About Socialism (1988)

From the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

1. What is the Socialist Party of Great Britain?
It is a political party, separate from all others, Left, Right or Centre. It stands for the sole aim of establishing a world social system based upon human need instead of private or state profit. The Object and Declaration of Principles printed in this introductory leaflet were adopted by the Socialist Party in 1904 and have been maintained without compromise since then. In other countries there are companion parties sharing the same object and principles, and they too remain independent from all other political parties.

2. What is capitalism?
Capitalism is the social system which now exists in all countries of the world. Under this system, the means of production and distribution (land, factories, offices, transport, media, etc.) are monopolised by a minority, the capitalist class. All wealth is produced by us, the majority working class, who sell our mental and physical energies to the capitalists in return for a price called a wage or salary. The object of wealth production is to create goods and services which can be sold on the market at a profit. Not only do the capitalists live off the profits they obtain from exploiting the working class, but, as a class, they go on accumulating wealth extracted from each generation of workers.

3. Can capitalism be reformed in our interests?
No: as long as capitalism exists, profits will come before needs. Some reforms are welcomed by some workers, but no reform can abolish the fundamental contradiction between profit and need which is built into the present system. No matter whether promises to make capitalism run in the interests of the workers are made sincerely or by opportunist politicians they are bound to fail, for such a promise is like offering to run the slaughter house in the interests of the cattle.

4. Is nationalisation an alternative to capitalism?
No: nationalised industries simply mean that workers are exploited by the state, acting on behalf of the capitalists of one country, rather than by an individual capitalist or company. The workers in nationalised British Leyland are no less the servants of profit than workers in privately-owned Ford. The mines no more belong to "the public" or the miners now than they did before 1947 when they were nationalised. Nationalisation is state capitalism.

5. Are there any “socialist countries”?
No: the so-called socialist countries are systems of state capitalism. In Russia and its empire, in China, Cuba, Albania, Yugoslavia and the other countries which call themselves socialist, social power is monopolised by privileged Party bureaucrats. The features of capitalism, as outlined above, are all present. An examination of international commerce shows that the bogus socialist states are part of the world capitalist market and cannot detach themselves from the requirements of profit.

6. What Is the meaning of socialism?
Socialism does not yet exist. When it is established it must be on a worldwide basis, as an alternative to the outdated system of world capitalism. In a socialist society there will be common ownership and democratic control of the earth by its inhabitants. No minority class will be in a position to dictate to the majority that production must be geared to profit. There will be no owners: everything will belong to everyone. Production will be solely for use, not for sale. The only questions society will need to ask about wealth production will be: what do people require, and can the needs be met? These questions will be answered on the basis of the resources available to meet such needs. Then, unlike now, modern technology and communications will be able to be used to their fullest extent. The basic socialist principle will be that people give according to their abilities and take according to their self- defined needs. Work will be on the basis of voluntary co-operation: the coercion of wage and salary work will be abolished. There will be no buying or selling and money will not be necessary, in a society of common ownership and free access. For the first time ever the people of the world will have common possession of the planet earth.

7. How will socialism solve the problems of society?
Capitalism, with its constant drive to serve profit before need, throws up an endless stream of problems. Most workers in Britain feel insecure about their future; almost one in four families with children living below the official government poverty line; many old people live in dangerously cold conditions each winter and thousands die; millions of our fellow men and women are dying of starvation — tens of thousands of them each day. A society based on production for use will end those problems because the priority of socialist society will be the fullest possible satisfaction of needs. At the moment food is destroyed and farmers are subsidised not to produce more: yet many millions are malnourished. At the moment hospital queues are growing longer and people are dying of curable illnesses; yet it is not "economically viable" to provide decent health treatment for all. In a socialist society nothing short of the best will be good enough for any human being.

8. What about human nature?
Human behaviour is not fixed, but determined by the kind of society people are conditioned to live in. The capitalist jungle produces vicious, competitive ways of thinking and acting. But we humans are able to adapt our behaviour and there is no reason why our rational desire for comfort and human welfare should not allow us to co-operate. Even under capitalism people often obtain pleasure from doing a good turn for others; few people enjoy participating in the "civilised" warfare of the daily rat-race. Think how much better it would be if society was based on co-operation.

9. Are socialists democrats?
Yes: the Socialist Party has no leaders. It is a democratic organisation controlled by its members. It understands that Socialism can only be established by a conscious majority of workers — that workers must liberate themselves and will not be liberated by leaders or parties. Socialism will not be brought about by a dedicated minority "smashing the state", as some left-wingers would have it. Nor do the activities of paid, professional politicians have anything to do with Socialism — the experience of seven Labour governments has shown this. Once a majority of the working class understand and want Socialism, they will take the necessary step to organise consciously for the democratic conquest of political power. There will be no Socialism without a socialist majority.

10. What is the next step?
Many workers know that there is something wrong and want to change society. Some join reform groups in the hope that capitalism can be patched up, but such efforts are futile because you cannot run a system of class exploitation in the interests of the exploited majority. People who fear a nuclear war may join CND. but as long as nation states exist, economic rivalry means that the world will never be safe from the threat of war. There are countless dedicated campaigns and good causes which many sincere people are caught up in, but there is only one solution to the problems of capitalism and that is to get rid of it, and establish Socialism. Before we can do that we need socialists; winning workers to that cause requires knowledge, principles and an enthusiasm for change. These qualities can be developed by anyone — and are essential for anyone who is serious about changing society. Capitalism in the 1980s is still a system of waste, deprivation and frightening insecurity. You owe it to yourself to find out about the one movement which stands for the alternative.


If you have read this set of principles and agree with some or all of them, contact the Socialist Party with your questions and ideas about what you can do to help speed the progress towards Socialism.

Breaking up black families (1988)

From the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Tories like to pride themselves on being "the party of the family" and yet there is a government Bill currently going through Parliament that is designed to keep families apart. The families in question are, however, black, and this government — like others before it — does not have quite the same enthusiasm for black families as it does for white, especially when family unity is to be achieved by more black people coming to live in Britain.

The legislation in question is the latest Immigration Bill — a nasty racist act which the Home Secretary describes as making "sensible and limited changes" to the 1971 Immigration Act. and which Timothy Renton. Home Office Minister of State, tried to downplay by calling it a "modest Bill" which would deal with "anomalies" and "loopholes" in immigration law.

In fact, this so-called modest, loophole-plugging Bill will remove the legal right of British men marrying foreign wives to bring their wives and children to live in this country. This overturns a guarantee made in the 1971 Immigration Act that all male Commonwealth citizens settled in Britain before 1973 could bring their wives and children under sixteen to live with them here. In future any man applying for his wife and children to join him in Britain will have to pass two tests. First he will have to show that he can support and house his family without claiming benefits. Secondly, he will have to prove that the "primary purpose" of his marriage was not to secure right of entry or abode to Britain for his wife. In addition, rights of appeal against deportation will be curtailed. At present anyone who stays in Britain longer than the time permitted on their visa and who is threatened with deportation, can appeal against the decision on compassionate grounds — for example, that their family is here. A clause in the new Bill removes this right of appeal in cases where it is less than seven years since the person last entered Britain. In other words someone could lose their right of appeal if they have left Britain to go to France for the weekend at any time in the previous seven years.

Similarly, another clause will make it a criminal offence to stay in Britain beyond the time stipulated on a visa and again, there will be no rights of appeal against a deportation order on compassionate grounds.

Ironically this Bill is. in part, a consequence of a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that the 1971 Immigration Act was discriminatory towards women since British and Commonwealth men could bring their wives and children to Britain but women could not bring their husbands. Instead of increasing rights by making them equally available to women, the government is now complying with that ruling by withdrawing rights from men. The law is no longer to be sexist but will it be racist?

In theory the new immigration law will apply equally to all British men, black or white, who marry foreign women. In practice, however, a white man who wishes to marry a white woman from abroad is unlikely to encounter obstacles — provided he is not unemployed or homeless. This is, after all, an immigration Bill and as the gutter press knows only too well, immigrant means, in effect, black immigrant; it does not refer to those Americans, Canadians, Australians or Western Europeans who settle here.

For some families the effects of this "modest" Bill will be devastating. Where women are refused permission to join their husbands in Britain the family is likely to remain separated. Even where an application is successful it will mean even more people having to go through the months — and often years — of tortuous and degrading bureaucracy and investigation by immigration officials. The new legislation will give these officials even more rights to question couples about their marital and family life in order to try to trip them up about the "primary purpose" of their marriage.

The Bill also contains a catch-22 clause. In order to satisfy the requirements of the legislation, a man wanting to bring his wife and children to Britain must show not only that he can support them financially, but also that he can provide adequate accommodation for them. A man seeking council accommodation to house his family will be confronted by the problem that no local authority will give him a house large enough to accommodate his family until they have arrived in this country. But their application to come will not be granted until he can satisfy immigration officials that he has a home for them.

Making overstaying a visa a criminal offence is also likely to have profound effects not only on those directly affected but also on most blacks. It is quite possible that blacks will be even more subject to police harassment as the police will be able to argue that they were justified in stopping and searching a black person since they suspected that he or she might be in breach of the immigration laws. In other words all blacks are likely to be treated as "suspect persons".

Who is it that the government is so anxious to exclude from Britain? The main group of dependants still applying to come to Britain to join their husbands is from Bangladesh. Bangladeshi men were the last group of people to come to Britain in any number without already having family here. These men are now seeking to bring their families to join them. However, the numbers are not large: in 1986 the total number of immigrants from the Indian sub-continent was just 3,000. But then, despite the rhetoric, it is not the numbers that the government is worried about — no restrictions are placed on the three to nine million, mostly white. Commonwealth citizens who retain an absolute right to settle here because they have at least one British-born parent. In the long term the government is anxious to prevent young men of Asian origin, born or brought up in Britain, from bringing wives into the country from the Asian sub-continent, as they currently have a right to.

Taken together with other changes to the immigration rules and the tougher stance taken in the treatment of refugees seeking asylum in Britain, this latest piece of immigration legislation is just one more measure that, despite the sentimental attitude towards the family in government rhetoric, will separate families, cause hardship and suffering, and will further help to fuel and legitimate popular racism, which, like national boundaries. passports, visas and immigration officials, serves only to divide the world s workers.

Janie Percy-Smith

Debate: Is there common ground between socialists and anarchists? (1988)

Letters to the Editors from the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

  The article "Socialism versus anarchism" which we published in the Socialist Standard of October 1987 provoked an interesting response. The theme was, briefly, that the article did not deal thoroughly enough with its subject and that there is much common ground between anarchists and socialists on which both viewpoints can be profitably debated. We publish two letters, with our comments.  First, John Crump argues that to attack anarchism is to give credence to a mirage; the only thing all "anarchists" have in common is their opposition to the state.

Dear Editors,

In the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard, there appeared an article by LEW on "Socialism versus anarchism”. Might I make one or two comments?

First, on a purely factual level, can LEW kindly provide evidence for his statement that Kropotkin "supported the Bolshevik revolution until his death in 1921"?

Second, I would suggest that in attacking anarchism. LEW is giving credence to a mirage. Those who are popularly regarded as "anarchists" have only one characteristic in common opposition to the state. Mere opposition to the state does not constitute an "-ism", however, particularly when supposed "anarchists" can range from supporters of capitalist laissez-faire to advocates of a communist social organisation. This point can best be illustrated by considering "statism", as the opposite of "anarchism". Would it make sense to label indiscriminately all who see a role for the state as "statists"? Since such a category would range from defenders of capitalism, such as Margaret Thatcher, to advocates of communism, such as the SPGB. it would clearly have no more value than LEW’S catch-all rubric of "anarchism".

Third. LEW devoted the overwhelming majority of his article to Stirner. Proudhon and Bakunin. Yet the most important characteristic these three shared was not their "anarchism", but the fact that their ideas were compatible with capital accumulation and the wages system. Of course, it is a question of "socialism versus anarchism" when "anarchism" is represented by such a selection of pro-capitalist ideologues, but LEW then extends the argument (quite unjustifiably. in my view) as follows:

  Even with "anarcho-communists" like Kropotkin, the apparent similarities between his view of anarchist society and socialism should not blind us to the differences of approach.

What is "apparent" about these similarities? Kropotkin, like the SPGB, stood for a new society without money, wages, classes, or the state. Not only do such similarities seem a good deal more real than apparent, but in an article which makes frequent reference to Marx, would it not be appropriate to mention that on some questions which the SPGB regards as crucial, Kropotkin had a clearer understanding than Marx? For example, did not Kropotkin's criticism of Marx's ideas on labour vouchers in the “first phase of communist society" (see The Conquest of Bread, chapter 13) precede the SPGB's similar rejection of this method of distribution by several decades?

Finally, LEW argued that:

  . . . unless anarchists recognise the necessity for democratic revolutionary political action based on socialist understanding, they will never achieve a stateless society.

As far as achieving a stateless society is concerned, all we have to go on is the empirical evidence. The SPGB's parliamentary approach has brought it scant success after more than 80 years, and the anarcho-communists have equally little to show for their efforts after more than 100 years. My own view is that the question of how we achieve the new society will be settled by the millions of men and women who will be the architects of the new world. It is just as pointless to attempt to lay down a blueprint now for the means of achieving the new society as it is to formulate a blueprint for the precise workings of that society. Our task here and now is to play our part in winning people over from a capitalist way of looking at the world to a communist way. The SPGB has a role to play here — and so have the anarcho-communists. I know this from personal experience, since both these currents influenced me on my way to becoming a communist.

Yours for communism.

John Crump 

University of York

 Second, PC objects that our article failed to deal with the range of anarchist thought and that there is such similarity between the viewpoints of socialists and anarchists that we should be debating with each other rather than standing in opposition.

Dear Editors,

Your article in October's Standard entitled "Socialism versus anarchism" does little to dispel the misunderstandings that seem regularly to accompany a discussion on the subject of anarchist ideology. The writer of the article made little effort to deal with the vast range of anarchist thought on his chosen subjects, nor did he make reference to any developments in ideas that have taken place since 1876. when the last of his "victims" died; nor is he apologetic — indeed, his denial that his discussion is "not over dead men's bones" leads one eventually to conclude that it is precisely so, for the sake of his argument.

The three anarchists he deals with — Stirner. Proudhon and Bakunin — are all open to criticism and the author points this out with example and justification. However, while these three have had an undeniable influence on anarchist theory over the years, they certainly cannot be said to be necessarily representative of anarchists today.

Anarchists, like socialists, are imaginative people, and it requires little speculation that their beliefs and theories are as numerous as they. Books on anarchism by Miller, Guerin, Woodcock and Joll concede that their subject defies definition. As Miller says:

  Of all the major ideologies confronting the student of politics, anarchism must be the hardest to pin down. It resists straightforward definition. It is amorphous and full of paradoxes and contradictions.

Yet there is one main thread that runs through all anarchist thought — the love and pursuit of freedom. From it springs all the ideas that are most readily associated with anarchy: the abolition of authority and property; along with an unjustifiable reputation for violence born of the means by which a well-publicised minority have pursued their cause.

This century, however, has seen a number of anarchists developing theories as to the means of attaining freedom that have not been mentioned by your author.

For example, in contrast to Stirner's egoism, a line of anarchist thought stretching beyond Stirner's time has considered indispensable the need for social organisation and solidarity among all people. The train of debate includes Voline, who wrote: "Of course, say the anarchists, society must be organised. However, the new organisation . . . must be established freely, socially and, most of all, from below". And Malatesta, who said:

  Social solidarity is a fact . . . it can be freely and consciously accepted and in consequence benefit all concerned, or it can be accepted willy-nilly, consciously or otherwise, in which case it manifests itself by the subjection of one to another, by the exploitation of some by others.

The author's remarks on Proudhon's weak reformism of property is justifiable. But are Proudhon's ideas on the subject representative of anarchist thought? Again the number of anarchists who utterly oppose all property and its attendant wage-labour is far more significant. The anarchist school that springs from Kropotkin's "libertarianism", which includes Malatesta and Elisee Reclus, have long been arguing the horrors of capitalism. Kropotkin himself said: "When we observe the basic features of human societies . . . we find that the political regime to which they are subject is always the expression of the economic regime which stands at the heart of society". Malatesta's conclusion from this observation is that:

  The basic function of government everywhere in all times, whatever title it adopts and whatever its origin and organisation may be, is always that of oppressing and exploiting the masses, of defending the oppressors and the exploiters: and its principal, characteristic and indispensable, instruments are the police agent and the tax-collector, the soldier and the gaoler — to whom must be invariably added the trader in lies, be he priest or schoolmaster, remunerated or protected by the government to enslave minds and make them docilely accept the yoke.

This cannot be said to be a "dislike of certain aspects of capitalism" which “lacks rigour" as your author suggests. Besides, as Miller points out: "Much anarcho-communist writing (such as the above) starts with an attack on capitalist society not readily distinguishable from that found in Marxist literature. A vivid assault is launched upon the exploitative relationship between capitalist and worker, resulting in poverty, drudgery and the constant threat of unemployment for the latter, and idle luxury for the former".

The debate on revolutionary action — democratic or otherwise — which is the instrument by which the author dismisses Bakunin, is still to run its course for anarchists and socialists alike. But rather than tie up the argument neatly and somewhat divisively as your author does, so perpetuating unnecessarily an enmity embodied in his title "Socialism versus anarchism" would it not be more rewarding to acknowledge the rich debate that both ideologies are able to present? For. in spite of your author's sentiments. anarchists and socialists are not as divided as he would make out, and certainly not so irreconcilable that debate and the exchange of ideas is impossible. Have both sides made their final statements on all matters? The frustrations of inflexible dogma were expressed vividly by Bakunin when he said of Marx:

  As soon as an official truth is pronounced — having been scientifically discovered by this great brainy head labouring all alone — a truth proclaimed and imposed on the whole world from the summit of the Marxist Sinai, why discuss anything?

Is it not more constructive to build on those ideas that both ideologies have in common? Malatesta was convinced that "anarchy. as understood by the anarchists and as only they can interpret it, is based on socialism", while Adolph Fischer claimed that "every anarchist is a socialist, but every socialist is [not] necessarily an anarchist".

So long as both sides are dismissive of the other, misunderstanding and mistrust can be the only outcome. It is not enough to have parallel sentiments: they never seem to meet. Surely there is still both the time and the need for informative and educative debate, not just between these two groups, but with all people of all political and social persuasions?

PC

Our comments are as follows:
The debate between socialists and anarchists has tended to be a rather sterile one. based far too often on a re-enactment of conflicts originating in the First International. The anarchists have quite mistakenly abused socialists-Marxists as being statists. This is nonsense. Marx was the first and most coherent political thinker to elaborate a theory which advocated a stateless society.

The Socialist Party stands in this tradition of seeking the abolition of all states, including government, the armed forces, national frontiers, prisons and all the other obscene features of an authoritarian, property-based society. We have never ceased to explain that those leftists who pose as socialists and then seek to establish state capitalism are enemies of all that socialists stand for. Anarchism is also a term which has historically been used in many ways. It has described the foolish antics of bomb-throwing and riot-supporting advocates of mindless rebellion against the state and so too has it described those individualists who have sought to take on the power of society by abstractly wishing themselves away from society.

In fact, these two types of anarchist outlook are far more representative of those who have called themselves anarchists than our correspondents might concede. Even today most of those who might describe themselves as anarchists have little more than a vague notion of fighting the establishment (whatever that may be) and smashing the state (however that might be done) and creating a free society (whatever freedom might mean). The same is true about many who call themselves socialists: there is no copyright on the term and it is used by all sorts of people in all sorts of confused ways. The difference between The Socialist Party and our correspondents is that we contend that socialism can only logically and scientifically mean one thing, whereas their concept of anarchism is so vague as to be meaningless.

For example. PC tells us that anarchism is a term which "defies definition". Terms like "ghost" and "heaven" and “soul" tend to be of the same nature and therefore it is hardly surprising that they are not treated with great seriousness by scientific thinkers. John Crump states that what is popularly called anarchism is a "mirage" and that the only characteristic uniting anarchists is "opposition to the state". Even that vague definition is misleading: some Russian anarchists gave full support to the Bolshevik seizure of state power in 1917 and played an active part in smashing the democratic Constituent Assembly in 1918 when the Bolsheviks lost the election. In Spain in the 1930s anarchists actually took part in the running of government. Let those who seek to defend anarchism tell us precisely what it is that they are defending and let them also tell us which "anarchists" have no right to call themselves anarchists. That is what The Socialist Party is required to do in relation to the term "socialism" and anarchists will be treated with little credibility unless they treat ideas with the same rigour and honesty.

Many anarchists have argued, and still do argue, in favour of a classless, propertyless, moneyless world society. Kropotkin is an example of a thinker in the anarchist tradition who held many ideas which socialists could agree with. His pamphlet, The Wages System, provided an acceptable refutation of the ideas being put by those who attempted to turn into a sacred dogma Marx's mistaken ideas about the existence of exchange by labour vouchers in a socialist society. Kropotkin's Mutual Aid is a fine work in the battle against those who insist that "human nature" is a barrier to socialism. But let us have no illusions about Kropotkin. He supported the slaughter of workers when war broke out in 1914; in 1917 he supported the revolution in Russia and, whilst not a supporter of Bolshevism until he died, was still able to commend the Bolsheviks for introducing greater equality in Russia — in his letter to Lenin as late as 1920. In the light of this, how much credence should we attach to PC's quotation of the assertion that "every anarchist is a socialist"?

John Crump is closer to the truth when he says that "opposition to the state" is what defines an anarchist. This included the so-called anarcho-capitalists of the Libertarian Alliance which is currently enjoying some popularity as a novelty act on the youth wing of the Conservative Party. The anarcho-capitalists argue that the state should be abolished so that capitalism can be run without any political interference: let market forces struggle in unrestrained freedom. What comes out of this extreme example is that it is not enough to simply oppose the state. To attack the state, and to demand that authority ceases to be used in society, without attacking the basis of the state or its authority is an example of the philosophical idealism which differentiates anarchists from historical materialists —from socialists. The idealist asserts that "authority is bad" and "co-operation would be a good idea". The materialist is not opposed to authority but to the state machine which is a coercive instrument of the authority of class over class. Materialists do not advocate co-operation as "a fine idea", but as the historically necessary next stage beyond class antagonism. Materialists do not oppose all authority but call for democratic control, the only form of authority which can be acceptable to the majority. So, even though some anarchists agree with socialists that we need to live in a stateless society, our reasoning is crucially different.

The anarchist seeks to abolish state power from which comes all social inequality, whereas the socialist seeks to abolish the existing material conditions (capitalism) which makes state power necessary. PC's comment that a "main thread that runs through all anarchist thought" is "the abolition of authority” exemplifies this simplistic idealism. In a book review written by Marx and Engels in 1850 they dismiss the idealistic notion of abolishing state power without dealing with the material basis of such power:

  For Communists, abolition of the state makes sense only as the necessary result of the abolition of classes, with whose disappearance the need for the organised power of one class for the purpose of holding down the other classes, will automatically disappear. (Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 1850)

Without democratic authority (socialists prefer to speak of "democratic control") no social organisation would exist. Now some anarchists — the individualists like Stimer who deride social organisation — can quite consistently support this opposition to the principle of authority. Why should these individualists care whether society organises itself or not? But anarchists who claim to favour the co-operative organisation of the world community are indulging in mere sloganising when they call for "the abolition of authority".

Anarchists have traditionally opposed the need for political action in order to transform society. Socialists contend that the only way society will be materially transformed is for there to be a majority of workers who understand and want socialism. These workers must take away power from the capitalist minority. Just as workers give social power to the master class through the ballot box, so the ballot box can be used to show that a majority rejects capitalism and those who seek to run it. The ballot box will only be one part of the revolutionary process, the far greater part being the development of majority class consciousness and the building of an active movement by the revolutionary class. Unless political power is taken from the minority it will be used against the majority.

Of course, the precise details of the revolutionary change will differ from country to country depending on the political conditions (where legal ballots do not exist or cannot be trusted the workers must create our own) and it will also differ in accordance with different creative ideas about what needs to be done before the establishment of socialism which will emerge as the socialist movement grows. In this sense John Crump is quite right to say that "the millions of men and women who will be the architects of the new world" will decide the exact means by which the revolution is to occur. But. as we pointed out in the article in October 1987 Socialist Standard, the revolutionary process cannot avoid democratic political action and still produce socialism. Without democratic action there will be no democratic society: without political action the state will be used to crush a non-political "socialist" movement. Again. PC tells us that the debate as to whether revolutionary action is to be democratic or otherwise is still to run its course for both anarchists and socialists. This is untrue. Socialists can conceive of no way in which a socialist system of society will be established except by democratic means.

We agree with PC, that it is worthwhile for anarchists and socialists to engage in "informative and educative debate". We should build on whatever ideas we have in common. It is pointless for workers who share a vision of a stateless society based on the uncompromised principles of socialism to be endlessly squabbling over the texts of the nineteenth century. If the ranks of the revolutionary movement can be swelled on the basis of principled unity it would be wrong for anyone to delay the process. Unfortunately, anarchists tend to be rather elusive characters and on those few occasions when we do encounter active anarchists they are reluctant to engage in open debate. When the few debates between The Socialist Party and anarchists have taken place such as those against Albert Meltzer, who told us in our last debate with him in Islington that anarchists must be involved in the struggle to reform capitalism because "that's where the workers are" — most anarchists in the audience disowned the speaker. Which is all very confusing when one considers the claim that anarchism is so revolutionary that it cannot even be defined.

Running Commentary: It’s the greatest (1988)

The Running Commentary Column from the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s the greatest

As Ronald Reagan's autocue prompts him to tell us, America is the greatest country in the world. It is the Land of the Free, awash with good living — where someone can rise from barefoot log-cabin poverty to become rich, famous and powerful; where even an actor playing second fiddle to Errol Flynn can be elected President. What a place to live.

At this point a recalcitrant autocue might begin to flash up a few facts about America which Reagan either doesn't know about or doesn't care to consider. For example there is the report, published last December, of a group of 23 doctors who found that for a significant number of Americans prosperity is a sick joke and freedom a choice between different adjustments of their destitution.

Describing it as an "epidemic of malnourishment", the report said that 20 million Americans now suffer from hunger. Nearly 14 per cent of the population live at or below the official poverty line, with the conditions worsening according to skin colour. For whites the percentage is 11; for Hispanics 27.3; for Blacks 31.1.

Even in sunny California — the home of so many good things American like Hollywood, oranges, smog and Reagan himself — the doctors found 3.6 million people existing within the definition of poverty, with ten per cent relying on regular food relief from charities. As hundreds of thousands of Californians can't afford to consult a doctor when they are ill. the infant mortality rate there is rising for the first time in 20 years.

Of course this account, grim though it is. is not nearly so bad as those of people in other parts of the world, where mass famine regularly wipes out millions every year (which is perhaps why Reagan can make such extravagant claims for American lifestyles). But it represents a fairly typical sketch of working class life in an advanced capitalist state, where the excessive wealth of capitalists like Reagan stands in contrast to the most desperate and degrading deprivation.

When they are confronted with the stark facts about working class poverty — about slums, malnourishment. needless disease and death — the politicians' conditioned response is a programme for a few financial re-arrangements like changes in state benefits or charitable grants. The apparent plausibility of such programmes is effectively undermined by the fact that poverty is persistent within capitalism and universal to it. Its degree will vary from time to time and from place to place but it is always present, always degrading, always repressing, always killing.

The reason for this is to be found in the basic nature of capitalist society, whose class division over the ownership of the means of life causes the majority to have only a limited access to wealth. At times this can mean a relatively genteel impoverishment. At others it can mean clinging to life at the most basic, essential level. This is the everyday experience of millions of workers throughout capitalism, including those who are so fondly addressed by Reagan as his "fellow Americans". inhabitants of the greatest . . . Well, yes.


Revenge

Fearless fighters against terrorism, like Thatcher and Reagan, are agreed that the one effective way to wipe out the problem is to create the certainty of swift and complete repression. Send in the Marines, or the SAS or, in the face of some extreme outrage, get Thatcher to denounce it in the House.

Among the world's most ardent practitioners of repression are the Israeli ruling class whose state, let it be remembered, was supposed to be founded on humane motives, forged in the Holocaust. Israel is now among the most powerful military states in the Middle East, with a reputation for dealing ruthlessly with anything it sees as a threat to its stability. This policy has brought about many bloody episodes and has been vented particularly harshly on the Palestinians for whom, it might be supposed, an Israeli government should have some fellow-feeling.

What has been the effect of this policy? Has it dissuaded potential guerrilla fighters? Can guerrilla terrorism be suppressed by officially sanctioned, state organised, terrorism?

In 1985 a group of Palestinian guerrillas made an apparently indiscriminate attack on people at Rome airport, throwing hand grenades and spraying the terminal with machine gun fire. They were opposed by Israeli and Italian security staff; it is not entirely clear — and does not matter — who fired first but what is not in dispute is that 16 people were killed and about 80 injured.

Last December one of the Palestinians — Mahmoud Ibrahim Khaled — was on trial in Rome for his part in the attack. Just turned 20 years old. Khaled expressed his remorse for the "gesture full of horror" and, in what was unlikely to be an influential part of his statement, told why he came to be at the airport on that awful day.

Khaled's childhood was spent as a refugee, in a camp for displaced Palestinians where both his parents were killed in a raid by Israeli bombers. What did this experience teach him? Raised in conditions of the most fearsome deprivation and assault. Khaled's defence was to become hardened into an easy prey to the delusions of Palestinian nationalism. In this, he was not unlike those other guerrillas who, many years ago, committed what were called acts of terrorism to make the case for an independent Jewish state. He joined what was intended to be a suicide squad to launch an indiscriminate massacre. It probably seemed a way of coping with the terrors and indignities he experienced every day of his young life. The Israelis who went in to attack the refugees certainly taught them a lesson — but it was not one they intended to teach them.

The fact that he now bitterly regrets what he did is not entirely to the point: "The sentence does not matter to me." he wrote to the court in Rome. ". . . I expect nothing from life".

Ideas are not to be eliminated through violence; the more likely response is counter-violence, if only in revenge. The people of the Middle East are suffering now under their appalling burden of fear and destruction, not because any of them are especially cruel or reckless but because there are huge, supranational investments absorbed in the mineral wealth and the strategic importance of the area. That is the problem to be dealt with if there are to be no more massacres and no more desperate young people for whom life is cheap because they expect nothing from it.


Celebration

Off the top of the head it is difficult to remember a time when CND thought there was anything to celebrate so it came as a jolt to see them dancing and breaking open the champagne to toast a more hopeful future for the human race. Plainly, something was up.

In the more sober morning after they might have taken a calmer look at the reason for their celebration — the INF treaty between Russia and America which promises, among other things, to remove Cruise missiles from Britain.

Well apart from the fact that this may eventually make the winding lanes of Berkshire and Cambridgeshire rather easier for civilians to use, was that anything to get happy about? By even the most sanguine of estimates, it is likely to be some years before the missiles leave Greenham Common and Molesworth.

Then there is the fact that such missiles are only a part of the nuclear powers' armoury. There still exists the fearsome array of super weapons, which can virtually wipe out settled life on this planet in a day or two and render whoever and whatever survives in no state to carry on.

Another uncomfortable, but largely disregarded, fact is that the warheads are not to be destroyed because this is to all intents and purposes impossible. The delivery systems will be dismantled. leaving the knowledge and the productive techniques, as well as the motivation for their original production, intact.

And as we pointed out last month, the superpowers were soon at work seeking out ways of bridging any gaps the treaty might leave in their capacities to kill and destroy. Anyone who thinks that capitalist states easily and voluntarily surrender positions which they have expensively and painstakingly built up, over a long time, in opposition to each other suffers from a tendency for self- delusion which alcoholic celebration is likely to exacerbate.

In any case the worth of the INF treaty must be seen in its perspective. The history of capitalism is crammed with pacts which were solemnly signed only to be ignored. The Locarno Treaty of 1924 was seen as a cause for celebration because in a war weary Europe the powers committed themselves to keep the peace but come 1939 the signatories were at war with each other. The Russo-German pact of 1939 did not stop Germany invading Russia, nor Russia expecting the attack to happen. Signatories to the United Nations Charter consider themselves bound by it only when it suits their ruling class' interests to be so. And so on.

There is no cause to invest any more hope in the INF treaty. No reason to dance, to quaff champagne in celebration. No cause to think that war, in whatever form, is less of a threat. No reason to be diverted from the work to abolish the cause of war the capitalist system whose ugliness is so aptly characterised in nuclear weapons.

Power to the people (1988)

From the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Standard apologises for being a little late with the news but last month Margaret Thatcher became the longest-serving Prime Minister of the century. The great, national sigh of gratitude and relief which greeted the fateful day when she passed the record of Herbert Asquith was quickly blotted out by the sound of frantically hammered typewriters, as political scribes launched into yet another assessment of her time in office, now compared with that of Asquith.

Modern capitalism demands that its executives in the state machine work a great deal harder now than they did eighty years ago. Thatcher, for example, rises at 6am and carries on throughout the day until the small hours of the next one. Only under protest does she take one brief holiday a year. Asquith, who was accustomed to taking several leisurely breaks, would have been horrified; but Thatcher revels under the pressure, drawing energy from the sense that she is at the centre of decision-taking, where policies are laid down and changes are wrought. She is, the scribes were agreed, politically dominant now; amid the column inches of awed admiration for her, a certain phrase began to creep in more and more often elective dictatorship. It means that Thatcher, having won power through the votes of millions of workers, uses that power as if she has an eternal grasp of it — as if she is a dictator. Her method is to ensure that British capitalism is run as she wants it to be by purging her government of all doubting or dissident influences and surrounding herself with people who, although nominally her advisers, rarely if ever question what she is doing.

An example of this was in the appointment of the new Cabinet Secretary, to replace Robert Armstrong who will be remembered for his squirming euphemism about being "economical with the truth" long after all his other work is forgotten. Poor Armstrong, going faithfully into the jaws of a ruthless cross examination on the other side of the world and, as always seemed inevitable, ending up an international laughing stock. But at least it proved one thing; it laid to rest the old myth that it is the Civil Service which runs capitalism rather than the people who are elected to be the government. Armstrong's successor, Robin Butler, is renowned as a Thatcher devotee, having been her principal private secretary. An all-powerful Civil Service would hardly have allowed such an appointment, so soon after Armstrong s humiliation.

But as the myth of the omnipotent Civil Service faded, it was to some extent replaced with concern over the influence of the lobbyists. These are the people who operate behind the scenes of government, with the object of influencing decisions in favour of the organisations who have hired them. Lobbying is a growth industry — if that word can be applied to it — which has expanded over the past few years from a few small firms competing for a small total annual fee into a business with some big companies, often subsidiaries of advertising agencies (of course Saatchi and Saatchi has one) able to command fees in tens of thousands for their services. The lobbyists need to know their way around the corridors of power; many of them once worked as senior civil servants or advisers to politicians. Recent events where they were active were the Westlands affair, the Guinness bid for Distillers and the SAS attempt to take over a slice of British Caledonian. While there is no reason to accept the lobbyists' estimates of their own influence — they have an obvious interest in exaggeration — it is true that they are an addition to what seems to many people a mass of confused influences, all operating on the government, which effectively blanket out any democratic content. There is Thatcher behaving as if she is a dictator; there is the civil service, through their position of the permanent factor whichever government is in power; there are the lobbyists, working behind the scenes to distort and frustrate governmental decisions. In all this, what happens to the wishes of the voters? To the promises on which the government was elected? Is there any point in ever voting again?

Anyone who suffers nightmares about a Britain in the grip of the faceless mandarins of Whitehall, or of the slick operators in the public relations business, can be re-assured. Whatever influence these people may be able to exert they can operate only within a certain system (after all, no recalcitrant civil servant has ever sabotaged a minute so as to help along the case for abolishing capitalism). We live under a social system based on a class division, into owners and non-owners — into capitalists and workers. This society cannot be democratic — it has to have its secrets, whether they are military, commercial or governmental (as Robert Armstrong knows only too well). The owning capitalists hold a privileged social position — privileged in their access to wealth, to information, to power and to the process of decision taking. The working class are never asked about decisions like the take-over of British Caledonian; it is simply not within the scope of their social position under capitalism.

This situation exists because the working class allow it to. At present the capitalist class — the ruling class — hold power but they do this through the fact that the working class agree to it. The workers are the majority; they are the useful, productive people who design and produce and operate all that society needs. As the majority they have the potential power; at present they surrender this power to the capitalists by voting in their millions for one or other of the parties which, whatever their incidental differences, are agreed that capitalism should continue. People who are concerned about the subversive distortion of governmental decisions should consider where the responsibility lies — how it is that an undemocratic system can be energised, again and again, through millions of democratic votes.

And that brings us to the important question of what can be done about it. How do we bring Thatcher's elective dictatorship to an end? How do we unmask the shadowy figures behind Whitehall's desks? How do we see off the subversive lobbyists? Well it is possible to have a society in which all people stand in equality in the sense that they all have the same rights of access to what society produces, whether it is wealth or a service or information. This will be a society which will work on majority consent, in the interests of the majority. It will have a universal, human unity in its objects and its achievements. Minority class interests will not exist and neither will the mess of deceits and cynicism which they entail. So there is no need to be down-hearted at Thatcher's record; like all the events of capitalism, it puts some important questions and offers some illuminating answers. We can change things; as soon as the society of common ownership and free access arrives, the Socialist Standard will not be late with the news.

Ivan

World without frontiers (1988)

From the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the Socialist Party socialism will be a world without frontiers; a world in which there will be no such thing as nations or national boundaries, in which every person on the earth will be completely free to travel anywhere they like at any time. If the reader wonders what socialists have got against existing national boundaries and divisions, perhaps the following will explain our view.

From the Russian citizen's earliest childhood. the regime in the USSR does its utmost to inculcate the belief that the "enemies of communism" (sic) are awaiting a favourable opportunity to attack from every side. But in reality, the Russian border guards are constantly watching out, not only for any saboteurs or spies trying to get in. but also for Russian citizens trying to get out. As s/he grows up. the Russian citizen no longer believes the official fairy tale and realizes the true purpose of the "frontier system”.

The frontier system does not have the automatic firing-devices found on the East German border, but it is still well-equipped. Briefly, the security arrangements of a typical stretch of Soviet frontier are divided, as one approaches from the interior, into three distinct zones:

1. The frontier zone. i.e. the adjacent area. Every resident must have a special permit with a special ID stamp; permission to enter the zone must be obtained from the militia even if only in transit; special troop units enforce security. Any unauthorised person found in this area is arrested and investigated — thoroughly.
2. The fortified zone: this, an area about 100 yards wide, contains various "systems" including (a) barbed-wire entanglements supported by concrete posts covered with protective metal layers. This zone is interrupted by numerous "corridors" which can be electronically operated, opened from observation posts. A guard phones the post commander to request opening a corridor using a password that is changed every day. Posts at which guards can plug in the receiver worn on their belts are scattered around the "neutral zone" following the line of the frontier (low-voltage current causes the slightest contact with the wire to set off an alarm signal in the control box), (b) Immediately beyond the wire is a five- or six-yard-wide strip in which the soil is regularly turned over so that any footprints would stand out distinctly, (c) Then there's a system of "concertina" barbed-wire entanglements supported on short stakes, (d) Another system is hidden in the long grass and brush — a spider's web of steel loops. One border guard reported: "Whoever catches his foot in a loop falls down; when he tries to rise he gets caught in another loop. The harder you struggle, the more entangled you get" (from Posev no. 4. 1977. p. 37). And finally:
3. The "neutral zone" (no-man's land) belonging to no-one. but Russian border guards with submachine-guns and dogs patrol it in pairs day and night.

Any border guard who shoots a fugitive is awarded a government medal "for valour", although shooting an unarmed civilian in the back with a burp-gun doesn't require any exceptional courage. Fugitives are sometimes hunted down illegally outside of Russian territory if they somehow manage to pull off a Houdini-like escape.

Perhaps now it is easier to see why we socialists prefer a world without any national boundaries; a world without frontiers.

DEF

50 Years Ago: Railway shareholders support nationalisation (1988)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr William Whitelaw, Chairman of the London & North Eastern Railway, wants the railways nationalised. He stated this in an interview reported in the News-Chronicle (December 29th, 1937). He thinks that it would eliminate competition, reduce costs, and be good for the shareholders. He says that if fair terms were offered there would be no opposition from the people with money invested in railway companies, and adds: "As a large stockholder myself 1 should have no hesitation whatever in taking Government stock instead of company stock."

In view of the fact that several classes of railway stocks have paid little or no dividend for years, and future prospects for many other classes look none too bright, the idea of State purchase will perhaps commend itself to those who own the railways. But what of the workers? What have they to gain? — in spite of the Daily Herald's joy that Mr Whitelaw had been "compelled by the logic of events to accept the full policy that the Labour Party has advocated for 15 years and more." (Daily Herald, January 6th. 1938.)

Labour Party schemes for State ownership perpetuate the parasitism of a propertied class living by owning. Until that has been got rid of the working class will continue to be barred from the big improvement in the standard of living which Socialism will make possible.

[From an article " 'Socialism' to Please the Railway Shareholders" Socialist Standard February 1938.]

Designed for living? (1988)

From the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the many intractable problems that face workers in their day-to-day existence under capitalism takes place within the area of housing production. Unable and incapable of meeting workers' housing needs capitalism forces them to either sink or swim according to the private or government dictates of housing provision. So not only do workers have to cope with the very real problems of lack of space, of repair and maintenance, of housing obsolescence and unfit habitation, they also have to cope with the constant financial pressures of mortgage and rent demands where the inability to meet the often high amounts involved means repossession and subsequent homelessness.

Similarly, since the end of the nineteenth century, workers have seen every housing reform supposedly enacted in their interests fail. The state has not been able to end the housing shortage, provide the wide and different housing workers require throughout their lives, nor alleviate the dangers to health and overcrowding within the decaying inner cities. In fact, the state's interference has more often than not contributed to the worsening of the problem.

If workers want a constant reminder of the futility of reforms as such then they could do no worse than study the history of housing reforms both before and after they were enacted by Parliament. A similar lesson could well be learnt by the reformers themselves. The high number of often well-meaning individuals who attempt to alleviate the housing problem under capitalism have taken on a job for life; one that will result in regular frustration and hopelessness. In fact, taken globally, and bearing in mind all the various housing reform bodies now in existence. the housing problem as it affects the world's working class could hardly be worse.

So what of the latest reform popularly known as "Community Architecture”? In their writings this new set of reformists regard community architecture as a major contribution to working-class housing. Through government grants, charitable organisations and the involvement of "investment and development" capitalists, the proponents of community architecture claim that they will simultaneously alleviate the entrenched urban blight under which most of the working class have to exist as well as engineer, through the process of worker participation, some mythical sense of "community spirit" which, we are told by one of its strongest advocates, Prince Charles, existed before the Second World War.

But then Prince Charles and the class he represents did not have to live in pre-war working-class housing. Were not high-rise, high density housing of the first three decades after the war held up as models of community architecture in their own day? Did not the reformers then point to the utopian towers of glass and concrete as the solution to the TB. damp and insanitary filth and grime of workers' housing of the 1930s? So placed in its historic context the community architecture of today is largely the result of the failure of the last set of housing reforms which ushered in the pre-fabricated housing that councils are now blowing up.

And what of the phrase "community architecture"? It is as though it had been coined by an advertising agency trying to brighten up the tarnished image of the businessmen and women who masquerade as architects at the Royal Institute of British Architects. For does not the word "community" imply some strong notion of of classlessness? Does it not also imply that there is a strong and active democratic control by that community over what is built, where it is built and for whose social needs it is meant? Are the supposed recipients of community architecture in control over their own lives; are they able to live in the best environment society can currently produce? Is the technical advice freely available to them? Are the materials and craft skills (the latter reified under capitalism to the degrading tag of "operatives") directly and freely accessible? The answer is, of course, no to all these questions — because "community” and "community architecture" under capitalism are illusions.

The reality for workers is that there is no direct access to land, materials and technical advice. The capitalist class monopolises it for themselves. Workers' access is governed by their ability to pay and at the end of the day, architectural awards or no architectural awards, the standard and quality of accommodation is little different from that provided by the likes of Wimpeys or Barretts: workers get the housing that befits their class position.

And what of the word "architecture"? Does — or has ever — the working class lived in housing that could be described as architecture? Are workers' housing the sort of houses architectural historians waste their time writing about or are lavishly illustrated in magazines like Country Life? The answer is, again, no. Workers live instead in buildings. It is the capitalist class who can afford to live in "architecture". Workers' houses are only studied by a few eccentric social historians while the workers themselves are out visiting Blenheim Palace and the thousands of other architectural gems that make up “Our National Architectural Heritage".

We should not, after 80 years, in a world that has the potential to house the world's population adequately and with dignity, have to again and again re-quote Engels' solution to the Housing Question and why all reforms have and will fail:

  The so-called housing shortage which plays such a great role in the press nowadays, does not consist in the fact that the working class generally lives in bad. overcrowded and unhealthy dwellings. This shortage is not something peculiar to the present; it is not even one of the sufferings peculiar to the modern proletariat in contradistinction to all earlier oppressed classes. On the contrary all oppressed classes in all periods suffered rather uniformly from it. In order to put an end to this housing shortage there is only one means: to abolish altogether the exploitation and oppression of the working class by the ruling class.

(The Housing Problem)

William Morris envisaged a socialist society that produced buildings based on craft skills and natural materials. Whether this or other forms of building techniques will be used by a future socialist society will be for them to decide, as they set about building a society fit for human beings to live in. But what generally can be said is that in a society freed from the utter absurdity of buying and selling, of commodity production and of classes, people will be in control of their lives and the society in which they live. It is only within this form of society that any real meaning for the term community architecture can be contemplated or sanctioned.

Richard Lloyd

From crisis to complacency (1988)

1987 Edition

Book Review from the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Energy Question. Gerald Foley (Pelican £4.95)

When the review copy of this book arrived I took my old one down from the shelf to compare them. The latter was published in 1976 and must have been written not long after the 1973 Arab-Zionist War and the quadrupling of oil prices in world markets.

The conclusion of most experts then was that there was too little oil and too many customers. Commodity markets — tin. coffee, copper, palm oil — boomed because the scarcity was believed to extend to everything except people; there were, it seemed, too many of us. Catholics rejected this view because God would not bring people into the world without means for them to exist.

Colin Clark, an adviser to the Pope on economic demography, had concluded that the world could feed ten times its current population to American standards and thirty times to Japanese standards.

But the majority of experts inclined to the view that scarcity was coming to haunt us. Oil and other sources of energy, along with most minerals and fertile soil, were in short supply and getting shorter Interested parties joined the chorus: producers of oil and minerals used the scare to jack up prices. Vegetarians argued that if we gave up meat there would be plenty of nut-cutlets for us all. Even Gerald Foley wrote in the early edition: “It is inevitable that the future will be more vegetarian than the past".

Twelve years on we are assured that there is too much of everything. Primary commodity prices have crashed: copper producers like Zambia and tin producers like Malaya are in economic difficulties. Europe is drowning in wine and olive oil lakes and there are mountains of meat and fruit and grain.

And energy, whose input equals half a ton of coal-equivalent for every man, woman and child in Britain for food-production alone:

  The energy picture is very different from that of 1976. when the first edition of this book was published. The atmosphere at that time was one of crisis. Now the anxiety seems to have completely disappeared. A decade ago there were worries about whether industrial society would reach the year 2000 without a major upheaval in its ways of obtaining and using energy; now the consensus is that the turn of the century will see business very much as usual.

Now why should all that be? Had some new element come onto the scene to change all the equations about energy? Nuclear energy had promised, or rather its PR officers had promised a future of free or nearly free energy. But that dream had already gone sour by 1976. The American nuclear industry, operating on a purely commercial basis, had already stopped ordering nuclear power stations and many of the utilities who had ordered or who were operating them were facing bankruptcy. Countries like Britain and France who continued to order or operate them were doing so for political reasons, like obtaining war supplies of plutonium from the Magnox stations, or as a counter to the power of the mining unions in the British government's case, or to the power of the Arab oil producers in the French case. Gerald Foley has no doubt as to the real reason:

  When the oil crisis arrived in 1973, there was a widespread misapprehension that it was connected with resource depletion. In fact, it was almost entirely a matter of economics and world politics, [ibid]

A couple of pages later he puts it even more bluntly: "In retrospect, it is clear that the energy crisis was to a large extent a creation of the major energy interests".

1976 Edition

So all that tizzy of excitement over self-sufficiency in the late sixties and early seventies was based on a false premise. All those flat-plate solar collectors on every roof and Cretan windmills in every backyard, methane digesters and Pelton Wheels and hand mills for grinding your own corn. Still, this book deals kindly with them and is careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Houses are still being built with big picture-windows facing north — the planning laws and building regulations say nothing about orientation; the heating requirements of most houses could be cut by three quarters for a modest expenditure on insulation and of most factories by an even bigger factor.

The "energy crisis"' did, nevertheless, produce substantial economies in the use of fuel, particularly in the US. American motorists spurned the gas-guzzler cars in favour of the Volkswagen Beetle in sufficient numbers to bankrupt Chrysler and force General Motors and Ford to redesign their products. In Britain the small ads columns were full of oil fired boilers that hard-pressed householders could not afford to run. Alternative and sometimes desperate measures: paraffin stoves, electric storage radiators, log stoves, rarely offered a real solution.

Now it is: as you were, and oil is once more among the cheapest of fuels. The chapter: "Planning for Scarcity" in the 1976 edition has been changed to: "From Crisis to Complacency". The point is still there but the emphasis is different. Gerald Foley comes up to the jump but refuses it. If he had only questioned the Market Economy itself. But if my aunt had wheels she would be a bicycle. The author is not in the business of political/economic analysis or he would have written a different book.

What he has written, and rewritten, is a compendious trip, historical and geographical, around the subject and provides a massive amount of material for us non-specialists to analyse. The tables and graphs are particularly comprehensive.

Ken Smith

Sad History (1988)

Book Review from the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The World Since 1945. T. E. Vadney (Penguin £4.95)

One day we shall be able to look back at books like this and the events they describe and wonder why people put up with capitalism for so long. For this history of wars and coups and massacres shows a society based on conflict and competition, where governments and ruling classes try to outmanoeuvre each other. Satisfying the needs of the earth's population is not one of capitalism's priorities.

Vadney focusses on political events, by which he means primarily the various aspects of great power rivalry, so that the lives of ordinary men and women rarely enter the narrative — except, of course, when they form cannon fodder for the rulers. Thus at least a million civilians were killed in South Vietnam between 1965 and 1974. In the period covered in the book, about 25 million people have been killed in war and other conflict in the Third World, to say nothing of the millions who have died in artificially-created famines.

Time and again Vadney shows how economic and strategic motives underlie political actions. The American Marshall Plan of 1947, for instance, was intended to boost the economies of the Western European states, with the ulterior aim of enabling them to afford American imports and to compete with the Russian-bloc countries. In 1954, the US staged a coup against the government of Guatemala, which was nationalising land much of which was owned by American companies. The truly global nature of capitalism is evident too: for example, the Jamaican economy in the 1970s was very much at the mercy of the global recession, in spite of the government's efforts to control things.

A couple of points which Vadney treats as if they were virtually obvious show how some things which socialists have been saying for years eventually become commonplace. Firstly. China after 1949 practised 'national capitalism' (read 'state capitalism'). Secondly, the countries of Eastern Europe have ruling classes with far greater power and material rewards than ordinary workers.

Rather than the author's pessimistic closing remarks that vested interests which benefit from the status quo will block any attempt to change and improve things, the appropriate conclusion to draw is that any social system whose history is to be told in these terms must be abolished as soon as possible.

Paul Bennett

Letters: More about “human nature” (1988)

Letters to the Editors from the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

More about “human nature”

Dear Editors.

I was very interested to read in the December 1987 Standard, Richard Headicar's letter containing his criticism of an article appearing in the September issue of the Standard, with the title "Society Without Exchange", which I regard as being very fair comment. However. I must say that I find your reply to his criticism most unsatisfactory with regard to the question of the human nature-human behaviour syndrome.

It is, I think, as important for us to make separation, for the purpose of analysis, between these two terms, and to define exactly what we mean by both, as it is in the field of political economy to make a separation and a clear definition, between the terms labour and labour power. The terms human nature and human behaviour are not interchangeable terms because they mean and connote different things.

They are not, however, mutually exclusive. The one (human nature), cannot exist without the existence of the other (the phenomenon of human behaviour) and vice versa. They are complementary. In complete contrast are the terms socialism and capitalism which not only mean different things but the phenomenon which each term connotes is mutually exclusive. The one can only exist in the complete absence of the other.

In the short paragraph at the end of your reply you say: "This leaves us with very little which can be properly called human nature As far as the case for socialism goes, it is so insignificant as to justify the phrase that it does not exist”. May I point out what can only properly be called human nature (in contrast to human behaviour) is the sum total of the biological attributes common to all members of the human species. Far from being insignificant this unique combination of biological attributes is not only not insignificant, it is the most amazing and important biological event (apart from the emergence of organic matter itself) that has ever taken place.

After three thousand million years of biological evolution by natural selection a species has emerged which has the biological potentiality of determining the future course of the evolutionary process, conceptually thinking matter had arrived, making it possible for all kinds of human behaviour the prerogative of the human species, instead of being the prisoner of natural selection for the first and only time in the history of the solar system. It is quite true that "human behaviour is what our opponents are really referring to when they say that 'human nature" would make socialism unworkable". But that is because they are in a state of confusion about the whole question of the human nature-human behaviour syndrome.

May I add that I use the term human nature as I have defined it on the basis that there is only one human nature applicable to all members of the human species. And this I claim is a concrete fact verifiable from all the evidence from all branches of natural and related sciences. On the other hand there is no such thing as one simple human behaviour which is applicable to all members of humanity. Animals, including homo sapiens, do not and in fact cannot inherit behaviour genetically. Behaviour is learned and developed by the organism as it grows and inter-relates with its environment. Therefore it is much nearer the truth to say, that whilst there is only one human nature, there are many human behaviours.

Yours fraternally.

H D Walters 

London

Nailing males?

In our otherwise excellent journal, occasional lapses are the more remarkable. Why do we attack "insecure, immature males" for attempting to take advantage of female colleagues at office parties (Season of Goodwill, December 1987) and not passive, compliant females who are far greater in number?

Nailing the working class on their acceptance of capitalism is our priority, the destructive behaviour of individuals within it is effectively dealt with by Ben Elton.

Yours for socialism,

Janet Carter 

Walthamstow. London

Restructuring (1988)

Book Review from the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Soviet Scene 1987. edited by Vladimir Mezhenkov  (Collets, £7.95)

This book is a collection of articles and interviews translated from the Russian press. Despite being produced by the foreign propaganda authorities in Moscow, it nevertheless contains some very revealing material.

The main themes dealt with are perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness, transparency). One illustration of the latter is an article that appeared in Pravda on 16 March 1987 denouncing what had been going on in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan under the local Party boss, Dimash Kunaev, who was deposed at the end of 1986:

   A select circle of leaders throughout the republic built themselves veritable stately homes — palatial residences and hunting lodges with saunas, greenhouses, billiard rooms, cinemas and swimming pools. These were luxuriously furnished with all the trappings of a princely lifestyle.

This circle also, explains the editorial introduction to the article, "kept their ’personal' cattle among the herds of the collective and state farms of Kazakhstan's Urals Region alone. Some of them had 250 and more sheep kept for their own benefit and dozens of heads of cattle and horses",

Gorbachev and his clique obviously felt that this was going too far as it brought into disrepute the whole nomenklatura and their system of institutionalised privileges (country homes, hunting lodges and the like, if not herds of cattle). Kunaev and his friends and relatives were purged, especially as Kunaev had been associated with Brezhnev.

Restructuring is introduced by an interview with Abel Aganbegyan, the economist closely associated with this reform. Restructuring is basically an attempt to revitalise the Russian state capitalist economy by freeing enterprises from bureaucratic central control by the state and telling them to go out and maximise their profits.

In Russia the main means of production are controlled by separate state enterprises which pay a percentage of their sales receipts to the state as a tax on their turnover and receive capital for further investment from the state either as direct allocations of equipment or as loans from the State Bank. Up till now the activity of enterprises has been closely controlled by the central state authorities by means of legally-binding directives whose application has been verified by a host of inspectors.

Restructuring involves giving enterprises freedom from state control, both to trade with other enterprises and to keep and invest more of the profits they make. This freedom is to be guaranteed by law. In return enterprises are going to be expected to seek to maximise profits and to practise strict profit-and-loss accounting, so as to build up a fund to finance more of their investments themselves as well as to repay, on time and with interest, the loans they get from the State Bank.

An article from Pravda of 12 January 1987 is very revealing in this respect. Entitled "Putting the Roubles to Work", it states:

   The role played by profits from production in accumulating money and strengthening the financial base of production is growing. Profits today amount to 200 billion roubles. For some time we have shied away from talking very much about profits. Many people still thought in old-fashioned terms taught by certain political economists to see profits as something pertaining only to a capitalist system.

By political economists such as Karl Marx, for instance. Pravda, however, has found someone to replace Marx: Micawber!

  The main law of the financial activity of any industry and any enterprise is that income should always be greater than expenditure. One of the characters in a Charles Dickens' novel said that if a person earns £20 and spends £19 19s 6d. the result is happiness. But if he spends £20 0s 6d. the result is misery
  In our day too, any enterprise manager has to assess income and expenditure and ensure a profit. Otherwise, the enterprise cannot be self-financing.

Enterprises in Russia have always sought to balance their books but until now it has only been the central state that has been concerned with maximising profitability and this only at the level of the economy as a whole. The change that restructuring is designed to bring in is that, from now on, enterprises will be given the green light to seek to maximise profits at enterprise level. This represents a change from a rigid state-controlled capitalist economy to a more market-motivated one.

A leading sociologist interviewed in Moscow News (1 March 1987) attacks the "free "health service in Russia and suggests that there should be charges for certain types of medical treatment. With such views being expressed in Russia, no wonder Thatcher and Gorbachev get on so well together.

Adam Buick

A few words to non-socialists (1988)

From the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

You are not a socialist. You do not want to live in a society where all of the resources are commonly owned and democratically controlled where factories, farms, offices, mines and media belong to the whole community, regardless of race or sex. You do not stand for production solely for use: food grown simply so that it can be eaten, houses to be lived in. clothes to be worn, entertainment to be enjoyed. You do not want a society where all people have free access to all goods and services without having to buy them - a moneyless society. The idea of a world without national frontiers, states and the weapons of militarist murder does not motivate you to political action. You are just not a socialist.

Now, there are many ways of not being a socialist. You might be a violent anti-socialist who is committed to the defence of the capitalist status quo to the bitter end. Most workers are not passionate defenders of capitalism. Most of capitalism's victims, the working class, do not even know what capitalism is. Indeed, few capitalists are even dedicated advocates of their own system they just enjoy it while the fruits are there for them to pick. Most non-socialists are simply not bothered about the meaning of capitalism or socialism. They would describe themselves as non-political, occasionally becoming politically vocal about the odd issue, and, if they are feeling up to it, voting in elections once every four or five years - usually to keep the baddies out rather than with any real belief that the goodies are any good.

Most workers regard socialism as something to do with politics and politics as something profoundly boring. So, when the Socialist Standard seller approaches them in the street or pub. offering a good socialist read for only 30p, most workers look the other way in the hope that politics will ignore them. Politics is about power - about who has it and who does not and what the powerful can do to the powerless. If you are a worker, deprived of all kinds of basic powers over your own life - ranging from the age at which you can legally have sexual relations and with whom, to whether you and your family are to be blown to pieces in a nuclear war - politics does not leave you alone.

To the average worker in Britain socialism is a scare word. It is like AIDS and sin and Libya - you might not know quite what they mean or where they are, but you know that your mother wouldn't approve of them. Workers fear socialism. Long years of anti-socialist propaganda by those who have a direct class interest in workers' fear of freedom have seen to that.

Socialism, the non-socialist will tell you. is what exists in Russia. And China - which is a national enemy of Russia. And Albania - which is a national enemy of Russia and China. Socialism is what they have in Australia - and Spain - and Greece - because they have "socialist governments” in those countries, don't they? And then there was Attlee and Bevan and Wilson and Callaghan - they were supposed to have called themselves socialists. Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone, Arthur Scargill: these men even use the word "socialist'' so they must be the real thing, mustn't they? Adolf Hitler called himself a National Socialist. All very confusing.

The Leftists who talk about "socialist countries" and "socialist governments" and "socialist leaders" do immense damage to working-class understanding of socialism. Most workers look at leftism and its aim of turning private capitalism into state capitalism (which the Left calls socialism) and, quite rightly, they reject "socialism". Labels deceive.

Many workers think that socialism is a moral proposition: that it has something to do with being nice to people. Most socialists do try to live their lives as decent beings in an indecent world, but that is not what socialism is about. Socialism relates to the material conditions within which we are able to live and behave. Socialists who own factories must exploit their employees or else they go broke, socialists who are competing with other workers for jobs will not endure the punishment of the dole queue so that their fellow workers can live well. Capitalism is a dog-eat-dog system and socialists are not dogs who will not bite, but dogs who are barking in pursuit of a system where we do not need to bite. Socialism is about the co-operation of humankind for the sake of us all.

Some workers like the sound of socialism. It has the sort of sound to it as an idea, when you consider it carefully, which reasonable people tend to find attractive. Yes, it would be good if we could all share this world as one human family, but . . . But, says the non-socialist, things can never be that way. The non-socialist has a fundamental doubt about tomorrow ever being different from today. Which is a rather groundless doubt when you come to think about it. for it is the ceaseless lesson of history that the certainties of the past are repeatedly tossed aside by new ideas, new conditions, new certainties. Just as capitalism, with its world market and working class freed from the ties of feudal serfdom, once seemed like a utopian dream, so socialism is only a dream to those who imagine that the capitalist nightmare is unlike all previous historical epochs and will go on forever.

Once workers have been convinced that human nature is not a barrier to socialism, many non-socialists, while agreeing that socialism sounds worth having, are too tired, too apathetic, too busy with other things to get up and join the movement for socialism. They may offer support for The Socialist Party - perhaps even regard themselves as sympathisers. We are glad of their support. But a disorganised minority of workers who will be for socialism when it comes can and will do little or nothing to change history. Their visions will be lost in the mists of dust created by the bombs which are being prepared for use as you read this article.

There is no way of forcing the non-socialist to become a socialist. It will not happen by electing so-called socialist governments to bring about socialism for the workers even though they know nothing about it. Nor will it happen as a result of the efforts of the counter-productive Leninist sects which think that the workers can be marched to freedom with guns to their heads. There is no substitute for winning a majority of our fellow workers to understand and want socialism. The Socialist Party will not do this alone. If our efforts were the sole means of transforming society from capitalism to socialism the world would be in for a long wait. It is the capitalist system, with its relentless class struggle, which creates the material conditions within which socialists are made. The task of The Socialist Party is to take the discontent which capitalism provides for us and see that it is not wasted upon the politics of futility.

If you are a non-socialist you should think carefully about why that is. If - as will be the case with very many workers - you have never really thought about why you are not a socialist, never regarded yourself as a supporter of the capitalist system which enslaves you, then now is the time to consider your position. If you are an anti-socialist, then you have some obligation to tell us socialists why we are wrong. If you agree with what we are saying, then now is the time to do something about it: visit your local branch, place a regular order for the Socialist Standard. And if you agree with the Socialist Party, why not join?

This is not an academic article. It is not about whether Victoria was a good Queen or a useless old parasite. It is not an article for reading and then forgetting. It is an invitation to think and to act. It is that capacity which human beings possess to a higher degree than any other animal. Think, act - and who is to say what sort of world this shall be by 1990?

Steve Coleman