Capitalism down under (1995)

From the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The political and economic situations in Australia and Britain are remarkably similar. Both have had the same party in power after several elections — in Britain since 1979 and in Australia since 1983. The oppositions in both countries now have substantial opinion poll leads, and so look forward to winning the next general elections, probably in 1997. The size and power of the trade unions have been reduced in both countries. The gap between the rich and the poor has been getting wider in both countries. Both governments have presided over the highest unemployment rates since the Great Depression of the 1930s. But there is one difference: the long running party in power is Conservative in Britain; in Australia it is Labor. To those who are naive enough to believe that Labour — or Labor down under — is the party of the working class, the point about the widening gap between the classes in Australia may come as a surprise. It shouldn't do — the facts show it to be true. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports "increasing inequality in earned income received by both male and female full-year, full-time workers over the period 1981-2 to 1989-90". During that period the highest 10 percent of income earners enjoyed a dramatic increase in their real income, but all other income earners experienced a dramatic fall.

Further evidence of inequality comes from an international study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Britain came third and Australia fourth (behind Norway and New Zealand) in the growth of inequality in the 13 years 1979-92.

In the Australian weekly Bulletin (28 February) spokesmen for the Labor and Coalition (equivalent to Conservative) parties debated the question of the income gap. For Labor, Peter Baldwin argued that the Henderson poverty line has increased by 16 percent in real terms over the past decade. He was therefore able to assert that "the poor are certainly not getting poorer". But Peter Costello, for the coalition, was more impressed by the relative than the absolute: "While the rich have got richer under Labor, the poor have got poorer."

Both sides did, in fact, agree on the widening gap. Baldwin admitted that "it is true that there has been an increase in inequality of market incomes, both in Australia and other developed countries. This reflects the phenomena of globalisation and technological change, as well as the successful restoration of business profitability during the 1980s". Note the word "successful”. From all their efforts the workers have got a bit more money. Thanks to Labor, the capitalists have been "successful" in getting a whole lot more. And the cost to the working class as a whole has been enormous: an unemployment rate of nearly a million (fluctuating between 8.5 and I I percent) and a new underclass of some 350,000 long-term unemployed.

The lessons are clear. Labour, Conservative, Liberal and any other aspirants to run capitalism do so in the only way it can be run — in the interests of capital. The cake made by the workers gets bigger but we get a smaller share of it. Business "succeeds" in making more profits as it forces more of us to join the reserve army of the unemployed.

But no-one forces us to vote for one of the capitalism-supporting parties. We can say "no” to them and their system and replace it with one where we'll all succeed.

Stan Parker

Leading up the wrong path (1995)

Book Review from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Radical Theories: Paths Beyond Marxism and Social Democracy by Darrow Schecter. (Manchester University Press, 1994.)

Exactly why we should want to follow a path “beyond Marxism” is not altogether clear from this book, and it is to be suspected that the title is the publisher’s and not the author’s. In it, Marxism is often equated with the "state socialism" of the former USSR and its satellites, but here and there are intriguing signs that Schecter thinks there is more to it than this. Unfortunately, he doesn't proceed too far beyond the signposts.

Schecter writes at one point that the “verdict on Social Democracy is still open”, following up this remark with the comment that “it remains to be seen whether Keynesian techniques will continue to be effective in terms of minimising unemployment and ensuring economic growth". We would have thought that by now the inefficacy of Keynesian techniques had been demonstrated beyond any shadow of doubt.

Schecter argues that, with the collapse of what he misleadingly insists on calling "state socialism", the task of socialists today is "to define the contours of a non-authoritarian socialist alternative to capitalism”. In approaching this task, Schecter examines six different strands of anti-authoritarian thinking: anarchism, such as that propounded by Proudhon and Kropotkin; syndicalism, especially that associated with Georges Sorel (who paradoxically also did much to influence Italian fascism); council communism, principally the ideas of Pannekoek; G.D.H. Cole's guild socialism; market socialism together with the co-operative and self-management movements; and finally green socialism. Schecter concludes that all these strands of thinking have their strengths and weaknesses, though it is clear that his preference is for a form of "Communitarian Anarchism" as the others suffer from problems as to how to regulate and organise production in a non-authoritarian manner.

Given his preference for non-market and decentralised systems of democracy and planning, it is curious that Schecter should have restricted himself to analysis of these six particular theories. Conspicuous by their absence are socialist industrial unionism and another branch of what is sometimes called "impossibilism” - the type of politics advanced by the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Schecter's book cries out for an analysis of the non-market socialism promoted by so-called “impossibilist” groups together with the rigorous approach to definition and argumentation which this political sector brings.

That his book ignores the contributions to the development of political thought on democratic organisation and socialist production by the Socialist Party's political sector, with its conceptions of non-authoritarian socialist democracy and planning, is not just our loss - Schecter's book is all the poorer without it.

Dave Perrin

A Common World (1995)

Editorial from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is now widely agreed that life should be organised in ways that protect the environment. This is a question of the natural conditions on which all our lives depend so it is a matter of basic self-interest. How, then, do we do it? At least two powers of action are required. We need to be able to control production and we need to co-operate with each other. Socialism would give us these powers.

With common ownership the planet will be held in common by all people and on this basis democratic decisions about how best to organise life in non-destructive ways could be freely made. There would be no economic constraints preventing us from using ecologically-sound methods. We would carry out the work through direct co-operation.

Many thousands in the Green movement might agree that this would be a desirable way to live but, tragically, at the same time they imagine that such a world can be achieved through reforms of the market system. This is impossible. The capitalist system has destructive features which cannot be removed through reform.

How is it possible for us to choose non-destructive production methods when these are in the hands of corporations which must place profit before needs? How is it possible for us to co-operate when we are dominated by economic competition? How is it possible to build a stable way of life, a non-growth system in balance with nature, while retaining a market system which is driven by a relentless pressure to renew its capacity for sales at a profit? Capitalism is primarily a system of capital accumulation and with any faltering of this anti-social aim it breaks down in crisis and a worsening of all social conditions.

The Green movement must face up to these questions which, if they ever gained political power, would surely haunt their term of office and all their efforts would break down in failure and disillusion. In these circumstances the cause of ecology would be set back for generations. The false belief that problems can be solved by reforming the market system has led to the death of every decent hope for humanity throughout the entire century.

To avoid such a disastrous outcome we urge all those who wish for a world organised solely for needs— which includes the urgent need to protect the environment—to join the work of establishing socialism. It is the only sure and practical way forward.

Come to bury not to praise (1995)

Book Review from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lenin: Life and Legacy by Dmitri Volkogonov (Harper Collins 1994. £25.)

The author of this 500-page book is a high-level Soviet Army officer who from the mid- 80s held the post of Director of the Institute of Military History and in August 1991 became Defence Adviser to President Yeltsin. Initially trained as a philosopher and historian, he researched and wrote a biography of Stalin in 1985 which found some disfavour in the military hierarchy, reinforced in early 1991 by his "un-Soviet" views in a history of World War Two.

Despite his education and clear critical intelligence. Volkogonov accepted Lenin and Leninism as the pure foundation of the Russian Soviet State which had somehow become sullied and debased in its later progression to the horrors of Stalinism. As he writes: 

"For twenty-five years after the Twentieth Congress (1956) the Russian people asked themselves where Stalin had acquired the cruelty which he inflicted on his fellow countrymen. None of us—the present author included—could begin to imagine that the father of domestic Russian terrorism, merciless and totalitarian, was Lenin."

With the breakdown of the Soviet monolith in 1990 and its release from the Communist Party stranglehold, immense quantities of previously secret historical archive material became available for researchers. This has enabled authors like Volkogonov to produce more detailed and more fully documented biographies and other historical accounts than has been possible for the past seventy- five years. The result in this case is a devastatingly solid indictment of Lenin and Leninism.

With a wealth of detail the author describes the chilling and almost unbelievable fanaticism with which Lenin drove himself and his colleagues, firstly to seize state power and then to retain it at all costs. He traces the sources of this obsession with power and its unfettered and brutal use to three main factors. The execution of Lenin's elder brother, implicated in a political assassination plot, the influence of 19th century Russian revolutionary terrorist writers, and Lenin's totally lopsided grasp of Marxism from which he retained only those few aspects which appealed to him. Nothing of Marx's humanity nor of his writings on the future intellectual freedom of men and women; nothing except violence, force, and yet more force, including outright terror if that could serve a purpose. With this background firmly established. Volkogonov goes on to show how all the horrific and well-known features of the Stalinist period had their origins in Lenin; the fact that Stalin was personally vindictive whereas Lenin’s cruelties arose as impersonal expediencies is here irrelevant.

Two other interesting and informative sections of the book deal with Bolshevik finances in the early days and with the "sanctification" of Lenin after his death. Many potentially embarrassing records dealing with German financial support during the First World War were of course destroyed. but the author has collected sufficient evidence to give a clear picture of the very substantial support the German government gave the Bolsheviks to help them take Russia out of the war, thus freeing troops which could be switched to the western front. The Bolsheviks naturally did all they could to conceal this German link.

The second item, the mummification of Lenin's body and the parallel ossification and crystallisation of his thoughts and methods, forms a quite fascinating chapter. The painstaking trouble and enormous expense devoted over decades to the preservation of Lenin’s body in a “viewable condition" are positively mind-boggling in their mediaeval stupidity, except of course when viewed from the standpoint of the cynical hierarchy who manipulated the whole charade to maintain their political dominance.

For almost seventy years after his death the preservation of Leninism was the accepted and necessary mainstay of all who clambered to positions of power; and the careful use of selected phrases from his writings or speeches was the common tactic adopted to dethrone opponents or to entangle those accused of anti-Soviet activity in the endless treason trials of the 30sand 40s. It is ironic that in the very society which proclaimed that its Marxist theory was not a dogma but a living, flexible, "dialectical" guide to action, in reality the power elite set Leninism in concrete for the greater part of this century and defended its rigour with a devotion of which a mediaeval churchman could have been proud.

All this will, of course, come as little surprise to socialists who have from the outset recognised that Lenin’s 1917 Revolution, as an attempt to impose socialism by dictatorship and coercion, was doomed to fail. Utopia, unlike Mao’s political power, did not materialise from the muzzle of a gun. despite all Lenin’s cold-blooded steely determination and his party’s control and use of every weapon of coercion. Volkogonov does not indulge in any political theorising, but his book provides powerful support for the view that the building of a socialist society will be possible when the majority of the workers understand and desire such a change. All the guidance by"revolutionary vanguard" parties with "infallible” leaders like Lenin at their head can never be a substitute for a self-reliant working class.

Lenin: Life and Legacy should help those still blinded by the Soviet myth to follow the disturbing path of intellectual awakening already trodden by the author himself. In his own words :”As a former Stalinist who has made the painful transition to a total rejection of Bolshevik totalitarianism, I confess that Leninism was the last bastion to fall in my mind".

Cyril Oldfield

Ensnared by ideological beliefs (1995)

Theatre Review from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Easter by August Strindberg

Playwrights, like ordinary mortals, are creatures of their time. Whether unconsciously or as a matter of intention, most playwrights reveal in their story-lines and their dramatic pre-occupations, their characters and their dialogue, a view of the society of which they are a part.

August Strinberg's Easter (RSC, Barbican) is full of symbolism and illusion. It describes events in the life of Elis Heyst, a manic-depressive Norwegian schoolteacher in three fateful days between Maundy Thursday and the Saturday before Easter Sunday. It is filled with references to Christian suffering and the possibilities if redemption; to the coming of spring after a Scandinavian winter; to guilt associated with a father's imprisonment for embezzlement; and, finally—so it seems—to forgiveness and charity. It is marvellously presented by a gifted cast in the crucible-like atmosphere of The Pit, to the echoing sounds of Bach's St. Matthew's Passion and against a slide-show of paintings from The Last Supper and the Crucifixion. The atmosphere of religiosity is tangible. 

Critics in the national press have responded to the moving last act as well they might. The ideas of forgiveness and charity might have been appropriated by Strindberg and given expression in the world of late nineteenth-century capitalism and Christian belief, but their benevolent, life-enhancing notions have a universal, timeless relevance. Indeed socialists see them as part of the common currency of life in a world based on co-operation rather than competition, happiness rather than angst.

What is especially interesting in both the play and also the reactions of the audience (and the critics) to it, is the way in which forgiveness and charity have been stolen and given expression within the values of capitalist society. Several times an apparently merciful redeemer makes clear to the unfortunate Elis that "it all comes back": that he (Elis) is to be forgiven because long ago his father—and languishing in jail—behaved charitably to the redeemer. This makes forgiveness not so much a gesture of magnanimity as a commodity to be exchanged on an "I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch my back" basis.

This marketing of forgiveness and charity escaped the notice of the critics in the national newspapers. Clearly it isn't only playwrights who are ensnared by the ideological beliefs of the society of which they are a part. Most of the audience and the critics are victims of the same kind of prejudices.

Michael Gill

Telling it like it wasn't (1995)

Book Review from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Strike Back by Ernie Roberts (Published by the author 1994)

The only thing of interest in this autobiography of a long-standing supporter of state-capitalist Russia who was an Assistant General Secretary of the AEU for twenty years and Labour MP for Hackney North from 1979 to 1987 is the following lying attack on the Socialist Party. It refers to an incident that allegedly took place in a Coventry factory about 1940:

"Armstrong-Whitworth had always been a well-organised factory, and as a result, wages and conditions there were among the best in the city. A small group of men - about ten in all - steadfastly refused to join the union. Not because they were anti-Socialist, but because they were members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which was firmly anti-union. They claimed that trade union leaders were the lieutenants of capitalism - saddling the workers so that the boss could ride them better. Finally, the other workers decided to take some action against the SPGB members for breaking the closed shop, and they approached their shop stewards with the problem. The solution was a fairly amicable one: the non-union men agreed that they would pay a contribution equivalent to their union subscription to a charity of their choice, so that there could be no question of their opting out of membership for financial reasons, and the rest of the shop then let them hold on to their anti-union principles in peace" (pp. 32-33).

Anyone who knows anything about the SPGB knows this can't be true. The SPGB was founded by workers who were active members of their unions, particularly in the building trade. When the issue of the Party's attitude to the existing pure-and-simple, "reformist" trade unions came up soon after the Party was founded in 1904, the policy of opposing them by trying to set up rival "revolutionary" unions were rejected in favour of working within them to defend the workers' day-to-day interests at work within capitalism. Ever since Socialist Party members have been active in various trade unions, including the AEU.

It is possible that Roberts is referring to an incident, involving members of the old SLP, but the fact that he associates it with the SPGB reflects the influence of the now defunct Communist Party (of which he was first a member and then a fellow traveller) which always used to spread the lie that we were "anti-union".

Adam Buick

Part of the union (1995)

Book Review from the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Radical Aristocrats: London Busworkers from the 1880s to the 1980s by Ken Fuller (Lawrence & Wishart.)

One of the myths about the Socialist Party, perpetuated mainly by historians sympathetic to the Labour Party or the now-defunct Communist Party, is that we are opposed to trade union activity (see review of Ernie Roberts's book p21). But the fact is that there are few unions, in the London area at least, whose history would not have to include, if only in a footnote, a reference to the role played by Socialist Party members. 

The London busworkers are a case in point. SPGB members played so prominent a role here that in this fascinating and readable book even a sympathiser of the defunct Communist Party such as Ken Fuller has had to face what for him must have been an unpalatable fact.

In 1913 previously existing unions for busmen and cabdrivers (who were in a similar position through having to hold a licence to do their jobs) amalgamated to found the London and Provincial Union of Licensed Vehicle Workers (LPU). This was a militant union whose constitution allowed the members a large degree of control over policy (officials and organisers were subject to regular election and re-election, and all members had a right to attend the meetings of the union's Executive Committee). A number of SPGB members were active in this union, including the E. Fairbrother mentioned by Fuller of pages 39 and 40 (he had been a founder member of the SPGB) and George Bellingham, who served on the LPU  executive for a while and was also one of its organisers till it amalgamated with the other unions in 1921 to form the Transport and General Workers Union (Socialist Standard, June 1938).

The London busworkers, as the title of Fuller's book indicates, were a relatively privileged group within the working class, enjoying more job security and higher wages than most other workers. The TGWU's policy was to bring its other members, tramworkers for instance, up to their level, even if tis meant not using the busworkers' full strength to get the best deal possible for busworkers.

Under these circumstances tensions developed between the busworkers and the TGWU leadership. A Busmen's Rank and File Movement (RFM) was formed in 1932, mainly on the initiative of Communist Party members (whose anti-"reformist"-union line had been changed by Moscow earlier that year); mainly but not exclusively since the man who was elected chairman was Frank Snelling, described by Fuller as "a member of the anti-Communist Socialist Party of Great Britain"  (p. 111).

Within the TGWU the London busmen had an elected Central Bus Committee. In the 1933 elections the RFM assumed control of this body. Snelling became the chairman, a post he occupied until after the 1937 Coronation bus strike, which was defeated largely due to the strikers being stabbed in the back by the TGWU leader Ernest Bevin.

The result was the demise of the RFM and, in 1938, the formation of a breakaway union, the National Passenger Workers Union, by some of the non-CP members of the old RFM and Central Bus Commitee (CP members were under instructions to stay in the TGWU). Snelling became one of the officials of this union which survived until after the war when it was squeezed out by a closed-shop agreement between the TGWU and the London Passenger Transport Board.

The NPWU revived the old LPU practice of electing officials and organisers - in contrast to the TGWU where they were, and still are, appointed from above - and adopted a non-political stance (i.e. didn't support the Labour Party). In 1943 it was to be denounced by the Communist Party as "a hotbed of every kind of anti-working class politics - SPGB members (who believe the fight for Socialism is hopeless till every worker is a 'Marxist'), ILP-ers, Trotskyists" (Socialist Standard, August 1943).

The existence of this breakaway union posed a bit of a dilemma for the Socialist Party and in June 1938 a meeting was organised by our Lewisham branch in which two busworker members, Snelling and Bill Waters (who had chosen to stay in the TGWU) debated the issue. The debate was attended by many local busworkers and was reported in the local press (Fuller, pages 166-7). The position eventually adopted was that SPGB members were left to decide for themselves which particular union they joined.

Both Snelling and Waters reappear after the war. Snelling as the national organiser of another breakway from the TGWU, the National Union of Port Workers (Socialist Standard, October 1946) and Waters as a founding member of an unofficial busworkers' journal The Platform that appeared between 1950 and 1967 (see Fuller, page 199). Waters was also a regular writer in the Socialist Standard on busworkers' problems (his February 1949 article is quoted by Fuller).

The Platform was edited, under the name George Moore, by George Renshaw who before the war had been the London Industrial Organiser of the Communist Party but who by this time had left the CP; Waters, in fact, went on record as stating that Renshaw was a sympathiser of the Socialist Party (Socialist Standard, June 1968).

Adam Buick