So the egocentric opportunist George Galloway is back in parliament. Some say it was a protest against what is going on in Gaza. There may be something in that. Others see it as a rejection of the Westminster parties. One thing it wasn’t was the election of a Socialist MP.

He promised “secure jobs for all in decent conditions with living wages”, “decent, cheap secure housing for all”, “free and comprehensive health care with no waiting lists”, “universal access to a cheap or free fully integrated public transport system”. Like the Labour Party used to (a long time ago). Nice if you could get it but you can’t because the money-wages-profits system that is capitalism cannot be reformed to deliver all that.

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

This evening’s meeting (19.30)

*DID YOU SEE THE NEWS?* *(Zoom)*

 https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020s/2024/no-1435-march-2024/

 GEORGE GALLOWAY’S ‘WORKERS PARTY’

Continued from Part One

Like Bernstein, today’s labour and social democratic parties do not champion any meaningful alternative – in fact, they are complicit in the perpetuation of capitalism. As Bernstein’s contemporary, the socialist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) contested:

“…people who pronounce themselves in favour of the method of legislative reform in place of and in contradistinction to the conquest of political power and social revolution, do not really choose a more tranquil, calmer and slower road to the same goal, but a different goal.” Consequently, their goal is “not the realisation of Socialism, but the reform of capitalism.”

This does not mean we should not fight for change within the system – indeed we cannot suspend ourselves nor exist outside of it – but we must acknowledge that meaningful change can only be attained by transcending the capitalist system. Once this has been achieved and socialism established, humanity must then work to continually improve socialism so that it fulfils its basic mission of meeting the needs of all. Here, and only here, is where socialism truly becomes evolutionary.

Socialists can take some comfort from the fact that, notwithstanding the futility of social democratic attempts to reform the system, capitalism is by no means an eternal fact, nor inherent to human nature. Closer examination reveals that it is more accurately understood as a phase in human development. Throughout history, economic systems have undergone significant transformations, and capitalism is just one stage in this ongoing progression.

In ancient societies, such as those of hunter-gatherers, communal living and resource-sharing were prevalent. The concept of private property and individual ownership was not a dominant feature of these societies. As human communities transitioned to settled agriculture, a shift toward more structured forms of social organisation occurred. However, these early agrarian societies did not operate on capitalist principles; instead, they were characterised by feudalistic structures and localised economies. For instance, Luxemburg demonstrated that primitive communism existed in several societies, ranging from the Germanic tribes, the Inca empire, Algeria, India, and Russia. Collective land ownership endured for many centuries and only ceased with the advent of imperialism and capitalist exploitation.

The emergence of capitalism can be traced back to the late medieval and early modern periods in Europe. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment played crucial roles in shaping the intellectual landscape that paved the way for capitalist ideas. During this time, the rise of trade, exploration, and technological advancements created an environment conducive to the development of a market-based economy.

The enclosure movement in England during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries is a notable historical example. Land that was previously communally used for farming was enclosed and privatised, leading to the rise of individual landownership and the creation of a market for agricultural goods. This transition marked a departure from traditional agrarian practices and set the stage for the capitalist system.

The Industrial Revolution further accelerated the evolution toward capitalism. Technological innovations, such as the steam engine and mechanised production, revolutionised the way goods were produced and distributed. This shift from agrarian economies to industrialized ones resulted in the rise of factories, urbanisation, and a new class structure.

The advent of capitalism brought forth key principles, such as private ownership of the means of production, free-market competition, and profit motive. The transition from feudalism to capitalism was not without conflict, as evidenced by the social upheavals and labour movements of the 18th and 19th centuries. These movements sought to address the challenges posed by the industrialisation of society, including issues of worker exploitation and poor working conditions.

There is, therefore, hope that humanity can transcend capitalism. It requires a widespread global consciousness, an acceptance of the truth that the system we currently perpetuate is harsh and damaging to us all, and that reforming that system equates to nothing more than that perpetuation.

While capitalism has undoubtedly played a significant role in shaping modern economies, seeking to reform it or viewing it as a timeless characteristic of human nature disregards the system’s inclination to devour and oversimplifies the complexity of historical and cultural contexts. Indeed, to do so is short-sighted and demonstrates the dangers of forgetting the past. Human societies have demonstrated adaptability and a capacity for diverse economic systems throughout history, and while no thinking socialist can dispute the transformative impact of capitalism; the extent of technological advancement and human dominion over the environment, one would do well to remember that it does not symbolise the culmination of all conceivable endeavours to organise as a species. To rest on the laurels of capitalism is to commit the mistake of previous generations, specifically those who held up religion, imperialism, feudalism, and slavery as essential preconditions for civilisation. We must take what we have learned under capitalism and use it to build a better version of the world – one based on peace, justice, and equality. In short, a Socialist world.

John Elliston

Part One: https://soymb.com/2024/02/capitalism-and-fallacy-of-reform-part.html

Rochdale Cowboys

(Apologies to Mike Harding)

It’s not hard being a cowboy in Rochdale,

Despite what a song once suggested. Just

Look at those canvassing for the trust

Of voters, with policies bound to fail.

Labour have disowned their own candidate

For claiming the murderous Hamas attack

Israel green-lighted, so it could strike back,

Condemning Gaza to its dreadful state.

There’s an exMP who’s making a play

As representative of Old Labour,

Standing against the ‘woke’ present Labour

On behalf of UKIP, Reform UK.

With the Green off colour, the choice is sparse,

Voters might consider ending this farce.

D.A.

Recently, Sir Keir Starmer announced his ambition for a ‘patriotic economy’ through the championing of home ownership and the building of new model towns. Evidently, the Labour leader is attempting to harness the middle ground, by blending Thatcher and Attlee. Many recall the faux revolution of ‘right to buy’ which, forty years on, has spawned a social housing crisis. Throw in the legacy of the 1946 New Towns Act, which sought to construct model towns in the aftermath of the Second World War, and you have yet another social democratic fudge to reform capitalism.

Sir Keir is not alone in seeking to reinvent the wheel. Every Labour leader has bound themselves to the yoke of the system. Ramsay Macdonald all too willingly succumbed to the protracted economic crisis of the interwar years, content at playing establishment bank manager in a period of decline. The Attlee Government, despite the strides made in welfarism, struck the rocks, and yielded to the rules of capitalism, laying the course for twenty-five years of Butskellism. Harold Wilson had us believe that a new Britain could be forged in the white heat of technology, but this fire burned in the hall of capitalism, prostrate by markets and a depreciating pound. James Callaghan surrendered what vestiges of leftism remained, implementing the kind of monetarism Thatcher later claimed as her own. Need anything be said of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – the would-be heirs to the Iron Lady?

No, the British labour movement, like so many social democratic movements the world over, has always been a willing hostage to capitalism, engaging in a futile quest to reform it, rather than introduce socialism. In some respects, they cannot be blamed, for the boom-and-bust integral to the existence of capitalism has attracted many in vainglorious quests to improve it and acquire the eternal elixir of socioeconomic harmony. Many also point to the idea that capitalism has in fact undergone transformations as justification for reform, such as the shift from industrial capitalism to the information age. The rise of technology and globalisation has apparently altered the dynamics of production, trade, and employment. Some have also claimed the attainment of adaptation within capitalism – the Nordic model, exemplified by countries like Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, supposedly combines capitalist elements with a strong welfare state. This model allegedly seeks to prioritise social equality, education, and healthcare, challenging the notion that capitalism must follow a rigid, laissez-faire approach.

However, reformist approaches are an illusion and cannot ameliorate the structural antagonisms which provide the fundamental basis for capitalism. Even in the venerated Nordic economies high inflation and interest rates, youth unemployment and poverty persist. Finland is in recession while the Swedish economy is weakening. Norway, propped up by oil and gas exploitation faces fiscal challenges with high public spending. The message is clear: under capitalism, boom will always lead to bust.

The system requires inequality and the exploitation of workers, else there would be no profit or incentive to accumulate. Over the past hundred years, social democratic efforts to introduce welfarism and redistribution have failed to eradicate this inequality and exploitation. Today, the rich are richer and the poor poorer. The gap has widened, and reformism has served only to pacify the masses so that the top one per cent can acquire more.

Today, the poorest 50 per cent hold only 8 per cent of global wealth, while the richest 10 per cent earn over 50 per cent. The top 1 per cent alone owns 35 per cent of global wealth, takes 19 per cent of income, and emits 17 per cent of global carbon emissions.1 This has occurred despite the founding of welfare states in some countries, free healthcare, state education, social security, and the “redistribution” of capital.

It appears the capitalist system has assimilated social democracy and turned it into a weapon to perpetuate exploitation. Harold Macmillan once said of Britons in the 1950s that they had never had it so good – (hardly an accolade considering decades of economic instability and destructive war). In truth, any semblance of prosperity is nothing more than the offering of more crumbs off the capitalist plate. You may receive sustenance, but the people at the top still get a hearty meal. If anything is true of today it is that the rich have never had it so good.

Alas, social democrats have been hood-winked, in no small way thanks to the social democratic Marxist theorist Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932). In Evolutionary Socialism: A Criticism and Affirmation (1899) Bernstein did not believe in capitalism’s inevitable destruction; he accepted the strength of its capacity to adapt and advocated reform so that humanity could transition from capitalism to social democracy. He contended that as workers attained greater rights, their grievances would diminish, making revolution implausible. In this, he is perhaps accurate. The extension of rights and the offering of the ‘crumbs’ have pacified the masses and encouraged social democrats to continue a long the path of reformism. However, his call for reform contradicts his appraisal of capitalism’s adaptational strength. Everything promulgated within the system is consumed by the system. Nothing changes,

John Elliston

Continued at Part Two

Britain is in the grip of a mental health crisis, research says, with 34% of Gen Z workers reporting depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder, up from 24% in 2000. Life is depressing for exploited workers in capitalism anyway, but the prospects for today’s Zoomers look arguably worse than they were for the Boomer generation, or even early Millennials, with gig economy jobs, huge college debts and unaffordable housing, plus ongoing wars and possible climate disaster.

Predictably there are calls for the government to do something. But governments administer the very system which causes these mental health crises. Doom-laden Gen Z workers need to organise a democratic revolution to overthrow capitalism, more than they need pills and therapy sessions.

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

From the Office of National Statistics:

‘The total fertility rate (TFR) decreased to 1.49 children per woman in 2022 from 1.55 in 2021; the TFR has been decreasing since 2010.

Fertility rates decreased overall and in each age group, except for women aged under 20 years where the fertility rate increased.

There were 605,479 live births in England and Wales in 2022, a 3.1% decrease from 624,828 in 2021 and the lowest number since 2002; the number remains in line with the recent trend of decreasing live births seen before the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.’

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthsummarytablesenglandandwales/2022refreshedpopulations

From Breibart:

‘Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) found that the total fertility rate fell to 1.49 children per woman in 2022, far below the rate of 2.1 needed to maintain population levels and the lowest since records began in 1939.

According to the statistics there were 605,479 live births recorded in 2022, a 3.1 per cent decline over the previous year and also the lowest overall figure since 2002.

The data also showed that the rate of women having children was highest between the ages of 30 to 34, compared to 25 to 29 just twenty years ago, suggesting that British women are delaying having children.

Commenting on the birthrate decline, chief executive of Pregnant Then Screwed, Joeli Brearley told The Guardian: “It is no surprise to us that fertility rates have hit the floor. Procreation has become a luxury item in the UK. Childcare costs are excruciating, and that’s if you can secure a place.

“Our research found that almost half of parents have been plunged into debt or had to use savings just to pay their childcare bill,” she said.

https://soymb.com/2024/02/wont-anyone-think-of-children-part-one.html

Speaking to the globalist Financial Times newspaper, James Pomeroy, an economist at the HSBC bank said that without mass migration, the birthrate decline would result in the British population falling by 25 to 30 per cent over the next generation. He claimed that a declining native population either needs “more immigration, higher taxes, worse public services or a higher retirement age”.

[There’s a far better solution. Do HSBC employed or any other economists know about Socialism?]

However, Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson of the Women’s Budget Group said that the native birth rate was likely declining due to economic factors, such as the price of childcare but also the soaring price of housing in the UK.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/02/24/birthrate-falls-to-record-low-in-england-and-wales/

From the Socialist Standard September 2020

‘For centuries, women have been denied the opportunities for personal advancement in the name of religion and tradition. Religious and cultural institutions where patriarchal attitudes were legitimised have had a deep effect on the role and status of women. Yet it is now women who are the key drivers in defusing what was once popularly called the ‘population bomb’. Everything has changed so much that choosing to have no children, or just give birth to one child, is for women just as convenient as choosing to bear two or three.



Globally, the fertility rate – the average number of children a woman gives birth to — is falling below the replacement level and this means nearly every country could have shrinking populations by the end of the century, based on the expectation that women will have fewer children. This does not mean the number of people living in these countries is falling, at least not immediately, as the size of a population is a mix of the fertility rate, death rate and migration. It can be a generation before changes in fertility rate take hold. Although fertility rates continue to fall the world population will continue to rise because the fall in fertility rates takes a while to show up, a phenomenon known as population momentum.



Falling fertility rates go hand-in-hand with better education and more career openings for women and the access to contraception and abortion. When more infants survive, fertility goes down and population growth draws to an end.



The more secure and prosperous people become, the lower will be their family sizes.



According to Wolfgang Lutz, of the Vienna University of Economics and Business, one reason for the fertility decline is women’s education:

‘The brain is the most important reproductive organ,’ he explains. Once a woman receives enough information and autonomy to make an informed and self-directed choice about when to have children and how many to have, she immediately has fewer of them and has them later.

Paid to reproduce

Some countries are so concerned about their shrinking populations and fear of the alternative – a policy of immigration – has led nationalist and xenophobic leaders to introduce policies that could only be described as a return back to an earlier time when women were viewed as baby-producing machines. Across Europe, governments have introduced benefits aimed at stimulating population growth, implementing baby bonuses for each new child and promoting ‘traditional family values’.



Victor Orban of Hungary is heavily investing in such things as cash loans to young married couples. Each time a child is born, payments are deferred. If the couple have three children within the requisite time frame, the loan is completely written off, otherwise they have to pay it back. Government IVF clinics will offer free treatment for all women who want them (just as long as they are under 40 and not lesbians). In Poland, the ruling Law and Justice Party introduced the 500+ policy in 2016, under which mothers received 500 złoty (£99) per child per month from the second child onwards, later expanded to include all children. Russia launched a one-off payment of £5,800 to families with two or more children, with Putin explaining that ‘Russia’s fate and its historic prospects depend on how many of us there are, it depends on how many children are born in Russian families.’



Sweden is one country that used a package of policies including childcare, flexible working conditions and generous maternity and paternity leave packages to reverse its population decline. But the increase to the fertility rate was marginal – just 0.2 children per woman.



As Wolfgang Lutz points out, ‘Once a woman is socialised to have an education and a career, she is socialised to have a smaller family. There’s no going back.’



Fertility rates

Just as the Catholic Church’s anti-contraceptive dogma was blamed for rises in population only to be punctured by women defying their priests, the argument switched to the Muslims, with its emphasis on strict traditional hierarchal gender roles, and it would be they who would go against the trend of smaller families. But then fertility rates in majority-Muslim countries such as Iran, Bangladesh and Indonesia fell, as well.



Now the blame for over-population has shifted to sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting that African high fertility rates with four or more births per woman will not buck the trend and cause over-population. But even here, there are signs of change in a growing number of countries.



Countries such as Nigeria which are struggling to make progress to provide education and employment opportunities and provide quality healthcare should be seen as the last hold-outs against the global triumph of small families.



International agencies found that over 20 percent of women in this region of Africa want to avoid a pregnancy but have their needs unmet by any family planning outreach. It results in almost 20 million — or 38 percent — of the region’s pregnancies each year being unintended. The World Health Organization estimates that globally 270 million women who want contraceptives have no access to them.



Practices such as early marriage, which is associated with an early start to child bearing, are common. In sub-Saharan Africa, approximately 38 percent of women are married by the age of 18. In Niger, three-quarters of girls marry by the age of 18. Child marriage denies girls an education which leads to a lack of ability to find work in later life and so handicaps girls’ decision-making power and their right to choose.



The gap between desired and actual family size suggests that women are not fully able to realise their reproductive rights. But choice can become a reality everywhere, including the African continent. In the past, women in Botswana would have seven children on average. Now they have fewer than three. It was accomplished by enabling women to control their fertility and reducing child mortality rates – moves that almost inevitably lead to them having fewer babies. When more girls attend school, a country’s adolescent fertility rates dip, more women wait until adulthood to have children and are armed with much more sophisticated knowledge-tools to make better decisions for their health and future offspring.



It took the UK 95 years to drop from a fertility rate of six children per woman to three, but it took Botswana only 24 years, Bangladesh 20 and Iran only ten years.



Overpopulationism

Blaming our environmental problems on population pressures is all too common among eco-activists and it has resulted in a sordid history of top-down population control programmes violating women’s reproductive rights with such measures as uninformed sterilisations. All women should have full access to contraception and safe abortion as part of overall health services. Family planning, however, is not the answer to our environmental problems. Babies and yet-to-be-born babies are not responsible for today’s environmental problems. Reducing population numbers will not stop climate change, nor rising sea-levels. Many environmentalists will cite the fallacious carrying capacity in their argument that we have too many people on the planet but the over-emphasis on individual consumption distracts from industrial and military consumption. Capitalism is the reason for ever-increasing resource depletion, CO2 emissions, waste and pollution. It should be held accountable, not the innocent victims of global warming.



More people bring more ingenuity, more talent and more innovation into the world. Every human born is not just an extra mouth to feed but also another pair of helping hands and an additional thoughtful brain. Yet we are being told by environmentalists that it means less for each of us. We get informed that we will need to radically reduce humanity’s carbon footprint on the environment by reducing our numbers, as well as changes to our lifestyles and that until the world’s population stops growing there will be an urgent need to squeeze people’s consumption.



Does pushing population growth down actually put the environment on a more sustainable path? And if so, what measures would the policy makers have to apply to actually bring about such a change?



The answer to environmentalists attracted to the over-populationist argument is that the birth-control campaigns are, in the end, just one more patriarchal attempt to control women’s reproduction, and that improving child survival rates, giving girls access to education, and empowering women to control their own reproduction (and that means allowing women themselves to make their decisions) are what will sustainably and non-coercively lower birth rates. Family planning and reducing family sizes, however, is not the answer to our environmental problems.



Environmentalist focus on population is mistaken and can lead to equally misguided action. Over-population is a thinly veiled misogynist racist myth that is accepted by both right-wingers and progressives alike. People who claim to be against genocide and eugenics push this myth with no sense of the irony. Those accepting the over-population argument obscure the more immediate causes of suffering under capitalism. Because of its short-termism, its unrelenting drive for profits, and international conflict, capitalism expresses a tendency toward planetary crisis, regardless of the total number of humans living on earth. The amount of waste and pollution under capitalism is enormous with its preponderance of the production and distribution of useless products, the wasted labour and the creation of mounting piles of garbage as a result of planned obsolescence and single-use products.



The concentration on so-called over-population confuses symptoms with causes, validating apologists for the system and perpetuating Malthusian anti-poor arguments. The central concept in the ideological armoury of capitalism is the idea that there isn’t enough to go around. Hence, we are confronted with the idea that there isn’t enough food, aren’t enough jobs, not enough housing, or we haven’t enough classrooms or hospital beds because there is a certain fixed amount of all these things. People who claim that population growth is the issue are shifting the blame from the rich to the poor.



Those who believe reducing the population to be an answer to global warming say very little about which policies would spare the planet many more billions of people, particularly when the existing trend is already towards smaller family sizes. We should forget all about prioritising population control and instead help each and every woman bear a child in good health whenever she chooses to have a baby. It might sound counter-intuitive for stabilising and lowering the population but giving women control over their lives and of their own bodies controls population growth. We need no more misanthropic pronouncements about too many people or that humanity has somehow exceeded the planet’s carrying capacity or that humanity is a parasitic species on the Planet Earth’s ecology.



Giving women control of both their lives and their bodies is what will control population growth. The best family planning and contraceptive is the empowerment of women.’

ALJO

‘A man has been hospitalized in critical condition after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC on 25 February, the city’s emergency services said.

Vito Maggiolo, a spokesman for DC Fire and EMS, told reporters that the man has been hospitalized with “critical life-threatening injuries.”

The man is reported to have said, “I will no longer be complicit in genocide” and shouted “Free Palestine.”’

It is thought that the twenty five year old man was a serving member of the American military.

He is now believed to have died from his injuries.

Self immolation for religious or political reasons has a long history.

Several Buddhist monks carried out this act in South Vietnam in the early nineteen sixties in protest against repression of majority Buddhists by a minority Catholic government.

As an act of protest it is an extreme one. Capitalism, historically, and at the present time, has engaged in extreme acts of violence against individuals and the masses.

We cannot know what compels an individual to commit such a thing. If the driving force for doing so emanates from actions by, and on behalf of capitalism, then the solution is to collectively fight for the abolution of capitalism and for its replacement by a social system where such deeds will never more be contemplated by anyone.

The SPGB’s response to a letter, the Socialist Standard, June 1970

‘… he more or less argues that any atrocities committed by the Viet-cong are justified because it was the Americans who started the war. This is of course a very old argument — it was used to excuse the obliteration of Hiroshima and in fact has always been used by capitalist states as part of their war propaganda.

It is true that the Americans interfered in Vietnam — in the same way as the North Koreans did in the South, and as the Russians did in Czechoslovakia, Finland and so on. In each case the inference has been justified by counter-accusations of threats from the subject of the interference. And so we go on — all the time avoiding the real issue, which is why wars, invasions and international interference take place. Why are they sometimes (not always) resisted? What interests are at stake? In Vietnam, we are seeing a struggle between rival capitalist groups for the control of an area of great economic and strategic importance. The interests in the war are those of capitalism; the people on both sides stand to gain nothing from the war and their interests are in keeping out of it as far as they can. Whoever wins, the people of Vietnam and of America will lose.

(He) accuses us of being deluded fools, thinks the North Vietnamese are fighting for freedom and justice. Is it part of freedom and justice to commit mass murder among the Vietnamese people? In war no one side is alone responsible for all the atrocities and this is widely accepted, with only a few people closing their eyes to the evidence.’

Editorial Committee

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2020/06/letters-what-about-vietnam-1970.html

THE SOCIALIST PARTY AGAINST ALL CAPITALIST WAR