Halo Halo! (2024)

The Halo Halo Column from the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Religions, well some anyway, amongst other things, preach tolerance don’t they? Not in Kansas, USA, apparently. A new after-school club is causing such a kerfuffle that a petition has been raised against it. The petition says: ‘Satanism has a strong history of persecution and violence towards the church and those who believe in God.’ And goes on ‘Whether you believe in God, are a Christian, Catholic, Mormon, Hindu, Buddhist or even atheist you should see that ending this club is not just because it opposes Christianity but because what they stand for and the actions they will make are wrong and immoral. This isn’t an argument over religion and Christianity but of right and wrong.’ (Newsweek 27 December). It’s a Satan Club. Are young folk setting out to wind up their parents and authority?

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In Iowa, ‘the Satanic Temple of Iowa placed with state permission a small altar on the first floor of the Iowa State Capitol. It displays what are described online as the seven fundamental tenets” of Satanism, including the statement that “the freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend”’ (YahooNews 13 December). The incensed State Representative wants to bring in a law to display ‘the Ten Commandments in all state buildings, including the Capitol, and in Iowa public schools’, but admits ‘few people think there is much that can be legally done about it because of free speech and freedom of religion.’

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Richard Dawkins in his 2009 book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, notes that in 2008, a Gallup poll, in response to three questions regarding the origin and development of humans on this planet, found that 36 percent of Americans thought that evolution had taken place over millions of years but that God had kick-started it; 14 percent thought yes, millions of years of evolution but definitely no god: and a staggering 44 per cent thought (rather believed because thought implies rationality) that God was responsible for the creation of humans within the last ten thousand years. The percentage of the latter who favoured October or some other month is not known.

A Gallup poll along similar lines in 2019 appears to show that the 44 percent is down to 40; the 36 is down to 33, and the 14 has seen a large jump to 22 percent. A 2021 Pew Research Center survey found that 60 percent of Protestants consider themselves ‘born-again or evangelical Christian.’ Opiates are hard to kick.

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Now the stepmother of US House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson has called out his extremist Christian beliefs (LBTQNation 13 December, quoting a Guardian interview). She says that Johnson, who is a creationist, has an indifference to environmental issues because he believes that ‘God will take care of you.’ So stuff the environment. An ideal capitalist politician given the damage capitalism causes.

Besides refusing to fight climate change, Johnson’s religion has fuelled his virulent anti-LGBTQ+ beliefs.

DC

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

A billionaire bungalow boss is bankrupt months after boasting about his bursting bank account. Entrepreneur Bob Bull, at No.88 in The Sunday Times Rich List, owes £725million,

(tinyurl.com/shc5uezf)

Over 1 in 5 children live in poverty in 40 of world’s richest countries, 

(tinyurl.com/35umy5t7)

In a recent interview, Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA). own stepmother called out his extremist Christian beliefs and blasted the House speaker for using religion to justify his indifference to environmental issues. ‘It speaks to those religious beliefs’, Janis Gabriel told The Guardian. ‘Don’t take care of the environment because we have a finite amount of time here and God will take care of you. It’s crazy.’ 

(tinyurl.com/2sr2zt53)

Scientists Warn That the Dubai Climate Conference Is Full of Crap.

(tinyurl.com/yc2vfxt9)

Communist China survivor blasts UN ‘eco-socialists’ for hypocrisy on eating meat: ‘From the Marxist playbook’.

(tinyurl.com/59h8scs9)

122 killed by a fire in a wedding hall. 82 killed by a fire in a Covid-19 hospital. Three months later, another hospital fire claimed the lives of 92 more. Though they may seem to be freak accidents, these fires were preventable tragedies sharing one common theme: gross negligence. Government investigations into these fires found that local authorities were negligent in their failure to enforce safety regulations and conduct inspections. Contractors used cheap, highly flammable construction materials to cut cost. 

(tinyurl.com/ykcmrw2d)

‘There is no democracy in Gaza when you want to speak against Hamas or its de facto government. We fear they will arrest us during the war, or after the war if we spoke against them. They can easily kill us even, and tell the world we are spies’, said Hasan Ahmed, 39, who was in the hospital with his injured brother.

(tinyurl.com/ycx6nnxd)

…I see a possible change coming through ‘the slow rise of solidarity between the Palestinian citizens of Israel and the Jews opposing the all-destructive war’. As a pragmatic realist, I am well aware that such a solidarity is difficult to imagine today. But it is here that we should resuscitate the famous motto of the May 1968 protests in Paris: Soyons réalistes, demandons l’impossible. Be realistic, demand the impossible. The truly dangerous utopia is the idea that the solution to the Middle East crisis can only be achieved through military force.

(tinyurl.com/mhrs6r98)

A progressive Thai MP has been sentenced to six years in prison for insulting the country’s powerful monarchy on social media.

(tinyurl.com/5n8wmv4n)

Sex can be bought for as little as £30 before 9am and £10 after midnight on the streets of Leeds due to the cost-of-living crisis. 

(tinyurl.com/y3rfmdnd)

This food was made by the People and it should fill the bellies of the People…Don’t fall prey to the myth of scarcity! 

(tinyurl.com/2bthwu2r)

‘It’s time for humans to become aware of the new reality and to collectively move where we want to as a species. We have the capability to do that and are already seeing signs of such movements. We can break out of dead ends’, concludes Søgaard.

(tinyurl.com/3n6c64cb)

New Year, old notions (2024)

From the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

As midnight chimed fireworks sparkled and people held hands, hugged and wished each other Happy New Year. Meanwhile in far too many places rather more dreadful pyrotechnics continued being unleashed.

Rockets erupted with fire and shrapnel in heavily populated built up areas, the deadly crackle of assault rifles continued to exact an inexorable toll of civilians and soldiers alike. The recently screened BBC series Vigil is being repeatedly realised in awful reality as military drones are launched by leaders utterly unconcerned about casualties, mere collateral damage.

While Russia and Ukraine continue their internecine conflict, their place in the headlines has been temporarily usurped by Israel’s determination to out-atrocity Hamas, apparently quite prepared to risk provoking Hezbollah into some futile act of bellicose response.

Two bombs in Iran have been exploded, amongst a crowd assembled to pay respects to a military man assassinated by an external power, seemingly by Islamic State. Muslims slaughtered by Muslims. The Middle East is demonstrating that the three Abrahamic religions, whatever they might profess otherwise, are no promoters of peace.

American evangelical Christians even claim the conflicts in and around Palestine have a divine purpose. Their government is seemingly prepared to continue supplying weaponry and support to those deemed politically righteous. Ukraine has even moved the birthday of Jesus, from their orthodox point of view, into line with their allies.

There is a common feature in all these conflicts; that is, the fundamental competitive nature of capitalism being expressed as nationalism. Zionist state, Palestinian two-states, Islamic State, or the states essentially created by the Bolsheviks now fighting it out.

In Britain, amongst those whose ‘socialism’ is in the Leninist tradition, there are arguments favouring one side or another in the conflicts. There are those who claim groups such as Hamas must not be criticised for their actions because they represent the oppressed.

How representative they actually are is debatable as there is no way of objectively assessing how many in Gaza actually lend Hamas their support. But even if they do it is hard to see how the seemingly random killing of a 1,000 plus Israelis advances Palestinian well-being. Especially as the response of Israel’s government was wholly predictable.

Political leaderships and their military ultimately will prioritise their nation’s state over the lives of the citizens. The common man, woman and child, are an expendable resource, self-replicating in the longer term, in the struggle for competitive advantage.

It is worth pointing out to those who profess their anti-imperialism through their partiality for this side or that in these armed conflicts that history is against them. A half century or so ago anti-American imperialism’s activists marched the streets chanting, ‘Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh, Vietcong are going the win’. They did, and fifty years later Vietnam is securely capitalist and well favoured by America.

However, in 1965, General Curtis E. LeMay, US Airforce Chief of staff, referring to North Vietnam said, ‘We’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Age’. Subsequently, an uncounted number of Vietnamese were killed by frequent bombing from altitudes so high there could be no pretence that military targets were identified, or that civilian casualties were unfortunate, but unintentional. There was also the widespread use of Agent Orange, a defoliant that caused widespread birth defects at the time and also in those conceived long after the war ended.

This campaign was conducted on behalf of the nation whose representatives are presently calling on Israel to moderate its action in Gaza, while continuing to supply the munitions.

Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Iraq subjected to ‘shock and awe’, Ukraine and Russia, Hamas and the IDF, all justified by national interests. It also raises the question of what constitutes terrorism. If it means inflicting terror on those on the receiving end, then terrorism is the default position of all nation states when pursuing their interests militarily, either actually or by threat.

Peel away the publicly stated rationales offered in justification, then competing nationalisms are exposed. Putin can accurately point to NATO expansion, but it’s Russian interests opposed to Ukraine’s, which has its own self-identified national interests to defend, that have led, once more, to war.

In the Middle East, Iran and Saudi Arabia look on the present conflict with their own competing national interests in mind. One antithetical to Israel, the other perceiving benefit from a possible working relationship with Tel Aviv.

And so the behind the scenes discussions revolve around the one-state and the two-state solutions for Palestinians. As if by drawing more lines on maps nationalist divisions can be ameliorated if not wholly overcome.

Meanwhile British politicians continue to invoke Israel’s right to self-defence as if that mitigates somewhat the humanitarian tragedy being enacted. The moral high ground may seem an exalted place to stand, looking down on those seemingly too benighted to look up and see beyond their errors. But it is a cold, isolated place.

Not that the UK is exempt from nationalism, rather it is riddled with it. From coronations to Brexit to political divisions, its competitive nature all too apparent. This year’s general election will be promoted by the SNP as a de facto referendum on Scottish independence.

This demonstrates an essential feature of nationalism, which is that it is pitched against ‘the other’. The other in this case is England, as if there is something elemental to being Scottish that is fundamentally different to being English.

Surely, a denizen of Edinburgh has more in common with a Londoner than a crofter on Orkney, as the Londoner compared with a North Yorkshire hill farmer. Neighbours living next door to each other have similarities and differences. But their best interests are served by sharing their commonalities and their individual attributes.

Far better than killing each other over which flag should be saluted is ditching all the flags and working together to realise human potential throughout the world. A truly international commonwealth in which competition has been replaced by cooperation.

Gaza will be the present iteration of terror inflicted by the bellicose until the slaughter is put on pause before being unleashed elsewhere. Unless and until, that is, people decide, as we are well capable of doing, to abolish capitalism and its attendant nationalistic notions.

Dave Alton

What has capitalism ever done for us? (2024)

From the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some who read Marx’s seminal work Capital are quite surprised, or even shocked, to encounter the great revolutionary extolling the virtues of the capitalist mode of production. We even encounter reactionaries using this to somehow justify their faith in the contemporary version of capitalism and its corrupt and destructive nature. They seem to believe that this shows even capitalism’s greatest enemy to be complicit in their admiration for exploitation, inequality and injustice.

For socialists this merely illustrates their ignorance of the evolution of the productive forces and the historical context it creates. Just as the Left continually point to the promotion of the state ownership of industry in The Communist Manifesto as still being relevant as a policy today we see a complete misunderstanding of how history proceeds and how it decides what political strategies are relevant at a particular time and place and not the ideological needs of the radicals of either the Left or Right.

It goes even deeper than this because for many, and unfortunately this includes the great majority, it is inconceivable that although humanity has created the economic systems we cannot control them – they control us. Just as in nature the evolutionary forces are beyond the control of any particular species so the cultural and economic manifestations of human productive activity have been a matter of mystery and so elude those who seek to understand and so control them. Ironically, we only realise this now because economic evolution’s current historical context has made this possible. Marx wasn’t born with a specific genius to understand capitalism but capitalism created the possibility that someone like him could understand it. Everything depends on historical context – and here’s why.

The success of our species is entirely due to our technologies – from bone axes to nuclear power and from the invention of language to its abstraction called writing our frail bodies have been protected, to a great degree, from the murderous rigours of nature. The eventual symbiosis of humanity and its technologies evolved into a total synthesis where it became meaningless to speak of one without the other. An understanding of humanity and its cultural evolution became the study of modes of production and the specific classes that became politically dominant because of this.

Any dissection of the propaganda/ideology of these dominant groups always reveals an economic foundation. In this country in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the struggle between capitalism and its representatives and the reactionary forces of feudal autocracy was bloody and without pity. The superficial religious ideologies of either side were promoted as the cause of the conflict but we see it now as the climax of a great class struggle created by emerging and old forms of production and their economic and political prerequisites. We also see that the attempted establishment of socialism by the True Levellers or Diggers was premature and only happened because of the political anarchy of the time. Not only were Cromwell and his bourgeois followers extremely successful at war but also at commerce, trade and exploitation. With the exception of a brief attempt at a counter-revolution in 1688, which was easily crushed, capitalism was established and the liberation of the productive forces was unleashed.

This ‘Industrial Revolution’ is what Marx refers to in his praise of capitalism. To him the creation of an educated working class together with the explosion of production (which made such education necessary) were the requisites of socialism. Capitalism was, for him, just a stepping stone towards socialism. Those who thought that socialism could be imposed without going through this capitalist stage have only to look to the tragedy of Bolshevik Russia to find their answer.

Today after unprecedented acceleration and change we find that capitalism has developed to a stage where automation, computerisation and organisation have the potential to liberate humanity from hunger, disease, ignorance, superstition and cultural isolation but instead we see food destroyed because it cannot be sold at a profit, medicine being priced beyond the means of those who need it most, systematic subversion of education into ideological conditioning, rising religious intolerance and the turning of information into fake news on the internet. Why? Because capitalism, like feudalism before it, has become a fetter on production. Production for profit necessitates buying power to create viable markets but also partly negates this consumerism by continually seeking to hold back the wages of those who produce the commodities that they are obliged to buy back! Today’s historical context renders capitalism irrational and anachronistic.

In the movie Kingdom of Heaven the character Balian asks Saladin: ‘What’s Jerusalem worth?’ The Saracen leader turns and says ‘Nothing’ but after a pause he turns again and says, with a smile, ‘Everything’. The same reply would be relevant to the question that is the title of this article. Capitalism and socialism are not involved in an eternal struggle resembling positions of ‘right or wrong’ or ‘good or evil’ but rather one of the recognition or otherwise of historical inevitability. The tiny parasite class and their ideological lickspittles of the mass media would still have us believe that in the midst of economic crises, war, pandemics, poverty, racism, genocide and crime that capitalism is still ‘the best of all possible worlds’.

Wez.

Proper Gander: Lights . . . Camera . . . Political Action? (2024)

The Proper Gander TV column from the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The response to Mr Bates vs The Post Office was a surprise reminder that TV programmes can still have an impact, even with so much else on our screens competing for our attention. The four-part series shown on ITV dramatised the campaign by ex-Post Office staff against their convictions for theft, fraud and false accounting. Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of sub-postmasters were prosecuted, with thousands more suspected of fiddling their accounts. Consequently, many lost their homes as well as their jobs, fell into debt and some ended their own lives because of the pressure. Their convictions were based on discrepancies and shortfalls recorded on their Post Office branch’s accounting software, Horizon. When some sub-postmasters realised there was a pattern of innocent people being convicted, they grouped together and formed The Justice For Sub-postmasters Alliance to co-ordinate their campaign. In 2019, England’s High Court ruled that the Horizon system was faulty, acknowledging the real source of the accounting discrepancies. So far, only 93 sub-postmasters have had their convictions overturned. In 2020 the government established a public inquiry which was ongoing while Mr Bates vs The Post Office was being broadcast.

Toby Jones portrays Alan Bates, who founded the campaign group and persistently worked to persuade lawyers and MPs that the convictions were unjust. The story is one of ‘skint, little people’ as Alan says, who found themselves victimised by the rules, procedures and economic prerogatives of powerful institutions, and who are fighting back. The Post Office is represented and defended by then-Chief Executive Paula Vennells and Head of Partnerships Angela van den Bogerd, both played as shifty and conspiratorial. The IT company behind Horizon, Fujitsu, is depicted as a cold, shadowy institution, but perhaps with less emphasis than might be expected. While the drama ends with a call for the government to take more responsibility, it puts Conservatives such as James Arbuthnot and Nadhim Zahawi (who appears as himself) in a very good light. Blame is placed on the Post Office rather than the economic and legal framework which allowed for the whole situation.

While Mr Bates vs The Post Office has raised awareness of the scandal beyond its 10 million viewers, it has been reported extensively before. Problems with the Horizon system were first highlighted in 2009 by Computer Weekly magazine, which has since published hundreds more articles, alongside investigations by Private Eye, Panorama (see Proper Gander June 2022) and journalist Nick Wallis, whose 2021 book The Great Post Office Scandal was serialised in the Daily Mail. The issue has been in the background for years, but Mr Bates vs The Post Office has managed to give it unprecedented attention. After its episodes were first screened in early January, a different angle on the topic was reported on news media each day: the way that suspects were interrogated, the millions paid to Fujitsu, the petition to strip Paula Vennells of her CBE, new legislation to quash the convictions, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak supporting a knighthood for Alan Bates.

Why has it taken Mr Bates vs The Post Office, rather than any of the previous exposés, to galvanise this action? As Marshall McLuhan said, ‘the medium is the message’, and the docudrama format of Mr Bates vs The Post Office enables it to have more of an impact than a straightforward documentary or written article. All these formats are interpretations of research into what happened, with the difference between them being in how this research is presented. In re-enacting what happened, a docudrama can employ the techniques used in filmed drama to engage the viewer. Dialogue is carefully chosen by the writer and rehearsed by the actor, often working with the real people being portrayed. Scenes are lit, filmed, scored and edited in ways intended to draw in the viewer to how the producers want the story to be told. When this is done proficiently, the re-creation of an event can have more of an emotional impact than being told about those events or even watching real footage. This gives docudramas an advantage in making the viewer feel emotionally invested in an issue, which is needed to fuel any political action. Only knowing that something is wrong or needs changing isn’t enough.

Previous docudramas have succeeded in shaping prevailing attitudes to events. The most well-known remains 1966’s Cathy Come Home, which showed a family becoming homeless and then being further persecuted by the state machinery and lack of adequate support services. The script was based on thorough research and largely filmed on location (a rarity at the time) with hand-held cameras and improvisation, giving additional authenticity. While Cathy Come Home drew attention to homelessness and led to the formation of the charity Crisis, the only reform to legislation it prompted was to allow husbands to stay with their wives and children in homeless hostels. As for wider change, director Ken Loach said that the film hasn’t achieved this: ‘it all gets smothered in this bear-hug of approbation, so that the energy of it is dissipated’ (tinyurl.com/3uasacat). A docudrama which had a particular impact on policy was The Day After, broadcast in America during 1983. This prediction of what a third world war would be like convinced then-president Ronald Reagan to pull back on nuclear proliferation. Hillsborough, shown on ITV in 1996, took a different approach to these by portraying real people, as does Mr Bates vs The Post Office. Hillsborough dramatised the campaign by the families of those who died during the Sheffield Wednesday football disaster to overturn the official verdicts of accidental death. When the deaths were instead ruled unlawful in 2016, MP Steve Rotheram stated the docudrama was ‘massively influential’ in the outcome (tinyurl.com/yeyucap4).

The momentum generated for a couple of weeks in January by Mr Bates vs The Post Office looks like it will speed up a resolution for the sub-postmasters which will hopefully improve their situations. However, the government’s apparent enthusiasm for the convictions to be overturned is perhaps due more to them wanting to attract support in a general election year than to them being concerned that the campaign will develop further if they don’t take action. Still, Mr Bates vs The Post Office has reminded us that TV has some strength, especially in the format of a docudrama, and the programme also optimistically shows how people driven by a common cause can self-organise and co-operate.

Mike Foster

Blogger's Note:

Correction from the March 2024 Socialist Standard

February's Proper Gander (print version) stated that Shelter was founded as a result of Cathy Come Home. The programme in fact inspired the creation of the charity Crisis. Apologies.

Vague and Vacuous (2024)

Book Review from the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Values, Voice and Virtue: the New British Politics. By Matthew Goodwin. Penguin £10.99.

Goodwin was co-author of National Populism, reviewed in the March 2019 Socialist Standard, which was largely an unconvincing and unpleasant defence of a xenophobic form of nationalism. His latest book is no better.

The basic argument is that, since the 1970s, there has been a revolution or re-alignment in British society and politics. Thatcher supposedly emphasised family values and individual responsibility, but also ‘ushered in the new era of hyper-globalization’, as if this was government policy rather than part of the way that capitalism works; this involved, for instance, selling off ‘many of Britain’s assets’. The former ruling class of industrialists and landowners was replaced by ‘a new middle-class graduate elite’. The latter attended top universities, and were not just journalists, politicians and broadcasters, but also academics, doctors and architects. They have allegedly made it much harder for white boys from a manual working-class background to get into university. They control Britain’s main institutions, and a third of MPs have postgraduate degrees. Many of the elite are radical ‘woke’ progressives, a group that apparently constitutes about one in six of the population.

It is noted that Britain has become more unequal, and there are some passing references to very wealthy people, such as the ‘international jet-setting elites’ who have homes in London but also in New York and so on. Yet overall the author has not the slightest idea of how capitalism operates, of the division between a tiny minority who own and control the planet’s resources, and the rest, who have to work for them. The decline in manual jobs is noted, and much is made of the geographical divide between London and the rest of the country. But in London a quarter of the population live in poverty and one in fifty are homeless, though the reader would not gather this from Goodwin’s treatment.

It is correct to say that choice was reduced in politics as Tories and Labour grew closer together. However, the book’s focus is very much on England, with no discussion of parties such as Plaid Cymru or the SNP. The claimed counter-revolution against the new rulers involved three revolts: populism, Brexit and Boris Johnson. Brexit, we are told, was intended to reduce immigration and ‘restore Britain’s national sovereignty’ (whatever that is). Despite his privileged background, Johnson was ‘a renegade member of the elite’ and became leader of the non-graduate majority who supported the counter-revolution. But Partygate derailed this, and Truss’s ‘small-state, low-tax’ vision of Brexit failed as it had little popular support (nothing to do with market reactions, then).

The whole book is a fantasy, with no arguments to show how the supposed former ruling class have been replaced by the graduate elite, and no understanding of how politics under capitalism is driven by economic interests and the need for profit.

Paul Bennett

Clubbable (2024)

Book Review from the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Clubland: How the Working Men’s Club Shaped Britain. By Pete Brown. Harper North £10.99.

The author describes working men’s clubs as ‘the biggest ever working-class social movement’. He provides an entertaining description of their history, enlivened by accounts of visits to specific clubs. One of these is the Red Shed in Wakefield, where the Wakefield Socialist History Group has hosted talks by Socialist Party speakers.

Clubs originated under paternalistic attitudes of people who wanted to provide male workers (industrial workers, originally) with an alternative to the pub. The Club and Institute Union (CIU) was established in 1862, and had a number of rich and often aristocratic patrons. Gradually, though, clubs became more democratic, run by committees of their own members, and in many cases it was the members who maintained and refurbished the buildings, without being paid for this work.

Clubs benefited from the licensing laws that applied to pubs but not to private clubs. They were not just about serving beer, as they also provided facilities such as snooker tables, reading rooms, concerts and lectures by invited speakers. In 1887 William Morris spoke on ‘Monopoly’ at the Borough of Hackney Club, but was taken aback at all the coming and going in the audience, waiters serving food and so on. Brown describes the Bloody Sunday demonstration that year, which was attacked by the police, as being held by ‘the London radical clubs’ (though some accounts mention others that contributed to organising it). Political activity gradually shifted to other locations, however. Many well-known names began their careers performing in clubs, such as singer Tom Jones, racist ‘comedian’ Bernard Manning and snooker-player Steve Davis.

An obvious question is the status of and attitudes to women in these working men’s clubs. Women were originally not allowed to join, but gradually things began to change and by the 1950s most clubs had ‘lady members’. The clubs could hardly survive without the income from and practical contributions by women, but it was only in 2007 that women achieved equal rights in clubs, after various campaigns and shortly before the 2010 Equalities Act. Bingo made clubs even more appealing to women.

The clubs have of course had their ups and downs over the years. The breathalyser and the smoking ban hit attendance and bar takings. Musical styles such as glam rock and punk were hardly suitable for them. In 1922 there were 1,150,000 members in over two thousand clubs. Nowadays 1500 clubs are affiliated to the CIU, with around a million members, though there are also clubs which are unaffiliated. The north-east of England is ‘the undisputed heart of clubland’.

An informative account of an institution that figures little in most social histories.

Paul Bennett

What to do about the Property Speculators (1974)

From the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whichever party wins the coming General Election will have had to promise to curb the property speculators. In the arguments over the three-day week, fuel shortages, and the belt-tightening enforced to try to deal with British capitalism’s troubles, they have become the universal bêtes noires. Why, it is said, should the miners be denied a modest wage-increase when the speculators roll in unearned riches ? Who is going to be impressed by the Government’s call for sacrifices while Harry Hyams swells his fortune by keeping a mammoth office-building vacant for years ?

These are the voices of common-sense and fair play — and the sad truth is that they are irrelevant. If the appeals to run speculators out of town were responded-to, no difference would be made to the situation. That is why the present Government or its successor will not mind responding to them, if it has to. The Left, with its unvarying stupidity, has been demanding that “something be done” for years; in the agitation over housing and homelessness Hyams’ Centre Point remains an obligatory gathering-place and his name daubed on protest banners galore. A recent newspaper report showed the ultimate cure for profiteering in the Land of the Left:

Two directors of a Soviet drinks factory have been shot for leaving the fruit out of the fruit juice they were producing. The newspaper Babinski Rabochi says the two from the Southern Republic of Azerbaydzhan, sold a mixture of water, citric acid and sugar, pocketing more than £400,000. Their appeal was rejected and they were shot.

(Guardian, 3rd Jan. 1974)

No doubt this sounded, to some, like the way to treat them. But will it stop privileged sections raking-in in Russia ? Not likely. Will it make a single worker better off? Of course not.

Profits Galore

Property developers have indeed had a bonanza in Britain since the war. Joe Levy’s profit from the development of the Euston Centre in 1967 was estimated at £22 million (Oliver Marriott, The Property Boom). In September 1972 it was said that sales of land in the Tolmers Square Development Area of London had “been taking place at the rate of £800,000 to £1,000,000 per acre’’ (Town Clerk’s report to Camden Council, 28th Sep. 1972). Of Hyams, The Observer on 23rd December said that his personal fortune

has increased by £300 million in the past six years — at a time when he has hardly been engaged in active development at all, but simply sitting on his steadily appreciating portfolio of office blocks.

Astronomical as figures like these may seem, it is absurd to imagine they are unique to property development and dealing. The same page of the Observer business section on 23rd December reported that the British Leyland motor company’s profits for the year had risen to £51.3 millions, and a race-horse owner was offering to give Cambridge University £10 million. A “Guide to Property’’ recently distributed by the First National Finance Corporation contains graphs of Financial Times Share Indices that put this in perspective. The all-share index includes property. It will be seen that while property in its recent boom period has been the best investment, other shares rise proportionately; and at other times have compared favourably. Incidentally, Counter Information Services have just issued (16th Jan.) a report on the enormous profits of insurance companies and pension funds, of which £4,000 million is estimated to have gone to back property developers—including substantial support for Hyams by the Co-operative Insurance Society.

Someone to Hiss

Supporters and revisionists alike of the capitalist system love a scapegoat. There is nothing admirable about the speculators. The illustrations to Marriott’s book are mostly portrait photographs of well-known property tycoons, and it would be hard to find another collection of faces of such ugliness and vulgarity. Nevertheless, they are only the latest in a succession of ogres but for whom, it is conveyed, the capitalist system would make us all as happy as kings. Their place in the nineteen-twenties was held by “the hard-faced men’’ who had done well out of the 1914-18 war. In the ’thirties it was the arms manufacturers. Malcolm Muggeridge says in his autobiography:

Armament manufacturers — commonly known among us as merchants of death — were a godsend in the way of providing us with an identifiable villain; one of the great needs of the political left being to be able to point an accusing finger at someone, or some corporate body, as being responsible for public and private wrongs and misfortunes.

It is part of the same tradition that the property speculators’ diabolic reputation rests largely on their immunity, so far, to legislation. Laws aimed at quelling them have helped them boom again. The post-war Town and Country Planning Acts, intended to snuff out speculative building, created favourable new conditions for it. The taxation laws in force till 1965, by assuming the developer who did not sell to be making no profit, gave him a magnificent advantage. Most uproarious of all was George Brown’s 1964 prohibition of office-building in London, which pushed up rents and profits and earned Brown the title of “the developers’ best friend”.

The most recent piece of legislation was Antony Barber’s taxation measures in his budget of 17th December 1973. The chief provision was to tax first lettings of new buildings as equivalent to outright sales. Financial writers like Bennie Gray and Christopher Booker in The Observer (as well as Labour critics) were quick to point out that applied to established examples this was anything but crippling, and concluded:

In other words, the situation whereby property profits have generally come to be regarded as the most conspicuous example of economic injustice in pur society is likely to remain.

It is interesting that Oliver Marriott, when his book appeared in 1967, thought the property boom had been demolished. He wrote at the end:

The era of the property tycoon as the arch-symbol of capitalism is over. Forces of competition and taxation have ended the days when an individual could rapidly amass a fortune with a few well-chosen deals and developments.

A Simple Answer

The rise of the office-building tycoons has been a direct outcome of the workings of capitalism. Its main sources have been wartime destruction; obsolescence; amalgamations of companies and the growth of fresh forms of commerce; the spread of administrative machinery; and the compulsion to rebuild town centres on account of road traffic. Given that proliferation of causes, there is no difficulty in seeing why fortunes have been made and why legislation has failed. Indeed, the motives of such legislation are always contradictory ones — acquiescing in the need for more development while hoping not to be shown the “unacceptable face” it inevitably wears.

It is worth remarking also on the belief that little or nothing is done about the speculators because Conservatives in government will not harm their capitalist friends. This could apply to Labour also. But the capitalist class is not united in its commercial interests; at any time, a section will be sent to the wall to suit the more vital needs of other sections. An example is the Act of 1915 which smothered landlords in the interests of industrial capitalists and the war. If the need were strong enough, any government would come down on property speculators. What must always be borne in mind, however, is that legislation is enacted for severely practical purposes and hardly ever for moral ones.

The contrast between poverty and plenty is an inevitable feature of capitalism: a class-divided society cannot help but display it. Likewise, in a society built round production for profit, it is no use lamenting that excessive profits are made. One can imagine fat capitalists tittering behind their hands at the naiveté of “radical” sentiments like Michael Duane’s in a letter to The Guardian on 7th January:

In the national emergency of war it was found impossible to create the unity necessary for survival until, by rationing food, clothing and fuel, we had demonstrated the good faith of our democratic protestations.

That is the kind of assurance rulers want. Given it, they know a few sops and humbug-gestures of “good faith” will quieten the murmurs — and the system will go on as before.

Rather than talking of injustice as if there were an alternative to be had, working men and women should ask why the benefits of their labour are unfailingly taken by somebody else. When the working class decides that this state of affairs can continue no longer and capitalism must go, the end of speculation in property, shares and lives will have come at last. The sight of vast wealth being accumulated by parasites who simply happened to be in the right place at the right time, understandably makes people sick; but none of us will feel better until we have established Socialism.

Robert Barltrop

You're wrong, you know — (1974)

From the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party is not socialist — never was — though they have used the label when it suited them.

Socialism is the higher stage of society which will supersede this one of capitalism — if we can prevent capitalism from destroying us all first.

Socialism will be a social set-up in which the world will belong to all the people who live in it — not a small minority who pay the rest of us to work for them.

In a socialist society, people will produce goods to meet what people need — not, as now, only when a profit looks likely.

There will be no frontiers, no states, no armed forces or police forces — all used now to protect the wealth owned by the minority (often from each other!).

There will be no buying and selling, no wages, no money at all in fact because all this is outdated.

WHEN DID THE LABOUR OR COMMUNIST PARTIES AIM FOR ALL THIS?

CHECK WHAT PEOPLE MEAN WHEN THEY TALK ABOUT "SOCIALISM".

The Myth of Management (1974)

From the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

'We are a happy team here, I treat my workers as human beings and they appreciate that’

Many managers in industry and commerce today, when pushed to explain their rôle, will define management very simply and starkly as: “Getting other people to do what we want them to.” Implicit in this is the idea that most people would not be doing the things managers want them to if they had a free choice. It is not difficult to understand why.

If you have ever had to get up at some unearthly hour of the morning, and journey to work simply to face the prospect of eight hours or more as the victim of an “efficient” system, you will know why. You have little control over what goes on, your time perspective is short, you are a passive instrument of production, you are dependent on those who have authority over you, and so on. Basically you are an adult being forced to behave as a child.

You might think that under these circumstances capitalist bosses and owners would have a difficult time persuading people to work for them, specially as the workers are not producing to fulfil sensible needs but just to supply markets. In one way you would be right; but capitalism has forceful ways of getting people to act against their best interests and produce wealth that will be accumulated to further ensnare workers in wage-slavery. For a start, working people under capitalism need wages to buy the necessities of life. In addition, advertizing implores and persuades everyone to buy more of this and that; with the result that every worker hopes to find a job that pays as much as possible and offers “advancement”, i.'e. the prospect of competing against other workers to somehow get more than they.

Research

Once a worker is engaged, how does capitalism ensure that it gets the maximum possible out of him? This is where management comes in. Capitalism, in order to produce and grow, has no alternative but to devote much attention to management to control workforces and persuade workers to take part in the corporate madness. On the surface it may look as if it has been successful: the majority of workers are persuaded most of the time to behave in a way that is profitable for the enterprise and to accept that managers have “the right” — as trained specialists — to control the machinery and the lives of those who work at it.

In developing the “craft” of management a great amount of effort has been expended, particularly in the universities; today no self-respecting university is without its Management Studies department. Here, students are trained and research is carried out to discover newer and more promising ways to achieve management’s end. It is enlightening to know that the Russians have been among other capitalist countries who have fallen over themselves to gain the latest information on management methods from the gurus at the universities in Britain and America.

Historically, the “Scientific Management” principles of F. W. Taylor in the early 1900s can be seen as among the first efforts by industrial capitalists to control workers otherwise than by force and the fear of dismissal. Essentially, these principles maintained that if firms selected their workers, trained them in the most efficient ways, and appeared to be rewarding them accordingly, the workers would behave in a way that was satisfactory to the management. (The wage-worker’s satisfaction would come from the supposition that he received high earnings.) This view of industrial man has become known as the “Rational-Economic” view and has given rise to work-study, personnel selection and systematic training techniques in industry.

What is a Human Being ?

It rapidly became apparent that this view was inadequate, and soon another factor in the industrial situation was named by researchers in the United States of America. It was discovered from the deservedly famous Hawthorne researches of Elton Mayo and others that there was a social factor to take into account in the workplace. Workers left to congregate did so in what were termed “informal groups”; in these they operated norms of behaviour and restricted production — not always in the best interests of the management and owners but in their own interests as workers. The management teaching which emanated from these researches became known as the “Human Relations” school, and was concerned to show that leadership at work was very important in order to get workers’ behaviour to coincide with the wishes of management.

This doctrine was very acceptable to capitalists, not only because of its timely appearance but because it seemed to fit in with Christian ethics and thereby reinforced management’s responsibility to control the enterprise. It has given rise to innumerable supervisory management courses, and the theatricals of treating workers as “real people” to give them motivation to produce for the benefit of the owners. In the immortal words of an unnamed industrial supervisor: “We are a happy team here, I treat my workers as human beings and they appreciate that.”

After the Second World War, in the developed capitalist countries there was a tremendous upsurge of study in the “social sciences” of psychology, sociology, social anthropology, political science, etc. To gain money for research in the USA, researchers removed the tainted word “social” and substituted “behavioral”. This name-change had the tempting implication of learning how to predict, control and manipulate the behaviour of human beings. Needless to say, plenty of money was then forthcoming to pursue these “sciences” and to feed resulting information to management so that it would be utilized to increase industrial stability and efficiency.

Inventing a Meaning

Management studies “discovered” what Marx had known long before: that man looked for meaning in his work, and the chance to develop and mature. Bureaucracies and other traditional forms of organization took away the likelihood of finding meaning except in the top echelons of the hierarchy. It was said also that bureaucracies produced immature behaviour and conflict among themselves because of the workings of internal politics and career structure. Therefore people were looking for their satisfaction outside the workplace and becoming apathetic and non-involved towards work. Management badly needed an ideology to cope with these problems. Lo and behold, it was produced in the guise of “Organization Development”.

“Organization Development” is the requirement for a firm to keep pace with technical and social changes inside and outside itself. It makes use of such trendy techniques as “participative management”, “job enrichment”, etc. What it means for management is seeking the commitment of the work-force by devising and designing jobs which offer people a challenge, and offer the worker more positive opportunities to “fulfil himself as an individual” at work. The supporting logic is that given these opportunities the individual will gain more satisfaction at work; his defences, brought into action to combat the immature manner in which he had to behave at work formerly, would be eroded — and consequently organizational effectiveness would be increased.

It is precisely this logic and ideology that is behind the much-publicized reorganization of production at Volvo in Sweden into teams of workers producing whole cars themselves, not on assembly lines but in what are termed “villages”. Volvo’s boss has been quoted as saying that if the experiment fails and output falls, the whole system can soon be re-transformed to the assembly line. So much for concern with “human satisfaction” !

Scientific Management was rape but Organization Development, with its techniques of “participation” and “enrichment”, is seduction. The end result is the same, a violated human being and society.

Why it will not Work

The Behavioural Science techniques have been and are being used by management to meet the continual difficulty of getting people to accept wage-slavery. It is the latest fad in a long line of panaceas for the problems of the capitalist system. We may take for granted that it will be as unsuccessful as all the other rearguard actions of capitalism and will not for long dupe workers into believing it is in their interests to acquiesce. The dilemma for management is that responsibility given to a person or group means a loss of managerial control. Therefore, management could not go far in creating true enrichment and participation without undermining its own control of the means of production. They will not do that.

All these attempts then have failed and will fail to deliver the goods. From the capitalists’ point of view, people remain “unmanageable” — but the capitalist class must go on seeking ways to manage, training people for leadership (and presumably followership).

It may appear that managers themselves have a vested interest in the continuance of capitalism because it gives apparent power and status. It should be remembered that they too are workers, anxious to be hired and liable to be fired. While perhaps lording-it over their “workforces”, they are themselves just as much aware of their own insecurity: they share the same problems. From that point of view the so-called leader is likely to be conscious that leadership is a myth.

Socialists do everything possible to destroy that myth and the necessity for people to be “managed”. The idea of management and leadership is an industrial as well as a political fallacy. In a Socialist society people will be able to decide democratically how labour is to be applied for the common good. The need for management is obsolete in such a society. No wages or status, but democratic decision-making and free access to goods and services. Who needs managers ?

D. G. Bishop

So They Say: Same the Whole World Over (1974)

The So They Say Column from the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Same the Whole World Over

The Paris paper Le Monde on 27th December published tables of French workers’ earnings in 1973. The information comes from employers’ official returns, and covers a working population of 13 millions.

The headline tells the story: 60% of earnings are less than 1750 francs a month. 1750 francs is in fact the approximate upper limit of the largest group of wage earners, 34.2 per cent., who receive between 1165f. and 1745f. On 27th December the exchange rate was 10.85f. to the £, giving an English equivalent for this group of about £27.10 to about £40.60 a week.

13.9 per cent. of French workers receive between 935f. a month, or £21.35 a week, and 1165f., and 14.2 per cent. less than 935f. When these figures are seen in relation to substantially higher costs for food and clothing, the position in France is the same as that of workers in Britain and other countries. To round off the similarity, a lucky 1.5 per cent, receive above 7000f. a month. Work it out for yourself.

An Incomes Policy at Last? 

A country where working-class living standards are lower than elsewhere is Russia. A report by Edmund Stevens in The Times on 2nd January described the satisfaction of the Russian press at “comparing the conditions in the Soviet Union with the turmoil and violence in much of the world”, and went on:

Nor is there a threat of petrol shortage, or an energy crisis, or runaway inflation.

However, the article went on to say that petrol prices are expected shortly to go up by 60 per cent., and that many prices have risen recently: sturgeon and other choice fish by nearly 300 per cent., while the cost of caviar doubled in December. How then does the Soviet government avoid monetary and petrol troubles? The answer is supplied:

None of this affected the vast majority of people, who have no need for petrol and could not afford such delicacies as caviar and sturgeon at previous prices, which were raised repeatedly during the past decade.

What a good way of avoiding problems — simply by not letting people have enough money to buy things ! Heath must be envious. But it should be noted that only “runaway” inflation is absent from Russia. The report tells us:

A kind of selective creeping inflation has been going on ever since 1961, when the old roubles were converted to new ones at a 10-1 rate.

So they seem to have problems after all.

Gold Mine Turns Out to be Mirage

A favourite argument of those who tell us the capitalist system is different now is to point to the number of small investors who allegedly represent the working class getting a stake in the ownership of the means of production. Under the heading “Relying on a little help from friends” a Guardian investment writer on 5th January gave a different picture (and, incidentally, showed the futility of much of the advice given by investment writers). He said:

The small investor must beware of tips in newspapers, because when he reads of them a few hundred thousand others will have read them also . . . Stockbrokers don’t want the small man. Indeed anyone with funds of less than £10,000, unless he has investment knowledge, should, if he wants equities, buy investment trusts or unit trusts.

Realistic words. They mean the capitalist class do not mind letting you have interest on small savings, but will not encourage big ideas of sharing with them. And which of us has not got “funds of less than £10,000”?

Trouble in Blue Heaven

The Socialist Party has always opposed every form of censorship. We often meet well-meaning advocates of it who say they agree generally, but believe there is some special evil to which its application will be justified. Part of the answer to them is that once censorship is instituted its use is not limited, and becomes an additional instrument for the suppression of opinion.

An interesting demonstration was given in two letters to The Guardian on 10th January. Both were concerned with the Cinematograph and Indecent Displays Bill now going through Parliament; one was from the chairman of a group of Greater London Young Conservatives, the other from the secretary of an Arts Co-operative. The first fears that the Bill will allow pornography still to be sold under the counter while restricting the availability of Men Only, Mayfair and Penthouse. The second fears that it will be used to suppress Picasso nudes.

Their juxtaposition makes our point, handsomely.

Oiling the Works

Commentators have been getting good mileage out of North Sea oil. Not only will it, in a few years, be replenishing the petrol-pumps and generators of Britain. It will bring “prosperity”. The suggestion is of a good time coming, when the working class will be more than compensated for the hardships of the three-day week and wage restraint.

Whoever believes this should read the financial pages. The good time is being had already — but not by the workers. On 4th January the Guardian's “City Comment” reported the “windfall” which has come to the merchant bank group Edward Bates.

The principal part of the $12 millions deals announced by Bates for the acquisition of working interests and royalties, was negotiated when oil was selling at $4.20 a barrel in the U.S. It is currently being sold at $8.30. As a result, the Bates projection of oil and gas income for 1974 jumps from $2.6 millions to $4.8 millions, not to mention the substantial capital gains which will result in property values.

The next day the Technology Correspondent told of the prosperity resulting from the latest North Sea find: “£180 millions added to the values of BP and Burmah Oil”. The Guardian writer calls the Bates acquisition “an example of the pickings to be had in the American market” over North Sea oil. Incorrect. The "pickings” are had out of the exploitation of the workers — for whom windfalls from capitalism remain elusive.

Where We Came In

Can you place this quotation?

You can’t conceive what existence is like without trains or tubes . . . and probably no electric light tomorrow. We in Richmond can still get to Waterloo; but Hampstead is entirely cut off . . . Then the experts say that the working classes have behaved with such incredible stupidity that the Government will beat them; and this strike is only the beginning of others far worse to follow. They say we are in for such a year as has never been known.

It comes in fact from a letter written by Virginia Woolf in 1919, quoted in her biography. What should be noted, apart from its contemporary ring, is that Mrs. Woolf was associated with groups who were going to end the inefficiency and inequity of capitalism. And fifty-five years later it is still the same.

Robert Barltrop

50 Years Ago: A "Socialist" Government (1974)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are on the eve of great events—at least, Mr. Garvin, of the Observer, says we are!

  “The reason is that to-morrow in this country will see the end of the last purely Conservative Government—none of the same name is ever likely to exist again—and will instal the first Socialist Government in its place."

We really must take exception to this constant tying of the labels “Socialist” and “Marxian” to the Labour Party . . .

. . . The attempt by Garvin and others to identify the ideas of Socialism with the Labour Party’s policy is a convenient method of curbing the workers’ desire for freedom and increasing the confusion already existing. The tendency of the workers to see in capitalism the real source of their miseries is dangerous from the point of view of the upholders of the present system. Garvin and his kind are astute, so they endeavour to fix the workers’ attention upon the Labour Party as the representatives of the new social idea. In due course the Labour Party will fail at the same obstacles—unemployment, and so forth—as the older parties. The Garvin group will then point triumphantly to this failure as an illustration of the incapacity of Socialism to solve economic problems. They bank on the idea that disappointment will breed apathy. This is one reason why we are so anxious to dispel any illusions the workers may have about the advantages to be expected from a Labour Government.

The Labour Party is not a Socialist body, and it repudiates the views of Marx. It is a snare set for dissatisfied but unwary workers.

[From an unsigned Editorial in the Socialist Standard, February 1924].

SPGB Meetings (1974)

Party News from the February 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Notes:

• 'S. Stefen' was the pen-name/party name of Stephen Shenfield.
• Howard Weaver's obituary was posted elsewhere on the blog.
• Stephen Bodington was the author of the 1973 book, Computers and Socialism. He was associated with the Labour Left.

Poverty and the causes of wealth (2024)

From the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just before Christmas, the Herald columnist Lennie Pennie wrote a piece that looked at extremely rich people who hoard resources (heraldscotland.com, 23 December). She took particular aim at the royal family, who are apparently described by some as ‘thrifty’ and ‘down-to-earth’ because, for instance, they wear items of clothing more than once!

She wrote: 

‘We should never look at an unequal society within which devastating poverty and extreme affluence are allowed to co-exist as anything other than a structural, governmental and societal failure which demands our immediate attention to resolve.’

Homelessness and food banks exist, while ever more people just cannot meet their basic needs. The UK government spent in one year almost as much money providing temporary accommodation for homeless people as it would apparently take to eradicate homelessness completely.

Unfortunately, Pennie’s approach puts far too much emphasis on celebrities, and the royal family especially, for posing with homeless people rather than really doing something about the problem. Better, she says, to ‘use more of the excessive hereditary fortune to redress the balance.’

The article is entitled ‘Poverty: We need to tackle the causes of wealth’. But it says disappointingly little about the real causes of wealth and poverty. Clearly the two go hand in hand under capitalism. It is not just a matter of the rich hoarding their wealth, but of how they obtained it in the first place and how that implies poverty and destitution at the other end of the scale.

Pennie quotes Oscar Wilde about making poverty impossible, but says little about how to achieve this. The rich, she says, might distribute as much of their wealth as possible to those they wish to help. But that is really not the point: let’s do away with money and inequality and establish a system of society geared to meeting human need.

Paul Bennett

Cooking the Books: Communism is socialism (2024)

The Cooking the Books Column from the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

To promote his book, Mute Compulsion, A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital, Søren Mau contributed a piece to the publisher’s blog last July in which he asked ‘What should the communism we fight for look like’?

He starts by defining communism (what we call ‘socialism’):

‘The fundamental condition of communism is that the basic conditions of the life of society are brought under democratic control. The state would be abolished, all private companies would be dissolved, and all privately owned means of production—land, buildings, machines, etc.—as well as the wealth of the upper class would be expropriated’.

Like land originally was, they would ‘belong to no one, and thus to everyone’.

He envisages this society being divided into a ‘public sector’ and a ‘private sector’, the latter being productive activities that people carry out in their free time after working in the public sector.

He argues: ‘Everything produced in the public sector would be distributed without the use of money. Housing, healthcare, medicine, education, childcare, public transportation, and meals in public cafeterias would be free of charge and available to all, without control’.

That sounds like socialism. But then: ‘Consumer goods associated with varying individual preferences … could be “purchased” with digital coupons’ which everyone would receive ‘each week to use for services and products available from public warehouses’.

But why? If enough of what people might want can be produced, why could these consumer goods also not be made ‘available to all, without control’? Does he share the popular prejudice that people would otherwise take more than they needed?

It is conceivable that in the very early days there might not be enough of everything to permit this and that some sharing-out system might have be devised (by those around at the time) for any goods in short supply, but this would only be a temporary, stop-gap measure. It wouldn’t need to be a permanent feature of a communist society; free access to consumer goods would be the norm. In any event, to set up and run a coupon system (which would have to include putting a coupon price on consumer goods) wouldn’t be the appropriate answer; in fact it would divert resources that could be used to overcome the problem.

Mau says that technically the coupons wouldn’t be money as they wouldn’t circulate. When, however, it comes to his ‘private sector’ he does envisage money as such:

‘Here, everyone would produce and trade as they wish, keeping within certain democratically determined limits (no production or exchange of humans, weapons, or hard drugs, for example). [They] would also be able to create institutions and technologies that could ease and regulate exchange—for example, creating some sort of money’.

Once again, why? No doubt in communist society people, after having contributed to production ‘according to their ability’, would produce some things in their ‘free time’. They might want to grow vegetables for instance but why would they want to sell them? Why would they not simply give them away without asking for anything in particular in return, as happens even now under capitalism? People would continue too to do things for each other but why would this need to involve money?

Mau seems to realise that he is on shaky ground here as he himself asks ‘But isn’t this private sector merely another form of capitalism?’ His answer is that it wouldn’t be since ‘land, housing, and labor power would never become commodities. Money would exist purely as a means of exchange and couldn’t be used to give certain people power over others’. It wouldn’t be capitalism, but it sounds suspiciously like that contradiction in terms known as ‘market socialism’.

Inadequate as Mau’s contribution is, it at least shows that the idea and implications of a communist (socialist) society are beginning to be discussed seriously as the alternative to capitalism.