Grenfell

 

An Unquenchable Blaze

Imagine waking at night, surrounded by flames, the air scalding your lungs. Grenfell Tower's residents experienced this horror on June 14, 2017, when the 24-story block was engulfed in fire, causing 72 deaths. The fire began with a malfunctioning fridge-freezer but spread due to the building's combustible cladding, revealing systemic safety failures in UK construction and government oversight.

Construction Failings and Cladding

Originally, fireproof cladding was planned for Grenfell's refurbishment. However, the material was downgraded to save money. Emails revealed that the cheaper, less safe cladding was chosen despite warnings. The decision, which saved £293,368, directly led to the rapid spread of fire. The cladding served more for aesthetic purposes, making the building blend in with the affluent neighbourhood of Kensington rather than improving its safety. One inquiry expert aptly described it as "a time bomb waiting to go off."

People's Disenfranchisement

The Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), responsible for managing Grenfell, repeatedly ignored safety concerns raised by residents. Residents had formed grassroots resistance against the faceless body managing their lives, but their warnings fell on deaf ears. The KCTMO, motivated by cost-cutting and profits, neglected the safety of Grenfell’s predominantly working-class residents.

Systemic Inequality and Class Divide

Grenfell Tower, located in one of London’s wealthiest boroughs, was an eyesore to its rich neighbours. While properties in the area were worth millions, Grenfell’s residents, many of whom were working-class and from immigrant backgrounds, lived in unsafe conditions. The fire has since become a powerful symbol of the deep inequalities that plague London and the UK more broadly. Survivors testified that the fire would likely not have occurred in a building housing wealthier residents, where safety standards would have been higher.

Edward Daffarn, a Grenfell resident and campaigner, stated: “We were treated as second-class citizens because of our postcode and because we were poor.” Housing in the UK is increasingly seen as a commodity rather than as satisfying a basic human need, and Grenfell epitomises the dangers of such a system. Social housing has been underfunded and neglected for decades, often outsourced to private contractors whose primary concern is profit, not safety.

Government Oversight and Accountability

The government's role in the tragedy cannot be overlooked. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 weakened fire safety regulations in an effort to reduce "red tape." Responsibility for fire risk assessments was transferred to building owners and landlords, relying on private contractors under constant pressure to cut costs.

Eric Pickles, the former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government from 2010 to 2015, played a key role in these deregulations. During his tenure, fire safety recommendations following the 2009 Lakanal House fire were largely ignored. More recently, Pickles faced backlash for his dismissive comments during the Grenfell inquiry, further highlighting the indifference toward the victims.

Corporate Negligence

The companies involved in Grenfell’s refurbishment, including Arconic, Celotex, and Rydon, prioritized profit over people’s lives. Arconic continued to supply flammable cladding despite being aware of its fire risks, as internal documents revealed. The inquiry also exposed how contractors like Rydon made decisions based on cost, often sidelining fire safety. One Rydon project manager testified that he knew about the fire risks but felt it wasn’t his role to question the overall design.

Survivor and Campaigner Testimonies

Survivors and bereaved families, represented by groups like Grenfell United, have consistently criticised the lack of accountability from authorities. They argue that Grenfell happened because the people in power saw the residents as expenses, not individuals. As survivor Edward Daffarn stated during the inquiry: “No one has been held to account for what happened at Grenfell. We don’t just want words; we want to see real change.”

Grenfell Action Group (GAG) was instrumental in raising concerns before the fire, repeatedly warning that a disaster was inevitable. Their warnings, however, were ignored. In a blog post written months before the fire, GAG chillingly predicted, “only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord.”

The Inquiry and Its Findings

The public inquiry, chaired by Sir Martin Moore-Bick, was divided into two phases. Phase one, released in 2019, focused on how the fire started and the response from emergency services. Firefighter Michael Dowden admitted in his testimony that, with hindsight, he would have done things differently.

Phase two, published on 4 September, is investigated the broader circumstances, including the decisions made during Grenfell’s refurbishment. Testimonies have revealed that fire safety was often sidelined in favour of aesthetics and cost efficiency. Architects and contractors ignored basic safety practices, contributing to the disaster. As lawyer for the survivors Stephanie Barwise KC noted, there were repeated opportunities to prevent the fire, but none were taken.

The inquiry has also shone a light on the inequality and indifference shown towards social housing tenants and marginalised communities. Survivors and campaigners continue to push for accountability and systemic reform. However, as of 2024, many feel that this remains elusive.

Housing as a Commodity

A major critique emerging from the Grenfell tragedy is how neoliberal capitalism treats housing as a commodity rather than a basic human right. Under this system, housing policy has shifted towards privatization, with little regard for the safety of those living in social housing. Dr. Lee Elliot Major, a social mobility expert, noted: “Grenfell exemplifies how housing policy in the UK, driven by neoliberal economics, has led to a profit-driven culture where the most vulnerable are treated as afterthoughts.”

The Role of Capitalism

The decisions leading to the Grenfell disaster are a reflection of capitalism’s systemic failures. The drive for profit at all costs, the deregulation of safety standards, and the neglect of social housing tenants are all inherent features of this economic system. As a result, the lives of working-class people are deemed expendable in the pursuit of wealth.

In 2017 David Lammy (now the Foreign Secretary), summed up the situation: “This is what happens when you deregulate and allow market forces to dictate safety in housing. Profit comes first, people come second.”

Grenfell is not just a story of corporate and governmental negligence; it is a symbol of deep-seated inequality. The fire exposed the glaring class divides in London, where working-class residents of social housing are treated as expendable. Survivors and campaigners remain determined to hold those responsible accountable and to ensure that no other community suffers the same fate.

‘Justice for Grenfell’ is not merely about criminal charges or compensation—it is about systemic change, ending capitalism with its class inequality and profit priority.

Swallowing Capitalism Hook, Line and Sinker

The Guardian has a piece on a survey which says that ‘Britons struggle to name common fish, while two-fifths admit that they have “only ever eaten it in batter or breadcrumbs”.’ 

‘Over half of those surveyed had no idea that a John Dory was a spiny fish; 12% mistakenly thought “he” was a famous poet, according to the Marine Stewardship Council poll.

‘Another 6% said the only pollock they had heard of was the American artist Jackson Pollock. A similar number thought that a hake was a garden tool.’

Would Jackson pollock fans have been delighted that as many as six per cent recognised who he was? A hake might easily be a dialect word for a rake so is excusable.

‘It confirmed that 60% had never tried John Dory, which is a common sea fish…’ To show how surveys should always be taken with a pinch of salt, and lots of vinegar if eating fish and chips, this writer read ‘John Dory’ as ‘Richard Cory’, a Simon and Garfunkel song about an American capitalist.

The poll came from the Marine Stewardship Council, who say that in September they are, ‘encouraging people to try something different”, particularly sustainable varieties of fish and seafood caught by fishing communities around the UK.’ So a marketing exercise then.

So how many, or how few, would respond to a survey asking what was the cause of many of the life problems they were experiencing on a day to day basis? Would ‘capitalism’ top the list? Knowledge is power. The MSC is encouraging people to learn more about fish.

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2024/sep/13/garden-hake-poet-john-dory-ignorance-fish-is-off-the-scale

The below is from the Socialist Standard March 1942

Conchies equals Conscientious Objectors

‘The Sunday Pictorial publishes letters from its readers under the title of "Voice of the People." On Sunday, January 25th, a hater of conchies urged that they should all be made to catch fish with pay at 1s. a day. Alternatively, they should be issued with conspicuously marked ration books which only allowed them foods which men have NOT risked their lives to get.

[This is similar to Covid when people who said they would inject themselves with unknown substances were threatened with all sorts of additional freedom restrictions.]

So conchies should catch fish for one shilling a day! Speaking of fish, we remember a time when particularly large catches of fish were thrown back into the sea. This happened, of course, in the piping days of peace and prosperity. They were discarded, because certain interested capitalists feared that so large an abundance might interfere with their rate of profit. Many workers, particularly the free unemployed, would have enjoyed some of this "surplus" fish.

May we be permitted to suggest that it would be quite a good idea to make the individuals responsible do a spot of fishing themselves. Possibly, after several months at sea, they would consider the advisability of tipping unwanted catches into the briny.

But, of course, these people are not conscientious objectors. They are busy trying to fight, or urging others to fight, for freedom—the freedom to burn food, pour milk down the drains, use wheat as fuel, and, of course, thrown fish into the sea, as their profit-making activities require.

The view that conchies should not be allowed to eat food for which other men have risked their lives affords us some cynical amusement. Workers also risk their lives during the periods of capitalist peace. They suffer mutilation and death in the mines and factories. And the fruit of their labour is used to make easy and joyful the lives of the propertied few. Shall we issue these people with specially marked ration books? But ah, they are not conscientious objectors.’

Kaye

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2015/06/fish-and-conchies-1942.html

Terrorism versus terrorism: Reflections on 9/11

 ‘The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. On that morning, 19 terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners scheduled to travel from the East Coast to California. The hijackers crashed the first two planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and aimed the next two flights toward targets in or near Washington, D.C., in an attack on the nation's capital. The third team succeeded in striking the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense in Arlington County, Virginia, while the fourth plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania during a passenger revolt. The September 11 attacks killed 2,977 people, making it the deadliest terrorist attack in history. In response to the attacks, the United States waged the multi-decade global war on terror to eliminate hostile groups deemed terrorist organizations, as well as the foreign governments purported to support them, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and several other countries. ‘

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks

The below is from the Socialist Standard October 2001

'Usama bin Laden’s photograph has been splashed across every newspaper front page in the world. He has replaced Saddam Hussein as the World’s No. 1 Mad Man. Already there is a $10 million price on his head. George W Bush has spoken of the old Wild West wanted posters and how bin Laden’s name is now on one. But who is bin Laden and how did he come to prominence?

Usama bin Laden is a billionaire Islamic fundamentalist, former US ally and protégé, who fronts a terrorist organisation whose fighters were trained and financed by the CIA during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. The US, in fact, were arming groups like the notorious Mujahedin a full six months before the Russian invasion of December 1979 and it is estimated that at the Russian withdrawal, US aid to them totalled $5 billion (this monetary support for some seven fundamentalist and extremist groups beginning after 1980 when Reagan quadrupled the CIA budget to £36 billion). Even after the Russian withdrawal, the US still supported the Mujahedin, though more covertly now and through Pakistan’s version of the CIA, the ISI. What they were—and still are—up to is perhaps best revealed in the words of Jimmy Carter’s adviser Zbigniev Brzezinski who described Afghanistan at the time as “the greatest chessboard”.

Most favoured status
The Islamic zealots the US are prepared to annihilate in Afghanistan were afforded most favoured status during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Under the Carter administration and beginning in 1980, they were trained in their thousands at the CIA’s Camp Peary and at the ex-army base at Harvey Point in Carolina; by the Green Berets at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and indeed by the SAS in Scotland. They would go on to be trained at Fort A.P. Hill, just off the Washington-Richmond interstate highway, and at Camp Picket in Virginia by Green Berets and US Navy SEALS. This was not simply “basic” training. They were trained in over 60 deadly skills, including the use of sophisticated fuses, timers and explosives, remote control devices for land mines, incendiary devices and the use of automatic weapons with armour-piercing shells. Thus the US went about supporting a ten-year long Jihad in the hope of preventing Russian state capitalism expanding its empire in central Asia southwards towards the Indian Ocean.

Following the car bomb attack at the World Trade Centre eight years ago, four of those arrested and charged with the attack were found to be linked to bin Ladens’s al-Qaeda organisation and amongst those trained by the US (Robert Fox, New York’s regional FBI director revealed this in a TV interview in 1993). When the US attacked bin Laden’s bases near the village of Khost in Afghanistan (along with the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory) following attacks on US embassies in Africa, they could do so with pin point accuracy for the CIA had planned and designed them.

The US is now reaping the bitter harvest of its foreign policy which used Islamic fundamentalism as a puppet in its perennial game of globo-political profit-making. For years it courted some of the most dangerous, conservative and fanatical followers of Islam, but the capitalist globalisation process, which the US has pursued obsessively, has served to make political Islam more reactionary in defence of its own culture and strategic interests.

Covert terrorism
Whilst the world is outraged at the terrorist attacks on the USA mainland, it must be remembered that the US has been conducting and supporting just as deadly covert acts of terrorism around the globe for 50 years. For instance, the US and Britain supported Suharto’s military coup in Indonesia in 1966, which resulted in the deaths of 600,000 mainly ethnic Chinese supporters of the Indonesian “Communist” Party, the PKI. And it was the US who toppled (also on an 11 September) the elected Allende government in Chile which resulted in thousands of deaths and countless disappearances. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and massacred 17,500, this act of terror was supported by the US.

Since 1945 the US has toppled some 30 governments and supported every dictator imaginable (Pol Pot, Mobuto, Amin, Marcos, Papa Doc Duvalier and Saddam Hussein) whilst seriously interfering in the domestic affairs of almost 70 countries.

In recent years the US has devastated Iraq in continuous bombing raids – even for using radar to scan airspace from which its air force is excluded. During the 40-day Gulf War, US planes dropped 177 million pounds of explosives on Iraq – the greatest aerial bombardment in history. It has imposed sanctions on Iraq that have resulted in the deaths of perhaps two million people and bombed Iraq in defence of the Kurds from the same air bases Turkey has used to bomb Kurdish villages. In the wake of the Gulf War, the US mercilessly attacked a retreating Iraqi army on the Basra road and quite literally fried to death 60,000 ill-equipped, ill-trained soldiers, the vast majority never wanting any part in the conflict in the first place. Two weeks ago, the US and Britain again joined hands in a bombing raid on Iraq. It wasn’t even reported in most Western newspapers. And where is the three-minutes’ silence for the 500,000 Iraqi children who have died of hunger and disease as a result of US sanctions in the past 10 years – a figure which Madeleine Albright described recently as “a price worth paying”?

There was of course a time when the US couldn’t help Iraq enough. During the Iran-Iraq war, the US gave its full blessing to Iraqi atrocities, even supplying Iraq with the chemical weapons it used on the small town of Halabjah in 1988 with the loss of 5,000 innocent lives. Indeed, in 1987 when Iraq attacked the USS Stark, killing 37 servicemen, there was no US response as the White House was keen at the time that Iraq got the upper hand in its war with Iran so as weaken Iran’s threat to the West’s oil supplies.

The US has launched attacks upon Libya, Somalia and Grenada, propped up right wing tendencies in Panama, Chile, Brazil, Haiti, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Colombia. In Africa it supported the gangster Savimbi as he tried to make Angola more hellish for its impoverished millions, adopted a policy of “constructive engagement” with South Africa’s apartheid machine and was all to willing to shoulder up with South Africa in its war with the frontline states. In the Middle East it has propped up despotic regimes in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf whilst at the same time backing Israel. This year alone Israel is receiving $6 in free US aid, in direct contravention of Congress rulings. During the retaliatory raids following the attacks on the US embassies in Africa, the US fired 70 cruise missiles into Afghanistan and killed many thousands in Sudan (a true figure is not available because the US blocked the proposed UN inquiry). The US ruling class’s catalogue of shame is indeed a deep one and we can only begin to scratch at its surface

Appalling losses of life
Whilst the 11 September attack resulted in an appalling loss of innocent life which no sane person could condone, the wonder is that the US has escaped the attention of terrorists for so long. For the poignant truth is that there are millions who have been murdered defeated, demoralised, impoverished and crushed by the US ruling class and its allies and who could well have turned to the pathos of terrorism as a means of evening up the score. Who knows the number of US-created Frankensteins walking the world, prepared to destroy the life of their master? This is not to suggest the US “deserves” to be bombed, but hints at the number of enemies the US ruling class has created in pursuit of global domination, forever trying to carve out larger chunks of the world on behalf of its corporate elite.

If we set this terrorist attack in a wider context, however, the loss of life in New York and Washington, whilst horrendous, is by no means the worst there has been. For instance, we can’t realistically comprehend the horror of the dying days of World War Two when, in one night alone, 100,000 died in a 1000-bomber raid on Dresden. If we make a comparison to the present, is it not an atrocity that 40,000 children die of starvation each day? Is it not a most heinous crime when 1,000 children die each hour of preventable disease (these are UNICEF statistics) and do we not find sickening the thought that twice that number of women die or suffer disability during pregnancy because of a lack of simple remedies or medical attention? We are speaking here of a Hiroshima a day which never gets reported, which is taken as accepted because it is so much a part of our way of life in capitalist society. Where is the 25-page newspaper pull-out that accompanies the recent WHO revelation that more people died of starvation in the last two years than were killed in two world wars?

Whilst we gasp in disbelief at the deaths of 5,000 workers in the biggest terrorist attack in history, it is worth pausing and remembering that the US, Britain, France, China and Russia have between them thousands of nuclear weapons capable of destroying the planet a hundred times over. Any one of these war-heads is indeed capable of creating death and destruction on a scale that would make the attack in question look like a playground firecracker. Where are the protests at this arsenal of destruction?

This in no way diminishes the fact that there has been an enormous loss of life in the USA. Those lying dead beneath the rubble in New York are our fellow workers—make no mistake about it—members of the working class, murdered whilst they were being exploited. Whilst we are revolted, as socialists we certainly do not crave the comfort of revenge. We take a more considered view.

Civilisation?
Western leaders have claimed the attack to be an assault on civilisation. But what is this civilisation that has been attacked, where 600 million have no home, where 800 million are chronically malnourished, where 1 billion have no access to clean water? What is this civilisation where three individuals have more wealth than the combined income of the world’s 48 poorest nations? How can we defend a “civilisation” where food is destroyed to keep prices high and scientists employed on weapons programmes whilst children die of preventable disease?

Since the attacks on New York and Washington, The US and British media has become a history exclusion zone, feeding only the whipped-up contagion of patriotism, whilst flag-waving and the repetitious singing of anthems trigger, in Pavlovian fashion, a national epidemic of jingoism, the only cure for which is reprisals. The dominant view is that extremists the world over are intent on destroying democracy and western civilisation – a near sighted perspective which washes well with a news-hungry audience whose knowledge of US foreign policy and basic international affairs makes it impossible for them to separate reality from distortion.

US Vice President Dick Cheney has demanded bin Laden’s head on a platter whilst his liege, Bush, informs the world that the US will not only target terrorists but those who harbour terrorists. The popular vision now is of US F-16’s and stealth bombers leaving US bases in Diego Garcia, Incilirik and from the carriers of the 5th and 6th fleets in the Middle East, their mission to level the breeding ground of Islamic terrorism – Afghanistan and any other states suspected of wittingly giving them refuge.

For the belligerent Bush, a war-monger long before his ascendancy to the White House, the terrorist attacks on mainland USA must be a blessing in disguise, providing Republican hawks and their bellicose corporate backers with a prime pretext with which to reinforce US hegemonic credentials and perhaps forge ahead with a costly National Missile Defense System now that the reality has struck home that the USA, or rather its profit-mongers and military machine, are loathed around the world.

The attacks on the US will perhaps serve to show Republican hawks the futility of this proposal. These hijacked planes could well have flown into nuclear power stations or bases containing US stockpiles of biological weapons (the US is the world’s biggest stockpiler of such weapons). They may well have carried small nuclear devices. The most sophisticated missile defence system imaginable simply cannot be programmed to read the mind of a religious fanatic incensed with the notion that his death (and those of 10,000 infidels with him) is a passport to heaven.

Bush may well speak of the terrorism the US faces from Islamic fundamentalism, but what about the global threat from US fundamentalism? Since coming to power, Bush has helped scupper the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on emissions and all but wiped his presidential backside on the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. His attitude to treaties and conventions suggests he has already declared war on the planet and that US foreign policy will continue as before and with one aim – to ensure the 21st Century is another “American Century”.

Bush claims that this is the first war of the 21st Century but it is just one battle in a larger war that began in 1945 with the US determined to control the world’s resources, and there is more than ample evidence to prove this. More importantly, though, The entire episode serves to show the insanity of the system we live in, and the desperate need to wrest control of our planet away from the madmen before it is indeed too late. In the 20th century, some 220 million lost their lives in wars, in conflicts over trade routes, areas of influence, foreign markets, mineral wealth and the strategic points from which the same can be defended or in other words, in the name of profit.

The solution to the ongoing insanity, we insist, remains the same. There is one world and we exist as one people in need of each other and with the same basic needs. There is far more that unites us than can ever divide us along cultural, nationalistic or religious lines. Together we can create a civilisation worth living in, but before that happens we need the conscious Cupertino of ordinary people across the world, united in one common cause – to create a world in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation, a world without borders or frontiers, social classes or leaders and a world in which production is at last freed from the artificial constraints of profit and used for the good of humanity – socialism.'

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2001/no-1167-october-2001/editorial-terrorism-versus-terrorism/

Socialist Sonnet No. 163

Progress

 

The entrepreneur and the go-getter

Engineered the world as it is today.

The obsolete banished, progress holds sway

Still, but is frustrated by a fetter

From realising what could be achieved,

If no longer bound by need for profit.

All human needs could readily be met

Once society’s finally relieved

Of the burden of money. People can

Decide en masse how their interests elide,

Once they choose to create a worldwide

Commonwealth. What capitalism began

Will be realised when social schism

Is resolved through progress to socialism.

 

D. A.

Hurting the old.

There’s always someone worse of than yourself is a truism. Across the world there are many who continue to live, and die, because of the conflicts, armed and poverty driven, that are the inevitable consequences of the insane social system which we continue to endure.

Not to downplay the intolerant sufferings which are affecting victims of capitalism but everything is relative. Whist not on a par with the events noted above today may see bombshells drop through the letter box, and into the email accounts, of many thousands in the UK, causing them great concern and stress. The reason? Notification that their energy utility costs will once again rise from the first of October.

There is a vote in parliament today to decide whether to remove the Winter Fuel allowance from millions of pensioners. SOYMB predicts that there will be plenty of crocodile tears on display on various television and other media news programmes tomorrow after the vote has passed. Can we expect to see Lucy Powell doing the media rounds again echoing Maggie Thatcher, there was no alternative!

The below is from the Socialist Standard October 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2022/10/a-fair-price-for-power-2022.html

Little Red Book: "Meaningless Twaddle"

 

9 September 1976 – death of Mao Zedong

From the Socialist Standard February 1975

It is the purpose of this article to show what Mao really stands for by examining The Thoughts of Chairman Mao (“The Little Red Book”). This Chinese Bible contains extracts from Mao’s voluminous writings. There are quotes from his early works written when as a guerrilla leader, Mao (and his Red Army) were such a thorn in the side of the Chiang-Kai-Shek regime, right through to the 1960’s. Now Mao’s ideas are so influential in China that they actually do serve as the equivalent of religious dogma. Perhaps when Mao does die, he will be made the first communist saint. His position after the cultural revolution was so secure that he was able to bump off his supposed successor Lin Piao (not to mention poor old Confucius). When the veneer of rhetoric is stripped away what has Mao done and said?

The first point to make is that Mao Tse-Tung has led a backward economy along the harsh road of advanced capitalism. He has also led the Chinese development into a military power to be reckoned with. We are not saying that there is not less famine now than before 1949, or that Mao’s regime is more (or less) oppressive than the previous one, or that technical advances have not been made. But at what cost in terms of human suffering. As Marx graphically put in Volume 1 of Capital:

“Capital is dead labour that vampire-like only lives by sucking living labour and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” (p.233, Lawrence and Wishart edition.)

It is not that the Chinese hero necessarily wants to be inhumane, destructive and oppressive to the Chinese people — it is that the development of capitalism inevitably results in poverty, shortages and deprivation for the majority. If Mao pursues the development of capitalism, he must also pursue the miseries inextricably associated with that development.

Mao’s own words show that he is in favour of keeping the Chinese workers in poverty. In 1958 (nine years after the revolution!) he wrote:

Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China’s 600 million people is that they are “poor and blank”. This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing (p. 36 — our emphasis).

It must be such a comfort for the poverty-stricken Chinese to know their leader thinks it is good for them to be poor. Mao does not make it clear that he thinks it is good for the leaders to be poor!

So far as one can tell the Little Red Book is compulsory learning in China. Indeed the introduction in the edition still being circulated over here (ironically by the disgraced Lin Piao) makes it clear that the workers should commit the book to memory in order that Mao’s guidance can help them in their daily problems. The book proves beyond doubt our contention that nothing but capitalism is being developed in China:

The spontaneous forces of capitalism have been steadily growing in the countryside in recent years, with new rich peasants springing up everywhere and many well-to-do middle peasants striving to become rich peasants. On the other hand, many poor peasants are still living in poverty, (p.33—a passage written in 1955)

Mind you, even on basis of trying to develop capitalism, Mao’s book is full of meaningless twaddle. What sort of guidance do you think the production teams on the Chinese factory floor get from the following:

“Grasp firmly.” That is to say, the Party committee must not merely “grasp”, but must “grasp firmly”, its main task. One can get a grip on something only when it is grasped firmly, without the slightest slackening. Not to grasp firmly is not to grasp at all. Naturally, one cannot get a grip on something with an open hand. When the hand is clenched as if grasping something but is not clenched tightly, there is still no grip...It will not do to have no grasp at all, nor will it do if the grasp is not firm, (p.111)

Secondly, Mao has been largely responsible for the giant confidence trick that has been so successfully played on the Chinese workers. By using phrases referring to common ownership, “Marxism”, and that contradiction “Marxism-Leninism”, he has duped large sections of the working class, both in and out of China, into thinking that Socialism is being established there. The merest glance at the Little Red Book will suffice to show how far Mao is from an understanding of either Marx or Socialism.

For example, Mao thinks that capitalism in Russia has been overthrown. He says that in Russia capitalism is a “museum piece”, (p.23) One can only wonder how this “Marxist” reconciles the existence of a wages system in Russia with Marx’s revolutionary call in Wages Price and Profit or the “abolition of the wages system.” He has even got the cheek to repeat that wretched reformist call for women to be paid equal wages to men (see page 197). He implicitly admits that women are not paid the same as men in China (and see also Socialist Standard November 1974). Women’s Lib fans of Mao, please note.

The whole principle of leadership is abhorrent to the Socialist. Socialism cannot be brought about by leaders but only by the democratic conscious actions of the workers themselves. Mao is firmly wedded to the idea of leadership and, one must assume, the benefits that go with it. He has after all been the chief leader since 1949 and the Little Red Book is riddled with statements about the importance of leadership (see for example at p.106 with his talk of “squad leaders”. ) Incidentally the book also points out that in 1958 only 10 million out of a population of 600 million were members of the Chinese Communist Party. Is it that the other 590 million don’t want to join or that they are not allowed to join?

In order to ensure that the workers are kept down. Mao can’t resist urging on them abstinence and sacrifice:

To make China rich and strong needs several decades of intense effort, which will include, among other things, the effort to practise strict economy and combat waste i.e. the policy of building up our country through diligence and frugality, (p.186)

If those words had been spoken by Wilson or Heath in crisis-ridden Britain you would not have been surprised.

The similarity between Mao and other capitalist politicians is so striking as to make one rub one’s eyes in disbelief at the sight of people in the West waving banners with Mao’s picture on them and proudly calling themselves “Maoists”. Mao is just as much an anti-Socialist as his one-time hero Stalin was. They both have in common the fact that they successfully exercised a dictatorship over the proletariat in their own country. When workers throughout the world learn to examine the contents of the packet and refuse just to accept the label, the fraud of Mao Tse-Tung will also be a “Museum piece”.

Ronnie Warrington

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/09/who-is-mao-tse-tung-1975.html

Egypt arming Ukraine, not Ukraine but Somalia

 

Capitalism causes conflict all over the world. There will be no warring states under socialism because the nation state will be superfluous’

‘Egypt has delivered military aid to Somalia for the first time in more than four decades, Reuters reported, citing three diplomatic and Somali government sources. The support comes in the wake of a maritime dispute between Mogadishu and Ethiopia.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said two Egyptian military planes arrived at the airport in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, loaded with weapons and ammunition.

Cairo struck a defence agreement with Mogadishu in January to strengthen the East African nation’s military capacity after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi warned that his government would not tolerate anyone threatening Somalia’s security or infringing on its territory.

The security cooperation came in response to the Somali government’s previous appeal for international support against Ethiopia for reaching a deal with breakaway Somaliland to lease 20km (12 miles) of coastal land. The January 1 pact would allow the landlocked state to gain access to the Red Sea and build a marine force base, reportedly in exchange for recognition of Somaliland’s independence.

Mogadishu, which considers Somaliland to be part of its territory despite the region declaring de facto independence in 1991, rejected the port access deal, calling it an act of aggression and a threat to its sovereignty.

While pledging support for Somalia at the time, Cairo, which is also embroiled in a years-long dispute with Ethiopia over the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile, accused Addis Ababa of being a source of regional instability.

Ethiopia has consistently rejected the allegations. Redwan Hussien, the national security adviser to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, described condemnations of the deal as “jingoism” designed to sow discord and chaos.

In June, Mogadishu threatened to expel thousands of Ethiopian soldiers involved in fighting the terrorist group al-Shabaab in Somalia ahead of a new African Union-led mission if Addis Ababa failed to annul the agreement with the breakaway region. It had previously dismissed Ethiopia’s ambassador and last week threatened to ban Ethiopian Airlines from its territory, claiming that Africa’s largest flight operator had undermined Somali sovereignty.

Egypt has reportedly offered to contribute troops to the AU peacekeeping force in the conflict-torn Horn of Africa nation.

In a statement, the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry accused Somalia of “colluding with external actors aiming to destabilize the region,” despite “tangible progress” in Turkish-mediated talks between the two countries to resolve the maritime dispute.

Addis Ababa has warned that the new mission poses a threat to the East African region, claiming that concerns raised by Ethiopia and other regional troop contributors have not been addressed.

“Ethiopia cannot stand idle while other actors are taking measures to destabilize the region. Ethiopia is vigilantly monitoring developments in the region that could threaten its national security,” the ministry said.’

Mr Underwoods' have full Labour government support.

 Hoist your Union Flags! Sing three choruses of Rule Britannia! Britain has a ‘world leading British defence industry.’ Yes we can beat Johnny foreigner hands down when it comes to exporting death and destruction. It’s all to defend democracy don’t ya know. What number under the heading, why capitalism needs to be abolished, does this come? Who knows, there are too many to list.

‘From a UK Ministry of Defence (i.e. Ministry of War) press release, 6 September

‘The UK will supply 650 Lightweight Multirole Missile (LMM) systems to Ukraine to boost the country’s air defence capabilities, as part of the new government’s commitment to Ukraine.

The air defence package will be announced by Defence Secretary John Healey MP today at the Ukraine Defence Contact Group (UDCG) meeting at US Air Force Base in Ramstein – his first as Defence Secretary. At the 24th meeting of the group, the Defence Secretary will set out the UK’s ironclad commitment to Ukraine and urge allies to continue to supply Ukraine with vital equipment.

It comes following a bilateral meeting between John Healey and his Ukrainian counterpart Rustem Umerov in London earlier this week, where the pair discussed how the UK will continue to ramp-up support over the coming months. At that meeting, the Defence Secretary confirmed that £300 million worth of artillery ammunition, procured by the IFU, will start to be delivered by the end of this year to support Ukraine’s war effort.

In keeping with the new government’s commitment to speed up deliveries of aid, the first batch of LMM missiles announced today are also expected to be delivered by the end of this year.

Today’s package is part of the UK’s work to help step up UK and European defence production - with today’s £162 million order helping to energise the supply chain for the future. Built by Thales at their Belfast factory, the missiles are highly versatile and can be fired from a variety of platforms on land, sea, and air.

The package is primarily funded through the UK’s £3 billion a year financial package for Ukraine, and contributions from Norway through the International Fund for Ukraine (IFU) and follows the Prime Minister and Defence Secretary’s commitment to stand by Ukraine will continue for as long as it takes.

It comes after the Defence Secretary signed a new Defence Export Support Treaty with his counterpart Umerov in July, during President Zelesnkyy’s visit to Downing Street. The agreement will fire up both the UK’s and Ukraine’s defence industrial bases and increase military hardware and weaponry production. The treaty will enable Ukraine to draw on £3.5 billion of export finance to support its war effort.

Defence Secretary, John Healey MP said:

This new commitment will give an important boost to Ukraine’s air defences and demonstrates our new government’s commitment to stepping up support for Ukraine. 

In recent days we have seen the tragic cost of Russia’s indiscriminate strikes on Poltava and Lviv. These new UK-made missiles will support Ukraine to defend its people, infrastructure, and territory from Putin’s brutal attacks.

With our international partners today, we will show that we are united for Ukraine. And we will discuss how best we can work together to improve support. Because the security of the UK and Europe starts in Ukraine.

Since Russia’s illegal invasion, the UK has provided hundreds of LMM missiles to Ukraine for air defence, destroying hundreds of Russian drones and other air threats.

Travelling at Mach 1.5 with a range of more than 6km, the LMM is highly versatile against a wide range of threats, including Armoured Personnel Carriers, fast in-shore attack craft and Unmanned drones.

This contract with Thales in the UK will further prime the world leading British defence industry to increase production rates, enabling future production to be ramped up.

A Thales spokesperson said:

As a strategic partner of UK Government, Thales is proud to be working with MoD to support defending democracy in Ukraine through the provision of our Lightweight Multi-role Missile, delivered from our Belfast site.

Since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, UK MoD and Thales have worked in close collaboration to support the Ukrainian effort by delivering key air defence systems at pace. We are pleased that this contract is the first to be signed under Task Force Hirst, which has been established to deliver a deeper defence industrial partnership between the UK and Ukraine.

Earlier this week, the Government confirmed a milestone moment in international support for Ukraine, with eight countries from across the world having now joined the UK to provide more than £1 billion to the International Fund for Ukraine (IFU), in a significant show of unity from Ukraine’s allies.

The IFU was first launched by the UK and Denmark in 2022 to provide an efficient way for countries to pool resources to buy equipment and weapons to support Ukraine’s most urgent capability needs. The UK has donated £500 million to the Fund to date.

This is also the first contract approved under Task Force Hirst, a MOD initiative created to ramp up defence industrial capacity and capability, laying the foundation for larger sustained supply of missiles and other key capabilities to Ukraine and, in the longer term, enable industrial cooperation between our two countries.’

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-to-provide-162-million-package-of-air-defence-missiles-for-ukraine-as-defence-secretary-meets-international-partners

Wigan Diggers Festival 7 September Begins 11.15 am

 

WIGAN DIGGERS FESTIVAL

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Event Details

• Date: September 7, 2024 11:15 am – 4:30 pm

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Saturday 7 September, from 11.15 am
Wigan Diggers Festival
Gerrard Winstanley Gardens, The Wiend, Wigan town centre, WN1 1PF
The Socialist Party will have a stall at this event

Socialist Sonnet No. 162

Cultivating the Rose

 

Standing in the Downing Street Rose Garden

Amongst deadheads, the new prime minister

Is making his withering vision clear,

Peering through rich man’s spectacles. Number ten

Is significant, as it’ll be a decade

At least before social democratic

Austerity eases, having done the trick

Of promising progress will have been made

Towards a fairer, wealthier nation.

Meanwhile, more will have to make do with less,

Even as a privileged few prosper. Guess

Who? Such is the dismal situation.

All those who voted for change can be sure

The Rose Garden scent is bovine ordure.

 

D. A.

Labour shed Crocodile tears à plenty

A Socialist writes: 

‘The Labour Party has sent us an email from Sir Keith Starmer addressing us, rather presumptuously, as “Friend”.

Here are some extracts:

“Frankly, things will get worse before they get better.”

“I’ll have to turn to the country and make big asks of you as well. To accept short term pain for long term good. The difficult trade-off for the genuine solution. And I know that after all you’ve been through, that is a really big ask …”

Actually it’s a bloody cheek.

How many times have government asked workers to put up with pain on the promise that things will get better? That before we can reach the sunny uplands we have to pass through the Valley of Austerity? Or that if we tighten our belts today we’ll get Jam Tomorrow?

It’s the standard government line when the state of the capitalist economy forces them to give priority to profit-making over meeting people’s needs.

As of course is for an incoming government to blame the outgoing one rather than capitalism.’

Are the Sir Humphries having a joke?

Sometimes one is driven to use intemperate language as an antidote to the otherwise detrimental effect upon the body’s blood pressure.

There is B_________ and then there’s the B__________ that politicians come out with.

The latest example comes from Lucy Powell who is a Labour (sic) MP and Leader of the House of Commons.

In an interview she said, that was no alternative to removing the Winter Fuel Allowance from millions of Pensioners and the government was ‘really sorry’. She could at least have said that it was ‘really, really sorry.’

As justification for the saving of one and a half billion pounds a year she iterated that if such a step had not been taken disaster would have overtaken British capitalism with financial markets losing confidence, government borrowing costs going up, a run on the pound and the pound crashing. Sure Jan.

‘There is no alternative’ was a favourite saying of Margaret Thatcher.

‘Thatcherism’ was a political style: abrasive; uncompromising; and ruthless. It was unapologetic. ‘There Is No Alternative’ she said and hammered the words home again and again. Her message was simple and accurate. Capitalism runs in accordance with its own laws and, despite the assertions of many politicians, offers little choice to those who claim to run it. TINA cut back on government spending, opened the nationalised industries to the discipline of the market, allowed unprofitable businesses to fail and sank her teeth into the miners. She was very, very thorough.’

Socialist Standard Thatcher, the Icon. May 2013

The most charitable reason which SOYMB can come up with for the nonsense which Powell expressed is that the Sir Humphries of the Civil Service laid a bet with each other other as to who could get the most outrageous and stupid remarks made in public by a Labour politician.

The joke, however, is on us. The continued support of the majority class in electing pro capitalism politicians, of whatever hue, to pretend that reformism will benefit said class, is of benefit only to the capitalist class.

The benefits of a socialist society where quality goods and services are produced for use, not profit, goes far beyond the economic. Lives which under global capitalism are lost to wars, poverty, stress and all of the ills visited upon the majority everyday will no longer be lost.

As Billy Connolly said, ‘“The desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever becoming one.”

When The Socialist Party puts forward candidates in elections it is with the aim of furthering socialism, not to shill for capitalism.

Brazil attempt to shut down free speech: Suggested responses.

 

Excuse the military comparison; during World War Two when asked to surrender by German forces at the Battle of the Bulge, American General McAuliffe simply replied ‘Nuts.’ Far be it from us to tell capitalists what to do but perhaps Elon Musk should reply to the Brazilian capitalist executive committee with a similar response.

Alternatively he could use the response that Private Eye used in response to a legal threat, Arkell versus Pressdram, 1971. Reader discretion advised.

Brazil isn’t the first State to try and shut down free speech and it won’t be the last. This is a free speech issue and is important to everyone who resents and resists attempts by governments to control even more than they do the dissemination of ideas and opinions which threaten the status quo.

‘Alexandre de Moraes of the Supreme Court of Brazil has ordered the operations of X (formerly Twitter) to be “immediately suspended” and threatened draconian fines against anyone trying to sidestep the ban.

De Moraes demanded that X censor several accounts that “spread disinformation” by criticizing him, but the platform’s owner Elon Musk refused.

On 29 August the judge ordered the platform banned in Brazil, giving Google and Apple five days to remove X from their app stores. He also threatened a fine of around 50,000 Brazilian real (approximately $8,874) a day for anyone using a virtual private network (VPN) to get around the ban.

“Free speech is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes,” Musk said in response to the order.

Musk also called de Moraes “an evil dictator cosplaying as a judge” and accused President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva of being his “lapdog.”

On Thursday, de Moraes froze the accounts of Starlink, a subsidiary of Musk’s SpaceX, saying this was needed to ensure the payment of fines levied against X for failing to appoint a legal representative. Musk objected to the “absolutely illegal action” taken without any due process, pointing out that X and SpaceX are “two completely different companies with different shareholders.”

According to X’s Global Government Affairs team, de Moraes “threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts.”

“Our challenges against his manifestly illegal actions were either dismissed or ignored,” the company said, pledging to make public all the related court filings in the interest of transparency. “Unlike other social media and technology platforms, we will not comply in secret with illegal orders.”

The US embassy in Brazil said only it was “monitoring the situation,” adding that “freedom of expression is a fundamental pillar in a healthy democracy.”

The dispute began earlier this year, when de Moraes ordered X to suspend the accounts belonging to several supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro, calling them “digital militants” who spread “disinformation” about himself and the court. Musk refused, calling the order a violation of Brazilian laws.’

Socialist Standard 1441 September 2024 Now Online

 

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020s/2024/no-1441-september-2024/