Militant Dishonesty (1997)

From the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

After the Labour Party, which for years was infiltrated by Trotskyists pretending to be bona fide members, we in the Socialist Party are the latest victims of Trotskyist dishonesty.

One of the Trotskyists groups, Militant, has decided to call itself “Socialist Party” and to put up candidates for elections under this name, despite the fact that we have been using this name for over 90 years.

This is the name we used on the ballot paper at the last general election (when Militant was campaigning for the laughable objective of “Labour to Power on a Socialist Programme!”), in the 1994 European elections, and in the Littleborough and Saddleworth parliamentary by-election in 1995 as well as in various local council elections and a council by-election in Lambeth last year. It is also the name under which we will be standing 5 candidates (in Glasgow, London, Jarrow, Easington and Livingston) in this year’s general election.

We contest Militant’s right to use this name, on two grounds. First, it is the name we use and one political group cannot simply come along and take the name used by another, long-standing and well-established, political party. This is an elementary democratic principle. To work properly, political democracy depends on people being able to make an informed choice, one condition of which is that different political organisations should be distinguished by separate names. Nobody is likely to confuse our policies and those of a Trotskyist organisation, but when a Trotskyist organisation uses the same name as us there is bound to be some confusion, so undermining the democratic process (not that Trotskyists, as Leninists, will be concerned about that).

Secondly of course, Trotskyists aren’t socialists anyway. But who are Militant and where did they come from?

Who are Militant?
In the 1940s three Trotskyists arrived in Britain: Tony Cliff (from Palestine), Ted Grant (from South Africa) and Gerry Healy (from Ireland). Each was destined to become the guru of one of the three main Trotskyist sects that were to emerge in Britain.

For a while all three worked together as members of the same organisation, the Revolutionary Communist Party, which existed for a few years after the War as an independent Trotskyist party. Then they went their separate ways, except in so far as all three of them joined the Labour Party.

Cliff, who had come to accept the view that Russia was state capitalist, started a paper that later become International Socialism, and a group that is now the SWP. Healy and Grant stuck with the Trotskyist dogma that Russia, even under Stalin, was a “Workers’ State” albeit a “degenerate” one, but they fell out over some obscure question of “tactics”. Healy started a group which eventually became the Socialist Labour League and then the Workers Revolutionary Party. Grant ran a paper called Socialist Fight which was forever praising the supposed achievements of Russia’s “planned economy” but still managed to attract a following amongst young Labourites on Mersey-side. It later changed its name to Militant.

Until 1968 all three groups pursued the Trotskyist tactic of boring from within the Labour Party known as “entryism”. By far the most successful was Healy who managed to capture the Labour Party’s youth section, the Young Socialists, and their paper Keep Left.

After 1968, and the students’ revolt and general strike in France which convinced them that they no longer needed the Labour Party as an intermediary to “make contact with the working class”, both Healy and Cliff withdrew their followers from the Labour Party and eventually set up their own parties and put up candidates against Labour (Cliff only briefly, Healy with money from Colonel Gaddafi).

Grant, however, decided to hang on inside the Labour Party where he now had a virtual monopoly of the Trotskyist franchise. In one sense this was a shrewd move and in the ’80s he was to be even more successful in infiltrating Labour than Healy had been in the ’60s.

Grant’s group, ostensibly just another pro-Labour paper like Tribune but in reality an undercover vanguard party named the Revolutionary Socialist League organised on strict Bolshevik lines, virtually captured Liverpool Labour Party (Derek Hatton has been their best-known member) and managed to get two of their members, Terry Fields and Dave Nellist, elected as Labour MPs. From the mid-80s the Labour machine counter-attacked. Grant and his followers were booted out of the Labour Party and Fields and Nellist were de-selected.

Militant was now on its own, in what it had up till then regarded as the political wilderness. What to do? Was political life possible outside the Labour Party? Grant himself didn’t think so and was for carrying on with “entryism” and trying to get back into the Labour Party clandestinely. Most of the other leaders regarded this as pointless; they were outside the Labour Party and would have to make the best of a bad job by acting as an independent organisation even if still telling people to vote Labour.

Grant was eventually expelled at the beginning of 1992 and yet another Trotskyist sect was born. Militant changed its (public) name from Militant to Militant Labour. The tactic was adopted of putting up candidates against Labour at local council elections and by-elections, with some success in that one or two were elected councillors, in Glasgow and Liverpool.

When Scargill left the Labour Party last year and set up his “Socialist Labour Party”, to an outsider it might have seemed obvious that Militant Labour and the Scargill Labour Party should join together—after all, both of them had the same policy, militant Labourism—but this was to overlook the fact that Scargill was a Stalinist who was determined that his party should not be infiltrated and perhaps taken over by some Trotskyist group (not that this has prevented some of the lesser Trotskyist sects having a go).

Talks between Scargill and Militant did take place but broke down, so Militant decided to set up a rival Old Labour party of its own. But what name to call it? Apparently, there were three options, Militant Labour Party, Militant Socialist Party and Socialist Party.

The name “Socialist Party” of course wasn’t free as the leaders of Militant were well aware. Being part of it themselves, they are not ignorant of the minority political scene in Britain and have seen us selling the Socialist Standard (“journal of the Socialist Party”) at the same demonstrations and on the same street corners as they sell Militant. Their leaders have been aware of our existence since their foundation and we have engaged them in formal debate and long intervened at their meetings in opposition.

We have used the name 'Socialist Party' for over 90 years.

This, however, did not stop Militant’s leadership recommending “Socialist Party” as the preferred option to a special conference held at the end of last November. According to the report in Militant (6 December), there was some opposition. Although 71.4 percent of delegates voted for, 24.8 percent voted for “Militant Socialist Party” and 3 percent for “Militant Labour”.

So, an element of confusion has been introduced onto the British political scene: there are now two organisations calling themselves Socialist Party and two organisations putting up candidates at elections under this name. This is entirely the fault of a dishonest and cynical move by Militant to try to hijack the name used by an already-existing political organisation.

Naturally, we will oppose this move in every way we can but we are obliged to issue a warning to our sympathisers and others who know us: look twice before buying any pamphlet bearing the name “Socialist Party”; if you find it praising pre-Yeltsin Russia’s “planned economy” or advocating fantastic reforms of capitalism then (obviously) it is not published by us but will be the usual Trotskyist nonsense. If you go to a meeting advertised as by the “Socialist Party” and the speaker advocates a “£6 minimum wage” or “Nationalise the Top 200 Monopolies” or that “the TUC call a General Strike Now” you will know you have been misled; stand up and say that the speaker is a fraud for pretending to be speaking on behalf of the Socialist Party.

Labourism with knobs on
But quite apart from the dishonesty of trying to steal our name, Militant does not stand for socialism It stands for state capitalism as its long-term aim while campaigning in the present for mostly impracticable reforms of capitalism.

There is a twisted logic to their campaigning for impracticable reforms. As followers of Lenin, Trotskyists hold that workers are incapable of directly understanding socialist ideas; at most, they can only acquire a “trade union consciousness” which reflects itself on the political field as support for reformist Labour Party-type politics. In these circumstances to campaign directly for socialism (as we in the real Socialist Party do) would be to cast pearls before swine, mere “abstract propagandism”. Instead, what a “vanguard party” must do is to try to use this workers’ reformist discontent as a battering ram to overthrow the government and seize power for themselves as Lenin and the Bolsheviks had done in Russia in November 1917.

Trotsky recommended that this be done by offering workers reforms (called “transitional demands”) which the vanguard party knows perfectly well can’t be obtained under capitalism, in the expectation that when these reforms are not granted the workers will turn against the government and support a Trotskyist coup d’état.

This of course is pure science-fiction politics that is only likely to come true on the planet Zanussi but (fortunately) not on planet Earth. Imagine what a Trotskyist dictatorship would be like; not too different from a Stalinist one, we would suppose.

In the context of the electoralist tactic that Militant has now adopted, “transitional demands” translate as extravagant election promises of reforms to be achieved under capitalism, bait offered to the mass of worker-electors who are still perceived of as not being able to move beyond a reformist, Labourist consciousness.

At election times, Militant Labour appears as a super-reformist party, promising the same sort of reforms as Labour only bigger and better ones. Thus, if Labour promises a minimum wage of £3 an hour, Militant Labour promises one of £6. If Labour promises to increase spending on education and the health service by 10 percent, Militant Labour promises to increase it by 50 percent. If Labour promises the highest achievable level of employment, Militant promises full employment, and so on. In other words, there is no attempt to combat reformist illusions within the working class (the illusion that capitalism can be reformed to work in their interest); just the opposite in fact, such illusions are encouraged and magnified.

Militant, by accommodating itself to this attitude instead of campaigning to change it, is encouraging workers to believe that their problems can be solved within capitalism if only those they elect as local councillors and MPs were more demanding and more determined.

It is in fact on this basis that Militant’s local councillors have been elected: as militant Labourists, as people who some traditional Labour voters feel will sincerely fight for the reforms that New Labour under Blair has abandoned. “Militant Labour”, the name under which they were elected, was an entirely accurate description as what those who elected them wanted was someone to fight in a more militant way for Labour’s traditional aims.

Militant’s Ideal World
Militant would deny this charge of encouraging reformism—of in fact being militant reformists—by pointing out that they do say that capitalism can never work in the workers’ interests. This is so, but by “capitalism” they only mean competitive, private enterprise capitalism, to which their alternative is planned, state-run capitalism not socialism.

Last year Militant (22 March) carried an article headed “Fighting for our ideal world” which ended:

“Militant Labour demands:

• An end to slave labour schemes;
• £6 per hour minimum wage;
• The right to join a recognised trade union”

Hardly an inspiring ideal (and this was in an article aimed at young people!). Normally, it is true, Militant’s “ideal” is not quite as crass as this but the principle is the same. In 1995, at the time the Labour Party was preparing to ditch Clause 4, Militant brought out a pamphlet called What is Socialism? in which they declared:

  “Militant Labour believes it is possible to achieve a minimum wage, full employment, good education and health services. Homelessness can be a thing of the past. We can end inequality and poverty. “
  “But we would also need an economy which produces more than it does today and produced different things: for example, fewer office blocks and more houses at affordable prices or rents, fewer-weapons and more public transport”.

This ideal world of higher wages and affordable prices is to be achieved by nationalising all “the major companies and financial institutions”.

Such wholesale nationalisation would not be socialism which is based on the common (as opposed to state) ownership and democratic control of productive resources, with goods and services being produced and distributed directly to satisfy people’s needs with the disappearance of wages, prices, pensions, banks, money and all the other products of a buying-and-selling society such as capitalism.

Militant’s “ideal society” turns out to be a state capitalism in which a government, supposedly ruling on behalf of the working class (but in reality controlled by and for the benefit of the leaders of the vanguard party), tries to plan the wages-profits-money system and make it work in the interest of all.

They give Cuba, and previously Russia, as an example of the sort of “planned”, “non-capitalist” economy they have in mind (“Can Cuba Survive!”, Militant, 22 March 1996), not as a perfect example but as a sufficiently successful example to back up their claim that a nationalised, planned economy of the kind they propose can work. But both Cuba and pre-Yeltsin Russia had state-capitalist, not non-capitalist, economies. Neither the Russian nor the Cuban revolution “overthrew capitalism”, as Militant claims. What they did was to change the personnel of the privileged class that was to preside over the accumulation of capital in these countries, from private capitalists and outside imperialists to a Party élite of state bureaucrats. That Militant see the economic system in Cuba and what used to exist in Russia as a model for what should replace capitalism confirms that they too stand for state capitalism.

But state capitalism is no more in the interest of the working class than is private capitalism. It still retains the wages system, under which people have to sell their mental and physical energies to an employer to get the money to buy the things they need to live. But where the wages system exists so does economic exploitation, since workers are always paid as wages less than the value of the work they do; the rest (Marx called it surplus value) is creamed off by their employers, whether a private individual, a company or a state enterprise, and redistributed as the privileged income of shareholders and/or state bureaucrats.

The Trotskyist proposal to nationalise all major industries and financial institutions and turn us all into state employees does not end the wages system; it merely changes who employs us (where, that is, we are not already government employees of one sort or another) and changes those who live off our work from private shareholders to state bureaucrats.

So Trotskyists like Militant are not even on the same wavelength as Socialists. It is not a question of us and them having the same aim but a different method of getting there—us, democratic political action by a democratically-organised and consciously socialist majority; them, a minority-led insurrection without majority socialist understanding. Their aim is quite different from ours. We want socialism and the abolition of the wages system; they want state capitalism with all of us being paid by the state.

In other words, even if we had some other name such as a World Socialist Party they would still have no justification for calling themselves “Socialist Party”. If they had been honest (but that’s science-fiction politics again) they would have changed their name to SCP or State Capitalist Party or, if that was felt to be too explicit, simply to “Trotskyist Party”.

Adam Buick

Why Capitalism is Decadent (1997)

From the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists refuse to be taken in by the assertions that capitalism is not only the most viable economic system possible but that it also represents continuous progress. After all, the evidence to the contrary is everywhere — inner-city nightmarish conditions, beggars in the streets, homelessness, increasing violence and drug abuse. . . .  and, of course, to deal with this 'progress', more police officers!

For most of the politicians, economists and historians this century, “the future” has been equated with progress. Even those who have never expressed a belief in the miraculous have invariably claimed that there has never been any reason to think that the future will bring anything other than development and advancement in the overall condition of the human species. While many have recognised that capitalism is not perfect, and have thus spent time trying to perfect it, they have never seriously countenanced an alternative to it because none seemed necessary or relevant. So long as capitalism is defended and emerges victorious, they have argued, humankind will prosper; thus to defend capitalism is to support progress. One historian—Francis Fukuyama—was so confident of the invincibility of capitalism as a progressive social system that a few years ago he pronounced that history had ended with the triumph of the world market and the rise of bourgeois liberal democracy, claiming that minor difficulties notwithstanding, human progress was assured.

While such an attitude has been the prevailing establishment view it has not always been held quite so enthusiastically by the rest of the population. It is, after all, the working class majority in society who have most direct contact with—and experience of—the system's inadequacies, being a subject class with little or no economic power. Today, the ruling class view of progress has less resonance among the working class the world over than perhaps ever before. Recent opinion polls in ‘advanced’ states like Britain have suggested that 60 per cent and more of the population now believe that the kind of world today’s children will inherit will be worse than their own generation inherited, apparently the highest number to take this view since records began. It is a view replicated in a great many industrialised countries let alone in the less developed ones and in the ‘Third World', where meaningful progress for the majority has long been a sick joke indeed.

Is progress still possible?
For our part as we watch the twentieth century draw to a close, socialists do not argue that progress is assured or that, contrariwise, we are all doomed. Socialists contend that lasting progress is possible for humankind—but only under certain conditions. These conditions do not appertain at the moment and most people are right to recognise this and right to question the traditional ruling class viewpoint they have been fed. They are right because we are no longer living in a society that is progressive in any real sense, but one that is reactionary or decadent.

In using the term ‘decadent' to describe modern society some explanation is necessary. Standard dictionary references to this term elicit the following definitions: “a state of decay”, “lacking in physical and moral vigour”, and “decline—especially in sexual morality”. To those most familiar with the word it probably conjures up visions of a society resembling something out of the Borgias or the hit musical set in 1920's Weimar Germany, Cabaret. In popular usage decadence, sexual licentiousness and moral decline are synonymous. For our purposes the wider definition of decadence being taken to refer to something in a state of decay, and existing without vigour, is the most useful.

For instance, over many decades—in fact about 100 years—socialists have argued that the type of society we live in today is decadent. Indeed, it is because we think that capitalism is decadent that we are politically organised to help bring about its overthrow. But that does not necessarily mean we contend that capitalism is drowning in an ocean of sexual immorality. Instead, we say capitalism is decadent because as a way of organising human affairs it is now outdated or obsolete.

To understand this it is necessary to briefly examine the socialist view of historical development, derived in the main from the pioneering work of the early socialists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. For without an understanding of the socialist view of social change it is impossible to fully comprehend why we say that capitalism is a decadent social system.

The key to history
During the last century Marx and Engels developed what is usually termed their Materialist Conception of History, an analytical tool which has since been used by socialists to explain historical events and social changes. 'The basis of Marx and Engels’ contention—derived from an investigation of past social changes and the forces that motivated them—was that society is not basically a static entity, changing only superficially, but is periodically subject to dynamic change and development. These changes are characterised chiefly by alterations in the way in which humans organise themselves to get what they need to live—food, clothing, housing, entertainment and so on.

The chattel slave society of Ancient Rome and the feudal society of the Middle Ages were organised on a very different basis to modern capitalist society, for example. Whereas once the dominant form of social organisation was for slaves to be physically owned and compelled to work for the benefit of their masters—often in appalling conditions—the inefficiency of this arrangement led at a later stage in human history to the development of feudalism, where feudal serfs worked part of the week for their own upkeep and livelihood and the rest for the feudal lord. Today we have capitalist society where there is still a class division between two main classes, the difference being that now the majority subject class ‘freely' sells its ability to work on a market in return for wages and salaries in order to live. Like in the other private property systems of Ancient society or feudalism, this subject class is still exploited by a dominant and unproductive class—in this case, the capitalists. However, the nature of social organisation has clearly changed.

Utilising Marx’s analysis, socialists contend that the motive force for such changes in society are the material forces of production. These chiefly consist of the instruments of production themselves (tools, machines, etc.) and the productive skills and knowledge at society’s disposal. In the last analysis, it is technological change which periodically revolutionises the productive skills and tools of society as humankind attempts to increase its power over production. But it is important to stress that this theory is not mere technological determinism—while technological change does tend to ultimately lead to major social change, it does not do so automatically, since humans make history. Any wider social change made necessary by technological development will only come about when struggled for by a group of humans—usually a new social class with a unique relationship to the means of living. Indeed, it is precisely the social grouping which comes to play the key organising role for the new productive methods as these methods are transformed by technological development, that will tend to emerge as the new dominant class in society. This grouping will not achieve dominance automatically and will have to struggle for this position by becoming conscious of its own interests and by then capturing political power from the old dominant class.

We argue that it is this scenario which broadly explains historical change through various social epochs. It explains, for instance, the demise of feudalism and the rise of the capitalist class and capitalist relations of production, and similarly it can be used to chart the decline of capitalism and the rise of the forces in society that have a class interest in its abolition and in the establishment of socialism.

Inventing history

The conditions which gave rise from the seventeenth century or so onwards to the capitalist mode of production—based on wage labour, market exchange and capital accumulation—have now clearly changed in an important way. This is because the role of the dominant class in society—the capitalists—has significantly altered. When the capitalist class emerged as the ruling class in society it was because they originally played a key technical role in the rise of the market economy as it superseded feudalism. Most people arc taught at school the stories of inventors and entrepreneurs such as Arkwright, Watt and others who played such a notable part in the development of the Industrial Revolution. In fact the view of the capitalist class as being the key innovators and inventors in society still persists to a degree, and was used by Margaret Thatcher among others as a form of modern-day justification for the free market It is, however, a view which is no longer to any significant extent supported by reality. Today, very few indeed of the richest men and women in the world have invented or introduced anything to hasten productive development. For every capitalist like Bill Gates of Microsoft there are many times more like the Duke of Westminster, George Soros or the Sultan of Brunei, who only work—if at all—at overseeing their finances.

This was a phenomenon noted in a work which was in many ways a fine application of the Materialist Conception of History, where Friedrich Engels argued in his Socialism: Utopian and Scientific that the transformation of industry and the means of distribution into large joint-stock companies, trusts and state property demonstrated the increasing irrelevance of the capitalist class regarding the management and development of society’s productive forces. He argued from the perspective of the late nineteenth century that as capitalism takes hold:

   "All the social functions of the capitalist are now performed by salaried employees. The capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the stock exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. ”

In other words, as capitalism takes root, the more isolated and independent nature of human activity in feudalism is replaced by a huge network of socially interconnected production, initially spurred on by a class of entrepreneurs, but then sustained by the mass of the population who come to operate capitalist society from top to bottom, even performing the tasks that the capitalists once did themselves. The capitalist class achieve an economically privileged position in society, and do not have to work or directly involve themselves in the productive process any longer. Hence the key organisational role in society clearly passes from the class of capitalists to the wage and salary earning working class who create all the wealth, including the large part of it appropriated by the capitalists for their own purposes.

As capitalism develops in this way its fundamental contradiction becomes ever more apparent—a socially operated and highly interconnected means of living based on the collective effort of the majority on the one hand, private ownership of this means of living by a tiny parasitic minority on the other. Socialists argue that this fundamental contradiction of capitalism, from which much else follows, can only be solved by the replacement of the capitalist class’s private monopoly of the means of production and distribution by collective ownership by society as a whole—socialism.

(To be continued)

Dave Perrin

Obituary: Bill Williams (1997)

Obituary from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bill joined the old Palmers Green branch in 1953, having moved to London from north Wales. From an early age he had been interested in science and technology, building his own reflecting telescope and even importing magazines on rocket technology from the USA during the Second World War!

He had been plagued by ill-health for most of his life, due to TB and aggravated by smoking, starting the habit years before it had been universally recognised as potentially dangerous. Although this limited his physical activity, as a car-owner he was able to act as "wheels" for branch members to carry out activities in the 50s and 60s.

His main profession was as a draughtsman in the Civil Service and he was active as a member in their union, DATA. It was at this time that, because of his gaunt appearance, he was known as "The Thin Man".

He was keenly interested in the UFO phenomenon and related subjects, but managed to keep his feet firmly on the ground as far as his materialist understanding of the world was concerned. During the 50s and 60s he took an active part in the theoretical investigation of crisis theory in political economy and in studying the emergence of civilisations in the ancient Near East. As far as he was able Bill was an active member of the branch, and his knowledge of scientific and technological developments was of much value in branch discussions and meetings.

When eventually his health prevented him from working, he was able to escape from wage slavery, in so far as not being beholden to an employer. This situation left him with a modest income. Even by the limitations imposed by capitalism Bill could not have been said to have lived his life to the full, choosing an abstemious existence rather than living for the day. He lived the last 20 years of his life with only one lung and had to be extremely careful about not infecting his remaining one. He was, however, able to attend the branch up to a few weeks before his death.

Julian Vein

Letters: Many tragic aspects of SLP history (1997)

Letters to the Editors from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many tragic aspects of SLP history

Dear Editors,

In reviewing the TV series 1914-18, DAP asserts that the Socialist Labour Party "wavered before coming out against the conflict” (Socialist Standard, December). I presume by Socialist Labour Party DAP means those in the SDF who broke away in 1903 in opposition to Hyndman’s reformism, chauvinism and authoritarianism rather than the American organisation headed by DeLeon. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I can find no evidence to support DAP's allegation. Indeed, the SLP's paper The Socialist for September 1914 stated that the SLP was neither pro-British nor pro-German and that its enemy was the capitalists. As the slaughter progressed, a number of SLPers found themselves behind bars for opposing the war, while the police destroyed the SLP's printing press.

There were many tragic aspects to the SLP's history but its position on WWI was not one of them. What was tragic in my view was the failure of those who broke away from the SDF in 1903 to unite with those who broke away in 1904 for much the same reasons. True enough there were differences—the SLP emphasised the industrial struggle while the SPGB emphasised the political. But there were a host of similarities— opposition to reformism, the need for a democratic organisation, making and educating Socialists.

Tragic too was the hypnotic effect of Bolshevism on many SLPers which resulted in their joining the Communist Party where they quickly came under the iron rule of those who slavishly implemented the line laid down by Moscow. However, SLPers did make some important contributions to Marxist theory in particular the work of William Paul and Len Cotton on the state.

The Socialist Party is right to criticise any other organisation calling itself Socialist but if it does so on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations it risks falling into the trap of using the type of methods its opponents, particularly Leninists, use against it.

Terry Liddle 

London SE9

Reply:
The review did not make "unsubstantiated allegations" about the SLP. It stated that the SLP "wavered" before fully coming out against the war, which meant that the only political organisation to "unequivocally" oppose the war was the Socialist Party. This is not a loose or unsubstantiated allegation—it is a matter of historical record, noted with dismay by us at the time and chronicled by historians since.

The Socialist in the early months of the war contained a number of contradictory statements which reflected the different political positions held by members of the SLP, both pro- and anti-war. One section of the SLP membership looked favourably on the idea of a war of “national defence" against German militarism. This was the view expressed both by leading SLPer Arthur MacManus and by the then editor of The Socialist, Johnny Muir. The resultant doubts about the SLP's exact position on the war were expressed by Muir himself in the December 1914 issue of the paper where he wrote about the two factions in his party:

   "I have not been able to find out what support each side has, and consequently I cannot say definitely what the official attitude of the Party is."

We may add that both before the conflict and during it the SLP worked with pro-capitalist organisations for temporary purposes e g. in anti-militarism campaigns. Eventually the SLP allied itself with elements in the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and British Socialist Party (BSP) who opposed the war but nevertheless supported state-run capitalism.

This was a disastrous policy which played no small part in encouraging the "hypnotic" politics of Bolshevism Terry Liddle refers to. The other factor in this was the leadership-orientated, anti-democratic nature of the SLP, a characteristic of course shared by the SLP’s American partner body of the same name as well as by the Russian Bolsheviks themselves. Indeed, the very idea that the SLP—like the SPGB—recognised "the need for democratic organisation" is at variance with any serious knowledge of that organisation. The SLP was a highly authoritarian body like its US counterpart and Terry Liddle would do well to read the rule books of either if he doubts this. Because of factors like these it was no surprise to us that the SLP was split asunder in 1920 when a large portion of its membership left to found the Communist Party of Great Britain along with members of organisations like the ILP, BSP and others that the SLP had been courting for years.

Editors.

What about the electorate?

Dear Editors,

While in agreement with R. Montague's article in the November issue of the Socialist Standard in which he criticises the role of the media in contemporary society, he fails to mention the recipient of media propaganda, i.e., the electorate. and the influence which it in turn has upon society.

Take, for example, the current demise of socialism within the Labour Party. Some people would argue that it is all the fault of the leadership; but the Labour Party can only be the kind of party that public opinion will allow it to be; and public opinion is, for the most part, determined by the media. The Labour Party knows full that if it started to espouse socialism between now and the next election. it would have no chance of being elected, because the media has succeeded in turning socialism into a dirty word and/ or an anachronism.

Furthermore, there seems to be a lack of awareness amongst the electorate that when they watch television news what they are in fact watching is not merely news but propaganda, propaganda being the discriminating use of information, which is then presented in such a way as to make it seem acceptable or unacceptable. depending upon the mode of presentation. Propaganda is, of course, something that is not confined merely to communist or Islamic countries, but is universal, and is most prevalent among those societies which have the largest number of television channels, radio stations and newspapers (the bourgeoisie has a total monopoly of the broadcasting media, the most powerful of the media institutions, and a virtual monopoly of the press).

I would suggest that the Socialist Standard continues to spend more time attacking the power of the media (as does R. Montague’s article) and less time in criticising politicians in general. since there is little doubt that those famous faces we see on our television screens at news-time, plus of course all those faceless backroom people. those television producers. editors and directors who prepare news programmes, have far more influence on the minds of the electorate than do their elected representatives in Parliament.

E. Shepherd

Manchester

Mass debating with barmy Bernie (1997)

The TV Review column from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Usually there is much competition for the dubious privilege of which programme has plumbed the lowest depths of inanity and humbug in the period before this column goes to press. Last month there was no contest. Not even Richard and Judy or Ricki Lake came close to matching the televisual disgrace which masqueraded as informed debate under the title of The Monarchy: The Nation Decides (ITV, 7 January).

Billed as the biggest exercise in democracy ever seen on British television, this programme told us all we need to know about the nature of democracy that exists in capitalist society. Virtually every aspect of it, from the so-called "debate” format, to the paucity of the views expressed by the invited panellists through to the uncontrolled (and allegedly rigged) telephone poll, went to demonstrate that democracy in capitalism is largely sham democracy.

Nothing more than a soundbite was allowed, most of the debate was taken up with whether the Royal family are "value for money" (whatever that means) and as Roy Greenslade explained in the following day's Guardian, the audience of 3,000 had been whipped up into a near hysterical frenzy before the show so that by when the 'debate' actually started it resembled little more than a bear garden.

Large sections of the audience, invited from several cities around Britain, simply shouted, heckled and cat-called on a mass basis for the entire duration of the programme. This meant that the little debate that would have been possible was rendered useless—and clearly by the design of Carlton TV who commissioned and ran the whole thing.

In a sense it was understandable that the audience—or a least a sizeable enough part of it—should have behaved in such a way. It was probably the best chance they had of stemming the tide of verbal diarrhoea emanating from the panellists. Nonetheless, some seeped through and the stench was truly repellent

Particularly odious, as a representative of the monarchists, was author Frederick Forsyth. Though coherent in an entirely tangential manner, Forsyth’s bad-tempered performance was sufficient to bring a whole host of rather unkind epithets to even the most considerate reviewer’s mind—like 'arrogant', ‘bumptious’ and ’surly’, these being the least descriptive but at the same time those least likely to result in a libel action. Forsyth’s main defence of the royals was that they are an economic bonus for Britain. To echo this point, he shouted at his hecklers “Your jobs are at stake!," claiming that any expenditure on the Royal Family is easily outweighed (he even had some figures) by the tourist revenue they create every year. It was possible to imagine the millions of rich tea-towel makers and commemorative mug engravers across the length and breadth of the country nodding sagely in approval. The suggestion that the multinationals and big-time capitalists were the real beneficiaries of all this (if there are any at all) was not considered. The programme producers had neither the time nor inclination to let anyone string more than two sentences together and a coherent reply to this nonsense, if any had been forthcoming, would have been near impossible.

Arise, Sir Bernie

One panellist smartly retorted that Forsyth would be better off sticking to writing Fiction, something he evidently knows a bit about, but what poor old Bernie Grant is good for is anybody's guess. A knighthood perhaps, or an early peerage. Never a stranger to controversy, one might have anticipated that Grant’s presence on the panel was guaranteed to set the cat amongst the pigeons. But, no. Bernie knows which side his bread is buttered on and launched into a sycophantic eulogy of the Queen that would have put Dame Vera Lynn to shame. Elizabeth was a marvellous head of the Commonwealth, he claimed, and did an awful lot to help all the poor black people in Africa.

It was obviously beyond Bernie’s comprehension that the Queen and her like, and the system they uphold, is the reason for their poverty and misery in the first place. But never mind, she's so gracious and has such a lovely warm smile as she walks among the malnourished. Well, she can continue to smile very big smiles indeed with suckers like Bernie Grant to do her bidding for her.

Most of those who plucked up the courage to oppose the monarchy, including those who rang in, did so with the proviso that they wanted a nice, respectable Head of State—a leader to look up to. Bizarrely enough, Princess Anne was the most popular choice followed by monied clown and failed balloonist Richard Branson. As such, the legions of republicans proved themselves little better than the raving monarchists. But then again, why should we expect them to be any different? These are, after all, people who vote for the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats or the Greens and are therefore fully tuned in to what can be expected in an inherently hierarchical, class-ridden and exploitative system like capitalism.

Even if Carlton had provided for a proper debate format, it would have been to no great effect. For does anyone still expect serious arguments for social equality from such people and their elected representatives? Frankly, it is no more likely to come from them than it is from the Duke of Edinburgh. and if this dreadful programme had even one little thing to commend it, it must have been the obviousness of that. 

Dave Perrin

Sophisticated critical perspectives (1997)

Theatre Review from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Art by Yasmina Reza (Wyndham's Theatre)

Art is an odd play. Some critics see it as a populist attack on modern art; others believe it to be about friendship. It runs for barely 90 minutes and it is packing them in—queues every night for returned tickets. When I called for tickets the clerk at the booking office told me—with a mixture of pride and of resignation born of hard work—”It's the hottest ticket in town."

The plot is simply stated. Serge buys an abstract painting for about £20,000. His friend, Marc, is uncomprehending. To Marc the canvas is but a white rectangle—although he does admit that he can see some whitish diagonals and some pinkish dots. But what can Serge see in it? Marc is baffled. He thought he knew Serge, and now this. He feels undermined—betrayed perhaps. In the event pushed by Serge into saying that he likes it. he explodes and calls it “shit". Yvan. a mutual friend, accommodating by nature, is brought in to mediate. But far from successfully resolving the conflict, he is unwillingly drawn into the drama. Three friends soon become three men at odds with one another.

At the end the audience was agog. I've rarely heard so much animated conversation at the end of a play; so many different opinions wafting on the air. Retiring for a pizza we talked for longer than the play had run. What did it all mean? All four of us had seen it differently, and had different points of view. As we chatted I found it easy to understand why the critics and the audience had been so divided. What had been presented was capable of many interpretations, so that the opinions of individual members of the audience probably revealed more about them and their particular knowledge and prejudices than about what they had seen and heard.

I was reminded of similar discussions about politics. Talk to folk about politics and most people will retain some variant of the conventional opinions offered in the Sun, Mail or Telegraph. etc. Only a few people, and conspicuously members of the Socialist Party, are able to see beyond the obvious to deeper levels of reality. Thus socialists see politics in terms of historical materialism and class conflict based on ownership of the means of production and exchange. And here, in reacting to what they had seen on stage, people were bringing a similar range of insights to bear; ranging from the kind of crude populist antagonism found in the popular press to sophisticated critical perspectives and insights.

I guess there must have been a lot of quasi-Sun readers in the audience. The biggest cheer of the evening greeted Yvan’s admission that, yes, he too thought the picture was “shit". But Yvan was clearly lying. His was a response born out of pain and a desire to hurt Serge. Not that many in the audience seemed to care, even if they understood. They laughed uproariously at Serge's plight. I confess to feeling very uncomfortable when people sitting close to me find the pain of characters on stage a matter for amusement. We smile smugly at the thought that it was our primitive ancestors who cheered at public executions, but you don't have to sit long in theatres and cinemas to realise how much capitalism has brutalised people's sensitivities. On such occasions I am reminded of Orwell’s description of the progress (sic) of capitalism: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.’’

Early in the play Serge observes to Marc “You have to understand the rules (of modern art) before you can make an informed comment." Socialists know this to be "true" of the world of economics and politics. You have to go beyond the immediate, the self-evident, if you are going to get any kind of purchase on how society works. What people need if they are to understand their everyday lives is a set of analytical tools— based on historical materialism, the labour theory of value, and the class struggle. A similar set of tools seems necessary if we are to understand art. The ideological apparatus of capitalism—including the so-called education system, newspapers, public service (ho, ho) broadcasting, and the other media—is intent on not providing such explanatory frameworks. The reaction of many in the audience to Art is one measure of its success.

Michael Gill

50 Years Ago: Labour Government, Strikes and Arbitration (1997)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The road haulage strike, which lasted for some ten days in the early part of January, brought out clearly the false position of the Labour Government and the impracticability of its policy.

Having undertaken the running of the capitalist system, the Labour Government is finding that it has got to do it in the only way it can be done. Capitalism will only work if the Capitalists can see the prospect of making a profit, so, in disregard of years of vaguely anti-capitalist propaganda, the Labour Government has had to come out in support of the "profit motive". Having claimed it would raise wages, it urges the unions not to make wage claims, lest profits should all be swallowed up. It declared for shorter hours, but now says the time is inopportune. It condemned the use of troops in strikes, and has twice used them since it came to power. It declared that under Labour Government strikes were unnecessary because “impartial arbitration" would give all the worker wanted, but has repeatedly seen the workers defying unsatisfactory arbitration awards.

(From editorial. Socialist Standard, February 1947)

The Profit System and the Alternative (1997)

From the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The social system we live under is capitalism, the profit system. It is a world-wide system. It exists in China and Cuba, just as it exists in Britain and the USA. Under capitalism, the means and instruments for production and distribution (land, factories, mines, railways, shipping, etc.) are owned and controlled by a minority— the capitalist class (5 percent of the population). All wealth, however, from a pin to an oilrig, is produced by us, the majority—the working class. In return for a wage or salary we sell our physical and mental energies to the capitalist class.

Production under capitalism is primarily undertaken with a view to making profit for the capitalist class, which means that items are produced and goods provided only when someone decides more money can be clawed back than was originally invested. The capitalist class, though, do not keep all of the profits they make. Much is reinvested in order that more profits can accumulate.

More often than not, too much is produced. When this happens the profits of the capitalist class are threatened. The result is that millions of tons of food are destroyed every year on purpose, to keep prices high in the shops. In addition, when no profits are to be made, workers are sacked or made redundant.

Meanwhile, millions die of starvation. Elsewhere, people sleep rough on the streets while millions of houses stand vacant and millions are unemployed while factories and machinery stand idle.

Occasionally, the interests of the capitalist class of one country come into conflict with the capitalist class of another. When this happens wars sometimes break out and workers are packed off to fight the workers from another country. They are told they are fighting for freedom and democracy, when in reality they are fighting over trade routes, foreign markets and mineral resources (all sources of profit for the capitalist class).

The mainstream parties will tell you that all this is inevitable (we agree that is—under capitalism) but that, if we are only patient, the system can be reformed. This is untrue. The capitalist system cannot be reformed in our interests because tho profit motive always has to come before social needs. Don't get us wrong, some reforms are beneficial, but none can abolish that basic contradiction between profit and need. The only way the capitalist system can be run is as it is run now. This is why the Socialist Party does not advocate reform, which is another way of saying patching up capitalism. We seek an end to the entire world-wide capitalist social system. In its place we wish to see established a world-wide socialist system.

Socialism does not exist and has never existed. It can not be established in a single country but only on a world-wide basis. In socialism, the earth’s resources, along with the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, will be commonly owned and democratically controlled by the world’s peoples. There will be no minority élite and no owners because society will be classless.

With the disappearance of money and the wages system, society's productive potential will be released from the artificial constraints of profit. Goods and services will be provided because society needs them, not because they generate profit. With the barriers of the money system removed, the only questions needed to be asked is what is required and where—questions that will be answered according to the availability of resources.

Technology and communications will be freed from the constraints of profit and used to their utmost to serve the world’s peoples. Again, alternative sources of fuel and energy will be sought, both to best serve humans and show the environment the respect it deserves.

People will give according to their ability and take from the stockpile of communal wealth according to their own self-defined needs, with work being based on voluntary co-operation.

For the first time ever, people will have control over their own lives, with all monetary worries and fears of crime and war ended. For the first time ever, the people of planet Earth will have an equal share in planet Earth.

John Bissett

Beggars are not choosers (1997)

The Greasy Pole column from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let us not be too hard on David Maclean, the Home Office minister who seems to be haunted by beggars demanding money in Scottish accents. Maclean never gives money but he does give them a piece of his mind—which is supposed to be worth having because he has a reputation as one of the brighter young Tory MPs. Speaking out is what he is used to; some time ago he had to be restrained from advocating that "vermin" be driven from the streets and praising the vigilantes—whose activities are, after all, outside the law. But Maclean is obviously under emotional stress as he is among an endangered species—Tory MPs who could be wiped out at the general election. So perhaps he can be excused for his attempt, albeit clumsy, to clamber aboard a bandwagon which is being propelled by the big political parties as what they hope will be a vote winner among those people who find beggars frightening or distasteful whatever accent they speak in.

Lower standards
It is not so long ago that we were subjected to an implicit instruction that homeless people and beggars might have been expected in Britain in an earlier, less enlightened age but are now confined to countries with lower standards of humanity and tolerance. Of course there were a few in places like the West End (Tory MP Sir George Young describes them as people you stepped over as you left the Opera) but these were eccentric, incorrigible. It is different now. All over the centre of cities such as London people sleep in shop doorways or under cardboard boxes and begging has spread out into suburban shopping centres.

The anger of people like Maclean is aroused because the beggars are an embarrassment. How much of an embarrassment can be gauged by the reaction of another Tory MP, Terry Dicks who came up to what are now the expectations of him by describing beggars as "scum" who should be “hosed out" of the doorways where they shelter. The embarrassment springs from the fact that the beggars are a massive, unavoidable, distressing testimony to the failure of Tory government. There was no hint, in their election campaign in 1979, that after almost 20 years of the Conservatives being in power, vagrancy would be the kind of problem to raise the ire of their MPs. But of course they can’t admit that it is evidence of their failure. So it has to be explained away as the result of personal shortcomings of the people concerned.

Maclean does not go as far as to call the beggars "scum"but he does say they are on the streets ". . .  out of choice because they find it more pleasant". This is the standard response to any group of people—the unemployed, single mothers—who have the greater difficulty in surviving under capitalism in the 1990s. These people, we are told, actually prefer to scrape by on Income Support in a sky-high tower block or living rough in the city. There is no explanation as to why so many people suddenly suffer this same kind of personality problem all at the same time and just when an economic recession is in progress, only to recover somewhat when the recession recedes to give way to a boom. It is easier—and. the politicians hope, more fertile for votes—to lambaste the beggars and call for a policy of "zero tolerance".

Blair
There was a time when the Labour Party might have been expected to respond to "zero tolerance" with some deceptive clap-trap about civil liberties and human concerns, leaving some voters under the delusion that things would be different under a Labour government. They should know better now, as Tony Blair leads the way in denouncing the beggars with heartrending stories about what he sees at Kings Cross where he drops his children in the morning, on his way to a hard day’s planning of how he will run the social system which is responsible for such ugliness and for the human wreckage which gravitates to it. No doubt Blair is concerned for his children; he is also not unaware that policies like “zero tolerance” may have a vote-winning potential.

None of this is reassuring to people who assumed society had moved on from the days when rogues, vagabonds, sturdy beggars and vagrants could be whipped in every county they passed through or when someone could be imprisoned for inducing people to give them money by displaying wounds or deformities. If Blair and Tories like Maclean have got it right, it is no longer politically inadvisable to advocate punishing people for what capitalism does to them. A safer policy now, for the vote-hungry politician, is "zero tolerance".

A recent survey by Centrepoint, which offers shelter to homeless people, gave some idea of what their clients are like—and it does not fit in with the version offered by Blair and Dicks. Almost a third were aged between 16 and 17; a third had no income; almost a half had a GCE.CSE or GCSE; almost a third had slept rough; a quarter had been in local authority care. It says a great deal about capitalism and its political parties that the response to the "embarrassment" such people provoke in tourists, tradespeople and politicians on their way out of the Opera is to repress and damage them more than they have already experienced.

Zero Tolerance
Aggressive and persistent demands for money are not monopolised by street beggars. A developing trend—probably a response to the decline in employment in the recession—is the business of young people going door-to-door in the evenings offering low quality cleaning material for sale. Another is the expansion of telephone canvassing—people who are employed to work their way through the telephone directory asking if you want to borrow money or have new windows fitted or whatever. These activities can be as intrusive as any beggar—while any profits which result from them will go to the employer.

So far no political leader has said that "zero tolerance" should extend to those kinds of activities. Nor have they suggested that it should be applied to the social system which saw profits to be made from the misery of a place like Kings Cross and which now wants it cleared up to accommodate a smarter, more profitable tourist centre. But zero tolerance is what we should have of capitalism—of its poverty, its famine, its diseases, of the misery and death it deals out to millions of people all the time. And zero tolerance of the politicians who deceive with their false remedies which either fail or even leave the system worse then before.

Ivan

At the crossroads (1997)

From the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of all the Arabic countries, Morocco is the nearest to Europe. It is just 16 kilometres south of the southernmost tip of Spain, across the Straight of Gibraltar. But immediately you step off the ferry from Algeciras, at Tangier you know that you are no longer in Europe, but in North Africa.

After 44 years of "protectorate”— that is colonial rule—Morocco became independent of France and Spain on 2 March 1956. The Hizb el-Istiqlal (Independence Party) and a number of other pro-nationalist groups, but excluding the Parti Communiste Marocain which was also pro-nationalist, had achieved their aim. The PCM. being good patriots, supported a constitutional monarchy and the reunification of Morocco with Mauritania; but this did not stop the Moroccan government from dissolving the PCM in September 1959. Morocco has been ruled by King Hassan II since 1961.

About the only kind thing that can be said about Morocco is that it is a "guided" bourgeois democracy, where opposition parties (but not "subversive" parties) are generally tolerated —and where Islamic fundamentalists have not, as yet, resorted to the kind of violence witnessed in adjacent Algeria. In Morocco the king rules with a Parliament, in which two-thirds of the deputies are elected by universal suffrage. and the remaining third are chosen by an electoral college of local councils, professional groups, employers' organisations and a few "tame" trade unionists. The iron fist of the state is generally covered by a velvet glove, although when I was there in 1981, I witnessed students who were demonstrating against the deposed Shah of Iran, who was in the country at the time, mown down by machine-gun fire from Moroccan troops.

French influence is still strong, although less than in the past. Nevertheless French companies have been responsible for much of Morocco's industrial development. Politically, however, Morocco has. and has had, other less transparent allies and friends.

In 1948, there were about 200,000 Jews living in Morocco: and up to Moroccan independence in 1956, 100,000 of them had left for Israel. But following independence, the new Moroccan government gave in to pressure from other Arab states, and forbade emigration to Israel. However, MOSSAD organised secret escape routes bribing Moroccan officials. In 1961, Israel asked France and the United States to intervene with the recently crowned King Hassan II. The king needed Western support, and so quietly co-operated with Israel, thus allowing more than 80,000 Jews, who wanted to go to Israel, to leave the country. Although Morocco was a member of the Arab League, and officially a supporter of the Palestinian cause, it nevertheless established close ties with Israel. MOSSAD helped Morocco organise its secret service; and in 1965, did Morocco a favour by assisting the Moroccan secret police assassinate their dissident, Mehdi Ben-Barka. Morocco and Israel, sometimes with Egypt, have quietly co-operated ever since.

In 1977 Jonas Savimbi, the Angolan UNITA nationalist leader, backed by South Africa and the United States, travelled to Morocco, where he met King Hassan. From Morocco. UNITA obtained a secure external headquarters in Rabat. Morocco offered Savimbi military training facilities, near Marrakech, for up to 500 men at a time; and Morocco provided UNITA with arms, and other military equipment, most of which came from the United States, over a period of many years. In 1981, Savimbi and other UNIT A rebels met senior State Department officials in Morocco to discuss United States plans for Angola. Morocco has, since independence, been a loyal but subordinate ally of the United States; and the CIA has always had a strong presence in the country.

Economic problems

The Moroccan economy has suffered severe drought in recent years, which has badly affected the predominant agricultural sector. Indeed, agriculture is still dominant. It is the principal source of employment, accounting for half the working population. Most of the farms are not economically viable, with only one percent of the farms having more than 125 acres. Most of the rest are under eight acres.

Since 1993, the government has been involved in a massive privatisation programme of what was largely a state-run, dirigiste, capitalist economy. Banking and foreign currency regulations have been lifted. From the capitalist viewpoint, the Moroccan government claims that it is a success story:

"International fluctuations in commodity prices have led the government to build up a more diversified economy by reducing reliance on agriculture and mining. It has been largely successful since the mining sector's share of GDP had declined steadily from 5.3 percent in the 1970s to 1.8 percent in 1994. Manufacturing has increased its share from an average 16 percent in the 1970s to almost 18 percent in 1990-94 period. The sector's share of total exports has jumped from 20 percent in 1986 to about one-third since 1992" ("Images”, Observer, 22 December 1996).

However, the economy is estimated to have contracted by five percent in 1995.

And how has this affected the majority of the people of Morocco, the workers and the peasant farmers? The Times (26 December) reports that unemployment is 20 percent, with those under 30 years of age suffering unemployment of more than 40 percent. Fifty-one percent of the population are still illiterate; and the per capita income in Morocco, North Africa's poorest country, is just £800 a year.

All this has resulted in thousands of poverty-stricken Moroccan would-be workers "illegally” going to Spain. Scores of them are detained every week, reports the Times. Last summer, 50 Moroccans were apprehended each day in Spain; and 1,300 were detained in June alone. Just how long it will take them, and many others, to realise that escaping the miseries of one country, Morocco, for the miseries of another, Spain, will not solve their problems, we cannot say. All we can say is that they will not solve them, in Morocco or elsewhere, within the framework of world capitalism.

Peter E. Newell

These Foolish Things . . . (1997)

The Scavenger column from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Progress?

The United Nations Children’s Fund estimates that there are 250 million children working, many of them in the sex trade and in industrial jobs which threaten their lives . . .  But, as it points out, ending all child labour will be a long and complicated business and some of the remedies proposed by Westerners have been counter-productive. The Harkin Bill introduced in the IJS Congress aiming to prohibit the import of products made by children under 15 is a case in point. Although the bill never reached the statute books, the threat of it caused panic in the clothes industry in Bangladesh and dozens of child workers were dismissed. The children, mostly girls, were traced and found to have moved on to more dangerous and exploitative workshops, or to have become prostitutes. The report emphasises that child labour is mainly a product of poverty and many surveys have shown that children’s work is often essential to keeping the family just self-sufficient. Guardian, 12 December.

Middle class?

The news that British Airways is to move accountancy jobs to India has more radical implications for people in the developed world than possible any other story this year. About 200 jobs are being transferred to Bombay to take advantage of wages as low as £4,000 a year against the £20,000 for their British counterparts. This is part of a rising trend for job exporting to hit white-collar workers, as education and living standards rise in emerging countries. Financial Mail on Sunday, 10 November.

Entertainment?

James Ferman, director of the British Board of Film Classification, said screen violence was a global problem. “The solution is beyond the reach of British law. The real solution is for Hollywood to wake up with a conscience. But I have my doubts—there is too much money at stake . . . Censorship can cut gratuitous acts of violence. But we cannot change the culture of violence which permeates much mainstream film-making.” Guardian, 12 December.

Can capital care?

Investment with a conscience is a scarce luxury in a hard-nosed world . . . Research by the Ethical Consumer magazine shows that, of the big banks, only the Co-operative and NatWest take environmental issues seriously when lending to companies. Most also fail adequately to consider concerns such as animal testing, factory fanning, oppressive regimes, armaments and workers’ rights. NatWest’s ethical lending policy is typical of the big banks: “We strongly believe that it is not the responsibility of lenders to police or try to manager their customers’ businesses.” Financial Mail on Sunday, 3 November.

Capitalism flourishes?

More than a third of the 3.4 million companies set up in eastern Europe with European Union help appear to have failed . . .  The EU channelled more than £7 billion of investment into eastern Europe between 1992 and 1994, the last two years for which figures are available. The survey, compiled by the EU’s statistical unit in Luxembourg, shows about 30 percent of the new companies were in Poland, 20 percent in the Czech Republic and 15 percent in Hungary . . . Two thirds have no salaried employees (the average company employs seven staff) and more than half were located in the home of the person setting up the company. Guardian, 31 October.

The Scavenger

Fighting the tiger (1997)

From the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Early in the morning of 26 December 1996, as South Korea slept, the ruling New Korean Party met secretly and in seven minutes passed the most draconian labour legislation the workers had encountered since the end of military rule in 1987.

When workers awoke a new labour law had been introduced which gives big business greater freedoms in sacking workers and setting working hours. A ban on the formation of two trade unions in any one workplace was introduced until the year 2002 along with the outlawing of new umbrella labour groups until the year 2000.

A new National Security Act was also introduced which gives the Korean CIA greater powers. Although ostensibly justified by the incursion of a North Korean submarine into South Korean waters last year, many workers believe the new act is meant to compliment the labour laws and will be used to crush internal dissent and re-discipline the workers with an iron fist.

President Kim Young-sam rationalised the new legislation by stating that the country needs to endure a period of radical change if it wanted to compete on the global market, fending off, for instance, the threat from low-cost economies like China. Last year, rising labour costs and a slowed economic growth resulted in a £12.5 billion trade deficit and a drop in the profits of quoted companies by 40 percent.

Ironically the new legislation came within two weeks of South Korea making it into the "big man’s club"—the OECD, which includes all the leading industrialised countries, and in which a condition of membership is the recognition of certain labour rights.

Needless to say hundreds of thousands of workers immediately took to the streets in a national, stoppage which was the largest in the country’s post-1945 history, taking part in huge demonstrations and sit-ins and engaging in running battles with the security forces.

As can be imagined, the chaebol (the country's giant industrial conglomerates) were the hardest hit, losing £640 million in the first week of industriaJ action, bringing to a total of £2.7 billion lost to similar action throughout 1996—a loss which prompted the South Korean capitalist class to embark on a massive transfer of funds into the cheaper labour markets of developing countries and first world economics.

At a time when government ministers in this country have been telling workers that trade-union curbs and labour market de-regulation are important if Britain wants to compete with the likes of South Korea, it seems paradoxical that South Korea wants to mirror Britain.

The truth is that the South Korean capitalist class have come to realise that the average eight percent annual growth they have enjoyed since 1960 has peaked and that profits can only be maintained by following the example set elsewhere—by hammering the workers still further and in investing in countries with low productivity costs where workers have fewer rights.

What becomes of the ongoing unrest in South Korea is anyone's guess. One thing is certain though. It is high time the workers there, as well as their counterparts world-wide, realised they are exactly "something to be bought and sold— a commodity" which one Korean labour leader recently claimed they were not.

John Bissett

Doing their job (1997)

Book Review from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Promising the Earth by Robert Lamb, Routledge.

This is a well-written and very readable book covering the history of Friends Of The Earth (FoE) from its conception (and before) in the 1970s to the present day. It has been produced due to the 25th anniversary of FoE.

The author sees FoE as a highly successful campaigning organisation and claims that the environment has been put on the political agenda by groups such as themselves (the Rio summit being the obvious example). The success of various direct action campaigns are also seen as great victories for the environment.

Maybe they are but FoE and all the other environmentalists suffer from the same delusions. The idea that somehow, with enough campaigning and raising of environmental awareness, an ecologically friendly society will be brought about is rooted in the environmental activists' approach but is based on pure fantasy.

Environmental problems and disasters do not occur because of bad or evil men who don’t care a damn for the world but because of the profit motive rooted in capitalism.

Twyford Down wasn’t about the government's disdain for the environment but due to them doing what is effectively their job in capitalist society; serving the interests of those who own the means of production. Congestion on the M3 was holding back profit. The violence used against the protesters shows just what value capitalism puts on diversity of thought if it stands in the way of profit. Environmental campaigners are okay as long as direct action doesn’t touch the bulging wallets of the capitalist; "middle England”, usually courted embarrassingly unscrupulously by Britain's political parties are then quite in line for a baton round the head courtesy, of the police.

Twyford Down, however, has been seen by FoE as a success in terms of unification of groups with environmental objectives and to some extent the media.

The Twyford Down protest did not succeed in getting the road stopped, and the list of other unsuccessful direct actions campaigns is almost endless. Yet FoE claims to make a difference in terms of awareness and altering government approach to sustainable and pro-environment policies. Is this so?

Even if it is. within capitalism it is fighting a losing battle. A success, for example, against the expansion of the nuclear programme (1980, after FoE revealed secret government negotiations) is offset by innumerable environmental problems elsewhere.

If campaigners find a loophole in the Law it is rapidly closed; after all they are playing the game to the capitalists' rules.

If laws protecting the environment are produced, as they have been in the last few decades. they are often unworkable (as the Basel ban will prove to be) or so loosely applied as to be meaningless.

Promising The Earth, unsurprisingly, concentrates on the positive aspects of FoE and its development. It runs through their various campaigns; from their launch and campaigns against Schweppes in 1971 (arguing for returnable bottles) through numerous other campaigns to the recent Newbury by-pass protest and House Energy Conservation Act in 1995. It also deals with internal struggles and difficulties within the green movement and far from paints an entirely rosy picture of the movement as a whole. The author, though, clearly sees FoE and its sister groups as the force for change into an eco- friendly society.

While the non-violent direct action policies of FoE and others may achieve limited success against government policies and lobbying for legislation, at the end of the day they will never be able to combat the motive of profit which is the root cause of the problems they wish to ameliorate and are destined to struggle endlessly against the tide of capitalism.

Colin Skelly

No real understanding of Socialism (1997)

Book Review from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

H.G.: The History of Mr Wells by Michael Foot, Black Swan £7.99.

According to its author, "this is a book about Socialism, but personalities will constantly be allowed to intrude". In fact, it is not about Socialism at all; rather, it consists of Foot's defence of one of his political heroes against a variety of crimes that have been laid at his door, from elitism to racism and sexism.

There is no doubt that HG Wells was an enormously influential writer in a number of fields, from pioneering science fiction to social novels, from popular history to political essays. As a one-time Labour parliamentary candidate and member of the Fabian Society, he was naturally associated with left-wing ideas and a variety of reformist causes. There is no denying the power of some of Wells’s depictions of poverty, and I for one love the following passage from The Time Machine, part of a discussion of the potentialities of travel into the future:

"‘One might invest all one’s money, leave it to accumulate at interest, and hurry on ahead. To discover a society,' said I, ‘erected on a strictly communistic basis.’" 

Foot of course doesn't quote this, and instead offers long justifications of some of Wells's conduct towards the various women in his life.

In fact neither Wells nor Foot show any understanding of Socialism. Wells wrote a number of books set in the future as he imagined it might be. or hoped it would be. Broadly the same sort of picture is presented in these writings. and there is little doubt that in essentials it represents Wells's own ideas about how society should be run. Firstly, there is a naive acceptance of technological and scientific advance. and the benefits this will bring. Secondly, there is an end to nationalism and the establishment of a world state, run by a global government. Thirdly, there is an élite which administers this world state in a dispassionate and altruistic way. In A Modern Utopia (1905) this élite consists of the samurai, a "voluntary nobility". Foot notes that the young Wells thought scientists more reliable and disinterested than politicians, and the samurai is a projection of Wells's faith in knowledgeable and public-spirited people as the most suitable to run society. Foot's defence of Wells against the charge of élitism is pathetic: Wells was “avidly read. say. in the Workmen’s Halls in Wales” and so cannot have been an élitist!

It was Wells who coined the phrase "the war to end war” as a description of the First World War. He had often warned against the possibility of a global conflict, but he saw war as being caused not by economic considerations but by militarism and nationalism (which was one reason for his advocacy of a world state). In fact he supported the First World War. on the grounds that the enemy was German militarism, and he offended many friends by putting this view in the jingoistic gutter press. Even Foot has trouble excusing this.

The following passage from A Modern Utopia gives a good idea of the functioning of the world state as envisaged by Wells:

"It will maintain order, maintain roads, maintain a cheap and efficient administration of justice, maintain cheap and rapid locomotion and be the common carrier of the planet, convey and distribute labour, control, let, or administer all natural productions, pay for and secure healthy births and a healthy and vigorous new generation, maintain the public health, coin money and sustain standards of measurement, subsidise research, and reward such commercially unprofitable undertakings as benefit the community as a whole ..."

This is a clear depiction of state capitalism, and there is little doubt that this is what Wells stood for. Foot's study has to be seen as an attempt to defend such ideas now that the Labour Party has abandoned any commitment to nationalisation or a comprehensive welfare state.

Paul Bennett

The Last Word: Trained to kill (1997)

The Last Word Column from the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nobody likes a bully—unless he has a medal on. Her Majesty’s well-paid bully-boy, ready to blow to pieces any stranger his masters set him upon. Bullies in uniform.

At least the street bully, thuggish and anti-social as he is, acts from self-interest. Beat up that old woman—frighten that mother with kids—scare the hell out of that kid— and they’ll give you their money. The working-class bully is a disgrace to society. But he’s a disgrace created by a system of society which rewards the most ruthless predator. The street thug is only doing what the supermarkets do to the comer shop; what Murdoch does to the small-fry press; what Uncle Sam does to the neighbouring country which can’t defend itself against him. I’m bigger and tougher, says the bully, and capitalism likes a callous brute.

But the hired bullies are an even lower breed. Whereas the anti-social mugger thinks that he can use his boots and fists to become one of the rich kids, the wage-slave in bully’s uniform is content to stay a slave, but uses his boots and fists so that the rich kids can stay rich or get richer. The military bully is the human fighting dog—the bulldog breed, they call them—who will leave his wife widowed and children fatherless to that somebody else can get rich—stay rich. Pitiful thug, all dolled out in his Action Man kit, mud on his face to disguise his humanity, and gun in his hand to show any brave opponent that he will fight muscle with bullets, the soldier is one of the most disgusting distortions of humanity that capitalism has conceived in its perverse history.

But out of that particularly distasteful brand of state-paid bully there is a sub-group which is even more malignant than the rest. These are the bullies who are trained to kill strangers from the air. At least the pathetic thugs in the army have to walk through dangerous streets occasionally and pop their mud-stained heads up above the trenches to face their masters’ enemies. And the naval bullies have to endure months at sea being treated like a Ship of Fools, sailing from here to there in voyages of pointless enmity against whichever stranger the Admiral class picks for them. But the Air Force contains the scum of state thuggery. What could conceivably be more uncouragously intimidating and vicious than to travel by jet to distant lands and, from vast distances in the skies above, drop bombs which kill people whom you have never met and whose language you cannot speak.

We are trained to forget. So, the bombing of Libya fades into the bombing of Iraq and that fades into the Vietnamese atrocities, and who even remembers about the villainous aerial bombing of Dresden by “the democratic allies” in which more bowed, defeated and defenceless Germans were killed than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (two more successful targets for the sky terrorists)? Thatcher was not alone in calling for the bully bombers to do their business in Bosnia, killing vast numbers of workers whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Voices from the British Left conspired with the likes of Thatcher to call for such aerial warfare. These were doubtlessly the same people who had once praised “the wonderful Soviet Air Force” whose planes were poised to fly over Britain and kill thousands of workers here with the press of a button. The bomber from the skies does not select victims on the basis of any kind of justice, however misplaced. Aerial bombing is indiscriminate in its slaughter. In Baghdad the USAF and the RAF killed children as they played. This was Dunblane with precision accuracy, carried out with the blessing of Church and State, and with the killers given medals upon the completion of their sick deeds.

And when they return, these uniformed murderers, they have children whom they love and care for, and dogs which they take to the vet when they limp, and they give money to charities because they feel sorry for neglected whales or crippled war veterans. In short, they are bullies by profession, not by birth. Their sick behaviour takes arduous training to develop. One day they are spotty teenagers, standing in the dole queue and wishing they could make a living wage out of doing something decent. And then the wages of military indecency are offered to them and off they go to train to kill. Look carefully next time you pass an RAF Careers Office. They are buildings which humans shall one day be ashamed to remember. They are bastions of the inhumanity which the profit system needs, like a vampire needs blood.

Steve Coleman