Bob Geldof; Fuck Off!

So, Sir Bob Geldof has organised simultaneous world wide concerts, show casing some of the worlds richest, trite and uninspiring bands, in an attempt to send a message to the political elite that will be assembled at Gleneagles. The concert will be a “unique opportunity for Britain to do something unparalleled in the world-to tilt the world a little bit on its axis in favour of the poor”-Geldof. Presumably, following the concert we can expect a monumental rise in the minimum wage, an abolition of sweat-shop labour and a lowering of the retirement age to 50, and that’s just for starters.

Sir Bob is clearly a big fan of the Christian notion that through self sacrifice we can help others, if we sit through 12 hours of the pretentious bullshit that Chris Martin, Bono et al have to offer then our suffering will be rewarded by a higher body (the G8 leaders) and they’ll drop the debt and flood markets with “fair trade” products.

The concert, to be held on the same day as a protest march against the G8 in Edinburgh, will apparently not be about charity but ‘for political justice’. Yet Geldof’s pious pleadings are all about charity, it’s about us rich westerners helping our poor brother in Africa.

The call is for a promotion of ‘fair trade’ (note a product is fair trade if it contains upwards of 6% of produce from farmers who have been given a ‘decent wage’ for the produce their workers produce) and an increase in aid to the world’s poorest countries. It’s ostensibly about damming rivers with cotton wool and dressing stab wounds with elasto-plasts. Of course “fair trade” is no bad thing when compared to competing coffee and banana companies such as Chiquita, after all they do provide some basic amenities for workers and purportedly allow union association, although it remains to be seen what kind of reaction would be meted out to the workers were they to ditch their bosses and organise production democratically and for their communities as opposed to export. However those who propagate “fair trade” as a solution to poverty and exploitation are seriously deluded. “Fair trade” is little more than the modernisation of the global market of the commodity in the same way that Punk was a profitable modernisation of the music industry in that it opened up new markets. The sanitised exploitation of “fair trade” can happily subsist next to the most brutal and bloody forms of exploitation.

The reality is that the overblown ego’s of the music establishment are in no position to alleviate world poverty, they may pontificate to others what they see as solutions to the poverty of global capital but in truth if they really thought that charity could change anything they’d immediately transfer their inflated bank balances to the leaders of anyone of the poor African nations. Geldof preaches to the world from his ivory tower, he is so detached from the reality of the situation that the best solution he can offer is to attend 12 hours of neutralisation and to wash it down with enough fair trade coffee to induce the kind of diahorrea that daily spills forth from his flatulent gob.

The tangible hypocrisy of the whole spectacle has been highlighted by the news that the ‘make poverty history’ wristbands that have been marketed to all those discerning consumers are actually manufactured in Chinese sweatshops. But the contradictions run much deeper, Geldof et al may only see rich nations and poor nation. The reality is that nations get rich off their people, Britain is a rich nation yet has one of the highest child poverty rates, lowest working weeks and lowest pay in Europe. Most people can’t afford to go down to London then travel up to Edinburgh in a day. The fair trade lobby perpetuate and spread the myth that we can only change the world as consumers, if this myth we’re not so prevalent it would be easy to laugh off. Consumerism is merely a by-product of capitalism. For a product to be marketable it must be sold at a higher price than the costs of production, those who make the good must be paid less than the worth of the product they make, this is the essence of capitalism and exploitation. Hence increasing the price paid to small producers for their coffee, wool, tea doesn’t change the social relationship between the exploiter and the exploited but merely raises the bar a little bit, it means that the standards of exploitation are developed to somewhere near those in the developed world. All the big name companies now advocate some form of ‘fair trade’ Tescos sells ‘fair trade’ products while simultaneously waging a war against sick pay for their own workers. The exploited in the first world cannot abolish global poverty through expressing their own poverty in consumer “choices”, the global consumer market is built from the blood, sweat and toil of workers the world over and it is only these workers who can fundamentally change the world for the better.

The only way to abolish world poverty is to bring down the hierarchical system that feeds off and breeds poverty, without material and qualitative poverty capitalism could not function since it is based upon the imposition of work and exploitation and no one in their right mind subordinates themselves to a boss and employment if they can live freely without such a burden. The poverty of those in Africa, Asia and South America is interlinked with the poverty of those in North America and Europe, they are not two distinct worlds. The action of the working class in Europe (in fighting against their exploitation and the imposition of the profit motive) has forced capital to seek cheaper and more exploitable labour in the third world, in turn this cheaper labour facilitates greater profits for company executives based in the first world and opens up new avenues for exploitation in the service and leisure sector. It is the working classes of the world alone that have the power to truly make poverty, and those who prosper from it, history. Only with the fall of capitalism will we have a chance to alleviate world poverty.

The leaders of the G8 will welcome their friends flagellating themselves ‘for Africa’ in Hyde Park, Philadelphia, Paris and Rome, since they understand the impotence of the musicians better than the musicians themselves. And hopefully the concert will augment a larger ‘fair trade’ market from which the discerning consumer can declare their utter impotence and assuage their consciences. But at the end of the day all will be the same.

Bob Geldof cannot be reformed, just kick him till he breaks!