Perhaps the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, should get himself booked on to the next series of the radio comedy game show,

I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. Except this increase in the bank rate is no laughing matter. How much pain, desperation and despair is it going to take before you shake off your lethargic support for this social system that is based upon the exploitation of the majority and you realise that capitalism doesn’t give a jot about you?

‘The British Tory government, like the New Zealand Labour government, believes that high interest rates reduce demand and therefore limit price rises. In March 1984 the bank minimum lending rate was 8 percent Since then it has risen to the present 15 percent. So prices ought to have stopped rising. Actually they have gone up by 43 percent since March 1984 and are now rising faster than they were then. Since higher interest rates increase the income of the lenders by exactly the same amount as they reduce the spending power of borrowers, why should demand be affected?’

Socialist Standard Editors August 1990

From the MailOnline, June 22, ‘Andrew Bailey today told Brits to stop demanding ‘unsustainable’ pay rises after the Bank of England ramped up interest rates in a bid to curb inflation.

The governor warned that the current level of wage settlements ‘cannot continue’ as he defended heaping misery on mortgage-payers by raising the base rate from 4.5 per cent to 5 per cent.

Speaking to broadcasters after the bombshell move – far bigger than the 0.25 percentage point hike analysts have expected – Mr Bailey denied that he actively wanted to trigger a recession.

But he made clear he will do ‘what is necessary’ to bring inflation back to the 2 per cent target – less than a quarter of the current reading.

High wage settlements are among the factors that have spooked the markets and forced the Bank’s hand, although it has been heavily criticised for failing to act early enough to combat prices.

Asked whether people were asking for too much, Mr Bailey – who earns around £575,000 a year – said: ‘Let me be very clear on this, because it’s an important issue.

‘We’ve got to get and we will get inflation back to its target.

‘To do that I have to be clear – and we expect inflation to come down this year – to do that we cannot continue to have the current level of wage increases,

‘And we can’t have companies seeking to rebuild profit margins which mean prices continue to go up at their current rates.

‘But what I would say to people is we expect inflation to come down, and it is important then that price setting and wage setting reflects that.

‘Because the current levels, I’ll be absolutely honest, are unsustainable.’

Amid mounting panic in Tory circles, Rishi Sunak voiced support for the Bank’s tough action. He also tried to cool concerns with a folksy town hall event performance insisting he is ‘100 per cent on it’.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt also offered gave strong backing to the Bank, saying controlling prices is the ‘only long-term way to relieve pressure on families with mortgages’.

‘If we don’t act now it will be worse later,’ he added.

Mr Bailey has been coming under intense fire for failing to respond to inflation earlier, with some Treasury advisers arguing that Threadneedle Street now has no option but to force a recession…’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12223281/BoE-chief-Andrew-Bailey-blames-unsustainable-pay-rises-rate-hike.html

‘Britain’s public sector net debt in May reached its highest level in over six decades and now exceeds the country’s annual economic output, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed on Wednesday. This comes as government borrowing has outpaced expectations.

Public sector net debt excluding borrowing from state-controlled banks hit £2.567 trillion ($3.28 trillion) at the end of last month, which amounted to 100.1% of gross domestic product (GDP), the ONS said.

This is the first time that debt has stood above 100% of the country’s GDP since 1961, meaning that public sector borrowing is now larger than the UK’s economy.

Government borrowing reached £20.045 billion ($25.5 billion) in May, down £3 billion ($3.8 billion) from April but still exceeding consensus expectations of £19.5 billion ($24.8 billion), according to the ONS. Last month’s borrowing figure was £10.7 billion ($13.6 billion) higher than in May 2022 and was the second-highest level recorded in the month of May since monthly records began in 1993.

The ONS released the debt figures along with the latest inflation data, which showed that consumer price growth remained persistently high in Britain.

“This will likely drive up spending through increased debt interest payments and inflation-linked benefits and tax credits,” PwC economist Divya Sridhar said.

Inflation in the country stood at 8.7% in May and exceeded expectations for the fourth month in a row.’

Boiling a frog apologue has the frog frog put into lukewarm water and as the temperature increases the fog doesn’t notice that when the water boils the frog won’t survive. “It’s unlikely that prices will return to where they were.” When a rocketing commodity price drops by a few pence the relief consumers feel at a minimal saving engenders acceptance that the previous cheaper base cost will not reoccur.

Socialists are careful about making  predictions as to what a future socialist society will exactly be like. However, some things are self evident. There won’t be such a thing as inflation. Why? Because it will be a money-free society with goods and services produced for the common good, not for profit. There won’t be people being driven to despair because they can’t afford their rent, their mortgages, their energy bills or any other basic necessity of life which under capitalism is ‘can’t pay, don’t get.’

‘Grocery inflation in the UK has started to ease as two separate surveys suggest that food-price growth may have passed its peak, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

Food inflation in the country fell for the third consecutive month in June but still remains at 16.5%, down from 17.2% the previous month, according to data from market-research company Kantar.

Inflation stands at its sixth-highest level since the financial crisis in 2008, according to Kantar. Eggs, cooking sauces and frozen potato products saw the biggest price rises.

Another study, conducted by Lloyds Bank, said food-production costs in the UK declined for the first time in May since 2016.

Grocery-price growth reached 19.1% in April, which was the highest rate in more than 45 years, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey earlier warned that the easing of inflation could take longer than expected.

“The ongoing squeeze is clearly weighing on the nation’s mind,” head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar, Fraser McKevitt, said. “Of the top five financial worries that consumers have, rising grocery prices is the only one that they are more concerned about now than at the start of this year.”

An index tracking costs for food and drink producers fell for the first time in more than seven years, a Lloyds’ survey showed. However, “it will still take some time before we see the benefit in terms of shelf prices,” according to Annabel Finlay, managing director of food, drink and leisure at Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking.

“This is, in part, due to the long-term nature of contracts between the manufacturers and retailers, as well as the broader segments of the production chain,” she added.

Earlier, UK officials reportedly met with supermarket bosses to negotiate price cuts, reassuring them that any scheme to help bring down food prices for consumers would be voluntary.

Last week Ken Murphy, CEO of Britain’s biggest supermarket chain Tesco, pointed to some signs of cooling grocery inflation after the company cut prices on bread, pasta and broccoli, but admitted that “it’s unlikely that prices will return to where they were.”’

‘The UK will have one of the highest inflation rates of any major developed economy this year, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported on Wednesday.

According to the forecast, British inflation, which only recently fell to single digits for the first time since last summer, will be higher in 2023 than nearly any G20 member except Argentina and Türkiye.

Although headline inflation in the UK declined to 8.7% in April from 10.1% in March amid cooling energy prices, food inflation has been stubbornly high. Grocery price growth reached 19.1% in April, which is the highest rate in more than 45 years, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The OECD predicted that even as Britain is expected to narrowly avoid a recession in 2023, higher interest rates are likely to dent economic growth and incomes in the coming months.

“The high interest burden on public debt and the recent drop in average debt maturity leave the public finances exposed to movements in bond yields,” the OECD said in its Economic Outlook.

The Paris-based organization expects the UK’s economy to grow by 0.3% this year and by 1% in 2024. It noted, however, that the forecast includes “significant risks.”

Renewed increases in wholesale energy prices will “further squeeze real incomes given the United Kingdom’s high dependence on natural gas. Faster-than-expected resolution of uncertainty regarding future trade relationships is an upside risk,” the forecast warned.

Responding to the OECD data, UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt admitted that inflation was still “too high,” adding that “we must stick relentlessly to our plan to halve it this year. That is the only long-term way to grow the economy and ease the cost-of-living pressures on families.”

The inflation rate in Britain should average 6.9% by the end of the year, the report concluded.’

The market is ‘arguably broken.’ It’s capitalism which is unarguably broken,

The economic and social misery that increased mortgage rates impose on first time house buyers, those who have still to pay off their mortgages, and private renting tenants (when landlord mortgage repayments exceed rental income). An important question that arises from the continuing damage that capitalism imposes upon the vast majority is why does the majority continue to allow this social system, – which has long outlived its historical usefulness as the necessary epoch which precedes socialism – to continue to exist when the obvious solution is ready and waiting?

The extracts below demonstrate the historical fallacy that higher interest rates reduce inflation:

“When this and other anti-inflationary tactics didn’t work, the eventual method settled upon by Thatcher and her Chancellor Nigel Lawson was to use interest rates as a policy instrument. In her memoirs, Thatcher stated that in her view ‘the only effective way to control inflation is by using interest rates to control the money supply

It is notable that interest rates have been used as the main policy instrument for controlling inflation ever since, by the governments of Major, Blair and now Brown. This is despite the fact that as a policy it not only arose by default, but has little to practically recommend it. The theory is that when interest rates rise, people borrow less and cut their spending. But this only takes into account one aspect of what happens. Interest rates are the price of borrowing and lending money and when interest rates rise, lenders are affected just as positively as borrowers are affected negatively. A movement in interest rates changes the terms of the relationship between borrowers and lenders in an economy and can create a short term economic disturbance, but it does not affect the level of purchasing power as a whole and can have no significant and persistent effect on the price level (for example, while those with mortgages and other loans are disadvantaged by higher interest rates, those with savings, interest-bearing investments, etc gain to a similar overall extent).

That raising interest rates cannot halt inflation – or even slow its rate of growth – has been demonstrated by a close look at economic history. During the time when Thatcher was Prime Minister the Minimum Lending Rate (as it was then called) for the banks rose from 9 per cent in 1988 to 15 per cent in 1989 yet the Retail Price Index (RPI) increased considerably across the entire period, having an average annual rate of 4.1 per cent in 1987 that had become 9.5 per cent by 1990.”



That raising interest rates cannot halt inflation – or even slow its rate of growth – has been demonstrated by a close look at economic history. During the time when Thatcher was Prime Minister the Minimum Lending Rate (as it was then called) for the banks rose from 9 per cent in 1988 to 15 per cent in 1989 yet the Retail Price Index (RPI) increased considerably across the entire period, having an average annual rate of 4.1 per cent in 1987 that had become 9.5 per cent by 1990.”

Dave Perrin. Crisis and Inflation: Back to the Future. 

Socialist Standard November 2008.

“The latest mortgage data from Moneyfacts reveals average interest rates hitting the 6% figure.

For residential mortgages, the average two-year fixed rate increased from 5.98% on Friday to 6.01% today, while the average five-year fixed rate increased from 5.62% to 5.67%.

The product count fell from 4,923 on June 16 to 4,683 June 19.

For buy-to-let mortgages, the product count fell from 2,589 on Friday to 2,515 June 19.

The average two-year fixed rate increased from 6.21% on Friday to 6.30% today, while the average five-year fixed rate increased from 6.17% to 6.23%”.

https://www.mortgagestrategy.co.uk/news/average-resi-two-year-fix-hits-6-moneyfacts/

‘In May, the Bank of England said 1.3 million fixed-rate mortgages were set to mature before the end of 2023, with a larger number up for renewal in 2024.

“The market is dysfunctional and arguably broken,”Martin Stewart, director of mortgage advisory London Money, told CNBC. “We have seen evidence where advisers are in queues alongside 2,000 others all trying to secure something that might not actually exist by the time they get to the front of the queue.”

The industry expert added that the last nine months have been “seismic” for the mortgage and housing sector, “on a par with the financial crisis,” although with different causes.

More than a quarter of UK homeowners on a fixed-rate mortgage are now projected to head for sharp increase in monthly payments, once their current deals expire.

Mortgage costs in Britain have been growing sharply in recent days, ahead of an expected interest rate hike by the Bank of England later this week. The regulator is likely to raise borrowing costs for a 13th consecutive time on June 22, in an effort to tame raging inflation’.

More than a quarter of UK homeowners on a fixed-rate mortgage are now projected to head for sharp increase in monthly payments, once their current deals expire.’

Whilst recognising the bias in articles published by Russia Today – all capitalist/state capitalist media is biased no matter where it emanates from – the extracts below are from a piece detailing a debate that occurred between five Russians in reponse to an article by Professor Sergey Karaganov, honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and academic supervisor at the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow. Karaganov, suggests that Russia should fire nuclear weapons at Western targets so that “By breaking the West’s will in imposing its aggression, we will not only save ourselves and finally free the world from the Western yoke of five centuries, but we will also salvage the whole of humanity. By pushing the West towards catharsis and the abandonment of the hegemony of its elites, we will force it to retreat before a global catastrophe. Humanity will be given a new chance to develop.”

“But what if the present Western leaders refuse to back down? Perhaps they have lost all sense of self-preservation? Then we will have to hit a group of targets in a number of countries to bring those who have lost their senses back to their senses.”

Demonstrating that neo-con evangelists and “leaders” of competing capitalist systems in America and elsewhere are not the only scarily insane ones whose irrational beliefs constitute a threat to the safety of all in the world, Karaganov invokes the ‘God’s on our side’ argument. A fan of Bob Dylan perhaps? Although in that song the sky dweller was supposed to be instrumental in preventing Armageddon. Those who subscribe to Historical Materialism would rather put heir faith -pun intended – in socialist minded human beings to prevent such catastrophes.

“I have spent many years studying the history of nuclear strategy and have come to an unequivocal, if unscientific, conclusion. The advent of nuclear weapons is the result of the intervention of the Almighty, who, appalled that mankind had unleashed two world wars within a generation, costing tens of millions of lives, gave us the weapons of Armageddon to show those who had lost their fear of hell that it existed. On that fear rested the relative peace of the last three-quarters of a century.”

“It’s a morally frightening choice – we would be using God’s weapon and condemning ourselves to great spiritual loss. But if this is not done, not only may Russia perish, but most likely the whole of humn an civilization will end. “

RT 14/6/23

https://www.rt.com/russia/578042-russia-nuclear-weapons/

From the debate:

Elena Panina, former State Duma deputy and director of the Institute of International Political and Economic Strategies:

“Sergey Karaganov’s article suggesting Russia should preemptively use nuclear weapons is intended to finally draw “red lines” so that the West gets scared and retreats. However, it looks like an extremely strange gambit, even beyond the provocative overtones. Nuclear war as a remedy for a global catastrophe is as helpful as a guillotine for a headache. (Our emphasis)

It is nuclear war that we are talking about, though in Karaganov’s article the term is replaced by the more streamlined formula “use of nuclear weapons.” Is there a line before which “use of nuclear weapons” is not nuclear war, and after which it is?

Is it not clear that the first use of nuclear weapons will immediately trigger a retaliation of much greater force?

Nuclear weapons are the last resort on the chessboard. When all other means have been exhausted, all resources expended, and defeat is inevitable. And even then, nuclear weapons can no longer be used to checkmate the enemy, but instead to overturn the tables and blow up the room. They do not let the enemy win by destroying it along with planet Earth.Police officers and criminals both know the rule: don’t show your gun unless you intend to use it. Don’t scare your opponent with it, because they might hit you or shoot you first. That’s why immature minds are not advised to carry guns – they don’t control the guns, the guns control them. It is a good thing that Mr Karaganov, who advises the use of nuclear weapons to scare the West, is not allowed to use them. And those who are allowed to have iron self-control and will not listen to such advice. 

Political scientist Ilya Grashchenkov, President of the Center for Regional Policy Development:

“Karaganov’s article is interesting because it shines a light on the impasse in which we find ourselves. Without reflecting on why this has happened, he suggests a simple solution: “It is necessary to scare the West into retreating and getting out of the way. To do this, we must strike. Somewhere. It’s not yet clear where.”

“It is a morally frightening choice – we use God’s weapon and condemn ourselves to a severe spiritual dilemma. But if we do not, not only will Russia perish, but all human civilization will probably come to an end,” is the conclusion Karaganov draws for some reason…

In fact, Karaganov’s article is similar to the line of thought of [ex-Preident Dmitry] Medvedev’s, but more serious. It is also in the schoolboy logic of “hitting first” and thereby beating the opponent in a berserk frenzy. Which is kind of frightening.

On the other hand, if you talk about something for a very long time, you begin to perceive the idea not as insane but as quite acceptable. Thus extending the boundaries of what is possible, first in your own mind and then in reality. So, what goes on in the heads of those who write about “God’s weapon” (though personally I am not sure that God has any weapon at all and apparently they have their own Saviour),- thinking of Joseph Stalin’s WW2 response when warned to be mindful of the Vatican; How many divisions does the Pope have? – is difficult to analyze and predict. Great Chinese prose compares such thoughts to “the dream of a severed head,” whose thoughts brew in a highly autonomous manner and are almost not subject to external comprehension. I would suggest that someone is trying to plant their fear in the West, fear as a new doctrine. We are the fearful!

To simplify the content of the article, it says that a “small scale” nuclear war is not that scary. And since we have nothing else, it means we have no choice – we must strike at Western Europe and then “in a few years take a stand behind China’s back, just as it is now behind ours, supporting it in its tussle with the US. For some reason, Karaganov seems to think that such an outcome is an outright blessing and a sign of prosperity, though one might perceive that such a position of battering ram and satellite of China looks rather humiliating.”

RT 17/6/23

https://www.rt.com/russia/578218-experts-respond-to-call-for-atomic-strike/

A piece in Zerohedge, May 25, is titled, “Finnish Nuclear Plant Throttles Output After Electricity Prices “Become Too Cheap”

“The Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor in Eurajoki, southwest Finland, started regular electricity production in mid-April, about 14 years behind schedule.

Since then prices for power in Finland have continued to plunge as the efficiency of the plant flooded the grid with ‘new’ energy.

So much in fact that early on Wednesday of last week, early on Wednesday of last week, the market price for electricity dropped below zero cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) and for hours after that the price was only 0.3 cents per kWh at its highest, according to the country’s grid operator, Fingrid.

That was unacceptable and prompted the plant’s owner, Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) to significantly cut back its output…

“Electricity production must also be profitable for nuclear power plants, and when the price is particularly low, there may be situations where output is limited,” TVO communications manager, Johanna Aho, said.

According to Aho, cutting back on nuclear power production due to excessively low electricity prices is very rare, but not unheard of.

Janne Kauppi, an energy markets advisor at Finnish Energy, agreed with that sentiment. 

“There haven’t been many situations where nuclear power output has been regulated specifically because of low prices,” Kauppi explained. When prices go negative on the electricity market, basically anyone who can adjust their production will do it, so that they don’t have to pay for their own production,”

The Finnish example is a testament to how nuclear can play a part in solving the current energy crisis, with consumers still paying sky-high fees for energy in many European countries.

However, the hypocrisy is of course that when power prices were extremely high in 2022, hurting consumers – it was all Russia’s fault; but now that prices are plummeting, operators can’t have that and withdraw supply to hurt consumers.

https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/finnish-nuclear-plant-throttles-output-after-electricity-prices-become-too-cheap?ao_status=selected

An article in History News Network dealing with how Capitalist propaganda is controlled and disseminated has some interesting examples of how American capitalism endeavoured to do this as these extracts show.

“In the 1920s, private electrical utilities faced a dilemma. They resisted rural electrification as it wasn’t profitable, but they didn’t want the government to step in and provide the service. The solution that the National Electric Light Association (NELA) settled upon was a propaganda effort through the schools. By influencing textbooks and teachers, went the thinking, these titans of lighting hoped to shape the future generations. These 1920s-era young people, having learned in school that government regulation and public ownership were bad, would grow up to cast their votes for officials who felt the same.

The effort backfired spectacularly. A years-long investigation by the Federal Trade Commission, which documented the group’s disinformation campaign in an eighty-volume set, made NELA a poster child for capitalism run amok. But the concern that schools were churning out kids who were inadequately enamoured of the free market — and that getting them the “correct information” would fix this — persisted.

Two decades later, fresh off an effort to roll back the New Deal and blunt the growing power of organised labour, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) launched a far-reaching campaign to sniff out “socialist” textbooks. After reviewing more than five hundred economics, history, social studies, and civics texts, the group concluded that many were hostile to the free-enterprise system. In a precursor to present-day book bans NAM’s warnings of socialism in schools would result in thousands of books being removed.”

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/185846

In the German Ideology, written in 1846 Marx and Engels were way ahead of the game. They explained the Materialistic Conception of History and how a ruling class can manipulate impose and achieve support for its aims and continuation.

“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.”

Below are extracts from an article published online in CounterPunch, May 26, by Eve Ottenberg. The piece examines the fatal consequences that may result from being homeless in the USA. The author, whilst not approaching this from a completely Socialist perspective, has, nevertheless, some trenchant comments to make about capitalism and its deathly options for many.

“You can measure the depth of a civilization by how it treats its poor, very young, elderly and mentally ill. By any such metric, ours here in the Exceptional Empire is barbaric. Take New York City mayor Eric Adams and his pronouncements on the homeless destitute. Since lotsa (sic) homeless are erratic – they either started that way, which was partly how they lost shelter, or living rough eroded their good manners – they are the target population for being locked up.”

“Once upon a time, we had governments concerned about the root causes of poverty and leaders who sought to ameliorate it with good ideas like public housing. Well, after decades of hysterical, lousy press, public housing has received little new funding and the number of poor people it serves shrank pitiably from its heyday in the mid to late twentieth century. This means more people sleeping on side walks.”

It’s unclear whether the author believes that ‘better leaders’ or a more ‘caring’ government is the solution to the problem of homelessness. Governments are there for the minority asset owning elite class and it is the latter’s interest which will always come first. Reminder that in the 1980s the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, instigated the Right to Buy policy of selling of council owned housing stock initially into the hands of tenants.

“Look at New York City’s housing voucher program to counter homelessness. For some inexplicable bureaucratic reason, it’s ditching renters. The vouchers cover a big percentage of a person’s rent, in a city notorious for astronomical housing costs…. So a city agency’s dysfunction, leading to kicking people out of the voucher program, is a disaster. Many of these luckless souls wind up dwelling in homeless shelters or on the streets. And that’s often lethal.” 

“Over 815 homeless people have died in public places in New York since 2022…”

There is no source quoted for this figure.

“Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports May 22 that unhoused seniors flood shelters that can’t accommodate their needs. “Nearly a quarter of a million people 55 or older are estimated by the government to have been homeless in the United States during at least part of 2019,” the Post reported, and this year, the number of elderly homeless spiked.

Indeed, seniors constitute the fastest growing cohort of the undomiciled. Quite a way to spend your sunset years, snoozing on the side walk, alongside the utterly helpless psychotic.”

“(New York City Mayor) Adams wants to remove those who “appear mentally ill” from public. The purpose is not to treat them or salve their psychological wounds, in which case such removal would be acceptable, even laudable. But no, Adams’ purpose is to incarcerate them, so their shabby selves won’t offend the sensibilities of the well-to-do and mega-rich who regard city centers as their playgrounds.”

“The truly malignant aspect of this is the one that treats poverty as proof of dangerous and savage psychosis. Economic failure in this brutal late capitalist jungle becomes medical and criminal. A deadly combo. And if the homeless destitute manage to evade the cops who want to lock them up in tiny cages, they still face existential threats on the streets, most notably death from exposure or from violent criminals.”

“The death toll for the homeless destitute, reports the New York Times May 13 “in San Diego County had increased nearly 10 times in the last decade.” That’s the same in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, Denver and Seattle. It turns out not having a roof over your head is fatal. There’s the cold in winter, extreme, climate-change-aggravated heat in summer and the inherent danger of living in public, now enhanced by vigilante fury, stoked by ambitious pols like mayor Adams.”

“Lucklessly for these very poor people, we live in the Age of the Demagogue. Most politicians will stoop to it whenever it brings them votes. But those who merit the title full-time are the worst hazard. They don’t want to solve problems and make powerless constituents’ lives better. They want to scream about them, whip up a public convulsion of hatred and ride that spasm of widespread rage to higher office. Not surprisingly, few seem to hold them to account. On the contrary, press outlets nod approval for vigilante justice against the crime of poverty.”

“… Quite an economic system we got here. It strips millions of people of the means of survival, then blames and punishes them for their dispossession. If you call that civilization, you need to rethink your definition of the term.”

https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/05/26/the-death-penalty-for-homelessness/

Well the ‘economic system’ we got is Capitalism. The ‘means of survival’ for the vast majority under this system is dependent upon the ability to sell their physical/menalt labour power to the asset owning minority elite class who maintain that position through the exploitation of the former. Ms Ottenberg rightly castigates politicians for their actions, or non actions in the resolution of this problem but expecting those who elect politicians with the expectation to ameliorate the problems directly caused by capitalism is a fools errand.

The only solution is the abolition of capitalism and its replacement with socialism. When that is achieved, by the collective efforts of a global working class majority, homelessness, and many other slights on a civilised society will cease to be a blot on humankind.

Tooth ache? Pay private fees or do it yourself.

Many will know that, while most people have to pay something for NHS dental treatment, it is still free to a certain section of the community: children and pregnant women and new mothers.

But, as George Monbiot pointed out in his column in the Guardian on 2 March: ‘Every child in the UK is entitled to free treatment by a non-existent dentist. Some people on benefits, pregnant women and those who have recently given birth also have free and full access to an imaginary service. Your rights are guaranteed, up to the point at which you seek to exercise them.’

(www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/02/rotten-state-broken-nhs-dentistry)

Dental practices, being profit-seeking businesses, consider that what they are paid for treating NHS patients is not enough – they claim that in some cases it doesn’t even cover their costs – and so are increasingly reluctant to offer it and have not been using up all their NHS funding. In February it was reported that ‘Around £400million allocated for dental care went unspent this year because of a shortage of dentists willing to do NHS work’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11778269/Shortage-dentists-NHS-left-400million-unspent.html

What this ultimately means, is that any patient requiring urgent treatment is forced to make a choice between suffering or paying privately for the treatment there and then.

The system does appear to offer an alternative. Since 2006 the necessity to ‘register’ with a particular dentist has been abolished. What this means is that a patient whose regular dentist is unable, or unwilling, to provide NHS-funded treatment can shop around for another dentist prepared to treat them under the NHS.

The reason this only ‘appears’ to be an alternative is because it is another of Monbiot’s right to a non-existent service. You won’t find another dentist prepared to treat you as they won’t find it profitable.

So, when you look at those same low-income families and elderly people who can’t afford to ‘go private’, you see that really this is not much of an alternative at all.

In any event, going to another dentist obviously can involve increased travel costs if the dentist is out of the area. While merely inconvenient for some it could mean the difference between having the treatment and not for others such as the very low-waged who do not have access to personal transport or the rurally housed elderly who rely on poor public transport coverage. When you add the psychological factor of forcing people to see a dentist they are unfamiliar with which, as we know can have a particular impact on older members of our community, you can see why so many people elect to wait for their own dentist to be able to do the work or forgo the treatment altogether.

There is another option – DIY dentistry – which, apparently, some have been taking. As Monbiot noted: ‘The result, in one of the richest nations on Earth, is that people are extracting their own teeth, making their own fillings, improvising dentures and sticking them to their gums with superglue, and overdosing on painkillers.’

Patients continue to be forced into a situation where, when they need treatment which is vital to their health and well-being, that they either pay extortionate private fees, are forced to seek out another dentist at their own cost or if none of the above are possible for them because of their financial situation, simply wait, with their condition worsening.

In socialism dental treatment would be provided freely to anyone who needed it. Unshackled from the financial pressures of the capitalist system, freed from the necessity of eking out an inadequate funding budget, the health services would be able to treat everyone in a timely fashion to the best possible standard.

It is yet another abominable facet of capitalism that anyone should be forced to make such dire choices when it comes to this or any other area of their health. The NHS was originally intended to implement the admirable principle: ‘Treatment free at the point of need’. Where our dental treatment is concerned, this principle has long had a thread tied around it and the door handle, and the door slammed shut.

 The greatest problem awaiting solution in the world to-day is the existence in every commercial country of extreme poverty side by side with extreme wealth. In every land where, in the natural development of society, the capitalist method of producing and distributing wealth has been introduced, this problem presses itself upon us. Not only so but the greater the grip which capitalism has on industry the more intense is the poverty of the many and the more marked are the riches of the few.

In observing the conditions of this problem, the fact is quickly forced under our notice that it is the producer of wealth who is poor, the non-producer who is rich. How comes it that the men and women who till the soil, who dig the mine, who manipulate the machine, who build the factory and the home, and, in a word, who create the whole of the wealth, receive only sufficient to maintain themselves and their families on the border line of bare physical efficiency, while those who do not aid in production – the employing class – obtain more than is enough to supply their every necessity, comfort, and luxury?

To find a solution to this problem is the task to which the Socialist applies himself. He sees clearly that only by studying the economics of wealth-production and distribution can he understand the anomalies of present-day society. He sees, further, that having gained a knowledge of the economic causes of social inequality, he must apply this knowledge through political action – through the building up of a Socialist organisation for the capture of Parliament and the conquest of the powers of government.

To every sober observer of social facts it is patent that the life condition of the workers is one of penury and of misery. The only saleable commodity they possess  – their power of working – they are compelled to take to the labour market and sell for a bare subsistence wage. The food they eat, the clothing they wear, the houses in which they live are of the shoddiest kind, and these together with the mockery of an education which their children receive, primarily determine the purchasing price of their labour-power. By organising in their various trades they may force their wage a little above this normal value, but taken on the average they are bound to sell their activity – physical, mental and moral – for the bare cost of their subsistence.

In return for this wage they create, by the conversion of raw material into manufactured products or by other means, a value far in excess of the value paid them as wages. The difference between these two values is taken by the employing class, and constitutes the source of profit, interest, and rent. These three forms of exploitation are the result of the unpaid labour of the working-class.

So long as this lasts – and it will last as long as the capitalist system of society – it will not be possible for the workers by any Trades Union organisation to more than slightly modify their condition, and their power in this direction is becoming every day more limited by the combinations among employers to defeat the aims of the working class.

Then, too, the magnitude of industrial operations, ever tending to increase by the inherent tendency under free competition of the large producer to crush out his smaller trade rivals – the joint stock company takes the place of the large individual, capitalist, the trust the place of the joint stock company. The worker is thus brought face to face with an ever greater foe.

The Socialist can calmly view this struggle, knowing that ultimately the victory is with him. In the meantime, however, he has to show the workers that while their organisation in trades will  prove an invaluable aid in the transformation of society by facilitating industrial reorganisation, yet at present they can best help to emancipate themselves from the thraldom of wage-slavery by recognising that in their class struggle with their exploiters they can be most certain of success in the political sphere of action.

Such political action will, however, be quite futile unless carried on by a class-conscious party with definite aims. Such a party must recognise that in the class-war they are waging there must be no truce. They must adopt as their basis of action the Socialist position, for in no other way can their ills be redressed.

To neither of the two historic parties can we look with any hope. The Liberal Party, like the Conservative Party, is interested in maintaining the present class society, and cannot, therefore, be expected to help in its transformation from capitalism to Socialism.

The National Democratic League and the Labour Representation Committee are also to be avoided. The former has a programme of purely political measures, each of which is found in the constitutions of France and the United States of America without the working-class being in any way benefited. The latter organisation has no programme whatsoever, and its members possess no principles in common save the name “Labour.” As soon as any question of constructive legislation is brought before it its component elements will break part, being unable to agree among themselves. Unity is only possible among those who possess common principles. Unity can not, therefore, be secured for any length of time by the members of the Labour Representation Committee, but even if it could, the body is not based upon Socialist principles and should not receive the adhesion of working men.

We, as Socialists, venture to assert that the party which is ultimately to secure the support of the rank and file of the working-class must be a Socialist party. Such a party must be ever prepared to further the realisation of a Socialist Society. It must proclaim the fact that this realisation can be achieved by the members of the working-class using their political power to return to Parliament and other public bodies only those who are members of The Socialist Party.

In the past two bodies of men have put forward the claim to be Socialist parties, viz., the Independent Labour Party and Social Democratic Federation. We who have for many years taken a share in the work of the latter organisation and who have watched the progress of the former from its initiation, have been forced to the conclusion that through neither of them can the Social Revolution at which we aim be achieved, and that from neither of them can the working-class secure redress from the ills they suffer.

The Independent Labour Party, founded for the ostensible reason of forming a half-way house to Socialism, was fated to meet with the reward of every party founded upon a compromise. With a membership of those who were sympathetic with Socialism, but who were not Socialists, they were bound to drift nearer and nearer to the Liberal Party. Having neither the courage to proclaim themselves Socialists nor to disavow Socialism, they are to-day coquetting with that working-class wing of the Liberal Party – the Labour Representation Committee. When the question of Socialism was raised on the committee, their chief representative declared that was neither the time nor the place for such discussion. With a party of this kind, which, in the words of their president, “is independent to support, independent to oppose” the two historic political parties, the working-class should have nothing to do.

The Social Democratic Federation formed to further the cause of Socialism in Great Britain, has, during the last few years, been steadily following the compromising policy adopted from the first by the Independent Labour Party. So much is this the case that to-day, for all purposes of effective Socialist propaganda they have ceased to exist, and are surely developing into a mere reform party, seeking to obtain the provision of Free Maintenance for school children.

Those Socialists who, within its ranks, sought to withstand this policy, have found the task to be an impossible one, and have consequently seceded and formed themselves into the Socialist Party of Great Britain – a party determined to use its every effort in the furtherance of Socialist ideas and Socialist principles.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is convinced that by laying down a clearly defined body of principles in accord with essential economic truths, and by consistently advocating them, swerving neither to the right nor to the left, but marching uncompromisingly on toward their goal, they will ultimately gain the confidence and the support of the working-class of this country. once this is secured it is a small step to the organisation of a Socialist Parliamentary party. When this is accomplished all is gained.

The first duty of The Socialist Party is the teaching of its principles and the organisation of a political party on a Socialist basis. The party becoming strong will capture parliamentary and other governmental powers. When these powers – legislative, administrative, and judicial, are wrested from their present class holders, they way is clear for the building up of the industries of the country upon the principle of collective production and collective distribution, and for the establishment of the Socialist Republic.

Men and women of the working-class, it is to you we appeal! To-day we are a small party, strong only in the truth of our principles, the sincerity of our motives, and the determination and enthusiasm of our members. To-morrow we shall be strong in our numbers, for the economic development of capitalist society fights for us, and as, through the merging of free competition in monopoly and the simplification of industry, the personal capitalist gives place to the impersonal trust as your employer, you will be forced to see that the welfare of the people can best be guaranteed by the holding of all material wealth in common.

We ask you, therefore, to study the principles upon which our party is based, to find out for yourselves what Socialism is and how Socialism and Socialism alone can abolish class society and establish in its stead a society based upon social equality. When you have done this we know that you will come with us and, by enrolling yourself a member of The Socialist Party of Great Britain, help to speed the time when we shall herald in for ourselves and for our children, a brighter, a happier and a nobler society than any the world has yet witnessed.

Socialist Standard September 1904