Whilst the world is focused on the horrors in the major conflagrations presently taking place in the world which are affecting thousands of innocent children and adults, there are other ongoing frightful events taking place.

‘The armed conflict in Sudan between the military and rival paramilitary groups has killed up to 9,000 people and forced over 5.6 million others to flee their homes in the past six months, the UN said on 15 October.

“Half a year of war has plunged Sudan into one of the worst humanitarian nightmares in recent history,” Martin Griffiths, UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said in a statement, adding that “25 million people are in need of aid.”

Intense fighting broke out in the African nation’s capital, Khartoum, on April 15 after months of tensions between Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) chief General Abdel-Fattah Burhan and the commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

The fighting has spread to other parts of the Sahel nation, including the already conflict-torn western Darfur region, where Governor Khamis Abdullah Abakar was assassinated in mid-June for allegedly accusing the RSF of genocide.

According to Griffiths, “civilians – particularly in Khartoum, Darfur, and Kordofan – have known no respite from bloodshed and terror for the past six months.”

“Horrific reports of rape and sexual violence continue to emerge, and clashes are increasingly taking place along ethnic lines, particularly in Darfur,” the UN humanitarian chief added.

Last month, the UN and the World Health Organization said that repeated attacks on hospitals and medical teams in Sudan had worsened disease outbreaks and fatalities.

They claimed that between mid-May and September, more than 1,200 children under the age of five died in refugee camps in Sudan’s White Nile state as a result of a lethal combination of a suspected measles outbreak and severe malnutrition. Health facilities have been overwhelmed due to a lack of staff, life-saving medicines, and critical equipment, the UN and WHO added.

On Sunday, Griffiths said at least 45 aid workers had been killed or detained since the conflict began, and that “almost all of them are national staff.”

The UN has urged Sudan’s warring factions to comply with international humanitarian law and to protect civilians, allow aid, and recommit to dialogue to end the conflict.

In August, RSF chief Dagalo expressed a desire to reach a long-term ceasefire agreement with Burhan as part of a strategy to end the conflict and build a “new Sudan.” The RSF proposal was rejected by the army chief, who stated that he would not “make deals with traitors.”’

Also see article in the Guardian 3 October.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/oct/03/sudan-conflict-like-planning-for-the-apocalypse-say-aid-workers

Is anyone seriously giving any thought to the question, won’t someone think of the children? Children all across the world are increasingly victims of conflicts and the capitalist system. How much longer are we all prepared to let that continue?

As the writer of the Socialist Standard article (below) articulates, this is insanity and ‘The real trouble for the people of the Sudan is the profit system, and the only future which can hold anything worth while for them—and for everyone else—is Socialism all over the world.’’

Children’s deaths in the Sudan

‘More than 1,200 children under the age of five died in refugee camps in war-torn Sudan between mid-May and September as a result of a lethal combination of a suspected measles outbreak and severe malnutrition, the United Nations and the World Health Organization have said.

The deaths occurred in Sudan’s White Nile state, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and WHO said in a joint statement reiterating their concern about the “worsening” health situation in the African country as a result of fighting between rival army groups since April.

Over 3,100 suspected cases of measles and high malnutrition, as well as more than 500 suspected cases of cholera, have been reported in other parts of the country, according to the UNHCR teams.

Health facilities are overwhelmed because of shortages of staff, life-saving medicines, and critical equipment, the organizations said, adding that repeated attacks on hospitals and medical teams have exacerbated service delivery challenges, worsening disease outbreaks and fatalities.

“…dozens of children are dying every day – a result of this devastating conflict and a lack of global attention. We can prevent more deaths, but need money for the response, access to those in need, and above all, an end to the fighting,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said local health workers, with assistance from the WHO and its partners, are making every effort under “very difficult conditions” to prevent more fatalities and the escalation of outbreaks.

“They desperately need the support of the international community to prevent further deaths and the spread of outbreaks. We call on donors to be generous and on the warring parties to protect health workers and access to health for all those who need it,” Tedros insisted.

The conflict that erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on April 15 has killed more than 7,000 people, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

Last month, (August) aid agency Save the Children reported that at least 498 children in the North African country, including two dozen babies at a state orphanage, had died as a result of food shortages and the closure of nutrition centres caused by fighting.

Speaking to reporters in Geneva on Tuesday, the UN children’s agency (UNICEF) spokesman James Elder estimated that thousands of newborns will die across the war-torn country by the end of the year.

“Every month 55,000 children require treatment for the most lethal form of malnutrition, and yet in Khartoum less than one in 50 nutrition centres is functional,” Elder was quoted by AFP as saying.’

The Future of the Sudan

‘Commentary on the recent coup d’état in the Sudan has been curiously limited. It is true that the seizure of power in mid-November by a military council was accomplished in unspectacular bloodless fashion; nevertheless, the overthrow of a government in so close proximity to the centre of recent world troubles ought, one thinks, to have made bigger news. Even the serious informational papers had not much to say. The Observer provided only 26 column-inches about it in two issues and the Manchester Guardian, though it gave most of all, did so largely in reference to the northern cotton market.

The reason is not hard to see. Events are quickly told, but the commentary on them must depend chiefly on their consequences—and the consequences of the Sudan happening are not yet apparent. The new government is politically unrevealed so far, and what fresh relationship may arise between the Sudan and the western world is still unknown. General Abboud may take the stage as a second Nasser to be hissed for a foxy schemer from the galleries of the west, or contrariwise as the golden-haired lad bearing freedom’s banner. For that, we must wait and see.

What is much more to the point is to ask what has happened and why. Briefly to go over recent events, the coup was announced on November 17th. The coalition government of Abdullah Khalil was known to be on its way out. Its two factors, the People’s Democratic Party and the Umma party, were in disagreement over the Sudan’s relations with Egypt: mainly, it is said, over fresh Egyptian plans for the Aswan High Dam made in the light of the proferred Russian loan. The new régime, in which General Abboud holds supreme power, announced itself as working “in the interest of no party or group” but aiming at “the elimination of incompetence and corruption among politicians in general,” with a hint about knowing the way to good terms with Egypt (Manchester Guardian, 18th November, 1958).

This has come in the face not only of Egyptian pressure, however, but also of economic troubles. The Sudan is a cotton-producing country. Eighty per cent of its exports are of cotton (largely to Lancashire), and the present condition of the world’s cotton markets has meant a huge unsaleable surplus, stated by the Observer correspondent in Khartoum to include 48.000 tons left over from 1957. Under the Anglo-Egyptian regime big sums were invested in irrigation projects and plans for government-assisted peasant production to develop the cotton yield, so that the Sudan is dependent always on world prices for its staple crop. Before the war the Sudanese people were considered better-off than the natives of most other colonized parts of Africa; now the country’s economy is in a critical phase without much prospect of improvement.

The growth and the varied outlooks of the Sudanese political parties have come partly through economic development and partly from the patterns set by the fifty-eight years of joint British and Egyptian rule which ended in 1956. The history of this companionate rule is in fact a series of quarrels over who should really rule a country which bordered the Suez canal and enclosed the upper Nile. The existence of pro-British and pro-Egyptian parties comes from this period, when each of the dual rulers tried to create its own body of support in the Sudan. The Umma is descended from the Mahdi’s followers who drove out Turco-Egyptian rule and is thus traditionally anti-Egyptian; the P.D.P., on the other hand, is an offshoot of the National Unity Party which has always seen advantage in alliance with Egypt.

As in all other colonial countries, a powerful vein of nationalism appeared with the vista of economic independence that the development schemes afforded. (It is an irony of imperialism that the leaders of nationalist movements are produced by the imperialists’ own needs for officials, technical assistants and the rest of the new “middle classes” which this stage of economic progress must turn out.) All the Sudanese parties, including the “Socialist” National Unity Party and the Anti-Imperialist Front (the Communists) are shot through with this strong desire for “national independence,” and the new military government lost no time in stating that it did not differ from them. The day after assuming power. General Abboud said his regime would “accept anything it considered in the interests of the country, but would reject anything which might harm its independence and sovereignty.”

The truth is, however, that the Sudan cannot be independent except in the nominal sense of not being any other nation’s colony. The change which has just taken place was forced by external conditions and happenings, and the policies of the Abboud government—even the vague ones which were immediately announced—are bound to be determined almost wholly from outside. The resuscitation of the limping Sudanese economy depends on, more than anything else at the present time, the government’s negotiations with Egypt and (a not-unconnected matter) its success in playing-off America and Russia to attract loans from either or both. On November 30th the Foreign Minister announced that “foreign capital without strings would be welcomed.” and that his government had already taken 15 million dollars’ worth of foreign exchange from America (Manchester Guardian, 1st December. 1958).

The outstanding questions between Egypt and the Sudan are the Aswan Dam project and the frontiers. To the Egyptian government the Dam, with its promise of irrigation and electric power, is vital for maintaining the economy (with its already desperate population problem) and making the economy maintain the army. Now, with the promise of Russian aid. it appears within reach, but there must first be agreement with the government of Sudan. From Egypt’s point of view a compliant Sudan would be the answer; Mr. Khalil, indeed, alleged in London last September that there were forces working to this end within the Sudanese government. For the Sudan, on the other hand, agreement can only mean a share in the benefits of the Dam.

What of the Sudanese people? Here, when one asks this question, stands forth a remarkable example of the stupidity and cruelty of commercialism and nationalism. For the Sudanese people are desperately, pitifully poor. In nearly three years of “independence” they have been governed by the National Unity “Socialists,” a coalition, and now the military—and none has made a scrap of difference to their poverty. It is worth pointing out that the Egyptian people have had the same experience: they were poverty-stricken under fat Farouk, and are equally so under Nasser. What have the political pretensions of their government done for them?

Assuming, however, that the building of the new High Dam would lighten these peoples’ burdens, the approaches to it have been made entirely in terms of not those but the rulers’ interests. First, there has to be money—obvious enough, but in itself a condemnation of the entire modern world where the need is pressing, the materials and labour plentiful, yet the fulfilment must wait on the djinn of this idiotic Aladdin’s lamp. When it was offered to Egypt by the West, the offer was based and then foundered on considerations of political advantage in the cold war. Now it appears again from Russia, with similar considerations in view (while a team of “American aid experts ” descends on the Sudan).

Who, then, cares about the Sudanese people? It is not that this or the preceding governments, or the government of Egypt, is deliberately negligent; on the contrary, it would be to the rulers’ benefit to have the support of prosperous and satisfied populations. The Sudan, however, has been pulled into the whirlpool of Capitalist world politics. From a colony in the once-majestic scheme of British imperialism, developed to make its cotton contribution to British trade, it has become another nation forced to struggle for advantage in the pitiless dogfights of world markets and big politics.

The future of the Sudan is bound up in the future of the world. Economic development and political contact have opened the windows for this country on the amenities of modern civilization, hence the nationalism, the reformist politics, and the anxiety to benefit by “getting in” on the bigger powers’ calculated generosity. Ideally, the Sudanese people stand to gain in every way from contact and interchange—in a word, “progress.” But modern civilization is far from ideal. Whatever progress is made will be directed at furthering only the interests of the property-owners of the Sudan: the important thing to recognize about the Abboud regime is that, whatever is said about ending corruption and the rest, this is its prime aim. However good a proportion of the High Dam potentialities is obtained for the Sudan, the sad fact is that the Dam is really wanted as a source of power and profits for the commercial class.

There is no sanity in this. It is not only in the Sudan, but everywhere; this small flare-up illumines a little more of what is going on all over the world. Nationalism and the political game are impediments to genuine productive development, standing in the way of what could be done by man for man—but they are parts of the superstructure of Capitalist society, which limits human activity to what will yield the best profits. The real trouble for the people of the Sudan is the profit system, and the only future which can hold anything worth while for them—and for everyone else—is Socialism all over the world.’

Robert Barltrop

From the Socialist Standard January 1959

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2019/04/blog-post_36.html

By Any Means

 

Atrocity can be excusable,

Once it’s justified by necessity

It seems. The bombardment of a city,

Or a hospital being hospitable

To wounded, injured and maimed refugees.

Shooting the young at a pop festival,

Cutting power and water to instil

Panic and despair, unleashing disease.

The blame lies squarely with the others side,

Always. All-out assault is an advance,

Not an attack, an act of resistance,

To defend property and national pride.

And there are benefits to martial harms,

Great profits from manufacturing arms.

 

D. A.

 

In 1961 the American President Dwight Eisenhower in a speech at the end of his presidency gave a short speech at which he warned against the “military-industrial complex.”

‘As President of the United States for two terms, Eisenhower had slowed the push for increased defence spending despite pressure to build more military equipment during the Cold War’s arms race. Nonetheless, the American military services and the defence industry had expanded a great deal in the 1950s. Eisenhower thought this growth was needed to counter the Soviet Union, but it confounded him. Though he did not say so explicitly, his standing as a military leader helped give him the credibility to stand up to the pressures of this new, powerful interest group. He eventually described it as a ‘necessary evil.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be might, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. . . . American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defence; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. . . . This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.’

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address

In an example of how the more things change the more they stay the same the under Capitalism the American establishment is now boasting/ threatening that it can and will support and increase the likelihood of the conflagrations taking place in the world at present into something of even more danger to the planet and to everyone on it.

‘US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said on Monday that Washington can “certainly” afford to support wars on two separate fronts, saying that its coffers are in good shape to continue backing US interests overseas in its support for Ukraine and amid ongoing tensions in the Middle East.

“America can certainly afford to stand with Israel and to support Israel’s military needs and we also can and must support Ukraine in its struggle against Russia,” Yellen said in a Monday interview with UK broadcaster Sky News in advance of a meeting with Eurogroup finance ministers in Luxembourg.

Yellen added that the United States’ financial outlook is sufficient to back its allies abroad. However, she warned that the potential economic ramifications of a larger conflict in the Middle East remains unknown, particularly amid an already volatile global oil and natural gas market that has contributed to a cost-of-living crisis in several Western economies in the past year.

A former chair of the US National Reserve, Yellen also noted that inflation is easing but called on Republicans to expedite attempts to appoint a new House Speaker to ensure that financial aid can flow overseas. California Republican Kevin McCarthy was removed from the position earlier this month, leading to concerns of a possible economic and legislative logjam in Washington.

“We do need to come up with funds, both for Israel and for Ukraine,” Yellen said, adding that this remains a “priority” of Biden’s administration. “It’s really up to the House to find, seat a speaker and to put us in a position where legislation can be passed.”

Yellen’s comments follow her appearance last week at an IMF/World Bank conference in Morocco during which economic leaders discussed the possible fallout of a deepening crisis between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

To date, the United States has already approved at least $113 billion in aid to Ukraine, according to recent calculations from the US State Department Office of Inspector General. However, CNN reported last week that the US military has called on defence producers to ramp up production to make up for shortfalls in stockpiles due to arms being transferred to Ukraine, in order to ensure it can supply munitions to Israel.’ (Our emphasis).

Amid renewed focus on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has warned in recent days that “international attention” should not be shifted away from his country.

Polling conducted in August, also by CNN, reflected a swelling discontent in the US over the authorization of additional funding to support Kiev in its conflict with Moscow – with 55% of respondents calling for Ukraine spending to be withdrawn.’

The USA National Debt now stands at thirty three trillion plus dollars and rising. One hundred and twenty four per cent of GDP.

 Friday’s news discussion on Zoom has been uploaded to the audio section –

‘Breaking news: the war in Gaza’ – hosted by Paddy Shannon.

 

Israel-Gaza War

Some say that the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East would not have happened if the State of Israel had never been founded. But it was and it exists. And the same kind of thing could be said about countless conflict situations in the world today. So we must look at the situation as it is and, if we do, we find that, as in other such conflicts, the underlying cause is not undying enmity between two groups – Jews and Arabs – but a fight between different capitalist factions, via their respective governments, over land, resources and strategic routes. In Gaza, the Hamas organisation, who are both anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic, came to power via elections in 2007 with the stated aim ‘to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine’. But that was the end of any form of democracy there and, in their time in office, they have crushed multiple protests against them by rivals, expelling their officials to make sure there would never be another round of elections and killing dozens of their own people, many of them civilians. During that time the people of Gaza have been plunged increasingly into poverty with, for example, 40 per cent unemployment, with their leaders enriching themselves assisted by backers from other Arab countries and enjoying multi-million-dollar land deals, luxury villas and black market fuel from Egypt.

The continuing oppression by Israel (a country by the way where 22% of its own households live in poverty) has also of course been a significant factor, as its government has sought to facilitate the enrichment of its own capitalist class by grabbing land and keeping a tight lid on protest. Now the lid has come off – and in the most horrific way.

There is no excuse for the horrors unleashed on innocent people by Hamas nor for Israel’s savage retaliation, killing hundreds, depriving a land of food, water and power and threatening to flatten its infrastructure regardless of what may happen to the inhabitants in the short and long term. Of course Israel’s government will support its own capitalist class to the hilt – after all that is its role. And it is all part of a play book, which we see played out time and time again as governments representing their capitalist classes fail to resolve conflicts by diplomacy and resort to horrifying violence. We can only repeat the same thing we have always said when this has happened – that workers (in this case Arab and Israeli ones) have no interest in fighting one another but have a common interest in uniting with other workers to abolish capitalism and establish socialism.

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

 

The Australia Institute published an interesting report in April. 

Titled, Inequality on Steroids: The Distribution of Economic Growth in Australia, the report analysed the share of wealth that accrued to Australians between the period of 1950 and 2019.

In the first ten year period four per cent of the gains went to the top ten per cent.

In the next twenty year period sixteen per cent of the gains went to the top ten per cent.

In the next eight year period forty eight per cent of gains went to the top ten per cent.

In the next seventeen year period thirty six per cent of gains went to the top ten per cent.

In the next ten years up until 2019 ninety three per cent, that’s ninety three per cent of gains went to the top ten per cent.

https://australiainstitute.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Inequality-on-Steroids-Who-Benefits-From-Economic-Growth-in-Australia-WEB511-copy.pdf

From the Socialist Standard June 1992

The Rich get Richer

One further aspect needs to be dealt with in this the on the concentration of wealth ownership in Britain, and that is the question of what happens over time. Do the richer get richer?

From the point of view of economic theory, this is what you would expect to happen. Capitalism is based on the concentration into the hands of a tiny minority of the population of the ownership of the means of production. These function as capital for them in the sense of providing them with an unearned income. The source of this unearned income that accrues to capital is the labour of those who operate the means of production and actually produce wealth.

Ownership of capital, in other words, confers the right to appropriate a part of the new wealth that is being produced every day. Most of this new wealth—around 80 percent in fact—is used as means of consumption, by workers from their wages and salaries, by capitalists from their rent, interest and dividends, and by the state from the taxes it levies. The rest, under the spur of competition between capitalist firms to maximise profits, is accumulated as means of production, as further capital to yield an unearned income for their owners. This accumulation of capital out of profits produced by those who operate the means of production is what capitalism is all about. Capitalism is an economic system under which means of production are accumulated in the form of profit-yielding capital.

In concrete terms what this means is that the stock both of physical means of production (factories, machinery, plant, materials, etc) and of its monetary form, capital, grows over time. This is by no means a steady process—it is halted and even reversed from time to time, as in wars (when wealth is physically destroyed) and in slumps (when the same thing happens and when the value of the rest falls)—but the long term trend is upward. This must mean that in the long run those who own the means of production—the rich—get to own more means of production, more capital, i. e. get richer.

Changing estimates

So much for the theory, but is it confirmed by the facts? For all but the recent past the facts are not easy to come by. In Britain they nearly all come from the statistics about estates left in wills which the Inland Revenue has been collecting since death duties were introduced in 1894. Until 1960 it was left to individual academics to convert these into figures for the ownership of wealth by the living. They often used different methods, which meant that their estimates were not always comparable, but there was broad agreement that until the Second World War the top 1 percent owned about 60 percent and the top 10 percent about 90 percent of personal wealth, as a study quoted by the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth in its first report in 1975 showed (Table 1).

This slow long-term fall in the percentage shares of the top groups should not be equated with a fall in the amount of wealth they owned, but rather, as we shall see, with a slower rate of increase in their wealth than that of other groups.

From 1960 the Inland Revenue began producing its own yearly estimates. According to these, between 1960 and 1975 the share of the top 1 percent declined from 38 percent to 23 percent, that of the top 5 percent from 64 percent to 47 percent and that of the top 10 percent from 77 percent to 62 percent.

These figures were challenged by those who argued that they underestimated the concentration of wealth ownership. The critics correctly pointed out that the figures, being based on wealth declared to the Inland Revenue for death duty purposes, inevitably left out the wealth of the rich that was placed in discretionary trusts and other such devices or given to relatives before death precisely to avoid paying death duties. Defenders of capitalism, on the other hand, argued that the figures overestimated the degree of inequality as they did not take into account the wealth owned by the 60 percent or so of the population whose estates did not have to be declared to the Inland Revenue because they were too small. Individually the amounts were small but, in view of the millions of individuals involved, when added together made up a significant amount.

The Labour government that came into office in 1974 set up a Royal Commission, in the time honoured way, to bury its promises “to launch a fundamental attack on the principle of the hereditary transmission of great wealth, with its associated power and privilege” and “to bring about a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families”. (Did the Labour Party once really talk like this?). This recommended that both types of non-included wealth should be taken into account, and the Inland Revenue now produces each year adjusted figures which do this. This new series of statistics began in 1976 and in fact shows that the distribution of wealth has changed very little since then (Table 2).

So the change between 1975, when the top 10 percent were said to own 62 percent, and 1976, when they were said to own 50 percent, resulted purely from a change in the way the statistics were calculated. Calculated on the old basis the figure for the top 10 percent in 1989 would still be between 60 and 70 percent.

Statistical illusion

But this is not the only purely statistical factor that is involved in the figures. What the figures show are the percentage shares, and not the actual amounts of wealth, of the various categories. These shares are shares in a cake (the stock of wealth) which, as we saw, expands in the long run. This means that, for one group to maintain its share, it must get the same share of the new wealth that is being accumulated. Thus if, as is generally assumed, before the First World War the top 10 percent owned 90 percent of accumulated wealth, then, for them to maintain their share, 90 percent of the newly accumulating wealth would also have to go to them. That they were in fact able to more or less maintain this share until the Second World War (see Table 1) is a testimony to the poverty of the rest of the population whose incomes were so low that they had to spend most of it on items of immediate consumption.

If during this period the other 90 percent had between them been able to accumulate more than 10 percent of the newly accumulated wealth, then the share of the top 10 percent would have fallen, despite the fact that they were continuing to accumulate wealth and even to accumulate more of it in real (as opposed to percentage) terms than the rest of the population.

It was precisely this situation that did occur from the 1950s on. Regular and more or less steadily-rising real wages and salaries meant that the non-rich began to acquire more wealth in the form of household goods, cars and houses. When included in the figures this had the effect of reducing the share of the rich, but this is the only effect it has had and it is purely statistical.

Independently of what has happened to the non-rich, the rich have gone on accumulating wealth and so getting richer. The November 1991 issue of the official government publication Economic Trends contained a table which showed how the total amount of “marketable wealth”, broken down by category, had changed each year from 1976 to 1988, all in 1988 money so as to

be comparable. The general trend was upward, though there was a fall in 1981 corresponding to the last recession; the total increased from £752 billion in 1976 to £1317 billion in 1988. Of this extra £565 billion, 13 percent went to the top 1 percent, 39 percent to the top 5 percent and a massive 58 percent to the top 10 percent (which explains why their share increased over the period from 50 percent to 53 per cent), while a meagre 4 percent went to be shared amongst the 22 million in the bottom 50 percent.

What is even more interesting than how the total amount was divided amongst the categories is how the average amounts of wealth held by each person in the categories changed (Table 3). As can be seen, despite a smaller percentage increase than the rest of the top 50 percent, the average holding of those in the top 1 percent increased by some £132,000, more than that of those in any of the other groups. So the gap between the amount of wealth held by the individual members of top 1 percent and that held by the rest of the population increased. There is no reason to suppose that these years were exceptional in this respect, except perhaps that in some earlier years the gap between the average holding of the top 1 percent and that of the top 5 percent may have narrowed.

So the conclusion can only be that the so-called decline of the rich this century is a statistical illusion. Their share has only fallen, and then only after the Second World War, because the non-rich came to acquire more wealth. But this acquisition of wealth by the non-rich made no difference whatsoever to the position of the rich. They continued to get richer in the sense of coming to own more wealth in real terms (the only meaningful sense of the word “richer”). But not only this their average holding of wealth increased more in real terms than that of the non-rich. Defenders of capitalism who say that the rich have not got richer are conveying misinformation.

Adam Buick

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-rich-get-richer-1992.html

 

How does a money-free society where quality goods and services are produced for free use, not for profit begin to sound? And no longer being cash-strapped is the only benefit either. No leaders misleading, no states competing with each other for resources and sending workers to fight other workers. Want a real equal society? No classes either.

‘Retail sales in the UK dropped in September as the high cost of living continues to pressure households’ budgets, according to the latest sales-monitor report from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and KPMG published this week.

The survey said that UK retailers reported weak sales last month as cash-strapped consumers avoided big-ticket spending and delayed winter clothing purchases due to unseasonably warm weather.

Although the amount of money Britons spent while shopping rose by 2.7% year-on-year in September, expenditures were down by 4.1% compared to August, figures showed.

“Big-ticket items such as furniture and electronics performed poorly as consumers limited spending in the face of higher housing, rental, and fuel costs,” said Helen Dickinson, CEO of the BRC. “The Indian summer also meant sales of autumn clothing, knitwear, and coats have yet to materialize.”

September marked the second weakest month of the year so far and was well below the inflation rate, indicating the volume of goods sold declined.

Sluggish retail sales have added to concerns over year-end profits, as soaring interest rates squeeze household incomes while the number of jobless is rising in the UK. The downturn in sales comes ahead of the so-called “golden quarter,” the run-up to Christmas when shop owners can make the most of their annual yields.

“The fight for Christmas shoppers will be fierce this year, with promotions likely to be earlier and abundant in a bid to loosen tight household purse strings,” said Paul Martin, UK head of retail at KPMG.

“Consumers will continue to seek out good deals, with price driving purchasing decisions. This is likely to be one of the most important golden quarters that we have seen in years.”

The cost of living crisis in the UK has sent consumption plummeting, while fears of a recession in the country are mounting as successive interest-rate hikes are taking their toll.

The Purchasing Managers Index, a measure reflecting overall economic health, indicated a contraction in August and September, and unemployment has been climbing for three straight months.’

 

As John Keats has it: ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun…

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft…

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies’.

Gathering swallows X in the skies doesn’t have quite the same ring to it does it?

Thankfully the season when the various circuses known as known as Party Conferences, roll into various towns is over for another year. If William Shakespeare were around to chronicle these events would he write them as comedies, or as tragedies?

At the Tory Party conference the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt threw some red meat to the acolytes gathered there.

‘Government plans to impose tougher benefit sanctions to drive people into work will cause “destitution” and “punish people already struggling to afford essentials in the cost of living crisis”, charities have warned.

Speaking at the Conservative Party Conference, chancellor Jeremy Hunt said 100,00 people are leaving the labour market every year for a “life on benefits”. He said this is why the government is replacing work capability assessments and examining the sanctions regime.

Hunt claimed: “It isn’t fair that someone who refuses to look for a job gets the same as someone trying their best.” But charities have expressed fear that further punishments will force people to seek low paid work which poses a serious danger to their health – or risk being plunged into greater poverty.’

https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/benefit-rules-sanctions-jeremy-hunt-tory-party-conference/

Not to be outdone, the ‘workers’ friend’ Party, laughing called the Labour Party, gave notice of where their priorities lie: ‘MILLIONS of out-of-work Brits are a “horrible, painful toll” on the public purse and are “dragging” down the economy, a top Starmer ally declared.

Shadow Cabinet Minister Peter Kyle said: “There are 2.5million people that are just unknown to the economy for reasons that we don’t understand, and there’s no exercise to go find them.

“There are 700,000 young people who are not in education, training or work. And that figure has been growing, not diminishing.”

The shadow science and tech secretary hit out: “All of these things are personal tragedies, but they’re also taking a horrible, painful toll on our economy. “It is dragging our economy down. So we need to get cracking on it.”

The tough talk came on first day of the Labour Party conference, with Mr Kyle suggesting they should instead be put to work in tech and green energy jobs.’

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/24329382/scale-of-jobless-brits-is-horrible-painful-toll/

Both messages should please their capitalist masters who are always looking for more workers to exploit and provide them with more surplus value.

Isn’t it well past the time when the working class, employed wage slaves or not, should be looking at the real alternative? Don’t be taken in by these charlatans!

 

A news source reports that,  ‘Argentina’s central bank on 12 October hiked the country’s benchmark interest rate for the sixth time this year, in yet another attempt to reign in soaring prices that have been weighing heavily on incomes, pushing millions below the poverty line.

The rate was raised to 133% from 118%, shortly after September inflation data showed that consumer prices in the country spiked 12.7% month-on-month and 138% annually, which is the highest rate in three decades.

According to a report by the National Institute for Statistics and Census (INDEC) released last month, soaring prices pushed Argentina’s poverty rate to 40.1% in the first half of 2023. This means that two out of every five people in Argentina now live below the poverty line, some 11.8 million people.

Another report by the Centre of Argentine Economic Politics (CEPA) think tank showed that wages in the country are unable to catch up with inflation, with the median wage only covering 85.6% of the basic food basket in August.

Some analysts suggest that with the economic crisis this deep the latest key rate hike may have come too late.

“It is no longer useful to raise the rate, expectations have gone away and raising it at this time is not going to contain the flight from pesos to dollars,” a national private banking manager told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Private analysts forecast inflation to reach 173.2% this year, while the rating agency Moody’s projects 200% for this year and 350% for 2024.

The rate hike came just ten days before the presidential election in the country scheduled for October 22. Most candidates have pledged to cut spending to close Argentina’s fiscal deficit, a key element that is driving inflation. However, outsider candidate Javier Milei, who won the August presidential primary, has put the focus of his campaign on getting rid of the peso entirely and adopting the US dollar.’

 The Royal Commission’s proposal to solve the Palestine troubles by partition has met with a mixed reception.

The recommendation is to split Palestine up into three pieces, an Arab State, a Jewish State, and a portion which will remain under the British Mandate.

At the recently concluded Zionist Congress opinion was sharply divided. A two-thirds majority, headed by the Zionist Chairman, Dr. Weizmann, voted in favour of the principle of partition, largely on the grounds that it was the best that could be expected from the British Government under the circumstances. The decision was only come to after long and heated discussion, and the news of it called forth protest from some leading Zionists in America and elsewhere.

Among the professed spokesmen of working-class interests there is also a conflict of views.

Communist writers, who claim that the Jews in Palestine have been building up a flourishing business under the protection of the British Government, back the Arabs. They urge resistance to the partition proposal and the establishment of an independent Arab State in Palestine, of which the Jews are to be members on an equal basis. The Communists put this forward on two grounds: The right of the Arabs to self-determination and the need to curb British Imperialism.

On the other side, opponents of the Communists, like Abramovich and Orenstein, favour the continuance of the mandatory system and oppose the Arab viewpoint. In doing so they overstate the Jewish case, though probably unconsciously, painting a beautiful picture of Palestine under the Jews, where Socialist ideas will flourish.

The state of affairs in Palestine is not clear cut. There is an old social system side by side with a new, and both subject to an over-ruling Imperial power. Within each again there are class interests that cut across racial and national feelings. And, to still further complicate matters, there is the peculiar international position of the Jew.

The Arab lives under a semi-feudal regime with the land-owner despoiling the peasant of nearly everything. The coming of the Jews introduced modern industrial methods which threaten the incomes of land-owners, partly by offering the peasants a way of escape from fleecing, and partly by competition. Hence the influential Arabs are opposed to the continued immigration of Jews and strive to stir racial hatred among the poor by using the religious bogey. They are opposed to partition and want an independent Arab State.

The Jew, hunted out of various occupations in the East and the victim of pogroms, has been drifting into Palestine for decades. The immigration  of the Jew has been vastly increased since the War, until at present it has reached from fifty to sixty thousand a year. How the Jews are permeating Palestine may be appreciated from the fact that, in spite of Arab immigration, the Jewish section rose from 17 per cent. of the population in 1930 to 30 per cent. in 1936. This antagonises the Arab, who foresees himself being swamped in the rising flood. On the other hand, the growing Jewish section pays the bulk of the tax revenue but receives the least benefit from it, which is a permanent source of complaint.

To the Jew, interference with immigration would have serious consequences. Palestine is perhaps the only place to which he has free access. A large proportion of the immigrants are representatives of families that have been left behind in other countries in dire straits, penniless and denied almost any opportunity of earning a living. To these the immigrant sends back contributions that enable the relatives to buy the necessaries of life. Thus, as one writer puts it, if the Arabs succeed in stopping Jewish immigration into Palestine it will mean starvation to millions of Jews.

The Jewish migration has brought with it to Palestine the capitalist system with its antagonistic classes. While, on the one hand, it is making the desert flower and bringing into existence flourishing towns, on the other hand it is replacing the feudal method of fleecing by the capitalist exploitation of wage-workers. To quote Mordekai Orenstein: —

  You will find in Palestine a highly organised capitalist class, a vigorous and aggressive Jewish clericalism, and a modern Jewish Fascism with all the usual characteristics from strike-breaking to the base murder of a distinguished working-class leader.

—(Page 10, “ Jews, Arabs and British in Palestine.”) 

He also adds that you will find there a strongly organised working class. But, towards the end of the pamphlet, he laments that: —

   Considerable sections of Jewish workers in Palestine have not as yet reached the realisation of the vital urgency of forging this supernational weapon [Jewish-Arab proletarian unity] in the political struggle in Palestine.—(Page 21.)

It may be added that partition, by restricting the area open to Jews, must have a considerable effect on their immigration, which is some explanation of Zionist opposition.

The attitude of the British Government is based on simple principles: The safeguarding of British capitalists’ interests, as represented by such things as the oil pipe between Mosul and Haifa; security of Imperial air routes, communications through the Suez Canal, and so forth. Their policy of divide and rule leads them to favour different sides at different times, and to keep racial animosities alive as long as they do not become too dangerous.

The support of both Jews and Arabs during the War was bought by promises that have not been kept, and cause irritation to both sections.

The Mandate has evidently outlived its uses to British capitalism, and the partition system is to take its place. This will give Arab and Jew (like the North and South of Ireland) something to quarrel over for years to come, to the hindrance of propaganda for working-class solidarity against the international capitalist class.

Gilmac

From the Socialist Standard  September 1937.

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2018/01/divide-and-rule-in-palestine-1937.html