“Uncle Sam is wicked” (1970)

Book Review from the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

This collection of essays (American Power and the New Mandarins, by Noam Chomsky, Penguin, 40p.) towers above the majority of polemics arising out of the Vietnam war. It is a withering exposure both of the scholars who use their abilities to expedite mass murder, and of those who criticise them on grounds of mere expediency. It deserves to be read with some of the care, honesty and clarity of thought which evidently went into writing it. For all that, its strength is mainly destructive. When it comes to Chomsky’s alternatives, the weaknesses emerge.

What sickens him is not just the American action in Vietnam, and the arguments for it — but the arguments against. These are often to the effect that the war is a costly blunder, in opposition to America’s long-term interest, that America has no hope of winning, or that more stress should be placed on aid. less on military means. Chomsky is even suspicious of anti-war arguments based on the suffering involved:

  The primary reason for opposition to the war is its cost to us. A second cause is the feeling that the cost to its victims is too great. At first glance this reaction seems to be at a higher moral level than the first, but this is questionable. The principle that we should retract our claws when the victim bleeds too much is hardly an elevated one. What about opposition to the war on grounds that we have no right to stabilise or restructure Vietnamese society . . .

Yet there is a curious discrepancy between his argument and his conclusions. [1] A piece like The Logic of Withdrawal takes up every cudgel available against US involvement in Vietnam, including the “national interest’’ and horror at the brutality of the war (both arguments which the author elsewhere declares to be unsatisfactory). He adds that the US is transgressing international law, and that the Vietcong has mass support in South Vietnam whereas the government does not. But here again, one can infer that Chomsky is not basing his case on these points. Occasional remarks scattered throughout the book make it clear that what really disgusts him is the arrogance of the US in presuming to intervene in far-flung lands as it sees fit, whatever the circumstances: America “has no unilateral right to determine by force the course of development of the nations of the Third World.’’

In short, he mobilises all the conventional arguments for American withdrawal, with great force and eloquence, whilst stating that these arguments won’t do, and offering tantalising hints of a much more radical indictment. But when we try to assemble from these hints what this radical critique amounts to, we find it to be preposterous:

  These scholars designate themselves as ‘the moderate segment of the academic community.’ The designation is accurate; they stand midway between the two varieties of extremism, one which demands that we destroy everyone who stands in our path, the other, that we adopt the principles of international behaviour we require of every other world power.

That is a good example of Chomsky’s bitter irony, but though the second form of “extremism”, which he embraces, might be expected to disturb some, it is patently so unrealistic as to be merely pious. Chomsky is more aware of this than most, for he has gone to great pains to draw parallels between the American Empire and its predecessors, notably Japan and Britain. The similarities are often startlingly close. After all, a nation’s foreign policy flows largely from its economic structure and its relationship, economic, political and military, with other countries. To make appeals to the most rich and powerful nation in history to behave decently is surely a waste of breath. The US did not attain its dominant position by a request for the rights of other nations, and could not maintain it by adopting such a principle. Yet Chomsky even goes so far as to speculate about “massive capital gifts” (from the US!) “to Cuba and China.”

True, domestic reaction against the war might conceivably help to hasten its end, but the great majority of American workers will not be prepared to subordinate what they imagine to be “their” national interest to some form of arbitrary morality. The major reason why dissent from the war effort has become so large (as Chomsky sadly indicates) is that there has been so much “responsible” criticism, i.e. criticism founded on costs, expediency and national interest.

In a recent interview (New Left Review, No. 57) Chomsky gave the following explanation of why America is in Vietnam:

  The United States fought the Second World War, in the Pacific theatre, primarily in order to prevent Japan from constructing its own independent, integrated imperial system which would be closed to America. That was the basic issue which lay behind the Japanese-American war. Well, the United States won. The result is that now it must develop a system in which Japan can function effectively as a junior partner. That means the United States has to grant Japan what it needs as a partner, namely markets and access to raw materials, which for Japan, unlike the United States, are desperate necessities. Now the United States can very well survive without South East Asia. But Japan cannot. So if the United States wants to keep Japan securely embedded within the American system, then it has to preserve South East Asia for Japan. Otherwise Japan has other alternatives. It would turn to China or to Siberia, but that would mean the United States had lost the Second World War, in its Pacific phase. Once again a substantial industrial power would be carving itself out an independent space which, taken to its logical conclusion, would be separate and partially sealed off from the American world system.

So the Vietnam war would seem to be in America’s economic interest. True, Chomsky gave other causes for America's continuing the war, including its “investment in error”, and in his review of Schlesinger’s Bitter Heritage he points out that whilst ideology has its roots in real or perceived interests it can have a life of its own that may sometimes conflict with the interests from which it arose (e.g. US policy towards Cuba, and arguably, Vietnam).

However, an argument on the basis of national interest is what Chomsky set out, quite rightly, to avoid. He is outraged at the notion that any calculation can justify America’s part in the Vietnam carnage, yet apparently feels unable to say: “To hell with the national interest.” It might of course be a useful exercise to examine all the arguments just to show that the case for the war will not hold water even within he terms of reference assumed by its advocates. But it is not at all clear that the Vietnam slaughter is, on balance, against the interest of American capitalism. And in any case, Chomsky fails to think through his own really rock-bottom case. What sort of a world would it be in which powerful nations were bound by the same rules of conduct as weaker nations; That is altogether absurd. Nations embody antagonism of interest: their very existence is a sign of that. [2]

Chomsky’s extreme radicalism has thus led him into a hopeless muddle, but if he became more extreme and more radical still, his inconsistency could be resolved. For a coherent, logically sound and morally acceptable indictment of war can be based only on a thoroughgoing anti-nationalism and anti-patriotism. This must entail a recognition that “the national interest” means the interest of the owning and ruling class, that the nation should not be equated with the people. “The national interest” is a term used to conceal the class division between employers and workers by superimposing a geographical division. It is waved in the face of striking workers at home, as well as foreign enemies.

Revolution can wait ?
What is the explanation for this core of confusion within the shell of Chomsky’s glittering erudition? In part it is due to his overpowering abhorrence of the war, and the sense of urgency he feels about it. Everything must be subjugated to the task of stopping the war. He is sympathetic to the idea of social revolution but :

  If the Vietnamese have to wait until we build a serious political movement against all forms of capitalist repression in the United States, then they are all going to be dead . . . we cannot delay on the Vietnam issue in order to build a movement on more long-term issues. . . . Principled opposition to the war will lead directly to principled opposition to imperialism and to the causes of imperialism and hence to the formation of a principled anti-capitalist movement. (NLR interview)

Now this is manifestly wishful thinking. Not any kind of principled opposition to war leads to opposition to capitalism. A pacifist, for example, taking the view that all physical violence is an unqualified evil in all circumstances, would certainly be opposed on principle to the Vietnam war, but there have been such people for generations, and many of them in other respects still support the capitalist system. Again, someone might oppose the US action in Vietnam on the principle that, whilst war itself must be tolerated, the US is at fault by the Geneva agreement. Or that killing soldiers is permissible whilst killing women and children is not. These are all “principles” but they do not, in historical fact, automatically lead to opposition to capitalism. So it all depends what Chomsky means by “principled opposition.” What principles?

Effective opposition to war must be based on revolutionary. Socialist principles. In this case, opposition to war does not “lead to” opposition to capitalism, but principled opposition to capitalism necessarily gives rise to principled opposition to war, which (this should always be made clear) means hostility to both “sides” in every war. [3]

The plea that we cannot delay on some vital topical issue in order to build up a movement to abolish capitalism is a cruel deception. Its unspoken premise is that a total change in society is very distant and somewhat airy-fairy, whereas something like stopping a particular war is hard, real, practical and down- to-earth. In actuality though, it is the attempt to adjust capitalism according to humane criteria which is Utopian, and the call for social revolution which is the only practical solution. For decades sincere people like Chomsky have been hypnotized by some “immediate” issue, and have fallen like him into the habit of talking as if, that issue once removed, the decks will be cleared at last, and some serious attention can then be paid to the task of abolishing capitalism. The fallacy is obvious: capitalism provides an unending procession of such immediate issues, and with each one a crop of new “realists” who argue that this pressing problem must be tackled first, and then, ultimately . . .

When the Vietnam war is over, new horrors of similar magnitude are in store for us. as long as capitalism lasts. [4] If the human species has to wait until all the Chomskys have sorted out all the Vietnams, then we are all going to be dead. One of the consequences of this relegation of revolution to the realm of the “ultimate” is that here is felt to be no need to argue for it in urgent and consistent terms. Thus, when the people who adopt this posture do mention social revolution, they usually discredit it, reinforcing the popular attitude that it is irrelevant to the here and now.

Guilty patriotism

But the real source of Chomsky’s muddles is his patriotism. The word may seem odd in this connection, conjuring up Curtis LeMay and his “Bomb them back to the Stone Age.” Chomsky’s however, is a guilty patriotism, the patriotism of the flagellant. His personal identification with the American nation is overwhelming. That is why his revulsion at the Vietnam butchery finds its expression in demands that the US reform itself.

Time and again he uses the expressions “we" and “us” to mean “America” or even “the American government.” It is alarming that one so sensitive to the implications of words should notice nothing strange about this:

  Like the German Kaiser we believe that everything must be put to fire and sword, so that the war will be more quickly finished — and we act on this belief. Unlike the German Kaiser, our soul is not torn. We manage a relative calm, as we continue, today, to write new chapters of history with the blood of the helpless and innocent.

Because he feels responsible for the actions of the American government he is paralysed when it comes to criticism of America’s antagonists. Thus, in an article on the Pacific war, he draws a convincing parallel between Japanese policy in China and subsequent US policy in Vietnam, but arriving at the subject of Japanese bombing of civilians in Nanking he merely states:

  For an American today to describe these events in the manner they deserve would be the ultimate in hypocrisy. For this reason I will say very little about them.

And that is presumably why he also says very little, in fact nothing, against the North Vietnamese regime or the Vietcong. Every conceivable argument, sound or not, must be mobilised against the American colossus. Therefore, when US policy is under attack, the idea that Chinese expansion might be a threat is vigorously pooh-poohed, but in another context, when it is necessary to stress the independence of Hanoi, the view that “the principle raison d’etre of such a powerful army in North Vietnam today is to protect North Vietnam against possible Chinese aggression” is quoted with approval.

This is dangerous because governments always try to make out that those who oppose their wars, are supporters of the enemy. There is no point in providing them with convincing evidence for their accusation. Chomsky is well aware that state capitalist Russia and China are only less brutal than the US to the extent (if at all) that they are less powerful. He knows that Victnam-style atrocities do not spring from any peculiarity of the American nation, except that it is on top. He knows too that North Vietnam is no paradise (to put it mildly), that it is dependent upon aid from Russia and China, and that an American withdrawal will amount to an extension of the Russian and/or Chinese spheres of influence. A call for American withdrawal is simply a call for a slightly different carve-up of the world by the big powers. It is time Chomsky faced up to the implications of these facts.

Where now

The bulk of this book, in its dissection of mainstream American ideology, is excellent. The deceptions and self-deceptions of this school often read like self-parodies, for instance the solemn warning from one expert that a pacification programme requires survivors to be pacified. Or the reminder, addressed to an American commander bragging of the latest US “victories”, that the victories seemed to be getting closer to Saigon.

Yet “there is no particular merit in being more reasonable than a lunatic,” as Chomsky himself remarks. He must therefore be judged primarily on his recommendations for political action. He could sometimes be more explicit in his references to social revolution, though some of these are promising:

  A democratic revolution would take place when it is supported by the great mass of the people, when they know what they are doing and they know why they are doing it and they know what they want to see come into existence. Maybe not in detail but at least in some manner. A revolution is something that great masses of people have to understand and be personally committed to. (NLR interview).

This view is as alien to the anarchist tradition as to the bolshevik — though it is certainly a corollary of Marx’s assertion that the emancipation of the working-class must be the work of the workers themselves. All the more unfortunate that Chomsky is attracted to anarchism, and has apparently been put off Marxism by its misrepresentations. He quotes Bakunin's summary (which is all lies) of Marx’s doctrine with every indication that he believes it to be an accurate account.

His observations on Spain are (so far as the knowledge of this reviewer extends) substantially correct, but whatever the possibilities of the popular movement before it was crushed by the “Communists” it was undoubtedly (like the Makhno revolt in Russia, another prize exhibit in the anarchist pantheon) a product of backward agrarian conditions. consequently haunted by scarcity and doomed by the march of industry. This in no way belittles the heroism of many of those involved: it simply indicates the limited relevance of such events to the problems of an increasingly white-collar proletariat in vast conurbations during the second half of the century.

It is not likely that the evolution of Chomsky’s ideas has stopped. Hopefully, future writings may contain a more serious approach to the urgent need of today: worldwide social revolution. For all its flaws, even the present volume can be expected to put serious questions into many thousands of minds, and is therefore, with reservations, welcome.

Steele

[1] Not to be resolved by taking into account the dates of the separate articles, though this does reveal a trend towards greater clarity.
[2] A similar lack of realism is displayed by those who imagine the UN could ever cease to be in the pockets of the big powers.
[3] The double think of the US government is unsurpassed, but some elements of the "peace movement” have a good try, e.g. the sleight-of-tongue by which support for a pro-war demand (Viet- cong victory) is represented as “antiwar." See Why Socialist oppose the Vietcong in the Socialist Standard, October 68. Also useful is the pamphlet Rape of Vietnam by Bob Potter, though this writer is disturbed to find himself approaching the position of hostility to both sides, and evades it with the remark “One can’t be ‘neutral’ while aircraft are flying over one’s home dropping bombs.” an announcement for which both the German and British governments in the last war might well have commended him.
[4] When there is a Socialist movement of more than derisory strength it will of course unite across frontiers to use its influence to try and stop particular wars within capitalism. But its approaches would be made not to the governments, requesting them each to capitulate. but to the workers called upon to fight, pointing out that only their masters’ interests are at stake in the war. This has been the message of the Socialist Party in two World Wars and during Korea and Vietnam though with no expectation of achieving anything towards preventing these conflicts, given the solid support for capitalism of the great majority of workers. A situation where a massive Socialist movement, not yet a majority, was confronted with a war, might never arise. Firstly, because the rate of the spread of Socialist ideas might at that stage be expected to increase, so that world revolution would be imminent, with it the abolition of war. Secondly, because governments might be deterred from the initiation of wars by the knowledge that very substantial proportions of their populations could be relied upon to sabotage the war effort.

Aspect: Capitalist education (1970)

The Aspect column from the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists have no illusions about the role which institutions like the universities have to play in class society. Like the government and the churches they serve the interests of the ruling capitalist class.

The basis of modern society is the ownership of the means of production by a section only of society and their consequent use to make profits for those owners. The rest of us, cut off from ownership, have to sell our mental and physical energies in order to live. We, who make up over 90 per cent of the population, alone produce all the wealth of capitalist society.

The time has long since past when the capitalists themselves took any part in production. They have long since become redundant parasites, employing specially trained wage-labourers to perform the jobs, in the administration of the State and the management of their businesses, which when capitalism was younger they used to do themselves.

Modern society and industry is now run from top to bottom by paid members of the working class. All the jobs in the administration, planning, production and distribution of wealth are carried out by workers.

The glaring contradiction in modern society is between large-scale social or co-operative production and the outdated sectional ownership of the means and instruments for producing wealth. Class ownership has become an anachronism that is holding back the use of society’s wealth to provide plenty for all.

So what have we got? A modern technology capable of providing abundance. Workers capable of operating this highly-developed industrial system, yet doing this in the interests of a non-working, owning class who want their means of production geared to profit-making. But whether these are used to make profits or to satisfy human needs the technology is the same. Thus, the owners face the problem of training workers to administer and operate modern industry.

At one time the task of schools was merely, by means of religious indoctrination, to break in the children of the working class to the sort of discipline and hard work they could expect when they went into the factories and mills and mines. But with the growing application of science to production the employers required more and more specially-trained workers. In 1870 the State brought in compulsory elementary education. More money was spent on technical schools. Soon, a three-fold division emerged in education: Elementary schools turning out factory workers; secondary schools turning out clerks; and the public schools teaching the children of the ruling class to be the rulers. This division was recognised and enshrined in the 1944 Education Act which made secondary education compulsory.

Compelled by economic necessity to spend money through the State on education, the capitalists came to expect more of schools than mere indoctrination. They wanted to turn out workers who understood what they were doing in the factory or office. They wanted, in other words, an educated or rather a trained working class.

Hence, in capitalist society, money spent on education comes to be seen as an “investment”, the return on which can be calculated in commercial terms. The educational system becomes the “education sector” of the economy or the “knowledge industry”. Thus Lord Butler, former Tory politician now an academic, can write about students “as the type of capital investment which will accrue with every year” and which has “enormous value” (The Times, 20 November 1968). Labour Ministers are not different. Gordon Walker, who used to be Education Minister, wrote in the Financial Times (11 March 1968) about the colleges of education achieving “a striking increase in productivity”, that is, turning out more teachers per £ invested.

People like to think of education as something outside the commercial world where human rather than commercial values are taught and learned. Thus all this talk of “investments”, “industry” and “productivity” in connection with education seems offensive and cynical. But Butler and Gordon Walker are being realistic. They are telling the truth. What is called education is today prostituted to the service of capitalist industry and its profit-making, pandering to its manpower and research needs. Education today really is an industry, a sector of the economy turning out a certain kind of product, whose performance is judged on the rate of return it brings on the capital invested in it.

This, of course, applies equally to the universities—though how they were captured by Big Business is another interesting story.

For universities existed before the rise of capitalist industry. They came into being in the Middle Ages as centres of religious learning where people could study theology, law and medicine. Indeed up until the end of the 18th century nearly all graduates were Church of England clergymen and until 1871 acceptance of the 39 Articles was a condition for going to a university (the poet and revolutionary Shelley was expelled from Oxford in the 1820’s for being an atheist). In the last century Oxford and Cambridge, the main universities, were institutions turning out Anglican clergymen and top civil servants. Since at that time the governing class still managed its own affairs, their role was to train the ruling class to rule.

Capitalist industry was faced with the problem of turning these bastions of aristocratic privilege into the knowledge industry, of driving out leisurely learning for its own sake and replacing it by business and technical training. Many of the early manufacturers were non-conformists and so were barred from Oxbridge. They therefore used their money to set up their own rival institutions—the redbrick universities—where the emphasis was on science and commerce rather than on Latin and Greek. The capitalists denounced the old universities as “a collection of books” and “a place where nothing useful is taught”.

This was an ironic situation. The mediaeval origins and traditions of these old universities, geared to serving a leisure class, made them value learning as such and resist the capitalist pressures to reduce them to the simple task of training managers, engineers and technicians for capitalist industry.

Traditionally, then, the universities were attended only by the sons of the rich, and especially Oxbridge by the idle sons of the idle rich. This is no longer so. Part of the money invested in education goes to provide grants for children of the working class to go to college. 90 per cent of students are the sons and daughters of workers maintained at college out of local authority grants. When after three or four years training they leave university, they enter the labour market just like someone leaving school at 15. Thanks to the capital invested in them, their ability to work is more valuable and so they can get a higher wage. But wage-workers they still are. The labour market for graduates is conducted partly through the advertisement columns of papers like the Daily Telegraph, the Times, the Sunday Times and the Observer, but now increasingly capitalist firms are entering the universities and trying to sign up students even before they graduate.

Make no mistake about this: students come from the working class and are merely being trained as special high-grade workers who still have to find an employer to live. Most students come from the working class and are being trained to fill the top posts in the State and industry.

Universities are capitalist bodies geared to producing valuable graduates for the employing class to exploit. So it is not surprising that these students who have seen this can only regard as hypocrites those academics who proclaim that the universities are “republics of learning” or “communities of scholars” dedicated to seeking after Truth. Students have every right, like other workers, to protest about being treated as an “investment” and judged merely from a profit-making point of view.

Adam Buick

The Vicious Circle (1970)

From the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

If society is to advance, or progress, or improve, or whatever you like, it is necessary that somewhere along the line men think about it and decide that it is a good idea—not just in an abstract, moral way but in material and concrete terms. The importance of this seemingly unexceptional statement is that the absence of man’s agreeing that a particular bit of progress is useful or necessary will delay or even destroy that progress.

At present, ideas are really the only obstacle to do the great social advance which will end capitalism and all its contradictions and replace it with the saner, more humane society of Socialism. Ideas alone are holding us up—human beings have developed the material necessities, a means of production which can feed and clothe and house us as well as we can want, but at the same time human support for capitalism maintains a social system which is at variance with those means of production. In other words, ideas are lagging behind material conditions.

To bring this down to an everyday, concrete (in more ways than one) example, we may consider what motor transport is doing to our lives. Used in a rational, humane manner, motor transport could bring great benefits to us. In itself, it is evidence of our ability to protect ourselves against our environment and to overcome obstacles to a better organised existence.

But the same people who design and build the motors, and the roads which carry them, also support the social system which imposes on it all an order of priorities based on the need for profitable wealth production. Because of this, those symbols of our abilities — the motor car and the roads, intrude on our environment to an intolerable extent. Very often, this means that a flyover passes within feet of somebody’s bedroom window so that all day, and for most of the night, the noise and the vibration and the smell of traffic is a companion to their lives.

Naturally, the people who suffer this complain bitterly about it but, as the authorities justify it all on the economic arguments which carry most weight in capitalism, the sufferers think that nothing can be done about it and from that assumption it follows that nothing is done. And that brings us to the point of this article, which is the Self-Fulfilling Prophesy.

Among the many ideas which keep capitalism in existence, the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy is one of the most potent. In essence, it involves postulating certain conditions and, when these have produced the expected results, accepting those results as the justification for setting the original conditions. It is what is known as a circular process of reasoning. All of this sounds very remote and complicated so perhaps it is easier to take one or two examples.

Take colour prejudice. In this country, whatever the official story, coloured immigrants, no matter what their qualifications or abilities, are confined in their choice of employment. Often, this means that they do jobs which “white” workers have rejected because they are badly paid, or dirty, or arduous. In addition, because they are immigrants, coloured workers find it difficult to qualify for council housing and meet discrimination when they try to buy a house outside certain parts of the town where they live. The effect of this is that some jobs, and some areas, are overloaded with coloured people. It is not difficult to see here the cause and its result. The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, however, sees it differently; it sees a majority of coloured workers in certain jobs and certain areas and concludes from this that anyone with a dark skin is only fit to live in a ghetto and to work as a bus conductor or a factory cleaner.

Coloured people are not the only ones whose responses are judged in accordance with pre-arranged prejudices. One of the big problems facing intending reformers in the field of crime is the simple fact that treating a criminal or a delinquent like a social deviant will produce deviant behaviour in him. Yet a person is bound to be treated in that way, once they have offended against capitalism’s laws. What it boils down to is that capitalism's reaction to crime does little more than produce repeated crime, which is then assumed to prove that a greater, stronger reaction is needed. Sentences are escalated, the offender is rejected even more emphatically and finds it harder and harder to adjust. He is part of the hard-core problem which baffles them all—the recidivist.

Such prejudice need not be confined to colour, nor indeed to class. It is only just over fifty years ago that women in this country won the vote, after a long struggle against the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. In this case, women were excluded from almost every activity except the most menial — were excluded, in other words, from all opportunity of proving themselves. Well-to-do women sat at endless hours of needle work, the less fortunate struggled with the job of governess or slaved as domestic skivvies. The very fact that women were kept out of certain jobs was used as evidence in support of the idea that they were incapable of doing these jobs. This opinion was supported by many highly qualified men — scientists, philosophers, politicians — and by not a few women as well. It took a massive act of defiance by a minority of determined women to dent this idea, which is now considerably shrunken in popularity.

Although this prejudice is not confined to class, it does operate in this field. At present, society is divided into two classes, one of which owns the means of production while the other does not own them. The first class (the capitalist class) employs the other (the working class) to work the means of production and distribution, which means that the working class really run society; without them the modern world simply would not be possible. They produce our food, build our houses, operate our transport system and design and conceive everything that is needed for this to happen.

But the working class, white collar and blue, high salary or low wage, are convinced that their rulers hold their superior social position by virtue of some innate, almost supernatural, abilities. They fall for the myth of the man who built an economic empire all on his own, who did it because he is millions of times more brilliant than the rest of us. They believe in the fraud of leadership and spend a lot of whatever time they devote to thinking about politics in searching for another myth — the honest, capable, effective leader who will deliver them to the promised land. Thus the working class condemn themselves to think, and to act, like a subject class. They proceed from this to accepting their own behaviour as confirmation that they should remain in subjection.

This can be seen most clearly, when a worker is confronted with the socialist alternative. Here is an idea which represents nothing less than an historic step to end the problems of capitalism. Yet when this idea is put to workers, their reaction often amounts to no more than objecting that, as it is a solution to their problems, it must be impossible. A society without leaders? We must have leaders, say workers, for the simple reason that we have them now. Without money? The world would stop without it, simply because money is so necessary to capitalism. Without war? Wars are unavoidable — simply because capitalism has conned them into thinking that war is a distasteful necessity.

Now so long as the working class think that Socialism is impossible, then it is impossible. And as they accept the very existence of capitalism, and the priorities and fundamentals of the system, as evidence in favour of keeping it in being, they continue to think that Socialism is impossible, undesirable, insane . . . Even when capitalism does its best to show them just what an impossible, undesirable, insane system is like — when capitalism sticks a flyover outside their front door, or herds people into stinking slums, or beats us all down in an obscene armed conflict — they are not convinced.

Ivan

The Labour Government: Are they bunglers? (1970)

From the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a recent ad. (Sunday Mirror, 4 January) the Tories contrast what Labour promised they would do with what they have in fact done. Under the heading "Bunglers or liars?" they say:

  It’s easy, isn’t it, to dismiss the whole lot of them as a bunch of liars who will say anything to save their faces and stay in power.
  Is that the truth? We don’t honestly believe it is. We think that when these people said these things, they believed them.
  But the extent to which they have failed to live up to their promises reveals an incompetence which is quite staggering. You appointed these people to run the affairs of the country so that everyone living here should prosper. That is what Governments are for.
  You gave these people their power. You pay them with your money. You hoped that by doing so you would enjoy a better life, and that your children would enjoy a better future. You can see what they promised you. And how dismally they have failed.
   Isn’t it time we set to work to undo the damage they have done ?

It is true that people voted Labour in the hope that this would bring them a better life. But it is not true that Labour has failed because they are utterly incompetent: nor that governments exist to “run the affairs of the country so that everyone living here should prosper”.

We are living in a class society in which there is no common social interest. The government’s job is to look after the interests of the propertied few who own Britain. This job involves all governments in conflict with the other class in society, those who have to work for a wage or salary. In managing the affairs of the capitalists governments have to ensure that profit-making can go on as smoothly as possible and are, from time to time, forced to take measures aimed at restoring profit levels by reducing workers’ living standards. The Tories have done this as well as Labour.

Labour has failed not because they are bunglers nor because they are liars, but because the capitalist system just cannot be made to work in the interests of wage and salary earners. In expecting Labour to do this, the voters set them an impossible task.

This is why a change of government from Labour to Tory would make no difference. Even if the Tories were as clever as they claim, they still could not ensure that everyone benefited from capitalism. If they are elected and when they fail (as on previous occasions) we shall not call them liars. Nor shall we suggest they are bunglers. We shall simply point out that no government. Labour, Tory, Liberal or a coalition, can make capitalism work in the interests of all. Capitalism is a class system that can only work for those who own the means of production. Until these means are commonly owned the problems facing wage and salary earners can never be solved.

Those who are going to vote Tory in the hope of getting a better life will be as disappointed as those who voted Labour last time.

Government by Labour (1970)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

A question which has recently aroused considerable controversy is, “Can Labour Govern?”

Socialists not so much concerned with the question of whether Labour can govern as whether is should, or, to put it a better way, whether Labour need govern. And on examination of the facts the only possible conclusion we can arrive at is that it need not—and should not.

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The word “govern" means (according to Blackie's Concise English Dictionary): “to direct and control; to regulate by authority; to keep within the limits prescribed by law or a sovereign will; to keep in subjection; GRAM., to cause to be in a particular case, or to require a particular case.—v.i. To exercise authority”.

The italics are mine.

#    #    #    #

Seeing that the spokesmen of the Labour Party are all so greatly concerned to maintain their ability and their right to govern (when they get the chance) it is natural to ask “Who is it that the Labour Party wish to ‘keep in subjection’?” Seeing that the Labour Party, both officially and in the utterances of its representatives, has no conception of politics other than the capitalist view, and seeing, further, that there is no class beneath the working class to be oppressed, obviously it can only be the workers themselves that the Labour Party desires to "keep in subjection”.

Now. in asserting that Labour need not govern, it is necessary to submit an alternative. That alternative is Administration . . . The same dictionary says that to administer is "to manage or conduct as chief agent . . ." and states that the word is derived from the Latin ministro, to serve. The difference, then, between Administration and Government is that the first serves the people and the other represses them. 

#    #    #    #

Real Administration can be born only when the proletariat, having seized political power, use it for the purpose of making the means of production the common property of the whole of society, and proceed to administer them for the common welfare of all. Then the need for the State, for government—“Labour” or other, wise— and the "keeping in due subjection", will vanish, and mankind will at last be free.

(From an article by Hutch., Socialist Standard, February 1920).

The Myth of fair wages (1970)

From the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are many rocks appearing among the stormy waters which the Wilson government are trying to navigate and one of them is called pay. Fair pay for nurses, for dustmen, bus drivers, postmen. Fair pay for miners, sailors, policemen, even for Members of Parliament.

Everyone in fact seems to be in favour of "fair” pay from which it follows that hardly anyone is asking the essential question of what the word means. It seems to be generally accepted that somewhere there is a magical formula which can fix a fair wage — a wage exactly adjusted to the skills, dangers, usefulness, responsibility, unpleasantness of each and every job. Of course this would be a beautiful excuse (as if one were needed) for a government to set up another of those Royal Commissions which could spend a lot of time gathering enough material to fill up very thick, big, books, which they will eventually produce as their report and which will very probably be quickly forgotten by everyone. But in the absence of a high powered commission, perhaps we could launch our enquiry.

What are we going to take as our standards for a fair wage? If we start with skill we shall soon run up against the problem that different skills are acquired in different ways. Some can be learned at university, others handed down from one generation to the next. In any case, is it ‘fair' to pay for skill in itself, rather than the way in which it is applied?

Then there is the question of danger. But if wages were based on the dangers involved in the job. airline pilots would be paid no more than the rest of their crew, who obviously are all in equal danger — and the whole lot of them would be paid a great deal less than miners, or trawlermen, or scaffolders. And how much would stock brokers and insurance men get, under a danger-regulated wages system?

They would obviously be in favour of some other criteria being applied. Perhaps usefulness in some strange way the Stock Exchange and the insurance firms manage to convince themselves that their dealings are necessary to society. Yet the world manages to tick over when the Stock Exchange is shut, and people who don’t take out insurance policies seem as happy and healthy as those with a trunk full of the things. It would be a different story if, say, the electricity generating stations took the day off or if bakery workers decided they had had enough of their job. By those standards, people who do jobs which society could not do without— people like dustmen—should earn a lot more than stockbrokers.

Anyone who is not left completely bemused by that beautiful notion may care to pass on to considering the next standard, which is, responsibility. This is, in fact, one of the arguments used by air-line pilots to justify their relatively high pay—which is, they say, no more than due recognition of the fact that they have in their hands the lives of many people and a lot of very expensive hardware. Yet this argument is not extended to other workers in similar situations — train drivers and bus men, for example, are not expected to get anywhere near a pilot’s pay, nor even that of people like salesmen (one advertisement in The Times recently offered salesmens’ jobs for men of between 25 and 35 with a basic wage of between £2000 and £2500 which, with commission could reach £5000 per year whose failures would not destroy any equipment nor endanger any lives.

Should wages, then, be based upon how unpleasant a job is? Anyone who has spoken to a nurse, and who has heard of the sort of jobs they have to do for patients who are in the last stages of diseases like cancer, will know that no wage could possibly be high enough to reflect the unpleasantness of their job. Then what about mortuary attendants, ambulance drivers, who have to pick up what’s left of people after road accidents? Sewer men? they should all be getting far, far more than the Royal Family.

It is possible to labour this point almost indefinitely. The plain, simple fact is that there is no such thing as a fair wage, nor is there any method of estimating one, nor is there any profit in trying to find one. Wages are not governed by fairness. They are not a moral issue, to be influenced by arguments of danger or skill or usefulness or anything else.

Because wages are paid by one human being to another (or, to be exact, by one class to another), the fact that they are no different from the mass of other payments in capitalist society is obscured. Yet wages are as much the price of a commodity as what we pay for apples, or bread, or a hair cut, or a ride on a bus. What is it that fixes how much we pay for apples or a haircut ?

In the short term, it is whatever price is settled after a tug-of-war between the opposing forces of supply and demand. In England in the summer, apples fetch a pretty high price in the shops, but as the autumn comes, and apples from English orchards flood into the shops the price comes down abruptly. This same situation applies to wages. If employers are short of a particular type of worker, or if they are competing with other employers for his working ability, or if they desperately need workers to produce goods to cater for an inviting market, then wages for that worker will tend to rise. If the opposite is true they will end to fall, or rises will be harder to get and the employer will be in a strong position to exert a downward pressure on pay and working conditions.

The whole point about the nurses’ campaign for higher pay is that it is not backed up with any force. Nurses would not use the strike weapon, which is another way of saying that they would not use their bargaining power— which means that in the end their employer has the pull over them. Appeals to fairness and public sympathy have only a limited value — and the government exploits this situation to the full.

When the forces of supply and demand have extended their pressures, they cause a fluctuation in the price of the commodity but the line about which this fluctuation takes place is fixed by something other that market forces. This line is the value of the commodity and, in general terms, this consists of what is need of socially necessary labour to produce the commodity. Thus the fact that a great deal of social effort is needed, in both training and equipment, to get a pilot into the air and bring him back safely, means that his labour-power has a high value. But the same cannot be said of a dustman.

The reduction of labour-power into terms of value, implying as it does an unequal social relationship between human beings, is one of capitalism’s most degrading effects. It flows directly from the debasement of human ability, to be costed and evaluated, bought and sold, hired and discarded. It causes directly the separation of man from his work, it is the hinge of exploitation, in which our lives are regarded as fit subjects for probing to discover ever more intense methods of extracting surplus value from us. It means a life-time of servitude for the mass of the human race.

This issue, which has nothing to do with justice, is always ignored by the seekers after a fair wage. Yet anyone who really wants to make sure that human beings get what they work for is illogical not to look at the social system which denies them this. A long time ago, Marx pointed out the futility and conservatism of those who pine for fair wages. He knew that the answer was a revolutionary one - abolish the wages system.

Ivan

Hey, Mr. Speaker: Socialism can work (1970)

From the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

How can we do without money, runs one objection to Socialism, it would mean we'd have to go hack to barter.

Why? Who said that barter and money were the only two ways of getting wealth to people? Obviously if that were the choice, money would win hands down. It is a very convenient invention that saves much time and trouble whenever goods are bought and sold. It would not be very sensible to go back to barter anyway, since money developed out of the barter system when it was seen how convenient it was if all goods could be exchanged for one particular one.

It is not quite true that socialists want to "abolish money”. Socialism will not be like today except that there won’t be any money. What socialists want is a society in which, among other things, money will have become unnecessary. That brings us to the third choice: free distribution of wealth, or if you prefer free access to wealth, where people can take from the common store what they need as and when they need it.

But that’s absurd. There’d be utter chaos. People would just grab as much as they could.

Why should they? People don’t grab those things which even now they can have as much as they like of. Take water. Once you have paid the rates, there is no restriction on the amount you can take. Do we find people leaving their taps running all day or filling buckets to hoard away? Of course not. People know what their daily needs of water are. and that there will always be enough to meet them, so they only take what they need when they need it. There is no charge to use some parks or libraries but people still behave normally: they use these free facilities as and when they want to. In some places they don’t charge for travelling on public transport or (after paying the rental) for local telephone calls. Yet still people behave sensibly: they use the trains or the phones only when they want to. This is normal behaviour. In a socialist society, where food, clothing, shelter, travel, entertainment and the other things people need to live and enjoy life will be freely available, why should people suddenly go mad and start grabbing more than they need? Is it not more likely that, as with water today, they will take only what they need?

There wouldn’t be enough to go round anyway.

Oh yes there would. You needn’t worry about that. Scientists and engineers have long known that mankind has the means — the modern industries and farms, the technical know-how and the skilled manpower — to abolish for ever famine, poverty and slums. There is no technical reason why modern industry should not turn out an abundance of the things people need. We can easily grow more and better food; manufacture more and better clothes: build more and better houses, schools, hospitals and other public buildings. It is a question of incentive. Today where production is geared to profit-making, this is not done because the rule is “no profit, no production”. In Socialism where production will be geared instead to meeting human needs, people can go on producing till all their needs are met.

Who's going to produce this abundance of wealth? If people didn’t have to work nothing would get done.

True, people working on materials from nature is the only way of producing wealth, but once again the underlying assumption, that people are basically lazy, is wrong. Most people don’t want to laze around all day doing nothing. It is normal to want to do something — in other words to want to work. For work is simply exercising your mental and physical faculties. Work may be pleasant (as in your leisure-time activities) or unpleasant (as, generally speaking, in your employer’s working time). Most people, quite reasonably, expect the work they do voluntarily to be pleasant. In Socialism, with satisfying human needs (including the need for enjoyable work) as its aim and where all work will be voluntary, people will ensure that they work in safe and pleasant surroundings and that they enjoy what they are doing to help run the society of abundance which benefits them all.


You still wouldn’t find anybody to do the dirty work.

Well, that depends on what you mean by “dirty work”. What work is dirty and what is not is a matter of opinion. The same work can be pleasant or unpleasant depending on why it is done and on how other people think of those who do it. People who wouldn't dream of being a navvy will gladly dig holes in their gardens. And some of the tasks performed by doctors and nurses are not much different from those done by lavatory cleaners.

Machinery could be designed to do nearly all the dull, repetitive jobs which human beings are now forced to do because it is cheaper to employ them than  to install machines. When society is geared to serving human needs, there will be every incentive to design and install machines to eliminate drudgery. If there prove to be some jobs that cannot easily be done by machines, then either they can be left undone or done (perhaps only for short periods) by people who recognise that someone has to do them. That such people will be found is a reasonable assumption since even today the dangerous, but obviously necessary, job of manning lifeboats is done mainly by volunteers.

Is it not so, when you come to think of it, that your everyday experience confirms that Socialism is practical? Common sense of course shows that it is desirable.

Letter: Socialism and Religion (1970)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Sir,

On Sunday 30th November I attended a meeting of the World Socialist Party of Ireland at the branch room, 13 Queen’s Square, Belfast. During this meeting the guest speaker stated that the World Socialist Party is, "atheistic and anti- religious". As an individual the speaker has a perfect right to be an atheist if he so desires but is the profession of atheism a necessary pre-condition of membership of the WSP?

Also, the term "anti-religious" is a very strong one. It infers a programme of de-Christianising, Stalinist purges instead of mere indifference or even benevolent neutrality, it is undeniably a positively fascist war-cry.

The speaker went on, with gay abandon, to condemn, as if integral parts of a larger whole, Christianity, Nationalism, and Racism justifying this absurdity by saying that all three alike are sops thrown to the working class to satisfy prejudice and silence dissent. I wholeheartedly agree that Christianity has been used on numerous occasions as a basis for the manipulation of its adherents but this does not condemn Christianity, only those who have thus misused its teachings. Marx himself opposed all strong-arm methods in dealing with religion, in 1865 he condemned French students who advocated militant anti-religious action. Likewise his, "religion is the people’s opium" statement was not meant to infer that the people were drugged by religion but that religion helped them to endure their sufferings and as such was beneficial. Christianity does not call on anyone to be content to live under a yoke with the ‘airy-fairy’ promise of eternal life dangling tantalisingly before them as their sole reward. The improvement of man’s condition, as through Socialism, fulfils rather than contradicts God’s plan. As a Christian, indeed a Catholic, and a Socialist I can see no contradiction between the two.

Stan J. Dempsey, 

Ballynahinch, 

Co. Down. N. Ireland.

Reply:
Mr. Dempsey sees no contradiction between being a Catholic and being a Socialist. We do, and so does the Catholic Church.

First, however, we must establish what a Socialist (properly so called) is, since this word is often used very loosely to include those who advocate only reforms of capitalism (which the Catholic Church has embraced as part of its social doctrine). A Socialist is someone who stands for Socialism where :

• Land and industry will be owned in common by the whole community.
• The use of land and industry will be under the democratic control of the community.
• Buying and selling will come to an end: wealth will be produced solely and directly to satisfy man’s needs.
• Each individual will have free access to wealth according to his needs.
• The wages system will be replaced by voluntary work.
• All frontiers will be abolished and all armed forces disbanded.

If Mr. Dempsey endorses this revolutionary, socialist programme then he is in conflict with his Church. We ask him three leading questions :

• Does the Catholic Church support the private ownership of wealth, including the means of production?
• Does the Catholic Church accept the wages system?
• Does the Catholic Church condemn the view that all the fruits of industry should go to the producers?

We suggest the answer to all three questions is "yes". Which is why in 1931 Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, pronounced :

   No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a Socialist properly so called.

There are a number of other aspects of socialist theory — on human nature, education. marriage, the class struggle, for instance— which the Catholic Church denounces. Then there is, of course, the socialist attitude to religion which explains why we say that nobody who still hits religious views is eligible to join the World Socialist Party.

Acceptance of scientific materialism — that the origin and development of the universe, of life, of man, of human society and of religion itself can be explained adequately without recourse to the so-called supernatural — is an integral part of socialist theory. A socialist party is made up of fully convinced socialists. To admit people who merely want Socialism because they think it is morally right or because it fulfills “God’s plan" would be to run the risk of eventually ceasing to be a socialist party at all.

This was one of the mistakes made by the old Social Democratic parties of Europe, which had a paper commitment to Marxism, when they proclaimed that religion was a "private matter" and refused to engage in anti-religious education. A mistake which, by the way, which is being repeated in Ireland — and for the same opportunist reasons — by the Peoples Democracy. We have always held this position to be mistaken and dangerous.

Religion is a social question which Socialist must face openly. Like nationalism and racism it is one of the delusions held by workers which stands in the way of the spread of socialist understanding. Opposition to religious ideas and institutions must be a part of socialist education.

Mr. Dempsey has obviously missed Marx’s point. Marx did regard religion as a social question. It was, he said, a kind of drug but to criticise it, while accepting the social conditions that gave rise to the need for it, was pointless. A criticism of religion, said Marx, must be tied to a criticism of society; only Socialism in fact would end the need for religion. This is what we say too and is the basis of our criticism of Atheists, Freethinkers, Secularists and Humanists. It is absurd to suggest that Marx regarded religion as “beneficial”.

We can assure Mr. Dempsey, however, that we are not in favour of persecuting Christians and other religious people. Quite apart from the fact that there will be no means for coercing people in socialist society, our aim is to convince people of the need for Socialism since it cannot be established until and unless a majority of the world’s workers want and understand it.

Editorial Committee

Irish Partition Discussed (1970)

Party News from the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Following a lecture on Ireland on 13th August, Westminster branch members discussed Partition with members of the Irish Communist Organisation, a Maoist group. The ICO argued that Irish workers should support the abolition of Partition (i.e. the incorporation of Northern Ireland into an all-Ireland Republic) as this would, they thought, remove the cause of the sectarian division of the working class of the Irish Nation. Party members replied that the Border was irrelevant from a working class point of view since its removal would not solve any working class problem: it would just be a change of masters for the workers of Northern Ireland just as independence for the 26 counties in 1922 was for the workers of the South. Socialists in Ireland should keep off the Anti-Partition bandwagon and campaign for Socialism. Members also challenged the ICO on their concept of “the Irish Nation”, saying that like all so-called nations this was a myth. The nation was a capitalist idea that originated with their rise to political power in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Propertied groups used a common history and culture as a device to get their workers first to help them to power and then to submit to their rule. Marx had long ago pointed out that the workers had no country. This was the socialist position.

Slaughter in Vietnam (1970)

From the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists look at war in a fundamentally different way from people with other political persuasions. We contend that war in the modern world is caused by the workings of capitalism with its struggles over trade, investments, oil and other resources.

The workers of the world have an identity of interests and have nothing at stake in the thieves’ quarrels of their masters. The working class owns no country. None of the resources are theirs; they have nothing to fight for and everything to gain by uniting to end the system that enslaves them and produces wars and other terrible problems.

Supporters of Trotskyism and the so-called Communist Party support war and take one side or the other, thus lending themselves to the shedding of working class blood for the profits of the capitalist class East or West.

In the case of Vietnam these people seek Victory for the Vietcong and line up behind the nationalist aspirations of developing Vietnamese capitalism.

If it could be shown that Vietnam was an exceptional incident to an otherwise peaceful and humane capitalism and if all that needed to be done was to end this war and all would be well in the world, all the talk and press comments about “this senseless war” might have some point. The fact is that no argument can be advanced condemning the war in Vietnam which would not be equally valid for the first and second world wars, for Korea and all other 73 conflicts that have taken place in the last twenty years. War is a normal condition of capitalism. An article in US. News and World Report (August 28, 1968) shows there have been no less than 128 wars since 1898 and that 57 per cent of these have taken place since the last world war. It must be clear from this that a particular war is an effect which cannot be dealt with in isolation. What we are confronting is a society that produces wars.

The present series of outrages coming to light in Vietnam are part of a greater outrage—the world-wide menace of capitalism. The American Government presents a tragic and ironic spectacle. They would like the world to believe that their concern is freedom and yet the very people they are supposed to be protecting and liberating, including women and babies have been gunned down in their hundreds by American soldiers. A White House press statement put the figure at 567 in My Lai alone.

The subtle extent to which people are conditioned to accept war can be seen from the fact that remote-control killing of scores of thousands of their women and babies by rocket fire and napalm bombing, is seen in a different light. Millions of men, women and children have been blown to pieces by bomber planes whose crews only see a target area from thousands of feet up. The press-button techniques and modern warfare make it possible for large guns or rocket launches to devastate towns and villages many miles away. Are the men who operate these weapons, any less conscious of the fact that they are killing people than if they were shooting them at close range? The argument that killing innocent babies in My Lai is different from killing “enemy” babies is the only rationalisation capitalism can fall back upon. This shows the utter depravity of this system of society.

It is all right for the hypocritical press and politicians to scream “atrocities”, but what about the society that puts guns into men’s hands in the first place? What about the leading statesmen of the world who have presided over the organised butchery of tens of millions of workers, who test and stockpile nuclear bombs capable of wiping out all life on earth, who poison the atmosphere with radiation causing thousands of deaths each year from leukaemia, who sell massive armaments around the world for profit, and the propaganda machine which strives to make it all acceptable in the name of freedom and humanity?

It is absurd to separate a few individuals and say they are guilty of atrocities when they are involved in situations created by society.

In the early days of the 1914-1918 war, posters purporting to show Belgian babies on German bayonets were used to whip up war hysteria. Now, such things are regarded as all part of war. George Brown says “stop weeping and get on with it”. Woodrow Wyatt, another stalwart Labourite supports him. Brown argued that the Labour Party ought to think about the threat to freedom if the “communists” win. What freedom Mr. Brown? The freedom to be gunned down by soldiers? Socialists repudiate the vile lie that butchery and napalm bombing of men, women and children, whether carried out by Americans or the Vietcong or anyone else, can have nothing to do with freedom.

To cover up its murder, capitalism has always raised the cry of freedom. Wage-slavery is capitalism’s freedom for the working class. In keeping with the Labour Government’s support for the war, the Parliamentary Labour Party’s Liaison Committee rejected the demand for Brown’s resignation as Deputy Leader. Meanwhile, demobilised American soldiers were appearing on the T.V. admitting the gunning down of babies, and the question of Nixon setting up a special tribunal to try those charged was being debated. Nixon subsequently appeared on television to say military tribunals would serve the purpose and that the guilty would be punished. He also announced the withdrawal of large numbers of American troops from Vietnam. Some Americans had already received long prison sentences over a rape and murder case known as “Hill 192”. The real culprit, will of course get away with it. What really needs indicting here is the capitalist system. A system that trains young men still in their teens to kill, a system that brutalises and degrades all humanity.

The war in Vietnam is now entering its eighth year with open American involvement. Whatever the outcome the workers will have gained nothing on either side. Hundreds of thousands of them will have been crippled or blinded so that the capitalist class, East and West, can pursue their sources of profit and wage future wars.

In America there have been massive anti-war demonstrations and thousands of young men have destroyed their draft cards. These are hopeful signs of emerging attitudes that desperately need to be taken much further. Even among the protesters American nationalism is still strong. It is the names of the American dead that are read out at demonstrations. The idea of world-consciousness; of being opposed to all wars and coming to understand the cause of war, has yet to take hold in significant proportions. This will come with the general growth of Socialist understanding.

It is noteworthy that with modern means of communication, the attitudes prevailing at home are rapidly reflected by workers in the armed forces. The Pentagon is faced with thousands of deserters and underground “peace" journals circulating among armed men, both in America and overseas. The arguments levelled at Socialists that the armed forces are isolated from the rest of the working class and are therefore cut off from Socialist influence, thereby making them a threat in the hands of the capitalists against the workers organising for Socialism, is clearly out of date.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain rejects the plea of the “left" that the nationalist ambitions of the North Vietnamese ruling class are worth dying for. This amounts to workers killing each other to determine who shall be their future exploiters. Nationalism is a divisive anti-working class concept. Home-rule is a bosses’ issue. We have home-rule in Britain but the capitalist class still own the means of production.

"

The “left-wing” supporters of the Vietcong are as deadly to workers interests as their more openly capitalist rivals. Do they really expect the aftermath of Vietnam to be any different from that of Korea? Do they really think it will do other than leave the way open to future wars? While both groups of workers, those who favour the Eastern bloc, and those who favour the West, go on deluding themselves with the plausible sounding excuses for supporting wars they are both in fact supporting capitalism. They are helping to guarantee that wars will continue.

The consistent opposition of the Socialist Party of Great Britain to all wars has proven to be the only valid position. The establishment of Socialism demands the unity and co-operation of the workers of the world. Such unity and cooperation can only arise from Socialist understanding, that means a clear recognition of the need to change society. To establish a system without frontiers or armed forces, where the scramble for trade and profits no longer exists. The resources of the earth, instead of being a class monopoly used to exploit and destroy, will be commonly owned and used solely to satisfy human needs.

Harry Baldwin

Picking the winner (1970)

Book Review from the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Selection of Parliamentary Candidates, by Michael Rush. Nelson Political Science Library 63s.

This book was originally a thesis for a PhD and has the vices and virtues one would expect from this. It has obviously been carefully researched and no doubt the facts can be accepted as authentic. It will probably be useful to students as a work of reference. But for the general reader it must be frankly admitted that it is boring to a degree.

This is the fault of the subject not of the author. Even the most avid follower of current politics (assuming such people even exist) will hardly find their blood pressure rising as they learn how the main parties come to select their candidates for parliamentary elections. How much does it matter if the Tories choose their candidates in pairs, man and wife being both suitable, very much like Noah arranging his passengers for the Ark? In practice, all this sort of thing makes little or no difference at all to the working of the political set-up.

The author is terribly concerned (as indeed are many others) with the fact that in the very many “safe” scats, the process of selection by the local party caucus is tantamount to selection of the MP. So it is. And so what? The author fails to worry about the real problem, which is why the seat is safe in the first place. And the answer to that, clearly, is that the voters can be relied upon to elect a certain breed of capitalist candidate, normally Tory or Labour (a Liberal safe seat is no doubt these days a contradiction in terms). If that situation altered, if the voters decided to do some of their own political thinking, then the apparent power of the local caucus to send its man to Westminster would be rudely shattered. And the author’s main worry would be a thing of the past.

Lewis Hopkin

South Africa’s “Communists" (1970)

Book Review from the February 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class and Colour in South Africa, by H. J. and R. Simons, Pelican. 21s.

Most of this book is a history of, or rather an apology for, the Communist Party of South Africa, which is not surprising since its authors were both prominent members of that Party at the time of its dissolution in 1950.

The CPSA, like so-called communist parties everywhere, had a shameful record of twists and turns in accord with the changing policies of state capitalist Russia. At one time it backed the white racist Labour Party and its alliance with the Afrikaner Nationalists; at another it was demanding a Black Republic. Then it violently denounced all other labour and nationalist groups; later it sought a "people’s front” with them.

The CPSA became committed to demanding a Black Republic after its 7th Congress in January 1929. The Simons — and this is typical of their apologies — claim this decision was reached democratically and not forced on the Party by the Communist International. Again, when in 1931 a number of the Party’s leaders and prominent trade unionists were expelled, according to the Simons this was another free decision.

A number of embarrassing episodes are glossed over. The Simons merely record without comment the execution of Lazar Bach, then a leading member of the CPSA, when he went to Moscow on its behalf in 1935. Then there is their Party's attitude to the Second World War. "Unlike communists in English-speaking countries, and without any prompting or instructions from outside”, we are told, “the party’s central committee went into opposition immediately on the outbreak of war”. They called for an immediate peace and pointed out to the Africans, Coloureds and Indians the hypocrisy of the government’s claim to be fighting for democracy while denying them the most elementary democratic rights. After the invasion of Russia in June 1941, of course, the CPSA was all out for the war. Now they opposed strikes and urged African and other workers to settle their grievances “while avoiding any stoppage of work”.

There is also much more than meets the eye behind the Simons’ special criticism of the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM) and its policy of non-collaboration (e.g., boycott of elections to Native and Coloured councils) with the government. The Simons suggest that this was a policy of inaction that particularly appealed to the Coloured teachers who led the NEUM since it gave them an excuse not to engage in activities like contesting elections that might endanger their jobs. Maybe, but the CPSA has good reason to try to discredit the NEUM since, as a trotskyist-influenced and more radical body, this is their main rival for the support of African, Coloured and Indian political activists.

It is facts like these which suggest that other parts of the book are probably unreliable too.

Adam Buick