From America: The Panama Canal and the right of free access (1977)

From the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the hottest pieces for conversation in America these days is the Carter Administration’s treaty with Panama, scheduled for a pomp-and-ceremonial signing on Wednesday, Sept. 7, in Washington, with a glittering crowd of little Latin-American dictators and other dignitaries in attendance. Ownership of the Panama Canal is to be transferred to the Panamanian Government, effective as of 1999, albeit with continuing US rights in the area of military defense. As of this writing, opinion polls indicate that a sizeable majority of the US population opposes the deal and that, in the end, the US Senate will refuse to ratify. The Government is mounting an all-out propaganda blitz to win over popular sentiment and save the Treaty.

In a nutshell, the positions are: Pro: in the final analysis, it is free access and not ownership that is important. Panamanians in particular, and Latin Americans, in general, are said to feel that 75 years of US ownership of a waterway in their area is enough. Good public relations between US and the latinos demand the transfer. Con: “We” (the us Government) built the Canal and paid for it. It makes no sense to give it away to a tinhorn dictatorship. Surely American military muscle can easily handle the hostile guerrilla action by anti-Yanqui latinos, but to surrender it to Panama would be to invite trouble from the Communist world — particularly Soviet Russia — which might seize control.

There is much meat here for socialists to chew on. But first it may be helpful to have a look at some bare facts concerning the history of the Canal, facts which are easily verified in the history books. To begin with, the “sovereign” nation of Panama came into being just 75 years ago as the fruit of a conspiracy involving a French capitalist consortium, the Government of President Theodore Roosevelt, and Panamanian revolutionists who sought independence from Columbia of which the Isthmus of Panama was a part.

The French capitalist group had recently abandoned its attempt at building a canal across the Isthmus after sinking some $260 million. A major, insurmountable, obstacle for them was malaria-bearing mosquitoes that devastated the work force. Roosevelt's government now commenced negotiations with the Columbian Government to pick up the rights from the French after agreeing to pay some $40 million for their franchise and unfinished work. But the Columbian Parliament stalled, attempting to raise their ante, and the US Congress hemmed and hawed. Then, enter the conspirators, and a Gilbert & Sullivan-type production ensued.

The group of Panamanian rebel-nationalists was set in motion on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus and the flag of independence was raised. At the same time, three US warships showed up at Colon and Marines were landed to “restore order”. The entire Columbian military force on the Pacific side was bought off, privates receiving $50 a head and officers more, and the revolution was over — bloodless save for the accidental killing of a Chinaman. The news reached Washington at 11.30 in the morning of Nov. 6, 1903, and the Republic of Panama was recognised before one o’ clock of the same day.

There is much more, of course, to this fascinating tale of intrigue in high circles but the foregoing are, at least, among the more salient facts. American capitalism licked the malaria problem by draining the swamps that provided the breeding ground for the mosquitoes. In other words, rather than waste time swatting the critters or spraying them with the 1903 equivalent of Flit, the US got down to bed-rock — the source — and corrected it, a tactic we can hardly expect capitalism to pursue in its perpetual confrontation with problems such as poverty-in-the-midst-of-porential- abundance; war; discrimination, etc.

Now, what should we make of all this noise about the Canal, today? Does it really matter either to Panamanian or American workers which nation possesses the deed of ownership? President Carter tells us, soberly, that it is not ownership but free access that is really important. Aside from our feeling that this move is an attempt by US capitalism to get further out of the more overt type of colonialism, we can only wish that the majority would apply such reasoning to all of wealth-producing property. The reason that the Treaty is of no import either to American or Panamanian workers is that ownership and free access, under capitalism, is generally confined to the capitalist class, even in cases of government-owned and government-operated industry.

But in the face of this truth there is something strange, even weird, about capitalism. Whether or not the Panama Canal will actually become the property of the Panamanian capitalist class depends on how successful the political leaders are in selling a bill of goods to American and Panamanian workers in order to provide the necessary pressures on the politicians to pass and to ratify the legislation.

Socialists maintain, then, that there are three rather than two positions on the Panama Canal Treaty: (1) Agreement; (2) opposition; (3) a simple working-class declaration: It is not our property so don’t bother us. But think carefully about that point made by President Carter on ownership vs. free access. And apply it to the world situation. The answer is inescapable: World Socialism will mean the end of ownership in the sense of class ownership. And common ownership can only spell free access to all that is in and on the earth, even the Panama Canal, by all mankind.

Harry Morrison, 

WSP, Boston. 

Rise of American Civilisation, Beard 

A New American History, Woodward

Letter: "Mother-right" (1980)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Mother-right"

Dear Editors,

The article “Battered Wives” in the July Socialist Standard follows Engels’ view in “The Origins of the Family” that mother-right was the general position before male-dominated, property, class institutions became established. Agreed: the position of women relative to men drastically deteriorated with the advent of private property, but it is open to question whether primitive societies were essentially matrilinear. Some were, others were definitely not. Why? is the subject of much controversy in anthropology. While the 19th century founding fathers of anthropology had precise, straightforward answers on how primitive humanity’s life was structured and functioned, present day anthropologists seem less certain of the meaning of the mass of data that has accumulated. I will quote just one of them—Leslie A. White a cultural evolutionist in the grand, system-building tradition of L. H. Morgan. His is by no means the last word, but at least he puts order into the question, and writes clearly.

As a general proposition we may say that prominence or predominance of men in the mode of life of the (primitive) society will tend to produce patrilinear lineages; prominence or predominance of women will tend to form matrilinear lineages. Thus a culture in which warfare, hunting or herding is an activity of paramount importance will tend toward patrilineal lineages because these occupations tend to be masculine pursuits. In systems where woman’s role in subsistence, house building and ownership, or in some handicraft, puts her in a position of considerable importance as compared with men in the mode of life, there will be a tendency toward matrilineal lineages. (The Evolution of Culture)

White adds that although this statement is sound enough, it could easily mislead because of the complexity of numerous, diverse factors at work in specific situations making for small to great variations.

S Lion

London, SE24

Letter: "Writing as an ex-member . . . " (1987)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Writing as an ex-member . . . "

Dear Sirs.

Writing as an ex-member of your party who has recently taken out a subscription to the Standard I think I will derive very little pleasure at what I have to say, nevertheless, having lived for 62 years I am now coming to terms with "the facts of life" and endeavouring to learn to live with them.

Like "the old days" you have some very forthright and amusing writers. Steve Coleman seeming to be a leading light; and his June 1987 article about "Post Election Blues" was in the usual format, excepting for the last sentence. Predicting that June 12th would be "a bloody miserable day" (and it was!) Comrade Coleman concludes by writing — "and for none will it be more miserable than for those who know how easy it would be to change the whole rotten set-up and establish a society fit to live in".

Apart from the serious error of grammar, whether one is of the chosen few (i.e. members of the SPGB) or the abysmally ignorant majority it is a gross exaggeration to state that any change from the capitalist system to a socialist society would be easy!

May I quote the General Election figures for Islington South and Finsbury? Tory 8,482, Labour 16,511, SDP 15,706, Greens 382, Humanists 56, SPGB 81. It is a reflection of the idiocy of human beings that only 56 people voted for a party which has more sense in one of its little leaflets than in the whole Conservative and Labour manifestos, but the fact that out of a total of 41.218 Islington and Finsbury electors only 81 voted for the SPGB merely proves that what the renowned Robert Tressell wrote over 70 years ago. is as true today as it was then. I have formed the opinion that the working class are more dumb than Dumbo ever was. There is far more insanity outside than inside "mental institutions" and on the whole human beings are much more obsessed with erotica and religious myths than their well-being and happiness. "Look at them". Robert Tressell's character said, with a contemptuous laugh. "Look at them! The people you are trying to make idealists! Look at them! Some of them howling and roaring like wild beasts, or laughing like idiots, others standing with dull and stupid faces devoid of any trace of intelligence or expression, listening to the speakers whose words convey no meaning to their stultified minds, and others with their eyes gleaming with savage hatred of their fellow men, watching eagerly for an opportunity to provoke a quarrel that they may gratify their brutal natures. Can't you see that these people, whom you are trying to make understand your plan for the regeneration of the world, your doctrine of universal brotherhood and love are for the most part — intellectually — on a level with Hottentots? The only things they feel any interest in are beer, football, betting, and. of course — one other subject. Their highest ambition is to be allowed to Work. And they desire nothing better for their children. They have never had an independent thought in their lives . . .!" And so the brilliant monologue goes on. and. like a surgeon's scalpel cutting into a cancerous growth it reveals the monumental task that the changing of society involves.

I work in a small post office-cum-general stores and apart from the usual vast majority of customers who can see nothing beyond their daily dose of Murdoch's law (i.e. the Sun). 20J.P. (i.e.. coffin, or is it coughing, nails) and a bar of Cadbury's for the weekend. I was appalled at the time of the General Election by the amount of people "on the Social" who voted Tory!

When I informed one elderly gentleman that I was a Socialist and would not be voting in my constituency, he told me to "get back to Russia" On June 12th he came up to my counter to draw his pittance of a pension triumphantly wearing a cheap blue rosette and sneered. "Well. I suppose you're laughing the other side of your face now that we've beaten you!”

I conclude with Robert Tressell's immortal words which sum up my feelings towards The Socialist Party of Great Britain. Although you are light years behind the razzamatazz of the Labour and the Tory parties and you are probably right in your analysis of society (based, of course, upon Karl Marx's) "your party persists in regarding people as rational beings, and that is where you make your mistake. Labour are just learning, the Tories knew long ago the sort of people they have to deal with; they know that although their bodies are the bodies of grown men. their minds are the minds of little children. That is why it has been possible to deceive and bluff and rob them for so long." (The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, 1905)

And please do not accuse me of arrogance. Anger, contempt, scorn — I plead guilty to these, but I make no claims to be proud of the fact that I belong to a species that will burn, blind and torture innocent animals for the sake of making a profit and kill and maim fellow humans in times of war.

Reg Otter 

Shepperton, Middlesex.

Reply

Before turning to the very real and understandable reasons for our correspondent's lack of hope, let us spell out what defeatism means. It means that you come to terms with a social system which you know to be exploiting you, restricting you, impoverishing your lifestyle and, with increasing ferocity, threatening you with destruction. Not only is capitalism doing that to you, but to your friends and family — people who you care for and want to help. And to millions you have never met. capitalism is doing even worse things. As a defeatist you accept that this is the way life must be. You give up on the struggle to transform society.

Reg Otter is clearly not a complete defeatist. He still tells fellow workers that he is a socialist. He no doubt argues with workers and may well be underestimating his ability to change the way some of them think. Our fellow workers do not always tell us directly when they have found socialist ideas convincing but we would not be surprised if there are a few workers scattered about who would say, "You've got to hand it to old Reg Otter, he talks a lot of sense about the problems of society".

What our correspondent most certainly does underestimate is the intelligence of the working class. After all, these creatures who are "more dumb than Dumbo ever was" make a pretty good job of running the trains, producing all the wealth in the factories, operating on bodies in hospitals, teaching children to read, delivering letters — and the thousands of other important and intelligent tasks which we, the workers, perform. Yes. plenty of workers are laughing like idiots and seem to have dull and stupid faces and appear to have eyes gleaming with savage hatred for their fellow men. Socialists do not romanticise the working class: we are of that class and know just how degraded the system can make wage slaves. But — and Reg Otter will know this very well — the human animal is highly adaptable. In a jungle s/he will behave like a beast. Given an incentive to leave the jungle society of capitalism workers could co-operate. Just as they are doing every day when it comes to producing and distributing wealth, just as workers are always doing when it comes to voluntary efforts to help make other people's lives better. Workers are not naturally programmed for capitalism; nor are we naturally programmed to forever reject the cooperative option of socialism.

Our correspondent is right if he is saying that now, in 1987, the political minds of the workers of the world are in a frightful mess. He is right if he says that this is dispiriting. He was right to feel miserable on 12 June. He is entitled to be angry, although it will do him little good. But should he dismiss the efforts of The Socialist Party as a waste of time? We perform an enormously important task in putting to workers the only alternative to the dangerous chaos of capitalism. We succeeded in persuading Reg Otter to join us and even though he later decided to leave, because he is not arrogant he will accept that there was nothing special about him which made him able to work for socialism while other workers could not understand. Every time we win one new worker to our cause it is proof that we could win a thousand more. And. in practical terms, each new member provides us with access to several workers who know him or her.

The 81 votes for socialism in Islington South and Finsbury was disappointing. We would like to have recorded all 41.218. We ran a great campaign in the area, as many workers living in Islington (even if they do not support The Socialist Party) will testify. Unlike any other party in the election, we consistently asked voters not to vote for us unless they agreed in full with our ideas. That 81 did vote for us — in a constituency which was a key Labour marginal, and in which the Green Party were there to take away the mere protest votes — is something to get working on. If we could persuade those 81 socialist voters to join our Islington Branch we would be very happy. Similarly in Swansea, where we recently recorded 50 votes in just one ward.

Of course, we could regard 81 and 50 votes as good reasons to give up and learn to live with capitalism. Well firstly, capitalism may not allow us to live with it for that much longer, because it is set to put an end to the live-in arrangement, and secondly society will one day change from production for profit to production for need and we are not going to waste a moment's time or withhold any energy to hasten that revolution. We are not defeatists and neither, perhaps, is Reg Otter: maybe he has made the comments which he has so that we can give him the answer he is waiting for. Get into the movement for socialism and do your bit to make history

Editors.

Letter: Work and waste (1989)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Work and waste

Dear Editors,

You believe that in a future socialist society work will be shared. Yet no system will be so efficient as to train everyone to master every skill needed to keep a technological society running—it takes a half-lifetime to master only one profession!

Even if it were possible, the laws of the division of labour hold that someone is still going to have to do boring shop floor work and that will mean that they will have a low status. Such inequality can hardly be described as a socialist ideal.

In addition, even you now agree with the opposition to nuclear power. But just as you now believe that it's impossible to have nuclear power without poisonous nuclear waste, so it's impossible to have industry without poisonous industrial waste. De-industrialisation will be an answer to our main solution: the pursuit for human happiness.

J.D. Moreno, 

London SW19

Reply:

The skills necessary for running a highly complex industrial society are collective not individual or personal. It will be for socialist society to choose how far to automate production in order to remove drudgery and danger. If they cannot be eliminated then the danger and drudgery will have to be shared by a society that will understand that the work needs to be done if socialism is to continue functioning effectively. It is in this sense that we say work will be shared. No-one will be expected to do the same repetitive and dangerous work for a lifetime.

We do not envisage socialist society as one in which everyone will have all the skills to do everything ("It's your turn to be the brain surgeon this week, George!"). What we do look forward to is a situation where skills and talents currently trapped and distorted by capitalism are given the opportunity of full and free expression according to personal taste and inclination to do "useful work not useless toil", to use the words of William Morris.

Socialism before anything else will be a society of equals. Status and inequality will be meaningless concepts recalled only as hateful features of class society.

Waste is not inevitable—it is only a by-product of production which cannot be reused profitably and disposed of without incurring a loss.

De-industrialisation is not an option for the human race. Who would wish to do without the means now available to provide comfort and sufficiency for all? At a more prosaic level, would our correspondent wish to have dental treatment in the absence of a pain-killer administered by a hypodermic syringe?

Editors.

Letter: The Pope and King Billy (1990)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Pope and King Billy

Sirs,

The article The Lies That Kill' (Socialist Standard, July 1990) on the celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne in Northern Ireland was topical. However, it did the position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain no good to rehash historical error, even if it is convenient.

The comment on the third paragraph on the second page of the article which refers to the Treaty (or league) powers, of which the Pope was the head, that armed, provisioned and financed King Billy when he landed in Ireland has no historical fact. Even the way the historical myth is written is out of the normal context. It is normally associated with the landing in England in 1688 when the Pope Innocent XI was on the Papal Throne but this is erroneous too (see page 202, New Cambridge Modern History, Vol VI).

While it is a popular tale to abuse the Orange conception of the Battle of the Boyne the Pope did not have a Te Deum sung in St Peter's to mark William's victory. Indeed Pope Alexander was disturbed at the report that a Te Deum was sung in Austria where the Hapsburgs ruled—one of William's allies on the continent.

David Boyce 

Hamilton, Scotland.

Reply:

If the purpose of David Boyce's remonstrance is historical accuracy, then is argument is worthy of examination. If it is intended to refute the contention in the article that the fictions, lies and historical rubbish that the opposing sides in Northern Ireland use to deceive the working class, then it is less worthy.

It is less worthy because, however valid the two points he makes may be, they represent a small part of our indictment of the viciously anti-working class and anti-democratic Orange Order. This organisation has consistently promoted the lie that Unionism and Orangeism represent a shield for workers who are protestants. It has. by its fascist-like posturings and its triumphalism, promoted hatred and division within the working class. It was founded on the lie of class collaboration and its contemporary existence epitomises the hypocrisy and distortion that forms one side of the substance of the lies that in Northern Ireland today bring death and destruction.

Mr Boyce raises two objections to the article: (1) That there is no basis in fact for the contention that King Billy was armed, provisioned and financed by the Treaty or League powers: (2) That the story of a Te Deum being sung in Rome in celebration of William's victory is a popular myth.

For his second contention he offers no evidence beyond his personal claim. Even so, it can be accepted that definitive evidence is impossible to find. James Connolly made the claim in Labour. Nationality and Religion and The Reconquest of Ireland and cited as one of his authorities the protestant historian, the Reverend Robert Murray's Revolutionary Ireland and Its Settlement. Among other historians who have backed Connolly are Beresford Ellis in History of the Irish Working Class and Klopp in The Fall of the House of Stuart. The latter cites Avaux and Macpherson as his authorities for reporting that the Catholic Austrian Court had ordered public prayers for the success of King Billy's expedition in Ireland.

Mr Boyce supports his first contention by a reference to Volume VI of the New Cambridge Modern History. The substance of the particular article is the English Revolution in which there is a footnote quoting a Von Pastor:

It has been said that Innocent XI supported or had some knowledge of the expedition. but the documents generally adduced for this are forgeries. It was impossible for Innocent to associate himself in any way with a Protestant against a Catholic prince.

None of the more prominent Irish and Anglo-Irish historians, past and present, support Von Pastor's contention that it was impossible for a Pope to support “a Protestant against a Catholic prince". Most of these writers make generous use of continental European historians and some of the latter say that Innocent XI was referred to as "the Protestant Pope” because of his close identification with William of Orange. Murray quoted Koch and Schoell's Histoire abrégé des traités de paix as follows:

The Pope supported the Imperial Alliance, for he aimed at the humiliation of France and he cared little whether this was brought about by Roman Catholic or Protestant means. Instead of a religious crusade headed by the Pope and the Emperor, Louis is met with the Grand Alliance, signed at Vienna, between William as Stadholder of Holland and Leopold, on 12th May 1689 against the policy of France. William bound himself to secure Germany against future aggression by Louis and Leopold undertook to support William from attack in Holland. England and Spain were also to join this League.

Mr Boyce must accept the factual evidence for the Grand Alliance, whose existence effectively refutes Von Pastor's version of events.

Editors.

Letter: Building the Party (1995)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Building the Party

Dear Editors,

I am writing to tell you about Marxism 95. The meetings I went to were very good (especially the discussion after the talks), but on leaving these talks I was faced by an army of SWP members asking me to join (this even happened after the first meeting—as if going to one meeting organised by the SWP would leave me, or anyone, rushing to join—but faced with this pressure, who knows?). When I answered “No” when I was asked. I was literally pulled over and asked "Why not?”. When I tried to explain that I was still finding out about them I was told "If you want a real change join the SWP" and “Join today and if you find that you have made a mistake, just throw away your membership card." —Of course it is not as simple as that, but they told me that it was.

Another point I would like to comment on is a talk on the Saturday by Bernie Grant MP, who is a member of the Labour Party. I was in no doubt that he is on the left of politics—but not the left of Socialism, on the left of Capitalism because Labour are certainly a capitalist party and in my opinion there is a massive gap between capitalism and socialism. When I brought this comment up after the meeting, the three or so SWP members that I was with admitted that Labour are a capitalist party and said that Bernie Grant would probably be in the SWP but "he can have a bigger influence and meet more people in the Labour Party". I then said maybe I should join the Conservative Party so I "could have a bigger influence and meet more people". They told me that was not the same, but I think that it is.

Adam Jaffer, 

Coventry

Letter: Socialism in a single country? (1995)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism in a single country?

Dear Editors,

As a newcomer, while supporting the goal of socialism globally, I question your rejection of the idea that it cannot or should not occur in one country beforehand, especially as this appears incompatible with the declared principle of a "speedy termination" of capitalism.

Given that formidable beneficiaries and advocates of capitalism world-wide are united in their determination to maintain their system, attempting to overcome them all simultaneously does not seem the best use of limited resources, nor does it provide a tangible stimulus to the world’s exploited to break free from lifelong restraint.

To use a demolition analogy: it's unnecessary to destroy a dam by exhaustively coating the entire surface with voluminous plastic explosive in order to shatter every part synchronously.

The same result is achievable by concentrating a limited charge in one place, so allowing what is constrained to first break free with such drive that the rest of the barrier steadily wears away in conjunction with an increasing rate of escape.

One nation succeeding through socialism would make the advantages so clear to others, so quickly, that any countermeasures to bolster the international profit system would be swept away by the dynamic surge for the same benefits.

A sufficiently developed nation could go it alone and meet all its needs and requirements through socialism without being isolated from the rest of the world (though even isolation— as duress to reconform—would fail since retaining global ties would be preferable rather than essential).

Any raw materials that had to be imported could be bartered for. And if necessary, by exporting surplus goods, foreign currencies could be obtained for maintaining world-wide communications and transport links etc.

Preserving these international relations would not be a betrayal of socialist values nor an act of reformation. It would be a means to and end. whereby the baby gains protection and its diet is supplemented, while also enabling all to observe it swiftly growing strong, healthy and contented.

Without any financial restraints, wastage of resources and dog-eat-dog disunity, the full benefits of common ownership could be realised throughout the pioneer nation, transforming and improving lives to such an extent that a socialist chain reaction would inevitably be triggered across the planet.

By insisting on simultaneous global socialism, or none at all, time might run out due to capitalism’s destructiveness before the former can be achieved. 

Max Hess, 

Folkestone, Kent

Reply:

We don't say that socialism should not be established in one country but that it can't be. If it could, then we wouldn't be opposed to this, but it can’t because capitalism is a world system. not just in the sense of being dominated by the operation of world market forces but also in terms of the underlying technical conditions of production and world-wide division of labour which socialism will inherit.

No one country could be self-sufficient not even the most developed country in the world, the United States, nor the largest Russia, nor the most populous, China, nor Japan, nor even a multi-country trading bloc like the Common Market And the idea of any other part of the world going it alone is just ludicrous.

What this means is that no one part of the world can opt out, at least not without suffering a drastic reduction in the amount and variety of goods and services available to satisfy the needs and wants of those living there. People would be deprived of products from other part of the world or would have to work longer and devote more resources than otherwise to producing them.

In these circumstances, even if private property and the profit motive were to be eliminated within its frontiers, the country concerned would hardly provide the attractive model you assume for people in other countries to want to follow.

You say that this drawback could be got round by bartering with the outside, capitalist world, but have you thought this through? The products to be acquired from the outside world would have to be paid for (whether in money or in kind) at the full market price. But these outside products would not be able to be acquired unless some products produced in the country had first been exchanged on the world market. For this to happen they would have to be competitive in terms of quality and price with the same products produced in the capitalist world, otherwise no other country would want to buy or barter for them.

So already, to participate in the world market, the isolated would-be socialist country would have to behave capitalistically, striving to keep labour costs down and so further restricting the already reduced standard of living of the population. As people would be unlikely to agree to this voluntarily a new ruling class to enforce this would be likely to emerge. The end result would be not "socialism in one country" but state capitalism in one country.

There is another point you overlook. Abolishing capitalism and establishing socialism is not like demolishing a dam. It requires the existence of an active and participating socialist majority. Without this there can be no socialism, so for socialism to be attempted in just one country there would have to emerged a socialist majority in just that country. But how likely is this to happen in practice?

We think it is highly unlikely. Given the fact that social conditions and problems are basically the same all over the world, and given that socialism is the idea of a world society where the resources of the Earth belong in common to all humanity, we can see no reason why socialist ideas, when they begin to catch on, should only spread in one particular country and not in others.

In our view it is much more reasonable to assume that socialist ideas will spread more or less evenly in all countries. In which case, apart from being impossible to achieve anyway but the problem of perhaps having to try to establish socialism in one country won’t even arise.

Editors.

Letter: Calling the Pot black (1996)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Calling the Pot black

Dear Editors,

John Bissett's article in the August Socialist Standard was excellent. There was a curious parallel between the Ceausescu and the Pol Pot dictatorships at the time they were being given Western aid and tacit approval. Not only did the Queen dub the Rumanian ruler, Sir Nicolai but the British press was encouraged to spell his country as Romania so as to emphasise its historic link with Rome. Similarly newspapers began to spell Cambodia as Kampuchea as a sop to Pol Pot. This policy was quietly dropped when the scale of the Khmer Rouge massacres became more widely known. However, the public abhorrence of the Pol Pot regime has been insidiously used by defenders of the oppressive system operating in Vietnam founded by Ho Chi Minh. These people are loud in their condemnation of the Khmer Rouge but have maintained a fifty-year long silence with regard to Ho’s initial task on behalf of his masters in the Kremlin. That was to murder the entire leadership of Indo-China's substantial Trotskyist movement in the interregnum between the collapse of the WWII Japanese occupation and the re-establishment of French colonial rule.

Later, when the French were finally defeated at Dien Bien Phu, the Vietcong began their slow but sure mastery over the independent states that came into being in the wake of France losing her South-East Asian territories. American intervention in the Indo-Chinese civil war certainly introduced a massive increase in the technology of destruction but there was little they could teach the Vietcong by way of the cruel and treacherous methods of guerrilla warfare in which they eventually proved victorious.

Rivalry between Vietnamese and Cambodian nationalism goes back a long way. But a bone of contention which has been little commented upon by Western specialists on Asian affairs is the way Pol Pot claimed that his savage treatment of the population under his control was laying down the pre-conditions for a moneyless Communist society with no private property whatsoever. In my opinion these claims must have been a major irritant in Leninist circles where to be reminded of what their original aim was supposed to be was very uncomfortable indeed. Stalin sent people to Siberia for less!

Eddie Grant, 

London NW4

Letter: Not peas in a pod (1996)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not peas in a pod

Dear Editors,

I am very disappointed with Graham Taylor’s interpretation (August Letters) of my letter to the July issue.

Not once in my letter did I say that I supported the Newbury rallies, and I do not believe it is very comradely either to suggest that I might hold Trotskyite or SWP views.

I am a member of the Socialist Party because I sincerely believe in the abolition of the capitalist system. The other views I expressed in my letter are quite clear, that I think some Socialists appear to make a fetish out of not demonstrating or showing solidarity with other workers. Socialists are people, individuals, not so many peas out of the same pod.

Heather Ball, 

Norwich

Letter: Hauling in the net (1996)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hauling in the net

Dear Editors,

In "Capital hauls in the internet" (August 1996) The Scavenger seems to view the £2  million investment by BT and MCI in a new internet network as signalling the end of the "global mutual help" that the internet has encouraged. As socialists, we should indeed be questioning how far such new technology is being used in the interests of the working class. However, the arrival of a new network, however large and profit-orientated, does not exclude organisations such as ours from using the internet to our advantage, facilitating co-operation and the sharing of information. We are soon to expand our site on the World Wide Web which will represent us as a global movement. It is already possible for anyone with an internet connection to access information that we provide free of charge. While a majority of the world’s working class are denied access to this technology. it is still an important opportunity for us. (For example, around 70 percent of the US population have access to an internet connection.) We should leave to others the task of worrying how the net might possibly be regulated.

Daniel Greenwood, 

Coventry

Letter: SLP backs down (1996)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

SLP backs down

Four members of our Colchester Branch attended a meeting of the Socialist Labour Party in Ipswich on 25 April at which Arthur Scargill declared that he "would debate with anyone". We publish below the exchange of correspondence which followed:

"Dear Mr Scargill,

At a Socialist Labour Party meeting in Ipswich, in early May, you offered to debate with any organisation. Colchester Branch members of this Party who were at the meeting would like to take you up on that offer.

The Socialist Party would welcome such a debate and could arrange for it to be held in the East Anglian area or in Central London.

We hope to hear of your acceptance in the near future when a date and venue can be arranged.

Janet Carter, General Secretary, 

The Socialist Party. 

16 June 1996.”

"Dear Ms Carter,

Thank you for your letter regarding a debate between yourselves and the SLP.

Our policy at this time does not include such a meeting.

P. Sikorski, General Secretary, SLP.

I 3 August 1996."

We will keep readers informed of future developments. 

Letter: Seeing red (1999)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Seeing red

Dear Editors,

Ivan’s article, “Keeping Their Hair On”, in the July Socialist Standard made some interesting points about party colours and the image of politicians. But why are certain organisations or institutions associated with particular colours?

For example, royalty has traditionally been represented by the colour blue and yet there is no certainty as to how or why this originated. I am not even sure if there is a reason for the left being traditionally represented by the colour red.

Whatever the reason for the association of the left with red, why does the Socialist Party still use this colour too—at least for its publicity and stationery? The Socialist Party is not left-wing (or any “wing”, for that matter) as it is advocating an entirely different system. Red, in the context of socialism smacks of Commies, Reds, Lefties, Militant, “Keep the Red Flag Flying” and all that other nonsense we are trying to distance ourselves from. Think of the old Soviet Union or China and what comes to mind? Red flags!

If we are to change people’s stereotypical perception of socialism and socialists—which is difficult enough as it is—then we need to change how people view us rather than reinforcing what they already believe. It is a question of image.

Sadly, capitalism has made image a more important quality than substance but as long as we have to operate within capitalism we will be judged on petty points such as our Party colour, just as much as we can be judged on our ethos. Perhaps we should use the colour blue (or a strain of it) ourselves; that would really give people something to think about!

Simon Montfalcon, 

Romsey, Hampshire

Reply:

The red flag was first used as a revolutionary emblem in the French Revolution, in 1792 when the monarchy was overthrown. Apparently, up till then it had signified that martial law was in force and of course is still a danger signal (for the ruling class?). In the following century it became the flag of those in France who wanted a social as well as a political revolution.

Thus, in one of his articles on the revolutionary events in France in 1848 (Class Struggles in France 1848-1850) Marx referred to the red flag as being the flag of “the most extreme subversive party”. So too, the first English translation of the Communist Manifesto appeared in an extreme Chartist paper, the Red Republican. The Paris Commune of 1871 adopted the red flag as its official flag, so again Marx wrote about “the Red Flag, symbol of the Republic of Labour, flying over the Hotel de Ville” (Civil War in France).

The words of the song The Red Flag (which used to be sung at pre-WWI Socialist Party meetings such as those to commemorate the Paris Commune, before the song got hijacked by the Labour Party) were written by James Connell in 1889. One line reads “we must not change its colour now”– Editors

News in Review: The Polls (1964)

The News in Review column from the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Polls

Over the past few months, watching the so-called public opinion polls has almost become an obsessive national activity. Glassy, fascinated eyes have watched the graph lines of support for the two big political parties snaking up and down.

Even the Stock Exchange has reacted, becoming more optimistic as the forecast support for the Conservatives has increased.

The two big polls National Opinion Polls in the Daily Mail and Gallup in the Daily Telegraph have differed in their assessments. NOP turning up figures more favourable to the government than Gallup. Both have agreed that the Tories have steadily gained ground.

Who Knows what the polls are worth? Naturally, they protest their own accuracy; they are now big business employed by famous companies and advertising agencies to estimate what razor blades we use, what size washing machine fits into our kitchens.

In the political field, the polls have never really lived down their massive boob in the American Presidential Election of 1948, when Truman won against all their forecasts. They blamed that on to an unsuspected flaw in their method, which they now claim to have eliminated.

But none of them, of course, can interview an entire electorate and inevitably their sampling methods come in for some criticism. When the election is over, the polls do some furious figure juggling and, not surprisingly, claim that their forecasts were accurate.

The political parties welcome or deride the polls, according to whether they are currently favourable or not. Some time back a constituency Conservative Party which was fighting a by-election suggested that the polls were undemocratic, because they actually influenced people to vote for the party which they tipped to win.

In that by-election, need we add, the Tories were doing badly when the opposite is true they do not complain about the polls.

The whole thing is, in fact, a rather amusing game. And. like a game, it has no real effect. We can make one forecast now, without the aid of the polls.

Whichever of the parties wins the election, and whatever the composition of Parliament when the votes have been counted, capitalism will remain. It will be business as usual for everyone, including the pollsters.

Restrictive practices

Sam Goldwyn has long been famous for his super-colossal films and for his snappy wisecracks. He has always been the newspapers' caricature of a Hollywood tycoon expansive, ebullient. But now he is under something of a cloud.

The great Sam recently sold fifty of  his films for showing on television. Now everybody knows that the one word which is likely to make the cinema owners see red, in the most glorious, panoramic technicolor, is television.

So Mr. Goldwyn’s sale is regarded by the cinema interests as a stab in the back or, as Mr. Ellis Pinkney, secretary of the Cinema Exhibitioners' Association, put it. biting the hand that fed him. Goldwyn was not around when this remark was made: had he been, he would doubtless have made another funny crack in reply.

But the CEA are not joking. They are pressing all cinema owners in Britain not to show any more Goldwyn films. As they claim a membership of over ninety per cent of cinema owners, including Rank and Granada, their ban may well be effective.

Now the film industry was once famous for the demarcation rules which its workers' trade unions applied in the studios. These rules were strict; no carpenter would stick up so much as a square inch of plaster, no plasterer would knock in the smallest nail.

The employers complained bitterly about what they called these restrictive practices. They implied that the workers were childish, that the rules would ruin the industry and would deprive the public of their films.

In fact, the unions were using an old established weapon to try to defend some hard won improvements in working conditions. This may mean some tough fights, but that is the way it is jungle of capitalism’s class struggle.

And toughness, and restrictive practices, are not confined to one side. What the cinema owners are now going to do in their fight against Goldwyn can only be described as a tough restrictive practice.

Naturally, they try to justify it by using the same tones of moral indignation as they use when they attack the film workers' demarcation rules. But morality docs not come into it.

Both sides arc only trying to protect their interests and that is something that goes on all over the capitalist world. Even that part which is the preserve of the tinsel unrealities of the film men.

Johnson's fortune

Nobody expects elections to be other than dirty businesses but sometimes, in their anxiety to throw mud the parties of capitalism achieve some strange results.

Consider the case of Johnson's fortune. The exact amount of the American President's wealth has become something of an issue in the election over there, so much so that Johnson has engaged a firm of accountants to report on the matter.

The conclusion of this investigation was that the Johnson family is worth about three and a half million dollars. This estimate has been questioned, because it is based on the original cost of the Johnsons’ interests, whereas their present market value would be somewhere nearer $14 million.

For some strange reason, this dollop of wealth is regarded as a possible electoral liability to the President. The delusion about the barefoot boy who rose from log cabin to the White House apparently persists in the United States, even after all that the Kennedy family did to destroy it. 

Yet why should his wealth lose Johnson votes? A rich man, after all, is capitalism’s highest form of life—he is successful. Does not Johnson, therefore, fit in with the prejudices and presumptions which dominate elections? Is he not the sort of man the American workers would want as their national boss?

Perhaps there are doubts about the methods which were used to amass the Johnson fortune. And these, too, are humbug.

Even the most illegal ways of building up wealth—and there is no proof that the President has ever done anything outside the law—are no worse than the simple, legal method of the exploitation of the working class.

No method is more degrading, more repressive. No method leads to more violence and unhappiness. Property, Proudhon said, is theft and that is it up.

From this we can see that Lyndon Johnson is eminently suitable to administer American capitalism, with all the ruthlessness that it may require. He has also shown that he can accept, and turn to his advantage, any of the system's anomalies.

At the same time as his fortune was being counted, Johnson was pushing through Congress his so-called Anti Poverty Bill, which is supposed to rescue millions of Americans from the depths of destitution.

Perhaps some of them will get the point, and remember it when the time comes in November.

Matter of importance

From the London Gazette of 1st September, 1964:

In future, on occasions when it is desired that decorations be worn invitations should state either “evening dress decoration" (signifying white tie with full orders decorations and miniatures) or “dinner jacket, decorations” (signifying black tie with orders decorations and miniatures as described above).

When “evening dress decorations" is prescribed those not in possession of full evening dress may wear orders decorations and miniature badges and medals as described above with a dinner jacket.

How comforting to know that, in this world of hydrogen bombs and hire purchase, of malnutrition and mental illness, there is still a spark of dignity.

How nice to know that the Queen, ever alert to the onward march of democracy, has graciously consented to unbend the once inflexible regulations on the wearing of decorations with evening dress.

What ease of mind it brings to us all, to know that “. . . orders, decorations and medals may be worn with dinner jackets . . . with shirts having a stiff collar or soft collar.”

What an uplift for the soft collar, to be put at last on a par with the stiff! How satisfying a fruition of human struggle and endeavour.

And how sick it makes you feel.

Letter: Full employment, slumps and other questions (1964)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Full employment, slumps and other questions

Dear Sir.

An article published in the Socialist Standard in January of this year posed a question with its title, namely "Are you better off?" Unfortunately, however, the article does not provide any definite conclusion.

The article does however concede that the average increase of the purchasing power of take-home pay is probably about 10 per cent.

"In the meantime, owing to more than proportionate increases of pay deductions from pay (national insurance and income tax), the average increase of the purchasing power of take-home pay is not the 18 per cent of the two indexes would show (wage rate index and retail price index) but something less, probably about 10 per cent Socialist Standard, page 9, January 1964.”

It might also be pointed out that.the present alleged standard of affluence that many of the working class are at present living at is dependent on their wives going to work in order to augment the family budget. But, notwithstanding, this and other factors such as the tremendous growth in hire purchase commitments, it is difficult to deny that the worker of today is better off if fully employed, as the vast majority are at present, than his counterpart was when unemployed in large numbers before the Second World War, particularly in the slump of 1929. In case it should be asked why one should compare the lot of a fully employed worker to that of an unemployed one in the pre-war period the answer is that millions were unemployed then, and relatively few are unemployed now. The article in question gave four columns of figures, one of which gave the number of unemployed of 1938 when it stood at 1,927,000. The column next to this gives unemployment as a percentage of 1938. this year being taken as 100 per cent. If these figures are accurate, then we may conclude that unemployment has not reached 50 per cent of this level since 1938.

On this aspect of the problem the article in your journal is significantly silent. In fact I think it would be true to say that the Socialist Standard has failed to account for this continuing full employment since the end of the war and does not even find the subject worthy of discussion in its columns.

May 1 therefore ask the following questions?

(a) Why in your opinion has the slump which you maintain is an essential feature of capitalism failed to appear in England?

(b) Why has there been no slump of the magnitude of 1929 since the war.

(c) Are the present conditions of full employment, increasing the membership of your organisation and the sales of the Socialist Standard.

(d) Do you think the orthodox economists using ideas of the late Maynard Keynes have found a way of preventing widespread and profound slumps of the pre 1938 variety and if not how do you account for this rather prolonged period of full employment?

I am, yours etc.

T. Lawlor

Reply:

Our correspondent comments on the fact that, compared with pre-war years, the position of the workers has been affected by the decline of unemployment and the increased number of married women who go out to work, as well as by the rise of average wages in relation to prices. This was referred to in the article, where it was pointed out that total wages are about five times what they were in 1938, “mainly because of the decline of unemployment and the fact that far more married women are now out at work".

Whether this last factor can be regarded simply as a gain is another matter. In the nineteenth century the need of married women to work was commonly regarded as a disadvantage by those who studied its consequences.

If however it is a fact that most workers now are rather better off than before the war, this kind of development is not a new thing. Frederick Engels noted in 1885 that since 1844, when he wrote his The Condition of the Working Class in England, the factory workers had become “undoubtedly better off”, and the condition of engineers, carpenters, joiners and bricklayers, organised in the trade unions, “had remarkably improved". (See Preface to 1892 Edition).

In the same Preface and in the 1886 Preface to Capital Engels then went on to state a position which events proved to be wrong. He had concluded, because of the length and severity of the depression, that British Capitalism would never resume its expansion and that “either the country must go to pieces or capitalist production must ”. He thought unemployment was bound to increase year by year and that shortly, “ the unemployed . . . will take their fate into their own hands ”,

Profiting by Engels' mistakes the SPGB reached the conclusion (one indeed that Marx and Engels had themselves seen) that the achievement of Socialism calls for understanding on the part of the workers and cannot be the outcome of discontent and despair without understanding.

Our correspondent accepts rather too easily the claim that there has been “continuing full employment since the end of the war". In the column of figures to which he refers in the January Socialist Standard it is shown that since the war unemployment has ranged from 302,000 in January 1956 to 861,000 in January 1963. This latter figure may not be high by pre-war standards but it certainly cannot be described as “full employment”. Allowance ought also to be made for the fact that unemployment will have been increased in the nineteen thirties by the big flow of migration into this country. In post-war years up to about 1960 the net flow was outwards.

Against that background we can answer the specific questions.

(a) For this question it is necessary to take care about the use of words. If by “slump” our correspondent means only a “heavy slump” like that of the thirties, the answer is that such heavy slumps are not an essential feature following each capitalist crisis.

What we had as an essential feature o! capitalism is, to quote the words used by Marx in Capital, Volume I, Chapter XV, Section 8: —

The life of modern industry becomes a series of periods of moderate activity, prosperity, overproduction, crisis and stagnation.

The crises, that is the sharp interruptions of booms, have continued to happen in the post-war years. For example, the index of production in January 1963 was down to 108, after having reached 120 in January 1961. If in post-war years, the ensuing “stagnations" have not been heavy and prolonged this is in line with the experience of crises in the nineteenth century. Most of these crises were not followed by heavy prolonged slumps. The outstanding big ones were in the eighteen forties, the eighteen eighties (the one that threw Engels off-balance) and the nineteen thirties, and in between there were depressions that were not heavy or prolonged.

(b) Among the reasons why heavy depression existed in the nineteen thirties and not in post-war years in this country (experience of some other countries has been markedly different) is the absence of a very important factor which existed then. This is the pre-war feature of crisis-dislocation superimposed on the long-term decline of some very big industries, agriculture, coal and cotton without the counter effect of strongly expanding new industries. In post-war years, along with a much larger Civil Service, large armed forces and armaments industry, there has been expansion of building (helped by war-time destruction and stoppage of building), man-made fibres, electricity and electrical engineering, motor car and aircraft manufacture, television, chemicals and oil, electronics and nuclear power.

(c) If this question means has low unemployment since the end of the war been accompanied by a continuous increase of membership, etc., the answer is no; but we would not expect increase of membership to be determined by low unemployment any more than the heavy unemployment of the thirties had that effect. Other factors also come into it.

(d) This question relates to the supposed ability of governments to prevent widespread and profound slumps by means of the techniques associated with the late Lord Keynes. It will put the matter into perspective to point out that also before 1935 (the year Keyne's major work appeared) there were, between the heavy slump, long periods without heavy slumps.

If it is claimed that Keynesian techniques give Governments effective control over capitalism why did unemployment rise to 861,000 in 1963? As all governments have at their disposal these same techniques, and numerous economists who approve of them, why have many countries had heavy unemployment for prolonged periods since the war. among them U.S.A.. Canada. Germany, Italy, Belgium and Denmark? In Italy unemployment ranged between 1½ and 2 million for 10 years after the war. During this year unemployment has been at the 6 per cent level in Canada and U.S.A.

How have the techniques supposed to have worked? The Keynesians claim that the Government can, when it likes, stimulate capital investment and consumption and at other times damp down over-expansion. When the present motor car boom slackens off as it certainly will, what can the government do, if the world market for cars is temporality saturated, except wait for demand to recover? Theoretically the government could have prevented the industry from expanding so rapidly—and left the market to be filled with the cars of other producers—but the car manufacturers, the trade unions and the Tory and Opposition M.P.'s would all have protested.

Now that the Southern Rhodesian tobacco industry has been hit by falling prices following a bumper crop, how can Keynes help them? The producers are in fact turning to another and older technique, that of restricting production.

Of course it long ago ceased to he true that Keynesian doctrines were held only by the unorthodox minority. They had become the orthodoxy of large numbers of economists and members of governments. Now fashion is changing again and Keynes comes under increasing criticism. It would seem that his theories have not proved, even to his admirers, to be the panacea they were claimed to be.

Editorial Committee.

Election Special: Introducing the Socialist Party of Great Britain (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain was founded in 1904. Our object is the establishment of Socialism; a world-wide social system in which the means of wealth production and distribution (factories, mines, the land, railways, steamships, etc.) will be owned by the entire population of the world.

We are associated with our Companion Socialist parties in the U.S.A., Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia. We have no connection whatever with any other political party or organisation.

WE OPPOSE every organisation which stands for capitalism, which includes the Labour, Conservative, Liberal, Communist, Independent Labour parties and many others. We oppose the wars which capitalism persistently throws up. We oppose political campaigns which appeal for votes on programmes of reforms (better housing, higher wages, etc.), which in fact do little or nothing to alleviate working class problems. We oppose Nationalisation, which is just another way of organising capitalism.

WE SUPPORT Socialism. Nothing less will do.

WE WORK for Socialism. We spread among the working class the knowledge without which Socialism cannot be established. Our leader does not exist. Leaders are for the politically ignorant. The worker who has Socialist knowledge does not need a leader to interpret political affairs for him and to tell him what to do. There are, therefore, no leaders in the Socialist Party of Great Britain and we do not set out to become leaders of the working class.

WE RECRUIT Socialists and nobody else. We examine all applicants for membership to ensure that they understand what is entailed by being a Socialist.

WE APPEAL to the working class to examine the case for Socialism and to vote for our candidate only if they understand, and want, Socialism.

Why we are contesting

Whenever there is an election the ordinary person, the man in the street—the working class voter—becomes suddenly very popular. Any number of political parties are anxious to please him and to make him all manner of tempting promises, if he in his turn will agree to vote for their candidate. Election time, in other words, is the time when there is an enormous hunt for votes—for your vote.

The bait which is used in this hunt is largely made up by promises. All the other parties offer this bait, and the generosity of their promises is usually in inverse proportion to the likelihood of their getting power. The Labour and Conservative Parties cannot be too extravagant; the Liberals can be a little more wild; the Communists can promise almost anything. And so on.

Most of the promises in this election are about things like modernisation, housing, education, pensions, wages and prices, war and peace. To read the literature of the other parties, it seems that all that has to be done to solve overnight all the problems connected with these issues is to vote for their candidate. They will all, it seems, bring British industry up to date, replace all the slums with new houses, give everyone a fair chance of the best education, increase pensions, keep prices stable while wages increase, banish war from the earth.

These promises sound very fine and in one election after another millions of working people vote for them. And presumably, when they do so, they think that they are contributing to the solution of our problems.

But let us stop and think about it.

Firstly, it is obvious that election promises are not a new thing. Political parties have been making them for as long as anyone can remember—and always about the same sort of problems.

Now what has been the result of all this?

The housing problem remains with us; despite repeated promises to deal with it, slums are developing faster than new houses are being built For the workers, who depend on their wage to live, housing is still an aspect of their general poverty.

The sort of education we get is governed by the financial standing of our parents. Even if a working class lad wins his way to university he is only studying to become a different type of worker—one with a degree behind him.

Millions of old age pensioners are living on the tightrope of destitution—and it only needs something like a severe winter for many of them to loosen their precarious hold on life.

Prices continue to rise, as they have done steadily since the war. No government has yet given a free rein to the level of wages—they have all tried to restrain them. And whatever the respective level of prices and wages, we always find that our wage packet only just covers our food, clothing, entertainment and whatever else goes to keep us ticking over.

War is just as much a universal problem as ever. At the moment there are only comparatively minor incidents, punctuated by more serious clashes such as Cuba and Berlin. But over it all hangs the threat of another world conflict, this time fought out with nuclear weapons.

It is not accidental that the politicians make so many promises and that they have so little effect upon the ailments they are supposed to cure. The world is full of chronic problems, but this is not because political parties have not thought up reforms which are supposed to deal with them nor because their leaders are not clever or knowledgeable enough.

The fact is that the problems persist whichever party is in power and this suggests that their roots go deep into the very nature of modern society.

We live today in a social system which is called capitalism. 
The basis of this system is the ownership by a section of the 
population of the means of producing and distributing wealth—
of factories, mines, steamships, and so on. It follows from 
this that all the wealth which we produce today is turned out 
with the intention of realising a profit for the owning class. It is from this basis that the problems of modern society spring.

The class which does not own the means of wealth production—the working class—are condemned to a life of impoverished dependence upon their wages. This poverty expresses itself in inferior housing, clothes, education, and the like. In the end, it expresses itself in the pathetic destitution of the old age pensioner—a fate which no old capitalist ever faces.

The basis of capitalism throws up the continual battle over wages and working conditions with attendant industrial disputes. It gives rise, with its international economic rivalries, to the wars which have disfigured man’s recent history.

Every other party in this election stands for capitalism, whatever they may call themselves. And whatever their protestations, they stand for a world of poverty, hunger, unrest and war. They stand for a world in which no human being is secure.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, alone, stands for Socialism. We stand for a world in which everything which goes to make and distribute wealth will be owned by the people of the world. Because Socialism is the direct opposite of capitalism, it follows that when it is established the basic problems of capitalism will disappear. There will be no more war, no more poverty. Man will live a full, abundant life; we shall be free.

But Socialism cannot be brought about by promises. It needs a knowledgeable working class who understand and desire it. They alone can establish the new world order.

We recognise that the road to power lies through Parliament. At the moment, the number of Socialists is small and our resources are therefore limited; unfortunately, we can afford to run only a few candidates. But as the conscious desire for Socialism spreads among the working class we shall contest more and more constituencies, giving more and more workers the chance to vote for a world of abundance, peace and freedom.

What is Socialism?

Socialism will be a social system based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the interest of the whole community. This definition was composed by the Socialist Party of Great Britain when it was formed in 1904. We have never altered it; not because we are stubborn and blind to changing conditions but because the word Socialism means the same today as it did in 1904—and as it will mean when Socialism becomes a reality.

Common ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution means that the things which are needed to make and distribute wealth will be owned by the whole human race. At present these things are the land, factories, mines, railways, steamships, etc. But common ownership does not mean that everybody in the world will own an equal share of every factory, mine, railway train and the rest.

What common ownership does mean, is that there is one way in which all human beings will be equal. Everybody will have an equal right to take however much wealth they need and to consume it as they require. Because the means of production will be commonly owned the things which are produced will go into a common pool from which all human beings will be able to satisfy their needs.

Now if there is unrestricted access to wealth for everybody it must follow that nobody, in the sense of an individual or a class, owns wealth. This means that wealth will not be exchanged under Socialism; it will not be bartered nor will it be bought and sold. As a rough parallel we can consider the air we breathe. Everybody has free access to the air and we can all take in as much of it as we need to live. In other words, nobody owns the air; nobody tries to exchange air for anything else, nobody tries to sell or buy it. Similarly there will be no buying and selling under Socialism; no need for the complicated and widespread organisations which deal in commerce and banking in capitalist society. Socialism will have no merchant houses, no banks, no stock exchanges, no tax inspectors, or any of the paraphernalia of capitalism.

In a Socialist society wealth will be produced solely to satisfy people’s needs and not for sale as it is today. Because of this there will be no deliberate variations in quality of wealth. Socialism will have only one quality. Whatever is produced will be the best that human beings are capable of. Homes, for example, will be designed and built with the only motive of housing human beings in the best possible style. The materials of which they are made, their facilities and location will all conform to this. They will be the best homes that society knows how to build.

Nobody will be employed by another person—nobody will sell his labour-power or work for wages. Everybody, in fact, will work for the whole of society. Work will be a co-operative effort, freely given because men will realise that wealth can only be produced by working—unless wealth is produced society will die. Yet it will not only be a reluctance to commit social suicide that will keep us working under Socialism. Men will be free—free from the fetters of wage slavery, free from the fears of unemployment, free from economic servitude and insecurity. Nobody will be found doing a job which he hates but tolerates because it pays him well. Healthy young men will not grow pigeon-chested over fusty ledgers. Nobody will waste his time learning how to kill scientifically. We shall be free to do useful work, making things which will add to society’s welfare, things which will make human life a little better, a little happier.

There will be no war—the cause of war will no longer exist. This means that there will be no armed forces with their dreadfully destructive weapons. It means that the people who are in the armed forces, together with the rest of the enormous social effort which is channelled into them, will be able to serve useful, humane purposes instead of destroying and terrorising.

When production is only for human use we shall see a great development of society’s productivity. First of all, an enormous number of jobs which are vital to capitalism will become redundant. Socialism will have no use for such jobs because its wealth will not be produced for sale. There will probably be statisticians to collect information about society’s productive resources and to relate this to our needs. A lot of people will work at transporting wealth all over the world. These are useful occupations, just as all work will be.

Capitalism has veined the world with frontiers and has fostered patriotism and race hatred, none of which has any scientific basis. Frontiers are purely artificial and are often altered at international conferences. Many workers are proud of their nationality although in logic they cannot take pride in something over which they had no control. Socialism will have none of this. No frontiers, no racial barriers or prejudices. The world will be one with only human beings working together for their mutual benefit.

Socialism will end the wasteful, fearsome, insecure world we know today. It will remove poverty and replace it with plenty. It will abolish war and bring us a world of peace. It will end fear and hatred and give us security and brotherhood.

Election Special: Where our opponents stand (1964)

From the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Conservatives

Since they came back to power twelve years ago, the Conservative Party have managed to popularise the idea that they are the party of prosperity. They also claim, like the other parties, to stand for the interest of the nation as a whole.

But can we sensibly talk of “The nation as a whole”? The economic editor of one well known Sunday newspaper recently wrote about “ the fantastically unequal distribution of wealth” and estimated that nearly one half of the total personal wealth in this country is owned by two per cent. of the adult population. This inequality is at the heart of the capitalist system—the system which the Conservative Party openly supports.

The Conservatives also claim to be the party of the small man, they talk of property owning and share owning democracies. In fact, however, their policy has been well described by Enoch Powell, one time Tory Minister of Health:

Does it pay? is the question which, quite unashamedly, we have to ask today of all our economic and commercial doings. Does this railway line pay—that coal mine, this shipping route? Does that industry in that place pay? (The Observer, 13/5/62).

This ruthless standard also applies to the small man; if his business does not pay, the Conservatives are prepared to see him go under.

It is difficult to understand how so many of those who suffer most from capitalism can find reasons to support the Conservative Party, which openly proclaims the basic capitalist doctrine that profit must come before human welfare.

Production for profit, which Mr. Powell and all Conservatives think is the most efficient and praiseworthy method, does not lead to one prosperous nation but rather to one prosperous capitalist class and to degradation and insecurity for the working class.

The workers have nothing more to expect from the Tories than what they get; unemployment, bad housing, pay restraint, insecurity. Tory ministers may describe these problems as personal, family difficulties, but in fact they are the inevitable results.of the class divided, privilege ridden social system which Conservatives so proudly support.

Labour Party

Both the Labour and Conservative Parties tell you, in this election and at other times, that the Labour Party stands for Socialism. Both parties have different reasons for saying this but these need not concern us. What we are concerned about is to ask whether it is true that the Labour Party is a Socialist Party.

Socialism means a new social system, based upon the common ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution. All wealth under Socialism will be produced to satisfy human needs and not to make a profit. There will, in other words, be no such thing as investment under Socialism. Yet the 1953 Labour manifesto Challenge to Britain states clearly that:

The crucial problem facing the next Labour Government will be to stimulate a big increase in investment.

Socialism will have no national barriers, no separate countries each with their own mistakenly patriotic workers. Compare this with what Mr. Harold Wilson said recently:

Desire to restore Britain’s standing in the world is a noble one, and one which we have been pressing for years. We have been saying that Britain must lead (The Guardian, 2/12/63).

There will be no international trading rivalries under Socialism. These rivalries, which often lead directly to war, spring from the basis of capitalist society. But Mr. Wilson wants:

. . .  a specific preference in awarding (Commonwealth) contracts to Britain. . . In return, Britain should undertake to provide guaranteed markets for Commonwealth primary produce (Daily Telegraph, 5/5/63.)

These statements are taken at random from a mass of evidence which proves that the Labour Party stands for capitalism and, as a British political party, represents the interests of the British capitalist class.

That is why, when they were last in power, they used troops to break strikes, developed the British H. Bomb, continued conscription into peace-time, put this country into the Korean war, and so on.

There is no point in pretending that millions of workers will not once more vote Labour in this election. But they should be aware that in doing so they are voting for capitalism—for war, for poverty, for unrest and insecurity.

The Liberals

Struggling to increase its political fortunes at this election will be the Liberal Party. Out in the wilderness for well over forty years, they have previous little chance still of forming a government. But this is not for want of trying; in recent years, their language has been that much more flowery than their Labour and Tory opponents, their promises that much wilder. For they are trying hard to raise an image of the “new” Liberalism from the ashes of the old, and to convince workers that theirs is the best way of running British capitalism.

“Cut the past. Assess the present and prepare for the future," was the cry of Liberal leader Jo Grimond only about two years ago, and bearing in mind the Liberal record, this was certainly not surprising to hear. Here we have the party of peace lovers who supported both world wars; defenders of individual liberties who agreed with conscription; friends of the workers who smashed their strikes with troops; protectors of the little man, who built up their party funds by selling peerages to their big business backers. All this and more can be laid at the door of the Liberal Party of yesterday, when it was well and truly a powerful force.