Is there a "Road" to Socialism? (1988)

Book Review from issue 5 of the World Socialist Review

State Capitalism: The Wages System Under New Management by Adam Buick & John Crump (The MacMillan Press Ltd, 1986)

You have only to attend a meeting of any of numerous groups identifying themselves as "socialist" or ’'communist” to find out one thing: with few exceptions, they do not define their immediate goal as being worldwide in scope. They regard replacing the buying and selling of necessary goods and services with free access to the same as a very long-term aspiration (though the notion enjoys wide acceptance as an abstraction). Between the cup of communism and the lip of capitalism, they claim, there lies a wide gap, and that gap can only be bridged by a complicated and unpredictable series of short-term objectives. Eventually society will be transformed, it is true, but not starting from the present reality as we currently understand it.

Those groups organized as formal political parties seeking to attract the support and/or the votes of workers and other sectors of the population thus find themselves nailed fairly tightly to a framework of nationalism which has to justify itself through an appeal to "proletarian internationalism" or something similar. Followers of Lenin and Trotsky. for example, advocate setting up a "workers’ state" which will liquidate the institutions and mechanisms by which private owners of the means of production perpetuated their legal monopoly over the output of goods and services. According to this scenario, the exploiting (capitalist) class continues in existence for a while but is sternly regimented by the party in control of the machinery of state and enjoying the well-informed support of the majority.

In State Capitalism Adam Buick and John Crump carefully dissect the concept of state ownership of the means of wealth production and lay bare the mass of rationalizations leading up to it. First they establish the general boundaries of discussion by defining what the term capitalism means, then they distinguish between two models of capitalism: the one traditionally accepted as such (private capitalism, the earliest form) and the other representing a number of historic adaptations or variants of capitalist monopoly over social production (in response to some structural failure on the part of the "private" model). Since this second type is characterized by the nationalization of enterprises--with or without a thoroughgoing state management of the system of production—it is of course best described as "state” capitalism.

This result can be accomplished in two ways. Either the state can bail out individual capitalists by taking over the legal proprietorship and control of their businesses without a major political upheaval occurring (as has become common in western Europe); or a revolutionary opposition can develop within the bosom of capitalist society and, with varying degrees of majority support, raze the preceding regime to the ground, totally reorganizing the system of exploitation (as in eastern Europe, Russia and China). In the second case, a new capitalist minority replaces the old, leaving the same or equivalent relations of production intact. Though from a narrowly legal angle the new minority renounces all private title to the system of production, they nevertheless retain monopoly control over it.

"Socialist” Profits?

In the fourth chapter, the authors deal with a question which everyone has sooner or later asked: What makes a state-capitalist economy different from a "classical" one? They tackle a couple of familiar old fallacies: namely, the belief that

"Socialist" profit is not capitalist profit because "all profits belong to the people" or, to put it another way, because "the state distributes profit for the benefit of the people. "Socialist" wages are not the mark of an exploited working class, but are the means by which social wealth is distributed according to each individual's contribution to production.

(Ch. 4, "The Capitalist Dynamic of State Capitalist Economies")

In the end, however, no matter on what ideological grounds wage exploitation is put into effect, the leopard cannot avoid keeping its spots. 

"Profit is pursued because, due to the competition which is inherent in world capitalism, state capital continually has to invest newly acquired surplus value in a compulsive effort to accumulate and hence expand itself." (p 101)

Before going on to socialism as the alternative to either state or private capitalism, they briefly outline some of the ideological underpinnings on which the justification for state capitalism rests, showing how the thinking of its advocates evolved out of "classical" socialist theory (as found in the writings of Marx or Engels) into its Leninist and post-Leninist forms.

Basic Features of Socialism

Having comprehensively sapped out the state-capitalist terrain, Buick and Crump have no difficulty elucidating the basic features of a socialist society: It must be worldwide; all goods and services will be produced for use only and distributed free; it will have no classes, states or national frontiers; no exchange of goods and services will take place—since there will no longer be any market to regulate consumption.

The disappearance of economic value would mean the end of "economic calculation" in the sense of calculation in units of "value" whether measured by money or directly in some unit of labour time. (Ch. 6, "The Alternative to Capitalism")

The need for planning will be met by establishing "a rationalized network of planned links" occupying the successive phases through which the cycle of production/consumption passes. "Planning" in that context will mean only the coordinating of "a direct interaction between hunan beings and nature." (The authority of economists rests partly in fact on the working class’s uncritical acceptance of their doctrine of an inherent natural scarcity. )

If the language in the last chapter makes heavy use of the conditional tense, this does not imply any prediction of utopia. It only acknowledges that workers have so far failed to shake themselves out of the slumber of poverty. This is a process which necessarily must take place on a world scale (if not everywhere at precisely the sane time); for a whole society to make the changeover to production for use requires a conscious understanding of the stakes by enough of the world's population to constitute a political force greater than any that capital can muster in its own defense.

Such an intense concentration of well-informed opinion has not yet occurred nor will it ever—if workers (including both highly paid professionals and exploited agriculturalists) continue to limit their thought horizons to those of the national state into which their destiny as wage slaves has thrust then. The admirable thing about State Capitalism is that it provides a sorely needed theoretical framework for tearing loose of the deadly embrace of nationalism This framework (as noted in the book) has been slowly emerging within the world socialist movement in the decades since the Bolshevik revolution, most significantly in the propaganda of our companion party, the Socialist Party of Great Britain. The book itself makes a highly readable contribution to this ongoing effort to create a class-conscious, socialist majority—one that will finally get capitalism's funeral cortege rolling toward the cemetery.

Blogger's Note:

Buick and Crump's book was also reviewed in the April 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard.  

Let Them Eat Glasnost (1987)

Editorial from Issue 4 of the World Socialist Review

Everyone knows the old joke about Russia's top-down brand of state capitalism: capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, whereas communism is the opposite. In fact, of course, there are no socialist republics (socialism not being compatible with government), nor are any of the Soviet Union’s republics examples of socialism (which requires a classless, moneyless society functioning on a worldwide basis), nor are there even any soviets (councils acting as the workers' democratically elected delegates) in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. What's in the name, then? An immense majority who go to the market everyday to sell their only commodity—their ability to do work—to a small minority who. . . . roll up their shirtsleeves and plunge into the "work” of supervising and directing the country’s capital investments so as to make them yield a profit (someone' s got to do it, after all!).

And now that the USSR’s workers, women and men alike, have glasnost, Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of ’’openness,” they will presumably become happier and more productive and, not least, more accessible to multinational penetration. For even the spectre of communism has at last been incorporated into the marketplace!

Common Ownership

It is no academic exercise to point out that the word ’’communism” means only common ownership of the means of producing wealth: the right to decide on the use of the mechanisms by which society recreates and reproduces itself. The state is designed, on the contrary, to enforce the will of a minority against the wishes of the majority (in modern times, perversely enough, through the use of "majority rule”). As "open” as the CPSU and its politburo may now be projecting themselves, all the glasnost in the world (though there isn’t that much of it floating around anyhow) will not make them communists.

Are We “Commies” ?

As communists (socialists) ourselves, our policy has often been confused with theirs. During the second world war, when the Allied Powers calculated it was to their advantage to court Russia’s ersatz ruling élite, a great deal of treacle and syrup poured forth from the US government about the heroic Soviet Union, led by that epic working-class genius, Joseph Stalin.

If you were too young during the days of world war II, or not yet born, there are books and articles readily available dealing with the cooperation and friendship between the bolshevik-style Communists on the one hand, and the professed champions of "democratic” capitalism on the other. (For starters, try The Pocket Book of the War, Quincy Howe, Ed., Pocket Books, Inc., Hew York, 1941.)

However, when the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Great Britain were wining, dining and dealing with Stalin in the Kremlin, the World Socialist Party and its Companion Parties in other countries were openly opposing the war as a carnage not worth the shedding of a single drop of working-class blood. When the secret police of the Soviet Union and the secret police of the United States (the forerunner of the present CIA) were acting in unison, we were speaking out and writing articles attacking the war.

When the Communist Party was recruiting for the war effort, selling Victory Bonds, waving the flag and singing the national anthem of America, as well as that of Russia, we of the World Socialist Party were speaking from the rostrum on Boston Common as our comrades in England spoke in Hyde Park; continuing to urge our fellow workers to organize for the abolition of capitalism everywhere—the basic cause of war.

Are They Communists?

Thus, we are not Communists in the popularly accepted meaning of that much-maligned word. We do not support or sympathize with Russian or Chinese or Cuban or any other state capitalism. We are communists, though, in the classical meaning of the term. We are scientific socialists who advocate the complete and immediate abolition of the buying and selling system in all its forms around the world and the immediate introduction of a system of production for use.

If the workers of the Soviet Union want an ’’opening” that is socially authentic, they would do well to press for the immediate elimination of the system that keeps them exploited in more or less the same way as it does everywhere else. Perhaps glasnost will inadvertently give them some space in which to think about organizing for a real socialist revolution.

Equal time for the capitalist view (1986)

From issue 2 of the World Socialist Review

With the heating up of the situation in Nicaragua, the bombing of Libya and the flood of Rambo-type films in the theatres, the subject of war is once again in the forefront of topics being discussed.

We of the WORLD SOCIALIST MOVEMENT for over eighty years have put forth our views on the causes of war. We claim that war is nothing but the clashing of economic rivalries over such things as markets, private property issues, trade routes and spheres of influence. Of course, the capitalists of various nations are always quarrelling over such things, but once in a while these items cannot be resolved peacefully. When such a time comes, wars begin. We claim that wars are therefore fought for the capitalist class interests and do not, in any way, benefit the working class. Therefore, we oppose all wars during peacetime and wartime. We also claim that the only way to end wars is to end capitalism.

Now that we have presented a brief outline on our position to war, we would like to take this opportunity to give the capitalist class and its supporters a chance to present their views in our journal (something that they almost never grant us in their publications).

1. Rear Admiral French E. Chadwick, U.S.N.

"Navies and armies are insurance for capital owned abroad by the leisure class of a nation/ It is for them that empires and spheres of influence exist. The great war now waging is a culmination of efforts to maintain and extend these spheres." 

(NY Evening Post, Dec. 17, 1915)

2.  Lammot duPont

"War is caused by economic and political rivalries."

(NY Herald Tribune, Nov. 19, 1934)

3. National Hughes Alliance Declaration, issued in 1916, signed by two ex-Presidenta, T. Roosevelt and Wm. Howard Taft and 25 leading bankers and captains of industry.

"Our business is business. We are producers, manufacturers and traders, without sufficient home demands to absorb the full yield of fields and the output of factories, Year by year it becomes more apparent that the markets of the world must be kept open to American industries.

We cannot extend our trade further than we are able to defend it. The rivalries that begin in commerce end on the battlefields. The history of war is green with international jealousies. Whatever the diplomatic excuse, every conflict in modern times had its origin in the question of property rights."

4.  Institutions magazine

"This is more than war of mechanical monsters clashing in the night . . .  more than a war of production. It is a war for markets—YOUR markets! The Axis wants your business—wants to destroy it once and for all."

(Quoted from a Treasury Department Ad placed in Institutions magazine, April 1943. Ad was captioned, "The Axis Wants Your Business")

5. Bernard M. Baruch

"Before I go any further in this expression of my views, I think it wise to remind you gentlemen of the fact that wars are not fought merely for immediate results. Each participant makes an effort to impose his will upon his enemies by military and economic destruction. But at the same time he keeps in mind the after results—new markets, new trade and new intercourse, always at the expense of the defeated and neutrals."

(Senate Comm., NY Times, April 7, 1939)

6. David Lawrence

"It makes one shudder to think what the sudden outbreak of peace might mean to the American economy."

(NY Sun, April 5, 1949)

7. George F. Taubeneck

"If you are one of those domestic-minded businessmen who are unimpressed with this view (that prosperity hinges on foreign trade) ponder for a bit the thinking of a gentleman who ought to know about such things. . . .  He is R.W. Gifford, vice-president and assistant general manager of Norge Division, Borg-Warner Corp., and chairman of the board of Borg-Warner International Corp.

He'll tell you in just ten words why he considers foreign trade important to this country: Because "all wars are basically economic" and because "we actually need the business."

(from 'Inside Dope' from Air Conditioning and Refrigeration News, Dec. 9, 1946.)

8. Woodrow Wilson

"Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused."

(as quoted in The Forging of the American Empire by S. Lens, 1971)

9. U.S. NAVY

"Realistically, all wars have been for economic reasons. To make them politically palatable, idealogical issues have always been provoked.

Any possible future war will undoubtedly conform to historical precedent.

Present differences with our world neighbors, naow in the diplomatic stage, we can hope can be kept there. But after all, war is merely diplomacy by force of arms."

(official document distributed by Office of Naval Intell. to U.S. Senate Comm, on Armed Services-April 15, 1947)

So, there you have it. The real causes of war, straight from the capitalist class and its supporters. Remember, the next time we have a war for "making the world safe for democracy" or for "to end all wars," that the real reason is not these idealogical phrases, but instead conflicts for the benefit of the capitalists and their markets.

Let's end wars by ending the system that creates wars. Join the World Socialist Party, Now!

Why you need a Socialist Party (1992)

From issue 9 of the World Socialist Review

Presently, everything we humans need to live is locked up tightly under the control of investors who accumulate capital (capitalists)—people who can deny everyone else access to “survival goods.” Because they have this power, they can force as many people as market conditions will allow to work for them, at rates they set low enough to allow them a profit on their investments. If the state does the investing and controls the capital, then the state is the capitalist; it all comes to the same thing. The owners and controllers of capital monopolize the production of virtually everything useful or enjoyable (wealth), which economists facelessly describe as “goods and services.”

This monopolization creates two classes of people—capitalists and workers. Anyone who works for a living—blue-collar, white-collar or professional—is a worker (whether this fits the currently fashionable image or not). Although not all workers produce wealth, the conditions prevailing in the factories, on the land, in transportation, set the standard for conditions elsewhere in the system. Workers alone produce wealth, and employment is just an evolved form of slavery.

Capitalists have to stay in business. This means they need to keep their costs down and their profit opportunities maximal. They must pay their employees the least amount they calculate will keep them alive; and their system allows the use of a "sliding scale" of valuation which gives them the right to pay employees as close to nothing as they can get away with, providing this is compatible with the maintenance of a profit-producing workforce.

Workers have to stay alive. This means they need to keep their earnings as high as they can and to maximize their purchasing power as consumers. If they don’t bother to draw their own conclusions about being forced into such a position, they will at least manage to respond to the initiatives taken by their employers; by organizing into unions, they can, when the economy is expanding, enforce the terms of their maintenance that capitalism normally requires in the abstract.

The attempt by employers to drive wages or salaries down below the survival minimum is part of a process we call “exploitation.” The driving mechanism of the process is the quest for profit, which requires producing the greatest possible surplus over workers’ needs at any given time. We say “producing” because it is in the sector of wealth production that the most direct and explicit form of exploitation occurs. But employment in general is exploitation, even where workers produce no direct wealth themselves.

The result of a system based on these two all-inclusive sets of conflicting needs is an unending and often vicious struggle between the two classes (the class struggle). All political conflicts, based on this premise, form part of the same evil tree— all of them ultimately generated by the exploitation of workers by capitalists. Ownership of the means of producing wealth requires no work, and work—in any sector of the economy—implies no control over the system in any of its parts.

What is the solution?

Obviously, this state of affairs could go on forever—conditions permitting, which is arguable all by itself—if workers (a) either tamely submitted to their enslavement or (b) actively "improved” its quality

by organizing against their employers. The only way out of the whole vicious cycle is to eliminate its basis, the use of capital.

How do you do that? Abstractly speaking, on the one hand, by transferring ownership and control of the means of wealth production to the community at large, so that all who ask for what they need can give it directly to themselves. (This implies a democratically controlled administration, naturally; see below.)

More concretely, enough workers to constitute a majority of the population remove the obligation of obtaining money for the things they need, based on the work they perform. They abolish the wages system. If everyone, as the community, disposes of a common ownership over the means of creating useful and/or enjoyable effects, no one can have power over others in that community.

Why the working class?

Because capitalism has triumphed worldwide, eliminating all competing systems of wealth production, it has consequently consolidated the struggles between exploiters and exploited into one between capitalists and workers. No other social classes are left anymore. Workers are almost all the people there are in the world. Businessmen constitute the remainder. By eliminating capital altogether—which rests squarely on the payment of wages, salaries and other types of payment for services rendered—workers in effect constitute a new form of society. Only they can do this; to their employers (and anyone using employer-logic) the whole idea sounds perfectly insane.

Getting there

The working class needs first of all—schematically speaking—to gain control of both the machinery of state and the world of work. A socialist party cannot help it do the latter, but— once workers realize the need to carry out this purpose—such a party is the best vehicle available for accomplishing the former.

Why gain control of the state? Because it is a command center for the economy, easily converted into a “war machine” for defeating working class initiatives aimed at wresting control from the capitalist class. It is a strategic line of retreat that can otherwise save the day for the capitalist class when all else seems lost. Capitalism is replete with instances of the military taking control of the state to tide over the system for indefinite “emergencies,” when workers get too close. Workers do, however, operate the system to a degree that has become virtually total. Economically they are already dominant within the capitalist system, but of course the capital-accumulating class denies them the political control that should go with that.

Workers need to pursue this goal very single-mindedly. Less than the system itself will not suffice: leaving “parts” of it intact will only force it to adapt itself to the change of rules imposed on it, largely at working class insistence. Basing an economy on payment for goods and services— specifically, on the payment of wages and salaries—itself must go, or we will never be rid of the beast.

Any organization failing to recognize this will never enjoy real or lasting success in seeking to promote goals it sees as opposed to the effects or the operations of capitalism. A socialist party cannot therefore allow itself to pursue other objectives than the replacement of restricted access to goods and services with the objective of free access, which means it can only seek the abolition of the wages system. It must oppose all other goals and those who espouse them; the logic of its very existence requires this.

Why a socialist party?

What people in different countries around the globe should seek to accomplish through their respective socialist parties, as an immediate goal, is to place everything related to the production of anything useful or enjoyable—wealth—in the hands of the community—not the state. This includes distribution from the places where wealth is created to the places where it is used, with the community being made up of everyone without distinction of race or sex: each person having the same right to decide and procure what he or she needs. This arrangement implies the lack of necessity for money or for any other sort of bartering device, and the consequent lack of a basis for the institutions related to exchange—banks, insurance companies, governments and states; of everything, including legislation, designed to force people to do things.

Making it happen

We live under a pernicious system that denies and punishes our best instincts as community animals. Either we can all wait until crisis conditions get so terrible that a confused collision (and possibly an explosively destructive one) between capitalism and reality forces everybody to recognize the benefits of common ownership; or we can do things as befits our human intelligence and organize to secure these benefits, restricting the pain of an enforced transition to our thought processes. We could all permit ourselves the luxury of betting on the luck of posterity, or we could make the change now ourselves while our chances of success remain optimal.

One cannot expect parties and groups committed to partial solutions (reforms) or indirect expedients (workers' states, minority led revolutions and the like) to know how to deal with the problem. As a socialist, you can work for an outcome that is a real possibility—although in the process you will find yourself opposed to these other promotions (and if you don’t realize it at the outset, the other parties and groups will waste no time in disabusing you).

Organizing for socialism—joining the World Socialist Party in this country—therefore implies your understanding of what socialism is and of what is required to achieve it, as well as a firm commitment to avoid embracing or endorsing any partial solutions to the crises of capitalism. While this is certainly not to everyone’s taste, adopting this rule is the only way to build a movement that really will have the eventual ability to act at the critical moment: when the working class, in a mood of historic revulsion, will finally move to end a system that only causes it pain, that trades it poverty for comfort, privileges for equality and slavery for freedom. 

Propaganda War (1992)

From issue 9 of the World Socialist Review

On second thought: From the Western Socialist (1994)

From issue 11 of the World Socialist Review

The main flaw in the industrial union as a means of emancipation is the fact that a labor union, in order to gain any sort of recognition, must open its doors, even to the point of compulsion, to any and all workers in the industry it seeks to control. If it does not do so it will not be in a position to control anything. If it does its membership must be dominantly made of workers who are not socialists.

Even if the “political arm" were 100 percent socialist, how could they hope to be backed by a union whose membership were predominantly non and anti-socialist? And if it is argued that the socialists of the “political arm” would educate the union members to socialism, this merely knocks De Leon’s theories for another cocked hat. This would certainly demonstrate once more that the political party does not arise from the industrial union.

The truth of the matter is that unions of any kind, whether craft or industrial, arise out of the relations of wage-labor and capital. They can only be used as weapons by the workers in resisting the pressure against their living standards by the capitalist class. They are the means the working class must use under this system to sell labor-power at its value. It may be argued that industrial organization is superior to craft unionization, but even if this is so it only applies in so far as it concerns a capitalist society, for no union could possibly be carried over into socialism. The material conditions for their existence will be absent in a society devoid of economic classes.

“The Socialist Labor Party” HARMO, July-August 1948

Git along, li'l flunky (1993)

From issue 10 of the World Socialist Review

Have you ever found yourself stuck in rush-hour traffic and wondering if the light—much less your life—would ever change? When you think about it, it doesn’t matter if you’re in the driver’s seat, since you’re always being told where to go. The Ross Perots of life literally bank on us acting like their societal chauffeurs or some other kind of admiring flunkies. Always mimicking their dreams and aspirations, trying to follow their lifestyles and goals; never conceiving our own.

In the same hot pursuit of the all-encompassing dollar, a neo-traditional ritual has grown up that runs roughshod over the grand cattle roundups of yesteryear’s golden days on the ranges. It’s euphemistically called morning and afternoon rush-hour traffic. In the cowboy days, otherwise unthinking and unmanageable beasts were herded up and driven long distances to self-destruction in slaughterhouses to make money for the well-to-do barons of old—leaving a hazy cloud of dust in their wake on the stampede to oblivion.

Today the money-making prize meat is much more mobile, intelligent and normally just two-legged! For miles around we herd ourselves on asphalt trails cramming into towering marketplaces of concrete and glass. Like the cattle barons of old, today’s bosses require our simultaneous presence in workplaces to chum out bewildering profits for their benefit—leaving a hazy cloud of smog in our wake as we come and go...

Humanoid cattle

Yesteryear’s slaughter produced a one-shot profit for the cattle barons. Today’s employment produces profit hundreds of times a year from the same humanoid herd member. On a relentless death-march of hypertension, heart failure, cancer, even AIDS; but for a reason no different from the grand slaughters that made America “great.” And at six feet under, evolution stops. All species are the same—dead meat.

Sitting for hours, day in and day out, in nauseating traffic jams isn’t a mass expression of individual free will, nor is it just a coincidence. It is a compulsion of capital that degrades us into high-tech cattle. Unlike cattle, though, we each have an advanced brain with which to think: and thus the ability to break out of this more sophisticated, but nonetheless induced, herd mentality at any point.

Today’s maverick entrepreneur cowboy-types just don’t know what’s on the other end of the rope. When they do find out, they will drop everything and run for cover (as Ross Perot did in his attempt to lasso the public, on getting what was for him a frightening glimpse, when he said, “.. .1 didn’t want to wreck the political process”). When we move en masse, there will be no stopping us. Not only in the driver’s seat, we will decide where we go and when, at our convenience—also, what we will do when we get there: something no cow ever dreamt of! With democratic control of the earth’s resources replacing control by capital, we can all tell the cowboy bosses to get lost so we can go about our business.

W.J. Lawrimore

Obituary: Len Fenton (1917-2006)

Len Fenton and Ann Rab

Obituary from issue number 21 of the World Socialist Review

Last October 26th, the World Socialist Party lost one of its most energetic and committed spokesmen—a "stalwart" in the old sense—Comrade Len Fenton. Surviving the death of his wife Ann Rab by four years, he retired gradually from party functions till his last remaining activity was keeping a monthly log of postal mail received.

Fenton's first contact with the organization was in 1936, during a lunch break on Boston Common, where the party speakers frequently and forcefully argued the case for socialism. He was soon deeply impressed; he joined the party in December 1936 and became an official speaker himself in 1938, joining Comrades Rab and Gloss on the stand at outdoor meetings.

Developing his talent for public speaking of all kinds, Fenton was Boston Local's most effective speaker over a long span of years. From 1947 through the 1970s, he frequently represented the WSP at debates with other organizations and at various colleges and universities in the Boston/Cambridge area.

He recruited several other members of his family into the movement. He served on the Editorial Committee of The Western Socialist (the predecessor of the World Socialist Review) from 1939 until its last issue in 1980. [1]

Although Fenton's forte was as a speaker and debater rather than as a writer, he was very active on the Circulation Committee of the WS, and in 1955 he initiated a campaign to get the journal into libraries, which succeeded in boosting its circulation significantly over the next few years (a period in which many radical journals were losing readership). He was also active on the National Administrative Committee, occasionally serving as National Secretary or Treasurer.

Len combined a lucky gene with financial acumen to rise to the status of "cockroach capitalist," a term applied to members who went into business and did well. This phenomenon has sometimes caused critics to wonder how a party of the working class, committed to abolishing capital and wages, can harbor members of the capitalist class in its ranks. But just a little reflection will show that a socialist revolution aims to abolish the function of capital and the necessity of working for a living; the capitalists themselves only personify their capital.

His business allowed him the opportunity to travel abroad, and from 1965 on he and Ann made several trips to England, where they were hosted by comrades in the SPGB. Often they reciprocated the hospitality when some of these comrades would cross the Atlantic and stop in Boston. They formed lifelong friendships with SPGBers like Gilbert McClatchie (Gilmac), Cyril May, Jim D'Arcy and many others. In that bigger, less connected world, mutual contacts among socialists scattered widely across the globe had an intensity borne of a common sense of purpose.

Len Fenton never lost sight of the big picture. All through his long involvement in the world socialist movement, he maintained a contagious upbeat philosophy. Any success the party has in organizing for socialism will rest partly on the foundations he laid. In that sense, he is with us still. 

[1] In 1939 the Socialist Party of Canada, dodging the wartime censors, asked the WSP to take over its publication for the time being as a joint venture — a relationship that ended after 1968, when the SPC launched an independent journal.

Voice From The Back: Profits And Oily Words (2006)

The Voice From The Back Column from the December 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Profits And Oily Words

You have seen advertisements by oil companies that express concern for the environment and claim they fight global warming. It is of course a fraud. “Britain’s leading scientists have challenged the US oil company Exxon-Mobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change. In an unprecedented step, the Royal Society, Britain premier scientific academy, has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have “misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence.” (Guardian, 20 September) Capitalists are only interested in profits, they don’t give a damn about your children or their children’s future. That is capitalism.

A Toxic Society

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimate at least 90,000 people die every year of asbestos related diseases but that didn’t stop the manufacture of the obnoxious material. “Chrysotile asbestos, a known human carcinogen, will remain off a global “watch list” of toxic substances for at least two more years after countries led by Canada blocked consensus in United Nations talks on Friday. … Canada, whose French-speaking Quebec province is a major asbestos producer and exporter, led opposition to its addition to the list, according to environmentalists tracking the talks. Canadian officials say puting chrysotile asbestos on the list would be tantamount to banning international trade in it and threaten jobs.” (Yahoo! News, 13 October) 90,000 deaths a year is a mere inconvenience compared to a couple of bucks for the owning class who make their money from death and disease. That is why we are socialists, also some of us once worked in shipyards, where they used asbestos, and we have difficulty breathing.

Cut Price Killers

“BP, the British oil group, had a “check-book mentality” towards safety and was aware of maintenance backlogs and unsafe equipment at its Texas City refinery years before the fire there in 2005 in which 15 workers died, according to findings from US safety officials. .. Safety was compromised by a succession of budget cuts … The company implemented a 25 per cut on fixed costs between 1998 and 2000 which adversely affected maintenance expenditure at the refinery.” (Times, 31 October) In order to compete inside capitalism firms are constantly trying to cut overheads. In this case leading to the death and injury of many workers. That is how capitalism operates. Nasty aint it?

Gangster Talk

The recent electoral losses of the Republican Party in the USA have led to the Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quitting his post. His political demise led to newspapers running articles on him. Here are a couple of his past statements that were quoted. “Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war” and “You get a lot more with a kind word and a gun than you do with a kind word alone.” (Times, 9 November) It is significant that this last statement of Runsfeld was a quote from the gangster Al Capone. We can understand why a US Defence Secretary would have admired a murderous gangster chief, after all they both lived in a capitalist society based on violence.

Bull In A China Shop

The media mogul Rupert Murdoch has been making strenous efforts to break in to the Chinese market, but in 1993 he made a mess of it by stating, “Advances in the technology of telecommunications are an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere.” The Chinese took this threat seriously and imposed strict rules on satellite dishes thus depriving Murdoch’s Star TV of the huge Chinese's potential audience. “The following year Star removed BBC World Television from its Chinese service, in a move that was regarded by many as a sop to the Chinese government.” (Observer, 12 November) Last month Murdoch was in China trying to sweet talk his way in with government officials. When it comes to making money democratic views take a back seat with capitalists like Murdoch. What is suppression of political ideas, imprisonment, torture and death compared with more money to a billionaire? Very little it seems.

An American Myth

Supporters of the profit system often site the USA as a good example of how democratic capitalism really is. They give us the old homily about “log cabin to White House” although today it should probably be “trailer park to White House”. It is of course a complete fallacy as the following item about the recent mid-term election illustrates. “This election proved that it pays to spend big(ger). The average House winner burned through about $1 million on the stump – and the candidate who spent the most won in 93% of House races. The most expensive victory was, oddly, one of the Dems’ safe bets: New York Senator Hillary Clinton, who won a second term with 67% of the vote – and $35.9 million.” (Time, 20 November) Forget the myths, for a lot of Americans it is “trailer park to trailer park”.

The Stern gag – capitalist policies for capitalism’s problems (2006)

From the December 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

“At every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing over nature – but that we, with flesh and blood and brain, belong to nature and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly. We are gradually learning to get a clear view of the indirect, more remote social effects of our productive activity, and so are afforded the opportunity to control and regulate these effects well. This regulation, however, requires a complete revolution in our existing mode of production . . . in our whole contemporary social order”

You could be forgiven for thinking the above quotation came from a modern-day ecologist or environmentalist, commenting on impending global ecological catastrophe and drawing upon the myriad reports currently in existence, written by concerned scientists, that portend cataclysmic changes to our life-styles if we don’t stop abusing our natural environment immediately. The quote is in fact 131 years old and is taken from Dialectics of Nature, written by Frederick Engels (1875).

Let’s get one thing straight from the outset. Socialists have been warning about the effects of capitalism’s penny-pinching production methods and how they impact on the wider environment for well over a hundred years, and it is often with despair that we reiterate Engels’ message from the later 19th century, more so now that state-of-the-art technology exists that provides hard evidence as to the exact effects of capitalist production.

Global disaster

It was, therefore, not with any great sigh of relief, or with shock and disbelief, that socialists received the findings of the much-trumpeted Stern report on climate change and indeed the government’s reaction to it. It does make for grim reading, suggesting that time is running out to really address the environment question previous opportunities having been pathetically squandered at the Hague and Kyoto Summits and that the possibility of preventing a global disaster is “already almost out of reach”.

The 700-page report, commissioned by the Treasury and carried out by the former World Bank chief economist, Sir Nicholas Stern, argues that environmental problems will be “difficult or impossible to reverse” unless something is done now. It paints a disturbing picture of the future of the planet if overall global temperatures rise by just two degrees Centigrade. It suggests that four billion people could face water shortages, that sixty million Africans would be exposed to malaria and that forty percent of the world’s species would face extinction.

Two-hundred million more people, it goes on, could be exposed to hunger and that figure could rise to 550 million if the temperature rose one extra degree because of a knock-on 34 percent drop in crop yields across Africa and the Middle East. Australia’s arable land would become simply too hot to sustain cereal crops. Another couple of degrees rise in temperature would, according to the report, see the ice glaciers of the Himalayas melt, depriving 300 million Chinese of a water supply. Rising sea levels would inundate half the world’s major cities, creating more homelessness, and increased ocean acidity would result in a serious decline in fish stocks.

The report further informs us that “changes in weather patterns could drive down the output of the world’s economies by an amount equivalent to up to £6 trillion a year by 2050, almost the entire output of the EU.” But all is not lost, believe Chancellor Gordon Brown and Environment Secretary David Miliband. They point to the ‘positive message’ arising from the report; this being that the world has the means to avoid the awaiting cataclysm. Money can be thrown at the problem – the earth-shattering sum of one per cent of Global GDP should suffice; a figure, incidentally, which is dwarfed by global military spending.

Whiff of profits

Responding to the report, Miliband sounded quite optimistic. Interviewed by the Independent (30 October), he said: “The second half of his message is that the technology does exist, the financing, public and private, does exist, and the international mechanisms also exist to get to grips with this problem – so I don’t think it’s a catastrophe that he puts forward. It’s a challenging message.”

What we are offered are capitalist remedies, and to make it all the more attractive there are profits to be had – well, the master class has to have some damned incentive before they act. As the Independent reported: “Combating climate change could become one of the world’s biggest growth industries, generating around $250bn of business globally by 2050.” Providing, that is, that we still have a planet worth saving in 50 years time.

Environmental disaster and the best capitalist politicians can think up is to tempt the master class with the whiff of profits to come if they agree to mend their ways! Indeed, the report is punctuated with terms such as “cost-effective” and “profitability”. Well, Stern is after all a leading world economist so his thoughts are naturally with his associates in big business. The very people who have disregarded the effects of their production methods on the natural environment for hundreds of years are now being asked to show it some mercy! Global environmental catastrophe can be halted by throwing money at the problem!

The simple fact is that businesses will not take the risk of falling behind in the struggle for profits and nor will any government enforce policy that will result in a drop in the profits of its respective capitalist class. This is exactly what President Bush cited when he pulled the USA out of the Kyoto Agreement. He is no doubt aware that the USA consumes more than one quarter of global oil production and is accountable for one quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, while being home to only 4.5 per cent of the world’s population, but his remit is not to protect the environment, nor the millions who would suffer as a direct result of environmental chaos. His job is protecting US interests all over the world, interests which are inseparable from profits.

Capitalist businesses survive by forcing out their competition, by cutting costs and sidestepping policies that hinder their expansion. They seek new outlets for their wares, to sell more and more, because this is the law of capitalism, and it is a law antagonistic to ecological concerns. It is the crazed law of capitalism that compels the big oil producers to pay teams of scientists to prepare reports that refute the findings of environmentalists who forewarn of the dire effects of current production methods.

The market economy demands that businesses only take into account their own narrow financial interests. Pleasing shareholders takes far more priority than ecological considerations. The upshot is that productive processes are distorted by this drive to make and accumulate profits. The result is an economic system governed by anarchic market forces which compel decision-makers, whatever their personal views or sentiments, to plunder, pollute and waste. They may well be loath to contaminate ecosystems, but the alternative is closure should they invest in costlier eco-friendlier production methods. Little wonder then that nature’s balances are upset today, and that we face problems such as melting glaciers, rising sea levels, acidic oceans and the like.

All Greens now

The Greens have long insisted that things could be put right with a change of government policy, which is exactly what Labour now proposes. The problem, they believe, can be rectified by governments forcing through laws and imposing green taxes on air travel, motoring and high emission vehicles – to protect the environment. Even the Conservatives, with their new infantile eco-logo, and the Liberals have jumped on board the green bandwagon. Shadow chancellor George Osborne promises a whole swathe of green taxes. All are seemingly convinced the problem facing the environment is an economic one insofar as the world’s governments can spend their way out of environmental catastrophe.

Governments, to be sure, exist to run the political side of the profit system and, no matter how well intentioned, do not have a free hand to do what is sensible or desirable. They do not control the market-driven profit system it controls them and shapes their policies. Which government is going to tell its oil companies to produce less oil, when these same oil producers are under constant pressure to pump more out of the ground and as cheaply as possible? Within three years annual car sales are set to hit 60 million per year, 10 million up on 2004. Which government will dare threaten these car sales with its eco-policies? At the very best their eco-policies can only slow down the speed of environmental decay, not halt it in its tracks at some future date.

Socialists are no different from others in desiring an environment in which the safety of all animal and plant species is ensured. Where we differ from our political opponents is in recognising that their demands have to be set against a well-entrenched economic and social system, based on class privilege and property and governed by the overriding law of profits first.

It has long been our case that human needs can be satisfied without recourse to production methods that adversely effect the natural environment, which is exactly why we advocate the establishment of a system of society in which production is freed from the artificial constraints of profit. We are not talking about nationalisation or any other tinkering with the present system, but rather its entire abolition and replacement with a global system in which the Earth’s natural and industrial resources are commonly owned and democratically controlled; a society in which each production process takes into consideration not only human need but any likely effect upon the environment.

One does not need a mastery of Earth sciences to envisage types of farming that preserve and enhance the natural fertility of the soil, the systematic recycling of materials obtained from non-renewable energy sources while developing alternative sources that continually renew themselves (i.e. solar energy and wind power); industrial processes that avoid releasing poisonous chemicals or radioactivity into the biosphere; the manufacture of solid goods made to last, not planned to break down after a period of time.

Once the Earth’s natural and industrial resources have been wrested from the master class and become the common heritage of all humanity, then production can be geared to meeting needs in an ecologically acceptable way, instead of making profits without consideration for the environment. This the only basis on which we can meet our needs whilst respecting the laws of nature and to at last begin to reverse the degradation of the environment caused by the profit system. The only effective strategy for achieving a free and democratic society and, moreover, one that is in harmony with nature, is to build up a movement which has the achievement of such a society as its objective.

John Bissett

Whose thoughts are you thinking? (2006)

From the December 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Richard Dawkins, the biologist, has become something of a celebrity through his outspoken advocacy of atheism as in his new book “The God Delusion”. But his approach to religion is still an idealist one.

The Dawkins approach to the question of religion is, like religion itself, an idealist one: religion is false, rationally unsustainable; morally enfeebling and a basis for hatred and division. Presumably Dawkins sees the death or meaningful diminution of religion by means of secularist persuasion just as religion hopes to resist secularisation by what it sees as ethical persuasion.

Dawkins looks into the biological evolution of homo sapiens for the origin and growth of the multiplicity of religious faiths. He is speculative rather than dogmatic on the issue but much more convincing when showing how the stringency of faith-based social morality has been softened over time by an intellectual response to the social development of society. He recognises this but, unlike Marx and Engels on the question of religion, simply reports it as a phenomenon under the label of moral Zeitgeist.

Unlike Dawkins, the pioneers of scientific socialism sought to show religion as a reflex of the social organisation of society. Marx, in the Introduction to his Critique of Hegel’s of Philosophy of Right, wrote:

“This state, this society, produces religion, a reversed world consciousness, because they are a reversed world. Religion is the general theory of that world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritualistic point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction. The struggle against religion is therefore immediately the fight against the other world of which religion is the spiritual aroma. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.” (original italics)

It wasn’t simply a question of religion being false, or brutal or divisive; it was a weapon of the ruling class, a bulwark in the way of the emancipation of the working class, a hurdle to be overcome in the progress to socialism nor could it be overcome while the conditions that nourished it continued to exist. Thus, the socialist sees religion as an integral part of the class struggle while the secularist sees it simply as a harmful, false premise on which to base a system of moral rectitude. As far as capitalism’s subject class is concerned, whether those who govern it or those who exploit it reject or accept faith is irrelevant; the morality of capitalism is not governed either by humanistic or religious considerations but by the constraints and compulsions of the marketplace.

Inculcating religion

Dawkins deals well, even poignantly, with the religious indoctrination of children pointing, for example, to the absurd practice of labelling young children with the faith identity of their parents or guardians. Even very young children, as young as three or four are referred to as, for example, ‘Catholic’, ‘Protestant’ or ‘Muslim’ children because society accepts the legitimacy of parents or guardians or clerics or teachers hijacking the innocence of children for the inculcation of beliefs more likely to be resisted if they were offered initially to an older person. Dawkins rightly calls it child abuse with ramifications sometimes even more devastating than the sexual abuse of children.

Obviously socialists agree that the indoctrination of children is a contemptible invasion of the rights of a child but, grave as it is, it is less socially heinous than the ruthless inculcation of the appalling precepts and values of capitalism – accompanied usually by the notion of a ubiquitous Divine Policeman – to which both children and adults of all ages are remorselessly exposed.

Science and the system

Indoctrination makes a nonsense of the claim that we live in a democracy. Democracy is about choice and choice is based on information and knowledge. But nowhere in the world of capitalism are the people offered the slightest hint that there could be a way of running our society that might free us from the appalling problems that are built-in, inevitable aspects of global capitalism. Instead we have intense conditioning and thought control to the extent were we look on the utterly absurd, like war and world hunger, as natural and as inevitable as the seasons.

Capitalism and its institutions rape our consciousness and rob us of the ability to think independently. Every situation must be reasoned within the paradigm of a world in which we are beholden to a class of owners not only for our daily bread but for every aspect of our life-functions from the cradle to the grave and unless our needs are consistent with the profit needs of the owning class they will not be met.

Richard Dawkins sings the praises of science and in a general sense socialists join in the chorus. But science, possibly more than most other disciplines, is a prisoner of capitalism. The scientists have to beg at the table of the system for funding to pursue their projects; their sponsors are usually largely mammoth capitalist enterprises bent on discerning means of further enriching their directors and shareholders or capitalist governments dedicated to the overall concerns of national capitalism.

Just like the rest of us, the scientist is a prisoner of the crazy logic of the system and just  like the rest of us if his or her dedicated function does not hold promise of profit for those who directly or indirectly employ them, irrespective of the potential social benefits of their work, it will be denied funding.

The first phase in the struggle to end the political and economic exploitation of our class is to learn to question the thoughts we inherit from well-intentioned parents and teachers; to challenge the strictures of the priests, parsons, rabbis and mullahs and to question why in a world of potential abundance, where a parasite class of non-productive money shufflers and profit-takers are rich beyond measure, and the working class that produces all real wealth endure mere want or dire poverty.

Richard Montague