Labour’s Internal Conflicts (2020)

From the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The suspension from the Labour Party of its erstwhile leader Jeremy Corbyn initially appears to be of little note for socialists. There can be sympathy for the hounding of an apparently decent man, , but hey-ho that’s capitalist politics for you.

But actually, this is a little more serious. While Corbyn does not in any sense meet the criteria set out in our principles of what is required to be a socialist, he is identified throughout the media and in the popular consciousness as just that. Indeed he probably self-identifies as a socialist.

During the lead up to the 2019 general election, in a number of BBC Radio 4 vox pops he was frequently cited as the reason for Labour voters of many years standing insisting they would not vote for the Labour Party. Corbyn was too extreme, to the point of being denounced as a ‘communist’. As socialists who state that socialism and communism are synonyms, that the Labour Party never was, is not and never will be a socialist party, such prevalent sentiments as expressed in those vox pops are of concern.

Capitalism’s defenders are none too discerning when it comes to identifying perceived socialist threats. The faintest whiff of red smoke and any vaguely smouldering embers are to be stamped on. If possible the word socialist, never mind the concept, is to be anathema.

Socialist understanding of the Soviet Union from its inception is that it was state capitalist and not socialist/communist in any sense. Yet there can be little doubt that Lenin, who thought himself a socialist, found himself through circumstance as head of a ruling regime that had no way of pursuing socialism.

Thus the compromise of state capitalism proved to be no pre-emptor of socialism as perhaps Lenin hoped. However, it did allow for an ideological claim of communism in the making, an iron curtain indeed behind which the ruling nomenclature became the capitalist class spawning the oligarchs of Putin’s non-Soviet Russia.

By posing as communist for over 70 years, the Soviet regime has been responsible for considerable ideological damage that actual socialists have to deal with. Present-day inheritors of Lenin’s legacy continue to serve to obscure the ubiquity of capitalism throughout the world, be it ‘free market’ or state capitalism.

This serves ‘free market’ capitalism particularly well politically as those state capitalist countries who continue to don the communist mask tend to the brutally authoritarian, thereby confirming the popular conception.

There is, though, a risk in all this for capitalism in that the concept of socialism may be traduced, but it continues to exist and where that may lead is unpredictable. For example, while the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 could not of itself have led to socialism, had the idea inspired the working class around the world to seriously consider what was possible for it to achieve, then capitalism would have had a problem.

Therefore, any hint of socialism succeeding, however erroneous, must be pilloried and, where possible, crushed. Even politicians who are merely trying to ameliorate the worst effects of capitalism without challenging capitalism itself must be thwarted and shown to fail. All the better if those politicians self-identify, or failing that can be branded, as socialists/communists/Marxists.

Thus the case of Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension from the Labour Party takes on a significance of sorts for socialists. On his being elected leader a whole machinery of vilification was slipped into gear. It was his declared support for a beleaguered Arabic people, Palestinians, which ultimately led to his downfall, branded a denier of anti-Semitism.

As a case study in character assassination, it should serve as a warning as to the opprobrium that will be manufactured and freely distributed to the public should anyone appear to be gaining influence contrary to capitalism’s well-being. The synthetic outrage produced through blending anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism has proved to be powerful. It has placed a brand of aggressive ultra-nationalism beyond criticism and forged a potent political weapon to strike down opponents, leaving them apparently morally, as well politically, compromised.

The wider impact is to identify anti-Semitism with socialism. It doesn’t matter that Corbyn really isn’t a socialist, just another would-be reformer of capitalism. If this is indicative of action that can be so vigorously pursued against a reformer, what can people expect who do wish to replace capitalism with socialism through the agency of a self-aware working class acting on its own behalf?

Once the working class is so motivated, then such a political weapon will be blunted. But until then, those who have accepted the task of propagating socialist ideas need to take heed of what could be the personal consequences of becoming more influential.

There is the further, perhaps more important, point concerning democracy. Socialists do not advocate the suppression of ideas, rather they should be brought out into the open and subjected to scrutiny. Through debate erroneous notions can be exposed and correct ones clearly identified. This does not preclude individuals continuing to expound erroneous ideas, the safeguard being their dismissal by the majority. That is democracy.

This most definitely applies to socialists. If some, or even all, we advocate can be demonstrated objectively to be wrong, then so it must be. It would be utterly pointless finding some mechanism whereby such a demonstration could be suppressed. This applies to all bodies of ideas and ideologies. Any agency working to frustrate this for self-serving purposes is opposed to democracy.

The Socialist Party was vigorously opposed to Jeremy Corbyn when he was leader of the Labour Party. However well meaning, his ideas would not have brought the benefit of socialism to the working class. This for the very good reason that socialism is not something that can be conferred, it must be achieved by the working class itself.

This opposition was open and political, not personal. His subsequent vilification though the media, and by many of his own backbenchers, has most definitely served the interests of capitalism by casting guilt by association, however vague and erroneous that association may be, with socialism. The juicier story is proving to be the ongoing, and rather laboured (pun intended) anti-Semitism row. If there is a strand of anti-Semitism running through the Labour Party it would be one of the threads of racism sown into all societies based around national identities.

Zionism is but one manifestation of this and it is quite possible that those who take a specifically anti-Zionist stand slip into expressions of anti-Semitism without recognising they are doing so. While the world continues to be divided by national boundaries, so will the curse of casual, as well as intentional, racist comments and behaviour.

Suspending Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour Party not only won’t cure the problem, in a sense it deflects from the root cause. It would well serve those who are celebrating Corbyn’s predicament to examine their own attitudes as to whether they can honestly acquit themselves of ever having had a racist thought. To quote a statement attributed to a Jewish teacher, ‘Let he (or she) who is without sin cast the first stone’.

Perhaps Jeremy Corbyn will now take stock and come to realise that the best interests of society are to be served through pursuing actual socialism, not some reformist parody. In which case he may come to realise suspension, perhaps expulsion, from the Labour Party is a blessing, even if initiated by dark deeds.

Dave Alton

Jottings. (1921)

The Jottings Column from the March 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

Commenting on the ridiculous demands of the French and British plunderers in connection with the reparation clauses the "Hamburger Volkzeitung" (31.1.21) says: "Let those pay who can. Let the conscienceless bourgeoisie of all countries settle their accounts between them. It is their concern that is going bankrupt. The workers can renounce the inheritance. Their account is on another page." Very nicely put and very true. We have been saying this for years.

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Mr. Gilbert Frankau, a person addicted to writing novels, is, despite his name, a British patriot 100 per cent. pure. So much so that he gets quite frantic about it. Loving his country as he claims to do, he is bound to see a menace in almost everything. Writing week after week in the "Sunday Herald," he has covered almost every phase of human activity, and sees in each and every one a menace to the British Empire. But writing on politics and economics is not like writing novels Even his colleague, Robert Blatchford, has had to remonstrate with him as to the accuracy of his statements. But apparently he is not particular as to his facts so long as space is accorded him in which to let himself go. Of course he had to lash himself into a fury when dealing with Karl Marx and Lenin (who, for some strange reason, he couples together), but his knowledge of both must be very scanty indeed if what he has told the "Sunday Herald" readers is all that he knows. In the issue for Feb. 6th he deliberately states that Marx was a lunatic and that he died in a lunatic asylum. This absurd lie Marxists can, of course, afford to laugh at as emanating from an ignoramus, but for the fact that a great portion of the working class bases its whole philosophy of life on the contents of the Sunday papers. This being so, it often falls to the Socialist to correct the erroneous views disseminated by such papers. Karl Marx is accredited, even by capitalist historians, with having written a masterly analysis of capitalist society in which he laid bare the whole system by which the workers are robbed and kept in subjection. It is admitted that "Das Kapital" had the influence that Darwin's "Origin of Species" had, and this from a lunatic ! It is a scientific study of industrial conditions, and from these investigations the theory is maintained that materialist conceptions have guided the history of man. The theory of surplus value is also deduced, that the workers' wages tend to fall to the minimum of subsistence and that all profits, etc., are part of the value the worker has produced but hasn't got—are, in fact, surplus value.

Karl Marx died in 1883, at 8 Maitland Park Road, London, in full possession of his faculties, though he died in broken health, probably accentuated by the death of his wife, whom he loved dearly. Like others of his kind, he was persecuted to his dying day by the Frankaus of his time. But it says much for his teaching when, nearly forty years later, people can work themselves into a fury simply because what he taught has been verified over and over again.

"When the tool arose the tool-less men became the slaves of those who owned the tools." That was stated by Marx, and was never more applicable than at the present day in this glorious new England of ours—or rather, Frankau's—where men and women who fought and worked that the British Empire might be extended to accommodate a lot of gluttonous robbers, are waiting day after day in long queues for a dole of bread and soup from their masters who own the tools, and upon whose permission they must wait before they can use them. If these lines should be read by any of Frankau's readers they may perhaps stimulate them into enquiring a little further into the writings of Marx, when they will easily be able to distinguish which is the lunatic—Marx or Frankau.

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The impression that Liberalism and Labour possess identical aims seems to be a pretty general one. During the anxious times of a bye-election when Coalition meets Liberal there is a dread on the part of Labour that Coalition might win. If the candidate opposing the Coalition happens to be Labour similarly Liberals are agitated lest their favourite be beaten. Sir Hamar Greenwood couples Liberals and Labour in his denunciation of those who would besmirch "the fair name of England." Greenwood's opponent, Joseph Devlin, appeals to Liberals and Labour to arrive at some modus vivendi to clear the "fair name of England." Mr. George Lansbury, the spotless champion of the British proletariat, likewise appeals to Liberals and Labour to combine. "Let us all— Liberals as well as Labour men and women— work together to throw out this Government which is a disgrace not only to England (that fair name of England, how useful everybody finds the gag!) but to the world " (Albert Hall. 15.2.21). Finally an examination of the new economic and industrial policy issued recently by the Executive of the National Liberal Federation discloses hardly any point of difference from the policy of the Labour Party. Indeed, the "Manchester Guardian" claims that "the new Liberalism has stolen not a little of the Labour thunder, and has even taken some hints from the Guild Socialist" (28.1.21). Thus all bourgeois-loving Labourites can—and no doubt will—give the new Liberalism their full acquiescence and support without in any way endangering their status.

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We have been repeatedly told by those who profess to be our leaders in matters industrial and political, that we, the workers, and constituting the largest portion of the community, bear the largest share of the burden of taxation. If this be true, then obviously any reduction or relief in taxation should redound to our benefit. When Mr. Will Thorne asked the Minister of Transport who would reap the advantage of a reduction in railwayman's wages consequent on the fall in food prices Sir Eric Geddes answered the taxpayer would. He meant by this that the increases of wages to railwaymen—and presumably those of other industries where "control" has been exercised—have been borne by the taxpayers, and that therefore any reduction should revert to them. If we, as workers, are also taxpayers, we should expect to find the sum total of all these reductions, or nearly all of it, spread out over the whole of the working class. What I want to know is, if a reduction in wages is going to find its way back into our pockets, will any Labour leader now come forward and discourage any resistance on our part to wage reductions ?

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Even if the worker be not sanguine that he will experience a return of the suppressed portion of his wages indirectly there are yet many who believe that there is some justification for the complaint of the master class that high wages are responsible for high prices. At any rate the bluff appears to have done its work. At Roubaix and Tourcoing in France, where the same gag was tried, the workers in all the mills, including those whose wages were not immediately threatened, decided to cease work as a mark of their resistance to any reduction. If any protest is offered in this country the plan seems to be to stop the job for a week or two on some pretext or other, and then in the interval put up a notice inviting those who are prepared to start back at a reduced rate to give their names in. The real facts, of course, are that owing to the vast numbers of workers looking for jobs and the prospect of destitution staring them in the face, they are compelled to accept. Apart from the quick realisation of profits there is nothing more desirable to the master class than to have a decent-sized army of unemployed always on hand. This it is that tends to keep wages low.

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All the same, it is rather pathetic to find some workers anticipating the wishes of their boss and asking for a reduction ! It marks a very low stage indeed in the development of knowledge of the factors governing industry. One such case has been extensively advertised in the Press recently, presumably to encourage others in a like course. It occurred at a mill in Manchester, and the method of approach was something like this: "Your employers have decided to approach you with the suggestion that our wages be reduced by 10 per cent. We hope that this offer will be accepted, as it is felt that the present high cost of living exists primarily owing to the very high cost of production." Needless to say, their hopes were quickly realised, along with the satisfaction of knowing that a strike was not necessary in order to enforce their demands.

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Enforced leisure, as a rule, is not exactly pleasant to think about when applied to the case of the worker. But I often wonder if a thought is given any time to the way in which our "betters" spend their leisure time. Do they (the workers) ever read the reports of "our special correspondent in the Riviera," who appears to be having a posh time recording the doings and the latest fashions in vogue among the wealthy Britishers out there? Just now Nice, Monte Carlo. Mentone, and the other places are simply packed with people who have gone to escape the rigours of the English climate. Back here at home those who look after interests are busy trying to dope us with the tale that unless wages are reduced they will have to shut down because they simply cannot carry on!

Judging from the reports, there doesn't seem to be any shortage of money on the Riviera ; and all this, mind you, represents profits wrung out of the toil of the workers. Other things remaining equal, any increase of wages must come out of their profits. Consequently if they can get the workers to accept less wages, they will have more profits to spend in the Riviera and elsewhere. Whilst the workers here are walking the shoes off their feet looking for jobs and wondering how their children are going to be clothed, or even where the next meal is coming from, these parasites are promenading in straw hats or minx coats, or magnificent sables costing a thousand pounds apiece. One lady appeared at a ball in a dress made up of feathers of humming-birds obtained at "stupendous expense."

Think of this, you ex-warriors, when next you or your wife take up your position in the queue waiting for your dole of bread.

The latest report says that black is de rigueur—which means no class—probably because it is a colour affected mostly by the working class —when they can get it. They need it most. What are described as "wonderful" silk stockings at £4 a pair are very fashionable. It is wonderful—why it is allowed to go on.

Tom Sala

Cooking the Books: The Labour Party Marxist? Pull the other one! (2020)

The Cooking the Books column from the January 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Sun (5 December) denounced the prospect of ‘a Marxist-run coalition with Corbyn in No 10.’ This strange view that the Labour Party under Corbyn is Marxist had been repeated for months by Tory politicians. A headline in the Daily Express (30 March) proclaimed ‘Iain Duncan Smith issues warning over “Marxist threat” from Jeremy Corbyn premiership,’ while in July, in his bid to become Tory leader, Boris Johnson spoke of Corbyn as ‘the leader of a cabal of superannuated Marxists.’

This claim goes even further back, to Prime Minister’s Question Time in 2013, when according to a Daily Mail headline (9 October 2013) ‘Miliband wants to live in a ‘Marxist universe’, Cameron claims as leaders clash over Labour ‘gimmick’ to freeze energy bills’, while ‘Chancellor George Osborne claimed that the Labour leader had put forward the same argument that “Karl Marx made in Das Kapital”’. Cameron’s case was that Marxists want to control prices while world market prices are beyond the control of governments; which, ironically, is the Marxist view.

But what is a ‘Marxist’? Marx himself didn’t like the term and would have preferred his theories to have been called ‘communist theory.’ Nevertheless, after his death, ‘Marxism’ came to be the term used even by those who agreed with his views to describe the body of his theory: the materialist conception of history, with technology and class struggles as the driving forces; his analysis of the economic workings of capitalism as a system of uncontrollable capital accumulation in fits and starts; and his insistence on the need for the working class to win control of political power in order to establish a communist (or, the same thing, a socialist) society based on the common ownership of productive resources and production to directly meet people’s needs rather than for sale with a view to profit.

The Labour Party falls at the first hurdle. It does not stand for socialism as Marx did, even though at times it has claimed to be socialist. The first time it did this was in 1918. Before that, it saw itself as merely a trade union pressure group in parliament. But what it called socialism was nationalisation, or production for profit organised by state enterprises, the correct term for which is ‘state capitalism’.

The present Labour Party has abandoned even this, accepting that the commanding heights of the economy should be in the hands of profit-seeking private enterprises. It talks now of an ‘entrepreneurial state,’ which is just another form of state capitalism.

The Labour Party has never understood how the capitalist economy works. It has never accepted Marxian economics, preferring Keynes who taught that capitalism can be controlled by state intervention and made to work in everybody’s interest.

A previous Labour Party general secretary, Morgan Phillips, famously said that ‘the Labour Party owes more to Methodism than to Marxism’, which is true. Its philosophy, insofar as it has one, is do-goodism rather than Marx’s view ‘the emancipation of the working class has to be the work of the working class itself.’

One more intelligent Tory, Robert Halfon, newly re-elected MP for Harlow, warned them to ‘stop calling Corbyn a Marxist’ as ‘such terminology means very little to most ordinary folk’. It doesn’t, but there might be an upside to this – more people seeking to find out what it does mean.

Contemptible Communist Propaganda Methods (1943)

From the May 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not an accident that Communist propaganda methods in Great Britain have for many years fallen to a particularly low level of irresponsibility and dishonesty. They were tainted at their source in the Communist International. Angelica Balabanoff, who after many years in the Italian Labour movement, held influential position in Bolshevik Russia, gives interesting examples of Communist methods even in the early days. She relates, for example, that as early as 1918 Lenin and others were prepared to use any means and instruments to gain whatever object they had immediately in view. On one occasion Radek was busy forming Communist groups out of foreigners then in Russia as prisoners of war, with the object of carrying on propaganda in their own countries on their return. Balabanoff found, however, that these alleged Communists were attracted to join the group by the favour and privilege membership carried with it, and "practicality none of them had any contact with the revolutionary or labour movement in their own countries and knew nothing of Socialist principles" ("My Life as a Rebel," p. 233). Balabanoff (who later broke with the Bolshevists over their use of such methods) says that two of the Italian prisoners "were about to return to Italy with special credentials from Lenin and a large sum of money. I had only to talk with them for a few moments in Italian to understand that they knew nothing of the Italian movement, or even of the elementary terminology of Socialism. I decided to go direct to Lenin with my protest."

When she told Lenin of this and advised him that the Italians were "merely profiteers of the Revolution" and would seriously damage Communism in Italy, Lenin's cynical reply was: "For the destruction of Turati's party, they are quite good enough."

It is but a step from Lenin in 1918 to the Communist Party of Great Britain now. For the achievement of whatever object they have in view at any moment, any men and any methods are deemed good enough. Recently the Daily Worker carried on for weeks on end a campaign of denunciation of a small group called the British National Party. Hardly anyone would have heard of this obscure B.N.P. but for the Daily Worker's campaign for their suppression as being Fascist sympathisers; but as a tactic what could be more useful to the Communists? If only the Communists could persuade the credulous that this B.N.P. is a great and growing menace how easy to recruit members to the Communist Party to fight it! Sc with characteristic irresponsibility the Daily Worker pursued its campaign. But irresponsibility has its pitfalls and sure enough the Daily Worker fell. It announced in its issue of February 25 that the B.N.P. had booked Lysbeth Hall "in the name of the Socialist Party" for an Easter Conference. With what was a thinly disguised incitement to disorder the article opened as follows:—

  A Fascist conference, meeting openly in the heart of London whilst lads give their lives fighting Fascism abroad. That is the prospect if present plant of the British National Party are allowed to be carried into effect (italics ours).

At this point it is important to notice a statement made in the House of Commons on March 18 by Mr. Herbert Morrison, Home Secretary. He said that the B.N.P. "is a small body with only about a hundred members, and in no way merits the importance recently attributed to it" (Manchester Guardian, March 19, 1943).

Yet the Daily Worker, which claims to know all about the B.N.P., not only published details of an imaginary conference being held by the B.N.P. but added the statement that "preparations are being made to accommodate some 500—600 delegates, for whom catering has already been arranged." (Daily Worker, February 25.)

So the 100 members were going to send 500—600 delegates! Perhaps this throws light on how the Communists arrange their own conferences!

As was pointed out in The Socialist Standard for March (back page), the Daily Worker when called to account for the utterly false statement that we had had a hand in arranging the imaginary B.N.P. conference (the only Conference was our own, held in this hall for the third year running) published a brief and inadequate extraction, without apology. They, declined to publish a longer statement sent to them.

Another illustration of Communist malice and irresponsibility is afforded by a letter received by our West Ham Branch from the West Ham Branch of the Communist Party. It arose out of a challenge to debate.

Here is the letter, a. typical piece of Communist scurrility :—

Read the Daily Worker, World News and Views, and
 Labour Monthly.

COMMUNIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN


West Ham Branch.

115, The Grove,

Stratford, E.15.

February 23, 1943. 

The Communist Party has NO dealings with murderers, liars, renegades, or assassins. 

The S.P.G.B., which associates itself with followers of Trotsky, the friend of Hess, has always followed a policy which would mean disaster for the British working class. They have consistently poured vile slanders on Joseph Stalin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, told filthy lies about the Red Army, the Soviet people and its leaders, gloated over the assassination of Kirov and other Soviet leaders, applauded the wrecking activities of Trotskyist saboteurs in the Soviet Union. They have worked to split the British working class, and are in short agents of Fascism in Great Britain. 

The C.P.G.B. refuses with disgust to deal with such renegades. We treat them as vipers, to be destroyed. 

C.P.G.B., West Ham Branch,

J. Barker, Secretary. 

Needless to say, none of the charges in the letter are true or have even a semblance of basis in fact. Doubtless even the West Ham Communists realise this well enough—hence their failure, when challenged, even to attempt to substantiate their letter.

Executive Committee.

The "Daily Worker" and the S.P.G.B. (1943)

Party News from the March 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the “Daily Worker" on February 25th appeared a statement that the British National Party was holding what was described as a "Fascist Conference" at Easter in the Lysbeth Hall, Soho Square, and that the booking had been made in the name of the Socialist Party. As our Annual Conference is being held in the Lysbeth Hall at Easter, we drew the attention of the "Daily Worker" to the fact that their statement was entirely baseless and that we have not at any time had any association whatever with the British National Party and had not booked that or any other hall for anyone but ourselves. On 27th February the "Daily Worker" published the following retraction:—

"LYSBETH HALL

We are informed that the Lysbeth Hall, London, has not been booked by the British National Party, or anyone acting on their behalf. The booking has, in fact, been made by the Socialist Party of Great Britain for their Annual Conference."

It will be noticed that the "Daily Worker" did not see fit to offer any word of apology.

Executive Committee S.P.G.B.

Barack Hussein Obama is a secret Muslim stealth Socialist born in Kenya!!! (and other frightening tales) (2012)

From the July 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

  With policy differences between Democrats and Republicans negligible, a good conspiracy theory comes in handy at election time.

If politics and policy were synonymous, the voters who loyally backed the Bush administration over eight years might as well support Barack Obama in the upcoming presidential election. His first four years in office have demonstrated that he can deliver the same basic policies as the Bush years (the military adventures overseas, the bailouts for investment banks, the cuts in social programs, the chipping away at constitutional rights, and so on), with the added benefit of no protesting peeps from liberals.

But politics is about more than policy, of course. For individual politicians, it all comes down to getting elected. This requires ‘brand differentiation’–setting oneself apart from the other guy. Politics may at times make for strange bedfellows, but more often it thwarts a loving embrace between those with much in common. And so Republicans must exaggerate their policy differences with the Obama administration for the sake of their election campaign.

But that’s not enough. Precisely because the difference in policy is so thin, the campaign must also be seasoned heavily with personal attacks. The task is to convince voters that Obama is a terrible menace to society, requiring an Internet-age whispering campaign in which conspiracy theory plays a prominent role.

Your lying eyes
Some Americans may need no more evidence than the colour of Obama’s skin to doubt his capacities. But outright racism is not exactly socially acceptable these days, at least in a public forum. What does still have wide currency, in Republican circles and beyond, is xenophobia. And this fear of the Other is a central theme of the imaginative efforts to personally discredit Obama.

Instead of reminding voters, with a wink and a nudge, that the president is black, conspiracy theorists are trying to build their anti-Obama case around the fact that he’s Barack –a ‘secret Muslim’ born in Kenya. If either half of the theory were true, the Republicans would have hit the jackpot, because Muslims remain an acceptable scapegoat among many Americans and only ‘natural-born citizens’ of the United States are eligible to run for president.

Rumours that Obama, the son of a Kenyan, was born outside the United States began to percolate during the presidential primaries in 2008, and the Hillary Clinton campaign was happy to benefit from the rumours or even help to spread them. The rising controversy led Obama that year to release a certified copy from the Hawaii Department of Health of the “short form”of his birth certificate.

But that only stirred up even more speculation among conspiracy theorists, who claimed it was a forgery. These ‘birthers’ continued to demand that Hawaii provide clearer proof that Obama had been born there. And some states even called for such proof in order for Obama to be eligible on their ballots. Bombarded by these requests, Hawaii in April 2011 decided to waive its policy of only issuing the short form and release a certified copy of the long-form Certificate of Live Birth.

This has quieted the controversy somewhat, but die-hard birthers remain unconvinced that the second document is based on actual fact. And not all of these skeptics are on the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party. As recently as May of this year, Donald Trump (who is a lunatic, but not on the fringe), said in a CNN interview, “A lot of people think [the birth certificate] is not authentic,”and he suggested that Obama’s parents may have filed a US birth announcement in Hawaiian newspapers for his overseas birth. Trump made these comments on the very day he helped raise $2 million for the Romney campaign.

Romney does not endorse the birther conspiracy theory, but he can’t say too bluntly that supporters like Trump have crossed the line separating bullshit from batshit. Romney doesn’t want to alienate the Tea Party movement, where birthers and other conspiracy theorists are welcome.

Jihad over Jesus
The other conspiracy theory that Republicans politicians are wary to embrace too tightly, even though they benefit from it, is that ‘Obama is a secret Muslim.’ This rumour has spread mainly through e-mail. At the beginning of 2007, around the time the right-wing magazine Insight ‘broke’ the story, the following e-mail was widely forwarded among rank-and-file Republicans:

  “Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim . . . Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama’s mother . . . introduced his stepson to Islam. Osama [sic!] was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta. Wahabism is the radical teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world. Since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when seeking major public office in the United States, Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background.”

This e-mail contains the crux of the claim that Obama is a secret Muslim. Other cute flourishes added to the theory include the rumour that he was sworn into the US Senate on the Koran rather than the Bible, and that he will not recite the pledge of allegiance or show reverence for the US flag.

Like any conspiracy theory, this one is concocted by mixing facts, speculation, and outrageous lies. It is true that Obama’s stepfather was, at least nominally, a Muslim. But the claim that “O[b]ama was enrolled in a Wahabi school”is a lie; in fact, he attended an ordinary Indonesian public school (and later a Catholic school).

What’s interesting about the theory is not its content but that millions of Republicans find it (at least somewhat) convincing. It attests to the paranoia and bigotry that runs through the ranks of the party, and the extent to which the party leaders must tap into this ignorance to get elected.

The company he keeps
Another horrible secret the president is keeping from the American people, say the Republicans in unison, is that he’s a socialist.

Of course, Republicans have been labelling opponents “socialists”since the 1990s, when it dawned on them that “liberal”had been worn too thin from overuse to serve as a choice insult. (How the limp creed of liberalism could have ever frightened anyone is a great mystery of American political life.)

The insult has changed but not the meaning: a socialist, like the once dreaded liberal, is someone who advocates “big government” (i.e. the modern welfare state, Keynesian economic policies, etc.). Socialism, under this commonly held view, is a society in which the “free market” is fettered –nota society where markets and money no longer exist.

But even when ‘socialist’ is just another word for liberal, and ‘socialism’ but a specific form of capitalism, Barack Obama still doesn’t stack up to much of a socialist. There are only a few examples of Obama’s “radical” (big government) policies that the Republicans can point to, such as the bailout of General Motors and support for the failed company Solyndra. And these have nothing to distinguish them from similar policies implemented by past administrations of either party. Even his health care reform, denounced as “socialized medicine” by Republicans, is premised on the continued existence of private insurance companies.

If Obama’s policies as president are socialistic, then every US president since FDR has dabbled in a bit of socialism. Republicans must know that the “Obama is a socialist”claim cannot be made on the basis of what he’s done in office. They have no choice but to turn from policy to conspiracy.

Having found so few juicy titbits from Obama’s first term in office, Republican conspiracy theorists have been sifting through his past, way back to his college days, looking for any sort of connection to radical individuals and organizations. Dozens of books have already appeared with the findings of this research, invariably published a few months before an election.

The authors all seem to conclude, regardless of their specific topic, that Obama is somehow alien to American political life, a sort of secret agent who has weaselled his way into the centre of power. The books are written to stoke readers’paranoia and have titles like, Barack Obama and the Enemies Within or The Secret Life of Barack Hussein Obama.

“HE ISN’T WHAT HE SEEMS”–warns the back cover of The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists; a book that promises to present “chilling findings”about “how dangerous Barack Obama really is.”These findings include: “Obama’s deep ties to anti-American fringe nexus [?] instrumental in building his political career”; the existence of “extremists . . . in the White House . . . including communist-linked Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod”; and Obama’s extensive “ties to terrorist Bill Ayers.”

Radical-in-Chief: The Untold Story of American Socialism, apparently one of the more respectable contributions to the genre, offers a similar list of revelations.  Along with the de rigueur obsessing about links to Bill Ayers, the book reveals, “Obama’s long association with an organizer training institute called the Midwest Academy –whose archives reveal it to be a classic socialist front group,”and recounts how “Obama’s life was changed forever when . . . he attended his first of many ‘Socialist Scholars Conferences’ in New York”where he “discovered community organizing and its stealth-socialist agenda.”(Quotes are taken from conservativebookclub.com.)

This might sound convincing to some readers, at least those who have never attended something like a Socialist Scholars Conference. But I wonder how many young people, after sitting through a left-wing academic presentation, would describe the experience as life-changing?

Apocalypse now (again)
“Armageddon is a triennial festival,” the critic Dwight MacDonald wrote in a 1960 essay. He was describing the hysteria that was arising before the US presidential election that year, which was no different from the frenzy in the run-up to other inconsequential elections, he recalled.

And now, more than fifty years and a dozen elections later, we face once again “the most important election in our lifetime.” The Republicans, for their part, fear that Obama, the stealth socialist, will finally implement his super-secret radical agenda. In a recent article on the New York Review of Books website, Garry Wills explains how Republicans are trying to scare people into voting for Romney:

  “Republican operatives describe this year’s presidential election in apocalyptic terms. It will determine our future. It will seal our national fate. . . . They tell Republican voters that President Obama, in a second term where he does not have to face re-election, will reveal and follow the full socialist agenda he has been trying to hide.”

But that article by Wills (‘Why 2012 Matters’) was written to scare people into voting for Obama! The line I took out in the middle of the passage quoted is: “Well, they are probably right, but not for the reason they give.”In other (less mealy-mouthed) words, Wills himself is describing the 2012 presidential in “apocalyptic terms”and saying it will (probably) “seal our national fate”–as he explains:

  “[T]his election year gives Republicans one of their last chances –perhaps the very last one –to put the seal on their plutocracy. They are in a race against time. A Democratic wave is rising fast, to wash away the plutocracy before it sets its features in concrete, with future help from the full (not just frequent) cooperation of the Supreme Court.”

There is a lot that can be said about this description, starting with whether the country actually has a politically cohesive “plutocracy”(the term itself certainly suggests rock-solid unity among capitalists), and if so, whether it truly fears drowning under a Democratic (not democratic) wave.

In any case, the simple point to make here is that Democratic ‘operatives’ (like Wills) rely on the same scare tactics as the Republicans, with plutocrats (or fascists) and Christian extremists serving as the bogeymen instead of socialists and Muslims. These operatives are now in a race against time . . . to finish their anti-Romney books before the November election.

No doubt, the untold story of Mitt Romney as plutocratic puppet with ties to grassroots Mormon-fascist organizations will be rolling off the presses soon.

Michael Schauerte

Bermondsey and the Press (1983)

From the April 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fleet Street's descent further into the gutters was clearly demonstrated by the campaign of vicious character assassination pursued in the run-up to the recent Bermondsey by-election. The power of the media to persecute those who do not fit in with its smug capitalist values is proof that the much-celebrated freedom of the British press is all too often a freedom for journalists to imitate the tactics of their colleagues in Moscow and Johannesburg in defaming with impunity the characters of their opponents.

Much as the press attack must be exposed and deprecated the Labour candidate in Bermondsey, for all his sincerity, was defeated because of his own political opportunism. It was only because he was a candidate for a party which traditionally wins votes from ideologically conservative, nationalistic workers that the press attack was successful. The press labelled Labour's candidate as a homosexual; the old Labourite bigot, John O'Grady, went around the streets of Bermondsey singing a song accusing his Labour opponent of homosexuality; the Liberals, whose official policy is supposed to favour "gay rights", also used the homosexual smear. But the Labour candidate, seeking votes from workers who detest sexual non-conformity, refused to stand up and affirm his homosexuality.

Similarly, the Labour candidate was attacked for being a "draft dodger" because he refused to fight in Vietnam. All socialists would seek publicity for their opposition to all war, and would make it clear that those who fight cannot call themselves socialists. But Labour, when in office, supported the war in Vietnam, just as it has given its support to many other bloody capitalist battles. The Labour candidate had to appeal to nationalistic Labour voters who are all in favour of flags and armies and wars. When that sickening enemy of the working class, Frank Chapple, President of the TUC, was asked on Any Questions why Labour lost Bermondsey he replied, "Well, I ask you, who's going to vote for a gay draft dodger?" In short, the man at the top of the TUC and close to the top of the Labour Party, admits openly that Labour voters are too bigoted to vote for a man who is homosexual and too chauvinistic to vote for a man who refuses to kill Vietnamese workers.

The hacks of Fleet Street made much of the fact that the Labour candidate was not even English -  the ultimate crime. Ignorant people with nothing more sensible to say, were reported as running after the Labour candidate and telling him to "go back to Australia". It is doubtful whether the same workers will be urging the Duke of Edinburgh to return to Greece. The Labour candidate for Bermondsey will not be the first aspirant political leader to fall victim to his own political opportunism.

Labour's opponents in Bermondsey accused them of being communists and Marxists; and the Labour Party does not like that. The fact is that Labour has no more to do with Marxism or true communism than the Mafia has with fighting crime. Communism and socialism are, when properly defined, synonymous terms: they have identical meanings. The Labour candidate for Bermondsey was not unacquainted with the real party of Socialism (or communism), the Socialist Party of Great Britain. But, like his fifteen electoral opponents, he dismissed the aim of abolishing the wages system and creating a classless, propertyless, moneyless society as one not worth working for. Instead, he spent his time on the traditional path of capitalist reform—trying to gain a few more crumbs for the wage slaves of Bermondsey from the cake that they had baked. When the lie-makers of the press called Labour's candidate a revolutionary he protested with all the horror of a radical vicar whose belief in god has been questioned. Any real socialist candidate in Bermondsey would have proclaimed to all the electors that he or she is a revolutionary—not in the anachronistic sense of building barricades in the street, but in the social sense of aiming to end capitalism and replace it with worldwide production for use.

Where there are leaders it will always be possible for the media to direct their viciousness against personalities rather than principles. That is why the Socialist Party enters elections as a political party, advocating a clearly stated object; our candidates are simply put up to satisfy the electoral laws of Britain—a vote for the Socialist Party is a vote for socialism, not for any particular socialist. If the media wants to talk to us they will have to discuss serious ideas. The Socialist Party, unlike all other political parties in Britain, does not make promises or ask for votes. Indeed, we alone urge workers not to vote for our candidate unless they are convinced socialists. Those who we have convinced will not be persuaded to desert the socialist cause by the puerile tactics of the capitalist-owned press. The greatest strength of the working class is the strength of ideas; once we are consciously organised the propagandists of capital can pervert the truth until their faces are as blue as their rosettes—the workers will treat them with the contempt they deserve. That is why socialists are so emphatic about the need for political education. A single worker who is conscious of the system which exploits him and understands the realisable alternative is better than fifty floating voters with floating minds.

In Bermondsey, an apparently solid Labour majority of 12,000 was reduced to a total vote of just over 7,000: the voter who lacks class consciousness can be manipulated by whichever trickster is the most cunning.

Steve Coleman

"Black Flag": Ignorance & Lies (1973)

From the November 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

The July issue of Black Flag, published by "the Anarchist Black Cross", consists an attack on the Socialist Party of Great Britain headed "SPGB — the Mumpsismus".

The first part of the article jeers at us for "having stood with the same principles since 1905", and claims that the Party was founded in error. The writer with this eye for error has his date wrong; but in the adjoining column an "anarcho-quiz" asks what is the oldest section of "the left" in Britain — and proudly tells us that the anarchist movement goes back to 1850s. Whether anarchist principles have remained the same or shifted about, and how much credit the answer implies, we are not told.

The alleged mistake in the Socialist Party's origins is as follows:

"Socialist prophet Fitzgerald got hold of the works of Marx. But the version he read in English was from the edited translation of Karl Kautsky. Kautsky had rigidly censored Marx and Engels, to conform with the anti-Socialist laws, and also to mould Marxist Social-Democracy, as it had arisen in Germany, into a legalistic form. It was on this censored version that Fitzgerald founded his faith . . . The SPGB took the 'mumpsismus' seriously."

To dispose of this ignorant rubbish, the English translation of Vol. I of Capital appeared in 1887. It was by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, and was edited by Engels. Moore translated the Communist Manifesto for its English appearance in 1888, also edited by Engels. Other major works available in English before 1904 included Engel's Origin of the Family and Marx's Poverty of Philosophy and Critique of Political Economy — none of them edited by Kautsky. It can be added that several of the 142 founders of the Socialist Party (only one of whom was named Fitzgerald) had previously attended classes in Marxian economics given by Aveling.

The reader may wonder where Kautsky entered the picture at all. In 1895 Wilhelm Liebknecht published, not in England but in the German Vorwarts, a cut version of Engel's introduction to Marx's Class Struggles in France; and Engels wrote to Kautsky complaining of it. The first English edition was not till 1936, when Fitzgerald and many of his contemporaries were dead. Thus, the Black Flag writer's statement is a complete fiction.

It would be possible to regard it as a painfully weak venture in the unfamiliar realm of political theory — some boy attempting a man's errand; except that the second part of the article consists of allegations about the lives and motives of Socialist Party members in general. In that light, we have to assume that the writer knows that he has written is untrue. We may also assume that his readers will note the allegations are in lieu of, and show incapacity to give, any answer to the Socialist case.

Relearning history (2008)

From the June 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Don’t believe what you were taught in school or hear from the media about benevolent Britain. We look at some books that give the other side of the story.

For those caught in their long-held conviction of the benevolence of British history, of the goodwill and generosity extended by successive governments to subjects of colonial conquest around the world; for those whose history books told stories of great white men’s great adventures into darkest Africa, of fantastic voyages to unknown shores lasting years and necessitating the loss of many lives, of returning heroes laden with treasure and tales of faraway cornucopias; for those who retain romantic visions of countries conquered and occupied for reasons of honest trade and incidentally to improve the lot of indigenous populations, to bring them civilisation and democracy; for those who considered the invasion of Iraq an aberration, an atypical intervention, something outside the realms of normal government procedure, blatant lies deliberately told to the populace as a cover-up for an illegal act; for those who cling to the fallacy of their leaders being beyond reproach because it’s not “British” to collude behind the scenes or to manipulate events. They always play the game by the rules and British justice is known to be above reproach. After all, didn’t we invent cricket?

For all those – it’s time to re-learn history, this time the real history, to have the scales removed from the eyes, to be confronted with the hard evidence, undeniable facts revealed from previously secret documents painstakingly investigated and compiled by those who seek the truth for humanity’s sake. This time to have the courage to question one’s enduring beliefs in the light of authentic revelations. This time to see through the obfuscation and downright lies that have been the staple diet fed to us by our elected representatives, generation after generation, with the purpose of pursuing their own secret agenda, extending personal interests and cementing alliances with powerful allies often with complete disregard for international law, agreements and that detail of small importance, public opinion.

The following are a sample from investigative journalists and historians known as tenacious and imperturbable individuals resolutely determined to get the truth out into the public domain.

Birth of the corporation

The history of the East India Company, a forerunner of the modern shareholder/corporate set-up is a story of ‘executive malpractice, stock market excess and human oppression.’ Nick Robins says in The Corporation that Changed the World that he set out to address the issue of the company’s social record as a corporation, something which he believes no other history of The Company does. Compared with today’s “corporate leviathans” the East India Company “outstripped Walmart in terms of market power, Enron for corruption and Union Carbide for human devastation.” From its origin in 1600 as an aggressive spice trader, using guile, bribery, mercenary armies, piracy and plunder it moved on to take control of Bengal and Bengal’s cotton fabric industry. Robert Clive (of India) decimated the weaving industry and, as an eerie precursor to current day India’s farmers’ suicides as a result of impoverishment by transnationals, weavers amputated their own thumbs rather than be forced to spin thread for less than starvation wages.

Later came Warren Hastings, responsible for pushing opium into China (illegally), causing the later “Opium Wars” and eventually forcing Chinese ports to open to trade. Despite the British government’s initial protests at the opium trade they were soon persuaded by the company’s Governor General in India that the revenue was growing too quickly to be abandoned. Nick Robins shows only too well that “a peculiar amnesia continues to hang over the role that corporations such as the East India Company had in the creation of the modern world.”

Public statements; Private record

Covert military action, support of military dictators, direct and indirect responsibility for millions of deaths around the world since the end of World War Two, support for various regimes that would surprise a lot of the British public. From previously secret files, now released into the public domain (even if still partially censored) Mark Curtis, in Unpeople. Britain’s Secret Human Rights Abuses, reveals that “British ministers’ lying to the public is systematic and normal”, that “the culture of lying to and misleading the electorate is deeply embedded in British policy making”, that “the policy makers are usually frank about their real goals in the secret record” and that “humanitarian concerns do not figure at all in the rationale behind British foreign policy.”

A strategy beyond propaganda, ‘perception control’ (thought control to you and me) “is designed to counter the major threat to British foreign policy: the public.” How many in Britain know – that British forces fought in Vietnam? And that in breach of the Geneva Accords also supplied arms to the US for use in Vietnam? About Britain’s support for Idi Amin? Support for Pinochet? About the “dirty war” in North Yemen in the 1960s where the British engaged with the wrong side for purely political reasons?

With enormous discrepancies between public statements and private files in both Labour and Conservative terms of office it is shown quite clearly that successive governments have nothing but contempt for their electorate. Curtis recommends the reader to undergo “a personal transformation, decolonising the mind of accepted truths and received wisdom.”

Media and government united in deceit

The role of the media, controlled by monopolies of multinational companies, requires ever more scrutiny; however, much of the public still tends to take their pronouncements at face value. Within the world of the media, integrity and the search for the truth is the main motivator of only a minority. It is interesting how mud tends to stick though, even when thrown at the innocent. People remember the breaking of a story but are often more unsure or forgetful about the outcome. The “no smoke without fire” syndrome. Take, for instance, the Scargill affair in 1990 when Maxwell’s Mirror launched an all-out attack on Arthur Scargill. According to Seumas Milne (at the time a journalist with the Guardian and author of a subsequent book The Secret War Against the Miners), Arthur Scargill and “Scargillism” were and had been “the enemy within” to Maxwell’s media empire, the “modernising” Labour Party leadership (Kinnock et al), the Conservative government and Thatcher in particular (she had voiced this comparison of the miners with the Argentinian junta that had invaded the Falklands two years earlier) and to British security and intelligence agencies. The two year smear campaign against Scargill came close to the end of two decades of determined effort by the Tory party “and Margaret Thatcher above all – to avenge absolutely and unequivocally their double humiliation at the hands of the miners in the historic strikes of 1972 and 1974.” A vendetta against the miners which was aimed at destroying the NUM and, as collateral damage if necessary, the British coal industry too. Maxwell’s Daily Mirror smear campaign, Milne asserts, would never have taken off had it not been for “the monopoly ownership grip of multinational companies on great swathes of the media” and too many compliant journalists happy to report what they knew to be fabrication as fact. It was the perfect distraction of public attention from Scargill’s warnings of the government’s intention to bring down the coal industry. The campaign worked as planned except that ultimately Scargill was acquitted of all and any crimes and the corrupt were only found to be amongst his accusers. Ironic, but another result for a government against its people.

The Chagos Islands (inc. Diego Garcia)

A tiny archipelago, home to some 2000 people living in “conditions most tranquil and benign” (1950s Colonial Office film), a group of islands so small as not to warrant a place on a page of the 2002 Peters World Atlas. It can only be found like fly droppings inside the back cover. But, starting with Harold Wilson’s, seven successive governments have clung together around a huge lie – a lie they fabricated and used against the islands’ inhabitants since they started removing them from those islands in 1968 – that they were merely transient workers. In fact they were first taken there as slaves by the French in the eighteenth century and became British in 1815 after Napoleon’s defeat. Now the islands are home to around 4000 US troops plus all their support personnel and paraphernalia, swimming pools, golf course, two of the longest military runways in the world (used for bombing Afghanistan and Iraq) and suspicions that captives are being “rendered” there for “serious interrogation.” The US are seeking to extend their current lease, which expires in 2016, for another ten years at least, for islands which are deemed too risky (with spurious claims about climate, water shortages etc.) for the original British inhabitants to return to, even though there have been two High Court rulings allowing them to do so. (See Freedom Next Time by John Pilger).

To compare and contrast the forced removal of these British citizens (compensation of about £1,000 GBP per person) with Britain’s resistance to the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands (also with a population of about 2,000) in 1982 at a cost of £2 billion pounds is poetic irony; an order-in-council agreed by the Queen in 2004 to ban the islanders from ever returning home for one population, for the other a Christmas broadcast by Tony Blair in 2006 telling them, “It is your right to determine your future.”

Why must these atrocities be kept secret from the public? Simply because if too many of us get too angry for a sustained period and decide collectively to get active it’s all over for them. Justice and morality are values we have been tricked into believing are at the core of the leadership of our society, propaganda of the most despicable kind used against the very people they are mandated to represent. They may be immoral and pervert justice but that doesn’t negate our individual humanity and desire for honesty. It may even strengthen our resolve in the search for the truth. It reveals the rottenness of the establishment, not of the people. We, the people, can decide to reject that establishment and work together towards a truly representative democracy.

What has to be remembered and given serious consideration is this; if we do nothing after being party to such a revelation in a book, credible newspaper account or reliable TV documentary the atrocity, injustice, inhumanity, chauvinism or deceit will still be there and will continue to affect those afflicted by it and the lie will still be a lie and we will still be the recipients of the lie. When these shameless lies are put firmly into the public domain it is the public’s responsibility to guard against collective amnesia, to constantly remind ourselves and each other of the accumulation of crimes committed in our name.

Janet Surman