|
Monkey
Business
According to the New Scientist (5 November) s o m e monkeys can be
taught to be captivated by capitalism. The research is gleefully
popularised in the Daily Mail
(3 November).
The reports don't actually talk about capitalism but the message
is clear - the money system is not only embedded in human nature, it
also goes back to monkey nature.
Apparently scientists at Yale University conducted experiments on
capuchin monkeys showing that they can be taught how to use
money and even master the art of shopping for bargains. They learned to
use silver discs as coins to buy pieces of apple and
cucumber from the researchers.
When the apple slices were made "cheaper" than cucumber -
meaning more apple was offered for the same amount of money -
they opted for the better-value apple. The monkeys then resorted to
underhand tactics to hold on to their cash - by hiding the real coins
and offering up "counterfeit" coins
made of cucumber. They also showed a gambling streak. enjoying a game
which enabled them to win or lose prized grapes
on the flip of a coin.
Fascinating stuff. But the New Scientist report didn't tell the
whole story. Some of the more intelligent monkeys went on to
figure that they were living in an animal class society.
The human e x p e r i m e n t e r s possessed all the means of
production and distribution: the laboratory, the stockpile of silver
discs, the food rations for the workers. All the monkey- workers could
do was earn a
precarious living by doing various tricks to
please their masters in return for food portions.
So the class-conscious monkeys got together and decided the only
way to achieve their emancipation was to mount a
revolution. They conveyed to the researchers where they could put their
silver discs.
Instead of access to the means of life only by earning discs,
they decided to build a new and classless animal society in which all
monkeys and researchers would stand equal in regard to the means of
wealth.
The experimenters didn't like the prospect of being dispossessed
of their wealth and privilege. They threatened to use armed force to
put down the revolution.
Fortunately this turned out to be an idle threat. Although a few
lumpenmonkeys briefly took the side of the experimenters, the vast
majority saw that the new system of production for use and free access
was in the best interests of all animalkind.
SRP
|
|
Don't
take me
to your leader
The subject of leadership has been
much in the news recently. The Labour
Party conference breathed fresh life into the ailing story of how long
Tweedleblair
will hang on to the top job, thus denying Tweedlebrown the juicy fruits
of office.
The Conservatives, trying hard to
find a leader who will last more than 15 minutes, have engaged in a
drawn-out
beauty contest long on candidates but short on beauty. Even leaders
need their leaders - George Dubya is reported to have said that
he was instructed by God to invade Iraq.
The socialist view on leadership is quite simple and
straightforward.
We don't need leaders and can do
very well without them.
Socialists are neither leaders nor followers - we are
participants in the socialist
movement and will be social equals in a socialist society.
That is not to say that some of the qualities
sometimes associated with leadership will not be relevant in socialism.
Today we rightly reject the idea that the Socialist Party has a
leader, but it does have a General Secretary to carry out certain
democratic
functions. Similarly, we don't have leading writers or leading
speakers, but we do
have an editorial board and a
procedure to test members who want to speak publicly on behalf of the
Party.
Leadership is not to be confused with exercising initiative. The
Socialist Party
as an organisation, and socialism as a future society, both need people
who will
start something or improve on what exists.
Thus the fresh design and layout of the
Socialist Standard since the beginning of this year was the result of a
few members
using their initiative, responding to what they saw as a need and
supported
democratically by the Party as a whole.
The same applies to Capitalism and Other Kids' Stuff, the first
of what is ntended as a number of socialist DVDs.
For socialism celebrities are out, while
developing everyone's potential is in.
If someone paints a number of
acclaimed pictures, gives excellent theatrical
performances, makes an outstanding contribution to a particular branch
of science,
they will no doubt be recognised - but they won't be worshipped as
demi-gods.
STAN PARKER |
|
Cooking the Books 2
Who needs
the rich?
To be one of the idle rich these days £1 million is not
enough, according to the private bank, Coutts & Co., who specialise
in dealing with the accounts of such people. The "super-wealthy", said
Coutts' chief executive Sarah Davies, was "a person who didn't have to
work if they chose not to, and who was able to lead a life of luxury"
(Times, 18 October).
Twenty-five years ago £1 million would have allowed you to
lead a life of luxury, defined as having a 5-bedroom house with two
staff, an apartment and a yacht in the south of France, eating out
twice a week in a posh restaurant, and going on three two-week holidays
to a luxury
destination. To lead such a life today you need, apparently, some
£3 million.
Nobody could amass that amount by working. Those that do possess
such a fortune will have got it either by inheriting it or by wheeling
and dealing in the City or in property speculation, as a look at the
Sunday Times annual Rich List confirms. In other words, they can only
lead their life of luxury on the proceeds of the exploitation of those
who do work. They are not the only ones
doing this since the "fat cats" at the top of private and state
industry who pay themselves bloated salaries and bonuses are at it too.
A million pounds is still a lot of money of course and would
still allow a person not to work if they chose not to, though not the
sort of life of luxury just described; rather not much above the
average of the rest of us.
But it's a measure of how non-rich most people are - and so have
to go out onto the labour market to find an employer - that there are
only 425,000 millionaires in Britain, which is under 1 percent of the
adult population.
It couldn't be otherwise of course,since the basis of capitalism
is the wages system and, to work, the wages system requires that most
people are forced by economic necessity to sell their mental and
physical energies as the means of obtaining money to buy the things
they need to live.
One old socialist definition of a capitalist was a person who
has sufficient wealth and unearned income from it to avoid having to
sell their ability to work. In other words, someone who plays no part
in producing the wealth of society but lives off the backs of those who
do. The pro-capitalist
economist Keynes called such people "rentiers" and looked forward to
their gradual "euthanasia".
In Russia after 1917 they actually did this. The idle rich were
dispossessed without compensation and went into exile. Some people
thought that this meant the abolition
of capitalism. But it didn't: capitalism continued without them, but
run by the state. The lesson of this was that if you abolish the
super-wealthy and the idle rich you don't necessarily abolish
capitalism.
Capitalism is essentially an economic system (of capital accumulation
out of the surplus-value obtained by exploiting wage- labour). It is
this impersonal economic mechanism that wage and salary workers are up
against and which involves their exploitation irrespective of who
manages
the system or benefits from it (whether private capitalists or those
who directly control the state).
It is this system, not the idle rich as such, who are only a
by-product of it, that socialists are out to abolish.
|
|
Contents