REFLECTIONS ON GEORGES SOREL (ZOOM)

REFLECTIONS ON GEORGES SOREL (Zoom)

‘More than one billion people live in acute poverty, with nearly half of them in countries experiencing conflict, according to a new United Nations report.

Countries at war have higher levels of deprivation across all indicators of “multidimensional poverty”, according to an index published on Thursday by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), reporting “markedly more severe” disparities in nutrition, access to electricity, and access to water and sanitation.

Research across 112 countries and 6.3 billion people revealed that 1.1 billion people endure poverty, with 455 million of them living “in the shadow of conflict”, according to the Multidimensional Poverty Index.

“Conflicts have intensified and multiplied in recent years, reaching new highs in casualties, displacing record millions of people, and causing widespread disruption to lives and livelihoods,” said the UNDP’s Achim Steiner.

The index showed that some 584 million people under 18 were experiencing extreme poverty, accounting for 27.9 percent of children worldwide, compared with 13.5 percent of adults.

Child mortality in conflict settings was 8 percent, compared with 1.1 percent in peaceful countries.

It also said that 83.2 percent of the world’s poorest people live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

The index, compiled jointly with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), used indicators such as a lack of adequate housing, sanitation, electricity, cooking fuel, nutrition and school attendance to assess levels of “multidimensional poverty”.

The index included an in-depth study on Afghanistan, where 5.3 million more people fell into poverty during 2015-16 and 2022-23. Last year, nearly two-thirds of Afghans were considered poor.

“For the poor in conflict-affected countries, the struggle for basic needs is a far harsher and more desperate battle,” said Yanchun Zhang, chief statistician at the UNDP.

India was the country with the largest number of people in extreme poverty, affecting 234 million of its 1.4 billion population.

It was followed by Pakistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The five countries combined accounted for nearly half of the 1.1 billion poor people.

OPHI Director Sabina Alkire said “poverty reduction is slower in conflict settings – so the poor in conflict settings are being left behind. These numbers compel a response: we cannot end poverty without investing in peace.”’

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/17/un-report-says-1-1-billion-people-living-in-acute-poverty

Proportionate?

Four children playing marbles is an act

Of terrorism? What of families

Forced to sleep in tents? The authorities,

Judge quite proportionate to the fact,

Launching a punitive conflagration

In order to maintain security,

The long-term future and the purity

Of a divinely appointed nation.

The irony of a pogromed-people

Driving others into ghettos, where they

Will survive and simmer, then find a way

Of striking back as soon as they’re able.

Observed in the breach, professed human rights

Spurned as rhetoric of anti-Semites.

D. A. 

Will the supporters, whose number must be falling daily, of the Labour government, be cheering the latest proposal from it as an example of how much more, in contrast to those other nasty capitalist supporting political parties, it cares for the welfare of the people? Pensioners excepted of course.

The MailOnline, 15 October, posits that, ‘ Labour wants to give millions of obese, unemployed Britons free fat-busting jabs used by celebrities in a desperate bid to get them off the couch and ‘back to work’.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting is planning to offer jobless Brits free jabs of the controversial ‘miracle’ weight loss drug, Ozempic.

Sir Keir Starmer today backed the idea, insisting it could help ease demands on the NHS and boost the economy.

But the news comes despite dire warnings that some 3,000 Brits to fall ill so far this year after taking either Ozempic and Wegovy.

Defending the drugs, the PM told the BBC: ‘I think these drugs could be very important for our economy and for health.’

He added: ‘This drug will be very helpful to people who want to lose weight, need to lose weight, very important for the economy so people can get back into work.

‘Very important for the NHS because, as I’ve said time and again, yes, we need more money for our NHS, but we’ve got to think differently.

‘We’ve got to reduce the pressure on the NHS. So this will help in all of those areas.’’

‘Speaking in the Telegraph, the Mr Streeting claimed Ozempic or Mounjaro jabs could kickstart a major back-to-work drive and boost productivity, with weight-related illness costing the economy £74billion a year. ‘

The phrase originated by a Bill Clinton supporting American in 1992 still applies; It’s the economy stupid.’

The aim, as is that of whichever capitalist executive Committee is in power,

is to reduce the financial burden of the capitalist class as a whole.

The article also notes that, ‘It comes as the government last night confirmed that pharmaceutical giant Lilly will pump in £279million into developing new drugs and treatment in the UK.’ Shades of Covid. Can we soon expect a state propaganda drive designed to shame and demonise those who refuse to comply? Will those receiving state benefits be threatened with the loss of them if they don’t obey|?

The extracts below are from an article in the Socialist Standard, May 1915.

‘In one of his recent utterances the leader of the Tory Party said that political power was absolutely in the hands of ihe working class, a con­dition that lent itself as a field for the demagogue. If Mr. Lloyd George and his party could persuade the working class that they were the friends of the poor, they might remain in office indefinitely. The condition of the working class being the same under either administration, it matters nothing to them which party is in office; but the fact remains that the Chancellor has an enormous following of workers who fervently and devoutly believe him to be the embodiment of progress, the friend of the workers, who understands their troubles and devises schemes to bleed vested interests for their benefit.

When these reforms are examined, they are easily seen to be mere contrivances in collective economy on behalf of the class he represents. The Chancellor himself does not attempt to conceal this fact. The frequency and vehemence with which he advertises it reveals what is his estimate of working class intelligence. For in many a speech he quite openly reassures his class of his loyalty to them, and demonstrates, in their own every-day business language, the effectiveness of his deep laid schemes to wring yet more profit from the working class. What other construction is it possible to place on the following from his preface to “Dr. H. A. Walters’ Exposition of Recent British Social Legisla­tion”?

“No attitude could be more short-sighted, or more paralysing in its influence upon social policy, than that of the man who shrinks at the immediate cost of great social reforms which aim at increasing the vigour and efficiency of the millions by whom the country’s material wealth is produced.”

If the vigour and efficiency of the working class is increased, so too is unemployment and competition. It is sheer humbug, therefore, to say that such legislation benefits the working class as well as the employers. He claims to be giving something to the workers but assures his class that like “corn thrown upon the waters it will be returned to them a hundred-fold after many days.” That is the essence and meaning of all legislation on the lines of ninepence for fourpence.

This is the nature of all the reforms instituted by the executive of the capitalist class—”put­ting capital into health” is the Chancellor’s expression. Collective capital is expended through Government departments, with the object of placing at the disposal of individual capitalists an improved commodity on the labour market—workers whose labour will bear richer fruit, in the shape of surplus value. In other words, fuller and more complete exploitation. How do the exploited benefit ?

We are told the old methods of social reform, like the poor law, were merely palliative, while the new method, like the Insurance Act, is preventive as well as palliative. The lie should be apparent, for if the working class, after the reform, produce more wealth for less wages, or for the same sum total of wages, than before, then instead of being preventive of poverty, it is productive of more poverty.

The followers of the Chancellor who have been emphasising in the Press the “economy of higher wages for agriculture,” not only in the articles, but in the title itself, admit that such reforms operate against the working class; or they fail to understand the meaning of economy.

… The workers as commodities are weighed in capitalist scales, according to capitalist standards and ideals, on the labour market. Supply and demand always operate against them, and when their cost of production—or cost of living—falls likewise.

The workers of this country had practical experience of this truth when Free Trade was established. The Cobdenites, like their modern prototypes, were all for cheapening the food of the people—only, as Marx pointed out, that they might be supplied with cheaper labour power. The wages of the working class were reduced fourteen per cent. in commemoration of the establishment of that beneficent and progres­sive measure.

The frequency with which efficiency is being advocated in the Press and on the platform, makes its frequent exposure necessary. Neither by reducing the cost of living nor by increasing the national share of the world’s market can it assist the workers. In the latter case the working class of England, if insufficient to overstock the labour market, can be augmented from abroad. Labour power is carried by its owners to the place where it is in demand; and the ex­ecutive of the capitalist class in each country adopt measures to facilitate its passage, in the same way that they increase its productivity.

The old methods of social reform—so called—never touched the fringe of the poverty pro­blem (no problem at all, by the way, because it exists in the midst of plenty). Blankets, coals, and doles only served to prolong misery here and there. The new method, heralded with false sentiment and yet claiming to be essen­tially business-like and practical, increases the total sum of poverty. Old or new, Tory, Liberal, or Labour, all are designed solely to stem the tide of revolution. Lloyd George and all his satellites may warble their sentimental love song to the workers, wooing them for their votes, but all the crowd of political pimps and touts, philanthro­pists and social reformers of every method, though they pipe humanitarianism till they choke, have only one sentiment for the workers—contempt.

“Social reform is the antidote to revolution par excellence,” and no political sect ahouts louder for the antidote than does the fraudulent Labour Party.

“Every party is now committed to social re­form” said Mr. Philip Snowden, and for what purpose we have shown. Is it to be supposed that the class that lives by robbery will forego even a fraction of their wealth or privilege, un­less compelled to do so ? Can anyone imagine a class revelling in luxury and vice, and that has so lived for centuries, voluntarily conceding to the class they rob any reform that would dimi­nish their helplessness ?

There is no record in history of any ruling class, oligarchy, or monarchy, making any concession to a subject class, unless under compul­sion. The nature of the capitalist class is the same as all previous ruling classes, utterly selfish and desirous of conserving its position.

“A State without the means of some change is without the means of its own conservation,” wrote Burke. That is the reason why every party—with the exception of the S.P.G.B.—”is now committed to social reform.” Capitalist society has reached that stage in its develop­ment where the vast majority have no real interest in conserving it. Though the know­ledge they require is within their reach, they only partially realise the possibility of successful revolution.

There are no reforms possible or likely of application under Capitalism, that can improve the condition of the working class. Moreover, it is but adding insult to injury for the capitalist class or their representatives to promise even real reforms for the improvement of working-class conditions. When the working class wake up they will see that no class or section pos­sesses the power to experiment over their heads—either for or against them. They will use the political power which Mr. Bonar Law says they possess to control the forces that stand between them and the means of life. Knowing, they will cease to be the dupes of either sentimental or practical reformers.’

F. F.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1910s/1914/no-117-may-1914/social-reform-old-or-new/

It’s the rich what gets the pleasure, it’s the poor that suffer under capitalism.

‘France has imposed another curfew on the Caribbean island of Martinique, amid violent protests over the soaring cost of living that have raging there for more than a month.

At least one person has been killed and 26 police officers injured in riots since the start of the week, and multiple stores have been looted. Videos circulating on social media show demonstrators putting up burning barricades and throwing rocks and bottles at police, who responded with tear gas.

The local French administration has announced a ban on public gatherings across the territory until October 14. The sale of items that could potentially be used for arson has also been prohibited, according to Reuters.

The local government has issued a statement stressing that no police officers used their weapons during the riots, and that the death of a civilian is being investigated, according to ABC News.

French Overseas Minister Francois-Noel Buffet has condemned the violence and called for “responsibility and calm.”

Didier Laguerre, mayor of the island’s capital, Fort-de-France, has sought to ease tensions, saying the protesters’ demands are legitimate.

“I understand the suffering and anger,” Laguerre said in a written statement. “I know everyone’s impatience and the resignation of those who have lost hope for a long time.”

In September, local authorities enforced a similar curfew in several neighbourhoods of Fort-de-France and the nearby town of Le Lamentin over the unrest on the island of 350,000 residents. Back then, the protests were led by the Assembly for the Protection of Afro-Caribbean Peoples and Resources, which demanded that food prices be aligned with mainland France.

Martinique and other French overseas territories have been struggling with spiralling food and transport costs. According to France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, average food prices are 40% higher than in mainland France.

Protesters have been calling for reforms, including a reduction in import taxes and better regulation of local markets, to tackle inequality.’

There’s only one solution to the problems people face – socialism.

Whilst in Moldova: ‘Anti-government protesters in Moldova’s capital, Chisinau, took to the streets with banners and empty pots denouncing the country’s pro-Western president, Maia Sandu, and her policies. The demonstrators accused Sandu’s administration of driving the country to poverty. The protest was unofficially called the “march of the hungry” and “the march of the deceived pensioners.”

Videos show dozens of people marching through the streets of Chisinau with banners reading: “Thanks, Sandu, for poverty and hunger,” “Sandu, go away,” and “For Moldova without the EU.” People chanted slogans calling for the president to step down, and banged on pots with spoons, chanting, “empty pots are louder than words.”

The march was organized by the opposition movement ‘Victory of the Young’. Yuri Vitnyansky, the movement’s leader, told RIA Novosti that the protesters seek to draw attention to the low standard of living in the country in the run-up to the heating season.

“We are on the eve of the heating season, we are facing new challenges of high prices for energy and electricity. We understand that hard times are coming not only for socially vulnerable groups of the population, but also for literally every resident of the country,” he said, explaining that the choice of empty pots as a symbol of the protest was intentional, “because the times have come when people save on everything, since there’s not enough money even for food.”

Moldova, which lies between Romania and Ukraine, is a former Soviet republic that became independent in 1991. It has been actively pushing for EU and NATO membership since 2020, when Sandu, a critic of Russia and supporter of EU integration, came to power.

The country is among the poorest in Europe, and Sandu’s opposition has accused her administration of failing to resolve the crisis in the economy and energy sector and driving Moldova into deeper poverty. Earlier this month, MP Irina Lozovan told Izvestia that farmers are being ruined by Sandu’s EU accession plans, accusing her of allowing businesses from the bloc to buy up land and property at low prices. Earlier this year, another MP, Diana Caraman, said that during Sandu’s rule, the country has greatly deteriorated, with a record 31% of the people on the brink of poverty’

Never put your trust in ‘leaders’ who are only concerned with how they can benefit from being capitalism’s minions.

CAPITALISM AND THE GRENFELL TOWER FIRE (Zoom)

Does the following come under mythical place has no fury liked a woman scorned, or patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel?

Yelena Valeryevna Välbe is a Russian former cross-country skier. She won a record 14 gold medals (5 in relays) at the FIS World Championships, including all five golds in the 1997 edition. She also won three Olympic gold medals (all in relays) and four bronze medals in various Winter Olympic Games as well as four World Cup Crystal Globes. Wiki.

She has a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the best skier of the 20th century.

She sounds like a very impressive talented athlete.

So why does she put this writer in mind of the Puddle of Mudd song? Explicit lyrics. She hates me.

Yelana in an interview apparently ‘slammed the West for banning the country’s athletes from most international sports tournaments in response to the Ukraine conflict.’ A view that elicits some sympathy because why should individuals be held responsible for what their capitalist supporting States do?

But Yelana is quoted as saying that “if we had dropped a serious bomb in the centre of London, it would have all been over by now and we would have been allowed everywhere.”

A bit extreme Yelana? No, that is a very very extreme sentiment. Why would you wish death and destruction on innocent people, many of whom abhor the warmongering of their own government and that of the Russian government? And of any government/state which kills and maims innocent men, women and children?

Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is a Russian politician who has been serving as deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia since 2020.Medvedev was also the third president of Russia from 2008 to 2012 and prime minister of Russia from 2012 to 2020.

Dimitry responded to her comment with, “Our famous skier Elena Vyalbe suggested dropping a bomb on London. She’s right, of course, but we need to solve the problem radically and just sink the damned island of Anglo-Saxon dogs,”

He did not elaborate on whether ‘the problem’ refers to sports or the state of Russia’s relations with the UK in general.’

‘The UK and NATO have sided with Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, providing Kiev with financial and military aid and placing sanctions on Moscow. London was among 30 nations that urged the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to uphold a ban it had placed on Russian and Belarusian athletes when it proposed allowing them to compete in the Summer Olympics this year.

Most Western-based sports bodies banned Russia and Belarus from taking part in international sports tournaments shortly after the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, including the IOC, FIFA, FIDE, and others. Moscow has repeatedly criticized the restrictions.’

The below is from the Socialist standard February 1937 Reprinted from December 1915

What is patriotism?

‘The answer depends largely upon the point of view. From one standpoint patriotism appears as the actual religion of the modern State. From another it is the decadence and perversion of a noble and deep-rooted impulse of loyalty to the social unit, acquired by mankind during the earliest stages of social life. From yet another viewpoint, that of capitalist interests, patriotism is nothing more or less than a convenient and potent instrument of domination.



Its Origin

The word itself, both etymologically and historically, has its root in paternity. In tribal days the feeling of social solidarity, which has now become debased into patriotism, was completely bound up with the religion of ancestor worship. In tribal religion, as in the tribe itself, all were united by ties of blood. The gods and their rights and ceremonies were exclusive to the tribesmen. All strangers were rigidly debarred from worship. The gods themselves were usually dead warriors. Every war was a holy war. Among the ancient Israelites, for instance, the holy Ark of Jehovah of Hosts accompanied the tribes to battle. It was this abode or movable tomb of the ancestral deity that went with the Jews in their march through the desert, and even to Jericho, playing an important part in the fall of that remarkable city. All the traditions of the Jewish religion, in fact, were identified with great national triumphs.



A Bond of Union

Thus tribal religion was completely interwoven with tribal aspirations and integrity. Tribal “patriotism” and religion were identical. Indeed, without the strongest possible social bond, without a kind of “patriotism” that implied the unhesitating self-sacrifice of the individual for the communal existence, it would have been utterly impossible for tribal man to have won through to civilisation. Natural selection insured that only those social groups which developed this supreme instinct of mutual aid could survive; the rest were crushed out in the struggle for existence. Is it a matter for wonder if it be found that such a magnificent social impulse, so vital to the struggling groups of tribal man, received periodical consecration in the willing human sacrifices so common in primitive religious ceremonial? Bound up with the deliberate manufacture of gods for the protection of the tribe and its works, there is indicated a social recognition of the need for, and value of, the sacrifice of the individual for the common weal.



A Bond of Another Kind

This noble impulse of social solidarity is the common inheritance of all mankind. But being a powerful social force it has lent itself to exploitation. Therefore, with the development of class rule this great impulse is made subordinate to the class interests of the rulers. It becomes debased and perverted to definite anti-social ends. As soon as the people become a slave class “the land of their fathers” is theirs no more. Patriotism to them becomes a fraudulent thing. The “country” is that of their masters alone. Nevertheless, the instinct of loyalty to the community is too deep-seated to be eradicated so easily, and it becomes a deadly weapon in the hands of the rulers against the people themselves.



Patriotism and Religion Part Company

With the decay of society based on kinship, religion changed also, and from being tribal and exclusive it became universal and propagandist. “Patriotism” at the same time began to distinguish itself from religion. The instinctive tribal loyalty became transformed, by the aid of religion and the fiction of kinship, into political loyalty. In a number of instances in political society, as in Tudor England, the struggle for priority between religion and patriotism became so acute as to help in the introduction of a more subservient form of religion. Thus patriotism became emancipated from religion, and the latter became a mere accessory to patriotism as handmaiden of class rule.



Patriotism Always Obliges

Though universal religion did not split up at the same time as the great empire that gave it birth, patriotism did so. The latter has, in fact, always adapted, enlarged, or contracted itself to fit the existing political unit, whether feudal estate, village, township, county, kingdom, republic or empire. No political form has been too absurd for it to fill with its loyalty. No discordance of race, colour or language has been universally effective against it.

What, then, is patriotism in essence to-day? It is usually defined as being devotion to the land of our fathers. But which is the land of our fathers? Our fathers came from many different parts of the world. The political division of the world in which we live is an artificial entity. The land has been wrested from other races. The nation they call “ours” is the result of a conquest over original inhabitants, and over ourselves, by successive ruling classes. Unlike the free tribesmen we are hirelings; we possess no country.



The One Common Bond To-day

Nationality, of which patriotism is the superstition, covers no real entity other than that of a common oppression, a unified government. It does not comprise any unity of race, for in no nation is there one pure race, or anything like it. It does not cover a unity of language, for scarcely a nation exists in which several distinct languages are not indigenous. Nor is it any fixity of territory, for this changes from decade to decade, while the inhabitants of the transferred territory have to transfer their allegiance, their patriotism, to the new nation.



The only universal bond of nationality or patriotism that exists for us to-day is, then, that of subjection to a single government. Patriotism in the worker is pride in the common yoke imposed by a politically unified ruling class. Yet it is this artificial entity that we are called upon to honour before life itself. This badge of political servitude is called an object worthy of supreme sacrifice. The workers are expected to abandon all vital interests and sacrifice all they hold dear for the preservation of an artificial nationality that is little more than a manufactured unit of discord: a mere focus of economic and political strife.



Ignoble Exploitation

Thus one of the noblest fruits of man’s social evolution—the impulse of sacrifice for the social existence—is being prostituted by the capitalist class to maintain a system of exploitation, to obtain a commercial supremacy, and preserve or extend the boundaries of a superfluous political entity. The workers are duped by the ruling class into sacrificing themselves for the preservation of a politico-economic yoke of a particular form and colour. Many so-called Socialists have fallen headlong into this trap.



Had social solidarity developed in equal measure with the broadening of men’s real interests, it would now be universal in character instead of national. The wholesale mixture of races, and the economic interdependence of the whole world, show that nationalism is now a barrier, and patriotism, as we know it, a curse. Only the whole world can now be rightly called the land of our fathers. Only in the service of the people of the whole world, and not against those of any part of it, can the instinct of social service find its highest and complete expression. The great Socialist has pointed the way. He did not call upon the workers of Germany alone to unite. He appealed to the toilers of the whole world to join hands; to a whole world of labour whose only loss could be its parti-coloured chains. And in this alone lies the consummation of that tribal instinct of social solidarity of which patriotism is the perverted descendant.



Capitalism the Barrier

Capitalism, therefore, stands as the barrier the destruction of which will not only set free the productive forces of society for the good of all, but will also liberate human solidarity and brotherhood from the narrow confines of nationality and patriotism. Only victorious labour can make true the simple but pregnant statement: “Mankind are my brethren, the world is my country.” Patriotism and nationalism as we know them will then be remembered only as artificial restrictions of men’s sympathy and mutual help; as obstacles to the expansion of the human mind; as impediments to the needful and helpful development of human unity and co-operation; as bonds that bound men to slavery; as incentives that set brothers at each other’s throats.



Despite its shameless perversion by a robber class the great impulse to human solidarity is by no means dead. Economic factors give it an ever firmer basis, and in the Socialist movement it develops apace. Even the hellish system of individualism, with its doctrine of every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost, has been unable to kill it. And in the great class struggle of the workers against the drones, of the socially useful against the socially pernicious, in this last great struggle for the liberation of humanity from; wage-slavery, the great principle of human solidarity, based upon the necessities of to-day and impelled by the deep-seated instincts of the race, will come to full fruition and win its supreme historical battle.



A Vile Use of a Noble Sentiment

That is our hope and aspiration. For the present, however, we are surrounded by the horrors of war added to the horrors of exploitation, and subjected to the operation of open repression as well as to the arts of hypocrisy and fraud. With the weakening power of religion to keep the workers obedient, the false cult of nationality and patriotism is being exploited to the full. Like religion, patriotism has its vestments, its ceremonies, its sacred emblems, its sacred hymns and inspired music; all of which are called in aid of the class interests of our masters, and utilised desperately to lure millions to the shambles for their benefit. Thus is an heroic and glorious social impulse perverted and debased to the support of arégime of wage-slavery, and to the furtherance of the damnable policy of the slave-holding class: to divide and rule.’

F. C. Watts

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/07/what-is-patriotism-1937.html