Greece, Austerity, and Capitalism (2015)

From the August 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Syriza won the elections in Greece in January on a 'No to Austerity' platform left-wing opponents of austerity throughout Europe were delighted. ‘If they can do it, so we can’, they chanted. Yes, but do what? Saying 'No' to austerity is one thing. Ending it is another.

Why there is austerity

Knowing how capitalism works, we were sceptical; maybe Syriza could mitigate austerity a little for some workers, but end it, no. 'Austerity' , i.e. cutting back on government spending, is a policy that all governments are obliged to apply when capitalism is in one of its periodic downturns, at least if they don't want to make the situation worse.

The capitalist economy is driven by business investment and businesses only invest with a view to making a profit. A slump is an expression of the fact that, for one reason or another, production on the previous scale is no longer profitable. The only way that capitalism can get out of a slump is if profitability is restored. The main way this comes about is through the devaluation of capital assets: some firms go under and their assets pass cheaply to rivals, which means that less profit needs to be made to achieve the previous rate of profit on capital invested.

Another factor increasing profitability is the fall in labour costs: with higher unemployment there is a downward pressure on wages. The government can help by reducing taxes on profits as businesses are only interested in after-tax profits. But, as in the end all taxation falls on profits and property by being passed on to them wherever it initially falls, it isn't just by decreasing direct taxes on profits that the government can help. It can also reduce taxation generally by cutting its own spending, including on 'welfare' and 'benefits' for workers, undoing past social reforms.

Besides the pressure to reduce taxation to help restore profitability, governments are under an additional pressure in a slump to cut their spending. With the fall in economic activity there is also a fall in their tax receipts.

All this is why governments can be legitimately said to be 'obliged' to pursue a policy of austerity in a slump. Of course governments have the power, both in law and in theory, to decide not to do this. But the consequence would be that they would make things worse, by prolonging and perhaps deepening the slump in economic activity.

More government spending no way out

Those who say that a government should refuse to impose austerity in a slump offer a seemingly plausible and common sense argument: as total purchasing power falls in a slump, increase government spending to compensate and that will get the economy growing again. Surely, reducing it only makes matters worse? If capitalism was a system driven by paying demand this might make sense. But it's not. It's driven by business investment for profit. It's the effect of increased government spending on this that's relevant. The key question is: where is the government to get the extra money to increase its spending from?

As governments don't produce anything themselves (except marginally if they happen to directly operate some profit-seeking business) there are only three possible sources: taxation, borrowing, or the printing press.

Since all taxation falls in the end on profits, increasing it will have an adverse effect on business investment for profit, which is what drives the capitalist economy.

Borrowing needn't have this effect, but the interest on the extra borrowing would have to come out of taxation (as would in the end repaying the loans).

Printing more money might give a temporary boost to production, but would eventually lead to a rise in prices, creating other economic problems such as making exports more expensive and so less competitive; imports would be cheaper so threatening the jobs too of workers employed by businesses producing for the home market.

So, however financed, government spending in a slump is not a way out of it. When tried, as with the Labour governments in Britain in the 60s and 70s and with Mitterrand in France in the early 80s, it hasn't worked. The economic situation got worse and the governments which tried it had to resort to austerity. Basically, both theory and practice demonstrate that there is no way in a slump in which a government can avoid imposing austerity without making things worse.

Greek debts

The Greek state was hit particularly hard by the crash of 2008 because, with the drop in economic activity that followed, its revenue from taxes fell while its debt – what it owed those who had lent it money by buying its bonds – increased as, like other states, it had to borrow money to bail out its banks.

Critics have blamed the scale of the problem on the profligacy of the Greek State, even on the Greek people in general, for borrowing and spending money recklessly. But it takes two to tango and in the period up to 2008 banks from other European countries were buying Greek government bonds as part of the general lending spree which nobody thought would end. If there were reckless spenders there were also reckless lenders. But the economic boom did end and it is this that has caused the Greek sovereign debt problem. In fact the various Greek bail-outs are aimed at bailing out the Greek government’s creditors as well as the Greek government.

Other European countries, whether or not they were in the Eurozone or even the EU (think Iceland), suffered from a similar problem, even if not on the same scale, and adopted austerity to try to deal with it.

The Eurozone is basically an agreement between the EU Member-States involved to maintain a fixed exchange rate between their currencies, all renamed the euro. To do this the member-states must pursue broadly similar economic and monetary policies. In a slump, austerity. This is imposed by capitalism but, because it has been made a condition for Eurozone countries to borrow money from other Eurozone countries, it appears to be imposed by the Eurozone. This has led – misled – some anti-austerity campaigners in Greece and elsewhere into blaming austerity on  being in the euro and not being in capitalism and into imagining that this could be avoided if their country exited the euro. This, for instance, is the position of Costas Lapavitsas, professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London who was elected a Syriza MP in January, as expressed in his frequent articles in the Guardian. 'Forget the euro, Greece needs a new currency' he commented on the Greek deal. This, he claimed 'would also allow the government to finally get started on a productive reconstruction of the economy' (13 July).

But it's a delusion. If Greece withdrew from the euro, it still could not escape austerity. It would just take a different political form and could even be worse. Tsipras and most of Syriza seem to have realised this or at least were not prepared to put it to the test and preferred to have it imposed from Berlin. And just where would the money to finance ‘a productive reconstruction of the economy’ come from? Maybe Lapavitsas is thinking of the same sort of state-capitalist siege economy as in Cuba (or formerly in Russia and East Europe), as if that avoids austerity.

Incompatible with capitalism

According to Nigel Farage the deal imposed on the Greece government 'shows that national democracy and membership of the Eurozone are incompatible' (Times, 14 July). Others, from the left as well as the right, have made the same point, but it's misleading. If Greece withdrew from the Eurozone – or if Britain withdrew from the EU – the trappings of 'national democracy' would be restored, but what its 'sovereign' government would be able to do would still be restricted by the pressures of capitalism in a slump. Austerity would still be the order of the day, only it would now be decided by an independent decision of a government exercising unrestricted sovereignty.

The Greek deal does show an incompatibility between democracy and capitalism. The Greek people voted 'No' to austerity twice – when they elected the Syriza government in January and when they voted OXI in the 5 July referendum – but it made no difference. They still got austerity. The people may propose, but capitalism disposes.

It's not just carrying out democratically-made decisions that is incompatible with capitalism. It's also meeting human needs. In April the Greek parliament appointed a Truth Committee on Public Debt (on which Trotskyist economists such as Eric Toussaint and Michel Husson were appointed, as if Syriza wasn't stuffed full of its own left-wing economists). In its preliminary report in June (http://cadtm.org/Preliminary-Report-of-the-Truth) it argued that most of the Greek debt was 'illegal, illegitimate and odious' and suggested that these were grounds for repudiating it which would hold up in court (which planet are they living on?). One section, on 'The impact of the “bailout programme” on human rights', argued that, because repaying and servicing it imposed savage cuts on people's education, health, housing and other basic needs, it infringed their 'human rights' under UN and other charters. This is an excessively legalistic way of putting it, but the general point is valid: austerity does mean that human needs are ignored and come to be met even less than normally.

Capitalism is incompatible with meeting basic human needs too. In fact, austerity is a prime example of the capitalist imperative to put Profits before People.

There is a lesson in Syriza’s abysmal failure to even mitigate austerity in Greece, let alone end it. It’s that as long as capitalism is in a slump it can’t be ended. All the articles by left-wing economists saying that it can are not worth the paper they are printed on. All the (quite legitimate) protests and demonstrations against austerity are misdirected when they call on governments to end austerity. This is an impossible demand. All this energy would be more effectively directed instead at replacing the capitalist system of class ownership and production for profit by a socialist system of common ownership, democratic control and production directly to meet people’s needs. Only then will austerity be ended forever. Only then will what people vote for be able to be carried out.

Adam Buick

Why We Oppose Labour Leaders. (1912)

From the May 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

The attitude of the Socialist Party toward leaders and the following of leaders seems to create a deal of mental disturbance, ranging from gentle indignation to double-distilled essence of Satanic malevolence, within those whose peculiar constitution demands a leader to look up to, worship, and follow.

Such injured innocents, and such injured people who are far from being innocents, seem to imagine that our opposition to leaders and followers is prompted by sheer cussedness and spleen, and grounded upon anything but reason and judicial consideration.

But it may be possible to give, within the limits of a short article, some reasons for our undeniably bitter hostility to all that savours of leadership, which will be sufficiently cogent to modify in some degree the criticism levelled against us, even if they fail to convert immense numbers to our view.

Now in the first place, the movement for working-class emancipation is unique in this respect—it is a movement for the emancipation of the only class in society that remains to be emancipated. The significance of this is easily grasped. So long as, in the struggle of classes, the class immediately seeking emancipation was not the only subject class; so long, that is, as there a class below them, the achievement of the particular revolution of the period by no means depended upon the class-consciousness of the majority of those fighting for it. On the other hand, in such circumstances there was always a class to be made the tools of those seeking emancipation, and therefore to be kept in ignorance of the true interests of their class.

In such case, while the success of the revolution depended upon the class-consciousness (or knowledge of their class interests) of the revolutionary section of society, it found either a helpful or a stumbling block, in the class below.

For this reason the revolutionary class had much to gain from leading their dupes into battle on their account, but this did not absolve the former from the necessity of themselves attaining class consciousness, as a class, before any very serious effort could be made to attain social domination.

With the modern working-class the thing is entirely different. They have no class below them on whom to foist a fraudulent conception of class interests, and from whom to draw support and assistance in the struggle. All their strength must be of themselves and in them themselves. All their militant might must be based upon the knowledge of their class position and the logical course dictated by that position.

Therefore at the very outset it is seen that the need for leaders does not exist. Only those who do not know the way require to be led, and this very fact makes it inevitable that those who are led will be entirely in the hands of those who lead.

The working class can only find emancipation through Socialism, which implies the overthrow of the present ruling class and their social system. The only possible human instruments in the prosecution of the struggle for this end are those who understand the working-class position in society, realise that only Socialism can lift them from that position, and who desire that the proletariat shall be so lifted. Broadly speaking, only members of the working class will come in this category.

The class-unconscious mobs, therefore, whom the "leaders" place themselves at the head of, can never be effective factors in the struggle for working-class deliverance. It is often said that the leaders are in advance of the led, but in the broader sense this is not true. Lading, after all, must be by consent. So it happens that the "leader" can only lead where he is likely to be followed. Hence, so far is the leader from being in advance of the mob, that he is only the reflection of its collective ignorance.

As it is true that mens' political actions are, broadly speaking, determined by their conception of their economic interests, it follows that would-be leaders must persuade those they would lead that the interests of the latter lie the direction they desire to lead them. Here is the crux of the whole business. The political activities of the "leaders" will be determined by their economic interests—and what guarantee is there that these interests will coincide with those of the mob they invite to follow them?

It is not to be supposed that the interests of all members of the working class under all conditions and in all circumstances are identical. The shipwrights on the Tyne, for instance, are the competitors to those on the Thames, and the interest of every unemployed worker is, up to a certain point, opposed to those who are taking the wages he aspires to take.

In like manner the economic interest of the "labour leader," as such, may be opposed to that of those he "leads." The interest of the latter is certainly their emancipation from wage-slavery by the only road—the institution of the Socialist system of society. The interest of the "labour leader," as such, lies in his maintaining his position as a labour "leader."

Granted that these interests have not been shown to be necessarily antagonistic. It is not essential to insist that they are. It is sufficient that they may be, and this no logical person can deny without doing violence to his convictions.

No what are the facts concerning the economic interests of labour "leaders"? In the first place their bread and butter, in typical cases, depends upon their activities as labour "leaders." It is to their interest, therefore, to remove as far as possible the element of doubt and insecurity concerning their livelihood by constituting themselves the bosses of their mobs, instead of being their servants. This they contrive to do by the simple expedient of dividing their followers against each other. Hence they dare not assist their followers to arrive at a true conception of their class interest, for that, if it did not result in their immediate overthrow by the vast bulk of ignorance on which they batten, would replace confusion with unanimity and knowledge that would never submit to be bossed or "led."

So in actual fact the interests of leaders and led are diametrically opposed, insomuch that the knowledge which is essential to working-class emancipation must inevitably abolish leaders, and establish working-class effort on the faith and confidence in the intellect and ability of the working-class.

It is part of the necessary work of a Socialist organisation to point out this divergence between the interests of the workers and those who aspire to lead them, and to seize upon every instance and opportunity of illustrating and proving the contention that labour "leaders" are, and necessarily must be, misleaders.

The Socialist and the true Democrat does not place faith in leaders. He knows that the only hope lies in the intelligence and courage and energy of the working class as a class, and all his hope, all his faith, all his trust, rests in the working class.

A. E. Jacomb

Editorial: Seven Lean Years (2015)

Editorial from the August 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is now seven years since the global economic crisis erupted that led to what is known euphemistically as the Great Recession. Overinvestment had brought about a crash in the housing market, in which poorer homeowners were unable to pay their home loans and newly-built houses could not be sold. The downturn spread to the rest of the economy, and with the sharp fall in production and employment that ensued, governments suffered a fall in tax revenue. Banks that had been lending heavily in this market found themselves laden with toxic loans that were not going to be repaid and were in danger of becoming insolvent. To avoid this, governments have had to step in and bail them out.

Governments had come to incur substantial budget deficits and to be saddled with large amounts of debt. Hence, the so-called era of austerity was ushered in, where governments introduced policies of mainly cutting expenditure on public and welfare services and raising some taxes. The impact of this austerity has largely fallen on the working class. Indeed, in the last few years, many capitalists have increased their wealth.

In the Eurozone, countries such as Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece had to seek bail outs from the Troika (The European Commission, The European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund). In return for cash, these countries have had to follow tough austerity policies. Greece has been particularly badly affected. Its people have had to endure five years of sharp falls in their living standards.

Of course, governments won't admit that the need for austerity measures arise from a crisis in the market system. They usually blame their predecessors or the fecklessness of the working class. The last coalition government in the UK, for instance, blamed overspending and financial mismanagement by the previous Labour government.

Some have argued that if the rich were made to pay more taxes, we could avoid austerity. This misses the point that austerity measures are not just about improving the government's finances. It is hoped that by reducing the cost of running the state, and along with the fall in real wages that occur during a recession, the prospect of higher profits will encourage capitalists to invest more in production.

Movements have arisen which seek to challenge austerity. The Podemos movement in Spain, the People's Assembly in the UK and the Syriza coalition of different parties in Greece. In January of this year, Syriza were elected to office on a platform of rejecting Greece's bailout terms, opposing further cuts in public services and pensions and calling for debt relief. In response, Greece's creditors set out new bailout terms which offered no debt relief and would entail further cuts in public expenditure and reductions in pensions. On 5 July, 61 percent of those voting rejected these terms in a referendum called by the government. Despite this, Greece's creditors imposed tougher terms and after strong pressure from the ECB and other Eurozone finance ministers, the Greek government caved in and the new terms were ratified by the Greek Parliament.

In the UK, aside from the Scottish Nationalist Party, the Green Party, Sinn Fein and other smaller parties, Jeremy Corbyn, MP for Islington North and a contender in the current Labour leadership contest, has pledged to oppose austerity. Were he, in the unlikely event, to become Prime Minister and try to put his policies into practice, he would find resistance from the markets. Investors would require a higher rate of interest before lending to the Government and there would probably be a run on the pound. He would be forced to make a climb down.

What this era of austerity has clearly shown, particularly in the case of Greece, is that in capitalism human welfare does not only come second place to profits, but it sometimes has to be sacrificed to it.

Lessons of the Nazi takeover (1984)

From the December 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

The year 1984 has become synonymous with tyranny. It has, in fact, become a cliche. People who have never read Orwell and in some cases have only a hazy idea who he was, know all about 1984 and Big Brother. Orwell's nightmare has not yet come to pass but fifty years ago a real Big Brother, Adolf Hitler emerged; that when the Nazis finally consolidated their hold over Germany and ushered in a tyranny which, while perhaps not quite as grim as Orwell's vision, was still pretty vile. Having crushed all their opponents, they turned on their allies. One thing which distinguishes the modem totalitarian state from older forms of tyranny is that no deviation, however slight, can be allowed. Friend as well as foe must be forced into line. This had already been demonstrated in Russia, where Stalin had shown the way and Hitler was an apt pupil. 

Two events stood out in 1934. The first was the bloodbath that began on 30 June, in which the leaders of the SA, the Brownshirts on whose backs Hitler had climbed to power, were wiped out. The second was the death of President Hindenburg in August of that year, which removed the final block to Hitler's absolute power. The SA or Sturm Abteilung (storm troopers) came into being in 1921 at the very beginning of the Nazi movement. Originally called the Gymnastic and Sports Division, they were formed to protect meetings and speakers from attacks by their opponents. They rapidly became the strong-armed squads of the party, breaking up opponents' meetings and beating up hecklers at their own. Dropping all pretence of being a defensive body, they made no secret of their real aims and openly glorified violence. They terrorised their opponents on the streets and fought pitched battles with Communists and other left groups. Horst Wessel, who wrote the Nazi Party anthem (sung to a tune pinched from the Communist Party who, in turn, had pinched it from the Salvation Army!) was one such young thug, killed in a street brawl. 

Many of their earlier recruits were ex-members of the Freikorps movement, set up in 1919 from war veterans, mostly young, who volunteered for service on the Eastern Front to guard against attacks from Poles and Russians. They were set up with the blessing of the army, to get around the restrictions in the Treaty of Versailles which limited the size of the German army to 100,000. The Freikorps' main task was to smash the rather pathetic attempts by the left to set up communes. This they did with great brutality. One of their slogans was "our job is to attack, not govern"; another was "moderation is a crime against one's people and one's state". The Allied powers forced the German government to disband the Freikorps, and many of their members found their way into the SA. 

In the 1920s there were in Germany many organisations calling themselves National Socialist or sometimes German Socialists. The one that was to emerge as the Nazi Party, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, was based in Munich. These organisations were independent of each other, but would co-operate from time to time. Some people belonged to more than one of them. They all shared the same philosophy, a mixture of extreme nationalism, rabid anti-semitism, and a hotch-potch of half-baked "revolutionary" ideas borrowed from the Communists and Social Democrats. They all had their strong arm squads, like the parties of the left. Private armies were tolerated, as the Freikorps had been, by governments partly through weakness, but mainly because they were seen as additions to the strength of the army. 

These squads usually wore windcheaters but Hitler saw the value of a distinctive uniform. The Nazis wore shirts of a gaudy shade of brown with caps based on the Austrian Imperial model and red arm bands. A small group within the organisation, formed to guard Hitler and leading Nazis, wore black uniforms over their brown shirts, with military caps bearing the skull and crossbones. These were called Schutzstaffeln, or Protection Squads, the name contracted to SS. From this small beginning came the organisation that was to dominate the Nazi movement in its later stages. The SA were always a separate organisation from the Party, running side by side with it. 

The slump that began in 1929 and produced mass unemployment throughout the world hit Germany particularly hard. Unemployment rose to seven million and workers who were disillusioned with the old parties and their failure to solve their problems, began to turn to the Nazis and Communists. The ranks of the SA were swollen by the young unemployed; they were provided with boots, meals and uniforms. As the Nazi party grew, the SA grew with it. Organised on military lines with lorries and weapons, they copied the Red Flag of the Communists with the Nazi emblem, the ancient symbol of the swastika, in the centre. The flag shafts had lance-like points, useful weapons in a melee. As with the Freikorps, successive governments as well as the military tolerated these private armies. Nationalist parties were prepared to go along with the Nazis, thinking they could use them and then dispose of them — an attitude they were later bitterly to regret. 

When the Nazis first came to power their position was still precarious and it was the Brownshirts who tipped the balance. The SA launched a wave of terror that prevented any comeback by their opponents; they rounded up and hunted down the enemies of the new regime and manned the new makeshift camps that were to develop into the concentration, and later extermination, camps. But once Hitler was in power and the torchlight processions and book-burning sessions were over, the SA became an embarrassment. 

Once power was achieved, people with ambitions jumped on the bandwagon and rushed to obtain party cards. The "Old Fighters", as they called themselves, had expected to be rewarded for their efforts but they were pushed aside and were often unemployed. Rohm and other SA leaders began to be edged out of key jobs into less important ones. What is more Hitler, who now had the backing of the big industrialists and businessmen as well as the army, and even the grudging support of the land-owning Junker class, did not want to be embarrassed by pseudo-socialist ideas or wild economic theories that could not possibly work in capitalist society. 

Worse still from the point of view of the Nazis and the people backing them was the SA's desire to take control of the army which, although small, was the highly efficient nucleus of the German army of the coming World War. They did not want it influenced by amateurs. As the spring passed into early summer, tension grew and there was talk of a second revolution. In their crude way, Brownshirts talked of "cleaning out the pigsty" and "driving the greedy swine away from the troughs". SA regiments began to arm and make threatening noises, most of which seems to have been play-acting with no real evidence of any actual plot but, on the night of 30 June, Hitler struck. 

The brutality that then began has been called the "Night of the Long Knives" — a romantic title for a squalid bout of internal savagery. Rohm and other leading SA leaders were rounded up and shot. The hierarchy of the SA were wiped out. This was mainly done by the SS, who had been subordinate to the SA leadership but now became the most powerful organisation in the Party. The opportunity was taken also to remove the few remaining characters whose continuing existence was inconvenient, plus a few revenge killings. A few unfortunates who were killed by mistake — Gregor Strasser, a member of the party from its early days who had left it and had attempted to co-operate with other bodies; ex-Chancellor General von Schleicher and his wife; General von Bredow and Gustav von Kahr, ex-premier of Bavaria who had been largely responsible for the failure of the 1923 coup attempt, were among many who died over that weekend. The full figures will probably never be known. 

The SA were broken as an independent body. From now on they were to occupy a subordinate position in the party, allowed only to handle mundane affairs. The Old Fighters were to be reduced to delegates to the Reichstag, wheeled in to applaud Hitler's speeches and rubber-stamp his proposals, or to take part in boozy reunions in Munich beer cellars. The days of random brutality were over. From now on tyranny was to be an organised affair. 

Within Germany shock at the events was tempered by relief that the hated Brownshirts, who had strutted and bullied their way across the country, had been tamed. In the whitewash that followed, much was made of Rohm's homosexuality. Not that anyone had worried very much about this over the previous twenty years. Outside Germany many people began to wake up to the true nature of the Nazi setup; until then Hitler had been regarded as a bit of a joke, a funny little man with a Charlie Chaplin moustache and a strange hairstyle. Just as later Idi Amin was always good for a laugh — unless of course you happened to live in Uganda. 

The other event was the death of President Hindenburg in August. He had been a professional soldier, an East Prussian Junker who regarded Nazis and Social Democrats with equal aristocratic contempt. He had been Commander in Chief during the First World War, had commanded the German army on the Eastern Front and had smashed the Russian advance in August 1914 at Tannenberg. He occupied a similar position in Germany to that which Kitchener occupied in Britain. He became President in 1925 but, by the early 1930s, he was senile and it is doubtful whether he knew what he was doing. Nevertheless he was a rallying point for Nationalists, and he had the complete support of the army. While the army was outside Nazi control, Hitler could never be completely safe. Had Hindenburg ordered the army to take over, as he had threatened to on a couple of occasions, the SA and SS would have been no match for them. His death removed that threat and left Hitler in complete control. 

Fifty years on, mass unemployment is with us again with its poverty, insecurity and homelessness, and people are looking for simple solutions. A persistent myth is that there is such a thing as a benevolent dictatorship. This was an idea beloved of Edwardian writers such as H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw. Such an idea is a contradiction in terms for, to exist, a dictatorship must be oppressive. The only difference is in the degree of oppressiveness. Under a dictatorship all the old problems of capitalism remain but with the additional ones produced by a lack of freedom. 

Capitalist crises are often explained away by reference to scapegoats. It does not matter too much who the scapegoat turns out to be. Anybody a bit different will do. In the twenties and thirties it was the Jews, although anti-semitic feeling was a legacy of medieval times when it was a mixture of religious bigotry and naked greed. As non-Christians in a Christian world Jews were outside the law and could be plundered at ease. So the Jew was an easy target for persecution but in Finland, where there were very few Jews and no anti-semitic feelings, it was the Swedes who were the target for fascist attacks. 

Today in Britain it is Asians and West Indians; in Germany, Turks and Italians; in France, where a racist party has recently made alarming gains in the European elections, it is North Africans and in the United States it is Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. The theory is that outsiders take "our" jobs and "our" houses ; remove them and our problems will be solved. The events of fifty years ago are not just history. They are a warning to workers and, as the Socialist Party has often stated (and it cannot state this too often): Workers ignore this warning at their peril. 

Les Dale

Piper Alpha (1988)

From the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

"We now go over to the ITN studios for a newsflash . . . ""An emergency telephone number has been issued for anxious relatives . . . "

The explosion and fire aboard the Piper Alpha platform on 6 July was waiting to happen. The revelations and admissions that followed within a few days of the disaster make that clear. The only surprise should be that it hadn't happened sooner.

Speaking in the House of Commons in the immediate aftermath of the fire the Energy Secretary, Cecil Parkinson, said, "Safety is the first priority of the Government and the operators." This is not true. Certainly safety is the a very high priority, for accidents cause lost production and in the case of Piper Alpha this was on a massive scale. But safety is not top priority. What stops a company from ceasing trading - a poor health and safety record alone or simply a lack of profit? What the House of Commons should have heard from Parkinson is that safety takes second place - to production.

The unavoidable fact about capitalism is that profit ultimately dictates. This is as true for the very first days of the North sea oil boom as it is for the last days of Piper Alpha.

To relieve pressure on the balance of payments and raise tax revenues as quickly as possible, British governments of the 1960s and 1970s - both Labour and Tory - went out of their way to ensure that offshore oil reserves were exploited at the earliest opportunity, particularly following the oil crisis of 1973. In planning their exploitation and production schedules, the oil companies were therefore presented with few government restrictions. Just as capitalism forced companies to maximise productions and profits, so the state too, is required to put safety to one side when convenient. As the professor of Marine Technology at Strathclyde University put it, "the number one priority after the 1973 oil crisis was to get oil quickly, and you don't get a Rolls-Royce for the price of a Mini".

Like other platforms, the Piper Alpha was built at a fraction of the value that would be created once production started. It cost £530m and was in production for 12 years, during which it pimped approximately 1,000 million barrels of oil ashore. At the current (depressed) price that is the equivalent to some £10,000m. The cost of the platform and wages bill (about £20m per annum) over the period amounts to just a few per cent of the wealth created. In the UK sector of the North Sea some 1,500 million pounds worth of oil is pumped out per month, with the government making £300m in export revenue.

These figures give some indication of the vast fortunes to be made in the North Sea -not, needless to say, from working there but just by owning. It is in the context of the disaster appeal - £1m from both the Government and petty cash box of Occidental Petroleum - should be viewed.

Much is made of how well-paid the average offshore worker is. The average pay is between £200 and £600 a week for a very exhausting, anti-social and stressful lifestyle. If that is high pay, what can be said of Dr Armand Hammer, chairman of Occidental Petroleum and one of the richest men in North America? The present writer was offshore on 6 July, on a platform from which the Piper Alpha was just a faint glow fifty miles to the north. Talking with some of the oil-workers as increasingly alarming reports were coming in, the impression gained was far from the usual macho image of oil-workers. It's not bravery or stupidity that makes them work offshore, but simple necessity. As one man put it to me, "You don't like to think about it. You can't afford to think about it".

Workers have regularly had to die for oil. When "their" countries go to war over ownership of natural resources, workers are required to do the dirty work of killing and dying for companies like Texaco, ELF or Esso. It's much the same in "peacetime": the war to defend profitability, the battle to advance the share of the oil market, is fought on the front line oil platforms by members of the working class.

So we shouldn't be shocked at the latest casualty figures. Within 48 hours of the disaster, grieving Occidental accountants recovered their composure long enough to calculate the cost to the company would be about $25m, reducing the estimated profit for this financial year to $200m. Shareholders would have to bite the bullet and suffer the tragic loss of 5-10 cents a share.

It's not all black armbands in the City though. The fire which devastated the platform and did much the same to 170 families, prompted some ferocious trading in New York and London while still smoldering: "Crude prices jump on news of disaster". (Headline, Guardian 8 July). North sea oil prices, previously depressed by a production "glut" (how many OAP's died of hypothermia last winter?), immediately rose by 25 cents a barrel.

The public inquiry which starts next month is likely to call for changes in the organisation of offshore safety. In 1980 responsibility for North Sea safety was transferred to the Department of Energy, whose function it also is to maximise production. At present, a variety of regulatory agencies and inspectorates have this responsibility but are insufficiently strict because they compete with each other for business. What is needed, according to experts, journalists and politicians, is an "independent" body such as the Health and Safety Executive, who presently enforce (if that is the right word) health and safety on the mainland.

The HSE is, however, a separate arm of the same body. As a watchdog it may be on a longer leash but it has little bark and fewer teeth. Its independence is as genuine as the Energy Department's and divorce from the overriding motive for capitalist production is, in any case, impossible.

It is likely that the inquiry will recommend improved designs of platforms and that most of these will be ignored or disputed by the oil companies on grounds of cost. Even the measures that can be introduced may only be effected if required across the board, of all operators; otherwise, companies will claim that new safety measures would make them uncompetitive. Many improvements could be made: larger platforms would allow the accommodation areas (where so many died on Piper Alpha) to be sited further away from production units; adjacent accommodation rigs would be safer still; fully automated systems are technologically feasible.

The immensely impressive technology used to extract oil from the sea-bed is not, it appears, available for ensuring worker safety. Technology under capitalism is redundant until it finds a market:

• On the Australian barrier reef a vast floating hotel and leisure complex is being built, designed to withstand typhoons.
• A shipping tycoon recently unveiled plans for the largest luxury liner ever. Complete with gardens, theatres, a couple of gymnasiums and dozens of restaurants it will cater for thousands of the Dr Hammers of the world.

Capitalism has made this level of technology possible, but available only to the minority who can afford it. A sane society will not need to rely on governments, companies or authorities to enforce safety. Socialism will rip the price tags from everything and liberate the productive potential of the world. It's a point to consider the next time your programme is interrupted by a newsflash and pictures of Mrs. Thatcher on another ward round.

Brian Gardner

The belated death of a class warrior (2002)

Editorial from the May 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

So, she's finally gone. The BBC dusted off its pre-prepared reels of fawning documentaries and gave Peter Sissons the task of breaking the bad news to the public. Sissons, however, forgot the script and put on a maroon tie, much to the chagrin of the Daily Mail, who seemed to want him charged with treason.

Then one million pathetic crawlers emerged from under their rocks to line the streets of the capital – or at least that's the way it first appeared. In reality, many turned up just to see the spectacle. And for the million who turned up on the day another 57 million voted with their feet and didn't.

Why should they have paid their respects to Britain's most famous parasite anyway? Few in society epitomised the privilege and condescension which are the traditional hallmarks of the owning class better than Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. That patronising grimace and vague wave of the gloved hand (like “opening a jar slowly” she once said, but in reality more like a thinly disguised two-fingered salute) were the body language of one who considered herself “born to rule”.

Of course, this was an arrogance that was as baseless as it was base. For what was the Queen Mother actually good at? What did she do? Did she ever make things? Or look after people? Or teach them? By all accounts she couldn't even open her own curtains or squeeze the toothpaste from its packet without having assistance from one of her fifty servants. Sure, she drank gin a lot by all accounts but any of us can do that and it can hardly be considered a talent. She liked the gee-gees too – and a flutter – but then so does your average derelict.

Some people in the queues outside Westminster Abbey said she “stood by the nation during the war”, but what exactly did they mean by that? Were the blitzed and beleaguered working class in wartime London supposed to thank their little ration books that she hadn't decamped to join most of the rest of her family in Germany? And why should we all be eternally grateful to her for this since?

During the blitz the working class in the East End of London took a different view of her entirely. When she lorded it over them on one of her walkabouts, they returned her salute to them with interest, pelting her with rotten vegetables. Then, after Buckingham Palace was hit by a couple of stray bombs she made her famous statement that “I can now look the East Enders in the eye” despite the fact that for nearly all the blitz the King and Queen were holed up in Windsor Castle. It was one of first of the many PR stunts for which the entire royal family are now famous.

And some public relations triumph it was – at least for a while. It is in many respects quite amazing that the Queen Mother was able to cultivate the image she did as “the nation's favourite grandmother”, representing an oasis of virtue in an otherwise barren scene. The epithets most commonly deployed to describe her by those who had never met her: “caring”, “considerate”, “dignified” and “loyal”, were phrases devoid of real meaning. How could it be otherwise when she spoke in public rarely if ever, didn't give an interview from 1928 until her death and never wrote an article or otherwise do anything to instil such emotions or elicit such responses?

Her political views were just about as reactionary as they come – far to the right of where popular opinion currently resides, enough to make even Mr Blair blush. She was an old-fashioned ruling class warrior – anti-trade union, suspicious of (and patronising towards) the working class and distrustful of arrivistes like Blair and New Labour. She reportedly said on one occasion that she preferred “Old” Labour but even this was only for their novelty value and so long as they stayed in opposition, where they belonged.

In the end, she died when the popularity of the thing she held dearest – the Royal Family as exemplars of ruling class standards and etiquette – had already started to badly fade. That so few people were really bothered or troubled by her death is testament to this as was the decision by the BBC to significantly scale down its coverage compared to what had been envisaged some years ago.

Socialists – like increasing numbers of the working class as a whole it would seem – will remember her for the things that truly defined her existence: her uselessness on the one hand and her daily embodiment of ruling class privilege on the other. Born in different circumstances into a different environment she may have grown to be somebody genuinely useful to society. But, unfortunately, and to paraphrase the lady herself, she was born to be a parasite. And for that we can only say goodbye . . . and good riddance.

Saving the Earth (1992)

Editorial from the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Will capitalism bring the world to the brink of ecological disaster? It is certainly having a good try. Its pursuit of profits and its competitive pressures to keep costs down have led to all sorts of inappropriate methods and materials being used in production.

Two of these in particular are threatening the stability of the biosphere as the environment that sustains life on Earth. One is the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which are known to have caused holes in the ozone layer. The other is the burning of fossil fuels which releases abnormal amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and which could cause a global over-warming.

The ozone layer is vital to life on Earth since it protects the life-forms that have evolved here from ultra-violet rays from the Sun. So the appearance of holes in the ozone layer is a serious matter. It is in the vital interests of us all that everything be done to stop them growing and then to close them. In concrete terms, this means immediately stopping the production of all CFCs.

A rise in the world's average temperature would have disastrous consequences on the present patterns of human life. The sea level would rise, flooding areas which now supply much of the world's food would no longer be able to do so. Once again, what must be done is known. Steps must be taken to reduce current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. First, by dramatically cutting back on the burning of fossil fuels in power stations and in cars, trains, ships and planes. Second, by stopping further deforestation as trees absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide.

So will capitalism step back from the brink? Will it be able to prevent its drive for profit from destroying the environment? At least the two problems are recognised. At least a world conference has been called. But recognising a problem and calling a conference is one thing; agreeing on and implementing effective measures to remedy the situation is another.

The Conference that is taking place in Brazil this month has been hyped by the media as "the Earth Summit" but is nothing of the sort. It is merely a conference of the leaders of the various capitalist states into which the world is artificially divided. All those present are supporters—indeed administrators—of the capitalist system which caused the problems in the first place. Each of them is there to defend their own particular sectional, national capitalist interests. In these circumstances whatever is decided will be totally inadequate.

Look at the record so far. In 1987 twenty-three industrialized countries met in Montreal and agreed to phase out the production of CFCs by 1999. The United States was the keenest—because it had a virtual monopoly on the production of substitutes. The other countries wanted time to catch up with this technology. Hence the delay to 1999. But many countries, particularly in the co-called Third World, refused to sign, on the grounds that they couldn't afford the substitutes (estimated to be at least three times more expensive). Some of these states can be expected to eventually begin production of CFCs themselves.

It's the same story with the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Here it is those countries with above average dependence on coal- and oil- fired power stations who, led by the United States, have been dragging their feet. Paying for filters or building other types of power stations would raise their industrial costs and put them at a disadvantage vis-à-vis their competitors on world markets. So any treaty on global warming that might emerge from Brazil will be an inadequate compromise between rival capitalist states full of loopholes and get-out clauses to protect vested interests.

Before anything constructive can be done, capitalism must go and, with it, the artificial division of the world into separate, competing states. The Earth, and all its natural and industrial resources, must become the common heritage of all humanity. A democratic structure for making decisions at world as well as at local levels must come into being. 

When such a united world has been established (or is about to be established) a real Earth Conference can be called to decide how to repair the damage capitalism has done to the biosphere. Then what scientists already know should be done can be done, and humanity can begin to organise its relationship with the rest of nature in a genuinely sustainable way.

The Myth of Red Clydeside - Part 2 (1976)

From the June 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part 1 can be read here.

The Clyde Workers' Committee resistance was broken after government intervention in Glasgow. In January 1916, workers at Beardmore's (whose strong representation in the CWC proved to be a maverick one) accepted a dilution scheme contrary to the CWC policy. Next month, the suppression of the CWC's paper, three associated arrests, a dispute at Beardmore's over the working of the dilution agreement, and subsequent strikes on these issues provided the opportunity for the removal of those identified as the trouble-makers. Eventually, seven were jailed and a further ten deported to other parts of Britain.

The Government's attack revealed disunity and a lack of resolve within the CWC and they went down without much of a fight. It was basically a weak organization. Like all so-called "rank-and-file" groups, the most significant thing about them was that they embraced less of the rank and file than the parent unions. Unable to gain any support from them, the place where their particular concerns were most relevant, they were never likely to do anything more substantial. Mindless of this, they challenged a government with dictatorial powers and were slapped down.

Till late 1917 the truncated CWC was subdued, taking no part in the engineers' struggle as it developed in England. In the same year, the political climate on Clydeside began to change. The liberation of the prisoners and deportees, the turmoil in Russia and the growing war-weariness all combined to raise the temperature. The CWC revived and in January 1918 stated opposition to the war. However, no action was ever taken to support this. Possibly, they had realized by this time that David only beats Goliath in fairy tales.

After the war's end, unemployment began to grow. The idea had also been developing that the time was ripe for cutting the working week. Inevitably, the two issues became linked with the aim of cutting hours to reduce unemployment. Early in 1919, local union officials and shop stewards met with Glasgow Trades Council and eventually resolved to issue a call for a general strike in support of a 40-hour week.

The strike began on January 27th with mixed success. There was a wide response from shipbuilding and engineering but power and transport, two prime targets, continued. After a few days, 100,000 were claimed to be out. Contact with the authorities began on the 29th when a deputation asked the Lord Provost of Glasgow to put the strikers' demands to the government. This he did, but not in the way that the strikers intended. He wired to London representing the strike as an unconstitutional threat and indicated that the strikers' request was an ultimatum. This was partly true, as the mass picket had been introduced to "induce" recalcitrant workers to come out. The government decided to hold fire in the absence of a more obvious challenge but to make the preparations to enable quick military intervention if necessary. Mindful of similar discontent in Belfast and recent events in Russia and Germany, they were prepared to take no chances.

Oblivious to these developments, the strikers returned on the 31st to hear the reply to the Provost's telegram. While a deputation went to see the Provost, trouble broke out among the thousands outside in George Square. A tramcar trying to pass through the throng was stopped and police drew batons to try to clear a way. Violence then spread throughout the Square and the Riot Act was read. Although there were allegations of plots by both sides no proof of any premeditation was produced.

By morning, troops were on guard in the city and six tanks were being held in reserve. Attempts were now made to spread the strike but the most hopeful effort was averted by the government. Power workers in London threatened to black-out the city but after the wartime Defence of the Realm Act was invoked to make the strike illegal, the Electrical Trades Union backed down. Within another week the strike was over.

The strike failed to go outside the West of Scotland and had failed to become general within that area. The need for mass pickets was proof of the lack of support from many workers, and any "induced" to strike were hardly likely to be reliable.

The end of the strike was claimed to be a tactical retreat to organize a better effort, but the movement died. The most significant political outcome of the period was the election to parliament in 1923 of 10 ILP members from the 15 Glasgow constituencies. The Labour Party has dominated politics in the area ever since. Others joined the new Communist Party, and that has also remained relatively strong in the area. From then on, energies were concentrated on the mainstream of British politics, and the idea of Clydeside as a maverick area within the nation was largely dead. Against this trend was MacLean. He formed the nationalist Scottish Workers' Republican Party which withered away after his death in 1923.

The most notable thing about the period was the parochialism of the activities. They were always centred on Clydeside and mainly in the engineering industry. However, they faced a capitalist class organized nationally and proved no match. This lesson seems to have been realized by the end of the 40-hours strike.

As a possible revolutionary movement, the Clydesiders were non-starters. Apart from the occasional pronouncement, nearly all their actions were in support of purely industrial aims. The exception was the rent strike. As the government had no real opposition to their aims, however, the achievement was not great.

The events of early 1916 and early 1919 show that the power of the state must be treated very seriously. Capitalist democracy, paltry though it may be by Socialist standards, is well enough organized to defeat any minority. Just as important, on the same basis it is possible for a revolutionary majority to gain control of political power. However, this is not enough. Capitalism is organized on a world scale operating through national units and, thus, any serious challenge to this order of society must follow the same pattern. This is an enormous task but it is the only one that fits the measure of the Socialist aim.

Con Friel

(Concluded)

Economic illusionists (1999)

Book Review from January 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Economics and Reality by Tony Lawson, Routledge 1997

The "Social Sciences" are in a mess and a few workers within the various subjects know it. The public in general has lost interest, and those engaged in the Natural Sciences are either incredulous or contemptuous—John Gribbin, a physicist, says the expression "social sciences" is an oxymoron, a self-contradiction.

Few people in Europe take psychology seriously any more. Bernard Crick says books on political science are unpublishable; nobody knows what sociology, a bastard half Latin half Greek word, means, and Paul Ormerod wrote in The Death of Economics that his life's work has turned out to be worthless.

Meanwhile a whale named Karl Marx has surfaced in the most unlikely pages of the New Yorker, the Financial Times and the Observer amid claims that he is the only one who has ever made sense of the whole mess.

Tony Lawson, a Cambridge mathematician turned economist analyses in this book why the "mainstream experts" have failed to provide an explanation of what is wrong with the world and, as a consequence, what to do about it. He begins with methodology.

Their procedure, he says, is simply "deductive". Reasoning from premisses which are either not disclosed, or when they are, simply do not fit any world that we recognise—they assume a world full of greedy, aggressive loners, squabbling over "scarce means", they end up with a rag-bag of isolated scenarios and anecdotes. Their world is one of atomic events, of isolated phenomena, unrelated to each other. Then, because this does not supply an explanation, many of them move into "econometrics" i.e. algebraic mumbo-jumbo, or computer modelling, GIGO—Garbage In Garbage Out. You can't get out of a machine what you did not put in.

All of the procedures (algorithms) of mathematics and logic are tautologies, or equations, and you can't have unequal equations. They can't tell us anything about the world but they can help to straighten out our thinking.

Tony Lawson's analysis of economists' failure to explain events is that they do not look below the surface for patterns, structures, processes, which are as real and verifiable through their effects as physical things are. Isolated events, individuals, things, have no explanatory power. He points out further that their attempts to use the criteria of physics and chemistry, of the "if x then y" variety, simply collapses human behaviour into that of the non-living world: "Given the open nature of human action—the fact that each person could have acted otherwise—the social structure can only ever be present in an open system"

As a consequence, economic "laws" cannot explain human behaviour mechanically. All living things share some degree of autonomy. And it is in their failure to recognise this that their problems lie, rather than in the conclusions that they draw from them.

The behaviour of humans in society is not unpredictable, but it has to be done appropriately. "If x then y", a simple causal connection, cannot give us the results that we need.

This book is for students of economics who despair of making sense of the subject. The style is heavily academic, much of it arising from the need to deal with the willful obscurantism or the hopeless muddle of the advocates of the system. For example, there is some discussion of ontology or being (what the world is really about) and epistemology or knowing (how and what we know about the world), which is not quite the same thing. The problem for us is that the World or the Universe is infinite, and we are very finite. Add to that our inability to investigate more than one thing at a time. Yet reasoning from one thing to many can give false conclusions because we are moving through different levels of abstraction. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

A better title for this book might have been Political Economy and Reality which is how Marx characterised the study of capitalism, as opposed to other socio-economic arrangements in history. The capitalist system has occupied less than one percent of human existence and it is only by comparing it with other systems—hunter-gatherer, herder, homesteader, etc and possible future societies—that it can be satisfactorily analysed. Bourgeois apologetics usually fight shy of history, of an economic past, since that might imply a (possibly different) future.

Comparing our unfree society with autonomous past or future arrangements can permit a better understanding of our present predicament. Science supplies only relative or partial truths. "Whole truths", as A. N. Whitehead pointed out, "are the very devil", and he could have added: from fundamentalist religion to molecular biology ("genes explain everything") or any other single cause explanation.

There is an alternative to capitalism but no research funds are being awarded for investigating it. Meanwhile millions of words are being ground out by economists in press, radio, television and books, which leave neither them nor us any the wiser.

Ken Smith

Socialists Do Stand for Equality (1936)

From the August 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx or Stalin?

The new draft Constitution now being considered in Russia lays it down that "to each according to the quality and quantity of his work" is a socialist principle. In the July SOCIALIST STANDARD that assertion was challenged on the ground that the principle is a capitalist one. As the question is an important one, and much confusion is likely to result from the Russian declaration, it was proposed to follow the matter up. In the meantime, the Daily Worker (July 4th) has departed from the general rule of the Communists of ignoring the S.P.G.B. by replying to the comment published in THE SOCIALIST STANDARD. While the Daily Worker’s observations are not well-informed, they will serve as an introduction. This is wDaily Worker says: —

hat the

Marxists have always drawn a distinction, corresponding to the distinction in reality, between Socialism and Communism, Socialism being that period between the seizure of power, by the working-class and the epoch of full Communism. In the period of Socialism, the principle "from each according to his ability, to each according to the quantity and quality of his work" obtains. Only with full Communism, the conditions for which are built in the period of Socialism, will the principle " from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" be realised.
Lest, however, the "Socialist Standard" should doubt that this has always been the view of true Socialists, I would suggest that the writer of this illiterate piece of nonsense should read Karl Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme, where he will find this alleged "corrupted version" fully explained and justified." — Daily Worker. July 4th, 1936.

The writer of the above, with more trust in Stalin than knowledge of the subject, has simply repeated what Stalin has said on several occasions. It happens, however, that Stalin's version of Socialist theory, and even of the past activities of the Bolsheviks, can be shown to be false. Let us, therefore, examine the points one by one, beginning with the terms Socialism and Communism.

The Terms Socialism and Communism

These terms have had a chequered history, but it can be said with certainty that the Daily Worker’s statement about them is wrong. It is not correct that Marxists have always used the term Socialism to mean a "period between the seizure of power by the working-class and the epoch of full Communism." Marx did not, neither did Engels, and Lenin knew this even if the Daily Worker does not know it. Lenin, in "The State and Revolution", actually quotes from Marx a passage in which Marx referred to such a period, but did not use the term Socialism to describe it. The passage Lenin quoted from Marx begins with the words: "But these defects are unavoidable in the first phase of Communist society . . . " (See The State and Revolution, by N. Lenin. Pub. Allen & Unwin, Ltd. p. 96.) We see then that Marx at that date, did not call this period Socialism but "the first phase of Communism." It is Lenin, not Marx, who then interposed the words "generally called Socialism." (p. 96.)

Notice, too, that while the Daily Worker says "always" Lenin said "generally"; but even Lenin's more cautious statement is wrong, except possibly as regards usage in Russia alone. To what extent in Russia the terms Socialism and Communism were used in this way we do not know, although it seems probable that even there it has been a comparatively recent development. Outside Russia it appears to have existed only in the imagination of the Daily Worker.

Marx and Engels used the terms Communism and Socialism to mean precisely the same thing. They used "Communism" in the early years up to about 1875, and after that date mainly used the term "Socialism" There was a reason for this. In the early days, about 1847-1850, Marx and Engels chose the name "Communism" in order to distinguish their ideas from Utopian, reactionary or disreputable movements then in existence, which called themselves "Socialist" Later on, when these movements disappeared or went into obscurity, and when, from 1870 onwards, parties were being formed in many countries under the name Social-Democratic Party or Socialist Party, Marx and Engels reverted to the words Socialist and Socialism. Thus when Marx in 1875 (as mentioned by Lenin) wanted to make the distinction referred to by the Daily Worker, he spoke of the "first phase of Communist society" and "a higher phase of Communist society" Engels, writing in the same year, used the term Socialism, not Communism, and habitually did so afterwards. Marx also fell, more or less closely, into line with this change of names and terms, using sometimes the one, sometimes the other, without any distinction of meaning.

It will be noticed that one of the most widely circulated works of Engels was called by him "Socialism, Utopian and Scientific" not "Communism, Utopian and Scientific."

Another partial break in the use of names came in 1918, when the Bolshevists (the majority wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Party) wished to indicate their repudiation of the wartime actions of their associates in the Second International. To do this they changed their name to Communist Party, and when they formed the Third International they called it Communist. Even then the British Communist Party only partly fell into line in the use of terms, and continued very largely to use the term Socialism as synonymous with Communism. Thus, the 1929 Election manifesto of the Communist Party of Great Britain, "Class against Class" repeatedly uses the term Socialism, and only once the term Communism. Each time Socialism occurs in that manifesto it is as the equivalent of Communism, and never in the way the Daily Worker says that "Marxists have always" used it.

The S.P.G.B., throughout its existence, has used the term Socialism, never in the manner the Daily Worker alleges the term is used, but always to mean what Marx and Engels meant by Socialism and Communism. Further, the S.P.G.B. has never helped to spread confusion by conceding the term Socialist to such bodies as the British Labour Party. The Communist Party—in this as in other directions has managed to box the compass, declaring at one time that the Labour Party is "the third capitalist party. It lays claim to the title of Socialist Party, but has nothing to do with Socialism " ("Class against Class," p. 8), and at another time referring to it as a Socialist Party (Mr. Harry Pollitt, in a letter to the Town Crier, Birmingham, June 26th, 1936).

Among many other illustrations of the way in which the terms Socialism and Communism have been used may be mentioned the English translation of the Communist Bogdanoff's "A Short Course of Economic Science" the final chapter of which carries the sub-title, "Socialist Society" and uses the term Socialism in place of and as the equivalent of Communism. The book was published by the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1923.

So much for the question of terms. Now for the basic principle of Socialism and Stalin's revised version of it, remembering all the while that Stalin, when he uses the term Socialism, means the phase after the workers' capture of power, and when he uses the term Communism he means the later phase. Stalin claims that Russia is now in the first phase and developing towards the later phase.

"From Everyone According to His Capacities, to Everyone According to His Needs"

This principle, quoted by Marx in the course of his criticism of the programme adopted by the German Social-Democrats at their Congress at Gotha in 1875, was by no means original. Similar ideas were discussed by the equalitarians during the French Revolution, and later on by such men as Louis Blanc, in France, and J. F. Bray, in England. Louis Blanc was using this same principle in 1839, although on occasion he employed it in reverse order—" To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities." It was framed in opposition to the doctrine of the followers of Saint-Simon, "Let each be placed according to his capacity and rewarded according to his work."

Now for Marx's views on the subject. In his criticism of the Gotha programme in 1875, he pointed out that "the co-operative commonwealth based upon common ownership of the means of production" (i.e., Socialism, or, as he then called it, Communism) would have a "first phase" in which it would be "afflicted with the congenital defects of the society from which it has sprung." In this first phase the individual "receives from society a voucher showing that he has done so-and-so much work. . . . On presentation of this voucher he withdraws from the communal storehouse of articles of consumption as much as this quantum of work is worth." (The quotations are from the S.L.P. edition called "the Socialist Programme," translated by Eden and Cedar Paul, and published in 1918.) In this first phase there would, Marx says, be mal-adaptations. Thus if each individual were required "to do an equal quantum of work, and all to receive an equal share from the social fund of articles of consumption," the man with dependants to keep would be worse off than the single man, while the stronger and more clever individuals would be able to do the required amount of work with less effort than the weak. Marx added that "such mal-adaptations are inevitable in the first phase of Communist society, because it is born out of capitalist society."

In due course the first phase would go, giving place to a higher phase: -

In a higher phase of communist society, when the slavish subordination of the individual to the yoke of the division of labour has disappeared, and when concomitantly the distinction between mental and physical work has ceased to exist; when labour is no longer the means to live, but is in itself the first of vital needs; when the productive forces of society have expanded proportionately with the multi- form development of the individuals of whom society is made up—then will the narrow bourgeois outlook be utterly transcended, and then will society inscribe upon its banners, "From everyone according to his capacities, to everyone according to his needs!

(It may be mentioned that Louis Blanc and others had also preceded Marx in stating that this last principle would not be applicable until after a "transition" period.)

Before going on to the present distortion of Marx's writings by the Russian Communists, , certain observations may be made in order to put Marx's words into proper perspective. His comments on the Gotha programme were "marginal notes" to use his own description, and were written at a time when he was "overwhelmed with work." They are, for the most part, clear enough, but in certain passages undue compression has left ambiguity. For example, there is the solitary reference to "the distinction between mental and physical work" which has been seized upon by Stalin as the basis of his revision. Though it is by no means certain what Marx meant, it is arguable that he considered that, in the "first phase" , "mental" workers would have to be placed on a somewhat higher level than other workers. They would get a somewhat larger share of products. If that was Marx's view it is still questionable, however—even in the circumstances envisaged by him in 1875—whether any such differentiation would not produce more problems and difficulties than it would solve. More importantly, the circumstances envisaged by Marx at that time are widely different from the circumstances that would now obtain after a Socialist majority have gained control of the political machinery. In 60 years the "productive forces of society have expanded" greatly—thus removing to a considerable extent one of the obstacles to the inauguration of the "higher phase" . Secondly, the working class have already travelled some distance away from capitalist notions about work and pay. Thirdly, we know from the experience of these 60 years that the understanding of Socialism which the workers will have to acquire before the conquest of power for Socialism becomes a possibility will be considerably greater than Marx held to be necessary in 1875. In short, all the reasons for having a phase based on "to each according to his work" (and for possible differentiation between mental and physical work) will have disappeared or be greatly weakened.

Now let us look further at Marx's views, and also Lenin's views on the subject of equality of wages.

Marx and Lenin on Equal Pay

Whatever Marx may have had in mind about the "distinction between mental and physical work" there is no doubt whatever that he strongly favoured at least approximate equality of wages, in the first phase, until such time as distribution "according to need" would eliminate the whole problem. Writing on the Paris Communards of 1871, Marx, in his Civil War in France (Labour Publishing Co. edition, 1921), highly approved their rule that "from the members of the Commune downwards the public service had to be done at workmen's wages" (p. 31. See also p. 34).

At one time (but not now) the Bolsheviks were aware of this. Lenin, in his "Soviets at Work", an address he delivered in April, 1918, expressly endorsed the—

principles of the Paris Commune and of any proletarian rule, which demand the reduction of salaries to the standard of remuneration of the average worker . . . ." (See edition published in 1919 by the Socialist Information and Research Bureau, Glasgow. Pages 17-19.)

Lenin was regretting that necessity compelled the Russian Government to pay high salaries to specialists. He did not pretend that it was anything but a backward step. He said, "Such a measure is not merely a halt in a certain part and to a certain degree of the offensive against capitalism . . . but also a step backward by our Socialist Soviet State, which has from the very beginning proclaimed and carried on a policy of reducing high salaries to the standard of wages of the average worker." (Italics ours.)

Lenin went on to call the payment of high salaries "the old bourgeois method," and said, ''the corrupting influence of high salaries is beyond dispute—both on the Soviets . . . and on the mass of the workers." He admitted that "to pay unequal salaries is really a step backward; we will not cheat the people by pretending otherwise."

Lenin had also referred to the matter in 1917 in The State and Revolution. Using the Post Office as an example, Lenin declared (pages 52 and 53) that, after overthrowing the capitalists, the task of the Communists would be to—

Make practical use of the experience .... which the Commune has given us. To organise our whole material economy like the postal system, but in such a way that the technical experts, inspectors, clerks, and, indeed, all the persons employed, should receive no higher wage than the working man. . . ." (Italics ours.)

We see, therefore, what Marx said; how Lenin interpreted Marx; and what Lenin's own emphatic views were.

Then there was a resolution passed by the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party in 1921, an English version of which is given as follows in "Economic History" (January, 1932. Supplement of the Economic Journal): —

The theory and practice as regards wages should be based upon as equal a distribution as possible of the standard articles of consumption. However, the Unions will make use of wages both in money and kind, as a means of improving discipline and production.

Now let us jump from Marx and Lenin to Stalin and the present-day Bolsheviks.

Marx and Lenin versus Stalin and the "Daily Worker"

The first point to notice is that, whereas Marx and Lenin used the expression "To each according to the quantity of his work" (and Bogdanoff says, "in proportion to the amount of labour"), the new draft Russian Constitution has smuggled in the word "quality" also. (The first Constitution, adopted in 1918, was silent on the point, merely proclaiming the principle, "He that does not work, neither shall he eat.")

Stalin, in recent speeches, has also inserted this word quality, absent from earlier statements of the principle.

Now if this change meant only that the work demanded of the able-bodied shall be of good quality, one could say that the inclusion of the word is unnecessary but harmless, unnecessary because nobody in his senses argues in favour of bad work.

If, on the other hand, it meant that all Russian "able-bodied citizens," from the members of the Government downwards"—to apply the words Marx applied to the Commune—are being paid approximately on the same standard, i.e., "workmen's wages" plus some small bonus for output or for quality as a stimulus to greater output and better quality, three criticisms could be made. One is that such a system would need great care in its application to avoid penalising the weak. The second is that such a measure (justified by Marx and others, for application during the first phase, on the ground of capitalist mentality and low productivity) would be hard to square with Bolshevik claims about their success in making the population Socialist in outlook, and their claims about the high productivity of industry.

The third criticism is, nothing can excuse the Russian Communists' pretence that such a principle is a Socialist one. Even if they were compelled to bow to necessity in the matter of their system of distribution (owing to low productivity and the capitalist outlook of the population) that cannot in any way justify them in circulating in English-speaking countries an English version of the Constitution which declares that "to each according to the quantity and quality of work", particularly as it is applied in Russia, is "the principle of Socialism" . The Communists know full well that large numbers of workers have already been deceived by them into believing that what we call Socialism (and what Marx and Engels called Socialism or Communism) has been established in Russia. The Communists cannot escape the charge that they are willfully deceiving the workers.

Furthermore, Stalin is using this word "quality" as cover for something much worse than differentiated wage rates. Whereas Lenin admitted that inequality was a regrettable necessity, a step backward, a corrupting influence, Stalin (and his new admirer, Sidney Webb) is glorifying it, and doing so under cover of the altered version of Marx's and Lenin's statements.

Lenin wrote in "Soviets at Work" that "our Socialist-Soviet State . . . has from the very beginning proclaimed and carried on a policy of reducing high salaries to the standard of the average worker."

Stalin's Government, far from reducing high salaries, is encouraging them. He goes further and according to the Webbs in their "Soviet Communism" denounces those who now put Lenin's point of view as "leftist blockheads" He declares that the Bolsheviks never held that view.

The Webbs quote from a speech of Stalin's delivered in January, 1934, at the 17th Congress of the Communist Party of Russia: —

These people ["leftist blockheads," he calls them elsewhere] evidently think that Socialism calls for equality, for levelling the requirements and the personal lives of the members of society. Needless to say, such an assumption has nothing in common with Marxism, with Leninism. By equality Marxism means, not equality in personal requirements and personal life, but the abolition of class. . . ." ("Soviet Communism", p. 702.)

Stalin's speech contains one true and important point, that Socialists are interested primarily in abolishing the private ownership and control of the means of life which is the basis of class division. Stalin is also right in repudiating the idea that Socialists aim at imposing uniformity. But in the light of what is actually being done in Russia under Stalin's Government, what meaning are we to attach to his further statement that "Marxism starts out with the assumption that people's abilities and requirements are not, and cannot be, equal in quality or in quantity, either in the period of Socialism or in the period of Communism ?" (Webbs, p. 702).

Marx and Lenin laid it down that in the first phase everyone should be at least approximately on workmen's wages, and in the higher phase, when productivity had increased and prejudices disappeared, all should be treated on the principle "each according to his needs" .Stalin's Government does no such thing. It promotes great inequality between the various rates of workmen's pay and between those rates and the salaries, fees, and royalties of technicians, high officials, popular literary men, novelists and so on, and for the later phase it promises "to each according to his needs" but only on the basis that (in Stalin's words) "requirements are not and cannot be equal in quality or in quantity." This can only mean that some are always to have a higher standard of living than others.

The Daily Worker objected to our statement that the new Russian principle is a "corrupted version" of the basic principle of Socialism. Is it not evident, however, that Stalin's words and the actions of his Government embody precisely that "corrupting influence" which Lenin associated with high salaries in his "Soviets at Work"?

Let us examine some of the actual applications of Stalin's theory in Russia.

Workmen and Others

The Webbs, who thoroughly approve of Stalin's views on this subject, report, in their "Soviet Communism" (p. 711) that in Russian industry work and pay are graded into anything from eight to seventeen grades, but—and this is important—"always excluding the apprentices, with the mere porters, cleaners or gate-keepers on the one hand, and the foremen, technicians and managers on the other." (Note the reference to "mere porters" by our Labour Peer!)

The difference between the pay of the highest and lowest grades of workmen varies according to occupation. In some cases it appears that the highest may be three or four times the amount of the lowest—but outside and above the rates of pay of these workmen's grades are the salaries of foremen and administrative and technical staffs. Why? On what principle? What has become of Lenin's demand that, in the Post Office, for example, technical experts, inspectors, and so on, should get no more than a workman's wage? What has happened to the example of the Commune so praised by Marx and Lenin?

On what ground does the playwright Schkwarkin get 300,000 roubles a year from royalties on his plays (compared with a skilled workman's 2,000, 3,000 or 4,000 roubles), making him a very rich man even after deduction of income tax? Is this in accordance with the quantity of his work, even if modified for the supposed distinction between mental and physical work? Is it, like the average factory worker's pay, based on output or piece-work?

The pay of a head of a department in the Russian local government service is 700 to 1,000 roubles a month, while that of a typist is 175 to 250 roubles a month. How does a Communist decide that the head of a department is worth four typists? And why is he worth half as much again as an engineer or a lawyer (400 to 700 roubles)?

(These figures are taken from the Bulletin of the "International Committee of Employees, etc." Moscow. June, 1936.)

The same question applies to all the favoured groups of politicians, technicians, officials, managers, popular writers and playwrights, etc.

The fact is that the real or supposed needs of Russian state capitalism and of the ruling group and their close associates have given rise to riches and poverty, privilege and lack of privileges, the features of capitalism generally. Russia is faced with the largely non-Socialist outlook of the population and the still relatively low productive capacity of industry. Lenin, when faced with such a necessity, said: "To pay unequal salaries is a step backward; we will not cheat the people by pretending otherwise" . Stalin, rather than admit the truth, chooses to gloss it over by misusing Socialist phrases, and by corrupting statements of Socialist principle. His hangers-on throughout the world first give their unqualified support to whatever he may say from time to time, then try to find reasons for doing so afterwards, quite regardless of the interests of the working class and the Socialist movement.

Edgar Hardcastle