fortune has shrunk by a relatively modest 12% over the year. But it is not all gloom – the former boss of supermarket chain Morrisons, Sir Ken Morrison, has seen his fortune increase by 11%, making him worth £1.6bn. The wealth of Peter and Denise Coates, owners of Stoke-based online sports betting website Bet365, has gone up by 33%, to £400m. And Harrods boss Mohammed al-Fayed has benefited from a cheap pound – his fortune stands at £650m, up 17% on last year.” (BBC Times, 25 April)

American Poverty

“An estimated 3.5 million children younger than 5 are at risk of hunger in the United States, according to government numbers provided by an anti-hunger group. That’s more than 17 percent of children who could suffer cognitive and developmental damage if they are not properly fed. The not-for-profit advocacy group Feeding America based its findings on 2005-2007 data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Agriculture Department. The study, released Thursday, is the first to look at these numbers for children under the age of 5, according to the group. Feeding America runs food banks and feeding centers around the country. The study also shows that in 11 states, more than 20 percent of children under 5 are at risk of going hungry. Louisiana has the highest rate, with just under a quarter of children at risk, followed by North Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Idaho and Arkansas.” (Yahoo News, 7 May)

A simpler way of doing things (2009)

From the June 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism makes arranging production more complicated than it need be.

We humans have always worked to support our life; worked to catch, grow and produce our food, to make our shelter, our clothes and our tools, in general to satisfy our needs. In groups tasks were shared and communities developed by dividing labour cooperatively according to expertise and free will. All worked both for themselves and the common good whilst partaking of the benefits accrued.

We still work to support our life but now money is a crucial factor, an artificial intermediary between labour and the satisfaction of needs, enabling labour to be exchanged indirectly for all manner of goods and services. We now require money whether working within the community or outside it. We do our work as farmer, builder, designer, cook or computer operator using our particular skill, the difference now being we are probably working away from our community and contributing little to it except socially in our spare time and often it isn’t the precise community of our choice but the one we can afford in monetary terms. Moreover, we work most of our life for an employer or series of employers who pay us more on paper than our net salary or take home pay with the remainder being passed on to various government agencies which, in turn, give us some back as health care, unemployment pay and various benefits and pensions as time, situation or entitlement dictate.

Without workers there is neither a product nor a service to sell and therefore no money is generated for the system, no money is generated to produce profit for the capitalists. Also, without worker input neither national nor local governments have money of their own. They are financed only by what they collect from employers in direct taxation and deductions for employees gross pay and from indirect taxes. The tax on employers comes from profit remaining after paying their bills and invoices for utilities, goods, raw materials, other overheads and the wages bill, all of which profit has been generated by the workforce. The deductions from employees’ pay also comes from the surplus generated by the workers but it forms a part of the overall sum that the employer is prepared to pay for the labour rendered.

Net pay is what is deemed sufficient and appropriate according to the type of employment. The difference in amount between gross and net pay, that which is utilised as deductions, (all of which is paid by the employer), is a deal struck between government and employers with some negotiation by trades unions on behalf of the employees. (The employee always striving for a larger remuneration in opposition to the employer looking to reduce it as much as possible.)

Gross pay, to a certain extent, appeases workers because they perceives themselves to be earning more than they are, although they generally believe they are being robbed on a regular basis, seeing a considerable amount clawed back from what they maintain they have rightfully earned. Statistics show that what is transferred from gross pay to the Inland Revenue and the National Insurance scheme more or less goes back to workers as various benefits and payments.

Defence, policing, health, education and roads, and the wages of the whole hierarchy of “public servants” from Prime Minister and Lord of the Admiralty to lowly office clerk, ambulance driver and teaching assistant all come ultimately from the surplus workers generate for their employers as profits.. The same goes for all the buildings and upkeep of the same, for the heating, lighting, cleaning, furnishings and all materials, vehicles – in fact everything used in their operations from stealth fighter to paper clip.

Today’s capitalist world is much more complicated and intertwined than that of our ancestors. We rely on international trade for many commodities and use ultra-sophisticated technology to allow us to track transactions worldwide, technology which, in theory, should simplify most matters, yet somehow we have become entangled in an overcomplicated web from which it is difficult to see a way out. Some say there is no way out of the present system. Our worker may disagree. If  workers accept that they have to work in order to live their life – and the vast majority do – does that mean that we also have to accept the incredible complications that capitalism and working for money involve (and that have certainly led to the miserable times many workers are now suffering in the latest financial crisis)? Can we not simply produce things directly for use, working for ourselves and the common good too, knowing that others will be doing the same?

Those who work – those who produce the useful things and provide the useful services – are the lynch pin, the vital component. They are indispensable. The capitalist, the employer is dispensable. Removing layers of unnecessary top-heavy bureaucracy, removing any necessity for taxation by removing the blight of money is the far simpler way. The nurse will tend the sick, the plumber will ensure no leaks, the farmer will provide food and the unemployed will no longer be unoccupied for there is much to be done cooperatively within all our communities. And plenty enough, too, for all to partake of the fruits of our collective labour.

Janet Surman

50 Years ago: The Snoopers (2009)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

A furore arose recently in the readers’ letters column of the Daily Mirror, when an article revealed that there were thousands of people employed by Finance Companies whose job it was to snoop into people’s lives, and report on would-be hire purchase customers’ credit reliability ( . . .)

Most people look upon snooping as an unsavoury occupation, but do not see where the real unsavouriness lies. This kind of activity is an essential part of property society, a society which provides even more unsavoury occupations, such as the policeman who breaks strikers’ heads with his truncheon, or the soldier mangling workers of othwer countries. The jobs themselves are not likely to ennoble the characters of the performers, but this is not the main issue. They are carrying out a necessary function of an irrational and harmful social order, and one which exemplifies the sheer idiocy of the social organisation.

What sensible reason can there be for an arrangement whereby some workers produce goods, other workers advertise them, yet more workers arrange them in gaudy shop-windows, more workers fill in hire purchase forms, even more run the complicated accounting and collecting system of the finance companies, some more occupy their time snooping into the buyers’ lives, others add up the bosses’ profit, a few store it away in bank vaults, and finally, a tiny section of the population live more than comfortably on the proceeds?

Surely a simpler and less wasteful arrangement is called for? Why should a vast number of people have to perform useless and frustrating tasks, in order to satisfy the selfish wishes of a ruling clique? Yet it is working people themselves who perpetuate this foolish system: who do the useless tasks as well as the useful; the unproductive as well as the productive.

The trouble is that the alternative, a world of common ownership and common effort, is frightening in its simplicity. It seems too easy to be true. Nevertheless, true it is. It’s as simple as that!

(from an article by A.W.I. in the Socialist Standard, June 1959)

Voice From The Back: The advance of poverty (2010)

The Voice From The Back column from the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

The advance of poverty

Every day we can read about the expansion of capitalism and how new industrial and commercial giants are arising to challenge the supremacy of the USA. One of the leading candidates in this struggle is India. We are constantly hearing about the modernisation of that country and the supposed benefits of the expansion of capital. We don’t hear so much about the plight of the working class there though. The following news item illustrates that the supposed benefits of capitalist modernisation are not so wonderful after all. “India has 100 million more people living in poverty, official figures show – 37.2 per cent of the population compared with 27.5 per cent in 2004 – with 410 million people below the UN poverty line of $1.25 a day” (Times, 19 March). Surviving on a pound a day while the owning class of that country now boast of the richest men in the world. “Indian names now figure prominently on the league tables of the wealthiest people on the planet. The country now boasts 47 billionaires, up from 12 in 2005 and just nine at the turn of the millennium, compared with 10 in France and 35 in Britain” (Observer, 9 May). That’s capitalism for you – surviving on £1 a day contrasted with the lives of billionaires.

The whip hand

“British Gas has received more than 65,000 applications for 600 gas fitter apprenticeships. The scheme pays £5,000 a year, plus expenses, to train staff to repair boilers and radiators. The 100-to-1 ratio of applicants to openings, twice the usual ratio, has been caused by surging youth unemployment, boosted by graduates and mid-career professionals searching for jobs. Most applicants are aged between 20 and 26, although British Gas said some were in their fifties” (Sunday Times, 18 April). Not only do we have workers madly competing for the right to be exploited but we have workers in employment working overtime for no extra pay. “One person in four is working longer than ever but few are paid extra for putting in overtime. A survey of 2,000 workers, carried out for Santander, found that the average employee in the UK is working a 41-hour week for an annual wage of £27,150. One in seven of those polled is doing at least 11 hours of overtime every week, but only two in five are paid extra” (Times, 4 May).

Fifty years of gradualism

One of the oppositions to world socialism is that rather than have a complete transformation of society we could have piece by piece gradual change. Well let us look at how that has worked out in relation to the environment. “Sir David Attenborough has warned that Britain’s wildlife is being destroyed thanks to man’s impact on the environment. The naturalist made his comments in the foreword to a new book, Silent Summer, in which 40 prominent British ecologists explain how humankind is wiping out many species. It comes fifty years after the publication of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s acclaimed book on pollution of wildlife that helped the growth of the environmental movement worldwide and led to a ban of some pesticides in Britain” (Sunday Telegraph, 25 April). So fifty years after the alarm was sounded the position is even worse. That is gradualism for you. The drive for bigger and bigger profits means that the environment is of little importance.

A papal view of society

There are many ways to look at society. What are the most important aspects of present day society? Socialists might say the fact that a third of the world is starving, or that we live in a society that could be annihilated in a nuclear holocaust or even that in the drive for profits we risk the delicate balance of the global environment. None of these considerations entered into the reasoning of the Pope when he recently visited Portugal. “The Pope yesterday condemned gay marriage and abortion as ‘among the most insidious and dangerous challenges’ to society, as Portugal prepared to legalise same-sex partnerships next week. Benedict also criticised Catholics ‘ashamed’ of their faith and too willing to ‘lend a hand to secularism’. Ninety per cent of Portuguese define themselves as Catholic, but Portugal’s society is increasingly secular, with far fewer than a third saying they attend Mass regularly” (Times, 14 May). Starvation, worldwide slaughter or global warming? Not as important as abortion or same-sex relationships according to His Holiness – no wonder the pews are emptying.

Political whores trading (2010)

From the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Extract of MI5 recording, number XA4821S, Westminster, May 7. Principals in cross-Party coalition talks, House Speaker residing.

Chair: I must begin by asking you, gentlemen, if any here present are intending in disregard of honour or scruple to prostitute all their principles simply for the sake of power at any price?

All: Of course!

Chair: Oh. Ahem. Well, that’s alright then. Now, to business.

Clegg: Still think I’m a joke, Cameron?

Brown: I think you’re both bloody jokes.

Clegg: I’m not even speaking to you, Brown.

Brown: Alright, I resign.

Chair: To order. The agenda is how to rake back £163bn without ending up with Greek fire in Whitehall.

Clegg: PR! AV plus! STD! No wait, I mean…

Cameron: I’m a liberal Tory, that means I’ll screw the poor and cut child tax credits but I won’t give the rich that huge inheritance tax bonus until next year.

Clegg: I want no tax for the 10k superpoor. And did I mention PR?

Chair: Do Labour wish to say anything?

Blunkett: Ok, we give in.

Cameron: What?

Reid: Who wants to be a coalition of losers?

Clegg: But you said you wanted PR!

Reid: Balls.

Chair: Come again?

Ed Balls: We’ve got what we want, Brown’s head on a pole, plus we won’t get blamed for the cuts we would have had to make in office. We’ll clean up next election. Cameron will be toast and Clegg will be cornflakes.

Chair: You mean you’re walking out on the negotiations?

Harman: Manning the lifeboats actually. Good luck with the deckchairs. The Titanic’s all yours.

Clegg: I knew they weren’t serious. Cameron, we’ve got to do something. The axeman cometh.

Cameron: You mean the IMF?

Clegg: No, I mean our rank and file. If I don’t screw a deal out of this hung parliament I’m hung, and if you don’t, your name will be down there with Ian Duncan Smith.

Cameron: Oh my god. But we’re diametrically opposed!

Clegg: No, that was yesterday. Today we’re liberals. Any deal will do. Now about PR…

Recording indistinct. Sounds of Miliband brothers scuffling and Alex Salmond singing ‘Whose bonny wee lassie am I?’)

                                     _________________________________________________

Political whores trading

We strongly suspect that the attached transcript (above) is a hoax, which is why we didn’t pay good money for it.

However, something like it probably did happen. Not for a generation has there been such an edge of the seat performance from all three main parties on a high turnout vote, with voters queuing up for hours to get in on the act and then being turned away by the jobsworths running the polling stations. All that drama for a holy grail they all knew was a poisoned chalice. The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, had predicted that whoever formed the next government and made the required cuts in expenditure would be out of power for a generation afterwards. Perhaps this was why Labour apparatchiks like Blunkett and Reid were throwing in the towel even before the votes were all in, and all that warm Liberal friendly pillow-talk during the election rapidly cooled as the realisation dawned that sometimes it’s better to be outside the tent pissing in.

 An election which produced no clear winner did however produce three clear losers. All three leaders immediately faced the guillotine, Clegg for being the golden boy who lost seats, Cameron for his secretive, Blairlike reliance on an inner circle and disregard of anyone else, as well as his crap and meaningless ‘Big Society’ election message, and Brown just for being Brown when New Labour was supposed to be about Blair, flair and razzle dazzle. A shaky coalition forced to wield the machete on wages and public spending amid general public rage over fat cat corruption has got to be any politician’s worst nightmare, and as if that wasn’t enough, the spectre haunting Europe this season is one of Greeks burning down banks. Hanging over this new government, even before it’s got started, is a ghastly sense of foreboding.

 In the event, desperation has forced Cameron to marry Clegg, on the grounds of better a bad hand than no hand at all. Clegg in particular was in a hard bind. He would have been crucified for not making a deal, their first chance in 30 years, and given the Lib Dem ‘democracy’ mantra, no less crucified for hypocritically siding with Labour when they were in a clear elective minority with no mandate to govern. As it is, he will probably be crucified by his own party for this deal with the Tories. As one Liberal put it: “I think we could be wiped out for a generation by this decision. We will probably be annihilated at the next election” (Guardian, 12 May).

 A common assumption doing the rounds is that, regardless of Cameron’s plan to shore up the ConDem’d government with 5 year fixed term legislation and an increase in the majority requirement for a Parliamentary vote of no confidence, the whole show will probably collapse in disarray in a couple of years or so. Labour certainly are banking on a short period to regroup in opposition and another ‘97 like landslide. But coalitions only look shaky because they don’t happen often in Britain.

 In other EU countries where proportional representation is the norm, coalitions happen almost routinely and government still manages to function, insofar as governments can ever really be said to function.

 The socialist view of all this has been echoed by, of all people, Michael Portillo (see Editorial). Governments don’t control the money, the money controls governments, and when money says ‘Jump’, it is always the working class who are for the high jump. It is with some sadness that we predict that the poor will pay the bill, however the politicians work out their debt repayment schemes, while the rich will do alright, thanks very much. What’s not going to happen is that capitalism somehow falls flat on its face and dies of a seizure.

 Experience shows that capitalism is good at surviving, even though it may consume many of its supporters in the process. All governments are really coalitions of capitalist class interests against the working class, so if workers want something better than pain and oppression for themselves then they had better stop voting for its continuation. Were socialists ever to be in a parliamentary minority and faced with the Clegg dilemma, there’s no question what we would say: A plague on all your houses, you’ll get no deal from us.

Paddy Shannon

“Listen, lady . . .” (2010)

From the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

  . . . the anger was palpable; the body language unmistakable; our driver was one very pissed-off guy.

We were on a short visit from our home in Turkey to Athens in neighbouring Greece; our son was working there for a few days from his home in the US and it was a rare chance to share some time together. It was also the day after a general strike protesting the EU/IMF bail-out terms that would adversely impact everybody except the wealthy ruling élite whose greed had bled the country dry. We had picked up a taxi at the airport; our driver spoke pretty good English and asking him about the economic and political situation seemed the natural thing to do.

 “Listen, lady . . . Greece is a small country, only 11 million people; six million live here in Athens because there is nowhere else to get work. I came from Crete because it’s hard to make enough for my family on the islands.

“We thought, when we got rid of the military in 1974, that we would have democracy and accountability. What we got was a bunch of corrupt political families and their cronies who have made themselves rich and immune from prosecution for their crimes.

“They pay themselves multiple salaries for having their names on various committees and they also pay themselves for more working days than there are days in the year! But that’s not enough so they milk the system with government contracts and ‘commissions’ for their families and friends.”

 Our driver pointed to two stadia as we drove by, “You see those? They were built for the 2004 Olympic Games; we were already bankrupt and still they borrowed more money to pay for constructions that were profiting them and their business partners. Now they are empty and falling to pieces – no one uses them.”

 As we drove further into the city the piles of rubbish multiplied everywhere; building skips overflowing with days of stinking household and business refuse. Our driver’s anger continued to mount . . .

 “Do you realise how much these bastards are spending on weapons – guns, aircraft even ships and submarines? Billions of euros.” [the actual figure was 14 billion euros or 6 percent of GDP in 2007 and 2009 (Eric Reguly and Brian Milner  Globe & Mail (1 May) ; i.e. half of the annual deficit problem, 13-14 percent of GDP, is caused by inflated spending on war preparation. Greece’s overall debt is greater than its annual GDP and ‘public’ spending accounts for 50 percent of GDP]. “

 Our neighbours in Turkey have one of the largest militaries in the world, what could this little country do? Yet our politicians continue to make problems so they can put money in their own pockets from weapon sales.

 “After independence in 1827 the Greek people never had a problem with the Turks – before that bastard Venizelos (Prime Minister 1910-1915 and instigator of numerous internal and external conflicts) went to war Greeks and Turks lived together and worked together; villages and towns were mixed.

 “Living is a struggle; we have pensioners protesting on the streets with us because their pensions are being cut. Not just frozen – cut. It’s the same for most government workers. We even have policemen joining the protesters. The politicians are not cutting their own wages – no – it’s us, the ordinary people who are paying for their corruption.

 “Taxi licenses have gone up a huge amount and fares have been increased by 45 percent, so now I get fewer customers. Restaurants are closing – even the up-market ones have fewer people in them. Look over there, (pointing) we have many more people begging on the streets – homeless – there are even women with kids, but the politicians still have their fancy houses and their black Mercedes cars.”

 During our short stay in Athens we spoke with several people from different economic backgrounds; bitterness was a uniting factor. Will the ‘unprecedented’ bail-out of Greece by the EU/IMF quieten the protests and shore up the euro? We doubt that very much – after all, it is not the people who are being salvaged but the corrupt élite and their corrupt system. The Greek people have a long history of defiance and rebellion against corrupt authority.

 As yet another ‘socialist’ government prepares to protect what it and its cronies have stashed into their bank accounts and property developments, by once again doing the bidding of the financial ‘Masters of the Universe’ and stuffing the workers, we asked our angry taxi driver why he continued to put up with them. “What’s the alternative?” he queried. We could have told him, but he had a living to make and the taxi meter was running!

Alan Fenn & Janet Surman

Tiny Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sex workers in Bangladesh, some as young as 12, are putting their health at risk by taking a drug to make themselves fatter so they are more attractive to clients. Their madams feed them steroids also used to make cows gain weight:

[Link.]

The Mahatma Gandhi Limited Edition 3000 and Mahatma Gandhi Limited Edition 241 [pens] are available for 93,500 dirhams (£7,292.89) and 13,800 dirhams (£1,076.38) respectively:

[Dead Link.]

Imagine living in a Tesco house, sending your child to a Tesco school, swimming in a Tesco pool and, of course, shopping at the local Tesco superstore. According to the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe), the government’s adviser on architecture and design, this collective monopoly is not an imaginary dystopia. “Tesco Towns” on this model are already being planned across the UK, from Inverness in Scotland to Seaton in Devon:

[Link.]

It’s the ultimate hole in the wall a money machine that dispenses pure gold. But installed beneath the gold coated ceilings of Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Palace hotel, where royalty and billionaires come for cappuccinos topped with gold flakes, the machine almost seems part of the furniture:

[Dead Link.]

The Brazilian women’s movement’s applause for the inclusion of sexual and reproductive rights in the draft version of the government’s 3rd National Programme on Human Rights (PNDH 3) has been cut short by the decision to eliminate this controversial issue from the text. The government’s decision to modify the draft programme came after a campaign headed up by the Catholic Church, which went so far as to refer to leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as “Herod” an allusion to the king of Judea who ordered the killing of baby boys in and around Bethlehem after the birth of Jesus Christ, according to the Bible.

[Dead Link.]

“I’m not being rightwing,” she [Ayaan Hirsi Ali] says. “The people who believe themselves to be on the left, and who defend the agents of Islam in the name of tolerance and culture, are being rightwing. Not just rightwing. Extreme rightwing. I don’t understand how you can be so upset about the Christian right and just ignore the Islamic right. I’m talking about equality.”

[Link.]

A regiment of eunuchs should be established to guard India’s borders and leading politicians, a state minister suggested on Tuesday, citing their “loyalty and integrity”:

[Dead Link.]

An Australian woman Monday pleaded guilty to using her 12 yearold daughter as a sex worker. The 41year old woman, who was herself sexually abused when she was a child, has admitted to being the commercial operator of a sexual services business..The court was told that in August last year the woman complained of not having money so she and another man, Gary John Devine, decided to use her daughter as a prostitute

[Dead Link.]

Half of America has only 2.5% of the wealth

Half of America has only 0.5% of the stocks and bonds

Real average earnings have not increased in 50 years

Taxes get better and better for the rich

If you aren’t in the top 1%, then you’re getting a bum deal

[Link.]

Dawkins criticised (2010)

Book Review from the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Selfish Genius. How Richard Dawkins Rewrote Darwin’s Legacy. By Fern Elsdon-Baker. Icon Books. £8.99.

 This is an attack on Dawkins’s claim that the views he put forward in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene are the only one and true form of Darwinism. In this notorious book Dawkins advanced the view that the unit of natural selection is not the species nor a group within a species nor the individual organism but the individual gene. It’s a theory but it wasn’t Darwin’s, if only because Darwin had never heard of genes. So, Elsdon-Baker argues, it is perfectly possible to be a “Darwinist” without accepting the “selfish gene” thesis.

 Darwin’s contribution was to collect a mass of evidence to show that the various different species of life came about through a process of natural selection (akin to the artificial selection of animal breeders, pigeon-fanciers and flower growers, but unplanned and over a much much longer period, as environmental factors changed). Darwin was scrupulously honest and admitted that he did not know what caused the variations between individuals that the process of natural (and artificial) selection worked on. He suspected that it might have something to do with unknown “particles” governing the inheritance of an organism’s features. Later, after his death, such particles were identified (even though they didn’t have all the features Darwin had speculated they might have) and called “genes”.

 Elsdon-Baker outlines developments within biology since the publication of Dawkins’s book which in her view undermine his view of genes as the only unit on which natural selection operates – so-called “junk DNA” may also play a role and genes can be modified by other natural factors than natural selection. But even if these developments undermine Dawkins’s position, they don’t challenge Darwin’s basic conclusion that it is through natural selection that species evolved.

 Elsdon-Baker also criticises Dawkins for linking his personal militant atheism with science, seeing this as counter-productive and unscientific. She claims that it cannot be said that it is a scientific fact that “God does not exist”, on the grounds that it cannot be proved that a non-interventionist god does not exist. Maybe but this depends on what is meant by “exist”.

 A non-interventionist god, precisely because it did not intervene in the world of observable phenomena, could not be detected and so to all intents and purposes does not exist in any meaningful sense of the word. As to an interventionist god, as the mathematician and astronomer Laplace is supposed to have said to Napoleon, science does not need that hypothesis to explain the world of phenomena. Having said this, whether militant atheism (as opposed to practical, matter-of-fact materialism) is useful has been debated amongst socialists as well as scientists.

Adam Buick

Letters: Trend to fascism? (2010)

Letters to the Editors from the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trend to fascism?

Dear Editors

 The letter from David Lee (April Socialist Standard) in calling for a socialist government shows a lack of understanding – that socialism means an end to government and governed – but you are too dismissive of his seeing the inherent trend of capitalism to fascism. The “ideal” of fascism is not necessarily the pre-war examples of Germany and Italy. The philosophy of fascism is the corporate state, the well-ordered state, where the most able, that is by their own definition, assume the positions of power in politics and industry etc. The majority accept that their position is due to their being less able and grateful to accept their position as decided by “natural abilities”.

 Other ways of describing this attempt of natural selection of order in society are meritocracy and equality of opportunity. So this sorts out the order of society by “natural” rule and a “benign” ruler or ruling class makes the nation as one. Classes are dismissed because the order of society is as it should be. The division between capitalists and workers is again presented as the natural order so fascism can claim it is a classless society. This obfuscation between the owing class and the majority is the common good of the whole nation, that the interests of all as are of one. A phrase which appears regularly to plaster over this is “the third way” to mean a way which is neither capitalism nor socialism, but taking the best elements of each. Blair used it early on in his career, those in the social sector – or third sector of co-ops and the like, even Ted Heath in his attempt to square the circle in his conception of corporate capitalism – the human face of capitalism. But the earliest use of “the Third Way” was the NSDAP considering this before settling on “the Third Reich” (see Michael Burleigh’s A New History of Nazi Germany).

 Bismarck’s Germany, sometimes called state capitalism by Lenin already exhibited all the signs of “benign” fascism and was probably as formative to Hitler as to Lenin/Stalin. That Lenin thought state capitalism was the route to socialism and acknowledged the greater power of state capitalist Germany had beaten Russia was enough to show two apparently diametrically-opposed dictatorships grow as fascism.

 But probably most prescient was Marx in the Communist Manifesto what could be seen as the development of what was to be called fascism, the reactionary becoming radicalised in German or “True Socialism” which presaged the “eternal truths, the model nation”, opposing the “brutally destructive” tendency of Communism. And so on, I won’t repeat it all but summed up as the bombastic representative of the petty bourgeois Philistine. Which is as good a description of the true nature of fascism as any.

 So, yes, the expressions of fascism of the pre-war variety are not visible, at least on the surface, but aside from this the tendency for fascist thought lingers in every cell of capitalism, from the infantile individuals you sometimes meet who always have a ready list of sexist, racist, anti-Semitic “jokes” to share with guilty pleasure often on their mobile phones to the more discreet smoothing over by politicians whose job, if it can be called that, is to confuse the majority that it’s in all our interests to do whatever are the problems of the moment. To blur over the divisions in society and represent the nation as symbolic as Unity, the problems of capitalism are all our problems, we are all in it together – the National interests (sic or sick).

 The well-ordered nation state is the capitalists and politicians’ dream and aspiration, the corporate state of successful regulation of private and state undertakings, the self-defined meritocracy and the worker held in wage-slavery, happy to accept his or her lot in the best of all possible worlds.

 This is fascism in “idealised” form but capitalism’s also on a tendency towards it. But even if this should appear attractive to the petty-bourgeois Philistines it always comes along with the horrors experienced in the 20th century.

 Effectively, as for as real alternatives are concerned, this turns the country into a one-party state, the consciousness of the majority is formed by the prevailing accepted norms of society, education, the press, the whole structure of production. This is as effective for control as any secret police and more acceptable as being “democratic” than totalitarianism – you get to leave a mark every few years, that’s democracy, isn’t it?

Stuart Gibson, 

Wimborne, Dorset

Reply: 

We still think it’s an exaggeration (and misleading) to refer to present-day Britain as “fascist” – Editors.

Pete Seeger

Dear Editors

 As regards the article on Pete Seeger in the March Socialist Standard, isn’t it about time we looked at the positive rather than the negative aspects of the folk revival in the US?

 To quote from the article: “The 1960s saw Seeger affiliating with the current ‘good causes’, plucking his banjo at Civil Rights rallies (an unfortunate instrument, given Negro memories of stereotypic minstrel shows) and supporting the Anti-Vietnam War movement”.

 The banjo in American music was played by both blacks and whites and goes back to a time when music was more integrated, before the minstrel shows.

 Civil Rights was more than just a good cause. It was a colossal task to say the least. When people like Seeger sang at freedom rallies in the southern states they were putting themselves on the line, and to be dismissive about the role they played is sectarian. Anybody that fails to see the importance of music in the Civil Rights/Anti-Vietnam War movement is not really looking at the role it actually played.

Roy Beat, 

London SE27.

Cooking the Books: What’s a “Living Wage”? (2010)

The Cooking the Books column from the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

 “A ‘Living Wage’ for all”, alongside a photo with the caption “Fighting the growing gap between rich and poor”, was the heading of the first election promise of the candidates of the Green Party in last month’s general election :

 “Green MPs will demand a ‘Living Wage’ to ensure low paid workers earn enough to provide for themselves and their families.”

 It’s an old demand, going back to the ILP in the 1920s and beyond. Presumably what the Greens have in mind is a wage that would allow a worker to afford decent housing, enough proper food, new clothes, to go on holiday and run a car (but perhaps not this last, as they’re Greens).
 
 To find the level they consider necessary to achieve this you had to go to their full manifesto where they say :

 “The Green Party will fight for a National Minimum Wage of 60% of net national earnings (currently this would mean a minimum wage of £8.10 an hour).”

 As the current minimum wage is £5.80 an hour what they were proposing was a massive 40 percent increase, a promise that put them up with the Trotskyists. In fact they were promising more than the ‘Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition’ between Militant and the SWP which only promised an increase to £8 an hour.

 Even so, £8.10 an hour for a 40 hour week is only £16,848 a year, which hardly qualifies as an adequate “living wage”. But how’s it going to be implemented? Getting employers to increase the wages of anyone paid less than £16,848 a year to this is easier said than done. The unions haven’t been able to do it, otherwise it would have been done. But let’s assume for a moment that a law forcing them to do this was passed. What would happen?

 First, some employers would go bankrupt. Others would withdraw their capital from producing certain goods or services, so their price would rise. Eventually this would stabilise at a new, higher level at which employers would be able to make a profit even when paying the increased minimum wage. So the cost of living would go up, including for workers on the minimum wage.

 Second, given the increased labour costs, the introduction of previously unused labour-saving machinery would become cheaper vis-à-vis employing living labour. Employers would do this. So there’d be job losses and unemployment, particularly amongst the unskilled, would grow.

 Also it’s not clear how the Greens’ plan would reduce the gap “between rich and poor”, at least not between those who figure on the Sunday Times Rich List (25 April) and those on the minimum wage. It might reduce the gap between low-paid and higher-paid workers, but this would just be a change within the working class – what we socialists have always called a “redistribution of poverty” – which would not affect the gap between the income of the working class and that of the capitalist class.

 In any event, socialism is not about redistributing income and wealth from the rich to the poor, but about establishing a society that would not be divided into rich and poor. To adapt Marx, workers should replace the green demand for a “Living Wage” by the revolutionary demand for the “Abolition of the Wages System”.