From The Socialist newspaper, 21 October 2009

 

Hard Times by Charles Dickens, reviewed by Linda Taaffe

 

IN 1854 Charles Dickens' weekly magazine Household Words serialised his novel Hard Times.

People looked forward to each episode just as nowadays they await the latest edition of TV serials.

Workers' conditions 150 years ago were brutal.

Dickens devoted his literary talent to making them central to this novel.

People still use the term "Dickensian" to refer to the poverty-stricken lives of poor workers today.

Dickens was not a socialist.

 Hard Times makes deprecatory comments about the union agitator character Slackbridge, and features a non-union mill weaver as the main worker character.

Neither did he pose a fundamental change in society.

But even this story, for popular consumption, would have been seen as an attack on the establishment and an open condemnation of capitalism.

Greedy employers such as Josiah Bounderby looked for the slightest signs of discontent that could lead to the "Hands" - real people reduced to mere units of labour - wanting "to be set up in a coach and six, and fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon."

 Such men were marked out for transportation.

Karl Marx loved Dickens, who graphically highlighted working conditions and workers' efforts to form combinations (early trade unions).

 Dickens worked briefly in a Manchester shoe polish factory, experiencing the conditions that Friedrich Engels brilliantly documented in Conditions of the Working Class in 1844.

Dickens vowed to "strike the heaviest blow in my power" to help those toiling there.

This wonderful short novel uses satire to comment on class, laws and parliament.

Dickens presents two ways of seeing life - the mean, utilitarian, cash nexus, as opposed to treating people decently and letting human relations flower.

MPs were already getting a bad name.

Dickens describes Thomas Gradgrind MP as "throwing of dust about into the eyes of other people," and described politicians as people in the service of the rich.

He was sickened by inhuman conditions in the factories where children's bodies were regularly mangled.

Even the factory inspectors were shackled.

"Government gentlemen come and mak's report. Fend off the dangerous machinery, box it off, save life and limb, don't rend and tear human creeturs to bits in a Chris'en country.

 What follers? Owners sets up their throats, cries out 'Onreasonable! Inconvenient! Troublesome!'

Gets to Secretaries o'State wi' deputations and nothing's done.

When do we get there wi' our deputations..."

What about deputations on pay, housing, health today, let alone the petitions of millions who demonstrated against war?

Cabinet ministers are still deaf to workers' pleas. Secretaries of State still cry "Onreasonable" over our cry for decent pensions.

Gradgrind wants to mould everyone and everything to serve self-interested capitalist exploitation for naked profit. His school in Coketown, "a town of machinery and tall chimneys," was founded on "facts".

He advises the teacher Mr M'Choakumchild to "plant nothing else, and root out everything else."

The "little vessels...are arranged in order, ready to have imperial facts poured into them until they were full to the brim."

Governments today still try to harness education strictly to employers' needs.

Teachers talk about the Gradgrind curriculum when campaigning against Sats tests for young children, and against the use of numbers and scores in league tables as the crucial measure for educational institutions.

Real education, most teachers agree, should be based on the ability to think for oneself.

This debate has been held for generations.

Albert Einstein failed at school, but his enquiring mind pushed the boundaries of science and he came to the conclusion that "Imagination is more important than knowledge."

Dickens juxtaposed Sleary's Circus to Gradgrind and Bounderby.

The circus characters empathise with others and help each other, despite their poverty. Imagination, emotions and colour make for real human relations.

They show that life is about the common interest, and lending a helping hand.

The circus girl Sissy Jupe helps sort out the problems in the story, not the wealthy, powerful or educated, for all their knowledge and vanity.

Dickens' novel reminds us how little has fundamentally changed.

 Workers are still exploited by employers as units to make profits - and brutally discarded when not needed.

The cash nexus has penetrated every aspect of life, debasing human relations even more.

One character in Hard Times bemoans: "All's in a muddle," ie society is in a mess. It still is today.

---

 

William E. Pike

Was Dickens Really a Socialist?

December 2006 • Volume: 56 • Issue: 10 •

 I have been an avid fan of Charles Dickens’s works since before entering high school.

I have also adhered to the freedom philosophy for about as long.

Therefore, as the years passed and I read more and more commentators lauding Dickens as a catalyst for collectivist economics and state-centered social programs, I grew discouraged and disquieted.

I have come to find, however, that by and large these commentators were not interpreting Dickens at face value, but were in effect putting words into his mouth.

Did Dickens stand up for the poor?

Yes. Did Dickens speak out on the conditions in his time?

Yes. Was he anti-capitalist?

Were his views socialist?

Did he advocate for government welfare programs? No.

Compared to most great novelists, Dickens has inspired an inordinate mass of biographies, and interest in his life, apart from his works, has been unceasingly strong. One reason for this is simply that Dickens lived life fully.

He traveled abroad often and made many public appearances. He was an oft-seen figure (though many times anonymous) in the streets of London , exploring the city and meeting people of all backgrounds and walks of life. He was comfortable among England ‘s highest society and among its lowest classes. His understanding of the human condition, therefore, was comprehensive.

It is no surprise, then, that in both his fiction and his nonfiction Dickens went to great lengths to present his readers with the full range of English society, including many of its most downtrodden.

We should not draw political conclusions from the fact that Dickens had a heart—that he painted vivid pictures of those suffering poverty, disability, abuse, and homelessness.

That he would try to win his readers’ hearts to the likes of these says nothing about his views on how they should be helped.

Such inferences are made today by self-serving ideologues eager to enlist an ever-popular writer into their ranks.

Dickens presented his readers with some of literature’s most touching characters:

Tiny Tim, whose handicap would doom him to a youthful death without costly treatment;

Oliver Twist, the orphan forced to endure hunger, cruelty, and childhood labor;

Mr. Micawber, the genial debtor tragically forced into prison;

Little Nell and Jo, who would die well before their time.

In presenting such characters Dickens meant to force us to face the plight of society’s least members, but he did not prescribe a collectivist solution to ending their miseries.

Nor does he blame their plight on the still-evolving capitalist economy of his day.

We are used to thinking of Dickens as an enemy of capitalism largely because of his timeless lampooning of certain men of business.

What he was really doing, however, was attacking the vice of greed.

In Our Mutual Friend he blasts the Lammles, who marry each other solely for money (only to find out that neither has any).

In the same novel he forced the “mercenary” Bella Wilfer to undergo a transformation before finding happiness.

In Martin Chuzzlewit relatives of the title character are ridiculed for their scheming at inheritance.

And then there is the prototype of the heartless capitalist—Ebenezer Scrooge.

But as with other characters, Dickens does not attack Scrooge as a capitalist but as a miser.

As Daniel T. Oliver put it in The Freeman (December 1999):

Scrooge’s character defect is not so much greed as miserliness.

He hoards his money even at the expense of personal comfort.

While many remember the single lump of coal that burns in the cold office of his assistant Bob Cratchit, the fire in Scrooge’s own office is described as “very small.”. . . Dickens gives us no reason to believe that Scrooge has ever been dishonest in his business dealings.

He is thrifty, disciplined, and hard-working.

What Dickens makes clear is that these virtues are not enough.

Though the protagonist throughout A Christmas Carol might be Bob Cratchit, there are sympathetic characters who are in fact capitalists.

Fezziwig, a man of business, nevertheless treats his employees like family.

And then there are the easily overlooked “portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold,” collecting money to “buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth.”

Indeed, Scrooge himself, on that transformative Christmas morning, does not renounce capitalism. Instead he promises to be a better man.

He will live a fuller life and share his good fortune with those close to him.

Many libertarians and other supporters of the free market will interject that Scrooge is already benefiting society as an effective businessman.

The argument is also made that in lampooning Scrooge’s personality, Dickens also distorts the realities of the labor market. Michael Levin has written:

Let’s look without preconceptions at Scrooge’s allegedly underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit.

The fact is, if Cratchit’s skills were worth more to anyone than the fifteen shillings Scrooge pays him weekly, there would be someone glad to offer it to him.

Since no one has, and since Cratchit’s profit-maximizing boss is hardly a man to pay for nothing,

Cratchit must be worth exactly his present wages.

Both arguments have merit—Scrooge, like your local banker or financier, benefits society through his business. And yes, Dickens does not express, and most likely did not fully comprehend, the realities of the labor market.

But the tale of Scrooge is of personal redemption. It is not particularly realistic nor well-versed in economics.

Dickens is not attempting to argue against capitalism, nor is he arguing against a free market for labor.

He is arguing against personal callousness and against misanthropy.

In chapter 33 of Socialism Ludwig von Mises lamented Dickens’s characterizations of utilitarianism and of true liberalism.

However, if Dickens’s words were later co-opted to promote a socialist agenda, that is hardly his fault. Utilitarianism can be the basis of a solid capitalist economy.

It can also be mutated into a communist state. Dickens might not have understood that, but he did know that utilitarianism without reasonable judgment can turn society—and the state—into something monstrous.

Private Philanthropy, Not Public Welfare

A Christmas Carol exemplifies, on a personal level, what Dickens was really arguing for.

He was not calling for state intervention, nor for economic regulations.

Instead, he argued on behalf of personal philanthropy.

In the end, Scrooge helps Tiny Tim not because of socialist ideals, but because his humanity is reawakened, causing him to care for this child. Quite frankly, he does the right thing.

In fact, a survey of Dickens’s novels shows that his protagonists and his happy endings often have something in common—a person with means helps persons of limited or no means out of the goodness of his heart. Oliver Twist is adopted by Mr. Brownlow.

In Our Mutual Friend the Boffins relinquish their fortune to the rightful heir.

Martin Chuzzlewit provides for his long-neglected grandchild and his true love.

Mr. Pickwick forgives dishonest friends and helps them to establish a new life.

And Sydney Carton gives up his very life for a pair of lovers in A Tale of Two Cities.

One can search in vain through Dickens’s works for calls for government control of the economy or social-welfare structures.

 As Lauren M. E. Goodland writes in Victorian Literature and the Victorian State regarding Dickens’s treatment of sanitation in Bleak House:

Here sanitary reform becomes fundamentally necessary to the nation’s moral and physical well-being.

Yet it would be a mistake to infer from such remarks that Dickens had become a staunch proponent of the state’s duty to intervene in the lives of individuals and communities.

 Bleak House memorably dramatizes the need for pastorship in a society of allegedly self-reliant individuals.

But it by no means clearly endorses state tutelage, nor, indeed, any other form of institutionalized authority.

In reality Dickens often criticized state-sponsored institutions.

The Ghost of Christmas Present, for instance, chastises Scrooge for relying on such institutions rather than being philanthropic himself.

Using Scrooge’s own words he mocks him:

 “Are there no prisons?

 Are there no workhouses?”

Among Dickens’s most moving writings is a nonfiction article called “A Walk in a Workhouse.”

In a few short pages he describes the pathetic scene of a state-sponsored parish workhouse, Victorian England’s solution to almost every social burden—orphans, abandoned children, the sick, the aged, the infirm, the insane.

The problem of course was that the workhouse took away both a person’s liberty and dignity—not to mention his future.

In all these Long Walks of aged and infirm, some old people were bedridden, and had been for a long time; some were sitting on their beds half-naked; some dying in their beds; some out of bed, and sitting at a table near the fire.

A sullen or lethargic indifference to what was asked, a blunted sensibility to everything but warmth and food, a moody absence of complaint as being of no use, a dogged silence and resentful desire to be left alone again, I thought were generally apparent.

Such was how Dickens viewed the state’s involvement in society’s welfare.

He took great pains to laud the nurses of the workhouse, who cared deeply about their wards.

But the place itself—the institution—was an abomination.

So don’t believe the English professors and the literary theorists.

Charles Dickens was not a socialist at heart.

Far from being an early proponent of the welfare state, he was sounding alarms for all of us.

Let us finally heed his warning.

Tom Paine

Writer and Revolutionary

By Jill Scholey

28th January 2012

Concluded

Paine, now an old man, was not so able to look after himself.

He wrote imploringly to Jefferson, asking the American Government to reward him financially for his work for the Revolution, but to no avail.

Paine was even refused the right to vote in 1806,officialdom saying that he was not in fact an American citizen. Paine turned increasingly to drink to dull his pain.

However, Paine’s contemporaries noted what brilliant sparkling company he still was on his lucid days.

By 1808, Paine was living in squalor, desperately sick and largely unable to move or converse. In his will, he left the bulk of his estate to Mme Bonneville.

On June 8th ,1809, Thomas Paine breathed his last, and was buried on his farm in New Rochelle.

Tragically, his body was later exhumed and his bones lost; to this day, his final resting place remains unknown. Paine affirmed that “ …my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

 His legacy lives on in his writings and in his profound influence on citizenship and modern democracy.

End.

Tom Paine

Writer and Revolutionary

By Jill Scholey

27th Jan 2012

Continued

During Paine’s final years in France, he drew up plans for the invasion of England, with the aim of liberating the English people from the shackles of the Georgian monarchy, as he saw it.

He was even to show initial support for Napoleon Bonaparte.

However, this was a political flirtation that was to cool quickly, Paine later renouncing Napoleon as a cool quickly, Paine later renouncing Napoleon as a tyrant and “the completest charlatan that ever existed.”

After the peace of Amiens in 1802 Paine decided to return to America.

A warm public letter to Paine from the new President, Thomas Jefferson, was received by many in America with scorn.

Having been away for fifteen years, Paine spent time assessing the political climate.

 He wrote a series of open letters criticising the backbiting and conflict in American government, and the misuse of the press.

Paine was saddened that citizens had forgotten how the American Revolution had come about, and the principles upon which America had been founded.

His despair was exacerbated  by ill health, poverty and old age

Nevertheless, he continued to give public lectures, and write articles.

He planned to publish an anthology of his works, but this never came to fruition.

To be concluded

Tom Paine

 

Writer and Revolutionary

By Jill Scholey

26th Jan2012

 

In December of that year, Paine was arrested and thrown into the Luxembourg prison, once a royal palace and now a prison for “enemies” of the Revolution.

Paine’s cell was small, dark and damp, but he was lucky in that he could afford candles by which to write.

The horror of the Luxembourg would have tried the courage of all but the bravest- a door would be flung open, a soldier would read out a list of names – then men, women and children would be dragged out to the guillotine.

It was noted that Paine was a calming influence and offered support to his fellow prisoners in their final hours.

The severe stress and terrible conditions eventually caused Paine to fall seriously ill.

It was the custom for the turnkeys to mark a cross on the door of those cells whose occupants were to be guillotined.

At the height of Paine’s fever, his comrades asked for his cell door to be left open, and in so doing the fatal cross was hidden from view, and he escaped death.

Paine wrote repeatedly to Gouverneur Morris (American Minister to France) insisting that he should be freed.

Some suspected that the Americans were not anxious to see Paine at liberty to cause trouble between France and America. However, at last, in 1794, the new American envoy to France, James Monroe, secured his release.

Pain was now ill, unkempt and grey from his ten month ordeal, but he soon recovered his health and for the following years wrote many pamphlets on a variety of subjects.

He lived with the Bonneville family in Paris, and Madame Bonneville translated for him.

Paine now harangued Washington, in the American press, accusing Washington of abandoning him whilst he lay languishing in prison.

continued

Tom Paine

 

Writer and Revolutionary

By Jill Scholey

25^th Jan 2012

continued

Struggles for power between the Jacobins and the Girondins now gathered pace.

Some delegates wanted  the king executed, others, including Paine,

favoured exiling him.

Paine worked feverishly to influence the deputies to a compromise solution.

 In his address, Paine reiterated his hatred of monarchy,

but warned against revenge and blood-letting which

was not becoming for a democratic republic.

The address fell on deaf ears .

On 21 January 1793 King Louis XVI was guillotined.

Now began the Reign of Terror .

All those deputies who had voted against the death sentence for Louis XVI were in

grave danger, including Paine himself.

Paine was trapped.

He could not return to either England or America .

He began work on another very controversial pamphlet The Age of Reason ,

an account of his views on religion.

Many of his friends had by this time been guillotined and Paine must have been

keenly aware of his mortality at this time

This work revealed that Paine believed strongly in

a benevolent Maker (‘I believe in one God, and

more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life’) but

was highly critical of organized religion:

All national institutions of churches…appear to me no

other than human invention, set up to terrify and

enslave mankind, and monopolise power and profit.

 

The Age of Reason quickly became a bestseller when published in 1793.

On the 200th Anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns
 
 

Written by J.R.Campbell on 24th January 1959 in World News.

For the occasion of the bi-centenary of Robert Burns we are better able to understand the man and the poet than ever before and to see what contribution he made to literature and to life.  
 
It is impossible to be neutral about Bums and it has always been difficult to make a balanced  estimation, but in this age of revolutionary change, those who are striving to promote that change are in an excellent position to understand Bums’ position in similar circumstances at the end of the eighteenth century.

Unfortunately for Burn’ reputation, the period after his death when the first biographies were being written was one of political reaction, when it was difficult to take a firm stand for the radical democracy which was Burns’ ideal.  

The French Revolution had first attracted and then repelled the intelligentsia and sympathy for radical change was on the wane. So Burns’ politics were on the whole played down. 

“His politics smelt . . .” The remark “his politics smelt of the smiddy” [smithy] took the place of a serious analysis of his opinions. It was also an age of religious reaction. 

The British ruling class had been thoroughly shaken by the French Revolution, which they attributed in part to the irreligious teachings of the Encyclopedists. 

If a similar misfortune were not to befall Britain, then everything possible must be done to ensure that the people were indoctrinated with religion.

 In the Scots Churches there was a swing back, from the liberal interpretations of Christian doctrine which Burns  had  backed in his own lifetime, to the stern discipline of Calvinism. 

The rapidly forming proletariat had to be kept in “decency and order”.

Those aspects of Burns’ poetry which did not fit in with this new social climate were consistently underplayed.

Burns’ first biographer, Dr.Currie, was more than pained at the poet’s addiction to, and praise of,strong drink and was only too eager, in the manner of later temperance advocates, to cite the poet as an example to be avoided.

In addition he was prepared to water down anything in Burns’ past life that might not fit in with the current political reaction. 

 Burns’ good friends in Dumfries were only too anxious to ensure that Dr.Currie’s forthcoming volumes had the widest possible sale and that in their opinion was most likely if they offended nobody.

The more extensive the sale of this work, the more there would be to support Burns’ widow, Jean Armour Burns, and to educate his children.  
So Dr. Currie got in first with the legend of Bums as a chronic alcoholic and little attention was paid to those who sought to paint another picture. 

A stained glass picture.  If the radical poet could be presented as a harum-scarum reprobate, who by some queer accident wrote very good poetry, it might prevent anyone from being greatly interested in his politics. 

When the rebellion against this false picture came, it went  to  the  other extreme.

A stained-glass picture of the poet became common.

He was represented as a sentimentalist almost too good for this wicked world.    

The famous portrait by Nasmyth, which certainly did not represent Bums “warts and all”, was constantly reproduced and each successive reproduction made Burns more and more of a cissy.

For this ethereal poet an ethereal lover was invented and we have, alongside the poet’s earthly lady loves, that creature of stardust,“Highland Mary”.  

It is not necessary to follow recent biographers in denigrating Mary.

The sober fact is that hardly anything is known about her one way or another.

So to the exceedingly ethereal picture of Burns, legend had to add the equally ethereal picture of his Highland goddess Bible in hand.

The emerging bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie in the nineteenth century annexed Burns.

Their annual Burns dinners became ritualised. It was an occasion for listening to Bums’ songs and poems the more sentimental preferably and for testing the qualities of strong drink. 

A curious feature of some of these ceremonies which still survives, is that they give scope for toasts not only on “The Immortal Memory” or “the Lassies” but also on “the Town and Trade” in which some local employer or magistrate gives his views on the economic situation.

In the middle of enjoying Burns, it was necessary not to forget business.

Those gatherings are well summed up by Hugh MacDiarmid when he describes them as voicing:  Burns’ sentiments o’ universal love, In pidgin English or in wild-fowl Scots,  And toasting ane wha’s nocht to them but an  Excuse for faitherin’ genius wi’ their thochts. 

It is therefore significant to note what was put in.

Burns was hoping for support by the local gentry for the first edition of his poems, yet the landlord and their ladies are not spared in the Twa Dogs. 

But gentlemen an’ ladies warst  Wi’ ev’n down want o’ wark are crust, 
They loiter lounging, lank an’ lazy,
Tho’ deil-haet ails them, yet uneasy: 
Their days insipid, dull and tasteless,
Their nichts unquiet, lang an’ restless, 
The men cast out in party-matches 
Then sowther a’ in deep debauches 
Ae nicht they’re mad wi’ drink and  whoring
Niest day their life is past enduring.    

If that was Burns when he was trying to be cautious, you can guess what he was like when he was reckless (as he frequently was).

Or take his address to George the Third in A Dream: 
Far be’t from me that I aspire, 
To blame your legislation 
Or say ye wisdom want, or fire 
To rule this mighty nation. 
But faith I muckle doubt, my Sire, 
Ye’ve trusted ministration 
To chaps, wha in a barn or byre 
Wad better fill their station 
Than courts yon day.    

Mr.Daiches complains that “at intervals a note of vulgar familiarity emerges, which would have been offensive even if the poem had been addressed to a fellow farmer.”

But surely Burns meant to be more offensive to George the Third than he would ever dream of being to a fellow farmer. 

To the Duke of Clarence, who was running around with a well known actress.

Burns indicates that he ought to marry the girl.

The Duke, like many royal dukes since, was pretending to be a sailor: 
Young royal Tarry Breeks,.
I learn  Ye’ve lately come athwart her, 
A glorious galley, stem and stern, 
Well rigged for Venus barter, 
But first hang out that she’ll discern, 
Your Hymeneal charter, 
Then heave aboard your grapple airn  
And large, upo her quarter, 
Come full that day.

Burns was living in what was frankly and openly an oligarchy.

Most modern poets congratulate themselves on living in a democracy where speech is free. 

 Yet they are with few exceptions much more scared of the Establishment than Burns was.

Imagine them venturing on the theme of the Abdication of Edward VIII with all its opportunities for sentimentality or satire. 

Burns was in a measure expressing the republican sentiments of his native Ayrshire, which had stood on the very left of the Covenanting movement  and so he was intellectually prepared to support the Great French Revolution when  it materialised. 

But by this time he had ceased to be an independent, if  precariously situated, young farmer. 

He was now an Exciseman and infinitely victimisable.  

So he had to manoeuvre, but each retreat was followed by a daring counter-blow. No one could keep Burns quiet for long. 

His  two heaviest counter-blows “Scots wha hae" and “Is there for honest Poverty” were published at the time when the  supporters of political  reform were being harried in Scotland. 

Still the sense of being hemmed  in was with Bums in his last years and growing ill-health added to his difficulties.

But there he was, in fair days and foul, labouring away at Scots songs. 

Those who alleged that his intellectual powers were declining should read the remarkable series of letters, which he sent along to George Thomson in Edinburgh.

For their understanding of Scots song they remain unequalled even today.

Years before he had written: 
Even then a wish (I mind its power) 
A wish that to my latest hour -  Shall strongly heave my breast, 
That I, for poor auld Scotland’s sake, 
Some useful plan or book couldmake 
Or sing a sang at least. 

That wish was at least fulfilled but he would have accomplished more if he had not been frustrated by political repression and by the constant menace of victimisation. 

This reflection will not prevent the present Establishment in Scotland and England (in their own right no mean exponents of victimisation) from delivering their orations and toasting the Immortal Memory.
Communist Party World News 1959

EXTRA NOTES

 Robbie Burns was a supporter and identified with the French Revolution, in his poem

" Why Should we idly waste our Prime?" he states:

"Proud Priests and Bishops we'll translate And canonise as Martyrs;
The guillotine on Peers shall wait;
And Knights shall hang in garters.
Those Despots long have trod us down, And judges are their engines;
Such wretched minions of a Crown Demand the People's vengeance!

Today tis theirs.
Tomorrow we Shall don the Cap of Libertie!"
Burns also wrote a short poem in 1792, entitled

The Slave's Lament,
describing the homesickness of a man snatched from Senegal and put towork on a Virginia plantation

Tom Paine

Writer and Revolutionary

By Jill Scholey

24th Jan 2012

Continued

Rights of Man stirred up much anti-government and anti-monarchist feeling.

Paine’s views on the English Government were clear:

 

All this seems to show that change of ministers amounts to nothing.

One goes out, another comes in, and still the same measures, vices and extravagance are pursued.

It signifies not who is minister.

The defect lies in the system.

 

The authorities determined to harass Paine and crush every sign of dissent.

Incidents of burning or hanging Paine’s effigy occurred everywhere.

He was lampooned in news-sheets, and tailed by government agents.

In 1792 Paine was charged with seditious libel.

 The authorities were trying to force him to leave the country or withdraw his opinions from public circulation.

Paine decided it would be safer if he left.

He made his way to Dover quayside through a hostile crowd.

Embarking on the packet bound for Calais, Paine left England, never to return.

In France he was welcomed once more, and offered French citizenship, which he accepted.

Wherever he went there were cries of “Vive Thomas Paine”.

Most of the people of France in 1792 had accepted the Revolution, but the question of the king had not been settled.

The monarchy had been suspended, but France was not yet a republic.

The motion that “royalty be abolished in France” was eventually passed unanimously.

continued

Tom Paine

 

Writer and Revolutionary

By Jill Scholey

23rd Jan 2012

 

 The first part of Rights of the Man was publish in 1791.

Paine’s opponents criticized  his plain and  ‘vulgar’ writing style, but officials chose at first to  ignore him, not wishing to incite even greatrevolutionary clamour .

Paine dedicated Rights of Man  to Washington , but he was not impressed and in fact distanced himself from Paine in the months ahead.
                                  
 Paine, glowing with literary success, returned to  France in 1791, sensing that revolutionary feeling was  running high.

However, on one occasion  Paine was briefly mistaken for a royalist and set upon by the volatile crowd.

He was almost dragged to the nearest lamp-post and hung.

Luckily for Paine, friends were  able to placate the mob, but not without Paine receiving some injuries.
                                      
 Paine and several friends plastered Paris with copies of a republican manifesto.

They also published and distributed a journal of revolutionary writings.
                     
 Paine returned to London ,convinced that revolution was imminent.

He was the talk of the country, and the King even commissioned a scurrilous biography to be written, to harm Paine’s reputation
                                
Burke responded to Rights of Man publicly and Paine responded further with the second part of Rights of Man.

This proved much harder to get into print, as  publishers feared imprisonment.

 It eventually reached the public in 1792 and was distributed by The London  Corresponding Society.

Tom Paine

Writer and Revolutionary

By Jill Scholey

22nd Jan 2012

Continued

Burke’s Reflections was aimed at the English aristocracy whom he hoped to awaken politically.

Paine decided that his work would be stylistically simple, In contrast to Burke’s, and “in language as plain as the alphabet.” Rights of Man would publicly challenge the view that the ruling political class was accountable to itself alone.

Rights of Man was not only an answer to Reflections, but was an appeal to his countrymen to replace aristocratic institutions with new liberal ones based on merit, and not on the hereditary principle.

Paine did not mince his words:

When we survey the wretched condition of man under the monarchical and hereditary systems of government, dragged from his home by one power, or driven by another, and impoverished by taxes more than enemies, it becomes evident that those systems are bad, and that a general revolution in the principle and construction of governments is necessary.

Paine also laid out his ideas on civil rights;

Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured.

His natural rights are the foundation of all his civil rights.

He was to develop these ideas in his last major work, Agrarian Justice (1795).

Paine’s forward looking proposals in Agrarian Justice can perhaps be seen as the early roots of the welfare state, in which provision is made for the very young, the sick and the elderly.

continued

Tom Paine

Writer and Revolutionary

By Jill Scholey

20th January 2012

Continued.

As well as being a political writer, Paine was keenly interested in designing models of bridges.

In May 1787, Paine returned to France to sell some of his designs.

Unfortunately, he could not secure financial backing and decided to return to England.

Paine came back to Thetford and saw his mother after thirteen years away.

Sadly, his father had died during his absence so the reunion must have been tearful.

When he left he made an allowance of 9s a week to his mother.

Meanwhile, a great revolution was fermenting in France, where promised reforms had not come, and thousands were suffering hunger and poverty.

This was a scenario that enthralled Paine and which appealed to all his radical sympathies.

Paine began writing a commentary on the French Revolution, and wrote to Edmund Burke about his hopes for spreading revolutionary fervour.

Burke reacted with horror, publishing Reflections on the Revolution in France in 1790, in part as a public reply to Paine’s invective.

Paine was hugely angered by Burke’s writings.

He retired to the Angel Inn in Islington, and worked feverishly on his reply.

This was to become the bestselling book in the history of publishing-Rights of Man

Continued

Tom Paine

Writer and Revolutionary

20th Jan 2012

Continued

The war with Britain raged on, and Paine received the news that John Laurens had been killed.
This fuelled Paine’s writings and persuaded him that to defeat Britain the revolution must be brought to      Englishmen on their own soil.
 By 1783, the war had ended and with it the motivation for Paine’s writings
and actions.
He felt weary and disillusioned with the new United States of America .
Congress asked him to write a history of the America Revolution, but this
Did not appeal to Paine, especially as payment would have come much later.

Paine now spent some time with Washington .
They had served together in the war, and sustained a mutual respect.
Washington once reputedly giving Paine one of his own coats.
 
 In 1784 Congress granted Paine a sequestered 300 acre farm at New Rochelle in New York State, which he rented out to make an income.
He kept up the pressure on Congress to reward him for his revolutionary writings, and eventually Congress gave him a grant which was to set a precedent for honouring literary figures.
 
Yet this was not enough to keep Paine in America .
He was once more at loggerheads with his contemporaries, this time over the Bank of North America.
Paine saw this institution as a means to regulate the personal fortunes of the rich. Paine was unjustly accused of being in the pay of the Bank, and
the continual slander he faced eventually persuaded him to return to Europe.

continued

Tom Paine

Writer and Revolutionary

Jill Scholey

19^th Jan 2012

Continued

Paine started planning to go undercover to England to rouse the  English towards their own revolution.

He was dissuaded by friends who thought the idea too dangerous.

Then an opportunity arose for him to journey to France with John Laurens, to ask the French government for aid to fight against the British.

Paine and Laurens set sail in the winter of 1781.

The passage was traumatic, and the ship nearly ran into icebergs.

However, Paine arrived in France a month later, unkempt but in good spirits.

Paine received a hero’s welcome from the French monarchist government despite his overt republicanism.

He worked as an unofficial Secretary to Laurens who, with Benjamin Franklin, was arranging military aid.

Once the aid was secured, Paine returned to America ,landing back at Boston in August 1781.

As a political writer, Paine’s role in public life was less secure the closer that America travelled towards peace.

He strengthened his friendship with General Washington, the future President of America.

He also befriended Robert Morris, a powerful politician, and it was through these friendships that Paine managed to secure employment.

Paine wrote an essay entitled Letter to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America in 1782 (Raynal had written a history of the America Revolution).

Paine’s essay developed his ideas that revolution should spread throughout Europe.

Paine viewed himself as a world citizen, and firmly believed America could act a model for other countries.

 

continued

Tom Paine

Writer and Revolutionary

By Jill Scholey

18th Jan 2012

In 1777, Paine was appointed Secretary to the Committee of Foreign Affairs, not without opposition from his critics .

However, this was the first official recognition of Paine’s might as a political writer.

In the autumn of 1777 another British  attack came at the Battle of Brandywine.

Over a thousand Americans were killed or wounded.

Even as the British were advancing, Paine was busy scribbling the fourth America Crisis paper and paid for the publication out of his own pocket.

Although the paper advocated fearlessness, it was not enough to keep the Philadelphia citizens from fleeing. Paine soon realised that he must either flee or face death.

Paine was now homeless and under constant threat.

 He rode along back roads, and witnessed much fighting and bloodshed.

Paine seemed loved and hated in equal measure, not least because he spoke out against corruption. In one such incident, a man named Silas Deane was caught profiteering from the selling of arms.

Paine’s public scorn of Deane and others was viewed by some as being damaging to Congress, and events eventually led to Paine’s resignation.

In 1779, Paine became Clerk to the Assembly.

This enabled him to contribute more substantially to the anti-slavery legislation of the time.

continued

DEBATE -THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THAT BRITAIN SHOULD LEAVE THE EU

 

The Economist

 

 

Defending the motion Daniel Hannan 

Conservative member of the European Parliament for South East England

One of the reasons the EU's GDP is shrinking as a proportion of world GDP is that deeper integration means less competition among the member states, which in turn means higher taxes and more regulation.

Against the motion Douglas Alexander 

Shadow secretary of state and Labour MP, Paisley and Renfrewshire South

 The confluence of these dynamics—a changing European architecture and an America looking to Asia rather than Europe—means that the next few years risk seeing a collapse in Britain's influence abroad.

The moderator's rebuttal remarks Jan 16th 2012 | Tom Nuttall 

 

In his second statement, Daniel Hannan acknowledges the comments from non-British European readers, such as Saint Just, Michel_Berlin and OLDIE, who have grown tired of British intransigence within the European Union and urge a quick departure.

As Mr Hannan points out, it is hardly surprising that Britain's hesitant and sometimes hostile attitude might generate resentment.

But, as some other comments suggest, there is more to this story.

Many EU countries, particularly the central and eastern European ones that joined in 2004 and 2007, have seen Britain as a natural ally.

They know that a British departure will tilt the political centre of gravity within the EU, and not necessarily to their advantage.

"German dominance of the EU is not a good thing," says Gdansk, whose username suggests he or she is writing from Poland.

Britain, after all, was (and remains) the big champion of EU enlargement. It shares an Atlanticist, free-trade outlook with many of the newer members.

Like most of them, and unlike most of the "old" EU-15, it has not joined the euro.

What sometimes gets forgotten in this debate is the weight that Britain carries in the EU.

It is the third most populous member and the third biggest economy of the club. Unlike every other member barring France, it can project serious military force. It has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

Adding Norway or Switzerland to the EU would not make much difference to its political dynamics.

Taking Britain away would. "It would be a great loss for the EU," says pedrolx2.

Britain's drift away from the EU also changes the nature of the Franco-German relationship, the most important one within the EU.

At the fateful December summit, Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, was reportedly furious with David Cameron for forcing her into the arms of Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, and his plans for tighter integration at the euro-zone (rather than EU) level.

Such arguments are unlikely to carry much weight within Britain itself. Mr Hannan and Douglas Alexander both focus on the costs and benefits to Britain of EU membership.

As elected British politicians, this is how it should be.

Yet in a sense they are talking past each other, and that is because very different assumptions lie at the heart of their arguments.

Mr Hannan argues that leaving the EU would not damage Britain's economic interests.

An EU that exports far more to Britain than it imports from it would have no interest in restricting trade.

And as the examples of Hong Kong and Monaco show, wealth (in per-person GDP terms) does not depend on size or influence.

Britain can thrive outside the EU—so why not leave?

Such arguments baffle commenters like jUDxQ4Jnq7, a Frenchman (or woman) living in London, who expresses surprise that "the question of EU membership is an economic one" in his or her adopted home.

But that is not always true.

Mr Alexander does not directly challenge Mr Hannan's contention that British withdrawal from the EU would not harm its economic interests.

 Instead, channelling a different strain of British foreign-policy thinking, he frames his argument in internationalist terms.

As America slowly shifts its strategic attention towards Asia and away from Europe, and the global balance of economic power moves ever-eastwards, it will, Mr Alexander believes, become steadily more important for Britain to be able to "amplify" its voice via the EU.

These two visions are not easily reconciled.

But in their final statements I would like our speakers to try on each other's clothes (briefly).

Mr Hannan might address those Britons, including plenty within his own Conservative Party, who have bigger ideas for their country than to be merely a Switzerland with nukes.

And Mr Alexander might consider how to convince those Eurosceptics who have no problem with Britain's international vocation, but believe it is best pursued outside a declining, bureaucratic club.

The proposer's rebuttal remarksJan 16th 2012 | Daniel Hannan 

 Douglas Alexander advances two arguments in support of EU membership: first, that we should not "cut ourselves off from a market of 500m people": and second that we need to be "part of a £10 trillion economy rather than just a £1.5 trillion economy".

To take them in turn, no one—no one—is suggesting that Britain should turn away from European commerce.

I tried to anticipate this absurd charge in my opening statement, but, to repeat, withdrawal from the EU's political structures does not imply withdrawal from the market.

Under Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, the EU is obligated to negotiate a trade accord with a state that leaves.

Britain might choose to remain in the European Economic Area, like Norway. Norwegian exports to the EU in 2010 were twice as much per head as Britain's.

Or it might prefer to leave the EEA, too, and rely on bilateral free-trade accords, like Switzerland.

Swiss exports to the EU in 2010 were four times as much per head as Britain's.

Some might protest that, while this is the legal position, an acrimonious split could leave the EU looking for ways to erect unofficial non-tariff barriers against British trade.

Why on earth should it want to do so, though, when the balance of such trade is overwhelmingly to the advantage of continental exporters?

Over the past 40 years, Britain has run a cumulative trade surplus with every continent on the planet except Europe.

Between 2005 and 2010, the EU accounted for 92% of our trade deficit (see pdf for the full figures).

It is hard to imagine that other EU states would wish to restrict trade with what would be, by a long way, their single biggest export market.

As for the second claim, the idea that we are too small to survive on our own, it rests on a misconception.

If size were a prerequisite of prosperity, China would be wealthier than Hong Kong, France than Monaco, Indonesia than Brunei—the EU, for that matter, than Switzerland.

All the evidence suggests that the opposite is the case.

In global league tables, the ten states with the highest GDP per person all have populations below 7m.

What matters to a modern economy is not its size, but its tax rate, its regulatory regime and its business climate.

One of the reasons the EU's GDP is shrinking as a proportion of world GDP is that deeper integration means less competition among the member states, which in turn means higher taxes and more regulation.

Too small to survive? Britain is the seventh largest economy in the world, the fourth largest military power and the fourth largest exporter.

It is a member of the G8 and one of five members of the UN Security Council.

It enjoys close links to America and the Commonwealth (which, unlike the EU, is growing impressively).

If 7m Swiss and 4m Norwegians are able not simply to survive outside the EU, but to enjoy arguably the highest living standards on Earth, surely 60m Britons could manage.

British voters have worked this out for themselves. As the shadow foreign secretary acknowledges, public opinion has turned against EU membership.

The difference between us is that I do not see public opinion as an obstacle to be overcome: I see it as a reason to change direction.

The three main British political parties have repeatedly promised referendums on one aspect or another of European integration; all three have abandoned their commitments when the time has come.

These repeated broken promises have done a great deal to weaken the legitimacy of our representative institutions.

Finally, a note to the many readers from other EU countries who have posted comments along the lines of 'good riddance, the quicker Britain leaves, the better'.

I quite understand your frustration.

British policy over the past 40 years has indeed been lamentable: we have protested against every new initiative, then threatened to veto it, then sulkily given in, and then complained.

Better by far to negotiate a new and more honest relationship.

We should say to our allies in the EU:

"If you want to establish a deeper union among yourselves, do it with our goodwill and our blessing.

You will always be able to rely on us as friends, as trading partners, as supporters in international forums and as military allies.

We simply wish to recover control of our domestic affairs.

 We apologise for the misunderstandings of the past 40 years, and look forward to a much improved relationship.

You will lose a bad tenant and gain a good neighbour."

The opposition's rebuttal remarksJan 16th 2012 | Douglas Alexander 

 This may be rather embarrassing for both of us, but there are elements of Daniel Hannan's analysis that I agree with even though I think he draws completely the wrong conclusion.

First, he is right to highlight the fact that the rationale for Europe has changed and at times the political conversation has been too slow to catch up.

To my parents' generation, the case for Europe was establishing peace and stability on the continent after a century scarred by two wars.

This was a cause with a powerful emotional resonance that people could understand and sympathise with.

For the 20 years after Britain joined the European Community, however, that emotional cause was supplemented by a somewhat drier one: that being part of Europe would help reverse Britain's post-war decline and would help boost our prosperity and productivity.

Jacques Delors's call in the 1980s for a social Europe aimed at a broader vision, but, despite all the rhetoric, welfare safety nets have to a large degree remained a part of the national, not the European, debate in each member state.

It is also fair to acknowledge that Britain's rising prosperity during the long boom that began in the 1990s contributed to a growing sense of national self-confidence.

Britain was suddenly growing faster and starting to accuse some others in Europe of lagging behind for a variety of reasons.

Taking this longer view, it is clear that in the sphere of geoeconomics, the global economy has changed fundamentally since the European Union's architecture was designed in the early 1990s.

My concern is that Britain risks becoming less relevant to a European Union consumed by the consequences of a crisis in a currency we correctly decided not to join—at the same time as also becoming less relevant to an America weary of ten years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq and now rebalancing its priorities from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

The confluence of these dynamics—a changing European architecture and an America looking to Asia rather than Europe—means that the next few years risk seeing a collapse in Britain's influence abroad.

But I do not believe that in order to prevent that we should leave the EU. On the contrary, I believe that we need a new European approach that reflects this new era.

And I also believe that some of these changes have left Britain with a good opportunity to lead the debate rather than falling behind by getting distracted by talks about withdrawal.

For a start, Germany and France are wrestling with a crisis in their currency that has already prompted a downgrade, even in Germany's growth forecasts.

There is at least a possibility that German and French leadership in Europe will be focused in the coming years on holding together the single currency rather than the wider issue of the single market.

And, in circumstances of low growth across Europe, there is also a scenario that, rather than all unifying around a Franco-German model, euro and non-euro members will continue to have a heterogeneous set of views on the single market.

I genuinely believe that the nature of British engagement—whether it is committed and sustained or whether it is focused on negotiating with Conservative Eurosceptics—could tip the scales one way or the other.

We should always be looking to find ways to amplify Britain's voice to make sure we are heard.

As America shifts its attention to the Pacific, we will need to work even harder with our European allies to preserve security in Europe and its neighbouring regions.

And again, to be able to export, say, British creative industries, we need to ensure our voice is heard by players as big as the Chinese government on issues like intellectual property.

The best way to amplify that voice with these large emerging economies is to work with our European partners. This is vital to prise open markets in these countries.

With WTO negotiations stalled, the EU continues to be crucial to opening new markets.

What I find revealing about the position of those who wish to withdraw from Europe is that they are obliged—as Mr Hannan is—to spend so much time talking about the immediate steps they would take after withdrawal to reintegrate with elements of the EU.

While it is right, of course, that those people who want us to withdraw should provide a detailed plan for the day after, it does also reflect that the rationale for a European Union is not quite as outdated as Mr Hannan suggests.

Tom Paine

 Writer and Revolutionary

By Jill Scholey

17th Jan 2012

Continued

It was later said of Paine that he was no soldier and kept out of harm’s way while he scribbled his war reports.

Others acknowledged that Paine’s passionate writings kept the fighting men motivated.

Paine walked alone to Philadelphia, some thirty- five miles, to disseminate his writings further.

He began his essay The American Crisis (the first of a series of sixteen pamphlets) which has been called one of

the finest essays in English Language on fearlessness:

 

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink

from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

 

The pamphlet was published and hastily distributed.

Heartened by its lofty and stirring language, soldiers marched on Trenton and under George Washington were

victorious.

Paine then wrote the second American Crisis paper, which proposed civility and integrity, not vengefulness.

At this time he also met with several Native American tribes, and acted as an intermediary between them and Congress.

Paine became more involved in local politics, always trying to steer a course between extreme radical and conservative views.

After publishing the third American Crisis paper, Paine shifted his attention to the war and national politics.

 

continued

Tom Paine

Writer and Revolutionary

By Jill Scholey

16th Jan.2012

Continued

In Common Sense, Paine elucidates brilliantly how societies and governments form, and why governments and monarchs can easily lose their accountability to their citizens.

Common Sense was one of the first pamphlets to propose a model of a civil society run by the people themselves, a far cry from who Paine saw British rule in the colonies.

Paine systematically challenges all the arguments for maintaining relations with Britain, arguing that:

“Even the distance at which the Almighty hath placed England and America, is a strong and natural proof that the authority of the one over the other, was never the design of Heaven”

In Common Sense, Paine also utterly disparages the system of monarchy, arguing that republican countries are generally more peaceful than those headed by kings and queens, Paine abhors the idea of hereditary succession, arguing that “a thirst for absolute power is the natural disease of monarchy.”

Many people were converted to the cause by Paine’s rousing words, and in July 1776 the Declaration of Independence was signed; war was subsequently declared by Britain.

Paine volunteered for military service, and marched with fellow soldiers to a point off Staten Island where he witnessed a vast number of British ships sent to quell the rebellion.

Some of the Pennsylvania troops were so demoralised that they deserted their posts.

Paine handed out copies of Common Sense to stiffen the resolve of the remaining soldiers.

Continued

Tom Paine

 

Writer and Revolutionary

By Jill Scholey

15th Jan 2012

Continued..

 

The turning point came in April 1775 when a group of American militiamen were attacked by a band of British redcoats on Lexington Green.

This incident was to mark the beginning of the War of Independence, and made Paine extremely angry.

He wrote “When the country into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir”.

As Paine developed as a writer, he found himself parting ways with Aitken.

More and more, Paine wished to concentrate his attention on rousing Americans to fight for their liberty and independence.

As a Quaker, Paine had been brought up to avoid violence, but he recognised the dilemma.  "I am thus far a

Quaker that I would gladly agree with all the world to lay aside the use of arms, and settle matters by

negotiation, but unless the whole will, the matter ends, and I take up my musket and thank heaven

He has put it in my power."

Paine published Common Sense in 1776, which was to have an overwhelming influence on the colonies.

It was an immediate success and sold more copies than any other pamphlet of the time.

Not only was it published in America but in Europe too.

Paine estimated that 150,000 copies were sold in America alone.

Continued

Tom Paine -1737 – 1809

 

Writer and Revolutionary

By Jill Scholey

14th Jan.2012

Continued

Mr Ollive died in 1769. Paine eventually took over the business and married the daughter Elizabeth in 1771.

It seemed that he was not a good business man.

His marriage too failed and in 1774 he declared himself bankrupt.

Paine visited London again and met Benjamin Franklin, the American agent- general in London, and a noted scientist and inventor.

This meeting was to inspire Paine to leave for America. Franklin gave Paine a letter of introduction to his son in law in Philadelphia.

In September 1774 Paine embarked on a ship bound for America.

After an eight week voyage and attacked by typhus, an incapacitated Paine arrived on American soil.

However, he had a strong constitution and before long was presenting his letter of introduction to Franklin’s son in law, Richard Bache.

Paine soon became acquainted with local bookshop owner, Robert Aitkin,who offered him the post of executive editor of a new journal The Pennsylvania Magazine. Paine accepted with enthusiasm.

This magazine was to be produced in the British colony of America, by and for the colonists.

Under Paine’s editorship of the magazine, circulation grew.

Though many colonists fretted against British rule and resented the King’s taxes and laws, they were generally loyal to the crown.

However, antagonism against the British was growing, and Paine’s own radical views were being honed in this new country.

To be continued

Tom Paine -1737 – 1809

Writer and Revolutionary

By Jill Scholey

13^th January 2012

 

Continued

Paine was initially positioned at Grantham, Lincolnshire, to gauge brewers casks as a junior excise officer, a dull undertaking for such a man of ideas.

Later, he worked in Alford, but this job was also short lived.

He was sacked unfairly at the hands of corrupt excise men, a situation that surely contributed to the development of his radical sympathies.

Paine returned briefly to Thetford, penniless and jobless, before moving to Diss to continue stay-making.

Yet he hankered to be reinstated as an excise man, so he journeyed to London to plead with his employers.

Whist waiting for a new vacancy, he scraped a living by teaching.

He also preached to the poor and uneducated, and renewed his friendships with the scientific and radical thinkers who had so inspired him previously.

Paine was eventually posted to Lewes,Sussex, where he continued his excise duties, and became involved in local politics.

He lodged with Samuel Ollive and family, who owned a tobacconist and general store.

Paine joined the Headstrong Club, a debating society, which exists to this day.

At their meetings, Paine further developed his revolutionary political ideas and debating skills.

Some of the excise men asked Paine to present a petition to Parliament to ask for better wages and conditions. Paine went to London to lobby MP’s.

The petition was largely ignored, except by the Commissioners of Excise, Paine’s employers.

They were furious and he was instantly dismissed.

To be continued

Thomas Paine 1737 – 1809

By Jill Scholey

Continued 12th Jan 2012

In 1757,Paine returned to London, Solvent and keen to establish himself.

He was able to live for sometime on his privateer earnings, and set about frequenting bookshops, science, astronomy and philosophy lectures and befriending some of the influential men of the day.

Paine’s radical political views (such as the freedom of the individual to organise against injustice) quickly developed.

However, Paine was soon forced to work again as a staymaker, this time in Dover and Sandwich, Kent.

He also preached as a Methodist minister to the poor, in plain language that they could understand.

Paine met and married Mary Lambert in 1759. It was a happy but short lived marriage.

Whilst Mary was pregnant, the couple moved to Margate.

Tragically, mother and baby died in childbirth.

This must have been devastating for Paine, but he never referred to it in his writings.

Paine’s staymaking business was also failing, so widowed and penniless he returned again to Thetford.

Mary’s father had been an excise man, a hard and dangerous calling, and this may have influenced Paine to change his career.

Smuggling was a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Excise men would lie in wait for the lawbreakers on lonely, windswept coasts.

Fierce fights would ensue, often resulting in deaths on either side.

 

To be continued.....

Thomas Paine 1737 -1809

Writer and Revolutionary

By Jill Scholey

11th Jan 2012

Thomas Paine was born in Stretford,Norfolk to a Quaker father and an Anglican mother.

Thetford was a Rotten Borough,where only a few people had the power to vote,and corruption was rife.

As a young boy growing up, Paine would often have witnessed men and women chained by the ankles, being led to Gallows Hill to be hanged, perhaps for stealing a loaf of bread or a packet of tea.

Much in the England of Paine’s youth was unjust and cruel, and made a deep impression on him,one that he was never to forget.

As a young boy , Paine attended Thetford Grammar School, where he was an avid student.

Paine left school in 1749 to be apprenticed to his father’s trade of stay or corset maker.

By 1756, the Seven Years’ War had broken out and Paine’s apprenticeship was coming to an end.

He saw an advertisement in a local news-sheet asing for volunteers to sail against the French on a privateer named The Terrible.

Filled with wanderlust, Paine travelled to London to board the privateer, but his father followed and dissuaded him.

This was providential,as shortly afterwards The Terrible was captured by the French privateer Vengeance in a bloody battle,with most of the crew being captured or killed.

Paine sought work as a staymaker in bustling and crowded Covent Garden.

However,it was not long before he found another privateer to join, The King of Prussia, and shortly set sail to try his fortune.

Paine sailed as part of the crew for six months, capturing enemy ships and rescuing friendly vessels.

Life at sea was perilous,cramped and dirty,and battles  between ships was brutal and terrifying.

To be continued.

“Pension’s offer security for older people and we have an obligation to provide a fair pension for all “

Tony Benn

 

“The Pension Crisis is a human crisis.

 A crisis of caring.

A crisis of sharing.

A crisis that is soluble.

A crisis that unites the 99%.

A crisis of today that we must solve tomorrow

A crisis that this pamphlet tackles. Read It “

Richard Murphy

Tax Research UK

 

"You worked for it, you fought for it, you contributed to it, so you are entitled to it.

 Fair pensions for all to live out life in comfort, dignity and security"

The Radical

FAIR PENSIONS FOR ALL

A CRISIS OF FAIRNESS

There is an economic crisis in the UK, but it was not caused by excessive
public spending or the ‘gold-plated’ pensions and pay of public sector workers.

It was caused by a recession triggered by the banking collapse of 2007.

Now there is another crisis: a crisis of fairness in which those who caused the economic mess
are forcing everyone else in society to pay for it.

It is clear whose side Cameron’s cabinet of millionaires is on.

Trade unions represent people in the public, private and voluntary sectors.

Our members will often experience each through their working lives – as will
their partners, friends and family.

Good occupational pension schemes are important wherever you work.

Most pensioners are reliant on the basic state pension for the majority of their
income in retirement, but it pays below the government’s own poverty line.

Disgracefully today there are 2.5 million pensioners living in poverty in the UK.

Only one in three private sector workers is now a member of an employer-sponsored
pension scheme, public sector pensions are under threat, and the state pension
is now worth just 15% of average male earnings.

On the other hand a quarter of all tax relief on pensions, amounting to more
than £10bn annually, goes to the richest 1% in the country.

We hear about
gold-plated public sector pensions, yet the real gilded pensions are to be found
in the boardrooms of private companies that have abandoned provision for
their workforces.

There is a crisis of pensions in the UK but it’s not that we’re living too long or
that pensions are unaffordable; it’s a crisis of fairness.

In retirement, as in working life, we are highly unequal. UK pensioner poverty is among the worst in Europe –
only Cyprus, Latvia and Estonia abandon their pensioners to a greater degree.

Action is needed to secure decent state pensions as the foundation for pensioner
income and decent employer-sponsored pension provision for all workers in all
employment sectors.

Please join our campaign for ‘Fair pensions for all’.

Introduction: a crisis of fairness

Mark Serwotka
PCS General Secretary

Christine Blower
NUT General Secretary

Dot Gibson
National Pensioners Convention

Sally Hunt
UCU General Secretary

How much does it cost to leave household appliances on?

By This Is Money, Ask The Experts

Last updated at 1:47 PM on 9th November 2011

A home energy expert, from not-for-profit energy group Ebico, replies:

The best way to look at this is that any appliance that is using more electricity than it needs to – even what might seem like a relatively small amount each hour –  does add up on your electricity bill over the course of a year.

So getting a handle on what these costs are can save you money in the long run.

Ultimately, understanding how much it costs to run various appliances around the house, and using them smartly, will save you money on your energy bills.

However, each appliance works in a different way, meaning that the energy demand for each varies.

The table below highlights how much energy in watts (on average) most common household appliances use when both ‘switched on’ and when on 'standby':

As you can see, if you were to keep all these appliances on standby they would add up to 83 watts, which if left on standby for say 18 hours a day, 365 days a year works out at roughly £76 added to your annual energy bill – not a small figure by any means.

To help you work out your appliance energy use, look on the back of the appliance, (often on a sticker), where it will specify the electricity demand figure in watts (W) or kilo watts (kW). If it is in watts, divide by 1,000 to get the kW.

Then multiply the kW figure by the rate of electricity you are currently paying in pennies. You can then multiply that by the true amount of hours you have your appliances on standby to give a better reflection on your annual saving, if you were to turn everything off at the mains.

Consequently, switching your appliances off at the mains once you’re finished using them, instead of leaving on standby, is a great way to reduce your energy bills, ensuring that appliances are not using any more energy than they need to be.

Home Energy Expert is a free energy advice service from Ebico, the UK’s only not-for-profit energy company and National Energy Action, the UK’s leading fuel poverty charity, committed to improving the quality of life of low income households and campaigning for warm homes.

Home Energy Expert has teamed up with This is Money to answer any burning questions about energy in your home. If you want to improve your energy efficiency and save money then email your question with Home Energy Expert in the subject line to: editor@thisismoney.co.uk="">editor@thisismoney.co.uk
For more information click on to: www.ebico.org.uk

Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/experts/article-2057727/How-does-cost-leave-household-appliances-standby.html#ixzz1dNx8BGpY

THE  YEAR IS 1911-

Remember the Model T Ford ?

This  will boggle your mind, I know it did mine!

************  ********* ***********

The  year is 1911  --- One hundred years ago.
What a difference  a century makes!
Here are some statistics for the Year  1911:

************  ********* ************

The  average life expectancy for men was 47 years.
 
Fuel  for this car was sold in drug stores only.

Only  14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.

Only  8 percent of the homes had a telephone.

There  were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved  roads.

The  maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.

The  tallest structure in the world was the  Eiffel Tower   !

The  average US wage in 1910 was 22 cents per hour.

The  average  US  worker made between $200 and $400 per year  .

A  competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist  $2,500 per year,
a  veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical  engineer about $5,000 per year.

More  than 95 percent of all births took place at home .

Ninety  percent of all Doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION!
Instead,  they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were  condemned in the press AND the government as  "substandard."

Sugar  cost four cents a pound.

Eggs  were fourteen cents a dozen.

Coffee  was fifteen cents a pound.

Most  women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg  yolks for shampoo.

Canada  passed a law that prohibited poor people from entering into their  country for any reason.

The  Five leading causes of death were:

1.  Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4.  Heart disease
5. Stroke

The  American flag had 45 stars...

The  population of  Las Vegas ,  Nevada , was only  30!!!

Crossword  puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented  yet.

There  was neither a Mother's Day nor a Father's Day.

Two  out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write and only 6 percent of  all Americans had graduated from high school.

Marijuana,  heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the  local corner drugstores.

Back  then pharmacists said, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy  to the mind, Regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a  perfect guardian of health!"

 (  Shocking? )

Eighteen  percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic  help .......

There  were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE  U.S.A.   ! p

I  am now going to forward this to someone else without typing it  myself.

From  there, it will be sent to others all over the WORLD - all in a  matter of seconds!

Try  to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years

Cable challenged over uni fees rise

Hands off our history!

 

Peopleinhistory.co.uk

The Pocket Version of A People’s History of England by A. L. Morton

with additions is now fully uploaded on www.peopleinhistory.co.uk.

All 95 sections offer the reader an insight into history

as it affected the common people.

Click on the flag and choose where in history you will go today.

Science Matters - But So Do Priorities: Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back?

A SOCIALIST MARKET ECONOMY

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the current economic system in the People's Republic of China. For the former socialist political ideology of the Kuomintang in the Republic of China, see Chinese socialism. For the Western European system,.

The socialist market economy or socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics is the official term used to refer to the economic system of the People's Republic of China after the reforms of Deng Xiaoping. It is also referred to as socialism with Chinese characteristics. Similar though much less extensive reforms were undertaken in Vietnam, where the economic system is called the Đổi Mới (lit. "New Age", trans. "Renovation"), respectively. It consists of a mixture of economic planning with a market economy.

Description

Deng Xiaoping, after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, was willing to consider capitalist methods of economic growth so as to revitalise China's economy. However, in doing so, he remained committed to centralized control and the one-party state.

The socialist market economy is a concept first proposed by Deng Xiaoping in order to incorporate the market into the then planned economy in the People's Republic of China, then Đổi Mới in Vietnam.^[1] Following its implementation, this economic system has supplemented the centrally planned economy in the People's Republic of China, and the high growth rates in GDP during the past decades have been attributed to it. Within this model, privately owned enterprises are a major component of the economic system, along with the central state-owned enterprises and collective / township village enterprises.

However, the fundamental distinction between the Chinese and Western mixed-market economy models lies less in the implementation of the mixed economic model but rather in the underlying authoritarian political philosophy, which eschews Western notions of democracy, individual rights, and the rule of law.^[2]

The private sector

Most of the economic growth in China is attributed to the private sector,^[3] which grows at twice the official rate of increase and is continually expanding.^{[citation needed]} However, the size of the private sector is notoriously difficult to pin down as the private sector is likely underestimated by state officials in calculation of GDP because of its propensity to ignore small entrepreneurs and private enterprises being not registered.

In addition, private entrepreneurs have a propensity to claim to be collectives and under-report the size of their business.^[3] The private sector generated approximately 70%^[4] of GDP in 2005, a figure that might be even greater considering the Chengbao system, in which entrepreneurs operate assets which nominally belong to the government. The state retains control of some strategic industries.^[5]

Numerous sectors such as health care and education that were previously run by the state were privatised during the formation of China's current market economy.^[6][7] The growth of the private sector is indeed phenomenal, as shown by this quote below:

What is more, if the analysis is restricted to companies that regularly produce statistical reports (those with annual sales of over 5 million Chinese yuans), then the private sector's share of value added has risen from 28 per cent to 52 per cent between 1998 and 2003. Further, in 1998, the private sector contributed a larger share of value added in only 5 out of 23 "non-core" manufacturing industries. By 2003, this had risen to cover all 23 of these industries. In half of those industries, private firms produced more than three-quarters of output. Overall in these 23 industries, the private sector is estimated to employ two-thirds of the labour-force, contribute two-thirds of valued added, and is responsible for over 90 per cent of their exports. To top it all, over a quarter of all industrial output is now reportedly produced by private foreign-owned companies.^[8]

The state sector

By 2005 the market-oriented reforms, including privatisation, was virtually halted and partially reversed.^[9] In 2006, the Chinese government announced that the armaments, power generation and distribution, oil and petrochemicals, telecommunications, coal, aviation and shipping industries had to remain under "absolute state control" and public ownership by law.^[10] The state retains indirect control in directing the non-state economy through the financial system, which lends according to state priorities. Liberalization continues to be rolled back in the state-sector by the consolidation of state enterprises into large "national champions" with the goal of consolidating efforts and creating internationally-competitive national industries.^[11] By 2009 the government considered a state insurance scheme to expand healthcare coverage.^[12]

The state sector is concentrated in the 'commanding heights' of the economy with a growing private sector engaged primarily in commodity production and light industry. Centralized directive planning based on mandatory output requirements and production quotas has been superseded by the free-market mechanism for most of the economy and directive planning in large state industries.^[13] A major difference from the old planned economy is the restructuring of state companies along a commercial basis, with the exception of 150 large state-owned enterprises that remain and report directly to the central government, most having a number of subsidiaries.^[14]

These state enterprises have high autonomy in that they can choose their own CEO's, keep their own profits, but differ from the private firms in that they get a bailout if anything goes wrong. By 2008, these state-owned corporations have became increasingly dynamic largely contributing to the increase in revenue for the state.^[15][16] The state-sector led the economic recovery process and increased economic growth in 2009 after the financial crises, due to the fact that most of the Chinese stimulus package was directed towards these state owned firms.^[17]

This type of economic system is defended from a Stalinist perspective which states that a socialist planned economy can only be possible after first establishing the necessary comprehensive commodity market economy, letting it fully develop until it exhausts its historical stage and gradually transforms itself into a planned economy (the Stalinist Two-Stage theory of revolution).^[18] Proponents of this model distinguish themselves from market socialists, who believe that economic planning is unattainable, undesirable or ineffective at distributing goods, viewing the market as the solution rather than a temporary phase in development of a socialist planned economy.

History

Main article: Chinese economic reform

The transition to a socialist market economy began in 1978 when Deng Xiaoping introduced his program of "Socialism with Chinese characteristics". Initial reforms in decollectivising agriculture and allowing private businesses and foreign investment in the late 1970s and early 1980s later led to large-scale radical reforms, consisting of privatisation of the state sector, liberalisation of trade and prices, and dismantling the welfare state in the late 1990s. Since the beginning of Deng Xiaoping's reforms, China's GDP rose from some 150 billion USD to more than 1.6 trillion USD, with an annual increase of 9.4 percent.^[19] As of 2004, 50% of the remaining state-owned enterprises have been transformed into joint-stock companies.^[19]

The private sector's share of the GDP rose from less than 1% in 1978 to 70% by 2005, a figure that is still increasing. Due to the poor performance of traditional state enterprises in the market economy, China embarked on a massive restructuring program of privatisation. Under this scheme, the state retains ownership and control of large enterprises but the central government has little direct control over the operations of state-owned enterprises.^[20] Recently the Conservative Hu-Wen Administration rolled back many of Deng's reforms, leaving observers dubbing 2008 the "third anniversary of the end of reform.^[21]

Controversy

Despite the official stance of socialism, the "socialist market economy" is often described as one hybrid type of both free market and socialism by economic observers.^[22] This criticism also comes from orthodox Marxists, who criticise it on the grounds that the socialist market economy restores capitalist commodity relations and production while further dis-empowering the working class, leading to a sharp increase in social inequality and the formation of a growing capitalist class.^[23] The political ideology term itself have often been mentioned for scapegoating bearing other issue like currency, energy, fair trade and environment change caused during economic and technology development.^[24]

Orthodox Marxists believe a socialist commodity economy is contradictory. Other socialists believe the Chinese have embraced many elements of market capitalism, specifically commodity production, resulting in a capitalist economic system.^[25]

While some industries remain under state ownership, its scope has been reduced substantially in recent years due to the privatisation program since the late 1990s.^[20] As a result, output of the Chinese economy has increased between 1989 and 2001;^[5] the privatisation program continues.^[7] While the free-market has largely supplemented central economic planning in the Chinese economy, the Chinese government still guides overall national economic development through "indicative planning".^[26]

Proponents of the socialist market economy compare it to the New Economic Policy in Soviet Russia that introduced market-oriented reforms while maintaining state-ownership of the 'commanding heights' of the economy. The reforms are justified through the belief that changing conditions necessitate new strategies for socialist development.^[27] According to Li Rongrong in 2003, chairman of the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council,

Public ownership, as the foundation of the socialist economic system, is a basic force of the state to guide and promote economic and social development and a major guarantee for realising the fundamental interests and the common prosperity of the majority of the people… The state owned economy has taken a dominant place in major trades that have a close bearing on the country’s economic lifeline and key areas, and has propped-up, guided and brought along the development of the entire socio-economy. The influence and control capacity of SOEs have further increased. State owned economy has played an irreplaceable role in China’s socialist modernisation drive

Are humans naturally greedy?

By Hillel Cohen

Are human beings “naturally” greedy? Is greed so much a part of human biology that it will always shape human social life?

This age-old question came up once again in an article circulated by Bloom berg News, the big business news service. (bloomberg.com)

The article highlights the work of Stanford University psychology professor Brian Knutson who has used modern brain-imaging technology to try to associate regions of the brain with specific behaviors.

In experiments by Knutson and colleagues, volunteers pretend to buy and sell stocks while the imaging machine called a functional MRI (FMRI) records the brain areas activated.

The findings suggest a connection bet ween activity in “pleasure center” areas of the brain and the action of making a profitable stock sale and even risk-taking behavior in anticipation or hope of gain, such as gambling.

(Brain areas considered pleasure centers have been linked to activities such as sexual orgasm and cocaine use.)

In the experiments, losses and fear of loss activated a different area of the brain— one that has been associated with painful experiences.

The researchers believe their findings may help explain why investors, like gamblers, often take irrational risks in the same way that people will often carry out what they know is risky and even dangerous behavior for a pleasurable high from sex or drugs.

The Bloomberg business editor commented: “At a neurological level, our species’ desire for money may resemble our desire for sex…” and “our brains lust after money, just like they crave sex.”

In this interpretation, capitalist greed is biological—-“hard-wired” by our brains neural circuits.

But this view is just a high-tech version of the very old, and mistaken, notion that greed is part of “human nature.”

A scientific basis for solidarity

Human beings are able to experience pleasure and pain, and for the most part, we pursue activities that give pleasure or lead us to anticipate pleasure, and we avoid activities that give pain or fear of pain.

But we must separate the question of how we feel pleasure and pain (the biology of the brain) from the question of what stimulates those feelings.

Burn your finger with a match and you’ll feel pain. Pleasure can come from a drink when you’re thirsty or food when you’re hungry.

But under capitalism people learn that money can buy almost anything.

Making money can become associated with pleasure just as surely as a bell can make a dog salivate, once the dog has learned that the bell means dinner.

For the big capitalists, greed—the desire for more and more wealth beyond the necessities of life—is what made them capitalists in the first place.

If that did not drive them, then they would not have succeeded as capitalists, or they might pursue some more useful occupation.

Under a different social system that valued equality rather than inequality, getting satisfaction from accumulating more wealth than one person could ever use would be considered a sickness—something like kleptomania.

The scientific finding that greed (under current social conditions) can stimulate feelings of pleasure similar to sex or drugs does help explain why capitalists seem to actually lust after profit and power, and why this lust will lead them to seek short-term gratification even if the long-term results of their action may be disastrous.

The experiments by Knutson offer one explanation for corporate opposition to environmental controls, as the tycoons of oil industry and other capitalists risk global warming and the long-term destruction of human life on earth rather than give up even a portion of their current profits.

Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is a biological part of human nature. Greed is not. But seeking pleasure and avoiding pain are not uniquely human.

This behavior is shared by all living things that can experience the sensations of pain and pleasure.

Are there, then, any characteristics of human biology that let us behave in a way that is substantially different from other animals? That perhaps give us hope for human solidarity?

About 10 years ago, neuroscientists discovered a type of neuron (nerve cell) in the brains of monkeys that the scientists labeled “mirror neurons.”

These specialized neurons activated the very same way whether a monkey did something itself or simply saw another monkey do it.

In other words, these specialized nerve cells allowed monkeys to imitate others and even to share the experiences of others.

With further study, scientists found that humans have even more highly developed mirror neurons than monkeys.

These cells help humans learn by watching others—an enormously useful ability that enables human social interaction.

Even more importantly, these cells may be the biological basis of human empathy, of the ability to experience someone else’s emotions, including pain or pleasure, as if the emotions were one’s own.

Human language and other social and cultural tools appear to depend on these neurons.

It may turn out that the number and sophistication of human mirror neurons are an evolutionary development—along with an opposable thumb—that has enabled humans to develop a social and cultural life far beyond our closest animal relatives.

If so, then the truly essential biological part of human nature is the capacity to experience the feelings of others as much as our own feelings.

Rather than greed, this capacity for solidarity may be what makes us distinctly human.

---

Social Justice

Social Justice is a concept that has fascinated philosophers ever since Plato in The Republic formalized the argument that an ideal state would rest on four virtues wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice.

The addition of the word social is to clearly distinguish Social Justice from the concept of Justice as applied in the law- state-administered systems, which label behavior as unacceptable and enforce a formal mechanism of control, may produce results that do not match the philosophical definitions of social justice - and from more informal concepts of justice embedded in systems of public policy and morality and which differ from culture to culture and therefore lack universality.

Social justice is also used to refer to the overall fairness of a society in its divisions and distributions of rewards and burdens and, as such, the phrase has been adopted by political parties with a redistributive agenda.

Social Justice derives its authority from the codes of morality prevailing in each culture.

By gathering together into bands and communities, humans seek to gain strength and to address their vulnerabilities which, in turn, creates the potential to develop into more complex and evolving civilisations.

If simple survival is to be transformed into long-term security, something more than co-ordinating the contribution of everyone's skills will be required.

A social organisation will be needed to resolve disputes and offer physical security against attack.

The achievement of community aims will depend upon the co-ordination of many functional specializations (such as farmers for food, soldiers for protection and rulers for resource management) and a willingness of community members to sacrifice some personal freedom for the greater good.

So, would defining or administering justice become one of these specializations and, as such, be the exclusive responsibility of any one class of citizens?

People will not accept the surrender of any of their freedoms unless they perceive real benefits flowing from their decisions.

The key factor is likely to be the emergence of a consensus that the society is working in a fair way, i.e., both that individuals are allowed as much freedom as possible given the role they have within the society and that the rewards compensate adequately for any loss of freedom.

Hence, true social justice is attained only through the harmonious co-operative effort of the citizens who, in their own self-interest, accept the current norms of morality as the price of membership in the community.

The next major impetus for the development of the concept came from Christianity.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) says, "Justice is a certain rectitude of mind whereby a man does what he ought to do in the circumstances confronting him."

As a theologian, Aquinas believed that justice is a form of natural duty owed by one person to another and not enforced by any human-made law.

This reflects the Christian view that, before God, all people are equal and must treat each other with respect.

Hence, the framework of the argument shifts to require obedience to natural principles of morality to satisfy a duty owed to God, and the outcome of social justice is driven by the tenets of morality embedded in the religion.

John Locke (1632-1704), an early theologist Utilitarain argued that people have innate natural goodness and beauty, and so, in the long run, if individuals rationally pursue their private happiness and pleasure, the interests of the society or the general welfare will be looked after fairly.

Locke characterised most of Christianity as utilitarian since believers see utility in rewards in the afterlife for their actions on Earth.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) believed that actions are morally right if they are motivated by duty without regard to any personal goal, desire, motive, or self-interest.

Kant's moral theory is, therefore, deontological and based on the concept of abject selflessness. In his view, the only relevant feature of moral law is its universalisability.

In the latter part of the twentieth century, the concept of Social Justice has largely been associated with the political philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) who draws on the utilitarian insights of Bentham and Mill, the social contract ideas of Locke, and the categorical imperative ideas of Kant.

His first statement of principle was made in A Theory of Justice (1971) where he proposed that, "Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.

For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others."

 His views are definitively restated in Political Liberalism (1993), where society is seen, "as a fair system of co-operation over time, from one generation to the next."

All societies have a basic structure of social, economic, and political institutions, both formal and informal.

In testing how well these elements fit and work together, Rawls based a key test of legitimacy on the theories of social contract.

To determine whether any particular system of collectively enforced social arrangements is legitimate he argued that one must look for agreement by the people who are subject to it.

Obviously, not every citizen can be asked to participate in a poll to determine his or her consent to every proposal in which some degree of coercion is involved, so we have to assume that all citizens are reasonable .

Rawls constructed an argument for a two-stage process to determine a citizen's hypothetical agreement:

• the citizen agrees to be represented by X for certain purposes; to that extent, X holds these powers as a trustee for the citizen;
• X agrees that a use of enforcement in a particular social context is legitimate; the citizen, therefore, is bound by this decision because it is the function of the trustee to represent the citizen in this way.

This applies to one person representing a small group (e.g. to the organiser of a social event setting a dress code) as equally as it does to national governments which are the ultimate trustees, holding representative powers for the benefit of all citizens within their territorial boundaries, and if those governments fail to provide for the welfare of their citizens according to the principles of justice, they are not legitimate.

To emphasise the general principle that justice should rise from the people and not be dictated by the law-making powers of governments, Rawls asserted that, "There is . . . a general presumption against imposing legal and other restrictions on conduct without sufficient reason.

But this presumption creates no special priority for any particular liberty."

This is support for an unranked set of liberties that reasonable citizens in all states should respect and uphold - to some extent, the list proposed by Rawls matches the normative human rights that have international recognition and direct enforcement in some nation states where the citizens need encouragement to act in a more objectively just way.

Social Justice as conceived by Rawls is an apolitical philosophical concept

The concept of social justice may hold some or all of the following beliefs:

• Historical inequities insofar as they affect current injustices should be corrected until the actual inequities no longer exist or have been perceptively "negated".
• The redistribution of wealth, power and status for the individual, community and societal good.
• It is government's (or those who hold significant power) responsibility to ensure a basic quality of life for all its citizens.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) Reflections On The Revolution In France (1790)

Edmund Burke is often referred to as the founder of modern conservatism. 

#Nevertheless,  he certainly has a part in the history of liberal thought (as understood by classical  liberals and libertarians). 

How much is a matter of discussion.  Two of the reasons for  considering Burke in the liberal tradition are William Ewart Gladstone  and Friedrich Hayek.

Gladstone (1809-1898) one of Britain’s most distinguished Prime Ministers in four  terms adding upto 14 years, and the greatest political figure in nineteenth century British  liberalism. 

Gladstone was a life time reader of Burke from his early ultra-Tory years, to  his later years as a Liberal with a contempt for the Tory British establishment that it  returned. 

Gladstone’s progress can in part be traced to his belief that the aristocracy  pursued sectional interests, in betrayal of its legitimate role as provider of disinterested  national leadership. 

In some degree, Gladstone was the converse of the stereotypical  socialist whose view changes on encounter with harsh reality. 

He did not agree with  everything in Burke, seeing him as too resistant to political change, but did read him  frequently, maybe daily, for a large part of his life.

Hayek as in the economist and political thinker, who was probably the greatest figure in the twentieth century revival of classical liberalism. 

As we have seen in earlier posts, Hayek also had a highly appreciative view of John Rawls, the political philosopher often associated with  left liberalism and social democracy. 

One lesson here is that traditions of political thought overlap and interpenetrate, so that we cannot, and should not, try to isolate liberalism as an immaculate doctrine with a completely self-contained existence.

The issues on which Gladstone disagreed with Burke included the French Revolution. 

Burke was a fierce opponent of the French Revolution, which began in 1789, passed through its most radical  phase in the years 1792 to ’94 , and came to an end with Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise to power in 1798 (or maybe Bonaparte’s coronation as Emperor in 1804). 

Burke’s opposition came as a surprise to many, and alienated him from the more radical Whigs in Parliament, like Charles Fox and the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, with whom he had been associated. 

 Whig refers to the more parliamentary of the two main political forces of the time, along with the Tories.

Burke himself, like Sheridan, came from Ireland, spending his adult life in England.  He made a name as a writer early on, particularly for his 1757 book on aesthetics, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful. 

The connection between that book and his political ideas is that Burke, like many Enlightenment thinkers, including his friends David Hume and Adam Smith, thought of a taste for beauty and for the sublime, as growing in history, in conjunction with the growth of commerce, law, and civil society. 

Burke moved to England and became one of the great parliamentarians of British history, though more for the content of his speeches than any capacity for exciting delivery. 

He was often on the most radical side in parliament, most famously with regard to the treatment of Ireland, India and the American colonies. 

Nevertheless, this did not extend to a wish to change the aristocratically dominated  political system, or challenge national traditions.  This became clear in his reaction to the French Revolution. 

Though he claimed to be still a Whig, he was closer to the Tories now than to his old Whig associates, or the radicals, republicans, and liberty lovers of the time, who were often what we would now call classical liberals.

Burke’s attitude to the French Revolution surprised many, but also came to seem prophetic. 

Burke might be taken to have exaggerated the violence of the first three years of the Revolution, but the Jacobin Terror of 1792 to ’94 and the rise of the young army officer Bonaparte to absolute power, also made Burke seem like a seer, who grasped the violent forces that the Revolution was unleashing. 

 Burke encountered ridicule when he famously lamented the failure of French men to follow medieval traditions of chivalry in defending Queen Marie Antoinette, but also correctly perceived that the Revolution would brutally crush any royal, or aristocratic opposition, and that of the most humble people whose rights it claimed to advance.

Burke explained that he thought liberty must be an ordered liberty, which requires the rule of law, and that the rule of law requires respect for traditional institutions, and authority. 

The state needs to be restrained from exercising absolute power, through the plurality of dispersed, and localised, institutions and customs, which grow over time. 

Those restraining forms also required deference from the lower classes, and a sense of mystique, to reinforce intellectual and moral respect.

Burke claimed that the radicalism and violence of the French Revolution was in contrast with British history, where even revolutions came in legal forms respectful of legal traditions, and which reflected the understanding of most people of all classes about rights and authority. 

This claim of continuity, and unity, in British history certainly does not command universal assent.

All the horrors that Burke identifies in the French Revolution have equivalents in British history, from Henry VIII’s confiscation of church lands (1536-41), through the Civil War (1642-51), the Glorious Revolution (1688), the crushing of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, and so on. 

Where Burke refers to such events, he goes to implausible lengths to describe them as legal, and as continuous with time worn traditions.

Whether we think these thoughts belong more to the liberal or conservative tradition, Burke certainly had an impact on liberal thinking. 

 He ought to be read by anyone who cares for the use of good English literary style in presenting political ideas, the history of political ideas, and a rounded understanding of liberal thought.

World economy:

Capitalists unable to stop the turmoil

Clare Doyle, International Secretariat of the CWI

SOCIALIST PARTY ARTICLE

As their system continues to slide further into its worst crisis since the 1930s, the frantic efforts of world capitalist leaders to reverse the process are farcical, contradictory and ineffective.

"Financial markets at their wits' end", was the headline in the Financial Times.

In a matter of weeks, trillions of dollars have been wiped from equity market values worldwide. The rush out of equities (shares in companies, banks etc) to alleged 'safe havens' of gold is now greater than at the time of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

This indicates the depth of the present crisis which threatens to become a prolonged slump.

The credit-worthiness of the USA, the most powerful economy in the world, has been questioned. Eurozone leaders are stumbling from one summit to another without being able to solve the crisis.

On Friday 5 August, the credit rating agency Standard and Poor (S&P), downgraded US government bonds from AAA to AA+.

This, they said, was due to the debacle between Democrats and Republicans over the debt ceiling for the US - now standing at $14 trillion, the highest in the world.

These are the very same 'experts' who gave an AAA rating to the sub-prime lending spree in the first place which helped to lay the basis for the present crisis.

Big investors in US 'treasuries', including the Chinese government, are still not likely to move out significantly, but China's official People's Daily newspaper took the opportunity of the S&P assessment to chide the US government with its own interests in mind.

It should not "become blind to the great risks that a weak greenback could pose to the world's fragile economic recovery by lifting dollar-denominated commodities prices", it wrote.

Double-dip recession

The S&P found the sums on which it based its assessment were wrong - by $2 trillion - but, pessimistic as they are about growth prospects, they still believed that lenders would have doubts about buying US government bonds.

The latest figures for January to July show the US economy already crawling along at a rate of just 0.8%.

The US economy is now almost certainly facing a 'double dip' recession.

There are legitimate fears, now widespread, that the austerity measures being imposed in the US and many other countries to tackle high levels of debt, will actually stifle their already weak economic recoveries and plunge them further into crisis.

This is behind the renewed expectations that the US Federal Reserve will announce a new round of 'quantitative easing' (QE - printing money) in response to forecasts of the US having a 50-50 chance of entering recession before the end of the year.

But QE1 and QE2 have not solved the problems and it remains to be seen whether a new 'stimulus package' will be sufficient to stem the crisis.

Fears about the future of the world economy have been reflected in the price of gold and oil.

Gold - not 'paper value' but a store of real value - is always a favourite 'investment' in uncertain times. Its price has jumped to new nominal records well over $1,720 an ounce and could, in some estimates, go as high as $2,500 by the end of the year.

Another 'safe haven' for investors - the Swiss Franc - has reached in the last month record highs against the euro and the dollar.

The 'Swissie' has now moved into negative interest rate territory, which means investors paying the banks to hold their assets safe!

On the other hand, the price of oil has considerably declined.

This is because of the grave concerns about downturns in growth leading to a fall in demand.

As the CWI has explained on many occasions, the very feeble recovery in most countries has not been accompanied by any sizeable growth in total output.

Apart from some notable exceptions, it did not bring jobs for the tens of millions of unemployed, nor stem what seems like a war on the poor - massive cuts in public spending.

Further cutbacks and downturns in the prospects for young people lie behind the outbursts of anger recently seen on the streets of England.

Seriously prepared strikes and general strikes are urgently needed in a series of countries now to stem the attacks on pension rights.

Without the trade union leaders giving a clear lead in the struggle against cuts across Europe and in other countries, clashes with police and attacks on property could erupt in the most deprived urban areas.

A programme of jobs and homes for all has to be accompanied by a struggle for the nationalisation, under democratic workers' control and management, of the banks and big monopolies.

This can channel all the anger and frustration of youth and workers against the system.

Crisis measures

On 21 July a special meeting of Eurozone finance ministers agreed another bailout for the Greek government.

But within days it was clear this would not solve Greece's underlying problems or prevent a default of its national debt.

Before the 21 July agreement can even come into force, it has to be ratified by all of the Eurozone governments, mostly through their parliaments which are not in session during August.

Only two weeks after this, under pressure from the Eurozone leaders, especially Merkel and Sarkozy, the European Central Bank (ECB) was forced to announce new measures to try and prevent the stock markets going into a tail-spin after Friday's news from America!

Its previous policy of not buying Italian and Spanish bonds on the open market was reversed.

This reduced, at least temporarily, the rates on these countries' borrowings.

However, stock markets remain volatile, reflecting investors' doubts over effective EU measures to solve the eurozone sovereign debt crisis.

Other discussions have taken place about expanding the powers to intervene by using the €440 billion in the European Financial Stability Fund but they are hampered by the need for unanimity across the zone.

Italy and Spain's governments alone need to find an extra €840 billion over the coming 18 months - more than the total of bailouts already found for Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

The ECB measure will ease the situation in relation to the debts of Italy and Spain but the strings attached will bring them into head-on confrontation with their populations.

Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has tried to give the impression there is no major problem in Italy.

But his country has one of the biggest debts as a percentage of GDP (nearly 120%) and an economy which has failed to grow more than a fraction of 1% for the past two decades.

He has now agreed, with his government, to bring forward the deadline by which budget cuts will balance the state books - from the original 2014 (well after the next general election) to 2013 (still after the next election is due!).

Extra austerity measures, nearly double those already announced, have been put through the cabinet by decree.

Already, even in a summer period, opposition is mounting.

Berlusconi has said he will not stand next time round, but he desperately needs a government in power that will not allow three major court cases against him to proceed.

Spain's prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has also declared he will not stand in November's election, sensing the widespread dissatisfaction with his inability to get Spain's economy back into healthy growth.

He has nevertheless agreed to increase austerity measures as a condition of the new loans.

The massive level of youth unemployment in Spain and a feeling of utter neglect by politicians have been behind the mass movement of the 'indignados' - young people disillusioned with political parties and looking for radical, even revolutionary solutions.

Richard Hunter, a broker from Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "The markets are looking for a concrete plan out of Europe and the US in terms of how they are going to deal with their deficits."

But because of private ownership and the states' role in defending the national interests of their own capitalists, a clear plan is something that capitalism, by its very nature, can never provide.

Capitalist anarchy

Trying to control an anarchic and blind system, none of the measures they take seems to stem the downward spiral into the worst crisis since the 1930s.

The measures they take to try and rescue their system will mean yet more cuts and austerity, yet more suffering and anguish for the vast majority of the world's population.

The accumulating crises - economic and political - of the last few weeks, have only served to underline the chaotic and wasteful way in which capitalism works or fails to work.

Only 58.1% of Americans of working age now have a real job.

 Tens of millions of people worldwide are on the scrapheap when they could be producing goods and providing services.

On the basis of public ownership and democratic planning, all the human and physical resources of society could be harnessed for the benefit of the vast majority instead of the increasingly rich minority.

The stranglehold of the banks and capitalist politicians over the lives of millions, in fact, billions, has to be broken.

Mass movements, including general strikes, will show the power that the working class can wield in society.

Linked with the energy and anger of the youth, new mass workers' parties can be rapidly built.

Confidence in the idea of a socialist alternative to capitalism can and must be renewed without delay.

Capitalism

The socio-economic system where social relations are based on commodities for exchange, in particular private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of wage labour.

Wage labour is the labour process in capitalist society: the owners of the means of production (the bourgeoisie) buy the labour power of those who do not own the means of production (the proletariat), and use it to increase the value of their property (capital).

In pre-capitalist societies, the labour of the producers was rendered to the ruling class by traditional obligations or sheer force, rather than as a “free” act of purchase and sale as in capitalist society.

Value is increased through the appropriation of surplus value from wage labour. In societies which produce beyond the necessary level of subsistence, there is a social surplus, i.e. people produce more than they need for immediate reproduction.

In capitalism, surplus value is appropriated by the capitalist class by extending the working day beyond necessary labour time.

That extra labour is used by the capitalist for profit; used in whatever ways they choose.

The main classes under capitalism are the proletariat (the sellers of labour power) and the bourgeoisie (the buyers of labour power).

The value of every product is divided between wages and profit, and there is an irreconcilable class struggle over the division of this product.

Capitalism is one of a series of socio-economics systems, each of which are characterised by quite different class relations: tribal society, also referred to as “primitive communism” and feudalism.

 It is the breakdown of all traditional relationships, and the subordination of relations to the “cash nexus” which characterises capitalism.

The transcendence of the class antgonisms of capitalism, replacing the domination of the market by planned, cooperative labour, leads to socialism and communism.

Historical Development: Capitalism develops through various stages.

Since capital is both a pre-condition and outcome of capitalism, a period of primitive accumulation marks the beginning of capitalism; this may involve outright theft and plunder, and in particular the creation of a class of people who no longer own any means of production – a proletariat.

By freeing the labour process from traditional forms and expanding labour cooperation through world trade, capitalism initiates a rapid transformation in the labour process and promotes the development of science and technology.

Meanwhile, religion and kinship ties are continuously undermined.

Capital is built up in a few countries at the expense of other countries which are used as sources of cheap labour and raw materials.

The competition between millions of small-scale producers which was characteristic of the early days of capitalism, leads to the concentration of capital in the hands of just a few as a more efficient means of production.

At a certain point (the beginning of the 20th-century), the entire globe had been divided up between a few great powers.

Thus begins the final stage in the development of capitalism, imperialism, characterised by the domination of the banks, the formation of large multi-national corporations, by war and revolution.

The free market that had been envisioned by Adam Smith was shown impossible by the late 19th and early 20th century, when monopolies dominated nations causing massive Economic collapses in the 1890s, a world production crisis during World War I, and the worldwide depression in the 1930s.

Thereafter national, and later international, regulation of the capitalist marketplace became necessary (SEC, International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, etc.); while the growth of militarization remains a necessity to expend excess production.

For example, the United States having overspent the Soviet Union in militarization, in the last decade of the 20th century continued to create wars throughout the world – Panama, Iraq, Bosnia, etc. – unleashing double and triple the firepower in all of World War II.

After the incredible expenditure of vast munitions and weapons (over $300 billion per year), the subjugated and destroyed nations are then offered contracts and infiltrated by capitalist business for the process of "rebuilding".

The Destruction of Capitalism: In capitalist society the working-class continues to grow, and ownership over the means of production continually dwindles into fewer and fewer hands.

One example of this is the stock market, where the finance banks emphasize that "all workers" can own a piece of various companies. In fact, through offering "ownership" of these companies to more people, financial oligarchies are able to gain greater control over these companies by diluting the ownership amongst an unorganized group while also extracting capital from this large group for further investment.

For example, a bank need only own 10 or 15 percent of a certain company to have an enormous controlling interest over that company, so long as the vast majority of stocks in that company are owned by thousands and tens of thousands of different people, people who do not have the time to attend shareholder meetings and are not united and unorganized on how to exert control over the company.

Furthermore in capitalist society, the value of labour increases while labourers continually receive a smaller portion of that value they create.

The selling of labour itself is continually reduced from something that is sold on a monthly or yearly basis to something that is sold day by day, and hour by hour, piecemeal or in short term contracts.

As a result, the income gap grows continually larger.

For example in the United States, from 1988-1998, income for the poorest 20 percent of the population rose a meager $110 to $12,990.

For the richest 20 percent it increased by $17,870 to $137,480. (Data according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute, checked with U.S. Census data; January, 1999).

Capitalist ideology attempts to refute Marxism on the basis that the biggest class in capitalist society is the "middle-class".

This class conception however is based purely on economic wealth (two cars in the garage, an income of x amount of dollars, etc.) and not on that person's actual relations to the means of production (See definition on class).

The enormous majority of the population in a capitalist society is proletarian – however through imperialism some highly specialized proletarians (from executive officers to autoworkers, information technology workers to industrial foremen, etc.) are paid very well (not by the full value of what they actually produce, but by a higher percentage of that value when compared to unskilled workers and workers in nations subjugated to imperialist exploitation).

In order for capitalism to function correctly, the petty-bourgeois class must be in existence.

This is one of the great contradictions in capitalist society, because on the one hand while capitalist production continually pushes small-business people out of the market (for example, the owner of the general store, vegetable shop, small grocery store owner – all are wiped out by corporations who establish enormous shopping centers to meet a large variety of consumer needs, with products of higher quality at a cheaper price); while on the other hand capitalism cannot survive without a class of people establishing new businesses to fill new consumer needs; and from a very select few of those businesses to recruit new bourgeois, forming large corporations (in United States this is referred to as the "American dream").

The ultimate failure of capitalism is brought about by capitalist production itself – the further technology advances, the more expensive and powerful are the machines needed for production, while at the same time, as a result of technological advances, products produced by more efficient machines become cheaper and cheaper.

This has the effect of firstly driving the petty-bourgeoisie into extinction (who cannot afford to constantly upgrade their productive forces, while their products continually become cheaper (the reason they are heavily subsidized by advanced capitalist governments); and further the creation of larger corporations, which in turn must not only shrink internally to maintain "efficiency", but must also merge with other companies, forming multinational conglomerates, etc.

The further this process continues, production becomes increasingly centralized, and when controlled by the capitalist, the more oppressive and backward production becomes (Microsoft at the end of the 20th century).

These technological advances will inevitably lead to either the common destruction of humanity (a third world war) or socialist revolution, a democratic society where the means of production and distribution will be controlled by the majority.

Further Reading: For a detailed description of the fundamentals and early development of capitalism see: Marx, Wage labour and Capital, and Capital Volume 1 & Volume 2 – on the Process of Production, Circulation and of Capital respectively), Capital Volume 3 on capitalist production in whole.

For a detailed description of the beginning of the later stage of development of capitalism, see: Lenin, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism.

Casualisation

Casualisation is the practice of replacing the employment of workers on continuing contracts with the hire of workers on an hourly basis with no guarantee of continued employment or acceptance of any commitment to paying rates related to the cost of living or conditions of employment which constitute a reasonable basis for life.

The advantage to employers is that it enables them to turn the tap on and off as required to meet fluctuating demand, and even more importantly, it enables the employer to threaten every worker every hour with termination of their employment.

Casualisation is thus a method for forcing the price of labour-power down to its minimum.

The terms ‘casualisation’ was coined by a government enquiry into dock labour practices in Britain in 1920, where casual labour was becoming the norm for unskilled workers.

It was in the fight against those conditions that the first great unions of unskilled workers were built, including the British dockworkers and the I.W.W. in the early 20th century, and in the 1930s, the U.S. Teamsters Union.

 

 

Cause & Effect

Understanding of Cause and Effect is a basic mode of scientific investigation, the discovery of the specific causes of phenomena and the complete cause: “When all the conditions of a fact are present, it enters into Existence”.

 However, the fixed opposition between cause and effect is limited, since every effect is also a partial cause of its own conditions of existence.

The concept of reciprocity arises from an understanding of the whole network of cause-effect leading to an understanding of "complete cause".

Scepticism says that Causality is simply a subjective construction, which flies in the face of the obvious successes of industry and natural science.

However, the limitation of the standpoint of Causality is shown in the inability to conceive the world and humanity's part in it as a single whole.

Capital

Capital is in the first place an accumulation of money and cannot make its appearance in history until the circulation of commodities has given rise to the money relation.

Secondly, the distinction between money which is capital, and money which is money only, arises from the difference in their form of circulation.

Money which is acquired in order to buy something is just money, facilitating the exchange of commodities.

 [Marx represent this as C - M - C or Commodity - Money - Commodity.]

On the other hand, capital is money which is used to buy something only in order to sell it again. [Marx represented this as M - C - M.]

This means that capital exists only within the process of buying and selling, as money advanced only in order to get it back again.

Thirdly, money is only capital if it buys a good whose consumption brings about an increase in the value of the commodity, realised in selling it for a Profit [or M - C - M'].

The word “capital” was first used in its current meaning in England around 1611, derived from “capital grant,” meaning a grant of land from the King – i.e. the head – which would be the basis of a new estate, and so meaning ”original” funds, thus carrying in its genealogy a mirror of the changing sources and origins of power, with the rise of the bourgeois revolution in England.

“The simple circulation of commodities – selling in order to buy – is a means of carrying out a purpose unconnected with circulation, namely, the appropriation of use-values, the satisfaction of wants.

The circulation of money as capital is, on the contrary, an end in itself, for the expansion of value takes place only within this constantly renewed movement.

The circulation of capital has therefore no limits.” [Capital, Chapter 4]

Capital is a Social Relation

Capital is not just wealth, but wealth in a specific historically developed form: wealth that grows through the process of circulation.

As an aside, it should be noted that wealth itself is a social relation, not just an accumulation of things.

For example, if you owe someone a favour, then that is something personal between the two of you; if your debt is determined by a third party or by some social ritual such as a birthday, then that is a social relation.

Wealth is a social relation in the same sense, and its various historically developed forms are social relations.

The issue is to understand exactly what kind of social relation is capital and where it leads.

Contradictions in Capital

The contradiction within capital is this: capital arises only in and through the exchange of commodities, but on average commodities are exchanged at their value, so no new value can arise simply by the exchange of commodities for one another.

So neither the purchase (M - C), nor the sale (C' - M'), can realise a new value. In order to expand, capital must purchase a commodity, the consumption of which creates new value (C - C').

This commodity is labour-power, and the consumption of labour power is the labour process.

“In order to be able to extract value from the consumption of a commodity, our friend, Moneybags, must be so lucky as to find, within the sphere of circulation, in the market, a commodity, whose use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption, therefore, is itself an embodiment of labour, and, consequently, a creation of value.

The possessor of money does find on the market such a special commodity in capacity for labour or labour-power.” [Capital, Chapter 6]

Wage Labour and Capital

Thus capital can make a profit because people can produce more in a day than they need to live, or to put it another way, the value of labour power is less than a full day’s labour.

The whole trick reduces to the problem: how to get the workers to work longer than needed to earn the equivalent of their own needs and then get hold of that surplus labour.

The secret of this trick lies in wage labour.

Further, wealth does not become capital until certain historical conditions pertain:

in the first place, the development of forces of production must be such that people can produce more than they need to live, so people have surplus labour left over after they have produced all that they need in order to live;

secondly, there must be a class of free labourers who have nothing to sell but their capacity to work and no other means of livelihood, who can be forced to work for the capitalist (the proletariat);

thirdly, a class of people who own the means of production as their personal property (the bourgeoisie).

The Rate of Profit

The two factors involved in the labour process are the means of production – materials, fuel, land and so on,– and the labour power of the workers.

The first component Marx calls “constant capital” and the wages used to pay for the workers’ labour power, “variable capital”.

These terms reflect the fact that the value of the constant component is recovered when the product is sold but its value is constant, whereas when the capitalist uses the workers’ labour power, new value is created.

The capitalist must measure the profit made in producing a given commodity in proportion to the total capital invested – the rate of profit; the workers, on the other hand, will measure the proportion of surplus labour time, to the time necessary to work to produce what they need to live – the rate of surplus value.

The ratio of constant to variable capital Marx called the “organic composition of capital”. The higher the organic composition of capital, the lower would be the rate of profit.

General Rate of Profit

It follows that the rate of profit would be different from one industry to the other, according to the organic composition of capital normal in the given industry.

 For example, labour intensive service industries would be expected to provide a high rate of profit while capital intensive industries like the railways would generate a low rate of profit.

However, this contradicts the empirical fact that in any given society there is a general rate of profit across all industries.

Marx showed that the formation of a general rate of profit is a result of “supply-and-demand” pressures which draws capital into areas where the rate of profit is high and forces the rate of profit down again.

Falling Rate of Profit

The rate of surplus value may increase over time, either by increasing the working day and extracting more and more surplus labour time from the working class (absolute surplus value), or because the necessary labour time is reduced as a result of increases in the general level of productivity (relative surplus value).

However, the total amount of materials and machinery consumed in the production process, relative to wages, greatly increases over time, and so the organic composition of capital rises.

Marx asserted that despite possible increases in rate of surplus value, the increasing organic composition of capital meant there is an historical tendency for the rate of profit to fall.

This, Marx showed, would bring about a crisis in capitalism, as it became more and more difficult for capitalists to realise their profits.

The problems of realisation of profits are exacerbated by the increasing scale of investment required to keep up with technology.

Also, if the capitalists keep their profits high by keeping wages at starvation level, how are they going to be able to sell their products?

These kind of problems would lead, according to Marx, to imbalances between “Department I” – production of the means of production, and “Department II” – production of the basic consumer goods and luxuries.

Conflicts within the Capitalist Class

As changes take place in the productive forces, capital flows from one industry to another, generating political conflicts between the the various sections of capital.

For example, manufacturing capital might pressure for reductions in tariffs, thus threatening agriculture.

The resulting political conflict which breaks out though, might take the form of a fight between two political parties, one of which has its base in the countryside.

Thus changes in capital are important in undertsanding conflicts which break out from time to time ‘on the surface’ in the form of political and social movements and social change generally.

Concentration of Capital

One of the most important of these conflicts which arise from the dynamics of capital is the way big capital constantly drives smaller competitors to the wall.

The resulting concentration of capital was seen by Marx as one of the main axes along which capital would eventually arrive at an historic crisis, with a handful of immensely wealthy capitalists confronted by a vast mass of proletarians, with nothing in between.

 

Modern bourgeois economics literature uses a number of new terms which are foreign to Marxism, such as “Natural Capital”, “Social Capital”, “Cultural Capital” and “Human Capital”.

Marx showed that capital is a social relation; for the bourgeoisie, social relations are a form of capital.

Natural Capital

“Natural Capital” is the term used by economists to refer to those aspects of Nature which have the potential to be subsumed under capital, such as forests which are in national parks and can be converted into private property and harvested.

The term “Natural Capital” is sometimes also used to indicate Nature as the “externality” which provides necessary inputs for capitalist production (raw materials, land, air, water, etc.) without payment, and absorbs costs of production without recompense (waste materials, pollution).

This extension makes sense in as much as Nature is the fundamental condition for production, and insofar as it is destroyed or ‘used up’, although it therefore fails to be subsumed under capital, capital must in some way make expenditure to compensate for having destroyed the natural conditions of its own existence.

So for example, clean air may not be “Natural Capital” in the sense that it can be converted into private property; nevertheless, if it is destroyed by capital, or in order to prevent its destruction, capital must make an outlay (for example, install filters, reduce energy consumption, plant trees, etc.).

“Natural Capital” is thus Nature, taken as an “externality” for capital, making inputs and absorbing outputs without payment. Economists widely believe that private production is always destructive of public goods which are “externals”, and “Natural Capital” is one such “external” liable to be destroyed by Capital.

Social Capital

Like “Natural Capital”, “Social Capital” is a term used by bourgeois economists to refer to an “externality” which supplies inputs to capital, absorbs outputs from capital, and is capable of being destroyed by capital and/or subsumed under capital.

In contrast to “Natural Capital” however, “Social Capital” refers to those factors of production and human life in general which exist in social relations presently not subsumed under capital.

Frequently, “Social Capital” is used to refer to those externalities other than the conditions for capital accumulation provided by the state, in what bourgeois economists refer to as “Civil Society”.

The point is that “Social Capital” is not capital at all; it is those creative, productive and life-giving relations between people which have the potential to be converted into capital, but are presently external to capital, i.e., not capital at all.

The term was first used in an ironic sense by Jane Jacobs in her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and more recently popularised by James Coleman, Robert Putnam and Francis Fukuyama.

For bourgeois economics, the term is important for the purpose of drawing the attention of capitalists to the potential for capitalist development contained in society generally, which can be converted into private production with minimal expenditure (for example, the skills and networks workers have before they are hired or ‘trained’ by the firm, people's capacity to provide information and ideas from their informal networks), and conversely to draw attention to the social capacities which are providing these inputs and absorbing outputs and are capable of being used up and destroyed by capitalist industry (for example, family ties supporting overworked or injured workers, trust and loyalty which allows business to be done without a team of lawyers and policemen to enforce contracts).

Bourgois economics, however, distinguishes between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ social capital; such a distinction is necessary to deal with the problem of why trade unions are not social relations providing inputs and absorbing costs of capital, while a professional association, for example, is, why one needs to be destroyed, the other exploited.

This kind of distinction is generally made in an apologetic way, because bourgeois economists do not accept the idea that capital is itself a social relation, and the concept of ‘subsumption’ under capital is not acceptable within the framework of bourgeois economics.

Likewise, some writers make a distinction between ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ social capital; ‘horizontal’ social capital is good and ‘vertical’ social capital (called “political capital” by some) is bad.

So for example, networks of support and exchange of information provide unpaid inputs to capital, and can be subsumed under capital, but organisations which build a strong sense of collective identity, elect delegates and representatives resist subsumption under capital, and such relations have to be destroyed before the “Social Capital” can be subsumed under capital.

The most profitable kind of “Social Capital” are networks of person-to-person relations which lacks any collective consciousness.

Human Capital

“Human Capital” is slightly different from “natural capital” and “social capital” inasmuch as it is generally used in bourgeois economics to refer to human capacities which are subsumed under capital: the skills and knowledge of employees, the trust between employees and the effectiveness of the division of labour within the workforce employed by a given capital, which can be used to make profit. In other words, all those values which are commanded by a given capital, but which cannot be property because they are human.

“Human capital” thus fails to be capital because all its elements remain the ‘property’ of the individual workers whose intellectual and physical powers constitute it, and these workers may choose whether or not to contibute these assets, and take them with them when they resign; on the other hand, “human capital” is subsumed under capital to the extent that the given capital brings together such a concentration and combination of human capacities that the ‘whole is greater than the sum of the parts’.

 Thus, “human capital” is contained within the workforce employed by the capital, but its ownership and value-form is contained in the ability of a company to retain and utilise the skills of its employees.

Note that that knowledge and skill of employees which are not or cannot be used for profit (e.g., the employees' union-organising, their hobbies, sporting skills, interests in music and literature, etc.) are not “human capital”.

“Human capital” differs from “labour power” because labour power is the use of much the same human capacities indicated by “human capital”, and is measured by the hour.

“Human capital” also includes those capacities which arise from the collectivity brought about by bringing a number of workers together in one productive enterprise. See also Human Capital.

 

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A SERIES ON ROTTEN BRITAIN

 

THE RADICAL INVITES READERS TO SUBMIT AN ARTICLE ON THE FOLLOWING :-

 

IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR JUSTICE YOU'RE IN THE WRONG PLACE

Governing for people; not property and profit

 Robin Thorpe

Aug 2011

LABOUR UNCUT

In December last year, Neal Lawson and John Harrison presented an outline of their proposal for new socialism.

With many European nations still circling the edge of the economic abyss and people starving to death in Africa is now a pertinent time to look again at the way in which we organise our world?

Each generation seemingly gets a chance to make a paradigm shift in the way in which their brand of civilisation is governed.

Apart from a very few cases, they opt for evolution in the place of revolution.

The consequence of this evolution is that despite the diminishing role of aristocracy and landed wealth, most world nations remain capitalist economies.

For the majority of the so-called civilised nations, the primary objective of governance has for centuries been as an enabler in the pursuit of profit and the expansion of capital.

Historically this was because the ruler and the ruler’s peers were the primary holders of capital.

More recently, because the professional political class are the acolytes of the wealthy and the preservers of the capitalist economy (particularly in the USA where election depends on the size of your marketing budget).

Even our celebrated legal system only exists because of our forebear’s predilection to the preservation of private property rights.

The people of Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland and to some extent the other European and North American nations are being asked to submit to severe austerity programmes.

Austerity measures that could be described as being designed to protect the investments of bankers and venture capitalists (often illustrated by the expression “socialise the risk and privatise the profit”).

Although they are justified with vague notions of national interest they are not specifically for the benefit of the citizens of any individual nation.

Outside Europe famine has once again brought death to Africa.

The saddest thing about famine, in any part of the world, is that the globe provides enough nutrition to support the entire world population; it is not, however, equitably distributed.

Unfortunately for the Somalians, “the markets” do not see fit to provide them with enough food and water to live.

A market economy based on private ownership does not seem to me to be able to solve any of the social or political challenges that have emerged in the last century.

Indeed the financial crisis was entirely created by the issue of private ownership; more specifically the debt created to finance private home ownership.

Why then do more people not question the very nature of the economy?

A global conversion to socialism with major countries abandoning the all pervasive markets isn’t likely.

But why is an economy based on the private ownership of capital and the religion of market efficiency, held up as an untouchable panacea?

Chomsky describes this as the ‘Muashar doctrine’ after a quote from Carnegie endowment Middle East specialist Marwan Muashar, formerly a high official of the Jordanian government: “There is nothing wrong, everything is under control”.

In a speech in Amsterdam, in March 2011, Chomsky pointed out that a greater danger yet could occur if short-term profit is given a greater priority than the environment.

The fate of the species could be threatened (the US congress has already cut funding for measures that could mitigate environmental catastrophe).

He concludes that, “All of this, and much more, can proceed as long as the Muashar doctrine prevails.

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome”.

If there is to be any potential for change, then meaningful leadership must be forthcoming.

But meaningful must meant more than merely populist: idealist.

Across the Western world, the political leaders are, without exception, intelligent and well-educated, but in the search for electoral success they follow only populist motions, always seeking to control the enigmatic middle-ground to ensure their power.

It must be accepted that contemporary voters load politicians with paradoxical demands; both reviling the political system and expecting political leaders to solve all their woes.

However this does not mean that these leaders should hide from the bigger challenges by debating only the scandalous and the provincial.

Democratic leadership should not be predicated on marketing strategy or research, but on strongly held beliefs and a vision in securing a brighter future.

 Leadership, in any field, is categorized by the ability to helicopter over the field of reference, make decisive strategic decisions where it matters and the ability to inspire a greater collective response than that provided by the sum of the individuals.

The markets, whoever they are, cannot provide the answers to any of the questions on equality, justice, environmental preservation and security that are important to millions of people across the world.

Only people can provide these answers.

And no doctrine that promotes the importance of the individual and of private property over the collective society will ever come close to resolving these challenges.

Socialism USA

by: Gus Hall 

We Communists believe that socialism is the very best replacement for a capitalist system that has served its purpose, but no longer meets the needs and requirements of the great majority of our people.

We believe that socialism USA will be built according to the traditions, history, culture and conditions of the United States. Thus, it will be different from any other socialist society in the world. It will be uniquely American.

What will be the goals of our socialist society?

1. A life free of exploitation, insecurity, poverty; an end to unemployment, hunger and homelessness.
2. An end to racism, national oppression, anti-Semitism, all forms of discrimination, prejudice and bigotry. An end to the unequal status of women.
3. Renewal and extension of democracy; an end to the rule of corporate America and private ownership of the wealth of our nation. Creation of a truly humane and rationally planned society that will stimulate the fullest flowering of the human personality, creativity and talent.

The advocates and ideologues of capitalism hold that such goals are utopian; that human beings are inherently selfish and evil. Others argue that these goals can be fully realized under capitalism.

We are confident, however, that such goals can be realized, but only through a socialist society.

Why Socialism?

Since its inception capitalism has been fatally flawed. Its inherent laws - to maximize profit on the backs of the working class - give rise to the class struggle.

History is a continuous story of people rising up against those who exploit and oppress them, to demand what's theirs. Our own country's historic beginning was revolutionary. The ideals of justice and equality have inspired peoples for centuries.

Up until the time of Karl Marx, those that advocated socialism were 'utopians', that is, motivated by ideals only. It was Marx and his longtime friend and collaborator, Frederick Engels, who uncovered the inner laws of capitalism, where profit comes from and how societies develop. They transformed wishful thinking for socialism into socialism with a scientific, materialist basis.

Communists say that capitalism won't be around forever. Just like previous societies weren't around forever either. Slavery gave rise to feudalism and feudalism to capitalism. So, too, capitalism gives rise to socialism.

The Foundations of Socialism

Political power would be in the hands of working people. Socialism starts with nationalization of the main means of production - the plants, factories, agri-business farms and everything necessary to produce what society needs. The large monopoly corporations and banks come under public ownership, that is, under the collective ownership of the entire working class and people, who have the leading role in building socialism.

Socialism also means public ownership of the energy industry and all the natural resources. It eliminates forever the power of the capitalist class to exploit and oppress the majority.

A socialist government draws up plans covering the entire economy. They are drawn up with maximum participation of the people, from the shop level on up. Such plans are achieved because they harmonize the interests of all, because there are no conflicts arising from exploitation of workers and no dog-eat-dog competition.

Production increases much faster than under capitalism, with a planned economy, advancement of science and technology, and the protection and preservation of our environment and natural resources.

A socialist government is based on all-around democracy, starting with economic democracy. The more people participate in running their own economy, the more firmly people's power is established, the more successful a socialist America will be.

Trade unions in a socialist USA will insure a fair balance between what workers produce and what they receive. They will have decisive power to enforce safety and health provisions, prevent speedup, and guarantee good transportation, working conditions and plant facilities.

Public services - schools, hospitals, utilities, transit, parks, roads - are crumbling under capitalism. And now corporations are 'privatizing' government-run, publicly-owned institutions for private profit.

Under socialism public services and housing will be vastly improved and expanded. They will be broadened in their scope beyond anything dreamed of under capitalism.

The U.S. will become a vast construction site. Homes, schools, hospitals, places of recreation will be built to end shortages, replace substandard infrastructures and public facilities.

Jobs and Education for All

Full employment will be quickly achieved as production is expanded to satisfy the needs of people. Automation at the service of the working people will lead to both reduced hours of work and higher living standards, with no layoffs. There will be no danger of over-production since production will be planned and people's incomes will increase in line with the rising output of consumer goods and services.

Poverty will be ended quickly with the recovery of the vast resources now wasted in war production, corporate profits and the extravagent lifestyles of the filthy rich.

All education will be tuition-free. Every person will have access to unlimited medical and health care without charge. These rights will be realized as rapidly as facilities can be built and the personnel trained.

With capitalism gone, crime will also begin to disappear, for it is the vicious profit system that corrupts people and breeds crime.

To Each According to Their Work

Some ask whether guaranteeing basic necessities, free education, low-cost housing and health care will encourage people to avoid working, or doing their best. The principle of socialism is: From each according to his/her ability, to each according to his/her work.

Socialism provides incentives for working better, producing more and higher quality goods, acquiring advanced skills. It does NOT equalize wages. Wages vary according to occupation and efficiency, although everyone is guaranteed a liveable wage.

Under capitalism, improvements in skill, organization and technology are rightly feared by the worker, since they threaten jobs. Under socialism, they offer the chance to make the job more interesting and rewarding, as well as to improve living standards.

Socialism provides moral incentives because the fruits of labor benefit all. No person robs others of the profits from their labor; when social goals are adopted by the majority, people will want to work for these goals. Work will seem less a burden, more and more a creative activity, where everyone is his/her neighbor's helper instead of rival.

It is true socialism will nationalize or socialize all large-scale production, property and real estate. But socialism does not abolish ALL privately-owned business. It does not require nationalization of those small businesses owned by people who work for themselves and do not hire others to make a profit. Personal property - private homes, automobiles, etc., - will remain just that, personal property.

In highly mechanized U.S. agriculture there will still be a place for the family farmer. But the farm family will be relieved of the pressure of agribusiness monopolies.

There will be rapid abolition of racism and national oppression. Socialism will bring complete equality for all racially and nationally oppressed. There will be no compromise with racism, for there will no longer exist a capitalist class which profits from it. Racism, national oppression, anti-Semitism, sexism, anti-immigrant discrimination and all forms of prejudice and bigotry will be banned by law, with strict measures of enforcement. Affirmative action will be expanded immediately to undo and make up for hundreds of years of the ravages of racism. Full equality will be one of the main priorities of the new society.

War propaganda will be outlawed.

The only privileged sectors will be the children and seniors, who have earned the right to a healthy, happy, secure retirement.

The children will reap all the benefits of socialist child care, free nurseries and schools with the very best facilities and teachers. Children will have wonderful recreational and sports facilities. They will have the option to choose whatever career they wish, and the free education and training to achieve it.

Socialism provides the economic foundation for effective democracy for the masses of people. To carry through the socialist economic and social transformation requires political rule by the working class - a government of, by and for the working people.

Socialism USA

Socialism USA will benefit from the experiences, the mistakes and succesess of the countries who built and are building socialism. But mainly it will reflect the distinctive features of U.S. development and environment.

Unique historical advantages, like the unequalled natural resources, fertile soil and perfect weather, coupled with the contributions of generations of working people, enabled U.S. capitalism to achieve higher productive levels and living standards than capitalism in other countries. So, too, the development of socialism here will have some distinct advantages.

1. We have a highly developed industrial society with a highly trained and educated work force.
2. Free from foreign intervention, socialism will not have to divert human and economic resources to defend itself.
3. Socialism USA will avoid the terrible problems of extreme poverty, illiteracy, civil wars, wars of intervention and world wars.
4. Socialism USA will extend democracy to its fullest, taking as its starting point the democratic traditions and institutions of the American people.

Path to Socialism

We say that it may be possible in the U.S. to bring socialism through peaceful means. Perhaps through the ballot box. One thing is clear, there won't be socialism in the U.S. until the majority of the American people want it.

I like to say that when workers enter the corporate board rooms to take over and the ruling class says: O.K. you're right, we made a mess of things and now you should run it all. Well then there won't be any trouble. But if the ruling class says: Forget it! And call out the army and the police and the national guard, then that is how revolutions become violent. It starts with the ruling class. Workers and their allies have to defend themselves and to fight for what is rightfully theirs.

We believe and advocate that a socialist society in our country will guarantee all the liberties defined in the Bill of Rights but never fully realized. These include the right of people to express themselves fully and freely through organizations of their choice and competing candidates who respect and are guided by the concept of building socialism.

Indeed, the freedoms in the Bill of Rights will take on far greater meaning for the great majority, who will now own the meeting halls, press, radio and TV, and will be able to exercise that freedom effectively.

That's why we call ours Bill of Rights Socialism, USA.

Socialism is our vision for America's future. It is a vision we are winning more and more people to because it is logical - really a great - replacement for capitalism. And because it is the next inevitable step up the ladder of human civilization.

An American Dilemma: 2011 

MARTIN O'DONNELL: The week that made Britain sit up and think

If Britain is to learn from the events of last week argues sociologist and union activist lecturer, Dr Martin O'Donnell, then "The social and economic direction we’ve been going in since the 1980s has got to be abandoned." Since last Tuesday a lot has been said about the reasons for the riots with numerous commentators choosing the most simple explanations. The most common being ‘criminality’. Which, aside from anything else, is not causation. This is an easy and lazy explanation which is used to distract from the real failings of political leaders to create genuine social cohesion and genuine economic opportunity. Those who have attempted to explore the complex social and economic causes have been dismissed as making excuses for criminality. Rather than excuses this piece attempts to untangle the deep-rooted social causes.  The reality is that events unfolded for differing reasons in different areas. Whilst the focus in Clapham and Ealing was looting, the focus in Nottingham was the police with five separate police stations being attacked but almost no shops. In Tottenham the violence was motivated by the police reaction to a peaceful protest over the, as yet unexplained, police shooting of Mark Duggan. The causative factors at play in each area are also manifold, ranging from policing, marginalisation, inequality, gang culture, status frustration, rampant consumerism, issues of masculinity (99% of those arrested were male) and wider societal factors such as individualism, materialism and the virtual disappearance of social mobility.  For many who work in public sector professions such as youth workers, social workers, police officers and teachers, the existence of a disaffected youth embracing subcultural values such as hostility to authority and rejection of education is something we’ve been aware of for years. For many youngsters this rejection of mainstream values manifests itself in displays of masculine dominance, violence and thrill seeking which involve experimenting with alcohol, with drugs and with sex. The thrill seeking and immediate gratification that was on display during the riots is something that those of us who work with many inner city youngsters are all too familiar with.  The feeling that amongst those at the bottom of society’s structure that they’re the forgotten failures is also exacerbated by a media dominated by the middle classes. TV schedules seem to be full of shows in which middle class people have their homes made over or conduct cooking in their expensive kitchens or buy and sell antiques or buy properties abroad. Current affairs programmes are dominated by journalists and politicians discussing the political issues that seem to matter to them such as interest rates, share values and the more sensational crimes. When do they discuss the casualisation of labour, job insecurity and the deterioration of the public housing stock? Small wonder that turnout in elections is consistently lowest in the poorest constituencies. The poorest in society are simply ignored and forgotten. They are a problem; a problem that no one in power wants to tackle until it literally blows up in these displays of violence. Martin Luther King accurately pointed out that ‘the riot is the voice of the unheard’. When the media do look at the poorest in society they are often simply demonised and displayed like something from a freak show as in the Trisha Goddard Show or the Jeremy Kyle Show. Labelling and stigmatising those who have ‘under-achieved’, as Howard Becker, Stan Cohen and others have repeatedly proven, often only backfires as the label is embraced e.g. chavs, hoodies, white trash and the, thankfully now abolished, ASBOs which often just became badges of honour.   What the media is also doing, which adds to the desire for immediate gratification as witnessed in the looting during the riots, is acquiescing in the retail corporations’ deliberate plan to create an acquisitive culture. Every newspaper, every commercial channel and, of course, the internet is filled with advertising. We are endlessly encouraged to spend, to purchase and to simply have the right brand or the latest gadget. Is it really so surprising that so many youngsters headed to the stores that hold the very goods their tempted with every day. American criminologist Robert Merton argued over eighty years ago that when too much emphasis is placed on a goal and not enough on the legitimate means of attaining it, then the risk is increased of individuals trying to achieve the goal by deviant or criminal means. We were warned of the dangers of this rampant consumerism with the ‘Ikea riot’ of 2007 which took place in none other than Edmonton, scene of one of last Monday’s riots. Our identities are often defined not by what we are but by what we have and what we have and own is restricted by our economic ability to consume. In the aftermath of the riots, Zygmunt Bauman (Britain’s most respected sociologist) identified this as the single most important problem “so grows the wrath, humiliation, spite and grudge aroused by not having them – as well as the urge to destroy what you can’t have. Looting shops and setting them on fire derive from the same impulsion and gratify the same longing.”  The wider structural problems with Britain’s society also have to be included to gain a fuller understanding of the riots. The growing middle class which dominates society has been convincing itself and tries to convince all sections of society that it’s position is theirs on merit. Meritocracy is a myth. We are seeing less social mobility today than at any time in the post-war period. As a result of the promotion of individualistic culture, the myth has been created that a person’s socio-economic position is entirely the result of their individual effort. The reality is that the economic structure needs a class of low paid manual labour and below that a pool of workless labour to keep wages down. The individual effort argument must conclude that, if everybody made the effort, we could all be lawyers, teachers, business consultants and journalists. But then who would fill their supermarket shelves, serve their drinks, manufacture their convenient foods and clean their offices? Hence the introduction of tuition fees and student loans; we can’t have too many graduates thinking they can enter the middle classes. The system must produce educational failures. It has to legitimise differential educational attainment in order to justify and provide this army of low paid, low skilled service sector workers.  Below the working class is that large body of workless poor. Described by the Right as the underclass and identified by many as having provided so many of the inner city rioters. The creation of this class, about which so much has been written describing their dependency culture, their deviant values and their lack of any stake in society, is also the result of the socio-economic structure. In the 1960s Harold Wilson talked of the ‘white heat of technology’ ushering in the ‘leisure age’. But rather than ushering the age of leisure it ushered in the age of unemployment. Rather than technology reducing hours of work it simply reduced the numbers a company had to employ. Shareholders love the news of redundancies. It does wonders for share values. And so hundreds of thousands sit and claim benefits with little hope of work. They watch others get richer and richer, they watch footballers being paid thousands a week, they read of bankers being paid enormous bonuses, they read of journalists paying the police for stories that invade the privacy of the most vulnerable and they read of politicians with their snouts in the trough as exposed by the MPs expenses scandal. Yet those same politicians and journalists condemn this forgotten class as ‘scroungers’. No wonder there’s simmering resentment.  Mainstream, middle class dominated, discourse tries not to blame the market for this. Instead the media contrive to blame the individual claiming benefits rather than the economy that cannot offer that individual gainful employment. Britain has simply learned to live with mass unemployment and has done so for so long that it seems normal. In the 1960s unemployment was not even an issue; it ran into thousands. When it hit one million in January 1972 there was uproar with demonstrations outside Parliament. But since that date unemployment has not once dipped below a million and has averaged out at almost two million. It’s now accepted as normal. It’s explained away as the result of lazy, work-shy individuals greedily claiming those ‘lavish’ benefits. But for some reason these people didn’t exist in the 1950s or 60s; they just seemed to suddenly appear in about 1981. This misguided individualist explanation is then used to explain the rioting as individual choice. The most profoundly consequential choice was that taken by those who chose to abandon the goal of full employment and abandon generation after generation to a wasted workless life.  These socio-economic inequalities are the root cause of the social malaise that resulted in the inner city riots. When Camila Batmanghelidjh asked on the BBC’s Question Time following the riots, “Why doesn’t Sweden have this problem? Why doesn’t Norway have this problem?” former Met Chief Brian Paddick replied “because there’s a more egalitarian society there”. There followed a stony silence. There is mounting evidence that every criteria for assessing a country’s social stability such as educational achievement, crime rates, levels of mental health, numbers of prisoners, levels of life expectancy and social mobility; is better in countries that have the smallest gap between their richest and their poorest. Those countries whose social structure stretches from the super rich down to a dispossessed underclass, such as Britain and the US have by far the worst social problems. By contrast, Japan is one of the most economically equal of all the developed countries; it has an exceptionally low crime rate, minimal drug use and high social mobility. And yet foreign journalists talked of their astonishment at the lack of looting following the earthquake of March 2011. It wasn’t astonishing to those who were aware of the impact of economic equality on a country’s social cohesion.  There has been a lot of moralising since the riots. The suffering that people whose businesses have been ruined and whose homes and premises have been destroyed will be immense. But to get the wider picture into perspective, the suffering that is resulting from the bank bail out of 2008 will be further reaching, far more widespread and will be felt for perhaps a generation or more. Those that are responsible have not been castigated, denounced or punished in anything like the way the rioters have. While a looter was given six months in prison for stealing bottled water (itself an iconic symbol of the consumer age) those who led Northern Rock, HBOS, Lloyds TSB and RBS into a disaster that has cost us £billions are pensioned off and the bonus culture continues. Over £7billion has been paid out in bank bonuses over the last year alone. Meanwhile the UK’s richest thousand people saw their total wealth increase from £256.2billion in 2009 to £395.8billion this year. This amounts to a 54.5% increase in just two years and that’s according to the Sunday Times rich list this year. There’s a rapacious culture at the top. Small wonder such rapacious behaviour was witnessed during the rioting.  If we as a society want to avoid a repeat of the horrors of the rioting and looting that took place across this country, then the social and economic direction we’ve been going in since the 1980s has got to be abandoned. Putting hundreds if not thousands more in prison will not resolve this country’s deep-rooted social problems. Neither will bringing in Bill Bratton or any other so-called ‘super cop’ to oversee increased repression in the inner cities. Beginning now to redistribute this country’s vast wealth via progressive taxation, investing in training and jobs, restoring the EMA, reversing the tuition fee increases, re-creating the opportunity for real social mobility and re-building a genuine sense of community will.   14 August 2011

Will capitalism eat itself?