All mad together (1962)

From the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the television screens they are smooth and assured. They smile with confident, frank eyes; if occasionally they show emotion they never lose their dignity. For these men are the politicians, who like to think that they are in control. Or they are the planners, who dream that organisation will solve everything.

The impression they like to make is that, although it is always so much better to have them in charge, Capitalism is anyway a sane and ordered set-up in which everything works pretty well. There may be one or two little problems here and there, but generally, they think, everything works out for the best. The men at the top know what they are doing, the world turns nicely on its axis and all the madmen are in the lunatic asylums. What could be better?

What, indeed? For sure, the workers go along with this. They, too, think that Capitalism is the best social organisation we have or are likely to deserve. Whatever worries or criticisms they may have about income tax or rising rents or redundancies, the workers think the world is organised as well as it can be—and whenever they get the chance they vote that way.

Now just how much sanity is there in the world? How much, for example, for the old people who long ago perhaps were themselves bemused by the puffs in favour of Capitalism? We all know that growing old can be one of the fiercest problems of our lives, meaning that we lose our jobs and sometimes our homes and our friends. For the morbidly inclined the prospect of poverty in old age can loom over his youth like a bank of storm clouds on a summer’s day. So the old ones have been a matter for the attention of many governments, for a long time. Hardly an election passes without the contesting parties all struggling to get their protective legislative arms around the pensioners. The Tories pull out figures to show that they have done better than the Labour Party on pensions. Labour cries that the Tories don’t really care for the old dears of the working class and anyway arc a lot of skinflints. Wistfully the Liberals and others wait with their promises to do better than both Labour and Tory put together.

Anybody could be excused for assuming that the pensioners had gained some material benefit from this anxiety to do so well by them. What are the facts? Early this year Codicote Press published a book on the subject—The Economic Circumstances of Old People, by Dorothy Cole and John Utting. Did the authors find the subjects of their inquiry living in prosperous ease? They did not. Were they doing alright then, contented, getting by? Wrong again. They estimated, in fact, that nearly two and a half million old people are living close to the state which the national assistance standards regard as poverty.

These standards are based on cold figures of cost of living indexes and so on, but we can guess what living on the poverty line means for a pensioner. It means a cold room in the winter. It means dining off dry bread and an Oxo cube in hot water. It means broken shoes and tattered clothes. These people live like this only because they are too old to tap out the profits for an employer. Their destitution defies the tinkering of the planners and the politicians. In terms of sanity and human welfare it is a scandal.

Young workers also get a taste of what Capitalist sanity and order means. At the end of this month the Government are expected to announce that the pay pause is at an end and that it will be succeeded by some other attempt at holding down wages, under a different snappy name. Ever since the end of the last war, when it became apparent that workers were strongly placed to press for higher pay, governments have been scheming and appealing to keep wages in check. Sometimes they have done this openly, as in Cripps’ freeze and Selwyn Lloyd’s pause. Sometimes they have done it in a roundabout way—by the 1949 devaluation of the pound, for example. So far they have not openly defied the big trade unions and forced a show down battle with them; perhaps that is in the future. But whatever method they have used, the theme has been constant—wages must be pegged down.

Yet who can be blamed for wanting more pay? Perhaps some workers believed the wartime propaganda which was intended to convince them that victory over Germany and Japan would bring, among other things, prosperity for them. Perhaps some of them think that as the post war productivity drive has succeeded to the point of destroying many of the world’s sellers’ markets, they can now start cashing in on the promises made to them when the Government only wanted them to work harder.

To workers, prosperity usually means sky high wages. But no sooner do they try to get them than the government intervenes, shaking its head and telling them that their wages are too high, that they are too prosperous. This must surprise shop assistants and farm workers and railwaymen and many others who earn hardly enough to keep themselves ticking over. It might interest and amuse other workers. For there is very little that is sane and organised about government wages policy. It is like a great game of snakes and ladders in which, for the wage-earners, there are too many snakes for comfort.

Then there is the curious case of British Railways. One of the theories behind nationalisation was that organisations like the railways could be run in the interests of the Capitalist class as a whole only it they were State controlled. Lord Chandos, as we point out elsewhere in this issue, has given the industrialists’ views on nationalisation. They want cheap and plentiful supplies and services, even if a nationalised concern must be run at a loss to supply them. But there has recently been considerable restlessness at the big deficits which the railways in this country have run up. Now there is a demand, pioneered by papers like The Economist, that British Railways ceases to operate as a service to Capitalism generally, cuts almost everything, but its profitable services and then picks the bones out of the rest. (Nobody has yet suggested that the Government suspend the interest commitments of British Transport Commission, which last year turned a working loss of £55 million into a deficit of £100 million).

Let us make it clear that, although its unprofitable railways may be a sore point to the Capitalists, no worker need worry whether his employer is doing well or not. But it is pertinent to consider the dilemma of Capitalism’s experts and planners. What sort of nationalised railways do they want? Do they even know what they want? And if they do know, can they get it?

This sort of disorder is not confined to Capitalism in England. Across the Atlantic, President Kennedy has let himself be seen sipping a glass of milk and has declared that in future no meal at the White House will be without it. Milk, he said, is delicious, nutritious and not at all radioactive. The reason for this publicity campaign is plain to see. Both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations have subsidised milk production and have supported the prices of milk products like butter and cheese. This has encouraged the American farmer to produce vast quantities of milk at the same time as consumption has fallen drastically. This has created a—dread word—surplus of milk which the President is doing his best to reduce by persuading people to drink as much of it as possible.

This all sounds fairly reasonable until we remember that milk is a food that can keep children alive and well—and that while the United States government is trying to pour the stall down unwilling American throats there are 650 million hungry children in the world who could put it to better use. Of course, Washington has its own reasons for not sending the milk where it is needed; they talk about budgets and farm prices and taxpayers. What it amounts to is that, even in cases of human survival, Capitalism often cannot deliver the goods where they are needed. Which does not make Capitalism seem a very sensible way of running things.

In fact, wherever we turn there is evidence which makes Capitalism seem the silliest of systems. That is why its politicians—the men who must run, defend and justify Capitalism—sometimes say the silliest things. Yet Capitalism has an inner sanity. Man started the thing off in his attempts to deal with the problems which were worrying him about a couple of hundred years ago. But we should not let it rest there. We still have problems to worry us. And we still have a way of solving them.

Ivan

News in Review: Disobedience campaign (1960)

The News in Review column from the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Disobedience campaign

It would appear that true to their policy statement most of the CND leaders have completely disowned Lord Russell’s proposals for a civil disobedience campaign. According to Lord Russell the proposals are an appeal to the conscience and intelligence of all men about the dangers of mass extermination. What concerns us is the kind of society reflected in these measures to flout authority. The real tragedy is that at election times the overwhelming majority vote for the retention of Capitalism and consequently for most of the policies which go with it, including the H-bomb. For this reason the Socialist is not being cynical when he makes the remark: “You got what you voted for.”

To those CND supporters still undecided as to their next move it could be pointed out that by supporting any kind of civil disobedience they are fighting and will continue to fight the effects of the present system rather than abolishing it altogether and replacing it with a new and much less frustrating society.

Right to Strike

Patrick Neary has been released after spending six weeks in prison. He was the leader of the recent seamen’s strike, and was sent to jail because he did not comply with a court order which told him (in effect) to give up all connection with the strike. Some newspapers have claimed that he was imprisoned not because he was a striker, but because he disobeyed the court order. This is to reject the substance and catch at the shadow. The reason Neary went to jail was because he had been elected chairman of the strike committee, and had therefore emerged as the figurehead of the strike. The shipping companies wanted to remind the seamen of the Merchant Shipping Act. under which any striking seaman can be sent to jail. As far as the mass of strikers were concerned, the companies were perhaps afraid of having them all sent to jail, for fear of repercussions: and so decided to call in the state machine (which after all they maintain to look after their interests) only against one man, the figurehead, Neary. Therefore Neary has had to endure for six weeks the vile indignities which are the lot of anyone in jail, because he took part in a strike and was elected chairman of the committee which ran it.

And what happened to the protests which we might have expected? The last war (our leaders told us) was fought to defend democratic freedoms. The right to withhold labour is a central democratic freedom. The alternative—sending men to jail because they refuse to work on the terms offered them by the capitalists—is slavery. But our ruling class had no objection to Neary's sentence. Their newspapers applauded it. Let us remember this the next time our rulers want our help to “fight for freedom and democracy."

Kennedy v. Nixon

BBC television has given up an hour of its time to show one of the debates between the rival candidates for the Presidency now being staged in the United States. It isn't clear why, unless it wants to demonstrate to British workers that there would be no point in emigrating. For the debate showed that politics have reached much the same stage over there as they have here. There are two great parties contending for the support of the working class. One of them holds that the system as it now stands is as near to perfect as anything ever devised by man. The other, which has the support of the unions, wants one or two reforms, which would do nothing whatever to change the class basis of society. Each of them has a programme and a policy, the essence of which is that each would run capitalism better than its rival.

In one respect the parallel is even closer. Over here we have become used to the Government of the day (whether Labour or Conservative) attacking any claim made for higher pay made by members of the working class, and treating any strike or threat to strike as if it heralded the end of civilisation. And then at each election, the Government, with superb effrontery, brings out any figures of higher pay won by the workers against the strenuous opposition of that very Government, as if it alone was responsible (and, at the same time, usually skates over any figures showing how inflation has left the workers in much the same position as they were before). In the televised debate Nixon, who has been vice-president for the last eight years, performed this very trick. He brought out the figures of wage increases as if he individually had led the workers in all the struggles which must go before the smallest pay rise. And no doubt if Kennedy wins this time, he will re-appear in four years using exactly the same argument which Nixon uses now.

The Referendum

The South African government has been given a majority vote in favour of a republic—a majority, that is, of white voters, as the vast mass of the population (the Africans, Indians and Cape Coloureds) in this referendum, as in all elections, have no vote. This winning of the referendum has, no doubt, pleased Dr. Verwoerd and his Nationalist supporters, but not all white South Africans are so pleased, although Dr. Verwoerd hoped that the creation of a republic would at last end the bitterness and hostility existing between the Boer South Africans and the English-speaking South Africans, which has remained since the Boer War. But this has not, so far, happened, and one of South Africa's leading industrialists, Mr. Harry Oppenheimer, is frankly worried that the Republic may have a harmful effect on industry, should it not be readmitted to the Commonwealth, partly because of loss of the imperial preference.

Suicides

From a recent meeting of the British Medical Association at Middlesbrough, comes further evidence of the anti-social consequences of competition and production for profit. Dr. Sargent, physician-in-charge of the Department of Psychological Medicine at St. Thomas's Hospital. raised the matter of the 5,000 suicides which occur in this country yearly. According to Dr. Sargent, many patients who go on to commit suicide do so after wrong courses of treatment often resulting from confusion created by drug manufacturers in their publicity campaigns. Recently, advances have been made with a new group of anti-depressant drugs. “Unfortunately intensive competition between drug manufacturers to capture their share of an enormous potential market had resulted in excessive claims being made for them and wrong groups of cases suggested for their use," said Dr. Sargent.

Clearly the human considerations of treatment of the sick are secondary in the drive towards commercial success. Even so, anti-depressant drugs can at best only hope to treat symptoms. A far more satisfactory way of preventing suicides would be to establish a society based on more harmonious social relations and which takes no toll of the individual in terms of emotional stress.

Nigeria changes

Nigerians living in London marked Nigeria's coming to independence by publicly wearing their colourful and roomy national costumes. Was it worth celebrating? At the most, Nigeria will develop into another minor capitalist state; and we have seen enough of those to know that they have no more to offer their workers than any of the older established powers. Dr. Michael Okpara, the President of Eastern Nigeria, stated in the region's Assembly on 8th October that Nigerians would rather lay down their lives than lose their newly won freedom. At a guess this is a correct estimation of the loyalty of patriotic Nigerians who, like any other politically ignorant workers, are wide open to the propaganda of their masters.

But Dr. Okpara's statement gives the lie to those who pretend that the emerging capitalist countries are basically different from those whose power they have replaced. All over the world, workers are periodically called upon to die for the protection of their master's interests—and always they are told that they are dying to defend some high minded principle. British workers, for example, have fallen for this for a very long time. Now, the Nigerians are getting the same treatment. With, presumably, the same results—bloodshed and tragedy.

Blowing their tops

Mr. Khruschev had a rare old time at the United Nations. Hugging Fidel Castro, making violent speeches, banging his desk and shouting. He even heckled Mr. Macmillan, which gave the British Prime Minister the chance to show how an Old Etonian deals with that sort of thing in the House of Commons. Such bad behaviour, it was reported, upset Mr. Eisenhower, who cancelled any intention of shaking hands with, or talking to, the Soviet Premier.

Now diplomatic conferences are not like chats over the garden wall, when boorishness can cause a man to be bad friends with his neighbour. Capitalist powers do not split on points of etiquette—their disputes are over rival economic interests. International politicians know better than to lose their tempers as openly as Khruschev did—unless it suits their purpose to do so. And all of them will willingly hobnob with people guilty of worse than bad manners. If the immediate interests of their capitalist class demand it, they will talk to, shake hands with, embrace, pose with, other diplomats who are little better than murderers.

The disputes of capitalism have always involved a large measure of humbug. The stakes are high—and no trick barred. A dirty game.

On the brink (1962)

From the December 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world has probably never held its breath so painfully hard as it did during the Cuba crisis. In some ways life went on as usual. Buses and trains ran, people went to work, played games, looked at television. A West End tobacco store announced that it had already imported its Havana cigars and that supplies would be undisturbed for Christmas. But it all happened under a cloud of unreality. Everyone knew that we stood on the edge of an overwhelming nightmare, perhaps the ultimate in capitalism’s upheavals. One newspaper published a cartoon in which a typist confided to her companion that she would scream if her boss, grinning, greeted them again in the morning with the observation that we were still here. Very funny. But a lot of people didn’t expect to be still here a few days after Kennedy’s broadcast and the point is that if the crisis had developed much further they might have be en proved right.

At the time, it seemed rather pointless to speculate upon the background of the affair. Now that the heat is somewhat off, we can take time to look around us.

Was it all a put-up job? Some of the missiles were carried quite openly on the decks of Soviet ships and their launching pads were put down in clearings with no attempt at camouflage. This seems to contradict Kennedy’s assertion that the missiles were sent clandestinely to Cuba. Because of this, and for other reasons, there was some speculation that the Russians were openly moving their rockets to Cuba so that they could use them to bargain with an alarmed American government.

Because (and who isn't relieved at this?) the two great powers of contemporary capitalism are still at the bargaining stage. The Russians might have wanted to use their Cuban bases to get the Americans out of Turkey and Iran. Or at least they might have been able to use them to force Washington to talk about the American bases and to discuss whether they should have them so near to Russia. This would have been a unique situation. Whoever heard of one capitalist power negotiating with its enemy over bases which are designed to attack them?

Another possibility which was bandied about was that the Russians were trying to persuade the Americans to accept the existence of an unfriendly Cuba. This would give the Soviet Union more than a toehold in the Caribbean. Kennedy has, of course, agreed that if the missiles and the nuclear bombers leave Cuba he will guarantee not to invade the island. This presumably means that he will leave it in the “imprisoned” condition which he ascribed to it in his broadcast. Or is that too risky a presumption? Capitalist politicians have broken promises before and there is no reason to think that they will not break them in the future.

Or was Cuba a blind? Was Kruschev trying to create a disturbance at one end of the world while the real dirty work was done at the other? Many eyes were turned to Berlin during the Cuban crisis and there was some fear that the Russians would at least make a definite hostile move there. If that had happened the propaganda machine of Western capitalism was ready. Kennedy mentioned in his broadcast that the Russians were not to interfere with the “brave people” of West Berlin.” How short a time ago was it that we were being encouraged to hope that the Russians would do just that, and with a vengeance ? Or does the world forget so easily the lies of yesterday, only remembering those of today?

All these speculations—and some of the others which were in the air at the time—must have a chance of being near the truth. It has been a feature of Russian tactics in the Cold War that they suddenly create a tremendous racket which convinces half the world that war has all but started. Each year, for example, Moscow seems determined to sign a treaty with East Germany and so provoke a really serious crisis over Berlin. Then just as suddenly they take the heat off and get everyone sighing with relief. But when the dust has cleared it can be perceived that the Russians have advanced their cause somewhat. Last year the Berlin Wall seemed a temporary irritant. Now it is permanent, well guarded. This could have been the tactic which Moscow were playing in Cuba.

Rocket bases

There might of course be a simpler explanation, one which does not rest on the assumption that capitalism's international dealings depend upon the suave, tricky diplomat who does his job as if he were a top-notch poker player. Perhaps the Cuban bases were a purely offensive move by the Russians, intended as a pistol pointing at America's heart. This would have put the Russians on something like an equal footing with the United States, whose overseas rocket bases are about as far from Moscow as Cuba is from Washington. The rockets in Cuba outflanked the elaborate and expensive early warning system which the Americans have built up. They reduced the time which a missile attack would give the American people to wind up their affairs, patch up their quarrels and kiss each other goodbye to the more hurried three or four minutes which we would have in England.

In at least two ways this was an ironical situation. Capitalist nations, whose experts assure us that they know what they are doing, have always spent a lot of effort in building a static defence system for use in wartime. In the days of more leisurely, more personal wars they built systems like the Hindenburg and Maginot Lines and the heavy fortifications at Singapore. Very often, these defences have been useless because the enemy has simply come in the other way—which is what the Russian missiles would have been able to do from Cuba. Which shows, once again, how fallible are the people whose reputation rests upon their being infallible.

There is irony, too, in the American refusal to accept parity with the Russians in missile and nuclear resources. Both sides in the Cold War argue that such things are necessary as a deterrent. But the most effective deterrent is surely one which is equally available to both sides, so that they can frighten each other equally. We need not point out—but we will—that neither America nor Russia ever takes the deterrent theory to these lengths. They are both too busy fighting out the race for bigger and more terrifying weapons. The fact is that the deterrent theory, just like the rest of capitalism's war propaganda, is a lie. Capitalist powers like the USA and the Soviet Union do not develop weapons to keep the peace. They make them so that they can wage war more effectively—more destructively—than their rivals.

If Kruschev was in fact trying to outflank the American defensive system, he has obviously failed. For him, personally, this could be a serious matter. There is ample evidence that the Russian government are deeply divided over the method of sparring out the Cold War and that Kruschev has had some narrow squeaks in these internal disputes. A diplomatic defeat in Cuba might mean the end of him—literally the end, because nobody can be sure that in Russia political defeat does not still mean execution.

These speculations are interesting, but that is as far as they can go. Only a very few people in the world know what was behind the Cuban affair. The international disputes which capitalism is always putting us on edge with do not lend themselves to open and honest dealing. Secrets must be kept and each side must try to hide its intentions from the other. Only now are we learning something of the truth about events which died fifty years ago. Only now are we beginning to learn some of the detail of what was behind the First World War. The 1939 war is still shrouded in official secrecy, although sometimes drops of horrible truth trickle out. Not for a long time will the facts on Cuba come out into the open. Not for a long time will the world know fully of the lies and double dealing, the threats and the power and the fearful, insane risks that were taken.

Secrets

Because in these disputes ordinary people do not seem to count. They are only the people who run capitalism, who keep the system working and who design, make, transport and finally fire off the missiles which all the fuss was about. They are only the people who are essential to the war effort which rounds off the fuss. For who was it who Kennedy and Kruschev called upon at the height of the crisis? Who did they mobilise into their armed forces? Who did they try to persuade, with their propaganda? The ordinary people. The working class.

The working class do not share in the secrets which pass between their leaders. Kennedy refused to publish the vital part of the correspondence between himself and Kruschev—the part which possibly explains the whole thing—for the reason that it was a letter which was addressed to him personally. But that is too transparently fatuous to need further comment. The working class are not asked for their opinion in these matters. Krushchev did not ask the Russian working class whether he should risk all their lives by sending missiles to Cuba and Kennedy did not consult the American workers about starting a war over those missiles. Neither, for that matter, did Macmillan ask English workers whether they agreed that they were behind America—to the death, if need be.

Conditioning

The working class are not asked—and do not expect to be asked—about these matters. They only expect to work, to fight and if necessary to die for capitalism. And, of course, to vote for it as well. Apart from that, they do not seem to count.

Or do they ? What if Kennedy’s call to mobilise bad been met with a blank refusal? What if American workers had refused to man the ships in the blockade? if Russian workers had said no to shipping the missiles? The leaders of capitalism would have been powerless. They could have exchanged insults or compliments for as long as they liked. In the end it would have been the workers, and not the leaders, who counted.

Capitalism's wars are fought because of the economic clashes of its opposing powers. But these wars can only be organised, supplied and fought by the very people who have nothing to gain—and everything to lose—by fighting them. That is why there is such a careful propaganda campaign, all the time, to condition the working class to accept the latest line-up in international capitalism. That is why the workers in this country are now taught to hate the Russians and to love the Germans, when a few years ago we were taught the exact opposite. Yes, workers do count.

Because they could stop capitalism's wars. They could do more than that. They could stop capitalism itself. Not, this time, by refusing to take part in it; but by understanding it. By taking the trouble, to start with, to remember and to put Cuba—and Korea, Formosa, Berlin and the rest—into perspective.

Capitalism marches to chaos upon the ignorance of the people who keep it in its miserable existence. Cuba was only one step along this unhappy road. But who dare say where it will end, if the march and the ignorance continue?

Ivan

Kennedy and after (1964)

From the January 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is part of the mystique essential to the leadership cult that the leaders themselves, dead and alive, are surrounded by myths. When they die in as dramatically horrible a way as the late President Kennedy, the myths may become more exaggerated than usual. Everyone, except for a few lunatics like the Deep South segregationists who cheered when they heard it, must have felt a chill of horror at the news of Kennedy’s assassination. Everyone must feel for Mrs. Kennedy in her endurance of an experience to haunt her for the rest of her life. It is never pleasant to look upon the results of violence, especially the sort of which simmers beneath the garish shell of a city like Dallas.

But the world is larger than one man, no matter how powerful he may be—and Kennedy was a very powerful man indeed. The eminence of the people who attended his funeral is proof—if more proof were needed—of the fact that the United States stands supreme in world capitalism today. But whatever sympathy we may feel for Kennedy we also feel for the millions of other people who suffer under capitalism. We feel it for those who meet, without headlines, equally horrible deaths in wartime. However much we sympathise with Mrs. Kennedy in her grief, we have the same feelings for the relatives of those who died in battle, or in air raids. We feel for all the unnecessary suffering which property society imposes on the human race—for the hunger and the fear and the cruel struggle that is so often the business of living.

Because we feel these things, and want to do something about them, we are Socialists. And because we are Socialists we try to dispel the myths which help to sustain capitalism, no matter what or whom they concern.

The first notion we have to examine is the one which is held, in different ways, by the man who shot the President and by the people who applauded, and by those who grieved, his death. This is the notion that murdering Kennedy will substantially alter the course of history. Predictably, there have been many comparisons with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at the end of the American Civil War. Yet Lincoln’s murder did not change anything. It did not alter the fact that the North had won and that as a result the American Union would continue to be solidified and to develop into the great power that it is today. If the American Negro is still, in many parts of the United States, held in near slavery, that is only because one of the real factors in the moulding of history—the massive will of a people—wants him to remain so and not because a man who is mistakenly supposed to have stood for Negro freedom was murdered.

In the same way, the policies which Kennedy followed, whatever superficial effect he himself had upon them, were basically determined for him by the conditions of his time. Kennedy, it is said, regarded politics as the art of the possible which means, among other things, that he tried to acknowledge the realities of modern capitalism. The new President, Johnson, lost no time in declaring that he, too, would work within these realities. Thus there will probably be no change in Washington’s new attitude towards the Soviet Union. This attitude sprang, not from a change of heart on the part of Mr. Khrushchev, nor from a pacific impulse on the part of President Kennedy, but from the new balance of power after the rift between Russia and China. This rift, incidentally, was symbolised by different reactions to the news of Kennedy’s assassination—regret in Moscow, jubilation in Peking. This situation has brought about a change in Russo/American relations; American policy is now the compound of firmness and caution upon which the dead President put his stamp.

We are accustomed, now, to hearing such changes described as the actions of peace-loving leaders. President Johnson has run true to form on this; in, his first speech to Congress he said:

“We will be unceasing in the search for peace—resourceful in our pursuit of areas of agreement even with those with whom we differ—and loyal to those who join with us in common cause.”

There will, too, be no change on civil rights. Racial intolerance is a considerable obstacle to the advance of organised industry in some parts of America; any government which faces modern realities must be opposed to it. Here was one of Kennedy’s greatest difficulties. He knew the importance of desegregation but he also knew that to push a programme of equal rights would cost him votes. And so it did. He was, in fact, in Texas in an effort to heal a split in the local Democratic ranks, and to rally support for his presidential campaign next year, when he was shot down.

The Kennedy policies, then, will continue because they expressed the conditions and the needs of American capitalism today. If some Congressmen opposed them, if fanatical racialist Senators from the South persisted in regarding Kennedy as a dangerous revolutionary, that is only a measure of the fact that they reflect the ignorance of the people who elected them. This ignorance need not concern only such things as class consciousness; it can also apply, as it does in the case of racial intolerance, to the realities of modern capitalism. Johnson will also do his best to make the United States face these realities. “I hate this as much as you do,” he once shouted at some obstinate Congressman, “But this is happening.” Which is a typically Texan way of summing it up.

Kennedy’s image was of a gracefully relaxed, yet energetically driving, young man. A cultured, sincere man; a man whose good looks, background and accomplishments made him something of a model for every modern sales executive. Kennedy was rich enough to have had, and to have taken advantage of, a very good education. One report put his personal fortune at between £3½ million and £4¼ million, and that of his father at something like £100 million. His social regime in the White House showed that he was deeply appreciative of the arts. But at the same time Kennedy was a very cool politician. He planned years ahead for his assault upon the Presidency. The manner in which he convinced the Democratic Party that his comparative youth and his Roman Catholicism did not weaken his power to attract votes was a classical example of his single-minded political campaigning. His professed sincerity and ideals did not prevent him, when he named Johnson as his Vice-Presidential candidate, from working the vote-catching compromise which is usual in American presidential elections. The campaign itself was a masterpiece, with Kennedy the man very much in control. Alistair Cooke reporting the campaign for The Guardian, contrasted the possible reactions of the candidates if they lost. Nixon, he thought, would take defeat bitterly but Kennedy would not let it worry him—he would “sleep sound o’nights.” 

There is no reason to suppose that Kennedy’s death will basically change anything. Perhaps there will be different decorations at the White House, or fewer famous musicians performing there. But the ideas and the policies which come out will be to all intents and purposes the same as if Kennedy were still alive. This is what American investors thought; Wall Street slumped when the President was shot, but a couple of days later it recovered with a rise the like of which has not been seen for over thirty years. The Stock Exchange in London, and its equivalent in other capitals, were also not slow to express their opinion that, whoever is in the White House, capitalism is going to live on.

The Cuban crisis made Kennedy the first man ever to have wielded, in apparent earnest, the threat of nuclear war as an instrument in capitalism’s international disputes. The manner in which he handled that crisis may be enough to set him down as one of the world’s more incisive leaders. Because of this, he will be buried in the myth that a leader’s political skill, or lack of it, substantially alters history. In fact, Kennedy was very much like the men who were Presidents before him, and the man who has succeeded him. He worked within the art of the possible. Perhaps at times he hated what he was doing yet was compelled to do it—because it was happening.

Ivan

News in Review: Top Men (1960)

The News in Review column from the September 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Top Men

The rearrangement of Mr. Macmillan's government caused quite a storm. The appointment of a member of the House of Lords as Foreign Secretary was responsible for a lot of the criticism and several newspapers had hard things to say on some of the other changes. In America, Senator Kennedy won the Democratic nomination for the Presidential election in November, despite the fact that he is a Roman Catholic—and Catholics for a long time have been considered a poor political risk in the States. His opposite, Vice-President Nixon, also caused a stir by refusing to pander to some of the regional prejudices of the Republican Party and selecting a New Englander, Mr. Cabot Lodge, as his running mate.

Are changes at the top all that important? Certainly, at election and other times each party reviles the opponents as incompetent and unworthy whilst offering itself as benevolent and efficient. But whatever influence on events the political leaders may have, what really counts is the fact that society as a whole supports the continuance of capitalism. That, in the end, determines the policies and actions of the world's leaders. And capitalism is vicious and anarchic, whichever party is in power and whoever happens to be at the top in the parties at any particular time.

Seamen on strike

The Merchant Shipping Act of 1894, we are told, is not an anti trade union Act but just one of those pieces of legislation which are necessary because they keep the vital wheels of society turning. The fact is that on August 11th eight seamen were sentenced to one month's imprisonment because, by striking work aboard the S.S. Castilian, they had contravened one of the Act's sections by disobeying a lawful order.

There are many Acts which, under the pretence of safeguarding the community's welfare, hedge round trade unionist activity with severe restrictions. One of these is the Electricity (Supply) Act of 1919, which may be used if the power station workers come out.

One simple method of safeguarding the community's welfare, keeping the ships sailing and making everybody happy, is to grant the seamen's wage demands. As a result of the recent agreement signed by the National Union of Seamen, a steward or seaman would earn a basic wage of about £40 a month with all found. To get this up to a reasonable level, he must work a lot of overtime. When he is ashore, of course, he is much worse off.

There can be nothing but commendation for any efforts to improve the seamen's working conditions. Time was when sailors were brutal and illiterate men. Capitalism has turned them into the regimented technicians which they are today.

They are like factory workers afloat. And like any landlubber, they are forced to fight to keep their heads a respectable distance above the economic waves.

Who's crazy now?

The man who claimed at Trenton, New Jersey, U.S.A., that he had built his own Atomic bomb in the basement of his house, and that it was timed to explode in 15 hours was immediately rushed away to hospital under observation. It seems that the authorities suspected him of being mentally ill. Yet scientists, who laboured for years to produce this same bomb, and even worse horrors, in the shape of hydrogen bombs, nuclear rockets, etc., are not thought to be mentally sick—oh no—they are lauded as having made a real contribution to the knowledge of society and the “defence of peace.”

Upset Swedes

President Eisenhower upset a lot of Swedes when, in his speech to the Republican Convention, he drew attention to the high suicide rate in Sweden and held this up as a warning against supporting what he called Socialism. It was rather unwise of the President to be so selective in his evidence to support his argument. Doubtless, some other comparisons would indicate that life in Sweden is preferable to that in, say, the United States. Presumably, Eisenhower was trying to frighten the American voters off the Democratic Party by associating them with Socialism. This is just as nonsensical as his assertion that Sweden is a Socialist country.

In fact, as the Dagens Nyheter—a Swedish Liberal paper—pointed out, Sweden's suicide rate, in a world where suicide is common, is unremarkable. It is now lower than during the five years preceding World War I and less than in Japan, Austria and many other countries. If the reasons for the majority of suicides in Sweden are the same as elsewhere, then the high Swedish rate is a symptom of the capitalist set-up in that country. For most of those who put an end to their lives do so when the strain of living under capitalism becomes too much for them. Sweden, like the rest, has the desperate problems which go with a brutal social system. Perhaps the next time an American President decides to attack Socialism, he will first take the precaution of finding out what it is?

Farthings

With the beginning of 1961, the farthing will no longer be legal tender in this country. Not so long ago, this little coin could buy a pocketful of sweets. Sometimes it came as change from the artful shopkeeper whose price of, say, two and elevenpence three farthings was meant to sound much less than three shillings. Now, to use the jargon, the farthing is to be demonetised.

Many older people sigh for the days when the farthing had some use. When, for that matter, the penny and the pound were worth that much more. But there is another side to the picture. According to the Ministry of Labour indices, average weekly wage rates in 1938 were one-third of those today, whilst prices have nearly trebled.

Put in another way, the amount of real wealth which a worker’s wage commands in this country has altered very little over the past twenty years. Certainly not enough to justify the laments of the old-timers or the joy of the alright Jacks.

The fact is that a worker’s wage is generally just about large enough to buy the things he needs to reproduce himself. That situation is not altered by the revaluation of currencies, upwards or downwards. In fifty years’ time a British government may decide to demonetise the shilling or some other currency unit. And when they have done it the poverty of the working class will be as acute as before.

Salad Days

Tomato growers in certain areas of France, where the cost of living has risen, have threatened to allow their crops to rot unless they can obtain better prices for them. They will not be encouraged by the prices quoted in the Paris newspaper France Soir today.

This snippet, from The Guardian of 9th August, is another morsel of proof—if any more is needed—of the motive for production in capitalist society. Here is an example of food being grown, not to satisfy hunger or desire, but to realise a profit for the owners of the means of its production. We can offer more encouragement than France Soir. A sensible society would grow tomatoes for people to eat and would only allow them to waste when the world’s needs had been generally satisfied.

News in Review: Aftermath of Profumo (1963)

The News in Review column from the August 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Aftermath of Profumo

If Mr. Macmillan is forced out and if, as now seems likely, the Tories lose the next election, we may be sure that the unhappy Mr. Profumo will get a lot of the blame for it.

This, of course, will be hardly fair or accurate, The government have been in trouble for a long time and so has the Prime Minister. Profumo's indiscretion was only the last, if the most News of the Worldish, of the events which have exploded under the Tories’ confident conviction that they could do no wrong and that there was no reason why they should not stay in power for ever.

There were good grounds for this confidence. As each political crisis was ridden, as each potentially dangerous policy was ruthlessly pushed through, as Macmillan airily brushed all criticism under the nearest carpet, the working class faithfully piled up the Tory majorities. Mac and whoever he chose for his men seemed to be unbeatable.

Now, it seems all that is to be changed and, unless after hanging on, the Conservatives can recover the ground they have lost, we shall have a Labour government next time.

If that does happen the reasons for it will be no less foolish than in the past. The working class voters will think that the Labour Party is more efficient, cleverer, perhaps morally sounder, than the Tories. They may decide that the secrets of British capitalism will be better guarded under, say, Mr. George Wigg than they have been under Mr. Macmillan. Or perhaps they will virtually give up thinking about it and simply decide, as if politics were like a game of Ludo, that it is time Labour had a turn.

Whatever the detailed reasons, if the electorate return a Labour government it will be because they are hoping for better things from them. In this hope they will be as mistaken as they were in 1945 and again twelve years ago when they changed back to the Tories. Neither of these parties—nor indeed any capitalist party—can provide the sort of world which human beings should live in.

It is a safe bet that some future journalist-cum-historian will write up a romantic, exaggerated account of the Profumo affair in which the ex-Minister of War will be given an importance out of his due. In fact, the most that he has done is to contribute a little more to the probability that the British working class, sometime in the next year or so, will change from supporting one capitalist party to another.

BTC dies

The British Transport Commission is now dead. Would there be any of its stockholders grateful enough to contribute towards a suitable memorial?

Consider the facts. Doctor Beeching has proved, says the government, that a lot of the railway system cannot make a profit. Under the Beeching regime lines have been shut down wholesale and, of course, there is the Big Chop yet to come.

Now if this sort of thing happened in a privately controlled industry the people who held stock in it would suffer. Their dividends at the least would be cut and in all probability would disappear altogether.

Not so on the railways, nor in the other nationalised concerns. The Transport Commission’s final accounts showed a total deficit for its term of life of £143.6 million, almost entirely due to the unprofitable operation of the railways. Yet concealed in this deficit was the sum of £74.4 million arising from payments of interest on stock and other central charges.

Which means that tens of millions of pounds have been paid out to stockholders, of one kind or another, from railway lines many of which were not making a profit and some of which have indeed been closed.

The story is the same in the coal industry, where the recent small surplus represented an actual operating profit of £25.4 million, when we take into account the interest which the NCB is liable to pay. And this interest, again, bore no relation to the fact that there have been widespread closures of coal mines.

Even for capitalism, this is something of an Alice-in-Wonderland story. The whole point, which is quite obscured in the regular hullabaloo over the finances of State industries, is that nationalisation basically changes nothing. The workers in State industries continue to turn out surplus value, a fair chunk of which goes out in the form of profit. For them, it is exploitation as usual.

For the capitalist class it is profits as usual. Even if the profits are unusual—and unusually generous.

The Kennedy tour

It was not, of course, just to visit the Ould Homestead that Mr. Kennedy came to Europe, although one of the uses of his tour was to make plain, by his refusal to open the Giant's Causeway and his other references to Anglo-Irish relations, his support for the cause of Irish republicanism.

The Irish part of the journey was, predictably, a pressman’s junket, with a faked up cottage, pigs dragged into the kitchen and the President taking a dish of tea with kind, puddeny Irish ma's.

Beneath this ballyhoo, Kennedy was in deadly earnest. He came to rally support for his governments European policy, which has been under some heavy fire of late. He came to put the de Gaulle concept of an independently united Europe in what Washington thinks is its place. He came to win Germany away from the temptations of the stubborn old man in Paris and to make sure that Adenauer’s successor will be receptive to American influence.

It was also noticeable that, for the usual diplomatic reasons, Kennedy did not see Harold Wilson. This gave some support to the rumours that one of the results of Wilson’s recent trip to Washington is that the American government does not look favourably upon the prospect of a Labour win at the next election. Did Wilson really give Kennedy cause to adopt this attitude? Perhaps, if Labour is returned next time, we shall find out.

The real reason for visits like Kennedy’s is all too often hidden in a cloud of newspaper nonsense. The men who meet in high conference are there to stand up for the interests of their country’s ruling class. They talk about the carve up of the capitalist world and the economic and military steps they can take to keep the carve up as they want it. They discuss the disputes which capitalism is so constantly heir to.

These men appear to hold the fate of the world in their hands. But the reality lies deeper. The working class must see this essential fact and resolve to do away with the social system which produces these leaders, their cynicism, and the perpetual threat of war.

Political Notes: Left-right to nowhere (1981)

The Political Notes Column from the March 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Left-right to nowhere

In China the Gang of Four have just been tried for being too extreme. At the Special Labour Party conference in Wembley the Gang of Three looked extremely moderate while Hattersley looked moderately moderate and Benn looked moderately extreme and most people felt extremely confused and moderately indifferent. Meanwhile we are told that Roy Jenkins is Left of Centre, James Prior is Right of Centre, David Steel is Dead Centre and the Socialist Workers’ Party and the National Front so extremely Left and Right that they meet at weekends to throw stones at each other. Is this really what politics is all about?

Moderate and extreme are adjectives and without a noun they have no more meaning than very or rather. The unmentioned map to which all of these descriptions refer is the capitalist social order. Those to the Right want to run capitalism a certain way and those to the Left support different policies. But both are policies for the same system. Sometimes one policy is adopted by a government to the virtual exclusion of alternative policies and then it is called Extremism. When various types of policy are mixed together in one general government policy, as is usually the case, it is called Moderation. But whether Left, Right, Centre, Moderate or Extreme, they are all policies which represent the social interest of a section, or sections, of the present ruling class who possess their power because of their ownership of the means of life.

Does it make any difference to the majority of us, who are not in the ruling class, whether one government policy or another is pursued? To a limited extent it does, insofar as some policies can be more disastrous than others, but ultimately the overriding principles of the capitalist system are greater than any policies for running it. No policy, of capitalism, can get rid of unemployment or bad housing or war or poverty. This is because the primary law of capitalism is that profits of the few must always come before the needs of the many. As long as the majority of people elect leaders to run this system it will not basically change, whatever the labels of the leaders.

Thatcher’s so-called extreme Right wing approach has clearly failed. So did Heath’s so-called moderate Right wingery. The so-called moderate Left with their objective of the mixed economy has invariably resulted in the same old mixed-up economy. The Communist Party, which some regard as the extreme Left, supports import controls and British withdrawal from the Common Market, as does the National Front, which is generally regarded as extreme Right.

The new rag-bag Centre Party is designed to provide a home for political misfits who have been less successful than they had hoped to be in the other capitalist parties. The new party will continue to churn out the same failed policies in a desperate bid to find an acceptable face for capitalism. Those left in the centre may do alright and be extremely moderate, but still, if they ever obtain power, they will administer the same old vicious, destructive, inhumane system.

Fall in

Restless, paranoid Labour MP Alex Lyon is convinced he has uncovered a government scheme to push unemployed youths into military training in uniform. Official assurances on the matter are airily unreassuring. An Unemployment Discipline Expert writes: Cadjoling unemployed people into uniform for a bit of square bashing, bayonet practice or strike breaking (or Coercus Bellicosus as we experts call it) is not generally harmful although it should only be used under the supervision of an expert. There are quite a few pitfalls which may trap the unwary.

To begin with, a few trouble makers may ask why we stop at unemployed youth. What is wrong with recruiting anyone who is not working—pensioners, hospital patients, even dead people (before they are buried, of course). The problem, as I often say to my clients, has to be one of recognition. Without getting bogged down in all that university professor’s jargon, we have to be careful about our definitions. Some descriptions of the unemployed might include the royal family, the Vesteys, Roddy Llewellyn . . .

Then what about your honest-to-goodness, backbone-of-Britain sergeant major? When I was in the mob (as we squaddies used to call it) they wouldn’t have wanted Roddy Llewellyn out on their Barrack Square. So you see we experts have to.be very careful.

Why only the other day one of my clients, who was in need of a bit of advice about discipline for his invalid grandmother, asked me whether I didn’t think the Army was unemployed in the sense that they never actually produce anything. Shouldn’t they, he asked, be pressed into a super Army for unemployed Army people?

Well being an expert it didn’t take me long to point out that with all their destructive power the armed forces create lots of jobs for the building trade, although they do a bit of no good for the demolition contractors. Then what about the help they give to the unemployed problem by killing off all those actual or potential dole-drawers?

We may not yet have all the answers but I’m sure our boys in the back room have something sensational cooking up in all those test tubes and pipettes; they’ll find a solution in no time.

Reagan’s new role

Ronald Reagan won the Presidency on promises, implied or explicit, that he, who was once one of the nice guys of Hollywood, was going to get pretty nasty with quite a few people like the Iranians and the Russians. This got a lot of American workers excited enough to vote for Reagan. The new President needed a few days to recover from his sumptuous inaugural junketings and since then the world has waited with, as they say. bated breath for him to loose off America’s nuclear arsenal in all directions.

The fear—or, for quite a few American voters, the hope—that he will do so is founded in the assumption that politicians fulfil the promises they were elected on. Sometimes this is a matter of saying they will conform to a political character- Reagan’s tough guy, Kennedy’s cultured “liberalism”, Johnson’s comprehensive efficiency. But Johnson ended his one full term in chaos, with the demonstrators baying in the streets in protest at the seemingly endless bloodletting of Vietnam and the other excesses of Johnson’s government.

And the humane, liberal Kennedy was responsible for the Bay of Pigs, and later the ultimatum to Russia over Cuba, which almost lossed off those missiles nearly twenty years before Reagan came into the White House. In practise politicians do not just fail to keep their promises. Often they pursue a course which is the very opposite of what they seemed to represent w'hen they were campaigning for votes.

Thus de Gaulle did not after all crush the FLN in Algeria but did a deal with them which allowed them to take over the country. Thus Macmillan did not batter down the independence movements in the old British colonies in Africa but lubricated the processes of their breaking away from British rule. And thus Reagan, the professed warmonger, faced with the immediate emergencies of capitalism, may yet disappoint his supporters.

News in Review: South Africa out (1961)

The News in Review column from the May 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

South Africa out

The usual products of Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ conferences have been toothy photographs and solemn, empty communiques. Astonishing, then, was the campaign to expel South Africa.

Astonishing, too, was the fact that the campaign succeeded. Why should the Prime Ministers get so upset about the apartheid policy?

Racial discrimination is quite detestable, but it is only one of many types of suppression. If the Prime Ministers wanted to scotch such things, they were right to get rid of South Africa—but why did they not then also expel Australia, India, Ghana, Ceylon—the United Kingdom itself?

It was not just a matter of the Premiers making a pact with their consciences. The Commonwealth, despite the unctuous propaganda about it, is nothing more than a world-wide trading tie-up, as was appreciated by the City Editors who, in the first few days after South Africa’s withdrawal, anxiously looked into the commercial effects of it all.

The ganging-up against South Africa may have been partly inspired by political motives, but was also a reflection of the South African industrialists’ opposition to Verwoerd's policies.

Let nobody think that it was the result of charitable concern for the African underdog. To mix our metaphors. capitalist nations have other fish to fry.


Washington Whirlwind

Everybody in Washington has been fascinated by the ruthless energy of President Kennedy. No one is safe from the new chiefs eye. “This guy,” said one official, “eats up reports.”

White House correspondents are fond of telling us that Kennedy is busy because he is building a new America There are hopeful murmurings about young aspirations, new frontiers, and so on.

There is nothing new in this. Franklin Roosevelt was hailed in much the same way. Eisenhower was described as the man to bring probity and courage to American government Yet it was under Roosevelt that America suffered the Second World War. And the Eisenhower era left behind a sticky unemployment problem; during the first quarter of this year there were 5½ million people out of work in the United States.

Unemployment is only one of the new President's headaches; others are the situation in Laos and the continuing disarmament wrangle. If the Kennedy administration sorts these out, it will find that American capitalism has turned up a few other problems.

Whatever the personal characteristics of a leader, his actions and his reputation are largely governed by the conditions of capitalism which he tries to control. Perhaps it is as well for U.S. capitalism that the President is so lively.


Kicked Upstairs

Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn has fought a furious fight against his transfer to the House of Lords. Despite his struggles, the government showed that they were determined to have him kicked upstairs.

Some lobby correspondents whispered that Mr. Macmillan personally gave the thumbs-down to Mr. Benn’s efforts to renounce his peerage. The P.M., said the rumour, is at odds with Lord Hailsham, and doesn’t want to set a precedent which might bring him back to the Commons.

Mr. Benn’s predicament is not free of irony. The Labour Party, of course, once stood for the abolition of the House of Lords. And Mr. Benn’s constituency used to elect Sir Stafford Cripps, who was at one time an ardent opponent of royalty, titles and the rest.

By the time Labour achieved power in 1945, they had dropped their old pledge about the Lords. Now, in fact, they do their bit towards helping the Upper House alive by supplying their share of life peerages.

It is Mr. Benn’s bad luck to have been born the son of a peer. His membership of the Labour Party is a different matter. He may not be able to resign his title: but he can always leave the party which has supported the system of pomp and privilege.


Salisbury Too

Some of the five M.P.’s who were disgorged in the Parliamentary Labour Party’s latest spasm wasted no time in getting their feet blistered on this year's Aldermaston do. Mr. Alan Brown, the member for Tottenham who gave up the Labour whip because he thinks that the party is too soft on the unilateralists, was not bothered by such discomforts.

This was another stage in the long Labour wrangle over defence. The Labour leaders, who know that British capitalism must have the most efficient weapons and armed forces possible, object to the “eat-our-cake-and-have-it” attitude of the unilateralists in the party.

While all this was happening, an announcement from the cool dignity of Hatfield House told of Lord Salisbury’s virtual resignation from the Conservative Party. For a long time, Salisbury has been opposed to the government’s colonial policies, the last straw was the easy way in which they have gone along with the African nationalists.

Sadly for him, Salisbury’s resignation caused scarcely a ripple; Mr. Macmillan has ridden much heavier punches in his time. But it is as well to be reminded that the Tories also have their splits, on colonial policy and other issues.

Need we say that there is one cause on which all Tories unite, with all Labourites solidly beside them? Whatever incidental quarrels they may have, they all agree about wanting capitalism to stay.

New Boy Learns

Politicians in different countries make speeches in different languages and different idioms, but there is one theme beloved of them all, one speech that every Prime Minister and Finance Minister carries in his brief case: the speech about the need for the workers to shun idleness and work harder.

Tanganyika has just achieved its independence, and as the politicians there have been telling the workers that this is the most glorious event in their lives, they had visions of celebrating the great occasion with a nice long bout of fun and feasting under the African sun. But their new Prime Minister, Mr. Julius Nyerere, lost no time in warning them that, for the workers, life under capitalism is real and earnest:—

  A day’s rejoicing is enough. We will make nothing of Tanganyika and we will set no example in the world unless it be by renewed efforts of hard work.

A few days later in a broadcast “he exhorted the unemployed not to loaf on the roadsides but to open up the Rufiji basin, a fertile but unpopulated area as large as England.” (Guardian 7/4/61).

People on another planet noticing the universality of this speech may wonder if there is some agency from which all the politicians get their speeches, but the explanation is much simpler; how will the rich be assured of their riches and their abundant leisure unless the workers work hard and long and cultivate habits of diligence and frugality?

50 Years Ago: The Conflict That is Capitalism (2012)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

So the crisis is over—for the time being! The Soviets have climbed down over Cuba and have withdrawn their missiles from that unhappy island. Everyone is sighing with relief and no doubt President Kennedy is congratulating himself on the success of his tough line. The press generally acclaimed him as the saviour of the peace, although it has been suggested in one journal at least, that there was no real Russian intention to fight over Cuba because the U.S.S.R. was just not ready for a shooting war yet. Russia, it seems, has run away to fight again another day.

Just what day, when and where, none can say—least of all the various opposing governments themselves. It is one of the terrifying aspects of the whole ghastly business that at the most we can only guess where the next trouble spot will be, and whether that will then trigger an explosion which will blow the world sky-high. Look back over the years since 1945. Berlin, Korea, Suez, Hungary, Lebanon, Formosa—the monster of war can rear its ugly head any place at any time and this is not to mention the smaller in-between conflicts such as Indo-China and Algeria.

Cubahas simmered down for a while and maybe will move out of the headlines altogether, as the major capitalist powers find their attention diverted elsewhere. Who amongst us anyway would have risked a wager even six months ago that Castro’s Land would be the focal point in a crisis which edged the capitalist world perilously close to another horror?

And now there is India’s fight with China. This again is in a part of the world which has only recently become big news, as Capitalist China pushes her borders outwards in pursuit of her expansionist aims. She has been squabbling for some time over certain slices of Indian border territory and negotiations have dragged wearily on, but force is the final arbiter in the clash of opposing interests, as we have pointed out on many occasions.

(Editorial, Socialist Standard, December 1962)

50 Years Ago: Death of a President (2014)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who would have dreamt, on the morning of that fateful November day, that within a matter of hours, the thirty-fifth U.S. President, John F. Kennedy, would be dead, as well as his assassin and a Texas policeman? Yet this was the news which burst upon an astounded world, and sent all the capitalist politicians into huddles.

Kennedy’s death was a tragedy for his family and friends, but at times like these it is as well to get the whole business into some sort of perspective and try to dispel some of the concentrated nonsense to which we have been subjected since the event. It was The Observer for December 1st which said that the shot which killed Kennedy ‘. . . must change the course of the world.’ But this is really just another repetition of the ‘great men make history’ theory, and has precious little evidence to support it.

The more sensible remark was that overheard between two young men in a London street the following morning. ‘Assassinations don’t really make a lot of difference,’ said one. ‘Things go on pretty much the same as before.’ Probably he was not a Socialist, but he certainly hit the nail on the head, for this is precisely what the newspapers were hastening to tell us a few days later. President Johnson would continue the Kennedy policies, said Richard Scott in The Guardian of November 28th. He could have added (but of course he didn’t) that these would as usual be a reflection of the needs of contemporary American capitalism. They were ably expounded by the new President thus:

‘. . . the unswerving support of the United Nations . . . the honourable and determined execution of our commitments to our allies . . . the maintenance of military strength second to none . . . the defence of the strength and stability of the dollar . . . the expansion of our foreign trade . . . our programme of assistance and cooperation in Asia and Africa. . . ’

There have been two Democrats and one Republican at the White House since Roosevelt and any one of them could have uttered those words. For American capitalism has become a giant in world affairs; its days of isolationism are well and truly over.

(from The Passing Show, Socialist Standard, January 1964)

News in Review: Freedom Riders (1961)

The News in Review column from the July 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Freedom Riders

Nobody need be surprised at the reception which was given to the Freedom Riders in Alabama. Race hatred, with its violent undertones, still festers in The Deep South. When we remember this, the 'sit in' victories seem to have been too easy.

Neither should we wonder at the brutality of the Montgomery mob. Colour bars cannot be justified by scientific argument, because there is no evidence to support them. Violence is simply a substitute for reason. Here is fertile ground for the ignorant, vicious mobster to flourish unhealthily.

We should remember that many of the Southerners who are fighting so hard to keep the Negro down also fought not so long ago in a war which, we were told, was for racial freedom.

We can see now what that assurance was worth. Racial freedom cannot be safeguarded by the military victory of one capitalist state over another. It depends upon the ideas of human beings.

Capitalism, with its anomalies and insecurity, breeds many brutal and inhuman ideas. Race hatred is one of them. The Freedom Riders are tackling something which may be bigger than they think.


Kennedy calls

President Kennedy is certainly mobile. His top level visits showed that, after the years of dispute, the American capitalist class still concern themselves deeply with European affairs.

Even after the wars which were supposed to eliminate them, there are still enough conflicts of interest in Europe to start another international blood bath. There is no reason to think that a third world war need begin anywhere else.

Kennedy did not see Macmillan until after his important talks with de Gaulle and Khruschev. Was he reporting on what had been decided, whether Macmillan liked it or not? Was his call at London merely a face-saver for British capitalism?

Certainly, it showed that the days are gone when Britain's gunboat word was law and that international capitalism has new bosses to sort out its problems.

Do summit talks help in this? Experience says no. Eisenhower was one of the latest of the exponents of top man-to-top man chats, but when he left office the world was as far from a secure peace as ever.

In truth the representatives of the ruling class rarely, if ever, talk peace. They talk commerce, strategy, compromise; sometimes threats. Sometimes war. If Kennedy can be taught anything in this, he is probably learning fast


Lord Home in Portugal

Lord Home; according to the people who know him, is a most charming and amiable fellow. A master, perhaps, of tact. An expert at disguising any inner feelings which may embarrass his host. Just the chap, in fact, to send out to be chummy with a dictator.

Lord Home must have needed all of his resource during his Portuguese visit. If at any time he touched on the massacres in Angola, it was doubtless with the greatest of delicacy.

There is no reason to get het up about this. The Foreign Secretary did not go to Portugal to discuss ways of expanding democracy. He went to talk about the usual things: economic interests, strategic zones and bases, exchanges of weapons and so on.

These are the real interests of the nations of capitalism. Beside them, high flown concepts like democracy are insignificant. True, some governments—like the British—profess a deep concern for freedom. But their actions expose their hypocrisy.

Diplomats are the administrators of this hypocrisy. We may sometimes wonder at their cynicism, but we would be wrong to blame them for the faults of an entire social system. Nobody should support capitalism with one hand, and hold up the other in horror at its brutality and suppression.


Stick to your business

Mr. Walter Padley, President of U.S.D.A.W., made the headlines recently for his statement at the Bournemouth Conference of his Union. “Passionate speech brings triumph to Mr. Padley'’ they said.

Was his passion for a £1 a week rise, or for shorter hours? No, he was pleading the cause of the Leader of the Labour Party—of which he is an M.P.—in opposition to the Unilateralists.

The conference spent a whole day discussing Unilateralism. What has this got to do with Trade Unions? Trade Unions were formed long before the Labour Party, with the definite object of fighting encroachments on their members' conditions of work and standard of living by the Capitalist Class, not to solve the problems of a Capitalist Party like the Labour Party. Although the prime aim of the Trade Unions when they formed the Labour Party was to get representatives in Parliament, we now find the tail wagging the dog.

In our view, the sooner the dog has a tail amputation the better. Then perhaps Trade Unions will discuss at Conferences what they are really there for.


New Cunarder

This month, the invitations to tender for the contract to build a replacement for the Queen Mary will go out to the shipbuilders.

There seems to be little prospect that the new Cunarder will be very profitable. The government are sinking £18 million in the venture to keep British shipowners in the scramble for the transatlantic sea traveller.

Cunard argue that the best way of doing this, and of boosting British prestige, is to build a 75,000 tonner. Other shipping companies have their doubts about this.

Some workers may object to the government’s subsidy because they think that it comes out of the income tax and other taxes which they grumble about so much.

Let us set that one at rest. However much the State takes from a worker's wage packet—and however much they leave in it—he still receives, on average, about enough to live on.

The burden of taxation is borne by the capitalist class, which is as it should be. They can afford taxes, and it is their State machine.

The attitudes which the political parties have struck about the new Cunarder may cause some surprise. Why should the Tories be justifying a State subsidy for such an eminent private enterprise? Should not Labour be pleased that the government is helping to build a British prestige winner, and giving work to depressed shipyards to boot?

This is not the first time the requirements of capitalism have persuaded political parties to abandon what they call their principals.


A New Market For Russia

The involvement of the Russian bloc in Cuban affairs must be seen in the context of their desire to penetrate a Latin American economy which hitherto had been the exclusive preserve of Western Capitalism. But even with their huge increase in commerce with Cuba itself, their share in Latin American exports and imports last year was still only about 2 per cent of the area’s total trade, as against 47 per cent for the United States and 29 per cent for Western Europe. However, Russia has embarrassingly large exportable surpluses of petroleum and her highly industrialised satellites, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, urgently require outlets for manufactured goods and capital equipment. Meanwhile within Russia there is a growing demand for foodstuffs such as sugar, coffee, beef and bananas.

Most Latin American countries are utterly dependent upon the export of one or two main crops or raw materials only. Yet it is just these commodities that have suffered a prolonged decline in price in recent years bringing about a continent wide economic crisis. An important factor contributing towards this decline has been the hardening of U.S. tariffs against so many of the products that she herself produces. An even more significant factor, perhaps, has been the increasing competition from the emergent African states and Portuguese colonies. Because of their closer ties with Africa and the somewhat shorter distances for freight the Common Market has many advantages in further developing trade with Africa. We can expect, therefore, that Russian capitalism will seek to profit from this situation with increasing vigour and success.

Kennedy to Run U.S. Capitalism (1960)

Editorial from the December 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Kennedy’s victory at the American polls came as the culmination of years of patient ambition and at the end of a campaign of open cynicism, such as we have come expect from capitalist political parties.

When he started his attempt to win the Democratic nomination, Mr. Kennedy had several question marks against him. The principal of these was whether he could unite the trade unions, the industrial cities and the backward Southerners into supporting him. We now know how skilfully he did this, by the careful choice of his Vice-Presidential candidate and by the promises and opinions which he uttered. Such was the success of these tactics that, long before election day, many on-the-spot correspondents were prophesying that Kennedy’s campaign would be irresistible.

Mr. Nixon showed a similar determination to win the presidency. Here is a man with an established reputation for single-minded ambition which has led him into some unsavoury actions. Many people will remember Mr. Nixon introducing his pet dog into a television programme in which he was offering evidence of his integrity as a servant of the American public.

Mr. Kennedy based some of his case upon an appeal to the patriotism of American workers, alleging that United States’ influence abroad has steeply declined during the Eisenhower presidency. Nixon’s reply—similarly an appeal to patriotism—was that it was insulting even to suggest that U.S.A. is a second-rate power.

This, then, was an election campaign of by no means an unusual kind, in which members of the working class were asked to vote on issues of personality, nationalism and capitalist power politics, none of which has the slightest effects upon their basic interest. Nevertheless, the American voters became absorbed in the contest and grew excited when it became obvious that there was to be a tight finish.

Mr. Kennedy has been compared to the late Franklin Roosevelt, who so dominated American politics during the thirties. One of the fallacies left over from the Roosevelt era is that Roosevelt came to power because the Americans supported his New Deal policies as a way of ending the Great Depression. In fact, these policies were not discussed during the 1932 election—the Democratic Convention of that year had produced a platform which promised fewer government agencies, reductions in government spending and a balanced Budget. After Roosevelt’s victory, the New Deal policies were worked out and within a year many new government agencies had been created, government expenditure had increased and the Budget was unbalanced. We may rely on it that, if the interests of American capitalism demand it, Mr. Kennedy’s election platform will be ignored in the same way as that of his famous predecessor.

It seems that Mr. Kennedy both lost and won votes because he is a Roman Catholic. Apparently, many American voters are under the impression that a Catholic president would allow his religion to sway his decisions. It is a ludicrous idea that American capitalism, with its tremendous mineral and industrial resources and its universal military influence, would allow its policy to be dictated from the Vatican. Mr. Kennedy made it quite clear that, if he were elected, he would do his best to administer American capitalism solely in its own interests. In that, he is no different from the rulers of the other capitalist nations. None of them seeks power to promote abstract principles or religions. All of them want power to organise a country for the benefit of its owning class.

It is depressing that American workers should be impressed by—indeed be part of—slick, high pressure salesmanship and cynical drives for power. For after the shouting and the ballyhoo have died, capitalism, in America and the rest of the world, remains unscathed. This social system produces the horrors of war, poverty, insecurity and racial hatred. The Democrats and Republicans, like the other capitalist parties, can offer no end to these. Only the establishment of Socialism can give us a world of peace and plenty. And for that we do not need stage-managed ballyhoo. We need knowledge and the social responsibility that goes with it.

The Cuban Cockpit and Castro (1961)

From the July 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

(1) The Background

In April, the American backed invasion of Cuba by a force of U.S. trained exiles became yet another issue that could have triggered off world war. As the invasion was under way, the American President warned Russia that “in the event of any military intervention by outside force the U.S. is ready to protect this hemisphere against external (our emphasis) aggression ” (Time, 28/4/61.)

America's “egg-heads” had hardly recovered from their exertions in campaigning for the election of President Kennedy, the bright young “progressive", before they were to be distressed and dismayed by the dishonesty and hypocrisy of his policy towards Cuba. Much more important still has been the harmful effect upon the American alliance and the less committed countries within its sphere of influence. The Guardian editorial of the 22nd April summed up these feelings and did not mince its words in the process. “American policy towards Cuba” it said, “has lead to resounding and deserved humiliation. . . .  the Kennedy administration appears to be guilty of deliberate intervention in the internal affairs of another country”. The editorial went on to say as a result the United States had made Dr. Castro stronger than before; she had made his régime still more oppressive and dictatorial; and thrown him still farther into the arms of the Soviet Union. . . .  Neutral governments have universally condemned him (Kennedy). Even in the Western Alliance he has wantonly thrown away much of the good will he previously enjoyed". What the Guardian regretted most of all was that American policy has facilitated Russia’s aim of posing as the “protector of small nations” struggling to free themselves from foreign tutelage. “He has made the watchwords of democracy sound like a camouflage for imperialism ”.

The Guardian summed up the feelings common to most of the junior partners of American Capitalism but we must point out that evoking democracy as a camouflage for attaining normal capitalist objectives pre-dates the Kennedy administration by many, many years. Two hideous world wars were allegedly fought to safeguard “freedom” against dictatorship and militarism but we know otherwise. Now that Russian economic development has reached such a high pitch, who need be surprised that her ruling class attempts to disguise its sordid objectives by hypocritically evoking the ideals of Socialism?

Like Germany and Japan before her, Russian capitalism is a latecomer in the world arena. Necessarily she is on the offensive. The American bloc, of which West Germany and Japan at present form part, is on the defensive. But it is not democratic rights nor the aims of Socialism that motivate their policies. It is the maintenance or enhancement of power, trade and class privilege that each government has as its function.

In January, the Socialist Standard carried an article which pointed out that for a small power to attempt playing off the great powers as a means of fostering its own economic development involves very considerable risks. The chief risk is that in freeing itself from subservience to one overlord it may well be forced to succumb to another. How is Castro faring in this respect? And, much more important so far as the Socialist is concerned, has the working-class in Cuba strengthened its bargaining position and extended its civil rights in the period in which the new ruling élite has been consolidating its position? Certainly, experience elsewhere in the held of bourgeois national revolutions of recent times has not been encouraging.

Throughout the former colonial or semi-colonial world, embryo capitalist classes or would-be capitalist intellectual-military élites are asserting themselves. Their aim is to supplant the foreign interests who, in the process of exploiting the natural resources of those parts, brought into being this rival social class. But just as the old powers find it necessary to disguise their rapacious motives under the cloak of the “struggle for democracy ”, so the new local exploiting class must obscure its cruel rôle in terms of the self-determination of small nations, their national liberation and the establishment of human dignity. As regards the claim of human dignity, it is true that with the ousting of the former colonial power, many an African, an Asian or a Latin American need no longer feel humiliated just because he was born where he was born and was what he was. That is an advance. But is he aware that in becoming a member of the working-class he is to face the greatest humiliation of all? That is that in the eyes of his employers he will not even be an inferior man. He, that is to say his ability to work, will become a mere commodity, to be bought and sold on the market. A cog in the productive process. Such is human dignity in the society into which he is entering.

The Socialist measures working-class progress in terms of its heightening awareness of its needs and aspirations. Consciousness in short, of its liberating rôle in history. Do workers realise the necessity of their building trade-union organisation that is independent of the employing class? Do they know the value of the strike weapon—and its limitations? Do they value and exercise hard won electoral rights and the right to dissent? Do they become more and more convinced of the need for a change in the very basis of present society if humanity is to survive and to reach its proper stature? These are our criteria.

The Nationalist teaches the worker to identify himself with his ruling-class. The Socialist says that the worker has no country and should recognise his common bonds with workers everywhere. Each new state that is set up has as its number one task the inculcation of a sense of differentness into its school-children and of their loyalty to a piece of territory quite arbitrarily arrived at. 

For the past year or so fierce argument has raged amongst Castro's admirers as well as among his critics in the outside world. Those who have viewed the scene through Bolshevik eyes have felt the necessity of “explaining” the social forces behind the Cuban revolution in the set terms of Leninism. Hence efforts have been made to show that, like China, it was the peasants' support that made victory possible as the workers played no great part. Then realising, perhaps, that the peasant's classic demand is for the land he worked and that state-farms (called cooperatives) would replace estate farms more efficiently, a new angle was developed. Truly speaking, they said, those working on the sugar plantations were not peasants at all but sharecroppers hired and fired by the three month season. Concerning the other end of the social scale, it is being debated whether it was a middle-class revolution betrayed because so many of its staunchest professional and managerial supporters have been alienated by now.

These knotty problems can be unravelled, however. According to Geografia de Cuba, a book quoted by Theodore Draper in his well documented article in Encounter last March, the population was more urban than rural and increasingly so. Of the 40 per cent who were dependent upon agriculture for a living over a quarter were classified as farmers and ranchers. The urban population was mostly literate but nearly half the rural population was not. But whatever their category, the mass of the people have readily given their support to a régime that promises to put an end to seasonal unemployment by diversifying agriculture and which is making strenuous efforts to raise the educational level of the people.

India and Brazil stand out as exceptions of great significance but since 1917 virtually every country entering upon the threshold of capitalist production has been failed by such middle-class elements as existed when the change came. Rarely has nature related the perfect juxtaposition of coal and iron that so favoured the pioneers of British capitalism. Coming so much later onto the scene there is the problem of important sections of the working-class being already organised to resist encroachments. Vast sums of money are needed to establish communications. Tariff walls are all around. In these circumstances and bearing in mind the extent to which the middle-class is compromised to the metropolitan power, it falls to a determined and far-sighted section of that class to actually throw off the fetters, often at the expense of some of the comforts and privileges of the class as a whole. Cuba’s capitalist system is being ushered in by a revolutionary élite of this kind who had grasped power on the strength of popular discontent.

(2) Political Democracy

How do the trade-unions fit into all this? Except for a pioneering few that were built up under anarcho-syndicalist influences at the turn of the century, most unions date from a much later period and were set up under Stalinist influence. Nevertheless, within their limits they became quite valuable working-class instruments. Under very great pressure they carried on through the Batista dictatorship and came out more or less intact. This was partly due to the fact that in the early days of the guerrilla war the trade-union movement remained neutral. Support for Castro came from professional and managerial circles who still lacked the constitutional rights promised as long ago as 1940 and from an increasing number of the rural population who saw him as the man who would at last enact the land reforms that had been promised in the same constitutional proposals.

The Communist Party (PSP) at that stage was deeply compromised by its history of collaboration with the Batista dictatorship. As late as April 1958 it broke, in effect, the general strike called by Castro since the key transport workers under CP leadership did not join in.

A few months after Castro’s triumphal march into Havana, the union elections that were held put most of the country’s union branches firmly in the hands of his 26th July Movement National conferences of various union federations during June, July and August secured him control over most of these groups. It should be noted that the new government had debarred from the elections trade-union figures belonging to several groupings other than the 26th July Movement who had managed to retain office in their unions even though they had fought against Batista and this was because of the solid rank and file support they enjoyed.

At the congress of the local TUC (CTC) early in 1959 there was a struggle between the pro- and anti-communist elements within Castro’s movement, the anti-communists having held power since his victory. According to Robert J. Alexander in his new book, The Struggle for Democracy in Latin America, both Fidel and his brother Raul intervened on behalf of the pro-communist elements. As a result all but one of the leading anti-communist figures were purged from the Executive. Since then the government has taken stringent measures to regiment the organised workers. By decrees promulgated early in 1960 all collective bargaining was abolished and all matters previously dealt with through joint negotiations were to be submitted to the Ministry of Labour for arbitration. Already troops have been used to bring recalcitrant workers into line. When a Conference of the Building Workers Federation in April 1960 refused to obey the orders of the CTC purge committee to dismiss its leaders, soldiers were moved into the meeting hall and the conference was brought to a summary conclusion.

Political democracy has been part of the price of the Cuban revolution notwithstanding that its reintroduction was the rallying cry of the "bearded ones” in their fighting days. On 1st May. Cuba declared itself on a level with Czechoslovakia by becoming a “Socialist Republic”. In the Soviet hierarchy it presumably ranks higher now than mere “Popular Democracies” which is what most of the satellites remain. Freedom of dissent whilst not entirely gone has been drastically curtailed. No opposition parties or newspapers have survived. Adlai Stevenson was reported by Time (28/4/61) as saying at the United Nations that nearly two-thirds of Castro’s first cabinet now form the leadership of Cubans in exile. It can be seen that those who fought with Castro in the belief that it was a struggle between democracy and dictatorship are silenced, in prison or in exile. Political freedom is something of such overwhelming importance to the working-class that it loses it at its peril. It does not exist in Cuba.

Eddie Grant