Capitalism or socialism (1986)

From the February 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

A society is a group of human beings gathered together for the common purpose of survival; in the modem age we can speak of the world as our society because the interdependence of human beings across the globe has made localised survival outdated. Our world society operates in accordance with the capitalist system. A system is a network of relationships to the means of wealth production and distribution. Under the capitalist system most people are either possessors of the means of living (factories, farms, transport, media, offices, mines) or producers of goods and services. These two classes stand in different relationships to the powers of production: the capitalist class owns and controls these powers; the working class does not possess the means of survival. So, society exists for the purpose of humans collectively providing for their needs, but the means of so providing are not owned and controlled by all the people who make up society, but by the capitalist minority. Under capitalism the working class is alienated from the principal social power.

Buying and selling

Under capitalism most of what is produced by people is not for their own personal consumption. but is made to be sold. Goods produced for sale are commodities and under capitalism wealth "presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities" (Marx, Capital, Vol I. p.l).

A commodity must possess two features. Firstly, it must be of use to someone. There would be no point in producing goods which people do not need, so commodities must possess use value. In order to define the use value of a commodity we appeal to common experience: the use value of a book is that it can be read; the use value of a vest is that it keeps you warm. But commodities are not produced solely for use: if they are to be sold they must possess a second kind of value called exchange value. Obviously, it makes no sense to say that books are of more or less use value than vests; use value is not a measured quantity. When it comes to exchange value we must establish why the book is costlier than the vest or the vest dearer than the book. How is exchange value determined? It is discovered by comparing the one common factor which unites books and vests, and all other commodities: the amount of labour required for their production. The exchange value of a commodity is determined by the amount of human labour expended in its production.

This explanation of how value is determined is known as the labour theory of value. Producing gold, which is hard to find and difficult to extract from the earth, requires more labour than the production of paper. A Ford car embodies less congealed labour than a Rolls Royce. so it has a lower exchange value. Sometimes exchange values change: for example when increased productivity means that the same amount of commodities can be produced by fewer workers (or more commodities by the same number of workers). Most commodities which we use today are not produced in one place, but are the product of a global division of labour. So, in calculating the exchange value of a commodity we must look at the labour input at all stages in the productive process. All workers in the modern world are part of the immense system of commodity production and all labour is socially dominated by the law of value.

We have stated that the labour embodied in its production determines the value of a commodity. This is open to the criticism: "If value is determined by labour, why would it not be more beneficial for producers to be lazy and slow so that the commodities they produce have greater value?" Marx answered this point by stating that we are not talking about labour as a purely individual process, but the labour which is "necessary for . . . production in a given state of society." This is referred to as socially necessary labour time and we can now refine our economic analysis by stating that the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour required for its production. We must also note that labour time is not simply measured in terms of how long it takes to produce a commodity at the point of production, but also how much time is socially necessary in producing the required quality of labour. For example, it might take more labour to produce a brick wall than it takes to sit in an office and make out people's wills, but the time required to produce the trained labour of the lawyer is greater than that needed to produce a bricklayer's labour.

Stated simply, price is the monetary expression of exchange value. The price of a commodity is the manifestation of its exchange value in the market. Commodities sell at around their value, although the struggle which is constantly going on between buyers and sellers (supply and demand) causes prices to fluctuate around the point of value. Money is the universal symbol of value against which commodities can be compared. In the early days of commodity production one commodity was exchanged for another. As social production has become more complicated commodities have ceased to be measured against the value of other specific commodities. but are measured in terms of money. In itself money is not of any use value: you can't eat a five pound note. Its function is as an accepted measure of value and as an intermediate factor in the process of the exchange of commodities. But commodity exchange is not planned and nor can it be, so capitalism has a tendency to enter a period of crisis whenever it becomes more beneficial for capitalists to store money than to invest it in the production of new commodities.

The legalised robbery of labour

Commodity production existed before capitalism came into being. What is new about capitalism is that human labour power (the mental and physical energies of people) has become a commodity, an item to be sold. Why do workers sell labour power to capitalists? Quite simply, because a worker has no choice: he or she does not own the means of living and the wealth which s/he requires and therefore, in order to buy these commodities, s/he must sell labour power. The working class possesses no property upon which it can survive except its labour power — that is the one commodity which the worker can take to the market and sell. This sale is called employment.

We have already pointed out that the value of a commodity is determined by the socially necessary time required for its production. That also applies to the value of labour power. That is why a doctor is paid more than a butcher. We have also stated that commodity values appear in the market as prices; in the case of labour power the term we use instead of price is wage or salary, but it means the same thing. Workers sell labour power for a price. Like other commodities which generally sell at their value, labour power is sold at a price which fluctuates about its value.

Given that labour power sells at its value, how can we say that workers are exploited? The answer is that labour power is a unique commodity in that, unlike all others, it can be used to create values greater than itself. The capitalist who buys labour power from a worker does so on the assumption that the employee will produce wealth which will provide more value for the capitalist than is represented by the price paid for the labour power. This extra value which workers are employed to create is called surplus value and it is the source of the unearned income of the capitalist. For example, a capitalist who buys a worker s labour power for one week at a price of £200 will not expect the worker to turn up on the Thursday and say "Well. I've reproduced the money which you have invested in me, by producing wealth which you can sell, so now I'm going home". The capitalist does not employ the worker so that the worker can receive a wage, but in order to obtain surplus value. If one capitalist employs hundreds of workers, then once their wages (as low as possible, of course) have been paid and they have reproduced the cost of the resources invested in production, a huge fortune can be accumulated out of the surplus value created by the employees. If there is no expectation of the employees producing an unearned income for the employer because the cost of production will be greater than the fruits of the workers' toil, then the capitalist will dismiss the workers, forcing them into the army of the unemployed. So much for the capitalist lie that employment is a gift from the bosses to the workers! On the contrary, workers are wage slaves and are forced to put their energies on sale to the capitalists to present a gift to the capitalist class in the form of surplus value. The involuntary presentation of surplus value by the producing majority to the parasitical minority is the most extensive charity yet known to society. The capitalists, who have no compulsion to work, live in luxury thanks to the exploitation of the unpaid labour of the workers. For what the capitalist calls a surplus (getting more than is put in) the worker may rightly call stolen time (getting less than he or she puts in).

The wages system necessarily entails the legalised robbery of those who produce by those who possess. The worker receives a wage and the capitalist receives a profit, but the worker has had to work hard and the capitalist has done nothing except take advantage of the fact that the worker is compelled to submit to wage (or salary) slavery. It may appear superficially that the worker is entering into a fair or free contract with the capitalist — that wage labour is not exploited or robbed, but an agent in a mutually beneficial deal — but the reality is that the worker's free choice is between the poverty of making ends meet on a wage or salary or the greater poverty of being a wageless wage slave. As Marx points out.

  The Roman slave was held by fetters; the wage labourer is bound to his owner by invisible threads. The appearance of independence is kept up by means of a constant change of employers, and by the fictio juris of a contract (Capital, Vol 1)

The worker may be free to change employers and be exploited by someone else, but not to reject employment and the compulsion to create surplus value. In this sense we can state that profits are produced as a result of the legalised robbery of the working class.

Production — for profit or use?

Capitalism, as a social system, is defined by the existence of commodity production (the buying and selling of goods and services) and by the fact that labour power takes the form of a commodity. But some countries in the modern world claim to have transcended capitalism and to have established socialism. In the so-called socialist countries is there buying and selling? Of course there is. But why should a socialist society in which everything is owned by everyone require exchange value? Common ownership logically means that nobody in society possesses wealth which non-owners need to buy: there are no commodities, but goods and services produced for use. In the bogus socialist countries the state takes the role of the grand capitalist, attempting to regulate the sale of commodities. In such countries does labour power take the form of a commodity? The most elementary investigation of life in Russia or China or Cuba shows that wage labour is still the lot of the majority of people. We have shown that wages are the price of labour power and that where wages exist the produce of the employee is not his or her own. but is bought by an employer (in this case, the state) whose function is to exploit wage labour. In any society where there is buying and selling, money, wages and profits there is capitalism, however falsely its defenders might wish to label it.

In a socialist society we shall not produce commodities to sell to anyone. What belongs to us all we shall all have free access to, and concepts of price and value will give way to those of need and comfort. In a moneyless society all the wasteful and in efficient factors which make capitalist commerce so difficult for most people to comprehend and impossible for the so-called experts to regulate, will make way for a system of deliberate, democratic organisation of production and distribution of goods and services in which the satisfaction of human needs will be the sole concern of society. In a socialist society we shall no longer be dominated by an imposing and anarchic system; society will become a real community. If we remember that humans organise ourselves into society for the purpose of common survival there can be no doubting the fact that the capitalist system of organising for survival and human comfort is an utter failure from the point of view of the working class. For that reason, the task facing our class is to organise, politically and democratically, for the revolutionary purpose of taking the world away from the robber class — in Marx's words, we must "expropriate the expropriators".

Steve Coleman

Letter: Submission (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the February 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

I would like to complain about the article The Waiting Game" in the otherwise excellent December Socialist Standard. It stated that "Religion has always preached submission in one form or another". This is dearly rubbish, as anyone who knows of Islamic "holy jihads" will realise. I would have thought Christ's crucifixion as a "subversive" by the Romans was hardly a likely punishment for submissiveness either.

I have no religious belief myself and was in full agreement with the way established religion was shown to prop up capitalism. However, to allow this analysis to degenerate into a series of insults, albeit witty ones, does nothing to further your cause and is a poor substitute for an objective historical analysis.

C S Hedges 

Milton Keynes

Reply

The submission which religion involves does not always take an obvious or simple form. The list of examples of religion being apparently rebellious or aggressive could be added to. There are also, for example, the Latin American priests who have been active in opposing many of the regimes there in recent years.

All religious thought, however, assumes there is an outside force or power which we can never control or even comprehend. It makes human beings the tools rather than the makers of history, and therefore condemns us to a perpetual repetition of the suffering of the past.

The jihads or “holy wars" are as much an example of human submission to authoritarian dogma as were the Christian crusades of the Middle Ages. The Koran, like the Bible, destroys human dignity by commanding servile worship of a non-existent "power". The name "Allah" derives from Al-llah, which means "the one God, the strong, the mighty one" and failure to offer absolute obedience is said to result in everlasting punishment. The Koran justifies the jihad against unbelievers, who often were given the choice of accepting the Moslem religion or death. This doctrine may not be pacifist: but it is certainly submissive in human terms. Religion is at loggerheads with working class emancipation.

As for our treatment of the subject having been somewhat light-hearted, most of the rival religions which are fighting over our non-existent "souls" take themselves quite seriously enough without us fuelling their self-righteousness for them.

Editors

50 Years Ago: Population and Poverty (1986)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have long been familiar with the argument that poverty is due to over-population, and that if the workers would only decrease the size of their families they would all be better off. Now we are introduced to the opposite argument, from a catholic, Father Woodlock. In a statement to the Evening Standard (January 15th) he pointed out that a falling population means fewer soldiers to defend the Empire, and that in addition it means greater poverty for the workers.

 Only short-sighted economists fail to notice that fall in the birth rate will not help the condition of the working classes, but accompanied by the noticeably increased longevity of our people, will put a much heavier burden on the workers.
 They will be fewer, but in the future they will have to support a much increased number of aged and unemployable dependants. Propagandists of the spread of the birth-control movement never seem to aver this.

We can agree with Father Woodlock that those who preach birth control as a cure for poverty and unemployment are completely in the wrong, but in rejecting that fallacy Father Woodlock embraces another. It is true that a population containing a large proportion of people unable to work may be at a disadvantage compared with one containing a higher proportion of able-bodied men and women in the prime of life, but we are not living in a system of society in which the problem of wealth production is as simple as that. Under capitalism large numbers of people — the propertied class — are not engaged in wealth production and have no desire or necessity to be so engaged. Consequently the burden resting on the shoulders of the workers is not that of keeping only themselves and their own dependants, but, in addition, of keeping the propertied class in luxury and idleness or non-productive activity. and of keeping all the military and civil hangers-on of the capitalist system. The wealth producers are not engaged in producing for themselves, but of producing wealth for the capitalist class alone to own and control.

(From an editorial Quins, Quads and Poverty, Socialist Standard, February 1936.)

Much ado about nothing: The Anglo-Irish Agreement (1986)

From the February 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

By the time this article appears, the "Ulster Says No" election will have passed. The reader will know whether the alliance of "Democratic" and Official Unionists conned enough members of the working class. Did Sinn Fein — who don't want Ulster to say "Yes" and are opposed to those who want it to say "No" —take enough votes to win a seat at Westminster (which they have refused to accept) or did they simply ensure that the SDLP — who want to say "Yes" — was defeated? Did the so-called Workers' Party — more-or-less in the "Yes" camp — save all. or any, of its deposits? Did the Alliance Party — strong on unionism but tentatively in the "Yes" group — win a few more votes from imagined "middle-class" Unionists whose political stomachs are upset by the surfacing of anti-British violence in the Unionist camp? In the best tradition of soap operas, all this will have been revealed by now.

Generally, politicians take elections very seriously. It is true that, following an election, irrespective of which group of political con artists get elected, the condition of the great majority of people, the working class, remains unaffected. Be that as it may, before an election it is the business of politicians and their parties to convince us that the elections are about our problems; about unemployment, poverty, slums — indeed, about any of the mass of social ills that affect society in general and the working class in particular.

The fact that all these social ills continue to exist after countless elections and the implementation of the policies represented by all the political parties — somewhere, if not in Northern Ireland — clearly demonstrates the failure of conventional politics and politicians. Nevertheless, unless politicians wish their business to be reduced to the level of a beauty contest or a dog show, they have got to go through the motions of trying to convince us that their election or rejection has some relevance to our problems.

Not about facts

On the 17 December last, the Belfast Telegraph published Thatcher's views on the Anglo-Irish Accord as given to its London correspondent. Her views are significant in one respect: they reveal that the whole exercise of the Anglo-Irish Accord is wholly unrelated to the facts of life of the ordinary people of Northern Ireland. "We are dealing" said Thatcher, "not with facts, but with perceptions".

It would be difficult to find a more contemptuous way of telling the working people of Northern Ireland that the purpose of the Anglo-Irish Accord is to kid them about the future. Here, straight from the mouth of the messiah of British capitalism is the message: the Accord is not concerned with facts — that is, with the realities of our lives. It is merely concerned with "perceptions" — that is, with the way we see things.

Of course Thatcher is right; the Accord, and the election it caused in Northern Ireland. is not about facts. It is not concerned with the fact that more than one in five people in Northern Ireland have no job or that, in some working class areas, a man with a job is a curiosity; it is not concerned with the fact that those who are working are paid, on average, some £20 a week less than workers in the rest of the UK or with the fact that wages in Northern Ireland are among the lowest in western Europe; it is not concerned with the fact that some 40 per cent of the population are wholly or partially dependent on social security payments in order to live or with the fact that slums and insanitary hovels are more prevalent in Northern Ireland than anywhere else within the EEC. Nor is it concerned with the fact that, if there was real peace in the province and all those currently engaged in jobs associated with the troubles were stood down, the miseries that are facts for the great majority of working people in Northern Ireland would be extended to many more people.

The Accord

The purpose of the Accord is. as Thatcher says, to make people in Northern Ireland see things differently. It establishes a Ministerial Conference under the joint chairmanship of the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs in which the two sovereign governments, the British and Irish, will be equally represented. Both sides will have an input into the Conference which may make recommendations to the British and, effectively, the Irish governments on matters related to Northern Ireland. The British government undertakes to give reasonable consideration to such recommendations but is not bound by the Accord to accept them. Within the Accord, the Irish government recognises the right of the majority within Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom and the British government recognises the right of the nationalist minority in Northern Ireland to identify without proscription or legal encumbrance with their "cultural" aspirations and to engage in nonviolent political activity to promote a united Ireland.

The Accord provides for the Conference to relinquish to the control of an elected Northern Ireland Assembly all or any of the matters within its competence providing that such an Assembly enjoys wide cross- community support — effectively, from catholics and protestants — and is desirous of taking over all or any of the matters within the brief of the Conference. In other words, should the local politicians reach a political accommodation that would allow them to establish a power-sharing Assembly and should that Assembly agree to deal with the matters presently within the consultative competence of the Conference, the latter is agreed to hand over such matters to the Assembly and. should all such matters be handed over, the Conference will become redundant.

Changing perceptions

How do the British and Irish governments see the Accord working? What perceptions do they wish to change and what effect would such change have in Northern Ireland? More importantly, especially since some Unionists and the loyalist paramilitaries have intimated that loyalists should, if necessary, be prepared to sacrifice their lives and freedom resisting it — what real difference will the Accord make to the lives of the working class?

It was hoped that the loyalists would accept the Accord, however reluctantly, because it contained the Irish government's effective repudiation of its constitutional claim to jurisdiction over Northern Ireland. On the other hand, it is hoped that catholics and nationalists will see their interests protected by the Irish representatives within the Conference and would, accordingly, be more willing, or less unwilling, to identify with the Northern State and co-operate with the forces policing that state.

Given a degree of success in this direction. it is hoped that elements within the northern nationalists who support the IRA will increasingly withdraw their support. Not only would this retard the IRA's capacity for waging terrorist warfare, it would also help to create a political climate in which the Northern and, more especially, Southern authorities could take the necessary steps to deal with terrorism. This, more than anything else, must be the desired purpose of the Accord; terrorism continues to destabilise authority both north and south of the border and, of course, the ever-present threat of bombings in Great Britain is a constant dread for the British authorities. The cost of maintaining security in both parts of Ireland is now astronomical and is especially damaging for an Irish government beset with persistent economic problems and a growing cash crisis.

The Northern Ireland problem, as far as the various authorities are concerned, is the IRA. In keeping with the naive logic of government, it is unnecessary to deal with the social realities behind political violence; a few cosmetic changes, a simple change in perceptions, and the terrorists will be isolated and banished. This is the why and the wherefore of the Accord; it has nothing to do with the problems of poverty, unemployment. slums or the frightening insecurity which bedevil working class life in the province — the very problems that fuel sectarianism. hatred and political violence.

According to the Accord makers an end. or even a substantial diminution, of IRA activity would be followed by a loss of influence on the part of the more extreme brands of Unionism. The currently enfeebled Official Unionists could regain the centre stage and. freed from the necessity of looking over their shoulders, these "moderates" would be able to do a power-sharing deal with the "moderate" nationalists. A power-sharing government could emerge in Northern Ireland, the Anglo-Irish Conference could be ended and the British and Irish governments allowed to return to the serious business of running a troubled capitalism in their respective territories.

In effect, the perceptions that Thatcher and Fitzgerald are concerned with changing the bigotry, hatred and patriotic rubbish that they wish to adjust — are those that their political forebears, together with the Ulster Unionists, developed out of the slime of Irish history. The perceptions of both Unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland the way the working class see things — was originally fashioned by the English authorities in the interests of English and Irish landlords in Ireland and was refined — if one can use such an expression for the deliberate promotion of hatred and division among the poor — during the 18th and 19th centuries. Later, the political representatives of a divided Irish capitalist class, Unionists, constitutional nationalists and Sinn Fein, developed that bigotry, hatred and patriotic rubbish as a weapon to promote the interests of the conflicting sides of Irish capitalism in the present century*. Now, with a united capitalist interest, north and south, the old slogans and shibboleths that form the present perceptions of the working class have become an expensive embarrassment. It is these, and only these, that the Accord hopes to adjust.

War of the big battalions

If a change in perceptions did result from the Accord and if these proved effective in ending violence and "normalising" politics in Northern Ireland, the World Socialist Party would acknowledge something that kept our fellow workers out of the cemeteries and the jails and. obviously, the difficult task of spreading our socialist image would be rendered easier without the shadow of the gunman official and unofficial — and in circumstances where less emotional bitterness prevailed. Unfortunately, perceptions are hard to change when the economic conditions that underpin them remain and grow stronger every day.

Nor are we impressed by the cynical deception behind the Accord and the contemptuous efforts of its authors to con workers into the belief that it has anything to do with the social realities of working class life.

Perhaps the most disgusting aspect of the Accord is its obvious intention, promoted by the Pentagon, to clear away the difficulties currently preventing the Irish government from becoming a strategically important member of the Western Alliance. It is a typical irony of capitalist authority that an alleged reform is set in the shadow of a grosser evil. Britain, America and Ireland may deplore a shabby tribal conflict in Northern Ireland but, because war is a persistent and glorified feature of capitalism, they will see no contradiction if part of the formula for ending that conflict is to bring Ireland into a war of the big battalions.

Seeing things the way they are

We can with absolute confidence predict the result of the elections as far as working people are concerned. Irrespective of who gets in or the size of their vote, and whether or not the elections have any bearing on the ultimate rejection or implementation of the Anglo-Irish Accord, life for the working class will remain the same. Our poverty, our unemployment. our slums and mean living will still be with us for these are the constant realities of capitalism however we may perceive it.

Richard Montague

*See IRELAND — PAST. PRESENT AND FUTURE. Available now from the SPGB and the World Socialist Party.

What we stand for (1986)

Editorial from the February 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party is an organisation of men and women who recognise that our material interest depends on the transformation of society from a class monopoly and production for profit to one of common ownership, democratic control and production solely for use.

We understand that society is divided into two main classes: those who possess the goods of the earth but do not produce them and those who produce but do not possess. The minority own and control the means of producing and distributing wealth, such as factories, land, offices, mines, media, transport. The minority, be they inheritors of class power or capitalists who have worked their way to affluence by the sweat of other people's toil, are living off the majority. The working class work to keep the bosses in luxury and idleness; we are their benefactors. Socialists are workers who have decided that the days of such foolish charity must end.

The non-socialist regards wages and salaries as gifts by the employer to the employee; the socialist views them as crumbs which the exploiter offers in return for the cake we have baked. The wages system allows us only enough money to exist as profit-producers. Socialists do not aspire to be robbed with dignity; unlike our reformist opponents who dream up endless reforms to soothe the injuries of the robbed, we are for abolishing, not improving, the wages system.

The socialist stands for a system of society where the necessities and luxuries of life are not commodities to be bought, but are there for the use of all. on the basis of free access. The wealth of a socialist society will belong to everyone, not because they are "owners", but because they are members of a free and equal community where property relationships have ceased to exist. The non-socialist worries at this point, scared that without money as an obstacle between humans and the satisfaction of our needs we will be greedy: we will over-consume. But the desire to over-consume is only a fetish adopted by workers who are compelled to under-consume: if we are used to paying for every steak we eat, we dream of eating more steaks than we would ever choose to eat in a society where food is free. The myth of "the greedy person" is a product of a system where money does not allow workers to have enough and calls us greedy when we demand nothing but the best.

So, a socialist society will have no money and no wages. It will be a system of conscious human co-operation. Indeed, socialists are very confident about the possibility of human beings behaving as intelligent co-operators. We do not share the miserable assessment of human potential advanced by the proponents of the theory of Human Nature. Human behaviour is not genetically determined, but governed largely by the social environment. In the absence of a jungle society we are certain that men and women will cease to act like beasts. Competition will give way to mutual aid, war to fraternity.

Unlike those who favour government of the few over the majority, socialists want a society where there are no governors or governed, but where humanity, organised on the basis of full-scale democracy and making use of modem communications technology, will make decisions by itself for itself. And as socialism will not be a society of leaders and led, so it is the case that workers cannot be led to the establishment of socialism. The emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.

Socialists do not think nationally. We recognise that socialism was never established in the so-called socialist or communist countries, and nor could it have been. These are state-capitalist countries, essentially the same as the rest of the capitalist world. Socialism entails worldwide action by the working class.

Socialists reject gods, religion and other superstitious follies. We are scientific enough to understand that it is up to human beings to make history and there are no superior beings, other worlds or external moralities which need get in our way. The socialist is a clear-headed materialist who seeks explanations on the basis of cause and effect and admits ignorance about those phenomena which are incomprehensible rather than invent dogmas relying on faith.

The Socialist Party is opposed to all other parties, for the lot of them stand for capitalism in one form or another. We reject the system and stand in uncompromising hostility to those who, knowingly or in ignorance, advise workers to support it.

Socialists are in a hurry. We realise that the task of social transformation is an urgent one and no effort can be spared in hastening the day when the rotten system of profit and plunder leading to war and waste is replaced by worldwide production for use.

Fascism, democracy and the war (1986)

From the February 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Workers who suffered under the monstrous Mussolini and Hitler dictatorships were clearly worse off than their fellow wage slaves in the so-called democratic countries. It is a popular fiction that Britain and its allies went to war against the fascist nations in 1939 to defeat an evil ideology and save the world for democracy. This is a lie, just as false as those invented to persuade workers to be slaughtered in the trenches in 1914. The fact is that Britain and its allies were motivated by a political and economic desire to protect their long-held interests in the world market against the expansionist aims of the fascist nations which had arrived late on the scene of world imperialism. The claim that a major war was initiated to liberate workers from fascist tyranny sounds very noble, but has little to do with the sordid motives of the capitalist class.

Fascism and the British capitalists

The first fascist state in Europe was Mussolini's Italy. It was established in 1923, long before the British capitalists contemplated going to war to save workers from the fascists. Far from regarding this new type of capitalist government as a deadly threat. Britain's leaders approved of Italian fascism. Winston Churchill told the fascists that

If I had been an Italian, I am sure that I should have been wholeheartedly with you from start to finish in your triumphant struggle . . . (Quoted in The Times, 21 January 1927.)

Churchill took the same attitude to Hitler, stating that if Britain was ever threatened with "communism", he hoped that a man such as Adolf Hitler would be available to lead the nation to safety. Indeed, the capitalist leaders admired Hitler's ability to keep the workers in check; consider the words expressed by Ramsay MacDonald to the National Government's Labour Committee on 6 November 1933:

The secret of the success of the dictatorships is that they have managed somehow or other to make the soul of a nation alive. We may be shocked at what they are doing, but they have certainly awakened something in the hearts of their people which has given them a new vision and a new energy to pursue national affairs. In this country the three parties in co-operation are doing that . . .

So much for the opposition to fascism of Britain's first Labour Prime Minister. He was simply stating the desire of the capitalist class: that workers must accept the needs of the profit system and if the fascists were succeeding in such a task they cannot be condemned. This was well summed up by the Tory, Lord Melchett, who stated that:

I admire Fascism because it is successful in bringing about social peace . . . I have been working for years towards the same peace in the industrial field of England . . . Fascism is tending towards the realisation of my political ideals, namely, to make all classes collaborate loyally.

David Lloyd George, the hero of the modem Liberals, was so impressed by Nazism that he went to visit Hitler in 1936. This visit was arranged by Philip Conwell-Evans. an enthusiast for the fascist cause, who had been a senior figure in the 1929

Labour government. He kept notes on the talks between the Fuhrer and the Liberal and reported that Lloyd George told Hitler that:

. . . public opinion in Great Britain was to an increasing degree showing more and more understanding for Hitler’s position and the one anxiety of British public opinion today was to bring about the closest co-operation between the two countries. (Quoted in Appendix II of Martin Gilbert's The Roots of Appeasement, London 1966.)

On 17 September 1936, Lloyd George had an article published in The Daily Express which was full of enthusiasm for Nazism and referred to Hitler as "a born leader of men". In another article he stated that the Nazis had "effected a remarkable improvement in the working conditions of both men and women" (News Chronicle, 21 September 1936). Two years earlier he had told the House of Commons: "Do not let us be in a hurry to condemn Germany. We shall be welcoming Germany as our friend" (Hansard., 28 November 1934).

As with Hitler, so with the fascist General Franco. The Conservative historian, Maurice Cowling, has written that "most Conservative MPs sympathised with Franco from the start . . . and did not regard Franco as a Fascist . . (The Impact of Hitler, p.266, Cambridge. 1975). Among those who were enthusiastic in their initial support for Franco was Churchill. Numerous examples can be cited to demonstrate the widespread enthusiasm within the British capitalist class for the tactics of the fascist governments. They were seen as models of efficient capitalism and were respected. The idea that capitalism could be managed democratically (which has never much impressed the capitalists) was becoming unfashionable in the 1930s. Typical of this was a speech made by Gordon Selfridge to the American Chamber of Commerce in London; The Times of 22 June 1932 reports him as stating that:

as an American he spoke to fifty representative men in America and did not find one who disagreed with his view that democracy in that great country could not possibly succeed as a system of government . . .  a country should be managed as a great business was managed.

Francis Yeats-Brown, who was the assistant editor of The Spectator between 1926 and 1931, expressed a popular ruling-class sentiment when he wrote that "the hope of order in Europe depends upon the abolition of democracy and the establishment of Corporate States" (10 November 1933).

Not only capitalists, but many workers also, were no longer prepared to place their faith in capitalist democracy. One of the main reasons for this is that the political parties all seemed to be standing for the same system and pursuing policies which led to the same old problems occurring again and again. Who can blame workers for feeling that elections and the other features of democracy are a waste of time if they do not lead to people being better off? It was capitalist politics, particularly the policies of reformism, which brought democracy into disrepute. This sentiment was well expressed by a character in Shaw's play, On The Rocks, written in 1933: he was a Prime Minister who knew that reform policies could make no difference to the working class and he undemocratically concluded:

The people of this country . . .  are sick of twaddle about liberty when they have no liberty . . They are sick of me and sick of you and sick of the whole lot of us. They want to see something done that will give them decent employment . . . They can’t set matters to right themselves, so they want rulers who will discipline them and make them do it instead of making them do the other thing. They are ready to go mad with enthusiasm for any man strong enough to make them do anything, even if it is only Jew baiting, provided it’s something tyrannical, something coercive, something that we all pretend no Englishman will submit to. though we’ve known ever since we gave them the vote that they'd submit to anything.

Shaw, who was as confused as he was condescending, was of the view that Mussolini and the Italian fascists had gone further in the direction of Socialism than the English Labour Party could yet venture if they were in power" (Quoted in Bernard Shaw and Fascism. London 1927). It was not until the late 1930s, when fascist foreign policy began to interfere with the imperial interests of the older capitalist powers, that British capitalist leaders began to use fascism as an ideological stick with which to beat their economic rivals. For example, it is an accepted fact that the British Foreign Office was well aware that German Jews were being subjected to state persecution and many dissidents were being tortured and killed by the fascists years before war was declared. If it was "the menace of fascism" which our bosses were so opposed to why were so many of them praising it until the moment that fascism threatened their economic power?

The Leninist attitude

No small contribution to the anti-democratic atmosphere in Britain in the 1930s was made by the Communist Party of Great Britain. As the main party of organised Leninism, the CP propagated two ideas which were both confused and dangerous. Firstly, it was CP policy between 1928 and 1935 to label all its opponents as "social fascists". The term was attributed to anyone who rejected the claims of the Russian state to be socialist. It was argued that there was no difference between fascist parties and social democratic ones: if they were not Leninists they must be fascists. This view, adopted because it was laid down by the Communist International (Comintern) led to the absurd conclusion on the part of the CP that "bourgeois democracy" was indistinguishable from fascism. Secondly, the CP pointed to Russia as the example of real democracy in action. The Stalinist police state of the 1930s arguably more dictatorial than Russia today - was described as "people’s democracy" and the CP maintained that instead of the limited democracy granted under private capitalism workers should aim to achieve the higher form of democracy of Stalin's Russia. Of course, this "people’s democracy" amounted to state-capitalist dictatorship and was feared by many workers as being no better than fascism. So. the CP added to popular confusion about what democracy means and. in presenting Stalinist dictatorship as real democracy. they led many workers to oppose the idea of democracy.

In 1935 the CP changed its policy and regarded fascism as a threat to the working class. This change was a reflection of Kremlin-dominated Comintern policy: the CP was then, as now. a party whose function was to defend the policies of the Kremlin. In September 1939. when the British capitalists went reluctantly to war with the fascist powers. the CP supported the war and published a pamphlet, written by Harry Pollitt, called How To Win The War. The following month the Comintern informed the British CP of the non-aggression pact which had been made between Russia and Germany and as a result the CP changed its position and opposed the war. Pollitt’s pamphlet was withdrawn from circulation and a new one. written by Palme Dutt. was issued, arguing the opposite of that being put forward a month earlier. Pollitt was forced to apologise for having supported the war. stating that

I recognise that my action in resisting the carrying out of the line of the Communist Party and the Communist International represented an impermissible infraction of our Party’s discipline. I request the Central Committee to give me facilities to prove in deeds that I know how to take my place in the front ranks (Quoted in 1939: The Communist Party and the War, London 1984).

On 2 September 1939 the CP issued a manifesto stating that "We are in favour of all necessary measures to secure the victory of democracy over fascism ”. (Remember: until 1935 the CP did not distinguish between the two.) Then, on 7 October 1939. after a British CP delegate had returned from Moscow with instructions to oppose the war because Russia had come to terms with Germany. a new manifesto was issued stating that:

The truth about this war must be told. This war is not a war for democracy against Fascism . . . This war is a fight between imperialist powers over profits, colonies and world domination.

The CP had turned its policy on its head because of Russian foreign policy. In fact, its revised policy made more sense: the war was not about ideology and was indeed a fight between economic competitors. In June 1941 the Nazis broke the pact with Russia and Stalin became an ally of Churchill - two great defenders of democracy! Once again, the CP line changed within days and the war was no longer to be opposed, but supported. Indeed, during the war the CP urged workers to place faith in Churchill’s great leadership and was instrumental in strike-breaking in areas where workers’ trade-union action might damage the war effort.

In 1979 the CP History Group held a conference to discuss its war policy and the proceedings have been published as a book: 1939: The Communist Party and the War edited by John Attfield and Stephen Williams. The CP is evidently anxious to explain away this sorry episode in its anti-socialist history but, judging from some of the contributions, it has no option but to admit to the fact that its role has been to echo, in the most unprincipled fashion, the decisions of Kremlin dictators. Monty Johnstone - supposedly a more critical leader within the modem CP - argues (p.24) that Russia was correct to make a pact with the Nazis. Perhaps such a pact was in Russia’s interest, but is it not then necessary for the CP to point out that such an interest could have nothing to do with socialism? The slavish response of CPers to Kremlin policy was summed up by the contribution made by Eric Scott who was secretary of the High Wycombe branch of the CP in 1939: he had supported the CP's September policy and was worried when he heard that it had been changed:

. . .  I thought that this was a betrayal of the anti-fascist fight. I spent a very uncomfortable forty-eight hours scratching my head and thinking it all over, and then I said. "well, if the Soviet Union takes this attitude. I suppose we can’t do anything else but take the same attitude". (pp. 128/9)

This uncritical dogmatism, so characteristic of the British CP. explains how workers who were advocating one view at one moment adopted a completely different one the next. They were victims of their own faith in leadership from Moscow. Again, in the contribution made by the late Lon Elliott:

The Soviet Union had tremendous prestige in the Communist movement, tremendous weight in the Communist International. We all of us felt, perfectly rightly I think, that the defence of the one and only socialist state was an absolutely paramount question at the time—it was the only socialist state. It seems to me . . . that the decision of the Comintern that this was an imperialist war was decisive (pp.68/9)

Apart from the obvious nonsense of referring to Russia as a "socialist state", it is a sure indictment of the willingness of Leninists to be told what to think that a decision made by the Comintern, in response to Russian foreign policy interests, led CPers to decide how to respond to fascism. The CP’s attitude to fascism was that it should only be opposed if Stalinism was threatened — just the same as the policy of the British capitalist class who only opposed fascism when it conflicted with their national interests.

The socialist reponse

Socialists have never been in any doubt as to the crucial importance of democratic methods as a means of achieving socialism. Unlike the parties of the Right and the Left, which contemptuously use the rhetoric of democracy in order to maintain capitalism in one form or another, the Socialist Party has always accepted that a fully democratic system of society can only be brought about by thoroughly democratic tactics. For that reason socialists (while recognising that capitalism will never be fully democratic) have urged workers in countries where they lack democratic rights to obtain them for the sake of building a socialist movement. It was therefore, quite obvious that the socialist response to the fascist dictatorships was one of total opposition, firstly because they were capitalist governments, but additionally because they were anti-democratic. This hostility to fascism was not determined by political opportunism, but by clear socialist principles. In 1850 Engels wrote of the working class that

They must see now that under no circumstances have they any guarantee for bettering their social position unless by universal suffrage, which would enable them to send a majority of working men in the House of Commons (The Ten Hours Question, The Democratic Review, March 1850).

The importance of democracy for socialists was expressed in the June 1939 Socialist Standard:

Under democracy, the workers are allowed to form their own political and economic organisations and within limits, freedom of speech, of assembly, and of the press is permitted as well as the freedom of the electorate choosing between contending political parties.

This was not to say that democracy in itself was enough:

Democracy, in itself, cannot solve a single problem of the working class . . .  As long as the working class supports capitalism and capitalist policies, it will, in the long run. ultimately give its support to that policy best calculated to meet the political and economic needs of capitalism - even though that policy may be fascist.

At the time of the Spanish Civil War some members took the view that democracy had to be fought for that the war was in defence of democratic rights and deserved workers' support. This was the view of A. E. Jacomb, who had been an active founder member of the Party, and by a number of members of then then Islington branch. The vast majority of Party members rejected this attitude, understanding that

If Fascism arose in Britain, with or without war. it could only be because the British capitalists wanted it and the workers supported it or were apathetic (The Socialist Standard, January 1939).

It is not possible to terrorise workers into a respect for democracy: if they are persuaded. as they were in the fascist countries. that democracy is not worth having, then no army will succeed in imposing democracy on them. So while maintaining at all times that "We much prefer a democracy to a dictatorship" (Socialist Standard, January 1941), the Socialist Party opposed the war. pointing out in 1939. as in 1914, that the war was between capitalist rivals and was unworthy of the shedding of working-class blood. On 24 September 1939 the Socialist Party's war manifesto was published and it contained the following sound analysis:

The present conflict is represented in certain quarters as one between "freedom" and "tyranny" and for the rights of small nations.
   The Socialist Party of Great Britain is fully aware of the sufferings of German workers under Nazi rule, and wholeheartedly supports the efforts of workers everywhere to secure democratic rights against the powers of suppression. but the history of the past decades shows the futility of war as a means of safeguarding democracy.

Indeed, the history of the Second World War proved the validity of this contention for, after 1945, when the dictatorships were apparently defeated, the process began whereby more workers in Europe are living under dictatorships today than in 1939.

Fascist dictatorships today

Using the term fascism in its broadest sense, we can see that in 1986 there is no shortage of governments in the world which can be well described as such: the military dictatorships of Central and South America; the one-party states of Africa; the racism of the apartheid regime in South Africa; the centralised tyrannies of the state capitalist countries. including the Russian Empire and China. In relation to the so-called communist countries, it has been stated that:

Russia must be placed first among the new totalitarian states. It was the first to adopt the new state principle. It went furthest in its application. It was the first to establish a constitutional dictatorship, together with the political and terror system which goes with it. Adopting all the features of the total state, it thus became the model for those other countries which were forced to do away with the democratic state system and change to dictatorial rule. Russia was the example for fascism (Otto Rühle. The Struggle Against Fascism Begins With The Struggle Against Bolshevism. 1981. p.5; originally published in 1939).

These days it is popular for those on the Left to attack the openly capitalist tyrannies, such as the monstrous regime in racist South Africa, while making apologies for equally dictatorial governments such as the one in Poland which uses thugs to beat trade unionists with truncheons and incarcerates dissenters in prisons. At the same time the Right wingers are very articulate when it comes to showing the undemocratic nature of the state capitalist countries, which are military and trade rivals of the Western nations but close their eyes to the overtly capitalist tyrannies. Socialists are alone in our total and equal hostility to all dictatorships. We are on the side of the workers in Russia and South Africa, Chile and China against their oppressors. We point out that only class-conscious workers can make full use of democracy but democracy must be obtained in order to build a movement of class-conscious workers.

Like in the 1930s, when the so-called democratic politicians in Britain were not that averse to fascist tactics, we know that the leaders who make a great noise about how democratic they are today could adopt more ruthless and dictatorial methods tomorrow. During the coal strike we saw all too dearly how readily these "Democrats" who rule over us will suspend rights, such as the freedom of movement within Britain, when it is to their advantage in the class war. The fact is that as long as workers follow leaders whose job is to run capitalism we are all the victims of power which is above us: the dictatorship of capital tyrannises us. whether it is wearing the mask of democracy or not.

The way to counter the racist nonsense with which British fascists today poison the minds of workers is not for us to become more capable thugs but to present a clear, practical alternative to the frustration bred by the system. Fascism is part of the messy business of running capitalism; only socialists. with our principled case for social revolution, offer workers a weapon which will blow fascism and capitalism from the face of the earth.

Steve Coleman

Commerce and Cancer (1986)

Book Review from the February 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cancer in Britain: the politics of prevention. Lesley Doyal (Editor). Pluto Press. £5.95.

This book is a sequel to Epstein's influential The Politics of Cancer and examines the dangers to health of carcinogens in industry, food additives, tobacco, environmental pollution, drugs such as female sex hormones and oral and injectable contraceptives in Britain.

Cancer is regarded by the authors as a preventable disease and they are critical of the curative emphasis that dominates most research, pointing out that the rates of cure for most major cancers have improved only slightly in the last 30 years. There are marked differences in the cancer rates of urban and rural areas, with very high rates of lung and stomach cancer in the industrialised inner-city areas — a pattern previously observed in the United States. The major cancers are common among semi-skilled and unskilled workers, particularly men, probably reflecting in part their greater exposure to occupational carcinogens.

The authors explain that there are two distinct approaches to cancer causation — the "establishment" approach which argues that occupational cancers cause less than 5 per cent of all cancers and resists attempts at regulation of industry, claiming that people's "life-styles" are responsible; and the "radical" approach which argues that 20-40 per cent of cancers are work-related and aims at better health and safety measures at work.

A comprehensive account is provided of the dangers of working with carcinogens; how industry resists attempts to make working conditions safer and how comparatively few people are able to obtain compensation once they have developed cancer through their work. The difficulty of regulating industry is increased by the manufacturers' secrecy, although as ASTMS have pointed out:

The chemical companies have no secrets from one another: each can analyse the product of its rivals within hours in an analytical laboratory. The real object of "commercial secrecy" is to keep information out of the hands of the unions, (page 38)

The pursuit of profit, not lack of knowledge, lies behind the failure to make the working environment safer. There are, for example, about 2.000 asbestos-induced deaths each year and although a Home Office report pointed out the dangers as long ago as 1906, regulations to control the levels of asbestos dust were not introduced until 1932.

The most flagrant examples of commercial interests influencing the regulation of dangerous substances can be seen in the case of the pesticides aldrin and dieldrin, which are banned in the United States but used and manufactured exclusively in Britain, and chlordane and heptachlor which are restricted in Britain but made and used in the United States. The failure of successive governments to regulate the tobacco industry and prevent the 50,000 deaths a year caused, at least in part, by smoking is influenced by the £4,000 million received every year from tobacco tax. The book points out that “. . . the financially precarious newspaper industry earns more than £30 million each year from advertising, a fact reflected in the consistent refusal of newspapers to criticise the industry or to support campaigns for stricter regulation" (page 81).

Perhaps the most tragic aspect of the use of carcinogens has been in the treatment of pregnant women with diethylstilboestrol, mainly in the 1950s. The drug actually increased miscarriages and baby deaths instead of preventing them, caused abnormalities in the offspring and an increase in the incidence of breast cancer.

In a chapter devoted to fighting the causes of cancer it is stated that "The problem is inherent in the nature and priorities of a society in which the profit motive is predominant" (page 147). Reformist measures such as campaigning for a Freedom of Information Act and more public participation in decisions are advocated and are doomed to failure under capitalism because of their effects on profitability. Socialism is not mentioned.

Nevertheless, despite its faults, this book is well researched, well referenced and provides a lot of useful information about how one-fifth of us will die prematurely to provide profits for capitalism.

Carl Pinel

It's not in our genes (1986)

From the February 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following article first appeared in the Summer 1984 issue of The Daily Battle, published in Berkeley, California. We republish it. in a slightly abridged form, not only because it is a clear exposition of what we too would say on the same subject. but also as yet another example of how capitalist conditions are continually throwing up socialist ideas.

If you believe the classic movie 2001, our existence as humans began when an ape picked up a weapon. War, greed, and selfish behaviour of all sorts are often explained as being inherent features of our species. Recent scientific findings, however, have dispelled many such widely-held beliefs regarding “human nature", beliefs promoted by the media and other social institutions. We are not the descendants of a "killer ape" species. In fact, our human ancestors were primarily gatherers who occasionally hunted, and who lived co-operatively for some two million years. In many places, such a lifestyle remained prevalent until recent conquest by Western civilisation. A few tribes in Africa (e.g. Namibia's Kung), the Amazon and the Philippines still live this way. Even today's alienated societies show instances of human co-operation. Aggressive behaviour, warfare, competition, property and hierarchy did not mark human behaviour until the advent of fixed settlements some 10-20.000 years ago. These traits did not become dominant in any region till only some 10,000 years ago. (See Leakey, The Making of Mankind; Gribbin. Genesis.)

The first people to turn to farming did so because they encountered an increasing shortage of gatherable goods and game. They had to work long days just to produce their own food. So began the concept of private property. This situation of scarcity resulted in certain modes of behaviour becoming prevalent, and fixed as social values. The Judeo-Christian-Western tradition is loaded with these ideals of sacrifice, hierarchy and competition for the goodies, often reflected in competition for the graces of gods. Scarcity also meant that things could not be freely shared, but had to be exchanged for equivalents. The early agricultural societies also made necessary the institution of the state, whose function was, and still is, the protection of a region's social order from internal and external threats.

Over the years, people's ability to meet their needs via agriculture and industry has generally undergone vast improvements with the development of new techniques and tools. Social systems also changed with these new abilities as slavery was replaced by feudalism, itself displaced by capitalism. Incidental exchanges of goods and services along tribal boundaries have mushroomed into a world-wide interdependent fabric. A car "made in America" often has a Japanese engine. German alternator. French tyres, and raw materials from five continents.

With a growth of productivity and trade, money evolved over the past 3,000 years as a medium to facilitate the growing number of exchanges. Money could be exchanged for any good or service, and hence became the most desired object (the ultimate fetish). During the 18th century, individuals with large sums of money began to buy tools and other people's time and capacity to work. At this point, a person's daily requirements to survive as a worker could be produced in less than a full working day. Since the paid workers worked a full day, the commodities they produced beyond the equivalent to their survival needs represented a surplus. The buyers of labour-power could take this surplus and turn it into money through exchange. Hence, profits. profits which could be used to further enlarge the money pool. Money utilised in such a self-expanding way is capital.

By definition, capital needs to grow, to accumulate. Its interests in this regard are represented by real people who undertake actions to ensure the accumulation process continues. Some are owners, others are corporate managers working for faceless stockowners. and others are state bureaucrats. (The Soviet Union is really only the world's largest corporation.)

Our present-day capabilities, intelligently used, could enable each one of us to work fewer than 10 hours a week to produce our basic survival needs, (e.g. food, clothing, shelter, utilities, transportation) as a mid 60s' study by the Goodman Brothers showed. Another recent study by the University of Sussex demonstrated the world could feed twice its present population using existing farmlands. The last 10,000 years may indeed be visualised as a bridge between the pre-scarcity era to the post-scarcity age. But nearly all this capacity is being wasted, and, even worse, used in ways that threaten our survival, because meeting human needs is only incidental to capital's progress.

We're stuck with a social organisation which lags behind material reality. Hence, we see farmers destroying food in order to push prices upward, while millions starve. Meanwhile. Soviet planners push nuclear power technology, even though 1935 housing targets are unmet. And Third World farmers are forced to cut down life-supporting tropical rain forests in order to earn a miserly income. Furthermore, most of those who work in the US and elsewhere in the industrial world do not produce needs, but are busy facilitating the exchange of money or its circulation (cashiers, bank tellers, book keepers, ad agency workers). A large part of your phone bill consists of expenses incurred in the billing process.

Many who do produce needs see the results of their energy used to pay off parasitic money lenders, institutions whose existence depends on the money system. Several nations in Latin America spend their trade earnings just on interest payments. Much of what is produced in the world is designed to fall apart (planned obsolescence), or corresponds to artificially-created-and-sustained needs (advertising).

The modem state still defends the social order from within and without. Hordes of social workers, cops and clerks guard against internal disorders and keep the gears oiled. At home, as well as on the battlefields of the world market, the military and its support industries provide the ultimate defence of the "national interest," the general interest of a nation's capital, be it the US, USSR, Nicaragua, Israel or India. A social order which normally threatens us with death through terminal boredom and slow toxic poisoning now threatens total annihilation.

Neither Democrats, Republicans, "socialist" parties, nor the Soviet-led state-capitalist bloc, are interested in basically altering the world's social structure (and we're not just talking reforms). They merely debate about ways of improving national economic performance, i.e. the performance of a nation as capital on the world market. Jesse Jackson and Ronald Reagan, portrayed as on opposite ends of the political spectrum, both agree the "economy" must be made to perform well and the Persian Gulf must be defended. Also defending their economies are France's "socialist" president Mitterrand. Nicaragua's Sandinista commandantes. and the Soviet Central Committee (which talks of improving profits).

The American left's long-range programme merely calls for public control of investment decisions, still treating productive resources as capital, a sum of money or its equivalent, which must be utilised so as to yield more money. For now. most leftists (Democratic Socialists of America. Leninist sects) would be happy with govemment-corporate-labour co-ordination for the national interest. And why not? Most of them are professionals by background or aspirations. They tend to accept commodity exchange, capital investment, wage labour, hierarchy and the state — the blood and guts of this society — as necessary features of modem society. Many also have hierarchic ambitions. They are thus unable and/or unwilling to see beyond the present. They label those who want more fundamental changes "unrealistic" and their own programme "the politics of the possible". But how realistic is it to expect the world system to continue for very long without terminating human life or to expect capitalist production to meet human needs?

Many forces are at work against such a transformation. Religion, prejudices and other superstitions incapacitate people in the face of life-threatening crises, by keeping alive the values of an era whose material foundations — scarcity and lack of information — have crumbled long ago. Common nonsense ideas such as the innate aggressiveness of humans are laughable among most researchers, but are still widely held, and widely promoted by the media, religion and other institutions. Most people conceive of possible societies only from the spectrum which stretches from the USA to the USSR. And cynicism about social change runs rampant.

It will take hard work to shovel out all  bullshit. The newly-available facts about human history must be disseminated beyond academic circles. Information about past and present movements that have gone beyond the "possible” should be widely circulated so that real alternatives can be seen as attainable. Concepts and misconceptions should be critically challenged. For example, Marx's analysis focused on the relations between people, and aimed at the abolition of the economy. This means the abolition of exchange and wage labour and the assumption of control of the globe's resources by the world's population as a whole. Yet, today, most analysts, "Marxists" included, regard "Marxism" as yet another economic prescription whose goal is improved national economic performance.

The revolutionary tradition itself must be demystified. We need wide discussions on bringing about rapid and massive social change. Communications between interested people, hopefully leading to co-ordinated activities, should be our top priority. Neither we, nor anyone else has all the answers. This paper is a modest contribution to such a process. We hope to see more monkey wrenches tossed into the machine, eventually to be used to take it apart and put something else together. Have no illusions. The going will be rough, but social revolution is the only game in town, besides ecocide and World War III. Let's break on through to the other side.

Capitalism and aircraft (1986)

Cover cartoon by George Meddemmen.

From the February 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the history of capitalism comes to be written, there will be very little mention in it of Michael Heseltine or Leon Brittan. The dispute between these two ambitious politicians may be represented to us now as a momentous clash of the titans, vital to us all, and that may well be how they themselves like to think of it. Perhaps in the end one or the other will find himself in Number Ten. None of these things changes the fact that this whole affair is of no real concern to the vast majority of people - which is what the history of capitalism will be all about.

That is not to say, of course, that there are not a lot of people who are presently interested in the contest between these two. Spurred on by the assiduous efforts of the capitalist media, there can now be very few members of the working class who have not heard of them. Whatever difficulty they may have in following the serpentine proceedings of the Cabinet, the ministries and the civil service, has not prevented many workers taking sides. Some argue that Heseltine deserves support for his opposition to an American take-over bid for a British firm, for his exposure of some dirty tricks in the government and of Thatcher's overbearing style of leadership. Others may have sympathy for Brittan’s adoption of a lofty refusal (he has claimed) to use his position as a minister to influence the take-over and to insist that the matter be left to the Westland shareholders, who know best how to protect their dividends.

It is impossible to say how many rush-hour bus queues have been disrupted by violent arguments between workers who don't have shares in Westland, or in any other company, about how best to look after the dividends of those who do. This is not an entirely fanciful notion, for workers do persistently take sides in such matters, in which they have no interest. They do this every time they complain about cheap foreign imports competing "unfairly'' with "their" goods on the British market, or when they get worried about a fall in the exchange rate of the pound or when and this is probably the most tragic example of all - they join in militarily protecting the investments and other interests of their ruling class.

Those types of uninformed prejudice will have been warmed by Heseltine's stand against the American bid for Westland. British workers are inclined to be a touch paranoid about invading American capital. It is difficult to unravel the reason for this; after all, American capitalists are no different from any others, who all have the same function - to organise and apply the most intensive possible exploitation of the workers they employ. Perhaps it is not unconnected with that period of Labour government just after the war. when British working class poverty was abruptly renamed post-war austerity which was, we were told, partly caused by the economic, commercial and financial domination of American capitalism. But that particular propaganda was no more than a convenient, opportunistic explanation for that particular period of capitalism in crisis. There have been many such crises since then, each one with its one spurious explanation the gnomes of Zurich, inflation. Arab oil sheiks - to divert attention from the basic fact that crisis is endemic to capitalism and that the system can't operate efficiently or to the benefit of the majority.

At the time of that Labour government there was, of course, still a British aircraft industry with ambitions to outsell American products. For some years British aircraft were successful competitors (and some were disastrous flops the Britannia, the Princess flying boat) until the massive power and investment of the American industry made itself felt. The last significant clash was in the 1950s between the DeHaviland Comet and the Boeing 707. Patriotic British workers sneeringly contrasted the Comet's sleek lines with its rival's chunkiness and assumed that the aircraft's appearance would have some effect on its profitability. But, as time has shown, the American industry had in fact developed the most economic - which meant, for the airline owners, the most profitable - design and the matter was settled when the Comets began to break up in the air. with such calamitous results for the passengers as well as for the aircraft industry in this country.

There were other spasms of life after that, such as the shorter-haul Trident and the VC10 and desperate governmental intervention brought about mergers in an effort to build a more concentratedly competitive industry. None of this worked, against the remorseless power of the American companies. principally Boeing. In any world sense, the British aircraft industry no longer exists and what there is of it is a truncated, cobbled-up patchwork of mergers and joint design projects with foreign companies. Westland is the latest example of this; unable to live much longer through its own competitiveness, it had to merge or go down.

British workers may not enjoy this, bombarded as they are with persistent propaganda about the "national'' interest, the need to keep "our" exports outselling all others and so on. Those who are convinced that they have a stake in the enterprise which buys their labour power, who therefore feel a common loyalty with the owners of the enterprise which actually exploits them to produce surplus value, are prey to all manner of social delusions. But the story of the collapse of the British aircraft industry bears witness to the capitalist reality that wealth, whether it is food or clothes or helicopters, is produced with the motive of sale at a profit. If there is no prospect of that sale then the motive for production disappears; the factories shut down and workers are thrown out of employment. There is much woe in the land and much cursing of scapegoats like American investors or foreign currency speculators. All of which misses the point. Westland's problems have nothing to do with any lack of human need for helicopters which, although at present extensively used as weapons of war have many obvious values to human beings and will be used in these ways when we have a society operated on the basis of human interests. The problems reflect the limited capacity of the market, which is the overall scope for the profitable sale of the machines. It is the market which interests the shareholders; they have invested capital in Westland in order to realise profit, not to produce things which are useful to human beings. If profit comes more readily from making helicopters as killing machines, so much the better for the investors; at present the big market is the military one. which goes some way to explain the government's inevitable interest in any take-over plans.

Which brings us back to that odious pair Heseltine and Brittan. In representing their clash as of great moment to us all they have avoided all mention of the basic issues about why and how helicopters are made, about how this society operates, about the class division between the useful producers and the parasitic owners and about the role of politicians in keeping this whole sordid deception whirling round and round. No, they will not attract a lot of mention in the history of capitalism. That can be written only when we have a saner, more humane social system, which means when the world's people have seen through to the realities of capitalism and the cynical posturings of its leaders.

Ivan

Between the Lines: Prejudice on parade (1986)

The Between the Lines Column from the February 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Prejudice on parade

British TV does not have a good record when it comes to racism. In what passes for comedy the reference to offensively racialist stereotypes has made many a performer afford his first Rolls Royce; unfunny "stars" of the Jim Davidson category find it easier to get a laugh out of imitating the accent of an immigrant than to point at some of the truly laughable contradictions which capitalism throws up. The drama departments are not much better: when was the last time you saw a peak-time non-European or American play on TV - and if you can remember, is that not because the occurrence is so rare?

Even attempts to portray black lives on TV. such as C4's comedy series. No Problem, over-emphasised and parodied the blackness of the characters, as if the only justification for showing the black character on TV can be the experiences associated with the colour of his skin. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when West Indian immigration into Britain was initiated on a large scale, the BBC made several deeply patronising documentaries about what were then referred to as "coloured people" (as if the rest of us are colourless).

As time passed, racism became inconvenient for the ruling class: it has its uses in dividing workers against one another, but the conflicts engendered by race prejudice are now regarded as an interference with the smooth-running of modern capitalism. It is for this reason that TV has in recent times become a little more sensitive when it comes to racism. 1986 began with two programmes which did more than anything I have seen on TV before to explain racism. The American Documentary (Sunday, 5 January. ITV) showed a film of an experiment conducted by an American elementary school teacher on a class of white children. She began asking them what they thought of blacks and most of them gave the conditioned answers expected from those who have been prejudiced by an all-white environment.

Her contention was that the only way to teach children to reject prejudice is for them to experience it. She divided the class into those with blue eyes (the superiors) and those with brown eyes (the inferiors). The blues were allowed to go out to play before the browns; browns were not to be spoken to by blues as they would be a bad influence on them; browns had to drink from special paper cups and wear brown collars as symbols of what they were. It was not long before the blue- eyed children assumed the role of social superiors. The brown-eyed children were seen to suffer and feel resentment. The following day the roles were reversed.

Two observations by the teacher who conducted the experiment were especially worthy of note: firstly, that spelling tests conducted during the course of the experiment showed children in the inferior group to produce below-average results, whereas those who were told that they were special achieved above-average results. This not only helps to explain how it is that those groups which society expects to achieve less tend to achieve less, but also that once people are told that they are special they are likely to achieve more than we would normally expect. A socialist society will be free from the educationally bogus categories of "black" or "white" or "kids" or "disabled" and the many other meaningless categories through which learning expectations are based on gender or "race" or parental occupation; learners will all be treated as important people and can therefore be expected to learn faster.

Secondly, the teacher observed how before the experiment the children she taught were such a lovable bunch of people who did not think of discriminating against each other; once conditioned to be prejudiced, even she was frightened by the ferocity of the conflict which emerged. Does this not demonstrate that antagonism is not inherent in human beings - it is not "human nature" - but has to be taught, conditioned, injected like poison into the minds.

Both the teacher and the documentary-makers seemed to accept the naïve notion that teaching workers to be victims of racism can eradicate racism. No doubt such an exercise can help to change ideas, but the tragedy is that capitalism breeds division and hatred as fast as idealists try to spread fraternity and there will be no eliminating racism until the material conditions which produce it are removed.

A second, equally good, stab at racism was shown in a Horizon programme entitled Are You A Racist? (Monday, 6 January. BBC2). The programme's makers placed adverts in newspapers asking for those who were racists and those who have been the victims of racism to reply. Of hundreds of replies they selected four of each category and put them in a country house for five days to explore their ideas. The result not only made compelling viewing (TV producers are slow to learn that there is little more exciting to watch than the tension created by the honest exchange of ideas), but also helped viewers to observe the inability of the racists to use rational arguments in the defence of their cause.

During the five days one of the racists changed her mind and rejected her original ideas; another spent his time in what appeared to be a condition of dazed drug-overdose (he was either very tired and was using the chance to catch up with some rest or else he was a slow thinker); the third racist, a woman from Peckham who claimed to have been mugged by blacks, held tight to her prejudice which she was utterly incapable of articulating, beyond the fact that whatever she was told she would not change her mind. The fourth racist, an exceptionally nasty bigot called Tom (described the following day as "eloquent" and "reasonable" by the TV critic of The Daily Telegraph). provided a fascinating insight into the difficulty faced by the racist - indeed, any dogmatist - in responding to ideas which contradict what they want to believe.

Tom's problem was not just that he held absurd. offensive views about other people being inferior because of their skin colour but that he could not understand why. He talked, but he listened little and heard less. Why could he not hear ideas which opposed his own? Perhaps because ideology — ideas which do not arise out of real experience, but out of imagined experience — can only be maintained by repressing the ability to be self-critical. Perhaps one day a similar documentary will be made in which four socialists and four anti-socialists are put in a house for five days to discover why they think as they do. In the end, how else can you defend the absurdities of capitalism except by struggling to protect your mind from the force of logical analysis?

Just like a Tory

BBC2's series called Comrades (Sundays) has offered British workers a peep into the Russian Empire. If it has shown nothing else it has demonstrated that Russian life has nothing to do with socialism — a classless, stateless, moneyless social system — and that state capitalism is just as bad, or worse, than capitalism in Britain. The programme on Sunday. 6 January portrayed a Communist Party official in a Pacific port town. What was notable about this woman was not that her ideas were advanced or revolutionary or inspiring (they were not), but that she was so similar to a typical politician in Britain. As one watched her at a CP-organised dinner dance, entertaining some visiting Japanese business men, it was remarkable just how much like a British Tory councillor she was.

Similarly, the section of the programme showing her sitting in her weekly surgery trying to sort out the difficulties of local workers overcrowded housing and all the usual problems — it was striking just how easily that could be any British inner-city with any politician sitting behind a desk giving the same tired excuses and promising in the same sterile way to "get something sorted out". And to think that some workers look to Russia as the place where capitalism has been transcended; they have only to watch their screens to see that the same old capitalist problems are there, with the same old capitalist leaders trying to brush them under the (red) carpet.

Steve Coleman