“The Mail on Sunday” on socialism (1993)

From the April 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 3 January issue of the Mail on Sunday contained an article by John Junor in which he referred to John Smith as "the leader of the Socialist Party”. Quite apart from the fact that we have no leader, we complained to the paper's ombudsman. Mr Chris Rees. We publish below his reply, together with our response:

I think it is fair to say that few, if any, members of the Labour Party would object to being called Socialists and many staunchly uphold the values and aims of Socialism.

There are. obviously, different interpretations of the word “Socialist” but in general terms the Labour Party is seen to be Socialist and of course John Smith is leader of that party.

It was good of you to point out the old Press Council ruling which stated that readers of the (Evening Standard) article would clearly understand the organisation referred to and I think the same logic must apply to the article by Sir John Junor.

Copies of this correspondence will be passed to Sir John and the Managing Editor, Mr Forgham. so that they are aware of your complaint and comments, but beyond that I do not think I can usefully take the matter any further forward.

Yours sincerely

Chris Rees, Ombudsman

Dear Mr Rees.

Having considered your response, as an allegedly independent Ombudsman, the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party is astonished by its political reasoning.

Firstly, we are told that few members of the Labour Party would object to being called Socialists. It is surely the job of a newspaper to describe people as they are, not as they choose to be described. For many decades the only nation in Europe which had a title describing itself as being democratic was the tyrannical, state-capitalist police state, the German Democratic Republic. If your newspaper chose to describe the dictators of the ex-GDR as being democratic on the grounds that most of them would not object to being so called it would be a rather perverse way of defining truth.

Secondly, it is stated that "the Labour Party is seen to be Socialist”. By whom is it so seen? Its leaders rarely describe it as standing for socialism and refuse to use the term in their publicity. Most of its active members criticise it for not being seen to be socialist. So, on what grounds do you maintain your view that it is accurate to describe it in such a way?

Thirdly, and most astonishingly, you state that not only is the Labour Party seen as being socialist, and not only is its membership willing to be so described, but "many staunchly uphold the values and aims of Socialism". This is an independent conclusion of your own which presumes some knowledge of what Socialism means.

Socialists stand for the establishment of a social system in which all goods and services are produced solely for use. not profit. Do "many” Labour members “staunchly uphold” such an aim? If so, when have they ever upheld it? When, for example, have they ever argued the case for moneyless free access to goods and services instead of the existence of the market standing between people and the satisfaction of their needs? Please supply us with a single speech, manifesto (local, national or European) or press release which upholds, “staunchly" or otherwise, that basic socialist aim. We suspect that all that you, or any writers or researchers on your newspaper, will be able to come up with are Labour plans for administering, regulating or reforming the capitalist market. After all, the famous Clause Four of their Constitution commits them to support for the market exchange of commodities.

We shall publish your response to us, and this response to you, in our official journal, The Socialist Standard (which was itself established two years before the Labour Party). We commit ourselves, as democrats, to publishing any response you can give to our questions and. in particular, to letting our readers know what evidence you arc able to cite in support of your contention that many members of the Labour Party do staunchly uphold the aim of Socialism. If you wish to retract the latter contention, on the grounds that there is absolutely no evidence to justify it, we shall be pleased to allow you to set the record straight.

Sting in the Tail: Death Ships (1993)

The Sting in the Tail column from the April 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Death Ships
When the oil tanker Braer sank off Shetlands in January it was a media event. It was great TV. Storm-struck shores, dying sea birds and earnest local politicians looking grim and concerned.

What is not generally realized is that it was not an isolated episode.

   In the past three years alone, 38 vast hulk carriers, have either sunk without trace or suffered severe structural damage. Around 40 oil tankers . . . have also been lost during the same period. (Observer, 14 February).

In a Panorama programme Scandal at Sea (BBC1, 15 February) it was reported that in the last three years 300 seamen had lost their lives in “accidents" in bulk carriers. As one bitter seaman said “people are concerned about the plight of birds but little is done about dead seaman”.

It's just another example of the callousness of capitalism. What are the lives of workers worth compared to the insatiable drive for profit?


Menace of the Mob
The killing of James Bulger was a dreadful event but so was the behaviour of some of the crowd outside Bootle magistrates' court. This lynch-mob mentality has shown itself on many similar occasions. Indeed, the mob wanted the blood of an innocent 12-year-old boy who was wrongly detained by the investigating police.

Are these people so blind that they have never noticed how often the police hold suspects during murder enquiries only to later release them? After the murder of the young woman on Wimbledon Common last year the police held several unfortunate men w ho had nothing to do with the killing.

All this plus the numerous examples of people being “fitted-up" for crimes they did not commit should be warning enough for anyone that an arrest is proof neither of guilt nor of police infallibility.


Services Rendered
Two men got a pay-off in February for services rendered. One was a Glasgow man who had worked for 47 years at Albion, part of Leyland-DAF. He never had a day off sick but his severance pay was £6,150 (£135 per year), the very minimum he could get. To add insult to injury the company thanked him for his “exemplary conduct and faultless timekeeping” (Daily Record, 18 February).

The other man got £5.2 million. He was Thomas Ward, an American lawyer, and the money was his “success fee” for the part he played in helping Guinness take over Distillers in 1986.

One man spends a lifetime creating real wealth and is sent packing with a pittance while another is paid 845 times as much for a spot of legalistic ducking and diving. There could hardly be a more accurate measure of capitalism's values than this.


Market Madness
Like every other car-maker, Mercedes of Germany have problems. Because of falling sales and profits the company wants to cut production from 600,000 cars to 505,000 in 1993.

This has meant the introduction of short-time working plus plans to cut 15,000 jobs. Problems solved? Not one bit because Mercedes workers are so worried by all this that they are refusing to go sick and are, as a company official put it, “working like madmen”. i he result is that output has increased so there will have to be even more short-time working!

In socialism cars will be produced for use instead of for sale, so the madness of the market won't come into it. Enough cars will be produced to satisfy society's requirements and the people who make them can then do other things and not be reduced to “working like madmen".


Advice to a Prof
Professor Alan Walters, Mrs Thatcher's former economic adviser, has accused John Major of lacking “any firm set of ideas” and of not having “understood markets at all" (A Brief History Of Our Time, C4, 14 Feb).

Who does, prof, who does? For example, did all those stock market dealers and analysts understand their market was about to collapse before Black Monday in October 1987?

And it’s easy for the prof to lecture politicians, but they, unlike him, have to take political as well as economic considerations into account and all too often the two simply don't mix. Just look at all those ideologues, left and right, who came into office armed with a “firm set of ideas” and then had to throw the lot overboard!

The prof should stick to his ivory tower and give heartfelt thanks that he doesn't have to wrestle with capitalism in all its bewildering complexity.


A Familiar Tale
Fveryone knows how the recession has hit people in the inner cities, the black community, the big council ghettoes and even business executives, but how has it affected Britain's Jewish population?

An article in the Jewish Chronicle on 29 January makes clear that Jews are faring no better than any other group, with 10 percent unemployed, people forced to give up their homes, many appealing to charities for help, money problems causing marital breakdown, and school leavers unable to get jobs.

And this applies especially to those who come from the leafy suburbs of London and other major cities, people who had thought themselves immune to hardship:

   In 1993, the stereotype of the community, successful, wealthy and middle-class is far removed from the reality.

The common idea that all Jews are rich always was nonsense, but many who were at least “comfortable” are no longer even that.

50 Years Ago: Why Lord Nuffield Looks After the Workers (1993)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

This solicitude for the welfare of the worker reminds us very much of the care which those capitalists who are interested in the turf lavish upon their racehorses. There are, of course, slight differences. A racehorse does not have to worry about making ends meet, about getting clothes for the children, about coupons or rations, or whether he will get a job when the war is over. In fact, he just doesn't do any worrying at all. There is another difference between the relationship of the worker and the racehorse to their common master. If a racehorse is no longer wanted, he can be sold, and perhaps eventually finish up in the knackers yard, and, in these days, as horse meat. But if a worker is no longer wanted, he is discharged, and sent about his business.

From an article by "Ramo" in Socialist Standard, April 1943. 

The future for socialism (1993)

Editorial from the April 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people on the left are bitterly disappointed. The past ninety-plus years of left-wing “successes” have left capitalism firmly in power. Labour governments did not enact socialism, but sought to reform capitalism and all too often were indistinguishable from intentionally pro-capitalist governments. The communist regimes had nothing to do with working-class power and socialism, but were monstrous tyrannies presiding over state capitalism.

Today many people on the left feel defeated. The Labour Left is marginalised and irrelevant because they are an embarrassment to the Smiths and Blairs who want their party of profit-system accountants to be just as respectable as the Tories. The Communist Party, ashamed of its Leninist past of echoing the lies of the Kremlin dictators, has given up the ghost. A few Trotskyist sects remain, spouting the old nonsense of the vanguard and insurrection—as if any workers in their right minds would follow these pastiche Bolsheviks in a new Leninist revolution.

It is quite obvious that all the old struggles of the Left have failed. But now is certainly not the time to give up on opposing capitalism. What we need is clearer thinking and more genuinely revolutionary organisation.

If ever Marx’s analysis was being proved correct it is now. This is no time to cast aside Marxian analysis.

Capitalism is in a global crisis. The international market is in a condition of anarchy which is beyond the control of governments or economists. As well as the increasing poverty and mass unemployment, the system faces widespread environmental destruction, numerous nationalist wars, the growth of the racist virus, uncontrollable urban violence and the existence of huge piles of nuclear and chemical weapons which are up for grabs to the highest bidder. If this is not a system in need of total abolition, then what else is there to do with it? Reforming capitalism is a waste of time.The only way ahead is out—to a new, untried social system.

Global production for profit must be replaced by production solely for use. The ownership of society's productive resources by the super-rich minority must give way to common ownership. The dictatorship of capital, which tramples relentlessly upon human lives, must give way to democratic control. These are not new ways of running capitalism. These are ways of running a sane society without capitalism.

Now, as ever, the socialist alternative cannot be imposed by leaders or legislated for gradually by reformers. The revolutionary act of overthrowing capitalism and establishing socialism must be the conscious and democratic act of the working class: the vast majority of us who do not live on rent, interest or profits.

The Socialist Party exists to win a majority of workers for socialism. We are neither a vanguard nor a would-be government. We assert that the future belongs to the working class majority and that only world socialism offers the hope of democracy, security, comfort and dignity for all.