Class War (1991)

From the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

What class you are in is defined by the position in which you stand with regard to the means of production. In capitalist society there are two basic classes: those who own and control the means of production and those who own no productive resources apart from their ability to work.

The working class in capitalist society is made up of all those who are obliged through economic necessity to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage or salary. If this is your position then you are a member of the working class. The job you do and the status it might have, the pay you receive and how you chose to spent it, are irrelevant as long as you are dependent on working for a wage or salary in order to live.

In Britain over 90 percent of the population are members of the working class. Of the rest only about 2-3 per cent are members of the exploiting, capitalist class who enjoy a privileged non-work income derived from the surplus value produced by the working class over and above what they are paid as wages and salaries.  The others are the self-employed—small shopkeepers, independent workers, professional people—whose income is derived from selling some service or other directly to the consumer rather than from selling their labour power to an employer. And many of these can be assimilated, in terms of income, to the ordinary worker.

What this means is that essentially we are living in a two-class society of capitalists and workers. But what about the "middle class”? The existence of such a middle class is one of the greatest myths of the twentieth century. In the last century, the term was used by the up-and-coming industrial section of the capitalist class in Britain to describe themselves; they were the class between the landed aristocracy (who at that time dominated political power) and the working class. Eventually, however, the middle class of industrial capitalists replaced the landed aristocracy as the ruling class and the two classes merged into the capitalist class we know today. In other words, the 19th century middle class became part of the upper class and disappeared as a “middle” class.

The term, however, lived on and came to be applied to civil servants, teachers and other such white-collar workers. But there was no justification for this, as such people were clearly workers just as much obliged by economic necessity to sell their ability to work as were factory workers, miners, engine drivers and dockers. The only difference was the type of job they were employed to do—and a certain amount of snobbery attached to it. .

It is not just the Daily Mail persists in believing that there is a middle class. So does the SWP which has come forward with a theory of the “new middle class”. This “class” is said to be composed of higher-grade white collar workers and to make up between 10 and 20 percent of the workforce (The Changing Working Class by SWP leaders Alex Callinicos and Chris Harman, p. 37). The reason given for excluding these people from the working class is that they exercise some degree of control over the use of the means of production and/or authority over other workers; in short, because they perform some managerial role.

To adopt this view is to abandon the relationship-to-the-means-of-production theory of class for one based on occupation. Socialists have always maintained that, as far as the actual production of wealth is concerned, the capitalist class are redundant. They play no part in production, which is run from top to bottom by hired workers of one sort or another. This means that all jobs, including those concerned with managing production and/or disciplining other members of the working class, are performed by members of the working class. To exclude from the working class workers with no productive resources of their own who are paid, among other things, to exercise authority of behalf of the employing class over other workers is to give more importance to the job done (occupation) than to the economic necessity  of having to sell labour power for a wage or salary which for Marxists is the defining feature of the working class.

Of course not everybody who receives an income in the form of a salary is necessarily a member of the working class. Some capitalists chose to manage their own businesses and pay themselves a “salary” for doing this. Although a part of this might correspond to the price of labour power (the part corresponding to what the capitalist would have to pay to hire a professional manager to do the same job), usually most of it is only a disguised way of distributing some of the surplus value at the expense of the other shareholders. What makes a salary-earner a member of the working class is not the mere receipt of a salary but being economically dependent on it for a living.

Having to work for an employer was not only how Marx defined the working class. It is also, and more importantly, the view of many workers who have never heard of Marx. When asked, as in a number of recent radio broadcasts, a surprising –and pleasing –number have replied that anyone who has to work for a living is a worker. Which makes them more sensible than both the Daily Mail and the SWP.

Adam Buick

The reason why . . . (1991)

From the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The reason why we will shortly have to go to war with Iraq is not to free Kuwait, though that is to be desired, or to defend Saudi Arabia, though that is important It is because President Saddam is a menace to vital Western interests in the Gulf, above all the free flow of oil at market prices, which is essential to the West's prosperity".

— Sunday Times, 12 August 1990.

What 'peace dividend'? (1991)

From the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many workers believe—or, until the Gulf crisis, believed—that with the end of the Cold War peace has broken out and that as a consequence the demand for war weapons has gone into a permanent decline, so that the money spent on them can be directed to improving living standards and the industries producing them converted to peaceful purposes.

Talk of this so-called “peace dividend" began following Gorbachov’s speech at the United Nations at the end of 1988, since when there has allegedly been “no enemy in Europe". Tom King, the Defence Secretary said as much in a statement to Parliament on 18 June last year justifying reductions in defence spending. Then in July, as part of the defence review, he announced the cancellation of an order for 33 Tornado aircraft for the RAF. British Aerospace responded by announcing a cut of 800 in their manning on Tornado assembly. This was followed up by the announcement in November of a "restructuring” involving a cut of about 20 per cent in staff and the closure of two large sites, in Kingston and Preston. Again the recent changes in eastern Europe were cited as a factor. The future of the European Fighter Aircraft (EFA), already hazy, has become more doubtful still following German reunification and the resulting reassessment of German military requirements.

Arms still in demand

This is not a new situation. The demand for arms fell temporarily after the Boer War and after both World Wars. In 1902 and 1918 workers lost their jobs as a result. There were also campaigns for diversification and the manufacture of alternative products at armament plants such as Woolwich Arsenal, which had little success despite some support from local councils and chambers of commerce. In 1945, while there was again a temporary slump in arms production, capitalism went into a boom phase which minimised the disruption. In none of these cases, however, had peace broken out. Indeed in 1945, following the defeat of the Axis powers, two new aggressive power blocs formed immediately and the demand for military equipment duly recovered.

This conflict—the Cold War—has now come to an end, at least temporarily. The main reason for this has been the need for Russia to take time out to give urgent attention to its ailing economy. But the basic cause of war, the struggle of competing capitalist rivals for raw materials, trade routes, markets and strategic areas, remains untouched. This may cause the Cold War blocs to re-form at some future date. Or future superpower conflicts may increasingly take the form of local wars on the Korean and Vietnam lines, as this in theory reduces the chances of a nuclear holocaust which would be an overkill even from the capitalist viewpoint. The danger of such a holocaust, however, will remain as long as capitalism does. None of these scenarios, needless to say, in any way remotely resembles peace.

The truth of this is underlined by the current Gulf crisis and the Iran-Iraq war which preceded it. This conflict is so brazenly a struggle for control of the world’s oil supplies as to be reminiscent of the period prior to World War 1, before so-called "communism” and fascism arose to be used to mask the true cause of capitalism’s wars. Indeed so clearly does this current conflict illustrate the truth that further comment would appear superfluous.

Patriotic unions

The current "crisis" in the arms industry (notice how any suggestion of peace leads to talk of a crisis!) will not prove lasting. That does not mean that the working class, through the trade unions, should not do all they can to minimise the effect of the present downturn. Just as pressure to defend real wage levels can succeed, because the cost to the capitalist of a strike may he greater than that of conceding, so for a similar reason redundancies may be reduced, by determined militant action, below the original figure demanded by the employers. Socialists fully support and participate in such efforts.

However, what we have been seeing from the trade unions goes far beyond this and is not acceptable from the socialist viewpoint. Basically it amounts to an attempt to reform capitalism in order, so they hope, to keep their members in employment. MP's are lobbied, the capitalist government is approached, searches are made for other possible sources of investment and if found support for them is asked for. The unions have even been demanding that the government revoke its cancellation of the Tornado order!

That is not to say that such attempts are doomed to failure. By and large, however, they come from an attitude in which fantastic and utterly useless remedies are being put forward, something that is not confined to armaments workers of course. Sometimes sections of the capitalist class lend some support if they see a prospect of profit, but it will of course be support on capitalist conditions, which cannot be of any real benefit to the working class.

We can see in such thinking a reflection of the attitude of the Labour Party to which the unions are unfortunately still wedded. The Labour Party is mainly composed of workers who believe that Labour politicians can run capitalism better than the capitalists. The example of Solidarity in Poland, originally a trade union, but which sprouted a political wing that now forms a government which is enforcing draconian austerity measures ought to serve as a warning to the super-reformist (and often super-patriotic) British trade unionists who are so numerous in the aircraft industry.

There can be no compromise with capitalism, and no matter how desperate the short-term situation may be, workers should not entertain such ideas. What may look on the surface to be just a compromise, will always prove in the end to have been surrender.

E. C. Edge

". . . Protect oil supplies by force."

From the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

KUWAIT "ONLY AREA WHERE WE MIGHT WISH TO INTERVENE TO PROTECT OIL SUPPLIES BY FORCE"

Protection of Kuwaiti oil was the United Kingdom's “irreducible interest” in the Gulf—to be defended by force of arms if necessary—according to confidential Whitehall policy papers released after 30-year closure yesterday.

Dick Beaumont, head of the Foreign Office Arabian Department, had written to Sir George Middleton, political resident in the Persian Gulf, on 29 January 1960, saying: “The irreducible interest of the United Kingdom in Kuwait is that ‘Kuwait shall remain an independent state having an oil policy conducted by a government independent of other Middle East producers’. A corollary of this is that Kuwaiti independence will not be preserved unless any government, which might wish to subvert or overthrow it. is convinced of Her Majesty’s Government’s willingness and ability to defend Kuwait by force of arms if necessary".

The previous November, senior defence and foreign policy planners had agreed that: “The only area where we might wish to intervene to protect (oil) supplies by force was Kuwait’’.

—Independent. 2 January 1990.

“Great Men” (1991)

From the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

The great ones of the earth

Approve, with smiles and bland salutes, the rage

And monstrous tyranny they have brought to birth.

The great ones of the earth

Are much concerned about the wars they wage,

And quite aware of what those wars are worth.

You Marshals, gilt and red,

You Ministers and Princes, and Great Men,

Why can’t you keep your mouthings for the dead?

Go round the simple Cemeteries; and then

Talk of our noble sacrifice and losses

To the wooden crosses.

— Siegfried Sassoon, The War Poems. 

Caught In The Act: Time for a change (1991)

The Caught In The Act Column from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Time for a change

Who is Margaret Thatcher? It is necessary to ask the question because it seems she has disappeared. Only a few months ago she was the indestructible Iron Lady, terrifying her foes, doing all her minister's jobs herself and ruthlessly squashing out any of them who fell from her favour. But now she is hardly mentioned.

For example the Gulf Crisis simmered and burst into war without any stimulus from her; she might have been expected at least to make a speech about the wishes of the Kuwait people being paramount (provided, of course, the dictatorship there allowed the people's wishes to be known). British capitalism is sliding into another recession but she is not expected to launch into one of her searing damnations of the Moaning Minnies who refuse to acknowledge that millions unemployed and an unprecedented bankruptcy rate are actually signs of a booming economy.

When one of Thatcher's Ministers left — or was ejected from — her government it was usual for the Downing Street media manipulators to quickly spread the word that the ex-minister was not much loss or even that the government was better off without them. The more prominent the ex-minister and therefore the more threatening their absence — the more violent was the campaign to undermine their reputations.

So it was that the likes of Howe and Lawson were on the receiving end of particularly malicious stories. Of course we couldn't expect that Thatcher would now be treated like that — John Major is supposed to be a much nicer, much less obsessive personality. In fact a rather gentler and more subtle technique has been used. Thatcher's standing now was expressed by a Tory grassroots member in the Ribble constituency: "I'm grateful for all she did for the country", said this patient, malleable blockhead, "But it was time for a change".

But whatever the style employed the fact is that Thatcher is the victim of an exceptionally efficient demolition job. The Tories have a long history of these things, often plotted in some bastion of chivalry such as the Carlton Club or the discreet offices of City merchants.

When the knife was wielded it was done with due regard for the Tory reputation as the Gentleman's Party. For they are the most single-minded bunch of political operators, who thoroughly understand that politics is about getting power to keep capitalism running in their way, at whatever cost. In the business of fighting elections and disposing of leaders who damage their chances of winning they leave their opponents standing. Ask Douglas-Home. Or Ted Heath. Or Margaret Thatcher.

Labour in change

It is ironical that Thatcher may eventually be seen to have left more of a mark on the Labour Party than on their own side. As the Tories have shown that they could win enough votes from politically deranged workers to keep them in power for a long time, the Labour Party decided that their best hope of winning a general election lay in imitating the Tories as closely as possible. The new Labour policies have provoked anger and confusion among those grassroots members who joined the party under the mistaken impression that it took a principled stand for a basically different society.

Their anger is based on the recent policy statement Meet The Challenge, Make The Change, which openly accepted market forces and private industry and was aimed solely at winning the next election. But how much of a change is this from the Labour Party of the past?

In October 1964 the Labour President of the Board, Douglas Jay, assured a dinner of the International Chamber of Trade that "the new government starts with no prejudice or bias whatever against private business and industry". In May 1965 George Brown, who was then head of the Department of Economic Affairs, told a meeting of company directors and managers that "the profit motive has an ' important role to play as an incentive and test of efficiency". In April 1966 Harold Lever, who later became a Treasury minister, wrote "Labour and business are already moving towards a mutual understanding".

And what about Labour's leader then, Harold Wilson. How does he compare to Neil Kinnock? In September 1964 — just before Wilson won the election — Anthony Howard wrote that ". . . he has already transformed the Labour Party from being primarily an ideological movement into being an election-minded organisation". Lest you misunderstand — Howard was one of Wilson's admirers.

Disappointed Leader

It could be that Kinnock has misled himself enough to be disappointed, were he to learn that he has not really changed anything about the Labour Party. It is some years now since he was a rebellious, CND-marching, fiery left winger; he dropped all that to concentrate on the serious business of exploiting working class readiness to disregard their interests and to vote parties like Labour into power.

To do this Kinnock must associate himself with, and defend, election programmes the attraction of which lies in their unrealistic claims to be able to solve capitalism’s problems and to reconcile essentially conflicting class interests.

In this Kinnock must upset his old friends, outraged by what they see as his change of course. In fact the real problem lies with them for Kinnock is following the inexorable route of a party which stands for a reformed capitalism and which must therefore compete for power over the system, cadging for votes with policies and promises which are as false and as cynical as they need be. This is as ruthless a business as the Tories getting rid of Thatcher; that is the nature of capitalist politics.

So it is not only incorrect to give Thatcher the blame — or the credit, depending on how you look at it — for Labour changing its policies and its style. It is also unfair: the Labour Party have always been as they are now only at times they are less effective in their campaign for capitalism. In any case, to be charitable to Thatcher: in the depths of anonymity of wherever she is, hasn't she got enough to answer for?

Ivan

Between the Lines: The Day War Broke Out (1991)

The Between the Lines column from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Day War Broke Out

This was the most planned for war in history. The cameras were waiting in the desert, eager for the first fireworks display. CNN reporters locked themselves in their hotel room and described the bombing of Baghdad as it started, even poking their microphone out the window so that the viewers could hear the big bangs. This was televised warfare — murder by media.

When the bombing started (16 January) the TV reporters affected an air of surprise, as if the whole shooting match was out of the blue. Had they not spent five months previous to this telling the workers that such mass slaughter was inevitable and then that it would begin on the first night after 15 January?

The second night of the war saw the first Iraqi attack on Israel. CNN reported that it was a chemical missile attack. This misinformation was reported for over three hours. The CNN reporter in Jerusalem, asked to describe the attack, recalled hearing a huge explosion close to his office. It later turned out that there was no missile attack on Jerusalem.

The ITN reporter, trapped in his sealed room in Tel Aviv and reporting that there had been a chemical missile attack, was asked what Israeli TV was saying. He replied that he could not tell us because the TV messages were in Hebrew — the language of Israel. What qualifications do you need to be an ITV reporter? An Israeli journalist on the BBC was asked to tell the viewers how scared he felt. He replied that he was in his flat with his family whom he rarely managed to be with and that they were watching Monty Python on TV. Were they the only ones, we asked ourselves.

Agreement Time

We all know that there is little difference between capitalist politicians. In time of war the little turns into nothing.

On Question Time (BBC1, 10.10pm, 17 January) the two panels of politicians did nothing but tell each other how much they were on the same side. Hattersley, Labour’s deputy leader, praised Major for his war leadership; Clarke, the Tory Minister, said how pleasing it was to see all parties united in Britain's hour of need; Kaufman, Labour's Foreign Affairs man, was so eager to support the war that he sounded more like Thatcher than Major does; Ashdown, the Liberal leader, let it ^be known that he was the only party leader to have served in Kuwait as a'' marine. One woman in the audience heckled, saying that they were all boring politicians saying the same thing. The audience had a jolly good laugh — all good clean English fun.

Three days later the BBC issued an edict to all disc jockeys: no pro-peace records could be played while the war is on. Lennon’s Give Peace A Chance is now banned in British broadcasting. Playful heckling of capitalist politicians who have the whole of Question Time in which to spew out their vicious pro-war filth is permissible, but lyrics which might just change workers’ minds - No fear.

The Con that kills

Remember those cosy TV ads about joining the army and seeing the world? Didn’t they make you want to rush to the recruiting office and learn to be a chef? Those T.A. recruitment ads used to tell wage slaves how they could give up a few weekends and have fun playing "Bang, bang, you're dead" games.

There was even one newspaper ad which showed the Socialist Party platform in Hyde Park. London, and suggested that if you join the army you would be becoming a sort of special protector of free speech. What they did not tell you was about the chemical weapons, the sweltering desert heat, the body bags, the pointless murdering and being attacked all in the name of oil profits.

A war for their class

This war is being fought so that capitalists can stay rich. Every wage slave in uniform who dies, including the poor conscripts in the Iraqi killing force, will die in vain. It is a war, as all wars, about capitalist power - on this occasion, the power to own and control oil production.

Alas. Channel Four's Class By Class (Fridays. 8pm) did not have the first clue what class is about. The presenter, Ray Gosling, perpetuated the stale old fallacy that class is a matter of lifestyle.

A month earlier BBC's Forty Minutes was about prostitution in the King's Cross area of London. It was an unpretentious documentary which made no claim to offer any grand theory of class. A number of prostitute women were interviewed who made it abundantly clear that their reason for doing their dirty work was that they needed money — they were poor.

Also interviewed on the programme was a socialist, David Hines, who has written an excellent play about prostitution (it is called Bondage and is highly recommended). He explained that hookers were no different from taxi drivers — both had to sell themselves on the market to the first bidder. This is true of all workers: wage slavery is prostitution.

Having said that, there is prostitution and prostitution, and there is something more dignified about selling quick sexual thrills or taxi rides than spreading war propaganda.

                                                                                                                             Steve Coleman