Economics Exposed: Rich or poor (1987)

The Economics Exposed column from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the last century, William Morris summed up the economics of capitalism simply but wisely, by saying that there were rich and poor, and that the rich were rich because they robbed the poor. That honest statement of the power relationship which lies at the heart of present-day society was worth more than the hundreds of pages of economic claptrap which have tried to persuade us that capitalism is inevitable (even though it has only occupied the most recent fraction of human history). And yet today, a hundred years later, it is often claimed that real class division between rich and poor has become a thing of the past. Thanks to pension funds, social reforms and wage rises, we are told, everyone now has a chance to "make it". Well, who are the truly rich in Britain today, and what chance do the rest of us have of becoming that rich ourselves?

In answering the first of these questions, it is important to bear in mind that wealth and poverty are relative, social concepts. To have owned a television some decades ago may have suggested some relative status or prosperity, whereas today it would by no means disprove that someone was in poverty. Henry VIII may have been one of the richest men of his age. but he still did not enjoy modern central heating (or drive a Rolls Royce). If you want to decide whether you are in poverty. then ask yourself two questions: "Am I fully in a position to enjoy the fruits of modern technology, such as good food, secure housing, extensive travel and so on, without ever having to scrimp, save, worry or settle for second best? And are there others, living in the same society, who are able to enjoy better food, housing and so on than I am, purely and simply because they do not share the same official "poverty" label as I do in this society?"

According to a major survey taken last year (British Social Attitudes, publ. Gower). 70 per cent of British people describe themselves as “working class ". But in fact, an even greater percentage, over 90 per cent of the population, are in the class which has to work for a living, to sell our abilities on the labour market in order to survive. Those who do not have to are certainly rich, as they have the resources at their disposal to rescue them from the pressures and indignities of wage — or salaried work. Such people may be termed "capitalists" as they own and control substantial capital, but the press tend to spare them the trouble of having their monopoly of capital highlighted too much, and give them instead a great range of other names: industrialists, entrepreneurs, captains of industry, business-people, members of the "business community", financiers and bankers, commercial magnates and investors. Well, socialists might also be tempted to give these people a great range of other names. However, we forgo that temptation, since our case against capitalism is based not on any personal hostility towards such people, but on the knowledge that under their system (which the majority still support) the interests of the working-class majority can never be met.

When we speak of the minority who are genuinely "rich", we are referring to people like David Sainsbury, whose £1 billion provides him with over £30,000 per day in dividends alone. People who could quite easily afford the cars advertised earlier this year for £150,000 and £275.000 (Sunday Times, 8 March 1987). Individuals like Robert Maxwell and Gerald Ronson whose monopoly of capital to the value of half a billion each provides them both with unearned incomes of approximately £1 million each week. Let us now move on, however, to some facts which will help us to answer the second question, what chance do the rest of us have of escaping at all from the poverty of our working lives?

Last year, an LWT television series called Fortune dealt with the subject of wealth in Britain, and the information was summarised in New Society, 22 August 1986. The research was specially carried out by Professor Bill Rubinstein of Deakin University, Australia and Professor Anthony Shorrocks of Essex University. Some of the findings to emerge were as follows:

1. The richest 43,500 people in Britain today, or about one thousandth of the population, own between them 7 per cent of all wealth, which is nearly twice as much as the wealth owned by the whole of the poorest 50 per cent of the population together. These 43.500 have individual fortunes of £740,000 upwards.
2. The richest 5 per cent of the population (about two million people) possess between them 41 per cent of all wealth. Even people with as "little” as £75,000 to their name would belong to this group, rather than to the remaining 95 per cent of the population who therefore suffer relative poverty.
3. A scientific study was made of all those who died in 1984 or 1985 leaving a million pounds or more. It was found that 68 per cent of these modem millionaires had parents who were "aristocrats, businessmen or farmers" and a further 12 per cent had parents who were described as "higher professionals". 43 per cent of millionaires had been left over £100,000, and exactly three quarters of them were found to have inherited at least £10,000 in their earlier days (and such sums would have been worth far more then than now)! A study by C.D. Harbury conducted in the 1950s and 1960s had found, similarly, that 58 per cent of those who were leaving £100,000 or more had themselves been left at least £50,000 by the previous generation.

All of this indicates just how little has changed in this respect since the days of William Morris. However, one point should be added. Even in the unlikely event of capitalism being so reformed as to make inheritance of little significance (and such a change is made particularly impracticable by the fact that this economic system is founded on the successive accumulation of capital), still the system would fail to meet the needs of the majority. The rich would still rob the poor, even if each generation had to jump through hoops, throw darts at each other or draw lots to see whose turn it was. The only solution is to replace this wage labour/capital relationship with social co-operation to meet needs. And the flexibility of human behaviour makes that prospect as workable as it is compelling.

Clifford Slapper

Acid Rain (1987)

Book Review from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Acid Rain by Fred Pearce,  Penguin (Harmondsworth, 1987)

Acid rain kills trees, eats away at stone, brick, paper and rubber, kills soils and fish and humans. This study attempts to explain how acid rain affects the environment and what causes it. It is not a new phenomenon for, as Pearce points out, the London pea soup fog of 1952 that killed some 4,000 people contained "water droplets. . . nearly as acid as the water in a car battery". The problem is exacerbated by the complexity of the chemical reaction. Ozone is formed in sunlight from hydrocarbons and nitrogen dioxide. It damages trees and acts as an irritant to human lungs. Ozone also helps in the conversion of gases to acid rain. We have begun to understand how the chemical soups are formed and we also have the technology to deal with that problem. The question is whether the political and economic will exists to carry out the necessary measures.

There has been much talk of acid rain but the actual extent of the environmental consequences are perhaps less well known. Sixty seven per cent of Norway's lakes have lost their stocks of brown trout during the century. Much of the poisoning emanates from the world's largest concentration of coal-fired power stations in a 20 kilometre stretch of the Aire valley. Drax, Eggborough and Ferrybridge combined pump out 600,000 tonnes of sulphur dioxide each year. The problem is not restricted to the interchange between Britain and Scandinavia. West Germany exports 500,000 tonnes of sulphur each year — and receives about the same amount. There is also as much nitrogen dioxide in circulation, from the many cars on which our transportation system is reliant. Sulphur dioxide is converted to sulphuric acid while nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide are converted to nitric acid. Nitrogen oxides are also a key ingredient in the formation of ozone. Such acids are no respecters of national frontiers:

Around 17 per cent of the acid that falls on Norway comes from Britain. About 20 per cent of that falling on Sweden comes from Eastern Europe. It leaps oceans, too. Perhaps five per cent of the add falling in Europe has blown across the Atlantic from North America (p. 23)

Britain has made strides in reducing sulphur emissions mostly through the Clean Air Acts. The pea soup fogs no longer happen. The dominant players in the league table of filthy air are now East Germany, Czechoslovakia. Poland and Russia. As an example 20 per cent of Polish people live in areas with sulphur dioxide levels in excess of permitted government levels (which are in any case four times higher than levels set in the USA.) Sunshine levels in Cracow have been reduced from an average of five hours a day in 1945 to about three hours at present. Twelve per cent of East Germany's forests are now damaged by pollution. We are fully aware of the extent to which acid is capable of eating into buildings. Marble is converted by acid into gypsum which is washed away by rainfall. The problem of attaching a price to aesthetics and history is an additional complication. Another estimate has suggested that the medieval glass of Europe may "disappear within a generation". At a more basic level the corrosion of Britain's water-mains is being exacerbated by the action of acidic water. More frighteningly the action of acidic water has attendant consequences. Pearce says of Scotland that:

Millions of people live in areas where the public water supply comes from reservoirs where the water is soft and acid, partly because of acid rain. This water scours the lead from the old lead pipes and tanks that are still found in millions of homes in Scotland and all over Britain. The lead, in a highly digestable form, comes out of the tap. (p.87)

A study by the Greater Glasgow Health Board in the early 1980s pointed out that some ten per cent of all new born babies in Glasgow had more lead in their blood than was considered safe for adults. Lead drunk by mothers is able to cross the placental barrier and so accumulate in the foetus. The more obvious consequences of this process can be still births or children born mentally retarded. The intention is that by 1990 British water will be dosed with lime to counteract the acid. There are also unknown elements such as aluminium washed from soil by acid rain. At present parts of Birmingham. Manchester and South Yorkshire are among areas whose aluminium tap water content is greater than European Community limits.

The damage to European trees has been well documented although there are still arguments over the actual mechanism whereby the damage takes place. West Germany's fir trees have an 87 per cent damage classification with some two thirds considered by foresters to be in the most severe categories. It ought not to be forgotten that food crops are also sensitive, in particular to ozone which has become more widespread in the past ten years. Damage to plants can occur with ozone levels of 50 parts per billion (ppb). In the summer of 1976 (notable for its heat — a prime ingredient in ozone production) levels of 200-260 ppb were recorded. For a factory worker 80 ppb is considered the safety margin for working. A main contributor to ozone is the car with its emissions of nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons. A possible consequence will be that the ozone will act as a "greenhouse", absorbing the sun's radiation and acting as a thermal blanket.

The traditional response to any pollution problem is the concept of disposal through dilution. It is compounded by two attitudes, that of the cheapskate and the optimist. The cheapskate says that there is a mass of water and air and so anything deposited will become insignificant by dilution. The optimist adds that if a problem should occur some future generation will have the technology to deal with it. To add credibility to these attitudes the role of the scientific vacillators is necessary. They propound other theories and hypotheses in order to confuse or more importantly to deny the facts of any one perspective. This suits capitalism well for it means that it need not invest excessive resources in dealing with a problem that is not fully accepted or understood. Ironically there are occasional reversals of the pollution syndrome. During the early years of the Thatcher administration the decline in manufacturing led to a 25 per cent reduction in the amount of sulphur dioxide put into the atmosphere although the CEGB estimate a 30 per cent rise by the end of the century- Such hiccups merely hide the reality of what is taking place:

Today there is more pollution than ever before. It is chemically much more reactive. And its reach has extended from the industrial heartlands of the continent to the most remote comers. There are no refuges. Nowhere is untainted. (p. 128)

The British Electricity Authority stated in 1954 that sulphur dioxide was one of the most harmful of all pollutants. The response has been a recognition of the need for flue gas desulphurisation but this was replaced by the building of big chimneys. Britain has still not been prepared to join the 30 per cent club (those nations committed to a 30 per cent reduction in sulphur dioxide emissions) although a programme of flue gas desulphurisation is to be undertaken. Sulphur dioxide can also be reduced by burning low sulphur coal. Such coal can be found in Scotland and South Wales where British Coal appears to be closing mines as fast as possible. This inconsistency is a direct consequence of the economic demands of capitalism.

We live in a society of misconceived priorities. How do we attach values to the alternative demands of trees, crops, fish, humanity, architecture? The profit system puts all at risk because the treatment of one issue must be made at the priority cost of profit. Even if we deal with sulphur dioxide it is probable that nitrogen oxides will be a greater danger and. in any event the faster growing problem. This will be the next debate for the vacillators. In the meantime the waste remains and kills.

Philip Bentley

Between the Lines: All the news that's fit to finance (1987)

'What did the Socialist Standard say about us, luv?'

The Between the Lines column from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

All the news that's fit to finance

Brass Tacks (BBC2,8.30pm. Wed. 26 August and 2 September) devoted two programmes to investigating the question of whether Britain has fair, decent, honest, free newspapers. Now. these adjectives are not ones which immediately spring to mind when one thinks of the press. Distorted, debased, dishonest and unfree are the more appropriate words which offer themselves as descriptions. Surely there can be few people in Britain who are unaware that if your name is Murdoch or Maxwell the press is just as free as you want to pay for it to be, but if you are looking for information you will be wasting your time sifting through most of the outpourings of Wapping Lies Ltd. and the other millionaire mouthpieces which constitute the illusion of the free British press.

In the first of the programmes Brass Tacks looked at four new newspapers and the editorial problems faced by the men who control them. Being commodities — like cans of dog food (but more tasteless) and strippergram girls — the newspapers have a principal aim to sell more copies, regardless of the journalistic standards which have to be abandoned in that sordid pursuit. So, as the newly appointed editor of the News on Sunday pointed out, despite the left-wing claims of that newspaper before and when it was established, the dictates of the market meant that vicar-beat-choirgirl-with-elephant-trunk type stories had to give way to exposes of brutality by the Greater Manchester police. You don’t make profits out of principles. The programme looked at the Today newspaper which has recently been pocketed by Rupert Murdoch, the man who has done for journalistic freedom what Adolf Hitler did for community harmony. David Montgomery. Murdoch’s editor of Today, summed up the answer to those people who stamp their feet with anger when it is suggested that the handful of capitalists who own the press are the dictators who decide what will go in it: "Clearly there’s bound to be a coinciding of Rupert Murdoch’s philosophy and the philosophy of his editors, but we have disagreements with him about style and content and we argue our corner. I suppose if the difference becomes so great then someone’s got to leave and it probably won't be Rupert Murdoch".

The second “Brass Tacks” analysis of the press took the form of a studio discussion. Facing the four editors who sat as a panel were people who had been victims of press distortion and manipulation. Predictably, the discussion divided into liberal sentiments about fairness in opposition to the real voice of capitalism: if it sells print it, if lies sell better make them big ones, if they will buy soft porn why give them news? Mike Gabbert, who was then editorial director of the Sunday Sport and is now editor of the new, "lustier" Daily Star, participated in the debate with all the elegance and eloquence of a football hooligan with a word processor. In response to women who objected to selling newspapers by displaying naked female flesh in between editorials moralising against rape, Gabbert blurted that they only held those views because they were too fat. This oaf needed a free education, not a free press. 

Speaking of press distortion 

While we are on the subject of the gutter press, let us turn our attention to The People (a nasty little Sunday rag) of 16 August. In it Ian Brandes writes a column headlined TV SOAP IS JUST A PLOT BY THE STATE!’ The article purports to be about comments made about soap operas, and Crossroads in particular, which appeared in this column in the August Socialist Standard. This party was not contacted by Brandes before he wrote his distorted nonsense. Despite letters from this journal to Brandes and to his editor insisting that the lies in The People article be corrected, we have not even received an acknowledgement, let alone a published correction. So. let us look at Brandes' article with a view to showing just how honest the dear old British press is. The article begins as follows: "The loony Labour left has launched a blistering attack on TV soap operas as the modern opium of the masses'." But the article deals only with comments made in this column in this journal which is published by The Socialist Party of Great Britain, a party which was formed two years before the Labour Party and has no connection with Labour or its left-wing. Brandes need only to have contacted us to find this out — or, easier still, he need only have read the August issue of this journal in order to find at least three articles referring explicitly to The Socialist Party’s opposition to the Labour Party. Second lie: The People article's headline suggests that we are claiming that soaps are a conspiracy or plot to fix workers' minds: in the article Brandes writes that "It (The Socialist Standard) claims that the nation's weekly favourites are just part of a sinister capitalist plot to keep viewers docile, while the bosses exploit their power." Compare this to what the Standard article actually stated: "It is not being claimed that soaps are a conspiracy to make workers accept capitalism". Third lie: in The People's account of our article it is said that we assert that "There would be no need at all for TV soaps" in a socialist society. What we printed was rather different: "Will there be soap operas in a socialist society? Who can tell? It is not for a small minority of socialists in 1987 to lay down a blueprint for how the socialist majority will decide to live”. In no sense can that be interpreted as stating that soap operas will not be shown on TV once we establish a socialist society. And lie number four: The People falsely claims that we were saying that there will be no soap operas in a socialist society: "There would be no need for TV soaps at all, the journal claims, if Britain would only embrace socialism". This column has never advocated the absurd, nationalist notion of "British socialism". If Brandes had taken the trouble to read the inside cover of the August Standard (as in this one) he would have read a series of clear questions and answers about what we stand for; in answer to the question. "What is the meaning of socialism?" we state in terms which are clear enough for even a People journalist to comprehend: "Socialism does not yet exist. When it is established it must be on a worldwide basis, as an alternative to the outdated system of world capitalism". So. in a newspaper article of less than two hundred words Ian Brandes and The People make four erroneous. dishonest statements about the contents of this column. What are they going to do about it? We'll be letting you know.

An after-dinner ramble 

UK Late (C4. Friday) is described as a programme of witty, punchy, after-dinner discussion. Quite who finishes their dinner at 11.30pm is uncertain, but we might suspect that if they take as long to cook the kebabs as they do to get to the point in these witty, punchy intellectual rambles they were lucky to have had dinner at all. On 4 September the collection of witty, punchy (rather dull, actually) conversationalists included a judge and a second-hand car dealer who had served a sentence or two for fraud. "We really think alike on most things, us two" said the judge, after an hour of exuding gas about crime and punishment. The criminologist, Jock Young, who is about as witty and punchy as a 1953 Boys ' Own annual, tried in vain to persuade the assembled guests to understand that criminality is a label usually placed by the state upon poor people, while at the same time City robbers (sorry, "entrepreneurs") are raking in millions as a result of their fiddles. What he did not mention were the millions more pounds being accumulated by the capitalists in the City, not as a result of illegal dealing, but due to good old honest robbery called making a profit, i.e. exploiting wage labour. The witty, punchy, after-dinner discussion about the meaning of class on 21 August was no more satisfying. The TV audience (that is. those of us who don't have after-dinner shouting matches of our own. so have to resort to the telly for a bit of genuine, semi-pissed prejudice) were treated to a collection of people who were able to say all kinds of punchy and witty things except a) what class means, b) why it exists, and c) how we can get rid of it. For answers to those questions read The Socialist Standard - as opposed to the half-witted, punch-drunk Sunday People.

Steve Coleman

SPGB Meetings (1987)

Party News from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Racism is rubbish — official (1987)

From the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The simplest way for anyone who is persecuted and repressed under the South African government's policy of racism is to get themselves reclassified out of discrimination. As this item in the Johannesburg Star of 9 June 1987 reported it is possible, under this procedure, for somebody to change their race and even their skin colour, from dark to whiter and the other way round:

More than 1000 race re-classifications were approved by the Department of Home Affairs in 1985-86. according to its latest annual report.

In this period 463 Cape coloureds became whites and six whites became coloured.

Seven coloured became Chinese and four Chinese became whites. One white became Malay. Three Malays became white.

Some other figures in the report: Indian to Cape coloured 60; Cape coloured to Indian 52; Indian to Malay 27; Malay to Indian 33; "Other Asian" to Cape coloured 3; black to Cape coloured 332; Cape coloured to black 30; Cape coloured to Malay 12; and Indian to white 10.

Further comment would, as they say, be superfluous.

50 Years Ago: French Workers Learn by Experiences (1987)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard 

In the meantime the French Labourites have tried a similar experiment, marked by the same infantile hopefulness in the impossible. In Great Britain in 1929 the Labour Government depended on Liberal votes in the House of Commons. In France the Labourites formed a coalition government with the Liberals, under the premiership, of Leon Blum. After running for a year Blum was forced to quit and hand over the premiership to a Liberal, still maintaining the "Popular Front,” though already the workers are sadly disappointed. It is to be hoped that they will learn how little can be done until capitalism has been got rid of.

The Daily Herald (June 22nd, 1937), in an editorial, says that Blum fell because “he did not possess the confidence of the big men of property, of the financiers, and the bankers"; which provokes the thought that if Blum went into office prepared to govern "within the present social regime” (his own words, The Times, May 2nd, 1936), yet supposed he could do so without having the confidence of those who own the present social regime, it is time he began to wake up to realities.

The Times Paris correspondent has shown a remarkably clear appreciation of the role of Labour Government and of the narrow limits within which they can diverge from traditional Liberal and Tory policy. On August 23rd, 1937, The Times published an article from him in which he wrote that Blum’s “Socialist” Minister of Finance

Does not seem to have realised that within the framework of the capitalist system social reform can be paid for only out of the profits of industry, and that if the entrepreneur is frightened out of his wits profits disappear. . . .

Two weeks later (The Times, September 7th, 1937), in another article, he wrote: —

M. Blum now supports the Radicals because he has realised that, short of provoking a dangerous upheaval, the problems of a capitalist system must, if they are to be resolved with capitalist support, be met by capitalist methods. . . .

[From an article in the Socialist Standard October 1937.]

Letter: Socialists and Social Credit (1987)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists and Social Credit

As a member of the Green Party, I was greatly impressed with the August issue of the Socialist Standard, particularly with the fair and balanced interview with Jonathon Porritt. At least on this occasion you seemed to have dropped the customary "we have an answer to everything" boast which has turned so many otherwise sympathetic potential socialists away from the SPGB before now. I was sent the August issue by a union colleague who is a SPGB member, and if this change is not just a one-off, I may become a regular reader or even subscribe.

The article on Ireland was similarly refreshing in its balance, but Ivan's piece on Parliamentary Rituals was an absolute classic. It should be distributed outside the TUC and Labour Party conferences as a leaflet, and at the next General Election. Great stuff. And now my question. What is your attitude to social credit? You must be against it because everyone else seems to be. Even the Green Party will not mention it by name. I am assuming that you know what it is as the SPGB pre-dates it by sixteen years.

Bill Whitbread 

London N22.

Reply.

We are pleased that Bill Whitbread enjoyed the August Socialist Standard and we hope that he will not only take out a subscription but decide, as a person who is concerned for the future of the world and its population, that his place is with us socialists in the work to replace capitalism with socialism.

Social Credit was a proposal by a Major Douglas to pay everyone a "social dividend" to make up for the chronic lack of purchasing power which, he alleged, was built into the financial mechanism of capitalism. It was one of a number of "under-consumptionist' theories that flourished during the 1930s.

All such theories assert that not enough money is distributed to enable people to buy all that has been produced. If this were true, capitalism would be in a permanent state of depression, whereas in fact it goes through alternating periods of boom and slump; indeed it would be difficult to see how capitalism could ever have come into existence in the first place.

While the Green Party does not mention Douglas by name, their manifesto for the last election bears evidence of the influence of his mistaken ideas;

The Green Party would take steps to end the monopoly of private banks over money creation (. ..) Community banks would be encouraged, subject to licence and with the power to create money, a power which would be withdrawn from private banks. Community banks would invest local savings in local enterprises, and invest newly-created money in those enterprises.

Closed factories alongside mass unemployment suggest that if only people had more money to spend boom time would return. But at no stage of the business cycle is there a shortage of purchasing power; there is however a difference between having the power to buy something and actually using that power. In a slump some capitalists choose not to invest all of their money in productive activity, as they would in a boom. Rather than being hoarded it is lent out at interest on the money market. This is the situation today and explains the paradox of the growth of financial institutions — evident from a stroll down any High Street — in the middle of a depression.

Douglas also believed that the banks had the power to create purchasing power, in the form of credit, by the stroke of a pen. If they had this power, why would firms ever go bankrupt, or make losses, or resist wage claims from their workers? Banks are in fact one of a set of financial institutions which make a profit out of the difference between the interest they charge borrowers and the interest they pay their depositors. The amount they can lend is thus limited by the amount they borrow from depositors as also applies (and nobody contests this) to building societies. In fact, due to the need to hold some money as ready cash, banks can only lend less than their deposits.

The solution to problems like unemployment does not lie in the reform of capitalism's monetary system but in the abolition of capitalism with its class ownership and production for profit, which involves the complete disappearance of money, banks, credit and all the rest of the financial system.

Editors.

Elections in Swansea again (1987)

Party News from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

On August 25. Swansea Branch found itself contesting a local election for the second time in four months. When the Conservative candidate who topped the poll at the May City Council Election died shortly after being elected, we decided not to lose the momentum we had gained by our May campaign and to stand again in the by-election.

As time was short we were unable to mount as extensive a campaign as in May, but, with the welcome aid of socialists from other branches, we still managed to leaflet all 10.000 voters in the ward, get some publicity in the local press and do some canvassing. What our doorstep discussions with voters showed was that we are now known in the area. When we canvassed in May, we had to go to a great deal of trouble to distinguish ourselves from the Labour Party and other organisations calling themselves socialist. This time the confusion hardly ever arose. On the whole people knew who we were and (at least approximately) what we stood for. And this greater familiarity of voters with our ideas was, we think, reflected in the voting. On a much reduced poll compared with May, our vote went up by 20 per cent numerically (from 50 to 61) and our percentage of the total votes cast more than doubled (from 1 per cent to 2.4 per cent).

Although the 50 votes we got in May have seemed very few by conventional standards, we were not in the least despondent about it. Our view was that we could not expect people who were, for the most part, hearing a completely new and different idea for the first time to immediately take it in, fully agree with it and go out and vote for it. To expect them to do all this in one fell swoop would have been quite unrealistic. What is not perhaps unrealistic, however, is for us to think that the August result shows that the idea is now beginning to filter through. Not that we would want to make too much of our modestly increased vote, but it is not perhaps too over-optimistic to suppose that the increase is at least partly due to the cumulative effect of people receiving our leaflets, hearing about us and in general having more frequent access than they would otherwise have to the socialist idea.

Now that we have a foothold in the Uplands area, we plan to be back again for the County Council elections in May when we shall again use the platform local elections give to put across the socialist case and. we hope, to consolidate and expand its influence in Swansea.

Swansea Branch

The full results of the August 25 poll were:

Jean Taverner (Conservative) 1460

Dereck Roberts (Labour) 851

David Howells (Green Party) 130

Howard Moss (Socialist Party) 61

Obituary: Stanley Malyon (1987)

Obituary from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Haringey and Enfield branch were saddened to learn of the death, at the beginning of August at the age of 74, of Stan Malyon, an active branch member for the past twenty years. Stan, who worked as an insurance agent before he retired, became a convinced socialist before the war and had originally joined the Party in 1938 He rejoined in the 1960s but had always retained his socialist convictions and attitude to life. Most of his work for the Party was at branch level but he was also frequently a Conference delegate and served for a while as the Party's Assistant Treasurer,

We extend our sympathy to his son, his daughter and other relatives and friends. In accordance with his own expressed wish, a Party member delivered a short address at a non-religious ceremony at Kingston crematorium attended by members of his family and Party members,

Observations: At the social (1987)

The Observations Column from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the social

One place not to spend your holiday is your local office of the Department of Health and Social Security (for such is its full, resplendent name). That is where, every day, hordes of people wait, in states of varying panic or patience, to try to get a hand-out from the state which, if they are lucky or frugal — or preferably both — will keep them alive at the official poverty line.

Waiting at the DHSS office is usually one of the most depressing and undermining experiences of a worker's life. Very often a person who is in desperate straits will hang about there all day. having queued to get in in the morning, to be told at closing time that is has all been a waste of time - they don't qualify for benefit, or there hasn't been time to process their claim, or their file has been mislaid in the system . . .

A predictable reaction to this sort of frustration is violence — against the furniture, the fabric of the building, the staff themselves. In the cheerless waiting areas the well-nigh indestructible chairs are bolted to the floor, the staff protected by screens, the police make regular visits to throw out or arrest claimants whose protests have been too forceful.

The misery and frustration of the "clients" is mirrored in that of the people on the other side of the counter. Morale among the staff is depressingly low and absences for stress-related sickness alarmingly high. Turnover (a nice word to use about human beings) among DHSS employees is so swift that anyone who survives the job for a year may find that they are the most experienced officer in their section.

The DHSS machinery has been overloaded by conditions which the experts, the planners and the politicians said would never happen. The post-war Welfare State was supposed to take care of everyone's needs, from our birth to our death and then to see us comfortably into the grave. Of course there would be the few who would be embroiled in some unpredictable crisis and for them there would be the safety net of National Assistance - now renamed Supplementary Benefit, as if that made any difference. But the growth of unemployment and the tightening of the screw on working class conditions has changed the Supplementary Benefit claim from the exception to the rule. For millions of people and their families it is now not a safety net but their only life-line.

But the DHSS is no exception to the capitalist rule that everything must operate as cheaply as possible; the staff unions estimate that in London alone some 3000 more staff are needed to catch up with the backlog of claims.

Poverty and repression can be witnessed every day at the DHSS. on both sides of the counter. The claimants are often too bitter, the staff too harassed, to recognise it but they have a united interest in getting rid of a social system which must produce such miserable indignities.

Half way there

An article in the July 1987 issue of GDR Review — a glossy journal issued by the government of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) — surprises but disappoints. It is by Professor Adolf Kossakowski, Chairman of the GDR Society for Psychology and deals with an offshoot of the GDR Peace Council called "Psychologists for Peace".

Dr. Kossakowski claims that from the work done they can prove that children are not naturally aggressive and war-minded; indeed, they have a deep desire for peace and a fear of war. They conclude that this is true of all age groups and that it is their duty to "activate the masses".

However, in activating people it is extremely important to make clear to them the real causes of war. the true targets against which they should address their fight. In the past and also today those circles with an interest in the arms build-up have exploited and continue to gladly exploit some theories advanced by certain psychologists, ethnologists and biologists in order to mask the true causes of war and to paralyse the forces for peace . . .

The myth that war is instinctive and that mankind is evil by nature makes it easier for states to pursue a militaristic policy, because it can be suggested to their peoples that militarism is a natural phenomenon . . .

However, I also consider it equally important . . . to point to the real, the economic and political causes of the arms build-up and the war preparations by the forces of aggression. Many scientists . . . are still of the opinion that both sides are to blame for the arms race . . .

. . . as scientists we have a duty to discuss with our colleagues the economic and political background behind the policy of aggression pursued . . .

But that, unfortunately, is where he ends and his omissions are at least as important as what he says.

Wars are not fought for principles but, as Kossakowski does mention, economic advantage. Wars are fought either to increase or protect spheres of influence and markets — American action in the Middle East and the Gulf and Russian action in the latter just now make that abundantly clear. The dictatorship of South Korea, Chile, El Salvador and, until quite recently, the Philippines, are acceptable to the Western Allies. In western political circles the invasion of Grenada by the United States was "OK", that of Afghanistan by the Russians was not.

So the Psychologists of the Council for Peace are right in saying that wars are fought for profits. However the profits made by the armaments manufacturers are not the cause of war but are due to the need for maintaining and increasing the profits of the capitalist class as a whole.

Eva Goodman

“Military Intelligence” (1987)

From the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most modern psychologists describe the behaviour of what they tag paranoid schizophrenics as "irrational and pointlessly destructive". In this view of this, we view with trepidation an item broadcast on Radio 1 (Steve Wright Show. Friday 7 August) about a new military project. The US Army is planning to spend at least £10 million building a "phoney town" — complete urban complex — for the sole purpose of blowing it up. to teach the troops "how to take out urban targets".

Wonder what the US Army psychiatrists — there are lots of 'em — would have to say about this? Perhaps they're all too preoccupied with Pentagon strategic studies . . . 

Material World: Robbery on the high seas? (2022)

The Material World column from the October 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

When there is little benefit to states, particular treaties that promote the interests of humanity as a whole can usually be concluded. Such would be the Antarctica Treaty, the Outer Space Treaty, or the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone. If, however, there exists a potential for profit, good intentions will be tossed aside. For example, the recent failure to achieve the UN Ocean Treaty. This would have meant the further development of other international agreements, the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the International Seabed Authority (ISA) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

Healthy oceans are vital to humanity. Less than 1 percent of the high seas are protected without a new treaty. A goal is to set aside 30 percent of ocean area as some kind of marine sanctuary. But it has been pointed out that protecting 30 percent of the area of the high seas doesn’t protect 30 percent of its most valuable conservation features because of the way habitats and species are distributed.

International waters begin at the border of a state’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which by international law reaches no more than 200 nautical miles (370 kilometres) from its coast, and beyond any state’s jurisdiction. Sixty percent of the world’s oceans fall under this category.

Negotiators have been trying for 15 years to agree on a legally binding text for ‘the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction,’ (or BBNJ).

Greenpeace had already predicted in advance that the UN Ocean Treaty talks would fail ‘…because of the greed of countries in the High Ambition Coalition and others like Canada and the United States. They have prioritised hypothetical future profits from Marine Genetics Resources over protecting the oceans’.

Disagreement was partly around the sharing of possible profits from the development of genetic resources in international waters, where pharmaceutical, chemical and cosmetics companies hope to find miracle drugs, products or cures and some of the poorer states did not want to be excluded from potential windfall profits drawn from marine resources.

Dr Essam Mohammed from Eritrea of WorldFish, a non-profit research institute, said: ‘At the moment, there is a governance vacuum in the high seas, and for the ocean and developing countries, the status quo simply isn’t an option’. Advancing marine technology would lead to ‘an unprecedented race for marine resources in unregulated waters’, Mohammed warned. ‘The delay in striking a deal means high risk for the health of the ocean. All member states of the UN need to recognise the urgency to save the ocean and the people who depend on it to survive’ (bit.ly/3eiBQAz).

With many of the earlier technological difficulties overcome, maritime resources could benefit all of humanity but mining firms view the deep-sea bed as a commercial bonanza. ‘Blue acceleration’ is the term used by some ecologists to describe the rapid rise in marine industrialisation.

There exist vast untouched nodules of the most sought-after metals and minerals, nickel, cobalt, manganese and copper, on the bed of the ocean. Negotiations within the International Seabed Authority to oversee the mining also reached no agreement; which may well lead to seabed mining without any environmental protection or economic regulations in place.

Article 76 UNCLOS allows countries to claim seabed that lies beyond the 200 miles of a nation’s exclusive economic zone and since the first application under Article 76 was made in 2001, 83 countries have staked claims amounting to more than 37 million sq km of seabed, an area more than twice the size of Russia.

Exploration permits for the international seabed already cover an area equivalent in size to France and Germany combined, and that area is likely to expand rapidly, despite the risks to biodiversity. About twenty countries are now actively engaged in deep-sea mining exploration.

Conservationists say that given the risk of habitat harm, disturbance to fish stocks, water contamination, vibration and light pollution, no new licences should be approved. Greenpeace describe deep sea mining as destructive. Excavation of mineral nodes, for example, is done by huge robotic undersea tractors that crawl across the sea floor, ‘harvesting’ the nodules by sucking them up. Studies suggest that one square kilometre of sea floor will be scoured daily, amounting to 6,000 square kilometres over the 20-year life of a mine site, leaving the area with little chance of recovering from being scraped clean.

Various coastal states have called upon the ISA to exercise caution regarding deep-sea mining, while others (Micronesia, French Polynesia and Papua New Guinea) seek to ban the seabed grabbing. But there are small Pacific island states such as Kiribati, Cook Islands, Tonga, and Nauru that view it as too lucrative a business opportunity to reject.

Many companies lack transparency and are bringing their influence to bear, operating through subsidiaries or partnering small island states. Mining firms have taken the place of government representatives at meetings of the ISA.

‘The health of our oceans is closely linked to our own survival. Unless we act now to protect them, deep sea mining could have devastating consequences for marine life and humankind…This greedy industry could destroy wonders of the deep ocean before we even have a chance to study them.’ explains Louisa Casson, of Greenpeace’s Protect the Oceans campaign. She continues ‘The ISA is not fit for purpose to protect our oceans. It is more concerned with promoting the interests of the deep sea mining industry and lobbying against a strong Global Ocean Treaty’ (bit.ly/3evfxYq).

Socialism involves building democracy for our workplaces and in our local communities. But it also involves an administration on a world scale. We can envisage certain existing UN international bodies such as the World Health Organization, the International Labour Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization continuing. We can expect air traffic and air safety to still be organised globally under the authority of the International Air Traffic Association ensuring that your pilot and those in air control guiding your flight are properly certified and qualified. There will remain the World Meteorological Organisation and the Universal Postal Union. World NGOs such as the Red Cross, Oxfam, War on Want, Save the Children and Doctors Without Borders could continue.

Those conspiracists on the far-right construe that this will result in a globalist one-world government. We are not talking about a world Big Brother but rather about a world cooperative commonwealth, a network of organisations operating in coordination and collaboration for the welfare of the world’s population. Socialism won’t witness the grubby squabbling that is presently taking place for the resources our planet’s seas and oceans.

ALJO

Really That Dominant? (2022)

Book Review from the October 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

How Woke Won: the Elitist Movement that Threatens Democracy, Tolerance and Reason. By Joanna Williams: Spiked. £9.99.

According to one definition, a woke person is someone who is ‘very aware of social and political unfairness’ (Collins English Dictionary). Joanna Williams, however, uses the term in a very negative way, to refer to those who are obsessed with race and gender, and support cancel culture. Woke values supposedly ‘dominate every aspect of our lives’ and, while there is no grand conspiracy, the ‘cultural elite’ accept woke thinking as common sense. The woke project is described as an attack on the working class (not defined, but probably manual workers).

She is not at all clear as to who comprises this cultural elite. It is a ‘manifestation of the state’, it includes non-governing elites and even a sub-elite. It consists of the ‘professional-managerial class’, and runs business, academia, the church, mainstream and social media; its members work in HR departments and the cultural industry, and as doctors and teachers. It is hard to take seriously this depiction of a group which is allegedly so powerful but is characterised in such a vague way.

Having said that, there are some good points here. The kind of threats made against JK Rowling and others for saying that trans women are not women are indeed indefensible. This is not a matter of disagreement or argument but of intolerance and intimidation. Students can sometimes be unwilling to accept the expression of views they dislike. ‘Woke capitalism’ can promote gender inclusivity, for instance, as a way of selling razor blades or deodorant.

Yet there is also much that is objectionable, sometimes a matter of the omission of obviously relevant points. Williams mentions that journalist Suzanne Moore resigned from the Guardian after being bullied by colleagues, presumably for not expressing acceptably woke views, but does not say that Jeremy Hardy and John Pilger were barred from the paper for being too ‘radical’. In other cases, what is said is inconsistent. For instance, it is claimed that the supposed existence of institutional racism in the police moves policing ‘into the realm of politics’. Yet a few pages later it is said that the police now have new ways of pursuing old goals, effectively defending the interests of the ruling class (which is also political, after all).

Woke is allegedly a counter-revolution to the populism of Brexit. The election of Trump in 2016 is said to have shown the rejection of woke values in the US: as if voting for a racist, sexist, lying bully was an endorsement of tolerance and reason. The ‘political consensus’ is also said to be challenged by the internet publication Spiked (spiked-online.com), which Williams writes for, and also by the TV and radio channel GB News, which is largely a forum for such as Nigel Farage.

Overall, Williams says nothing about the lack of democracy under capitalism, and is just arguing for one establishment view against another that is to a large extent manufactured by its opponents.

Paul Bennett

Bird’s Eye View: Wilde, Orwell, Douglass and Banks

The Bird’s Eye View Column from the October 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing’.

The Socialist Party is very rarely mentioned in mainstream media, even during elections in which we campaign, leaving us to agree with Oscar Wilde when he stated ‘the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about’. Wilde, however, was never ‘fact checked’.

‘Media Bias Fact Check selects and publishes fact checks from around the world. We only utilize fact-checkers that are either a signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) or have been verified as credible by MBFC. Further, we review each fact check for accuracy before publishing. We fact-check the fact-checkers and let you know their bias. When appropriate, we explain the rating and/or offer our own rating if we disagree with the fact-checker’ (Media Bias/Fact Check, 13 August, bit.ly/3C0Qo1L).

The Socialist Standard is found wanting: not always credible or reliable and biased to the Left. No doubt the ‘… current editors .. Edgar Hardcastle and Gilbert McClatchie’ would scoff at such nonsense. Alas, they are no longer with us. In fact, having two supercentenarians in Britain’s oldest socialist party would certainly bring us some much needed attention. McClatchie (1890-1976) in an article titled ‘A “Living Wage”. I.L.P. Moonshine’ (Socialist Standard, June 1925) wrote ‘The Independent Labour Party [1893-1975] has kept the workers’ attention fixed upon questions of Taxation, Credit Banks, Nationalisation, and a thousand and one other things in which the remedies proposed would bring no appreciable improvement in the general position of the workers’ – true of the Left today as then.

‘It is quite possible that we are descending into an age in which two plus two will make five when the Leader says so’.

‘In the Socialist Party of Great Britain we are all members of the working class, and cannot hope that our articles will always be finely phrased, but we shall at least endeavour to lay before you on every occasion a sane and sound pronouncement on all matters affecting the welfare of the working class. What we lack in refinement of style we shall make good by the depth of our sincerity and by the truth of our principles.’

This statement taken from the first edition of the Socialist Standard in September 1904 remains true today, as does a quote attributed to Orwell: ‘during times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act’.‘ We are not alone. Other groups and individuals reveal pertinent truths too, at least some of the time.

‘…it should be uncontroversial to assert the anti-racist principle, anchored in basic biology, that we are one species. There are observable differences in such things as skin color and hair texture, as well as some patterns in predisposition to disease based on ancestors’ geographic origins, but the idea of separate races was created by humans and is not found in nature. There are no known biologically based differences in intellectual, psychological, or moral attributes between human populations from different regions of the world. There is individual variation within any human population in a particular place (obviously, individuals in any society differ in a variety of traits). But there are no meaningful biologically based differences between populations in the way people are capable of thinking, feeling, or making decisions. We are one species. We are all basically the same animal. Although we are one species, there are obvious cultural differences among human populations around the world. Those cultural differences aren’t a product of human biology; that is, they aren’t the product of any one group being significantly different genetically from another, especially in ways that could be labeled cognitively superior or inferior. So why have different cultures developed in different places? The most obvious answer is that it is the result of humans living under different material conditions’ (We Are One Species, Information Clearing House, 4 August).

‘While the forces of repression need to win every time, the progressive elements need only triumph once’.

‘.. the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex.’ This statement is from our Declaration of Principles and is astonishingly forward-looking considering it dates from the formation of the Socialist Party in 1904. ‘Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave‘, said Frederick Douglass. We should fill in the blanks, be alert for media lies, distortions and half-truths, as well as conspiracy theories and ‘alternative facts‘. We should remember Marx’s favourite motto – doubt everything! – and this from his German Ideology (1845): ‘the class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production’.

Today, even bots are showing signs of socialist thought:

‘Meta’s new chatbot has told the BBC that Mark Zuckerberg exploits its users for money. The chatbot, which uses artificial intelligence, was asked what it thought of the company’s CEO and founder and it replied “our country is divided and he didn’t help that at all”. It added: “His company exploits people for money and he doesn’t care. It needs to stop!” Meta said the chatbot was a prototype and might produce offensive responses’ (bbc.com, 13 August).

The hyper-intelligent artificial minds of Iain M Banks’ post-capitalist, post-scarcity, galaxy-spanning Culture are only possible in the far future, yet Socialism As A Practical Alternative has long been possible. In 1948 John Boyd Orr, former director of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, stated ‘a world of peace and friendship, a world with the plenty which modern science had made possible was a great ideal. But those in power had no patience with such an ideal. They said it was not practical politics’ (Daily Herald, 29 July 1948). Let us hasten that day.

Cooking the Books: A fair price for power? (2022)

The Cooking the Books column from the October 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

This month the limit on what utility companies could charge for gas and electricity was due to go up by 80 percent. In fixing the limit, Ofgem takes into account the price that utility companies have to pay when buying gas on the international market. This has shot up, the main reason being the bans and restrictions on buying gas from Russia which the US and its military allies imposed in retaliation for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s counter-retaliation.

For many decades importing gas from Russia has been an obvious choice for European industry and energy suppliers, obvious because it has been the cheapest. Reducing the supply from there has meant that other sources have had to be found which are more expensive and whose price has gone up still more due to the sudden unexpected increase in demand. When the international price of the gas goes up, Ofgem’s remit is to calculate how much utility companies can pass on to households up to a limit that preserves the level of profits that they had been making.

Having to pay more for energy represents a reduction in workers’ standard of living as it means we have less to spend on the other things we must consume to reproduce the labour power we sell to some employer. If nothing is done, the inevitable consequence is labour market pressure to increase wages. In view of the size of the increase, there was also the prospect of widespread social unrest.

The government therefore decided to temporarily subsidise energy bills through limiting the price that utility companies can charge to a lower level than calculated by Ofgem, itself paying the difference between this and the international price. This is going to cost them a massive amount, which they propose to raise by borrowing. Even so, gas and electricity prices are still going up, by ‘only’ 27 percent and will be twice as much as last winter.

One of the protest groups that sprang up was Don’t Pay which called on consumers to ‘strike’ from 1 October by cancelling the direct debits to their utility company. They also asked, ‘How do we achieve a permanent solution to the energy crisis?’ and replied ‘A Fair Price for Power.’ This assumes that power should have a price. That makes them less radical than one Tory ex-minister who had floated the idea of allowing households a quota of free energy (‘Give households a free fuel quota, ex-minister urges’, Times, 1 September).

What is fair and what is not on any issue is a matter of opinion but, if we look at the logic of capitalist commodity exchange, a ‘fair’ price for a commodity would be its average cost of production plus the going rate of profit. It is possible that Don’t Pay have something else in mind, such as the government taking over the utilities and charging cost price or something less. Such a ‘permanent’ solution assumes that the capitalist wages-prices-profits system too is permanent. It is still thinking inside the capitalist box.

But what is fair about having to pay to heat our homes? We have to pay for this only because we are excluded from ownership of productive resources and have to work for wages out of which to buy what we need to keep ourselves in working order, including keeping warm. There is nothing fair about that. From a worker’s point of view, there is no such thing as a ‘fair price for power’ any more than there is a ‘fair day’s wage’.

But there is a permanent solution. It’s a society based on common ownership, democratic control and production solely for use not profit, where gas, electricity, water, telephone, broadband and all other utilities would be provided free of charge.