About Socialism (1988)

From the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

1. What is the Socialist Party of Great Britain?

It is a political party, separate from all others, Left, Right or Centre. It stands for the sole aim of establishing a world social system based upon human need instead of private or state profit. The Object and Declaration of Principles printed in this introductory leaflet were adopted by the Socialist Party in 1904 and have been maintained without compromise since then. In other countries there are companion parties sharing the same object and principles, and they too remain independent from all other political parties.

2. What is capitalism?

Capitalism is the social system which now exists in all countries of the world. Under this system, the means of production and distribution (land, factories, offices, transport, media, etc.) are monopolised by a minority, the capitalist class. All wealth is produced by us, the majority working class, who sell our mental and physical energies to the capitalists in return for a price called a wage or salary. The object of wealth production is to create goods and services which can be sold on the market at a profit. Not only do the capitalists live off the profits they obtain from exploiting the working class, but, as a class, they go on accumulating wealth extracted from each generation of workers.

3. Can capitalism be reformed in our interests?

No: as long as capitalism exists, profits will come before needs. Some reforms are welcomed by some workers, but no reform can abolish the fundamental contradiction between profit and need which is built into the present system. No matter whether promises to make capitalism run in the interests of the workers are made sincerely or by opportunist politicians they are bound to fail, for such a promise is like offering to run the slaughter house in the interests of the cattle.

4. Is nationalisation an alternative to capitalism?

No: nationalised industries simply mean that workers are exploited by the state, acting on behalf of the capitalists of one country, rather than by an individual capitalist or company. The workers in nationalised British Leyland are no less the servants of profit than workers in privately-owned Ford. The mines no more belong to "the public" or the miners now than they did before 1947 when they were nationalised. Nationalisation is state capitalism.

5. Are there any “socialist countries”?

No: the so-called socialist countries are systems of state capitalism. In Russia and its empire, in China, Cuba, Albania, Yugoslavia and the other countries which call themselves socialist, social power is monopolised by privileged Party bureaucrats. The features of capitalism, as outlined above, are all present. An examination of international commerce shows that the bogus socialist states are part of the world capitalist market and cannot detach themselves from the requirements of profit.

6. What Is the meaning of socialism?

Socialism does not yet exist. When it is established it must be on a worldwide basis, as an alternative to the outdated system of world capitalism. In a socialist society there will be common ownership and democratic control of the earth by its inhabitants. No minority class will be in a position to dictate to the majority that production must be geared to profit. There will be no owners: everything will belong to everyone. Production will be solely for use, not for sale. The only questions society will need to ask about wealth production will be: what do people require, and can the needs be met? These questions will be answered on the basis of the resources available to meet such needs. Then, unlike now, modern technology and communications will be able to be used to their fullest extent. The basic socialist principle will be that people give according to their abilities and take according to their self- defined needs. Work will be on the basis of voluntary co-operation: the coercion of wage and salary work will be abolished. There will be no buying or selling and money will not be necessary, in a society of common ownership and free access. For the first time ever the people of the world will have common possession of the planet earth.

7. How will socialism solve the problems of society?

Capitalism, with its constant drive to serve profit before need, throws up an endless stream of problems. Most workers in Britain feel insecure about their future; almost one in four families with children living below the official government poverty line; many old people live in dangerously cold conditions each winter and thousands die; millions of our fellow men and women are dying of starvation — tens of thousands of them each day. A society based on production for use will end those problems because the priority of socialist society will be the fullest possible satisfaction of needs. At the moment food is destroyed and farmers are subsidised not to produce more: yet many millions are malnourished. At the moment hospital queues are growing longer and people are dying of curable illnesses; yet it is not "economically viable" to provide decent health treatment for all. In a socialist society nothing short of the best will be good enough for any human being.

8. What about human nature?

Human behaviour is not fixed, but determined by the kind of society people are conditioned to live in. The capitalist jungle produces vicious, competitive ways of thinking and acting. But we humans are able to adapt our behaviour and there is no reason why our rational desire for comfort and human welfare should not allow us to co-operate. Even under capitalism people often obtain pleasure from doing a good turn for others; few people enjoy participating in the "civilised" warfare of the daily rat-race. Think how much better it would be if society was based on co-operation.

9. Are socialists democrats?

Yes: the Socialist Party has no leaders. It is a democratic organisation controlled by its members. It understands that Socialism can only be established by a conscious majority of workers — that workers must liberate themselves and will not be liberated by leaders or parties. Socialism will not be brought about by a dedicated minority "smashing the state", as some left-wingers would have it. Nor do the activities of paid, professional politicians have anything to do with Socialism — the experience of seven Labour governments has shown this. Once a majority of the working class understand and want Socialism, they will take the necessary step to organise consciously for the democratic conquest of political power. There will be no Socialism without a socialist majority.

10. What is the next step?

Many workers know that there is something wrong and want to change society. Some join reform groups in the hope that capitalism can be patched up, but such efforts are futile because you cannot run a system of class exploitation in the interests of the exploited majority. People who fear a nuclear war may join CND. but as long as nation states exist, economic rivalry means that the world will never be safe from the threat of war. There are countless dedicated campaigns and good causes which many sincere people are caught up in, but there is only one solution to the problems of capitalism and that is to get rid of it, and establish Socialism. Before we can do that we need socialists; winning workers to that cause requires knowledge, principles and an enthusiasm for change. These qualities can be developed by anyone — and are essential for anyone who is serious about changing society. Capitalism in the 1980s is still a system of waste, deprivation and frightening insecurity. You owe it to yourself to find out about the one movement which stands for the alternative.

If you have read this set of principles and agree with some or all of them, contact the Socialist Party with your questions and ideas about what you can do to help speed the progress towards Socialism.

Punishing the poor (1988)

From the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

At a time when we are constantly being told that the economy is doing well, that output is increasing and the living standards of those in work are going up, it is easy, perhaps, to forget that significant numbers of workers in Britain are not doing well, even measured by the miserable standards of capitalism. 10.43 million people are currently living at or below the Supplementary Benefit (SB) level; a further 7.61 million people live on incomes no more than 40 per cent above the SB level. In other words a total of over 18 million people are living in a state of poverty.

Life for claimants has never been easy: they have to endure the indignity of waiting for hours just to "sign on'", of having to answer numerous questions about their lives in order to secure the "right"' to a pittance of benefit which is insufficient to meet even their basic needs — food, shelter, warmth and clothing. They have to live according to a set of rules laid down by the state governing what they do with their time — how many hours they can work, whether or not they can enrol for a course at college — and even, in some circumstances, who they can sleep with and on what terms. Put a step wrong and they are likely to find their benefit stopped by officials who are trained to regard all claimants as potential "scroungers '.

This month sees the introduction of a new system of social security benefits which will make life even harder for most claimants — less money, more hoops to jump through in order to get it and more conditions attached to receiving it.

• Supplementary Benefit is to be replaced by a new means-tested benefit to be called Income Support.
• The old system of " single payments" — extra money to cover the cost of large items like furniture, bedding and children’s shoes — will be stopped. In its place will be the Social Fund. Instead of getting grants to help with large occasional expenses, claimants will have to ask for a loan from a cash-limited fund which they will have to pay back out of their ordinary weekly benefits. Those who are turned down for such loans will be referred to charities.
• Family Income Supplement (FIS), the means-tested benefit that is presently paid to low income families with children, is to be replaced by Family Credit which will be available to fewer families and will be payable through the breadwinner s pay packet.

The government claims that "only" 35 per cent of claimants will be worse off under the new system. Other (more independent) sources argue that the figure will be nearer to 60 per cent (including 81 per cent of couples with children, 74 per cent of lone parents and 90 per cent of pensioners) since the government's calculations do not take account of the fact that any "gains" under the new system will be almost completely wiped out by simultaneous changes in the housing benefit system which will require everyone, including claimants, to pay the first 20 per cent of their rates. Insufficient allowance has been made for this in the scale rates which have been set for Income Support.

There are other measures in the new system which will make life more difficult for the poor: unemployed sixteen- and seventeen- year-olds who refuse to go on government “training " schemes like YTS will be disqualified from receiving any benefits at all. And the unemployed will also find themselves the target of even more "special measures" designed not so much to get them back to work, but rather to intimidate them into removing themselves from the unemployment register and thus give the illusion of rapidly falling unemployment rates. People claiming sickness or unemployment benefit will have their entitlement assessed on the previous two years' national insurance contributions instead of just the last year as at present. Those who leave a job without being sacked will find that they are deemed to be "voluntarily unemployed", and therefore not entitled to benefit, for twenty-six weeks instead of thirteen weeks. Clearly these last two measures are designed to force people to stay in the same job no matter how unsuited they may be to the work and no matter how bad the working conditions.

The new social security system must be seen in the context of other recent changes which have also hit the poor. Since January 1987, unemployed people on Supplementary Benefit have only been entitled to have half their mortgage interest paid for them for the first four months on benefit — the darker side of the owner-occupation about which we hear very little compared with the empty rhetoric about the joys of being part of the "property-owning democracy". Extra weekly payments for heating have been frozen since November 1985 and the level of Child Benefit — payable to 6.8 million mothers to help with the cost of raising 12.2 million children — has not been uprated in line with inflation.

So how should we view these new measures? Firstly, they are not entirely new — there has been a long history of punishing the poor, beginning with the imprisonment of those deemed to be vagrants and continuing, in the nineteenth century, with the harsh conditions of the Victorian workhouse. Secondly, poor people have always been divided into two categories: the "deserving'' and the "undeserving". The "deserving" poor have tended to be the elderly, widows, children. the sick and the disabled who have been seen as worthy recipients of charity for which they are expected to be duly grateful. The "undeserving" poor have tended to be the unemployed, viewed with mistrust, suspicion and fear, especially by the ruling class, nervous that those members of the working class so clearly without a stake in the present social order, might kick against a system to which they were marginal. The "undeserving" poor are not even regarded as suitable objects of charity. Rather they should be punished to deter others from voluntarily joining their ranks by making their position so uncomfortable (“less eligible") that no one would choose unemployment rather than wage-slavery. Seen in this light the new system merely represents more of the same.

The government claims that, under the new system, benefits will be targeted towards those most in need — the "deserving" poor — although even this claim is pretty empty since many pensioners will be worse oft sickness benefit will be harder to get and child benefit has already been cut in real terms. The measures against the unemployed are, however, quite clearly designed to make their lives as uncomfortable as possible. Young people will be forced to work for their benefits; the differential between benefits and wages will be widened so that even very low wages look attractive compared with what can be got on the dole; and the grounds for the withdrawal or refusal of benefits to the unemployed will be increased. At the same time the new Family Credit system, because it will be administered by employers and paid along with wages, will give low paid workers the illusion that they are being paid more than they really are. In other words, the government is continuing its attempt to create a low wage economy.

The consequences of low wages and benefits is poverty, and poverty has far-reaching effects on people's health, housing, personal relationships, sense of well-being and life chances. Already the children of the poor are twice as likely to die before their first birthday than the children of the rich. Death rates among the unemployed are 20 per cent higher than expected. Increasingly the unemployed figure in the statistics for suicide. In 1987, 100,000 families were homeless and the number of mortgage defaults was over 20,000 and rising. One million people are living in unfit housing. 5.6 million people exist on incomes below Supplementary Benefit levels because they do not get all the benefits they are entitled to.

This situation, already an appalling catalogue of misery and deprivation, can only get worse under the new benefit system. However, it would not be enough simply to reinstate the old system or even to up-rate the level of benefits — people would still be forced to live in poverty. What is needed is a new social order that does not require access to wage-slavery as a precondition for meeting basic needs and which does not punish those who are unable to work by forcing them to beg for crumbs. It's time that all workers got up off their knees.

Janie Percy-Smith

Obituary for the phoney alliance (1988)

From the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much water has flowed under the bridge in the decade since the Dimbleby Lecture was delivered on BBC TV by Roy Jenkins, the archetypal Labour opportunist with an expensive taste for wine and an undisguised contempt for socialism. Jenkins had been Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Wilson government which had dragged the idea of socialism through the mud as it pursued some of the most cynically anti-working-class policies in British political history. Now Jenkins had become a convert to a new, even more opportunist, more cynical, vision: the belief in what became known as the political "centre ground". No longer should politics be stained with the extremities of ideological fervour. In moderate, comfy, common sense, men of good reason (capitalist timeservers like Jenkins and George Brown and assorted other careerists) would unite in the political "middle ground". As the 1970s turned into a new decade with a new Thatcher-led government a growing campaign emerged to realise the Jenkins dream of a new Centre Party — a dream which, if history is to be written accurately, Jenkins pinched from the 1960s' Liberal leader Grimond who in turn stole from the post-war Butskellite tradition in which all three major electoral parties co-habited within the intellectual slum of vaguely comprehended Keynesian reformism.

By the early Eighties the cry for a Centre Party was motivated by impatience at the dogmatic obsessions of the Tory monetarists and the tired rhetoric of the pro-state-capitalist Labour Left, then passing through one of its illusory moments of ascendancy. The cry for the new party was deafening. But wherefrom came the cry? Not from the factories or offices or pubs or dole offices or anywhere that you or I are likely to be found. It came instead from the media and from the academics who had run out of ideas, from the Liberals who had lost all hope of power and the Labourites who were tired of having to go to the bother of singing the Red Flag once a year so that the troops would fight for them.

The new party would "take the politics out of politics", while offering the workers what they believed we had always been used to: smiling leaders and capitalism without the ideological wrapping paper of the Left or Right. The rest is history. In 1981 a bunch of squalid Tories in drag walked out of the Labour Party (which had been very happy to have them) and took up residence in TV studios. There they spent the early 1980s looking through the camera into the living rooms of workers who were told repeatedly that what we all really want is "moderation" — a term which, like decency and apple pie, is uttered with an appearance of great meaningfulness by politicians and which means absolutely nothing.

After the Labour split of 1981 came the Gang of Four: a gang of bores who told us that they were old-fashioned, "moderate" socialists who would stand for Social Democracy. This meant, in fact, that they stood for a combination of sterile Labour reformism and half-baked Tory management of the profit system and that they would do this in unison with the Liberal Party which had been suffering from a serious illness, probably terminal, for about sixty years. The Alliance was born. In Warrington Roy Jenkins won a spectacular by-election success when he lost the election and came second. The TV pundits did brief interviews with the candidate who had the audacity to win and then spent weeks celebrating the victory for moderation which Warrington apparently signified.

In 1983 the "social democrats" (by now the SDP) went into the general election with the Liberals as an Alliance. They lost, enjoying the dubious success of sometimes damaging the Labour vote and providing the Tories with the best election victory of any British party since 1945. Jenkins was removed as SDP leader within weeks of the result. He was to make way for the man who had always personified the real face of moderation: David Owen. What did this real moderate face look like? Well, as a face it looked pretty good — the sort of face which would not have been out of place on one of those TV hospital dramas where the surgeons are always handsome and arrogant. So much for the man himself. The face of moderation politically could not have been better portrayed than by David Owen: a smug, supercilious man for whom pragmatism was all, principles of no account and capitalism as inevitable as socialism was instantly dismissable. At the Labour Conference in Wembley in 1981 (the one where Owen quit) our late comrade, Jim Glitz, approached Owen and offered to sell him a Socialist Standard "This is the only paper which puts the case for the abolition of the wages system" said the ever-optimistic Glitz, the sort of bloke who would have tried telling Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams to stop wasting time on trivialities and unite for world socialism. "When are we going to have this socialism, then — next weekend?" retorted Owen, whose definition of an ideal is embodied in his devout support for the obscene power of the NATO murder machine. Owen epitomises most of what stinks in capitalist politics; the bits which he does not yet epitomise he is ambitious to descend to.

In 1987 the Alliance went into the general election as two parties in fundamental coalition. Steel and Owen presented themselves as the inseparable dream ticket. Seven million workers were conned into voting for them. Of course, the worst of it was that they voted for capitalism which can never be run in the interest of the workers. But that was not all that constituted the Alliance confidence trick. The campaign of Liberal-SDP coalition within the mysterious "middle ground" which was presented to the voters last year was erected on the basis of the most cynical and contemptible fraud. While Steel and Owen posed as friends they were in reality bitter rivals for power; they appeared as advocates of an unstated Centre vision but it now turns out that they were both looking in different directions, both hoping that those scrutinising their case were too stupid to see the transparent sham of their phoney alliance. Even within the usual context of capitalist political trickery the Alliance politicians played a dirty trick; they deserve everything that has happened to them in the days since the election as their tacky Alliance has fallen to pieces before the public gaze. They deserve the contempt which millions of workers will show them.

What pleasure we have all had — we who were not taken in by them — to watch the Alliance committing public suicide in the months since their defeat in the last election. How pleasing it has been to see that, despite all the advertising hype for which they could afford to pay thanks to their millionaire backers like David Sainsbury, despite all the media support which has none too subtly been offered to them, despite all the phoney rhetoric about "middle ground" and "the Centre" and "breaking the mould", they have ended up in a squalid battle over a merged party which thousands are planning to leave and nobody looks very anxious to join.

The Alliance has shown that a party without principles or ideas descends to a level which is truly laughable. Look at the Liberal merger debate in Blackpool where for many of the speakers the main objection to merger was that Social would come before Liberal in the new party's name (the SLDP). Then, on the eve of the SDP merger conference in Sheffield, an internal war broke out over which faction could use the conference hall on the Saturday night. The SDP leaders (the pro-mergerites) threatened to take their opponents to court to stop them using the hall. Meanwhile, the non-merger SDPers (irritatingly referred to as the Owenites: a profound insult to the memory of the ideas of Robert Owen, a political thinker whose boots David Owen would not be fit to polish) are offering the chance of a free fortnight in Portugal to SDPers who resist the yawn-inducing temptation of going into the SLDP and stay in the SDP rump. Such people might as well go away for good, for their political futures will be doomed after the SDP minority has had its nose bloodied in a few by-election defeats by the SLDP. How long will it be before Owen, and perhaps some of his fellow SDP hacks, swallow what pride they have left and accept the offers which are certainly made to them to enter their natural home in the Tory party?

Whatever happens to Owen, Maclennan and the rest of the SDP timewasters, one thing is certain: after one hundred and ten years as an oflicial party (and rather longer as a political tradition) the Liberal Party is now dead. Like jolly decent Liberals they booked a hall in Blackpool and voted with tears in their eyes to shoot themselves through the head. Some Liberals will be too “progressive'' to be allowed into the new party — which will be the only party in Britain to impose a constitutional obligation on its members that they support NATO. Others will join reluctantly, mourning the days in which they at least had a reason to be in oblivion which they could justify to themselves. Others will join the new set-up willingly, pursuing the sordid struggle for a lick of power. Paddy Ashdown will be leading the Give Us A Lick tendency, followed not far behind by those nonentities in search of greater nonentities to worship them, Alan Beith and Malcolm Bruce.

Some people may be surprised that we regard the Liberal Party with such hostility. After all. are they not a basically "radical'' force? Indeed, in its years of decline the Liberals have won to their ranks many workers who oppose the worn-out policies of both left-wing and right-wing and they have been responsible for raising within the Liberal Party many issues which would be ignored in more pragmatic circles. But no, the Liberals are not radical in any meaningful sense of the term. The Liberals have never addressed themselves to the root cause of the problems which they sometimes sound concerned about: they do not get to the root because the root is the capitalist system and it would not do for a capitalist party to have to pull up that root, would it? So for years now, the Liberals have plodded away in a smug world of thinking themselves rather radical and nonconformist but in reality being wedded irremovably to the futile old politics of capitalist reform. Ian Aitken of the Guardian was on the ball when he described them as being "cocooned in a comfy mood of self-esteem" (25 January 1988).

The Liberal Party 's delusion of radicalism is based, like so many of the other great myths of capitalist politics, on very selective memory. To be sure, the Liberals have made progressive-sounding noises when they have been out of power, but what have they done when they have been in? Are we to forget that they were the government which grossly intensified the arms budget to prepare the way for the monstrous slaughter of the First World War? Liberals supported that waste of millions of workers' lives because as supporters of capitalism they cannot extricate themselves from the system's inevitable by-product: war. They did it then and now again they have merged into a new movement which sees preparation for war as a priority.

The Liberals now make much noise about the wickedness of the Tories' so-called free market dogma. But this was not an invention of Thatcher's or one of her crazy advisors. The essence of Liberal economics was free trade and the unregulated market. And let it not be forgotten that the Liberal Party in power was the last government in Britain to fire on and kill striking workers. In 1910, when Winston Churchill was Liberal Home Secretary. 7.000 troops were sent to Liverpool to coerce the dockers who were on strike. Tom Mann, the chairman of the transport workers' Joint Strike Committee, told the Liberal tyrant. "Let Churchill . . . order ten times more military to Liverpool and let every street be paraded by them, not all the king's forces with all the king's men can take the vessels out of the docks to sea". In fact. Mann was right: the might of organised labour was greater than the Liberal government and their armed thugs and the dock authorities gave in to the dockers' demands.

Liverpool was only part of a general strike wave to which the Liberal oppressors had to respond in 1910: in Tonypandy in the Rhondda Valley massed police attacked defenceless strikers, and in Llanelly they fired on a peaceful demonstration, killing two workers. So much for the radical record of Liberalism. The history of the Liberal Party is one of failure to tame the beast of capitalism and success in accommodating itself to the anti-social ferocity of the beast. If that is the legacy which they take with them into the SLDP, workers should keep clear of the new party like the plague.

Many Alliance supporters will be disappointed that their hopes which had been raised by Owen and Steel have been so suddenly dashed. It was inevitable for there is no such place in politics as the middle ground. The concept of the centre is an illusion. To those tired of the boring old left-right struggle the illusion is a seductive one, offering the chance of capitalism without having to think about ideology. The hard fact is that there are only two camps which serious political parties may join. One can either stand in open defence of capitalism — as the Tories and the Owen faction and many Liberals do — or one stands against capitalism. The reason for the lack of credibility of the Labour Party and the other lefty "moderates" is that they pay occasional lip service to opposition to capitalism but are in fact supporters of running the system. Kinnock and the vast majority of Labourites are as much victims of the illusion of the political soft centre — of capitalism in moderate doses — as was the Alliance.

There is no room for fence-sitting in the class war. You are either for the millionaires or for the workers who are robbed. You either favour bombs, of whatever kind they might be, or you refuse uncompromisingly to fight their bloody wars. You either stand for production for sale and profit or for production for use and free access. Either revolution or reform. There is no middle way. Let those who are licking their wounds in the obscurity of political disgrace remember that the creation of a sane society is always going to be more important than the miserable dealings for power in which they have all just been the losers. The workers have a world to win and that is just a little more important than whether Paddy Ashdown is to become leader of the party with no name and fewer principles.

Steve Coleman

Swansea election campaign (1988)

Party News from the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the second year in succession Swansea Branch of The Socialist Party are putting up a candidate in the City Council elections. As last year, we will be contesting the Uplands Ward of the city, which has approximately 11,000 voters. The election takes place on Thursday 5 May and our candidate is Howard Moss. Our activity will consist mainly of canvassing and of free literature and manifesto distribution to all the houses in the ward. We would especially welcome members or supporters from outside Swansea to help in the campaign. Now that we are known in the area from last year's campaigns, we hope to make a bigger and more sustained impact. Below is the election manifesto that will be received by all the electors in the ward.

Swansea Branch

Limiting food supply (1988)

From the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like their American counterparts a few years ago, European farmers too are going to be paid not to grow food. This was one of the decisions of the summit of Common Market Heads of Government in Brussels last February.

Known as "set aside", this scheme is no doubt destined to become as notorious as the comparable US Soil Bank scheme which President Kennedy once frankly admitted to be one of "planned underproduction". Under it, farmers who take at least 20 per cent of their land out of cultivation will be paid an annual subsidy of between £170 and £1,020 an acre, financed partly by their government and partly by the EEC. The full text of the decision, which we record for a no doubt incredulous posterity, reads as follows:

 Withdrawal of land (set-aside): The European Council agrees to accept a mechanism for limiting supply by withdrawing agricultural land from production. This will complement the other stabilisers; application will be compulsory for the Member States, but optional for producers. Regional exceptions to compulsory application will be possible.
  In order to qualify, a producer must set aside at least 20 per cent of his arable land for at least five years. A producer who sets aside at least 30 per cent will, in addition to the premium, be exempted from the co-responsibility levy for 20t of cereals marketed by him.
 The minimum premium will be 100 ECU/ha and the maximum 600 ECU/ha; the Community contribution will be 50 per cent for the first 200 ECU, 25 per cent for the following 200 to 400 ECU and 15 per cent for 400 to 600 ECU.
  If the arable land is used for fallow grazing or converted to certain types of protein plant production, the premium will be approximately 50 per cent of the amount granted for complete set-aside.
  The Community contribution will be financed 50 per cent from the EAGGF Guarantee Section and 50 per cent from the EAGGF Guidance Section

It is estimated that at least two million acres of land will be taken out of production under the scheme, which will be introduced on 1 July.

Such a scheme had first been officially proposed when Britain held the presidency of the EEC in the second half of 1986 when it was put to a conference of Common Market agricultural ministers in September of that year by the then Minister of Agriculture, Michael Jopling. The scheme was also anticipated in a consultative document issued by the present Minister of Agriculture, John MacGregor. last December in which he floated the idea of paying cereal producers between £60 and £80 an acre to take their land out of production. Predictably, the National Farmers' Union said it wasn't enough. They wanted to be paid more not to grow food, thus confirming that farms are places where the main aim is to make money not produce food. They ought to be happier about the EEC scheme.

Basically what the EEC has decided is that, instead of paying farmers to grow food which cannot be sold, they will pay them not to grow the food in the first place. The aim is to save money on storage costs. In capitalist logic, where food like everything else is produced to be sold on a market at a profit, this makes some sort of sense. There is no point in producing food that can't be sold, despite the fact that it might be needed, as there is no profit in this. In terms of the logic of human interest, however, it is quite indefensible. As we were reminded, only a few weeks before the EEC Heads of Government made their decision, by (other) clowns wearing red noses, there is a crying need for food in certain parts of the world such as Ethiopia and Mozambique where people are literally dying of starvation.

Giving the food away to those who need it is too simple for capitalism, as it would upset the operation of the sacred market mechanism on which the system is based and which everyone including the Labour Party is now saying is the best way of distributing goods and services. In fact the market mechanism is a quite irrational way of distributing food, as the example of EEC food production shows. The capacity to produce the food to feed the starving is there but cannot be activated because the starving, not having any money, do not constitute a market. Until now the unsaleable food has been allowed to go rotten in storage. From now on farmers will be paid to cut back on the capacity to produce food. Both are equally irrational ways of solving the problem of poverty amid plenty but they are the only ones possible under capitalism.

Solving the problem in the obvious way of free access to food won't be possible till socialism has been established. Indeed, this will probably be one of the first things that socialist society will have to do. Once socialism has been established, food everywhere will be produced not to make money but to satisfy the need for it. Capitalism with its food mountains in one part of the world while people are starving in another part will remain solely as a memory of humanity's barbaric past.

Adam Buick

Why Waldheim? (1988)

From the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

So, according to available evidence, Kurt Waldheim did not actually commit any atrocities, but he lied. He tried to hide the fact that he knew about them, and the witch-hunters who had wanted a burning are having to concentrate their energies on trying to get at least a banishment.

It is perhaps little known that a higher percentage of the Austrian population voluntarily joined the Nazi Party than even in Germany and it is not surprising therefore that an attack on Waldheim's Nazi past is considered by many there to be an attack on themselves. A result, which could easily therefore be foreseen of this belated attempt to bring him to "justice", is that latent anti-Semitism has been aroused and is making itself heard and felt to the discomfiture of Jews who either survived in, or have since returned to, Austria.

The question which no-one seems to ask is "Why Waldheim?" The Allies reinstated many in the German judiciary and civil service into jobs held during the Nazi regime; indeed evidence has been forthcoming from time to time that even some who had participated in concentration camp atrocities are holding responsible positions in Germany and are generally held in high esteem. It is safe to assume that, as so well expressed recently by one of Britiain's eminent public persons, they too are "economical with the truth” about their past.

The western powers who are aiding and abetting Wiesenthal's Nazi hunting are obviously also suffering a loss of memory. Perhaps they should be reminded of Tom Power's The Paperclip Conspiracy (Michael Joseph. £14.95), published as recently as 1987. This well documented book, the contents of which no-one has refuted, tell how all the Allies, shortly after the end of the second World War. went through the files of Nazi doctors and scientists. Those considered useful, however notorious their past, were marked with a paperclip. New personalities, even new nationalities, and false papers were prepared to enable them to start serving their new masters. Ardent Nazis were denazified — on paper — and given American citizenship. Among these was a doctor who had experimented on inmates in Dachau concentration camp. Their findings shaped American Air-Sea rescue operations and helped to put American men into space. Among the many pictures in the book is one of these doctors in laughing conversation with John Glenn, America's first space hero. The Nazi team who pioneered the fastest submarines were taken, en bloc, to Barrow-in-Furness by the British Admiralty; Nazi aviation experts similarly went to Farnborough. They, and those who brought them to their new homes, may safely be assumed to be hiding their past and identity.

So the question remains "Why Waldheim?" Was it a trade-off to ensure Wiesenthal's silence about others more useful, or embarrassing, to western leaders; the head on a platter of a prominent public person who, however, is easily expendable to those who are doing the backdoor bargaining? If so, the foreseeable consequences for Jews living in Austria and possibly elsewhere have been completely disregarded not only by those who offered up Waldheim as sacrifice but even more so by the self-appointed avenger. That depth of cynicism would be difficult to equal, even by the double standards of so-called morality we have become used to under capitalism.

Eva Goodman

The Green Party’s Market Economy (1988)

From the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Green Party sees the solution to the environmental crisis as lying, correctly, in the achievement of “a system of human activity which is in harmony with the Earth’s life-sustaining systems” (1987 General Election Manifesto), only they imagine that this can be done while retaining production for the market.

The Green Party’s basic policy statement Manifesto for a Sustainable Society looks forward to a society “in which small, relatively self-sufficient, self-governing communities can coexist harmoniously within the framework of a greater nation and the world as a whole”. Each of these self-governing communities would be encouraged to be as self-sufficient as possible in primary products — those taken directly from nature such as food and minerals. But “goods and resources which cannot be obtained or manufactured locally would necessitate trade with other communities” and communities “would need to trade primaries by selling manufactures (e.g. calculators for wheat)”. There would be trade within communities too:

  The self-employed will come into their own. Cobblers, comer shopkeepers, smallholders, small farmers, craftsmen and repairers of all kinds, and anyone to whom independence and the satisfaction of a job well done is more important than high financial return will find that the Green Party National Income Scheme allows them to cut their charges to customers, leading to an increase in demand for their services.

This is not socialism (not that the Green Party claims to stand for this) but the sort of simple market economy without capitalist profit that was advocated by some critics of capitalism in the 19th century. It was unrealistic then and it is still unrealistic today. The problem is not the decentralised structure based on self-administering local communities — this is one among many possible forms that democratic decision-making could take in socialism — nor even that districts and regions should produce more of their basic foodstuffs but that these communities are seen as exchanging goods with each other, whether this be for money or by barter.

Such a system would not work in the way the Green Party expects because whenever wealth is produced for sale on a market it acquires a commercial exchange-value in addition to its use-value, or capacity to satisfy some human need, and this unleashes economic forces which come to dominate production and orient it away from production for need. The goods, whether primaries or manufactures, that the self-governing communities would be producing for exchange with other communities would be commodities, or goods having an exchange-value, and so would be subject to the same laws of commodity production as apply in any market economy.

The rate of exchange between wheat and calculators — to stick to the example in the Green Party’s pamphlet — would tend to reflect the comparative amounts of labour required on average to produce them from start to finish, an average that would be established by the market, i.e. by the competition (for this is what searching around and bargaining for the best deal would amount to) between communities to buy and sell wheat, calculators and other products to each other. In this competition it would be those communities able to offer their goods at the lowest prices that would tend to do best.

The self-governing communities would therefore have an interest in keeping the labour content of their products to a minimum and, as in a normal capitalist economy, the way to do this would be to employ new, more productive machines. But these cost money, which could be obtained by maximising sales. So the Green Party’s communities would come under exactly the same pressure as are today’s private and state capitalist enterprises to seek to maximise sales and accumulate the money obtained as capital invested in new means of production.

The Green Parry evidently hope that this pressure could be resisted by limiting exchange either to barter or to the exchange of goods simply with a view to obtaining money to buy needed use-values that communities could not produce themselves. The experience of cooperative-type enterprises operating within a market context, such as the kibbutzim in Israel and the cooperative societies in Britain, has shown however that sooner or later, under the pressure of economic circumstances, such enterprises are forced to act in the same way as any more typically capitalist enterprise.

Production for the market, even if at the beginning the purpose was merely to obtain money to buy useful things, inevitably develops into capitalism where production comes to be carried on to obtain money, not to buy goods for use, but to be invested in production with a view to making more money. Wherever there is production for the market on any scale, the economic laws of capitalism inevitably come into operation and impose profit as the aim of production.

A sustainable productive system as one that respects the laws of ecology can only be instituted if production for the market is completely abolished through the establishment of the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and replaced by production solely for use. The relations between productive units — and between local communities — then cease to be commercial ones and become simple relations between suppliers and users of useful products without the intervention of money, buying and selling, trade or barter.

Adam Buick

Comic Relief (1988)

From the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Remember February 5th? — the momentous day we all donned our red noses, bow ties and other silly attire, for comic relief. Yet another day of activity to raise yet more funds for charities and worthwhile causes. Millions of people bought red noses; some walked backwards on pub crawls, others ate worms or threw jelly; all supposedly to alleviate suffering here and around the globe.

Working as I do from five in the morning at a newsagents, I had it all day. First half-a-dozen sleepy eyed, red nosed newsboys/ girls — then school kids in an assortment of madcap outfits, and later on even a horse paid a visit asking for donations. These brainwashed children from seven to seventy, convinced that this was the way to end famine and other needs, kept asking me “where is your red nose?” Charity, I replied, is futile as the problems are always recurring. I was told not to be a bore and asked what I would do about these problems.

Well, while Bob Geldof helped raise some one million pounds for famine relief over two years, the Common Market spends more than two million pounds every week on its unwanted food mountains. In Britain’s 248 grain stores there is enough wheat and barley to feed six million people for three years. There are 47,000 tons of beef, 23,000 tons of skimmed milk powder and 248,000 tons of butter, much of which is more than two years old and useless. According to This Week (TV 4 February) and other sources, it is the civil war in Ethiopia which prevents relief agency supplies from reaching areas stricken again by drought. Agonisingly the agencies are ready but they cannot transport the food to where an estimated five million people are at risk of starvation.

On top of this is the fact that over one million pounds is spent every minute on the most destructive, grotesque weapons ever created. “Well, that’s fair enough” the clowns reply, “so what do you propose?” What about a society where all the resources are commonly owned and democratically controlled — where factories, farms, offices, mines and media belong to the whole community regardless of race or sex? A world in which people have free access to all goods and services, giving according to their ability and taking according to their self-defined needs?

At the nearby library red nosed readers were served by red nosed librarians as cars passed by outside with red balloons on their bonnets. The school children dressed as penguins and peasants, threw jelly and streamers, the clowns joined the horse on the backwards walk to the pub. And they call socialists crazy.

Brian.

Birth Pangs (1988)

From the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

It's true what they say, "If men had to bear children, there'd never be more than one in a family". The infusion pump bears a small plaque that says, "Donated by . . . , Fun Run. 1985". There is no bean-bag, no birthing- stool. no background Mozart or Barry Manilow, just an interminable time that gives us a new insight into the concept of "labour". When Eleanor, our daughter, finally emerges, our relief is quickly followed by wonder at the sight of the techni-coloured baby who has just joined the human race.

Like the proverbial Martian sent to discover whether there is intelligent life on the Planet Earth, a baby starts life with a completely open mind about the new world s/he now inhabits. Our Martian day-tripper, being a completely rational being, flees back to his own planet after half a day, convinced that the inhabitants of Earth all belong to a huge lunatic asylum. Research has been unable to pinpoint the exact features of life here that upset the alien so. but there is some evidence to suggest that exposure to Murdoch's tabloids. coupled with soaps and game-shows, exerted an unbearable stress on the Martian whose sense of good taste is much more highly developed than ours. Some commentators wondered whether a glimpse of a social system that keeps millions in poverty and hunger might not have affected the visitor but this analysis was dismissed out of hand by Prime Minister Thatcher on the basis that Martians don't pay the poll tax, and therefore can't vote.

But for the new-born there is no escape from a society where people are trained to think that individuals are powerless to alleviate hunger, or poverty, or homelessness, or misery. Instead, they are led to think that giving a few pounds to charities is the limit of their ability to change the order of things. It's not that people don't recognise the need for a better system, the infant could do that. But unlike the infant who has still to be conditioned, society's rulers have persuaded the rest that there is no alternative. You don't have to read the Sun, and you don't have to watch Eastenders or The Price is Right. You can probably avoid having fairy-stories preached at you by some reactionary, misogynist in a pulpit. But unless you happen to be a member of the capitalist class you will find it almost impossible to provide food, clothing or shelter for yourself without allowing capitalism to exploit you.

A child who, on entering the world, discovers that his/her parents belong to the ruling class, is hardly likely to squallingly demand to be instantly handed over to a working class family. As s/he lies in her/his cot dreaming of the life of privilege and luxury stretching ahead — benefits derived from the exploitation of those forced to sell their labour-power in order to live — does it occur to the infant to question why a majority continue to run capitalism for the benefit of a minority?

Asked for my occupation when registering the birth I am sorely tempted to state "Wage Slave". Driving home from the hospital I slot Lindisfarne into the cassette and sing loudly to Lady Eleanor. Then I think about my future reply to my daughter's unasked question. "What did you do in the Class War, Daddy?".

Dave Coggan

Housing division (1988)

Book Review from the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Property Owning Democracy? Housing in Britain. M.J. Daunton (Faber and Faber. London 1987)

In the hierarchy of needs that confronts humanity, housing or shelter is a fundamental requirement. It has been at the forefront of Conservative Party thinking since 1979 as being the so-called right of people to own their own property. This has been a very fashionable concept but it ought not to be forgotten that the pattern of house ownership has undergone many changes, as Daunton points out in his conclusion:

  There is nothing sacrosanct or immutable about the pattern of provision and ownership of housing . . . The last 70 years have seen the fall of the private landlord, the emergence of the owner-occupier to dominance, the rise and fall of the council house.

Owner occupation is not the dream that it might appear to be. We are confronted with soaring house prices, easy credit and high levels of foreclosures. It is no easy matter to enter the house buying market for the first time, particularly when your over-extended commitment may be gazumped by someone more fortunate or more foolhardy. We live in a period in which we are told that "popular capitalism" means access to share ownership allied to home ownership. More importantly it may simply represent an attempt to "break down the antithesis of profits and wages and to create an identity of interest between entrepreneurial success and social benefit".

Public housing has suffered as a consequence of the image of the grotesque and repulsive high rise developments which have been seen as an economic and social nightmare. The changes arising out of the new pattern of home ownership have had their costs with private housing expenditure, in conjunction with fuel and power, accounting for 21.7 per cent of household budgets in 1981 compared to 15.8 per cent in 1964. The comparable figures for Germany and France for 1981 stood at 17.9 per cent and 17 per cent respectively. A consequence is that employers are pressurised to provide increased wages which conflict with the need to produce maximum profit. Nor should it be forgotten that, as employees, home ownership may represent a fetter to social mobility at a time when employment and home location are at variance. It should also be remembered that, according to the Nationwide Building Society, 30 per cent of the population cannot afford to move into owner occupation.

An attempt to manipulate the population through housing into the processes of the system may be the aim of current legislation. This is no new concern. The production of housing by industrialists in the nineteenth century can be seen as an attempt to instil control and discipline in employees. A national commitment to housing provision and standards can be interpreted as the state s concern with the social efficiency of the nation in contributing a healthy workforce to ensure the productivity of the firm. The debate in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries between those arguing that wages should rise in order to pay the rents as against those advocating lower rents consistent with wages is typical of the reformist arguments which obscure the actual needs of those who simply continue to suffer. The reality was and still is that many workers cannot afford access to adequate housing.

The current Conservative hostility to council housing is a new perspective in the party. The Labour Party continues its commitment towards council housing although they have not rejected the apparent political popularity of private home ownership. What the Conservative Party has achieved is a reduction in council housing by limiting its commitment to construction and by selling existing stocks. Daunton argues that since 1980:

  reductions in the contribution of central government to local authority housing, and changes in accounting procedures have led to an increase in the basic rent. This provides an added incentive to better-off tenants to buy, the increase being offset for the poorer tenants by means-tested rent rebates.

Owner occupation seems to be considered morally superior and to engender the correct social attitudes. This is not seen as being granted a stake in the system but of engendering social acquiescence as a result of mortgage commitments. One myth that Daunton does destroy is the notion that owner occupation is a "natural right”. The study shows clearly that the desire for property "can only be understood in the context of a housing market which was biased in certain ways by government policy" and that this has been an ongoing debate. The reality of home ownership has not drastically altered. Wealth and security of income represent the only guarantees of safeguards in this society. The promise of home ownership is only another burden to bear. As said above it may even be a guarantee of continued disadvantage in reducing mobility or by over-extending limited income in offsetting repairs, deterioration and debt repayments. We might even question the whole notion of owner occupation and its function within society. In 1980 Switzerland had 30 per cent owner occupation whereas the Philippines had achieved 89 per cent by 1970. West Germany had 37 per cent owner occupation in 1978 whereas Bangladesh had 90 per cent in 1981 Daunton argues that there is little similarity between owner occupation of a terraced house in Liverpool and a detached property in Surrey:

  the experience of the tenure does not emerge from the tenure itself so much as from the tenants’ income level and social status which define the way in which the tenure is experienced.

Yet even this is only partially correct. Those who are marginalised by the system may suffer disproportionately yet the relationship between individuals and access to property is the same regardless of the level of provision. A consequence is to create another divisive way in which competition is enforced between sections of workers. The struggle for access to property and participation in the process of maintaining property values diverts attention from the profit system. Any notion of an allegiance arising out of methods of housing provision or levels of that provision are as arbitrary and as contrary to working-class interests as allegiances based on race or sex. Houses are a commodity. As a commodity housing has been manipulated by the demands of different political persuasions. One irony of the present administration is that although advocating a free-market economy it has engendered "a financial system which distorts in favour of one type of asset". The reality of housing as a commodity for the present administration in its notion of "popular capitalism" has been a reduction of commitment of central government to provide housing for those unable to buy. "Between 1979/80 and 1983/4 expenditure on housing was cut by 39 per cent in money or 89 per cent in real terms." There has been a price to pay for the dream of owner occupation — a partial abandonment of those least able to survive in the housing market. For those participating in the struggle for owner occupation there is the increased burden of financing the venture and the likelihood of suffering the consequences of social acquiescence to a system whose existence is contrary to their real interests.

Philip Bentley

Letters: Were we censored? (1988)

Letters to the Editors from the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Were we censored?

Dear Editors.

Following the article "Hate and its Causes" (Socialist Standard, March 1988) I noted the comment: "The views in this article are not necessarily those held by Calvert s Press".

My first reaction was "So what!! They're printing the paper, not editing it!" Quite often a printer disagrees with what a paper says. Then, I asked myself: "Why the comment anyway? Are your printers trying to censor the Socialist Standard?"

My second reaction was: "It is very sad, after all this time printing the paper, that they do not agree, particularly as the article is such a clear condemnation of capitalism in Ulster, the "men of violence" and the local politicians who, if anything, tend to make a bad situation worse".

It is also a pity that the printers do not agree with a socialist analysis, since for much of its existence, the Socialist Standard was set up and printed by people sympathetic to socialism — Jacomb, Taylor and even, to some extent. Brocks.

     

     Yours,

Peter E. Newell 

Colchester, Essex

Sexual harassment

Dear Comrades

In the February Standard Janet Carter asks why we attack insecure, immature males for sexual harassment at work, instead of "passive, compliant females who are far greater in number". By the same token, perhaps we should attack defenceless pensioners for getting themselves beaten up by active, young muggers. Sexual harassment is a problem facing many women workers as a direct result of their economic position; if it's the boss touching them up they can't afford to say no. The trade union movement has shown signs of taking this issue much more seriously, and it is entirely appropriate that the Socialist Party should.

To say that the destructive behaviour of individuals should be left to Ben Elton is to miss the point that it is in such behaviour that they reveal their acceptance of existing social relations. If we ignore all the different problems of different working groups, they will continue to ignore us.

     

     Yours for socialism.

Keith Graham 

Bristol

Letter: Wildcat debate (1988)

Wildcat magazine.

Letter to the Editors from the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

I am writing to add a few points to the letter my comrade, MB, has already sent you in response to the article in the December Socialist Standard criticising the Wildcat pamphlet Capitalism and its Revolutionary Destruction.

Steve Coleman alleges that Wildcat "seems to think" that "revolutionaries will be in a minority at the time of the revolution". Had he read our pamphlet a little more carefully, however, he would have noticed that the sentences he quotes to supposedly support this allegation refer, not to the situation at the time of the revolution, but to the class struggle at its present-day stage. Later on we state quite clearly that the "primary aim" of revolutionaries "must be to get more and more people actively involved in the struggle", and also that "if revolution is to succeed, the great mass of the working class must become conscious communists".

To say that "No Leninist would disagree" with Wildcat's views on this issue is as foolish as stating that no Christian would disagree with the SPGB's attitude towards religion.

The question remains, however, how are the mass of the working class to become conscious communists?

One of the basic arguments of our pamphlet is that the seeds of the future struggle for communism are contained within the working class's struggle of today. Riots and strikes are part of this struggle. Steve Coleman scorns these as mere street fights and reformist sectional disputes. This dismissive concentration solely on the negative aspects of the class struggle throws the baby out with the bathwater.

Strikes, riots and other aspects of the class struggle are also an interruption in the everyday routine of capitalist "normality". In the course of these actions numerous practical problems crop up. In overcoming them, those working class people actively involved find themselves having to develop their own collective solidarity, imagination. initiative and organisation. The development of these powers — all stifled by capitalism — is essential for the working class if it is to have any hope of transforming society.

Furthermore, by changing people's immediate material conditions, collective struggle also contains the potential to alter people's perceptions of the society around them, and place in a new perspective the limited goals they originally set themselves. All of these things can be observed, to varying degrees, whenever working class people take action together to fight back against the miseries heaped on them by capitalism. The wider the struggle, the greater the potential for the development of new forms of organisation directly controlled by those involved in the struggle, and the greater the potential for the development of radical ideas not confined merely to tinkering with society as it is but with the ambition of completely transforming it.

This, then, is the revolutionary strategy proposed by Wildcat: a materialist strategy, based on the working class's pursuit of its material interests, and recognising that the source of ideas — in this case, revolutionary ideas — is material conditions — the working class's active engagement in the class struggle. By contrast, the SPGB's strategy is materialist only in the most abstract, general sense, and tends more towards idealist philosophy, seeing no connection whatsoever between the class struggle of today and the future struggle for communism, and thus abandoning the Marxist view of the class struggle as the historical motive force behind social change.

As a final point, I would like to take issue with Steve Coleman's case in favour of participation in parliamentary elections, which is that the working class must gain control of the state so that the ruling class cannot use the armed power of the state to crush the revolutionary working class. If Steve Coleman really believes that control of the armed forces is automatically guaranteed by control of state power, how does he explain desertions, mutinies and military coups? What use was control of state power to the Kerensky regime in 1917 when its cavalry refused to cut down the insurrectionary workers of Moscow and Petrograd7 What use was control of state power to the "democratically elected" Popular Front government of Spain in July 1936 when half of its troops sided with Franco's attempted coup?

Examples abound throughout history to prove that, to use an appropriate metaphor, the armed forces are not like a gun controlled by whoever has their finger on the trigger of state power. The SPGB believes that socialist ideas will spread throughout the working class, disregarding all "barriers” of nation, race, sex, occupation etc. Why then should it expect these same ideas to halt at the barrack- room door? Which is the more realistic revolutionary strategy: to appeal, as Wildcat does, to our fellow workers in uniform to fraternise with the rest of our class and turn their guns against our common enemy? Or to expect, as the SPGB seems to do, that workers in uniform will forever blindly obey the orders of the ruling class and shoot down their class brothers and sisters who are holding out the prospect of a world free for ever from war and oppression?

The SPGB should apply Steve Coleman's litmus test of what constitutes a revolutionary organisation to itself, and ponder just how "serious" its strategy for the revolutionary transformation of society really is.

Yours for socialism.

Mark Shipway 

a member of the Wildcat group

Reply to Mark Shipway (of Wildcat)

We have received this and another letter from a member of Wildcat complaining about our criticism of their pamphlet. We are pleased to read that Wildcat accepts that there can be no revolution without a majority of workers becoming conscious; why then are they so frightened of workers' support for socialism being tested electorally? Wildcat insists that "revolutionaries do not. under any circumstances, participate in . . . elections". If they accept that there can be no socialism without a socialist majority why do they state that "the revolution itself will inevitably be a bloody affair'. It is not "inevitable" that a conscious, overwhelming majority of socialists will be resisted by force. And if such a majority is so threatened, the force required to deal with a recalcitrant minority would hardly constitute "a bloody affair". Opposition to all elections and the assumption that revolutionary violence is inevitable are both classical Leninist positions.

Wildcat's support for riots and other futile struggles can be criticised on two levels. Firstly, it is improper for people calling themselves revolutionaries to urge workers to offer themselves as sacrifices to the truncheons of the police — especially as we strongly suspect that Wildcat members, on a day-to-day level, are not so foolish as to engage in riots. How has rioting ever helped workers to "develop their own collective solidarity, imagination, initiative and organisation"? How have they improved "people's immediate material conditions"? Secondly, by associating the struggle for socialism with acts of frustrated violence, Wildcat adds to the general confusion about the meaning of socialist revolution. It is wrong to suggest that our review opposed workers taking strike action. The Socialist Party supports strikes in working class interests which are conducted on sound lines but, unlike Wildcat, denies that strikes are a means to revolution.

The Socialist Party cannot be accused of ignoring the class struggle as the motive force in history. Our attitude is stated in our Declaration of Principles, written in 1904 and still valid today. Of course we are aware that some workers may learn to change history by materially engaging in class struggle. That is a different matter from riots, which are perversions of the class struggle: frequently they involve no more than one section of the working class attacking another.

We agree that workers in the armed forces will not be impervious to socialist ideas at the time of the revolution. That is all the more reason why the revolution will not "inevitably be a bloody affair". We notice that in Issue 10 of Wildcat, under a report about 16.000 attacks on policemen in the last year, there is a caption saying "KILL THE BILL". Does Wildcat regard this also as a useful means of struggle in preparation for the socialist transformation of society? Is killing cops — or just injuring them — a way of showing them that they are fellow workers in uniform? Or is this not sloganising, dangerous if taken seriously?

Steve Coleman

Carry on camping . . . (1988)

From the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

A firm in Stroud has designed and marketed what they refer to as "high-tech tents" of aluminium frames with heat-reflecting panels. According to a Times (15 February 1988) report, the firm last year had sales worth £2.7 million — to Arab states. The firm's managing director has said that the tent is particularly useful in the desert because it is light and easy to erect. The firm has in fact adopted the title "Nomad International Structures". We were at first gratified that, at last, advanced technology had come to the aid of the poverty-stricken nomads of the Arabian deserts — until we read that the tents were being purchased by Arabian governments for sheltering tanks:

  Without the benefit of the tents, which can have camouflage and infra-red reflective coatings, the tanks would become too hot to be serviced comfortably during the fierce heat of the day.

50 Years Ago: The Russian show trials (1988)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

It had been assumed by many newspaper correspondents in Russia that the series of trials of Stalins opponents and potential rivals had ended, and Stalin himself had talked of stopping the judicial persecution at least of the more obscure victims. But the trial of the twenty-one Old Bolshevists is barely ended before there are reports of further public trials involving highly placed generals and others.

The usual confessions were made by these Old Bolshevists that they had been the agents of Japan, Germany, Great Britain, and so on, but with the difference that the dates of the treachery were placed much farther back. Rakovsky "confesses" that he was in the pay of the British Secret Service in 1924. Sharangovitch was spying for the Poles in 1921. Rosenholtz began his espionage for Germany in 1923. Trotsky (but he isn't in Moscow, so someone else had to confess for him) worked for Britain from 1926 and for Germany from 1921. Bukharin confessed that he was plotting against Lenin in 1918.

All of this leads to an interesting speculation. Either the confessions are false or they are genuine. If the latter, then we have to believe that right back in the early days, during and after the Bolshevist seizure of power, the leaders were secretly conspiring against each other. It will be recalled that Lenin and other exiled leaders reached Russia in 1917 in a train which crossed Germany and was placed at their disposal by the German military authorities. The charge was made that Lenin and his friends were nothing but German agents paid by Germany to disorganise the Russian army. The charge was denied by Lenin and the denial was accepted by the working-class organisations generally. But if, as the Communists say, these Moscow confessions are genuine, then many of the men concerned were at the very beginning hopelessly corrupt. If the rest of them, why not Lenin?

[From an article "Another Russian Sacrificial Feast", Socialist Standard April 1938.]

End of an era? (1988)

From the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the commercial preoccupation for "anniversaries", it is only a matter of time now before some predictable advertisers begin to cash in on the approaching year 2000. In the late 1980s, we are expected to feel a carefully cultivated pride in the achievements of the twentieth century. But with that second millennium a mere twelve years away, we would do well to replace social pride in this "civilisation" with a determination to end it.

Often it is the official facts and figures which reveal, as much as anything, the organised misery of the present social system. The most recent British Social Trends Survey, published in January by HMSO, explains among other things how the number of homeless people has continued to rise in recent years. By 1986 local authorities were officially accepting responsibility for a total of 120,000 homeless families. Between 1982 and 1986 the number of repossessions by building societies, in which failure to make mortgage payments results in eviction, more than trebled from 6,000 to 21,000 families each year. So much for people who "own their own homes". Still, you could always take a break at the Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane, London, whose latest price list includes rooms for £957 per night.

Another tendency exposed by the survey was that more and more workers are able to enjoy the benefits of modem technology only at the price of stress caused by deeper and deeper debt, while the interest paid on HP agreements helps the company owners to become even richer. Between March 1982 and March 1987 consumer debt to credit companies doubled to £31 billion. At the end of 1986 almost 12 per cent of annual disposable income was owed to credit companies.

Meanwhile, according to the latest Inland Revenue Statistics (January 1988), the richest ten per cent of people in Britain possess more wealth than the rest of the population put together, while the poorest half of the adult population have seen their share of wealth drop from 17-21 per cent in 1979 to 15-19 per cent in 1985. Even at 21 per cent of the wealth, this was hardly something for the poorest 50 per cent of the population to celebrate, which is a sobering thought for those who dream of the "good old days" when people like James Callaghan rather than Margaret Thatcher, used to preside over this poverty. In any case, vast differences like these between the two classes in present-day society will not disappear through reforms; they will only go when the economic and social system which gives rise to them goes.

One in a hundred people in Britain now own between them one fifth of all marketable wealth. The poorest half of the population holds only seven per cent of such assets. Research by Professor Tony Atkinson and Dr Alan Harrison has also demonstrated the recent reversal of the trend which, from the 1920s to the 1970s, saw the slight filtering of wealth out of the hands of the richest five per cent (largely for tax purposes). From 1966 to 1984, for example, the wealth held by the richest five per cent fell from 56 per cent to 39 per cent of all marketable wealth; now it is rising again (Guardian, 13 January 1988).

Such details of class division are, of course, not confined to Britain but are global. For example, a national survey in the USA in 1986 showed at least 33 million people there to be suffering poverty even by government definitions, with two per cent of American families holding 54 per cent of total financial assets (Guardian, 15 November 1986).

All these facts and figures can be bewildering but they come to life more clearly when some of the more outspoken among the owning class open their mouths and let their own side down through lack of tact. For example, on 6 March 1986, the Daily Mail reported that William Baker had been sentenced to nine months in prison (eight months suspended) for petty theft. In mitigation, Baker pleaded: "I only want to feed my family". In passing sentence. Judge Geoffrey Jones was quoted as saying: "I hope it is absolute hell, so that when you have served your twenty-eight days you won't ever want to go back in there again. It is better to starve than to go out and burgle". I wonder whether Judge Jones has ever had to make the choice?

Then there was the well publicised comment on private health made by Margaret Thatcher during last year's general election campaign, when she said “I can go on the day I want, at the time I want, with the doctor I want". Less than three months earlier the Health Education Council, it its last report before it was disbanded, had concluded that "All the major killer diseases now affect the poor more than the rich". It is significant that attempts were made to suppress this report.

Of course, the evidence of the sickness of present-day society is almost endless, from hypothermia to nuclear pollution. The widespread recognition of these problems gives the desire for some sane and rational alternative a stronger base than ever before. We have conquered the technological problems long ago. Now, social relations must be transformed to free us from the constraints of the market society.

As the end of the decade and the end of the century approach, the great choice facing humanity is between production for monetary profit, the system which exists throughout the world, and production to meet human needs. Many people can at least see the desirability of a society in which needs would be met as a matter of course, not as the privileged luxury of those who can pay. If that desire is to become more then it must be brought about through working-class unity and democratic political action. We have to end the bosses' ownership, which allows them to exploit us, rather than just negotiating the terms of that exploitation. This solidarity between workers in different parts of the world has emerged more clearly at certain times in history.

For decades the socialist alternative has been discredited by those state dictators in the Russian empire and elsewhere, who have described their state-capitalist regimes as "socialist". But, for example, those workers in Poland who formed Solidarity were not deterred by this from challenging the power of their bosses. In doing so, they received messages of support from similar underground trade union movements in both Russia and China. Among those messages received from Russian and Chinese trade unions, and published at the time, were the following:

  Our own workers movement is only being born . . .
  The struggle for the rights of ordinary people in Poland is also our fight . . .
 Your victory clearly shows the tremendous power and new class consciousness generated by the solidarity of the working class . . .

So in this age of meaningless "anniversaries", let us stick to the exciting task of creating our own history and making something worth celebrating.

Clifford Slapper

Dundee election campaign (1988)

Party News from the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

In May, Dundee Branch of The Socialist Party will contest three district wards around the city in the local elections.

We are planning a wide range of activities, including:

• Public Meetings
• Leaflet distribution
• Selling literature
• Debates and Forums
• Canvassing
• Distributing a free sheet
• Literature stall in town centre

All readers and sympathisers in the area should take this opportunity to get involved in the vital, rewarding work of putting socialism firmly on the political agenda.

Come to our informal weekly meetings in the back room of the Ladywell Tavern. Victoria Road, on Thursdays at 8pm or see address in the Branch Directory (inside back page) under Dundee.