Letters

Beyond profit

As a subscriber since the very beginning, I must agree with Marc Hudson (Letters, NI 538) that, though the magazine continues to be excellent, during all that time and after so many campaigns, we always seem to be back where we started. I, however, differ from him in the remedy he proposes of finding ways of ‘forcing decent policies through legislatures’. Yes, we need to ‘build sustainable organizations’. But not organizations that will press governments to bring in reforms of the current worldwide system of production for profit. Rather organizations that have the aim of convincing people to collectively and democratically bring in an entirely new system of production which will say a decisive goodbye to the profit system and the market, to money and to wages, and will say a welcome hello to a world of voluntary co-operation and free access to all goods and services.

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Full Marx

In response to Paul Bennett (Letters, NI 538), when I say that capitalism provides people with work, I mean simply that under capitalism capital is invested in the employment of labour. Labour itself is capital as it produces value over and above the cost of its hire (a cost expressed in the form of wages). This relationship is also the source of labour exploitation, insofar as under capitalism the value that the workers produce is greater than what they receive in wages. We will never understand how to go beyond capitalism unless we first recognize that labour (and its exploitation) is a fundamental constituent of the capitalist system. As Marx was the first to recognize, the abolition of capitalism requires the abolition of labour as capital.

[This correspondence is now closed – Ed]

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Misdiagnosis

In relation to the picture of Aneurin Bevan meeting the NHS’s first patient (Cartoon History, NI 537), may I point out that nephritis is inflammation of the kidneys, not a liver disease.

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Conspicuous absence

Kathleen Nolan’s article (NI 537) informs us that she has been researching child sponsorship since 2018 and references an NI article on the subject by Peter Stalker from 1982. She refers to various academics whose opinions broadly concur with her own. Conspicuous by their absence are the opinions of the people at the heart of the matter – sponsored children.

As the article failed to enlighten us on the life experiences of sponsored children, I fail to see how it can possibly reach the conclusion that sponsorship is inherently wrong and misguided. Indeed, it could be argued that it is guilty of a certain level of arrogance in promoting its own ‘we-know-best’ rationale.

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Hows and whys

In discussing whether it is too late to prevent climate catastrophe, Richard Swift says: ‘What we need to do doesn’t change whether it’s a “yes” or a “no”.’ I agree: when your house is on fire you just ‘do’ what you have to do to survive instead of thinking about whether or not it’s too late. The ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer will not, as Swift says, affect ‘how’ you have chosen to struggle to survive.

But Swift doesn’t address the psychological question of ‘why’ we should continue to struggle to survive if and when hope is no longer there in large quantities to act as one of our motivators.

I’d like to add this: Hope is not the only motivator to draw strength from, nor is it the most powerful. Our house is on fire, and our global family is inside, so, ideally, empathy and love are more likely to be at the centre of our motivational psychology than hope. Empathy is expressed in the Golden Rule of Reciprocity: ‘Treat others as you want to be treated.’ Even in the absence of much hope, that rule addresses the question of ‘why’ and has a lot to say about ‘how’ we should continue to struggle for our global family.

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What stories should we cover in 2023?

Have your say – tell us about the stories and themes we should be writing about in 2023. Please send us your ideas via letters@newint.org by 30 September 2022.

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