Letter: Ideas and Struggle (1989)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ideas and Struggle

Dear Comrades,

I found an old copy of your magazine Socialist Standard at a friend's place. I was very interested to read it and there were several thought-provoking articles.

Have you got anything on Trotskyism? Several of my friends have very nearly joined such parties as the SWP. Militant and the RCP. A few years ago, I was on the periphery of the RCP, but their ruthless party building (and total rejection of real working class issues) turned me off . . . fortunately. I find that the Trotskyists have a very patronising attitude to the working class that I presume results from Lenin's theory that, on their own, workers can only reach a trade union consciousness and thus, hey presto, the need for the guiding light of a revolutionary party—it does not seem to have done that much guiding so far! And what do you think of anarchism? I have occasionally read anarchist papers—some of them are nothing more than liberal rubbish (such as Freedom), but others do have more sense (e.g. Direct Action) in that they emphasise the class rather than the culture!

I must say that I do have my differences with the SPGB analysis, particularly over how socialism will be achieved. I completely agree with you that a majority of the working class needs to be fighting for socialism, but. as Marx said, "ideas change in struggle". To me this means that at any time there is a possibility of real change because in mass struggle the ideas of the working class do change. For example, if the miners strike had spread to other sectors (as it had to in order to avoid defeat), then we might have seen a possible revolution. I think that it is very Leninist to underestimate the abilities and potential of the working class. You say "the democratic conquest of political power”— what about the real power in this society, the economic structure? Thatcher is merely a puppet of the bosses' interests. To talk of revolution in such mild terms makes me think of naivety such as what would you do if there was a military uprising against the new socialist government?

I also think that you emphasise educational activities far too much. I would never deny the importance of propaganda, but getting back to that original quote from Marx: “ideas change in struggle” . . . not through passive book reading. So I would argue that socialists should be fighting back against this rotten system in their own lives in the here and now (for example, agitating for a strike in their workplace, leafletting their community about the Poll Tax and helping to set up Anti-Poll Tax Unions) and supporting all other working class people in their struggles against class society. I think that it is only through such a movement as this that society will be changed—but I am very interested to hear what you have to say

Norman Davis

London, N16

REPLY
1. Yes, as Marx said, ideas change in struggle. But this does not mean to say that ideas change suddenly. In fact, the process of overcoming the overwhelming conditioning of capitalism is itself a long hard struggle. We do not underestimate the potential of the working class, as the Leninists do, when we say that the majority of workers are at present imbued with support for capitalism. There is a great potential for workers to make the transition to understand and want socialism instead, but we would be kidding ourselves and others if we accepted, for example, that if the miners' strike had spread "then we might have seen a possible revolution". The key precondition for a socialist revolution is that a majority should be socialists, fully conscious of their class position and their interests as workers in ending capitalism. If the miners' strike had benefited from greater solidarity amongst other workers, it would have improved the miners' position, and would have been a sign that class consciousness was growing. But that simple condition, of a majority of genuine socialists, still stands as an indispensable precondition for the revolutionary change we seek, and we continue to work with great determination to build up such a majority.

2. Yes, Thatcher is a puppet of the bosses' interests. But political power within capitalism cannot be overestimated—the bosses spend millions through their parties securing and organising political power. In Britain today, the state forces including the military are, as a matter of concrete fact, under the control of a parliamentary government which is given electoral support by the very workers whose interests it opposes. Many on the Left find it hard to face up to the harsh fact that capitalism, in all of its forms, does depend on the acquiescence and/or apathy of a majority of workers themselves. With the growth of a socialist majority, determined to end capitalism, the notion of a military uprising to prevent this is nonsensical. How would such a military force even exist or survive against the solid and hostile opposition of a socialist majority throughout society? The greater degree of class consciousness which that would entail on the part of the majority would make it more than likely that such a military sect would be starved of food, of power and electricity supplies, of uniforms, of weapons and of credibility.

3. You say that "passive book reading” and educational work are not enough on their own, but must be combined with active campaigning, e.g. against the poll tax, or for strikes at work, as, going back once again to Marx, "ideas change in struggle”. It is false to make such a rigid division between passive reading and active action. Reading and learning is itself an activity. Furthermore, the substance and subject matter of what socialists write and read about is, of course, the subject matter of the class struggle itself. And, on the other hand, a lot of so-called radical actions are actually nothing more than feeble attempts to reform and modify capitalism, to dress up oppression in a new guise. But, as far as trade union and strike action are concerned, or democratic efforts by workers to combine and improve (or just maintain) their wages and conditions of work, the Socialist Party fully supports such action. As active members of a whole range of trade unions, many of our members have worked very long and hard at such active struggle. But as a political party standing unequivocally for socialist revolution our role, which we carry out to the best of our abilities, is to put to our fellow workers the most urgent choice facing the entire human race now in 1989: are we. the deprived majority, going to allow the world's resources to remain harmfully in the hands of about 1-5 per cent of the population, or are we at last going to act on our true interests. and organise politically, consciously and democratically for the overthrow of capitalism, and the establishment of world socialism?

Editors.

Pensions myth (2006)

Book Review from the forthcoming August 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Phil Mullan: The Imaginary Time Bomb. Why An Ageing Population is not a Social Problem. (IB Taurus.)

 

There are too many old people. They are becoming an unsupportable burden on the pensions and health systems. If nothing is done about it there will be a generation war between pensioners and the decreasing proportion of those of working age.

So runs the argument consistently put over by the media. But, according to Mullan, it’s a myth based on faulty statistics, disguising a hidden agenda by people who want to cut pension and welfare benefits for other reasons and/or want to make money by selling private pensions.

He points out that while the proportion of over-64s in the population is indeed rising this is mainly a reflection of a reduced birth rate in the past, which has meant a fall in those now in the 16-64 age range. This has happened before in the last century without the dire consequences now being predicted. Most estimates, he says, don’t take into account the reduced expenditure on the under 16s that a fallen birth rate means nor the fact that a significant proportion of the 16-64s are also not working, not just the disabled and the recorded unemployed but also many who are on “incapacity” benefit as early retirees to whom capitalism denies a job.  Nor does it take into account the fact that over time the productivity of those at work rises nor that the health of the over-64s is improving.

 So, for Mullan, the “pensions time bomb” is an imaginary threat, but not just a panic cynically stirred up by vested interests. It is also a reflection of what he calls the current “age of anxiety” where : 

“The feeling of uncertainty and insecurity influences discussion and debate in all sphere’s of life. Politicians have lost popular authority and have tended to limit their objectives. The main idea coming out of political think tanks on both sides of the Atlantic seems to be that there are no more ‘big ideas’. Most Western governments have adopted a narrower agenda of managing what exists rather than seeking to intervene in society in pursuance of more ambitious aims. . . Interacting with the élite’s loss of nerve, the erosion of previous collectivities is a major source for this popular mood. The demise during the 1980s of trade unions and of less formal mechanisms of support, solidarity and community have left people more on their own than ever to face the problems of everyday life. The social fragmentation and individuation thas made life seem more insecure”.

This pessimism, bred (we would add) by the inability of capitalism to meet needs and by the failure of reformism last century, is the fertile ground on which the vested interests concerned have been able to sow this particular panic.

Adam Buick

The War in the South Atlantic (1982)

From the July 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Workers’ blood has been spilt in a squalid war over which group of exploiters shall own and control the resources on and around the Falkland Islands. The perverse propaganda in favour of legalised murder oozes from rags like The Sun, while the genteel voices of BBC “defence experts” discuss details of human sacrifice with all the cynicism of ancient rulers plotting a battle between expendable slaves. In a society where the loss of a fighter plane is infinitely more costly than the waste of a replaceable uniformed wage slave, profit is the god and human needs must be tossed aside to satisfy its voracious appetite. “Our lads”, who hitherto could not afford a weekend trip round the harbour on the luxurious QE2, are now being treated to a mystery tour on their bosses’ floating mansion—the mystery being not where they are going, but whether they will return alive. At the bottom of the bitterly cold South Atlantic, corpses from both sides mingle with each other—death highlights the fact that a British worker is indistinguishable from an Argentine worker: they are not natural enemies, but paid dogs of war set on to each other to do their masters’ dirty work.

Workers have no country. Britain is not “ours”: the richest ten per cent of the British population own more of the accumulated wealth than the other ninety per cent added together. Britain, like Argentina, belongs to a minority class which owes its affluence and privilege to a system of institutionalised parasitism. The Falklands do not belong to the workers of Britain or Argentina or the Islanders themselves. If British capitalists maintain their ownership and control of the Falklands, or if they lose control to their rival exploiters in Argentina, it will not make a scrap of difference to workers anywhere. It is a war fought by workers for the interests of capitalists.

What are they fighting about?
Much fallacious drivel has come forth from politicians and media hacks alike about “the interests of the Islanders” and “principles of international law”. It is suggested that Thatcher and her Tory, Labour, SDP and Liberal allies have sent the Task Force to the South Atlantic at a huge cost to the British capitalist class because they are eager to defend the Islanders’ rights to be British and to save the world from fascism. Such nonsense would be laughable were it not so commonly believed. If the government was so eager to “keep the Islanders British”, why did it exclude them from British citizenship in its recent Nationality Act? If the government was so disgusted by the Argentine Junta’s record of repressively anti-working class dictatorship, why was it a major arms supplier to the Junta up until the invasion of the Falklands? The hard fact is that wars are not fought for moral reasons — the only justice of significance to the capitalists as a class is that which ensures their own economic power. If British capital could succeed by selling out the nationalistic wishes of the Islanders and by working in alliance with the Argentine fascists they will certainly do so. Unlike in the Great War, however, the ruling class is no longer able to urge gullible wage slaves to die for the sake of Imperial Glory. These days the imperialist interests of the ruling class need to be dressed up as battles over principle — modern wars are disguised as “fights for democracy” or for “international law” or “for the right to be British”. Just as Churchill and his political allies would readily have made a deal with Hitler in the 1930s (in fact, Chamberlain tried to and Stalin did), so Thatcher would willingly conspire with the Junta today.

Workers should not be deceived: wars are simply a continuation of the rivalries over markets, raw materials and trade routes which are inherent in the profit system. The economic interests at stake in and around the Falkland Islands can be summed up as follows:

1. Agriculture and fisheries.
2. Oil.
3. The mineral resources of the Antarctic.
4. Strategic routes.

Agriculture and fisheries
The main industries of the Falkland Islands are sheep farming and fisheries. On 6 June 1982 The Mail on Sunday posed the question: “Who owns the Falklands Islands”. The answer was revealing:

  For the most part, not the islanders. More than seventy per cent of the land is owned by companies registered in the UK. The best-known landlord is the Falkland Islands Company . . . now owned by the Coalite Group, the Derby-based manufacturers of smokeless fuel. The Company employs half of the island’s population and owns half the sheep. It also owns some forty per cent of the land. Another thirty per cent is in the hands of seven small private companies in Britain and Germany.

The article refers to some of the holdings on the Islands which are usually referred to as being “ours”:

  Port Howard on West Falkland is a spread of 170,000 acres – bigger than Hampshire — stocked with 38,000 sheep. The farm is run by a manager for a company called James Lovegrove Waldron Ltd., whose thirty-seven shareholders live in England . . . The first territory to be recaptured by the Task Force was Port San Carlos where the Cameron Family have 97,000 acres and 31,000 sheep. Mr. William Cameron settled in the Falklands and bought the farm in the 1870s. He left it to his four children who later moved to Britain. Mrs. Anne Cameron, managing director of Port San Carlos Ltd., now lives in Ireland.

Reading this one might ask, how many workers own farms covering thousands of acres of land? The repossession of the Islands is entirely a capitalist concern, of no interest at all to the majority of people who are lucky if they own or rent a back garden. Landowning parasites like Charrington Coalite and the Camerons must be laughing all the way to the bank as they observe propertyless wage slaves worrying about the possession of territories which will never belong to workers. We can be sure that the capitalists will not die fighting for our interests; why should workers sacrifice their lives for the sake of capital?

Oil
For some time there has been speculation about the potential oil reserves which lie beneath the South Atlantic in the vicinity of the Falkland Islands. Oil is currently a very valuable commodity and capitalists are particularly interested in new areas of exploration. According to the Observer (23 May 1982), two major oil consortia have made bids within the last year to explore the Magallanes Este, a stretch of water which is equidistant between the Falkland Islands and the Argentine coast. The Argentine government sold the bidding rights to explore for oil and gas in the Magallanes Este to the American oil company, Atlantic Richfield (ARCO). The British government threatened to take legal action against ARCO, as it claimed that the exploration was going to take place in its waters and that Argentina had no right to sell the exploration rights. In objecting to foreign exploration of the Magallanes field the British government was undoubtedly thinking of the objectives of the section of the capitalist class which it represents. The Argentine military conquest of the area will have been seen as a denial of the British capitalists’ ambitions in relation to oil.

The oil factor has been played down by the British media. British capitalists are straining to give the impression that the potential oil is quite incidental to their high moral motives in sending the Task Force. The truth is rather different: in 1974 a team from Birmingham University investigated the oil potentiality in the Malvinas basin and compiled an economically optimistic report. According to the Observer,

 Industry forecasts of the potential oil in the Malvinas basin have been mixed, ranging from 20 million barrels from the Falklands side of the basin to between 40 and 200 billion barrels from the Argentine side.

North Sea oil reserves produce about 50 billion barrels. In 1981 the Royal Dutch Shell Group, acting as a contractor for the Argentine State Oil Company (YPS) drilled a well in Argentine waters which yielded 5,000 barrels a day.

Quite possibly the oil prospects around the Falkland Islands will come to little or nothing; but they have yet to be seriously tested and the British capitalist class is determined to be around if and when the oil profits start pouring in.

The mineral resources of the Antarctic
Not long after the main discoveries of the Antarctic by Cook, Bouvez de Lozier and Kergeulen-Tremarec in the eighteenth century, commercial exploitation of the area began. It has always been assumed that the mineral potential would be vast; but only in recent years have techniques been developed for obtaining the resources of the Antarctic. (Similarly, the Russian ruling class has recently discovered the vast riches in Siberia and it is becoming one of the key industrial areas of the USSR.)

Competition between sections of the capitalist class for the right to own and control the Antarctic was so intense that research in the area has often been stifled and “poisoned by endless arguments over sovereignty” (The Antarctic, H. G. R. King, p. 250). In the mid-1950s the US government proposed that the Antarctic should be internationalised and placed under the control of the United Nations, but this idea came to nothing. In October 1959 a conference of sixteen nations met in Washington and devised the Antarctic treaty, which was ratified in 1961. The treaty determined a thirty-year period of multilateral control of the Antarctic by Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Russia, Britain and the USA. During this time geological research was to be carried out in the area in order to determine its potential riches. The treaty will expire in 1991 and there is every prospect that conflict over future ownership and control of the vast area will be very fierce. While British capital has a foothold on the Falklands it is close to the scene and cannot easily be excluded from a share-out of the Antarctic territory.

Cartoon by George Meddemmen

Strategic routes
Capitalism not only needs to produce commodities, but to distribute them to the markets of the world. To do so it needs access to the convenient trade routes. In an interview on NBC (a US television network) on 9 June. Margaret Thatcher was candid about the fact that economic considerations were on her mind:

  Mrs. Thatcher argued strongly that there was more to the Falklands crisis than ideological issues like democracy. Quite a number of big oil tankers now had to go round Cape Horn to get to Alaska, she said, and they (i.e. the Falklands) had very enormous strategic value” (Guardian, 10 June 1982).

In addition to the principal economic causes of the Falklands war there are political factors which come into play. In Argentina, the Junta was probably prompted to take military action when it did by the then growing political opposition. Faced with a crisis of world capitalism, the Junta has been unable to prevent intensifying economic contradictions from fuelling the discontent of large sections of the working class. Shortly before the ”reconquest of the Malvinas” the Junta was confronted by mass demonstrations on the street; its show of nationalist militarism has converted dissidence into jingoism, thus temporarily stabilising the position of the Argentine ruling class. The use of national chauvinism as a political diversion has aided Thatcher no less than Galtieri. In the long run, however, it is a mistake to assume that the leaders of capitalism are directing its affairs; they are the victims of the system and no amount of peaceful intentions on their part will avoid the occasional need of capitalism to destroy lives and wealth for the sake of profit.

The war, Marxists and the left wing
The role of revolutionary socialists is not simply to declare abstract principles. There are plenty of piously motivated people who are deeply committed to abstract aims, such as “world peace”. Such aims are utopian unless they are related to the historical possibility of establishing a classless, stateless society. Understanding that capitalism causes wars, socialists urge the need for conscious political action to end capitalism and thus eradicate war. Socialists do not simply oppose violence or war or destruction; we oppose the class interests which give rise to these anti-social forms of behaviour.

Socialist principles are put to the test when they are applied to the real experiences of the class struggle. In 1914, when every political party in Britain was either swallowed up by the jingoistic war hysteria or else left muttering inane pacifist sentiments, the Socialist Party stood alone in condemning the war from a class angle:

  Whereas the capitalists of Europe have quarrelled over the questions of the control of trade routes and the world markets, and are endeavouring to exploit the political divisions and blind passions of the working class of their respective countries in order to induce the said workers to take up arms in what is solely their masters’ quarrel. THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN, having no quarrel with the working class of any country, extends to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our good will and Socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of Socialism.

In 1939 the Socialist Party refused to be tricked into support for legalised killing, firmly rejecting the fallacy that the British ruling class — in its alliance with the dictator, Stalin — was fighting for democracy. Alone among all parties in Britain, the Socialist Party has never supported one capitalist interest against another in a war. Consistently we have argued that workers have a material interest in opposing all wars. In maintaining this principle the Socialist Party adheres to the classic declaration of Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto:

  The Communists are distinguished from the other working class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the fore the common interests of the entire proletariat independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

In the light of these revolutionary guidelines of Marx and Engels we may examine the attitude taken to the war by the parties, groups and sects of the British Left. In the moment of truth, have they sided with the workers’ interest — have they pointed out “the common interests of the entire proletariat” — or have they supported the military ambitions of one section of capital against another? Predictably enough, the latter is the case.

Instead of pointing out that workers have no interest in the territorial squabbles of their rulers, virtually all the Leftists opted to make legalistic judgements about which band of exploiters ought to possess the Falklands. The New Communist Party’s leaflet on the war begins by stating: “Let no one be deceived, Britain has no right to the Falklands.”

It seems that the Central Committee of the New Communist Party has set itself up as an international arbiter of capitalist rights. Perhaps they will be good enough to tell us which capitalists do have the “right” to own. control and plunder the earth? The Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) states that Galtieri’s fascist junta is “manipulating the just sentiments of the people for the decolonisation of the Islands . . .”

Socialist Newsletter seems to be divided between supporting the claims of both groups of capitalists; its leaflet begins by stating that: “The 1,800 or so British people who live there are British. They have a right to stay there as British people.”

Having granted the Islanders the right to stay allied to the British ruling class, Socialist Newsletter is anxious not to seem unfair to the Argentine capitalists and so states that “The Malvinas are part of Argentina”.

The Socialist Workers’ Party is never far behind when there are class issues to be confused. “Stop this mad war now!” its leaflet instructs; but instead of going on to say that only socialism can put an end to war, the SWP declares that what is needed is an Argentine victory. “Every socialist and trade unionist . . . has a direct interest in the defeat of the British forces.” Now, if socialists have a direct interest in an Argentine victory (because that is what “defeat of the British forces” means) — if success for the junta equals success for socialists, as the SWP says, should workers not be encouraged to sign up and help the Argentine army defeat the British forces? Presumably the SWP is in favour of what they call the direct interest of socialists and trade unionists, and so are therefore logically committed to taking any action which will enhance such interests. Perhaps we will soon be seeing SWP paper sellers collecting coins to provide arms for the Argentine army — instead of their old slogan, “Fight the fascists on the streets” they will be able to shout out, “Fight with the fascists in the Malvinas" — for by doing so these political half-wits think that they are defending the interests of socialists and trade unionists everywhere.

The SWP leaflet states that:

 . . . the Argentine trade unions and Left rightly believe that the Falklands should belong to Argentina as they were stolen by British gunboats 150 years ago.

So, according to the petty nationalists of the SWP, workers in Argentina are quite right to believe that the national aspirations of their ruling class have anything to do with them—they are right to engage in the very anti-working class nationalism which Marxists totally oppose.

The other trad Trots, such as the IMG and the WRP, have taken attitudes to the war which are indistinguishable from the SWP. They have taken to referring to “the Malvinas” and to regarding Galtieri as a fighter against imperialism. While the Trotskyists dream of a future People’s Malvinas, the Communist Party engages in sterile, meaningless talk about the need for a peaceful United Nations settlement. Such is the revolutionary status of the party which was once going to smash capitalism!

If the trad Trots are strong on pro-nationalist implications, the Revolutionary Communist Party is in the running to become the British wing of the Argentine junta. The RCP is quite clear about which capitalists have its support: “In this war it is the duty of British socialists to back Argentina.” On the assumption that the enemy of an enemy must be a friend, the RCP states that “No socialist can remain neutral when the British ruling class goes to war”.

In 1939 the RCP would no doubt have been sending fraternal telegrams to the Nazis. The front cover of the RCP’s disgustingly anti-working class paper, The Next Step, has banner headlines declaring:

WHEN BRITAIN GOES TO WAR WORKERS MUST TAKE SIDES!
THE MALVINAS ARE ARGENTINA’S!
DEFEND THE RIGHTS OF 27 MILLION ARGENTINES!

If the RCP intends to defend the entire population of Argentina we must assume that they are just as concerned about looking after the interest of the capitalists’ as the workers. The Next Step for any clear-headed member of the RCP would be resignation.

None of the leftist groups has attempted to analyse the real economic causes of the war. The SWP advance the facile explanation that “the war is really about, saving face – Thatcher and her government’s face”.

Not only is this a classical example of. the conspiracy theory — the absurd belief that the capitalists are in any kind of conscious control over capitalism — but misses any serious Marxist analysis why wars occur. To blame wars on Thatcher is to ignore the class forces which personalities like Thatcher, Reagan, Brezhnev and Galtieri are simply the symbols.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) has traditionally ignored the vital question of the cause of war, preferring to campaign against certain weapons of war. The Falklands war has put CND in a difficult position: here we have a decent, old-fashioned conventional war of the kind that CND finds rather more humane than the unpleasant nuclear variety. The horrific conventional weapons which have been used in the South Atlantic may have forced some those CNDers who do not object to war as long as they are non-nuclear to have a re-think. Just as in the late 1960s thousands of CNDers lapsed from the faith in order to take sides in the Vietnam slaughter, so today there are many CNDers fully support the Task Force in its mission. CND boasts that its defence policy has been proved correct and had there been a run-down in conventional armaments the British ruling class would have been militarily unsuccessful in the South Atlantic. In short, just like all reformist bodies, the role of the CND is to advise the capitalists on how to run their competitive and murderous system.

One member of CND who must not be forgotten is Michael Foot — the man who likes to be known as an “inveterate peacemonger”. His speech in the House of Commons at the beginning of the Falklands crisis should be remembered by workers for years to come. It was Foot who urged the government to use force — it was he who threatened to expose the government for weakness if it did not respond to aggression with the might of the British military machine. Foot has workers’ blood on his hands no less than Thatcher. But Foot was elected to administer capitalism and who could expect his party or the Leftist sects which hang on to his party to do anything but bow to the needs of British capitalism? Peace for them is something to be talked about when there is not a capitalist war to be fought. The Left wing of capital is as much an enemy of the working class as are the overt defenders of capitalism on the Right.

The tragedy is that the dangerous policies outlined above lead inevitably to the waste of war and the continuation of class privilege. For Marxists there is but one way ahead and that will not be in the company of capitalists of any nation.

“The workers have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!” (The Communist Manifesto)

Steve Coleman

Letter: Post-modern pessimism (2001)

Letter to the Editors from the January 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Post-modern pessimism

Dear Editors,

Probably the basic problem with the political perspective propagated by the SPGB is that you do not appear to have any sense of a dialectical perspective at all, which, in my opinion, accounts for your absolutist Utopian position, which is surely contrary to a marxist standpoint of scientific socialism. A dialectical perspective teaches that all aspects of life are relative and contradictory, so that the SPGB absolutist position of total communism on the basis of mass theoretical understanding is just totally absurd, and, if I did not know any better, I would have to say that the SPGB were some kind of agents provocateurs—indeed, the Maoists would say that you were objectively counter-revolutionaries. Surely the fact that the SPGB has been standing parliamentary candidates for the last hundred years and still does worse than the fascists should make you think that perhaps you are doing something wrong. I don’t think that you could show me one article in the Socialist Standard where the subject of dialectical materialism has ever been dealt with, which is quite serious, as only an uneducated fool would say that the philosophical basis of marxism was not imperative.

If I would have to label myself, then I would have to say that I am a post-modernist marxist, in the sense that, although I theoretically adhere to the marxist philosophy of dialectical and historical materialism, I would have to say that the ultimate communist goal is quite Utopian, and so unachievable, except perhaps in terms of science fiction, if a small number of people leave the dying civilisation on earth to form a communist space colony. I would say that the greatest obstacle to a fully-fledged communist society is what I call the ecological imperative, in the sense that, within the social context of a realistic expectation of world population levels, it would be ecologically infeasible to expect everyone in the world to have at least the the material status of, say, a working class English person. Just as the SPGB at least had the good sense to agree with the Trotskyists that socialism in any sense was impossible in one country, since, of course, it would only be an equality of poverty, the same thing applies in relation to the ecological imperative within the social context of any serious attempt to impose generalised world equality. Thus if the notion of communism has a future, then it is only in terms of a primitive communist society that would remain after the final collapse of bourgeois materialist civilisation. Moreover, contrary to what some idolatrous admirers of Marx seem to think, he was no more aware than anyone else was prior to recent times of the exigencies of the ecological imperative when he enunciated the Utopian goals of a wholesale communist society.

Thus, in my opinion, the zenith of human civilisation is liberal-democratic (or, perhaps, social-democratic) capitalism, and since the bourgeois materialism of capitalism is essentially ecologically infeasible, it is only a matter of time before bourgeois democracy will degenerate into bourgeois fascism of either the convential type or the Left-fascism of Stalinism—in this regard I would regard all the marxist-leninist groups as essentially Stalinist, since they, like the SPGB, are trying to achieve Utopian ends, although, unlike the SPGB, the Stalinists at least have a realistic perspective of power politics.

It should not be necessary to have to explain to someone who claims to be a socialist that the capitalist imperative of economic growth contradicts the ecological imperative, and that any notion of a green capitalism is nonsense, since, within the social context of realistic levels of world population, in terms of the dialectical principle of quantity changing into quality, even if so-called ecologically sustailable technology was adopted on a wholesale scale it would make no ultimate difference in terms of pollution and resource exhaustion; moreover, the notion of a green capitalism would presumably entail a fascist political context as the capitalist class generally would not willingly agree to abstain from what they would regard as profitable activities, although the ruling capitalist circles would regard it as necessary. And, as is the case in our present-day society, whenever a particular commodity is banned, there develops a criminal industry around it, and the same would be true if it was profitable to market illicit anti-ecological commodities, if, in accordance with the capitalist law of value, the illicit alternative to what was supposed to be ecologically sustainable was more economical.

If I say that I am a post-modernist marxist, and, as well as rejecting the SPGB perspective, I reject the so-called Marxist-Leninist position as objectively Left-fascist (i.e., Stalinist), then, in terms of concrete political practice, what indeed is left for an avowed marxist? I would say that in order to forestall or postpone what is the inexorable fascist political degeneration of capitalism my role is to do what I can to dispel Utopian illusions by emphasizing the necessities of supporting reformist political parties such as the Labour Party or the Liberal Democrats, as being the best of what is practicably possible. It is indeed the case that I would be inclined to agree with the perspective of an organisation called Living Marxism, which has a website at LM, and which could be said to have a post-modernist perspective, and I would be interested to know if you are familiar with them—I will not discuss the notion of post-modernism now, since that is rather complicated, although it could be generally said it is a theoretical recognition that modern-day capitalism civilisation has not got a progressive future, and that there is no realistic alternative. What is perhaps the best thing for avowed marxists is to form think-tanks in the tradition of the Fabian Society, since for an avowed marxist it would be somewhat of a dialectical contradiction for them to be actively involved in social-democratic politics (which is quite all right in itself), while cogently expounding the exigencies of capitalist social evolution, which is essentially that there is no progressive future, and that we only have the choice of what is the lesser evil in a capitalist social context.

Leonard Amos, 

Australia (by email)

Reply: 

Yes, we do know of Living Marxism or “Dead Leninism” as we used to call it. It was originally the journal of the Trotskyist “Revolutionary Communist Party” but later evolved into the voice of a group of trendy cynics, changing its name to LM (a good thing, since it minimised the discredit Marx’s views got from being associated with theirs).

Your own comments illustrate this cynicism quite well: “the ultimate communist goal is quite Utopian, and so unachievable”; “the zenith of human civilisation is liberal-democratic (or, perhaps, social-democratic) capitalism”; “the necessities of supporting reformist political parties such as the Labour Party or the Liberal Democrats, as being the best of what is practicably possible”; “there is no progressive future and we only have the choice of what is the lesser evil in a capitalist social context”.

You challenge us to produce one article in the Socialist Standard which discusses dialectical materialism. Since we’ve been published every month since September 1904 we could give you a whole list. But we’ll confine ourselves to referring you to our pamphlet Historical Materialism which has a chapter on the subject and which can be found on the internet [here]. Briefly, we, too, start from the basis that everything in the universe is interconnected and in a state of constant change but we don’t see any contradiction between this and our perspective of the more or less immediate establishment of “from each according to ability, to each according to needs” once a majority have come to want and understand it. Capitalism has had its period of being historically progressive and its insoluble contradictions now show that it is ripe to be replaced by the new social system it has prepared the way for—world socialism or communism (the same thing).

But you think that socialism/communism is in any event impossible because the resources don’t exist to sustain the present world population at the level of “a working class English person”. Really? Why not? A worker in England consumes a finite amount of food, clothing, accommodation, travel and entertainment but we can see no reason why, given the mobilisation of the world’s resources to that end, the same amounts could not be provided for everyone anywhere in the world.

The mistake you have made is to take the total amount of resources consumed in England (Britain) and divide it by the population and then multiply the result by total world population. This gives an enormous figure for resource consumption that may well not be sustainable. However, this figure is meaningless as it is invalid to assume that all the resources used in Britain are consumed in producing the finite amount of goods consumed by the working class here. Resources consumed in Britain at the moment include the waste of capitalism, which is enormous.

The waste, for a start, of arms and the armed forces. Then there’s the waste of the whole system of buying and selling (the armies of accountants, salespeople, ticket collectors, bank clerks, etc, etc, etc) and of administering the capitalist system (the armies of civil servants devising, collecting, recording taxes and paying out subsidies and benefits). Finally, there’s the waste of planned obsolescence, of producing shoddy goods designed not to last too long, and of not recycling.

How extensive is this waste? The most conservative estimate is that it amounts to 50 percent, i.e. that only half of the present-day resource consumption in Britain (and equivalent countries) is devoted to directly satisfying people’s needs, the other 50 percent being on-costs that are incurred solely because this is taking place in a capitalist context. Others have put the waste figure as high as 90 percent. Whatever the figure, socialism/communism being a society of direct production to satisfy people’s needs without money could economise on the resources used up on these oncosts of capitalism.

You also ignore the other side of the equation: resources. You seem to think that these are fixed and that we are near their limits but this is by no means the case. Figures produced by the FAO and other researchers show that, for instance, food production could be increased so as to adequately feed twice the world’s present population of 6,000 million (quoted by Swiss MP Jean Ziegler in his 1999 book La faim dans le monde expliquée à mon fils (Famine in the World Explained to My Son), p. 19; see also the FAO site at FAO under “Dimensions of Need”). Existing resources could also be made to go further by making things to last longer, by standardised spare parts, better storage facilities, recycling and by the adoption on a wholesale scale of the ecologically-sustainable technology you seem to doubt.

You don’t need to convince us that a “green capitalism” is nonsense. That’s been our case against the Green Party and campaigning environmentalist groups like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace from when they first made their appearance on the political scene in the 1970s and 1980s. You’re probably right that under capitalism the measures they advocate could only be fully implemented by authoritarian methods. And we can go along with you that things are going to get worse from an ecological point of view as long as capitalism is allowed to continue. Capitalism does indeed risk a descent into barbarism, the beginnings of which can already be seen. Indeed, the emergence of pessimistic and cynical doctrines such as so-called “post-modernism” is an ideological reflection of this.

You preach pessimism and say that the most we might be able to do is to slow down a little this descent into barbarism. We, on the other hand, retain the “modernist” view inherited from the 18th century Enlightenment that humanity can build a better future—but only as long as it takes steps to replace capitalism by a world socialist society.

Editors.

Story of an election (1992)

From the May 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the end the workers voted for the devil they knew. Kinnock, whose readiness to sell his soul and any physical parts of his anatomy to the devil as the price for power, finished with neither principles nor power. Ashdown, the shady middle man, ended the day firmly in the middle of the wilderness. dealing cards in a game which nobody needed to play with him.

The Greens suffered what future historians may decide to call The Fate of Kinnock: after a heated Conference debate as to whether they should be pragmatic and voter-friendly or say what they meant, the opportunist majority won, but the workers refused to offer the Green politicians the remotest lick of power. The Natural Law Party, created in 1992 with the backing of hippy millionaires and the ability to buy their way on to TV stations which have refused electoral broadcasts to socialists since TV started, proved that you can buy a few hundred votes in a few hundred constituencies if you have enough money and enough voters with enough madness.

It was a dull election which was dominated by media rambling and boring polls which proved to be wrong. It is too unkind to wish that the pollsters, together with the now obsolete kremlinologists, enjoy a short while on the dole queue followed by a long while doing something useful with their lives?

The essence of the election was negativity. The Tories did not win; indeed, most voters opted for parties other than Major’s. The Tory election campaign, backed by nearly every newspaper, was designed to scare workers against voting Labour. The Labour Party, wedded to the market and virtually the same in policy terms as the Conservatives, used most of its fire attacking the wicked Tories and presenting slick, sick ads with film stars and no ideas. As ever, the Liberals played it dirty. The most interesting poll of the election showed that negative motivation amongst younger voters outnumbered positive reasons for voting choice by three to one (Guardian, 12 March).

The socialist campaign

The Socialist Party decided to contest the London seat of Holborn and St Pancras. The campaign, organised by Camden branch, owed its success to enthusiastic support from many people, both members and supporters of the party. Manifestoes were printed by the party printers on our own presses and delivered free by the Post Office. Thousands of posters and stickers were printed and displayed. Open-air meetings were held in Camden Town. Kentish Town. Brunswick Square and Lincoln’s Inn. A loudspeaker car toured the constituency blasting out somewhat different messages from the other parties. Three different types of leaflets, in addition to the manifesto, were printed and delivered across the constituency. One thousand extra copies of the election issue of the Socialist Standard were distributed and so were many more back-issues. An eve-of-poll rally in Conway Hall had standing room only and was followed by a less formal gathering in a nearby bar where those interested met and talked with us. It was hard not to notice us in the area: the campaign is but a beginning of our serious work in Camden where we are determined to make the Socialist Party a force that the defenders of capitalism will be unable to ignore.

It was not all cheer and beer. The campaign had its down points and these told us a thing or two about how the capitalist system works. This party, which is hostile to both the market and to the rule of bureaucrats, was more than once the victim of both.

First, the market and the election. For the days after the election was called we roamed the constituency looking for an election office to rent. There was no shortage of empty shops in prime sites, but a combination of ridiculously high rents and lousy premises kept us out in the cold.

Finally, we found a shop which was affordable and more than half decent. The price was fixed with the agent and we arrived on the first Friday of the campaign (three weeks from the election day) ready to set up for action. A complication had arisen, said the agent: a well-known property company was the owner of the shop and was uncertain about letting us use it for “political reasons”. No Socialists Wanted Here. This is called democracy. We were told to wait for the directors to think further on the matter, but gently suggested that they jump somewhere where the water is less than fresh, and by that same Friday evening we moved into a shop in the less convenient area of Chalton Street, off Euston Road. The election office was transformed from a slum into a pleasant environment and was used efficiently for the three-week campaign.

Bureaucratic interference in our campaign came from the Post Office who told us that our manifesto, which had been stamped and approved by them, could not be delivered because it advertised our election rally. We pointed out to them that our last manifestoes had advertised meetings, and that the Post Office stamp of approval was placed right next to the rally announcement. They accepted that they were in the wrong, but not before wasting two days when the manifestoes could have been distributed by them. We are now in dispute with the same bureaucrats concerning several thousand manifestoes which they failed to arrange to distribute in the Kentish Town area.

Honest Politics

As ever, we made it clear to our fellow workers that while it is in their interest to vote for our candidate, we did not want their votes unless they were socialists. We asked the workers not to vote for us unless they agreed and they obliged: we won 175 votes.

Little can be said about our vote, but, for the psephologically-minded, here are a few points worth thinking about—“just for fun”, as the man with the silly swingometer might put it. Firstly, 175 votes equals 0.4 percent of those who voted, or four voters out of every thousand. It is a higher percentage of the vote than any national election we have contested for over twenty years, and since we were up against the Greens, the Natural Law Party and a Leninist outfit, as well as the big three parties, we may presume that our votes were not all mere protest votes but represented genuine support for our unequivocal socialist manifesto.

Secondly, even if we assume that not all the votes were as sound as we would like them to be, even if we halved the number of votes and then projected it across the country (assuming that socialist consciousness is not innately higher in Camden than elsewhere) we would have had 50,000 genuine socialist votes. If such a calculation is reasonable, it is amusing to think that there are already twice as many socialists in Britain as there arc millionaires!

Thirdly, the tactic of Leninist opportunism has been discredited by our result. Standing against us was the Revolutionary Communist Party, a disreputable Leninist sect. Being opportunist tricksters, they employed the old tactic of standing under the name of a front organisation: “Workers Against Racism". Yet, despite their reformist campaign and their efforts to appeal to populist single issues, the Socialist Party’s undisguised principles won more votes than them. This was not only the case in our constituency: the Socialist Party won more votes than any of the Leninist candidates standing in London constituencies. In times past parties like the Communist Party told us that appealing to the workers on the basis of tactical reformism was the only way to win votes. It is gratifying to note that honesty was respected more than tactics.

As for the other Leninist sects, their position in the election was just as disgraceful. Their call was to vote Labour. Workers News, the paper of the “Workers International League (Leninist-Trotskyist Ten- dency/Britain)” had as its election headline: “Kick Out The Tories! Vote Labour . . . But Reject Kinnock's Cowardly Policies”. The election headline of Workers Power stated “Vote Labour—But Organise To Fight!”. Rather like telling workers to jog on the M1, but remember to take some bandages.

As ever, the barmiest Leninist nonsense came from the SWP whose 4 April issue of Socialist Worker (the paper for those students who can only achieve a Leninist level of consciousness) had the following headline: “Major Out. Vote Labour. But Build A Socialist Alternative". Of the Labour Party, which they urge workers to waste their votes on, the same issue states that:

  the word socialism is not used once in labour’s election manifesto. Labour leaders have hardly uttered it throughout the campaign. Labour's priority in recent years and in its manifesto has been to appease big business and the bankers. (Our emphasis)

So, here is a so-called socialist organisation bemoaning the fact that Labour never speaks about or stands for socialism and instead supports the interest of the class enemy and therefore workers should vote for them.

In order to diagnose the symptoms of this political insanity (as well as put socialist leaflets into the hands of workers attracted to it by the pseudo-socialist title of the SWP), we attended their rally in our constituency where they were urging workers to vote for the party of “big business and the bankers” against the Socialist Party. Their speaker, one Alex Callinicos, a politics lecturer from York University, declared how delighted he was that Labour was ahead in the polls and how workers must be persuaded to vote Labour in order to learn that a Labour government will attack them just like the Tories!

SWP meetings are stage-managed and most of the “questions" from the audience take the form of pre-arranged harangues from members of the cult. The SWP is a party of confused capitalist reformism and urges workers to vote Labour "without illusions”. Interestingly, the rather less confused. but equally non-socialist Financial Times came out on election day with exactly the same recommendation to vote Labour but without illusions.

In place of leaders

Our candidate did not stand as a leader or potential leader. What he called for was a democratic socialist mandate. All of the other parties called on the workers to follow rather than think.

The manifesto of the Natural Law Party informed its readers that "our candidates have demonstrated greater orderliness of brain functioning, indicated by EEG coherence; and greater command of Natural Law, indicated by improved mind-body co-ordination—Yogic Flying”. On the basis that these self-styled superbrains can fly through the air in ways that would have left Lamont and Smith standing in silent awe, it behoves the floating voter to examine the economic section of the manifesto of their local floating candidate: "The Natural Law Party upholds the principle of free-markct economy".

Not to be outdone by such spectacular activities, Frank Dobson, the elected Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras, performed the much-admired circus feat of The Disappearing Man: he ran no meeting in the constituency throughout the campaign and appeared on BBCTV on election night saying that he had spent the best part of the campaign touring Britain.

Should he ever extend his tour into the constituency which political ignorance has made his, he might like to consider that there are two as yet unacknowledged challenges to debate awaiting him from the Socialist Party and there are 175 local voters who would like to see him respond to the genuine case for a socialist transformation.

Steve Coleman

Election Result

Abstentionists 23.863: Dobson (Lab) 22,243; McHallam (Con) 11,419: Horne- Roberts (Lib-Dem) 5.476 Wolf-Light (Green) 959: Hersey (NLP) 212; Headicar (Socialist Party) 175; Lewis (Trot) 133.

What about Lenin? (1991)

Book Reviews from the December 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Stalinism in Crisis. By Robert Knight. Pluto Press. 1991. £9.95.

Stalinism and the Seeds of Soviet Reform By Moshe Lewin. Pluto Press, 1991.

Current events in Russia have left Trotskyists (not to speak of Stalinists and other Leninists) in complete confusion. These two books illustrate two contrastingTrotskyist responses to Russia's changing from bureaucratic state capitalism to private capitalism.

Knight, a writer for the RCP’s Living Marxism, sees the Russian ruling class as trying to “restore" capitalism in Russia and to convert itself from a bureaucracy ruling an inefficient statist economy into a capitalist class. Lewin won’t even concede that Russia has a ruling class or that it is heading for the sort of capitalism that exists in the West. In his introduction to this new edition of his book that first appeared in 1974, he seems to be saying that Gorbachev was engaged in converting Russia from a “degenerate workers' state" (whatever that might be) into some sort of “socialist" democracy!

And, of course, it is altogether too easy to blame, as the titles of both books seek to, the Russian dictatorship on to Stalin, when the bases for it were laid under Lenin.

Adam Buick

Monument of Confusion (1987)

From the July 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every Saturday at the Earl Grey Monument in Newcastle city centre, a crowd of eager young paper sellers practically trip up innocent passers-by, in their efforts to unload their latest offerings of ''revolutionary" wisdom. A whole range of groups calling themselves "socialist" will bark at bored shoppers and brandish high in the air the papers which they each claim to be the only true word of Karl Marx.

Who are all of these groups, and what evidence is there that any of their papers are any more revolutionary than the local Evening Chronicle? Apart from the Socialist Standard there are three papers/parties in particular which may be spotted at the Monument. All three are Trotskyist groups. They owe their origins to post-war doubts on the left about continuing to support the Russian dictatorship. The Socialist Standard, in contrast, had exposed from the time of the Russian revolution itself the fact that Russia was — in Lenin 's own words — state capitalist, and that the Bolshevik model of revolution was bound to lead to dictatorship, because it was not based on democratic participation.

First, there is Militant, which is supposedly produced by the Militant Tendency, but is in fact produced by a manipulative sect called the Revolutionary Socialist League, so called because it is neither revolutionary nor socialist. The Militant idea of "socialism" can be found in their proposal to "nationalise the top 200 companies". Quite apart from the problem of what happens to the 201st, this is a blueprint for state capitalism. Miners, steel workers and others in nationalised industries know only too well that the priority is still profit rather than human needs, even if the profit goes to the state boss rather than the private boss. Like other groups on the left, Militant persists in the naive view that if only we could get the "right leaders", a Labour government could humanise capitalism.

The Next Step is the paper of the Revolutionary Communist Party and follows Lenin's false theory (taken from the English Liberal, Hobson, in 1916) that the world divides neatly into countries which are "imperialist" and those which are not. According to the dangerous assumption that the enemy of an enemy must be a friend (known in the jargon as "revolutionary defeatism") this means that British workers must support any "smaller" country which the British state happens to be at war with. So during the Falklands war in 1982, the RCP produced a pamphlet urging us to support Galtieri and his fascist-type junta; and during the crisis surrounding the bombing of Tripoli in 1986 they produced a leaflet stating "Britain backs Reagan; We back Gaddafi". No doubt the Libyan dictator was very pleased to hear about this.

The Socialist Workers' Party offer the Socialist Worker as the paper which has really got the capitalist system sussed. On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that it is spreading confusion about what socialism is and how to get it. In giving examples of contradictions within the pages of Socialist Worker we are spoilt for choice, for there are dozens. In their issue of 11 May 1985. the following two statements both appear:

1. "We believe a future Labour government will not act in the interests of the working class. On the contrary, it will act like every previous Labour government — in the interests of the bosses' class"
2. "Our attitude is clear. We are for a Labour government".

This year the SWP is again urging workers to vote Labour. The way Socialist Worker tries to justify such a contradictory stance is by referring (politely, of course) to the supposed inability of workers to understand socialism. The self-appointed vanguard of the SWP realise the limitations of Labour government, but the idea of simply stating this to workers is apparently far too straight for them. Instead workers, presumably including SWP members themselves, have to be dragooned into electing yet another capitalist government. in order to "learn from their mistakes” — which the SWP has told them to make.

Why does the Socialist Party claim to be different from the other groups who peddle their wares at the "socialist" bazaar every Saturday?

• The Socialist Party has put a clear and consistent case for socialism at all times. Unlike all the other so-called "socialist" groups, we have never supported futile attempts to patch up the profit system. By its very nature the profit system will always put the profits of the few before the needs of the majority.

   Earl Grey's Monument itself was built in 1932 to mark "a century of civil peace" (!) and carries an inscription that "the people renew their gratitude to the author of the Great Reform Bill". This is ironic, as the groups who sell around it are still caught up in the same ridiculous attempt to reform capitalism in the interests of workers, with for example the SWP's "Right to Work" campaign or the recent RCP "demand"" for "a living wage”.

• The Socialist Party has never held up the Russian régime or any of the other state dictatorships as examples of "socialism". Socialism means a world-wide, democratic system of society. Productive resources would be owned in common and production would be for direct, free use — not profit or sale. There would be free access to wealth. Although the groups referred to above halfheartedly criticise present-day Russia, their idea of socialism is in fact a model for state dictatorship of the same kind. Take for example Socialist Worker, 6 September 1986, which says that in socialism there will be a militia "in charge of everyday law and order", that the party will form the government and that “there will not be complete universal suffrage'". The Socialist Party, in contrast, has always stated that socialism means the end of government and "law and order”, and the beginnings of people controlling their own lives democratically.

• Finally, The Socialist Party has never posed as a "vanguard" or leadership for workers to follow or be " organised"" by. We are simply a tool or vehicle to be used by workers wishing to take political action to end capitalism. Likewise, within The Socialist Party there is no leadership, no "instructions from the Central Committee" such as you will find in the Trotskyist groups. The movement for a democratic society must clearly be democratic itself, based on shared understanding and principles, rather than on leaders and their sheep. As socialist understanding spreads among workers, these self- appointed “revolutionary vanguards" will be seen increasingly as irrelevant to the struggle for socialism. Common ownership and democratic control of the world's resources will come about through a socialist majority, transforming society by democratic means. Only then can universal suffrage be, as Karl Marx put it a century ago, "transformed from the instrument of trickery which it has been up till now. into an instrument of emancipation" (1880 Programme of FPSWF).

The Socialist Party is an active and growing political force in the North East, and throughout the country. If you are interested in these ideas, why not send for a free sample of our literature?

Clifford Slapper

Sting in the Tail: Send for Jeeves (1991)

The Sting in the Tail Column from the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Send for Jeeves

The characters of P.G. Wodehouse may seem a little outdated, but the useless, luxurious lives of the very rich don't seem to have changed all that much since the days of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves.

Patrick Davison, a butler to the millionaire George Soros, recently won his case for unfair dismissal; and in reporting the tribunal the newspapers revealed a little of the outrageous life-style of the rich in Britain today. The butler insisted to Mrs Miriam Sanchez, a recently appointed chef, that she use less expensive wines when preparing her gourmet meals.

But Mrs Sanchez complained to Mr Soros's wife Susan, got her own way, and began to use Chateau Lafite wines costing between £400 and £500 a bottle

Glasgow Herald 8 May

All lovers of haute cuisine will be delighted that the present economic slump is not affecting the high standards of the Soros household.

Unkindest Cut of All

At the Scottish Tory Party conference in Perth last month you could hear some remarkable nonsense, but it is doubtful if any of the delegates could have topped the nutty ideas of that foolish fop Mr Nicholas Fairbairn MP.

When not grabbing the headlines of the gutter press with his eccentric notions of sartorial elegance (he once appeared at Buckingham Palace in a tartan three piece suit that made him look like a demented Bay City Roller fan) he thunders forth on such issues as World Hunger.

In Africa, they are being encouraged to have more children. I feel there should be more sterilisation programmes by these governments and It should be a world-wide priority.

Glasgow Herald 10 May

Like many politicians Fairbairn believes that World Hunger is caused by too many people. He of course does not take the socialist view that this planet is capable of feeding all the world's population if we had production for use instead of production for profit.

Sterilisation as a solution to World Hunger is stupid. Although it is a pity perhaps that Fairbairn's father hadn't been a volunteer for such a programme.

Dead Leninism

We forked out the £1.80 to buy the May Issue of "Living Marxism", the monthly review of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

The contents quickly reveal the RCP as yet another bunch of Leninists when, for example, we read about the alleged need for

... arming a minority with an understanding of the necessity for social change...

Of course there's not one word about what the social change is to be, merely a mention of "a new society".

But why only a minority, why not a majority? Well, being Leninists they certainly don't want THAT!

After all, if the majority saw the necessity for real social change by replacing capitalism with a world-wide society based on common ownership and democratic control then there wouldn't be any place for Leninist leaders, would there?

Thieves Fall Out

The Institute of Directors has been described as the Tory Party at lunch but now its director general has fallen out with the government.

Peter Morgan told the Institute's annual conference:

This awful recession . . .  is a failure of government management. It is government failure, not market failure.

The Guardian 24 April

Morgan imagines that if the government had followed policies approved by him then the recession would have been avoided. He is wrong. No matter what policies governments pursue, the normal boom - slump cycle of capitalism cannot be avoided.

But he was right about the relationship between inflation and wages when he blamed the government for "high wage settlements".

I have absolutely no doubt that inflation causes high settlements and not, categorically not, the other way around.

Remember this the next time you hear about "inflationary wage rises"

May Day Mayhem

May Day in Glasgow was fine and sunny but the number of marchers continues to decline. The main speaker at the official rally on Glasgow Green was a trade union leader but his meeting attracted fewer people than the beer tent did.

One fringe activity was a platform on which every leftist group was invited to speak. And so they did but often only to slag off one another.

For example, a Trotskyist attacked "the Stalinists" and was immediately denounced by an anarchist for supporting Trotsky, "the butcher of Kronstadt".

Some speakers urged trade union action while others were hostile to this, but all were united in hammering the Labour Party although most still wanted to "get the Tories out" and "a real Labour government in".

Incidentally, the big demand from the organisers of this meeting was ... the reinstatement of the demoted curator of the People's Palace Museum!

Meanwhile, Glasgow branch members of the Socialist Party set out their literature and, despite the surrounding din, held a brief meeting. That, we can swear, was the only occasion when anything about socialism was allowed to intrude during the whole afternoon.

Don't All Rush

Fancy a des res with "unrivalled view" over Kensington Palace Gardens? This apartment has polished marble floors throughout, four reception rooms, four bedrooms each with bathroom en suite, and has Prince Charles as a near neighbour. (ITN News 10 May).

And because the market is at rock bottom it's yours for a giveaway £13 million. This includes antique furniture worth £1 million but a discount can be arranged should you wish the apartment unfurnished.

Still not sure? Well, this residential block is so exclusive that its development officer thinks the apartment will go to the type of person “who needs a home in all the major capitals".

You'll think about it? Yes, that's just about all workers can ever do about capitalism's extravagances.

The Blackboard Jungle

A good example of the Tory Party's idea of open government was explained in The Independent on 13 May, in reporting how the government dealt with critical reports from the school Inspectorate on the state of education. 

The Government found such criticism embarrassing. In 1987 it held back the Chief Inspector's report until after the general election. Only after the election did the public find out about the large increase in unfilled teacher vacancies, the crumbling classrooms and the great divide between schools where parents could afford to buy textbooks and those who could not.

It is heartening that some Tory MPs are eager to avoid this dishonesty - they are proposing a bill to abolish the inspectorate!

Defending Modernism? (2005)

Book Review from the May 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone? by Frank Furedi, Continuum, 2004

Frank Furedi takes the opportunity in this book to rail against the modern 'cultural elite' and their 'dumbing down' of political, educational and artistic standards.He forcefully argues that an all pervading desire for 'inclusivity' leading to the flattery of interest groups - has replaced more hard-headed conceptions of scientific rigour, critical thought and above all, standards, as the driving force for decision makers in the modern world. Today, he argues, participation (or the appearance of it) is seen as the key issue, while the role of the 'intellectual', as arbiter of taste, independent critical analyst and robust generator of original ideas, has been compromised and diminished.

This is interesting and provocative, particularly as Furedi - currently Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent - is better known as the leading theoretician of the Trotskyist political current which called itself the Revolutionary Communist Party until a few years ago, notable for their annual 'Preparing For Power' conferences and their glossily superficial Living Marxism magazine. That his views now seem to have more in common with those routinely expressed in the opinion columns of the Daily Telegraph clearly isn't something he feels the need to apologise for. Strangely enough, Mick Hume, the erstwhile editor of Living Marxism (or 'LM' as it became, in a needless concession to the postmodernist culture and 'dumbing down' Furedi now ironically rails against), happens to be a broadsheet columnist spouting similar views to Furedi himself. This does nothing to diminish the prevalent view on the British left that their organisation was a rather bizarre cross between a cult and a sect with a tendency to say anything controversial if it could get them some media attention.

For all that, Furedi's book is well worth reading. He is a thought-provoking writer and something of a critic of the present 'postmodern condition', where everything seemingly has a value of some sort and banality is elevated into an art form, where science and reason are merely another perspective on the world, and where all attempts at fundamentally changing society are doomed to failure, are dangerous - or both. Here he is tilling fertile ground, and his writing is stimulating and energetic.

A large part of the book focuses on the way in which public policy in the major capitalist states is currently using 'inclusivity' and 'widening access' as bogus ways of enfranchising the disenfranchised, whether it be in political life, the arts, or Higher Education. This involves the recognition and flattery of 'identities' (ethnic, gender, sexual, national) and the promotion of the idea that everyone creates even if some of Furedi's hobby-horses lead him astray periodically.  instance, For the current agenda for 'widening access and participation' in HE is little to do with abstract social engineering but the response of successive governments to the demands of the labour market, including the demands of employers for more vocationally-focused university courses and for the creation of intermediate awards like Foundation Degrees. Indeed, this seems an odd point to need to make to someone who has spent most of his life calling himself a Marxist.

Furthermore, even if Furedi is a half-decent sociologist he is certainly not much of an educationalist, as his comments on modern methods of teaching and learning, accreditation of prior learning and other issues tend to show, for here he is unreliable and his approach lacks the type of rigour and engagement with serious study he otherwise insists on. But where Furedi's book misses the mark most noticeably is in his defence of the 'intellectual' as embodying everything that was good about Enlightenment ideals and modernist conceptions of progress. This is a partial, one-sided analysis and it is tempting to suspect that what Furedi really wants to defend is modernism, science and rationality itself against postmodernism, relativism and our seemingly irrational age.

But this has already been done by others quite recently, such as by Francis Wheen, so Furedi has cast around for a new angle that only serves to distort the picture, robbing it of clarity.

Society doesn't need a new phalanx of intellectuals at all, it needs a reaction against reaction and a confidence that humankind generally can look beyond the fragments of the postmodern condition and collectively work towards a vision of how the world ought to be.

Dave Perrin