Groucho Marxism

Questions and answers on socialism, Marxism, and related topics

  • Only socialism can defeat austerity

    This week I attended a ‘people’s budget’ meeting held by Surrey Trades Council which featured talks by representatives from the Socialist Party of England & Wales, Your Party, the Green Party of England & Wales, and the UK Labour Party. The Socialist Party representative spoke first and began by pointing out that continued low economic growth will almost certainly be used by the government as an excuse to squeeze funding for public services even further. They then said that they although they are encouraged to see left-leaning trends in the Green Party, they are also wary that the Greens are still not committed to reversing cuts to council funding imposed by previous Conservative governments, as well as the current Labour government.

    The Your Party representative spoke next and made clear that Your Party will not be standing candidates in the upcoming local elections in Surrey but will instead be looking to support independent candidates. They went on to say that they would like to see the Greens supporting Your Party in future, in the same way that members of Your Party supported the Greens in the recent Gorton & Denton by-election. A common theme that ran throughout their talk was the need for all of us on the left to work together as a united front to combat the stress being put on our public services by repeated budget cuts. They ended their contribution by voicing their support for a budget that puts people’s needs first – in other words, a people’s budget.

    Next up was the Green Party representative, already a councillor in Surrey. They agreed with the Your Party representative on the need to form left-wing coalitions, although their focus seemed to be more on stopping Reform rather than properly funding public services. Interestingly, they said that they used to be a member of the Labour party and that they were a Labour councillor, but they were kicked out during the purge of the left that occurred when Starmer took charge of the party. Their proposal for arresting the decline in public services was to bring them back into ownership by the local community; for example, by providing services such as special educational need provision within Surrey rather than contracting them out.

    The final speaker was the Labour Party representative, who began by affirming their left-wing credentials, telling us about how they had grown up in one of the most deprived areas of the UK and how they were a lifelong trade unionist. They lamented the loss of Sure Start, a government-funded initiative primarily targeting disadvantaged areas designed to provide support services for parents and children under four years old (or five in some areas). This policy was introduced by Labour in 1998 but was subsequently cut back in 2011 as part of the government’s austerity program. They finished by pointing out their priorities for the Surrey: social housing, public transport, special educational needs, and youth services.

    The floor was then opened to allow contributions from the audience. The first of these was from a Socialist Party member, who highlighted  the failure of the Labour party to do anything about the cuts to public services that were imposed by successive Conservative governments. They said that young people are fearful of the future, and face rising accommodation costs as well as rising costs of basic goods and services. These rising costs were exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and are likely to be exacerbated further by the recent outbreak of war in the Middle East. Both of these conflicts are driven by imperialist interests. They went on to argue that Your Party should be standing candidates now to counteract these imperialist forces and that in not doing so they are squandering a historic opportunity.

    The next contribution was from another Socialist Party member, who spoke about the difference between schools funded by the local authority and academies, which are essentially privatized schools. The Labour Party representative responded that in their view we shouldn’t have academies at all, and it is appalling that schools are being treated like businesses. As a general rule, they said, schools should never be managed by private companies. In the same vein, they argued that we should also get rid of private schools and that all children should be given equal access to opportunities. A two-tier education system gives an unfair advantage to those children who go to private schools and erodes hope for children who don’t.

    This last point was made in response to a pertinent question from another audience member to all the panel: what would you do to bring back hope to young people? The Green Party representative said they would aim to ‘make hope normal again’, by bringing back the politics of care and compassion into communities. The Your Party representative said that young people should be given a seat at the table and asked what changes they would like to see. The Socialist Party member rightly pointed out that what gets most people into politics is seeing what it can achieve. To bring back hope to young people we need to take a bold stance and be clear that we can defeat austerity and provide them with a brighter future. The Socialist Party is the only party that is currently doing that.

  • Should we all join the Green Party?

    The UK Green Party has just pulled off a stunning by-election victory in the Manchester constituency of Gorton and Denton. The Greens’ Hannah Spencer becomes the new MP, with Reform in second place and Labour pushed into third. Billed by the press as a three-horse race, in the end the result wasn’t even close: the Greens secured 41% of the vote, way ahead of Reform (29%) and Labour (25%). This a remarkable result for several reasons. The Greens had never won more than 10% of the vote in a parliamentary by-election before. Labour had not lost an election in the Gorton and Denton constituency since 1931. Meanwhile, the Conservatives lost their deposit with just 2% of the vote, their worst ever by-election result.

    It is only the second time that neither Labour nor the Conservatives have been one of the top two parties in a by-election contest, with the first time being the Rochdale by-election in 2024. With the two parties languishing  at 20% or less in the polls, the Conservative-Labour duopoly that has dominated post-war British politics looks to be over. The Conservatives have been unable to fend off the challenge from Reform, and now Labour’s traditional position as the main party on left of British politics seems to have been lost to the Greens. Keir Starmer’s tenure as prime minister will surely soon be over too. I suspect they are only keeping him on for now so that they can make him the fall guy for Labour’s local election results in May, which will almost certainly be catastrophic.

    This result once again raises a question that many of us on the left have been grappling with recently, namely: should we throw in our lot with the Green Party? Indeed, many on the left have done just that already. And honestly, I don’t blame them. Zack Polanski’s leadership has transformed the Greens’ fortunes and turned them into a genuine electoral force. It should of course be pointed out that he has been given a huge helping hand in this by Starmer’s disastrous leadership of the Labour party. Still, Polanski and the Greens deserve a lot of credit. Compare and contrast with Your Party, the UK’s nascent socialist party, which has taken months to get off the ground and been mired with endless bickering and infighting.

    However, there is good reason for us socialists to be circumspect about the Greens. In particular, they are a reformist party that is wedded to the existing capitalist system. This creates a contradiction as they supposedly stand on an environmentalist platform, but capitalism is fundamentally inimical to environmentalism. It is clear that the Green Party will not bring about a revolution and as such does not post any real threat to the ruling class. We can see this borne out in the way that Polanski has been given a relatively easy ride by the media (although that might change following this by-election result). Still, you might argue, does this really matter? After all, most socialists supported Labour under Jeremy Corbyn even though it was then also a reformist party.

    The reason it matters, I think, is that there is a danger that the Greens absorb the huge latent demand there is for a genuine left-wing party then don’t do anything with it. We have already seen a glimpse of this with Green councillors in Sheffield refusing to back a no-cuts budget (see my recent blog post on this for more details). You get the impression that the Greens are more concerned with respectability than they are with bringing about genuine transformative change. This is obviously a problem as transformative change is what this country so desperately needs. Moreover, if people join the Greens expecting such change, and none comes about, this will inevitably lead to voter disillusionment and apathy.

    So if we shouldn’t throw our lot in with the Greens, who should we throw it in with? The obvious answer is Your Party. As already mentioned, this party has not got off to the most auspicious start. They have at least managed to elect a leader now, namely Jeremy Corbyn. I was slightly disappointed by this as I was hoping that Zara Sultana would get the job, but hopefully it will at least put an end to the infighting. It is also quite satisfying, not to mention quite funny, to see Corbyn back as leader of a political party after everything the establishment did to try and get rid of him. Given the obvious machinations that have been going on behind the scenes in Your Party, however, I am not optimistic about its prospects of becoming a major transformational force in British politics.

    The problem that the Green Party and Your Party have in common is that they are both being controlled from the top down. As such, they can never be truly democratic and can therefore never by truly socialist. Rather than backing one of these established parties, I think we should focus our efforts on building our own party which is controlled from the bottom up. One party that is being built in this way is the Socialist Party (formerly Militant), of which I am a member. It is only by building a party which is controlled from the bottom up that we can create a truly democratic, socialist party that puts people before profits and can genuinely transform our society.

  • Why do tankies love Mao?

    Tankies – hardline Marxist-Leninists who defend the repressive actions of socialist states – often hold leaders such as Mao Zedong in high regard. This sets them apart from the rest of us, who usually think of these people as tyrannical despots. It is difficult to understand why anyone would venerate a leader who masterminded such disastrous initiatives as the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. The first of these was a failed economic policy that ran from 1958 to 1960 resulted in the worst man-made famine in history, killing an estimated 40 to 80 million people. The second was a violent purge of perceived capitalist elements that lasted from 1966 to Mao’s death in 1976 and destroyed cultural heritage, paralyzed education, and also killed many people.

    Mao created a cult of personality, suppressed free thought, and eliminated political opposition. Anyone who denies any of this is guilty of ignoring basic historical facts. Why, then, do some on the left seem to idolize him? A number of reasons may be put forward to explain this rather puzzling phenomenon. The first is that according to tankie ideology, opposing US imperialism is the primary goal of the communist movement. Because Mao led a successful revolution and established a strong, anti-Western power in China, he is seen by some as a champion of promoting unity among developing nations and a key figure in the fight against Western capitalism. This is the logic of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’.

    Another reason is that tankies often subscribe to the concept of ‘siege socialism’, which argues that for a socialist state to survive it must ruthlessly eliminate internal and external threats. Mao is viewed as a leader who prioritized the survival of the socialist state over all else, which in their view justifies his authoritarian measures. A third reason is that Maoism is considered an advanced form of Marxism-Leninism that applies particularly to revolutions in developing nations. Many, including those belonging to liberation movements like the Black Panthers, were influenced by Mao’s writings on strategy and revolution. A fourth reason is that tankies view criticisms of Mao as Western propaganda designed to delegitimize socialist history.

    None of these arguments stand up to scrutiny. The idea that we socialists should blindly support any leader or country that opposes US imperialism is obviously nonsense. Nazi Germany opposed US imperialism as it viewed the US as a dangerous rival for global power and land, but that doesn’t mean we should venerate Hitler! The idea that Maoism is an advanced form of Marxism-Leninism that applies particularly to developing nations seems equally nonsensical. Leninism was developed in early 20th century Russia, also a backwards agrarian country at that time. However it should be noted that Mao did write extensively and made significant contributions to socialist theory. It is difficult to imagine today’s politicians doing the same. ‘The thoughts of Keir Starmer’ would be a pretty short book.

    The ‘siege socialism’ argument has a bit more going for it, as any socialist state existing in a capitalist world will face many internal and external threats. You only have to look back to Chile in the 1970s to see what can happen when a socialist leader tries to make concessions to the capitalist class. (See my blog post on this for more details. Spoiler alert: it didn’t end well.) The argument that we view Mao through the lens of Western propaganda also has something going for it. It is often difficult to gauge how much of what we read and hear about socialist leaders like Mao is true and how much of it is capitalist propaganda. But it is undeniable that Mao was the architect of policies that killed millions of his own people and that this went way beyond simply eliminating capitalist threats.

    One argument in support of Mao that I think does carry some weight relates to the transformation that China underwent whilst he was leader. When Mao became leader of China in 1949 the country had just been ravaged by 20 years of war. First there was the civil war of 1927-1936, fought between the nationalists led by the Chiang Kai-Shek and the communists led by Mao. Then followed the second Sino-Japanese war of 1937-1945, fought between the China and imperial Japan, which in 1931 had invaded and conquered Northeast China (Manchuria). By time Mao declared the formation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 the nation was essentially a failed state. The literacy rate hovered around 30%, poverty was endemic, and life expectancy was just 35 years.

    Mao’s leadership fundamentally transformed China from a fractured, war-torn feudal society into a unified, industrializing nation. He ended decades of war and foreign imperialism, reuniting mainland China and establishing the People’s Republic of China as an independent, sovereign, and respected international power. Life expectancy increased from roughly 35 years in 1949 to 65 years by the time of Mao’s death in 1976 as basic healthcare was expanded to rural areas. The 1950 Marriage Law abolished traditional, oppressive practices such as foot-binding, arranged marriages, and concubinage, allowing women to enter the workforce, own property, and attain greater equality. And despite the setbacks of the Great Leap Forward, the era saw rapid, foundational industrial growth.

    If we were playing devil’s advocate we might ask whether any competent administration would have been able to achieve these advances given the dire state of China in 1949. But if we are to criticize Mao for the things he got wrong then as a point of logic we must also praise him for the things he got right. The rapid advances made by China under Mao demonstrate what can be achieved with a planned economy, even with a tyrannical dictator at the helm. Imagine what could be achieved by such an economy if it was run democratically by the people, for the people. Now that really would be a great leap forward.

  • Welcome to the new world order

    The rules-based international order is a post-WWII framework of laws, institutions (United Nations, World Trade Organisation, and International Monetary Fund), and norms supposedly designed to govern state behaviour, promote liberal democracy, and foster economic cooperation. In a recent speech, the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney argued that this decades-long arrangement is coming to an end. It is difficult to know whether we are witnessing the demise of something truly unique in human history or whether the whole thing was a sham. Most would probably argue that the truth is somewhere between these two extremes. Personally though, I am inclined to think the whole thing was a sham, as exceptions have always been made for certain countries, particularly the US and Israel.

    The sham has now well and truly unravelled. Israel’s genocide in Gaza has exposed the rules-based international order as a farce. The question now is: what comes next? President Trump’s recent behaviour provides a clue. We’ve all seen how Trump is has been acting like a medieval king, holding court and threatening to invade neighbouring countries. He also recently set up his ‘Board of Peace’ – an Orwellian title if ever I’ve heard one – and installed himself as lifelong chair. It is not clear at this stage whether this initiative will get any traction or whether Trump will forget about it as soon as he finds something interesting to watch on TV. But quite a few dictatorships have already signed up, as has Tony Blair (no surprise there!).

    Trump’s threats to invade neighbouring countries and his administration’s resurrection of the Monroe doctrine are quite telling. We seem to be witnessing a return to a pre-WWII geopolitical situation whereby countries aim to achieve dominance within their perceived ‘sphere of influence’ – which, in the case of the US, is the whole of the western hemisphere. You could take this as a sign that the US government on some level understands that it is no longer powerful enough to act as global enforcer. This might be viewed as a good thing for countries outside of the western hemisphere, who are now at lower risk of invasion. But it also creates a global power vacuum which will encourage regional powers elsewhere in the world to assert their dominance.

    One such regional power is Israel. The US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, recently created an international incident by suggesting that Israel would be justified in taking over a vast stretch of the Middle East on Biblical grounds. This was met with condemnation by many governments in the region and around the world. But his comments are entirely consistent with the ‘Greater Israel’ concept. Recently an image has been circulating of an Israeli soldier’s uniform featuring a hypothetical map of Greater Israel covering not just Palestine but all of Jordan and Lebanon, as well as parts of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the governments of these countries are now waking up to the realization that they might be next.

    For some time, Israel’s strategy has been to turn neighbouring countries into failed states that it will able to invade easily. If recent reports are to be believed, the US is about to launch an attack on Iran, despite the fact that Trump himself has always been against such intervention. Of course, the official reason will be that the US is attacking Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. But there is no evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, and even if it was, there is no way these weapons could reach America. Nobody in their right mind really believes that Iran poses any real threat to the US. If the US does attack Iran it will be doing so entirely at Israel’s behest. More and more it seems that the Israeli tail is wagging the US dog.

    The cementing of Israel as the dominant power in the Middle East is sometimes referred to as ‘Pax Judaica’, Latin for ‘Jewish peace’. The term is also used to describe a hypothetical or emerging global order dominated by Israel, framed as the successor to ‘Pax Britannica’ – the era of relative stability between the Napoleonic Wars and the WWI – and ‘Pax Americana’ – the era of relative stability following WWI (coinciding with the rules-based international order). During both of these periods a hegemonic power adopted the role of ‘global policeman’; in the first case Britain, and in the second case the US. The suggestion behind the Pax Judaica concept is that Israel is aiming to usher in a new geopolitical period with itself as global hegemon.

    It is beyond doubt that Israel is aiming to establish dominant control in the Middle East. We have seen this with the Abraham Accords. These are ostensibly a series of normalization agreements establishing diplomatic, economic, and security ties between Israel and several Arab nations. In reality, they are elite-driven, top-down arrangements that lack popular support among citizens in the Arab signatory countries and sideline Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Israel’s blatant disregard for international law has precipitated the end of the so-called rules-based international order. We are now witnessing the beginning of a new order in which Israel will cement its place as regional hegemon and aim to become one of the dominant powers of the world.

  • Why work sucks

    A recent post on twitter caught my attention as I thought it perfectly summed up the absurdity of the working world. The post went like this: “Wake up early to go to a job you don’t care about. Work all day doing things that don’t matter to you, for people who wouldn’t care if you disappeared. Come home exhausted with barely enough energy to cook, clean, or even think. Try to squeeze in 30 minutes of ‘your time’ before passing out and doing it all again. Weekends? Spent recovering, running errands, or worrying about Monday. Vacations? Maybe two weeks a year if you’re lucky, and you’re still checking emails. And this is considered ‘normal’? I don’t want to ‘climb the ladder’. I don’t want to hustle for a promotion to get slightly better crumbs.”

    The post went on: “I want to wake up without anxiety. I want time to create, to move slowly, to breathe. Whatever this system is, it’s not living. It’s survival with a salary attached. Anyone else feel like the whole setup is one giant scam we’ve been tricked into calling life?” This post doesn’t just sum up the absurdity of the working world; it sums up the absurdity of capitalism. Our capitalist system is a giant scam that we are all forced to participate in against our will. When did any of us agree to this?! A critic might counter that we all have to do things we don’t want to do in order to keep society functioning effectively. But this ignores the fact that under capitalism, the vast majority of work people do is not designed to keep society running; it is designed to create surplus value for the ruling class.

    This is particularly true for people working in office jobs, who now comprise over half of the working population in the UK (including me). I am firmly of the view that we could get rid of 90% of office jobs overnight and society would continue to function just fine. In fact it would probably function more effectively. One peculiar thing about working an office job is that you often find yourself with nothing to do. Tell someone with a ‘real’ job this and they will act incredulous: “Surely you must have something to do? Otherwise they would just get rid of you!” But there are many reasons firms keep staff on even when they don’t actually have any work for them to do – the main one being that staff are kept on in case they are needed at some point in the future.

    From the point of view of a corporation, people are essentially no different to machines. In the same way you might buy a machine – say, a vacuum cleaner – and use it only when you need to, a firm will hire an employee and only use them when they need to. The rest of the time, the employee will be sat around twiddling their thumbs. That might sound nice – and it would be, if you were free to pursue your own interests during this down time. But instead you are still expected to be present and demonstrate that you are using your time ‘effectively’. Which practice means using your time in a way which will benefit the corporation, or more accurately, the corporation’s shareholders. These shareholders don’t care about your hobbies or interests; all they care about is that you make them money.

    One thing you soon learn about the working world is that the reward for hard work is not more money; it is more work! This makes sense in light of the way that employees are treated as machines: if you had two vacuum cleaners, and one was more effective at cleaning than the other, you would obviously tend to use the more effective one more than the less effective one. Company CEOs will often argue that employees shouldn’t just be motivated by money, that ‘hard work is it’s own reward’, and so on. But this is a bit rich given that the entire point of the enterprise they are overseeing is to make money for shareholders, and that their job is do this by extracting as much surplus value from their workers as they possibly can.

    Many companies will argue that they are ‘employee friendly’ and that they treat their employees well. And it’s certainly true that some companies treat their staff better than others. But all firms must operate within the constraints of the capitalist system, which necessarily involves making money through the exploitation of workers. Any firm that doesn’t do this will end up going bust. A company has no choice but to exploit its workers, no matter how nicely they might want to treat them. In this sense, firms are just as much a slave to the system as workers are. This absurdity will continue as long as we continue to live under capitalism. Our only way out is to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a system centred on people rather then profits.

  • Quantifying inequality in the UK

    It is generally agreed now by all but the most zealous capitalist apologists that conditions have not improved for ordinary people in the UK for some time. Recently I have been wondering if there is any data to back up this claim. And it turns out, there is. In this blog post I will go through some of the key statistics that highlight just how little things have improved for working people in this country in recent times, and how in many ways things have been getting worse. I will focus on the period since the 2008 financial crash, as this is when things started to become particularly hard for ordinary people – although it should be noted that the problems set in much earlier, arguably as far back as the 1970s. Let’s start by looking at wages.

    Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that the average wages adjusted for inflation grew steadily in the period 2000-2008 but then remained roughly constant after that. According to research by the Resolution Foundation, an independent think-tank focused on improving the living standards for those on low to middle incomes, fifteen years of wage stagnation has left British workers £11,000 worse off a year on average than they would have been had wage growth continued at its pre-2008 rate. This is backed up by data on the labour share of national income, which has remained at around 60% since 2008, and by data on income distribution, which shows that the income share of the bottom 10% has remained at around 20% since 2008, compared to around 35% for the top 10%.

    The standard economic measure of income inequality called the ‘Gini index’, named after the Italian economist Corrado Gini who devised it in 1912. This index measures income or wealth inequality within a population, ranging from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 or 100% (perfect inequality). According to data from the World Bank, the UK’s Gini index has remained roughly constant at around 35% since 2008, which again backs up the claim that conditions have not improved for ordinary people since then. In fairness, the UK’s Gini index is one of the lowest in the world; but it could be lower. Slovakia and Slovenia, for example, both currently have indices around 25% – and both are classed as ‘high income’ countries. The UK’s Gini index was also around 25% back in the 1970s.

    However it is in wealth rather than income that inequality shows up most clearly. According to a report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, an independent social change organisation, wealth inequality in the UK is high and rising, with the top 10% of households currently holding 57% of all wealth whilst the bottom 50% own less than 5%. Moreover, wealth inequality has increased significantly in recent years, with the wealth gap growing by 50% over an eight-year period ending around 2019. Net property wealth and private pension wealth are the main drivers of this disparity, with the former accounting for around 40% of total wealth and the latter accounting for around 35%. Individuals aged 65-74 generally have the most wealth, whilst younger, working-age people generally have very little.

    You might be wondering how we can square the fact that wealth inequality has increased so rapidly in recent years with the fact that income inequality has remained roughly the same during the same period. The explanation lies in the observation that the more wealthy you are, the less of your income you are obliged to spend in order to survive, and vice-versa. Workers generally spend all or almost all of their income on paying for essential goods: food, housing, clothing, and so in. We could even go so far as a defining a worker as someone who must spend all of their income in order to survive. In contrast, those at the top of the income distribution – those we might label as capitalists – only have to spend a fraction of their income on necessities, and are therefore able to accumulate the rest as wealth.

    Wealth inequality matters for many reasons. It drives poverty and precarity for people at the bottom of the wealth distribution. Not having access to wealth makes lives more insecure and makes it more likely that people will be pulled into poverty. According to a 2023 study, more than a quarter of adults at the start of 2020 said that they would not be able to manage on their savings for a month if their income stopped. Wealth inequality is racialized and gendered, and therefore entrenches existing societal prejudices. Men in the UK have on average around £100,000 more in total wealth than women, a gap of 35%. Wealth holdings are also regionally skewed in the UK, exacerbating regional inequality. The South is considerably more wealthy than the North and this difference is growing over time.

    An iron rule of capitalism is that the rich get richer whilst the poor get poorer. As the saying goes, it’s easy to make money when you have money. This reinforcing feedback loop is perhaps the key dynamic of capitalism. Marx’s general law of capitalist accumulation states that the accumulation of wealth at one pole (capitalists) necessitates the simultaneous accumulation of misery, agony of toil, and unemployment at the opposite pole (workers). Moreover, such reinforcing loops inevitably lead to crashes and crises. It’s high time we replaced capitalism and its reinforcing loop of capitalist accumulation and worker immiseration with a new system based on a balancing loop of capitalist deaccumulation and worker emancipation.

  • Do councils need to make cuts?

    A recent exchange in Sheffield between the Green councillors group on the one hand, and Trade Union & Socialist Coalition / Your Party supporters on the other, has raised an important question: what can councils actually do to resist austerity? For context, Sheffield council provides over 500 public services to the city’s half-a-million plus population. In the run-up to setting this year’s council budget, the Sheffield Your Party proto-branch organised a No Cuts People’s Budget conference to discuss a no cuts budget for the city and invited the Green Party councillors to participate. Unfortunately, not only did the Green councillors refuse the invitation, but they also made clear that they would not be proposing such a budget. Here I will dissect the arguments put forward by the Greens in support of their position.

    None of the arguments made by the Sheffield Greens against a no cuts budget are new. According to them, such a budget would “hasten bankruptcy”, lead to “a freeze of all non-essential spending”, result in “central government intervention”, and many other horrors. Is there any truth to these claims? Unlike in the US, a council in Britain cannot go bust in the same way that a private company can. Because only an act of parliament can dissolve a local authority, council services and the financing to provide them are implicitly underpinned by central government. However, local authorities are legally required to set a balanced budget each year before they can issue council tax bills, set service charges, and so on. Thus, realistically, any budget set by a local authority must be balanced to avoid a legal conflict.

    So how could a no cuts budget be balanced? The answer is through the use of borrowing powers and reserves. The use of borrowing powers and reserves to meet projected deficits – including reserves previously earmarked for other purposes – is, by statute, a matter of judgement for councillors to make. It should be noted as well that just because a budget has been agreed, that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be stuck to religiously. The COVID crisis demonstrated the elasticity in the system, with nearly a quarter of councils materially overspending the budgets they agreed at the start of the 2020-21 financial year which, at the time they were voted on, were formally balanced. Although in practice it wouldn’t be possible for a council to overspend on its budgets indefinitely.

    There is nothing to prevent councils from taking out a loan from the bank to properly fund public services. Indeed, this is precisely what Liverpool’s socialist council of 1983-1987 did. The council’s budget included £60m in loans in 1985 and £100m in loans in 1986 to bridge the funding gap, a technique referred to as ‘capitalisation’. As local authority funding is implicitly underpinned by central government, there is essentially zero risk of a council defaulting. This means that bank should always be willing to lend to councils even if they have no obvious way to generate the revenue required to pay the money back. Clearly, then, it is wrong to say that the means cannot be found to avoid making cuts. This is not fundamentally a financial question; it is a question of political will.

    The Sheffield Greens argue that taking out such large loans is irresponsible and stores up problems for the future. But this completely ignores the impact an anti-austerity stand could have in mobilising public support. They would do well to remember that in 1991 Margaret Thatcher and her poll tax were defeated by the mass movement organised against it by Liverpool’s socialist council of the time. Do the Green councillors really think that it would be more difficult to force Starmer to retreat on local council funding than it was to remove Thatcher as prime minister in 1991? Surely it’s worth putting up a bit of a fight! As general secretary of the RMT transport workers’ union Bob Crow used to say: “If you fight you might not always win. But if you don’t fight you’ll always lose”.

    Borrowing money to pay for public services would only be a stop-gap. There would be huge popular support for any council taking this approach, which would put massive pressure on a very weak and unpopular Labour government that has already been forced to make U-turns and concessions on several occasions. If enough councils took this approach it would force central government to fund public services properly. Sadly, the Green councillors in Sheffield don’t seem to understand this. Or perhaps they don’t want to understand it. One of their objections to the no cuts budget was “we don’t think it would be responsible”. This comment is very telling and suggests the Greens are more concerned with respectability than they are with fighting for properly funded public services.

  • The scourge of the SUV

    A sport utility vehicle (SUV) is a car classification that combines elements of road-going passenger cars with features from off-road vehicles, such as raised ground clearance and four-wheel drive. These cars have grown massively in popularity in recent years. The rise in production and marketing of SUVs in the 2010s and 2020s by auto manufacturers has resulted in over 80% of all new car sales in the United States being SUVs or light trucks by 2021. This rise in SUV sales has also spilled over into the United Kingdom, the European Union, and many other countries around the world. As a result, SUVs have become the dominant vehicle type globally, with their market share reaching 54% of all new cars sold in 2024.

    SUVs have been rightly been criticized for a variety of environmental and safety-related reasons. These cars generally have poorer fuel efficiency and require more resources to manufacture than smaller vehicles, thus contributing more to climate change and environmental degradation. Their higher center of gravity significantly increases their risk of rollovers. Their larger mass increases their momentum, which results in more damage to other road users in collisions. Their higher front-end profile reduces visibility and makes them at least twice as likely to kill pedestrians they hit. Large SUVs have been shown to have poorer handling and longer braking distances in the dry than traditional passenger cars. Additionally, the psychological sense of security they provide influences drivers to drive less cautiously.

    All of which raises an obvious question: why do people buy these cars?! One reason often given as to why people buy SUVs is that they offer more space and versatility. But this simply isn’t true, as SUVs generally offer less space and versatility than equivalent-sized vehicles, not more. If you want lots of space you are better off buying an estate car (station wagon in American English), people carrier (minivan in American), or even a van. Another reason often given is that SUVs feature all-wheel drive and higher ground clearance, enabling better handling in snow or on uneven terrain, and are ideal for towing trailers, boats, or caravans. But the vast majority of SUVs are driven primarily on well-paved roads and are not used for towing heavy loads at all.

    A third reason often given is that the increased ride height of SUVs makes it easier for passengers to enter and exit the vehicle and simplifies buckling children into car seats. Again, though, if you want an increased ride height you are better of buying a people carrier. Moreover, many SUVs are so large now, particularly in the US, that they are often more difficult to get into and out of than standard cars. Another reason sometimes given for the popularity of SUVs is resale value: SUVs generally maintain a higher resale value compared to saloons (sedans in American) or hatchbacks. But financial arguments like this make little sense when you consider that SUVs cost more to buy in the first place and are more expensive to run due to their elevated fuel consumption.

    The most plausible explanation as to why people buy SUVs is that there is a perception among consumers that SUVs are safer for their drivers than standard cars. It’s certainly true that in an accident involving an SUV and a standard car, the latter is likely to come off far worse. In this sense SUVs are a bit like nuclear weapons: people feel they need them for protection because everyone else on the road has them. Thus, the growth in popularity in SUVs may be compared to an arms race. Another plausible explanation is that the elevated driving position, which offers a better, ‘commanding’ view of the road, improves visibility and makes drivers feel more secure. This enables SUV drivers to (literally) look down on other road users, giving them a sense of superiority.

    In my view, SUVs embody everything that is wrong with our capitalist society. When you drive an SUV, you are signalling that you don’t care about your impact on the environment or the fact you are putting pedestrians and other road users at greater risk, as long as it means you are safe and can look down on others. It is the epitome of selfish, ego-driven behaviour. However I think it is a mistake to blame SUV owners for the proliferation of these killing machines on our roads. Rather, I think it is a symptom of a system that encourages and rewards self-serving behaviour. I have always felt that owning and driving a car brings out the worst side of human nature – just look at how irrationally angry people can get when they are driving. SUV ownership is just an extension of this phenomenon.

  • It’s all relative

    The theory of relativity comprises two physics theories by Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. These theories transformed theoretical physics and astronomy during the 20th century, superseding a 200-year-old theory of mechanics created primarily by Isaac Newton. Einstein published the theory of special relativity in 1905, building on many theoretical results and empirical findings obtained by Albert A. Michelson, Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré and others. Einstein then developed general relativity between 1907 and 1915, with contributions by many others after 1915. The term ‘theory of relativity’ was based on the expression ‘relative theory’ used in 1906 by Max Planck, who emphasized how the theory uses the principle of relativity.

    The principle of relativity states that the laws of physics are the same for all observers in any inertial reference frame. A reference frame is just a coordinate system, whose origin, orientation, and scale have been specified in physical space. An inertial reference frame is one in which objects exhibit inertia: they remain at rest or in uniform motion relative to the frame until acted upon by external forces. The principle of relativity is the first postulate upon which special relativity is based. The second postulate is that the speed of light in vacuum is the same for all observers, regardless of their relative motion or of the motion of the light source. These postulates lead to many surprising and counterintuitive consequences.

    One of these consequences is relativity of simultaneity: two events, simultaneous for one observer, may not be simultaneous for another observer if the observers are in relative motion. Another is time dilation: moving clocks are measured to tick more slowly than an observer’s ‘stationary’ clock. A third is length contraction: objects are measured to be shortened in the direction that they are moving with respect to the observer. A fourth is that there is a finite maximum speed: no physical object, message or field line can travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum. And a fifth is mass–energy equivalence: energy and mass are equivalent and transmutable. The last consequence is summarized by the equation E = mc2, perhaps the most famous equation in all of physics.

    What is interesting about this is that all of these counterintuitive consequences arose from Einstein making a simple shift in perspective. Instead as seeing objects moving relative to a space which is fixed and absolute, he realized that it only makes sense to think of objects as moving relative to a particular reference frame. Thus, according to Einstein, it makes no sense to say that an object has an absolute velocity; all we can say is that it has a relative velocity. Another way of putting this is that it we can only measure the velocity of one object relative to the velocity of another object. This demonstrates that velocity is a relative rather than an absolute concept. The same goes for other physical quantities such as length and time.

    I think we need to apply a similar shift in perspective in the social sciences. Instead of seeing concepts like wealth and happiness as absolute, we should view them as relative. We cannot in general say that someone is ‘wealthy’ or ‘happy’; all we can say is that they are wealthy or happy relative to some reference frame. It makes no sense to measure wealth an happiness using an absolute scale. In fact this is even more true of social concepts like happiness than physical concepts like velocity. Whereas we can say the velocity of one object has some particular quantitative value relative to the velocity of another object, we cannot say that someone’s well-being has a particular quantitative value relative to someone else’s well-being.

    Realistically, all we can say is that one person is happier than another person; it makes no sense to say that they are 3 times as happy. The idea that we can measure well-being on a cardinal or absolute scale is a fallacy upon which the entire philosophy of utilitarianism is based (see my previous blog post on this for more details). The truth is that concepts like well-being can only be measured on an ordinal or relative scale. This simple insight has far-reaching consequences for how we should structure society. It makes no sense to try to maximize overall well-being, as it isn’t even possible to quantify this in this first place, even in principle. Instead, our aim must be to minimize the discrepancy in relative well-being between different people. This is the only optimization protocol that makes any sense.

  • Science and sociopathy

    One of the most surprising things about the Epstein files, to me at least, has been the number of eminent scientists who are implicated. These include cognitive scientist Joschua Bach; neuroscientists Edward Boyden and Mark Tramo; linguist Noam Chomsky; computer scientists David Gelernter and Marvin Minsky; psychologists Jonathan Haidt, Stephen Kosslyn, and Steven Pinker; physicists Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss; and palaeontologist Jack Horner. The degree of implication varies, from those who are only mentioned in this files to those who appear to be in up to their neck. The kindest interpretation is that this is a sign of extremely poor judgement on the part of these scientists. But the evidence suggests there is more to it than that.

    The published extracts from the Epstein files reveal that some of these scientists involved hold (or at least held) some pretty repellent views. For example, in 2016 Joshua Bach wrote to Epstein that “black kids in the US have slower cognitive development”. Here Bach seems to be channeling two other scientists with particularly odious views, namely the psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray. In 1994 Herrnstein and Murray published a book that has since become notorious called The Bell Curve, in which they argued for a link between race and intelligence. The Bell Curve has now been completely debunked, something Bach seemed unaware of in his correspondence with Epstein.

    Bach also wrote to Epstein that women “tend to find abstract systems, conflicts and mechanisms intrinsically boring”. And he is not the only misogynistic scientist in the Epstein files. In a letter from 2011, David Gelernter described one of his undergraduate students to Epstein: “I have a perfect editoress in mind: Yale sr, worked at Vogue last summer, runs her own campus mag, art major, completely connected, v[ery] small goodlooking blonde”. Ugh. More disturbingly, in an unsealed deposition from 2016, Virginia Giuffre stated that she had been directed to have sex with Marvyn Minsky during a visit to Epstein’s compound in the US Virgin Islands. Then there’s Lawrence Krauss, who in 2017 reached out to Epstein for advice on how to respond to his own sexual misconduct allegations.

    Perhaps the biggest disappointment to those of us on the left has been the revelation that Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Epstein were apparently best buddies. Chomsky even went as far as giving advice to Epstein on how to handle Virginia’s Giuffre’s accusations when she went public with them in 2019. Specifically, Chomsky advised Epstein to not comment on it because that would provide additional negative public attention, adding “That’s particularly true now with the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women, which has reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder.” Not only is this nonsense; it demonstrates that Chomsky was turning a blind eye to the abuse that Epstein was perpetrating.

    Sadly, many on the left have responded by trying to make excuses for Chomsky’s behaviour. The left-wing journalists Aaron Maté and Glenn Greenwald have both come out and defended him since the revelations about his close friendship with Epstein were made public. Others have tried to make out that Chomsky’s involvement demonstrates that those on the left were no more immune from Epstein’s manipulation that those on the right. I think these people are being far too easy on Chomsky. There is simply no excuse for his behaviour, and in my view the only correct response is to declare that he does not represent the left and drop him like a hot potato. No genuine leftist would allow their head to be turned by a shyster like Epstein.

    These revelations got me wondering if there is a link between eminent scientists and sociopathic behaviour, so I decided to see if there is any other evidence that backs this up. And it turns out, there is. Take, for example, the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, founding father of quantum theory who devised both the seminal equation and the thought experiment involving a cat that now bear his name. In 1926, at the age of 39, Schrödinger tutored a 14-year-old girl who he then proceeded to have a sexual relationship with, later managing to get her pregnant. According to his biographer Walter Moore, Schrödinger had a “Lolita complex”. A 2021 Irish Times article labelled Schrödinger “a serial abuser whose behaviour fitted the profile of a pedophile in the widely understood sense of that term”.

    Or take Jon von Neumann, a polymath generally considered to be one of the cleverest people who has ever lived. In the late 1930s von Neumann got involved in the development of nuclear weapons. He was included in the target selection committee that chose the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the targets of the atomic bomb. The cultural capital Kyoto was von Neumann’s first choice, a suggestion that was thankfully voted down. Von Neumann oversaw computations related to the expected size of the bomb blasts, estimated death tolls, and the distance above the ground at which the bombs should be detonated for optimum shock wave propagation. In short, he made sure the bombs would kill as many people as possible. What an appalling use of such a formidable intellect.

    I should make clear that I am not for one moment suggesting all scientists are sociopaths; I’m sure the vast majority of scientists are perfectly nice people. But the number of eminent scientists displaying sociopathic behaviour is too high to be ascribed to chance alone. It pains me say this as I have a science / maths background myself and grew up idolising people like Schrödinger and von Neumann. Yet now I can see that they were truly awful people. There is clearly something about being at the top of the scientific profession that encourages sociopathic behaviour. I have some theories as to what this something might be, but I will leave that to a future blog post.