In May 2023, UNICEF highlighted the growing cost of infant formula and the profit jacking of producers.

‘Families are under growing pressure to afford infant formula and other essentials to support their babies’ early years. Infant formula prices have risen above inflation over the past two years – bringing the cost of feeding a 10-week-old baby on first stage infant formula to between £44 to £89 per month.

In late 2023 the Government’s independent Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) revealed that some infant formula companies boosted profits by raising prices 25% over two years, and further highlighted strong consumer brand loyalty to increasingly expensive infant formulas, despite the nutritional equivalence of all infant formulas in the UK.

Responding to this issue, Shereen Fisher, UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative Programme Director, said:

It is unacceptable that a small number of powerful infant formula brands are exerting control over the market and putting profits ahead of the welfare of babies by increasing prices significantly higher than their costs – leaving the Government and taxpayers to pick up the bill. With the Healthy Start scheme failing to cover the cost of a tin of formula, it is not right that companies continue to profit off struggling families.’ https://www.unicef.org.uk/babyfriendly/infant-formula-price-rises/

From the July 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Over one million babies will die this year from diarrhoea because their mothers have been sold unnecessary bottle feeds”.

There seems to be little, if any, dispute amongst nutritional experts that breast milk is best for babies, and for the poor it has the additional advantage of being free. In addition, a baby receives antibodies in the mother’s colostrum which gives some immunity from a number of infectious diseases.

There are a few mothers who are unable to breast feed and have to resort to artificial feeds as a substitute, but the vast majority of mothers are able to feed their babies satisfactorily. But capitalism is not concerned with the best interests of developing babies—profits are the overriding priority and, therefore, business strategies have been devised to persuade mothers to use milk substitutes instead.

In the industrialised countries many mothers from working-class homes have to return to work within a few weeks of giving birth to earn wages to help support their families. This forces many of them to abandon breast feeding in favour of bottle feeds which can be given by other members of the family or child-minders.

Infants from poorer families have substantially higher mortality rates than the wealthy, in which artificial feeding, by depriving the babies from receiving some of their natural immunity, plays a part. There is also a risk of over-feeding and obesity if the feed is mixed too richly. Obese children tend to develop habits of over-eating and grow up into obese adults.

In underdeveloped countries artificial feeding can be a matter of life or death. Dr Peter Poore, chief medical officer for Save The Children states:

For a sub-Saharan African baby the early termination of breast feeding can be tantamount to a death sentence. (Guardian, 8 March).

Food and drug firms in industrialised countries spend millions of pounds trying to persuade doctors, nurses and mothers in underdeveloped countries to abandon breast feeding and use artificial feeds. In 1981 the World Health Organisation and UNICEF’s code was adopted by most industrialised nations which prohibited advertising and stopped free artificial feeds being supplied to hospitals.

This has not prevented tinned milk from being donated to hospitals, allegedly for mothers unable to breast feed. But the supply of milk substitutes far outweighs the number of mothers who need it and is clearly intended to persuade other mothers to abandon breast feeding. Far from being charitable, hard-headed commercial considerations are behind the “donation” of milk substitutes.

In underdeveloped countries it is rare to find a mother who is unable to breast feed. The supply of free artificial feeds is designed to create a dependence on the product. Once the mother has stopped breast feeding for a while the milk supply dries up and the mother has no choice but to continue using bottle feeds.

The European Commission, after secret consultations with food and drugs manufacturers, has decided to remove most of the regulations governing the advertising and supply of milk substitutes. This directive will come into force in 1992 and, in the future, aggressive advertising will be used to promote artificial feeds to provide profits at the expense of babies’ lives.

Aggressive advertising

In urban Brazil, studies have shown that bottle-fed babies are 14 times more likely to die from diarrhoeal infections and three times more likely to die from respiratory infections. Many mothers in underdeveloped countries dilute artificial feeds too much because they are too poor to pay for sufficient tinned milk once they have become dependent on it. In some countries the water supply is contaminated or fuel to sterilise the bottles and teats is in short supply.

The continuation of breast feeding also reduces the chance of becoming pregnant. And while it is only partly effective it does help women in poorer countries to space their children in the absence of more effective contraceptive methods. The encouragement of mothers to abandon breast feeding removes this natural contraceptive effect and leads to unwanted pregnancies.

In addition to the supply of milk substitutes for small babies there has been the development of “follow-up” milks designed for babies over six months of age. These are blatantly advertised in underdeveloped countries and are starting to increase the mortality rates of slightly older babies. And the European Commission’s deregulation of milk marketing practices next year could soon lead to these milk substitutes being advertised in Britain.

Each year underdeveloped countries spend $1.5 billion on milk substitutes which are, for the most part, unnecessary. But capitalism is not concerned with what is necessary or desirable for health. Any product, no matter how dangerous, will be produced if there is a market for it. And the same capitalist logic will prevent much needed food being produced if people are unable to pay. The death toll these result in will continue as long as this vicious system lasts.

Carl Pinel

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2020/07/in-name-of-profit-1991.html

Further to this post from SOYMB, 5 March, comes news that women in Nigeria are being targeted to become more capitalism friendly and contribute toward the profits of Nigerian capitalists.

‘The World Bank, formed at the 1944 Breton Woods Conference is meanwhile concerned that women’s rights and gender equality need to progress at a faster pace. Lest anyone think that this organisation’s motives are exclusively altruistic the World Bank says, ‘Closing the gender gap could boost global GDP by over 20%, doubling the world’s growth rate over the next decade.’

‘Women have the power to turbocharge the sputtering global economy,’itother said.

Further, ‘Today, barely half of women participate in the global workforce, compared with nearly three out of every four men. This is not just unfair – it’s wasteful,’

‘The development organization argues that the transition to a gender-equal world could be fast-tracked through accelerating efforts in reforming laws and enacting public policies that empower women to work, as well as to start and grow businesses.’

In other words, on behalf of the global capitalist class the World Bank wants a situation where, along with men, more women can be exploited to produce more surplus value (profits) for capitalists. Women are also part of the majority working class and their interests are best served by working toward the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by a social system where quality goods and services are produced for free use not profit.’

https://soymb.com/2024/03/russia-women-and-musk.html

‘An initiative to promote the role of women in local Nigerian businesses will receive a grant of 600 million naira ($376,000) that will benefit 1,000 female entrepreneurs, a foundation run by major mobile operator MTM Group has announced.

During the launch of phase two of what is called the Y’ellopreneur Initiative in the city of Lagos on Tuesday, Odunayo Sanya, the executive director of MTN Nigeria Foundation, highlighted gender inequality as a significant cause of hunger and poverty.

The initiative aims to decrease female unemployment and promote women’s development as entrepreneurs by offering capacity-building programs and providing access to loans, grants, and advisory services to ensure long-term business sustainability.

“MTN is investing 600 million naira in the second phase of the initiative. The sum of $282,000 (N450 million) is available at $1800 (N3 million) each for the top 150 qualified Y’ellopreneurs to access as equipment loans at a low 2.5% flat interest rate. Upon full repayment of the loan, the sum of $70,000 (N112 million) will be refunded between all 150 Y’ellopreneurs as grants,” Sanya explained.

The initiative is tailored to support female entrepreneurs at medium-sized enterprises who possess at least a secondary education and prefer self-employment. Eligible applicants need to have been operating an existing business for at least two years in sectors such as manufacturing, processing, agriculture, ICT, digital services, waste management, and energy generation.

Sanya emphasized that sustained female participation in entrepreneurship and business administration will not only generate income for their families but also significantly contribute to Nigeria’s socioeconomic progress. 

The submission period for applications for the Y’ellopreneur program commenced on Tuesday and will run through March 30. 

MTN Group Limited, formerly known as M-Cell, is a South African mobile communications company that operates across numerous African and Asian nations but derives a third of its revenue from Nigeria, where it holds an approximately 35% market share.

The MTN Foundation was established in 2004 and, according to its website, works with “disadvantaged and rural communities” to help them “become self-sufficient.”’

 In preparation for the US elections this year, both sides are resorting to slurring the mental capacities of the other’s leader. Biden is being called ‘senile’ by Republicans and Trump ‘unhinged’ by Democrats.

Will this play into how people vote? It’s hard to know. But one thing is sure. Whoever is voted into power will have no significant impact on the problems faced by electors in America or by countries elsewhere in the world. That’s because they will be constrained by the needs of maintaining the capitalist system and looking after the interests of the tiny minority class that owns the vast majority of the world’s wealth. Only democratic action from ‘below’, from the world’s workers, can change that.

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

Aljeezera 13 February, noted that, from a report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies; ‘Global defence spending jumped 9 percent to a record $2.2 trillion last year, and is set to rise in 2024.’

‘The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.’ George Orwell.

From the Socialist Standard, August 2022.Speaking in June at Eurosatory, a weapons industry fair, French President Macron said that France ‘has entered into a war economy’ (bit.ly/3AI99pQ).

Strictly speaking, this is not true as a ‘war economy’ is when a state at war mobilises its economy for the one aim of winning the war. France is not currently at war, even though it is playing its part in arming NATO’s proxies in Ukraine. All he seemed to mean was that the French state should devote more resources to equipping its armed forces with the most up-to-date weapons of death and destruction and, as he was speaking at a merchants of death trade fair, selling some to other states.

There is another sense in which the term ‘war economy’ has been used – ‘military Keynesianism’. Keynes argued that there was no tendency under capitalism towards full employment and that the situation could occur, as in a slump, where not enough paying demand was being generated to bring about full employment. His answer was that the state should step in and increase its spending so as to boost demand. ‘Military Keynesianism’ is if this spending is on arms.

This appeared to work in Germany where the Hitler government’s spending on re-armament did reduce unemployment. In the US, too, the mass unemployment of the 1930s was not eliminated till the US entered the war. When the war ended this was not followed by a slump as many expected (including ourselves). One explanation that was offered for this was the continuing high level of government military spending.

One variety of this was the ‘permanent arms economy’ theory, espoused in Britain by the SWP’s predecessor, the International Socialists, and expounded by its economic expert, Michael Kidron. In an article with this title in 1967 (bit.ly/3c8gEfM) and repeated in his 1968 book Western Capitalism since the War, Kidron said he shared ‘the assumption that we should collapse into over-production and unemployment were it not for some special offsetting factor’. That factor, he went on to argue, was a ‘permanent arms budget’.

He offered two explanations of how this worked to save capitalism. The first was pure military Keynesianism. ‘Expenditure on arms is expenditure on a fast-wasting end-product’, he wrote, that ‘constitutes a net addition to the market for ‘end’ goods’ and that ‘one obvious result of such expenditure is high employment and, as a direct consequence of that, rates of growth amongst the highest ever’.

But he also advanced the opposite view that arms spending slowed down the rate of capital accumulation and the fall in the rate of profit this caused and saved capitalism in that way. ‘Were capitalism left alone to invest its entire pre-tax profit, the state creating demand as and when necessary, growth rates would be very much higher’. It was this over-accumulation which, if unchecked, would lead to ‘collapse into over-production and unemployment’.

He was right about government arms spending slowing down capital accumulation as, having to be paid for out of taxes on profits, it reduced the amount of profits available for re-investment. But he was wrong that this saved capitalism from collapse. For, while there is indeed ‘a permanent threat of over-production’ under capitalism this is for other reasons than any long-term trend for too much capital accumulation leading to a fall in the overall rate of profit.

In any event, the permanent arms economy turned out to be not so permanent. It did not prevent the post-war boom, caused by reconstruction and the expansion of world markets, coming to an end in 1973 and replaced by a two-year period of slump that no government expenditure on arms or anything else was able to end. Keynes was wrong and so was military Keynesianism as an explanation of the post-war boom.

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2022/08/an-arms-economy-2022.html

Barbarism or Socialism?

A hundred, more, gangs on Haiti shows,

Under idyllic Caribbean skies,

The true nature of raw free enterprise

Untroubled by any effective laws.

Wherever the market determines goods,

Drugs or guns or both? And then nothing stirs

Unless so willed by armed entrepreneurs

The poor look up to as their Robin Hoods.

While terror roams the streets in four by fours

The limits of government are revealed,

The power of profit’s no longer concealed,

As the powerless huddle beyond their doors.

Barbarism or Socialism? The voice

Of Red Rosa echoes still with that choice.

D. A.

Karma is a belief in Indian religions that do good in this life and your reincarnation will be happier. Do bad, and you’ll suffer for it the next time round. Not a concept that materialists give credence too but, for the sake of this post, Americans collectively must have done something terrible to have to suffer the ongoing unedifying election farce that is taking place in the USA right now.

In the November 2020 election, Biden beat Trump. Now we have the unedifying likelihood of two old punch drunk boxers having a rematch which is likely to be more painful for the spectators than those in the ring.

This article in the October 2020 Socialist Standard demolishes the fallacious lesser of two evils argument.

‘As the American presidential election draws closer, progressives such as Noam Chomsky are making their message to vote Biden very much more vocal, declaring Trump is so demented and deranged that a president already displaying symptoms of senility and dementia is preferable and so working people must ignore Biden’s ignominious past record. Unlike 2016, there is now no debate whatsoever about who the lesser evil is. The claim is not that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party has actually converged into one on many issues (even if not identical) and that they share so many policies that the choice is between Tweedledum and Tweedledumber.

Our principle is to abstain from voting for either evil and offer neither a mandate to rule. Working people are required to register their rejection of capitalist candidates. Both Trump and Biden are staunch champions of the capitalist system and apologists for Wall Street and the Pentagon. November’s election is a contest about who will preside over the ‘executive committee of the ruling class’.

The lesser-evil argument is rampant these days. Biden is presented as an ally of African-Americans and other minorities. Trump is depicted as the authoritarian autocrat, suppressing liberties and repressing resistance. The working class should not support either of the presidential candidates this year, as neither represents the interests of the working people of the United States. Both would continue the assault on the living standards of working people, to boost corporate profits by cutting social services and take back reforms won through hard struggle over the past years. The working class should reject the ‘Big Business’ candidates and their shared programs of economic austerity and war preparations. There is no such thing as a meaningful choice when it is to pick between cholera and typhoid.

The lesser-evil fallacy serves only to keep the voter chained to the duopoly political system and its two parties. Voting in this election will only hold back the process of forging an independent workers’ movement. Workers have had the lesser-evil strategy for many decades and bitter experience indicates that it hasn’t worked, and even less chance than ever will it succeed today.

Biden is not opposed to capitalism but out to save capitalism from Trump. His campaign is not based in the working class or on any working-class struggle but upon an imaginary gentler, kinder capitalism. As a politician Biden adopted blatant anti-working-class policies that should shame and condemn any ‘socialist’ endorsing him. Biden may not be as openly racist as Trump yet he has a history of flirting with segregationists and he has shared with the right wing similar positions on immigration, law and order and foreign policy.

Not voting in the presidential election is not a matter of principle for socialists. The working class can use the electoral process as part of its struggle for socialism to assume political power and capture the institutional machinery of the state. The Socialist Party holds that there is nothing more dangerous for our fellow-workers than endorsing a class enemy. As genuine socialists we want the working class to become conscious of itself and realise its power to change society. It is the working class versus the capitalist class. Socialism cannot be achieved by electing capitalist candidates but rather by fighting capitalists collectively.

Socialism seeks to eradicate the basic causes for war, poverty and environmental damage which it knows are the products of capitalism. No matter the outcome of the election, no matter who wins, the continued existence of capitalism is assured, none of the consequences of the profit system will be abolished. The Socialist Party stands for socialism now and not later through any electoral bargaining with our class foe. The purpose of the Socialist Party is to promote socialist consciousness and organisation and that will not be accomplished by entering into alliances with any capitalist politician. Biden is not a lesser evil, despite the pronouncements of liberals such as Chomsky and others. Any person who does not tell this truth isn’t worthy of the name of socialist. There is only one party in the USA that expresses the interests of our American fellow-workers and that is the World Socialist Party of the United States.

ALJO

Blogger’s Note:

Chomsky has replied to the criticism of him in this article:

“ Some truth to it, but wrongly put. I’ve never adopted the curious new concept of “lesser evil voting” and have argued strenuously that even raising the notion, as is done here, is a sellout to the establishment. For the left, politics is activism, daily. Every once in a while an event comes along called an “election.” A genuine leftist asks whether some candidate is so awful that it’s worth taking a few minutes to vote against them, and if it is, does so, and the goes back to work.” (10/01/2020)

Capitalism is global. Capitalism long ago created the conditions for the transition to a socialist global society. Examples of wealth inequality can be found in many SOYMB posts. Now comes news further inequality within Russia. Rosstat, the Russian official statistics agency, using the Gini index, which assesses inequality on a scale from 0 to 1, where higher values indicate higher inequality. (has reported that in 2023 the index rose from 0.395 in 2022 to 0.403 in 2023. Meaning that the income gap amongst Russians had increased.

‘In 2023, according to preliminary data, the 10% of the population that are the highest earners accounted for 29.7% of total income (29.1% in 2022) and the 10% most disadvantaged population accounted for 2.0% (2.1% in 2022),

The World Bank, formed at the 1944 Breton Woods Conference is meanwhile concerned that women’s rights and gender equality need to progress at a faster pace. Lest anyone think that this organisation’s motives are exclusively altruistic the World Bank says, ‘Closing the gender gap could boost global GDP by over 20%, doubling the world’s growth rate over the next decade.’

‘Women have the power to turbocharge the sputtering global economy,’ it said.

Further, ‘Today, barely half of women participate in the global workforce, compared with nearly three out of every four men. This is not just unfair – it’s wasteful,’

‘The development organization argues that the transition to a gender-equal world could be fast-tracked through accelerating efforts in reforming laws and enacting public policies that empower women to work, as well as to start and grow businesses.’

In other words, on behalf of the global capitalist class the World Bank wants a situation where, along with men, more women can be exploited to produce more surplus value (profits) for capitalists. Women are also part of the majority working class and their interests are best served by working toward the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by a social system where quality goods and services are produced for free use not profit.

Stop and shed a tear for Elon Musk who has been replaced as the world’s richest person by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, a listing of the world’s 500 richest people.

‘Bezos’ net worth was $200 billion, while Musk’s stood at $198 billion. According to the index, the Tesla CEO has lost more than $31 billion over the past year, while Bezos has gained more than $23 billion.’

‘The world’s third richest man, according to Bloomberg, is French luxury goods magnate Bernard Arnault, the CEO of LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy). Bezos, Musk, and Arnault have been jostling for the top spot for years. Arnault previously briefly surpassed Musk at the top of the index. The trio are the only individuals ever to have exceeded $200 billion in net worth, according to Bloomberg.’

Where does their wealth come from? It comes, as does all capitalist wealth from the exploitation of the working class. It’s long past the time when the vast majority allowed such inequality to continue. Capitalism concentrates on the intersts of its, the ruling classes, interests. When is the global working class going to do the same?

There is an article on the ynetnews.com website, 3 March, stating that George Galloway is a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

This is completely and utterly false.

Galloway is not, and never has been, associated with the Socialist Party of Great Britain,

Representations have made to the news site informing them of this fact and asking that it corrects the article accordingly.

In the remonstration it is pointed out that a correction is required because having Galloway related to us ‘is damaging to our reputation.’

‘Galloway, who belongs to the Socialist Party of Great Britain, won almost 40% of the vote, taking advantage of the fact that Labour withdrew its support for its candidate, Azhar Ali, after he promoted a conspiracy theory that Israel knowingly allowed Hamas to carry out the attack on October 7.’

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/skcty8zta

Royal National Lifeboat Institution: ‘Founded in 1824 as the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, it soon afterwards became the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck under the patronage of King George IV. On 5 October 1854, the institution’s name was changed to its current name (RNLI), and in 1860 was granted a royal charter. ‘Wiki

The Charity Commission’s RNLI report for end of 2022 has 2405 Employee(s), 14 Trustee(s) and 209892 Volunteer(s) involved in the organisation which had an income of almost two hundred and thirty million pounds.

https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/charity-details/209603

The MailOnline, 3 March, has a headline story detailing dissatisfaction in the ranks of the RNLI. It’s a little he said, she said, but it could be read as a dispute between workers and bosses.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12803901/RNLI-whistleblowers-bully-lifeboat-bosses-charity-toxic-row-200th-anniversary.html#reader-comments

To those who say that without a financial incentive no one will want to ‘work’ in a Socialist society the evidence overwhelmingly disproves that assertion. Within the capitalist system their are millions of volunteers displaying their altruist nature. Manning lifeboats to save lives at sea is one of the more dangerous volunteer activities yet there are many who are prepared to do so.

From the Socialist Standard, February 1982 Who will do the dangerous work?

‘This is a question often asked when we explain that in socialist society the principle “from each according to his/her abilities, to each according to his/her needs” will apply. In other words, that people will voluntarily contribute in terms of work what they can in order to produce the abundance of wealth to which they will then have free access according to their individual needs (of which they themselves will be the sole judge).

The assumption behind the “dirty work” objection is that if work were voluntary nobody would choose to do the hard, the dangerous, the boring or the messy work because this would be “against human nature”. We don’t want to go here into all the scientific arguments which show that there is nothing in the nature of the animal homo sapiens that would prevent them living in a socialist society; quite the reverse in fact, human beings are animals which have evolved and survived only through their capacity to co-operate. All we will do is draw attention to the fact that the objection is not valid even for all work under capitalism.

Work under capitalism mostly takes the form of employment—that is, work for an employer, under his control and for his profit, and it is therefore not surprising that most people consider “work” to be something unpleasant, to be avoided as much as possible. But when it comes to exercising their mental and physical energies—which is equally “working”—in their own time, as in digging their gardens, pursuing their hobbies and the like, it is a different matter. Because people enjoy this kind of work, many are not even prepared to consider such activities as work, to such an extent has capitalism associated work with work for an employer! Socialism, which will abolish employment, will also abolish this false distinction between “work ” (unpleasant) and “play” (pleasant), People will be able to organise the necessary productive work in such away that everybody will be able to derive satisfaction from doing it. 

But what about the dirty work? Well, as the Penlee lifeboat disaster recently showed, even under capitalism people can be found to undertake work of the most dangerous kind voluntarily. These lifeboatmen were all volunteers to do a job they knew to be socially necessary. Despite the fuss they made of the disaster, the capitalist class were unable to understand this. “£3 for a start, then, £1 an hour—the price of lifeboat courage” headlined the Daily Telegraph (21/12/81) with the suggestion that lifeboatmen were not being paid enough. But, as any of the lifeboatmen could have told them, this was not the point; money (expenses) was not the motive. In fact, one RNLI official was quoted as saying “some do not bother to claim it”.

Then why do they do it, why do they voluntarily undertake such dangerous, dirty work? Why could more than enough volunteers be found from the same village to replace the eight men who died? Because, as we have said, they were aware that there was a socially necessary job to be done. If this can happen under capitalism where the cash nexus has corrupted nearly everything, how can it be imagined that in socialism there will be any problem to find people to undertake any “dirty” jobs that cannot be automated?’

Adam Buick

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2015/07/who-will-do-dangerous-work-1982.html

Royal National Lifeboat Institution: ‘Founded in 1824 as the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, it soon afterwards became the Royal National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck under the patronage of King George IV. On 5 October 1854, the institution’s name was changed to its current name (RNLI), and in 1860 was granted a royal charter. ‘Wiki

The Charity Commission’s RNLI report for end of 2022 has 2405 Employee(s), 14 Trustee(s) and 209892 Volunteer(s) involved in the organisation which had an income of almost two hundred and thirty million pounds.

https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/charity-details/209603

The MailOnline, 3 March, has a headline story detailing dissatisfaction in the ranks of the RNLI. It’s a little he said, she said, but it could be read as a dispute between workers and bosses.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12803901/RNLI-whistleblowers-bully-lifeboat-bosses-charity-toxic-row-200th-anniversary.html#reader-comments

To those who say that without a financial incentive no one will want to ‘work’ in a Socialist society the evidence overwhelmingly disproves that assertion. Within the capitalist system their are millions of volunteers displaying their altruist nature. Manning lifeboats to save lives at sea is one of the more dangerous volunteer activities yet there are many who are prepared to do so.

From the Socialist Standard, February 1982 Who will do the dangerous work?

‘This is a question often asked when we explain that in socialist society the principle “from each according to his/her abilities, to each according to his/her needs” will apply. In other words, that people will voluntarily contribute in terms of work what they can in order to produce the abundance of wealth to which they will then have free access according to their individual needs (of which they themselves will be the sole judge).

The assumption behind the “dirty work” objection is that if work were voluntary nobody would choose to do the hard, the dangerous, the boring or the messy work because this would be “against human nature”. We don’t want to go here into all the scientific arguments which show that there is nothing in the nature of the animal homo sapiens that would prevent them living in a socialist society; quite the reverse in fact, human beings are animals which have evolved and survived only through their capacity to co-operate. All we will do is draw attention to the fact that the objection is not valid even for all work under capitalism.

Work under capitalism mostly takes the form of employment—that is, work for an employer, under his control and for his profit, and it is therefore not surprising that most people consider “work” to be something unpleasant, to be avoided as much as possible. But when it comes to exercising their mental and physical energies—which is equally “working”—in their own time, as in digging their gardens, pursuing their hobbies and the like, it is a different matter. Because people enjoy this kind of work, many are not even prepared to consider such activities as work, to such an extent has capitalism associated work with work for an employer! Socialism, which will abolish employment, will also abolish this false distinction between “work ” (unpleasant) and “play” (pleasant), People will be able to organise the necessary productive work in such away that everybody will be able to derive satisfaction from doing it. 

But what about the dirty work? Well, as the Penlee lifeboat disaster recently showed, even under capitalism people can be found to undertake work of the most dangerous kind voluntarily. These lifeboatmen were all volunteers to do a job they knew to be socially necessary. Despite the fuss they made of the disaster, the capitalist class were unable to understand this. “£3 for a start, then, £1 an hour—the price of lifeboat courage” headlined the Daily Telegraph (21/12/81) with the suggestion that lifeboatmen were not being paid enough. But, as any of the lifeboatmen could have told them, this was not the point; money (expenses) was not the motive. In fact, one RNLI official was quoted as saying “some do not bother to claim it”.

Then why do they do it, why do they voluntarily undertake such dangerous, dirty work? Why could more than enough volunteers be found from the same village to replace the eight men who died? Because, as we have said, they were aware that there was a socially necessary job to be done. If this can happen under capitalism where the cash nexus has corrupted nearly everything, how can it be imagined that in socialism there will be any problem to find people to undertake any “dirty” jobs that cannot be automated?’

Adam Buick

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2015/07/who-will-do-dangerous-work-1982.html