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 What’s
In Your Shopping Trolley?
Andrew
Simms: Tescopoly. Constable £7.99.
This
is not just about Tesco but about the ways that supermarkets in
general drive other shops out of business, put an end to true
community life and exploit their suppliers. Waitrose, for example,
are now seen as a big threat by delis and farm shops (Guardian, 3
July).
On
the other hand, Tesco is clearly viewed here as the main villain of
the piece, being the dominant grocer in 81 of the UK’s 121 postcode
areas. In Swansea, for instance, 54p of every pound spent on
groceries is spent at Tesco. In the year ending February 2006, it
made £2.2 billion in profit. It’s also expanding abroad, e.g.
intending to open 47 stores in South Korea in 2006–7. (For more on
Tesco see www.tescopoly.org, which is not connected with this book.)
Among
the tactics that have made Tesco so (in capitalist terms) successful
include: selling some products below cost; selling others at whatever
they can get away with; undermining competitors in various ways;
paying suppliers less than the industry average. Child labour is
common among clothing suppliers, while prices for bananas, for
instance, have been constantly driven down (more than halving in real
terms over the last forty years). Tesco in effect get loans from
suppliers, as they don’t pay for goods till some time after
receiving them, while they of course get the money from sales
straight away.
Supermarkets
restrict our choice of where and to shop and what to buy. They tend
to force local shops to go under, and this has a domino effect on
other local services, from window-cleaners to accountants. Villages
which have no general store of their own ‘quickly lose their
identities’, according to the Countryside Agency.
Simms
is well aware that Tesco and other supermarkets are simply doing what
‘the system’ allows and what investors expect, i.e. making the
biggest profit it can. The global food industry is organised to meet
the demands of investors rather than to feed people. He is pleased
when people get together to persuade the council to block a planning
application from Tesco. But he seems to think that moving to a
society of small shops in place of giant superstores is really going
to make a big difference. In reality what is needed is further
reflection on the idea of food being produced to feed people, and
realisation that this means an end not just to superstores but to
production for profit, whether of food or anything else.
PB
Crying
Wolf
Six
Degrees. Our Future on a Hotter Planet.
By Mark Lynas. Fourth Estate. 2007. £12.99
Why
do some campaigners against climate change have to exaggerate? Lynas
argues that, unless the emission of greenhouse gases peaks by 2015 –
in only eight years from now – we will be heading for a “runaway
global warming and the destruction of most life on Earth” by 2100.
His
book traces, on the basis of scientific studies and hypotheses, the
effects on climate and the other changes this will bring, of an
average global temperature rise of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6º
centigrade respectively. A rise of 1º to 2º by 2100 is
already, he says, inevitable, given past and likely CO²
emissions up to 2015 but this would be tolerable. His contention is
that any rise above this level will not only have damaging effects in
terms of rising sea levels, more violent storms, more droughts and
desertification, but if CO² go on rising will start a runaway
warming that will, when the temperature rise reaches 5- 6º,
create Hell on Earth.
Socialists
are not climatologists. So, in the debate over global warming we can
only exercise critical thinking while taking into account the views
of the majority of scientists working in the field. Their view, as
expressed in the Fourth Assessment report of the International Panel
on Climate Change in February is that:
“Most
of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the
mid-20th
century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic
greenhouse gas concentrations”.
This
statement has clearly been carefully worded. “Most”,
that is, not all, leaving room for the possibility that some may be
due to natural phenomena beyond human control such as increased solar
radiation or volcanic activity. “Since
the mid-20th century”, that
is, not since 1900, nor since the industrial revolution, but since
the time averaged global temperature began rising again after falling
in the 1950s and 1960s. “Very likely”,
that is, we are not fully certain as we don’t
yet know the exact relationship between a given increase in
greenhouse gas concentrations and an increase in average global
temperature.
The
Earth is warming and this is causing problems and something needs to
be done about it. Our contention is that the only framework within
which anything lastingly effective can be done is a world where the
Earth’s resources have become the common
heritage of all humanity, so eliminating the vested commercial
interests and market forces that have caused global warming. Crying “wolf”,
as
Lynas does, doesn’t help towards
understanding this.
ALB
Watering
down socialism
We
won’t pay! By Gary Mulcahy.
Published by ‘Socialist Party’. £3.
This
pamphlet somewhat tediously sets out in detail the arguments offered
by those - probably the great majority across the social spectrum in
Northern Ireland - who are opposed to the proposed introduction of
water charges.
Despite
the generality of this opposition, it is the fragmented Left that
have made the issue their current hobby-horse. Indeed, given the
strength of opposition to
water charges, it should prove a unifying
element among those who support the notion that the capitalist
leopard can have its spots removed one at a time. The pamphlet is
aimed at the creation of a united Left front to the charges; however
in lengthy and vigorous excoriation of their political kindred, it
shows that while there is agreement on purpose within the Left there
is acrid diversity regarding the means of achieving that purpose.
These
verbal punch-ups are endemic within the Left; inevitable political
afterthoughts nourished in the fecund soil of failure and disillusion
brought about by the belief that they can control or seriously
influence capitalism without the overwhelming authority of a
socialist-conscious working class.
These
‘vanguard cadres’ don’t view the democratic process as a means
of achieving the revolutionary change from capitalism to socialism.
They aim at 'improvement', at making capitalism better for its wage
slaves which is akin to suggesting that the slaughter house should be
made better for the cattle.
Against
the Marxian view that the achievement of socialism must be the work
of the working class this so-called ‘Socialist Party’ (a
reincarnation of Militant) adheres to the absurdly arrogant Leninist
thesis that workers are incapable of emancipating themselves and must
be led to political salvation by a political elite.
The
pioneers of the socialist movement held to the view that since
capitalism was based on the exploitation of the working class it
could not function in the interests of that class. Understanding this
essential truth they urged workers to organise to end capitalism. As
Marx put it, workers should abandon the conservative motto ‘A
fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work’ and, instead, to
inscribe on their banner ‘Abolition of the wages system’.
However
well-intentioned Left reformists might be it is a fact that by
distorting the essential meaning of the terms socialism and communism
(which Marx and Engels used interchangeably) they have seriously set
back the growth of socialist consciousness.
A
gross example of this distortion appears on page 47 of the pamphlet
under the heading ‘The Need For a Socialist Alternative’. The
author recites a few of the greater obscenities of recent capitalist
plunder and cites the need for a mass socialist party to+ no! not to abolish
capitalism; not to use our unified power to
end its
iniquitous wages and money system; not to dump commodity production
into the dustbin of history+ but to retain what is patently now a
harmful social anachronism but under the aegis of the state. Probably
they would argue that unlike Lenin and the totalitarian empire he
endorsed when his ‘vanguard’ established state capitalism in
Russia, their vanguard would be more socially virtuous.
RM
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