Capital, it has been said, can make a product of anything, save its own destruction. Turn off your critical faculties, and the concert in London has all the trappings of some anti-capitalist event: banners reading 'Turn Charity into Justice', artists drawing the world's attention to the G8, bands singing Children of the Revolution. But much as Hitler stole the images of the German left - the red flags, the workers' songs - and converted them into something quite different, so Geldof, Bono and their kind seem to be converting a culture of anti-capitalism by some extraordinary act of alchemy into a celebration of the spontaneous generosity of the rich. 

The lies are so obvious that most children could see through them. The richest man on the world Bill Gates appears on stage as a philanthropist, guided only by his kindness towards the poor. Madonna presents herself to an interviewer as an expert on Africa. Why? Because one of her friends went there once. Paul McCartney is a relevant musician. And Blair, Bush, Brown have anything good to offer Africa.

The last untruth is the worst. Since long before the G8 summit, it has been obvious that the politicians would come up with some deal: debt relief for a number of countries, but on the sole condition that they agree to hand over their remaining industries and services to the private control of Western companies. Anyone who thinks that the privatisation of water, gas and electricity is some neutral act should read read Ashwin Desai's We are the Poors, a brilliant account of the new liberation movements of Soweto and Durban, struggling no longer against apartheid but against the new tyranny that allocates services only to the rich.

The most disturbing part of the concerts is the contrast between their marketing and the reality. The concerts were supposed to mark the continuation of 1985-style music, but with a new political edge. The journalists were astonished when Geldof told them that the point was no longer to give money but to open up a dialogue with Bush and Blair. But instead of turning attention towards the processes that make people poor, the converts turn out to be a celebration of charity, no longer as a private act but as the collective strategy of the most powerful states.

A familiar sentiment tells us that charity corrodes the recipient, converting active people into passive donees. A hundred years ago, Oscar Wilde saw the dynamic more clearly. Even worse is the process by which charity corrodes the giver, turning them into someone smug and self-satisfied with their own generosity. Geldof, really.

Lenin says we should pin our hope on events in Edinburgh, but if London is this bad - surely even Edinburgh will be dragged down with it?

3 July 2005: A nice line or two 

From an old Ian Birchall article: 'As for Live Aid, its role for 1980s rock stars is what "buying my mum and dad a big house" was for their predecessors in the 1950s - confirmation that they are nice boys and girls at heart ... is that in a period with no social movements to exercise a pull in the opposite direction, the profit-makers have tightened their grip and succeeded in making virtually everything they touch anodyne, diluted music for a demoralised public. The industry has even solved the old problem of what to do with those who are too old to rock and roll and too young to die - it sells them Bruce Springsteen and Dire Straits.' (I. Birchall, 'Only rock and roll? A review of Dave Widgery's Beating Time', International Socialism 2:33 (1986), pp. 123-34, 131).

Twenty years later of course there are social movements: the movements against racism, fascism and war. The musicians who do have an authentic connection with them, Nitin Sawney, Damon Albarn - were exactly the people that Bob was most concerned to keep off the stage.