1984—Unthinkable? (1955)

TV Review from the January 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month an adaptation of George Orwell’s famous novel, “Nineteen-Eighty-Four” appeared as a television play. The impact on audiences was generally agreed to have been startling—too startling, according to newspaper complaints about unsuitability and lack of “entertainment value.” The intention of the author, however, was not to horrify people, but to make them think and reflect, and certainly the play must have succeeded to a large extent in doing just that.

The story is set in London of the future, which has become Airstrip One in Oceania, one of three States into which the world is divided. These states are permanently at war with each other, though the actual fighting takes place in remote parts, in the jungle or the desert. The social structure in Oceania is a  hierarchy consisting of the Proles, the Outer Party and the Inner Party. At the bottom are the Proles, people doing purely routine work, ignorant, stupefied by abysmal and degrading conditions. Not very different are the Outer Party members, without privileges, living and working like automata, named and numbered on their clothing, rationed—and ceaselessly spied on by the two-way tele-screen through which the Thought Police watch and rule.—By contrast, the Inner Party members are the privileged, the givers of orders, the only people with servants, with such luxuries as wine, and with freedom to switch off their tele-screens when they wish. Above all stands the figure of the leader, Big Brother. Whether he is a real person is immaterial—he is the “expression of the Party.” 

Against this background the story unfolds of one humble member of the Outer Party. Winston (why Winston?) Smith, perhaps the last of the rebels. He is a pitiable, harassed, uncertain and confused rebel, working in the Ministry of Truth, where information is "adjusted" as the State requires. He watches a propaganda film showing the enemy leader, Goldstein; and while the others shout hate at Goldstein, he hesitantly thinks "I hate Big Brother." He meets a member of the Inner Party who, he suspects, "works for" Goldstein, and offers his services as a conspirator. Questions are asked: Is he willing to lie to further the cause he believes in, to cheat, to murder—even to throw sulphuric acid in a baby's face if it will somehow help? He is willing.

A romantic interest is introduced when Winston meets a girl whose job is to operate a novel-writing machine that churns out stereotyped rubbish for the Proles to read. Since love is forbidden and marriage is by order of the Party, the couple meet in secret, at first in the country and later in a room above an antique shop in the Prole sector. Eventually, the shopkeeper betrays them to the Thought Police. There is a scene (perhaps unnecessarily long and detailed) showing the brutal methods used to break down the last vestiges of their resistance, so that they unquestioningly accept that 2 + 2 = 5 if the Party says it is right.

The elements in the story that most compel attention are the subtle touches of detail that illustrate the sort of world that the author suggests is possible three decades hence. The worker in the Ministry of Truth helping to compile a dictionary of Newspeak (the new distorted basic language) proudly claims that it will abolish shades of meaning and narrow the range of thought, that it will abolish ideas through the destruction of words to express them. This appalling outlook is seen in an Inner Party official's remark "We're not interested in the stupid crimes you've committed—only in the thought."

All the most detestable aspects of the world today are enlarged and caricatured; the slogans like  “Ignorance Is Strength,” “War Is Peace”; the Ministry of Plenty announcing ration reductions as increases, the Ministry of Peace proclaiming “another great victor over our enemies,” the Ministry of Truth adjusting the facts of past history and “amending all records accordingly.”

The newspaper critics of this television play generally assumed that it was to be taken as a warning against totalitarianism as exemplified by Hitler’s Germany and in Russia today. When he wrote the book in 1949, Orwell doubtless drew inspiration from the Nazi regime and “Big Brother” Stalin. Yet the warning is not really against the tendencies and conditions in one “bad” part of the world sullying the “good.” It is against the actual and potential denial of human qualities that is implicit in the world set-up today. The theme is a powerful condemnation of the whole system of privileged and subject classes, of governmental control to preserve the system by crushing out any opposing idea. More than anything, perhaps, it is a warning of the effect of the mass-production of ideas on those who lose the desire to think for themselves, and who leave everything to “Big Brother.”

Stan.

What is Freedom? (1989)

From the February 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

In exchange for the Socialist Standard we receive from a library in East Berlin the GDR Review. This glossy, well produced journal covers a wide range of subjects, from politics, current affairs and economics to art, sport and various aspects of life in the German Democratic Republic—East Germany.

The December 1988 editorial was headed "What we mean by Freedom". We quote:

Everyone would like to be able to say they are free. Without freedom, life itself loses its value and meaning . . . Freedom cannot be won by an individual living in a vacuum . . . Being free does not mean doing only what you want to do, but rather wanting to do what has to be done. As Friedrich Engels put it: "Freedom is also the ability to make a knowledgeable decision." This requires that people be active, that they make use of the educational opportunities presented to them and that they work conscientiously for the wellbeing of society as a whole.

So far we could agree, but we soon come to a parting the ways:

Of course, freedom is always connected with what I can afford, both in intellectual and material terms. Some people tend to compare the "material" aspects with developed capitalist countries, and then use this as the sole measure of individual freedom. But when there are 16 million unemployed people in the leading EEC countries alone, we just have to ask: freedom for whom? What sort of freedom is it when you are not even guaranteed the right to provide for yourself and your family? The conclusion is obvious, namely that it is freedom at the expense of others. This however, is not the freedom we mean.

The kernel of our disagreement is in the statement "freedom . . . and material terms". It is an admission that, even if they call it socialism, East Germany operates state capitalism and there can be no freedom for workers under capitalism. The "freedom" enjoyed in East Germany is to go to work for wages, rather than the 16 million in the EEC who are "free" to apply to their governing bodies for "free" payments, often not sufficient to satisfy even the most basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. On the other hand, in Western Europe that worker (with or without work) is, more often than not, free to complain about his lot and criticise capitalists, politicians and the system, a freedom denied to his opposite number of the GDR.

When Engels wrote, he referred to freedom in co-operative socialist society where the wage labour/capital relationship between employee and employer has disappeared, and not attempted equation between (relative) freedom from want versus (relative) freedom of expression under state or private enterprise capitalism.

Eva Goodman

"Too many" bricks (1992)

From the November 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

The notion that the price mechanism is the most efficient allocator of resources took a further blow recently with the confirmation that Britain has a massive "oversupply" of bricks, concrete blocks and other building materials and a deepening housing crisis.

Despite increased homelessness, record levels of house repossession and rising council house waiting lists throughout the country, figures released by the Department of the Environment and leading construction companies show the house-building industry to be still in severe slump.

The output of the construction industry is now five percent lower that it was in the second quarter of last year, itself a period of sharp downturn. Redundancies have escalated and the industry's workforce has fallen by a further 13 percent over the last year.

The brick-making sector of the construction industry has been particularly badly hit. According to the Daily Telegraph (12 September), the major construction firm Tarmac is to close four plants producing a total of 100 million bricks a year, while concrete block factories in Nuneaton, Dumfries, Fleet and Bracknell also face shutdown.

With the decline in paying demand total UK brick sales have fallen from a peak of 4,270 million in 1988 to an estimated 3,100 million for 1992. Meanwhile, as homelessness continued to rise 1,473 million of brick stocks built up last year, the price mechanism once again demonstrating its inability to marry production with real human demand—in hosing as in other sectors of the economy.

The gulf between the total productive capacity capable of meeting human needs and the actual utilization of productive forces to meet paying demand in capitalism has been highlighted by, ironically enough, stockbroking firm BZW. They have estimated that despite rising real needs for housing, paying market demand in the building sector for materials is back to the level of 1986, when construction was just emerging from the previous slump of the early 1980s.

Furthermore, BZW estimate there to be excess productive capacity of 20 percent in the brick industry, 42 percent in ready-mixed concrete, 38 percent in crushed rock, 35 percent in plasterboard, 26 percent in both concrete blocks and roof tiles, and 25 percent in cement.

Bizarre though it may seem to rational individuals, some supporters of capitalism consider their system to be highly efficient, incorporating the best system of distribution known to humankind. But what sort of efficiency piles up stocks of useful materials and imposes market penalties, i.e. loss of profitability, as a disincentive to utilize an artificially "excess" capacity?

Though it is a good example, the construction industry is not, of course, alone in demonstrating the absurdity of the capitalist system of production. Most spheres of manufacturing are now faced with declining or static market demand, with wholesalers and retailers cutting back on orders as stocks of unsold goods pile up. According to a recent CBI survey, 63 percent of wholesalers are cutting back on their orders from manufacturing, while 45 percent of retailers are reducing orders from their suppliers (Guardian, 11 September).

This crazy situation of overcapacity and falling paying demand for commodities amidst increasing need, poverty, homelessness, and—in the "Third World"—mass starvation, has to be ended. And the sooner the better. The madness of the market will have to give way to a co-ordinated system of production for use, with free access to the goods, materials and services available to society.

It's time to put capitalism out of its misery and thereby help put us—the world working class—out of ours.

Dave Perrin

Our Attitude to Elections (1954)

From the January 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vote for a Case not a Face

In our recent by-election campaign in North Paddington we laid stress on the fact that we attached no special significance to our choice of a candidate. We made it quite clear that we approached the electorate with an object in view—that of Socialism, which implies the complete dispossession of the entire capitalist class and the reorganisation of society on the basis of production solely for use.

We hold that when a majority understand the nature of Capitalism, understand the futility of electing leaders to reform it, and that a complete change of the basis of society is both necessary and possible, then they will democratically elect their representatives for this sole object.

If we take a look at elections today, we find that the candidates of other political parties pander to a variety of tastes and requirements, and play off one group of people against another. “Something for everybody” might well be their motto. It is an encouraging sign that our political opponents are recognising the fundamental difference between us and other parties, though their statement of the position is usually not quite as we would put it. Thus The Glasgow Herald (19.11.53) wrote that:

“ . . . they need not undertake all the degrading business of making him (the candidate) known to North Paddingtonians, cataloguing his virtues, giving him opportunities to kiss babies. Individuals count for nothing with the S.P.G.B., who acknowledge no leaders, have never swerved from the principles laid down in 1904, and proudly remain the only political party who implore the electors not to vote for them unless in full understanding and agreement with what they stand for.”

Since the majority of workers think along capitalist lines, it is quite simple for the Tory, Liberal, Labour, Communist and other candidates to come along with plenty of promises – promises that they can in no way fulfil. Knowing how workers identify themselves with “our country”, “our exports (or imports)”, these parties can always hold out the threat of “our interests” being at stake – when all that is meant is that capitalist interests are at stake.

“Working men have no country” is as true a statement today as when Marx first said it. When the worker realises that he possesses nothing but his ability to work, which he sells to the capitalist to enable him to live, then he will have different ideas about voting for someone to represent him. He will only elect a delegate to carry out his wishes and who would be powerless to do otherwise. Be that candidate painter or plumber, clerk or bus driver, typist or cook—it will not matter. That he undertakes to carry out what he will be democratically elected for will be the only concern; not as now, when candidates parade their “good looks”, “war records”, “homely backgrounds” and all the other dope that is used as what the Americans call “sucker bait”. 

We can understand how the press in general, seeking "news" in preference to stating facts, registers surprise at our reluctance to give a life-story of the candidate. How gladly its reporters mop up any little tit-bit to make news; how they pester  us all day long for photographs, age, profession or job, hobby and what not. As they and their employers all support the retention of a capitalist system of society, it is too much to expect that they will give much prominence to stating the case of a party that seeks its complete abolition. Nevertheless, they do make small mentions, usually by means of "selective suppression"—that is, the selection from what we well them of what they think they ought to print.

In such a way is the wider spread of our propaganda made difficult. Not having the vast resources of other parties for propaganda—giant press organisations, the B.B.C. with radio and television (both barred to us)—we have to depend on our monthly journal, occasional pamphlets, outdoor propaganda, and the voluntary help so tirelessly given by our members. Our funds are always inadequate for the amount of activity we would like to indulge in.

Sympathisers might take note of this and assist us financially and otherwise. There is always plenty to do for those anxious to help. You will be able to assist in a comradely atmosphere, and will find pleasure in doing something worthwhile, instead of just giving a blank cheque at election times to the supporters of Capitalism.

You will find no “Great Men” in the S.P.G.B. The parts that its members play are varied, but no attempt is made to measure one against the other—the keynote is co-operative effort, as it will be in socialist society. One of our objections to the existence of “Very Important Persons” is that it presupposes that some persons are accounted of little importance. We are a band of ordinary folk, but each is as unimportant (and therefore each is as important) as the other, whether chosen for speaker, secretary, organiser or by-election candidate.

G. Hilbinger

The Passing Show: Labour rebels (1960)

The Passing Show Column from the September 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour Rebels

A letter in the Guardian (24/6/60) read in part as follows:

What I should like to know, however, is whether those members of Parliament who are now calling for the resignation of Hugh Gaitskell have ever themselves thought of resigning. If they are dissatisfied with the policies and leadership of the Labour Party, let them join say "The Socialist Party of Great Britain," and see how they get on there.

The letter is signed by Silvan Jones, the chairman of the Conway constituency Labour Party.

We are grateful to Mr. Jones for his interest in the Socialist Party, but it seems that he is under a misapprehension. While we are always glad to receive applications for membership, in order to keep the party as a Socialist party, we only allow Socialists to join. In this we are unlike Mr Jones' party, which the most convinced upholder of the capitalist system could join merely by signing an application form. The results may be seen in the political history of the twentieth century: the Labour Party's erratic pursuit of one reform after another, contrasted with the Socialist Party's consistent advocacy of Socialism.

Harry Pollitt

What a tragedy was the life of Harry Pollitt! Here was a man who, horrified by the conditions of the working class as he had known them in his youth, set out in a genuine attempt to improve those conditions. He conceived a personal dislike of "the bosses," and was determined to "make them pay" for what the workers had had to suffer. Yet Harry Pollitt never gained a thorough understanding of the forces that mould modern society, in Russia as well as in Britain. As a result, his deeply-felt hostility to the ruling class in Britain simply resulted in his becoming, indirectly, an overseas ally of the Russian ruling class. It is not enough merely to oppose capitalism, as one has known it: one must be for its alternative, Socialism. Had Harry Pollitt succeeded in his efforts, he would merely have been instrumental in establishing state capitalism in Britain, in place of the variety we have at present. And that would have left the workers exactly where they  are  now.

Curiously enough, many of the obituary notices which have appeared in the papers after Harry Pollitt's death expressed some regard for him—curiously, because the British newspapers are the propaganda organs of the British ruling class. The obituaries recalled with approval that Pollitt, after supporting the 1939 war against Germany at its outbreak, showed more reluctance than the other members of the Communist Party to come out against the war when Stalin and Hitler concluded their pact.

The Times obituary (30/6/60) was an example. It was written by a clergyman, a former member of Scotland Yard's Special Branch who once had the job of shadowing Pollitt. This writer could claim to understand the interests of the British ruling class: he recounts that when, after the Russo-German Pact, he asked Pollitt. "Are you going to let Hitler smash Britain?" Pollitt replied "No, we shall not do that." The fact that Pollitt was able to talk about the war (which was a struggle between German capitalist class and the British capitalist class) in those terms shows how little he understood the world in which he lived.

Alwyn Edgar

Cooking the Books: Labour and labour-power (2010)

The Cooking the Books Column from the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

In part two of his article “Is Marx’s analysis of capitalism still valid today?” (Freedom 31 July) Jonny Ball tackles Marx’s theory of surplus value which he correctly says is central to this analysis. This is how he presents it:

“Its basic premise is that in order to make a profit, the capitalist must pay the worker a sum lower than the amount the worker actually produces. The owners of the means of production, of Capital, will always try to keep costs, such as wages, to a minimum in order to extract the maximum amount of surplus value from their workforce, while those who do not own capital are obliged to sell their labour in order to live at a price that is determined not so much by the value they produce, but by the whims of an employer, who will receive the bulk of their workers' produce in the form of profit.”

No doubt Ball was trying to be sympathetic to Marx but, unfortunately, this is not a satisfactory depiction of Marx’s theory. Marx did see the source of surplus value as the unpaid labour of workers, but he never held the view that what workers were paid was determined “by the whims of an employer”.

Even when, in the 1840s, Marx spoke in terms of workers selling their “labour”, he argued the value of the commodity they sold was determined, as in the case of all other commodities, by the amount of labour-time required to produce and reproduce it and that its price fluctuated with supply and demand.

Later, in exile in Britain in the 1850s, when he had more time to study the workings of capitalism, Marx came to draw a distinction between “labour” and “labour-power”. Labour-power was the ability to work, the skill to produce something, while “labour” was the result of the exercise of these skills, the expenditure of labour-power. What workers sold to their employers was their “labour-power” not labour. Labour in fact couldn’t be bought and sold, only the commodities in which it was embodied could be.

So crucial was this distinction to Marx’s considered analysis of capitalism that when in 1891 Engels republished Marx’s 1849 article Wage Labour and Capital (still a basic introductory text to Marxian economics) he corrected the text on this point, explaining in his Introduction, “According to the original, the worker sells his labour to the capitalist for wages; according to the present text he sells his labour power” (Engels’s emphasis).

This distinction solved the problem of exactly how profit arose from the exploitation of workers. Workers were paid (generally and more or less) the full value of what they sold – their labour-power – yet were still exploited because the exercise of their labour-power produced a greater value than that of their labour-power. This “surplus value” was the source of their employer’s profit and of all capitalist property incomes.

Up until then pro-working-class thinkers and activists had tended to see profits as arising either from employers paying workers less than the value of what they sold (i.e. by cheating or swindling them) or from them selling what workers produced above its value (i.e. through profiteering or ripping off their customers).

Both these do go on under capitalism but Marx held that, as explanations of working class exploitation, they were unsatisfactory as they suggest that this has its origin in exchange not production and that it could be ended by “fair wages” or “fair trade” rather than by making the means of production the common property of all.

Soft soap opera (1981)

From the April 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is a mark of the level at which political journalism is conducted when what seems to loom largest in the minds of some press commentators is the dress-sense, hairstyle, and love-life, of Shirley Williams. While all manner of things may be germane to our political and social condition, does the existence in William's one-time Oxford rooms, of seven photographs of Peter Parker, (Guardian, 10 February), have any possible bearing on that condition? What, one is entitled to ask, will these newspaper hacks cobble up for us next?

The reason for printing such irrelevant hogwash is a determination in Fleet Street and broadcasting to build up the Labour Party's latest defectors as the beautiful people of British politics (even if that means the inclusion of Roy Jenkins). We are to be persuaded that these dilettantes are more concerned with the "moderate" decencies of political life than with its intrigue and infighting. In fact, what primarily motivates the media is the perpetuation of privilege and patronage among an "in" group who are assured of a comfortable ride on one or other of the band-waggons operated in the interests of our masters (who can recognise a loyal servant when they see one.)

The "sacrifices" such as Shirley Williams and her friends are flaunting in our less-than-terstained faces are those of the true class -collaborator, who would be (Roy Jenkins and Lazards, for example) received into almost any boardroom in the country. Neither would such people have much difficulty in being accepted by their Fleet Street friends, or by the BBC or IBA. To these latter they are very much a commodity, produced for sale with a view (that of the media) to profit. So naturally they can afford to play ducks and drakes with the organisation which provided them with so very lucrative a platform from which to mislead, and betray, the class they purported to represent.

The point about the whole sorry mess is that the defection from the Labour Party of a handful of disaffected class collaborators must essentially be a matter of indifference to us of the working class. It is a true measure of the sort of organisation the Labour Party is (and always was) that it can contain so motley a crew of the misguided, the careerist, the opportunistic and the sycophantic. The real surprise is that Williams and Co. have decided that their political fortunes lie elsewhere. After all, as will become increasingly plain as the months pass by, the Labour Party will revert to type: a reformist hotch-potch; a "broad church", complete with its pocket-lining priesthood, offering the working class nothing more nourishing than the same old mixture of pious platitudes and shop-soiled placebos. Right up Shirley Williams' street, one would have thought: but no—she's off; even if she has to be seen standing an awful long time upon the order of her going. (But then she would no doubt wish to maximise both the damage to her erstwhile colleagues and the publicity to herself.)

It is certain, should the beautiful quartet represented by Williams, Owen, Rogers and Jenkins, manage to play in tune, we shall shortly discover that their music has a remarkably familiar ring. Before so very long the cynical rhetoric will begin to fly. No amount of thumbing through Roget's Thesaurus will disguise the old shibboleths: the inevitable "incomes policy", even should it be further euphemised as, say, "rational rewards", or "restructured reimbursements", will remain an attempt strictly to control wages. A Centre Party, or as they may prefer to call it, a "Social Democratic Alliance", will, willingly or unwillingly—wittingly or unwittingly—run capitalism in the interests of those who primarily benefit from it: the capitalists. And if this means—as it will—a continued toleration of all the inequalities, frustrations and miseries so familiar to those who collectively produce all wealth, then our "social democrats" may confidently be expected to remain dry-eyed as they toast each other in their Limehouse redoubt.

Rodgers, Jenkins, Williams and Owen.

For make no mistake about it, Williams and Co. are quite unable to do anything more effective than jerk on the ends of the strings the ruling class have strung them with. The nearest mention of Karl Marx's name would be enough to send our Shirl scurrying for her crucifix (or whatever equivalent she might prefer). These people have deliberately chosen not to arm themselves with the sharpest weapons available to us. Again this is natural enough, for there is no career to be carved out of the ripping away of the mask from the face of capitalistic exploitation. So they turn to the likes of John Maynard Keynes and, using his tool-kit, they tinker with what has manifestly become a clapped-out old banger. Oh, yes: it can be made to cough and stutter on almost indefinitely; but how many of us are to be asphyxiated along the way?

So, should a "Social Democratic" Party start to roll it must merely mean that the politics of capitalism will have been further fragmented. The divisions and sub-divisions; the shades of meaning already virtually numberless, and to be found both within the parties and outside them, will have been further increased. Understanding of our class position will have been even further confused. Workers, offered once again a multiplicity of predictably mendacious "solutions" to the inevitable crises of capitalism, may well be tempted to turn to a shiny new grouping; (well, dusted off and refurbished, anyway). They might as well resort to a chiropodist to cure a hopelessly gangrenous leg. For it is the capitalist system itself which is solely responsible for the contradictions and absurdities, the cruelty and waste we see all around us. Capitalism works on a cold and irrational cruelty which leads to a total disregard of the cost as measured in human lives; it is under a compulsion to behave in this way. And capitalists, while exploiting the working class, must also gobble up each other: it is their only way "forward".

Labour's Gang of Four (or however many they are by now) may be the beautiful people of British politics but they are trying to do the same ugly job as all the others.

Richard Cooper

Another question, Mr Morris (2006)

Book Review from the February 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tony Pinkney, ed: We Met Morris: Interviews with William Morris, 1885-96. Spire Books £19.95.

In the 1880s the interview was a fairly new journalist technique, and a range of publications, from Justice to the Daily News and Bookselling, wanted to have William Morris’s views on a variety of topics. Most of the thirteen interviews gathered here took place in Kelmscott House, his residence in Hammersmith. The result is an interesting view of Morris as a person (generally dressed in a blue serge suit and smoking incessantly) as well as an insight into his opinions on political and other matters.

In 1885, Morris gave his reasons for leaving the Social Democratic Federation to help form the Socialist League. The SDF had been run ‘arbitrarily’, and it was heading towards ‘political opportunism tinctured with Jingoism’. The League, in contrast, would ‘uphold the purest doctrines of scientific Socialism, and + educate and organize towards the fundamental change in society’. In an interview from 1890, Marx is given credit for starting off the Socialist movement on scientific lines, and for showing that Socialism is ‘the natural outcome of the past’. There is a pleasant image of Socialism having ‘a public library at each street corner, where everybody should read all the best books, printed in the best and most beautiful type’. An 1894 criticism of anarchism is backed up by the argument that it is important to get control of parliament rather than attempting an insurrection (a contrast with his earlier opposition to parliamentary methods).

But this same interview acknowledges ‘the wisdom of the S.D.F. in drawing up that list of palliative measures’, i.e. a policy of reformism, something which Morris himself had previously rejected. In 1885 he also talked of the need for leaders, though it is not entirely clear what they are to do other than explain Socialist ideas, so this can hardly be taken as support for a Bolshevik-style vanguard. An interview with a woman journalist reveals some views which, to put it kindly, show that Morris was a man of his time: ‘I feel very strongly that a working man’s wife is needed in her home, and it is a pity when she has to leave it to compete in the labour market.’ (Shades of News from Nowhere, where it seems to be the women who do the housekeeping.)

It helps to have some previous acquaintance with Morris’ ideas and writings, but this is a well-produced volume which shows him in an unfamiliar and revealing light.

Paul Bennett

Sports Results (1949)

From the February 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

1948 was a year that will remain long in the memories of English sports fans. The Olympic Games were held here, an Australian cricket team visited and toured the country and the usual football, cricket, horse racing, dog racing, speedway and other sporting features had their place. The relative merits of prominent footballers and first-class cricketers have been hotly discussed. The abilities of various race horses and jockeys have been the subject of much argument. The Olympic contestants from all over the world have been cheered and applauded. Evenings have been devoted to the weekly ritual of completing the football pool coupons.

Late in the year a controversy arose over the business of the transfer of football players from one club to another. Football clubs will pay thousands of pounds to other clubs to obtain the transfer of a top-line player. The players become tied to the clubs that buy them. If they leave the club with which they are registered, they are barred from earning a living as professional footballers by playing for any other club.

Capitalism has converted to its own ends the many institutions thrown up by society in the course of its development and the sporting institutions have certainly not escaped. Sports and games, once the care-free expression of the joy of living, have become, for most of us, an entertainment to relieve the monotony of living.

At one time, man's sport was centred in the struggle to wrest from nature the means of life. Exceptional prowess in the hunt, etc., was the pinnacle of achievement. But now, except for those whose livelihood is derived from it, sport is practically divorced from the business of producing life's necessities. In a few rare instances, men cling to the old forms of enjoyment connected with the tussle with nature, instance fishing. In the main, sports have taken on a new aspect with each change in the social structure. The games and pastimes of the medieval village differ greatly from the more vigorous pursuits of barbarians before them, and the pay-at-the-gate type of game that we get today.

For the majority of workers nowadays, life is a continual round of drudgery and toil and monotony. They have no control over their labour—no interest in their products. There is no "joy of workmanship" for them. Home comfort  for many is more of an ideal than a fact. They have but few opportunities and little inclination to leave the towns and cities to enjoy the countryside. Too tired after their toil to engage in active recreation, the majority of workers seek a little respite in the entertainments offered them.

This condition of affairs offers a fruitful field for investment to those with wealth to spare. The institution of sport is seized upon and corrupted in the interest of capital. It becomes an industry. We see the amateur displaced by the professional and gate receipts become the motive for organising games. Even the remaining amateurs must play to the gallery to ensure patronage—or just get squeezed out. The players are subject to exploitation and intensification just as are other workers. Players who are at the top of their class are a money-making attraction and the clubs that employ them bind them in a form of slavery.

In a drab and unromantic world people seek thrills and excitement. These are provided by profit seekers whose interest is not in "sport for sport's sake," but in balance sheets and dividends.

Here is an instance of an institution, drawing its vitality from a deep social need, being converted to an instrument for producing profit. That it is used as a means for retarding the spread of revolutionary ideas, we are well aware. Although it may not be a conscious intention to do so, yet the organised professional sports of today serve the same purpose as the gladiatorial contests of the days of the declining Roman Empire. Whilst the exploited populace is applauding the contestants, in either greaves or shin-guards battling with either trident or tennis racquet, they are giving no thought to their exploitation or the means to end it. In this way sport serves a dual purpose. It produces profit for a few and it keeps the minds of the workers filled with thoughts of league matches and cup ties, winners for the 2.30, featherweights and heavyweights, Oxford and Cambridge, greyhounds and hares, holes, goals, tries, l.b.w.'s and all the other jargon and paraphernalia of present-day sport. Not forgetting totalisators and permutations.

Socialism, by ending exploitation, will end drudgery; by abolishing poverty it will abolish sordidness. Men and women will find life more interesting, they will find that it can be an adventure in itself. They will not be driven to seek artificial excitement. Friendly rivalry will take the place of cut-throat competition, on the sports ground as elsewhere. Sport can then be the means of allowing men to exhibit their physical strength, their fleetness of foot, their keenness of eye, their powers of endurance and their agility. It can satisfy man's desire to play. That was its original function. Capitalism has degraded it. Socialism can amend it. Socialism can make life entertaining so that men can use sports as a means of recreation, so that they will not be so tired and bored that they need to make of it a form of "pass-time."

W. Waters 

Sting in the Tail: Force and Revolution (1990)

The Sting in the Tail Column from the April 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Force and Revolution

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto that the defeat of capitalism " . . . can be achieved only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions".

Generations of left-wingers have claimed this is proof that Marx and Engels advocated armed insurrection, smashing state power, etc.

Of course they did no such thing. Instead they urged workers "to win the battle of democracy" in order to control state power and thus secure the socialist revolution.

Left-wingers have ignored the fact that "force" doesn't only mean violence but has economic and political meanings too.

For example, workers are "forced" by economic need to work for wages: More to the point, almost all of Eastern Europe's dictatorships were ousted by political force and without any violence being used. This "force" was the determination of the people to get rid of a system they detested and is in line with the "forcible overthrow" envisaged by Marx and Engels.

Economics of Health

How splendid is the claim of Kenneth Clarke, Health Secretary, that under his White Paper no patients will be refused the medicine they need.

This is, of course, a downright lie. There is a drug called erythropoetin that can transform the life of those suffering kidney failure. A thousand patients are being denied the drug because it is so expensive. It costs between £3,000 and £5,000 per patient per year.

Of the 1,500 who would benefit from it, only 500 are receiving it. The doctors have to refuse the treatment to the other 1,000 sufferers, because it is too expensive for the NHS.

Commenting on this, Dr. Stephen Waldeck, consultant renal physician at Hope Hospital, Salford said:

It is extremely frustrating for doctors and nurses, having seen how much better that little ampoule can make the patients to have to refuse it.

It is also frustrating, doctor, to see workers suffering unnecessarily while bare-faced liars like Clarke get away with their empty political boasts.

Love's Young Dream

It is not often that any worker will find anything of interest in Harper's and Queen magazine. It is a snobby magazine aimed at the parasites who own this country, but have been woefully short changed in the brains department.

But there was an interesting little item in a recent issue about the 20 richest women in Europe. It comes as no surprise to learn that Queen Elizabeth tops the list, with a personal fortune of £5,300 million. She was way ahead of her nearest rival Queen Beatrix of Netherlands, who had a mere £3,800 million.

But this wealth accumulation is not the exclusive domain of royals. It was heartening to see that a former member of the working class had managed to reach number 10 in the Rich Bitch Charts.

She is Janni Spies-Kjaer who has a personal fortune of £330 million. Not bad for a former lift-operator!

How did she manage this transformation? It seems that at 16 years of age she caught the eye of her 60 year old employer. Married him and a year later he died, leaving her his Scandinavian travel empire. Later she consoled herself by marrying a multi-millionaire.

Now £330 million is a tidy sum. Why, it could buy 66,000 treatments of erythropoetin!

The Nutty Professor

The new Tory "Libertarians" claim that they influence the government by "thinking the unthinkable: and setting out to deliberately shock.

Roger Scruton, professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, has set out to shock us.

We must recuperate yet another Victorian value: that of child labour. Many a 14 year old, set to work as a builder's apprentice, an electrician's mate or a stable hand, will learn far more than he could ever learn at school, while acquiring independence, responsibility and self-respect. If the pay were sufficiently low - and children are willing to work for quite paltry sums -  there would be no lack of employers ready to offer it.

The Guardian 13 February.

So you see, child labour would really benefit the children: just look at all the things they would gain! Of course the "paltry sums" they might earn are purely incidental as are the extra profits employers would get.

Scruton's views that many children would "learn far more" if they left school at 14 is his unconscious verdict on the standard of working class education, and has he never wondered how the children of our masters manage to acquire "independence, responsibility and self-respect" without the advantage of child labour?

Anyone who thinks Scruton's obnoxious views are mere fantasy should remember that some previous libertarian fantasies are now law. Child labour is only one example of the kind of society they want and work for.

Oh No, Not That!

Can you imagine Kenny Dalglish complaining that fans are talking football or Bros being unhappy because youngster discuss pop music?

Of course not, but here's a politician who doesn't want people talking about politics. Tory MP John Stokes told a meeting of Tory MPs

People never talk about politics in the pubs. But now they are starting to. I regard this as a sinister sign.

Glasgow Herald 9 February.

It's easy to see why Stokes doesn't welcome this trend. Tory policies such as the Poll tax, high interest rates, etc., are highly unpopular and Stokes thinks that if politics is being discussed then so will those unpopular policies.

But maybe something much worse has dawned on Stokes: like the dread thought that workers who talk about politics might even start thinking for themselves.

Every would-be leader from "right wing" Tory to "vanguard" Leninist would find that very sinister indeed.

Letter to Tebbit

The Scorpion's Nest

1st April

Dear Norm,

We read how upset you were at at the BBC for describing those Russian hardliners who opposed Gorbie as "conservatives". You added:

Indeed, to my astonishment I find from the BBC that Stalin and Brezhnev were "conservatives" while poor ill-informed me, well, I had thought they were communists.

The Independent 22 February.

We know how you feel, Norm: haven't we in the Socialist Party fumed when the Labour Party is miscalled "socialist" or some dictatorship is dubbed "Marxist"? We even read, in your favourite rag, The Sun, about Nicaragua's awful "Marxist coffee".

But Norm, you've got a nerve to complain about others misusing words. You do it all the time! You're doing it when you say Stalin and Brezhnev were communists: what communist principle did they ever adhere to?

And at the last general election you were even describing the Liberal-SDP Alliance as "socialist", so you really shouldn't whinge when you get a taste of your own medicine. 

Tell Me Lies (2004)

Book Review from the February 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

David Miller ed: Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq. Pluto Press £12.99

This volume contains 32 contributions from a wide variety of writers, which naturally means few arguments are developed at length and there is some overlap. A number of the pieces have appeared before, such as John Pilger's articles in the New Statesman.

It is probably not a surprise to learn that the physical attack on Iraq was preceded, accompanied and followed by a massive propaganda war. There were the notorious claims about Iraq's supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), claims which the mainstream media signally failed to expose as falsehoods. The view that Iraq constituted a threat to the rest of the world, largely by dint of having WMDs, was built up from at least 1997, despite the lack of real evidence for it. Even the CIA was pressured into producing reports that gave more support to the case for war.

Once the invasion had started, the propaganda machine went into overdrive, though under the more acceptable labels of “public diplomacy”' or “information support”. Both state and private media played their part; the BBC's Andrew Marr, for instance, reported that Baghdad had been captured “without a bloodbath”, despite the loss of thousands of civilian lives. The invasion force went to great lengths to ensure that only their perspective on the fighting was given proper airtime. Many reporters were stationed at the US Central Command in Qatar, where they could do little but listen to, and pass on, the official line as delivered in press conferences at which hostile or even sceptical questions were firmly discouraged.

A major development in this war was the use of “embedded” reporters, who travelled with invading forces, supposedly sharing the same dangers and so identifying with the soldiers they were accompanying. This inevitably meant that they toed the official line, often presenting a sanitised view of war, in which Iraqi casualties were minimised and all emphasis was put on the prospects for a successful (from the US-UK standpoint) outcome. In contrast were the so-called “unilateral” journalists, who were more independent, in some cases reporting from Baghdad while it was under attack. The US stressed the protection that they could offer to the “embeds”, while the unilaterals could enjoy no such advantages. In fact, two embedded American media workers were killed during the war, as were at least fifteen other journalists. In some cases, media centres and hotels housing reporters were bombed by US forces - probably intentionally, given that their positions and status were too well-known for all these incidents to be accidents.

Of course, there are other forms of government and ruling class influence on the media than naked physical threat. Many media bosses are themselves extremely wealthy capitalists (think of Rupert Murdoch), so their companies naturally present a pro-corporate power position. In the US, owners of radio stations supported the war as a thank you to the government for its deregulation of the radio industry, from which they'd benefited. The US media adopted a jingoistic attitude during the war, but the UK media were not quite that bad (and it is only fair to record that Channel 4 News was the most critical in its reporting).

The Iraq invasion was a media war in that many of the prominent public images of it were mere media stunts. Remembering the toppling of Saddam's statue? Well, it was American troops who pulled the statue down, and a few handpicked Iraqis were depicted rejoicing. In other cases, the reporting was noticeable for what was not said. Much attention was given to Iraqis looting museums and hospitals after the fall of Baghdad, but there was hardly any reference to the fact that US troops made sure that the Oil Ministry building, with its important records of oil exploration and so on, was made secure.

One good thing which emerges from the book is the way that ordinary people are becoming less and less prepared to swallow the lies emanating from governments and their propaganda machines.

Paul Bennett

Recent Times (2015)

Book Review from the October 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Charlie Chaplin', by Peter Ackroyd. Vintage £7.99.

Charlie Chaplin was born in a South London slum in 1889. His childhood was extremely impoverished, including spells in a workhouse, and his first show-business job was as a clog dancer at the age of nine. He became an actor and stage performer, joined Fred Karno’s company and travelled to the US, where he made his first film in 1914. He survived the birth of talkies and became a director and independent film-maker. Already by 1915, according to Ackroyd, he was the most famous man in the world.

Chaplin was best known for his screen persona as the Tramp, the ‘little fellow’ who became a kind of universal symbol of failure and hopelessness. Some of his films were overtly political, such as The Great Dictator (1940), where he played Adenoid Hynkel. This applied in particular to Modern Times (1936), about factory life and the repetitive and dehumanising nature of the production line.

In the First World War, he decided to stay in the US rather than return to the UK and risk being conscripted; people sent him envelopes with white feathers in, and some British cinemas stopped showing his films. During the Second World War, he made remarks supporting the ‘Soviet Union’ as a wartime ally, and also expressed some admiration for Stalin. Together with the implied message of Modern Times, this led in the late 1940s to trouble with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Some thought it suspicious that he had lived in the US for thirty years without becoming a US citizen, and in 1952, as he and his family sailed to Britain, his permit to re-enter the US was withdrawn (though he was later allowed to visit). For some discussion of his political views, see www.cartoonresearch.com/gerstein/chaplin/commie.html.

Ackroyd describes Chaplin as ‘a libertarian with tendencies towards anarchism’. But this is hardly compatible with his authoritarian approach to directing, his support for President Roosevelt, and his chauvinistic attitude to women. He also accepted a knighthood and was very concerned to protect his US-based property and investments. Though he was hardly consistent, he is perhaps best seen as someone who, looking back at his impoverished childhood, identified with the poor and downtrodden, but had no ideas about restructuring or even reforming society. Claims about him being a ‘Communist’ say more about the hysteria prevalent in some circles in the US than about Chaplin himself.  

Paul Bennett

Tony Benn: a political con-man (1981)

Illustration by George Meddemmen.

From the April 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Even if capitalism was administered by politicians who were all selfless and honest men and women, it would make little or no difference. The evils of poverty, unemployment, war—the list is endless—are an integral part of capitalism and will not be removed until the system itself is removed. Which itself can only happen when the working class decides to do its own thinking instead of hiring out its minds to leaders. Good leaders or bad leaders—it doesn't matter.

There is, unfortunately, no sign yet that the working class is ready to stop putting its faith in leaders and it remains an endless source of wonder that they can go on, generation after generation trusting shepherds who lead them from one morass to another. How is it possible that workers could even expect people like Wilson or Callaghan to solve their problems for them? And having realised after the "winter of discontent" that the Labour government was doing them no good at all, how could they possibly think that Margaret Thatcher would be able to do other than what she has done? There now seems to be a possibility that the next miracle worker the electorate will appoint to run British capitalism will be A. Wedgwood Benn. He cut the Wedgwood part from his name to lend a spurious working-class aroma to his stock-in-trade, while carefully retaining the capitalist wealth that the name implies. It might be instructive, therefore, to look at the slogans used by this men to lever himself to the top of the Labour Party—slogans which will presumably form the so-called left-wing programme on which the workers will in due course be asked to vote.

In a report in the Guardian (2/2/81), we are told that Benn advocates five priorities for the next Labour government. It is important first to remark that one "priority" is bound to be missing: socialism. And yet, as he calls himself a socialist, one would suppose this should be the sole priority. What else should a socialist want to introduce other than socialism? What is the point of being a socialist otherwise? If you think that socialism is the answer to the problems of society, then surely the establishment of such a system in the place of capitalism must be the object of obtaining power. If you don't think that, then you are clearly a fraud of the most impudent kind. Nobody will be surprised to learn that Benn's five points make no reference whatever to socialism. And the sad thing is that this slight omission will not even be noticed by the working class in general or even by the leftists Militant faction in the Labour Party who are lending such vociferous support to Benn and denying the right to call themselves socialists to such as Shirley Williams and David Owen (well they're right about that last bit, at least).

First of the five priorities is "the restoration of full employment". Merely to state this shows the utter contempt this would-be leader has for the working class. He takes it for granted that they are too stupid to see that the very inclusion of the word "restore" is itself a piece of chicanery. How can you restore something that never existed in the first place? Benn knows full well that the Labour government, of which he was a prominent member under both Wilson and Callaghan, not only presided over a large unemployment problem (which Thatcher inherited). He knows that under that government, unemployment actually doubled from the three-quarters of a million when the Heath Tories were removed from office to one and a half million when Callaghan was kicked out. The nerve of people like Benn and Foot to lead huge demonstrations denouncing unemployment can only mean that they assume the workers have no memory.

Next we have something called "expansion of public services". Whatever that might mean, it is clearly shown up as fraudulent by the cuts in social services which were a chief cause of discontent in that famous last winter of the Labour government. Thirdly, Benn regards it as important for the working class to support the idea of "withdrawal from the EEC". In fact the question of British capitalism being in, or out of, the EEC is of no consequence whatever to the working class.

So now we get to Priority Number Four. Benn wants unilateral nuclear disarmament. If one thing above all betrays the duplicity of the man (and of Foot and the rest of them) it is this, The Labour government of Attlee the Great was, after all, the one that made the decision to build their very own H Bomb. Then, when they were removed from office, all these lefties, Benn included, became supporters of CND and were to be heard screaming "Ban the Bomb!" They should have screamed "Ban the Bomb Which We Made" but perhaps that's too long for a slogan. However, in due course the pendulum swung and Labour, including Benn, was back in power. So they could ban the bomb, scrap Polaris, kick out the American bases and anything else that was needful to carry out their high-principled policy.

As everyone knows, they did nothing of the sort. The Labour government carried on where the Tories left off, voting vast sums on improving their H Bomb at a time when they said it was necessary to make cuts in hospital beds, school meals and the like—all the very things in fact which they now blame the Tories for. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to say that Benn resigned from the Labour Party to show his contempt for this disgraceful dereliction of principle? And pigs might fly. Once again, he kept mum for the whole time his party was enjoying the sweets of office. But almost the very moment they were kicked out, he and his fellow tricksters were at it again. Ban the Bomb!

Last, and one hopes least, Benn wants to "strengthen democracy at all levels in society". It is not worth wasting much of the valuable space of this journal on worrying about what this vague claptrap can possibly mean. In a society based on two classes, the minority owning almost everything and the majority owning almost nothing, there is a clear limit to the amount of democracy that is possible. But if Benn now seeks power "for more democracy" (whether t means anything or nothing), surely he should face the obvious question: As you were in power for many years until quite recently, why did you not introduce this improved democracy? Why did you not resign if your governmental colleagues stopped you? Why did we never hear so much as a whisper about it during the whole period and yet the moment you are out of office you suddenly discover what has been missing?

Enough is enough. If the working class would behave like thinking human beings, instead of like sheep, then bogus shepherds like Benn would no longer be able to fleece them.

L. E. Weidberg

Hodge-podge (1984)

Book Review from the October 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Democratic Economy by Geoff Hodgson. Penguin 1984. £3.50.

It is not unusual to find that non-socialists writing on political and economic questions have interesting criticisms to make of other defenders of capitalism, but are far less impressive when setting forth their own ideas. This is the case with Hodgson.

His book begins by discussing the views of the "New Right", by which is meant Hayek, Friedman and their followers in the Thatcher government. Their attitude is that freedom is the absence of coercion and that a free market economy minimises coercion by providing freedom of choice. It is not difficult to point to absurdities in this; poverty and starvation are coercive, so workers have no freedom of choice about entering employment. The state is not the only instrument of authority and coercion: the capitalist enterprise is another. Moreover, some degree of state intervention in the economy is a necessary feature of capitalism; laissez-faire capitalism in Britain was in fact the product of deliberate state action. The goal of the New Right — a system completely regulated by the market and private enterprise — is unrealisable (and, socialists add, equally undesirable).

On the basis of this conclusion, Hodgson proposes what he called the impurity principle, which states that different economic structures must necessarily co-exist in a single society (though one structure may be dominant). Pure market capitalism with no state intervention is thus impossible. Eastern European countries show central planning co-existing with some market forces. It follows from this that "some form of structural economic pluralism" is inevitable: it needs to be decided whether markets or planning will be dominant.

And here we reach the limits of Hodgson's vision. Though he mentions in passing that socialists have often advocated the abolition of money, he has no conception of anything as revolutionary as abolition of the wages system. He wants a society based on worker participation, democracy and decentralisation, where markets still exist but are subservient to planning. This is not socialism with some elements of capitalist structure — it is capitalism period! It is not possible for socialism (a classless society based on common ownership and free access) to co-exist with capitalism (a system based on class monopoly and commodity production).

At bottom, Hodgson simply fails to understand what constitutes capitalism. He criticises Tony Benn for identifying markets with capitalism, but for the wrong reasons: he believes that markets can exist in socialism, not that capitalism can exist without a free market. His dismissal of the view that Russia is state capitalist is utterly confused, and leads him to conclude:

The theory thus transforms Marxism into a millenarian hope in an impossible scenario of simultaneous world revolution. In the meantime, 'capitalism' is everywhere.

In spite of himself, Hodgson has seen the implications of the socialist case. But he rejects it with the ignorant voice of reformism. Still, what should one expect from an advisor to Neil Kinnock?

Paul Bennett

Obituary: W. T. Hopley (1968)

Hopley at the SPGB's 1905 Conference.

Obituary from the May 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to record the death at the age of 87 of Wilfred T. Hopley, one of the two oldest members of the Party. His funeral was at Tunbridge Wells Crematorium on March 12th. Hopley joined the Party just after it was formed in 1904. He was one of the best humourist writers in the Party and was a regular contributor to the Socialist Standard for many years. In fact his last contribution appeared in 1954 in the bi-centenary issue of the Standard. He wrote over the initials "W.T.H."

He helped to form the original Paddington Branch and represented it for years as a delegate to Conference and Delegate Meetings. Later he moved to Watford Branch and performed the same services for that Branch until the outbreak of the 1914-18 War. In 1925, when Alex Anderson attended his last Conference, Hopley was Chairman. Anderson was dying, and knew it, and he went on addressing the delegates for a long time in a voice like a loud whisper: one or two members urged Hopley to ask Anderson to finish, but he said it was Anderson's last chance to speak to members and he was not going to stop him. Anderson died a few weeks after the Conference.

Some time after the last war Hopley and his wife moved to a little place in Kent, not far from Tonbridge, to be near a son who was ill in hospital. Unfortunately his son died and his wife died a few years later, leaving Hopley to live alone in his house for the last nine or ten years. The other son and family lived up in the Midlands but Hopley did not want to leave the Tonbridge area.

To the very end Hopley was as lively, humorous and interested in Party progress as ever.

The Party has lost one of its staunch and solid old timbers, and some of us have lost a cheerful, optimistic and grand old comrade and friend. To his son and family we send our sincere sympathy.

Gilmac.