Socialist Standard October 2014 1 socialist Contact Details SPGB Media: [email protected] UK BRANCHES & CONTACTS Frankfi eld, Cork. Tel: 021 4896427. Email: [email protected] LONDON Newtownabbey : Nigel McCullough. standard North London branch . Meets 3rd Tues 8pm Tel: 028 90852062. at Torriano Meeting House, 99 Torriano Ave, SCOTLAND NW5 2RX Edinburgh branch . Meets1st Thur. 7.00- Contact: [email protected] or 020 9.00pm. The Quaker Hall, Victoria Terrace OCTOBER 2014 7609 0983 (above Victoria Street), Edinburgh. South London branch . Meets 1st Tues. J. Moir. Tel: 0131 440 0995. 7.00pm. Head Offi ce. 52 Clapham High St, [email protected] Branch SW4 7UN. Tel: 020 7622 3811 website: contents West London branch . Meets 1st & 3rd Tues. http://geocities.com/edinburghbranch/ 8pm. Chiswick Town Hall, Heathfi eld Terrace Glasgow branch . Meets 3rd Wednesday of (corner Sutton Court Rd), W4. Corres: 51 each month at 8pm in Community Central FEATURES Gayford Road, London W12 9BY. Tel: 020 Halls, 304 Maryhill Road, Glasgow. Peter 8740 6677. Email: [email protected] Hendrie, 75 Lairhills Road, East Kilbride, Nonviolent Revolution 10 Glasgow G75 0LH. Tel: 01355 903105. Email: MIDLANDS [email protected]. Poverty Excludes 13 West Midlands Regional branch . Meets last Dundee . Ian Ratcliffe, 12 Finlow Terrace Sunday of the month, the Briar Rose pub, 25 Dundee, DD4 9NA, Tel 01382 698297 What labour is really worth 15 Bennetts Hill, Birmingham B2 5RE. E-Mail:[email protected]. Kilmarnock .Meets last Thursday of month Tel:01242 675357 7pm-9pm at the Wheatsheaf pub (about 2 The rise & decline of 16 minutes from bus station). Paul Edwards. Tel: capitalism NORTHEAST 01563 541138. Email:rainbow3@btopenworld. Northeast branch . Contact: Vin Maratty, 22 com Ripping off the patient 17 Greystoke Avenue, Sunderland, Tyne and Lothian Socialist Discussion @Autonomous Wear, SR2 9DS, tel: 01915 250 002. Email: Centre Edinburgh, ACE, 17 West Montgomery [email protected]. Place, Edinburgh EH7 5HA. Meets 4th Wednesday of each month 7.30-9.00pm. Tel: REGULARS NORTHWEST F.Anderson 07724 082753. Lancaster branch . Meets fortnightly 8.30pm. Pathfi nders 4 P. Shannon, 10 Green Street, Lancaster WALES LA1 1DZ. Tel: 01524 382380 Email: spgb. Swansea branch . Meets 2nd Mon, 7.30pm, Halo Halo! 6 [email protected] Unitarian Church, High Street. Corres: Manchester branch . Paul Bennett, 6 Burleigh Geoffrey Williams, 19 Baptist Well Street, Cooking the Books 7 Mews, Hardy Lane, M21 7LB. Waun Wen, Swansea SA1 6FB. Material World Tel: 0161 860 7189 Tel: 01792 643624 8 Bolton . Tel: H. McLaughlin. 01204 844589 Cardiff and District . Corres: Richard Greasy Pole 9 Cumbria . Brendan Cummings, 19 Queen St, Botterill, 21 Pen-Y-Bryn Rd, Gabalfa, Cardiff, Millom, Cumbria LA18 4BG CF14 3LG. Tel: 02920-615826 Email: Cooking the Books 18 Carlisle : Robert Whitfi eld. Email: robdotbob@ [email protected] gmail.com Tel: 07906 373975 Llandudno Mixed Media 19 Rochdale . Tel: R. Chadwick. 01706 522365 Contact: Gareth Whitley - Email: gwhitley@ Southeast Manchester . Enquiries: Blanche hotmail.co.uk Reviews 20 Preston, 68 Fountains Road, M32 9PH Proper Gander 21 INTERNATIONAL CONTACTS YORKSHIRE Meetings 22 Yorkshire Regional Branch: Richard Latin America . J.M. Morel, Calle 7 edif 45 Rainferd, tel: 01484 327468 apto 102, Multis nuevo La loteria, 50 Years Ago 23 [email protected] La Vega, Rep. Dominicana. AFRICA Action Replay 23 SOUTH /SOUTHEAST /SOUTHWEST Kenya . Patrick Ndege, PO Box 78105, Nairobi. Kent and Sussex Regional branch. Meets Swaziland . Mandla Ntshakala, PO Box 981, Voice from the Back 24 second Sunday every month at 2.00pm at The Manzini. Free Lunch 24 Muggleton Inn, High Street, Maidstone ME14 Zambia. Kephas Mulenga, PO Box 280168, 1HJ. Kitwe. Email: [email protected] ASIA Tel: 07973 142701. Japan . Michael. Email: japan.wsm@gmail. South West Regional branch. Meets 2nd com Saturday of each month in the Railway AUSTRALIA Tavern, Salisbury, 2.00pm (check before Trevor Clarke, [email protected] The Socialist Party attending). Shane Roberts, 86 High Street, EUROPE 52 Clapham High Street, Bristol BS5 6DN. Tel: 0117 9511199 Denmark . Graham Taylor, Kjaerslund 9, fl oor London SW4 7UN Canterbury . Rob Cox, 4 Stanhope Road, Deal, 2 (middle), DK-8260 Viby J Tel : 0207 622 3811 Kent, CT14 6AB Germany . Norbert. Luton . Nick White, 59 Heywood Drive, LU2 E-mail: [email protected] Email: [email protected] 7LP Norway . Robert Stafford. Website : www.worldsocialism.org/spgb Redruth . Harry Sowden, 5 Clarence Villas, Email: [email protected] Blog: http://socialismoryourmoneyback. Redruth, Cornwall, TR15 1PB. Italy. Gian Maria Freddi, Via Felice Casorati blogspot.com/ Tel: 01209 219293 n. 6A, 37131 Verona Spain . Alberto Gordillo, Avenida del Parque EAST ANGLIA 2/2/3 Puerta A, 13200 Manzanares. SUBSCRIPTION ORDERS East Anglian Regional branch. Meets every should be sent to the address above. two months on a Saturday afternoon (see COMPANION PARTIES OVERSEAS RATES: One year subscription (normal rate) meetings page for details). £15. One year subscription (low/unwaged) £10. Pat Deutz, 11 The Links, Billericay, CM12 Europe rate £20 (Air mail). Rest of world £25 0EX. [email protected] Socialist Party of Canada/Parti Socialiste (Air mail). Voluntary supporters subscription David Porter, Eastholme, Bush Drive, Eccles- du Canada . Box 4280, Victoria B.C. V8X 3X8 £20 or more. Cheques payable to ‘The Socialist on-Sea, NR12 0SF. Canada. Party of Great Britain’. Tel: 01692 582533. Email:[email protected] Richard Headicar, 42 Woodcote, Firs Rd, World Socialist Party (India) 257 Baghajatin Hethersett, NR9 3JD. Tel: 01603 814343. ‘E’ Block (East), Kolkata - 700086, Tel: 033- The next meeting of the Executive Committee Cambridge . Andrew Westley, 10 Marksby 2425-0208, Email: [email protected] will be on Saturday 1 November at the Close, Duxford, Cambridge CB2 4RS. World Socialist Party (New Zealand) P.O. address above. Correspondence should be Tel: 07890343044 Box 1929, Auckland, NI, New Zealand. sent to the General Secretary. All articles, World Socialist Party of the United States letters and notices should be sent to the IRELAND P.O. Box 440247, Boston, MA 02144 USA. Editorial Committee. Cork : Kevin Cronin, 5 Curragh Woods, Email: [email protected]

2 Socialist Standard October 2014 Introducing The Socialist Party

The Socialist Party is like no other political new socialists. We publish pamphlets will be able to draw on and greater will be party in Britain. It is made up of people who and books, as well as CDs, DVDs and the new ideas for building the movement have joined together because we want to various other informative material. We which you will be able to bring us. get rid of the profi t system and establish also give talks and take part in debates; The Socialist Party is an organisation of real socialism. Our aim is to persuade attend rallies, meetings and demos; run equals. There is no leader and there are others to become socialist and act for educational conferences; host internet no followers. So, if you are going to join themselves, organising democratically discussion forums, make fi lms presenting we want you to be sure that you agree and without leaders, to bring about the our ideas, and contest elections when fully with what we stand for and that we kind of society that we are advocating practical. Socialist literature is available are satisfi ed that you understand the case in this journal. We are solely concerned in Arabic, Bengali, Dutch, Esperanto, for socialism. with building a movement of socialists for French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, If you would like more details about socialism. We are not a reformist party Swedish and Turkish as well as English. The Socialist Party, complete and with a programme of policies to patch up The more of you who join The Socialist return the form on page 23. capitalism. Party the more we will be able to get our We use every possible opportunity to make ideas across, the more experiences we socialist standard OCTOBER 2014 Editorial The Scottish referendum

WHATEVER THE outcome, capitalism was going to continue class will resort to force as the British ruling class did when and with it the problems it inevitably generates as a system Ireland tried to break away in 1919. This time they pursued a that puts, and has to put, profi ts before meeting people’s different strategy. When it appeared that, despite their earlier needs. Whether this is done from London or from Edinburgh calculations, the Yes side might actually win they bent over makes no difference. An independent Scotland would be backwards to offer more powers to the Scottish parliament in capitalist just as much as if it remained part of the UK. a bid to buy off the movement. Nevertheless, from a purely political point of view, the Yes We suggest that this is the more likely reaction of a ruling campaign was demanding a far-reaching change, well beyond class to a growing socialist movement committed to using the the mere change of government or local council that’s usually ballot box and enjoying widespread support. Not that it would at stake in elections. It was demanding the break-up of one work. In fact it didn’t work in Scotland. Those supporting Yes of the longest-established capitalist states and one that had refused (as the socialist movement would) to be bribed and once been the dominant power in the world. So it was a change their intended vote. Those in the No camp continued decision that could be described as “historic” in the sense in their resolve to vote No, largely no doubt because they felt that if could have affected the future course of history. People that there was no point in taking the unnecessary risk and in Scotland realised this. Which is why 9 out of 10 of the disruption that a Yes victory would involve. population aged 16 and over came out and voted. That was understandable. The partisans of independence As socialists, who advocate the use of the ballot box in the were painting an unbelievable picture of how life would course of the socialist revolution, we are comforted by this as be so much better if Scotland was no longer ruled from it bears out our contention that when there is perceived to be Westminster. A social democratic paradise was to be something really important at stake, people will vote. established in Scotland. Reformism, despite failing to do so To continue for a moment the analogy between the Yes on every previousoccasion it has been tried, would somehow campaign and the movement for socialism. The Yes campaign be able this time to make capitalism work for the benefi t for did represent a threat to the interests of the British ruling wage and salary workers and their dependents. Socialists class. A breakaway by Scotland would weaken them in the didn’t believe this either. struggle between states over economic issues that is built-in The trouble is that politics is now going to be as boring as to the capitalist world system. Capitalist Britain would not only before as the professional politicians, North and South of be diminished in size but also in diplomatic status and clout. the border, wrangle over purely constitutional matters while Some argue that, faced with a threat like this, a ruling capitalism and the problems it causes continue.

Socialist Standard October 2014 3 The brutality of what followed has been of biblical The Dark Rebellion proportions. The Islamic State rolled over Mosul and cleared out its bank vaults, while crucifying opponents and non-Sunni 10 YEARS ago this month the British worker Ken Bigley Muslims, eviscerating women and reputedly executing children was murdered in a video beheading by the leader of an Iraqi and putting their heads on spikes on Mosul Park. The West insurgency group, one Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, despite appeals has looked on aghast at the scale of the atrocities. and interventions from, among others, Yasser Arafat, King Despite its chilling barbarity the Islamic State seems to Abdullah of Jordan, the Muslim Council of Britain, the Republic know what it’s doing. With an estimated fund of US$2m it is of Ireland, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and even Libyan building all the infrastructure of a new state with effi ciently- dictator Colonel Gadaffi . functioning public services and administrative and military Zarqawi’s group affi liated to Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda control systems amid continued revenues from robbing banks, network at this same time, and became known as Al-Qaeda in ransoming hostages and allegedly, selling captured Syrian Iraq (AQI). The following year, 2005, Zarqawi received a letter energy supplies back to the Syrian government. It is noted for from Bin Laden’s military commander, Ayman al-Zawahiri, its unusually professional management of social media and outlining al-Qaeda’s four-stage strategic plan for expanding even its harrowing beheading videos, clearly a key part of its the Iraq war. The stages were, fi rst, expel the Americans and conception of asymmetric warfare, are described as looking their allies, then establish an Islamic caliphate, widen the increasingly slick and well-produced. It employs if not ‘awe’ confl ict to engulf neighbouring states, and fi nally declare war then certainly ‘shock’ in its campaign to subdue opposition and on Israel. deter western and regional powers from intervening. Zarqawi continued to run AQI, specialising in extortion, Some commentators speculate that the brutality is so kidnappings, hotel bombings and hostage beheadings, until excessive that the world’s Muslim communities will recoil a US Air Force F-16 dropped 460kg of high explosive on his from it, if they haven’t already done so, forcing IS towards safehouse in 2006. AQI lived on, however, and the same year moderating its behaviour in the future. But this is the legacy merged with several other groups to form the Islamic State of of the killer of Ken Bigley ten years ago, and they didn’t get Iraq (ISI). where they are today by being moderate. AQI thereafter became increasingly unpopular because A recent edition of New Scientist (13 September) carried of its targeting of Iraqi civilians, and open war developed two articles that bear on the subject. In the fi rst, Lifting the between AQI and other Sunni groups. Bin Laden himself black mask, academics have been demanding access to US was said to regard the brutality of AQI’s video beheadings as intelligence data as part of studies to establish the factors counter-productive, and his commander, Zawahiri, had also which go towards radicalising western-based jihadists. Some criticised Zarqawi for recklessly squandering civilian sympathy conclusions are already in, however, in particular that the and support. The US in 2007 began arming rival Sunni militias idea of jihadists being ‘brainwashed’ by recruiters or radical who agreed to fi ght AQI instead of the Americans ( Guardian, imams is wrong. These young people who go to fi ght for Isis 12 June 2007). This resulted in the ‘Anbar Awakening’ of Sunni have simply absorbed and applied the views of their own counter-attacks, and by 2008 the ISI described itself as being circle of friends and family. Socialists say that capitalism, in in a state of ‘extraordinary crisis’. oppressing workers everywhere, spontaneously assists the With the withdrawal of US troops in 2009, AQI’s fortunes spread of socialist ideas. What we also have to acknowledge started to pick up again. They began blowing up government is that capitalism is also fostering a ‘dark rebellion’ which is, in offi ces in a bid to destroy the Iraqi administration and many ways, the antithesis of everything that socialism stands sabotage the 2010 elections. But they hit problems again as for. Capitalism plays the same hateful pop song on an endless communications with al-Qaeda in Pakistan were cut and, it loop, while socialists aim to press Fast Forward, but there are was estimated, around 80 percent of their leadership were also those who are keen to press Fast Rewind, all the way captured or blown up. back to the Middle Ages. But like the mythical Hydra, AQI could grow heads as The second article concerns a reappraisal of two notorious well as cut them off. The new leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and now considered unethical psychology studies, which now began recruiting Saddam Hussein’s former military staff, and suggests that acts of deliberate cruelty are not perpetrated as thereafter pursued an energetic campaign of highly successful a matter of routine by ordinary people who are ‘just following prison breaks to free veteran insurgents held at, among other orders’, an argument known as the Nuremberg Defence, but places, the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. only by individuals who can be characterised as ‘committed’ And then, the Arab Spring fell upon Baghdadi like manna believers. from heaven. Suddenly the regional strongmen who were able In the 1960s series of ‘shock’ obedience studies conducted to contain and maintain regional stability fell or were in trouble. at Yale by Stanley Milgram, it turns out that participants were Baghdadi seized the moment and began planting ISI seeds regularly badgered to administer electric shocks, and that in Syria which sprouted into the al-Nusra Front. This Syrian up to 50 percent refused, while in the 1971 Stanford prison group, unlike ISI, was not interested in establishing caliphates experiment, participant ‘guards’ were heavily coached to but only in ousting Assad, and recruited its foreign fi ghters mistreat ‘prisoners’ by having forms of mistreatment suggested solely on this basis. In April 2013 Baghdadi announced, to them. In both studies participants were repeatedly told to without consulting either al-Nusra or al-Qaeda, that al-Nusra conform and obey ‘in the interests of science’. The reappraisal and ISI were merging as the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham suggests that those who bought into this formulation of the (Isis or Isil). It was the equivalent of a hostile business merger, ‘science ethic’ tended to conform, while ‘non-believers’ did not. and the al-Nusra Front leader protested vociferously. Al- Capitalist ideology loves to demonise ‘human nature’, and Qaeda promptly ruled against Baghdadi and ordered Isis to be media reports of torture and murder barely seen outside the disbanded. After months of argument, al-Qaeda got nowhere Old Testament seem almost to justify that demonisation. and severed all connections with Isis. After more months But we don’t just do what we’re told, like mindless zombies. of internecine confl ict, al-Qaeda resignedly told al-Nusra to It matters what we believe. Whatever excesses the world’s stop fi ghting Isis. Elements of al-Nusra subsequently saw no unhinged fanatics manage to drive themselves to, the capacity option but to go over to Isis, as did parts of the Free Syrian for evil does not, after all, lie dormant in the banal heart of Army, JMA and other anti-Assad groups. In June this year Isis humanity. declared itself a caliphate with Baghdadi as its caliph. PJS

4 Socialist Standard October 2014 Letters Scotch myth? Reply: Airbrushed The purpose of the series was Dear Editors to demonstrate that a Scottish Dear Editors Regrettably ‘Myths of Scottish national history is invented and the On 12th July at Sheffi eld Anarchist Nationalism’ (Socialist Standard, image presented of the Covenanter Bookfair the Communist Workers August) ended on a low note as no movement is one such an example. Organisation (CWO) held a meeting matter how fl awed nationalism is, it The Covenanter Movement was not titled ‘The only war which is worth is not responsible for the prevailing a unifi ed movement and was riven fi ghting is the class war’. The subject opinion that the Covenanters were by schisms, not unlike the current was the First World War and at 8 freedom fi ghters. It is a widely held Islamic Movement but, for sure, the minutes 21 seconds in, the speaker view. article was not making the claim that representing the CWO stated ‘I won’t The current SNP would be strange the SNP’s and its nationalism are the go into the various British ones today bedfellows with a Covenanting legitimate heirs to the Covenanters. but the only group – and it was a movement, as according to Professor It is possible to argue that the details group rather than an organisation – Alan MacInnes the Covenanters had of the 1707 Union fulfi lled much that can claim to have had any real a radical view of Britain that was of the Covenanter demands and anti-war policy completely was the federal and constitutional. ended any future of the Scottish Kirk Socialist Labour Party’. The article commented on the being the base for radicalism, its low In Revolutionary Perspectives Battle of Bothwell Bridge, omitting point, a call for the deportation of issue 4 (Journal of the CWO) dated that the majority of Covenanters Irish catholic immigrants during the Summer 2014, the article ‘Social there made public declaration that 1930s. Democracy, the First World War they wanted a free General Assembly As the article acknowledged, and the Working-class in Britain’ and free Parliament. The monument there are many who argue that the starting on page 14 discusses ‘The to the battle, which was erected by Covenanters were progressive and Response of Socialists in Britain’ public subscription, is quite clear revolutionary but by no means is it a even discussing the Socialist Labour that the Covenanters stood for Civil universal endorsement, as you would Party (De Leonist) on page 18. and Religious Liberty. seem to suggest. Gerard Cairns on For all the CWO airbrushing of What resulted from the sacrifi ce the Scottish Republican Socialist consistent SPGB opposition to the and sufferings of so many ordinary Movement website, arguing from First World War, it is ironic the same Scots and others was not an a ‘catholic gael’ perspective, could CWO speaker once debated the SPGB inquisition but a democratic write: accusing the SPGB of being ‘schooled Church that was acceptable to the ‘It may seem very Marxist to in Stalinism’. majority, a free Parliament and a argue that the Covenanters were Jon D. White (by email) Bill of Rights that gave us liberties class warriors, a mass movement and freedoms much in advance of against an absolutist regime. That Reply: the rest of Europe. These were the really would be an example of the Strange indeed, and for two foundations on which our democracy mechanical Marxism which tries to reasons. The fi rst being the clear and has evolved. That Bill of Rights was a hammer a square peg into a round principled opposition to the war from foundation stone for the evolution of hole. Can we really turn bigots into the SPGB (on the basis that it was a our European Human Rights, which revolutionaries? ...A movement capitalist war and not in the slightest ensures liberty of expression and from below led by pedagogues on about the interests of the working assembly for minority political and high who wanted a monolithic class). Second, the SLP was split religious groups. Fortunately history Scotland and/or Britain based into two factions, one pro-war, the shows that totalitarian systems are on Presbyterianism. Everything other anti-war (with articles in their doomed to failure be it long or short else was secondary.’ (www. paper The Socialist refl ecting this term. scottishrepublicansocialistmovement. division at the start of the confl ict). It David Bryce, Hamilton. org/Pages/ was only some months into the war that the anti-war faction won out and the SLP clearly stated its opposition to the slaughter. We know that the CWO as ‘left communists’ venerate the SLP because after the confl ict the majority of its membership left to join the pro-Bolshevik Communist Party of Great Britain at its foundation, but the SLP’s attitude to the war has been well documented and there is no excuse for such shoddy historical revisionism. – Editors.

SOCIALIST STANDARD INDEX FOR 2013 For a copy send 2 second-class stamps to: The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN

Socialist Standard October 2014 5 was saved. You’d give a fortune to get your hands on a bottle of that wouldn’t you? Well, some people obviously do. ‘By using the anointing water, you are symbolically setting yourself apart for Jesus Christ’s special attention as you pray Gullibility:G llibilit AAny KKnown CCure? ? in faith’ he says. ‘I mean, you are positioned for mercy, favour, As this goes to press the number of known deaths due to healing, deliverance blessing, prosperity and fruitfulness’. And the West African Ebola outbreak – for which there is, as yet, it sounds good, you must admit, especially the ‘prosperity and no known cure has passed the 2,630 mark. The number fruitfulness’ bit. of infections is put at over 5,300 although many more are However, there may be a snag. It’s guaranteed to work of suspected to be going undetected. By the time you read it the course – as long as you ‘pray in faith’, but as with all religious statistics will be much worse. guarantees, if the punter doesn’t have the required amount of Unless, of course, in the meantime God steps in with a faith – well, that could bugger the whole miracle up. miracle to sort it out – which, presumably, he could if he wanted And it’s even been suggested by some, who obviously have to. He did, after all, in the case of Dr Kent Brantly. Brantly, an nowhere near enough faith in Joshua and his Jesus juice, that American medical missionary working in Liberia is one of the it is simply salt water. Obviously this is an outrageous slur. No fortunate ones who, after contacting the disease, made a full multi-millionaire preacher would ever carry out such a scam recovery. ‘God saved my life’ he assured a press conference would they? after being released from hospital. Hopefully he does provide full instructions for use with the The way God did this, it seems, is by arranging for Brantly to magic liquid though. You obviously need to know whether to be one of the fi rst to receive the very scarce and experimental drink it or pour it into your car’s radiator. It’s all very well making serum known as Zmapp, and whisking him back to a modern your old banger bulletproof, but if it’s saltwater you’re pouring in, hospital in the US where he received another dose, and the best it could corrode the cooling system internals and make it leak possible medical care available. like a bloody sieve. Not exactly the kind of holiness you want in How effective the Zmapp was in his cure we can only guess your radiator. at this stage, or what Dr Brantly’s views of it are, but he is in no NW doubt that it was God who saved his life. Why did God single out Dr Brantly to be saved, we might wonder? Why didn’t he carry out a similar miracle for some, at least, of the other 2,630 victims, including many other committed medical volunteers? Why was it necessary for God to allow the outbreak to occur in the fi rst place? Maybe Dr Brantly knows the answer to these questions, maybe he doesn’t, but of one thing he is absolutely certain. ‘God saved my life’. To assist God in carrying out further miracles of this sort another, more unorthodox, treatment for Ebola has been prescribed by ‘Prophet’ T B Joshua, one of Nigeria’s fi ve wealthiest preachers. Prophet Joshua, whose fortune has been estimated at between 10 and 15 million dollars by Forbes magazine (although that sum is dwarfed by others on the list), has fl own 4,000 bottles of his amazing ‘holy anointing water’ to Sierra Leone for use in treating the Ebola virus. This magical water which is produced at his church’s headquarters is obviously potent stuff. It is more usually taken among his followers for the treatment of such complaints as barrenness, cancer, paralysis and the AIDS virus, although one even confi rms that whilst being attacked in his car one night by ten armed bandits his car suddenly became bulletproof and he

Bird dismisses the idea of ‘generals who from the John Bird rehabilitates comfort of their offi cers clubs sent the masses to their death! Over the top and into oblivion’ culturally World War One epitomised in Oh! What a Lovely War and Blackadder Goes Forth. What about Haig’s contempt for the working John Bird, founder of The Big Issue, has rewritten class evident in his diary entry ‘mostly gamekeepers and history in his article The Necessary War (4-10 August) servants’ after hearing 13,000 men were killed in three which states ‘the First World War was an imperative hours during a battle. confl ict for Britain and France to fi ght as Kaiser He makes the ludicrous assertion that Napoleon Wilhelm’s Germany would have propelled Europe back caused the First World War. We know the ‘Great Man’ to the Dark Ages.’ It is an essay full of 1914 anti- theory of history but Bird surely needs a dose of the German propaganda. Materialist Conception of History. The war was the He identifi es the Kaiser ‘with a withered arm’ as a outcome of decades of competing capitalist interests, reason for Germany starting the war. Bird writes that the fact that the predominance of British and French ‘it would have been an absolute disaster for Germany capitalism was being challenged by Germany, French to have won the First World War.’ This the country that hurt pride over the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, and Britain’s brought us Goethe, Beethoven, and Hegel. He writes determination to halt German access to the oilfi elds of Germany would ‘turn Europe into an Africa; open for the Persian Gulf. Bird needs to take a history lesson. rape and pillage and plundering’ which is ridiculous. His article was an insult to the homeless people who Britain declared war ostensibly to defend neutral sell his magazine. Fortunately the same issue carried Belgium which had committed atrocities in the Congo our advertisement stating that ‘we oppose all leadership, Free State where natives were maimed and slaughtered all war.’ for profi t. SPC

6 Socialist Standard October 2014 PUBLICATIONS ORDER FORM

PAMPHLETS Price and Qty More … and more An Inconvenient Question: Socialism and The Environment...... £2.00 x____

What’s Wrong With Using Parliament?...... £1.00 x____ THE PRE-WWI US labour union boss Samuel Gompers was once asked what unions wanted. He replied with a Ecology and Socialism...... £1.00 x____ single word – ‘more.’ It was a good answer since that’s basically what unions are about: more money, from em- From Capitalism to Socialism: how we live and how we could live....£1.00 x____ ployers, to enable their members to live a little better un- der capitalism. They don’t always get this and in slump Africa: A Marxian Analysis...... £1.50 x____ conditions have to be satisfi ed with aiming to get ‘not so Socialism As a Practical Alternative...... £1.00 x____ much less’. It’s actually a better slogan than a ‘fair’ or a ‘decent’ Some Aspects of Marxian Economics...... £2.00 x____ wage since there’s nothing fair or decent about being forced by economic necessity, as most people are under How the Gods Were Made...... £1.50 x____ capitalism, to sell their mental and physical energies to some employer for a wage or a salary. That’s wage slav- Marxism and Darwinism by Anton Pannekoek...... £1.50 x____

ery and it can never be fair however much more workers How we Live and How we Might Live by William Morris...... £1.50 x____ get paid. On 18 October the TUC is organising a national demon- The Right to be Lazy and other articles by Paul Lafargue...... £2.00 x____ stration in London under the slogan ‘Britain needs a pay rise’. It’s a silly slogan, designed presumably to show that Marxism Revisited...... £2.00 x____ unions don’t just have their members’ interest at heart but also that of the country. But ‘Britain’ is not a united com- Socialist Principles Explained...... £2.00 x____ munity with a common interest. It’s a class-divided society in which the ‘national interest’ is the interest of the domi- All the above pamphlets (25% discount)...... £15.00 x____ nant capitalist class. They, not workers, are Britain. So, what the TUC has ended up doing is trying to con- BOOKS vince the capitalist class that it is in their interest to in- Strange Meeting: Socialism and World War One...... £4.50 x____ crease wages. This is not self-evident, otherwise they would already have done so without the TUC needing to A Socialist Life by Heather Ball...... £3.75 x____ ask them. The TUC’s argument is that ‘getting money back into Are We Prisoners Of Our Genes?...... £4.75 x____ people’s pockets is essential to securing a strong re- covery.’ This is to assume that the capitalist economy is Socialism Or Your Money Back (reduced from £9.95)...... £4.00 x____

driven by what workers buy. It isn’t. It’s driven by what All the above books and pamphlets (25% discount)...... £20.00 x____ capitalist fi rms invest with a view to profi t. What workers can buy is a by-product of this since the more capital- DVD ist fi rms invest, the more workers are employed and so the more in total that workers can buy. As Marx put it, ‘if Capitalism and Other Kids’ Stuff...... £5.75 x_____ productive capital grows, the demand for labour grows. It therefore increases the price of labour-power, wages’ Poles Apart? Capitalism or socialism as the planet heats up...... £5.75 x_____ (Wage Labour and Capital , ch. VI). In any event, what the TUC is concentrating on de- TOTAL ...... £______manding is an end to too low pay. They want the mini- mum wage enforced more strictly and ‘higher wages from All prices include postage and packing. For six or more of any publication, employers who can afford to pay’, explaining: reduce the price by one third. ‘We know that in many low paid sectors employers could afford to pay more without making job losses. Return this form along with your cheque or money order to: That’s why we need new ways for unions and employers The Socialist Party of Great Britain, FREEPOST, London, SW4 to work together to set higher wages, so that workers and 7BR, United Kingdom. businesses both get a fair deal.’ (No postage necessary if mailed within the UK) It would be nice to think that this was just a ploy to get the employers concerned to pay more. Unfortunately the NAME...... TUC probably believe it and do want a ‘fair deal’ for busi- nesses as well as workers. A fair year’s profi ts for a fair ADDRESS...... day’s wage! In that respect they would agree with another ...... of Gompers’ sayings, that ‘the worst crime against work- ing people is a company which fails to operate at a profi t.’ ...... Workers do need more but not just more money to live City...... under capitalism. A lot more. The whole means of produc- tion in fact so that these can be used to turn out what ...... Postcode...... people need instead of to make a profi t for those who monopolise them. That will mean the end of the system of County...... working for wages and its replacement by the application PHONE (optional)...... of the principle ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.’ E-MAIL (optional)......

Socialist Standard October 2014 7 Desperately seeking - safety

Manus Island Detention Centre

RACISM AND xenophobia are not specifi cally Australian ‘Australia’s policy of offshore processing for asylum seekers personality traits, for racism isn’t biological or innate. It was arriving by sea, and its interception and turning back of vessels, created to rationalise and justify slavery and colonialism, is leading to a chain of human rights violations, including exploiting pseudo-science to persuade people that racial arbitrary detention and possible torture following return to home superiority is natural. There is nothing natural about it. The countries. It could also lead to the resettlement of migrants in attitude of today’s government contrasts with the reception countries that are not adequately equipped... Human rights are given to the Vietnamese boat-people in the 70s and 80s. not reserved for citizens only, or for people with visas. They are Back then, Australia honoured its obligation as a signatory to the inalienable rights of every individual, regardless of his or the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. The 2006 her location and migration status.’ he declares (Sidney Morning census recorded 173,663 Australian people of Vietnamese Herald, 7 September). ancestry who were fi rst or second generation Australians. Admiral Chris Barrie, responsible for border protection The logistics of accommodating newcomers is something under the Howard government, said the demonising of asylum that Australia has repeatedly demonstrated it is capable of seekers in Australia’s detention centres was a central concern achieving. for him: Hamid Kehazaei, a young Iranian asylum seeker, has ‘I’m not sure we should continue to use the term ‘mandatory been declared brain-dead following his emergency medical detention’ when we actually mean jail. At least in Australian evacuation from the Manus island detention centre. Dr Peter jails the incarcerated have rights of access to legal support and Young, the former director of mental health services at IHMS representation. In these jails no such rights exist.’ He continued: and one of the most senior doctors working in immigration ‘Australians are doing their utmost to extinguish hope, the detention, explained he would not be surprised if there were most powerful of human emotions’ ( Sidney Morning Herald, 4 delays to Kehazaei’s medical care. September). ‘Whenever people are placed in a remote place like this, Why do some Australians ‘hate’ asylum seekers? Many are where there isn’t access to local services on the ground, it led to believe they are one of society’s biggest problems. Little inevitably creates a situation in which there are going to be wonder. The media claims Australia is under siege from asylum delays when people have deteriorating conditions and when seekers and they are blamed for higher taxes, increasing crime, higher level, tertiary care is required. That’s just a characteristic rising house prices, longer hospital waits, cheap labour, as well of being in a remote location and that’s leaving aside the issues as terrorism and disease. Mainstream politicians promote such of the logistics when someone needs to be moved out and the stories. bureaucratic delays when approval needs to be sought through Even if all the boats were stopped, even if they were all sent multiple agencies’ (theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/03/). back into Indonesian waters, even if all asylum seekers were Draconian immigration policies are increasingly being locked up in detention camps situated in puppet countries, imposed by various countries around the world. Australia none of that would increase wages or pensions, increase the detains refugees who arrive by boat to seek political asylum numbers of nurses and doctors in public hospitals, make the on Christmas Island and in camps in Papua New Guinea and education system any better, or make more affordable housing Nauru. Australian governments, both Liberal and Labour parties, available. The campaign against asylum seekers won’t lead to have demonised boat people for 15 years, defying international a single affordable house, a single hospital or a single school law. being built. Everybody knows this deep down, yet asylum Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the new United Nations high seekers are the scapegoat for the ignorant and aggrieved. It is a commissioner for human rights, accused Australia of causing campaign of fear to cover-up the failures of capitalism. human rights violations through its policy of detaining asylum ALJO seekers offshore:

8 Socialist Standard October 2014 Clashing in Clacton

JAYWICK IS a village on the one of the energetic young Tory modernisers elected Essex coast with a stretch of to the Commons in 2005’ and in the following year the golden sand. Built in 1928, Daily Telegraph named him as ‘the Parliamentarian of it originally consisted of the Year’. All of which, with his increasing majority in ‘chalets’ but these developed Clacton, entitled Carswell to regard himself as someone as permanent residences and the occasional holiday with real prospects. But every day, in so many ways, the retreat for anyone who was in employment permanent arrogance of politicians with their bogus ‘principles’, their enough for them to afford a week away to recover from superfi cial ‘energy’, their ‘modernising’ is exposed to us. That War followed by The Slump. For many it was as How does Carswell match up to this? close to paradise as they were likely to get. But it is all different now, for Jaywick has fallen to the lower layers of No Primary poverty and decay. In 2011 a survey by the Department After the 2010 election the Coalition agreement of Communities and Local Government stated that on promised to introduce a system whereby the voters select the basis of poverty, crime, education, unemployment candidates in primary elections. Carswell stated his and housing it was the most deprived area in England. support for this reform, in the so-called Contract With There is a lack of street lighting and pavements and Britain. Which would have been more convincing if he what were parades of shops are now wastelands – empty had applied the system in his own case. But when he and vandalised. It is part of the genteel Parliamentary moved from the Tory Party to UKIP and resigned as an constituency of Clacton, which was represented by the MP he said he would stand again without any mention Conservative Douglas Carswell until August, when he of a primary election. Instead the matter was subject to changed to UKIP the system he professes to despise; in fact it was even and stood down more closed – privately settled with Nigel Farage during a from Parliament cosy meal in a discreet Mayfair restaurant. This took no with the stated account of the fact that there was already a selected UKIP intention of candidate – Roger Lord, a local farmer who had been a contesting the member of UKIP since 1997. Lord complained bitterly resulting by- about being elbowed aside, to the extent that he more or election there. less removed himself from all political activity of whatever party. Sofa Clique Clacton was Expenses created as a If there were ever any doubts about Carswell’s resolve parliamentary constituency for the Douglas Carswell to make his name – and ensure himself a place further 2010 election, when Carswell had a up the Greasy Pole – they would have been stilled by majority of 12,088. In common with a number of coastal what the Daily Mail called his ‘fearless’ call for the towns, it has a higher proportion of retired people and Speaker of the House of Commons Michael Martin to be a lesser number of those classifi ed as ‘non-white’. Votes dismissed for his resistance to a more open system in there are cast defensively; local polls confi rm support the matter of the MPs’ expenses. In May 2009 Carswell’s for Carswell’s stand against British membership of the motion of no confi dence led to Martin resigning from the EU, for restricting the infl ow of immigrants and longer chair, pleading that this was ‘for the sake of unity’. But prison sentences for repeat offenders... all of which add Carswell himself was not backward in the scandal, for his up to Clacton being a hopeful place for a UKIP candidate. campaign against MPs’ sleaze (he complained that their Among the polls the Conservative Home website predicted standing had ‘never been so low’) did not prevent him that Carswell would get some 56 per cent of the by- being one of those imaginative claimants for ‘expenses’. election vote as against only 24 per cent for the Tory He began by designating a £1 million fl at in London as candidate, for he promised to change things: ‘Our politics his second home before fl ipping to a £335,000 house is dominated by politicians. It’s all about them, not the in Essex. This was followed by his claims for furniture people they are supposed to answer to... First under Tony and equipment which between 2007 and 2009 cost Blair, then Gordon Brown, now David Cameron, it’s all some £32,000. He claimed £429 for gardening and then, about the priorities of whichever tiny clique happens to perhaps to reveal himself as someone with an eye for be sitting on the sofa in Downing Street. Different clique, detail, 74p for a washing line from Tesco. But above all same sofa . . . They seek every great offi ce, yet believe in else was a £655 Maximus love seat ‘in deep moss brushed so little’. cotton with extra fabric protector’ for use when he moved in with his future wife. Someone Special We are fully accustomed to the sprouting of some Carswell is well experienced in this matter of aiming smaller third party urging us to vote them into power for a place on that sofa. He fi rst contested an election in because they are cleaner, more honest and reliable than 2001, at none other than Sedgefi eld where Tony Blair was the two big ones with their playing elections as a kind the Member. At the time, before Iraq and the infamous of gruesome Musical Chairs. We remember David Steel lies, there was something of a slump in the popularity and his Liberals, Roy Jenkins and his SDP. Now we have of that Labour government and Carswell reduced Blair’s Farage and his strangely impulsive, self-incriminating majority by 7,500. And then in 2005, after a spell in lot. The signs are that come 9 November Carswell will be David Cameron’s offi ce, he stood for Harwich and turned their fi rst MP. But all the evidence says that he should out the sitting Labour MP by 920 votes. In 2007 he was not let this excite him into any further delusions. Which a joint- author of Direct Democracy an agenda for a new also goes for those who vote for him. model party, which led The Spectator to include him IVAN among ‘...the brightest young Conservative thinkers’. In the Sunday Times in July 2008 he was hailed as ‘...

Socialist Standard October 2014 9 Nonviolent Revolution: A Contradiction in Terms ?

protest’. Rall actually makes a number of good Many assume that bringing capitalism to an end will require points in his article, arguing against violence. But workers can paralyze the capitalist class without ‘Western analysts, liberals and even leftists’ who have ‘cheapened the word fi ring a shot. “revolution”, attaching it to developments that . . . are nothing of the kind’; whereas a true revolution is ‘a vast set of radical transformations in the way that ordinary evolution is often equated with ‘The privileged classes won’t relinquish people live’. ‘You can’t make a revolution violence. William Morris addressed their privileges, power or wealth without revolutionizing society’, he writes, Rthis misconception nicely in ‘How voluntarily. They will use their control over ‘which requires the complete violent We Live, and How We Might Live’, where the police and the military . . . in order to overthrow of the ruling class’. he explained that: crush any meaningful opposition. They But is it necessary for him to insist ‘The word Revolution, which we are violent. Their system is violence. so strongly on the violent nature of this Socialists are so often forced to use, Defeating them requires greater violence. transformation? Is it true that violence has a terrible sound in most people’s Nothing less results in revolution’ (‘Not a is an essential aspect of revolution? ears, even when we have explained to Revolution, Just an Old-fashioned Coup’). Is the use of nonviolent tactics among them that it does not necessarily mean Rall insists that nonviolence is revolutionaries ineffective and historically a change accompanied by riot and all ineffective for a revolutionary movement unprecedented? kinds of violence, and cannot mean a and historically unprecedented, as he change made mechanically and in the notes in his criticism of the Occupy The power of nonviolence? teeth of opinion by a group of men who movement in the same article: Nonviolent tactics would seem have somehow managed to seize on the ‘At the height of the Occupy movement particularly ill-suited for any movement executive power for the moment’. during the fall of 2011, many knee-jerk facing an authoritarian regime armed to And 130 years later most still pacifi sts, besotted with the post-1960s the teeth. Here, at least, the arguments assume that revolution necessarily is religion of militant nonviolence (in spite in favor of violent revolution would seem accompanied by violence, and that a of its repeatedly proven ineffectiveness), persuasive. But an article published in the ‘nonviolent revolution’ is a contradiction agreed that radical transformation — July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, titled in terms. revolution — was necessary in the United ‘Drop Your Weapons: When and Why States. Yet these liberals also argued Civil Resistance Works’, argues that even The Ted offensive that (even though there was no historical in such situations collective nonviolent In an article published last year, the radial precedent) the triumph of the mass of resistance can be very effective. political cartoonist Ted Rall puts forth the ordinary American workers over the The authors of the article, Erica basic argument so often used to defend corrupt bankers and their pet politicians Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, are violent revolution: could result from purely nonviolent hardly revolutionaries: Chenoweth is an academic and Stephan a ‘strategic planner’ for the State Department. And the magazine is pure ‘establishment’; published by the Council on Foreign Relations, an organization that seeks to ‘promote understanding of foreign policy and America’s role in the world’. Not surprisingly, then, many of the examples of violent and nonviolent movements that the authors examine concern ‘regimes’ that the US government has sought to topple. Far from objecting to this meddling foreign policy, Chenoweth and Stephan simply think that supporting nonviolent movements can be more effective in many cases than backing armed confl ict. In any case, their article begins with some statistics about how ‘campaigns of nonviolent resistance’ have been much more successful against authoritarian regimes than violent movements. They examined ‘323 campaigns’ in the period from 1919 to 2006 – covering ‘all known nonviolent and violent campaigns How some artists see revolution (each featuring at least 1,000 observed

10 Socialist Standard October 2014 Disarming a police state to defeat a police state is not ‘greater The effectiveness of violence’, as Rall seems to think, but nonviolence, in the view of the the mass power of workers to effectively authors, has nothing to do with disarm that apparatus of violence: moral suasion: overwhelming it with numbers, dissolving ‘Civil resistance does not its legitimacy, and winning over fellow succeed because it melts workers ordered to pull the trigger. the hearts of dictators and Even the most repressive regime secret police. It succeeds relies upon a degree of cooperation because it is more likely than and consent from the population. When armed struggle to attract a that legitimacy among the citizenry has large and more diverse base dissolved, the state’s use of violence of participants and impose becomes increasingly diffi cult or even unsustainable costs on a counterproductive. There are numerous 45 Revolutions Per Minute - and no violence regime’. examples in recent history alone of Chenoweth and Stephan seemingly powerful regimes that participants) for self-determination, the list a number of reasons why nonviolent have collapsed suddenly removal of an incumbent leader, or the tactics can be so effective. in the face of expulsion of a foreign occupation’. First of all, nonviolence is a tactic that mass protest. The authors found that the ‘campaigns allows a movement to mobilize a greater This essential of nonviolent resistance against number of participants and supporters. point was made by authoritarian regimes were twice as In other words, there are fewer ‘barriers Erica Chenoweth likely to succeed as violent movements’; to participation’ than in an armed confl ict, in the 21 August and that ‘almost half’ of the nonviolent so a wider stratum of society is more interview with campaigns examined succeeded in likely to take part. And, needless to the two authors achieving their goals, compared to just say, the larger the movement, the more on National 20 percent of the violent ones. diffi cult it is for a government to violently Public Radio: These statistics, as you can see, are suppress it. ‘When very large vague and the category ‘campaign’ Another factor cited by the authors in and diverse includes every sort of social movement, favor of nonviolent movements is that sectors of society whether its participants saw themselves they can employ a wider variety of tactics withdraw their as revolutionaries or reformists. But than is possible in an armed movement; cooperation from the interesting point to note is that not only demonstrations and strikes but the opponent authoritarian regimes often found it other forms of noncooperation that make government, diffi cult to stamp out movements of mass it clear that the legitimacy of the rulers it’s extremely nonviolent resistance despite the armed has dissolved. diffi cult for that power of the state. The authors point to the example of government to ‘Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Shah of Iran, who ‘had little diffi culty maintain its hold no social, economic, or political neutralizing the Islamist and Marxist- on control. And structures have systematically prevented inspired [sic!] guerilla groups’ but when the reason is nonviolent campaigns from emerging or ‘large numbers of oil workers, bazaar because every succeeding’, the authors argue, adding merchants, and students engaged in acts power holder that, ‘movements that opt for violence of collective nonviolent resistance . . .the is 100 percent often unleash terrible destruction and regime’s repressive apparatus became reliant on the bloodshed . . . usually without realizing overstretched’ and soon thereafter the cooperation, the goals they set out to achieve’. Shah fl ed the country. obedience and Ted Rall cartoon - against violence In other words, what was necessary help of people that reside in its pillars of support - the security forces, the state media, religious authorities, educational elites, business and economic elites and civilian bureaucrats’. Clearly,

Socialist Standard October 2014 11 Occupy: decamped?

Chenoweth is imagining a confl ict within US foreign policy out of the Pentagon, the new society that replaces the old. In the ruling class, where the outcome but they do make some good points other words, like the Occupy movement depends on which side the bulk of the about how nonviolent tactics can work he criticizes, Rall doesn’t really have elites decide to back. But a similar against authoritarian regimes as a sort of a basic goal or strategy for what is to dynamic would be at play in a socialist ‘asymmetric’ confl ict. replace capitalism. It is that absence of revolution as well. That is, when the But, to return to the question of a goal that accounts for why movements majority of the working class withdraws revolution, the debate over violence like Occupy fall apart, not their preference its cooperation from the capitalist class, it versus nonviolence, however interesting, for nonviolence. would be extremely diffi cult for that class is not the primary issue for socialists. Our own goal is clearly the creation of to maintain its hold on power and its We are convinced that the success a new classless, borderless, moneyless pillars of support will begin to crumble. of a revolution depends on a majority society of common ownership; a society The problem for the capitalist class in of the working class coming to have we call ‘socialism’. And our strategy for such a situation would hardly be a lack an understanding of and desire for achieving this goal is for more and more of military fi repower; they would always socialism. This is the key issue; much of our fellow workers to understand and outgun the workers. But unleashing more important than the specifi c tactics consciously aim for this new form of that force against a rebellious working socialists employ to surmount this or that society, until the point of critical mass is class could backfi re, adding fuel to the obstacle along the way. reached where replacing capitalism with fi re; or the police and soldiers (workers Ted Rall seems to suggest that the socialism is a real, concrete task for the themselves) might refuse to carry out Occupy movement fell apart as a result working class. At that point, the question the orders or turn their guns against the of sticking religiously to ineffective becomes how best to take that fi nal step. rulers. nonviolent tactics. But the central And we believe that, once socialism problem of that movement had less has majority backing, a nonviolent, Tactics are secondary to do with its nonviolent tactics (which democratic transformation is possible and As advocates of nonviolence, Chenoweth were actually remarkably effective), than preferable. and Stephan may be nothing more than its lack of a clear vision of what could Violence is an effective means for useful idiots in the eyes of the military- replace the unequal capitalist society a minority to hold on to power, or for industrial complex that actually runs against which they were protesting. It is another minority group to topple them hard to see how the use of violent tactics and become the new rulers. But the would have compensated for that lack of workers make up the vast majority of strategy. society– if not ‘the 99%’, pretty close Or, perhaps Rall was trying to say that to it. When the majority of workers are Free Lunch the Occupy movement failed be cause moving steadfastly toward socialism, the Collection 1 it did not set itself the goal of sweeping violence of the minority ruling class would on sale now aside the ruling class (which he says be unable to stem the tide, at least not for Order from Head Offi ce, £7.50 requires violence). But even if that is long. his argument, it only reveals that Rall is inc p&p, cheque to “The MICHAEL SCHAUERTE focused exclusively on the ‘negative’ or Socialist Party of Great Britain” destructive side of revolution, rather than

12 Socialist Standard October 2014 Poverty Excludes

We look at different concepts of poverty, at the idea of social exclusion and at how governments have tried and failed to eradicate these.

overty need not imply less than 60 percent of the median a household with income below the destitution, the situation where household income. Thus in 2011-12, 60 percent poverty line after housing Pa person simply cannot provide the median household income in the costs were taken into account. The for themselves. Many asylum-seekers UK was £23,200 (down from £24,100 extent of poverty is also revealed by are forced to survive on £5 a day in 2007-8): 60 percent of this would increases in the numbers resorting to and so can genuinely be described be £14,460. Naturally, such fi gures food banks and to petty shoplifting, as destitute, or as in absolute or need to be adjusted to take account even from pound stores, and by extreme poverty. An alternative of differences in terms of family size rises in cases of malnutrition treated notion is that of relative poverty, and the cost of living in different in hospitals (over fi ve thousand in living below a poverty line usually parts of the country. That same year, 2012). defi ned as a household receiving more than one child in four lived in An alternative approach defi nes poverty in relation to typical living standards: ‘Individuals, families and groups in the population can be said to be in poverty when they lack resources to obtain the type of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities which are customary, or at least widely encouraged and approved, in the societies in which they belong’ (Peter Townsend, quoted from www.cpag. org.uk/content/what-is-poverty). This is often described as social exclusion: ‘being unable to access the things in life that most people take for granted’ (defi nition from Age Concern). At the very least this would mean: decent housing which was not overcrowded and which people could afford to heat; eating healthy and nutritious food, without worrying about skimping towards the end of the week and resorting to food banks; buying warm and functional clothes, without relying on hand-me-downs and charity shops; access to good-quality health care; having the chance to perform useful and rewarding work; being able to afford bus and train fares; enjoying some basic leisure activities, such as a trip to the cinema or a day in the country; having an annual holiday that is more than just staying with relatives. Not too much to ask, you might think, given the capabilities of modern society, but in fact beyond the reach of millions. In his 2010 book Injustice, Daniel Dorling claimed that one-sixth of households in Britain count as poor, with debt as the main problem that prevents them from affording necessities, arguing that ‘People A soup kitchen in Poland spend and get into debt to maintain

Socialist Standard October 2014 13 their social position not out of envy of the rich, but out of the necessity “the fi ve richest families in Britain own more to maintain self-respect.’ You cannot keep up your self-respect if you wealth then the poorest fi fth of the population” truly are excluded from the normal standards of present-day living. It is sometimes said, not just that not imply that everyone who wants suggesting that the Coalition should the 60 percent fi gure is arbitrary, a job has one, so ‘eradicating’ child act to increase wages. but that relative poverty, and the poverty does not mean getting rid of The cause of poverty, however concept of social exclusion too, can it altogether. Rather, it was intended defi ned, is not that the benefi ts give a very false impression, as under that fewer than 10 percent of system encourages dependency them people can still be regarded as children should live in families below and undermines any ambitions poor even if their standard of living the poverty line. that people have. Nor is it that the is well above that of poor people a This specifi c target, along with tax system penalises those who generation or two before. And even others, was enshrined in Labour’s earn relatively little when they start those who are not destitute may have Child Poverty Act of March 2010. The earning a bit more. The fundamental other big parties supported it, though

Tony Blair, who in 1999 proclaimed a commitment to eradicate child poverty by 2020 the use of gadgets and technology that did not even exist a couple of the Tories complained that it tackled cause is the way that society is decades ago. If you have a big colour the symptoms of poverty rather than organised, with a small minority television, the argument goes, how the causes. Shortly after the 2010 owning the means of production and can you be poor? One response is election, when poverty statistics for the overwhelming majority forced that you can still be socially excluded 2008-9 were published, Iain Duncan to sell their labour power for a wage in the way sketched above; another Smith stated: in order to survive. The degree of would be that the comparison should ‘Millions of children, adults and inequality this gives rise to is scarcely be with the very richest people in pensioners are daily experiencing credible: the fi ve richest families in society, who have prospered very the crushing disadvantage that Britain own more wealth then the nicely in spite of the recession; and poverty brings. They are living at the poorest fi fth of the population. fi nally, that the true comparison margins of society, unable to achieve To be more accurate, workers should be with the possibilities for their aspirations and trapped in are forced to attempt to sell their life in a socialist world. dependency. … Vast sums of money labour power, since there will not Reformist governments have have been poured into the benefi ts always be a capitalist in a position of course addressed the problem system over the last decade in an to exploit a worker and therefore of poverty. In 1999 Tony Blair attempt to address poverty, but willing to employ them. Workers may proclaimed a commitment to today’s statistics clearly show that sometimes be able to maintain a eradicate child poverty by 2020, but this approach has failed.’ reasonable standard of living, while this has not been going well, with the The point about dealing with at other times they may be excluded interim target of halving child poverty symptoms rather than causes from what is by any criterion a by 2010-11 being missed. It was only was correct, but that after all is basically acceptable way of life. But cut by about a third, and even this essentially what every government we are always excluded from true reduction was partly due to a drop does. The Tory idea of the causes of empowerment over our lives and in the median income and hence the poverty is also rather different from those of our families – and that is poverty line being lower. And as in that of socialists: Duncan Smith later not something that can be achieved other areas, government terminology argued that the Labour government under the present social system. did not quite mean what it appeared ‘did not do enough to make work PAUL BENNETT to. Just as ‘full employment’ does pay’, though he is of course not

14 Socialist Standard October 2014 that used to be freely available has shrunk, has been taken away by force for the benefi t of capitalists and corporations? Here cost comes into play. The cost to the What labour is public in general of the loss of the commons is impossible to put a price tag on. Water, land and hitherto public spaces have been acquired from the public sphere as really worth money-making ventures: factories, mines, building projects, dams, monocrops for feed or biofuel; town centres, former public land and playing fi elds, even the “The real price of every thing, what every thing really ground underneath housing is vulnerable to takeover. costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and The air we breathe is highly susceptible to pollution trouble of acquiring it. What every thing is really worth to as an externality of the market system we endure. The the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of polluters are also the benefi ciaries of the profi ts from it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble their businesses but they readily pass on the costs of that which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon pollution to workers as externalities. The costs are borne other people.” by people living locally as air, water, ground and food is contaminated – and by those living far away as poisoned “Labour alone, therefore, never varying in its own value, is waste is shipped thousands of miles to be dealt with at a alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of fraction of the cost it would be in the producing country. all commodities can at all times and places be estimated Huge health costs to be borne by those in the recipient and compared. It is their real price; money is their nominal neighbourhoods. price only. Accumulatively there are costs from hese are the words of Adam loss of space, loss of Smith about the system we freedom to use such inhabit currently but what spaces, health costs, T loss of individual would they mean if anything in the alternative system we may choose privacy and freedom for the future? of speech, loss of Take money for instance, what choice in all manner does it mean to most people? of areas signifying Simply a means of acquiring the both personal and things they need and want, in fact collective costs - all most things throughout life and whilst the capitalist for the majority that isn’t easily minority continues attained. And in many cases there to steal more and is never enough, however hard more of the common they try. How much one needs wealth and infl uence for an average life for an average law making. lifetime who knows? On an Current politics is average wage, wherever you live on far from inclusive the planet, who can imagine what and certainly not it means to be a millionaire or a democratic in many billionaire (the numbers of which are rising fast)? eyes. Counting at the rate of one dollar, pound or euro Those with money are the ones with infl uence. They per second it will take twelve days to count a million are free to buy whatever it is they want – material goods and thirty one years to count a billion. Longer if you and the time and labour of others. However, in the grand stop for the necessities of life. And as for a trillion, a scheme of things, they are the minority. Those with little number bandied about more frequently of late, with – and we are many – are the labour. the expectation that within a few short years the fi rst Giving value to labour, in the broadest sense – those of trillionaire will hit the headlines, simple maths shows us us who work for our living, whether manual in farming, that 31,000 years would be required. That’s an awful lot fi shing, factory or mine, on road, rail or the high seas, or of toil and trouble, potentially an awful lot of labour. indoors in health, education, administration or any other It is the predatory nature of capitalism that has, in kind of service industry – when we recognise the value of recent years, awakened increasing numbers to question giving value to labour, to our labour and the labour of all what it is that is happening around the world and to the others like us, we will be on the path to answering the feel aggrieved enough to protest in their thousands. earlier question – ‘what are we going to do about it?’ From believing they lived in functioning democracies we Removing the money element from our labour will are now aware that that belief has been overturned as remove the money from all of our transactions. It will demonstration after demonstration reveals the deeper also remove the profi t seekers and corporations from awareness of masses of people. It is now commonly any further equations. No more banks, investment recognised that governments are running countries for companies, mortgage, rent and insurances creating the benefi t of business and that business is extremely endless headaches and the anxiety of indebtedness. No friendly to compliant governments. Revolving doors, more middlemen and consumer ideology warping our hefty donations, lecture tours for ex-politicians, seats minds and persuading us against our better judgment to on boards, fees for access, you scratch my back and I’ll consume, consume, consume. Labour, working together scratch yours. We know how the system works and for across the world, retaking and rebuilding the commons whom it works best, so the question for the great majority in the best interests of the common good. Labour, for whom it doesn’t work becomes ‘what are we going to recognising its individual and collective value, working do about it?’ together to secure a democratic world community. Who can have failed to notice how the sphere of things JS

Socialist Standard October 2014 15 The rise and decline apitalism was progressive destruction. during its ascendance in its This is, however, Cformative stage. During this not to say that capital of capitalism phase all its necessary formations has come to a dead halt. and reformations were progressive, Capital’s nature of exploitation, of development of the productive even though it emerged having been appropriation and accumulation of forces these relations have turned drenched in blood and gore. Both surplus value continues as long as it into their fetters or, in other words, the capitalist and working classes exists. the productive forces have outgrown were sprouting, growing – evolving. Capital develops unevenly through the production relations. All the productive forces – means of concentration and centralization. The history of the past hundred production, instruments of labour And for that matter capital is still years has shown us that the and labour power, were developing going on accumulating globally reformist movements around the within the womb of the new born whereby one capital kills many world have not only been futile, relations of production. Hence giving rise to gigantic conglomerates. but also have increasingly grown here the working class movements reactionary by providing capitalism for formation/reformation were with a new lease of life by the entire progressive simply because capitalist media which has baffl ed elimination of capitalist relations, the people as a whole. Moreover the which were just taking shapes, was leftists and the Leninists have further out of the question, even though confused the workers and actually consciousness about its negation defended capitalism. Now we need ie. socialism, began to appear as a change – a radical change at the working class ideas and interests foundation of society – and more alongside the ruling ideas and – a change of the base-structure- interests of the capitalist class. Both superstructure of society – lock, classes were involved in severing stock, and barrel. feudal relations of production and The precise task of socialists installing capitalist ones. This was today is to hasten the revolution the epoch of bourgeois democratic by raising class consciousness revolution. Marx: ‘The philosophers have only through education and organization For world socialist revolution to interpreted the world, in various ways; the of the working class world-wide. occur two interrelated conditions point, however, is to change it’ The working class is not required must mature – the subjective to establish any eternal truth, or condition ie. the revolutionary will Accumulation is going through to realize any far-fetched ideal, but and organization of the working class destruction and annihilation. This is to set free the elements of the new on a world scale and the objective reactionary. This is decadence. society with which the old decadent condition ie. a comprehensive Productive forces have developed to capitalist society itself is pregnant. material maturity of the productive the stage of both actual and potential ‘… the proletariat can and must forces for abundance. Until the end abundance for all. But the working emancipate itself. But it cannot of the 19th century the revolutionary class consciousness and organization emancipate itself without abolishing replacement of capitalism was have remained subdued under the the conditions of its own life. It impossible since these necessary domination of capitalist ideas and cannot abolish the conditions of its conditions were not yet ripe. interests – constantly and crushingly own life without abolishing all the However, by the beginning of the campaigned by all pervading inhuman conditions of life of society 20 th century, the situation reversed. ‘right’, ’left’, ’centre’ chronicles today, which are summed up in its Capitalism entered into its era of and ideologies. They comprise all own situation.’ (Marx and Engels, decadence. Decadence – because, various belligerent factions of capital. The Holy Family, 1845, CW, Vol. 4, from then onwards, the revolutionary Although they use different names Progress Publishers, Moscow 1975, situation (objective condition) and slogans on their banners, they p. 37). And from the Communist remains ready but the revolution has don’t have any scientifi c alternative Manifesto: ‘The proletarians not happened owing to immaturity to capital’s devastatingly continued cannot become masters of the of working class consciousness and reproduction. They are mere productive forces of society, except organization (subjective condition). reformists of all various hues. We by abolishing their own previous Thus, humankind has reached have experienced enough of such mode of appropriation, and thereby the ‘era of social revolution’ but the things. And enough is enough! They also every other previous mode of revolution is yet to begin. Capitalism have given capitalism a century long appropriation.’ has gone into its phase of global anachronistic existence. Measures And remember Marx’s famous crisis cycles and anarchy leading to which were once very necessary pronouncement: ‘The philosophers world wars involving capital against and useful for maturation of the have only interpreted the world, in capital, fomenting national prejudices system have already more or less various ways; the point, however, is and pitting workers against workers accomplished their tasks and grown to change it’ (Theses on Feuerbach, to slaughter one another, destroying old and outdated. The material 1845). productive forces on all contending productive forces of society have BINAY SARKAR sides and producing misery, poverty, come into confl ict with the existing waste, pollution and environment relations of production. From forms

16 Socialist Standard October 2014 Ripping off the patient

he president of the Zambia Medical Association Sata when he was minister of health. In 2002 the Dr Munjajati recently revealed that the current MMD government went on to introduce consultation Thealth delivery system in the country cannot protect and medical fees in both public hospitals and clinics. patients seeking private medical attention from fl agrant Economic liberalisation entailed the acceptance of the overcharging. His remarks tend to highlight the fact lurid fact that free health care and education was a cost that Zambia has a two-tier health system within public to the government. Hospitals, schools and colleges were hospitals. Fee-paying hospital wards were introduced in de-centralised under health and education boards. 1980 by the UNIP government of Dr Kaunda. Those with Under the system of private healthcare, the enough money could be hospitalized in fee-paying wards opportunities for ripping off patients seems endless. in order to receive proper medical treatment . There is nothing in place to regulate the prices that The reluctance of the current Patriotic Front are charged by service providers and hence the price government to boldly check and regulate the operations differences in goods and services from one private of privately-owned hospitals and clinics is because to do health provider to another. Grading of private health so would be against the government’s policy of economic facilities does not exist on the ground due to the salient liberalization. Private health care is encouraged in the professional ethic surrounding medicine. Due to the belief that an increased role for entrepreneurs and prevalence of HIV/AIDS and the mystery surrounding the competition in the delivery of healthcare will result in disease and its causes, Zambia has seen a proliferation a more effi cient and effective healthcare system. Thus of traditional herbal therapies and traditional healers. the search for fi nancial gain determines the quality of It is not illegal in Zambia today to sell and advertise traditional herbal medicines that have not even President Michael Sata undergone a laboratory scrutiny The introduction of free male circumcision in public hospitals emphasises that lack of a regulatory framework. The public health system exists in a state of corruption. Private surgeries are stocked with medicines siphoned from public hospitals. There is no treatment protocol and this results in overservicing, A private doctor will prescribe ten supplementary drugs for the sake of advertising his business. Most private hospitals are under the control of lay managers whose primary interest is to make a profi t. Thus under the system of private health care doctors promote profi t-producing drugs, surgeries and tests. Medical treatments and counselling that lack profi t potential are discouraged. The commercialization of private healthcare has led to the abandonment of human virtues that are essential for a community - caring for old people, compassion and charity, especially for the less privileged members of the community. The zeal and altruism that is displayed by doctors and healthcare systems. But the values of free enterprises and nurses in their primary concern for the alleviation of pain the economic benefi ts that may fl ow from a more effi cient and sickness has been hijacked by the profi t motive. healthcare system can only be achieved at the cost of Indeed the prevailing ideology says that political states other and more important values – including a concern or governments have a duty to protect the interests of for fairness, the dignity of people and community-centred the citizenry, through providing them with law, security ethics that places people before profi ts. and healthcare. But the provision of healthcare under Caring or looking after the sick is a calling of special capitalism is hamstrung by the principle of free enterprise dignity and importance. The striking nurses were with its competition and profi t. The income and wealth dismissed by the Labour Minister in 2013 on the disparities between the working and capitalist classes allegation that they had failed to uphold the oath of translate themselves into standardized economic, political allegiance they swore when they graduated from Health and social programmes. The vision of free healthcare, College – to serve others out of compassion. To go on and other services cannot obtain under a capitalist state. strike for reasons of salary increments was anathema It is only in socialist society that health care will be to the values that guide governments and their civil characterized by its capacity to serve the good of every servants. This is the oath to serve the people out of member of society. The sense of responsibility by those love and compassion, without regard to the standard engaging in providing free medical care will demonstrate of prevailing salaries and poor conditions of service. In the individual and social virtues necessary for the that case, by the same standard, it would be the task of wellbeing of a classless, moneyless and stateless society – every government to make access to healthcare as free as socialism. possible. But they don’t. K. MULENGA There are relatively small amounts of legislation regulating the operations of health facilities compared to laws governing health personnel. The existing legislation regulating the operations of both private and public health hospitals was introduced by President Michael

Socialist Standard October 2014 17 An ancient papyrus scroll, recently found lying unnoticed on our General Secretary’s desk for nearly 2,000 years, has been examined and identifi ed as a previously unknown ‘Gospel of Karl’. Green economic policies THE GREEN Party held its annual conference at the begin- nd it came to pass that there was great discontent ning of September. According to the BBC, ‘the Green Party in the land. For they who were the capitalist class have sought to position themselves to the left of Labour and Aand owneth the factories, the farms and the means the Lib Dems by adopting policies such as the renationalisa- of production, and their fathers before them, and their tion of the railways, and curbing private NHS work’ ( BBC on- father’s fathers before them, were a host of robbing line, 5 September). parasites. Being more radical than Labour and the Liberals is easy And lo, the people cried out to the Lord that they had enough and it is true that in her speech as their leader Natalie no rest from their labours, that they were fed upon offal Bennett did seem as if she might have been speaking at a burgers and fries, draped in shoddy garments from the Labour Party Conference in the days of yore. land of Primark, and up to their ruddy necks in debt. And The Green Party, she told the BBC, is ‘the party of real he heard them not. change, the party with plans and policies for how to trans- And they sayeth one unto the other ‘Verily, what hath form our economy so that it works for the common good … come to pass? Why are we, who fl oggeth our guts out What we really have to do is rebalance our economy. At the to produce all the wealth up the bloody creek without a moment, wealthy individuals and particularly big multinational paddle, while they who owneth the wealth do sod all and companies aren’t paying their taxes and aren’t paying ade- liveth the life of Riley? It is surely a sign from the Lord quate wages. Britain is a low-wage economy. We have to al- that we toil not hard enough’. low people to get a decent return on their labour.’ And Moses heard their cries and came down the This is to assume that the economy - which is capitalist - is mountain saying unto them ‘Verily, I have tabloids of something that a government can manipulate or mould at will, stone from the High Priest Murdoch, and upon them is but the evidence of all past governments that have tried to do scribed the commandments which thou shall keep for all this is the opposite. It can’t be done. Rather than governments thy days, and if thou question them thou shalt surely be being able to change the way capitalism works it’s been the cast out of the paradise in which thy live’. And they were other way round. Governments have to dance to capitalism’s sorely afraid and knew not what to do. tune and that means putting profi ts fi rst. Then cometh amongst them a wise man whose name The Green Party may not like capitalism in its present form was called Karl, and he sayeth unto them ‘Workers of the and want to ‘rebalance’ it, but they still see no alternative to world unite, ye have nothing to lose but thy chains’. And capitalism as a system of production for profi t based on wage- they trembled with fear. labour and are resigned to working within it. It is true that the ‘Who art thou who cometh to cause discontent amongst sort of capitalism they envisage would not be dominated by us?’ they asked, ‘Some kind of bloody commie?’ tax-dodging multinationals but one in which the profi t-seeking And again he spake unto them saying, ‘Fear not, for I enterprises would be small and eco-friendly. But there is no bring ye glad tidings of great joy. If ye just bloody listen more chance of an eco-friendly capitalism than there is of go- for fi ve minutes I will explain. He that employeth thee ing back to small-scale capitalism. and payeth thee thy wages is surely ripping thee off. Ye Transforming the capitalist economy so that ‘it works for the needeth him like ye needeth a bloody hole in the head’. common good’ is precisely what cannot be done. Capitalism And lo, they were confused and sore afraid and trembled is a class-divided society driven by the imperative for those in their socks. ‘How shalt we live if they giveth us not our who own and control the means of wealth production to make wages?’ they sayeth. a profi t. It can only function as a profi t system in the interest of ‘Jesus Christ!’ he exclaimed, ‘thou art bloody slow on those who live off profi ts. the uptake’. ‘Verily, I say unto thee, ye toil unto them All governments have to take this constraint into account simply because ye owneth not. Thy wages are just enough and frame their policies so as to give priority to profi ts and to keepeth thee alive and maketh sure ye come back to profi t-making. This means that they have to back off from bloody work next week’. taxing the rich too much – to pay, for instance, for ecological ‘But’ they cryeth, ‘It is surely the way of the Lord. And measures or higher wages and benefi ts – in case they reduce anyway, it was written long ago that the meek shall the incentive to pursue profi ts and so provoke an economic inherit the earth’. crisis. ‘In thy bloody dreams cock’ sayeth he whose name Derek Wall, once a Green Party spokesperson (in the days was called Karl. ‘Thou shalt inherit bugger all until thou before they had a Leader) once put this rather well: stoppeth being so bloody meek’. ‘A Green government will be controlled by the economy ‘Take no notice of him’ sayeth the High Priest. ‘Verily rather than being in control. On coming to offi ce through coali- it shall come to pass, but not until thy next life, for thou tion or more absolute electoral success, it would be met by an art sinful and must fi rst be punished. Yet for a fee we can instant collapse of sterling as ‘hot money’ and entrepreneurial prayeth for thee unto the invisible God and guarantee capital went elsewhere. The exchange rate would fall and in- thee a place in paradise, but it will cost thee many pieces dustrialists would move their factories to countries with more of silver’. relaxed environmental controls and workplace regulation. ‘But how canst we knoweth that the invisible god doth Sources of fi nance would dry up as unemployment rocketed, exist’ they asketh. slashing the revenue from taxation and pushing up the social ‘We have proof’ sayeth the priest. ‘Doth not the fact security bills. The money for ecological reconstruction – the building of railways, the closing of motorways and construction that nobody hath ever seen him not prooveth that he is of a proper sewage system – would run out’ ( Getting There, invisible? 1990, p. 78). ‘Bloody hell’ sayeth the people, ‘we never thought of The answer is not to steal Labour’s abandoned clothes but that. Thou art either a genius or a total bloody dickhead, to get rid of capitalism and its production for profi ts and work- but we knoweth not which’. continued page 21

18 Socialist Standard October 2014 MI XED Daniel Kelly as Marx of the Irish struggle which she learned from Lizzie Burns. Marx is very witty: ‘Marx is dead! Well I am … and I am MEDIA not. That’s dialectics for you’, ‘Understand one thing – I’m not a Marxist. I said that once to Pieper and he almost croaked’ and ‘My Ricardo! You pawned my Ricardo!’ Zinn invents a visit to his home by the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, no record of such a visit exists although they had met in Paris in 1844. Bakunin was an irrepressible revolutionary who arrived in London in 1861 at Alexander Herzen’s home, bursting into the drawing-room where the family was having supper. ‘What! Are you sitting down eating oysters! Well! Tell me the news. What is happening, and where?!’ Zinn portrays ‘Marx angry that his theories had been so distorted as to stand for Stalinist cruelties and to rescue Marx from those who now gloated over the triumph of capitalism.’ Zinn concludes the play with Marx proclaiming we should be ‘using the incredible wealth of the earth for human beings. Give people what they need: Marx in Soho food, medicine, clean air, pure water, trees and grass, pleasant homes to live in, some hours of work, more MARX IN Soho, the 1995 one-man play by Howard Zinn hours of leisure. Don’t ask who deserves it. Every human was recently produced at the Marx Library in London being deserves it.’ directed by Sergio Amigo and starring Daniel Kelly as Marx in Soho is highly recommended for socialist Marx. Zinn portrays ‘Marx as few people knew him, theatre-goers: ‘Look at it this way. It is the second as a family man, struggling to support his wife and coming. Christ couldn’t make it, so Marx came...’ children’ in a ‘fantasy’ where Marx returns but due to a bureaucratic error not to Soho, London where he lived, but to Soho in New York City. Marx has returned ‘to clear my name!’ Zinn drew on insights into Marx’s private life in Yvonne Kapp’s biography of Eleanor Marx. Marx speaks of life in Soho: ‘we were living in London. Jenny and I and the little ones. Plus two dogs, three cats, and two birds. Barely living. A fl at on Dean Street, near where they dumped the city’s sewage.’ Marx speaks about his favourite daughter Eleanor, ‘a precociously brilliant child’ nicknamed ‘Tussy’ who is ‘a revolutionary at the age of eight’, plays chess with ‘the Moor’ (the family nickname for Marx ‘because of my dark complexion’), drinks, smokes, and is enamoured

‘people have never had it so good.’ Hamilton particularly Richard Hamilton at the Tate Modern admired the German electrical company Braun and its Chief Design Offi cer Dieter Rams whose ‘consumer products came There was a major retrospective of the work of Richard to occupy a place in my heart and consciousness that Mont Hamilton at the Tate Modern in 2014. He is acknowledged Sainte-Victoire did in Cézannes’, and in 1964 he began to as the inventor of ‘Pop Art’ which he described as ‘popular, base works on Braun’s marketing images. transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, After the failure of Keynesian capitalism in the 1970s, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business.’ Hamilton was horrifi ed by the 1980s capitalist restructuring The exhibition reconstructs his installation under Thatcher, and the reintroduction of Fun House, originally shown as part of the unfettered free market capitalism. His 1984 Whitechapel Gallery’s 1956 show This installation Treatment Room is inspired by the Is Tomorrow. It incorporates fi lm, music, bleak, clinical style of the capitalist state refl ected distorted architecture, op art and Hollywood in the DHSS offi ce or NHS hospital waiting room. fi lm imagery and pin-ups such as Marlon A TV monitor where the X-ray machine would Brando, Charlton Heston, Marilyn Monroe, be repeats footage of Thatcher from the 1983 and Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Tory Party Conference. His War Games (1991- Planet. It is an homage to ‘Americana’, as 92) used TV news footage of the 1991 Gulf War well as a celebration of the new youth and which portrayed the war as a sport for viewers and ‘pop’ culture of 1950s capitalism. reminds us of the BBC Newsnight coverage with In his 1956 collage Just What is it that Peter Snow’s sandpit and models. Later Hamilton Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So portrays ‘war criminal’ Tony Blair as a gun-toting Appealing? Hamilton has a muscle-man cowboy against a backdrop of military inferno in Shock and Awe provocatively holding a lolly with the word POP and a woman (2010). with bare breasts wearing a lampshade hat, surrounded by The Hamilton retrospective has some salutary lessons: emblems of the affl uence of 1950s capitalism from a vacuum you cannot ‘reform’ capitalism to work in the interests of cleaner to a large canned ham. Capitalism is portrayed as the working class, and war is endemic to capitalism due to ‘cool’, it was riding high in its ‘golden age’ of the post-war competition between capitalist groups for raw materials such economic boom, the reformists believed capitalism could work as oil in the Middle East. in the interests of the working class, and Macmillan proclaimed STEVE CLAYTON

Socialist Standard October 2014 19 Book Reviews What about Marx? their psychological understanding. were involved in turning out war With the exception of one passing materials. What About Me? The Struggle for reference to Theodore Adorno the But there was also a great deal of Identity in a Market–Based Society author would seem oblivious to the industrial unrest, with strikes aimed Paul Verhaeghe. Scribe. work of the ‘Frankfurt School. This is at countering the effects of rent very odd since they were focused on increases and massive price rises, This book, the very same subject of the book. especially for food and clothes. In written by a Unfortunately the author of this 1915 thirty-two men from a factory Belgian academic book has no political weaponry with in Reddish were fi ned for striking and translated which to destroy the system that he without going to the Board of Trade from the Dutch, so clearly despises. for arbitration fi rst. The blackout is fundamentally WEZ imposed from March that year was an attack on enormously unpopular, since there ‘neo-liberalism’. was a view that it turned canals He sees it as Goodbye, Piccadilly and rivers into death traps. There psychologically was a general fall in crime, with extremely Manchester in the Great War. the exception, strangely enough, destructive and socialists would Joseph O’Neill. Pen and Sword of bigamy. By early 1918, the food concur with his withering critique. £9.99. shortages were so bad that there The great problem is that without any were rumours that Britain might political understanding (which Marx This is a better be forced to end the war in order to would have provided) he sees this book than fi rst avoid starvation. ideology as something new rather seemed, given Even the capitalist press could not than merely the latest propaganda the unpleasant entirely whitewash the grim nature of that seeks to justify the continuation remarks made in the fi ghting. The fi rst list of local men of capitalism. One is tempted to the Introduction. wounded appeared on 5 September think that his scorn is generated O’Neill claims 1914. During the Battle of the (as he indicates) by the penetration that the Somme in July 1916, the headlines of the ideology into his own realm generation in the Manchester Evening News went of teaching and psychotherapy ; of 1914 were in a week from ‘Kitchener’s Boys: industrial workers might say, with motivated by New Armies Make Good’ to ‘Heavy some justifi cation: ‘welcome to our ‘municipal pride and love of country’, Toll of the City Units’. world’. values that people have since been Anti-war protest was diffi cult, since With its attempt to measure taught to hate. The educational meetings and demos were often either everything and so turn quality establishment have supposedly banned by the police or broken up into quantity capitalism famously emphasised multiculturalism, and by the so-called British Workers’ knows the price of everything and so white working-class children League. Plenty of people appealed the value of nothing. Another fl aw have been cut off from their roots. against being conscripted, on in Verhaeghe’s analysis is the Fortunately such bigoted attitudes do various grounds. O’Neill writes that contention that human identity is not surface in the rest of the book. appellants were generally excused wholly dependent on the relationship There was a rush to join up combat service if they were ‘resolute with parents who represent moral among many workers when war was and reasonably articulate’, though and ethical values. Socialists would declared in August 1914. This was he gives no evidence or statistics to contend that man’s relationship sometimes on political grounds (‘poor support this (one major weakness with nature through his desire to little Belgium’), but also for economic of the book is that it has no notes, constructively change it (his or her and other reasons (not much references or bibliography, making it work) is fundamental to all human patriotism, then). Life expectancy in impossible to know the source of any identity and its absence in capitalism Manchester was below the national of the statements made). is the real genesis of alienation. average, with men generally not O’Neill says that by the end of 1915 Verhaeghe has not understood that making it into their fi fties. For many, Manchester was ‘totally given over to working to make profi ts for the enlisting offered an escape from war’, and that more than any other parasite class is fundamental to unemployment or tedious badly-paid city it was ‘transformed by the war’. capitalism and as such can never work. In the case of one 16-year- The 22,000 men from Manchester offer mankind the kind of meaningful old living in a one-room house on and Salford killed in fi ghting for the fulfi lling work that he advocates. Oldham Road, the war was ‘a grand interests of their rulers certainly had And so he joins the countless other opportunity to join the army and their lives more than transformed. critics who want to reform the system see the world’ (one wonders if he PB without really understanding it. His saw much more than the inside of a dismisses socialism which confl ates trench). with the leftist regimes of the past. There was much social pressure Verhaeghe’s knowledge of Freud is on those who did not volunteer, but extensive (as one would expect) but it by late 1915 the enthusiasm to join does serve as a warning that a purely up was waning. The announcement psychological approach to mankind’s that conscription was likely to be travails can be very misguided. The introduced led to many single men work of Erich Fromm and Herbert applying for jobs in munitions Marcuse is infi nitely superior to this factories, on the grounds that such short book because, although dealing work would be likely to exempt them with the same subject, the political from the call-up. By the end of 1916 knowledge expressed is on a par with more than half the local population 20 Socialist Standard October 2014 From page 18 Capitalism can never be made to work for us And the priest replied unto them saying ‘Praise be to the Lord’. EVERY ELECTION is the same. vision of the future remains dull, And the people wept saying ‘Yea, Your vote is needed to clear up there is only so much that can be we are of a sinful nature and must the present issue of the day and done with a dirty cloth. not interfere with what the Lord the party asking for it is the only The Socialist Party challenges hath ordained’. And they turneth party who can sort it out. all other parties because it knows one unto another saying ‘Verily, if But for all the promises nothing that capitalism can only be run the Lord hath not intended us to be ever gets better. Nothing ever gets in the interest of the few. For us poor he would hath provided us with resolved. The solution isn’t around the question isn’t whether it’s in slaves’. the corner. This has gone on for the nation’s interest to stay in, or ‘Yea’, sayeth their companions, ages. The political parties aare like out, of the EU. It’s whether the ‘Just like he did for the capitalist someone trying to clean a window nation’s interests and the people’s class’. with a dirty cloth and rather interests are the same. The Then again spake he whose name than swap it for a new one they answer is no. was called Karl. ‘Christ alive! this harangue each other about how The Socialist Party is part of is going to taketh longer than I they use it. the World Socialist Movement. thought: From whence does thou The Conservatives see nothing For 110 years we have organised think thy employer getteth the loot wrong with the dirty cloth, all without leaders practising real from which he payeth thy wages?’ that we need for a brighter British democracy. Our goal is not to run ‘It is a mystery’ they replied unto window is to apply it more fi rmly, capitalism for you in the interest him’. roll up our sleeves and try a little of individual nations. Our goal is ‘A mystery, my arse’, He replied. harder. UKIP see nothing wrong to unite the people of the world so ‘He owneth everything that thou with the dirty cloth either, but that we, the people, can run it in hath laboured to produce and he feel its use should be guided by the interest of ourselves. selleth it: And from whence doth a purely British hand. Labour We will not stand for starvation he getteth the loot from which he is appalled! Labour feels that in a world that can feed everyone payeth his bills and maketh all his by wringing out the cloth and more than adequately. We will not profi ts?’ changing how it’s applied will see those who work and create the And they looketh one to another in lead to a fairer, more prosperous wealth struggle while those who awe. ‘Bloody hell.’ they sayeth. ‘We window. The Left feels this manipulate thrive. We will not who toil all of our days do provide doesn’t go far enough, only by see the environment destroyed in the bloody lot’. cleansing the cloth and a complete the name of profi ts. We will not ‘I thinketh that at last the penny reorganisation of how the window see honest, hard working people hath dropped’ sayeth he whose is scrubbed will do. Of course, the turned against each other in war name was called Karl, and he went BNP couldn’t care less about the to serve a minority’s interests. on his way rejoicing. state of the cloth, only what colour SEAN DEEGAN NICK WHITE it allows the window to become. No matter who takes charge the

Electronic Heroin conversations between the children, their parents and nurses, mostly about their distant relationships. In one of his lectures to a class of parents, the centre’s professor connects family ANYONE SWITCHING on half problems with being too pushy for academic achievements. way through Web Junkie (BBC4) This is the only time in the fi lm that raises wider explanations might think they’ve tuned in to a for ‘internet addiction’ (or ‘electronic heroin’, as it’s called). grim dystopian drama, rather than a The faults in society which make some teenagers prefer a documentary. Uniformed teenagers virtual life aren’t discussed. Nor is the possibility that ‘internet march through a Chinese boot addiction’ is a social construct, although if the centre’s camp with drab walls and blandly authorities realised this, they would be doing themselves functional furniture. Some have been tricked into out of a job. The existence of these centres reinforces the joining, or have woken up there after being drugged. All have defi nition of an ‘internet addict’ and therefore fuels the issue. been sent because they have been diagnosed with ‘internet The regime at the Daxing centre looks more like that of addiction’, which the state claims is ‘the number one public a prison than a hospital. Despite claims of a 70 percent health threat to its teenage population’. More than 400 such success rate, its inmates are mostly disparaging of its boot camps have been built across China since ‘internet programme and the notion that they have an illness. Even if addiction’ was classifi ed as a clinical disorder. Web Junkie: prolonged internet use has affected their China’s Addicted Teens follows several relationships or motivation, getting them teenagers and their parents through the to sing and do press ups probably isn’t treatment provided by the Daxing ‘Chinese the best way to address the problem. And Teenagers Mental Growth Centre’ in Beijing. even if they are ‘cured’ and can rejoin This treatment to encourage ‘mental society as a productive unit, they’re likely growth’ is a bizarre combination of lectures, to end up in a dull offi ce job, still sat in drill exercises, medication, ‘self-refl ection’ front of a computer for eight hours a day. in an isolation room, patriotic songs and MIKE FOSTER group therapy. The latter are awkward

Socialist Standard October 2014 21 Meetings For full details of all our meetings and events see our Meetup site: http://www.meetup.com/The-Socialist-Party-of-Great-Britain/ Scrap capitalism Manchester Branch Socialist Party Speaker: Bill Martin. IT IS time to forever scrap forever this The Red Shed, Wakefi eld Labour Club, 18 Saturday 11 October 2.00pm. cock-eyed system that takes from the poor ‘World War One: No Working Class Interests Vicarage Street, Wakefi eld WF1 1QX. at Stake’ and gives to the rich; that preaches aus- Unicorn, Church Street, Manchester M4 1PW. Socialist Party Head Offi ce terity for the 95 percent whilst the elite get Sunday 16 November 3.00pm. yet richer; where millionaire leaders shed Glasgow Branch ‘Bilderberg Ate My Hamster: Conspiracy crocodile tears over poverty as they live Theories in Capitalism’ Wednesday 15 October 8.30pm. in luxury. Somehow it has been sold to us ‘Karl Marx in the 21st Century’ Speaker: Rob Worden. Maryhill Community Central Halls, 304 Maryhill 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN. that this is usual – moreover it is the only Road, Glasgow G20 7YE. way to organise society, and it is good and Socialist Party Head Offi ce healthy. You could not make it up. Socialist Party Head Offi ce Sunday 23 November 3.00pm. We could share all the world. Scrap ‘The Case Against Fracking’ Sunday 19 October 3.00pm. capitalism, abolish the monetary system ‘Have You Read Piketty?’ Speaker: Darrell Whitehead. Speaker: Adam Buick. 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN. and suddenly the playing fi eld is not so 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN. uneven. We will not have achieved utopia Other events but many of the idiocies of the current sys- West London Branch Party leafl etting of TUC ‘Britain needs a pay tem will have gone: life will not be quite rise’ march ‘Saturday 18 October - assemble Tuesday 21 October 8.00pm. so problematic. No longer would the ac- ‘War without End: The Ukraine, Gaza and ISIS’ 11.00am at Blackfriars Embankment for march Speaker: Steve Clayton. to Hyde Park. countant who fi nds havens for the rich to Chiswick Town Hall, Heathfi eld Terrace, hide their wealth to avoid tax earn a thou- London W4 4JN. Party literature stall outside the Anarchist Book sand times more than the carers looking Fair Saturday 18 October between 10.00am after the health of your old aunt – because and 7.00pm. Queen Mary College, University Oxford Communist Corresponding Society there would no longer be wages. No more Thursday 23 October 7.30pm. of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS. ‘I for one welcome our robot overlords’ wages slavery, just imagine. You’d be Socialist Party speaker: Bill Martin. able to do what you do and be able to take The Mitre pub, 17 High Street (corner of Turl Picture Credits what you need. Street), Oxford OX1 4AG. Cover: 2007, Rudolf Rabatin CCA-SA 3.0. You will no doubt be told it’s mad and President Sata - www.lusakatimes.com. totally unachievable. But think what would Socialist Party Head Offi ce Soup kitchen – Piotr Drabik 2013 CCA 2.0. 10.30 am to 5.00pm Saturday 25 and Sunday John Amaechi – Rich Mellish 2005 CCA-SA have been said about the internet or triple 26 October 2.0. heart bypass surgery 50 years ago. Hu- Autumn Delegate Meeting p6: Prophet Joshua, 2013, Uchdo, CCA-SA man beings are incredibly intelligent – just 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN. 3.0 look at how much and how quickly we can p9: Douglas Carswell, 2009, Steve Punter achieve things when we set our minds to East Anglia Regional Branch 2009, CCA-SA 2.0 Saturday 8 November 2.00pm. p11-12: 45RPM, 2004, Tomasz Sienicki , it – and we in the Socialist Party are sim- ‘Music, Recuperation and Capitalism’ CCA-SA 3.0; cartoon, 2008, Ted Rall, CCA- ply saying the world can be organised in a Speaker: Stair SA 3.0; Guillotine, 2006, Kauko, PD; Occupy, more intelligent way. It cannot be seen as The Nelson Hotel, 120 Prince of Wales Road, 2011, Leepower, CCA-SA 3.0 either intelligent or necessary that most of p15: Labourer, 2007, Rolf Obermaier, PD Norwich NR1 1DX. (The meeting room can be the wealth of the world is given to so few. accessed by going through the Costa Coffee p19: Daniel Kelly, 2013, camdenreview.com; Café and down the stairs. Left hand side of the Marx Library, marx-memorial-library.org All the other parties offer you some vari- bar as you face it). p20: What About Me? – amazon.co.uk. ant of what we have already – possibly Manchester in the Great War – www. a few more checks and balances. Sadly Yorkshire Regional Branch bookdepository.com history shows that, whatever the govern- p21: Web Junkie – the2x2project.org Saturday 15 November 2.00pm. ment, the rich come out on top. We are Debate with the Alliance For Workers’ Liberty p24: Aldouri Castle, 2010, Dave Conner, CCA 2.0; Michael O’Leary, 2004, Janwikifoto, here to say it need not be like this. CCA-SA 3.0 HOWARD PILOTT Declaration of Principles

This declaration is the basis of our a class struggle between those who possess the powers of government, national and local, organisation and, because it is also an but do not produce and those who produce in order that this machinery, including these important historical document dating from but do not possess. forces, may be converted from an instrument the formation of the party in 1904, its original of oppression into the agent of emancipation language has been retained. 3.That this antagonism can be abolished only and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic by the emancipation of the working class and plutocratic. Object from the domination of the master class, by The establishment of a system of society the conversion into the common property 7.That as all political parties are but the based upon the common ownership of society of the means of production and expression of class interests, and as the and democratic control of the means distribution, and their democratic control by interest of the working class is diametrically and instruments for producing and the whole people. opposed to the interests of all sections of the distributing wealth by and in the interest master class, the party seeking working class of the whole community. 4.That as in the order of social evolution the emancipation must be hostile to every other working class is the last class to achieve its party. Declaration of Principles freedom, the emancipation of the working The Socialist Party of Great Britain holds class will involve the emancipation of all 8.The Socialist Party of Great Britain, mankind, without distinction of race or sex. therefore, enters the fi eld of political action 1.That society as at present constituted is determined to wage war against all other based upon the ownership of the means 5. That this emancipation must be the work of political parties, whether alleged labour of living (i.e. land, factories, railways, etc.) the working class itself. or avowedly capitalist, and calls upon the by the capitalist or master class, and the members of the working class of this country consequent enslavement of the working 6.That as the machinery of government, to muster under its banner to the end that a class, by whose labour alone wealth is including the armed forces of the nation, speedy termination may be wrought to the produced. exists only to conserve the monopoly by the system which deprives them of the fruits of capitalist class of the wealth taken from the their labour, and that poverty may give place 2.That in society, therefore, there is an workers, the working class must organize to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as consciously and politically for the conquest of to freedom.

22 Socialist Standard October 2014 ketball still gets funding from, for instance, 50 Years Ago ACTION Sport England, which is concerned with grass roots sport. Former international John Amaechi Tweedledee or ‘dum REPLAY argued (BBC online, 22 August) that Basket Case basketball could help solve various so- In the 1964 General Election, as in those cial problems: ‘There is legitimacy to all of the past, the capitalist political parties YOU MIGHT well be able to guess that the sports in question, but are canoeing, have encouraged us to believe that football is the most popular participant shooting, archery, fencing, modern pen- fundamental issues are at stake. sport in Britain, but you would prob- tathlon and rowing the answer to our obe- This is far from the truth. The Labour ably be surprised to learn that basketball sity problem? Are these the sports that and Conservative Parties are argue over ranks second. Every year over 2.5 million can permeate our urban communities trifl es—the fi ght between them is sham. people over 14 play the game. and inspire a generation of youth who are On the vital issues of the day are one. But in terms of medals and national dramatically less well off than the previ- This is refl ected in many ways. It is prestige, things are not so good. The ous?’ He proposed radical changes to the refl ected in the basic agreement in the British men’s basketball team has never way the sport is run, at all levels. parties’ policies. It is refl ected in the qualifi ed for an Olympics contest, though The boss of British Basketball, Roger fact that, although each side presents they did play as host nation at London Moreland, dismissed Amaechi’s com- its leader as a paragon of honesty, 2012, where they won just one match plaints, and insisted that progress was knowledge and strength, none of them out of fi ve. They recently failed to make it being made. Though in relation to the re- take the fundamentally different stand of through to the European national tourna- cent qualifi ers he could only say, ‘Frankly, opposing leadership in principle. ment in 2015, having lost in the qualifi ers sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Home or Wilson? Landed aristocrat to Iceland and Bosnia-Hercegovina. We just happened to have lost on this or Grammar schoolboy made good? Early this year funding at the elite level particular occasion.’ Amiable elegance or rumpled, chubby was cut from £7m to zero, as UK Sport Amaechi is probably rather optimistic purpose? The voters are asked to reassessed its priorities after the London about what sport could do to keep peo- make their choice between these two Olympics. This organisation (which re- ple fi t, well and off the streets. This little representatives of capitalism, on the ceives money from the government and spat tells us quite a lot about the priorities assumption that leaders are necessary, the National Lottery) deals only with ‘top that drive establishment support for sport: because without them we poor end’ sport, and – in addition to money for weighing up the furtherance of national dunderheads would lose our way in the athletics – dishes out sizeable sums to glory against promoting a healthy popu- treacherous maze of the wicked world. sports such as sailing and fencing, which lation. But they all see sport as serving It is not diffi cult to penetrate this sham. deliver a fair number of medals but have some useful (for them) function and not The most casual investigation of leaders very little impact in terms of participation. just being for fun. past and present reveals them as hard, It should be pointed out, though, that bas- PB cynical men dedicated to the ruthless administration of the capitalist system. It also shows up the game of leadership as FREE a dirty business. 3-month trial subscription to the Sir Alec Douglas-Home has recently joined in the game for whatever Socialist Standard advantage his party can get out of it. On the other side Harold Wilson has shown that a leader’s most valuable asset is a cold, professional determination. It is no coincidence, and not entirely due to the General Election, that since Wilson became leader the Labour Party has kept its splits plastered over. So smooth has his political handling been that his public relations men are trying now to dispel the image of him as too clever, as the cocksure, calculating political climber.

(from editorial, Socialist Standard, For more details about The Socialist Party, or to request a 3-month trial subscription October 1964) to the Socialist Standard, please complete and return this form to 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.

Please send me an info pack Please send me a trial subscription to the Socialist Standard. Name...... Address ...... Postcode......

Socialist Standard October 2014 23 much better over the past two decades. In its ruthless drive for profi t capitalism Chinese Hypocrisy The only reason why their pay has cares little about the environment. Wealthy Chinese tourists are splashing increased so rapidly compared to their out up to £100,000 on hunting trips to employees is that they are able to get A Crazy System Scotland, so they can feel like Downton away with it’ ( Daily Express, 18 August). It was just a short article in the daily Abbey’s Earl of Grantham. Inspired by So much for the notion that there is some press but it sums up what a crazy system the ITV series, hunting parties from China sort of morality behind the jungle warfare capitalism really is. ‘A treasure trove of are hiring out castles with butlers and of the wages and profi t system. art, jewellery and other valuables from staff included so they can try their hand the estate of the reclusive heiress Rachel at bagging some of the biggest game Recovery For Whom? “Bunny” Mellon will go on sale at auction roaming the countryside. ‘Among those The press and TV are lauding the following her death earlier this year at visiting is Jack Ma, one of China’s richest government for what they are describing the age of 103. Experts invited to assess men. He recently hired out Aldourie as an economic recovery, but what has her collection at her country home of Oak Castle near Loch Ness for £36,000. Mr been a period of boom for the capitalist Spring Farms, in Upperville, Virginia, Ma spent a week with 11 friends on the class has seen a worsening of conditions were stunned at the scale of the riches 500 acre estate, also hiring staff including for many wage earners. ‘The cost of she had amassed, including little-seen a butler and cook’ ( Daily Mail, 11 August). borrowing will increase before workers Picassos and Van Goghs, personalised Mr Ma is reckoned to have a fortune benefi t from a real rise in their wages, Chanel handbags and even a vintage of over £6 billion. Oh, by the way the the governor of the Bank of England said 1950s fi re engine’ ( Sunday Telegraph, Chinese government claims they have yesterday. Mark Carney said that interest 14 September). Mellon never worked for communism in China! rates were likely to rise from their record this fortune, she inherited her vast wealth low of 0.5 per cent in the spring of next from her grandfather. It is estimated that year, possibly before the her fortune is probably worth about $100 general election in May’ million although countless hard-working (Times , 10 September). people are trying to survive on less than He went on to say to $2 a day. the TUC in Liverpool that infl ation-proof wage Class Contempt increases would not It is always interesting to know what the arrive until the following owning class think about the working summer, indicating class and Michael O’Leary the outspoken a fi nancial squeeze CEO of Ryanair makes no secret of his on homeowners with contempt. ‘MBA students come out with mortgages. “My staff is my most The Drive For Profi ts important All sorts of well-meaning asset”. organisations exist Bullshit. Staff in efforts to stop the is usually Getting Away With It deforestation of the Amazon basis, the your biggest Britain’s top executives are now paid 143 melting of the Arctic region and other cost. We all times the wages of an average employee, examples of how capitalism worsens employ some according to a study. Executive salaries the environment. Alas they are doomed lazy bastards have increased dramatically in relation to failure. ‘The rate of destruction of the who need a to most workers, said the High Pay Amazon rainforest in Brazil has increased kick up the Centre. ‘The think tank has called on the for a second year running. Brazilian backside’ Government to act after it found that in government fi gures show deforestation (Times , 16 August). This contempt is 1998 the average chief executive of a was up by 29% in the 12 months up staggering when all the owning class’s FTSE 100 was paid 47 times the pay of to the end of July 2013. Satellite data profi ts including Mr O’Leary’s are the their average employee. The Centre’s showed that almost 6,000 sq km (2,315 result of the exploitation of the working director Deborah Hargreaves said: sq miles) of forest were cleared during class. ’Britain’s executives have not got so that period’ ( BBC News, 11 September).

Order Free Lunch Collection 1 now - see p12 for details

ISSN24 0037 8259 Socialist Standard October 2014 Produced and published by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN