Socialism before reformism (1983)

From the April 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many objections to the case for socialism are rooted in the argument that, while a social system based on common ownership of the means of production and distribution with free access to wealth is highly desirable, something must be done now about the problems which afflict the human race.

This argument, which on the face of it has much merit, for the problems of capitalism are urgent and horrific, makes a number of concessions to the socialist case. It agrees that capitalism cannot satisfy the needs of its people, that it must continually throw up wars, poverty, famine and the like. It concedes that the customary political parties do little to alleviate the situation; it does not raise any objections that socialism is somehow at odds with "human nature", that people are naturally so divisive, aggressive and greedy that a co-operative society could not survive. It does not waste time in questioning whether a moneyless, classless society is practicable. It accepts that what are now everyday blights on our lives simply will not exist when we have socialism.

But such concessions, though important, are not conclusive to the reformists. Millions dies each year, needlessly, in famines; the world's power blocs possess an obscenely high level of destructiveness, enough to kill each one of us again and again; in this country alone there are millions living in slums, or homeless, or in the direst poverty. Such problems—and there are many others—say the reformists, must take priority over any efforts to revolutionise society. We must act now to get rid of the bomb, to organise food supplies to the famine victims, allow special state benefits to the needy. When we have cleared up these matters it will be time to turn our minds to socialism.

The reformist argument then spells out, often in impressive detail, the current social troubles. It tells us, with the help of graphs, tables, statistics, about the scope of these and their effects on people's lives. Thus CND has a wealth of knowledge about the numbers of nuclear weapons in existence, their destructive power, the area which one bomb could wipe out, how many it would kill at once, how many it would leave suffering a slower, more agonising death, how it would cripple millions of survivors with radiation diseases. As an indictment, an encouragement to question why a modern society should devote such effort to destroying itself, it is impressive and valuable.

From that type of indictment the reformists proceed to an assumption that the problem can be eliminated by applying some piecemeal remedy to it. CND is sure that nuclear weapons can be abolished simply by persuading the government in this country to do just that, on its own. Oxfam workers are convinced that food shortages can be dealt with by rushing supplies of the stuff to the areas which are suffering from famine. It needs, runs the reformist argument, no more fundamental action than that.

In fact, in terms of logical argument, there is a massive, unbridgeable chasm between the indictment and the policies which the reformists put forward as the solution. There is no evidence to support the assumption — for it is no more than that — that capitalism's sickness can be cured by taking each symptom separately without any reference to the cause and to the fact that all the symptoms spring from a common basis.

In the case of CND, despite over a quarter of a century of marches, demonstrations, sit-downs, terms of imprisonment, the weapons are still there, growing worse and more threatening as they proliferate across the world. We live less securely now than we did when CND first came into being. This applies also to the other issues we have here discussed; the most sanguine of reformists can offer no hope that they are diminishing in intensity. Indeed, such is their grip on our lives that the reformist campaigns cannot relax in the assurance of success; all the time they must keep up the pressure and start new protests, each making the same claims as their discredited and exhausted predecessors.

The unbridgeable chasm bars the way because the reformists are following the wrong route. An effective indictment of social problems should lead to an analysis of them and then to their cause. Nuclear weapons spring from the fact of modern war, which is directly attributable to the basic nature of capitalism. A similar approach to the other problems will point to the conclusion that they also have the same root cause. And from there it is a small, irresistible step to the final argument, that only by abolishing capitalism will we rid the world of its problems.

But abolishing capitalism is not the end of it; as human society must continue, what is to replace the system of class ownership of the means of life, of war, famine, poverty, avoidable disease, insecurity? The only other basis possible is the opposite of private ownership — it is communal ownership of the means of production and distribution and their democratic control by the entire human race. That is socialism.

An examination of capitalism, then, leads by a series of logical steps to the conclusion that socialism is the next, necessary, step in social evolution. Capitalism is critically sick and there is need for urgent treatment. The human race need not continue to suffer the nuclear threat, or endure famine and poverty and we must act at once on that knowledge. Only socialism will answer human needs; only socialism will enable us to build a world which allows the people to live co-operatively, in abundance and freedom and to contribute to the limits of their abilities.

The priority is socialism.

Greasy Pole: Darling turns the screw (2000)

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

When New Labour came to power, it was assumed by many that knee-jerk government was over. But as Labour climbed the greasy pole, "principles" and beards were quickly shed

The governments of John Major and Margaret Thatcher did not go down in history for creating a harmonious country free of poverty, stress and disease but they will be remembered for a few other things—handbagging opponents, rampant unemployment and sleaze. And in response to these things, knee jerk policies—the rushing out of a parliamentary bill or some other measure after some sudden, media-motivated panic about a problem which, until then, had existed for a long time unmolested by any attention from frantic ministers. The idea of the knee-jerk was to give the impression that the government was alert to the concerns of the voters and would act on them with all possible speed. What really happened was that polices were trotted out which quickly ran into trouble precisely because they were so badly designed and so had to be withdrawn or reshaped, to the acute embarrassment of their originators.

When Blair's Labour Party came bounding into power in May 1997, overflowing with youthful vigour and optimism and fresh ideas, a lot of their supporters assumed that knee-jerk was a thing of the past, with the rest of the nightmare of Tory rule. From then on every government action would be weightily considered, carefully worked out after proper consultation and responsibly presented. It was, they triumphantly assured each other, the only way of dealing with any problem. New Labour, New Sobriety.

Benefits 

Well it did not work out like that. Just like the Tories before them, the Blair government gives every sign that they are not in control of the situation, that they are in a continual state of panic, cobbling together policies as each emergency hits them in a desperate attempt to keep the voters' confidence until it is time for the next election. We have seen several examples of this recently, as things get worse and worse for the government. We have seen Jack Straw's infamous crackdown on asylum seekers and his blundering attempts to reduce the crime statistics. We have seen Tony Blair's astoundingly mad suggestion to give the police powers to drag public order offenders to the nearest cash dispenser to pay an on-the-spot fine.

Another knee-jerk which has caused the government some embarrassment is the attempt to suspend state benefits for people who breach community penalty orders. The government's original idea was that the matter should not be tested in the courts, where the breach would have to be proved. It would need only a probation officer or a community service officer to allege that there had been a breach and to summons the offender for the Department of Social Security to cut the person's benefit—entirely in the case of Job Seekers' Allowance and partly in the case of Income Support—for up to 26 weeks.

A predictable objection to this proposal was that to cut the benefit of a person who had no other means of support was more or less inviting them to go out and commit a few more crimes just to get by. The Tory peer Lord Windlesham who, as a past chairman of the Parole Board has some experience in the matter, condemned the measure as ". . . rooted in deep ignorance of deviant behaviour and the most effective ways of countering it". The Penal Affairs Consortium described the proposal as ". . . retrograde, counter-productive and bound to increase crime". Such arguments did not impress the government, who are among the small minority who, in face of overwhelming evidence, deny that there is a link between crime and the levels of poverty. Nor were they impressed when it was pointed out that cutting benefit would not affect offenders who are in employment and who could therefore breach their community orders without fearing a cut in their income. The lawyers' argument, that courts, and not some government agency, should deal with breaches of their own orders was similarly dismissed.

Darling's beard 

The person with the job of implementing the policy is Alistair Darling, who glories in the title of Secretary of State for Social Security. In fact there was a time when Darling had strong reservations about the proposal but these were not based on any principled objections, nor concerns about the welfare of people whose only income he wanted to take away. Darling was worried about which ministry was going to have to pay to administer the measure. When he lost that battle he enthusiastically supported the idea. Which is just what would have been expected of him for he is a man who might politely be described as a pragmatist but more realistically as an unprincipled, ambitious climber. Just how ambitious was illustrated in the matter of his beard which, when he first came onto the political scene, was almost as luxuriously dense as Frank Dobson's. Darling liked his beard; his wife liked it a lot. But in 1996, when he was opposition spokesman on Treasury and economic affairs, Darling was visited by some of Gordon Brown's heavies who tactfully informed him that the beard had to go. It did not, apparently, inspire trust in what is known as the financial community (the people who make profits and losses from useless fiddles like selling and buying currencies all day long) and so could work against Labour's interests. Of course Darling, who is rumoured to have once been a Trotskyist, could have told these people that he had not come into politics to butter up financiers, except that that was why he had come into it. So gradually, over a short period, the beard came off. So Darling kept his job. And got promoted.

And the "financial community" was very happy. "In opposition," said the Financial Times on 14 June 1997, "Mr. Darling was widely praised for his handling of his City brief . . ." The admiration for him did not flag after the election, when Darling got into government, as Chief Secretary to the Treasury: "He is about as unscary as they come . . . Just the sort of person the City could deal with . . ." rhapsodised one senior banker. "Flexible on regulation and willing to listen . . ." burbled a City chief executive, who may have been nervous about what regulation might do to his firm's profits. With those kinds of commendations, Darling was not likely to lose sleep over measures designed to drive desperate and alienated people even deeper into impoverishment and despair.

Contracts 

When the attacks began on the proposal to deny benefit to people who breach their community penalty orders Darling did not show up so well; his admirers in the City would have been disappointed. Apparently devoid of any valid argument to support the cuts, he fell back on a spurious one: “Surely it is not unreasonable to say to someone if they enter into an agreement they should stick to it? . . . We are all responsible for our actions. Society is built on a contract. There are rights, yes, but there are responsibilities too” (Guardian, 24 June 2000).

That argument may have pleased one or two Labour dummies (one noble lord moaned "Why can't these people toe the line when they know the issue with which they are faced?") but it did not answer the case. As a lawyer Darling should know about the desirability of a contract being between equals. This would not have been the case with many community penalties, which are imposed on an offender waiting trembling in the dock to hear their fate from a judge or a bench of magistrates sitting on high. Community penalties were designed by the law to be direct alternatives to imprisonment, which brought an element of coercion into the acceptance of the "contract". In any case the ex-solicitor Darling seemed to have overlooked the fact that the need for an offender to agree to a community penalty was abolished some years ago; courts can now make such an order whether the defendant agrees or not.

But enough of Darling as a lawyer. What about him as a politician? Society is indeed built on a contract—or rather this society is built on the "contract" between the class who monopolise the means of wealth production and distribution and the rest of us, who "contract" to be exploited in order to live—and to lubricate and maintain the whole system. This is another contract between unequals because the working class have the choice to submit to their own exploitation or live on, or below, the bread line. For example, as Darling himself has pointed out (Guardian Special Reports, 22 August 1999), of the 2000 children born every day in Britain a third will be born into what is officially known as poverty. Left as it is, he said, many of these children will not only be born poor but will die poor. That is a fair measure of the effects of the capitalist society which Darling and his party support.

Promises 

When parties like New Labour present themselves to us at elections, wheedling and cajoling, they offer to enter a contract with us: give them our votes and they will organise capitalism so that it behaves as if it were not a society of privilege and exploitation. For some reason this kind of appeal, from Tory as well as Labour, is seductively successful at one election after another. It was effective in 1997, when millions of people contracted with Labour over its promises, for example to provide " . . . better schools, better hospitals, better ways of tackling crime . . . one nation, with shared values and purpose . . ." The Labour Party did not say then that their part of the contract would involve the deeper humiliation of the more vulnerable members of the working class while they fawned on wealthy capitalists and "celebrities". They did not say that, in knee-jerk policies and many other ways, they would run British capitalism in a style distinguishable from the Tories only because, as in the case of Darling's benefits cut for offenders, it would be even harsher.

Ivan

Marxism and Russia (1933)

From the February 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mrs. Barbara Wootton has a reputation as an economist and is accepted by many people as an authority on the theories of Marx. She holds views on the relationship of Marxian theories to the social system in Russia which are fairly common. In the Highway, organ of the Workers' Educational Association (December), she sets out to interpret Russia for the benefit of non-Russians who wish to understand what is going on in that country.

Her explanation is a simple one:

“The Soviet Mind is a single mind. It is this which gives life in present-day Russia its peculiar flavour. ... In other countries no such common collective purpose is known, unless it be the purpose of making war. . . . The Soviet mind not only knows what it is after; it is also after very strange things. . . . These strange things are, of course, nothing less than those embodied in the philosophy called Marxism.”

Mrs. Wootton describes briefly some of the strange things. Among them is concentration on increasing the productivity of industry, what she calls “the glorification of economic output.” This, she says, leads the Russians to esteem sobriety because the sober worker has a bigger output. He must shun “licentious pleasures.” He must get up early and be punctual.

Another of the strange things is that the Russian child is taught to study phases of the class-struggle in other countries, but not in Russia. (According to Mrs. Wootton the children are taught that the class-struggle no longer exists in Russia.)

These and various other examples are given by Mrs. Wootton to “illustrate the extraordinary unity and consistency of Soviet ideas in every field.”

The whole of this is rubbish. There is no “common collective purpose” in Russia. The “strange things” are not strange. They are perfectly familiar to every student of capitalism everywhere, and Marx is not responsible for them.

Let us first take the “single mind” of Russia. Not a week passes without authoritative reports of the shooting or imprisonment of peasants and others who have come into conflict with the Russian Government. Frequent armed punitive expeditions are sent against rebellious groups of private peasants or members of collective farms. Dissident Communists are disgraced, exiled and imprisoned. At the moment a wholesale purge of the Russian Communist Party is taking place. The “single mind” is that of the Communist officials who control the vast repressive forces of the State. The appearance of unity is like its counterpart in every other country: it is imposed by those who have power on those who have not. Mrs. Wootton's analogy of the alleged “common collective purpose” of the nation making war is not a bad illustration of the absurdity of her argument. The war-making governments had to use conscription, supported by intensive lying propaganda and the savageries of military discipline to drive millions of unwilling or indifferent men into the trenches. Mrs. Wootton thinks that this is a common collective purpose. It did not look like that to the conscripts.

Then for the boosting of big output. Here Mrs. Wootton herself has to admit that the Russian “strange thing” bears a resemblance to the propaganda used in the U.S.A. before the present depression. She might also recall the official British “increased production” campaign of 1919-1920, backed by politicians in the three big parties (Labour included) and made the subject of innumerable newspaper articles, coloured posters in the streets, platform speeches and divinely-inspired sermons in the pulpits of churches of every denomination.

Then there is Mrs. Wootton's discovery that in Russia the children are taught to ignore the class-struggle at home and fix their eyes on the shocking state of unrest abroad. This is precisely what happens in every capitalist country. We are allowed to know that there were class struggles in the past and class struggles in benighted foreign countries, but the educational system does not recognise the existence of a class struggle here and now. There is no need to deal with her belief that the class struggle has disappeared from Russia. The rulers of that country officially admit that it is more acute than ever. That is why they have to depend for protection on their huge police and military forces, and that is why, in spite of Mrs. Wootton's nonsense, they do not trust to the “common collective purpose” supposed to have been derived by the Russian population from the theories of Marx.

Anyone acquainted with Marx's writings would know how he denounced the inhumanity of capitalism, sacrificing the comfort and health of the workers in order to build up huge production plants for the profit of the investors. Yet Mrs. Wootton holds Marx responsible for precisely the same process imposed on the Russian workers by the dictatorship. While the majority of Russian workers tighten their belts the home and foreign bondholders get their 10 per cent, or more on their investments out of the proceeds of the workers' labour, and specialists and bureaucrats draw their high salaries.

Mrs. Wootton shows by her article that she knows little of Russia, not very much about capitalism elsewhere, and understands nothing at all of Marx. Her views are not in themselves of special importance, but unfortunately her misrepresentations of Marx are widely held and do great harm to the Socialist movement.

Edgar Hardcastle

Obituary: Comrade Norman Taylor (1954)

Obituary from the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is with regret that we have to report the death of our Comrade, Norman Taylor, who died on August 27th after a life of suffering from one of the most pernicious diseases which this detestable system throws up. Despite this our comrade was active in the initiation of the Croydon Group and subsequently the Croydon Branch, which he was secretary of for many years.

We will all, I'm sure, share in expressing our sympathy and condolence with his wife, Comrade Rhoda, who we hope may find some measure of consolation in the fact, that her husband, Comrade Taylor, despite his enormous disabilities, was always on  hand to carry out for and behalf of the Party, which fell within his capacity.

M. A. C.

Exit Oskar the pink (1999)

From the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

In March the man the Sun once called the most dangerous man in Europe resigned as Germany's Finance Minister. The Sun—or rather Rupert Murdoch as a capitalist himself—didn't like him because they thought he had plans to increase direct taxes on profits in Britain up to the same level as in Germany.

Oskar Lafontaine was chairman of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) which returned to power in October after years in opposition. Politicians who are out of office for long periods often loose their grip on capitalist reality—that governments must nurture profits and provide an environment in which they can flourish since they are what makes capitalism go round—and imagine that governments can work wonders simply by political will.

Sometimes, when returned to power after years in the wilderness, they try to put this mistaken idea into practice. The classic example was the French leftwing government, with Communist Party participation, that came into office when Mitterrand was first elected President in 1981. They really believed that they could "relaunch the economy" by "increasing popular consumption" and so they brought in measures to increase the minimum wage (which in France affects all wages since they are tied to it) and social benefits.

The result wasn't long in coming. Instead of economic growth being relaunched, inflation increased, leading to three devaluations of the franc in as many years. Within a year the new government adapted its policies to capitalist reality; they clawed back the reforms they had introduced and imposed austerity as a means of shifting the balance back from consumption to profits. They had learned the hard way that you cannot run capitalism in the interests of the excluded majority.

Since, with Kohl winning election after election, the SPD had been out of power for fifteen years, the big question after their September 1998 election victory was: would they make the same mistake as the first Mitterrand government, especially as they were in coalition with the Greens who also had ideas which if seriously pursued would threaten profits?

Oskar Lafontaine had written a book in which he proposed, as a way of getting Germany out of the current crisis, that wages and salaries should go up in line with productivity. He repeated this in newspaper articles and interviews after the SPD election victory. Since this would result in wages and salaries going up faster than they had been, it was equivalent to the policy pursued by the 1981 French government. And the thinking behind it was the same: if wage and salary earners had more to spend this would create more markets, so stimulating the economy to grow again.

In the event this turned out to be just another electoral promise but it earned Lafontaine the reputation of being "Red Oskar". Red used to signify revolutionary and has always been the fetish colour of Socialists. But there was nothing revolutionary about Lafontaine's ideas. He was merely putting forward the orthodox Keynesian nostrum that in a period of economic stagnation you should increase spending. Of course by the end of the 1970s Keynesianism had proved to be an utter failure on this point, as Marxists had foreseen years previously. But it is a measure of the very narrow margin of manoeuvre of reformists these days that even milk-and-water Keynesian reformism is denounced as "revolutionary" and "red".

Although, as Finance Minister, Lafontaine never tried to implement his idea of tying wages and salaries to productivity he did introduce some new direct taxes on profits and he kept on calling on the European Central Bank to reduce interest rates. He believed that this would help Germany out of the crisis (even though in Japan interest rates are less than 1 percent and they're still in the economic doldrums). For a Finance Minister to repeatedly call for a lowering of the interest rate was seen as out of order or even counterproductive. The ECB, which fixes the minimum short-term lending rate for the whole of Euroland, had to refuse such calls just to prove it did not give in to political pressure.

It was this that was the immediate cause of Lafontaine's downfall. The interest rate reduction which he and the rest of the German government wanted was being held up by his political interference making it difficult for the Bank to do this. So pressure was bought to bear and he left politics to spend more time with his family. Yet another reformist politician bit the dust. Good, or rather good as long as it helps workers in Germany and elsewhere realise that reformism is a dead-end.

Adam Buick

Are you an abstainer? (1999)

From the May 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

This year has been dubbed the "year of elections". This month there are local elections and elections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, next month elections to the European Parliament. We're putting up a limited number of candidates, but are you one of those very many people who doesn't see the point in voting, and can't be bothered with politicians? If so, read on, you just might find this interesting.

You may have noticed that whoever gets elected, nothing really changes. This is because politicians normally have no intention of changing anything. They're really doing very nicely out of the system as it is, thank you, slump or no slump. While they enjoy their executive lunches, cars and kickbacks, the rest of us miserable suckers are supposed to toe the line, "yes" the bosses, and work ourselves into early graves to earn wages that wouldn't buy one of their bottles of claret.

If you're still reading this, you'll notice it isn't your ordinary run-of-the-mill election manifesto, with the usual vague promises and smiley conman confidence. Well, that's because we're not politicians, and don't let our name, and the fact that we are standing for election, fool you into thinking we are. The fact is, we represent an idea which is most unpopular and unfashionable these days, an idea which is ignored by the media, dismissed coldly by politicians, and avoided by anyone who prefers the status quo to stay put. This idea is revolution.

What are we proposing? Well, you must admit it would be difficult in one short article to prove any case beyond question, especially a case as big as this. All we can do is give you the bare bones, so don't be surprised if it doesn't convince you straight off. We're revolutionaries, not magicians. If you don't have questions to ask at the end of this then we're not doing our job properly, or you're not giving it any thought. And if you have questions, we can only suggest you contact us to ask them.

OK, you know that in our world, private property is king, and that the rich make the rules. You probably know that only about 5 percent of the world's population is rich, while 95 percent does all the work and lives in varying degrees of poverty, debt and stress. You may have concluded that this situation causes everything from street crime to international warfare, and you have almost certainly suffered yourself from the effects of overwork, deprivation and other people's "anti-social" behaviour. Considering that private property society, or capitalism in its developed form, was built by human beings, it is an amazingly anti-social and unfriendly system, and it brings out the worse in us. We treat each other with suspicion and we treat the planet with contempt.  

Undoubtedly this state of affairs is bad news all round, but what can be done? The politicians' response is to ignore the problem and talk about trivia instead, hoping nobody will notice. Look at their manifestos. That's why nothing changes. Our response is direct, and simple: the 95 percent need to sort their act out and abolish the private property principle, that mutual agreement that says one person has the right to own and keep what other people need, even if they should die because of it. And every single day, people are dying because of it. The real enemy of humanity is not a person or a group of rich people, it is simply this agreement.

What comes after capitalism?

Privately-owned property is an anachronism in this day and age. There is enough food in the world to make every individual fat. There are ten empty houses to every homeless person. Technology is producing abundance so fast that commodity prices keep collapsing, yet nobody has yet recognised what this all means. It means that there is a higher level of civilisation, of science, or arts, of culture, of personal fulfilment, waiting to come after capitalism—an advanced society which, because it has abolished scarcity, does not contain all the horrors that have dogged human organisation until now. From the standpoint of such a society, we in capitalism are still living in the Dark Ages, with our wars, famines, pollution and other disasters, and our outlook is suitably bleak. And from our present standpoint, a post-scarcity society seems a dim and distant image, a matter for the 22nd century perhaps, but not now. Lulled by the incessant idiotic chatter of politicians and their meaningless agendas, we do not notice that even now, today, we are standing on the very threshold of that post-scarcity world. All we have to do, as individuals, is take one step.

Revolution is a scary word, but it doesn't have to be a scary thing. If you prefer, think of it as a kind of social "upgrade", like building a better and faster computer. We don't advocate violence, although we can't know of course that the rich will quietly abdicate when they see that the game is up. But there is a personal revolution to face, as well, because a free society requires responsible members, not children who just play "follow-the-leader" and do as they are told. It's true that we get the society we deserve. Revolution consists in learning to deserve better.

Well, you've made it to the end of this strange manifesto. No mention of Europe. No mention whatsoever of local issues. No promises of "I'll do this and I'll do that for my constituents", no flattery, no sweet talk. Maybe now you'll sigh and throw this in the bin. If you vote for us you won't get a wage rise or a tax cut, but then again you probably won't anyway. Just remember, all those other candidates are happy to continue with the private property society you know and don't love, and equally happy to assist it in every possible way. They are selling you out, and your kids, and their kids after them. They are politicians. We are private citizens, democratically organised as a party to advertise revolution but not lead it, to abolish political power not keep it for ourselves, to promote a free society without rulers, and to disband when we have served our purpose. So if you vote for us now, it's not because we've conned you into it with charming lies. It's because you've just taken that all-important small step, the step that begins the journey.

Paddy Shannon

Cooking the Books: Good capitalism, bad capitalism? (2011)

The Cooking the Books Column from the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

“There is good and bad capitalism,” wrote Will Hutton in a recent article for the left-of-centre think-tank, the Policy Network

He argued that

“The left has to understand what capitalism properly managed can deliver: and then to demonstrate that the paradox is that only the left can provide the political tension that biases capitalism towards the good. While the right is the indiscriminate friend of all capitalism, the left’s mission is to hold capitalism’s feet to the Enlightenment fire – and thus make it work best to meet the ambitions and needs of ordinary people.”

This – apart from the philosophical stuff about the Enlightenment (the 18th century intellectual ferment that provided the theory for the American and French bourgeois revolutions) – is what the reformists of the old Labour Party always stood for in practice, despite their talk of socialism (in most cases, actually state capitalism). They believed that it was possible, through legislation and government intervention, to humanise capitalism, to smooth off its rough edges. Only that was not how they (or those of them interested in more than just getting into office and taking on the day-to-day running of capitalism) expressed it. They talked in terms of these measures being stepping stones to something beyond capitalism rather than creating a “good capitalism”.

What Hutton is doing is bringing the theory into line with the practice. As far as Ed Miliband is concerned, he’s preaching to the converted as the Labour leader is already on record as saying he wants “a capitalism that works for people and not the other way around” (Observer, 29 August).

“Bad capitalism”, according to Hutton, is “a universe of bloated incumbents, politically fixed markets, productive entrepreneurs forced to the sidelines and too little public investment. It cares little for the condition and risks of the people.” And good capitalism? It, says Hutton, has

“two key properties – a system of business ownership in which the returns to owners and managers is proportional to the risk being undertaken rather than winners taking all, along with politically and socially constructed institutions that help mitigate risk, thus allowing more to be taken.”

This is how capitalism according to its theorists is ideally supposed to function. But even if it did function in this way, there would still be minority class ownership, production for profit, and the division of society into rich and poor. In fact, for Hutton, there are also good capitalists and bad capitalists:

“Social democrats should properly distinguish between the deserving and undeserving rich.”

He then added, curiously:

“They should also be prepared to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving worker – and the deserving and undeserving poor. Marx made this point to the French socialists in his critique of the ‘Gotha Programme’.”

Hutton may know about the Enlightenment but he clearly doesn’t know about Marx. The fact that Gotha is in Germany should have been a hint that Marx was addressing German rather than French socialists. And there’s nothing in what Marx wrote there about deserving and undeserving workers. Hutton has presumably misinterpreted the labour-time voucher scheme Marx mentioned.

What Hutton fails to understand is that capitalism is based on the exploitation of wage-labour for surplus value and is governed by the imperative drive to accumulate more and more capital out of this. Which is why it can never be made to work “to meet the ambitions and needs of ordinary people” and why it can only work as a profit-making system in the interests of those who live off profits.

There is no such thing as a good capitalism.

Anthropology and politics (1999)

From the March 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the late 1920s and the 1930s a series of books by the American anthropologist Margaret Mead created a tremendous following among the general public. Coming of Age in Samoa, Growing up in New Guinea, and other blue Penguins still to be found on second-hand bookstalls thrilled generations of readers who wondered, after reading the accounts of free love among the people of the Pacific islands, whether they were getting their share. Then came spoilsports to interrupt the dream of what was reported to go on under the swaying palms and around the sleepy lagoons of Polynesia.

The whole thing was a hoax, these academics argued. Margaret Mead spent very little time in the Trobriand Islands, didn't bother to acquire the language, only learned what she wanted to learn, and her interpreters obliged by making it up.

There is a long tradition of hoaxes and forgeries in the human sciences. The fossil of Piltdown Man provided British archaeologists with something home-grown to offer against the French and Spanish with their sumptuous finds of Cro-Magnon people, their art and artefacts at Lascaux and Altmaira. By the time the Piltdown fossils had been identified as the skull of an ape mixed together with the skeleton of a not very prehistoric man the perpetrators were long dead.

The psychologist Sir Cyril Burt was discovered after his death to have produced some very original home-made statistics in his anxiety to prove that people are differently equipped with intelligence. He was one of a long line. A recent book The Bell Curve by another psychologist named Murray and an economist, continued this sterling work among social Darwinists to prove that the poor are poor because they are stupid. A sceptic might argue that if Natural Selection was a reliable hypothesis, then the most intelligent and robust should be sought among those who were products of the most testing circumstances—the historically poor.

These distortions mattered less in the nineteenth century before psychology was invented and anthropological research was carried on by chair-bound scholars like Sir James Frazer in his Golden Bough, which was a hotchpotch of classical mythology, and stories brought back from the Empire by missionaries like Dr Livingstone and army officers like General Pitt-Rivers. This cosy world was burst open by a new breed who took research out into the field. The Pole Bronislav Malinowski went to the Trobriand Islands and brought back to the newly-founded London School of Economics his findings published as Argonauts of the Western Pacific. This was a materialist account of the daily lives of the people. He supplied the sex himself by getting his leg over the nubile Margaret Mead.

American anthropology of this time was dominated by the German scholar Franz Boas, much of whose work had been concerned with the American Indians. The Frenchman Marcel Mauss had also written about the native Americans of the north Pacific coast in his classic essay The Gift, but like the amazingly prescient, and home-grown Lewis Henry Morgan with his Ancient Society of a century earlier, he had come up with conclusions of primitive communism which were clearly unacceptable and mostly ignored in the US. An added disability for Morgan was his being taken up by Engels in Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. It was not until the women's movement in the 1960s that either could be mentioned in academic circles.

Boas was much more interested in a cultural approach and pressed his student Miss Mead for details of the sex lives of her subjects. Her publisher was also pressing for juicy details which would guarantee big sales. The result was a succession of best-sellers which guaranteed her a mass following. Margaret Mead became a living embodiment of the Statue of Liberty. Enter the villains, in particular the Australian Derek Freeman, to the hisses of American academics.

The Australians are frequently anti-American, we are warned; although Margaret Mead "did provide misleading embellishments" to her accounts of native life, they did not materially affect their accuracy. Freeman, for his part charges her with being anti-evolutionary and stuck in a rut of cultural determinism. He pleads for an interactionist view of things. Her defenders counter that he is viewing 1920s' anthropology through the glasses of the 1980s with the benefit of hindsight.

If Americans are charged with reductionism, with ignoring the interaction between factors, then it would not be the first time that they laid themselves open. More recently than Margaret Mead, the biologist Garrett Hardin argued in The Tragedy of the Commons that medieval common land was destroyed by overgrazing until private property arrived to save it. But Hardin's unregulated free-grazing was as false an assumption as Mead's Polynesian lovelies being available to all-comers. There were rules, as wiser American counsels urged, also Karl Heinrich Marx:

"Men make their own history, but not just as they please. They do not choose the circumstances for themselves, but have to work upon circumstances as they find them, have to fashion the material handed down by the past."

Ken Smith 

Party Activities (1930)

From the February 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Head Office

The Sunday evening lectures that were commenced at Head Office in the autumn have continued through the winter with considerable success. These lectures are given mainly by members who are developing as speakers, and this offers a splendid opportunity for beginners. The questions and discussion that follow have been usually on a high level and cannot fail to provide valuable information to those present.

We would like to see more members in attendance.

WEST HAM. Meeting at Stratford.

In spite of very bad weather there was an interested audience of 250 at Stratford Town Hall on Sunday 12th, when our speaker dealt with the subject, "How to Get Socialism." Questions and opposition centred chiefly round the problem of doing something in order to check the worst effects of Capitalism. It was interesting to notice that even those who spoke in defence of the Labour Party policy were not prepared to speak enthusiastically about the Labour Government's actions. Instead of the usual Communist telling is that the workers must use armed force, the one Communist opponent who intervened did so in order to deny that the Communists hold any such view. Fortunately the speaker had available the report of the last Communist Congress where that policy was reiterated.

The members of the West Ham Branch who organised the meeting had used it as an opportunity of making the party more widely known. Some 3,000 handbills were given away and 1,000 specimen copies of the Socialist Standard were distributed prior to the meeting.

There was a collection of £2 6s. 9d., and literature was sold to the value of 9s. 4d.

EAST LONDON.

The East London Branch have been very active during the winter and are making good progress. Open-air propaganda in Victoria Park has been maintained and indoor public meetings have been held each month. In addition, the branch is conducting lectures in the branch room at 141, Bow Road, on alternate Fridays in the month.

Potential speakers have been discovered among new members, and are being given opportunities for training. Sales of literature are good.

BATTERSEA.

The monthly meetings run by Battersea branch in their branch room at Latchmere Road Baths have been a great success. Attendance has been good and considerable interest taken in the party point of view. Open-air propaganda has been maintained on Clapham Common, except in very bad weather conditions.

SHEFFIELD. A BRANCH FORMED.

Efforts to form a branch in Sheffield have met with success, and we are looking forward to early signs of propaganda activity in that neighbourhood. Those wishing to get in touch should communicate with E. Boden, 44, Edgedale Road, Millhouses, Sheffield.

EDINBURGH.

Edinburgh members are trying, in spite of difficulties, to make the party known and get a branch going. Not the least of the difficulties is the bad weather, which frequently prevents open-air meetings. When the weather improves their efforts are likely to meet with success. Those wishing to lend a hand should communicate with D. Lamond, at 15, Barclay Place.

GENERAL PROPAGANDA.

Regular open-air propaganda stations are being well maintained. Glasgow especially has been showing good results.

As so much depends on the Socialist Standard to link up the party with friends and sympathisers, and to keep our position before the public, members are urged to make special efforts to increase sales. One way of doing this, we would suggest, is to get subscribers for a period of one year (the cost is only 2s. 6d. per annum, post paid). If each member of the party made it his or her job to get only one or two subscribers annually, our sales would increase by leaps and bounds.

All shoulders to the wheel to forward the good work.

Propaganda Committee. 

Material World: Cars and Socialism (2013)

The Material World Column from the March 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month’s Material World examined the terrible price that society pays for the motor car – in pollution and disease, ugliness and noise, social atomisation, injury and death. Does it follow that a socialist community is likely to decide to stop producing cars? How compatible would such a decision be with the idea of socialism as a world of material abundance and free access?

First point. Socialism will make a lot of car travel unnecessary. This applies especially to commuting. Many jobs to which people now commute will disappear with the abolition of money. Over time geographical patterns of habitation and production can be changed to enable most people to live close enough to their work not to need a car to get there.

We can expect new forms of public transport and the restoration of environment-friendly old forms such as trams and perhaps even canal barges (for non-perishable supplies). Sizeable urban areas can be made safe as pedestrian precincts. Some towns in Germany are already car-free and accessible only by rail.

Second point. Replacing petrol-guzzling motor cars by electric cars should reduce pollution from cars and their contribution to global heating, provided that the electricity comes from low-carbon sources (not from coal, as it often does at present).

Sharing systems

Third point. Free access to car transport as a service can be achieved without permanently assigning a car to each family or individual. In social terms, the current arrangement, with most cars sitting unused most of the time, is extremely wasteful. The total number of cars required can be minimised by relying on a pool of cars available through a network of depots.

When people want to go on a trip that cannot conveniently be made by public transport, they will borrow a car from the nearest depot. When they no longer need the car, they will return it to the network (not necessarily to the same depot). The depot staff will recharge, repair and maintain the vehicles and monitor their use.

Such arrangements already exist, though not for cars. The public lending library provides free access to books and cassettes. A free-access sharing system for bicycles was pioneered in Amsterdam by the Provos in the 1960s and now exists in Paris, Hangzhou and many other cities. In socialism sharing systems will expand to cover specialised tools and other things that people need to use occasionally.

In a free-access society people will develop a different psychology. They will view the goods being held for their use in public stores and depots as already belonging to them. As they will have free access to those things whenever needed, they will feel no urge to transfer stuff to their homes in order to make it “theirs”. Such pointless behaviour will appear pathological. People will feel a need for exclusive and permanent possession only of those things which have a special personal meaning for them.

Electric cars still a problem?

So it may be possible to provide free access to electric cars at a social cost lower than that now paid for motor cars. Much lower, perhaps, but still considerable. Switching to electric cars would not prevent road accidents. Electric cars also pose environmental problems of their own.

There are two types of electric car: one runs on a battery, the other is powered by a stack of hydrogen fuel cells. However, the manufacture of both devices depends on the availability of rare earth metals (REMs). These substances occur in very low-concentration ores from which they have to be separated out by means of acid baths and other processes, generating vast quantities of highly toxic waste.

The REM smelting plants in Inner Mongolia dump the waste into a large pool. From there the ‘radioactive sludge’ seeps into the soil and groundwater, destroying local agriculture and the health of local residents. A socialist society could not tolerate such poisoning of the environment, even in a single locality. No local community would voluntarily sacrifice itself to provide the world with certain raw materials. And the world administration would lack the coercive power to sacrifice a local community against its will.

So the waste would have to be reprocessed, stored in sealed vessels and buried in stable geological structures deep underground. This is not done under capitalism because it would cost too much. But even in socialism it will surely be impracticable to store more than a certain quantity of waste in this way, especially as it will be in addition to hundreds of thousands of tons of accumulated nuclear waste in urgent need of similar treatment.

That constraint will limit the amount of REMs extracted. And as REMs will be needed for many other uses (including energy-efficient fluorescent lamps and magnets for wind turbines) it will be necessary to set priorities for their allocation.

Free access to everything?

Thus, we cannot be sure whether socialist society will be able or willing to provide free access to car transport. The social cost associated with maintaining an adequate pool of electric cars may still be judged unacceptably high.

It’s doubtful that there could ever be free access to everything – to space travel, for instance. The world socialist community will have to decide, through its democratic institutions and procedures, what free access will and will not cover, and how to distribute things to which free access cannot be provided.

Stefan

The "Labour Movement" (1967)

Book Review from the May 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Left edited by Gerald Kaufman (Anthony Blond, 18s.)

This book is a collection of essays by supporters of the Labour Party, mainly journalists, on what is called "the labour movement": constituency Labour parties, trade unions, the co-ops, the left-wing press, the "fringe left" and so on. The essays are of varying quality and interest.

In recent years Labour has shed its old confused ideology (trade unionism, nationalism, anti-imperialism) and become "a classless, radical, pragmatic Party". Roy Hattersley, now a junior Minister, describes the changeover which was completed in the years after the 1959 defeat: the determination to get power at all costs; the jettisoning of old slogans because they didn't appeal to voters; the employment of public relations techniques to catch votes.

Efforts were concentrated on what came to be known as 'target voters', that tiny percentage of the electorate whose decision to vote for one party or the other (and whose decision to vote at all) can be changed by persuasion and propaganda. Their habits, their hopes, and their aspirations were projected as the keynotes of Labour's campaign.

Could Labour's opportunism be stated more frankly?

Over 70 per cent of Labour's money comes from the Unions which raise the money through a political levy. All members of affiliated trade unions pay this levy unless they can be bothered to contract out. Many don't bother. Many, perhaps most, don't know they are financing the Labour Party (and organisations like Anti-Apartheid and the British Committee for Peace in Vietnam). In other words, much of Labour's money is got by subterfuge. Yet one writer discussing this issue on connection with the co-ops, tries to contrast the Tory and Labour attitude to the matter:

Though the Tory Part has never shown qualms in accepting money from companies who give their individual shareholders no option in the matter, it would not be in accordance with the democratic principles of the Labour Party to act in the same cavalier manner.

This is hypocritical to say the least. If Labour is so concerned with democratic principle on this matter, why did they, so soon after getting power in 1945, replace contracting-in by contracting out? If they are so sure that no-one is giving money to their party through apathy, ignorance or fear, why don't they restore contracting-in? Or, are they afraid of what might happen to their funds?

The Socialist Party of Great Britain gets a brief mention in an essay on "the fringe left" by Llew Gardner. Gardner has the illusion, obviously inherited from his days as a member of the so-called Communist Party, that:

Involved in a strike, an SPGB member is likely to stand up to tell his fellow workers that their wage claim is pointless and that they must unite to destroy the capitalist system.

While it is true that Socialists always draw attention to the ownership of the means of production by a privileged class, the Socialist Party does not say that strikes are pointless. We have always urged workers to keep up the struggle for higher wages and better working conditions all the time, under Labour as well as Tory governments, in war-time as well as peace-time. In fact, no other party has given such unqualified and consistent support to this economic side of the class struggle. Gardner's lie is particularly insolent from a member of the strike-breaking Labour Party who now writes for the Daily Express.

And talking of insolence, how dare the publishers ask 18 shillings for a mere 180 pages?

Adam Buick 

Is Bernard Shaw a Judge of Socialism? (1941)

From the April 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Commenting on Mr. W. J. Brown's broadcast "Is Hitler a Socialist," Mr. Emrys Hughes, editor of Forward (March 15th) takes Mr. Brown to task and warns him against underestimating Hitler. Mr. Hughes does not disagree with Mr. Brown's proof that Hitler is not Socialist: "Of course Hitler is no more a Socialist than is Winston Churchill, and Brown had no difficulty in disposing of that delusion." So far, so good, but Mr. Hughes backs up his opinion by calling in Bernard Shaw's recent opinion of Hitler. But is there any reason to suppose that either Hughes or Shaw is competent to recognise a Socialist when he sees one? Mr. Hughes, it is, who for years has told the workers that nationalisation or State capitalism is Socialism. Indeed, it is highly probable that Mr. Hughes is one of those in the Labour Party who told Churchill that he was supporting Socialism just after the last war, when Churchill was reported to have spoken in favour of nationalisation of the railways. Mr. Hughes is certainly a bad guide and Shaw is even worse. Writing in the Sunday Dispatch (March 9th, 1941), under the head "The Amazing Winston Churchill," Shaw discovers that Ramsay MacDonald was at one time a "revolutionary Socialist," and praises Mussolini and Hitler (along with Lenin and the ex-Kaiser) for their contempt of the Parliamentary system and for the "revolutionary social changes" they brought about.

The truth is that Shaw, whatever merit he possesses in other directions, and in spite of much pertinent criticism of capitalism, is a most untrustworthy guide to Socialism. Before Mr. Hughes again advises anyone to take Shaw's advice on Socialism, or on Hitler, he should take to heart the following statement made by Shaw in an interview given to the Sunday Referee (October 2nd, 1938):—

You know what I think of Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini—two  highly capable revolutionary and proletarian leaders, who are giving their people as big a dose of Socialism as they can stand.

It looks as if Shaw's answer to the question "Is Hitler a Socialist?" would be: "Yes he is, he is a Socialist like Churchill, Lenin, the Kaiser, and Ramsay MacDonald.

Edgar Hardcastle

Some Notes On Party History (1954)

From the May 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The meetings of the Provisional Executive Committee were concerned with all the arduous spade work involved in starting an organisation literally from scratch. The Party members had nothing but knowledge and enthusiasm; no office, no literature, no meeting places, no organisational system and no funds. All the plans had to be made and the bricks gathered to build a structure that would serve as a jumping-off ground. There were few members with time to do the work; all committees and sub-committees were made up by ringing the changes on members from the same small group. In the circumstances what they accomplished was astonishing, and a tribute to their energy.

For a long time there was no central office and the E.C. used to meet fortnightly in a room at the Communist Club in Charlotte Street.

At the first meeting of the Executive Committee, after the Inaugural Meeting, it was reported that the following branches had been formed: Islington, Battersea, Wood Green and Paddington. A committee of four was appointed to organise the membership into branches, and another committee of three to consider and report on the question of a Party journal.

As the new party had come into existence without literature of its own a list of pamphlets was drawn up and sent to branches with the recommendation that they confine themselves to this literature for the present.

The E. C. were not happy about some of the pamphlets on the list but they had a limited choice. Members and speakers were complaining about how frustrating it was to hold meetings and have no literature to distribute explaining the Party's views. The titles of some of these pamphlets sound rather curious now. Here is the list: —

"Socialism and the Worker," George.
"Wage, Labour and Capital," Marx.
"Socialism and Radicalism," Aveling.
"No Compromise," Liebneckt.
"The Social Revolution", Kautzky.
"How I became a Socialist," Morris
"Jones Boy, " Spokeshave.
"Commune of Paris," Marx.
"Socialism and Drink," Russell Smart.
"The Meaning of Socialism," Widdup.

A Committee was appointed to draw up a Manifesto to the working class of Great Britain and a Manifesto to the Second International; Reeves were to be approached to see if they would dispose of the copyright of the Communist Manifesto. In due course Reeves replied that the Communist Manifesto was still in print and they had no intention of selling the copyright.

It was decided that Party letter headings must have the Object of the Party printed on them but the selection of address to be used as Central Office was left to the General Secretary. The latter decision was unavoidable because the address had to be wherever the General Secretary was lodging for the time being. As he was almost penniless he had a habit of moving frequently.

Finally Kautzky was to be approached about permission to translate the Erfurt Programme. We will have more to say about this later.

At the second meeting of the Executive, on the 25th June, arrangements were made for a series of mass meetings to be held in different parts of London for the purpose of raising funds and making the Party known. The General Secretary was further instructed to write for delegates credentials for the forthcoming Congress of the Second International to be held in Amsterdam. It was taken for granted that the Party would automatically affiliate to this body. Later developments brought about a reversal of this attitude.

A Resolution was also carried at this meeting that the special meeting of members to discuss the attitude to trade unions to be held on Saturday, July 9th, and that only those who had signed the Party's Declaration of principles be admitted to the meeting. The Special Meeting was held at the Food Reform Restaurant, Furnival Street, E.C. There was a considerable conflict of views on the attitude to be adopted towards trade unions, and the meeting adjourned without coming to any definite decision. The E.C. was requested to arrange a further meeting. As the trade union question was a thorny subject for the first two subject for the first two years of the Party's history, before a definite attitude was agreed upon, we will consider it at some length in later notes.

The International Socialist Bureau was the body that conducted the business of the Second International between Congresses. As the Bureau declined to recognise the Party a letter was sent to H. M. Hyndman and H. Quelch, as representatives of that body in this country, requesting them to use their influence in the direction of securing due recognition of the Party by the International Congress.

Eventually the Credential Forms arrived, and then the fun began; the problem of finding members who could make the journey, and raising money for expenses. J. Kent was approached to represent the Party, on the understanding that all or part of his expenses would be paid. He replied that he was willing if part of his expenses was paid. Money was collected and sent on to him, but he subsequently wrote that he could not travel as the amount subscribed did not help much. This letter came before the Executive meeting of the 15ht August. Lehane (the General Secretary) reported that immediately he received Ken's letter he proceeded to the address of the Party Treasurer, R. Elrick, who advanced the sum necessary to cover the expenses. Lehane made an appointment by wire with Kent for the following day, Friday the 12th August, and handed him £2 18s. which, with the sum of £1 11s. 4d. previously collected, made up £4 10s. in all. Kent then undertook to proceed to Amsterdam the following morning, The state of Party finance may be gathered from the difficulty in raising such a small amount as 4 10s. Part of it came from a collection at the Special Meeting of members.

A few days later Kent notified the Executive that he had arrived in Amsterdam and that A. Pearson, who was paying his own expenses, had turned up and joined him as a delegate of the Party.

The report the two delegates brought back from the Congress was a shock to the members and fundamentally altered the Party's attitude to the Second International. At first attempts were made by correspondence with the Bureau to get our views on the unsatisfactory state of affairs put before the parties affiliated to the Congress. The basis of the complaints was (1) That representation at the Congress was chaotic and (2) That delegates from organisation with no socialist basis were admitted to Congress.

At the first General Meeting of the Party on the 18th September the following resolution was carried unanimously:

"That the E. C. be instructed to prepare a statement of the position in Great Britain, go into the whole question of representation at the International Socialist Congress and carry on an agitation throughout the world for the purpose of clearing the air of confusion regarding the true basis of the Socialist Movement."

The E. C. carried out the instructions contained in this resolution as far as they could. The January 1905 number of the SOCIALIST STANDARD contained copies of correspondence with the Bureau. The front page had a message "To the Socialist Working-class" in English, French and German which, after a general criticism of past Congresses, contained the following:

"The Socialist Party of Great Britain is strengthened in this opinion by facts well known here which show clearly the principles animating many who took part in the recent congress at Amsterdam. Our delegates thereto found such organisations as the Independent Labour Party, the Labour Representation Committee, the Social-Democratic Federation, and the Fabian Society claiming and obtaining admission as Socialist organisations. Thus were seen the defenders of capitalism, the upholders of Child-slavery, the friends of Compromise and Reform, and the catspaw of the Bourgeois reaction generally masquerading as Revolutionists, prostituting the name and spirit of Socialism, and confusing the workers on questions of vital importance"
"With the object of placing future International Congresses on a definite Socialist basis, and securing proper and proportionate representation of all bona fide Socialist Parties thereat, the S.P.G.B. is preparing a memorandum for the consideration of the International Bureau and the Socialist Parties affiliated in the hope that measures will be adopted to as far as possible prevent the recurrence of past confusions and place the working-class of the world on a united and revolutionary platform."

The Executive Committee reported on their efforts to the first Conference in April 1905. The Conference then passed the following resolution:—

"That only Socialist Organisations recognising the class struggle in theory and practice should be represented at the International Socialist Congress.
"That disputes between the various parties in each country as to the genuineness of their respective organisations be settled by Congress itself."

After further correspondence with the Bureau we eventually withdrew from the International as our points were not conceded. From that time on a critical attitude developed towards prominent champions of social democracy and we had, at times, to dissociate ourselves from some of their actions. In 1906 we called A. Bebel to book for a telegram he sent to "Reynolds" hailing the Liberal victory as a triumph for the progressive forces. Bebel, along with Karl Liebknecht, had been an outstanding figure in the German Social Democratic Party during the last quarter of the 19th century. The correspondence we had with him on the subject occupied six columns of the SOCIALIST STANDARD in 1906. The STANDARD was then double its present size.

In the next contribution we will come to an important landmark in the Party's history; the production of the first number of the SOCIALIST STANDARD in September 1904.

Gilmac.

(To be continued.)

Buying the baby (1988)

Film Reviews from the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Babies, it would seem, are big business. Having first tried to sell us the glossy lifestyle of the young, upwardly mobile careerist, unencumbered by little more than a filofax, two recent films (and others are on the way) are now trying to humanise the stereotype with the addition of a baby or two.

Diane Keaton's latest film, Baby Boom, is about a successful young businesswoman who is suddenly landed with a baby — not her own — and discovers that life a s high powered management consultant is more difficult when nappies and bottles have to be combined with brief cases and business meetings. When ultimately faced with the choice between baby and career, not surprisingly the oh-so-cute baby wins. Keaton leaves Manhattan for a dilapidated farm house in Vermont. That is in the autumn. By spring she has not only fallen in love with the local vet (Sam Shephard), but she's also turned a recipe for apple sauce into a million dollar baby food business. A typical story of life as a single parent.

Three Men and a Baby offers us essentially the same kind of story. Three men-about-town, living in a shared apartment, have a baby dumped on them which messes up their lives in all kinds of predictable, if faintly amusing ways. But again, sentimentality will out. Despite all the complications the baby causes, they can't part with her.

Apart from the presence of a baby, there are a couple of other features that these two films have in common. Firstly, there's the manner in which the heroes/heroine come by the baby in the first place. In both cases the child is simply dumped upon them. In much the same way that soap operas like Dallas and Dynasty expand their cast by one of the main characters suddenly discovering that they have a child/parent/spouse that they didn't previously know about. How can these people so carelessly lose relatives all the time? In Baby Boom this part of the story is particularly implausible. We are supposed to believe that Diane Keaton "inherits" the baby from distant cousins. The implication, I suppose, is that a woman in her position would not actually choose to have a child and so has to have one thrust upon her in order that she can discover the maternal feelings that lurk just below the surface. Why they didn't just resort to the stork or the gooseberry bush, I don't know. It would have been about as believable as "inheriting" a child. 

Secondly, there's the rather curious idea that, having tried to sell us the life-style that goes with being young, rich, independent, successful and so on, we should now "buy the baby" to complete the package. In other words, having been kitted out with the executive brief case, the designer clothes, the Porsche and the penthouse, the next step is to acquire the baby as a means of humanising what is otherwise seen as a soulless existence.

Buried somewhere underneath all that gooey sentimentality there's probably a positive message of sorts, namely, that human relationships are important. But these two films are cute, not incisive. They address a tiny minority of people who have pursued a certain kind of life-style at the expense of all else. The majority of us didn't need to be told that human relationships are important — many people in capitalism have little else of value in their lives — nor that children are simultaneously frustrating, demanding, messy and also a source of joy and fulfilment. Or maybe I'm being too generous and the truth is much more simple: that films about cute kids make money.

Janie Percy-Smith  

Dystopia (2012)

Book Review from the May 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Intrusion by Ken MacLeod. (Orbit 2012)

The science-fiction author John Wyndham was known for his novels about the “comfy apocalypse”, where great catastrophes would wipe out all the “wrong” sort of people and lead to a renewed existence.  Ken MacLeod presents us with what could be called a comfy dystopia, where by intricate layers of pressure and compulsion a government forces people to do what it judges to be in their best interest - whether they want to or not.

The novel focuses on Hope, a woman who refuses to take “the fix” – a genetic medicine pill designed to correct any genetic defects in her unborn infant.  Everyone agrees it is in the best interest of the child and totally safe.  Yet, she still refuses, and refuses to give reasons for her refusal.  The “social and free” society cannot tolerate such a refusal in ways that are reminiscent of the totalitarian village of sixties TV show ‘The Prisoner’ (where Number Six refuses to say why he resigned from espionage).

The novel details the way in which people implement their own imprisonment (placing cameras throughout their own homes to protect them from accusations of abusing their children, for example) and how their compliance is used against them.  It is a skilful account of the ways in which surveillance technology and the erosion of civil liberties could be used to control people.  Grimly, it also shows how a sense of solidarity and of wanting to do well by our fellows can be used against us: time and again Hope is urged to comply for the sake of others, for her doctor’s insurance ratings, for the other kids at school and, ultimately, for the child in her womb.

What makes the story particularly chilling is that it is so mundane, the incidents so everyday.  There are no grand heroics or statements of high ideals, there are simply people trying to live under conditions of a claustrophobic paternalism.  It deploys a touch of SF magic, though, to suggest, ambivalently, that the outcome of such submission and control might be a form of civilisation-ending nihilism.  

The tale roots itself in contemporary preoccupations, sometimes taking a reductio ad absurdum, slippery-slope view to suggest, for example, a future fear of fourth-hand smoking.  It illustrates how, when the cheapening of the means of policing is coupled with populist demands for someone to ‘do something’ and for information to be used against people whether or not they are formally convicted, can lead to levels of control undreamt of by the old totalitarian states.  In this, it shows how technology is a dual-edged tool that can enslave as well as liberate.

PJS