Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Socialist Sonnet No. 159

Austerity Circles

 

The last time a party fell from office,

It found itself very quickly being blamed,

As the new government loudly declaimed

Details of the national debt and the price

Of a necessary austerity;

So obvious, everyone must surely see

How the previous crew incompetently

Managed to crash the economy.

Now though, with new hands on the fiscal reins,

The Chancellor sombrely explains

A policy of tightened purse strings, pain

That might look like austerity again.

Only, it’s not, in any shape or sense,

Rather, it is the return of prudence.

 

D. A.

Tuesday, July 30, 2024

National Debt

 

It's reported that, 'The US national debt has skyrocketed in recent years under the leadership of President Joe Biden and his predecessor President Trump, who had repeatedly pledged to reduce it during his 2016 campaign.

When Trump left office, the debt had grown by $8.4 trillion to $27.7 trillion, with over a half of the borrowing related to Covid-related measures. The trend continued under Biden, with the incumbent president now smashing through the $35-trillion mark. While the borrowing rates somewhat slowed during the first half of Biden’s tenure compared to the Trump era, they have now accelerated, with the US adding a further $1 trillion to its debt this year alone.

According to the House Budget Committee’s calculations, the debt now equates to $104,497 per person, $266,275 per household and an eye watering $483,889 per American child. Over the past 12 months, the debt increased by $2.35 trillion, with the rate of increase equating to $74,401 in new debt per second.

The persistent “misalignment” of US fiscal policy was harshly criticized by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) late last month, with the body calling Washington’s budget deficit and debt rates a “growing risk” for the whole global economy.

“Such high deficits and debt create a growing risk to the US and global economy, potentially feeding into higher fiscal financing costs and a growing risk to the smooth rollover of maturing obligations,” the IMF said in a statement, adding that “these chronic fiscal deficits represent a significant and persistent policy misalignment that needs to be urgently addressed.”'

Public sector net debt, excluding state-controlled banks, reached 2.742 trillion pounds ($3.47 trillion) or 99.8% of annual gross domestic product in May, up from 96.1% a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics said.

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-public-debt-rises-highest-since-1961-election-nears-2024-06-21/

The below is from the Socialist Standard November 2020

‘‘The UK’s national debt hit a record £2.024 trillion at the end of August, £249.5 billion more than the same time last year’, reported the Evening Standard (25 September). Presumably seeking to be helpful but actually confusing the picture, the report went on:

‘To put the figures in some perspective, the debt level works out at roughly £30,000 per person living in the UK’.

So we are all on average £30,000 in debt, are we? No, it’s the government’s debt not ours. What is popularly called the ‘national debt’ is the outstanding debt, accumulated over the years, of the capitalist state and so is no concern of ours. To be fair to the statisticians at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) who compile the figures, their official name for it is the ‘General Government Gross Debt’. The total debt owed by persons is called ‘Household Debt’. At the end of March 2018 this totalled £1.28 trillion, most of which was mortgages. The two statistics are quite different.

Note that since 1974 a ‘trillion’ means only a thousand billion (not the billion billion it used to be). But it makes a more sensational headline to say that the government’s debt is £2.024 (with a full stop) trillion rather than £2,024 billion (with a comma).

Governments (unless they are directly involved in capitalist production themselves) generate no income of their own. The money they spend comes from two main sources, mostly taxes. If a government wants to spend more than what this brings in it has to resort to borrowing. This is normally done by selling short-term (Treasury) bills or longer-term bonds (gilts). The interest on these has to be paid from tax revenue.

Another statistic we are urged to get worked up about (but needn’t) is the ‘General Government Deficit’. This is the difference between what the government spends and what it raises through taxes and which has to be made up by borrowing. At the end of June it was £128.8 billion. If, on the other hand, a government’s income from taxes is greater than what it borrows, then there is a surplus which can be used to pay off a part of its debt.

Marx had something to say on the origin and consequences of the ‘National Debt’:

‘The state’s creditors actually give nothing away, for the sum lent is transformed into public bonds, easily negotiable, which go on functioning in their hands just as so much hard cash would. But furthermore, and quite apart from the class of idle rentiers thus created, the improvised wealth of the financiers who play the role of middlemen between the government and the nation, and the tax-farmers, merchants and private manufacturers, for whom a good part of every national loan renders the service of a capital fallen from heaven, apart from all these people, the national debt has given rise to joint-stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds, and to speculation, in a word to stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy.’ (Capital, Penguin edition, Volume I, Chapter 31).

This is a fair description which still applies today but, unfortunately, is a source of many currency crank theories. Marx was aware of this and warned:

‘The great part that the public debt and the fiscal system corresponding with it have played in the capitalization of wealth and the expropriation of the masses, has led many writers, like Cobbett, Doubleday and others, to seek here, incorrectly, the fundamental cause of the misery of the people in modern times.’

The fundamental cause of this misery is not the financial system but the class ownership of the means of life and production for profit. What is required to remove it is not monetary reform but common ownership and production directly to satisfy people’s need.’




Monday, July 29, 2024

Strikes and Class Consciousness

 ‘Junior doctors’ leaders in England have agreed a new pay deal with the government, which could lead to their wages rising by 22.3% over two years.

The agreement comes after 44 days of strikes since junior doctors first took industrial action in March 2023 in pursuit of a 35% pay rise.

Stoppages by staff across the NHS since December 2022 have led to the postponement of 1.5m appointments, procedures and operations at an estimated cost of more than £3bn’

The Guardian 29 July

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/29/junior-doctors-leaders-agree-pay-deal-over-two-years

The below is from the Socialist Standard February 2023.

The reference to P.M. Rishi Sunak’s government is no longer applicable.

‘Over the past decades, employers have been fierce and unrelenting. Companies laid off workers, attacked unions and demanded concessions. Governments of all stripes helped by eroding labour standards, de-regulating industries, privatising services and permitting job out-sourcing. Being in a weak position the union leaders recoiled from the prospect of waging an all-out class war to challenge the employers so they accepted the new contracts, no matter how damaging, in the hope that lost ground could be regained. Emboldened by this, employers demanded workers forfeit more established practices, even as the stock market boomed and profits soared. With few notable exceptions, strikes were defeated, union recruitment drives failed and workers became demoralised.

But now trade union militancy and strikes have returned to the forefront of British politics. The Socialist Party does not minimise the necessity and importance of workers keeping up the struggle to maintain the level of wages and protect working conditions. There are now once again some signs that general combativeness is rising. Unions are the single most effective way organised workers can counter the bosses. Workers who risked their lives during the Covid pandemic and are now suffering from a cost of living crisis not of their making say they deserve substantial pay raises, and are prepared to go on strike to try to get it. Employers can no longer expect their workforce to compliantly roll over and be strong-armed into conceding cuts in wages and conditions. Increasing numbers of workers across all sectors are saying enough is enough. The current labour shortage means they have a bit more leverage. It has got the bosses worried.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government intends to introduce new laws that are aimed at trade union industrial action by insisting key workers must maintain essential services during any strike. The government wants to make it more difficult for ordinary working people, firefighters, nurses and teachers to express their democratic wishes and to take industrial action in defence of their jobs and pay. Make no mistake. The government’s legislative plans are an assault in the class war on workers’ ability to resist the employers’ offensive. Trade unions are workers’ front line of defence against their employers under capitalism.

The legislation will permit employers to sue unions and sack employees if legal minimum service levels are not met. Union members who are instructed by the employers to work and refuse to do so could lose their jobs. The new law will also back employers bringing an injunction to prevent strikes or seeking damages afterwards if they go ahead with unions facing court actions and possible sequestration of funds.

When workers strike or work to rule, the bosses find out who really runs the workplace, who keeps the machines humming, production going, and the money flowing. But that said, it’s important to clarify that the employers have the power of the state behind them and when push comes to shove, they do not hesitate to bring that powerful institution to bear upon the workers. In addition, most workers have practically no savings, so cannot afford to stop working for long.

Hence the strategy of a series of short strike stoppages. Adapting to match the new reality, rather than calling for a general strike, individual unions seek to coordinate their actions for increased effect. Solidarity is one of the greatest weapons we possess. Many workers are realising that it is the worker and the worker alone who has to take care of their economic interests, as they’ll get nothing from the politicians who fill parliamentary seats and cabinet posts or the bureaucrats in their professional union posts.

When the government goes on the offensive against workers on behalf of the capitalist class, this may lead workers’ organisations to more radical actions, to the capitalist society exposing its class nature, to the general public opening up to revolutionary ideas, and consequently, to the class struggle becoming conscious and political rather than just defensive and economic.

To be sure, participation in strikes does not automatically make workers class-conscious. Even when workers acquire revolutionary consciousness they are still compelled to engage in the non-revolutionary struggle. As workers we fight in the here and now, where we are and where we can. We don’t see such day-to-day struggles as a diversion.

Our preferred trade union strategy is to be active in unions where they exist, but not to do it with a parochial perspective but with a class-wide viewpoint that involves all groups in society that have no opportunity to participate in unions and to engage them as much as possible in a conscious class struggle. The strike weapon is not a sure means of victory for workers in disputes with employers. There are many cases of workers being compelled to return to work without gains, even sometimes with losses. Strikes should not be employed recklessly but should be entered into with strategy in mind.

Socialism demands the revolutionising of the workers themselves. This does not mean that workers should sit back and do nothing, the struggle over wages and conditions must go on. Workers are learning the hard lessons and it is becoming clearer that this is a secondary, defensive activity. The real struggle is to take the means of wealth production and distribution – the factories, farms, offices, mines etc. – into common ownership. That is the larger, political struggle.’

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2023/02/enough-is-enough-is-not-enough-2023.html


Sunday, July 28, 2024

Liberty, Fraternity, Equality

 

The start to the 2024 Paris Olympics appears to have gotten off to a dodgy start with the opening ceremony appearing to have ruffled quite a few feathers. Aspects of the display have enraged the religious fantasists who are screaming on social media, satanic! God will not be mocked! As SOYMB has already noted; the Olympics are sport as warfare.

.https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-olympics-sport-as-warfare.html

As far as can be judged, this Blog being completely indifferent to the nationalistic propagandising of the French, it is aspects of the French Revolution which are being extolled. There seems to be a lack of awareness of eighteenth century history on the part of many of the ‘disgusted’ on social media.

In 1793, in his essay, ‘Considerations on the Nature of the Revolution in France’, Jacques Mallet du Pan wrote, ‘Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.’

On 28 July, 1794, Jacobin leader, Maximilien Robespierre, was guillotined.
‘Whatever may have been Robespierre’s reasons for justifying the dictatorship of the Jacobin Committee of Public Safety, the bulk of the members of the national assembly (and indeed some members of the Committee itself) supported it as a necessity to win the war, both external and internal, and were ready to relax it once this had been achieved, as it had been by the summer of 1794. This was fatal for Robespierre who was overthrown on 27 July (9 Thermidor, according to the revolutionary calendar) and guillotined with his immediate followers the next day.

The Right to Unequal Property Ownership Re-asserted

The overthrow of Robespierre and the Jacobins marked the end of the radicalisation of the French Revolution and a return to its original aim of establishing a constitutional government by and for property owners. The only difference with 1791 was that this was now to be achieved within the framework of a Republic rather than of a constitutional monarchy. The Republican Constitution of 1795 reintroduced the property qualifications for being an "active" citizen, an "elector" and a deputy.’

[Taken from the Socialist Standard July 1989:1789: France’s bourgeois revolution.

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2013/07/1789-frances-bourgeois-revolution.html

Note: the excellent article referenced above gives an in-depth socialist analysis of the events of 1789, before and after. Readers are encouraged to study it at source as it is an absorbing but long read.


The below is from the Socialist Standard July 1989.

This document should be read alongside 1789: France’s bourgeois revolution https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2013/07/1789-frances-bourgeois-revolution.html
that also appeared in the July 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard.
This manifesto, drawn up by Sylvain Maréchal, for an attempt to organise an insurrection in Paris in 1796 known as the "Conspiracy of the Equals", was never formally adopted by the conspirators. It is nevertheless a fine appeal for the establishment of the same sort of classless communist society as Winstanley and the Diggers had advocated in the course of the English revolution some 150 years previously.

PEOPLE OF FRANCE

For fifteen hundred years you have lived in slavery and in misery. And for the last six years you have existed in the hourly expectation of independence, happiness, and equality.

Equality is the first principle of nature, the most elementary need of man, the prime bond of any decent association among human beings. But in this you, the French people, have fared no better than the rest of mankind. Humanity, the world over, has always been in the grip of more or less clever cannibals—creatures who have battened on men in order to advance their own selfish ambitions and to nourish their own selfish lust for power. Throughout man’s history he has been gulled with fine words, he has received only the shadow of a promise, not its substance. Hypocrites, from time immemorial, have told us that men are equal; and yet monstrous and degrading inequality has, from time immemorial, ground humanity into the dust. Since the dawn of human history man has understood that equality is the finest ornament of the human condition, yet not once has he been successful in his struggles to bring his vision to life. Equality has remained a legal fiction, beautiful but baseless. And today, when we demand it with a new insistence, our rulers reply: “Silence! Real equality is an idle dream. Be content with equality before the law. Ignorant and lowborn herd, what else do you need?"

Men of high degree—lawmakers, rulers, the rich—now it is your turn to listen to us.

Men are equal. This is a self-evident truth. As soon say that it is night when the sun shines, as deny this.

Henceforth we shall live and die as we have been born—equal. Equality or death: that is what we want. And that is what we shall have, no matter what the price to be paid. Woe to you who stand in our way or try to thwart the realization of our dearest wish!

The French Revolution is only the forerunner of another, even greater, that shall finally put an end to the era of revolutions. The people have swept away the kings and priests who have been leagued against them. Next they will sweep away the modern upstarts, the tyrants and tricksters who have usurped the ancient seats of power.

What else do we need other than equality before the law?

We need not only this equality as it is written down in the 
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen; we need it in life, in our very midst, in our homes. For the true and living equality we will give up everything. Let the arts perish, if need be! But let us have real equality.

Men of high degree—lawmakers, rulers, the rich—strangers as you are to the love of man, to good faith, to compassion: it is no good to say that we are only "bringing up again the old cry of
loi agraire.” It is our turn to speak. Listen to our just demands and to the law of nature which sanctions them.

The
loi agraire—the division of the land—has been the instinctive demand of a handful of soldiers of fortune, of peoples here and there governed by passion, not by reason. We intend something far better and far more just: the COMMON GOOD, or the COMMUNITY OF GOODS. There must be an end to individual ownership of the land, for the land is nobody’s personal property. Our demand is for the communal ownership of the earth’s resources. These resources are the property of mankind.

We say that an end must be put to the situation in which the overwhelming majority of mankind, living under the thumb of a tiny minority, sweats and toils for the sole benefit of a few. In France fewer than a million persons own and dispose of wealth that rightfully belongs to twenty millions of their fellow men, to their fellow citizens.

There must be an end to this outrage! Will people in times to come even be able to conceive that such a situation ever existed? There must be an end to this unnatural division of society into rich and poor, into strong and weak, into masters and servants, into rulers and ruled.

Age and sex are the sole natural distinctions existing between men. All men have the same needs, all are endowed with the same faculties, all are warmed by the same sun, and all breathe the same air. Why then should not all receive an equal share of food and clothing—equal both in that quantity and quality to which all shall be entitled?

But a howl arises from the sworn enemies of a truly natural order of things. ‘Anarchists! Demagogues!" they shriek. “You are nothing more than instigators of mob violence. That’s what you are."

PEOPLE OF FRANCE,

We shall not waste time dignifying such charges with an answer. But to you we say: the high enterprise which we are engaged upon has a single purpose— to put an end to civil strife and to the sufferings of the masses.

No vaster plan than ours has ever been conceived or put into execution. Once in a long while men of vision have discussed it, cautiously and in whispers; none of them has had the boldness to speak out and to tell the whole truth.

The hour for decisive action has now struck. The people’s suffering has reached its peak; it darkens the face of the earth. For centuries chaos has reigned under the name of "order." Now the time has come to mend matters. We, who love justice and who seek happiness—let us enter the struggle for the sake of equality. The time has come to establish THE REPUBLIC OF EQUALITY, to prepare an asylum for mankind. The time has come to set the earth to rights. You, who are oppressed, join us: come and partake of the feast which nature has provided for all her sons and daughters.

PEOPLE OF FRANCE,

A glorious and historic destiny has been reserved. for you.

Hidebound tradition and blind prejudice will set barriers, as they always have, in the way of the establishment of the Republic of Equality. True equality—that alone provides for all human needs without sacrificing some men to the selfish interests of others—will not be welcome to everyone. Selfish and ambitious people will curse us. Men who have grown rich by thieving from their fellows will be the first to cry "thief." Proud men, living in privilege or in idleness, who have grown callous to the sufferings of others, will do battle with us. Men who wield arbitrary power, or who are its creatures, will not unprotesting bow their stiff necks beneath the yoke. The shape of things to come, the common good, their blind eyes cannot see. But how can a handful of such people prevail against a whole nation that has at last found the rapturous happiness it sought so long?

The day after the revolution for true equality has taken place people will be amazed. They will say “The common good was so easy to attain! We only had to will it! Why on earth didn’t we realize that sooner—why did we have to be told so often? It’s absolutely true: when one man is richer and more powerful than the rest of us, everything is spoiled; crime and misery flourish”.

PEOPLE OF FRANCE,

What is the hallmark of excellence in a constitution? Only true equality can serve as a foundation on which to base your Republic and satisfy all your needs. The aristocratic charters of 1791 and 1795 did not break your chains: they riveted them upon you more firmly. The Constitution of 1793 was a giant step toward true equality, the greatest that we have yet taken. It was dedicated to the goal of the common good, but did not, even so, fully provide the basis for organizing it.

PEOPLE OF FRANCE,

Open your eyes and hearts to full happiness: recognize the REPUBLIC OF EQUALITY. Join with us in working for it.

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2018/07/manifesto-of-equals-1989.html

Workers of the World Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!


Saturday, July 27, 2024

It's a big club and you're not in it!

 



From Aljazeera comes this very interesting piece on who owns the world’s wealth. There is a link to a downloadable PDF on the web page where this appears. How much longer is the world going to allow this iniquitous system to exploit the majority?

The world has at least 58 million US dollar millionaires, accounting for

 1.5 percent of the global adult population, according to the 2024 UBS

 Global Wealth Report  which sampled 56 markets that account for

 92 percent of global wealth.

The United States has the highest number of millionaires, with some 21.95 million individuals having wealth in seven figures or more. China comes at a distant second with some 6.01 million millionaires, followed by the United Kingdom (3.06 million), France (2.87 million) and Japan (2.83 million).

UBS defines wealth as the value of financial assets and real assets minus debts held by a household.

Global wealth, in dollar terms, grew by 4.2 percent in 2023 after a decline of 3 percent in 2022, according to UBS.

“If you think of millionaires or the wealthy in general, there’s kind of an indigenous, core of millionaires that has a strong attachment to the country. Then there is a more mobile element that globally [is able to] fairly easily switch domiciles,” Samuel Adams, an economist at UBS, told Al Jazeera.

By 2028, the UK is expected to lose the most millionaires – nearly one in six of its millionaires will lose that status. The Netherlands is another country set to lose 4 percent of its millionaires by 2028.

“The point here with the Netherlands and the UK that we’re making is that both of these countries already have a lot of millionaires – they have a growing core. But then you have a very mobile [element] working around that. And it might be that, in the global competition for wealth, they could see some outflows of the more mobile element of the wealthy. Which doesn’t necessarily mean the economy isn’t working. There’s still wealth being created in those countries. It’s just that the people who are mobile might consider all the places that they want to domicile to.”

How is wealth divided globally?

Almost half of the world’s wealth, 47.5 percent or $213 trillion, is held by just 1,5 per cent of the global adult population, according to the Global Wealth Report. These are households that hold more than $1m.

In contrast, those with a wealth of less than $10,000 hold just 0.5 percent ($2.4 trillion) of global wealth, but make up 39.5 percent of the world’s adults.

Households with a wealth of between $10,000 and $100,000, representing 42.7 percent of adults, account for 12.6 percent of global wealth or $56.2 trillion.

The fastest-growing millionaires (2000-23) In terms of wealth per adult, the world’s population has made substantial progress since the beginning of the millennium. The percentage of adults whose wealth exceeds $1m tripled from 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent. Since 2000, Qatar saw the greatest increase in the number of millionaires, which rose from 46 to 26,163. China saw the second largest increase, from 39,000 to 6,013,282 millionaires, followed by Kazakhstan (918 to 44,307).

I think it’s important to appreciate that in general, wealth grows kind of proportionate to economic growth, as well as kind of vaguely to asset price growth,” Adams said.

“Emerging market economies such as China, especially if we think back to the 2000s, which was in a very different stage, Russia equally, tend to see more wealth growth in general, and then it also helps if you have a certain concentration in a sector, for example, that sees particular growth. So commodity exporters – thinking of Russia, but also some Middle Eastern countries – tend to see very fast accumulation of wealth, particularly in the top 10 percent of the wealth bracket, which supports millionaire growth.”

UBS said over that the 15 years that it has published its report, the Asia Pacific region has posted the biggest growth in wealth, up almost 177 percent, followed by the Americas at nearly 146 percent, while Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) was up just 44 percent.

The highest share of millionaires .The The US hosts 38 percent of the world’s millionaires, Western Europe 28 percent and China 10 percent. By country, in percentage terms, Switzerland has the highest share of millionaires, with 12 in every 100 people having a wealth of more than $1m. This is followed by Hong Kong, where eight in every 100 people are millionaires, Australia (seven in 100), the Netherlands (seven in 100) and the US (six in 100).

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/27/where-are-the-worlds-millionaires-and-how-is-wealth-divided-globally



Why were they killing? Why were they dying?


July 2024 has seen lots of Bread and Circuses taking place. It’s not surprising if events from one hundred and eight years ago are hardly impinging on the consciousness of many. Perhaps a few historians are recollecting the events of 1916 when the British, French and German armies fought each other in a campaign, known as The Battle of the Somme, which occurred from July through to November 1916. The three armies suffered a combined total of 311,645 casualties during the month of July. At the end of the campaign there were 1,364,402 causalities in total on the three sides.

The below is from the Socialist Standard August 2006

The recent 90th anniversary of the human tragedy of the Somme saw the politicians, the churches and the organisations charged with remembrance giving history a makeover.

The Allied warlords planned a massive assault set for mid-summer 1916. The offensive was to be carried through by the combined Allied armies and was intended to break through the German lines on the Western, Eastern and Italian fronts imposing a defeat of such magnitude on Germany as to bring a speedy end to the First World War.

Doubtless it all worked out well for the generals and marshals as they threw clay representatives of thousands of human beings into homicidal battle against one another on the sands table. But battles are not won on sands tables and in the early spring of 1916 the Germans spoiled the plot by opening up a massive assault against the French city of Verdun which absorbed French divisions planned into the attack on the Western Front at the Somme.

In the week before the 1st of July Allied artillery carried out a ceaseless bombardment of German positions on a five mile stretch of the front. In all they fired 1.6 million shells but many of the British shells failed to explode and the German fortifications not only proved largely resistant to the shelling but also provided subterranean tunnelling where soldiers could take refuge from the bombardment.

Such was the confidence of the British Command that an enervated German line would crumble before the ferocity of a massed attack that they ordered their 11 divisions to walk steadily across No-Man's- Land towards the German fortifications. At 7.30 hours on July 1st the men arose out of their entrenchments in response to the blowing of whistles and proceeded to walk towards their objectives.

Immediately they were confronted with a deadly fusillade from German machine-guns. Like lemmings they offered their bodies like blades of grass before a scythe; wave after wave of them, the cared prodigy of wives and mothers learning the falsehood of patriotism or paying the price for volunteering away from poverty or the dull, hum-drum meanness of wage slavery. 60,000 of them fell that day, 20,000 dead, the rest flawed statistics.

The chaplains were busy intoning their prayers to a remorseless god and the generals, too, were brutal and remorseless for it didn't stop; it continued the next day and for four more months. In October the torrential rains came changing the blood-soaked ground into a quagmire where putrefying human flesh mingled with the mud and obstructed men as they were striven to further slaughter. When this single phase of the hellish conflict was exhausted in mid- November those designated as 'British' were 420,000 fewer while the French lost 195,00 men and the Germans over 600,000. There were no generals killed or wounded and the Allied forces had advanced 5 miles over wasted, barren land.

The Somme, Passendale, Salonika, Suvla Bay, names of strange places that became prominent in the lexicon of war and its brutalities. 'Lions led by donkeys' was the popular alibi for the monstrous slaughter and the ineptitude of warlords like the British Somme commander, Earl Haig became the focus of bitter criticism and sick jokes. There was no poetry now in the killing; the avalanche of stereotyped telegrams expressing official regret at the death of a husband or son began to speak louder than the xenophobic vapourings of politicians and the media and officialdom may well have been haunted by the thought that workers turned soldiers might catch on to the duality of their exploitation and the brutally obvious fact that a social system that required periodic bloodletting was fatally flawed.

Time has accounted for those who survived the battle; those who ploughed through the detritus of decaying human flesh and wept for dead comrades.

If you were a tourist from Mars attending the Somme commemoration the vital question you might want to ask is why were millions of men, men of no property and no financial interests, men who had never met those they were now told were their enemies and with whom they did not share a language that would allow them to curse at one another, why were they killing? Why were they dying?

The answer is that they were fighting over markets and the political and economic appurtenances of trade; that war was, and is, simply a logical extension of a brutally competitive system of social organisation predicted on profit and ongoing expansion; a system that dominated their lives, took away their human dignity and reduced them to the status of wage slaves and cannon fodder.

So the question must be avoided at all costs; capitalism's obsequious apologists, its politicians, its beholden clergy and media hacks will change the script: Tell the fools how brave they were and how proud they should be; that'll keep them happy to the next time.

"Give a benediction, bless them with a prayer,
And tell them how the son of God was longing to be there!"

In the circumstances of the conflict bravery is an empty virtue; an abuse of language that must surely add insult to injury.’

Richard Montague

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-battle-of-somme.html




Friday, July 26, 2024

SPGB Meeting TONIGHT Friday 26 July 1930(GMT+1) ZOOM

 

DID YOU SEE THE NEWS? (ZOOM)


Event Details

  • Date:  – 

Discussion on recent subjects in the news.

To connect to a meeting, click https://zoom.us/j/7421974305

Thursday, July 25, 2024

The Poverty of American Capitalist Politics


Samuel Johnson said that when a man is to be hanged in a fortnight it concentrates his mind wonderfully. The inhabitants of the United States of America have longer than a fortnight to decide whether they would rather face a firing squad or the gallows.

There is, however, an alternative, ‘Instead of supporting parties whose purpose is to perpetuate capitalism, workers in the US and elsewhere need to organise to establish a truly democratic society of free access to all goods and services, based on production for need not profit – socialism.’

World Socialism Movement

‘Around 700 million people [across the world] live today in extreme poverty – they subsist on less than $2.15 per day, the extreme poverty line. After several decades of continuous global poverty reduction, a period of significant crises and shocks resulted in three years of lost progress between 2020-2022. Low-income countries, which saw poverty increase during this period, have not yet recovered. In 2022, a total of 712 million people globally were living in extreme poverty, an increase of 23 million people compared to 2019.’

https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty

In the USA, 2022 figures, almost thirty million people were deemed to living in poverty. ‘The official poverty rate in 2022 was 11.5 percent, with 37.9 million people in poverty.

https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2023/demo/p60-280.html

‘Who lives in Poverty USA? All those who make less than the Federal government’s official poverty threshold... which for a family of four is about $25,700. People working at minimum wage, even holding down multiple jobs. Seniors living on fixed incomes. Wage earners suddenly out of work. Millions of families everywhere from our cities to rural communities.’

https://www.povertyusa.org/facts

What difference is the election of Dumb or Dumber going to make to their lives, or to that of Americans as a whole. It’s capitalism that benefits, not those who run the system on behalf of the minority class.

The below isThe Poverty of Capitalist Politics from the Socialist Standard June 2000

The state has an interest in defining poverty in such a way that only a minority are classified as poor.

It was hardly surprising, after the depredations of war and the austerity of rationing, that the early post-war years should have been a period of rising expectations. This increasing optimism was fuelled by rapid growth. The huge task of social reconstruction soaked up labour like water in a sponge. Low unemployment pushed up wages and that, together with the introduction of the "welfare state", meant that the scourge of poverty seemed to be inexorably receding. Technological advances made affordable household items that were once the province of privilege. The mass market had at last truly arrived: a veritable cornucopia disgorging its superfluity of refrigerators, TV sets and automobiles. And it was against this backdrop of rising consumption that the first green shoots of a new kind of social protest would soon emerge—from budding environmentalists to the hippies of the "flower-power" generation-fulminating against the crass materialism and extravagant excesses of the "throwaway society".

It was in these years that a spate of books appeared which seemed to capture the mood of the time. One such was one written by the economist, J.K. Galbraith, called The Affluent Society (1958). Galbraith's thesis was that we live in an age of unprecedented affluence yet our habits of thought are still rooted in the past. This was a past traumatised by the experience of "grim scarcity". We need, he argued, to radically adjust our economic thinking if we are to fully capitalise on the new prospects opening up and avoid jeopardising what had hitherto been achieved.

It was just as well that Galbraith saw fit to prudently qualify his observations, restricting their scope to what he called a "comparatively small corner of the world populated by Europeans". Yet, it must be remembered that, at the time, even among the developing countries, there was a widespread expectation that the benefits of modernisation would soon "trickle down" to everyone, heralding the end of global poverty. They had only to keep to the same trajectory of economic development that had so unerringly guided their ex-colonial masters towards the sweet pastures of capitalist paradise. Little did they know what awaited them around the corner. The 1970s' oil crisis, mounting Third World debts and the crushing, hope-extinguishing cutbacks imposed by IMF structural adjustment programmes soon put paid to such wishful thinking.

Relative poverty

But, to be fair to Galbraith, he did not suppose that the disappearance of "grim scarcity" in the so-called First World signalled the eradication of poverty altogether. There remained a more intangible, indeed intractable, kind of poverty—the "elegant torture of the spirit which comes from contemplating another man's more spacious possessions". "People," declared Galbraith, "are poverty-stricken when their income, even if it is adequate for survival, falls markedly below that of the community. Then they cannot have what the larger community regards as the minimum necessary for decency; and they cannot wholly escape, therefore, the judgement of the larger community that they are indecent."

This is "relative poverty". It is often contrasted to what is called "absolute poverty"—the kind of poverty where one has barely enough to survive on—but, in a sense, that can be quite misleading. Indeed, it can lend itself to the complacent conclusion we having nothing really to grumble about; at least compared to others less fortunate. Like a child, admonished for not eating all their peas, we are told to remember "the starving millions in the Third World". So we should. Not the inference that we should be eternally grateful for living in a society that manages to put food on our plate—providing we can afford it—is, frankly, one that sticks in the gullet. For this is a society the vast majority have good reason to get rid of and, perhaps, none more so than those it lets starve in the very shadow of the food mountains it has wilfully created.

Rather than see "relative poverty" as something to be contrasted to, and separate from, "absolute poverty", it can be better understood as encompassing the latter. As the anthropologist, Marshall Sahlins, perceptively observed:

"The world's most primitive people have few possessions but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all, it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such, it is the invention of civilization" (Stone Age Economics, 1974, p.37).

In short, poverty presupposes affluence just as affluence presupposes poverty. Each only acquires meaning in and through its relation to the other. And, paradoxically, what underpins their mutual dependence is what enables us to analytically separate one from the other: our experience of material inequality. In other words, we would not be aware that we were poor unless we had reason to believe others were better off then ourselves.

It is conventionally assumed that it is the duty of government to look after the "less fortunate". But if poverty is essentially relative, how does one differentiate between those who supposedly warrant this support and those who do not? In other words, on what grounds are we to classify one person as "poor" and another, "affluent"? After all, a millionaire might conceivably be considered "poor" by the standards of a billionaire.

One approach might be to calculate the average income—or arithmetic mean—for society as a whole such that all who fell below it are deemed "poor" and all above it, "affluent". By this token, given the highly skewed distribution of wealth in society today, a clear majority of the population would fall into the former category, and a small minority, the latter. However, while this pattern of distribution remained the same, any increase in overall living standards which the state may rely upon to improve the welfare of its citizens would, by definition, have no impact on the extent of poverty among them. This is because the proportion of "poor" would itself remain unaltered. For a government committed to the alleviation of poverty, this would pre-empt any possibility of success on those terms and, so, may prove politically damaging.

It could, of course, decide to significantly alter this pattern of wealth distribution. Even so, short of everyone getting exactly the same, the optimum outcome it could thereby hope to achieve—which, in statistical terms, means eliminating any "skewness" around the "mean"—would be to reduce the ratio of poor to only half the population by this reckoning.

There are, in any case, clear limits to a policy of redistribution that a government cannot ignore in a competitive environment without hindering the process of capital accumulation. In this regard, there is undoubtedly some truth in the neo-liberal critique of the welfare state: "excessive" redistribution, involving massive increases in sate welfare, would impose an unacceptably high tax burden on capitalist enterprises which would substantially reduce their profits. That, in turn, would diminish their capacity to mobilise capital for future investment and, hence, their ability to compete in an increasingly globalised market.

Redefining the poor

Clearly, then, from the state's point of view, some other approach to the identification of poverty is needed to circumvent these difficulties. Ideally, this would allow it to conclude that the problem of poverty was, by no means, widespread. An appropriate formula could then be devised to yield just such a conclusion. By such means, a state could, if not altogether define it out of existence, at least enable this problem to "assume" manageable proportions. There are several reasons why such an approach might be officially favoured.

Firstly, the "poor" could thus be portrayed as a minority, small enough not to appear as a serious political threat and not too large as to overwhelm the state's efforts to render them some token "assistance". Secondly, by defining poverty in this arbitrary fashion, this draws attention away from a structural explanation of poverty, allowing it to be blamed, say, on personal "defects". Thirdly, by effectively splitting the working population into those officially classified as "poor" and those who are not, this facilitates the state's ideological objective of securing their support through a process of "divide and rule".

Since Elizabethan times, poverty was equated with destitution. Initially, parishes were responsible for supporting the poor but, after the 1834 Poor Law, this task was taken over by boards of "guardians", each comprising several parishes, which were overseen by a government commission. As David Donnison points out, paupers "had to pass a crude kind of means test-calculated in loaves of bread—and the relief they were given kept them alive at a standard which was intended to be worse then the lot of the lowest-paid labourers..." (The Politics of Poverty, 1982, p.10).

According to Donnison, one of the main purposes of the 1834 poor law was to "impose the labour disciplines required for an industrial economy". Another was to mitigate the risk of social unrest. However, the "lowest-paid labourers" were themselves not given any assistance, and this effectively remained the case right until 1971 when the family income supplement was first introduced.

Then, in the early 20th century, the meaning of poverty underwent a subtle shift, in part instigated by Seebohm Rowntree's classic surveys of poverty in York. Rowntree's notion of poverty involved the formulation of a minimum income needed to ensure the reproduction of labour power at a level of physical efficiency increasingly demanded by industry. To that end, a simple diet sheet was prepared with help from the British Medical Association which would ensure adequate nutrition at minimum cost to the state. "Subsistence poverty" was held to be a standard of living that fell below this tolerable minimum; as such, it was distinguishable from "destitution poverty"—or what we usually mean by "absolute poverty"—which was simply concerned with physical survival.

From the standpoint of the state, the advantage of setting a fixed threshold is that it enabled it to look to a gradual rise in living standards to lift growing numbers of the poor above a condition of poverty without having to seriously address the vexed question of unequal distribution. In short, it could thus hope to progressively reap the political benefits of a society that was becoming increasingly "affluent". However, at around about the time that The Affluent Society was first published, an increasing number of social scientists, led by Peter Townsend, began to question the validity of this approach.

Townsend and his colleagues, argued that, far from disappearing since the war, poverty had increased. They pointed out that the "poverty line" adopted by the then National Assistance Board (set up in 1948) was actually lower than even that recommended by Rowntree himself. Further, it was unrealistic to expect the poor to confirm exactly to such a stringent spending pattern paternalistically laid down by the state; what the state regarded as a "necessary expenditure" was not something that could be absolutely fixed for all time but constantly changed along with society itself. This called for a definition of poverty that was essentially relative and thus sensitive to the distribution of social wealth.

Their approach was one that had been anticipated, not only by Marx, but also, Adam Smith. In The Wealth of Nations Smith wrote that "by necessaries I understand, not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary to support life but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without". Such a sentiment was, as we saw, echoed by Galbraith himself.

In due course, the notion of a fixed "poverty line" was abandoned and replaced by more relativistic measures of poverty. One current example is what is known as "Households Below Average Income" (HBAI) which identifies "the poor" as those living below 50 percent of average income. But, crucially, from the standpoint of the dominant ideology, this still retains the assumption that the poor constitute only a minority and, consequently, that the majority have reason to be grateful for not being included amongst their number.

But, in truth, that majority is impoverished. It is impoverished insofar as it has no other option than to sell its working abilities to those who monopolise the means of living and whose conspicuous wealth must irresistibly provide the very yardstick by which that poverty will be starkly exposed.

This may not be the poverty of material destitution. But if the measure of a human being consists in the accumulation of material possessions to which he or she may claim the, by that token, we are demeaned. And, ultimately, it is in this devaluation of our human worth—not simply in the fact of material inequality but in the meaning this society attaches to it—that we may glimpse the very essence of this poverty.’

Robin Cox

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2017/01/what-is-poverty-2000.html




SPGB Meeting Friday 26 July 1930 (GMT +1) ZOOM

 

DID YOU SEE THE NEWS? (ZOOM)


Event Details

  • Date:  – 

Discussion on recent subjects in the news.

To connect to a meeting, click https://zoom.us/j/7421974305

Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Symbolic of their struggle against reality.


It’s reported that, ‘The British Army, Royal Navy, and Royal Air Force are all struggling with “hollowed out forces, procurement waste, [and] low morale,” British Defence Secretary John Healey has warned.

In a grim assessment of the state of the UK military, Healey told the British Army’s annual Land Warfare Conference that the nation’s armed forces face “very serious challenges,” according to Sky News.

“We now also see that these problems are much worse than we thought,” added the defence secretary, who has been in office for just over two weeks as part of the new Labour government.

Healey also said he wants to establish “a new era for UK defence” in the face of “rapidly increasing global threats.”

The new British government launched a thorough defence review earlier this month after Labour’s general election victory. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has insisted that Britain should be better prepared for “a more dangerous and volatile [capitalist] world.”

The government has set out a “roadmap” to spending 2.5% of national income on defence. Britain is a member of NATO, which requires that member states spend at least 2% of GDP on their militaries.

The conference in London was also attended by the Ukrainian ambassador to the UK, General Valery Zaluzhny, who delivered a speech claiming that a Third World War may be approaching as a result of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. [Giss us more money!] Zaluzhny was removed from his post as commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces by Vladimir Zelensky in February following the failed 2023 counteroffensive.

London has been a vocal supporter of Kiev since the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022. The British government has delivered almost £12.5 billion ($16.1 billion) in aid to Kiev as of the beginning of July 2024.

Earlier this month, Starmer pledged to provide £3 billion ($3.87 billion) a year in military support to Ukraine until 2030/31 and “for as long as needed.”

Zelensky visited London last week to meet with Starmer and attend a cabinet meeting. The British leader told Zelensky that London would speed up the delivery of aid to Kiev, claiming that “Ukraine is, and always will be, at the heart of this government’s agenda.”London and Kiev also signed a framework agreement which included a £2 billion ($2.6 billion) loan to finance Ukraine’s defence needs.

[ (Harold) ‘Wilson’s private stance against going to war in Vietnam may have more practical than principled, with Wilson believing that joining the war wasn’t something the Labour Party should be doing, and that Britain simply couldn’t afford it. Despite committing no troops, Wilson still faced huge public criticism for not outright condemning the conflict – the mood was angry and rebellious, with police only just stopping protesters breaking into the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square during a protest on March 17th, 1967. When his own cabinet turned on him and asked why he wouldn't criticise the Americans, he reportedly snapped "Because we can’t kick our creditors in the balls!!”’.]

Told by Bernard Donoughue, in 216, head of the Number 10 Policy Unit during Wilson’s time as PM.

https://www.forcesnews.com/news/harold-wilson-man-who-kept-us-out-vietnam

The Independent reports that the head of the British Army, and new General Chief of Staff, General Sir Roly Walker, is shilling on behalf of the British Industrial Military Complex. ‘The threat of multiple wars involving Russia, China and Iran breaking out in three years means that British forces must double their fire power to be ready to cope... the UK and its allies had to be ready “to deter or fight a war in three years”’ but it was not ‘inevitable.’ What does he want, and when does he want it? He’s calling for a tripling of modern weaponry by 2030. And who might benefit from that?

Health warning. Likely to result in sustained,  uncontrollable laughter: ‘He added that “the need is urgent” if the Army was to “apply all strengths as a free-market democracy against the weaknesses of their rigid, autocratic, command economies”’.

Tuesday, July 23, 2024

The Olympics: Sport as Warfare

Who says history doesn’t repeat itself. At the 2024 Paris Olympics Russia and Belarus are banned from participating as national teams. Individual Russian and Belarusian athletes may take part but only under the category of Individual Neutral Athletes. It’s reported that fifteen Russian athletes have accepted these terms. Should they win medals their ‘flag’ will be teal and white and feature an AIN logo. The Russian state is considerably miffed and won’t televise any Olympic events.

The below is from the Socialist Standard August 1980. It’s titled, The Olympics: Sport as Warfare.

‘A large number of people are currently assembled in Moscow to take part in, watch, or report on, a festival of international sport which, supposedly, contributes to world peace by bringing people of different countries together in a spirit of friendly competition. The popular mythology has it that even the compilation of medal tables, so as to discover which nation has come “top”, is preferable to other ways of asserting national superiority or increasing national prestige—score, score is apparently better than war, war. In fact, those who gather in Moscow are participating in a gigantic charade—a mixture of hypocrisy, chauvinism and plain dishonesty which mirrors accurately enough the world of which it is a part.

In the first place, there is no way in which the Olympics could possibly contribute to the establishment of peace in the world. A few thousand athletes come together in this way may get to know, and understand rather better, people of differing countries and cultures (the same sort of claim has been made about the Miss World contest!), but it cannot seriously be argued that such contacts will help prevent war. Countries go to war for good (to their rulers) economic and strategic reasons, and are not going to be diverted from such designs by the fact that a few of their citizens have made friends with a few of the “enemy”. Of course, if workers refused to kill each other in defence of their masters’ interests, then wars could not take place, but such a stand implies a degree of socialist consciousness which results from something more than just taking part in the Olympics. To suggest that the Olympics can serve the cause of peace reveals a naive misunderstanding of the causes of war.

On the contrary, the Olympic Games—like international sport in general—are used as a device to inflame nationalist sentiments and to delude workers into thinking that they have some sort of interest in “their” country doing well. It won’t just be Sebastian Coe who wins a medal, it’ll be Britain—or “us”. It is national sides who compete in team sports such as hockey and football, and it is national anthems and flags that are played and raised at medal ceremonies. Jacques Julliard, in an article in Le Nouvet Observateur for December 1979, argues that the true founder of the modern Games was not Baron de Coubertin in 1896 but Adolf Hitler in 1936. It was in Berlin that the nationalist and propaganda value of the Games was first exploited fully. And it is in Hitler's footsteps that the more recent practitioners of the propaganda art are following.

As a consequence of the exploitation of a victory for nationalistic purposes, the production of sporting champions has become a major industry in a number of countries. Russia has specialist schools and institutes for the training of the talented few—and this although half of the country's schools have insufficient equipment for physical education lessons (James Riordan: Soviet Sport). It is commonplace in the West to point out that East European sportspeople, whether described as soldiers, students, or whatever, are not really amateurs but in effect full-time professional athletes. This is fair enough, but it conveniently overlooks the fact that a very similar situation obtains in the West. Athletes are employed by sports goods firms, paid to wear their running shoes, and (in America) given generous college scholarships. The modern world-class athlete, whatever their natural ability, is an expensively-produced and carefully-nurtured product, packaged in a national flag.

And usually filled up with drugs to boot! The anabolic steroids taken by shot-putters and others are the most celebrated, but there are many examples, including—most distasteful of all, perhaps—the drugs taken by girl gymnasts to arrest the advent of puberty. Sports medicine is now a highly-developed science, but nobody really knows the risks being run by the drug-takers, especially the child prodigies who are subjected to drugs from an early age. Although doping is illegal, the rules are easy enough to circumvent: stop taking your steroids a few months before you know you’ll be tested, and you can be confident you won’t be detected. Indeed, even if you are found out, you’ll probably be competing again very soon, anyway.

So the countries that win the most gold medals arc those that have the best-organised and best-financed production line for top-class athletes. Sport at international level has been taken over by the ruling classes of the various nation-states for their own ends.

Which brings us to the boycott. In protest against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, a number of national Olympic Committees have in response to a boycott campaign orchestrated by President Carter, decided not to send teams to Moscow. At the time of writing, eighty-five countries only had accepted the invitation to attend, out of a possible hundred and thirty or so, the non-acceptors including such successful nations as West Germany and the United States. It is as concerted an exercise in hypocrisy as could be imagined. Just look at some of the countries that are adopting a high and mighty moral stance and not attending. Military dictatorships such as Argentina and Pakistan. Israel, which is occupying parts of neighbouring countries. America, which till five years ago was waging a bloody war in Southeast Asia. China, which just eighteen months ago invaded Vietnam.

Looking back over recent Olympics, there have been few not marked by some particularly nasty illustration of the nature of capitalism. Just before the 1956 Games, Russia invaded Hungary, and Britain, France and Israel invaded Egypt in the Suez Crisis. Spain (!) and the Netherlands withdrew because of the Hungarian invasion, and Lebanon and Iraq because of Suez. The Mexico City Games of 1968 were preceded by the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, and by a massacre of Mexican students. Although there was a threatened boycott by African countries because of South Africa’s intended participation, nobody refused to attend Games in a country run by a government that had recently murdered some of its citizens. And in 1972 the Olympics went on despite the killing of some Israeli athletes by Palestinian guerrillas.

Even when there were no “spectacular” events of this kind, there were wars and dictatorships the whole time. It is difficult not to agree with Avery Brundage, President of the International Olympic Committee, who, in a moment of rare perception, said in 1956:

In an imperfect world, if participation in sports is to be stopped every time the politicians violate the laws of humanity, there will never be any international contests (quoted in Richard Espy: The Politics of the Olympic Games).

But of course boycotts aren’t mounted whenever there might be grounds for doing so, only when it suits those who organise them (when they are faced with a forthcoming presidential election, for instance).

It was particularly interesting to observe the humbug that surrounded the attempt by the British government to cajole the UK Olympic Committee into joining the boycott. When sports representatives pointed out that they were being expected to carry the can alone, in that the government was doing precious little else to protest about Afghanistan, Lord Carrington informed them that a trade embargo could not be considered, as it would hurt Britain more than Russia. “We are”, he said, “a trading nation.” It is then hardly surprising to learn that one British sportsman who has refused to go the the Olympics on grounds of “conscience” — is a fencer who is an army captain, in other words a man who is trained to kill (or, more likely, to order others to kill) in defence of the interests of British capitalism. His conscience won’t stop him doing that, presumably.

The deadly serious Olympic “Games”, as part of capitalism, reflect its nature and its values. The gold medals are tainted not just with the blood of Afghans, but with the essential rottenness of all class society.’

Paul Bennett

Nearly all the sports practised nowadays are competitive. You play to win, and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win . . . At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests and seriously believe—at any rate for short periods—that running, jumping and kicking a bill are tests of national virtue.’
George Orwell


https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-olympics-sport-as-warfare-1980.html




Monday, July 22, 2024

Electoral choice


An ex-Labour Prime Minister once said that a week is a long time in politics.

The American working class still have plenty of time to decide that the ‘choice’ they’re being given is no choice at all because, at the moment, the only winner of the American presidential election is capitalism.

The below is from the Socialist Standard July 2024

‘Elections are not just happening in the UK this year: around the world there have been national elections in South Africa, Bangladesh, Mexico, Taiwan, Indonesia and Pakistan already. The United States is due to have an election in November. There have even been elections in Russia and Iran and European Parliamentary elections. There may be more, but what is certain, is that a majority of the human species will vote in national-level elections at some point in this year.

This is something worth taking on board: particularly for ourselves as socialists who maintain that a worldwide revolution is possible. It becomes conceivable that in one particular year, socialist movements could win elections not just in a preponderance of states, but with a majority of the species on the planet.

This is the first time in recorded history that so many people will be engaged in this way, and the likelihood is that such occurrences will become more common. Yet, despite the spread of democracy, we still see the overall rule by a minority. The capitalist class holds sway both within and between states. The evidence is that democracy is a form of government that supports and promotes minority rule.

The first factor to take into account is the very division of the world into nation states. Many electrons have been sacrificed in recent stories about Georgia’s new Foreign Agents law (widely seen as a pro-Russian imposition to cut out western NGOs and other bodies). Yet, the UK has recently passed a similar law which makes it an offence to work as an agent of a foreign government. As it is worded, it’s not entirely inconceivable that were a part of the World Socialist Movement to win an election anywhere in the world, it could lead to our members being proscribed (as we would be acting as part of a single worldwide organisation).

On top of that is the process that can be most easily demonstrated in Russia and Iran. In both countries, great steps are taken to restrict who is able to stand, with candidates being vetted by an electoral commission. Whilst in the abstract, this could lead to protest votes being cast for smaller parties (since there are multiple candidates in the elections) the bombardment of propaganda is one-sided so people feel there is no point to voting against the incumbent (or, in many cases, will be persuaded that he is the best candidate).

In Iran, this results in very low turn-outs, down to 40 percent. In Russia, there are suggestions that the vote is inflated by outright ballot fraud and box stuffing (there are no independent observers in Russia, so it’s hard to say).

This process still happens in the ‘open’ democracies in some ways, where the barriers to standing are financial, time availability and co-ordination. Concentration of wealth gives the capitalist class minority the head start in being able to organise around winning elections.

Counting the ballots is a vulnerable point in electoral politics, hence why Donald Trump has been able to maintain his claims of voter fraud. This technique was pioneered in Kenyan Presidential elections, and works by filling the airwaves with claims of cheating, backed up by having enough energised supporters to mean the claims cannot be easily ignored. Clearly, this approach is backed up by clever psychological studies of group behaviour. All over the world, skilled professionals are paid precisely to game any election rules to try and support one faction over another.

Even where such blatant fixes aren’t in place, the whole structure of representative elections is actually stacked towards minority rule. In practice, parliaments and legislatures only ever have one vote: who is the government? Handing power to an individual executive in practice creates an elected monarch. The so-called division of power much vaunted by liberal doctrine simply frees up the executive branch to behave as it wants, with parliaments being oversight committees on the activity of the executive.

That is not to say they have no influence. Parliaments can threaten to obstruct the executive and rob it of authority. Indeed, this is a way in which minority politics operate, since it is in the interest of parliamentarians to form minority factions which threaten the overall majority, and quietly exact policies from the executive in return for their continued loyalty.

Likewise, the existence of the executive allows for a band of courtiers who jockey for position and patronage: they have privileged access to information (especially timings of announcements) and the ability to co-ordinate easily because their numbers are small and they are personally known to one another. They can offer each other jobs and opportunities to make contacts.

Here again, the inequality of wealth rears its head. The small number of courtiers can themselves be courted, and if not outright bribed, they can be made aware of the revolving door between politics and business: comfortable sinecures await those who prove sufficiently pliant to business interests. If they all move in the same circles, they form a common way of looking at the world which means they do what is needed without even having to be asked.

Informal networks and factionalising are almost inherent to human society and cannot be eliminated, but the more open and diffuse the decision structures are, the less these traits can have an effect on the outcomes of decisions. The fact that the billions who vote are in effect insulated from the day to day decisions by the election of intermediaries in parliament simply exacerbates the opportunities for scheming and domination.

Election and delegation of defined functions would continue to be an essential part of running a society based on common ownership, as would (indeed) some representative bodies. The abolition of concentrated private wealth and the active participation of the billions in ensuring that as many decisions are taken as closely as possible to the public gaze means that we can look to transforming the current means of deception and fraud into a means of liberation and effective administration for us all.’

Pik Smeet


https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2024/07/elections-worldwide-2024.html