Socialist Party magazine
Damaged Goods: The Rise and Fall of Sir Philip Green
By Oliver Shah
Published by Penguin, 2019, £9.99
Reviewed by Iain Dalton
With last autumn’s release of the film Greed, a satire loosely based on the life of Philip Green, and the man himself in the news once again around a pension scandal, this time suspending payments into the Arcadia group pension fund, this story of how his custodianship of British Home Stores (BHS) ended in crisis is especially relevant.
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As global markets reel in the face of the developing coronavirus pandemic it is difficult to see how these events will not be the trigger for a new world capitalist economic downturn, with all the social and political consequences that will entail.
There is no doubt that the rapid spread of the virus and its disruptive impact has stunned the capitalist class and their political representatives.
On February 25 the chief economic advisor to Donald Trump, Larry Kudlow, breezily declared “we have contained this. I won’t say airtight, but it’s pretty close to airtight”.
Just twenty days later on March 16, after the MSCI all-country world index, the widest measure of global markets, had suffered its heaviest weekly loss since 2008, the US Federal Reserve central bank was forced to make its biggest intervention since the crisis then.
Read moreViruses never stand still! Like all living things they continually change in unpredictable ways – and change is sometimes very rapid. Nobody could have foreseen Covid-19 – the new corona virus causing worldwide repercussions within weeks of identification of the first patient.
What was entirely predictable, however, was the threat of infectious diseases to people across the world – and the inability of profit-driven capitalism to protect us.
Read moreThe Far Right Today
By Cas Mudde
Published by Polity Press, 2019, £14-99
The continuing murderous activity in Europe and further afield, largely by small right-wing groups and even individuals – ‘lone wolves’ – has drawn increased attention of writers and commentators about the far right, how they are confronted, and what are the perspectives for these organisations. Cas Mudde’s small book is packed with vital, necessary information on the far right today in general and the different types of organisations to be found in their camp. The writer provides not just an explanation of the different far right organisations but a glossary of these organisations. Moreover he correctly insists on accurate terminology in describing their political physiognomy as well as the differences between them.
Read moreThe explosive mass movements which have rocked Latin America, Haiti, Iraq, Lebanon, Iran and some other countries in the recent period all have their particularly unique characteristics but also many common features. They are an expression of the mass anger and opposition to the ruling classes, neo-liberalism, nepotism and corruption which has accumulated over decades. These heroic movements have generally assumed a class character, uniting workers and the oppressed across ethnic, religious and gender divides in a common struggle. A generation of new young workers and students has been at the forefront.
Read moreIn 1997, the Kyoto protocol established the setting of a price for carbon as capitalism’s solution for reducing atmospheric greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide, in order to prevent a critical increase in global temperatures. The treaty was meant to establish a global market for trading carbon permits that, through the magic of the market, would incentivise individual nations and companies to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and invest in low-carbon alternatives.
The preferred market model at the outset was an international cap-and-trade system. The idea was that countries would be set a limit on emissions totalling an overall global cap. If one nation – or a business given its own limit by a government – wanted to exceed its cap, it would have to buy additional emission rights from the carbon market. If it managed to reduce emissions beneath the cap, it could sell the unused allocations on the market as well.
Read moreThe Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth
By Michael Mandelbaum
Published by Oxford University Press, 2019, £18-99
Reviewed by Robin Clapp
The last two decades have witnessed an intensification of economic and military rivalries across the globe with US armed forces intervening in the Middle East and Afghanistan. The legitimacy of the established capitalist order is questioned by millions for whom thirty years of rampant neo-liberal globalisation have yielded only the bitter fruits of privatisation, poverty and a continually widening wealth-gap between the oligarchs and the rest that is greater than at any time in human history.
Serious representatives of capitalism question where this rampant inequality may lead, while conceding that the stability of their system is increasingly susceptible to unsustainable mountains of dangerous debt and the potentially catastrophic impacts of climate change. Some openly warn that world capitalism has entered a great stagnation and in some regions is beginning to unravel backwards. The next world recession will exacerbate all the pre-existing political tensions between nation states and imperialist power blocs.
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Just two months after the general election the simmering divisions within the Tory party that were quieted by the outcome of the December contest, bubbled back to the surface with Sajid Javid’s dramatic resignation as chancellor on February 13.
The immediate cause was Boris Johnson’s ultimatum that Javid’s advisors be sacked, echoing the conflict between Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson, who resigned as chancellor in October 1989 just a year before her own mortal wounding by the mass anti-poll tax non-payment movement (in which the Socialist Party’s predecessor, Militant, played a critical role).
Read moreThe general election in Ireland saw a seismic change in the electoral landscape, with a big surge in support for Sinn Féin. Presenting itself as a radical, anti-establishment alternative, Sinn Féin was able to channel much of the voters’ anger, especially among the youth.
The party, which had its first TD (a member of the Dáil – the Irish parliament) elected in 1997, took 24.5% of the vote, winning 37 seats out of 160. Prime minister Leo Varadkar’s right-wing Fine Gael was pushed into third place on 20.9% (35 seats).
Read moreAt the end of January, the British Broadcasting Corporation announced the latest redundancies in its drive to ‘save’ £800 million between 2016 and 2022, following reductions to its licence fee income. Fresh lay-offs in news will exceed 500 as the division works towards its allotted £80 million share of the cuts. Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists, called it “part of an existential threat to the BBC”.
The need to defend these jobs is not in question. Trade unions organising in the BBC must urgently discuss with members and propose industrial action to stop the cuts. But what of the institution itself? What is the real role of the Beeb – and the media under capitalism?
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