Letter: Spiritual truths? (1990)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

Re your article on Socialism and Ecology in last month's Socialist Standard, I am glad to say that the people who sell me the Standard are more courteous and tolerant of people's beliefs than your writer.

By what right has anyone to say that a belief in Gaia (which is symbolic modern representation of a very ancient concept), UFOs and astrology are “manifest nonsense"? Does he/she have evidence of this, or are they merely toeing the stuffy old. stoic party-line7

In which case, why does someone like myself who has an open mind about such "spiritual ' precepts bother to read your materialistic mag? Simple, it's one of the sources of an alternative politics which I can hardly get from most of the daily sewer sheets. I do however believe that there are things we can and should change, and other things we cannot.

I would just like to ask you two questions on this point, namely:

1. If much of humanity is not searching for deeper spiritual truths, then how do you explain the resurgence of the concepts your writer derides—the increasing interest in the occult, etc which began with the 60s hippies et al? and,
2. If a person has a deep faith and deep political convictions, which do you think they would drop, if forced to, by the sort of clash between them which your article alleges? I can assure you. it is bound to be the latter.

Until you realise that spiritual people can contribute as much as anyone toward a socialistic economic system and that the two viewpoints are not irreconcilable: and until you stop ridiculing potential supporters in this way, then I'm afraid you will remain what you are: a small and insignificant party, with no hope of making the world a better place.

R. E. Wilson

Warley, West Midlands

Reply:

Our correspondent, presumably, regards the view that the earth is flat as ‘manifest nonsense". How, therefore, would he answer a flat-earther who protested that this was an insult to his deeply-held beliefs? Would he not reply that the truth of a statement does not depend on how deeply or sincerely it is held but on whether or not it is backed up by hard evidence?

We take up the same attitude towards those who say that "nature is peopled by wood sprites and other spirits headed by a goddess". Our correspondent says that this is only “symbolic" (the pagan religion obviously has its Bishops of Durham too), but others take it literally:

  We who live in rural parts are lucky enough to have many sacred wells, standing stones, stone circles and oak groves where we can gather to worship or be alone with the gods and goddesses (from a letter in Green Line, March 1988).

Here, then, is an unambiguous claim that "gods and goddesses" exist and are present at the places mentioned. This statement is either true or it isn't. It can easily be tested. You simply go to some oak grove and look for evidence of the presence of these “spiritual" beings. None has ever been found.

Astrology, the doctrine that claims that the lives of individual human beings on the planet Earth are influenced by vibrations emanating from the stars and the other planets, has also never been able to produce any evidence of its validity. Not only has no astrologer ever been able to explain the physical mechanisms of how this operates but the astrological tables that appear in papers and magazines are wrong even on their own terms:

  In the past 2.000 years, the suns apparent position in the sky has slipped backwards by one whole sign of the zodiac. Astrologers have stuck with tradition, even though it is now out of step with reality. So an astrologer will tell the parents of today's newborn baby that he or she is a Cancer: "highly sensitive, moody, reserved' (Teach Yourself Astrology, Jeff Mayo 1964). If they instead looked at the sun's position in the sky. they would find the sun is in fact in Gemini, the sign of someone "communicative. witty. chatty".

(Misreading the message in the stars". Nigel Henbest, Independent, 22 June 1987).

Why do so many people believe that their lives are influenced by "occult" forces of one kind or another, whether these be God. Jesus, the stars. Satan. Gaia or whatever? Basically, because we are living in a society which is not under human control but one where humans really are at the mercy of blind, impersonal forces— the economic laws of the capitalist economy. People feel, rightly, that they are governed by forces they can't control but attribute this, wrongly, to forces operating from outside the world of experience. This is what Marx meant when he talked about "the fetishism of commodities": humans attribute mystical powers to what are in fact the products of their own activity. Astrology, paganism and other cults have revived over the past few years but largely at the expense of the traditional religions whose emphasis on personal guilt, sexual repression and the inferiority of women have become unacceptable.

The answer to our lives being controlled by impersonal forces lies not in searching for "spiritual truths" (which will never be found, because they don't exist) but in bringing about a society in which humans consciously control the forces of production.

Editors

Blogger's Note:

See also 'A plea for some rational skepticism' from the same issue of the Socialist Standard. 

A plea for some rational skepticism (1990)

From the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

  "There is today in the West (but not in the East) a resurgent interest in vague, anecdotal and often demonstrably erroneous doctrines that, if true, would betoken at least a more interesting universe. but that, if false, imply an intellectual carelessness, an absence of tough-mindedness, and a diversion of energies not very promising for our survival. Such doctrines include astrology (the view that which stars, one hundred trillion miles away, are rising at the moment of my birth in a closed building affect my destiny profoundly); the Bermuda Triangle 'mystery' (which holds in many versions that an unidentified flying object lives in the ocean off Bermuda and eats ships and airplanes); flying saucer accounts in general; the belief in ancient astronauts: the photography of ghosts; pyramidology (including the view that my razor blade stays sharper within a cardboard pyramid than within a cardboard cube): Scientology; auras and Kirlian photography; the emotional lives and musical preferences of geraniums; psychic surgery; flat and hollow earths; modern prophecy; remote cutlery warping; astral projections; Velikovskian catastrophism; Atlantis and Mu; spiritualism; and the doctrine of the special creation, by God or gods, of mankind despite our deep relatedness, both in biochemistry and in brain physiology, with the other animals. It may be that there are kernels of truth in a few of these doctrines, but their widespread acceptance betokens a lack of intellectual rigor, an absence of skepticism, a need to replace experiments by desires.”

—Carl Sagan in The Dragons of Eden.

Socialism at the Polls (1990)

Party News from the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist Party candidates are standing in two wards in the 3 May local elections: in the Winton ward, Eccles, of Salford Borough Council (candidate: Jimmy Rushton) and in the Southfield ward of the London Borough of Ealing (candidates: Adam Buick, Ralph Critchfield and Kevin Cronin).

Those in these areas who want a socialist world of common ownership, democratic control and production solely for use can show this by voting for these candidates. Elsewhere, they can do so by writing the word “Socialism” across their ballot paper.

What About The Labour Party (1990)

A SPGB leaflet reproduced in the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Present Mess

Many workers are disgusted by the antics of the Thatcher mob, which stands for capitalism in its naked form. The wealth producers are legally robbed so that the rich can become richer. Everything is second to profit. The Tories are running the profit system the only way it can be run: produce more and more profits for the parasitical minority who own and control the resources of society, and to hell with the rest of us!

A New Government

When the government displays such open contempt towards the working class, a lot of workers start to look for something new. After all, the majority of workers did not vote for the Thatcher government in 1979, 1983 or 1987.

These days fewer and fewer workers fall for the con-trick of the so-called moderate Centre parties, with their 'moderate' nuclear weapons and their 'moderate' policies for squeezing more profits out of the wage slaves.

Some workers have turned to the Greens with their simplistic policies for an environmentally clean Capitalist Utopia. A few workers still opt for the daft dreams of the narrow-minded nationalists. But when most workers think of a change from the Tories they think of the Labour Party.

Neil Kinnock and his political gang are currently falling over themselves to prove that they are a 'responsible' government-in-waiting. They do not claim to stand for a different social system from the Tories — Kinnock admits that Labour is out to run capitalism. The Labour Party's claim is that they will run it better.

What Can Labour Do?

The best way to know what a future Labour government would do is to look at what the previous eight Labour governments have done. They have attempted to manage the profit system.

They have claimed to stand for peace, but it was the Labour government which introduced the British atom bomb and took Britain into the murderous NATO club. Labour supported the slaughter of workers in two world wars, and the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Ireland and the Falklands.

Labour claims to stand for the unions, but they have used troops to smash strikes (from the dockers in 1950 to Grunwick in 1977) and have been the only government in history to actually pass a law making it illegal for bosses to pay their workers more (the Wilson statuary income policy).

They claim to be against racism, but it was a Labour government that was the first ever to pass immigration laws based upon the colour of peoples' skins.

They claim to be on the side of the unemployed, but every Labour government since 1924 has left office with the number of unemployed higher than when they went in.

They claimed to be able to share out the wealth more 'fairly'. But under the last Labour government the richest 1% of the British population increased its share of wealth ownership from 24% to 25% of all marketable wealth in Britain.

In short, the history of Labour governments is one pathetic story after another of Labour leaders making promises which the capitalist system could not possibly let them carry out. They have done the dirty work of running the profit system according to its own laws. Trying to run the profit system in the interest of the working class is like trying to run the slaughter house for the benefit of the cattle.

The Reformist Dream

For as long as capitalism has existed and thrown up its countless problems there have been dreamers around who have wanted to keep capitalism and reform its problems out of existence. The reformist dream is an appealing one to workers who do not yet understand the nature of the system they are living under.

Faced with the callous rule of the Thatcher crowd it must be comforting to imagine that all we need is to put Kinnock and Co. in her place and life will be better. Comforting, maybe; wrong, certainly! No amount of tinkering with the system will ever make capitalism a comfortable dignified and secure system for workers to live under. The reformists will always fail.

The Socialist Alternative

Why waste time dreaming of a new government when it's a new way of organising society that we need? That new way is Socialism.

In a socialist society the resources of the world will belong to all the inhabitants of the world, not to an owning or controlling minority. There will be no classes — no workers and capitalists: we will all work according to our abilities for the common good. We will take according to our needs. Production will not be for sale and profit. The market, which both Tories and Labourites are sure we cannot live without, will exist no more. Goods and services will be produced solely for use.

This socialist alternative has nothing to do with Labour's plans for nationalised industries (state capitalism) or small, co-operative business enterprises. Socialism is not about the state managing the profit system, but about doing away with profits, the state and all of the other features of a non-co-operative, money-mad society.

No Followers Required

To bring in another Labour government simply requires persuading enough mugs to follow Kinnock. All capitalist parties are out to urge you to become a follower. This applies equally to the so-called left-wing revolutionaries who, just like their hero, Lenin, think that the workers are too dim to change the world except by following leaders.

The Socialist Party is not a leadership. We do not want to lead or govern anyone. Our sole purpose is to educate, agitate and organise for socialism. The change from capitalism to socialism cannot be brought about by us — or anyone else — acting on behalf of the working class. The workers must bring about socialism as a conscious, democratic majority.

If you can see that capitalism is against your interests however it is run, whoever runs it, then you will reject the phoney promises of the Labour Party and join The Socialist Party in working to bring about a real change in society.

Better Than Tories?

Kinnock's speech to the Labour Party Conference, Blackpool, 1988:

"  . . . we get the accusation that we are trying to run the capitalist economy better than the Tories . . . the fact is that the kind of economy we are faced with is going to be a market economy. It will be the one that we have to deal with when we are elected. We have got to make it work better than the Tories make it work . . . Even after that has been the implemented programme of a Labour government for years, there will still be a market economy."

The Independent, 5 October 1988.

Praising the Market

Extract from The Labour Party's Policy Review document, 1989:

"In our view, the economic role of modern government is to help make the market system work properly where it can, will and should — and to replace or strengthen it where it can't, won't or shouldn't. Helping 'to make the market work' means creating the conditions for enterprises to be more successful, enabling them to take a greater market share at home and abroad."

Making Capitalism Work

Douglas Houghton MP, writing of the 1964-66 Labour Government:

"Never has any previous Government done so much in so short a time to make modern capitalism work."

The Times, 25 April 1967

Never a Socialist Party

Tony Benn, former Labour cabinet minister and present member of the Labour Party's National Executive Committee, writing in The Independent, 17 May 1989: 

Past Labour governments have always worked within the limits set by market forces (as when the cabinet capitulated to the International Monetary Fund in 1976); have always supported nuclear weapons (as when Callaghan authorised the Chevaline without telling parliament); and have regularly confronted trade unionism (as with rigid wage policies). . . We must add . ..  a clear recognition that the Labour Party is not — and probably never was — a socialist party, and its individual members do not decide its policy, nor are its election pledges apparently meant to be taken seriously.

In Favour of Profits

Austin Mitchell, MP in his book The Case for Labour (Longman 1983)

  To our left is a body of critics who castigate Labour for failing as something it has never been: an instrument for the elimination of capitalism.
  Socialists cannot be opposed to profits. Capital must be rewarded if it is used productively for the benefit of the community.
  It is Labour’s responsibility to make the State more effective and to restore its role where it has been pushed out for doctrinaire reasons. It is, however, also Labour’s responsibility to rebuild the private sector.

More Competitive

Extract from The Labour Party's Policy Review document, 1989:

  "Labour's goal: an internationally competitive economy. The single most important requirement of economic policy is to make Britain internationally competitive."

This article is also available in leaflet form. Copies for distribution can be obtained (£2 per 100 plus postage) from: Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN. 

Caught In The Act: Out of touch (1990)

The Caught In The Act Column from the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Out of touch

Willie Whitelaw went down to the mid-Staffordshire by-election to help the Tory candidate but probably lost him a bucketful of votes when he bought a box of chocolates and grandly said he wanted only the pound notes in the change. The shop girl had to remind him gently that we use only pound coins now—the notes went out years ago.

Being out of touch is one of the criticisms being levelled now at the Thatcher government—out of touch over Poll Tax. mortgages, interest rates, privatisation, the National Health Service . . . They are so out of touch that they lost a rock-solid seat like mid-Staffordshire— and that to a Labour candidate whose pre-packaged. master-minded campaign was openly contemptuous of the voters. Like football teams—or rather like their managers' excuses—when governments are out of touch they are also out of luck. Whitelaw's well-meant blunder was hungrily recorded by the news-hounds who accompanied him on his sweetshop safari, to be retold to an increasingly bewildered and irritated electorate. Thatcher's standing has crashed, as if she has fallen off a cliff, from that of a woman who single-handedly beat the Argentinians. Arthur Scargill and inflation and who then went on to persuade the people of eastern Europe of the benefits of McDonald's burgers and privatised water, into that of a reckless and stubborn dogmatist who would do everyone a favour by applying for her pension and her bus pass.

Squabbles

Of course there are still some hard-core Tories who pretend that all these difficulties are, to use one of Nigel Lawson's unhappier expressions, a “blip" and that all is in fact well within the government. But these loyalists ignore the evidence of their own eyes and ears and what they read in their favourite newspapers like the Daily Mail and the Sun. To begin with, there is the squabble over the leadership, before it is officially available to squabble over, between Heseltine, Tebbit and Howe. Not that any of them ever admit that the leadership is in question or that they would ever dream of opposing Thatcher. It is just that, in all modesty, if the party were ever to be in need of another prime minister who will give his all in the service of this Grand Old Country, well perhaps they have something to offer, perhaps they could be persuaded . . Since all these hopefuls also say that they wholeheartedly support Thatcher's policies and will do their utmost to ensure that we get another dose of Tory government under Thatcher at the next general election it is rather difficult to see why anyone should take them seriously.

Another symptom of the government's malaise has been the sudden eagerness of some of its prominent members to desert it. We refer to the moving examples of Peter Walker and Norman Fowler, both of them the slickest of political operators but who are now revealed as sentimental family men. Walkers survival through the years of opposition to Thatcher, while all around him other ministers were being picked off to crash into back-bench obscurity, must rank with the world's most thrilling escape yarns. Norman Fowler had some of the stickiest jobs in the Cabinet, some of its dirtiest work directly connected with class conflict and working class poverty but he adroitly rode most of his problems by setting up enquiries. By the time the enquiry reported Fowler was off to some other ministry, leaving an exceptionally unpleasant can to be carried by his successor— like the hapless John Moore at the Department of Social Security. Walker and Fowler have left the government, earnestly professing undying loyalty to it. on the excuse that they need to spend more time in their sumptuous homes with their lucky, secure families—a lot luckier than the families who desperately try to make the best of the cruel reforms which Fowler initiated at the DSS. Does anyone believe these reasons? Perhaps there should be an enquiry to find out.

Labour ecstatic

Naturally the Labour leaders are ecstatic about these developments as each day brings yet another crisis for the Tories. As they scent the government's impending doom they are presumably spending less and less time with their families. All that is needed, they happily burble, is one last electoral heave to dispense with the Tories and then we shall have a government of realism and humanity. People who worry about how they will pay the Poll Tax. or about whether the Building Society will be asking for their house back, or what will happen if their doctor's budget runs out just as they need some treatment. may find this an attractive vision. A reference to the history of Labour government should deflate their misplaced optimism.

In the middle of 1968 the Wilson government were facing a crisis which was remarkably similar to that of the Tories today. They had been returned to power, on a surge of expectation, with an increased majority in 1966. But two years later they were in an economic crisis with a persistent deficit in the balance of payments; they were in continual conflict with the unions over the statutory wage-freeze (the BOAC pilots were constrained to make a little history in this); they had lost a series of by-elections, the opinion polls said that only 27 per cent of people were satisfied with Wilson as prime minister and that if there were a general election then the Labour Party could expect to hang on to only 50 seats.

Plots

George Brown had finally managed to resign from the government because he objected to being left out when they were discussing economic crises (apparently he still wasn't bored by them) and Ray Gunter left the Cabinet grumbling about it being ‘overweight with intellectuals". It wasn't clear whether Gunther thought the government's crises could have been avoided with a bit of educational subnormality. In any case his departure was not deeply mourned. There were active plots to ease Wilson out of Number Ten, on the theory that he alone was responsible for capitalism's waywardness, encouraged by the Times, the Observer, the Economist and. under the deranged guidance of Cecil King, the Daily Mirror. Meanwhile, the Tories busily promoted their own candidate for prime minister as a "Man of Integrity". It was, of course, Ted Heath. Yes. it was rather a long time ago.

The Wilson government's response was to do just about the only thing they could do—plough on patching things up as best they could while pretending that the problems were only temporary provided everyone kept their nerve. Wilson soothingly assured the nation ". . . new and spectacular evidence from all over the country showing the robust strength of British industries" —rather like Tory ministers today who bleat about the "underlying strength of the British economy" or words to that effect. The Labour Party got out a mid-term manifesto which admitted some mistakes but insisted that basically the government was on the right lines—which is what the less obdurate Tories now try, when they harp on the violence among Poll Tax protests—to divert attention from their current problems by setting up a conflict, between the Commons and the Lords, a revival of the famous battle cry of Peers versus People.

Good and bad luck

What this shows is that governments do not basically differ. They all grapple with the problems of capitalism which are always beyond their powers to influence significantly. How the voters judge governments is based largely on what might loosely be called luck. Governments have their good times when, perhaps to their surprise, capitalism's affairs go well for them and the voters love them. And they have their bad times when the crises come one after another and the voters switch their support to another, equally ineffectual, style of reforming capitalism. These are the times when the cracks show, the squabbles become public, when some ministers suddenly want to go home to their wives and families and others can't remember things like what currency to use in a shop.

Ivan

Socialist Teachers (1990)

Party News from the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

A meeting will be held at the Socialist Party Head Office, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN (nearest tube: Clapham North) at 2pm on Sunday 20 May.

Further information: Kerima Mohideen, c/o Head Office.

Where the Greens go wrong (1990)

From the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not a day goes by without the problems of the environment being featured in the press and on radio and television. Particularly since the industrial revolution, there have been developed vastly increased powers of production which have spread across the planet and which are being operated in a very destructive way. So the question is: how do we establish a society in which all people are able to cooperate to provide a decent life for each other which at the same time will be a society which is in balance with nature?

The Socialist Party holds that only socialism can set up the relationships of co-operation, the freedom and the rational control over our affairs which can get us out of the mess we’re in. For all their good intentions, and for all their apparent radicalism, the policies of the Green Party are impractical because they stand no chance of establishing the kind of world they want to see.

The destructive nature of modern production has developed as part of capitalism. Because we live in a competitive, profit-motivated system enterprises come under an irresistible pressure to use the cheapest and most labour efficient methods. There is no choice about this. Companies simply have to go for low cost options and cannot afford to worry about the ecological consequences of this. To choose high cost options would be to commit economic suicide.

Under capitalism the production and distribution of goods takes place – and can only take place – according to the economic laws which govern the profitable circulation of capital. These laws are of an absolutely compelling nature. You can break the criminal law and sometimes get away with it, but you cannot break the laws which regulate the profit system without suffering financial loss or going bankrupt. What this means is that production methods cannot be chosen on their merits, as being environmentally friendly.

Constraints of Market System

The Central Electricity Generating Board is a state capitalist enterprise which every year throws up 4.2 million tons of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere. It’s not the only villain. West Germany has been putting up 3.5 million tons every year and the countries of the EEC have been putting up over 20 million tons.

In 1984, the British government came under pressure to reduce its emissions by 30 per cent. It refused because the cost would have been £1,000m. At the time British capitalism was struggling to get out of a deep depression in which there were nearly 4 million unemployed and in these circumstances the British government was not in a position to add £1 billion to its energy costs. You only get out of a depression by becoming more competitive, by improving the prospect of profit and by improving investment confidence. You can only achieve these things by lowering not increasing your overall production costs. This is a fundamental and compelling fact of market life.

Everybody must be aware of the tragic absurdity of the situation. We’ve got the urgent need to eliminate these harmful acid emissions and not just by 30 per cent. We’ve got the techniques for doing it, and there are millions of unemployed, so there’s a vast availability of labour for the work. Yet we are unable to bring these things together. We are held back by the economic constraints of the market system. We cannot do it because the profits of a privileged class minority who own and control the means of life come before the needs of the community. There are no sane grounds on which this can be justified.

The only way to get out of the mess is to establish socialism which will be based on common ownership, production solely for need and democratic control. With common ownership all means of production and distribution and all resources will be held in common by the whole community.

You can’t have the oil resources of the North Sea or anywhere else owned by oil companies or governments, you can’t have the land owned by agribusiness and exploited by them for profit, you can’t have the means of life, mining, industry, manufacture and transport owned by capital, and at the same time expect to run a decent society based on cooperation and social responsibility. It is just not possible. If you want a world of co-operation and responsibility then all these means of life must be brought under the democratic control of the whole community on the basis of common ownership.

On this basis, instead of the wages system through which workers are exploited, there will be a community of free producers who will cooperate to produce goods and provide services solely and directly for needs. The community will have access to the pool of goods created free from the barriers of the market, without exchange of any kind and therefore without the use of money which is only necessary for making profit.

It is only by this means that we can sweep aside the economic straitjacket which constrains all social action under capitalism. To come back to the problem of eliminating acid emissions from power stations, the cost of £1 billion would not be a factor. That money barrier would disappear and through co-operation we would use the techniques which are available, apply our energies and get on with the job.

In socialism we would not be bound to use the most labour efficient methods of production. We would be free to select our methods in accordance with a wide range of socially desirable criteria, in particular the vital need to protect the environment. It wouldn’t matter if ecologically benign methods of producing energy required more allocations of labour than destructive methods as we wouldn’t be producing commodities which have to compete in price for sales in the market. We’d be free of all that.

The Green Party has talked about a “steady-state” society and this is something we should aim at. What it means is that we should construct permanent, durable means of production which you don’t constantly innovate. We would use these to produce durable equipment and machinery and durable consumer goods designed to last for a long time, designed for minimum maintenance and made from materials which if necessary can be re-cycled. In this way we would get a minimum loss of materials; once they’ve been extracted and processed they can be used over and over again. It also means that once you’ve achieved satisfactory levels of consumer goods, you don’t insist on producing more and more. Total social production could even be reduced. You achieve this “steady state” and you don’t go on expanding production. This would be the opposite of cheap, shoddy, “throw-away” goods and built-in obsolescence, which results in a massive loss and destruction of resources.

This is something that socialism could do. The problem for the Green Party is that they want this, but they also want to retain the market system in which goods are distributed through sales at a profit and people’s access to goods depends upon their incomes. The market, however, can only function with a constant pressure to renew its capacity for sales; and if it fails to do this production breaks down, people are out of employment and suffer a reduced income. It is a fundamental flaw and an insoluble contradiction in the Green Party argument that they want to retain the market system, which can only be sustained by continuous sales and continuous incomes, and at the same time they want a conservation society with reduced productive activity. These aims are totally incompatible with each other.

Old Failed Policies

The Green Party sees itself as a new force in politics but its basic approach to problems is years out of date. Like the Labour Party, it imagines it can do all sorts of things through the tax system. It says, for example, that it wants a tax system which will substantially redistribute wealth. The Labour Party tried that years ago and it failed, and the Green Party will fail for the same reasons.

Like the old Labour Party they imagine that by having the right kind of government in charge of capitalism they will be able to administer it in the interests of the whole community. The reason the Labour Party failed should be obvious. In its everyday operation capitalism staggers along according to its economic laws which cannot be controlled or rationally directed, on the basis of an economic antagonism between classes with capital trying to maximise its profits at the expense of wages and salaries and workers struggling to maximise wages at the expense of profits. It staggers along on the basis of competition and economic rivalries between enterprises and between capitalist nations.

Yet the Green Party thinks it can form a government which somehow, as if by magic, can ignore this reality and act on the basis of a common community interest through cooperation and socially responsible policies. This cannot be done. The tragedy is that we’ve got a lot of sincere and enthusiastic people in the Greens being sidetracked by these out-dated illusions which have dissipated so much energy and wasted so much time in the past.

The Green Party manifesto contains an elaborate battery of new taxes through which they hope to restructure society. Again, the old Labour Party manifestos contained similar proposals with the same intentions. The Labour Party abandoned them because they failed, but the Green Party has resurrected the corpses of these dead policies.

There’s a community ground rent, a resource or conservation tax, pollution charges, increased consumption taxes, higher taxes on large firms, a new company turnover tax, and new trade taxes which would operate through import and export tariffs.

We can project a scenario for what would happen under a Green government. Imagine that it has passed a law standardising the production of all bottles and glass containers so they can be returned to food and drink producers to be used again. It’s a sensible idea – socialism would do it – but this is a Green government under capitalism and it has put firms in the glass industry out of business and made a lot of workers unemployed. As a result of its trade tax on imports other government have retaliated and placed an embargo on the imports of British goods. This has put more firms out of business and more workers out of jobs. As a result of higher company taxes on large firms there has been a sharp drop in business confidence with a corresponding reduction in investment. Again, this has made more workers unemployed. With less trade and less taxable income, there has been a sharp fall in funds flowing into the Green Exchequer. It has had to abandon its guaranteed income scheme and is facing widespread strikes in the public sector with vital services breaking down.

These depressed conditions have led to an alarming run on the pound, with the Green Chancellor frantically buying in sterling to keep up its value. Having dissipated government funds on this and other measures the Green government has been forced to abandon its plans to invest L1 billion to reduce acid emissions from power stations.

In other words, the Green government is facing mounting hostility from the trade unions, employers, the City and the international business community. It is in desperate straits struggling with a worsening financial crisis. They’ve had to set aside all their plans for dealing with the problems of the environment. Their poll ratings have hit zero, and they’ve fallen out amongst themselves arguing about what went wrong.

In the light of the economic realities of capitalism and the experience of previous reformist governments, which is the more likely scenario? The one being projected in the Green Party’s sublimely optimistic literature or the one just outlined?

Urgent Need for Socialism

The obvious, and only practical, way forward is to get rid of the whole insane capitalist structure. This is the serious work begun by the socialist movement which has to be supported. One of the problems is that throughout this century we’ve had a lot of people who don’t like the system and who want a better world, but they were diverted by the superficially attractive but fatal illusion that capitalism can be made to serve our needs through the right kind of reformist government.

In the meantime the problems have stayed and some have got worse. The Green Party is the first to stress that we don’t have a lot of time, and it is certain that we cannot delay the solution without suffering the consequences. There can be no justification, on any grounds whatsoever, for wanting to retain an exploitative system which robs workers of the products of their labour, which puts privileged class interests and profit before the needs of the community, which robs the soil of its fertility, plunders nature of its resources and destroys the natural systems on which all our lives depend.

The only alternative is socialism. We must concentrate all our efforts on the work of building up a majority of socialists. It might seem a big job because our numbers are small, but we wouldn’t need many more for us to become a strong voice in the community and every new socialist makes the work easier.

Pieter Lawrence

50 Years Ago: May Day: Bedlam Let Loose (1990)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Exactly one year ago the Socialist Standard's annual May-Day Message emphasised the imminent danger of war: today this war has been in progress for eight months. Poland, Russia, Finland, and now the Scandinavian lands, have been drawn into its destructive vortex.

The League of Nations. "Collective Security”, the "Peace Front"—all have vanished, and in their place has come the line-up of allies in war. as it has always, down throughout the history of capitalism.

"Armed strength means peace!" "Alliances prevent war!" Does anyone believe those discarded catch-cries?

Yet right up to the outbreak of hostilities millions pinned their faith to such spurious arguments. Even now we can hear in some quarters regrets: "If only the Western Powers could have made a pact with Russia . . .!”

The cause of war to-day is capitalism; the line-up in war is forced on the countries concerned by their interests as capitalist competitors for wealth and trade.

(From the editorial in the Socialist Standard, May 1940).

Sting in the Tail: Recipe for Profit (1990)

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

Recipe for Profit

Marks and Spencer, Britain's biggest retailer, have given 24,000 sales staff a whopping pay rise of 26%!

They already pay at least 30% more on average than other stores, so what lies behind this seeming capitalist generosity?

M & S pay more because this keeps staff turnover down to 20% yearly while the figure for other stores is around double that.

The reason for the 26% pay rise is that M & S must compete for staff with other employers in a situation where fewer school-leavers are coming onto the labour market. Sainbury's had just offered its junior staff rises of between 8.5 and 15% so M & S had to top that.

There is an old recipe for baking a rabbit pie which begins "First catch your rabbit". M & S know that before they can declare their usual big fat profit they must first catch their workers.


Theory v. Practice

"Competition good, monopoly bad", has been the constant refrain of this government.

They are all for competition because, they say, it promotes efficiency, gives consumers choice and keeps prices down while monopoly does the opposite.

Yet the government have been turning a blind eye to many takeovers which reduce competition. For example, British Airways' swallowing of British Caledonian and GEC's purchase of Ferranti's radar business.

The government has simply recognised that the likes of BA and GEC have to compete worldwide with rivals which are even bigger than they are, so they must increase market share by eliminating competition or risk being swallowed up themselves.

So competition may be the government's theory but the relentless trend towards monopoly is the practice.


Midlands Miracle

Ever-ready to supply its readers with spiritual insights The Independent has a Religious Affairs Correspondent and he has recently been reporting on miraculous events in the Midlands.

It would seem that there have been three reports of God's name appearing in Arabic inside aubergines!

  Tasleem Moulvi, of Kingnewton Street, Leicester, told The Independent yesterday that her mother found two significant aubergines on Friday night when she sliced them open after visiting another one, exposed in Bakewell Street. One, sliced twice, shows the Arabic characters for Allah repeated three times; the other, she said, appeared to contain a verse from the Koran, though this had not yet been deciphered.

Cynics may be tempted to think that it was merely a "sell by" date that had leaked through but Ms Moulvis has no such doubts.

  "It’s quite clear," she said. "You don't even have to have a magnifier. Everyone who has been round to see it and pay their respects has said it's a message that it's going to be the end of the world or whatever. It is a message to tell all the Muslims, and all the other faiths, that this is the true faith. No other religions have had this happen to them."

Well come on all you devout Christians in the Leicester area. Are you going to take this lying down? Get out there and search through the greengrocer's shelves. There is sure to be the odd banana or two that contains the Lord's Prayer or the Sermon on the Mount.


Speak Out, Nigel

When Nigel Lawson was the Chancellor of the Exchequer he was fond of attacking "inflationary wage rises".

Now that he has quit that role and is safely seated on the board at Barclays he can forget all that nonsense. Just as well really, for it would be embarrassing if he kept on espousing the myth that pay rises cause inflation.

You see, the Chairman of Barclays, Sir John Quinton's salary has jumped to £332,920 — an increase of 25%; and that of an unnamed highest-paid director to £470,283 — an increase of 47%!

We await with interest Mr. Lawson's next outburst on inflationary wage rises!


A Horror Story

In February this page dealt with the plight of Brazil's Yanomami Indians whose lands have been invaded, with government approval, by hordes of gold miners who spread death and disease.

Now the miners are in retreat but not because of new-found government compassion for the Indians. This is due to the collapse of the price of gold following the anti-inflation programme of Brazil's new government.

This fall in price — from 900 cruzeiros a gramme to 200 — means that "hundreds of thousands" of miners have been abandoned to their fate in the rain-forest.

The Guardian (31 March) reports that the flights which brought the miners' food, medicine and supplies have been cut from 130 a day to 20, and 50,000 miners, many suffering from malaria, hepatitis and hunger, are trying to reach safety by any means they can.

This episode at least proves that Brazil's government cannot now be accused of favouring the miners against the Indians: it regards them all with the same callous indifference.


Forthright Talk

Are you sick of politicians who lie, flannel and give "coded messages"? Then be grateful for Eric Forth, Industry Minister and ardent free-marketeer.

Forth told a CBI conference on Japanese investment in Britain:

Britain has one of the lowest labour costs in the European Community — one half of the costs in Germany and one third of the costs in France or Italy. Only Greece, Portugal and Spain are cheaper. The workforce is also skilled and flexible, since it is not limited by rigid labour laws.

The Guardian 1 March

So low wages and poor health and safety laws for workers are something to brag about, a tribute to Thatcher's "economic miracle" of the last 11 years!

We should hail Eric Forth as something unique — a politician who spoke the truth in plain language even if it was due more to sheer arrogance than honesty.


Too Much Nonsense

The spurt in inflation has got the "experts" airing their pet theories again. On TV recently, such economic gurus as Peter Jay and Sir Keith Joseph have blamed inflation on "too much money chasing too few goods". So competition between consumers for scarce goods is what causes prices to rise!

Anyone can test this absurd notion by walking into Dixons, Woolworths, Burtons etc., any day of the week. Will they see very few goods on display with harassed sales staff besieged by throngs of customers waving wads of money and clamouring to buy?

Of course not. What they will see is an abundance of goods with customers often outnumbered by sales staff; so the spectacle of "too much money chasing too few goods" simply doesn't exist and we can reveal to the likes of Peter Jay and Sir Keith Joseph that it is deliberate depreciation of the currency by governments which causes inflation.

Scorpion

What the paper said (1990)

From the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why on earth aren't there more socialists about? It surely can't be because the daily newspapers (at least, those that are referred to as the quality papers since they are supposed to provide news rather than gossip) don't reveal all about the society we live in, namely capitalism, a class-divided society with the rich and privileged on the one side and the deprived and struggling on the other. This writer happened to have had a little extra time to go thoroughly through a recent issue of The Times.

You can choose any issue you like and you'll nearly always find something along the lines of the following. Casually turn over a page and there's a picture . . .  47, Grosvenor Sq. in Mayfair described as “having a discreet facade" harbouring “an opulent interior. . . hiding one of the most expensive homes in London". In case of visitors or a large family "there are 10 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, six reception rooms, swimming pool, gym and sauna, all decorated in the style of an Arabian palace, including tented ceilings, huge chandeliers and ornate mouldings picked out in gold." Not bad, eh? and we're told “it's a snip at £15 million".

Well, we heard that the East Germans had a fit of apoplexy when they learnt of the high-style living and larks of Honecker & Co. but dear Erich, even if he could have monopolised half his comrades' privileges, could not have matched this, so how are the East German workers going to react now that they have the blessings of the free market bestowed upon them, and with those in the upper spheres above them enjoying the aforementioned trappings?

Leaving this for the future to work out, one would have thought that the Editor would have been careful about where to place the above item, but no! Right underneath, as if to lend point and contrast, we find a report which tells us that the National Audit Office (a money-saving watchdog committee acting conscientiously on behalf of the capitalist class) is deploring the fact that £11 million is spent "needlessly" because doctors are too liberal in giving out sick notes to workers for benefit claims. That means that if you're not feeling quite yourself one morning and not inclined to join the scrum to get to work and then having to face those dreary hours till knocking off time, and then the bustle of the return journey, think twice before rushing off to the doctor. We're told that even a 1 per cent drop in these untaxed (shame!) benefits would save £11 million but, just think, even this sum wouldn't be enough to buy that two by two in Grosvenor Sq. We're also told that the basic rate of Invalidity Benefit is £43.60 a week although (heaven be praised for the generosity of the capitalist class) in certain cases this can rise to £60 or (wonders will never cease) to £100 per week. One small point, though: these sums would not be sufficient for the upkeep of the premises mentioned above.

Tarred with same brush

Not to labour the point (does it need labouring?) let's turn to another page. Now, we've heard recently, over and over again from all directions, about the end and demise of Communism or, as one BBC programme had it, "The flight from Communism". It so happens that this programme was dealing with the events in Poland, and it also happens that in this issue of The Times a correspondent in Poland informed us that a lot of former secret police of the Interior Ministry are turning to making an honest living by acting as private tecs, but who and what for? “It is to protect rich businessmen who feel nervous in the classless(!) society". Amongst other things their brief:

is to protect private villas, private shops and warehouses, transport valuables, etc. Crime is rising quickly everywhere. A particular target for thieves are houses with expensive satellite dishes—in Poland a sign of substance and wealth. Millionaires abound . . . there are jewellers, perfumers, cake wholesalers, sunglass manufacturers, computer importers and money changers who have become de facto private bankers. One detective agency assured us that 'when the Western capitalist comes here we can provide the finest bodyguards' (Times. 12 January).

Turning to another page we find the story of John Smith, the Shadow Labour Chancellor being piqued by the suggestion that Labour's policies would impose huge burdens on business and spending "huge amounts of time in boardrooms and at City dining tables explaining how a Labour government would get manufacturing industry on its feet again". Now did you think these industries were flat on their faces? You wouldn't think so looking at some of their profit and loss accounts in the financial pages.

On another page, there's Maggie going on something awful about the workers asking for more money in their wage packets . . .“very disturbing”, "jobs at risk”, “Britain's wage costs higher than main competitors”. "wage costs must be kept down", but at the same time “it was essential to keep higher interest rates going for the foreseeable future".

As we socialists say, they're all tarred with the same brush and, as Mercutio put it in his last moments (and we hope fervently that the working class will not wait until such an eventuality), "A plague on both your houses".

Max Judd

Between the Lines: Only Joking (1990)

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

Only Joking

More mature TV viewers must be at a loss what to do with their Monday nights this month. April 9th saw the last in the series of Stand Up Jim Davidson (ITV), which was billed as "adult humour". What this meant in practice was peak-time permission for the chirpy cockney to entertain the troops by setting the clock back thirty years. Remember those good old days before we were taught to worry about the feelings of racial and other minorities? When a good joke had to have a good defenceless target? Well, Jim takes the Sun newspaper and simplifies it into small-screen sniggers for the simple-minded. Asians in Bradford, people in wheelchairs. the blind, women in council flats. Jews. Irish and gays: all these and many more were featured in his gallery of mugs. Only one group was missing from his league table of comical victims: white, male. English boneheads, with a microphone in one hand, half a pint of lager in the other, and not very much in between.

Democracy Versus Marketing

There was a great deal of promise in the early parts of "Remote Control: Television and Democracy" (Channel 4, April 7, 8-9pm). First, there was an excellent survey of the ways in which each period of history has seen a struggle over control of the key means of communication. In the Middle Ages, for example, the translation of the Bible into English was part of a shifting of power from Rome to Canterbury. In the nineteenth century, punitive taxation on publications was used to prevent the free distribution of radical ideas within the working class. And in the twentieth century, the early lessons learnt by the ruling class regarding the political uses of cinema were later applied to radio and television.

A further useful point was made by this documentary, regarding the current debate about the likely effects of the impending "deregulation" of broadcasting, and the arrival of cable and satellite. The debate has been almost exclusively based on arguments about "quality" and choice. Will deregulation lead to a widening of choice, a degeneration of quality, or both? But this is to regard television as purely another product for mass consumption like any other in the capitalist world market. The stress being placed on the concepts of quality and choice place the millions of viewers in a passive role, their only function being to pay their money and flick their remote control switches. But television, as a means of expression and communication, has always had the potential to be more than simply a product for mass consumption. The technology, particularly since the advent in the 70s of small, hand-held video cameras, could allow large numbers of people to be making programmes as well as watching them. Present government plans for the future of broadcasting fail even to pay lip service to such possibilities.

It was at this point that the programme began to flag somewhat. Lacking any really pertinent political analysis, it was not able to touch on the reasons for this, or to approach any real solutions. This inability of present-day society to allow proper participation in the broadcasting process is in fact symptomatic of a much wider problem. Real, full democracy in society is simply not compatible with a class-divided, property and profit-based social system. With regard to possible solutions, the programme focused on access slots like the BBC's "Open Door", the problems they have encountered, and on Channel Four, with its special remit to cater for minority views. Radical commentators trotted out tired modern cliches about their wish that TV would become more "empowering", "enabling" and "facilitating" for people, but had little idea how this might happen.

The conclusion reached, however, was refreshingly realistic: that the direction in which TV is heading shows less and less concern with the exciting ways in which it could be used as a democratic means of expression, and more and more preoccupation with being a profitable investment within the market system.

Steve Coleman

Return of Labour? (1990)

Editorial from the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Are memories so short? Or is that Thatcher has become so unsupportable that people will vote for anything just to get rid of her? Whatever the reason, the opinion polls confirmed by recent Labour electoral victories seem to be suggesting that another Labour government is a real possibility. 

As those who remember the Wilson and Callaghan prime ministerships of the 1960s and 1970s can testify, Labour governments have always ended up administering capitalism according to its rules. Attacks on workers as greedy wreckers for going on strike, anti-union laws, troops as strike-breakers, benefit cuts, hospital closures, unemployment, poverty and homelessness are not just features of recent Tory rule. They were features of Labour rule too—because, in the end, the capitalist profit economy forces governments to dance to its tune, by putting profits before people's needs. Capitalism controls governments, not the other way round.

Capitalism can only work as a profit system against the interests of the wage and salary earning majority. Any party which takes on responsibility for governing capitalism has sooner or later to recognise this. The Tory party always has, even when not in power. In the past Labour politicians have generally learned the hard way: by experiencing the failure of their reformist attempts, when in office, to make capitalism work other than as a system where profits come, and must come, first. Today's Labour Party, however, is no different from the Tories in recognising, even when not in office, that capitalism is a profit-driven, market-oriented economy that must be allowed to operate as such.

Just before last year's Labour Conference, John Smith, the shadow Chancellor, gave a remarkably frank television interview in which he made it absolutely plain that if Labour came to power again it would impose tough spending controls: priority would be given to restoring the profitability and competitiveness of capitalist industry. "If that means we have to postpone some of our social ambitions, then we may have to do so . . . We're all agreed that we cannot spend what we have not earned and we intend to earn it before we spend it. That will be the guiding light of the next Labour government" (BBC “On the Record”, 1 October 1989).

Since then Smith, in a bid to convince the capitalists that their interests will be safe in Labour hands, has taken this message directly to the City. Labour, he told one meeting of investment bankers, was determined to "maintain a responsible fiscal policy with prudent control over public finances, spending only as resources allow and as the economy can afford”. If resources were not available, "we have to scale down our spending” (Independent, 23 February).

So nobody should entertain the illusion that Labour will restore the cuts in spending on social and public services made under the Tories. We are being told that that will have to wait till profit levels have been restored. In the meantime, it's to be austerity as usual. Jam tomorrow, as it always is under capitalism, but never today.

Smith even said that there would be "no dashes for growth" under another Labour government. “Chancellors should be more concerned to avoid mistakes than engineer the miraculous. Economic management is largely about avoiding unnecessary shocks”. In other words, a future Labour government will aspire merely to hold the ring while capitalist businesses get on with making profits. No wonder the bankers were reported to have been impressed. This is what they were used to hearing from Tory politicians.

Smith is not just expressing a personal opinion, but official Labour policy summed up by Kinnock as "making the market economy work better than the Tories”. The “market economy" is a euphemism for capitalism, and capitalism can only work as a profit system. Making capitalism work means ensuring that priority is given to profit-making. The Tories have always understood this. Now Labour has too. Their policies have become indistinguishable from those of the Tory wets. In fact Kinnock, Smith, Hattersley and the others are Tory wets in all but name. Which means that the return of a Labour government would have even less significance than in the past. This time it would represent a mere palace revolution amongst open supporters of capitalism. Like Heseltine replacing Thatcher. Tweedledum taking over from Tweedledee.

What we mean by Revolution (1990)

From the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The word Revolution, which we Socialists are so often forced to use, has a terrible sound in most people's ears, even when we have explained to them that it does not necessarily mean a change accompanied by riot and all kinds of violence, and cannot mean a change made mechanically and in the teeth of opinion by a group of men who have somehow managed to seize on the executive power for the moment. Even when we explain that we use the word revolution in its etymological sense, and mean by it a change in the basis of society, people are scared at the idea of such a vast change, and beg that you will speak of reform and not revolution. As, however, we Socialists do not at all mean by our word revolution what these worthy people mean by their word reform, I can't help thinking that it would be a mistake to use it, whatever projects we might conceal beneath its harmless envelope. So we will stick to our word, which means a change in the basis of society."

—William Morris in How We Live and How We Might Live.

Human nature and Socialism (1990)

From the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

t seems that everyone is an expert on human nature, right? Especially politicians, who often make remarks about the general nature of humans. Why, everyone knows that humans are an inherently greedy, selfish, violent, nasty species. I mean, what could be more obvious?

This conventional wisdom is both wrong and unscientific. There has been a lot of debate over the years, for instance the Nature vs Nurture debate, but it seems that the public at large remain ill informed. The public's judgement is of course affected by the unchallenged remarks of people in positions of power. We not only do ourselves a great injustice by condemning our fellow humans in this bigoted way. we also place ourselves and our collective future in great danger. That such views should be widespread amongst all sections of the population is a striking commentary on the education most people receive.

It is worth noting that when people make the scathing remarks concerning our nature they often conveniently exclude themselves and their friends. Actually, when most people talk about human nature, they are referring to human behaviour—two different concepts.

Human nature implies a built-in, inherent attribute, and we do have these. For instance, the urge to satisfy human needs such as food, clothing, and shelter. Human behaviour, on the other hand, includes learnt or acquired behaviour. The fact is that we are a social animal and that our behaviour is virtually all learned behaviour.

One to two million years ago, human beings emerged as a species from an ape like creature, and for at least the last 100,000 years we have had basically the same bodily form. The thing that ensured our survival was and is co-operation and this has been a constant indispensable feature of human society. Unlike other animals we long ago dispensed with adapting ourselves biologically to the environment, but instead we adapt the environment to ourselves. For hundreds of thousands of years we lived in primitive hunter-gatherer societies of tribal communities. One of the outstanding features of these communities was the ability of their members to co-operate and live in harmony for their own mutual benefit. If they had the behavioural attributes that we now so glibly condemn in ourselves, human beings would have perished forever millions of years ago.

The main things that people are born to do are to eat, drink, keep warm, imitate, copulate and learn. The relations they enter into with each other at a given time to accomplish these ends set the pattern for the social outlook and the social code. In the course of history humanity has moved from relative simplicity in the social arrangements in isolated communities into a world of large interconnected industrial 'complexes. What people think and how they act is not due to some fundamental instinct, but is the result of customs, regulations and inhibitions that spring from the social environment in which people of past history have had to solve the problem of living. In other words, that people are able to think and act is a fact of biological and social development, but how they think and act is a result of social conditions. Since private property came into existence some 10,000 years ago. the pursuit of property has bred murder, cruelty, fraud, enmity and other anti-social behaviour.

There has been little discernible change in the fundamental make-up of humans, yet there have been considerable changes in social conditions. For example, stealing today is looked on as a criminal act whereas hunter-gatherer societies did not have any concept of stealing because there was no private property.

As to the assumption of selfishness, there are thousands of people who give selfless devotion in all manner of voluntary effort. There is co-operation going on all around us if you care to look, despite the competitive, one-upmanship, law-of-the-jungle philosophy which is rammed down our throats. It comes as a surprise that, despite the enormous inhuman stresses that are placed upon people by the society we live in, there are not more murders, rapes and crimes in general. The selfish, cruel, anti-social conduct that is laid at the door of human nature is really only the outcome of systems based on private property, which compel people to engage in predatory conduct in order to survive.

We cannot afford to let an erroneous view of ourselves as human beings prevail. There is absolutely no reason why we cannot live in peace and harmony. That this will mean that we must make a fundamental change in our system of society is something we will come to when we know about ourselves as humans.

Dave Tildesley
World Socialist Party of New Zealand

Gorbachev and Socialism* (1990)

From the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

*This untitled block quotation from Vitali Vitaliev was attached to the unsigned article 'Is Socialism Dead?' 

"The main mistake of Western analysts trying to assess Gorbachev's career is the attempt to treat him as a kind of God-sent Messiah who emerged to save Russia from 'socialism'. Nothing can be further from reality. Throughout his political career Gorbachev was part and parcel of the apparat. He came not to dismantle 'socialism' but to preserve it.
    I am putting 'socialism' into inverted commas because there has never been anything of the kind in Russia. No other country is so far from the ideas of equality and fraternity as the Soviet Union. If there was a socialism, or even a Communism at all, it was only for the ruling elite who lived and are still living in a separate world.
    It is a world of privileges, starting from birth (special maternity homes) going on all through their lives (special shops, hospitals, hairdressers' salons, canteens, toilets and what not) and not ending even with the end of their physical existence (special cemeteries). Yes, yes, special cemeteries for the rulers of 'the first working-class State in the world', where workers are not supposed to be buried."

—Soviet journalist Vitali Vitaliev (Observer, 11 March)

An American Marxist (1990)

Book Review from the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Daniel De Leon. By Stephen Coleman. Manchester University Press. £25.

The contribution to socialist thought of Daniel De Leon has been neglected over the years. Most labour historians have mentioned him only in passing, usually in scorn and often inaccurately. Stephen Coleman’s book, in Manchester University Press’s “Lives of the Left” series, rectifies the situation. But who was De Leon?

By 1886 Venezuelan-born Daniel De Leon was 34 and living in the Hispanic quarter of New York. An ordinary family man, his main concern was to achieve secure employment as a university law lecturer. However, he was soon to come into conflict with the status quo and leave university life for good. He immersed himself in the radical movements of his day, finally emerging as a Marxian socialist in 1890. He joined the American Socialist Labour Party (SLP) which he was to dominate, transform and remain in for the rest of his life. He stood for socialism and nothing but, and his distinct brand of Marxism and party organisation is still extant today.

De Leon’s major concern, states Coleman, was “to apply the orthodox position of Marx to the industrial conditions of his own time, and to simplify its reasoning and conclusions”. He goes so far as to include him in the tradition of popularising socialist ideas of William Morris and Robert Tressell and to write that it would be hard to name any other source of Marxian education in the USA. De Leonist bodies also emerged in Canada and Australia.

In Britain De Leon’s works were a major influence on the revolutionary minority which left the Social Democratic Federation in 1903-4. This minority formed the British Socialist Labour Party and the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Coleman quotes Jack Fitzgerald, a founder member of the SPGB, who thought the American SLP’s journal The People “the best socialist journal published in English”.

De Leon’s standards were rigorous, and Coleman makes it clear that he imposed them on the SLP. For a start, membership of the party was not automatic. Applicants had to demonstrate an understanding of SLP principles before joining. Neither were waverers tolerated for long. That unity was not to be had at any price is demonstrated by the party split of 1899, when a halving of the membership was regarded by the remaining members as a gain in the party’s strength. James Connolly was one of the more notable waverers to be ousted. Now more famed for his Irish nationalism than his socialism, he left the SLP fold with De Leon accusing him of introducing racial (national) and religious questions into party tactics and organisation.

De Leon’s influence was such that principles would not be exchanged for a “broad-church” numbers-game. It was this principled stand for socialism and nothing but that influenced those who found the Socialist Party of Great Britain. But this is as far as it goes. There is another aspect of De Leonism that Coleman could have more clearly distinguished from this political influence: socialist industrial unionism.

“Socialists tend to die frustrated or deluded: frustrated that human emancipation has not been achieved, or deluded that it has”. Such is the socialist’s lot according to Coleman. But perhaps De Leon’s life shows that frustration and delusion need not be mutually exclusive. There is no doubt that De Leon’s political life was a model of socialist commitment and principle. The frustrating fact was that workers continued to be, in Coleman’s words, “a recalcitrant force”, persistently denying ballot success to the SLP. And though Coleman emphasises that De Leon was never deluded into thinking that socialism had been achieved, it could be argued that he held illusions about how it could be achieved – illusions born of frustration.

By 1905 De Leon was rejecting the notion of a solely political transformation of society. He asserted the need for an economic wing to the socialist movement and put forward a three-stage theory of revolution: socialists winning the battle of ideas, victory at the ballot-box, and socialist industrial unions supplying the economic might to enforce electoral victory and workers’ power. He also ventured a view of future socialist society that would be an industrial unionist administration. To this end he was a major influence on the formation of two industrial unions: the Socialist Trade and Labour Alliance and then the Industrial Workers of the World – both ultimately to fail.

Socialist unions were never to be the short-cut to a mass class-conscious movement that De Leon might have hoped for. How could they be when, unlike the political wing, an understanding of basic socialist principles was not a condition of membership? Coleman argues that De Leon was not wrong to condemn “pure and simple” trade unions. “His mistake was to attach too much importance to leadership, assuming that dishonest leaders imposed themselves on unwilling union memberships”. The fact is that these leaders had the support of the workers “and this would not be changed by retreat into socialist-run unions, but by hard and sustained persuasion of those who accepted the union status-quo”. In Britain industrial unionism was taken up with enthusiasm by the SLP and even by a short-lived minority in the early SPGB.

Coleman is quick to point out that De Leon’s post-revolutionary plan, to replace a political state that would “wither away” with a work-based industrial administration, had its unsolved problems. What about those who do not work? For example, the retired, disabled and those in full-time education. Neither, Coleman states, were De Leon’s views on socialism in one country nor his plans for a post-revolution labour-voucher system what one might expect from a consistent socialist. What about free access?

These were certainly lapses. But De Leon was a product of his times. Coleman claims that his industrial administration theory was borrowed from Edward Bellamy’s utopian work Looking Backward and of course even Marx came up with a labour-voucher scheme in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. In final mitigation, Coleman points out that De Leon was unable to spend time working out an entirely coherent conception of socialism because he was too busy recruiting socialists.

Although Coleman can hardly suppress a glowing respect for this giant amongst pioneer socialists, his is not an uncritical account of De Leon’s life and ideas. De Leon’s failings as a revolutionary socialist are openly and clearly brought out and, in many respects, account for the greater part of Coleman’s work.

Indeed this book, apart from its biographical content, should achieve the status of a handbook to the do’s and don’ts of socialist strategy. As well as being a well-researched scholarly work, it is accessible and eminently readable. It only remains to add that a cheaper, paper-back version will be published later.

John Dunn

Is Socialism Dead? (1990)

From the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following article first appeared in a university newspaper in Vancouver. We reproduce it as a welcome change from the general media line that events in eastern Europe represent "the failure of socialism". For those unfamiliar with the Canadian political scene, the "Socreds" are more or less the equivalent of the Tories in Britain and the NDP of the Labour Party.

What's happening in eastern Europe? We've all seen the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, repressive governments going down one after the other in the face of mass Working Class opposition, general strikes, even armed revolution. Most of the media tells us that socialism and communism are dead, now we know for sure it will never work; Marxism is history, so let's just get out there and join the young Socreds, make lotsa bucks and enjoy capitalism.

But wait a minute – what is Marxism, anyway? Isn't it supposed to be about fighting for workers' revolution? Wouldn't Marx have supported a mass movement for freedom? One hundred years after his death, you still can't open a daily newspaper without reading the name of Marx, but you will look long and hard for an explanation of what the man actually stood for or wrote about. The fact that Marx actively supported all the popular uprisings of his day, that he fought for radical democracy, freedom of speech and assembly, the rights of oppressed nations, and all civil rights is unreported.

And what is socialism anyway? You will see the word socialist used to describe societies as far apart as Sweden and Cambodia, under Pol Pot; parties as far apart as the Bolsheviks and the NDP; and individuals as different as Stalin and Pierre Trudeau. Does the word have any meaning anymore?

Actually, it does, and that's why the argument about socialism vs. capitalism rages on. But no other debate is so buried under such a mountain of mystification and distortion by vested interests, East and West.

It serves the interests of the Stalins and the Ceausescus and the Pol Pots to present themselves as the brilliant leaders of societies in which exploitation and oppression have been abolished. These are the pigs from Animal Farm. But it also serves the interests of the Western powers to tell the population that socialism already exists, it's that place over there where governments are so brutal and the soup lines are 5 miles long. As long as they can present capitalism as the most natural, prosperous and just system, they will be safe from the anger of their own working class.

Why are the People Rising? Why is the opposition in eastern Europe so massive? There are many justified complaints: widespread food shortages, government repression, corruption, lack of civil rights, lack of democracy, and so on. There is in some eastern Europeans an almost religious faith that western style capitalism and a free market can solve these problems. Is that true?

We in Vancouver are lucky to live in one of the most peaceful and prosperous backwaters of the world. For most of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the existence of a free market does not mean that "consumers have more choice". It means that the majority go hungry because they can't afford enough food. In the former "Eastern Bloc" they ration by keeping food off the shelves. In the capitalist market, they ration by keeping money out of people's pockets.

Last year there was a big media scare about poisoned fruit from Chile. Most reports didn't mention the reason the Chilean opposition poisoned export fruit – because most farmworkers in Latin America suffer from malnourishment while the mountains of food they produce fly first class to North America. This is the "miracle" of the free market.

The Globe and Mail had an interesting front page one day in December. On one side was the headline "Mass Protest Against Corruption in Leipzig". On the other side was "RCMP investigating 15 MP's". The ruling class in eastern Europe were certainly corrupt, like the ruling class anywhere – but they hardly hold a monopoly on corruption.

One of the things that upset people in east Europe the most was the revelation that their leaders, who never stopped telling the workers that they had to tighten their belts for the good of society, were living high in private compounds guarded by secret police and German Shepherd dogs. The media in East Germany and Rumania were given tours of private headquarters full of luxury goods and gold-plated bathroom fixtures and we all were shocked at the hypocrisy.

But in the west, the ruling class doesn't even bother to hide their wealth – they prefer to show off. You don't have to go to any secret compound – just take your car along South Marine Drive (there's no bus service – if you can't afford a car you don't belong there). We are so used to the inhumanity of the market that we hardly notice that millions of people living under capitalism sleep in the streets because they can't afford to pay rent, that millions die from disease because they can't afford medical care, that millions starve because they can't afford food, but we find it perfectly tolerable that someone like junk bond king Michael Milken should earn $500 million per year for doing no socially useful work of any kind.

It is completely unacceptable to the people of eastern Europe that they have no democratic control over the state bureaucracy. It is true that in the west in many countries we have the very valuable right to vote for this or that member of the ruling class to misrepresent the people in parliament. But MPs actually don't have much power. You can never vote for those who have the real social power in our society – you can never vote for the boss. You will never lay a democratic finger on the industrialists, the bankers, the bureaucrats, the IMF and the World Bank, the newspaper magnates, the executives of the multinationals, and all their kinfolk, because between them and the working class stands a Chinese wall – the institution of private property, backed up by the constitution, the law, the judges, the police, and if necessary, the army – in short, the state.

If you look at it closely, all the complaints which led to the uprising in eastern Europe exist in the west in even greater measure. And if you look at Marx closely, you'll find that he was any enemy of the state as much as he was an enemy of the market.

Real socialism, where working people control all of society and its wealth, never existed in eastern Europe. Real democracy, where people run their neighbourhoods, schools and workplaces democratically from the bottom up, never existed in the west.

The real socialist revolution has yet to come.