Bread and circuses for today

 

The sell-out concert tour of Britain and Europe by Bob Dylan (he’s in his 85th year) presents a prime example of the way capitalism, via its entertainment industry, can sell us meaningless thrills to patch over the uniformity and stress of living in its wage and salary system.

Dylan does have something unique to offer, but the adulation, the hero-worship, as opposed to simple appreciation, of him by the fans at his concerts can only be seen as part of the obsession with celebrity culture that capitalism thrusts upon us as a substitute for mutually cooperative activity. This is something the free access society of economic equality that we call socialism would release.

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

Socialist Sonnet No. 214

Your Party – Not Mine

 

Is it time a new party was founded?

Sure, the old one’s comprehensively failed,

The locomotive of Labour derailed.

It seems hope is once again unbounded,

As so often before, another red flag

To be run up the polls and kept flying.

Then come the splits, the schisms, the dying,

Such a weight of expectation to drag

Down the vision that was always myopic.

The old nostrums and canards trotted out,

Members who cannot debate, only shout:

Who is going to vote for the shambolic?

This challenge to capitalism’s resolved,

With, at no point, socialism involved.

 

D. A.

SOCIALIST STANDARD December 2025 Now Available Online FREE

 

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020s/2025/no-1456-december-2025/

World Socialist Radio - Violence and War

 

Violence and War: Are They Inevitable? The Long View

by The Socialist Party of Great Britain

This episode argues that war and large-scale violence are not primitive constants built into human nature, but rather they became widespread only with the rise of hierarchical, agrarian and class-based societies. For most of human prehistory — during the long era when humans lived as small, egalitarian hunter-gatherer bands — there is scant evidence of systemic war. It was only with the advent of agriculture, permanent settlements and the resultant scarcity that social hierarchies emerged: a privileged minority gained power over resources and labour, dominance replaced egalitarianism, and the structural conditions for permanent class society were created. Thus, war and institutionalised violence are shown as products of social organisation rather than an inevitable aspect of human biology or “original sin.”

Taken from the December 2025 edition of The Socialist Standard.

World Socialist Radio is the official podcast of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We have one 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.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/world-socialist-radio/

Fred, Charlie's best mate -Two

Frederick Engels, 28th November, 1820 - 5th August 1895

 The Aspect column from the October 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

The second and concluding part of a tribute to Marx co-worker

The writings of Friedrich Engels are indispensable for the study of the growth and development of Scientific Socialism. His writings derive their importance from the fact that even when they were not produced jointly with Marx (as was the case with the Communist Manifesto), they were (until Marx’s death) produced in collaboration with Marx in the sense that the whole plan was discussed by them jointly before the works of either were written The result in each case was submitted for the critical revision of the other.

Engels capacity to explain in a popular manner the ideas and theories of Marx have probably never been excelled. The proof is to be found in the worldwide circulation of Socialism, Utopian and Scientific. Originally this consisted of portions of certain chapters in his polemic against Eugen Dühring. At the request (or suggestion) of Paul Lafargue, Marx’s son-in-law, a separate pamphlet was made out of these sections, which, with Engels’ approval he translated into French and issued in 1880. Translations into other languages and re-prints in the original German text were followed in 1892 by an English translation for which Engels wrote an Introduction which is probably one of his best essays. It has been translated and undergone re-prints in many languages. In 1892 Engels commented upon its great popularity. It remains to this day the best approach to the study of Marxism.

Engels qualities as a writer were shown no less well in his Ludwig Feuerbach. In this essay he shows the connection between the Marxian world-outlook and that of German classical philosophy which came to an end with Feuerbach. Engels skilfully compresses the most profound implications of the Marxian world-outlook into terms that are clear and at the same time carefully guarded against any possibility of over-statement.

In one sense, the essay on Ludwig Feuerbach is a summary of the main theme of Engels’ longest work, his Anti-Dühring. The two works differ in tone and temper; the larger work is a point by point argument against a pretentious, badly-built theory of Socialism while the shorter essay is a straight-forward exposition of the historical origin of the Marxian world-outlook. But while the essay gives that outlook in a summarised form, the Anti-Dühring reaches it in a succession of arguments in which the proposition of Dühring is fully exposed and finally the whole field of philosophical thinking is established for the Marxian view of historical materialism and of revolutionary class-struggle.

The most specialised work of Engels can be placed under three heads:— (a) Military studies, (b) Historical and Political Essays, (c) the completion of Marx’s Capital. Of the works in the first category we need not here concern ourselves.

Engels’s Historical and Political Studies form the largest single section of his writing. For convenience of characterisation they may be sub-classified as (a) the group dealing with the German Revolution, (b) social theory group, and (c) the group dealing with the English working class struggle.

In the first category is his The Peasant War In Germany (one of his neglected writings and now almost forgotten) dealing with events of the early 16th century. Engels traces the historical causation which led to the outbreak in 1515, from which he draws the moral expressed by Marx as “The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself”, The Peasant War is valuable for its handling of the historical causes of the alliance between peasantry and the working class. During 1851 and 1852 Engels also wrote a series of articles under Marx’s name on the events of 1848 in Germany for The New York Daily Tribune. These were later published as a book, Revolution and Counter Revolution in Germany and still erroneously attributed to Marx.

The social theory group consists of one polemic volume The Housing Question, a study of The Origin the Family, Private Property and the State and an essay The Mark dealing with the form in which tribal communal land ownership, all necessitating a consideration of the nature of the State.

The Origin of the Family deals, in method, with the sociological discoveries of Lewis Henry Morgan, who was the first to prove that human society had undergone a process of historical transformation before even the most ancient of historical records began. At the time when Engels wrote, the notion of a ‘history before history begins’ had barely been discussed. Today the amount of literature on anthropology and related subjects is so vast that the significance of Engels’s work tends to be overlooked. Engels did what modern writers are careful to avoid; he drew a moral from the lessons of the past. Just as Man existed for great lengths of time without developing the idea of such thing as a frontier, so it was possible to envisage a future in which frontiers had disappeared and mankind had become united into a co-operating whole. So with private property; as this, too, was an institution which had evolved by degrees, so it was possible to conceive it passing out of existence and giving place to a form of common ownership on a higher plane. So with the family. As this had its history in the past, it could not he doubted that its future form would change. On all counts the “necessary conditions” of human society — the State with its frontiers, property and the family — which were often regarded as sacred and fixed, were shown to be transitory products of social development and not its immutable causes.

Engels not only draws these Socialist conclusions from his subject matter in a general form; he draws them concretely in his analysis of the State, expounded Anti-Dühring as well as the Origin.

This he shows to be likewise a transitory phenomenon and the product of class divisions based upon property differentiation. He concludes here, that the working class will constitute itself a State force as the capitalists did before them, but under radically different conditions. Since the essence of the State is to coerce and since, further, the essential object of the working class struggle is to abolish class differences, the working class organised as a State, and using its State force, will eliminate all class divisions and must in the end achieve a result in which the State has ceased to be a State at all. So far as the working class eliminates all privileges based upon private property in the means of production and makes the means of production the common property of society, it converts all members of society into workers who are also collective owners. But in doing so, the working class will have abolished distinctly its own working class status. Its own class character will have disappeared with the disappearance of the property relations and the privileges by reference to which it was a class. Its State will therefore cease to be a State since there no longer exists any subjects over whom it can exercise coercion. “The function of the organisation of society will change”, Government over persons will be replaced by administration over things”, the State will die out.

It is extremely difficult to place Engels’s works in any precise order of merit and having in mind the undoubted pre-eminence of the Anti-Dühring, it can be said categorically that Origin of the Family is very necessary for a proper grasp of the ideas expressed by Marx.

The essay, The Mark, is in one sense a foot-note to the Origin. It is useful, however, as showing Engels’ grasp of the various changes and exchanges possible in the ownership of land during its transformation from primitive forms of common ownership to private ownership.

The ‘English’ sub-group contains two works. Engels’ first work The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, and a later work, a series of articles which appeared in the Labour Standard in 1881 (since re-published under the title of The British Labour Movement.)

In the decade after the Paris Commune of 1871 the independent labour press had practically disappeared but the London Trades Council produced their paper the Labour Standard. Its editor, George Shipton, invited Engels to contribute a series of articles. From May to August Engels wrote ten articles, in which by means of current events he demonstrated that old style trade unionism whose objectives were summed up in the slogan “A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work” was absurd. It is in the article “Trade Union of May 28, 1881, that he stresses the need for a movement for the “Abolition of the wages system altogether”. Simply worded, quietly and carefully reasoned, these articles are as readable today and as rewarding as when they were written.

These articles, along with the Condition bear testimony to the fact which a perusal of the Marx-Engels correspondence will verify, that Engels’s association with the working class in Britain continued from the time of his contribution to Owen’s New Moral World and O’Connor’s Northern Star down to the date of his death. To the last, he showed pleasure at the memory of the Chartists’ struggle and he never lost his conviction that the British working class would sooner or later find its place in the forefront of the world revolutionary movement of the working class.

The final group of Engels’s writings consists in his completion of volumes II and III of Capital. It was characteristic of him, that with the death of Marx, he should undertake as a matter of course, the completion of the immense work which illness had compelled Marx to leave unfinished. Engels realised and understood that the full importance of Marx’s analysis of the laws which underlie capitalist society could not be appreciated from the first volume alone. Volume I looks at the process of capitalist production only in a general and abstract form. The work of Volumes II and III is to carry forward the analysis to a study of the concrete process which links together production, circulation and consumption. It is these later studies that show the contradiction of capitalist society as a developing whole. In order that Marx’s scientific discovery (The Law of motion of capitalist society) should be presented to the world complete, Engels, at sixty five years of age undertook a task whose immensity can be appreciated by all who have studied the result and compared it with what had been done before in the field of economics.

In connection with his completion of Capital must be considered the number of prefaces written by Engels to new editions of his own works and those of Marx. During the later years of his life, he congratulated himself upon the fact “That there is but a limited number of languages that he could be called upon to assist translators” (Preface to Volume III of Capital). Added to this mass of work of a uniformly high quality must be the enormous amount of correspondence. Nothing Engels wrote ever failed to be interesting and informative. Without the work of Engels, the theories of Marx would be much less known than most people realise. Marx and Engels both stressed the importance of correct theory arising out of historical development as a preliminary to any revolutionary activity. A last quote from Engels’s 1880 preface to The Communist Manifesto is a fitting end to a tribute of this character:

The proletariat cannot obtain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class — the bourgeoisie — without at the same time, and once and for all emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class-distinction and class struggles.

Bob Ambridge

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2017/09/engels-man-and-his-work-part-two-1971.html

Fred, Charlie's best mate - One

Frederick Engels, 28th November, 1820 - 5th August 1895

 The Aspect column from the September 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

The first of a two part tribute to Marx’s co-worker Friedrich Engels

Seventy six years have passed since the death of Friedrich Engels, the friend and co-worker of Karl Marx. Much of the interest that has been shown over the years in the Socialist movement has tended to obscure the reputation of Engels by an exclusive pre-occupation with that of Marx — a process which Engels himself encouraged — so it seems more than fitting that we should pay tribute, in recognition of the debt present-day Socialists owe to Friedrich Engels.

Marx’s pre-eminence in their partnership was stressed by no one more emphatically than by Engels himself:

  I cannot deny that both before and during my forty year’s collaboration with Marx I had a certain independent share in laying the foundations of the theory, and more particularly in its elaboration. But the greater part of its leading basic principles, especially in the realm of economics and history, and, above all. their final trenchant formulation, belong to Marx. What I contributed — at any rate with the exception of my work in a few special fields — Marx could very well have done without me. What Marx accomplished I would not have achieved. Marx stood higher, saw further, and took a wider and quicker view than all the rest of us. Marx was a genius; we others were at best talented. Without him the theory would not be by far what it is today. It therefore rightly bears his name (F. Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, Marx-Engels Selected Works Vol. II, Moscow, 1958). 

This leaves little room for doubt in so far as it concerns Engel’s generous renunciation especially in the reference to “we others.’’ If we differ from it, as in fairness we must, it can only be in respect of the fact which Engels passes over as of no account: the fact that but for Friedrich Engels, there is every possibility that Karl Marx would have been relatively unknown.

We do not refer only, or even mainly, to the possibility that, without Engels’ aid, Marx would have probably starved to death or been driven insane by privation and disappointment in the years after the failure of the revolt of 1848-9 in Germany and the suppression of the paper (Neue Rheinische Zeitung) in which he had sunk what little money he possessed. This is important enough, but it can be negligible in comparison with the fact that the capability of Marx was fully developed made stronger and richer by his association with Engels and the stimulus of his companionship and talented collaboration. The same process also applies to Engels and his enrichment by his association with Marx. So that the net result is much as Engels expresses it in a letter to Franz Mehring (July, 14 1893):

   If I find anything to object to it is that you give me more credit than I deserve, even if I count in everything which I might possibly have found out for myself — in time — but which Marx with his rapid coup d’oeil and wider vision discovered much more quickly. When one has the good fortune to work for forty years with a man like Marx, one does not usually get the recognition one thinks one deserves during his lifetime. Then, if the greater man dies, the lesser easily gets overrated and this seems to me to be just my case at present; history will set all this right in the end and by that time one will have quietly turned up one’s toes and not know anything any more about anything (Selected Works, Vol. II).

Now that Engels has “turned up his toes” it is his due that while reserving to Marx that pre-eminence which belongs to him, we must also appreciate and value the work of Friedrich Engels.

The friendship of Marx and Engels began in 1844, after having met previously in the office of the Rheinische Zeitung of which journal Marx was the editor. Neither was, at this meeting, much drawn to the other.

Engels, the son of a cotton manufacturer and importer, was born in 1820 in the town of Barmen, now merged with Elberfield and four small towns to form Wuppertal in the province of North Rhine Westphalia. At the time he met Marx, he had just completed his year in the army as a lieutenant in the guard artillery, and although he was deeply interested in the philosophy and and republican-democratic politics of that period, he appears to have been still a rather stiffs “officer of the Guards”. His background in a rigid Lutheran and commercial home was very different from that of Marx who had lived in an atmosphere of eighteenth century culture based on the Rabbinical tradition and legal studies of his father. Marx as a young editor had obtained his knowledge of classical German philosophy and democratic politics by a method opposite to that of Engels, although each was a man of intense feeling and wide sympathy, yet, at their first meeting they did not appear to. have had much in common.

Engels went to England to fill a clerical appointment at his father’s factory in Manchester where he found it necessary to take up the study of commerce. Marx, in his work as editor, found himself engaged in numerous conflicts with the authorities and the censorship. He found himself handicapped by a lack of knowledge of political economy and, what at the time, were new ideas about “Socialism” then prevalent in Paris and from there, spreading out into Germany.

When the Rheinische Zeitung was suppressed in 1844, Marx made his way to Paris expressly to study these subjects. A friend, Arnold Ruge, invited Marx to collaborate with him in producing, from Paris, a review-magazine — the German/French Year book, which was to feature critical philosophical studies upon all the topics then current in Germany. A magazine of this type was impossible to produce in Germany due to the censorship of that period. The collaboration of Radical writers in France and Germany (Feuerbach, Bruno, and Edgar Bauer, Heine and Proudhon among them) were invited and in response to this appeal, an Article “Outlines of Political Economy” was received from Friedrich Engels in Manchester. This led to an invitation from Marx to Engels suggesting a visit to Paris.

Engels’ arrival in Manchester in 1842 coincided with the second upheaval of the Chartist Movement with the strikes and rioting which accompanied it. He was deeply interested in the aims of the Chartists, and through that movement came into contact with the ideas expressed by the supporters of Robert Owen, which ideas overlapped with the Chartist Movement. As a student of commerce, he was naturally brought into a study of classical political economy. It was his association with the Chartists, Owenites and others, which made him aware of the critical conclusions, drawn from that political economy by the other champions of working-class aspirations. These studies, carefully combined with his knowledge of classical German philosophy, resulted in two works. The first, a study of the working class in England in 1844 upon which he was at work when he was invited to contribute to the German/French Year Book. The second was the article he sent in response to that request.

Engels followed his article to Paris, where he and Marx for the next ten days compared notes and views. As a result, they found they had each independently reached the same conclusions; that the capitalist system was historically a transitory phenomenon and bound to give place to a new system, based upon the common ownership of the means of production and that it was the historical mission of the working class to bring the new form of society into being. The fact that each had reached this conclusion by a different method; Engels by the study of classic English philosophy (political), Marx by a study of the French Revolution and its outcome on French proletarian movements, made them complementary to each other. The friendship born out of these circumstances lasted for the remainder of their lives. 

The immediate effect of their friendship was that they both commenced upon their life task; to get an understanding and acceptance by the working class of what they regarded as its historic role in society.

Each, in his own way, settled down to the work of propagating the ideas of scientific socialism as opposed to the Utopian ideas of that period. Engels wrote the opening instalment of the Holy Family which Marx completed and published Engels’ fine work The Condition of the Working Class in England was first issued in Germany in 1845. The following quotation is from the preface for the English Edition of 1892: “The author, at that time, was young, twenty four years of age, and his production bears the stamp of his youth with its good and its faulty features, neither of which he feels ashamed”.

This is a statement with which we must agree. There is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. It is a classic, readable and rewarding; a splendid record of working class life as Engels saw it in 1844, together with its historical background. This was in opposition to the "respectable” and complacent view that saw the working class as the ‘mob’ the 'lower orders’ and sometimes as the ‘swinish multitude’. Engels formulated the proposition that this despised section of society contained the force prepared by historical development for the overthrow of capitalist society, and which would make possible and necessitate the establishment of Socialism.

The collaboration of Marx and Engels is best shown in the Communist Manifesto. So close was it, that in the final result it is hard to say which is Marx and which is Engels.

When Marx, driven from France, settled in London, Engels joined him and did his best to help Marx get a living by journalism whilst he, in order to get the money for their joint purpose, went to work in the factory owned by his father. Thereafter, for the rest of their lives they never lost contact.

How close their relationship was and how much Engels’ stimulus and encouragement helped in promoting the development of Marx can be seen by this extract from the Marx/Engels correspondence. Marx had completed years of work on his Capital and the first volume was ready for the printer. Marx writes to Engels:

      London, 16 August, 1867 2 o'clock at night 

Dear Fred, . . . So this volume is finished. It was thanks to you alone that this became possible. Without your self-sacrifice for me I could never possibly have done the enormous work for the three volumes. I embrace you, full of thanks! (Marx-Engels Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1956). 

After 1869 Engels retired from commerce and in 1870 he came to live in London. The correspondence was now replaced by daily visits. He was also able to relieve Marx of the stresses of his early years by his kindly act of endowing him with a small annual income. It was fitting that it should be Engels himself who found that Marx had died peacefully in his chair and that to Engels should fall the task of making the speech over the grave at Highgate cemetery, March 17, 1883. It included the words: "On the fourteenth of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think . . ", "his name and his work will endure through the ages." (extract from Graveside Speech).

With the name and work of Marx which has endured must be coupled the name and work of Friedrich Engels. With the death of Marx, Engels, at the age of 65 undertook the monumental task of preparing from the notes left by Marx, Volumes two and three of Capital for publication, and spent the rest of his days, vindicating and popularising the work of his friend.

Of Engels’ personality, a word or two is appropriate. He appears to have been a genial person, fond of the open air and country walks, good eating and drinking. He differed from Marx insofar as he was more immediately likeable. But they were as one in their enthusiasm for their joint life's work. In all he did; in his studies and writings he gave all he could. To the Marx children he was an elder brother. When writing of a man like Engels, it is almost impossible not to use superlatives. He was a man in the best possible sense of the term.

In March 1895, he developed cancer in the throat. By August 1895, he was dead. At his own wish his body was cremated and the ashes thrown into the sea off Eastbourne.

Bob Ambridge

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2017/09/engels-man-and-his-work-part-one-1971.html

SPGB Meeting TONIGHT 28 November 1930 GMT ZOOM

 

ARE WE LEFTWING … OR RIGHTWING? (ZOOM)

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Event Details

• Date: November 28, 2025 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

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Where do others perceive us on the left/right spectrum? Does that spectrum make sense anyway?
Speaker: Kevin Cronin

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

Thankful for what, American exploited class?

Previously posted on SOYMB 26.11. 2015

‘ Thanksgiving approaches and throughout the U.S. a fairy-tale is re-told. It goes a little something like this:

“Pilgrims came to America, in order to escape religious persecution in England. Living conditions proved difficult in the New World, but thanks to the friendly Indian, Squanto, the pilgrims learned to grow corn, and survive in unfamiliar lands. It wasn't long before the Indians and the pilgrims became good friends. To celebrate their friendship and abundant harvest, Indians in feathered headbands joined together with the pilgrims and shared in a friendly feast of turkey and togetherness. Happy Thanksgiving. The End.”

Following the bloody Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863. Back then, Americans were desperately in need of unity and inspiration. Hence, the myth of the first Thanksgiving was born.  

The actual story is very much different. 

“One day, the Wampanoag people of the Eastern coast of the Americas noticed unfamiliar people in their homelands. These unfamiliar people were English pilgrims, coming to a new land which they dubbed "America," in order to settle and create a new life.

The Wampanoag were initially uneasy with the settlers, but they eventually engaged in a shaky relationship of commerce and exchange. Also, in observing that the pilgrims nearly died from a harsh winter, the Wampanoag stepped in to help.

The Wampanoag chief, Massasoit, eventually entered into agreements with the pilgrims, and, on behalf of the Wampanoag Nation, decided to be allies while each nation coexisted in the same space together. At one time, the Wampanoag and pilgrims shared in a meal of wildfowl, deer, and shellfish.

After Massasoit's death, the Wampanoag nation became weakened as a result of disease contracted from the English. It wasn't long before the pilgrims began tormenting surrounding tribes, burning entire villages to the ground, while indigenous men, women, and children lie sleeping.

Uneasy with the growing cruelty, greed, and arrogance of the new people in their homelands, the Wampanoag began to distrust the pilgrims. The pilgrims soon demanded that the Wampanoag submit to them, and give up all their weapons.

Shortly after, the pilgrims and Wampanoag were at war, and in the end, the pilgrims rose victorious. At the close of the war, the Wampanoag were nearly decimated, and the son of Chief Massasoit, Metacom, was killed by the pilgrims, dismembered, beheaded, and his head impaled on a spear outside of Plymouth. Metacom's young son was sent to the West Indies as a slave, along with numerous other Wampanoag and surrounding tribes. A day of Thanksgiving was declared, and to celebrate, the pilgrims kicked the heads of dead indigenous peoples around like soccer balls. 

As indigenous nations throughout America were continually betrayed by European settlers, killed by disease, germ warfare, hunted for bounties, sent overseas as slaves, and ultimately pushed out of their homelands and onto prison camps (now commonly known as reservations), few survived the depressing conditions. As a result of centuries of historical trauma, indigenous nations today have staggering rates of depression, mental health disparities, suicide, and deaths due to alcohol and drugs. Indigenous people continue to struggle to cope with historical trauma, and heal deeply imbedded wounds which stem directly from colonialism. This, still, is not the end.”

The Thanksgiving myth breeds ignorance and reinforces bigotry. It is time to embrace truth. The mythical version of Thanksgiving creates a fairy-tale of land-grab, betrayal, brutality and genocide.’

Adapted and abridged from here 

Socialist Sonnet No. 213

Treasury Tales

 

Red box of exchequer delights open

To reveal a tax on the tooth fairy,

With fruit plucked off the magic money tree,

Treasure borrowed from the lair of a dragon

Or the pot of gold at the rainbow’s end.

Raise taxes here, then lower others there,

Increase benefits trying to be fair,

Only to leave others trying to defend

The little they have got. The dragon’s loot

Will move off-shore, the tooth fairy replaced

By a drone, the pot of gold can’t be traced,

While the money tree’s torn up by the root.

All fiscal tales told, Labour’s and Tories’,

Turn out to be merely fairy stories.

 

D. A.

How to neuter fat cats

 

A new BBC history series concludes that ‘Wealth inequality is the most common and crucial element in societal collapse.’

What to do? At a recent awards ceremony singer Billie Eilish, who is donating £8m to fight food poverty, asked the question ‘If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire?’ Her suggestion, to give it all away, reportedly annoyed Mark Zuckerberg.

Many, including even Reform UK voters, would support a wealth tax. But the tax proposed is usually modest – a mere ‘pantomime of pseudo-radicalism in which the villains are some wankers on yachts.’ We say it’s pointless decrying wealth inequality as an ‘injustice’ while accepting the capitalist logic that created it. If you want to abolish inequality, abolish capitalism.

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

Socialist Sonnet No. 212

COP…out

 

Assemble fifty thousand delegates,

From around the world. Ask what the price is,

When considering the climate crisis,

Of convening fourteen days of debates.

Then there’s the press corps and TV news,

Social media that requires broad banding,

The wining, the dining, the glad handing:

A towering Babel of discrepant views.

Far, far too many are still enraptured

With fossil fuels and profits they’re making.

For all the hot air there’s no mistaking

That not a gram of carbon is captured

After the fortnight, despite pressing need.

Just lots of motions with nothing agreed.

 

D. A.

World Socialist Radio - No Such Thing

 

‘No Such Thing as Free Buses’ and ‘Woolly Thinking’.

byThe Socialist Party of Great Britain

Proposals for “free buses” under capitalism—like the plan by New York politician Zohran Mamdani—paint a misleading picture: there’s no such thing as “free” in a system based on profit. While fare-free public transport would indeed make travel easier and lower emissions, the column warns that funding it via higher local taxes essentially subsidises employers by reducing the cost of living, which in turn can suppress wages. The only way to make transport—and all essential services—truly free and accessible for everyone, according to the authors, is to abolish the wage system entirely and bring the means of production into common, democratic ownership, enabling a socialist society where goods and services are provided solely to meet people’s needs.

In Woolly Thinking the author critiques trade union leader Sarah Woolley’s call to raise taxes on the rich and corporations in order to fund public services like housing, health, education, and a “just transition.” While she argues that the money already exists in society, the article contends that under capitalism, that wealth comes from surplus value created by workers — which capitalists then reinvest or hoard. Taxing profits would reduce incentives for reinvestment, likely leading to less job creation, lower wages, and a shrinking tax base. The piece warns that these reformist proposals misunderstand how capitalism fundamentally operates.

Articles taken from the November 2025 edition of The Socialist Standard.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/world-socialist-radio/

SPGB Meeting TONIGHT 21 November 1930 GMT ZOOM

 

HISTORY OR TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM? (ZOOM)

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Event Details

• Date: November 21, 2025 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

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Does the working class have a “historical mission”?
Speaker: Darren Poynton

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

Socialist Sonnet No. 211

No…

 

‘No Irish, no Blacks, no Dogs’, set in quotes

From a world and a time long gone, or so

It might be presumed, or should it now go

None of those arriving in rubber boats?

Ballistics do not respect borders,

As poverty pays no heed to flags flown,

Changing climate means sea levels have grown

Dangerously high; by such disorders

People, not migrants, are forced to retreat,

To abandon homes, to cross stormy seas

Hoping for better, but no guarantees,

Somewhere fairness is the common conceit.

Meanwhile, politicians are none too slow

At taking advantage of saying, ‘NO!’

 

D. A.

Forever blowing bubbles

 

On 18 November, the Financial Times told us that a Bank of America survey has found that a “majority of global fund managers think companies are overinvesting, as market anxiety grows about the sustainability of the artificial intelligence spending boom”.

The capitalist press is again revealing the accuracy of Marxian economic theory, which describes how capital will and must flow into industrial sectors with potential/actual relatively high profits. The end result will always be over-investment and an ensuing sectoral slump which, depending on circumstances, can turn into a world slump.

As the refrain goes, capitalism is “forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air”. Except for us, the working class, the bubbles aren’t pretty at all!

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

World Socialist Radio - Capitalism All at Sea

 

Bonkers From Jib to Poop – Tales of Capitalism All at Sea

byThe Socialist Party of Great Britain

This is a talk that was given on 31 Oct 2025 on a general maritime theme. There’s no particular point being made, just some observations on a number of vaguely related news stories from earlier in the year.

World Socialist Radio is the official podcast of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We have one 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.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/world-socialist-radio/

SPGB Meeting TONIGHT 14 November 1930 GMT ZOOM

 

HAVE YOU HEARD THE NEWS? (ZOOM)

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Event Details

• Date: November 14, 2025 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

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Discussion on recent events

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

A world of slums

 

Over a billion people live in slums, an increase of more than a hundred million over twenty years.

This is mainly in Asia and Africa, with unplanned urban growth meaning that people often build their own poor-quality unsanitary homes. In south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, around half of city-dwellers live in slums.

The real reason, though, is the massive inequality that marks this capitalist world, with so many having their lives disrupted and being forced to move to cities. Whether this is a result of war, climate change, economic problems or other causes, it shows clearly that the present global system cannot satisfy even the basic demands of much of the population.

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

The Latest Humbug

 

‘The Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And then we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now, too
Have God on their side ‘

With God on our side. Bob Dylan.

Lieutenant General Alexander Sollfrank is the Commander of the Bundeswehr Joint Force Command, has stated that, ‘Berlin is prepared for a war with Moscow and stands ready to facilitate the deployment of 800,000 NATO troops towards the Russian border.’ Politico re has reported that Germany’s rearmament plans would cost it €377 billion ($440 billion).

For the third time those dammed Germans are trying to start a world war. (Sarcasm0. Don’t let us forget on Remembrance day the other guilty countries, who have engaged in military conflict of various kinds: Britain, America, France, Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire,,Israel, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Portuguese, Sweden, and on and on and on. Not forgetting conflicts in Africa and Latin America etc etc etc.

We shouldn’t forget the reasons why nation states, and those who want to be nation states fight others - in the nineteen thirties Major General Smedley spoke about how the American military was used to protect and expand American capitalism. "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" Bu we should give remembrance, and not just on one day, to all the working class men and women who were propagandised, or brainwashed, into supporting nationalist ‘ideals’ and who perished and who were crippled, to fight for the particular minority capitalist class. And not forgetting all the millions of civilians who also suffered in conflicts they didn’t want and didn’t start.

Standing at the Cenotaph in "silent humility" at 11 o'clock on the Anniversary of Armistice Day were to be seen politicians whose whole political career is a record of pompous and contemptuous disregard for the lives of the working class; ‘ see below. They serve capitalist interests for their own interests. Neither they nor capitalism care about the vast majority except perhaps as cannon fodder.

How do we put an end to this baseless killing and destruction? By consigning capitalism to the dustbin of history

The below is from the Socialist Standard December 1920

‘There is, perhaps, no other epoch in history so mean and brutal as the present. Even the days we are wont to call the "Dark Ages" have no records of men slaughtered wholesale by gas and flame. Herod has been out-Heroded by dozens of petty military chiefs. Nero earned the execration of posterity by burning a city: a modern general will gain a title and the popular applause by burning a score.

Where in the pages of history can one read of such detestable hypocrisy as the burial of the "Unknown Soldier" that took place a short time ago in the very street where the erstwhile comrades of that lifeless clay had been batoned because they dared to rebel against the prospect of starvation? Does any thinking man suggest that the capitalist class had any other idea, in organising and carrying out, with such pomp and expense, the burial of a common soldier, than hoodwinking the working class?

Standing at the Cenotaph in "silent humility" at 11 o'clock on the Anniversary of Armistice Day were to be seen politicians whose whole political career is a record of pompous and contemptuous disregard for the lives of the working class; who had sent soldiers to shoot down strikers in their native streets, and who at that very moment were formulating plans for the calling together of scientists to assure that this country should be well supplied with poison gas at the outbreak of the next war.

Representations are being made to the Government to protect the infant dye industry against foreign competition—not because they want English frocks dyed with English dyes! That is (vide "Daily Mail," 19th Nov.) only, apparently, a secondary point. The main reason is that of the maintenance of plant for the manufacture of toxic gases! And this almost contemporary with the announcement that the League of Nations is endeavouring to prohibit the use of gas in war.

We were told at the commencement of the war that no more would be seen the spectacle of men broken in fighting "their country's battles" forced to seek charity in the streets or shelter in the workhouses. We were promised "a land fit for heroes." Our eyes were dazzled with the prospect of an England made beautiful and happy so soon as the Prussian were crushed and rendered innocuous. Yet what do we find? Men wearing war ribbons hawking vegetables, or even begging coppers, may be met with all over the place. Certain newspapers are full of the plaints of ex-soldiers who have been swindled out of their pensions. One journalist has been going about the country as a tramp, and reports the casual wards in all parts to be full of ex-service men tramping about the land looking for work! The economic position of nearly everyone who possesses nothing but labour power is more desperate than ever it was before. And yet Prussianism is crushed. Its arch-exponent is reduced to the expedient of sawing wood as an outlet to his feelings.

Was it, then, Prussianism that was the enemy of the working class? Or was not the Socialist right when he told you that the capitalist system was the enemy to be fought and crushed? Do you still place reliance on your political representatives? Show us a capitalist politician and we will show you a fraud, a trickster, and a pot-hunter. Show us a labour leader and we will point you either a stupid ignoramus or a wilful misleader. Show us an ideal you cherish and we will show you how the capitalist class through their Press twist it to their own advantage. Even your tears and heartaches for your lost young men are used by this hypocritical class to blind you to the rottenness of the system upon which they batten and live their luxurious lives.

How, then, to escape from this murderous, slavish existence? Do we need tell you the way again? Or need we only urge you to think for yourselves? If you need encouragement go to Bethnal Green, or to the slums of Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, or whatever great town you may be near, and if you have any pity in you it will not be long before you discover the way to end the system that murders and degrades the large mass of its community in the interests of a small section, and assuages its grief-stricken millions with a circus.’

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-latest-humbug-1920.html