Anarchism: No State, No Market by Howard Moss (1986)

Blogger's Note: 

The article below by Socialist Party member and regular Socialist Standard writer, Howard Moss, first appeared in the 1986 Freedom Press anthology, Freedom: A Hundred Years 1886-1986, which, as the title suggests, was a special book published by Freedom Press to mark its centenary. I remember buying the anthology in Freedom Bookshop in Aldgate in the early 1990s, and it was a surprise at the time to see Howard's name within its pages — I perhaps applied my hostility clause a bit too literally back in the day — but it's a good piece of succinct writing and, I think in its own way, its general point overlaps with Rubel and Crump's book, Non-Market Socialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century, which was originally published around about the same time period.

According to bookfinder.com, the cheapest secondhand copy of the anthology would set you back forty dollars today, so it's good to know that a PDF of the book is available over at LibCom. It's worth checking out, not just for Howard's article, but for its history of early British anarchism, the biographical sketches of forgotten Anarchist activists over the decades, and articles from such anarchist 'names' as Colin Ward, Alex Comfort, George Woodcock, Crass, Nicolas Walter, Donald Rooum and Vernon Richards. As an added bonus, it also features a cartoon by longstanding Socialist Standard cartoonist, Peter Rigg, in his Kronstadt Kids period.

Anarchism: No State, No Market

What do anarchists want? It’s a difficult one. Perhaps an easier one along the same lines would be ‘What do anarchists have in common?’ And for me the answer to this one was summed up by Donald Rooum in the May 1986 Freedom through the words of his cartoon creation Wildcat: ‘You get rid of governments by convincing people to withdraw support’. Yes, that’s it, getting rid of governments, and of course getting rid of the thing they govern — the state. The next question, however, has got to be ‘What kind of a stateless society do we want?’ Even if we can’t be expected to give a blueprint, we can at least be expected to give some kind of idea of how things will be organised and the kind of life that will be possible in a society that doesn’t have the state to change it.

Let me say right away that, as I see it, there are two possible choices of the kind of stateless society. And the choices are simple ones. We either have a stateless society with a market or a stateless society without a market. If you’re an anarchist who doesn’t envisage getting rid of the market, then automatically, whether you realise it or not, you’re talking about keeping buying and selling, trade, money, banks, financial institutions, and so on — in other words all the paraphernalia of capitalism, even if it’s capitalism without the state. And there are people, anarcho-capitalists they call themselves, who argue precisely for this kind of arrangement. They want an entirely free-market world, without national frontiers, with a single world currency and where private ownership extends to everything imaginable and the ethos, even more than now, is unbridled competition. Freedom dealt with them (not very well, in my opinion) in October 1984 (Vol 45 No 10) and later referred to them as a ‘squalid bunch’. I doubt whether many readers of Freedom would want to be associated with them either. But the rub is that, unless as an anarchist you advocate not just the abolition of the state but also the abolition of the market system, then logically you can’t escape being an ‘anarcho-capitalist’. Because as long as you’ve still got the market or an exchange society of any kind, then you’ve still got some form of capitalism, or at any rate some form of property society.

Now I know most anarchists would say, if it were put to them, that they don’t want the market system or the exchange economy that goes with it. But how often do they explicitly express this point of view? And how often is it explicitly expressed in anarchist literature? In my experience, very rarely. And this is a pity, because one of the greatest difficulties in putting anarchist views across is reaction from people along the lines ‘You’ve got nothing practical to replace the present system with?’ or ‘An anarchist society would be chaos’. Yet if we stressed not just the stateless but also the marketless nature of anarchism, we’d be making anarchist views that much easier for people to grasp and not react to like that, because we’d be putting across the idea that it’s the market that’s chaos in the way it arbitrarily dictates how much we shall or shall not have, what work we shall or shall not do, the kind of lives we shall or shall not live. And as a logical converse to that, we’d be offering a society in which, instead of competing among one another in a system of privately owned wealth, we could all work together to provide for our needs using the commonly owned resources of the earth. If we did this, we’d not only be putting across the idea that human needs and human worth shouldn’t be measured by money and profit but also advocating a practical alternative in which that wouldn’t happen.

I’ll raise a few hackles now by saying that, having reached this point, we’re pretty close to what some people would understand by ‘socialism’. Not the ‘socialism’ of the Labour Party, or Russia, or China, or the left-wing groups, but the socialism of ‘from each according to ability to each according to need’ and ‘the abolition of the wages system’. These of course are things Marx said (though he did not originate the sayings) and we’ve got to reject a hell of a lot of other things Marx said, but should we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater? Why should’t we accept that those ideas provide a sound basis (as I see it, the only basis) for a truly free society?

It may or may not come as a surprise now if I say that I consider myself a socialist, but when people say to me (as they often do) ‘Isn’t what you’re talking about anarchism?’, I say ‘Yes, as long as by anarchism you mean not just a society organised without a state but also one organised without a market’. That is after all the only road to freedom — isn’t it?

Howard Moss

Socialist Sonnet No. 146: Crossing the Floor (2024)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Crossing the Floor

Divided, it seems, by just two sword lengths

Are green benched Capulets and Montagues,

Who, in vitriolic rivalry stew

As vexed ambition flexes its strength.

Whether feeling neglected, rejected

Or some bitter sense of injured pride,

One crosses the floor to the other side,

Where greater rewards might be expected.

This act of principle or betrayal

Is mitigated by the growing sense

That it makes little or no difference,

As every Commons cause is doomed to fail.

No matter what the rivals do or say,

Capital profits, and must have its way.

 

D. A.

Blogger's Note: 

A sonnet written, no doubt, in reaction to the recent news of Tory M.P., Dr. Dan Poulter, defecting to the Labour Party.

April's "Done & Dusted"

An even quieter month than last month. Only 5 Socialist Standards "done and dusted" in April. 

In fairness to myself, I have been trying to do other 'Party work' elsewhere in the last month. But that other stuff is a work in progress, and it's too soon to say anything more at this point. However, it is disappointing that I didn't finish more April Standards, as there's not that many Standards from the month of April to complete now. It possibly could have been the first month in this digitisation project to be fully finished.

The finished Standards are broken up into separate decades for the hard of hearing.

April's "Done & Dusted"

April 1933

April 1948

April 1958

April 1961

April 2024

SPGB May Events (2024)

Party News from the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our general discussion meetings are held on Zoom. To connect to a meeting, enter https://zoom.us/wc/join/7421974305 in your browser. Then follow instructions on screen and wait to be admitted to the meeting.

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The princes are nothing but tyrants who flay the people; they fritter away our blood and sweat on their pomp and whoring and knavery.’ These were the words of Thomas Müntzer at the head of the massed ranks of a peasant army in the year 1525. Ranged against him was the might of the princes of the German Nation. How did Müntzer, the son of a coin maker from central Germany, rise in just a few short years to become one of the most feared revolutionaries in early modern Europe? 

(Penguin Random House)

Like many of Myanmar’s young men and women, Ko Naing said he had no intention of answering the call and would instead do whatever it takes to avoid the draft. ‘The one sure thing is I won’t serve. If I’m drafted by the military, I will try to move to the remote areas or to another country,’ Ko Naing told Al Jazeera from Myanmar. ‘Not only me, I think everyone in Myanmar is not willing to serve in the military under the conscription law’, he said. 

(Al Jazeera)

The ‘one land, two peoples’ analysis of the situation is nonsensical. The land does not belong to the people [proletariat], anywhere in the world. It belongs to those [bourgeoisie] who own it. This might seem very theoretical, but the mere existence of social relations on the ground shows to whom the idea of two camps belongs, ie, the ruling [bourgeois] class.

(libcom.org)

South Africa’s Western Cape is known for its dramatic coastlines and acres of wineland. But behind the blue skies and rolling hills, the province is grappling with a heartbreaking health crisis. The area has the highest rate of foetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) in the world – a group of debilitating and life-long disabilities caused when a mother drinks during pregnancy. Whilst FASD affects about 0.7 per cent of the world’s population, in the Western Cape rates are as high as 31 per cent, and across South Africa, it’s estimated that 11 per cent of all newborns are affected each year.

(The Telegraph)

As BBC Ukraine reported in November, 650,000 Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 years old have left Ukraine for Europe since the start of the war. Zelensky’s former adviser Alexey Arestovich recently claimed that 4.5 million Ukrainian men, nearly half of the Ukrainian male population, had fled abroad to avoid military service, and that 30 to 70 percent of military units consist of ‘refuseniks’ who have gone absent without official leave (AWOL) .

(WSWS.ORG)

‘And if they’ve refused three offers of a job, or whatever the number would be, and they say ‘I’m sorry, I’m not doing any of that’, you then say – in which case you must go and do two years in the Armed Forces’. 

(Daily Express)

‘Universities should be havens for robust debate, discussion, and learning—not sites of censorship where administrators, donors, and politicians squash political discourse they don’t approve of’ said the head of the NYCLU.

(Common Dreams)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Halo, Halo! (2024)

The Halo Halo Column from the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Social media shorthand SMH means ‘shakes my head’. When the German Hindenburg airship caught fire landing in New Jersey in 1937 the radio commentator cried out, ‘oh, the humanity!’ The current seventh-century rulers of Afghanistan cause both of those reactions. The Telegraph, 25 March, reports that a Mullah there has declared, ‘we will soon implement the punishment for adultery. We will flog women in public. We will stone them to death in public.’ Words fail.

*****

Fulcrum7.com in a book review says the author posits the ridiculous theory that Noah carried dinosaurs onto the Ark as juveniles or even as eggs. Because obviously think of the space a pair of eighty-foot dinosaurs would take up! The reviewer says, rubbish! Well of course. That’s like the old comedy routine where someone claims to have two lions, a giraffe and an elephant in a shoebox they’re carrying. The reviewer then says, ‘I believe the dinosaurs were among the “confused species”, which were the result of genetic engineering and one of the reasons for the Flood was to destroy those animals’. Words fail.

*****

In June 1812 Napoleon Bonaparte and his French army invaded Russia. In 1812 Mary Anning and, initially, her brother dug the skeleton of an unknown seventeen-foot-long creature from the cliffs of Lyme Regis. Now it’s known that it was the skeleton of an ichthyosaur from the Jurassic period. Mary Anning was aged twelve when she discovered this.

With hindsight, which of those two events was the most important? It’s not known if this is one of the animals that the Flood failed to destroy.

Mary Anning and her family were avid fossil harvesters selling their finds to tourists. Oxford professor William Buckland teamed up with Mary. Peal writes that Buckland was a committed Christian who had difficulty in reconciling Mary’s finds with Bible stories. To maintain his delusion Buckland said that the skeleton must have come there as a result of the Flood.

Mary also discovered a plesiosaur and a pterodactyl. She is quoted as saying that, ‘great men of learning had taken advantage of her.’ ‘They ‘sucked her brains’ of her knowledge, and stole the glory of her discoveries for themselves’ (Meet the Georgians, Robert Peal, 2021,).

*****

The protagonist sees a group of flagellants in St James’s Park. He converses about it with his chauffeur who says; ‘I find it ridiculous. If God exists and He’s decided He’s had enough of us, He isn’t going to change his mind because a rabble of no-hopers dress up in yellow and go wailing through the park.’

‘Do you believe He exists?

‘Perhaps His experiment went spectacularly wrong. Perhaps He’s just baffled. Seeing the mess, not knowing how to put it right. Perhaps not wanting to put it right. Perhaps He only had enough power for one intervention. So He made it. Whoever he is, whatever He is, I hope He burns in His own Hell’ (The Children of Men, P.D. James, 1992).

DC

Propaganda of the deed (2024)

Book Review from the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Devilish Kind of Courage. By Andrew Whitehead. Reaktion Books. 320 pages.

Andrew Whitehead recounts here the events and background to the ‘Siege of Sidney Street’ in the East End of London in January 1911 in which two Latvian revolutionaries, wanted for the killing of three policeman in a botched attempt to rob a jewellery shop the previous month, were cornered. After a shoot-out the two were burned to death when the house they were holed up in caught (or was set on) fire and no attempt to extinguish it made. The supposed ringleader, dubbed ‘Peter the Painter’ by the police, became a legend but was never found.

It was a sensation at the time and led to an (unsuccessful) campaign to stop the immigration of ‘aliens’ from Tsarist Russia. This was often openly anti-semitic, even though those involved were Latvians. The Russian revolution of 1905, after an initial success in extracting concessions from the Tsarist regime, was brutally suppressed. Some of the revolutionaries turned to bank robberies to obtain money to finance revolutionary organisation and activity (and survive). Exiled to Western Europe some continued this, including those involved in the attempt to rob a jewellery shop in December 1910 and a wages robbery in Tottenham in January 1909. They were described as ‘anarchists’ and were certainly acquainted with anarchist ideas. The three most well-known anarchists living in Britain at the time — Kropotkin, Malatesta and Rocker — repudiated their tactics. However, ‘propaganda of the deed’ was advocated and practised, in the form of assassinations and robberies, by other anarchists at the time.

Whitehead examines the milieu in which exiles and immigrants from Tsarist Russia in the East End of London moved, mainly Yiddish-speaking Jews but also others including Latvians from the Baltic region. He also identifies who Peter the Painter most likely was. His well-researched and detailed book looks like being the definitive study of what the Socialist Standard of the time described as ‘the recent world-stirring East End melodrama’ (as well giving a socialist analysis of it and its repercussions).

Adam Buick

Proper Gander: Going public about going private (2024)

The Proper Gander Column from the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard 

There are several connotations with the word ‘private’, in relation to ‘private hospitals’ or ‘private healthcare’. The description means that they are privately owned companies with the purpose of generating profits for their shareholders, with medical treatment as the product they sell. The word ‘private’ also suggests that these hospitals are select, and separate from the NHS and the majority who use it. This isn’t always the case, as shown in Panorama’s investigation NHS Patients Going Private: What Are The Risks? (BBC One). The word ‘private’ also implies being reluctant to reveal too much, so the documentary was of some use in highlighting issues which private hospitals would sooner be made less public.

One of the symptoms of the ailing NHS has been increasing delays for treatment, with more than six million people in England in the worrying position of coping with a worsening condition while they wait their turn. In an effort to reduce the length of waiting lists, some of these patients have been referred to private hospitals for surgery, with the costs paid from NHS funds. In 2023 around 800,000 NHS patients were handled by private hospitals in this way. Many of these went to one of the 39 hospitals run by Spire Healthcare Group plc, the second-largest private provider in the UK. Since 2021, Spire has treated more than half a million NHS patients, contracts for which have made up around 30 percent of its revenue. Reporter Monika Plaha looks at two aspects of how Spire runs which have had a devastating effect on some of its patients: staffing and arrangements for dealing with emergencies.

Spire’s management of its staff was questioned after two surgeons they employed were separately exposed as dangerously incompetent. Since then, concerns have focused on low staffing levels, especially at nights and weekends, and how alert people can be during back-to-back shifts. Resident doctors have been contracted by Spire for up to 168 hours a week including nights on call, whereas doctors’ working hours in the NHS are capped at 48 a week. Almost all the ex-Spire doctors interviewed for Panorama were worried about the consequences of their high workloads and protracted shifts. Hiring insufficient numbers of staff is one of the most obvious ways of minimising costs to maximise profits, regardless of the more obvious risks to patient safety. For the documentary, Spire provides a bland statement that it now has ‘robust safeguards’ and resident doctors only work ‘when adequately rested’.

The programme also describes failings in how private hospitals have dealt with complications during surgery, whether suffered by referred-in NHS patients or those paying directly. Most private hospitals don’t have intensive care or high-dependency units, so when a patient’s condition deteriorates or a procedure fails, they have to be transferred to an NHS hospital for emergency treatment. Moving a patient during a crisis carries risks, made worse by having to rely on an ambulance which could take hours to arrive, even when the hospitals are close to each other. The programme features interviews with people who have tragically lost loved ones due to complications which Spire hospitals couldn’t cope with and which weren’t dealt with by an NHS hospital in time.

Private hospitals don’t have facilities to deal with crises because they tend to treat medical issues less likely to have serious complications which require care in a high-dependency unit. And they tend not to deal with high-risk operations because these come with additional costs for specialist surgeons or equipment, and would therefore be less profitable. In other words, patients with complex conditions aren’t financially attractive. As Sally Gainsbury of the Nuffield Trust points out, around a third of NHS patients have health issues too complicated to be managed in private hospitals, so they must wait longer for NHS treatment. This is exacerbating a two-tier system where healthier people can be treated quicker privately. One way of reducing this disparity would be for private hospitals to have adequate intensive care facilities, avoiding the risks with transferring patients back to NHS hospitals in emergencies. But this requires investment, raising costs which will mean that fewer people will be able to afford private treatment, whether funded through the NHS or not. So far, private healthcare organisations like Spire have been reluctant to invest in facilities for crises, or sufficient numbers of staff. Despite this, and the criticisms made of it, Spire is aspiring to carry out more complex procedures and have longer-term contracts with the NHS. This isn’t with the aim of helping out the beleaguered ‘public’ sector, but to extend its market share. Last year, Spire’s profits increased by over 30 percent to £126 million, and any expansion will be guided by what’s likely to generate further profits rather than by meeting need.

Reformists call for the NHS to have more funding so it doesn’t need to refer patients to private hospitals, but there will never be enough money for the utopian NHS they want. Even if a government wanted to adequately fund the NHS, other economic imperatives would prevent this, especially the need for profit which guides the system overall. The ‘public’ ownership of the NHS means that it isn’t directly profit-driven, but it still has to survive in the profit-driven system, alongside and inter-dependent with private healthcare.

Every day, skilled and dedicated staff in NHS and private hospitals perform life-saving operations which would have looked like miracles just a few years ago. Somehow, they carry on despite the obstacles put in their way by the system they work in, such as the routine of long shifts in understaffed wards because this minimises costs, or having to gamble on surgery being straightforward because other hospitals with facilities for dealing with crises are overstretched. Trying to overcome these obstacles with reforms or revised contracts or reallocated funding is a never-ending struggle because this approach can’t change the system which creates the problems. It only addresses the symptoms without curing the cause.

Mike Foster

End Capitalism (2024)

From the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism – it’s the system that, for now, rules throughout the world, in either private or state forms.

The driver and fundamental characteristic of this system is capital accumulation, or put more simply, profit.

If the bosses have no expectation of profit, there is no production.

And the result? At an economic level, continuous instability and pressure on workers’ employment conditions.

And the inevitable capitalistic competition leads to a struggle for the control of natural resources and markets, Hence so much energy wasted in military preparations and the perpetual threat of war.

On top of that, the system requires constant expansion which explains the threat of environmental catastrophe.

No reform can make a difference to the fundamental characteristic of capitalism. None.

So if we want real, permanent progress for everyone we have to replace capitalism with a system in which the economic driver is the satisfaction of the material needs of every person.

And on a worldwide level too. A cooperative society, without bosses, without frontiers, with free access to the social product.

This is what we call socialism. With the tremendous productive capabilities that have been developed under the rule of capital, the new society is within reach. All that is lacking is the will of the majority of the workers to bring it into being.

Cooking the Books: An April Fool (2024)

The Cooking the Books column from the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the First of April the Guardian seemingly pulled off a good April Fool as many people wouldn’t have recognised it as such. They published an article by a ‘Stuart Kells’ who argued that banks can create money out of thin air and that governments don’t need to tax or borrow money.

‘Stuart Kells’ begins by criticising a scene in the 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life in which:

‘depositors demand their money from a small town building society. Its manager, George Bailey (in an unforgettable performance by James Stewart), explains that the money is not in the building society’s vault; it has been lent to other people in the town. “The money’s not there,” Bailey pleads. “Your money’s in Joe’s house … and in the Kennedy house, and Mrs Macklin’s house, and a hundred others.”’

The joke consisted in claiming that this explanation of how a bank works is incorrect:

‘Banks don’t lend out money from reserves or deposits or other sources of pre-existing funds. (…) When you borrow money and your bank credits your loan account, the account is created anew, “from thin air” …’

If by this point Guardian readers hadn’t realised that the article was an April Fool, they just needed to consider how a building society operates. If it could create a mortgage out of thin air why would it need to attract depositors? Why do building societies compete with each other by offering savers an attractive rate of interest on their deposits? And why did Northern Rock go bust?

That James Stewart was correct was confirmed when in 2022 central banks raised the bank rate, as the rate of interest at which they lend money to commercial banks. As a result, the rate at which banks lend to each other via the money market, if at the end of the day the money they have paid out is less than the money that came in, also went up. As banks were paying more to borrow ‘wholesale’ they had to raise the rate of interest which they charged those they lent money to. They were slower to raise the money they paid savers who lent them money ‘retail’ but eventually they had to as borrowing from savers is cheaper than continually borrowing from the money market.

The financial media rediscovered the concept of ‘net interest income’ as the difference between the income from the interest the banks charged borrowers and the amount they had to pay those they borrowed money from. That banks — and, more obviously, building societies — are basically financial intermediaries borrowing money at one rate of interest and re-lending it at a higher rate was evident for anyone to see.

Perhaps the Guardian was relying on this for its readers to realise that they were dealing with an April Fool. In case this was not enough, ‘Stuart Kells’ went on to claim that governments don’t need to impose taxes or borrow money and that they should simply create and spend it. Governments have been known to try this, as in Zimbabwe, but the result has not been quite as intended. And, why do governments borrow money and pay interest for it when they don’t need to?

Maybe it was us who were fooled as it turns out that Stuart Kells is a real person and the author of a book entitled Alice TM: The Biggest Untold Story in the History of Money from which the article was extracted. Knowing how the Guardian allows funny money merchants free range in its columns — in this case, MMT, which stands for Modern Monetary Theory and Magic Money Tree — we should have realised it wasn’t intended as a joke after all.

50 Years Ago: Students against democracy (2024)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Liverpool was proud of The Beatles and its connection with that Cunard Line. What the city thinks of the conference of the National Union of Students held there early April is another thing. Hundreds of delegates from universities, polytechnics etc. assembled for their annual jamboree. Over the years, this conference has endorsed some pretty queer ideas, but 1974 will go down as a vintage year.

This assembly debated students’ grants; elected a new President (a political loner we are told) by 21 votes; didn’t agree to send a delegation to Czechoslovakia to see if the Czech students’ union were democratic enough to form links with the NUS (would their journey have been really necessary?). Then came the body blow to democracy and the right of people to express their views. The outcome of this debate intimated they had a lot in common with the Communist-Party-dominated Czechoslovakia.

A majority of the delegates “voted yesterday to take whatever measures were necessary, including disruption of meetings, to prevent members of racialist or fascist organizations from speaking in colleges” (Guardian, 5th April, 1974).

(…)

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has personal experience of what happens when such a decision as that of the NUS is operative. We arranged a debate in North London against the National Front. An opportunity for the audience to weigh up the two conflicting schools of thought — socialist or nationalist. We were of the opinion that the audience would be able to judge for themselves the validity of the arguments. But our dear “lefty” types thought otherwise. They broke up the meeting. Did they consider the audience to be such a bunch of morons that they could not judge? Obviously they did, and this might just be the reason why these “revolutionaries” wish to appoint themselves as leaders of the masses. They know what is good for us — they know what we should hear.

Democracy, never a favourite word in their vocabulary, means a method of conducting affairs where a majority decision is reached on the basis of all information being readily available. Who are these self-styled dictators, who in the name of democracy, wish to decide what we shall or what we shall not hear? The suppression of “unpopular views” by violence does not eradicate these ideas. This can only be done by a free exchange of ideas.

(From the Socialist Standard, May 1974)

Action Replay: Abuse of position (2024)

The Action Replay column from the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

It started with a kiss, when in August last year the head of the Spanish FA kissed one of the players, Jenni Hermoso, on the lips at the award ceremony for the Women’s World Cup. This led to a great many protests, with the president (who has been the subject of other complaints) being forced to resign, being banned from football activities for three years and then being charged in a court. Except of course that it didn’t start there at all, as women athletes have frequently been subject to discrimination and sexual harassment.

Many women coaches in football, for instance, have encountered prejudice of various kinds, including verbal and physical assaults, and even being completely ignored by the male coach of the opposing team at a match. Only about one professional coach in ten in UK sport is a woman.

Swimming is an area that is particularly problematic. From girl swimmers who have problems with periods during a training session to those who just don’t want to appear in a swimming costume in front of the whole school, young female swimmers can encounter all sorts of difficulties. The appearance of women swimmers can lead to body shaming if they have big shoulders. Last year two Italian TV presenters made sexist remarks at an aquatic championship, describing a Dutch woman diver as ‘big’, adding, ‘They’re all equally tall in bed’.

Women who are swimming just for fun and exercise often encounter sexist behaviour too: being followed into the showers, having their bottom pinched or being leered at from the public gallery, and men swimming slowly in front of them or taking up excessive space,

Prejudice in sport doesn’t just affect women, of course, as male swimmers can also be subjected to remarks about them gaining weight. In football there was an appalling scandal involving sexual abuse by coaches and scouts of young male players, starting in the 1970s. The true scale of this only emerged from 2016, with fourteen men being convicted. However, it does seem to apply to women more often, and girl gymnasts have been starved and body-shamed by coaches, with the ostensible aim of improving their performance, and very many have described physically abusive behaviour,

It’s not just in sport: in education, entertainment, business and so on, people in authority can harass and even abuse those they have power over. All in a society based on hierarchy, with pervasive sexism.

Paul Bennett

Editorial: The Middle East: capitalist powder keg (2024)

Editorial from the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The tit for tat rocket attacks between Israel and Iran have brought to the surface the real issue in the Middle East — whether the US and its allies should or should not control the fossil reserves and the trade routes in the area, which are vital to the operation of capitalism in their parts of the world.

The US position was clearly spelt out in 1980 by President Carter in his State of the Union message:

‘An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force’.

This wasn’t just words. In 1991 the US waged the Gulf War after Iraq invaded Kuwait and in 2003 the Iraq War that led to the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime there. This allowed the US to establish bases in Iraq to add to those in the Gulf states. The civil war in Syria allowed it to establish one there too. Its main asset in the region, however, has been Israel, its support for which has been ‘ironclad’ and which it has armed to the teeth.

With the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, the threat to US domination has come from Iran where, in 1979, the pro-US regime was overthrown and replaced by a brutal theocracy. The economic system there remained capitalist and the new regime aggressively pursued Iran’s national capitalist interests against those of the US. Iran, too, has its ‘bases’ throughout the region in the form of ‘proxy’ militias, in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. Iran is opposed to Israel ostensibly on religious grounds but essentially because Israel is US’s main asset in the region that needs to be destroyed if US control is to be ended.

Israel, as a capitalist state in its own right, has its own agenda. Its present rulers aspire to protect its existence as a separate state, to establish its rule over the whole of the former Ottoman province of Palestine; which involves the permanent political repression of the non-Jewish population living there. As far as the US is concerned, this is a diversion from why it supports Israel and undermines Israel’s usefulness to them.

In this sense Israel’s savage war of retaliation on Hamas and the whole population of Gaza for Hamas’s massacre of Israeli citizens on 7 October is a horrific sideshow.

Where all this will end is unclear. But one thing is not. The Middle East is a powder keg as a result of a conflict between capitalist states over who shall control raw material resources, and the trade routes to transport these out of the region. Capitalism’s competitive struggle for profits breeds such conflicts. Wars, the threat of war, and the waste of armaments will exist as long as capitalism does.

Socialist Sonnet No. 145: Human Relations (2024)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Human Relations

All the hot air in parliament inflates

Small boats wallowing over the Channel

Into problems, fetching those who might steal

Low paid jobs from Saint George and his mates,

Foreign fathers and mothers recklessly

Risking drowning their children to evade

Regulations. So, a stand must be made

To staunch this dire influx, especially

If there are votes to be quite cheaply won

By cultivating old prejudices,

Any visceral view that dismisses

Common humanity, once reason’s gone.

Should heated rhetoric be deflated,

Revelation! We are all related.

D. A.

“I hoped he liked me as well as I liked him.”

On this day in history in 1938 George Orwell's memoir from the Spanish Civil War, The Homage to Catalonia, was published.

Posted below are a selection of articles and book reviews from the Socialist Standard covering both Orwell and the Spanish Civil War:

• Dec 1936: Editorial: Atrocities in Spain
• Feb 1937: Some Lessons from Spain
• Mar 1938: Review of Spanish Testament, by Arthur Koestler
• Apr 1939: The Last Hour in Madrid
• Dec 1949: Into the Crystal Ball
• Aug 1954: Barcelona 1937
• Mar 1971: Coming up for Orwell
• May 1980: Literary lefties in the 1930s
• Dec 1983: Orwell's Nightmare
• Aug 1986: Spanish Civil War
• Oct 1986: The Political Ideas of George Orwell
• May 1997: George Orwell, Spain and anti-fascism
• Feb 1998: A review of Friends of Durruti Group: 1937-1939 by Agustin Guillamon
• June 1998: A review of The Spanish Anarchists. The Heroic years 1868-1936 by Murray Bookchin
• Aug 2006: For Whom The Bell Tolled
• Sep 2016: The Heroic Tragedy: Civil War and Social Revolution in Spain
• Oct 2016: The Heroic Tragedy: A Civil War Within a Civil War
• Nov 2023: A review of Orwell: The New Life. by D. J. Taylor

The Passing Show: As such (1961)

The Passing Show Column from the April 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

As such

The two American RB-47 airmen who were released by Russia recently after being shot down over the Barents Sea gave their own stories to reporters at an American air force base. They said that they had returned the fire of Russian fighter planes. One of the reporters recalled that previous American reports of the incident had claimed that the aircraft was unarmed. The airmen replied:

The aircraft, as such, was not armed with an offensive weapon of any sort. We carried two 20-millimetre automatic cannon which were mounted aft, pointing to the rear. This was a defensive weapon purely to protect us from attack from the rear. 

How automatic cannon, whether pointing up, down, forwards or sideways, can be anything else than offensive weapons was not made clear. And what exactly does “as such” mean in the first sentence? An aircraft carrying automatic cannon is armed as an aircraft, not as a submarine.

But merely to point out the absurdities of the airmen's statement would be to over-simplify the matter. For these airmen are only repeating what their masters, the American ruling class— along with every other ruling class—have always said. No country has a "Ministry of Attack”. No country produces "Offence Estimates". No country, to judge from its own propaganda machine, ever attacks another. In all wars, each country simply defends itself against the others: the enemy is always the aggressor. And if the hydrogen bomb is claimed as a "defensive" weapon, who can blame the two airmen for claiming that their automatic cannon were not offensive?

Jomo Kenyatta

Sir Patrick Renison. the Governor of Kenya, recently refused to release Jomo Kenyatta and gave two reasons for his decision. They were:

The political campaign for Kenyatta's release, “which has roused many emotions and which has not allowed divisions and personal fears a natural atmosphere in which to diminish. 

Kenyatta's refusal to “make any statement or reveal his thinking about the great issues which Kenya is facing." in spite of the fact that six Ministers, including three Africans, had visited him in August.

These reasons (given in the Times. 2-3-61) are remarkable. Leaving out the long words, the first one means simply that the Governor of Kenya isn’t going to release Kenyatta because the Kenya Africans have made it plain that they want him to be released. The Governor can hardly expect anyone to believe that he would have released Kenyatta if there hadn't been a campaign demanding it.

The second reason is even more extraordinary. Dictators have often put people in jail, or kept them in exile, because they have ”made statements” or "revealed their thinking" about public issues; this must be the first time a political leader has been kept in exile because he refused to take up a political stand

When thieves fall out

The Socialist position is straightforward. We are opposed to any attack on democratic freedoms, whether it is jailing for political reasons, restrictions on the right to vote, or any other weapon in the colonialists' armoury. But we are not blind to the real nature of the struggle in Kenya, it is the old struggle between land and capital. On the one side are in Kenya, it is the old struggle between capitalists, whether they are those who hope to establish full-scale industrial capitalism in Kenya, or those who have already established it in Great Britain. We welcome any extension of democracy in Kenya which this struggle between two rival propertied classes has produced or will produce. But we know that democracy is never safe in a capitalist society. That has been seen in Germany, in Italy, in Spain, in Czechoslovakia and the rest. Only in a Socialist society will democracy be safe from overthrow.

Out of my way

An irate letter-writer in the Sunday Express recently told how he had parked his car beside a parking meter in accordance with the instructions on the meter, went to the theatre, and returned to find his car vanished.

Eventually, after very considerable frustration annoyance, and expense, I found it at one of the police yards miles away. 1 was ordered to pay £2 to recover it—which I refused to do. The only explanation I could get from the police was that I had committed the offence of being on the royal route to the cinema— although how I was expected to know this is beyond my power of reasoning.

The removal of one’s car. however, is only one of the minor inconveniences that may follow if one gets in the way of a royal progress. It could be much worse. In Katmandu, for the visit of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh to Nepal, a new road was built from the airport to the royal guest house. It took 14.000 men over a month. It wasn't a question here of simply removing cars to make room for royalty: whole houses were bulldozed down. Even churches were not sacrosanct. "One temple was shifted 30 yards and worshippers one morning found the principal idol hanging on the end of a crane " (The Observer, 26-2-61). So much for the respect paid to religion when it conflicts with the convenience of the ruling class. Religion, of course, is maintained by ruling classes because it helps to keep the rest of us in our places. Perhaps it is naive for us to expect a ruling class to take its own propaganda too seriously.

Alwyn Edgar

Finance and Industry: Rents and the Price Index (1961)

The Finance and Industry Column from the April 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rents and the Price Index

As most rents have risen during the past three or four years, some of them by enormous amounts, it may be a matter for surprise that this does not seem to have shown itself in the Ministry of Labour’s Index of Retail Prices, which now stands at 12 per cent above the level of January 1956.

The fact is that the Ministry's separate Index figure for "housing" costs, which consist mostly of rent and rates but allows also for the cost of repairs etc., has risen continuously for 10 years and particularly since 1956. It is now a third higher than in January 1956 and two-thirds higher than it was in 1950.

This sharp rise has had comparatively little effect on the final Retail Price Index because people are assumed on average to spend over nine times as much on all other items of expenditure as they do on rent, rates, etc. So a rise of 66 per cent in the rent figure would raise the final Index by about 6 per cent only.

A movement of food prices would have four times as much effect on the Index because people are assumed to spend four times as much on food as on rent etc.

Of course many people will find that they spend far more than the assumed proportions on rent etc.; which would not of itself invalidate the Ministry's assumption because there are some rents etc. which represent a very much smaller percentage, and both extremes enter into the average. It was recently shown in an official publication that the average council house rent in Scotland is 9s 10d. a week (the lowest being Dumbarton, only 2s. 10d). Corresponding averages for say London would be about 35s. to 40s.

Nevertheless, with the rapid rise of housing costs in recent years it is probable that a larger proportion than the official 8.7 per cent of expenditure goes on rent, rates, water charges and repairs.

Yet despite the rapid rise in recent years the average increase of rents since 1938 has been far less than the percentage increase of food prices, clothing prices, or drink and tobacco.

American Depression

Politicians and Economists giving their views on the course of trade and business prospects are curiously like doctors telling the relatives how the patient is fairing—probably for the same reason, that they arc not sure.

If the doctor felt perfectly confident that his diagnosis is correct, and that he knows precisely what to do he would be able to say “ I have administered the remedy and by 9.30 a.m. exactly tomorrow morning the patient will start improving rapidly and will be out and about a week from today ".

And if the governments and their economic advisers could make exact diagnoses and prescribe specific and certain remedies, they could be equally confident. But as it is, they are never quite sure whether things are getting better or worse. If they fear the worst it is best not to say so because something may turn up, and in any event spreading gloom may itself help on a downward slide.

So it is not surprising that the reassuring statements of last autumn have slowly given place to admissions that American industry is in a rather bad way.

Last September Mr. Per Jacobson, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, at an interview in Washington was sure that the United States was not heading for a full-fledged recession, only a slackening in business activity, and on February 20, 1961 the Financial Times correspondent in New York could report, "U.S. business still optimistic. Belief that upturn is not far off". But only a week later the President's council of economic advisers was informing Congress that it would be unreasonable to expect recovery until after mid year and simultaneously the news of six million unemployed, the worst since before the war.

And the chairman of the council disclosed other reasons for not taking an optimistic view. He pointed out that even when the upturn in business docs lake place it will not be the solution to the longer term problem of a growing gap between production and productive capacity.

Since 1955 the economy’s "chronic slack"—a gap between what the country can produce and what it actually produces had shown a "distressing" upward trend. (Guardian, 7.3.61).

The Slum problem

The American President is going to do something about the slums, and the Times correspondent in Washington, writes, with unintended humour; "That something has to be done and done quickly has for years been evident to those driving through slum areas to the trim suburbs (Times 10/3/61).

What makes the Times correspondent think that because an evil has been obvious for years, that something has to be done about it quickly or at all? It is over a century since the British government and philanthropic agencies started to abolish the slums and they are still with us.

Anyway in America, according to President Kennedy there are "40 million families living in sub-standard houses". but at the same time “one out of every six construction workers is unemployed, and house building dropped by 18 per cent last year to the lowest level in the past decade".

Innocence of Journalists

If the Times correspondent in U.S.A. is naive in supposing that capitalism and slums are incompatible, his Daily Mail colleague Mr. Don Iddon is worse; he writes like a true innocent abroad. In the issue for 10 March he tells of having been stopped by beggars on Broadway. “shabby men asking not for 'a dime for a cup of cawfee’. but for a quarter (about 1s. 9d.) for food”. Because of this and other things Mr. Iddon says. “Kennedy's America is beginning to puzzle me". But why should he be puzzled because queues are lengthening at the employment exchanges, and the motor show rooms are almost deserted, or because 166.000 car workers are unemployed and there are a million brand-new unsold cars? Mr. Iddon has lived for quite a while and has had abundant opportunities to get around and see things in different parts of the world so why should he be puzzled because America shows the same kind of happenings as other countries and other times?

Mr. Iddon tells how stock exchange speculators can make fortunes with a few telephone calls (he himself made $1,500.) "Yet good men, not drifters or drunks, are panhandling in the streets and women and children are queuing up for food in the Bronx and Brooklyn at relief centres".

May we let Mr. Iddon into an open secret about this country? That about two million people a year, including unemployed and impoverished pensioners, go to the Assistance Board for help!

What Next ?

The big political parties and the Labour Party above all have long been stressing the need for more investment to expand and modernise factories, plant and equipment. The argument is that this will make production larger in the years ahead and that it is absolutely necessary in order to be able to sell at low prices and meet the competition of other countries, which are, they say going in for investment on a larger scale than does British industry.

When therefore the Treasury announced in February that investment in manufacture has been rising very fast and that the building of new factories this year is expected to be 40 per cent above last year, there was quite a lot of satisfaction, not to say pride among those who wanted this to happen.

Two elementary factors seem however, to have been overlooked. The first is that all countries are engaged in the same competitive rat race of hoping to be better off in the future but not now.

The second is that a sudden burst of 40 per cent more factories will be followed by a slackening off of factory building and by a burst of additional output when they are completed, and this in a situation in which the "sellers market” phase after the war has long since passed and been replaced by a phase of greater difficulty in selling, and keener competition.

Edgar Hardcastle

Letter: Common-Ownership? (1961)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Common-Ownership?

I thank you for the interesting reply you give to my letter. It is the more welcome because it does meet the principle points of difference between us. even if I am right in my submission that it promptly runs away from them again. For example.,"common-ownership" is accepted by both of us, but in whom is it to be vested, and how? The term covers a multitude of possibilities unless closely defined. President Nkrumah of Ghana lists four "sectors" of his country's proposed economy, “state-owned, joint state-private enterprise, co-operatives, and purely private." You would, of course, reject two of these, but what of the other alternatives, or have you one of your own? Again, you postulate "assessment of needs and the means to fulfil them," but who is to assess? I am not arguing, mark, that assessments cannot be made. They obviously can be made about many things. But I want to know about it and I feel that a means-test of any variety should be repugnant to both of us. Of course, you do not mention anything of the kind, but what do you mean?

These are not trivial points for they involve the tremendous issue of administrative tyranny against communal freedom, state-ism against decentralisation; indeed, syndicalism versus the commune. Where do you stand? Arc you for high-powered mass-production run by trades-unions on Fascist lines with Coventry and castor-oil complete for "deviationists," a vast factory system with "scientific" direction of labour in a monstrous mechanism under an ultimately totalitarian though differently labelled state, or for the comely life of production for use in free cooperative groups for the most part, and under only the most resilient form possible of overhead government? Arc you for mass-production of everything despite the fact that, as every good farmer knows, mass farming it bad farming, and the other fact that quality craftsmanship beats factory products in length of life four or five times over. Mass-production is for the masses; who but they would touch it? In food products and manufactures alike it is recognised (by the advertising world) that it costs six limes as much to sell an article at it does to make it. The difference is in transport costs, insurances, marketing charges, multifarious agency profits, wholesale and retail percentages—all arising from remote and competitive marketing, and all to be avoided, as Socialism would avoid them (or largely so), by leaving production and consumption to loosely articulated small units wherever possible.

There are hundred upon hundreds of successful co-operative groups in Britain today producing for use. sharing small machinery socially and employing expert advice. The point I wish to make here is that there is nothing to stop such development except the fact that the workers are in the main indifferent. There are the orthodox co-operative societies, of course, numbering in membership ten millions, a quarter of the population, owning the meant and instruments of production and distribution. They are run as capitalist concerns and the excuse of socially conscious members is that they have to meet capitalist competition! "We have to beat the band!". What rubbish! The business of any genuine co-operative group is not to beat anything or anybody, but to co-operate. Of course, big business can “beat" the workers on its own ground, but how shall it beat the co-operative will? Above all, how beat production for use?

As it stands, however, the co-operative societies, after a-century-and-a-half's dedicated (so it is alleged) membership rise to the giddy height of "save up for summer holidays" but fall lamentably short of any co-operative commonwealth whatever. Why? Not because there is anything at all in the way unless the competitive rat-race is still held sacred. It is because the workers neither understand Socialism nor want it.

The choice before us between freedom and slavery. The one is possible only where control of the means of production is direct and immediate, just as democracy is possible only where the people are in direct and effective touch with public affairs. The other cannot be more than an impersonal power process to be rendered quite ghastly by modern automation and atomic energy.

We who claim to be Socialists used to acclaim freedom. With the present drift towards a totalitarian economy, and in trades-union politics the one-party state, your own utopian belief in a miraculous “dawn ” upon the morrow of an equally miraculous release of pent-up proletarian virtue is as abstract and full of holes as a Henry Moore sculpture.

Amwell.

Belsize Park. N.W.3.

Reply:

Lord Amwell wants to know in whom common ownership is vested, and how?

The definition we gave was that everything that is in and on the earth would be the common possession of all mankind. In our property and privilege ridden society it is not easy to give a helpful illustration of what we mean, but we will try.

Air is the common possession of all mankind. you can breathe as much of it as you like without anyone raising an objection. Similarly you can drink as much water as you like at a public fountain. In both instances each person determines what he or she needs. The same process will operate in the future with food, clothing, shelter and everything else. The people with the intelligence to build up the new society will also have the intelligence not to expect the impossible.

In the Socialist Party of Great Britain different members, and groups of members, are appointed to perform the necessary work in the organisation and propaganda of the Party. For example, the Literature Committee finds out from branches what literature they require—the local branches do the assessing. They make an estimate from experience of what further supplies are required. They then obtain from the printer the total amount they have arrived at and proceed to fulfil the needs of branches and individuals. There is no administrative tyranny in this, it is purely a technical problem. While it is true that the Socialist Party is small, and therefore the problem is not a great one, yet in the future a similar procedure will be adopted in harmony with the size and complexity of society's needs.

Production in each area will be based on what individuals in that area need—they will make their own assessment of what they need. Experience will enable the production assessors to have available sufficient in quantity and variety to fulfil these needs. The articles will be available in suitable places in the area and all that people will have to do is to go there and take what they want. We used the example of a self-service store in the limited sense that people can go there and take what they want of what is available. In that instance, of course, they nave to pay for what they take—in the future they will just take.

While the new society is getting on its feet there may be people who, still affected with the possessive inclinations of the past, may want to load themselves up with more than they need. Well, whal of it? They will soon get tired of their stupid and unnecessary efforts.

In our view each community will Ik as self-supporting as possible Some things, however, will need extra community arrangements: like raw material, travel, correspondence, and so forth. These arrangements are just technical questions which can be dealt with by groups of people at given centres who are interested in this kind of work. In the future society there will be no isolated communities, split off from the rest of the world. They will all be part of a world Socialist system, decentralised but each working in harmony with the rest, without statism or tyranny, to enable everyone to live a useful, interesting and satisfactory life. If there are occupations that are necessary but uninteresting then some method of sharing will be devised.

This brings us to the question of mass production. Whether or how far there will be mass production we cannot say now. A great deal that is mass produced nowadays will be unnecessary in the future—armament production is one example. The mass produced article is as a rule the cheap, the short-lived and the lacking in variety. Whether mass production saves a really appreciable amount of labour in the long run is questionable. But what is not questionable is that it is soul-destroying work. Obviously the aim will be to limit that kind of work as much as possible. The accent will be on craftsmanship. and if mass production still operates it will only be in operation in instances where it is essential for the benefit of tho community. More than this we cannot say.

We agree with Lord Amwell’s description of orthodox co-operative societies as just capitalist concerns in which petty investors have neither control nor influence, though they can make a lot of noise at times.

Finally, we do not believe in any miraculous dawn. We believe in the development of understanding, which will be transferred into action by the mass of the population who suffer the present system. Socialism can only be established when the majority of society understand it, want it, and take action to bring it about. There is no other way, but there are plenty of roads into the morass of confusion and disillusion.

Editorial Committee.

Blogger's Note:

I'm not 100% sure which previous letter Lord Amwell (Fred Montague) was following up on but it may have been this one from the October 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Mankind under Capitalism (1961)

From the April 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The constant endeavour that has marked man's life since his biological emergence to human status should have created a world befitting the dignity of manhood. But man, sociologically, lags far behind his biological advance. He has learned to observe, and, to a large degree, understand surrounding phenomena; to connect causes and effect; to make and use tools; to harness natural forces to his own ends. But the latter part of humanity's history has seen the arrival of class-divided orders of society where those who rule seek to confine education to what will do no more than preserve the existing order of rulers and ruled. This obtains in the present day when we live in a capitalist society.

On the whole, therefore, man under capitalism has not learned to study the economic foundation of his world to probe into its shams and anomalies, to devote his mind to establishing a society no less advanced than his biological development. And so. with the acquiescence of nearly everyone, a social system which has long outlived its justification as a phase of social evolution, hangs on with its spoliation of personalities, its unnatural relationships and its sordid purpose.

Nothing so determines the character of man as his manner of securing his means of living. Of legitimate ways of securing these means under capitalism there are only two—the employment of each of which is dependant upon the social class to which each man belongs. If one belongs to the master class the obtaining of the means of life—not to mention, in many cases, the luxuries, the riches, and the accumulated wealth to be used for further investment—will be contrived by exploiting working-class labour power and by securing profit through the sale of the surplus values derived from it. This is the sole function of the capitalist—imposed on him by the circumstance that he is a capitalist.

By his very position in capitalist society, therefore, this person becomes a parasite, an exploiter. No matter if his inclination be one of kindliness, his survival as a capitalist entails expropriation from his fellows. More, to remain a contending factor in the competition for markets he must offer the commodities produced by his workers at competitive prices. Wages must be kept as low as possible; output pushed to the highest reachable peak. He becomes the hard business man, a fevered participant in the capitalist rat-race, the ruthless strikebreaker. And, although as a man he may have repugnance towards the thought of war, as a capitalist he may quite well find justification in a conflict which has for its aim the preservation of markets and market accessories from the hands of foreign rivals, or even the capturing of further markets etc., for himself and his fellow capitalists.

This is the way in which the existing order forces the capitalist to behave. But he gets off lightly compared with the men and women of the working class. These are the people, overwhelmingly exceeding in numbers the members of the capitalist class, who daily are compelled. by the necessity of getting a living. to sell their energies to the capitalists. They range from factory managers —though such may like to claim inclusion in a mythical “middle class"— to general labourers; from chief buyers in gigantic emporiums to borough council road-sweepers; from conductors in theatre orchestras to bus conductors. But. however “posh ”, "respectable", or “degrading" the means of their getting a living, each and every one of these workers cannot escape the brush with which capitalism tars them.

Nor is that all. The better-paid workers smug with a fancied superiority and an imagined exclusiveness from working-class dependence on wages, are nonetheless just as reliant as other workers on their salaries. Struggling to maintain the appearances expected of their "good position" they lead lives, very often, of gilded poverty. Their concept of their position in society is, in many cases, an empty delusion, for refuting the reality of their working-class status, they have embraced the fiction of their oneness with their masters.

And so it goes on. The foreman— once “one of the men", and perhaps happier as such—has accepted promotion because of his inability to manage on his former wages. Expected by his employers to prevent slacking and to raise or maintain output, he must now either boldly show himself as committed solely to the interests of production, the overseer with the whip, or, to preserve continued popularity among his former bench-fellows, he must resort to the under-handedness of maintaining a "still one of you" demeanour whilst carrying tales of non-co-operation to his masters. He becomes either the workshop tyrant, or the two-faced spying informer.

And what of the workers who are thus openly sweated or surreptitiously coerced? Is it their reluctance to work hard and continuously that makes foremen necessary? Possibly so, but can conscientiousness and industry be expected from those who, under nearly all circumstances, are compelled to work for wages that will buy very little more than the basic needs of life? Very often, for the sake of a "bigger shilling", they take a job that nauseates by its unhealthy conditions, its tediousness, or its lifeless repetition. And, although the cause may be unknown to the sufferers, it is frequently felt that for all the day-to-day striving they never reach a condition more comfortable than that of just getting by. Small wonder that conscientious work becomes a rarity, that spending the minimum of effort becomes the rule, that many workers arc clock-watchers looking forward only to knocking-off time.

Capitalism's destruction of ready endeavour is most widely observed among those who work closely and frequently in contact with the general public. Indifferent clerks behind post-office counters, curt or officially “nice" shop assistants, unashamed "behind time" bus drivers and conductors— these are but a few of the human products of capitalist society. And ever commenting on the faults of these are the critics—mostly members of the working class themselves, and in all cases the creatures of capitalism. Not recognising that here is behaviour engendered by capitalist environment, they condemn what they call the basic nature of the offenders. These people, they complain, are utterly selfish. Instead of being helpful and courteous to the public they are disinterested and curt. "And then they have the nerve to want more money—if I had my way, they’d be given less".

The prize taunt, however, is that these people “want the money, but don’t want to work”. Ironically, this is true when one considers the universal compulsion upon the working class to go to work and in many cases perform the most nauseating of tasks in order to get the necessary wages to exist upon.

Of course it is nice to think of men doing well-loved work with happy heart, and with no thought of repayment. But it is an idea unrealisable within the present order of society. Of course, there arc many of us who feel the revulsion against the indignities, the incongeniality and the oppressiveness of our occupations, and the reasons we keep at these occupations (and a proof of our wage-slavery) is because, to keep alive we must have, and subsequently want, the money.

The salesman in whom smooth falsification has become so much a part that he cannot eradicate it from his behaviour outside business. The soldier deceived into believing that the training he receives is not to make him a killer, but to make him a man. The youngster who, in a world that takes the carnage of war for granted and. in the name of ”defence", devises and uses the most diabolically destructive weapons, becomes somehow attracted to the violence of the age and experiences a thrill in embarking upon a little violence himself. All these are products of the capitalist world.

Sometimes the clash between the workings of capitalism and the ideals of mankind produces ideas which contrast with those promoted by ruling class propagandists. For instance the existence of oppression, anomalies, inequalities, cutthroat practices and preparation for wars that threaten to imperil the whole of mankind, brings into being the rebels against these ills. Most of those express themselves through political or humanitarian organisations which lack the sound sociological knowledge which alone can promote action that will eradicate the anti-socialist behaviour objected to. Thus these rebels remain, ardently protesting against the horror of nuclear war, pleading that votes for particular individuals might serve beneficent ends, but missing altogether and failing to deal with the real cause of the trouble.

But within the womb of capitalism, as of all social orders, is the seed of its own destruction. Not all rebels are Utopian idealists. There are some who have sought to understand the world around them, and to base upon scientific fact their efforts towards a social reconstruction. We maintain that a sane, classless, warless, povertyless social order—Socialism—will remove the causes of anti-social behaviour.

F. W. Hawkins