Rhymeating lion tamer (1978)

Book Review from the December 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

John S. Clarke: Parliamentarian, Poet, Lion-Tamer by Raymond Challinor (Pluto Press)

This little book, published a couple of years ago, is well worth reading containing, as it does, illuminating sidelights on the genesis of the British Communist Party and its later left-wing off-shoots.

Clarke was an extraordinary character, leading a colourful life as a lion tamer (he came of circus stock) and merchant seaman. He travelled all over the world but, although entirely self-taught, showed remarkable gifts as a writer and Scottish "rhymeater" in the Burns tradition. He gravitated to the Socialist Labour Party where his journalistic talents soon made him the actual editor of The Socialist during the first World War. With the advent of the Bolshevik seizure in Russia, Clarke was the first (with Willie Gallacher) to make the Moscow trip. Whereas Gallacher (a muddlehead if ever there was one) swallowed the Russian bait, Clarke refused to come back to England and, as editor of the Glasgow Scottish Workers Committee paper The Worker, wrote critical articles, exposed the unsuitability of Russian tactics in Britain and, above all, the lying, glowing reports sent to Lenin by the greedy job hunters of the British Socialist Party. "Information by the mass, specially preened, pruned, doctored and cooked by the officials of the old BSP was sent to Russia with the deliberate object of misleading the Bolsheviks as to the true state of affairs in Britain" he wrote.

This certainly did not suit the new Russian paymasters who, after buying up The Worker, promptly had Clarke sacked. He was the first publicly to denounce the absurdity of Lenin's tactics of supporting the Labour Party. Challinor claims to have "subjected all Lenin's statements about Britain to a close analysis" and to have come to Clarke's view. "Lenin's mistake was his belief that most British workers considered the Labour Party to be Socialist, and that this myth could only be dispelled by seeing it in office but, in fact, most British workers are aware the Labour Party is largely the mouthpiece of the Trade Union leaders, whose limitations have been known for many years. Hence Lenin's tactic was an unnecessary exercise, telling workers what they already knew," he writes. What a pity that Vanessa Redgrave, Paul Foot, Tony Cliff, Gerry Healey, Chris Harman and co., many of whom were still, up to a few years ago, urging workers to vote for the Labour Party, did not know what "most workers knew". We would have been spared the rubbish of WRP, RWP, Big Flame, IMG etc., "New CP", "Old PLC." Chinese Leninists and so on.

Clarke was persuaded by the Glasgow ILP (Maxton and co) to run for Parliament. He was elected, sat for Maryhill for two and a half years and, to his, credit, chucked it up in disgust!

Borrow the book from the local library, like I did.

Horatio 

The "Friends" of Scottish Workers (1945)

From the April 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since the working class was granted the vote there has never been a shortage of busy-bodies who—hand-on-heart, have declared their ardent sympathy and interest in workers' problems.

When elected, of course, the workers become the "constituency" and each M.P. "looks after his constituency" and looks ahead to the next election. W. Gallacher, A. Woodburn, D. Kirkwood and other Parliamentary luminaries are engaged at the moment—amid other equally laudable pursuits—in pressing the post-war claims of Prestwick Aerodrome. All three are campaigning for the "Forth Road Transport Bridge and have endorsed Hector McNeil, Labour M.P.'s efforts to modernize the Clyde so that the largest ships can be docked at Greenock and Glasgow"

Other Scottish M.P.'s—with an eye on their constituency—are eloquently expatiating on Scottish needs and problems. The "Daily Express," February 15th, gave considerable space to a report of a Parliamentary debate on a Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Bill. Thos. Johnston—the mover the bill said: "In the Tradeston division of Glasgow, for example, there are 127 houses or more than 700 persons to the acre." He said: "The measure won't bring a new Jerusalem to Scotland, but would assist local authorities to deal with problems." In short, a confession of impotence unuusal in its frankness. In the came report there is a gem of a phrase coined by Campbell Stephen, I.L.P., M.P.:— "We in Scotland have had a raw deal. Our association with England has not given us an opportunity to deal with housing and industry." Characteristically, however, W. Gallacher, M.P., capped the lot with "Effete Sassenachs were incapable of dealing with the planning problems which confronted them in Scotland and in consequence the Sturdy Scot had been bound hand and foot and dragged behind them in this miserable bill." He then went on to talk about the class war, which, he said, had done a thousand times more damage that the War.

Have the Scottish workers any doubts that Gallacher, Woodburn, Campbell-Stephen and Co., are really interested in working class affairs? Could they have?

Those of them who have, however vaguely, identified Socialism with an international outlook will be bewildered at Gallacher's talk of "effete" Englishmen and "Sturdy" Scots, particularly in view of his later and inexplicable reference to a class war.

They will think of "effete" "Scots," who bide here in Scotland for the "Glorious 12th" and "sturdy" Englishmen who "carry hods" here all the year round.

Supporters of the "Socialist" I.L.P. should feel uneasy about Campbell Stephen's "Our association—hasn't given us an opportunity."—They will, or should wonder who "Our and us" means and conclude that if it was Scottish workers—that is was Capitalism rather than association with England that had been and still is the source of working class problems.

The England, Irish, Welsh and American capitalists with investments in Scottish aviation, building, shipping and transport will applaud the efforts of the Scottish Communist, Labour and I.L.P. M.P.'s.

Kirkwood has already earned the title of "M.P. for John Brown's" among Clydeside workers: now it will be Woodburn "M.P. for Scottish Airways," McNeil "M.P. for Clyde Trust" and Gallacher "M.P. for Arrols and Wimpey's."

What all this has to do with the interests of the working class in Scotland no one knows. Perhaps the M.P.'s could tell us?

It certainly does not require genius or a microscope to perceive that Scotland, like every other country, has a population which is divided into a majority who are non-owning workers and a minority who are non-working owners. And that after centuries of joint development with England that all means of producing wealth are owned and controlled by large concerns whose shareholders are spread throughout Britain and the rest of the world.

Just as certainly it does not need extraordinary intelligence to know that workers in specifically "Scottish" concerns merely receive in wages enough to continue working—barely enough, as for workers everywhere.

The Scottish workers don't have to attend a University to know that the ruling class of Scotland since the days of the Highland "clearances" referred to by Marx in biting terms in "Capital" (Vol. 1), are any less brutal and avaricious than their English counterparts. Or do they?

Thos. Johnston's burning indictments of the Scottish ruling class make curious reading nowadays when he is Secretary of State for Scotland and seems to be on terms of easy familiarity with the present scions. The same remark applies to old copies of the "Forward" during his period of editorship.

There is a story told by John S. Clarke regarding Lenin's estimate of Gallacher in which he described Gallacher as a "_____ fool"; a story which Gallacher repudiated indignantly and inexplicably as "an insult to Lenin." Whether the story is true or otherwise is unimportant but at least reflects a view of Gallacher, increasingly common, among workers with memories and intelligence.

The ability of the Gallachers, Johnstons, Maxtons, Kirkwoods in getting away with their anti working class nonsense and buffoonery rests on the—as yet, political ignorance of the Scottish workers.

Their political and social interests—like their fellows everywhere—are opposed to those of their masters and does not lie in schemes which will enable their employers to wring yet more surplus value from their skill and energy.

The political power that enables the privileged class to retain their social privilege is vested in control of the machinery which has its centre in Westminster.

This fact enables the Scottish, English and Welsh working class to co-ordinate their task of intelligently wresting this supremely vital control of political machinery from the hands of their class enemies—the masters; a co-ordination which has a fit and ready instrument in the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

The duty of the Scottish workers—like the workers the world over—is to-day—not tomorrow—to attempt an understanding of the basic nature of their problems and having done so, to organise in the Socialist Party democratically to take over power to establish Socialism.

Capitalism in Scotland, in England, America, Germany, Russia, in every country in the world produces the same set of problems to workers—poverty, unemployment, insecurity, war, and so on.

These problems arise with sublime impartiality as to forms of government, climate and previous political history, they arise in democracies and dictatorships in the two hemispheres and in big and wee countries.

The Socialist analysis and solution is international in scope and outlook and the only way in which the Scottish workers can assist their fellows in India and Greece as elsewhere is to study, understand and organise for Socialism. As they do so, the boloney of the Labour, I.L.P. and Communist M.P.'s will become clearly apparent. "Our" problems are the problems arising from the capitalist nature of Society which is now world-wide and the solution for "us"—World Socialism in which wealth will be produced, controlled and enjoyed by all.

Thomas Anthony.

Voice From the Back: Too many people (2015)

The Voice From the Back column from the August 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Too many people?

While only 59 percent of lay respondents believe that a population boom will become a problem, 82 percent of scientists are concerned about overpopulation (goodtherapy.org, 6 July). Is the world overpopulated? Socialists are convinced there is good evidence to the contrary. Dr. Paul Ehrlich recently opined that women should not be allowed to have as many babies as they want as this is akin to letting everyone throw as much of their garbage into their neighbour's backyard as they want. Does he or most of the scientists surveyed, no doubt seeing this 'problem' through a capitalist lens, not know that half of all food is thrown away or that we could all move to New Zealand and experience a population density less than that of Manhattan?

Sultan Erdogan and his golden throne

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denied (Today's Zaman, 3 July) that his gigantic presidential palace is fitted with gold-plated toilet seats. Should we believe him? A more interesting question is what would a socialist world do with the tens of thousands of tonnes of gold currently locked away in vaults? Well, some may take inspiration from More's Utopia and use gold to make bathroom fixtures. We would also have to decide what to do with Erdogan's 1,150-room palace, which was built at a cost of around €490 million when money still existed.

No nations

William Morris wrote ‘While theologians are disputing the existence of a hell elsewhere, we are on the way to realising it here: and if capitalism is to endure, whatever may become of men when they die, they will come into hell when they are born.’ Haiti is certainly one candidate for hell on Earth as in addition to natural disasters and the rule of the one percent, our class there has recently suffered from the attention of the United Nations and Red Cross. The former is responsible for the ongoing cholera outbreak, an epidemic which has killed thousands and hospitalised hundreds of thousands, as well as exchanging food and medicine with over 200 women and underage girls for sex. The Red Cross raised half a billion dollars and built just six homes leaving most of the population existing in shacks made of rusty sheet metal, and without access to drinkable water, electricity or basic sanitation. Now 'some half a million stateless Haitian-Dominicans face mass deportation from Dominican Republic in what's been called an 'ethnic purge.' Poverty-stricken Haiti has condemned the expulsion measures and signalled it is not equipped to deal with the security issues posed by a massive influx of migration' (Telesur TV, 1 July).

Let them eat Campylobacter

Nearly three-quarters of fresh supermarket chicken in the UK tested positive for a food poisoning bug. Campylobacter is the UK's leading cause of food poisoning and a year-long survey by the Food Standards Agency showed 73 percent of chickens tested positive for the pathogen, with one in five (19 percent) within the highest band of contamination (foodqualitynews.com, 3 July)

K.I.S.S.

Socialists are smart. We do not know the answer to life, the universe and everything, but we have the solution to war, pollution, and many other global 'problems'. We are members of the working class, smart enough to run society from top to bottom for the enrichment of the vestigial capitalist class. Until we learn better, even 'the smartest people in the world' will find 'problems of hunger and poverty are wickedly difficult' (grist.org, 2 July). D'oh! As long as capitalism remains so will its attendant 'problems'.

Looks like a duck

So-called socialist or communist states (actually a contradiction in terms) show the hallmarks of capitalism. State capitalist Venezuela and Guyana are in an uncomradely argument over resources:

’This particular border controversy covers an area of some 160,000 sq. kilometers (62,000 sq. miles), which signifies some three-quarters of the territory of Guyana, according to a decree signed recently by Maduro. For its part, Guyana claims that Venezuela modified its maritime borders to include the area in dispute, which includes territory where large petroleum deposits were recently discovered’ (Fox News Latino, 4 July).

Trotsky's killer (1978)

From the December 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ramon Mercader, the man who murdered Leon Trotsky, died in Havana on October 18th. Four days later his ashes were flown to Russia, the country whose secret policy, in 1940, recruited Mercader to kill Trotsky in his Russian exile.

"I was a Trotskyist until one day I realised that the leader who claimed to be struggling for the liberation of the working class was in reality just a fanatic thirsty for revenge against Stalin." These were the words Mercader, who afterwards served a 20-year prison sentence, used to explain to the Mexican police his motives for splitting Trotsky's skull with a pickaxe.

How close to the truth was Mercader's appraisal of Trotsky? Well, Trotsky;s writings do manifest an intense personal hatred of Stalin, the man who robbed him of what he considered his rightful place as leader of Bolshevik Russia. But they also expose with substantial accuracy the terrible cruelties which members of the former Bolshevik hierarchy and the Russian people were subject to under Stalin. And as for fanaticism it would be hard to beat Stalin himself. He had a special branch of his secret police set up at New York employing agents with the sole duty of eliminating Trotsky, a defeated rival who had long since ceased to be a direct threat.

Following Trotsky's murder the sympathy evoked by his failure in the struggle for power and the circumstances of his death, led many people to the opposite view of Mercader. They came to believe that had Trotsky, and not Stalin, succeeded Lenin at the head of the Russian ruling group in 1924 the terror and suffering endured by the Russian people would have been avoided and Russia would have achieved genuine socialism.

All the evidence militates against this hypothesis. Trotsky had been a party both to the outlawing of other organisations by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and to the murderous activity of the Bolshevik secret police, the Cheka, in the years following. He favoured exterminatory measures against minorities such as the Jews (despite being one himself) and in 1921 personally supervised the smashing by artillery fire of a revolt by sailors at Kronstadt,, who had passed a resolution seeking relaxations of the regime's laws on forcible requisitioning of food from the peasants.

So quite clearly Trotsky had no compunction about shedding blood and inflicting suffering on those who stood in his way. But even had he been a different kind of man, once in power the circumstances of a huge, backward country dragging itself up out of feudalism into the modern industrial world would have inevitably imposed upon him policies which, while perhaps not as harsh as the excesses of Stalin's reign, would have involved trampling on all opposition to the speedy development of Russian state capitalism.

Several years before his death Trotsky expressed the view that socialism would develop out of a second world war, soon to occur. He was only partly right. A second world war did occur but of course socialism did not come out of it. And perhaps we should be thankful; for it socialism looks anything like what Trotsky helped to rule over in Russia before his fall from grace, we want none of it. The use of the term 'socialist' by Trotsky and his ilk to describe repressive one-party dictatorships makes all the harder the spreading of the idea of a democratic world society based on majority will.

Howard Moss

Greasy Pole: Making the President (2000)

The Greasy Pole Column from the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

To accept the spectacle of the presidential election requires a massive feat of amnesia or delusion by the working class

Throughout almost the entire length of this year's American presidential elections the pollsters—those obsessive people whose finger is always firmly on the pulse of public opinion—said that Republican George W. Bush was the nation's favourite. And then they suddenly changed their mind and put Democrat Al Gore out in front. This sent all the strategists and analysts into confusion but it did not take them long to come up with the reason for the dramatic turnaround. It was all down to what happened at the Democrats' convention in August. Gore's success since then was due, not so much to what he said—indeed he had assured the convention that he is a pretty boring man—but because he had kissed his wife. Nothing unusual in that, of course—politicians often kiss their spouse at moments of intense vote-cadging or before numbingly compliant audiences. The difference was that the Gore kiss was, in the words of more than one witness, a snog—prolonged and smothering enough to raise anxieties about whether Mrs Gore was about to be suffocated. But she survived, breaking and smiling and supportive and Gore's ratings began to rise and rise . . .

It was just as well that Gore did something out of the ordinary because there was nothing in his speech to the convention to set the blood racing. "Every hard-working American family," he said, "deserves to open the door to the American dream." This is not the first time we have heard about this elusively defined thing. It has been around in politicians' rhetoric for long enough to make us wonder why, after all this time, there are any people in America who are stopped from enjoying it by a closed door. "I ask for your support," Gore clamoured, "on the basis of a better, fairer, more prosperous America." He did not explain why, after eight years as Vice President, he still thinks there s so much room for improvement in the country. But he did say he wants another four years.

Images

It was no better with Republican candidate George Bush. In a sideswipe at Bill Clinton and his peculiar handling of cigars he promised to change the tone of Washington to one of "civility and respect". Shortly afterwards he gave an example of this by describing a journalist at one of his press conferences as "a Major League asshole". After outlining some of his policies to the convention he assured them, "We will seize this moment of American promise. We will use these good times for great goals . . . We will extend the promise of prosperity to every foreign corner of this country . . ." The assembled Republican faithful loved it and gave it, according to one reporter, an "ecstatic, deafening response". They would not have been in the mood to reflect that Bush spoke in the vaguest of platitudes; to analyse his rantings would have been like trying to hold smoke.

The ringing, empty phrases spewed out by Bush and Gore had been painstakingly crafted over hours of toil and argument, to promote an image of each of them as historically clever, strong, sincere, honest. This is not an original technique. For example in May 1991, Bill Clinton, then a rising star in the Democratic Party with his ambitions centred firmly on the White House, said to the party's leadership council: "Our burden is to give the people a new choice rooted in old values. A new choice that is simple, that offers opportunity, demands responsibility, gives citizens more say, provides them responsible government, all because we recognize that we are a community." It sounded very will, enough to convince a lot of people—a typical piece of Clinton oratory. An earlier speech, on the same lines, had persuaded a disillusioned campaigner to become enthused enough to tell Clinton "I feel two emotions in this room that I haven't experienced in a long time—pride and hope." It would be interesting to know what emotions that man feels now, after eight years of Clinton sleaze.

Kennedy

Yet the fact is that such blind enthusiasm is capable of surviving the most compelling reality. No American president has come to power with such favourable prospects as John F. Kennedy. Rich, handsome, politically slick, bathed in glamour and the style which came to be called Camelot, he convinced millions of people throughout the world that we would leave the place in a much better state than it was when he took office. Such was the devotion for him that nobody threw up when Marilyn Monroe, in that dress, before a huge audience, sang Happy Birthday to him.

In all the excitement it was largely overlooked that the Kennedy family fortune was principally due to some nasty deals during Prohibition. There was a convenient blanket of amnesia over the President's father, the odious Joseph Kennedy, who can best be described as a ruthless gangster with an obsession that one of his sons would one day inhabit the White House, whatever it costs. In the massive publicity surrounding Kennedy there was little attention given to his connection to Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana—a friendship fertilised with large, regular bundles of money. Giancana's influence was applied to ensure that Kennedy won the 1960 presidential elections. At the time the defeated Republican candidate, Richard Nixon, knew that the election had in effect been bought. But he was no slouch himself at such tactics so he allowed that particular sleeping dog to lie.

In 1963, before the Vietnam war got under way, the president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, was showing a willingness to negotiate with the Vietcong. If the negotiations had happened it is possible that tens of thousands of people on both sides might not have been killed. But at that stage a negotiated settlement did not fit in with the Kennedy government's policies in the area. The situation was dealt with by Washington tacitly supporting a military coup in which Diem and his brother were executed. The fact that Diem was supposed to be a personal friend of Kennedy did not save him. It was a solution worthy of the president's Mafia friends. Diem's charge d'affaire in Washington remembered the affair: "You had a group of people who pursued personal and political ambitions. It was like the Mafia."

Affairs

Kennedy's Mafia connection was useful to him in other ways. He had an affair with Judith Exner, who at the time was in a relationship with that same Sam Giancana who had manipulated his 1960 election victory. Exner was only one of a veritable mass of such liaisons for Kennedy. One of the Secret Service agents assigned to protect the president "grieved that he would conduct himself in such a way as to make us so vulnerable and make the country so vulnerable."

These activities would have been of no concern except that at the same time as he was devoting so much of his time to them Kennedy was being portrayed as a devoted husband and father, with the kind of family ideal to society. After his assassination a memorial fund was set up and publicised with a photograph of Kennedy walking barefoot along a lonely beach hand-in-hand with his toddler son—a touching picture of a supposedly caring family man. The contrast with the reality of Camelot illustrate the extent of the cynicism which powers the presentation of political leaders—and the miseries of delusion among the voters.

Nixon & Reagan 

Kennedy was not unusual in this. During Richard Nixon's time as president he was represented as very different from the man who drank too much, depended on prescribed drugs and sometimes beat the wife who, in the customary pattern, was supposed to be the object of his adoration. Nixon died with the reputation of the president who brought peace to Vietnam. In fact, in the run-up to the 1968 election he tried to boost his chances by doing his best to undermine Lyndon Johnson's first moves to negotiate an end to the war.

Ronald Reagan's popularity was so overwhelming that one Democratic strategist moaned that the party had given up running against him. His support was based on an image of a decisive, self-confident representative of homely values, modest courage and happy endings, like an old cowboy movie. In fact he was often detached from the process of government, with the job of articulating the myths so beloved of the voters—America the best country in the world, strong and proud and free where every decent main's wife was called Nancy . . . He was very, very adept at playing that role which the political manipulators around him polished and packaged and publicised.

That is a good point at which to sum it up. The majority of people—the working class, the useful, productive people in this society—are content to keep capitalism in being under the delusion that it is rather like a movie in which the baddies come to a sticky end and the hero and heroine just have time to embrace before the end. The problem is that there are so many baddies—war, poverty, starvation, mental stress, homelessness, alienation, crime, disease . . . And the "heroes" and "heroines"—Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan and the rest—are powerless to do anything about it. To accept all this and to forget the impotence of those leaders requires a massive feat of amnesia or delusion by the working class. And to help them to be like that there are all those speech writers, strategists and spin doctors—the kind of people whose job is to tell Al Gore that if he didn't stop being boring and serious he would lose the election so he had better get out on stage, get hold of his wife and . . .

Ivan

Proper Gander: Together In Electric Dreams (2015)

The Proper Gander Column from the August 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever fancied having a robot around to do the household chores? Or, indeed, ever fancied a robot? Channel 4’s drama series Humans imagines if robotics had reached the point of developing lifelike walking, talking androids – or ‘synths’ – for us to use as servants and colleagues, or in ‘fight clubs’ and brothels. Some of the synths have acquired consciousness, and the story follows the people living with them and searching for them.

There’s little that’s original about the series. It’s a remake of the Swedish drama Real Humans, and most of its themes were explored decades ago by Karel Capek, Isaac Asimov and Philip K Dick, among others. Where the show breaks with tradition is that it’s set in a ‘parallel present’ rather than the future. This approach may have been taken to avoid the cost of producing futuristic clothes, cars and sets, but it also reflects a lack of confidence in the viewer to be interested in how society would be changed by this technology. The series doesn’t dwell on how a ‘class’ of robots could impact on workplaces and the economy. Instead, the synths are plonked into our current way of life, and disappointingly used in a storyline borrowing tropes familiar from umpteen crime dramas. The show would have been more thought-provoking if it had been programmed with more emphasis on possible political and philosophical implications.

Despite this, Humans does consider what it might be like to have a robot as part of the family. Generally, most of the women characters become fixated on their synths, and most of the men end up being emasculated by them, while the damage done to relationships outweighs the benefits of not having to do the cooking and ironing. The script may also be saying that it’s easier to use someone if we lack empathy with them, or that when we use someone, we’re treating them as if they’re just an object. But it might be giving the drama too much credit to say that it’s a detailed analogy of how workers are used.

Humans doesn’t quite live up to its potential, but remains worth watching, especially for Gemma Chan’s eerily believable portrayal of synth Anita.

Mike Foster

The Mind of a Social Democrat (1966)

Book Review from the 1966 - number 5 issue of The Western Socialist

The Accidental Century by Michael Harrington (New York: Macmillan Co., 1965)

Next to the world-wide Moscovite movement, the largest phony "socialist" tendency is that which is frequently referred to as "social democratic," or, unfortunately, as "socialist." The Scandinavian social democratic parties, the Labour Party of Great Britain and the Socialist Party of America, are all of this tendency. At some time, social democracy could boast some able theorists. Now, however, it has a very low theoretical level. A recent illustration of this theoretical weakness is Michael Harrington's book, The Accidental Century.

The author is known for his book, The Other America, the fame of which is attributable to its stimulation of the discovery of poverty by the liberal press and mass media. The Accidental Century presents the author's general evaluation of the social developments of the last sixty years.

In the preface, the author acknowledges the inspiration of Norman Thomas, Max Shachtman, and Bayard Rustin. It seems incredible that this trinity of social democracy can be openly acknowledged as theoretical mentors. This in itself speaks volumes on the primitive level of social democratic theory.

The book seems addressed to an audience of "liberal liberals," that is, those who are so very, very liberal. In trying to appeal to this type, the author tones down the more radical implications—conclusions are gently suggested rather than boldly pursued.

One somewhat amusing aspect of the book is that the author has taken on the posture of a literary essayist in an apparent imitation of ex-radical writers like Irving Howe, who have landed jobs as professors. As a man of letters and serious literary critic, Harrington is a flop. His pretensions to scholarship are quite  "mid-cult." For example, there is not even a bibliography provided; nor are any citations given for the plethora of quotations. Literary allusions plus a hodgepodge of synopses of men and ideas do not add up to anything profound. Of course, no doubt,, Harrington makes some correct summaries of literary themes, but his whole process is reminiscent of the term paper of the college sophomore mercilessly carried to great length. Clever phrases, comments and thumbnail sketches are not enough justification for writing a book, let alone one that purports to present a serious political perspective.

The theme of the book is the decadence of traditional capitalism along with the institutions and ideas associated with it. Harrington sees some of these ideas as valuable and he laments the dangers to these ideas from the forces unleashed by capitalist development. The cause of this decadence is the undirected and unintended byproducts of technological changes. This "revolution," as he calls it (his terminology is imprecise), has "unsettled every faith and creed in the West."

This, one would think, would be generally welcomed by Harrington. Yet there is a definite note of ethnocentrism and cultural imperialism in his designation of useful ideas as "Western." He is really expressing sorrow for the decay of social democracy. Had social democracy presented a real alternative to capitalism, its decay would not have been so complete.

Harrington tells us " . . . the one set and undeviating principle of socialism is its commitment to making the . . . free choice of the citizen the principle of social life." A hundred and fifty years ago this expression of the ideals of bourgeois democracy would have been progressive. But today it ignores the recognition that democratic theories must be related to a social context. The social democrat never understood that the science of political economy is the heart of the matter. Democracy cannot exist on thin air; it refers to a social context. Specifically, where the social relations of wage labour and capital exist, democracy cannot exist. It is not that more planning is needed but that outmoded social relations must be abandoned. Socialism is not just that people get what they want; it refers to what can be done when people want and get a different society with different social relations.

William Jerome 

Material World: Shit news (2015)

The Material World Column from the August 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 193-member General Assembly, the UN’s highest policy-making body, declared water and sanitation a basic human right in July 2010. The United States, Britain, Australia, Austria, Canada, Greece, Sweden, Japan, Israel, South Korea, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Ireland all abstained. It has remained a pious resolution, a human ‘right’ that is yet to be implemented. Most developing nations have fallen short of meeting their goals on sanitation and the world’s poorest countries have been lagging far behind, according to a UN report.

The world has missed the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target by nearly 700 million people. The UN has now vowed that the practice of open defecation must be totally eliminated by 2025 (yet another example of wishful thinking).  One in three people, or 2.4 billion worldwide, are still without sanitation facilities – including 946 million people who defecate in the open. The report says progress on sanitation has been hampered by inadequate investments in behaviour-change campaigns, lack of affordable products for the poor, and social norms which accept or even encourage open defecation. Today, only 68 percent of the world’s population uses an improved sanitation facility – below the MDG target of 77 per cent. At present rates of progress it would take 300 years for everyone in Sub-Saharan Africa to get access to a sanitary toilet, said the report. More optimistically in Cambodia latrine coverage has been increasing by 1.3 percent per year– a growth rate at which it could take more than 60 years for the country to be ‘Open Defecation Free.’

There are 41 million people who do not have access to a toilet in Pakistan and as a result they are defecating in the open. In India alone, there are nearly 600 million people (out of a total population of over 1.2 billion) without access to sanitation, according to the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council. The Indian 2011 census found that nearly 70 percent of rural households, as well as over 18 percent of homes in towns and cities, don’t have toilets.

The study says diarrheal disease, largely caused by poor sanitation and hygiene, is a leading cause of malnutrition, stunting and child mortality, claiming nearly 600,000 under-five lives every year. Where there is open defecation, pathogens spread quickly, causing diarrhoea, cholera, bilharzia (caused by freshwater worms) and other diseases. More than 1,400 children die each day of diarrhoea-related diseases linked to a lack of safe water, basic sanitation and good hygiene.

Inadequate facilities also affect education and economic productivity and impact the dignity and personal safety of women and girls. Women across rural India are stalked by sexual predators and raped or molested when they venture out into the fields at night. In one such incident two teenage girls from the village of Katra Shadatganj (228 km southwest of New Delhi), were raped and hung from trees. Since then, at least four other similar cases have been reported in the same region. It subsequently emerged that each of these women came from homes that did not have toilets, and were accosted while attempting to relieve themselves at night. The truth is that the ruling elite (that's the government and multinational corporations who own the country) do not care for those living in abject destitution. India is the world's biggest arms importer. It budgets tens of millions on a Mars space programme. It is spending its money on crap. As far back as 1925 Gandhi said ‘Sanitation is more important than independence’.

The spectacle of ‘socialists’ seeking to improve capitalism on behalf of the ruling class has a long history. During the early 20^th century in America grew a movement called ‘sewer socialism.’ In the Britain the term was ‘municipal socialism’. It sought to reform capitalism on the local level by cleaning up neighbourhoods with new sanitation systems and municipally-owned water supplies. But ‘sewer socialism’ has gone down the stinking drain as a step in the direction of socialism. The socialist transformation of the political and economic system is absolutely necessary to stop the waste of valuable resources on senseless wars and to raise the living standards and quality of life of the vast majority of the population. A socialist party deserves the name only to the extent that it acts towards that necessary social revolution, nothing less. Capitalism is shit: let’s flush it down the toilet.

ALJO

Labour MPs in confusion (1989)

From the October 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party has always attracted a wide range of politically bewildered do-gooders and reformists. These believe that in spite of their many differences, they can all band together and run capitalism more acceptably than the Tories. In the past some, like David Owen, have decided that their ambitions would be better served by getting out and abandoning the principles they once claimed to hold. Others like Tony Benn have remained despite their out-of-step ideas, to become eccentric and embarrassing curiosities in the eyes of their more ambitious colleagues.

In his leadership acceptance speech of October 1983, Neil Kinnock attempted to forge a new unity by referring to "socialism" in the vague and misleading way that the Labour Party has often had recourse to when convenient:

Our function, our mission as socialists, is to see we gain the power to achieve that, and there is no other way but by Socialism—deliberate organisation of all the resources of humankind and talents. That is the definition of Socialism.

Such loose catch-all phrases may win standing ovations at Labour Party Conferences, but would also receive lip-service from all kinds of other capitalist politicians too.

In contrast to this, the Socialist Party has always held to a clear and precise definition of our aim, and being a democratic movement without leaders, any Socialist Party member could be relied on to explain this clear definition of socialism: a worldwide system of society in which goods and services are produced solely to satisfy human needs, not profit; which will only be possible when all the productive resources are democratically controlled, rather than at present where they are owned and controlled by private individuals or by the state on the "people's behalf". It cannot therefore be a system of buying and selling or bartering. Money will then be obsolete, as will be the need for human beings to starve while food is destroyed or allowed to rot because they cannot pay for it. This definition, of common ownership, production for use, and free access to all wealth, is expanded on throughout the journals and pamphlets of the Socialist Party.

Mixed Economy
In an effort to find out what was lift of Kinnock's so-called socialist unity after five years of his leadership, one of our members wrote to a number of Labour MPs late last year and asked for their definitions of socialism. The results were quite spectacular, confirming our suspicion of utter confusion, disagreement and bewilderment.

Both Kinnock and his right-hand man Hattersley simply sent copies of Democratic Socialist Aims and Values which at the time was the latest creation of the Labour Party's waffle factory in Walworth Road. The nearest that the pamphlet came to defining socialism was as a system of state capitalism, heavily decorated with a generous dose of liberal rhetoric. "The state', we were assured, "is an instrument for sustaining and enhancing the liberties of the whole community". "Free trade unions" would be vital to democracy; but Kinnock has been rather shy about any pledge to repeal the anti-trade union legislation of the past ten years. They trot out the old clichés about "redistribution of wealth" (and this is one promise which the 1974-79 Labour government did keep—the richest ten per cent became richer!) but there is no talk of changing the basis on which wealth is produced, only a recommitment to the "mixed economy", as "there are many areas of the economy where market allocation and competition between companies . . . is essential" and "democratic socialists believe in market allocation". Next they'll be telling us that defenders of capitalism "believe in common ownership".

Tony Benn was one of several respondents who referred us to literature on the subject, in this instance a list of the many books and pamphlets he has written since 1957. He also sent the Aims and Objectives of the Campaign Group, which advocates "a steady expansion of common ownership . . . covering the commanding heights of the economy". It is clear, however, that this refers to state capitalism again, as the leaflet elsewhere speaks not of ending the state, government and law which are all parts of the profit system and of class division, but of subjecting these institutions to "fundamental reform" only. Likewise, when interviewed in the Socialist Standard in 1980, Benn upheld the Clause Four blueprint for nationalisation.

Gwyneth Dunwoody also referred us to the old chestnut of Clause Four of the Labour Party Constitution, while Dale Campbell-Savours plumped for "a collectivist approach" with a bit of "democratic accountability" on the side. His comment that "I could have spent several hours pondering in the most subtle detail exactly what I do mean by Socialism, and it might be good for me personally to do so" could well be taken to heart by many of the other respondents. Peter Shore, on the other hand, went for "a society of equals . . . to end the exploitation of man by man". He seems to have forgotten that saying that under Labour governments the exploitation of "man by man" is replaced by its opposite.

Stuart Bell sent several typed sheets, the gist of which can be summed up by his assertion that "the Labour Party believes in a mixed economy where profits are accepted but where profits are accepted but where a better use of them would be re-investment". He also showed an unfortunate lack of prescience by stating (in November 1988) that "Mikhail Gorbachov and the leader of the Chinese people . . . are seeking to democratise their socialism, to make it accountable and therefore flexible and responsive to the needs of people rather than bureaucracies". So, according to his defence of state capitalism referred to as "socialism", is the wholesale slaughter of Chinese workers part of this new "flexible" response?

Self-Publicity
Michael Foot declined to provide a definition, instead recommending various books by Aneurin Bevan, John Strachey, himself and others. Several others also found themselves more inclined towards arrogant self-publicity than to define for us what they stand for. Ken Livingstone assured us  that we would find his definition of socialism in an interview he had had with Tariq Ali. Eric Heffer complained to that to define socialism "would take a lot of time and effort" and recommended instead that we get his latest book. Likewise, Bryan Gould recommend his own book and, as a teasing taster gave us this morsel, that socialism is "a political system designed to break down the concentrations in society and to defuse power as widely as possible". There was certainly a breakdown of concentration as far as these definitions were concerned.

Bearing in mind that many of these people have been elected to power on the basis of standing for something called "socialism", their general reluctance to give a clear and practical definition of what they stand for shows a quite outstanding contempt for the people who elect them to such positions of power. Perhaps the best example of this arrogance came from Robin Cook, whose assistant wrote that "Robin Cook has asked me to thank you for writing to him, unfortunately he does not feel that he is in a position to respond to your request." You could probably get a more helpful response from the queen.

Jeremy Corbyn wrote of an absence of exploitation, respect for the natural environment, and production for need and not profit. In this last phrase, he came dangerously close to a genuine definition of socialism. But the capitalist class need not fear; production for need cannot be introduced on the basis of minority control of the means of production, whether through private enterprise or through the state control which Corbyn stands for. Tam Dalyell limply offered "a system based on the advantage of the community rather than the individual". Finally, Denis Healey (don't forget the MBE) suggested "collective control of society" with the rider that "I hope my views will be clear to you in the enclosed pamphlet". In what might be regarded as a symbolic gesture, however, there was no pamphlet enclosed.

Politically Bankrupt
Then, for some light relief, some Tory MPs were also asked the same question. Teresa Gorman and John Carlisle both felt too bound by parliamentary protocol to be able to answer correspondence from a constituent of another MP. Dame Jill Knight quoted tediously from the Universal English Dictionary about collective ownership of capital. Henry Bellingham wrote passionately about "restrictions of an individuals freedom". Leon Brittan would not offer a definition as he would prefer to leave that to those who claim to be socialists. (He seems unaware that he would have as much claim to call himself a socialist as some of the other respondents!) Finally, our member was warmly reassured by Graham Bright that "as a Conservative MP my aim is to preserve the liberties of my country and ensure its peace and prosperity".

The conclusion to this enquiry, then, must be that the Labour Party remains quite bankrupt politically. Even when invited to define socialism, the rhetoric of confusion continues to churn out. Even in their most visionary moments, these people continue to fluctuate narrowly between the limited horizons of private and state forms of capitalism. They are unable to define socialism clearly or in practical terms because they are caught up entirely in the idea of trying to run capitalism. For a clear explanation of the socialist alternative then, workers must turn to the uncompromising, principled aim of the Socialist Party and our companion parties in the World Socialist Movement.

NW/CS

Why not socialism now? (1998)

From the May 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why does the World Socialist Movement not get involved in social activism, in trying to do something now under capitalism?

There is an endless stream of issues under capitalism and a myriad of organizations are involved in them. These issues are clearly attractive to people and generate a huge amount of donations. For example, Greenpeace International has 2.9 million members, six ships and a $153-million budget (as of September 1996). So why don't Socialists get involved too?

Every organization has to decide what it is working for, and whether that aim is important. When the first of the parties in the World Socialist Movement was founded in 1904, it decided it was going to work for socialism.

The socialist analysis of society shows that capitalism itself is the underlying cause of most of the problems which the social activists want to solve. The social activists attack the symptoms but ignore the cause. Social activists work to reform capitalism, socialists work to eliminate capitalism: the cause of the problems.

If people eliminate the cause of the problems, the problems won't keep cropping up. Instead of trying to fix the symptoms, year in and year out, forever, people can eliminate the cause, once. Then we can all get on with living our lives in a world where solutions actually solve problems, instead of just covering up symptoms.

Emotionally difficult

This approach can be emotionally difficult. It may even mean that someone dies today, who might have been saved by social activism. A simple analogy to explain the socialist perspective.

If a pipe bursts and the water is rising on the floor, one can start bailing the water out while it continues to flow in, or one can turn the water off, and then start bailing. It may take a while to find the tap, and some valuables might be destroyed while searching, but unless the water is turned off, the water will continue to rise and bailing is rather pointless.

Socialists are not immune to the human tragedies which occur daily, by the millions, and which generate thousands of social activist groups trying to stem the tide. Socialists suffer those tragedies as severely as anyone else, but work to encourage people to find the tap and turn it off.

If the reform actions of the social activists saved everyone who might have died today, it would be harder to question their approach. But the fact is they don't even come close. After the Holocaust in the 1940s, people said "Never Again". In the 1990s, genocide was on people's minds again, for a few hours, when the atrocities in Srebrenica, Bosnia hit the front pages. Genocide didn't stop for 50 years. It continued all along in places such as East Timor, but wasn't, apparently, important enough to make the front pages. The environment promoting genocide didn't go away, and so neither did genocide.

If the social activists had solved the myriad of problems, or were even to be able to say that things were steadily improving, that would argue in favour of their approach to social activism.

But that is not the case. The reality is that the reforms which the social activists promote do not work. The social activists are not gaining much, if any, ground, and the same problems continue to appear. It is often one step forward, several steps back.

That is the reality of capitalism. Social activism cannot change that.

Or rather what most people call "social activism" can't change it. Socialists are social activists, and suggest that working to eliminate the cause of the problems is the most valuable type of social activism.

Socialists make a choice. We choose to use our time and limited funds to work to eliminate the cause of the problems. One can pick any problem and often one can find that real improvements have taken place, usually after a very long period of agitation. Rarely, if ever, has the problem disappeared, and usually other related problems have cropped up to fill the vacuum of destruction or suffering left by the "solution".

After hundreds of years of social activism, both the problems of war and poverty, which most people consider to be rather important, are still major problems and are nowhere near solution. War didn't stop in 1918 or 1945, it continues every day, somewhere in the world. The anti-war movement seems to be fading out without ending war.

The anti-poverty movement is now marginal. Eliminating war and poverty are no longer even in the realm of discussion for reformists. The reformists have failed.

Reformism has failed

Some environmentalists tell us that if the environment is destroyed all the rest won't matter. That is true enough, but there is little indication that the huge, well-funded environmental movement is making much real headway. For example, since the Rio Earth Summit, the forests of Brazil, sometimes called "the lungs of the planet", are being destroyed faster than before.

Worldwatch Institute tells us that millions of hectares of tropical and deciduous forest still disappear each year, and carbon dioxide emissions are at record highs.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently reported that major air pollutants have decreased by nearly 30 percent over the last 25 years, while the economy grew. That's good. But does anyone think that the fight for breathable air is over? It isn't, and if industry moves out of a country to get less strict (cheaper) regulations, the fight will get a lot harder.

Maurice Strong, who was Secretary General of the Rio Earth Summit, and now heads the Earth Council, says "far too few countries, companies, institutions, communities and citizens have made the choices and changes needed to advance the goals of sustainable development." Strong also tells us that 100 countries are worse off today than 15 years ago, with 1.3 billion people earning less than $1 a day.

Socialists have been saying for over 90 years that reforming capitalism won't solve the problems and we have been proven correct so far. People who say that it is too early to accept that verdict seem willing to wait another 90 years to see what has, by then, transpired.

If socialists are correct, that would mean another 90 years of war, of poverty, of economic crises, of environmental destruction. It means that and more, as the destructive capability of society increases daily. There is no even moderately compelling evidence that socialists are wrong. There is compelling evidence that socialists are right.

Socialism is what socialists want, so socialism is what they work for, not the reforms of the "social activists".

The Companion Parties of Socialism, in the World Socialist Movement, are socialist parties. They promote socialism because that is all a socialist party can promote.

If you find a "socialist" party promoting "social activism", you'll have found a non-socialist party ignoring socialism and working for reforms, not solutions.

A tiny group of socialists can't solve the world's problems; only a huge, socialist majority can do that. It is up to every individual to create that majority, and to use it to turn off the tap of capitalism, so that the problems can be solved.

Steve Szalai

Material World: Criminals in Business Suits (2012)

The Material World Column from the August 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Few of us have any real understanding of the secretive world of intelligence and undercover operations. Spy thrillers are hardly a reliable guide. But perhaps we can learn a bit from the revelations of whistleblowers – disillusioned insiders who decide to tell all and damn the consequences.

I have before me memoirs by two American whistleblowers –Susan Lindauer, Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq (2010) and Sibel Edmonds, Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story (2012). Both books are self-published. Which could mean either that no publisher would risk taking them or that no publisher thought them credible.

Lindauer was a CIA “asset”who represented the US in unacknowledged and therefore deniable “back-channel”communications with various governments. She negotiated an agreement with the government of Saddam Hussein that took all declared American interests into account but still failed to avert the US attack on Iraq. She says that when she blew the whistle, she was arrested on obscure charges under the Patriot Act and that while she was in prison an attempt was made to declare her insane and forcibly drug her.

Edmonds translated tapped telephone conversations from Turkish and Persian sources for the FBI. She discovered that a colleague was working for the very businessmen it was their task to monitor and says when she tried to persuade her bosses to do something about it she was fired. She was also branded a traitor by the government of her native Turkey, to which she could no longer safely return.

Pillars of society

The official mission of the FBI is to fight dangerous forms of organized crime like terrorism, money laundering and the illegal trade in narcotics, arms, nuclear components, and military and industrial secrets. The trouble for FBI agents who sincerely want to pursue this mission is that many of the criminals engaged in these activities are extremely well-connected and influential –real ‘pillars of society’. As Edmonds remarks, most of us associate global crime with gun-toting gangsters and Mafiosi. However,

“Turkish criminal networks consist mainly of respectable-looking businessmen (including top international CEOs), high-ranking military officers, diplomats, politicians and scholars.”  (p. 97)

These respectable people employ the best lobbying firms and cultivate (to put it more crudely, buy) equally respectable American public officials and Pentagon, State Department and White House bureaucrats, securing hundreds of millions of dollars a year in US government contracts for Turkish companies.

Naturally, those officials and bureaucrats do not want to receive FBI reports about the criminal activity of their partners. They made it clearly understood that even raising such delicate matters, let alone acting on them, would “irreparably damage our relations with a key ally.”

Nor did Bush Administration officials want to endanger even more lucrative relations with another “key ally”by having the connections of prominent Saudis with Islamist terrorism brought to their attention. It was much more convenient to blame Saddam.

This does not mean that nuclear non-proliferation, prevention of terrorist attacks and other declaratory goals are completely phoney. In principle, some policy makers might like to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons. And they do not relish the prospect of being blown to pieces in their plush air-conditioned offices. It is just that they do not give these issues high priority. Other things take precedence. Especially making money.

Terrorism, of course, is only a bad thing when it is directed against ‘us’. The CIA has always been happy to fund and promote terrorism against Russia and other rival powers. Sometimes terrorists escape the control of their patrons and ‘bite the hand that fed them’. This is known in the trade as blowback. 

Divided agencies

Neither of the whistleblowers gives credence to the theory that the Bush Administration actually arranged the attacks of September 11, 2001. Lindauer, however, speculates without any proof that a rogue group of US intelligence agents could have given the terrorists a helping hand by laying explosives under the Twin Towers.

In the weeks and days leading up to September 11 it wasn’t easy to discern what exactly top US officials wanted. They received warnings of imminent terror attacks from their own agents and from other governments (the French, for instance), but appeared not to heed them. How was their unresponsiveness to be interpreted? Most likely they were ‘in denial’ – their heads stuck firmly in the sand.

Some agents continued right up to the last moment to repeat the warnings and urge the adoption of countermeasures –for example, the deployment of anti-air defences on the roofs of threatened buildings. Others took a different view.

What makes such things possible is the division of intelligence agencies into numerous small groups that are isolated from one another and responsible only to the very top of the government hierarchy. When –as evidently often happens –they find themselves without clear guidance from above, they may begin to act autonomously and at cross purposes. Thus, in the run-up to the war with Iraq, some groups of agents (like the one Lindauer belonged to) were trying to avert war while others were trying to bring it about.

Stefan

Capitalist crises (2015)

Book Review from the August 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Capitalism’s Crises: A Debate'. Contributions by Andrew Kliman, David Harvey, and Doug Lain. Marxist-Humanist Initiative. 54 pages.

Andrew Kliman wins this debate hands down.  David Harvey has tried to argue that Marx didn’t really hold or didn’t stick to the theory of ‘the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall’.  He did suggest that, as labour is the only source of profit and as capital accumulation tended to be labour-saving, there was a tendency for the amount of profit to grow more slowly than the amount of capital invested. So Harvey’s view is easy enough to rebut. The real debate, which Harvey does not enter into, is how this tendency might be related to financial crises and economic downturns.

Some argue that there is a direct link between the falling rate of profit theory and crises, in that, as a result of the introduction of more and more labour-saving machinery over a period, the rate of profit eventually falls so low that there is no longer an incentive to invest so much and so there’s a slump in production.

Kliman’s argument is that the link is only indirect:

‘Marx did not regard the tendency of the rate of profit to fall as an immediate cause of commercial or financial crises. He argued that a decline in the rate of profit leads to a crisis indirectly and after some delay. It promotes overproduction (by, e.g., depressing productive investment demand). It also promotes financial speculation and swindling (…) it is only when debt finally cannot be repaid that a crisis – that is, a financial crisis – erupts, and the crisis then leads to stagnation’  [Kliman’s emphasis].

He also writes of ‘the existence of many intermediate links between the fall in the rate of profit and the outbreak of crisis.’  But with all these intermediate links is this really a falling rate of profit theory of crises? Doesn’t it amount in the end to saying in effect that capitalism causes crises?

No such questions arise over the complementary view that during a slump the rate of profit rises through the devaluation of capital (capital is not a thing but a sum of values), so creating the condition for a resumption of capital accumulation. Kliman explains this well, underlining a very useful distinction between a financial crash (the actual ‘crisis’ point) and the drop in production that follows, useful because those in the Marxist tradition (including ourselves on occasion) sometimes use the word ‘crisis’ to cover both.

Adam Buick

Work - as in holic (1994)

From the February 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

I am unemployed at the moment, on a small retainer from a government which begrudges it heartily and doesn't miss an opportunity to remind me of the fact. Officially I am an IT trainer and (for the benefit of those at the benefit office employed to stop my benefit) I am actively seeking work. Information Technology, if you don't already know, is for those who think there is something seriously groovy about electronic filing systems and adding machines. I certainly do. In this heady world of techno fashion toys people like me describe new clever filing systems as "sexy", which shows you how disturbed we are.

It is interesting to note in passing that the CBI recently complained that Britain was going down the toilet because its workers are not trained in Information Technology. Anyone who knows anything about computers knows this is all bollocks, and that Britain will go down the toilet whether or not its workers know how to save a text file memo in dBase. I suspect the government takes the same view. I got made redundant, after all.

Being unemployed is of course a pain in the arse, but it has its moments. I'm pretty rich in freedom for one thing, although oddly I fritter that away in just the same way an employed person does money, wondering where it all went at the end of the month and thinking that it never seems to buy anything these days.

But I've had a dose of life in the Office, as a computer programmer, and by god that was like being on a different planet. Forty hours a week for forty years under forty-watt light-bulbs — that was a nightmare I had to get out of bed to experience. The cheery accounts department banter only made it worse. But what threatened to push me over the edge was that I was surrounded by workaholics. I developed a large rash of "attitude problems" and "under-motivation complexes" by being planted among individuals who all wanted to chalk up fourteen hours graft a day and no passes.

Chas was the accountant. Very nice chap, charming, friendly, lots of brains and charisma. One of the new breed of managers, who don't give orders but merely ask "personal favours", giving you the impression that they're your friends and not your employers. Chas works from seven a.m. till ditto p.m. virtually every night (and takes work as well). Then there's "owd Fred", who'd been there since they took all the railings away from the park for Spitfires, and he was putting in a solid ten hours a day. There's Arthur who would look at his watch and say "Christ, I'll get shot . . . " but still wouldn't go home.

Who you know
The Managing Director, a relation in the old family, would come in for an occasional gloat round the office but was usually out fishing in the afternoon, from what I could see.

So did I have the wrong attitude, I wondered? Is office work so exciting that people the world over just can't tear themselves away from it even to go to lunch? In extremis, I turned to friends for a little psychiatric help.

"Look here," I chattered through clenched teeth, manfully containing my hysteria, "is it me or is it them? Who's the nutter?"

"Oh, that's nothing," came the careless reply. "I worked at a place once . . ."

One morning I staggered into work after a particularly heavy night on the piss to discover that the mainframe computer had crashed because, get this, one of the staff had come back to finish some invoices at midnight. Unpaid, mind you.

And when you suggest that socialism could roll along quite happily because at bottom human beings quite like work and would do it paid or not, people look at you as if you're completely deranged.

"Oh no," they state flatly, "you can't have a society where everything is free and nobody is paid to work. No one would do anything. People are too selfish."

Working to rule
People think I'm cynical. Well now, let's not get the wrong idea. I'm not flatly knocking dedication to the job. I wouldn't want to be shovelled bleeding into Casualty one night after being bagged by some drunken bastard in a Volvo only to find that the staff were on their shift break and couldn't possibly be disturbed until halfpast two. I realize that working strictly to rule isn't always practical or desirable. But there are one or two basic economic considerations here that are worth pointing out. Unions exist, as everyone knows, to try to improve the pay and conditions of work. Many however have exactly the same attitude to them that we do to a commercial plumber. In other words, we treat unions like a paid-for service, to resort to only when our pay-packet springs a sudden leak, and not as organizations that require our constant attention. Union reps with hundreds on their books usually can't get double figures into the meetings. The fact that this is partly the movement's own fault for being undemocratic in the past isn't really the point. What is the point is that workers themselves, by opting out of a union which "charges eight quid a month and does sod all" and by agreeing to work extra hours for nothing, are not doing themselves any big favours.

Being an unemployed IT trainer myself, I could take the view that every IT trainer out there who is doing work for free is a traitor to the cause of my personal unemployment. The state won't come up with the funds to pay me, and thanks to them it doesn't have to. According to one researcher, "the cost of replacing the work of the voluntary sector would be well in excess of £20 billion — or some 12p or 13p on the basic rate of income tax." Since we're being so generous with our time, why don't we volunteer to run the NHS as a charitable endeavour and then we can put the nurses out of work too? (Half the hospitals in the country seem to be paid for out of collection as it is).

Meanwhile the Managing Director is presumably still pissing himself laughing down by the river. Whoops, another bite on the line  . . .

Joining the dog race
If you bred whippets for sale, you wouldn't feed them on smoke salmon and then sell them for half their value, would you? No, you'd buy the cheapest dog food you could get away with and charge the highest price you could get. Thus are fortunes made. It's not a matter of greed as some people seem to  think but simply of common sense. Gather ye profits while ye may, because of course the bottom might drop out of whippets at any moment. Not a pleasant thought.

In capitalism people's skills, like whippets, are a commodity. In fact, unless you're rich, it is the only commodity you've got to sell, so why sell yourself short? The selling process is nothing but the frantic pursuit of means to pay for the privilege of living. It's like being born with an overdraft that you can never clear off.

The labour market that we sell ourselves in works like any other market, in other words, on the basis of supply and demand. If you have trained for thirteen years as a doctor, you're a bit of of a rarity and in some demand, so normally you'll fetch a decent price. (Naturally they'll always try and pay you less, if they can get away with it — you have to learn to haggle, which is why unions were created in the first place). If you have trained for thirteen years as a Conquistador you will certainly be a rarity but no one is going to pay you large sums of money to invade Mexico. The labour market is quite ruthless. Some workers fetch good prices and other don't. What's more, like any other market, nothing is stable and demand is unpredictable. The buyers of labour wring their hands and sniff that the recession is ruining them, but they make a staggering profit out of this arrangement.

Just look for a minute at where the profit comes from. If employers were to pay you exactly what you're worth to them, they wouldn't make a penny out of it for themselves. So they pay you less than your labour is earning them and keep the difference, to save up and buy themselves nice clothes, politicians and continents. Ah but, you might ask, how do they know exactly what your labour is worth to them? After all, most workers are not employed to produce anything at seventy pounds a week that you can paint green and charge a hundred quid for. In the real world it's much more complicated than that. So they employ accountants like Chas to figure it out for them (and they don't pay him the millions he saves them either).

Why should a worker give ten hours to an employer when the contract says eight and they're only paying for seven anyway? Add to this the anti-union feeling which also exists, and one begins to see that really, until people start taking their own interest seriously, the owning class has got it made.

Paddy Shannon