Words, Words, Words . . . (1954)

From the September 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

"I am told that people say I bawl. Well, I allow it, I do bawl and I will bawl." So said a famous tubthumper of two hundred years ago, and in various tones, for various causes, they—we—have been bawling ever since.

Rhetoric under the sky is the oldest, most powerful form of persuasion. It was done in the agora, the market place that was the centre of social and political life in a Greek city. Petronius heckled an orator in Nero's Rome—"by a set of dribbling witticisms you found you could make audiences titter"—on his way to the bawdyhouse. In mediæval England John Ball stood on hillsides demanding freedom and justice for the poor. In Shakespeare's day news, scandal and sedition were put into ballads and sung in the markets, and old Saint Paul's was "the market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes"; Mark Antony—and his audience—had their prototypes. Through the centuries that followed, in the squares and open spaces they cried salvation and the rights of man—the revivalists, the Chartists and the rest.

The Socialist Party was founded when open-air meetings had never been more copious, when the sects and parties vied with one another in the streets for the attention of the working class. Different conditions engender different approaches. There was more rhetoric in those days—to the modern mind more "ham" perhaps, but it was necessary. The slick, confidence-making political speech belonged to the wireless-telegraph future. Aspiring speakers, practising declamation, tried "The Charge of the Light Brigade", "Men of England" and "The Bells" on one another.

Politically conscious people were more theory-conscious that they are to-day. Marx and Engels were not long dead, Kautsky, Luxemburg and Plechanov in their prime; Bernstein's revisionism and the Fabian Essays were argued fiercely. Socialist speakers had to know their theory and know it well. Many of them learned by heart what were considered key passages of important works: sections of The Communist Manifesto, the statement of historical materialism from The Critique of Political Economy, pages of Capital, of Darwin, Spencer and No Compromise, and bits of Shakespeare too. It was a fine thing to support the analysis of capitalism with

" . . . You take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live."

If the politicos were more learned, the others made up for it. A speaker too vigorous in attacking the prejudices of a prejudiced audience was asking to be thrown in a horse-trough, and not uncommonly he was. Robert Tressell describes the reception of a "Clarion" van by the ragged-trousered philanthropists of Hastings:

"The man on the platform was still trying to make himself heard, but without success. The strangers who had come with the van and the little group of local socialists, who had forced their way close to the platform in front of the would-be speaker, only increased the din by their shouts of appealing to the crowd to 'give the man a fair chance.' This little bodyguard closed round the van as it began to move slowly downhill, but it was completely outnumbered . . . 'We'll give the swines Socialism!' shouted Crass, who was literally foaming at the mouth." 

On most platforms, feeling carried the day. The Liberals and Tories could raise cheers with reference to the Empire and the Flag; the worst accusation against a policy was "it will ruin the country". Emotion was not altogether disfavoured by Socialists. Words like "traitor" carried a great deal; labour leaders were invariably called "Labour bleeders" or "fakirs", and there was even a Party song called "The World for the Workers".

The platform manner changed after the first war, at the same time as urban growth and road traffic began to eliminate meeting-places. The radio and the pictures arrived, and speakers had to compete with them. Some of the smaller parties were swallowed by the Labour and Communist Parties, so that theoretical argument gave place to "practical policies" and calls for "action now." In the 'thirties a new sort of political meeting appeared, with the speaker surrounded by microphones and no questions allowed. The rhetorical tradition of Parliament, too, suffered a blow when Labour came to power with Cabinet Ministers who were without oral grace; Gladstone, Balfour and their contemporaries could often be taken down verbatim to read as excellent prose.

Today audiences are more tolerant (and more knowledgeable too) and speakers, on the whole, more urbane and more discursive. Perhaps there are more wisecracks and fewer long quotations, because our age prefers the former as a condiment to learning. One tradition which the Party has always maintained is that of giving the platform to opposition. Other parties don't do it; the Socialist Party, which has everything to gain and nothing to fear from open discussion, never refuses, and many a truculent opponent has deflated himself trying to present a case against Socialism under the Socialist Party's own auspices.

The industriousness of Party speakers has always been remarkable. Before the first war, two dozen of them held something like a hundred and thirty open-air meetings a month in London alone. The numbers were similar in 1939, and today the meetings still are a vital part of the Party's propaganda. Debates, too: Liberals, Labour, Tories, Communists, pacifists, fascists, parsons, anarchists—all of them have had their petty panaceas atomized by Socialist speakers. Several debates were published as pamphlets, and they are remarkable examples of the Party's case in action.

Fifty years' speaking for Socialism—fifty years of writing for it, as well. The Socialist Standard is unique. It has never known a paid journalist; its writers and editors have been bricklayers, clerks, housewives, busmen—all sorts and conditions of working people in their spare time. The first page of the first issue said:

"In the Socialist Party of Great Britain we are all members of the working class, and cannot hope that our articles will always be finely phrased, but we shall endeavour to lay before you on every occasion a sane and sound pronouncement on all matters affecting the welfare of the working class. What we lack in refinement of style we shall make good by the depth of our sincerity and by the truth of our principles."

The Standard was too hard-hitting to have such refinement, and there was little room for fine phrases in Fitzgerald's relentless logic or the rumbustious onslaughts of Jacomb. Euphemism was scorned, and the contributors said just what they meant. When the Manchester Guardian slighted the Party, a Standard headline called it the "Liberal skunk press"; Lloyd George was a liar. Asquith an assassin, and their confreres hypocrites, frauds and political prostitutes. It seems that surprising that the Party was sued for libel only once.

The style of the Standard then, as now, owed to two principal sources: the sociological textbooks of the time, and popular journalism. From the latter it drew a peculiar Joe Miller waggishness that was part of the stock-in-trade of successful newspaper columnists, easier to exemplify than describe. Thus, the Editorial Committee apologizing for a writer who had not made himself clear to a correspondent: "He developed what he calls his style by studying a burr-walnut piano case in foggy weather". A debate with a suffragette was irresistible, and its report was resplendent with quips about "ye gallant knight Anderson" and "the poor girl". Perhaps the acme of this sort of wit was with a highly dramatic poem which had the refrain:

"Go! reckon your dead by your forges red,
        And in factories where we spin;
If blood be the price of your cursed wealth,
        By Christ! we have paid in full".

The poem was called "Gawd Struth We Have."

The writers on economics, socialist theory and political issues put forth their subject-matter lucidly and without frills or ambiguities; style which came naturally through close acquaintance with Engels, Kautsky, Plechanov and the other classical exponents of Marxism. The popularization of academic and technical subjects influenced later writers, and is still doing so—"science for the citizen" has made its mark. Just as on the platform, the people addressed are more widely informed and less concerned with theoretical questions. That does not mean, however, that the modern writer—or speaker—may neglect theory; it means that he must apply it more widely in a world with wider horizons.

And so it goes on; the business of persuading people to think straight, because that is what the Socialist wants. Words are our weapons. Words, words, words . . .

Robert Barltrop

Paradise lost (1986)

Book Review from the January 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Governments, 1945-51 by Henry Pelling (Macmillan £9.95)

Nervous of the future, with its prospects of another five years of Thatcher government, members of the Labour Party have been known to draw comfort from a conveniently distorted version of their past. Not, of course, the past of Ramsay Macdonald and Jimmy Thomas; their nostalgia centres on the time of the Attlee government, which came to power a little over forty years ago.

Those were, we are told, the days; key industries nationalised so that they belonged to, and worked for the benefit of, the people; the National Health Service set up to provide a free medical service of the highest possible quality; Family Allowances introduced to remove the burden of poverty from families for ever; Ernie Bevin signalling the day of the common person at the Foreign Office; Herbert Morrison ensuring an efficient passage to the Promised Land; Nye Bevan's fluent tongue on guard over Labour's conscience, to keep the party straying from the path to socialism. A great time, they remember, for the Labour Party and the British working class.

The only problem is that it didn't seem at all like that at the time. A more accurate memory would recall austerity, more intensive exploitation by way of wage restraint linked to exhortations to work harder, economic crises, war, conscription, internal feuding  . . . When the Labour Party were defeated in 1951 it was said to be due partly to several of their big names having died or being seriously ill—an inadequate explanation, since the Tories who replaced them were not free of these handicaps; Churchill had suffered some devastating strokes and Eden—Churchill's obvious successor as leader—was practically living on drugs to ease his intestinal troubles. The truth is that Labour lost because they failed to keep their promises to create a secure, prosperous country; most of their precious theories, devotedly nursed over so many years, had been put into practice after 1945 but had had no fundamental effect on working-class lives. Capitalism lived on, with its class division, its poverty and slums, its exploitation of one class by another, its diseases, its war. Much of the energy of Socialist Party propaganda went into contrasting this with what socialism will actually be—a classless social system based on communal ownership of the means of life, free access, a united human race.

There was, to begin with, nothing of socialism in Labour's nationalisation schemes. There was no proper resistance from the Tory opposition to the state take over of the Bank of England, the railways and the coal mines. Gas nationalisation had already been advocated by the Heyworth committee and civil aviation was largely under state control as the result of measures taken in the 1930s by Neville Chamberlain. Even the steel industry, over which there was a certain amount of posturing by the Tories, accepted the case for " . . . national planning . . . if you are going to have a Steel Board it should be a permanent control board and its powers should be thorough" (Sir Andrew Duncan, Conservative MP and Chairman of the Iron and Steel Federation, 21 May 1947). Nationalisation was a means, not to common ownership but to an adjustment in the details of minority class ownership, intended to act in the overall interests of the British capitalist class. At the 1948 Labour Party conference a delegate from the Post Office Workers—who, working for one of the established nationalised concerns could claim to know what he was talking about—declared himself "cynical" about "the idea of some organised sections of the workers that nationalisation itself will bring freedom from exploitation".

There was also effective party agreement about the "welfare state". The coalition government had accepted all three of the basic assumptions of the Beveridge Report—family allowances, a national health service and "full employment". Debate, such as it was, centred on matters of timing and levels of state benefits, and the doctors bargained with some ferocity, just like any group of workers whose working conditions are under review and who have the strength to resist, over their pay and other issues. But there is no doubt that had a Tory government been elected in 1945 there would still have been a "welfare state" and that it would not have differed much from the model which Bevan eventually piloted through parliament. The reason for this was that the pre-war fragmented, uneven medical services and benefits were inefficient in providing the healthiest, most profitably exploitable workforce. The general interests of the British capitalist class demanded that there be changes and both Labour and Conservative parties were united in their readiness to make them.

When it came to the international protection of the interests of the British ruling class, the Attlee government knew exactly what their priorities had to be. In January 1947 they decided to start making the atomic bomb; a little over a year later Defence Minister A. V. Alexander assured the Commons that " . . . research and development continues to receive the highest priority in the defence field, and all types of weapons, including atomic weapons, are being developed". That same year the Cabinet approved the unprecedented introduction of permanent peacetime conscription. It was a decision which epitomised the Labour Party's "progress" over its fifty years of existence, for that Cabinet contained several men who had been conscientious objectors in World War 1. Labour's expenditure on armaments steadily increased so that in 1951 Chancellor Hugh Gaitskell envisaged spending £4700 million on "defence" in three years and was looking to restrict social expenditure in consequence.

Henry Pelling has written an absorbing and detached record of that government, which went out of office with the Tories promising to "set the people free" (by which they meant relieving the British capitalist class of the more irksome of the wartime controls, while keeping a lot more in operation). Pelling exposes some of the infighting, the squabbling and personal jealousies among that supposed band of sisters and brothers who told us they were bonded in the struggle to bring socialism to this country. One who emerges as perhaps the most spiteful was Hugh Dalton, the old Etonian son of the Dean of Windsor, as a child disliked by Queen Victoria and elevated in 1945 to Chancellor of the Exchequer. Dalton was an ebullient left winger by reputation and his contempt for the working class was typical of a Labour "intellectual". Pensioners he described as " . . . those wretched old people, who are our most troublesome Pressure Group". After the 1950 election he declined the job of Colonial Secretary because it would involve visits to "pullulating, poverty-stricken nigger communities  . . . who the more one tries to help them, are querulous and ungrateful". How anyone with those kinds of opinions could claim to be remotely connected with socialism defies any rational explanation.

But perhaps the working class who, whatever else they wanted were then, as now, concerned that their ruling class' interests should prosper, were not as grateful as they might have been to the Attlee government. By any standards, Labour did a pretty good job for British capitalism and at the end of 1948 the Economist—who should have known—commented that "There can be no doubt that on the major issues of economic policy, the nation has been travelling on the right road". What higher praise could the Labour Party expect, for proving so devotedly through those years that the British capitalist class had nothing to fear from them?

Ivan

The opportunist tendency (1988)

Film Review from the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hundreds of women experience sexual harassment at work. Many do little or nothing about it since the harasser is frequently their boss - to complain could lead to dismissal. And, until recently, many trade unions have failed to take the issue seriously.

Business as Usual is based on the true story of one woman worker who did complain about the harassment by their boss of a fellow worker and got sacked as a result. The film focuses on her struggle to get her job back. The woman at the centre of the story, played convincingly by Glenda Jackson, is inexperienced in industrial disputes and is only too happy for her campaign to be taken over by the unemployed section of the TGWU in which her son and his girlfriend—members of the Militant Tendency—are heavily involved, especially in view of the half-hearted support given by the union's full-time officials. As well as coping with this struggle, she is also trying to deal with the domestic consequences of her husband's (himself a former trade union official) redundancy and his affair with an oh-so-sincere television reporter.

Ultimately, the film as a whole, despite what is basically a good story, fails to convince because it tries to do too much. It takes on not only sexual harassment but also racism, police brutality, unemployment, sex-role reversal and trade union conservatism. Furthermore the "baddies" in the film—the harasser and the owner of the company—are unconvincing caricatures. I'm sure there are people who are that slimy but it would have been far better if they were less like the twentieth century equivalent of the cartoon capitalist in top hat of the nineteenth century.

The most true-to-life part of the film—apart from the sexual harassment—was the depiction of Militant Tendency activists taking over the fight for Babs' reinstatement. The film was much too generous to them, however, failing to show the true extent of their political opportunism. However that willingness to clamber aboard any bandwagon they can for their own ends was demonstrated admirably by the twenty or so Tendency members who waited outside the cinema to greet the crowd as they emerged with copies of Militant for sale. An example of life imitating art, perhaps?

Janie Percy-Smith

Action Replay: Winter wonderland (2013)

The Action Replay column from the December 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

You would probably expect the Winter Olympics, involving skiing, bobsleigh and so on, to be held somewhere quite chilly. But the Games next February will be in Sochi, a Russian city on the Black Sea, where the average temperature that month is about the same as in Manchester.

Climate is not the only controversial point about the choice of venue. Another relates to the notorious Russian law that prohibits ‘propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations’ among minors, which has been used to stop people speaking in defence of gay rights or holding gay pride events. The International Olympic Committee has apparently been assured that the law will not affect participants or spectators at the Games, but not everyone is convinced by this, and no Pride House dedicated to gay athletes will be permitted.

Environmental problems are prominent too. There have been claims that the building of massive new transport infrastructure was done without proper study of the local geology, and in 2010 a storm washed away a cargo port that was in the process of being built.

And the cost is enormous, at $50bn as much as five times the original budget. The workers who do the actual construction are treated appallingly: ‘Low-skilled migrants get $500 a month, working 12-hour shifts with no contracts, safety training or insurance… Some employers withhold workers’ passports, so they cannot leave the site. Last year at least 25 people died in accidents and many more were injured’ (Economist, 13 July).

Moreover, this being Putin’s Russia, there are plenty of question marks surrounding the award of construction contracts, many of which have gone to companies owned by the president’s mates. A company owned by one Arkady Rotenberg, often described as an old friend and former judo partner of Putin, has won contracts worth over $7bn. Rotenberg’s wealth is $3.3bn, according to Forbes, and he is the 30th richest person in Russia.

Lastly, there are reports that the Russian security service will be monitoring all communications during the Games. This goes well beyond the Prism system used by the National Security Agency in the US, and could be used against anyone discussing political views, including gay rights, or business details.

According to the Olympic Charter, ‘The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.’ 

Paul Bennett

The Strike (1996)

A Short Story from the February 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was Thursday morning and once again Class Two was waiting outside the Domestic Science Centre for Miss Dougal to open the door. Everybody in our class dreaded Thursday mornings. To say that Miss Dougal had "an uncertain temper" would be to put it very mildly indeed. She raged and fumed, waved her arms about, banging saucepans down loudly on well-scrubbed tables, chucking terms of abuse at Class Two, making us responsible (or so it appeared) for every single thing that had ever gone wrong in her life.

We kids were always confused and confounded by Miss Dougal's behaviour. Some of the ire she so bitterly and scornfully directed at us was lost on our innocent hearts, but we knew . . . we KNEW by her fury that she hated us even if we didn't know why. Once she was almost nice to me when I took in my father's christening cup to clean the silver. She closely inspected the name on it and smiled "Shian Menzies Tweedie. How wonderful!" I was bewildered by this, because she told Margaret Rogers (who always had a runny nose and chilblains) that she came from the slums, when we all knew that Margaret lived in a neat little Council house in Rushgreen Avenue and that her Dad was a bus inspector, whereas my Dad, with such a lovely name, was a roadsweeper and had once been a dustman. So with Miss Dougal nothing ever really added up. She didn't make sense.

Daphne Small remarked to me that the old cow was late opening the door today and someone suggested she'd got run over on the way to school. This encouraged others to come up with some very good ideas as to why Miss Dougal was late. She'd broken her leg, she couldn't find her knickers, she'd died of pneumonia in the night. It all got very noisy, bawdy, as we doubled over with mirth, knocking into each other, full of good humour so united were we against Miss Dougal. The door opened.

I suppose normally we would have formed a nice, orderly little queue, but the situation had got rather out of hand, We had been enjoying ourselves and it was impossible to change so quickly. Daphne Small was still trying to think up reasons for Miss Dougal's tardiness and was just telling me "I KNOW, she got struck by lightning" when the domestic science teacher appeared in her white overall, tiny wisps of grey hair escaping from her white cooks hat. She stood arms akimbo, eyes piercing. Wait for it, I thought.

The storm soon came. We were all, or so she would have it, a bunch of kids from the slums. Not one of us had any breeding. Actually not one of us knew what she meant by "breeding" (Daphne whispered to me that she probably meant that we couldn't have babies). Our parents, she told us, were of the worst kind, living in slum houses, unable to speak decent English. Absolutely, ABSOLUTELY without breeding. And yet we mocked her, HER with her refinement and upbringing. How dare we?

We didn't dare any longer. We filed in, took our gingham aprons out of our schoolbags and put them on. All the joy had gone out of our day. We sat down at our tables with our arms folded, subdued beyond what was natural.

It was a miserable morning. Poor old Margaret Rogers burnt her pastry and Miss Dougal emptied it into the wastebin roundly abusing Margaret all the while as well as attacking her family background.

It was during playtime that I suggested we went out on strike. "We just won't turn up for Domestic Science on Thursday," I said. "She's out of order talking to us like that. We'll tell the headmaster."

The next Thursday morning about ten of us went to our own classroom instead of attending the Cookery Class. Our class teacher was worried and perplexed. She told us we couldn't just not go to our cookery lesson because we didn't like the teacher. She pointed out to us that our time at school was a preparation for Life, that we would one day find Life even harder than Miss Dougal's cookery class. She said that we were after all British and should always show true grit and courage. In any case we were hardly old enough to question adults who, it seemed, were much, much wiser than us.

This little lecture worked for everyone but me and the others were dispensed to Miss Dougal's Centre for Mental Torture. I was sent to the headmaster.

Mr Brown was a gentle man (an ex-naval commander who sang Eternal Father Strong to Save in ringing tones during Assembly). I had always thought of him as having "insight" so was surprised when he used the same arguments as our class teacher. True British grit, preparation for Life, must not question adults, etc, etc. I was disappointed. Finally he said "Now come, Heather, you're a sensible girl, go back to Miss Dougal's class and not another word will be said on the subject." I said no and I meant no and so Mr Brown then said it would be his duty to write to my father.

A letter to my Dad from the headmaster of my school held no fears for me. Unlike Lizzie Chandler who lived next door to us and had got a good hiding from her Dad for being a "scab" and going back to Miss Dougall's class. It seemed there was no justice anywhere for children. My Dad went to see the headmaster who sent him to see Miss Dougal. He asked her "What are we going to do about about all this, Miss Dougal?" and she'd responded "Well, Mr Tweedie, that all depends on Heather." That was enough for my Dad. "In that case," he said, "my daughter will never come back to your class again."

But of course the school was forced to find a solution to what had happened. Eventually I was put into another Domestic Science class with another Domestic Science teacher called Miss Oldham, the only real snag being that the other pupils were only nine-year-olds. To a thirteen-year-old with boobs and a slightly more sophisticated outlook on life this was torture.

I hadn't won anything. I wept bitterly, while my Dad assured me that my suffering was nothing compared with that of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. But this was no consolation. But then perhaps true British grit and courage were going to come in handy after all.

Miss Oldham's class was on Tuesday mornings. I got into the queue outside the classroom door, a tall girl, standing with kids that came up to my shoulder. When they giggled I didn't, but I was a novelty and they were prepared to love me for some reason that I have never understood and I was very popular. I was also popular with Miss Oldham (once again for reasons that I didn't understand then but have come to understand since; she didn't like Miss Dougal either).

I remained in Miss Oldham's class until I was nearly sixteen and due to say goodbye to school forever. Miss Oldham made a little speech saying how sorry they would all be to see me go, what an asset I had been to her class and so on. She then added that her class didn't have enough saucepans to go round that morning. Would I pop upstairs to Miss Dougal's and ask if we could borrow a couple?

So I climbed the stairs to Miss Dougal's class, my heart beating painfully. When I knocked on the door and then entered the room, there she stood, hands on hips, eyes blazing, shouting the odds as always, whilst the kids sat stunned into silence. A kind of hush filled the room as I walked in, cutting Miss Dougal off in mid-sentence. "What do YOU want?" she bellowed. "Some saucepans," I said with dignity.

These saucepans were like trophies! I took them back to Miss Oldham's class and she looked at me with a twinkle. "Well done, Heather," she said, "I hope you said a final goodbye to Miss Dougal."

Heather Ball

Cooking the Books: Co-operatives Can’t Escape Capitalism (2013)

The Cooking the Books column from the December 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those critics of capitalism who argue that the way-out is for workers to form co-operatives would have been shocked by the headline in the (London) Times (23 October) ‘Stricken Co-op Bank falls into hands of American investors.’

Most people will associate co-operatives with the retail shops that compete against the supermarkets. Co-operatives have in fact a long association with attempts by workers to improve their lot under capitalism. The original co-operatives were set up to try to stop workers being ripped off by local shopkeepers. The Co-operative Bank was established in 1872 as a bank for these stores and later for trade unions and the Labour Party and their branches. There is even a Co-operative Party registered with the Electoral Commission but it is indistinguishable from the Labour Party.

Co-operatives were popular with radical workers in Marx’s day. Some (such as Proudhon and the anarchists) saw them as a way of eventually out-competing and replacing private capitalist enterprises. Others (such as Lassalle and the German Social Democrats) wanted them to be financed by loans from the state.

Marx was expressing some sympathy for the viewpoint of the German Social Democrats when he wrote in Volume III of Capital:

‘The credit system is not only the principal basis for the gradual transformation of capitalist private enterprises into capitalist stock companies, but equally offers the means for the gradual extension of co-operative enterprises on a more or less national scale. The capitalist stock companies, as much as the co-operative factories, should be considered as transitional forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, with the only distinction that the antagonism is resolved negatively in the one and positively in the other’ (chapter 27).

He would presumably have envisaged this ‘gradual extension of co-operative enterprises’ taking place after the capture of political power by the working class at a time when socialism was not yet immediately possible, as earlier he had pointed to their limitations under capitalism:

‘The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new, although they naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system.’

The Co-operative Bank promoted itself as different from other banks by being ‘ethical.’ But, in seeking to expand its business, it took over a building society which had indulged in sub-prime mortgages and the like. This proved its undoing as it had to go to the stock market to raise more capital to cover the losses and got eaten alive by the vulture capitalists there.

The fate of the Co-operative Bank shows that cooperatives operate within the context of the capitalist economy and that if they are to survive they have to play by its rules, in particular to make a profit. And, again in response to market forces, most of this profit has to be reinvested in cost-saving machinery and methods of production. In other words, they cannot be used to improve the wages of those working for them or to benefit their customers by reducing prices. That would be the road to ruin.

Workers in cooperatives have in effect to organise their own exploitation for profit to be accumulated as more capital. They are not the way-out. As Marx pointed out, co-operatives ‘must reproduce everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system.’ And they do.

Absolute end (1986)

Film Review from the June 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The release of Absolute Beginners—a film based on the novel of the same name by Colin MacInnes—has coincided with some of the most intensive advertising ever launched for a British made film. In recent months all available publicity outlets—television and radio shows, magazine features, newspaper articles, billboard advertisements and pop video promos—have been mobilised in a desperate effort to sell the film to the British public.

The main financial backers, Goldcrest Films, are still smarting after the costly flop of their last major film, Revolution. Unless Absolute Beginners is a box-office success, Goldcrest Films threatens to go bust and the so-called renaissance of the British film industry which began with international triumphs like Chariots of Fire and Ghandi will come to an abrupt halt. The message then is loud and clear, buy British and help to save the British film industry.

But why should this be? In capitalist society films—like everything else—are produced as commodities to be sold on the market with the aim of making a profit. A successful film is one that makes a profit; an unsuccessful film is one that makes a loss. Films are no different from any other commodity in this respect: those who invest in a particular film do so in the belief that at the end of the day they will get more money out of it than they put in. Why should anyone pay to see a film just to line the pockets of those who have invested in it?

The British capitalist class has no doubt learned by now that appeals to patriotic feelings alone are not enough to sell commodities. The commodity itself must be carefully packaged to ensure success and in this respect Absolute Beginners is equipped with a wide variety of selling points. Its shrewd blend of music, glamour, fashion, nostalgia for the 1950s, and the presence of chart-topping pop stars such as David Bowie, Style Council and Sade should guarantee its profitability. As the film trade magazine Screen International puts it, Absolute Beginners is "a must for fans of the various star singers and musicians, and the mass audience of under-25s already hooked on pop videos".

In terms of content, Absolute Beginners is predictably superficial. Although it attempts to portray certain aspects of modern capitalism—the commodity fetishism of the advertising jungle and the Notting Hill race riots of the late 1950s—it does so only in a half-hearted manner and somehow succeeds in only glamourising them. Working class racism is vividly portrayed but no attempt is made to understand its underlying causes. However, accurate descriptions of reality are the last thing we should expect from a film like Absolute Beginners. If you desire escapism, fantasy and a glamourising of the past, then this is the film for you.

Paola Doyle

The religious mentality (1989)

From the March 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people. (Marx, Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law)

These are embarrassing times for the religious opium addicts who want to uphold their ideas in the company of rational people. Last year saw thousands of religious Americans ranting and raving because cinemas showed The Last Temptation of Christ. Christ on the cross is shown fantasising about having sex with Mary. The Christians screamed blasphemy: our Lord would descend to no such vulgar antics in the course of crucifixion: he was human, but he wasn't that human. The Bishop of Durham shuffled around hoping that his nutcase followers would get off the TV screens and back on their knees where they belonged. Leave the intellectualising to Bishops who know how to square circles. But the self-appointed censors were the real Christians; they knew that in the New Testament Christ says that anyone who doubts him will face eternal damnation. Still, at least the crazy Christians did not want to kill the film's director—just making him mute would have suited their Christian consciences.

Crazy Muslim consciences are not so easily satisfied. The Ayatollah Khomeini has called upon all good Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses, a novel with a dream sequence in which the prophet Mohammed indulges in a few last temptations of his own. Copies of the work have been publically burned by Muslims in Bradford.

Let us not beat about any religious bushes on these book  burnings: they are the acts of modern Nazis who think that ideas can be destroyed by fire, Max Madden, the Labour MP for Bradford, motivated both by a cynical quest for the local Asian vote as well as some sincere but half-baked anti-racist sentiments, has called for an extension of the blasphemy law to include Islam. In short, it would be illegal (punishable by fines and imprisonment) to speak or write in ways which give offence to Muslim irrationalists, just as it currently is in relation to Christian irrationalists. In this wholly undemocratic enterprise Madden has been supported by other Labour MPs, including Bernie Grant. Madden even went so far as to state on BBC Radio Two that any book likely to cause offence to Muslims should be published only if they were granted by the publishers a right of reply. One can only speculate as to which particular guardians of the absolute Truth of Islam would be granted this right for, as Madden must surely know, there are several factions of the religion, each bitterly opposed to the others.

The Rushdie matter has highlighted the basic issue in relation to religion. It is not, as secularists have rather tiresomely contended for decades, about whether god exists. Scientific thinkers are hardly likely to waste time arguing about an invisible entity which demands faith as the proof of its existence. Does god exist? Do fairies live at the bottom of my garden? Is Elvis Presley alive? Let those who can define these supernatural phenomena offer proof. Religious thinkers have not tended to be bothered with scientific investigations to establish proof; faith will do nicely. The issue is not what they believe, but that they believe. Believing is what you do when you don't know, and religious belief is certainly based on ignorance of what there is to be known. The religious mentality is one which substitutes what is believable for what is scientifically knowable.

With his or her pack of beliefs, the religious individual looks at the world, embracing that which reinforces the beliefs, retreating from experience which conflicts with them. New knowledge, untried feelings, novel perspectives must be first mistrusted, then banned. Nothing must interfere with the dogma. If Christians really believe that Christ lived and was a pure and wonderful person, then they would have the confidence to withstand a film which says otherwise. But dogmatism is fragile. It is upheld by denying all other images than those which reinforce it. The Ayatollah's assassination call, as well as being a cynical political tactic to distract his war-weary subjects (some of whom might just be thinking about assassinating him and others in the theocratic mullah elite), is also a sign of a lack of confidence. It is the uncertainty which all dogmatists always feel and always will feel: it was lack of assurance which led Christ to state that all doubters would go to Hell and Lenin, at the Tenth Bolshevik Congress in 1921, to say that those who did not follow the leadership were state enemies.

When Muslims in Britain petitioned the Ayatollah about Rushdie they were testifying that their beliefs were under threat by truths they could not handle. Polite and embarrassed liberal Muslims have said that the Ayatollah does not represent real Islam. Maybe he does not (on the basis of Sura 42 verse 35 of the Koran, governments established by coups are said to be sinful), but whether one old Iranian tyrant is a good Muslim is not the point. To be a good Muslim is to possess a religious outlook; to be religious is to offend against the most elementary requirements of reasonable thought. And a society inhabited by unreasonable workers is one which is safe for the minority who prey on ignorance.

Marx, as well as referring to religion as "the opium of the people", called it "The self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet found himself or has already lost himself again". The religious mentality exists in those workers who have not yet discovered the essential, exhilarating fact that we are the gods. We must make the future out of the material conditions which surround us: gods, prophets, bishops and mullahs are the illusory masters who people invent to tower over them. The socialist transformation of society will banish the capitalists from the earth and the gods from the skies—or to be accurate from the minds of men and women, where they have exercised their pernicious fantasies for too long. Those who choose to believe in powers beyond will be free to do so in a socialist society. Indeed, without the state to adopt this or that religious dogma as the official one, religious believers will be freer than they are now. Freer, but never free to tell others what to do. It will take more than a divine injunction from a white-beared guru to tell socialists what we can think, say or write.

SC

Editorial: Revolution (2013)

Editorial from the December 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The word revolution means different things to different people. There’s the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution. It is even used by advertisers to give an impression of something new and different. This is a clue to its use in society, history and politics – to describe the complete replacement of the previously existing system. There is also the implication that this occurs fairly rapidly; otherwise it’s evolution.

Some people, influenced by the perception of the French Revolution cultivated by those who didn’t and don’t like it, associate the word with violence. A social or political revolution can involve violence and many have. A revolution certainly involves force – this has to be the lever bringing about the change – as the beneficiaries of the old system have to be forced to give up their power and privileges, but this can take other forms than outright violence. It can take the form of mass popular pressure or of the use of the ‘legitimate’ force of the state machine.

When Russell Brand called, in his interview with Jeremy Paxman, for a revolution he clearly meant it in the sense of getting completely rid of the present system of elite rule and neglect of people’s needs. Some interpreted him as calling for a repeat of the riots and looting of the summer of 2011 on a wider scale, but he himself later insisted that the revolution he envisaged should be non-violent.

The socialist of the Victorian era, William Morris, opens his pamphlet  How We Live and How We Might Live with these words:

‘The word Revolution, which we Socialists are so often forced to use, has a terrible sound in most people's ears, even when we have explained to them that it does not necessarily mean a change accompanied by riot and all kinds of violence, and cannot mean a change made mechanically and in the teeth of opinion by a group of men who have somehow managed to seize on the executive power for the moment.’

Socialists, he went on, mean by it ‘a change in the basis of society’.

This is the sense in which we too have always used the word. The revolution we envisage is a change in the basis of society from the present minority class ownership of the means of production to their common ownership and democratic control by all the people in their own interest.

We wholeheartedly endorse Morris’s view that this change cannot be ‘made mechanically and in the teeth of opinion by a group of men who have somehow managed to seize the executive power for the moment’, as some 19th and 20th century self-styled revolutionaries have maintained.

For us, the social revolution from capitalism to socialism has to be carried out democratically, both in the sense of having majority support and in the sense of employing democratic means. This latter means organising without leaders. In the developed capitalist parts of the world this democratic self-organisation can – and we say should – also involve organising to win control of political power via the ballot box and parliament. In other words, forming a political party to challenge those Brand said he has (rightly) never voted for and never would. We shouldn’t let them have a clear run or allow them to claim to be the’ legitimately elected representatives of the people’.

Karl Marx: Anthropologist (2013)

From the November 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Text of a talk given by guest speaker Brian Morris at a Socialist Party meeting in London on 21 April this year

The Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski began his well-known history of Marxism with the words ‘Karl Marx was a German philosopher’. True: Marx studied philosophy at the University of Berlin in his early twenties, and had a passion for German philosophy, particularly that of Hegel, but it hardly needs saying that Marx cannot be understood simply as a philosophical thinker. Better known, perhaps, as a political journalist, an erudite economist, and a revolutionary socialist, Marx was also, in an important sense, an anthropologist, for he always repudiated scholastic metaphysics. He can indeed be described as one of the founding ancestors of anthropology.

But what also has to be recognized is that Marx was an absolutely voracious reader, endlessly taking notes on everything that he read. He was therefore well versed not only in philosophy, economics, history and the natural sciences, but also in literature, being particularly fond of the poetry of Aeschylus, Shakespeare and Goethe. Marx had a truly encyclopaedic mind, a restless and inquiring intellect, and was interested, as an anthropologist, in understanding all aspects of life.

The German Enlightenment scholar Immanuel Kant – like Marx Kant was more than simply a philosopher – famously defined anthropology as the study of what it means to be human. Marx's anthropology, as Thomas Patterson affirmed, was largely derived from the Enlightenment. It was a kind of anthropology, however, that was critical, dialectical and historical, and it involved the embrace of some of the key tenets of the Enlightenment legacy: the importance of rationality, and the use of reason, along with that of empirical knowledge; the acknowledgement of the existence of the natural world independent of human cognition and representation; the fundamental importance of human freedom; the denial of all knowledge claims based on authority or mystical intuition; and a recognition of the historicity not only of nature but of human beings and human social life and culture.

Scholars within the Enlightenment tradition, scholars as different as Erich Fromm and Bruce Trigger, have long recognized that there is an essential ‘paradox’, or basic contradiction at the heart of human life, an inherent duality in social existence. On the one hand humans are fundamental organic beings, and intrinsically a part of nature. On the other hand, through their self-consciousness, sociality and symbolic culture they are in a sense unique and separate from nature. They have what Cicero called a ‘second nature’. The social ecologist Lewis Mumford suggested that humans have a ‘twofold’ life. Anthropology, as Marx envisaged it, firmly embraced this paradox, putting an equal emphasis on our organic life and our shared humanity (as with Kant) and on the social and cultural diversity of human life (as with Herder). As Marx expressed it in his definition of communism, anthropology entailed a combination of naturalism and humanism.

Drawing on the Enlightenment legacy, Marx's anthropology, as a study of what it means to be human, is focussed around four key concepts – namely, nature, society, history and science - concepts which some contemporary anthropologists treat with unwarranted scepticism, if not with derision. We may explore Marx's own conception of anthropology and the human subject in relation to these four fundamental concepts.

Nature

Although Marx was an ontological realist, affirming the existence of a physical world independent of humans, this, of course, did not imply a dualistic metaphysic (as Karl Popper implied), or the idea that humans were independent of nature. To the contrary, Marx, in contrast to most sociologists and contemporary postmodernist anthropologists, strongly emphasized that humans were natural beings, and intrinsically a part of nature. As he put it: ‘nature is man's inorganic body’. For Marx, humans were natural beings. They were active, living beings, embodied, sensuous, conscious, with feelings and emotions, and with inherent dispositions and capacities, as well as being, like other animals, limited, conditioned and suffering beings. The relationship between humans and nature was thus essentially dialectical, not simply relational.

This meant, of course, for Marx, that any understanding of human social life (or history) must begin with one basic premise: namely, the existence of human individuals, and the fact of their inter-relationship with the rest of nature. It was through their productive relations, their creative interactions with nature to meet then-basic needs, that humans produced their material life, or what Marx described as their ‘modes of life’. Forms of consciousness, specifically culture or ideology, emerged, he felt, from within these ‘real-life processes’. As Marx famously put it: ‘life is not determined by consciousness but consciousness by life’.

Whether or not this implies a form of economic determinism has long been debated by scholars from right across the political spectrum. Given that Marx was essentially a dialectical thinker, the material aspects of human life must be seen as the basis or anchorage for cultural configurations, or what Ernst Cassirer described as symbolic forms (art, religion, philosophy, science) rather than involving any direct causal relationship.

Yet it is important to recognize that Marx fervently rejected the idea of a fixed human nature or essence, for in being a part of nature, rather than the creation of some divine agent, humans had evolved historically. Marx saw no antithesis between nature and human history, and like Darwin, stressed the historicity of human nature. His lifelong associate and friend, Friedrich Engels, wrote a famous essay entitled The Part Played by Labour in the Transition From Ape to Man, stressing the importance of labour – human productive inter-actions with nature – in the emergence of ‘modern’ humans. Along with erect posture, the expansion and re-organisation of the human brain, the dexterity of the human hand, tool-making, language and symbolic culture, and the emergence of a more complex society, labour is seen by Engels (and Marx) as the key factor in the emergence of Homo sapiens.

Society

The important point, of course, is that humans are not only natural beings, but also, Marx insisted, human natural beings, species-beings, with sociality and self-consciousness. Humans, therefore, as Marx continually stressed, are social beings, always enmeshed in a complex web of social relations. Our relationship with nature is therefore always intrinsically social, and even our perceptions of nature are socially and culturally mediated, though not wholly determined by our culture.

Importantly, as with later sociologists, Marx emphasized that human perceptions, thoughts and actions, are shaped to an important degree by the patterns of social relations, and the cultures into which humans are born, and which they help to actualize, maintain or transform. Marx famously remarked that humans make their own history but they do not make it just as they please, for past traditions always influence living humans. Marx was, therefore, one of the first social scientists to explore what later became known as the ‘duality’ between social structures (relations) and human agency, and, for Marx, this relationship between social forms and the human individual was always interdependent and dialectical.

Marx was therefore always critical of the two extremes in approaching this ‘duality’. The first extreme, as reflected later in Durkheimian sociology and culture theory (in its various guises) virtually oblates human agency, viewing human thought and action as largely determined or an ‘effect’ of either symbolic culture (as with Leslie White and many postmodernists) or ideology (Althusser) or power (Foucault). Marx was critical of such sociological determinism, and (again) famously remarked:

‘History (that is, social life) does nothing, it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles! It is real living men who do all this .. .History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends’.

On the other hand, Marx was equally critical of the other extreme, which tended to put a fundamental emphasis on the individual, and to downplay or ignore the importance of history, and of social relations and culture. He was therefore always critical of the ‘abstract’ individual of the classical philosophers, who seemingly posited the human individual as outside nature and society. He thus made some trenchant criticisms of Feuerbach's humanism, Stirner's radical individualism, which in its emphasis on the unique ‘ego’ dismissed humanity as a ‘spook’, and the asocial possessive individualism of Hobbes and the bourgeois political economists. The political economists (Ricardo and Adam Smith) Marx famously dismissed as ‘Robinsonades’ (after Robinson Crusoe), for they began their analysis with the notion of a rational isolated individual, detached from social bonds, and assumed that this was a reflection of human nature.

In terms of contemporary social theory, Marx rejected both ‘sociological collectivism’ (or holism, mystical or otherwise) and methodological individualism (Popper and rational choice theorists).

History

Many scholars have stressed that Marx viewed the human subject as a dialectical unity, as intrinsically and simultaneously both a natural and a social being. But as a revolutionary socialist Marx also emphasised that all humans have a unique personal identity – a sense of self with moral and social agency. And he was centrally concerned not with autonomy, but rather with social freedom, and the self-expression of the human individual. Marx thus expressed an understanding of the human subject in terms of a triadic ontology.

To illustrate this we may turn to the American anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn, the engaging ethnographer of the Navaho. Kluckhohn once suggested that there were three distinctive ways of conceiving the human person; firstly that in some respects every person is like every other human being – as a species-being; secondly that they are like no other human being in having a unique personality (or self); and, finally, that they have affinities with some other humans in being social and cultural beings. These three aspects of the human subject are an essential expression of the fact that humans are always embedded in three historical processes, namely, the phylogenetic, pertaining to the evolution of humans as a species-being (humanity); the ontogenetic, which relates to the individual as a unique, embodied and psychological being (self); and, finally, the socio-historical, which situates the human individual as a person, in a specific historical and ecological context.

Like Kant and Marcel Mauss, Marx therefore always recognized that the human being had, always and simultaneously, three distinct ‘natures’; a) as a species-being, a human nature (or identity) with essential needs, powers, capacities, and a history; b) as a ‘communal being’ or ‘an ensemble of social relations’ (as Marx put it), a person who enacted specific social roles and expressed certain social identities; and c) as an individual being, a self with a unique personality and subjective and moral agency. Marx was a humanist, in that he always emphasised the ‘individuality’ of the human person, and the fundamental importance of human freedom, viewed in terms of the self-determination and the self-expression of the individual. But like the social anarchists, Marx recognized and stressed that such freedom could only be achieved by the creation, through collective practice and struggle, of a truly socialist society, for humans were fundamentally social beings. Freedom, for Marx, was social not metaphysical.

Science

Within the Marxist tradition there has long been an on-going debate, and at times harsh polemical exchanges, between two contrasting interpretations of Marx.

On the one hand, there are those who are usually described as critical theorists or Hegelian Marxists, who stress the continuity between Marx and German philosophy, particularly that of Hegel. They focus on Marx's early writings on philosophical anthropology, situate themselves in the more literary and philosophical traditions of European culture, and adopt a more ‘historicist’ and ‘humanistic’ interpretation of Marx. The emphasis is on ‘dialectics’, ‘humanism’ and history, and they often express an aversion to science. A classic example is Erich Fromm, who described Marx as an existentialist humanist, centrally concerned with human dignity and freedom.

On the other hand, there are those Marxists who focus on Marx's later writings, particularly his profound analysis of modern capitalism Das Kapital (1867), which is essentially a work of empirical anthropology, replete with a welter of ethnographic data on industrial production and human life under capitalism. Such Marxists suggest that Marx made a clean break with Hegel's historicist philosophy, along with dialectics, and had pioneered a new scientific way of understanding human history. Louis Althusser is a key exemplar of the tendency to interpret Marx's anthropology as a ‘science of history’. But in being stridently ‘anti-humanist’ and derisory towards history, Althusser tended to express a rather abstract and synchronic form of scientific understanding.

What many scholars have suggested, however, is that Marx's anthropology is best understood as a unique attempt to establish a dialectical social science. Marx thus envisaged anthropology as a historical science, one that would combine dialectics and science, historicism (humanism) and materialism (naturalism). It involved a rejection of both cultural idealism and positivism and all forms of reductive materialism. As Marx put it: ‘the abstract materialism of a natural science that excludes the historical process is defective’, for the only viable approach to the understanding of social life is one that is both materialist and historical. Such scientific understanding, therefore, involves going beyond phenomenological description by exploring – explaining – how social and cultural phenomena ‘came into being’. The anthropologist Franz Boas put this succinctly ‘To understand a phenomenon we have to know not only what it is, but also how it came into being. Our problem is historical’.

Marx's anthropology can therefore be described in summary as at once dialectical, historical, materialist and scientific, as well as reflecting the ‘critical spirit’ of the Enlightenment.

Marx, of course, was primarily interested in economics and political theory, and is mainly known for writing the famous Communist Manifesto (1848) (along with Engels), and for his substantial economic treatise Das Kapital. But it has to be recognized that Marx was a world-historical thinker. As a political journalist he wrote extensively on India and colonialism. Always fascinated by the diversity of human societies, both in the past and in his own time, Marx became deeply involved in studying pre- capitalist modes of production - communal (tribal societies), ancient (the classical civilisations of Greece and Rome), Germanic, Asiatic, Slavonic (specifically Russian serfdom) and European feudalism. These formed the socio-historical context with regard to the emergence and the expansion of the capitalist world economy. While in his last years Marx filled several notebooks – the ethnological notebooks -with observations and reflections on diverse anthropological topics, ranging from ‘primitive communism’ to the family and gender in the Roman Empire – notes derived from extensive reading. Marx was particularly interested in the work of the pioneer American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan who wrote ground-breaking studies on the Iroquois, on kinship systems, and on socio-cultural evolution. Morgan's Ancient Society (1877) was a landmark text in the development of anthropology. Significantly, Engel's seminal study The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) is largely based on Morgan's work and on Marx's own notebooks.

Although Marx is invariably interpreted as a social evolutionist, who, like Morgan and Edward Tylor, viewed human history in terms of rigid unilinear ‘stages’, it is evident, as Patterson contends, that Marx had a much more complex conception of human history, one that implied multilineal ‘pathways’.

Though an exemplary and pioneer anthropologist, Marx continues to be dismissed by contemporary liberal scholars as an intellectual ‘relic’, and held responsible for the authoritarian politics and tyranny of the Soviet Union under Stalin, and the Chinese state under Mao Zedong. Both, of course, were forms of state capitalism under a party dictatorship, and far removed from Marx's own embrace of democratic politics and his conception of a communist society. Perhaps, as a last word, we can quote from the pragmatist philosopher Sidney Hook, before he became an apologist for the American empire:

‘Marx was a democratic socialist, a secular humanist, and a fighter for human freedom. His words and actions breathe a commitment to a way of life and a critical independence completely at odds with the absolute rule of the one-party dictatorship of the Soviet Union’– or that of any other political dictatorship’.

Marx was also an anthropologist and the advocate of anthropology as a humanistic science.

Brian Morris

REFERENCES

Boas, F. (1940) Race, Language and Culture (1982 edition). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hook, S. (1971) From Hegel to Marx (original 1962). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Marx, K. (1967) Capital. Vol One. Introd : G.D.H. Cole. London: Dent.

Marx, K. (1975) Early Writings. Introd: : L. Colletti. London: Penguin Books .

Marx, K. and F .Engels (1956) The Holy Family (original 1845). London: Lawrence and Wishart

Marx, K. and F. Engels (1965) The German Ideology. London: Lawrence and Wishart

Patterson, T. C. (2009) Karl Marx : Anthropologist. Oxford: Berg.

Who are the Socialist Alliance? (2001)

From the April 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Yet another set of dishonest politicians will be after your vote at the general election. However, in this case they are calling themselves 'socialist'. But they are anything but.

The Socialist Alliance intends to field up to a hundred candidates in the forthcoming election, specifically targeting disaffected Labour voters who feel 'betrayed' by Tony Blair and may want a 'socialist alternative'.

Rag bag

So who are the Socialist Alliance? They are an eclectic rag bag of Trotskyists, former Stalinists, various other groupings and assorted individuals. The main organisations involved include: Socialist Workers Party, Militant (now calling itself Socialist Party of England and Wales, or SPEW), Alliance for Workers Liberty, Communist Party of Great Britain, International Socialist Organisation and Workers Power. The SA are also supporting the 72 (former-Militant) Scottish Socialist Party candidates. Previously, the SA have stood in the 1998 Euro elections and last year's Greater London Assembly elections, with limited success. The general election will be their most ambitious adventure to date. So, unfortunately, we will undoubtedly be hearing more about them.

In any case, it is interesting to learn how such a disparate collection of former enemies could have come together in the first place. It does not seem so long ago that the AWL were accusing the SWP of 'violent thuggery' against some of their own members (see AWL pamphlet Why the SWP Beats Up Its Socialist Critics), and surely the former Stalinists of the CPGB would have balked at the prospect of talking to Trotskyists, let alone organising with them. But whatever particular ism each of these leftist sects subscribe to, they all represent the left-wing of capitalism's political apparatus, and thus are the enemy of the working class.

Left opens up

But with New Labour's victory in May 1997 and flirtations with Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party notwithstanding, these leftist group's orientation to Labourist policies had to be re-evaluated. Many of these groups have been hoisted with their own petard: telling workers to vote Labour only to scream 'betrayed' when they discovered Blair and Co were anti working class. We didn't vote for this! screamed Socialist Worker. Oh yes you did! is our response.

Subsequently, a rightwards shift into the area vacated by Labour has become the order of the day. Just how far this shift should be and, moreover, the very content of the cynical reform package being offered to the working class has tested the very foundations of the alliance and caused much acrimony among the groups themselves. The SA is very much a marriage of convenience.

Leninist duplicity

All Leninist/Trotskyist organisations start from the premise that workers are too stupid to understand or want socialism by their own volition. Therefore, revolutionary ideas have to be introduced from outside the working class by all-knowing 'professional revolutionaries' who will lead workers to the promised land. It's worth pointing out that the Leninists themselves do not want socialism because they do not know what it is. For Leninists and Trotskyists, socialism is what you get when they run the government and nationalise the commanding heights of the economy in a pathetic attempt to centrally plan production. This is not socialism, it is capitalism. Or, more precisely, state capitalism—whether the Leninists consciously realise it or not.

For this end, a minimum—or transitional—programme is adopted. Since workers are unlikely to be turned on to what the Leninists really stand for, a plethora of unworkable reforms is served up for the working class's edification. For instance, here are some of the SA's 'priority pledges' from their website:

• Tax the rich to pay for the welfare state
• Raise the minimum wage to £7 an hour
• Cancel third world debt
• For the right to work -- 35 hour week now
• Raise pensions and restore the link with earnings
• Fully funded comprehensive education and NHS

Commenting upon the SA's 'tax the rich and spend' budget proposals, Dave Nellist, the SA leader, said:

“If you tried to enter our budget into the Treasury computer model of the UK economy, it would reject it. It breaks all the rules.” (SA press release, 4/3/01)

As Nellist admits, the SA's capitalist reform proposals would not work as capitalism is based upon capital accumulation and production for profit. So, Mr Nellist, why the need to lie?

Within the SA, groups such as the SWP, Militant and the AWL have been 'out-lefted' by the likes of the CPGB and WP who argue that the former are 'economistic' and 'centrist'—Leninist speak for lacking revolutionary vision. The others have retorted by accusing the CPGB and WP of 'ultra-leftist posturing'. According to Weekly Worker, the journal of the CPGB, reporting on the recent National Policy Conference of the SA:

“The SWP consciously and openly argued that in order to make a real impact in the election and attract non-revolutionary workers and Labourites, we must not stand on 'too radical' [sic] a platform. The most important thing is to form a pole of attraction one step to the left of New Labour—in effect, the old Labour model is the safest and most viable.”

Furthermore:

“Amendments from the CPGB and WP called for opposition to the standing army and police and their replacement by working class militia and 'community self-defence organisation' [sic]. The SWP's Kambiz Boomla strode to the microphone to admonish the left for wanting to 'put off' [sic] people such as 'Sister Christine', a catholic nun who was on the point of being recruited into the alliance in east London.” (Weekly Worker, 15 March)

Yes, this is real revolutionary politics: do we demand a 'workers militia' or will that frighten off the nuns? It's difficult to know whether to laugh or cry.

Even our Leninist friends have been forced to admit that this charade is based upon a tissue of lies. Here's one member of the International Socialist Group:

“Do we want a revolutionary programme or a programme that challenges capitalism and can reach out to significant forces to our right? We 'don't always have to tell the truth' [sic] about our revolutionism.” (Weekly Worker, 15 March)

SWP's about turn

Our old friends in the SWP, which is infamous for changing its line, or 'bending the stick', whenever it suits them, have done exactly this in the case of the SA. For years, the SWP has proclaimed itself as the de facto revolutionary party and denigrated the efforts of other left groups that it is now in partnership with. It has always been fiercely against standing in elections, as such activity was considered tantamount to reformism. This, of course, never prevented them from telling workers to vote Labour at every election or from jumping on every reformist bandwagon in town. Indeed, its 'Where We Stand' column, printed in every issue of Socialist Worker, clearly states:

“There is no parliamentary road. At most parliamentary activity can be used to make propaganda against the present system. Only the mass action of workers themselves can destroy the system.”

Also:

“The present system cannot be patched up or reformed as the established labour and trade union leaders say. It has to be overthrown.”

Rest assured that none of the above will appear in bold print in the SA election manifesto. After all, think of the nuns! It is reasonable to assume that the core of the SWP remains the same although its auto-Labourism has been thrown into confusion since the victory of new Labour. In 1998, the SWP produced an action programme of minimalist reformist demands which signalled a rightwards shift. Despite criticisms from the more left-leaning CPGB and WP that the SWP has become too reformist, this has been the logical political trajectory of all the groups comprising the SA.

In particular, the CPGB and the AWL appear to be interested in taking the SA to its logical conclusion—the formation of a new party. Of course, a prerequisite for such a development would be an SA paper, and, as leading CPGB theoretician Jack Conrad has argued:

“such a political paper represents the starting point, the first step towards creating a genuinely socialist party in Britain . . . is the overriding goal to which everything else should be subordinated." (Weekly Worker, 25 January)

However, it is unlikely that the largest organisations in the SA—the SWP and Militant—would ever countenance such a development. As things stand, the alliance project has deeply divided Militant, leaving themselves with one foot in and one foot out with a possible split on the cards. Experience tells us that the SWP would only ever be interested in anything they could completely dominate, and such behaviour has already been implicitly noted in the pages of Weekly Worker.

Our analysis of the SA is not based upon some narrow sectarianism—it's based upon principle. We do not, nor have we ever, supported capitalist parties, especially those that dress up in revolutionary garb in order to hoodwink the workers. The SA is an expression of all the political mistakes made by the working class last century—from the Labour Party to the Soviet Union. We do not doubt that well-meaning individuals get caught up in such chicanery for no other reason than a desire to see a better world. However, sentiment can never be a substitute for the class struggle.

Dave Flynn

Running Commentary: Take cover (1980)

The Running Commentary column from the September 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

Take cover

Hiroshima and Nagasaki disappeared into the atomic dust just over thirty five years ago so it is clearly time for the government to give some serious thought to protecting the population in the event of a nuclear attack.

One way of doing this would be to build enough shelters for everyone to be able to take cover but that would cost between £60 and £80 billion. While a government will readily spend that sort of money on weapons they are not likely to be so free when it comes to protection from the weapons' effects. Rich people, of course, can always afford to build their own shelters; the rest of must do the best we can with the blanket of official propaganda and advice, which is about all the government are prepared to offer.

The essence of this advice will be to keep faith, the government's airy assumption is that about 15 million people will be left in Britain after the attack (although most of them will be a bit deaf and probably bronzed, as if they had just come back from a holiday near a tropical jet airport) and that will be enough to eventually rebuild towns, roads, factories and so on and in general get the machinery of capitalist exploitation going again.

To ensure this, the government's plans give priority to their survival. There will then be money available for the construction of adequate shelters for our rulers, be there ever so little for them to rule over. Rather lower—in fact at the bottom—of their priorities comes the safety and welfare of the working class. Perhaps there is an unconscious, ironical justice in this; after all, the working class don't have to keep capitalism in existence, don't have to make its weapons, fight its wars . . . 

For the workers, anti-nuclear defence measures have a special meaning. We shall be encouraged to keep our heads wrapped in a jacket or some other substantial garment and to whitewash our windows which, writes Home Secretary Whitelaw, ". . . can provide very effective protection against fire resulting from the heat-flash from nuclear explosions."

This rather unnerving optimism was echoed, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph (23/6/80) from a Dr. Kitty Little of Oxford, on whose operating table we must all fervently hope never to find ourselves. Dr. Little offers us the assurance that "The only serious long-term hazard . . . are the stress disease symptoms caused by apprehension and fear." Her advice is to keep "an open tank of water" on the window sill to stop the heat-flash igniting inflammable material.

So when the Bomb comes there will be rather a lot for us to cram into the four minutes. Whitewash the windows, set out tanks of water, select a durable jacket from the wardrobe, prop the table against the wall, with a sandbag or two to secure its base. Anyone who feels any fear or apprehension coming on may take solace from the thought that, beyond their flimsy defences, their ruling class are keeping the flag of privilege flying—as usual giving themselves the best possible chance in life.

Take it out

There are factories in Japan where the workers are able to give vent to their suppressed anger in a place called the Rumpus Room, where they are able to pummel effigies of the managers. But even this clever idea is not enough to divert all frustrations; in the Tokyo tube and suburban commuter trains, female travellers are becoming increasingly angry at the male hands which too often explore their bodies in the rush hour crush.

At peak travelling times, when the workers are hurrying to their places of exploitation, part of the degradation process is the cramming of three times as many people into those trains as they are designed to carry in comfort. There are, in fact, workers whose job it is to pack in the bodies as skilfully—which means as tightly and as profitably—as possible until, in the words of one railway security guard, " . . . you can't lift your hand to scratch your nose."

These journeys are not enlightened by the added insults of the posters which are aimed at encouraging even more discipline from the sardine-like travellers. Don't leave anything behind you; don't sit with your legs wide apart; don't wear clothes like a peacock's plumage; don't let your head flop onto your neighbour's shoulder. All these undisciplined travel habits take up too much room—and more room means more workers packed into the sweating crush.

After a journey like that (the average commuting time in Tokyo is two hours twenty minutes) and a day on the production line or in the office the Rumpus Rooms must have plenty of customers. And beating a lifeless doll must be a lot cheaper than building more comfortable railways.

Japanese workers are often cited as examples of industrial discipline, people whose hard and uncomplaining work reaps rich rewards for their master class. Whatever the truth of this, it is clear that they rank pretty high among the world working class for the intensity of their exploitation—and for the contempt in which they are held by their capitalist employers.

Little wonder that they experience such tensions. But there is a more useful way of taking out their frustrations, than in any Rumpus Room or in annoying their fellow workers.

Take off

Two episodes in the life of Steve Skingle of Plaistow - skinhead, unemployed, Tube traveller extraordinary.

On Easter Monday Steve, like any self-respecting London skinhead, was in Southend getting a bit of aggro. He was arrested and bailed to appear in court at a later date.

Before he went back to court, Steve was involved in the Tube crash at Holborn and, apparently unlike any self-respecting skinhead, helped to rescue the train driver. This made some lovely headlines for the copy-starved hacks in Fleet Street and eventually so impressed the Southend magistrates that they put Steve on probation.

"You could," commented the chairman of the Bench, "be a useful member of society. It is just a matter of bringing it out."

"Lovely," gasped Steve when he was asked what he thought of his sentence, then went back to Plaistow to work at this being a useful member of society.

He got a job as a labourer on a building site. "I'm enjoying it," he beamed. His father (who is out of work) weighed in with the hope that Steve would soon give up being a skinhead and obligingly defined what a useful member of society should be about" " .  .  . I hope that now he has started to find himself he'll get himself new clothes, a bird and a car."

Being a useful member of society means one thing to people who draw the dole in Plaistow and another to people who draw their dividends in Belgravia. Pompous magistrates judge people like Steve Skingle by their degree of conformity; is he "well dressed", in a steady job, looking forward to a lifetime of marriage and mortgage? Is he a toe-the-line wage worker, giving his all in the process of his own exploitation? Is he normal—by which they mean, does he conform?

How long will the working class assent to their inferior social position? How long will they direct their frustrations in the wrong direction? Steve's shaven head was, he hoped, a badge of rebellion, a mindless reaction against something he does not understand but which he does not like. Perhaps, after all the publicity, he will be relieved that he can drop the pose and fall in with the docile role his conditioning demands of him.

This may satisfy insecure parents or pontificating magistrates—both symbols of capitalist authority—but it has little more to offer than a seaside punch-up.

Ivan