"The Thatcher and the Michael Foot . . . " (1983)

From the February 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Click to enlarge.

Tinkering about (2021)

Book Review from the February 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Angrynomics by Mark Blyth and Eric Lonergan (Agenda Publishing, 2020. £12.35)

The economist Mark Blyth and hedge fund manager Eric Lonergan postulate that anger takes two distinct forms, public and private. Public shows itself in protests, strikes and xenophobia (tribal), while private anger shows itself as mental health issues and despair. They assert that policies enacted by most of the current ‘neoliberal’ governments have failed to address this underlying public anger and that that is the main reason for the recent rise in the popularity of right-wing populist governments. The analogy of hardware and software to describe some of the economic mechanisms to support their arguments is unconvincing. Fintan O’Toole’s book, Heroic Failure, provided more convincing arguments for the shift in the public mood away from neoliberal ideology and the rise in nationalism.

There are references to the French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital and his idea of a wealth tax. However, they never get around to properly criticising his ideas, despite the promise in the text. They introduce their ‘big’ idea of taxing corporations for use of the public’s personal data, and then investing this in the stock market. They estimate a high return of 6 percent invested over a 15-year period, which might seem unlikely given the volatility of the market. This scheme seems more likely to increase commissions for the financial services sector while having no impact on the immediate issue of the huge growth in inequality and the dearth of ‘decent’ jobs, poor public healthcare and lack of social housing. 

The above ideas are just tinkering around with the capitalist system in a classical Keynesian way. They will not prevent the insatiable advance of capital accumulation and the continued rise in inequality and anger of the dispossessed working class.

Nick Sampays

Dealing with the deal (2021)

From the February 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

So, the shouting is over, and a Brexit deal has finally been agreed. In one sense, credit where credit is due. Boris Johnson and David Frost have achieved what they set out to do: to get tariff-free access to EU market for British goods; to end freedom of movement; and to remove the UK from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (the body that enforces the rules of the EU’s law and single market policies). Credit where it is due to Michel Barnier and the EU negotiating team, who exacted a measured price for agreeing to the UK’s wishes.

The EU came into being because, after the Second World War, the capitalists of Europe found themselves competing with those of the Soviet Union and the United States. The latter could achieve enormous economies of scale and concentration of capital, no single group of European capitalists could match that. In order to expand beyond the narrow horizons of their national arrangements, agreements needed to be struck so capital could flow and investments be made secure.

The European Coal and Steel Community was brought into being to regulate the core resources that can cause war between states and so harm investments. This was supplemented by the European Economic Community, and eventually became the European Union. The goal to harmonise and protect investments led to the creation of a single market and customs union: essentially meaning that all of Europe’s capitalists were competing under the same rules.

Rather than have erratic bilateral negotiation of those rules between states, the institutions of the European Union were born to harmonise, implement and enforce those rules. The European Council, the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament and the European Commission were set up to engage in continuous open discussion about how to build the economic community. The European Court of Justice was given the job of interpreting the rules when dispute arose: taking the politics out of matters and turning them into a predictable architecture so that capitalists knew that mere whims of political office holders could not interfere with their interests.

This pooling of national sovereignty necessarily meant power slipping away from the individual state’s elites and a weakening of the links between their capitalist class and their state (and also meant the emergence of a European elite, such as the likes of Stephen Kinnock, son of the former European Commissioner Neil and in turn married to the former Prime Minister of Denmark Helle Thorning-Schmidt).

Divergence of interests

The Brexit debate in the UK was driven by the divergence between the manufacturers of goods and those engaged in financial services. Different rules and jurisdictions are part of the life blood of financial services, every barrier to trade is an opportunity to make money, whereas for manufacturers they are a cost to be eliminated in the search for profits. As financial services became a more significant part of the UK economy, so the cries to be freed from the regulatory grasp of Brussels rose, and the Brexiteers found their coffers filled with fighting funds.

The deal achieved between the UK and EU, formally styled the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, sets out the new terms of trade and investment going forward, now the UK has left the institutions of the EU.

Most obviously, it allows tariff-free and quota-free trade between the two market areas of the UK and the EU. This means no tax will be paid on goods moving to or from either market. Customs checks, however, still apply, although the Agreement does mandate that they will be minimal checks and trusted trader schemes will be set up to keep goods moving through as smoothly as possible. However, this only applies to goods.

Services, and importantly financial services, are not covered by the agreement beyond the general WTO terms to prevent discrimination against overseas firms and investors (eg. by having local ownership requirement rights). There is no provision for recognition of qualifications or ‘passporting.’ The size and strength of London’s financial services mean that, given the commitments to the free flow of capital, this should not be a short-term problem, but it does mean there is a gap and both parties are free to try and exploit it.

Partnership Council

The Agreement will be managed by a Partnership Council which will contain a UK government minister and an EU Commissioner (meaning the UK no longer can talk directly to the Council of Ministers, as they discovered during the Brexit negotiations, so that scope for trying to talk to heads of government will be limited. The UK will have to deal with the EU as a united bloc). This Partnership Council will be supplemented by a plethora of working groups and specialist committees to implement the various detailed strands of the Agreement. It will have its own secretariat. The Council will meet alternately in London and Brussels.

The Council will supervise and facilitate the implementation of the agreement. It also has the power to amend the agreement and make supplementary agreements. As such the deal is a deal to keep talking, and be in continuous negotiation over terms of trade, much like the EU infrastructure. That this only needs the agreement of a government minister and an EU commissioner means changes can be undertaken quickly and quietly, without transparency of process.

This is even more so, given that the Act of Parliament to implement the deal expressly gives UK ministers the power to make regulations to implement the agreement. Further, the law requires that UK courts interpret all laws in such a way as to make them compliant with the agreement. So much for Parliamentary sovereignty: from now on one minister’s deal with Europe can radically change all the laws of the UK without debate and without scrutiny. It also raises the prospect of UK courts effectively striking down any future Acts of Parliament that might be deemed to be incompatible with the partnership agreement.

As European Law no longer applies, when disputes under the agreement occur, they will first be raised in the Partnership Council and if bilateral agreement cannot be reached, a three-person arbitration board will be convened. The UK and EU will maintain a list of people who would be eligible for ‘high judicial office’ to serve on these tribunals. Only the UK and EU can raise these disputes, private citizens cannot raise them. Their rulings will not directly become law, and courts in the two jurisdictions are expressly not bound by them.

That is, Johnson has expressly removed the legalistic framework that characterises the EU approach to market governance, in favour of bilateral political relations. Instead of imposing fines or other penalties, the arbitration panels will enable the respective parties to raise retaliatory tariffs should the other side not live up to their part of the deal. This includes cross sectional tariffs, ie. being able to raise tariffs on goods outside the immediate dispute in order to inflict proportionate pain, eg. if the EU started to subsidise cheese, the UK could retaliate beyond imposing tariffs on cars.

The fact that these measures are political (and thus discretionary) means they can be used as a threat before they need to be implemented. The mere threat may be enough to deter investors. The lack of predictability will be a significant factor, but that is the price for leaving the court system.

(As a matter of fact, the ECJ does retain a small role, governing the UK’s participation in European schemes, and also the rules of Northern Ireland, under the Withdrawal Agreement).

Toddler’s bedtime

Although the UK managed to avoid being bound by the EU’s regulations and level playing field rules, this looser formation will leave the UK in the position of the toddler who goes to bed whenever they want to, and it is just a coincidence that that is the same time their parents tell them to.

Rules on country of origin mean that the UK cannot leverage its proximity and access to become a route for third parties to enter their goods into the EU. With car batteries being subject to country-of-origin rules, the UK wouldn’t be able to turn itself into a place of assembly for electric car makers, an important future market.

The big loss for workers is the end of freedom of movement. To go and work in the EU will generally require a work visa from a member state (short-term working is permitted under restricted circumstances, but people have already noticed that singers and musicians will find it much harder to tour in Europe now).

What the deal amounts to is an architecture for a managed divergence now the UK has left the EU. What it means in practice is yet to be seen, but a possible example is Ireland, after it achieved independence from Britain. It spent the next fifty years effectively as Britain’s farm, bound through infrastructural and economic ties to Britain despite being politically independent. The power of capital knows no national boundaries, and even if a group in Britain has managed to secure their exclusive access to the levers of the British state, it is not guaranteed they will be able to do much with them.

Indeed, it is likely, now the heat has been taken out of the immediate UK/EU relationship, that economic convergence could quietly resume through the mechanism of the Partnership Council.

Pik Smeet

Gnostic Marxist (2021)

From the February 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

I am a gnostic. Now, before anyone has an attack of the socialist vapours, this is not going to be an attempt to reconcile Marxism with religion. It is the epistemic principle that lies behind the original esoteric manifestations of Gnosticism that we will consider.

For all the fanciful claims made by Gnostics, the essence is each individual coming to know in such a profound way that the knowledge leads to action via conviction. The alternative was for salvation to be delivered by the Church, the authoritative body controlling ideology, effectively rendering people powerless.

The material conditions for achieving socialism exist and have done so for quite some time. The political structures also exist through which that goal can be democratically pursued. Yet, in the near 120 years of the existence of the Socialist Party in Britain the vital element, the working class, has not embraced their own cause.

The last general election, just over a year ago, once again demonstrated how divided against itself the working class remains, and how distant it seems from becoming a credible socialist force. The collapse of the ’Red Wall’ allowing an insurgency of the Blue Meanies was but the latest example of the dominant acceptance that problems can be solved without really changing anything.

Brexit has been an ongoing exemplar with much heat, but little light, as staying in or leaving the EU was the rancorous issue: which would be best, opting for capitalism or choosing capitalism? Hardly worth the political energy that has been expended on it.

Cue nationalism. With Scotland firmly in the Remain camp, the SNP raised the independence banner for workers to rally around yet again. If they are successful will there be some haven from the travails of capitalism north of the Tweed to Solway border posts?

It’s a nonsense of course, but a powerful and a destructive one because while it occupies the minds of Scottish workers, perhaps rouses the antagonism of English workers, they lose sight of the crucial fact that, actually, they are just workers who share common cause with all other workers.

In a song, ‘The White Rose and the Red’ there is a verse that runs,

‘Pennines slope to east and west, / Yet where on the moorland range

Is a line that’s clearly drawn / Where the colour of roses change?

By colours men are misled…’

Be they the colours of roses or other divisive symbols such as flags such totems remain potent political narcotics. If there was an election tomorrow there is nothing to stop people voting for socialism, except they wouldn’t. It’s not simply an absence of socialist candidates, for most who might claim to be socialist voters, their ballots would most likely go to the present-day wearer of the red rose.

The determining factor in socialism becoming realisable is the material conditions necessary being in existence. Without such conditions, the productive and distributive technology, such a society would remain an unobtainable ideal.

History can furnish examples of idealists establishing communities based on common ownership and equality that proved either unsustainable, or, lacking widespread support, were actively suppressed by vested interests.

By the time Marx was writing, those necessary conditions were either in existence or well on the way to becoming so. There has been no significant material barrier to establishing a socialist society for 150 years or more.

Through those intervening years, despite claims made in disparate countries at various times, socialism has yet to garner the vital mass support needed for it to be realised. What is preventing working people deciding to act in their own best interests?

The answer seems simple, but is proving stubbornly difficult to address. The objective conditions for socialism may well exist, but the subjective conditions presently do not. This is the factor that needs to change to fully realise the vast potential of material reality.

When socialists consider the working class they envisage the majority in society acting collectively to pursue their common interests. However, in Britain for example, that collective is actually so many million individuals and each individual needs to become a socialist for the working class to become socialist.

For socialism to succeed, then it is not just the millions in Britain who must be committed, but also the billions worldwide. Not as followers of a vanguard, but active in their own right on their own behalf. Some task.

Marx famously stated: ‘Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world is various ways; the point is to change it.’ It is not enough to mount convincing arguments in favour of socialism if they do not become integral in the thinking of the vast majority. Then they can act collectively to change their world.

And this is where being a Marxist gnostic comes in. Actually, all socialists are political gnostics by dint of having become their own authority. There isn’t a secular ‘Church’ to which they can subscribe that will mediate between them and salvation, the achievement of socialism. This is the case whether there be just a few, or vast numbers of socialists.

My tongue may be lodged a little in my cheek, but those who have seen through the miasma of falsehoods that cloud the general view of capitalist society, are the ones who know in a profound sense, why capitalism cannot simply be made better, why socialism is the only viable alternative.

The task of dispersing that miasma remains daunting, but feudal monarch, bishops and barons felt their positions in the world were unassailable, while their peasants largely regarded society as being divinely ordered and beyond change. Yet change it most certainly did, and profoundly so.

We will conclude with a secular (and very, very loose) reworking of the third secret saying in ‘The Gospel of Thomas’:

If it is said by those who lead you, ‘Socialism is in this country, or that country,’ you are merely hearing the squawking of parrots.

If it is said, ‘Socialism has been tried and failed and is behind you,’ they are trying to blind your vision with myopic hindsight.

Rather socialism is all around you in all its productive potential.

And socialism is within you with your ability to embrace that potential.

Then you will realise socialism for what it is.

But until you know, you dwell in the poverty of philosophy and you are that poverty of philosophy.

Here endeth the lesson.

Dave Alton

How I became a socialist (2021)

From the February 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Up until Brexit politics didn’t really feature much in my life except for a brief time at university. Brexit changed all that, it made me look deeper into current affairs, which made me realise that the system was broken and socialism could be just the thing to fix it.

I was originally from a small mining village in the North East of England. My mum was of Irish extraction, a pious catholic and salt-of-the-earth working-class woman. She married my dad, an émigré from Portuguese India. The house was a 2-up-2-down terrace with an outside toilet that always froze up in winter. I remember the backyard had cobbled stones with an open drain for the sink waste. Dad had knocked it up with old tin cans and it would block up, he never was any good at DIY. Working for the National Coal Board (NCB) Dad received the free allocation of coal. I guess that would be described as a company perk these days but in fact just helped keep wages down for the NCB. The coal truck would dump a ton of coal out the front and mum would wheel-barrow it around into the backyard, where it was stacked. In the 60s when the pit closed and Dad lost his job, he managed to find a storekeeper’s job with Wimpey, the house builder, in Birmingham. So we upped sticks, dad, mum and six kids to join the exodus of many other families from the Durham coalfields. I was 8 years old.

As a child and adolescent I didn’t have any great political awareness, I was more interested in playing football and cricket with my mates. However, I do remember the Aberfan disaster in 1966; principally because of my mum’s reaction to the horrendous deaths of all those innocent children. The political significance of that disaster was lost on me at the time but would come to influence my views of government in later life. Any political awareness I had was probably socialist coming from my mother who described Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists as: ‘the best book she had ever read’. My dad had come to the UK in the 1950s and, after a short time as a clerk in the civil service, joined the British army, the first six years in the regulars during the Suez crisis and a further 27 with the part-time territorials. He would often take me along to the territorial pay corps offices on the back of his Vespa 90 scooter, hoping I would join up when I grew up, but I only went along for the ride. I couldn’t stand all the uniforms and tipping your forelock to the officers. I remember dad always complaining that I was always asking ‘why’ when he would assert some Catholic religious dogma; mystified as to why I didn’t share ‘the faith’.

I never shared my parents’ religious views as I found them impossible to reconcile with science and reason. I was always keen on physics at school and left home to study electronics at Salford University in Manchester. Whilst at university I became involved with student politics and joined the Anti-Nazi League, an offshoot of the Socialist Workers Party. I participated in many demos protesting against the National Front. After graduation I dropped out of active politics and concentrated on my engineering career. In the 80s and 90s my involvement in politics was restricted to just casting a vote.

In the early 80s the company I worked for at the time sent me to Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales to install some electronics in the main telephone exchange. When I arrived I was shocked to find the whole town shrouded in the dark shadow of huge coal slag heaps. It was then I realised that this was just four miles from where the tragedy took place at Aberfan some 20 years previously. I can remember being moved to tears visiting the cemetery seeing so many gravestones for the children that died. I was incredulous that governments could have allowed that to happen and not even bothered to restore the landscape after the horrendous mess the industry had made to the environment. The scruffy terraced housing, run-down shops and impoverished locals left an impression that this place had been forgotten by the powers that be.

Thatcher’s assault on the miners, the unions and her profuse use of police violence to break up strikes was shocking to witness. The charade of the Falklands War to bolster her re-election in 1983 just reinforced my opinions of the Conservative Party. The imposition of the Poll Tax in 1989 seemed the last straw, and even I considered joining one of many demonstrations against that unfair tax against the working class. Her fall from grace and replacement by centrist John Major did seem like a change for the better. I didn’t have any great understanding of politics, believing Labour to be a socialist party that cared more about the working class; therefore, deserving of my vote.

When New Labour finally regained power with the Blair/Brown regime in the 90s there was great expectation in the country, which was reflected in the sweeping victory in 1997. However, with the tragedy of the Iraq war, the selling of public utilities, the Private Finance Initiatives, etc it became almost impossible to differentiate between New Labour and the old Tories, so there didn’t seem any point in voting.

Brexit

In 2016 I retired, providing lots of free time and which happened to coincide with Brexit. The propaganda from the Tory Vote Leave side and UKIP had such a ring of xenophobia it was reminiscent of the National Front back in the 1970s. Alarmingly, fuelled by the media this polemic seemed to resonate and rekindled latent nationalistic fervour in a large section of the public. This level of public support seemed perplexing as the arguments didn’t seem to stand up to any scrutiny, particularly from an economic perspective. In the media, many commentators were citing neoliberal economics as one of the main causes of this rise in right-wing populism. Not having any idea of what that actually meant I started reading some of the popular political commentators: Robert Peston’s WTF; Finton OToole on Heroic Failure; and Ian Dunt’s What the Hell Happens Now? I discovered Yanis Varoufakis’s, Adults in the Room, which was a great eye-opener for the workings of the European Union.

Austerity

The first time I saw the 2015 movie The Big Short I found it somewhat confusing with all the references to financial derivatives such as Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs). It was only after reading Robert Peston’s How Do We Fix This Mess? that the shocking reality of what happened in 2008 became clear. The financial system was built on debt and required the subsequent bail out of the banks. Labour chancellor Gordon Brown then embarked on his ‘balancing the budget’ austerity programme, which continued under subsequent Tory administrations. This has been the main factor in the effective decline in living standards (real earnings) in recent times, particularly for those on low incomes. Brown had constantly claimed that, with his policy of sticking to tight inflation targets, the age of boom-to-bust economics was over – so much for that prediction.

New Hope

I joined the Labour Party in 2018, attracted by their new manifesto which promised to reverse some of the Tory and previous Labour sell-offs of public utilities. Jeremy Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell promised a more cooperative and democratic economy starting with a limited programme of renationalisation, a National Bank, increased spending on the welfare state, increasing corporation tax, reducing student tuition fees and scrapping Trident. These seemed at the time to be a great reason to sign up to Labour.

However, as a leader Corbyn came over as indecisive and easily undermined by many on the rightwing of the parliamentary party. This indecision, exemplified with his position on Brexit and accusations of antisemitism, established him as weak in the eyes of the public and an easy target for the media.

The election result in December 2019 and the collapse of the Labour vote in Labour’s key heartlands of the North gave the green light for a centrist takeover and the marginalisation of the Left.

I started reading economic theorists such as Stiglitz, Krugman, Piketty and Ha Joon Chang, authors of several texts on the crisis facing neoliberal, free-market capitalism. They all suggest state interventionist methods to reform the system to prevent this recurrent boom-to-bust cycle and rise in inequality. What they don’t seem to want to admit is that these Keynesian reformist methods have been tried many times in the past and as yet haven’t managed to prevent the boom-to-bust cycles which repeat every few years.

A social-democratic Labour Party can’t achieve its expressed aim of liberty, equality and fraternity by reforming capitalism. The capitalist ethic of dog-eat-dog, grow-or-die is diametrically opposed to a truly democratic, mutual, caring, equal and ecological society.

Discovering socialism

My awareness of socialism started when an old friend suggested I read some Murray Bookchin. Bookchin, an American theorist from New York, has written copiously on everything Left and has certainly shaped my ideas since reading his books and essays. The material on YouTube from Richard Wolff, Double Down News and alternative media like Counter Punch and Byline Times have also helped shape my views.

Having previously been a member of the Anti-Nazi League as a student I had some knowledge of the SWP and so thought they might be worth having a look at. I attended a few online discussions to get an idea of where the party stood against my view of socialism. It soon came apparent that they have a strict ideological commitment to a Leninist/Trotskyist interpretation of Marx. I didn’t feel comfortable with this, being aware that this revolutionary approach of overthrowing the state has always led to state capitalism, not socialism.

On Google using the search string ‘list of socialist parties in the UK’, then following the most popular result, Wikipedia; a huge list of parties is revealed. Browsing through the list you come across around 20 allegedly socialist (non-capitalist) organisations. I checked out those and found most were in the same mould as the Trotskyist SWP or supporters of the Labour Party.

But the SPGB welcome page is clearly laid out with a straightforward statement of Party goals. The Party’s declaration of key socialist principles is clear: common ownership, democratic control and free access to goods and services. This contrasts markedly with other so-called socialist parties where a lot of policy is hidden. The website also had a wealth of well-researched articles and literature; all this encouraged me to join one of the online meetings to find out more.

After attending a few meetings and reading the literature I decided to join. What particularly struck me was the requirement to complete a questionnaire. A little bit intimidating at first compared to entering your address and credit card details to join the Labour Party. However, as an option you can just answer the questions over a call should you so wish.

Having been in the Party for just a few months, I was quite surprised when some of the experienced hands asked me to write about myself and what motivated me to join the Party. However, support and helpful advice was at hand. Just a word too on the informal online group meetings through Discord which are run twice a week. They give you a chance to learn new stuff and discuss current issues with like-minded people in a friendly environment.

The party is democratically organised in small groups and branches rather than being focused on direct action, public demonstrations and confrontation with the state, and I would heartily recommend anyone with like-minded views to join.

Nick Sampays

Anti-capitalist (2021)

Book Review from the February 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles by David Harvey Pluto Press, 2020

This is more a collection of short essays than a comprehensive book. Harvey remains impressive as ever when explaining the basic ideas of Karl Marx succinctly and effectively, including such things as the operation of the rate of profit and how it relates to technological change.

The intent of the book is to give print form to Harvey’s regular podcast output, and the editors suggest it is a good accessible gateway into Harvey’s work and thoughts.

The chapters are thus short, and slightly repetitive, using the same examples (eg. that China has used more cement in two or three years than the US has done in the past 100). But that reflects the bite sized nature of the chapters, the book can be picked up and put down.

The focus across chapters is on the difference between mass and rate. Harvey notes that we should be more concerned about the mass of carbon dioxide we have already put into the atmosphere, rather than think about the rate at which we are adding more carbon. Likewise, he notes the importance of examining the mass of profit rather than just the rate of profit when examining the operations of the capitalist system (and he also gently uses that to criticise the Marxist writers who see the fall in the rate of profit as the key feature of capitalism).

As a geographer, he has useful insights into the geopolitical goals of China, and particularly notes how the brutal treatment of the Uighur may be connected with their attempts to control central Asia and thus cement a position as the predominant power on Earth. This is also joined by useful comments on the ‘second nature’ of the urban environment, as well as a useful discussion of his notion of accumulation through dispossession.

There is also a useful discussion on the place of the concept of alienation in Marxian thought, which includes a light sketch in how the notion has been examined in the second half of the twentieth century and the usefulness of continuing to apply it as a tool of analysis today. Particularly, there is an interesting discussion of how the notion of alienation might be used to examine the rise of Donald Trump as a symptom of the disaffection of the deindustrialised areas of the United States (he goes into dispiriting detail of the betrayal involved in the closure of a Detroit car plant).

Disappointingly, Harvey sees modern capitalism as too complex and interrelated to be changed wholesale, and instead looks to micro-changes and warm words. The book is thus long on analysis of capitalism but short on actual concrete anti-capitalism.

As a pedagogue, Harvey includes a selection of discussion questions for each chapter and further reading at the end of the book. These are actually good questions, and going through them might be a useful exercise and worth the price of the book.

Pik Smeet

Pathfinders: Gene genies (2021)

The Pathfinders Column from the February 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Revolutionaries tend to like science, and science loves revolutions. There’s one going on right now in something called proteomics. This studies the structures of proteins, collectively the proteome, which unlike the genome differs from cell to cell. The gist is that DNA makes RNA, and RNA makes proteins, but what do proteins make? That depends on the cell they’re in and the 3-dimensional shape they fold into. The hows and whys of this have up to now never been fathomed. But late last year Google’s DeepMind AI lab was able to predict the 3-dimensional folding of a protein (BBC Online, 30 November).

If this doesn’t sound very awe-inspiring, imagine you’re a kid with a basic Lego set, and one day your mum gives you a tool to design and create any individual piece you like, for any purpose, in any quantity. The potential limits go well beyond the sky.

But that’s building new things. What about debugging what already exists? Another revolution generating huge excitement involves the ability to cut and edit individual strips of DNA. Work is progressing so fast that textbooks, even if they existed, would be out of date as soon as they were printed. And as is so often the case, this breakthrough happened largely by accident.

Life exists in three domains (four if you include viruses): bacteria, archaea (a kind of alt-bacteria), and eukaryota (plants, fungi, slime moulds, us). Eukaryotes have fancy enhancements like a cell nucleus, but the other domains are much more rudimentary. Yet a few years ago it was discovered that the genomes of many bacteria (read also archaea) had strange repeating sequences in their DNA which nobody could account for. Fast forward to the revelation that these sequences were bits of virus DNA left over from attacks by bacteriophages, viruses that ‘eat’ bacteria. It turned out that the bacterium was able to use these DNA sequences as templates to peel off an RNA replica strand, a bit like an identikit portrait, that could be sent off round the cell to hunt for any matching DNA from other phage attackers, and bind itself onto it. Then came the killer surprise. The RNA strand came with a special weapon, a protein called Cas9, that was able to cut through the phage’s DNA at the binding point, thus dismantling the phage. In other words, bacteria and archaea had a hitherto unsuspected search-and-destroy immune system.

Imagine the squid-like blob attached to the astronaut’s face in the film Alien, all set to inject its loathsome babies into his innards to eat him from the inside out. But the quick-thinking astronaut pulls out a pair of scissors, aims it at the exact spot, and snips the squid-blob’s brain stem. The squid-blob drops off his face, stone dead. Bacteria do this to phages using these repeating identifier sequences. To describe these sequences, someone came up with the wonderfully recondite name of ‘clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats’, or CRISPR for short.

So far so obscure, but then it was realised that if you could tweak these sequences, you could use the process to quickly cut, or cut out, any bit of DNA, at any point you like. If a single faulty base-pair is known to cause serious conditions, such as sickle-cell anaemia, it should be a simple matter to edit it out. Because genes are passed on to descendants, the edit would be permanent. Other life-crippling conditions and diseases could follow, such as cystic fibrosis or Huntingdon’s Disease. Edit the genome of the carrier mosquito and you could in theory wipe out malaria and dengue fever.

CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing has been described as one of the biggest discoveries in the history of biology, potentially allowing us to control and rewrite evolution. The two leading researchers in this field, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, just recently shared the 2020 Nobel prize for chemistry, incidentally the first science Nobel ever awarded to two women.

But what to do with a frontier technology like this, that’s the big question, and it quickly becomes a political one. Professor Doudna is upbeat about the potential, especially for agriculture. But with capitalism, priorities are money driven, a trait discernible where the process has already been used – to create low-fat pigs, extra-woolly Cashmere goats, and gluten-free wheat, this last probably not for the few genuine Coeliac sufferers but more likely for the huge narcissistic food-fad market. Slightly alarmingly the professor also talks about creating mythological creatures like flying lizards and even unicorns (bit.ly/3oSvNTF). But, like many others including Professor Charpentier, she is quite aware of the Frankenstein potential, and an intense ethical debate is in full swing.

Genes can have multiple effects on other genes, and so on in cascading effects, most barely if at all understood. What if an edit causes an unexpected change, and the change ‘gets out’ and can’t be stopped? Home CRISPR kits are already starting to appear on the market, raising the spectre of some enthusiastic schoolkid accidentally creating a terminator gene that escapes into the wild.

Socialist society would also have to weigh up such risks. But capitalism raises the threat level far higher than it needs to be. Its entrenched class-divided nature could lead to this technology being hijacked by the rich in order to create designer babies and widen the class divide at the genetic level, a Brave New World scenario. Moratoriums on human genome editing do exist, and a Chinese scientist was jailed for three years in 2019 for carrying out illegal work on twins. Yet the money and the temptation are there, and covert work is probably continuing in other dark corners. The gene genie is out of the bottle.

Then there is capitalism’s compulsion to weaponise new technology. A genetic ‘bullet’ wouldn’t just disable a soldier, it would disable all that soldier’s descendants. Fortunately perhaps, work is already underway on how to limit the effects of CRISPR or even stop it in its tracks. Viruses, currently the world’s Public Enemy Number One, offer a solution. It transpires that, in the microbial arms race, many viruses have evolved a powerful anti-CRISPR mechanism, which we could exploit (New Scientist, 13 January).

It’s an indictment of capitalism that we even need to worry about weaponisation, or misuse by bad actors for commercial gain. No matter what technological benefits capitalism has fostered, fundamentally it doesn’t care about our welfare, only about money. Nobody in their right mind would trust a friend like that. We shouldn’t trust a social system like that either.

While science remains trapped in the service and thrall of capital, its revolutions will always be suspect, its achievements monetised and perverted, and its intentions derailed. The revolution needed to emancipate science for our collective benefit is never going to come out of a science lab. It has to come from the rest of us.

Paddy Shannon

Cooking the Books: All state activists now? (2021)

The Cooking the Books Column from the February 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the eve of Britain’s final departure from the EU, Boris Johnson wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph in which he praised the development of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine as an example of collaboration between ‘state activism’ and ‘free market capitalism’. The government, he said, had provided the cash and the scientists while AstraZeneca provided the production facilities and the marketing. This was interpreted as a hint of the economic policy he envisaged his government pursuing.

This praise of ‘state activism’ does seem strange coming from a Tory prime minister as it has traditionally been more associated with the Labour Party. In fact, combining ‘state activism’ with ‘free market capitalism’ has been the economic policy of the Labour Party since it abandoned ‘nationalisation’ – the state owning and running industries – as its panacea. Since then its policy has been that the main means of production should remain in the hands of profit-seeking private enterprises, so with profit as the motivating force of productive activity and ‘state activism’ taking place in this context.

When Labour could still be considered a classic social-democratic reformist party, it envisaged the state being active within capitalism to improve the standard of living of workers through social reforms that brought them some direct material benefit. Nowadays, the Labour Party envisages the state being active to provide cash for infrastructure projects to be carried out by private enterprises and for improving productivity through training schemes.

This was the case even during the Corbyn interregnum. Corbyn himself didn’t seem much interested in economic policy. This was left to the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, John McDonnell, who set out to develop an economic policy that Big Business and the City could accept as credible and reasonable.

To this end, he invited the economist Marianna Mazzucato, author of The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking the Public vs. Private Sector Myths, to be one of the Labour Party’s advisers on economic policy. According to publicity for her book, she argued that ‘in the history of modern capitalism the State has not only fixed market failures, but has also actively shaped and created markets’.

This is historically and empirically correct. States can and have done this but the markets they create are not extra markets. They are created by taking money from sections of the capitalist class (whether through taxes, borrowing or inflation) and giving it to other sections to carry out projects that a state has judged are in the general interest of the capitalist class as a whole.

McDonnell made this Labour Party policy, telling the 2015 Labour Party conference:

 ‘We will create what Marianna Mazzucato describes as the entrepreneurial state. A strategic state that works in partnership with businesses, enterprises and workers to stimulate growth.’

The state itself would not organise production, but only ‘stimulate’ private enterprises to do this by putting up the money for them to make profits from activity it wanted to encourage. Or, as Johnson put it, a collaboration between ‘state activism’ and ‘free enterprise capitalism’.

In embracing this, he has stolen the Labour Party’s clothes. It may just be rhetoric designed to retain the support of ex-Labour voters in the Red Wall constituencies in the North that helped the Tories win power in the 2019 general election. It won’t be popular with the hard-line free-marketeers on the ‘libertarian’ wing of the Tory party who deny that the market can ever misallocate resources.

50 Years Ago: Decimalisation (2021)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whatever difficulties people may meet with in handling the metric currency changes on 15 February the changes themselves will have no effect at all on the main operations of the British monetary system or its standing in world currencies. New names will be given to some old coins, and three new ‘coppers’ will appear, the new 2p, 1p, and ½p but the total amount of ‘copper’ coins, about £200 million, will not be altered on D day, nor will the notes in circulation, about £3,660 million. One change has however already been introduced which distorts somewhat the Bank of England’s weekly figures of note circulation. This was in November 1970 when £96 million of ten-shilling notes ceased to be legal tender, thus dropping out of the Bank of England’s note figures, having been replaced by the same quantity of the ten shilling (50p) ‘silver’ coins.

After D day, as before, the pound will still have the same exchange rate with the dollar (about $2.40), and with the rest of the currencies inside and outside the European Economic Community.

This does not mean that the changes have no great significance; this will only become apparent some years ahead if Britain joins the European Six and if the Six themselves succeed in setting their, at present deadlocked, negotiations about moving towards a single European currency.

The D day changes are a first step aimed at an eventual situation in which there will be only one currency covering the whole of Europe, just as the dollar covers the whole of the USA and the rouble the whole of Russia.

(Socialist Standard, February 1971)

Editorial: Chaos on the Capitol (2021)

Editorial from the February 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month we looked at the chaos that has been engulfing the capitalist world in the twenty-first century. The chaos shows no sign of abating.

On 6 January, at a ‘Save America’ rally organised in Washington D.C., Donald Trump fired up a crowd of supporters, repeating the fantasy that the presidential election had been stolen from him and calling on them to march on to the Capitol. This they did and then went on to storm the Capitol building in a desperate attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden as the next President. They met with little resistance from the police, indeed in some instances they appeared to have been assisted by them, in stark contrast to a Black Lives Matter demonstration outside the Capitol in the summer where the building was heavily fortified by the National Guard. Amid the chaos, five people lost their lives.

The rioters comprised a motley bunch of disgruntled workers, small business owners, armed vigilantes, highly paid professional workers, far-right groups like the Proud Boys, off-duty police officers, serving and retired members of the military. Many were followers of the QAnon conspiracy group. What had drawn them to embrace Donald Trump’s leadership?

Over the years many American workers have seen their incomes stagnate and their places of work and jobs being relocated to countries where the labour costs are lower. The influence of the labour unions has been dwindling and Democrat administrations, which purport to represent working-class people, have presided over this growing power of capital over the workers.

Many small business owners have been losing ground to the big beasts of capital. This has especially been the case since the 2008 financial crash, and now with the Coronavirus pandemic many small businesses have gone to the wall, whereas the large capitalists have gone from strength to strength.

In these circumstances, experiencing growing social powerlessness and, in the absence of an influential socialist movement, many have become attracted to right-wing nationalist populism and some are drawn to conspiracy theories propounded on the internet and social media. White supremacist and vigilante groups provide a sense of community and belonging. Donald Trump was able to harness this discontent for his opportunist ends by posing as the workers’ champion. He promised he would take on the ‘Swamp’ and bring back jobs to the US. Over the course of his presidency, he built his base by pursuing nationalist and xenophobic policies like beginning the construction of a wall on the Mexican border, implementing tougher anti-immigration measures and aligning himself with far-right groups.

The assault on the Capitol has been described variously as an attempted coup, an insurrection, an assault on American democracy, and an act of domestic terrorism. But it was no workers’ revolution, and socialists do not endorse reckless adventurism to try to advance working class interests. We say that, on the contrary, workers must organise globally and democratically to take political power to establish socialism, a worldwide society without classes, money and national frontiers. This revolution will be based on socialist consciousness and not on the leadership of a narcissistic egomaniac.

Proper Gander: Cutting-Edge Drama (2021)

The Proper Gander column from the January 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Small Axe (BBC One) is a polished and engaging collection of five dramas directed and co-written by filmmaker Steve McQueen, most well-known for 12 Years A Slave. As he explains, ‘the anthology, anchored in the West Indian experience in London, is a celebration of all that that community has succeeded in achieving against the odds’. Two of the films, based on actual events, focus on how black people reacted to their suppression by the police between the 1960s and 1980s. Here we find why the anthology is called Small Axe, which comes from the Jamaican proverb ‘if you are the big tree, we are the small axe’. McQueen’s skill is shown in how he authentically recreates the sights, sounds and attitudes of the times, and brings together a talented cast who have the daunting job of portraying real people. He says that the dramas ‘are about the past, yet they are very much concerned with the present’ (ibid), particularly in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement, given added impetus through the killing of George Floyd by American police.

Mangrove tells the stories of some of those connected with the restaurant of the same name, which opened in Notting Hill in 1968, the same year as then-Tory MP Enoch Powell’s notorious ‘rivers of blood’ speech. Run by Frank Crichlow, the Mangrove restaurant was a lively, friendly hub for the local community as well as a meeting place for activists in the British Black Panthers, including Altheia Jones-LeCointe, Barbara Beese and Darcus Howe. Police soon turned their attention to the venue, as much because of its popularity among black people as through its links to the Black Power movement. Over the years, as many as 12 brutal raids were carried out, ostensibly on suspicion of alcohol and drugs offences, without any evidence of criminality being found. A response to the police’s targeting of the restaurant was a rally held on 9 August 1970. The 150-strong crowd, carrying a pig’s head and chanting ‘hands off black people’ made their way to the police station, where they were outnumbered and broken up, with nine arrested.

The second half of the film depicts the subsequent trial in 1971 of the ‘Mangrove Nine’, including Crichlow, Jones-LeCointe, Beese and Howe. They were charged with rioting and affray, after previous allegations against them had been thrown out of court. The trial was held at the Old Bailey, which was seen as a move to put more pressure on the nine because it was the usual venue for the most severe cases. Some of the defendants represented themselves, giving them the opportunity to directly address their accusers and show up the holes in the police’s account of the demo. Most of the Mangrove Nine were found not guilty, although four received suspended sentences for affray and assaulting police officers. When summing up, Judge Edward Clarke QC said that the trial had ‘regrettably shown evidence of racial hatred on both sides’, which was the first judicial recognition of racial prejudice in the Metropolitan Police, and a comment which the force unsuccessfully attempted to have withdrawn. The trial’s outcome is where the film ends, but in real life the police continued to harass the restaurant for many more years. Critchlow found himself in court three times until his name was cleared in 1989 and he received a record £50,000 in damages. The Mangrove restaurant finally closed three years later.

The police in Mangrove are largely presented as out-and-out racists, and their mindset towards black people is explored further in another of the Small Axe films. Red, White And Blue dramatises the beginning of Leroy Logan’s career in the force, which he decided to join in 1983 after his father was attacked by two officers. Logan aimed to increase representation of black people among the police and develop the institution from within. He was congratulated by senior staff as the best new starter among the latest batch, and became the face of a recruitment drive for more ‘coloured’ officers, as they were described at the time. Despite – or because of – all this, he found himself distanced from many others, including the young black people who called him a traitor when he walked past them in uniform, his father (who had good reason to mistrust the police) and his racist colleagues. Logan persevered and rose up the ranks to become a superintendent, as well as co-founding and chairing the Black Police Association.

Both dramas present the police force as dominated by bigoted thugs who were enabled to act out their prejudices by tradition and discriminatory laws. Having the protection of a uniform probably attracted racists to become officers in the first place. While Logan tried to improve the police from inside, the Mangrove Nine challenged them first through direct action and then by careful navigation of the judicial process. Their determination is commendable, and each helped to erode some of the institution’s racism, but they didn’t threaten the institution itself, because it’s part of something bigger. The police force has an integral role in the state, and although it would be possible for it to operate in a non-racist way, it is inherently divisive because it supports the class divide. As such, the ‘small axe’ is too small to carve out really fundamental change.

Mike Foster

Ill Fares the Land (2021)

Book Review from the January 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who Owns England? How We Lost Our Land and How to Take It Back. by Guy Shrubsole (William Collins £9.99.)

The answer, of course, is a small number of very rich people. Thirty percent of land in England is owned by the aristocracy and gentry, 17 percent by ‘new money’, 18 percent by companies, 8.5 percent by the state, and just five percent by homeowners, with another four percent spread among crown, church and charities. Even these figures leave around one-sixth of the land unaccounted for, such is the difficulty of acquiring information about land-ownership, as ‘concealing wealth is part and parcel of preserving it’. The rise of digital technology has made investigating who owns land somewhat easier, but it is clear that the author has devoted a great deal of effort to uncovering the information provided here. He operates the website whoownsengland.org, and it is also worth looking at whoownsscotland.org.uk, which is separately run but deals with similar facts and figures.

Another way of describing the extent of inequality is to say that just 36,000 people own half the rural land in England and Wales. The origin of this dates back to Norman times, when William the Conqueror handed out land to less than two hundred clergy and barons. Many aristocratic land-owning families can be traced back to those days, such as the Dukes of Westminster, who remain unbelievably wealthy. Male primogeniture has played a large part in perpetuating the wealth and power of a small group of aristocrats. Much of the land they own is given over to grouse moors: apart from grouse shooting being a thoroughly nasty ‘pastime’, managing the moors can lead to environmental problems, such as flooding downstream.

Aristocrats became wealthy through owning land, but those with new money have bought land as a result of becoming wealthy. An example would be the Vestey family, who derived their wealth from selling cheap meat, purchased country estates and, like so many other landowners, used trusts and tax havens as a means of protecting their wealth. They have been joined more recently by Russian oligarchs and those who reap massive profits from Middle Eastern oil, both of whom specialise in properties in central London.

State ownership of land means primarily the Forestry Commission and the Ministry of Defence. The biggest corporate owners are privatised water companies, and also such as Peel Holdings, which, among much else, owns the Manchester Ship Canal and land adjoining it; Peel’s owner is a billionaire who lives on the Isle of Man, and it exercises power via a mass of subsidiary companies. Peel Holdings ranks only 33rd in Shrubsole’s list of land-owning companies, though it probably owns much more than the 15,000 acres attributed to it.

The author provides an excellent survey of land ownership and how it came about, though with relatively little on the enclosures that played a major part in the emergence of capitalism. Read his book for what it says about the past and present situations, not for the reforms proposed in the final chapter, such as ending unsustainable uses of land, which will be impossible in a society of private property but straightforward when the land belongs to everyone.

Paul Bennett

The Myths of Nationalism (2021)

From the January 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you open an atlas, you will generally find two kinds of map there. Physical maps show land masses and islands, mountains, seas and rivers. Political maps show towns and cities but also borders of various kinds, from counties and provinces to countries. In some ways, it’s rather odd that these borders exist: they are not natural phenomena, and even a few hundred years ago, national boundaries would have been very different. Nevertheless, nations and the nationalism associated with them are often seen as essential aspects of the way the world is organised, with people expected to support the ‘national interest’, which goes well beyond supporting the national team in various sports. But there are good reasons for questioning the whole idea of nations and nationalism, and for arguing that they are all part of a world forced on its inhabitants and based on division, rivalry and setting people against each other.

An article in the November Socialist Standard criticised nationalism as ‘a dangerous diversion from the class struggle’, adding that it would just mean workers getting new masters in place of the old ones. And there are further reasons why workers should reject nationalism, including the fundamental point that the whole idea of a nation is extremely problematic. Whatever definition is adopted, there will always be exceptions, and it is just not possible to say in objective and consistent terms what constitutes a nation.

Let’s look at some definitions. Commonly cited is the one by Stalin (in Marxism and the National Question):

  ‘A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.’

As far as psychological make-up is concerned, he claims that nations differ ‘in spiritual complexion, which manifests itself in peculiarities of national culture’. This is vague enough to be meaningless, and so makes no contribution to the recognition of a nation.

With regard to the language criterion, Stalin notes that the inhabitants of the UK and US both speak English but do not form a nation, as they occupy distinct territories and do not share an ‘internal economic bond’. He recognises that two nations can speak the same language but maintains that a nation cannot speak several languages. But there are many countries where more than one language is spoken.

In Belgium there are three official languages, Dutch/Flemish, French and German. Stalin would presumably have to say that (leaving aside the smaller number of German speakers) there are two nations in Belgium, namely Flanders and Wallonia. There are plenty of other examples, from Switzerland and Wales to Canada, Iraq, Afghanistan and India (which has no fewer than twenty-two official languages). In addition, it cannot be claimed that multilingual countries usually have one language used by all inhabitants (in India, for instance, fewer than six in ten speak the most widely used language, Hindi).

Some approaches to nationalism make no reference to language. The following is from National Identity by Anthony Smith:

 ‘a named human population sharing an historic territory, common myths and historical memories, a mass, public culture, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members. ‘

Note the similarity to Stalin’s definition in terms of a common economy, a mass culture and such vague terms as ‘common myths’. Smith’s definition of nationalism is also relevant:

  ‘an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining autonomy, unity and identity on behalf of a population deemed by some of its members to constitute an actual or potential ‘nation’.’

It should be clear that nationalism is based on totally subjective notions relating to memories and culture and what some believe to be a nation. As was stated at the time of the unification of Italy, ‘We have made Italy, now we have to make Italians’.

Open the atlas again and look at a political map of Africa. Many borders consist of straight lines, and it is clear that these are arbitrary consequences of colonialism, of which colonial power ruled which area and where it was convenient to draw boundaries, rather than reflecting any genuine distinctions between nations. Instead, the lines were put in place, and nations were created as a result. Iraq, too, was assembled a century ago as an artificial entity that served the interests of the British ruling class, with special regard to access to oil reserves. Even a supposedly long-existing nation, China, has in fact consisted of different areas over time, often with rulers who were not themselves Chinese but, among others, Mongol or Manchu.

So many will say that a nation has a common culture, but what is not true is that the members of a nation have common interests. This is because all nations are divided into different classes, an elite who have the lion’s share of wealth and power in contrast to the great majority of the population. Under capitalism, the division is between the capitalist class and the working class. The capitalists are less than one percent of the population; they own the land, factories, shops, offices and so on; their income derives from rent, interest and profit; they can be immensely wealthy, multi-millionaires or even billionaires. In contrast, the working class form the rest of the population; they have to work for a wage or salary, or else depend on someone who does so; what they are paid does little more than enable them to keep their heads above water, and they are always prey to unemployment and real poverty.

In such a society, there can be no commonality of interests between the capitalists, who want to increase their profits and their power over those they exploit, and the workers. The capitalists wish to protect their wealth and power on an international stage, such as access to trade routes and markets, and they invoke nationalism to persuade workers to go along with this. Even if they share a nationality with their bosses, it is in the interest of workers to defend their wages and working conditions against capitalist onslaught, and indeed to overthrow the rulers and the system, establishing a global society where there are no classes and no borders. Where nations and nationalism are things of the past, like banks and bailiffs and charities and passports.

Paul Bennett

Copyrights expire, humanity gains (2021)

From the January 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

This month marks the end of an era. The play, Pygmalion, written and first performed in 1912, goes out of copyright in the United Kingdom, and much of the world. 108 years as intellectual property comes to an end. It joins all of the works of George Bernard Shaw, along, also, with the works of George Orwell, in the expiry. Both men died in 1950. The antiquity of Shaw’s writing is down to his very long life.

At the time both men died, they could have expected their intellectual property, and its income, to live on 50 years after them, however, the law was changed in 1995 to extend copyrights by twenty further years, so that intellectual property had a life of the remainder of the author’s life, plus 70 years.

Copyright asserts that that the author has the right to control their own intellectual creations: initially, as the name suggests, over who had the right to make copies of published books. This later extended to the right to prevent derivative works (using characters and instances from the created work). It also asserts the author’s right to be identified as the creator of the work.

It is, in effect, an intangible property right, that exists only because the state creates and enforces it. The first copyright law in the UK dates back to 1710, “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned”. As this title makes clear, the intent was that people could benefit commercially from producing works and publishing them. Initially, this was limited to 14 years.

The reason this sort of protection is necessary is seen in the famous example of Charles Dickens suffering at the hands of literary pirates in America, where his works were not in copyright: within weeks of A Christmas Carol being published, pirate copies were selling freely and lucratively in the United States.

In strict economic terms then, copyright is a species of rent, arising from the artificial monopoly created by the state, hence the interest of rentiers to extend and extend the term of the copyright so that they can keep profiting from the use of the intellectual property.

The sort of value involved can be seen in the 2015 Freedom of Information Act request to the British Museum (one of the beneficiaries of the Shaw estate). That showed that the Museum gained £1.5 million from his estate between 2001 and 2014. It should be noted that this in itself represents less than a third of the income of the estate, split as it was between the National Gallery of Ireland, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the British Museum and – in a final quixotic twist, an endowment towards alphabet reform. True to his form as a challenger of received notions, this last part of his bequest had to be overturned in court by the public trustee, demonstrating the limitations to the absolute right of an individual to dispose of his property as he pleases. A very Shavian outcome to Shaw’s own life.

These fine institutions will now be bereft of considerable income. This is not the first time. In the 1980s Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) lost the income from J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan works. This led to campaigns on behalf of the hospital to extend its copyright (no doubt encouraged by less worthy owners of intellectual property). In art, this drove the extension from 50 years after the author’s death to 70, but in addition, GOSH was granted a perpetual interest in the royalties of Peter Pan performances and publications in the UK (but not full copyright control to authorise performances and publications).

Intellectual property is big business. Corporations like Disney spend a lot of time and effort buying up the rights to characters and stories (like their purchase of the Star Wars franchise). Given that corporations don’t die, it is in their interest to keep property rights around for as long as possible. Even more, there is currently controversy, as Disney are apparently maintaining they have gained the benefits of the Star Wars IP, but are trying to avoid paying the author of the novelisations of the films any royalties.

The power of the copyright monopoly came to the fore during the Covid lockdown, as university libraries found that academic publishers were not making electronic copies available (which could, thus, be read by students at home) or were charging very high prices (some publishers did make ebooks temporarily available, but even that generosity could be seen as loss-leading, to get people into the habit of those titles being available). Librarian organisations have called for a review of the ebook market in the UK (academicebookinvestigation.org/).

They note that increasingly the model is for universities to pay for expensive and restrictive licences that have to be bought each year. This is the trend with intangible property, to transform one-off payments into revenue streams. Unlike when you buy a print book, when you buy an ebook you do not own a thing, you are simply granted the right to be able to read a text. This is as true for an ebook on a Kindle as it is for university libraries.

For publishers, the cost of producing a print book and an ebook is pretty much identical (actually printing is a marginal cost in the whole process), but they are struggling to find a business model that allows them to collect revenue whilst at the same time using the infinite reproducibility of electronic distribution of information.

Both Shaw and Orwell claimed to be socialists, and often made useful and important contributions to the debates and arguments for socialism (even if that took the form of needing to disagree with them). Their works becoming more widely and freely available can only be a welcome thing. Humanity gains in general from the increased availability and distribution of ideas and knowledge.

Pik Smeet

No, ambassador (2011)

Book Review from the January 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Getting Our Way. By Christopher Meyer. Phoenix £8.99.

A diplomat, it is commonly claimed, is a man sent abroad to lie for his country. Not only is Meyer aware of this saying, he actually regards it as a compliment. As former British ambassador to Germany and the US, he is well placed to write a history of diplomacy.

In some ways he is a maverick (his previous book, DC Confidential, was criticised by some for its supposed revelations), but he is clearly an establishment figure. His aim in writing this book is to argue for a revival of diplomacy and a proper ‘foreign’ policy, as opposed to one supposedly based on ‘the daft utopianism of ‘global values’. But what strikes a socialist is how open Meyer is about how diplomacy serves British national interests (i.e. the interests of the British ruling class).

By considering examples from the sixteenth century onwards, he looks at a number of cases where British diplomats have endeavoured to defend these ruling class interests, often with more than a little help from guns and gunboats. In China, for instance, a mission in 1793 was unsuccessful in gaining access to Chinese markets as a means of reducing the trade imbalance caused by the Western thirst for tea. Then in the mid nineteenth century, the Opium Wars achieved what mere negotiation had failed to win. In 1856 the bombardment of Canton led to further growth in ‘free trade’. Hong Kong became British territory as part of these shenanigans but, as Meyer says, ‘It was trade not territory that Britain was after.’

In the 1990s, the former Yugoslavia became another centre of conflict, with the Western powers fearful that fighting there would spread and destabilise the rest of the Balkans and perhaps an even wider area. It was these considerations that led to armed intervention in Kosovo. But in Africa there are few examples of such intervention, simply because Western national interests are not at stake in the same way.

Meyer quotes approvingly Palmerston’s statement that Britain has no eternal allies or enemies, just eternal interests, the main one being the protection and extension of trade. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British navy defended trade routes, the importing of raw materials and the slave trade. Nowadays the emphasis for the most powerful countries is on the struggle to control natural resources, as witness China’s activities in Africa, Central Asia and Latin America, and also the tensions over the control of minerals under the Arctic ice cap.

So here is one representative of the ruling class who is well aware of what lies behind capitalist wars and is quite happy to proclaim that to the world. But of course he does not mention the millions of workers and peasants killed or maimed in these conflagrations.

Paul Bennett

Blogger's Dilemma:

The above book review is listed under the January 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard on the SPGB website but it's not in the PDF of the January 2011 Socialist Standard which is also on the SPGB website. Instead, the PDF carries the review of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I'm not sure what happened so I've included them both on the blog.