What’s new about Tory racism? (1984)

From the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shock! Horror! Have you heard the latest rumour? According to the media . . .  according to "usually reliable sources", it seems that racists have been "infiltrating” the Conservative Party. Oh. the awful scandal of it. After all these years of tolerance and open-mindedness, the party at which Enoch Powell was once the most popular guest has allowed the whiff of racism to stain its reputation. Could it have been that when Margaret Thatcher made her 1979 speech about British folk feeling swamped by aliens, her harmless words were misinterpreted by racists who imagined — perish the thought — that she was trying to lure the "paki-basher vote” away from the National Front?

Well, now it is all out in the open. The political advisor to the Monday Club has resigned, staling that it has been taken over by racist infiltrators. A BBC Panorama documentary exposed the alleged manoeuvrings of Tory Action, a band of right-wing loonies who apparently resent the fact that Thatcher has committed the sin of appointing Jews as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary. Certain Tory MPs. including the last relic of the Empire. Harvey Proctor, are accused in a recent Young Conservative report of having close links with known racists, including members of several barmy fascist outfits, such as the National Front. The new Tory chairman. John Selwyn Gummer. has promised to take firm action (in the tradition of his predecessor) against any members of the Conservative Party who are discovered to hold racist views. Perhaps Gummer should make a study of Tory party history before he asserts with such self-righteous hypocrisy that his party would never tolerate racist infiltration.

Back in the 1880s there was a steady flow of immigrants entering Britain in order to escape from anti-semitic persecution in Russia and Poland. In 1894 the Marquess of Salisbury introduced a Bill in the House of Lords which was intended to diminish the number of immigrants entering Britain, that is, to increase the number of Jewish workers who would be destined to stay in Eastern Europe to face murder and persecution. By 1898 Salisbury was the Tory Prime Minister and a similar Bill was placed before the Lords by Lord Hardwicke, who declared that:

  It would be a very serious matter if the type of population which is now to be found in many districts of the East End. where there is a strong alien element, were to become at all a common type in the poorer districts of our large cities. It would mean, my Lords, that these classes would become to a great extent non-English in character, and that, both in physique and in moral and social customs, they had fallen below our present by no means elevated standard.

Tory racism was more explicitly expressed in 1902. when Major Williams Evans Gordon, the Conservative MP for Stepney —an area of dense immigrant settlement— moved an amendment to the Queen's Speech calling for control of immigration. His speech is too rambling to quote in full (it was made in the House of Lords on 29 January 1902 and is worth reading) but, to give an idea of his approach, here are some samples: "Not a day passes but English families are ruthlessly turned out to make room for foreign invaders . . . It is only a matter of time before the population becomes entirely foreign . . . The working classes know that new buildings are erected not for them but for strangers from abroad . . . A storm is brewing which, if it be allowed to burst, will have deplorable results". In order to encourage the brewing-process, Evans Gordon formed the openly anti-semitic British Brothers’ League and organised a rally at the People’s Palace in the Mile End Road. Stepney which, according to contemporary accounts, was identical in its racist style and content to the more recent gatherings of the National Front.

So influential was backbench Tory racism that, in 1904, the Balfour government introduced legislation to deal with "the alien problem”. This was opposed by most Liberals — although by no means all of that party were opposed to the racist sentiments of the government; for example, the Liberal MP. Cathcart Watson, referred to the Jewish immigrants as “the refuse and scum of other nations" (Hansard, 18 February 1903).

By 1905 Balfour’s Bill had been dropped. but the Tory racists were not happy. A number of capitalists in the West Midlands, for instance, were concerned that the introduction of cheap labour power into the East End sweatshops of London would interfere with market competition. In the by-election at Stalybridge in 1905 the Tories distributed a leaflet to all electors in which they tried to attack the Liberals for being "soft on immigration”:

  “Let them all come" is the radical cry. The radicals, by their obstruction to the Aliens Bill, are evidently glad to see all foreigners who are criminals, who suffer from loathsome diseases, who are turned out in disgrace by their fellow-countrymen, who are paupers who fill the streets with profligacy and disorder.

In the 1930s the Tories, who like to claim these days that they were the great opponents of Nazi anti-semitism, were busy trying to prevent Jewish immigrants from escaping from the concentration camps of Germany be entering Britain. One example of several was the question asked in the House of Commons by Edward Doran, the Conservative MP for Tottenham, on 9 March 1933:

  Will the Home Secretary take steps to prevent any alien Jews entering this country from Germany? Hundreds of thousands of Jews are now leaving Germany and scurrying from there to this country . . .

It must be beyond historical doubt that there were many German Jews — probably thousands — who were sent to their deaths by the Nazis because they had failed in their efforts to be accepted as immigrants into Britain and other countries operating racist policies.

In the 1950s British capitalism was in a period of expansion and it was necessary to import labour power from the Commonwealth countries. Most Tories dropped their old racist views, tempted to favour the idea of a multi-racial society by the knowledge that black labour power would be cheap and obedient. During this period Tory racism was relatively isolated, but still there were some who stuck to their gut feelings, such as Sir Cyril Osborne who declared that “This is a white man’s country and I want it to remain so" (Daily Mail, 7 February 1961). Racism was nothing new for the Mail, which, in the 1930s, had supported Moseley’s Blackshirt fascists. On 4 December 1964, Osborne was writing in The Spectator that "If unlimited immigration were allowed, we should ultimately become a chocolate-coloured, Afro-Asian mixed society. That I do not want”.

Osborne represented a strand of base Toryism which has always existed within the British ruling class. By and large it is not the outlook of the modern capitalist, who is prepared to exploit without caring about the colour of the workers’ skins. In the years of expansion the Osbornes were in a minority and most racists tended to form themselves into specifically anti-immigrant organisations, such as the League of St. George. At the same time there were a few nutters like Colin Jordan and John Tyndall who resented the defeat of Nazism and wanted to organise Nuremberg Rallies in Church Halls in Peckham; these outfits were regarded by the capitalist class as socially undesirable fools — a description with which socialists could agree.

In the 1959 General Election racism was not an issue, except in Brixton where the Tory candidate tried to win votes on an anti-black manifesto. It was in the 1960s that candidates for parliament began to see the tactical use of stirring up anti-immigration feelings in order to prove their patriotism. In October 1963 Sir Edward Boyle addressed a rally of four hundred Southall residents in which he promised that a future Tory government would set up special schools for Asian children in order to segregate them from the children of white residents. In the run-up to the 1964 election racism was used as a major propaganda weapon by several Tory candidates, especially in Birmingham and the Black Country. On 6 October 1964, Alec Douglas-Home made a speech in Bradford — specially chosen as an area with a large immigrant population — in which he defended Tory immigration policies by stating that:

 What had been a trickle of immigrants from the Commonwealth was developing into a flood. We saw that if it was not brought under control it would create very serious social and economic problems. . .

In fact, Home lost the 1964 election and it was the Labour government which was left with the dirty work — which it willingly undertook — of passing legislation designed to exclude non-white British passport-holders from entering Britain.

Workers need be under no illusion: the Labour Party has a record of carrying into effect racist policies when in office, even if many of their members are opposed to racism in sentiment. As for the Tories, they cannot stand before workers making pious noises about how much they are opposed to racism. Those of us with memories will recall the Smethwick by-election campaign, in which the Tory candidate pandered to the most disgusting racist prejudices; we recall the "rivers of blood” speech which won Enoch Powell a degree of popularity in his old party which few of its leaders have ever enjoyed; we recall the 1983 Tory Party Conference at which the likes of Harvey Proctor were canvassing support for their schemes to repatriate black workers. Indeed, these may be exceptions to the more discrete national chauvinism which infests the minds of more diplomatic Tory politicians, but there need be no doubt whatsoever that the Conservative Party includes within it a substantial body of opinion which is hostile to the idea of non-British people being allowed to live in harmony alongside British people.

Why does racism exist? Partly, it is a relic of the ideology which the British ruling class used to defend their imperial activities in the past; partly it is a reflection of outdated nationalism which teaches inhabitants of one country to believe that they are superior to others. The ruling class will use racism to divide workers when it is opportune to do so, and they will use immigrants as scapegoats when capitalist crises require workers to be thrown out of employment.

The Socialist Party is hostile to racism in all of its forms. Our Principles make clear that socialism will involve the emancipation of all human beings, without distinction of race or sex. For us, the division in society is between exploiters and exploited; all workers are our brothers and sisters, whatever may be stamped on their passports, whatever colour their skin happens to be. Socialism holds out the prospect of one world inhabited by one people, emancipated consciously and politically from the ignorance of racist thinking.

Steve Coleman

Abundance is Feasible (1984)

Book Review from the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his latest book, The Economics of Feasible Socialism, (published last year by George Allen and Unwin) Alec Nove, who has made his reputation as an expert on the Russian economy, sets out his ideas on the kind of “socialism” he believes to be “feasible” within “the lifetime of a child already conceived”. His sights are not set very high, as the only alternative to private capitalism that he sees as possible in this period is the sort of milk-and-water state capitalism that might be advocated by a Labour or even an SDP supporter. In fact Nove even recognises that there would continue to be “extremists” in his “socialism” who would denounce it as state capitalism and urge workers to continue fighting for higher wages and better conditions. Indeed there would.

But it is not this part of his book that is interesting but rather the first chapter entitled “The Legacy of Marx” in which he attempts to show that socialism as a moneyless, wageless, stateless world commonwealth is not feasible, at least not in the next 70 or so years. He declares his position right from the first page:

  I feel increasingly ill-disposed towards those latter-day Marxists who airily ascribe all the world’s evils to ‘capitalism’, dismiss the Soviet experience as irrelevant, and substitute for hard thinking an image of a post-revolutionary world in which there would be no economic problems at all (or where any problems that might arise would be handled smoothly by the ‘associated producers’ of a world commonwealth).

Nove seems to have in mind people like Sweezy, Mandel, Bettelheim and Bertell Ollman but clearly socialists also fall into the category of those towards whom he is ill-disposed, even if we are not exactly “latter-day” Marxists. As a matter of fact we are the only group of people consistently defending the point of view Nove sets out to demolish since the people mentioned above basically agree with him that all that is feasible immediately is not a moneyless society, but some sort of “transitional society” lasting for up to two generations during which money, wages, the state and the rest would have to continue to exist.

Nove summarises Marx’s position as follows:

  Marx appears to have believed that technical progress already made under capitalism had fundamentally solved the problem of production, but that the shackles imposed on the forces of production by the capitalist system prevented  ‘the absolute development of social productivity of  labour’, such as would make possible ‘continual relative overproduction’. Marx is well aware that needs expand with rising production . . . Evidently there would still be scarcity in relation to needs at first, but, it seems, not for long. 

  Let us define abundance as a sufficiency to meet requirements at zero price, leaving no reasonable person dissatisfied or seeking more of anything (or at least of anything re- producible). This concept plays a crucial role in Marx’s vision of socialism/communism. Let us observe the consequences of—and then consider the consequences of not—accepting this assumption. 

 Abundance removes conflict over resource allocation, since by definition there is enough for everyone, and so there are no mutually exclusive choices, no opportunity is forgone and therefore there is no opportunity-cost. The golden age, a communist steady-state equilibrium, will have been reached. Gradual change, growth, will be simple and painless. The task of planning becomes one of simple routine; the role of economics is virtually eliminated. There is then no reason for various individuals and groups to compete, to take possession for their own use of what is freely available to all . . . If other goods were as easily and freely available as water is in Scotland, then new human attitudes would develop: acquisitiveness would wither away; property rights, and crimes related to property, would also vanish, not because the citizens would have become ‘good’ by reading Marxist books but because acquisitiveness would have lost all purpose. In other words, Marx did not say that, under socialism, there would be no conflicts over the allocation of scarce resources (oil, fish, iron ore, stockings, or whatever) but that these and other resources would not be scarce.

Apart from one or two snide expressions, this is not too bad as an outline of Marx’s position, indeed of the general socialist position (since Marx did not invent the idea of socialism but merely joined an already existing movement, helping to clarify its ideas). If anything, it errs by painting too rosy a picture of socialism. For instance, while it is true that in socialism we will be able to meet everybody’s material needs, it is not the case that there would be “no mutually exclusive choices” in socialism.

A decision to produce so much of some reproducible good will indeed not be a decision to produce less or none of some other good since resources will be adequate to produce both goods in the desired quantities, but this does not apply in the case of land. A piece of land can only be used for one purpose—build a factory on it and it can’t then be used as a playing field—and this will continue to be the case in socialism. Such decisions over land use will have to be settled consciously and democratically in the light of the preferences of those concerned.

Nove, however, has an interest in painting socialism as a problem-less “golden age” so as to be able to denounce it as “millenarian”, “utopian”, “far-fetched”, “never-never land”, “religious”, to mention just some of the terms of abuse he employs against socialism in the course of his book. He is however honest enough to admit that to prove his case he must show that abundance, as “supply balancing demand at zero price” or as we would prefer to express it where resources are sufficient to meet human needs, does not exist and could not be made to exist within “the lifetime of a child already conceived”.

“It is my contention”, he writes, “that abundance in this sense is an unacceptable assumption”:

  Over a fifty-year worldwide perspective, even on optimistic political, geological and technical assumptions, it is surely far-fetched to imagine that there will be enough for all at zero price. Saturation of demand for particular products is possible, which might bring them into the same category as water in Scotland. But is it conceivable, can it be seriously envisaged, that the world’s citizenry would be able to take whatever they wanted (even ‘reasonably’ wanted) from the amply supplied public stores. . ?

As evidence for this view he can do no more than come up with such discredited prophets of doom as the Club of Rome and the Brandt Commission and a reference to starving millions in India and China! This won’t do and is unworthy of anyone who is seriously interested in investigating whether the world’s people can avoid millions starving to death and millions more being killed in wars and other conflicts such as will be the case if socialism and abundance are not feasible and capitalism and scarcity the only possibility for the next two or more generations.

The evidence is overwhelmingly against Nove’s contention that the world’s resources, and humanity’s knowledge of how to use them, are not sufficient to adequately feed, clothe, shelter and otherwise provide for the needs of its population. We could quote from any number of technologists, agronomists, nutritionists and other scientists, but will confine ourselves to quoting W. David Hopper writing in the special issue of the Scientific American on “Food and Agriculture” that came out in September 1976:

  It is important to recognise that the world’s food problem does not arise from any ‘environment’. The limitations on abundance are to be found in the social and political structures of nations and in the economic relations among them. The unexploited global food resource is there, between Cancer and Capricorn. The successful husbandry of that resource depends upon the will and the actions of men.

So abundance already exists potentially today and it is clear that every new technological development makes the case for socialism even stronger. Nove is on especially weak ground since he contends not only that abundance could not be brought about today, but also that it is unlikely to be able to be brought into existence within the next fifty years. But technical development will continue during this period and two important advances in particular can be expected.

First, the practical application of nuclear fusion in electricity generating stations (thus providing virtually limitless energy) and the discovery of an efficient system of storing electricity (which will allow, for instance, electricity generated in off-peak periods to be stored for later use as well as allowing other forms of energy such as the sun’s rays and the wind, to be converted into electricity and stored in that form). Arthur C. Clarke in the second (1973) edition of his Profiles of the Future estimated that the first of these advances would be achieved in the 1990s and the second towards the end of the 1980s.

We hasten to add that we are not suggesting that these advances in themselves will automatically bring about socialism nor that socialism could not be established without them. We are merely pointing out that the abundance is not at all “far-fetched” as Nove claims, and certainly not in the 50-70 years to come.

In his discussion of individual consumption Nove only sees two possibilities: either individual choice expressed through purchasing power (“voting with the rouble” as the Russian economic reformers to whom he is sympathetic put it) or some bureaucratic decision as to what people should be given to consume. He adds that even if the decision about what people should be supplied with for their individual consumption were taken democratically, this still would not be superior to the market since why should 5 per cent decide what the other 49 per cent should consume? So why not leave the choice, he asks, up to the individual? Why not indeed, and this is precisely what will happen in socialism, as Nove himself vaguely recognises:

  …no better method for arriving at consumer choice is known than that of allowing the consumer to choose, and (save on farfetched assumptions of ‘abundance’) this means choosing by using his or her purchasing power, by buying in shops. . .

In other words, if the assumption of abundance is not regarded as “far-fetched” (which, as we have seen it is not) then there is an even “better method” of ensuring individual consumer choice than voting with money: free access, where there is no regulation of consumption and where, as Nove puts it, “everyone takes from the common stores the amount that he needs, and he determines what he needs”.

As can be seen, Nove is attacking socialism as we (and Marx) understand it. His arguments are very weak, but the important thing is that people should have begun to discuss socialism—as a moneyless, wageless, tradeless world commonwealth—as at least a theoretical possibility. This helps get the idea of socialism into circulation and when people realise that abundance is not far-fetched but, on the contrary, within our reach, then they can realise that a world of free access, without either bureaucratic planning or a market economy, is perfectly feasible.

In this paradoxical way then Nove has unintentionally done socialism a favour.

Adam Buick

European Elections: an appeal (1984)

Party News from the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Comrades, an appeal for support. The Parliamentary Committee of the Socialist Party, with Islington Branch and other members, are organising to contest the forthcoming European Election. The chance to bring the socialist case to workers beyond our national confines should be of concern to all socialists. The manifesto is being prepared now.

The advantages of contesting elections arc obvious, especially to Islington Branch members, who have seen a steady growth of their Branch since the last General Election which the Party contested. Elections also focus propaganda activities at a time when politics is a matter of widespread debate. So let this Election be an opportunity for all socialists to rally in support of our efforts. A general meeting to organise our campaign will be held on Thursday 26 April at 7.30 at the Prince Albert Pub. Wharfdalc Road, London N1.

World Socialist Party of Ireland (1984)

Party News from the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Belfast Branch of the WSPI is maintaining the high level of activity commenced in June of last year. The Branch meets on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of each month at the Ulster People's College, 30 Adelaide Park, Belfast.

In order to ensure the interest of visitors, a short public meeting on a pre-arranged subject takes place between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. and is followed by a Branch Business Meeting. Additionally, the Branch organises at least one Sunday meeting in the College each month. These meetings are advertised by leaflets, 3,000 of which are distributed door-to-door.

The Party has been trying to organise public debates—especially with organisations which mis-use the word “socialist”. All such groups and organisations have been challenged but, unfortunately, our opponents fight shy of this excellent opportunity to state their case! The latest refusal came from the Communist Party. Our secretary had written to the CP requesting a debate, and after many weeks we got our answer, verbally— through a CP member: the Communist Party was too busy! The thought occurs that maybe they are busy “boring from within"—a task they must be performing very quietly, especially since there is no “mass party” of Labour fakirs here. Beneath the political cowardice of the CP's response is the comforting thought that even their leaders must know that their record and policies arc indefensible.

Next month, the Party is putting on one of the special weeks of socialist activity that have now become a feature of our propaganda strategy. Comrade Coleman of Islington Branch of the SPGB will be our working guest and speak at meetings in Belfast and Derry—or Londonderry. if you like. By either name it is an area of the grossest deprivation and a fitting monument to the obscene system that creates the material conditions in which prisoners of poverty quarrel over the name of their prison.

Press Secretary, WSPI

Leninism v Democratic Socialism (1984)

From the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the end of the nineteenth century the peasantry accounted for eighty-five per cent of the total Russian population of one hundred and fifty million. The “revolutionary" activities of the most recent past had been confined to a group of intellectuals who believed in “going to the people", that is to say mingling with the peasantry at large so as to spread their ideas. These Narodniks. as they were known, held that the revolutionary potential to overthrow the tyranny of Tsardom lay with the mass of peasants. This was understandable since at the time Russia, in terms of industrial development, was backward in comparison with the more highly developed Western economies, with their correspondingly large urban working class.

The Narodniks, as typified by the "People’s Will” group, believed in terrorism and teaching of anarchy as the means to revolution. They were responsible for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. and the subsequent treatment of their members when caught did little to deter others from following the futile policy of violent minority action. In fact, six years later, Lenin’s brother Alexander was executed for complicity in a plot to assassinate Alexander III. under the auspices of the same organisation.

The "People’s Will" had been formed after a split in the Narodnik organisation "Land and Freedom”, which was set up in 1876 under the influence of the prominent anarchist Bakunin, who advocated such measures as the razing of capital cities and, when drinking, toasted "the destruction of public order and the unleashing of evil passions".

Concurrent with the establishment, at the turn of the century, of large-scale Russian industry, there arose a movement known as the League of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class, whose number came to include one Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov. This Ulyanov, who became better known as Lenin, was a keen follower of Plekhanov, who had previously split from the "People’s Will" on the issue of individual terrorism. Plekhanov had founded the “Liberation of Labour" group, dedicated to rejection of the old Narodnik ideas in favour of using the incipient industrial working class as the agent of revolution. Through his association with Plekhanov, Lenin began to formulate an idea for a new party organisation using new tactics based on this growing proletariat. Arrested in 1895 for distributing agitational pamphlets, the subsequent period of exile gave him time to consolidate these ideas.

Professional revolutionaries 
Lenin made no secret of his desire to build an organisation of revolutionary leaders who would devote their abilities to imposing their will on the ignorant mass of porkers. The arrogance of this policy is clearly shown in the 1902 pamphlet ‘What is to he Done?': “As I have stated repeatedly, by ‘wise men’ in connection with organisation, I mean professional revolutionaries". [1]

On the question of “vanguardist” professionals. Marx and Engels had unequivocally stated some twenty years previously:

  When the International was formed we expressly formulated the battle cry: the emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the working class itself. We cannot therefore co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic persons from the upper and lower middle classes. [2]

This compares interestingly with Lenin’s blatant leadership policy:

  The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness . . . The theory of Socialism, however, grew out of the philosophical, historical and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status, the founders of modern Scientific Socialism, Marx and Engels, belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. [3]

Nobody who claims to take a scientific view of history could deny that What is to be Done? was a reflection of the conditions of the day — conspiracy and violent minority action being a logical product of a non-democratic feudal system of society. But in fact Lenin did not abandon the policy of elitism even when the justification for it had disappeared. Fifteen years later he announced that if it were necessary for everybody to have developed intellectually to the level of desiring socialism, then we would have to wait five hundred years. [4] There is a wealth of evidence scattered throughout Lenin’s political career to show his contempt for the ability of the workers to understand socialism, and his conviction that they would have to be led to it by an elite of professionals. In 1917 a former colleague of Lenin’s described him as “a candidate for a European throne vacant for thirty years, the throne of Bakunin". [5]

Lenin had never really departed from the policy advocated by Peter Tkachev, who some twenty-seven years earlier stated:

  A real revolution can only be brought about in one way: through the seizure of power by revolutionists . . .
  The revolutionary minority, having freed the people from the yoke of fear and terror, provides an opportunity for the people to manifest their revolutionary destructive power. [6]

Views on the coming revolution
After the Second Party Congress of 1903 the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party split into two on the issue of whether the party should be constituted as a democratic mass party or as a small, centralised, disciplined elite. Tactical differences also developed between the “Bolsheviks” and “Mensheviks” (from the Russian words for majority and minority respectively). Both groups saw the necessity for Russia to undergo a preliminary capitalist revolution before socialism could even be considered—a view quite in accordance with the Marxian Materialist Conception of History. No one expressed this formulation more forcefully than Lenin, who wrote quite unambiguously that "Marxism has irrevocably broken with the Narodnik and anarchist gibberish that Russia for instance can bypass capitalist development, [7] and that . . . the democratic revolution will not immediately overstep the bounds of bourgeois social economic relationships.” [8]

The Mensheviks maintained that the proletariat, the working class, had no hope of gaining political power for their own ends without the prior establishment of this “bourgeois-democratic” regime. Only under these circumstances, with workers meanwhile negotiating some interim reforms, could conditions develop under which the working class would be able to lake power for themselves in order to establish socialism.

The Mensheviks therefore postponed any direct revolutionary action to some remote unforeseeable future, and openly advocated support for the up-and-coming Russian capitalist class in its struggle for supremacy over the reigning autocracy. The Mensheviks were therefore the faction most closely to be associated with the “revisionist” tendency in the German Social Democratic Workers’ Party, as propounded by Eduard Bernstein. These members rejected conspiratorial organisation in favour of what was considered by the Bolsheviks to be a too-deterministic approach.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks took the attitude that, due to the weakness of the developing capitalist class in Russia at that time, their coming superiority as a class could only be effected if helped by an alliance between the proletariat and the numerically superior peasantry. Under this dictatorship of workers and peasants, the richer section of the peasantry could then be dispensed with, leaving the working class and the “semi-proletarian” element of the peasantry in control:

  The proletariat must carry through to completion the democratic revolution, by uniting itself to the mass of the peasantry, in order to crush by force the opposition of the autocracy and to paralyse the instability of the bourgeoisie. The proletariat must complete the Socialist revolution by uniting to itself the mass of semi-proletarian elements in the population, in order to break by force the opposition of the bourgeoisie and to paralyse the instability of the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie. [9]

Dictatorship of the proletariat
It is significant that this peasant/worker alliance was not originally intended to constitute the "dictatorship of the proletariat” — a phrase used by Marx when he was optimistic about the establishment of socialism in the near future. He envisaged a situation where the workers would have taken democratic control but the forces of wealth production had not yet been sufficiently developed to allow free access. Hence the need for a democratic society with the proletariat in political control but not yet fully at the level where it would be possible to have access based on the principle “from each according to his ability to each according to his needs”. [10]

This idea of “dictatorship” was later used by Lenin to justify a “two-stage” theory of socialist development, made necessary by his (at first) unique interpretation of the events at the end of 1917. The Bolshevik idea was that there would follow, in the wake of their seizure of power, a series of revolutions in Western Europe, thereby consolidating the world revolution.

The third opinion on the debate over the nature of the coming revolution was provided by Leon Trotsky, who argued that the proletariat, having carried out the initial revolution, could scarcely be expected to relinquish state power afterwards. He held that the revolution would become "permanent” through the institution by the workers of nationalisation measures, while waiting for the rest of the European workers to take the lead from Russia's good example. Originally, Lenin maintained that the peasants and European workers would have to support the revolution from the outset. Trotsky arguing on the other hand that their support would constitute the final phase of the revolution.

So, Lenin's revolutionary horizon was at first no broader than a “dictatorship" of workers and peasants. This attitude was to change dramatically after the first, February, revolution of 1917. After his return in April. Lenin published his famous April Theses, one of which was that the worldwide socialist revolution had, in fact, begun. Most of Lenin's own comrades were staggered by this interpretation, even to the extent that he was interrupted with cries of, “delerium, the delerium of a madman”, [11] and it was widely believed that he would come to his senses when he had time properly to assess the true situation.

What is to be done?
Leninist and Trotskyist organisations to this day attempt to discredit the use of the. admittedly limited, democratic institutions as a vehicle for social revolution. "Parliamentary Cretinism”, to use Marx's term, is indeed doomed to failure — meaning the use of the capitalist institution to pass legislative reforms which are supposed to lead, ultimately, to a "fairer” society. However, the system of more-or-less democracy which goes with the Parliamentary institution can serve as a useful measure of the prerequisite for a successful revolution — working class consciousness.

Marx and Engels recognised the growing value of using suffrage as an expression of popular will. Marx wrote in 1880:

  . . . collective appropriation must be striven for by all means that are available to the proletariat. including universal suffrage, which will thus be transformed from the instrument of fraud that it has been till now, into an instrument of emancipation. [12]

The out of date vanguardist methods of violent insurrection were finally laid to rest by Friedrich Engels at the end of the nineteenth century, when he wrote in his introduction to Marx's Class Struggles in France 1848-1850,

  The time is past for revolutions carried through by small minorities at the head of unconscious masses . . . the masses themselves must participate, must understand what is at stake and why they must act. That much the history of the last fifty years has taught us. But so that the masses may understand what is to be done, long and persistent work is required . . . even in France the Socialists realise more and more that no durable success is possible unless they win over in advance the great mass of the people. . . . The slow work of propaganda and parliamentary activity are here also recognised as the next task of the party. [13]

Soviets and the state
The soviet, or council, was the institution that flourished in Russia at the beginning of the abortive 1905 revolution, in the absence of any legally-sanctioned representative body of political opinion. Obviously, the form of democratic representation used by the working class depends ultimately on the prevailing political and economic conditions at that time. However, present-day advocates of the soviet as a means to "workers' control” are adamant that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready made state machinery, and wield for its own purposes"; [14] this is the article of faith still propounded in the Trotskyist paper Socialist Worker.

  It was however the view of Marx and Engels, authors of the above passage, that it was necessary for their workers to take control of the state machinery before it could be used against the capitalist class. This , seeming paradox was resolved some years later when Engels clarified the specific point in a letter to Bernstein:

  As to your former enquiry regarding the passage in the preface of the Manifesto. . . . It is simply a question of showing that the victorious proletariat must first refashion the old bureaucratic, administratively centralised state power before it can use it for its own purposes. . . . [15]

The state is after all the executive body of the ruling class, even if run from top to bottom by members of the working class. The army and the police force, by virtue of their particularly unpleasant manifestations of repression and brutality, have come to be regarded by some as a force unto themselves, impermeable to socialist ideas. The fact remains, however, that the police and army are made up of workers who are forced to sell their ability to work in whichever way they can. The members of these repressive state institutions are no less susceptible to socialist ideas than is any other body of people.

A democratically-expressed majority is the only way to ensure that there will be a sufficiently large number of people aware of how society will need to be run and prepared to assert it. As Rosa Luxemburg said, with regard to the Bolshevik closure of an unfavourable Constituent Assembly:
   . . . the remedy which Trotsky and Lenin have found, the elimination of democracy as such, is worse than the disease it is supposed to cure; for it stops up the very living source from which alone can come the correction of all the innate shortcomings of social institutions. That source is the active, untrammeled, energetic political life of the broadest masses of the people. [16]

P. G. Robinson

References
[1] What is to he Done?, p121 (Progress, Moscow 1978).
[2] Selected Correspondence — Marx and Engels, p307 (Progress 1975).
[3] Lenin, op.cit, p31.
[4] Ten Days that Shook the World, John Reed, p263 (Penguin).
[5] Quoted in The Bolshevik Revolution, Vol. I. E.H. Carr, p90 (Pelican 1983).
[6] Quoted in D. Shub’s biography, Lenin, p26 (Pelican 1966).
[7] "Two Tactics in Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution". Lenin, p76 Selected Works (Progress Moscow 1977).
[8] ibid, p82.
[9] ibid, p147.
[10] Critique of the Gotha Programme, p247 (Pelican Marx Library 1974).
[11] Carr, op.cit, p90.
[12] "Introduction to the Programme of French Workers’ Party". p247 (Pelican Marx Library 1974).
[13] Introduction to Marx’s "Class Struggles in Trance, 1848-1850". p18 (Progress 1972).
[14] Communist Manifesto, Preface to 1872 edition. p2 (Peking 1970).
[15] Selected Correspondence — Marx and Engels, p345. (Progress Moscow 1975).
[16] The Russian Revolution, Rosa Luxemburg. p38 (Slienger, London 1977).

Right minded lot (1984)

From the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

At this very moment there must be many young people, in universities and trade unions nurturing ambitions, and they had better realise that climbing to the top of the greasy pole is more than a simple matter of putting forward a reasoned, effective policy in the expectation that voters will respond. Voters — for the present, at any rate — don’t operate like that: they are more easily impressed by a seductive, instantly recognisable personality, packaged and presented. This means that aspiring occupants of Number Ten must spend some time identifying their supporters. They must ask themselves, for example, if their appeal is stronger with younger voters? Will family women and men crowd into the polling booths for them? Are they acceptable to foaming patriots or to what is known as ethnic minorities? There is a great deal of lucrative work here for opinion pollsters, speech writers, camera operators and other artists in deception. If they get it right the candidate identifies a sort of constituency of support, scattered among the entire electorate. Work can then begin on appeasing and enlarging this constituency.

This is by no means a recent trend in politics. In the twenties, Stanley Baldwin was at pains to present the image of a plain, simple man of goodwill, which presumably appealed to voters who thought of themselves in the same way. Here is a typically reticent self-portrait by Baldwin, in October 1923:

  I am not a man to play with a pledge . . . I am not a clever man. I know nothing of political tactics . . .

These modest words were in a speech in which Baldwin announced that he was about to go back on a pledge given by his predecessor, Bonar Law, not to impose protective import duties. He fought the next election on the issue, except that the result was a Labour government under Ramsay Macdonald, who would never have denied that he was a clever man.

Forty years later another plain and simple man who, like Baldwin, carefully cultivated a reassuring media manner (and who also distracted his audiences with clouds of pipe smoke) was in the business of playing with pledges while posing as a leader of unshakeable principle. Harold Wilson came to power after nurturing a constituency rather different from Baldwin’s. Some time before his victory in the 1964 election, he had outlined its boundaries to his henchman Richard Crossman. They were discussing Labour’s apparent failure to hold the votes of "young scientists, technologists and specialists’’:

  . . .  the only way to win them back is to make Labour the party of science. At present we are treating science as a gimmick . . . At our next conference we have got to take them seriously.

Labour’s argument was simple enough to have come from a Baldwin. The Tories had shamefully neglected the development of the latest productive technology; it was too modern a concept for them to grasp, as they tramped the grouse moors among the enfeebling mesh of the old boy network. So we had stop-go production, crisis, wage restraint. a lack of many of the good things in life. As a Labour government remedied this through investment in advanced technology productivity would soar and there would be prosperity and security for everyone — as well as an exalted place in history for Harold Wilson. It was all set out in their 1964 manifesto:

  If we are to get a dynamic and expanding economy, it is essential that new and effective ways are found for injecting modern technology into our industries.

What actually happened was that the realities of capitalism, which take no account of election promises, were too much for the Wilson government. Caught in the inevitable tangle of financial and economic crises, they were soon reduced to looking for excuses for their failure to organise the promised abundance through the white hot technological revolution. Poverty, slums, class conflict, wars, all remained; Wilson’s fine words became an historical embarrassment.

Since then — and in particular since their defeats in 1979 and 1983 — the Labour Party have been wondering what happened to the constituency of scientists and technologists which Wilson thought he had captured for a lifetime. One opinion is that a lot of the people known to psephologists, sociologists and market researchers as "skilled workers” have switched their votes to the Tories, on the grounds that they have some stake in capitalism which is worth defending and that this is best left to a Conservative government. If this is true, it may indicate a certain change in mood among working-class voters. This change is nothing too dramatic; the working class are not about to discard all the parties of capitalism and think in terms of a radical social revolution. But it could mean the replacement of the aggressive, expansive propaganda of Wilson’s white-hot technological revolution by defensive, retractive, in-turned preferences. In 1929. during that other slump. Baldwin appealed to the voters with the slogan of Safety First. In 1984, with over 3 million out of work, successful politicians may have stopped courting the constituency of youthful scientists and turned instead to that of the Right Minded People.

Of course this cultivation of a constituency is uncomplicated by any concern for political principles. The object is to garner votes, whatever the opinions and desires of the voters. This sordid, sterile business is described in Carol Thatcher’s Diary of an Election (a book of stupefying banality and irrelevance). Hoping for a best-seller, Carol faithfully accompanied Mum and Dad and Mark around the country during the last election. One morning, perhaps in an analytical mood, she took breakfast with Chris Lawson, the Conservative Party’s director of marketing, who instrueted her in the subtleties of marketing a discredited capitalist party:

 Target groups are, of course, the first-time voters, the young housewives, C1s, C2s, skilled technicians, and the older people — they’ve always been very strongly Conservative — but the other groups have moved with us too.

Not a word about political principle, or human interests. Like Carol Thatcher herself. Lawson’s words are insulated from the real world of suffering and repression, about which so much needs to be done so urgently. It seems inevitable that out of the Tory victory the constituency of Right Minded People should emerge, with a clutch of university-bred gurus to draw its theoretical geography — like Roger Scruton, Maurice Cowling and the deranged ex-lefty Paul Johnson. In the Sunday Times Magazine of 4 March 1984 Scruton mapped out his theories:

  I think of conservatism as growing out of the rootedness of a man's history. Man is a fragile being whose happiness depends on finding his home. Attempts to find long-term strategic solutions are doomed: one needs the family, and private property.

In other words, a Right Minded Person believes in patriotism, law and order, and keeping your place. What kind of challenge do these beliefs present?

To begin with, patriotism is a demonstrably one-way affair, which insists that the interests of the British capitalist class should be dominant but does not allow the same belief to patriots in, say, Russia and Argentina about the interests of their capitalist class because they are obviously Wrong Minded People. This prejudice extends into the field of economic rivalry. The recent embarrassing episode of Mark Thatcher (failed accountant, racing driver and rally competitor — would you buy a building from this man?) and the University of Oman was dismissed by the Prime Minister with the assertion that she “bats for Britain”. To all Right Minded People, this recourse to patriotism was enough to stifle all the criticism and to clear the matter up beyond further argument.

Similar mental juggling must be performed on the issue of Law and Order, which are accepted by all Right Minded People as essential in any civilised society. But there are varying definitions, and degrees, of law and order; in the case of the theft of the Falkland Islands, and their eventual ownership by the Coalite Group, the law can be refashioned to suit the interests of the owners and the wildest of disorder can be created to protect those interests. Right Minded People subdue any doubts about this in their confidence that nobody has anything to fear from the law provided they accept one or two minor restraints such as the class structure of capitalism and the privileged standing which this gives a small, parasitic minority.

This compliance can otherwise be called Knowing Your Place, which is strongly advocated by the Right Minded People. For example, people like miners, lorry drivers and car industry workers should work very hard indeed because that is their lot under capitalism and in any case it is good for the country that they should do so. But they think differently about the ruling class, whose indolence and uselessness is enviably glamorous and proves their inborn superiority. Workers who dare to strike are excoriated because strikes interrupt production. which is not good for the country, but it is quite acceptable for the capitalist class to shut coal mines and factories which are unprofitable because this is the sort of interruption of production which is. mysteriously. good for the country.

It should not be assumed that, because the constituency of the Right Minded People has come into its own under the Thatcher governments, it is always linked to the Tories. Of course Thatcher is a splendid model for it. with her voice, her hair-dos and dresses which even the Grantham Women’s Institute might find too conventional. In her infamous speech in 1978, about immigrants “swamping" the people in this country, she claimed that ". . . the British character has done so much for democracy, for law. and done so much throughout the world . . .". which must have struck just the right chord in the minds of the Right Minded People. But Labour leaders have also done a great deal to make a similar appeal to these political neurotics. They have crushed strikes, urged workers to break picket lines, set up the super-coercive Special Patrol Group, devotedly prosecuted British capitalism's wars, paid ardent respects to the royal and aristocratic figureheads of the ruling classes.

How do we free ourselves of this sordid hypocrisy, where do we find some optimism about human society? Socialists do not cultivate a constituency: we make no appeal for votes. We do not fashion a policy to fit ignorance and prejudice. The movement for a new society must be one of understanding and participation. It has no appeal for the Right Minded People but works to put people in their right mind.

Ivan

Socialism or Reformism? (1984)

From the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

When it comes down to it there is no real choice between reform and revolution. These are not two alternative ways of reaching the same goal. Certainly people can try to reform capitalism to make it work in the interest of all, but they can never succeed. All their efforts are wasted. The only way forward is social revolution, in the sense of rapidly abolishing present-day society by a political act and establishing a new and different society in its place.

The reason for this is clear. Capitalism is an economic system which operates according to economic laws which cannot be changed by human action, and which human beings have to accept and submit to in the same way as they do to natural forces like the weather and the tides. But there is a difference between the economic forces of capitalism and the tides in that the former only operate because humans chose to keep in being the system of production for sale on a market with a view to profit. If people decided to end this system, then these forces would cease to operate. But, as we have explained, there is no point in accepting to work within this system and then trying to stop these economic forces operating. It can't be done. As long as capitalism remains its economic laws will continue to function roughly like the tides.

Essentially we are talking about people being in charge of the production of the wealth they must have to survive. This is what socialism is about: subjecting production to conscious human control so that it can be directed to the single purpose of turning out goods and services to satisfy human needs. Why should this not be possible? After all, production for use — production to satisfy human needs — is the logical purpose of producing wealth.

Production to satisfy human needs is possible, but it requires a fundamental social change to make it a reality. Basically, all that is in and on the earth must become the common property of everyone. In other words, there must no longer be any territorial rights or any private property rights over any part of the globe. The farms, factories, mines and all other places where wealth is produced will not belong to anybody. This means that a section only of society would no longer stand between the rest of society and the means of production. Social classes would cease to exist and all men and women would stand in equal relationship to the means of production as free and equal members of a classless community.

Naturally, in order to use the commonly owned means of wealth production, people would have to organise themselves and devise procedures for allowing them to be put in motion. This brings us to the second basic feature of production: democratic control. A certain degree of democratic control exists in some capitalist countries today, but it is very limited and only applies to the operation of certain political institutions at local and national level. In a socialist society democratic control will extend to all aspects of social life, including — and in fact in particular — decisions about the production of wealth. This is what production is about: bringing the production and distribution of wealth under conscious human control which, in a classless community of free and equal men and women, can only be democratic control. Otherwise society would no longer be classless: access to. and control over, the means of production would then remain in the hands of the minority. This is why democracy and socialism are inseparable. There is no choice about the matter. An undemocratic socialism is a contradiction in terms. Socialism is democratic or it is not socialism.

The third feature of socialism is production for use, and in a sense follows from the other two. If the means of production are commonly owned and democratically controlled, there is only one end for which they can and will be used: to produce wealth to satisfy the needs, individual and collective, of the classless community. But another way, common ownership and democratic control is the only framework in which this natural, logical object of production satisfying human needs can be achieved.

When we say production for use we mean production solely for use. In socialism wealth no longer will be produced for sale; buying and selling and all that goes with it money, prices, wages, profits, banks, and so on — will have no place; they will, in fact, have no sense in socialism. Since the means of production will be commonly owned, it follows that what is produced will also be commonly owned — that is, by the classless community of free men and women who will have produced it. In these circumstances the question of selling what has been produced just would not — could not — arise. For how can what is commonly owned be sold to those who commonly own it?

The problem (if that is the right word) that will arise will be of a quite different nature. It will be how to distribute what has been produced among members of the community. Advocates of common ownership have argued about this from ancient times but until the end of the last century this argument was always — and inevitably — conducted in terms of sharing out a limited amount. The suggestions for doing this were many and various. Some suggested equal sharing, others a points system based on a hierarchy of needs; others wanted to link what people received to what they had contributed to production in terms of hours of work. Any of these systems would have been immensely more equal than what happens under capitalism, but nowadays we need no longer think in terms of having to share out fairly a limited amount. Since the turn of the century, we have left the Age of Scarcity and entered the Age of Abundance — potential abundance. that is. To the extent that scarcity survives today, as of course it very much does, this is an artificial scarcity maintained by the economic laws of capitalism, and particularly its basic principle of "No Profit, No Production".

On the basis of common ownership and democratic control, the artificial barrier to the production of abundance (that is, the profit motive) will be removed and we shall be able to produce an abundance of the basic things — food, clothing, shelter — which people need to enjoy life. Material wants and poverty can be banished for ever. Technologically speaking, there is no reason why any man, woman or child in any part of the world should starve or go without proper shelter. Socialism will allow this technological possibility to be realised, which will no doubt have to be one of the first priorities of socialism when it is established.

How to distribute this abundance of basic necessities? The answer is simple. Let people come and take what they need. Wealth could be produced in such abundance today that there is no need to ration access to it. The free access to consumer goods and services which was always the long-term aim of the nineteenth century socialists and communists can now be instituted with the establishment of socialism. Free access — which we can list as the fourth basic feature of socialism after common ownership, democratic control and production solely for use — means exactly what it says. People will be able to come to the places where the basic necessities of life will be stored and freely take away what they consider they need. They themselves will judge what they need; individuals will determine their own needs. In conditions of permanent abundance people will have no reason to take more than they need. To do so would be pointless. People won’t hoard basic necessities in a socialist society any more than they hoard the water which they draw freely from their taps today. They will simply take what they need from the stores as and when they need it. Ensuring that these stores are always stocked with what people need will be no problem given the technological possibility of producing in abundance. This will essentially be a question of stock control.

So common ownership, democratic control, production for use. free access; these are the essential features of the society which must replace capitalism if the problems facing people today are to be solved. Clearly it is not the sort of society that can be introduced gradually within capitalism. We either have common ownership or some sort of class ownership, private or state. We either have production for use or production for sale. In both cases the one excludes the other.

Certainly, claims have been made to introduce elements of “socialism” into capitalism as a way of gradually transforming society, but they have never worked. In the early days of the Labour Party nationalisation was seen as a step towards common ownership. In fact, nationalisation never even superseded private ownership. In Britain the private owners were merely transformed from shareholders into government bondholders and continued to receive a property income as interest on their bonds rather than dividends on their shares, and the nationalised industries have always been profit-seeking enterprises. In fact, it was a Labour government — under Harold Wilson in 1967 — which laid down that nationalised industries should seek to achieve the same rate of profit on their new investment projects as any equivalent private enterprise. Nationalisation, far from being a step towards socialism, has merely meant state capitalism. Similarly, “planning” was originally seen as an attempt to impose production for use instead of for profit. In practice however planning has either been a complete failure because capitalism is an anarchic, unplannable system, or else has been the planned exploitation of the wage and salary earning class in countries like Russia and China.

So once again we arrive at the same conclusion. Reformism cannot succeed in making capitalism work in the interest of the workers, the majority. Neither can it succeed in gradually transforming capitalism into socialism. The only way forward is social revolution — not in the sense of barricades, street battles and executions, but of a rapid change in the basis of society.

This is what socialists are working for, but it is not we who are going to establish socialism. We could not do it. No minority can. By its very nature as a democratic, responsible society, socialism can only be established by a majority who understand and want it. After all, how could a minority force people to establish a society based on voluntary co-operation and democratic decision-making?

This is why all the efforts of socialists are directed towards helping to spread the idea that there is an alternative to capitalism with its artificial scarcity, organised waste, wars and threats of war. insecurity and anxiety. Our role is to inform people about this and get people to want to change society and to organise to do this.

Adam Buick

Letters: Socialists against religion (1984)

Letters to the Editors from the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists against religion

Dear Editors.

In the January edition of your journal (p.9) you talk of religious indoctrination and "tedious and absurd fairy stories". Is this view on religion universally representative of the Socialist Party or is it simply the personal prejudice of one of its members? (Which is presumably acceptable to an elected editorial board.)

In the Declaration of Principles there is no mention of atheism or agnosticism as being a prerequisite for membership of the party. Does this mean that someone having a religious faith and also desiring to help solve the problems of the world can join the party? Or is it the ease that anyone who believes in supernatural powers; and who, in other words, rejects the rigid historical materialism of Engels (and to a lesser extent Marx) will be prevented from furthering the cause of socialism?

If the Socialist Party regards the fundamental message of Christianity and many other religions, namely, "love your neighbour", as being incompatible with their aims because it is not founded on materialistic and scientific argument, then I believe that this proviso should be included in the Declaration of Principles.

S P Hayhurst 

Swansea

Reply:

The Socialist Standard is the official journal of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and states the socialist attitude on current issues as well as theoretical matters. The piece in the January number put the socialist ease about religion, although of course the manner in which it was put would vary from member to member, so that the wording might not suit all socialists. Our opposition to religion is not a prejudice, it is not a judgement made before having any facts or evidence. We argue that religion is opposed to working class interests, hampers the spread of socialist consciousness and with all this has no scientific evidence to support it. On no grounds can it be justified.

While this is not explicitly stated in our Declaration of Principles, the policy is there by clear implication (as is the case with other issues, such as our opposition to racism and our support for trade unionism) in the materialistic interpretation of human history. This is an essential part of the socialist case; we therefore reject any applicant for membership who holds religious views, or who believes in the supernatural, because these attitudes are not compatible with a vital part of our case. Of course there are people who hold such views and who also have a genuine desire to do something about the problems of capitalism. Such people are sincere but also confused on matters which are vital to socialism and cannot therefore be accepted into our party. Ideas like "loving your neighbour" sound constructive but in themselves they are not useful; the words have been on the lips of many a Christian who saw no difficulty in supporting the wars of capitalism, in which neighbours were emphatically not to be loved. The case for socialism does not rest on such abstract idealism but on scientific materialism and that is why we are opposed to all religion and belief in a supernatural.

The End of Feudalism

Dear Editors.

In his excellent survey "England as Marx's Model" in your January 1984 issue, ALB rightly describes Marx's section on primitive accumulation in Volume 1 of Capital as “virtually a short history of the economic and social development of England from the middle of the sixteenth century”. In my view, however, it is far more than this since it is also here that Marx unerringly places the destruction of the English peasantry in Tudor England, linking this event dialectically with the termination of feudal social and economic arrangements.

This is in direct contradistinction to bourgeois historiography which continues to treat Tudor land enclosure as a movement localised both in time and space, i.e. as merely a reaction by landowners to an advance in wool prices and affecting only limited areas of England. Bourgeois economic historians continue to ascribe the disappearance of the English peasant to the activities of the Commissioners of Enclosure in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—an interpretation which effectively isolates the movement from its real roots in the revolution in the mode of production occurring two centuries earlier.

This is all the more remarkable since it is now fifty-seven years since the (non-Marxist) economic historian, Ms E. Davies, in a brilliant study of the Land-Tax Assessments, discovered to her own surprise that, by the time the Commissioners came round, the English peasant had been gone from time immemorial. Marx was thus confirmed.

The question arises, are (at least some) bourgeois scholars unconscious Marxists?

Joseph Beckman

Egerton

Visions

Dear Editors.

Most socialists are understandably reluctant to set out a detailed blueprint of the kind of society they ultimately envisage. But clearly both activists and sympathisers must have, without falling into utopianism, a realistic vision of the outlines of a socialist society. To help with research I am doing in this area, I'd like to hear from readers what their vision is.

James Parris

c/o Flat 1

6 Oakden Street

London SE11

The Guardian—An Important Correction (1984)

From the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Guardian is famous for its misprints, some of which are hilarious, but a mistake which has recently recurred in our regular announcement in the paper’s small ads columns is by no means funny.

The socialist case is, and always has been, that socialism can come about only through democratic action by a working class majority, throughout the world, but for some reason the Guardian's misprint operative keeps inserting the word “minority” for “majority”, regardless of the fact that to talk about democratic action by a minority is nonsense. More importantly, it is directly opposite to our case and to what we are trying to say in the ad.

We apologise for their mistake. We hope no worker has been put off by it. We also hope that no worker has read it and come to the conclusion that the SPGB is just another bunch of crazy, undemocratic elitists. The socialist revolution will be a majority, democratic act—the first social revolution in human history in the interests of the majority.

Priorities (1984)

From the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Torvill and Dean were cheered by MPs in the House of Commons last night. Winding up a debate on housing benefits, the Social Security Minister of State, Dr Rhodes Boyson said to cheers: "I do think even housing benefits are put into perspective on occasions like this". (Guardian, 15 February, 1984.)

A Lesson for CND (1984)

Editorial from the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

While some CNDers, together with the Labour Party, are campaigning for more so-called conventional weapons to maintain British military strength if it unilaterally abandons nuclear weapons, a conventional war has been raging in the Gulf area for about four years. Estimates of the numbers killed to date vary between 200,000 and 500,000, proof (if any were needed) that conventional weapons can be just as deadly as nuclear ones. But there is another aspect of this war which completely undermines the CND case for trying to ban the use of one particular type of weapon.

As a result of incidents during the First World War. most states pledged themselves, in a Convention signed in Geneva in 1925, not to use chemical weapons (or rather poison gas weapons since all bombs are chemical) in their wars with each other. Iraq signed this Convention when it became independent and thus could wage war on its own account. Yet the evidence now seems to be that it has nevertheless used poison gas, perhaps even the dreaded “mustard gas" of the First World War, in its war with Iran.

Apparently the rulers of Iraq, who must fear that they are eventually going to lose this war, have decided that the preservation of their state and rule is more important than any “scrap of paper" they may have signed (the only papers deposited in Geneva in which they are interested will be their Swiss bank accounts) and that this desperate situation justifies the use of poison gas to try to stop the advance of the numerically superior Iranian army. Had they possessed nuclear weapons they would no doubt have used them . . . once again, even if they had signed a Convention banning them for which CND is pathetically campaigning.

Incidentally, the 1925 Geneva Convention bans the use, but not the manufacture or the stockpiling, of such weapons. Thus research into chemical and biological weapons (banned by a similar worthless Convention in 1972) continues in all the major states of the world, including Britain. These states also have stockpiles of such weapons: Russia’s is said to amount to 400.000 tonnes and America's to 150.000 tonnes. And of course it may well have been from one of these stockpiles that Iraq got its supplies, since exporting arms has always been one way of helping the balance of trade.

The fact is that, in a war-prone society divided into competing armed states it is quite unrealistic to expect that the use of particular weapons of war can be suppressed. As long as the drive to conflict and war exists—and under capitalism there will always be economic conflicts over markets, trade routes, investment outlets and sources of raw materials which will break out from time to time into open warfare — rulers will always be tempted to use all available weapons, including those that they may have formally agreed not to. Even if the manufacture and stockpiling of poison gas — or nuclear weapons — were also to be formally banned the knowledge of how to manufacture them never can be.

This is why the only way to prevent their use, and indeed of all weapons down to the rifle and the bow and arrow, is to create a society in which there would be no built-in tendency towards first economic and then military conflict. In other words to abolish capitalism and replace it by world socialism. This is why the only effective way to fight war and the threat of war is to struggle for world socialism, rather than flounder about in campaigns to try to ban particular weapons of war in a war-prone society.

Running Commentary: Hart Attack (1984)

The Running Commentary from the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hart Attack

Senator Gary Hart's primary campaign is looking rather like an old Mickey Rooney movie, with its message that money doesn't matter and that what does matter is being young, honest, humane . . .

Hart claims to bring the very stuff of youth—freshness, vitality, courage—to the election and he is not too abashed to admit that, compared to the overflowing coffers of Walter Mondale, his is an impecunious campaign. If the early primary results are any guide, workers all over America may be about to fall for this, and perhaps in November make a choice between Hart and the wrinkled, somnolent Reagan.

Of course we have seen this all before, many times and in many countries. It is very often a profitable political tactic, to promote a candidate on personal characteristics which mark them out from the person they are to challenge and to assert that these characteristics are a virtue in themselves. Thus the ageing, aristocratic land owner Douglas-Home was challenged by young, ex-grammar schoolboy Wilson. After Eisenhower, Kennedy was able to make his promise to "get America moving again" sound like a battle hymn of American youth. And what myths have been fashioned, and have lived on, about Kennedy's time in office.

It is to be expected that Hart should be compared with Kennedy; he is not the first American politician to try to gain from those myths. But workers who are seduced by such propaganda might take pause to recall what happened to Kennedy, and to Wilson, when the realities of capitalism overcame their posturing. They might remember how the ambitions turned sour, the promises were forgotten, the wizard was exposed as a tawdry trickster.

There is no reason to believe that if Hart makes it to the White House he will succeed where Kennedy, Johnson and Carter failed. He can offer nothing new; he must deal in the same outworn policies which have time and again been discredited, even if they are offered with his own gloss of striving youth.

No politician, whatever their age or other attributes, has ever been able to control capitalism. None has been able to cajole, or charm, the system's problems into abolishing themselves. That can come about only through a social revolution, for which society will need a working class invulnerable to all political seduction.

Ring down the curtain, not just on Hart but on everything he represents.

On the Move

One of the most revered names in the Labour Party is that of Noel-Baker. The patriarch of this clan was Philip, a frail embodiment of pacifist humbug, a spectral figure whose performance at party conferences often went some way to reassure unhappy delegates that Labour's heart was in the right place, and so reconcile them to accept the most bellicose of policies.

So it was predictable that Philip’s son, Francis, should also join the Labour Party and carry the honoured name into the Commons in the bright young intake of 1945, who outraged parliamentary customs by singing The Red Flag in the House and who were sure that they would set Britain's feet on the road to the new Jerusalem.

The rest, as they say, is history — the disillusionment with Attlee and his crew as they steered British capitalism through the early post-war years; then the long wilderness of opposition: then the heady euphoria of Wilson, which ended miserably as Callaghan was beaten by Thatcher. Labour was not just defeated, they were also in despair.

So at some point Francis decided that he, and his dad, had got it wrong. He took himself off to the Ecology Party, a well-meaning bunch who survive through an ability to observe the problems of capitalism as if through the wrong end of a telescope. Then he moved again, to the Liberals and the SDP, who survive through a stubborn refusal to admit that the problems exist to be observed. This, it seemed, might be a natural resting place for a Noel-Baker, exhausted by the demands of a heritage of self-delusion.

But the clan is made of sterner stuff and Francis is on the move again. Fed up now with the Alliance because it has no joint policy on nuclear weapons, he has switched to the Conservatives who he says, he finds "more credible". It is tempting to speculate on the "credibility" of a government which presides over three million unemployed, which has launched a harsh assault on workers' living standards and which proudly puts its name to the jingoistic blood-letting in the Falklands. Tempting too to wonder about Noel-Baker's “credibility”; by easy stages he has moved from Labour Party to Tory and there is, as they say. no place much for him to go now.

Slip-Up?

Many colourful metaphors have been used to depict the process in which a government fails to master the problems of the social system which they all claim to be able to control.

Like being caught, in the thirties, in an economic blizzard. Or, in the sixties, being blown off course. These are prime examples of the art of deception through language, in which metaphors can be especially effective. For in these cases they gave the impression that the problems were temporary and surmountable; like the weather they will eventually clear up and meanwhile there is the strong, clever political leader at the helm able to provide shelter for us all.

The art of the metaphor composer has never been better displayed than in the current fondness for describing the Thatcher government’s difficulties as a tendency to slip on banana skins. What could be more temporary than that? It needs only a new political broom, to clear away the carelessly discarded debris, and all is well . . .

Unemployed workers—many of them being told that never again in their lifetime will capitalism find a profitable use for their abilities—will have some feelings about being compared to a banana skin—slimy, undermining and discarded. Those whose discomfort is being accentuated by cuts in hospitals or social services may also have some questions to ask about the usefulness of the phrase, as well as its sensitivity.

In fact it is never useful to regard the problems of capitalism, and the difficulties which governments experience in trying to control and reform the system, as temporary, easily remediable matters. This social system inexorably produces poverty, war and a vast range of other social ills, none of which can be eliminated unless there is a fundamental social change—a revolution to replace capitalism with socialism.

The political metaphor-maker exists to obscure that fact and to divert attention from that reality to fantasy. Governments do not slip up; even if at times they become accident-prone that is beside the point. What matters is that as long as the working class are prepared to accept the fantasies and the obscuring they will remain, metaphorically speaking, flat on their backs.

Death on an empty stomach (1984)

From the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

RESULT OF RIOTS IN TUNISIA: AT LEAST 120 DEAD (Headline in Libération, 11 January).

MOROCCO: 150 to 200 DEAD ACCORDING TO SPANISH RADIO (Libération, 23 January).

How is it possible, in an age of potential plenty, when Common Market Ministers are discussing how to get rid of butter mountains, milk lakes and other food “surpluses", that on the other side of the Mediterranean people are rioting against increases in the prices of basic foodstuffs and being shot down for doing so?

The answer is that we are living in a society which is geared not to serving human needs but to producing goods, or rather commodities, to be sold on a market with a view to profit. In these circumstances food, and indeed everything else, can only be obtained in exchange for money. Until now the governments of the countries of North Africa have heavily subsidised food prices as a means of keeping the cost of living — and so wages — down. But. in the current world capitalist crisis, this has become too expensive and the International Monetary Fund has put pressure on these governments to economise as a condition for continuing to bail them out. The governments of Tunisia and Morocco — and indeed of other countries subject to similar pressures, such as Brazil and Egypt — have thus been faced with the problem of how to further decrease the already low standard of living of the mass of their populations.

The Tunisian government chose to try to increase basic food prices in one sweep: prices of bread and other cereal products were to be doubled from 1 January 1984. It is doubtful whether the government really believed they could get away with this, since a similar austerity programme had already led to riots and deaths in January 1978. In other words, they were testing the situation. If the price increases were accepted without too much trouble, then so much the better; but if the protests proved to be too strong then, after shooting down some rioters, they could be withdrawn and re-introduced gradually over a longer period. In the event this was what happened, leaving, according to a provisional estimate of the Tunisian Human Rights Defence League, at least 120 people dead. Naturally the members of the government who decided and carried out this cynical test remain in their comfortable villas enjoying the best things in life.

Not that a more gradualist approach would necessarily have avoided riots (or will in the future) since this was the policy adopted by the Moroccan government, to no avail since riots broke out there too. The petty king of Morocco, Hassan II, was particularly upset by these riots in the Northern part of his kingdom as they coincided with the Conference of Islamic Heads of State in Rabat at which emirs, sheiks, tin-pot dictators and other nonentities were entertained in an extravagant style which reflected the contempt in which they hold the people they exploit and oppress.

Riots are endemic in this and similar relatively underdeveloped parts of the world. In May and April 1980 there were riots and deaths in Tizi-Ouzou in neighbouring Algeria and in June 1981 hundreds of people were shot down in Casablanca, the economic capital of Morocco. Rioting is in fact one of the few means of defence that these populations have against their repressive governments, be they republics (like Tunisia) or monarchies (like Morocco). But it is clear that all this does is slow a downward movement. In the end they cannot win. For them, as for workers in other more developed countries, the only way out is the establishment of world socialism.

Adam Buick