Greasy Pole: Byers Market (1999)

Byers before New Labour called.

The Greasy Pole column from the March 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Perhaps it was because he feared that Blair is coming across too effectively that William Hague complained in Prime Minister’s Questions about whether a British Prime Minister should spend time solemnly discussing a barmy football coach’s religion. Perhaps it was because Blair realised uncomfortably that the Tory leader had a point that made him react so sourly: he could scarcely believe, he snarled, that Hague had raised the matter—ignoring the fact that he had been the first to try to exploit that particular piece of mind-numbing triviality.

This may have been entertaining to football obsessives or students of the techniques of spin doctoring but it obscured the fact that this government came to power on promises to be something new, to so change the capitalist system that it actually worked in a way which had never been experienced before—that is to say in the interests of the majority of its people. That is what politics should be about; it is what should concern people when they vote at an election. On that basis, a more interesting and significant statement was recently (on 2 February) made by Stephen Byers, who took over as Minister for Trade and Industry when Peter Mandelson had to resign over the little matter of borrowing a lot of money to buy an exceedingly posh house.

When Byers got his promotion there may have been a few traditionalists in the party still clinging to the delusion that their party in power really could change how this society operates. They may have hoped, remembering that Byers was once well known as a stroppy leftist local councillor, that he would regard it as a priority to use the power of his new job to bring about that redistribution of wealth which the Labour Party were supposed to stand for. They would have been as disappointed.

“The reality [said Byers] is that wealth creation is now more important than wealth redistribution . . . Governments should not hinder (entrepreneurs) but work to ensure the market functions properly and contributes to creating a strong, just and fair society . . . I firmly believe that the best way to address inequality and social exclusion is to create a more affluent, more successful Britain with opportunities for everyone to fulfil their potential.”

Byers was sharing his thoughts on how to make everyone rich—although some rather richer than others—with a gathering of business people in the Mansion House, in the very heart of the City. We must also understand that this latest exponent of the “trickle down” theory of wealth distribution has recently been through the familiar process which renders the wildest and most romantic left wingers tamely compliant to the demands of capitalism as soon as they get a sniff of power.

But what happened when, a few days after making this speech, he had an opportunity to put into practise his new-favoured theories about leaving the market to work its own way without any interference from the government? On 5 February the news broke that the German car manufacturer BMW, which also owns the Rover car company in England, was considering the closure of the Rover plant in Longbridge which would put about 14,000 people out of work and affect tens of thousands in ancillary firms largely dependent on Rover as their market. The Rover plant is under threat because it was heading to make a loss of up to £400 million this year, after an investment by BMW of £2.5 billion not to mention the buying price of £800 million.

Rover

With the market for cars looking close to saturation it seems good sense for BMW to close Longbridge; after all, like any other company they are in business to make profits and not to give charity to thousands of workers or to make life easier for a minister in the British government. As an admirer of the way market forces operate Byers should have greeted this news with enthuisism. But tens of thousands unemployed workers are not fertile electoral material. And what kind of start would he have made in his new job if his message to those unemployed was that they were the inevitable victims of economic forces which, they would eventually agree, work to the benefit of us all?

So Byers forgot what he had said at the Mansion House and he intervened with BMW, to try to affect the way in which the car market is operating. “I intend to talk to Professor Milberg (the new chairman of BMW) this weekend,” he droned, “to stress to him the importance that the Government attaches to Rover and Longbridge. The Government has a very constructive relationship with BMW . . .” If BMW agreed to keep the plant open Byers will provide financial help to modernise it. Then he will be free to make another speech, stressing how vital it is for governments to be always ready to intervene if they are likely to get some bad publicity—and antagonise a lot of voters–through the closure of a factory which is losing money.

And if he does speak like that we may be sure he will not mention another way in which the market operates. Many recent surveys on the effects of poverty in the family have highlighted the fact that parents often go without food in order to make sure their children have something to eat. Almost without exception they say that they can rarely afford meat. The Guardian of 6 February had something to say about another side of this. Their reporter John Vidal went to see how hill farmers, who raise sheep, get on with the market for their produce. One farmer described the situation as “all doom and gloom” because prices are so low that he can hardly give away his animals. He had just tried to sell some at rock bottom prices only to be told that he would have to pay to have them taken off his hands. Another farmer told Vidal that in some cases sheep were being slaughtered and buried rather than trying to sell them. So while families suffer through being unable to afford perfectly good meat, edible sheep are being wasted—and all in the service of the market which Byers thinks is such a logical, useful safeguard of our welfare.

Even in the face of this we should not assume that Byers does not understand how capitalism works—how it can only operate on the basis of producing wealth for sale at a profit and not on meeting the needs of human beings. We should not assume that he is unaware of the fact that if profits cannot be made production stops and workers are thrown out of jobs. We should not assume that when he was drivelling on about the importance of creating wealth as distinct from its redistribution he was in ignorance of the fact that the wealth creators are the working class, who need to be employed in order to live and who in their jobs are exploited and degraded and then, if the wealth they have created cannot be sold at a profit, are deprived of that livelihood. Any militant leftist will have discussed these issues to the point of exhaustion. Byers now behaves as if he was never concerned. This may be seen as his achievement. Or it may turn out to be his insuperable problem.

Ivan

Obituary: John Ball (2005)

Obituary from the April 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard 

John was someone I first came across in the early 90s in Norwich along with Heather prior to us all being properly acquainted with the Socialist Party. Our enthusiasm for responsible anti-authoritarian values and the politics of a world so different from this one, along with the reasonably close proximity of our houses helped to create a lasting bond and friendship.

John was born in Plumstead, in London, is 1932 and worked for most of his working life as an electrician. He was a warm and generous person, very down to earth who would call a spade a spade; at the same time he could be very understanding with people he got close to whose conclusions may have been  different from his own, seeing the basis of those conclusions as a possible connection to build on. He was well-read and enjoyed connecting with people of all ages and backgrounds and had a penchant for helping the underdog sometimes to the detriment of his health. He was a vegan, painted in oils, and loved upbeat music and dancing.

Towards the end of his life John would say that he felt ever more convinced that the Party’s sole pursuit of socialism and not reformism was the correct and only practical solution to the ongoing problems that a capitalist world is always throwing up. He recognised the importance of humour, connected to a  constructive politics and philosophy in contrast to the sober authoritarian politics of the Left he was always falling foul of in the earlier period of his life (he had been in the Communist Party, which he left in 1957, and then in the Trotskyist SLL, from which he was expelled in 1960).

John died in February. I’m sure his way of being would and did affect positively many people he had come across throughout his life.

Stair

A Siberian Winter in Trottingham (2020)

Book Review from the May 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Winter at the Bookshop. Sylvia Riley. Five Leaves. 2019

Essentially a book of short stories and anecdotes, this has been put together by the writer of Switchboard Operators, which years ago was made into the 1990s TV series The Hello Girls starring Letitia Dean.

The bookshop in question was based in the poverty-stricken St Ann’s area of Nottingham and was run by Pat Jordan. Riley was one of the volunteers who helped out. Jordan was one of the leading lights of British Trotskyism, founding the International Group which was for a time the section in Britain of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. This was the current that was linked to veteran Trotskyist writer Ernest Mandel and to Michel Pablo, who argued that the revolutionary struggle should always take as its starting point the particular situation prevailing in each country concerned. This meant in many cases an emphasis on ‘Third World’ struggles for national liberation and also student revolt, rather than the more usual Trotskyist pre-occupation with the traditional working class.

The International Group – after early dalliances with Ted Grant’s Revolutionary Socialist League (the ‘Militant Tendency’) – eventually morphed into the International Marxist Group and became dominated by Tariq Ali during the student revolts of the late 1960s, which is when the book ends. It is necessarily a highly personal account but generally well written, rather twee on some occasions and moving at others. It tells of a world of backroom duplicators and yellowing pamphlets, of student rebellion and fluid relationships. An air of grinding poverty hangs over it all, in an area long overdue for slum clearance (which happened shortly afterwards).

Nottingham at this time was known nationally as a hotbed of Trotskyist activity in a period when the so-called ‘New Left’ was making its mark as a challenger to the conventional Communist Parties. Pat Jordan and Ken Coates (later to become a Labour MEP) were the most central characters in this milieu and Sylvia Riley writes engagingly about the movement they led, the people in it – and their foibles. Let us say it doesn’t entirely align with the more glamorous image the IMG seemed to have cultivated at the time.

The IMG eventually split and its main successor organisation became ensconced in the Labour Party – with several former IMG members going on to become prominent Labour parliamentary figures, including ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling and Kate Hoey. A long way indeed from Pat Jordan’s tumbledown bookshop, with its bare light bulbs, Marvel comics and Trotskyist tracts.

DAP

Obituary: Heather Ball (2000)

Obituary from the December 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Readers of her regular column will be saddened to hear of the death of Heather Ball last month. As they will have gathered from her recent articles, she had come to suffer from a degenerative disease which increasingly disabled her.

Heather was born in 1933 and brought up in London to where her father had moved from Scotland and before reaching pension age had worked in the various kinds of factory, office and cleaning jobs that was often the only choice for working class women of her generation. Her father was a member of the Communist Party and she was brought up to join first the YCL and then the party itself. However, she was one of the many who left after 1956 following Khrushchev’s secret speech about Stalin and the Hungarian uprising. She joined the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League—a case of out of the frying pan into the fire—from which she was expelled in 1960. This put her off vanguardist politics for good and she became active in the peace movement in East Anglia to where she and her family had moved. In 1994, tiring of single-issue politics too, she joined the Socialist Party. She was active in our Norwich Group and of course as a writer of a regular column in the Socialist Standard which many readers liked as a contrast to the other, more overtly political articles.

We extend our sympathy to her husband John, also a member, and family.

The Phoney Revolution (1957)

From the October 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part One: The Burnham Thesis

The roots of James Burnham’s Managerial Revolution go back to the early 19th century Utopian Socialist, St. Simon, who first systematised the notion of the managerial society. Burnham’s second edition of this concept was neither analytical nor in the strict sense statistical, only crudely and melodramatically descriptive. Nevertheless, it met a need in that it gave food for thought to a theory hungry intelligentsia and presented them with a plausible view of what was supposedly happening in contemporary society.

Burnham and the Reformists

Not that the motley crowd of reformists who acclaimed the managerial revolution were prepared to swallow Burnham whole. They eschewed his cynicism as to the effectiveness of any kind of political action; his blatant totalitarianism and bizarre fatalism based on “iron historic laws.” Nor did they share his brutal frankness that this managerial revolution would only be for the working class a change of masters—managers instead of capitalists, and, vide Burnham, a change in some respects for the worse. Rather they diluted the doctrine with democratic and quasi idealistic assumptions. They agreed that a hierarchic social structure was inevitable, even desirable, with an administrative and technical elite at the apex. Political expediency, however, compelled them to a tender regard for the broad based “masses,” who would be comfortably supported in that station of life to which it pleased “management” to call them. Indeed, leftists in their quest for novelty renamed the managerial revolution 20th century Socialism, and in their incorrigible fashion turned Burnham’s nightmare into a Fabian day dream.

Burnham’s proposition

Burnham’s book was tricked out in the pseudo Marxist terminology favoured by Trotskyists and Communists alike. Perhaps many mistook his heavy style for weight of argument, and his metaphysical determinism for scientific exposition. Again, the fact that Burnham as an ex-Trotskyist had been subject to the political paranoia peculiar to the creed, made it easy for him to pass over to the grandiose assumptions of the managerial revolution.

These assumptions can be briefly summarised. It is a fallacy, said Burnham, to believe that Socialism is the only alternative to capitalism. In fact, he contended that the abolition of capitalist property relations holds no implications for the realisation of Socialism. Nevertheless, the present system was doomed. It had lost its power due to the impact of economic crises, modern wars and changing industrial techniques on an already enfeebled system. The New Deal in U.S.A., large scale State organisation carried out by the Soviet and Nazi dictatorships, even the effects of the war economy on Britain, had compelled the major Powers along a path which so far as the old methods of capitalist production were concerned there could be no return. So argued Burnham.

Burnham’s Managerial Class

According to Burnham, capitalism in any significant sense was virtually finished, and the phase we are entering, contrary to Marxist predictions, is not Socialism, but the managerial society, a social set up where control is vested in the administration of business and government by an elite of highly trained and educated men. In short, a society dominated by the manager and technician. Economic evolution, he argued, compels the State to exercise ever greater control and even direction over the means of production. But he concluded, whether managers are representatives of private or public concerns, their power will grow with the growth of economic and technical development. Thus, the managers will emerge as a distinct class, with their own class consciousness, class interests and privileges.

Managerial Society Universal but not Indivisible

Paralleled with this internal development of managerial society, there will externally be a struggle between the three major states or super-states for world supremacy. These super-states will consist of Europe, pivoted on Germany; Asia, whose focal point will be Japan; and America, based on the U.S.A. Each of these states will be autonomous managerial societies based on state ownership of the means of production and political control by the managerial class. We may mention that Burnham wrote his book in 1940 and at the time deemed a Nazi victory possible.

The Three Phases of the Revolution

The managerial revolution, vide Burnham, will be divided into three phases, although the phases may overlap. First, the managers will seize political power from the capitalist class and reduce them, to impotence. Secondly, the curbing of the masses and their indoctrination with managerial ideologies. Thirdly, the struggle between the world Powers for economic supremacy. In Burnham’s view the process took the classic course in Russia. In Germany the working class was curbed first and the capitalists later. Leaving aside the fact that all of Burnham’s major prophecies regarding the outcome of the war were false, what he had to prove was that Russia, via the Bolsheviks, and Germany, via the Nazis, had eliminated capitalism. Further, that the New Deal had been a mortal blow to U.S.A. capitalism and that in the major capitalist countries control of the means of production were passing under the control of the managers. It can be said that Burnham’s premises have no more foundation now than when he first put them forward.

Burnham’s Fallacies

When Burnham argued that the managerial revolution occurred first in Russia, this would seem inconsistent with his own logic. According to him the managerial revolution can only take place as the result of an economic and technical development which renders the capitalist organisation of production superfluous along with the capitalist class. No such process, however, had taken place in Russia. The task of the Bolsheviks was not to supersede capitalism in Russia, but to develop it. Burnham strove to show that Soviet Russia was neither capitalist nor Socialist, but he evaded the basic proposition  that the relations between wage workers and a state employer enchain the working class in Russia to the laws of wage labour as elsewhere in capitalism.

Nor was he on any stronger ground when he argued that the Nazi Germany had begun a new social order. He offered as a proof of this the fact that mass unemployment had been wiped out in Germany. Remembering the vast armament programme of the Nazis and the placing of the economy on a virtual war footing, it would have been strange if the Nazis had not done so.

Burnham tried to clinch his point by saying that capitalist countries like England could not even in total war abolish mass unemployment. Once, however, the war effort was under way mass unemployment was abolished here. He also contrasted what he believed to be the overall efficiency of the alleged managerial set up in Germany with what he termed backward nations like England. Yet, according to official English sources, war production efficiency was superior to that which obtained in Nazi Germany.

Nor did his picture of a virtually non-capitalist economy correspond with the facts. German capitalism all through the Nazi regime and right up to now exhibits the monopolistic and interlocking character which it had in pre-Nazi times. One has only to think of the iron and steel industry dominated by men like Wolf and Flick, Transport, the building, chemical and electrical trades, largely controlled by the Quandt family, or the monopolistic concentration of potash, oil, textiles, glass and cement. While names like Krupp and Klockner were still in Nazi Germany household words. Not only were these monopolists powerful capitalists, but also active participants in their businesses. As such they do not fall into the category of mere coupon clippers or managers in Burnham’s sense of the term. Moreover, these powerful capitalists or groups of capitalists were able, by the familiar devices of inter-connected directorships, plural and proxy voting, share exchanges, profit pooling, etc., to exercise a closer control over the German economy than their counterparts here.

State Regulation and Capitalism

But, argued Burnham, was there not a great deal of regulation and direction of the state, including curtailment of investment, carried out in Nazi Germany. But if this is the characteristic mark of the managerial set up, then English capitalism was equally qualified to be accounted a managerial society. A qualification which in England’s case Burnham would not grant. Burnham contrived to show that market laws and the profit motive were no longer crucial to the German economy. While it was true that the outcome of imperialist rivalries and the needs of German rearmament had blocked certain economic avenues, this had only led to a more intense search for new outlets by means of an aggressive policy of expansion. Thus, extension of markets, export of capital and expansion of capital accumulation were the dominant features of Nazi Germany, just as they were the dominant features of pre-Nazi Germany, and just as they are dominant features today. (Here, of course, we specify West Germany.)

Again, vide Burnham, the index to the advance of managerial society lies in the extent to which state capital replaces private capital. But here once again the evidence which Burnham offered is unconvincing and even paradoxical. In Germany in 1937 the capital invested in state enterprise was only about 7 per cent, of the nominal capital of joint stock undertakings. But if, according to Burnham’s logic, the maturity of the managerial society is an ever-increasing ratio in favour of public financing of industry as against the private industrial sector, then Germany was, under Hitler, still overwhelmingly a capitalist nation.

We might also remember that in 1938 and, taking account of the different price levels, profits distributed in Germany were 1,200 million marks, and undistributed profits were over 2,000 million marks. According to the Oxford Institute of Statistics (The Economics of Full Employment), “Profit margins were extraordinarily high in Germany in 1938 as compared with other countries or with conditions prevailing in Germany in the ’20s.” Also the same source states that between 1933-1938 there was a decline in Germany in real wages. Nor did German capitalism remain a static economy. Some concerns expanded, others declined. Some made huge profits, others made small profits. Some even went out of existence. In short, under the Nazis the economic set up had all the basic features associated with the economic behaviour of capitalism. As such it hardly corresponded with Burnham’s picture of a non-capitalist, non-profit economy.

State Intervention and Capitalism

Burnham also advanced as a crucial proposition in support of his managerial thesis that state intervention, he instanced the New Deal, undermines the basis of capitalist society. In principle Burnham had to argue that state intervention is a move away from capitalism to the managerial society. But state intervention is a typical feature of capitalism, and its purpose is to, and does in fact, strengthen the structure of the capitalist economy. While groups of capitalists in America opposed state intervention via the New Deal, the undoubted intention of Roosevelt was to strengthen and stabilise capitalist property relations, and in this he succeeded. The fact that state intervention of some sort has been a consistent and permanent feature of capitalism, including the state regulation and interference of its mercantilist period, exposes the poverty of Burnham’s argument.

Burnham and U.S.A. Capitalism

It was American capitalism which Burnham made the touchstone of his contentions. For this he leaned heavily on Berle and Means study, The Modern Corporation and Private Property. They stated that “The dominant institutional feature extant in America is the large corporation. Typically they said this is controlled by its management, who have no substantial ownership interest in it and consequently receive no benefit from it apart from their salaries.” They add that in 1929 65 per cent. of the 200 largest corporations, totalling 80 per cent. of their assets, were management controlled. Burnham, however, went far beyond the findings of Berle and Mean. Indeed, only a total misreading of their work could lead one to conclude that they were advancing a theory of the managerial revolution. Apart from what they termed pure management; i.e., Burnham’s definition of the managerial class, they included in management those whose interest was financial and profit making.

Since the publication of Berle and Mean’s book, The Securities and Exchange Commission of the Temporary Economic Committee (T.N.E.C.) carried out an exhaustive analysis on the same lines, which emphasised an aspect of corporation control ignored by Burnham. The report stated that “In about 140 of the 200 largest corporations the blocks of shares in the hands of one interest group were large enough to justify with other indications, such as representation on management, the classification of these concerns as more or less ownership controlled.” This, of course, is even truer for the vast number of smaller companies. The same report stated that the 2,500 officers and directors of the 200 companies own more than two billion dollars’ worth of stock, which amount is heavily concentrated in the hands of about 250 men. Again, it can be noted that the dominant group need hold as little as 20 per cent. of the total stock providing sufficient proxy votes can be arranged, and the rest of the stock can be sufficiently dispersed. It is true that the salaried employers of big corporations—managers in Burnham’s sense—may by investing their savings or even judiciously speculating with the funds of the corporation in which they are employed, strengthen their financial position and reach the status of capitalists. But it was no part of Burnham’s case to prove that there can be and are changes in the personnel of the capitalist class.

What Burnham failed to prove

But even apart from the decisive controlling interests of the powerful capitalist groups who are outside Burn-ham’s managerial classification, he failed to answer the crucial question, and that was in what way do the most important managers employed by capitalists have interests and aims different from their employers? Further, if the mode of production of the managerial society is to be neither capitalist or Socialist, in what way will it be different from both? Burnham himself was aware of the basic weakness of this part of his case, and although he strove to get round it, he left the whole matter up in the air. Thus we find in the end that Burnham’s managerial society, with its integration of state with capitalist industry, is merely a new name for an old process, the development of monopoly capitalism.

We might conclude by saying that Burnham typifies the arrogant, peevish intellectual. He qualified to become a leading Trotskyist by making all the political errors it is possible to make. Some might have been dangerous— if anybody had taken any notice of him. Thus, in 1936, he was not only still asserting that the Soviet set up had a Socialist basis but further, that in the event of a war between Russia and other capitalist powers, the workers should turn their arms against their nationals in support of Russia. Now he has stopped being a Trotskyist, he has not, however, stopped being foolishly dangerous. He is now advocating American world domination—and at this point we leave him.

Ted Wilmott

Part Two

Editorial: The Sterility and Futility of Ex-Communist "Intellectuals" (1950)

Editorial from the August 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Manchester Guardian for the 10th July contains an article giving a report of the “Congress for Cultural Freedom" that was held in Berlin from June 26th to 30th. The article is by H. R. Trevor-Roper who attended as one of the British delegates and who appears to have summed up the nature of the congress and the delegates with a considerable amount of clear-sightedness.

   “This congress turned out to be a political demonstration. As such it was well organised and no doubt successful. My only objection is that it was not advertised as such, and I do not think it would have obtained all its sponsors or all its delegates if it had been correctly advertised.”

As the article makes clear the congress was certainly not one for cultural freedom; it was in fact dominated by renegade communists who made vicious attacks upon their late friends and upon the ideas they had formerly backed as the essence of all that was advanced in culture, and deserving of world wide support, with them, of course in the vanguard of the movement—the admired leaders! Unfortunately for themselves they were, as always, only ignorant tools. When they discovered this they turned their impotent fury upon the hands that led them up the garden.

Mr. Trevor-Roper describes some of the incidents that make plain the narrow personal outlook of these would-be leaders of the world, and how little this outlook has to do with cultural freedom. Some quotations from this article are enlightening.

   “The printed prospectus offered highly intellectual terms of reference, and Professor Ayer (one of the English delegates), in his opening speech, kept to them. To a disapproving audience he quoted Mill and examined the philosophic justification of tolerance. The Greek chairman then explained that this was irrelevant, since our enemies were too intolerant to be tolerated; and a German, declaring that ‘in our times John Stuart Mill cannot help us,’ appealed for a rival dogmatism as a more useful weapon of war. Professor Herman J. Muller, of Indiana, then spent forty five minutes denouncing Lysenko as an ignoramus.”

Mr. Trevor-Roper remarks that after this it was impossible to return to an intellectual level. The next day they discussed “The defence of peace and freedom," Mr. James Burnham opening on the subject. This is what Mr. Trevor-Roper has to say of Mr. Burnham’s contribution:

   “Mr. Burnham’s prophecies have always been oracular and infallible in form, but their content has needed frequent revision. At the moment he is prophesying the inevitable defeat of Communism. In his speech he advocated a somewhat expensive method of securing the inevitable, for he preached total war; denounced pacifism, then (by an imperceptible transition) peace; and urged his audience to judge the morality of atom bombs according to the nationality of their manufacturers.”

Then Mr. Arthur Koestler added his contribution: 

   “Mr. Koestler made, altogether, three speeches, and his theme was constant if unconstructive. It was that Right and Left are meaningless terms; that the choice before us is Communism or Anti-Communism; and he who is not with us is against us. On this occasion he developed his theme into a long attack on England as parochial and isolationist for refusing to see the problem in these clear terms.”

Mr. Koestler has always been a master at seeing problems in clear terms, only the terms get mixed up— one day on one side and the next day on the other side.

The ex-communist Franz Borkenau also made a contribution about which the writer of the article makes the following comments :

   “Pouring out his German sentences with hysterical speed and gestures, he screamed that he was a convert from Communism and proud of it; that past guilt must be atoned for; that the ex-communists alone understood Communism and the means of resisting it; that Communism could only mean perpetual war and civil war; and that it must be destroyed at once by uncompromising frontal attack, and yet, terrible though it was, this fanatical speech was less frightening than the hysterical German applause which greeted it. It was different from any other applause at that congress. It was an echo of Hitler’s Nuremburg.”

The writer of the article adds that with that speech and the applause the whole structure of the congress was revealed as an alliance between two parties—the ex-communists among the delegates and the German Nationalists in the audience. “Cultural freedom,” he says, “ was nowhere.”

The concluding paragraph of the article is .an example of the clear-headedness of the writer, at least on this particular question. He sums up as follows:

   “The congress was in no sense an intellectual congress. . . .  It was simply Wroclaw in reverse—the Wroclaw of the ex-communists. Signor Silone once suggested that the coming struggle would be between the Communists and the ex-Communists. After the sterile congresses of Wroclaw and Berlin I am confirmed in my view that a more satisfactory solution will be offered by those who have never swallowed and therefore never needed to re-vomit, that obscurantist doctrinal rubbish whose residue can never be fully discharged from the system.”

These ex-Communists (Burnham, Koestler, Borkenau, Hook, Lasky and the rest) are incapable of understanding now the mainspring of their own fatuous conduct. Blinded by a false conception of their own importance, always wrong, and violently wrong, they still hope to occupy the centre of the political stage and bolster up their empty egoism with the plaudits of equally blind followers. Yet so great is their political ignorance that they are fated always to back the wrong horse. Their actions demonstrated that it is they, more than any, who fail to understand the basis of the Russian dictatorship and its imperialist policy, and that it is also they who are the more easily rendered impotent. They fall for every wrong social theory, for every futile movement, and are used and cast aside by political climbers of every brand; their contradictory professions, fleeting loyalties and futile actions brand them as what they are—servile tools of ambitious political groups always ready, like mangy curs, to snap at the heels of those who have fed them. Blindly imagining that they arc superior to the working class they are in fact but the scum that floats on the surface of that class.

Greasy Pole: Alan Milburn – Days of Despair (2009)

The Greasy Pole column from the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The aftermath of polling in the general election will be a stressful, disorientating time for us as we struggle to adjust to the loss of so many of those we have loved for their readiness to turn back on their promises and distort hard facts. Particularly to be mourned in this way is the Right Honourable Alan Milburn, ex-Secretary of State for Health and Member of Parliament for Darlington. Milburn will not suffer the predicted humiliation at the polls because he announced in June that he would not be standing for Parliament again after a career, notable even among MPs, for its labyrinthine application of the arts of politics. As a child in the little County Durham town of Tow Law, once dependent on its iron works and its coal mines until it was devastated in the slumps of the 1970s and 1980s, he never knew his father and was cared for by his mother. From that – often unpromising – start he blossomed into one of the highest paid Labour MPs with a six figure income from his “extensive outside business interests” (which is perhaps what he meant when he told his constituency Labour Party that he was resigning the seat to give him “the time to pursue challenges other than politics”)

Haze of Dope
“Challenge” is a word too easily used by politicians – especially those who have something awful to disguise. For Milburn, it has been a varying concept, as became obvious when he left Tow Law for the wide, hard world where words mean what the user needs them to, for as long as is useful. He went to study history at Lancaster University (not then feared for any rigorous application in its standards of scholarship). His next challenge was to try for a Ph.D at the rather more expectant Newcastle but this proved beyond his powers of endurance and he gave up – which he ascribes not to any lack of tenacity on his part but to his aversion to studying on his own. So in his twenties he could be found, appropriately shaggy and bearded, jointly running a left-wing bookshop in Newcastle. This hive of delusion advertised itself under the name Days of Hope which was popularly translated as the Haze of Dope.

Declaring himself to be a Marxist or a Trotskyist according to which was the more challenging in the circumstances, Milburn became active in CND and helped run a campaign to save the doomed shipyards of Sunderland. Applying the kind of insidious skills to prove later so useful in the jungle of Westminster, Milburn oozed charm and a consummate ability to exploit the attention of the media. Perhaps he and the other campaigners – not to mention the desperate shipyard workers – were impressed by all of this; if so they overlooked the fact that their opponents could use similar, but more cutting and decisive, methods. Bankers in the City at first offered the workers reason for hope but then abruptly withdrew. Prospective buyers from abroad turned out to be nothing of the kind. The bitter confusion of doubt was finally settled on 7 December 1988 when the Tory minister Tony Newton told the Commons that the yards would close – “reluctantly, with great regret” he said but then he would, wouldn't he. Days of Hope it was not.

Influence
This episode might have been instructive for Milburn as an example of how capitalism operates, producing wealth such as ships not as a favour to human beings but as a means of profit for a minority class, so that employment is not a social service but the imposition of wage slavery. This system works in disregard of someone like Milburn and his delusional ability to charm and manipulate. Faced with this cruel reality he chose to blame the failure to defend the shipyards onto his lack of influence, which he would remedy by joining the Labour Party. Moving up the Greasy Pole, from trade union official to MP to junior minister to a seat in the Cabinet he used his “influence” in ways which dismayed many people who were unwise enough to have believed in him; among other labours he oversaw energetic privatisation of Labour's sacred state health service. Stolidly he supported the war on Iraq, the replacement of Trident, student tuition fees... In this way he earned the recommendation of “leadership material” from the embittered bruiser Charles Clarke but whether this was helpful is a matter for doubt.

Whatever theories Milburn may have spouted to the bookworms of Haze of Dope about influence rightfully stemming from the democratic decisions of the people did not prevent him, after he resigned from being in charge of the Department of Health, taking a £30,000 a year job as consultant to Bridgenorth Capital – a venture capital firm with big interests in the financing of private health companies breaking into the NHS. Notable among these was Alliance Medical which in June 2004, just a year after Milburn had left the Department of Health, was awarded a £95 million contract to supply and operate 12 mobile scanners to the NHS over five years. This nice little earner was signed up to by John Hutton, Milburn's successor at Health, at a time when many scanners were lying idle because the NHS Trusts could not afford to run them, forcing some patients to travel as much as 20 miles for a scan. A year later the whole scheme was being denounced by doctors as a “disaster” and panicky Labour officials were trying to stop MP Kevin Jones asking questions about it.

Social Mobility
Milburn's last fling, before he leaves Parliament in time to evade the ban on MPs holding other jobs, was to chair the grandly titled commission on social mobility, which purported to investigate, and make proposals about, the chances of improving a person's life prospects. To the customary media hysteria, the commission concluded that a person's “social mobility” was related to their level of poverty. There is a wealth of evidence which reaches the same conclusion – about education, health, ambition... So what was the point of yet another dead-end enquiry into the ravages of this abominable social system? To provide a discredited Labour leader with the illusory comfort of “influence”?

Ivan