A World Without Money

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 “Changing the world, one Bitcoin at a time” is a mantra that fits into the picture of socialism, the greatest social experiment of the 20th century. But the question is, would Karl Marx, the father of socialism, embrace Bitcoin if he were to be alive today?

Marx held as early as 1843 that mankind could only be emancipated through the abolition of money and the State.

‘Money, then, appears as this overturning power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc.,which claim to be essences in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence and intelligence into idiocy’

The related essay below is one of 38 just posted on the Socialist Standard Past & Present blog.   They first appeared in  the special 300th issue of the World Socialist Party of the United States old journal, The Western Socialist, in 1974.

Time was, when the idea of a social system operating without a medium of exchange was held only by a relative handful of scientific socialists Today, one hears the concept kicked around a bit more on talk shows and by people who do not necessarily consider themselves revolutionary in the sense of the World Socialist concept of revolution. But one gets the impression that there is not too much understanding of the economics of the question even among many of those who favor a moneyless society. They do openly disagree with the popular notion that no social order could operate without money of some sort but they seem to believe that it is going to be a case of a government of one sort or another proclaiming the abolition of money.

In order to understand why such an act will be not only unnecessary, but impossible, it is all important to comprehend why a medium of exchange, money, is necessary within the present system. Production, under capitalism, is carried on primarily for the purpose of sale on a market with view to profit and, as a result, we have an exchange or a circulation of commodities. Now it stands to reason that if eggs, shoes, whisky, houses, automobiles and all the other commodities exchange on a market in certain proportions there has to be a medium for effecting the circulation. This medium must be, itself, a commodity and one that is universally acceptable as an equivalent of the values of all commodities. So we have the commodity gold acting as the universal equivalent behind the various nominal monies of the world. And unless some other commodity with the necessary properties and the universal acceptance of gold comes along, gold will continue to act as real money.

Besides acting as a medium of circulation, money must exist, then, as a means of payment and as a measure of the values of commodities. Much of this may even be learned in a college economics course.

But the system, today, in the whole world is one of production for sale on a market with view to profit whereas the system advocated by socialists is something quite different. In a socialist world there will be no production of commodities. Goods and services will be produced only for the purpose of satisfying the needs and wants of the population. Eggs, shoes, whiskey, houses, automobiles and whatever else is wanted by society will be produced only because these things are wanted and not to sell. There will be no buying and selling at all and in such a situation there could be no need for anything to act as money.

Two questions might immediately leap to mind. First: do socialists advocate a return to simple barter? and Secondly: when has a moneyless system ever existed, at least in recorded history. The answer to the first question is “No” and to the second. “Never!” But with a but.

Obviously, barter could not exist under socialism any more than could money exist. There is just no need to exchange goods. We produce and we consume and the only difference that would be really noticeable from what takes place today would be the absence of cash registers and private or state ownership of the means of production. Should production of a particular item be inadequate to satiety the needs of the population, production of the item would be increased. If more than enough, it would be decreased.

As for the point that money always existed throughout recorded history: Yes, but not for most of the population. In previous social systems most people never had occasion to require money. Production was mainly geared to the needs of a slave or serf population and their masters. Money appeared only among a minority of the population, in trade.

And NO! We do not advocate a return to slavery or serfdom. We urge the abolition of all slavery, the end of wage slavery, the establishment of world socialism — a system in which the need for money will vanish.

Hiroshima background

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Reposted from SOYMB 6 August, 2009


Hiroshima in the making
On the 6th August 1945 at 0816 local time an atom bomb was dropped over the city of Hiroshima. The 40th anniversary of this event was marked by the following essay in our journal.



The idea that the material world is composed of enormous numbers of exceedingly small entities called atoms was first propounded about 450 BC by the Greek philosopher Leucippus and his pupil Democritus. It was not until 1911, however, when Ernest (later Lord) Rutherford published a paper putting forward the nuclear model of the atom, that the proposition gained general acceptance. It may seem hard today to realise that the paper caused no commotion in the world of physics – Rutherford himself does not appear to have considered this discovery as the epoch-making event it tumed out to be. In fact, this is not surprislng since no commercial application could be envisaged for the work, unlike x-rays and radium which had obvious medical uses and were soon seen as potential sources of profit. 



Where no such profitable application appeared the research was funded largely out of universities’ private resources and co-ordination between researchers .depended largely on their own individual efforts. This situation was not to change until the stage had been reached when it began to look as though this decomposition of matter, occurring naturalIy in the radioactive materials, could be achieved artificially in a controlled manner to the extent required for a large explosion. The relevant work between the two world wars led to the discovery of the fission process and the possibility of a chain reaction. 



It would be too long a story to detail the steps by which these discoveries were made, but it is worth noting that the whole process, even jf unco-ordinated, involved a large number of scientists of many nationalities. En route the dream of the old alchemists, of transmuting one element into another, was realised although the end product was not as they had envisaged, By 1939 it had been shown that nuclear combustion, releasing a million times the energv of chemical combustion, was indeed possible. 



When war broke out the scientists involved expressed considerable scepticism about whether an atomic bomb was feasibie. The politicians were even more doubtful. – Margaret Gowring recalls that Churchill at this time was more concerned that the so-called “fifih column” might exploit fears about “a terrible new uranium explosive” to force Britain to accept a surrender! (Britain and Atomic Energy, 1939-45, Macmillan, 1964.) Many scientists were directed to other vital war work at places such as the Royal Aircraft Establishment, although some uranium research continued at a very slow pace. A change in attitude was brought about as much by the fear that Germany might get a head start as any more rational consideration. A number of scientists who had fIed from Nazi persecution gave assistance to the Allied powers and the teams competing in this grim race were truIy international both in the sense of their composition and in the debt they owed to past knowledge. 



Eventually, in early 1940, the British government set up a small sub-comrnittee under the Committee for the Scientific Survey of Air Warfare – which was to be known by its code name of the Maud Committee – to examine the available evidence and report back to the government on the chances of success. Their report, issued in July 1941, gave a positive answer and was remarkable in its prescience. Only in two respects was it deficient: it was two years early in its foreeast of when a bomb would be ready and it erred in its assessment of the prospects of plutonium as a fuel (the Nagasaki bomb used this method). 



The stage had now been reached when uranium research was no longer the exclusive concern of a few individuaIs in universities. The horrors of atomic warfare could be envisaged fairly clearly, even though practical demonstration was still some way off. The Maud Committee were able accurately to compare the devastation expected from an A-bomb with known effects of TNT and they also had a reasonable understanding of the effects of radiation. They commented: . 



“It is very difficult to estimate the extent of their [fission products] effect especially as the most important substances would be those of long life, which are the hardest to study under laboratory conditions. It does however seem certain that the area devastated by the explosion would be dangerous to life for a considerable time.”



The conclusions of the Maud Committee and similar work in America led to a decision to manufacture. After Pearl Harbour, America went onto a full war footing, and they no longer saw any need to share their secrets with the British. Already they were looking ahead to the post-war world and resurned industrial competition – an attitude which led to considerable friction within the Alliance. The American capitalists saw the chance to supplant British interests in the latter’s erstwhile colonies and Roosevelt appeared to side with Stalin against Churchill at some of the wartirne conferences. The British reluctantly had to accept a very junior role in the A-bomb project, and virtually none in the dedsions about dropping one in anger. 



Before any bombs were ready, however, Germany and Italy had surrendered and so the question was whether the weapon should be used against Japan. The politicians and militarists were still riddled with sceptidsm and it did not therefore figure prorninently in their strategy. At first the British and Americans wanted Russia to enter the war with Japan. There were obvious problems about Russian entry, as clearly Stalin wanted to strengthen Soviet influence in Manchuria and in the territories lost to Japan in the 1904-05 wars. The Chinese government of Chiang Kai-Shek was party to negotiations over these issues and any agreements reached at the Yalta conference were cLearly of an unstable nature. 



The first successful test on 16 july 1945 caused a change in the attitude to Russia, as the possibilitv of forcing Japan to surrender without help now loomed. Considerable disagreements surfaced over how Japanese resistance could best be ended. As early as September 1944, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed that “when a bomb is finalIy available it might perhaps, after mature consideration, be used against the Japanese who should be warned that this bombardrnent will be repeated unill they surrender .” (Gowring, M., op. cit., p.370). In May 1945 a brief but heated debate began in America, involving scientists as well as politicians and the arrned forces, The case for warning Japan was argued in front of President Truman himself, A “harrnless” demonstration of the bomb’s power, perhaps with Japanese observers present, was proposed but the idea foundered on two main counts: there was still no certainty that the bomb would work, or that if it did it would induce surrender.



Deep divisions still existed after the successful test and it was impossible to get a consensus view in the necessary time. This may have been the reason why Trurnan later came to exaggerate and indeed to glory in the personal part he played. When Robert Oppenheirner regretted his part in the project, saying that he felt he had “blood on his hands”, Truman told Dean Acheson. “Don’t you bring that fellow around here again. After all, all he did was to make the bomb. I’m the guy who fired it off’ (Pringle, P. & J. Spiegelman. The Nuclear Barons, Sphere 1985, p.95). 



One factor that is often understandably underplayed by official accounts was the strength of the “Peace Party” in Japan. It is quite incorrect to think of the country as completely dorninated by a military caste headed by an autocratic Emperor. Gowring reports: 



“The Peace Party had ernerged within the Japanese Cabinet as early as April 1945, but it had to move with extreme circumspection in the face of fierce opposition from the military. However in ]uly, whlle the Allied leaders were assembling at Potsdam, the Japanese Emperor himself authorised peace feelers through Russia. Japan, it was ernphasised, would never accept unconditional surrender but was anxious for discussions about a negotiated peace. Stalin gave Mr Churchill an accurate account of these approaches … “



Deterrnined efforts to encourage the Peace Party were hindered by disunity in the Allied camp, and the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan, following the conference of that name, was a solernn warning of the destruction to comeijf they did not surrender forthwith. However it did not describe the new weapon and when Trurnan, after yet more intemal debate, informed Stalin he merely said that America now had “a weapon of unusually destructive force”. The Russians and Japanese, through their intelligence networks, probably had a good idea what was meant, but they could not say so openly. The Russians had in fact already started work on their own atom bomb. 



Three days after the Potsdam Proclamation, on 29 July, the Japanese Prime Minister announced that his government would ignore it, but four days later further peace feelers were sent through Moscow with “qualilled adrnission of the Potsdam Proclamation as a basis of discussion”. This however brought no response before the Hiroshima bomb was dropped on the now infamous 6 August a further appeal for surrender followed, failing which more bombs would be dropped 



The Japanese militarists had in the past been accustomed to dictate terms to the Emperor; now however Hirohito sided with the Peace Party against the influence of the arrned forces. The Japanese cabinet was hopelessly split, and even Hiroshima did not break the deadlock. Communications had been cut and the hawks refused to believe what they had been told and had to visit the area themselves to be convinced. No agreed statement could be made. The Allies responded by advandng the date for the bombing of Nagasaki, which coincided with the entry of Russia into the war. The last stand of the armed forces was at an end. The atornic bomb which fell on Hiroshima killed 64,000 people within four months and the bomb on Nagaski 39,OOO people.In addition, 72,000 people were injuted in Hiroshima and 25,000 in Nagasaki. At Hiroshima four square miles were totally devastated and nine square miles were very badly damaged. 



It is futile to speculate on how the destruction compares with what might have occurred had non-nuclear options been adopted – all the altematives were terrible in terms of the killing and mairning of workers on both sides. Such conjecture would merely encourage the notion that saving lives was a major consideration. 



E C EDGE



Further reading:



Hiroshima and after!



Why they dropped the bombs

Hiroshima, August 1945

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Hiroshima, August 1945 (1985)

From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist


Forty years ago the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in Japan. The following poem was written by a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain shortly after he heard the news of the bombing.

Like a blast from hell the atom bomb came,

And a city in ruins was hurled;

On wings of fear, it thundered its name,

Through a shocked and war torn world;

This atomic force with transmutable breath,

Its first warning sign we see,

Garden of plenty, or desert of death;

What is this world to be?

The challenge is vital, and urgent the hour;

When this Capitalist era must pass,

And workers control this atomic power,

So misused by the ruling class;

This nuclear power from the atom was wrought,

It evolved in the womb of time,

Born of the labour of man’s social thought,

Its baptism, Fire, blood and crime;

Dark is the future if our governments command

This scientific genie of might,

Secret diplomacy knows no remand,

From chaos and abysmal night;

The Capitalist powers are still planning our fate,

And with their lies seek to stifle our fears,

Turning worker against worker, in blind bonds of hate,

For their new orgy of blood sweat and tears;

A Socialist world, no other solution,

Presents itself to mankind;

The workers must strive for a world revolution,

And cast off those fetters that bind;

This atomic force with transmutable breath,

For good or for ill must abide,

Garden of plenty or desert of death?

The workers themselves must decide.



Walter Atkinson (Britain)


NO PIECEMEAL PATH TO PEACE

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 “Current nuclear arms control and nonproliferation efforts are inadequate to protect the world’s population against the threat of nuclear war by design, error, or miscalculation,” the editorial reads.

NO SHIT!


Innumerable peace treaties, pious resolutions, prayers, demonstrations have been written, passed, uttered, forgotten and staged since the dawn of capitalism. Nuclear weapons remain and cluster bombs are making a comeback. In addition to weapons of mass destruction, capitalism produces poverty, insecurity, disease, and all the vicious things that stem from those, and it gives rise to the wars for which governments are constantly preparing.


‘The increasing intensity of competition for economic markets must lead to armed conflict unless an economic settlement is found. This, however, is hardly to be hoped for. Talk about peace in a world armed to the teeth is utterly futile’ (W. M. Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia during WWI, News Chronicle, 25 July 1936). Time and time again the socialist has demonstrated that war stems from capitalist struggles for markets, trade routes, sources of raw materials, and places of strategic importance. The 99 percent based in the UK and US face the same problems as members of our class existing elsewhere. Workers have no country. If anybody can really delude themselves into believing piecemeal measures will bring everlasting peace worldwide, their gullibility can know no bounds. We have a job to do, in this century, the establishment of socialism, and while workers are pursuing reform rather than revolution, they are falling down on their historically appointed task.


‘To oppose nuclear weapons requires a fundamental change in our attitude to life. Clarity of purpose and utter opposition is the only chance to reverse the threat that hangs over all our lives. What we want to change is immense. It’s not just getting rid of nuclear weapons, it’s getting rid of the whole structure that created the possibility of nuclear weapons in the first place. If we don’t use imagination nothing will change. Without change we will destroy the planet. It’s as simple as that’ (Boon, C., Social Movements and Political Power Emerging Forms of Radicalism in the West, Temple University Press, 1986, bit.ly/3a2S6Up).

American Auto Workers seeking bit more of the cake

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The President of the American United Auto Workers (UAW) has been ‘”talking about capitalism and the nature of capitalism and how it’s really hurt workers.”’

Recently elected Fain, made a speech highlighting members’ demands for ‘a significant pay raise to make up for years of concessions by the union following the Great Recession, the rising cost of living and inflation, and to match pay increases enjoyed by the CEOs of the Big Three’.

He’s quoted as saying ,’”Big Three CEOS saw their pay spike 40% on average over the last four years,” said Fain. “We know our members are worth the same and more”.

‘Ahead of a September 14 deadline, after which the UAW could go on strike, the union is demanding an immediate 20% pay raise followed by an additional 5% raise in each year of the four-year contract’.

‘According to the union, most new workers start out making $16 per hour, but if cost-of-living increases had been maintained since the Great Recession, the starting wage would be $28.68—about $21,000 more per year’.

The union also wants ‘a return of the defined benefit pension, which would give retired workers a set amount of money each month; the right to strike if a company threatens to close a plant; more paid time off; restored cost-of-living allowance increases; and other provisions’.

The Union President ‘spoke about the potential to shift to a 32-hour work-week to allow workers to spend more time with their families’.

‘”Our members are working 60, 70, even 80 hours a week just to make ends meet—that’s not a living. We have to work longer and harder to maintain the same standard of living… That means missing Little League games and family reunions. That’s barely surviving, and it needs to stop,” he said.

Shawn Fain would seem to very well know that capitalism’s profits come from the surplus value extracted from workers: The car companies can ‘ “easily” afford to substantially increase workers’ wages. The companies have made a quarter of a trillion dollars in North American profits over the past 10 years, and reported a combined $21 billion in profits in the first half of this year. Record profits mean record contracts. They’ve been competitive on our backs and it’s time they pay up”.’

An apologist for capitalism, a former hedge fund manager, hosting a CNBC programme is apparently shocked at workers demanding even a slighter bigger slice of the cake. He has called the demands ‘“frightening” for advocating for a wage increase to reflect the record profits the companies have reported in recent years’.

The anchor has refuted ‘Fain’s suggestion that Big Three shareholders and CEOs have been “overly rewarded” and scoffed at the notion that shareholders are “fat cats.” ‘

‘”That’s class warfare and it’s very shocking to hear class warfare,” said Cramer’.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/uaw-contract

Sounds like someone should have a conversation with the World Socialist Party of the United States (WSPUS). And that includes the President and the members of the UAW too.

It’s commendable that workers should use their collective strength to improve their living standards under capitalism but it is, as best, a short term solution to the exploitation of the working class.

The real, and only, solution is the collective working toward the abolition of capitalism and its replacement with socialism.


































Idlers of the World Unite! Especially Over Fifties!

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From The Guardian, 3 August, 2023, ‘Over-50s looking for work should consider delivering takeaways and other flexible jobs typically occupied by younger people, the work and pensions secretary has said.



On the recently introduced digital “mid-life MOTs”, which are designed to help older workers with financial planning, health guidance and career skills, Stride said: “You really do need to sensibly stop, take where you are in life, and assess whether, for example, you’ve got enough money to get you through with the kind of lifestyle and living standards that you’re expecting.”

Since the pandemic there has been a sharp rise in the number of economically inactive people, those who are neither working nor looking for work. About 8.6 million people in the UK – equivalent to one in five working adults – are classed as economically inactive, according to the Office for National Statistics. More than 3.4 million of them are over 50 but under the retirement age’.


Below is a repost from SOYMB 16 April, 2017


Monotonous, manual work can be done by machines, freeing humans up to do creative, activities. So we’re told. The truth is there has been an explosion in what anthropologist David Graeber calls “bullshit jobs”. 



And, as individuals come under pressure to stand out from the crowd, there emerges what sociologist David Frayne calls a “culture of gratitude” where labour is given without charge in return for “profile” or imagined networking benefits. “In this hyper-competitive context,” he writes, “it has almost become a matter of bad taste to fuss about issues like contracts, payment, and working conditions. You should just be grateful to have an opportunity in the first place.”



He says, “Society is presently organised so that work is people’s main source of income, social contact, and recognition. Living without work means somehow reinventing the ways to access these things, and that is no easy task. Depending on how far people want to go, resisting work means overcoming some significant barriers. The most obvious one is our reliance on work as a source of income. If you do not have the luxury of inherited wealth or a contingent source of money, this might be overcome to some degree by consuming less. A person can spend more carefully, repair and self-produce things, privilege more inexpensive pleasures, and perhaps even discover new and alternative forms of enjoyment in the process. All of these things are also easier to do when you work less and have more free-time, but spending less is still no easy feat in a society where so many of our needs are conventionally met via commercial transactions.”



He continues,  “We must refashion society so that people can remain connected, active, and valued, even when their labour is not required by the formal economy. As automated technologies continue to replace the need for human workers, the need to do this refashioning will become increasingly urgent.”



The issue of work is one that socialists have addressed for well over a century. Karl Marx’s son-in-law wrote a pamphlet called the “Right to be Lazy.”



The majority of the population is not engaged in productive work. The greater part of the non-producers is employed in the buying and selling plus all the related occupations. Any system by which the buying and selling system is retained means the employment of vast sections of the population in unproductive work. It leaves the productive work to be done by one portion of the people whilst the other portion is spending its energies in keeping shop, banking, and all the other various developments of commerce which employ probably more than two-thirds of the people today. It is the elimination of such activities and institutions, essential though they may be to a functioning market economy but unproductive in themselves from the standpoint of producing use values or meeting human needs, that constitutes perhaps the most important productive advantage that a socialist economy would have over a capitalist economy. The elimination of this structural waste intrinsic to capitalism will free up a vast amount of labour and materials for socially useful production in socialism.

 In socialist society, productive activity would take the form of freely chosen activity undertaken by human beings with a view to producing the things they needed to live and enjoy life. The necessary productive work of society would not be done by a class of hired wage workers but by all members of society, each according to their particular skills and abilities, cooperating to produce the things required to satisfy their needs both as individuals and as communities. Work i a socialist society could only be voluntary since there would be no group or organ in a position to force people to work against their will.



“… in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.” – Karl Marx 



And it was Marx who said in communism it will be society’s free (disposable) time and no longer labour time that becomes the true measure of society’s wealth.


Work should not really be equated with employment. Employment is wage labour.  William Morris regarded work as a basic, natural human need. His main criticism of capitalism was that it denied the vast majority of humans satisfying and enjoyable work. Under capitalism work, instead of being the enjoyable activity of creating or doing something useful, became a boring and often unhealthy and dangerous burden imposed on those who were forced to get a living by selling their mental and physical energies for a wage Morris’s concept of “art”. Which he defined, not as some specialised activity engaged in by some fringe group of “artists”, but as ”the expression of a person’s joy in their work”; people who enjoyed their work would produce beautiful things. And when he realised that the nature of capitalism meant that most producers were denied any enjoyment in their work – or, put another way, that it meant the “death of art”.


In a socialist society, the distinction between work and leisure will diminish—perhaps even disappear. People will have an opportunity to use their hobbies and enthusiasms for the social good: to enjoy being useful.


Most of us want to work. What we hate is employment. We want to work for ourselves, our families and friends, our community, not for some thieving parasite employer!


  



WORLD WAR ONE – LEST WE FORGET

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Germany invades Belgium and declares war on France, beginning World War I.


The German invasion of Belgium and Luxembourg in 1914 was of military benefit but a political gamble. It enabled the German armies to flood into France by avoiding the main border defences and it allowed Belgian coal mines and factories to fall into German hands. The political gamble was whether or not this move would bring Britain into the war on the side of France….

(Read more here),



Socialist Sonnet No. 108

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Snap Judgements

 

Skin can confer innocence or guilt,

Scrutinized by the ever watchful eye

Of the camera, and cameras do not lie,

Even if discrimination is in-built.

Innocence can’t be presumed any longer,

Human nature, it seems, is thought so flawed

It’s far better that people are outlawed

Than rely on honesty being stronger.

After all, the profit motive requires

The committing of a legalised crime,

In the stealing of unpaid for labour time,

The difference between sellers and buyers.

However depressed, at least smile a bit,

Snap judgements need you to be photo fit.

 

D. A.

Nigeria: Capitalism NOT a ‘glorious dawn’.

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1000 Nigerian Naira equals £1.03

‘Nigerian President Bola Tinubu addressed the nation in an evening broadcast on Monday, acknowledging the economic hardship caused by the removal of a subsidy on petrol.

He however said the country would save “trillions of naira” yearly by scrapping the subsidy and that the money would be used to implement reforms that would help boost the economy.

Ending the decades-long subsidy has more than doubled the price of petrol and raised prices for food and other essentials.

But Tinubu said the government had created a fund to use the savings to build much-needed infrastructure and supply cheap loans to farmers, small businesses and students.

He said the government would monitor petrol prices and intervene if and when it was necessary to do so.

“I assure you, my fellow countrymen and women, that we are exiting the darkness to enter a new and glorious dawn,” he said at the end of his address.’

https://www.africanews.com/2023/08/01/nigerian-president-justifies-removal-of-fuel-subsidy/

Related?

‘A total curfew was imposed on Sunday in a state in northeastern Nigeria where hundreds of residents engaged in massive looting of shops and public warehouses where food was stored, authorities said. 

Teenagers living on the street started the looting , but were soon joined by hundreds of residents who entered these places where food, especially cereals, was stored before taking them away.

“Adamawa State Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri has issued a 24-hour curfew…with immediate effect ,” his spokesman, Humwashi Wonosikou , said on Sunday . “With the curfew imposed, there will be no movement statewide” .

Local police also said security personnel had been deployed to enforce the curfew and prevent future looting.

Nigeria , the most populous country in Africa and the continent’s largest economy, has been facing a serious economic crisis since 2016, aggravated by the coronavirus pandemic , then the Russian offensive in Ukraine.

Nearly half of its 215 million people live in extreme poverty (on less than $2 a day) despite its huge oil reserves .

For the past two months, poverty has worsened in the country as the new president Bola Tinubu has taken a series of economic measures aimed at reviving long-term investments, but with serious effects on household wallets.

Last month, the president notably ended fuel subsidies , causing gas prices to quadruple, and indirectly skyrocketing food prices.

In mid-July, he announced a “State of emergency on food security” , promising massive investments in agriculture, and money transfers to the poorest.

Earlier this year, the UN already predicted that more than 25 million Nigerians would be at “high risk” of food insecurity in 2023, not counting recent inflation .

Northeast Nigeria is particularly affected by food insecurity, as a 14-year-old conflict between the army and jihadist groups has displaced millions of people there and driven farmers away from their land’.

https://www.africanews.com/2023/07/31/nigeria-curfew-in-adamawa-state-after-massive-looting/




UK Debt Misery

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An Observer article, 30 July, quotes the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which has data that shows that 2.3 million low-income families have reported taking out loans or using credit to pay essential bills during the ongoing capitalist cost of living crisis. With another expected interest rate rise possibly in the offing there are concerns about ‘a “time bomb of debt” among poorer households’.

Are we about to see another plethora of advertisements through various outlets for the loan companies whose interest rates run into three or four figures?

The article says that, ‘Nearly 6 million low-income families have unsecured debt, such as credit cards, overdrafts and personal loans from banks, credit unions and payday lenders. In May this year, they owed £14.2bn in total. Interest on this debt was £3.9bn, equivalent to about £675 a year per family’.

Further, ‘Using credit to pay bills is not preventing households from falling behind with payments. Three-quarters report arrears with at least one household bill or lending commitment, with 44% in arrears with three or more bills. Meanwhile 2.8 million low-income households said they had been refused a loan between May 2021 and May 2023’.

Those running charities aiming to help, one way or another, those burdened down with overwhelming debt problems ought to get themselves off to SpecSavers because the same myopic ‘solutions,’ which are not long term solutions, are being trotted out.

StepChange, a debt charity says, ‘ “It is crucial the government continues to uprate benefits with inflation and looks for ways to increase income for the most vulnerable households, for example by stopping unaffordable deductions from universal credit to repay government debts.” ‘

The government said, ‘ “We know people are struggling with rising prices, which is why we are delivering support worth on average £3,300 per household, (citation needed) uprating benefits in line with inflation and have increased the national living wage.

“We have invested a record £90m to support free debt advice in England and our Breathing Space scheme gives those facing financial difficulties space to receive debt advice, without pressure from creditors or mounting debts.

“Deductions help to protect claimants from enforcement actions such as eviction, make sure priority debts like child maintenance are addressed and recover money when overpayments are made.”’

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jul/30/millions-of-uk-families-using-credit-cards-and-loans-to-pay-basic-bills

For those whose lives are desolated by the nature of capitalism there are other costs which add to the existing pressures: mental health issues, damaged relationships, and removal of the ability to live life to its fullest.

As the blessed Margaret Thatcher once incorrectly remark, there is no alternative. But there is. It’s Socialism, a money-free, class-free society free access to goods and services will consign this blight to the dustbin of history forever.


Promoted by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UN.

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