‘You load sixteen tons and what do you yet?

Another day older and deeper in debt

Saint Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go

I owe my soul to the Company store’

Religious imagery apart, this song could be taken as a metaphor for the relationship between the working class and the ruling capitalist class. The surplus value produced by the labour power of the working class is turned into profits by the exploiters.

There are several options by which the capitalist class can take advantage of the source of their wealth and the latest one involves working producers until they drop. Where might this end if capitalism is allowed to continue? Working until you’re 75, 80, 85?

You’re never to old, or to young, to become a Socialist. Given the option of ensuring the transition to a social sytem where quality goods and services are produced for use, not profit, or slaving away all your life to increase the wealth of a minority who look upon you as nothing more than a cash cow, which do you choose?

‘The retirement age will have to rise to 71 for middle-aged workers across the UK, according to research into the impact of growing life expectancy and falling birth-rates on the state pension.

The UK pension age of 66 is set to rise to 67 between May 2026 and March 2028. From 2044, it is expected to rise to 68.

But the research suggests that this is not enough, and that anyone born after April 1970 may have to work until they are 71 before claiming their pension.

This age limit may need to be set even higher, say experts, thanks to the high rate of workers exiting the workforce before they reach state pension age, predominantly due to preventable ill health.

Les Mayhew, associate head of global research at the International Longevity Centre and author of the report State Pension Age and Demographic Change, said: “In the UK, state pension age would need to be 70 or 71 compared with 66 now, to maintain the status quo of the number of workers per state pensioner.

“But if you bring preventable ill health into the equation, that would have to increase even more,” added Mayhew, who is also professor of statistics at Bayes Business School and has advised the government on rises to the state pension age multiple times as a senior civil servant and in his current roles.

By age 70, only 50% of adults in England and Wales are now disability-free and able to work. A smaller working population and a large economically inactive population reduces the tax base to pay for pensions – and creates huge labour shortages, which creates its own problems.

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, pensioner benefits will cost the UK government £136bn in 2023-24, of which £124bn will be spent on state pensions.

Jonathan Cribb, associate director and head of retirement at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said that while he did not disagree with a higher pension age, increasing it without addressing other cost-saving measures was not “realistic or equitable”. He added: “It would disproportionately impact poorer individuals whose ill-health means they have shorter lives, and so who receive pensions for less time.”

While the ILC’s solution is “illustrative of the kind of pressure that an ageing population puts on the public finance”, a rise in the retirement age to 71 was not a “realistic policy option unless you have a real emergency”, he added.

Cribb pointed out that while state pensions and pension benefits are estimated to increase by £45bn by 2050, the pressure on public finance from health and social care is estimated to increase by £105bn in today’s terms over the same period. “The real issue is actually around the NHS and social care,” he said.

The Intergenerational Foundation, an independent think tank, agreed that the pension age had to rise, but questioned on whose shoulders that cost should fall.

Younger people, their research has found, do not have the financial assets that their parents and grandparents did. In 2010, those under 40 held £7.53 of every £100 of wealth. By 2020, that had fallen to £3.98. One-third of the UK’s 14 million Gen-Xers are at high risk of retiring on insufficient income.

Angus Hanton, co-founder of the think tank, said pension age should be based on life expectancy and occupation. He also supports a wealth tax to fund and pay more towards people’s retirement, and reducing income tax and national insurance.

“The over-60s should finance their own extra retirement years since they have received such generous treatment from the state,” he said. “The money raised can be used to invest in improving the health and prospects of younger generations so they are less of an economic burden as they age.”

“Increasing the state pension age would be a terrible policy – a really bad way of attempting to make people more productive,” he said.

The government said it would ensure that the state pension remained “a sustainable and fair foundation of income for future generations”.

A spokesperson said: “We have committed £70m in employment and skills support for the over-50s, which has seen an extra 54,000 over-50s added to company payrolls. Our £2.5bn Back to Work plan is supporting people to stay fit and find work, in addition to £14.1bn to improve health services to help people live longer, healthier lives.”’

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2024/feb/05/uk-state-pension-age-will-soon-need-to-rise-to-71-say-experts

‘When the UK raised the age of retirement and heightened the national insurance contribution criteria to be eligible for a state pension, there were complaints from women who were particularly affected by the changes but very little wider protest.

It has not been as easy for the French government plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. Trade unions have held nationwide strikes that have brought France to standstills, hoping that strikes and accompanying demonstrations will bring about a similar outcome as in 1995 when then-president Jacques Chirac abandoned his pension change proposals. Millions of workers have been involved to disrupt industry and transport across France. However, unlike the previous five strikes, trade unions declared the 7th March strike, ‘grèves reconductibles’, meaning workers will vote at the end of each strike day on whether to continue industrial action. With no fixed end date, unions hope to damage the economy so severely that it defeats the government.

Although the country’s current retirement age is one of the lowest in the European Union, the existing rules already require most people to work past the age of 64 in order to qualify for the full pension. By raising the retirement age by two years most workers would need to work 43 years, rather than 42, to be eligible for a full pension.

The government claims postponing the retirement age by two years and extending the pay-in period would yield an additional €17.7 billion in annual pension contributions, allowing the budget to break even by 2027 and safeguarding what they say would be a failing system. But not all economists agree.

In September 2022, a report by the French Pensions Advisory Council found the pensions system actually produced surpluses in 2021 (€900 million) and 2022 (€3.2 billion), although it did predict the system would run a deficit on average over the next quarter of a century. According to its calculations, ‘between 2023 and 2027, the pension system’s finances will deteriorate’, reaching a deficit of between 0.3 and 0.4 percent of GDP, or just over €10 billion a year, until 2032. But the Council predicted an eventual balance beginning in the mid-2030s.

A deficit of €10-12 billion per year is not necessarily excessive for a pension system whose total annual expenditure amounts to around €340 billion. ‘The results of this report do not support the claim that pensions spending is out of control,’ the Council wrote. Pension spending as a proportion of GDP is expected to remain stable, at around 14 percent of GDP, before rising to up to 14.7 percent by 2032.

Pensions expert Michaël Zemmour said, ‘It has become a form of political discourse to exaggerate and dramatise the deficit issue, to claim the system urgently needs to be reformed, when in fact the deficit is rather moderate’.

He explained, ‘It’s not about saving the pension system, it’s about financing tax cuts for businesses,’ highlighting France’s intention to finance tax cuts with structural reforms to bring the national deficit under 3 percent by 2027, a requirement of EU member states (bit.ly/3kUXHlx).

Government attempts to appeal to younger generations on the grounds that it is they who carry the burden of supporting the elderly have not been successful. Despite retirement being a distant prospect, France’s younger workers have been active in the protests.

One student said, ‘We live in a productivity-obsessed society that is preoccupied with economic growth and which has been destroying our planet for decades. Now we’re being asked to work for two more years so we can produce even more.’ Another explained, ‘We should be able to live longer and in better health without working ourselves to death. Besides, if they’re talking about retiring at 64 now, what will it be when I’m 60? Will I have to work until I’m 70 or 75? ’ (bit.ly/3JofydM).

In the United States, where the retirement age for Social Security is already transitioning to 67, a Republican Party committee has called for the retirement age to increase by three years so that people born on or after 1978 will have to wait until the age of 70 for a full pension (bit.ly/3mFHwcg).

In Germany, the Federation of German Employers’ Associations in the Metal and Electrical Engineering Industries has also suggested raising its retirement age to 70. However, Johannes Geyer of the German Institute for Economic Research believes ‘Raising the retirement age puts a lot of pressure on the working population. People with low life expectancy, and those with health problems, will suffer more; a relevant part of the population dies before reaching retirement age.’ He seeks an alternative solution. ‘We need migration. It’s essential that we have enough people coming from abroad to work in Germany’ (bit.ly/3mCFM3r).

Working people must reject this capitalist imposition – ‘live longer, work longer’. We should have a society where we can appreciate the added years of our lives and not be made to work until we drop.

ALJO

From the Socialist Standard, April 2023 https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2023/04/material-world-live-to-work-or-work-to.html

One’s heart bleeds for Elon Musk. No it doesn’t, just joking. Capitalism’s no joke though for the vast majority.

‘A judge in the US state of Delaware has voided Elon Musk’s $56 billion Tesla pay package, arguing that the company’s board of directors had failed to prove that the billionaire CEO deserved such a high compensation. Musk responded by publicly floating a move to Texas.

The 2018 pay deal was the highest in US corporate history, and made Musk the richest man in the world, with an estimated fortune of up to $220 billion as of last year. Under its terms, Musk was given stock options that would pay out if Tesla hit certain performance targets.

However, Tesla investor Richard Tornetta, who owned just nine shares in the electric automaker at the time, sued Musk and the company, arguing that the billionaire had misled shareholders by telling them that these targets would be more difficult to reach than they were.

The case was finally brought to trial in November, and Chancery Court Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick ruled in Tornetta’s favour on Tuesday. In her 200-page judgment, McCormick argued that Musk had “enormous influence over Tesla” and was therefore able to convince shareholders that such a pay deal was necessary. Even though Musk had excused himself from board meetings on the pay deal, McCormick claimed that five of the six directors who voted on it were “beholden to Musk or had compromising conflicts.”

“Swept up by the rhetoric of ‘all upside’, or perhaps starry eyed by Musk’s superstar appeal, the board never asked the $55.8 billion question: Was the plan even necessary for Tesla to retain Musk and achieve its goals?” McCormick wrote.

The judge instructed Musk and Tornetta to confer and decide how Musk would go about handing back any of the pay package he has already received.

Not all US states allow corporate courts to override shareholder decisions. “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware,” Musk posted on X, which he owns, after the decision was announced. “I recommend incorporating in Nevada or Texas if you prefer shareholders to decide matters,” he added.’

Capitalism at its finest.

‘The world’s richest people may be sad to hear that 2023 is coming to a close, given how lucrative the year was for them.

In total, the 500 wealthiest people saw their net worth jump an eye-popping $1.5 trillion, Bloomberg reported. That’s a massive turnaround from 2022, when that same group lost almost $2 trillion. The growth was largely due to the stellar performance of tech stocks, which helped billionaires in that field gain a whopping $658 billion, or a 48 percent surge in their wealth.

Unsurprisingly, Elon Musk led the pack, with an additional $95.4 billion boosting his net worth to $232 billion and easily making him the wealthiest person in the world. In comparison, the Tesla and SpaceX founder saw a $138 billion dip in 2022. After his impressive 2023, though, the mercurial Musk regained his position on top from LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault, who is now virtually tied with Jeff Bezos for the title of the second-wealthiest person on the planet. (Arnault has a $179 billion fortune, while Bezos clocks in at $178 billion, after gaining $71.3 billion this year.)

Other notable names from 2023 include Mark Zuckerberg, who added $84 billion to his bank account throughout the year. The Meta founder is now worth $130 billion in total. And while she may not be a household name, the L’Oréal heir Françoise Bettencourt Meyers is now the wealthiest woman on the planet and the first woman to amass a $100 billion fortune.’

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/world-500-wealthiest-people-got-180000426.html

Bitter Winter mainly focuses on religious issues particularly religious repression within China. However, this piece is worthy of attention as it demonstrates the nationalistic determination to selfishly deny sharing of life essentials, water resources, to others which is typical of State behaviour under a capitalist system.

‘It is often said that conflict over water is probably going to be the cause of the next global war. Three-fourths of the earth is made up of water, but only two-and-a-half percent of them is potable. Asia is already grappling with a critical water shortage, with the least per capita water availability among the continents. An MIT study warns that this crisis by 2050 is likely to drown the region into severe water scarcity. In a climate of escalating political tension, competition for this precious resource could become a major threat to long-term peace and stability across Asia, with consequences for human rights as well. This stark reality demands immediate and focused action to manage and share water resources sustainably before competition gives way to conflict.

This is precisely why nations have begun to preserve fresh water and, in some cases, have gone beyond becoming global water hegemons, as they grow and develop. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) provides the best example of this trend today. The PRC, a water-stressed country, has made huge investments in water-based resources globally. Apart from the geo-political implications, the PRC’s water hegemony has hurt the environment and well-being of local populations and pushed nations into debt traps due to resource-intensive investments in dams or hydroelectric projects.

China’s aggressive dam construction, with over 308 dams built in 70 countries, has sparked worldwide concern. These dams, generating 81 GW of power, have disrupted river ecosystems, caused environmental damage, and displaced millions downstream. Despite concerns, China continues building mega-projects like the Three Gorges Dam in Hubei, displacing 1.5 million residents.

Central Asia is grappling with a worsening water situation due to increased water usage by China from rivers like the Illy. This poses a threat to shrink Kazakhstan’s vital Lake Balkhash, echoing the tragic near-disappearance of the Aral Sea in neighbouring Uzbekistan. Additionally, China’s water diversions on the Irtysh River, a crucial source of drinking water for Astana and a tributary to Russia’s Ob River, raise further concerns. Beyond water quantity, China’s expansive activities in Xinjiang—encompassing energy, manufacturing, and agriculture—pose an even greater threat. Just as Chinese industry has polluted its own major rivers, practices in Xinijang threaten to contaminate the transboundary waters crucial for Central Asia, adding hazardous chemicals and fertilizers, exacerbating the region’s water insecurity.

China’s unique geography grants it immense control over water resources. Six major Asian rivers originate there, flowing into eighteen downstream countries, effectively making China the “upstream water hegemon.”

This power raises concerns about water weaponization. China’s domestic water demands have led to extensive damming, impacting downstream nations. For example, dams on the Mekong River have disrupted aquatic life, sediment flow, and riverbanks, causing droughts and floods in Thailand and Laos.

A 2019 study by the US based Stimson Centre revealed that despite heavy rainfall in the upper Mekong region, China held back water in its dams, causing severe droughts downstream. Satellite images confirmed this, showing dams as the prime culprit. The lack of cooperation between countries on dam management has worsened the situation. China’s eleven dams disrupt wildlife, block sediment flow, and contribute to collapsing riverbanks and displacing communities. Despite sharing many transboundary water sources, China avoids agreements with its neighbors and international efforts, prioritizing its own “water sovereignty.” Their rapid dam construction reinforces this approach, as evidenced by their reluctance to share water data with Mekong countries or India, where they claim strong water rights. China’s unilateral and maximalist approach to water management puts downstream countries at risk and hinders regional cooperation. Population displacement and limited access to resources obviously cause human rights problems, in addition to the ecological problems created by these policies.

While China holds a significant portion of the world’s freshwater within the Tibetan Autonomous Region(TAR), its exploitation for hydropower remains limited. Despite China’s total hydropower capacity reaching 341 million kilowatts by 2017, the TAR only contributed 1.77 million kilowatts, barely 1% of its potential. This underutilization raises concerns about downstream impacts on neighbouring regions. However, China’s ambitious 14th Five-Year Plan includes the Medog Dam near the border with India, driven partly by its commitment to carbon neutrality by 2060. As China moves away from coal-based energy (currently contributing almost 70% of its energy consumption) towards cleaner options like hydroelectricity, further dam construction in the TAR can be expected, potentially intensifying downstream consequences.

Tension is brewing in the Himalayas over China’s ambitious dam projects on rivers flowing into India and Bangladesh. This unilateral action raises concerns beyond simply altering the rivers’ flow. In 2020, China was caught using bulldozers to block the river Galwan, a tributary of the Indus, diverting its water away from India. This incident exposes China’s potential control over water resources, earning it the label of a “water hegemon.”

The proposed Medog Dam, located near the Indian border, adds to the growing concern. This massive dam could significantly impact downstream countries like India and Bangladesh, potentially straining India’s water resources for agriculture. Conversely, mismanagement of the dam could lead to devastating floods in India, like the 2000 Tibetan dam burst that caused widespread flooding. Recent alterations in the Yarlung Tsangpo River’s flow due to landslides further highlight the unpredictable nature of the situation and the potential threat of “water bombs” unleashed by sudden changes.

Raising concerns for downstream neighbours, China has taken decisive action regarding the Brahmaputra River, a crucial water source for both Bangladesh and northern India. To fuel a large hydroelectric project in Tibet, China recently diverted the flow of one of the Brahmaputra’s tributaries, essentially cutting it off. This disruption adds to ongoing worries, as China is also actively pursuing the construction of a dam on another Brahmaputra tributary, potentially leading to a chain of artificial lakes within the river system. Both projects have the potential to significantly impact water availability and flow patterns downstream, prompting anxieties about future access and usage of this vital resource.

China’s extensive investment in hydropower abroad, totalling $114 billion in the past two decades, raises concerns about its motives. Critics argue that these investments, concentrated in resource-rich regions like Southeast Asia, are driven by a “neo-colonial” ambition to secure resources and materials for China’s own economic growth, often at the expense of other countries. This concern is further fueled by China’s dominance in the global hydropower market, with an estimated 70% share. The environmental toll of China’s water hegemony extends beyond the immediate geopolitical concerns, affecting ecosystems, biodiversity, and the well-being and human rights of local populations in the interconnected web of transboundary waters.

Strategic affairs expert Brahma Chellany observed how China’s territorial claims in the Himalayas and the South China Sea are paralleled by “stealthier efforts” to control water resources in shared river basins. Given this trend, countries in South and Southeast Asia face a potential threat from China’s combined strategy of territorial expansion and water resource dominance.’

Bitter Wiinter 31 January

https://bitterwinter.org/chinas-water-hegemony-policy-a-threat-to-neighboring-countries-and-human-rights/

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020s/2024/no-1434-february-2024/

Ex Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson used to say that a week is a long time in politics. That comes from a time when the Labour Party used to at least make an effort at being a Party of the working class. There were members and politicians then who thought of themselves as socialist, albeit of the reformism kind. The delusion that they were the champions of the poor, along with other vote and power seeking parties, was maintained for quite a time afterwards. Now, no longer. Politicians of the workers friend Party can no longer even to be bothered to keep up the pretence.

If there is, as expected, a general election later in 2024 will everyone remember The Who’s 1971 song, Won’t get fooled again? Or will new boss, same boss, be installed, whichever political party it is, to continue to run affairs to the benefit of the capitalist ruling class as a whole?

‘The shadow chancellor has told the BBC Labour would not reinstate a bankers’ bonuses cap that was scrapped last year by the Conservative government. It comes as Rachel Reeves set out Labour’s plans to boost economic growth through the financial services sector. She described the sector as one of the UK’s greatest assets which the party would “unashamedly champion”. It marks a big change from the policies of the previous leadership and past criticism of the bonus cap removal.

A maximum bonus of 200% of bankers’ regular pay was introduced across the European Union (EU) to deter the excessive risk-taking many blamed for the financial crisis.’

BBC 31 January

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68145720

From the Socialist Standard, February 1930

Mr. Tom Shaw, speaking at Wandsworth on December 16th, 1929, gave the following interesting pledge on behalf of the Labour Party: —We make no apology for saying that the instant we are powerful enough to do it, poverty shall be abolished.

—(“Evening News,” 17th Dec.)

The “Evening News,” in an editorial, expressed its doubts about the matter :— That is not the maundering of a street-corner spell-binder. It is the considered utterance of Mr. Tom Shaw, one of His Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State in the Labour Government and incidentally the man who once complained piteously that he could not produce a remedy for unemployment “ like rabbits out of a hat.”

We make no apology for saying that though Mr. Shaw and his friends should be returned to Parliament with no opposition at all poverty will not be abolished. We venture to add that the type of mind that could produce such a statement as Mr. Shaw made at Wandsworth last night will never decrease poverty, let alone abolish it.We are strongly of the opinion that the “Evening News” is right; we also do not think that the Labour Party will succeed in fulfilling Mr. Shaw’s promise. We are quite certain that poverty will not, and cannot, be abolished under Capitalism, although the administration of the system is in the hands of “Labour” men. But what surprises us is the further admission of the “Evening News” that the problem has not been solved in the U.S.A., which the “Evening News” is always telling us to imitate.

We might begin by reminding Mr. Shaw that the world has never been without poverty and that in the United States to-day, the richest nation in material wealth that the world has ever known, there is plenty of it—not relative poverty merely, but want and destitution.

Next time we are invited to copy American methods, perhaps the “Evening News” will tell us in what way “want and destitution” in the U.S.A. are preferable to “want and destitution” in the United Kingdom.”

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2017/10/a-labour-party-promise-and-capitalist.html

With the present drip drip drip in the main stream media in preparation to persuade the population of many western States that a forthcoming world is inevitable and that they must be prepared to fight for it on behalf of their various capitalist ruling classes this piece from the Socialist Standard of August 1931 is still apposite.

Letter to the Editors from the August 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

The correspondent whose letter was replied to last month, writes again on the need to make an “emotional appeal.”

Tottenham, N.17,

July 7th, 1931.

The Editor,

Socialist Standard,

42, Great Dover Street,

London, S.E.1.



Dear Sir,



(1) May I reply to the points raised against my letter in the July issue. The success of the emotional appeal of the war reveals how powerful appeals to irrational forces can be. The workers do not simply commit an error of judgment, mistaking “the capitalists’ interests for their own,” but respond because their behaviour is so largely influenced by emotional tendencies, which, suppressed by the demands of civilised life, find outlets in behaviour often irrational when judged from an economic standpoint.



(2) The Socialist case may be rejected or fail to arouse interest because the dominant trends in a person do not respond sympathetically to the exposition. Trivialities such as the manner, speech, or clothes of the propagandist may evoke unfavourable impressions, or the immediate attraction of a tennis game or dance distort the value of the propaganda.



Influences which seem remote from politics play a part in the making of Socialists. As mentioned in my letter, “experiences of sexual character, dislike of certain individuals, jealousy, etc., find consolation in Socialism,” supplying motives other than a sense of inferiority.



(3) It is noteworthy that, while Christian, Communist, and Socialist vigorously assert the intellectual character of their convictions, it is not difficult for each to discover emotional influences at play in the others.



(4) Modern psychology, distinguished by its emphasis on a dynamic or hormic view of the mind, is reversing the conceit that man, among animals, is a rational creature. In the nineteenth century, when Darwin established the truth of evolution, those whose approach to people depended on the retention of an obsolete account of man’s origin, resisted the theory strenuously. Now, a like opposition is offered to the psychologists’ conviction that the intellectualist interpretation of man’s behaviour is equally outworn.



Just as evolution is older than Darwin, so there may be much that is not new in modern psychological theory, but it is through the mass of evidence collected that theories gain weight and insist on scientific recognition.



(5) The tendencies within capitalism seem to point to a drift towards Socialism, but they, after all, are tendencies only, to be worked out by human-beings. There is no divinity benevolently directing events to a happy ending, and so if Socialists persist in presenting their propaganda to a mythical working-man, guided by intellectual preference, and, with a fine disdain, refuse to stoop to moulding their propaganda nearer the hearts of the workers, their efforts may be misspent.

Yours faithfully,

Reply.

(1) Our correspondent now claims that the workers’ support of the war proves “how powerful appeals to irrational forces can be,” and he denies that they responded to an appeal to their “interests.” Does our correspondent then deny that the workers in 1914 were trapped by being told that defeat would mean the loss of “their” colonies, “their” foreign trade, “their” merchant shipping, “their” property, “their” liberties, “their” jobs, and “their” security, not to mention their lives and those of their dependants? If these are not appeals to the workers’ interests what are they? Even the talk about “poor little Belgium” was backed up with the threat that defeat would mean the same treatment for this country as had been meted out across the Channel.



If the workers respond merely to “emotional tendencies,” not guided, by assumptions as to their interests, why do not the workers endeavour to treat their class enemies at home as they treated the Germans when they (the workers) believed their interests to be bound up with the outcome of the war? What sort of “emotional tendency” is it that leads the half-starved and unemployed dweller in a slum to vote for the class (and even for the individuals) responsible for his miseries, makes him leave the place where the miseries are inflicted and could be ended, and actually lay down his life on foreign soil under the orders and in the interests of that class? If the uncontrolled “emotional tendency” dominates the situation why did not and do not the victims make a direct attack on the landlords, employers, and politicians with whoso activities their miseries are closely and obviously associated?



The answer is that the workers are always having it drummed into them that they have a common interest with the capitalist class in maintaining capitalism.



Our correspondent, as was pointed out last month, ignores the results of 40 years of I.L.P. and Labour Party appeals to emotion. He persists in ignoring the results, except to make the claim that the war shows how powerful the emotional appeal can be. In his anxiety to seize a supposed point he appears to have forgotten what we are discussing. His admission that years of emotional appeal from the Labour Party and I.L.P. did not succeed in making socialists but did succeed in making willing victims for the slaughter only supports our objection to the emotional appeal as a means of making socialists.



(2) The remarks in this paragraph are obvious but not in the least helpful. Of course socialist propaganda will be listened to more readily if it is pleasantly and tellingly presented; but so will anti-socialist propaganda. Does our correspondent imagine that Liberals are all of them people who think that Lloyd George has a nice kind face? And that the workers are all childish like H. G. Wells and will, like, him, allow their dislike for Marx’s Victorian whiskers to dissuade them from studying socialism?



(3) It is difficult to make out what this paragraph is intended to imply, as it seems to have little to do with the argument. Our correspondent lumps together Christian, Communist and Socialist and says that he finds “emotional influences” in us all. It would indeed be strange if he did not. If he looks a little closer he will discover that we are actually human beings. But what has that to do with our contention that emotional appeals are not a method of building-up a socialist organisation, and with his contention that emotional appeals are such a method?



(4) Again, we must ask our correspondent to consider the facts and not just discuss airy assumptions. “Modern psychology,” he tells us, has shown that the emotional appeal is the way to build up a socialist party. Will he then explain why the I.L.P., which concentrated on this emotional appeal, from its formation back in the eighteen nineties, has failed so utterly to get socialism, or to build a socialist organisation, or even to build a solid and dependable organisation at all? Why, in face of emotional appeals backed up with lavish funds and delivered by professors at the game such as J. Maxton, why, in face of that has the I.L.P. lost half its members in two or three years?



(5) In this paragraph our correspondent (who, by the way, writes in language which the average reader would find it very difficult to understand) tells us how to get to the hearts of the workers and thus not waste our efforts. We can only reply that if we had had the relatively enormous financial resources of the emotional appealers the I.L.P. and the. Communist Party, and yet found our efforts had produced as little result as theirs have done, we would indeed have cause to look for different methods. But the facts point to the reverse conclusion. Apart from confusing the workers’ minds and making our propaganda efforts more difficult, the emotional appealers have achieved nothing of assistance in the task of getting socialism.

Editorial Committee

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-socialist-forum-value-of-emotional.html

THE SOCIALIST PARTY AGAINST ALL CAPITALIST WAR

SOYMB has been pointed in the direction of a site where ten classic Utopia novels are listed. There are many lists of this kind, they can feature music, sports teams and sports players, food, tourist destinations, even politicians and leaders (sic). Some lists are concerned with which historical or contemporary figures or States ended, through various means, wars, famines,colonisation, gulags, genocides, the most human lives. Depending on the timeline that list could be extensive.

Obviously, lists tend to be subjective and the person compiling a particular one is influenced by many factors. Out out the ten on the website (link below) William Morris’s News From Nowhere is this present writer’s only proper Utopian piece. Subjective opinion.

Utopia, to many who continue to support the exploitative capitalist system, is something that will happen, human nature don’t ya know, or some such spurious reason, and the word is actually used as a sneer and an insult; You’re Utopian, you’re an idiot!

The concept of a Utopian society goes back a long way, first posited in 1516 by Thomas More, but as the Socialist Standard article shows the idea goes much further back into history.

Socialists would not make the claim that with the transition from Capitalism to Socialism society as a whole would immediately become Utopian. But it depends how you define the meaning of the word. It is beyond doubt that with the move away from the present social system many of the problems that afflict the world and which are directly related to Capitalism would be eradicated. Even a small amount of Utopia would be welcome compared to the dystopian system which holds us all in its grasp now.

https://www.thereviewgeek.com/10-classic-utopia-novels/

From Socialist Standard, July 2009

‘The word utopia, together with its derivatives utopian and utopianism, is a familiar part of our political vocabulary. It originated as the title of a work by the Tudor lawyer, statesman and writer Thomas More, first published in Latin in 1516 as a traveller’s description of a remote island. Utopia is a pun: it can be read either as ou-topos, Greek for ‘no place’, or as eu-topos, ‘good place’ – that is, a good place (society) that exists in the imagination.



More invented the word, but the thing it represents is much older. Plato in his Republic discussed the nature of the ideal city state. Medieval serfs took solace in the imaginary ease and plenty of the Land of Cockaigne. More’s utopia, however, is the first to embody a response to capitalist social relations, which in the early 16th century were just emerging in England and the Low Countries (in agriculture and textiles). As the first modern utopia, it has a special place in the emergence of modern socialist thought.



Contents of More’s Utopia

The work consists of two ‘books’. Book I is More’s account of how he came to hear of Utopia. Book II describes the Utopians’ way of life – their towns and farms, government, economy, travel, slaves, marriages, military discipline, religions.



More presents his story as true fact. Henry VIII sends him to Flanders as his ambassador to settle a dispute with Spain – and we know that this is true (it was in 1515; the dispute concerned the wool trade). During a break in the negotiations he meets his young friend Peter Giles, who introduces him to an explorer, Raphael Hythloday, just back from a long voyage. There follows a long conversation between More, Giles and Hythloday.



Giles and More urge Hythloday to put the vast knowledge acquired on his travels to use by entering the service of a king. Hythloday refuses, arguing that no courtier dare speak his mind or advocate wise and just policies. This exchange is thought to reflect More’s misgivings about his own career in royal service.



The conversation then turns to the situation in England. They discuss the enclosure (now we call it privatisation) of common land to graze sheep, the consequent pauperisation and uprooting of the peasantry (“your sheep devour men”), the futile cruelty of hanging wretches who steal to survive, and other social ills.



This leads them to the question of remedies. Hythloday declares that the injustice, conflict and waste inherent in the power of money can be overcome only by doing away with private property. More objects that this would remove the incentive to work. (Sounds familiar?) Hythloday replies that More would think otherwise had he been with him in Utopia.



Utopia is, indeed, a society without private property. Households contribute to and draw freely on common stocks of goods. Money is used only in dealings with foreign countries, while gold and jewels are regarded as baubles for children and “fools” (i.e., the mentally retarded). In these respects Utopia resembles socialism as we conceive of it.



In other respects, however, it does not. Decision-making procedures are only partly democratic. A hierarchy of “magistrates” enforces draconian regulations: travel, for instance, requires official permission. The main penalty for serious transgressions is enslavement – not to individuals, of course, but to the community. Thus, there is a class of slaves who do not participate in common ownership but are themselves owned. Utopia is not a classless society.



Was More joking?

Almost all critics treat More’s factual presentation as a mere literary device. They do not believe that he met an explorer while in Flanders or that he was influenced in his description of Utopia by information about real places. This is not to say that they attribute everything solely to More’s fertile imagination. They often draw connections between his ideas and the thought of Greco-Roman antiquity. In the foreword to an edition of Utopia published in 1893, William Morris even calls Utopia ‘an idealised ancient society’. More was one of the foremost classical scholars of his day, so it is a plausible view.



Yet More always maintained, even in private correspondence, that Utopia was based on fact. Was he joking? He liked a good joke.



Two researchers take More at his word. It is quite possible, they argue, that he did meet an explorer who had encountered or heard about a pre-Columbian society in the Americas that served More as a prototype for Utopia. Arthur E. Morgan, an engineer who was chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1930s, takes the Inca Empire as the prototype (Nowhere was Somewhere: How History Makes Utopias and How Utopias Make History, University of North Carolina Press 1946), while the anthropologist Lorainne Stobbart identifies the Utopians with the Maya of the Yucatan Peninsula in present-day Mexico (Utopia: Fact or Fiction? The Evidence from the Americas, Alan Sutton 1992).



They argue that it is not valid to argue that Hythloday cannot represent a real person because Europeans knew nothing of the Maya or Incas at the time when More was writing Utopia (1515—16). This is true only if we accept the conventional chronology that conflates discovery with the military expeditions of the Spanish conquistadors (Cortes first landed in Yucatan in 1517; Pizarro entered Inca territory in 1526). But Morgan and Stobbart refer to old maps and documents indicating that Portuguese explorers reached the eastern shores of Central and South America as early as the 14th century (Hythloday is Portuguese), while English sailors were trading with the new lands by the 1470s. Whether any of these early travellers got as far as Peru is less certain, though some may have obtained indirect information about the Incas.



How closely does More’s Utopia resemble the Maya and Inca civilizations? Morgan and Stobbart detail numerous similarities in political and economic organization, dress, social customs, city layout, family life, science and art, and so on – even down to such practices as the erection of memorial pillars and ceremonial wearing of quetzal feathers. The Maya and the Incas, like the Utopians, used money only in foreign trade and had common stores from which officials distributed produce (except that, in contrast to Utopia, it was rationed). It is extremely unlikely that so many close parallels should arise purely by chance.



But there are also important differences. The most telling criticism made against these authors is that they obscure a wide gap in social structure between the aristocratic autocracies of the Maya and the Incas and the basically democratic governance of More’s Utopia (see George Logan’s review of Stobbart in Moreana, June 1994).



It is therefore doubtful whether Utopia is a direct representation of any specific pre-Columbian society. Nevertheless, More’s account does probably reflect the influence of knowledge of such societies that he had somehow acquired, possibly from a Portuguese explorer he met in Flanders.



A bureaucratic mode of production

This conclusion has implications for our understanding of the development of socialist ideas. For it means that a seminal work of modern socialist thought bears the imprint of archaic societies that though not based on private property were far removed from the classless democracy of genuine socialism.



The Maya and Inca social systems are strikingly ‘pure’ examples of what Marx called the ‘Asiatic mode of production’. In this mode, a royal bureaucracy extracts and redistributes surplus from pre-existing peasant communes and directs public works. The monarch is considered the owner of land and resources. The word ‘Asiatic’ does not, of course, fit the New World context (Marx had mainly India in mind). Karl Wittfogel, stressing the centrality of water management, coined the term ‘hydraulic mode of production’. Or we might call it the pre-industrial bureaucratic mode of production.



Louis Baudin paints a vivid picture of what it was like to live under this system in his Daily Life in Peru under the Last Incas (Macmillan, 1961). It was a hard life for the common people, but their basic necessities were supplied: a small dwelling, two woollen garments each when they marry, a patch of land, relief in the event of local famine. They were more fortunate in this regard than poor people were in More’s England – or than they themselves would be after the Spanish conquest. But they were victims of class exploitation nonetheless.



It is understandable that the Incas and the Maya should have appealed to early European critics of capitalism. Theirs, however, was not the only alternative model that the pre-Columbian Americas offered to the reign of private property. The New World was also home to the much more egalitarian ‘primitive communism’ of peoples like the Iroquois who so fascinated the 19th-century anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan and through him Engels and Marx, influencing their conception of ‘advanced communism’.



An upright and honest official

More’s utopia is a sort of compromise between the democratic and authoritarian-bureaucratic conceptions of communal life. He omits important information that would help us clarify the nature of the society that he is portraying. In particular, how are the higher officials appointed or elected? (We know that lower-level officials are elected.) Do they have material privileges? Does Utopia have an aristocracy of any kind?



I interpret this ambiguity in light of More’s general attitude toward the lower classes. He felt genuine compassion for the suffering of the poor. This is clear not only from the sentiments he expresses through his alter ego Hythloday, but also from his reputation as an upright and honest judge and official. He did not take bribes from the rich and he patronised the poor. By the standards of his day and age, he was open-minded and tolerant. He belonged to the same social type as that other upright and honest official, his near-contemporary in Ming China, Hai Rui.



But More, like Hai Rui, was no rebel. He was a “good servant” of God and king, a member of the ruling class with a strong belief in order and hierarchy. His ideal was not the fully democratic self-administration of society, which he could hardly imagine, but rather paternalistic “good government” by upright and honest officials like himself.



In conclusion

So what shall we make of More’s Utopia? It is, to be sure, an eloquent critique of the cruelty and perversity of capitalism, all the more remarkable for having been written at a time when that system had scarcely bared its fangs. However, More – although he envisages the abolition of money – does not provide a picture of what we now mean by socialism. But then that could hardly have been expected of him.’

Stefan

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2009/no-1259-july-2009/was-nowhere-somewhers/

 ‘Its a big club and you aint in it…They don’t give a f*** about you. They don’t care about you at all — at all — at all. And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on; the fact that Americans will probably remain wilfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue d*** that’s being jammed up their a******* everyday. Because the owners of this country know the truth: it’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.’’

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/14/congress-passes-886-billion-defense-policy-bill-biden-to-sign-into-law.html

Lloyd J. Austin III is the the American Secretary of Defence. After reading his address to the Reagan National Defence Forum on December 2, 2023, you might think he was indeed some fictional character straight out of the novels of Robert Ludlum or from the thrillers of R J Ellory.

‘We don’t want to fight but by jingo if we do,

We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, and got the money too!

We’ve fought the Bear before and while we’re Yankees true

The Russians shall not have Constantinople.’

Apologies to George William Hunt for adapting Macdermott’s War Song (1878)

Might is right, allegedly, and this, straight from the horses mouth, is the bragging bullying voice of the ruling class of the ‘land of the free.’ These people make Dr Strangelove seem sane.

Highlighting by SOYMB.

‘… I also urge you to pass our urgent supplemental budget request to help fund our national-security needs, to stand by our partners in danger, and to invest in our defence industrial base.

… only one country can consistently provide the powerful combination of innovation, ingenuity, and idealism—and of free minds, free enterprise, and free people. And that’s the United States of America.

And let me be blunt about our mission. The U.S. military is here to win our country’s wars—and to win them decisively.

[it’s not the working class’s country, and AK47’s say otherwise.]

We will always try to deter conflict. But if we have to defend our country, we will fight—and we will win.

[not always Lord Copper, not always.]

…the rules-based international order is central to our long-term security.

It is the structure of international institutions, alliances, laws, and norms built with American leadership after the staggering losses of World War II.

They help ensure that civilians are protected, and not targeted.

[If you don’t know what’s happening in the world you need better intel.]

And they help to punish aggression and keep bullies in check.

Since 1945, the rules-based international order has helped to give our country—and the entire world—an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity.

[Aggression and bullies here means other capitalist states in competition for resources, markets and trade routes. ]

But the troubles of our times will only grow worse without strong and steady American leadership to defend the rules-based international order that keeps us all safe.

[That work to the benefit of the American ruling class.]

The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians.

You see, in this kind of a fight, the centre of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.

So I have repeatedly made clear to Israel’s leaders that protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral responsibility and a strategic imperative. And so I have personally pushed Israeli leaders to avoid civilian casualties, and to shun irresponsible rhetoric, and to prevent violence by settlers in the West Bank, and to dramatically expand access to humanitarian aid.

[if it wasn’t so tragic what’s going in the world it would be funny – sick funny.

Don’t think the Zionists have been taking much notice of you there bud. Not doing a good job at all are ya?]

… the United States will remain Israel’s closest friend in the world. Our support for Israel’s security is non-negotiable. And it never will be. And we remain fully able to project power, to uphold our commitments, and to direct resources to multiple theatres. 

[The USA’s aircraft carrier in the Middle East. Resources means the means to kill and maim as many people as possible.]

The United States is the most powerful country on Earth. And we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Since then, the United States and our allies and partners have worked to get many key weapons systems—including HIMARS, and Patriots, and Abrams tanks, and more—into the hands of trained Ukrainian operators.

[Looking at the state of your infrastructure and the living conditions of the working class. Note the use of language – makes training people to kill sound like they’re being taught how to serve fast food.]

Ukraine matters profoundly to America and to the entire world. And it matters for four key reasons. First, Putin’s war poses a stark and direct threat to security in Europe and beyond. Second, Putin’s aggression is a clear challenge to our NATO allies. Third, the Kremlin’s deliberate cruelty is an attack on our shared values of democracy and decency. And finally, Putin’s war is a frontal assault on the international rules-based order. As the Ukraine war drags on, more attention is being paid to the real reason for Putin’s attack on his neighbour -the desire of Russia’s capitalist class, backed by its government, to control Ukraine’s mineral and agricultural wealth. That wealth was an inevitable temptation to a large power whose monopoly on trading such resources on the world market was increasingly at risk.

[We want what they’ve got.]

‘The course of the war suggests that Putin misjudged the readiness of the capitalist classes and governments in Ukraine and the West to allow this monopoly to be extended. The whole scenario illustrates perfectly the Socialist Party’s argument that wars in capitalism are caused by competition for global domination of resources, markets and trade routes.’

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

Our National Defence Strategy describes the People’s Republic of China as America’s “most consequential strategic competitor and the pacing challenge for the Department of Defence.” The PRC is our only rival with the intent—and, increasingly, the capacity—to reshape the international order. The PRC hopes that the United States will stumble, and become isolated abroad and divided at home. But together, we can prevent that fate.

[History shows that all empires come to an end. When the transition to Socialism occurs History will take a totally new turn.]

You know, I had a great visit yesterday at our Defence Innovation Unit in Silicon Valley. DIU focuses on fielding and scaling commercial technology across the military. It’s directly plugged into Silicon Valley, working with venture-capital firms and tech innovators who are often doing business with DOD for the first time. And it will help us deliver thousands of game-changing capabilities at speed and at scale. When we sharpen our tech edge, we expand our military edge.

That’s why we’re making such major investments in innovation. And we’re giving the American taxpayer extraordinary value—even while our spending on national defence, as a percentage of GDP, remains about half of what it was during the last decade of the Cold War.

[Bet they’re delighted to know that the cost of killing, maiming and destroying is more cost effective than previously.]

The Department’s budget request includes $145 billion for R&D and $170 billion for procurement. Now those are the largest such investments in U.S. history. We’re also making major investments in Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control. And those investments will make us even better at joint operations and combat integration.

… we’ve also created the Office of Strategic Capital, which will help attract and scale private capital in our critical technologies.

Now, Ukraine’s high burn rate for artillery has hammered home the need to invest even more in munitions. So compared to the defence budget from just five years ago, we’re putting nearly 50 percent more money into munitions.

[Because why would you spend money on improving the lives of everyone who lives in your particular State.]

And during this administration, America’s production of artillery shells won’t just increase. It won’t just double. It will quadruple.

How sick do you have to be to boast of this as an achievement?]

Meanwhile, we’ve launched what the Army calls “the most ambitious modernization effort in nearly 40 years” for our defence industrial base.

Some $50 billion of our supplemental budget request would flow through our defence industrial base. And that will create or support tens of thousands of good American jobs in more than 30 states. That includes making missiles in Arizona; vehicles in Wisconsin and Indiana; and artillery shells in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas. And that all means greater prosperity at home and greater security around the globe.

The U.S. military is the most lethal fighting force in human history. And we’re going to keep it that way.

[It ain’t going to help you when the majority decide that this iniquitous system is being dumped in the trash can of history.]

https://www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech/Article/3604755/a-time-for-american-leadership-remarks-by-secretary-of-defense-lloyd-j-austin-i/

An American tennis player, John McEnroe, in his playing days was well known, before social media, for the verbal meme, ‘You cannot be serious!’ screamed at the umpire when a call in his games went against him.

The news of the last few days emanating from various sources that the Russians are coming and the UK population must be prepared, man, woman and child, to pick up their pitchforks and defend this sceptred isle to the death can only elicit a McEnoe response.

The main reaction on contemporary social media was the traditional British two fingered one to this call to arms by the British ruling class.

A good overview of ‘invasion literature’ can be found at Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_literature

In the late nineteenth centure/early twentieth century there was a plethora of fiction dealing with the invasion of the British Isles by foreign states. Germany appeared to be the state considered the main threat after 1903. Up to then, according to Wiki, France was seen as the most likely threat.

In William Le Queux’s 1894 The Great War in England in 1897 the adversaries were France and Russia with Germany eventually getting involved on the side of Britain.

Le Queux’s 1906 novel, The Invasion of 1910 was firmly of the opinion that the next threat would come from Germany and Britain was dangerously unprepared for it.

Jump seventy two years and a book purporting to have been written in 1987 describing the 1985 Third world war initiated by Russia came from the same mindset. The Third World War August 1985 by General Sir John Hackett and others was written in the Cold War period. Spoiler alert, NATO wins.

At the UN the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov apparently said. Russia does not want to enter into a “big war” and has no intention of attacking other countries. “No one wants a big war,” including Russia. “We have lived through ‘big wars’ many times in our history,”

Russia maintains that, ‘In recent weeks, senior officials in several European nations have been urging their citizens to prepare for a potential military confrontation with Russia. Moscow, however, has insisted that it has no interest in waging war against NATO.’

Mandy Rice Davis , friend of Christine Keeler involved in the 1963 Profumo Affair said in court when told that a Lord denied knowing her or having had an affair with her, ‘Well he would, wouldn’t he?’ Miss Rice Davis’s riposte would seem to be still apposite to doubts about intentions, or non intentions, of the Russian state articulated by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock remains at ninety seconds to midnight but it’s obvious that the world is still a very dangerous place. No one needs to join the military to see Armageddon at first hand because each and everyone of us is directly in the firing, or missile, line. In current, and previous, conflicts civilians are/have suffered.

States may claim that the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction is no longer an option but given the forces at play within capitalism this cannot be assured.(no pun intended).

Humankind cannot continue to leave its fate to the MAD capitalist system and those running it. William S Burroughs said that no one owns life but anyone who can pick up a frying pan holds death. Some frying pan. How much nearer to Armageddon does the world have to get before it decides, enough is enough and implements Socialism, the only sane alternative for us all?

Wednesday, January 24, 2024