Review – The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell

After having this book recommended to me several times I finally got around to reading it over the last few months. And the reasons that it was recommended to me, for its exposition of the capitalist system and a vague explanation of how Socialism could work are very good. The chapters which feature the debates the workmen have about socialist ideas are excellent parts of the book.
Yet, for me there were several things I disliked about the book too. Firstly, at 700 or so pages, I felt that the book was overly long for the story it was telling. Secondly, I found the story quite depressing. Not that that is a reason necessarily to dislike it, but what was most depressing was the fact that the Socialists were just abstractly arguing for their ideas without trying to engage in struggles alongside other workers. There is one bit towards the end when the main character, Frank Owen, finally stands up to his employer to defend an apprentice at the company, and I found myself thinking ‘at last!’.
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists depicts the brutality of capitalism for the working classes excellently, and despite the gap since when it was published those same conditions apply in similar form today. But whilst you’ll find an exposition of Socialist ideas in the book, what you won’t find is how to bring these ideas to the working class.

The Question of Human Rights

Is there such a thing as inalienable universal human rights? Are they just a distraction of the capitalists from class struggle? These are questions I’ve been grappling with over the last few weeks whilst I’ve been trying to write an essay.

The most important human rights document is probably the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Although this recognises such things as rights to medical care, asylum, and so on, it also includes the right to own private property. Although I agree if this were to be limited to personal property, I don’t this should extend to the right to own the means of production – not only because of being a Marxist and arguing for the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy, but also because without the aforementioned measure you can’t provide the facilities to guarantee the initial rights.

I think it’s a damning indictment of capitalism that 60 years after declaring ‘so-called’ inalienable human rights it hasn’t put them in place – indeed it seems to be threatening them ever more and more. Human rights as capitalism has presented them are just a fig-leaf to the oppressed masses around the world. Indeed, the UN is effectively a toothless body when it tries to act to curb the interests of the major capitalist powers. For them human rights are fine so long as they don’t interfere with their interests, and if they do then human rights get thrown out of the picture.

So should the working classes support the idea of human rights, or is it just a capitalist sham? As Marxist have always noted; the most advantageous capitalist regime for workers in the bourgeois democratic state – this of course is opposed to fascist or military-police bonapartist dictatorships which restrict civil liberties and human rights. So we should for my mind be fairly supportive. In the works of Marx and Trotsky, the idea of universal morality (to which the idea of human rights is derived from) is rejected, as it cannot exist in a class ridden society. To paraphrase Lenin (from State and Revolution) it is only possible to talk of real universal rights when class divisions exist no more.

In conclusion, answering my own questions I don’t think human rights are a tool of capitalists, I think they are in general an aspiration of the oppressed everywhere to live a decent life. To that extent they are actually in contradiction to the capitalist system that cannot sustain such rights – just take a look at the advanced capitalist countries where in theory they should be most obtainable but they aren’t. Thus the establishment of inalienable human rights is something Marxists should be fighting for, however, we need a system that can provide the necessary infrastructure to guarantee them, a socialist world.

Utopia or Reality? Can we create the Perfect Criminal Justice System?

This was an essay I had to submit for my course on the criminal justice system, I post it here because it raises several things I discussed in my post Draft Prinicples of a Marxist Criminology and should be of interest to all readers ps. there's more after the references

Is there such a thing as a perfect criminal justice system and, moreover, what would such a criminal justice system look like? In this essay we will examine these questions. We shall first discuss what a criminal justice system is, before contemplating what the aim and purpose of a criminal justice system is. We will then discuss if and how these systems may be perfected, before discussing the implications of this on individual branches of the criminal justice system and concluding the essay.
The first question that we are presented with is that of definition, what is a criminal justice system? The Sage Dictionary of Criminology (2001:66) defines Criminal Justice as “The process through which the state responds to behaviour that it deems unacceptable. Criminal justice is delivered through a series of stages: charge, prosecution, trial; sentence; appeal; punishment. These processes and the agencies which carry them out are referred to collectively as the criminal justice system”. Cavadino & Dignan (2002:1) note that the criminal justice system consist of the “police, prosecution authorities and courts” in addition to the penal system “the system that exists to punish and otherwise deal with people that have (usually) been convicted of a criminal offence” (most importantly the prison and probation services).
The entry in the Sage Dictionary of Criminology later states “… crime control, or crime reduction, is obviously the overall aim of criminal justice…” (2001:67). But this answer does not yet solve our question; instead we must ask what would the aim and purpose be of a perfect criminal justice system? Given as we have seen crime control and crime reduction are the aims of a criminal justice system, then a perfect criminal justice system would reduce crime to non-existence. However, such an aim is quite contradictory; if such an aim was achieved there would be no need for a criminal justice system to exist any more as there would be no further criminal offending. Here we have our answer, the perfect criminal justice exists when it has served its purpose, when it is no longer necessary and thus no longer exists.
If we consider Lenin’s (1987) notion with regards to the state as a whole withering away when it is of no further use, then the idea of a criminal justice system ceasing to exist when crime is no longer occurring is very similar. In discussing democracy in the state Lenin (1987:339) says “… the more complete it is the more quickly it will become unnecessary…”, we could similarly say the more complete and effective a criminal justice system is in reducing crime (by lowering recidivism for example), the less need there is for it.
One may ask how relevant it is to be talking about the state in relation to the criminal justice system. As Taaffe et al. (1983:25-6) point out that “In the last analysis – as Marx, Engels and Lenin pointed out - the state consists of armed bodies of men and their material appendages ie. prisons etc.” Are not these the main constituents of the criminal justice system – the police and prisons – alongside the judiciary?
It would also be wrong to consider Lenin’s argument on the withering away of the state without noting that there is another criminological tendency which posits the lack of or severe reduction of a criminal justice system. Abolitionism to some would seem a not too dissimilar approach to the one just outlined above. Indeed, in an article outlining the relationship of abolitionism to crime control, Willem de Haan talks of “popular or socialist forms of penality” (de Haan, 1991:214), and the abolition “of the repressive capitalist system part by part or step by step” (de Haan, 1991:213).
However, abolitionism, according to de Haan, (1991:203) “is based on the moral conviction that social life should not and, in fact, cannot be regulated effectively by criminal law and that, therefore, the role of the criminal justice system should be drastically reduced while other ways of dealing with problematic situations, behaviours and events are being developed and put into practice.” Unlike the Marxism of Lenin, its starting point is not class struggle that necessitates the abolition of capitalist relations of production, but moral conviction instead. Whereas the eventual ‘withering away’ of the state and criminal justice system is only possible in a post-capitalist situation for Lenin, Abolitionists want the criminal justice system gone without any pre-conditions.
This difference then leads on to differences of a more practical nature. As de Haan (1991:207) goes on to state “…the criminal justice system is part of the crime problem rather than its solution… Therefore there is no point in trying to make the criminal justice system more effective or more just.” And later “Instead of the panacea which the criminal justice system pretends to provide for problems of crime control, abolitionism seeks to remedy social problems… Abolitionism assumes that social problems or conflicts are unavoidable as they are inherent to social life…” (de Haan, 1991:211) In contrast, as Taaffe et al. (1983:14) point out “It would be absurd for socialists in present day society to stand aside and declare that we cannot support the police in taking action to prevent crime and arrest criminals.” However, Marxists would agree that social problems need remedying too, and it is to this that we now turn.
As Jock Young (1981) discusses, aetiology, or the causes of crime is a pivotal issue in criminology and in how one deals with crime. This is influential, because as he exposes “If, for instance, we view crime as a voluntary act of the individual, we would tend towards a policy of punishing him or her, whereas, if she/he is seen as acting under the compulsion of individual or social forces, the treatment of the criminal might seem to be inappropriate.” (Young, 1981:252)
Indeed, Lenin (1987:340) suggests that with the removal of “the fundamental social cause of excesses”, which he holds to be “the exploitation of the masses, their want and their poverty”, “excesses will inevitably begin to “wither away”… with their withering away, the state (or in our case the criminal justice system) will also wither away”.
From this passage we can see that Lenin suggests two main causes of crime (or excesses); ‘want and poverty’ (deprivation/relative deprivation) as well as ‘exploitation of the masses’ (alienation). These factors are not new, indeed, Lenin being a Marxist drew these concepts from Marx, who exposed them several times in his works, most accessibly in Wage, Labour and Capital (Marx, 1996).
Marx’s theory of alienation can be summed up nicely in the sentences “… the exercise of labour power, labour is the worker’s own life activity, the manifestation of his own life. And this life activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of subsistence. Thus his life activity is for him only a means to enable him to exist. He works in order to live. He does not even reckon labour as a part of his life, it is rather a sacrifice of his life.” (Marx, 1996:25) Sell (2006:28) adds to this by commenting “Instead of making life easier, the increase in automation has reduced ever more jobs to mind-numbing repetition and boredom”.
Marx’s explanation of relative deprivation is similarly summed up well by his words “A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it shrinks from a house to a hut. The little house shows now that its owner has only very slight or no demands to make; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilisation, if the neighbouring palace grows to an equal or even greater extent, the occupant of the relatively small house will feel more and more uncomfortable, dissatisfied and cramped within its four walls.” (Marx, 1996:39) He concludes, “Our desires and pleasures spring from society; we measure them, therefore, by society and not by the objects which serve for their satisfaction. Because they are of a social nature, they are of a relative nature.” (Marx, 1996:39)
But how does this relate to crime? Sell (2006:30) argues that “The result [of increases in alienation and relative deprivation] has been an increase in street crime and robbery, almost all of it carried out against people who are also living in poverty. There is an increase in drug addiction… The reasons for drug use are wide and varied. Nonetheless, the increase in drug addiction and dependency, both legal and illegal, is primarily the result of a more alienated society.”
She goes on to illustrate this, pointing out “…the experience of the ex-mining villages around the country… the closure of the pits have left previously strong communities suffering the ravages of unemployment, poverty and drug addiction.” (Sell, 2006:30)
Young (1991:154) correctly states that based on this “To reduce crime we must reduce relative deprivation by ensuring meaningful work is provided at fair wages, by providing decent housing in which people are proud to live in, by ensuring that leisure facilities are available on a universal basis…”
However, as Taylor (1981:79) recognises “A welfare state which works on the principle that woman is naturally dependent on man and also currently depends on the expulsion of large numbers of youths into worklessness is not meeting the real needs of women and young people to be self-generating members of the human species.” The problem being that attempting to solve the problem of relative deprivation via a redistributive welfare state doesn’t solve the problem of alienation. It, as Taylor (1981) later notes adds because this is carried out by a layer of professionals which he argues act in lieu of people, rather than under their control.
Engels (1971:32) similarly discusses how “Society had created its own organs to look after its common interests, originally through simple division of labour. But these organs, at whose head is the state power, had in the course of time, in pursuance of their own special interests, transformed themselves from the servants of society into the masters of society.”
To overcome alienation, it is necessary to overcome the fact that most people have no control over a large portion of their life, whether in the workplace, or outside it. Taylor (1981:101) argues that a “thoroughgoing democratisation” is necessary for these interests to be met. What would this look like you may ask?
Engels (1971:33) commenting on the Paris Commune suggests that “In the first place it filled all posts – administrative, judicial and educational – by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, subject to the right of recall at any time by the same electors. And in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers… In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up…”
As Johnstone (2000) points out there are critics who would suggest that such a manner of operation of society as a whole, and the criminal justice system in particular, could not operate. Johnstone (2000:165) goes on to explain “even if it were concluded that today there is widespread and increasing support for a less tolerant and more punitive penal policy, it would not follow that increased public participation in the making of penal policy would automatically result in a harsher penal system.”
He continues “With regard to penal policy, the suggestion that people should be excluded from its making because they do not have the necessary qualities – such as knowledge, active interest and restraint – is easily countered. Through participation in making penal policy, people will develop these qualities. To the extent that they lack such qualities, this is due precisely to the over-centralization and over-professionalization of governance in general and penal policy making in particular. As decisions about the use of the social power to punish are historically removed from ordinary people and placed in the hands of a small elite, people lose the attributes required to make those decisions well. The only way they can recover these qualities is by having these decisions returned to them.” (Johnstone, 2000:158)
And tying this back in with the ideas developed so far, Lenin (1987:339) comments “…the diffusion of democracy among such an overwhelming majority of the population [means] that the need for a special machine of suppression will begin to disappear”, by special machine Lenin means the state (or for our purposes the criminal justice system). Of course such a thing will not happen overnight, as Lenin (1987:334) notes “there can be no question of defining the exact moment of the future withering away – the more so since it must obviously be a rather lengthy process”. Greater and greater participation can only come with time being freed from other areas; in particular the working day must be gradually shortened to allow for “removing the antithesis between mental and physical labor” (Lenin, 1987:344). Additionally, other institutions outside the criminal justice system would also be used to help in this process, most notably the media and the education system would be inherently useful to help people become more informed about crime and the criminal justice system.
As mentioned above, informed journalism could play a role in this. Wacquant (2007:39) gives us an example of how this may look “A rational public debate on crime would differentiate between offences and rigorously measure their incidence and effects. It would eschew the short-term perspective and emotional cast of daily journalism to make a clear cut differentiation between blips and groundswells, incidental variations from year-to-year and long-term trends. It would not confuse the rising fear of crime, intolerance of crime, or concern over crime with an increase in law-breaking itself.”
However, as Feilzer & Young (2006) demonstrate, such journalism cannot be limited to just one columnist in one newspaper. It must become a standard for newspapers and other media to place crimes in their social context, and to be written in a manner that explains the processes behind the topic being reported on. A basic grasp of the workings of the criminal justice system taught to all school pupils would also assist in this manner.
Now that we have a brief outline of what is necessary to achieve such a state of the criminal justice system, it is perhaps worth looking at what the first steps towards this may be in each of it’s branches. Although the comments here are focussed on the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales, the general thrust should be applicable to a greater or lesser extent in other countries too.
Policing is perhaps the most visible part of the criminal justice system. For our purposes it is perhaps useful to look in particular at the disputes in the early 1980’s to do with the accountability of the police. This centred around several issues, from the 1980 Police Authorities (Powers) Bill proposed by Jack Straw MP, the inner city riots of 1980 and 1981 (particularly in Toxteth and Brixton) and conflicts over the role of police authorities, and later the deployment of the police during the 1984-5 miner’s strike (Scraton, 1985).
The link between all these issues was the attempt to subordinate the priorities of local policing to the wishes of the local populace. Kinsey et al. (1986) argue that police are dependent upon the local community for information to help them apprehend offenders and that the pursuance of policy contrary to the wishes of the community (such as operations like Swamp 81 which provoked the 1981 Brixton riots) merely serve to alienate the community further from the police, and thus reducing this flow of information. As they note “People have little incentive to participate in a process over which they have little control” (Kinsey et al., 1986:133) Instead they advocate increasing the powers of police authorities and giving them the responsibility to encourage debate over crime and conducting local crime surveys. This could however be extend to even more local democratic bodies for certain areas or long lasting cases or series of crimes.
Prisons have been said to have been in an almost perpetual state of crisis recently (Cavadino & Dignan, 2003), the most important of which is crisis of resources. This has manifested itself recently with a record prison populations leading to massive overcrowding across the 139 prisons in England and Wales (Dalton, 2007a).
Overcrowding has led to a poor standard of accommodation, which Cavadino and Dignan (2002:189) suggest is ‘a byword for squalor’ with lack of access to adequate toilet facilities, lack of time outside cells and cell sharing. Similary a record 91 self-inflicted deaths in prison was recorded in 1999 (Cullen and Minchin, 2000) and Morgan (2002) notes that about a quarter of all prisons are Victorian buildings, most of these older prisons are local prisons which suffer the most overcrowding. As Dalton (2007b) notes at present the strategy is to release some prisoners early and attempt to build the way out of the problem, creating 9,500 extra places by 2014, but estimates suggest that cells will run out then too.
Fundamentally, a change in policy is necessary here. Cavadino & Dignan (2002) suggest that the judiciary is the ‘crux of the [penal] crisis’ and suggest a list of reforms including empowering bodies to create enforceable guidelines for sentencing to make it more consistent, in addition to other measures to encourage the judiciary to be more lenient. However, why leave the same people running the system if they have been too punitive, and why stick to sentences given out by them if they too are too punitive. As Dalton (2007b) argues, the judiciary should be elected and democratically elected tribunals should review existing sentences.
Overcrowded prisons also don’t help reduce crime either. As government figures show six out of every ten released from prison end up back inside within two years, this cannot be improved by a situation which has seen prisoners being locked up for longer in their cells, rather than tackling some prisoner’s underlying problems such as illiteracy or innumeracy. As Dalton (2007b) points out, a reduction in the prison population would free up resources which could be used towards the rehabilitation of those it is still deemed necessary to detain.
In conclusion, the perfect criminal justice system is both possible and impossible in that on reaching its stated aim it will have fulfilled its purpose and fall into disuse. In the opinion of the author of these words most other approaches tend to keep crime down to manageable levels rather than rid us of it. This solves no-ones problems; people still get victimised, offenders get stigmatised for life and the public foots the millions and billions necessary to make the system work.
This essay has thus taken a distinctly Marxist position, drawing in particular on Lenin’s notion of the withering away of the state. We have discussed what this position would put forward as the reasons for crime and how this influences how the criminal justice system should operate to help alleviate these problems. We have then discussed how to implement these ideas within several branches of the criminal justice system. From this we have shown that perfecting the criminal justice system to the point where it is no longer needed, will take a long time and will generally consist of increasing democratisation. Wider changes in society will also be needed to supplement these processes. Crime breeds inequality, so it seems only apt that achieving real equality is the solution to this problem.

References

Cavadino, M. & Dignan, J. (2002) The Penal System, 3rd ed. London: SAGE
Cullen, C. & Minchin, M. (2000) The Prison Population in 1999, Home Office Research Findings No. 118, London: Home Office
de Haan, W. (1991) ‘Abolitionism and Crime Control: A Contradiction in Terms’ In: Stenson, K. & Cowell, D. eds. (1991) The Politics of Crime Control, London: SAGE
Dalton, I. (2007a) ‘Reid’s prison disaster’, The Socialist, 1st-7th February pg.5
Dalton, I. (2007b) ‘Overcrowded prisons, overworked staff’, The Socialist, 13th-19th September pg.4
Engels, F. (1971) ‘Introduction to the Civil War in France’ In: Marx, K. & Engels, F. On the Paris Commune, Moscow: Progress Publishers
Feilzer, M. & Young, R. (2006) ‘Crime Scene Oxford’: The impact of a factual newspaper column on readers of a local newspaper – Final Report to the Nuffield Foundation, Oxford: Centre for Criminology
Johnstone, G. (2000) ‘Penal Policy Making: Elitist, Populist or Participatory?’, Punishment & Society, 2(2): pp.161-180
Kinsey, R., Lea, J. & Young, J. (1986) Losing the Fight Against Crime, Oxford: Basil Blackwell
Lea, J. & Young, J. (1996) ‘Relative Deprivation’ In: Muncie, J., McLaughlin, E. & Langan, M. eds. Criminological Perspectives: A Readers, London: SAGE
Lenin, V. I. (1987) ‘The State and Revolution’, In: Christman, H. M. eds. Essential Works of Lenin: “What is to be done?” and Other Writings, Mineola: Dover
Marx, K. (1996) ‘Wage Labour and Capital’ In: Marx, K. Wage Labour and Capital & Wages, Price and Profit, London: Bookmarks
McLaughlin, E. & Muncie, J. eds. (2001) The Sage Dictionary of Criminology, London: SAGE
Morgan, R. (2002) ‘Imprisonment’ In: Maguire, M., Morgan, R. & Reiner, R.. Eds. The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 3rd ed. Oxford: OUP
Scraton, P. (1985) The State of the Police, London: Pluto Press
Sell, H. (2006) Socialism in the 21st Century, 2nd ed. London: Socialist Publications
Taaffe, P., Grant, E. & Walsh, L. (1983) The State… A Warning to the Labour Movement, London: Militant
Taylor, I. (1981) Law and Order: Arguments for Socialism, London: Macmillan
Wacquant, L. (2007) ‘How to Escape the Law and Order Trap’, Criminal Justice Matters, 70 pp.39-40
Young, J. (1981) ‘Thinking seriously about crime: some models of criminology’ In: Fitzgerald, M., McLennan, G. & Pawson, J. eds. Crime & Society: Readings in History and Theory, London: Routledge
Young, J. (1991) ‘Left Realism and the Priorities of Crime Control’ In: Stenson, K. & Cowell, D. eds. (1991) The Politics of Crime Control, London: SAGE

Upcoming Posts

As you have seen i've posted on some of the things touched on in this post before (ie left realist criminology, media and crime, and crime and alienation) expect over the next few weeks/months/whenever i get around to it:-

A review of the State of the Police with some commentary on the 'left idealist' branch of critical criminology
A post on relative deprivation as a 'cause' of crime
A post on the criminal justice system and the paris commune
A post on The State and Revolution and the criminal justice system
A review of The State: A warning to the Labour Movement
A post on political economy and crime
A review(s) of Cavadino & Dignan's arguements about the penal system

Prisons: Lumbering Into Further Crisis

In December, the government’s latest review of prisons was published. Chaired by Lord Carter, one of the reviews main features is a call for three ‘Titan’ jails holding 2,500 prisoners each as part of a massive prison building programme.
The prison building programme comes as a response to the projected rise in the prison population to about 96,000 in 2014. The system is at present full to the point of bursting with most prisons being overcrowded and the ‘temporary’ measure of using police cells to hold prisoners under Operation Safeguard still in effect over a year later.
Earlier this year Jack Straw had declared that he wouldn’t build his way out of the current prisons crisis, but alongside the ‘Titans’ are plans to convert army camps and even a prison ship. However, this won’t solve the crisis, all previous major prison building programmes have done is create extra-capacity that is soon filled creating a new prison crisis further down the line.
According to the Prisons Minister, David Hanson in a recent Society Guardian interview (12/12/07), this prison building programme is different, many older prisons are ‘not fit for purpose’ and need to be decommissioned and replaced. It is undoubtedly true that many prisons have poor facilities, particularly some of the older Victorian prisons, but one of the main reasons that they haven’t been decommissioned before now is because the government are trying to cram as many people into the current system as possible, in some places cells built for one prisoner are now accommodating two or even three.

Titans – Giant Warehouses of People

The three proposed Titans were originally announced to cost £1.2bn, but this turned out to be just extra funding on top of the already announced £1.5bn prison building programme that the government had already committed to. It is unknown what these behemoths will cost in the end, but it will similarly be in the £billions. Already Carter has argued that there should be an extra titan built in London too.
The main reasons for building such large prisons is that there will be economies of scale savings, as well as being able to get planning permission more easily due to the recent passed legislation on this issue that allows major developments to bypass local democracy. Carter also argues that such massive prisons will allow prisoners to be held closer to home, but surely this would be provided better by smaller, more local prisons? A further blow to the proposals came from the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, who testified before the Commons justice committee that all the evidence shows that smaller prisons do better than larger ones (ie less overcrowded etc.) and also pointed out that in France building titans had been halted after the population of the first one, built in Paris in 1992 to hold 2,800, had swollen to 3,600. Big prisons mean a larger prison population and prison overcrowding are here to stay. It should also be of no surprise to socialists that the titans are likely to be PFI projects, yet more £billions into the coffers of big business.

Mental Health

As pointed out by Prison Officers Association General Secretary, Brian Caton, at Socialism 2007, mental health problems is a serious issue in prisons. More 70% of prisoners (both male and female) suffer from two or more mental health disorders and around 5,000 prisoners suffer from severe and enduring mental illness. As Caton commented in an interview in the Socialist (issue 461) “So many people who have mental health difficulties… will find themselves in the criminal justice system. There is nowhere else for them to go.”
As the Socialist has reported, cuts in NHS services are being carried out up and down the country, mental health services being one of the most effected area; the recent victimisation of Karen Reissman for speaking out against mental health cuts merely highlights this. Even before this latest round of cuts, mental health services were under-funded and under-resourced. An end to health cuts is desperately needed, because as Caton also stated in the interview “Until we tackle the mental health difficulties and underlying problems of crime in our society, we will not move anywhere.”

Attacks on prisoners and prison workers

The Guardian (6/12/07) reported that one of the recommendations of the Carter report was “the urgent modernisation of the prison service workforce”. This undoubtedly means cuts and a further stretching of already overstretched staff. Prison Officers have already taken their first national strike in 2007 on pay, but one of the main issues strikers raised was that of conditions. These are set to worsen as the Guardian also reported (13/12/07) that the government is planning to keep inmates locked up for an extra half a day a week, which means cancelling classes and workshops on Friday afternoons and means that prisoners will be spending 23 hours a day in cells from Friday afternoons to Monday mornings. All to extract around £60m in efficiency savings, when the government was giving strike breakers during the POA national strike bonuses of £500 each. These policies show that any talk of trying to do something serious to tackle crime is just spin, and as always the burden of crime and offending will be left upon the working class

For a Socialist Policy to Tackle Crime

Clearly prisons are understaffed at present, any more prisons will simply increase this and result in prisoners being locked up for even longer than these current proposals. Socialists stand against locking even more people up unnecessarily, and oppose the building of ‘titans’ and increasing the prison population. We also stand for the replacement of older prisons so prisoners and staff can facilities fitting for the 21st century. But the main way to do this is not building out of the crisis, but renationalising privatised prisons and vastly reducing the current overcrowded population. Such a stand would also reduce understaffing at the same time as well as freeing up resources for better mental health services for those convicted of crime whether inside or outside prison.
But this isn’t the main solution to the problem of crime. For socialists, the root cause of crime is the alienation, deprivation and other effects of an oppressive capitalist society. Only a programme to tackle these by giving well-paid jobs and training for all with housing and other essentials, such as a quality public health service, will alleviate these ills of society. It is a socialist transformation of society will allow us to attack these real roots of crime.

Alienation and Crime

NB: As you may have noticed, i'm now going to attempt to update the blog regularly on thursdays, saturdays and tuesdays, so here's the first post for that.

Criminology is in the midst of an aetiological crisis, or Jock Young and others pointed out in the mid 90s. Aetiology, is a theory of what causes criminal actions to occur. For left realism this is usually explained through the concept of relative deprivation, which they take from Robert Merton's concept of anomie. However, in this post i wish to talk about alienation and how this process can also lead to crime.

A note of caution I wish to strike is that in talking about the aetiology (or causes) of crime, I do not wish to lump all crime together as caused by the same things necessarily. Crime (indeed how you actually define crime can be a contentious issue), we must note, consists of various things including drug-related offences, sexual offences, violent offences, property offences, health and safety offences, white collar crime, anti-social behaviour etc. What links them (or at least most of them) is that they are all endemic problems under a capitalist society. That is not to say that they don't exist outside of a capitalist society, but that they will always exist within one. The aetiology between each group will vary with its character (and also with the groups).

Returning to alienation, I wish to deal with how thsi is presented in Hannah Sell's "Socialism in the 21st Century" (pp. 28-30). In particular the quote she takes from Marx's "Wage, Labour and Capital",

'And the worker, who for twelve hours, weaves, spins, drills, turns, builds, shovels, breaks stones, carries loads etc. - does he hold this twelves hours weaving, spinning, drilling, turning, building, shovelling, stone breaking to be a manifestation of his life, as life? On the contrary, life begins for him where this activity ceases, at the table, in the public house, in bed. The twelve hours labour has no meaning for him as weaving, spinning, drilling etc. but as earnings which bring him to the table, to the public house, into bed. If the silk worm were to spin in order to continue its existence as a caterpillar, it would be a complete wage worker'

I have to say I really like that quote. It sums up how I feel about my current job and probably many others about theirs too.
Hannah goes on to say "As capitalism has become more brutal over the last 20 years, alienation has undoubtedly increased. Without exaggerating, there is a small section of young people in Britain for whom the system has offered nothing, and who are, as a result, almost entirely alienated from society". Then slightly later, "One of the worst of all experiences in capitalist Britain is to be a young person who cannot get work - to have been thrown on the scrap heap".

I wish to labour on this point for a minute. In some areas there are simply very few jobs at all for anyone, let alone young people, or even when they are they are so mind-numbingly dull, like working in a call centre etc. So you drink (and other activities) to forget about how depressing work is. This will of course lead (not in all or even many circumstances) to binge-drinking and drunken violence. As for drugs, Hannah comments "There has been an increase in drug addiction, for example, a 400% increase in the number of children who have died from sniffing gas and glue between 1980 and 1990", and drug taking also can lead to burglary and theft (to obtain money to pay for drugs, although this is usually from friends and relatives), as well as the possibility of violent action under the influence of drugs.

Hannah then says, "The increase in alienation is a direct result of neo-liberal policies. This is graphically illustrated by the experience of the ex-mining villages around the country. The defeat of the 1984-5 miners' strike and the closure of the pits have left previously strong communities suffering the ravages of unemployment, poverty and drug addiction."

The point I wish to make is that crime is certainly not a rational choice. There are very decent jobs for young people today, such a dismal prospect of life of course brutalises peoplewhen they see no future for themselves (and probably accounts for quite a few suicides). You certainly cannot be wholly rational about your situation (indeed it's probably difficult at the best of times), and as for choice, I think this is best summed up by the lyrics from the Anti-Flag song No Blood-Thirsty Corporations (N.B.C.) "But a choice between shit is still shit!!!"

Not that the criminal actions that people take are defenicble, indeed they cause even greater harm to working class communities, but the finger of blame needs to be pointed elsewhere. "As long as we live in a capitalist society, then, as Marx described, "brutalisation" and "moral degredation" will remain, " Hannah concludes, before talking about how working class collective action could tackle that.

By the way, in amongst these few pages in various parts there is also mention of relative deprivation too. In fact, Marx also discussed this in Wage, labour and Capital, and as mentioned earlier is the favoured aetiological concept of left realist criminology, so i'll try and get to grips with it and post on this in the future too.

Socialism 2007

Two of us made the five hour trip from Bangor to London to participate in this annual event. The first session I went to, was the one added to the agenda only a few weeks ago on Burma, which indeed I'd been asked to chair. The session featured video footage of the recent protests and also a clip from john pilgers documentary on the 1988 uprising, as well as a brief introduction by Clare Doyle from the CWI. The discussion had some good input, but didn't really get going properly due to (i think) most of the people there coming to find out about burma, rather than knowing anything that much about it themselves (to be honest, I probably fell into that category too!).
Next on the agenda was the Socialism 2007 rally for socialism. The first speaker was Brian Caton, General Secretary of the POA (prison officers union), he hit back at the IBT (those who don't know a fairly insignificant left sect) who had been protesting against the us supporting the POA's recent strike, making some really good points about prison conditions, and admitting the existence of some reactionary prison officers, but saying they weren't welcome in his union. Next was Mel Mills, who if you go back on this blog to when I was in Huddersfield you might find mention of, she was the anti-cuts candidate who stood in a ward of Kirklees counil last election and reported of the advances made by the Save Our Services alliance in Huddersfield - anyone who says the CNWP is stillborn should take a look at this campaign. Next was a very short piece by a remploy shop steward, who my favourite line from was "I've got more socialism in my big toe than Gordon Brown". He was followed by Sadiq Abakar, a Socialist Party member facind deportation back to Darfur, where some of his family have been murdered and which he escaped from several years ago.
The Dave Nellist, who was hsoting the event read out some solidarity greetings from CWU NEC member Dave Warren (who seems to be leading the no campaign against the rotten deal with Royal Mail) and also from the striking NIPSA classroom assistants in Northern Ireland. Matt Wrack (FBU General Secretary) was the next to speak, starting with paying tribute to the firefighters who had recently died in Warwickshire and talking about the attacks on the fire service and the FBU. He was followed by a brief contribution from a Burslem Postal Worker who spoke about her branches struggle against trade unionist victimisation. Mark Serwotka was next, giving a lecture to an extent of left unity (more of which in a minute) and gave some example of the attacks on civil service workers including speaking of civil servants who were on maternity leave and expected to come in to do an IQ test two days after she was due to give birth, otherwise she would face the sack!
Peter Taaffe made the last major speech of the evening, in particular commenting on the need for a new workers party and drawing some conclusions from the split in RESPECT. Then followed the finance appeal rasing about £20,000, a short piece of film footage about the Russian Revolution and a very short contribution from a speaker from Socialismo Revolucianario (CWI in Brazil).
I failed to get much sleep that night, which meant i was quite knackered the f0llowing morning, but i managed to make it through the day nonetheless.
The first session I went to on Sunday was on the Shop Stewards Movement in the 1970's by Bill Mullins (SP industrial organiser). He started by giving an overview of that period of time, an era of revolutionary movements (france 68, chile 73, portugal 74 etc.), before commenting on the highly organised nature of the trade unions at that time, with 10 million workers in TUC affiliated unions and a period of mass action to defend and improve workers conditions. He talked briefly of the role of the CPGB in organising the Liason Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions, the main body through which the shop stewards organised, as well as many comments on his experience of being a shop steward at that time. The discussion focused on the mistakes of the CPGB and also on the existence of elements of workers control at that time. As well, Dave Chapple, co-convener of the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) suggested to Bill taht he should write a pamphlet of his experiences for discussion within the shop stewards movement today.
The next session was a debate on Venezuela between Karl Debbaut of the CWI and Jorge Martinez of Hands Off Venezuela and the IMT. (I've summarised this a little from my notes, no doubt there will be a write up fo thsi on the SP wesbite in a bit anyway)
Karl started off by pointing out the importance of Venezuela internationally, especially with Chavez talking about socialism, it had attracted the attention of many workers and young people (indeed I had a discussion with an otherwise unpolitical UCU rep the other day about Chavez). He pointed out that the CWI supports reforms that help workers, but we are critical of the IMT because they are fairly uncritical of Chavez and in Karl's opinion are more interested in having the ear of Chavez than in the politicla independence of the working class.
Jorge then outlined the IMT position on Venezuela, that there has been a revolutionary process since 1998, with massive participation by the masses but capitalism and the capitalist state still remains, even though the movement is a big threat to that. He concluded with three problems of the Venezuelan revolution, the first was that capitalism is still raking in big profits and that reforms cannot control capitalism. the second was that the state is only in a paralysis at the moment and that's why it could not cruch the movment for the time being. Finally he said there was a need for a revolutionary organisation there.
There were several contributions from the floor, the most interesting two in my mind were one from comrade PG who contrasted the building of the PSUV (Chavez's new Venezuelan socialist party) with the approach of the SP to the CNWP, pointing out that several things in PSUV are being imposed on the working class, the second interesting was on Chavez's foreign policy towards Iran, Russia, China and others, and the role he had played in breaking some strikes in the region (I think ecaudorian oil workers?).
Unfortunately Jorge dodged most of these questions prefering instead to concentrate on some queries that had been raised and points that he agreed on with the contributors from the floor. He did mention a document by the IMT on Venezuelan foreign policy on Iran, which i'm going to read though. Another annoyance for me was that despite their being other members of Hands off Venezuela in the room, none of them wanted to speak even after the chair asking several times that if they did they could be the next speaker.
Finally there was a closing rally on the russian revolution, but it wasn't as good as i had hoped, mainly because the russian comrade who had been expected their to speak had been denied a visa, which was a big shame.

Anyway, I've also been working on some ideas for future posts including one on Alienation and Crime, a review of the new publication Science, Marxism and the Big Bang and others for the blog over the next few weeks.

Overcrowded prisons, overworked staff

Here's another articl;e of mine, published in this weeks The Socialist

BRITAIN'S PRISON officers held their first-ever national strike, mainly on pay, in August. Another major issue that strikers raised was that of conditions. Prisons are still massively overcrowded. According to the National Offender Management Service 80,762 people were in prison in August. Prison officers are also very overstretched, which is bad for prison officers and prisoners alike.

The government response has been a limited early release programme (ECL) and a new prison-building programme. Early release of prisoners has been part of Britain's penal system for over 100 years, although the last Tory government drastically curtailed this, adding 1,000 extra prisoners into the system, under Michael Howard's slogan of 'prison works'.

The law allows prisoners to be released on the Home Secretary's power up to six months early. Former Home Secretary John Reid limited it to 18 days, in line with Labour's right-wing law and order policies.

The tabloid press protested nonetheless over prisoners being given £170 cash on leaving prison. But all prisoners get this money, usually £45, to help them survive until they can sign on and start claiming benefits. Prisoners released under ECL are given extra money because they cannot sign on until the days they are released early have passed. They are still technically prisoners.

However, pressure from right-wingers led to this scheme being scrapped. ECL prisoners get only £45, which is supposed to last them until they can start claiming benefits, up to a month. Probation officers' union NAPO calls this a recipe for re-offending.

The government are also building more prisons to provide 9,500 extra places by 2014, although their own estimates show that at the rate prisons are filling, the cells will run out again then.

Moreover, at present up to 400 police cells are holding prisoners who won't fit in prison. This is at a huge cost. New Labour have privatised both police cells and prisons. Increases in prison populations will be another vehicle for this privatisation, making prisons even more like human warehouses.

All the main parties have the same vision for their law and order agenda, of more and more of the population being locked away, similar to the USA. Socialists wholeheartedly disagree with such ideas.

The Prison Officers Association have welcomed the announcements of new prisons. But the prison service, like other state institutions under capitalism, is drastically under-funded.

Striking prison officers interviewed by the socialist stressed that staffing has been drastically cut over the last few years.

Understaffing means that prisoners spend more time locked up in cells rather than doing any activities, frustrating for staff and prisoners alike. This situation will worsen if any further expansion of the prison population through building new prisons goes ahead.

Socialists argue for a radical decrease in the prison population. Many people are locked up due to debt and poverty.

Moreover, sentences handed out by courts have crept up in length and the proportion sent to prison for more than 30 years, despite the crime rate going down over recent years.

To implement this reduction, socialists call for the democratic election of judges, subject to recall.

Moreover, we demand the release of all people imprisoned for fine defaults, ASBO defaults and other trivial offences, with democratically elected bodies to review all other cases.

Socialists do not necessarily oppose building new prisons. But we would argue that any new prisons need to be part of a plan to reduce the jail population, through replacing older prisons with newer ones, which held fewer prisoners but with more facilities and better conditions.

This would free up staff to reduce the prisoner-staff ratio, whilst providing better prison facilities. But these prisons should not be built and run by the private sector with their history of providing poorer quality prisons.

Moreover, socialists demand that privatised prisons are renationalised too.

Such a programme would reduce the overcrowding crisis in prisons. However, to tackle the problem of crime a socialist programme is needed that would give jobs and training for all on a living wage, with housing and other essentials of life under public ownership and control.

Prisons should be geared towards helping offenders overcome any problems such as not being able to read or write.

Combined with the measures above, most prisoners would be able to emerge into a meaningful life on the outside and escape the re-offending trap that sees six in ten of those who are released back inside within two years.

Review - In The Name of the Working Class by Sandor Kopacsi

In The Name of the Working Class is an autobiography/description of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, written by the at that time Chief of Budapests Police.

The book begins with Kopacsis description of his upbringing, his origins as a metal worker and his involvement in the resistance against German occupation during the second world war.

He then describes his move to Budapest to become a police officer and how he rose through the ranks to become police cheif, but including description of the general political situation and the influence of the Russians and his disdain for the AVO (the Hungarian secret police).

One of the most interesting parts of the book is his depiction of his involvement in the 1956 revolution and how his somewhat blind faith in the Russians was broken in the course of events. He then goes onto desribe his imprisonment and the sham trials to convict him and the other leaders of the rebellious government. (Many other people were simply executed or fled to Austria). Kopacsi once released from prison eventually emigrated to Canada where he died.

The book is not a full depiction of the event, but it does give huge insights into it, especially where Kopacsi was involved. This is not so say he didn't make mistakes during the course of the revolution, I for one thought he didn't put enough faith in the working masses, however, given the dominance of Stalinism it is somewhat understandable. Of particular interest is when Kopacsi details the revolt of sections of the Hungarian Army and how he dealt with his own role as chief of police.

The major criticism I would make of this book is the introduction, I believe it is in desperate need of reprinting with a different one that seeks to put the event fully in its context rather than be loaded with capitalist triumphalism, it isn't the worst I've ever seen, but to me it seemed to misrepresent what Kopacsi says and the lessons of this event.

Ps. This book is fairly cheap second hand on amazon.co.uk and despite its heavy topic made fairly good light reading

Review - Law And Order: Arguements for Socialism (1982) by Ian Taylor

Law and Order: Arguements For Socialism, is British critical criminologist Ian Taylor's arguement that the British left should take the issue of crime seriously. In the aftermath of the 1980/1981 riots which showed just how badly Margaret Thatcher supposedly 'Law and Order' agenda had failed Taylor argues for the reconstruction of socialist crimnal policy in the form of 'transitional demands'. Although Taylor is not a revolutionary, he (at least at this point) argued for the end of capitalist economic relations as part of the fight against crime and other social problems.

Taylor starts the book with a description of the rise of right-wing criminology (right realism) and the effects this has had within the first two years of Margaret Thatcher's reign in the UK, particularly the advocation of free market policies and 'tough on crime' policies. I do not think i need to go once again into these, needless to say the crime rate did not decline with the implementation of these policies, rather it began to climb even faster.

Taylor's second chapter is a critique of the keynesian welfare state. Taylor's arguement (which i agree with) is that despite it's short comings the post world war 2 welfare state fulfilled to an extent real needs. He charts the how the Labour Party fell short of what was possible in the aftermath of world war two, which could have been a decisive break from capitalism (i would argue that the social democratic parties of europe saved capitalism). Then he chronicles the reforms implemented in the immediate aftermath of this, noting the top-down imposition of experts (mostly liberal-professionals) to run the criminal justice system and other social services, which deals with their middle class ideas of peoples need rather than the actual needs of workers.

Taylor then begins to argue for his 'transitional programme' in relation to crime issues. This is necessary he says because of the right's dominance of an issue they are making worse for people through their economic policies (and continuing to do so today), with no real solutions. He puts forward the slogan of the radical democratisation of the state, particularly in relation to the police, but that this must also be done on the basis of putting forward socialist economic policies to undermine the fundamental causal factors of crime.

Taylor then goes onto suggest where such policies can come from. He puts forward policies in relation to the family, the police, sexuak crime, prisons and the legal system, building on such movements as the prisons right movement that was around at that time. These topics are not exhaustive as he says, but these were the most prominent of the issues when he was writing the book (although he briefly comments on the 1981 riots in the introduction, he had finished the bulk of the text by then). He argues that a socialist criminology should not be academic with its head on the clouds but argue for policies that have a concrete reality that working people can fight around. He concludes by paraphrasing the famous remark of Rosa Luxemburg that the obverse of socialism is barbarism.


Unfortunately, like many after the collapse of the soviet union, Taylor seems to give in to the Capitalist triumphalism of the 1990's in his later works prior to his death in 2001. His last book prior to death, Crime in Context will be reviewed at some stage in the future. However, what is clear in even the immediate aftermath of this book is that the book Ian Taylor promises on a further extension of some of the ideas of this book combined with some essays by Jock Young never seems to have appeared, despite being scheduled for publication the following year, perhaps this was due to Young's diversion into left realist criminology.
Nevertheless this book remains in my mind the pinnacle of criminological writings so far, and should be read by all (despite it's focus on the uk). (copies should be available second hand on amazon)

PS. just a reminder that i'll be away until next thursday/friday so don't expect any more posts until then

Review - Losing the Fight Against Crime by Richard Kinsey, John Lea & Jock Young (1986)

This book was written based on the results of several local victimisation studies into crime on Merseyside, combining this with other research the authors had been involved with and in the area of policing. The book firstly begins by reviewing some facts and figures from the first six/seven years of Margaret Thatchers administration, notably that since 1979 crime was 40% by 1986 with a polcie force costing £58 per person rising to £117 per person in London. But even with a better paid, better equiped and bigger police force, the clear-up rate of crime had gone down from 41% in 1979 to 35% in 1984 and even more damning for every 100 unsolved crimes in 1979 there were almost double in 1984.

The book goes on then to argue that there has been a crisis in policing where the public began to distrust the police due to the tactics that were being employed ie mass stop and search operations that kicked off the Brixton riots, but also the mass mobilisation of the police during the miner's strike of 1984-5. They then go on to present one of their main ideas in the work, that the police are largely dependant on the support of the public for combating crime. The tactics have outlined above have increased distrust, because as the authors note the best indicator of whether the police will stop and search you is if you have been a victim of crime yourself. This leads to the police receiving less information about crime and thus reducing the clear-up rate.

The book then goes on to discuss the levels of violence in society and that official crime stats or victim stats are unlikely to reflect this an only really the homicide rate is the best stable measure of violent crime (more recently hospital records have also been used).

They also argue against the idea that crime is wholly socially determined but also against the ideas that one needs to be tough on crime, which they then go on to put forward the Neighbourhood Crime Scheme in Detroit as a way in which to reduce crime rates arguing that democratisation of the police is necessary by local government having control of police appointments and a truly independent complaints body. They also set up over 3,500 schemes, mostly organised through existing residents and tennants bodies into bodies that set local policing priorities, rather than just talking shops.

The book then discusses the problems the police experience when they try to collect information themselves through co-operation with other public agencies and by massive databases, stop and search and wiretaps which in the most case turn out to be rather expensive for very little gain (very little information is collected and people who would have talked to you to provide info otherwise won't anymore).

This leads them on to suggest their solution which has many elements of the aforementioned Chicago scheme. They argue that police policy should be controlled by local government sub-committees consisting of elected councillors and some co-opted police representatives. This group would also have responsibility for encouraging real debate on crime based on the real information (and not hyped tabloid craze) as well as conducting local crime surveys.

They argue that such a system would have a maximum voluntary reporting by the public and would use the minimum amount of coercion, and would fully respect civil rights which would again make the police more efficient in their work.


Critique


My main problem with this book comes from the authors lack of understaning of class and the state. They reject the idea that crime will only wither away under socialism, suggesting that neglects the fact that some reforms can be won in capitalism that can make workers lives better, but these reforms are snatched back by the ruling class at the first opportunity they get, note the increased use of stop and search in the UK after the 9/11 attacks and the 7/7 attacks. They also reject the idea fo the state being organised to repress workers struggles, but they fail to understand that it is this only in the last analysis, so whilst not every action is directed against workers, when the stakes are high (such as the miners strike) they will be used to their full.
Their notion of class seems to be only in the relevance of the class origins of someone, rather than in the Marxist view of the conditions people live under. For Marxists it is conditions workers exist in which make them the most revolutionary class due to appaling working conditions but also the fact they have to work more as group or unit that any other class, which leads them to take group or collective action. These errors permeate the work unfortunately.
Their idea of a solution is also sadly lacking. They correctly argue to democratising the police as an urgent step forward, but they do not mean the same democratising as Marxists would mean. For myself it would be the right of the police to a trade union that was lost after the 1919 police strike (see http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/liverpool/l2). I would argue that a police force ought to be organised with the election of officers subject to the right of recall on the same wages as the rest of the police officers (with the police only receiving the wage of an average worker). The police should be controlled by a democratically elected local committee, with local elected representative, elected trade union representatives as well as elected police representatives. I would also include elected representatives of the judiciary in a small number, but subject to the judiciary itself being elected.
Such a body would be responsible for policing priorities and the other tasks suggested by the authors. But I would also demand the democratisation of the press to allow full discussion of crime, as the current capitalist papers constantly distort crime reporting (see The New Politics of Crime & Punishment by Roger Matthews and Jock Young, where Young discusses the headlines produced by all newspapers in response to recently published crime figures where they said crime had increased when in fact it had decreased).
As mentioned above, these demands must be coupled with the demand for a socialist society, with production planned to meet the needs of people under democratic control.

Bin Collections & Recycling

articles mostly by myself from this weeks socialist

We need - Weekly bin collections AND recycling schemes

OVER RECENT months several councils have announced their intention to move to fortnightly non-recyclable bin collections (from weekly) and to increase recycling bin collections to fortnightly too. Environment Secretary, David Miliband, also announced plans to allow councils to introduce additional bin charges as well as rewards for those who recycle the most.
Iain Dalton
For the last year I have lived in an area where the alternating fortnightly bin collections (non-recycled then recycled) had been trialled.
I went from having five bin collections every four weeks (four weekly non-recyclable and one monthly recyclable) to four (two fortnightly non-recyclable and two fortnightly recyclable), which is a cut in collections.
For the most part the two of us sharing the house managed to cope with the reduced collections, except at Christmas, where the reduced collections meant that it was almost four weeks between them.
In consequence, we were left with a pile of bags in the house that wouldn't fit in the bin. It was even worse for the family next door with a new-born baby. They had bin bags full of nappies that they couldn't fit in their bin for months.
This scheme was supposed to improve recycling and reduce the amount of waste, similar to the announcements made recently by the Environment Secretary.
The problem with the scheme is that it didn't take into account the different amounts of waste produced by families due to the differing numbers of people living within each house.
Schemes that try to charge for bin collections or charge by bin weight will come across similar problems, as houses containing more people will undoubtedly create more waste than those with fewer.
Despite claims that any charging scheme for waste collection would be revenue-neutral, all councils are engaging in ways to cut costs, whether by trying to limit public-sector pay or cut services.
Providing more recycling collections gives people the chance to recycle things they couldn't in the past due to their recycling bins being full. However, reducing non-recycling collections doesn't mean that recycling will increase, given the amount of excess packaging on many products.
Packaging
JUNK MAIL and packaging are the main sources of waste that could be reduced. Miliband proposes an opt-out scheme for undirected junk mail, but why should people have to opt out of mail they don't want anyway.
Excess packaging is another thing which people are burdened with by companies. Any packaging which is still needed should be designed to be recyclable or reusable.
Products could be designed to last longer and thus need replacing less often too (creating less waste) and those that do exist (such as energy-saving light bulbs) should be made affordable to more people.
Whilst more affluent individuals may be able to afford the 'green lifestyle' products companies now produce, these tend to remain out of the reach of ordinary people.
It will take more than just Miliband's 'voluntary agreements' with big business to change the above problems. They exist because companies believe that they can either attract more customers (junk mail), lower their costs (non-reusable/recyclable packaging) or increase sales (short-usage products) all meaning greater profits.
The firms that are mostly responsible for this are making millions and sometimes billions of pounds worth of profits, yet still they squeeze more out through these wasteful methods.
This is due to the very nature of capitalism based, as it is, on profits rather than the needs of people and the environment.
Only by production being democratically planned to meet the needs of the environment and people can we reduce this vast waste.

We should demand:

• Fully funded weekly public waste collection and recycling schemes
• No to privatisation of bin collection and to extra collection charges
• Nationalisation of the big supermarkets and the top 150 companies under democratic control.
  

When recycling becomes a hazard

SOON, SOME 200 councils will have axed their weekly rubbish collections. It is claimed that fortnightly collections will improve household waste recycling rates. Currently, 100 million tonnes of rubbish is dumped in landfill sites and the UK is close to the bottom of the European recycling league.
However, Channel 4's Dispatches programme (broadcast on 24 May) showed that fortnightly collections were risking a public health hazard by leaving waste uncollected for longer. As a consequence, households were recycling less waste. They were putting recyclable items into non-recyclable collections if it meant getting rid of them faster.

Squandered - earth's mineral resources

UNDER THE present system of profit and waste, it is not only rubbish that gets thrown away or squandered. As an article in New Scientist magazine (26 May) showed, some of the world's most valuable mineral resources are being seriously depleted.

byRoger Shrives

Expensive metals like platinum, essential for such environmentally important products as catalytic converters and fuel cells, are in increasingly short supply. Due to wasteful methods of production and usage, platinum makes up 1.5 parts per million of roadside dust. Scientists are now trying a bacterial process to separate platinum from the dust in the largest waste sites.
Gallium, indium and other metals that are needed for solar cells are also becoming rarer. The US imports 90% of its 'rare earth' metals from China which is industrialising fast and may keep more of its bounty for its own industrial needs.
Shortage of resources often increases tendencies towards conflict. Already, media reports show the effects of capitalism on poverty-stricken but mineral-rich countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, whose people have faced horrific civil war as battle has raged over the huge mineral resources.
Millions have died in wars while plunder by mineral companies has reduced vast areas to little more than desolate moonscapes worked by miners as young as eight. Gold, diamonds and the biggest tantalum mines in Africa are not being used as a common resource to raise living standards in that continent and solve environmental problems worldwide but to boost private profit and power.
Nobody knows how much or how little reserves of these minerals are still in the earth.
Socialist planning needs to replace the chaos of production for profit and prestige. This is the only way of making a better world and finding a solution to the problems caused by the short-sightedness of capitalism.

How do we phase out plastic bags?

THE SMALL town of Modbury in Devon received quite a bit of media coverage when it went plastic carrier bag-free early in May.
Plastic bags make up a large percentage of waste. These carrier bags do not degrade, rather they break up into smaller pieces that can eventually enter the food chain.
So, it is beneficial to the environment to phase out their use. In Modbury, the elimination of plastic bags was achieved by replacing them with compostable bags. However, the population of only 1,553 people is hardly analogous to any major town or city.
What is more, £3.95 per compostable bag is hardly affordable to working-class people. However, if such bags were produced in greater quantities this would immediately reduce their price - they need to be provided very cheap or free.
It would be necessary for these to be available in all shops, most importantly the big chain stores and supermarkets where their use would have the most impact.

Review - Why I Write by George Orwell

Why I write is a collection of four essays of various sizes published in 2004 by Penguin as part of their Great Ideas collection. Of the four essays, A hanging is the shortest, which describes an execution during Orwell's time in Burma. Why I Write is another short essay dealing with the motivations of writers and journalists when they put pen to paper, intermingled with a brief depiction of Orwell's life. Politics and the English Language is not much longer, but in it Orwell discusses the quality of writing in 1940's political material. This is a piece which I think is still highly relevant today, particularly the points Orwell makes of the overuse of metaphors, lack of clarity of writing and using more words to ake a point than is necessary. The Lion and the Unicorn is by far the longest, larger than the previous three combined. Writing this during the Blitz, Orwell comments on the situation in Britain at that time. Despite, in my opinion, his misconception of situation leading him to support patriotism and wanting a form of utopian socialism (a misconception more than likely due to his middle class background), Orwell makes several good points. The first is a condemnation of the Stalinists (which of course Orwell makes in other writings) for their crying out for pacifism and their pro-Hitler behaviour. Secondly the ineptness of the British ruling class in their foreign policy, which shows how much of a brake on development they were (and still are). Thirdly the need for a complete break with capitalism, which was missed by the very Labour Party Orwell canvassed for in 1945 along with the Social Democratic and Stalinist parties of Europe who saved capitalism from revolutionary overthrow. There are better accounts of the political situation during the second world war, but Orwell demonstrates the three above poiints excellently. This book isn't a must for socialists but it is a worthwhile read.

Fear of Crime and the 'Law and Order' card

In elections we often hear about the main political parties playing the 'law and order' card of setting out tougher and tougher policies to tackle crime rates. Last years local elections saw the 'foreign prisoners scandal' that led to the replacement of then Home Secretary Charles Clarke by John Reid.

'Law and order' ideology arose in the late 70's promoted in this country by Thatcher and the Tories who made crime an electoral issue. It arose as a response to the re-habilitative ideal that collapsed in the 60's and 70's where the penal system (prisons, police etc.) focussed on trying to re-integrate offenders back into society by treating them as if something was wrong with them (like in medicine). The problem wasn't that something was wrong with all offenders, however, it was the capitalist system that can never provide for everyone, as it requires ever increasing concentration of wealth (which underlies many property crimes). Not only this the whole nature of intense competition and struggle for survival under such a system places huge strains and stresses on individuals (which underlies all crime and things such as drug abuse and alchoholism). No matter how much you treat some individuals you are fighting a losing battle as the system is the big problem that causes the others.

As such crime rates were rising and the old rehabilitative system was seen as falling apart. Taking the quasi-religious notion that offenders are evil or somehow implicitly wrong no matter what and also the idea that if you make the penal system scary enough nobody will offend (even though as I've explained the nature of the system means that people will commit criminal offences regardless of this), 'law and order' ideology took the position that one had to have heavy sanctions for offenders and and lots of police officers to appear threatening.

Of course marxists should point out that any bulking up of the penal system is a bulking up of the state of forces that can be used against the working class in struggle, indeed Thatcher used her extra 'coppers' to batter the 1984-85 miners strike. Demands should be posed to counter the grip of the ruling classes on the state forces (such as more openness, democratisation etc.), although ultimately the tops of these forces will side with the ruling class and indecision will help workers struggles.

We also have to understand why 'law and order' ideology appeal to some workers and continues to do so. The reason was that the rehabilitative ideal was failing to reduce or even control crime which threatens working class people. No-one wants to be the victim of a rape, burglary or assault, workers and other people are afraid of crime, they don't want to become victims to it. In this situation saying that you could immediately reduce the crime rate by scaring people out of doing it presents itself as an easy solution to the problem. However, it is a solution that was never going to work and hasn't as is shown by the huge increase in crime and prison population that has occured for the last almost thirty years.

We need to not pose a return to the rehabilitative ideal (although some elements such as giving people the opportunity to access decent education will still be relevant), but to rid ourselves of the capitalist system that breeds mass crime and fight for a socialist world.

The Internet

i know i've posted a lot of things related to the socialist party recently, so i thought i'd give that a break this evening. instead i'm going to post about what i'm doing at the moment.
You see, although i use the internet quite a bit, I like many other working class people do not have access to the internet at my home, instead I have to trek for a half hour or so to Huddersfield Uni to go on the internet there. all in all it's very time consuming. The internet is a rich source of information on various issues, and allows lots of people to discuss with each other from the other side of the earth, it could be a huge resource for people.
Capitalism squanders this, it can't do such a simple thing as providing internet access for everybody from somewhere convenient to them. It's a bit like digital tv, if it wasn't for the fact that they want the bandwith from switching off analog they won't do anything to provide people with it (and as far as i know they haven't done much in this respect anyway). Currently it is mostly middle class families that have access to the internet, with some working class families having to cut into other spending areas to be able to afford to get the internet.
For a socialist world, ensuring adequate access to information, be it newspapers, radio, tv or the internet would be vital. it would be imperative that everyone was kept informed as everyone would have to run society. A socialist government would plan to give eveyone adequate internet as quickly as practical, by upgrading telephoen systems across the country and providing internet access for free, along with an adequate computer for people to 'surf' with.

Socialist Students Conference

Yesterday saw Socialist Students conference being held in London. I got up at a silly time in the morning to get there, crammed in the back of a car with four other comrades from Huddersfield. On the way down I mostly read End of the Hamptons by Corey Dolgon, a book I got for my birthday a while back, interspersed with general chatter and trying to find our way to the conference.
Anyway, when I got there we entered the fairly smart conference hall at Holloway Road Resource centre and was promtly aatempted to be greeted by Sparts, but i was running late so i ignored them and went inside. The main room for the conference was quite odd, looking a lot smaller than it actually was, there was about 125-150 people there i think (i know there was seating for about 110ish and quite a few people were standing (but i only counted the closing session and some people left early).
Anyway, the day began with an opening rally, with a collection of photos of various campaigns Socialist Students and ISR have been involved with (fortunately they didn't show the photo from the Machester 06 anti-war demo where my bandana is sticking up - it looks realy daft), followed by conference splitting into two to go to sessions on rights at work and fees.
The fees debate had Wes Streeting, NUS VP Education, Matt Dobson and Hannah Walter from Socialist Students and an anarchist Dan Glass from Sussex. Both Socialist Students spoke well, Matt speaking about the Campaign to Defeat fees, and Hannah speaking more specifically about anti-cuts campaigns in Durham (probably the most interesting of the four). Dan Glass seemed to be going on a lot about an idea of 'tent-universities' an awful lot and for me didn't really hold a perspective of how to link the campaigns against cuts and fees up. Wes Streeting tried to defend NUS's position (and didn't do particularly well) although he seemed to be slightly less bad than the rest of the labourites controlling NUS, he still couldn't defend the fact that he was a member of the labour party, saying that he wished Socialist Students members were still in there, forgetting that many of us (but nowhere near all) are members of Socialist Party, and many of our comrades got thrown out of that very same labour party for sticking up for working class people. That and he seemed to avoid the question of what to do next.
After this came lunch and a phone call to my partner who couldn't make the conference with me and then the discussion groups. I was chairing the Save the NHS session, and oh how badly did that go. The problems for me was that very few people turned up to that session only six excluding me and the three speakers, so when no-one wanted to speak in the discussion i felt i had to say something. It wasn't pretty, i completely screwed up what i was saying, fortunately Roger Davey, a UNISON member and one of the speakers saved me by coming in again. However, if I did that session again i'd probably aim it even more specifically at NHS students and young workers, who face the prospect of not having jobs or very low pay. I don't think i'd want to chair it (to be honest after doing NHS campaigning for a year and a half you begin to get a little sick of it).
Next came the motions, and I spoke on the motion about NUS, very well I thought and also came in on a few of the other motions. There were some very good discussions on issues relating to nuclear disarmament (and critics who say we never talk about revolution should have been there to here it) and on iraq.
Finally came the closing rally, which I have to say dragged a little particularly because there was a supposed 20 minute discussion, which wasn't really used except for a finance appeal, and a slide show presentation that wasn't as good as the first.
All in all though a good day, and we had a fair few debates in the car on the way back. Particularly about charities which i'll try and go into in a bit.

York

Tomorrow I'm going to be speaking at the meeting of York Socialist Students. It always makes me feel a little nervous when speaking at another branch, especially since I haven't done a leadoff for quite a few months. But this is only the second time I've been to another branch, and this time it isn't even a socialist party one so it's got me more nervous.
I'm going to be speaking on Cuba, something I volunteered to do a leadoff on in Huddersfield a while back, and I'm a little worried how interesting it's going to be as nothing much has changed there since i did that leadoff. Given that Castro still isn't well there isn't much for me to say apart from that he looks like he's getting better. To some extent I think the discussion will drfit off into Latin America generally and discuss Bolivia and Venezuela and there relationship with Cuba, which to some extent is positive in terms of trade links and stopping the return of capitalism in Cuba, but Cuba does hold out the image of Stalinised state to the workers in Venezuela and Bolivia which I would argue is holding them back.
Anyway it should be interesting and I can have a chat with the comrades about the branch that comrades are going to be forming there soon too.

Marxist Interntet Archive

I just received this message today

Friends of the Marxists Internet Archive, This message is going out to all supporters and friends of the MIA. As many of you know, the MIA came under an intense "Denial of Service" attack, originating in China, in January. Since then we have had to reorganize to meet this attack. While the MIA continues to provide the texts of classic Marxism online, we have been unable to add new works. This will change, March 1, at which time our new server will go on line and we will be fully functioning again. We would like to thank you for all your support during this period,David WaltersMarxists Internet Archive

I can only say this is great news.
For those who haven't come across the Marxist Internet Archive, it is a brilliant resource with tons of texts, letter, speeches and other marxist goodies within from a huge range of authors. I've used it several times to get access to read various pamphlets written by marx, engels, lenin and trotsky.
If you've never used it before then you should, the address is

www.marxists.org

Birthdays & Other Celebrations

Today is my little brothers birthday, yesterday was my dad's birthday and in six days time is my birthday. Yes, it's brithday season in my family. So we're going out for a meal to celebrate tonight and i've had to get presents for them. I have to say I have got them something, but with me it's a case of that I either get something really good, or something that's sort of alright but not great. these two are probably both the latter, but we'll see (last year was both the former). But it's got me thinking, bout the kind of forced nature of birthdays, of having to celebrate on a specific day.
Basically, I don't like it. I'd rather not just celebrate my birthday. It's mostly becuase it seems to be like it's just one nice day out of 365, whereas i just want people to be randomly nice to me, not suck up on one day.
Same goes for chrsitmas, everyone knows how busy it gets, how nothings ever open etc. Wouldn't it be great if we all didn't celebrate at the same time, then everything would work all the time, we wouldn't have busy periods (cos there'd always be some people off, and some people at work etc.) I also reckon people would enjoy just getting to spend time together more if it was when they wnated rather than kinda forced.
I don't think this kind of thing is possible at the moment, cos lifes so rubbish that getting the odd day that's really great is the best that people can do under capitalism, but i'd like to think that under a socialist society we could all enjoy every single day and get the feeling you get when you're able to just enjoy a day all year round rather than once a year.

Socialist Alternative Radio

I have to admit I like good ideas, and what I'm going to describe is one of them. Comrades in the CWI in Boston, MA in the US have launched Socialist Alternative Radio, to spread the ideas of socialism and marxism across the airwaves. And it's a damn good listen.
Generally speaking the typical show has a look at the previous weeks news, an interview with an activist of some kind (has varied from the Green candidate for governor in Massachussets to other members of the CWI across the US to striking workers), various music, book and film reviews and solidarity anouncements for the local (Boston) area.
So if you're bored on a journey for a couple of hours (like I am a lot), download this to your MP3 player (if you're lucky enough to have one) and listen along. It can be downloaded from http://www.wmfo.org/index.html every week, or listened to live there (or in Boston of course). Just go to Schedule on the site menu and then find Socialist Alternative Radio and click last show.