HOW WE LIVE AND HOW WE MIGHT LIVE: CAPITALISM, POVERTY AND GLOBAL CRISES (ZOOM)

HOW WE LIVE AND HOW WE MIGHT LIVE: CAPITALISM, POVERTY AND GLOBAL CRISES (ZOOM)

A survey carried out in Germany by the ARD-DeutschlandTREND has zero per cent of Germans ‘fully satisfied’ with their government.

Just one fifth were ‘satisfied’ leaving eighty per cent dissatisfied which included almost half who were ‘not satisfied at all.

‘The country is currently governed by the so-called traffic light coalition, which consists of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), the Free Democrats (FDP), and the Greens.’

Are Germans seeking out the only sane alternative? Unfortunately, it would appear not.

How soon will it be before Britain’s are expressing similar sentiments?

How soon will it be before the Labour Party election slogan from the nineteen sixties is regenerated?

The conclusion from the article reproduced below is as apposite today as it was then.

Below is an extract from the Socialist Standard April 1966

‘He has it all now; even the place in history which he is said to pine for. Mr. Harold Wilson will be remembered as the first Labour Prime Minister to lead his party back to Westminster with an increased majority.

It has never happened before; but then never before has there been a government like this one, and never before has there been a Labour Premier like Mr. Wilson. Never before has the so-called left wing, with its nostalgia for the days when Labour dabbled in theories of what it called Socialism, been so thoroughly tamed. The Labour government has made a public pride of the fact that it would have none of theories or principles; its first concern has been to run British capitalism as its day to day affairs demanded.

This is what is meant by a word which was often used to describe the Wilson government during the election: pragmatic. The Economist said on February 26th: “Mr. Wilson has been a socialist in small things and a pragmatist in big ones.” William Davis, the Financial Editor of The Guardian, wrote on 28th February: ‘‘I do not believe that …Wilson the pragmatist would go easy with the trade unions and aim nasty blows at business men.” And Mr. Wilson himself claimed, when he was being interviewed in television’s Election Forum on March 10th, “We have been a pragmatic government.”

It is also what was meant by the slogan on which the Labour Party fought the election: You Know Labour Government Works. Not, we should notice, You Know Labour Government Is Socialism, nor even You Know Labour Government Is Good For You. Only the claim that Labour government works. And now that they are back again stronger than before it is time for those who voted for a return of Labour government to ask themselves what is meant by the word “works”

…On many other matters the Labour government, in proving that they worked, upset many of their supporters. These supporters thought that their government would judge an issue like the war in Vietnam on humane grounds. Had they known anything about the workings of capitalist parties they would not have been so disappointed when Mr. Wilson so wholeheartedly supported the Americans in their actions there. While Mr. Wilson did so, of course, the bombings went on and the Vietnamese villagers and their children perished wholesale beneath the napalm.

On wages there was less excuse for disappointment; the Labour Party have always made plain their intention to try to control them. But even solid Labour trade unionists were upset when their government actually introduced the Prices and Incomes Bill, which was the sort of measure no Conservative government had dared to bring in. In their battles in this field, the Labour government were openly standing for the interests of the British capitalist class against the wage claims of the workers—many of whom worked so hard for Labour’s return.

There is no reason to suppose that this next Labour government will be any different. They have made it clear that their first pre-occupation will be with the problems of the British capitalist class; the very first specific object stated in their manifesto in the last election was: “It is our aim to achieve balance in our international payments by the end of this year.” Plainly, more disappointments are in store for the friends of Labour rule.

This, then, is what is meant by a Labour government which works. It means a few minor reforms, most of which are of no benefit to the working class. It means the abandonment of principle and its replacement by mealy-mouthed expediency. It means a disregard for human problems and welfare, and a pandering to the bleakest of prejudices. It means a continuation of the social system which terrorises and degrades human beings all over the world. 

There need be no surprise that little interest was shown in the alternative to capitalism at the election. The biggest change of opinion is called a landslide; it would need a veritable earthquake in social awareness to change society from one of despair into one of hope. The earthquake did not, of course, happen and the foundations of capitalism—the self deception, the prejudice, the apathy and the plain ignorance with which the working class blight their own lives—are unshaken.’

Ivan

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/04/another-stretch-of-labour-rule-1966.html

Reporting the result of last month’s general election, Reuters said ‘Keir Starmer returned the Labour Party to power’. ‘Power’ is not the right word as it suggests that being the government gives its members more control than they actually have and in fact generally believe they have. It suggests that they have the power to control the economy and make it work as they want. However, the capitalist economic system operates according to economic laws which are beyond the control of governments, however resolute or well-intentioned those who compose them may be.

Of course governments are not completely powerless. There are some things they can do. They control the armed forces and other means of coercion. On the economic field they can control the issue of the currency, levy taxes, grant subsidies and impose tariffs. But they do not control and cannot control the way the economy works. They can pass laws and draw up plans about economic matters but this does not mean that these laws and plans can be implemented as envisaged nor, if they are, that they will have the intended effect. Capitalism is an economic system that operates according to its own economic laws which governments ignore at their peril.

These economic laws can be summed up as:

— the capitalist economy is an integrated world economy; there is no ‘British economy’ or ‘German economy’ or even ‘American economy’. What exists is a world capitalist economy which dominates all countries.

— since government activity does not produce any wealth, all the resources consumed by governments, whether for ‘defence’ or social reforms, have to come from the surplus over costs created in the productive sector of the economy, whether private or state.

— the private sector is motivated by the search for profits since these are its source of funds which private enterprises need to continue productive activity; in fact, making a profit is the only reason why this sector produces anything.

Given this, it is more accurate to say that when a party wins an election and gets to form the government what happens is that they come into office. Members of their party replace as ministers members of the outgoing party. It’s a replacement of decision-making personnel, but personnel without the power to make the economy work otherwise than it does.

It would be a rhetorical flourish to describe them as office boys since they do have more decision-making power than that. A better term would be that are the middle management of the world capitalist economic system. Like middle managers they are given a remit from above with some leeway as to how to implement it. In the case of governments the remit is to apply the economic laws of capitalism that dictate that priority must be given to profits and conditions for profit-making. Although the economic laws of capitalism are impersonal they are not self-enforcing but require personnel to enforce them, and this is what governments are alongside the executives of business enterprises.

All that happened on 5 July was a change of middle management. Nothing to get excited about.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, part of the World Socialist Movement, has, since its inception in 1904 never had ‘leaders’. After all, the majority working class run capitalism on behalf of its ruling class so why shouldn’t we be capable of organising society to run for the benefit of all? So why do we continue to put people into a position of power over us where the only benefit is one where they ‘exist, for one purpose only: to line their own pockets and empty yours?

’‘US President Joe Biden says he has been “running the world” and therefore does not actually need any cognitive tests to prove his fitness for office.

The president made the remarks in an interview with ABC News when the 81-year-old was repeatedly pressed by George Stephanopoulos about the growing concerns surrounding his mental and physical condition.

Asked whether he has “had a full neurological and cognitive evaluation,” Biden provided a rather incoherent response. 

“I’ve had – I get a full neurological test everyday with me. And I’ve had a full physical. I had, you know, I mean, I – I’ve been at Walter Reed [national military medical center] for my physicals. I mean – uhm yes, the answer,” he stated.

The president dodged the question on whether he would willingly pass such a test and release its results to the public, insisting his work alone proves he is fit enough for office.

“Look. I have a cognitive test every single day. Every day I have that test. Everything I do. You know, not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world. Not – and that’s not hi -sounds like hyperbole, but we are the essential nation of the world,” he asserted.’

The below is extracted from the Socialist Standard March 1967

‘This, as the newspapers never tire of telling us, is the age of progress and enlightenment; which means, among other things, that every little girl and every little boy in the schools is taught that to worship idols is evil. Of course, this applies to only one sort of idol. Those same little girls and boys are also taught, in those same schools, that to worship leaders is virtuous.

The leadership principle is one of the pillars of property society. The vast majority of people are convinced that the world is so full of complex and dangerous problems that only a few can be expected to have the knowledge, the ability and the courage to deal with them.

This select few are the leaders. There is even something called a “born” leader, although when we consider the properties leaders are supposed to have it is reasonable to wonder whether they can be said to be born like the rest of us.

For the most part, the working class accept it all. The nearest they come to criticising is to complain about the quality of the leadership they suffer, and to pine for stronger or weaker, or abler, or some other type of leadership. Just see how enthusiastically they react whenever a great man drives through the streets. Study their smiles, a mixture of joy and amazement, when he proves that he is human by getting out of his car and coming across to clasp hands with them.

No shadow of doubt can be seen on those happy faces. None of them is asking what a leader is supposed to be, to do, to be worth. So let us, the minority who do not accept the leadership principle, ask the questions.

A leader, first of all, is supposed to be someone who does things which are good for us. His intentions are supposed to be of the best and under his wise and humane guidance we should flourish into prosperity and happiness. But it is at once obvious that, to put it at its mildest, this is not always so. To take the plainest of recent examples, whatever intentions lay behind Hitler’s rages, or Stalin’s level eyes, they were not inspired by the greatest good of the greatest number.

Of course when it was convenient for them, the allied leaders made great play on the evil results of the Hitler and Stalin tyrannies. This propaganda was acceptable to those workers who console themselves with the notion that all evil leaders are foreign. It ignores the fact that, at the same time as the British leaders were condemning the Nazis’ savagery, they were themselves indulging in delicate operations like arguing about which of them had correctly calculated the number of houses the RAF could destroy in their attacks on German cities.

Now the whole point is that if it is possible for a leader to be a murderous tyrant, if a leader can act against human interests, the case for having a leader is severely damaged. If leadership is a sort of lucky dip, with a good chance of coming out with a Hitler, then there is a strong argument for not sticking our hand into the bran tub.

Whether a leader is “good” or “bad”, one quality he should have is to know more than his followers. Some leaders, of course, assert that this is all done by intuition. There is no argument in favour of leaders unless they know better than anyone else. How do our leaders match up to this?

… In other words, that no matter what sort of a leader we have capitalism is unpredictable, that it can blow up sudden storms or settle into unexpected calms. Leaders can amass all the facts possible, they can adopt what pretence they like. When it comes down to it they have to admit that events are beyond their control.

This is what provokes what are sometimes called leaders’ “mistakes” but which might have other descriptions. Indeed, history is littered with examples of politicians’ broken promises, misguided calculations, discredited forecasts.

…The case against leadership in principle, then, is formidable. Leaders can be ruthless and inhumane; they can be as ignorant as anyone else; they can make massive mistakes; and they can betray what their followers have always thought of as their principles.

So why keep them? The simple answer (although this may seem presumptuous) is that the existence of leaders reflects the ignorance, the apathy, or the delusions, of the people who follow them.

One aspect of this, ignorance is the confusion over the meaning of leadership. Many people think that anyone who has a special knowledge and who applies it to the rest of us— like a doctor—is in that fact a leader. We don’t know enough to treat ourselves, runs the argument, so we have to rely on the doctor to do it for us. That makes the doctor a leader which proves that we cannot exist without leaders.

Yet there are limits beyond which a doctor’s special knowledge cannot be applied, because our knowledge makes us question him. If, for example, we went to our doctor with a poison toe and he started preparations to lance our finger we would probably get in touch with a couple of his colleagues to have him certified. (Perhaps it is no coincidence that Harold Wilson once said his favourite image of himself was as the people’s family doctor.)

For some reason, the working class do not apply these same standards of judgement to politicians. A doctor who sometimes murdered his patients, who confessed to a lack of medical knowledge, who kept performing the wrong operation and who ended up working for the undertaker would soon get what he deserved. Yet political leaders who carry on in the same way remain on their pedestals, in their offices.

All that is needed to end this is some basic knowledge. Not very much; only the equivalent of knowing that the doctor is treating us for the wrong complaint; only enough to tell us that the society we live in now does not work in our interests and that to get rid of its evils we must fundamentally change it.

With that knowledge, workers are impervious to the promises, the deceptions, the mistakes and the treachery of leaders. They have no need of leaders to tell them what to do; they have the essential equipment to build the new society where people count.

Ivan

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2020/03/are-they-really-necessary-1967.html

Well, a Labour government has been elected, with a really sizeable majority, and the Tories have suffered a big setback, losing well over two hundred MPs. But the real and crucial result was a foregone conclusion, that capitalism would win. It doesn’t matter which capitalist party is in office (Labour, Tories, LibDems, Reform, Greens, SNP, Plaid, and so on), because the wages–prices–profits system will continue until workers see the need for a revolutionary change.

Tory MP Robert Jenrick (who retained his seat) said before the election that a Labour landslide would make Britain ‘unrecognisable’. In fact it will be totally and recognisably business as usual, capitalist business: inequality, poverty, unemployment.

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

THE GENERAL ELECTION (ZOOM)

THE GENERAL ELECTION (ZOOM)

In May a Welsh politician tabled an amendment to a Bill .The amendment did not move forward. It would have ‘made it a criminal offence for a politician to deliberately mislead the public.’

https://nation.cymru/news/ban-on-politicians-lying-law-shelved-despite-cross-party-support/

One would have to be cynical to the nth degree to even think that during this past few weeks has been politicians and would be politicians would ever stoop to speaking/publishing anything which was not of the utmost veracity. Politicians telling whopping fibs in their pursuit of election and power? Really sir, do you takes us for fules? British democracy is the best in the world and Britain’s leaders are the most fervent in upholding Truth, justice and the Capitalist Way.

For the record, there is only one political party which has laid the unvarnished truth in front of the electors and that is The Socialist Party.

The below is from the From the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard July 2000. It’s titled The Lying Game.

Our rulers have a long and inglorious tradition of lying to stay in power. Our only defence against this is to understand the basis of this lie machine.

Just ask anyone, they’ll tell you. “Of course the press lie,” they’ll say, and whip out the latest tabloid, and show you proof incontrovertible that there are porky pies in the Currant Bun It’s so obvious that the media are liars that one paper—the Daily Sport—can trade off on its pastiche of the press, telling blatant and obvious lies, wherein the pleasure for the reader lies precisely in spotting that it’s all false.

It is, though, precisely through reference to the blatancy and flippancy of the so-called “yellow press” that the power of media propaganda lies. That the tabloids’ allergy to accuracy is passed off as playfulness in the face of the grim-faced puritanism of the “serious” media and apparent attempts to impose any agenda on them, means that the reputation for honesty and accuracy of the broadsheet and broadcast media is maintained. Yet, it is precisely through the “serious” media that many of the lies that sustain the system are promulgated.

A simple examination of the modern media suffices to demonstrate that propaganda is the norm, not the exception. You just have to look at who the media are to begin to understand that they have a material interest in going out of their way to defend the current system. The media is composed of capitalist businesses, selling their news, dependent on the markets; and—more specifically—they are dependent upon selling advertising (i.e. getting money from other capitalists) in order to keep operating. A careful glance at, say, the Guardian would demonstrate just how much page space is given over to advertising in proportion to the space given over to reports. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own the press, and capitalists own the press, both individually through media firms and collectively through advertising. The threat to withdraw advertising income from firms that incur the displeasure of the capitalist class means that the media firms have a direct interest in avoiding certain controversies.

This situation pertains, even in the supposedly non-commercial BBC, since it exists in competition with the other news providers, and is subject to similar funding threats as well as political pressure, the ending of the licence fee, or the appointment of governors, for example. The model for government intervention in the culture industry is “the arm’s-length principle”, thus the BBC, and various arts boards are given grants and are nominally independent, but, they are capable of losing funding, or being otherwise pressured if they get too much out of control. This “arm’s-length principle” is in effect the way that the whole capitalist class relates to the media, preserving the appearance of neutrality and objectivity, whilst retaining ultimate control.

Researching and gathering information requires lots of time, patience and diligence, something which adds to a media firm’s overheads—thus cutting into profits. The pressure to lower costs, to churn out copy on time, means that media firms cannot waste much time independently searching out and verifying information. Thus they are heavily dependent upon publicists (like the ubiquitous Max Clifford) and public relations officers of both the state and other firms to provide them with newsworthy items. Capitalist institutions collectively spend billions of pounds per year on public relations and media management.

The relationship to official sources can be seen in the build-up of the Zimbabwe story, which began with news stories reporting comments by Robin Cook and Peter Hain expressing their concerns about conditions in Zimbabwe. These comments, highlighted, no doubt, by so-called “spin doctors” meant these concerns became a top news item. In contradistinction, the fact the Cook did not give the story of the British government negotiating Foday Sanko into coalition with the Sierra Leonean government last year, meant it did not make the news. The same holds true of the collapse and invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the bloodbath of the Eritrean-Ethiopian war: without being placed on the official agenda by the powers-that-be these stories have only been given footnote treatment in the British media. Even the collapse of liberal-democracy from the military coup in Pakistan has been consigned to acceptance.

Private Eye (2 June), in uncovering a significant aspect of the Sierra Leone story—that the Sierra Leonean army is equally as murderous as the RUF—makes a significant observation: when the embarrassing story came to light, the government reacted by “burying the story by ensuring the non-availability of official spokesmen or ministers”. Without official documentation, and without the opportunity for “balance” the news media did not run with the story. The power of the information providers to withhold both data and access provides a key strategy in their control of the news media.

These international stories help highlight the way in which the supposedly “free” press follows the line of their masters. Are media in France or Germany putting the Zimbabwe story as their lead news item? Undoubtedly not, because Zimbabwe is not an area of their concern, so they do not focus on it so intently. Hence while thousands die each year in Laos from bombs dropped by America in the 1970s, while thousands are slaughtered in Colombia—all without a single comment in the media. The murder or beating up of a single farmer in Zimbabwe is top of the six o’clock news, complete with tearful interviews from the victims and their families. Along with that, every news report of the killings in Zimbabwe lists the number of white-skinned farmers first, and then relegates the murdered black-skinned MDC supporters to a footnote on that figure.

This highlights a classic manoeuvre on behalf of the media—the selection of worthy and unworthy victims. Two months back, people facing starvation in Ethiopia were presented as, again, the worthy recipients of the West’s largesse and charitable concern, yet, when people starve and die in Iraq—as a direct consequence of the policy of the Western powers—their story does not make the news headlines. Acting to help worthy victims, and punish “bad guys” serves our masters’ ends in that it helps them justify and thus mobilise for their interventions.

A part of the response of the British media to the Zimbabwe story owes itself to older forms of class rule, in that the editors of the newspapers, or their staff, have friends or relations living in Zimbabwe who went over to administer colonialism. These personal relations give further impetus to placing the story up the news agenda.

The control of personnel is in fact another key factor in ensuring the capitalist control of the news agenda. A glaring example of this in practice was evidenced by the Mayday riots in London this year. Almost inexplicably the BBC sent along Nicholas Witchell, their “Royal” correspondent, to cover the events. Obviously, anyone who gets the “accolade” of being a royal correspondent is sufficiently tame to serve their masters’ interest with gusto, as indeed, Witchell did in his reportage of the day. The very fact that he was moved from his usual brief to cover what was, in effect, a small protest (with only 5,000 or so people present in Westminster) clearly indicates the propaganda intentions of his editors.

In the days leading up to the protest the media ran scare story after scare story, about the police being prepared for massive violence, about the army being on standby (and these stories were spread by the “respectable” media, such as Radio 4’s Today programme). It was clear that the agenda was worked out in advance, and carefully prepared.

The behaviour of reporters at the scene gives other indications how the media coverage was an a priori agenda. Camera folk were seen hunting out any grungy-appearing anarchist who’d overdone the drink and was being sick. The Channel Five reporter described largely peaceful events as “simmering all day”, in flagrant contradiction to the experience of the vast majority of people attending. Indeed, the media as much as possible pushed the line that the police were merely responding to the thuggery of the protesters; repeating time after time that the riot suits only came out after McDonald’s was trashed; whereas eye-witness reports from Trafalgar Square note that police there were waiting in riot gear, and could not have got changed after the vandalism began. It was clearly in our masters’ interests to maintain that the police response was a reluctant intervention, and that the blame lay on the protesters.

The disorganisation and the non-accountable actions of individuals in trashing the shop and vandalising the statues represented a gift to the media so they could ignore the point of the demonstration and push home their masters’ line and scare people into accepting more control. Spectacular dissent failed dramatically because the protesters had no means of controlling the social and political context into which the protest was placed by the propaganda system.

The mandarins of the state and their commissars in the media occasionally and inadvertently admit the importance of media structures. During the Kosovan war, they were forced into openly having to bully John Simpson for his reports from Serbia for falling out of step with the official line, while every other reporter placidly accepted the daily dole of information from Jamie Shea. Further, by attacking the Serbian broadcasting service, and claiming it as a legitimate target of war, the powers-that-be revealed their true and thorough understanding about the role of propaganda. The event was not without precedents, as NATO forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina seized a Bosnian-Serb television transmitter (see Socialist Standard, January 1997) because it was broadcasting “enemy” propaganda.

Our rulers have a long and inglorious tradition of lying to stay in power, and our only defence against this is to understand the basis of this lie machine, and to work to expose their lies as often as possible. They tell different lies in different circumstances, and set different agendas according to the intended news audience they anticipate. Our interest lies in exploiting the divisions between the divergent interests of different groups of capitalists, and showing the contradictions involved. Thus our best weapon against the lies of our masters, is to understand that we the workers of the world have a common interest, and to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing information between ourselves, deliberately and consciously working for our liberation without borders.

Pik Smeet