Why outer space really is the final frontier for capitalism

The private sector is far more timid than it appears, so if we want to mine the untold riches of the moon, international socialism must step in

• 
• • Richard Seymour
  • theguardian.com, Friday 20 December 2013 11.45 GMT

'The idea that someone would finally think to scan below the moon’s surface for precious minerals is rather moving.' Photograph: Alamy

Such is the state of advanced capitalism: we can't pay our bills, but China's on the moon. In fairness, the Chinese government is doing humanity a favour.

The race to populate space has been staggeringly slow, and the idea that someone would finally think to scan below the moon's surface for precious minerals is rather moving. For so long, the moon had appeared to us as merely a dull, lifeless wodge of dust and space-shit. To think of it as being radiantly packed with precious minerals is actually quite romantic. One can imagine poems being written about it.

It gets better. Apparently, the substance sought is helium-3, an isotope of the element that could potentially replace oil and gas as our energy generators. Not only is the moon redeemed, but the earth is saved.

It takes a lot to make this cynic weep, but I'm seriously waxing lachrymose now.

The question is, why haven't the moon's resources been thoroughly plundered by now? Why hasn't it provided us with the energy necessary to colonise the rest of space? I'll tell you why: it's because capitalism is weak and timid.

In principle, it shouldn't be this way. Capitalism, said Rosa Luxemburg, always needs a periphery. There needs to be a non-capitalist outside to appropriate – new land, new resources, to provide profitable investment opportunities. Whether it takes the form of colonisation, privatising public goods, turfing peasants off their lands or creating "intellectual property", there is a need to accumulate beyond the existing realm of capitalist property relations.

The geographer David Harvey points out that the world capitalist system needs to find $1.5tn profitable investment opportunities today in order to keep growing at its historical average of 3% a year. In 20 years' time, it will need to find $3tn.

The effects of this are complex. On the one hand, such production places a tremendous burden on the planet and risks making large parts of it uninhabitable and extinguishing a great deal of life. Further, this production both exploits workers and becomes imbricated with all manner of brutality – consider the relationship between coltan production and war in the Congo. On the other hand, well: tablets, smartphones, DVD players, advanced sex toys that do something other than just buzz, cars that don't smell like foot disease, an abundance of stuff that makes life easier and more interesting.

The problem with capitalism, though, is that it's actually staggeringly timid in some respects. For all that the Communist Manifesto breathlessly extolled the revolutionary spirit of capital – "constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions … all that is solid melts into air" – businesses are really quite conservative. They aren't going to invest unless they're reasonably sure of a profit, even if the result is sluggish growth and flatlining innovation.

This is why, as Mariana Mazzucato points out, it falls to states to undertake the risky investments that pay off in the technology that makes, for example, iPhones possible. Of course, capitalist states do a great deal else to overcome the inertia of the system, from war to violent enclosures. It doesn't do to idealise the state. The point here is that, if it were left to private sector enterprise, we would never have seen a human foot touch down on the moon's surface.

Of course, under capitalism the state's ability to explore the unknown is limited by its priority of making things work for business, or developing a greater war machine. States don't need an immediate return on investment, but if they're to justify taxing profits, they need to demonstrate some sort of plausible return. Hence, there's always more money for military arsenals than spaceships. We could be holidaying on Mars, but some people would rather bomb Afghanistan. Put that on a placard.

However, as Leigh Phillips explains, even the limited exploration of space thus far has produced unexpected bounties for the Earth-bound: cooling suits used by nuclear reactor technicians, dialysis technology, running shoes, water purification, housing insulation, food preservation, fire retardants and so on. And even if it didn't provide all these spin-offs, human curiosity is an end in itself. So what if we don't find the aliens who have been kidnapping drunk rednecks and plumbing their lower intestines? We'll find precious mineral ore on an asteroid, and that's more than enough.

So, this is what we need. First, international socialism. And to paraphrase Lenin, socialism = soviet power + interstellar travel. Don't ask me how we get that, we just need it as a precondition for everything else. Second, an international space exploration programme, funded with the express purpose of adding to the sum of stuff and human knowledge. Third, a popular space tourism programme. We have to be careful with this. The last thing anyone wants to see is a conga line of pot-bellied fortysomethings drinking Red Stripe on Jupiter. But hopefully socialism will elevate the culture. Finally, a publicly funded cryogenics programme now for everyone who wants to live to see this day.

Is that really too much to ask?

It's not zero-hours contracts that are the problem, it's the bosses who abuse them

As someone who has worked a zero-hours contract, I welcome Vince Cable's consultation – and his intention to crack down on exploitation

• 
• • Ruth Hardy
  • theguardian.com, Thursday 19 December 2013 18.32 GMT

Vince Cable intends to crack down on 'exclusivity clauses [in zero-hours contracts], meaning their workers are guaranteed no hours, but are prohibited from finding work with anyone else'. Photograph: David Cheskin/PA

Vince Cable today launched a consultation on zero-hours contracts, saying he wanted greater fairness, but would not be calling for a complete ban. Having worked a zero-hours contract for just under a year, I think he's right. For many, a flexible contract where you are not obliged to work fits in well with the demands of studying or another job. The problem is not with the contracts themselves, but with the way that employers are abusing them.

It is estimated that about 1 million Britons are on these contracts, and in recent years they have become much more widespread. For those who have a steady source of income that covers rent, food and other essentials, but occasionally need to top it up with extra work (such as students in the summer holidays, or those who have retired), zero-hours contracts can be a good fit for both employer and employee.

The problems arise when companies use zero-hours contracts for nearly all their staff, as a way to cut their own costs and limit the rights that their workers have. The distinction between "worker" and "employee" is a complicated one, but those on zero-hours contracts are usually defined as workers, meaning they have fewer rights than employees. Employees are entitled to statutory redundancy pay and the right not to be unfairly dismissed. Not all workers, however, are.

If you want a job with guaranteed hours, to be forced on to a zero-hours contract denies you the psychological security that comes with knowing how much you will earn in a given month. Insecure employment means that you are constantly worrying about money and making ends meet: you can have plenty of hours one week, and none the next. There is no safety net of a minimum number of hours. There is nothing to stop you from earning nothing.

And some companies have even been using exclusivity clauses, meaning their workers are guaranteed no hours, but are prohibited from finding work with anyone else. Vince Cable has announced that he intends to crack down on these, but it is an indication of how exploitative the current labour market is that they have so far been allowed.

Zero-hours contracts enable companies to transfer the burden of an uncertain economy on to those that they employ. They are assured of a pool of workers from whom they can draw in busy times and ignore in quieter times. At the staffing agency I worked for, we were told that some shifts were "non-cancellation", meaning that cancelling the shift (even from ill health or an emergency) would incur a fine of £10. Yet the company was not restrained by its own rules: once I took a day off my internship to make a non-cancellation shift, as I needed the hours. The day before, I was told numbers had been reduced so I would no longer be needed after all. This short-term cutting of shifts happened often, sometimes just hours before you were meant to start.

A culture in which employers are allowed to treat their workers as disposable cogs in a commercial machine is exploitative, and there needs to be more regulation to ensure that those who want a stable, set-hours contract are entitled to one, while those who need to work flexibly can continue to do so. The needs of businesses should not take precedence over the rights of those that work for them – even in an economic situation that seems to have lapped up most of our principles with it.

Guess the driver in this hushed up hit and run case. A****i scion?

Jug Saraiya in The Times of India

Is there a conspiracy of silence in the Indian media?

The media have been loud and clear about government corruption, crimes against women and other derailments of the rule of law and order and the delivery of justice.

Which makes it all the more strange that a hit-and-run incident, in which two people were allegedly killed and several others injured, and which is said to have taken place in Mumbai on December 7 this year, has received scant, if any, attention in either the press or on TV.

However, social networking sites such as Facebook are buzzing with it, creating a web of rumours in the absence of any hard facts, or indeed any discernible  attempt by the media to try and sift through whatever evidence there may be and present the facts of the case.

According to the rumour mills, the lethal hit-and-run driver was the young son of an extremely wealthy and powerful business tycoon who enjoys political patronage at the highest levels. The recklessly speeding car is said to have rammed into two other cars, resulting in two deaths and several people injured.

The driver of the car allegedly fled the scene in one of two SUVs which were escorting the car.  A day later, a middle-aged man presented himself at the local police station saying he was the driver employed by the business family and that he had been responsible for the previous day’s accident.

A sole eyewitness to the incident, who had earlier said that the driver of the speeding car had been a young man, is believed to have retracted the statement, allegedly under pressure.

The case is similar to what has come to be called the BMW hit-and-run incident involving the son of a powerful Delhi family, and in which more than one prosecution witness became ‘hostile’, presumably through intimidation or bribery or both.

But while the media had had a field day in the BMW case, giving it full coverage, there seems to be total silence about the recent case in Mumbai. A silence which becomes strange when it is contrasted with the clamour the case has caused on social networking sites.

Is the alleged involvement of the tycoon’s son only a rumour? It might well be. But surely the insistence with which this rumour is being spread is itself worthy of notice by media, particularly when that rumour implies the accusation that there is a conspiracy of silence on the part of the press and TV channels. Shouldn’t media investigate the rumour and expose it for what it is? 

Indian media pride themselves on being both free and fair, a self-congratulatory pat on the back which more often than not is well-deserved.  TV anchors are particularly outspoken – some would say strident – in righteously denouncing all manner of foul play.

So why this silence about media’s alleged conspiracy of silence about the Mumbai hit-and-run? It makes one wonder how many other instances, regarding all manner of wrongdoing, go deliberately unreported, or under-reported, by media.

Such selective silences – if indeed they do exist – can and will be highlighted by social media, as is happening in the current case. There is much talk and controversy about appointing a political Lokpal. Should the media have their own Lokpal to look into alleged irregularities? By default, social media might become the unofficial Lokpal of mainstream media, breaking the sounds of dubious silence with irrepressible electronic chatter which brooks no censorship either state-imposed or self-imposed.

Anachronistic and iniquitous, grammar schools are a blot on the British education system

Owen Jones in The Independent

The chief inspector of schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, could not have been more damning. Grammar schools are “stuffed full of middle-class kids,” he says. Though they “might do well with 10 per cent of the school population,” he argues, “everyone else does really badly.” Refreshing: we normally only hear from those who want to bring back secondary moderns. It’s time to push back, and call for the remaining 164 grammar schools to finally be scrapped.

There’s a good reason why the pro-secondary modern brigade are so loud, with the exception of the two-person campaigning machine of Melissa Benn and Fiona Millar. According to the Sutton Trust, most top journalists are privately educated – for the general population it’s just 7 per cent – so our media is hardly fertile ground to champion the benefits of comprehensive education. “Aha!”, the secondary modernists respond. “That in itself illustrates the failure of the comps!” It actually says more about the fact that if you have parents rich enough to send you to a fee-paying school, they’ll be rich enough to pay you through the media’s proliferating unpaid internships, as well as the costly post-graduate journalism courses that are becoming all but compulsory to so many wanting to enter the media world. Here is a wider debate about Britain’s rigged society that the secondary modern lobbyists are not interested in.

The debate is also skewed because so few of those written off by secondary moderns made it into the political or media elite. So let us stick to the facts. Grammar schools have never worked. Back in the late 1950s, the government commissioned the Crowther Report into the state of Britain’s education system. They found that boys from semi-skilled or skilled family backgrounds were “much under-represented in the composition of selective schools”, but “over-represented” in the secondary moderns. Most of the “sons of professional people” went to grammars, but only a minority of manual workers’ children did so. As a 2011 British Journal of Sociology study put it, “any assistance to low-origin children provided by grammar schools is cancelled out by the hindrance of secondary moderns”.

What about the minority of working-class children who did make it to grammars? Generally speaking, they did badly. According to a 1954 government report, out of 16,000 grammar school pupils from semi-skilled or unskilled families, around 9,000 failed to get three passes at O-level. Just one in 20 were awarded two A-levels. And there’s a reason for this: it is broader social inequalities that fuel educational inequalities, not school structures.

Peter Hitchens is a passionate defender of selection, arguing that political parties have been “captured by Gramscian revolutionary thought some years ago”. One of his key arguments is that “the grammars and direct grants stormed Oxford (and Cambridge) in the 1950s and 1960s”. This in itself is an odd conflation, given most of the students at direct grant grammar schools were fee-paying. Back in 1964, 37 per cent of all Oxbridge students were state-educated; last year, 63.3 per cent of Cambridge hailed from a state school. As ever, the numbers of working-class students at Oxford and Cambridge – and other top universities, some of whom are even less socially representative – is unacceptably low. That’s why they should be forced to automatically enrol the brightest working-class students, recognising the fact we start from different places.

Where selection remains today, it continues to be largely the preserve of the privileged. Just 3 per cent of grammar school pupils are on free school meals, compared to 17.5 per cent at other schools. They are a whopping four times more likely to admit privately educated children than those on free school meals. Hitchens claims that’s because, with so few selective areas, pushy middle-class types are bound to dominate. But grammar schools’ unrepresentative make-up is consistent with how they have always been, and hardly explains why, as one study recently found, “poor children do dramatically worse in selective areas”, with poor children far less likely to do well at GCSEs in areas like Kent than non-selective areas. In selective areas, the privileged often pay for private tuition to get their kids to pass the grammar school test, which is exactly what they would do everywhere if selection was rolled out nationally again.

And then there’s Northern Ireland, also stuck in the selective age, again championed by Hitchens as a success. That’s odd, because according to the recent Pisa international rankings on maths, reading and science, the Six Counties do worse than both Scotland and England.

The real issue is social inequality. By the age of five, children from the poorest backgrounds have a vocabulary up to 18 months behind those from the richest backgrounds; no wonder selection a few years later purges so many. That’s why we need far more resources at an earlier age, with more investment in Sure Start and nurseries. Diet, housing, the stresses of poverty: here are far bigger factors, and the reason middle-class pupils tend to do well wherever they are sent. So let’s focus on inequality and good schools for all, and finally rid ourselves of the bewildering anachronism of selection.

Iain Duncan Smith leaves Commons debate on food banks early

Jonathan Paige in the Independent

Tory ministers have been condemned for not taking the plight Britain's poor seriously after a rowdy Commons debate on food banks during which the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith refused to answer questions and left early.

As Fiona MacTaggart, the Labour MP for Slough, described how people battled over end of day bargains in her local Tesco, she was almost drowned out by laughter and jeering from the government benches.

Ms MacTaggart could barely be heard over the braying as she described how the supermarket had been forced to draft in extra security and asked “Isn't that a shocking sign in the 21st century?”

Labour MP for Copeland in Cumbria, Jamie Reed told The Mirror: “I regret to say the laughter from the government benches says more about this issue than words ever could.”

Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, and the remaining government ministers from his department left the debate after an hour, well before its conclusion.

Barry Gardiner, Labour MP for Brent said it was “extraordinary” to see Mr Duncan Smith smirking as it was pointed out that half a million people are now using food banks - and the minister refused to answer any questions directly, instead leaving them to be fielded by his deputy, Esther McVey.

The Trussell Trust, the nation's largest provider of food banks, with almost 400 branches said it was “disappointed” by the attitude of those who jeered.

Labour had called the debate after nearly 150,000 people signed a petition backed by The Mirror, the Unite union and The Trussell Trust calling for an inquiry into the growing dependence on food aid.

Ms McVey said it was a good thing that more people were turning to food banks and that Germany and Canada had also seen a rise in their use.

The Tory MP for Wirral West said:  “It is positive that people are reaching out to support other people - from church groups to community groups, to local supermarkets and other groups.”

She went on to try to pin the blame on spiralling food bank use on the Labour party.

“In the UK it is right that more people are... going to food banks because as times are tough, we are all having to pay back this £1.5 trillion debt personally which spiralled under Labour, we are all trying to live within our means, change the gear and make sure that we pay back all our debt which happened under them.”

But Conservative MP Laura Sandys (South Thanet) said: “Food banks are not the answer. They must be seen as a transitional support mechanism for families in stress at particular moments.

"They are not a solution or something we want institutionalised."

Labour's Sir Gerald Kaufman described McVey's speech as the nastiest he had heard in his 43 years as an MP.

As Mr Duncan Smith and his colleagues left, the speaker John Bercow said he had no power to stop them, but said the view that it was a disgrace there was no minister there ”may be widely shared".

Shadow Environment Secretary Maria Eagle said “It's a scandal which is getting worse and the Government now has the humiliation of the Red Cross helping to collect and distribute food aid in Britain for the first time since the Second World War.”

And the former Labour cabinet minister Paul Murphy said he had never seen such poverty in his 40 years as a Welsh politician, apart from during the 1984 miners' strike.

Labour's motion calling on the government to reduce dependency on food bank was eventually defeated by 294 votes to 251, a majority of 43 as Tories and Lib Dems banded together to shout it down.

America's 'virgin births'? One in 200 mothers 'became pregnant without having sex'

Rob Williams in The Independent

The results of a long-term study of reproductive health, published in the British Medical Journal, have revealed that one in two hundred US women claim to have given birth without ever having had sexual intercourse.

The findings were based on a study of 7,870 women and girls aged 15 to 28, as part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which ran from 1995 to 2009.

The Christmas issue of the BMJ reports that, of the women who took part in the study, 45 (0.5%) reported at least one virgin pregnancy, "unrelated to the use of assisted reproductive technology."

In short, they claimed to have conceived - yet had not had vaginal intercourse or in-vitro fertilisation (IVF).

The BMJ article notes that virgin births, or parthenogenesis (from the Greek parthenos for virgin and genesis for birth), can occur in non-humans as a consequence of "asexual reproduction, where growth and development of the embryo occurs without fertilization".

The article notes that as well as the story of the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary, parthenogenesis often appears in popular culture, "including the Spielberg blockbuster Jurassic Park3 and the 2008 Dr Who episode “Partners in Crime.”

For the study of putative virgin pregnancies, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill analyzed data from the thousands of teenage girls and young women who took part in the long-running study.

They found that the girls who had become pregnant, despite claiming they had never had sex at the time of conception, shared some common characteristics.

Thirty-one per cent of the girls had signed a so-called 'chastity pledge', whereby they vow - usually for religious reasons - not to have sex. Fifteen per cent of non-virgins who became pregnant also said they had signed such pledges.

The 45 self-described virgins who reported having become pregnant and the 36 who gave birth were also more likely than non-virgins to say their parents never or rarely talked to them about sex and birth control.

About 28 per cent of the "virgin" mothers' parents (who were also interviewed) indicated they didn't have enough knowledge to discuss sex and contraception with their daughters, compared to 5 percent of the parents of girls who became pregnant and said they had had intercourse.

The authors of the study, entitled "Like a virgin (mother)", - say that such scientifically impossible claims show researchers must take care in interpreting self-reported behavior. Fallible memory, beliefs and wishes can cause people to err in what they tell scientists.

The 'right school'? No, parents staying together is the best way to help children

Children with a stable home life do better at school. Focus less on catchment areas and more on relationship counselling

• 
• • Joanna Moorhead
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 18 December 2013 14.59 GMT

'The more stable a home life children have, the better they will be able to concentrate at school, and the better grades they will have.' Photograph: Eye Ubiquitous / Alamy/Alamy

Parents do anything they can to give their kids the best chance to succeed. According to a report published by the Sutton Trust, a third of "professional parents" with children aged between five and 16 have moved to an area because they think it has good schools, and 18% to a specific school's catchment area.

Some go further: 6% of the 1,000 parents surveyed admitted attending church services when they hadn't previously to help their children get a place at a church school; 3% admitted using a relative's address to get children into a particular school; and 2% said they had bought a second home and used that address to qualify for a place.

As well as a fair few white lies, it all adds up to a colossal amount of money spent on trying to improve your children's chances of doing better educationally – and the point the Sutton Trust wants to make is that the more money you have, the more you can do to "buy" an advantage. Its recommendation – that the government should step in and encourage ballots for school places, to make selection fairer – seems a good one. After all, the drive to make things as rosy as possible for your offspring is inherent in all us parents: it's what we're designed to do, to achieve the best possible life chances for our children. That doesn't, or shouldn't, amount to fraud – it's a braver person than me who would cast the first stone and condemn parents for trying to give their kids the best start.

So it seems strange that parents, while focusing so intently on school, seem often to ignore a much cheaper way of improving their children's educational lot. Because the more stable a home life children have, the better they will be able to concentrate at school, the better behaved they will be in school, and the better grades they will have on leaving school.

There's plenty of research to back all this up: a recent study by the Childhood Wellbeing Research Centre found that children aged seven and older tended to do more poorly in exams and to behave badly at school if their parents split up. Another report funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, released at the end of last year, found that a stable family life meant children were more likely to take in what's being offered in the classroom. According to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, teenagers whose parents are fighting or separating may find it difficult to concentrate at school.

Of course, many marriages are completely on track, 100% hunky dory, and here the only thing worth stressing about is a school's Sats and GCSE results. But it may not be you, and I have to admit it's not me either: I've been married for more than a quarter of a century, and the one thing I'm sure of is that it's not a bed of roses. I've also got four children aged between 11 and 21; and while I'm truly grateful to the many teachers who have taught them, and the schools they've been pupils at, I've become more convinced as the years go by that a stable home is an absolutely vital ingredient in how they're getting on – and certainly much more crucial than where their school sits in the local league table.

So shelling out a few hundred quid for a course of Relate counselling sessions (and if you're on a low income, it can be a lot less, or even free) could be a much better use of the family's funds than spending thousands on moving house. Sure, your children might end up at a school whose exam results aren't quite so glowing – but that's more than offset by the fact that they are likely to do better for having happier parents (and moving house, after all, puts even more pressure on a relationship).

According to Relate, 80% of clients who went for adult relationship counselling said their partnership had been strengthened as a result. According to a whole pile of research stretching back across many decades, children tend to do best when they're raised in a stable family. I can't help wondering whether the only sure winners from the scramble to live by the best school gates are estate agents rather than the very children the move is designed to help.