When international charities illustrate the immensity of poverty and deprivation in areas of the ‘Third World’, they often use a statistic of how many children die per minute from preventable diseases due to a lack of cleaning drinking water and sanitation. A common response to the brutal realities of capitalist production, distribution and consumption on a global scale is to externally lament the plight of far-off peoples while internally feeling glad that we live safe and secure in the developed world, the land of the ‘have’s’ and not the ‘have not’s.’

Yet, poverty and deprivation also affect our own societies profoundly. A fifth of the UK population lives in poverty , while around 4 million children live in low-income households.

Many vulnerable people, particularly the elderly, are choosing between heating and eating this winter

With Christmas approaching and one of the coldest winters in living memory gripping the country, one of the clearest examples of how deeply poverty affects our society and how brutal its effects are is this: every nine minutes last winter a pensioner died of a cold-related illness. In fact, last winter there were 25,400 cold-related deaths (i.e. deaths occuring in the winter months due to cold that are above average levels of deaths during the rest of the year) in England and Wales, which is relatively far higher than other countries with colder climates than ours.

What is disgraceful is that just as with a lack of clean drinking water in Africa, cold-related winter deaths are prevantable. They happen in the home where with adequate heating people can protect themselves from the health consequences of dangerously low temperatures. The elderly are particularly vulnerable: of the 25,400 deaths last winter mentioned above, 20,600 (81%) were people aged 75 and over. The central cause is fuel poverty: when households spend over 10% of their income just to keep warm, and extreme fuel poverty, where over 20% is spent. In Scotland, a third of Scots live in fuel poverty: 770,000 households, and the figure has been rising steadily over the previous decade: it was under 300,000 in 2002. This Christmas, vulnerable groups of the population are choosing to forego food in order to afford their heating, and many families are choosing to live in only one room of the house in order to afford their heating and keep warm. As a spokesperson of Citizens Advice Scotland recent reported in the Herald:

“One-third of Scots are now officially living in fuel poverty and that is completely unacceptable.

“Advisers across Scotland have reported to us that many people are so worried about their fuel bills that they are going without food in order to keep the heating on.

“Others are planning to spend the Christmas holiday period living more or less in one room, so they don’t have to pay to heat the whole house.

“We’re hearing of too many vulnerable people – including pensioners, sick people and families with young children – who are sitting shivering in their homes this Christmas. Many of them are suffering adverse health problems as a result.”

Four of the biggest six energy suppliers, who provide around 97% of British domestic energy, have increased their prices this winter, prompting criticism from Consumer Focus and Ofgem.

And that is the culprit driving up fuel poverty and inflicting such suffering and even death upon the most vulnerable people in our society: capitalism. Energy companies have been increasing the cost of heating, far above increases in the wholesale price of fuel, in order to make increasing profits from selling us the gas and electricity we need to keep warm. In fact, prices have increased by almost 20% between July 2008 and July 2009. When wholesale prices (the prices at which energy companies buy fuel) rise, energy companies invariably pass this onto consumers, and thus still maintain and increase their profits. When wholesale prices fall however, bills stay the same or even continue to rise, so the energy companies still make massive profits. This the logic of the profit motive, and how it utterly conflicts with human need: as winter hits and the need for heating increases (most of all from the vulnerable) energy companies increase bills to profit from the human need to stay alive through keeping warm. The result is increased profits for the companies, and increased fuel poverty, deprivation, missed meals, and winter deaths for the vulnerable.

This is where calls from socialists for a system which values “people not profit” and “human need and environmental protection, not private profit and ecological destruction” show themsevles not to be just slogans, but real demands which draw attention to the contridictions of capitalism. In the example of fuel poverty, there are two ways of dealing with the problem. One is to put a ‘human face’ on capitalism: increasing winter fuel payments to the vulnerable, one-off  ‘windfall’ taxation of company profits and using the money to subsidise heating bills and improve home efficiency. However, while massaging the logic of capital in this fashion may help to alleviate the worst effects of the problem, but it will not eradicate or solve it. This is because the privately-owned energy companies exist to make profit: without this they cannot exist. As soon as these are threatened, political moves will always be made to scrap those measures which hinder the ability to make maximum profit, including protecting the vulnerable from the negative effects of the profit logic. In many ways, this is the story of what has happened to the welfare state. Rather, in today’s political climate the impulse is for the opposite, where winter fuel support may be further reduced. In any case, such a solution is like a temporary patch on a permanent leak: it never fully deals with the problem and it always in conflict with the overall logic of the situation.

The other solution is to remove the profit motive and to run the system on the motive of serving human need instead. Such a system requires the means of energy extraction and distribution to be publicly owned, i.e. owned by and run for the whole of society, not in order to make a profit for stockholders. The result is that rather than being seen as a commodity to make a profit, energy is seen as a resource by which we are able to heat ourselves in order to stay alive, protect the vulnerable from the negative health effects of winter cold, and allow us to get on with our lives without having to choose between heating and eating. Such an energy system could operate in several ways which would have to be debated, including maximum billing (e.g. no more than 2.5% of any households income) with the rest of the cost met through taxation, to high billing of the super-rich and corporations for energy with the money used to reduce bills of the poorest, to a combination of taxation and subsidies to remove bills from either the most vulnerable or everyone altogether.

Of course, the details of such a move would need to be debated democratically and on a mass basis. The point is: this winter, both poor families in Africa, and in Scotland, indeed all over the world, will be suffering from the logic of capitalism: private profit coming before human need. In our society, fuel poverty is but one example of the structural violence capitalism inflicts upon us all. For me, the only answer for humanity is to develop an alternative that puts human need and the logic of human development at the heart of society. That is why we must debate, develop, and struggle for a socialism fit to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

For an excellent and personal article on fuel poverty in Scotland, read Aiden Kerr’s previous post on the blog here.

Leftfield has already reported how the World Cup, far from being an economic benefit to South Africa, has in fact been a license for FIFA and international capitalism to loot the country.

Now it looks as if the full force of the law might be used to keep the electricity supply to fans’ TVs running, and prevent workers from exercising their right to strike.

Eskom is South Africa’s state owned electricity supplier, although attempts were made to at least partially privatise it in the late 1990s, meaning it operates in many ways as a private business. Eskom workers are demanding a 9% pay increase, as well as a housing allowance to help them cope with the rocketing cost of keeping a roof over their heads. The company has refused to meet their demands, offering increases in wages and allowances well below what the workers need during an economic crisis.

A strike would be unlikely to affect the actual electricity supply to the stadia themselves, as they generally have back up diesel generators. But it could affect the supply to TVs for fans from around the world who are in South Africa without tickets. More importantly for the South African economy, and global capitalism, it could disrupt platinum and gold mines, affecting the global price of these commodities.

In response to the unions pledge to push ahead with strike action next week, as the World Cup moves towards semi finals, Eskom has threatened to go to the courts and have the strike declared illegal, because electricity is deemed an “essential service”, and therefore presumably electricity workers should have no rights. “This is a country of laws and we must all abide by the laws,” said Eskom CEO Brian Dames.

The unions counter that they have tried to reach a ‘minimum service agreement’ with Eskom, meaning that non-essential workers would be able to strike while the lights were kept on. Eskom instead proposed an agreement that would have completely removed the right to strike from all workers, which the unions refused to sign.

What’s particularly ridiculous about Eskom’s refusal to budge is that its own executives have been caught out using company funds to feather their own nests. Executives are to be paid a 9.6 million Rand performance bonus, while they claim they can’t afford to pay their workers properly. They have established a R1 billion pool to fund payments to top bosses.

They’ve also spent R12.6 million on World Cup tickets for top execs.

Dames said he was appealing for “organised labour to play a part in putting our country first.”

But union spokesman Lesiba Seshoka hit back, saying: “We would like to put our country first; why don’t they put their workers first? Why are they putting themselves first?”

After the government attempted to partially privatise Eskom in the late 1990s, it refused to provide funds for the building of extra electrical power plants, meaning that there are now problems with supply leading to blackouts. A huge proportion of the poor population of South Africa continues to have no access to electricity supply.

Protesters slam rising electricity bills

During the Apartheid era, it was common for people to refuse to pay their power bills as a form of struggle against the racist and oppressive government, and to covertly connect themselves to the supply illegally. This form of struggle has seen a resurgence in recent years as the urban poor have been enraged that the impact of neoliberal economic policies means many still have no access to a proper home, electricity or clean water, and for those that do have access to utilities bills have jumped.

These policies have been implemented by the African National Congress government, which has now largely abandoned its left wing roots to become a party that only implements policies that suit South African and international capitalists. Significantly, the British bosses’ paper, the Financial Times, reckons there’ll be no strike because of the ANC. “If things aren’t sorted out by the weekend, expect party heavyweights to get involved,” they write.

The latest strike threat to the World Cup comes after the dramatic strike of stewards at stadia forced police to take over security at games. The stewards were angry that at their poverty pay at the hands of FIFA contractor Stallion Security. They linked up with community protesters who held banners demanding “World Cup for All! People Before Profit” and declaring “Apartheid Still Exists!”

Police used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse strikers before taking over security themselves at games such as the first round match between Brazil and North Korea.

Workers on strike at Soccer City

The heavy handed security for the World Cup has been a scandalous issue, with FIFA using South African police as a tool to protect their own business interests, excluding anyone who wanted to expose their role, or local traders trying to make a livelihood in the zones around the stadia where FIFA has been given exclusive economic control. A local environmentalist was arrested in durban for handing out leaflets about the World Cup’s impact at a ‘Fan Fest’ event, and another man who was found with 30 tickets and “no explanation” was given three years in jail.

Stallion itself is a scandal ridden operation, after a promise by the labour minister to ban it due to its terrible treatment of workers was not fulfilled. In 2001 it was responsible for a stampede at a Johannesburg football game that left 40 dead.

Their partner as head of security for FIFA’s local organising committee is former prisons commissioner Linda Mti, who gets a cut from a notorious privatised concentration camp for immigrants who have been arrested at Lindela (as well as being a triple arrestee for drunk driving.)