Editorial: Blatchford, War and Socialism. (1910)

Editorial from the January 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

Upon the cue of the General Election, the Conservative party has acquired the services of (for the moment) a most useful journalistic hack. We refer to Mr. Robert Blatchford, the idol of the multi-coloured conglomeration, the Clarionettes. An able writer or speaker who will (for a consideration) beat the big drum of "the country in danger," "the peril of invasion," etc, is sure of a large hearing in the present state of mind of the working class. This the Tories well appreciate, and their object in giving "Nunquam's" German War Scare and pro Conscription twaddle such enormous advertisement through their perhaps most widely read organ, the "Daily Mail," and elsewhere must be patent to all.

Meanwhile Socialists have an account to settle with Blatchford. This man has for many years taught in gentle phrases what millions have in all confidence mistaken for Socialism.

He gained the confidence and affection of thousands — only to betray them. For to invite the British workers to arm themselves to fight their German fellows—to ask them to give "the question of national defence" "precedence of every other question"—in a word, to ask them to drop Socialism, is nothing less than betrayal. However, the betrayed have not been without warning. Since its inception the Socialist Party of Great Britain has frequently demonstrated Blatchford's worthlessness as a teacher of Socialism, and his culpability in misleading the workers. So in passing we may perhaps be allowed the mixed consolation afforded by the reflection that their idol's flagrant jingo and anti-Socialist attitude will, for some "Clarion" worshippers at least, have the effect of breaking their mental bonds and set them to reconsider their position.

Blatchford appeals to "the evidence of facts." But what facts? The facts that most nearly concern this and every other capitalist-dominated country? By no means. Had he dealt with the facts of working-class misery and enslavement—the hideous facts of the capitalism his pen is to-day helping to perpetuate—his screed would not have been printed in the "Daily Mail" nor in any other capitalist daily. Not by helping the toilers but by their betrayal could he gain prominence in immense type, and for many days in succession, on the placard of a great capitalist paper.

The fact is the the working millions are impoverished and subjugated, whether under the Kaiser and his German Rothschilds et al, or under Edward and his English Rothschilds & Co., and consequently have no business to offer their blood and interest for the war service of either set of bloodsuckers. This is unwittingly suggested for the British workers by Blatchford himself when he says: "I got back from Germany and I saw the wretchedness and squalor of the Borough and Bermondsey and the rest of London's underworld. You don't see anything like that in Germany and I thought to myself "Is this how we are preparing to fight for the existence of our empire? What use will these ragged, famished spectres be?" (Italics ours.) Indeed, this language invites the reflection that if such is the case, conquest by Germany might, then, mean an improvement here.

So, then, in view of the simple facts we must invite our readers to do all they can to counteract the evil works of capitalism's ally, Robert Blatchford. We invite them to join the Socialist Party of Great Britain and this help render impotent all the misleaders and their pay-masters, and bring nearer the day when a people's dreams shall no more be haunted by fear of famine, rapine, and the shambles.

Christ as a Capitalist. (1935)

From the March 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

On November 11th last year, there appeared in The People an interview with Mr. Ernest Thompson, the retiring Mayor of Louth, a "bustling" little town in Lincolnshire. Louth is a remarkable place for these pagan times. It is supposed to "bustle" with the Christian spirit. Mr. Thompson is also a Christian, but it is not the ordinary brand of Christianity. Mr. Thompson is a practical Christian. He believes that practical Christianity is the only remedy for present-day problems. "Not your so-called religion,: he says, with a frank smile, "but practical Christianity—applied to every-day life, can solve all our problems—even that of unemployment."

At last the saviour! After nearly two thousand years of searching, the true Christian doctrine has been discovered, and we have to thank the Mayor of a "bustling" little town in Lincolnshire.

Of course, Mr. Thompson must have told The People that the reason why the workers are poor is because they produce the wealth for the benefit of the master class, and not for themselves. Surely he pointed out that the profit-making nature of this system restricted the production of wealth and reduced millions of workers to the aggravated poverty of unemployment. There can be no doubt that he urged the establishment of a social system where goods shall be produced for use, and not for sale. What else could he say? Alas, no! What he said was:—

If employers would use their capital and possessions as Christ would have them used, then there would be no money lying idle in the banks and men would be trooping back to work . . . 

And how? As Christ had no possessions and despised them, the answer is obviously a lemon. But Mr. Thompson has solved the riddle. Mr. Thompson, you see, does not keep all his eggs in one basket. He is a contractor as well as a practical Christian, and from all accounts he is a very practical contractor. He has begun work on a new housing scheme to provide work for the unemployed, because he has been "guided by God" to buy the land for that purpose . . . And here is the gem—the master-stroke:—

The men I have employed are all working with the Christian spirit in their hearts—and that alone is going to have a sound practical result . . . It means that they are working harder and better than ever would have done. They are building the houses faster, and consequently, more cheaply than usual. And that means I shall be able to sell them at a lower price and develop the estate further . . .

Councillor Thompson smiled. "You see," he said, "Christianity can be practical . . . "

Such simplicity is positively staggering. Mind you, no mention is made of profits. But, remember, Mr. Thompson insists that the necessary condition for producing cheaper houses is harder work from his wage-slaves. Strange as it may seem, the Practical Christian, like any other sort of employer, wants to squeeze the utmost out of the workers. If this pious gentleman is only eager to find work for the unemployed in Louth, he would give them a five-hour day and urge them to take it easy. What should it matter to the Practical Christian if he gets no profits on his capital so long as it is used to make people happy? . . . "I do not profess to be a saint,"  said Mr. Thompson, "but I am convinced that here is the solution the world is looking for . . . "

Mr. Thompson is certainly no saint. He is just a plain, simple, ordinary capitalist exploiter.

KAYE.

Socialism Now (2003)

From the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Today, in the first years of this 21st century, we can look back on the climactic events of the 20th, and see that indeed, that was the defining century of capitalism. Capitalism as an economic system has existed in tiny segments throughout history, but it was not until the 19th and especially the 20th that it became the truly global system it is today.

With the triumph of capitalism over feudalism, many thinkers analysed the new system and saw how it could be converted from the system of continued class tyranny and exploitation into an instrument of global prosperity and progress for all. While Marx was frustrated in his yearning for communism, it was probably not a practical possibility during his time. He died with Europe firmly enthralled in capitalism, and the rest of the world soon to follow.

Now however, in the 21st century, after many years of capitalism as the definitive world system, we have seen at first hand how despicable and outdated the system is. Two massive world wars, with workers butchering each other for the interests of global capital, have caused millions upon millions of deaths. Since then it has been near endless war in some part of the world or another, all perpetuated by the endless demands of capital to accumulate more and more. Untold amounts of resources have been squandered by the rival capitalist states in new and more powerful means of suppression and destruction in order to protect their interests. It has come to the point where they possess the weaponry to destroy all life on the planet.

The Earth's atmosphere itself is becoming less and less hospitable to human life, as pollutants are released because rival capitalists desperately compete with each other to cut costs and gain greater profits. Millions of people are starving amid plenty even as food is destroyed to drive up prices on the markets to yield continued profits. People across the world endure terrible and alienating working conditions, with claims of a “classless society” spouted by the reformists a laughable and unrealisable utopia within the present system. Poverty has not been eradicated in the “developed world” and poverty in the “third world” is not a product of some unassailable trait of human nature, but a matter of the productive system that is capitalism. All this and more assaults the human race as a vast unsolvable problem, a nightmare with no end, and apathy soon sets in. In fact there is a solution; never in history has socialism been so relevant as it is now.

No matter how much it has been lied about, ridiculed and twisted from its original form, scientific socialism is now, more then ever, needed to solve the crisis humanity finds itself in.

Socialism is common ownership. Socialism is production for need. Socialism is real democracy.

Socialism is for the global working class, who can use the vast productive powers for the free development of all. We, in the 21st century, now have that potential. It is possible to house everyone. It is possible to feed everyone. It is possible for everyone to live a decent and fulfilling life as real people, and not just as objects on the labour market. The only thing stopping this is the outdated profit system that constrains production to the will of private property and privilege.

The productive powers have been increased to a vast degree, yet people are still idle, starving, poverty stricken, and homeless, while the machinery of production is misused or neglected. This must change. This will change. This, the 21st century, can be the true century of revolution, of true socialist revolution. We must abandon the faith misplaced in the leaders and apologists of capitalism and move on, ourselves, to our new global society, where the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all. These words have never been more relevant than they are now, and we have nothing to lose but our chains, and a world to win. Workers of all countries unite!

Dan Read

TTIP: Putting Profits Before People (2015)

From the October 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a free trade and investment treaty  being negotiated in secret between the European Union and the USA. The main goal of TTIP is to remove regulatory barriers which restrict the potential profits to be made by transnational corporations on both sides of the Atlantic.

The British government claims TTIP could add £10bn to the UK economy, $80bn to the US and €100bn to the EU every year. It says consumers would benefit by the removal of EU import tariffs. And reducing regulation would help UK small businesses export to the US. Tariffs between the EU and US are already low, averaging around 3 percent but both sides foresee they will be eliminated under the agreement. The main focus of negotiations is on harmonising regulations, reducing 'non-tariff barriers' to trade, or abolishing them if they're deemed unnecessary. US and EU regulators have different requirements for testing the safety of products. Going through the different tests is expensive for business but TTIP aims to reduce those costs by bringing in common standards.

TTIP is championed by the capitalist class. Cameron has described it as 'the biggest bilateral trade deal in history' (Guardian 17 June 2013). John Cridland of the CBI added 'with the UK already trading more and investing more with the US than any other country, there are real advantages to drive home particularly for smaller firms. TTIP would be the biggest free trade deal ever negotiated' (CBI News 18 December 2014).

Godfrey Bloom, the ex-UKIP MEP commented:

'For the conviction Free Trader, the international classical liberal TTIP is very natural progression in a global society especially between two great trading blocks the USA and the EU. It begs the expectation of such supporters of 19th Century advocates such as Frederick Bastiat that 'when trade crosses borders armies do not'. A qualified welcome therefore from such idealists was fairly immediate, rightly so. One might carry forward Bastiat's theory to fit with more pressing international concerns such as migratory refugees: 'when trade crosses borders migrants don't'. Liberal societies with free trade agreements prosper.'

Bloom concluded 'the theory of TTIP is noble and worthwhile but in practice is doomed to failure. Does anybody imagine for a moment the regulators both sides of the Atlantic will not protect their turf, that they will voluntarily give ground, that big business in the world of crony capitalism really want to see increased competition from small and medium sized businesses?' (Huffington Post UK 11 June).

Trade and investment deals

The EU has been negotiating a similar trade and investment deal with Canada, known as the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). One of Canada’s key negotiating aims was to promote the use in Europe of oil from its tar sands. In 2012, the EU’s Fuel Quality Directive (FQD) proposed that oil from tar sands should be given a 20 percent higher carbon value than conventional oil. This reflected the greater pollution caused by its production and was designed to steer companies away from using it in the EU. However, a few weeks after CETA was concluded, the final version of the FQD had been watered down, and lacked the earlier requirement that companies needed to account for the higher emissions from tar sands, effectively neutering it.

Another free trade agreement is the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) which would further consolidate transnational corporate power. TISA covers 52 countries including the EU, North America, some South American nations, Japan, Israel, Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan. It is set to affect up to 70 percent of the global services economy. It includes the removal of restriction on moving 'natural persons' from one country to another which will mean the capitalist class can use migrant workers to drive down wages and conditions. For some countries their only 'comparative advantage' is cheap labour. TISA would allow multinational corporations to exploit migrant workers with impunity.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is considered by the US as the companion agreement to TTIP.  This agreement covers the US, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Japan. TPP is one of the primary goals of the trade agenda of the Obama administration in the US.

Right to sue governments

TTIP also consolidates the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) which gives transnational corporations the right to challenge a country's laws. ISDS allows transnational corporations to receive compensation for the absence of a 'predictable regulatory environment.' Already under existing WTO free-trade rules this type of argument has been used to attack clean energy, mining, land use, health, and labour rights. More than $14 billion in 16 claims are now under litigation in the US. Under TTIP, a transnational corporation could sue a Government if their profits might be affected by food safety standards or wage increases. ISDS creates a parallel legal system, independent of national law, allowing transnational corporations to sue governments in secret corporate courts over laws or regulations that might prevent or reduce profit, what they term 'indirect appropriation.'

In 2012, the government of Ecuador decided to terminate its contract with US oil corporation Occidental, after Occidental sold 40 percent of its production rights to another company without abiding by its legal obligation to obtain government approval. Occidental turned to the ISDS provision in the US-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty. This allows companies to sue governments through international courts for policies that threaten their profits. Occidental won and, as a result, Ecuador was forced to pay out $1.77 billion to Occidental, the highest compensation awarded to an investor through ISDS to date.

The government of Slovakia moved to restrict the powers of private insurance firms in the public health system which led to a number of health insurance companies successfully suing the Slovak government for their loss of profits. The Dutch firm Achmea attempted to use the same powers to block the Slovak government from setting up a public insurance scheme that would provide health cover to all the country's citizens. Achmea lost but because the scheme had not yet been adopted. If it is, no doubt they will try again.

The Vattenfall Corporation, a Swedish energy company is using an ISDS clause in an energy treaty to sue the German government for €4.7 billion following its decision to close its nuclear power stations in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. This case has not yet been decided.  Corporations don’t win every time but merely suing is an attempt to stop governments acting. As TUC General Secretary, Frances O’Grady has pointed out, it represents the spread of ‘compensation culture’ to the international level. Addressing the European Commission Trade Policy Day in Brussels in June, she said that ISDS identifies 'the compensation culture that is building up in multinational companies, where suing democratically elected governments becomes more remunerative than actually providing a service' (TUC, 23 June).

Screening regulatory measures

All new US or EU proposals for legislation or regulation would have to be screened first for their impacts on trade and business. 'Mutual recognition' means that the EU would recognise US standards as 'legitimate' and would therefore allow US exports into the EU even when they don't meet EU standards.  TTIP is not to stimulate trade through removing tariffs between the EU and USA, as these are already at minimal level. The main goal of TTIP is to remove regulatory 'barriers' which restrict potential profits to be made by transnational corporations. The EU has much stricter regulations on GM crops, pesticides, food safety, and the environment than the US. TTIP deal could open the EU market to cheaper products with poorer standards such as hormone-fed beef rinsed in acid, genetically modified oil from pesticide-soaked crops, and butter laced with antibiotics. In the EU, the precautionary principle is paramount to policy-making, meaning that a business must prove to government that a product poses no threat to human health or the environment. In the USA, a product is presumed safe, and for it to be banned government must prove that there is a threat to human health or the environment.

If global temperature rise is to be kept below 2 degrees and the most severe impacts of climate change mitigated, around 80 percent of known fossil fuel reserves must be left in the ground. The EU is pursuing a trade deal that would undoubtedly lead to even more money being poured into fossil fuel extraction. One of the key aims of TTIP is to push the US to reduce or remove current restrictions on the export of crude oil and shale gas.  This would facilitate the export of tar sand oil, mined in Canada and refined/transported via the US. A EU 2014 report by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate confirmed that high-carbon investment over the next 15 years will only serve to lock in the risks of dangerous climate change.

TTIP would allow private firms running NHS services to sue the government. The NHS is a 'public service' (the 1993 General Agreement on Trade in Services Treaty defines a 'public service' as one supplied 'neither on a commercial basis, nor in competition with one or more service suppliers') but as a result of the 2013 Health and Social Care Act, more health services in the UK are being put out to tender in a competitive market by Clinical Commissioning Groups. This commercial competitive element means that large parts of the NHS will not be protected from TTIP.

Unemployment

The EU has admitted that TTIP will probably cause unemployment as jobs switch to the US, where labour standards and trade union rights are lower. Examples from other similar bi-lateral trade agreements around the world support the case for job losses. The Economic Policy Institute in Washington DC estimates that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the US, Canada and Mexico caused the loss of a million US jobs and shrinking real-terms wages for millions more workers. The Centre for Economic Policy Research concluded in a study commissioned by the European Commission itself that TTIP could cause between 680,000 and 1.3 million job losses in Europe and between 325,000 and 715,000 jobs in the US.

The US also has lower labour standards and employment rights than EU countries. The US has not ratified a number of the most important International Labour Organisation Conventions, including the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining. The US has also passed Right to Work legislation in 24 states, most recently in the traditional union stronghold of Michigan, which clamp down on unions capacity to bargain and organise. European companies may take advantage of the ease of market access created by TTIP to relocate to the USA, and take advantage of the weak labour regulations. There is also the possibility that American companies may be encouraged by TTIP to relocate to EU states such as Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia where incomes are low and trade unions are weaker than in other parts of the EU.

For transnational corporations, barriers to trade are things that restrict their profits such as labour rights, food safety rules, regulations on the use of toxic chemicals, the minimum wage, health and safety laws, and environmental regulations. TTIP is a charter for profit before people. The casualties will be working class people the world over, who will end up as collateral damage, more powerless and more vulnerable than ever in the face of global capitalism. TTIP is a race to the bottom, to the lowest common denominator that will further the interests of global capitalism.

Marx in his Speech on the Question of Free Trade in Brussels in January 1848 pointed out that 'when you have torn down the few national barriers which still restrict the free development of capital, you will merely have given it complete freedom of action... every one of the destructive phenomena to which unlimited competition gives rise within any one nation is reproduced in more gigantic proportions in the market of the world.' He concluded 'the Free Trade system works destructively. It breaks up old nationalities and carries antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie to the uttermost point. In a word, the Free Trade system hastens the Social Revolution. In this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, I am in favour of Free Trade.'

Steve Clayton

Between the Lines: Much ado about nothing (1987)

The Between the Lines Column from the June 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

There now follows . . . 

Am I just getting more fed up or are party political broadcasts getting worse? One has only yo hear those words, "There now follows a party political broadcast on behalf of . . . (Don't try turning over because we've stuck them on all channels)" to know that an insult to the public intelligence is about to be perpetrated. There was a time when these affairs were pretty simple efforts: Harold Wilson sitting behind a desk puffing lies in a fatherly sort of way or George Brown looking into the camera with the sincerity of a man who showed signs even then of ending up an SDP member of the House of Lords. In those days they would deliver their messages as abbreviated speeches and get off the screen. No we are in the age of hi-tech lying: video edited, maximum visual impact porky pies.

Take the Labour PPB of a few months ago where an actor stood next to a big globe and pointed at it with an imposing looking stick while talking about how the Tories are leaving the damned place undefended with their lack of expenditure on conventional bombs. This was drama, not politics, the medium was the message; vote for us if you like my shiny medals and big stick (This is the way to win the Harvey Proctor voters over). Then there was the Tory pre-local election PPB (5 May, all channels). This one had dire pictures of people in pain whom it was soon explained were in fact ratepayers in Ealing and Waltham Forest — of course, why didn't I guess? — whose rates had been put up by Labour councils. These rates, we were told with the aid of horrific graphics, were to support gay centres (there are simply hundreds of them in Ealing and Waltham Forest, don't you know) and anti-police campaigns.

Norman Tebbit came on at the end warning voters in hysterical terms that voting Labour would lead to suffering beyond conception. Perhaps my awareness of the inanity of it all was heightened by the fact I coincidentally watched the BBC2 version of the broadcast put out for the deaf with subtitles. You can watch TV politics and think it's twaddle and you can an article by a politician and think it's twaddle, but there is nothing quite like watching and reading it at the same time to confirm that it is pure, unadulterated twaddle.

Much ado about nothing

This Week, Next Week (3 May, 1pm, BBC1) had a bad dose of election fever. No election was announced, but that did not deter the producers of this little roll-in-the-mud from insisting upon a pre-election shove-around in the studio. So, in were brought Bryan Gould and Lord Young, two men whom few people had heard of a year ago, but who look like being the election faces of the year. It seems that, in the tradition of all jolly good public school pranks, Labour's Bryan Gould had written and had a published a Tory manifesto which looks just like the 1983 Tory Manifesto (Tee hee!) Lord Young was angry because Labour had nicked their design. Pushed to promise that the Tories would not do the alleged deeds Young wisely declined to commit his party to not doing anything. Also in the studio was an Alliance spokesman and a rubber plant.

Benn falls in love

With Peter Ustinov and Tony Benn as guests, Wogan looked worth watching. (29 April, 7pm, BBC1) After all, both are eloquent men who have been known to have more to say for themselves than Wogan's usual guests. In fact, the appearances were disappointing but that is not important: guests on chat shows quite frequently sell themselves short, simply because of the pressure placed by the format of such programmes to push your personality, as if the latter is something you slip into in the morning like your shirt.

What was striking from this programme and it has never been apparent (at least to this writer) in the past, was that Tony Benn had fallen in love with Russian state capitalism. Gorbachev's reforms are the greatest thing in 40 years . . . the Russians are a peace-loving people who are determined to avoid war . . .  the problem is that we have all these lies in the West about Russia. Benn sounded like a fellow traveller, pouring out all sorts of half-open hints of friendship in defence of one of the greatest tyrannies in the modern world.

Perhaps it was inevitable that an isolated Labour leftist, never really at home among the non-ideological void of Kinnockism, should finally drift towards the illusion of Stalinism. But it was sad to perceive. Benn said he was more optimistic now about the prospects of world peace than he had been in decades; the Gorbachev weapons reduction proposals were magnificent. If he believes that he'd believe . . . well, I suppose he does.

Right royal rubbish

Aren't Charlie and Di a fine couple? Isn't it lovely to see her changing her frock every fifteen minutes? Doesn't he do fine work to help the poor? Wasn't it pleasant to see him walking around the grounds of one of his palaces talking to the plants? No to all questions, and that is why I, like others of sound mind, switched the nauseating parasites off after twenty minutes and went up the pub. (4 May, 8pm, ITV, The Prince and Princess of Wales: In Public, In Private.)

Steve Coleman

Between the Lines: News priorities (1986)

The Between the Lines Column from the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

News priorities

On the day the Space Shuttle exploded, thousands of people — most of them under five — died of malnutrition. There was no report on the news. And how many lives were in ruins that day because mothers could not feed or clothe their children, families were living in overcrowded slums, or children were turning to drugs to escape the reality of a miserable system? Approximately eighty per cent of news broadcasts were devoted to the deaths of a group of people who had chosen to go on a dangerous mission, but was it really necessary for American TV networks to point cameras at the relatives of those killed, catching every twitch of their faces?

What is called "news" is determined by the perverse priorities of capitalism. We cannot help thinking that the America government was grieving rather more over the setback this even will have caused to the Star Wars military project than over the day's many other victims.

Spitting Image

The doubt in my mind about Spitting Image is the extent to which it fosters the belief that by ridiculing leaders — and in some cases their appearances rather than their ideas — one is being political. In fact, it can be argued that precisely this kind of comedy defuses whatever anger workers have against the system itself. And the politicians probably don't mind the publicity. Revolutions do not, after all, start as a result of watching TV puppet shows. The question worth pondering is, are they delayed because workers are sitting in their armchairs laughing at caricatures instead of the real TV comedy: the party political broadcasts?

The SWP show

Diverse Reports of 22 January (Channel 4) was virtually a party political broadcast on behalf of the Leninist Socialist Workers' Party. Its content was predictable, commencing with the absurd statement that the Labour Party has recently moved away from socialist policies. When has the Labour Party ever stood for anything but capitalism? The fact is that the SWP is just as confused about socialism as the Labour Party, and it was indeed strange for them to devote their programme to exposing the Labourites when they urged workers to vote for them in the last election and will do so in the next. Nevertheless, the Socialist Party is in favour of minority parties having access to TV slots, even if they have as little worth saying as is clearly the case with the SWP. Whenever the Socialist Party has approached TV companies (including the nominally radical C4) and asked for a slot of this kind, we have been told that it is against their regulations to give time to minority parties. Even when one of our prospective parliamentary candidates appeared on C4's Comment a few months ago, he was forbidden to mention the party's name. If that is the policy of the TV companies, why was it not applied in the case of the SWP? C4 has to come out in the open and state whether or not minority political parties are to be censored, leaving viewers with the impression that they have nothing to say. if their undemocratic policy has now been rejected, then the SWP has had its chance and we want ours. If the policy is to be upheld, then we accuse C4 of hypocrisy and call for an explanation. The matter will be raised with the TV controllers concerned and we will report fully their response — or lack of one.

Entering an institution

They say that marriage is not a word but a sentence, and if anyone needed any proof they had only to watch Desmond Wilcox's voyeuristic documentary series, The Marriage (Wednesdays, 9.30 pm, BBC1). The series followed the first year of married life of a couple of people who seemed pretty typical. The degeneration of their relationship from unlimited affection to evident strain was almost entirely caused by money. Almost every argument they had was about it — he spent more than she liked; she wanted money for their own home; he took on a new job so that he could earn more; he had to buy a new car but she wanted it to be a cheaper model. Here on our screens was a microcosm of what is going on in most working-class relationships. The souring effect of money is something we will probably never comprehend fully until it has been abolished.

Steve Coleman

Between the Lines: Passing of a Texan Idiot (1985)

The Between the Lines Column from the September 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Passing of a Texan Idiot

Wipe away those tears, fellow workers: mourning will not bring him back. Those of us who watched the BBC's final screening of Dallas (BBC1, 17 July) saw how Bobby Ewing, the not very bright Texan oil millionaire, planned to marry two rich women in one episode and, just as he'd decided which one to leave on the shelf, along comes another woman in a fast car and . . . bash! Next scene: Bobby lies dying in a posh Texan hospital surrounded by the whole cast and not a single doctor or nurse. After mumbling some soppy sentiments — "Don't let them sell you to the ITV, Pam" and "Don't forget the number of the Swiss bank account, J.R." — his eyes close and the contract runs out. The other characters stand around and weep, presumably because this is the last episode to be shown in Britain. If I was J.R. I'd sue the hospital for negligence, leaving the poor man unattended in his final moments, with nothing but a second-hand script of a death scene to keep him going. 

Millions of workers watched this sentimental garbage, pushing it into the top programmes in that week's ratings. While wage slaves mourn the fictitious of a privileged parasite there are millions of the wealth-producing class living in squalor — as shown on the very good portrait of the declining british welfare services, From The Cradle To The Grave (ITV, Mondays, 29 July-19 August). The choice is clear: do we treat into the fantasy worlds of Dallas and Dynasty or look at the less glamorous, less jolly, less simplistic world of social reality for the working-class majority? We know which choice the programme-controllers would like us to make.

News?

Talking of utter triviality, have you noticed how TV news often repots as issues of importance matters which inform us of nothing but the empty-headedness of the news editors? The recent story about Labour MPs dangling a topless woman over the River Thames (BBC News, 29 July) was about as important a contribution to human knowledge as the lengthy reports a few weeks earlier about a manifestly deranged ex-SAS man who spent several weeks living in a small rock — a British rock of course — somewhere to the north of Scotland. When one considers all the important happenings in the world which workers should be hearing about — the oppressive activities of governments, the mass murders and mutilations in wars, the millions dying of starvation in a world of food surpluses, the uncontrollable fluctuations of world trade — why is it that the important news is all too often left out to make room for insignificant trivia? Could it be that, like the producers of Dallas, the news editors prefer a good bit of diversionary escapism to a healthy dose of useful knowledge?

Socialists and Censorship

In the same week that the BBC listed its twenty-year ban on The War Game it obeyed government wishes and banned the Real Lives documentary which included an interview with Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein. Socialists aim to build a majority movement in favour of a totally democratic society; we have always emphasised that such an end can only be obtained by democratic means. Socialists are against government censorship whether it is by law, as in Russia and South Africa (where the recent emergency powers have seriously media censorship), or by hints and the use of political pressure, as in allegedly democratic Britain.

In this column last month we pointed out that, much as we deplore the anti-working-class aims and policies of Sinn Fein, we favour all opportunities for workers to be exposed to all political points of view. If the defenders of the IRA have a case to state we are in favour of it being heard, not censored, just as we want our own ideas to be given media exposure. The BBC has a long record of denying the Socialist Party of Great Britain TV time and it is worthy of note that the major capitalist parties, which do have access to TV, have not found such censorship in conflict with their professed democratic principles. In calling for the Real Lives documentary to be banned, the Home Secretary admitted that he had not even seen a recording of it. Perhaps he well urge the BBC to show it in twenty years' time.

Steve Coleman

Between the Lines: Sinn Fein, Game Shows and Live Aid (1985)

The Between the Lines Column from the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sinn Feigners

Beatrix Campbell, in Diverse Reports (C4, 3 July), sought to portray Sinn Fein as a progressive, caring, reforming party—an image it seeks to put across to electors. It should not be surprising that a programme showed Sinn Fein's policies without constant reference to the party's support for nationalist murderers; after all, the Tory and Labour parties support national armies committed to obscene acts of violence, but this is not mentioned every time there is a programme about their policies.

And having seen the uncensored picture, what are we to conclude? Quite simply, that Sinn Fein is just another party of reformist politicians who want to run capitalism. As the party's leader Gerry Adams, said, "All we can do is  . . . achieve those very small gains by working along with the people within the system". So much for Assembly member, Danny Morrison's throwaway comment that Sinn Fein is "a revolutionary party". From Adams we heard the usual vague claims of a reformist leader: first the nationalist movement must be built up to oppose British rule, and then after the British have withdrawn and Ireland is independent there will be "the beginnings of a socialist society". What does this mean? Uncensored Adams neglected to tell us. Campbell, who is a feminist, asked Adams what the position of women would be once Ireland had achieved Home/Rome Rule; she stated that "for women this happens to be one of the most repressive cultures you can think of." But Gerry told her that her question was based on "cultural imperialism" and she, being English, should learn that Irish people are different.

At the end of the programme one was left with the clear impression of a political party based on the twin confusions of nationalist illusion and reformist promise. If there ever is a united Ireland, presided over by Sinn Fein, it will be another capitalist state and the workers living under it will detest Adams and his fellow would-be rulers as much as they do their present representatives.

Even without the terrorist violence, which socialist unequivocally condemn, there was plenty shown about Sinn Fein to justify the unreserved hostility of socialists towards them.

Money sickness

It was D. H. Lawrence who referred to "the collective money-madness of mankind",  and where better to  observe that madness than in the gambling establishments of Las Vegas. Showdown at Glitter Gulch was a documentary about the world poker championship (BBC1, 3 July)  - an event where the winner gets a million dollars. It was an obscene spectacle, all these idlers throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars on to a table while millions of workers go without a decent supper and millions more die for lack of money for food. It was not "human nature" which led these men to indulge in an insane monetary ritual — it was a social system which elevates money into the god of life and trains those with more of it than sense to invest their energies in acquiring more. A mad system drives men mad and this programme was a peep through the window of one of the top-class asylums.

The price is indignity

The same "collective money-madness", but at a cheaper rate for the proles, is The Price is Right (don't know or care when it's on). The programme succeeds in being the ultimate in tasteless money fetishism. Crowds of impoverished workers scream and throw dignity to the wind as the prospect of guessing the price of an electric carving knife turns them into human cash registers. The aim of the game is to guess how much commodities are worth and if the guess is near enough to the price you win. Game shows generally portray capitalism as its most grotesque, and the trouble with watching them is that we are supposed to applaud contestants for doing well.

Live aid

Live Aid for Africa (BBC, 13 July) demonstrated several things that it did not intend, The purpose of the concert was to raise money to stop people starving to death in Africa. Yet its effect will be minimal, negligible, crumbs thrown into an ocean of despair. What then did the event show? First of all, that workers, even when motivated by immense goodwill and collective concern, cannot solve capitalism's problems. During the course of the sixteen-hour concert British workers donated a mere £4 million in telephone pledges, less than the British Government spends on the military machine every three hours every day; less than the richest woman in Britain (the Queen( receives as interest on her personal investments in one week. Workers were 'phoning up and saying that they would sell their cars and donate their precious savings to the worthy cause — but asking the impoverished in Britain to feed the starving of Africa solves precisely nothing.

Secondly, the show demonstrated just how superficial is the moralising self-righteousness of those who do not understand the capitalist system. Periodically we would be urged — by millionaires who became rich by dressing up in fancy costumes and singing about love through sore throats — to "feed the world". But why is food dumped while people starve? Why do some people have banquets while others do not? In short, the whole event was an invitation to weep at the symptoms, and to hell with any concern about the disease. Indeed, Bob Geldof (who may be sincere, but it certainly naive to a dangerous degree) was seen repeatedly throwing his arms in the air, like a man who feels something but does not know what, and declaring that governments should "do something". In fact, governments are doing something: running capitalism and feeding the capitalists' hunger for profits.

Thirdly, the show proved just how musicians have become incapable of performing without record producers to twiddle knobs and make them sound any good. Some of the sets from Wembley and Philadelphia, presented without the benefit of studio treatment, ranged from not very good to pathetic. Demonstrated above all, however, was the power of communication technology: fourteen international satellites beamed the show to 50 million TV sets, reaching an estimated audience of 1.5 billion people. But just as this technology can unite millions of workers for a lofty, if ultimately futile, moral cause, so too can it bind them together for more sinister propaganda messages, such as those demanded for example in the build-up to war. Left in the hands of the capitalist minority the means of mass communication are a potent weapon. But used for socialist purposes, think of how the worldwide unity forged by Live Aid could be turned into an instrument for making democracy work within the global village.

Watching the show until the final performance by Bob Dylan (not an occasion worthy of the wait, as it turned out), I was struck by an overwhelming sense of depression — not just at the thought that fellow human beings are starving to death, although that is good enough reason for a sleepless night, but because all the goodwill, energy, determination and technological know-how put into "doing something about it" will not feed the world. Despite Geldof's moral crusade the obscenity of mass human misery will go on and on and on until Elvis Costello stops singing "all you need is love" and the workers realise that the world os ours for the taking. And finally the national anthem came on, and by the time it got to "Long To Reign Over Us" I was fast asleep.

Steve Coleman 

Between the Lines: News from Oceania (1989)

The Between the Lines Column from the May 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

News from Oceania

George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eight Four, is about the most miserable social vision ever constructed. In 1984 there was much debate about how far society had gone down the road to Orwell's fascistic nightmare world. While "intellectuals" were weighing civil liberties on the Orwellian scales, picketing miners were feeling the truncheons of workers in uniform who were sent to break their resistance. What happened to the miners — the state brutality, government callousness and media vilification — was a stronger answer to the question of what kind of society 1984 was than any of the 19.50 hardback academics ever came up with.

Before 1984 there was much debate about quite what Orwell was attacking in his novel. Some said it was a critique of post-war England, bowed in spirit by the rationing and regimentation of the war years — that 1984 was really 1948 reversed and writ larger. Others suggested that Orwell was trying to attack socialism. Orwell was specific about the fact that his novel was not intended as an attack on the genuine principles of socialism (as he understood them). Writing to Francis Henson of the United Automobile Workers union in the USA, he explained that "My recent novel is NOT intended as an attack on socialism  . . . but as a show up of the perversions to which a centralised economy is liable and which have already been partly realised in Communism and Fascism." In short, the novel was aimed at the drift towards the corporate state which so-called radicals of both the Left and Right had celebrated as liberation from capitalism in the years that Orwell lived and wrote.

Last month Channel Four showed the recent film version of the novel. It is open to criticism in that its depiction of a mass society of submissive ideological slaves presented the deluded victims as caricatures of conformity. They looked too much like extras in a film, told to look like conditioned subjects. In reality, conditioned subjects are less caricatured; it is precisely that humans are not robots, and yet can be made to think like programmed machines, that is sinister and frightening about totalitarianism. The "masses" in this film looked and sounded like robotic machines, and this diminished the horror of what had been done to them. It is the whistling Nazi and the Stalinist who loves his wife and children who are the really frightening characters. That said, it was important that the film was made and shown because within it is a reminder of the dangers inherent in dogmatic belief.

Nineteen Eighty Four is essentially about the power to make people believe that is not true. O'Brien tells Winston Smith, while he is torturing him, that thinking is all bout learning to discipline your mind to accept reality. And "reality" is what those above you — Big Brother, The State, The Party, conventional opinion — dictates it to be. Smith attempted to resist the social reality of the ruling elite. Like the Romantics of the last century, who sought to be true to their own feelings before they would defer to the abstract Facts of the Industrial Order, Smith believed that his duty was to obey his own feelings, not those of his dogmatic rulers with  their ideology of Ingsoc. Smith tells his lover, Julia, that it is not survival which is most important, but remaining human. He pleads with her not to betray her humanity. She thinks that by betrayal he means she should never confess to the state — never get caught. But betrayal means more than that: it means acquiescence to dogma, to ideas which are unrelated to experience. In the end Smith is forced to betray himself in both senses. Not only does he confess to thought crimes — that is easy — but he also succumbs to the dogma. He is afraid to have doubts. He learns to say and do what is expected of submissive subjects.

The novel, and now the film are not about 1948 or 1984 or the merits of socialism of the demerits of Stalinism; they are about the power of dogma to extinguish the sense of doubt which is the basis of all reason and the necessary accompaniment of all intelligent political conviction. When you stop doubting you are politically dead. Regardless of what orwell meant by his novel, and regardless of the demerits of the film as a depiction of the ideologically conditioned crowd, there is still importance in the message which tells us that minds can be controlled, resistance nullified by the very forces against whom we need to resist, and that dogma, in whatever form, is a fearful enemy. To pre-empt critics, we would add that this applies no less to socialist dogma. As Orwell said of his own vision, "The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: Don't let it happen. It depends on you."

Our enemies are our friends

News At Ten (6 April) urged us to welcome our new-found friend, Mikhail Gorbachev. He is a communist, you see. A communist with whom Mrs. Thatcher is very pleased to do business. A communist who is proud to invite the Queen to come over and tread on a few of his subjects. The cult of Gorby is very big right now. It was the Newspeak writers on The Sun who christened him Gorby. Over in Washington the CIA tried to put a damper on the visit by leaking the information about Russian sales of fighter planes to Libya. All part of the propaganda war. This is the dogmatic assault upon us today: when our rulers want us to believe that Russia is "the Evil Empire" and we must prepare to die destroying it, then the newsreaders will tell us what a despicable police state the dictator Gorbachev presides over (as he does); when commerce and international militarism require closer relations between the two old superpowers — so that perhaps they can prepare to make war on the new, up and coming superpowers — then Gorby is our man and pictures of Raisa being shown the Tower of London are the order of the day. It all depends what they want us to think. To accept what the servants of capitalist propaganda tell us is to fall into the trap which leads to the kind of world Orwell was writing about. That millions have fallen into the trap cannot be denied, but it is not too late to climb out. In an essay written in 1940, called Inside The Whale, Orwell made a comment which is worth keeping in front of you while watching News At Ten: "To say 'I accept' in an age like our own is to say that you accept concentration camps, rubber truncheons, Hitler, Stalin, bombs, aeroplanes, tinned food, machine-guns, putsches, purges, slogans, Bedaux belts, gas-masks, submarines, spies, provocateurs, press censorship, secret prisons, aspirins, Hollywood films and political murders."

Steve Coleman

Between the Lines: Next Fraud (1989)

The Between the Lines Column from the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Next Fraud

Next Left (C4, 8 pm, Fridays) offered four programmes packed to the edge of the screen with undiluted nonsense. Purporting to be about the failure of socialism in years past and the need for socialists to adapt to the new age, the series offered the most facile account of current world politics and not even an attempt at explaining what socialism actually means. It seems to be the case that when documentary-makers produce films about socialism they feel quite free to accept the fallacy that anyone who calls himself a socialist is one. Neil Kinnock, Bryan Gould, François Mitterrand, Brandt, Rocard  . . . all of them advocates of state-run capitalism, and all of them called upon to discuss why the failure of their state-capitalist policies means that socialism has been tried and failed. The working class, we are told, is disappearing; the market is becoming more accountable to people's needs; planning has failed and "freedom" is the new buzz word. "Socialists" must adapt to these new conditions or become irrelevant. Instead of talking about social transformation socialists should be attending to more modest changes, we are informed, such as establishing workers' co-operatives and providing welfare services through the trade unions. The new "socialist" model is Sweden; "socialism" works there — even though Sweden is a capitalist country. No contradiction. No need to explain anything. The frauds who make these programmes are like the character in Alice in Wonderland who insists that words shall mean what they want them to mean. Channel Four's attempt to advise socialists to throw away our revolutionary principles and attend to making capitalism work was intellectually shallow, dishonest drivel.

Laughing all the way to the bank

Another bloody charity telethon. It is hard to switch on the telly these days without seeing either Kylie Minogue or a begging bowl. This time it was Comic Relief (BBC1, all evening, Friday, 10 March). No doubt there was plenty of sincerity there. So what? Since when has plenty of sincerity made the profit system run in our interest? This time we were treated to comedians making jokes to encourage workers to send in a few quid. In one night's nationwide collecting Comic Relief brought in about £10 million. About enough to buy a cheapish military fighter plane. The same night's Newsnight (BBC2, 10.30 pm) had a very brief report on the annual profit made by the clothing company, Viyella: £135 million — down on last year's figure. That's a year's profit for one medium-sized capitalist company. So, who is giving more to charity — the workers who collected ten million quid after a day of wearing silly plastic noses and bathing in custard for sponsorship, or the wage slaves at Viyella who donated all that profit to the capitalists in the biggest charity of all: The Wages System? The capitalist class are kept in the luxury to which they are accustomed because a majority of workers acquiesce to a system which puts the profits of the rich before the unmet needs of those crying out for help.

Free to beg

World In Action (ITV, 8 pm, Monday, 6 March) was a documentary depicting the miserable lives of kids who, having left home and come to London in search of work, find themselves in cardboard boxes on the Embankment by the River Thames. These youngsters — many of them under eighteen — are compelled to beg in order to live. Young girls are under great financial pressure to find a pimp and work for him. The programmes showed that the young beggars of London are a fast-growing population, products of a system geared not to encouraging the creativity of people, but to making them exploitable workers. If they are too young to be put to work and too poor to find shelter, then they are ignored as if they did not exist. This is the living reality of the great revival of Victorian values: the sight of homeless kids forced to beg for the price of some food — and probably for drugs once the culture of street frustration has finished with them. And these well-paid TV tricksters on Channel Four tells us that the socialist revolution from production for profit to production for human need is no longer relevant.

Steve Coleman

Debates. The S.P.G.B. versus the I.L.P. (1933)

Party News from the January 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

A debate was held between the S.P.G.B. and the I.L.P. at Bethnal Green Town Hall on Friday, December 2nd. The I.L.P. speaker, N. Dunbar, claimed that the revolutionary ferment among the workers since the Bolshevik seizure of power has completely changed the problem of overthrowing capitalism. The workers have made inroads into capitalism by such achievements as unemployment insurance, and that the I.L.P. policy of Workers' Councils is the road by which the workers will achieve Socialism. The present I.L.P., since the Bradford Conference early this year, is a fundamentally different body from the old I.L.P., and must not be held responsible for its predecessor's actions.

Comrade Hardy, for the S.P.G.B., denied that the problem is essentially different from what it was before the war.

To get Socialism, the workers must gain control of the political machinery, yet the General Election last year showed the workers, employed and unemployed, prepared to vote the capitalists into power. Russia is not an instance of Socialism but of state capitalism, and in any event the I.L.P. cannot claim any credit for what the Bolsheviks did. In 1917, when Kerensky was in power and oppressing the Bolsheviks, the leaders of the I.L.P. sent this capitalist government a telegram of congratulation, urging the Russians, subject to certain conditions, to continue the war. (See Labour Leader, May 3rd, 1917.)

Social reforms like unemployment insurance, are methods by which the capitalists buy off working class discontent, with the result that unemployed riots are far less formidable than they were before the War.

The I.L.P., right from it formation, entered into electoral arrangements with the Liberal Party and had never fought elections on the simple demand for Socialism. The new I.L.P. is just like the old, a reformist body. The claim that the I.L.P. stands for any definite policy, cannot be maintained. The New Leader, for weeks past, has been publishing letters from influential I.L.P. members disputing with each other as to what the I.L.P.'s policy is?

The debate was well attended and both speakers obtained a good hearing from the audience, many of whom appeared to have Communist sympathies.

*     *     *     *

The S.P.G.B. versus the Co-operative Guild

A debate was held on Tuesday, November 15th, at Sutton, Surrey, between Comrade Ginsberg, representing the S.P.G.B., and Mr. Atkins, representing the Sutton Branch of the National Guild of Co-operators. The audience was small but interested and attentive.

A.F.

Notes on Economic History (12) (1961)

From the October 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Malthus on Poverty

From his law of population, Malthus infers that Governments should, on the one hand, remove all obstacles to the cultivation of the soil and, on the other, favour preventative checks, especially the postponement of marriage. The following passage from the 1803 edition is interesting: "A man born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if society do not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and in fact has no right to be where he is. At nature's mighty feast, there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to begone and will quickly execute her own orders if he does not work upon the compassion of her guests."

Malthus therefore recommends the reduction of paupers' relief to a minimum. Money used to support the poor or destitute, he argues, us taken from the other classes in society, and especially from that section of the working class that is only just outside of destitution. For this poor relief, says Malthus, increases demand, and thus raises the price of food, clothing and shelter.

Malthus' main demand is for "moral restraint." He writes: "It is clearly the duty of each individual not to marry till he has the prospect of supporting his children: but it is at the same time to be wished that he should retain undiminished his desire of marriage, in order that he may exert himself to realise this prospect, and be stimulated to make provision for the support of greater numbers."

Arising from this, it was proposed to put legal difficulties in the way of marriage. The poor who had no prospects of being able to support a family were to be forbidden to marry.

The Malthusian doctrine attracted widespread attention, and was accepted almost without qualification by many scientists. It also made a strong impression on governments, and its effects were seen in the increased stringency of the marriage laws. Down to 1918 vestiges of this persisted in Bavaria and the Austrian Tyrol, where marriage could not be entered into without the permission of the commune.

The astonishing fact about the Malthusian theory is its persistence in face of evidence that confutes it. To go to the core of the question, we can say there is no evidence to warrant the assumption that there is any tendency in population to increase faster than subsistence. The facts stated by Malthus to show this tendency, simply show that where, owing to a small population in a new country. or where, owing to the unequal distribution of wealth, as among the working class in the old country, human life is occupied with physical necessity of existence, the tendency to reproduce is at a rate which, if unchecked, would at some time exceed subsistence. But it is not correct to infer from this that the tendency to reproduce would show itself to the same extent where population was sufficiently dense, and where wealth was distributed in such a way as to lift the whole community above the necessity of devoting their energies to a struggle for mere existence. Nor can it be assumed that the tendency to reproduce, by causing poverty, must prevent the existence of such a community: for this obviously would be assuming the very point at issue and be reasoning in a circle. And even if it be admitted that the tendency to multiply must ultimately cause poverty, it cannot be stated of existing that it is due to this cause until it is shown that there are no other causes which can account for it.

The Malthus theory has persisted, and will persist, because it does not in any way oppose or antagonise any powerful interest. It is soothing and reassuring to the class who, wielding the power of wealth, largely dominate thought. Indeed, at a time when men were beginning to question an examine society, it came to the aid of the ruling class. The Essay on Population was written as an answer to William Godwin's Inquiry concerning Political Justice, a book which dealt with the principle of human equality, and the effect of Malthus' book was to justify the existing inequality by shifting responsibility for it from the laws of society to some kind of God-given laws.

The Socialist of today still has to contend with Malthusian ideas, in a modern form. They become more prevalent in times of large-scale unemployment, and are also use as an excuse to justify poverty in such places as India, Africa, the Latin countries of America. The answer to Malthus, and the modern exponents of his teachings, is to be found in the method of ownership of the means of producing wealth.

Poverty, as dealt with by Malthus, is not in fact the result  of excessive breeding. It is the chaotic nature of the capitalist system which must be blamed. Its solution is obvious—remove the cause which the Socialist claims is the private property relation in the means of production. Make this property common property, and the common access to wealth which follows such a change will provide the answer to poverty, present or future.

Bob Ambridge

News From India (2015)

From the October 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Letter sent to the Calcutta paper The Statesman.

In the evening of August 23 in the Sunday Discussion Meeting of our party, the World Socialist Party (India), we read with interest the Saturday Statesman, August 22, article ‘Relevance of Marx’ written by Professor Gargi Sengupta (see here). It is really heartening to note that a nineteenth century communist revolutionary, Karl Marx, is being revisited by the 21st century mainstream press to find answers to the present-day woes and worries. Hopefully, this signals the beginning of Marx’s media-ride in India too.

This happens because, as Marx and Engels themselves observed, ‘consciousness can sometimes appear further advanced than the contemporary empirical conditions, so that in the struggles of a later epoch one can refer to earlier theoreticians as authorities’ (The German Ideology). ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past’ wrote Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

In her appreciation in defence of Marx, Gargi Sengupta has rightly claimed that ‘Marxism enables us to understand the nature of the capitalist crisis,’ and also that ‘Marx believed that human development requires a cooperative society based on common ownership of the means of production.’

She has excellently pronounced, ‘The overall significance of religion may have declined, but the family, the schools, and the capitalist controlled mass media continue to brainwash the working class and prevent them from realizing their true destiny’.

Her observation: ‘From a global perspective, a class-based analysis is still relevant,’ holds up one of the basic principles of Marxism. She defends Marx for ‘making a very fundamental contribution’ whereby ‘He placed human beings and their conscious, purposive activity – human labour – at the centre of his analysis’ and also for a ‘unique contribution’ – the role of ‘class struggle’ in ‘human historical development’. She is right in pointing out that ‘Marx’s writings still evoke interest across the world. … Marx’s writings can throw light on the problems of our age’. Simply because, as Marx viewed, ‘The nature of capital remains the same in its developed as in its undeveloped form’; and ‘Production of surplus value is the absolute law of this mode of production’(Capital, Volume I).

Actually, Marx is more relevant today than ever before.

This said, I would like to comment on a couple of inaccuracies in Professor Sengupta's article. She says, ’Marx visualized the remedy in violent revolution followed by decades of civil and international warfare.’ This is a half-truth. True, in his early years Marx held a ’violent revolution’ view. However, eventually and finally he arrived at the following conclusion: ‘Proletariat – organized in a separate political party. That such organization must be pursued by all the means which the proletariat has at its disposal, including universal suffrage, thus transformed from the instrument of trickery, which it has been up till now into an instrument of emancipation’ (written on about May 10, 1880, printed according to L'Egalité, no. 24, June 30, 1880, checked with the text of Le Précurseur).

Secondly, in portraying capitalism as only a ‘private enterprise’ system she has missed the yardstick of defining state capitalism – the defining characteristic of which is state ownership and control of the means of production and articles for distribution. As a result she is mistaken in recognizing the erstwhile so-called ‘communist’ dictatorial and despotic state capitalist regimes of Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. How could there be ‘the eclipse of communism’ when communism (socialism the same) has nowhere and never been attempted at all? Just what happened in these countries was appropriately described in 1918 by Fitzgerald of the Socialist Party of Great Britain: ‘What justification is there, then, for terming the upheaval in Russia a Socialist Revolution? None whatever beyond the fact that the leaders in the November movement claim to be Marxian Socialists’ (Socialist Standard, August 1918).

Binay Sarkar

Notes on Economic History (11) (1961)

From the September 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Theory of Population

As Adam Smith's doctrine spread, it was elaborated and modified. Attempts to develop his ideas led to endeavours to explain the poverty and misery of the working class and all the defects that had become apparent during the rapid development of Capitalism, from the time of publication of his Wealth of Nations.

Two contrasted attitudes appeared. One was a condemnation and a criticism of conditions—this led to ideas about Socialism. The other was a pessimistic resignation, accepting the conditions and declaring them to be the result of the working of natural laws. This was the views held by Malthus. Malthus was responsible for two important works; in 1820 his Principles of Political Economy was published preceding by some 22 years his Essay on the Principle of Population, first published in 1798, and for ever associated with his name.

Malthus begins his statement on population with an account of the "tendency of all life to increase beyond the amount of nourishment available to it." In illustration he quotes Benjamin Franklin—"It is observed by Dr. Franklin that there is no bounds to the prolific nature of plants or animals, but what is made by their crowding and interfering with each other's means of subsistence. Were the face of the earth, he says, vacant of other plants, it might be gradually sowed and overspread with one kind only, as, for instance, with fennel; and were it empty of other inhabitants, it might, in a few ages, be replenished from one nation only as, for instance, with Englishmen." It follows from this, he says, that population has a constant tendency to increase beyond the means of subsistence.

Studying the increase of population in America, where there was an ample supply of good fertile and virgin land, and where there were few natural checks to growth of numbers. Malthus arrived at the conclusion that during about one hundred and fifty years the population had doubled itself every 25 years. The natural increase of population therefore took place like the increase in a series of numbers—1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256. In short, population, when its growth is unhindered, tends to increase in geometrical progression.

On the other hand, says Malthus, it is impossible to increase the produce of the soil in such a ratio. Under favourable conditions we may suppose that by improving the land already under cultivation, and by utilising the comparatively poor and neglected land, it would be possible to increase yields considerably. But the increase in twenty-five year periods (those in which population can double) could not be expected to be more rapid than is represented by the series of numbers—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. "It may be fairly pronounced . . .  that, considering the present average state of the earth, the means of subsistence, under circumstances the most favourable to human industry, could not possibly be made to increase faster than in an arithmetical ratio." To sum up, whereas population can increase in geometrical progression, the means of subsistence can increase only in arithmetical progression.

Population for Malthus, therefore, is limited by the means of subsistence. As a result of the tension inherent in the contrast between these two rates of increase, there is a tendency for population to increase beyond the means of subsistence. The result is that population increases in any country when the means of subsistence increase, whether as a result of more intensive agriculture, the import of food, or changes in the distribution of national wealth. Insufficiency of the means of subsistence, on the other hand, makes itself felt in the form of checks. These checks are of two kind—positive and preventive.

The positive checks are those which set by destroying existing population: the most obvious are wars, diseases, and famines, but they include every cause, whether arising from ignorance, vice or misery, which in any way helps to shorten the natural span of life. Preventive checks are those which are deliberately undertaken, such as refusal to marry and what Malthus calls the postponement of marriage, moral restraint. "By moral restraint I  . . .  mean a restraint of marriage from prudential motives, with a conduct strictly moral during the period of restraint."

The fact that the produce of land is uncertain and irregular was embodied in the "Law of Diminishing Returns." In the cultivation of land, assuming that the technique remains unchanged, Malthus argued that each successive addition of capital and labour applied to it beyond a certain amount (the optimum expenditure upon a particular technique) produces a smaller increment of yield. Accordingly, beyond the optimum expenditure further increments of capital and labour no longer produce equal additions of yield, but progressively diminishing ones. To put the matter in more general terms—the conditions remaining unchanged, additions of expenditure prove less profitable. If, for instance, the expenditure of 1,000 of additional capital produces an additional product of 500, the expenditure of a second 1,000 will produce an additional product of only 300: that of a third 1,000 will produce no more than 200, and so on.

This "law" has in fact been shown to be fallacious. It assumes that the productive technique remains unchanged, an assumption which is contrary to all evidence. In fact, Malthus himself says that this "law" is valid only so long as agricultural techniques remain unchanged. It would be difficult to find a period since Malthus wrote the essay, during which advanced countries' techniques of production has not been continuously changing and must, as man's knowledge increases, continue to change.

Bob Ambridge