Tobacco and capitalism.

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Mon Dec 7 00:09:48 PST 1998


At 04:16 PM 12/6/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Chris Burford wrote:
>
>>Drugs of addiction make for a particularly reactionary brand of capitalism
>>- I am thinking of alcohol and caffeine (as in Cola), as well as nicotine.
>>
>>Forces are gathering against the capitalist control of nicotine.
>
>Oh please Chris. Liberals love hot rhetoric about tobacco capital; it makes
>them feel militant without taking much social risk. But the reasons people
>smoke are a hell of a lot more complicated than the evil machinations of
>Big Business. Fuck this moral police stuff. It belongs with Clinton and
>Blair and other meddlers.
>
>You're a psychoanalyt, aren't you? Surely you must know something about the
>complexities of desire that lead people to cigrettes. Or are you one of
>those American-style mental hygienists?
>
>Doug

Doug,

I can't say I am surprised by your reaction because I recall you posting dismissively more than a year ago about the case by the States Attorneys General which has run to a figure of hundreds of billions of dollars in compensation. But I am surprised by its strength and I really do not understand why.

On the major question I think it has become apparent that the tobacco companies have been the biggest funders of the campaign to get Clinton, although the Clinton side may be reticent about how much to reveal for fear of even sharper retaliation and because it suits them to portray the anti-Clinton network as a collection of eccentric unreformed plantation capitalists from southern Arkansas, plus fundamentalist Christian right, plus the Moonies. What is at stake is not one clever and narcissistic man, who you may or may not hate, but the ability of capitalist companies to use the bourgeois democratic system to teach lessons to any politician that seriously damages their interests.

Perhaps it is that we come from very different experiences. The word "liberal" has different resonances in the UK than in the USA it seems. In the UK it is not a term of abuse except in marxist circles, and then (as far as I am concerned) it should be used analytically. In the USA I understand it has been successfully presented as a contemptuous term by the right for those on the left of the Democratic Party trying to nudge it towards policies that the right would denounce as Socialist but are in fact reforms of a democratic nature. A whole generation has been brought up with this mind set.

So from the point of view of the serious and even marxist left, the unattractive agenda is whether to work with demoralised moralists who have no perspective to win but just bore everyone with their defeatist preaching. Am I right?

I have to assume that you find that no way forward. But on the other hand you have been consistent in deflating the RRRevolutionary posters in marxism space whenever they argue that revolution is just around the corner, and the final crisis of capitalism is nigh. Your book Wall Street ends modestly and deftly saying that you see the way forward as a gradual one that is in a sense market socialism. You have more recently referred to the formula, socialising the market. You have asked for a couple of years out before coming up with solutions yourself which would socialise finance capital more tightly, but implicitly have not ruled the debate out of order.

I presume your plea here is to oppose moralistic politics against capitalism. In the UK there is a strong current of Christian socialism for more than two centuries, and that of course is not marxism. The beer barons were among the strongest supporters of the Conservative Party, even after the time of the pocket boroughs when free beer would be given out to beat up the other side. British cities are littered with late Victorian pubs on once prestigious street corners called "The Salisbury", after Roseberry, the Conservative Prime Minister who stabilised Conservative rule following the First Reform Act.

Yes the Christian socialist reply was teetotalism, which split the working class and is not a materialist response the drug pedlers, and marginalised the left.

(The recent Swiss campaign to legalise all drugs and make them available through civic centres, and which attracted 1/3 of the vote, is far more interesting.)

In the case of nicotine, the British Medical Association has been banging on for decades against the promotion of smoking as it does against boxing.
>From time to time there are national no-smoking days, and everyone is made
to feel guilty. But young people continue to start smoking at a dangerous rate, and the rate is rising for girls for whom latest research shows they may be even more vulnerable than boys.

I certainly accept that the taking of mild to moderate drugs is a much more complex psycho-social process than just getting the drug into the body. It is about socialising, about passing a barrier, about risk taking, about breaking with childhood and parental guidance, about exchanging signifiers in the shape of small commodities, that convey complex messages of mutuality and reciprocity, the offer of a light by a man to a woman, and less commonly the other way round, may illuminate the road to further intimacy ...

Cigarettes may be somewhat phallus shaped. But more so cigars, and when wrapped in cellophane may actually meet a similar need to that of a phallus.

Freud is famously quoted as saying "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar". What a relief. But Doug, when I post an item totalling the annual profits of the three major tobacco capitalists in the UK, a market of roughly 50 million inhabitants, at around 3 billion dollars, then we cannot say a cigarette is just a cigarette.

The news item I reported actually shows how careful the new third way is to avoid moralism. There is no message in the selected facts that smoking cigarettes is morally bad for the general adult population. The appeal is to the adult population to be concerned to the risk to children, and to realise that the tobacco companies are shortening the lives of the children

on whom they parents have devoted sweat and tears. It is an argument of self-interest, not moralism.

It is significant how it gets reported in a paper like the Mirror, successfully, since the Mirror is thought to represent the Labour-voting section of the manual working class. Any moralism would be a disaster in terms of uniting the class. The spin here avoids that and the article though short, was relatively informative.

The timing is probably also significant. Today is the first hearing in the High Court of the merits of the first group action to take place outside the USA against the tobacco companies, and an interview has already taken place this morning with the solicitor for the action, Martin Day.

52 people are bringing the case against Imperial Tobacco and Gallagher. 36 of them are outside the 3 year limit normally required for compensation cases. The essence of the matter is, as in the States, what the tobacco companies knew in the 60's.

The solicitor has been trawling the US documentation and sees big similarities.

The judges have to decide the merits on proceeding with the case on

a) whether the reasons for the delay are good or bad

b) whether the parties would be prejudiced by the delay

c) whether the case is strong enough to give reasonable cause to proceed.

This last point in connection with tobacco companies has never been tested before in British law. I get the impression the applicants expect to be successful.

If so the case will start to be heard in the year 2000.

This seems to be another example of bourgeois right not always working in the interests of the capitalist system.

But Doug, obviously I do not want to cause you psychic pain. (With Louis I am resigned to a robust relationship where I hope the mental sadism is at least mutual).

What is bugging you about this campaign? Are you against it in principle or are you just against moralistic politics? Can you give examples because I do not accept that the campaign to curtail the power of the tobacco capitalists has to be moralistic. It will also be more clear headed if it is not.

Chris Burford

London.



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