Another pointless bloodbath (1992)

From the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the ideas which was supposed to have been killed off—or rather laughed to death—by the satire boom of the 1960s was Boer War British jingoism. To some people this was a comforting idea because few theories are more disturbing than the blind-eyed, deaf-eared, empty-headed patriotism which insists “my country, right or wrong”. But ten years ago it was necessary to learn that jingoism was alive and kicking, cheering and waving Union Jacks as the task force sailed out to deal with the Argentinian capture of the Falklands.

This hysteria was in response to the government telling us that the war was fought so that the Falkland Islanders did not have to live under a regime they did not want. Now this was, to say the least, surprising since under this capitalist system—and most definitely under the Thatcher government—human rights and democratic self-determination were not high priorities. The war cost between £3 million and £5 million a day at 1982 prices and then to fortify the Falklands cost about £300 million and to maintain the base there cost some £120 million a year. Do governments—did the Thatcher government—really spend that kind of money so that a few thousand people in a small and desolate group of islands thousands of miles away can decide who rules over them?

Crisis

In fact by the time the war began ten years ago, in April 1982, the British government had spent quite a bit of time trying to hive off the Falklands in some way acceptable to Argentina. For example in 1980 Nicholas Ridley, who was then gracing the Foreign Office with his graceless arrogance, went to the Falklands to persuade the administration there to accept some kind of "leaseback" arrangement. This scheme had previously been floated by Callaghan’s Labour government. But on his return Ridley got so rough a reception from the House of Commons that for a time it seemed his position as a frontbencher was in jeopardy. Meanwhile trading links between Argentina and the Falklands were nurtured; Argentina had a near-monopoly in fuel supply and air travel and had built the first big runway at Port Stanley.

For centuries from the end of the 16th century the islands had been a source of minor friction between the colonising powers until, in 1833, a British force deposed the Argentinian governor and proclaimed British rule, that conquest had nothing to do with the wishes of the islanders because at that stage there were virtually no people of British origin there; it was only in 1833 that the British community was established. British rule has never been accepted by Argentina. At the least they have registered an annual protest to keep the dispute simmering and a basic teaching in their schools has been the perfidious colonisation of the British, just as British children are taught about the inherent uprightness of the British.

There were several reasons for the Argentinian move to heat up the crisis in 1982. The Falklands were one of a very few outposts remaining from the British Empire; it was doubted that there would be the resolve, or resources, to resist an Argentinian invasion. At the same time Argentina was in an internal crisis, with prices increasing at almost 150 percent a year and the unions becoming restless about wages and democratic rights.

Two days before the invasion a huge demonstration in Buenos Aires was fired on by troops, six protestors were wounded and about 2000 arrested. The prisoners were saved from what might politely be called an uncertain fate when the government released them as a gesture of national unity. A different kind of demonstration was sparked off by the Argentinian landing, as thousands came on to the streets to voice their support of General Galtieri, who assured them that he was ready to accept 40,000 dead as the cost of capturing the Falklands. It is, of course, not unknown for a member of the ruling class to courageously face the prospect of workers being killed to protect their interests. In Galtieri’s case it was even more obvious; he was a general who had never fought in a war.

Censorship

In Britain, the Thatcher government’s popularity had slumped after the recession in 1981, which was widely considered to be the worst since the war. Serious trouble was in prospect in the coal industry, after the miners had recently been dissuaded from action over pit closures by what amounted to a government subsidy—even if this directly contravened what was supposed to be the government’s most cherished principles. The Falklands dispute was a golden opportunity to divert workers’ attention from such problems; they could forget it all in a great splurge of jingoism about Britain’s rightful place in the world as the defender of human freedoms against a rabble of treacherous South Americans.

Thus it was that the Argentinians invaded and the British, in record time, prepared an expeditionary force to respond. The speed with which troops and materials were assembled and ships were modified to carry them was impressive—particularly at a time when workers were being so forcefully instructed on the need to tighten their belts because essential resources were in short supply. The Uganda was changed from a school educational cruiser into a hospital ship; the Canberra from a luxury liner into a troop transport; the QEII (where the carpets were protected from the working class boots of the Marines who would soon yomp across the Falklands allegedly to save democracy) into a troop ship.

The official propaganda machine moved into action, sifting the news to give people back home a distorted version of events. For example the landing of some Argentinian scrap merchants on the island of South Georgia was represented as a clumsy and transparent ruse to disguise a military invasion. In fact the Argentinians were there genuinely to dismantle an old whaling station and had documents to prove this. The official spokesman for the Ministry of Defence, Ian Macdonald, added his own flavour to the censorship by speaking at press briefings as if his audience was a collection of dullards instead of reporters from newspapers like the Sun and the Star. A typical reply of his to a question about a rumoured helicopter landing was:

 What I have said throughout to that kind of question is that interesting though it may be, I have throughout the whole of the last four weeks never made a comment on it but have always said that I hope no one will think my comment means more than simply no comment.

Irony did not seem to be in Macdonald’s character. If it had been he might have realised that, so bellicose in their jingoism was much of the British press, there was little need for any kind of censorship; papers like the Sun could be relied on to manufacture their own lies.

Business is business

The war illustrated the international scope of capitalism’s deadly trade in armaments, as British forces were attacked with weapons which Argentina had bought from allies of Britain or from Britain itself. Argentinian snipers used American night sights to devastating effect. The infamous Exocet missiles were supplied by a French company (“This is indeed a wonderful victory for French know-how” was how a spokesman for the company which made them greeted the crippling of the British warship Sheffield).

The Argentinian Navy’s Type 42 destroyers were sister ships of British destroyers in action in the war; they had been designed, and one had been built, by Vickers at Barrow-in-Furness. When the war began the Argentinian government still owed Williams & Glynn Bank £3.8 million on the deal. The sale had been covered by the British government’s Export Credit Guarantee scheme, which would have paid up if the Argentinians had defaulted. Instead, the Argentinians quietly settled the debt a month after the end of the war. Business, after all, is business—after all the fighting and suffering and killing. Business is business.

And politics is politics. The Falklands war proved to be a vote-winner beyond Thatcher’s wildest dreams. At the general election in 1983 the Tories practically put the Labour Party to the sword. Labour might have complained about the injustice of the vote and the ingratitude of the voters; after all they had supported the war as well. Their leader, Michael Foot (who had recently pleased a party conference by describing himself as “an inveterate peace-monger”), had been among the more vociferous in the demand that the Task Force be despatched, and so the killing begin, with all possible speed.

So everyone was happy, except the families of the dead and those who had to live with their wounds and disfigurements (and who. because they were too disturbing to look upon, were kept out of sight of the subsequent victory parade). It is rather changed now in the Falklands. The islands are no longer in the grip of the Coalite company and some of the economy has been developed. Ten years on the war is being “re-assessed” by military historians and experts. Some are already saying that it was all unnecessary—as if, except to the capitalist social system, there could now be a war which was needed by the human race.

Ivan

The rich are still there (1992)

Illustration by Peter Rigg.

From the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is a class-divided society in which a minority own and control the means of production while the majority are forced by economic necessity to work for a wage or a salary in order to live.

Whatever may have been the case at an earlier stage of capitalism, nowadays ownership of the means of production does not take the form of personal possession, management and appropriation of profit, but that of a legal right to draw an unearned income derived from their operation. The most obvious case of this are stocks and shares.

But since any income is a claim on wealth and since wealth can only be produced by humans working on materials that originally came from nature, all forms of unearned income are ultimately derived from the operation of the means of production and so represent a stake in their ownership even if no direct link can be established with a particular factory or mine or railway or whatever. Interest-bearing bank or building society accounts, and government bonds and National Savings, are, like stocks and shares, property rights over the means of production.

So, in modern capitalism, minority ownership of the means of production is not going to be a case of the minority personally possessing as their exclusive private property all land, factories and other workplaces, but of them having a disproportionate share of legal titles conferring the right to draw an unearned, or property, income from the operation of the means of production as a whole. What the statistics can be expected to show is not 1.2 or 5 percent owning 100 percent of unearned income yielding rights, but a range from those having little or no stake in the ownership of the means of production, through those having modest stakes of varying sizes, to those at the top end with stakes large enough to provide an income sufficient to free them from the necessity of going out and working for a wage or salary.

What the statistics show
So what are the statistics and what do they show? Ever since Sir William Harcourt introduced death duties in the budget of 1894, the Inland Revenue has possessed the raw data for working out the distribution of property and property rights in Britain. Once you know how much, and what type of wealth, people leave in their wills it is possible to estimate what and how much those who are alive own:

   Briefly, the Inland Revenue collects information about the value of estates and. by applying factors based on inverse mortality tables, derives estimates of the wealth of the living . . . A number of adjustments have to be made in the course of deriving these estimates: some asset valuations have to be converted to values which are more appropriate to the wealth of the living; as no information is available on holdings of some jointly-owned property which would pass on death to the surviving joint owner, this data has to be imputed using limited data available from other sources; similarly, imputations are required for property held in some trusts and for the holdings of the smallest estates which do not require a grant of representation when passing on death. (Economic Trends. November 1991).

The results of these calculations are published each year in the annual Inland Revenue Statistics. The latest edition, that for 1991, came out in January. The provisional figures for the year 1989 are given in Table 1.

This is the source of the figure quoted in the press at the time of the top 1 percent owning 18 per cent and the top 10 percent owning 53 percent of all “marketable wealth". The figures also reveal (see Table 2) how lacking in wealth are the vast majority of the population: 83.7 percent own wealth worth less than £50,000. while 52.7 percent own less than £15,000 and 31.8 per cent less than £5000.

But revealing as these figures are, they are not those we are looking for since "marketable wealth” is precisely what the term suggests: wealth of any kind owned by an individual and which they could dispose of for cash. To measure the unequal stake people have in the ownership of the means of production what is relevant is not all wealth but only those forms that confer the right to pocket an unearned income. The ownership of means of consumption such as houses, cars and household goods needs therefore to be excluded. These in fact form a fairly high proportion of marketable wealth.

Distribution of capital
Unfortunately the figures quoted above are not broken down by type of asset, but the raw Inland Revenue data after application of the mortality tables are. The figure for this—called "identified personal wealth”—is somewhat less than the final adjusted figures as it excludes in particular any wealth owned by adults whose wealth holding is too small to have to be declared to the tax authorities (this applies in fact to 65 percent of adults) and also the wealth held in the trusts which are a favourite tax-avoiding device employed by the rich. In 1989 identified personal wealth amounted to only 65 percent of total marketable wealth.

What these figures show is that 46 percent of personal wealth takes the form of residential buildings and 8 percent of household goods, cars and other personal possessions, making a total of 54 percent. It is the distribution of the remaining 46 percent—consisting of stocks and shares, bank and building society accounts, insurance policies, government bonds and other financial assets, and land and non-residential buildings—that interests us since, as assets yielding an unearned financial income, they are forms of wealth that confer a stake in the ownership of the means of production. They are capital in the sense of wealth that is invested to obtain an unearned income, whether profits, dividends, interest or ground-rent.

What the figures for the ownership of such capital show can be seen from Tables 3 and 4.

As stated, these figures do not include wealth that does not have to declared to the tax authorities on death. Of this excluded wealth, all of that held in trusts by and for the rich will be capital and, if included, would increase the share held by the 674,000 individuals who make up the top 1.5 percent of capital-holders. The "wealth” of those who would leave ‘‘the smallest estates”, on the other hand, can be reasonably assumed to be in the form of household goods, personal possessions and perhaps a car rather than as capital except for paltry amounts in a bank, building society or the Post Office. Since 65 percent of adults, or over 28 million out of a total adult population of 44 million, fall into this category of “smallest estates", we can safely say that two- thirds of adults have virtually no stake in the ownership of the means of production.

The conclusion from these figures is that the richest 1.5 percent—those with wealth of all sorts, not just capital, of £200,000 or more—own at least 36 percent of capital and of the different types of capital. 67 percent of shares and 62 percent of land. When the next richest category of those who own wealth of all kinds between £100,000 and £200,000 is added, it emerges that the top 6.7 percent own 61 percent of personally-owned capital, 85 percent of shares and 81 percent of land.

So the official Inland Revenue figures amply confirm the socialist analysis that capitalism is a class-divided society in which the vast majority own so little capital that they are forced by economic necessity to work for a wage or a salary for the benefit of the tiny minority who own so much capital that they could live off the unearned income.

Adam Buick

Next month: What about pension funds?

"I want to see more of my product." (1992)

From the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Illustration by Peter Rigg.

Caught In The Act: Future Uncertain (1992)

The Caught In The Act Column from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Future uncertain

John Major is famous for being the nicest of nice guys so naturally his motives in timing the general election for April 9 were the purest of the pure. It was. he said, the "right time", the people wanted an election and of course "we will win the election . . . with a working majority."

It is not clear whether Major was suffering from the delusion that there were crowds swirling around the gates of Downing Street, clamouring to be allowed to choose between the Labour and Tory methods of trying to organise British capitalism. Nor was it clear whether he had forgotten that his announcement of the date came the day after the Budget, which was supposed to be so attractive to the voters that they would insist on showing their gratitude to Major and Norman Lamont by returning them in a general election as soon as possible. In the event the announcement of polling day effectively removed the Budget from the headlines.

But docs anyone, anywhere, really believe Major when he says that April 9 was the right date because that was what the people wanted? Doesn't everyone understand that the timing was motivated by the desire to get the biggest possible vote. And doesn't the fact that Major, like all the other leaders before him, plays the election timing game, expose the myth that the Nice Guy is better than the Nasty One?

Nice Guys, as they say. usually come second and Major, when all is said and done, is a politician which means that coming second doesn't interest him. After all.,what will happen to him if the Tories lose? It can't have been entirely coincidental that immediately after the election has been called the media were speculating on his likely successor. Naturally Michael Heseltine was involved in this, declaring bashfully that he had no intention other than giving Major the kind of support, that football managers get from their chairman just before they arc fired.

None of this was calculated to comfort Major, who recently told the Tory conference that he likes being Prime Minister and intends to stay in the job. Depending on the election result, there will be a few other people with a say in that.

Forecaster unsuccessful

Of course Major got a lot of advice on the best dale for the election, some of it from Norman Lamont the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Now Lamont has the vital job of keeping control of the economy of British capitalism so that it runs as he wants it to. This sounds very impressive except that Chancellors probably spend as much time complaining that the economy is out of their control as they spend celebrating that it is behaving as they want.

According to press reports Lamont was pressing Major to postpone the election until May. His reason was that the brilliant remedies he was applying to the recession and the other current problems of British capitalism would need a little longer to take full effect. By May their effectiveness would be plain for all to see and the voters would gratefully and dutifully return a Tory government and Lamont's job in the Treasury would be rather more secure than the three million-odd people on the dole.

The snag is that Lamont's true claim to fame is his persistent inability to get his economic forecasts right — or rather to have the luck to do so. If Major had had any sense Lamont's advice to wait should have persuaded him to call the election as soon as possible, because as things are if Lamont says the situation is going to improve it's a fair bet that it's about to get worse.

Lamont’s style of assessing economic trends is not new. He is liable to interpret a slowing in the rate of increase in unemployment as evidence that unemployment is actually falling. He is also liable to assume that his forecasts are so reliable that industry and commerce can behave as if what was forecast has actually happened.

None of this deters Lamont from forging on, through the exposure of his bufoonery and his blunders, with even more assessments and predictions. There is only one way of taking him seriously — as the embodiment of capitalism's chaos, immune to the conceits of its politicians.

Millionaire unrepentant

Of all the MPs who will not be seen again in the Commons, because they are retiring, none will be missed more than Alan Clark, the Honourable Member for Plymouth Sutton, son of the famous art historian Lord Clark, millionaire owner of the splendid Seltwood Castle in Kent (and much more), disdainful racist and sexist bigot.

Clark made a name for himself through a succession of what may have been interpreted as indiscreet statements. Nobody seemed to consider whether what he had said was really perfectly discreet, in the sense that he was showing his boundless contempt for anyone whose skin is black, or whose sex is female or who is a member of the working class. Even his apparent disparagement of his old school had this edge to it. Only someone rich enough to have been a pupil there could afford to say that "Eton was a very useful lesson in human cruelly and deceit"

The same can be said about his sneer at those who, because they have to work for their living, were gullible to the Thatcherite dream of a land populated by mortgages: "It's not that one wasn’t scared of losing one's jobs, but at least one wasn’t scared of not being able to pay the, er, what’s it? . . . Yes, that's it, the mortgage!"

It is impossible to feel anything other than anger and contempt for his supposedly jocular — but actually bigoted and insulting — wish to send black people ". . . all back to Bongo Bongo Land" and for the arrogant sexism in his mock concession "I now realise that women can do all jobs better than men, except butchery and coal mining". This might have been a little more impressive if Clark had had the slightest acquaintance with butchery and mining as jobs.

His career — if that was what it was — in politics has yielded a rich harvest of such boorishness, yet there is this to be said for him. At a time when the Conservative Party is led by someone who thinks that capitalism can be a classless society it is not simply provocative to have a politician like Clark, who glories in the reality that this is a class-divided society of rich and poor, in which millions must be exploited and repressed. A politician who knows which side of the class division he is on and makes no secret of his resolve to stay there.

So that's alright then. We know where we stand; we should also know what to do about it.

Ivan

Are you under age? (1992)

From the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

You are a young person, still at school or, perhaps, in a job-training scheme. As a rule, even with an election in the offing. political parties are not yet interested in you because you are not old enough to vote. Until then . . . well, it is generally assumed that you are not old enough to have any significant opinions of your own. Your parents, your teachers, clergymen and all the rest of the respected and respectable people you come in contact with will organise your thinking for you.

A lot of people will be critical of us for daring to intrude on your political innocence. It’s not really the done thing?! We will be accused of trying to take advantage of the young; of trying to indoctrinate you before you are mentally equipped to defend yourself.

Brainwashing

Yet, if you look back at your training and education so far, you might reach the conclusion that you have been subjected to the most rigorous indoctrination and brainwashing since shortly after you were born.

All the ideas you hold, ideas about behaviour, about religion, about politics, about leaders and leadership, about "your" country, about the totality of ideas and concepts that are moulding you into the same general type of social being as your parents, have been steadily infused into your consciousness since since before you remember.

The ideas and beliefs with which you have been conditioned might be good or bad or a combination of both. The fact is, however, that you are fed these ideas as absolute truths. They have been instilled into your consciousness in such a way as to form barricades against the intrusion of new ideas and new concepts that might possibly change your perspective on life and the way it is organised at present.

In fact, you have been programmed to reject any form of information or knowledge which might threaten the interests of those who have determined your conditioning.

A very simple test will demonstrate this. You are asked if you think it would be possible to have a world where money did not exist, where people would co-operatively produce all the things they need and require and simply take these things as and when they wanted them.

What is your reaction to such a proposal? Everything you have learnt from when you were a baby militates against such a proposal. You have been trained, educated and conditioned to think in terms of ownership, of possessions, of employment, of working for wages or salaries, of money and buying-and-selling. of greed and laziness. You reject the proposition out of hand with the same intellectual arrogance that our forbears might have shown when it was suggested that the Earth might not be flat!

The fact is that whatever spirit of enquiry is, or was, encouraged in you as a student is restricted to the requirements and the accepted pattern of society as it is now. You question the basis of the world you live in at your peril. At the risk of the wrath of parents, teachers and friends and, later—well, no employer will lack suspicion for someone who challenges the social "morality” of the way he or she gets their living.

Accepters anonymous

To question, to challenge, to think outside the parameters established in your programming, can be dangerous. The question is whether it is even more dangerous to become one of the undignified band of Accepters Anonymous who accept without question things as they are now— with all the very real dangers that ‘things as they are now’ entail for your future.

It is not our purpose to try to indoctrinate you. We reject the idea of leadership—something you have been taught to accept—and are not, therefore, interested in indoctrinating people to play the role of sheep. We do have very positive ideas about the source of the major problems that confront society; problems like poverty, insecurity, slums, violence, world hunger, war, but we do not intend to expand on these things in this short article.

Instead, we would like to ask you some questions. These questions are about the world we live in; they are about the problems that probably affected the lives of your parents and grandparents. The problems that, almost certainly, will have a marked bearing on your future unless you, and those like you. take active and urgent steps to abolish their cause.

Of the many questions we could ask, we will confine ourselves to the following. If you would like to send us your answers we will be pleased to comment on them. If you would like to receive our answers, we will be pleased to send them to you.

QUESTION 1 Governments of different political parties, Tory, Liberal or Labour, governments of the Right, the Left and the Centre, come and go in different countries. But all the basic problems remain despite the fact that political parties achieve power on the basis of their electoral claims to be able to solve these problems. Why is this?

QUESTION 2 In this country—indeed, throughout all countries—homelessness and slum dwelling is a permanent feature of life. At the same time, there are vast numbers of workers, skilled in the various aspects of building construction. Why are building and construction workers idle when millions of people desperately need decent homes?

QUESTION 3 In every country poverty, in one or more of its many forms, exists. Some 15 million children (averaging about 42,000 every single day) die every year of hunger and hunger-related diseases. At the same time, massive amounts of foodstuffs are dumped or stored—much of it until it goes rotten—and governments deliberately restrict food production. Why do you think this is?

These are just a few of the questions that might be asked about the contradictions that exist in this country and throughout the world. As you approach the time when you will have the power of your vote to endorse things as they are or bring about real change, we think it is important for you to address these questions.

In seeking answers, we would suggest that you ask questions. Ask your parents and teachers, ask clergymen, write to the Member who is supposed to represent you in Parliament and, of course, write to the leaders of the political parties. In the next issue of the Socialist Standard we will give you our answers to the questions we have posed.

And, of course, we will be happy to publish and comment on the answers you receive to our questions, especially those answers from political leaders, clerics and such others as feel competent to guide your thinking. They could make lively reading.

Richard Montague

Election Fund (1992)

Party News from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the time of going to press the amount standing in our Election Fund was £1831.30, which means that by now we should have attained our target of £2000. The money collected will be used to pay for the renting of committee rooms, 45,000 copies of the election manifesto (mainly for free distribution by the Post Office), 5000 posters, stickers and leaflets, 1000 extra copies of this issue of the Socialist Standard and the candidate's deposit.

We express our thanks to our readers who contributed and will publish a detailed breakdown of how the money was spent in a subsequent issue.

Further details on the election campaign can be found elsewhere in this issue.

Letters: The Tragedy of the Commons (1992)

Letters to the Editors from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

Congratulations on the article “The Tragedy of the Commons” (February). I am not aware that it has been dealt with before in the Socialist Standard yet it was a frontal assault on the whole idea of a propertyless society. As Robin Cox points out, the argument was an anachronistic howler. It tried to examine hypothetical medieval situations in bourgeois terms.

Hardin’s viewpoint comes straight out of the 18th century Utilitarian theory of society as a rabble, a collection of individuals. While society itself is today under attack from capitalism, it certainly meant something in the Middle Ages as it still means something in surviving pre-capitalist communities.

The Tragedy of the Commons can be faulted on three grounds. leaving out econobabble:

1. Medieval society was structured—everybody knew their place in the village, there was no free-for-all.
2. The idea of producing a surplus for its own sake, beyond that to cover bad harvests and to exchange for iron ploughshares and blue ribbons, did not occur to anybody, as Werner Sombart pointed out.
3. Even if it had, there were no means of storing it, i.e. money, and market to dispose of it in the form of cattle or corn.

Medieval life was integrated, even if it did include the pimp in the Manor House. Co-operation ran from barn-raising to clubbing together to make a plough-team of oxen. If Little Boy Blue and The Boy Who Looks After The Sheep were falling down on the job, there was more than one villager to kick their arse.

References to American rangeland, Argentine pampas or Siberian steppe are unhelpful. The American Indians and Mongol herders never had any problem. There is even talk of handing back the West to the buffalo because of problems with soil and water.

Ken Smith 

May Hill, Glos

Dear Editors,

I did not state in my letter in the March issue that overpopulation is the cause of pollution, resource depletion and environmental degradation. I agree with you that the capitalist system with its profit motive is the main culprit. I mentioned the probable doubling of population as something that a socialist society would have to take into account when planning production.

J. Wood

London E1

Reply:

Sorry to have misrepresented your views. We will return to the subject of cars and pollution in the special issue we will be bringing out in June to co-incide with the so-called Earth Summit in Brazil that month.

Editors

Future trends (1992)

Book Review from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Megatrends 2000. By John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene. Pan. £5.99.

Capitalism needs to have some idea of future trends and developments, if only to keep the profits coming in by anticipating changed market conditions. While often tacitly aware of the unplannability of the system, the bosses and politicians would greatly appreciate a preview of what society will be like in 10 or 20 years' time. It is in response to this need that the discipline of futurology, a pretentious mixture of sociology, politics and economics, has arisen. Naisbitt and Aburdene (described on the back cover as “the world's leading social forecasters”) have made their contribution by trying to identify ten major trends of the 1990s.

The authors begin by acknowledging something that socialists have been saying for years: that there is a single world economy rather than lots of national economics trading with each other. Other than this, though, their views turn out to be a mixture of the obvious and the ignorant. It is not very surprising to be told that over the next decade the state capitalism of eastern Europe (which the authors, of course, misname “socialism”) will be replaced by a market economy, that Japan will become the major economic and cultural power, that there will be more women at the top of politics and business, or that the welfare state will contract. On the other hand, it is extremly surprising to learn that the 1990s will be "a period of economic prosperity", when, in fact, the decade has opened with a recession.

In others ways, too, the lag between writing and publication has embarrassed the authors and shown the foolishness of predicting events under capitalism. Parts of the book read like a hymn to Margaret Thatcher, who has apparently changed the direction which Britain was travelling and “hit a chord with the British people”.

Further evidence that the authors know very little of past and present, to say nothing of the future, is easy to find. For instance, they claim that the cause of poverty is “failure to create families". So single mothers can escape destitution by the simple expedient of finding a husband! This is a neat reversal of the old game of blaming poverty on the poor having too many children. We read, too, that economic prosperity will put an end to war, since "wealth is a great peacemaker". But. as the Gulf War has shown, developed countries are quite prepared to go to war to defend their profits and wealth.

To be fair, Naisbitt and Aburdene do state that they have deliberately concentrated on positive trends, leaving others to stress the negative ones. But emphasizing the positive developments under capitalism means ignoring so much that the resultant picture is a complete travesty. Capitalism simply cannot function without the downside of wars, famines, slumps and oppression. To do away with these, whether by the year 2000 or not, requires Socialists, not social forecasters.

Paul Bennett

Election Latest: your help needed (1992)

Party News from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an ocean of hollow rhetoric, hopeless promises and sickening humbug there is still one small voice of political sanity. You can help to make it louder. You can support the Socialist election campaign.

We have a candidate, Richard Headicar, who is standing in the Holborn and St Pancras constituency in London. Our campaign is not just to win votes, but to raise socialist consciousness. However large or small our final vote is. our work will be relentless in getting the case for real Socialism across to as many people as possible. We shall be delivering tens of thousands of socialist leaflets, distributing literature, putting up posters, holding street meetings and attending all events run by our opponents. Please call 071- 622-3811 for details of the campaign office telephone number and ways that you can help.

An eve-of-poll rally at Conway Hall is aimed to be a climax of our campaign. You are invited to be there—and bring along any interested friends, family or workmates. After the rally a more informal chance for socialist discussion will be organised in a room above a nearby pub.

Our political enemies say that we theorise too much. This campaign is a chance to show just how practically and visibly the socialist alternative of production for use can be presented to our fellow workers. The more of us there are the more credible the campaign will be. This party needs you now; don't let us down.

Campaign Office

67 Chalton St, NW1 (Euston end). Open 10 am till 8pm.

Between the Lines: Debate of the Decayed (1992)

The Between the Lines column from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Debate of the Decayed 

On a recent visit to the House of Commons, collecting policies for his long-term research into the fossil record, your TV columnist happened to stumble upon three familiar-looking party leaders, each rehearsing speeches which mass TV audiences were never to hear. In the absence of the TV show-down which would have been as politically illuminating as One Man And His Dog (without the Man, and with ballot papers issued to the sheep), we here publish the texts of the speeches which were never made.

Honest John

"Let me say at the outset that my government has nothing to offer you except more of the same. As you can see, this leads to enormous prosperity for everyone. If elected, I shall produce a Charter, to be placed on all bus shelters and town-hall lavatory doors, which will be signed by me so that nobody will dare to ignore it. It will promise that trains will run on time and

Prime Ministers will be honest — or else they will face a £200 fine, or a knighthood in the case of the Prime Minister. Above all, my worshipful followers, I remind you of my motto: If it isn't hurting it isn't working (based on an original idea by Harvey Proctor). I shall see to it that all NHS doctors be issued with framed parchments containing these comforting words. So, vote Conservative and don't be deceived by our opponents’ lies about poverty, unemployment, homelessness or beggars on the street, all of which are caricatures created by Channel Four documentary-makers".

The Future Lord Neil 

"Your Majesty, Lords, Ladies, Very Rich People, moderate trade unionists and little old ladies — I appeal to you to vote for the party which you can feel safe with. You see, there are mud-spreaders around who want you to believe that capitalism will be unsafe in our hands. Just because it has been the case that we have been in government eight times and been clueless how to make the profit system run in the interest of the working class. Now we have the answer: we intend, without reservation or hesitation, to make the profit system run in the interest of the capitalist class.

We believe — and we ask you to believe — and furthermore, we ask that you believe that we believe — that only by bleeding the workers dry will this great country of ours be even greater.

To this end, we shall continue the policies of the Thatcher government (selling off council houses, building nuclear missiles, breaking the unions), but we promise that, unlike the wicked, woeful Tories, we shall sing The Red Flag at our conference each year while we are administering the legalised robbery of our dear brothers and sisters in the trade unions."

Paddy Pointless

"I think . . .  I think I think that my party is different from the others. We are different because . . . And secondly, we are in favour of a system of voting which will get more Liberals into the Commons bar. Moreover, I am an extremely butch commando and can speak Chinese. So vote for the Alliance . . . .  I mean  . . . "

Open Debate

Democracy is not served by sound-bite exchanges between Presidentially-styled leaders who are looking for sheep to fleece. TV debates are not the answer. If you are convinced of your case you will stand up on a public platform and put it before an audience that can answer back.

The Socialist Party wrote to the sitting MP for Holbom and St Pancras, Frank Dobson, weeks before the election was called, inviting him to debate in public. At the time of writing he has not even replied. He knows that there is a big difference between the TV election soap opera and the glare of a large audience who want to hear answers to their problems — and then want to answer the answers.

That we have been spared the Major-Kinnock-Ashdown slogan exchange is a small mercy; that they have been spared the harsh judgment of workers who regard them as being as inspiring as a repeat series of Crossroads is a delay which must be rectified.

Steve Coleman

50 Years Ago: War-Time Restrictions on Publication (1992)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

As far as the S. P. G. B. is concerned our attitude is the one we have always adopted. We are in favour of complete freedom of speech and publication for every point of view, that of our opponents as well as ourselves, but we cannot profess to be surprised that under war conditions the earlier restrictions should be greatly increased. It is a process inseparable from war and will probably result in still more restriction before the war is ended. (We notice in passing that quite a number of supporters of war do appear to be surprised: having apparently made the childish assumption that it is possible to wage war without having these necessary accompaniments of it.) While regretting that under these conditions it is not possible to publish all that we would wish to do on the war, we do not forget that the S. P. G. B. is not merely an anti-war organisation but a Socialist organisation. It is our duty as Socialists to state the case for socialism and while it is possible to continue to do useful work we shall continue, notwithstanding our enforced inability to state all that we would like to state.

(From the Socialist Standard, April 1942.)

Sting in the Tail: Labour Sees Stars (1992)

The Sting in the Tail column from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour Sees Stars

The main British political parties have long-since been aping the American practice of wheeling-out showbiz stars to support them at elections.

Last month there was a big swing of Scottish "artistes" from Labour to the Scottish National Party. Labour countered by parading their famous faces before the media with comedian Robbie Coltrane topping the bill.

Alas, the show bombed when Robbie fluffed his lines by voicing support for "an Independent Scotland", which is the SNP's policy, instead of Labour's devolution policy.

Serves the Labourites right! What kind of party is it that would even want, let alone seek, the votes of those who would vote for it because some politically clueless entertainer supported It?

Where Power Lies

At a recent Socialist Party meeting a young left-winger claimed that real power lay not with parliament but in the boardrooms of big business. It Is an old, familiar argument but it bears no resemblance to what actually happens.

For example, the Institute of Directors urges the government to cut the standard rate of taxation to 20p and so bring economic recovery. The Confederation of British Industries tells the government that the way to recovery is not through tax cuts but by more government spending, training programmes, etc.

What does the government do in the face of all this boardroom "power"? It simply ignores the I of D and the CBI and steers the course it thinks is best for British capitalism.

& Where It doesn’t

The other leg of the above argument is that real power lies not only in the boardrooms but with the military brasshats.

That this belief is equally wrong can be shown by the latest cuts in the size of the army. These are so large that the House of Commons Defence Committee warned that: -

The reduction might be so great that the force would not be able to cope with crises or even peacetime duties . . .  and effectively police Northern Ireland.

ITV's Oracle 6 March

And what can the brasshats do about It? Nothing except fume with impotent rage as the number of soldiers that they have to play with is cut and cut again. Where does power lie?

Don't Bank On It

Many people have funny ideas about banks. They think banks have unlimited funds to lend, make bigger profits than any other industry and so on.

To these errors is added one from a writer in the February issue of the anarchist paper Freedom. He claims that banks are a "largely risk-free Investment" for British capitalists.

A glance at the current plight of the banking industry shows otherwise. During February Britain's "Big Four" banks, Barclay's, Midland, Lloyd's and NatWest, between them declared another £6 billion in bad debts for 1991 to add to the £4 billion total for 1990.

On top of this their combined profits fell by £700 million, their share prices are depressed and all four predict more hard times to come.

If British capitalists are looking for a risk-free investment then banking certainly isn't it.

Got Your Share?

Since 1979 the number of shareholders has increased from 3 million to 11 million now. This is almost entirely due to privatisation, the flotation of Abbey National, etc., but even so, the proportion of shares held by individuals has fallen from 28.2% to 21.3% during that time.

Now comes an organisation called ProShare which aims to reverse this decline:

The ProShare chairman said yesterday that share ownership was hindered by ignorance, high dealing costs and unfair tax treatment . . .

The Herald 21 February

ProShare plans to educate the ignorant about the risks and rewards in owning shares, press for individual investors to get the same taxation treatment as the big institutions, promote the spread of employee share owning schemes, and more.

Do we have a moral to this story? The Herald obligingly provides one for us:

It all sounds very grand and ambitious. Of course one "black Monday" could undo all the good work.

Dignity of Labour?

The quest for profit is unrelenting in a capitalist society. How unrelenting was shown in The Independent (13 March). German shipowners have been given a trial dispensation by the government on the manning levels of container ships.

And so it is that the glass lavatory has made its debut as a new navigational aid to keep up 24-hour-a-day productivity. A transparent toilet giving panoramic views of both port and starboard has been installed on the bridge of three ships owned by Hapag Lloyd, the large German shipowner. The commanding WC allows crew numbers to be cut to 13 for the 30,000 ton container ships as part of trials for new low-manning arrangements. The requirement to have at least two people on lookout at any time has been suspended as a result.

It is good to see that the workers are not taking this lying down - or rather sitting down. Indeed one of them Knut Schronder, a ship's pilot on the Kell Canal, shows a great deal of awareness about capitalism and how it works.

In a recent letter of protest to the German transport ministry he wrote: "To me this is an expression of utter contempt for human beings. Productivity must be kept up even when shitting. You can’t say clearer than that when declaring your support for an unsocial market economy."

The Scorpion.

No ideas please — we're followers (1992)

From the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

This has been the no-ideas election. It has been an insult to our intelligence. Whatever important right to make the working-class voice heard the Chartists of the last century were fighting for, it was not for this foul process of bribery by reform, propaganda by smear, and policy formulation by opinion poll.

But for the pitiful enthusiasts of either side—the Major minors and the pink-rosed tame Kinnockites—nobody believes for one minute that anything big divides the contestants for power. The pathetic Lib-Dems—less “preparing for power” than preparing for a dodgy deal with the highest bidder—and the half-cooked Greens with their dream of a green and pleasant capitalist land, are about as inspiring as a Heinz sponge pudding with ready-made custard.

The Communist Party, once destined to win a few hundred votes in safe Labour seats where life is so bad that Bucharest looked good, is no more, and apart from a few latter-day Leninist nuts the Left is left to cheer for Kinnock and hope that he dies painfully. The fact is that none of them, from Lamont’s lunatics to Lord Sutch and the avowed lunatics, have an idea worthy of more than three seconds’ contemplation.

If the electoral scenario has been bleak here, pity the American voters, the victims of seduction by such mindless wonders as Tsongas. Clinton, Buchanan and Bush. The only clear result so far is that most people who could vote won't, and those who do are motivated by opposition to the nonentities who are worse than whoever they have wasted their primary votes on. The prospect of a race between Bush and Clinton, assisted by multi-million dollar ad campaigns and enough balloons to give a birthday party for every starving African child, is as dull as it is wretched.

Both the British general election and the US Presidential race are cynical exercises in mass manipulation. This trickery is paid for by those who are concerned to tranquilise the political imagination of the majority. A sleeping working class, either abstaining from voting or abandoning power by voting for leaders, is an exploitable working class which represents no threat. The workers, who run society from top to bottom by producing and distributing all wealth, are many; the idlers who own and control the means of life are very, very few. This election is about ensuring that the many follow the few.

The great ideological crisis

The defenders of the profit system ought to be laughing right now. After all, do they not claim to have defeated “communism"? To be sure, the state-capitalist perversions of the profit system have been falling as fast as . . . well, as fast as British businesses, seeing as a comparison is required. And here lies the cause of the absent laughter by the profit system’s friends. How convenient it would have been for them if the bogus communist regimes had fallen at a time when capitalism was expanding—employment rising, businesses opening, banks doing well, the distinct stench of corporate corruption far away. But this is not the situation these political conmen must defend. Try as they might, it is hard for them to brush aside the tragedy of millions on the dole, record bankruptcies, house repossessions, kids begging on the streets, chaos in the NHS, BCCI, high interest rates facing workers in debt, growing racism, inner-city squalor and poll tax resentment . . . the litany of capitalist maladies is endless.

Cartoon by Peter Rigg.

Yet all of the electoral contestants defend capitalism as not only a tolerable system but the best one, and not just the best but the only possible one. Vote for more of the same, they implore, all else is utopia. Even the pitiful Labourites, once the advocates of at least the tiniest of radical dreams, is now so much in love with capitalism that the Bank of England is to John Smith what a brothel is to a sailor. Where once Labour leaders would lyingly speak of some kind of an alternative to the profit system (even though it was only the sterile state-capitalist non-alternative), now Kinnock asks no more than that he may be allowed to run capitalism better than the Tories.

Not only the politicians themselves, but the commentators and the professors have run out of ideas. They are like Chekhovian caricatures, awaiting the grinding completion of history in a soon-to-come, never- to-arrive moment of stabilised capitalism.

In contradistinction to the intellectual bankruptcy of those who profess to be the ideas-people. the situation within the wider world of material reality is everywhere pregnant with contradiction and change. The rapidity with which the dramatic overthrow of the state tyrannies in Eastern Europe and throughout the Russian Empire took place is proof of the electrical current that makes history live for those with the vision to be part of it.

The mess of nationalist conflict and the virtual economic collapse that faces the new "free" states could lead to anything— except stabilised capitalism. The war in the Gulf, fought at a time when the political "experts" of capitalism told us that the world was at last safer if not safe, has left a mass of unresolved problems. In Africa, where they starve while dictators spit at democratic aspirations, the struggle for change is far from dormant. In America an economic crisis, accompanied by deep and unhealable cultural divisions, is producing the greatest collapse of confidence in US history—one which the usually conservative BBC commentator. Alistair Cooke, predicted could end in civil war.

What a time this is to be alive. Who can resist the urgency of taking a stand, offering ideas and solutions? Only the mentally strangled, suffocated by the theme tune of Neighbours and tamed into a political consciousness which will follow the crook with the best advertising slogan, can sit back in passive acquiescence. If ever the age of political valium addiction should end, when could be better than now?

But not only do all of the electoral contestants stand for more of the same old failed system; they dress up their support with the most puny of Big Ideas. Major’s Social Charter; Ashdown’s Proportional Representation; Bush’s New World Order; Clinton and Kinnock’s New Deal for America/Britain (delete as appropriate and swallow the contents in case they cause a bush fire). Nothing less exciting could be offered. Never in the course of political history has so little been offered to so many by such prats—and at a time of such possibility.

 

A big idea

Here is a big idea: take the whole world and everything in it and let it he owned and controlled by the people who inhabit it. Let us no longer produce for profit hut solely for use. Let us do away with money and have free and equal access to available goods and services. Let us break down every national border and have a democratic global community, organised locally, regionally and worldwide. Let us stop tormenting ourselves with the nonsense that human nature makes us useless and foolish. Let us recognise that humanity is intelligent and co-operative and capable of living in harmony.

That is the vision. It is no utopia. It is realisable. It has never been tried. It offers a solution to the madness of having a world of potential abundance while millions starve and are deprived in a thousand different ways. It is a big idea. So big in fact that the little parties of capitalism — Labour. Tory, Republican, Democrat — can only deal with it by ignoring, distorting and ridiculing it.

The most exciting and empowering aspect of this big idea (call it World Socialism—call it Gladys if the word socialism offends you) is that it can only come about when the majority whose passivity gives leaders their power stop following and start uniting consciously and democratically.

Despite all the dishonest cynicism attached to this election, we do not dislike the ballot box. On the contrary, used by conscious men and women ballot boxes can be explosive. They can reflect the growing will, and ultimately the will of the overwhelming majority, against leadership and for World Socialism. When the workers of the world use their brain boxes and the ballot boxes, the consequence will be that the age of electoral following will end and John Major can go back to the circus.

Steve Coleman

Socialist Manifesto (1992)

Editorial from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most people think that whichever government is elected it will make no real difference to their lives.

Most people are right.

Most people think that political leaders are dishonest timewasters.

Most people are right about that.

Most people think that the world is in a mess: millions unemployed, homelessness and house repossessions, kids on the streets, a collapsing health service, wars, ecological destruction, countless millions starving while farmers are paid to let food rot.

Yes, society is in a hell of a mess.

Most people think that little can be done to change it.

They’re wrong.

Society does not have to be like this. We live under a system where:

• Production is for profit, not primarily for need.
• The richest 10 per cent own over half of all personal marketable wealth.
• The richest one per cent own three times as much as the poorest 50 per cent added together.
• The economy is run to make the rich stay rich at the expense of the poor.

The world market can never be run in the interest of the majority of us who produce the wealth but do not possess the major resources. No tinkering with the profit system by any government can ever make it comfortable, secure and happy for the majority of us.

All of the politicians in this election are asking you to vote for them so that they can run capitalism—continue the mess—carry on putting profit before needs—piling on the misery. 

What we need is a new way of running society based on:

• The common ownership of all resources by the whole community, not just a rich minority.
• Democratic control of the community by everyone, without distinction of age, race or sex, instead of rule by unelected company directors or state bureaucrats.
• Production purely for use, not profit.
• Free and equal access to all goods and services—an end to the market and to money.

Only the Socialist Party stands for that alternative: genuine socialism.

A vote for the Socialist candidate means that:

• You reject the policies of the profit system.
• You understand and want the real socialist alternative.
• You do not need leaders to do your thinking and run society for you.
• You are going to vote for yourself—for a change.

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BEGGING FOR A LAST CHANCE (1992)

From the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

BEGGING FOR A LAST CHANCE

"How do you know when politicians are lying? When you see their lips move”. Politicians have failed us so many times it is a standing joke. But it's not a very funny joke. They cruise comfortably through disaster after disaster while in power, but when elections loom they panic completely, lose all dignity and promise anything they can think of.

And what is unfunniest of all is that we believe them. Each election they beg for another chance. Each election we give it to them. And the starvation and misery in the world, the poverty, the pollution, the stress in our lives and the despair of so many, all of these get worse instead of better. In spite of "greening" themselves politicians can do almost nothing to stop the immense destruction caused by pollution, basically because it's cheaper to pollute than to reprocess waste.

And what could they do about poverty? Abolish it? If they do that then they must also abolish riches, surely, because you can't have one without the other. And what will the rich have to say about that? Can they abolish homelessness, perhaps by giving people free houses? Again, what would the rich building contractors say? Can they abolish hunger by making food very cheap? Not if they want the support of rich food producers. Politicians who are smart know this.

They know exactly how helpless they are in the face of problems which defy any attempt to control them. But they know also that to admit defeat is political suicide. Somebody else will make the same promises and get all the votes instead, as we've been seeing with the Greens. So instead they always beg us for one more last chance.

But there could be a better way.

NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

We are going to make some proposals. They are not "common sense" proposals, so "realists" won't be interested. But that's all right, because they have all the rich and clever ideas of ordinary politicians to choose from. We think, however, that it is time to think big. The proposals we make are ambitious. Probably more so than any you will have heard before.

Because the problems are world-wide, we think that the solutions have to be world-wide. First, we are going to propose that the world organises itself democratically. It is not so at the moment, because we rely on leaders. We put people into positions of power, where they can control vast fortunes and vast armies, and then we expect them to act in our interest. That's like putting children in charge of a sweetshop. We should not be surprised when they let us down. But the world is no sweetshop, it is a matter of life and death. If we cannot trust leaders, we must learn to stand on our own feet - without leaders. We are not children, however much we are treated like children. We do not have to be helpless and weak. If we decide to make our world into a democracy, we are well able to do it.

If we decide that we should not be ruled over by tyrants and masters, we are well able to do that too. If enough of us organise together, we can accomplish anything. Which is just as well, because not everyone would welcome more democracy. In fact, there is a tiny minority of people who would not be at all pleased if we decided to run things ourselves. And that's because they happen to own nearly everything on this planet.

SMILE, THERE'S A GUN AT YOUR HEAD

Imagine what life would be like if someone discovered how to stop you from breathing without their permission. That person could charge any price they liked, and you would have to pay. Just how free would you be then? Fortunately, no-one can do that to you, but consider this - can you eat without anyone's permission? If you think so, think again. You will be arrested if you try it.

You must pay the owner first - for permission. It's the same with everything else - heating, clothing, housing, travel, communications - we have to pay for permission to have these things. And what happens when they can't pay because you have nothing to sell? Then you must sell your time and your skills - you must find a job. If you can.

There's nothing wrong with owning things. We all do. But when somebody owns the food you need to live on, it's as if they are holding a gun to your head. They can make you do almost anything. The world we live in is so arranged that a small minority of people holds that power over a very large majority, simply because of what they own. And this affects everything we think, feel and do.

Rich people don't have to wait in queues. They don't have to swallow their pride, or shortchange their kids at Christmas and birthdays, or buy cheap clothes, or take abuse from bosses. They don't go red when policemen look at them, or worry about being late, or avoid people’s eyes. Rich people are beautiful people with beautiful lifestyles. And what, then, does that make us? If we want a real democracy, we must face the fact that property stands in the way.

However huge a step it is, we cannot ever be free until we have abolished the ability of people to hold such terrible power over each other. Property and money are worldwide institutions. To uproot them would mean turning the world as we know it virtually upside down. We do not propose such a change lightly. The implications are so enormous that they cannot possibly be covered in a few leaflets.

We know how much is against us, and we know what the rich and powerful might try to do to stop it.

Yet we believe it can be done, that it can be done quickly, and that it can be done without violence of any kind. In the next leaflet, we'll explain how.

Taken from a series of leaflets produced by our Lancaster branch.