Sting in the Tail: The Daily Grind (1989)

The Sting in the Tail column from the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Daily Grind

A survey carried out by an insurance company has shown that more than half of male office workers spend much of their time at work making personal telephone calls, reading newspapers and magazines, and slipping away to attend to their personal business. More than a third dream of changing their job while 40 per cent long for love affairs with younger colleagues.

Bloody typical, isn't it? No wonder this country can't compete with the Japanese . . but wait a bit, the insurance company IS Japanese and the male workers work in Tokyo !

But aren't Japanese supposed to be much more loyal to their employers and dedicated to their work than us ?

These findings only confirm that wage slavery has much the same effect on workers the world over and never provides the satisfaction and fulfilment that work could and should be.

House Hunting

Towards the end of last year an item in a newspaper mentioned that Donald Trump, a New York property magnate, has an apartment in Manhattan which cost 17 million dollars.

Astonishing as it may seem this is not the top end of the market for the really rich. Two years ago a Fifth Avenue apartment worth 30 million dollars owned by Adnan Khashoggi, the Iranian arms dealer, had been seized by the New York court as security in a law suit brought against him by Lonrho.

This "apartment" was created out of sixteen smaller ones and takes up two entire floors in one of New York's most fashionable areas. Anybody who is worried that Khashoggi will not have a roof over his head will be relieved to know that he has other homes in Marbella, Paris, Cannes, the Canary Islands, Madrid, Rome, Beirut, Riyadh, Jedda and Monte Carlo.

Rumours that he is looking for a home in either Brixton, Handsworth or Toxteth have not been confirmed.

Militant Tactics

How often have we come across examples of left-wing organisations recruiting people on the basis of some single issue or other. The Socialist Workers Party do it all the time. They get people to join over such issues as "Troops Out", "The Right To Work", etc., etc., but never on the issue of the abolition of the wages system.

The latest example is Militant's drive to recruit opponents of the Poll Tax into the Labour Party in Glasgow. Militant organisers have been telling the local press that they have recently signed up many new members for the Labour Party ("30 after one meeting") who joined purely on the grounds of their opposition to the Poll Tax.

Militant's aim is to use these recruits as voting fodder to help de-select sitting Labour councillors and, ever hopeful, replace them with Militant supporters.

Recent history makes it extremely unlikely that they will succeed in even this trivial objective but their action highlights once again the unprincipled and non-socialist outlook of the would-be "Vanguard".

An Apology for Thatcher?

Sir Douglas Hague, chairman of the Economic and Social Research Council from 1983 to 1987, was recently reported as saying:

. . . most of Britain’s social scientists seem to me not completely in touch with the real world.

He said Britain's economists should apologise to Margaret Thatcher for their misguided policies. Now there's an idea!

During the farce of Mao's Cultural Revolution in China one of the strange spectacles was university professors parading through Peking with placards proclaiming "I am a complete dumpling. I was a capitalist deviationist. Long live the Glorious Cultural Revolution."

Something similar seems to be demanded by Sir Douglas of the 364 economists in April 1981 who had the effrontery to criticise the Government's economic policy.According to Sir Douglas

Never in history can a profession have been so manifestly proved to be so wrong in its predictions, yet no collective apology has come.

London Tourist Board could exploit Sir Douglas's apology idea. Lines of discredited economists parading past 10 Downing Street in Dunce's caps and carrying placards proclaiming " I was a Keynesian dupe. Privatisation for pavements."

This could provide Mrs. Thatcher with her "photo opportunity" as contrite academics kneel to kiss her arse.

What troubles Sir Douglas of course is that the Government funds these ungrateful buggers and they are not coming up with what the Government wants to hear. According to Sir Douglas:

. . . too much attention was being devoted to the study of the problems of the deprived and disadvantaged.

Apparently his idea of "being in touch with the real world" is to ignore the unemployed, the homeless and the exploited.

What a Shower

When one of the speakers at the recent Young Conservative conference angrily denounced the "headbangers" who was he referring to?

The IRA or the Loony Left? No, this was just one of the "wets" referring to those of his fellow YC's known as the "libertarians". And no wonder.

Here's what one of them had to say during one of the debates "Socialism is a filthy, disgusting perversion. We are the pure." The "pure" what he didn't say, but there are several things we can think of.

The hang 'em flog 'em bunch spend a lot of their time trying to outdo one another in being "right wing". Indeed their main objective seems to consist of being as reactionary (they call it "revolutionary") and obnoxious as they possibly can be.

They support every authoritarian regime as long as it is "right wing", they flaunt "Hang Nelson Mandela" T-shirts, and when striking miners and their families were suffering then they had callous, jeering songs to sing.

Perhaps no one can accuse these "libertarians" of being "wet" but as sympathetic, considerate human beings they are a complete wash-out.

About ourselves (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is the Socialist Party?

An independent political party which stands opposed to all others in this country, including the Labour and Communist parties. Our only links are with similar socialist parties in some other parts of the world.

What is your aim?

The replacement of the existing capitalist system of society by a new and different system we call socialism.

What is capitalism?

A system based on the ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth (land, industry, railways, offices and the like) by a section only of society who thus form a privileged class. The others, who in return for a wage or salary produce wealth for sale with a view to profit, make up the producing or working class. In Britain less than five per cent of the population belong to the owning or capitalist class. Most people — those who work in offices as well as those who work in the factories — are in the working class.

What is socialism?

A democratic world community without frontiers based on the ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth by society as a whole. Socialism will abolish classes and free all humanity from exploitation and oppression. The basis of socialism is this ownership of all the means of production by the whole community; control over their use will rest in the hands of the community through democratic institutions. Wealth will be produced not for sale or profit, but solely to satisfy human needs. This means the end of buying and selling and all the other financial and commercial institutions like money, prices, wages and banks. People will cooperate to produce an abundance of wealth from which they can take freely according to their needs.

Will everything belong to the State?

No. The State does not represent the whole community; it serves the interests only of those who own the means of production. State ownership or nationalisation is one of the ways in which this class controls industry. When the State takes over industries (like the railways and coalmines in Britain) it does so in their interests. State ownership leaves unchanged the class basis of society, the profit motive and the wages system, all of which socialism will abolish. Nationalisation is just State capitalism.

What system exists in Russia?

Russian society is part of world capitalist society. It shows all the essential features of capitalism: a class who control the means of production through their control of political power; another class forced to work for wages; production of goods for sale with a view to profit and the accumulation of capital out of profits. The same goes for countries like China. Cuba and Yugoslavia. They like Russia have State capitalism.

Do you want something like the kibbutzim in Israel?

Socialism can only be a world community without frontiers. It cannot be established in one country let alone on one farm. The kibbutzim do show that human beings can live without money and can work without wages, but their small scale means that what they can offer is very restricted so that young people are tending to leave them. In practice they have paved the way for the development of capitalism in Israel and some have themselves become capitalist institutions employing outside wage labour and producing for the market with a view to profit.

How do you advocate socialism should be established?

By the class of wage and salary earners, once a majority of them want and understand socialism, taking democratic political action to change the basis of society from the class to the common ownership of the means of production and distribution.

Why must there be a majority in favour of the change to socialism before it can be made?

Socialism, by its nature as a system involving voluntary co-operation, could only be kept going by those who really wanted it and knew what it involved. Any attempt to establish socialism without a majority first being in favour is bound to fail.

Do you repudiate undemocratic minority action to achieve socialism?

Most definitely. No leaders, however sincere or able, can lead a non-socialist working class to socialism. Leaders who take power while a majority do not understand socialism have no choice but to develop and administer capitalism, as has been shown in Russia and by the various labour governments in Britain. When a majority do want and understand socialism they have no need of leaders, but only to organise themselves democratically.

Why do you advocate political action to achieve socialism?

It is their control of the machinery of government that now allows the capitalist class to protect their privileged position as the owners of the means of production. In Britain it is parliament that makes the laws granting them property rights and it is the police and the Courts, and if need be the army, that enforce these laws. The socialist majority must win political power in order to remove the protection the government machine now gives to class ownership and to carry through the establishment of the common ownership of the means of production.

How do you advocate the socialist majority should win political power?

By using their votes to elect socialist delegates to Parliament and the local councils. A socialist victory in a democratically-run election would demonstrate to all that a majority were in favour of the change to socialism.

Why are you opposed to all other political parties?

All of them accept the capitalist system and believe that current social problems can be solved within its framework.

Why do you think that reforms of the capitalist system are not the solution? 

These problems are caused by the class ownership of the means of production which all reforms leave unchanged. The policy of trying to deal with social problems one by one by reforms of capitalism is futile, as this is to deal with effects and not the cause. We call this policy “reformism" and are opposed to it.

But surely you are not against all reforms? 

We are not opposed to reforms which may bring temporary relief to some workers, but we do not regard it as the task of a socialist party to propose reforms of capitalism. Were we to do this we could easily soon become just another reformist party. To avoid this danger we advocate socialism only.

Why have all the other parties failed? 

Basically because capitalism cannot be reformed so as to work in the interests of the class of wage and salary earners. It is a class system that can only work for those who own the means of production. Any party, be it Labour or Conservative, which takes power under capitalism is forced to run that system in the only way it can be and so is inevitably brought into conflict with the mass of people who work for a wage or salary. This has been proved time and again.

So it is not because the politicians are not determined enough or are incompetent or dishonest that they fail?

No. No matter how determined or able or sincere the members of a government may be they still could not make capitalism work for the good of all. The politicians fail because they have to accept the class system which causes the problems they are always promising to solve.

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.

And not a drop to drink (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

It takes a remarkable degree of disorganisation to create a problem of clean water supply in a country like Britain where it rains at least one day in three. The problem is not entirely new of course. Ever since the Tudors and increasingly since the industrial revolution the rivers and inshore waters have been used as open sewers.

In seventeenth century London the paths of disease could be traced on a map along the rivers of the capital — the Fleet, the Brent, the Lea. The rich were smart enough to live on the high ground — Hampstead, Stamford Hill. Dulwich, so that their sewage flowed down toward the poor at the bottom in Camden. Tottenham, Walworth and the streams that drained the valleys.

The problem had begun with the depopulation of the countryside by Enclosures. The dispossessed peasants flocked to the cities as they are now doing in the Third World, and the Plague of London of 1665-6 was an early consequence. The city's population exploded from the few tens of thousands it had been in the Middle Ages. It was no longer a real city with a corporate existence but just a huge aggregation of people without clean water or sewage. The cry of Gardee Loo! as the chamber pot was emptied out of the bedroom window into the street below was a commentary in sound of the sanitary arrangements. The peasant on the other hand would have had his thunderbox well away from the house, an earth or pit closet, placed downhill and as far away from the well as possible.

London in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries resembled Calcutta today (if they could be said to differ, London would come off worse). The situation got so bad that, after continual outbreaks of cholera and typhoid which infected Gladstone and Queen Victoria and killed Prince Albert, the government in 1858 ordered the piping of London for sewage and clean water supply. Waste was simply conveyed downstream and put into the river beyond the sniff of the capital.

Elsewhere in the country, rivers like the Clyde and the Mersey, the Humber and the Taff. which had teemed with fish and water-fowl, otters and crayfish, became stinking black ditches.

Market economy to blame

The reason for all this was identified by the economist A.C. Pigou as "externalities", that is, businesses shrugging off overheads in the form of unwanted waste products onto the rest of the population. It gives you a business edge to throw your rubbish over the fence, to let your filth run into the nearest stream rather than build a treatment plant. The same economic mechanism which rewards the drive for profit also rewards the drive to cut costs — at other people's expense. It is an inescapable consequence of the market economy.

There is no way the problems can be dealt with while goods and services are produced with a view to sale and profit. Tinkering with the problem will only shift the burden somewhere else.

Power stations and car exhausts produce acid rain which leaches out aluminium in the soil and into the streams and rivers from which it is piped into our taps and is strongly suspected as a major factor in Alzheimer's Disease. It is little comfort to discover that much of the power produced goes to provide us with junk mail, computers in banks, tanks and aircraft carriers for the next war.

Trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene, which are used for degreasing metal in Vauxhalls at Luton among other places, have got into the water table at levels high enough to disturb the experts because they are regarded by the World Health Organisation as a major cause of cancer. Many of these cars are destined for reps who will be sent out to sell soap powder, Mars bars and life insurance.

In the summer of 1988 a boy canoeing on the Warwickshire Avon found two dead herons on the river bank. He mentioned the fact casually to a young man who was a biologist interested in environmental matters. Examination showed that the birds had died of dieldrin poisoning (remember Seveso?), an insecticide banned everywhere in the developed world. The source was traced to a company in Coventry which cleaned drums for an American multinational in Avonmouth which manufactured the poison for export to the Third World (they are not allowed to produce it in the US). Dieldrin has since been found in Severn eels, up to eight hundred tons of which were annually exported to Holland and Germany. The Ministry of Agriculture found this out in the spring of 1988 but kept the finding secret. The facts were leaked to the Continentals and the imports were cancelled. More recently still the Gloucester Citizen carried the headline “Probe As Fish Quit Severn".

The only exception to the falling quality of water in the rivers was the much publicised cleaning-up of the Thames by improving the sewage works at Thurrock in recent years. Within a very short while some thirty species of fish were reported to have returned to the river and one wealthy optimist seeded the headwaters above Oxford with thousands of salmon fingerlings in the hope that when mature they would return to the river to spawn. There were reports three or four years later that salmon had been taken by anglers but since then trouble with sewage works along the river has brought the quality of the water down again.

The cleaning up of the Thames was little more than a public relations exercise and a bit of charity beginning at home for members of the ruling class obliged to spend time at Westminster. Elsewhere water quality continued to fall with nitrate pollution in East Anglia, cryptosporidium in Oxfordshire, and massive aluminium-sulphate poisoning of people in Cornwall.

Obsession with privatisation

In the middle of all this the Thatcher government is pressing on with privatising the water undertakings. How irrelevant this is can be seen from the fact that 20 per cent of the industry has always been in the hands of private firms. Neither they nor the majority of firms that are government owned have shown the slightest urge or ability to come to grips with pollution, but as we have tried to show above, they can't anyway. Like the rest of the economy, it is really out of control. Polluting the environment is profitable for Conservative investors and Left Wing bureaucrats can do little about it.

The vile water we have to drink will inevitably become even more expensive. At present only half of the fifty odd thousand employed in the industry actually do the productive work. Putting a meter on everybody's house will cost £1.5 billions in the aggregate and will require a new tier of non-productives to read the meters, send out bills, chase non-payers, prosecute those who make imaginative use of a piece of pipe and two hoseclips to bypass the meter . . .

In addition, the £7 billion it will cost to transfer the businesses from local bureaucrats to independent companies will have to be met by the consumers, plus the interest on same, which is set to increase from 5 per cent to 8 per cent annual return on capital on the whole package to make it attractive to owners of capital. Even then, it will only be a percentage point or two above the rate of inflation.

The latest news is that the EEC has turned down a request by Nicholas Ridley. Minister of the Environment (No kidding!) that his government be exempted from having to observe Commission standards for water purity. His argument was that when the new companies are set up, their being responsible for policing themselves will be our guarantee of pure water in the future. After all, if they don't come up with the goods we can all exercise the customer's prerogative and go without, can't we?

Ken Smith

. . . and the food's not too good, either (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent outbreaks of salmonella and listeriosis have focussed attention on the rising incidence of food poisoning in Britain in the last few years. There have also been outbreaks of food poisoning from other organisms; campylobacter has increased threefold and rotavirus has increased fivefold in the last eight years. Both of these organisms cause diarrhoea and vomiting, and the increase is probably due to “changes in agricultural practice or changes in the commercial preparation of food" (The Independent, 23 January 1989). These changes are the result of trying to make maximum profits regardless of the risk to consumers' health.

Salmonella

The Communicable Disease Report compiled by the Public Health Laboratory stated that there were 24,123 cases of salmonella enteriditis poisoning in 1988 and 12,533 cases of salmonella enteriditis phage type 4. Salmonella infections have doubled in the last two years and 80 to 90 per cent are found to be associated with chickens and eggs (Ibid.). It is significant that this dossier is not available to the public because the state in its role as facilitator of capital regards commercial secrecy as more important than providing the public with the knowledge to avoid the risks associated with food poisoning.

It was Edwina Currie's claim that most of the egg industry was infected with salmonella that alerted the public, and led to her losing her Junior Health Minister's post for offending the powerful agricultural lobby. Further evidence of the government’s concern to protect the egg industry's profits rather than public health was demonstrated by the much publicised leaked document received by Robin Cook, Labour Party health spokesman, which showed that representatives from the Department of Health had met with the egg producers and agreed not to issue a notice that “salmonella-poisoning at two hospitals appeared to have been caused by raw eggs. It was generally better if the announcement came from the company or trade body concerned" (Morning Star, 10 February 1989).

The use of antibiotics to help animals gain weight has resulted from the European Economic Community's ban on the use of hormones in meat, since 1 January 1988, because of the risk to human health. Previously, hormones fed to cattle increased profits by putting up to an extra 100 pounds of weight on a carcass. It is thought that antibiotics also help animals to gain weight, possibly by eliminating sub-clinical infections which prevent them from gaining their optimal weight (Self Health, 20 September 1988). But the widespread use of antibiotics has led to the evolution of drug-resistant strains of bacteria, and a study by two doctors at the US Center for Disease Control in Atlanta found that, compared with ordinary strains of salmonella, the death toll was 21 times higher in people infected, with resistant strains of salmonella.

A fund of £19 million was set aside by the British government to compensate the egg industry for loss of sales even though the sharp increase in salmonella poisoning has been caused by a blatant disregard for consumers' health in the way that poultry has been reared.

In fact egg sales fell by 10 to 15 per cent and only £482,000 compensation has been claimed by the egg industry (The Grocer, 21 January 1989). Of course there are no plans to compensate the relatives of those who have died or the thousands of people who have been made ill as a result of eating contaminated eggs.

Ironically, in these days when increasing numbers of people are more health-conscious of what they eat, free range eggs are more likely to cause salmonella infections according to Bill Reilly, chairman of the public health committee of the British Veterinary Association:

The big advantage of the battery system is that the egg is laid on the wire ann rolls away immediately. A free range hen may lay the egg anywhere, and faecal contamination is more likely. (British Medical Journal, 28 January 1989 )

Listeria

Listeriosis, although less common than salmonella, with 683 reported cases since 1986 and 39 deaths in 1986 and 1987 is potentially more dangerous and, because of the continuing increase in “cook-chill” methods of preparing food, likely to be seen more frequently in the future.

Listeriosis takes between five days and five weeks to develop and it is difficult to trace the source of infection. The symptoms of the disease can resemble influenza, and listeriosis may not be suspected. The disease is particularly associated with miscarriages and stillbirths, and may also cause meningitis and septicaemia in the elderly.

A study carried out by Richard Lacey, professor of clinical microbiology at Leeds University found that a quarter of a test sample of cook-chill meals bought from leading supermarkets contained the bacteria (The Grocer, 14 January 1989). But. in addition to the health risk to the public, there has been an increasing use of cook-chill methods in hospitals since its introduction in the National Health Service in 1980 and there are now 157,000 meals a day produced by 40 centres.

Hospital cooking

Birmingham's Dudley Road Hospital has one of the largest cook-chill operations in the NHS with £1.8 million purpose built food production centre (Nursing Times, 18 January 1989). The introduction of this centre led to the workforce being reduced by one-third as it took over the work previously carried out by 14 kitchen: an attractive proposition for a government intent on reducing NHS costs and creating the potential for commercial use in the future.

The centralisation of hospital catering and the construction of large district general hospitals during the last two decades has caused problems in delivering cooked food to hospital patients. The Institution of Environmental Health Officers' (Hospital and Therapeutic Kitchens Inspection Guidelines and Reporting Format, 1988, states:

The movement of prepared food within hospitals, often over considerable distances. can create many problems with temperature control. In order to be safe the internal temperature of any heated trolley or container should be raised to a minimum of 75 degrees Centigrade before any food is loaded. Food must never be allowed to fall below a temperature of 63 degrees Centigrade.

These guidelines, sensible though they may seem, are almost impossible to carry out, especially in the winter months in hospitals on large sites where food trolleys have to be transported outside to be delivered to separate ward blocks. And even when food is successfully kept hot, the prolonged "hot-holding" to which it is subjected impairs its nutritional value.

It is not surprising that some of the worst outbreaks of food poisoning during the last twenty years occurred in hospitals. It is an indictment of the quality of hospital food that some institutions looking after long-stay patients have had to provide vitamin supplements — especially vitamin C — to remedy the sub-clinical deficiencies caused by an institutional diet.

The majority of cases of food poisoning are not reported but non-attendance at work because of “diarrhoea and vomiting" has become more common in recent years. There has also been an unexplained increase in septicaemia in the elderly. The government's response has been to play down the risks and when this strategy failed John MacGregor, Minister of Agriculture, announced that there would be tough measures taken to ensure that food production is strictly monitored. But plans to extend cook-chill regulations, to make food storage safer in shops, have been suspended for 18 months because of differences between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Department of Health.

Profits before food safety

The government has announced cuts of £25 million in research grants which will lead to 2,000 redundancies in scientific posts and severely restrict future research into food poisoning. Although the government expects the food industry to conduct its own research it is unlikely that it would benefit the consumer: experience in the drug industry has shown that research has been solely to make larger profits and is frequently against the consumer's interests.

There is undoubtedly dissatisfaction with the role the Ministry of Agriculture has played in its responsibility for food safety. However, calls to make the Ministry of Health responsible instead will only marginally improve matters because the state's function is to ensure the smooth running of capitalism and not the well-being of workers unless production is threatened.

In theory there are laws to protect the consumer, but when Sunblest bakeries were recently fined £200 plus £50 costs for selling a mouldy cake it was revealed that they'd had 146 previous convictions since 1983 (The Messenger, 20 January 1989). It is also possible to buy reject and out of date food for less than half price at London markets (Today, 20 February 1989).

In recent weeks mercury has been found in Sainsbury's butter; mineral oils, used to glaze children's sweets, have been found to cause liver damage: and tea bags, milk cartons and coffee filters have been contaminated with dioxin which can cause genetic defects and liver damage. Additionally, despite the efforts of pressure groups the number of additives used in food continues to rise. The basic problem is that food, like any other commodity, is produced solely for profit. Only the abolition of capitalism can ensure that it is completely safe for people to eat.

Carl Pinel

War zone Wilts (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Guardian of 3 February carried a report on the rejection of a petition presented to the European Parliament by the Wiltshire Villages Environmental Association. The petition had been the latest stage in a campaign lasting several years to prevent a now nearly completed village on Salisbury Plain from being used for its intended purpose. There had been an earlier, vain, attempt to obtain a public enquiry, using posters with unpleasantly nationalistic overtones in an effort to secure public support. The posters referred to the project as the “German Village" because of its intentional resemblance to villages in Germany and carried an emblem incorporating a German Second World War helmet.

The purpose of the site is revealed in the acronym given by the Guardian: FIBUA (Fighting in Built-up Areas). The 90 buildings being erected on a 30 acre site at a currently estimated cost of £15 million are not intended to provide housing for one single person. However, the purpose of the protest campaign, whatever a rational being might believe, is made clear in the same report:

The association does not question the need for the project but says its site, on the edge of Copehill Down, will cause serious disturbance.

Anyone living in the vicinity of Salisbury Plain will be able to sympathise with a complaint on the grounds of disturbance. In what is superficially a peaceful, rural area the noise and nuisance caused by military activity is already considerable without any further additions. The dominant sounds are usually those of gunfire, from automatic small-arms, mortars or a variety of heavy artillery. When major exercises are in operation, intensified gunfire is joined by the grinding of tanks, the whine and congestion of military convoys on the roads and the deafening intrusions of low-flying jet fighters, helicopters and Hercules transport aircraft by night and day. Indeed, there is a long-standing but hollow joke among those who live locally that the outbreak of another war would pass unnoticed here.

However, to protest about disturbance alone while explicitly not questioning its cause, is at best simply to plead for the nuisance to be imposed on others with less influence, or at worst just an exercise in futility. Even to have considered the reason given by the Ministry of Defence for the FIBUA village would have provided the members of the association with a pointer to the likely outcome of their campaign. It was ‘'needed" as a replacement or a supplement to the village of Imber, less than five miles distant as the shell flies (any self-respecting crow would long since have vacated the area).

Imber was a thriving and active farming village with about 150 inhabitants when it was compulsorily evacuated in 1943 to provide training facilities for the armed forces. The evacuees were led to believe, at the time, that they would be permitted to return when the Second World War ended. The formation of a protest group in 1945, when that understanding was proved to be unfounded, has had no effect whatsoever; the survivors are still awaiting their return to this day. It would now be difficult to honour that understanding since the few houses still standing are derelict, most having been demolished and replaced by gaunt barn-like shells. Almost as difficult, it must be said, as building the new FIBUA village.

The weakness of this protest movement lies not simply in its nationalism, nor in its acceptance of the waste involved, nor even in its neglect of the precedent shown by the case of Imber; it lies in its failure to question the need for the project. By adopting that position the members of the association have accepted the myth that the existence of the whole horrific war-machine is in the interests of ordinary working people. Furthermore, in protesting to governments, they have revealed a total misconception about the role of the state and its executive, the government.

In reality, the state and all its agencies, including the armed forces, have arisen in response to the requirements of business enterprises, of all kinds, and their owners. The interests of the overwhelming majority of us who do not come into that category are subordinate to those requirements and are considered or acted on only when the functions of business are threatened. Clearly, a protest over disturbance by the few who live close to practice killing-fields like Salisbury Plain poses no more threat to those functions than complaints by and on behalf of the homeless, the poor and the starving in their millions worldwide.

The only worthwhile movement must be one to end the very system which causes so much human suffering, whether from disturbance or from utter deprivation, and to replace it with a society which has the satisfaction of all human needs as its aim.

GM

Sinn Fein follies (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Although they would furiously deny any affinity with "Godless communism", Sinn Fein local councillors have developed a remarkable fondness for portraying themselves as latter day Peoples' Commissars, well versed in the theory and practice of revolutionary socialism. If, however, we ignore this self-delusion and examine the real views of the organisation (recently set down by its President. Gerry Adams, in Signposts to Independence and Socialism), it becomes clear that the Party is hopelessly and dangerously confused about the subject.

The main entry is the text of a speech delivered by him to an internal conference of Sinn Fein in 1986. This afforded Adams all the time and opportunity he needed to explain fully what his party means when it uses the term socialism, and for him to give us some idea what its implications would be. Instead, he contented himself with making only passing reference to what is supposed to underpin, in economic and social terms, the IRA's superficial "Brits Out" campaign.

This reticence of Adams to "come clean" isn't surprising. He himself admits that his party's "socialism" should be kept firmly under its hat, lest it offend the delicate dispositions of those “genuine republicans" who, while being able to stomach the wholesale slaughter of British and Irish workers in the name of Holy Ireland, are likely to develop political apoplexy should they detect that a victorious Sinn Fein might just interfere with the property rights of Irish capitalists.

Thus Adams warns:

. . . if the Republican Movement as a whole decides to style itself "Socialist Republican" this implies that there is no place in it for non-socialist republicans, or that non-socialist republicans are in some way second-rate, inferior or less genuine republicans.

He continues:

. . . if "socialism" is what is offered as the alternative, it cannot have the same popular appeal.

Elsewhere in the pamphlet Adams says of nationalism and socialism: "One without the other is useless — one without the other is impossible". Which renders all the above merely a euphemistic way of saying that Sinn Fein (being an open, principled and democratic party) should hide part of its views just in case those engaged in what it sees as useless and impossible work within the nationalist and republican movement should take umbrage. In short, Sinn Fein's much lauded "socialist principles" should be concealed and glossed over in favour of nationalist tactics.

In fact, Sinn Fein concealing their “socialism" is all to the good for it doesn't amount to anything and can only serve to confuse workers further on the subject. Behind the welter of nationalist claptrap, it is clear that they have merely fallen for the old sop of welfare state capitalism:

You must have your own government with the power to institute the political and economic policies which constitute socialism. Socialism is a definite system of society in which the main means of production, distribution and exchange are socially owned.

The only evidence Adams presents to support this baseless assertion is that this is the “classical sense of the term". In reply, we need only say there was once a "classical" proposition that the earth was flat.

In common with the rest of capitalism's half-baked Left-wing. Sinn Fein are utterly blind to the real problem. They see all evils only in the shape of private capitalism — the source of working class poverty is not to be found in the fact that we, as wage workers, are exploited by capital, but in the identity of capital's owners. Sinn Fein is concerned with the shadow of exploitation not its substance. Despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary, collected over the past century and more in every country in the world, they maintain that capital in the hands of the state performs the miraculous feat of transforming itself from the exploiter of wage labour into its servant!

At the present time large sections of industry in both the north and south of Ireland are nationalised. The Northern Ireland Electricity Service is in fact an excellent example of how Sinn Fein’s policies would work in their ideal state. Here is an industry that, unlike most state controlled concerns, actually pays its way (at the time of writing it is due to be privatised) and is highly profitable. Do the workers employed by the NIES really own any part of it? When their electric bills arrive in the post, do-they throw them in the bin safe in the knowledge that they don't have to pay for something which already belongs to them? What about those who don't work for the NIES? Is the fact that it is state owned beneficial to them?

Socialism in fact has nothing whatever to do with nationalisation, which is properly called state capitalism. Socialism is the complete negation of all forms of capitalism. It involves taking the means of production and distribution into common ownership and has no need for any means of exchange. As Marx put it as far back as 1875 in his Critique of the Gotha Programme:

Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers DO NOT EXCHANGE their products (our emphasis).

In a society based on state property, production can only take place with a view to supplying a market. The dictates of the market are the goods and services must be competitive and profitable. Competitiveness and profitability, however, are the very things which stand in the way of meeting people's needs.

It is not surprising to learn that Sinn Fein knows nothing about capitalism either. According to Adams, the Party is opposed to "big business", “multi-national investment" and "foreign interference". They see an end to these things as a necessary step towards their utopia in which the resources of Ireland

. . . are under Irish control and organised to bring maximum benefit to the people of a 32 county state in which Irish culture and the national identity are strong and confident.

The protestants of Northern Ireland are often derided, an rightly so, for their "wee Ulster" mentality. The ramblings of Gerry Adams in this pamphlet betray Sinn Fein for the "Little Irelan- ders" that they are.

Let's fantasise a moment and envisage Sinn Fein taking power in their united Irish state. What would they do about Ireland's foreign debt? Would they repudiate it on the grounds that Irish workers should not be expected to work in the interests of foreign money-lenders like the workers in "socialist Poland" currently do for western bankers? More to the point, could the self- proclaimed peoples' representatives in a Sinn Fein government repudiate the debt?

The idea is absurd! Ireland is not self-sufficient, nor will it ever be. Only a fool would suggest that a Sinn Fein government could simply repudiate all foreign debts and opt out of the world market. Unless Sinn Fein has an economic genius who has worked out a foolproof method of bartering in the world market, some of the produce of Ireland would have to be sold for capital with which to buy the produce of other countries

But there would be no markets in which to sell their goods. If Sinn Fein really thinks they are going to repudiate Ireland's debts to Germany, America, Japan, Britain, Holland and the rest, that they are going to nationalise foreign property in the shape of multi-national companies and then expect foreign governments to allow Irish goods in their markets, we repeat our assertion — Sinn Fein knows nothing about capitalism!

Sinn Fein's Socialist Republic of Ireland would be ostracised and ignored by international capitalism. So. where would the capital come from to buy the things Ireland couldn't produce itself? "We'll print it ourselves”, think the Little Irelanders, but as any economist knows, this is the sure road to real ruin. If a government resorts to the printing presses in order to buy itself out of trouble, the consequence can only be raging inflation. If a Sinn Fein government, in an effort to bolster its Mickey Mouse economy, were to circulate excess paper currency the effect would be as catastrophic as its ban on foreign investment.

As bad as things are now for workers in both the north and south of Ireland, the reality is that Sinn Fein's cure would be worse than the disease. Capitalism offers us little or nothing in the way of a decent life, but in Gerry Adams' Socialist Republic, we'd be lucky if we got our hands on a pair of matching socks — and only then, in exchange for a wheelbarrow full of Punts!

And to think, the IRA is blowing up children for this!

Britain? (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Britain?

"Interest rates on both savings deposits and loans will be raised from February 1... According to a spokesman for the central bank, this is the second time in five months that such rates have been increased, and the move is part of the national effort to curb inflation and brake economic growth. The spokesman said the higher interest rates should attract more deposits and reduce the threat of a spending spree "

No, China

(See Beijing Review, 1989. no. 6)

50 Years Ago: About Class (1989)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Working Class! Capitalist Class! Middle Class! A plague on all your classes. I do not like to think of men and women in society as belonging to different classes.

I like to think of these people as individuals all doing their best to meet life's joys and anxieties with enthusiasm and determination.

A one-time Prime Minister of Great Britain, whose benevolent face and rotund figure are often the background for a pipe, became a little disturbed at such descriptive class titles and consoled himself and his hearers with sentiments similar to the above. How he abhors such marking off into sections of certain members of the human family! Nevertheless, I am sure that he knows to which class he belongs. Probably some evidence will be found on his railway ticket; on his particular suite in a luxury cruise; on his standing under his own pergola or chandelier; on the power of his effective demand upon the mass of commodities within society.

Now there are many who, like our one-time Prime Minister, give more evidence of sentimentality than sense when discussing society, when faced with the logical terminology which is forced upon them by the economic system which we know as Capitalism.

However, the march of events takes but little notice of a person's particular dislikes, and we are compelled to take notice of facts, not fancies. In society, as at present constituted. there are two distinct classes with interests diametrically opposed — Capitalist Class; Working Class.

(From an article Working Class, Socialist Standard April 1939.)

Letters: Reforms and Reformism (1989)

Letters to the Editors from the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reforms and Reformism

Dear Editors,

I am unable to sympathise with your views on “reform" movements. I realise that reforming capitalism cannot alter the world considerably, and that the only way many of the world’s problems can be solved is through socialism. However, could reforms not produce a base from which establishing socialism is easier?

Could reforms not aid the plight of the homeless, the people suffering on NHS waiting lists or countless others? Would not a Labour government improve things in Thatcher's Britain?

I see how energy can be (and has been) wasted in efforts to reform society, when the only answer to many problems is socialism. But. do you oppose the use of the little energy it takes to vote for reformists. even if it means a choice between "the lesser of two evils"?

GS, 

Cumbria

Reply:

We can understand why people might want to use election time to register their rejection of Thatcher and all she stands for, but doing this by voting Labour (or any of the other non-Tory parties) is to assume that the problems people have had to suffer under Thatcher have resulted from the evil intentions of one woman and her ministers rather than being an inevitable consequence of the way the capitalist system works.

If Thatcher has clobbered wage and salary earners this has been because she is the prime minister of a government of capitalism and because any government of capitalism has no alternative but to preside over the operation of a system that can only work as a profit-making one in the interest of profit-makers and to the detriment of satisfying needs.

Those who remember the various Labour governments of the sixties and seventies can testify to the fact that the Labour Party in power behaved in basically the same way — they froze wages, they opposed strikes, they cut social benefits, they imposed health charges, they kept and developed nuclear weapons. The only difference was one of style: the Labour ministers clobbered the workers with reluctance (or so they said) rather than with relish like Mrs Thatcher, but the end result was the same. If in many respects the anti-working-class measures taken by capitalist government since 1979 have been harsher this has been because the economic depression has been deeper in this period.

So, no, a Labour government would not "improve things in Thatcher's Britain". It would merely represent a change of government personnel — a reshuffle of ministers — that would leave unchanged the capitalist system that is the real cause of problems such as housing, health, education, transport, pollution and the threat of war. After all, didn't Kinnock tell last year's Labour Party conference that a future Labour government would retain the market economy (that is, the capitalist economy) and to try to make it work better than the Tories. Making capitalism work, however, inevitably means putting profits before needs (as all previous Labour governments have done) and opposing trade union action — the only effective response workers can make to protect their interests under capitalism.

While some reforms might be able to alleviate, at least temporarily, problems facing some workers, they will never be able to solve any of the multifarious problems from .which workers suffer under capitalism. This is because reforms are aimed only at treating effects while leaving the cause (capitalism) unchanged, and as long as capitalism continues it will create problems for those who depend for a living on working for an employer for a wage or a salary. More accommodation might indeed be provided for some of the homeless but the housing crisis would remain. As our correspondent accepts, the only lasting solution lies in the establishment of socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production with production for use not profit and free access to consumer goods and services according to self-determined needs.

We cannot agree that reforms could “produce a base from which reforms of capitalism that have been sustained have been those which contributed to the more efficient operation of capitalism as a profitmaking system. Better schools to provide a better trained workforce; a national health service to patch up sick workers and send them back to work quicker; suburban rail or underground services to get workers to work more rapidly, and so on. In fact, capitalism, being a system that constantly changes as new profit opportunities open up (and old ones disappear), needs to be reformed all the time. In this sense bringing in reforms is part of the job of any capitalist government. So, a strong case can be made for saying that reforms are necessary to capitalism and help keep it going. Not that this is a reason for opposing them if they bring some marginal and temporary benefit to some workers, but it is a reason for rejecting the idea that reforms could somehow help towards the establishment of socialism.

Editors.

Interest rates 
and living standards

Dear Comrades,

In the February Socialist Standard it is stated that millions of workers will suffer a fall in their standard of living because of the rise in interest rates, including mortgage interest rates, and that since coming into office Mrs. Thatcher has hoped that home owners would “abandon traditional working-class demands for higher wages and salaries".

Such statements could encourage readers to accept the mistaken belief that working class standards of living are determined by movements of prices and interest rates. What governs working-class living standards is whether capitalism is in a phase of expansion and profitability, or the reverse, and the ability of the unions in a period of expansion and profitability to interrupt the flow of profits by strikes and thus get concessions from the employers.

With regard to the first statement, when interest rates rise lenders are as better off as borrowers are worse off. and among the lenders are those workers who have savings on deposit in building societies and banks.

More importantly, whatever Mrs. Canute Thatcher may have hoped, workers, whether home owners or not, have defied her orders and have gone on pressing large wage claims during the recent years in which production and profits have been rising fast. In such a period, as Marx pointed out, "wages rise generally and the working class actually get a larger share of the annual product intended for consumption”.

In every year since 1981 total wages and salaries have risen by more than the rise of prices on the official index (which includes mortgage interest and other housing costs). When production and profits slacken off and start to fall no doubt the working class will lose part of what they have gained, as happened in 1980 and 1981.

Tony Dobson for Camden Branch

Reply:

We were talking about effects in the very
 short term.

SPGB Meetings and Debates (1989)

Party News from the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Intervention USA (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

In these days of the enterprise culture, government involvement in industry, commerce, banking and other economic activities is not the flavour of the month. Market forces are in and intervention, or so we are told, is out.

Indeed it would appear that this is true, for all over the world, in Britain, France, Australia and elsewhere, governments have been getting rid of much of what is called “the public sector”. In fact nationalisation, the main form of government involvement in a nation’s economic activity and once seen as a device which would solve all of capitalism’s economic and social problems, is more or less a dead duck.

So obvious is this even to politicians of “the left” that the Labour Party here doesn’t intend to re-nationalise all the Tory sell-offs of the last decade, while in the so-called communist countries private enterprise is being encouraged to compete with ailing state enterprise.

From deregulation…

However, even in such times as these, governments still have to step in and intervene when they think that the interest of the national capitalist class is in danger. For example, in the United States, the very heartland of non-intervention, there has been the growing problem of the Savings and Loans banks. These S and Ls are the rough equivalent of Britain’s building societies and hundreds of them have gone bust while hundreds more are insolvent. Their losses were $6.8 billion in 1987 and $3.8 billion in the first quarter of 1988, although depositors are covered by a government insurance agency.

How did this happen? Just as nationalisation was once seen as the great cure-all, nowadays it is “deregulation” which fills the bill. This means that enterprises in an industry no longer have to conform to laid-down government regulations but are freer to operate as they see fit. This, it is claimed, will produce a capitalism without its attendant problems, will provide greater all-round prosperity, and so on.

Thus the S and Ls were allowed by the Carter administration in 1980 to borrow, not only from small investors for re-lending as mortgages as previously, but from the money markets at ever higher rates of interest. This laid them wide open to trouble, which duly arrived when the Reagan administration further deregulated by allowing the now exposed S and Ls to move into high-risk lending for big property deals and other get-rich-quick schemes of which they had no experience. The result was the spate of bankruptcies and insolvencies already mentioned.

… to regulation

At present the insolvent S and Ls keep afloat by continuing to borrow at high interest rates and their debts are estimated to be increasing by $35 million a day. Sooner or later the government will have to foot the ever-mounting bill. The implications of this are serious for American capitalism. How can it ever tackle its massive budget deficit of $150 billion while it throws away billions at this rate? More seriously, many American banks have collapsed in recent years (almost 200 in 1987 alone) and the additional collapse of hundreds more S and Ls could trigger a disastrous loss of public confidence in the entire American banking system. The Administration have therefore intervened to try to stop the rot.

Bush and his financial advisers have come up with a plan calling for a one hundred billion dollar issue of new bonds to bail out the S and Ls. The interest on the bonds is to be paid to the government by the S and Ls and the other banks though higher premiums for Federal insurance of all bank deposits. Critics of the plan say it breaks Bush’s election promise of “no new taxes” as “the taxpayer”, in the form of the banks’ customers, will have the extra premium passed onto them through higher bank charges. But this will not necessarily happen because the customers may refuse to pay up, in which case the banks and S and Ls will have to bear the extra cost themselves.

This rescue package also calls for a leaner and fitter S and L industry to be taken over and run by another government agency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and amounts to back-door nationalisation. So whatever their ideological preferences any government will make use of intervention, even despised nationalisation, when it suits “the national interest”.

All of this reinforces the Socialist Party’s view that whether government use less intervention or more, they are helpless in avoiding capitalism’s pitfalls.

Vic Vanni

Independence No Benefit (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chinese troops patrol the streets of Lhasa to clamp down on yet another group of men and women clamouring for Independence. But what exactly has "self-government" meant to those around the world who have managed to achieve it?

Since 1947, thirty-six territories previously part of the British Empire have become independent sovereign states, although most of them decided not to forego the economic aid and trade advantages inherent in being a member of the Commonwealth. What have the people of these countries gained from the change?

Various types of one-party dictatorships exist, and bloody civil wars have raged in Biafra and Somalia. In the latter there is wholesale denial of the most elementary political rights and more than a million refugees have fled into equally poverty-stricken Ethiopia and Sudan. New independence movements indiscriminately slaughter those of different groups or tribes in India and Sri Lanka as well as Somalia. Corruption is rife even in so-called democracies. Abject poverty is the rule among the vast majority, while the new ruling class who control the economy grow rich. To celebrate Independence in 1984 the Sultan of Brunei built the worlds largest palace with 2.000 rooms and 257 lavatories. His subjects have been provided with a "Welfare State" and pay no income tax; even so. it is safe to say that independence has made little difference to their lives. The government of Sierra Leone is so concerned for the health and welfare of its "independent" people that it has accepted, against payment of course, the dumping of tons of British lethal toxic waste just outside its capital, Freetown. It is very doubtful whether the "mother country" would have dared to do this while Sierra Leone was a British responsibility.

Lesotho (Basutoland) and Swaziland are completely dependent upon South Africa, have repressive regimes and widespread poverty. No Independence here and certainly no benefits for any but the ruling clique. Even in those few states where material and political circumstances of workers have been maintained or improved, changes have been minimal. The fact that some of the most repressive régimes refer to themselves as socialist is, of course, a mockery.

When asked why we do not support struggles for Independence by fellow workers in other parts of the world, we point out that, at best, they will simply be exchanging one lot of masters for another. They may win or be allowed a little more freedom within the system but while it remains they must depend on the capitalists — state or private — for their subsistence. For workers, independence is merely a change of rulers.

Eva Goodman

What's next for privatisation? (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

"They have monopolised everything that it is possible to monopolise: they have got the whole earth, the minerals in the earth and the streams that water the earth. The only reason they have not monopolised the daylight and the air is that it is not possible to do it. If it were possible to construct huge gasometers and to draw together and compress within them the whole of the atmosphere, it would have been done long time ago, and we should have been compelled to work for them in order to get money to buy air to breathe. And if that seemingly impossible thing were accomplished tomorrow, you would see thousands of people dying for want of air — or of the money to buy it — even as now thousands are dying for want of the other necessaries of life. You would see people going about gasping for breath, and telling each other that the likes of them could not expect to have air to breathe unless they had the money to pay for it. Most of you here, for instance, would think so and say so. Even as you think at present that it's right for a few people to own the Earth, the Minerals and the Water, which are all just as necessary as is the air. In exactly the same spirit as you now say: 'It's Their Land , It's Their Water'. It's Their Coal', It's Their Iron', so you would say ‘It's Their Air', 'These are Their gasometers, and what right have the likes of us to expect them to allow us to breathe for nothing?’”

— Owen to his fellow workers in Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

Down with justice! (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are words of which people should have learned to beware. Liberation, meaning it is your allies who will try to kill you this time instead of your enemies. Prosperity, a sure thing you are about to feel the pinch more tightly. Progress, the development of new ways to exploit the majority of people and turn creativeness sour. And justice. In Britain, they say. it is the best that money can buy. Demands and pleas for it echo through history and every day's newspapers So do threats of it: as well as the grail of the oppressed, justice is the first refuge of every oppressor. With each invocation of the word goes the feeling that a moral principle is involved, that there is an over-riding consideration of rights. Is there justice to be had?

One answer might be that it is impossible to get under capitalism, or has to be fought for against odds. On that basis, working-class claims for justice acquire greater weight and passion, because sentiment favours assaults on the inaccessible. Unfortunately, it is a superficial and mistaken answer. The mistake is in the assumption that there is true justice which is simply being with-held or misapplied. If hands could be laid on it, the belief goes, wrongs would be righted and truth prevail. In fact, justice is a concept established and elevated by property society for its purposes alone. Or, as Marx and Engels addressed the capitalist mind in the Communist Manifesto:

. . . your jurisprudence is but the will of a class made into law for all, a will, whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of your class. The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property — historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production — this misconception you share with every ruling class that has proceeded you.

What has to be realised is that there is no injustice — there is only justice. Does this mean that appeal is useless, that every personal and social oppression must be taken as inexorable and endured? By no means. But the argument and struggle had better be for concrete purposes, not for the phantom of a moral truth. Indeed, the Communist Manifesto points out that early major gains by organised workers were won "by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself” — not by appeals to humanity and justice. In criminal actions it is only the defendant who asks for justice in court. The police and prosecutors know it is there: what they ask for is the penalties.

The futility of seeking social redress in the name of justice was ridiculed by Engels in Anti-Duhring, in 1878:

If for the imminent overthrow of the present mode of distribution of the products of labour, with its crying contrasts of want and luxury, starvation and debauchery, we had no better guarantee than the consciousness that this mode of distribution is unjust, and that justice must eventually triumph, we should be in a pretty bad way, and we might have a long time to wait.

Underlying the belief that some better kind of justice can be had is, inevitably, acceptance of capitalism s yard-sticks and axioms. The idea of rights and freedoms, the idea of equal opportunity — they sound like emancipated thought, but they denote thought sadly fettered. In effect, they propose alterations and exceptions to the rules; the question not asked is who makes the rules, and why they exist. Robert Tressell's biographer. F.C. Ball, relates how the author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists would suddenly ask men in argument: "What makes you think you are entitled to food and clothing?", "Can you tell me why your children should have shoes on their feet?” This is going to the heart of the matter. When the very means of living are owned by a minority, what can be said of the majority's right to live? What is the point of believing that justice can come true?

This is the difference between the reformist and the revolutionary or socialist. The reformist hopes (at a later stage perhaps pretends, professionally) to find a soft heart and a love of truth in capitalist society. Of course by their own professed moral standards those who rule and dispose in capitalism are perenially cynical, vicious and low; but that reveals only the spuriousness of the standards. The socialist knows that Engels, again, wrote in Socialism, Utopian and Scientific:

According to this conception, the ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in the minds of men. in their increasing insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the mode of production and exchange: they are to be sought not in the philosophy but in the economics of the epoch concerned.

The socialist case holds no reference to justice or the rights of man. Its foundation, like that of capitalism, is in material interests. When the great majority who form the working class are ready to establish socialism, it will be not a matter of belief in eternal principle; but because they have had enough of deprivation, inferiority and modern barbarity as all capitalism can give, and propose to run society by themselves for themselves. That this society will be a thousand times better and more satisfying in every way is true — but the drive to it is not a moral one. So far from promising to inaugurate justice, opportunity and the recognition of rights, the revolutionary proposal is to do away with them and replace these slave-concepts with the human relationships of socialism. This too was one of the challenges laid down in the Communist Manifesto. Mimicking liberal-philosophical timidity, the authors say:

'There are. besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom. Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis: it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.'

And the reply:

But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages. viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms . . .
   In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonism, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all.

Why ecology is important (1989)

Editorial from the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent years the environment has become a major political issue. And rightly so, because a serious environmental crisis really does exist. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat have all been contaminated and polluted to a greater or lesser extent.

Natural materials are being transformed into substances (including waste) which nature cannot decompose, or such substances are being created at too fast a pace for nature’s decomposing processes to be able to keep up with them. The result is the current environmental crisis — or, more accurately, the ecological crisis, since what is involved is much more than unsightly skylines in cities or ugly factories in rural areas. Substances which are poisonous or cannot be decomposed are being released into nature — for instance lead and the pesticide DDT and also the other heavy metals and a host of chemicals. These substances eventually find their way back to us through the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. Ecology is not just about protecting nature — animal rights, saving the whale and other moral issues. It is about human beings too — the way we live and the quality of our life.

Nature and the environment are being damaged today because productive activity is oriented towards the accumulation of profits rather than towards the direct satisfaction of human needs. The economic mechanism of the profit system can function in no other way. Profits always take priority both over meeting needs and over protecting the environment.

This is why the Earth's easily-accessible resources have been plundered throughout the history of capitalism without a thought for the future, why chemical fertilisers and pesticides are used in agriculture, why power stations and factories release all sorts of dangerous and noxious substances into the air and water, why road transport has replaced rail transport, why human waste is not recycled back to the land, why animals are injected with hormones, why detergents have replaced soaps, why lead is put into petrol, why goods are made not to last . . .  the list of anti-ecological practices indulged in under capitalism because more profitable is endless.

Where we differ from the various Green parties and movements which share this ecological perspective is over what should be done. To find an effective solution, awareness and indignation about a problem must be accompanied by an understanding of its cause.

Explanations of the cause of the environmental crisis which circulate among Greens differ from ours. Some blame modern technology rather than the use — or, more accurately, the abuse — that is made of it under the present system. Others attribute pressure on resources and the environment to overpopulation. Others say that humans are too greedy and preach restraint on consumption for moral reasons. But respecting the laws of ecology does not mean abandoning modern technological knowledge and going back to the productive methods and personal consumption levels that existed before the coming of industrial capitalism. It means rather using materials and methods compatible with a balanced functioning of nature. With appropriate modification, modern industrial techniques of production are quite capable of providing enough good-quality food, clothing and shelter for every person on Earth and of doing this without damaging the environment.

The Green Party in Britain sees the solution to the environmental crisis as lying in the achievement of "a system of human activity which is in harmony with the Earth's life-sustaining systems", as they put it in their 1987 General Election manifesto. However, they see this as being achieved through the election of a Green Party government which would take measures gradually to transform the present growth-oriented and profit-motivated capitalist economy into a decentralised, democratically-run and ecologically-sustainable one. While awaiting the election of such a government the Green party concentrates, like environmentalists in the Labour and other parties, on advocating reform measures to try to protect nature and the environment.

We are up against a well-entrenched economic and social system based on class and property and governed by coercive economic laws. Reforms under capitalism, however well meaning or determined, can never solve the environmental crisis — the most they can do is to palliate some aspect of it on a precarious temporary basis. They can certainly never turn capitalism into a democratic, ecological society.

The conclusion is clear: if the present environmental crisis is to be solved and the threat to — indeed the actual degradation of — the environment removed, then capitalism must go. It must be replaced by a socialist society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production.

How green can you get? (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Throw away the red paint, lads; green is the latest fashion. Red banners and class struggles are out of date. These days, if you want to look radical you have to be green. From Number Ten the Green Goddess has sounded the clarion call: "Let’s pretend we care about the environment — there are votes in this one". Where Thatcher leads the hapless promise-makers in the Neil, David and Paddy camps follow. On this year's Labour agenda, vote-losing, truncheon-battered miners are out, vote-winning baby seals are in. The Green Party is printing application forms on recycled paper for those who like the sound of its late Eighties, health-conscious. conservation-minded message. Pity that those filling them in have not checked the parliamentary record of the German Greens who, in order to make a few legislative deals with other parties, voted in favour of a huge military budget. The Left is going green too. In the Communist Party the fetishism of commodities is distinctly passé; Gramsci on the burning question of deodorant sprays and the ozone layer is big talk. The Two Royals, Phil and Charlie, are making speeches to whoever will listen about the importance of conserving this green and pleasant land. They own enough of it for the subject to be of direct interest. Meanwhile, they eagerly await the hunting and shooting season when they can pursue the noble sport of killing innocent animals. Elkington and Hailes Green Consumer Guide became a non-fiction best-seller last September, and now publishers are falling over one another to publish vegetarian recipes and shocking accounts about rain forests. It is fashionable to be green these days.

Socialists have been saying for a very long time that workers must wake up to the enormous threat of environmental damage which the profit system poses to the world around us. Nuclear weapons are just the most obvious and powerful symbol of self-destruction which capitalism has created. For decades it has been cheaper for capitalists to pollute the air workers breathe than to adopt clean techniques and practices. Methods of production which are unsafe, disease-spreading and potentially explosive have long existed. Workers' food has been adulterated for as long as there have been wage slaves; see Engels' comment about this in his book, Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. In order to make a fast buck it has long been capitalist practice to destroy the earth’s irreplaceable resources. Animals are made to suffer and die needlessly; endangered species which have no exchange value in the market are free to become extinct. There is nothing new about any of this. It is not peculiar to the late Twentieth Century, and we did not require a new fashion to hit the tabloid headlines to recognise that we inhabit an endangered planet — endangered by the dictates of profit.

The Socialist Party is hostile to the Green Party. It is a party which stands for the continuation of the capitalist system, but in a different form. We stand for the abolition of capitalism in all forms. The two positions are irreconcilable. Those who vote for the Greens are doubtlessly sincere and caring people who want something different. In their own lifestyles, perhaps some of them have made genuine adjustments which are in line with a socially more co-operative way of living. So have many socialists, but we are well aware that individual lifestyle changes, whether they involve not eating meat or using what are called “environment-friendly" products, are not going to change the fundamental nature of the social system which oppresses us. A few million workers might give up using products which destroy the environment, but what power do we have in comparison with the minority who own and control the means of wealth production? The ruling class, be they multinational companies, state-capitalist bureaucrats or small manufacturers, have an interest in keeping their costs down. If their profits come before the long-term interests of workers, who can blame them for sacrificing workers’ needs? After all, workers voted for the profit system. Only by abolishing the system which is the cause of these problems can the effects be eliminated. The Greens, both in their own party and in the major parties, put out an on appealingly radical message, but when examined it becomes clear that it is a case for the market with a green tinge.

Green reformism

Let us imagine that a Green government is elected at the next General Election. What would it do? To begin with, it would govern. The job of governments is to run the coercive state on behalf of the capitalists who monopolise the means of life. So, like all previous governments, a Green one would be compelled to ensure that the workers are producing profits. In another sense, a Green government would not really govern at all: it would be governed by the profit system. Its Ministers would be constantly coming before us, like Labour reformists in the past, saying "Look, we honestly did want to reform this and that but. you see, with the capitalist economy being what it is..." And so the old story of reformist promises coming to nothing, followed by working-class disgust and disillusion, would go on. In Green Line (November 1988) Tim Andrews reported on a list of reforms which the Green Party Conference had just voted for: “the scrapping of the Common Agricultural Policy, the replacement of price support with income support . . . the party's intention to withdraw from the EEC unless reconstituted on ecological principles . . . opposition to free trade . . . commitment to economic as well as political decentralisation." In short, a package of policies to reform capitalism, many of which have been tried and failed in the past, and others which are just pious platitudes. A Green government of British capitalism would be no freer than any government before it to carry out changes which would conserve what is worth keeping in the world around us. Let us say that a Green government abolishes nuclear weapons, as they say it would. What weapons would it introduce instead? If none, then capitalism in Britain would be undefended and ripe for take-over by profit-hungry vultures from other states. If the Greens seek to introduce new, more humane, greenish weapons of murder, then let them spell out such a defence policy here and now. Likewise, let us assume that the Green government fails to persuade the EEC to reconstitute itself on ecological principles. Who will the British capitalists trade with? And why should non-EEC trading agreements be any less concerned with profit before need than the current ones are? Or would a Green government only agree to trade with nations which are ecologically principled? The question alone demonstrates the catastrophic implications of the expected green answer.

It is simply impossible to purify or humanise this capitalist system. And some of the more aware Green politicians, such as Jonathan Porritt, probably know this. They would argue that politics is about pragmatism, that is cynical compromise. It is about “lesser evils". But why vote for Porritt and his fellow would-be governors to administer the lesser evil when capitalism, which creates the evils, can be abolished altogether? The usual reformist answer is that the lesser evil will take less time to achieve than the grand socialist aim. The Socialist Party was told this by CND nearly thirty years ago when they were going to reform the threat of nuclear annihilation out of existence; we were told it by the reformists of the Labour Party over eighty years ago — they were going to eradicate poverty. It is a foolish myth that partial objectives are more worthy of support than realisable big ones. There is unlikely ever to be a Green government, and if there is, then its greatest critics will be present Greens who will complain that it has sold them out. It is inevitable with reformism; it must sell out in order to fit in with the needs of the system.

Green anti-materialism

Socialists are materialists, but not in the sense that the term is often used: it does not mean that we want people to have more and more “material” things, such as cars or video machines. To be a materialist is to recognise that human beings are rooted in our social environments. Our consciousness is social, and through conscious action we can alter the material environment of which we are a part. The environment is not something Out There which must be protected; it is part of us and we part of it. To be a materialist is to reject antiquated, idealist nonsense about the soul or the spirit. The present writer attended a debate two years ago in which the Green speaker pointed out that being green was all a question of the spirit. Asked to identify this spirit, the Greens laughed a little and ended up proclaiming that if you don’t know what it is then you ain’t got one. Are we to conclude from this that the new Green World is to be established by those who have discovered their spirits, leaving behind us poor wretches who have only our material selves to live with? There is a good deal of arrogant self-righteousness in the Green claim to have seen a better world. What they fail to understand is that seeing visions does not transform the world. Even Tories see glorious visions.

The task facing us is not to romanticise, but to revolutionise. Of such thinkers Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto that they were “half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future: at times, by its witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart's core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history." Such will always be the condition of visionaries whose pictures of social completion are really images of a re-created past. The Green dream of a semi-rural arcadian utopia, undisturbed by the thundering force of Big Business and its needs, is really a looking backwards, a conservative ideal All this spiritual nonsense serves as a valuable diversion as far as the ruling class is concerned: while the proles are searching for the invisible spirits they will not be disturbing capitalism as a material reality.

The Times (26 December 1988) reported that "After a decade of old-fashioned pursuit of money and status. Americans and the citizens of the other rich countries will, as the planet runs low on space and resources, turn in the closing years of the century to spiritual fulfilment." The newspaper was responding to an article published in The Futurist, which is published by the World Future Society based in Washington DC. In the same city is the US Department which collects figures on official poverty. It reports that one in four citizens of the United States is living below the government poverty line. So, while bored Californians turn to the non-existent spirit for comfort in a worrying world, others cry for lack of material necessities to keep themselves warm, fed and clothed. There is no solution to be found in the so-called New Age ritualism whereby abstract idealism overcomes the need to attend to harsh material requirements. And it is precisely because there is no solution in such inaction that capitalism will quite willingly accommodate the growth of Green ideology.

Green profits

Big business is making plenty of money out of the new green consciousness. An article in The Guardian entitled “Conning of the Greens" (17 December 1988) pointed out that the supermarket chains are losing no time in cashing in on the willingness of workers to buy healthier food. This suits the capitalists who employ workers: the healthier we are the more exploitable we are. And it is increasingly suiting the retail capitalists who have created a whole new range of commodities which can be sold at extra cost — conscience money. Sainsbury's was selling organic potatoes at 64 per cent above the price of normal potatoes; organic leeks were 67 per cent dearer and organic lemons 114 per cent more. Tesco's is selling its “own-brand UK mineral water . . . that is calorie free ". John Elkington points out that “People . . .  like to feel that they are paying something extra to protect the planet." Very nice too, if you are one of the capitalists who own the planet.

Capitalism will pass a few minor reforms to win a few green votes, and also because the capitalists themselves realise that their investments are being damaged by the filth created by a lack of environmental concern. Just as they passed The Clean Air Act of 1956, so in the months to come they will attempt a few more self-regulating laws. Needless to say, these laws will be evaded by those rich and powerful enough to do so. Even when the capitalists are agreed on their common interest, there will always be one or two who will try to sneak behind the others’ backs and make an even faster buck.

The planet belongs to them. We, the workers who produce everything and run the planet from top to bottom, have given it to them. Our task is to take it away from them; to reclaim the planet. The Green Party, which does not stand for the socialist transformation of global society, cannot take the planet away from the capitalists. In the end, all they are is a rather futile reform group, pleading with the profit-taking class to do us all a favour and take less profits. Given such a pointless crusade, we need not to be surprised by the following section of the report of their 1988 conference:

Perhaps the most contentious issue at conference was the attempt by National Party Council to replace the sunflower as the party's logo with one of three designer-symbols commissioned by professionals . . . The arguments against keeping the sunflower were confused: it had become associated with healthy eating, some said, while others claimed it looked like a fried egg (hardly healthy food!). Commissioning new logos on such spurious pretexts seemed unnecessary. After all, sunflower logos only look like fried eggs when the petals have not been drawn properly . . . (Green Line, November 1988)

For further news of these exciting political dramas within the party of the future, watch this space.

Steve Coleman