A culture of violence (1987)

From the October 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

On a summer day in August, Michael Ryan took to the streets of Hungerford armed with an assortment of lethal weapons and embarked on an orgy of terror and violence leaving in his wake a trail of dead and injured before, finally, turning a gun on himself. The media had a field day—a sensational story in the middle of the "silly season". After the sickening accounts of Ryan's massacre, came the instant diagnoses, remedies and pop psychology: Ryan was a madman, under the influence of too much violent television and films, with too easy an access to firearms. The "solution": ban violence on television and stop madmen from getting hold guns.

But the "solution" proposed not only does nothing to deal with the problem of violence but also fosters a dangerous illusion — that this incident was an exception, something out of the ordinary, the product of a deranged mind. Michael Ryan may or may not have been schizophrenic, psychotic or paranoid; he may or may not have been over-protected by his mother; he may or may not have had sexual hang-ups (there is, in any case, something grotesque about engaging in posthumous psychoanalysis), but some of this explains why the particular form his disturbance took was so violent and anti-social.

It is, no doubt, very comforting to some people struggling to make sense of what happened, to simply label Ryan as "mad". To do so gives the impression that his violence was an individual, pathological problem and in no way connected to the society in which we live. But in fact although the scale of the violence in this case was perhaps exceptional, the violence itself was not. It is part of a continuum of violence with Saturday night pub brawls, child abuse and wife battering at one end and war and genocide at the other. Each and every day numerous acts of violence are committed: they are so routine as to go largely unnoticed. In a violent society it takes a massacre for violence to hit the headlines.

Ryan, we were told, was, at the time of his attack, dressed in Rambo-style combat gear complete with headband. Doesn't this, they argue, prove that he was acting out a fantasy inspired by the film? Shouldn't we then ban depictions of violence in films and on television? Although the causal connection between violent images and violent behaviour remains unproved, what is clear is that films like Rambo and Death Wish, and television programmes like Miami Vice and the A Team are tremendously popular. Why? Could it be that, rather than causing the violence that exists in society, they are a part of, and contribute to, a culture that allows violence to flourish? The same newspapers that screamed "shock, horror" from their headlines the day after the events in Hungerford, routinely encourage and romanticise xenophobia, militarism and war and glorify "heroes" of the Rambo ilk.

And then, to add to the hypocrisy, having dismissed Ryan as a madman, they then call for gun laws to be tightened up to stop other lunatics from getting their hands on sub-machine guns. But gun laws, however restrictive, necessarily presuppose guns and guns are, by their very nature, weapons of violence — despite what the gun lobby might say about their "sporting" uses. The same culture of violence that makes films like Rambo successful also creates a market for real live guns that are manufactured and sold for profit through gun shops, arms dealers and mail order magazines, who have little interest in the state of mind of the buyer, or the use to which they might be put. There is after all money to be made from violence, as the state which permits and encourages arms dealing knows only too well.

The massacre in Hungerford might, momentarily, have shattered any cosy illusions that people might hold that we live in the best of all possible worlds but the "instant" analysis and irrelevant "solutions" quickly papered over the cracks with reassuring pap about it being an isolated incident, the actions of a crazed man who should never have been permitted a firearms certificate, allowing people to fall back into the complacent belief that "something" is being done. Gun laws are to be reviewed, television schedules were altered. Well that's alright then, isn't it?

Janie Percy-Smith

Who Will Do the Dangerous Work? (1982)

From the February 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

This is a question often asked when we explain that in socialist society the principle "from each according to his/her abilities, to each according to his/her needs" will apply. In other words, that people will voluntarily contribute in terms of work what they can in order to produce the abundance of wealth to which they will then have free access according to their individual needs (of which they themselves will be the sole judge). 

The assumption behind the "dirty work" objection is that if work were voluntary nobody would choose to do the hard, the dangerous, the boring or the messy work because this would be "against human nature". We don't want to go here into all the scientific arguments which show that there is nothing in the nature of the animal homo sapiens that would prevent them living in a socialist society; quite the reverse in fact, human beings are animals which have evolved and survived only through their capacity to co-operate. All we will do is draw attention to the fact that the objection is not valid even for all work under capitalism. 

Work under capitalism mostly takes the form of employment—that is, work for an employer, under his control and for his profit, and it is therefore not surprising that most people consider "work" to be something unpleasant, to be avoided as much as possible. But when it comes to exercising their mental and physical energies—which is equally "working"—in their own time, as in digging their gardens, pursuing their hobbies and the like, it is a different matter. Because people enjoy this kind of work, many are not even prepared to consider such activities as work, to such an extent has capitalism associated work with work for an employer! Socialism, which will abolish employment, will also abolish this false distinction between "work " (unpleasant) and "play" (pleasant), People will be able to organise the necessary productive work in such away that everybody will be able to derive satisfaction from doing it. 

But what about the dirty work? Well, as the Penlee lifeboat disaster recently showed, even under capitalism people can be found to undertake work of the most dangerous kind voluntarily. These lifeboatmen were all volunteers to do a job they knew to be socially necessary. Despite the fuss they made of the disaster, the capitalist class were unable to understand this. "£3 for a start, then, £1 an hour—the price of lifeboat courage" headlined the Daily Telegraph (21/12/81) with the suggestion that lifeboatmen were not being paid enough. But, as any of the lifeboatmen could have told them, this was not the point; money (expenses) was not the motive. In fact, one RNLI official was quoted as saying "some do not bother to claim it". 

Then why do they do it, why do they voluntarily undertake such dangerous, dirty work? Why could more than enough volunteers be found from the same village to replace the eight men who died? Because, as we have said, they were aware that there was a socially necessary job to be done. If this can happen under capitalism where the cash nexus has corrupted nearly everything, how can it be imagined that in socialism there will be any problem to find people to undertake any "dirty" jobs that cannot be automated? 

Adam Buick

Little Brother is Watching You (1959)

From the February 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has always been fashionable for the champions of so-called Western Democracy to describe in horrifying detail the horrors perpetrated by Big Brother Stalin, Big Brother Khruschev and the other dictators, in order that we might be comforted by the thought that circumstances here might be a lot worse. When one looks around, though, the differences aren't as great as they are made out to be. Everywhere one looks there are myriads of little brothers—the petty bureaucrats and officials that are apparently indispensable to modem society. So vast and impersonal has the State machine become, that the sum total of all the little brothers appears to make a very big brother indeed. 

One of the most disturbing features about this is the way in which little-brotherdom has been taken for granted, few now questioning the supervisory rights exercised by the multitudes of little brothers. 

Practically every moment of our waking life is spent under the observation and control of these watchdogs, who themselves are oblivious to the nature of their task, that is to be the ruling class's minions who ensure that every dot and comma of the laws of property society are observed. 

Let us take a look at our lives and see how far we are dominated by little-brotherdom. We open our eyes in the morning, lift our heads from the pillow (Purchase Tax (Domestic Pillowslips) Order 1947, S.R. & O., 1876); and gaze around our cosy Council flat ("Tenants shall not keep cats, dogs, chickens, livestock or any animal whatsoever"). We lower our feet gently to the floor, careful not to wake the baby downstairs ("No musical instruments, radio, record-player or noisy instrument whatsoever shall be played or used between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7.30 a.m."). We pull on our cotton socks (Customs and Excise (Import Licences for Foreign Cotton Goods) Order 1954. S.T. No. 6764). 

The carpet we tread on is subject to Purchase Tax, Hire Purchase restrictions, Customs and Excise duty if it is imported, Police investigation if it is stolen, and some thousands of officials in various Ministries and Departments are concerned with all these qualities of the carpet. The only quality that they are not interested in is the one that concerns the owner, that is, its usefulness. Similarly the tea that we pop into the teapot is haggled over by harassed merchants, discussed by diplomats, preserved by security police, checked by Customs officials, weighed by weights and measures men, and litigated over by lawyers, all without reference or relevance to the need that it satisfies. 

And so the morning goes on; everything we do, everything we use, and even our conversations are affected in some way or other by regulations, statutes, restrictions, official decrees, taxes, tithes, fines, penalties, and the rest. 

Perhaps the postman has brought us some mail? Ah, yes, a kind letter from our obedient servant, the Inspector of Taxes, requesting us to complete and return Form A.63 forthwith or have our code number reduced to zero (almost a fate worse than death). What else—perhaps a billet-doux from the Postmaster-General reminding us that our television licence expires on the 31st proximo? Or a figure-studded form from the Town Clerk telling us that each pound of rates was divided up into such fascinating items as 3¾d. for roads: 4¼d. for schools; 9d. for himself as watcher-in-chief and for his myrmidons; and so on. In fact, one could hazard the guess that three-quarters of the average man's mail comes from the little brothers. 

And so it goes on—one is always subject to the restrictions, petty tyranny and feeling of soul-destroying impotence produced by constant surveillance—"Good morning, madam; may I see your wireless and television licences?"; and the rest of it. 

Even the forms of little-brotherdom that we take completely for granted -"Fares, please"; "May I see your ticket?"; "One and nines at the far paybox" — all these are the product of an irrational society which substitutes profit for human needs, money for human feelings, and cash registers for human lives. 

A whole army of people exists, whose only purpose is to restrict us, regulate our lives, keep us submissive, and preserve the sanctity of private property. This is not a criticism of the watchdogs themselves—the clerk in the tax office or the bus conductor is only carrying out a job, although the job itself is one that stultifies and inhibits. Millions of able-bodied men and women carry out these socially useless tasks for the purpose of keeping capitalism running efficiently and keeping the others in order. 

Capitalism requires an army, navy, air force, police force and judiciary to defend the rights of employers to exploit their propertyless employees. In order to do this efficiently in the modern world, an immense and complicated State machine grows up, which irons out the differences between individual capitalists and combines all their interests in what is complacently described as the "national interest." To maintain this top-heavy institution, hundreds of thousands of workers are required to staff the end less Ministries and Departments. The Inland Revenue Department rakes in the State's share of the profits exacted from workers, and the various Ministries spend it in the ways deemed best by the ruling class's administrators.

And yet, a large proportion of the tasks performed by this vast army of people are, from a rational point of view, socially worthless. The Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance keeps infirm and aged workers alive at the minimum expense; the Customs and Excise Department preserves the State monopolies of tobacco and alcohol and keeps the rapacious foreign capitalist from the door; the Defence Ministry and Foreign Office ensure that the British capitalist can hang on to what he has captured; and so on. No doubt this is all very desirable from the ruling class's point of view, but has little to do with the interests of the majority of people.

People's acceptance of these social fungi implies an acceptance of capitalism, with all the evils that go with it. Conversely, once one has rejected capitalism, it can be seen that this implies the rejection of all of its stupid paraphernalia - of which little brothers are a part. Little brothers are only a facet of a harmful social system which has long outlived its purpose; a facet which itself emphasises and demonstrates the irrational and undesirable nature of capitalist society. 

A society which turns in on itself in this way, which dominates and regiments humans instead of serving their interests—this is a world which is unworthy of human beings. The fact that people find life unthinkable without the little brothers proves just how unthinkable it has become with them. 

Albert Ivimey

Who needs money? (1990)

From the November 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

We live in a society where almost everything is bought and sold. That which you need in order to live is a commodity; you must buy it from someone who will make a profit out of selling it to you. Our minds are dominated by money. It is our passport to existence. No money, no access to what we need. Too little money, no comfort. Money drives people crazy: contrary to the words of the song, money does not make the world go round—money makes the world go mad. 

It turns the white-coated scientist into the unprincipled servant of commerce. It converts the caring doctor into the grasping private practioner. Money makes pathetic liars out of salesmen and robotic paper counters out of bank clerks. Money leads young men to beat up old women. Money is the source of the poor man's scheme to have a fat wallet which ends too often in a cold prison cell. Money is the rich man's god. Children beg for money. Not a day passes when we do not think about it. Have I enough money for . . . If only this cost less . . . I must now pay my money for . . . Bills, tokens, threatening reminders, final demands, security locks, bank queues, exchange rates, newsreaders announcing that the pound has fallen, as if it is the sun which has fallen out of the sky. It is a vast, mentally corrupting, emotionally destructive money madness. 

Why Money? 

Money is the universally accepted means of exchange. It is a universal equivalent. Instead of me giving you three toasters for your armchair, I pay in an accepted, legal currency. Sounds sensible. Who wants to return to the awkward system of bartering goods? It seems sensible as long as we have a property-based system of society where wealth is owned by some and sold to others. 

The two main uses of money by most people are for food and housing. You need money to buy food from the corner store, or, more probably, the supermarket. In effect, you are paying the owners of food production for the right to have access to what they possess. These millionaire food manufacturers did not produce the food. But you must buy if from them so that they may profit. You pay money for housing to the landlord or the building society. They own the land that you live on and they own the means of producing the buildings in which you dwell. Directors of building societies are not to be found on building sites making houses. They are too busy getting drunk in their clubs or playing golf. 

Now, imagine that all these things that you need were owned and controlled in common. By everyone. All of us—you included. There is nobody to buy food from—it is common property. There are no rents or mortgages to pay because land and buildings belong to us all. There is no need to buy anything from any other person because society has done away with the absurd division between the owning minority (the capitalists) and the non-owning majority (the workers). You would not need money. In a society of common ownership money would have no role. It would be like the tramlines in a city which has done away with trams. No longer would money exist. 

The money test I 

"But we need money—couldn't live without it". That is what most well-conditioned readers will say. In our society people learn to turn money into a fetish. In primitive societies certain objects were invested with magical powers. For example, in Ancient Egypt cats were regarded as sacred animals which had to be treated with great respect or they would turn the world upside-down. Modern people are taught to believe that money contains intrinsic powers. Where would we be without it? Beware of dethroning the money-god. Let us put this to the test. 

Take a pile of money. Three fivers and a couple of pound coins. Leave them in a dark room and see what happens. Will they dig coal? Will factories be built or homes furnished? Well. at least they could cook you a good dinner: you can get good food for seventeen quid. Nothing will happen. Humans make money powerful. Left to itself it is just a pile of tokens of no worth. Even the picture of the Queen is ugly. 

The money test II 

But is money that important to you? Perhaps it is less intrusive in your daily life than has been suggested. Try one more test. 

Stop selling yourself for money for three months. That is what you do every time you go out to work in return for a wage or salary. You put yourself on the shelf along with the baked beans and the canned tuna fish and you say 'Buy me!'. The wages system, which turns the vast majority of people into exploited workers, is a process of selling your mental and physical energies in return for some money. For most of us, if we do not sell ourselves we will have little or no access to what we need in order to live. We devote most of our waking lives to trying to obtain money. Our work is devalued by money: if we enjoy working, the pleasure is diminished by the knowledge that we are only really engaging in a sordid transaction—and how many workers hate the miserable work that they are forced to do in order to get money? 

Give it a try: stop selling your labour power for money. You will give up on the test long before three months—or three weeks—or even three days. Most wage slaves are too petrified of losing their jobs—their chance to be bought for money—to even contemplate such an exercise. And rightly so, for under the wages system we are lost if we do not sell ourselves for money. 

Abolish money 

Socialists stand for a world without money. All wealth will be commonly owned, so there will be no body to buy what you need from. The right to live, and to be comfortable and happy, will not depend upon your pocket-book. Freedom will not be costed by accountants who will only give you liberty if you can pay for it. 

In a socialist society people will work according to their abilities and take according to their needs. Who will decide what their needs are? Not their bosses or the state or a cunning advertising industry—none of these will exist. People will decide for themselves. Who but humans ourselves are able to decide what we need? 

There will be no "socialist market". Contrary to the economic babble of certain "theorists" on the Left, it is quite obvious that the market, which is a mechanism for buying and selling commodities and realising a profit for the sellers, will have absolutely no function in a community where nobody is buying or seiling or making profits. In a society where production is solely for use people will have free and equal access to take what they need from the common store. 

Are people capable of living in a society of free access without making a mess of it? Will they take too much? Will they all refuse ever to work? Will they go to sleep for a thousand years and refuse to move a muscle? These are the fears about the nature of human beings that we in this money-mad society are urged to have. Socialists do not share such fears. We know just how co-operative and sharing and intelligent workers are capable of being. After all, we are a party of workers. 

Given a society of moneyless, free access men, women and children will co-operate together to make and to take what they commonly need and desire. They will do so democratically. And we could do so tomorrow if the vision of a moneyless society grabs hold of enough imaginations and penetrates the consciousness of enough of those millions of workers who are currently crying out, openly or quietly to themselves, under the strain of the enormous and often unbearable pressures of the money system. Without money, humans will be free to relate in ways which we have forgotten or only half-remember. The banks can close down, the cash machines put in museums and the children who cry because their parents have too little money to pay for them to grow up can stop. 

Steve Coleman

The Theory of State Capitalism (1992)

From the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard 

"The fact of the matter is that the credit for this particular form of state capitalism should go back to the Socialist Party of Great Britain, who taught Jock Haston his Marxism in the first place (cf Against the Stream, p. 251) and had promulgated the theory as far back as 1918. For it was Haston who first raised the question of state capitalism within the Revolutionary Communist Party, not only as a purely Russian phenomenon but in global terms, both in the group's internal bulletin (War and the International, pp. 182-5) and in a series of articles in Socialist Appeal (mid-August to mid-September 1947). In fact Cliff's remit from Mandel when he first came to Britain was specifically to argue against these 'state capitalist' heresies, and what happened was that in the course of the dispute the contestants changed sides. Anyone who wishes to make a serious investigation of the whole topic should consult the above sources, as well as the SPGB's position, which was reissued as a pamphlet in the same year as Cliff first published his own, though we have to admit that Cliff's logic is inferior to theirs, since they dated Russia's capitalist revolution back to 1917."

—from a review of Alex Callinicos's book Trotskyism in Revolutionary History, Autumn 1991.

Political Pathways (2015)

From the July 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Einstein and common sense (1979)

From the March 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Watch out, all you believers in common sense. Albert Einstein was born on this day in 1879 and it is interesting to consider the effect of the scientific revolution caused by his theories on the "common sense" view of the world. 

In 1905 (while working in a patent office), Einstein published his first paper on Special Relativity ("On the electrodynamics of moving bodies"—Annalen der Physik). From two beautifully simple axioms (the principle of relativity and the constancy of the velocity of light), Einstein was able to come up with some startling results. One of the best known is the prediction that moving clocks run slow. To quote his original example: "Thence we conclude that a balance clock at the equator must go more slowly by a very small amount than a precisely similar clock situated at one of the poles under otherwise identical conditions". 

Another prediction that violates "common sense" is that the relative velocity of two observers moving directly away from each other, is not equal to the sum of their velocities. For example, if two spaceships move off from the earth in opposite directions at half the speed of light (relative to the earth) then their relative velocity will not be equal to the velocity of light (the answer predicted by classical physics and "common sense") but only 80 per cent of it. The original reactions to these apparently nonsensical theories were mainly hostile. W.P. Magie in his Presidential Address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science dismissed relativity theory, saying: 

"I do not believe there is any man living who can assert with truth that he can conceive of time which is a function of velocity or is willing to go to the stake for the conviction that his "now" is another man's future or yet another man's past."

The hostile reception to his theories meant that Einstein had to work for another four years in the patent office before he got a job as a physicist. 

The first experimental tests of relativity theory (Kaufman, Annalen der Physik 1906) were not compatible with Einstein's theory and favoured rival theories. But Einstein was not unduly worried: 

"In my opinion both theories have a rather small probability because their fundamental assumptions concerning the mass of moving electrons are not explained in terms of theoretical systems which embrace a greater complex of phenomena." (Mach, Einstein and the Search for Reality by G. Holton, p 651/2). 

In other words, Einstein was convinced of the correctness of his theories not because of the empirical "facts" but because of subjective factors such as the simplicity and beauty of the equations. Of course, later experiments revealed flaws in the earlier ones, and gave results compatible with relativity However, the opposition to the theory continued and even when Einstein won a Nobel Prize in 1921 it was only partly for his theory and partly for same comparatively minor work. 

There was also some more fanatical opposition, particularly in Germany and largely on political grounds (partly because he was a Jew and partly because be was thought to be attacking the great German philosophers like Kant). In 1934, twenty five years after the publication of his first paper on relativity, a book was published in Germany called 100 Authors Against Einstein. Typical of the relativity "sensible" attack was that by Professor Strehl: 

"The theory of Einstein is for me a functional deformation of reality, his framework of references, variable space and time coordinates, invariant velocity of light (in spite of variable limiting value) is not to my taste." (Die Naturwissenschaften II (1931) p 234/6). 

The relevant point is that "common sense" is based on generalisation of everyday experience in which bodies move very much more slowly than light, and that therefore the effects of special relativity are negligibly small. Attempts to extrapolate these laws to velocities approaching that of light (300,000 kms per sec) give results which are qualitatively wrong. To physicists working with particles moving with velocities within a fraction of a percent of the velocity of light, the effects of special relativity are so common that the laws of relativity become part of their "common sense". 

An analogy between relativity and socialism should not be taken too literally, but what should be remembered is that the history of science is full of revolutions which violated the prevailing "common sense" view of human nature (humans are innately greedy, aggressive and so on) because this view is based on generalisations made in capitalist society. The extrapolation of this view of human nature to a qualitatively different society — socialism — is therefore completely unscientific. Those people who reject socialism on these grounds are making just as big a mistake as those philosophers who rejected relativity because it violated the internal infallibility of Kant. 

Tony Weidberg

National Liberation (1992)

Book Review from the March 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

National Liberation by Nigel Harris. (I B Tauris, £24.95.)

Capitalism, argues Harris, has now become a single world economy in which international capital finds the frontiers which divide the world into 170 or so political states irrelevant. Governments are forced to take this economic reality into account by pursuing policies that allow the free movement of capital and commodities. 

A similar view was expressed by many in the Marxist tradition before the First World War. In fact, it was almost the mainstream Marxist view, though only a few like Rosa Luxemburg, Pannekoek and Bukharin drew the conclusion that this meant that nationalism no longer had any progressive role to play and so should be opposed by socialists. Harris, of course, is well aware of this, and his first chapter is an analysis and debunking of nationalism and its myths. He sees nationalism as we do—as a political creation imposed on people by states (and movements seeking to set up states) in the interest of the ruling class (or would-be ruling class) of those states. 

But in a sense, says Harris, the pre-First World War Marxists were proved wrong in that the war was followed by an increase in economic and political nationalism, not the decline that their theories implied. Indeed, "Marxism" itself came to be associated with economic nationalism so that today most of those in the world who call themselves "Marxists" are nationalists of one sort or another. 

Harris is a long-standing member of the SWP, but his book has been severely criticised by the leadership of that organisation who find its political implications disturbing. For if you hold that capitalism has become a single world economy in which national frontiers are irrelevant, this implies that you should also regard the nationalist programme of economic "independence" as reactionary. Harris, himself, does not explicitly argue that socialists should no longer support nationalist movements, but he does cautiously say that we can expect nationalism to slowly decline and implying that this would be a good thing: 

Thus, if politics were no more than a reflex of economics—as some of the cruder Marxists seemed to imply—the world ought to be within sight of the end of nationalism as a political force. On such a reading, it might survive as a cultural-linguistic concern, but the economic and political issue would be over for all except the economically least developed. Such an eventuality would once more restore the pre-1914 theorization. 

To adopt the pre-1914 Marxist position of opposition to nationalism as economically reactionary is the last thing the SWP leaders want, as it undermines their whole case of supporting such groups as the IRA, the Sandinistas, Pan-Arab Nationalism and the like, as well as support of countries like Iraq when at war with more powerful capitalist powers. They are forced to stand by their dogma that nationalism has some progressive role to play and that state capitalism in one country is something to be supported, so placing themselves amongst those Harris calls "the last quixotic defenders of a world of national State capitalisms, replacing the tyranny of the market with the dictatorship of the bureaucracy". 

Adam Buick

Southern discomfort (1989)

Film Review from the August 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

By any standards Mississippi Burning directed by Alan Parker is a very forceful piece of cinema and watching it made me realise that the horror and despair I experienced, when the three young Civil Rights activists were murdered in Mississippi in the 1960s, were still there.

The three were arrested on a trumped up speeding charge when in fact their 'offence' was to encourage the blacks to take what was in constitutional theory their right—to register to vote. They were held by the police until the local Ku Klux Klan could organise a lynching party and then they were released for the klan to murder them and bury their bodies in the earthworks of a dam. The FBI came down to investigate (the suspected crime was not murder, which had to be left to the State police, but violation of federal rights), found the bodies and brought a number of people to court among them the town's sheriff and his deputy. The sheriff was acquitted, the others went to prison.

Mississippi Burning—Hollywood's version of that gruesome incident—has been criticised for the way it it embroiders and distorts the facts, introducing elements of heroism into a story that was sordidly drab. For example, in the film the case is cracked—the FBI break open the cocoon of silence woven around the murderers by local people—through some subtle ingratiation by Gene Hackman and some not-so-subtle intimidation by his henchmen, which makes for a watchable film but does not fit the reality that it happened through the unheroic process of bribing witnesses. A lot of the film is concerned with the struggle between Hackman, a rough, tough ex-sheriff turned FBI agent, and his boss played by Willem Dafoe who is a serious, sharp-suited college boy. Dafoe tries to insist that the investigation sticks to 'Bureau procedure' while Hackman itches to behave more like Popeye Doyle in The French Connection. There are no prizes for guessing who comes out on top and whose methods are eventually used. If it didn't turn out that way it would not have been half as gripping a film and there wouldn't have been so many opportunities for the audience to relieve its tension in vengeful laughter, which swamped out any doubts about means and ends.

Case Against Racism

Among the film's bits of fable—like Hackman silencing and humiliating the town's most rampant racist thug by grabbing and squeezing his balls (at which more of that laughter)—it makes out its case against racism. Dafoe reminds us that racism is not a local problem but a social curse, rooted in widespread ignorance. Hackman remembers his father, a poor white farmer who enviously poisoned the mule of a more successful black neighbour. Revealing himself in this way helps him win the confidence of the deputy sheriff's wife, so she feels able to burst out with the frustration of trying to be humane when she was surrounded by a bigoted hatred which she had grown up with, and had married.

Compared to the millions wiped out by capitalism every year, compared to what the Nazi and Stalinist dictatorships did, compared to what was being unleashed in Vietnam at the time, three deaths seem of little numerical account. The horror stems from the fact that they were part of a long history of repression which had conditioned the people of the South into accepting that anyone with a black skin was fair game for anything white people chose to do them. It stems from the tension in the communal condonement of the murders and in the savage intimidation of any possible witnesses. It is a response to the ruthlessly destructive passion in defence of a diseased and doomed limb of prejudice.

Right to Vote Not Enough

And the despair is born of what has happened since then. In the 1960s segregation was crumbling under pressure from the economic, commercial and military needs of American capitalism. It still needed massive courage by the Civil Rights workers (the three in Mississippi knew exactly how terrible were the risks they ran) until now the American blacks are pretty well established as a voting force, which has had its effect on the face of politics there. All over the country, including the South, blacks are elected to public office. But it is not enough, just to win the vote; it must be used with an awareness of why society operates as it does and a will to change it. The case of the American Negro offers plenty of evidence in support of that argument.

Mississippi Burning is a powerful indictment of racist bigotry but it leaves us with the question: if there was indeed some kind of triumph of human qualities in Mississippi in those awful days, is it really represented now by the likes of Jesse Jackson?"

Ivan

Blood on their hands (1979)

From the December 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 7 January this year Pol Pot was toppled from power, and a few days later the founding of the People's Republic of Kampuchea was announced, the president being Heng Samrin. The new government was installed in power with the help of Vietnamese troops, and was very much a Vietnamese creation. The Heng Samrin regime was immediately recognised by the Russian-bloc states, but most countries still regard the Khmers Rouges as the "legitimate" rulers, in spite of the horrors they inflicted on the country and manifest fact that they control no more than a small part of its territory. Norodom Sihanouk, who has distinguished himself solely by often and abruptly changing sides. has prostrated himself before the United Nations, begging for international assistance and support for the barbarians who helped destroy his country. Kampuchea and its people have become entangled in a web of hypocrisy, deceit and suffering which is remarkable even by capitalism's gruesome standards.

China supported and supports the Khmers Rouges, hence those western capitalist states which are becoming increasingly friendly with China and foresee better trade opportunities there are unwilling to upset them by supporting Heng Samrin. The Americans, having done their best to "bomb Vietnam back into the Stone Age", as one of their more candid generals put it, raise their hands in horror at the sudden discovery that wars kill people. Meanwhile the Vietnamese rulers have taken a leaf out of Uncle Sam's book and installed a puppet regime in Kampuchea. A treaty signed in March allows Vietnamese troops to be stationed in Laos and Kampuchea, enabling Vietnam (and its Russian mentor) to dominate Indo-China. This is basically what the dispute is about: over the last thirty years a succession of ruling classes have striven for control of Southeast Asia. After the defeat of the French and then of the Americans, the region was up for grabs between Russia and China. In spite of the Chinese attempt to force a Vietnamese withdrawal from Kampuchea by invading Vietnam, the Russians and their satellites have, for the moment at least, won the contest.

The losers, as ever, are the ordinary people, the peasants and workers of Kampuchea. Out of a 1975 population of around seven million, about three million are now believed to have died under Pol Pot. A further two million are currently starving as a result of the disruptions caused by evacuation and fighting. Only five per cent of the the country's arable land is under cultivation, and the food situation is likely to be even worse next year. Millions of pounds' worth of aid has been sitting around unused while presidents and prime ministers play their deadly games. Heng Samrin's regime has refused to allow the Red Cross to distribute aid to the Kampuchean population, on the grounds that this would mean sharing it with the Khmers Rouges and their supporters. And all the while, countless human beings die and suffer horribly, with their safest place the overcrowded and insanitary refugee camps in Thailand.

Anyone who thought that the defeat of American imperialism would lead to peace and prosperity for Southeast Asia has now been disillusioned. Post-"liberation" Vietnam has turned into such a paradise that hundreds have been prepared to risk drowning in order to escape, after the government has thoughtfully reduced the weight of the ships by relieving them of large sums of gold. Capitalist states like Vietnam and China are now exposed, to all but the willfully blind, as hypocritical murderers and oppressors no more deserving of support than Britain or the United States.

An "independent" country is simply one where a home-grown ruling class lord it over their subjects, to whom the nationality of their exploiters should be of no concern at all. Under capitalism, all countries are forced to behave like predators, including those that have but recently thrown off the "imperialist yoke".

No one who has seen, on their television, or in newspapers, the walking skeletons of Kampuchean children could fail to be moved. The instinctive response may be to dig into one's pocket, but charity will not prevent such horrors happening again and again. Starvation may be rare in industrialised countries nowadays, but for a large proportion of humanity it is it is either an everyday experience or an ever-present threat. It is capitalism, with its inequalities and its wars and its artificial shortages, that is responsible for this situation.

Paul Bennett

Editorial: Capitalism unleashes war (1991)

Editorial from the February 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

So capitalism has again unleashed the horrors of war. The Socialist attitude is clear. Wars are never justified from a working class point of view. They are fought by capitalist states over sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets and investments. None of these are issues of concern to wage and salary workers, the majority in society.

The present war in is a particularly blatant example of the sort of issue wars are fought over under capitalism. What is at stake for both sides is quite clearly control over oil supplies and trade routes. Everybody knows this, and the propaganda machines of the Western powers are having great difficulty in portraying it as a war for "democracy" and "our way of life". With the official war aim being to restore the filthy-rich Al Sabah dynasty to rule over and exploit the the people in the puppet-state of Kuwait and with mediaeval and religious fundamentalist Saudi Arabia where women are not even allowed to drive cars as the main local ally, this is hardly surprising.

Iraq is being attacked, under the flag of convenience of the United Nations, because its emergence as a strong regional power with expansionist ambitions represents a threat to Western domination of the area and a challenge to the security and free flow of Western oil supplies "at market prices".

This gives the Iraqi ruling class a propaganda advantage. They can truthfully present the war as one waged by Western powers to protect and further their imperialist interests. But Iraqi workers should not be fooled. They are members of the international working class who have been conscripted by a particularly brutal local ruling class to fight for its interest in having a secure trade outlet to the sea and in building itself up as the dominant regional power. Issues, once again, that are not ones of concern to them as wage and salary workers. Iraqi workers, like those of the Western countries and their local allies, will be dying for interests which are not theirs.

The outbreak of any war is an unmitigated disaster for the working class. It is the workers who are hired or conscripted to do the fighting, the destroying, the killing - and the dying. It is workers and their families who suffer from the bombings, the destruction, the restrictions, the famines and the epidemics that accompany all wars. War brings nothing but suffering and misery.

This is why, as Socialists representing the working class interest, we are opposed to all wars. always. We are not prepared to support under any circumstances the killing and maiming of our fellow workers in the pursuit of capitalist profits. Ideally, from the point of view of the working class within capitalism, it would have been better if the capitalists had settled this conflict peacefully and, now that the war has started, it should stop immediately. Unfortunately this can only be wishful thinking. Capitalism does not work that way. War will always be a policy option invoked by capitalist states from time to time.

We denounce the war as yet another example of the barbarous nature of the capitalist system and call upon our fellow workers in all countries to unite even more urgently to bring the war-causing capitalist system to a speedy end by establishing in its place a world socialist society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the Earth's resources by all the people of the Earth.

The Demise of Thatcher (1990)

Editorial from the December 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who the hell cares which political dinosaur will lead the Conservative Party? What possible difference does the conclusion of this thieves' quarrel make to the vast majority of people living in Britain? 

The Tories represent the interests of the parasite class which lives on the profits which are legally robbed from the wealth-producing majority. The workers, who are the overwhelming majority, have nothing to be gained by supporting the sordid ambitions of politicians. The Prime Minister is not the workers' representative, but the chief mouthpiece of the profit-protecting government. 

The function of government is to rule over those who are the productive majority. The system in which the majority allows itself to be ruled - governed - oppressed by leaders is not democracy. Democracy means the rule of the people by the people. It means the administration of things, not the government over people. In a democracy there can be no leaders or led, for all people will co-operate to make the decisions which affect the life of the human community. 

The irrelevant leadership battle is a sordid fight between defenders of capitalism who think that it is their role to govern and ours to be governed. We are not invited to vote in their election; all we are asked to do is to sit in front of our TV screens and gaze at the cynical tactics of a gang of political tricksters. 

The Tory contestants were united by one policy; their complete and unequivocal support for world capitalism. In this they are at one with Kinnock and Ashdown. All of the politicians and parties of the profit system are solid in their rejection of any alternative to the way the world is run now. We live in a society where needs come second to profit and where those who possess do not produce while those who produce all goods and services do not possess the resources of the earth. 

The real political contest is not about who will lead the Tory party and draw the prime ministerial salary. It is a battle of ideas about whether the working class majority will support and vote for production for profit or production for use. If workers vote for the profit system, then it matters not a jot which of the con men leads which party of fakers. If workers opt for socialism, as historical necessity demands that we should, then the question of leadership is irrelevant. No socialist would ever follow a leader; no socialist seeks to lead anyone else. 

To the Tory tricksters we say "A plague on both your houses!". Socialists have better things to think about than the dirty fighting of those who run this dirty social system. 

In 1979 Mrs Thatcher came to power heralded as the saviour of British capitalism. She now quits the stage with British capitalism in economic decline. Far from realising her boast "to bury socialism", her political career has been buried by capitalism. 

Additive eating (1989)

From the March 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The addition of foreign substances to food for profit is as old as capitalism. In medieval times the production of food was subject to quality control by the guilds who regulated their members' trade practices. Food inspectors spent a good deal of time making sure wine, ale, flour and oil were of an acceptable standard and quality. The fourteenth century German "pure beer" laws are an example of this. 

The development of industrial capitalism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century led to increasing numbers of people crowding into towns and cities. The adulteration of their food and drink was accepted as a matter of course and practiced with impunity. Like other wealth creating activities food production took on its modern mass-production character — that of a commodity to be produced for sale on the market with a view to making a profit.

Controls were swept away to such an extent that by the 1850s a Member of the Royal College of Physicians, called upon to give evidence before a Parliamentary Committee, could report that he had found adulteration of food "very prevalent". It occurred, he said 

". . . in nearly all articles which it will pay to adulterate, whether of food, drink, or drugs. There are but few exceptions to this rule . . . The adulterations practised are very numerous . . . The majority consists in the addition of substances of greatly inferior nature, for the sake of weight or bulk. Other adulterations consist in the addition of various colouring matters; these are employed either to conceal other adulterations, or to heighten, and, as it is considered, to improve the appearance of articles. Lastly, a few adulterations are practised for the purpose of imparting smell, pungency, or taste to certain articles ..."
(Quoted in Royston Pike, Human Documents of the Victorian Golden Age, 1974, page 295.) 

That this steady stream of adulterants had a debilitating effect on the health of the working class can hardly be doubted. It must have been in part responsible for the fact that during the first world war 41 percent of workers conscripted to defend their masters interests had to be rejected as unfit. Seventy years later government reports still point to the inadequate nutritional levels of the poorest members of the working class, except that adulterants have been up-graded — they are now called additives and have pretentions to respectability. 

Researchers from the DHSS found in 1986 that children were eating more crisps, chips and potato products than any other single food. Biscuits and cakes were the second most popular item, being eaten more by weight than vegetables. Little fresh fruit was eaten. Commenting on the report Andrew Veitch, medical correspondent of The Guardian, noted:

"Children of families on Family Income Supplement and Supplementary Benefit had the lowest nutrient intake and were significantly shorter than others. (4 April 1986, emphasis added.)

The "state of the nation's health" is still a subject of concern. The employing class clearly does not want a clapped-out working class suffering ill health because of their diet. On the other hand, there is a great deal of money to be made peddling food given an added value and therefore a bigger margin of potential profitability. 

Increasingly too consumers — workers who stump up at the cash register — are asking the question, What is it that we are really eating? Complacency is being replaced by concern. Worried families pressurised by advertising and lack of time and money into buying the cheaper processed foods are questioning the need for additives, as the campaign to remove artificial colouring matter demonstrates. With limited money to spend it does not need a degree in economics to work out that a shopping basket of products less likely to contain processed, additive-rich food, will cost more than one including a preponderance of beef-burgers, pot-noodle and fruit squash. The outlay for a family of four eating a "healthy" as opposed to a typical diet was compared recently by Isobel Cole-Hamilton, a dietician working for the London Food Commission, and Anita MacDonald from the University Hospital Leeds. Not surprisingly the healthy diet costs a great deal more — £48.04 as compared to £37.09 (more than 25 per cent.) MacDonald also pointed out that:

" . . . it would be impossible for a child to obtain the minimum nutritional requirements laid down by the DHSS from the amount of money available for food from supplementary benefit — the allowance simply isn't large enough." (The Guardian, 18 October 1986.) 

Food and drink manufacturers have an annual turnover of £6bn and account for 10 per cent of all manufactured output. They spend an estimated £231 in a year on food additives. Seventy per cent of what is spent on food buys processed products. There are no exact figures for the amount of additives consumed per head but Erik Millstone of Sussex University estimates it to be between 3 and 7 kilogrammes annually. It could be considerably higher in some cases — 10 or 15 kg per head a year because not all people consume the same quantity of processed food. As The Guardian survey quoted above showed, food purchases of those with less money to spend will almost invariably be made up of processed food because it is cheaper. 

Why are additives used in such vast and increasing quantities? As far as food manufacturers and processors are concerned they fulfill a number of important technical needs. They improve the look of food products, they modify their texture to increase acceptability, they inhibit mould and bacteria and extend "shelf life" (which means the product can be kept in circulation from machine to mouth longer before it decays and loses its value). Flavours lost in the manufacturing process can be regained or reinforced. These needs are real in a system where increasing amounts of food are industrially processed before consumption. For example, Erik Millstone estimates that 45 major food distribution centres handle some 80 per cent of all the food marketed in Britain, "Hence the ability of preservatives to give food a long shelf life is of enormous economic value to the food industry . . ." (New Scientist, 18 October 1984). 

The Consumer Association have looked into the use and need for additives in food, and as far as flavours are concerned state that:

"In a highly competitive industry, keeping down costs while maintaining sales is essential for survival. Even though manufacturers might acknowledge that the most wholesome products would include natural ingredients . . . substitution of flavours for ingredients is one of the easiest ways for them to reduce costs . . .  Undoubtedly when raw material costs increase, manufacturers may feel under pressure to lower the quality of some products in order to maintain their position in the market." (Understanding Additives, Which? Books-Consumers Association/Hodder and Stoughton, £6.95.) 

In the case of preservatives they admit that:

"Hygiene in factories is not always as high as modem standards would demand. Bacterial spores are commonly found in food processing plants, and preservatives may need to be added to food to prevent contamination during processing . . .  The financial benefit of extending the shelf-life of products is likely to be greater than the cost of adding individual preservatives."

Scientific research coupled with public pressure have led in recent years to the abandoning of some artificial colouring matter in food. This was almost always added to make the product look attractive. But according to the CA: 

"Manufacturers would not have replaced synthetic colours with more expensive natural ones unless they were able to recoup or absorb the additional cost. Companies which felt that there was a commercial risk in excluding colours have, on the whole, retained them . . ."

As far as additives as a whole are concerned an anonymous representative of the food manufacturing industry is quoted as saying that "We do produce some products with fewer artificial additives. This is purely for marketing purposes" (emphasis added). This puts into true perspective what the CA identifies as the consumer's overriding need " . . .  to be able to obtain a nutritious and balanced diet, at prices they can afford . . . " (emphasis added). To which it is reasonable to retort — "It may be cheap, but is it safe?". 

Another response to criticism has been the provision of more "information" on food packaging. However this sop to public opinion still fails to give relative quantities, excludes flavourings, and often does not specify additives used in production prior to the final processing. For example museli, that prime example of health conscious eating, may contain fruit treated with mineral oil or preserved with sulphur dioxide, the presence of which is not indicated on the label! 

Of the use of sulphur dioxide, the most widely used antimicrobial preservative, Erik Millstone and John Abraham say: 

".. it is of enormous technological, industrial and commercial value, but we know that it is harmful to at least a few people, and that it may be harmful to many people." (Additives: a Guide for Everyone, Erik Millstone and John Abraham, Penguin Books, £3.95.) 

Other entries in this "dictionary" of chemicals used in food manufacturing make grim reading. In their assessment of the supposed safety of over 200 additives the phrase "presumed safe" occurs with frightening regularity. The possible long term effect of the continuous intake of small doses and the consequences of taking combinations of chemicals (the so-called "cocktail" effect) will be costly and time consuming to ascertain. The Food Additives Council (a body which regulates the use of additives) has no funds of its own and has to rely mainly on research carried out by the food industry itself £ a bit like a gamekeeper trusting the poachers.

The results of research are secret or difficult to verily. Experiments on animals do not produce results which can be readily transferred to humans primarily because the methods are imprecise. Millstone and Adams, summing up this state of affairs, say: 

". . .  the entire regulatory system rests on an undisclosed base . . . Secrecy is defended by industry and government on the grounds that disclosure might adversely affect the commercial interests of companies."

Indignant as one may feel at being poisoned for profit — at being forced by economic circumstances to consume inferior food — it must be realised that this is simply part and parcel of the production for sale and profit system. In a society of production for use the incentive to adulterate food would disappear. 

Gwynn Thomas

Between the Lines: 1968, the BBC & Tabloid Journalism (1988)

The Between the Lines column from the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

1968 and all that

Back in the late sixties, while thuggish cops kicked hell out of anti-Vietnam war demonstrators in Grosvenor Square and the Beatles sang "you say you wanna revolution", your reviewer was quietly tripping out on Junior Disprins, listening to John Peel on pirate Radio London and occasionally paying attention to my old man who told me that Harold Wilson was no more a socialist than Bob Dylan could sing. He was right about (Lord) Wilson, wrong about Dylan and now a lot of the Grosvenor Square victims are members of the SDP and like to recall their youthful rebel days.

World In Action (8:30 pm, ITV, January 4) was all about three of those rebels of 1968. Using film clips of the heady days when lads with duffel coats and earnest expressions were going to change the world, the programme jumped on to 1988 when Thatcher reigns supreme and young trendy lefties have turned into middle-aged, compromising bores. The first was Mike Tomkinson, then President of the LSE students' union, now a man who writes for the Digger and believes that the establishment is here to stay. Second bore was Dave Clarke (no, not the one who made bad records then and no records now) who owns his own business in Docklands publishing a local newspaper. Clarke, whose line in cliches has not changed much in twenty years, is shown in 1968 declaring that violent revolution is what we must prepare for and in 1988 admitting that Thatcher's put some good old life back into the profit system and — I bet you've never heard this one - if you're not a socialist before you're twenty you have no heart but if you're a socialist after you're forty you have no brain. Dave did not explain what you are supposed to be between twenty and forty, although he seems to have maintained a sort of permanent mindless dullness throughout the whole process.

Dave looks into the camera and declares that his heart is on the left, but his wallet is on the right. The fact is, of course, that back in 1968 Dave Clarke, then President of Manchester Student's Union, was a moralising trendy with nothing to do except sloganise in accordance with the then fashionable dogma which insisted that Vietnam should win its war. Now that Vietnam has won and millions of Vietnamese workers are living under an obscene dictatorship (just as they would have done if America had won the war) Clarke is trotting out the latest fashionable tripe about Thatcher being good for "our" industry. The false message of the programme was that Clarke had changed in twenty years; the reality is that he was a capitalism-supporting fool then and he appears to be no better now.

The third rebel chosen for ridicule by World In Action was Tariq Ali, a r-r-r-revolutionary then and an oh-so-constitutional Labourite with his own TV programme on Channel Four now. Ali is at least consistent: in 1968 he was struggling for state capitalism in Vietnam, now we are able to see from the programme that he is struggling for state capitalism in Nicaragua.

The purpose of this programme (if TV reviewers may be so arrogant as to seek such a factor) was to show that times have changed in twenty years. For conservatives this is supposed to be a reason for good cheer: all them lefty radicals have grown up at last, what!; for leftists it is supposed to show that the good old days of the late sixties, when you could start a demo faster than Harold Wilson could light his pipe, have gone and we are now in the miserable age of Thatcherism. Socialists accept neither view. The Left in 1968 never was a threat to the system. We do not doubt that many workers matured a little politically through the struggles of those active years but that maturity came from seeing through the illusions of futile reformism, not pursuing them. What is sad - very sad, in fact — is that students in 1988 who mouth the platitudes of pseudo-revolutionary leftism have not moved beyond the moralising confusion of 1968. Twenty years ago they were rolling joints and wasting their hopes in the political haze of reformism; today the dope costs more and it's mainly young Tories who smoke it. Apart from that, the task of changing society has still to be carried out

Marmaduke exposes himself

See For Yourself (8pm, BBC1, January 3) was all about how the BBC works. It was a two-hour programme which is probably like the kind of thing they show about collective farms on Bulgarian TV. "This is the BBC making a play - this is us making the news - did you know that it takes fifteen cameras to film the golf coverage?" Well, thanks for telling us, but does it really matter to the old workers who can't afford to pay the TV licence fee out of their pension?

After the programme we were invited to phone in questions to the two men who run the BBC. One was Michael Checkland, a man who looks and sounds like a banker and seems to think that the BBC would have been better off if it went into banking. The other was Marmaduke Hussey - a man who, as if not foolishly enough named already, kept on being referred to as Dukey by Checkland. Before the calls came in Marmaduke answered a question or two from the interviewer. Had he watched the two hour programme? No - well, he'd seen a bit of it. Wise man: he was probably watching ITV at the time. But what sort of Chairman of the BBC goes on TV to answer questions on a programme most of which he has never seen? Does he watch EastEnders, the BBC's most watched programme? He had seen it a few times, said Marmaduke — and then proceeded to ask a caller from Bristol what the weather was like there because he had one of his houses round that way.

One of his houses? Marmaduke probably spends so much time travelling from one home to the next that he has precious little time to watch the telly like the rest of us. I was thinking on 'phoning up and asking why BBC news tells so many lies about "Marxist" countries — or asking why EastEnders is such insulting, anti-working-class drivel, or when it was that Marmaduke was actually elected by the viewers of the BBC to be its Chairman.


The People caves in

Readers who have been following our own little soap opera about the People newspaper's published lies about comments made in this column about soap operas will be pleased to know that the People admitted in a written reply to the Press Council that it was wrong to claim that The Socialist Party was in any way connected with the Labour Party or that we stand for socialism in one country. They have published a letter from a member of the Socialist Standard Production Committee correcting their distortion. However, as their correction was several months after the original lies had been published and as our reply was given about a tenth of the space which was given to their original article, you can draw your own conclusions about so-called press freedom. One thing can be said about the BBC: they can't be accused of twisting what The Socialist Party says — they just maintain a conspiracy of silence which began in Reith's day and shows no sign of changing in the Era of old Marmaduke.

Steve Coleman

Out of Step . . . What Is 'Normality' In Capitalism? (1973)

From the May 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

The governor of a large London prison is reputed on good authority to have said that if he were to unlock all the gates most of his prisoners would prefer not to walk out. This was of course a comment not so much on the prison as on the world outside. For one thing a prison accepts, or at any rate contains, attitudes and behaviour which are unlikely to be tolerated elsewhere. Prisoners are classed as among society's deviants; while they are inside they are subject to a social code which is geared to the needs of the prison and to what is required to survive there. Any prisoner who deviates from that code (for example the "grasses" — men who inform on others) act in ways which conform more closely to the requirements of the world outside the walls. 

This typically many-sided example serves as well as any as an introduction to the subject of deviance which in the time of drug use, homosexual reform, Women's Lib and so on is painfully exercising the minds of many workers who would probably feel more secure in unquestioning conformity. There are of course many fields in which deviance can show itself, not all of them connected with crime; madness for example. What they all have in common is an ability to provoke a general rejection of the deviants, which may lead to them being shut away — in prison, mental hospitals — or in them shutting themselves away (which may amount to the same thing) in their own circles of social contact. 

Deviance, the mainstream agrees, is bad — which means that normality is good. It is possible to spend a great deal of time in argument over a definition of normality, tossing about evidence from many fields — anthropology, history, sociology and so on. A psychiatrist may well have a definition substantially different from that of, say, a lawyer. There is no agreement about where normality is to be found — is it in an individual, a family, a community? Can prisoners really be classed as abnormal, when they themselves fit into a community with its own culture and morals? There is clearly more to this question than is to be found in the hysteria of the get-tough-with-criminals lobby. 

One solid fact we can deal with is that normality is socially defined and therefore socially violable. In other words, deviance is not a matter of scientific theory but of social pressures and expectancies; society at any one time decides who are the outsiders, not the other way round. Like any other social factor, the quality of normality — and therefore of deviance — changes in accordance with differing conditions and demands. For example, homosexuality was not so long ago considered one of the most abhorrent and threatening of deviances but now there is the beginning of a reaction against such bigotry. The result has been that there have been same minor changes in the law but, more importantly, there is a greater readiness among homosexuals to declare themselves and to organize in an effort to resist the special type of repression which is applied to them. There are stories that the true extent of homosexuality would be shocking news to Mary Whitehouse; that if it were revealed it would be seen to be common enough to cease to be deviant behaviour and, by sheer weight of popularity, almost to become normality (which would presumably transform our great stud heroes like James Bond into super deviants.) 

It would be useful here to give same attention to the norms — the social expectancies — which are imposed upon us today and which determine who and what is deviant. We must accept that in any social system minimum demands are imposed, which generally have to be met in order to survive. How does this apply to the capitalist society we live under today and what effect does this have upon us as social creatures? 

One of the first things we have impressed upon us is that our place in the economic order is to be employed for our living. As we grow up we are persistently cajoled into thinking about what we will do for a job when we leave school; to regard a top job with a desk and an office and a secretary and a company car as the climax of achievement. Our childhood, which is so crucial to our growth into adults, is cruelly distorted in the drive to turn us out as schooled and disciplined wage slaves, ready to do our part in capitalism's commodity production and to be driven slowly out of our minds in the boredom of an office or the drudgery of a production line. To deviate from these norms — to question the usefulness of wage slavery, to assert that work should be pleasure or nothing — is an offence against normality for which one of the lesser penalties is to be stigmatised as slothful. 

What is Required 

From our economic standing under capitalism we absorb social norms which are partly expressed in our family life and in the relationships between men and women. It is within the family that a significant part of the socializing of the child, adapting it to the requirements of capitalism, takes place, The family has its own expectancies — an invariably monogamous marriage, at its most fabulous a pre-ordained union of boy and girl to complete part of a great romantic jigsaw puzzle and go on to live happily ever after despite the Bomb and slumps and famine and the general rottenness of capitalism. Outside of the poorer magazines it never happens - and even if it did it would not be healthy. 

In marriage the expectancy is that the husband operates to a tolerance and to ambitions a lot higher than those of the wife. At its worst she is allowed the drab, unhistoric tasks at home, perhaps relieved by a teatime chat with another, equally confined, woman, or by a session of bingo, while he is away at heroic, vital deeds in the fierce world of commerce and industry. The family needed by capitalism is private, defensive; it denies free human contact and obstructs full living. And with all this, the family today is extremely fragile, with inadequate safety nets to catch those under whose weight the bough breaks. Yet so powerful is the conditioning of family dependence that to rebel against it may need to be an act of heroism — and capitalism can exact a high price for such courage.

These norms converge into the political expectancies of capitalism — the massive confidence trick by which millions of workers are persuaded that property society is normal and must go on for ever because it is based upon an eternal morality. Thus they continually opt for their own exploitation and repression, trusting in their leaders as wise, courageous men who will guide them through all their troubles to a safe and comfortable grave. They react derisively towards political deviants who insist that capitalism is no more than an historical phase, that it fails to meet the needs of its peoples, that leaders are an obstacle to our progress. Socialists are stigmatised, like any other deviants; we are dubbed agitators, cranks, impossibilists and we would not have it any other way. 

The concentrated personification of capitalism's norms is the smart young executive in his new town house, keeping a prudent eye on his stake in unit trusts, watching for the right moment to trade in his Ford for the latest model, paying all his bills, mowing the lawn whenever it is time and generally behaving as if he were only part-alive. This person can be seen in advertisments, in statistical returns and in some popular stories and plays. He may even, somewhere, exist for real. It is a relief to turn our attention to the deviant. 

Deviant from the Norm 

It is the lot of deviants to be rejected, which may conceal the fact that they are reacting in a way which is basically healthy, as a protest against intolerable conditions. The response to their protest is often anything but healthy, of which more later. For example a child who refuses to go to school may be tucked away under the deviant label, as "school-phobic". Yet it is often the case that such children are fearful not so much of what may happen to them at school as of what is actually happening to them at home. Nobody labels the family as "child-phobic", Drug addicts are often trying to block off the bleakness of capitalism yet they are dealt with as if they are the sickness in themselves. Many criminals are like those men who would prefer to stay in prison — capitalism offers them little in terms of concern, acceptance, esteem. Many of them bear the marks of a lifetime of social rejection, which has been intensified as they have kicked against it. At the end they are isolates, with little ability to form a relationship with even one human being, let alone with enough to enable them to win a place in the ranks of capitalism's wage slaves.

This is a process which has been expressed in a theory of primary and secondary deviance, which suggests that a first deviant act may provoke a response liable to produce another such act. A logical extension of this is that the agencies which set out to oppose deviance and to impose norms have the end effect of stimulating deviance. From this point of view the police, say, are seen as doing more, in a broad social sense, to promote crime than to contain it. At the same' time, by labelling a deviant as such society may be setting up the preconditions for repeat deviance — for example to stigmatize a person as mentally sick may induce fear in him and about him which can be expressed in disturbed behaviour — which reinforce the original labelling and so on. 

Can Society Care? 

The point at which this process might conveniently be said to start is often determined by the prejudices of stereotyping, by which one aspect of behaviour is presumed to determine another. Men with shoulder length hair, for example, are presumed to be on drugs; negroes all to live in ghetto conditions. There are elements of defensiveness in such labelling; anyone who feels the need to prove that he is not on drugs need only keep his hair short, and "while" people can wear their skin colour as if it were a badge guaranteeing civilized living. But another way, the normal actually needs its deviants, not just as the opposite side of a relationship but for the norm's protection, to define its position and to assert its acceptability. Deviance is insecurity and society at large can feel safer when it is reacting against it. By stigmatizing and shutting away its criminals and its mental patients society can take comfort from the fact that they are out of the way — and even call it treatment. 

An important point about capitalism is that its norms do not coincide with majority interests. Normality as far as capitalism goes is set and defined to assert and protect the superior standing and the privileges of the dominant, property-owning minority. It follows from this that it is virtually impossible to conform to the expectancies of capitalism; most people at some time have stolen, or slacked on the job, or breached the sexual assumption of the capitalist family. Capitalism's deviants are in the majority, which is evidence of the system's basic inability to organize itself to the advantage of its people. 

What, then, of the alternative society? Socialism will have its norms and so, it must be agreed, also its deviants. But those norms will be acceptable in that they will be laid down by the interests of the majority. Human beings will respond to the incentives of a co-operative, socially supportive system; even under capitalism, with the drive all the other way, deviants make pathetic attempts at winning acceptance. Socialism will be a society which will care. Anyone who then remembers the banished miseries of capitalism may end up by asking: where have all the deviants gone? 

Ivan