According to a food waste non-profit group, in 2023 food retailers in the US ‘generated 4.45M tons of surplus food, nearly 35% of which went to landfill or was incinerated as waste.’ That 35% works out at around 9 lbs (4 kg) of food per person in America. With food prices sky high and 47 million Americans facing hunger, including 1 in 5 children, destroying food ‘surpluses’ could be regarded as a crime against humanity.

Will you be enjoying a breakfast Bucks Fizz before the indulgence of the ‘festive’ day begins? Or perhaps you prefer to drink your Champagne neat? Or perhaps, much more likely, you can’t afford to buy it? If, however, you are in the privileged minority who can quaff it like water and who don’t even consider the monetary cost of the item, do you even consider the human cost that goes into producing it?

Exploitation of workers for profit is built into the capitalism system.

‘People employed to pick grapes for France’s luxury champagne brands are being forced to sleep rough and steal food to stave off hunger, an investigation has found.

The Guardian reported that it had found seasonal workers from west Africa and eastern Europe in the town of Epernay in northern France sleeping on the streets or in tents as the vineyards did not provide accommodation.

Dozens of them spent their nights in the doorway of the cinema opposite the town’s main train station, it wrote.

Epernay is home to world’s most expensive champagne brands, including Dom Perignon and Moet & Chandon. Total champagne shipments from the town in 2023 stood at 299 million bottles and generated over €6 billion ($6.25 billion) in revenues, according to the industry body Comite Champagne.

The grape-picking season at Epernay lasts from August to October. This year’s yield was estimated at 10 tons of grapes per hectare.

Some workers interviewed by the publication claimed they were underpaid or not paid at all. Others said they had not been provided with enough food and left without means of buying any, having to resort to stealing.

“They were treated like dogs,” a retired winegrower told The Guardian. “The people who do that aren’t winegrowers: they’re exploiters,” he added.

Last year’s season was reportedly dubbed “the harvest of shame” after four seasonal grape-pickers died due to suspected sunstroke.

In a case scheduled to go to court in March, four people, including a vineyard owner, have been charged with human trafficking.

According to the unions, it is hard to hold specific champagne houses responsible for the exploitation because of a system that involves delegation of responsibilities from one company to another.

Comite Champagne issued a statement to The Guardian expressing shock” at the “shameful practices” and asking authorities to step up controls and severely punish any abuses.

The industry body also reported a drop in shipments in the current year caused by “the sluggish global geopolitical and economic situation and widespread inflation.”’

Below is taken from the Socialist Standard October 2009

‘In the past when Southern Californian fruit growers were faced with a glut and falling prices they let the fruit rot on the trees. When castigated for this apparent madness they pointed out the quite logical capitalist argument that they would have to pay pickers wages for fruit they couldn’t sell. When again they were taken to task for this argument they were offered by some charitable organisations the prospect of them supplying free labour and they would distribute to the needy. Again the fruit growers had an answer to that. “Every year charitable organisations buy at cut-rate prices our unsold surplus. Giving it away would even spoil that source of income for us.” The fruitgrowers may have appeared heartless but from an economic standpoint letting the fruit rot seemed the logical action. A similar solution is being followed today by French wine producers. “Hopes of a glut of cheap champagne are set to be dashed when vineyards meet next week to agree on a big cut in production to prop up prices. With sales falling, producers may be ordered to leave up to half their grapes to wither on the vine in an attempt to squeeze the market.” (London Times, 29 August) Capitalism is a crazy system, obviously inside socialism we would deal with the problem by drinking more champagne.’

aliststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2009/10/voice-from-back.html

‘There are lies, dammed lies and statistics. The figures given below should be looked at sceptically. Whether correct or not the figures given for Ukrainian casualties, and the unknown Russian ones, are unacceptable and a tragedy.

To these should be added the number of innocent lives being sacrificed in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

‘More than 400,000 people have joined the Russian Army in 2024, Defence Minister Andrey Belousov revealed during a meeting of top officials in Moscow. Around 1,200 people voluntarily sign up for military service every day, he said. We continue systematic work on staffing the armed forces Since the start of the year, over 427,000 servicemen have already been recruited, Belousov stated.

In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree that increased the number of armed forces personnel to 2.39 million, including 1.5 million military personnel. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov explained at the time that the decision was based on the increasing number of threats currently faced by Russia, including the extremely hostile situation on the Western borders and instability on the Eastern borders.

The decree came into force on December 1. The Russian Army had previously been increased to 2.2 million in December 2023, including 1.32 million military personnel, amid the Ukraine conflict and the ongoing expansion of NATO towards Russian borders.

Belousov did not specify the total number of Russian troops taking part in Moscow’s military operation. Russia also does not make public losses incurred in the conflict with Kiev. However, according to the minister, the Ukrainian Army has lost more than half a million troops in 2024 and over one million since the escalation of the conflict in 2022. He noted that, unlike the Russian military, which has been steadily boosting troop numbers, the Ukrainian Army is severely understaffed, with fewer than 50% of frontline positions currently filled.’

More outrage is being expressed about the assassination of a Russian General in Moscow than against the crime of the continuing annihilation of the many who are used as pawns in capitalism’s ‘game.’

It’s totally against the rules of war! Military do not kill other military in that fashion is the cry. As if capitalism has any conscience in its pursuit of its aims of power, resources, competitive advantage and hegemony.

‘The US has denied any involvement or prior knowledge of the bombing that killed Russian Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov and his assistant in Moscow. Both the Pentagon and State Department have distanced themselves from the targeted assassination, which is believed to have been carried out by Ukraine.

The commander of the Russian Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Défense Forces was killed along with his aide in an explosion outside his apartment early on Tuesday morning. Multiple media outlets have reported that the assassination was executed on the orders of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU).’

What is the reason that the working class, the majority who run capitalism on behalf of the exploiting minority, submit to such heinous manipulation?

One explanation may be that of ‘nationalism.’

The below is from the Socialist Standard March 1973

‘In the struggle to win the minds of the working class Socialists have to contend not, on the whole, with rational critiques of the Socialist position but with deeply held and unquestioned values. A few of these, for example, might be religion, “human nature”, “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work” or the association of Socialism with Russia. One of the strongest of these sacred beliefs, and one of the biggest obstacles to the establishment of Socialism, is nationalism ― the loyalty felt by many members of the working class to “their country”, the political unit in which they happen to reside.

Socialists hold that the only real divisions which exist in the world are horizontal ones, between different social and economic groups. In advanced capitalist countries this consists in a division between the capitalist class, which owns and controls the means of production, and the working class, which owns none of them and which has to sell its mental and physical labour-power to the capitalist class in order to live. Feelings of loyalty to a nation-State are purely subjective, having no basis in reality; the working class in Britain has more in common with the workers in other countries than it has with the British capitalist class.

Classes not Kingdoms

There, is however, an alternative view of the world. This is the belief that the important divisions are not horizontal, between different classes, but vertical, between various nations. A “nation” consists, according to this view, of a hierarchy of men and women who, although having differing incomes, social status and power, all have a common interest in working in harmony for the benefit of the whole unit and, if necessary, in fighting against other nations to defend this interest. This completely erroneous outlook is the one held by most members of the working class and nearly all political parties (including the Labour Party). Most historians reject Marx’s declaration that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle”, preferring instead to see history as a succession of struggles of nations against foreign domination, of subjects against tyrannical kings and of nations and races against each other.

Broadly speaking, nationalist ideologies and movements represent the interests of the capitalist class. Nationalism as such did not exist in pre-capitalist society and its growth and development represents the parallel development of the capitalist class. Nationalism as we know it today first made its appearance during the French Revolution. In the early stages of the revolution cosmopolitan ideas were prevalent ― it was believed that the rest of Europe would be inspired by France’s example and would likewise overthrow the old order. When this failed to materialise strong feelings of nationalism developed; France was seen as a chosen nation, picked out to be the standard-bearer of revolution throughout Europe.

Politically, nationalism is ambiguous, in that it can take on a “rightwing” or a “leftwing” form. This depends upon the position of the capitalist class in the particular time and place. If political power is held by the aristocracy or nobility, and the middle-class is struggling to assert itself, then nationalism will have “leftwing” connotations. This was the case in Europe until 1848, when nationalism was a romantic, revolutionary force against the traditional ruling class. However, once the bourgeoisie has captured and consolidated its power, then nationalism becomes a conservative and rightwing force.

Although every nationalist movement believes it is unique, there exist basically these two forms of nationalism side by side. In the advanced parts of the world ― the United States, Britain, Western Europe ― nationalism is conservative, whilst in pre-industrial countries engaged in struggles against a foreign ruling class, nationalism is a “leftwing” force.

The World Socialist Movement opposes all nationalist movements recognizing that the working class has no country. There are certain other groups ― the Communist Parties of the world, and the so-called revolutionary left ― which, though claiming to have a class outlook, have a wholly opportunist and ambiguous attitude to nationalism, which reflects not so much the interest of the working class as it does Russian or Chinese foreign policy. These groups fully accept the mythology of the existence of “the nation”. For example, from an Anti-Internment League pamphlet:

“The people of each nation have the right to determine how they shall be governed. Foreign interference is a fundamental attack on that right. When one nation takes offensive action against another, by introducing troops or in any other way, we cannot sit on the fence . . . And so to Ireland: Ireland is a nation; Ireland is not Britain; and the Irish have a right to decide whether or not they wish to have any association with the rest of these isles.”

This attitude is a complete denial of Marxism; it is almost incomprehensible that people who describe themselves as Socialists should write of the “right to re-establish Irish nationhood” (from the same pamphlet). The Irish republican movement is in essence no different from any other nationalist movement; it was brought into being because of the need of a fledgling capitalist class to break away from Britain and erect protective tariff barriers in order to build an industrial economy. Socialists give the IRA and Sinn Fein no support whatsoever.

What Marx Meant

It will be argued that Marx and Engels supported nationalist movements and that therefore Socialists should do so today. Such an assertion is based on a faulty understanding of the materialist conception of history. Marx and Engels were living in an era when the bourgeoisie was engaged in a struggle to assert itself against the old feudal regimes. The victory of this class was a historically progressive step at that time in that it brought about the re-organization of society on a capitalist basis, the essential precondition for the establishment of Socialism; and it created an urban proletariat, the only class which can bring about Socialism. This was why Marx supported the rising capitalist class in their bid to capture political power. However, once capitalism reaches the point where Socialism is a practical proposition, there is no need for Socialists to advocate the capitalist industrialization of every corner of the globe; they can concentrate fully on the task of establishing Socialism. Hence we give no support to any nationalist group, and in place of the opportunism and hypocrisy of the myriad Bolshevik groupings in advocating “national self-determination”, Socialists echo the rallying cry of Marx and Engels, “Workers of All Countries, Unite!”

Brendan Mee

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-poison-of-nationalism-1973.html

‘The Position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain

The SPGB has a single aim: the establishment of a society in which all productive resources (land, water, factories, transport, etc.) are taken into common ownership, and in which the sole motive for production is the fulfilment of human needs and wants. This aim is central to the SPGB’s view on the role of ‘the party’.

The abolition of private property in the productive resources will be mirrored by free and equal access for all to the wealth (food, clothing, housing, telecommunications, health and education services, entertainment) that can be produced socially. Its abolition will also be mirrored by democratic control of those productive resources – there will be a need, for example, for informed decision-making about how much effort is to be expended on the consumption goods and services mentioned above and how much effort to expend on production goods (like machinery and new factories). This would take place on a local, regional or wider level, depending on the scale of each issue.

Clearly, such a society will not build a completely new system of production from scratch. In fact, it depends for its establishment on the existence of the productive capacity that wage workers have developed under the rule of capital. It will inherit, or more precisely, appropriate the existing system of production, which is, of course, an interconnected worldwide system. This of course means that the new society must be worldwide.

Considered from the perspective of the current situation, where a minority own and/or control almost all of the productive resources, where production is determined solely by the need for profit, realised by the production and sale of commodities on a world market, we can describe the key aspects of the socialist (for us, socialist and communist mean the same thing) society that the SPGB advocates as one that is without classes, without money or any other form of economic exchange, with neither states nor frontiers. And one in which people work collectively and co-operatively to meet society’s material and psychological needs.

It’s not for us to describe in detail how people will choose to organise their lives once a socialist form of production has been introduced: the different resources, technology and mindsets which will exist then are difficult (impossible?) for us to empathise with now. But there is one very important fact of which we can be sure, and it is this: where there is free access to socially-produced wealth, there will be no connection between what an individual consumes and the amount or type of work that they do or don’t do at any given time in their life. The lash of poverty, or threat thereof, that the owning class currently wields over the wage-earners to coerce them into work, will no longer exist. 

Yet the natural circumstance that we, as a species, need to work in order to survive (and also, we would argue, to fully realise ourselves as human beings) will remain, despite the utopian nonsense about fully automated luxury communism. 

So, throughout and after the revolution, the majority will have to be ready to be proactive participants in the socialised system of production, and have the confidence that a socialist form of production will better serve their various needs and wants than the capitalist system ever could.

The Role of the Party

For the SPGB then, the role of the revolutionary party in the present non-revolutionary situation is to put forward the case for a socialist system and against the capitalist system, to help our fellow workers to understand why, as wage earners, they can never be free from economic insecurity and exploitation, and to understand that the threats of war and environmental devastation have their roots in the capitalist system of production.

Obviously, we must seek to attract members to share the work of developing and spreading socialist ideas, but we have never tried to do so by promoting reforms of capitalism – nor will we do so in future. Experience has shown that the dynamics of capitalist economics turn reformism into an eternal misery-go-round that might catch a few crumbs as they fall from capital’s table during a boom, only to have many of them sucked away again in the inevitable succeeding slump.

For this reason, when the SPGB stands candidates in general and local elections, we make clear our stance against reformism, as opposed to all reformist parties left or right. We stand candidates in capitalist elections in order to make use of what passes for ‘democracy’ to promote socialist ideas until such a time that enough socialists are voted in to power over the state machine in order to abolish it, as part of the revolutionary process, and establish an administration of things rather than a government over the people. 

If we are to establish the non-coercive, non-hierarchical, classless society, the majority will have to understand, want and be actively involved in the attainment of the objective. Given that mass socialist understanding, the political vehicle the socialist majority choose to win control of political power must be fully democratic, reflecting the sort of society they are seeking to establish.

Leaderless and Democratic

So, the mass socialist party must not be a vanguard party controlled by a leadership, but a democratic party controlled by its members; in fact there must be no leaders or leadership, just administrative bodies carrying out the democratically-arrived at decisions of a membership that wants and understands socialism. When there is a mass socialist party with aligned parties across the world, the revolution will be a more readily-achievable goal, and so the party should have practical proposals for how the means of production will become owned in common. The party in a pre-revolutionary climate, such as now, has to primarily work to attract support to grow the movement. It should be organised in a way which puts the principles of democracy, equality and co-operation into practice as far as possible. This demonstrates that people can work together in ways which go beyond what is demanded by capitalist organisations with their hierarchies, to get as close as we can now to unalienated labour. To this aim, the SPGB is organised through branches, which nominate delegates to various committees to carry out party work, with some roles and decisions agreed through majority vote of the membership as a whole. This framework isn’t intended as a blueprint for how organisations should be run in socialism, and it would also likely have to be adapted to suit the circumstances and size of a mass socialist party, but what would remain constant are the socialist values underpinning the organisation.’

https://prometheusjournal.org/2024/12/13/the-end-and-the-means/

‘When the brutal 50-year tyranny of the Assad dynasty collapsed last month, people danced in the streets in many parts of Syria as they contemplated an unprecedented new beginning. Joyous crowds looted the Presidential palace, while the titular head of the Ba’ath party dictatorship skulked off to Moscow.

The fall of the secular Arab nationalist dictatorship alters the balance of power between the various states in the region, with Turkey and the United States the winners and Iran and Russia the losers. The winners took quick advantage of the initial power vacuum. Turkey sent its proxies to attack the Kurdish nationalists who control a large part of Syria including the oilfields. Indeed, Turkey must have given the victorious Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamists the green light to march on Aleppo and then down to Damascus.

The United States benefits from a weakened Iran, the main threat to its current domination of the wider region and the oilfields and the trade routes out of it.

Israel, too, wasted no time in exploiting this tense, multiplayer Game of Thrones scenario, by bombing Syria’s navy to the bottom of the sea, as well as a host of other targets, and pressing forward in the Golan Heights. Their reasoning is obvious. One or other group is eventually going to take power in Syria. If it’s a group that hates Israel, they can hate Israel without missiles and a navy. In a world where relations between states is based on ‘might is right’, Israel wants another weak neighbour like Lebanon.

What was surprising was the rapidity with which the dictatorship collapsed. Its conscript army was reluctant to fight and the general population, suffering from increased economic hardship due to Western sanctions (the cruel way the West employs to undermine a dictatorship it doesn’t support) was ready to welcome a change of regime

HTS seems keen to solicit international recognition, which means making some concessions to capitalist liberal democracy, but it has been designated a terrorist organisation by the West, and there’s a $10m price on the head of its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, aka Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. Indeed this former al-Qaeda and ISIS fighter has publicly praised the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, and faced home-turf protests that his Sharia-law regime in the province of Idlib was as bad as Assad’s. But he has also faced protests by Islamic hardliners who think he’s not fundamentalist enough.

The political direction of travel is not obvious at the time of writing, and any spark could set off civil war. For the sake of the people of Syria, newly released from a tyranny that looked eternal, we can only hope not. As for the long-term future, it would seem almost churlish to point out that, if the country doesn’t go into meltdown, they’ll get the wage-slavery and the limited political ‘rights’ that workers have in many other capitalist countries, while a new privileged Syrian ruling class exploiting them emerges. That, unfortunately, is the best-case scenario, in the absence of an imminent global socialist revolution. The worst-case scenario doesn’t bear thinking about.’

 *LIFE AND TIMES OF THE SOCIALIST STANDARD*

*Speaker: Howard Moss*

https://zoom.us/j/7421974305

The below is from the Socialist Standard December 1965



‘Christmas, we shall be told again and again during the next few weeks, is for the children. There is, of course, another side to it, represented by the flood of gaudy rubbish which fills the shops, the big campaigns to sell it, and by the tinsel of nonsense with which the whole thing is embellished. This is not so romantic a vision as that of innocent, starry-eyed kiddies hanging their stockings by the chimney—and it suggests that, whatever enjoyment children may get out of it, Christmas is for a few other people as well.



As the City columns, the advertising agencies, and the trade statistics make clear, Christmas is that thing so beloved of a section of the capitalist class—a spending spree. Millions of people save up, perhaps for the entire year, for this one great splash-out. This is the time when savings vanish, bonuses are blued, hire purchase debts cheerfully taken on. These debts have partly replaced the old loan clubs, which used to have their big pay-out at Christmas. In fact, hire-purchase does no more than the clubs—it simply moves the payment date from one part of the year to another, but this is enough to make it one more piece of evidence for those who are trying to prove that we are all so much better off nowadays.



Christmas is responsible for an amazing expansion of the retail market, lasting for about a month at a time when trade would probably otherwise be slack. For example, the sales of one suburban branch of a famous retail chain bound up to around thirty thousand pounds on Saturdays during December; the manager can almost forecast what his sales figure will be for each weekend. These sales are in the established, non-seasonal goods such as clothes, which simply become more hectic during the Christmas rush. There are plenty of other examples, as people determinedly smoke more cigarettes, eat more food, and of course drink more alcohol during the space of a couple of days than they do in a normal week.



Apart from the established trades, there are the seasonal sales, with an appeal confined exclusively to the Christmas period. Christmas crackers, for instance, are being turned out all the year round; even the men who compose those dreadful jokes and mottoes are hard at it months in advance. The result of all this is that about one hundred million crackers are sold at Christmas, some of them abroad.



We must not forget Christmas cards. The first of these was sent in 1843; the idea did not catch on for about twenty years and since then the market has steadily expanded until now something over six hundred million cards, worth about 15 million, are sent each Christmas. This is good business for the firms which make the cards (one of whose executives said a little while ago “We are in the sentiment business”) and for the Post Office, who rake in something like £8 million in postage on the cards, not to mention the extra revenue on Christmas parcels, greetings telegrams, ‘phone calls and the rest.



It is anyone’s guess, how much of the spending at Christmas goes in a genuine effort to have, or to give someone else, a good time. A lot of the drinks, presents and smokes are sent as bribes (there is no other words for it) from the directors of one firm to those of another which, they hope, will buy their products. A host of calendars, diaries, packs of cards, are produced as advertising material. Some Christmas cards are sent out by firms as reminders that they are still in business—and magnificent pieces of work some of them are.



Apart from the business world, there is no doubt that a lot of money is spent at Christmas in an effort to impress other people. We have all seen—perhaps some of us have actually received—those Christmas cards which have so obviously been selected with the motive of convincing us that the senders are more wealthy and important than they actually are. We have all read the advertisements which say that no card is really gracious unless it has the senders’ name and address printed on the inside. It is an unpleasant fact that the acquisitive nature of capitalism gives strength to this sort of appeal; for those who fall for it, sending Christmas cards is a highly competitive business, in which a defeat has to smoulder for a whole year before the chance for revenge comes round again.



The fact is that Christmas is in some ways a time for people to show their less attractive side—and for the massed forces of commercialism to cash in on the situation, ruthlessly and to the full, with the only justification they need—in the end they have more profit than if they had not played up to peoples’ snobbery, their insecurity and their distorted conception of the world in which they struggle to live.



In other ways, too, commerce turns the screw at Christmas. A walk around any department store reveals an astounding variety of junk which is being sold at equally astounding prices. There are toys which are dangerous, or which will not last from Christmas to Boxing Day in the hands of any child. There are cakes of soap and bath cubes, stuck in a fancy box and covered in cellophane, selling for much more than their usual price. There is a bewildering mass of tinsel, plastic and coloured paper—and all the time there is the drive to sell, sell, sell for a Merry Christmas.



Yes, this is an enormous, briefly inflated, market; each year the note circulation leaps up to accommodate it. (Last year it increased from £2,583 million in the first week in November to £2,766 million in Christmas week.) The firms which hope to cash in on the boom lay their plans a long time ahead. From the summer months onwards, they are discussing and deciding on their advertising campaigns, their special wrappings and what they like to call their “presentation”. There is always the temptation for them to try to get in first, which they have to resist for fear of opening their campaign too early. But none of them can afford to leave it too late—they have such an awful lot to sell. So it is not uncommon for us to be able to buy Christmas decorations, wrappings, cards and so on in October; and before Guy Fawkes night there are not a few big stores with their Father Christmas, usually an unemployed stage extra, to induce people to buy by working on their children.



Many people complain that the Christmas sales campaign starts too early. But as the market is stimulated to grow, and as it grows, so will the effort to exploit it. This might mean an even longer sales drive in the future—wasn’t there a story about a business man who said that Christmas was good business as long as they kept religion out of it?



He must have been an ungrateful fellow; religion, after all, does him many a good turn. In any case, as we point out elsewhere in this issue, Christmas has nothing to do with Christianity; the Christians simply pinched it to suit their own purposes. What more natural, then, than that the capitalist social system, which is so faithfully supported by Christianity, should itself adopt Christianity’s most important festival for its own ends?



It was the Industrial Revolution which was responsible for reducing the old twelve days’ holiday at Christmas to a single day. The rise of capitalism meant that masses of people sold their working ability to the master class by time—and time spent on holidays was time not spent producing the masters profits in the factory or the mill or the mine. Capitalism, with the help of its religious lackeys, built up a massive condemnation of what it called idleness. And among other things it destroyed the ancient Twelve Days of Christmas.



More recently, capitalism has reduced the opposition to Christmas to a handful. Nobody now holds the opinion expressed in a Puritan pamphlet of 1656, that Christmas was “. . . the old Heathen’s Feasting Day . . . the Papists’ Massing Day, the Superstitious Man’s Idol Day . . . Satan’s That Adversary’s Working Day” but until fairly recently there was a solid, articulate opposition to it. This is now all but silent, as the festival has been blown up into a vast, commercialised orgy of selling and consumption, one of the many working class Festivals of Delusion.



The great Delusion of Christmas is that dormant within us there is the Christmas Spirit—a gentle compound of benevolence, co-operation and goodwill which is roused at this time of year by the appeal of religion. When we are possessed of the Spirit we are wise and generous and loving; if only (says the Delusion) we could keep it up all the year round the problems of the world would be solved. If we would only cast out the Scrooges among us (and we all have our own idea of who Scrooge may be) and live by the Christmas Spirit there will be no more poverty, or war, or oppression.



This is no joke; the Delusion is powerful. It brought both sides out of their trenches to fraternise in No Man’s Land in 1914 (officially, that was the last time they did it). It inspires countless maudlin speeches at office parties and family gatherings. It runs through the entire Queen’s Speech on Christmas Day. It is powerful—and it is dangerous.



For the Delusion fosters the idea that the troubles of capitalism are caused by anything but the essential nature of the system. It promotes the nonsense that the world today is a fearsome, disturbed place because people are bad and that if only people were better the world would be a better place. It encourages people to think in terms of good and bad spirit, when they should be asking themselves why they behave as they do, and why the world is as it is. And as a final irony, the Christmas Delusion even encourages some people to think that there is something inconsistent in the determined way that capitalism exploits Christmas for all it is worth.



To start at the right end of this problem, we should first of all realise that there is nothing essentially wrong (or right, for that matter) with most people. It is the conditions of living and working under capitalism which largely make them what they are. Capitalism is constantly working out ways of exploiting us more efficiently, which means more intensely. It is always pushing us that bit harder, crowding us in that much more, making us into that much more of a cut-throat in the competitive scramble for the better job, the bigger house, the easier money.



In these conditions, people live at an intense pressure. Events which in themselves are trivial—a telephone which rings, a child who behaves like a child—are an intolerable strain. It is only when we relax, when we put aside the worry of making ends meet, when we try to live like human beings, that we begin to get a better perspective on it all. Perhaps this is what a lot of people do at Christmas. Some of them, for a couple of days at any rate, actually succeed, and they put it all down to the Christmas Spirit.



The big laugh about this—if anyone can stand another joke at this time of year—is that if the working class really grasped the implications of this they would take a hard, sober look at capitalism and see it for the wretched way of living that it is. That old chap Scrooge had a word which aptly describes the delusions of capitalism, its cynicism and its hypocrisy. Humbug.’

Ivan

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/12/christmas-great-delusion-1965.html