The Lessons of East Europe (1990)

Editorial from the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before the end of 1989 few people had heard of the Rumanian town of Timisoara. Since then it has added its name to Tiananmen Square and the many other places where workers have been gunned down in their struggles for democracy; such blood has stained the streets of cities throughout the world. In Rumania the price was high and we salute the selfless courage and the sacrifice of men and women who put their lives on the line demanding freedoms which are vital to the interests of workers everywhere. There would be many political points on which Socialists would disagree with those who rose against their oppressors in Eastern Europe but we also acknowledge that they risked their lives trying to establish the conditions in which free trade unions and a genuine socialist movement could operate.

Since the second world war, the enforcement of political tyranny in Eastern Europe has cost the lives of incalculable numbers of workers and brought untold misery.

A further crime that has been perpetrated has been against the integrity of ideas in the claim that socialism exists in Russia and Eastern Europe. A distinction must always be made between the fraudulent claims of ideology and the real facts of productive relations. In Russia and the countries of Eastern Europe there is commodity-production, wage-labour and capital, the accumulation of capital through the exploitation of workers, the market, rent, interest and profit; that is to say, all the economic features of capitalist society, organised mainly through the state for the benefit of a privileged class. The wealth robbed from the workers and enjoyed by the Ceausescu family with its millions of pounds deposited in foreign accounts was only one example of the luxury lifestyle enjoyed by the rich in the state capitalist countries.

Despite these facts it has suited the propagandists of both East and West to describe those systems as socialist. The Russian rulers needed to cloak the reality of their vile system with an acceptable ideology and for Western propagandists, this gave them an ideal opportunity to discredit the name of socialism.

It was inevitable that the oppressive forms of state capitalism in Russia and Eastern Europe would degenerate into chronic inefficiency. It is impossible to allocate such vast resources to repression, to engender corruption, cynicism, low morale and outright lack of enthusiasm and at the same time expect to be well ahead in the world league of rates of productivity and industrial growth. However, it would be wrong to say that the pressures for changes have originated at the top. Leaders like Gorbachev have reacted to a situation created by Russian workers through their many forms of passive resistance including their unwillingness to apply themselves conscientiously at work.

In Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Rumania despite the intimidation, the workers took courage into their hands, came onto the streets and openly defied their oppressors. What has been impressive has been the sophistication of the ways in which these workers have conducted themselves. By their nature these events could not be well planned in advance, the movements had little structure of organisation behind them, yet despite these disadvantages in every case except Rumania (which was not the fault of the workers) they managed to conduct themselves without great bloodshed in a dignified and self-controlled manner.

With greater freedom of movement and expression, for the first time in many years, the genuine voice of socialism can now be carried to those countries. When we see these oppressive structures collapsing, what is being demonstrated is the power and force of popular consciousness. So, when we say that a majority of socialists will be able to take over the state and establish a system of co-operation and direct production for human needs on the basis of common ownership, the workers’ ability to carry this through has been demonstrated in Eastern Europe over the past few weeks.

When we say that in recognition of their common interests throughout the world, workers can co-operate and act simultaneously in each country; that a socialist majority will be able to organise this great revolutionary change through a series of fast-moving events in a level-headed and self-controlled manner, the ability to achieve all these things has also been demonstrated by the working class in Eastern Europe.

These are the grounds on which Socialists can be greatly encouraged by recent events. Having seen these vile and despotic structures continue intact decade after decade, we might have been excused for thinking that they were so firmly in place that they would last for ever. In fact, they were so fundamentally weak that they collapsed overnight.

Having seen world capitalism stagger on decade after decade, similarly we could get the impression that it is so firmly entrenched that it will remain for ever. In fact, confronted by a socialist majority, the lesson is that it will prove so fundamentally weak that its abolition will be a mere formality causing it to dissolve into history.

From Cold War to Class War (1990)

From the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The past forty years have been marked by an apparent stability in the modem capitalist world order. The post-war settlement, arrived at by those partners-in-crime of world historical proportions, Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, has survived surprisingly well. Its main achievement has been to neutralise conflict amongst the major powers, giving capitalists in these countries the peaceful base of operations needed to conduct the greatest programme of mass-exploitation of class by class ever seen on Earth. In the West, the traditional pressures for conflict between developed capitalist nations have been converted into a binding military alliance, and it has preserved a status quo of “mutual deterrence” with its state-capitalist rivals in the Warsaw Pact.

Of course, post-war capitalism has not been without its troubles. Since the global crisis of the early seventies, economic tensions, for example that caused by Japan’s massive trade surplus, have become an increasingly significant issue. However thanks to the close political relationship between the leading seven capitalist governments, the post-war era has been one notable for its unprecedented level of international co-operation on economic matters between the state administrators of capitalism. This has minimised the inherent tendency of capitalism to repeated crisis. The co-ordinated response to the October 87 slump on the world’s stock markets showed how important economic co-operation has become to the functioning of capitalism.

But behind the facade of stability things have not stood still – indeed they could not have. “All things”, Engels pointed out, “come into being and go out of being”, and the post-war settlement is far from being an exception, by reason of the competitive nature of capitalism:

  The battle of competition is fought by the cheapening of commodities. The cheapness of the commodities depends . . . on the productivity of labour, and this depends on the scale of production. Therefore the larger capitals beat the smaller. (Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, chapter 25.2)

And true to Man’s prediction, post-war capitalism has indeed been characterised by a growing, unabated concentration of capital. National markets are giving way to international markets. Financial markets are no longer national but global.

The impact of all this for a medium-sized European country like Britain is enormous. What government could once control, it no longer can. Evidence comes from the current trend of privatisation which is, in reality, a programme of multi-nationalisation, as the necessity for capital to expand beyond redundant national borders becomes irresistible. Amersham International, British Aerospace, British Airways, British Gas, British Steel, British Telecom, BP, Cable and Wireless and the others are all now multi-nationals. French interests in British water companies and Jaguar, swallowed whole by Ford, are the latest examples of the inevitable multi-nationalisation process.

Collapse of State Capitalist Bloc

But the major result of all this world capitalist integration is the defeat of the distorted, Stalinist concept of so-called “socialism in one country” or, indeed, one bloc. It has been undermined by its bureaucratic inflexibility and lack of democratic mandate, but finally, and much more emphatically, by the global market, by the logic of capitalism itself. “Socialism in one country” – state capitalism – is suffering the same economic pressures as openly capitalist Britain, which, out of economic necessity, has no choice but to integrate further with its European partners. In the same sense, we are witnessing the end of the era of separate state-capitalist development in the Russian Empire.

The tradition of the Russian Revolution gave rise to the chimera of so-called socialism and capitalism as separate worlds, as entirely estranged civilisations. The Socialist Party never gave in to the temptations of this “short-cut-to-socialism” tradition, and now that steadfastness of view is being vindicated. From now on, with gathering pace, there will be an unstoppable integration of East and West. Russia will over time acquire markets, multi-national firms will operate there, the rouble will become convertible, Russian tourists will visit London as Western tourists already visit Moscow. We are moving into a new era in which the distinctions between Russian state capitalism, the Swedish mixed economy and American capitalism will surely diminish. What does this mean for socialism?

In the short-term, the end of Stalinism will be held by the Western capitalist class as the end of the only apparent non-capitalist alternative, as the end of Marxism. This will lend a sickening prop of legitimacy to the capitalist free-market and the model of Western liberalism. Capitalists and their hangers-on will publicly gloat at the demise of their one-time ideological competitors – but, in private circles, there must be some disquiet about what is to follow the end of the Cold War.

Re-emergence of Germany

Historians in the pay of the master class have falsely (deliberately or not) interpreted the Cold War conflict as a struggle between alternative social systems. The “iron curtain”, a term ingeniously coined by that arch-champion of capitalism, Winston Churchill, has been central to their analysis of post-war international relations. None of this stands up to a thoroughgoing Marxist scrutiny of history. There is no internal tendency towards East-West conflict. What invokes fear and concern in London these days is not Russian military force but the power of the dreaded Deutschmark. And here lies the crux of the matter .The crisis in the Eastern bloc has made the rise of Germany as a new super-power a real possibility.

America, Britain and France are desperately trying to minimise the repercussions of the crisis of Russian state-capitalism, looking for all sorts of new roles for NATO. But the very foundations of the post-war settlement – the arbitrary division of Germany and Europe – cannot be sustained indefinitely. The re-emergence of the German question shatters the illusion (which those in the war-torn third world never had) that the peaceful co-existence of the major capitalist powers can go on for ever. The underlying problems which caused two capitalist world wars this century have not gone away. Indeed, anyone who thinks that peace between Washington and Moscow means total disarmament is only showing the utmost CND-like naivety. At a time when America’s, Russia’s and Britain’s world status rests not on economic power but nuclear capability, the decision to maintain militarisation will not be difficult – especially in the light of the glowing economic successes of Germany, Japan and Italy.

If the collapse of separatist state-capitalism in the Eastern bloc is giving capitalists around the world sleepless nights, then the opposite is true for scientific socialists. For us, there is some cause for optimism in the cataclysmic events of recent months. So long as Leninism, Stalinism, Russian state capitalism masqueraded as the only non-capitalist model, the project for building a majority support for socialism could make only limited progress. The apologists for capitalism on the political left and right could always point to Russian society in their ideological argument against a social revolution. Now at last, the end of Stalinism creates the possibility of clarifying the issues at stake in the class struggle.

Way Clear for Socialism

Never has the appeal for workers of the world to unite been more relevant or urgent. Together we can eliminate the waste of human capacities and material resources which exists under capitalism. Together we can achieve an abundance of the means of life to which everyone will enjoy free access. Together we can nullify the risk of another capitalist world war.

This prospect is brought nearer now that the siren-call of “Marxism-Leninism” that attracted many would-be socialists to the rocks of state-capitalism is being stifled. It is surely now clear that Lenin’s distorted interpretation of Marxism produced the vanguardism of which Sir Nicolae Ceausescu was the latest perverted symbol. Leninism occurred in a country in which there was peasant unrest, economic backwardness and no possibility, under feudal relations, of building up to the mass working-class movement that Marx had in mind. Though even in feudal Russia earlier this century, Lenin’s was not the only view of Marxism. After all, the Mensheviks took a different view. They believed, as Marx and Engels did, in the necessary development of the social contradictions in capitalism which would inevitably and inexorably lead to social revolution and socialism.

Marxism and scientific socialism are not the same as “Marxism-Leninism”. Martov and Plekhanov never thought so. The Socialist Party has never thought so at any point in its history and now world events have endorsed this unwavering position. The era of the 1917 revolution is at an end. And for those left disillusioned by the failure of “socialism in one country” it is time to join the party with untarnished principles, to help create a mass democratic movement for world socialism.

It is time to join the Socialist Party and the real pre-Lenin tradition of Marxism, for though the Cold War is over, the class war goes on.

John Dunn

Sting in the Tail: Getting Thatcher Out (1990)

The Sting in the Tail column from the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Getting Thatcher Out

Are Tony Cliff and the rest of the Socialist Workers Party dishonest or just barmy?

At an SWP meeting in Glasgow in December Cliff implored the audience to help "get Thatcher out".

When we asked if this meant that the SWP would, as it always does, urge workers to vote Labour at the next election, Cliff replied "We must always take sides in any struggle and if Labour Is even one per cent better than the Tories then we must support them".

Yet the SWP paper, Socialist Worker, on sale at that meeting stated:

We can recall again and again the record of past Labour governments which . . .  turned viciously on working people as soon as they gained office. 

and forewarned that 

. . .  it is perfectly possible that, regardless of intentions, a Klnnock government will be even worse In terms of its objective attacks on the working class than the Thatcher regime has been.

Any party which tells workers that and still asks them to vote Labour has to be dishonest AND barmy!

Getting Thatcher In

Mention of getting Thatcher out, do leftists ever ask themselves how she "got in" In the first place?

Back in 1974 their cry was "Heath out" and they got their wish when a Labour government was elected. But Labour inevitably got up the noses of so many workers that by the next election they would have voted for anyone, let alone Thatcher, to get Labour out.

So Thatcher's victory in 1979 was the product of the previous Labour government. Any future Labour government would be just as helpless in solving capitalism's problems and the Tories would claim that there really is no alternative to their policies and probably be given a mandate for even harsher policies than before.

The moral is; Electing a Labour government only gets you the Tories next time around.

Class Struggle in USA

They say in Harlan County there are no neutrals there,You either are a union man or a thug for J.H. Blair.

These words are from a union song written in 1931 about the bloody struggle between the United Mineworkers of America and the Appalachian coal owners.

This struggle has continued until today when the Pittson coal company in Virginia has set out to break the union. 1,700 miners have been on strike for seven months because:

Pittson has rejected the union contract and cut-off health benefits to 1,500 widows, disabled miners and pensioners.

(Billy Bragg writing in the Weekend Guardian 30 December)

The song also contains the line "And I'll stick with the union till every battle's won". A noble sentiment indeed, but workers' battles with capital can never be finally won by trade union action. Only their political action to end capitalism and establish socialism can do that.

Value for Money

The Times of 12 December brought the exciting news of two increases in income:

Britain's 55,000 pre-1973 war widows and their supporters have won the battle for a better pension . . . The rise will mean that all war widows will receive a pension of more than £100 per week.

The war widows' increase is the result of a 16 year battle by The Campaign for Equal Pay for War Widows organisation, who described the increase as "an enormous improvement and we are very grateful".

Mr. Michael Mates, chairman of the all-party select committee on defence called it "a quick, fair and generous response.

16 years is apparently Mr. Mates' idea of "quick". One wonders how many widows have died in these 16 years.

As for "generous" we wonder how he would describe the other increase reported in that day's Times.

Lord Hanson's pay topped £1.5 million In the year to end September according to Hanson's annual report.

It would seem that giving your life "for Queen and country" is valued rather less than staying alive as a company director.

Wounded Minds

When George Bush visited American soldiers wounded during the invasion of Panama, one man, paralysed by his wounds, handed him a small American flag and told him:

I want you to have this from them, and thank you for sending us.

Guardian 2 January

Presumably "them" were the 23 American soldiers killed and the 323 wounded during the fighting, but needless to say it was Panama's workers who suffered most. Their dead are expected to exceed 1,000 and many still lie beneath the ruins of the barrios (slums) which were flattened by indiscriminate American firepower.

But what if that paralysed soldier had been an Iranian and Bush the Ayatollah? The exchange between them would doubtless have been presented by the media as an awful example of Islamic fundamentalism. Bush and the class he represents should be pleased by the Yankee-Doodle fundamentalism produced by America’s head-fixing industry.

Blind Leaders

"What's that, my boy, you hate being a wage slave? Well forget socialism, that's utopian nonsense. Consider instead Mrs. Thatcher's vision of the future - 'Every man and woman a capitalist', so show some enterprise and start a business!

Pay no attention to the fact that there were 16,562 business failures in England and Wales alone in 1988. Trade Indemnity, insurers against bankruptcy, estimate there will be 20% more in 1989 with a further increase in 1990.

The reasons? Well, there’s high interest rates, but this would be to your advantage if you started a bank.

Then business confidence is low, but isn't that precisely when capitalists like to take risks? And there's increased competition from Europe, but we British can always see off these foreigners, eh?

So, my boy, I expect you can't wait to get started on the road to fame and fortune. What's that you say? You've never heard a bigger load of utopian nonsense in your puff and you'd rather stick with socialism!

There’s no helping some people."

Genocide in Brazil

The Yanomami Indians live in the remote forest area on the frontier between Brazil and Venezuela. As their home is stripped for cattle ranches their way of life is fast disappearing.

The process has been accelerated by the discovery of gold in the region. It is estimated that there are only 20,000 of them left. Their future looks bleak as the Brazilian government, instead of honouring its promise to send in troops to clear out the 45,000 gold miners who have invaded the area, have announced that 256 square km. of the area will be set aside for mining inside the 2,000 square km Yanomami reservation. This was formerly 9,000 square km.

Every time a more primitive people come in contact with capitalism the result is disastrous for the tribal society. The murder of the Indians of North America in the 19th. century is being repeated in the Amazon in the 20th. century.

Inside capitalism the profit motive is all-powerful. As a whole culture disappears, supporters of market forces can reflect on the "improvement" of pulling down the forests and poisoning the rivers with the mercury the miners use to purify the gold.

Scorpion.

British Left in Disarray (1990)

From the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now that Leninism is stewing in its own ideological juice, and the vanguard parties which bullied workers in the name of "the proletarian dictatorship" are being hissed off the world stage by the workers who detest them, the British Leninists must decide what to do. Apart from a diminishing number of left-wingers within the pro-market Labour Party who have never embraced the Leninist dogma, the vast majority of those on the British Left subscribe to the political ideology of Leninism. They may call themselves Marxist-Leninists, but in practice they stand in the tradition of Lenin, the Bolshevik leader, and not Marx whose ideas Lenin distorted.

As Leninists they believe that the workers cannot understand the case for socialism, but must be led to revolution by politically-conscious cadres. The model for such a revolution is the Bolshevik coup of November 1917 in which a minority party claimed to establish a new social order on behalf of the non-socialist masses. Leninists preach the need for a vanguard party to lead the workers. Such a party must be organised on the basis of the Leninist principle of "democratic centralism" according to which dissent from the decisions of the leadership is an act of betrayal not to be tolerated. The Leninists' contempt for our ability as workers to emancipate ourselves from capitalism is matched by their opportunist efforts to be wherever the workers are in struggle, constantly aiming to lead such struggles. The Leninists are Generals looking for an army.

In Britain the Generals have always looked rather pathetic and the workers have shown a wise unwillingness to join the Leninist army. After the Bolshevik revolution most of the British Left went over to the side of Bolshevism. They were overwhelmed by the romanticism of the historically absurd claim of a small, secretive party in backward Russia to have established socialism by force of arms. Dazed by the Bolshevik daydream, the parties of the Left swallowed Lenin’s writings as if they were the revolutionary gospel, and formed the Communist Party of Great Britain.

From the outset the CP had as its purpose to repeat in Britain what the Bolsheviks had done in Russia. Without Leninism as a dogma and "Socialist Russia" as a model, the CP had no reason to exist. As Russian state capitalism became more obviously anti-socialist in its nature, so the CP had to twist and distort more and more in order to justify itself. The CPGB of the 1930s was a party committed to the propagation of lies. Purges? But there are no purges, they said. A dictatorship ruled over by the monster Stalin? But Russia is a workers' dictatorship and Comrade Stalin is the greatest Marxist alive, they solemnly declared. Wage slavery? No, no, the Russian workers are free from capitalist exploitation. Most of them believed that what they were saying was true: some of the more cynical leaders knew they were lying, but “tactics, comrades, tactics!” They were good Leninists, and if lies were required to make workers follow them, then why let mere “bourgeois honesty” stand in the way? After 1945. as the Russian Empire expanded to take in millions of new East European subjects, the British Leninists praised the wonderful lifestyles of the new prisoners of Leninism.

Sixes and Sevens

With the collapse of East European Leninism, what is the British Left to do? It has three basic options. Firstly, it can pretend that nothing has happened and go on supporting the glorious socialist paradise of Russia, even though the rulers of Russia now admit that the paradise stinks of its own failure. Secondly, the Leninists can support reform in Eastern Europe, pretending that this is what had been necessary all along. It can enter into a love affair with perestroika, even though the current reforms embody everything that the Leninists have traditionally regarded as counter-revolution. Thirdly, the Leninist Left can hang up its boots and retire. After all, the Hungarian Communist Party has dissolved itself, and other East European CPs are due to do likewise. The Australian Communist Party, which had 20,000 members in its heydey of the 1940s, has voted by a three to one margin to close down, and in Italy the PCI (the largest in West Europe) is to change its name. The Dutch CP has joined a faction of the Greens.

In Britain there have been moves in all of these directions. The membership of the CPGB was 20,000 in 1980: it is now under 7.000—and those are just book numbers. In 1977 the CPGB split: those who left formed the New Communist Party, committed to uncritical support for the Leninist states, while those remaining began to criticise certain aspects of the Russian Empire, still insisting that it was socialist. These critics—the so-called Eurocommunists—were still committed to the basic Leninist dogma: amongst their leading thinkers was Monty Johnstone who spoke in a debate against the Socialist Party, arguing that Lenin was a good Marxist. The Eurocommunists were used by a new group within the CP, based around the party's “theoretical journal", Marxism Today and its editor-cum-guru, Martin Jacques, who wanted to advocate the policies of an important role for the market under "socialism”, electoral pacts with all anti-Thatcher forces and the rejection of any kind of class analysis. It is an irony of CP history that ten years ago Johnstone and those like him were the radical heretics within the CP, fighting against its Stalinist past: now they are the mainstream Leninists, fighting against the total abandonment of anything resembling Leninism by the new Jacques leadership.

In 1988 the CP split again: the Marxism Today loyalists retained control of the CPGB. while some of the old Leninists who could not tolerate the complete rejection of ancient doctrines formed the 1500-strong Communist Party of Britain. So, there are at least three CPs in Britain today: the Jacques-dominated CPGB. the more conventionally Leninist CPB and the incorrigibly Stalinist NCP. At its November 1989 Congress the CPGB did not vote on a motion to wind up the party—although there are plans for a referendum to close it down and form a so-called Socialist Forum which would not be a party and which anyone, including members of other parties such as the Greens, could join. It seems likely that this is what will happen eventually (so the ‘Premature Obituary which the Socialist Standard published last year was not all that premature after all). In the meantime the CPGB has voted to follow the Jacques line of celebrating the downfall of East European "Communism" (as he calls it) and of abandoning Leninist dogma for support for what they call a socialist market economy.

The future of the 200-strong New Communist Party looks very bleak. Its funding came from the traditionally Stalinist Czech Party, which is now fighting for its political life (a fight it will surely lose) and is unlikely to pay for the NCP's weekly newspaper. So. the last true advocate of unadulterated Stalinism awaits burial. The Communist Party of Britain will either go the same way or will remain a sect in which old Leninists can comfort themselves in seclusion from the rest of the world, endlessly repeating worn-out Leninist cliches to each other in public meetings which the public will regard as a club for those whose time has passed. One thing is for sure: nobody will be persuaded to join political parties which exist to support conceptions of socialism which history has shown to be detested by the workers who were forced to put up with them. A few Leninists will turn their attention to the fantasies of "socialism" in China (until that dam bursts, as it is bound to) or Cuba or Albania (for as long as that lasts). In general, the myth that socialism/communism now exists somewhere is virtually dead.

Left in a Mess

Writing in Marxism Today (a journal which must soon decide to change its name, for it is no longer Marxist even on its own terms). Martin Jacques has stated that the tradition of the Bolshevik revolution, in which Russia stood as a socialist model against the rest of the capitalist world, is no longer relevant:

That era is at an end. From now on. with gathering pace, there will be an interpenetration of the two systems. The Soviet Union, over time, will acquire markets, international firms will operate there. Soviet tourists will be a common sight in London The international communist movement is now surely at an end. (January 1990).

What Jacques means is that the old division between state and private capitalism is ending. In an Open Letter to Marxism Today, John Lloyd, a member of the Labour Party, writer for the Financial Times and advocate of the Swedish market system, has suggested that Jacques cannot continue to pay lip service to Marxism while rejecting everything that the CP has always meant by the term (New Socialist, January 1990). Lloyd is quite correct: if Jacques is to continue to accept that Leninist ideology is irrelevant and also that class analysis is redundant, then why pose as a Marxist? Why not go the whole way and admit that he and his fellow “communists" are opponents of socialism/ communism and are simply interested in trying to make the capitalist market-system work well? Incidentally, the same question can be put to Mikhail Gorbachev.

Of course, there are still the Trotskyists. These are the Leninists who want it both ways: they hold passionately to the Leninist dogma, which the CPGB has thrown overboard, but whenever the results of Leninism are pointed out to them they cry in unison, “Nothing to do with us. It was all Stalin's fault”. This is crass historical idealism: as if one man turned Russia from a home of revolutionary socialism into a police state. The fact is that Stalin did nothing that Lenin, the authoritarian statist, had not begun. Furthermore. Trotsky, who was an accomplice of Lenin and was the leader of the massacre of the Krondstadt sailors as well as the advocate of the Bolshevik policy that trade unions must be subservient to the state employers, could not have ruled the Bolshevik dictatorship in any significantly different way from Stalin. At least the now-dying New Communist Party can be credited with defending unto the last the hideous consequences of their Leninist recipe: the Socialist Workers Party and the Revolutionary Communist Party want the recipe to be used, but demand the right to spit out the cake.

All in all, the British Left is in a huge mess. It is a mess of their own design. Ever since the formation of the Communist Party in 1921 the Socialist Party has warned them of the fallacies inherent within the Leninist strategy. In the 1930s our party was called fascist by the CP because we exposed the crimes of Stalin in the pages of this journal. It was official CP policy to break up our meetings. The Leninist Left is now left with a discredited record and no future. Despite our political hostility to them, we are bound to feel some sympathy for those workers who have wasted their lives in a cause which is now so rapidly crumbling before their eyes. Some of the workers who joined the Leninist parties in the early days were conscious of the iniquities of the profit system, often well read in Marx, and frequently active in the fights over wages and conditions which wage slaves must inevitably enter. These were the deluded workers who would talk endlessly about how well-off were workers in Eastern Europe, how rumours of dissent in those countries were mere CIA propaganda and how happy workers would be here if they were governed by a Gierek or a Brezhnev. How utterly mistaken they were; what an immense dis-service to the cause of world socialism they unintentionally caused.

After Leninism

Talk of a crisis of socialist ideas is much in the air. Thatcher, in her New Year message, said that the 1980s had been the decade in which socialism was shown to have failed. What has actually failed is state capitalism and the Leninist illusion that the state can run the profit system in the interest of the class which is exploited for profit. Leninists of all descriptions are in a dizzy crisis, the seeds of which are to be found in the illusory belief that the capitalist revolution in Russia in 1917 led to the establishment of socialism.

As far as real socialists are concerned, we have no awful record of lying and self-deceiving to explain away. Far from suffering from a crisis of ideas, recent events in Eastern Europe have served to clear the air of a number of foolish illusions about “socialist countries” which we have had to waste too much of our time having to expose as false. Indeed, now that the Labour Party has come out in its indisputably capitalist colours and the Kremlin is admitting that its job is to run the market profitably, just like all the rest of the capitalist governments, the task of socialists faces fewer obstacles. We can state the case for a world society without property, classes, states or money and only the most stupid of opponents will be able to tell us that that is what the Labour or Communist parties stand for. More clearly than ever it is apparent that there is only one Socialist Party in Britain. We have always been the only ones to stand for the establishment of a genuinely socialist world community; now we are the only ones to say that that is what we stand for.

Never having been taken in by the dogmas of Leninism or the myth of “socialist nations", the Socialist Party stands with a reputation which advertises the validity of our principles. Here in the West the profit system wears the mask of freedom. While ambulances are run by cops and soldiers, because the state thinks so little of workers' health that they would rather let us die than pay the ambulance workers above the rate of inflation; while the monopolised press tells lies with impunity and BBC employees are vetted by MI5 before they are allowed to report the news; while the inner cities fall prey to the Crack Culture and the Arthur Daley business ethics; while kids sleep in cardboard boxes and fifteen million British workers can only exist on state hand-outs; while Thatcher spits out the rhetoric of militaristic jingoism and all parties relegate human needs to the good health of the Stock Exchange, the workers of Eastern Europe are being offered this bogus freedom as a prize for their struggle against their pseudo-Communist masters.

Socialists stand in hostility to the boss class of the West and the East; whether they pretend to dictate on the workers' behalf or they are undisguised legalised robbers, we are out to end their power, and to expose the ideologies which have allowed them to hold it this long. Socialism is not dead: it has not yet been tried. And now that we can bury not just the corpse of Lenin but the myths of Leninism, it is a great time to be in the struggle for a society freed from the Dictatorship of Capital.

Steve Coleman

Solidarity governs in Poland (1990)

From the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is happening in Poland?

What sort of policies are coming from the Solidarity-led government? What are the prospects for the workers? And can it really be possible that the "vanguard" party—the privileged elite—could have really given up their power and privilege, voluntarily?

Over the New Year steep price rises were announced and meat disappeared from the cities' markets. No police were to be seen in Warsaw: even during New Year's Eve festivities in the centre, where thousands of people, many very drunk, celebrated noisily. Some say the police, unpopular and demoralised, are afraid to be seen on the streets. Many have left the force, some setting up in business as private detectives and security guards. Their clients are mostly rich people: "despite appearances. there are more and more wealthy people in Poland" (Warsaw Voice, 31 December-7 January).

With the move towards a market economy and private enterprise there are pickings to be had for the rich, and for Western capitalists. Lech Walesa has been begging Western businesses to set up shop in Poland, and the Economist reminds its readers that, like Portugal. Poland pays very low wages. Why is this? After all, isn't Solidarity supposed to be a trade union, representing workers interests. and doesn't it control the government?

Experts Hi-Jack Solidarity

Almost from the start Solidarity was dominated by so-called "experts". At its birth in Gdansk, in August 1980. when the workers' representatives wanted to demand the abolition of censorship and free elections, a representative of KOR (a group of intellectuals sympathetic to the workers) was the only one to plead for them to be reasonable. That man is now Prime Minister Mazowiecki.

As a result of the advice of such people, the Gdansk Agreement and later policy documents of Solidarity were mealy-mouthed, meekly accepting the status quo. avoiding any challenge to the “leading role of the Party”:

These new unions . . . will be established on the basis of . . . the socialist system which exists in Poland today. They will recognise the leading role of the PUWP in the state and will not oppose the existing system of international alliances. (Gdansk Agreement)

The workers' delegates were furious at this acknowledgement of the Party's “leading role", which had not been discussed with them. "From that moment on. they wanted to throw all the experts out of the shipyard", wrote an eyewitness. Jadwiga Staniszkis.

The Gdansk Agreement also urged workers “to show greater work discipline in co-operation with the management of the factories and enterprises", and "to work towards the increase of output'. Later. in its Draft Statutes (31 August 1980), Solidarity's aims are defined as to attempt to bring the workers' interests into harmony with the functioning of the enterprise".

This is the language of the Church, very influential with the leaders of the movement. Lech Walesa is on record as saying that he wouldn't trust himself to be a leader "if it were not for the influence of God" (BBC TV. 12 July 1981).

For the record, previous workers demands had been less humble and had insisted on free elections. Just before the Gdansk Agreement, at another shipyard occupation strike in Szczeczin. an agreement was reached which had nothing in it about the "leading role of the Party". But in Szczeczin no “experts" were allowed to hijack the workers' negotiations.

These "experts", like Mazowiecki, Michnik, Kuron and others of the KOR faction are now elected members of the Polish parliament, the Sejm, endorsed by Solidarity. However, last summers "free" and democratic elections were something of a fraud. Within a few weeks of the announcement of the election, Citizens' Committees (note: not workers' committees) sprang up and produced nominations: academics, writers, actors, film directors, names of all sorts, including KOR activists. Endorsed by Lech Walesa in the name of Solidarity—but without any process of consultation with the membership—these Solidarity candidates all got elected in the one-third of the seats open to them.

The election meant that the old PUWP. and its allies, held most of the seats but wherever there had been a choice, voters had shown their preference for Solidarity candidates. Jaruzelski chose to opt for a coalition, a form of power-sharing. Mazowiecki became Prime Minister and Kuron Minister of Labour while his side retained the key ministries of Defence, Internal Affairs, Transport and External Economic Relations. In short, the PUWP retained control over the armed forces and the police.

Consensus on Economic Reforms

The policies of the Mazowiecki government include the old classics of economic reform: ending food subsidies, increasing productivity, and introducing some form of “market economy". This is in line with the policy decided at the 1981 Solidarity Congress. and not very different from those which the PUWP were then advocating. As Marxism Today commented at the time. “Solidarity's reform proposals for economic decentralisation and the introduction of market mechanisms only diverge in degree from those of the Party and the government" (January 1982).

The continuity in policies is really quite striking. In July 1980. the then PUWP leader. Gierek, said that "rises in the standard of living have to be earned". The solution to Poland's economic crises, then and now, is to make the workers work harder and earn less.

Today, with inflation running at from 100 per cent to 500 per cent, workers' pay rises are not allowed to be above 80 per cent of the rise in the cost of living. So, even if they can obtain a rise, their earnings are cut by 20 per cent. If enterprises pay more, they are attacked with punitive taxation, even bankrupted. Kuron, as Minister of Labour, wants to limit the right to strike. His plan is for strike organisers to "be charged with paying the costs of strikes, a ban on political strikes and strikes concerning collective agreements that had previously been signed by the union"(Warsaw Voice). Incidentally, he appears on TV on Tuesday nights with helpful hints. Like his idea for solving the problem of poverty by opening an SOS bank account for people to send money to for distribution to the needy (a scheme which flopped due to objections from the Polish National Bank).

Under Solidarity rule, conditions for workers are not better than under Gierek in 1980, with shortages of basic essentials, high rates of accidents (in the mines, one death for every 500,000 tonnes of coal), the need to work weekends to supplement low wages, and so on.

Looking back, it seems that a consensus was reached in 1980-1 on plans for economic reform. These would include “marketisation", profit maximisation, ending the nomenklatura system, and some form of "workers' self-management". Already in 1980. Jerzy Urban of the PUWP wrote of the need to do a deal with the trade unions: “to find a place for the new trade unions in the whole system of government in Poland" (Polityka, November 1980).

Jaruzelski's strategy was to incorporate Solidarity as a partner in a coalition government. A similar policy was urged by the Church, always favouring national unity and “harmony". The result is that the PUWP does not have to carry the can for the unpleasant, harsh effects for workers of these “reforms". In fact the situation is one of role reversal. Once the workers' movement, Solidarity is now attacking workers’ living standards, forcing real wages down, and limiting their right to strike. And the PUWP and the old “official" unions are in opposition, protesting against price rises and objecting to Kuron's plans to limit the right to strike.

Enfranchisement of the Nomenklatura

So far the working class have not benefited from government policies. Who is benefiting? Quite a few members of the old elite, the nomenklatura of apparatchiks and managers, are busy feathering their own nests, setting up companies and acquiring business assets. Perfectly legal but decidedly unscrupulous activities are going on, according to the Warsaw Voice (31 December-7 January) in an article headed Watch Out, Thieves!’:

A new process called the "enfranchisement of the nomenklatura" began deep within the Polish economy. Beneficiaries of the previous system used their positions to secure their own financial futures by setting up companies which claimed state properly.

This began with buying up cars and property belonging to state offices and enterprises but "the extent of this destructive procedure is wider than had been believed".

Soon, when a scheme has been worked out for privatising industry, who do you think will have money to spare to buy shares and become legal capitalists? Not the working class, obviously. Effectively the "vanguard’' will re-establish its control of the means of production in a different form, no longer mediated through state ownership.

The Church will preach to the workers about the need for harmony. And Solidarity's activists will urge that their members be "responsible in their demands . . .  We as activists will ask our people here to understand and support the government of Mazowiecki", in the words of Edward Folcik, the Solidarity shop steward at a Wroclaw factory.

On a visit to Poland over the New Year I heard much that reminded me of the period, in the 1970s, when a Labour government arranged a deal with the TUC, a "social contract". This was not in the interests of the workers: in a period of inflation they were told that they could not demand pay rises; that this would not be in the national interest, and could mean the Tories getting back into power.

Similar arguments are used in Poland. Sacrifices must be made to get the economy on its feet again, “there is no other way", the only alternative would be to bring back the PUWP. And trade unions and clergy actively preach at the unfortunate workers about the need to work harder, for a “better tomorrow".

Charmian Skelton

Nationalism and economic collapse (1990)

From the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is still the conventional wisdom for members of the peace movement to equate the end of the military blocs partitioning Europe with a new era of peace. Individual nations, it is said, freed from the super-powers' endless games of brinkmanship and mad arms-racing will establish a new era of peaceful co-operation.

This ignores the fact that the Cold War of the last forty or so years simply froze into place the nationalist rivalries between states which had torn Europe apart in two world wars. Now the blocs are crumbling these dangerous rivalries are thrusting themselves once more on to the centre stage.

Poland and Germany

Poland had its western boundaries arbitrarily redrawn along the Oder-Neisse river lines, including the former German city of Danzig, now Gdansk. Fully one-third of Poland is former German territory, and the substantial German minority is now beginning to make itself known again.

When Chancellor Kohl paid an official visit to Poland early in November, he was forced to cancel plans to attend a German-language mass in the country after a furious outburst by the Polish media. The venue was to have been Annaberg in Silesia, which just happened to be the site of the brutal repression by the rightwing Freikorps of a Polish uprising against German rule in 1921. It is now a rallying point for the German-speaking minority in Silesia. Germany has still not renounced its claims to the “lost territories" and has never signed a peace treaty with Poland or Russia recognising the validity of the Oder-Neisse line.

Meanwhile the pent-up frustration of East Germans over economic conditions their side of the border is spilling over into calls for German reunification, while a recent East German law forbids Poles from buying subsidised goods in East German shops. A member of the East German parliament was loudly booed when he warned East Germans to "beware of putting an invisible yellow mark on the backs of our Polish friends"—a reference to the marking of the Jews under Nazism.

The Poles have looked at these developments with increasing nervousness. Polish officials recently met with Gorbachev and displayed a sudden keenness for stressing that Russia remain the most important external guarantee of the security of the Polish state.

Polish fears were put by Russian foreign minister Shevardnadze to the European Parliament in December. Questions remained about the German commitment to its present borders, he said, “will a reunified Germany be ready to accept the existing borders in Europe and renounce any territorial claim? The Federal Republic of Germany has avoided answering that".

On 3 December the Prussian Iron Cross and Eagle were returned to the Goddess of Victory statue atop of the Brandenburg gate in Berlin for the first time since 1958. In that year they were pulled down as being a “symbol of Prussian-German militarism”.

Hungary and Rumania

To the south of Poland, historic rivalries between the rulers of Rumania and Hungary were also frozen by the Cold War. Two and a half million Hungarian-speakers were locked into the western Rumanian province of Transylvania, where ever more desperate attempts were made by Ceausescu forcibly to integrate them, culminating in the notorious plan for forced resettlement into "model" towns after the razing of the Hungarian-Rumanian villages.

After the fall of Ceausescu there are already signs that the leaders of the ruling National Salvation Front share his views on integration. Istvan Pap. a Transylvanian Hungarian who fled Rumania three years ago. calls the leaders of the Front "little Ceausescus", while the father of the dissident priest Pastor Laszlo Tokes. whose persecution sparked the anti-Ceausescu uprising, warned recently: "After all that has happened the old way of thinking will go on. The people are demonstrating for democracy now. but I fear it may not last".

One particularly ominous sign is the creation of the National Christian Peasants Party, a religious and conservative oriented party with echoes of the crypto-fascist National Christian Party of the 1930s which had a pronounced anti-semitic programme and established its own para-military organisation.

The newly-formed Democratic Federation of Rumanian Hungarians is now pressing for laws on the rights of minorities to be debated by a democratically-elected government. But the fears of "liberal” Rumanians were summed up by the dissident Hungarian playwright and regional head of the Rumanian National Salvation Front. Andreas Suto: “If Ceausescus policy of romanisation of national minorities is not reversed it will be bad not only for Transylvania but also for the whole of East and Central Europe".

The Hungarian government also remains fiercely nationalistic towards the border issue. When Ceausescu's persecution of the Transylvanian Hungarians was at its height last year, it sent furious protests and broke off diplomatic relations, leading the Economist (2 September 1989) to speculate that “if this had been 1914 it would have been war" It should be remembered that it was precisely the pursuit of territorial claims against Rumania which led Hungary to disaster in the Second World War.

The fall of Ceausescu was precipitated by the Hungarian minority in Timisoara defending one of "their" priests against persecution. before being joined by Rumanian workers, and there is growing evidence that a new Hungarian government to be elected later this year will not let the border dispute rest. One of the leading contenders in the elections scheduled for April, the populist and patriotic “Democratic Forum", has already begun spouting anti- Rumanian. anti-semitic and anti-gypsy propaganda. At the end of December Dr Csba Vass. a founder member of the Forum, visited Transylvania, telling correspondents he hoped to "bring back on to the political agenda the question of the rights of the ethnic Hungarians there".

Instability and the rise of xenophobic nationalism also marks the border between Turkey and Bulgaria. In the middle of last year one third of a million ethnic Turks in Bulgaria fled the country after an attempt to forcibly assimilate them into the Bulgarian language and suppress their Islamic religion. Bulgaria's former dictator. Todor Zhikov. actively encouraged anti-Turkish sentiment to bolster his unpopular rule, forcing Turks to adopt Bulgarian names in 1984-5 for example. After his fall, the new government met mass opposition when it tried to restore the Turkish minority's rights.

"Neo-Monetarist Dictatorship"

No-one is suggesting that all this will lead to renewed hostilities in Eastern Europe—yet. The central point is that a severe economic crisis now threatens to engulf Eastern Europe, creating an explosive situation of social disintegration in which appeals to nationalism are often the last resort of a beleaguered ruling class.

The Hungarian parliament, for example, has just endorsed Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth’s austerity budget which aims to hasten the transition from a state capitalist to a free market capitalist economy. The package aims to cut the budget deficit by one-fifth from its current level of about £500m. The IMF has insisted on at least this before it will release $350m in standby credits and $1 billion in EC funds. The Finance Minister Laszlo Bekesi pulled no punches: “There is no alternative to our programme. What is at stake is the complete collapse of the economy"

In Poland the IMF-sponsored "rescue" package aims to slash inflation from 50 per cent a month to 5 per cent by April, while government subsidies on consumer goods will be cut from 31 to 14 per cent. All wages will be frozen. Unemployment is forecast to rise from virtually zero to 400,000 while the standard of living drops 20 per cent. Already about one million of the 37 million population are acknowledged to be not earning enough to live on, and officials say the figure is probably 10 times as many (Guardian, 18 December). According to the government, "social discipline" is already in disarray, and crime is on the increase: there are rumblings of union discontent and sporadic strikes. Recent reports cite Polish workers complaining that the "Proletarian (Party) Dictatorship" is simply being replaced by the "neo-monetarist dictatorship"

The situation looks as bad in Bulgaria. Although figures are hard to come by, estimates of the country's foreign debts are as high as $10 billion. The Rumanian government has a little more leeway owing to the former dictator's fanatical policy of debt repayment. but the underlying economy is in deep trouble.

So we have an explosive mixture of economic collapse and a resurgent nationalism. This feeds on historical divisions and the need of the new ruling classes in alliance with the remnants of the old to legitimise their rule through appeals to xenophobic and racist ideologies.

These ideologies gain their strength through the hard struggle for survival experienced by workers in everyday life under state capitalism, and these struggles are set to become even harsher under the lash of free market forces now being unleashed. East Europe, now manifested in newly assertive, separate states and pulled towards conflict by the capitalist economic development they serve, looks set to enter yet another grim cycle of violence and despair.

Andrew Thomas

The Welcome in the West (1990)

From the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Perestroika (“restructuring") is really a term for the move away from the heavily-centralised state capitalist economic system of Eastern Europe (Russia has never remotely been either socialist or communist; Marx would turn in his grave at the thought of being associated with any of the inhumanities carried out there in his name) towards a more Western-style of capitalism.

No-one can begrudge people who have been oppressed, economically and psychologically, for so long actually getting reforms that improve their quality of life. It has been inspiring to see on TV the vast congregations of ordinary working class people thronging the centre of the major cities to make mass criticisms and demands that not so long ago would have got them run over by tanks or tortured by the local guardians of law and order and approved thinking.

In the longer term the switch from state capitalism to an economic system more like Western capitalism will be a very mixed blessing. Firstly, nothing will happen overnight. Over time, if the East European economies drag themselves nearer the capacities of those in the West, more wealth might be created But—and it’s a big but—the mass of working class people will only get a bigger share of wealth through the time-honoured principle that when the rich get richer, there are bigger crumbs falling from their tables for the poor to scrabble for.

So, who will be the rich under this system? Well, those who already have privilege and wealth stand at the head of the queue to benefit from the new opportunities that will come along. They are the ones who will be able to convert themselves to being private capitalist investors more easily than anyone else can. Perhaps some of the Party apparatchiks will need to do some agile mental gymnastics to justify their new position, but given the corruptions they administered in the name of the people and state one might imagine that their consciences will not stir a whit.

The position of the working class will not change substantially—they will remain the working class. In Poland, for example, where Solidarity now has political office if not power, this much-admired trade union has urged workers not to strike. The “restructuring" of the Polish economy will mean redundancies for workers The Polish working class is going to have to tighten its belts to help Poland become internationally competitive in the world capitalist marketplace and attract large investment from abroad as well as making the investments of its own new private capitalists profitable. Funny, isn't it, how under capitalism the least well-off have to suffer so that the already well-off can increase their wealth through profits?

What It’s Like in the West

What can the East European citizenry look forward to, then'? Since the end result of what is happening would seem to be something fairly similar to what exists in the West, examining the position of workers here will give some idea as to what East Europeans can expect.

Well, we have the vote and can vote for whichever representatives we wish, even if the choice is more than underwhelming as a rule. Political parties represent class interests and in Britain, the Socialist Party apart, no party represents the majority of ordinary people—the working class—at all.

The Conservative Party quite nakedly represents the interests of the ruling class, who wish to extend their wealth through unfettered profit-making. The Labour Party is grossly misnamed. It does not represented "labour", as can be readily gleaned from the policies adopted at its recent Party Conference It self-proclaims that it wishes to run capitalism better than the Tories, adding that it has the Leader and policies to do so.

Anyone who can remember life under a Labour government will surely recall that they, as Tory governments before, were continually at pains to limit or deny wage increases to “labour", wage demands made by workers who. faced with inflation and spiralling prices, only wished to maintain an already low standard of living.

The reason was simple. Capitalism runs governments, not the other way round. The stated goal of all parties aspiring to power is to run their country; which means running the economy in the interests of the profit-seeking capitalists. Profit is always put ahead of any concern, if it exists, for the material welfare of the working class. This is why the Labour Party, in "opposition", is loud and enthusiastic about wanting a socially caring society but. in power, has been as oppressive as any Tory government, readily adopting anti-working class policies as the needs of capitalism have demanded.

The fact that the interests of capitalists and those of workers are irreconcilable is easily revealed. Capitalists, who own the means of making wealth, continually seek to increase their profits. Profits drop if costs rise. Wage rises of any group of workers—who may only be showing a desire to stay solvent in the face of an economy that makes them poorer—are a rising cost to capitalists. Low or no wage increases mean larger profits for capitalists. That is the real equation in life.

If you have to work for somebody else for a wage or salary, no matter how much you earn, then you are a member of the working class. That applies to many who would vehemently call themselves middle class. However, class position is not a matter of imagined manners, or life-style, or amount of consumer items owned. It is the placing of the person economically, in relation to whether they own the means of wealth production but produce nothing (capitalists) or don't own them and by their labour together with that of their fellow workers produce the wealth of society.

We live in a two-tier society that mirrors this divide between the worker and the capitalist. In the area of education the "masses" attend state schools whereas the children of the wealthy attend “public" (another misnomer) schools. In the area of health, the NHS caters for the "masses" and private health-care facilities cater for the wealthy. Recently the director of ICI got a pay rise of £100,000. Many workers have to go on strike to get a paltry pay rise and could live until the end of their days (not extravagantly, but comfortably) on the annual interest such a sum could bring if it was invested wisely for them. That's the insanity and inequity of capitalism. The fat cats get fatter and workers struggle to survive while working to create profits for their exploiters.

Capitalism not a Free Society

Yet, almost from the cradle, we are fed the Myth of Democracy. We are continually told that the vote is our assurance of a free and democratic society. It does have that potential—if we vote to replace the gross inequity that is capitalism and choose instead a world that is typified by everyone's needs being met. But the millions of people, who live in poverty amidst plenty, know that choice and freedom under capitalism is determined by the amount of money you have. No money, no choice.

The well-off always expect the working class to tighten their belts at times of economic crisis. Yet it is the wealthy capitalists who could better afford to do this, but they won't. They must have their profit, which they will not tolerate becoming less. So they will lay off workers, cut production, and fight wage increases with a vengeance. All to cut costs and maximise their profit. They will be aided in this by the (any) government of the day. Democracy? Freedom? These are empty notions unless there is real equality for each citizen, including an equal right of access to the wealth of society.

In all essential respects Western capitalism and state capitalism are the same. Both have a minority, privileged class who have a monopoly of the wealth of their particular country and a majority working class who have to work for wages to live.

The Eastern Bloc currently seem to be moving towards a system of private capitalism (not necessarily exactly the same one as the West) allied with more democratic procedures for electing governments. That system has not freed the workers of the West. It is not going to free the workers of the East either. As the new governments try to put together streamlined, internationally competitive economies, the euphoric workers will soon discover that it will be their belts they will be urged to tighten as the ruthless reality of capitalism continues to prey on them.

The reforms they have achieved may ultimately come to be seen as icing on a rotten cake—very nice to look at but of crumbling fragility. On TV the sight of millions of East Germans flooding through the Berlin Wall was illuminating. Most looked round the shops, looking at expensive consumer goods they couldn't afford. The British press reported that the most popular purchase East Germans made in West Berlin was fresh fruit to take home. After the East Germans have some kind of elected assembly they are likely to find that they have voted for the availability of fresh fruit, not freedom

No matter how wonderful the reforms seem, in themselves they don't change the nature of capitalism. Profit and wealth remain in the hands of a ruling class and the working class, as ever, face an exploitation that deprives them of the wealth that they, and only they, have created.

There is, however, hope. Not just for workers in East Europe but for those throughout the world. That hope is socialism. Not the dreadful sham that passes for it in the current, so-called socialist countries but a world, to be achieved by a conscious majority of the working class voting for it, where everything is produced to meet need and not for the profit of a small privileged minority

Sandy Wilson

Letters to the Editors: Class, inflation (1990)

Letters to the Editors from the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class, inflation

Dear Editors.

You talk a lot about the battle between the workers and the ruling classes. How do you group people in these classifications? Is a member of the ruling class someone who is connected with the government. or someone who earns more than a certain amount a year, or someone who has inherited substantial wealth, etc.? Are workers those who rely solely on their wages and benefits to survive? Into what class fall the self-employed, working for and/or by themselves? My parents have worked all their lives as dedicated teachers; they have bought small amounts of shares in government privatisations—what class are they?

Secondly, your article "Four fallacies about inflation" (Socialist Standard, August). You state that raising interest rates actually raises inflation, and that it is money supply that is responsible for inflation. In the latter point, you are to a great extent, correct; as to the former you seem to have missed the point of raising interest rates. This main aim is not to actually take money from people (although it does have this side effect)—a government wanting to do this would find it far more efficient to raise taxes—but to discourage people from creating new money: in other words, to stop new, further borrowing, and thus stopping them, as you argue, increasing the money supply and thus in turn the inflation rate. Interest rates are thus a valid means of controlling inflation over the medium-term, as has been demonstrated time and time again, the world over.

John Everett

Darlington

REPLY:

Class is defined by the position in which people stand with regard to the control of the use of the means of production. In present-day, capitalist society there are two main classes: those who monopolise the means of production whether through legal title (as in the West) or effective control through the state (as in Russia) and those who, excluded from such ownership and control, have to live by selling their mental and physical skills for a wage or salary: in short, the capitalist class and the working class. It is true that there also exist a comparatively small number of self-employed people who could be said to form a third class, but many of these are no better off than wage and salary workers in that they have to work hard and long to repay, with interest, the money they have borrowed.

The ruling class is the class that controls political power, today the capitalist class. Owning a few shares no more makes a wage and salary worker a capitalist than being paid for doing some work makes a capitalist a member of the working class.

You seem to have completely misread the article on inflation. We never stated that raising interest rates raises inflation; in fact we said the exact opposite: that inflation tends to cause interest rates to rise. We do indeed say that inflation is a question of the "money supply" but are always careful to define this precisely, as the supply of currency (notes and coins). Others, including yourself, wrongly include bank loans; which is absurd since it attributes to banks the power to create new purchasing power whereas all they can do is to redistribute existing purchasing power, from their depositors to their borrowers. Only the central state can create new purchasing power, in the form of more currency— which the Bank of England is doing all the time at a steady rate of around 5 per cent a year, even though the economy doesn't need it. Hence, the decline in the purchasing power of the pound which shows itself as a continual rise in the general price level.

Trying to control inflation through high interest rates is one of the most absurd "anti-inflationary" policies ever to have been devised since interest rates do not, and cannot, have any effect whatsoever on the general price level. We know of no evidence of it having worked anywhere, certainly not in Britain over the past few years.

Editors.

Dear Editors.

Alwyn Edgar's "Diary of A Capitalist” is obviously not compiled in a particularly methodical manner. His article in your January 1990 issue informed us that Churchill died in the “early 1950s", to be replaced as Prime Minister by Eden.

I fear that our capitalist's diary entry at that point must have been inspired by fantasies similar to those of the demonstrators he was so disparaging of. In fact, Churchill managed to survive another ten years after his resignation from Prime Ministerial office, dying as recently as 24 January 1965.

Nevertheless, I am in full agreement with Edgar's central point about the futility of socialists' concentrating their criticisms on the role of individual leaders in the running of capitalism.

Steve Cooke

York

An underestimate

Dear Editors,

I recently discovered your fine publication and was impressed by the refreshing clarity and concise nature of your articles. A figure given in the September issue confused me, though. A reference to Jon Bennett's Hunger Machine cited $21 million a year as being sufficient to nourish, house, educate, and provide health care for each individual on Earth. Certainly such a figure is way too high for each individual while being woefully inadequate for billions of people. Yet not even $21 billion a year would seem enough for the task. This would amount to about $21 a year per person assuming "only" one billion in need.

To demonstrate how puny a $21 million figure is in military matters consider this. World military expenses run over S2.5 billion a day! Of course only a fraction of this represents expenditures on actual hardware. In the US around half goes toward development and purchasing of weapons. The total US budget is about $300 billion for the military. This amounts to roughly 30 per cent of the world's total. At the same time we represent only 5 per cent of the population. Our beloved master class doesn't apparently believe in divine intervention to protect its material interests .

Frank Emerson

Minneapolis, 

USA.

REPLY:

We think that you and the others who have written to us on the same point are right and that the figure given in Jon Bennett's book (it is his figure, not ours) should have read $21 billion not $21 million.

The context in which Bennett uses the figure makes it clear that the resources represented by this sum are in addition to current spending on socially useful products and services. Although he does not quote a source for this figure, we think it probable that it is based on the work of Ruth Sivard who has for years produced various estimates of what could be done if the resources squandered on means of destruction were diverted to socially useful production to alleviate the suffering of the starving and the poorest of the poor. We are not in a position to seriously dispute her figures. As she was formerly chief of the economics division of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency her estimates must be regarded as having some authority.

What we would question is the probability of such a diversion of resources being made within the context of world capitalism with its overriding need to operate profitably and to defend vested interests. Where the motive for wealth production is the realisation of profit those without the means to buy suffer. Bennett highlights this in the context of food production when he writes:

Set against this harrowing catalogue of human misery is the startling fact that there is more than sufficient food currently available to feed every man, woman and child on the planet . . .  People die of hunger because they are poor, because they cannot afford to buy what food is available.

If this is so, then the establishment of socialism, as the common ownership and democratic control of the world's productive resources where production will be geared to meeting needs, could solve the "problem" of hunger virtually overnight. Whether the remaining problems would need the extra resources represented under capitalism in money terms as $21 billion or some other figure must be set against the fact that capitalism is a system of artificial scarcity.

Editors.

Between the Lines: When TV told the truth (1990)

The Between the Lines column from the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

WHEN TV TOLD THE TRUTH

Anyone who has argued with reporters at a British TV station will have seen the apologetic and compromised embarrassment which is proof of their collaboration with deceit. Yes, they will admit that TV is biased and the bias is usually against workers who dare to take on their capitalist masters. It is true, they confess uneasily, that the NUJ has discovered that MI5 vets the files of all senior "news" reporters. It is true also that there are bans on some reports. These bans may be public They are more often the result of internal semi-secret memoranda and directives. If you work for the British media you have to learn to censor yourself in case you tell unwanted truths. It is true, journalists will tell you in whispered outrage, that the government threatens the BBC with cutting its funding if it does not adequately toe the line—and with the laughably labelled "independent" TV companies fighting like mad for advertising revenue they too must be careful not to offend major moneyed interests. So if you have a concern for telling the truth (and such concern is no qualification for employment in the BBC or ITN machines) it is hard to be a journalist. Reporters are workers too; they need to work in order to get the salary to pay the mortgage to keep on living to keep on working. Many wage slaves have to do dirty work; distorting truth for mass consumption is one of the dirtiest kinds.

There are moments in history when the dirty workers decide to come clean. Such was the case last December in Rumania. The dictator, Sir Nicolae Ceausescu (the knighthood was given by one unelected Head of State to another) was aware of the importance of TV. Since the mid 1980s Rumania TV broadcast for three hours daily mainly to convey "news" of the dictator's good deeds, the healthy state of the (crumbling) economy and to play "patriotic" music. When the workers came out on to the streets to overthrow the dictatorship the TV crews had to decide which side they were on. One ungenerous observation is that they backed the right side in the battle, but some of them were doubtlessly motivated by a consciousness that now was the moment of truth: to continue telling lies when so many workers were seeing through them was pointless The reporters in the Rumanian media put their futures on the line and went with the workers. In solidarity with the bravery of the TV presenters the workers defended the TV station. The Ceaucescu loyalists knew that winning control of the mass media was the most important victory they could achieve. These days the means of communications are more important than how many bullets you have.

The support given by Rumanian TV to the rebellion there supports three points which the Socialist Party has long made about the nature of social change. Firstly, it shows that the ideas of the majority determine whether change can happen or not. However more militarily competent the enemy might be, if workers possess the machinery of ideas they are a long way on the road to victory. Secondly, it does not follow that state-indoctrinated dupes can never change. How often have we been told that soldiers are not part of the working class and are brain-washed to turn against any workers' uprising? Such is the dogma of the Leninist left. In Rumania not only the much-indoctrinated soldiers but also the university-conditioned TV employees went to the side of their own class, the workers. Thirdly, the success of what happened in Rumania owes much to TV and radio reports of successful workers' struggles in other East European countries. In Czechoslovakia it was TV film of the brutally suppressed 17 November demonstration in Wenceslas Square that spurred Czech workers to join the struggle. Similarly it was Hungarian TV reports picked up on Rumanian TV sets which alerted Rumanian workers to the legalised murders committed by state police m Timisoara. The claim that world socialism will not emerge simultaneously seems less credible than ever in this age of TV images which know no borders.

On a recent ITN news broadcast there was a five-second shot of motorists passing ambulance stations and sounding their horns in solidarity with the striking workers. The vast majority of British people support these caring workers. At the moment it is the strikers' enemies who own and control the means of communications and the sound of a few car hooters does not drown out the noise of the official "news" reports. That might change but now we know it can change.

Steve Coleman

The German Question (1990)

From the February 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 9 November last year, that hated symbol of political repression, the Berlin Wall, was opened up for the first time in 28 years. The scenes of joy and celebration as thousands passed without hindrance through the concrete scar that had divided the city were truly emotional. The impossible, it seemed, had happened but how and why?

During the last two years thousands of East Germans have voted with their feet— 330,000 in 1989—leaving a country that failed.to meet their economic expectations. Despite official claims of economic growth and greater prosperity the workers remained unconvinced and many questions unanswered:

Why is good quality meat often not available? Why are clothes so expensive? Why are housing conditions still so poor? Why are there still shortages of a thousand and one little things from needles to biros? Why are supplies of bananas, oranges, lemons and other important fruit still so very inadequate? Why are there still so many slum schools and hospitals? Yes, and why after all these years should the GDR worker still find it difficult to buy his own version of a Volkswagen compared with the West German, French, Italian or British worker? (David Childs, The GDR: Moscow’s German Ally, p.162).

This lack of economic success was difficult for the authorities to deal with as people in East Germany had access to West German television. East Germans could see the “consumer society” of their West German neighbours and wanted to share in it—though when they got there they found themselves the latest victims of the Wohnungsnotstand (housing crisis), having to live in caravans, in prefabricated housing and even on specially equipped ships (Hamburger Morgenpost, 7 October).

Fall of Honecker

The mounting pressure of refugees leaving for the West, coupled with the reluctance of the East German “Communist” Party, the SED, to adopt political reform, forced the protest on to the streets. Mass demonstrations took place in Leipzig, East Berlin and other cities demanding free speech and human rights and an end to the old-style leadership. Many opposition groups were formed to articulate these demands, the most notable being “New Forum”.

The SED was now confronted by pressure from two directions. Internally from mass demonstrations and fleeing refugees and externally from the joint Russian policies of glasnost and perestroika.There can be no doubt that when Gorbachev visited Erich Honecker (then leader of the SED) in October 1989 to mark the 40th anniversary of the “German Democratic Republic”, he brought with him some harsh criticism. Two weeks later, Honecker was toppled from power and replaced by Egon Krenz. However, Krenz was not the ideal choice to instill mass support and trust from the population. It was widely known that he had congratulated the Chinese “Communist” leadership after the massacre of students in Peking. So even though Krenz lifted the travel restrictions, which in turn led to the opening of the Wall, he had no credibility and was too closely associated with the old guard to win respect and quell the unrest. Krenz was soon replaced by Hans Modrow, the SED leader from Dresden who is being championed as a “reformer”.

Modrow has formed a new government, hoping to win back the confidence of the population. Several top Party officials including Erich Honecker were arrested and faced a corruption investigation. Honecker has since been released but it is obvious that he was a man with aspirations to be a English country gentleman:

Mr Erich Honecker, the now disgraced former leader, had at his disposal an annual sum of £2.1 million for luxury goods supplied by a special supermarket in the village of Wandlitz, near Berlin where he and other politburo members lived. A keen hunter, Mr Honecker employed a staff of 22 at his hunting estate north of Berlin where the deer were fed on hundreds of tons of imported corn. (Guardian, 14 December).

Several changes have taken place since the Wall was opened. Along with the drive against corruption, the hated secret police—the Stasi—have been disbanded and the Party has adopted a new name to match its new image SED-DS (“Socialist Unity Party of Germany—Democratic Socialism”). However, the most important changes have been the exclusion from the constitution of the SED’s “leading role” in society and the announcement of new elections in May.

These changes look impressive on paper, but it should be remembered that the SED still holds the reins of power. Out of 27 government posts, the SED have 16. All the important ministerial positions—defence, finance, internal security, education, economic planning, foreign affairs, home affairs—are held by SED members. As yet no real tangible change has taken place and much will depend on how the opposition can mobilise popular discontent and eliminate its political differences, if they are to be successful in the May elections.

German reunification?

Whoever governs in East Germany after May, a gradual move towards political pluralism and economic reform is probable given the pattern in other East European countries. Economic reform will entail relaxing state control and introducing elements of the free market. Western capitalism will be eager to exploit the cheap resources and labour that exist in Eastern Europe. No doubt part of the West’s enthusiasm for recent developments has something to do with the prospect of a large exploitable East Europe becoming available.

Since the opening of the Wall, there has been much speculation about the eventual re-unification of Germany. Opinion in East Germany itself seems to be divided, according to a report in the Guardian (19 December):

Participants in East Germany’s round table talks made an urgent appeal yesterday to the governments in Bonn and East Berlin not to endanger stability in Europe by moving into premature talks on German reunification. The joint appeal by government parties, opposition groups and Church representatives came on the eve of a meeting in Dresden today between Chancellor Kohl and the East German Prime Minister Hans Modrow; Dr Kohl's first meeting with East Germany’s new leadership is expected to attract pro-reunification demonstrations; while opponents to unity have announced protest marches in Dresden and Berlin.

Moreover, in West Germany a recent opinion poll carried out by Der Spiegel magazine (20 November) indicated that only 27 per cent of those asked thought that reunification would be possible in the near future.

Obviously here we are entering the world of speculation, but the author’s guess is that reunification in terms of a single unitary state, joint armed forces and single currency is for the moment unlikely. For such a prospect would entail great changes to the political and military map of Europe and poses many unanswered questions. What would be the position of a unified Germany vis-à-vis the existing miIitary/political blocs of Europe? Would a unified Germany accept demilitarisation and adopt a neutral status? Would a reunified Germany be part of the EEC or COMECON or perhaps of both? The questions are endless The most likely short-term outcome is the development of a “community” of the two German states, with increased economic and cultural ties together with freer movement across the borders. But one thing is certain: whether there is one or two German states, German workers will still face the same social problems and economic insecurities that world capitalism produces.

Workers can change history

The recent developments in East Germany and elsewhere in Eastern Europe substantiate the long-held socialist argument that the so-called communist countries of Eastern Europe have in fact nothing to do with socialism. What exists in Eastern Europe is state capitalism. Workers in these countries are exploited by the state which functions as a capitalist. The “communist” parties with their control of the state machinery constitute the exploiting and ruling class and any challenge to their political monopoly has been hitherto ruthlessly crushed. Despite the official rhetoric that East Germany is a “Workers’ State”, the workers themselves know that the system does not function in their interests. They have experienced the economic exploitation and deprivation, while the Leninist vanguard who claim to represent them live in luxury country houses, drive expensive western cars and enjoy a standard of living that most workers there can only dream about.

All this demonstrates more clearly than ever that workers, both East and West, share a common experience. Whether we live under state or private capitalism we will never truly be free until we liberate ourselves from capitalism itself. The common ownership and democratic control of the world’s resources—-socialism—remains the only answer to the problems we experience as workers. The events have shown that things do change. Workers can change history. What seems impossible today can be reality tomorrow. Old certainties, as well as the Berlin Wall, can fall—why not capitalism?

Steve Dowsett