Monday, March 18, 2024

Financial Difficulties Advice: Abolish Capitalism!


As capitalism continues to exacerbate the financial problems of very many, living as we all do in a social system that is exploitative and profit based, the ‘solutions’ on offer are, as usual, of the band aid type rather than of the drastic surgery which is the only panacea.

The Guardian reports that, ‘A record 6.7 million people in Britain are in financial difficulty, a campaign group has claimed, as the cost of living crisis pushes more households into debt.

A survey for Debt Justice found that 13% of adults had missed three or more credit or bill payments in the last six months, a figure that rose to 29% among 18- to 24-year-olds and a quarter of 25- to 34-year-olds.

Although energy bills and some other prices have fallen from their peak, rents and mortgages are much higher than before the crisis and are straining household budgets.

The Insolvency Service’s latest figures showed 10,136 people entered insolvency in February, a rise of 23% on the same month last year.

Debt Justice said it wanted all political parties to commit to helping those in unmanageable debt to make a fresh start and to give them protection against harassment by debt collectors.

Joe Cox, a senior policy officer for Debt Justice, said “We need to see policies in party manifestos that can match the scale of the UK’s household debt emergency. As millions of people are currently weighed down by debt and under intolerable strain, it is time for some political leadership.”

Bruce Connell, Crosslight Advice’s chief executive, said almost half of those who contacted the charity for help have had to cut back or go without food because of financial pressures.’

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/mar/18/record-numbers-of-uk-people-in-debt-warns-charity


The following is from the Socialist Standard, June 2016

‘From Shakespeare’s Shylock to Dickens’ Scrooge, moneylenders have generally had a bad literary press, probably revealing people’s instinctive reaction to them, but their place in society remains central. We examine the role of debt in working-class life.

Robert Roberts’ The Classic Slum describes life in Salford in the first part of last century. The pawnshop was an essential part of the local community; many people were dependent on the short-term loans offered, with women often pawning the family’s ‘best’ clothes on Monday until the following Saturday. There was a social hierarchy among the working class, with skilled workers at the top, and various ‘disreputable’ individuals at the bottom; and position ‘was judged not only by what one possessed but also by what one pawned’. True destitution meant pawning not just clothes but also pots and rugs, and finally not being able to redeem what had been left with the broker. The interest charged was usually a penny in the shilling per week; sky-high, but less than the moneylender, who charged threepence in the shilling per week.

Pawnbroking is not now the widespread industry it was in the days Roberts was writing about, but it began to grow again from the 1980s. There are now over two million loans a year, and the market as a whole is worth £850m, though the average loan is less than £200 and is for three or four months. The National Pawnbrokers Association states that 88 percent of loans are redeemed, but that still leaves around 250,000 which are not (though this does not mean that the value of the goods has been completely lost). The NPA describes pawnbroking as ‘a serious alternative to using the services provided by the High Street bank’ and ‘a modern, friendly and convenient way of getting cash quickly’. They claim it is cheaper than a bank loan or using a payday lender.

In July 1954 war-time food rationing came to an end, as did restrictions on hire-purchase (‘never-never’) agreements for consumer durables such as radios, fridges and vacuum cleaners. This meant buying what were then relative ‘luxuries’, in contrast to buying essentials such as furniture this way back in the 30s. Nowadays, hire purchase is often used in buying cars, including companies buying a fleet of cars. For personal consumers, it avoids the need to pay a big sum up-front, but it can lead to problems: if you return an item after paying less than half its cost, you have to pay enough on top of what you’ve already paid to make up that half cost (so you might get just three months’ use of something but have to pay a year’s worth of instalments).

The extreme case of hire-purchase is that of the weekly payment stores, which make big profits, primarily from the massive interest rates they charge on their loans and the service cover they also sell. Back in 2012 the Guardian gave an example of an oven that could be bought from one such company for £562 (or £389 elsewhere) but would cost a whopping £1433 if bought on weekly instalments from that same company with service cover over three years. Sales pressure plus an inability to pay by other means can easily result in people taking on such commitments without quite realising what they are letting themselves in for.

If people are having trouble repaying any kind of debt, they may well have recourse to one of the payday loan companies that now exist on almost every high street. But these again are incredibly expensive, with annual interest rates sometimes topping several hundred percent. The debt charity Step Change gives an example of someone borrowing just £200 for twenty days at the maximum allowable rate of 0.8 percent a day. If you repaid the loan on time, you would pay back £232, which is already quite a stiff rate of interest. But if you are late, then the interest mounts up, a late fee is added and you have to pay interest on the late fee. If you are ninety days late repaying, you would repay £400 (double the original loan, and the legal maximum that can be charged).

As this suggests, being poor is in itself expensive. Using prepayment meters for energy is more expensive than a standard tariff; and borrowing money means a higher rate of interest if you do not have a good credit record. No wonder debt counselling has become a minor industry in its own right. Some writers have even referred to there being a ‘poverty industry’.

Mortgages are of course the biggest source of debt, while students typically have over £40,000 in debt when they graduate. But plenty of people borrow – especially from payday loan companies and even doorstep lenders – to pay for everyday expenses such as food and energy as they struggle to make it to the next payday. They also borrow to pay for Christmas and so avoid disappointing their kids. And they borrow to pay off existing debts, which can swiftly lead to things spiralling out of control. Losing your job, falling ill, the break-up of a relationship: all these can tip people over the edge into chronic indebtedness.

The Money Charity provides a great many statistics on the extent of debt. For instance, in February this year, the average debt per household, including mortgages, was over £54,000. Outstanding consumer credit lending was £180bn, including £63bn on credit cards. Every day over two hundred people are declared insolvent or bankrupt, and twenty-five properties are repossessed. Other sources have noted the big increase in household debt over the last year or so, with the average increasing by over a third to £13,500 (mortgages aside). Shelter reported that one in ten parents thought that they might be unable to pay their rent or mortgage bills in January this year. Moreover, in March the increase in borrowing was the biggest since March 2005, before the recession began, leading debt charities to become increasingly worried.

The definition of ‘problem debt’ is when a family pays more than 25 percent of their gross monthly pay on servicing unsecured debts, and this applied to 3.2 million families by 2014 (up from 2.5 million in 2012). The pressure of debt can be overwhelming. In the words of one man who eventually did cope with his problems: ‘I felt like I was drowning, felt trapped. There was no light coming from anywhere, it was horrendous. And at one point I did go really dark and I did want to end it all’ (BBC Online, 20 January). Some people do in fact commit suicide because of their debt problems. In November 2013, for instance, a 60-year-old man from Southampton killed himself after taking on £20,000 in debts from twelve payday loan firms: his jobseeker’s allowance had been stopped on the grounds that he was fit to work, even though he had an illness that prevented him from swallowing (Daily Mirror, 22 July 2014).

Pawnbroking dates back at least to Ancient Greece, but it takes capitalism, with the cash nexus touching almost all aspects of life, with the never-ending influence of advertising, and with the insecurity felt by many workers, to make so many people subject to the worry and pressure of debt.’

Paul Bennett


https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/06/living-on-tick-2016.html


Sunday, March 17, 2024

Capitalism's War Addiction: Working Class Expendable


Latvia joins ‘other European countries where conscription is already mandatory including Austria, Belarus, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Lithuania, Moldova, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine. ‘

https://metro.co.uk/2024/02/07/latvia-introduces-compulsory-conscription-men-aged-18-27-20236904/

The UK had mandatory conscription in WW1 and WW2 after which National Service was in force until 1960.

It is reported that, ‘Britain and other NATO allies should consider conscripting citizens into the military to counter the supposed threat from Russia, the Latvian foreign minister told The Telegraph.

Latvia re-introduced compulsory military service earlier this year, in response to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as Riga strives to increase the size of its “active and ready reserve.” The updated rules oblige all male Latvian citizens aged 18 to 27 to complete one year of service, including those living abroad.

When asked whether the UK and other countries should follow suit, Krisjanis Karins said: “We would strongly recommend this. We are developing and fleshing out a system of what we call a total defence involving all parts of civil society.”

The Latvian diplomat also urged London to raise its defence spending to 3% of gross domestic product, describing the move as “inevitable.”

NATO countries should consider a “total defence” model in which large numbers of citizen-soldiers could be potentially called up at short notice, according to the minister.

Latvia has borrowed elements from the Finnish conscription system, which “could be a very good model for many of us,” Karins said, adding that Finland has a small standing army, “but a very large, very well-trained” war-time reserve “so they can easily call up a 250,000 trained military”.

In January, the UK Chief of the General Staff, Patrick Sanders, called for “training and equipping” civilians for a potential call-up in the event of a direct conflict with Russia. However, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak insisted that there are no plans to introduce conscription.

Britain’s army, navy, and air force had 184,865 active-duty personnel as of late 2023, the lowest figure since the end of the Napoleonic wars. The army has seen its headcount shrink from more than 100,000 in 2010 to 75,983 at the end of last year.

Latvia has been on the frontline of the West’s confrontation with Moscow along with Estonia and Lithuania since the launch of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. The former Soviet republic, whicho shares a 284-kilometre border with Russia, joined the EU and NATO in 2004, and abolished conscription in 2006.’

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose !

The following comes from the Socialist Standard, December 1912.

‘The question as to whether or not conscription will, in the near future, become a necessity, appears to be once again very much “in the air." Lord Roberts in the course of a recent speech, during which he implied the failure, and foreshadowed the disintegration, of the Territorial force, advocated more strenuously than ever his pet notion of universal military service. In this advocacy he is, of course, acting quite logically —more logically, indeed, than those “lovers of peace” (chiefly to be found among the Liberals and Labourists) who, while upholding and using all their efforts to maintain the present capitalist social system, at the same time deprecate what is, in reality, quite in accordance, morally and politically, with the development of capitalism.

Professor Edward Jenks, in his "Short History of Politics,” points out that the principle which binds together modern social groups is military allegiance. He continues

“In the States which practice conscription, or universal military service, this is very obvious. The most heinous political offence which a Frenchman or German can commit, is attempting to evade military service; or, possibly worse, taking part in military service against his own country. But even in Great Britain, where conscription is not practised, the tie is really the same. It is unquestionable that the Queen,” (this was written in 1900) “through her Ministers, has the right, in case of necessity, to call upon every one of her male subjects to render personal military service; and any British subject, captured fighting against his country, would be liable to suffer death as a traitor.”

To put the matter clearly, the social group known as capitalist society is bound together by the tie of military allegiance. Capitalist society exists, and is allowed to exist, by the will of the majority of the units of which it is composed. Therefore such units should be prepared to do their share in the maintenance of the tie which binds the system together, seeing that they are in favour of the capitalist system of society.

But to those who happen to loathe capitalism, and all its insane and unhealthy institutions, and whose aim is to hasten its downfall in order to raise in its stead what they consider a rational, sane, and healthy system to the Socialist, in fact — the whole question takes another aspect.

The Socialist will ask himself : “What is conscription to me and my class? Will it benefit me or the class to which I belong ? ”

To a man such as Lord Roberts, who has managed to make a fortune and win a title through professional soldiering, military service will, of course, seem all that is desirable. But what the devil is the poor drudge of capitalism, the wage slave, to get out of it? A fortune and a title? Hardly! At what should be the best portion of his life — his early manhood — he would be taken, numbered like a convict or a beast of burden at a cattle show, herded with his fellow beasts in compounds, trained and drilled and bullied and brow-beaten, taught to walk upright and to handle a rifle, taught to shoot sufficiently straight to kill and maim certain of his fellows (whom he has never seen before and with whom he has no quarrel), coming out of the Army at the end of his term with all the virtues of an efficient, non-thinking, non-questioning wage-slave, with all the initiative and all the self-confidence knocked out of him. Truly a delightful prospect!

Lord Roberts and his co-agitators talk glibly of patriotism, of the duty of defending the Empire, of the glory to be obtained in resisting the encroachments of Germany. Let these people who talk so much about patriotism and duty and glory show, however, how the British working man would be any worse off under the rule of William of Germany than he is under George of England (even admitting the almost unthinkable possibility of a German occupation of Great Britain).

As the average member of the working class has no property to defend, no country to call his own, no prospect of ever being in a better position under capitalism than he is in now, why should he fight to maintain the rights of those who have property, who have a stake in the country, who are in a position of opulence?

It is significant to notice how, not only at the present day, but in all history and through all literature, it is always the man who has something to maintain, something to defend, who talks about duty and patriotism, about the honour of the country and the glories of the Empire. Having nothing, what necessity is there for us to fight in order to defend that nothing?

Still, as aforesaid, if the people of Great Britain are so much in love with capitalism, so desirous of upholding the institutions of modern society, it is their obvious duty to defend their little corner of capitalism with all their strength.

We, as Socialists, for our part, are not particularly concerned with conscription one way or the other, except in its aspect as being a phase of capitalist development. With the downfall of capitalism will fall all the institutions of capitalism — militarism included. Instead of wanting to be trained and drilled so that at the word of command we may slaughter and maim certain of our fellows, against whom we have no cause for animosity and who are all in the same social condition of life as we are, we are training and drilling ourselves to be ready for the time when the workers of the world will unite in establishing a sane, healthy, and joyous system of society the system we know as Socialism. Our object is not to destroy life, but to raise it to a plane where it shall have free play for all its activities. Which is the better ideal, ours or the militarists’ ?

When the question is considered, one feels almost sorry for such men as Lord Roberts, whose only aim in life seems to be the organisation of a universal army of professional murderers. What a glorious ideal of what noble human beings! And what a heaven sent system that breeds such men and such ideals!’

F. J. Webb

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2017/11/conscription-1912.html


Saturday, March 16, 2024

Karl Marx - An Appreciation

 

This is a shortened version of an article that appeared in the Socialist Standard, March 1933, which was the anniversary of Karl Marx’s death fifty years previously.

‘Fifty years ago, on March 14th, 1883, Karl Marx died in London, after a lifetime devoted to the workers' cause. The persecutions and privations he had endured in that cause hastened his death. When he died, much of the work he had planned still remained to be done, but, nevertheless, he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had given the working class movement all over the world an impulse and direction. His significance as a thinker and as a revolutionary grows more important each year, and although critics succeed one another in an unending line with “refutations" of his theories, those theories still stand awaiting disproof. History as it unfolds brings new illustrations of the truth of Marx*s discoveries and of the inadequacy of opposing doctrines.

The Communist Manifesto

The manifesto was written and issued by February, 1848, shortly before the outbreak of the 1848 revolution. This manifesto is what we now know as the Communist Manifesto. In writing it, Marx used a draft prepared by Engels before the Congress met, but to it he added what Engels himself has described as “the fundamental proposition which forms its nucleus.” Engels goes on to state that proposition as follows:—

That in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; that the history of these class struggles forms a series of evolution in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class—the proletariat—cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class—the bourgeoisie—without, at the same time, and once and for all emancipating society at large from all exploitation oppression, class-distinctions and class-struggles. (Preface to Communist Manifesto. Preface written by F. Engels, 1888.)

With the publication of the Manifesto a new stage is reached in the history of the working-class movement. The Manifesto may not be a perfect piece of work, from the point of view of the present day. Had Marx been called upon to write it in 1878 instead of 1848 certain things in it would no doubt have been different. Even so it contains in embryo most of Marx’s later ideas and was a significant advance on anything of the kind that had preceded it. It took Communistic thought out of the world of Utopias and set it up on a basis of reality.

The Marxian Theories

Marx’s importance in the history of the Labour movement comes from his having discovered first the basic law governing the development of society, and second the essential economic principles underlying production in a particular form of society, the capitalistic form. The first of these is embodied in the “Materialist Conception of History.” which is outlined above in the words of Engels. The corner-stone of the second is Marx’s theory of value, the only economic theory that has succeeded in giving an adequate explanation of the sources of profit in capitalistic production. Both of these theories have been attacked, but it is safe to say that at no time has their validity been more apparent than to-day. A whole school of economic historians has arisen during the last fifty years, re-writing history from the viewpoint provided for them by Marx, although few of them are honest enough to acknowledge his influence. For the workers the importance of the Materialist Conception of History lies in its revelation of the class struggle as the mechanism through the operation of which social changes are produced. Without the guiding principle of the class struggle working-class thought must inevitably flounder about in a morass of reformism. Until the identity of interests of all workers everywhere, as members of the same class, was made apparent by Marx, there was no solid basis on which an international working-class movement could be established. Without such a movement capitalism cannot be overthrown.

Marx’s theory of value made clear the exploitation of the worker, gave it scientific proof and demonstrated its inevitability under capitalism. Here was the final blow to all theories of social reform. Once it was shown that the preventable evils from which the workers suffer are the result of their being numbers of an exploited class in society it followed that only by terminating their exploitation could those evils be abolished. Revolutionary Socialism was born.

The S.P.G.B. and Marx

It is to preach this that the S.P.G.B. exists. In putting itself forward as the only party worthy of the support of the workers, the S.P.G.B. does so as a Marxist organisation. What do we mean when we describe ourselves as a party of Marxists? In the first place, it does not mean that we claim infallibility for Marx, or accept all he wrote as dogma and true just because he wrote it. But we do claim that Marx, in all his main ideas, was correct and provided explanations of social problems and guidance in the solution of those problems. To the extent that these ideas pass the test of modern experience—and we contend that, fundamentally, they do satisfy such a test —we subscribe to them, but we do so in no blind spirit of hero worship. We appreciate that Marx, like lesser men, was subject to the environment in which he found himself. The body of his thought did not emerge fully formed at the beginning of his career, it developed and grew each year as his researches and experience increased. Inevitably, until Marx had completed his economic studies, his thought was not rounded off, and certain of his earlier ideas are not altogether consistent with those of his mature years. Engels referred to this in his introduction to “Wage Labour and Capital," Engels wrote: —

All his (Marx’s} writings which appeared before the publication of the first part of. his “Critique of Political Economy” differ in some points from those published after 1859, contain expressions and even entire sentences, which from the point of view of his later writings appear rather ambiguous and even untrue.

In other words, where there are contradictions —and they are relatively few—in Marx's teachings it is on the later statement that he must be judged. The particular conditions of his times, the undeveloped nature of capitalism and the struggles to overthrow the relics of the feudal restrictions on capitalist industry, made him an advocate at certain periods of courses of action which, in his later years, he disavowed and which, in any event, are not applicable to modern conditions. For example, Marx’s (and Engels’) ideas on the use of armed force to achieve revolutionary objectives underwent a radical change during his lifetime, and the reasons that led Marx, in 1848, to advocate war with Russia, and later to subscribe to a political programme of immediate demands, including such things as the eight-hour day, are no longer operative: Marx’s example cannot be pleaded in defence of the support given to the war of 1914-18 by the various Labour Parties of the belligerent countries or in justification of reformism. Experience has shown that a programme of immediate demands cannot be used to build up a socialist organisation. In practice immediate demands have soon brought confusion and destroyed the Socialist objective of the parties which adopted them.

Marx and Engels also underestimated capitalism's strength and ability to adjust itself to the demands made upon it. They both thought in the ’fifties that capitalism could not survive its industrial crisis and that its end was imminent.

We dare to mention the shortcomings of Marx even in a commemorative article just because he was a genius. His reputation is big enough to bear the truth. Marx, like Cromwell, would have insisted on being painted “wart and all.’’ Only mediocrity has to be protected from being judged on account of its mistakes. It was Marx himself who said: “Ignorance never helped nor did anybody any good," and ignorance of the development of Marx’s thought can only lead to difficulties in understanding his final ideas. An understanding of these ideas provides a sure and complete key to all modern social and political problems. The S.P.G.B. aims in its propaganda to provide that understanding.’

B.S.


https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2017/03/karl-marx-appreciation-1933.html

Friday, March 15, 2024

Chad: No such thing as a free lunch?


The Republic of Chad is a landlocked country in Africa. From 1900 to 1960 it was a French colony. After independence civil wars and dictatorship followed. Idriss Déby ruled as President until his demise in 2021 when General Mahamat Déby, his son, took power.

Over a third of Chad’s eighteen million population live in extreme poverty.

World Bank Date has only 11.3 per cent of Chadians having access to electricity (2021)

It’s now being reported that; ‘Chad's government has announced that it would provide free water and electricity for households until the end of the year.

The monthly household consumption payable by the government is capped at 15 cubic metres (15,000 litres) of water and 300 kWh of electricity.

The government said it would also clear water and electricity bills for residents with outstanding arrears.

It also announced a cut in transport taxes that could lower transport costs, which hiked last month with a rise in fuel prices.

Chad's junta leader and interim President Mahamat Déby sanctioned the policy "to assist households", a joint statement by the presidency and finance minister said.

Some Chadians perceive the move as Mr Déby's attempt to endear to voters.

He will be vying for the presidency when Chad holds elections between May and June.

Some residents also say that the move is meaningless as several parts in the capital, N'Djamena, have faced a power outage for the past two weeks.

But some Chadians have welcomed the measure as a much-needed relief to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.’

https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/africa/2024-03-12-chad-introduces-free-water-and-electricity-for-households/

A further report states, ‘The authorities stated that they would as well settle water and electricity bills for residents who have unpaid bills.

“A system will also be put in place in agreement with the Ministry of Energy and the Société Nationale d’Electricité (SNE) to guarantee the free electricity consumed by households during the same period from March 1, 2024 for all two social tranches or equivalent, a total of 300 kWh per month and per subscribed household, including for subscribers in prepayment of the SNE,” Finance Minister Tahir Hamid Ngulin said.

“The requirements of this circular must be rigorously observed, and any difficulty in their application must be submitted to my attention,” the minister stated.

Additionally, the authorities announced a 50% decrease in various taxes on passenger transport. This has the potential to lower transportation costs, which increased last month due to rising fuel prices.

The transitional government’s announcement occurred after a month-long energy crisis in Chad, marked by frequent water and electricity supply cuts. The interruptions left many areas of the capital N’Djamena plunged into darkness for weeks.

This initiative comes two months prior to a presidential election scheduled for May 6, 2024. The leader of the military, General Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, also known as Mahamat Kaka, and Prime Minister Sukkes Masra are candidates for the top post.

Mahamat Kaka made a commitment to give power back to civilian authority after an 18-month transition period, but then increased it by two years.’

Whilst any alleviation of suffering by a population would be a positive there is not enough public information so far to conclude whether these are pie crust promises served up by a politician looking to hold on to power.

For real jam today, and for tomorrow, the abolition of global capitalism and its replacement by Socialism is the only panacea that is practicable.





Thursday, March 14, 2024

Kicking against the pricks: Gove and censorship

 

Strange times when The Socialist Party of Great Britain finds itself sharing the views of three former government ministers and the Archbishop of Canterbury. When members of the capitalist establishment are kicking against the pricks then something is seriously amiss.


‘Michael Gove has named a string of organisations that could be barred from government funding and meetings under a controversial new definition of extremism.

But he insisted the reform will not impact those "exercising their proper right to free speech", including gender critical campaigners, those with conservative religious beliefs, trans activists or environmental protest groups.

He named a number of Muslim organisations, which he said would be investigated over extremism fears.

These include the Muslim Association of Britain, Cage and Mend, which he said “give rise to concern for their Islamist orientation and views” and will be assessed under the new definition, he told MPs.

He also named Patriotic Alternative and the British National Socialist Movement, which he said would similarly be investigated. The communities secretary has been forced to defend his controversial plans to name and shame new ‘extremist’ groups amid claims the policy threatens the “fabric of a civilised society”.

It has come under fire from three former home secretaries and Justin Welby the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The archbishop said that the plans risk “disproportionately targeting Muslim communities” and threaten the “right to worship and peaceful protest – things that have been hard won and form the fabric of a civilised society.”

But Mr Gove said: "It's not intended to prevent people demonstrating per se, absolutely not.

"It's not a restraint on free speech. It applies only to engagement with government, because we know that there've been cases in the past where individual extremist organisations have sought to take advantage of government patronage, money and influence in order to advance their agenda.” He said the purpose of the new definition was to make clear that goverment “will keep these organisations at arm's length so they can't benefit from access to government and its funds."

Mr Gove insisted groups would only be deemed extremist after "a patient assessment of the evidence" and if they showed "a consistent pattern of behaviour".

But he did not rule out naming specific groups when he gives a statement to the Commons on the new definition later.

Mr Gove said an expert team of civil servants advised by academics would carry out a "very rigorous process of due diligence" to decide whether a group was extremist or not, with the final signoff from either the Home Secretary and Mr Gove himself.

The blacklisted groups will be barred from funding and prevented from meeting ministers and civil servants under the plans.

Mr Gove has insisted the new definition of extremism is necessary to crack down on the “pervasiveness of extremist ideologies” that have “become increasingly clear” in the aftermath of the 7 October attack by Hamas on Israel.

Earlier this month Rishi Sunak warned the UK risked descending into 'mob rule' as he warned the police must take urgent action or risk losing public confidence.

At the time the prime minister pledged to do “whatever it requires to protect our democracy”.

Government officials insist that the new definition sets a “high bar” that will only capture the most concerning activities.

As well as not receiving funding or meeting with ministers, extremist groups or individuals will be barred from public appointments and from receiving honours.

The government published the extremism definition on Thursday and civil servants will now spend the next few weeks deciding which groups fit the criteria.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael said the new definition was “at best vague, and at worst risks sowing even more division”.’


https://uk.news.yahoo.com/michael-gove-defends-extremism-policy-110119854.html

The following is from the Socialist Standard, June 1973

‘As members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain we are opposed to all censorship, whether it be through the legalized violence as enforced by the courts of the capitalist state or by the violence of self-appointed moral or political guardians. Let there be no misunderstanding of the meaning of what happened here last week. A body of people decided that the rest of us should not be allowed to hear certain views they considered objectionable; they took it upon themselves to use physical violence to achieve this end — and succeeded. In other words, they successfully censored what we should hear. But will they stop here? Will they now proceed to prevent Eysenck expressing his views in writing? And, after that, will they burn the books he has already written? And what are the prospects for those of us who disagree with them if ever they win control of political power? Will we be shot or just put into concentration camps? These are serious questions since they are the logical extensions of the policy pursued by last week's political censors.


There is a further point: all censorship — especially censorship of this kind, allegedly exercised for the benefit of the working class — is an insult to the intelligence of ordinary working men and women since it implies that they cannot be trusted to hear or read certain ideas and are incapable of making rational judgements on the merits of rival ideas. Those who favour censorship always assume that they are somehow superior to ordinary people and have the right to decide what ordinary people should or should not hear. Censorship is an elitist policy — but those who favour it here at the LSE such as the Maoists and Trotskyists have nothing but contempt for the ability of the working class to understand Socialist ideas and to establish Socialism by and for themselves.


The classic case for allowing unpopular minority views to be expressed — including those with openly anti-democratic ones like fascism AND Maoism — has never been refuted: if they are wrong then their case will perish in the course of free, rational discussion; if they are right then censorship delays discovering this. As our resolution passed by the Union last Thursday puts: "only in the healthy atmosphere of free expression can ideas be debated, false ideas debunked and sound ideas developed". We are always prepared at all our meetings to give opponents of Socialism a chance to express their views. For we are convinced that our views are right and that this will be shown in any free debate — and if we are wrong we wish to know so that we can stop wasting our time. WE STATE unambiguously that ALL censorship is anti-Socialist and anti-working class.


Last week's incident has done one thing, if nothing else. It has brought into the open those who favour censorship of political ideas: the Maoists and Trotskyists. They have placed themselves in the same camp as the fascists themselves and stand exposed as the dangerous enemies of the working class prostituting the good name of Socialism.


We stand for the common ownership of the means of production, without distinction of race or sex, organised democratically.’


https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2014/01/eysenck-at-lse-socialist-defends-free.html


Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Dirty Business


According to a recent report from The Rivers Trust, ‘No single stretch of river in England or Northern Ireland is in good overall health.’ At the end of February, for instance, human faeces and toilet paper flooded a chalk stream and a road in Norfolk.

Besides the discharging of raw sewage, there can be pollution by plastics or chemicals, especially ‘forever chemicals’ that take over a thousand years to degrade. All this has drastic implications for aquatic wildlife and human health.

Water companies are only allowed to discharge sewage into waterways in special circumstances, but it happens far more often: because, of course, it costs money to act in an environmentally-appropriate way.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/




Kybosh on Cod

 

Little Jacky may very well no longer have a codlin' or haddock baked in a pan when his daddy’s boat come in.

From The Fishing Daily, ‘Russia Ends Decades Old UK Fisheries Agreement for Barents Sea.’

https://thefishingdaily.com/latest-news/russia-ends-decades-old-uk-fisheries-agreement-for-barents-sea/

More devastating than the news emanating from Kensington Palace, or rather, not emanating from KP, comes the intelligence to break the heart of every Briton. Russia has cancelled an agreement going back to 1956 which allowed British fisherpersons to access fishing grounds along the coast of Russia’s Kola Peninsula and east of Cape Kanin Nos.

The Barents Sea is one of the world’s most important fishing grounds for cod and haddock.

That’s 560,000 tons of fish down the Swanee. As if the price of family Cod and Chips wasn’t already well into second mortgage territory then this agreement termination will probably put the kybosh on Britain’s favourite meal

One source noted that Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin in a ya -boo -sucks to the UK said;

“The shameless English had been eating [our fish] for 68 years. They have imposed sanctions on us, while 40% of their diet, their fish menu, comes from our cod. Let them now lose some weight,”

A popular social media meme which is too rude to repeat here but which warns against the unwelcome consequences of actions would seem to apply as the reasons the Russians rescinded the UK fishing rights was because of the UK’s decision in March 2022 to deprive Russia of ‘most favoured nation’ trade status, in a move to punish Russia over the Ukraine conflict. Other British sanctions included import tariffs on hundreds of Russian products.

Environmentalists may be clapping their hands on behalf of all the fish that will no longer end up on dinner plates but this is a global capitalist society and where something or someone can be exploited for profit then it will be so. Some Russian capitalists will already be clapping their hands now that perfidious Albion can no longer appropriate profits from Their Fish. So the harvesting, or overharvesting, of the sea will continue one way or another.

A Pew Research 2002 study found; ‘More Than 100,000 Fishing-Related Deaths Occur Each Year.

‘Fishing has long been known as one of the world’s most dangerous professions, but a new study by the FISH Safety Foundation, commissioned by The Pew Charitable Trusts, suggests that the problem far exceeds previous estimates. According to this research, more than 100,000 fishing-related deaths occur each year—three to four times previous estimates. Serious injuries and abuses, including child labour and decompression sickness—for example, from workers being forced to make repeated deep dives to harvest lobster—are also well-documented across the sector.

Further, while fishing can be inherently risky, the study draws attention to the harsh reality that many of these deaths were, and are, avoidable. Incredibly, few were even officially recorded. Insufficient and unenforced safety regulations are a key challenge, but the study also points to a convergence of other major factors that leads individuals to risk their lives and die on the water. These factors include scarcity of fish due to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, overfishing, and climate change, and, for many fishers, the added desperation caused by poverty and food insecurity challenges driving them into IUU fishing practices. The study shows that these deaths and injuries disproportionately victimize impoverished people, including children, in low-income countries, which is a major reason they are so seldom noted.’

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2022/11/more-than-100000-fishing-related-deaths-occur-each-year-study-finds

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Socialist Sonnet No. 139

40 Years On

 

Just forty years on from the Iron Lady

Disavowing coal. Deep in the shadow

Of abundant stockpiles, the wealth below

Was to be forfeited for a shady

Deal between politics and capital,

Anathema of organised labour

Had to be vanquished, by setting neighbour

Against neighbour if at all possible,

Coalfield against coalfield, trade against trade.

Solidarity undermined, derided.

By keeping the working class divided,

The very notion of class was gainsaid.

Coal mines and the Iron Lady are long gone,

Yet nothing’s been resolved forty years on.

 

D. A.  

Manipulating The Crowd

 

In 1895 Frenchman Charles-Marie Gustave Le Bon (1841 –1931) wrote 

The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind.


In it Le Bon analysed how the behaviour of the individual was affected by that of the crowd or mob and how, caught up in the assembly of many others an individual would sublimate their personality and proceed to act in ways that individually they would not have contemplated.


We searched our bookshelf to find the copy of The Crowd to reread in order to look for some explanation for the madness which has afflicted many in recent times.


Republic or Kingdom, it doesn’t matter if capitalism remains the overbearing social system. The working class has no country and owes no country allegiance so whether a King is nominally head of state or a President it makes no difference to the exploited majority.


So the hoo-ha about the health of a particular individual and the frenzy surrounding the publication of a photograph is of no interest to Socialists.

The interest lies in the manipulation of of media and social media to arouse the hysteria in the well-being, or otherwise, of a woman which has, to some extent, diverted attention from the continuing atrocities which are still continuing in the capitalist struggle for control of profit engendering resources.


As someone , somewhere must have said, if you’re falling for all of this then you’re being played.


The current mania is akin to a cat dipping its paws into a goldfish bowl.

Leave the fish alone and concentrate on what is really important.


From the October 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard


‘One of the indexes of class struggle in the Middle Ages was the frequent issuing of sumptuary laws: legal ordinances about which people could wear what clothes, according to their station in the medieval hierarchy. Naturally, where status was reflected in such outward signs, people with ambition or on the make would strive to be seen wearing the clothes of their ‘betters.’


For aristocracy, station was based on inherent personal relations: family and royalty. Property was not alienable, it could not be separated from the person, or bloodline, but could only be passed on through marriage and inheritance. Worth was based on these outward relations, and not through any actual ability or personal merit.


This also meant that aristocracy had to live in a manner befitting their station: as they accrued the unearned (and proudly, unearned) surpluses from their estates, they had to spend in a manner befitting their status. They were the biggest customers of the ‘middling sort’, that commercial class that would go on to become the modern capitalist class. This was one of the central contradictions of medieval and early modern class struggle, as the middling sort became richer and began to assert themselves politically, it was to the detriment of their best customers and their own sources of income.


For example, Edward I of England chose to punish the burghers of London for their role in the second barons’ war by moving his wine supply from London vintners to Gascon merchants.


In eighteenth century Britain, after the war of the crowns and the English revolution, the aristocracy became relatively more politically marginalised, as power was moved to be exercised through the Parliament largely elected by those middling sorts. Although some aristocrats had ‘jumped ship’ as it were, and begun to invest in trade, forming what is sometimes known as the ‘Whig old corruption’, many feudal remnants remained, increasingly running into debt to try to maintain their status.


This led, in part, to the cult of taste: refinement, fashion and taste replaced overt sumptuary laws, as taste went along with breeding, and blocked routes of advancement, as outsiders were quickly marked in the corridors of power. This can be seen in fashion statements that live on, in some ways, to these days.


Wealthy aristocratic men were dandies, in fine fashions with laces, frills and all the gaudy, individualistic, trimmings: the middling sort (recalling the puritanical routes of their revolutionary ancestors) wore a plain uniform, usually black. This can best be represented by the characters in the third series of Blackadder, where Rowan Atkinson as the surly servant wears black, while Hugh Laurie’s Prince George wears a fabulous array of patterned satins.


This is not to say that the capitalist class totally hid its wealth: just as now, the uniform allows for expensive watches, costly tailored suits and ties. But, also, the wives of the middling sort could become fashion statements. To this day, the convention, as expressed in many a comedy, is precisely that women at formal occasions should not wear matching outfits. To an extent, these class differences meant that aristocratic men of that period have been depicted as effeminate, because their behaviour was that which the middling sort reserved for women. It also conveys part of the clash of ideologies that was going on.


Eighteenth century debate around ‘justification by faith or by deed’ abounded, and reflected the old class lines of inherent inward ability versus outward status symbols. However, the outward signs remained desirable, and a badge of having made it, so the rising class began to find ways to be given honours, titles and badges of status, and in return, retained some of the symbolism of the old aristocracy, even when it had been politically muted (and, let’s not forget, that up until 1911 the House of Lords retained power and parity with the Commons, and it took until the Blair government to remove most (but not all) of the hereditary peers).


Royalty became all about pomp and circumstance, a means, much like the bourgeois wives, of reflecting achievement and status that puritanical capitalists formally repudiated for themselves. Local Tufton-Buftons on county councils lived for the day they could meet the monarch at a Buckingham Palace tea-party. To borrow Graeber and Wengrow’s account of schismogenesis, the existence of the royalty became a badge to differentiate Britain from the republics such as France or the USA, and thus the pomp and symbolism became part of the selective invented tradition of British nationalism.


At home, royalty became a badge of success, with a whole alphabetti-spaghetti of honours to throw around for bootlickers to enjoy: OBE, CBE, KCMG, CH, OM, etc. Abroad it became part of the British brand. In the meanwhile, it allowed for a residuum of political power to remain in the hands of the monarchy, and for it to retain a style and comfort to reward the puppet aristocrats who would dance a monkey dance for the new owners of the country.


In the age of mass communication, royalty has become part soap opera, part propaganda tool, as the press use them and attitudes towards them as part of a blend of conservatism and patriotism. One of the most serious charges they brought against Jeremy Corbyn was his republicanism, and any sensible politician knows it isn’t worth the political capital to fight the storm of press odium to stick their heads above the parapet and criticise the royal system.


That is, the class interest that once struggled against the gatekeeping power of the aristocracy now finds it useful to use royalty to circumscribe the bounds of political debate, which also allows it to buy the loyalty of a whole range of toadies and hangers-on who want to bask in the reflected glory.


The now late Elizabeth Windsor spent a life in service to this system of inequality and power, protecting her own and her family’s interests. She had a despicable job in the service of a despicable system. The best memorial should be for us to sweep it all away.’

Pik Smeet

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2022/10/royaltys-role-from-feudalism-to.html