USA Homelessness

 Capitalism would rather waste resources on wars than provide roofs over the heads of its populace.

It's reported that 'The number of homeless people in the United States has reached a record level since the federal government began tracking the figures in 2007. According to data released this week, almost three quarters of a million people, 771,000 are homeless in America, an increase of 18% compared to 2023, marking the sharpest annual rise in decades.

The figure published by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on Friday translates to approximately 23 out of every 10,000 people in the US. The increase follows a 12% rise in 2023, which the department attributed to skyrocketing rents and to the conclusion of pandemic assistance.

A severe lack of affordable housing nationwide is being compounded by “rising inflation, stagnating wages among middle- and lower-income households, and the persisting effects of systemic racism,” natural disasters, and an influx of migrants without access to stable housing, according to the HUD statement.

Median rent was up 20% in January 2024 from rent costs for the same month three years earlier, the National Low Income Housing Coalition wrote in March.

According to the HUD, there has been a 39% increase this year in the number of individuals in families with children who depended on shelters or slept outside. This amounts to approximately 259,000 people, the highest figure recorded since data collection began.

The report also shows that nearly 150,000 children were homeless on the targeted January night, a 33% increase from the previous year’s count. Meanwhile, the number of veterans experiencing homelessness declined by 8% from 2023.

The new homelessness figures come amid the Biden administration’s pledge to increase funding for affordable housing and expand services aimed at preventing homelessness. However, advocacy groups argue that more systemic reforms are needed, such as stronger tenant protections, rent controls, and a focus on mental health and addiction services.

The US Supreme Court ruled in June that cities may ban homeless residents from sleeping outside; more than 100 jurisdictions around the country have since taken steps in that direction, Associated Press writes.'

New year reflections

 

From the January 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘I've hated Christmas for as long as I can remember. Since the day when, as a child, I realised that I'd been conned every year of my short life by stories about Father Christmas only bringing toys to good children — a sort of "no-strike" agreement in return for a Christmas bonus between me and my mother. Later I realised that all of Christmas is a con — from the birth of Jesus which it is supposed to be celebrating, to the "peace and goodwill" that is supposed to appear miraculously at this time of year.

Nowadays I get a sinking feeling in my stomach when Christmas cards first go on sale in the shops (usually sometime around the end of summer); I start to feel decidedly fed up by about mid-November when fairy lights and tinsel are festooned around concrete street lamps in the High Street; and by December, depression hits with a vengeance and I can be found loitering in travel agents frantically seeking out cheap holidays to places where they don't celebrate Christmas.

Last year I succeeded: I flew to Israel on Christmas Day — not a turkey, mince pie or tinsel angel in sight (so long as you kept well away from Bethlehem where they tend to get a bit excited about it all). The irony of it was that in order to pay for this extravagant piece of escapism I had to work every night for two weeks at the post office — sorting Christmas cards!

But despite my loathing of the enforced jollity of Christmas I always used to like New Year. I liked the idea of seeing the Old Year out and starting the New Year afresh with fine-sounding resolutions scribbled furtively in a diary which, if I kept them, were sure to make me healthy, happy and wise, or so I thought. Of course I never did keep them, or at least not for very long.

As idealism faded and cynicism set in even the resolutions took on a more jaundiced tone: to stop killing myself by smoking cigarettes (that one, kept for over four years, is lately getting a bit frayed around the edges); not to be so bad-tempered, and so on. I also began to realise that I could make all sorts of resolutions but I was fighting against enormous odds in trying to keep them (besides, that is. my own lack of will power).

The society in which we live makes it almost impossible for most of us to be healthy, happy, or wise, no matter how hard we try or how many New Year resolutions we make. How can we become more healthy when the environment in which we live is profoundly unhealthy? I might resolve to swim twenty lengths of the swimming pool every day and only eat whole foods, but that's not going to do me much good if I live next to a leaky nuclear reactor, or in a city where the air is polluted by lead-ridden exhaust fumes. I might resolve to give up smoking (again), but if I smoke to help me cope with the stress of everyday life caused by anxieties about money, work, housing or bills, then I might very well get a stomach ulcer instead. My resolve to be less bad-tempered is all very well, but if the reason I get bad-tempered is the daily frustration of not being fully in control of my own life then I am attacking the symptom and not the cause. How nice a person can you afford to be in a world that is not nice, where competition and aggression are highly valued attributes? And how can people become wise when they are constantly being fed misinformation, distortions of the truth and downright lies from the relatively harmless fairy tales about Father Christmas coming down chimneys to bring toys to good children to the infinitely more harmful fairy tales of politicians who tell us that if we, the workers, are good (work harder for less pay, don't go on strike, don't make a fuss about poor housing, health care and so on), then we will reap the benefit as "the nation" gets richer.

The truth of the matter is that, as individuals, we are extremely limited in our ability to change our own lives very much at all. We are part of a society which directly affects what we can or cannot expect from life, how we live our lives and even the way in which we behave towards each other. So if we want to be healthy, happy, caring individuals — if, in other words, we want to be fully human — we must first live in a society which permits those qualities to flourish. And capitalism, the society in which we all live now, certainly does not.

Capitalism is a system of society which divides people rather than unites them — capitalist from worker, men from women, blacks from whites, nation from nation. It teaches us competition not co-operation competition for jobs, housing and something that approximates to a bearable standard of living. The division between capitalist and worker is inherent in capitalism — their interests are totally opposed and can never be reconciled. But the divisions between workers are not inherent —they are encouraged by the conditions in which we live and work but could be overcome through a recognition of our common class interests, our mutual inter-dependence and, above all, the need for radical change.

So this year, when your self-image has recovered from the body-blow dealt it by your brother thinking you were the kind of person who would like the pair of pink lurex socks, or by your Auntie Flo being convinced that a Barbara Cartland novel was just what you always wanted; when you've been to Marks and Sparks to get a refund on a jumper in order to pay the electricity bill; when the last of the turkey has been metamorphosed into turkey curry; when you've replied "Quiet, but nice" for the last time to people who ask at work if you've had a nice Christmas; when the TV has stopped showing disaster movies, The Sound of Music and Jimmy Savile tormenting sick children in hospital; when the ankle you sprained leaping across the living room on Christmas Day to turn off the Queen has recovered; in short, when life has returned to humdrum normality, why not reflect on what your New Year's resolution will be this year? Are you going to make pious resolutions to become a "better" person, which you have very little chance of keeping, or are you going to make this the year you start to take control of your own life? It would be nice to think that people throughout the world are scribbling the words: "I resolve that 1986 will be the year that I will organise democratically with my fellow workers to abolish capitalism and bring about a society in which we can all start to become healthy, happy and wise.”’

Janie Percy-Smith

Not a happy new year under capitalism

 

We will not be participating in the convention of cheerily wishing all and sundry a ‘happy new year!’ Churlish you say? Miserable so and so’s you say?

Typical socialists you might even say, incorrectly equating us with the British Labour Party which is certainly currently doing its best to make as many people as possible miserable, and less well off. Note, the Labour Party is not socialist, but is operating on behalf of the British capitalist class.

The Socialist Standard piece below is an editorial from January 1907, over a century ago. Within that time period, and given some of the historical events which occurred within it, capitalism has inflicted untold horrors upon the majority whom it continues to exploit and who continue to run capitalism for the benefit of the minority. It has inflicted damage not only upon the lives of countless millions but upon the planet too.

To those who say that within that period socialism occurred in various States and that it was a failure – wrong. Those States calling themselves that, and a few still do, were/are state capitalist, not socialist.

There will not be happy times for the majority until capitalism has been abolished and replaced by socialism where production for use and free access to the necessities of life, and more, will have consigned production for profit to the dustbin of history.

When the efforts of the majority have brought this about we will be cheering the loudest.

Note to Labour Party supporters, there will be no need for political parties in socialism.

‘Another year with all its opportunities gone. Another year with all its possibilities opening upon us. And—”a happy new year” comes lightly from the tongue in conventional salutation. “A happy new year”—and doubtless behind the greeting there is still some measure of real concern for the materialisation of the wish in the person addressed. “A happy new year”—why not ? Why should not happiness be in the constant experience of all? Why should not happiness be the normal condition of everybody? Why should it not be as natural for everybody to exult in the joys of living as it is for them to breathe—why is it not ?

Because—happiness is conditioned by the available supply of the necessities of life. Deny these to a man and he cannot be happy. And the barest of these necessities are unobtainable (upon capitalist authority unobtainable) by at least a third of the people of this, the most prosperous of nations, while the rest of its working population—the population that builds up the “national” prosperity—only just manage, with infinite labour and anxiety, to maintain themselves in a condition of working efficiency.

That is the reason why happiness is not the normal condition of the working population. That is why they have not been happy in the dead year. That is why they cannot be happy in the year just commenced. To wish them “a happy new year” which we know they will not get is therefore rather dreary humour and about as useful as wishing the moon were green cheese.

The Might Have Beens.

And yet—it might have been otherwise had capitalist development been a few more years advanced. We might have given our new year’s greeting to our neighbour from out of a glad certainty that the happiness we wished was easy of attainment to every worker—had economic conditions ripened a little more rapidly. For between the working class of all countries and those things upon which their happiness depends the barrier is weak enough to-day to be broken through with ease and swiftness. All that is required to-day is an understanding by the working class of their own strength and the fragility of the opposition set against them no more than that. Economic development has reached a point when, for all practical purposes production, is being carried on by associated wage workers exclusively, with a minimum of waste. The capitalist has served his purpose in the concentration and organisation of industry, he is now merely the recipient of the wealth produced and is only able to maintain his position by virtue of his ownership and control of the machinery of production and distribution. The working class have but to understand that and determine upon the appropriation for themselves of the wealth, they produce themselves and their happy new year’s greeting to one another partakes no longer of the grotesque.

The Work Before Us.

Well. The important thing seems to be to emphasise that single, simple fact. We can do no more. To pretend that we can would be to delude and confuse; just as it would be a confusion and a delusion to affirm that a happy new year is possible to the working class before they have eliminated the capitalist. As the organ of The Socialist Party of Great Britain, it has been our purpose to drum into the minds of our fellows of the working class the simple fact referred to. We claim that we have done that consistently, refusing to permit the introduction of any element calculated to weaken the effect of our insistence or confuse the object of it. We can do no more in the new year and we will do no less.

We start with the same enthusiasm that has carried us on from the commencement. We have no new resolutions to make, no new leaves to turn over. We have no delusions for ourselves or for others— and as the British wing of the International Socialist Army we shall continue to relentlessly fight all those, however they may label themselves, who attempt to delude or whose work has that effect. We know that we are right, that our methods are sound ; that our cause must triumph, and we are content.'

The SPGB is part of the World Socialist Movement.

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2024/07/editorial-1907-1907.html

Bare necessities

 

According to a food waste non-profit group, in 2023 food retailers in the US ‘generated 4.45M tons of surplus food, nearly 35% of which went to landfill or was incinerated as waste.’ That 35% works out at around 9 lbs (4 kg) of food per person in America. With food prices sky high and 47 million Americans facing hunger, including 1 in 5 children, destroying food ‘surpluses’ could be regarded as a crime against humanity.

Yet today’s food industry exists not to provide food but to make a profit. US retailers do give away some surplus to charity, but they destroy far more to keep prices high. What an indictment of the capitalist economic system, to destroy what people need!

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb

Socialism: Still making your mind up?

 

Will you be enjoying a breakfast Bucks Fizz before the indulgence of the ‘festive’ day begins? Or perhaps you prefer to drink your Champagne neat? Or perhaps, much more likely, you can’t afford to buy it? If, however, you are in the privileged minority who can quaff it like water and who don’t even consider the monetary cost of the item, do you even consider the human cost that goes into producing it?

Exploitation of workers for profit is built into the capitalism system.

‘People employed to pick grapes for France’s luxury champagne brands are being forced to sleep rough and steal food to stave off hunger, an investigation has found.

The Guardian reported that it had found seasonal workers from west Africa and eastern Europe in the town of Epernay in northern France sleeping on the streets or in tents as the vineyards did not provide accommodation.

Dozens of them spent their nights in the doorway of the cinema opposite the town’s main train station, it wrote.

Epernay is home to world’s most expensive champagne brands, including Dom Perignon and Moet & Chandon. Total champagne shipments from the town in 2023 stood at 299 million bottles and generated over €6 billion ($6.25 billion) in revenues, according to the industry body Comite Champagne.

The grape-picking season at Epernay lasts from August to October. This year’s yield was estimated at 10 tons of grapes per hectare.

Some workers interviewed by the publication claimed they were underpaid or not paid at all. Others said they had not been provided with enough food and left without means of buying any, having to resort to stealing.

“They were treated like dogs,” a retired winegrower told The Guardian. “The people who do that aren’t winegrowers: they’re exploiters,” he added.

Last year’s season was reportedly dubbed “the harvest of shame” after four seasonal grape-pickers died due to suspected sunstroke.

In a case scheduled to go to court in March, four people, including a vineyard owner, have been charged with human trafficking.

According to the unions, it is hard to hold specific champagne houses responsible for the exploitation because of a system that involves delegation of responsibilities from one company to another.

Comite Champagne issued a statement to The Guardian expressing shock” at the “shameful practices” and asking authorities to step up controls and severely punish any abuses.

The industry body also reported a drop in shipments in the current year caused by “the sluggish global geopolitical and economic situation and widespread inflation.”’

Below is taken from the Socialist Standard October 2009

‘In the past when Southern Californian fruit growers were faced with a glut and falling prices they let the fruit rot on the trees. When castigated for this apparent madness they pointed out the quite logical capitalist argument that they would have to pay pickers wages for fruit they couldn't sell. When again they were taken to task for this argument they were offered by some charitable organisations the prospect of them supplying free labour and they would distribute to the needy. Again the fruit growers had an answer to that. "Every year charitable organisations buy at cut-rate prices our unsold surplus. Giving it away would even spoil that source of income for us." The fruitgrowers may have appeared heartless but from an economic standpoint letting the fruit rot seemed the logical action. A similar solution is being followed today by French wine producers. “Hopes of a glut of cheap champagne are set to be dashed when vineyards meet next week to agree on a big cut in production to prop up prices. With sales falling, producers may be ordered to leave up to half their grapes to wither on the vine in an attempt to squeeze the market." (London Times, 29 August) Capitalism is a crazy system, obviously inside socialism we would deal with the problem by drinking more champagne.’

aliststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2009/10/voice-from-back.html

Better 'oles still in short supply

From the December 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard ‘Many people complain that the Christmas sales campaign starts too early. But as the market is stimulated to grow, and as it grows, so will the effort to exploit it. This might mean an even longer sales drive in the future—wasn’t there a story about a business man who said that Christmas was good business as long as they kept religion out of it?’  (Socialist Standard, December 1965). 

Although it appears to have been so three months ago because that’s when Christmas commodities started to appear in retail outlets. Even more than the rest of the year the mantra is purchase, buy, consume, spend! It’s no wonder that alcohol consumption soars and family rows escalate in this period of joy and peace. Coping with capitalism creates enough stresses on a daily basis in itself but, at this time of the year, especially for parents, but not just confined to them; they increase many-fold life’s everyday pressures. Sympathy must go out for one to the residents of towns served by Medway Council in Kent because it has ‘cancelled all its Christmas lights this year just to save £75,000. Medway Council in Kent announced the “sad and difficult decision” after identifying a potential overspend of £17 million this financial year.’ Local folk have labelled the Council ‘Scrooge’ (Sun, 10 October). Think that can be filed under the heading of ‘First World Problems’. Snowflakes It’s very hard to get through this period without Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol impinging in some way or other.

 George Bernard Shaw channelling Scrooge, (before the ghost’s visitations) in a 1946 letter to Reynolds News expressed his vehement opposition to Christmas:

‘I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas. It is an indecent subject; a cruel, gluttonous subject; a drunken, disorderly subject; a wasteful, disastrous subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blasphemous and demoralizing subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press: on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and anyone who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages’.

Perhaps Santa let him down as a child. Proper pantomime villain, boo, hiss? Did Outraged Christian of Easily Offended inundate the letters page with their outrage? The latter-day aficionados of Christmas are rushing to social media to express their umbrage at a particular seasonal advertisement.

Speaking of outrage, there’s always a competition amongst capitalist enterprises to ‘win’ the best Christmas advertisement. The purpose being to maximise sales in the ‘golden quarter.’ Back in November an ‘edgy’ anti-Christmas advertisement from Marks and Spencer apparently upset some as M & S were forced to apologise because the destruction shown of party hats in an open fire was deemed to be an insult to Palestine. How, you ask? The colours of the hats were also those of the Palestinian flag! Even socialists know that red and green are traditional Christmas colours.

This is surely taking taking offence to the level of the absurd. The events across the world in 2023 are more demanding of offence, outrage and umbrage.

A world of dread and fear

John Donne’s 1624 Meditation XVII piece, No Man is an Island seems particularly relevant almost four hundred years on:

No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man

is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;

if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe

is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as

well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine

owne were; any mans death diminishes me,

because I am involved in Mankinde;

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

As in other years of mass bloody conflicts the bell has tolled for far too many in 2023 in places other than Europe.

Almost forty years ago Band Aid released a charity record, Do they know it’s Christmas? in response to famine in Ethiopia. The lyric included, ‘It’s Christmas time, There’s no need to be afraid, At Christmas time we let in light and we banish shade’. And ‘There’s a world outside your window, And it’s a world of dread and fear’. It is to be fervently hoped that, over the intervening weeks, the chilling prospect of more ‘dread and fear’ will not have spread to a far wider arena.

In 1961, at his presidential inauguration, John F Kennedy said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you but ask what you can do for your country.’ Sixty plus years on this exhortation would seem to now mean ask what you can do for the capitalist state engaged in armed conflict with the full support of the capitalist state where you reside – or else. A reminder that the global working class have no country. Patriotism is the refuge of the scoundrel, even if is it being forced upon many; but many, even if they do not, as of yet, understand that socialism is the only viable solution, are resisting the brainwashing and propaganda. But, without the realisation that socialism is the only alternative, nothing will change.

When the working class of many states were engaged in capitalist wars in the early part of the twentieth century, black humour was much evident as a way of coping with great adversity.

Bairnsfather’s 1915 cartoon of two British soldiers under fire in a foxhole with the caption ‘Well, if you knows of a better ‘ole, go to it’ is an example.

Well, we do know of a ‘better ‘ole’. It’s a money-free, leader-free, state-free society where conflicts and wars are forever abolished and consigned to the dustbin of history.

DC

Wannit, gotta ‘ave it

 

And what’s this year’s must-have gift that you should offer to the man or woman who has everything?

Well, it’s a no-brainer for the small minority that really do have everything. They’ll only be happy if they get exactly the same from you as you gave them last year – and the year before that.

And what was it?

Nothing, nowt, zilch. Except your consent to them living on the backs and the efforts of the vast majority. So easy to do, it doesn’t need any thought, or even any wrapping. Just imagine the happy smiling faces of the capitalists when they realise that you don’t yet realise that they’re mugging you every day. Ho bloody ho!

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

Pawns in the game

'There are lies, dammed lies and statistics. The figures given below should be looked at sceptically. Whether correct or not the figures given for Ukrainian casualties, and the unknown Russian ones, are unacceptable and a tragedy.

To these should be added the number of innocent lives being sacrificed in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

'More than 400,000 people have joined the Russian Army in 2024, Defence Minister Andrey Belousov revealed during a meeting of top officials in Moscow. Around 1,200 people voluntarily sign up for military service every day, he said. We continue systematic work on staffing the armed forces Since the start of the year, over 427,000 servicemen have already been recruited, Belousov stated.

In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree that increased the number of armed forces personnel to 2.39 million, including 1.5 million military personnel. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov explained at the time that the decision was based on the increasing number of threats currently faced by Russia, including the extremely hostile situation on the Western borders and instability on the Eastern borders.

The decree came into force on December 1. The Russian Army had previously been increased to 2.2 million in December 2023, including 1.32 million military personnel, amid the Ukraine conflict and the ongoing expansion of NATO towards Russian borders.

Belousov did not specify the total number of Russian troops taking part in Moscow’s military operation. Russia also does not make public losses incurred in the conflict with Kiev. However, according to the minister, the Ukrainian Army has lost more than half a million troops in 2024 and over one million since the escalation of the conflict in 2022. He noted that, unlike the Russian military, which has been steadily boosting troop numbers, the Ukrainian Army is severely understaffed, with fewer than 50% of frontline positions currently filled.’

More outrage is being expressed about the assassination of a Russian General in Moscow than against the crime of the continuing annihilation of the many who are used as pawns in capitalism’s ‘game.’

It’s totally against the rules of war! Military do not kill other military in that fashion is the cry. As if capitalism has any conscience in its pursuit of its aims of power, resources, competitive advantage and hegemony.

‘The US has denied any involvement or prior knowledge of the bombing that killed Russian Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov and his assistant in Moscow. Both the Pentagon and State Department have distanced themselves from the targeted assassination, which is believed to have been carried out by Ukraine.

The commander of the Russian Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Défense Forces was killed along with his aide in an explosion outside his apartment early on Tuesday morning. Multiple media outlets have reported that the assassination was executed on the orders of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU).’

What is the reason that the working class, the majority who run capitalism on behalf of the exploiting minority, submit to such heinous manipulation?

One explanation may be that of ‘nationalism.’

The below is from the Socialist Standard March 1973

‘In the struggle to win the minds of the working class Socialists have to contend not, on the whole, with rational critiques of the Socialist position but with deeply held and unquestioned values. A few of these, for example, might be religion, "human nature", "a fair day's wage for a fair day's work" or the association of Socialism with Russia. One of the strongest of these sacred beliefs, and one of the biggest obstacles to the establishment of Socialism, is nationalism ― the loyalty felt by many members of the working class to "their country", the political unit in which they happen to reside.

Socialists hold that the only real divisions which exist in the world are horizontal ones, between different social and economic groups. In advanced capitalist countries this consists in a division between the capitalist class, which owns and controls the means of production, and the working class, which owns none of them and which has to sell its mental and physical labour-power to the capitalist class in order to live. Feelings of loyalty to a nation-State are purely subjective, having no basis in reality; the working class in Britain has more in common with the workers in other countries than it has with the British capitalist class.

Classes not Kingdoms

There, is however, an alternative view of the world. This is the belief that the important divisions are not horizontal, between different classes, but vertical, between various nations. A "nation" consists, according to this view, of a hierarchy of men and women who, although having differing incomes, social status and power, all have a common interest in working in harmony for the benefit of the whole unit and, if necessary, in fighting against other nations to defend this interest. This completely erroneous outlook is the one held by most members of the working class and nearly all political parties (including the Labour Party). Most historians reject Marx's declaration that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle", preferring instead to see history as a succession of struggles of nations against foreign domination, of subjects against tyrannical kings and of nations and races against each other.

Broadly speaking, nationalist ideologies and movements represent the interests of the capitalist class. Nationalism as such did not exist in pre-capitalist society and its growth and development represents the parallel development of the capitalist class. Nationalism as we know it today first made its appearance during the French Revolution. In the early stages of the revolution cosmopolitan ideas were prevalent ― it was believed that the rest of Europe would be inspired by France's example and would likewise overthrow the old order. When this failed to materialise strong feelings of nationalism developed; France was seen as a chosen nation, picked out to be the standard-bearer of revolution throughout Europe.

Politically, nationalism is ambiguous, in that it can take on a "rightwing" or a "leftwing" form. This depends upon the position of the capitalist class in the particular time and place. If political power is held by the aristocracy or nobility, and the middle-class is struggling to assert itself, then nationalism will have "leftwing" connotations. This was the case in Europe until 1848, when nationalism was a romantic, revolutionary force against the traditional ruling class. However, once the bourgeoisie has captured and consolidated its power, then nationalism becomes a conservative and rightwing force.

Although every nationalist movement believes it is unique, there exist basically these two forms of nationalism side by side. In the advanced parts of the world ― the United States, Britain, Western Europe ― nationalism is conservative, whilst in pre-industrial countries engaged in struggles against a foreign ruling class, nationalism is a "leftwing" force.

The World Socialist Movement opposes all nationalist movements recognizing that the working class has no country. There are certain other groups ― the Communist Parties of the world, and the so-called revolutionary left ― which, though claiming to have a class outlook, have a wholly opportunist and ambiguous attitude to nationalism, which reflects not so much the interest of the working class as it does Russian or Chinese foreign policy. These groups fully accept the mythology of the existence of "the nation". For example, from an Anti-Internment League pamphlet:

"The people of each nation have the right to determine how they shall be governed. Foreign interference is a fundamental attack on that right. When one nation takes offensive action against another, by introducing troops or in any other way, we cannot sit on the fence . . . And so to Ireland: Ireland is a nation; Ireland is not Britain; and the Irish have a right to decide whether or not they wish to have any association with the rest of these isles."

This attitude is a complete denial of Marxism; it is almost incomprehensible that people who describe themselves as Socialists should write of the "right to re-establish Irish nationhood" (from the same pamphlet). The Irish republican movement is in essence no different from any other nationalist movement; it was brought into being because of the need of a fledgling capitalist class to break away from Britain and erect protective tariff barriers in order to build an industrial economy. Socialists give the IRA and Sinn Fein no support whatsoever.

What Marx Meant

It will be argued that Marx and Engels supported nationalist movements and that therefore Socialists should do so today. Such an assertion is based on a faulty understanding of the materialist conception of history. Marx and Engels were living in an era when the bourgeoisie was engaged in a struggle to assert itself against the old feudal regimes. The victory of this class was a historically progressive step at that time in that it brought about the re-organization of society on a capitalist basis, the essential precondition for the establishment of Socialism; and it created an urban proletariat, the only class which can bring about Socialism. This was why Marx supported the rising capitalist class in their bid to capture political power. However, once capitalism reaches the point where Socialism is a practical proposition, there is no need for Socialists to advocate the capitalist industrialization of every corner of the globe; they can concentrate fully on the task of establishing Socialism. Hence we give no support to any nationalist group, and in place of the opportunism and hypocrisy of the myriad Bolshevik groupings in advocating "national self-determination", Socialists echo the rallying cry of Marx and Engels, "Workers of All Countries, Unite!"

Brendan Mee

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-poison-of-nationalism-1973.html

The Position of the SPGB

'The Position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain

The SPGB has a single aim: the establishment of a society in which all productive resources (land, water, factories, transport, etc.) are taken into common ownership, and in which the sole motive for production is the fulfilment of human needs and wants. This aim is central to the SPGB’s view on the role of ‘the party’.

The abolition of private property in the productive resources will be mirrored by free and equal access for all to the wealth (food, clothing, housing, telecommunications, health and education services, entertainment) that can be produced socially. Its abolition will also be mirrored by democratic control of those productive resources – there will be a need, for example, for informed decision-making about how much effort is to be expended on the consumption goods and services mentioned above and how much effort to expend on production goods (like machinery and new factories). This would take place on a local, regional or wider level, depending on the scale of each issue.

Clearly, such a society will not build a completely new system of production from scratch. In fact, it depends for its establishment on the existence of the productive capacity that wage workers have developed under the rule of capital. It will inherit, or more precisely, appropriate the existing system of production, which is, of course, an interconnected worldwide system. This of course means that the new society must be worldwide.

Considered from the perspective of the current situation, where a minority own and/or control almost all of the productive resources, where production is determined solely by the need for profit, realised by the production and sale of commodities on a world market, we can describe the key aspects of the socialist (for us, socialist and communist mean the same thing) society that the SPGB advocates as one that is without classes, without money or any other form of economic exchange, with neither states nor frontiers. And one in which people work collectively and co-operatively to meet society’s material and psychological needs.

It’s not for us to describe in detail how people will choose to organise their lives once a socialist form of production has been introduced: the different resources, technology and mindsets which will exist then are difficult (impossible?) for us to empathise with now. But there is one very important fact of which we can be sure, and it is this: where there is free access to socially-produced wealth, there will be no connection between what an individual consumes and the amount or type of work that they do or don’t do at any given time in their life. The lash of poverty, or threat thereof, that the owning class currently wields over the wage-earners to coerce them into work, will no longer exist. 

Yet the natural circumstance that we, as a species, need to work in order to survive (and also, we would argue, to fully realise ourselves as human beings) will remain, despite the utopian nonsense about fully automated luxury communism. 

So, throughout and after the revolution, the majority will have to be ready to be proactive participants in the socialised system of production, and have the confidence that a socialist form of production will better serve their various needs and wants than the capitalist system ever could.

The Role of the Party

For the SPGB then, the role of the revolutionary party in the present non-revolutionary situation is to put forward the case for a socialist system and against the capitalist system, to help our fellow workers to understand why, as wage earners, they can never be free from economic insecurity and exploitation, and to understand that the threats of war and environmental devastation have their roots in the capitalist system of production.

Obviously, we must seek to attract members to share the work of developing and spreading socialist ideas, but we have never tried to do so by promoting reforms of capitalism – nor will we do so in future. Experience has shown that the dynamics of capitalist economics turn reformism into an eternal misery-go-round that might catch a few crumbs as they fall from capital’s table during a boom, only to have many of them sucked away again in the inevitable succeeding slump.

For this reason, when the SPGB stands candidates in general and local elections, we make clear our stance against reformism, as opposed to all reformist parties left or right. We stand candidates in capitalist elections in order to make use of what passes for ‘democracy’ to promote socialist ideas until such a time that enough socialists are voted in to power over the state machine in order to abolish it, as part of the revolutionary process, and establish an administration of things rather than a government over the people. 

If we are to establish the non-coercive, non-hierarchical, classless society, the majority will have to understand, want and be actively involved in the attainment of the objective. Given that mass socialist understanding, the political vehicle the socialist majority choose to win control of political power must be fully democratic, reflecting the sort of society they are seeking to establish.

Leaderless and Democratic

So, the mass socialist party must not be a vanguard party controlled by a leadership, but a democratic party controlled by its members; in fact there must be no leaders or leadership, just administrative bodies carrying out the democratically-arrived at decisions of a membership that wants and understands socialism. When there is a mass socialist party with aligned parties across the world, the revolution will be a more readily-achievable goal, and so the party should have practical proposals for how the means of production will become owned in common. The party in a pre-revolutionary climate, such as now, has to primarily work to attract support to grow the movement. It should be organised in a way which puts the principles of democracy, equality and co-operation into practice as far as possible. This demonstrates that people can work together in ways which go beyond what is demanded by capitalist organisations with their hierarchies, to get as close as we can now to unalienated labour. To this aim, the SPGB is organised through branches, which nominate delegates to various committees to carry out party work, with some roles and decisions agreed through majority vote of the membership as a whole. This framework isn’t intended as a blueprint for how organisations should be run in socialism, and it would also likely have to be adapted to suit the circumstances and size of a mass socialist party, but what would remain constant are the socialist values underpinning the organisation.'

https://prometheusjournal.org/2024/12/13/the-end-and-the-means/

Syria: What next?

'When the brutal 50-year tyranny of the Assad dynasty collapsed last month, people danced in the streets in many parts of Syria as they contemplated an unprecedented new beginning. Joyous crowds looted the Presidential palace, while the titular head of the Ba’ath party dictatorship skulked off to Moscow.

The fall of the secular Arab nationalist dictatorship alters the balance of power between the various states in the region, with Turkey and the United States the winners and Iran and Russia the losers. The winners took quick advantage of the initial power vacuum. Turkey sent its proxies to attack the Kurdish nationalists who control a large part of Syria including the oilfields. Indeed, Turkey must have given the victorious Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamists the green light to march on Aleppo and then down to Damascus.

The United States benefits from a weakened Iran, the main threat to its current domination of the wider region and the oilfields and the trade routes out of it.

Israel, too, wasted no time in exploiting this tense, multiplayer Game of Thrones scenario, by bombing Syria's navy to the bottom of the sea, as well as a host of other targets, and pressing forward in the Golan Heights. Their reasoning is obvious. One or other group is eventually going to take power in Syria. If it's a group that hates Israel, they can hate Israel without missiles and a navy. In a world where relations between states is based on ‘might is right’, Israel wants another weak neighbour like Lebanon.

What was surprising was the rapidity with which the dictatorship collapsed. Its conscript army was reluctant to fight and the general population, suffering from increased economic hardship due to Western sanctions (the cruel way the West employs to undermine a dictatorship it doesn’t support) was ready to welcome a change of regime

HTS seems keen to solicit international recognition, which means making some concessions to capitalist liberal democracy, but it has been designated a terrorist organisation by the West, and there’s a $10m price on the head of its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, aka Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. Indeed this former al-Qaeda and ISIS fighter has publicly praised the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, and faced home-turf protests that his Sharia-law regime in the province of Idlib was as bad as Assad's. But he has also faced protests by Islamic hardliners who think he's not fundamentalist enough.

The political direction of travel is not obvious at the time of writing, and any spark could set off civil war. For the sake of the people of Syria, newly released from a tyranny that looked eternal, we can only hope not. As for the long-term future, it would seem almost churlish to point out that, if the country doesn't go into meltdown, they'll get the wage-slavery and the limited political ‘rights’ that workers have in many other capitalist countries, while a new privileged Syrian ruling class exploiting them emerges. That, unfortunately, is the best-case scenario, in the absence of an imminent global socialist revolution. The worst-case scenario doesn't bear thinking about.'

SPGB Meeting TONIGHT 13 November 1930 GMT ZOOM

 *LIFE AND TIMES OF THE SOCIALIST STANDARD*

*Speaker: Howard Moss*
https://zoom.us/j/7421974305

The divide grows wider

‘The twelve richest people in the US now have a combined worth of over $2 trillion (inequality.org, 3 December); that’s a 2 followed by twelve zeroes. The newest member of this exclusive club is Jensen Huang, boss of the software company Nvidia, whose wealth is now $122bn, over twenty times what it was four years ago.

This is at a time when there are over 36 million people in the US living in poverty by the official definition, including nearly ten million children. Over 650,000 are homeless, a figure that has increased for each of the last six years.

That’s capitalism for you: unbelievable wealth for a very few, varying degrees of poverty for many.’

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

Be of good cheer?

The below is from the Socialist Standard December 1965

‘Christmas, we shall be told again and again during the next few weeks, is for the children. There is, of course, another side to it, represented by the flood of gaudy rubbish which fills the shops, the big campaigns to sell it, and by the tinsel of nonsense with which the whole thing is embellished. This is not so romantic a vision as that of innocent, starry-eyed kiddies hanging their stockings by the chimney—and it suggests that, whatever enjoyment children may get out of it, Christmas is for a few other people as well.

As the City columns, the advertising agencies, and the trade statistics make clear, Christmas is that thing so beloved of a section of the capitalist class—a spending spree. Millions of people save up, perhaps for the entire year, for this one great splash-out. This is the time when savings vanish, bonuses are blued, hire purchase debts cheerfully taken on. These debts have partly replaced the old loan clubs, which used to have their big pay-out at Christmas. In fact, hire-purchase does no more than the clubs—it simply moves the payment date from one part of the year to another, but this is enough to make it one more piece of evidence for those who are trying to prove that we are all so much better off nowadays.

Christmas is responsible for an amazing expansion of the retail market, lasting for about a month at a time when trade would probably otherwise be slack. For example, the sales of one suburban branch of a famous retail chain bound up to around thirty thousand pounds on Saturdays during December; the manager can almost forecast what his sales figure will be for each weekend. These sales are in the established, non-seasonal goods such as clothes, which simply become more hectic during the Christmas rush. There are plenty of other examples, as people determinedly smoke more cigarettes, eat more food, and of course drink more alcohol during the space of a couple of days than they do in a normal week.

Apart from the established trades, there are the seasonal sales, with an appeal confined exclusively to the Christmas period. Christmas crackers, for instance, are being turned out all the year round; even the men who compose those dreadful jokes and mottoes are hard at it months in advance. The result of all this is that about one hundred million crackers are sold at Christmas, some of them abroad.

We must not forget Christmas cards. The first of these was sent in 1843; the idea did not catch on for about twenty years and since then the market has steadily expanded until now something over six hundred million cards, worth about 15 million, are sent each Christmas. This is good business for the firms which make the cards (one of whose executives said a little while ago “We are in the sentiment business”) and for the Post Office, who rake in something like £8 million in postage on the cards, not to mention the extra revenue on Christmas parcels, greetings telegrams, 'phone calls and the rest.

It is anyone’s guess, how much of the spending at Christmas goes in a genuine effort to have, or to give someone else, a good time. A lot of the drinks, presents and smokes are sent as bribes (there is no other words for it) from the directors of one firm to those of another which, they hope, will buy their products. A host of calendars, diaries, packs of cards, are produced as advertising material. Some Christmas cards are sent out by firms as reminders that they are still in business—and magnificent pieces of work some of them are.

Apart from the business world, there is no doubt that a lot of money is spent at Christmas in an effort to impress other people. We have all seen—perhaps some of us have actually received—those Christmas cards which have so obviously been selected with the motive of convincing us that the senders are more wealthy and important than they actually are. We have all read the advertisements which say that no card is really gracious unless it has the senders’ name and address printed on the inside. It is an unpleasant fact that the acquisitive nature of capitalism gives strength to this sort of appeal; for those who fall for it, sending Christmas cards is a highly competitive business, in which a defeat has to smoulder for a whole year before the chance for revenge comes round again.

The fact is that Christmas is in some ways a time for people to show their less attractive side—and for the massed forces of commercialism to cash in on the situation, ruthlessly and to the full, with the only justification they need—in the end they have more profit than if they had not played up to peoples’ snobbery, their insecurity and their distorted conception of the world in which they struggle to live.

In other ways, too, commerce turns the screw at Christmas. A walk around any department store reveals an astounding variety of junk which is being sold at equally astounding prices. There are toys which are dangerous, or which will not last from Christmas to Boxing Day in the hands of any child. There are cakes of soap and bath cubes, stuck in a fancy box and covered in cellophane, selling for much more than their usual price. There is a bewildering mass of tinsel, plastic and coloured paper—and all the time there is the drive to sell, sell, sell for a Merry Christmas.

Yes, this is an enormous, briefly inflated, market; each year the note circulation leaps up to accommodate it. (Last year it increased from £2,583 million in the first week in November to £2,766 million in Christmas week.) The firms which hope to cash in on the boom lay their plans a long time ahead. From the summer months onwards, they are discussing and deciding on their advertising campaigns, their special wrappings and what they like to call their “presentation”. There is always the temptation for them to try to get in first, which they have to resist for fear of opening their campaign too early. But none of them can afford to leave it too late—they have such an awful lot to sell. So it is not uncommon for us to be able to buy Christmas decorations, wrappings, cards and so on in October; and before Guy Fawkes night there are not a few big stores with their Father Christmas, usually an unemployed stage extra, to induce people to buy by working on their children.

Many people complain that the Christmas sales campaign starts too early. But as the market is stimulated to grow, and as it grows, so will the effort to exploit it. This might mean an even longer sales drive in the future—wasn’t there a story about a business man who said that Christmas was good business as long as they kept religion out of it?

He must have been an ungrateful fellow; religion, after all, does him many a good turn. In any case, as we point out elsewhere in this issue, Christmas has nothing to do with Christianity; the Christians simply pinched it to suit their own purposes. What more natural, then, than that the capitalist social system, which is so faithfully supported by Christianity, should itself adopt Christianity’s most important festival for its own ends?

It was the Industrial Revolution which was responsible for reducing the old twelve days’ holiday at Christmas to a single day. The rise of capitalism meant that masses of people sold their working ability to the master class by time—and time spent on holidays was time not spent producing the masters profits in the factory or the mill or the mine. Capitalism, with the help of its religious lackeys, built up a massive condemnation of what it called idleness. And among other things it destroyed the ancient Twelve Days of Christmas.

More recently, capitalism has reduced the opposition to Christmas to a handful. Nobody now holds the opinion expressed in a Puritan pamphlet of 1656, that Christmas was ". . . the old Heathen’s Feasting Day . . . the Papists’ Massing Day, the Superstitious Man’s Idol Day . . . Satan’s That Adversary’s Working Day” but until fairly recently there was a solid, articulate opposition to it. This is now all but silent, as the festival has been blown up into a vast, commercialised orgy of selling and consumption, one of the many working class Festivals of Delusion.

The great Delusion of Christmas is that dormant within us there is the Christmas Spirit—a gentle compound of benevolence, co-operation and goodwill which is roused at this time of year by the appeal of religion. When we are possessed of the Spirit we are wise and generous and loving; if only (says the Delusion) we could keep it up all the year round the problems of the world would be solved. If we would only cast out the Scrooges among us (and we all have our own idea of who Scrooge may be) and live by the Christmas Spirit there will be no more poverty, or war, or oppression.

This is no joke; the Delusion is powerful. It brought both sides out of their trenches to fraternise in No Man’s Land in 1914 (officially, that was the last time they did it). It inspires countless maudlin speeches at office parties and family gatherings. It runs through the entire Queen’s Speech on Christmas Day. It is powerful—and it is dangerous.

For the Delusion fosters the idea that the troubles of capitalism are caused by anything but the essential nature of the system. It promotes the nonsense that the world today is a fearsome, disturbed place because people are bad and that if only people were better the world would be a better place. It encourages people to think in terms of good and bad spirit, when they should be asking themselves why they behave as they do, and why the world is as it is. And as a final irony, the Christmas Delusion even encourages some people to think that there is something inconsistent in the determined way that capitalism exploits Christmas for all it is worth.

To start at the right end of this problem, we should first of all realise that there is nothing essentially wrong (or right, for that matter) with most people. It is the conditions of living and working under capitalism which largely make them what they are. Capitalism is constantly working out ways of exploiting us more efficiently, which means more intensely. It is always pushing us that bit harder, crowding us in that much more, making us into that much more of a cut-throat in the competitive scramble for the better job, the bigger house, the easier money.

In these conditions, people live at an intense pressure. Events which in themselves are trivial—a telephone which rings, a child who behaves like a child—are an intolerable strain. It is only when we relax, when we put aside the worry of making ends meet, when we try to live like human beings, that we begin to get a better perspective on it all. Perhaps this is what a lot of people do at Christmas. Some of them, for a couple of days at any rate, actually succeed, and they put it all down to the Christmas Spirit.

The big laugh about this—if anyone can stand another joke at this time of year—is that if the working class really grasped the implications of this they would take a hard, sober look at capitalism and see it for the wretched way of living that it is. That old chap Scrooge had a word which aptly describes the delusions of capitalism, its cynicism and its hypocrisy. Humbug.’

Ivan

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/12/christmas-great-delusion-1965.html