Letter: Social Insanity (1984)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Social Insanity

Dear Editors,

I should like to bring to the attention of your readers a double question, about the so-called “balance of terror". I am hoping to encourage some debate on this, having already tried without great success to obtain some response from the so-called “intellectual elite" on this matter. What difference is there between the "totalitarian" political regimes where the voice of reason is automatically stifled, and the so-called liberal regimes, where the free voice of irrationality overwhelmingly stifles, in practice, the voice of reason? Don't these two types of regime suffer from the same malady, which we might call a kind of politico-military paranoia? With regard to the future of humanity, these rival oligarchies show themselves to be accomplices caught up in one demented course, based on a barbaric strategy: "If you want peace, prepare for a universal holocaust”.

Maximilien Rubel

Paris

Reply:

We endorse fully the suggestion that the governments of both West and East are engaged in a kind of madness, or irrationality which threatens to end in a nuclear war which would probably wipe out a large percentage of the human race. We would add two important points. Firstly, the "madness" of leaders and governments to which our correspondent refers cannot be considered in isolation from the rest of the population. Their power is ultimately a reflection of the failure of the working class to assert its interests; their ability to inflict “paranoia" and the hatreds of nationalism and warfare on the rest of us arises directly out of our acquiescence. Secondly, weapons proliferate not for their own sake, but in order to fight wars, and wars in their turn do not take place in isolation from social forces. The cause of war in the modern world is the competition between rival capitalist power blocs, including Russia and China as well as the more openly capitalist countries. They compete over markets, trade routes and raw materials: all sources of profit for the propertied minority within each state. These issues need not concern the working class majority, who are merely used as cannon fodder.

The only way to end the madness of preparing for a universal holocaust is to prepare for a universal revolution. This revolution must democratically replace the profit system with the common ownership of the world's resources. For this, we need a majority of socialists, and the present growth of the socialist movement must be actively encouraged by all who seek to remove the threat of war from the face of the earth.

Editors.

Letter: Classes (1978)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Classes

What is the extent of working class investment in the UK economy and what proportion is it of total investment at a rough estimate?

I was perplexed when I came across the following extract from Marx’s work Theorien Über den Mehrwert II/2 pg. 368. in Bottomore and Rubel’s book Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy p. 198:

  What [Ricardo] forgets to mention is the continual increase in numbers of the middle classes, . . . situated midway between the workers on one side and the capitalists and landowners on the other. These middle classes rest with all their weight upon the working class and at the same time increase the social security and power of the upper class.

I’m afraid I don’t know what context this was written in (perhaps you can tell me?) but it does appear to me to contradict for example what Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto about the "lower strata of the middle class” sinking into the proletariat and also in Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right where he talks of the “disintegration of the middle class” (Bottomore and Rubel, p. 190). I had always imagined that by "middle class” Marx meant basically the small businessman. From his analysis of the economics of capitalism Marx predicted the growing concentration of capital in fewer and fewer hands —in the sense in which “middle class” is understood as alluding to the small businessmen Marx’s prediction is undoubtedly spot-on. Could it be that in the above quotation from Theorien Über den Mehrwert Marx used the term "middle class” to mean a social grouping embodying a petty-bourgeois mentality? If so when this appears to utterly refute the sort of smug assertions one finds in sociology textbooks that “Marx failed to foresee the growth of a middle class” (even leaving aside the point that to marxists, because someone works in an office or speaks in a posh accent, this does not make him any the less a member of the working class).

Robin Cox 

Haslemere

Reply:

1. There is no conceivable way of identifying what shares are owned by workers. Company shares are owned by individuals and joint owners, and by trustees, investment and unit trusts, banks, pension funds, insurance companies, etc. No owner explains when buying shares that he is or is not a worker.

For an individual company it is possible to find out what amount each shareholder owns, but this tells you little. X may own 1,000 shares in 10 companies, as also each of those named in the previous paragraph. However, nobody could combine this information for all companies, or identify the ultimate owners via a trust or a pension fund.

The First Report of the Royal Commission on Incomes and Wealth (pages 81-82) gives some information on the percentage of shareholding in groups classified according to the estimated total personal wealth of the persons in each group.

2. The 1969 Moscow edition of Theories of Surplus Value has an addition to the second sentence of the passage you quote and reads: "The middle classes maintain themselves to an ever increasing extent directly out of revenue, they are a burden weighing heavily on the working base and increase the social security and power of the upper ten thousand.”

In this section Marx is discussing the transformation of capital into revenue and vice versa, with references to Ricardo and another writer, John Barton. In another part of it he speaks of "the landlords and capitalists, their retainers and hangers-on”, and later: "A larger section of the workers employed in the production of articles of consumption that are consumed by—are exchanged against the revenue of—capitalists, landlords and their retainers (state, church etc.).” This makes clear that he was not talking about small businessmen.

Theories of Surplus Value was Marx’s manuscript for a projected Fourth Volume of Capital. The manuscript was never worked up by Marx for publication, and some passages are little more than notes for further elaboration; we do not know if he would have used the same phrases in a finished work. The view which Marx stated consistently is found in Capital Volume 3 (page 1025, Kerr edn.): “In view of the foregoing analysis it is not necessary to demonstrate again, that the relation between wage labour and capital determines the entire character of the mode of production. The principal agents of this mode of production itself, the capitalist and the wage worker, are to that extent merely personifications of capital and wage labour. They are definite social characters, assigned to individuals by the process of production. They are products of these definite social conditions of production.”

Editors.

Letter: Rubel and Marx (1982)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rubel and Marx

I write in response to an article by ALB (Luxemburg) in the June Socialist Standard. He makes several comments that I find difficult to understand.

According to Rubel, says ALB, Marx saw the working class as having an "ethical" or "historical" mission to abolish capitalism. ALB later goes on to say that apart from the word "ethical" Rubel's position is similar to the SPGB’s in that if the working class do not make the conscious choice to abolish capitalism or make this "ethical decision" to do so then capitalism will continue.

I believe ALB to be wrong when he assimilates the words "historical" and "ethical" because the ideas these words represent are not compatible. The "historical" mission of the working class is the materialist understanding of its position as a class in society and the pursuit of its own material advantage through the political struggle with the opposing class. This specifically excludes any ethical or moral considerations which to a materialist are irrelevant to the politics of socialism. And so surely when a socialist speaks of the "conscious choice" for socialism he is most definitely not thinking in the “ethical" way that both Rubel and ALB seem to think.

Andrew Westley, 

Sawston. Cambs.

Reply:

Of course the "conscious choice" of the working class to establish socialism will be based on a recognition that it is in their material interest to do so and not on some abstract moral principle and we never meant to suggest otherwise.

We don’t however want to get into an abstract semantic argument about the relative meanings of the words historical, ethical and moral. Suffice it to say that some people argue that any situation in which there is a choice involves a moral or ethical decision; in other words, they are using these words virtually to mean the same thing as choice. We don’t use these words in this way. Rubel does. But there is no need to make a fetish of mere word-forms where the meaning is the same: that socialism can only be the outcome of a deliberate, conscious choice on the part of the working class, in pursuit, as we said, of their material interests — but a choice nevertheless.

Editors.

Michael Lebowitz's Beyond Capital (2003)

Book Review from the December 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Beyond Capital. By Michael Lebowitz, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.)

Karl Marx originally planned to write six books under the project title “Economics”, but only the first book Capital was ever written. The other books in the planned series were: Landed Property, Wage Labour, State, International Trade, World Market. Because Marx never got beyond the first, claims Lebowitz, the theory is somewhat one-sided. Capital analyses in particular the laws of motion of capital and a detailed consideration of the other side of the social relationship, wage-labour, was to be left to the third book in the series. The resulting description of capitalism in Capital can be interpreted in a mechanical and determinist way, with capital having a “logic” of its own from which the class struggle of the workers is absent. Would anyone be so foolish as to read Capital that way? Well, yes, it’s surprisingly common. For instance, G.A. Cohen has built an academic career largely out of popularising a functionalist account of Marx’s theory in which, among other things, we learn that “high technology was not only necessary but also sufficient for socialism” (Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence, 1978, p.206). For Lebowitz, on the other hand, the subject of Capital is capital and it explores that relation from the perspective of capital. However, an adequate understanding of capitalism as a whole requires us to recognise it as a totality, as a class struggle between capital and wage-labour.

From the point of view of capital, the value of labour-power (the worker’s ability to work which is sold for a wage or salary) is determined by the necessaries of life. This can imply that the process of establishing wage levels and the value of labour-power is more or less automatic, with the direction of causation going from the necessaries of life to the value of labour-power to wage levels. On the other hand, although Marx never wrote the planned book on wage-labour, he did a lecture that is written up as the pamphlet Value, Price and Profit. Here Marx explains that wage levels will vary with “the respective power of the combatants” and in the long run this will determine the value of labour-power and the necessaries of life. From the point of view of wage-labour then, wage levels and the value of labour-power depends on the balance of class forces, on what workers can actually get from their employers.

Of course socialists take the side of workers in the class struggle. However, the problem of a possible one-sided interpretation in Capital was first recognised by Maximilien Rubel, and he concluded that because of the “fragmentary state” of Marx’s “Economics” project, in particular the intended book on wage labour which remained unwritten, we do not have a rounded analysis of capitalism (Rubel on Marx: Five Essays, 1981). Lebowitz suggests that it is possible to get that rounded analysis scattered throughout Marx’s work and by including the class struggle in the analysis. So, for example, a rise in tax borne by workers should not be assumed to be automatically passed on to employers in the form of higher money wages. From the (one-sided) viewpoint of capital, workers are variable capital and, from this perspective, it may be thought that, because of the “law” of motion of capital, wages will rise in due course. But once the class struggle—pressure from the capitalist as well as the workers’ side—is factored in, this issue can only be answered empirically, depending on “the respective power of the combatants.”

Lew Higgins

Blogger's Note:

G. A. Cohen's Karl Marx’s Theory of History was reviewed in the August 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard.

50 Years Ago: A Rose by Any Other Name (2004)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are all “socialists” now. Let us witness the parade: The Churchill Tory socialists, the French Radical Socialists, the totalitarian “socialist” governments including the black, brown and red shirts, the New-Deal – Fair-Deal creeping “socialists”, the Labour Parties of Europe, the Asiatic “socialist” and “communist” governments as well as those in Africa and South America, the colonial “socialist” groups, the various alleged socialist organisations throughout the world such as the Social Democrats, Trotzkyites, the Communists parties, syndicalists, I.W.W., Socialist Labour Party and the Companion Parties for Socialism in Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, U.S.A., Australia and New Zealand. Then there are the anarchists, Christian “socialists”, pacifists and a whole host of others. By no means have we exhausted the list of marchers in the “socialist” parade.

No wonder M. Rubel in his dilemma: “The Uses of the Word ‘Socialism’” in the Winter, 1954, issue of the American magazine Dissent, would prefer “to abandon the word socialism” and would substitute some other word for it that would “save the conceptual content once attached to this term.”

It is significant of the times we live in to see every strata of society and the entire gamut of conflicting and opposing interests express themselves in terms of socialism. They must in order to rally support. Even though socialism is NOT accepted by the world, it has become recognized and established as the hope of mankind.

M. Rubel describes very well the general nature of socialism that stirs and inspires everyone: “A society from which exploitation would be banished and in which the unfolding of each individual would be the condition of the freedom of all.”  This is the basic appeal of socialism as an ultimate objective which serves as a rallying cry to muster support for the various groups marching in the parade of “socialism.”

Let us suppose that some other word came into use to express the very essence of socialism, its “conceptual concept.” This new word would then be subjected to the very same difficulties. The old word “socialism” would lose its meaning and significance. The new word would become abused in the same manner as the old one. Changing the name would not solve any problem for it doesn’t come to grips with the real situation.

(From an article by I. Rab, Socialist Standard, August 1954)

The Socialist Case in other languages (1986)

Party News from the June 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The latest issue of the Paris-published Economies et Sociétés (Marxology Studies. No.25) includes a translation of the 1885 Manifesto of the Socialist League, drafted by William Morris (see Socialist Standard, July 1985). Appended to this is the French version of our Object and Declaration of Principles, introduced as follows: "We add as a complementary document the Declaration of Principles of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, founded in 1904, whose action and thought is inspired by the political work of William Morris. This issue, as with the others in the same series, also contains interesting articles on Marx's ideas written from the standpoint of his aim of seeing established a moneyless, stateless society.

The first issue of Voluntad, published in Barcelona earlier this year, contains a Spanish translation, from the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard, of a letter from Maximilien Rubel on Marx's "ethics" together with our reply. This publication too favours the establishment of a stateless, frontierless world community without money, but we are obliged to record serious differences with them over how to establish this.

Letter: A "normal observer" amazed (1988)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors.

I recently had occasion to see a list of the General Election results of the Socialist Party of Great Britain since 1945. I must confess to being shocked. The conclusion I draw from seeing that in 18 parliamentary elections the Party has barely achieved an average of one per cent of the vote is that your dogmatic attachment to the "principles” formulated in 1904 has made you into a kind of religious sect, perhaps a more sectarian one than any other and even less successful in winning people to its point of view.

Being "sectarian" doesn’t necessarily mean having a short-sighted attitude or a wrong view of things. It's possible for you, a tiny minority, to be right and almost everyone else, the vast majority, to be wrong. But what has never ceased to amaze me in my regular reading of the Socialist Standard is the total lack of consideration by the SPGB of the causes and reasons for the absence of a "socialist"' movement in the sense that you understand the term. I'm also amazed by your failure to try and analyse your total lack of success over the years. After 40 years of participating in elections on behalf of democratic parliamentary socialism, you've got absolutely nowhere. And this after the cataclysm of 1939-1945 and after Auschwitz and Hiroshima. (1 don't of course know what electoral success' your Party had between 1904 and 1945.)

As for the efforts of the Socialist Standard in trying to reach the working class, you are labouring under delusions about your chances of success. If the capitalist dailies average circulations of several million what chance is there for the spread of socialist ideas without a mass circulation working- class daily?

Marx had a clear theory about the "transition" from the capitalist mode of production to the socialist-communist one. He also had knowledge of what was required for the creation of a "communist consciousness" in terms of the psychology and social development of workers and bourgeois intellectuals — what you might call the "ethical" side of things. This consciousness was supposed to be created spontaneously under the weight of ever worsening material and moral conditions. This idea of Marx has given rise to controversies between the various different schools of Marxism about so-called "increasing misery" among the workers. According to the idea, the resistance and opposition of the workers to an employing class that was becoming smaller and smaller in number yet increasingly richer and more oppressive would intensify until it finally brought about the famous reversal of roles as to which class dominates — the "negation of the negation" — with the period of transition having the form of a "dictatorship" of the immense majority who would cleanse society of its capitalist institutions. But much has happened since the disappearance of Marx and Engels which should cause us to "reconsider" the materialist . . .

If we look at the result of your "activities", which consist of trying to 'make' socialists before the objective circumstances favourable to the establishment of socialism appear; if we consider the fact that four-fifths of the world's population are ruled by economic, political and ideological dictatorships with methods of terror and brainwashing which are increasingly more efficient and sophisticated, then we must be tempted to question not only your methods but also all so-called "socialist" strategies in the whole of the so-called ""free" world. And we must also ask the question whether it wouldn't be more reasonable to abandon the traditional terminology which has done nothing but mislead people since the capitalist empires of the East have managed to usurp the names of "socialism" and "communism".

Reading your replies to readers" questions in the Socialist Standard, your extreme sectarianism becomes apparent. Under cover of rejecting "reformism", you throw cold water on all participation in movements of protest and opposition not carrying the "socialist" label as defined by yourselves. In a context of limitless barbarism wherever one looks in the world, you reject out of hand the imperative need to put aside ideological disputes and join hands with radical pacifist, ecological and feminist movements. Not once in the Socialist Standard have I read a serious study of the uniqueness of the present crisis which for the first time ever raises the question of the very survival of the human species. To the question. "If that's the point we're at, whose fault is it?" the SPGB will reply: "It's capitalism that's to blame But of course, one could equally well reply: "It's the workers who are to blame". Your French-language journal, Socialism Mondiale, in reviewing a book by Serge Kolm (No.2. 1985). criticises the author's thesis according to which to arrive at relations of economic equality people must behave in an altruistic not a selfish fashion. While we would all reject the notion of "human nature", we must nevertheless admit that to behave like a socialist (in the SPGB sense) means to behave in an opposite way to the majority of workers. And are we not in actual fact being "altruistic" in aspiring to a community of conscious human solidarity without seeking either power or wealth for ourselves? Unfortunately, the problem of today's world is precisely one of "altruism": that of the workers who sacrifice themselves to ensure the wellbeing and the continued authority of the ruling class.

To return to another aspect of the verbal "fetishism" tirelessly cultivated in the Socialist Standard, may I mention: (1) your condemnation of money in the name of an abstract principle which the average worker will certainly find difficult to grasp; (2) your advocacy of "voluntary work"; and (3) your insistence on "free access". Kolm, in the book I've mentioned, suggests a form of "money" which has nothing in common with money as a source of profit but is used as a "general unit of accounting" in the tradition of utopian thinkers such as Owen and Proudhon, and indeed as advocated by Marx himself. Anyone who is in the slightest bit receptive to the reality of daily life, where money is more and more subject to the ups and downs of the finance market, will inevitably, when confronted with the fine phrases of the SPGB, ask questions about the virtues of "voluntary co-operation" and the principle of the "gift economy" and will in particular want a precise, detailed explanation concerning the transition from a capitalist mode of work to a socialist mode of work. Such an explanation will of course have to include a plan of organisation for the countless jobs and occupations in which today's millions of wage workers are involved and enslaved as they carry out tasks which are overwhelmingly useless and alienating inasmuch as they are producing goods or services for the exclusive profit of the master class (excuse my over-stark terminology — I am trying to make my point absolutely clear).

Let's take, for example, the large number of people (civil servants, office workers, manual workers, technicians, experts, etc.) involved in producing armaments for the "killing industry" or involved in work aimed at intoxicating people through the advertising industry or through foisting the latest fashions on them. These workers will not be able to be "recycled" from one day to the next to carry out tasks and occupations useful to the new community and will consequently have to be fed, clothed and housed "for free" by their "productive" fellow workers. This in fact presupposes a different kind of "altruism" from the present masochistic sacrifices of the world's workers.

Marx himself came to reflect on the problem of the "transition" and outlined his project for it in the Critique of the Gotha Programme. The SPGB rejects this "heresy", replacing it with phraseology it calls "materialist" but behind which is concealed a quite unjustified confidence in the feelings of solidarity which would be shown by those workers who had been transformed into "socialists" even before the Great Moment of Liberation (excuse the irony but I'm trying to stress how unrealistically vast are the Socialist Party's expectations of the mass of workers).

Hoping that your election results and my observations will cause you to reflect seriously on the conclusion any normal observer (and I count myself as one) is driven to when faced with your unrelenting and continuous lack of progress.

Maximilien Rubel 

Paris

Reply
These criticisms range over a very wide field — our failure at elections, the restriction of membership to those who accept our principles, the content of our propaganda, our refusal to join up with non-socialist organisations and, finally, the usefulness of our socialist objective. Maximilien Rubel clearly thinks his criticisms are his own original work. He is quite unaware that they are not only very old but that all the things he tells us we ought to do were put into practice long ago by self-styled socialist organisations; with disastrous results for the socialist movement.

Lack of success
Why does the Socialist Party regularly achieve such a low percentage poll when it contests elections? Is it our dogmatic "sectarianism", our refusal to "join hands" with other groups, (anti-war, ecologist, feminist)? Frankly we don't think so since, despite the enormous efforts of such groups, they have — both separately and joint — had very little more success than we have. And, more importantly, although we would not want to deny the goodwill and sincerity of these groups in seeking to improve living conditions and solve social problems, we would not want to merge with them to try and bring about reforms of the capitalist system. This is not sectarianism either. It is merely a way of keeping our objective clear and not being sidetracked into activity which has nothing to do with the work of building a movement to advocate and achieve a society of common ownership and democratic control. In fact, M. Rubel is himself not prepared to argue that restricting membership to those who accept a Declaration of Principles is necessarily unjustified. "Being 'sectarian' doesn't necessarily mean having a short-sighted or a wrong view of things." Indeed he concedes that perhaps we might be right, and the others were wrong.

In Britain we have had a party which was formed on the basis of precisely the theory and strategy he lays down. It was the Independent Labour Party, formed to rescue the socialist movement from the "dogmatic" and sectarian attachment to principles shown by the existing Social Democratic Federation (Later on the ILP made the same criticisms of us.) Keir Hardie. its chairman, pointed to the overall votes SDF candidates got and their consequent failure to be elected and said it was due to the SDF "wooing the electors on what they allege to be a pure socialist ticket.". The only way to get elected, the ILP said, was for socialists to interest themselves more in the workers' day-to- day struggle and take up whatever issues the workers happen to be concerned with from time to time. There was to be no "dogmatic" adherence to a rigid set of principles. Here are Keir Hardie's words: "a broad tolerant catholicity has always been a leading characteristic of the ILP. It has never had a hard and dry creed of membership". The ILP and the SDF have now both vanished from the political scene. We have no intention of accepting Maximilien Rubel's advice and meeting the same fate.

We are of course always keen to discuss and debate with other groups and parties, hold forums with them, carry their views in the letter column of the Socialist Standard, and indeed learn from them where they have knowledge that we do not have. At the same time, we would point out that literally thousands of such organisations have come and gone this century without managing to stem the barbarity and horrors which Professor Rubel points to and which appall us as much as they do him. There can be no doubt that had the Socialist Party joined forces with any such organisations, we would have gone too As it is, we have at least had success in keeping the socialist idea alive — perhaps no mean feat considering the obstacles we have constantly had to overcome.

Increasing misery
We agree with Professor Rubel that Marx's concept of "increasing misery" is open to interpretation, as is much else Marx wrote. But we don't think that what has happened since Marx's time negates the essence of that idea. Workers are increasingly worse off. if not in absolute terms, then in terms of the proportion of wealth they actually consume. In mentioning Auschwitz. Hiroshima and the "limitless barbarism" of the modern world. Professor Rubel himself surely points to a worsening of what he calls "moral conditions". But we don't think that such conditions, material and "moral", give cause for hopelessness. What they do in fact is to create an increasing likelihood that people will turn to the solution that socialism offers to their problems. Our own small voice trying to point people in that direction is one which has been born of those conditions and has seen a way out of them.

The transition
We can understand that our use of terms like "voluntary co-operation", “moneyless society" and "free access ' should seem like "word fetishism" to Professor Rubel. But all we are trying to do is to describe the kind of society we are aiming at. While we can accept that to many people these terms may seem over-abstract, we'd certainly be selling ourselves and others short if we didn't make it absolutely clear what our objective was. If there are other and better ways of putting across the same idea, we'd be genuinely pleased to know about them. Indeed that's what we re constantly looking for and we're as aware as Professor Rubel that the word "socialism" itself often leads to confusion and misunderstanding. The only thing we don't want to do is to conceal, or appear to want to conceal, the true nature of our objective. Nor do we want to claim that we can provide a detailed scenario for the transition from capitalism to socialism or for the organisation of socialism. We can't. It's true that many people, in order to feel that socialism is a tangible objective, want an explanation about how it s going to come about and then be organised. But it's an explanation we can only give in a general not in an exact and detailed way. We cannot, for example — small number that we are now — know exactly how the millions of people involved in socially useless work under capitalism will switch to socially useful work in socialism. We can, and do, speculate on this to a certain extent and this is one of the things we have tried to do in our recent pamphlet, Socialism as a Practical Alternative. But the kind of thing we can be fairly sure of is that as the socialist movement grows within capitalism, those in the movement will be developing plans as to how work will be organised in socialism and will be ready to put those plans into operation once the political changeover from one system to another takes place. Of course, as Professor Rubel suggests, this new organisation of work will not be an overnight process — nothing important in human affairs ever is — but at least the social basis for it will be there. Nor will "human nature" be in any sense an obstacle since making socialism work will be in the practical interest of each member of the community and will therefore not involve an "altruism" that some may find it over-optimistic to expect from the human species.

Socialism

Maximilien Rubel started by noting the slow progress towards working-class acceptance of socialism as defined by us. Then it transpires that he isn't really sure that our objective is worthwhile anyway! He raises supposed big difficulties in the operation of socialism and suggests, instead of free access, a money system which, he says, "has nothing in common with money as a source of profit but is used as a general unit of accounting". Other supposed difficulties are getting the workers to accept the idea of "voluntary work" (that is, the abolition of the wages system) and the problem of moving over to useful work all the great army of people at present producing armaments or doing other work necessary only to capitalism. He also says that we condemn money "in the name of an abstract principle which the average worker will certainly find difficult to grasp".

Taking the last point first, we do not "condemn money" on an abstract principle but on the basis that with the inauguration of production solely for consumption there is no useful function for money to perform. However, M. Rubel then proceeds to invent a supposed use for money in socialist society. How useless it is can easily be seen.

In socialist society it will be necessary to know how many tons of each kind of coal come from each coal mine, how many kilowatts of electricity from each power station, how many yards of each kind of cloth from each textile factory, and so on. This is easy to calculate and done already. And in precisely the form in which the consumer in socialist society will want the information. Maximilien Rubel wants to stick a price label on everything so that there will be a combined total of £x, covering prices of all the different kinds of products. For what purpose? It won't be wanted by the consumer and M. Rubel tells us it won t be a source of profit to anyone. So why waste effort doing it? And in M. Rubel's "socialism'. who will fix all the prices, including wages, the price of labour power? And on what basis? When M. Rubel says that the average worker finds it difficult to grasp the idea of abolishing buying and selling, has he considered the difficulty that workers will have in grasping his money that is not money and a price system that serves no apparent purpose?

These would indeed be real, in fact, insoluble problems for muddled bureaucrats who envisage operating socialism with a non-socialist working class, either by leadership, exhortation or by imposing it through dictatorship. But the essence of our case is that there can be no thought of achieving power to establish socialism until a majority, politically organised, have come to understand and accept the socialist case with all the responsibilities that socialism will entail.

Another issue he reuses is that four-fifths of the world's population are ruled by dictatorships and that, consequently, we are "trying to "make" socialists before the objective circumstances favourable to the establishment of socialism appear" We do not accept the implication of M. Rubel's statement, which is that it is impossible for four-fifths of the world s population ever to have heard of the socialist idea and impossible for them to reason out for themselves where working class interests lie. How does he suppose ideas of socialism developed in the first place and were propagated in Britain, at a time when all industrial political organisation and propaganda were illegal and savagely suppressed? And it can hardly have escaped M. Rubel's notice that the supposedly monolithic and impregnable capitalist dictatorships in Russia and elsewhere are beginning to be removed, as they were long ago in industrially advanced countries like Britain. France. Germany and Japan.

The future

We too would like to see a mass-circulation working-class daily and agree that a small-circulation monthly publication can’t hope to make a great impact. But luckily the development of socialist consciousness does not depend solely on the Socialist Party and its publications but more generally on the conditions people live under in capitalism and the need to change those conditions. Having said that, we'd like the Socialist Standard to be as effective, wide-ranging and wide-circulating a vehicle of socialist ideas as possible; so the more people who have already arrived at a socialist consciousness become part of the organisation propagating those ideas, the more members and the more resources this will give us to increase our circulation and move towards weekly and then daily publication.

Editors.

Barcelona conference (1989)

From the January 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Late last year there took place in Barcelona an international conference on the future of society. The idea was for a large number of speakers from across the world to take part in a week of discussion and debate on the question of social change. Contributors were to be of diverse political persuasions, so that the outcome would be representative, and conferences would be continued annually in different parts of the world over five years, returning to Barcelona in 1992. This first conference was timed to mark the twentieth anniversary of the events of 1968, and the radical pronouncements in the advance programme appeared promising, speaking enthusiastically of “a change in civilisation", "models for the future" and even the need to "transform society".

Having been offered the opportunity to take part in all of the seminars and debates. and to address one of the sessions, I was quite willing to see of what use this forum could be in the urgent task of propagating socialist ideas. This was in spite of the fact that speakers included certain philosophers of the "New Right”; unlike some political dim-wits of the Left who refuse to debate with those they allegedly disagree with, socialists are prepared to discuss and debate with political opponents of all persuasions. This is a point of principle based on our view that socialist revolution can only come with the winning over of a clear majority to our ideas. We can and must defeat in argument all kinds of antiquated myths which are peddled by many workers on behalf of their employers.

On arrival at the conference, however, all of my worst fears were confirmed. Although originally organised by a small group of ex-Trotskyists based around the University, the event had grown and begun to attract major sponsorship in a way that verged on the sinister and would have been comical had the wasted opportunity not been so obvious. The sponsors, it turned out. included the Sony Corporation, various banks and even government bodies. These financial institutions clearly knew a thing or two about buying off dissent, but with this intellectual mob the process clearly came pretty cheaply. Even the grandiose conference auditorium itself was situated in a bank!

The conference was opened by speeches full of pious waffle from non-entities such as a government minister and the Chairman of the bank in question. Anyone attending, other than the hundred or so invited speakers, had to pay ninety dollars just to take part. Almost all the main participants were senior academics of various disciplines. Lively debate was prevented by methods ranging from restricting to a few minutes at the end of a session, questions from the floor" to the outright censorship of taking points in writing for selection by the platform speakers.

Despite all these and other limitations, I was able to ensure that the genuine expression of socialism was heard loud and clear in several of the sessions, as well as in the text presented at one of the seminars (see separate article). It is, however, worth considering in detail some of the nonsense spoken, as this proved in the end to be a classic example of the chaos which results when capitalism's apologists try to give the system a new lease of life by discussing so-called 'alternatives” within it.

At the outset, the excited auditorium of two hundred or so were warned by an anthropologist called Buxó not to contemplate any return to the structures or values of primitive anthropological forms: far better no doubt to stick with the civilised certainties of the bomb and the dole queue. Lester Ruiz from New York spoke of the "deconstructivist" efforts facing us all, and the need for spiritual transformation. An ex-Communist party member from Paris called Garaudy stated that millions were dying of hunger while wheat is destroyed, but then showed his reluctance to leave the CP behind by singing the praises of Gorbachev and declaring his conversion to Islam. A born-again Christian called for a "mixed economy" with “God at the centre and love at its heart". A Communist Party member and philosopher from Georgia, Merab Mamardashvili, spoke of the need for metaphysical rebirth and mourned the passing of the “pre-revolutionary spirit" of Tsarism, while insisting that as a Marxist and Party member, he knew what he was saying and “allowed" himself to say it. "The capitalist system does not exist", he went on, and “life, in the strict sense of the term, is impossible". Even the simultaneous-translation interpreters were in stitches of laughter at this learned philosopher's ramblings. which culminated with the classic plea (quoted here verbatim) that: "I hope you understand me because I have difficulty in understanding what I’m saying myself". This comment would make a fitting epitaph to much of the pompous event itself. Meanwhile, students and scholars in the aisles scribbled notes furiously and the next philosopher was helped to the stage.

Maximilien Rubel, who has written several times to the Letters column of the Socialist Standard, chided the conference for ignoring the threat of nuclear war and pointed out Marx's recognition that the majority most affected by social problems must act to end their cause — the market system itself. He spoke against the state capitalist Russian Empire and attacked in advance next year's Paris celebration of 1789. adding that rather than “indulge in vanity of inventing new cultures", the speakers should declare themselves against “the insane nihilism of the political barbarians" who own and control the world. Rubel also pointed out that 1968 was a useless starting point unless it was recognised as a complete failure. Like others who spoke some sense or showed tell-tale signs of having ventured beyond their studies during the past year, he was patronised and dismissed by both the organisers and the majority present.

While these enthusiastic “experts" pontificated in a bank, the streets of Barcelona overflowed with some of the worst poverty in Europe. We were surrounded by social problems of which many speakers seemed ignorant, as they shunned as too “political" any talk of the majority repossessing the earth as the necessary prelude to any real social change. An official survey in the old quarter of Barcelona in 1985 found 25 per cent of the children there suffering malnutrition and more than half of the families living in sub-standard housing. Life expectancy was ten times lower than in other districts. These and other statistics were lucidly presented in a television documentary shown late last year (Cities Fit to Live In: Salud. Barcelona, TVE Barcelona/ Channel Four, November 1988), which ended with this refreshing piece of honest commentary:

  In the nineteenth century, Barcelona fought to demolish the stone walls hemming her in. The challenge she faces today is to bring down the invisible walls that divide one citizen from another, and to set all her citizens on an equal footing. Only then will it be possible to talk about health as a state of total physical, mental and social well-being, and not simply an absence of illness.

Clifford Slapper

Marx, carbuncles and all (1978)

Book Review from the June 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx without Myth by Maximilien Rubel and Margaret Manale (Blackwell)

A very good biography of Marx, which recounts fairly and without eulogy his personal and political activities year by year, is Marx without Myth by Maximilien Rubel and Margaret Manale (published by Basil Blackwell in 1975). What makes it so good is that the authors recognise that Marx stood for “a classless, stateless and moneyless society” and point out that, right from his first socialistic writings at the end of 1843, Marx held that mankind could only be emancipated through the abolition of money and the State.

Marx maintained this view for the rest of his life even if, as Rubel and Manale point out, “he was not always able to reconcile his conduct with his theoretical views”. For instance, he was obsessed with the Russian threat to Western Europe, an obsession which led him to very questionable cooperation with Tory journalists like David Urquhart and Maltman Barry. As late as 1877 Marx was writing anonymous anti-Russian articles in the Tory press! But then we have never been committed to endorsing everything Marx said and did, even though we do owe him a tremendous debt as the man who first provided a scientific basis for the case for Socialism.

Adam Buick

Rubel on Marx (1981)

Book Review from the December 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx: Life and Works, by Maximilien Rubel. Macmillan Chronology Series.

This is a sort of shortened paperback version (130 pages) of Rubel and Manale’s Marx without Myth, and a very good and fair year-by-year summary of Marx’s life and literary activities. Rubel, whose writings are only just beginning to be known in the English-speaking world, is a regular, if critical, attender at the meetings of our Paris discussion group and fully accepts that by socialism Marx meant a classless. moneyless, wageless society. Here, for instance, he points out that in Marx’s first published writing as a socialist (The Jewish Question, 1843) Marx made it clear that human emancipation “will only be obtained by doing away with the state and with money", a view he held for the rest of his life. 

Adam Buick

The Misplacing of Marx (1956)

From the November 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ruling class, through its defenders, have tried many methods over the years to kill the influence of his work, but, like a ghost, Marx continues to haunt them. In the early years he was ignored, but the penetration, power and pungency of his outlook compelled opponents to take notice of him. Then followed bitter attacks upon him and his views, but social development took the point out of these attacks and revealed the ignorance and malevolence of the attackers.

Since then Marx and his work has been approached from different angles, in the endeavour to remove the sting. He has been patronised on the plea that he was quite an energetic and fruitful thinker, but, alas, his theories were all wrong! That what he said was perhaps justified in his day, but times have changed. That his criticism of Capitalism was searching and true in his day, but Capitalism has completely changed since then. And so on. But it was no good. In spite of the claims that his theories were all wrong, and that no reputable economist or historian accepted them, time has shown that Capitalism is still fundamentally the same old Capitalism, and quotations from his writings reveal that his criticisms, his theories, and his conclusions are as applicable today as they were when they were written long ago.

In an editorial in The Times Literary Supplement (21st September, 1956) there is another approach to the work of Marx. He has become respectable, but the sting has been removed.

The editorial is concerned with a new book on Marx by T. B. Bottomore and M. Maximilien Rabel. The editorial tells us:

“The purpose of the editors is to exhibit Marx as, first and foremost, not a philosopher or an economist, but a student of society, and to show how much in the modem development of social theories is due to the impetus derived from Marx.”

The editorial then claims that Hegel was the root of Marxism: “Had Saint-Simon never written a line, the broad outlines of Marxism might still have been the same: without Hegel Marxism could not have existed.” This sweeping statement is nonsense; it ignores the fact that all past thinkers and practical movements played important parts in what ultimately became the Marxian outlook. The philosophers, from Aristotle to Feuerbach; the pre-French Revolutionary writers who were lumped 

together as the Encyclopaedists; economists from Sir Wm. Petty to Ricardo, including Benjamin Franklin; and finally the Utopian Socialists, whose influence, in spite of the editorial, may have been the most important in shaping the direction of Marx’s outlook.

The editorial then goes on:

“Once this reservation [relating to Hegel's influence] is made, however, the case for Marx's influence on the development of sociological thinking is overwhelmingly made out.”

This is a clever way of putting it; not that he was right in his outlook, but that be had a great influence in the development of modern thinking—but they refrain from enlightening us on the subject of modern thinking.

The real kick, however, is contained in the last few lines of the editorial:

"And it is possible to pay tribute to Marx's role in the formation of modern social theory without necessarily subscribing to all his conclusions. Few of the leading sociologists of the last fifty years have in fact been Marxists. But the study of society would not have attained the stature, or assumed the form, which it has reached to-day without the many-sided insights which Marx brought to it.”

There we have it! He was not a bad old chap; did a lot of good work in his time, but, of course, we have progressed far beyond him now! Thus he can be safely canonised and forgotten.

But the devil of it is "He’s dead, but be won’t lie down! ”

Gilmac.

A Rose by any other name (1954)

From the August 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are all "socialists" now. Let us witness the parade: The Churchill Tory socialists, the French Radical Socialists, the totalitarian "socialist" governments including the black, brown and red shirts, the New - Deal—Fair - Deal creeping "socialists," the Labour Parties of Europe, the Asiatic "socialist" and "communist" governments as well as those in Africa and South America, the colonial "socialist" groups, the various alleged socialist organisations throughout the world such as the Social Democrats, Trotzkyites, the Communist parties, syndicalists, I.W.W., Socialist Labour Party and the Companion Parties for Socialism in Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, U.S.A., Australia and New Zealand. Then there are the anarchists, Christian "socialists," pacifists and a whole host of others. By no means have we exhausted the list of marchers in the "socialist" parade.

No wonder M. Rubel, in his dilemma: "The Uses of the Word "Socialism" in the Winter, 1954, issue of the American magazine Dissent, would prefer "to abandon the word socialism" and would substitute some other word for it that would "save the conceptual content once attached to this term."

It is significant of the times we live in to see every strata of society and the entire gamut of conflicting and opposing interests express themselves in terms of socialism. They must in order to rally support. Even though Socialism is NOT accepted by the world, it has become recognized and established as the hope of mankind.

M. Rubel describes very well the general nature of socialism that stirs and inspires everyone: "A society from which exploitation would be banished and in which  the unfolding of each individual would be the condition of the freedom of all." This is the basic appeal of socialism as an ultimate objective which serves as a rallying cry to muster support for the various groups marching in the parade of "socialism."

Let us suppose that some other word came into use to express the very essence of socialism, its "conceptual concept." This new word would then be subjected to the very same difficulties. The old word "socialism" would lose its meaning and significance. The new word would become abused in the same manner as the old one. Changing the name would not solve any problem for it doesn't come to grips with the real situation.

The Situation

The views of those who, patently, are supporters of the status quo are of no interest to this discussion, even though they may be listed in the parade of socialists. But we are very much concerned with those who allege adherence to socialism. In the name of socialism, all manner of views are presented. There are those who are disappointed at the slow growth of the movement and propose immediate demands; they feel that socialism is a long way off and, in the meantime, we have immediate problems to solve, that we must face "reality" and be "practical." Some consider reforms and government ownership as gradual steps to socialism. Some consider state capitalism (often called state socialism) as a form of socialism, if not socialism itself. Necessarily, these are efforts to administer and reform capitalism. All this leads to erroneous concepts, particularly, identifying capitalist relationships as being socialist ones. The common characteristic of these viewpoints and activities is to divorce the socialist objective from the policies that are pursued. The means become the goal and objective.

It has become the fashion of many "profound" pundits of socialism to dismiss as dogmatic and sectarian* those who realize the socialist activities must not be disassociated from the socialist objective. We see this same attitude in some of the articles in Dissent.

It is tragic to observe the net result of all these "practical" movements. Being freed from "dogmatism and sectarianism" (which really means: freed from a scientific analysis of social forces), we find what? Hosts of workers are bewildered by the deceptions and disappointments of the "socialist" as well as "communist" election "victories" in all corners of the globe. Especially, we find vast numbers disillusioned because of their false hopes in Russian state capitalism.

At no time have any of these widespread and tremendous efforts been devoted to spreading socialist consciousness. particularly damaging to socialist understanding has been the stress on nationalism and patriotism which is so foreign to the very spirit of socialism, which is a world-wide society, a social system. What a waste of such expenditures of energies! One wonders how much further the socialist movement would have been advanced without these vast diversions and had the same efforts been devoted to socialist activities.

Is it difficult to realize why the word "socialism" has lost its "conceptual content" to so many who never really grasped the socialist content?

What is Socialism?

The case for socialism is not difficult to grasp. It really is simple.

There are three phases of socialism. They are interrelated and interdependent and part of an unfolding process.

(1) Socialism first appears on the scene ideologically. It arose out of the material conditions of the earlier portion of the 19th Century. This is the birth of socialist science. It is materialistic. It recognizes that everything in existence is interrelated and in a constant process of change. (In a very real sense, it might even be said that socialism is the science that integrates all branches of science into a correlated whole.) Specifically, it indicates the general outlines and the process of social evolution and, more particularly, the nature of capitalism. It explains how the seed of the forthcoming society is fertilized within the womb of an old society.
(2) Then, socialism arises as a movement. It is not alone sufficient to understand the world. the task is to change it. Its very raison d'etre is to exert all its efforts to arouse the working class and all others to become socialists so that the vast majority becomes conscious of its interests, and proceeds to institute socialism. The socialist revolution cannot be rammed down the throats of "followers." The socialist revolution is majority, conscious and political. It is and can only be democratic by its very inherent nature. It is not a new ruling class come to power with a subject class having to submit.
(3) Finally, in the course of its evolution, capitalism has laid the groundwork for socialism, a classless, money-less, wage-less society. Socialism is "a society from which exploitation has been banished and in which the unfolding of each individual would be the condition for the freedom of all."

The Answer

In light of all this, what constitutes being a socialist? Broadly speaking, it is one who realizes that capitalism can no longer be reformed or administered in the interest of either the working class or society; that capitalism is incapable of eliminating its inherent problems of poverty, wars, crises, etc.; and that socialism offers the solutions for the social problems besetting mankind since the material conditions and developments—with the single exception of an aroused socialist majority—are now ripe for a socialist society.

If an organization or an individual or a "victory" supports the continuation of capital-wage labour relationships by advocating or organizing to administer an improved, bettered reformed status quo (capitalism) instead of coming out for the socialist revolution (a frightening word which only means a complete social-economic change) then—it is NOT socialist.

The need for educating, agitating and organizing to keep the issues clear cannot be overemphasized. All too many liberals, radicals, intellectuals, and, what is far worse, the much greater numbers of rebellious workers resisting their sad lot in life—all these, sincere, earnest and devoted—have been washed in and out of the so-called socialist organizations and their fringes and in the entire process never did get an insight or an inkling as to what it is all about.

The simplicity of the socialist case is buried by friends and foe alike in mountains of "day-today" ISSUES so that there never is and never can be time for them to become acquainted with the science of socialism, i.e., the socialist case.

The real need today is the understanding and knowledge of socialism rather than changing the word "socialism."

—I. Rab.

(Reproduced from the Western Socialist, May-June, 1954.)

* Just because of their scientific attitude, socialists are constantly re-examining their theories in the light of historical developments and experience. So far, unfolding events have conformed and corroborated the socialist case and nothing of a fundamental nature has occurred to repudiate the general theories of the science of socialism. 

Party News (1981)

Party News from the May 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Paris public meeting

There has at least been some sanity in this month's French presidential election: members and sympathisers of the Socialist Party of Great Britain organised a public meeting in Paris on the subject of universal suffrage and Marxism. Maximilien Rubel gave a talk on how Marx concluded in 1880 that the working class could change universal suffrage from an instrument of trickery into an "agent of emancipation" by mandating socialist delegates to immediately dismantle the state machinery of capitalism and establish socialism. Rubel stressed the importance of working-class consciousness in the transformation of society but when then suggested that we should adopt a reform programme to win support. The logical outcome of reforming capitalism could be seen on the way back from the meeting: large posters with the most absurd and vague slogans lined the streets: "France needs a president. V. Giscard d'Estaing"; "Jobs first: Mitterand for President" ("Socialist" Party); "With Huguette Bouchardeau for the alternative" (Unified Socialist Party); "Let's produce French: Marchais for President" (French Communist Party); and, most bemusing of all, "Now, together, act with Jacques Chirac". The alternative to this array of careerist hypocrites is for us to stop following leaders and cast a vote not for a person or a policy, but for a socialist society. The election issue of Socialisme Mondial, as well as a French version of the Questions of the Day pamphlet Pour le Socialisme Mondial is now available from Head Office.

Clifford Slapper

The future of work

Wealth in present society is produced only when there is the prospect of a profit; in a socialist society, production would be carried out simply in order to satisfy human needs, whenever and wherever they occurred. The contrast was brought out very well by Mike Cooley of the Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards Committee, at a conference in March organised by the William Morris Society and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Several SPGB members took part. Cooley argued that people could create high quality articles through satisfying co-operative work, provided that the priority was use and not exchange.

Modern technology will only act as a liberating force if the basis of society is altered from market competition to human co-operation. At Lucas Aerospace co-operating workers are exploring the possibilities of creating useful work and production, although their struggle for survival in the world market system imposes severe limitations. Mike Cooley also told how Lucas workers had occupied the Willesden factory to oppose "rationalisation". One weekend they left the factory and on returning found that Lucas Industries had burnt out the inside of the place and ripped the roof off.

Ray Watkinson spoke about William Morris' views on work. Morris saw useful labour as the only true art, and looked forward to a time when socialist co-operation would allow all work to become creative and satisfying. Watkinson neglected to explain how Morris spent his later years campaigning for this, through the political organisation of the working class.

The discussion that followed was chaired by Geoffrey Robinson, MP, who more than once slipped in a sly plea for support for the Labour Party. He spoke of the "need" for a harmonious partnership between labour and capital. A socialist from the audience suggested we should get rid of this "holy alliance" and institute real harmony in a classless society. Robinson replied that we should keep working for harmony within in the present economy, and keep socialism in mind for the future. "Like a carrot", came a call from the audience.

The thin red line (1988)

Book Review from the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Faced with a social system which creates problems faster than its politicians can make promises, responses range from the stupidly complacent, to those whose self-righteous radicalism leaves no time for actually solving the problems they shout about. Would-be "leaders" the world over, rush to defend the indefensible. Political parties compete to run a system of organised poverty and obscene contradictions, which has built weapons to destroy humanity while millions starve. Most political debate is as irrational as the system of class division and profit which, in one form or another, it seeks to defend. It is therefore very refreshing indeed when a glimmer of social sanity shows itself through this dense fog of doublethink.

Just such an encouraging and exciting event took place late last year, with the publication of a book which is of significance. Until now, those historians who claimed to deal with the "labour movement" or the opposition to capitalism have focused, almost entirely, on the opportunists who have come to power by riding on the back of social discontent and perverting the idea of social freedom, through the Labour Party, the Communist Party or the Trotskyist fringe. Those who have upheld a clear and principled socialist alternative in the face of fierce hostility have all too often been relegated to a contemptuous footnote  in small print, if they were mentioned at all.

Now the record has been set straight. Non-Market Socialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries is a fascinating and compelling account which deals exclusively with those who have seen through the nonsense of the profit system and who have stood clearly for the abolition of capitalism in any of its forms, whether private or state controlled and its replacement by a system of production for use, with human needs being met through free access to all goods and services. Socialist ideas are explained in a historical context which makes them all the more powerful and urgent. Moreover, it is demonstrated that capitalism really does "produce its own gravediggers", as various groups at different times and places have independently reached (and continue independently to reach) the same conclusion - that since the problems of the working-class majority cannot possibly be solved through the reform of the capitalist system, therefore it must be replaced.

Following the pattern used in each of the chapters of the book, let us first set out the background and central idea put forward in this work, before summarising the content and moving on to weigh up its strengths and weaknesses as a book. Non-Market Socialism, edited by Maximillien Rubel and John Crump, published by Macmillan and available in paperback at £8.95, arose out of a conference of discussion and debate which took place in York in September 1984. The revolutionary basis on which the book develops is made clear from the formal dedication on the very first page, which states

This book is dedicated to the men and women of the thin red line of non-market socialism who have kept alive the vision of socialism as a society of personal freedom, communal solidarity, production for use and free access to goods.

Socialism defined

In Chapter Two, written by John Crump (who for some time was a member of The Socialist Party), four key features are outlined, as a definition of socialism which is to be used throughout the book. These are that:

• Production will be for use and not for sale on the market.
• Distribution will be according to need and not by means of buying and selling.
• Labour will be voluntary and not imposed on workers by means of a coercive wages system.
• A human community will exist and social divisions based on class, nationality, sex or race will have disappeared.

Crump them goes on to elaborate excellently on all the implications of such a revolution in social relationships, dealing very clearly with all the common myths of "human nature" which have sometimes been used to obstruct such discussion. He also explains the historical emergence of the "Social Democratic" and Leninist movements which distorted and confused this fundamental concept of the socialist alternative. The way in which the Russian Revolution of 1917 established a regime of state capitalism is also clearly stated, with quotations from the Socialist Standard from that period to demonstrate how socialists were able to make such an analysis even then. Also in Crump's chapter, the whole notion of a "transitional society" between capitalism and socialism is explored and rejected.

At this stage, the central thesis and claim of the book is explained. This is that there have been various movements which have stood openly for the socialist alternative as defined above, the five most significant such "tendencies" to be dealt with in detail in subsequent chapters. While agreeing on their object or aim, these movements have been in conflict over how to achieve that goal and over various other points of detail. Crump argues that such differences constitute a "periphery" which, at the present time, is less important than the "core" idea of defining socialism, introducing workers to this and encouraging them to adopt it as the only practical alternative to the exploitation of the capitalist system. We will consider this general thesis in more detail below but let us first take a look at the contents of the other chapters.

A background survey which explores the nineteenth century origins of socialist idea is provided by Maximilien Rubel, a recognised authority and scholar of Marx, based in Paris, who has been in close contact with The Socialist Party. Rubel takes as his starting point the 1848 Communist Manifesto's list of categories of "Socialism" and finds there some early progenitors of both the modern idea of "market socialism" (of course, a contradiction in terms) and of the non-market alternative. He seeks to rescue from relative obscurity and rehabilitate into their deserved place of recognition such early socialist thinkers as Wilhelm Weitling or Flora Tristan and many others. In contrast to "vulgar materialism", Rubel presents the need for socialism as an "ethical imperative": a term whose use has been debated in the columns of the Socialist Standard when Rubel has corresponded with us on that issue. Finally, and with great eloquence, he demolishes the very damaging claims of the Bolsheviks to have established "socialism" in Russia, with their perversion of "Marxism" into a distorted religious ideology.

In a chapter on "Anarcho-Communism", Alain Pengam develops further the rich heritage and background of ideas from which the modern socialist movement has developed, by focussing on those early anarchists who embraced most clearly the idea of abolishing property relationships. Déjacque, for example, wrote in 1858 that social revolution means that "Commerce . . . this scourge of the 19th century, has disappeared amongst humanity. There are no longer either sellers or sold" (p.64). Kropotkin is also extensively quoted on the need for the abolition of the wages system. Beyond this, however, Pengam struggles in vain to find any substantial threads of such a tradition extending into the twentieth century, referring for example to the military defeat during the Mexican Revolution of those anarchists who sought in vain to establish agricultural co-operative communes there.

World Socialist Movement

This brings us to Chapter Four, on "Impossibilism", which is written by Stephen Coleman and focuses on The Socialist Party itself. In a postscript to the book it is pointed out that the Socialist Party of Great Britain, "with a record of over eighty years' unbroken commitment to non-market socialism" is an exception to the general rule, whereby other groups proclaiming allegiance to the ideas of non-market socialism have tended to be rather more fleeting in their organisational existence. Coleman makes it quite clear in his chapter how and why that consistency of both organisation and principle has been achieved by The Socialist Party.

The formation of The Socialist Party in 1904 is described, as is the formation of its similar predecessor, the Socialist League in 1884, both as breakaway groups from the Social Democratic Federation. From the League, William Morris is quoted on the need to "put an end for ever to the wage-system" so that everyone could have "free access to the means of production of wealth" (p. 85). There is also a brief description of the ideas of Daniel De Leon and of the Socialist Labour Party, with their notion of the need for "labour vouchers" in a socialist society clearly dealt with.

Coleman then goes on to produce an excellent, sweeping survey of the history and ideas of The Socialist Party and its companion parties in other countries, referred to as the World Socialist Movement. This is of great historical significance in itself, since until now we have been faced with an overwhelming silence from labour historians in relation to the unique and inspiring record of The Socialist Party, in putting forward a consistent case for socialism in a way which is now properly documented and described in this chapter. In fact, the only other book previously published dealing with The Socialist Party was produced in 1975 under the title of The Monument, and consisted of a series of (often inaccurate) anecdotes, failing to deal at all seriously with the development of socialist ideas.

The work in question, on the other hand, sets this record straight. Using a wide assortment of examples, ranging from India to Canada, Britain and elsewhere we see how socialism was positively put and reformist compromise consistently opposed throughout the upheavals of these years. We read how both world wars were actively opposed, and how the Socialist Standard has been published every month without fail, despite the difficulties that have been involved.

A careful reading of Coleman's chapter also shows that there are two false assumptions which emerge elsewhere in the book. First, in his introductory chapter Crump claims that The Socialist Party is separate from the other traditions referred to because it has a "parliamentary strategy" which is "anathema to the other currents of non-market socialists". In fact, it would be more accurate to state the emphasis of Socialist Party material has been democratic, concerning on the need for socialism to be established by a conscious majority, since means must harmonise with ends. Coleman contrasts the "parliamentarianism" of the reformists, which involves sending representatives to Parliament to run capitalism, with the socialist policy in which a socialist majority mandates recallable delegates in order to dismantle the state machine, from a position of control. Coleman tells the story of the socialist speaker who referred to socialism coming not just through the ballot box, but through the "brain box" and points out that

it is clearly those who insist that ballot boxes and parliaments can play no part in the establishment of socialism and assert that socialism can only be established via industrial organisation alone, who are being dogmatic and historically fetishised in their thinking about the revolution. (p.94)

Second, one might think from reading the introductory sections of the book that the various tendencies considered differ fro one another only in their ideas about how socialism is to be achieved. It is clear however, from looking at the closing section of Chapter Four in comparison with other chapters, that there is another important difference which distinguishes The Socialist Party in particular from those other tendencies. This is that The Socialist Party is alone in remaining organised on a significant scale and politically active in Britain today.

Possible exceptions to this, it might be argued, would be found under the heading of "Council Communism", which is dealt with in Chapter Five by Mark Shipway. It is, however, stated in the Postscript that "it is doubtful whether any 'orthodox' council communist groups exist today". Of the organisations which are then listed, the International Communist Current has been found in debate with The Socialist Party to adhere to a fundamentally Leninist position and the group Wildcat, of which Shipway is a member and which is reviewed critically in the December 1987 Socialist Standard, state that "we struggle in favour of strikes, riots and all other acts of rebellion against capitalism", which hardly suggests credibility in terms of democratic organisation.

Council Communism
Shipway presents an historical account of the emergence of the Council Communist movement in the wake of the First World War, quoting extensively from Anton Pannekoek. Unlike other tendencies dealt with, the Council Communists were generally more preoccupied with a detailed discussion of how the revolution would take place -  as far as they were concerned, through the setting up of workers' councils to rival the capitalist state - rather than focusing, in any detail, on what end result was to be achieved through this process. In the course of his analysis, Shipway accepts the somewhat suicidal notion of workers forming their own militias to rival the capitalist armed forces (p.117), refers somewhat confusingly to "periods of revolutionary turmoil" (p.108) and quotes approvingly the need for a party to "win the trust of the masses" (p.124). He states, rather hopefully, that Council Communist intervention in working class struggles "should" be based on nothing less that the final goal of communism, while recognising that this has not generally been the case. (p.124). Further, support is given to Pannekoek's emphasis on theories of economic breakdown (p.120) and to his rather obscure and vanguardist references to building up the "spiritual power" of workers (p. 122).

Bordiga
In Chapter Six, Adam Buick presents a detailed view of "Bordigism", the movement named after the Italian marxist Amadeo Bordiga, who died in 1970 after a great literary and political output. After an historical explanation of the succession of parties influenced by Bordiga's thinking, culminating in the International Communist Party, among others, Buick goes on to show how Bordiga's concept of socialism was explicitly based on the abolition of the market system and of all property relationships, including those of state capitalism.

By quoting extensively from Bordiga himself, Buick methodically and clearly demonstrates just how emphatically capitalism in all its manifestations was understood and rejected by Bordiga. Many good examples of this are given, perhaps one of the simplest being that "where there is money, there is neither socialism nor communism, as there isn't, and by a long way, in Russia" (Bordiga, 1959, quoted on p.139).

Buick also explains the paradox, that alongside this very clear revolutionary concept of the socialist alternative, the Bordigists have remained élitist in terms of political strategy, believing that socialist understanding on the part of the working class majority could be developed after, rather than before, socialism is brought about.This, again, relates to the underlying thesis of the book, because whereas Bordigist means of obtaining their goal can be seen in this chapter to stand at odds in many ways with their goal, it is argued by Crump in Chapter Two that this is "peripheral", since workers who are educated by Bordigism into revolutionary ends can themselves prove the Bordigists wrong in practice about the means required to bring this about. It is perhaps worth noting, however, that means often determine ends rather than the other way round and that of course ultimately the two cannot be separated. Buick implicitly recognises this fact by showing how the Bordigist conception of socialism itself is "non-democratic" and "technocratic", involving not full participation in the control of production but the appointment of experts to make decisions in the best interests of others - an angle which would perhaps be regarded with more cynicism by many workers in the 1980s than in former decades. Also, despite these reservations, there is clearly validity in Crump's point that Bordigism, together with the other movements considered, has definitely played a positive part in introducing workers to the idea of the abolition of the wages system and its replacement with a system of production for use.

Situationists
Finally, the movement of "Situationism" is dealt with in Chapter Seven, again by Mark Shipway. The Situationist International was a small group based in France which produced a substantial amount of literature between 1957 and 1973 and which became widely known, out of all proportion to its numbers, as a result of the May 1968 "Events" in Paris. They were explicit in their opposition to modern capitalism, which they called the society of the "Spectacle", because of the passivity and alienation it produced and in their support for socialist revolution. Shipway clearly explains their theories of consumerism, with key texts by Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem, finding roots in Marx's theory of alienation and weaknesses in that Situationist was based rather narrowly on conditions in the post-war boom in France. What also emerges, however, is that they developed some very important cultural and psychological insights into capitalism which complement much of the more traditionally political and economic analysis focused on in the rest of the book. Finally, Shipway ends the book with a comment on reformism which appears rather at odds with the rest of the book:

Of course it would be ideal if every time workers went on strike it was for the abolition of the wages system. But while this is not the situation in which revolutionaries presently find themselves, neither is it a reason for ignoring or abstaining from any struggle which starts out on the basis of ostensibly reformist demands. (p.169)

It is worth pointing out in relation to this that each author was separately responsible for his own chapter and clearly some have been more clear on such issues than others. A good reason, for example, why revolutionaries must abstain from struggles which start out "on the basis of ostensibly reformist demands" is suggested in a very clear passage by Crump in Chapter Two, in which he explains that there can be no halfway house between the two "all-or-nothing" options of world capitalism and world socialism:

the means of production must either function as capital throughout the world (in which case wage labour and capitalism persist internationally) or they must be commonly owned and democratically controlled at a global level (in which case they would be used to produce wealth fro free, worldwide distribution) . . . the changeover from world capitalism to world socialism will have to take the form of a short, sharp rupture (a revolution), rather than an extended process of cumulative transformation. (pp.54,55)

In conclusion then, the detailed chapters on the five main tendencies which have supported the idea of "non-market socialism" suggest that the original thesis was to some extent a victory of hope over reason. In terms of practical and active organisation in 1988, and particularly in Britain, the organised movement for socialism is somewhat more unitary than this volume might suggest. Also in terms of developing a practical strategy for establishing socialism which takes due account of the importance of both majority consciousness and democracy and which recognises the need to relate means to ends, then again the "thin red line" is perhaps thinner than we might wish it.

Despite such reservations, those who have collaborated in the production of this book have effectively broken a silence of decades. We hope this will also generate further discussion and debate among that growing number of individuals and groups who have come to reject capitalism, in all its forms, and seek to develop a non-market alternative. It is a strong vindication of Marx's Materialist Conception of History that from a variety of times, places and backgrounds within capitalism workers have reached similar conclusions about the need to establish a new social system capable of meeting the needs of all. The fact that workers now continue to seek such answers shows that non-market socialism is both practical and urgent. Those who wish, then, to further their understanding of the movement for socialism are recommended to get hold of this book. In continuing such discussions, we are helping to ensure that the "thin red line" does not remain so thin in the immediate future.

Clifford Slapper