Our radical history (2001)

Book Review from the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Zinn on History by Howard Zinn, Seven Stories Press, New York, 2001.

Readers may be familiar with the work of the radical American historian and activist, Howard Zinn. It includes the witty, humane play Marx in Soho, as well as his magnificent Peoples Histories, of the United States and the twentieth century. During the Vietnam War it was Zinn, together with Noam Chomsky, who helped copy, smuggle out and then edit and publish the Pentagon Papers, official documents that illustrated the full and savage involvement of the American ruling class in the appalling invasion and destruction of South-East Asia.

This current volume is a collection of Zinn’s essays that date from the mid-sixties to last year, and concern themselves with broadly historical themes—sketches of individuals, tales of action, meditations on the role of the academic and history in general, on Marx and “Marxism”.

This sense of history shines through in his essay on the Seattle protests. Zinn welcomes the shift away from the single issue campaigns that characterised much of left-wing US protest in the eighties and nineties, and a growing targeting of capitalism itself. He reminds readers of North America’s rich (and sometimes overlooked) history of class resistance and militancy. Seattle was the stage for a general strike in 1919 of some 35,000 dock workers. Moreover, the area was often deeply militant, with the “Wobblies” (the anarcho-syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World) strong and much anti-war agitation against US involvement in World War I. So often today’s anti-capitalist protestors are ignorant of this legacy; Zinn’s work is going some way to remedying this.

Socialists will, I think be most interested on his thoughts about Marx and his ideas. Zinn, like Marx before him declares “je ne suis pas marxiste!” (“I am not a Marxist!”). The present reviewer feels the same. Marx’s turn of wit was, on this occasion given to one Pieper, a young German sychopant (or “nudnik”, as Zinn calls him in wonderfully colourful Yiddish)¸ a self-styled “Marxist”, who was attempting to get Marx to attend his Karl Marx society. Zinn, in quoting Marx’s weary and witty reply is saying that we ought to reflect on what is relevant and alive in Marx’s writings, rather than turning them into sterile dogma.

Marx wasn’t just a scholar, but an activist and commentator on the world he often painfully lived in. Zinn points readers to the Theses on Feurbach and the 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. These are not “early” or “immature” works, he says, but rather rich in insights that are still as profoundly relevant as when they were written. The alienation and exploitation produced under capitalism are appalling; “It [The 1844 Manuscript] simply stated (but did not state simply) that the capitalist system violates whatever it means to be human”. To overcome this alienation a complete change—indeed , a transcendence—of capitalist society’s social, economic and political relationships is required. Zinn reminds us of Marx’s hostility towards nationalism, and points out that he would have been horrified by the so-called “socialist” societies that Stalinism created. Marx instead lauded the 1871 Paris Commune with its direct democracy, egalitarianism, levelling of wages and abolition of the guillotine as his idea of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, as he called the political transition to a socialist society.

The rest of the book is devoted to accounts of Zinn’s own activism, mainly against the war in Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement. One of the best essays is on the Freedom Schools in Mississippi the free, egalitarian summer schools for poor blacks that Zinn and others set up in 1964, often at risk of injury and death. Zinn reminds us that “education is not just a tool of indoctrination, but a powerful tool of emancipation as well.

I can’t pretend to agree with Zinn all the time; yes, some of Marx’s economics is dense and difficult, but an understanding of surplus value and commodity production is vital to understanding capitalism. Zinn is also too often prone to supporting reformism on grounds of “pragmatism”, provision of public healthcare in the US being a case in point. However, given where he comes from and the generation he belongs to, it is at least understandable. “Human beings make history, but not always in circumstances of their own choosing,” as Uncle Charlie was fond of saying. Given all the history out there being written by bourgeois apologists, plodding careerist empiricists, dull local-fixated antiquarians and childish, pretentious postmodernists, we need more radical historians like Howard Zinn. A touching and worthwhile collection; read it and start reading and researching your own radical history.

Rob Worden

Blogger's Note:

Zinn's famous essay,  'Je Ne Suis Pas Marxiste',  is available on the blog.

Interventions: Leaflets (2001)

Party News from the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist Party members have been present at ant-war demonstrations. Here are two examples of the leaflets we handed out there

Against war—against capitalism

It was good to hear of the anti-war demonstrations that took place recently in cities around the world, including Washington. It is heartening that many workers are refusing to accept this latest march towards bloodshed, despite the war propaganda blitzkrieg we have been subjected to.

However, we would say that slogans like “no more killing, no more war, no more violence any more” (though wholly admirable) do not go to the root of why war is such an ever-present feature of life. War does not occur because of “world leaders” being misguided or evil (though they may be these things), but because of the ruthless competition inherent to capitalism.

War is “business by other means” as they say. This war (whatever form it takes) will have its roots in the ongoing scramble for Middle East oil.

War is the inevitable result of world capitalism and the conflict between competing powers over markets, raw materials, trade routes and strategic territory – quite simply, war will not be banished from our lives until we have banished capitalism from our lives.

The companion parties of the World Socialist Movement have opposed every single war. We call on our fellow workers to reject and oppose all capitalist violence and bigotry, as we do. But it is also essential that our class understand the cause of war – the outdated capitalist system – and organise to abolish it.

www.worldsocialism.org

 

Another War – Another Tragedy For Humanity

The bombing of Afghanistan has begun. The alleged “war on terrorism” against America’s former islamic fundamentalist allies in Afghanistan is under way.

It will really be aimed at installing another regime more favourable to US and other “great powers” interests in a region strategically important with regards to oil (the reason for the previous financial and military support for the fundamentalists).

The cause of this war, like all others, is the profit system and its inherent vicious competition, which constantly finds expression in war and destruction. And like all wars, this war has nothing to do with the interests of the global working class.

The interests at stake are the interests of the competing national sections of the capitalist class and hence at odds with the real interests of us, the workers of the world, whose exploitation is the source of capitalist power and profit. The killing of our fellow human beings runs counter to the interests of humanity, full stop.

As ever, the companion parties of the World Socialist Movement call on our fellow workers to stand with us in opposing both this war, and the anti-human capitalist system which has spawned it. We must reject all attempts to divide the working class into national camps, whether our class enemies use the ideologies of “democracy” or of “islam”.

We simply cannot afford to repeat the carnage of the Twentieth Century in the Twenty First. The potential for a united world society based on the common ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole human community has existed for some time now. It is vital for the future of humanity that the useless, war-prone capitalist system is abolished.

How much more blood can we allow to be shed?

World View: Strange values, denials and a few truths (2001)

From the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The proverbial line has been drawn in the sand and President George W Bush has told the world “either you’re with us or you’re against us.” It’s a catch-all sentiment that is taking hold. Indeed, one writer asked me through the letters page of the Shields Gazette: “A simple message to John Bissett. Which side are you on, ours or the terrorists?” “It’s that simple”, I’ve been told on the streets!

The mainstream view is that the forces of barbarism have declared war on the bastion of democracy. George Bush boldly declared: “They hate our freedom, our freedom of religion, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with one another”, yet wonders not why, if this were so, the Statue of Liberty, the White House or the Lincoln memorial was not attacked on 11 September. Why the Pentagon and the WTC – one a symbol of America’s global military reach, the other a symbol of US economic prowess?

Of course there is much missing from Bush’s assertion that Islamic terrorists are simply jealous as hell of the democratic freedoms “enjoyed” in the US. The simple truth is that throughout the Middle East, indeed the world, the US has, despite its alleged support for movements towards democracy and greater freedoms for all, generally hampered provisional steps in the direction of democratisation whilst it has increased its support for despotic regimes such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Morocco.

Israel, for instance, gets 40 percent of all US overseas aid. Meanwhile Israel is in breach of six UN resolutions and continues oppressing people in Palestine. During Jordan’s despotic and repressive rule in the 1970s and 80s, US aid for the Amman regime was enormous. Then when Jordan decided to oil the cogs of its political machine in the 1990s, that aid was vastly reduced and for a while suspended. Similarly, aid to Yemen was cut off within months of that unified country’s first “democratic” election. In recent weeks, when it was discovered that Qatar’s satellite channel Al-Jazeera was beginning to sound a little “pro-democracy”, upsetting regional dictators, broadcasting images of the US bombings and airing bin Laden’s now famous video, it was Colin Powell who demanded the channel be closed down, insisting it fostered “anti-Americanism”.

When it comes to Middle Eastern peace, the US’s actions have ensured that the region is as unstable as ever, cocking a snook at UN Resolution 687 which calls for region-wide disarmament – which would also mean an end to Israel’s nuclear capability – and at the same time selling $60 billion worth of arms to Middle Eastern country in 10 years (80 percent of all world arms exports to the Middle East). Israel, by the way, receives $3 billion in US military aid on the pretext that it is defending itself from its Arab neighbours – those same neighbours the US has armed to the teeth.

Writing in the Guardian (29 September), Artundhati Roy goes a little further. “Could it be”, she asks, “that the stygian anger that led to the attacks has its taproot not in American freedom and democracy, but in the US government’s record of commitment and support of exactly the opposite things, to military and economic terrorism, insurgency, military dictatorships, religious bigotry and unimaginable genocides?”

Blair’s double-speak

This side of the Atlantic, in his finest Orwellian double-speak, Tony Blair could announce: “The values we believe in should shine through in Afghanistan”. Could this be the same Blair whose government armed the Indonesian military machine that not so long ago ran rampage through East Timor? Whose government has signed 91 military export licences for Israel in the last eight months of the current Intifada? Such instances fly in the face of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office claim that “we will not issue export licences where there is clearly identifiable risk that the equipment might be used for internal repression or adversely effect regional stability”. Are these the same “values” which, on the same day as the attacks on the US, allowed the DSEi arms fair to go ahead in London and to continue for another two days? And are these same “values” informing a Labour government who, without any mandate from the UN, has helped notch up 15,000 RAF/USAF bombing raids on Iraq since the second Gulf War?

These same values are now behind the decision that Britain and the US should support a proxy army, the Northern Alliance, an outfit with an impressive record of widespread rape, pillage and murder in Kabul, in its confrontation with the Taliban. One of the key figures in the Northern Alliance is Abdul Rashid Dostom, and ally of Uzbekistan’s President Karimov, who has made huge profits from exporting drugs via Uzbekistan, and who allegedly was all to keen to secure Russian weapons and military supplies in exchange for keeping the gas flowing north.

Just as Blair’s values can enable him to curry favour with Israel’s Ariel Sharon, architect of the slaughter in Qibya in 1953 and the 1982 massacres in Sabra and Shatila, so can these same ideals prompt him into friendly dialogue with President Karimov, whose airfields are suddenly strategically important now the bombing of Afghanistan has commenced. Karimov, incidentally, holds 7,000 political prisoners, allows no free press and no political opposition. And Karimov, of course, has other reasons for supporting the anti-Taliban alliance. His corrupt police state is facing bankruptcy and to prop it up he is intent on having a pipeline through Uzbekistan and Afghanistan to a Pakistani port.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was castigated by his boss for making a link between Palestine and the recent terrorist attacks in the US when he said that Middle Eastern terrorism was bred “by the anger many people in this region feel at events over the years in Palestine.” Tony Blair was to spend 15 minutes on the phone to Ariel Sharon, trying to calm him down and get him to agree to meet Straw.

US foreign policy aims

Neither will Washington acknowledge its complicity in other areas which have a direct bearing on the present. Whilst Bush is mouthing off about the importance of curbing the funding of terrorist groups and keen to see the Taliban’s overseas assets frozen, it was his own administration, May gone, that scuttled international efforts to clamp down on tax havens, withdrawing support for an OECD initiative that called for more transparency in tax and banking procedures.

Moreover, it was again in May of this year that the Bush administration was giving the Taliban $43 million as an incentive to reduce the cultivation of poppies, knowing full well the Taliban were notorious abusers of human rights and that they harboured terrorists from all over the Islamic world. And there was no criticism of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan who for years gave the Taliban military and financial aid.

For quite some time now, US, German and Russian intelligence services have been alerting Washington to the fact that Osama bin Laden has been trying to acquire weapon’s grade nuclear material, indeed as early as 1993 from Russian outlets with poor controls. What was the response of the Bush administration to this? They proposed cutting funds for a programme aimed at preserving nuclear materials in the former USSR.

Of course all the cant and clever rhetoric and soldier speak of the last few weeks have helped mask what are now becoming the true intentions of the US. The attacks on the US on 11 September are now being used to serve US foreign and domestic policy.

The oil reserves of Central Asia are perhaps second to those of the Middle East and as Afghanistan is geographically located between the Caspian basin and the markets of Japan, China and the Indian sub-continent, we can well see the country’s strategic importance to foreign policy planners wishing to dictate the way in which the region’s oil and gas reserves are utilised to the benefit of the US dollar.

The “war on terrorism” is clearly being used to induce fear and mistrust in the US, and through this fear a justification will be found to curb all manner of civil liberties, increase police powers and military spending.

Furthermore, the current crisis serves to extend US power around the globe and perhaps set a definite agenda for the coming century, the ‘war on terrorism’ serving as a replacement for the Cold War, now that the US has had its anti-communist passport stamped null and void and is desperate to maintain a pretext to assert its hegemonic credentials.

None of which surprises socialists. We are well attuned to the machinations of the elites of powerful countries as they seek to promote the interests of their corporate backers. Though it is no easy task for the uninitiated, we urge our fellow workers to be as vigilant as ever. To believe the arguments of the likes of Bush and Blair is to disarm yourself intellectually – for it is at times like the present, when the media is dancing to the tunes of governments, when the trumpets of jingoism, patriotism and reaction are sounding, that we need to be fighting the war of ideas.

John Bissett

Greasy Pole: Death of a Buffoon (2001)

The Greasy Pole column from the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Quintin McGarel Hogg, Lord Hailsham of St. Marylebone in the City of London, who was “a sweet, dear man” (Woodrow Wyatt); a “political genius” (Harold Macmillan); a “cantankerous old man” (Margaret Thatcher); “a gentleman” (himself) died last month. He was 94 years old and his life was richly productive of the kind of material beloved of fawning obituarists, who did him full justice. By the time we had absorbed that he was a kind, effervescent, clever, intellectual giant we could only wonder how the world would survive without him. Could it really go on, with its wars and disease and poverty, untouched by the death of one of capitalism’s more arrogant and volatile politicians? Should we not reproach ourselves for failing to value this paragon more appropriately when he was alive? Except that Hailsham, was not quite like his admirers make him out to be.

He came of a family of lawyers and politicians and ended his career in politics seemingly welded to the Woolsack, holding the job of Lord Chancellor longer than anyone since the days of Lord Halsbury at the end of the 19th century: “. . . he couldn’t go on being that for ever” said an exasperated Margaret Thatcher when she was contemplating removing him from that office. His father held the same job in the 1920s and was the MP for St. Marylebone. His son Douglas is an MP and has held some minor ministerial jobs – although not to wide acclaim or without controversy. A daughter is a High Court judge. The Hogg family looks likely to carry on into infinity, producing volatile eccentrics who are willing to play their part in running British capitalism in the interests of the class they are born into.

Eton and All Souls

Hailsham was educated at Eton; where else could a boy like him have gone to school? He was said to be the cleverest pupil there, too clever for some of the masters and he was fully aware of it, being known as “. . . a disagreeable boy, academically clever, but emotionally arrogant and extremely self-centred”. Of course he was elected to Pop, that self-appointed aristocracy above the aristocrats of the school. Members of Pop wore fancy waistcoats and walked about arm in arm, they were fawned on by many of the masters and feared among the other boys for their arbitrary powers of flogging and the enforced servitude known as fagging. Clearly, Eton had little to teach the young Hailsham (or Hogg, as he was then, before succeeding to the title) about asserting himself as a member of the ruling class. He was notorious for the gusto and frequency with which he beat other boys (his half-brother, Edward Marjoribanks, was “passionate” about it and had a reputation for sadism). It was a useful education in guiltless suppression of anyone classified as socially inferior.

After collecting a succession of prizes at Eton which proved how clever he was Hailsham went to one of the more traditional of Oxford colleges, got a first class degree and was accepted as a Fellow of All Souls. This is a kind of Pope of the university, although more sober and industrious. It was founded in 1437 with the main purpose of praying for the dead (part of its landholdings include Willesden Junction, a grimy part of North West London where the inhabitants need rather more than prayers to give them some hope). Hailsham began his time among the brains of All Souls as a “Screw”, whose job was to decant the after dinner port which was drunk in such quantities. Places like All Souls, with their exclusivity and their rituals, play a part in informing the working class that they must accept their inferior status in society, the running of which should be left to their betters. How reliable a concept this is can be judged by the kind of politician to have passed through those privileged doors – recent examples were Keith Joseph and John Redwood, who have gone down in history as eccentric blunderers. We shall see how Hailsham measured up to the popular expectations of him.

Suez

He burst onto the political scene as Conservative candidate in a bye-election at Oxford City in 1938, supporting the Chamberlain policy of “appeasement” of Nazi Germany against an all-party candidate. This took some living down later, when appeasement became a nasty word and Chamberlain was universally unpopular. Hailsham survived the war with a slight wound and continued as an MP with a reputation as a kind of verbal blunderbuss in his attacks on the Labour government. Some time after the Tories won power he was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, which pandered to his need to behave like an attention-seeking adolescent. But behind his posturing the fact was that, although he was one of the Service ministers he was kept in the dark about the secret negotiations between Britain, France and Israel which laid the plans to justify the Suez invasion. Hailsham denounced the Egyptian take-over of the Suez Canal as “wholly illegal” (as if such concepts are of the slightest consequence in capitalism’s wars) and never doubted that Britain and France were right to “intervene” (as he called it) in the war between Israel and Egypt. It was not the most penetrating analysis of that sordid affair.

Under Macmillan’s prime ministership Hailsham, who succeeded to the title when his father died in 1950, was given the kind of jobs which could have paved his way to the top. Appointed party chairman, he seized the opportunity to engage hysterically with the membership. In 1957 at the Tory conference in Brighton he made his first appearance in the early morning on the beach, wearing baggy trunks and plunging briskly into the sea for a swim. It was not coincidence that he was accompanied (although not into the water – there are limits to the call of duty) by a posse of newspaper hacks. At the end of that conference Hailsham grabbed the chairman’s bell and rang it in a frenzy, declaiming the poet’s words about who the bell tolls for – meaning the Labour Party. The party faithful loved it, stamping their feet and cheering but others – particularly his rivals in the party – were sourly uneasy at his vulgar publicity-seeking.

Flat Cap

This behaviour was rewarded in 1963 when Hailsham was given not one, but two, jobs involving responsibility for sport and for injecting some hope into the North East, where unemployment was at 4.5 percent compared to 2.4 percent nationally. The region’s most important industries – steel, shipbuilding, coal – were in decline. Hailsham was not a sportsman – he regarded the very idea of a minister of sport as akin to fascism – and he was not an economist. This did not disqualify him from holding the jobs but it did make the appointment look like a typical piece of Macmillan gimmickry. Hailsham did nothing to dispel this by touring the region wearing the kind of flat cap usually seen in working men’s clubs, or the dole queues. Later he tried to explain this away as a matter of chance; he had left his bowler hat in his car in London and was offered a choice of a pork pie hat or the cap. He chose the cap because it would be useful when he was out shooting. But the impression endured, that he was either making fun of the hard-pressed workers there or was clumsily trying to convince them that in spite of his Eton education and his large house in Sussex he was really one of them. “I do not pretend” he wrote later “that the plan (which he drew up after his visit) succeeded to the extent that my visit to the North East permanently solved the chronic difficulties of the region”. Well no, it didn’t but at least he got a nice new cap out of it, for his times on the grouse moors.

Later that year his big chance arrived, when Macmillan decided to resign and the Tory party descended into the kind of frenzied back-stabbing which should have had no place in what was called, in the days before Thatcher, the gentleman’s party. It all happened at their 1963 conference where, after Macmillan’s announcement, the atmosphere was, according to William Rees Mogg, “ugly”. Hailsham was Macmillan’s first preference as his successor but he had to get rid of his title and return to being plain Mr. Quintin McGarel Hogg. Without following the custom of first informing the rest of the cabinet he launched his bid for the top job in a carefully stage-managed announcement at the end of an otherwise dull meeting, which erupted into hysterical applause at the news. Randolph Churchill roamed the conference pinning large badges with the letter Q onto anyone unwise enough to stand still within arms reach. Hailsham got himself photographed spoon feeding his one year old child in the hotel foyer. All of this was not to Macmillan’s taste and so from the chaos of ugliness emerged the unlikely figure of Douglas-Home. Hailsham had blown it.

Relief

Which must have been a relief to the many people who had him correctly summed up, not as a genius but an arrogant buffoon, isolated by his conceit from the real world around him. Throughout his life he was buoyed up by the assumption that he and the rest of his class were superior, born to rule in the best of all possible worlds which is capitalism. The rest of us should only be grateful that there are people like Hailsham who are willing to exploit, degrade and ridicule us. To anyone concerned for society and its people Hailsham will not be missed.

Ivan

More reactions – from the front line (2001)

From the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

We reproduce below recent emails sent by a member of the World Socialist Movement living in Peshawar, near the Afghan border

Well, Pakistan as you might be aware is breathing heavily as the pressure is mounting on it by the US. The religious parties are furious over the government support for the Americans. They are bringing people out on the streets and protesting against the government and USA. Things could get worse if the attack on Afghanistan actually takes place. The place where I live is indeed very sensitive. There is a religious movement going on for the past six years in the frontier region here. They are armed, rebellious and can defy the government any time. They are pro-Taliban and are sending fresh recruits across the border into Afghanistan to fight the holy war. The imminent attack is sure to trigger off a far worse situation than can ever be imagined. People would rally around the religious parties as they have the street power and are bold enough to defy any ban by the government. Already life is too tough for the poor and destitute here and inside Afghanistan. Watching BBC and CNN it seems war is already here. They are whipping the drums of war just for nothing. The impact of this on the lives of the common people is worse. Thousands of refugees are crossing the border for safety and entering Pakistan for food and shelter. What is going to be their fate is anybody’s guess. We are living at only three hours drive distance from the border. There is a hectic activity on border between Pakistan and Afghanistan in the frontier region to which I belong. Emotions are very high and even illiterate people are keen to know what is happening on that side. As we all know, Afghanistan is in a virtual grip of drought and fighting for the many years. People are already suffering in refugee camps set up in Peshawar. More are coming. There is going to be a huge catastrophe in terms loss to humans lives of the innocent and hapless who have nothing to defend themselves.

Well, this is how things are moving, not in the right direction which it never was.

(3 October)

Blair arrived and said what he had been saying all along since the attacks. The generals on this side obviously looked tense and confused. Yesterday’s dictators are today’s democrats. Blair praised Musharaf’s so-called roadmap to democracy and in turn promised large and hefty economic largesse. Obviously the government is happy as it has been bailed out of the economic stranglehold that has dogged it for three years. The government economic managers (mismanagers) hired from the IMF and World Bank (the finance and foreign ministers were former employees of the WB) are now lining up in Washington to thank their boss and to beg for more. Back at home people the majority whom the general terms minority are infuriated over the government “unstinted support” in the fight for terrorism. The armed religious are waiting for the strikes to happen and then there would be nobody to stop them from carrying out their agenda. Presently they are a bit silent and cautious.

(6 October)

So the strikes have begun, and so have the demonstrations in every nook and corner of Pakistan. The area where I live is considered to be very sensitive as there are many religious groups operating here. The schools were closed today for an indefinite period. There were more than ten demonstrations today here by students and parties protesting and chanting slogans against US. Across the country protestors have damaged vehicles and put a cinema on fire in Quetta alone. They were tear-gassed. Later in the day shops too were closed down as mark of solidarity with the Afghan brethren. The situation is very volatile and open to violence any time. Now we are living in the midst of war albeit fought at a distance from us. The government will soon come under severe attack by the religious and non-religious alike, as the strikes have paralyzed business here. The president in his press conference here said today the strikes would be short and targeted while the Americans say it would be sustained and relentless. One thing seems clear the Americans will take it too far no matter what happens to Pakistan and Afghanistan in the process.

(8 October)

The drive to war (2001)

From the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

A member from Ireland who was in the USA on 11 September records the atmosphere there

I wasn’t alive during the summer of 1914 but I think I may have got a sense of what it felt like as a result of my recent holiday in the United States. We were staying with a relation in Los Angeles when we were awoken by him on the morning of Tuesday the 11 September to the continuous coverage on all the TV and radio channels of the terrorist bombing in New York or “Attack on America” as the news anchormen quickly deemed it. It was shocking to see the footage of those planes crashing into the World Trade Center and to imagine the gruesome deaths that so many on the planes and in the buildings must have suffered.

What was particularly upsetting was the sight of people forced to jump off the building to their deaths rather than tolerate the fireball. For me though as a socialist, what was most dispiriting, that in addition to the knowledge of so many innocent dead, was the whole way that the media and the establishment in general so quickly took control of how the incident should be interpreted. It was a powerful example of the socialist critique of what’s called liberal or parliamentary democracy; although we elect our leaders by periodical mass voting the context in which they operate and their agenda somehow seem to be set by others beyond our control.

Even before President Bush made his first announcement “today we saw an attack on freedom”, and only a number of hours after the suicide bombings, grief for the victims and hope for the survivors was already being pushed aside by talk of retribution and revenge. Almost instantaneously an endless series of retired State Department and Pentagon officials from the Reagan and Bush (Senior) era, together with innumerable academics, (styling themselves as “terrorism experts”) were paraded across the screens offering their two-pence worth on who was behind it and what form the military response should take. It was evident that a large number of these were aching for a war with Iraq/Iran/Libya etc. and any other ‘rogue state’ that could be tied into the conspiracy.

The papers were just as bad and the coverage even in supposedly liberal papers such as the New York and Los Angeles Times was equally strident. They carried stories on the role that the “Special Forces” would undertake which read like the worst excesses of tabloid jingoism that we’ve come to expect from the Murdoch Sun. It wasn’t just the media who were uncritical in their judgements. The Friday after the bombings had been designated as an official “Day of Mourning” for the country. The President and a number of ex-Presidents plus the leaders of Congress all gathered in the National Cathedral in Washington for “prayer”. Representatives of the Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim faiths (in that order!) duly said their piece to be followed immediately by the President on the podium. Bush’s warlike comments on the actions that the US would undertake were clearly at variance with the supposedly religious ethos of the service though unsurprisingly provoked no adverse comments from the clerics present. Indeed the whole affair ended with a stirring rendition of Battle Hymn of the Republic by a Marine choir.

The effect of this on public opinion was quickly apparent. The ‘Stars and Stripes’ flew everywhere. Reputable billboards in Shopping Malls carried the slogan “God Bless America” while their more uncouth cousins (located close to offices of the National Rifle Association or similar organisations) promised all sorts of unprintable vengeance to Osama bin Laden. On the radio talk shows people wanted the borders closed, immigration halted, “racial profiling of people of Middle Eastern appearance” and a multitude of other measures. For some even this wasn’t enough; “it was time this country got serious” and the mass expulsion or detention of Arab-Americans was the only solution. This provoked a response and “helpful” listeners rang in and urged Arab-Americans to place the US flag prominently on their houses to demonstrate to their neighbours where their true loyalties lay.

Of course Wall Street wasn’t going to take the attack lying down; radio and newspaper advertisements, sponsored by the major banks and investment houses, soon appeared urging Americans to buy shares as it was their patriotic duty to push the Dow Jones index up. In a vague way it was suggested that the World Trade Center was singled out because as a symbol of capitalism it captured America’s true spirit. Hollywood too (where correctly sensing the public mood and identifying with it is a key requirement for success) went to war and a “galaxy” of A-list celebrities hosted a “Tribute to Heroes” television special. Raising money for the victims of the atrocity is an entirely praiseworthy event of course; the irony that some of the big names involved such as Sylvester Stallone had made films in the 1980s extolling the Mujaheddin as freedom fighters will register with some of us.

Very importantly though it must be pointed out though that not all American workers were taken in by this frenzy; within days after the event I passed small groups of anti-war protestors in different towns who were pointing out the fallacy of equating justice with revenge. It took some courage to do so in that heated environment. Their small stand highlighted the complete absence in the mainstream media of any attempt to ask the question of why this attack took place and what the suicide bombers intended to achieve by their act. The role of the US in the Middle East in terms of its support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinian Authority and its propping up of autocratic, reactionary states in the Gulf was not referred to. While the Taliban regime in Kabul owe their origin and rise to power to a complex series of events in Afghanistan’s recent history, the not-so-covert actions of the CIA in supplying the Afghan resistance to Soviet occupation with a plentiful supply of weaponry cannot be glossed over. George Bush now has a 90 percent popularity rating in the polls and may find himself in the trap that unless forthcoming US deeds match his rhetoric then his credibility and re-election hopes will be damaged. It may be that many more people across South Asia will join the 5,000-plus fatalities in New York and Washington as victims of 11 September.

Kevin Cronin

Indictment of capitalism (2001)

From the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following letter from a member was published in The Belfast Telegraph on 28 September

George Bush has made it clear that if we do not support his plans to use absolute state terrorism to defeat the more “laissez faire” variety of terrorism, we will be marked down as an enemy. This is, we are assured, in the interests of the Bush definition of freedom.

Meanwhile, America’s astronomical “defence” budget must be going through the roof. Enormous bribes to old enemies and new friends are the order of the day and what are obviously staggering amounts of dollars are being laid out in the massive movement of men and equipment to terrify the enemy and, presumably—unless the Pentagon is absurdly wanton with its military resources—take the lives of a great many human beings. As in all wars, most of the latter will be completely innocent people, or, to use that brutal term taken from the lexicon of the US military establishment, mere “collateral damage”.

While the killing hasn’t yet started, the starving people of Afghanistan whose lives have been blighted by the brutality of the Russian imperialists and cynical usage by the agents of the West, are already being terrified. The UN, obviously bound hand and foot by the purchasing power of the West, has embargoed food aid to these starving people, caught between the religious madmen of the Taliban and the threat of the allegedly sane leaders of what they insist are the Western democracies.

Conversely, while the miserably poor of Afghanistan are being starved and terrified, the US President and the mayor of New York are appealing to Americans—obviously excluding the millions of poor in that country—to go out and spend to help American capitalism.

Could there be a more profound indictment of the system of international capitalism?

Richard Montague

Bilderberg group (2001)

From the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has been pointed out to us that a passage on page 4 of the September Socialist Standard about the G8 leaders could have been misunderstood as saying that the "semi-mythological Bilderberg group" were the real rulers of the world. The Bilderberg group is a gathering of politicians and their paymasters in the ruling class and is not beholden to one or another government or state. Beyond the fact that its members and attendees are typically representative of ruling class opinion and powerful in their own right, their collective power as members of Bilderberg is certainly open to conjecture, though it won't extend to controlling governments. 

Editors.

University Challenge 2001 (2001)

Party News from the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever complained about the Socialist Party never doing enough to propagate the case for socialism? Ever wanted to do some useful, productive work to help spread the ideas of world socialism?

Course you have. And now you have your chance. Twenty minutes of effort on your part is all that is needed to help with the Socialist Party's "University Challenge" 2001 campaign. 

The campaign is an open invitation to student political groups/societies to hear the world socialist case at one of their meetings. This campaign has been successfully run previously and resulted in a number of very positive discussion meetings, putting the distinctive case for a world of free access in front of interested minds. So this year we want to really try and get as many meetings as possible.

Don't be put off if you don't want to be a speaker yourself — a local speaker can be found. 

All we need at the moment is for you to contact your local college or university (via their general telephone enquiries) and get the address for the student association or main society's body.

The Campaigns Department has produced a range of standard letters to be sent out to different types of interested student groups (Third World First, Labour Students, Greens etc). These can be Word 6.0 format from gardner_brian@hotmail.com. You can amend the letter for it to be returned to yourself, or to Head Office, whichever suits you.

50 Years Ago: When the Workers Ran the Factories (2001)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently the Trade Unions International of Metal and Engineering Workers (which is part of the World Federation of Trade Unions) issued a pamphlet describing how the Italian steel workers refused to allow the owners to close steel factories during 1949 and 1950, and instead continued at their work without wages and without professional management, electing temporary managers from their own ranks. While the workers ran the factories themselves, they built ships, aeroplanes, furnaces; they improved efficiently; and by introducing new processes, they economised considerably on production costs–for example, at the Ilva-Bolzaneto works at Genoa, they reduced the price of a kilogram of metal from 44 to 28 lire, and in order to economise on oil, they invented a process which saved 500 kilograms of oil in every eight hours of work.

It Can be Done

This episode in Italy has a number of useful lessons for all socialists. First, that workers can run the factories by themselves; and that they can not only maintain but improve efficiency. Second, that this kind of movement, which consists of industrial action alone cannot permanently put the workers in control of the factories. As the pamphlet itself says, “there was no point in cherishing the illusion of stable and lasting working-class management in a capitalist regime.” Like all such experiments, this one would have ended immediately had the Government decided to employ resolutely the coercive forces at its disposal. Italy thus reinforces the lesson of Russia after 1917, where the system of worker-elected managements, which operated for a short time after the Revolution, was soon abolished by the Bolsheviks in favour of State-appointed managements when the former system was seen to be incompatible with State-capitalism.

[From “Passing Comment”, Socialist Standard, November 1951]