‘It is very difficult to estimate the extent of their [fission products] effect especially as the most important substances would be those of long life, which are the hardest to study under laboratory conditions. It does however seem certain that the area devastated by the explosion would be dangerous to life for a considerable time’ (Maud Committee report, 1941).  

The following articles have been added to the Jack Fitzgerald Internet Archive:

November 1911: Asked & Answered: Prices and Values.

November 1914: Birds of a feather.

March 1915: The Confusion of the “Clarion” “Economists”.

June/July 1915: Capitalist economics.

March 1918: Working Harder for the Capitalist.

That completes all the articles in the Socialist Standard signed by him

During a life cut tragically short, Sinead came to the attention of socialists for advocating the need to abolish money.   

The article below is taken from the January 1993 edition of the Socialist Standard.

The music business certainly contains some odd contrasts. On 5 November, the world’s biggest music publishing company, Time Warner, handed a cheque for £26 million to Elton John and Bernie Taupin for the future marketing rights to all their songs from 1974 onwards, including the next six future albums. This was the largest advance ever paid in music history. It reflected the safety of investing in the popular material involved.

Around the same time, a fairly successful but somewhat more controversial singer hit the headlines, not just of the music press, but also in the tabloids and elsewhere. Sinead O’Connor had torn up a picture of the Pope, live on camera on the “Saturday Night live” American network comedy show. This only added to an already radical reputation, which had polarised opinion between the “moral majority”, particularly in the States, who see her as a public enemy and figure of hate, and the few who have been intrigued by the passionate protests she has pursued.

On an earlier occasion, she had refused to participate in a concert which was to have ended with a rendition of the Stars And Stripes, and for this Frank Sinatra was quoted as eloquently saying that he would like to “kick her butt”. The Sun did an excited expose about her alleged support for the IRA, which later turned out to be unfounded. She horrified the music industry by refusing to collect her “Brits” and US “Grammy” awards in 1991 as she disagreed with the acquisitive and competitive ethos it represented. Then, at the time of the Gulf War, this popular singing star again distinguished herself from her musical colleagues by nailing her colours to the mast and going on record as being emphatically opposed to the war.

Ugly scenes

In the USA, ugly scenes ensued in which piles of her records have been destroyed in public (no doubt in the name of freedom of expression). In Britain, she has been ridiculed instead, through the somewhat limp wit of radio DJs, attempting pathetically to stray into the vocal exposition of their insipid conservatism.

Matters came to a head last October, when she was violently shouted off the stage at a special New York concert held to commemorate thirty years of records produced by Bob Dylan. How ironic that this smug party held for the protest singer of a previous generation should have displayed such brutal intolerance for someone who had spoken out with views which had protested against certain sacred cows in the 1990s. Did they think that the sixties had been so successful in liberating humanity that “protest” could be quietly laid to rest?

It was in the aftermath of that concert that she announced her resignation from her singing career, stating that she had striven to achieve fame only in order to obtain a platform for certain strongly-held views. She then explained these views in some detail through various press interviews. It was subsequently announced that her record company had then persuaded her to reconsider her decision, and she was therefore included in the bill for an Amnesty International concert.

So what were the ideas which lay beneath this wave of controversy?

The opposition to Sinead O’Connor’s pronouncements about the need to abolish money had a tiresomely familiar ring to socialists. In supposedly radical journals like New Musical Express and supposedly liberal organs like the Guardian the tired old arguments in defence of the money system were trotted out with religious devotion, as if kept permanently ready, to use at the first signs of any heretical statements made against the money god:

“Take away money, then you take away the pillars of society…Money may well be the root of all evil. but what choice do we have? Right now. no money equals no power. No power equals a voice in the wilderness. Sad, but that’s the real world. (NME. 14 November).

So you don’t accept that human nature is essentially competitive and that money is just part of this? … But what about you, Sinead? You must have a few quid stacked away somewhere? (NME. 31 October).

“Mad Woman in the Artic, Part II”; “I’m not a raving loony”. Sinead O’Connor told the Sun last week. “My biggest aim is to get rid of money”, she continued. “If everyone agreed to do it at the same time, it could happen”. Unsold piles of the last Sinead CD could be the new currency.”(Guardian, 31 October).

Revolutionary socialists, who have been working for many years for the creation of a moneyless system of society, have grown used to these inane defences of the money system. They confuse the notion of a fixed “human nature” with the wide variety of human behaviours which have evolved through the conditions of various social systems.

It was of note that in the main NME interview involved, O’Connor made no fewer than fifteen separate references to the urgent need to abolish the money system. Whilst socialists will want to question some of the religious commentaries which were woven in with this, it was very heartening nevertheless to see this proposal receiving this unexpected platform:

“So the only solution to all of the problems in the world – starvation, homelessness, joblessness, etc – is to get rid of money… A survey has to be conducted. Let’s have a vote and see…”If everyone else was going to do it, would you be prepared to live without money?” Let’s see how people feel about it – -supposedly we live in a democracy. I bet you that people will be able to do it…as long as there exists the system of money, there will always be people who have some and those who haven’t… Ninety-five per cent of the world’s wealth is owned by five per cent of the world’s population. That’s the whole problem…We can do it, but there’s no point unless everyone’s gonna do it, it just can’t work… Look at our lives, how they’re run by money… get rid of money. In one foul swoop, you get rid of the whole thing. With love, and our supposed belief in God…Have the faith to go through the rocky part and believe that God’s gonna help us out. (NME, 31October).

Child abuse

She holds the view that most modern social problems had their origin in the rise of the Catholic Church and “Roman Empire” based in the Vatican, with its sanctioning of various invasions and imperialisms, and its imposition of repressive moral codes over millions of people. In her own country of origin, Ireland, she describes how alcoholism, drug-abuse and, in particular, child abuse have in her view been the inevitable legacy of that historical process. She makes no secret of the fact that her own childhood there was plagued by persistent sexual abuse. It might readily be seen that her theorising about the key historical role of the Vatican in the rise of a globally exploitative system is a reflection of her own experiences and is too narrowly based on one interpretation of the development of certain, mainly European countries and in particular of Ireland. She fails to take a broader world view of the ruling class which in fact encompasses all religions, and in many cases none. On the other hand, these arguments are soon tied in with sounder lines of economic criticism:

“We’re all trapped in a society that has been very, very carefully orchestrated and structured to control us by people who want power over us, for money…they took us away from the truth, brutalised us and then only offered us one God, a God outside and above us, unattainable. They made our God into money.” (NME, 31 October).

She goes on to explain that the people who did all this were the Catholic Church, especially with reference to their role in Irish history. Again, this is a peculiarly narrow definition of the minority class enemy which exploits us, and leaves out of account the quite separate evolution of ruling groups in other ways in other parts of the world. Her proposed solution, however, of abolishing the social system which is based on money, is both universally applicable and urgently needed. There is an international ruling class which certainly does impose moral codes and supervise institutionalised poverty and abuse.

Regardless of the reservations referred to above. Sinead O’Connor is to be applauded for these specific proclamations which she has pursued so single-mindedly. The profusion of panic, misunderstanding and venom with which her comments were greeted is in fact testimony to the refreshingly different and viable ideas involved.

Orange Protest

‘JUST TOP SOIL’ on orange T shirts; two fans

At the Ashes Test cocking a snook

At those match disrupters trying to look

Progressive, but ill-conceived, naïve plans

To be unsporting are easily foiled

And only provoke public annoyance

Rather than helping the cause to advance,

The wheels of reaction are too well oiled.

Protest brings headlines, but not policy,

Action leading to inaction, a schism

Obscuring how it’s capitalism

Frustrates reformers whoever they be.

Neither slogans nor satire can arrange

Circumstances to bring radical change.

D. A.

 Yes, “sex work is…work”  and  employment is prostitution!   Marx saw sex work as ’only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the labourer’ (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, 1844).    Prostitution along with female genital mutilation, misogyny, virginity tests, being taught that menstruation is unclean, circumcision for non-medical reasons, caste/class, homophobia, marriage to children, as well as blasphemy as a crime, non-evidence based medicine & cock and dog fighting – all of them should be thrown in the dustbin of history! 

The dehuminization of those involved will only end when the terms buyer and seller become redundant with the establishment of socialism.

From the BBC News website: ‘The number of rough sleepers in London has risen by more than a fifth in the past year, the latest figures show.’

The BBC quotes a report by the Combined Homelessness and Information Network (Chain) which says that people sleeping rough for the first time rose by more than twenty five percent.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66030583

There are lots of statistics given: ‘figures, released in a report commissioned and funded by the Greater London Authority (GLA), found that 10,053 people were seen sleeping on the streets between April 2022 and March 2023.

This figure was up by almost 21% from 8,329 in the same period a year before. First time rough sleepers in London rose to 6,391 – an almost 26% rise compared with 5,091 from the same period in 2021/22… some 2,084 people had been seen rough sleeping for at least two consecutive years.

After more than a year without sleeping rough, 1,578 people returned to the streets…the number of people in this situation increased by almost a third (31%) from 1,205 the previous year.’

There is recognition that this is an unacceptable situation; ‘Homelessness charity St Mungo’s branded it a “tragic reflection” of the cost-of-living crisis and lack of affordable housing’. The Mayor of London described the rise as “extremely alarming”’.

Although the sincerity to alleviate and end this dire situation for all the individuals forced to live on the streets is accepted the ‘solutions’, as is too often the case within capitalism are of the sticking plaster variety treating the effect not the cause.

The Mayor of London: ‘despite previous progress, “extraordinary financial pressures are putting the poorest Londoners at growing risk of homelessness”. His solution, ‘ he would like to be handed powers from the government to bring in rent controls’. Further, ‘ministers must “get a grip on the cost-of-living crisis and restore the social security safety net which stops people becoming trapped in a cycle of homelessness”’. And, “They (the government) must also invest in new council and genuinely affordable homes and restore London Housing Allowance rates to the 30th percentile of market rents”’.

A government commitment had previously been made to end rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament.

The CEO of St Mungo’s underlined some of the issues which contributed toward homelessness: “The shrinking supply of affordable homes in the private rented sector, and the chronic undersupply of social housing, means people are struggling to find and keep somewhere to live… without “immediate intervention, the number of people sleeping rough will continue to rise”.

It’s perhaps too much to ask that capitalism would be recognised as the underlying cause.

Does this Blog protesteth too much? Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

Perhaps not on a par with Henry V’s Saint Crispin Day speech but stepping into the breech to eliminate the slay the dragon of homelessness (apologies for mixed metaphors. Ed.) comes Prince William to the rescue. Big sigh of relief. We can now all sleep safely in our beds. Well not if you’re homeless you can’t.

‘It’s a sad reality that in 2023 homelessness still exists. That is why Prince William and The Royal Foundation of The Prince and Princess of Wales have launched Homewards: a transformative five-year, locally led programme that will aim to demonstrate that together it’s possible to end homelessness – making it rare, brief and unrepeated’.

https://homewards.org.uk/

The Royal family own nineteen properties.

https://www.countryliving.com/uk/homes-interiors/property/a29509536/royal-family-properties/

There does not seem to be a town, village or smaller area anywhere in the UK where homeless individuals will not now be found. Socialists are just as repulsed by this social ill as anyone.

Our solution is not more sticking plaster but a maddeningly simple one – abolish capitalism and replace it with a social system where goods and services are produced for use, not profit.

From a foreign news source, a report about the hardships the Dutch continue to suffer as energy utility consumer costs continue to rise. What’s going to happen when winter comes and the option to use as little energy as possible is dramatically reduced by the need not to freeze to death?

‘Household energy bills in the Netherlands are up drastically from last year, despite government subsidies and a consumer price cap.

The average gas and electricity bill rocketed by 37% in June compared to the same month of last year, data released last week by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) revealed. The increase will add €630 ($702) to annual household energy costs, bringing the average bill to €2,320 ($2,586) per year, compared to €1,691 last June.

Wholesale energy prices across the EU rose dramatically last year as Russian supplies shrank, following sanctions resulting from the Ukraine conflict.

Last October, the Dutch government announced a relief package of €23.5 billion to compensate for the rise in energy tariffs. The country has also introduced a consumer price cap, amounting to €1.45 per cubic meter of gas and €0.4 per kilowatt hour of electricity.

However, even with state aid, energy bills in the country are still higher than last June, partly due to increased taxes, the NL Times news outlet noted. The Dutch government has provided fewer tax discounts on energy, while a temporary reduction in the VAT rate has also been reversed.

Higher prices have forced Dutch families to slash energy consumption, taking an average of €40 off annual bills for gas and electricity, according to CBS.

Economists warn that the average household energy bill in the Netherlands may reach €2,500 once the state-imposed price cap expires in 2024.’

Thw historian, biographer and political commentator. Geoffrey Roberts states in an interview today:  ‘The most important thing to understand about Stalin is that he was an intellectual, driven by his Marxist ideas, a true believer in his communist ideology. And he didn’t just believe it, he felt it. Socialism was an emotional thing for Stalin.  His often-monstrous actions stemmed from his politics and ideology, not his personality.’

In the 1930s Stalin outlawed abortion and homosexuality and  pursued state capitalist industrialisation, at the cost of millions of lives, and in 1936 announced that Russia was ‘socialist’.   That very year, on 28 August, Pravda proclaimed him divine: 

O Great Stalin, O Leader of the Peoples,

Thou who didst give birth to man,

Thou who didst make fertile the earth,

Thou who dost rejuvenate the Centuries,

Thou who givest blossom to the spring…

 The same year, a mere mortal observed: ‘There are in the U.S.S.R. privileged and exploited classes, dominant classes and subject classes. Between them the standard of living is sharply separated. The classes of travel on the railways correspond exactly to the social classes; similarly with ships, restaurants, theatres, shops, and with houses; for one group palaces in pleasant neighbourhoods, for the others wooden barracks alongside tool stores and oily machines. .It is always the same people who live in the palaces and the same people who live in the barracks. There is no longer private property, there is only one property – State property. But the State no more represents the whole community than under preceding régimes’ (What the Russian Revolution Has Become, Robert Guiheneuf, 1936).

Ironic considering 30 years earlier Stalin’s understanding of socialism was sound:

‘Future society will be socialist society. This also means that with the abolition of exploitation, commodity production and buying and selling will also be abolished and, therefore, there will be no room for buyers and sellers of labour power, for employers and employed—there will be only free workers… Where there are no classes, where there are neither rich nor poor, there is no need for a state, there is no need also for political power, which oppresses the poor and protects the rich. Consequently, in socialist society there will be no need for the existence of political power’ (Anarchism or Socialism? 1906).

Kenyans are experiencing the effects of both capitalism and the futility of trusting in ‘leaders’. The soaring cost of living has led to protests with extreme violence resulting, according to the United Nations human Rights Office, in protesters deaths and injuries. To protect its power, and those of the asset owning class, the State will always initially resort to those members of the working class who have undertaken to defend bourgeoisie interests even to the extent of beating and shooting fellow workers.

‘Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga has called for three days of anti-government protests starting on Wednesday.

The latest demonstrations are against tax hikes and follow two previous sets of protests this year against the soaring cost of living in East Africa’s economic hub and alleged malpractice in last year’s presidential election, which Odinga lost.

The new taxes were to take effect on July 1, but a Nairobi court halted their implementation pending further legal proceedings. Still, a tax increase on petroleum products was imposed, increasing fuel costs.

Odinga said more protests could be held after this week.

What are the latest protests about?

Odinga announced the protests on June 14 against a new finance bill, which introduced a 1.5 percent housing levy, a 16 percent tax on petroleum products and a 16 percent value-added tax (VAT) on money that policyholders receive as compensation from insurance companies.

“That finance bill will be the last nail in the coffin,” Odinga told his supporters. “If it is passed, it will make Kenyans slaves of paying taxes. …When they pass that bill, that will be the trumpet call. Will you be ready?”

The bill was signed into law on June 26.

On July 10, Kenya’s High Court extended an order barring Treasury Cabinet Secretary Njuguna Ndung’u from implementing it.

The government mostly obeyed the ruling except for the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority, which increased fuel prices, triggering an increase in public transport costs.

The price increases are from 182.04 shillings ($1.29) to 195.53 shillings ($1.38) per litre of petrol, 164.28 shillings ($1.16) to 176.67 shillings ($1.25) for a litre of diesel and from 161.48 shillings ($1.14) to 173.44 shillings ($1.22) per litre of kerosene.

What is the finance act about? 

During the presidential campaign,the eventual winner, William Ruto, promised to reduce the cost of living and positioned himself as a poor “hustler” eager to wrest power away from the ruling dynasties that President Uhuru Kenyatta and Odinga, sons of independent Kenya’s first president and vice president, represented. The younger Kenyatta endorsed the younger Odinga rather than his deputy, but Ruto was declared the winner and was sworn into office in September. President Ruto inherited an enormous government debt. At the time Kenyatta took office in 2013, it stood at 1.79 trillion shillings ($13bn). By the time Kenyatta left office, it had ballooned to 8.7 trillion shillings ($61bn).

Ruto then removed fuel subsidies, leading to a spike in the prices of basic commodities like bread and maize flour, which are directly affected by the cost of energy and transport.“In addition to being very costly, consumption subsidy interventions are prone to abuse, they distort markets and create uncertainty, including artificial shortages of the very products being subsidised,” he said in his inauguration speech.

New taxes followed. In addition to the housing levy, petroleum products tax and insurance compensation tax, digital assets taxes were also introduced. The government also imposed a 3 percent levy on transfer charges applied during the exchange of assets that cover non-fungible tokens (NFTs), cryptocurrencies, and digital currencies.

The finance act also introduced a 15 percent withholding tax for digital content creators, a 35 percent tax for people earning above 500,000 shillings ($3,536) annually and the VAT on petroleum products was increased from 8 percent to 16 percent.

According to economists, the law will increase tax revenues collected from high-income earners while shrinking individual net income for low-income earners because of increased tax burdens.

What have the effects of the protests been?

According to a statement by a spokesman for the United Nations Human Rights Office, up to 23 people were killed by the police and dozens were injured in demonstrations in the past week. A couple of opposition members were also arrested.

“The UN is very concerned by the widespread violence and allegations of disproportionate use of force, including the use of firearms by the police during protests in Kenya,” Jeremy Laurence said. “We call for prompt, thorough, independent and transparent investigations into the deaths and injuries.

”What happens next? 

Thousands of opposition supporters have protested in Nairobi and a number of other cities on back-to-back Mondays and Thursdays despite a strong pushback from law enforcement, so massive numbers are expected for the protests this week’.

https://www.aljazeeracom/news/2023/7/18/kenya-braces-for-3-days-of-anti-govt-protest-all-the-details

Asda’s profit margins on fuel have tripled since before the pandemic, according to the competition regulator at a bad-tempered parliamentary hearing where the supermarket chain’s co-owner repeatedly refused to explain its pricing strategy.

Mohsin Issa declined to answer multiple questions on whether Asda had increased its profit margins on fuel since its takeover in 2021, prompting MPs on the business select committee to become increasingly furious as the retailer insisted it had not changed its strategy.

Petrol has become a lightning rod for concerns about the rising cost of living as soaring inflation on food, energy and other everyday essentials has squeezed household budgets.

Supermarkets are under the spotlight with the CMA also set to report on whether they have been banking additional profits on groceries – so called ‘greedflation’.

Jonathan Gullis, an MP on the committee, said on Wednesday that “people were being ripped off at the pump” at a time when the cost of living was “already forcing a squeeze at the till from supermarkets”. He said that only when the competition watchdog effectively “named and shamed” what was happening that “suddenly supermarkets magically managed to find a way to take 6p per litre off their costs”.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published a report this month saying drivers were paying more for petrol and diesel than before the Covid pandemic because of “weakened” competition.

The CMA told the committee there had been a “significant change” in the supermarket’s pricing approach after its £6.8 billion takeover by the billionaire Issa brothers and their private equity partner in 2021. Asda is now set to buy the UK arm of the Issas’ EG Group petrol forecourts business for £2.27bn, tightening its grip at the pump.

Darren Jones, the chairman of the committee, said a whistleblower had told him that under Asda’s former owner Walmart, the retailer had aimed to be at least 1p per litre cheaper than its nearest rival but the new owners had reduced that target to just 0.1p.

In faltering words, a quietly-spoken Issa refused to confirm whether that was the case, saying there were many elements that contributed to decisions on fuel pricing.

Before Issa gave evidence, Dan Turnbull, the director of the CMA, told the committee that the chain had stuck with its strategy of being price leader but had altered course on two other aspects – increasing profit margins and to “deliberately feather” prices – or to take more time to react to drops in the wholesale price of fuel. He said this was particularly the case on diesel where there had been a lot of volatility in prices.

“We found that between 2021 and 2023 they significantly increased their internal fuel margin targets on a pence per litre basis, and indeed by 2023 those pence per litre targets were three times what they’d been in 2019,” he said.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/19/asdas-profit-margins-at-the-pump-have-trebled-mps-told