Alan Johnstone (2024)

From the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Readers will have noticed that there have been no articles for a while from ALJO who wrote the Material World column and was a prolific contributor to our blog. We ourselves have not heard from him in Thailand for well over a year.

Alan joined the Edinburgh Branch in 1970 while a teenager and rejoined in 2003. Before his retirement he worked for Royal Mail and was an active member of the Communication Workers Union.

If anyone has any information about him or his whereabouts could they please get in touch with us.

Party News: three leaflets (2024)

Party News from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

To end the rage, end capitalism

The media love it when racists riot, because disaster sells.

There’s less interest in the real story, of cooperation, of solidarity against racism, of mutual support, shown by the vast majority of people.

People like you, here at this event.

There are those who say that humans are by nature greedy, selfish and cruel, and that peaceful and cooperative co-existence will never be possible.

That’s nothing but an excuse to justify a violent, warring system that, deep down, we all hate, in which billionaires lounge on their yachts while the rest of us scrape by, obey their stupid laws, and do all the hard work of running society.

It’s capitalism that drives many to a nameless rage they take out on innocent people around them through racism, homophobia and domestic violence.

And it’s capitalism that has become, to quote campaigner George Monbiot, ‘a weapon pointed at the world’, a system of runaway profiteering that is threatening our collective survival.

It’s time to declare we’ve hit peak capitalism.

We can do so much better.

We have the tech and the know-how to upgrade to a sustainable world of democratic common ownership, with no nation states, leaders, rich elites or money.

Making everything free will make everyone free.

Making everyone free will end the rage.

If you want this, say so – tell people you want to move beyond capitalism, because you’ll be surprised how many agree with you.

And contact us to help get the message out.

– Leaflet handed out at ongoing anti-racism events.

Green capitalism? No chance!

We need rational stewardship of the biosphere for our survival.

But the world is in the hands of a tiny capitalist minority, all in furious competition with each other to stay ahead of the pack.

All their grubby investment decisions are taken in private and only for profit. There’s no overall rationality, no ‘grand design’. It’s a crazy casino.

Environmentalists say you can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet, and that’s true. So can we tame the casino? Can we magically rig capitalism so it pursues only modest or even zero growth?

That would be a feat for the ages, like turning a tiger vegetarian, or convincing a Great White shark to give back to the community.

Capital only wants to do one thing, make a profit, faster and faster, on and on, and bugger the externalities. You’ll never make it change. You’ll never make it green.

The only way to get rational stewardship is to get rid of capitalism.

We need to take the world into collective democratic ownership, with no market system or production for profit, and no rich class of irresponsible gamblers to ruin it for the rest of us.

– Leaflet handed out at Green Party Conference in September.

Against all capitalism’s wars

Why this war with all the death and destruction wars bring? It’s not, as it might seem, another example of an undying enmity between two groups – Jews and Arabs – but a fight between different capitalist factions over land, resources and strategic routes. And not just between the government of Israel and the Hamas regime in Gaza. The greater issue is who controls the oilfields in the Persian Gulf and the trade route out of it, with Israel being supported by the West to counter the threat from Iran and Iran promoting militant Islamism to undermine Israel.

In Gaza, the Hamas organisation, who are both anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic, came to power via elections in 2007 with the stated aim ‘to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine’. But that was the end of any form of democracy there and, in their time in office, they have crushed multiple protests by rivals, expelling their officials to make sure there would never be a round of elections and killing dozens of their own people, many of them civilians. During that time the people of Gaza have been plunged increasingly into poverty with, for example, 40 percent unemployment, with their leaders enriching themselves assisted by backers from other Arab countries and enjoying multi-million-dollar land deals, luxury villas and black market fuel from Egypt.

The continuing oppression by Israel (a country by the way where 25 percent of households live on the poverty line) has also of course been a significant factor, as its government has sought to facilitate the enrichment of its own capitalist class by grabbing land and keeping a tight lid on protest. Now the lid has come off- and in the most horrific way.

There is no excuse for the horrors unleashed on innocent people by Hamas nor for Israel’s savage retaliation, killing thousands, attacking hospitals, depriving a land of food, water and power and flattening its infrastructure regardless of what may happen to the inhabitants in the short and long term. No wonder there are calls for a ceasefire to alleviate the sufferings of the people of Gaza.

Of course Israel’s government will support its own capitalist class to the hilt – after all that is its role. And it is all part of a playbook, which we see played out time and time again as governments representing their capitalist classes fail to resolve conflicts by diplomacy and resort to horrifying violence. We can only repeat the same thing we have always said when this has happened – that workers (in this case Arab and Israeli ones) have no interest in fighting one another but have a common interest in uniting with workers throughout the world to abolish capitalism and establish socialism, a world without borders where the Earth’s resources will belong to all humanity and are used to produce what people need, not profits for the few who currently own and control these resources.

– Leaflet handed out at anti-Gaza War protests.

SPGB October Events (2024)

Party News from the October 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.

*Update*

Tonight's SPGB Zoom Meeting.

"Lenin: Anti-Tsarist revolutionary who succeeded or revolutionary socialist who failed?"

Speaker Adam Buick

4th October 7.30pm (Greenwich Mean Time)

#Socialism #Lenin  #SPGB

To join the meeting click https://zoom.us/j/7421974305

Onward, Christian soldiers (1977)

From the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The armed forces must be prepared to play a new rôle in enforcing democracy in Britain should the present system of government break down.” Thus, the Very Reverend John Field Lister, the Provost of Wakefield Cathedral, as reported in the Yorkshire Post of 15th July.

This gem of current religious philosophy was delivered on the occasion of the laying-up of the regimental colours of the First Battalion of the Coldstream Guards at Wakefield Cathedral. He went on to say: “More and more nations are finding that government is almost impossible to carry out. This may be because democracy is a Christian concept and that without it, it cannot succeed.

“When governments break down, then we have seen in one country after another that the military have to be brought in. It might well be that in the years which lie before us the armed forces will have a new and different rô1e to play, and how important that role will be.” There followed some all-too-familiar references to the power of the unions, the possibility of a general strike, etc., etc.

It is to be hoped that the guardsmen on the receiving end of this will have learned something about their function in the eyes of supporters of the capitalist class. They are themselves members of that same working class they may be ordered to suppress.

Richard Cooper

So They Say: The Reason Why (1977)

The So They Say Column from the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Reason Why

A bewildered assistant is no assistant at all; the Conservatives have got one of theirs, Margot Lawrence, “flummoxed”. Judging by her contribution to the columns of the Daily Telegraph on the 30th August, this is probably no difficult achievement in any event. She became concerned to clarify the “highly emotive phrase” “production for use, not profit”, which some dastardly Socialists argue from time to time. Writing under the title “Isn’t production for profit?” she is puzzled why the Conservatives are “failing to use the strongest argument in their own book”:

That production for use is production for profit, the two are intertwined and inseparable.

Notwithstanding Margot Lawrence’s view that “almost all people do have enough money for what they really need”, we suggest that one of the reasons the rest of the Conservative Party does not argue along the lines she proposes is that such a contention could not be sustained.

Production in capitalist society is carried on because the owners of the means of production realize a profit from selling their commodities. All of these commodities are considered useful by the purchaser, whether they be the lawn-mowers used as an illustration in the article or weapons of mass destruction used in war. When production in certain fields would be unprofitable however, no owner will advance capital for such production. Vast numbers of the world’s population do not starve because food would not be “useful”, they starve because it is unprofitable to feed them.

When the Socialist says “production for use”, he is saying: abandon the form of society in which society’s needs are assessed in terms of the minority’s requirement for profit.

Problems and . . . More Problems

We give below two excerpts from newspapers which illustrate this particular point. Capitalism has an apparently uncanny ability to produce social problems. A study of the foundations on which it is based show in fact that it cannot fail to do otherwise. Although it would be naive to suggest that Socialist society will not face problems, we will be able to devote our fullest efforts towards solving them and preventing new problems from arising.

In capitalism we have surely reached a pinnacle of absurdity when the means are available to solve, for instance, the problem of starvation, but the possible avenues for tackling the first problem, through only partial application, create a “problem” of precisely the opposite nature. We are sometimes asked what Socialism will be like: we can predict now that the newspapers of Socialism will not need to carry items like these.

The Community [EECJ is being chased by an ever-increasing milk surplus. It is about to operate what is described in the jargon of Brussels as a “corresponsibility levy”, in other words a penalty against farmers for producing too much milk . . . Milk is a tiresome commodity for the EEC to handle since it is expensive to store and difficult to sell to anybody else . . . the official intervention stores are often the only outlet for it.

The Times, 5th September 77

Asia’s major hope for future development, the “green revolution”, is now failing to keep pace with the rapid growth ir. population, and this will condemn a quarter of mankind to continued poverty,, hunger, malnutrition and unemployment.

The Times, 6th September 77

First Things First

The well known Conservative bull-frog, Reginald Maudling, has been croaking on the difficulties faced by industrialists because of the governing consideration of profitability. The aforementioned Margot Lawrence would do well to note his passionate comments. Mr. Maudling, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, had this to say in a published letter:

With the possible exception of the strike-ridden motor car industry, it seems to me clear that potential supply is far greater than existing demand. Maybe potential supply has been reduced by discouraging investment, but there is no doubt whatsoever from every bit of evidence that emerges from industry, that what is holding back supply at the moment is not capacity, but inadequate demand.

The Times, 2nd September 77

He was writing a week before Ford Motor Company’s decision to build an £180m engine plant in South Wales, but even so his comments do not seem so wide of the mark, as Ford is making it clear “that the new plant did not point to plans for a huge increase in total car production”.

The problem of “inadequate demand" seems an odd one at first glance. Can this be anything other than a campaign of stubbornness by members of the working class? Why, at the present moment the majority are forced to live in circumstances where the watchword is Cheapness; one-and-a-half million of the blighters are out of work entirely. You would think they were able to make plenty of “adequate” demands for the sake of the frustrated industrialists. “Ah, but wait a minute,” will say the latter. "They may have plenty of demands —but have they got the money to go with them?”

Miracle Man

It may not be the second coming, but it is a present-day equivalent. When the Associated Television Corporation began making their fiction-film Jesus of Nazareth, we recall Lew Grade, the group chairman and chief executive, muttering about it being made because it would be meaningful, important and so on. Some may have mistakenly imagined these comments related to the content of the film.

Zeffirelli’s majestic production of ‘Jesus of Nazareth" was first shown in this country on Palm Sunday, 3rd April 1977. It achieved immediate success both at home and abroad. In Britain, the audiences amounted to 21 million viewers; in the USA to over 91 million and in Italy 84 per cent saw the film. I have no hesitation in saying that this film, representing ATV's largest single film-production investment, will prove an asset of inestimable wealth to the company and provide a valuable annuity over the years to come.

The Times 8th September 1977

Lord Grade (as he is now called) had taken a full page advertisement to publicise ATV’s results. Although he refers to the “inestimable wealth” resulting from the film, share-holders like to have their information in more precise terms.

The results speak from themselves. The pre-tax profit figure is £11,161,000, the highest in the 22 years history of the company, and shows an increase of 81 per cent over 1976.

Thus we learn, in the words of the good book, exactly what it shall profit a man.

Tony D'Arcy

50 Years Ago: Does capitalism need the House of Lords (1977)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

For years we have warned the workers against the danger of Labour Governments. Capitalism can be administered, as regards essentials, only in one way—the Capitalist way . . . The Queensland railwaymen [employed in a nationalized industry] tried to help some workers who were on strike in the sugar industry. The “Labour” Government met this sympathetic action by dismissing the 11,000 railway employees, and was able to force them to desert the strikers and go back to work. Thus Queensland is vindicated as a territory which is still safe for Capitalism.

#    #    #    #

For those who imagine that the existence and powers of a House of Lords are questions of first-class importance, it is useful to remember that Queensland long ago abolished its Upper House. When it is necessary to crush revolt among the workers, a single chamber in the hands of a “Labour” Government in Queensland can be as drastic and as brutal as anything England or the U.S.A. can show, and what is of more importance from a Capitalist standpoint, it can act so much more promptly than can a cumbersome two-chamber system.

[From an editorial "Capitalism in Queensland—Ferocious Labour Government". Socialist Standard, October 1927.]

Letter: Sitting duck rules (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sitting duck rules

Thank you for publishing my letter plus your reply. However, I'm afraid that good at criticizing the status quo (who isn’t? It’s a sitting duck) you weaken completely when asked for your alternative.

Without money, how can it be decided whether I’m to have the use of a pair of low-quality, plastic shoes (the present reality), or of a Rolls Royce (which, of course, I richly deserve)?

Without the need for money, how on earth am I (and a few million others) going to get up and go to work each day?

Politics is the art of the possible and. having recently exceeded the allotted three-score and ten, the SPGB should seriously consider what Marx and Engels would think, say and do were they here today.

With or without class and money, the tough-minded people—the aggressive, assertive minority—will pursue their interests at the expense of the rest, who have neither the energy nor courage to oppose them. What humanity needs most is for the powerful and influential, in all walks of life, to decide to co-operate with each other for the good of all.

Allan Bula

Guildford

Reply:

Though you speak of money as an indispensable facility, on your own evidence it is not: instead of enabling you to get things, it prevents you from doing so. How was it “decided” that you have low-grade plastic shoes? Obviously, you want better ones but your choice is nullified by your pay-packet. Nor does the capitalist class or the government "decide” that you shall have only so much money. The government (any government) would like to have everyone in work, well paid and contented; it does not choose but is forced into policies which have the opposite effects. For the capitalist class as a whole, workers are customers. Each capitalist would like all the others’ employees to have plenty of money to buy his wares; but he must try to keep his own employees’ wages down. No "decision” is made. It is the way capitalism operates.

You need to reason this out. The sellers of wealth are the owners of it. If common ownership existed, there would be no owning class; the means of living and the products would belong to everyone. Can you explain what basis there would be for buying and selling, and what function money could possibly have? As for its being an incentive, you clearly see it as the reward of labour. Yet you acknowledge (see above) that it provides an inadequate reward for you. We are saying that Socialism would provide incomparably better material rewards, and therefore as much incentive as you need.

Without class there are no interests and no powerful people: power is political. Since a class society produces competing interests, it is impossible for "the powerful and influential” to co-operate "for the good of all” (you say this yourself in the preceding sentence). But society has been and is ruled by so-called strong men, and the .result in your own words is that the status quo is “a sitting duck”—i.e. has almost nothing to be said in its favour. Why do you think it will be different in the future? Socialists take the realistic attitude that a change of rulers makes no difference because the problems are produced by the class structure of capitalist society. Your view is the Utopian one.

Editors.

Letter: Class and Ideology (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class and Ideology

You accused Harold Walsby of holding that the working class is "mentally inferior”. Challenged to support this you produce statements that the working class does not understand or accept Socialism. But in order to show that Walsby held them to be mentally inferior you have to show him saying or implying that some other group is mentally superior to it. You have failed to support your accusation.

You describe as "absurd” my statement that “in acceptance or rejection of Socialism there is no significant difference between workers and capitalists”. My evidence is that although the majority of capitalists do not accept Socialism, a tiny majority do accept it. Similarly with the workers. Although the overwhelming majority of workers do not accept it, a tiny minority do, and show this by belonging to the SPGB.

It will be more fruitful to try and get to the root of the difference between Walsby and the SP. It is not the case that the working class accepts Socialism and the capitalist class opposes it. Class position does not correspond with acceptance or rejection of Socialism, and is not coming to do so. What does determine it? The ideology of the person concerned. All of us begin life with the same ideology. Some of us move on to a more sophisticated one, some of those to a more sophisticated one still, and so on. The result is the existence of a number of ideological groups forming, very roughly, a pyramid. The SPGB is the political expression of an ideology very close to the top of the pyramid, an ideology, therefore, with a very small group attached to it.

If a person possessing this ideology hears the Socialist case, he will probably accept it. A person possessing any other ideology will reject the case; it does not "fit” his ideology. This is why, whenever an SP branch is started in a "new” town it usually reaches a size comparable with that of established branches and then stops growing; all the people of the appropriate ideology in that area have been "collected”. Over seventy years the SP has proven that it is impossible to get a majority of Socialists. Walsby’s theory explains why this is, and opens the way, through recognition of the ideological structure of present society, to solution of our main social problems.

Geo. W. Walford

London N1.

Reply:

You acknowledge that Walsby held that the majority of workers would never understand Socialism, but object to our identifying this with the view that they are “mentally inferior”; we must show what other group he compared them with, you say. From Walsby’s writings, let us take the original quotation used in our January article: “an established fact—namely, that the average human intelligence is on the decline”, followed by a sentence accusing the SPGB of vacillating over "whether the workers have or have not the intelligence to establish Socialism”. "Decline” can only mean that the workers at a given time are inferior to a previous generation.

In your own statements, comparisons implying superiority and inferiority are made repeatedly. For example, the “more sophisticated ideology” and the "more sophisticated one still” which "some of us”—but not "the overwhelming majority of workers”—hold. You kindly place the SPGB “close to the top of the pyramid”, with the mass of the workers a long way down below. We do not think you are handicapped by language here: it would be possible to speak of a different ideology and a still more different one, and to use another geometrical shape if that was all you meant.

You misrepresent our answer to you on workers and capitalists. We pointed out (a) that most workers have not heard the Socialist case at all, and (b) that something more than minimal exposure to it is required as grounds for saying they have heard it and reject it. You accept that workers and capitalists are separate classes, but treat it statically; what is not mentioned in any of your three letters, although it was the starting-point of the article you criticized, is the class struggle.

None of us disputes "the existence in society of a number of ideological groups”. Where do they come from? The socialist case is that they arc produced by the class structure of society. A person raised in poverty has different assumptions and attitudes from those of a luxuriously-nurtured person. Of course further experience affects his attitudes; but that also is derived from a class-divided society. A capitalist may, as you suggest, accept Socialism as a system of ideas. That does not make him any less a capitalist, obliged to put his material interests before the “more sophisticated ideology” he may have acquired. (There are exceptional cases.)

The founders of the SPGB knew from earlier experience that the task they undertook was likely to be a slow one; other people, then and since, have understood Socialism but been unwilling to work for it for precisely that reason. Your thesis that a Party branch soaks up "all the people of the appropriate ideology” in its area is quite fantastic. Our branches, whether in suburbs or cities, would be pleased to have a situation in which this was tested—it would mean everyone had heard and considered the SPGB.

The remedy offered by Walsby and his followers for social problems consists of domination over the masses by intellectuals. We give three quotations.

Thus, in basing his ideas of achieving a scientifically controlled society upon an unconsciously motivated assumption—the mass-rationality assumption—the scientific intellectual is wasting much of his political time and energy. It is this assumption (with its associated repressed material) which today largely befogs the minds of those scientists—and others—who are striving for a society in which sub-atomic energy is no longer used for the destruction of man, but for his benefit and well-being.

("Atoms and Ideology” by Harold Walsby, in The New Age of Atomics)

Is the great mass of mankind through its inherent incapacity for scientific thought and understanding, doomed to eternal suffering?. . Concomitant with the rational superiority of these politically more enlightened people goes their inevitable numerical inferiority. Yet, year in and year out, with admirable though blind optimism and appalling ignorance as to the nature and structure of political development, they go on, fighting among themselves and vainly appealing to the masses with the same arguments and upon the same subject-matter which was instrumental in their own 'conversion.

(Understanding the Mass Mind, by Richard Tatham)

No longer are we confined to announcements as to how people ought to think, or as to the attitude they must adopt if civilisation is to be saved . . . not until this relationship between the intellectual and the mass is understood and accepted—and who is to do this if not the intellectuals? — will it become possible to control the development of society.

(The Intellectual and the People)

That takes us back to Plato, and men cast in higher moulds.

Editors.

Letter: Riches and poverty (1977)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Riches and poverty

One wonders what the inmates of London’s poorest streets find in common with the occupants of power in Buckingham Palace, for it was the humblest of homes that had the largest flags. Bunting hung from the houses that have been witness to cries of hungry families or the young and old in need of warmth. The monarchy never saw fit to look after the simplest needs of the working class outside its everyday use on the labour-profit market, or in war to fight under its flag for so-called freedom. The only freedom they (the state) cares about is its own safeguards—big business under the puppet system plus the old three party political collaborators. At the Guildhall we saw them feast luxuriously side by side with murderers from the Commonwealth, yet the very same wanted |to keep Amin out.

The Church of England are all part and parcel of this pomp for the Queen is its head. It has much in common with its stable-companion the Catholic dictatorship. The great wealth of the rich has only been built on deeds of plunder, piracy and wholesale murder and the wage-slave-profit market.

Until the real people cast their eyes and minds on the true and rightful road of Socialism, where all the everyday needs of life—food, light and heat, and a decent home free from the price and rent label for ever in a classless society dedicated to the welfare and health of all the people: this will be the highest law in the land. No longer will the evils of the money market be with us. That’s right, no banks, no profit-mongers, the end of the big business supermarkets. The network of landlords (private and state) will be an evil of the past—homes, like all building, will be for the use of the people not profit.

Once the abolition of money comes about, only then can you plan a rich and carefree future.

R. Bloomfield,

London SW8.

SPGB Meetings (1977)

Party News from the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard