Greasy Pole: The Great - Are They Any Good? (2004)

The Greasy Pole Column from the April 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Interposing themselves among the various layers of hierarchy and the ravages of capitalist society there is a peculiar human stratum which goes under the name of the Great and the Good. Their function is largely self-defined; in their own estimation they serve, they instruct, they resolve. Many - but not all- of them were fashioned in expensive schools, followed by years of devoted study in prestigious universities, to prepare them for membership of exclusive clubs and intimidating professional societies. Every so often they descend to our level to tell us what we are doing wrong and urge us to trust them to put it right. They assume that their very eminence will persuade us to heed their advice.

The boundaries of the Great and the Good are murky, difficult to set. It is probably easier to say who is not one of them than who is. They are unlikely to be found battling their way to work in a bus queue or a sardine tin tube train. Typically, among their ranks are newspaper editors, expired politicians, media personalities, university big-wigs, ex-civil service mandarins and lawyers, especially those who have graduated onto the Bench. They are often on call to newspapers or TV programmes to cobble together some empty pontificating on a current event. Their names are among the first to be thought of when it is necessary to populate some quango or official enquiry charged with blanketting some nasty reality relating to property society. So they infest organisations like the Parole Board, the Press Complaints Council, hospital boards of management. Some of them might find themselves sitting as a governor of the BBC. (When the chairmanship at the BBC fell vacant after the precipitous departure of Gavin Davies an ambitious queue of the Great and the Good formed, hopeful for the job, which yields a pay off of £81,320 a year for a four-day week).

Ryder and Radley

At this point we introduce Lord Ryder of Wensum, who is plainly among the Great and the Good because he is a governor of the BBC and  its vice-chairman, acting chairman until Davies’ successor is appointed. The Wensum bit of Ryder’s name is a river which provided a natural defence to the unwalled side of the city of Norwich. When Ryder was raised to the peerage he took the title of Wensum because he comes from that part of the country; it is where his family reaped the kind of profits to send him to a public school to begin the education necessary for someone destined to be among the Great and the Good. In fact he went to one of the more modern, less prestigious, public schools - Radley, which was established as recently as 1847 and which may have tried to assuage the shame of not being on the same level as Eton or Harrow by imposing a notably abrasive regime on its unfortunate scholars. One who went there described at as an “arriviste” school where “+I was regularly withdrawn from everyday life for months on end, as if abducted by aliens, and brought here instead. At the time, I blamed the parents”. After participating in Radley’s compulsory Rugby football, its cold baths and punishing long runs in the early morning darkness, Ryder must have found relief in one of the more famous of Cambridge colleges where he could unspectacularly graduate in history.

After that there was an appropriately seamless progress into journalism (at the Daily Telegraph of course) and life as a farmer. But it seemed the urge to give all this up in order to serve the rest of us unfortunates was strong enough to persuade Ryder to opt for a career in Tory politics. Like any new seeker after the higher reaches of the greasy pole, he had to prove his motivation by trying his luck at some hopeless seat. He took two batterings at the impregnable Labour stronghold of Gateshead East in the general elections of 1974, until in 1983 he was ushered into the comfort of Mid Norfolk - which was not only solidly Tory but his home area as well. This agreeable ending was made even happier when, soon after arriving at Westminster, Ryder was singled out for promotion - well, his wife was private secretary to Margaret Thatcher, who was at their wedding - holding some minor jobs before moving to Economic Secretary to the Treasury in 1989. In 1990 he disappointed Thatcher, who had done so much for his career, by adroitly switching sides in the Tory leadership struggle to support John Major, who in his turn rewarded him with the job of Chief Whip.

Bastards and Sleaze

But Ryder’s luck was out for that was not the best time to be a Tory Whip, what with John Major’s  battle with the Euro-sceptic “bastards”, including the unlamented Iain Duncan Smith. (Another of the rebels, Teresa Gorman, complained in her book Bastards about how ruthless the Tory Whips were with them). And that was not the end of the discipline problems, as the party’s MPs seemed to be queuing up to discredit Major’s unwise call to get Back to Basics with a succession of exotic embroilments and underhand deals which have collectively gone down in history as Tory Sleaze. Nothing he had endured at Radley had prepared Ryder for this and in 1997 he decided that enough was enough. He left active politics, became a director of Ipswich Town Football Club (which proved that the Great and the Good did not lose the common touch) and founded and became chairman of two local private radio stations. As he did this he may have congratulated himself on his timing for in the 1997 election his 1983 majority of 15,515 shrivelled to just 1336. In a traditional show of gratitude for Ryder’s devoted labours in lubricating the process of capitalism’s deceptions Major elevated him into a Life Peer, with an appropriate gong - the OBE - to go with it. >From here it was a short, predictable step for him to become a governor of the BBC and, in January 2002, the Corporation’s vice chairman.

It was from that vantage point that Ryder made his grovelling apology to the government over the Andrew Gilligan affair. “On behalf of the BBC,” he snivelled, he had “No hesitation in apologising unreservedly for our errors”. Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell - who have yet to apologise for their “errors” over the 45 minutes Weapons of Mass Destruction distortion - were delighted at Ryder’s fulsome toadying. They overlooked the fact that Ryder was not speaking “on behalf of” the workers at the BBC, who staged an immediate mass protest, nor for the thousands who were outraged by the government’s cynicism and Hutton’s readiness to brush it all aside.    

Weirdo and Watches

So what kind of politician, journalist, farmer, Life Peer, BBC governor, is the Great and Good Lord Ryder of Wensum? A fellow Tory MP - not one, it must be said, famous for being discreetly considerate - described him as weird, quiet and secretive, wearing his watch upside down because the time of day was not a matter for public disclosure (whatever that means). Edwina Currie, perhaps making comparison to John Major, thought him “skinny and youthful-looking+hiding behind owlish glasses, drinking Diet Coke+” He did have one fervent admirer though, at least for a while, in the odious, fascistic Alan Clark, who said he was “+such fun. So intelligent, and has the right views on practically every topic” (although Clark did not make it clear whether these “topics” included Nazi Germany). But as Clark became increasingly bitter about being out of Parliament (ignoring the fact that it was by his own decision to stand down) Ryder ceased to be a subject for his admiration. “I am ‘put out’ by my friends ignoring me,” whined the tediously egocentric diarist of Saltwood Castle; “Especially wounded by Richard. I did think that he was a friend, and I a confidant of his”. Clark’s final opinion, contemptuously approving his wife’s waspish appraisal, was that Ryder was “+just a little accountant+on the way out he scuttled away through a side door”.

But if Ryder was an accountant he was clearly one who could do his sums, as he proved in 1990 when he calculatedly deserted Margaret Thatcher in the hope that he would be better off supporting Major. Thatcher wailed at his treachery:

    It was a personal, as well as a political blow to learn that

    Richard, who had come with me to No. 10 all those years ago

    as my political secretary and whom I had moved up the ladder

    as quickly as I decently could, was deserting at the first whiff

    of grapeshot.

With his kind of credentials, Ryder fits comfortably in the ranks of the Great and the Good. His grovelling apology about “errors” at the BBC and everything about his amputated career in politics implied that the fault lies with the rest of us, for our scepticism when we are confronted with the likes of him and their pathetic defence of capitalism. We might ask, what gives him the right to behave in that way? What gave Thatcher and Major the right to foster him in what they hoped would be his faultless journey up the greasy pole? Such “rights” spring from the basic class structure of capitalism with its minority privileges and will endure with the system. Lord Ryder of Wensum is living witness to the cruel cynicism inherent in that system as well as the confusion among those who speak loudest in its defence.  

Ivan

The global profit system (2011)

From the June 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It's to see my dividends coming in.” So said John D Rockefeller founder of Standard Oil. 

Rockefeller's wealth was gained through the exploitation of worker labour power to turn a free resource, oil, into a commodity for sale on the market. That in a nutshell is how he kept those dividend payments rolling in. What applied then just as surely applies now.

Standard Oil’s rapacious business methods laid the foundations for today’s oil conglomerates. Throughout its existence Standard Oil was the target of disgruntled politicians and newspapers. Rockefeller’s PR people and lawyers were as busy then as their modern day counterparts. In 1880 the New York World wrote that it was “the most cruel, impudent, pitiless, and grasping monopoly that ever fastened upon a country” (John D. Rockefeller: Anointed With Oil, p.60). A decade later Rockefeller controlled 88 percent of the United States’ refined oil. In 1911 the Supreme Court found Standard Oil in breach of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Its trading practices were ruled illegal and it was ordered to be broken up into 34 new companies. Rockefeller still held a 25 percent stake in Standard Oil. This was transferred proportionately into shares in the new companies. Although Rockefeller’s direct control of the oil market was somewhat diminished, his personal fortune in 1920, which was estimated at $900,000,000, translated into plenty of influence. And a great deal of personal pleasure.

Another capitalist who was to derive plenty of pleasure from oil was William Knox Darcy. He was the son of an English solicitor who emigrated to Australia where he began to speculate in land. He became a partner in a syndicate in 1883 that uncovered a large deposit of gold at Mt Morgan. Darcy returned to England with a considerable fortune in his knapsack. His thirst for pleasure still unquenched he cast his eye east to Iran.

In 1901 Darcy negotiated a contract that gave him the rights to drill for mineral resources over a significantly large area of Iran. The contract was signed by the landowner, the Shahanshah, king of kings. Darcy handed over £20,000 cash. The rest of the deal involved £20,000 in stock and a 16 percent share in the net profits if any transpired. In 1908 oil on a significant scale was discovered. Darcy never once set foot on the Iranian soil that would give him and a small elite considerable pleasure in the years to come. Out of this deal the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was formed. In 1935 its name was changed to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC); its new owner was the British government.

At the core of all conflict under capitalism are markets and profits. Iranian instability haunted the owners of AIOC. That paltry 16 percent share stuck in the throats of Iranians. As was AIOC’s refusal to allow the Iranian government to check their books to see if that legendary British fair play was being practised. In 1951 the pro-AIOC Prime minister was overthrown. The Iranian parliament nationalised the oil fields. AIOC was ousted from Iran and it squealed its way through boycotts and high courts. In 1953 operation Ajax was initiated. The CIA and British government conspired with the King of Kings and the Iranian military to effect a coup. However AIOC had to forego its earlier monopoly and make do with only a 40 percent share of the spoils. American oil companies received 40 percent and the French 20 percent. The fountain of pleasure was re-activated.

In 1954 AIOC changed its name to the British Petroleum Company. Expansion from their base in the Middle East to Alaska followed in 1959. Adding substantially to the profits and the dividend cheques was their oil strike in the North Sea in 1965. Thatcher sold off the British government’s holding in BP, but not their interest in its fervent pursuit of profit. When the Kuwait Investment Authority, essentially the Kuwait government, saw an opportunity to gain control of BP through market manoeuvres, the Thatcher government didn’t hesitate to block their attempts; despite the free market rhetoric of its members.        

BP continued to grow through the capital generated from its exploitation of natural resources excavated by human labour power. Along the way those profits allowed BP to swallow up several of the offspring of Standard Oil. ExxonMobil and Chevron snapped up the rest of its most profitable siblings, and the trio came to form the backbone of the ‘Seven Sisters’ who in 1973 controlled 85 percent of the world's oil reserves.                    

BP nowadays ranks as the fourth largest company in the world measured by its 2009 revenues of $239 billion. It has acquired 22,400 service stations worldwide, and pumps 3.8 million gallons of oil in to the market place every day. Its profits, and thus its power, are culled from throughout the world. A source of pleasure for a few, but one of deep discontent to many.

The costs of doing business can often seem strange to the uninitiated. The Guardian (12 April 1976) reported that BP handed over £500,000 to a “slush fund which dispensed money to the ruling Italian political parties in return for favours over oil taxes and prices”. BP’s own documents showed that this type of payment was “calculated as a percentage of the money the company could expect to make as a result of favourable legislation”. Profits are all about maths. Is doing a thing one way more profitable than doing it another? That is the logic of capitalism, and consequently the logic of what follows.

In September 1999 a subsidiary of BP in Alaska paid a fine of $22 million for the illegal dumping of hazardous wastes from 1993-1995 on the Alaska North Slope. In August 2006 BP were forced to shut down their operations as over one million litres of oil had been spilt over the North Slope. The Guardian (1 July 2007) reported that “a US congressional committee has uncovered evidence of ‘draconian’ cost cuts at BP”, and demanded documents “suggesting that managers considered turning off the flow of anti-corrosion chemicals to save money”.

Maintenance and safety cuts were also linked to an explosion at BP’s Texas City refinery resulting in 15 deaths and injuries to 180 people. Refineries based in Texas City and Toledo U.S accounted for 97 percent of all flagrant safety violations (829 of 851). The Centre for Public Integrity reported on 16 May last year that “most of BP’s citations were classified as ‘egregious and wilful’ by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and reflect alleged violations of a rule designed to prevent catastrophic events at refineries”.

In April 2010 the offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico killing 11 people and creating an oil slick that covered at least 2,500 square miles. BP, Halliburton and Transocean, the three companies that expected to carve up the profits have ended up blaming each other for the disaster. This is a common occurrence when thieves fall out. BP’s chief executive at the time has since left the company pocketing a £2 million severance deal, £100,000 a year as a payoff from a Russian joint venture with TNK-BP and a £600,000 per year pension. But the news isn’t all good though, along with Lord Browne of Madingley he’s been cited in a multi-million dollar lawsuit linked to the bribery of government officials in Kazakhstan.

The Guardian (2 February) reported that BP is under investigation in the US over its “alleged manipulation of the gas market”, and “in a separate case in 2006, BP paid $300m to settle charges that it had manipulated the propane market in the US”. Another report in the same issue that would have made Rockefeller proud of one of his heirs is that “the administrator of BP's $20bn (£12.3bn) Gulf spill compensation fund was accused last night by Mississippi's attorney general, Jim Hood, of sweeping deficiencies and violations of law”.

In South America BP has been equally busy pursuing dividend payments. They stood accused in the European Parliament in October 1996 of colluding with the Columbian army in gross human rights violations and of wilful destruction of the environment. Evidence supplied by a report commissioned by Colombia's President Samper’s human rights adviser alleged that “ BP passed photographs and videos of local protesters to the army, which human rights groups say led to killings, disappearances, torture and beatings” (corporatewatch.org). Likewise, a group of Colombian farmers won a multimillion pound settlement from BP after they were “ accused of benefiting from a regime of terror carried out by Colombian government paramilitaries to protect a 450-mile pipeline” (Independent, 22 July 2006).

Africa hasn’t escaped BP’s grasp either. In Southern Sudan BP have been linked to a civil war that it’s alleged has the central goal of depopulating the oil regions and the protection of pipelines. The people of the Niger Delta have been suffering from the oil cartel’s calculated exploitation of the land for the past 40 years. Its 606 oilfields supply 40 percent of all the crude that the US imports. Pollution from oil spills is endemic and dwarfs every other such disaster. As the Guardian reports “more oil is spilled from the Delta's network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico”.

Nnimo Bassey, Nigerian head of Friends of the Earth International said “There is an overwhelming sense that the big oil companies act as if they are beyond the law… It is clear that BP has been blocking progressive legislation, both in the US and here. In Nigeria, they have been living above the law. They are now clearly a danger to the planet. The dangers of this happening again and again are high. They must be taken to the international court of justice” (30 May 2010).

Many people believe that companies like BP are the problem. Well-meaning people like Bassey see court rulings, legislation and even the break-up of companies as a solution. So did well-meaning people during the reign of Standard Oil. Nothing changed then except some names. The problem is the global profit system. The, dog-eat-dog, unquenchable compulsion to acquire earnings and dividends. Pollution, corruption and death are the symptoms of a disease. The disease is capitalism. Only major surgery can cure the disease.

When will the naive finally realise that the problems faced by people and the environment cannot somehow, magically, be solved by methods that have failed abysmally for decades? How long do we, the overwhelming majority, sit on our hands while a tiny minority derive their pleasure at our expense?

Andy Matthews

Voice From the Back: Time on their hands (2015)

The Voice From The Back Column from the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Time on their hands
'Have Half a Million Dollars? Here’s a Massive Roger Dubuis Pocket Watch. Roger Dubuis is a brand that's never shy. If you're a fan, you probably use adjectives like bold and pioneering to describe the ornately skeletonised watches that come from the Geneva-based manufacturer. If you're not a fan, florid might seem a less generous description. Whatever your taste though, there's no denying that the new Excalibur Spider Pocket Time Instrument is flat-out insane' (bloomberg.com, 5 October). There are billions of reasons why this is mad. Here are just 600 million of them, the number, in India alone, of people who defecate in the open. Workers of the world wake up. Pull the chain on this system of obscene wealth and abject poverty.

Hajj Hell
Estimates vary as to how many paid the ultimate price and lost their lives in the rush to submit. The feudalistic theocracy of Saudi Arabia said 769 died in the crush, the Associated Press counted at least 1,453 and Iran over 4,700. Whatever the exact number, the history of the hajj, past, present and future, is tragic. Who is to blame? Mohammed? No, even though, unlike Jesus, there is convincing evidence he lived, we cannot really blame a man long dead. The moronic mullahs who failed to give advance warning of the impending deaths? No, because they cannot see the future any more than eBible Fellowship leader Chris McCann who stated the world would pass away on 7 October. But, according to one report, a class element is involved: the two waves of pilgrims converged on a narrow road 'which had been partly closed to allow a VIP Saudi prince to jump the cue [sic] causing people to suffocate or be trampled to death' (dissidentvoice.org, 7 October).

Stephen Hawking boldly goes....socialist?
'If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality' (huffingtonpost.com, 10 October). Socialists, preferring the first option, are not ashamed to appropriate Healey’s First Law of Holes to remind fellow members of the working class to stop digging. A world of free access and production for use not profit is ours for the taking. Make it so!

Moore nonsense
Meaningful change cannot come about through leaders, chasing reforms or minority action. Michael Moore disagrees: ’it doesn't take a lot; just a few people have got to do something, not a lot of people. No change has ever occurred with the masses doing it. Fewer than 25 percent supported the American Revolution in the Colonies, right? Jesus has 12 guys that fished! ' (cbsnews.com, 2 October). But only the masses can do it! Meanwhile, in the words of William Morris, ‘our business... is the making of socialists, i.e., convincing people that socialism is good for them and is possible. When we have enough people of that way of thinking, they will find out what action is necessary for putting their principles into practice. Until we have that mass of opinion, action for a general change that will benefit the whole people is impossible.'

$mith & We$$on
Moore is in favour of more gun controls. The manufactures are too, as such talk improves sales. 'Renewed calls for tougher gun control laws sent gun stocks surging on Monday as investors expected an increase in gun sales. The value of Smith & Wesson’s shares went up by 7.29% and Sturm, Ruger & Co increased by 2.75%. It was another good day for gun stock investors. Overall this year, the value of Smith & Wesson’s shares has increased by more than 80% and that of Sturm, Ruger increased by more than 60% – making them some of the best-performing stocks of 2015' (Guardian, 5 October).

Clueless capitalist
'Lord Sugar says today's poor have never had it so good, with mobile phones, computers and televisions making a mockery of claims of deprivation' (Daily Telegraph, 4 October). Just 85 capitalists have accumulated as much wealth between them as half the world's total population combined. Yet the 99 percent suffer poverty because they, unlike the capitalists, do not have direct access to the means of production and distribution.

Why I Joined the Socialist Party of Canada (1965)

From the 1965 - Number 2 issue of The Western Socialist

While walking that damp and dreary spring evening I came to a shop which, in my mind, sold odd things. At first I was interested in the things I could see in the window, then I looked beyond. After the fancy of what I saw beyond was gone did I suddenly realize there were people in the shop and I wondered what were they doing there.

The next thing I knew a young man came to the door and said, "We are having a socialist meeting. Come in, for you are welcome."

"Good," I said, "for I am also a socialist."

I sat down and (listened to a general discussion that was going on. Finally, the meeting was called to order, and the Chairman said, "This meeting is on behalf of the Socialist Party of Canada." I wondered to myself, "I have never heard of the Socialist Party of Canada."

I listened to what was said and agreed with much of it, but when he said, "Under socialism you do not need money," I thought he was mad.

At long last, he was finished. He said, "We will now have a question and discussion period, as this is part of the Socialist Party of Canada policy."

Asked I, "Mr. Speaker, what will people do without money. What incentive will they have to work?"

He replied, "Today, goods are produced for the profit motive, not for use. They have a use value, but the motivation is profit and not use. Under socialism, goods will be produced for the first time in history for the use and comfort of all mankind." I agreed and could see part of what he said, but as far as I was concerned you still must have money as an incentive. So, anyway, I bought a Western Socialist.

After reading it all, but only understanding a part of what I read, I came to the conclusion they were fairly sound. I had given up on politics as I had been to all types of political meetings and was just fed up with what I heard. My exact promise to myself was: "I am finished with politics forever."

I went back to that shop with the curious things in it and talked about the things I had read in the Western Socialist. We agreed and disagreed. The only conclusion we reached was that we agreed to disagree.

So back I went to my newly purchased reading matter. I found the more I read the more I understood. Finally, I realized they were, oh, so right, in all they wrote and said. I got mad and tore up the literature because it is hard to know the truth. Yes, facing up to reality in life as it really is is a very hard thing to do. Well, after much discussion, reading, thinking and so on. I realized the facts and the facts are these.

Socialist philosophy is not the idea of any one or more people. It has arisen from the problems which confront mankind today and are happening every day, such as poverty in the midst of plenty. Example, paying the farmers not to produce; annihilation of the human race and, whether or not people accept it, we are wage-slaves. The only means we have to live is to sell our mental and physical labour power.

Socialism offers the solution to these problems. But this is still not the reason why I joined the Socialist Party of Canada. Here is the reason.

People, today, judge a man by his wealth and it matters not how he got it, as long as he has it. Now before people can have an understanding of a person for what he is and not what he has, they must have socialism.

Today, the working class are so wrapped up in their own little world, struggling to eke out an existence, they have no time to really think about much else in life, struggling to buy a car, trying to save a little money to have a small amount of what they believe to be security... There is no security under capitalism. There never has been nor will be, but under socialism, where each will give according to his ability and take according to his need, all the goods society can produce will be available for the benefit of man, his comfort and pleasure. He will then have free access to all his material needs and will then have time to look for human relationship fulfilment, a world where men and women alike can be honest, sincere and be what they are, not like today where they are subjected to the will of the people who own the means of production and wealth.

I quote from one of long ago. His name is William Shakespeare. "He who owns the means by which I live owns my very life."

Join with us for freedom — for socialism.

Ronald Yurkoski, 

Toronto

Education serving capitalism (2000)

From the April 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

At every level of formal learning we are taught to conform—without mass indoctrination the profit system could not exist.

Tony Blair knows the value of education—it was the only word he used when listing his three priorities for running the profit system. Education is an integral part of any social system. In one that is dominated by commodity relationships and values, education both reflects and contributes to those relationships and values. Those who wish and work to replace capitalism with socialism need first to understand how education sustains the one and how it can help to bring about the other.

There is a conventional mythology surrounding the noble ideals of education. Schools are said to be places where young minds are nurtured, where boys and girls are prepared to become responsible citizens. Sir Sydney Caine writes that universities at their best are "the 'soul' of the country and when they have been independent of government and inspired by some vital and independent philosophy." The reality is, of course, much different. Schools, colleges and universities are not independent of society—they are an essential feature of it.

Feudal society required little of the peasants by way of education. The Industrial Revolution demanded more—workers who could make, tend and repair machines, and some who could keep records and books. The schools taught the virtue of attendance, the children were to know their place and sit still in it—a suitable preparation for working life in the factory or office. In the 20th century the process was continued—mass education was fashioned into an increasingly refined training and selection mechanism for the labour force.

For the employer class the education of workers is a cost that must be borne as economically as possible. In a book called The Education Dilemma, edited by a member of the World Bank, we are treated to the following remarkably frank admission (boast?):

"It is true that schools have 'inputs' and 'outputs' and that one of their nominal purposes is to take human 'raw material' (i.e. children) and convert it into something more valuable (i.e. employable adults)."

The cost of education is a particular problem for governments of Third World countries, most of whom are saddled with huge debt repayments to international banks and with the costs of choosing to put domestic guns before butter. One answer they have come up with is to use what is called non-formal basic education as an inexpensive alternative to universal primary education. This is a rural-based, vocationally oriented form of education relying heavily on instructional technology (useful if you can't afford to pay teachers). One contributor to The Education Dilemma offers the advice that, since television seems to work no better than radio and is much more expensive, it should almost never be used for instruction in low income countries.

This leads us to the question of whether the increasing use of more costly forms of instructional technology in the economically advanced countries is a good thing or not. From the point of view of school and university administrators and the governments and corporations who are their paymasters, instructional technology is a good investment. The recent worldwide growth in distance education is an example. Apparently, national and multinational corporations like distance education because it can link employees via electronic means for training, and they can save on the costs of transporting employees across the country.

The rhetoric about the university is that it is a community of scholars. While some of the medieval universities were no doubt founded on this ideal, today the label "academic capitalism" seems more apposite. Academic capitalism denotes market behaviour on the part of universities and faculties. There has been a shift from state block grants to grants and contracts targeted on commercially useable results. Centres within universities that form government-industry-university partnerships are encouraged. Faculties are obliged to look for commercial research funding—projects that are applied rather than basic, that are tied to the needs of national or multinational corporations.

A few years ago George Ritzer wrote a thought-provoking book on The McDonaldization of Society. The basic principles of the ubiquitous McDonald chain of fast-food restaurants are efficiency, quantified and calculated product, predictability, and the substitution (as far as possible) of non-human for human technology. Ritzer shows how these principles are exemplified in education. Schools and universities are required to be cost-effective; league tables give evidence of which institutions get the best exam results. Exams themselves are increasingly boiled down to multiple-choice questions, the answers to which are machine graded. The best-selling textbooks are "customised" and contain easily-digested McNuggets of information.

The subjects taught are prone to the same commercial pressures. Economics—aptly named the dismal science—focuses its theories, concepts and examples on the world of buying, selling and exchanging property, including intellectual property. If alternatives to the status quo are considered (which they rarely are) they equate socialism with nationalisation and communism with state capitalism. In a University of the Third Age economics group the speaker expounded on multinational corporations: their names, the industries and countries involved, the technologies they used, and so on. In view of their failure to meet basic human needs, I raised the question of whether they should be replaced by a system of common ownership and free access. My question was ruled out of order.

Other subjects are also heavily influenced by monetary calculation and property relationships. The comparatively new field of conflict resolution is monopolised by texts and teaching on "deterrence" to war, leadership policies, business strategies—not a word on the conflict between capitalism and what could be its practical alternative if enough people were given the opportunity to know and understand it. Leisure studies gives undue weight to the provision of leisure by commercial companies and government bodies—the idea that we can make our own leisure, individually or collectively, is largely discounted.

The inherent inequality between teacher and pupil has led some critics of capitalism—and indeed some socialists—to question the value of "schooling". In New from Nowhere William Morris expresses his objection to the way children are taught in capitalism by predicting that in socialism there will be no schools offering "a niggardly dole of not very accurate information; something to be swallowed by the beginner in the art of living whether he liked it or not, and was hungry for it or not". No blanket rejection of education was implied, but the critique of authoritarian schooling as simply preparation for employment led to a movement for "deschooling". The concern has been that hierarchical and autocratic teacher-pupil relationships concentrate power in the hands of teachers and lead children to acquire attitudes of docility and submission to authority.

What can we say about education in socialist society? It is easier to foresee what will no longer take place than what will positively develop. With no employment, schooling will lose its function as preparation for employment. No more McDonaldisation of education, no more economics (though economy history, as part of history, may well survive). The knowledge and skills needed to run a society which inherits the best from the past and rejects the worst will be circulated and developed among adults, and the ability to think creatively and critically transmitted from generation to generation. There will surely be different approaches to—even controversies about—what task.

Stan Parker

The blank ballot (2015)

Book Review from the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

'How Voters Feel', by Stephen Coleman. Cambridge University Press. Paperback at £18.99

Like every other social process within the current alienated form of society, voting has become thoroughly fetishised into a hollow shell, compared to its potential. By examining the subjective feelings around voting Stephen Coleman opens up the question of how valuable that process could once again become, were it to be returned from its current status of begrudged duty into the realm of exciting, engaging action.

How Voters Feel does not seek to address the question of economic democracy or the unbridled power of transnational corporations, though Coleman does make in passing the point that:

‘Having no votes in the election of officials running the International Monetary Fund or World Bank, let alone private transnational corporations that are increasingly allowed free reign, voters understandably feel estranged from many of the most important sources of power over their lives.’

Nor does it set out to posit what function ‘representative democracy’ may or may not have in undoing the effective economic dictatorship over resources and power which currently excludes the majority of the population from any real control, and therefore engenders our demoralisation. Clearly, the parties which currently stand before the bulk of the electorate every few years are resoundingly united in seeking to manage that same economic dictatorship, as a cardinal matter of policy.

The book’s aim is to explore the experience of voting and to consider how it might be resuscitated as a potential force for change, through the cultivation of a more democratic sensibility. Such a project is especially timely given the continuing disaffection during recent years, particularly of younger people, from the parliamentary system and voting in elections (other than those in the field of entertainment, with telephone voting buoyant and enthusiastic, despite being charged for, in television shows such as The X Factor or Celebrity Big Brother).

Modern capitalism has long loved to sing of its own democratic credentials as supposedly evidenced by that magical moment of secrecy inside a wooden booth once every few years. Important as the idea of voting remains to any idea of democracy, it is nevertheless instructive to recognise how feeble a claim that is. True social democracy would take much more account of far more views, ideas, inputs and wishes than this tokenistic selection of one or other management team a couple of times per decade.

The early chapters of Coleman’s book recount the history of modern representative democracy in Britain, the USA and elsewhere, from the viewpoint of the gradually enfranchised electorate. He explains, fascinatingly, how universal suffrage was initially perceived on all sides as a possible or even likely harbinger of major social change, and specifically of state intervention to try to ameliorate conditions for the impoverished majority. The century-long journey from aspiration to grim resignation on the part of the newly enfranchised majority, from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, is excellently set out here.

The middle chapters (4-7) present a wealth of empirical evidence from original research consisting of sixty interviews with both voters and non-voters. A number of themes emerge from this. Voting has, in the modern period, become a private, secret and almost intimate activity, in contrast to the more public processes of previous periods. It is no coincidence that the cover of the book shows a photograph of American voters in Idaho, with their backs to us, in a neat row of cubicles looking amusingly as if they are engaging in that other universal yet ‘private’ activity of using a urinal or, in the case of the women, entering a toilet cubicle.

Amongst those interviewed, Coleman identifies the ‘dutiful voters’ who feel obliged to cast votes without any genuine expectations of a positive outcome, and the ‘committed abstainers’ who decline to vote and yet say they would resist bitterly any move to deprive them of their right to vote. He describes both of these groups as having given up on cultivating a vibrant relationship with their representatives. By his then also adding the observation how important it is for representatives to embody the feelings of those they represent, we seem to be invited to ponder how best to bolster and repair this system of specifically representative democracy.

Might it be even more useful to interpret these failings as signifying the need to reappraise that concept of democracy? Both the ‘dutiful voters’ and the ‘committed abstainers’ have indeed a somewhat dysfunctional relationship with representative democracy, in that the former place excessive weight on that relationship, despite its failure, whilst the latter are incontrovertibly suspicious of the representational process, whilst holding out for its ideal. However, one might equally interpret this, especially in the latter case, as a healthy disregard for the idea of representation itself as compared with the hope of  voting becoming less vicarious and part of something more participative, such as delegation and the idea of voting for ideas, or at least for delegates as cyphers for specific policies or actions.

There were also some respondents who on principle would go to vote but then either ‘spoil’ their ballot paper or leave it blank. This is in fact a long, noble and meaningful practice by those who simply wish to reject ‘what’s on offer’ whilst registering the importance on principle of the vote itself, and in that regard this practice makes perfect sense. It is an option which was written about in the national press at the time of the 2015 general election in Britain, and may well be increasing. It is somewhat frustrating therefore that this practice is not given more attention in  these pages than just one paragraph, which comments wryly that ‘To speak of casting a blank ballot paper as a ‘useful’ act is intriguing. It signifies absence by presence; that the voter counts and yet cannot be counted ...’

Perhaps the most fascinating – and significant – section of the book is in chapter 8 which deals, amongst other areas, with the ways in which working-class children are socially conditioned into humility, and sets the challenge of how this might be reversed, to recreate a democratic sensibility comprising confidence both in self and in the prospect of change. Coleman explores many of the complex mechanisms through which ‘children internalise the range of possibilities open to them in life.’ There is, however, more inspection of the ‘how’ than the ‘why’ of this socialisation for subservience, and as a result the proscriptive parts of the chapter may be seen as somewhat optimistic:

‘If schools are to perform a useful role in preparing young people to play their part in democracy, this must entail conferring resources of hope upon those who have been routinely and systematically persuaded to think of themselves as naturally or inevitably lacking voice or efficacy.’

Having worked in many schools and been made painfully aware of their specific raison d’être, I am less than sanguine about their potential role in spearheading this necessary surge in democratic sensibility. On the other hand, the enormity of the task of overcoming vast socially and psychologically conditioned subservience is even less plausibly seen as depending on the efforts of activism at the fringes of the current systems of universal education.

In all this as in so much else, it is the class division of present-day society which most strikingly both explains why meaningful and confident civic engagement by the economically weak majority is not encouraged by the education system, and offers a practical motivational form through which this might start to be redressed.

Does the book succeed at what it sets out to do? Absolutely. It is a challenging and at times specialised and complex, yet rewarding read. There are some key questions which it would have been clearly outside the remit of this book to probe. For example, from the point of view of those working to encourage speedy social revolution, is it desirable or an impedance to work to encourage engagement with the specifically parliamentarian and representative model of democracy?

Clifford Slapper

Letter: Is the Socialist Propagandist Necessary? (1905)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

COMRADES,—

In the last Socialist Standard your correspondent, “Ignoramus,” asks for information on three very important points: a clear understanding of which entails a sound grasp of Socialist philosophy. May I offer a slight attempt at explanation?

I have only space enough, to deal with one of his points—no doubt those better qualified will deal with the others. With regard to the question of the Taxes the answer is just this: to tax a commodity is by no means necessarily to raise its price, in fact taxation is the least important factor in determining prices. In regard to Municipalism, a variation of the same economic fact is brought to light. Municipal enterprise is favoured by the small middle-class because profits derived therefrom are used to “reduce the Rates”—which Rates again are no factor at all in determining the price of house-accommodation and, therefore, no concern of the working-class as such. Certain Socialists, by-the-way, advocate municipalism chiefly because of this rate-reduction, and it is this use of “Municipalisation” or “Nationalisation” as a red-herring to draw the working-class into the mazes and mists of “Reform” that we must set our faces against as fiercely as against any “Fiscalism” or “Laborism” whatever.

But these points will be dealt with doubtless by the better-qualified. “Ignoramus’s” other point needs careful consideration. “Here is the rub,” he says, “the intelligence of the worker can only expand as a result of the alteration of his present conditions. Yet the alteration of these conditions is dependent upon the expansion of the working-class intelligence. The latter must precede the former, yet the former must precede the latter!” Put in this way it certainly looks like a contradiction, but is not “Ignoramus” generalising a little too loosely?

We find reason to complain that the working-class, in general are either satisfied with things as they are or despair of any improvement in their lot. We find them too often caring little for the acquirement of knowledge about anything, and in parts animal in their enjoyments and squalid in their ideals. But will “Ignoramus” or anyone else deny that all this and a 100 per cent, more could be said of the possessing-class? Is not the capitalist-class in general brutal, unenlightened, animal in its pleasures, and squalid in its ideals—and much more so than the average working-man? Are the manners of “Park Lane” so greatly different from the “New Cut” except in outward form?

The average workman fails to realise that the present system is based upon his enslavement. The average member of the “respectable” class considers himself or herself a superior kind of being to a member of the lower orders. Which is the most ignorant? In short, the “ignorance” argument cuts both ways and, argued to its logical conclusion, simply exposes the hideous mockery of our “glorious Civilisation.” That the number of those who really love learning, who ardently seek Truth, or who possess any lofty life ideals is very few, no one who knows anything of Life as it is could deny; but few as they are, I contend and will maintain that their number is made up of actual proletarians and those who work with the proletariat for the Social Revolution.

“Ignoramus” has hardly got the Socialist contention correctly stated. That the hooligan, the drunkard, the imbecile, the physically degenerate, the libertine, the prostitute, the “gospel revivalist,” the blasé roué, and the Society lady are all hideous products of an obsolete social system is what we contend; and when it is argued that the poor are poor because they “drink,” or because of their “ignorance,” we are easily able to show that they are created what they are by their environment.

Furthermore we are easily able to show that the evils of poverty tend to increase with the development of capitalism. But to contend that the working-class is “ignorant” is to ignore the fact that the whole production of the community is effected by the efforts of wage-labourers. The capitalist as a capitalist contributes not one iota to the useful work of society. The “intellectual” working-man is with us—and suffers from unemployment and the “competition of machinery and women” like the remainder of the working-class. Is a clerk who understands three languages and cannot get employed at any price above 30s. a week to be classed as “ignorant”? He is a proletarian beyond question.

Briefly, the ignorance and apathy of the working-class exists, like that of the capitalist-class, in the shape of “lop-sided” development and is common to our present social system: but this does not prevent the working-man from realising what every day it becomes easier for him to realise, viz., that the present system is based upon his exploitation and enslavement, that his interests and those of the master-class are diametrically opposed, that therefore the master-class will always consciously or unconsciously try to keep him as he is, and consequently that he must act in such wise as to get rid of a master-class at once and for ever.

The function of the Socialist propagandist is to speedily and effectively increase the opportunities for this awakening. The Socialist is produced by present conditions just as much as anything else, and most of all, “Ignoramus,” it only needs ordinary common sense to understand Socialism—otherwise, Comrades Editorial, where should I have been?

—Yours fraternally,

Thos. A. Jackson.

Not So Wise (2015)

Book Review from the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind', by Yuval Noah Harari. Vintage £8.99.

This is not a book to consult for a century-by-century chronicle of what happened in history. Rather, it provides an overview, focusing on some significant events and on what Harari sees as important trends and principles. It is a good place to look, for instance, for a summary of recent research on the origin of Homo sapiens and our relation to other kinds of Homo. And it is instructive to learn that since 1500 the global population has increased about fourteen times, but the value of goods and services produced well over two hundred times.

The Agricultural Revolution about twelve thousand years ago led to a dramatic increase in population but was responsible for worse diets and harder work for most people. Hunter-gatherers were in less danger of disease and starvation than farmers, but it is not clear that this warrants describing the Agricultural Revolution as ‘history’s biggest fraud’.

One point made several times is the crucial role played by co-operation. Humans are social animals and it takes a number of people to raise a child (single parents don’t do so in isolation). We can co-operate in lots of different ways with large numbers of people. Yet Harari also argues that it is money that promotes trust and co-operation, ignoring the fact that there are plenty of instances of co-operation not involving money (such as mountain rescue, Wikipedia and the Socialist Party). And capitalism, with its wages system, involves coercion rather than co-operation.

Though he is well aware of the extent of suffering in both past and present, he is uncritically accepting of the current social set-up: ‘The state and the market are the mother and father of the individual and the individual can survive only thanks to them. The market provides us with work, insurance and a pension’. But this is only because the state and the market are part of the dominant economic system, capitalism, and almost all production currently has to rely on them. It is human labour that provides food, homes, clothing and so on, not the state and the market.

In some cases his explanation for historical events is purely idealist. In the sixteenth century the Spanish invaders conquered the Aztecs and then the Incas, supposedly because the Incas had a purely parochial outlook and were unaware of the fate of the Aztecs. Nothing to do, then, with the fact that the Spanish had guns and horses, which they did not (horses not being native to the Americas).

Unfortunately, when he discusses economics and anything related to Marxism, Harari goes well astray. For instance, he believes that any factory worker who buys some shares thereby becomes a capitalist. He gives an astonishingly simplistic presentation of the idea that banks can create credit. He sees the ‘Soviet Union’ as an attempt to implement the principle ‘From each according to ability, to each according to need’. As this last example suggests, he unquestioningly accepts that Marxism means Bolshevism, and he sees Communism as a religion (defined as ‘a system of human norms and values that is founded on a belief in a superhuman order’). This ‘superhuman order’ is some unspecified ‘law of nature’ allegedly discovered by Marx, Engels and Lenin. Communism, he asserts, does not call itself a religion but an ideology: this is quite wrong, though, since for Marx an ideology is a theory that offers a distorted view of reality (such as the view that workers are paid in wages the full value of what they produce).

So this is an interesting and stimulating read, but it also contains much that is misleading or just plain wrong.   

Paul Bennett

Death of one of our oldest comrades (1938)

Arthur Evans at the SPGB's 1905 Annual Conference.

Obituary from the February 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Battersea Branch has suffered a second loss in the past few months with the death of another old member, Arthur Jones, who died on December 20th, 1937, having reached his 81st year.

He was originally a member of the Social Democratic Party and took an active part in the early days of the movement, on one occasion being sent to prison for selling literature in Battersea Park.

In 1904 he assisted in the foundation of the S.P.G.B. and served on its first Executive Committee.

Of late years he had been unable to take part in any activity. This, of course, is easily understood, as we know all too well the toll taken of vitality by capitalist exploitation and advancing years. But, for all that, he never wavered in his Socialist convictions and maintained an interest in the affairs of the Party up to the last.

We regret the loss of a consistent Socialist and comrade, and extend to his wife and relatives our sincere sympathy.

E. L.

Sermons in Stone (1956)

From the January 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

To some people the fact that the Socialist Party has existed for 50 years is objectionable. At least, that is what they say. We suspect in many cases they would object equally strongly if it had existed one day, or even one hour. But they try to give their criticism the appearance of reason and logic by saying that the Party must be wrong because it has talked for 50 years and still very few workers are aware of the idea of Socialism.

Modern speleologists, in their delvings below ground, have discovered blind albino fish that have never seen the light because the earth's surface interposes between them and the sun.

Many workers are like these blind fish. They cannot see the light of day because they live in a mental cave.

Our critics would have us believe that the cause of these workers' darkness is the light—Socialism itself. They would deny that it is the reformist worker's abject acceptance of the orthodox and conventional, without even trying to think, which condemns him to monotony.

Because the idea of Socialism has existed many years no more makes it wrong than the idea of flight, or radium or radio. All these things existed as ideas in people's heads for several years before they were actually achieved, and most of the ignorant and stupid mob went on denying their existence for years after they had been working.

In fact the original stuff of the earth from which life itself emerged; water—has existed for ever—yet there are still those whose acquaintances with it might be described as limited.

A most striking example of a commonplace object of this kind which exists in masses almost everywhere is "The Pebbles on the Beach." With this title Mr. Clarence Ellis has produced an utterly fascinating book—the result of an active hobby of collecting and studying pebbles, for many years.

And yet millions regularly loll and sprawl on the beaches during their summer holiday without the beginnings of a ghost of a notion that in the pebbles around their feet lie the secrets of the history of the earth, the formation of the rocks, the different kinds of rocks, the birth of rivers, the existence of ice ages and the reasons which go to produce a piece of jet in Yorkshire, basalt in Scotland or granite in Cornwall. Mr. Ellis points out what an interesting pastime this can become when one starts to make a collection of suitable specimens.

Our critics of the Socialist Party's long existence, were they logical, would condemn the pebbles which have lain on the beach for millions of years and not the ignorance of those who take no intelligent interest in the world around them. The Socialist stands in relation to the working class as the geologist; in this case, Clarence Ellis, to the world at large.

It is the duty of those who know, to make their knowledge available in the easiest form. All that is true. But without the intelligent desire to learn the workers will get nowhere.

Horatio

Greasy Pole: Thug in Suede Shoes (2005)

The Greasy Pole Column from the October 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who feels a need to penetrate the Conservative mind should steel themselves to read the letters page of the Daily Telegraph, which is now in the throes of what might be called a debate about the respective appeals of the candidates for the party leadership. A most treasured recent example was a missive, apparently intended to wind up the discussion: “My mother told me never to trust a man who wore suede shoes. Does this advice still hold good?” It would not have needed a particularly sharp mind among the Tory activists to work out that this referred to Kenneth Clarke, who is infamous for, among other things (of which more later), wearing Hush Puppies in preference to the politicians’ required footwear of sober, lace-up black shoes. Asked about this highly sensitive matter some years ago, Clarke responded in characteristic style: “The shoes are an act of defiance, because people began to be rude about them and if anything I began wearing suede shoes more often because I was getting advised to stop wearing them”. He did not say whether he had also received advice to stop smoking large cigars and to do something about his rumpled clothes and his reputation, which he assiduously cultivates, as an arrogant and insensitive political thug.

Rivals

Clarke was at Cambridge with a clutch of aspirant Tory politicians who developed into bitter rivals – Selwyn Gummer, Leon Brittan, Norman Lamont (who Clarke replaced, in the high spot of his career to date, as Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Michael Howard, who now stands between Clarke and the Tory leadership. Before getting into Parliament for Rushcliffe, Clarke fought two elections in the hopeless constituency of Mansfield. In keeping with his self-promoted image as someone who enjoyed a fight, after the first election he promised the Mansfied Tories that he would stay on to contest the seat again. The fact that he was more or less honour bound to do this did not prevent him casting about for another, safer seat. He tried for Edgbaston but the local party preferred Jill Knight; Clarke kept his two-timing a secret and posed as a man whose word was his bond.

When he got into the Commons he commenced an unusually smooth journey up the greasy pole, through minor jobs in the 1980s in the Department of Health, Minister for Employment, Secretary of State for Health, then for Education. He was promoted to Home Secretary in 1992 and, at his peak after the fall of Norman Lamont, Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1993 until the Tories were beaten in the 1997 election. At that time the British economy was emerging from the slump which had seen something like three million unemployed. Clarke’s coincident period at the Treasury enabled him to claim to have designed the alleged economic recovery. This is a common ruse among Chancellors of the Exchequer: in a boom they claim the credit for the easier times while in a slump they blame pressures which were out of their control.

Bruiser

During all this time Clarke’s aggressive and dismissive manner ensured that the enemies a politician normally accrues would in his case have a particular edge to their enmity. While he was at the Department of Health he riled the doctors with his plans to impose new contracts of employment on them; faced with their resistance he described them as “in the last resort a pretty ruthless lobby”. In 1982 he dismissed the nurses’ objections to NHS staff cuts with the sneer that “They are a trade union and they don’t like the idea of their membership going down at all” (which is true about the Conservatives and any other capitalist party). He infuriated the ambulance crews (as well as substantial numbers of the voters) with his response to their claim for a rise in excess of the 6.5 per cent on offer: “The vast majority of ambulance staff are professional drivers, a worthwhile job – but not exceptional at all” (so who would anyone knocked down on the road prefer to see coming to help them – an ambulance crew or Kenneth Clarke?). This arrogance was too much for even the normally supportive Daily Express: “Whatever happened to caring Ken? Instead of the matey, jolly fellow once known to colleagues and public we now have a truculent, bad-tempered bully”. Thatcher was no more help to her beleaguered minister; at Prime Minister’s Question Time she pointedly avoided agreeing with Clarke about the ambulance crews.

The teachers were another group to fall victim to Clarke’s aggression. The changes in schooling introduced by Kenneth Baker in 1998, which had resulted in schools being swamped with minutely detailed instructions on what they should teach, how they should teach it and how they should report on it, had provoked years of hostility between them and the government. To call the situation chaotic hardly did it justice. Clarke arrived at the Department of Education to restore some sort of order, which he started to do in a manner customary to someone described by Thatcher when she moved him to Education, as “an energetic and persuasive bruiser, very useful in a brawl or an election”. But Clarke’s lack of finesse undid him; in a magazine interview, subsequently picked up by the Daily Mirror, he said that private schools provided a higher standard of education than state schools. Reminded of this comment in a Commons debate by Jack Straw, Clarke intervened with the opinion that the Mirror was a newspaper “read by morons”. The Mirror’s response was immediate and crushing. “That’s two fingers to 8,230,000 voters, Minister” it bellowed and the day after that it ran a telephone poll to establish how its readers rated their Minister of Education – was he a prat or a moron? “Kenneth Clarke was voted a total PRAT last night as 59,000 Daily Mirror readers took part in one of the most fiercely fought elections for years” it crowed, with an unflattering photograph of Clarke as a bully who smoked too much and, at 16st. 9lbs, was unhealthily obese.

Sneers

Michael Heseltine said of Clarke: “He is what he is. You get what you see. And people like that.” But what people do not “like” is a politician who rubbishes genuine problems or who regards truth as something to be fashioned in accordance with their needs at any time. In 1980 the American pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly launched a new wonder drug – Opren – on the market, claiming that among a clutch of beneficial effects it could reduce arthritis pain. In fact Opren had serious side effects such as liver jaundice, kidney damage and excessive sensitivity to sunlight. There were 76 deaths attributed to the drug, which was later suspended by the Committee on Safety of Medicines. At the time Clarke was Minister for Health. His reaction to the suffering caused by Opren was to sneer that it was “no more than the patients becoming lobstered”. After their crushing defeat in 1997, the Tory party set about electing a new leader. Clarke knew that his views on many issues, especially Europe, would not endear him to the party faithful. (The Daily Telegraph damned him as “the candidate of the past”). In an effort to attract the votes of the right wing, anti-Europe membership Clarke cobbled up a partnership with the weird Eurosceptic John Redwood – a U-turn too cynical for even the most hardened Tory MP. Now he is again bending what he calls his principles, saying that Europe is not now on the agenda and that his enthusiasm for it is “no longer as constant as the North Star”.

Politicians, like salespeople, come in many shapes and styles. Some are reticent and conciliatory. Others are brash, brutal and noisy. Nobody should be impressed by Kenneth Clarke’s pose as the man for the people – matey, frank, reliable and human, if engagingly boozy. He has shown himself to be as calculating and dishonest as all the others. There is no more to be hoped for from him, the candidate of the past, than there is from those of the future.

Ivan

Marxist populariser (1988)

Book Review from the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Karl Kautsky, by Dick Geary, Manchester University Press

This book on Kautsky, in the Manchester University Press "Lives of the Left" series, is a useful and well-balanced discussion of the ideas, though not the life (but who cares?), of the person who, after the death of Engels in 1895, became the best-known populariser of Marx's ideas. The first three pamphlets, published by the Socialist Party in 1906 and 1908, were in fact a serialisation of the theoretical introduction Kautsky wrote to the programme adopted by the German Social Democratic Party at its Erfurt Congress in 1891. (Curiously, reference to these pamphlets is not made in the bibliography Geary gives of Kautsky's works available in English).

As a populariser of Marx's ideas Kautsky was good, and many members of the Socialist Party learned about Marx's ideas through reading Kautsky's Economic Doctrines of Marx and Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History as well as Kautsky's own application of the materialist conception of history in his Origins of Christianity and Thomas More. His politics were another matter, on which we were in fundamental disagreement with him. As an orthodox German Social Democrat he defended that party's usage of revolutionary marxist phraseology while engaging in reformist practice.

After the First World War Kautsky acquired a bad reputation amongst those who considered themselves Marxists. This was because he had opposed the Bolsheviks seizure of power in Russia in November 1917, for which he was denounced as a "renegade" by Lenin. But, amongst real socialists, to be denounced by Lenin was a good recommendation and in fact Kautsky's Dictatorship of the Proletariat shows a much better understanding of Marx's views on democracy and socialism than did anything Lenin ever wrote. In spite of his reformism, Kautsky understood that the Bolsheviks were establishing a dictatorship over the proletariat and were heading for state capitalism not socialism.

Geary discusses Kautsky's views on this point as well as on Bernstein's revisionism, the mass strike and imperialism and provides a good short introduction to the theoretical issues that concerned pre-First World War Social Democracy from which, after all, the Socialist Party was an early breakaway.

Adam Buick

Consumerism (2015)

From the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you have the money you can buy anything; from a can of baked beans to a Pacific island. But what does such ‘ownership’ signify? The right to define the future (immediate or indefinite) of what is purchased - the right to ‘consume’. This relationship between humanity and the world humans created is the vital illusory component that sustains capitalism. Who or what gives anyone the right to consume that which is produced by another? It is as if those who produce do not exist, or rather, only exist to facilitate the relationship between product and consumer. That most consumers are also producers is entirely overlooked in terms of the ownership of what is produced. When workers walk out of the workplace they are immediately transformed into consumers surrounded by a seemingly limitless cornucopia of potential acquisition. They are confronted by the alienated fruits of their own labour; stolen from them by the use of the confidence trick called wage labour. Not only have they paid (labour) to create the products but they now are obliged to pay again (money) to retrieve them.

Regulated theft

There is no point in attempting to formulate and trace the economic origins of ‘private property’ since this is merely the history of regulated theft of which capitalism is the latest manifestation. The astonishing fact is that we live in a culture where those who do not produce own everything and those who do produce own almost nothing. Most are only vaguely aware of this and will shrug with a phrase similar to: ’it’s always been like that’. If there is  such a thing as ‘human nature’ then it is defined culturally and we can legitimately ask: what kind of being has consumerism produced? Is he/she content and happy? This question has to be rhetorical because we all know the answer. What then are the consequences of the internalisation of consumer culture on our relationships with others, and crucially, with ourselves?

The concept of the ownership of something you did not produce is irrational. That the decision of the fate of something that is made belongs to the producer is infinitely more sustainable both rationally and morally. To enter into a ‘contract’ that enables another to decide the future of what you have produced can only be the result of an unequal power relationship; and as such it has no moral integrity. To bring something into existence is surely the only rational base for its ownership. It follows that if, as now, most commodities are socially produced then they should be owned socially. The basis of consumerism is to break that link completely; as if the children belong, not to the parents, but to the owners of the hospital and medication that facilitated the birth.

Paradoxically, and in an inversion of this absurdity, the concept that parents ‘own’ their children is a direct consequence of the internalisation of consumerism. From our inception we feel owned and as a consequence we seek ownership as validation of status. The emotional and financial expenditure of parents leads many to assume the rights of ownership in terms of the determination of their children’s values and their right to, and type of, happiness.

Adult relationships tend to be a replay of this where the ‘beloved’ within an exclusive relationship is ‘owned’ by their partner. A glance at any dating web site will leave you in no doubt that what is being offered is a consumer choice of another who will ‘complete you and give meaning to your life’. The child or the partner is conceived of as an accessory for a successful lifestyle. Like a flashy sports car others become an extension of the ego. And these are people we love; pity those who serve us in restaurants or on checkouts in supermarkets if they are tardy in their duties. Having paid our hard earned cash, god help anyone who frustrates the ownership of the service or product we anticipate.

Everybody’s possession

Someone once asked me: 'Would I have to give my record collection to the people after the revolution?’ Obviously this is a rather crude interpretation of a property-less culture since it conflates property with products; the former being defined as the means of social production and the latter being the commodities consumed. But it does illustrate the paradox of ‘owning music’. We are all aware of the dramatic changes to the technology that mediates the arts. Our record collections are now replaced by ‘iTunes’ and ‘clouds’ that store our favourite melodies. We acquire this music through the internet in a variety of ways, many of which are devoid of conventional payment and the subsequent ownership that defines old fashioned consumerism. The parasite class are furious about this loss of revenue but, in their and our absence as the owner, who should define the fate of a recording? Does it become the ‘intellectual property’ of the musicians who made it? As was said earlier the only rational owner of anything is its creator. But once the decision is made to release music onto the internet those concerned realise it becomes the potential property of everybody – and, therefore, nobody. 

Music could be finally returning to its creators – humanity. Those who have the talent to sing will sing, those who can play instruments will play them and those who like to listen will rock. No middleman can stamp his ownership on something as natural to humans as music. Such is the fate of the absurdity of the concept of ownership and consumerism. Technology, so long our master, has rescued us from our enslavement to it by helping to liberate our humanity – the need to transform the world in our work. But the dire warnings of our masters concerning ‘piracy’ and the immorality of not creating profits for them and ‘the economy’ still resonates in the ears of many. Capitalism cannot help but create its own demise and it is our duty (and pleasure) to point this out to the working class using such examples as the above. To quote John Lennon: ‘Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.’

WEZ