Running Commentary: Comic cuts (1986)

The Running Commentary column from the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Comic cuts

The newspaper business has been going through some changes recently, most noticeably the movement of Murdoch's News International to Fortress Wapping. In the process, Murdoch managed to engineer the sacking of 5.000 printworkers. His titles, including the Sun and The Times, are now being printed by members of the electricians' union.

Murdoch's manoeuvres have brought much condemnation from many Labour MPs, outraged at his tactics in deceiving the workers and saving on redundancy payments (although these tactics can hardly be said to be new to capitalism). The Sun has long been a target of left-wingers, who find its gutter journalism, cheap titillation and especially its patriotic. pro-Thatcher jingoism. offensive.

Murdoch's competitors in the newspaper business are concerned about the increased levels of profitability and efficiency he has gained. Robert Maxwell, who owns the Mirror Group, is in the most direct competition with Murdoch: he produces the same kind of comic. The Mirror also has a high proportion of scandal stories although, in an effort to appear refined, Maxwell recently ordered his Page 3 Lovelies to cover up their nipples.

In order to meet the challenge of News International, Maxwell recently imposed a change in working practices at his two publications in Glasgow, the Daily Record (which still shows nipples) and the Sunday Mail (which doesn't). The workers at these papers did not fancy a deterioration in their working conditions and being forced to produce an Irish copy of the Daily Mirror. Maxwell decided that these workers had sacked themselves — strange behaviour with four million on the dole so he shut down his Scottish operation and locked the workers out.

The reaction of Labour MPs in Scotland was not to condemn Maxwell despite his high-handed management. Murdoch was called the Dirty Digger, and an interfering foreigner (after all he is Australian). But the shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, Donald Dewar, John Smith and many other Labour MPs expressed "concern" over the breakdown in "communication", and stressed the need to get these rags, which for years have spread anti-working class filth across Scotland, back to giving their "specific contribution” to the Scottish political scene.

So what is the difference between the lies of Maxwell's distorting Mirror and the Wapping-great lies of Murdoch's Sun that warrants such selective outrage from Labour MPs? Of course it could be the fact that Murdoch is a supporter of the Tories, while the "socialist millionaire" supports the Labour Party and so is courted by Kinnock & Co. at their conferences. But Labour would never betray workers' interests just to get cheap political support, would they?

The effort of the Labour MPs managed to get Maxwell back to the negotiating table, and the Daily Record back to the gutters. But not for long — while workers allow parasites like Murdoch and Maxwell to remain in positions of power and influence then we will continue to be insulted and insecure.

Sounds familiar

At the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union held in February, the Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev spent much time talking about the need to reform the Russian economy. In his calls for expansion, modernisation and efficiency he sounded astonishingly like Thatcher. Factories which regularly make losses are to be allowed to go bust: "The state will not be responsible for their debts and losses", he said (all quotes. Guardian, 26 February). This could be Thatcher talking about "lame- ducks" being a burden on the Great British Taxpayer.

Managers and workers who produce unsold goods that end up in warehouses are to suffer loss of pay and bonuses. Wage increases must be earned — they must be related to the quantity of work done. Again, Thatcher has had a lot of experience of berating workers for taking “unearned" pay rises. Since the workers produce all the wealth in society, it is difficult to see how their wages — a fraction of what they produce anyway — can be unearned.

Gorbachev also called for less central interference from the state planning agency Gosplan, in the day-to-day running of the economy. They must "allow industrial management to get on with the job". The "right" of management to manage is a common cry of government ministers and of parasites such as Murdoch and MacGregor. What this "right to manage" usually amounts to is pay cuts and job losses.

Many of the current problems with the Russian economy were blamed on failures of the past. The stagnation and inertia, bureaucracy and corruption of the Brezhnev years in the seventies are the root of today's problems, according to Gorbachev. This is one that politicians often rely on. The current problems are blamed on the failures of the previous administration, whether Labour or Tory, Republican or Democrat, or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The fact is that capitalism produces problems by its very nature, regardless of the extent of state control. Whatever reforms Gorbachev rushes through it is clear that the workers in Russia will do the hard work and suffering, while the ruling class relax in their dachas and bemoan how lazy the workers are.

The strangest thing about Gorbachev's speech to the Congress was the fact that he cracked jokes (about Lenin!). Of course Mikhail — like "our" Maggie or Neil — is very conscious of his image, liking to appear as a humorous, concerned person. He's even been compared to the "great communicator" (or bullshitter). Ronald Reagan. Now what's the Russian for Saatchi and Saatchi?

Whitewash
How much longer can Botha and the ruling National Party in South Africa get away with promising reforms and then failing to deliver the goods?

Botha's latest promise was made in a recent speech in which he admitted that South Africa had "outgrown the outdated concept of apartheid". But he then went on to restate the belief basic to apartheid: that South Africa consists of separate tribal peoples or nations, each of which must have jurisdiction over its own affairs while the whites retain overall control. What this means in practice is the policy of "independent” tribal homelands for the blacks — Bantustans — poverty-stricken reservations with nominal autonomy which provide a ready supply of cheap black labour for the predominantly white ruling class.

The "reforms" outlined by Botha include the restoration of South African citizenship to those who lost it when the Bantustans were granted "independence"; the extension of self-government to the remaining non-independent homelands; limited rights of property ownership for blacks in the townships; amendments to the Pass Laws so that everyone in South Africa would have to carry identity papers; and the establishment of a new National Advisory Council that is to include blacks.

Most black workers in South Africa will recognise these "reforms" as worthless, since they leave the main institutions of apartheid intact. For example, the proposed amendments to the Pass Laws would still enable the police arbitrarily to arrest blacks for being in the "wrong" area and it is likely that black access to the cities will continue to be dependent on a job and accommodation. The proposed Advisory Council represents the same kind of tokenism as the constitutional amendments which gave Indians and Coloureds separate national assemblies while the real power remains in the hands of the white ruling class.


Free speech
You would have thought that the Left had learned its lesson from last year's events at North London Poly when the Socialist Workers' Party orchestrated such favourable publicity for the National Front by trying to prevent Patrick Harrington from attending classes. But no, the Right are yet again being granted the moral high ground as defenders of free speech, as this year's intake of students conforms to the Left stereotype. Having found their feet as student radicals, they are now attempting to prevent selected demons of the Right from speaking on university and polytechnic platforms. Michael Fallon, Tory MP, was given a rough ride at Sunderland Poly, as was John Carlisle at Bradford University. An invitation to the philosopher of the new right, Roger Scruton, was withdrawn when Leeds City Council said that they could not guarantee his safety. And even tapes of American anti-Semite, Louis Farrakhan, were banned at the South Bank Poly in London.

Meanwhile, students at Bristol University have just discovered that John Vincent, Professor of History, has an alter ego as a reactionary columnist for the Sun newspaper. The word went out and the Left picketed his lectures, resulting in the involvement of the police and local publicity more favourable to the "victimised Professor Vincent" than to the "lefty student yobs". Why, you might ask, if it is his column in the Sun to which they object, are they picketing his history lectures at Bristol University? Their argument is that he is using his position as an academic to lend spurious credibility to his journalistic efforts. But never mind the finer details — picketing is so much more fun than lectures and, after all, John Vincent is right wing and therefore a legitimate target for emotional tirades about racism, fascism, the Sun newspaper . . . And let's not worry too much about free speech, or the damage being done to serious opponents of capitalism.

Printers' Progress, 1986 (1986)

From the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

  We have, by turns, conceded what we ought manfully to have resisted, and you, elated with your success, have been led on from one extravagant demand to another, till the burden is become too intolerable to be borne, You fix the number of our apprentices. and sometimes even the number of our journeymen. You dismiss certain proportions of our hands and do not allow others to come in their stead. You stop all surface machines and go to the length of even to destroy the rollers before our face. 

  You restrict the cylinder machine and even dictate the pattern it is to print. You refuse, on urgent occasions, to work by candlelight and even compel our apprentices to do the same. You dismiss our overlookers when they don't suit you; and force obnoxious servants into our employ. Lastly, you set all subordination and good order at defiance, and instead of showing deference and respect to your employers, treat them with personal insult and contempt. 

Considerations to the Journeymen Calico Printers of Manchester by One of their Masters, 1875 History of Trade Unions, page 76; Sidney Webb, 1920.

Bloggers Note:
This passage was inserted as a block quotation in the Running Commentary column, and is only properly understood when read alongside the Wapping dispute/print unions piece in said Running Commentary column.

Socialism explained (1986)

From the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

From Capitalism to Socialism: How we live and how we could live. The Socialist Party. 40p.

Our latest publication is a basic introduction to the case for socialism which contrasts our present way of life with what a world society of common ownership would bring. All the main arguments for socialism are covered in seven chapters, beginning with a discussion of the lifestyle of the average worker and the restrictions imposed by capitalist society on our choice of work. What we do, where and when is essentially decided by our employer.

The second chapter deals with humans as they are, biologically and physiologically. Basically we have developed very little as a species; socially, however, we have lived through many changes. Not only can we adapt to many different surroundings, but we also have the ability to change our conditions to suit our purposes. Instead of altering ourselves to suit a new environment we have often altered our environment to suit our needs. Society moulds people, but people can equally as well mould society.

The pamphlet goes on to discuss earlier social systems and then examines capitalism in some depth. A society of common ownership how we could live — is then presented as a practical alternative. The dominating feature is the change that would take place in work, where freedom from compulsion would mean an environment suited to human needs rather than maximum profit. This section also includes two interesting lists of products and occupations that would cease to exist in socialism because they are concerned with money.

One objection to a society of common ownership is that there is just not enough wealth in the world to sustain a system of free access. But this idea is nurtured today by the artificial scarcity created by the profit system: goods and services are only produced if there is a market for them. On the face of it. goods are scarce; potentially, however, there is no shortage at all. Sometimes it may be too costly to, say, extract a mineral from the ground or irrigate barren land. Socialism would do away with all the restrictions of a private property society.

Socialists are confronted daily by those who believe that the answer to social ills is to reform society a little at a time, and a section in the pamphlet is therefore devoted to the issue of reformism. What emerges clearly is that there is no common ground between reformism and revolutionary action: if you seek reforms you openly accept the political and economic structure of society and limit your activity to effecting superficial changes. By opting for revolutionary action, on the other hand, socialists are aiming solely at a fundamental alteration in social relationships. The pamphlet shows that reforms are only accepted by governments if they do not clash with the needs of capitalism — a "successful" reform can easily be withdrawn if it becomes a hindrance to profit.

The pamphlet ends with a call to action. A conscious majority, using delegates and not leaders, must take control of the state and abolish its coercive functions and the profit system in all its forms.

How to arrest the police (1986)

From the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many of the people who have come through the experience archly known as "helping the police with their enquiries" will be unsurprised at the case of the five youths beaten up by policemen in the Holloway Road and by the attempt to cover it all up. It is true to say that illegal violence is freely used by the police — perhaps to induce some hapless suspect to put their name to an incriminating statement, or to put down over-effective pickets, or even at random on the streets. In the first issue of Today (whose proprietor has cause to be thankful to the police) Derek Jameson protested: "The streets of London are becoming like New York with young coppers running wild". That may be a typical journalist’s overstatement but what can't be denied is that recent events have not helped to give the police a happy image. Last year Scotland Yard paid out a record £207,537 in damages to people who had been assaulted or "improperly" treated by their officers. One case outside London involved the Manchester police in agreeing damages of £2,000 to a deaf, disabled man who was beaten up by three policemen and left bleeding on a cold December night. What is remarkable about the recent notorious events is not so much that they happened as that they were publicised. Nor is it exceptional, that the police should find it difficult to unmask culprits in their ranks. Blair Peach was bludgeoned to death by a member of the Special Patrol Group when the streets were swarming with police yet his killer has never been officially identified.

In spite of these examples — and others like the police operations during the coal strike (of which more later) or how the Wiltshire police dealt with the Stonehenge hippy convoy or the incidents which sparked off the riots in Brixton and Tottenham — British capitalism cannot be described as a police state. Whatever happens behind the cell doors, there is a legal protection of the rights and safety of suspects in police hands. When the police deny those rights they are acting outside the law. whereas a police state would legally sanction any degree of repression. In practice this may well be the sort of thin distinction to wring hollow laughter from anyone who has been interrogated by the British police, or who knows of someone who has mysteriously died while in police custody. So yes. there is a problem; how do we deal with it? How do we control the police?

A favourite response of the left wing to these questions is that the police should be made "accountable", should carry out their job through popular consent. In fact "police accountability” and "policing by consent" are slogans almost as popular among left-wingers as "Second Front Now" and "Nationalise the Mines" used to be. In practical terms, they mean that the police should be answerable to, and so controlled by, some elected local body. Through a little disconnected logic, the argument then proceeds to claim that this would make the police democratic because they would be operating within the wishes of the majority. The case was put by Margaret Simey, who chaired the Merseyside Police Committee:

  I believe that over the past five years, the Merseyside Police Authority can claim to have explored the day-to-day actuality of whether, and if so, how policing by consent can be made a reality. All the work we have done in scrutinising our own responsibilities for finance and administration and in striving to involve the public in the provision of the service, convinces me that policing by consent is practically possible. (Guardian, 7 March 1986).

Hacking through the luxuriant verbiage of that statement, we come to an awkward question: if the people of Granby Ward in Toxteth, which Margaret Simey represents as a County Councillor, should decide as a majority to eke out their dole by helping themselves to essentials like food and clothes, how would this relate to policing by consent? Would the police themselves consent to it? The theory sounds cosily reassuring but, like all left wing nostrums, it is crippled by some basic flaws.

There are in fact examples of the police operating under what might be described as majority consent and control but these are not helpful to the likes of Margaret Simey. In the Deep South states of America the police have often been open and assertive agents of racist repression. Far from protecting human rights and safety they have been known to collude blatantly with, or even themselves commit, the murder of black people or of civil rights workers. And this happened although the major law enforcement officers — police chiefs, sheriffs — were popularly elected. Because the majority in the South wanted blacks to be repressed, the police were more or less mandated to act as racist thugs. Such examples as exist in this country are no more helpful. The GLC had something called the Police Committee which could be relied on to fulminate against excesses but which had no real influence and which the Metropolitan Police, which is answerable to the Home Secretary, effectively ignored. It is a similar story in those places — like Simey's Merseyside — which had Police Committees with closer links with the police. They were in persistent conflict with their chief constables — notable among them were Anderton of Greater Manchester and Oxford of Merseyside — who took little account of the committee's opinions. Simey described this:

  The unwelcome truth is that though much bombast is uttered about the principle of accountability. the stark reality is that the machinery for measuring that it works in practice has rusted up to the point at which it is virtually unusable.

Which brings us to the question that, if the police are to be accountable, who or what are they accountable to? The left wing argue that it must be to the community. But it is the job of the police to arrest and prosecute people for stealing, for taking wealth which they as a class have produced but to which they have no right unless they can buy it. When the police are called to arrest someone for shoplifting they are not acting in the interests of the community, which demand that all human beings have free access to things like food and clothing. They are acting in the interests of the owners of the shop.

Another example is the work of the police in helping to break last year's coal strike. Since the miners were defeated the National Coal Board have pressed on with their programme of closures. Nearly 30 pits have ceased production and over 35,000 miners have left the industry, with many more in prospect. Yet while the coal lay uncut and the miners were being labelled as redundant, the suffering among old people during the cold during February exposed — as if this was again necessary — how much need there is in the community for fuel. One survey (Sunday Times, 2 March 1986) of pensioners' homes in Croydon found that on average their living rooms were heated to 14.7°C and their bedrooms to 8.8°C (at the same time the House of Lords was enduring 21.1°C). In such conditions old people die of the cold — through hypothermia. chest infections, accidents caused by numbed senses. Hospitals were overwhelmed; one in Scotland was expecting 20 cases of hypothermia a day and a consultant geriatrician in North London predicted an extra 8,000 deaths for every degree below average in winter (Observer, 2 March 1986).

So whose interests were the police asserting, when they helped to break the strike? Certainly not those of the pensioners shivering and dying in their homes, nor of the nurses and doctors battling against the effects of cold-induced sickness and accidents. They were asserting the fact that under this social system coal and all other wealth will be produced only when it is profitable, regardless of human need. They were reminding us that we live in a society based on the class ownership of the means of life, which means the denial of access to wealth — coal. food, clothes or whatever — to the majority.

It is quite clear that there is a conflict between the function of the police and the real interests of the community. The police exist to enforce the minority property rights of capitalism, with all that they entail — the privileges of the parasitical minority, the poverty of the productive majority. That is why the police cannot encourage people, however needy, to help themselves to wealth. That is why, when the miners resisted the capitalist principle that the ''uneconomic" production of coal must cease, they met the opposition of the police, one of whose functions is to enforce that principle. Those functions ensure that the police cannot be a democratic organisation. They cannot, for example, publicise that they are about to raid the home of someone suspected of handling stolen property. They cannot consult every constable whether they would agree to go out to intercept a bunch of armed robbers. Bodies like police committees, and left wing theories like "police accountability" and "policing by consent", exist on the false assumption that capitalism can be refashioned into a benign, humane, open society and that the capitalists' privileged position can somehow be related to the interests of the community. These are clashes between reality and delusion, between the deceptions of reformism and the inexorable demands of a society based on class ownership. What it amounts to is that the police are accountable — to the class who employ them and to the privileged interests of that class. Policies for reforming the police out of their character conflict with that reality and are doomed to impotence. Discussions about how to control, or democratise, the police are futile.

There is one last vital fact to be considered. At every election the working class vote for capitalism to continue — which means for class privilege, state coercion, police repression, to continue. People like Margaret Simey airily ignore that fact but it will not go away until the working class face the realities of capitalism and of their own power to abolish the system. But the grim outlook is that many more workers will be beaten and killed by the police before our class comes to trust themselves in a truly democratic society.

Ivan

Letter: Left is not right (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

I am interested in the view of the Socialist Party on violence as a means of achieving socialism. The SWP supports numerous violent groups and says "socialists ought to support them". The PLO, the ANC and the IRA are the usual groups which use violence and the SWP advocate "fighting back" against Israeli oppression. British occupation of Ulster, and white apartheid.

When the PLO claimed responsibility for the massacres in Rome and Vienna airports in December, the SWP published an article (9 January) on the PLO and the IRA. It was an apologist article for terrorism, and argued that Palestinians resolved to fight back after the massacres at Sabra and Chetila, and some chose terrorism. I could not see how the massacres of innocent people, and injuring many more, can undo all the tragedies that have happened at Sabra and Chatila.

I am concerned that even a world socialist revolution would become a dictatorship if established by violence. In all countries that have experienced socialist revolutions there has ended up being a one-party state that allows no independent trade unions, imprisons people because of their views, and does not have fair trial procedures. The logic behind this is that opposition parties and organisations must not be allowed, to safeguard against counter-revolution. These countries justify this on the grounds that the workers run things—examples are USSR, China, Cuba, Libya, Vietnam,, Laos, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, North Korea, Mongolia, Afghanistan, etc. I have a suspicion that even a world socialist revolution, where foreign aggression would not be a threat, would still be a repressive dictatorship in order to prevent counter-revolution.

If a majority supported socialism then it would be possible to bring it about, but there is still the risk of disappropriated big businessmen trying to reverse the revolution by violent means and a world wide civil war would result. I therefore don't think socialism would end wars. Later on the system might degenerate into state capitalism — a world state capitalist system.

Various sci-fi novels, such as A. E. van Vogt's Future Glitter depict world dictatorships founded on socialist ideas.

If the system is to be democratic and everyone takes what they need and works voluntarily, I don't know what would happen if people didn't do the unpleasant but necessary work such as mining or working on oil rigs — the goods would not be produced and people would not be able to take what they needed because resources are not being used.

It would take at least thirty years for a majority in rich as well as poor countries to develop the necessary consciousness to want socialism, and in the meantime we have got to keep our fingers crossed that the bomb isn't used for all those decades. Once it is dropped, there'll be no socialism because everyone will be burnt, irradiated, starved or frozen to death in the war or the nuclear winter. But you say only socialism will avert the nuclear threat.

In the 19th century when workers lived in appalling misery there was no socialist revolution in Britain, Germany, France or the USA. What chance is there now of a socialist revolution when workers have social security, free health care, television, videos, records, radio, holidays . . . They feel that they have too much to lose and may gain a repressive Soviet-type society, and may lose their lives, their loved ones or their freedom in the state repression of a revolutionary movement, or be tortured and maimed by the forces of the state.

How can there be a revolution when the revolutionary Left is all in splinter groups: Militant, SWP, Revolutionary Communist Party, Workers' Revolutionary Party, the Communist Party — with many of these putting workers off by advocating hideous policies such as supporting the IRA, PLO or ANC when these people often kill innocent people with pub bombings (Ireland) or attacks on airports (PLO) or burning alive (South Africa)? Other groups advocate supporting the Soviet Union and its satellites — in the USSR prisoners are almost starved — and workers are forced to work for inadequate rewards due to lack of union power, and when the Soviet Union finances wars and kills women and children in Afghanistan, and in most of these countries women work sixteen hours a day and there is no creche provision when children are sick, but no paid leave for mothers either. Some socialists think this is the pinnacle of socialist achievement.

The SWP has asked teachers to strike for one day every week — this means a loss of 20 per cent of pay! My boyfriend is a teacher and we spend about two-thirds of our income as rent, debts and electricity. This also affects children, with no-one at home, who will be wandering the streets in the cold. The SWP and the other revolutionaries also support DHSS strikes which could cause unemployed people, pensioners and single mothers to be hungry, cold and even evicted from their private rented hovels. Apparently the end justifies the means! Socialists subscribing to this maxim have put me off socialism.

The end result of endless suffering for socialism (if we are not all incinerated by H- bombs first!) could be a society like the Soviet Union on a world scale, with enforced "modernisation", abolishing the extended family but with no welfare state pension to replace it, as has happened in the Soviet Union after 1917. Socialism seems to offer no hope, just like all the other dreary religions and capitalism. We are still born to suffer and die and wonder why.

Lynn Stabler

London N22

Reply
The criticisms Lynn Stabler makes of left-wing parties like the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP) are both clear and correct. We do not think, though, that the understandable rejection by many workers of these bogus ideas has discredited the idea of real socialism permanently. Labels like "socialist" and phrases like "the class struggle" are used by a variety of organisations whose opposition to the profit system ranges from the incredibly modest and futile (the aims, for instance, of the Campaign Against Plastic Bullets) to the violent and futile (like the Red Brigade and the IRA). It is true that socialists who are advocating a social revolution are often faced with obstacles of prejudice which have arisen in society because of the repressive and misnamed "socialist states" and because of the great frustrations which have come from the predictable failure of organisations like the Labour Party to make capitalism run in the interests of the majority. But experience is stronger than words. The idea of a classless society with production exclusively for human use arises from its opposite: class-divided society based on production for profit and all its consequent misery. Socialism neither originated from the writings of Karl Marx nor from the columns of the Socialist Standard and it cannot be extinguished by the misleading double-talk of people like Paul Foot. Neil Kinnock, Mikael Gorbachev or their right-wing opponents. The wages-system breeds discontent and workers cannot be persuaded indefinitely that we should not organise to establish production for use.

To consider Lynn Stabler's points in more detail:

Violence
The Socialist Party is completely opposed to the use of violence to achieve socialism. The women and men who between them own and control the means of life across the world, taken together with all of their police, judges, prison warders, armed forces and senior civil servants number only a tiny fraction of the world's population. They occupy their positions of social parasitism with the general consent of the majority. They are high and mighty because their subjects are kneeling.

Capitalism is not kept in business because the minority threaten the majority with violence. Isolated acts of legal violence are, of course, used against workers or groups of workers who refuse to conform to the dictates of the profit system. But this use of occasional force relies on it being generally endorsed by the majority, otherwise they would never get away with it. The capitalist class relies on the support of something much more powerful than rifles or tanks to keep them where they are — opinion. They are more secure on top of conventional wisdom than they are on top of a conventional weapon. Socialists realise that it is this prejudice about the need for a ruling class and a wages system which needs to be attacked, and not other workers. The only way to establish a reasonable society is to use reason to convince people. The debris and shrapnel of terrorist bombs will never leave a peaceful society in their wake. The rifle is an inadequate substitute for reason and workers who think that killing their fellow workers in pub bombings or machine-gun attacks will solve any of their poverty-caused problems are tragically mistaken.

Counter revolutions
Will socialism need to use the state machine to combat a counter-revolution, begun perhaps, by former members of the ruling class? The answer, in a word, is "no." But how can we be confident of this? If a majority of women and men has decided to abolish the social relations of capitalism and establish a classless society (and the only way that it can be established is by the democratic action of the majority), then a bloody-minded contingent of financiers, aristocrats or factory owners who refused to yield up to society what they once jealously guarded as theirs could be very easily immobilised without violence. In order to be effective, any counter-revolutionary force would need a variety of resources which the majority of us would have to make sure it did not get. It would need electricity, petrol, food, drink and most essentially workers who are soldiers. Is it a reasonably foreseeable prospect that after the factories, offices, media, transport systems and so forth have been taken by the community, a significantly large number of soldiers will still be willing to turn their backs on their fellow workers and engage in violence to wrest the factories from the community and put them back into the hands of a minority? When a "revolution" is nothing more than a change of president or regime (because some murderous bandit or junta of professional killers has violently ousted the last lot in a coup) then you can see why, from the point of view of the would-be leaders, a counter-revolution would make sense. Counter-revolutions can be enacted in this way without the majority of workers even getting the chance to discover the original revolution. In socialism, anyone who seriously entertained the idea of dissuading the majority from operating the means of life in the interests of all and giving back the farms, factories. offices and media to a minority to operate for profit would certainly have their work cut out, probably for the first time in their life.

The dirty work

A discussion about this very often depends on what you mean by "dirty work". It could mean the dirty work of capitalism: the highly trained professional murderers in the armed forces, people who are expert in killing others they have never met; the policemen and women who have to spend some of their time arresting their fellows for stealing and protecting the tycoon thieves who employ them; prison warders, bailiffs, lawyers, debt collectors. social security snoopers and others. Clearly there will be no need for any of these unpleasant contributions in a socialist society. On the other hand there will undoubtedly be the need for the performance of some work which many people would not find agreeable. Surgery, for instance. is a service not renowned for its pleasant sights and smells. Similarly, work on oil rigs, in sewers and down mines would need to be continued. Why should anyone want to do these jobs in a socialist society? There are a number of points to consider. First, they will not be jobs that the same people have to do indefinitely or "for life" as now. Secondly, they will not be conducted in conditions which have been determined more by profitability than welfare and safety. Thirdly, some workers are, of course, genuinely interested in the sort of work that is carried out on oil rigs or the civil engineering involved in the sewer system but hate the pressure and routine of work under the profit system. Motivation in a socialist society — having your skills and social usefulness appreciated by the community — will be of the highest kind, the sort which has been the inspiration behind the greatest inventions, discoveries and developments in all fields of endeavour. The responsibility required to establish socialism is not compatible with the situation where no-one is prepared to work on an oil-rig and we have to reintroduce the wages-system to impel people to work under the threat of going hungry.

Thirty years and the bomb

Why speculate on the need for at least thirty years to pass before social consciousness is developed enough for a social revolution? Lenin once estimated that, left to their own devices, workers would take at least 500 years to establish socialism (from which he concluded that they would therefore need a leadership vanguard to do all the important thinking and acting for them). The Socialist Party considers that socialism is immediately practicable — we are aiming, along with our companion parties in other parts of the world, at getting socialism today and not in three decades from now. With the means of communication and transport being as highly-developed as they are today ideas, if they are in tune with people's experience and in their interests, spread very rapidly. The rate at which socialist ideas will spread will be greatly accelerated after they have reached a certain level of social acceptance and popularity: like the snowball rolling down the snow-covered mountain. The only way to eliminate the danger of the nuclear bomb is to remove the root causes of war — economic rivalry between competing owning-class interests. If we retain a society which is prone to erupt periodically into war then workers will be powerless to instruct the governments of nations what weapons they may and may not use, even if this sort of refinement to the machinery of mass murder was realistic. It is also worth considering that the disaster many CND supporters are so desperate to avoid (even at the expense of an indefinite postponement of working for socialism) is, in many ways, here today: millions of people starving to death, millions of homeless people and rootless refugees, widespread civil disturbances, riots and rebellions and thousands of people dying in military conflict every month.

Too much to lose?

Today many workers have televisions or personal stereos whereas their ancestors did not. But that is not really the point. If it was you could say that the monstrous conditions of early capitalism were beneficial to those early wage-slaves because they could enjoy better access to pubs and pianos than their forefathers. The telling contrast is not what we've got now set against what we had fifty years ago, but what we've got now compared to what we could have. For the tens of millions of workers with boring dead-end jobs and relentless debts or the millions of people without work, for the millions of workers neglected because they are old or disabled, or picked on as scapegoats because they have the wrong colour skin or religion; and for everyone who is insecure or scared about the likelihood of nuclear war; for all of these people, it is improbable that the pleasures of a Ford Escort and a 22-inch colour television will forever forestall the creation of a society which can produce abundant wealth for all to share.

The splintered Left

It is right to say that there are many organisations, described generally as "the left-wing parties", which are at odds with each other and which are propounding policies which many workers treat with disdain. Eamonn McCann, a spokesman for the Socialist Workers' Party, said in a recent television programme:

  Labour is incapable of bringing about fundamental social change and Labour's pursuit of election victory is a trap for socialists committed to changing the system. They should leave the Labour Party now and build a radical alternative  (Diverse Reports, C4. January 1986)

Curious then that it is SWP policy to urge their supporters to vote for the Labour Party at election times in constituencies where there is no SWP candidate.

The various other groups who support the totalitarian state-capitalist nations like the Russian empire are no better. Another consequence of not opposing capitalism as a social system is that groups may often get bogged down in arguing about the best way for workers, like teachers or DHSS staff, to deal with industrial disputes created by the wages system. The only solution to the problem, as many painful decades of industrial conflict have demonstrated, is the abolition of the employer-employee relationship.

One final point: Lynn Stabler rather pessimistically concludes that "we are still born to suffer and die, and wonder why . . ." Think what state we would be in now if the pioneers of working class organisation in the early trade unions had concurred with that view. Our world is not predestined. Tomorrow is what we make it and we've got a world to win . . .

Editors

GLC: working for capitalism (1986)

From the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1963 the Local Government Act set up the Greater London Council. At the time the Labour Party opposed the creation of the GLC, arguing that it widened the boundaries of the old London County Council too far and would lead to a built-in Tory majority. In fact, Labour won the GLC election in 1964 and that put an end to their campaign against the GLC. Twenty years after the 1963 Act the Tory manifesto for the 1983 General Election proposed the abolition of the GLC on the grounds that it was "wasteful and unnecessary". This contrasts with earlier Tory attitudes to local government:

  There are plenty of people who feel that local administration is wasteful and extravagant and hold that there should be a much tighter degree of Treasury control over spending. I pray you will never lend substance and ammunition to that charge.
(Earl of Home, quoted in Local Government Campaign Notes. 15 April 1954. p.8)

Again, in a document entitled Background Material for Election Address, issued by the Conservative Party Central Office in 1953 it is stated that

  Conservatives believe that local government should be local and that decisions on local matters should be made with reference to local conditions, not in obedience to the rigid direction of a central . . . machine.

So. why the change in positions: why in 1983 did we see the Tories advocating the elimination of the GLC as a local government and the Labour Party fighting to keep it? The immediate answer is party-political. The fact is that the Tories lost control of the GLC, as well as the Metropolitan Counties which it also sought to abolish, and. rather than having a local government marching in the opposite direction of a powerful central government, it decided to abolish the former. This political distaste for the GLC was admitted in a speech by the Tory Opposition leader on the GLC, Richard Brew:

  Leaving aside the ideologically committed, he (Livingstone) is seeking out the feminists and the gay activists. He is topping up these with the ethnic groups and the Irish. He is mobilising the anti-police brigade and he is seeking out the pressure groups CND. Babies Against the Bomb and so on. In other words he is going for the nutters.

(Quoted in Citizen Ken by John Carvel, p.208)

And when "the nutters" are in a majority you abolish elections. They have psychiatric hospitals for such "nutters" in Russia and Brew shows that the Tory reasoning in abolishing the GLC was not very different from any other centralised state which refuses to hold elections because the electors cannot be trusted to vote properly.

The Labour-led "Save the GLC Campaign" has been a popular reformist movement in London and, as Edward Heath pointed out in the House of Commons, the Tory decision to abolish the GLC has had the totally unintended effect of making Ken Livingstone one of the most popular politicians in London. If the polls are to be trusted, it seems that abolition is sufficiently unpopular to result in serious Tory losses in London constituencies in the next General Election. Patrick Jenkin, the Minister responsible for pushing the abolition Bill through the Commons, is now politically ruined and the government appears to have handed the Labour Party a gift.

As the GLC is buried a myth is in danger of being born: the myth of “GLC socialism". It is a common belief amongst many leftists that the GLC under Livingstone was responsible for making moves towards socialism in one city, and the further we drift away from the period in which this is supposed to have happened the more elaborate the legend will become. Let us look at what these so- called socialist measures were which the GLC implemented.

Firstly, they lowered the fares on London Transport, only to have this action ruled illegal by the capitalist Judges. As we pointed out at the time of the so-called Fair Fares campaign, socialists want no fares, not low fares. The trains, the buses and the rest of the transport system should belong to the community as a whole and when they do we will not have to pay to use them. Such free access, and nothing less, will be socialism. The GLC move to lower fares by rate subsidy was an understandably popular reform and was in line with transport policies in other European capital cities. But it was not compatible with the profit system and was thus ended by the central state. This is the inevitable fate of any city government which attempts to impose rules upon capitalism which are unacceptable to the capitalists on a national level.

Secondly, the GLC gave grants to several organisations of workers seeking facilities which would not be granted by central government. We are not denying that many of these facilities were put to good use (we refer to those which were not politically reformist causes) and that the GLC won many friends that way. But, as GLC defenders were at pains to point out throughout the anti-abolition campaign, these grants to radical groups amounted to only 0.6 per cent of their annual budget. In a socialist society women would not need to fill in numerous forms and negotiate politically with leaders before they can have a centre to meet in; if Irish people living in London require a cultural centre they shall have free access to the space and buildings available and will not have to be beholden to some government body in a socialist society.

Thirdly, the GLC has acted controversially in declaring London a nuclear-free zone. What exactly does such a declaration mean? Are we to expect that London will no longer be a target for nuclear missiles because of this absurd nominal gesture? In fact, if the GLC had wasted less time upon such pious nonsense and a little thought on considering the cause of war (namely, the capitalist system) workers could now be organising to abolish the cause of war rather than wasting time pretending to be free from its effects.

Fourthly, the GLC set up the Greater London Enterprise Board (GLEB), the "socialist" function of which was to persuade capitalists to invest more money in exploiting London's workers and to convince unemployed and other workers that by setting up capitalist co-ops they could succeed in business. This is hardly the action of any movement intending to replace capitalism with socialism.

In fact, there have been some positive changes in London in the early 1980s. but these have not happened because politicians have legislated for them. Workers in London are taking a more conscious attitude to racism and to the problems of women; after many years gay men and lesbian women are less afraid to come out in the open than they used to be; community groups, such as tenants' organisations, are trying to take more social responsibility over their areas — although they still do not own or control their areas and their efforts are all too often hijacked by Labour opportunists who use workers' organisations for purposes of vote-catching. There are some positive developments, but that is because workers are in certain respects becoming more socially conscious and there is little doubt that such consciousness will continue to develop with or without the GLC.

The myth that the GLC somehow humanised capitalism in London must be resisted, for if it wins workers' minds we will see yet another political diversion of workers organising to return to "the good old days'' of the GLC. The fact is that in those "good old days" the GLC was evicting council tenants who could not afford to pay their rents, NALGO and NUPE workers employed by the GLC had to fight hard to exist as wage slaves, there was widespread deprivation within London and the GLC, like any other capitalist government, was impotent to tackle it.

It is a major waste of energy for workers claiming to want socialism to be fighting to retain a level of government. Socialists are opposed to all government, because the state, both local and national, is but the executive committee of the capitalist class. Why should workers campaign for the right to be governed? Of course, we must see through the sordid political opportunism which led the central government to abolish the GLC and we must recognise the contempt which the capitalists have for democracy when they are losing the elections. But it should be remembered that there is no government or ruling class which could abolish democratic facilities once workers have a class-conscious interest in democracy. It is the workers who elected the capitalist national government, just as it was workers who elected the capitalist local government of London. As soon as workers are socialist-minded we shall democratically conquer both local and national governments and these will be used to dispossess the capitalist class of their wealth and power. There will be no socialist state: local and national government will not wither away in a socialist society, but will be abolished because in socialism there will be no propertyless class to be governed and coerced.

Socialists possess no blueprint as to how administration will be conducted within a system of common ownership and democratic control, but two points are quite clear. Firstly, socialism will not be a centralised society. After all, we are talking about a world society (socialism cannot be established in one country or city) and it is inconceivable that there will be a single global administration. Secondly, it is very likely that there will be plenty of opportunities for local community involvement in decision-making in a socialist society, with local bodies and global bodies feeding ideas and initiatives into one another on the basis of dynamic democracy. But not until society and everything in it belongs to the people who inhabit it can we speak of genuine democracy, so instead of shedding any tears over the passing of the GLC and the Metropolitan Counties workers should think enthusiastically about a society in which democracy means a lot more than the right of Ken Livingstone to sit and make decisions in County Hall.

Steve Coleman

Castles in the air (1986)

Illustration by George Meddemmen

From the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Under capitalism the housing problem has been a constant feature of working-class life. Although consecutive British governments have enacted numerous reforms, overcrowding. shortages, slum-living and homelessness persist. The present government's 1980 Housing Act sought to broaden the scope of home-ownership by allowing council tenants the "right to buy" local authority-owned housing, in the belief that a shift of tenure offered the best solution. So what have been the results so far?

There is a popular image of owner-occupiers as a privileged minority enjoying a number of advantages denied to tenants of rented accommodation, such as freedom of choice, independence, security of tenure, high-quality housing and asset growth. In addition, the financial carrot of tax subsidies such as mortgage interest relief helped make owner-occupation a seemingly attractive proposition.

The remarkable growth of the owner-occupied sector — from 54.7 per cent in 1983 to 60.2 per cent in 1985 and a projected 67.9 per cent in 1991 — seemed to justify the Conservatives' policy on council house sales, which was popular with the electorate. Political pundits have in fact pinpointed the 1980 Act as a major factor in the Conservatives' electoral successes in recent years and Labour traditionally the party of council housing has taken note of this and reversed its policy.

Despite its apparent popularity, however, the growth of owner-occupation has not been accompanied by an easing of workers housing problems. In fact for many working-class households owner-occupation has created more problems than it has solved. Entry into the owner-occupied sector is no guarantee against squalor and the responsibilities of maintenance and repair, coupled with the pressures of regular mortgage repayments. place an enormous burden on those dependent exclusively on wages and salaries for the upkeep of their house. In this context security of tenure is an illusion and the threat of eviction and homelessness is ever present.

Contrary to popular belief, most owner-occupiers do not actually own their houses. Their right of tenure is secured only through loans which they have to repay with interest to the lending institution — usually a building society but increasingly since the 1980 Act to local authorities. The title deeds to the property are held by the lending authority until the mortgage has been fully repaid, which means that over the life-time of the mortgage — which can be as long as 30 years the owner-occupier's status is akin to that of a tenant but also bearing all the responsibilities of repair and maintenance.

If owner-occupiers get too much into arrears the loan-making body can apply for a court order to gain possession of the property. A recent report in the National Westminster Bank Quarterly Review shows that as owner-occupation grows so too does the problem of mortgage arrears and repossession. It points out that "although increasing numbers of people are entering owner-occupation. increasing numbers are being forced out" (August 1985). The 1980 edition of Judicial Statistics showed that there were 27,105 mortgage possession actions in County Courts in England and Wales. By 1983 this figure had reached 43,274, an increase of 61 per cent. This nevertheless tends to underestimate the problem of mortgage default because most of those in arrears do not figure in possession actions. Many people resolve the problem in other ways: some borrow money to pay off the arrears (even though this only delays the date of court action); others sell their house to meet their debts and either move down market or into rented accommodation, while some simply hand over the key of the property to the mortgagees.

Those forced to give up their houses either voluntarily or as a result of a court order often face difficulties in securing other accommodation. A move to cheaper housing invariably means a move to a poorer area, with all the repercussions that may have for changing jobs (if this is possible) and schools and severing family and social connections. The move to rented accommodation is not, however, as easy as it appears. As the local authority housing stock dwindles the chances of ex-owner-occupiers being rehoused are slim — a problem which is aggravated by the rules many local authorities have which effectively exclude owner-occupiers from access to council houses and place them in low priority categories for rehousing. And as for the privately rented sector, this has shrunk so much that offers of accommodation are exceedingly rare or far too expensive for those priced out of owner-occupation.

So what are the causes of mortgage difficulty? Building societies grant mortgages on the basis of the size and stability of household income, and for members of the working class this means the wage or salary derived from the sale of their mental and physical energies to the capitalist class. The conditions of capitalist production determine both the amount and the availability of workers' incomes — if the capitalist class isn't trying to cut workers' wages to the absolute minimum in order to maximise profits then it is making workers unemployed to minimise losses. Ether way workers cannot win, a fact mirrored in the insecurity of their position as owner-occupiers.

The Building Society Fact Book (1985) attributes the upsurge in arrears and possessions to the sharp increase in unemployment and the consequent fall in wages and salaries. Two major reports — the National Consumer's Behind with the Mortgage and the Building Societies Associations Mortgage Repayments Difficulties — show that owner-occupation becomes unsustainable for those households which suffer an unexpected and long-term cut in earnings. This can be brought about by factors other than unemployment, such as sickness, pregnancy. industrial disputes, marital breakdown and death.

It follows, therefore, that owner-occupiers who want to maintain their homes and stave off the bailiffs must not get sick, pregnant, go on strike, get a divorce, be made redundant or die — a tall order for any member of the working class. In the circumstances of rising unemployment the pressure on owner-occupiers is enormous, but for low wage earners it is especially acute. Workers on low wages are highly vulnerable to sharp increases in housing costs or any reduction in their income, and even the slightest rise in mortgage rates can cause severe problems.

To encourage as many households as possible to take up owner-occupation, the government has also wielded the axe to council house expenditure programmes. This has meant that council house rents have risen sharply over the past few years while tax subsidies to owner-occupiers and various other incentive schemes (shared ownership, homesteading, mortgage guarantees and council house sales with large discounts on market values) have helped to cheapen the cost of house purchase. Given the choice between slum or near slum council housing and the seemingly lucrative financial incentives of house-buying, it is hardly surprising that opinion surveys indicate a huge demand for owner-occupation.

In recent years the concept of home-ownership has been sold to workers so relentlessly that the shabby reality of owner-occupation has been submerged beneath a barrage of misinformation. Workers should not accept the well-worn fallacy that there is something fundamentally different between rented and mortgage accommodation — that council housing is somehow "socialist" and owner-occupation "capitalist". The provision of both is determined by the conditions under which those who own the means of producing houses, the land, building materials and capital, can realise a profit. These people do not care whether their capital is used to produce council houses for rent or houses for sale in the private sector. Their goal is profit and nothing else.

Under capitalism the housing market determines both the quality and quantity of accommodation within the price range of the working class. Consequently, there is very little difference in house standards between owner-occupied housing and council accommodation — in fact, owner-occupiers are marginally worse off than council tenants in this sense. The recently published Duke of Edinburgh Inquiry into British Housing reveals that the state of repair of the average owner-occupied sector has fallen below that of the average council house. The former has, on average, a higher percentage of dwellings which are officially classified as unfit (4.7 per cent); lacking basic amenities such as an inside toilet (3.3 per cent); and requiring repairs of £7.000 or more (5.3 per cent) and £2,500 or more (21.3 per cent). Many workers simply cannot afford to carry out the maintenance and repairs required on their homes, a situation which has been exacerbated by the recent cuts in home-improvement grants. In some cases workers are sent on an endless trip to nowhere for what is basically a slum house; or worse still, making mortgage repayments on a house that has been demolished as a result of structural faults or subsidence. Their homes may have been lost or fallen into an uninhabitable state but their mortgages remain the same.

In the nineteenth century Engels made the following remarks about the housing problem:

 As long as a capitalist mode of production continues to exist it is folly to hope for an isolated settlement of the housing question or of any other social question affecting the lot of workers. The solution lies in the abolition of the capitalist mode of production and the appropriation of all the means of subsistence and instruments of labour by the working class itself

(The Housing Question)

During Engels’ time very few members of the working class could be described as owner-occupiers: the majority lived in rented accommodation. At present owner-occupation is the major form of house-tenure in Britain but the problems to which Engels was referring in The Housing Question are still with us. Homelessness rose by 6 per cent last year and the government is at present carrying out a full national survey which, experts believe, will reveal the true extent of the housing "crisis".

As long as profit takes precedence over human need the problem of housing will remain as an ineradicable feature of working-class life. The solution, therefore, lies in the abolition of capitalism nothing more, nothing less.

G. Davidson

Socialist Correspondence Club (1986)

Party News from the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1983 a Socialist Correspondence Club was formed with the aim of breaking down the sense of isolation felt by many socialists across the world. Since then the number of participants has grown substantially and now includes readers of the Socialist Standard in Britain, Ireland, America, Australia, New Zealand, India, Poland, South Africa, Zimbabwe and France.

The Club's membership list is now being updated. Would readers who wish to join please contact the co ordinator. Louise Cox, at Flat 3. The Mount. Lower Street. Haslemere. Surrey GU27 2PD. England, stating their name and address, and most importantly, any specific interests they have. The deadline for all letters is the end of April. Those already on the list are asked to advise of any change of circumstances.

Shortly afterwards a complete list of members will be sent to all participants for each to decide with whom to start a correspondence. It is also planned to include with the list the first newsletter of SCC. This will include advice on initiating socialist activity in different parts of the world and details of literature and tapes which could help to this end. Short items of news and information should be sent to the co-ordinator as soon as possible.

When good news is bad news (1986)

From the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last year five of the eight countries in the Sahel region of Africa had record harvests. Regional production of cereals is estimated to have been 6.3 million tonnes, or 10 per cent more than in 1981, the year before the much-publicised drought and famine in the area began. Good news, you might think. Or is it?

In a world organised to serve human needs a bumper harvest would of course be good news, but we are not living in such a world. Instead, we are living in a world where food and all other goods and services are produced for sale with a view to profit. No profit, no production is the basic rule and it is its inexorable application that leads to people dying of starvation in one part of the world while in other parts governments stockpile "surplus" food and pay farmers to take their land out of cultivation. Those who starve do so because, not having the money to buy the food they need to stay alive, they do not constitute a market from supplying which a profit can be made. It is as simple as that.

But what about food aid? Quite apart from the fact that it is often used to further the foreign policy aims of the donor governments (were voices not raised against giving food aid to Ethiopia because its government aligns itself with state capitalist Russia? And was not the rejoinder that aid should be given precisely to wean the Ethiopian government away from Russia?), the amount of food distributed in this way can never be more than marginal since it goes against the whole logic of the capitalist system. If practised on a wide scale it would amount to the economic aberration of instituting production for use in one sector (producing food for free distribution to those who need it) in a world of production for profit. Production for free distribution is of course quite logical from the point of view of human interests, but if applied under capitalism it creates problems. This is why the bumper crop in the Sahel could turn out to be bad news, as explained in a specialist publication:

  When an abundant local harvest occurs it comes up against the food aid stocks of millet, maize and sorghum. This aid visible on the local markets brings about a collapse of prices. National silos, filled up with aid food, cannot accept the new harvest. The local producers then risk not finding a buyer, or if so at what price? The following year they will plant a smaller area, as already happened in Togo in 1985 following difficulties in disposing of the 1984 harvest. If in 1986 the reduction in cultivated areas were to be combined with a drought year, the situation of the Sahel would become disastrous (La Lettre de Solagral, December 1985).

In other words, in a system where food is produced for sale, giving away food free merely upsets the market and leads to a reduction in food supplies. This is quite in accordance with the logic of capitalism. In fact, so absorbed were some relief workers by a (no doubt sincere) desire to help starving areas beyond the very short term that, at the height of the Ethiopian famine, they could be found urging that limits be put on the amount of free food sent to Ethiopia. They would have preferred to see aid channelled into small-scale projects which, unlike the free distribution of food, would not have impeded the development of local production for the market.

This is a good illustration of how those who want to do “something now" (other than working for socialism, that is) are led to accept and apply the logic of capitalism. When people are starving in one part of the world while unused food stocks exist in another part, the natural, normal reaction is to ask why the food can't be transported for free distribution to those who desperately need it — and it was to help achieve this that ordinary people gave money after the Band Aid concert. But, under capitalism, while this can help relieve an immediate situation it quickly creates another problem, precisely by undermining local markets and so local food production (which, of course, is geared to selling, not satisfying needs). And this leads relief workers, who see no further than capitalism, to oppose free distribution of food on the grounds that this impedes the development of local capitalist production of food for sale on the market.

As far as we are concerned, the spontaneous reaction of ordinary people, not the tortured reasoning of the capitalist-minded relief workers, is basically the right one: free distribution of food to the starving is the solution to the problem of world hunger, but only in the framework of a society in which all wealth would be produced for use and no longer for sale on a market with a view to profit; which in turn is only possible on the basis of the common ownership and democratic control of the world's resources.

In such a world socialist society any starvation inherited from capitalism could be stopped immediately by distributing “surplus" and "strategic" stocks, without this in any way discouraging local food production. This is because the latter would then be geared to use and not sale and so its output would not be in competition with the food shipped in from outside. Indeed, since it is desirable that areas should be self-sufficient at least in the area's basic cereal (be it wheat, rice, maize or whatever), the longer term aim would be that local production should be expanded so as to be able to replace outside shipments as quickly as possible.

A crash programme of this type combining free distribution to relieve immediate hunger and the development of local food production, within the framework of a world community without frontiers or buying and selling, is the only way to solve the problem of world hunger once and for all.

Adam Buick

Vodka, vodka everywhere (1986)

From the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is now common knowledge that Russia has a massive drink problem. Alcoholism has reached ghastly levels. Leningrad on a Saturday night makes Glasgow look like a vicarage tea party. The authorities are naturally worried, and Russian magazines run feverish discussions on how best to deal with the problem. As in other countries, alcoholism in Russia leads to horrifying crimes, especially brutal assaults, and even murders, some cases of which we quote later. The medical authorities and the police have organised a regular service of snatch squads to pick up dangerous drunks and transfer them to special clinics where they are dried out and sterilised before being released and presented with the bill, for alcoholics are not covered by Russian medicare. Foreign tourists on the "Metro" at night do not often realise that the five-man patrols on the stations are mainly for drunks, who can be a deadly menace. There is no control at the station entrances. The Leningrad Metro, usefully for dangerous drunks, is fitted with steel outer-doors on the station platforms, which open only when the train doors open. In Leningrad the problem is worsened by the hordes of weekend tourists from Finland, just over the border. "What have you come to Leningrad for?”, one young husky was asked in the Hotel Moscow. Strutting about in a resplendent Red Army officer's cap (which he had swopped for a bottle of vodka), he replied: "For the booze and the birds. In Leningrad, they are the best".

Russian vodka is probably the most pernicious potion on the face of this earth, making scotch whisky. Jamaican rum or Mexican tequila mild by comparison. Tasteless, odourless (unless you can call a smell like old petrol anything) and colourless, it also looks harmless (like the water it is named after) but a couple of swigs, and in minutes it sets the pulse racing and has the brain cells inflamed. Vodkas potency is compounded by the traditional Russian method of drinking. Woe betide the unfortunate guest at any Russian party or celebration who does not, upstanding, down the glassful in one spasmodic, desperate gulp. For the average non-Russian that gulp is often enough to bring intoxication, even oblivion.

Heavy boozing has a long tenuous history in Russia. When the Winter Palace was finally over-run in November 1917, the mob rapidly invaded the basement. (The sailors had already got in during the night by the unguarded back doors.) Down in the cellars they found thousands of bottles of the choicest vintages of the whole of Europe. Never having even seen such stuff before, it did not take the invading hordes long to test it. In a few minutes the greatest coup d'etat in history looked like becoming the greatest mass booze-up of all time. Companies of the Priobrahzensky elite guards were called in. They too, officers included, were soon staggering about. Eventually a special detachment of the fire brigade was called out to smash thousands of priceless bottles and pump the contents into the Neva river. Never has so much fabulous booze gone to such waste.

In the first euphoric revolutionary days the Bolshevik authorities banned the production and sale of vodka which, by the way, is not made from rotting vegetation, or crude oil but from best quality corn. They might as well have ordered the sun to stop shining. Just as in America, prohibition just would not work. Peasants promptly started up their little stills and produced a deadly brew called "Samagon'. or "Do It Yourself', which was so powerful that a slug of cold water after 24 hours unconsciousness put one out again for another spell. With NEP, the Bolshevik government re-introduced the manufacture of vodka, immediately named Rykovha after the then-Prime Minister Alex Rykov (later shot by Stalin, of course).

Typical of the present situation are the reports of court cases in the Moscow Literary Gazette:

• "Citizen K" in a drunken condition and hooligan manner, stabbed "Citizen H" who, not recovering consciousness, died of wounds.
• "That day I drew my wages, on the way home to the hostel we (my friends and I) bought six bottles of vodka and six of beer. When the vodka ran out one of the lads suggested we buy some more from a taxi driver. In the street I stumbled against a young girl. I was very unsteady on my feet. Her boyfriend told me not to drink so much. This annoyed me, so I outed with my knife and stabbed him."
• "Yesterday evening my neighbour came round with a bottle of vodka. After we finished it I asked him where we could buy some more. From a bloke in the street', he replied. After he left, my girlfriend, who was very drunk, started sobbing and said she was so miserable, she didn't wish to live any more. I don't understand why I picked up the table knife or why I stabbed her. I killed her out of pity".

It will astound London cab drivers that night taxi drivers in Moscow. Leningrad and other cities are regular illicit vodka suppliers, among other things.

It is painfully obvious that the Russian government has a profound social problem. It was the confident claim of the old socialist writers that the new society (socialism) would make boozing quite unnecessary. Who would wish to drown their sorrows and ruin their health, when most of the sorrows were no longer there? Under harsh exploitation and state repression, the mood of the Russian workers is misery and frustration. expressed in an excess of swigging vodka. But this mood will not last. Russian workers will demand free speech, free elections. free organisations — in a word, democracy — and will go on to partake in the socialist revolution. We might (cautiously) drink to them.

Horatio

Observations: Pop goes Norman (1986)

The Observations Column from the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pop goes Norman

The British Record industry Awards (BBC 1, 10 February) consisted of the usual vacuous ego-tripping and facetious speeches from such useful members of society as the pop group Tears for Fears. The recipients of the awards were the same kind of safe, tedious performers as last year, and the year before, and so on. Phil Collins, the Eurythmics, Huey Lewis and the News, Bruce Springsteen — the list of commercially successful and artistically irrelevant "stars" is endless. Of course, there was the patronising "special award" to Bob Geldof and Live Aid but in general these awards showed that Nothing Had Changed. (Although, in the spirit of tokenism for which the BBC is famous, we even had a Best Classical Recording award.)

However, this award ceremony was special, because the guest of honour was none other than our old friend Norman Tebbit. The emptiness of the speech he was to make was presaged by Noel Edmonds' blatant appeal to naked emotion when he introduced Tebbit as "a man who has recently returned to public life after a long spell in hospital" — or words to that effect: Tebbit began by saying that he didn't know much about pop music (neither does Noel Edmonds, so he was in good company) and then sallied forth into a series of facts and figures showing that pop music was an extremely high-earning export (and therefore ideologically sound as far as Norm was concerned). He praised its "competitiveness" and the fact that it gives pleasure to so many people and went on to praise Live Aid for "helping people less fortunate than ourselves". An analysis of why they are "less fortunate" was too much to hope for, but the hypocrisy of first praising competition and then shedding crocodile tears for the inevitable results of the competitive system was blatant even for Tebbit.

But the awards only served to confirm what Tebbit said — those who are most easily marketable take the awards. Of course, in this twisted society it makes more sense to waste time and effort marketing the garbled vocals of Bruce Springsteen than to ensure the free distribution of resources which would ensure that disasters like the Ethiopian famine can never be repeated.

Socialism will be a world wide society of free access, in which everyone's needs are met. Then there will be no need for faded pop stars to organise fund-raising concerts; no need for hypocritical politicians to congratulate them for doing so and no need for ceremonies in which the musically illiterate are presented with awards for selling more records than their equally illiterate competitors. Pop music will no longer be a commodity to be bought and sold — it will simply not matter whether or not a record is Number One. Maybe music will then give real pleasure rather than a temporary respite from the misery of life under capitalism.

God spot

"Gawd", you mutter, as our Brian, busily buttering up his latest Establishment worthy, rolls over invitingly to have his belly scratched. "What about some genuinely aggressive questioning for a change?" But Scargill's out in the cold these days; Brenda Dean's dangerously popular, and Hughie ("terrible twin") Scanlon s sleeping it off in the Lords alongside Joe (Lord) Gormley. We'll just have to wait until there's a nice juicy striking bus-driver for him to sink his teeth into.

But what's this? Thought for the Day. Aarrgh! Here it comes again! You'll know the sort of thing. Some vicar, attired in the gear of an archangel, arrives at the studio clutching a couple of frying-pans, a brace of walking-sticks. and a chalice of font-water. Like as not he'll be sporting six yards of striped woollen scarf (run up, hell confide unctuously. in celebration of advent) and a crash-helmet. In true evangelical style he's off to Killamey to skid down the Paps while singing the Greater Doxology to the tune of the well-known popular ditty, My Old Man's A Dustman.

“Heavens", observes Master Redhead. "Precisely", murmurs our impassioned divine. You haven't even a free hand to turn the damn thing off as you mop the blood from your lacerated face, or as you scrape the porridge from the kitchen floor. You may remind yourself that, after all, it's only three minutes. But then, it's three minutes every morning. There you are. struggling to interpret the customary BBC Newspeak, fuming, perhaps, at yet another gratuitous assault on yet another group of disaffected trade unionists when — Wham! — you're suffocating in yet another nebulous cloud of sanctimonious codswallop.

They've mugged you again. (This time it's a holy cook who manages to punctuate his pietistic diatribe with entirely disgusting recipes for goatsmeat stew.) But they won't catch you next time — will they?

The great and the good

"I have built many roads and sewers in my time"
(Employment Secretary. Lord Young, on BBC Radio 4. 20 February)

My, my! How about that, then? Of course, Lord Young is not exactly unique in his truly prodigious endeavours, is he? Take the Great Wall of China. You may have heard a broadcasting hack assert (Radio 2, 26 February) that this mighty rampart — all 1500 miles of it — was built by one Shih Hwang-ti. the first of the "universal emperors'. Swiftly on to 5th century Athens BC. Phidias builds the Parthenon. Admittedly, he enjoyed a little help from Ictinus and Callicrates, but it was a brave effort for all that. North-Westward to Rome and the Colosseum. The Emperor Vespasian rolled his sleeves up for this one. Unfortunately he was "summoned by the Gods" before he could complete it — overwork, no doubt — and his successor. Titus, to the cheers of his admiring people, finished the job — all on his own.

But what about the home scene? There have been many instances of selfless hard work and heroic devotion to duty. One in particular springs to mind: the example of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Brunei built anything and everything bridges, railways, ships, canals . . . One very fine example of his handiwork is his tunnel at Box. on the old Great Western line from London to Bristol. Imagine, if you will, all those spotless navvies and their wenches, sitting round their roaring fires, tankards of foaming porter clutched in their soft white hands, howling encouragement to Isambard as, shovel in one grimy fist, pick in the other, he hacks his way through miles of rock and clay. A heartening sight indeed!

Or — and here you rub your eyes — can it be possible that the nearest Lord Young of Graffham ever got to building sewers was when he presented his aristocratic backside to them?

Ireland — New Central Branch (1986)

Party News from the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The World Socialist Party has now established a Central Branch. Membership is open to socialists living in areas where there is no existing branch of the Party. Members of Central Branch will be kept in touch with Party activity through a Branch Newsletter and encouraged to attend centrally-organised lectures and training courses designed to help them generate socialist activity in their own areas.

The World Socialist Party is anxious to promote the growth of Central Branch, which is seen as the best way of developing socialist organisation throughout the country. A handbook, giving guidance and advice on the most effective means of getting activity going in areas where no formal branch structure exists, is in course of preparation and will be issued, on request, to any member of Central Branch.

The National Executive Committee of the Party has also agreed to provide Central Branch members with special leaflets, where required, specifically designed to meet the needs of a particular area. Should a Central Branch member, or members, wish to organise a public meeting, the N.E.C. will assist with advice, advertising and the provision of speakers.

There are a considerable number of subscribers to the Socialist Standard throughout the country who may be interested in making a positive contribution to socialism. Central Branch provides them with an opportunity to do this. For details, write to:

V. Polland, Secretary, Central Branch, World Socialist Party, 41 Donegall Street. Belfast 1.

The War On Poverty (1986)

From the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Click to enlarge.)

Students in confusion (1986)

From the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last February the Socialist Workers Student Society of Central London Polytechnic (SWP) ran a weekend of discussion and debate on Marxism for Students. Why Marxism is any different for students, they do not say. But their advertisement said ". . . and still the crisis goes on — not just for Britain — all over the world there seems no way out of the circle of decline  . . .  Russia is no different . . . The Third World sinks deeper into debt and American multi-nationals continually hover on the brink of collapse."

They may "hover on the brink" but the first thing the SWP has to learn is that capitalism will not collapse; also that there is a "way out" of the cycle of decline through the normal economic laws of capitalism. When demand revives the capitalists re-invest and the cycle of boom, depression, stagnation and slump starts afresh.

The SWP's Marxism for Students then turns into an attack on Kinnock because "Labour doesn't do anything" to "challenge the Tories . . .  At no time has Kinnock stood by those who challenge the Tories . . . What is surprising to many socialists in the Labour Party is the way in which the ‘Soft Left' in the Party have danced to Kinnock's tune.” The idea that there are any socialists in the Labour Party is as ridiculous as Catholics in the Ulster Unionist Party or members of the Anti-Betting League in the Bookmakers' Protection Association. Despite the hard facts proving that the Labour Party is a gang of politicians serving capitalism, the old musty Leninist tradition drags on. The entire tone of the SWP is a petulant whine at the "misconduct" of Kinnock, based on the obsolete Leninist notion that somewhere, somehow, the Labour Party ought to be a socialist party because it is financed by the trade unions. "Those who once denounced Kinnock as a scab, now sacrifice all principles in the name of unity", they moan. How the Labour Party, which has never had any principles and has always readjusted its politics to the prevailing wind, could sacrifice something it never had they do not say.

"Many former revolutionary groups joined the labour Party hoping to turn it Leftwards, but instead found it swallowed them up." How delightfully modest and self-effacing not to mention that it was precisely the SWP and its Trotskyite followers who flogged "entryism" (infiltrating the Labour Party) for years, kidding the workers that it could be transformed into a socialist party. After 60 years of floundering and blundering, the SWP has now just realised that "Russia is no different" and that the Labour Party is a bourgeois party. How many decades of progress towards socialism have these Trotskyite red herrings cost us? When will members of the SWP read and study Marx himself instead of Trotsky’s false interpretations? When will they realise that the only way to socialism is through voting, not rioting?

The admission to this mish-mash of confusion cost £7. The Socialist Party has never in all its 82 years charged admission to its lectures, meetings or schools. Our advice to London Polytechnic students is to keep their money in their pockets; instead attend the meetings of the Socialist Party, where authentic Marxism is expounded free of charge, as it ought to be. They can then speed the day when one of the main obstacles to socialist progress — the confused and bewildered Left Wing — will realise their futility and quietly vacate the scene, leaving the way open for genuine socialism and the organisation of the revolutionary democratic socialist movement.

In the same issue of the students' magazine is this gem: "The thing about the SWP is that very few of them are socialists - and even less are workers.”

Horatio.