SPGB May Events (2026)

Party News from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our general discussion meetings are held on Zoom. To connect to a meeting, enter https://zoom.us/wc/join/7421974305 in your browser. Then follow instructions on screen and wait to be admitted to the meeting.

Blogger's Note:

Harald Sandø's book, Waking Up, was reviewed in the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard.

SPGB Meetings (1994)

Party News from the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist election activity (2025)

Party News from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party stood four candidates in the local elections at the beginning of May. Below are their election addresses

Kent County Council Election Folkestone

Human needs or profit first?

We live in an economic system, capitalism, that ensures nothing gets built or created unless someone, somewhere expects to make a handsome profit. Human needs come very much second.

That is why Folkestone’s stunning harbour is going to be submerged in ugly blocks of concrete and glass. They are built, not for the needs of local people, but to make a profit for the developers and the owners of the land. No surprise there. That is how capitalism works.

All around us everything crumbles, from schools to libraries and social services, even as the vast wealth of a tiny minority continues to increase. And this will go on so long as we keep voting for political parties which think this absurd and cruel system can be reformed.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has for the last 120 years advocated a quite different society built on the common, democratic ownership of the planet and its resources. A society in which every one of us gets to participate in decisions like the building of new houses, the planting of crops, how we get our energy. A truly human society where sustainable decisions are made based on human needs and the need to maintain a healthy planet.

At current levels of science and technology the earth can easily provide an abundance of resources for everyone to live a happy and fulfilled life. Then there will be no need to artificially ration the necessities of life with money. We will contribute our physical and mental labour freely and take freely from the common store.

That will need a world revolution. And every revolution starts somewhere. Why not Folkestone?

If you agree VOTE SOCIALIST.

Gloucestershire County Council elections Stroud

Capitalism or Socialism?

This might be the last Gloucestershire County Council Election. The government seems intent on reorganising the County and District Councils. This will result in fewer representatives and a concentration of strategic power in the hands of a regional Mayor.

This is democracy in the capitalist system: a choice between candidates for office with only marginally different sets of policies. Once elected those in office can tinker with the system but not the rules of capitalism: those without wealth are beholden to those who do, profit comes first not human needs, and can’t pay – can’t have.

But what can we do? Unlike the architects of local government devolution, socialists believe not that there is too much democracy, but that there isn’t enough. The rules of capitalism have not been in place for all of human history and we don’t need them in future. Getting rid of the rules of capitalism and creating a real democratic future can’t be brought about from above. It has to come from a majority of people.

You can show support for real democracy, socialism, by voting for the Socialist Party of Great Britain on May 1st.

Socialism is a classless, stateless, wageless, moneyless society or, a democracy in which free and socially equal men and women co-operate to produce the things they need to live and enjoy life, to which they have free access: ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’.

The Socialist Party is like no other political party in Britain. It is made up of people who have joined together because we want to get rid of the profit system and establish real socialism.

Our aim is to encourage others to become socialist and act for themselves, organising democratically and without leaders, to bring about the kind of society that we advocate.

We are solely concerned with building a movement of socialists for socialism. We are not a reformist party with a programme of policies to patch up capitalism.

If elected, Piers Hobson will work for socialism at every opportunity, vote on issues according to the democratic decisions of his branch of the Socialist Party and always be for socialism and nothing else.

Lambeth Council by-election London

Real change, not damage limitation

Fellow workers,

They call it democracy but it’s nothing of the sort.

Labour didn’t even want this by-election. They’d rather stitch it up behind closed doors than face a real challenge. This isn’t about serving the people, it’s about protecting their grip on power. Councillors are parachuted in, selections are stage-managed, and decisions are made long before you ever see a ballot paper.

Meanwhile, rents rise, wages stagnate, benefits are cut, food banks multiply and estates are handed over to developers. Labour’s record in Lambeth is clear enough.

Now they ask for your vote again. So do the Greens, Lib Dems and others who promise change but only offer better management of a system built on exploitation. They won’t end your problems. They won’t challenge the class system. They won’t stop capitalism — they serve it.

No confidence in their system. No votes for our bosses’ parties.

Until we end capitalism, nothing changes.

That’s why the Socialist Party is standing in this election. Not for tweaks or token reforms, but for real change. Common ownership, democratic control, production for need not profit.

If you want that, you can show it by voting for the SOCIALIST CANDIDATE.

SPGB March Events (2025)

Party News from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our general discussion meetings are held on Zoom. To connect to a meeting, enter https://zoom.us/wc/join/7421974305 in your browser. Then follow instructions on screen and wait to be admitted to the meeting.

SPGB January Events (2025)

Party News from the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our general discussion meetings are held on Zoom. To connect to a meeting, enter https://zoom.us/wc/join/7421974305 in your browser. Then follow instructions on screen and wait to be admitted to the meeting.

Food as a weapon (1992)

From the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the ending of the Cold War. American military power is no longer sufficient to hold its real economic rivals— Europe and Japan—in check, and the three power blocs are squaring up for the battle for world economic domination in the 21st century.

The current battlefield is a scries of talks on world trade, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which have now been stalled for nearly two years, with the European and US governments hurling abuse at each other over the emotive issue of farm subsidies.

So what is GATT, and why does an apparently minor dispute over handouts to farmers threaten to bring the world trading system to the point of all-out economic war?

The GATT process is aimed at promoting “free trade" amongst the competing states of the world, tearing down barriers to imports and allowing consumers to choose the most efficient supplier of anything from banking services to hairdryers.

In reality, of course, there is never any such thing as free trade among equal players— no ‘‘level playing field". US-based multinational corporations. with the economic battering ram of vast scales of production behind them, and the military and political power of the US state in the not too distant background, are clearly going to make easy meat of the struggling young industries throughout the “Third World”, currently protected by their own governments’ trade barriers.

Trade wars

Now all this is fine with European governments as well. They too have multinationals based on their soil, only too eager to participate in the turkey shoot. In the coming months you will doubtless hear ministers extolling the virtues of Free Trade for the health of the world economy.

But when we come to agriculture. there is a slight fly in the milk churn. European farms tend to be small and “inefficient" (unprofitable), whereas their US competitors tend to be large and “efficient"—fully industrialised and reaping the advantages of economics of scale.

This, of course, would give them a significant advantage in a genuinely free market, almost certainly devastating the European farm industry, and scoring round one of the battle for 21st century economic domination to America.

And American farmers have never been more desperate for markets for grain, which regularly gluts the American market. (Of course, this does not mean that there are no hungry people in America, simply that they can’t afford to buy what lies rotting in warehouses).

In fact this is another bizarre consequence of the ending of the Cold War. since in those good old days the Soviet empire bought all Americas surplus grain and paid on the nose with hard currency.

Europe’s governments, then, urged on by the powerful farming lobby, are determined not to give up their agricultural subsidies, while the US is desperate to prise the European market open.

A few months ago. a high- level EC delegation led by Portuguese Prime Minister Cavaco Silva and Commission head Jacques Delors, visited President Hush in Washington for crisis talks, with Cavaco Silva making it quite clear how deep the rift had become. “Sometimes there is a discrepancy between the apparent political goodwill and the technical proposals put on the table by the US”, he told the European (9 April).

And that’s just about as close as a diplomat comes to calling the other side a dirty cheating liar.

Both sides only entrenched their positions at the G7 economic summit in Munich last month, with John Major suffering a major rebuff to his attempts to break the deadlock, and vowing to continue to “bully, badger and cajole" fellow leaders into living up to the undertakings to conclude a deal by the end of the year.

In fact, although the European side has offered a 30 percent reduction in protection and support for agriculture, this would be on the basis of levels operating in 1986—a real cut of little more than 15 percent (The Grocer, 23 November 1991).

In the EC’s last review of support prices in June 1991. ministers cut a modest 1.5 percent from levels of support for oilseed, and at the EC Lisbon summit price support for cereals was cut 29 per cent. "Still not enough" said Hush.

Agri-business

The Daily Telegraph issued a dire warning following the failure of the Munich summit that the world is edging closer to a menacing era of protectionism. “There is a real danger that the Uruguay round of GATT could breakdown altogether, taking us back to the unstable trade bloc structures of the 1930s” (9 July).

The point is that food production is governed by the laws of competitive production for profit. Manufactures of food only survive by selling at a reduced price against their competitors, and with a glut of unsaleable food on the world market, pressure to subsidise unprofitable, mainly small-scale European producers against their industrialised US rivals is immense.

So the EC’s subsidies pile up yet more unsellable food, and US farming corporations are forced to watch their own surplus production rot in warehouses because it can’t be sold anywhere. The GATT negotiations are therefore a trial of political and economic strength between US and European agri-business, with their respective governments fighting their corners round the negotiating table.

What insanity! Capitalism— the competitive production of goods for sale at a profit—yet again proves itself to be completely unable to cope with a world in which we could provide an abundance of food for each citizen of this planet. It is the only system that actually manages to find adequate food production a major crisis. Surely its time to establish a system where this is an opportunity. through free access to all food production, to abolish hunger once and for all.

Andy Thomas

Party News: Election results (2024)

Party News from the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party stood candidates in last month’s general election and also in the previous month’s elections to the Greater London Assembly. Here are the detailed results.

General Election

Clapham and Brixton Hill: Ribeiro-Addy (Lab) 24,166; Curtis (LD) 6,161; Yuen (Green) 5,768; Saroy (Con) 4,360; Matlock (Reform) 1,758; Key (Ind) 406; Martin (Soc) 122.

Folkestone and Hythe: Vaughan (Lab) 15,020; Collins (Con) 11,291; Wright (Reform) 10,685; Brett (Green) 3,954; Ngan (LD) 1,736; Khanom (TUSC) 249; Allen (Fairer Voting) 240; Thomas (Soc) 71. 

Greater London Assembly

Barnet and Camden: Clarke (Lab) 70,749; Redmond (Con) 51,606; Tokley (Green) 18,405; Emery (LD) 12,335; Forhad (Reform) 7,703; Martin (Soc) 1,369.

Lambeth and Southwark: Ahmad (Lab) 84,768; Sheppard (Green) 35,144; French (LD) 22,030; Wallace (Con) 22,121; Sharp (Reform) 8,942; Buick (Soc) 2,082.

Our candidates in the July 2024 election (2024)

Party News from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

FOLKESTONE AND HYTHE

Want real change? Vote for a new world

For the last 120 years the Socialist Party of Great Britain has been fighting for a new world. A world owned and democratically controlled by all the people on this planet instead of a tiny minority interested only in raking in profits at the expense of human happiness and the health of our fragile planet.

This new world will be a world without borders, with free access to the abundant wealth we will create by working together, A world where work is freely contributed according to our abilities and interests. Where communities self-organise without the need for leaders.

A world in which we will live in harmony with the planet, taking just what we need to live a good life. We will grow food locally and build houses and public buildings using the best materials and in sympathy with the natural environment. We will choose the most sustainable – not the most profitable – forms of generating power.

We believe recent advances in technology have made this new world possible to bring about as soon as enough people want and vote for it.

Contrast this vision of how we could live with the appalling reality we will be forced to live whichever ‘mainstream’ party is elected on July 4th.

A collapsing health and social security system; growing childhood poverty; construction of monstrous blocks of housing for the rich along the Folkestone seafront and harbour arm while most Folkestone residents live in increasingly unaffordable and dilapidated rented accommodation or struggle to afford a mortgage; profit-driven water companies pouring raw sewage into Folkestone and Hythe’s rivers and beaches. Add to this the daily tragedy of fellow humans risking life and limb to cross the Channel to escape the poverty and war directly caused by the global profit system carving out empires across Africa and the Middle East.

It does not matter which of the ‘main’ political parties you vote for – Conservative, Labour, Greens, Lib Dems and the rest. They all support the continuation of the profit system with all the deprivation, destruction and division it brings.

A vote for the Socialist Party is not a wasted vote. It is a positive choice rejecting the horrors of the profit system and embracing a new future for humanity free of poverty, war and environmental devastation.

If you agree VOTE SOCIALIST on Thursday 4th July

CLAPHAM AND BRIXTON HILL

VOTE SOCIALIST

The Socialist Party urges a truly democratic society in which people take all the decisions that shape their lives. This means a society without rich and poor, without owners and workers, without governments and governed, a society without leaders and led.

In such a society people would cooperate to use all the world’s natural and industrial resources in their own interests. They would free production from the artificial restraint of profit and establish a system of society in which each person has free access to the benefits of civilisation.

Socialist society would mean the end of buying, selling and exchange; an end to borders and frontiers; an end to organised violence and coercion, waste, want and war.

You can use your vote to show you want to overturn capitalism and end the problems it causes once and for all. When enough of us join together, determined to end inequality and deprivation, we can transform elections into a means of doing away with a society of minority rule in favour of a society of real democracy and social equality.

If you agree with the idea of a society of common and democratic ownership where no one is left behind and things are produced because they are needed, and not to make a profit for some capitalist corporation, and are prepared to join with us to achieve this then vote for the SOCIALIST PARTY candidate BILL MARTIN.

Promoted by the Socialist Party of Great Britain on behalf of Bill Martin, both of 52 Clapham High Street, SW4 7UN, and of Andy Thomas, of 74 Linden Crescent, CT19 5SB

SPGB June Events (2024)

Party News from the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

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The Gulf: one year later (1992)

From the January 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the dust from Kuwait's burnt oil-wells barely settled, the race is on for UK companies to beat their rivals back into the Gulf, with rich pickings on offer from reconstructing Kuwait's war-ravaged economy and the return of local dictators to their old playgrounds. And just to show that the pursuit of profit knows no boundaries of race, religion or nation, British companies are again climbing into bed with the “bloodthirsty mullahs" in Iran, as they too seek to rebuild a country laid waste by Iraqi bombs and missiles— also supplied, of course, by US and British companies.

Last May, just three months after the Gulf War finished. US business announced the resumption of its offensive when Al-Ahlia-Gulf Line, bottler of Coca-Cola for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman, commissioned the first modern, high speed multi-packaging machine in the Middle East. According to company general manager Jim Hill, this followed “extensive tests over the past 12 months in the local Dubai market". So even as US bombs fell in neighbouring Kuwait and in Iraq, the sharp suits from Coke were planning their own offensive on the pockets and teeth of Middle Eastern youth.

British companies could not take this sort of thing lying down. The massive participation by Britain in the Gulf War—where it supplied the second largest Allied contingent—was undertaken not for protecting Kuwaiti sovereignty, nor out of particular concern for its oil. British troops were in the Gulf to stop the domino-like internal collapse of Saudi Arabia and the other four states of the Gulf Cooperation Council—Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE and Oman—which could easily have followed an Iraqi victory and a triumphalist Saddam calling on the people of the region to rise up against their corrupt and despotic rulers.

And why this touching concern? Because British trade with the Gulf states is currently worth well over £4 billion a year, according to figures compiled by the Department of Trade and Industry. Last year, as the Gulf crisis was unwinding. British, companies did some £2 billion worth of business with Saudi Arabia alone. So now the British government is anxious that its support for the local dictators during the war results in adequate rewards for the British companies it is there to represent.

The first post-war move came from the Birmingham Chamber of Industry and Commerce, which organised a tour with the DTI of 32 British companies to Saudi Arabia, which returned in triumph with over £3.25 million in confirmed orders. “This was the most successful mission in 25 years of overseas promotion work,” Birmingham Chamber of Commerce leader Mike Turner proudly announced. A vast amount of restocking was taking place in the parts of the kingdom most affected by the war, a process being exaggerated as Saudi businessmen pump supplies into Kuwait, said Mr Turner. Interestingly, he also reported that members of the Kuwaiti elite, unimpressed by the money making opportunities in their shell-shocked native land, were to be seen wandering neighbouring states transacting all sorts of business there. Mr Turner’s advice to recession-struck companies in the UK was to visit the region in person—"the rewards are there for companies taking the trouble”.

Business interests

The government was not slow in taking up his suggestion. Whatever accusations have been laid against the DTI for “inaction" during the domestic recession, the same cannot be said for the way it sprang forward as the champion of British business interests in the Middle East, loudly announcing a Britain in the Gulf 92 exhibition to be held in Dubai at the end of April.

Any interested readers—and particularly those about to lose their homes through mortgage or rent arrears—should apply by the end of this month at the latest to take advantage of the very generous level of support being offered by the DTI. “Eligible British companies will recieve a 50 percent subsidy on the cost of a standard, 15 square metre stand”, proclaims the DTI's promotional literature. "This will include company name, carpet, flower arrangements, furniture (1 table. 3 chairs) and stand cleaning"—the latter presumably undertaken at competitive rates by some of the tens of thousands of Palestinians or other "foreign” workers expelled by the Kuwaiti leadership since its return from a heroic exile. In addition, the DTI offers a "subvention” (not a subsidy, you understand) to cover one third of the not inconsiderable costs of up to two representatives per company.

"In the aftermath of the Gulf War, Anglo-Gulf relations have never been better", enthuses Britain in the Gulf 92 News. "The DTI attaches the highest importance to sustaining and enhancing the level of British trade with the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council”. And it is not only the DTI which is involved in pushing British business in the region. “The campaign began in December and includes reports and special programmes through the BBC Arabic Service and the Central Office of Information". So much for BBC's lofty claims to "independence”—“Nation Shall Sell Unto Nation" should perhaps be its motto in the Middle East.

The Gulf War victory by the US and its allies has ensured that Dubai remains a safe place for UK business: "The pro-business policies of the government arc reflected in the liberal regulatory environments which include no taxation on profits or incomes, nor foreign exchange controls”, says the DTI. The good citizens of Dubai earned the undying respect of the DTI by ignoring the crisis enveloping the region last year and buying 13 percent more from the UK, bringing total exports to the UAE as a whole to £R600 million in 1990.

International Conferences and Exhibitions Ltd, which is jointly arranging the Gulf 92 exhibition with the DTI, was the only exhibition organiser in Dubai to carry out its programme of events during the Gulf crisis. And the response of a grateful Dubai business class to having their skins saved by British tanks, was to endow British firms at the Opportunity in the Gulf exhibition—held in Dubai three months after the ending of hostilities—with a further £20 million worth of orders, with the same amount again anticipated for the near future.

Gulf elites

And business opportunities in the region now extend much further that the basic construction, power and transport contracts of yore, argues the DTI. The Gulf elite clearly feels secure enough to enjoy the better things in life again:

The high level of government expenditure is fuelling a boom in private sector investment, reflected in a spate of new high rise office developments, five star hotels, apartment blocks, sports clubs, shopping malls and luxury villas, all of which require a full range of luxury fittings.

It also generates the need for a whole lot more services essential to the well-being of redundant oil workers, refugees and displaced peoples throughout the region—things like "printing, advertising and financial expertise”.The children of the rich are also back to unrestrained consumption, it would seem, with consumer spending being "stimulated to record levels on items such as clothing, domestic appliances, cars, food and drink, jewellery, sports equipment and overseas travel”.

A list of companies so far enlisted for the DTI's Gulf 92 extravaganza tells its own story. Starlite Chandeliers, for example, is exhibiting a range of crystal chandeliers and light fittings, while Gainsborough Silver Collections will be displaying "a selection of pieces from its comprehensive range of silver plated tableware”. The list goes on to include limousine converters and Moores of London's "corporate jewellery in solid silver and gold plate", and so on.

Finally, what of the Iranian connection?

The carefully planned visitor promotion campaign for the Britain in the Gulf 92 exhibition will cover the six Gulf Cooperation Council states and also extend to Iran, a country with which Dubai has close trading ties.

Could this be the same country the British government sanctimoniously severed diplomatic ties with after its leader issued a death threat against Salman Rushdie which has still not been withdrawn? Yes indeed, and here is the reason:

In addition to the massive rebuilding programme planned for Kuwait, reconstruction schemes in neighbouring Iran, only 40 minutes flight from Dubai, are also arousing unprecedented interest on the part of UK exporters.

So if the government starts to backpedal on its stance against Iranian state terrorism—by banning demonstrations by Rushdie supporters, for example, which it actually did in November—you will know the reason why.

Andrew Thomas

A Spring thaw? (1988)

From the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

To many in the "peace movement”, it seems that the tide is finally turning. The focus for their optimism is none other than former Cold Warrior Ronald Reagan, who has instructed his negotiators to "go for gold", and hammer out a 50 per cent cut in the superpowers' nuclear arsenals. They should not be so easily fooled. Behind the pacific rhetoric lies a grimmer calculus which reflects the new realities facing American capitalism in the 1980s.

In the drive to restore profitability to US industry, business interests have clamoured for cuts in the $200bn budget deficit in the new financial year. As a result the Pentagon will be receiving $33bn less than it anticipated and funding for "Star Wars" will be slashed. Forced into a corner, the military and their political allies have felt compelled to change their tactics, and the apparently paradoxical result has been a new found enthusiasm for arms control. To see how this has come about, we will take a brief excursion into the bizarre world of nuclear strategy.

To the military mind, there is no such thing as an "unusable" military weapon, and from the earliest days of the US "deterrent”, the Airforce developed plans for massive first strikes against the USSR. General Curtis Le May stated this quite openly in front of a presidential committee in the 1950s. when it was put to him that pre-emptive nuclear strikes were not official US policy. "I don’t care", he replied, "it’s my policy. That's what I'm going to do." This remains the dominant view in the highest reaches of the US military-political establishment. Colin Gray, for example, now a senior presidential adviser, wrote in 1980 that the US should "identify war aims that in the last resort would contemplate the destruction of Soviet political authority and the emergence of a postwar world order compatible with western values". Nuclear weapons were to be treated in the same way as conventional ones had been in previous eras; as a means to destroy opposing military forces and compel compliance with the interests of the victorious national ruling class.

The paradox of using nuclear weapons to accomplish political objectives, however, was that their sheer destructive power could result only in genocidal war. which could have no rational political use. This was the conclusion of the Harmon Committee, which examined the feasibility of a pre-emptive strike against the Soviet Union in 1948-9.

What was needed, from the point of view of the military planners, were "cleaner" weapons, which could selectively "take out" discrete military targets such as silos, troop assembly points etc. whilst avoiding large-scale "collateral" damage. It has been estimated that 20 million deaths is an "acceptable" level for civilian casualties in this sort of scenario. In recent years, the technological developments necessary to allow such nuclear war fighting strategies have begun to emerge.

In the dehumanised language of nuclear mass murder, the ability of a warhead to destroy a hard target, such as a silo, is measured in terms of "lethality", or “K". “K" is dependent primarily upon how close to the target a warhead is delivered. The first generation of US ICBMs had an accuracy (acronym "CEP") of some 1000-4200 FT. giving a lethality of between 9 and 12. Some meaning is given to these figures when we compare them with the comparable ones for the new generation of US missiles. The MX and Trident D5 have accuracies of just 300 FT and lethalities of 200. whilst Cruise missiles will land less than 200 FT from their targets with a lethality of 300. US scientists are now working on manoeverable terminal guidance warheads which will have accuracies of 120 FT. as well as "earthquake bombs" which bury themselves in the ground before exploding. In practical terms, these missiles can destroy with virtual certainty the hardest of Russian silos. Moreover, simply throwing more of the earlier missiles at a target does not compensate for lack of accuracy, since the first missile to arrive over a target would destroy those following even a split second behind. Greater accuracy, with fewer missiles means greater certainty of a clean kill. Military strategists have even turned the controversy about the "nuclear winter" to their own advantage, by claiming that the theory is only applicable to attacks on cities by the older, indiscriminate nuclear missiles. Military targets such as silos, it is argued, are located in wilderness regions, which would not throw up the debris associated with burning cities. This form of attack is undoubtedly the more ecologically sound!

It will by now be clear that far fewer of the new missiles are necessary in order to pursue an effective nuclear war-fighting strategy, and that the older ones are effectively obsolete in military terms. It is precisely these older missiles that the US will be "sacrificing" in any major arms reduction agreement. This, however, is only half the story. There is another very good military reason for supporting a major cut in the superpowers" nuclear arsenals, and this has to do with the technological limitations of the "star wars" (SDI) programme.

When SDI was first conceived, it was intended as an integral part of a war-fighting strategy; it was to be the shield behind which the US could shelter from Soviet retaliation after delivering its own first strike. Insuperable technical problems have been encountered in attempting to develop such a device, however, and military planners recently conceded that it is not a feasible objective for the foreseeable future. Instead of a massive space security shield protecting US cities, they now plan only to protect vital military installations, and still reckon only to be able to destroy 30 per cent of an all-out Soviet strike, or some 1,300 warheads.

There is more than one way to skin a cat. however. Suppose that the Soviet nuclear arsenal could be cut in half, to some 2,800 land-based warheads and 600 submarine launched ones. Suppose also that the new US missiles could be expected to destroy even half of the remaining forces in a first strike (bearing in mind that five out of six Soviet submarines are stuck in port at any one time and therefore highly vulnerable. This leaves the number of warheads available for a retaliatory Soviet strike at a number which the new slimmed-down SDI might be expected to deal with. The enthusiasm of the military for a treaty which would cut both sides' arsenals by 50 per cent whilst leaving the US free to develop and deploy its own devastating new weapons is thus readily apparent.

The change in the US approach to the Geneva arms talks, therefore, has nothing to do with the changing whims of its leaders, and still less to do with the influence of the peace movement. Rather, it has to do with material factors; the weakness of American capitalism, which necessitates cutbacks in non-competitive production, and the capabilities and limitations of the available technology. This much is conceded by Professor Paul Rogers, a leading spokesman for CND, in a recent article in the New Statesman (8 April). What, however, is to be done about it? Rogers is reduced to calling for yet more campaigning for a test ban and a freeze in the deployment of new weapons; this is apparently "the best that can be hoped for". But military power and its related technology are the necessary accompaniments of the rivalry between competing capitalist and state capitalist blocks. The murderous technologies and strategies of nuclear war do not have an existence outside of this struggle, and cannot be eliminated without first tackling the antisocial system of which they are simply the most terrifying symbols.

Andrew Thomas

Election results (2021)

Party News from the June 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party stood 4 candidates in last month’s regional and local elections. In Wales we contested Cardiff Central constituency in the elections to the Welsh Assembly (now called The Senedd), the same we had in the 2019 General Election, with ten others standing for capitalism in one form or another. Some 43,000 election manifestos were delivered free by Royal Mail to households there. In Kent we stood two candidates for the County Council, as we had done four years ago, and one in a by-election for Folkestone town council. As there is no free postal distribution for local elections, some 20,000 were distributed commercially and by members of Kent and Sussex branch.

The results are:

Cardiff Central: Labour 13,100; LibDems 5,460; Conservative 3,788, Plaid Cymru 3,470; Green 1,552; Abolish Welsh Assembly 440; Propel 268; Freedom Alliance 156; Reform UK 151; Socialist 82; Gwlad 65.

Folkestone East: Labour 1324; Conservative 1132; Foundation Party 561; LibDems 361; Socialist 89.

Folkestone West: Conservative 2105; Labour 1782; LibDems 541; Independent 264; Reform UK 127; Socialist 55.

Folkestone Town Council Central Ward: Conservative 1119; Labour 916; LibDem 255; Independent 218; Socialist 61; Independent 44.

Olympic invitation (1988)

From the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many commentators were taken aback by the apparent volte-face conducted by China and Russia when they recently accepted South Korea’s invitation to the 1988 Olympic Games. This seemed particularly odd since their regional ally "Communist" North Korea, bitterly opposed participation on the grounds that it amounted to a virtual recognition of the US-backed Southern regime.

The confusion over these manoeuvres stems from the mistaken belief that leaders determine foreign policy in line with their ideological interests. In opposition to this view, the materialist analysis of international relations holds that there are underlying economic forces which determine, over the long run, what actions leaders take. Seen in this light, the "mystery" of the Olympic acceptance is soon resolved.

Following the enforced division of the Korean peninsula by the United States in 1948, Russia and China maintained a seemingly implacable hostility towards the South and lent their support to the Northern regime's drive to re-unify the country. The importance of the North to China and the Russians was dramatically enhanced by the bitter conflict which erupted between these two states in the 1950s and '60s. North Korea occupied a critical strategic position, flanking vital industrial and military regions on both sides. Ritual denunciation of the Southern regime became an important weapon in the struggle to secure the support of the North's dictator. Kim I'-Sung.

The situation began to change in the late 1970s and early '80s. when the stagnation of the Russian and Chinese economies galvanised their respective party bureaucracies into an enforced process of economic modernisation. A necessary condition for success was a massive injection of western capital and advanced technology, which required a downgrading of cold war hostility and an opening up to the United States and its allies through the process of detente.

South Korea occupies a key position here. It is located in the fastest developing economic region in the world and is growing at a more rapid pace than Japan. Its per capita GNP is $2,900, at least three times that of the North. Furthermore, South Korean industry has direct access to the latest technology from the United States and Japan and its manufacturers have proved themselves adept at integrating aid, successfully utilising their advances as, for example, in the development of the four megabit DRAM computer.

The Chinese were the first to attempt to tap into these resources. In the early 1980s they established trading links with the South through Hong Kong and between 1983 and 1985 two-way trade rose from $285 million to over $800 million, exceeding China's trade with the North. More recently a covert direct trade has begun to develop. South Korean businessmen have visited China, and in 1986 the Daewoo Corporation spearheaded the first ever joint venture with a Chinese company, producing television sets in the Fujian province.

The South Koreans have been anxious to encourage these links since China has a lot to offer them: cheap labour, low corporate taxation and an alternative to the increasingly protectionist United States market. President-Elect, Roh Tae Woo, has promised to develop the South West province of Challa as a free trade zone to exploit these possibilities.

The Russians have been more circumspect in making openings to South Korea, principally because of the strategic benefits they derive from naval facilities at Cam Rhan Bay in the North, as well as overflying rights for their military aircraft. The importance of these assets has diminished, however, as the Soviets attempted to create a stable regional environment in which they could pursue economic modernisation. This involved seeking a rapprochement with China and increasingly dissociating themselves from Kim I'-Sung's wilder demands for a military solution to the division of Korea. The last thing the Russians wanted was a clash with either China or the United States, which would have diverted resources away from economic development and threatened the flow of Western technology and capital. Consequently the Russian leadership has moved to relieve tensions with China and has tacitly accepted the present division of Korea as more or less permanent.

These shifts have resulted in the downgrading of the relative importance of the North in Russian thinking. For example, in the early 1980s they were notably reluctant to supply North Korea with advanced MIG 23 fighters, and did so only in response to United States' introduction of F-16s into the South. This reassessment was reinforced by the financial burden to the Russians of supporting the North. Kim I'-Sung's attempts to build an "independent" economy had resulted in an efficient and aging heavy industrial base patterned after Stalin's programmes of the 1930s. The North today has a trade deficit of $465 million and has consistently failed to repay its loans, much to the irritation of some Western capitalists who are now exceedingly reluctant to extend financial or technological assistance. In pursuit of economic self-sufficiency. Kim I'-Sung has also refused to join COMECON and integrate the North more fully into the Russian empire. This has remained a constant source of tension. The Russians are already overextended economically with their commitments in Vietnam, Africa and Afghanistan and strategic returns from their investment in North Korea no longer seem worth the immense cost.

For both China and Russia ideological hostility towards South Korea clashes with the demands generated by the need for economic modernisation. As Marxists would expect, this contradiction is resolved by bringing the ideology into line with changing economic circumstances. The acceptance of South Korea's invitation to the 1988 Olympics is an important part of that process.

Andrew Thomas

Kashmir: socialism or barbarism? (1990)

From the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

By the end of April this year the Indian army had redeployed 70-90,000 troops, including between 300 and 500 tanks, to just 30 miles from Pakistan's Sind and Punjab provinces. These "exercises'’ were officially due to have ended in February. It was along this stretch of border, Pakistan's "weak under-belly", that Indian tanks crashed through in 1965, and today war between the two states again seems a real possibility.

Pakistan and India have fought each other three times since British forces pulled out of the Indian sub-continent in 1947. In that year Imperial India was partitioned into two bitterly opposed states. Moslem Pakistan and mainly-Hindu India. But the cause of the successive Indo-Pakistan conflicts was never religion as such. Religion rather became the cloak behind which the Indian and Pakistani states mobilised their peoples to fight for regional strategic dominance. And the key to this dominance lay in Kashmir.

Strategic importance

Kashmir is a poor, mountainous, scenically beautiful region of 85,000 square miles—larger than England—lying between India and Pakistan. Traditionally it has been the resting place for caravans moving from India to the Highlands of Central Asia, and it remains today the strategic pivot of the sub-continent. The state which dominates Kashmir dominates the area, and this has been clearly recognised by the leaders on both sides.

In an Indian government publication entitled Independence and After written in 1949 the then Prime Minister Nehru asserted that:

  India without Kashmir would cease to occupy a pivotal position on the political map of Central Asia. Strategically Kashmir is vital to the security of India: it has been so since the dawn of history.

And. almost twenty years later, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan. Liaquat Ali Khan, justified his state's claim in exactly the same terms:

  Kashmir is vital to Pakistan. Kashmir, as you will see from the map, is like a cap on the head of Pakistan. If I allow India to have this cap on our head, then I am always at the mercy of India. (In M. Gopal, Considerations of Defence, Caravan, 1967).

After “independence" Kashmir was left hanging between its hostile neighbours. Although some four-fifths of its population were Moslems, the ruling elite was Hindu. In 1947 Moslem tribesmen from the North West, enraged at reports of massacres of Moslems elsewhere, invaded Kashmir. The wave of mass killing and arson which followed threatened the rule of the Hindu Maharajah, who turned in desperation to India for support. Seizing its opportunity, the Indian government extracted a promise that Kashmir would be signed over after the army had intervened—a condition the Maharajah had little choice but to accept. But as soon as the instrument of accession had been signed Pakistan sent troops into Kashmir, ostensibly to "save the uprising" of fellow Moslems, but in reality to secure the Pakistani state's strategic position.

The bloody clashes which followed were brought to an end by a ceasefire which left India in de facto control of the most prosperous part of the province. Although Indian politicians had promised free elections for Kashmir, this was soon forgotten The result could only have been independence or union with Pakistan.

Despite a disastrous attempt by the Pakistani army to seize Kashmir in 1965 after infiltrating guerilla forces over the ceasefire line, Southern Kashmir has remained in Indian hands ever since.

Cynical misrule

The present crisis erupted in Kashmir after years of cynical mismanagement by the Indian state, including rigged elections, endemic corruption and now naked repression. Foreign correspondents, now banned from the province, have continued to receive reports of beatings, rapes, torture and even executions.

In response. Kashmiri secessionist groups have stepped up their campaign of violence, engaging Indian troops in savage street to street battles, assassinating politicians and senior police officers and waging a relentless bombing campaign whose recent targets included a private bus and a Bombay commuter train. Indian army curfews were met with mass demonstrations and over 350 people have died in the uprising this year.

Over 8000 refugees and at least 3000 volunteers seeking military training have already streamed over the ceasefire line, and with the end of the avalanche season in June as many as 100,000 more are expected to attempt the crossing. India has responded by banning any movement out of the province and constructing a 12-ft high electrified fence along the perimeter. Pakistani troops are reported to have provided covering fire for refugees making the break for the border and ugly clashes with Indian border patrols are said to have led to a number of deaths.

The Indian government has blamed Pakistan for fomenting the unrest and threatened armed retribution. In the middle of April the Indian Prime Minister VP Singh said the country should be "psychologically prepared" for war against Pakistan, and after attacking Pakistan's “evil designs" in Kashmir warned that the Pakistani army would "not last 1000 hours" in a war. “We will teach them a lesson unless they stop aiding terrorists", he concluded darkly, refusing to rule out the possibility of hot pursuit raids against the alleged rebel training camps on the Pakistani side of the ceasefire line.

Meanwhile correspondents in Pakistani Kashmir report that the rebels are setting up power centres and arming themselves with weapons bought from arms dealers in the country's tribal belt. A jihaad. or holy war, has been proclaimed by Moslems there with the support of a hard core of 1000-2000 Kashmiris already battle-hardened in that other jihaad just across the border in Afghanistan

Fingers on nuclear triggers

What lessons can be drawn from this dismal situation? First, that where there are states competing for strategic advantage—which they are compelled to do for reasons of survival in a competitive world—there will always be conflict, or the threat of conflict.

It also reveals the futility of nationalism. Who would Kashmir "belong to" if it was “liberated" from the grip of the Indian ruling class? Certainly not those who are pouring across the ceasefire line to learn to fight and kill their fellow workers. They would find that their sacrifices would bring just the same poverty and oppression when they are exploited by a bunch of Kashmiri or Pakistani bosses rather than the Indian variety. And of course the multinationals would continue to inflict their Bophals and extract their profits no matter which gang was in power.

The only solution to the Kashmiri crisis is world socialism, in which there will be no more states struggling to divide the world's markets between them and using the cloak of religion to muster support for their murderous banners; when there will be a free and cooperative sharing of the world's resources and living space on the basis of need, and not on the ability to conquer or exploit.

One closing thought for those who think that a socialist world would be all very nice but is not an urgent necessity. India has successfully exploded a nuclear capability Both have large air forces capable of delivering nuclear bombs. If a crisis does erupt when refugees from Kashmir start pouring across the border after the avalanche season, and the Indian state carries out its threat to launch cross-border raids, fingers will be on those nuclear triggers.

Because, unlike the superpowers, who can guarantee to retaliate after receiving a first nuclear strike. India and Pakistan have so few nuclear devices the side which strikes first could expect to "win" an exchange (whatever that might mean). This is clearly a recipe for massive instability, and perhaps disastrous miscalculation. Socialism or barbarism is still the only real choice which confronts us.

Andrew Thomas

Manifestos: The Socialist Alternative (2019)

Party News from the December 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

CARDIFF

What is this election about?

The wide view

Our world contains massive resources – raw materials, systems of manufacture, communications technology, sophisticated transport. Enough to give everyone a comfortable and fulfilling life.

It’s also beset by perennial problems – wars, never-ending poverty, economic and other kinds of insecurity. The profit motive of society means that life is becoming more and more commercialised and people are increasingly isolated from one another with drug abuse and mental illness on the increase. Capitalism – and governments – are proving incapable of dealing with climate change and other threats to the environment. The standard of living may have risen for some but the quality of life deteriorates.

Why don’t we change our world so that we can have the benefit of the resources without the problems?

How can we do that?

   We can do that by holding the world’s resources in common and using them directly to serve everyone’s needs instead of just producing ad nauseam to create ever greater profits for a tiny minority. This is genuine socialism – a moneyless society of free access to goods and services. Forget about the other uses of the word.

So, we vote you in and you create this wonderful world for us. How can we trust you to do that?

   You can’t and neither can we. The new society we’re putting forward can only be created when a majority of people like you actively decide to do it. You can use us, the Socialist Party, as an instrument of the democratic revolution we are advocating, but you yourselves must be in control of what happens.

But isn’t this all fantasy politics? People are too selfish to put everything at risk for the sake of pie in the sky?

  Stick to the case you know best – yourself. Are you too selfish to realise that your on interests (as well as those of the people around you) can be advanced by making an alliance with others and pursuing joint interests? Are you sufficiently open-minded to consider alternatives to our present social arrangements? If you want to prove you can do this, one way is to take advantage of the free subscription to our journal, the Socialist Standard, offered on this leaflet.

Hasn’t socialism been tried and shown not to work?

   No. Small political minorities have tried concentrating resources in the hands of the state, but that has just continued the profit system in another, often more oppressive, form. That isn’t socialism. Instead we are talking about a world where we all democratically decide how to use those resources directly for our own mutual benefit and in a way which minimises the impact on the environment.

  This is all a long-way off. In the meantime shouldn’t ‘progressive’ organisations sink their differences, defend working people against attacks on their living standards and eventually work towards a socialist society?

It’s true that we all have to live in the here and now, but how far off the socialist society we advocate is depends on when people are prepared to take democratic action (i.e. vote) to establish it. More than a century of attempts to reform capitalism have shown that none of its major problems can be removed. So it’s clear that if we do nothing about socialism ‘in the meantime’, the meantime lasts forever. And we are putting off perhaps for all time the greatest advance that human society could ever make.

So does this election matter? Does Brexit matter?

  This election is about one way or another of organising the profit system, capitalism, so it doesn’t matter which of the major parties is elected. Nothing will change. Brexit is a small detail in that system, so it doesn’t matter that an arrangement has been made to manipulate that detail in the interests of the tiny minority who hold most of the wealth. What does matter is how many voters understand the case we are putting for a real social upgrade – a world community without states or frontiers based on participatory democracy – and show their preference for that by casting their vote for the Socialist Party candidate, Brian Johnson.

We are talking about a society of material abundance, without buying and selling, where everyone has access to what they need without the rationing system called money.

We are talking about a rational and sustainable society where people are the Earth’s custodians, not its destroyers, where they contribute the knowledge, skills and effort to maintain it.

This is a system that will make 21st century capitalism look like the Dark Ages. Hardly anyone dares conceive of a society after capitalism, so powewrful is its hold on the collective mind. But we do and that is why we are putting the debate out into the open.

Capitalism will do all it can to discredit the idea of world socialism. Don’t let it succeed. Take a first step by voting for our candidate, Brian Johnson.

FOLKESTONE

Profit or Needs, not Leave or Remain, is the real issue

This election, we’re told, is about Brexit. Whether ‘we’ will be richer or poorer, freer or more subservient if we stay in or leave the European Union, with or without a deal.

But does anyone seriously expect that Leaving or Remaining will end child poverty? Homelessness and food banks? Collapsing health and social services? Unemployment – or the mass insecurity of zero-hour-contracts? War and forced migration? The destruction of the Earth’s wildlife and natural resources? The threat of disastrous climate change?

The Brexit ‘debate’ simply obscures the real issue: a failed economic system where nothing is produced unless a profit can be made from it. Where human needs are everywhere subject to the inhuman demands of market forces. And this system will continue to rule our lives whether our new leaders are based in Brussels or London, Belfast or Edinburgh.

The Socialist Party stands for putting an end to this profit system. For replacing it with a society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the world’s natural and industrial resources.

We live in a world of potential plenty, where we could meet our needs by freely cooperating on the basis of ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.’ There is no need for anyone anywhere in the world to go without what they need to live a happy, healthy and fulfilled life. What prevents this is the ownership of resources today by a privileged few and production for sale with the aim of making a profit.

 The parties committed to running the market system – and that includes the Labour Party and the Greens – are making empty promises. A vote for them is a wasted vote as this system operates on the basis that making profits must always come before meeting needs, whatever those in government might want or have promised.

We are standing here to give you a chance to show that you reject the profit-driven market system and want a classless society of equal men and women geared to directly satisfying people’s needs.

To show this, vote for the  Socialist Party candidate, Andy Thomas, and then come and join us, not to mend the present system but to bring a movement strong enough to end it.

Write The Socialist Party, 74 Linden Crescent, Folkestone, Kent CT19 5SB

Email spgb.ksrb@worldsocialism.org


How you can help
South Wales branch will be holding an election stall on Saturday 7 December from 1 pm to 3pm in Queen Street (Newport road end) in central Cardiff. There will also be leafletting elsewhere in the constituency. More information and offers of help contact Richard Botterill, election agent, at botterillr@gmail.com

Kent and Sussex branch will be meeting on Sunday 1 December from 2pm in The Muggleton Inn (Wetherspoon), 8 High Street, Maidstone, ME14 1 HJ (first floor) to discuss the campaign. Offers of help with leafletting and other activities in Folkestone: email spgb.ksrb@worldsocialism.org or write to The Socialist Party, 74 Linden Crescent, Folkestone, Kent CT19 5SB.

The Socialist Party also has leaflets for distribution outside the two constituencies saying that socialists will be casting a write-in vote for «World Socialism». Copies for distribution available from spgb@worldsocialism.org or write to the Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN or phone 020 7622 3811.

Battering down all Chinese Walls (1994)

From the October 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The last remaining bastions of the doomed "Socialism in One Country" experiment, are finally facing up to the reality of the world capitalist market to which they are, and have always been, inextricably linked.

China’s government has now pretty much given up any pretence that it is operating a non-capitalist economy, with the current slogan "Socialism with a Chinese Face". This involves opening up the economy to international capital while retaining tight control over the apparatus of state repression.

The Chinese have been much bolder in opening up the fenced-off Economic Zones, where multinationals are free to exploit a cowed labour force without the unpleasantness of needing to account for their actions either to an elected government or to a strong union movement — increasingly the case in the other rapidly developing economies of east Asia.

Western multinationals recognise a good business partner when they see one, and the Chinese "Communists" are some of the best around. Nobody on the boards of US constructions companies like Parsons Brinckerhoff or Brown and Root wanted to see Western governments raising awkward questions of human rights on the recent anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and indeed the Clinton administration was quiet as a mouse on the subject.

The rewards are now being reaped. Between the 28 and 30 August, a US trade mission initialled over $5 billions-worth of new business in China in the key power, automotive and communications sectors.

No wonder that Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, who led the trade mission with the heads of some of America’s biggest corporations, proclaimed himself "exhilarated” by the warmth of his reception from Chinese officials.

And this is a mere taster for the $250 billions-worth of infrastructure projects coming up before the end of the century in China. "We intend to compete in this market and we intend to win", Brown warned his western rivals.

So important are these contracts to the ailing US economy — rivalling in size those in the halcyon days of the Shah's untrammelled spending with US heavy industry — that the "moral”and liberal Bill Clinton has bowed to the inevitable and "delinked" trade and human rights issues.

The key indicator of this was the renewal by his administration of China’s Most Favoured Nation trading status after US corporations argued that the administration's focus on human rights was jeopardising US business interests in China and benefiting competitors in Europe and Asia. US exports to China are growing at four times the rate of exports to the rest of the world, and now provide a living for around 150,000 Americans.

Commerce Secretary Brown says he will resume a “dialogue" on human rights issues this month. The Chinese contemptuously broke them off during a tense visit by Secretary of State Warren Christopher to China earlier this year.

As an interesting footnote, the contracts signed by Brown’s mission include an agreement between TRW in the US, Suman group of Guandong province and Beijing Cable TV Network to supply one million descrambler units for television programmes in Chinese households. We eagerly await the tortured explanations of Chinese state ideologues as to how this actually brings the day of universal access to the means of communications any nearer.

Andy Thomas

Highway-One Revisited (1994)

From the October 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Meanwhile in neighbouring Vietnam, the state bureaucracy is also well down the road to quietly burying the experiment of “Socialism in One Country". Seventy-five international construction companies arc now bidding for $317 millions-worth of contracts to rebuild Highway One. This road, which links Hanoi in the north with Ho Chi Minh City (ex-Saigon) is a key symbol of the war fought to rid Vietnam forever of American "Imperialism”.

Among the key bidders are US corporations anxious to repair the potholes and craters gouged by their own bombs and mines — and close on their heels the South Koreans, key supporters of the US’s Vietnam war effort. Even the Chinese are having a go, reckoning that this is one area where their technology can compete with the ex-imperialist enemy.

The renewed interest in Vietnam follows its full rehabilitation into the international capitalist system, capped with renewed access to International Monetary Fund and other multilateral agency loans. Naturally there are no humanitarian motives behind this. The flow of international capital into developing economies, set up by the Bretton Woods regime after the last world war, was designed to keep depression at bay in the West by allowing developing countries credit to buy excess production from Western corporations.

In the case of Highway One, international construction companies are now confident that with IMF and World Bank loans pump-priming the Vietnamese economy, traffic volumes will increase sufficiently to yield an acceptable profit from tolls.

And as in China, there are richer pickings to come. The World Bank estimates that Vietnam will need $7 to $10 billion by the year 2000 for infrastructure repair, with at least $2.2 billion allocated to transport.

Andy Thomas

Our time to act has come (2019)

Party News from the May 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘We have reached a point in history when we have the technical capacities to solve poverty, malnutrition, inequality and, of course, global warming. The deciding factors for whether we take advantage of our potential will be our activism and our international unity. We need to start cooperating and sharing the remaining resources of this planet in a fair way.’ So said one of the students involved in the climate change school strikes.

She probably does not regard herself as a socialist, but she echoes the goal pursued by the Socialist Party of Great Britain since it was founded in 1904: the planet owned in common and democratically controlled by the people who live on it, with production for need and not for profit.

Brexit or no Brexit, the market system continues to stand between us and what we need to live a good life: healthy food, good housing, access to health care and a clean environment.

Take the Folkestone seafront redevelopment. A socialist society would freely cooperate to design and build this on a human scale. It would democratically agree to use resources to repair and run the Leas lift without having to beg for funding: in a society of common ownership, finance will no longer be a factor. Compare this with the powerlessness we all feel today, at the mercy of what is profitable for developers.

Voting for the Socialist Party will not of course bring about this society overnight. But it will send a signal that we will no longer tolerate a world run in the profitable, destructive interests of a tiny minority. There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

The Socialist Party candidate is Andy Thomas.

Election leaflet for council election in Folkestone & Hythe District Council and Folkestone Town Council (Harbour ward) on Thursday 2 May.

Local Elections (2019)

Party News from the April 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Voters in the Harbour ward of Folkestone, Kent will have their fourth opportunity in six years to vote for Socialism, when they go to the polls to re-elect the District Council on 2 May. Previously they have been able to vote for Socialist Party candidates for the UK and European parliaments, the last District poll in 2015 and most recently in 2017, when most of Folkestone was contested by the Party in the county council election. In fact, the 4000+ Harbour ward electors will be able to vote twice for Socialism , as we are also standing for the Town Council in the same ward. Andy Thomas is our candidate for both contests.

Afghanistan: the Russian Withdrawal (1988)

From the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nine bloody years after their intervention in Afghanistan, the Russian army is finally pulling out. The government of Nahmud Berri is to be left to fend for itself against the Mujahadeen guerrilla alliance, which successfully tied down 155,000 troops for almost a decade. How are we to explain this abandonment of a “communist” ally to such an uncertain fate, given the scale of Moscow’s past support for the Afghan regime? The answer can be found in the operation of economic pressures on Russian decision makers.

In 1978, the government of Muhammed Daoud was overthrown in a coup led by the “Communist” Party of Afghanistan, the PDPA. The party was split into two antagonistic factions, and alarm bells started ringing in Moscow when the more radical wing, the “Kalq”, gained the upper hand and began pushing though far-reaching reforms. They aimed to transform Afghan society into a modern Russian-style state by expropriating the large landlords and attacking feudal social structures. These measures provoked bitter resistance, and within months the country was embroiled in an increasingly savage civil war.

At this point the Russian ruling class became seriously alarmed and tried, without success, to make the President, Hafizulla Amin, soften his position. The Ayatollah Khomeini had just been swept to power in neighbouring Iran, and the Russians were fearful that a similar regime of religious zealots might come to power. At best they would be anti-Russian, and at worst they could ally with Washington. US bases might even follow.

When it became clear that Amin would not be diverted, the Russians sent in their troops, stormed the presidential palace and executed him. In his place they installed Babrak Karmal of the moderate “parcham” faction of the PDPA, and set about trying to win the war. Thus the intervention was about putting a stop to the revolutionary process before it threatened the strategic interests of the Russian Empire.

So why, nine years later and with the war still not won, has the Russian leadership decided on a withdrawal? The dominant factor was the sheer cost of the occupation, not only in maintaining a huge garrison through a war which was unwinable but also in the unseen burdens it was placing on the Russian state.

The process of “Perestroika” is not merely a passing fad of the western media, but involves the very survival of the Russian ruling class. To allow their crumbling economy to stagger on in its present form is to invite relative and eventually absolute decline, which would marginalise the country in the world economy and could prejudice the political and even the territorial integrity of the state. Russian industry simply must become competitive in the world market, and to this end will require vast amounts of capital and new technology, expanding markets and cheap sources of energy and raw materials.

This is the context in which the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan must be seen. As we saw in the case of changing attitudes towards the Korean Peninsula, the primary goal of Russian foreign policy is now regional stability and the reduction of tension. Such a climate is crucial if trade and foreign investment are to be successfully encouraged.

The Afghan war has long been a major source of tension with China, the “third world” and the West. The Chinese government has consistently maintained that the occupation of Afghanistan was one of three obstacles to the normalisation of relations with the Russians {the other two being border disputes and the Vietnamese occupation of Kampuchea). The Afghan withdrawal will significantly speed up the recent rapprochement between the two states, and this will produce immense benefits for the Russian ruling class. Not only will it allow them to make further reductions in their half million strong forces guarding the Chinese border, but it will also help force the pace of growing trading links.

As far as the “third world’. is concerned, recently released Kremlin documents show that some officials appreciated at the time of the invasion the disastrous effects it would have on Russia’s position in the region, particularly with the Islamic nations, whose friendship was necessary for the economy and overall security. These fears proved well founded, particularly in the case of Pakistan and the Arab world.

Finally, the occupation of Afghanistan was one of the factors {along with the imposition of martial law in Poland) which provided the pretext for the United States to launch the “second cold war” of the early 1980s. Most distressing of all to the Russians was the curtailing of trade credits and the tougher restrictions placed on the export of “sensitive” technologies to the Eastern bloc. The recent summit in Moscow demonstrated the value the Russians now place on restoring conditions in which these restrictions can be removed.

It would, however, be wrong to suppose that the Russians are completely abandoning their interests in Afghanistan. They have a large economic stake in the northern oil and gas fields around Jauzan, and army leaders have made a series of agreements with local tribal chiefs {the same “forces of reaction” against whom they are supposedly waging a life or death struggle) to safeguard their interests. Moreover, recent reports suggest that they have pushed the Afghan government into creating what amounts to a buffer state in the north, under the guise of an “administrative reorganisation” , which would serve to protect their real strategic and economic stake in the country should the central government collapse (Guardian, 23 April).

Withdrawal from Afghanistan does not herald a new, more “peaceful” era in international affairs. The foreign policy of the Russian ruling class, like their Western counterparts, cannot afford to renounce war as an instrument for securing their interests. Indeed, they have already warned Pakistan and the United States that the withdrawal will be halted unless they stop supplying arms to the guerrillas. However, economic pressures have proved stronger than the strategic worries which were behind the original invasion and which remain unresolved. This makes the further use of force unlikely, not because Gorbachev is any more pacifically inclined than previous leaders, but because the weakness of the economy leaves him with little real choice.

Andrew Thomas