MAKING POVERTY HISTORY IN EDINBURGH

Who is the G8? In a nutshell, it is a clique of the 8 leading industrial nations who have self appointed themselves rulers of the world. The G8 leaders are actually the executive of the capitalist class of their respective countries and are the staunchest defenders of neoliberal corporate globalisation, the custodians of privilege and corporate power and the guardians of world capitalism. They help rule the world and maintain the playing field for profit-hungry western corporations. They are all male, all caucasian, and together they have the power to dictate who eats and who starves, who lives and who dies, to declare war regardless of the wishes of the people who elected them. Their policies have resulted in global poverty and environmental destruction. They are meeting in Edinburgh this July to decide on which international strategies they can commonly pursue, allegedly in the interests of the people of the word and the natural environment.

Lined up against the G8 leaders this July in Edinburgh is the campaign group Make Poverty History, a loose coalition of some 450 NGO’s, Unions and charitable organisations, united in the demand for fairer trading conditions for developing nations, debt cancellation and increased and improved aid.

By far the biggest development organisation within the MPH is Oxfam, which has been widely accused of pandering to the whims of New Labour and propagating objectives which are identical to those of a Blair government frantic, in the face of the Iraq fiasco, to implement a foreign policy that campaign movements can stomach. Indeed, there are many larger than life individuals and groups associated with the MPH movement who identify with the objectives of Messrs Blair and Brown. The celebrity Bono, for instance, referred to the smiling duo at the last Labour Party conference as the “Lennon and McCartney” of poverty reduction.

Foul mouthed celebrity, Bob “fucking “ Geldof, a week after Bono’s remark, revealed he was backing Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s attempts to deliver development to Africa because of their Christian values. Geldof can well support New Labour and obsessively promote the agenda of the MPH campaign, but, frigging hell, you have to begin asking questions when even Blair has been spotted wearing a white Make Poverty History wristband.

The praise is of course reciprocal. On June 3rd, Gordon Brown expressed his support for Sir Bob the Gob’s Live8 concerts and encouraged demonstrations at the G8 summit, as long as they take the form of a "peaceful march". Any other government would have feared a march by one million demonstrators, but not New Labour. Blair and Brown are so happy with the convergence of their own overseas agenda and the demands of the MPH campaign that they rather see a million person march as being a rally in support of Labour Party policies.

Chancellor Gordon Brown is nowadays advised on international development by former Oxfam trustee and former director at the US bank UBS Warburg, Shriti Vandera and Blair has the backing of Justin Forsyth – one time Director of Policy and Campaigns at Oxfam - on the Downing Street Policy Unit. Said the latter back in 2002: “When you speak to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, they really understand [the] issues. They are easily some of the best leaders when it comes to talking about development and dismantling subsidy, and they are making the right arguments time and again.”

Of course there are some within MPH that see through the scam. War on Want dismay at the way New Labour’s overseas policies are winning widespread acceptance and undermining their own campaigning efforts. And neither is Christian Aid happy at Oxfam’s over-cosy, less critical relationship with the government. Friends of the Earth likewise believe there are disadvantages to the privileged position Oxfam enjoys with the government, believing the demands of campaign movements are becoming diluted and generalised.

They have a point. Blair sees himself as somewhat spearheading the MPH campaign at Gleneagles and queries why the MPH are heading for Edinburgh when he speaks their jargon. In Dundee, in March of this year, he commented: “It would be very odd if people came to protest against this G8, as we're focusing on poverty in Africa and climate change. I don't quite know what they'll be protesting against.”

MPH has been so linked to the government as to be rendered toothless. When the main players in the MPH demanded a meet with the government, Whitehall couldn’t accede fast enough. So closely have Blair and Brown been identified with the objectives of the MPH coalition that they have been criticised by other EU member states for softening their pro-liberalisation stance.
And who as it that rallied to the defence of the government to counter the claims of Blair’s cynics in Europe? None other that Oxfam who issued a statement criticising Blair’s detractors for trying to hamper Britain’s attempt to help the world’s poor. It is no secret that Oxfam has informed other developmental groups linked to MPH that it is important not to be perceived as being confrontational with the government now that Blair and Brown are singing from the same hymn sheet as the MPH.

Meanwhile, John Hilary, Director of Campaigns and Policy at War on Want, says that the British contingent at the WTO told him to “get real. The development agenda does not go very far. We have to be pro-business and pro-trade (New Statesman, 30th May, 2005).”
Hilary appears to have been well informed when one considers the agenda emerging from the much praised Commission for Africa Report.

The BBC, (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4337239.stm) responding to the launch of the Commission for Africa Report, published on March 11, which is the showpiece of the Blair government’s strategy for the G8, listed eight areas necessitating action by the West, inclusive of doubling or trebling aid, cancelling debt, spending more on HIV/AIDS, financing African universities and the removal of trade barriers to African exports in the West. (The report can be downloaded in full or in sections at:

http://www.commissionforafrica.org/english/report/introduction.html)

Now there is much here, in the CAR, to whet the appetite of the anti-poverty campaigner. But, you need only read the précis of the various chapters to suss out what is in fact the real schema. In chapter 7, for instance, objectives for fiscal growth in Africa are alleged to be possible 'only if the obstacles of… a discouraging investment climate are overcome'. And it proposes the 'public and private sector working together to identify the obstacles to a favourable investment climate'. How else can this be interpreted other than in suggesting more liberalisation and privatisation and more opportunities for western corporations to exploit African resources and labour?

The summary of Chapter 8 says: 'Investments in infrastructure and the enabling climate for the private sector are at the top of the agenda.' Is this not the government spearheading neoliberal reform in Africa on behalf of big business?

Business Action for Africa (BAA) has been in cahoots with the Commission for Africa. This coalition of 250 business representatives met with the CFA in February following formal dialogue between the CFA and the private sector on the continents of Africa, North America and Europe - a meeting arranged via the Business Contact Group, itself set up to provide private sector input to the Commission for Africa, and the result of a meeting co-chaired chaired by Gordon Brown and Reuter's chairman, Niall Fitzgerald.

Referring to the Business Contact Group, Corporate Watch observed: “Its 16 or so corporate members read like a roll call of the most exploitative and despised companies currently operating on the continent including Anglo American, Shell, De Beers, Rio Tinto and...Diageo, who also own the Gleneagles hotel where the G8 Summit will take place. Its programme was managed by Shell International's Senior Business Development Advisor for Africa. Also managing the Contact Group is the Commonwealth Business Council (CBC). The Corporate Council on Africa and the Canadian Council on Africa also gave input, thus allowing oil corporations, ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, a say.” (http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=1535)

Dave Miller, writing for Znet in an article entitled Spinning the G8, commented: “The corporations involved can barely contain their excitement. The 'outlook' of the business community is a 'positive one' says one of the CFA commissioners. 'It believes Africa is the next frontier for investment'. James Smith, the UK chair of Shell, which co-hosted the meeting, noted that progress 'requires that the private sector has a bigger role'. The chair of the Commonwealth Business Council, the business lobby group co-hosting the meeting, read out the concluding statement. Dr Mohan Kaul affirmed that 'getting the conditions right for doing business in Africa is the biggest single investment for the future well-being of its citizens'. A 'vibrant and successful private sector… is required' he noted. (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=7852)

EU states may well be critical of Britain’s new pro-Africa stance as being influenced by celebrities and NGOs, but the truth is that affiliates to the MPH, in applauding Brown and Blair, are the unwilling accomplices of a government which forms the vanguard of the latest corporate drive to open up markets throughout the developing world.

Gordon Brown may well bang on about writing of the debt of poor countries, but the fact is that whilst developing countries owe something like $2.5 trillion, over 60% is owed to private western investors, not the big international institutions like the World Bank, and it is not the debt owed the former that will be written off. Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance only owes the latter $68 billion, yet owes much smaller lenders over three times this amount.

In cancelling the debt owed to the big gangsters of global capital, it can be found there are countless smaller financial thugs demanding they get back what they initially loaned plus interest. Brown’s plan simply means countries have more space now to pay the little lenders off and these lenders, knowing they – developing countries - now have more money to splash out, will be shouting “Righto, we’ know you’ve got the dosh and we know where you live. So, no excuses. Cough up or we’ll send the boys round. Got it?”

Increasingly, in the last decade, there has been a worldwide reaction against neoliberal globalisation, corporate power and the injustices associated with modern-day capitalism. Everywhere where the world’s ruling elite have assembled to decide their next step they have been met with protests and demonstrations that have attracted hundreds of thousands. Demonstrations at Seattle, Gothenburg, Cologne, Evian, Birmingham, Prague, Genoa and Quebec, have stimulated debate on the nature of modern day capitalism. Thousands of articles have been written on the subject and hundreds of books have been published that explore the aims, objectives and the alternatives offered by the anti-globalisation movement.What is now clear is that the anti-globalisation/pro-development movement, however well-meaning, does not seek to replace capitalism with any real alternative social system. At best it attracts a myriad of groups, all pursuing their own reformist agenda. Some call for greater corporate responsibility. Some demand the restructuring of international institutions like the IMF, World Bank and the WTO.. Others call for the expansion of democracy and fairer trading conditions, debt cancellation and more aid. All, however, fail to address the root cause of the problems of capitalism and rather promote the damned system they are critical of by applauding any meagre reform.One thing is certain: no amount of high table reform is going to legislate poverty out of existence as the MHP coalition believes. Capitalism cannot be reformed in the interests of the world’s suffering billions, because reform does not address the basic contradiction between profit and need. Moreover, reform can be so packaged and camouflaged as to be acceptable to protestors whilst leaving their real grievances unaddressed. The world’s leaders simply cannot be depended upon to implement real change because they can only ever act as the executive of corporate capitalism.

The protesters at the G8 might think they are united in common cause, but in truth they are only united in supporting capitalism and in their mistaken belief that poverty can be legislated out of existence, They have no blue print for change other than the three demands put forward by the Make Poverty History campaign – Fair trade, more aid and debt cancellation. – and this is about as radical as it gets. In mirroring in their objectives the overseas goals of Blair and Brown they are anything but the modern day revolutionaries they claim to be and are rather guilty of class treachery.

It is now no utopian fantasy to suggest we can live in a world without waste or want or war, in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation. That much is assured. We certainly have the science, the technology and the know-how. All that is missing is the will – the global desire for change that can make that next great historical advance possible; a belief in ourselves as masters of our own destiny; a belief that it is possible to free production from the artificial constraints of profit and to fashion a world in our own interests. And how soon this happens depends upon us all – each and every one of us.

WILL IRAN BE NEXT?

On May 10th, the Iranian government began what may turn out to be a full blown global crisis when it announced that it is to continue with its nuclear programme. Although Tehran claims it is intent on forging ahead and enriching uranium for civil purposes, the Bush administration is rehashing one of the lies that it used to invade Iraq: namely, that Iran will be manufacturing nuclear weapons that it may well give to terrorists.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which carries out regular inspections in Iran, recently issued a report declaring that it has found no proof of a nuclear weapons program in Iran. Moreover, according to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which Iran is a signatory, and to which the US cocks a snoot, non-nuclear countries do in fact have the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, on condition they inform the IAEA of their progress.

There is nothing to substantiate Washington’s claims that Iran is intent on producing a nuclear arsenal, yet before the Iraqi war is finished, the hawkish neoconservative misinformation machine in the US is at work creating fear that the US is in danger from Iranian nukes unless, we can infer, America pre-emptively attacks Iran.

Washington has argued that with all its oil Iran does not need nuclear energy - a statement that smacks of hypocrisy for many reasons, not least because it was Washington that enthusiastically encouraged the Shah’s nuclear programme in the 1970s – and that its desire to continue its nuclear research is clear evidence of its malicious intentions. Again, whilst the US sounds off about other countries having advanced defence systems, we find that the biggest stockpiler of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons is the US itself, and which has a proven track record of having used them. The world’s number one rogue state – the US – furthermore feels it has the moral right to rubbish the nuclear test-ban treaty so its weapon’s scientists can enhance the US’ new theatre nuclear weapons, like bunker-busting mini-nuclear weaponry and to develop space-based weapons systems capable of annihilating whole armies from space in an instant.

Iran - not so long ago named by President George W. Bush as one-third of the "axis of evil” - is surrounded by U.S. troops in Afghanistan to the east and Iraq to the west, countries that have been flattened by American bombs in the past four years, not to mention the Fifth Fleet and numerous U.S. bases in the southern Gulf States. Naturally Iran feels a little threatened so it could be that Tehran is working on the assumption that those countries that possess nuclear weapons - Israel, Russia, India, Pakistan, China, and North Korea – generally get treated a lot better by the U.S. than smaller countries that do not.

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Undersecretary of state John Bolton was credited with the words: “real men want to go to Iran”. Iraq, it was suggested, was just the first stage of a five-year plan. Iran, with a larger population and better defence systems would certainly not be as placid a foe as the Iraqi forces were and US casualties would be many times those suffered during the invasion of Iraq were the US to launch an invasion of Iran. So, leaving aside the fallacious argument that Iran is intent on building nuclear weapons it can sell to enemies of the US, what other reasons could there be for these ‘real men’ to want to attack Iran?

Well, Tehran is seen as a real threat to the US economy. A year ago this month (June 2004) Iran announced its plans to set up an international oil exchange (or bourse) denominated in the Euro currency and that this would be in operation by 2006. For several years oil producing and consuming countries have expressed their interest in trading through such an exchange so, logically, such an oil bourse would vie with London’s International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) as well as competing with the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), both of which are owned by US corporations. Since the US Dollar has been so far the global standard monetary fund for oil exchange, oil consuming countries have had little alternative but use the $US to pay for their oil. Oil consuming countries are thus required to keep the Dollar in their central banks as their reserve fund, thus underpinning the American economy. But were Iran and other oil-producing countries presented with the Euro as an alternative choice for oil exchange the American economy would go through a real crisis. It is possible the crisis could come at the end of 2005 and the commencement of 2006 when oil investors would be faced with the option of paying $50+ a barrel of oil at the American (NYMEX) and at London’s (IPE), or pay 37 Euros a barrel at the Iranian oil bourse. Such a choice would reduce trade volumes at the US Dollar-dependent (NYMEX) and at the (IPE). A triumphant Iranian bourse would solidify the petroeuro as one more global oil-transaction currency, thus ending the petrodollar’s supremacy as the foremost international oil currency.

The international trade of oil in petrodollars has kept the US dollar artificially strong for 30 years, enabling the US to amass vast foreign-funded government debt and trade deficits. Whatever Tehran’s motives, we cannot ignore the fate of neighbouring Iraq, which had already begun to trade in Eurodollars before the allied invasion. One of Washington’s objectives in Iraq was to install a pro-US stooge government, set up military bases before the onset of peak oil and to convert Iraq back to the petrodollar, thus frustrating OPEC’s desire to begin using the euro as an alternative currency of oil transaction. Indeed, one of the first steps taken by Iraq’s provisional government was in returning the country to the $US oil standard.

We must also look to US geopolitical strategy if we seek a real reason why Iran is seen as a threat to the US. The country, for one thing, is strategically placed, sandwiched between Iraq and Afghanistan, straddling the Middle East and Central Asia and must be subdued if the US is to control the region’s oil supplies (it’s not so much that the US wants all the oil, rather the US wishes to be in control of its distribution, to whom, and on its own terms).

The US is seriously concerned about the onset of peak oil and which experts say will come within ten years, the fact that extant reserves will probably be gone within 30 years and that long before that time China will have the same oil demands as the US. China is already securing long-term oil contracts with Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Venezuela, seeking out oil contacts via Canada and has previously, somewhat audaciously, made a bid for the US oil company Unocal. It is thus imperative for US capitalists that a rising competitor – China, itself the world’s chief consumer of grain, meat, steal and coal – is prevented from gaining a tighter stranglehold on world resources. The two counties may appear to be on friendly terms, but both are jockeying for position in expectation of a showdown. For US capitalism, there is simply far too much at stake. Should China grow in economic strength, sell off its dollar holdings, US imperialism will crumble. Therefore, in securing future US global resource flows, Iran has to be taught a lesson by US gangster imperialists – don’t mess with out interests; don’t run a racket on our turf without our permission; don’t deal with another mob.

An attack on Iran may be only weeks, months away. This may sound like speculation, maybe it is, but consider why, in June of last year, Israel took delivery of almost 5,000 "smart bombs" from the United States, bombs capable of penetrating six-foot concrete walls such as those that could well encase Iranian nuclear installations. There have also been numerous reports of clandestine US reconnaissance missions inside of Iran, and of U.S. spy drones violating Iranian air space.

As we approach the final year of Bush’s ‘Five-year plan’, expect war in the Middle East to feature prominently in the headlines of the world’s press. We hope we are wrong – for the sake of the hundreds of thousands of workers that would die a result of a US attack upon Iran – but history shows that where the interests of mega business is threatened, blood has to be spilled..

Further info available at:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CLA410A.html
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8354.htm
http://amin.org/index.html

Caviar, for F**** sake!

Just going been through this week's papers here. Could you believe the bastards are actually arguing over the menu at Gleneagles?

After discussing African poverty at Gleneagles there is a banquet with the Queen. Blair's missus is pissed off that she is not getting the same menu as her hubby, so out of spite she has taken lobster off the menu.

They are also arguing over what caviar to serve. The Independent reported:
"Originally caviar from Iran was to be served. It is not as good, but considerably cheaper than the Russian variety. But diplomats said having anything from a state described by Mr Bush as part of the 'axis of Evil' might make it hard for the President to swallow. Instead, the finest caviar from Belarus is being served." (Independent, 6/6/05)

Interestingly, caviar from Belarus? The country is landlocked.

Seriously, though. Me, I'd give the bastards at Gleneagles bread and cheese. If they whinged that they wanted a hot meal. I'd say: "put some fucking mustard on it!"

Death of a Pope

Being brought into a discussion on the death of Karol Wojtyla, alias Pope John Paul II, with a few elderly ladies while waiting for a bus, I commented that they would be wiser contemplating the hundreds of thousands he had sent to their deaths than mourning the passing of this enemy of their class. The ladies were visibly shocked, said I was out of order and that I shouldn’t speak so irreverently of someone so holy. I tried to explain my remark, but they were having none of it.

Like countless millions around the world, they had undoubtedly been caught up in that media-generated tsunami of sentiment that swept around the world when news of the Pope’s death was broadcast; ready to defend the claims made by announcers on the TV news and in the 20-page papal death exclusives the press was churning out, that a living saint had died. One hundred and fifty world leaders were going to Rome to pay their respects to one of the “greatest men” who had lived, so I was in no position to pass sacrilegious judgement.

Days later the Pope’s funeral was reported as the biggest in history. It had attracted 70 presidents, dozens of prime ministers, the leaders of 14 religions, nine kings and queens and countless other dignitaries. Joining this farcical parade of the infamous were 4 million devout followers of the Catholic Church who had descended on Rome from all over the world.

The very fact that 150 world leaders, the heads of the executive body of world capitalism, were keen to attend this funeral must have suggested something. Karol Wojtyla was on their side and was clearly perceived as being a man who promoted their case. Had he been a critic of the profit system, had he publicly criticised the world’s corporate elite and the governments who defend their interests by any means, they’d have spat on his grave. As it turned out, this was like a big mafia don’s funeral at which the gangster fraternity had turned out to pay their last respects to a fellow enemy of law and order.

John Paul’s 28 years in the Vatican were certainly controversial. He lived through interesting times, as the saying goes, and like any Pope worth his salt involved himself in world political affairs when it was convenient to do so and made acquaintances with many world leaders, yet rebuked none of them.

He, for instance, referred to Chilean dictator, Pinochet, and his wife as “an exemplary Christian couple”. When this enemy of Chilean democracy, who had killed tens of thousands of his opponents, was arrested and charged with crimes against humanity, the Pope waded in on his defence demanding his release, stating that as a Chilean leader at the time of his crimes he was entitled to immunity – a kind of papal infallibility for fascists.

Throughout South America, John Paul sided with the forces of reaction, supporting right wing elites and restraining the ‘liberation theologians’ of the Church who had made common cause with the impoverished masses. The papal nuncios to the Chilean and Argentinean military dictatorships he promoted to cardinals. In Central America, he reproached members of the clergy who had sided with the Sandinistas and promoted to the status of cardinal one arch-bishop who had opposed the Sandinistas and their attempts to improve the lives of the poor.

Few news reports on the Pope’s death did not refer to his time in the Vatican during the dying days of the Kremlin’s empire. Some reporters were even bold enough to claim that it was his intervention in the Polish political scene in the 1980’s that eventually led to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The rise of Solidarity and working class militancy in Poland at the beginning of the 1980s panicked governments around the world. The ‘communists’ of eastern Europe feared a growing threat to their rule, while the governments of the west saw the mobilisation of an angry section of society that could only inspire militancy in their own countries.

While John Paul wished to see the end of Stalinist rule, he was keen this should not be via violent revolution and, moreover, at the hands of left wing sections of Polish society, but by the right. Here he had the backing of the USA. In 1980 John Paul granted an audience to a group headed by Solidarity leader Lech Walesa and in the coming years the Vatican would find $tens of millions to finance Solidarity’s struggle.

Make no mistake; the Vatican was not openly supporting the demands of the workers in their struggle against an undemocratic, unaccountable Stalinist bureaucracy—what was the Vatican if not undemocratic, unaccountable and bureaucratic?—but to contain the movement, to see it had the guidance of nationalistic and right-leaning Catholic ideologues and to ensure it’s confrontation with the Polish leadership did not get out of hand and win larger international support from workers.

Many news commentators referred to the 473 beatifications under the JP papacy, a figure that is twice the number of saints made in the previous 400 years. One can only assume that with more social problems facing humanity than at any time in its history the Pope thought we needed an increase in the number of saints to pray to for help in solving them.

However, among those beatified and elevated to the ranks of the saints by John Paul II was the anti-Semite Pope Pius IX and Pope Pius XII, the latter being the same Pius who collaborated with the fascist regimes in Spain, Italy and Germany. Pius XII ordered the Catholic Church in Nazi Germany to steer clear of political activity, to close its political parties and to stifle its newspapers. Hitler would refer to this Papal move as "a great achievement" and of enormous advantage in the "fight against international Jewry". Under Pius’ watchful eye, the Catholic Church went on to collaborate in the "racial certification" of all Germans and refused to openly condemn Hitler when it was know that millions were being sent to the extermination camps.

Also elevated to sainthood was Josemaria Escrivá, the founder of the hierarchical and clandestine Opus Die in Madrid in 1928, and described by Hitler as “the saviour of the Spanish church”, along with Mother Theresa who, when questioned on how her opposition to contraception in Calcutta was leading to unnecessary infantile deaths, countered that even a child who breathed only a few hours meant another soul for heaven. For Mother Theresa, suffering was a blessing from the almighty, for it enabled carers to reveal their love for the afflicted.

One scandal the press tended to steer clear of—and one humiliation John Paul was keen to ride out on behalf of Catholicism—was the sexual abuse scandals concerning priests and Church officials. Since the 1950s, 4,450 catholic clergy in the US alone have been accused of molesting children. The allegations have persisted down the years and in spite of a Vatican decree in the 1960s which threatened anyone exposing child sex abuse within the Church with excommunication. John Paul continued the cover-up, issuing an edict demanding Church secrecy in child abuse allegations. The Pope’s ruling on the matter was felt to be so conclusive that one leader of a Spanish seminary persuaded his scholars that he had the Pope's blessing to masturbate them.

John Paul’s complicity in attempting to conceal sexual exploitation in the American, Irish, Austrian and other Churches, and his undermining of the importance of the allegations once they had come to world attention, merely emphasized the Vatican’s double standards on issues of sexual morality.While covering up the excesses of a sexually frustrated clergy who found it impossible to adhere to the vow of chastity, John Paul was ever ready to pronounce papal verdict on homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, divorce, abortion and the use of birth control.

In recent years, in spite of a growing Aids epidemic which now infects tens of millions in impoverished countries, the Vatican withdrew its support from those organisations that distributed free condoms. The head of the Vatican's office on the family, Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, propagated the lie that the Aids Virus can pass through microscopic holes in condoms, and John Paul referred to the use of condoms as a ‘culture of death’. In El Salvador, after a long struggle by the Church, packets of condoms were printed with the warning that they did not protect users from the spread if HIV and, in Nigeria, the arch-bishop of Nairobi proclaimed that condoms actually caused Aids.

Undoubtedly, millions who looked to the Catholic Church for guidance, who declined the use of protection during sex, were handed a death sentence. Perhaps millions of women were forced, by fear of the flames of hell, to bring young families into a world of abject poverty and early death through disease and hunger.

Whilst many saw JP as a champion of democracy and human rights, a one man Amnesty International as one commentator suggested in the press, the truth is he was a conscientious defender of the established order of western-style class privilege, even if he did once refer to elected governments as the spreaders of “nihilism” He might have lambasted as an atheistic dogma what many refer to as “socialism” (state capitalism) in Encyclical Centesimus Annus, whether it existed in Eastern Europe or Central America, but this seems to be his only reason – ”socialism” was associated with atheism and therefore was a serious challenge to rule from Rome

More importantly, the Pope headed an organisation with 1.3 billion followers who were encouraged to put their trust in a god and to pray to this god to solve the major problems of the day, thus diminishing people’s faith in their own ability to sort out their own problems and undermining the likelihood of workers uniting and organising with a common objective. Accordingly, the Pope became just another reactionary agent of oppression, like all of his predecessors. And the Vatican’s reactionary credentials are nothing recent. Indeed, it has been part of the foundation of reaction since the start, whether it was urging the masses to obey the Caesars, supporting the feudal hierarchical order, opposing the Protestant reformation or siding with the capitalist class against the workers, determined always to stifle the anger of the oppressed with promises of reward in heaven for their sufferings if they struggle on uncomplainingly, and an eternity in the sulphurous pits of hell if they organised to better their lot.

Jews, a race?

Sent to the Shields Gazette, 29/03/05

Dear Sir,


Further to Mr B's letter of March 29th (To wander is a way of life), I would like to inform this confused gentleman that there is no such thing as a "Jewish race". Judaism is a religion, like Christianity or Islam.


Looked at from a scientific and biologocial perspective, Jews do not conform to any uniform recognisable physical type. If anything, their migratory history has had the effect of making them resemble the groups among which they have settled. Nevertheless, over centuries, they have managed to preserve something of a seperate identity for themselves. This means that they might best be described as a socio-religious group which, I would add, has in its struggle to survivve often become as racist as its own detractors.


Mr B is further keen to remind us that "these wandering Jews illgally walked into Palestine and set up a state." I suppose Mr B sees nothing wrong with the post-1918 carve-up of the Middle East, the subsequent British occupation of Palestine and Iraq, for instance, and the British occupation of countless countries for centuries?


Neither, might I add, did the Jews illegally "walk into Palestine". They in fact entered the region known as Palestine as nomadic cattle-breeders about 1400 BC.


Mr B's says that "for thousands of years we've read stories of wanderers of all nationalities across the whole world." For the record, nationhood is largely a 19th century concept. Thousands of years ago there were no 'nationalities' and no national boundaries people could identify with.


John B

Only Sheep Need Leaders

I was standing at the SPGB stall at the Miner’s Gala, talking to a member from one of the many left-wing groups in attendance, and who had been sent out to try and sell their weekly paper. He was clearly a new member, for he had not yet been told to avoid our stall – an instruction pummelled into the heads of new recruits before they attend such gatherings. I had swapped him one of our publications for his and I wondered how his comrades would react when he arrived back at their stall with our journal rolled up and stuffed in his pocket. (Perhaps as Jack’s mother did when he was sent out to sell a cow and came back with a handful of “magic” beans. They might have called him an oaf, and clouted him but they couldn’t have sent him to bed without any supper?) We’d been talking a couple of minutes when he asked:

“So, who’s in change of the SPGB?”

“In charge?” I replied.

“Your leader. I mean who’s the leader?”

“We have no leaders. We never have. We have a membership of equals who arrive at decisions democratically and who elect delegates to act on their behalf, or to administer party affairs on behalf of the membership. But no leaders in the sense that someone sits on high giving out orders and deciding on policy on behalf of a passive membership.”

He looked confused. “So who makes the decisions?”

“No one person – all decisions are arrived at democratically. We elect an Executive Committee and General Secretary each year, but these have no powers or authority that marks them out from other members. They are simply ordinary members who have been delegated to administer the affairs of the Party and in the interests of the entire membership. Other than that the party meets twice yearly for conferences and branches send delegates to contribute to whatever debate there is and to vote on behalf of their branches”

“But you must have someone in charge. What about the really big decisions?”

“Why? What can one person do that could not be done far more efficiently by the entire membership deciding together. Surely hundreds, thousands of brains weighing up a problem is a much better way to come up with the best answer than one person alone. We all know the task at hand and what is expected of a member and we all share the same stance on capitalism and how it must be abolished. The really big decisions, you mention, would be those pertaining to party policy or changes of rule and in these instances we decide by a poll of the entire party – one member having one vote and each member being allowed the same chance of input into any ongoing debate.”

He looked pensive and his eyes searched for a reply.

“Do you need someone telling you what to do, what to think,” I asked. “Is the membership of your party so incompetent, so distrustful of their own powers of reasoning that they need a leader to think on their behalf? It just seems to be to be a daft way to run a supposed revolutionary organisation. And it seems that your organisation does have a leadership making the big decisions otherwise you would not have raised the issue.”

“Well, they don’t make all the decisions. We’re allowed to decide on our own activity ourselves.”
“That’s kind of them of them. Look, I’m not being an arrogant bastard. I’m not having a go at you, but look at it another way,” I said pleadingly. “That paper under your arm – how much control does the membership have over it? I can tell you now it is zilch. If you wanted to put a contentious issue on your party’s conference agenda, just how successful would you be? Again, I can tell you you’d be lucky if you didn’t get a slap off your regional leader for stepping out of line, and even if it was accepted by your regional bosses it would then have be vetted by some central committee.”

Our conversation was cut short. My visitor spied a friend and made his excuses and left, promising to read The Socialist Standard cover to cover and to think over what I had said. He seemed a decent enough bloke and I just hoped his friends would not spy our journal in his back pocket, but that he would be allowed to read it in his own time at some point and reach is own conclusions.

This visitor to our stall was not unique. It is honestly amazing just how many visitors to our stalls, wherever we set them up, just cannot come to terms with the idea of a revolutionary political organisation having no leadership. Query their assumptions on leadership and it becomes clear they are the disseminators of a cruel myth, a popular myth, that dates back thousands of years and which echoes around the globe; and it is that wherever humans congregate, wherever they settle, wherever they organise, a certain group of people will be exclusively marked out to be the leaders; that we would be unable to look after ourselves without such leaders. The origin of this myth, regardless of the societal organisation it has taken root in, has been the existence of private property in the means of living.

With the beginning of private property and class society and the concentration of the ownership of wealth into fewer hands, certain groups found themselves in a privileged position by virtue of their ownership of the wealth they had seized. They found they had command over others. They could deprive others of the means of living – food, water, shelter, the necessities of life - and thus were in a position to get others to do their bidding. In short they realised they could control the entire village or city or country. They had power to choose who lived and who died.
They developed a philosophy to justify their rule – rooted it safely in religion to show they ruled by divine right – and hired others, at first usually the biggest and toughest, to defend their power and ownership of wealth. They became utterly convinced of their ability and right to rule and looked down with contempt upon their followers. As time passed by they became more and more powerful and people took them for granted, saw them as wise beings and blessed with an insight into affairs which were beyond the ken of mere mortals, and thus in need of palaces castles and the best of everything. The followers were only too happy to be followers of their own special leader and soon learned to treat with suspicion the followers of other leaders. They wondered how thy would ever survive without leaders telling them what to do and asked their gods to protect them.

The leaders looked around and saw the threat posed by other leaders, who might usurp their power, envied the scarce resources they controlled, the power they too had, and so declared war on them, sending their followers against the armies of other leaders. The victors became even greater leaders and acquired a wider following.

After thousands of years the myth still prevails and leaders still abound. Indeed, they are the greatest defenders of the leadership myth. They are still powerful, still wealthy and will still urge their followers go to war to further their interests. Millions idolise them, look up to them, pay homage to them, sing songs about them, sculpt their images in stone and marble and bronze, and will happily die on their behalf if asked to do so.

Of course the leaders that exist now are not the leaders that existed during the days of slavery or feudalism or when capitalism was first brought screaming into the world. The leaders then were emperors and kings and queens, generals and great landowners. Today’s leaders, though powerful, are not as powerful as the class whose interests they represent – namely the capitalist class. Today’s leaders, the world’s political leaders and their governments, serve as the executive for the capitalist class and it is the capitalist class who has the real power. It is they, like the kings and emperors of old, who control the necessaries of life, deciding who lives and dies and it is in their interests that governments will wage war and decide upon whichever piece of legislation is necessary to protect the wealth of the capitalists.

Across the world, billions still support leaders and aspiring leaders. They will argue and fight and campaign for whichever leader they think can best manage the affairs of the capitalists – though few see things in this light. Billions invest a lot of trust in leaders and are content with a set up that allows them to vote for a leader every few years, satisfied this is democracy at work. A minority – socialists – urge the followers of the leaders to think for themselves and to imagine a better world without leaders, but their efforts bring mostly derision.

The philosophy of leadership has had a bad influence on workers. Not only does it incline them to mental laziness as they distance themselves from the important issues of the day, delegating problems to others for solution, it also numbs the critical faculties, so much so that when modern-day leaders fail to deliver what they promise, it is they and not the political and economic system that is seen to be at fault. After all, leaders do not control capitalism – it controls them – so their hands are really tied. Apathy, disenchantment, frustration and mistrust ensue, and this is often reflected at election time with a bigger proportion of the vote going to the abstentionsits, who refuse to exercise their right to vote. Many workers often switch off and turn away from politics, convinced anyone standing for election is a two-faced, self-seeking scoundrel. All of which is even more exasperating for the socialist contesting an election and standing in opposition to the defenders of capitalism, who is tarred with the same brush as that used to blacken the mainstream politician, and thought of as peddling the same wares.

This is a great sadness. The working class have been led and betrayed and disillusioned for so long that they have become apathetic. Moreover they have lost all sight of their own collective strength. Workers still look up to their betters though, and will support royalty, wave the flag of their masters when asked to do so and argue over which politician will make the best leader and agree with their leaders that the leaders of other countries need to be overthrown. Workers are constantly being urged to obey and follow orders, to trust the advice of others who know better how they should organise their lives, to mistrust their own intelligence and to look with suspicion on anyone who challenges the status quo, particularly those who urge them to think for themselves.

This is a great step for many people – thinking for themselves. Perhaps that first liberating wiggle from the strait-jacket of subservience that binds the working class, is when workers look around and realise it is not leaders who run the world, but they themselves, the everyday people on the streets, in the offices and factories, the people next door. Yes, that subservient, exploited majority run the world from top to bottom.

It is we, the working class, who plough he fields and plant the plantations. It is we who dig the mines and fish the oceans, who build the factories, ships and aeroplanes the ports and airports. It is we who dig the tunnels, who build the roads, the railways and bridges, the schools, universities and hospitals, the palaces and mansions. It is we, the working class, who produce everything society needs to function from a pin to an oil rig, providing humanity with all the services it needs. It is we who fix and mend and invent, who produce the fine music and art that so many of our class are deprived the enjoyment of. All of this is carried out by an exploited majority, who thinks it is not capable of taking care of its own affairs, whose only input into the democratic process is to be allow to place an ‘X’ – the mark of an illiterate – on a ballot paper every four or five years. Everything we see around us is the product of workers applying their physical and mental abilities in order that human needs, real and imaginary, are satisfied – not thanks to leaders, but in spite of them.

Look at how far science and technology has advanced in the last 100 years! Look at the inventions that have benefited humanity. How many were dreamed up by leaders? How many dreamed up by Stalin or Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Suharto or Saddam Hussein or even Thatcher, Blair and George Bush? Isn’t it the case that inventions are the mind-work of ordinary people, thinking up faster and more efficient ways to complete a difficult, dangerous or time consuming task, improving on techniques they were taught by others who had, themselves, improved on them previously?

In spite of all this, there are some who recognise all of this – they like to call themselves “socialists” – yet still maintain that workers need to be led, that workers are not capable of thinking for themselves and deciding what is in their own best interests, and that workers can only ever achieve a ‘trade union consciousness’, pursuing minor objectives, and that they must be led by a vanguard of professional revolutionaries - a chosen few, blessed with a unique knowledge - to the promised land. Such people could be found trying to establish socialism in the Russia of 1917, by force, and in a country upon which capitalism had hardly impinged and thus defying the very historical laws they themselves claimed to have knowledge of. Their descendants can still be found today in numerous left wing organisations, ever ready to lead the way – to confusion.

These Leninists and Trotsykists believe it possible to establish socialism in one country. They claim that socialism can come about by violent revolution. They even urge workers to campaign for myriad reforms, whilst ironically holding to the view that these same workers can only attain trade union consciousness. They claim to be the most ardent followers of Marx and Engels and are wont to bludgeon their opponents with quotes from the bearded duo themselves. However, they tend to pick and choose whichever quote best serves their ‘revolutionary’ philosophy and will most certainly not be found citing a circular letter from Marx to the leaders of the German Socialist Workers Party back in 1879:“When the International was formed, we expressly formulated the battle cry ‘the emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the working class itself.’ We cannot therefore cooperate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philosophical leaders.”

Neither will they point their listeners to a passage written by Engels in the 1895 Introduction to Marx’s Class Struggles in France:

“The time is past for revolutions carried through by small minorities at the head of unconscious masses. When it gets to be a matter of the complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must participate, must understand what is at stake and why they must act. But so the masses may understand what is to be done, long and persistent work is required.”

And so to with Clause 5 of the Socialist Party’s Declaration of Principles – “That this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself” – a statement socialists take seriously, and based on the realisation that socialism can only be established by a majority of the world’s people when they understand what socialism means, when they are prepared unite and work together and without leaders to further their class interests.

The Socialist Party says no more than before you can have socialism you need a majority of workers with a revolutionary class consciousness to help establish it – this entails no more than workers understanding the nature of the system that exploits them, that capitalism is not the “end of history”, as some of its apologists would assert, and that another world is possible if we organise consciously and democratically to help bring it into being.

Give us a million rifles and they will be totally useless. But give us the minds of a million workers who have at last pulled away the veil of deceit capitalism cloaks itself in and we will be on our way. A socialist revolution will never be won on the barricades, as some on the left believe, where workers squat like fugitives, the sites of their Kalashnikovs pointed in all directions, Molotov cocktails at the ready, red flags waving high and the leaders in some far off hide away directing the struggle. The battle against capitalism is to be fought on the battlefield of ideas. It is thus important that our case against capitalism must be watertight and that the workers who will establish socialism know exactly what is at stake. It is we, the working class, the exploited global majority who must work together, freely and consciously, and without leaders, to establish socialism.

The wording of one banner the North East Branch regularly attached to its stall was: “Only sheep need leaders.” If you want to be sheep, then prepare to be fleeced.

Size Counts (or never mind the quality feel the width)

One question I’m certain every socialist activist will have been asked is that regarding the “size of the party”. To be honest it’s a question that no member is over happy to answer, because we are, after all, relatively small, minute, compared to the mainstream parties who can count there membership in the hundreds of thousands. You just know the Labour Party member, who has asked you this question, is trying to keep a straight face, but already anticipating telling his friends down the local what he has just learned

Size matters for the general public too: “So how big are you then?” is often asked of us by enquirers. But nowhere is this fixation more apparent than with our dealings with left wing groups, who seem to have that obsession with size you would associate with a class of adolescent boys in a changing room after a sports lesson. The latter (assorted Leninists and Trotsyists) tend to put the question in a manner of contemptible decisiveness, the revelation that they are larger, and therefore ‘far more revolutionary’, being a form of political check-mate that terminates the confrontation: “We’re ten times as large. Get out of that if you can!”

We have nothing to hide! Though some members may feel a slight embarrassed about The Socialist Party being relatively small after such a time in existence, our answer is short and candid. But this is one of the things that distinguish us from organisations like the Labour Party, the SWP or the SLP – we simply have no obsession with size, will not try to hype our numerical strength and will not grovel on our hands and knees to anyone looking our way to fill out a membership form.

The disclosure as to out the size of our membership is often greeted with ridicule from our political opponents. “What, you’re that small?” they’ll exclaim, somewhat jubilantly, “and after 100 years? Just shows your ideas are not working, that no one is listening.” I can’t recall the number of times I’ve found myself in such a situation!

When the manifest logic of this shallow approach is spelled out, our opponent usually relinquishes his or her previously expressed view on size. It must be realised, that if the main criterion of the validity of a political party and its policy is the number of supporters it attracts, then the Labour Party are presently the ‘most right’ and before them the Tories were the ‘most right’ for eighteen years. Moreover, consider this: in the elections to the National Assembly in Germany on 6th June 1920, the Nazis polled 1,918,300 votes, or 6.5 per cent of votes cast. On 12th November 1933 they polled 39,638,800 votes, or 92.2 percent of votes cast and took every one of the 661 seats being contested. Is it sensible then to conclude that Hitler’s repressive, bigoted, militarist and nationalist policies were watertight, totally sound and commonsensical?

Our opponent now allows that neither Blair, Thatcher nor Hitler was “right” and that the support the various political parties enjoy tends to ebb and flow depending on many factors. New parties can come from nowhere – i.e. consider the UKIP’s victories in the 2004 Euro Election - and take support away and win votes from long established ones, which helps to bear out our claim that voters are not automatically inclined to the policies of the party with the largest membership.

It is then obvious that the constraints placed on the Socialist Party for being small are really a snide way of attacking our socialist principles and indeed afford the critic an escape hatch from constructive debate they feel uncomfortable about engaging in: “Why should I argue with you? You are nothing.”

What the size obsessionists fail to grasp is that the key to understanding the ebb and flow of political membership can be found in the materialist conception, or view, of history. New political parties, and the rise and fall of their memberships, arise from new ideas, which in turn stem from changing economic and social conditions.

Consider the ascendancy of the trade union movement in the latter part of the 19th Century. This was directly due to the intensification of industry in the larger towns and cities and the decimation of an agricultural workforce. The concentration of tens of thousands of workers into industrial centres in which poverty was the norm meant that sooner or later they were going to organise in defence of their common interests, whether it be working conditions or the length of the working day. And this in turn led to the creation of reformist labour parties to pursue their further interests via parliament. Again the rise of the Nazis in Germany in the inter-war years was attributable in part to the austere social conditions the country endured after the Treaty of Versailles.

The formation of the Socialist Party in 1904 was also due to changing ideas and changing social conditions – namely the advance of capitalism and the realisation amongst workers that the powers of production had developed to such a stage by then as to make socialism a viable system of society. Furthermore, workers were seeking to establish a political party that had socialism as its only goal; a party not dependent on a leadership for guidance and not out to reform capitalism, but to abolish it.

So changing social conditions give rise to new ideas, but it does not follow that these new ideas spread like wildfire overnight, with a huge majority accepting them in a short space of time. On the contrary, they are only accepted by relatively few people and often for a long time. This relates not simply to political ideas, but all ideas, whether they be political, scientific or religious. The more profound the new idea, the greater it challenges the ideas people had hitherto held and the longer it takes for its appeal to spread. Hence the low appeal of revolutionary socialist ideas. The Socialist Party is not advocating a few slight changes to capitalism, a few minor reforms, like the mainstream and leftwing parties, but demanding an end to the present system and everything associated with it. This, at the moment, is just too radical for many people.

And neither does the Socialist Party, as previously mentioned, pull all manner of stunts to increase its membership and secure votes. Mainstream parties, for instance, are known for signing dead people up as members and for sending their supporters into aged persons homes to get unwitting residents to sign up for membership. The SWP will stop anyone approaching their stall and ask if they want to join – they might even be recruiting BNP and NF members! The Socialist Party, on the other hand, is unique in having a membership test to ascertain the socialist knowledge of the aspiring member on a number of points considered very important to members – i.e. the socialist position on reforms, war, the former USSR and religion. Neither does the Socialist Party overtly ask people for their votes at election times. The Socialist Party makes no pledges, no promises, advocates no grand reforms, but stresses there is nothing it can do for the workers that they are not capable of doing for themselves and urges voters only to cast their vote for socialism if they fully comprehend and agree with the socialist case against capitalism.

So, the membership of The Socialist Party is small, but does this diminish the importance of its ideas or contribution to political theory? Hardly; its ideas are in keeping with social evolution – the future of humanity when capitalism is at last recognised as an outdated and ridiculous way in which to run the affairs of the world. This makes the ideas its members defend so powerful as to be ultimately indisputable. Thus, the Socialist Party’s members feel privileged to be members, convinced they are making a genuine contribution to the struggle for socialism. This is not to suggest the Socialist Party considers itself, as so many Leninist groups do, to be some revolutionary vanguard, blessed with an insight the masses can only dream of, ready to lead them to victory when the final hour comes. On the contrary, Socialist Party members believe a revolutionary class consciousness can be attained by any member of the working class who is prepared to begin thinking for themselves and to start questioning the most prevalent assumptions of the day. The Party may be small, but this is the price it has paid for refusing to compromise any of its revolutionary principles in 101 years and for not offering quick-fix solutions to the problems of capitalism. It remains small because it is not impatient for social change, realising that before you can have a social revolution you need a revolution in the way people think. At this moment in time, although the case for socialism has never been so pressing, it remains a sad fact that too many workers still think capitalism can be made to work in the interests of all if enough tinkering here and there is a carried out.

It's human nature, innit?

Imagine this:

Scene: The High Courts of Justice, London. On trial is a 30 year-old man, charged with 3 armed robberies, 3 counts of attempted murder, and 12 charges of assaulting police officers and another of incapacitating a police dog. The QC for the prosecution has finished summing up. He sits down, satisfied he had done enough to see this psychopath imprisoned for 350 years, and now the defendant’s barrister approaches the jury, one hand in his pocket and fidgeting with his car keys.

Barrister: Members of the Jury! It’s an open and shut case as far as I can see. It’s human nature, innit? Humans are by nature greedy, selfish and aggressive. We’ve been like this for donkey’s years. Nothing you can do about it, eh? He can’t help it (points to defendant) – he’s naturally predisposed to be a violent robber. I, therefore, urge you to find my client not guilty on account of this ‘ere human nature thing.

The jury retires and the judge adjourns. Five minutes later the jury returns. The foreman of the jury hands the usher a note which is then passed to his Lordship Justice Fairlaw. The judge looks at the slip of paper, raises an eyebrow and puts the note to one side.

Justice Fairlaw: Have the ladies and gentlemen of the jury reached a verdict on which you are all unanimous?

Foreman of the Jury: Yes, M’Lud.

Justice Fairlaw: And it is?

Foreman of the Jury: We find the defendant not guilty, M’Lud. We’re all agreed it’s not really his fault. Like his barrister said, it’s human nature, innit?’

Justice Fairlaw: In that case you’re free to go Mr Stabbemall If you read this account of a trial in a newspaper you would be flabbergasted. You’d think this some huge joke or, if not, that the judge, barrister and jury were completely and utterly bonkers. Your faith in the criminal justice system would be shattered into a billion pieces.

This, however, is just the kind of logic socialists come up against when trying to convince people of the benefits of a socialist society. People will hear us out, agree that capitalism is insane and that our vision of a future society sounds perfect, and then wallop you with their evolutionary psychological analysis of human society, saying:

“Yeah, I agree with everything you say. But it ain’t gonna work, is it, coz of human nature? At the end of the day, humans are greedy selfish and aggressive. Always have been, always will”

Which immediately puts your socialist on the defence: “Are you greedy, selfish and aggressive?”

“No, but…err…I’m…”

“Good to hear it. Neither am I. Hold on a sec, I’ll ask this guy here.” And the socialist holds out an arm and attracts the attention of a passer-by. “Sorry to bother you. I wonder if I could ask you a question.”

“Yeah, why not?” The passer buy joins the socialist and his critic.

“Right, would you consider that you are greedy and selfish?”
“Most certainly not.”

“Maybe aggressive?”

“No.”

“Thanks. That’s all.”

“That it?”

“Yes, thanks. Have a leaflet.” The socialist turns back to the evolutionary psychologist. “I’ll ask this woman crossing the road.”

The evolutionary psychologist walks off, muttering under his breath that the socialist is distorting his words.

The ‘human nature’ objection to socialism manifests itself in numerous ways, though it is more frequently the human nature of others, the wider society, which is acting as the barrier to socialism, never that of the model citizen and objector.

Let’s look briefly at the argument that humans are “by nature greedy, selfish and aggressive.”

So are humans naturally aggressive?

Well, if this is so then why do government s have to bring in conscription to force young men and women into their armies during times of war? At previous times, in Britain’s history, people have woken up from a drunken night to find themselves clutching the ‘king’s shilling’, turned into cannon fodder overnight, having been tricked into the army, and others have woken up in the holds of war ships which had already put to sea. Here, in Britain, where there is no conscription, very few people join the army with a view to killing others. Most join because they see it as an alternative to the dole queue or because they seek adventure or believe the army can teach them a valuable trade.

Moreover, one real problem armies have is that of desertion. In the Vietnam War, 50,000 US soldiers deserted. In other wars the army hierarchy has had to introduce the death penalty for deserters in an attempt to prevent so many fleeing the front line. So much for innate aggression.

Again, if humans are naturally aggressive, then why is there so much opposition to war? Surely our inborn aggressiveness compels us to cheer on “our boys” into battle, but this is not so. The February 2003 Anti War demo in London became the biggest ever demonstration in British political history, with almost 2 million anti-war protestors taking to the streets of the capital, having travelled from all over the country. They were not alone; there were coinciding demonstrations in cities right across the globe. Hundreds of thousands carried placards saying “Not in my name” – determined to make clear their opposition to conflict.

Critics may counter by citing the rising levels of physical violence as evidence of a violent trend amongst humans. But even this can be attributed to the fact that well over 90% of this violent crime is carried out when the perpetrator is drunk or high on drugs. The remainder tend to be violent crimes of desperation, rooted in poverty. When for instance, did you hear of a member of the aristocracy jumping an old lady on her way out of the bingo hall and snarling, “righto, missus, let’s ‘ave yer bag”?

The human aggression argument is looking pretty dubious, so we’ll move on.

So humans are greedy?

Our objector assumes that in a free access society, which socialism would be - where people give freely of their abilities, taking from the stockpile of communal wealth according to their own self-defined needs – that there would be an orgy of consumption. It is assumed that people would simply go mad and grab at anything that did not have to be bought; running home with 20 loafs of bread and five walkman cd players.

Have you ever watched a mother and say a two year old child in a corner shop? The mother will be at the counter, momentarily distracted, paying for her groceries, and her child heads for the confectionary display. The child has no real conception of the buying, selling and exchange game that parents play; one penny might as well be a pound coin – they’re just little fiddly things adults play with. Children simply take so much for granted. The mother will call the child away from the sweet display, and the child, wanting something, brings an item back- a packet of Smarties maybe - to her mother in the hope the parent will approve. Now note, it is just one packet, not ten and six packets of crisps! Just one packet of Smarties! Surely a child would be more predisposed to fill his or her arms with a stash of chocolate than an adult – believing this to be simply for the taking. But no, the child will take what he or she thinks will satisfy his or her immediate needs. For him or her there is always another day and it doesn’t look like all this free access confectionary is going anywhere in a hurry.

What possible benefit could there be to storing goods that were in plentiful supply and freely available? Take more than you need by way of perishables and you’ll end up with a cupboard full of stinking and rotting vegetables. Water is generally considered to be “free” – you can for instance go into a public building and get a free drink at a water fountain – but no one runs in with 10 gallon containers in order to hoard it at home. Air is free, but when did you last hear of anyone extracting it and storing it in warehouses?

In a free society it is far easier, just to take for you immediate needs and to return when you require more.

It is only in class society as exists today, where commodities have two values, a use value and an exchange value, where the profit motive results in artificial scarcity, that people display characteristics associated with greed. But establish as society in which the artificial constraints on production are removed (profit), in which goods have a use value only, and are produced for no other reason than people need them, and people’s approach to obtaining them will change.

Humans are selfish?

Are we really self-seeking, self-centred and egotistical? Well, let’s begin with a few facts.
1) In Britain there are 180,000 registered charities. These charities involve millions of people who give their free time, unpaid, for what they believe are worthy causes that benefit others. 2) According to a survey by Independent Sector, a US coalition of non-profit organisations, the percentage of volunteers in America is the largest of any country - almost 56%. The average hours volunteered per week by an individual is 3.5 hours. According to Charity America, donations to charity for 2002 were $241 billion, 76.3 per cent of this given by individuals.

Now let’s go back to December 26th, 2005, when the Asia Tsunami hit, killing upwards of 200,000. Overnight charities mobilised all over the world to get food, medical aid and other supplies to the millions left homeless in the disaster zone. The generosity shown towards the victims of the Tsunami disaster by, say the people of the USA, were not Bush administration “values”, which Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, seemed to imply during his damage limitation exercise in Indonesia, but rather the basic values of human beings in America, indeed, the world over, who had been motivated by the sorry plight of their fellows overseas.

Unlike other animals, humans are endowed with the ability to sympathise and empathise with their fellow humans. Humans derive great pleasure from doing good, are at their best when faced with the worst and will go to extraordinary lengths to help alleviate the suffering of others.

Across the US, as in other countries, there were all manner of fundraising events, in all sections of society, inclusive of nursery schools, prisons, universities and impoverished communities. In some instances people queued for over an hour to put money in a plastic collection bucket.

People raised hundreds of millions of dollars to help people they had never met before, nor knew anything of, and it was the same during the Ethiopian Famine of 1984, with millions around the world mobilising to help the starving of Africa.

Several years ago, when the Yangtze River in China threatened to burst its banks, seven million people came out and began to fill sand bags, pillow cases, anything, to build up the river banks that threatened their community.

Here in Britain, and indeed elsewhere, millions attend donor centres to give blood – usually every 17 weeks. Others put themselves on bone marrow registers and carry donor cards. All of this to help people they know they will never meet.

There have been cases where a small animal, a cat or puppy, sometimes even a child has become lodged in some deep underground pipe. Hundreds of people have mobilised to rescue it – fire crews, ambulance personnel, rescue services of every description. Contractors have freely sent in mechanical diggers. In most cases these people work endlessly, sometimes for days on end, sometimes without sleep, more often than not unpaid, until the cat or dog or even the small child is rescued. You can’t get near the site for TV crews and newspaper camera men – all desperate to capture the ‘human interest’ story, in the knowledge that this makes big news (as well as profits for the newspapers and TV networks it must be said).

So the evidence hardly suggests that humans are selfish, greedy and aggressive. Indeed, if this was the case, if we could just not help ourselves, then we would very much see the type of court case we began this episode with far more often. What most critics of human nature are actually referring to is human behaviour, behaviour exhibited in varying circumstances, and sometimes this reveals humans to be displaying behaviour that is aggressive or selfish.

For instance, if you go to Newcastle on a Saturday afternoon you’ll see thousands of people out shopping, strolling along quietly, minding their own business. Return ten hours later when the pubs and night clubs empty, when the same streets are full of drunks and you’ll see behaviour that is quite blatantly aggressive. This is not natural aggression, but aggression which is arising because the normal functioning of thousands of brains is being upset by an overdose of the chemical alcohol and other drugs. Anti-social behaviour is also influenced by our social circumstances at any given time, i.e., when we are poor, depressed, lonely, afraid, angry or frustrated – sometimes a spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion arising from abnormal and unfamiliar circumstances.

Socialists maintain that human behaviour is shaped in general by our surroundings, our circumstances, by the kind of system people are conditioned to live in – that it is not our consciousness that determines our social existence but our social existence which determines our consciousness. Nobody, for example, is born a racist or a patriot, a bigot, or with a belief in gods – this has to be learned. Nobody is born a murderer, a robber or a rapist, and our assumed greed for money is no more a function of the natural human thought process than were slavery or witch burning.For instance, Labour lost the Smethwick, Birmingham seat in the 1964 election to the Tories because of the racist hysteria the Tories had whipped up in the constituency and the false fears they had spread about immigration. Their candidate had as his election logo: “If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour.”

During the Falklands War, in the early eighties, if was not the people on the streets who wanted to celebrate the murder of thousands of Argentinean soldiers - it was the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who urged us to “Rejoice!” The Sun even printed the words as their headline in support of the Tories’ raw brand of jingoistic patriotism and millions of readers thought rejoicing at death was thus acceptable.

Ordinarily, the reactionary ideas the common people hold have been acquired second-hand, passed down from the ruling class above us. This is because, as Marx observed, the class which owns and controls the productive process also controls the intellectual life process in general. .In most cases, those who produce the world’s wealth (some 95 percent of the world’s population) have had that second-rate education that makes free-thought difficult – an upbringing that conditions us to accept without question the ideas of our betters and superiors. Indeed, the education system is geared to perpetuate the rule of an elite, insofar as it never encourages children to question and take issue with the status quo. Children may well cite that 8 times 8 equals 64, but how many will ask about the cause of wars or query the destruction of food? Moreover, the master class is allowed to hold onto power by controlling exactly what we think to the point that we imbibe a false class consciousness and readily acquiesce in our own exploitation. They control the TV, the radio, the newspapers, the schools. They perpetuate ideas that become so ubiquitous many people accept them as their own, uncritically. Many of these ideas are reactionary and, once imbibed, provide fertile soil for other reactionary ideas. A young man, who might have had no interest in politics, may well find himself regurgitating the racist remarks he has read in an election leaflet. He may find himself boycotting the local “Paki shop” and then joining the BNP or the National Front. Before you know it he is shaving his head, donning a black windcheater and Dr Marten boots and going out with his fascist mates for as spot of aggro.

Socialists hold that because we can adapt our behaviour, the desire to cooperate should not be viewed as illogical. We hold that humans are, “by nature”, cooperative and that we work best when faced with the worst and that our humanity shines through when the odds are stacked against us. Today, world capitalism threatens the human race with extinction. The reason this obnoxious system survives is because we have been conditioned to accept it, not born to perpetuate it. Rest assured, no gene inclines us to defend the profit system.

TOO YOUNG TO HANDLE THE TRUTH?

Saturday gone, I took my son to see the Holocaust Exhibition located on the third floor of the Imperial War Museum in South London. I was stopped at the door by a member of the museum staff and asked how old my son was.

“Eleven,” I replied.

“I’m sorry, but the exhibition is unsuitable for under-fourteens,” he says, apologetically.

“This is his fourth visit here. He’s been coming here for two years.” I answered and, before he could reply, said: “you can’t go setting an age limit on the truth.”

He waved me in.

I wasn’t lying. This was his fourth visit and just how old is a child supposed to be before they can be exposed to the harsher realities of history? Was his school erring in selling him his copy of the Diary of Anne Frank at a bookfair two years ago? For the record, the law would have it that a child reaches the age of criminal responsibility in this country at 10, so just how old do you have to be allowed cognizance of the more heinous crimes of your fellow humans?

Each time I have taken him he has viewed the exhibits and used the interactive material with the required solemnity and with an adult’s empathy. Of course he is a child, so naturally impatient to get on to the next exhibit. But, the exhibition is punctuated with video monitors. set into the walls at strategic points, playing looped film of Nazi leaders poring fourth their foul cant to cheering crowds, Jews being rounded up in Warsaw, lines of nameless victims being stood against trenches and machine gunned, and these I’m determined to talk him through, again:

“That’s Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister.”

"Who?”

I repeat the name and explain his function within the Nazi heiarchy.

Goering he can identify and already knows the final solution was given his nod.

We stop in front of a display highlighting the fact that the Nazis killed something like 170,000 people with physical and mental handicaps – Hitler’s way of ridding the ‘master race’ of impurities – and I explain, again, just who was included.

He asks why the framed post card poem in our passage-way at home does not refer to this fact – it’s the famous Pastor Noeller one - “First they came…” - and shares a wall with a dozen other such hangings.

“I reckon he hadn’t heard of these crimes when he was writing the poem. a lot of them were carried out hush-hush”

“Would they have come for you?”

“Probably – but more likely because of my politics.”

He gives me one of his frequent frowning looks of incredulity. It comes across his face when you tell him a blatant huge porkie, but also when he hears something that challenges his conception of the world around him.

Later, downstairs, he sits at one of a dozen or so desks that has a monitor built into it, the touch-screen interactive type that allows you to ask questions or hazard a guess at a question. I watch on as he takes out a piece of paper and a pen and begins to jot down figures that he prompts on to the screen and pertaining to numbers killed in the concentration camps by category. I ask what he’s doing.

“Working out how many were killed.”

“Don’t be silly. You’ll be there all day. There are millions from every section of society not even listed on there.” And I try to explain it is far more important to try and understand what made people think these were their enemies, why they hated them and treated them so. History is not just facts.

The latter is a statement not lost on him – he can readily rebuff the popular misconception that wars are fought for freedom and democracy, countering it with an infantile Marxian recognition that military conflict has its root in disputes over trade routes, areas of influence, foreign markets, mineral wealth or the strategic points from which the same can be defended.

The model of Auschwitz is the exhibit he spends most time at. It’s a huge display, a scale model, painted white, perhaps in excess of 30 feet in length. Every detail has been accounted for. There are thousands of minute figures – no two seemingly alike - alighting from their cattle trucks on the sidings just inside the gates of this hell – and many more walking, heading to the far end of the display, descending the steps to the gas chambers and certain death. There are the barbed wire fences, the barracks and the camp guards. We both can’t help but wonder at the dedication, passion and love that went into making this magnificent model. And at the end of this display there is a glass case housing a rusting canister of Zyclon- B pellets and just round the corner a couple of the ill-fitting, striped pyjamas concentration camp prisoners wore, right next to a display case with a mountain of ageing shoes.

When we leave the exhibit, he’s quiet, though not subdued, and not at all interested in the other displays, the sundry tanks and military vehicles and the fokke-wolfes hanging from the rafters, though the word "fokke" makes him smile. These are only part of the story of the insanity of war. We leave and go for lunch and the continuation of the history lesson over sausage, egg and chips.

Call me a sick, insensitive bastard, but this is one kid that is not going to wear a soldier’s uniform, or wave a flag, or ridicule another because of their skin colour, race or religion. I am preparing him for war, though - the class war. He and his school mates have been neck-deep in it since birth; they just don’t know it yet.

More on the Holocaust Exhibition:

The Holocaust Exhibition commences with the tumultuous political scene in Europe just after World War One, looking at the ascendancy of the Nazi party, how anti-Semitism as a Europe-wide phenomenon became fertile in Hitler’s Germany, giving birth to twisted anti-Jewish beliefs, the distortion of science to shore up Nazi race supremacy theory, the isolation of German Jews, the refugee crisis and the introduction of so-called 'Euthanasia' policies in 1939.

The exhibition contains eye-witness accounts, written and oral, and all manner of documents. There are photographs, diaries, newspapers and artefacts of every description and film from most every country the Nazis occupied. The exhibition contains a funeral cart, a deportation railway truck – that could have carried victims to Auschwitz – concentration clamp clothing and much more.

Hey, and if you do go, take a few tissues!

Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road London SE1 6HZ United Kingdom. Email: General enquiries: mail@iwm.org.uk Telephone: +44 (0)207 416 5000General enquiries: +44 (0) 207 416 5320Fax: +44 (0) 207 416 5374http://london.iwm.org.uk/

The Landlord Wore a Dressing Gown

A certain Glaswegian - and a fellow barricadist (nah, not him on the left) - has suggested I recount the night we held a branch meeting in Sunderland (‘we’ being the North East Branch of the Socialist Party). Well, here goes.

About 6 years ago, when the North East Branch of the Socialist Party was quite an active branch, the toast of their southern comrades and the envy of less formidable lefty groups in the region, we boldly decided to commence holding meetings around the borough - taking the mountain to Mohammed, so to speak (in those days we met regularly at The Swan, just off the Heworth by-pass, a pub that backs onto the cemetery that contains the grave of legendary 1832 miners’ strike leader, Thomas Hepburn). The branch contained a mixture of Geordies*, Makems**, monkey hangers*** and exiled Scots; the Makems forming perhaps the largest contingent.

We decided at one branch meeting, on a member’s advice, to hold a meeting in Sunderland, in a public house in Roker and not far from the famous black cat football ground (long since replaced with the Stadium of Shite****). The comrade who suggested the pub – buggered if I can remember the name of it – used it as his local and was a friend of the landlord and offered that there would be a decent turn-out there.

The night of the meeting came and I set off early for the venue – unsure just where it was and a slight apprehensive, as the last time I had ventured through the area a gang of nutters were ripping the scaffolding from a building that was being renovated, and hurling it each other for a laugh, and some little gobshite, no more than seven-years-old, asked if I could light his fag. Anyway – I digress – I eventually found the pub, or should I say ‘pothole’?

There are messy pubs and there are right bloody dives and then there are pubs like this one. This one was unique in so far as not two tables or chairs in the entire place matched. The tables clearly hadn’t been cleaned in weeks, there were fag ends on the floor and fish supper wrappers and empty crisp packets stuffed down between and at the back of the seating where it met the wall, and the wallpaper was in the kind of condition you would expect if you had been scraping it off for an hour. And sitting amidst this detritus was the oddest looking bunch of people I have ever seen assembled in one spot.

When I walked into the bar at about 7 pm the place went deadly silent, just like in that scene in the film An American Werewolf in London when the two young Yanks venture into the Slaughtered Lamb pub on the Moors to escape the encroaching evening. Even the juke box paused and looked at me. And then everything returned to normal and the locals carried on their conversations.

I knew I looked strange to them – I do to everyone and am always guaranteed a second, third and even fourth glance – but as I looked around me I knew I just had to be at a convention of Last of the Summer Wine***** fanatics, and at which some members had decided to come as Eli Duckett (pictured above - the short-sighted old guy with the jam jar glasses, who wears the long white mac and shuffles along, and who’ll stand for half an hour talking to a post box, thinking it’s a woman in a red coat and saying something like: “Eee, missus, you’re on wrong side of road for bus stop.”) There were ‘Compos’ there as well as a few dodgy looking characters who could successfully have auditioned for walk-on parts in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

The landlord came out of a back room to serve me, looking like he’d just got out of bed – hair ruffled, unshaven and clad in a blue dressing gown, open and untied at the front and revealing boxer shorts and a pot belly.

“Is this where the socialist meeting is being held?” I asked, half hoping he’d tell me I was in the wrong pub and that someone had stuck the meeting’s advert to the entrance for a laugh.
“Aye, mate, upstairs,” he replied, as he looked me up and down.

I chatted to him as he poured me a half glass of lager and mixed it with a half pint glass of lemonade, and the Eli Ducket Appreciation Society occasionally looked over and wondered why a man was drinking a girl’s drink.

My host eventually directed me to the stairs for the “function room” above and off I headed in that direction, with a glass of shandy (I’m teetotal) and my heavy hold-all of party literature which I was now regretting having brought – I was thinking a flare gun, commando knife and 24 hour survival pack would have been more appropriate for this night exercise.

The upstairs room was no different – resembling someone’s attempt at furnishing a room from stuff found in skips. It was a lot brighter than downstairs, however, being painted sky blue, but more cluttered with assorted junk piled up and filling one half of the room.

The meeting was not due to commence until about 8pm, but there was already a few comrades there, chatting with a couple of locals who had spied the home-made A4 poster advertising the meeting - ‘All Wellcome’ - and wishing to investigate. The former were pleased to see me – it being evident that their company were giving them a hard time – and thought maybe I, with experience of speaking in daunting settings, could explain the party case to them in a way they could understand.

Like any battle-hardened socialist worth his or her salt, I was again and, for the thousandth time, defending ‘the case’ against charges that “socialism had already been tried and had failed,” that “socialism was dead” and that nobody would want to “live in the Soviet Union” and how “human nature” would always be a barrier to a system of society based on cooperation. But, like making an omelette with one arm tied behind your back and without breaking the eggs, there are something you just can’t do – like converting people with a reformist, Labour Party mentality, their only source of information being The Sun and Sky TV, to ‘the case’. These guys were not having it and proved just as confrontational as the trio of BNP****** members who once came over to the Party stall one afternoon in Jarrow to show off their neo-Nazi tattoos. So I told them just to wait until the evening’s talk was over and there would be a discussion on the same and that maybe they would have a different slant on what I was saying by then.

I set out the stall – we do this at every meeting, and I tend to go over the top and bring more literature than it is possible to sell – handed out some free literature and sat back and waited for the speaker to show up and generally chatted with whoever came into the room. When our speaker did turn up he was an hour and a half late, which really pissed off everyone there, myself included. I had previously said I could not stay late and we were now 90 minutes behind schedule.

I can’t recall the topic of the talk or what was said; I have heard so many that I focus more on the debate and question and answer session afterwards, anticipating, from what the speaker has said, just which direction the questioning will take. In the event, I had to make my farewells, just after the speaker finished. I packed the stall away – literature sales zilch - and left the comrades to the questioning and ventured out into the cold Wearside evening looking for a bus stop. It had been a disappointing evening, with our speaker turning up late and only half a dozen members turning up in addition to our four visitors, who were really only there out of amusement.

There was only one bus going my way and after almost an hour waiting anxiously for it, standing at a semi-derelict bus stop in the cold of night, the echo of distant drunken screams occasionally sounding as if they were getting closer (it was a half hourly service), I assumed it must have been ambushed somewhere and jumped on the first one heading in a northerly direction. This just happened to be a South Shields bus, which on its way to South Shields market place took us on a tour of Seaburn and Whitburn first. Along the route I kept looking out of the window into the darkness for a familiar landmark, convinced I was miles off target and swearing we’d never venture far from The Swan for meetings again, without having well advertised that meeting and checked out the location properly beforehand and secured some decent transport. But eventually we stopped in South Shields. I’d missed any bus going my way and headed for the Metro to Hebburn and once there I had a half an hour walk home, arriving there just after midnight.In the warmth of my home, relaxing with a coffee, I checked an A-Z of the area and discovered I could have walked it home from Roker quicker and contemplated the evening and the lessons we could learn from it - there is no grand plan for the perfect branch meeting; mostly it’s all part of one long learning curve - and hoped the Eli Ducket Appreciation Society got home safely.

Notes:

*Geordie – someone born on Tyneside.

**Makem – affectionate Geordie term for someone born on Wearside and who speaks the local dialect ( i.e.’You make them and I’ll take them, coming out as “Yee makem ‘n’ aall takem.”) and originating in love the two local football teams - Newcastle United and Sunderland – have for one another.

*** Monkey hangers – affectionate term the above groups of people use to greet people from Hartlepool (it’s a long story, but do a Google search for ‘Hartlepool Monkey’).

**** Stadium of Shite – affectionate Geordie term for Sunderland’s football ground, the Stadium of Light.

*****Last of the Summer Wine – a long running BBC TV comedy series based on the trials and tribulations of three elderly gentlemen in a sleepy Yorkshire village.

****** BNP – British National Party – group of semi illiterates and Neanderthals whose lifetime obsession is the colour of people’s skin, who admire Hitler and speak a strange monosyllabic language. The only claim to fame this group has is that the Conservative Party keep stealing their ideas. Not to be confused with human beings.