Lord Amwell and the Labour Party: Pointed Criticism by Early Member of the S.D.F. (1956)

From the February 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the permission of the Daily Mail and Lord Amwell we reproduce below the article “Why I Quit the Labour Party,” published in the Mail on 16 December, 1955. It is of more than passing interest because Frederick Montague, besides having been Labour M.P. and having held office in Labour Government, was a member of the Social Democratic Federation at the time members broke away to form the S.P.G.B. in 1904. He had joined the S.D.F. in 1894 and the I.L.P. in 1895 (dual membership being quite an accepted thing at that time) and later became a member of the Labour Party. The S.D.F. which, after some changes of name, had reverted to its earlier name, lost membership and influence and disappeared early in the second world war. In 1939. the last year in which it appeared' among the organizations affiliated to the Labour Party (with a membership reduced to 500) Fred Montague was their delegate at the Labour Party Conference.

All this gives interest to Lord Amwell’s reason for leaving the party that he has supported for so long. Many of the points he makes are in line with S.P.G.B. arguments

ED. COMM. 

Why I Quit the Labour Party

One-time newsboy and shop assistant), Lord Amwell, Frederick Montague as he then was, sat as Labour MP. for West Islington from 1923 to 1931 and from 1935 to 1947. He was Under-Secretary of State for Air, 1929-31; Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport. 1940-41; and Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Aircraft Production, 1941-42. He was created Baron in 1947.

I quit, but not to cross any floor, only to be free. I want freedom to say without embarrassment that which I feel ought to be said about today’s labour politics and industrial tactics.

Clement Attlee’s departure provides the occasion by loosening certain ties of personal loyalty.

Labour was never very clear in its Socialist theory but I, for one, hoped for the best. Today’s attempt at “refashioning Socialism as a philosophy and finding practical programmes to meet the needs of the times” has resulted in grounding the principles by which the movement was originally inspired. Such is my view and here are some of my reasons for holding it.

“Welfare” has nothing whatever to do with Socialism, and constitutes no “silent revolution.” It did not originate with the Labour Party and was not opposed by any party. It is not a party issue. That “rascally” Tories voted against the Welfare State is not true. Naturally Tories wanted their own way on details, but they no more voted against the principle than Labour voted against having an Army, Navy, and Air Force.

Mislead

It is a little disgusting to mislead electors by taking advantage of popular ignorance of Parliamentary procedure in the interest of vote-catching.

I have no objection to “Welfare.” We live in a keen Capitalist world that must be allowed to work or we starve. But I do object to the substitution of it for what we are supposed to stand for and the consequent neglect of more fundamental things. Especially do I object to calling the Beveridge system Socialist and claiming fundamental change for it, silent or not.

It is not true that “ poverty has been wiped out in Britain for ever,” as Attlee told the Russians. The authoritative figure of persons in receipt of public assistance is 1,600,000. These are not all old persons.

Substitute

The fact is that “Welfare” implies the continued existence of the inherited and the disinherited—Disraeli’s “Two Nations.” It is made a substitute for Socialism on the ground that it involves a redistribution of national income—the alleged silent revolution. But Socialism is not the redistribution of money income. It is production for use and the distribution of that.

There is now full employment upon the basis of inflation, which is quite another matter. For how long? Three-and-a-half-million married women go out to work. They will not go out to work when inflation has run its course and lower prices set in. The production line at any old wage will last as long as markets are kept and no longer.

The American motor-car balloon is already sagging. Automation and “ atomation” may soon start its own silent revolution. For leisure? Oh, certainly for leisure if we don’t look out! How are you going to sell superabundance to countries also superabundant?

The Illusion

In my view it is a complete illusion that high-powered industry on a vast scale can be “taken over” as a going concern, or “planned” from the outside, without taking over and planning human beings. Stateism which under trades union rule means syndicalism was never the dream of old. Mechanism and freedom won’t mix.

Labour in face of tremendous problems seems to me to be playing the old unclean party game, peddling for votes on the “Ninepence for fourpence” and “Big loaf instead of little loaf ” pattern. I have no use for it. I think the propaganda of Transport House shocking in its mendacity and its appeal to cupidity. Not thus was a loveable movement made. '

Labour’s new generation even experts like Gaitskell himself, brilliant player of the “game” as he no doubt will be, no more understand the economics of Capitalism than they do the economics of Socialism.

We are not informed as to what has happened to the untold millions made overnight on the floor of the London Stock Exchange. Silence reigns on this matter, because the untold millions are no longer told. In this notion that ledger-entries and real wealth are one and the same thing and that “there’s plenty where that came from” to go on being distributed there is the elementary fallacy that Socialists laughed out of court years ago. The fallacy of “sharing out.”

Can’t be done

I want to say these things and much more. I want to show how it is that Socialism cannot be properly dressed in Capitalist togs, that “welfare" is precariously poised, as Beveridge admits, and that a free economy is possible.

I want also to show that social reform in history has always been a process of “tidying up” when the cruder forms of exploitation have ceased to pay. There is no exception to this, and it makes a big difference once understood, to what we think about fundamentals and expediencies.

So, I quit!

Lord Amwell

Enter the Dragon: The impact of China (2005)

From the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1978 the Chinese Communist Party under Deng Xiaping embarked on reforms that would steer China’s economy toward transition from state-run to free market capitalism.

Since then China’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown by an average of 9.5 percent per year, faster than any other country. China joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in December 2001 and now accounts for 13 percent of world output with a GDP likely to overtake Japan by 2016 and America by 2020, making China the world’s largest economy.

Economic “openness”

This prodigious growth is attributable to foreign investment that has utilised the country’s remarkably ‘liberal’ business climate to exploit low wage labour as a platform for the manufacture of goods and then their export to world at cheap prices.   Put simply, manufacturing has been relocated to China to undercut competition and raise profits – attracted by the almost ‘inexhaustible’ supply of cheap labour, well-developed infrastructure, tax concessions and brutally repressive state.

China’s economic ‘openness’ makes it the world’s largest recipient of foreign investment, which increased 35 percent in the year to September 2004 alone. It is further exemplified by the country’s import tariffs, which “have, on average, fallen from 41 percent in 1992 to 6 percent after it joined the WTO in December 2001, giving it the lowest tariff protection of any developing country.” (The Economist, 2 October 2004, p.6)

Joint ventures between Chinese companies and foreign multinational corporations produce 27 percent of manufacturing output (there are 4,000 involving UK companies alone) and a flourishing private sector accounts for 50 percent of Chinese GDP.

Rich v poor

Although most of the population still exists at basic subsistence levels, the purchasing power of a minority of better paid workers (but still measured in tens of millions) and the development of an indigenous capitalist class have nurtured a sizeable domestic market.  China in fact has the world’s fastest growing consumer market and sales are soaring. If income distribution remains unaltered, “by 2020 the top 100 million households will have an average income equivalent to the current average in Western Europe. This will open up a vast market for consumer goods.” (The Economist, 2 October 2004, p.11) An increasing number of American and European corporations are now investing to sell directly to this growing market.

China’s market has also encouraged the emergence of a Chinese capitalist class, comprising many who already have close ties with foreign capital and political patronage from Beijing. Within this class a small number have amassed staggering levels of wealth. 

This picture looks set to continue. Though productivity is still low compared with the developed world, running at approximately one-eighth of that in America, economic ‘openness’ is encouraging the rapid transfer of manufacturing technology that will enable China to use the industrialised countries as a springboard to raise productivity. Production will also rapidly climb the “value added” chain, utilising the 10 million graduates who join the Chinese working class each year.

But more important is the abundant supply of the resource essential to profits – human labour power. China has a population of 1.3 billion or 20 percent of the world’s population and the political elite has worked hard to mobilise this labour power to create the conditions to fuel capitalism. 

State industry has rapidly shrunk and thousands of enterprises have been sold or bankrupted and their workers sacked. An estimated 40 million have been made jobless to join the countless millions made redundant from native private industry by relentless foreign competition.

Town v country

In rural regions, where over 60 percent of the population still live, the free market deregulation of agricultural prices has driven millions from the land. Here, over 150 million destitute people are waiting to migrate and seek work at any wage, while farmers are often compelled to take unskilled temporary work between harvests to supplement meagre earnings.

It will take 15-20 years to absorb this labour power, which means that, unlike some parts of South-East Asia, where labour scarcity could raise wages, Chinese based capitalism can probably hold down unskilled wages for many years. 

To most the transition from state-run capitalism to the free market variety means low wages, poor living conditions and repression. While a minority of higher paid workers has access to consumable goods, the free market has devastated the lower paid who do not have money to buy those goods. Services including education and medical care, formerly provided by the state, are now ‘fee based’, while housing is controlled by private landlords.    

The main manufacturing belt lies in the region of Guangdong and along the Pearl River Delta, where workers slave 15 hours a day, seven days a week with mandatory overtime enforced by coercive factory regulations. Migrant labour is estimated at over 100 million, more than half women from impoverished inland regions. Industrial disputes are not uncommon. 

Contradictions

Sometimes disputes erupt into riots as happened at the Taiwanese Stella International factory at Dongguan in the spring of 2004. The factory, employing 70,000 workers, makes shoes for Nike, Reebok, Clarks, Sears and Timberland. Factory property was allegedly damaged and ten workers were subsequently jailed for 3½  years but later freed when the company, fearful of repercussions, secured their release.

Long-term disregard for poverty and the impoverished plight of working people and peasantry may well pose a significant threat to government authority. The government has been compelled to ameliorate worker conditions and in some places unemployment insurance has improved and minimum wages increased, while cities have endeavoured to increase employment – generally by offering assistance to new enterprises to employ redundant workers. But funding is still minimal and official corruption widespread.

Nowhere is the contrast between rich and poor more stark than in Shanghai, a city of 17 million and the centre of Chinese capitalism. Here poor living conditions, overcrowding and poverty are “…a far cry from the empty streets of the gated communities in the east end of Pudong, where high walls and a plethora of guards provide a safe, insular heaven for those living within.” (China Daily, 28 April 2005)

One of China’s main weaknesses is electricity generation and the rapid increase in demand, exacerbated by household appliances and air-conditioning, has caused shortages, blackouts and power rationing.  China’s electricity generation is 70 percent dependent on coal and miners were forced to increase output by 54 percent in the four years to 2003. Rudimentary safety is ignored and a twelve-hour day, 28 days a month is the industry standard. “There were more than 6,000 deaths last year from explosions, floods, cave-ins and other accidents in China’s mining industry, accounting for 80 percent of the world’s total fatalities. Independent estimates, however, say up to 20,000 workers are killed every year as they toil underground in poor conditions for little money.” (http://www.chinalaborwatch.org)

The ‘All China Federation of Trade Unions,’ is the only legal trade union and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Independent trade unions are banned and workers agitating for better conditions are routinely jailed. But despite the lack of organisation, skill shortages have enabled some to make gains after strikes, as in Shenzen in October 2004 and Panyu in November 2004. 

Knock-on effect

The ‘Chinese miracle’ has had a detrimental effect on many workers outside China. While the international class who live by profits has benefited immeasurably by transferring operations to China, many workers in other countries have paid the price with the loss of their jobs. Worst hit have been workers who barely survive in undeveloped countries where imports and exports mirror those of China.  The abolition of import quotas on textiles in January 2005, for example, is set to decimate jobs in Bangladesh and Cambodia where companies will be unable to compete. Another casualty has been the Mexican working class where an estimated 225,000 jobs, originally transferred from America after the introduction of the North America Free Trade Association have moved to China since 2001. Likewise, production transferred to South Korean and Taiwanese based corporations is ‘out-sourced’ to China for labour intensive assembly and then re-export.

But China’s capitalism is also influencing the world’s working class in other ways. Worker conditions in developed countries are under attack. As The Economist euphemistically puts it: “Individual countries can maximise their gains from Chinese integration and minimise their losses by making their own economies more flexible, increasing mobility between sectors and improving education.” (2 October 2004, p.12).

Political control

The development of capitalism in China looks set to remain firmly under the political dictatorship of the Communist Party. Although in practical operation for years, free market capitalism was officially reconciled with ‘communism’ at the 16th National Congress of the CCP in November 2002 when the Party’s constitution was amended to open membership to China’s ‘business elite’ to protect the “legitimate rights and interests” of business and property owners.  The CCP has become the instrument of multinational corporations and of this ‘business elite’ and seeks to perpetuate its rule with the support of those who benefit from the system of exploitation in the world’s largest sweatshop. The Party has warned it will make no concession to ‘democratic aspirations.’ At the Central Committee meeting in September 2004, Hu Jintao, China’s President and Party leader asserted that “China would never have its own Gorbachev,” or countenance erosion of the CCP’s ruling position. Denouncing those who “fly the banner of democracy and political reform,” he warned the Party would be “pre-emptive” and “strike when they rear their heads.” (Time 31 January 2005, p.45).

In practical terms the political elite is seeking to tighten control over local government to block independent legislatures and plans to “improve the political thinking of university students to elevate the Party’s ruling power” (People’s Daily, 19 January 2005). Websites exposing corruption have been shut without explanation. Newspapers are banned from publishing anything negative about the police, government or judiciary and journalists have been ordered to stop criticism.

In this way capitalism in China is an investors’ paradise and a workers’ prison camp. Enormous profits are attained at staggering human cost, and with the growing gap between rich and poor the class struggle is set to intensify.  The integration of China into world capitalism has also had profound effects. It has drained away jobs from other parts of the world, lowered global unskilled wage rates and eased pressure on wages in other countries by reducing prices of consumable goods. These world-wide reverberations will continue.

Steve Trott

Cooking the Books: Marxism and Panda Bonds (2006)

The Cooking the Books column from the February 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

To mark the 112th anniversary on 26 December of the birth of Chairman Mao a new, expanded “Marxism-Leninism Academy” was opened in Beijing (Times, 3 January). According to Zhang Tongxin, of Beijing University’s Marxism Institute, “since reform, a considerable number of people have forgotten that China is a socialist country”.

By coincidence, the same day the Times reported on a number of financial reforms that came into force in the first week of January. One of them concerned the modernisation of financial markets “to steer more money to profitable projects, not white elephants, and keep the banks on their toes”. Already in 2005, the Times reminded its readers, China had seen “the launch of a highly successful commercial paper market; China’s first asset-backed and mortgage-backed securities; approval for banks to trade currency swaps and forwards; the establishment of the country’s first money broker; the first ‘panda bonds’ - denominated in yuan and sold in China by international borrowers”.

No wonder “a considerable number of people” had come to the conclusion that China is not socialist. And they are right. China is not a “socialist country” but a capitalist one. And it never was socialist. What the Chinese “Communist” Party established when they came to power in 1949 was a state-capitalist regime under their political dictatorship. The workers and peasants continued to be exploited but, from then on, by a “vanguard” which collectively exercised a monopoly, through its political control, over the state-owned means of production.

Although this state-capitalist regime was relatively successful in developing China’s heavy industry and military might, like the similar regime in Russia it proved unable to compete economically against the established capitalist powers such as the US, Europe and Japan. So, again as in Russia, a policy of “reform” was instituted involving the encouragement of private capitalist enterprise and the more rigorous subjection of state enterprises to market forces. From the point of view of the established political elite, so far this reform has been executed far more successfully than in Russia in that they are still in control of political power and on this basis can still proclaim the lie that China is a “socialist country”. Not that anybody believes them any more.

Marx wrote Capital to analyse how capitalist society worked with a view to showing how it could never be made to work in the interest of the class of wage workers on whose exploitation for surplus value it was based. He was not writing to advise political parties and governments how to run capitalism. So it is difficult to see what the Chinese government thinks it can get out of studying his writings.

Marx did write, in Volume III of Capital, about stock exchanges, financial markets and the like. Basically, he saw these as places where capitalists tried to swindle each other and small investors out of the surplus value that had already been extracted from the workers. Conceivably, Chinese government officials and the millionaires that have come into existence under the “reform” could pick up a few hints from here on how to swindle each other more efficiently.

Letter from Denmark (1966)

From the May 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

As a teacher with socialist ideas I hold that the only sensible thing in a sane society is to teach children when they want to be taught and what they want to be taught. I feel sure that most of children want to explore the world in which they live. We all know of children who don't come home in time because they are engaged in play or in the act of investigating things. And who does not know children who keep on asking questions of all kinds? I find such behaviour characteristic of most children and I think all questions must be answered in a way satisfactory to the children at the time. If their request for information is not satisfied by us, we cannot hope that the abilities and talents which each child possesses will he developed fully!

Yet to develop these is precisely one of the stated aims of education in Denmark! The law says that the purpose of education is: “to further and develop the children's abilities and talents to strengthen their characters and give them useful knowledge.’’ The wording of this paragraph gives the teacher quite a wide scope on the theoretical level, for it is not defined in detail how to strengthen their characters and what useful knowledge is. Every teacher will interpret it his own way, and this makes if appear very democratic. But such a law should also give a socialist teacher a chance to try out his ideas in this field.

However, theory is one thing, practice another. What is actually happening at school?

A child starts at seven and leaves again at fourteen at the earliest. For each year of school a syllabus has been worked out—that is to say, by the end of the school year the pupil is supposed to know a certain number of things. At the later stages of school life examinations take place. If you pass these well, your chances in adult life arc good. If you happen not to be bright at the right things it's just your hard luck. The result is that teachers, parents and often the children themselves become very ambitious with regard to examinations. This means that the teacher asks questions to which he already knows the answers, and the children answer them as best they can. A teacher may ask : “How did the Norwegian and Danish people react to the German occupation?” The teacher knows the answer, and for some reason which is not apparent to the child it is desirable to know this fact. Motivation for knowing the two peoples' reactions is completely lacking. By the time you have lived your school life in this way for 7 years at least it has become quite natural to think in terms of “What am I expected to answer now?” In a class of 15 year olds a teacher had once asked everybody to watch a TV programme about 3 religious altitudes with the purpose of using the programme as basis for discussion. Nearly everybody had managed to see the programme, but when it came to the discussion nobody had anything to say except the teacher. She could provoke no one to speak. How good her techniques in this direction were I cannot say, but after the lesson a girl told her that of course all pupils had an opinion but did not like to put it in front of the class. In this case the children had to make up their own minds about a question and by now being so used to have a set answer to learn, the pupils found the idea of speaking freely awkward. This phenomenon cannot in many cases stimulate and develop the interest of learning.

But with the stated aims of education being as they are, a teacher should be able to change this situation. A number of things have to be considered in this connection It is impossible for a teacher to avoid examinations and tests. He, or she, will be judged on the basis of examination results, for the future employers must know your qualifications when you apply for a job. It is clear, therefore, that a good teacher is still one who can give knowledge which will give the best chance for a job to as many children as possible; and those will have the best chances who can enter into frictionless co-operation at their future factories, offices or other places of work. In today’s society technical skill is of utmost importance, and so the emphasis in the syllabus has been shifted from classical subjects to technical skills.

Some people hold that the fact that children are no longer expected to have so much exact knowledge and that demands in this direction have been eased considerably, is a sign of progress. It is true that there is a tendency towards teaching children how to find out things themselves, but at long as examinations and tests do not examine this quality in children it is pretty irrelevant to base your everyday teaching on this alone.

In practice it often happens that children ask you questions which do not lie within the subject you happen to be teaching. Many of these questions are very important to the children and would be interesting to discuss, but mostly pressure from above stops a teacher from taking up such questions. If you are a teacher who wants to satisfy these very relevant demands made by the children, you are in a dilemma. You want to do a thing which you are prevented from doing because you are at the same time subjected to quite contrary and different demands from the authorities.

So my conclusion must be that you cannot change one part of society successfully without changing all other parts. When some changes have taken place in education, I see their cause lying in changes in the methods of production. New techniques for producing goods developed all the time, and the worker is then required to learn new things all along. It means that more emphasis must be put on his ability to readjust himself to newly adopted techniques. Therefore children now in school must learn different things from what their parents had to learn. There is also a move away from direct authoritarianism. The latter change is, I think, due to the realisation by those in control that contented people are better producers, and these are important for capitalists to make bigger profits. Capitalism will run smoother in this way. So to me, the whole aim of society will have to be changed if any radical change is to be expected in our schools.

A. Peterson,

Copenhagen.

Another stretch of Labour rule (1966)

From the April 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

He has it all now; even the place in history which he is said to pine for. Mr. Harold Wilson will be remembered as the first Labour Prime Minister to lead his party back to Westminster with an increased majority.

It has never happened before; but then never before has there been a government like this one, and never before has there been a Labour Premier like Mr. Wilson. Never before has the so-called left wing, with its nostalgia for the days when Labour dabbled in theories of what it called Socialism, been so thoroughly tamed. The Labour government has made a public pride of the fact that it would have none of theories or principles; its first concern has been to run British capitalism as its day to day affairs demanded.

This is what is meant by a word which was often used to describe the Wilson government during the election: pragmatic. The Economist said on February 26th: "Mr. Wilson has been a socialist in small things and a pragmatist in big ones.” William Davis, the Financial Editor of The Guardian, wrote on 28th February: ‘‘I do not believe . . . that . . . Wilson the pragmatist would go easy with the trade unions and aim nasty blows at business men.” And Mr. Wilson himself claimed, when he was being interviewed in television's Election Forum on March 10th, “We have been a pragmatic government.”

It is also what was meant by the slogan on which the Labour Party fought the election: You Know Labour Government Works. Not, we should notice, You Know Labour Government Is Socialism, nor even You Know Labour Government Is Good For You. Only the claim that Labour government works. And now that they are back again stronger than before it is time for those who voted for a return of Labour government to ask themselves what is meant by the word “works”.

What was the record of the last Labour government? To begin with, they did take off the prescription charges and they did increase pensions, as they said they would in their 1964 manifesto to The New Britain. These are the usual sort of sops which new governments dish out, giving them the chance to pose as benefactors of the working class. The sops are also an excuse for a government to claim that they stick to their principles—that, in other words, they are not pragmatists. It is, of course, convenient for governments to make such claims occasionally, at other times it is convenient for them to make the opposite claim.

The Wilson government did not bring in any measure concerned with what was once thought to be a basic principle of the Labour Party. They did not introduce any nationalisation measures. They talked about steel; indeed the nationalisation of this industry has been the cause of so well-publicised an argument that it would have been difficult for a Labour government to drop the idea entirely. It was a typical piece of Wilson manipulating that his government kept saying that steel was about to be taken over but never actually got around to it.

Nationalisation is not, and never has been, anything to do with Socialism. The point is that the Labour Party always claimed that it was Socialism in itself; it is no coincidence that they have changed their mind, as they have come out openly as an alternative administration of British capitalism which the voters can try when they get tired for a while with the Conservatives.

Nationalisation was not the only matter on which Labour government “worked”. The days when Hugh Gaitskell raged against the barely concealed colour bar in the Commonwealth Immigration Act were quietly put out of mind and the Labour government were seen in practice to impose harsher restrictions on coloured immigrants than the Tories had done. This was all part of a sordid, dangerous auction in which both sides were bidding for the racialist vote, in an effort to win certain constituencies where racial feeling runs high. On this issue alone the Labour Party were revealed as a vote-grabbing, expedient conscious, unprincipled political rabble. Did Labour government “work” for the coloured immigrant, as it made his life even harder than it need be under capitalism by pandering to the racist prejudices of the frustrated workers around him?

It seems a long time ago, now, that the Labour Party were deceiving supporters of nuclear disarmament that they would get rid of the independent British Bomb. In the 1964 election they made great play of what they called the “myth of the independent British nuclear deterrent,” and claimed that anyone who supported this myth did so only because of a nostalgia for the days when Britannia very nearly ruled the entire world.

But myth or no, the fact is that there has been no change in the British nuclear weaponry. True, the Labour government said that they were opposed to the Multilateral Force and would prefer something which was for all practical purposes the same—something called the Atlantic Nuclear Force. That was about the only change they went out for. Certainly they never wanted to abolish the British Bomb, let alone all Bombs, let alone war itself. The greatest contribution the Labour government made to the field of so-called Defence was that they introduced, under the guidance of Denis Healey (a man who was once regarded as an extreme Communist)—the policy of what they called cost-effectiveness. This was another way of saying that they were determined the British capitalist class should get full value for the immense amounts of money they spend on weapons.

On many other matters the Labour government, in proving that they worked, upset many of their supporters. These supporters thought that their government would judge an issue like the war in Vietnam on humane grounds. Had they known anything about the workings of capitalist parties they would not have been so disappointed when Mr. Wilson so wholeheartedly supported the Americans in their actions there. While Mr. Wilson did so, of course, the bombings went on and the Vietnamese villagers and their children perished wholesale beneath the napalm.

On wages there was less excuse for disappointment; the Labour Party have always made plain their intention to try to control them. But even solid Labour trade unionists were upset when their government actually introduced the Prices and Incomes Bill, which was the sort of measure no Conservative government had dared to bring in. In their battles in this field, the Labour government were openly standing for the interests of the British capitalist class against the wage claims of the workers—many of whom worked so hard for Labour’s return.

There is no reason to suppose that this next Labour government will be any different. They have made it clear that their first pre-occupation will be with the problems of the British capitalist class; the very first specific object stated in their manifesto in the last election was: “It is our aim to achieve balance in our international payments by the end of this year.” Plainly, more disappointments are in store for the friends of Labour rule.

This, then, is what is meant by a Labour government which works. It means a few minor reforms, most of which are of no benefit to the working class. It means the abandonment of principle and its replacement by mealy-mouthed expediency. It means a disregard for human problems and welfare, and a pandering to the bleakest of prejudices. It means a continuation of the social system which terrorises and degrades human beings all over the world. 

There need be no surprise that little interest was shown in the alternative to capitalism at the election. The biggest change of opinion is called a landslide; it would need a veritable earthquake in social awareness to change society from one of despair into one of hope. The earthquake did not, of course, happen and the foundations of capitalism—the self deception, the prejudice, the apathy and the plain ignorance with which the working class blight their own lives—are unshaken.

Ivan

The Election: What is at Stake? (1966)

From the March 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

On March 31st the electorate will once again go to the polls and perform the act which Socialists consider is of crucial importance to the way in which society is organised — they will vote. Like other elections in the past, this one will generate its own groundless optimism. Once again, the illusion will be fostered that here is a fresh opportunity at last to solve the problems which have been a burden for so long. In spite of the enduring failure of all varieties of political parties to overcome such problems as war, poverty and the general chaos that is a constant feature of Capitalism, the Labour and Tory parties will go blandly into this election as if the experiences of the past had never occurred.

Once again, there will be the cheap traffic in promises. Once again, there will be the contrived differences between parties who are united in their defence of Capitalism. Once again, there will be the complete failure to face up to the realities of life in 1966. Once again, the politics of personalities, gimmickry and opportunism will take precedence over a serious understanding of the difficulties besetting society.

The records of both the Labour and Tory parties make a mockery of their claim to be the instruments of social improvement. The past policies of both these parties are an indictment which no amount of hollow phrase-mongering can overcome. For all their talk of progress and modernisation, their ideas and actions are imprisoned by the limitations of the status quo—that is—Capitalist society.

What is at stake in this election? What is it that the electorate by voting Labour, Tory or Liberal will endorse?

Whatever spurious disagreements will engage the Heaths and the Wilsons during this election, in fact they have a great deal in common. Socialists talk about the means of production and by this we mean all the instruments and technical know-how that man has developed for the purpose of producing wealth, from hand tools to nuclear power stations. All reformist politicians agree that these means of production should continue to be monopolised by a small privileged section of the population.

Although the life of the whole community depends on the way in which these means of production are utilised, all reformist politicians agree that they should be geared to the profit motive. They agree that the under-privileged working mass of the population should continue to live only by selling their labour to the owners of industry.

They are agreed on preserving the root cause of the problems facing man. This applies to the wars that so-called statesmen cannot prevent, to the frustration and poverty that arises directly from the workers’ wage employment status. So far as preserving the fundamental features of Capitalist society are concerned, the Labour and Tory parties are of one accord. At stake in this election is whether or not the majority of the population will continue to acquiesce in a society of which they are victims. By voting either Labour or Tory, the working class will endorse their own exploited economic position. This is the basic conditioning factor of modern life. The trivial controversy between the large parties will avoid this fundamental issue.

Although theoretically the working class holds political power through the vote, they have yet to use it in their own interests. It is a power that can only be fully realised when the working class have the knowledge and determination to end Capitalist society.

The Socialist Party does not play at politics. It does not pander to prejudice; it does not flatter ignorance; it does not dilute its case in the pursuit of cheap popularity. The Socialist Party does not offer the corrupt relationship of the leader and the led; it offers an understanding of society and the fraternal association of men and women who are equipped by knowledge, and who know what they want and how to get it. We know that compromise will defeat the sane and rational ends to which we are committed.

The talk in this election about the balance of trade, gold reserves, prices and income policies is an aspect of the commerce and trade in which workers have no stake.

There will be promises to solve the problems of housing, urban chaos, poverty, rising prices and international conflict by men who have failed in the past and who cannot but fail in the future.

The message of the Socialist Party at this election time is a positive one. In addressing ourselves to working men and women, we embrace all those who make a contribution to the wealth and well being of society, be they factory operatives, doctors, technicians, labourers or tradesmen. Only they can rebuild the world to make it a fit place to live in, but not by electing a government to administer Capitalism.

For loo long have their skills and talents been used by a privileged minority to create profit and private luxury. For too long has human labour been subject to the crippling limitations of production for sale.

It is not enough to struggle to defend living standards under Capitalism. These workers must join the Socialist movement to take over industry itself and convert all the means that society has developed for producing wealth to the property of the whole community. Thus commonly owned and democratically controlled, the means of production can serve the needs of the whole community. This action must presuppose any attempt to deal in a practical way with the problems of our time.

______________________________________

CORRECTION in the April 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard
We regret that the article "What is at stake? in the March Socialist Standard contained some phrases liable to misunderstanding. "Labour" in paragraph 6 should, of course, have read "Labour power", and "to take over industry itself" in the last paragraph should read "to capture political power".

Editorial Committee

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The SPGB and the 1966 General Election

The Socialist Party of Gt. Britain will be contesting two constituencies in the coming election—Hampstead (London) and Woodside (Glasgow).

In Hampstead the candidate is H. Baldwin and the election agent is M. Davis. Prior to arrangement of Committee Rooms all members and supporters please contact Head Office where up-to-date information will be available.

In Woodside the candidate is R. Vallar and the election agent is M. Donnelly and up-to-date information on the arrangements is available at the Glasgow Branch rooms.

Editorial: Aspects of State Power (1966)

Editorial from the February 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The State is the people" is a popular misconception that lives on. It is still widely held that the State embodies the whole community. The illusion is fostered that it is “our” country, “our” government, “our” balance of payment crisis.

In fact the country is owned by a privileged minority. Exports are their problem. Inevitably the government administers their interests through control of the state machine.

The State is the armed forces, the police, the judiciary, the prisons. These exist to defend and maintain private property. The State also administers the Post Office, schools, hospitals, railways, etc.

Over the past hundred years government has grown enormously. Today it is accepted that the government will be directly concerned in every aspect of social and economic life. At the same time its power is more centralised.

This is not to say that the government can exercise its power in an arbitrary way. On the contrary government today must he tuned in with public opinion. Never before has the success of a politician been so dependent on his saying the right thing at the right time. Election programmes are largely the product of advertising men. This is partly why the manifestos of Labour and Tory parties hardly differ. In practice government policies bear little relation to electoral promises.

The Labour Party sees the state machine as an instrument of social progress provided they control it. The illusion of nationalisation as an egalitarian system of ownership and distribution is now obvious by bitter experience. Under Labour as well as Tory governments state controlled industry is run in the interests of the capitalist class.

Nationally the State protects the interests of capitalism, and in doing so frequently has to over-ride sectional capitalist interests.

Two aspects of state administration which concern most people are education and health. The State cannot provide a proper education system because it is primarily concerned to train workers. Capitalist society creates more ill health than doctors and nurses can cope with. What the State provides is limited by the economics of a society that is concerned more for profits than for people.

Against anti-parliamentarianism (1966)

From the January 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

To establish Socialism, the working class must organise to win control of the state and turn it from the instrument of oppression which it is today into the agent of their emancipation. This principle asserts the conscious, majority, political nature of the socialist revolution.

The State is the public power of coercion and consists of the armed forces, law courts, prisons and police. Today the State is used by the capitalist class to maintain their dominant social position in a society based on the forcible exclusion of the majority from the means of production.

The first step in the evolution of the modern State was the centralisation of the means of coercion in the hands of Kings and their officials. As the capitalist class grew economically stronger they began to struggle to bring the State under their control. In Britain their weapon in this struggle was Parliament. This struggle to bring the Slate under parliamentary control was finally won with the expulsion of James II in 1688.

In Britain Parliament is the instrument by which the capitalist class control the State. Parliament makes the laws which the State must try to enforce. Thus the State is not an independent agent but is more or less effectively controlled by the capitalist class through representative institutions. The capitalist class does not rule directly. The parliamentary parties, their leaders and members, represent the capitalist class and actually manage their common affairs. The second function of Parliament for capitalism is in the debating and settling of common affairs. For capitalism is an ever-changing system, and change demands adjustments elsewhere. It is the task of the capitalist political parties to draw attention to, and take up, the problems at home and abroad which arise in this way. Party politics is the attempt to find solutions to these problems. Leaving the solutions to the free play of political forces has proved a much better method, as far as capitalism is concerned, than the Absolutist and Bureaucratic methods of the political regimes it overthrew.

Originally Parliament was an exclusive body with the franchise restricted to property owners but the struggle of the working class has forced the extension of the franchise to property-less elements also. The vote is an unqualified gain to the working class. It is something which was won by struggle and which could not be taken away without a struggle. It is a potential class weapon. In Britain the working class have come to appreciate the importance of having the vote, but not yet of how to use it to serve their own interests. But having the vote is itself a restraining influence on the capitalist class and the extent to which they can use the State against the working class.

The next step in the evolution of working class understanding is to use their votes to gain control of the State and turn it into the agent of their emancipation. To do this they most organise as an uncompromisingly Socialist political party. Working class power will be used to dispossess the capitalist class of their privileged social position. When the working class win State power there will be no question of forming a “socialist government.” Like the capitalist class the working class can only control the State through representative institutions; those who are actually sent to the scat of power will go as delegates, they will not be in a position to use the State against the socialist majority who sent them any more than the State officials of today could for long declare their independence of capitalist control. With the establishment of Socialist society will disappear the conditions for a State power of coercion; in its place will be an administration.

A number of objections have been put against this position of the Socialist Party for the most part based on experiences and conditions where both the capitalist class and working class were weak.

Anarchist anti-political propaganda frequently refers to Parliament as a “facade” or a “cypher”; Ministers are just “puppets”; somewhere behind the facade is the “real seat of power.” These are arguments anarchists have been using for years under all conditions. Their use today ignores the fact that the struggles of both the capitalist class and the working class have altered political conditions from when these dogmas were first formulated. For the view of Parliament as a facade, having no control over the State, does correspond to the reality of the pre-World War I Empires of Germany, Russia and Austro-Hungary. Here pressure had led to the establishment of elected assemblies, but these assemblies had no real power. The Emperors and their officials still directly controlled the State. Parliament was a facade, Ministers were puppets, the real seat of power did lie elsewhere. One of the early German Socialists in a famous phrase described one such assembly as “the fig-leaf of Absolutism.”

But to suggest, as anarchists do, that a modern Parliament can be compared to the Duma of Tsarist Russia or the Reichstag of Imperial Germany is just plain nonsense. In Britain Parliament controls the State; this is how the capitalist class rule. It is alright to say, “It doesn’t matter who gets in, the capitalists always rule,” but how do they rule? In fact, they rule through Parliament; the anarchists have apparently found some alternative and secret capitalist organisation for controlling the State. This is absurd, and dangerous, as it leads workers to underestimate the power of the vote.

Other critics admit the need for winning political power but argue that as the Socialist movement grows the capitalist class will suspend Parliament and unleash Fascism. First let us consider the suspension of Parliament. For the capitalist class this would mean the dissolution of the organisation whereby they control the State; they could be abdicating power to a group over which they would have little or no control. In the second place it would lead to confusion and disorder, with the breaking up of established ways of settling common problems. Thus the suspension of Parliament, and the consequent abdication of political power, would be a desperate act.

Once the Fascists were in power parliamentary institutions were smashed; and voting and trade union liberties suppressed. Compared with parliamentary rule Fascism was a step backwards. It is true that some capitalists were prepared to support such movements, and so were the working class. On the Continent the working class have been more violent which is often taken as a sign of their being more “revolutionary.” But in fact it means just the opposite: violence is a sign of the immaturity of a working class as it means they are too weak, to restrain anti-democratic elements.

Fascism did not arise as a counter to the Socialist movement (though it was to a large extent a means of disciplining an unruly working class). In Britain the capitalist class could not suspend Parliament without the support of the working class. In fact, the growth of the Socialist movement itself will change political and social conditions; it will be a restraining influence on the capitalist class rather than a provocation to violence.

A third anti-parliamentary argument uses as evidence the experience of reformist governments like the various British Labour Party governments, the Social Democratic governments of pre-Hitler Germany and the Popular Front government of Leon Blum in France in 1936. From these the lesson is drawn of “the uselessness of the State machinery for the purposes of the proletarian revolution.” In actual fact, however, such governments fail not because they attempt to use political means to benefit the working class, but because what they can do in this respect is severely limited by the basis on which they sought power and by the workings of the capitalist system. Mere political decrees cannot overcome economic forces. Capitalism can only be overthrown by the determined struggle of a Socialist working class. Reform parties, however, do not have such support behind them hence their attempts to make capitalism benefit the working class by parliamentary means are doomed to failure from the start. The reason for this is not because the government is “torpedoed by the bureaucracy” or by financiers but because capitalism cannot be made to work in the interests of the working class. There are things that Parliament and political power can do and there are things they cannot do. Parliament does control the State; it does not control the economic forces that are capitalism. The working class doesn’t need political power to form a government and try to run capitalism but to force the capitalist class to surrender their privileges. The experience of non-socialist, reformist. political action is no argument against the conscious, majority, political action for Socialism.

Adam Buick

Marx on the power of knowledge: the control of nature: socialism (1979)

From the October 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, of human participation on nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge objectified. The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production and to what degree, hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself has come under the control of the General intellect and been transformed in accordance with it.
  To what degree the powers of social production have been produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social practice, of the real life process.

(The Making of Marx's Capital, p.706.)

Labour under illusions (1979)

From the October 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Herbert Morrison once said that "Socialism is what the Labour Party does while in office". On the basis of such a definition, it is little wonder that after six doses of Labour's ’socialism’, very many workers are anti-’socialist'. At its conference this month, the Labour Party busily invents new ways of enticing voters back to the faith which gave them the massive majority of 1945; that was when they had workers believing in the creation of a Brave New World.

Labour Party conferences are traditional affairs: the delegates call for radical change, the leaders politely humour them. When in office, there is talk of betrayal by the right wing leaders; when in opposition. Labour's record is recalled with glory and all social evils are attributed to the malice of the Tories. The naive radicals who still believe in Clause Four remind their comrades of the dangers of diversion, while many of their time serving comrades, grown fat from the trust of the ignorant, go through the ritual motions and look forward to the diversions of power. If the Labour Party is a church, it is one in which the rich and powerful leaders occupy the pulpit, the rank and file kneel down with their eyes closed, and the trade unions contribute generously to the collections.

Despite the failure of the six Labour governments to enact fundamental social change, there will inevitably be some Labourites who will plead with the conference that what is required is a radical economic programme. The left of the Labour Party maintain that their policies could tackle the problems facing the working class in Britain. Their economic programme rests upon three principles: that wealth can be redistributed so as to extensively erode, if not eradicate, social inequality; that state intervention — or even total control — in the economy would take power away from the capitalist minority and give it to the public; that social democracy (parliamentary reformism) will eventually break down the unequal structure of British society. The proponents of these principles argue that no Labour government has yet seriously applied them, but that if this happened the position of 'the ordinary people’ — a term which the Labour Party uses to describe its followers (perhaps not unrelated to the level of their awareness) — would be remarkably improved. The debate between the left and right is essentially about how much emphasis to give to these three principles.

The problem with both sides of Labour's economic debate is that they fail to locate the root of economic inequality. They are dealing with the symptoms rather than the cause, and so end up engaging in a futile effort to make the system run fairly; in fact it is running fairly insofar as it is a system which operates in the interests of those who own and control vast amounts of property.

The existence of the capitalist system is totally ignored by Labour economists. Failure to recognise capitalism leads to the ahistorical belief that the features of social organisation existing now can never be fundamentally altered. What are the features which constitute a capitalist system? Private ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution by members of a minority class; a condition of wage slavery for the majority of the population who must sell their labour power in order to live; production for the market with a view to profit; national boundaries, competition and war; the existence of a coercive state to defend private property. Wherever these features exist there is capitalism. Two questions must be answered. Does the economic programme of the Labour Party in any way affect the misery and inequality which are a consequence of capitalism? If not, what can? We can answer the first question by considering the three tenets of Labour's economic objective.

1. The redistribution of wealth

It is claimed that we live in a property-owning democracy. The following table, indicating the ownership of marketable wealth in terms of proportion of the population, shows the markedly undemocratic nature of wealth division under capitalism (see graph).

The line taken by the Labour Party is quite simple: wealth is unequally divided; what we must do is divide it up equally. Graduated income tax, subsidies to certain industries, and attempts to close the rift between high and low paid workers, have been the means the left has urged Labour governments to adopt. But these policies have failed: although there has been an apparent diffusion of wealth since the beginning of the century, the process has been one of redistribution within the capitalist class and within the working class. As Westergaard and Resler point out, the reason for the transfer of wealth ownership within the ruling class

. . . from the richest one per cent to those a little way down the scale from them is plain. The shift represents, primarily or even exclusively, the measures taken by the very rich to safeguard their wealth against taxation. Property which is transferred to relatives, or others, some time before the death of the original owner has not been liable to death duty. Protection of private wealth has therefore required — and produced — earlier divisions of large holdings of wealth among kinsfolk, with little effect on the social distribution of capital. (Class in a Capitalist Society)

Thus the redistribution of wealth at the top, which is the only significant redistribution to have taken place this century, has been a means of preserving rather than spreading the privilege of ownership. Indeed, the recently published report of the Royal Commission on the Distribution of Wealth and Income has shown that the top one percent actually owned a more concentrated section of accumulated wealth during the first three years of the last Labour government than they had done under Heath's Tory government.

As for the working class, their economic position has remained unaltered after six Labour governments. Although pay has increased and conditions are apparently better (although worse relative to the increased productivity of the working class over the last eighty years), workers have nothing for which to thank the Macdonalds, the Attlees, the Wilsons and the Callaghans. Workers still produce all the wealth of society in return for a wage or salary. Wages, being the price of labour power, rise and fall in rough correlation with other commodity prices.

Labour has failed to solve the problems which arise from the fact that approximately ninety per cent of the British population own ten per cent of the wealth. By choosing an arbitrarily determined line of poverty, Labour has attempted (unsuccessfully) to deal with the excesses of deprivation without facing the basic problem, which is the deprivation of the vast majority of the full fruits of their labour. The programme to reduce poverty is simply a redistribution of poverty within the working class. The Labour Party wants to make distribution ‘fair', while leaving the means of wealth production in the hands of a minority. Westergaard and Resler (whose book is to be highly recommended to readers seeking statistical information concerning the power structure in contemporary capitalism) are forced to conclude that despite claims that Labour would fundamentally redistribute wealth: 

Private capital is massively concentrated in the hands of a small minority, though it is now more widely dispersed within the families of the wealthy than in the past, as a protection against taxation. Some one per cent of the adult population have as large a share of wealth as the poorest thirty per cent or so. Two-fifths or more of their income comes from investments; a matter of little surprise, since they alone own about thirty per cent of all private wealth, and four-fifths of all company stock in personal hands. Private property, individual or corporate, is the pivot of a capitalist economy, as much in its ‘welfare' form as before. It is for that reason above all that, despite its expansion of production, capitalism can make no claim to a steadily more equal spread of wealth. Inequality is entrenched in its institutional structure.

2. Nationalisation and state subsidies

The argument for widespread nationalisation of industry which is frequently advanced by groups on the left of the Labour Party goes like this: inequality of wealth ownership results in a disparity of living standards; the state is the elected representative of the people; by nationalising industry, the people, through the state machine, would have control over industry; the result would be that the people in general, through their elected Members of Parliament, would control the economy. To thousands of radical labourites and trade unionists, the logic of this series of propositions seems compelling.

In fact, the argument rests upon several fallacious assumptions. The most serious is to imagine that the state represents the people who elect a government. This is entirely to disregard the existence of social class. Under capitalism, the state acts as the regulator of affairs for the capitalist class. The police, the army, the prisons, the courts, the schools, are paid for by the state, by the capitalists acting in their collective interest. State subsidies or ownership of industry have usually been imposed because private capitalists have called upon the rest of their class to collectively invest in a section of the economy. But it should be remembered that capitalists do not invest to provide services, employment or social harmony.

This leads to the second fallacy in the nationalisation argument. It is assumed that the state is able to be less concerned about profits than would a board of directors. In fact, all Nationalisation Acts contain clauses saying that profits must be made. And where there are profits there is exploitation. Whether workers are exploited by the state or by private capitalists makes little difference: wage labour equals exploitation for profit.

Thirdly, it is false to suggest that nationalisation dispossesses capitalists of power over the economy. All nationalisation has been based upon ‘fair compensation’ for the previous owners. Instead of depending upon the variations of share returns, the capitalist whose firm has been nationalised can rely upon the regular interest of state bonds for the rest of his parasitic life. Neither does nationalisation take away the capitalists’ control over industry. The boards of the nationalised industries are still dominated by members of the ruling class.

There is something of a myth that Labour is the party of nationalisation and that nationalisation is the central economic aim of socialists. Neither of these assumptions could be further from the truth. In the nineteenth century, both Liberal and Tory governments had a long record of nationalisation. No modem government could survive without intervening in industry, including the provision of subsidies and services. Sir Keith Joseph will learn this lesson, just as Edward Heath did when he subsidised Rolls Royce despite his brave words about not financing 'lame ducks'. Nationalisation has nothing to do with socialism: it is state capitalism.

A quarter of British workers are employed by the state. Are they better off than workers exploited in the private sector? In Russia and most of Eastern Europe the main sectors of the economy have been nationalised. Does production for human needs prevail in those countries, or is it not the case that profit is the motive for production there as it is in the West? British Rail is nominally publically owned. Ever tried travelling on one of the trains which you nominally possess without buying a ticket? That state control equals public control is a pernicious myth. The Labour Party is guilty of perpetuating it.

3. Social democracy

When Labourites claim to be social democrats it means that they are reformists looking towards Parliament to solve the ills of the capitalist system. The Labour Party’s reformism is an admission that it has failed to eradicate inequality either by redistributing wealth or by state intervention. Labour reforms are simply intended to make the poor less uncomfortable. It should also be borne in mind that welfare reform is neither a particular feature of Labour administrations, nor an act of benevolence by the state. All parties have initiated a certain degree of welfare reform. It is in the interest of the capitalist class to have a moderately healthy, educated, mobile working class. That it might also be in the temporary interest of the workers is no reason for supporting it. Reforms are not given as an act of charity by the ruling class, but are usually paid for by means of a general fall in wages. In short, welfare reforms usually involve a redistribution of wealth from one section of the working class to another.

Reformism marks an acquiescence in the present system of society. And if there is one thing no Labour Party conference will ever do. it is to break away from its reformist origins. The Labour Party may have started out with some ideals, but its history has been one of persistent betrayal of the working class.

Steve Coleman

Churches in retreat (1987)

From the February 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Christian churches in Britain have lost half a million members in the last five years. According to the UK Christian Handbook, Christian church membership has declined to under seven million people, which is about fifteen per cent of the population. But other religions have shown an increase. In particular the number of Muslims has increased by over a third to 852.000 and many churches have been converted into Mosques. Other religions to have increased their membership, on a smaller scale, were Sikhs. Hindus, Buddhists and Satanists while the number of Jews showed a slight decline.

Although there has been a change in the type of superstitious nonsense being peddled, on the whole religion is a very minor activity in Britain. There will be a greater number than the above who still profess a belief in a god of some kind but who don't want to be confined to the absurd behaviour patterns these churches demand.

In fact, Christianity has been in decline for some time. It has also continuously retreated from what it claims to be able to explain. At one time it said that the world was created by god in six days and that the sun revolved around the earth. Although there are still some who claim a literal translation of the bible, most Christians now accept the theory of evolution and other scientific facts. Instead they now try to stress the "symbolic" nature of god and the bible — how god is about love and kindness — and play down the roasting in Hell bit. Hardly a week goes by without some trendy bishop on the telly saying that religion is fun and positive and not about saying no to the things people enjoy.

The churches have always felt able to say that, despite god being all-powerful and creating the world (even if he used evolution to do it) when anything unpleasant happens it's always the fault of human beings. So he takes the credit for humanity at its best when we are being loving, kind, creative and successful. But when it comes to Hiroshima and Auschwitz, pyorrhoea and Aids it's got nothing to do with him - unless he is moving in mysterious ways.

Religious ideas and socialist ideas are incompatible. Socialism is about understanding the way society operates with a view to changing it. Religions preach submission, basically saying that a superior being controls our destiny and we must accept our lot. Such beliefs grew up to explain away large gaps in human knowledge. But as our knowledge has widened, the religious explanation is shown to be increasingly untenable.

The persistence of religious ideas can be understood against the background of an insecure world where, due to the class- divided nature of society, people feel powerless. Religion, with its promise of a pie-in-the-sky afterlife, may offer some hope and comfort. But as Marx said, "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions".

Religion has often been used by ruling classes to justify their dominance and the subjugation of the poor. Kings rule by the grace of god, it is supposedly ordained from on high. Often the first shock troops of the British Empire were the missionaries, who sought to convert the natives and teach them their proper (servile) place in the world.

The Catholic Church has made deals with fascist dictators in the past and is often a force for reaction in Latin America, although some priests have embraced "liberation theology", perhaps in an attempt to be on the right side of any new ruling class.

In Ireland, religion has been used to viciously divide workers to fight for their employers' interests, and many of the wars and disputes in the Middle East use religion and the idea of a holy war to get workers spilling each other s blood. Millions of deaths in capitalism's bloody wars have been blessed by religion.

Religious ideas are political and must be defeated. Only when workers are free from such illusion will be we able to set about the real task facing us, transforming the world into a place fit for people to live in. It is the only world we will get and we should make the most of it. And not let any trendy bishops or long-haired preachers get in our way.

Ian Ratcliffe

Brent (1987)

From the January 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Education — or rather schooling, for very little education takes place in schools despite the sincere efforts made by many teachers — is under attack once again from the media. This time the target is multi-cultural education in the London Borough of Brent. Recently, Brent advertised for a large number of teachers to be involved in setting up the Development Programme for Race Equality in Schools. Every school in Brent will have a senior member of staff responsible for implementing the programme. The project is funded by a Section II grant provided by the Home Office to areas with a large population of workers from the Commonwealth.

The tabloids eagerly published the news, giving readers the impression that their children's minds would soon be in the hands of Orwellian Thought Police, nicknamed Commissars. They also suggested that this would lead to a further decline in educational standards, particularly where white children are concerned. The so-called hard Left of the Labour council in Brent were blamed. The newspapers failed to note that events in Brent were in fact initiated by the previous Conservative council. They also failed to mention that these "commissars" are not very different from many teachers in other local authorities who work in the field of multi-cultural education.

Brent Council has only set a precedent in that it is using Section II money on a larger scale and in a more tightly organised manner. It is doing this to meet the recommendations recently put forward by several government reports on the effects of racism on the educational achievements of black children. Governments publish such reports on aspects of schooling at regular intervals to suggest that they take the subject of education seriously.

The media continually presents multi-cultural education as being a threat to both the education system and to society in general. Nothing could be further from the truth. Multi-cultural education is certainly not revolutionary in its aims and objectives. It is an educational reform that has developed in Britain over the past 20 years in response to the needs of Commonwealth immigrants who came to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. But what is it attempting to reform? Education in a capitalist society is not worthy of the name. It is merely schooling. Achievement is not measured in terms of the personal development of each individual through his or her lifetime. It is instead measured in terms of success or failure at public examinations. This success or failure determines the young worker's future value on the job market. A school is, at best, a kind of factory which produces workers to meet the needs of capitalist society. But this is only a secondary function. Primarily schools are places where the energy and enthusiasm for learning of large numbers of young people are frustrated.

By the mid 1960s it was becoming clear that some kind of special English language teaching provision was needed if children of black and Asian Commonwealth immigrants were to succeed and compete as equals with white children in the British school system and later on the labour market. This resulted in the establishment of Section II funding directly from the Home Office in 1966. This is still the main source of funding for multi-cultural education. The Section II regulations reflect the origins of multi cultural education and have not changed for 20 years. Local authorities applying for the grant need to show that they have a large population of Commonwealth immigrants whose language and customs differ greatly from those of the rest of the community. They need to show that this population has proportionately greater needs than the rest of the community. This means that a school in an area with a mainly white population cannot claim the grant. Workers whose salaries are funded by Section II have to be individually and directly accountable to the Home Office. For example, Section II teachers are asked at regular intervals to send details of their pupils and the level of their needs.

In the late 1960s it was simply assumed that once the Commonwealth immigrants had acquired full command of the English language and were fully assimilated into British culture, the problem would disappear. The problem did not disappear — it got worse. Research into the education system showed that a disproportionate number of West Indian children were failing in the school system. Black and Asian workers continued to suffer discrimination in the labour market and in fact in all other walks of life. This was accompanied by the focussing of white discontent into the growth of the National Front and other violent fascist organisations. It was becoming clear that merely providing language classes for people who by now were no longer immigrants but established members of the community was not the solution. If schools were to continue to function effectively, both black and white discontent must be contained.

It was recognised that black achievement within the school system would continue to be low as long as schools presented a narrow curriculum based only on the culture of white Britain. The culture and history of black workers was either ignored or presented as inferior. This had a detrimental effect on the self-esteem and confidence of young black pupils which, in turn, affected their achievement at school. Britain was becoming a multi-cultural society, it was argued, and the nature of that society must be presented in the school curriculum. This would also challenge the racism of young white people. Of course, from time to time this results in the kind of right-wing backlash recently demonstrated by the press response to Brent. Meanwhile some black people view the reforms as merely superficial — a propaganda exercise aimed more at containing their discontent than with eradicating racism.

Multi-cultural education continues to miss several important facts about schools. Firstly, it is not only black children who fail at school. A significant number of children fail to pass any exams. Secondly, all school subjects, whether they take into account a child's cultural background or not. are forced down reluctant throats and so are hardly likely to be educative. In spite of the efforts of inspired teachers committed to education, at school children learn only how to accept oppression and how to compete rather than co-operate with their fellow human beings.

But the struggle to reform the school system continues and is growing more organised, as recent events in Brent show. Yet it is no more enlightened. However, it would be wrong to present a completely bleak view of multi-cultural education. It has stimulated much interest and research into language and culture. Information on African, Caribbean and Asian literature and history is increasingly accessible. There are also growing numbers of teachers who are opposed to racism and to giving all children access to a meaningful education. However, their energies are sadly misdirected in institutions where education rarely takes place. It is only when they challenge the existence of schools and the social system that produces such institutions that an atmosphere will be created where meaningful education can take place.

Kerima Mohideen