The Vitalising Principle of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (1955)

From the March 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain was organised in 1904 in order to achieve the emancipation of the working class. That was the reason for its founding.

The people who formed our party were working men and working women. They had learnt that there was only one way by which the workers could gain their emancipation. That way was by establishing Socialism, and that there were no short cuts to this objective. Bitter experience had taught them that the fatuous policies of "progressives," the blissful dreams of humanitarians, the patronising philosophysing of "intellectuals," and the prolonged agony of reformism, were all alike delusions and snares. Their experiences and studies in an earlier organisation had taught them three things: The Socialism could only be established by a working class that understood what it involved and wanted it; that before Socialism could be established the working class must take the powers of government out of the hands of the possessing class; and, finally, that the Socialist Party must follow an unswerving course based upon an understanding of the class struggle and its implications.

When the founder members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain realised that the party to which they formerly belonged, the Social Democratic Federation, was leading the workers into a morass, they then decided to form a new party with the aim of emancipating the workers by establishing Socialism, and cleaving to this as their sole object. Hence they set down their object and formulated a set of principles which summarised the existing social system, its implications and the course that must be followed.

Since 1904 the other parties have come and gone, chimerical hopes have been raised, but the basic position has not changed, nor are there any indications that it is ever likely to change before the accomplishment of the Party's objective. Hence the only course the workers can follow in order to achieve their emancipation from the capitalist system of exploitation is to work for the establishment of Socialism and to ignore all the alluring and much trodden byways which only lead to frustration and despair. No amount of word spinning, verbal juggling, or hairsplitting, can get around this position or surmount the obstacles that stand in the workers' path to emancipation. To no longer be solely concerned with the emancipation of the working class would be to abandon the outlook that brought our party into existence, inspired those who have continued to press forward its outlook and policy, and what has kept the Party on a sound Socialist course through 50 years of tribulation and opposition.

The fact that the emancipation of the working class by the establishment of Socialism will have beneficial effects on groups of people, whether they be workers or not, who suffer other forms of discriminations is entirely incidental and has no bearing on our intentions or procedure, though it helps to support our case.

The class cleavage between workers and capitalists is universal; it cuts across all national, colour and religious distinctions. It overrides and swamps all other distinctions in the final analysis and the final reckoning. When the class distinction between the working class and the capitalist class has been abolished by the establishment of Socialism all other distinctions that set people at variance today will go with it.

Finally, our exclusive aim is the emancipation of the working class by the establishment of Socialism, and we welcome to our ranks all who are prepared to help us in this work.

Gilmac.

One O'Clock, Two O'Clock, Three O'Clock, Rock . . . (1957)

From the February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rock, Around the Clock . . . Yes, Rock n' Roll is the craze—from London to Glasgow, Paris to Berlin, and even Moscow.

Dixieland, New Orleans, Chicago, Swing, Boogie Woogie, Jive, Bop . . . they all come, and go. And now it's Rock 'n' Roll. Teenagers shout, sing and riot wherever the film "Rock Around the Clock" is showing; dance halls hold weekly Rock 'n' Roll nights; records by Bill Haley, the Platters and Elvis Presley, sell by the million, and even the B.B.C. play a few Rock 'n' Roll records. Yes, it's the craze. But why?

Every so often "Pop" music gets a shot in the arm; a new lease of life. In the 'twenties it was the Charleston and Jazz Bands, the 'thirties Swing, Boogie Woogie and Jive; the 'forties the New Orleans revival and Bop. And now  . . . "Rock"!

What then is Rock 'n' Roll? It isn't Jazz or Swing or Boogie. It's just a combination of the three . . . a simple beat, a simple lyric, improvisation, plenty of noise—plus "corn"; all the "gimmicks" in the book. Yes it's a gimmick; musical extroversion of the Nth degree. But it's got a beat. Even the "squares" tap their feet, and "cats" just go wild!

Why do many youngsters go wild over Rock 'n' Roll? Why did many go crazy over Goodman, Basie or Harry James in the 'thirties or the Charleston Chasers in the 'twenties? Why do people mob a movie star or a famous footballer? The reason, I think, is that life for most people is pretty boring, "soul destroying"—particularly for youngsters, teenagers, who have more energy than their elders; who have not yet had the zest for life knocked out of them. After eight or nine hours in an office, shop or factory, the "kids" want to do something; they want to express themselves in some way or another. Life for most of them seems empty, purposeless. Modern Capitalist society with its general insecurity, its wars and its call-ups gives them very little to strive for. And after a day at the office or factory bench, they've just got to let themselves go. They need some kind of escape; some kind of outlet for pent-up energy. The movies, the Dance Halls, the Jazz Clubs, provide them with this "escape", this outlet. The cinema, the Dance Halls and Jazz Clubs, each with its variation on an old theme, or a new gimmick or craze such as "Bop" or "Rock" give these youngsters and teenagers a chance once, twice or more times a week to get away from what are often poor, uncomfortable homes; to sing, dance, stamp their feet and "let their hair down," away from the chief clerk, clerk, the factory foreman—and their parents; to leave their worries, their problems, their frustrations and repressions behind—for a while.

Rock 'n' Roll is a new craze. But a Rock 'n' Roll night at the Palais; a Rock 'n' Roll Jamboree can be fun for a few hours a week, yet after all it's not much of a substitute for a really full and interesting life. And our present society denies that to most young people today.

But, for the time being, at least  . . . "Rock around the Clock."

Peter E. Newell

Marilyn Monroe: A Cultural Phenomena (1954)

From the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Beauty is only skin-deep," wrote the Self-Made Merchant to his son, "but that's deep enough to satisfy any reasonable man." That was sixty years ago, before it became customary to used the hands for describing beauty and when beuty, however deep, kept most of its skin under cover. The reasonable man's pleasure to-day is Marilyn Monroe, and the publishers and booksellers, with their empirical knowledge of his tastes cannot give him enough of her—at second hand, of course.

Reigning beauties of the past, for all that poets have made of them, reigned only in courts and castes. Miss Monroe's sovereignty is practically unlimited, geographically or socially. Not long back, manchester City Councillors averred her to be preferable to one of Henry Moore's sculptures, and a Work of Art: a national columnist went farther and said she was an Act of God. Even the Communists' censoriousness of her as a dollar princess has the scent of sour grapes. Marilyn Monroe, in fact, represents the acme of desirability in this day and age.

Times have changed, of course. This writer once heard an old lady describe how, mounting her bicycle in the eighteen-nineties, she was attacked by a woman who screamed: "You brazen thing! I can see your ankles!" It is not only that people in the 'nineties would have been shocked by Miss Monroe, undissembled in tight or negligible clothing: they would have thought her ugly, too. The beauties of the day—Lily Langtry, Olga Nethersole, La Belle Otero—were strapping girls with all the appearance of good living. Nobody talked of slimming, and the ladies' magazines advertised a treatment called Diano which, if it was all true, was nothing short of an inflationary measure.

The case for eternal beauty becomes as illogical as the argument that there is eternal morality, when one considers the variations in both according to time and place. Metropolitan man may pull faces over the Congo's idea of pulchritude; it is certain that the African native in turn would not think a lot of Marilyn Monroe. It is a question of what you esteem, and that itself is a question of what your world finds necessary. There is an old but appropriate story of a farmer and his guest together gazing across the countryside: the townsman rhapsodizes about the rolling vista, the farmer spits and says, "Thirty-bob-an-acre stuff." Most likely the African, as well as the Eskimo and some others, would say something of the sort about Miss Monroe.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" is a fair enough statement of fact, but it leaves the important question unanswered. Man is the beholder: what puts, and transforms, beauty in his eye—his mind's eye? In primitive communities it is chiefly physical function, the apparent capacity for child-bearing and hard work. In class-divided societies, beauty has always been seen to a large extent in terms of conspicuous leisure; the sirens of all western civilization seem to have done little else through history but loll on divans (if you believe it, look in the art galleries). And, of course, every age creates its own motives and needs which help to shape its concept of beauty. According to the franker historians, mediaeval ladies often assailed the nostrils as well as the heart, but nobody minded much; nowadays, with a century's public health behind and the soap advertisements before us, a whiff of perspiration kills romance.

Marilyn Monroe is the personification of what popular consciousness in our time deems desirable. The rubato walk is a source of delight; in Victorian England, when no respectable woman thought sex pleasurable, it would have brought an indignant flush to a decent man's face. When the family was sacrosanct (because the economic ties which held it were still fairly strong) sexual provocation was shameful. Now the ties have sagged, the morality has sagged too, and beauty can present itself to arouse the instinctive polygamist in every man. And the conspicuous leisure is still there—in impractical dress as well as the sultriness and aura of wealth.

There is more to Marilyn Monroe than merely physique, however. She is "the sexiest girl in Hollywood," the girl who posed naked for a calendar and takes an interest in Freud. Almost every day there is a fresh tale and a fresh photograph; her skirts blow over her head, she distorts perspective with her callipygous charms. Her marriage to Joe DiMaggio was a feast for the papers and everybody's imagination. The husky, virile Joe, a masculine idol, and the supremely nubile Marilyn saying: "You can't take a career to bed and cuddle it," and: "I like honeymoons." Miss Monroe is, in fact, a dream. In Hollywood they make dreams; she is the most delectable dream of all.

The visual promise of pneumatic bliss is only the beginning. The real secret is the legend. Earlier film beauties, the vamps, the sweater girls and the rest, established conventions for exciting without intent to gratify; the Monroe legend is all of intent to gratify. Miss Monroe suggests not merely that she would please you but also that you would please her. From the humbleness-to-riches story, to the fabulous marriage and the scene where a plumber gropes for his pipe-wrench in her bath, the whole is a gorgeous fantasy into which every unsatisfied person of either sex can project every longing. It is Cinderella up-to-date, in glorious technicolour, and they live voluptuously as well as happily ever after.

None of this reflects any particular discredit on Miss Monroe or her employers, the film magnates. People who sell things, even dreams, are simply cashing-in on other people's needs—the only important criticism is of the world which creates such needs on so large a scale. The brevity of Marilyn Monroe's marriage indeed suggests that she herself is no more satisfied than a good many of her admirers. Certainly she knows no greater security—the careers of public entertainers are as precarious as those of any other people.

One of the paradoxes of our time is that, as fast as morality has slackened and so removed apparent obstacles to well-fulfilled sexual lives, the lack of satisfaction has grown. It is impossible to imagine a stable, sane community deifying a dream, but modern culture is largely made up of dreams. There is Miss Monroe; there are the revenge dreams of the brutal gangster stories, the escape dreams of popular romance, the vicarious thrills of speedways, space-fiction and the big fights. Our society, despising primitive people who incorporate sex practices in their cultures, has erected Marilyn Monroe as its tribal symbol—the symbol of frustration and unsatisfied desires.

Robert Barltrop

Hope for Nicaragua (1985)

From the January 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

For years Nicaragua was run by the Somoza family who, in return for maintaing "order", so that the exploitation of the peasants by US multinationals could continue in relative peace, were allowed to help themselves to some of the pickings of this exploitation. In the end the greed and corruption of this bunch of gangsters became too much even for the rest of the parasite class in Nicaragua, who threw in their lot with the Sandinista guerrilla movement (so called after a Nicaraguan general, Augusto Sandino, who led an anti-American and pro-peasant revolt in the late 1920s and early 1930s):

The enormous fortune of the Somozas had coexisted peacefully with the investments of the country's other businessmen until, following the 1972 earthquake, the Somoza family took over banking and construction, two fields considered as the preserve of the country's well-off class. From then on frictions appeared which ended in a break between the capitalists and General Somoza and in a union of capitalists with the young people who had taken up arms under the banner of the Sandinist National Liberation Front. (Républicain Lorrain, 18 July 1979) 

Within a few years of the overthrow of the Somozas in July 1979 power came to be exercised exclusively by the leaders of the Sandinist movement with most, but by no means all, the private capitalists and their supporters going over to the counter-revolution encourage, financed and armed by the US government.

Even if we assume that the leaders of the Sandinist movement who now occupy the top government and state posts in Nicaragua do not attribute themselves a privileged income compared with the rest of the population (which may be the case, to a certain extent) they are still compelled, by virtue of the fact that they are administering a state in the context of the capitalist world economy, to behave as a capitalist class.

Thus, they are forced to oblige peasants to grow cash crops for export, as a means to get foreign

currency (to buy machinery and arms), rather than allowing them to grow food to feed themselves. Thus, they are forced to brigade the workers into state-controlled "trade unions" and to denounce strikes as counter-revolutionary. In this respect, see the front page we reproduce here of of an official Sandinist newspaper whose headline reads: STRIKES WOULD BE AN EXCUSE FOR A YANKEE INVASION! The subtitle in white on black reads: "The strike is not necessary in Nicaragua because power is in the hands of the workers", exactly the same argument used by the rulers of state capitalist Russia and East Europe. In reality it is precisely the fact that the workers in Nicaragua have to sell their ability to work to an employer, private or state, for a wage or salary that shows both that they don't exercise power and that they need the strike weapon to defend themselves.

So, even without calling into doubt the sincerity of (most of) the Sandinist leaders and of those who support them in Nicaragua — by all accounts they do seem to genuinely wish to improve the lot of the ordinary people living there — the fact remains that there is no hope for the people of the so-called Third World as long as capitalism, in the form of the world market economy, remains the dominant world system. Their standard of living and their freedom will remain restricted either by a government operating openly in the interest of native and foreign private capitalists or, if a revolution occurs to try to free them from this oppression, by the very leaders of this revolution however sincere or well-meaning they might be (for the experience of such revolutions shows that in time leaders evolve, after eliminating any genuinely sincere elements among them, into a self-conscious, cynical and hypocritical ruling and privileged class.)

The only hope for the people of the Third World is a world socialist revolution to replace existing world capitalism. Until this happens capitalism will remain in existence in the Third World, either in the form of private capitalism under some corrupt and authoritarian government or in the form of state capitalism under the dictatorship of a vanguard party. In other words, even if they take up arms against such brutal dictators as Batista, Somoza or Pinochet, the most they can achieve is a new class society of state capitalism, not a classless society without exploitation.

Adam Buick

The Demand for "Workers" Control (1945)

From the December 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reynolds News (4th November, 1945) published the following letter:—

   "I am surprised that Mr. Shinwell says he does not subscribe to the doctrine of workers' control of industry. Surely this has always been one of the basic principles of the Trade Union Movement.
   It appears that, instead of applying Socialism, many of our leaders are endeavouring to find a way out of or around the problem. Only a planned economy of workers' control can realise a full Socialist State.

B. Darke

London, E.9.

Mr. Darke's view is that of many supporters of the Labour Party.

It is completely divergent from the intentions of the Labour Government.

The idea has also been expressed by strikes recently.

The idea is a plausible one: simply this, that if a Government of "workers' representatives" (Labour leaders) are in office it is "Workers' control" of industry.

That therefore things will be run increasingly to the benefit of the workers—correspondingly to the detriment of the capitalists, realising, eventually, planned economy in a "full Socialist State".

Wherein lies Mr. Darke's error? First of all, workers' control is not Socialism. Socialism abolishes classes and therefore the working class. Socialism is democratic control of production by the whole community—not by a section of it.

Secondly, and more importantly, neither is a Labour Government "workers' control."

First, "workers control" in the sense of operating production is universal to-day. But if by "workers' control" is meant control of the ownership and distribution of the wealth the workers produce, it obviously cannot be under capitalism. Capitalism is a system based on private ownership; so long as capitalists own, they control.

Where Mr. Darke is confused is that he believes, like so many workers, that a Government composed of men who one worked with their hands, Labour leaders who are ex-dockers, miners, grocers' boys and milk-float drivers, necessarily makes the policy and intentions of that Government different. It does not.

The Labour Party is elected on a programme for the retention of capitalism. It has deluded many electors that its nationalisation schemes are Socialism. They are not.

It urges the workers now to work harder and tighten their belts to increase exports as a step to "Socialism." It is not.

Horatio.

Too Little Too Late . . . (2015)

From the December 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

. . . That’s the most that will ever be done under capitalism about the problems that global warming will bring.

The way the capitalist system works rules out the effective action at world level that is needed to begin tackling the problem. It even encourages economic activities that contribute to it.

Capitalism is based on production being controlled by profit-seeking enterprises which, supported by governments, compete on the market to buy resources and sell products. This competitive pursuit of profits is the essence of capitalism. It’s what capitalism is all about and what prevents any effective action to deal with climate change.

Nobody can deny that global warming is taking place. Nor that, if it continues unchecked, it would have disastrous consequences – such as rising sea-levels and increased desertification – through its effects on the climates of the different parts of the world. There can only be argument over what is causing it. Most scientists in the field take the view that it has mainly been caused by the increase in the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere largely as a result of the burning of the fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas.

If this is the case, then one part of any solution has to be cut back on burning these fuels. But this is not happening. In fact, on a world scale, their use is increasing. This is because this is currently the cheapest way of generating the energy to drive industry – and the logic of capitalism compels the profit-seeking enterprises that control production to use the cheapest methods. If they don’t, their competitors will.

What is the solution? First, the competitive struggle for profits as the basis for production must be ended. This requires that the Earth’s natural and industrial resources become the common heritage of all humanity. On this basis, and on this basis alone, can an effective programme to deal with the problem be drawn up and implemented, because production would then be geared to serving human interests and no longer to make a profit for competing enterprises.

There will be those who say that we haven’t the time to wait for the coming into being of this, in their view, unlikely or long-distant solution, and that we must therefore do something now. In this age of apathy and cynicism when any large-scale change is dismissed, this may seem a plausible argument but it begs the question. It assumes that a solution can be implemented within capitalism. But if it can’t (as Socialists maintain), then concentrating on something now rather than on changing the basis of society and production will be a waste of valuable time while the situation gets worse.

---leaflet handed out at climate change events. Bulk copies are available on request and the cost of postage from: The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN.

"Security" and the terror in South-East Asia (1996)

From the March 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The Indonesian Government remains a military dictatorship that has little hesitation in cracking down on political dissent. Military repression in East Timor and harsh clamps on free speech and other civil liberties in Indonesia are anathema to most Australians" (West Australian, 16 December 1995).

Nevertheless, on Monday 18 December 1995, Prime Minister Paul Keating and Defence Minister Robert Ray, together with Senator Evans, flew to Jakarta for the signing, with the Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas, of the secretly negotiated security pact.

Keating, however, described the deal "as more than a defence agreement" which "tilts Australia into a security arrangement with the world's biggest Muslim country—the first time non-aligned Indonesia has signed such a treaty". Moreover, admitted Keating, it will open high-level consultation between the two countries on regional security that could lead to Australian troops defending Indonesia—and vice versa—if either country was "adversely challenged", although this would not happen automatically. Foreign Minister Senator Gareth Evans said that the security pact "showed that Australia could stand on its own feet and did not need the United States to make big agreements in the region on its behalf".

Oil
For Australia and Indonesia, there are good reason they they should be concerned with common "security interests". As elsewhere, there is the smell of oil. Between Darwin and the island of Timor to the north is the Timor Sea or Timor Gap. West Timor is officially part of Indonesia; East Timor was originally a Portuguese colony, which Indonesia invaded in 1975 and annexed in 1976, but is not recognised as being part of Indonesia by the United Nations. Nevertheless, there is an agreed seabed boundary between Australia and the Republic of Indonesia approximately two-thirds of the distance between northern Australia and southern East and West Timor. In 1989, Australia and Indonesia signed the Timor Oil Gap Treaty which covers oil exploration in 61,000 sq km of the Timor Gap. The area is estimated to hold at least one billion barrels of oil. A small part of the area north of the boundary is Indonesian-controlled; a much larger areas south of the boundary is under joint Australian and Indonesian control, and a somewhat smaller area to the south of it and to the north of Australia, is under exclusive Australian control. The future of East Timor is, therefore, of particular interest to both Indonesia and Australia.

Repression in East Timor
The number of East Timorese killed by the Indonesians is not, and may never be, known. The usually accepted (but not by the Indonesians) figure is 200, 000. A graph in the Western Australian of 30 September 1995, based on official Indonesian and Portuguese statistics, shows the population, in 1970, to be 600,000; in 1973, about 620,000; in 1980, down to around 550,000, and ten years later, about 740,000. It is now about 800, 000 but this would include Indonesians who settled there during the last years or so. According to the West Australian of the same date, there are six to none Indonesian battalions, each of 700 men, occupying East Timor. The East Timor rebels, known as the National Council of Maubere Resistance (CNRM), formed in 1988, is estimated to be no more than 100 to 500.

For the people of East Timor, the past 20 years have been dominated by fear and repression. Indeed, "Almost two decades after the brutal Indonesian invasion, the military regime still relies on terror to maintain its grip on the troubled island province, which is little more than 300km from the Australian coast" (West Australian, 30 September 1995).

Torture has been, and probably still is, widespread, although the Indonesian authorities deny that they torture people. But the physical scars on former inmates, and the consistent accounts from Amnesty International and other human rights groups, tell a different story. Moreover, between September 6 and 11 last year, there were riots and unrest in the capital Dili and other towns of East Timor.

Although most East Timorese are not involved in the struggle for independence, they do not accept Indonesian sovereignty. "Most see complete independence as an unrealistic goal as long as President Suharto and the Indonesian military hold the reigns." (West Australian, 30 September 1995). Furthermore, they realise that neither Australia, or Britain and the United States, are prepared to upset Indonesia's rulers; "a country growing in economic importance". Nevertheless, Australia at least is trying to make sure that no capitalist regime in East Timor comes to power which may upset its stake in possible future oil profits under the waters of the Timor Sea.

Peter E. Newell

Help yourselves (2011)

Book Review from the April 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Help! by Oliver Burkeman. Canongate. £12.99

Subtitled ‘How to Become Slightly Happier and Get A Bit More Done’ this is a well written and amusing romp through one of capitalism’s biggest growth industries: self help books and ideas. Readers of The Guardian will know Burkeman as the author of the ironically titled ‘This Column Will Change Your Life’ feature, and here he tackles everything from numerology to leadership systems and Scientology.  

Burkeman is an expert spotter of flummery and exaggeration and the world of self-help and personal growth literature has more than its fair share of both:

“If you want to get really stressed out…you could do worse than read Change Your Life in 30 Days, a bestselling book by the American TV life coach Rhonda Britten… [but] 30 days looks relaxed compared to Change Almost Anything in 21 Days, Change Your Life in 7 Days, Shape Shifter: Transform Your Life in One Day, and my favourite, Transform Your Life in 90 Minutes… As a sucker for quick fixes, it took me a long time to realise the problem. Deadlines induce stress and worry.”

In truth, a book knocking some of the worst excesses of this genre is easy enough to concoct, but Burkeman has also accessed a good deal of the research to make a case for what does work (usually with modest effect) compared with what manifestly doesn’t. Among the interesting findings are that the act of giving has more lasting, positive psychological effects than receiving, about why Sunday is the most depressing day of the week, and of the reasons why having experiences tends to be more fulfilling than acquiring possessions.

Burkeman is clear that one of the problems with the self-help approach is that it systematically over-estimates individual willpower and under-estimates environmental factors in making us what we are. His book is unlikely to fundamentally change many lives (and thankfully doesn’t promise to) but it manages to be alternately amusing and sobering about what is possible and impossible within the confines of the society we live in.

Dave Perrin

Marx and the State (1979)

Book Review from the November 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution. Volume 1: State and Bureaucracy by Hal Draper, Monthly Review Press, £5.60 paperback.

This is an interesting book by the man who wrote the very useful study of Marx's references to the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' which confirmed the view we had long held. In New Politics, Vol. 1, No.4, Summer 1962, he shows that the phrase was used by Marx comparatively rarely and, when it was, to mean simply the democratic exercise of political power by the working class.

In this new book, Draper is arguing a case which cannot be fully understood without some knowledge of his background. He is a Trotskyist, but of the dissident variety known to other Trotskyist sects as 'the Shachtmanites'. During the great controversy on the nature of Russian society in the American Trotskyist movement just before the last war, three views emerged: 1) that Russia was a 'degenerate Workers' State', the view of Trotsky himself and the Trotskyist orthodoxy to this day; 2) that it was state capitalist; and 3) that it was neither a 'Workers' State' nor state capitalism but a new exploiting class society which Shachtman, borrowing a term from Bruno Rizzi, called 'bureaucratic collectivism'. Draper was for years a leading figure in the Shachtmanite tendency which existed as an independent group until 1958 when its members joined the reformist SP of America.

So in showing that Marx held that a state bureaucracy could be a ruling class and that a class society could exist on the basis of the state monopoly of the means of production, Draper is demolishing one of the arguments used by orthodox Trotskyists to defend their preposterous theory about Russia, Marx not only admitted this as a theoretical possibility but used the terms 'Asiatic mode of production' and 'Oriental despotism' to describe just such a society as had existed in ancient times, and not just in Asia. The ruling class had then been a state bureaucracy, controlling the means of production and hence collectively monopolising them. The parallel with present-day Russia is obvious; though not, of course, with regard to the mode of production itself (which is capitalism).

In The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels referred to the 'executive of the modern State' as 'but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie'. Draper warns that, if taken too literally to mean that the government is always directly controlled by the capitalist class, then this is an oversimplification; there are cases where the government, though still used in the interest of the capitalist class, is not actually controlled by them.

Marx in fact devoted quite a bit of time to studying one such case: the Second French Empire (1852-1870). Napoleon's nephew, Louis Bonaparte, had been elected President of the Republic established in 1848 after the overthrow of the bourgeois King Louis Philippe. In 1851 he staged a coup d'etat and a year later had himself proclaimed Emperor (the events are written up in Marx's inimitable journalistic style in the pamphlet The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte). Here was an example of a capitalist society where the government was not controlled by the capitalist class through a parliament, elections and so on, but by a dictator not subject to their control even if he did protect their interests. Marx called this phenomenon 'Bonapartism', and Engels argued that Bismarckian Germany exhibited similar characteristics. This phenomenon—where the capitalist class has been prepared, sometimes even compelled (sections of it, at least) to surrender political control of the government through representative institutions in exchange for the law and order imposed by a strong dictatorship — has been fairly widespread since, from fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and Franco Spain to the present-day dictatorships in Chile and Argentina.

Of course, such dictatorships are still governments of capitalism and have to run capitalism in the only way it can be; as a profit-making system and so ultimately in the interests of the capitalist class. Thus Draper's conclusion about Marx's theory of the state, not just in capitalism but in class societies generally, is fair enough (the quotes are from Engels):

The state, 'necessary and logical product of the [given] social conditions', is always in the last analysis 'the executor of the economic necessities of the national situation'. Thus it is always the organizer of society in the interests of the class (exploitative) structure taken as a whole.

One criticism. As a Trotskyist, even if an unorthodox one, Draper still believes in a 'Workers' State' (a term never used by Marx himself), and he sometimes seems too keen to play down the the anti-state element in Marx's thinking. Certainly Marx thought that the working class should use the state to abolish capitalism, but this was to be a temporary affair leading fairly rapidly to the dismantling of the state and the establishment of a stateless socialist society.

Adam Buick

A Prophet of Liberation (1973)

Book Review from the May 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier; Selected Texts on Work, Love and Passionate Attraction, Translated and edited by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Cape, £3.95

Marx and Engels praised and criticized Fourier. The criticism, inevitably, was that of all the Utopian Socialists of 1800 and thereabouts. As Engels put it in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

The solution of the social problems, which as yet lay hidden in undeveloped economic conditions, the Utopians attempted to evolve out of the human brain. Society presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these was the task of reason. It was necessary, then, to discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and, wherever it was possible, by the example of model experiments. These new social systems were foredoomed as Utopian; the more completely they were worked out in detail, the more they could not avoid drifting off into pure phantasies.

Yet the praise was undeniable too: for Fourier's satire, the "power and charm" of his denunciations of commerce, his view of women's position, and his historical insight.

Of all the Utopians, Fourier most readily wins sympathy today. Saint-Simon's gospel of work may seem too severe. Owen's experiments not free from the suspicion of progressive management; with Fourier, however, the human concern which won that word "charm" is almost irresistible. His answer to the classic question of who would do dirty work under Socialism is memorable. Muck? Filth? Let children do it: they love such things.

The present collection of Fourier's writings draw strongly on material which was not available to Marx and Engels. This is the volume published for the first time in Paris in 1967 under the title Le Nouveau Monde Amoureux (The New Amorous World). It would not have altered their view, but it greatly amplifies the vision of a satisfying society as Fourier saw it. It enables us also to see how far away the Fourierists who founded 19th-century communities were from what was in his mind: straitlaced groups who, as the Introduction remarks, "for tactical as well as personal reasons" ignored his intention of a realm of sexual freedom.

After a financially comfortable upbringing, Fourier was woken to the realities of social life in the years following the French Revolution. Experiences in the Lyon insurrection of 1793 are said to have given him "a lasting horror of political revolution and social turmoil", and the rifeness of profiteering and speculation under the Directory made him a bitter critic of "anarchic" competition. From these points of departure he constructed a series of proposals for the reconstruction of society, leading to the master-plan: a scheme of "natural association" in which the gratification of personal desires and passions would be for human good. By 1819 he had completed, but was never able to publish in entirety, his Grande Traité on society and human nature.

It was essential to Fourier that his idea be put into practice. His conception was of a community called the Phalanx, made up of small "passional" groups. For years he sought a patron to provide the land and the backing; he tried bankers, philanthropists and ambassadors. Though these appeals brought nothing, a small band of disciples formed. He quickly dissociated himself from an attempt at a community in 1833; after his death in 1837 Fourierism became a political fashion for a few years. Fourierist study groups in Russia included Dostoevsky and Alexander Herzen among their members. A number of Fourier communities were set up in America, almost all under-capitalized and incapable of survival for any length of time—the only part-successful one, Brook Farm, was ruined by a fire in 1846.

Fourier's emphasis was on human fulfilment. He saw that capitalism and its commerce were not only degrading and starving millions of people physically, but also deprived them of necessary emotional satisfactions. He was concerned about ending work as slavery—not by inducement to make work attractive, but by letting it be attractive as he was convinced it was to everyone: civilization had perverted it. There was no reason why men should spend all their lives or even all day at one kind of work. In Harmony (Fourier's name for his Utopia) they would do many different things, in pleasant surroundings and among friends and lovers. Economic security would be provided by the "social minimum", a guaranteed income which made the framework for freedom of choice.

Like most Utopians, Fourier advocated a predominantly agricultural life. He did not deny the place of industry, but it had to be secondary; and factories and workshops must be specially luxurious if people were to want to work in them. However, he argued a great increase in agricultural production and a decrease in manufacture: goods would be so excellently made as to need replacing only occasionally, while the Harmonians would consume correspondingly more of the social wealth in food. The fullest expression of pleasure in work would be the appearance of armies of "a million industrial athletes" for huge projects like bridge-building and land reclamation.

But the real destiny of mankind in this new world was the complete liberation of the instincts. The satisfaction of material needs led to organised release from sexual and emotional bondage. As Engels pointed out, Fourier was "the first to declare that in any given society the degree of women's emancipation is the natural measure of the general emancipation". Fourier attacked Christianity's "enslaved monogamy" furiously, for brutalizing sexual relations and for the hypocrisy which turned love into a self-centred activity. He saw sexual love as a central part of community life.

Love in the Phalanstery is no longer, as it is with us, a recreation which detracts from work; on the contrary it is the soul and the vehicle, the mainspring of all works and of the whole of universal attraction.

The proposals for a free sexual life turn out to be elaborately regulated. There is a hierarchy of officials, and a mighty rule-book. The orgies sound like committee-ridden village fêtes, and there are even Courts allotting playful forfeit-type penalties. Fourier insists that the code is voluntary and to facilitate expression, but it rings uneasily of regimentation; the high priests, matrons, pontiffs etc. are plainly sexual bureaucrats in the making. Nevertheless, the vision remains a remarkable one when it is seen in contrast with all that was taken for granted about sex relationships in the bourgeois society of the period.

In one respect particularly Fourier was startlingly ahead of his time. His Utopia involved the liberation of the sexual "deviant":

In Harmony manias will be particularly bizarre and plentiful among the more complex personality types. In civilization on the contrary the complex personalities are those who try hardest to stifle and hide their manias. They do so out of an excessive respect for civilised standards and public opinion and also out of a desire to avoid criticism, of which they already have quite enough. 

Every person's proclivities would be marked on papers he carried, so as to find appropriate partners without difficulty. The "manias" would contribute to society's well-being just as much as normal sexuality. The only line Fourier drew was at activities in which a person was abused, or made an object against his will. Thus, he anticipated by a century and a half the "gay liberation" movement and its logical conclusion—that society must be reorganized first.

This was indeed the great merit which enables us to see Fourier as a forerunner of Socialism. He perceived that the material basis of life was the essential condition to be provided, and this could be done only by creating a new kind of social order. Capitalism's "disgusting civilization" was inimical to every human need:

The results of this system—poverty, oppression, deceit and carnage—are wholly contrary to man's desires and to the goal of nature.

When security, comfort and pleasure in work have been attained, man could then become truly liberated. Sexual relationships would be freed from coercion and necessity, and the gratification of instinct produce social enthusiasm and harmony.

The translation of this vision to class-consciousness and comprehension of political power as the means was, as Engels wrote, simply not possible in Fourier's time. It remained an idea, hopeful of achievement by luck or infection. There is very much, however, which resembles what Socialists today look forward to in the society of the future. The belief in small communities as islands of liberated living still persists, but—as in Fourier's day—a world away from what his mind saw. His view was of a whole society; no group of men is an island.

Robert Barltrop

Party News (1981)

From the October 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month two debates took place between the Socialist Party and organisations standing for free market capitalism. On September 10 in Islington, with 83 people present, Ron Cook of the SPGB debated with David Steele of the Libertarian Alliance. The declared principles of the Libertarian Alliance include "The right of all persons to life, liberty and justly acquired property". For the Libertarians, "justly acquired property" includes the wealth accumulated by the owners of capital through the work carried out for them by the rest of us, with the threat of enforced hunger of we refuse. David Steele's objection to socialism was that without the mechanism of profit and prices, goods could not be efficiently distributed to those who need them. It was pointed out that millions starve at this moment, precisely because they cannot afford to pay the prices, and that a system of production for use according to needs could be based on the modern means of communication which already exist. People could declare needs directly and worldwide as the basis for production, instead of the present buying and selling mechanism. The following day, in Guildford, Steve Coleman of the Socialist Party debated with Professor Antony Flew of the Philosophy Department of Reading University. 65 people attended the debate, which was on the question of "Is Equality Just a Socialist Myth?"

Utopian Communities (1966)

Book Review from the December 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The History of American Socialisms by John Humphrey Noyes, with new introduction by Mark Holloway, Dover, New York

"Socialism has been tried before in various communal experiments. These failed because men cannot live together, co-operating freely in production and sharing the amenities and products of their community."

So runs one of the "human nature" type of objections to Socialism.

The answer is that Socialism cannot work in isolation. It must be world-wide, taking over from the present world-wide system of society—capitalism. The conditions for its achievement are, that there must be a potential abundance for all, and that a majority of workers must be equipped with the knowledge of Socialism and be organised to get it. Socialism is the emancipation of the working class and not an escape from capitalism to some backwoods hideaway. This is Scientific Socialism as opposed to the earlier ideas of reforming mankind by setting up communities free from the influence of private property known as Utopian Socialism.

This book is a contemporary account of Utopian communities set up in America mainly between 1825 and 1850. The author founded a religious community which lasted 30 years. The greater part of his material was drawn from the researches of A. J. Macdonald, an admirer of Robert Owen. The book is largely devoted to brief histories of communal experiments, the main groups dealt with being: the efforts of Owen and his followers, communities set up by admirers of Fourier and various religious colonies.

It is interesting that theories developed to deal with the effects of the industrial revolution in Europe should have been applied in pre-industrial America. There was plenty of land available in America and people who had escaped from conditions in Europe were keen to try new and more satisfying ways of living. Their role was of pioneers opening up virgin territory rather than social revolutionaries ending oppression.

The fallacy of trying to change the social environment in isolation is evident with each experiment. Private property dogged them from the start. Land, tools and supplies had to be bought. Funds had to be raised for these, which meant that the community was in debt to the lender. They had to direct their efforts to paying this off so that they had to try and sell their products at a profit. In practice these schemes worked out as private property, held and worked in common, with all the frustrations of small property owners and the added irritants of being confined by the bounds of their land and of their social circle, both work and play, being limited to the colony. No wonder their attempts to change society failed. This book only deals with the mechanics of failure (some, say Noyes, were, incompetent; others anti-religious; some had too many lazy members; others were struck by disasters like fire or sickness) but does not question the ideas of the Utopians.

The ideas, which seemed feasible in the 19th century, have been swept away by modern capitalism. The working class in its hundreds of millions is engaged in the social process of production on a world scale. Their position has changed from being mere beasts of burden to the people who run society from top to bottom. Yet for all these changes their social position is unchanged: they still face the problems associated with wage or salary earning; they still work for the minority who own the means of production. It is now clear that the environment of capitalism makes socialists who, when they are in a majority, will use their knowledge to make the world fit to live on.

The History of American Socialisms is an interesting historical document showing the efforts that men made to organise their affairs on what they thought was a sane and rational basis. The failure of the Utopians lay not in their intentions or courage but in the fact that the conditions of capitalism in their day made their ideas seem feasible.

JEF.

Cooking the Books: Yes, We Have No Economic Policy (2015)

The Cooking the Books Column from the December 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Or, put another way, we don’t have any policy for trying to manage the capitalist system.

This is for two reasons.

First, we don’t want to manage the capitalist economy. We want to end it.

Second, we don’t think that it can be managed.

The economic policies of all the other parties assume that it can whereas experience shows that it can’t. Rather than governments controlling capitalism, it’s been the other way round. Governments have to react to what capitalism throws at them. They are like people in a small boat on a choppy sea, powerless to control what is happening to them and only able to take puny counter-action.

A revealing recent example of how governments can’t control the way capitalism works was the claim by Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, to have finally ended the boom/slump cycle (echoing, incidentally, a similar claim by Nigel Lawson twenty years earlier). Within a couple of years the biggest slump since the 1930s hit the world, including Britain.

All the Labour government and the subsequent Tory/Lib Dem coalition could do was to react to it. And react to it on capitalism’s terms – by cutting back on government spending so as to reduce the burden of taxation on profits, the lifeblood of the capitalist system, in the hope that sooner or later profitability would be restored and a profit-led recovery begin.

Ironically perhaps, this lets the Labour Party off the hook as far as one criticism is concerned – the Tories blaming the economic situation after 2008 on Labour’s economic policy. This is unfair as it was the internal workings of the capitalist system that brought about the slump. The history of capitalism shows that it goes through a repeating boom/slump/boom/slump cycle, with a big slump breaking out every 50-60 years. There’s nothing any government can do about this. So it was capitalism, not Labour, that has caused the ‘economic mess’ as the Tories called it.

But this works both ways. Just as capitalism spontaneously caused the crash of 2008 and subsequent slump it has also spontaneously caused the present modest economic recovery. The Tories are claiming this as the result of the economic policies pursued over the past five years. But they are claiming credit for something that was going to happen anyway sooner or later (in the event, far later than they expected) because in a slump the devaluation of capital and the fall in real wages, by restoring profitability, create the conditions for a profit-led recovery. That’s the way capitalism works.

So, governments can’t control the way the capitalist economy works. They can only work with it, putting profits and conditions for profit-making before meeting people’s needs adequately and before other considerations such as safety at work and protecting the environment. Capitalism is a profit system that runs on profits and can only work by giving them priority. Governments have to accept this and in the end they all do.

This is the only way capitalism can work. It can’t be reformed to work in any other way. This is why it has to go and be replaced by a system based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources so that we can really control what is produced and distributed. On this basis we can gear production to meeting needs instead of for the market or to make a profit, with people having free access to what they need in accordance with the principle ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’. In a word, socialism (in its original sense).

Fantasy masquerading as reality (1997)

Theatre Review from the March 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Homecoming by Harold Pinter, Lyttleton Theatre.

Harold Pinter is perhaps the most lauded English playwright of the past thirty years. The National Theatre has premiered three of his new plays and revived five others in the last 20 years, and now revives a sixth, The Homecoming. For its part The Homecoming has been seen widely both in the United Kingdom and across the world. The programme for the current revival at the National Theatre lists forty-four major productions, across five continents, since the play was first performed in 1965. Pinter is seen as a serious and successful dramatist. His plays both command respect and can usually be counted upon to fill a theatre. Several have been successfully filmed. Performances of his new work are seen as significant events, not least by those arbiters of taste, the critics of national newspapers.

Years ago Kenneth Tynan noted that Pinter's ability to hold an audience seemed to depend upon three qualities: "his bizarre use of dramatic technique"; "his skill in evoking atmosphere" (especially feat and apprehension); and "his command of contemporary idiom" (A View of the English Stage, K. Tynan).

These three qualities are vert evident in The Homecoming, the tale of the return of a prodigal son and his wife to some anonymous tenement in North London, the son now teaching philosophy in an American university. Who are the four males in residence? What are their positions as members of the family? Pinter reveals his secrets slowly, teasingly. And as he does so he preserves an atmosphere of uncertainty, not to say menace. As the four males circle each other violence never feels far away. It is spat out in the dialogue. It is apparent in the body language. And with the arrival of the returning son and his wife it becomes manifest.

But there is a problem. Pinter's use of language may be convincing—some people do, on some occasions, speak in the intensely aggressive and idiomatic way that is commonplace in his work—but it is nevertheless often very difficult to square what the characters say to one another, with that we know about them and what they do. So if the dialogue is convincing, its use by characters on stage is not. Thus it appears that brother Lenny is a pimp. In such circumstances would Lenny continue to live at home where he is the butt of aggressive behaviour from his almost psychotic father? And when locked in a row with his returning brother, a successful philosopher, would we expect Lenny rather than his brother to win the sophisticated discussion about the nature of philosophical discourse?

If Pinter's characterisation is unconvincing his storytelling is almost perverse. Why would the successful son want to bring his wife home to the alienating hell from which he had successfully flown? And what happens between the end of the first act and the beginning of the second, to transform a group of six adults who were previously locked in a violent, physical struggle, and who now emerge like some fawning members of a college sophomore group? Pinter offers no reasons for their inexplicable behaviour. And as for the apparently demure wife who is revealed as a potentially promiscuous woman—would she really exchange life in America with her husband and her three children for the charms of being a part-time prostitute. as well as a part-time housewife and comforter to four variously unattractive males? The proposition is at once as hugely unconvincing as it is significantly misogynistic.

Many/most of the characters (sic) in The Homecoming have neither substance nor validity. The actors are superb and they demand our attention. However, although the set convincingly captures the essence of a shabby tenement in the 1960s, its realism contrasts markedly with the frequent implausibility of Pinter's characterisation and narrative. Never mind that almost without exception Pinter's characters are significantly disadvantaged and/or unfailingly unpleasant—a view of the world which is at odds with most people's experience even in the barbaric world of the market—their behaviour seems to be based almost entirely on primitive physiological and psychological needs and drives; drives which barely acknowledge the social world beyond home and hearth. Pinter's writing may have many qualities, but he ultimately presents us with a preposterously uni-dimensional view of human behaviour; a kind of unreal, invalid fascist nightmare.

Michael Gill

Labour's bad memory (1981)

From the October 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

But this is terrible. They have elected a Labour government and the country will never stand for that. (Woman dining at Claridge's, 26 July 1945.)

Thirty years ago—on October 5 1951 to be exact—the British people voted to set themselves free, to expunge austerity from their lives, to replace snoek and dried eggs with good red meat. At least that was what Tory politicians (like Churchill, Eden, Butler, Woolton—how evocative the very names are now) had told them would happen if they got rid of the Labour government.

The government—Labour's first ever with its own majority—was elected, in the final stages of the 1939/45 war, on the promise to build a fair, abundant, secure Britain. What happened, between 1945 and 1951. to swing the voters the other way?

The Labour Party was all but wiped out by the 1929 crash and the MacDonald defection. When the war started in 1939 they were inching their way back to a position where they could challenge the Conservatives' apparently eternal majority. There is little doubt that the war condensed and hastened the changes Labour need to carry that challenge to victory.

The popular mood in 1945 was very different from that after the First World War, when recovery meant getting back to the Good Old Days when the British monarchy, the Empire, the  pound sterling and the Royal Navy were to last for ever and ever amen. In 1945 the rampant desire was for progress; pre-war Britain was remembered as a place where incompetent and complacent politicians turned a blond eye to chronic unemployment and the rise of the European dictators, only worried that nothing should upset important events like Royal Ascot and the Eton and Harrow match at Lord's.

The post-war urge for social change had, ironically, been stimulated by the official war propaganda, which was based on the theory that the workers would more readily sacrifice themselves in their masters' interests if they could be persuaded that this would result in a better Britain than before the war. Churchill, in a speech to the boys at Harrow School (what more appropriate place?) declared:

When this war is won . . . it must be one of our aims to establish a state of society where the advantages and privileges which have hitherto been enjoyed only by the few shall be far more widely shared by the many . . .

This type of assurance was given by the Beveridge Report, published in 1942, with its proposals for a comprehensive welfare state and which millions of workers were silly enough to believe was a plan for a society free from poverty.

That this restlessness benefited the Labour Party rather than the Conservatives was partly due to another profound working class misconception. The success of the Russian forces against the German invaders was regarded as evidence of the efficiency and desirability of a system of state control. As a result Labour, as the party of natonalisation, picked up a lot of votes. Tory candidate Aubrey Jones (later a minister) said that during his 1945 election campaign he was persistently told by people in his audiences: "Look what nationalisation has done for Russia, and how great and strong she has become." There was also the idea—quickly dispersed by experience—that a Labour government would be able to deal more amicably with the Russians—"that left could talk to left."

So the Labour Party could enter their election campaign in 1945 in rollicking style. "The Labour Party," proclaimed their manifesto Let Us Face the Future "Is a Socialist Party and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain . . . " They proposed to nationalise key industries and to set up the National Health Service. It was to be the dawn of a new era of equality and plenty: "Homes for the people must come before mansions, necessities for all before luxuries for the few" their programme said.

This heady stuff helped Labour to a crushing victory, laying low five Tory Cabinet ministers in the process. Clement Attlee, spurning a chauffeur driven limousine, climbed into the family Austin Ten for his wife to drive him to Buckingham Palace where the king, seemingly unafraid in the presence of so dangerous a revolutionary, asked him to form a government to keep capitalism running. Attlee went off to do as the king asked; seven ex-miners were in his first Cabinet but the king didn't seem to mind. Excited Labour MPs sang the Red Flag in the House; at least it was probably the Red Flag but quite a few of them were such shakily recent converts that they knew neither the words nor the tune of the Socialist Commonwealth's funereal anthem. There was excitement of a sort outside Parliament too; "Those who are well off are trembling with fear" confided Marie Belloc Lowndes to her diary.

Well of course they need not have worried. At the election, Attlee had made quite clear what he thought of all that nonsense about socialism: " . . . it is time that the Labour Party ceased to mouth Marxist shibboleths about the proletariat having nothing to lose but their chains. It is just not true." On this cue his government, ex-miners and all, quickly got down to an attack on the living standards of the working class. The country (by which they meant the British capitalist class) was in trouble; therefore everyone (by which they meant the British working class) must work harder and pull in their belts. Food rations were sometimes cut below those endured in wartime and some—for example bread and potatoes—were rationed for the first time. Up and down the country posters were slapped on hoardings bellowing "We're Up Against It! We Work Or Want." In February 1948 the government published a White Paper on Wages and Personal Incomes, which was the first of numerous post-war attempts at a wages "policy", more accurately called wage restraint. The White Paper touched off a long war between the government and trade unions in which the government could claim some success; over the next 2½ years prices increased by 8 per cent while wages went up by only 5 per cent.

On the whole the unions were sympathetic to the government, which caused their frustrated members to stage "unofficial" strikes—strikes without union backing—in which they sometimes had to fight their union almost as hard as their employer. The "unofficial striker" became as black a folk devil as the "flying picket" was to Callaghan's government in the seventies. The government reacted sharply, sending in servicemen to break strikes and in 1949 considering in Cabinet a plan to deport trade unionists who were organising strikes in the docks and in 1950 actually prosecuting some gas workers who went on strike outside the agreed procedure.

This attack on the working class was largely the work of Stafford Cripps, once a turbulent rebel who was expelled from the Labour Party but had become an austere devotee to the economic progress of the British capitalist class. Through a long painful illness Cripps stoically urged the working class, in the name of honour, duty and honesty, to work harder and longer for less. One of his notable methods of cutting wages was the massive devaluation of sterling in 1949 from an exchange rate of $4.03 to $2.80. Cripps did this after emphatically denying that he had any such intention, which did not seem to disturb his sense of honour or honesty.

A similar zeal was evident in the Attlee government's participation in the military conflicts of world capitalism. One of its earliest decisions was to develop an independent British nuclear arsenal—an historic fact which has never lessened the fervour of those thousands of Labour supporters who have subsequently demonstrated against those weapons. When the Americans—calling themselves the United Nations—went to war against North Korea in 1950 the Labour government gave immediate and unqualified support. British workers were sent off to fight there—nearby 700 of them were killed—and the period of national service (Labour had already made history by keeping conscription going for the first time ever in "Peace") was increased from 1½ to 2 years. They spent what were then record peacetime amounts on armaments; Gaitskell's first proposals, when took over as Chancellor from Cripps, were for an annual expenditure on something he called "defence" of £1,500 million. At the same time he imposed charges for prescriptions, dental treatment and spectacles—a bitter blow for those who had struggled for so long to realise the article of faith of a "free" National Health Service.

Perhaps they were consoled by the fact that, apart from some last minute havering over steel, the Attlee government kept their pledge to nationalise basic industries. In the case of coal it was common for the oldest ex-miner in the district capable of tugging on a rope to be taken to the pithead to run up the National Coal Board flag and declare that the people had at last taken over the mines.

Well as we all know, people who are under emotional stress tend to overlook important but inconvenient facts. The truth was that nationalisation was very far from ownership by the people; why else did Tories like Churchill and Quintin Hogg (now Lord Hailsham) say that in most cases they had no objection to the state takeover? In his book The Road to 1945 Paul Addison says:

In each case the argument for state control was as much accepted by businessmen as by Labour politicians . . .

When the Bank of England was nationalised there was not even an outward sign of change; the Governor, his Deputy and the Court were left in office, to carry on as before. Nobody suggested bringing some ancient retired clerk, grown dim-eyed from years of poring over ledgers, to raise the Red Flag over Threadneedle Street.

Many members of that government paid a high personal cost in their efforts to hold British capitalism together in crisis. Two of them—Cripps and Bevin—died. And when, thirty years ago, they lost the election, they were written down—inaccurately—as a party of rigid political theory, of experiment, the party which bungled its way into crises, shortages and finally into its own defeat.

They were a long time recovering. But among the Labour ranks as they went down that October day was one whose canny grasp of political reality looked forward to the day when the workers would be dissatisfied with the Tories too. Harold Wilson's great contribution to the politics of capitalism was to win recognition for Labour as a "pragmatic" party. He practised deceit in a new dimension. Theory and experiment, a desire for a different social order however misinformed, were for those who watched white haired, wheezing ex-miners raise flags. Wilson might stand watching too but at the same time he knew that it was his role to bring the Labour Party to its destiny as the alternative administration for British capitalism.

Ivan