Cry havoc

 

Shouldn’t someone check out little Rishi and little Volodymyr for a Napolean complex?

‘RISHI Sunak has given a chilling warning that Putin will not stop at the Poland border should the despot defeat Ukraine in the war.

As the West heads for a nuclear showdown (this isn’t showdown at the OK corrall) gunboats, lethal missiles and armoured vehicles will be sent to repel Vlad under Britain’s largest-ever tranche of military aid for Ukraine.

The Prime Minister is set to announce the power package along with an extra £500million for President Zelensky’s war effort.

The immediate funding is to support "the highest priority capabilities", a Downing Street spokesperson said.

Including further ammunition, air defence and drones, the cash boost will take the UK’s support for Kyiv to £3billion this financial year.

Mr Sunak is then heading to Poland and Germanyfor urgent security talks where he will warn Russia will invade NATO f it is not stopped.

Poland already gave the green light as they're ready to host nuclear weapons on their borders if needed.

Ahead of his two-day trip, Rishi Sunak said last night: “Defending Ukraine against Russia’s brutal ambitions is vital for our security and for all of Europe.

“If Putin is allowed to succeed in this war of aggression, he will not stop at the Polish border.”

A Downing Street spokesperson said that the PM spoke this morning to President Zelensky to assure him of the UK’s steadfast support for Ukraine’s defence against "Russia’s brutal and expansionist ambitions".

Meanwhile, Polish President Andrzej Duda said his country will take up nuclear arms if they are asked to by NATO as they look for somewhere to deploy weapons and respond to Putin’s latest chilling threats.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/27481212/rishi-sunak-warns-vladimir-putin-poland-border-ukraine-war

They’re straining at their leashes aren’t they?

‘Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.’

Julius Caesar William Shakespeare

Some Russian's birthday

 

The Socialist Party, formed in 1904, has, from its inception eschewed leaders. This date, 22 April, marks the birthday of an individual who is, understandably, loathed by many but who still carries a fascination for more amongst whom are those who would like to recreate the USSR past.

From the January 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘When Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov was sixteen his brother was hanged for complicity in a plot to assassinate the Tsar. Later, he himself got involved in anti-Tsarist revolutionary activity, was arrested and spent three years in prison in Siberia. In 1900 he was exiled, eventually settling in Switzerland and adopting the pseudonym “Lenin”. He founded and was the leader of the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903. After the revolution of February 1917 Lenin returned to Russia and in October he led the Bolsheviks to power in a coup. When he died in January 1924, most of the main feudal obstacles to capitalist development had been removed, together with all effective political opposition.

The socialist analysis of Lenin and his legacy is different from the Cold War propaganda which can still be found in books such as Orlando Figes' A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, published in 1996, which depicts Lenin and the Bolsheviks as forerunners of Hitler and the Nazis. The socialist argument against Lenin is based on the evidence that he distorted what Marx claimed and thereby damaged socialist theory, pursued political action that was against the interests of the working class and dragged the name of socialism through the mud.

Starting with What Is To Be Done? (1902) Lenin said: “the history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousness.” Lenin argued that socialist consciousness had to be brought to the working class by professional revolutionaries rather than a parliamentary party, drawn mainly from the petty-bourgeoisie, and organised as a vanguard party. But in 1879 Marx and Engels issued a circular in which they declared the opposite:

“When the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle cry: The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves. We cannot, therefore, co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic big bourgeois and petty bourgeois”

It must be noted however that Lenin's elitism was consistent with the outlook of the Second International. As Hal Draper has written: “The fact is that Lenin had just read this theory in the most prestigious theoretical organ of Marxism of the whole international socialist movement, the Neue Zeit. It had been put forward in an important article by the leading Marxist authority of the International, Karl Kautsky.” (The Myth of Lenin's Concept of The Party, The difference between Kautsky and Lenin here was over who was to lead the workers beyond “trade-union consciousness”, though historically Lenin's interpretation that this should be a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries has been more influential. By contrast, when the Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed in 1904 it repudiated leadership as a political principle and insisted that the emancipation of the working class really had to be the work of the working class itself.

Lenin was not the first to describe socialism as a transitional society, but through his followers, he turned out to be the most influential. In Lenin's Political Thought 1981), Neil Harding claims that in 1917 Lenin made “no clear delineation” between socialism and communism. But in fact Lenin did write in State and Revolution (1917) of a “scientific distinction” between socialism and communism:

“What is usually called socialism was termed by Marx the 'first', or lower, phase of communist society. Insofar as the means of production become common property, the word 'communism' is also applicable here, providing we do not forget that this is not complete communism”

The first sentence of this quote is simply untrue and Lenin must have known this. Marx and Engels used the terms socialism and communism interchangeably to refer to the post-revolutionary society of common ownership of the means of production. It is true that in his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) Marx wrote of a transition between a lower phase of communism and a higher phase of communism. Marx held that, because of the low level of economic development (in 1875), individual consumption would have to be rationed, possibly by the use of labour-time vouchers (similar to those advocated by Robert Owen). But in the higher phase of communism, when the forces of production had developed sufficiently, consumption would be according to need. It is important to realise, however, that in both phases of socialism/communism there would be no state or money economy. Lenin, on the other hand, said that socialism (or the first phase of communism) is a transitional society between capitalism and full communism, in which there is both a state and money economy. According to Lenin:

“It follows that under communism there remains for a time not only bourgeois right, but even the bourgeois state, without the bourgeoisie!… For the state to wither away completely, complete communism is necessary.”

But Lenin failed to see what this would involve. In effect, the theory of “socialism” as a transitional society was to become an apology for state capitalism.

In terms of its impact on world politics, Lenin's State and Revolution was probably his most important work. This was derived from the theoretical analysis contained in his earlier work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). Lenin's theory of imperialism demonstrated to his satisfaction that the whole administrative structure of “socialism” had been developed during the epoch of finance or monopoly capitalism. Under the impact of the First World War, so the argument ran, capitalism had been transformed into state-monopoly capitalism. On that basis, Lenin claimed, the democratisation of state-monopoly capitalism was socialism. As Lenin pointed out in The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It (1917):

“For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly. Or, in other words, socialism is merely state-capitalist monopoly which is made to serve the interests of the whole people and has to that extent ceased to be capitalist monopoly” (original emphasis).

In State and Revolution Lenin claimed that according to Marx work and wages would be guided by the “socialist principle” (though in fact it comes from the Christian saint, Paul): “He who does not work shall not eat.” This was eventually adopted in the USSR Constitution of 1936 and amended to read: “to each according to his work.” as a “principle of socialism.” Marx and Engels used no such “principle” and they made no such distinction concerning socialism. Lenin in fact did not “re-establish what Marx really taught on the subject of the state”, as he claimed, but substantially distorted it to suit the situation in which the Bolsheviks found themselves. When Stalin announced the doctrine of “socialism in one country” in 1936 (i.e. the establishment of state capitalism in Russia) he was drawing on an idea implicit in Lenin's writings.

In State and Revolution, Lenin gave special emphasis to the concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. This phrase was sometimes used by Marx and Engels and meant working class conquest of power, which (unlike Lenin) they did not confuse with a socialist society. Engels had cited the Paris Commune of 1871 as an example of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Commune impressed Marx and Engels for its ultra-democratic features, which involved a non-hierarchical structure and the use of revocable delegates. Lenin, on the other hand, tended to identify the term with a state ruled by a vanguard party. When the Bolsheviks actually gained power they centralised political power more and more in the hands of the Communist Party. Modern-day Leninists claim that the rise of Stalin was due to the ravages of civil war and Russian isolation, but the fact remains that “democratic centralism” can allow dictators to rise to power and all openly pro-capitalist political parties have a similar structure which can allow the leadership to act undemocratically.

Lenin's short article The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism (1913) is a concise explanation of the basics of Marxism . But by 1918 the dictatorship of the proletariat had become for Lenin “the very essence of Marx's teaching” (The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, 1918, It is noticeable however that Lenin's Three Sources article contained no mention of the phrase or Lenin's particular conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Harding alleges that Lenin was the most “doctrinaire” of all Marxists at this time, but here again we see that Lenin was only too willing to distort Marx's arguments in order to fit into the reality of Russia's capitalist revolution. That is, the further development of wage labour, capital, commodity production and the state, which resulted in the exploitation of the working class by the party bureaucracy as the exploiting class.

Lenin's greatest positive achievement was getting Russia out of the bloody futility of World War One, something that the SPGB acknowledged at the time. The SPGB was the only British organisation to publish the Bolsheviks' anti-war declaration during the war. The trouble really started when claims about the “socialist” nature of Russia began to be aired, first within Russia then in the Communist parties being formed around the world. The false claims about Russian “socialism” are largely derived from Lenin's opportunism as he distorted Marxism – working class socialist theory. In this country, The Socialist Party always denied that socialism existed in Russia (or anywhere else) or that Russia was on a transition towards socialism.

For its anti-democratic elitism and its advocacy of an irrelevant transitional society misnamed “socialism”, in theory and in practice, Leninism today deserves the hostility of workers everywhere. Lenin seriously distorted Marxism and thereby severely damaged the development of the socialist movement. Indeed, Leninism still continues to pose a real obstacle to the achievement of socialism.’

Lew Higgins

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/05/lenin-socialist-analysis-2004.html

Corinthian F.C. ideals died years ago.

'Furious lower league clubs have raised the prospect of boycotting the FA Cup  after the controversial move by the Premier League and FA to scrap replays.

Owners and fans of many sides outside the top flight have been left outraged by the move, which they say will hit them in the pocket and was made without them being consulted.

The FA say they made the call on the back of an expansion to the Champions League which means more fixtures for those in the competition.

'This appears to have been a deal done behind closed doors without any meaningful consultation with clubs outside the Premier League and against the democratic spirit of the FA Cup itself,' read Cambridge's statement.

Orient chief executive Mark Devlin added: 'My personal belief is that this decision has been made to accommodate an expanded Champions League fixture list, which now looks very much like a European Super League but in different clothing.'’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-13328021/Lower-league-clubs-BOYCOTT-FA-Cup-fury-Premier-League-FA-agreed-scrap-replays-hallowed-tournament.html?ico=topics_pagination_desktop

The following is from the Socialist Standard, May 2021.

‘April is known for showers and fools. The shower presently in charge of six leading Premier League football clubs seemed determined to make fools of the rest. Their stated intent was to form an elite of European teams to secure the largest possible slice of the revenue pie.

As it turned out they were the April fools as the scheme quickly collapsed as all six English (geographically, if not by ownership) clubs withdrew from the scheme. However, even though a Spanish and an Italian club followed suit, according to Real Madrid’s president, the European Super League isn’t dead, it’s ‘on hold’).

The other 14 Premier League clubs had been joined by the rest of football and publicity-seeking populist politicians, including the prime minister, in condemning this blatant money-driven assault on purported sporting values. Many a pious platitude was solicited from commentators, pundits, former players and supporters.

Whether this was a serious proposal or a high pressure negotiating position remained unclear. It did seem remarkably coincidental that it appeared as football authorities were announcing changes to present structures. Whatever the purpose, money will be the driving force behind it. How could it be otherwise under capitalism?

Those loudly protesting this assault on the values of the game have more than a little hypocrisy about them. The Premier League was formed in 1992 for precisely the same reasons offered in support of the European Super League.

Sky Television offered fabulous amounts of money for exclusive rights and football was reformed for that reason alone. Subsequently, other media platforms have bought into the product, the only value actually realised being the commercial one.

Football has succumbed to modern capitalist financial practices. Clubs are purchased via leveraged deals, whereby the buyers borrow the money they need, but then settle that borrowed amount as debt on the club. Manchester United led the way in this sort of trading, but even smaller clubs are now subject to these methods.

One such is Burnley, recently bought out this way by an American deal, ending local ownership for the first time in the club’s history. Burnley was one of the original 12 founding members of the Football League in 1888, when the town was a major centre for cotton textile manufacture.

Of those 12 clubs, 6 were in Lancashire, the rest were in the industrial heartlands of the Midlands. The common factor was economic dynamism. The original Football League was itself a product of the financial circumstances of the day.

Football served an ideological function, encouraging workers to identify with their local team and, by association, the local capitalists who actually owned the clubs. It also encouraged workers into rival groups, sometimes leading to violence.

The link between football and violence of supporters is usually portrayed as emerging in the 1970s. However, a Times report on the 1914 cup final between Burnley and Liverpool made a point that the two sets of supporters did not assault each other, which suggests such events were not unknown.

Capitalism is all encompassing. Sport is not, and has never been, exempt from that. Even amateur football cannot escape: there’s the hire of the ground to play on and facilities to change in, kit to change into and various other expenses. Free it is not.

Whatever the eventual formulation, huge sums of money will be involved. One often-voiced criticism is that footballers are generously remunerated while nurses, for example, aren’t. Which are of greater value?

While the word ‘value’ has various dictionary definitions, for capitalism there is only one significant meaning, and that relates to profit alone. Footballers sell far more media subscriptions than nurses. Which is why the major factor driving the Super League is the production of a commodity that can be marketed around the world.

The big difference between1888 and now is that capitalism has moved on from the local (as it was already beginning to do even then) to the global. Football must reflect this. If it’s not the Super League then some similar formation will be required.

Supporters can gather outside clubs, chant their dissatisfactions and burn replica shirts all they like, but sooner or later commercial decisions will be the deciding factor in how the game is organised and played. It might be football in Britain, soccer in America, but the name of the game, as it’s always been, is profit.

The media has alleged that a deciding factor in making the infamous 6 change their minds was fan power, as supporters outraged at the prospect of their game being threatened by greedy businessmen forced them to abandon their plans. If only it was so.

When the Premier League was first launched a major concern expressed in the media was that the ready availability of televised football would result in fans no longer going through the turnstiles. Indeed, it was posited that entrance to games would become free to attract a crowd to provide the atmosphere.

Clever marketing sold the concept of glory by association to the point that some clubs had a waiting list for season tickets being sold at inflated prices. Cinemas showed matches live for those who could not afford either tickets or subscriptions.

The elite league as it then was quickly became a financial juggernaut, attractive to oligarchs, Middle Eastern princes and American speculators, among others. The Premier League became the ‘promised land’, the only worthwhile place for a club to be. A European Super League, by capitalist logic, would have been a reasonable next phase.

That it will not now be realised in its proposed form does not mean some version of it will not eventually emerge. If the financial imperatives require it to happen it will, whatever the opinion of fans, politicians or a media willing to curb their usual enthusiasm for free enterprise to court populist opinion. Not that such enterprise has anything to do with being free.

As with all aspects of life, free development is contingent on freeing society from the obligations of capitalism. Sport in general, football in particular, will mirror the social environment it exists in. Only with socialism and the subsequent absence of money can true sporting values be allowed to develop freely.’

Dave Alton

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2021/05/in-league-of-their-own-2021.html

Peace Between Peoples – No Peace Between Classes: Repost

 

The Socialist Party, formed in 1904, has, from its inception eschewed leaders and has opposed war. Today, 20 April, marks the birthday of an individual who is, understandably, loathed by many but who still carries a fascination for  more, amongst whom are those who would like to recreate the past. As the post points out, leaders do not operate in a vacuum. The ideologies may change but the fundamental capitalist causes of conflict remain the same. The present conflicts in the world continue to menace the future of humankind. There is a solution: Socialism.

The following is a repost from SOYMB, 25 March, 2022.

One of the many problems that capitalism has not solved is that of war. We see each day the mobilisation of military forces on some border as perhaps another potential bloody conflict may break out. The companion parties of the World Socialist Movement have a consistent history of opposing all war. In our analysis which has withstood the test of time, war is fought for the interests and advantages of the ruling class, fought to protect or extend capitalist profits. Of course, no ruling class will ever admit going to war for such sordid motives. Every war has to be justified as a ‘righteous’ and ‘just’ war reluctantly resorted to for ‘humanitarian’ reasons or in defence of international ‘justice’, otherwise, no worker would sacrifice their lives or surrender their liberties so willingly.

Many assume Hitler was the sole cause of the Second World War and all the associated horrors as they blame Putin today for the Ukraine war. This is a gross oversimplification. Germany in the 1930s wasn’t suddenly corrupted by Hitler’s charisma. The political tensions and strife were all there, the results of a previous world war and a great depression. Hitler was just able to capitalise on this. But if he hadn’t there’s nothing to say that nobody else would. Elimination of the main figurehead won’t necessarily prevent events that were as much a product of the wider socio-political context. Problems rarely exist in isolation.

These lies about international justice and freedom and the like have been uncovered but not before people were deceived and dragged into the great slaughter, then they opened their eyes and saw the truth. They saw clearly that the war was not about their own interests, or anybody’s rights and freedoms, but that war was a terrifying conflict between predatory groups seeking advantage over the others. It then seemed so simple and understandable and we are taken aback when we are reminded that we found the pretext of wars in what the politicians and the media said. They will claim that the war was waged to defend national sovereignty or to protect their ethnic cousins. Or they will argue that ‘our’ government’s foreign policy was misunderstood while ‘their’ government’s foreign policy was simply wrong because its leader is a war-monger and militarist adventurer. ‘Our’ side had recourse to war only because ‘our’ government was forced into a ‘defensive position due to the other nation’s aggression.

But he or she who truly wants to know the causes of war today, the real causes, will recognise the reasons we mentioned above as well-worn. He or she would be very naive if they believed the guises and lies whose aim is to cover up the real causes of wars. He or she who wants to explain how wars come to be, both the past ones and the ones that threaten us in the future, and what are their causes, is obliged to examine and learn first the capitalists seek to place their excess capital abroad, in order to obtain bigger interest and more profits, to have these countries as markets for their merchandise, To subjugate them politically, to have their governments under their own influence. To pull the strings and play them in their hands like puppets.

Around the world the old ‘democratic’ methods are abandoned by the political parties, the so-called civil and human rights have been reduced to a mere joke on the people, and there is no means of oppression, violence and terror that is not being used on them. The state has become the private playground of every oligarch who can afford to finance a lobby group or think-tank, the social and welfare services have become merchandise in privatised hands and finally, a whole camp of parasites on the public purse follow any party clique in the ups and downs of political power. Bankers, big industrialists and merchants now hold in their hands huge concentrated economic forces (stock-market capital, land, factories, real estate), that is, it holds in its hands almost completely the lives of the people. The causes for new wars develop daily and the important resources of the country are wasted in preparing for war.

The causes for the war are to be found in the very process of capitalist production, distribution and exchange where corporations seek to establish control over markets, sources of raw materials and areas for exploitation. In their inextinguishable thirst for new profits, cliques of big business seek other countries, outside of their own trading bloc, to exploit. This search for expanding areas of markets comes up against rival groupings. What the capitalist elite of one nation desires is the same thing the sharks of the other countries crave too. And in the name of nationalism the ‘fatherlands,’ and the ‘motherlands’ launch their armies against each other. And the price of these conflicts is paid by the people with their own innocent blood.

This process, unavoidable so long as capital rules, creates ceaseless conflict. Hark back to the dissolution of the Soviet Empire and the so-called ‘peace-dividend’ which was promised. Instead, each year has seen war around the globe and more nations devoting vast resources to their military machines.

The struggle does not begin when a government – serving one group of businesses – declares war on another nation. It goes on all the time, taking many forms; some open, some concealed. Diplomatic negotiation and treaties, agreements and alliances between countries, subsidised economic warfare, small proxy wars waged ostensibly between small powers or rebel forces, actually on behalf of great ones, all these are manifestations of the same conflict. The formal declaration of war – rarely practised nowadays, more and more dispensed with – is merely the continuation of this same struggle in a sharper, more open form. The temporary cessation of one conflict gives rise to the escalation of other conflicts.

There is an oligarchy that holds in its hands the most important means of national wealth and whose interests oppose and counter those of the great majority of the people. Many want to deny this, either out of self-interest or narrow-mindedness. They say that there is no such class. And they don’t want to see these parasites, bankers and financiers, big merchants and industrialists, all those idle rich who accumulate capital from the sweat of all the working people. But, of course, the plutocratic oligarchy is always there exploiting the labour of the people, often happening without us realising. A thousand lies and prejudices and customs hide it. A general uncertainty for tomorrow in all aspects of the life of every country arising from the political conflicts of the capitalist gang of every country trying with every means of violence, terror, mass murder and oppression to keep its hegemony, to squeeze out new profits of the people’s misery new profits constantly while all the time preparing for new bloodthirsty episode tomorrow. Everywhere there are volcanoes of conflicts, lying dormant, ready to erupt and bury under its lava unsuspecting citizens.

There are many instances of autocracy and tyranny against us. The 1% tells us that ‘the will of the peoples is sovereign’ yet decide on their own, using their fortunes to buy elections. They send their own representatives to the parliament and they take decisions with their vested interests in mind. And the people frequently make it easy for them, being willing instruments of every charlatan demagogue, prostrating themselves at the feet of various rich local party leaders who can manipulate the passions of the people very skilfully with all their rabble-rousing speeches. We need not mention the outright terror and violence of state pressure, nor the brazen ballot-rigging which have become the main means of electoral domination lately. And so the ‘will of the people’ ends up to be the most disgraceful comedy against them, the ultimate hypocrisy and lie, that conceals from the eyes of the deceived the political dictatorship of the privileged upon the people.

The workers cannot conquer political power by struggling against foreign capitalists but only by struggling against those in their home country who control the existing social structure. It is impossible to support war and the governments waging them and to hope to create revolutionary opinions which will radically change that social system.

Those who replace the red flag of world socialism with the jingoist flag-waving of nations must be denounced. Yet, the tragic fact remains that men and women seem, at present, more willing to work and die for capitalism than to work and to live for Revolution! Only the class war for the overthrow of capitalism can end wars by ending the cause of war – capitalism.

The fight against war is inseparable from the fight for socialism. And this is very important to know, for us who want to fight for our lives and our peace, against the war. We must strike evil at its root, not its branches. Only through our own organisation and our own struggle will working people gain possession of their own lives and the means to free and save themselves from being sacrificed and slaughtered. As there are differing kinds of tyranny and exploitation, our organisations must also be varied with various ways of struggle. But it is obvious that all these organisations must share a common goal: the abolition of the plutocratic oligarchy and the liberation of the people. The only way to fight militarism is to fight capitalism. The capitalist nationalist system breeds wars, and we shall have to build a cooperative society, where things are no longer produced for profit, but for use, in order to be secure in peace. This struggle is known as the class war, and this is the only war in which workers should engage.

https://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2022/03/peace-between-peoples-no-peace-between.html

Chairman of UK Capitalism Executive Committee threatens sick workers

 

MailOnline, 19 April, Headline: ‘Sick note squads to crack down on workshy Brits: Rishi Sunak warns 'spiralling' benefit bill is 'unsustainable' and normal 'life worries' are not a reason to shun work as he suggests specialist teams - not GPs - should decide if people can be signed off.’

The UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, is, once again, threatening those who are not contributing toward increasing the wealth of UK capitalists.

He is reported as saying, ‘He said it was his 'moral mission' to get people in work, as it was the way to improve living standards.’

In a tough pledge set to feature in the Tory manifesto, Mr Sunak said that in future anyone on benefits for 12 months who did not comply with conditions set by their work coach would be stripped of handouts entirely.

'The situation as it is is economically unsustainable,' he said. 'We can't afford such a spiralling increase in the welfare bill.'

‘Mr Sunak said: 'For me, it is a fundamental duty of Government to make sure that hard work is always rewarded.

'I know, and you know, that you don't get anything in life without hard work.

'It's the only way to build a better life for ourselves and our family, and the only way to build a more prosperous country.'’

Rishi Sunak is the husband of Indian heiress, Akshata Narayana Murty (they are listed on the 2023 Sunday Times Rich Listas being the 275th richest people in Britain with a combined wealth of £529 million (US$645 million).

Whose ‘hard work’ got you both that Rishi?

‘... figures released revealed that the number of people considered 'economically inactive' after being placed on long term sickness benefits has jumped by a third since the start of the pandemic and now stands at a staggering 2.8million.

Around half are signed off with depression, anxiety and bad nerves.

Overall, 9.4million people aged between 16 and 64 are economically inactive - meaning they are neither in work nor looking for work.

Sunak also said, ‘the Government's 'overall approach is about saying that people with less severe mental health conditions should be expected to engage in the world of work'. ‘

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13327087/Sick-note-squads-crack-workshy-Brits-Rishi-Sunak-warns-normal-life-worries-not-reason-shun-work-ministers-say-benefits-bill-skyrocketing-numbers-long-term-ill-hits-eye-watering-2-8m.htm

To those who are thinking, it’s just the Tories justifying their position as the Party of the well off, and it will all change when Labour win the next election, we have news for you.

‘Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall has laid out their intentions;’ ‘Under a Labour government there would be ‘no option of a life on benefits”, the Party has said, as it set out plans to reduce the number of young people not in work, education or training.’

‘Under our changed Labour party, if you can work there will be no option of a life on benefits,’ she said in a speech to the centre-left Demos think-tank in London, where she sought to outline Labour’s commitment on “investing” in young people.

‘Not just because the British people believe rights should go hand in hand with responsibilities. But because being unemployed or lacking basic qualifications when you’re young can harm your job prospects and wages for the rest of your life.’ The Guardian, 4 March.’

The following is an edited version of Are the Workers Lazy? from the Socialist Standard, August 1975.

‘On July 24^th The Sun published the first of 1400 letters it had invited and received on "who is to blame for our present economic crisis". The writer— "A. Worker” — subtracted pensioners, at-schools, servicemen, officials and prisoners from the population and reached his point: "Balance left to do the work, 900,000; people who won't work, 880,000."

Interestingly, the next day the headlines — including The Sun's — were all about unemployment going above a million. Would that have altered "A. Worker's: calculation, had he known? Not at all. One of the features of the nineteen-thirties' depression was frequent assertions by the powerful, and the conviction of the comfortable and ignorant, that the unemployed did not want work.

The answer to the assertion that the characteristic of the working class is to loll about all day is simply to look around. Tower-blocks rise swiftly, motorways spread across the country; the harvest is gathered and transformed into daily bread; post a letter today and it arrives a hundred miles away tomorrow— all done by inert, won't-raise-a-finger people is it? The fact is that capitalism nags everyone to work, from birth. It is the yardstick of school reports: "Works well", "Must work harder", "Steady worker", with "Lazy" the depth of disgrace.

"Work fascinates me. I can watch it for hours", said Jerome in Three Men in a Boat. But— and here is the point— the criticism of slothfulness is only of him who has a lot to do and cannot be seen at it all the time. Having the means to do nothing is another matter and leads (or did, until not long ago) to being called a "gentleman" and bowed— and scraped-to. Only the working class can be lazy; the rich twiddle their thumbs or doze in clubs, but that sis how they Carry All the Responsibility.

The aspect which is carefully concealed, in fact, is that the working class is condemned to work. Born into the capitalist system, the only way to get a living is to sell one's sole possession: labour-power. No wonder people think about work so much— without it, they may go hungry. "Plenty of work" is an allure, the prospect of work which goes on and on and has lots of hours. And what does the working class get for it? Wages, while the fat and the profits go to the owning class.

The "people who won't work" of The Sun's thick-skulled contributor are a myth. It is a tragedy that working people should believe in it. It provides them, of course, with a fear when Socialism is mentioned: what about "the lazy people", the mass of good-for-nothings who would sponge on others' honest efforts? The gullible worker who talks like this never sees that he is repeating what his masters say, and they mean him as well. This is, indeed, a curious habit among proprietors of saying they "built" or "made" or "provided" almost anything. They know, of course, that the workers did it, but the workers are of no account.

It can be said also that for most people work is what they can get, and devoid of the capacity to interest. Part of the definition of work, commonly, is that it is something dull or unpleasant: if (by rare good fortune) one does something agreeable or even enjoyable it is not reckoned to be truly work.

Oh yes, men and women work, lifelong. They have no choice: the non-workers are those who live by exploitation. Socialism will end that, and make work rewarding in every sense.’

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2015/06/are-workers-lazy-1975.html

Questioning Nationalism: Tonight on Zoom. 19.30 (GMT +1)

Friday 19 April 19.30

QUESTIONING NATIONALISM 

National identity is a nebulous concept that’s almost impervious to rational argument. For example, questioning Israeli nationalism triggers an automatic accusation of anti-semitism, closing the argument down. Nationalisms in the UK are seemingly more benign, but are they?

Speaker: Dave Alton

To connect to a meeting, click https://zoom.us/j/7421974305

SPGB April 19 Meeting 1930 (GMT+1) Zoom

 

QUESTIONING NATIONALISM (ZOOM)

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Event Details

• Date: April 19, 2024 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

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Friday 19 April 19.30

QUESTIONING NATIONALISM (Zoom)

National identity is a nebulous concept that’s almost impervious to rational argument. For example, questioning Israeli nationalism triggers an automatic accusation of anti-semitism, closing the argument down. Nationalisms in the UK are seemingly more benign, but are they?

Speaker: Dave Alton

To connect to a meeting, click https://zoom.us/j/7421974305