50 Years Ago: Anti-Americanism (2003)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a more sinister aspect to the grotesque posturings of Harry Pollitt and the Communist Party. Since the erstwhile Allies quarrelled over the postwar settlement, the Communist Party has indulged in stirring up anti-American prejudices. They refer to “Yank” in almost the same manner as Fascists refer to “Yids.” Should some unfortunate girl be assaulted by an American soldier, then it is headlined in the Daily Worker. But should Americans give large contributions to flood relief funds then one requires a microscope to find any reference to it. In their spoken propaganda they harp on this anti-Yank theme with the same assiduity as Mosley once tried to work up prejudice against Jews.

There is no baseness from which the Communist Party will shrink in its effort to follow in the footsteps of their masters in the Kremlin. But they had better be careful. Not for the first time, Moscow might suddenly change policy, catching Harry Pollitt and his friends on the wrong foot, again not for the first time. Then, in their efforts to catch up with the change they might trip and break their political necks. An event which would be unmourned by all who know the Communist Party for what it is.

It was said of Shakespeare that “he touched nothing he did not adorn.” Of Mr. Pollitt and his Party it might truly be said that they touch nothing they do not degrade.

[From a column by “S.A.”, Socialist Standard, July 1953]

The Immigration Question (1976)

From the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Migration is described in the Encyclopaedia Britannica as “an outstanding feature of human life”. That spells misfortune for it, for there are no features of human life that are not exploited and mangled under capitalism. In mid-1974 there were 1,673,000, or 3.2 per cent, of the population, in Britain who were “of New Commonwealth and Pakistani ethnic origin” — that is, black. The figure for 1967 was 1,016,000, or 2.1 per cent, (figures from Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, quoted in The Times, 27th May 1976). An estimate for 1954, given in The Colour Problem by Anthony H. Richmond (Pelican 1955) was 100,000.

Not all immigrants to Britain are black, of course. Approximately 4 million people left Ireland for various countries, including Britain, between 1850 and 1900. and nearly half a million again between 1951 and 1961. In 1931-38, 150,000 people entered Britain from Eire together with 350,000 from European countries. However, in contemporary usage “immigrant” means black. The freshly-coined official term “New Commonwealth” means this, and excludes immigrants from Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In that frame of mind Indians, Pakistanis and Africans are made to appear as menacing invaders.

The latest phases in this alleged problem are claims that every Asian has a tribe of probably-bogus relatives claiming entitlement to join him, and unrest which has included four apparently indiscriminate racial murders. There is now widespread agreement that something must be done to control immigration. The secretary of the Punjabee Society of the British Isles wrote to The Times on 29th May: “Enough is enough.” Bob Mellish MP, former Labour Chief Whip, in the News of the World on 30th May: “Controls must be stricter. Numbers must get fewer and fewer until we arrive at a complete stop.” And there are the National Front and Enoch Powell, neither of them funny. The former deal in fear and ignorance, as did the Nazis whom they admire; the latter has talked repeatedly of racial carnage in a manner which, to quote Bernard Levin, “is making it more likely that his predictions will come true”.

The Myths

The argument put by Mellish and others is that the number of immigrants is too great for resources inside Britain.

Is there anything that can be done to control the number of newcomers in any one year to take account of the problems of employment, housing, schools and social services?

(C. Legum and A. Raphael, The Observer, 30th May)

Mature and sober as this sounds, it is only a nicely-stated confirmation of what largely underlies racial tension: “If I blacked my face I might get a council house . . . The teacher’s too busy looking after the black kids who can’t speak English . . . They get endless Social Security, but if we went we wouldn’t . . . etc.” Either it is true that black immigrants rob the natives of jobs, houses and services, or it is not. Some recent facts are as follows.

The 1971 General Household Survey showed that 35.5 per cent, of the black population in Britain are skilled manual workers, and 30 per cent, semiskilled or unskilled; 17 per cent, have non-manual jobs, and 10.5 per cent, are “managerial and professional’.’ In The Economic Impact of Commonwealth Immigration by Jones and Smith (Cambridge 1970) the average benefits received per black head from Social Security totalled £16.30 a year, as against £28.30 for the “home” population; for Health and Welfare £18.30 as against £18.60; in Local Authority housing £0.90 as against £3.00. The General Household Survey showed also that 23 per cent. of black households were overcrowded (insufficient bedrooms) as against 6.2 per cent. white ones, and 33 per cent. lacked the use of a bath as against 12 per cent.

If it is argued that the presence of immigrants nevertheless exacerbates existing problems, that simply is not true. The housing problem has been acute throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, yet at all times sufficient houses have existed. A report in The Times on 22nd April 1976 said: : "There is a surplus of about 850,000 houses in the United Kingdom, according to the Nationwide Building Society, which yesterday published its latest survey on housing trends.” At the same time, in 1972 there were 13,000 homeless persons in London (Shelter, Paper 4) and in 1966 60-70,000 overcrowded households in London (Census). The “shortage”, as always, is because housing is beyond the reach of those who need it, not because of any absolute scarcity. What on earth has that to do with immigration or alleged differences between black and white?

The Truths

The provision and extent of welfare services and education is a matter of government policy at any given time. However, if the concern really were about population pressures on “a tiny nation of over 50 million” (Mellish) the official figures for both-ways migration should allay it. For several years the numbers entering Britain have been substantially fewer than those leaving. In 1974 the net “loss” was 85,300; from 1969 to June 1975 it was 368,100. This has practically always been the case; the sole exception was the 1931-38 period, when the world depression at the beginning caused a fall in emigration and an inward balance of 23,821. It is stated also, in the annual report On the State of the Public Health published by the DOHSS on 28th March, that in 1974 Britain had “an unprecedented low birth rate of 13 a thousand” and “The population rose by only 55,173, the smallest increase ever recorded in peacetime”.

Were immigrants to respond to declarations of the capacities and needs of “host” nations, they would be scurrying about the world everlastingly. In 1948 the Royal Commission on Population recommended a policy of “combining encouragement of emigration with with a policy of selective immigration to make good any shortage that might arise in Great Britain”. During the 1939-45 war a number of West Indians were imported to work in factories in the north of England, while the United States repealed its sixty-one-year-old policy against Chinese immigration. On 2nd June 1976 the Australian Minister for Immigration announced that workers from anywhere were wanted, mentioning "East Timor, Indochina, Chile and many other places” (The Times, 3rd June).

Since the “bread-and-butter” argument against immigration is false from beginning to end, what we are left with is racial prejudice. Moreover, it is racism of a particularly dishonest kind which knows that in the open it has not a leg to stand on, and so hides behind plausible-sounding theories of population pressure and injustice to the home population. Over twenty years ago Dr. Roger Pilkington, the geneticist and anthropologist, wrote in the British Medical Association’s magazine Family Doctor:

Leading experts had declared that available scientific knowledge provided no basis for believing that the groups of mankind differed in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development. “Given the same opportunities of education and environment the performance and ability of individuals does not differ appreciably from one race to another.”

(The Guardian 28th April 1955)

Profit and Prejudice

The capitalist class are too well aware of their interests to practise racism. They may have individual private sentiments, and they are pleased to see it dividing the working class. But while Enoch Powell sees immigration “foaming with much blood” (April 1968) and producing “firearms and explosives” (May 1976), the capitalist’s vision of it is a lather of surplus-value and fizzing with interest-rates and profit. The Times on 9th June carried a report on Southall, the London industrial suburb where 20-30,000 of a population of 70,000 are immigrants, mostly Indian, and where disturbances have taken place recently.

According to the report, Indians first went to Southall in the early nineteen-fifties to work in a rubber factory. It continued: “Today there is still plenty of work, mainly unskilled, available in the district. Heathrow [London airport], especially after dark, seems to be entirely serviced by Punjabis in their bright turbans and saris. There is a fair amount of light engineering and there are some food-processing plants. The engineers in the local coach-works are Indian, and many of their coaches are on hire to the town hall to take Indian children out of Southall to integrate them and to improve their English.”

Therein is the whole position. Immigrants are wage-workers, or peasants who think they will improve their condition by becoming wage-earners. Coming to Britain or any other country, they are not instituting a separate fraternity; on the contrary, they are joining one massive group in a common situation — the industrial working class. Don’t be mistaken about this. The working class are all those who own nothing but their ability to work and so have to sell that, week by week or month by month, for a price called a wage. The resultant problems of being hard-up, badly housed, uncertain of employment and generally short of the essentials for a decent life, are universal in that situation. Real or fancied differences are unimportant beside it: this is what everyone in Southall, and nine-tenths of the population of the capitalist world, has in common.

The idea of a national identity which becomes a personal one and makes the others “foreigners” is a direct product of the nation-state which is the political unit of capitalism. Thus, each nation has its own history studded with its own partisan myths, and each represents its traditions and customs as the acme of civilization. The legends about immigrants all reflect this, which is why they repeat themselves indiscriminately. Everything said about Indians and Africans now was said about Jews, Irish, Poles, Italians, Chinese etc. in the past (the contemporary story that black people eat tinned cat-food was preceded by one, in the nineteen-thirties, that Italian immigrants ate cats). Its counterparts the world over are the same: for example, in France all murder, rape and offensive conduct is attributed to Arabs. This nonsense is easily disposed of; what is more important is to see whence and why it arises.

What to Do !

“Liberal attitudes” and anti-discrimination laws are no answer. Are we really to believe that having black policemen and magistrates and enabling Indians to join golf clubs is the road to social harmony? The obvious outcome of these policies will be divisions and rancour among the immigrants themselves, and that is already happening. On 30th May The Observer reported an interview with a Mrs. Singh, who is a young BSC from Calcutta and lives in “a pretty suburban house in Hounslow”. Her opinions were that illiterate Indians should not be allowed in, and It was regrettable that “lower class, illiterate Indians collect together in places like Southall and Bradford”. Liberal legislation may be handy for Mrs. Singh and her like, but whose interests are served by trying to persuade people to live contentedly together in districts from which they would like to escape but can’t?

The solution to the problem is not “integration” or fresh restrictions, but recognition by all workers that they are in the same boat. The working class have no country: only their class identity. Those who enter Britain and those who emigrate from it — and the position is the same for other countries — are on the whole leaving adverse economic or political conditions, hoping for something better and influenced by a possibility for reaching it. Inevitably, in huge numbers they are disappointed and made the objects of the frustration of people already on the other side of the fence where the grass is not greener after all. For all of them there is a practical alternative, the establishment of a classless society without frontiers. Stop listening to the rabble-rousers and the liberalizers, and find out about Socialism.

Robert Barltrop

An American Analysis of The Bi-Centennial Bust! (1976)

From the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

American capitalism in this year of Bi-Centennial celebration might well be summed up in a word: turmoil. Certainly, to base one’s estimates entirely upon reports by the media and to accept the superficial analysis of capitalist-dominated thinking, is to provoke the question : is American society disintegrating before our very eyes ?

For here is a nation based upon Law—we are assured —that is seemingly a Mecca for outlaws. Here exist a system of government and a political philosophy that shine as a beacon to the rest of benighted mankind, the most brilliant and the fairest system in the world of these or any previous times. Every American school-child has been made aware of this by the authors of the approved texts. And every last one of the horde of immigrant workers from Central and South America and the islands of the Caribbean (not to mention the steady stream of those from so many other lands) have heard of it, if not from their children, then certainly from other sources of “information” that abound in this “land of abundance.” Even the “wet-backs” who cross and re-cross the borders of this Promised Land, aided and abetted by employers of cheap, unskilled labour, always on the lookout for still cheaper human energy, have heard the glad tidings of America, the Land of the Free (and those who work for them).

And despite the gilt-edged assurances of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the entire American system of doing things, the turmoil exists and seems to accelerate with the passage of time.

But do not be deceived. There is nothing unusual about the troubles and woes of capitalism in America, today. Concerned supporters and radical opponents to the contrary notwithstanding, the system functions normally and there are at least two obvious tests one can make to verify this assertion : (1) Compare it with its own past by checking newspapers of the past in the microfilm department of your Public Library; (2) Compare it with what goes on, today, in the rest of the world wherever capitalism—in whatever form—is the order of the day.

And yet, one cannot be too careful when undertaking such comparisons. For it is the superficial that is readily seen, especially when observing the situation, via the media, on a world basis. It would seem that there is much more “law and order” in other nations than is the case in America, especially in the dictatorship countries, much less turmoil than in these United States. But it is not safe to make such an assumption for at least one good reason, viz., there is no country where the press (and other media of propaganda) is as highly developed, as a “Fourth Estate,” as in America. The Lords of the Press in this country have been able to maintain a large degree of independence from national government and what it assumes to be national (capitalist) interests.

More so than in other nations, even in the nations of the “Free West,” is this the case. Just one example is needed: publication of “classified” government material in any other country would earn for its publishers a cell in the slammer, if not the execution block. Yet, the US Constitution guarantees that there shall be no prior restraint on the freedom of the press and this right of individual capitalists over the rights of other individuals, or even at times the interests of the total national capital, as interpreted by the government, has been upheld in the high courts. Even ordinary cases before the courts—right up to murder—can be and are “tried in the newspapers” and defendants either convicted or acquitted on the basis of stories in and attitudes created by the newspapers.

The fact is, then, that all of the sores of capitalism (and they are many) are reported and sensationalized by the media in America to perhaps a greater extent than any place else in the world. And there is another aspect about reporting that should not be overlooked. That aspect is the penchant for distortion. Newspapers and TV Newscasts are, besides a major part of the head-fixing industry, commodities themselves produced for sale on the market (to readers and viewers) with view to profit (from advertisers). Especially is this true in a country such as the United States of America where outright Government ownership is not present either in the press or the Airwaves. The message, as taken by some, of turmoil-to-the-point-of-disintegration, then, should be inclusive of a large grain of salt.

★

With the foregoing in mind, let us now look at America in this Bi-Centennial Year as it really is. It is certainly not a land in which some 220 millions enjoy a common heritage or—at least—a common interest. (Nor is this so any place else in the world). Neither is it in deeper-than-usual difficulty and ready to come apart at the seams. The first part of this estimate should be obvious to all but those unfortunates who are born blind, deaf, and speechless, and needs no elaboration. The second part can be made apparent through a brief look at class warfare and mass poverty in America over the entire period of its history; and the public libraries are well-stocked with all the documentation one would need, from old newspapers, to journals, to history books. From the rebellions immediately following the framing of the Constitution in 1787 until the continuing upheavals of these 1970s, class warfare has run rampant in this land, even when it is cloaked by racial overtones.

As for the fanciful estimates of uninformed radical activists and the fears of far-right patriots that capitalism in America is being destroyed from within, the facts indicate otherwise. This does not mean that America might not, in time, be toppled from her position of world dominance by another power or combination of powers. This is possible even if it may not seem probable in the immediate future. But the working class of America can hardly suffer economic loss from such an eventuality. For working class standards are really not tied to a nation’s position of power vis-a-vis other nations. Latest figures show per capita income (by means of which living standards are generally estimated) in America are not first, but fifth, despite her occupying the No. 1 spot in world power. Nor can the British workers, for example, look back with nostalgia to those times when Britain dominated the world and wish to return to their living standards of those “good old days”.

So let us take a hard look at the actual standards of the American working class in this year of America’s colossal 200th birthday party. And let us go to the capitalist Press for some statistical facts, rather than the fiction it so dearly loves to spew on the subject of American working-class affluence. As reported in The Western Socialist (Boston, USA) in its No. 5, 1975 issue:

In a full page spread in an issue of The New York Times, USN & WR (US News and World Report) goes after advertising. And in blowing its own horn it inadvertently blows the whistle on the Great American Myth. We are presented with the picture of a smiling family of four on a sight-seeing trip, enjoying the ‘American heritage’ by actual contact. The caption accompanying the photograph reads: “If Peter Lloyd wasn't above the Buying Point, his kids would be reading about our American heritage. Instead of seeing it.’ And the ad goes on to spell out this American message. A chart depicting the details of ‘The Buying Point’ spills the beans and it seems that one exercises his patriotic urges in proportion to one’s income — which is something we knew all along, anyway, but which is something that makes news when revealed by the capitalist press.

The Report goes on to show, citing USN & WR, that one half the households are below the buying point. Further, that the lower half gets by on but 23 per cent of the national total income. Nor should we forget that a significant percentage of that upper half enjoys its buying power through the power of instalment buying (“hire purchase,” in Britain) and are forever precariously perched on a parlous precipice, warding off a plunge.

As the WS piece concludes:

For never forget, if we are all equal under the law, in America, it is a fact that some of us are more equal than others. Those whose income is above the buying point, and especially those who actually own America, the 5 or 10% at the top.

★

The American Bi-Centennial hoop-la is accentuated, of course, by the quadrennial race for the Presidency. Adding somewhat to the confusion is the fact that the incumbent, Gerald Ford, is the first us President in history who was not elected to the office. He was selected for the Vice-Presidency, by the then President Nixon, to replace Spiro Agnew who resigned rather than face trial on graft charges. When Richard Nixon followed Agnew into disgrace and retirement from office, Gerald Ford succeeded to the accoutrements of the Presidency. Because of this new element, the Republican Convention will be “open” with the incumbent enjoying no scissors-hold on the nomination. So the bad actor from California, Ronald Reagan, is making an all-out effort to save his country from disaster!

On the Democratic Party side, the race has narrowed somewhat as far as the various state-wide Presidential Primary elections are concerned. The main ingredient for capturing the White House, in these times, is money —piles of it—and those with money to invest usually place it on a more apparent winner. But a popular syndicated humourist, Art Buchwald, has observed that one needs a beautiful mouthful of teeth to be elected President of the United States and in that respect, at least, most of the candidates qualify—right down to Hubert Humphrey and Edward Kennedy whose shadowy figures bulk in the wings, awaiting a possible bolt from the blue.

But the most important fact of life for the working class in this proud year of capitalism in America is a sad one. There is no sign on the horizon of a meaningful opposition to the system that holds them in wage servitude. Any alternative being offered to the major parties, regardless of the designation, is but a variation of the theme: Capital versus Wage Labour with a government functioning as a capitalist class. There remains the need, in America, to build a genuine Socialist organization capable of presenting the case for a wage-less, price less, moneyless, world society, Let this not take another century !

Harry Morrison

Boston Local, WSP of US

Presidential Circus (1976)

From the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Where mindless buffoonery is another name for statesmanship, just about anybody could qualify as President of the USA; or as top political henchman anywhere in the world.

It must throw serious doubt upon the sanity of anyone who is prepared to be a candidate for one of the dirtiest jobs on earth. A job which involves being ready to command the use of H-bombs and other nuclear weapons, and to preside over the annihilation of countless millions of people. American Presidents have already either used nuclear weapons or considered using them. Every post-war President has pursued policies for testing and stockpiling H-bombs. Wars involving so-called conventional weapons are commonplace throughout the world. The influence and interest of American capitalism are concerned more often than not.

The job also means having a string of glib excuses ever ready to trot out as to why poverty, unemployment, slumdom, and crime continue to blight the lives of most Americans in one form or another. During the Primaries, and indeed right up to election day, evasion and cynicism are essential to survival. Of course, whoever wins will have to be doubly evasive and cynical once in office. It is as though under the influence of mass-hypnosis a primitive ritual were taking place, and serious adult discussion of major social problems was a taboo to be breached only on pain of extinction. Never mind what it’s all about, win the nomination. The object is to get elected. If that means wearing a gormless grin and a Stetson hat for months on end, so be it. The art is to be as sensitively tuned as possible to the rumbling of band-wagons, and not to be caught on the wrong one at the wrong time.

Anything in the way of fundamental principles would be a gross liability. Popular prejudice and mass political ignorance must never be offended. Candidates must strike the proper balance between being patriotic, religious and anti-Communist. Vagueness is vital, so that no-one can ever quote you as saying anything for sure.

Ideally, candidates need to personify as many of the myths associated with capitalism as possible. Be enterprising, successful, rugged, ultra-American, strong yet flexible. Insofar as behind those myths lie the realities of capitalism, “enterprising” means wheeling and dealing. “Success” means climbing on the backs of others. “Rugged” means knowing how to survive in the rat-race. “Ultra-American” means appealing to nationalism to achieve political ambition. Being "strong” means standing up to the recurrent crises of capitalism and not appearing to be too confused by the conflicting advice of your aides. To be “flexible” means hypocrisy, bending with prevailing winds and pandering to popular opinion, to lie and deal and double deal. On the basis of those criteria, Richard Nixon was a first-rate President. Perhaps the real reason why he was pushed out was because too much of capitalism was too clearly reflected in him.

A great deal of reverence is vested in the office of the Presidency. The President is regarded as a kind of national father-figure. Image-building of this kind is important to the capitalist class as a whole, for while the office and the person of the President are highly respected by the working class a useful camouflage is provided for the “normal operation” of the system.

They could, no doubt fill the post by placing a simple notice in the want-ads, but then some joker may apply who does not support war, or who won’t agree to play ball with the wheeler-dealers. So the circus and the sickening ballyhoo are indispensable to the final outcome. Even the also-rans play their part in stoking up the drama in what might otherwise become the non-event of the year. The whole thing is astutely stage-managed so that only personalities are seen. The miserable continuity of capitalism slips by unnoticed. We are expected to respond with breathless anticipation to the world-wide commentary, as they jockey for position round the three-ring circus donated by courtesy of Rent, Interest and Profit.

In the realms of personality, mediocrity is the order of the day. What the votes on polling-day really declare is not who shall be the next President of the USA; that is of little importance. They spell out loud and clear the readiness of American workers to go on accepting capitalism and their willingness to swallow the small-talk while the major social problems remain as glaring as ever. To reaffirm this fact and to take a sounding of any latent unrest is worth all the clowning and the expense to the ruling class. It assures them of the continuing “safety” of their system.

Anyone who thinks that Ford and Reagan (or any of the others) are not interchangeable should remember Johnson and Goldwater. Johnson campaigned as the man of peace who would pull out of Vietnam. Goldwater was for staying in and fighting it out. The American working class voted Johnson a landslide, but they got Goldwater anyway. It was not long before they were chanting “Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many kids you killed today?” When Reagan says he would send American troops to Rhodesia and Ford calls this “irresponsible” it does not mean Ford would not send troops to Rhodesia. It means that it is irresponsible to say such things during an election. Reagan said the troops would be for peace-keeping. Would they then leave their guns at home? What would-be President talks of sending soldiers anywhere to make war these days?

The whole situation has its parallel in every country throughout the world. Rival politicians jostle and manoeuvre to gain or hold on to power for the running of capitalism. The working class is taken in by a privileged minority who wield political power to preserve their domination of the means of wealth production and distribution. It is not that the American workers are more ignorant than their fellows elsewhere, just that their circus lasts longer.

Are we saying that elections are like circuses and should therefore not be taken seriously by the workers? On the contrary, it is because the real issue is not treated seriously that elections have all the farcical features of a circus. This does not discredit the democratic process of voting, it indicates the urgent need for workers to back their votes with class-consciousness. When they understand what is involved in changing society to the classless world of common-ownership, they will use their votes to sweep away the puppet politicians of capitalism.

Abraham Lincoln is often quoted as saying: “It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.” Whoever is elected the next us President certainly will not be deterred from trying.

Harry Baldwin

USSR — Land of Privilege (1976)

From the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the ever-increasing participation of the Soviet Union in western trade, more information about the way the Russians live is coming to hand. We suspect that much of the information was always available but for their own purposes the western capitalist press suppressed the information which would have destroyed the myth they wished to keep alive, namely that Socialism was established there. They back it both ways. Friendship with the Soviet Union will produce pro-Russian propaganda, and will gloss over the numerous shortcomings in the Soviet system. At other times when there are differences of policy with the western powers, anti-Russian propaganda will expose and exaggerate these shortcomings. Eventually truth, like Hamlet’s ghost, will out, and now that the Russian workers have been indoctrinated in the cause of capitalism, the Soviet authorities will relax their censorship up to a point, because they cannot keep the lid on the kettle. Censorship makes an expensive form of administration.

The SPGB have always maintained that there is no essential difference in the class system in the Soviet Union from that elsewhere. The ruling class enjoy the same privileged existence, and use the same means to stay on top. The common features of western capitalism, exploitation of wage labour and production for profit, are present — with the resulting social inequality. All the propaganda by friend and foe alike cannot contradict or obscure this real situation.

One of the most obvious signs of social inequality is the wage differentials between the higher and the lower paid workers. The Daily Telegraph (2nd June 1976) on the occasion of the visit of the Soviet missile destroyer Obraztsovy drew attention to the enormous discrepancy in pay between officers and ratings. A Russian naval rating is paid £4.70 a month, and a full captain’s pay is £202.00 a month, more than 40 times greater than that of the ratings. This differential is quite considerable when it is taken into account that the Russians have over 8 million men in the armed forces. The British equivalent is that a captain receives approximately 8 times that of a rating.

Graft & Corruption

The city column of the Sunday Telegraph (18th April 1976), gave numerous examples of the corruption practised by high-ranking government officers, top scientists and members of the Soviet Politburo. Otari Lazfishiyili, the head of the government synthetics laboratory, was renowned for throwing lavish parties costing thousands of roubles. He enjoyed the luxury of a mansion, and had two country homes with swimming pools. Apparently he was running a black-market nylon business on the side, with over 100 accomplices. He made a million pounds before they caught him.

Another government official, the chief of the agricultural equipment purchase department in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Trade, Uri Sosnovsky, planned to take a cut of a 30-million rouble contract with a Swiss firm — he was hanged. The then Minister of Culture, Yekaterina Furtseva, was alleged to have spent about £60,000 in having an exclusive country dacha built for her daughter; this was in addition to the two owned by the Minister herself. The scandal lost her her seat on the Supreme Soviet in 1974. In the same article, a reference was made to petty corruption. Izvestia, the State newspaper, last year published figures to the effect that one-third of the relatively small number of private motorists in the USSR drove their cars on petrol paid for by the State. About 150 million gallons were estimated to be stolen or siphoned off from State vehicles.

There are as many instances of graft and corruption in the USSR as there are elsewhere. There is also a colossal black market. The fact that the penalties are high only underlines the extent of the problem. If the name of the game is capitalism, then the aim of the game is privilege. Those nearest the till are in a better position to get their hand in it, as are high Communist Party officials, government officials, and other socially privileged groups. The difference with the black marketeer, the corrupt official, and the stealer of state property, is that they do it through the back door. But many more obtain their privileges through the front door.

In a capitalist society people will always behave in a capitalist way, and Russia is no exception. Chief among those who receive and confer privileges through the front door are the Communist Party hierarchy. According to a book recently published, The Russians by Hedrick Smith, for three years Moscow correspondent of the New York Times, life at the top in Moscow is based on privilege (Sunday Times 16th May 1976). The most conspicuous symbols are the numerous grey-curtained chauffeur-driven cars containing VIPS doing their shopping and ignoring all traffic laws. There are special shops which sell Russian delicacies like caviar, smoked salmon, and the best canned sturgeon, vintage wines, and other luxuries well beyond the reach of the average Russian worker, and only accessible by special pass to the politically anointed. Perquisites are handed out according to rank; top leaders get home delivery, or use stores right inside the Kremlin, and the Supreme Soviet executive group have their special shop in the government buildings, Versenevsky Embankment Road. Soviet marshals, admirals, top scientists, senior editors of Pravda and Izvestia and other important publications, Lenin prize winners, actors, writers, dancers, economic managers — all have their special shops where cut-rate food is available, and these shops are debarred to the general Russian public.

Diplomats, trusted journalists, poets and the like, who have worked abroad, are issued with certificate roubles, a special currency, and can buy imported goods at bargain prices at the hard-currency Beryozka shops in Moscow. Many Moscow people are infuriated at the existence of these special stores because they don’t even accept Soviet currency. One white-collar worker fumed that it was a “violation of socialist principles”.

The cream of the élite, Politburo members and National secretaries, use black Zil saloon cars, hand-tooled and worth £40,000 apiece. In addition to car and shopping privileges, the Kremlin leaders enjoy special travel facilities, including a special airport Vmukoy 11. They also have exclusive health clinics, clubs, and even certain universities are regarded as the province of the government, for the offspring of the military and diplomatic élite. Many of the Party leaders have large guest houses. Brezhnev takes his guests boar-hunting. Many have mansions with exclusive grounds, private beaches, and recreational areas provided by the state, and their privacy ensured by state guards.

Top Dogs

Hedrick Smith tells a funny story about Brezhnev who was showing his mother round his various possessions and trying to impress her. Apparently this is a Muscovite joke. “He invited her up to see his town apartment. She looked nonplussed, so they sped off in his Zil to his dacha near Usovo, one previously used by Stalin and Khruschev, but still she said nothing. So he called for his personal helicopter and flew her straight to his hunting lodge at Zavidovo. There he escorted her to the banquet room, grandly displaying the big fireplace, his guns, and unable to restrain himself any longer asked: ‘Tell me Mama, what do you think?’. ‘Well’, she hesitated. ‘It’s good, Leonid. But what if the Reds come back?’ ”

The Soviet élite do not advertise their privileges, but the workers in Russia are left in no doubt that there is a special class of person upon whom everybody else dances attendance. All railroad trains, Aeroflot airlines, theatres and hotels, always reserve accommodation or seats in the event that these “important” people may drop in. Even state officials are given priority in any allocation of tickets at sports fixtures. Apparently at the 1972 hockey inter national competition between Canada and Russia, a Canadian diplomat was waiting to obtain his allocation of tickets when a young man walked in, went to the head of the queue, and identified himself as a member of the Central Committee. He asked for, and received, 3,000 tickets per game, a quarter of all the available seats. The diplomat commented that by the time other influential people got their cut, there was nothing left for the genuine hockey fan except perhaps a few dozen tickets forming a token box office. This, according to Smith, happens every time a big foreign sports team or cultural show visits Moscow. (Sunday Times 16th May 1976).

Nobody who really understands the nature of class society will be surprised at the way it operates in Russia. What is the point of a society based on the exploitation of workers for the purpose of private gain, unless the exploiter reaps the benefit? To say that no capitalist class exists in Russia is playing with words. The system is riddled with inequality from top to bottom, apart from the corruption and graft which are inseparable from government by dictatorship where officials wield immense power.

To describe the system as Socialist, or anything remotely connected with Socialism is a deliberate and, as we have seen, a calculated distortion of words and meaning. We can well understand the intense hostility from Russian diplomats and politicians against those who criticise the Soviet Union. It certainly is a good system for them. We cannot understand the almost pathetic adulation from the underprivileged propertyless dupes of the Left in this country who look to the USSR as the “socialist oasis” in a capitalist paradise. This confuses the issue of Socialism, and to that extent holds back the genuine revolutionary movement.

Jim D'Arcy

Cuts in Education (1976)

From the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again capitalism is going through a pretty severe crisis. There is of course nothing new in this. Nor is there anything unusual. On the contrary, it is merely evidence of the normal working of capitalism; a society in which crisis is as endemic as weeds to a flower bed. Marx pointed out over a hundred years ago, that capitalism would inevitably move in phases, one of which was crisis which is what is happening now. When capitalism in Britain or elsewhere gets into a financial crisis its government must turn to anything which offers a prospect of saving the situation, one vulnerable arm of expenditure is education. The direct benefits of investment in education are not as evident to all the capitalist class as is investment in plant or machinery. It takes some considerable time to get any return on the expense of getting children ready for “the work of life” (one of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definitions of education); at least ten years in school to make a labourer, considerably longer for a worker with a technical degree, even longer for a scientist capable of inventing a new type of warhead. So capitalism cuts.

This cannot be in the long-term interests of capitalism. Advanced capitalism needs well-trained labour. Without it, the individual capitalist state may fall behind its competitors in world markets. But long-term interests seldom enter into it. To make his workers redundant, close his plant etc. means less profit for the capitalist, yet nevertheless the capitalist class finds itself doing just that. So also with education. The dictates of this crazy system do not allow for common-sense (even from the point of view of capital). For one thing there are no jobs available for all those expensively-trained students (especially those coming out of so-called higher education). The Times reported (16th January 1976) over 1750 vacancies in colleges, universities and polytechnics which could not be filled in the south-east alone. From the point of view of the capitalist class, with a situation like that, why not cut?

So the hatchet men of the capitalist class (currently the Labour party) start looking for ways of saving the capitalist class’s money. Apart from straight cutting, a future hatchet “person”, Mrs. Thatcher has been suggesting one way for the capitalist class to have its cake and eat it. The method? Easy; you have more colleges, universities etc., without the State paying for them. Which is in effect what she recommended when she open the new University College of Buckingham. This was launched in February of this year as the first "private” university to be started this century in the UK. It is private because there are no direct “public funds” being used for its establishment and maintenance as distinct from other universities in the country. Of course in the long run if this experiment survives, most of the money will come from the capitalist class anyway, but for the moment the state is not being asked to fork out directly. Which is what Mrs. Thatcher meant when she said that she hoped in the future universities would be “encouraged to take their destinies more into their own hands and to embark upon institutional adventures which do not involve the lobbying of public opinion or government departments.” (Times Higher Education Supplement, 13th February 1976). She means of course those that do not require direct public funding.

But apart from this limited possibility, the capitalist class must look at the situation as it is. It must have been clear to the capitalist class what education was costing them. In the financial year 1975/76 for example the total cost of education (admittedly including “libraries, science and arts” government figures) will be £6,164 million. The only item of government expenditure which would cost more this year is the one misleadingly called “social security”. The remedy was to cut £618 million for next year and £1,000 million from the education budget for the following two financial years.

The effects of the cuts were predicted in the run-up to the publication of the government White Paper on public expenditure. One result forecast by the Times education correspondent (23 January 1976) was a large number of staff redundancies; hardly a difficult prediction since there was a serious unemployment problem in the teaching profession before the cuts were introduced. Among the other estimated effects from the cuts are higher school meals charges, reductions in the numbers of students undertaking higher education courses from an estimated 800,000 to 600,000 in the year 1981, a standstill on staff appointments, a reduction in the target for the number of teachers, a standstill on the numbers of children able to attend nursery education etc.

The reaction of the teacher unions was as predictable as the results of the cuts themselves. Fred Jarvis, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, was typical. He complained about the wastage: it had cost millions of pounds to train teachers who were to be made redundant. “The amount of public money wasted in training them would be about £50m. ‘This is the economics of Bedlam’, he said.” (The Times 20 January 1976.) But it is the economics of capitalism, which unfortunately he and most of his members continue to support. Most of the unions talked of “action” to oppose the cuts. Teacher unions received motion after motion with “demands” for no cuts, opposition to redundancies, opposition to closures, etc. The National Association of Teachers in Higher and Further Education for its 1976 conference has a list of 111 motions almost all of which relate to opposition to the cuts, or financing and salaries. All about as effective as trying to stop Concorde by throwing paper darts at it.

In all the loud and useless flannel of the unions, there are few signs of any realization that the chaos in their lives and those of their children is the result of the capitalist system. For example the Technical Journal for December 1975 when commenting on the disastrous effects the cuts would have in higher education grudgingly acknowledged that as the funding of much of further education “is closely linked to industry, this sector of education has always encountered the occasional potential redundancy situation due to such factors as a declining industry.” Although that could qualify for the understatement of the year, it nonetheless demonstrates something of an awareness (as yet alas, dim) that anarchy in production must lead to havoc in human existence.

Of course it often used to be possible for expensively trained teachers who were suddenly made expensively unemployed to leave the UK and find work abroad, at least in some of the Commonwealth countries. But just as capitalism is world-wide, so also are its periodic crises and so also therefore is unemployment. The Observer (8th February 1976) reported that it is no longer possible for British teachers to get jobs abroad. It even warns teachers against accepting jobs if lucky enough to be offered them. The article ends by pointing out that in the USA teachers can find education authorities running out of money and not having sufficient to pay the wages! So much for “successful” capitalism.

The SPGB is not joining in the campaign to oppose cuts or redundancies. It is pointing out to workers instead, that the cutting down in teachers and resources, while schools are short of both, is yet another of the endless dilemmas created by a social system where cost is paramount. The dilemma in this case is for those who protest at cuts but cannot suggest where the money is to come from, and will go on supporting capitalism which creates such problems.

Ronnie Warrington

Exploitation in South Africa (1976)

From the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to The Star (Johannesburg) of 28th April 1976, the recent increase of 18 per cent, in the price of “mealies” (maize cobs) will help erode “the small reservoir of goodwill that remains among more than 20m. Black and Brown South Africans”. Mealie is basic to the cost of living of something like three-quarters of South Africa’s population and “few products of inflation can weigh as heavily on the Black community as an increased mealie price”. This will lead to a worsening in race relations because many blacks cannot afford the increase. The article says that whilst an increase was “inevitable” it should be remembered that “vast numbers of our mealie farmers are relatively unproductive and inefficient”.

The Star says the solution must be two-fold. First, encourage the efficient farmers and discourage the inefficient ones. This presumably means to encourage the use of labour-saving machinery so that eventually, through competition, the “unproductive” farmers will be forced out of business. The second part of the “solution” is to pay the blacks more so that they can “afford to absorb knocks like the increased mealie price”. To make this practicable they must be “better trained and utilised” (our emphasis). Also they must be allowed to form “more effective industrial bargaining machinery” (i.e. Unions).

Black trade unions have no recognition in South Africa but it seems that the South African capitalist class and their agents, through their media like The Star, are beginning to recognize that they have a vast potential industrial proletariat which if it could be put to use profitably could bring them untold surplus-value in the future. The problem is that they need training, and that costs money and takes time. For the capitalists it is better to “adopt” the embryonic unions and have them under their wings than to allow them to develop in direct antagonism to the employers. The benevolence of the South African capitalists is staggering: once they have a black working class which is industrialized, working for a few pennies more, then they can carry on eating mealie and be grateful for it.

Our advice to workers must always be that, necessary as it obviously is for them to struggle against pressure to reduce the little they have, they should be seeking to understand why it is that one class can sell the goods which the workers produce alone and yet which do not belong to them unless they can buy them back. Once they understand this they will know that the time is long overdue for the change to Socialism.

T.K.

We are indebted to a correspondent in Johannesburg for supplying the material used above.

To Sir, Without Love (1976)

The Lavender List

From the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

There has been a lot of noise about your choice of peers for your last Honours List but before we deal with this vital subject perhaps we can ask you a question which I think has not been put to you: Sir, Oh Sir, wherefore art thou Sir? After all, you have so often proclaimed yourself an “egalitarian socialist” (whatever that is supposed to mean) who didn’t believe in titles. (We know you believed in other things. Like money. And translated your sincere belief into practice.) So what on earth has your hand been doing on the royal garter? It makes one doubt your honesty!

Of course, we Socialists understand the noble reason you have always given for creating nobles. You had to put “socialists” in the House of Lords so as to smooth the way for the introduction of “socialism”. Couldn’t expect those Tory backwoodsmen to bring in “socialism,” could we? And if you had to make Lords for the sake of the cause, what more natural than that you should choose your friends? So you created Lord Jumbojet, your solicitor. He was already President of everything in sight so he was well suited to Lord it (or to lard the lean earth, like the original Falstaff). True, he jumbojetted to the villainous Smithie for Sir Alec Whom? who does not claim to be a socialist (about the only one who doesn’t, I think). But it would be ignoble to quibble. He did it all for “socialism”. Noblesse oblige.

Then you made a Lady of your chef de cabinet (and about time too, I’m sure). Lady Marcia, the Virgin of the Slagheaps. Such a pity that your kitchenmaid had to have a flutter in the property sewers when you had been going out of your way to denounce such ways of making money under capitalism — though why the acquisition of wealth from slagheaps is any worse than from any other heaps — e.g. memoirs — is a bit puzzling. It’s all coming from the same source, the exploitation of the working class, isn’t it? Or did you find your five houses in a slagheap, perhaps? Still, we won’t be unkind to the Lady; as she explained, she only did it to have something put by for her old age. True, some villainous Socialist in the Socialist Standard was a bit caustic about this excuse, saying something about you having used your power to arrange pittances for the old age of real workers and why isn’t that good enough for my Lady? No satisfying these Socialists, is there?

In the light of all that sort of thing, the furore over your parting gift to a bunch of rather obvious capitalists, is really unfair to you. But now your hard stint at the coalface is over, what did you achieve for the workers? They did plenty for you didn’t they? And where is the socialism you got the power for? Somehow, I don’t think you’ll answer that one.

L. E. Weidberg

So They Say: Fair Play in War (1976)

The So They Say Column from the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fair Play in War

A certain mental agility, not to say an outright contortion of sanity, is part of the stock-in-trade which our “superiors” find necessary to employ in order to explain (away) the irritatingly persistent difficulties which arise from the private-property system and what they intend to do about them. We say agility, because that is what it takes to face several directions at one time. The progress of Mr. Jimmy Carter in the US primary elections for example, is surely evidence enough that the days of the two-faced politician are over: now it is essential for them to display at least three or four.

However, fleet footwork is not the sole preserve of the professional shadow boxers; the affliction spreads further afield. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute produced a recent report — Medical Protection Against Chemical Warfare Agents — dealing with nerve gases. We put aside for the moment the fundamental flaw in its viewing “protection against” as of greater importance than the reasons for the existence and development of killer gas. The Institute has been investigating “a non-woven synthetic textile, coated on the outside with a repellant, and has a layer of activated charcoal on the inside” which may offer protection. Such treated material could be used in “gas masks and combat jackets.” They acknowledge some drawbacks.

Even if some of the new drugs could be incorporated into military auto-injectors [protective clothing], all that can realistically be said of the new methods of treatment is that they will provide more time than is available with the existing treatment to move poisoned individuals to medical facilities. While this is a valuable step forward, in times of war, it is unlikely that medical facilities would be able to cope with the vast number of casualties.

Daily Telegraph 5th June 76

Capitalism turning the knife in the wound; insufficient medical facilities on one side struggling to cope with the over-efficient work of other “medical facilities” who have been developing the gas. However the monster has its scientific counter-balance, the problem being

Clothing capable of giving full bodily protection to the skin and to the respiratory system, is so cumbersome that soldiers wearing it would be brought to the point of military uselessness.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute seem to be waiting for the day when “our boys” in the improved carbon jackets can withstand nerve gas for long enough to become militarily useful. This is what they appear to project but these “peace artists” paint a gloomy picture. The answer to the techniques of killing does not lie in double, or triple-think, but in the abolition of the social system which produces war. That is a solution within the realms of possibility.

Divide & Rule

Five members of the Felixstowe Conservative Association face expulsion from their local Conservative club because they campaigned for an Independent Labour candidate at the local elections in May. Their story is that they wanted to divide the Labour vote, allowing a Conservative candidate to top the poll in a previous Labour stronghold. Although the plan succeeded, their local treasurer was not impressed, “as far as we’re concerned they’ve worked for the opposition”. However the five are unrepentant:

We’ve succeeded in getting a Conservative elected in Labour’s safest ward in the only way that it could be done . . . and believe there was the strongest justification for what we did.

Daily Telegraph, 1st June 76

No doubt they all threw up their hands in horror and shouted “Cheat!” with the rest of their cronies some days later when Labour MPs broke “pairs” and entered the lobby to avoid a government defeat in the Commons.

Virtue of Necessity

Disquiet is growing among both teachers and students over the contradictions which face them when trying to apply a “text-book” analysis to capitalism in the expectation of a logical answer. On the one hand there are student teachers who are occupying their colleges, or marching, in protest against the likely failure of an estimated 15,000 of them to find teaching jobs. Against this there is the President of the Association of Head Teachers (Scotland) referring to “overlarge classes” and concluding: “We need these extra (not “surplus”) teachers.”

On the other hand there will be, according to figures given at the annual conference of the National Association of Head Teachers, the likelihood of 250,000 school leavers without jobs this summer, while the Lord Privy Seal, among other notable onlookers, is calling for “more sheer hard work before we are anywhere near out of the wood” in the Times of 10th June. The contradictions have encouraged the self- styled experts to exhibit some of their “departmental” reasoning in the letter columns. The President of the National Union of Students writing to the Daily Telegraph on 5th June argued that the government had “a golden opportunity to improve the pupil-teacher ratio.”

The Government has already spent £50 million training this year’s jobless student teachers for the dole queue. How can our economy benefit from miscalculation and wastage of human resources on such a massive scale?

“Our economy” and “wastage of human resources” gives away the extent of the NUS’s ‘“revolutionary leanings.” These refrains are music to the ears of the ruling class — it is only the tempo upon which they disagree. However the difficulty may be overcome according to the Headmaster at University College School, London. Unemployed teachers and unemployed school leavers? Apply a little thought and you come up with the following:

Here, surely, is a great opportunity for unemployed teachers to set an example giving themselves experience of the kind of work which many of their future pupils will have to do. Industries, businesses, hospitals, hotels, schools and institutions of one kind or another ail have vacancies for what is mis-termed “menial employment” . . . If unemployed teachers give a lead showing that a job well done, however “menial” can be rewarding and satisfying then the unemployed school leaver might be inspired to follow.

Times 10th June 76

We had a fancy that the man of learning may have been glancing through “The Charge of the Light Brigade” shortly before penning his letter, but there is a difference. He sees the officers turning home before long in order to continue the good work. Having gained an experience of “menial” jobs, he argues, “in the long run they would be much better teachers.” And what of the others? The school leavers who were “inspired to follow.” Ah yes, with luck wage slaves also — but that is what capitalist education is about.

Dear Sir

Reinforcing this last point was the response to the new GCE examination in the “business use of English.” The Managing Director of Adpower Ltd., a “specialist staff consultancy,” had some pertinent observations to make.

Many (school leavers) are unable to get a job in the professions or in industry because they are incapable of filling in a job application form (even ours which are deliberately kept simple) . . . College leavers have simply not been prepared for the next stage in their lives — getting a job. If this new GCE examination lives up to its expectation of training young hopefuls how to speak and write commercial English, then the Associated Examining Board must surely have the backing of everyone in commerce.

Times 10th June 76

Dear Capital, Assuring you of our best attention at all times the “young hopefuls” remain therefore your most obedient servants, etc. etc.

Alan D'Arcy

Letter: Jargon and things (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jargon and things

I am concerned to know what is the general social activity of Socialists outside party activity. When I see Socialists they seem far removed within, from the world they live in, as though they were immune from it.

Your party states that under Socialism, world common ownership of land, industry and transport, etc., all the necessities of life are produced entirely for use instead of for sale (money) and profit-making. Yet there is no mention in your Object and Declaration of Principles that there will be no money (wages etc.) under common ownership.

Why does the SPGB use complex phraseology and long-winded terminology? In many of your articles in the Socialist Standard the composition of England is what I call a jargonized English.

Why does the SPGB fail to realize that people expend less energy but consume more than 50-100 years ago? Because you say that workers are relatively worse off, does that mean you would welcome a return of conditions of 100 years ago?

Why does the Socialist Party stubbornly persist in saying that the wage-earners support capitalism because they support various reform parties such as the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Parties when they show support for capitalism by its very economic nature? Surely the voting of various reform parties is only an endorsement of support of capitalism.

Do you think of capitalism as a threat or challenge?

R. Martin 

Finsbury Park

Reply:

Round the table of the committee which produces the Socialist Standard the “general social activity” of the members includes going to work, bringing up families, playing and watching sports, going to the pictures and the circus, shopping, house-decorating, talking to friends, etc. We can’t and don’t seek to be “immune” from the everyday world. What do you do in your spare time?

Several features of the Socialist case are not specifically mentioned in our Object and Declaration of Principles. Besides the fact that Socialism will be a moneyless society, the Principles do not say we are opposed to reformism, or state our attitude on war, leadership, nationality and other questions. The Object and Principles nevertheless spell out these things. The absence of money is not something we plan as well as common ownership of the means of production and distribution, but a clear implication of common ownership.

Jargon and long-windedness are avoided in the Socialist Standard, and we have been complimented on our liveliness among political journals. It is true that some subjects cannot be expounded painlessly, and the reader must himself make some effort. That is the case with most study; we try to minimize it, but those who want to learn find the effort worth while.

Comparisons with conditions a hundred years ago are beside the point. In 1876 a house with a water- closet outside the back door represented the height of modernity; today it is considered disgracefully substandard. The proper comparison at any time is between what the working class gets and what it produces and makes possible. Today as a hundred years ago workers’ consumption is restricted to the portion of the wealth they produce that is handed back to them as wages, and this position cannot alter under capitalism.

We assume you mean that the workers consciously support capitalism only at second hand by voting for pro-capitalist parties. Certainly the majority of workers do not understand capitalism and are voting only for more houses, promises of employment, etc.; the major part of the Socialist Party’s work is making clear the nature of the social system. But without understanding, direct and indirect consent come to the same thing. A supporter of a supporter is still a prop to the system.

It is much better to understand that capitalism is a social system based on the class ownership of the means of living than to use words like “threat” and “challenge”. These belong to the realm of foggy language you say you object to.

Editors.

Letter: Criminal classes (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Criminal classes

The Socialist Party persistently state in their vintage way that there are only two classes in society. I beg to differ. My list of classes would include criminals who were once members of the working class, and the self-employed. Your figures of two classes is petty.

R. West

London W.10

Reply:

Your contention about criminals might be answered by looking at court reports in the newspapers. Do the accused give their occupations as “burglar”, “smash-and-grab raider” or “bag snatcher”? Of course not. They describe themselves as salesmen, labourers, drivers, factory workers, unemployed etc. — in short, as members of the working class.

The definition of a worker is one who has no ownership of the means of living and is therefore forced to sell his labour-power, his only possession, in order to live. There are always numbers trying to escape this life-sentence or to solve the perpetual working-class problem of insufficient money, by crime. Hardly any live by it; it is a sporadic activity, and for the rest of the time the individual is faced with having to find a job because that is his class position.

By “self-employed” presumably you mean small shopkeepers and other one-man businesses. Again, consider definitions. A capitalist, because of his ownership of the means of production, employs people and appropriates the surplus value created by them to turn it into interest and profit. A person using no other labour-power than his own is not in this position. If he is a shopkeeper his profit is from trading, i.e. it is a small portion of what is realized from the surplus value created in manufacture. Generally his position is no different from what it would be if he were an employee, nor is his income. As an example, some “landlords” of public-houses are managers employed by breweries and others are tenants and allegedly “their own masters”; in practice the difference is purely one of business administration and the “landlord” is a member of the working class — as are these self-employed individuals as a whole.

Editors.

Letter: More than emotion (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

More than emotion

Thank you for printing my letter “Spiritual Matters” and your reply. I think for the most part I have to agree with you, although I have been partly misunderstood.

In using the word “mere” in connection with explanations I meant “solely” and not in the sense of trivial and unworthy of attention. A work of art can be analyzed and explained, but this will not necessarily explain why they create an emotional response. This, as far as I am aware, is peculiar to Man and differentiates him from other animals. This response is a contemplative condition and “spiritual” is the only word I know to describe it, although you would probably prefer to keep to “emotional”. To me it is something more than emotion.

Your extract from J. W. Draper’s History of the Intellectual Development of Europe was well chosen but I didn’t say that spiritual conditions are independent of physical forces. An explanation of the earth’s axis of rotation doesn’t help me to understand why Man should glory in the phenomena. In talking of spirituality you seem to have assumed that I meant an ability to appreciate beauty. I didn’t say this. I don’t know what beauty is and certainly, as you say, ideas about it can change in time and place. Love, hate, compassion, aspiringness, pride, indignation, joy — are these not things of the spirit? and although related to physical conditions I wonder if they can be fully accounted for by them. Why should Man be moved to these states of mind? Indeed, why Socialism, which concerns itself with the wellbeing of the human race?

Your point about ridding the mind of cant is taken, but I see no reason to bar membership to anyone holding similar views to those I have expressed. It is not helping the SPGB to spread its message.

George Pearson

London S.W.20

Reply

Man produces emotional reactions to stimuli simply because he is physically equipped to do so. Darwin, in his Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, put forward three principles in broad explanation of them. It is now generally accepted that the experience in feeling or emotion depends on the activity of centres in the portion of the brain known as the hypothalamus. However, the forms the reactions take are dependent on social custom and law. In the opinion of some experimenters, smiling and laughter are respiratory phenomena which, being approved or rewarded, are “selected” as socially appropriate (while other respiratory or expressive mechanisms are disapproved). The difference in usage between emotional reactions and “spiritual” ones is that the latter term is reserved for more highly sanctioned spheres of interest.

You have missed the purpose of the quotation from Draper and the remarks about social conditioning. You say the mechanical explanation does not tell us “why Man should glory in the phenomena”. Our point was that Man does not glory in it. Some men do, under some circumstances. A simple illustrative story is of the townsman and the farmer together gazing at the landscape: the townsman rhapsodizes about the multi-coloured vista, the farmer spits and says “Thirty-bob-an-acre stuff”.

However, in your repeated question about SPGB membership we suspect another kind of misapprehension about materialism. Obviously you value emotional experience: so do Socialists. To understand the reasons for phenomena does not dissolve or disvalue them. We may know that being in love is a combination of the activity of hormones, certain portions of the central nervous system, and the social climate; that does not at all exempt us from it. Materialists appreciate works of art and sunsets too.

Editors.

Letter: New definitions (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

New definitions

F. Sliwinski’s argument for the evolving of a new language to educate the working class is commendable but hardly possible of realization. To be of use it needs mass dissemination, and by what means? The schools, the media, all controlled by the “cheap bamboozling propagandists”? Hardly. The Standard’s progress in seventy years should disillusion the best-intentioned. Swift questioned the ability of words to convey definitions of what we actually mean and suggested we carry around with us the things to make our meaning clear. To take a television from our pocket and shout triumphantly “This is what I mean”, then drop it over a cliff.

The East End schoolteacher sacked for teaching children poetry is a good example of what we are up against. Sliwinski makes his point though perhaps admitting inadvertently that Marx did not, as far as the ordinary man is concerned. Capital written in the vernacular with wit, caustic humour and belly laughs might achieve something. Marx stripped of some verbiage could reveal the tree for the hanging of. Paine was dangerous to the ruling classes for his clear unadulterated English whereas Godwin constituted no threat though he pleaded on the same lines as Paine.

Unfortunately obscurity denotes profundity, vagueness great intellect, and if you don’t understand don’t ask him who professes to — for the condescending smirk may hide the fact that he has also lost his bearings.

Nevertheless, like Seddon who wrote to his wife the night before his execution, “I am still cheerful”.

Ruth Bolster 

London S.E.15

Letter: Big money (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Big money

Further to my letter about top brass salaries and the labour theory of value, here is a news item from the Daily Mail 3.3.76. Sir Richard Dobson’s salary from British Leyland is £22,500 per annum or £450 per week and he got an £80,000 golden handshake when he left British American Tobacco. The Prime Minister defended Sir Richard’s appointment, arguing that “a rather wise, elder statesman” was needed.

What wealth does their costly labour-power produce? Supply and demand is a lame excuse as there are dozens of understudies who can do their “jobs”.

In fact they are absentee directors as well and assistants don’t produce a pea but get good pay. Well, how are these huge “wages” fixed according to the socially-necessary-labour theory embodied in a managing director as with a dustman? plus a few cigars at £80,000 for recreation?

Look at the pages of closely printed money — capital going into billions — in the Financial Times, chasing investment, creating nothing, getting a fat living out of dishing out other people’s surplus-value cash. It’s incredible!

Harold Shaw

Gloucester

Reply:

We think you are confusing two issues. First, as we said in our reply (April SS), some capitalists have nominal occupations, most commonly as “directors”, for tax purposes. An example in The Sun, 26th April, is of Peter Parker, proud to be a “socialist” and a capitalist. The Sun states that he has “a Rolls- Royce, splendid homes, no end of directorships, and an income around £55,000.” Enormous incomes mentioned elsewhere in the April SS represented shareholdings — not wages.

On the other hand members of the working class are employed as executives. The production of surplus-value is easiest explained first in terms of those actually engaged in production, but it must be understood as a social process. Capitalism is a complex system which needs banking, salesmen, advertising and management etc. It is the working class as a whole which runs this system. Socialist society will not require people to occupy prestige and leadership positions, but these jobs are necessary to capitalism.

We think you should raise your sights beyond the fact that some workers receive amounts much in excess of the wages earned by the majority. Our opposition is to the capitalist system itself.

Editors.

"Blind assertions" (1976)

Answer to correspondents from the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Colin Brinton (Harwich): You are not the first to try sending us an offensive and boring letter with a “dare to publish it’” note. If, as you say, you have “several political associates watching closely”, we suggest (1) that you get one of them to lend you a dictionary, (2) that you extend your reading of “a few editions of the Socialist Standard” and try to grasp what the Socialist case is, (3) that you try to construct an argument instead of blind assertions.

Correction (1976)

From the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are grateful to correspondents who have drawn our attention to an arithmetical error which occurred in our reply Classes and Prices, June 1976. The passage read “If then the amount of labour required to produce 1 oz. gold is halved, but the same amount of labour is necessary for 2 cwt. of copper, then 1 oz. of gold = 4 cwt. of copped.” The last line should have read “then 1 oz. of gold = 1 cwt of copper.”

Where to buy the Socialist Standard (1976)

From the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

I don't always post the 'Where to buy the Socialist Standard' column on the blog but it's worthwhile every once in a while to get a flavour of the outlets that were out there for radical literature in years gone by. Obviously in the 1970s you had a flourishing of radical bookshops in major cities in the UK.  It was a reflection of the times. Sadly only a handful remain in the 2020s. In fact, many were already disappearing when I got sucked into politics in the late 1980s.

SPGB Meetings (1976)

Party News from the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard