Progress

The entrepreneur and the go-getter

Engineered the world as it is today.

The obsolete banished, progress holds sway

Still, but is frustrated by a fetter

From realising what could be achieved,

If no longer bound by need for profit.

All human needs could readily be met

Once society’s finally relieved

Of the burden of money. People can

Decide en masse how their interests elide,

Once they choose to create a worldwide

Commonwealth. What capitalism began

Will be realised when social schism

Is resolved through progress to socialism.

D. A.

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

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

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

The below is from the Socialist Standard October 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9 September 1976 – death of Mao Zedong

From the Socialist Standard February 1975

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ronnie Warrington

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WIGAN DIGGERS FESTIVAL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Defence Secretary, John Healey MP said: This new commitment will give an important boost to Ukraine’s air defences and demonstrates our new government’s commitment to stepping up support for Ukraine.  In recent days we have seen the tragic cost of Russia’s indiscriminate strikes on Poltava and Lviv. These new UK-made missiles will support Ukraine to defend its people, infrastructure, and territory from Putin’s brutal attacks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cultivating the Rose

Standing in the Downing Street Rose Garden

Amongst deadheads, the new prime minister

Is making his withering vision clear,

Peering through rich man’s spectacles. Number ten

Is significant, as it’ll be a decade

At least before social democratic

Austerity eases, having done the trick

Of promising progress will have been made

Towards a fairer, wealthier nation.

Meanwhile, more will have to make do with less,

Even as a privileged few prosper. Guess

Who? Such is the dismal situation.

All those who voted for change can be sure

The Rose Garden scent is bovine ordure.

D. A.

A Socialist writes: 

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

Here are some extracts:

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

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

Actually it’s a bloody cheek.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Socialist Standard Thatcher, the Icon. May 2013

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

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

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

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

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