Tokyo's standard of living (1988)

From the June 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The image of Japanese business methods and industry - happy workers doing their best in a paternalistic environment - has been held up to us as an example to follow if we want a "prosperous Britain" and high living standards for ourselves. The Japanese way of industrial life has been introduced here: no Union or one Union, no strike deals; works managers wearing overalls like machine operators; everyone from the managing director down eating the same food in the same canteen. Equality and prosperity for all . . .  so we are told.

Intriguing therefore to open The Times and see the headline "Tokyo wage slaves resist leisure lure". It seems that things in the Land of Blossom are not as idyllic as they would have us think.

Life, it seems, is getting harder for the indoctrinated workaholics of Tokyo. The government may be trying to persuade them to take two day week-ends, but, high prices having forced moves into the suburbs, they have longer commuting times, and fewer staff mean longer working hours under greater pressure. Tokyo's workers are beginning to realise that "their” economy may be booming but they themselves have nothing to show for their extra effort. A recent trade union survey showed that 76 per cent felt overworked and 90 per cent find it hard to make ends meet. Holidays are still the exception rather than the rule as workers fear to lose out on promotion when employers still rate hours worked above results achieved. Is it too much to hope that, after so many years of hardworking unquestioning obedience these first stirrings of awareness are signs that workers in Japan are waking up to their exploited position? Compared with workers in other developed countries their standard of living may be high, but what a standard of life!

Eva Goodman

The Secret of "High" Wages (1926)

From the April 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

Quite a number of people appear to have discovered America, including the "Daily Mail" and Mr. Oswald Mosley. "Why is it," they ask, “that the American workman is paid at a higher rate than the Englishman, yet his employers make considerable profits?" The "Daily Mail" apparently considers the subject interesting enough to dispatch a special commission of trade unionists to investigate; while Mr. Oswald Mosley has already returned with the information that better machinery is the secret. This was pointed out in the "Socialist Standard" some fifteen or sixteen years ago by our contributor A. E. J.; in fact, an acquaintance with Marxian economics would predispose one to draw that conclusion in advance of the actual evidence.

What is not pointed out, however, by these discoverers is the fact that, in spite of his higher wages, the American worker is relatively in a worse position than his British compeer. This was illustrated by the existence of six million unemployed in the U.S.A. less than five years ago. It is illustrated by such facts as are described on page 24 of our new pamphlet on "Socialism." The mode of organisation in American bread factories is to divide the plant into two sets of machinery operated by two gangs of men who are pitted against one another in the endeavour to obtain the maximum speed. The net result is that the American workers are faced with greater insecurity as a reward for greater productivity while the master class of America enjoys the fruits of their labour on a scale which arouses the envy of their British competitors.

The facts of American production give the lie to the oft repeated claim that lower wages in Britain will bring prosperity to all; but, correctly understood, they also illustrate the futility of the propaganda of the "Daily Herald” and the Labour leaders on behalf of American methods. These gentry, of course, pretend that higher wages are the solution of the unemployed problem through the restoration of the home markets; five seconds' reflection, however, will reveal the absurdity of this argument.

The master class do not control production simply to supply the markets; they do not employ workers to produce goods merely in order to sell them again. They do these things in order to obtain a profit! Consequently, they will adopt a policy of higher wages only when they can see the possibility of more profits arising as a consequence. The "Herald” and its satellites are fond of arguing as though the American employers paid higher wages in order to avoid slumps; but, as pointed out in our pamphlet, the higher wage-rate of America is the result of the fact that capitalism there commenced with the workers occupying a more favourable social position than they did in Europe. Their ability to settle on the land as independent proprietors resulted in a scarcity of labour-power in the industrial centres. Hence the more rapid strides which the machine has made in that country.

The most important point to bear in mind, however, is that wherever capitalism exists, no matter what standard of life the workers possess, that standard tends to fall in relation to that of the master class. In other words, the share of the workers in the total product of their labour grows smaller with every advance in the powers of production, whether it be the result of improved machinery, better organisation, speeding up, technical education, or the like. According to Prof. Hansen, of Minnesota University: "From 1897 to 1915 real wages were falling in spite of an enormous increase in national production.” (American Economic Review, March, 1925.)

Increased production, either with high wages or without, leads to no improvement of the working-class position; on the contrary, every boom leads inevitably to the slump. In its issue of March 20th, the “Daily Herald” insults the intelligence by comparing Colonel Willey’s observations upon slumps and waste with the analysis presented in "Capital,” and expresses its gratitude for the fatuous suggestion that the elimination of waste means "less labour for the workers, more recreation and no attack on wages.” If Colonel Willey means by "less labour,” an increase in the unemployed, if by "recreation,” he means promenading the streets asking for work or maintenance, and if he means that the unemployed have no wages to be attacked, then, we may, of course, agree with him; but it cannot be too often emphasised that all economy under the existing system benefits the masters at the expense of the workers.

The "Rooster" thus demonstrates once more the fact that capitalist economics dominate its outlook. It wishes to teach our masters how to run their own system. As an agent of confusion it is a worthy rival of its Tory competitors.

Eric Boden

The Paris Commune. (1926)

From the March 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist attaches no mystical importance to dates. Hence he is not given overmuch to the celebration of anniversaries. There is one event, however, in the annals of the class-struggle which needs to be kept in mind for the lessons to be learnt therefrom..

In March, 1871, after enduring the vile horrors of a prolonged siege, the working class of Paris rose against their oppressors and proceeded to administer the affairs of the city. Their victory was short-lived. Before the end of May the Government troops, assisted by their late "enemies" the Germans, overthrew the Commune and carried on for several days the wholesale massacre of its supporters.

Space does not permit here a detailed account of this historic episode, but one or two salient features may usefully be dwelt upon. The curious reader may consult Lissagaray’s “History of the Commune,” and Marx’s “Civil War in France” for fuller light.

During the siege the ruling class of France had been compelled to protect their property by permitting the workers of the city to arm. As usual, they exploited the patriotic illusions and economic ignorance of their slaves. The workers paid for their arms themselves.

After the armistice the authorities, naturally apprehensive as to what an armed and discontented working class might attempt, endeavoured to disarm them. The workers resisted, for the time being successfully, and the Government fled in panic to Versailles.

Left in charge of the city, the workers administered affairs with remarkable success considering all the circumstances. They established universal suffrage and rid the city pro tem of the incubus of the bureaucracy. The Commune was itself an administrative body and not a mere talking-shop. The practical results of its administration, such as the abolition of night work for bakers, were not, indeed, revolutionary, but so far as they went, were in the interests of the working class.. The outlook of the Commune was towards the limitation of exploitation, rather than its abolition.

Improvised in an emergency, the Commune reflected both the political immaturity of its supporters and the incomplete economic development of France as a whole. On questions of major importance such as the property question and its own relationship to the Versailles Government, confusion reigned in the Commune, and vacillation, as a consequence, paralysed its hands. It left in the hands of its enemies the principal financial weapon, the Bank of France, and allowed these same enemies time to prepare their ruthless counter-stroke, while ostensibly negotiating “peace.”

Behind much of the apparent weakness of the Commune, however, lay the isolation of Paris, the lack of working class organisation throughout the country. The peasantry and the petit bourgeoisie in general proved broken reeds on which to lean for support. Hence it was only a matter of time before the Commune fell, betrayed from within and overwhelmed from without. Neither the conditions of its existence nor its own mentality made it ripe for success.

For all that it failed, the Commune, nevertheless, constitutes an encouraging example of the ability of the workers to help themselves. It had all the faults of a purely spontaneous and instinctive upheaval, but it proved the existence of the capacity for self-assertion which is indispensable to a revolutionary class. When the cynical bourgeois, secure behind the guns, or the spineless slave ignorant of how to capture them, tell us that the workers will never rise, we can point to the Commune and conclude that a class capable of such an effort will rise again. The rising we have in mind, however, is a determined, intelligently organised capture of political power by a working-class which has at last realised the underlying causes of its own movement and which will therefore know how to act when it has the power.

Hence we of the Socialist Party do not rest content with merely sentimentalising over the martyred dead, by the wall of Pere La Chaise. We incessantly insist on the necessity for our policy of no compromise with capitalism and the parties which uphold it. Class sentiment is a necessary element of class consciousness, but it is not sufficient in itself. . Knowledge of the system we desire to overthrow and of the manner in which it is upheld are equally necessary. "Solidarity"! Yes! but the condition which necessitates solidarity on the part of the working class is the class war!

The utter ruthlessness of the revenge of the French bourgeoisie upon the Communards forms a never-to-be-forgotten warning of the criminal folly of parleying with the enemy. There can be no peace between exploiters and exploited save at the expense of the latter. When the workers realise this they will also realise the futility and danger, from their point of view, of Liberal "Labour" Parties and caricature "Communists” who rally to their support at the polls. They will realise, in fact, the necessity for the Socialist Party.

Eric Boden

Henry Dubb—and his brother (1926)

From the February 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

Readers of the “Labour” Press are familiar with that vacant-faced individual who is supposed to typify the Tory variety of working-class ignorance. Henry's weaknesses—his fondness for a drop of beer and a bob on a horse and a certain disinclination to think for himself have all been dwelt upon ad nauseam.

The weaknesses of his brother, Jimmy, are less often dealt with. Henry is, in the main, of a cheerful disposition; in fact his "good natured” tolerance lies at the root of much of his readiness to accept things as they are. Jimmy, on the other hand, is a taciturn, unsociable cuss whose chief object in life appears to be the airing of his "superiority" to Henry and his pals and the meddling with their habits. He is possessed with an all-absorbing itch to put them “right" in matters of faith and morals. Politically he is by tradition a Liberal, though of recent years he has taken to calling himself a “Labour” man, and even professes a leaning towards Socialism. So far, however, his leaning has done nothing to support its case and a good deal to lessen Henry's disposition to consider it as a remedy for the evils of which he is dimly conscious.

Henry, in spite of his obvious slowness, is not altogether dense. He has, for instance, a somewhat cynical disbelief in Jimmy’s “idealism,” so glibly vaunted.

He distrusts his own class on the ground that a boss who has risen from the bottom makes a harder taskmaster than one who is born in that position. Hence he views with disfavour all the "ranters” and “wind-bags’’ whom he shrewdly suspects of an ambition to exploit his support.

Jimmy, on the other hand, betrays an almost imbecile tendency to place absolute confidence in each and every would-be political climber, every man or woman with the gift of the gab and a professed desire to "help” the workers. He is a fanatical believer in the "intelligent minority,” and has little use for the "drink-sodden” democracy except as voting cattle for his favourites.

Another point, rather in Henry’s favour than against him, is his lack of enthusiasm for Jimmy’s pet obsession—increased State control. Whether it relates to the "pubs” or the mines, railways, etc.. Henry can see nothing in this proposal but a greater extension of official dominance, of the petty vexations, tyranny, inextricably associated with the modern bureaucracy. Needless to say, Jimmy’s feeble plea that the State is the people, leaves him cold. He knows otherwise, from everyday experience. This, again, strengthens his conservatism. The fact that all “progressive” proposals appear to involve State action induces in him a stubborn distrust of all progress.

The Socialist, taking a scientific view of social change, can regard the wordy struggles between Henry and his brother with some amusement, tinged at times with impatience at the blindness of both sides; but he further sees the relentless economic development which cuts the ground from under the feet of both. Increased State control. for instance, of industrial and social affairs, is the outcome, not of some Utopian theory, but of the increase in the size and social character of the productive forces, and the intensified antagonism which that increase begets in social relations. State regulation is the only means possessed by capitalism to preserve itself, the only means by which it can control the internal conflicts within the capitalist class on the one hand, and the greater conflict with the workers on the other. In other words, Nationalisation, etc., will proceed in accordance with capitalist requirements irrespective alike of the opposition of Henry and the support of Jimmy.

The extent of this development may be debatable, but one thing is certain. To whatever extent it proceeds it will not solve the social problem; it will not rid society of the struggle between the workers and their exploiters. Wherever State ownership exists there exists also the necessity for Trade Union effort to maintain wages and conditions at subsistence level. The State represents, everywhere, the interests of the exploiting class against the workers. Neither Henry nor Jimmy realise this. Each of them in turn put in power one section or another of the numerous political flunkeys of that class. They do not see behind the labels of these sections or parties Liberal, Labour or Tory, all alike, recognise and uphold the legal right of the owning class to their property, no matter with what fine phrases they may disguise their intentions.

All alike accept the exploitation of the workers and are prepared to use the forces of the State to maintain the system based thereon. This is their main function; their pet schemes are merely incidental efforts to further especially the interests of the particular section of the capitalist class on whose support they rely.

What, then, is there to choose between the Dubbs, Henry and Jimmy? Each allows himself to be duped in the interest of some section or other of the master class. Neither gains anything as a result of his political activities. As workers, they have as little to hope for in "reforming” capitalism as in "conserving” it. Its existence in any shape or form means misery and subjection for the workers. For the one, therefore, to deride the other, is merely an example of the pot calling the kettle black. The Socialist Party invites both of them to drop their mutual distrust and abuse and to study Socialism, confident that understanding will breed conviction.

Eric Boden

Who wrote the Communist Manifesto of 1847? (1926)

From the January 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a series of articles contributed to the Socialist Standard in 1911 on anarchism, we referred to the “falsified” Pages of Socialist History by W. Tcherkesoff. This brochure contained an attempt by this anarchist writer to show that the Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto of 1847 was a plagiarism of Victor Considerant’s “ Manifesto of Democracy to the 19th Century.”

The accusation against Marx of stealing other people’s ideas and writings was so often made and the charges regularly exploded that it was not surprising to find that Tcherkesoff’s allegations were groundless. Recently Tcherkesoff died and his anarchist friend Nettlau (the biographer of Bakunin) in an article in “Freedom” (December, 1925) warns the anarchists of the baselessness of Tcherkesoff’s charges against Marx.

We quote the following extract from “ Freedom’s” article by Nettlau :—

   Tcherkesoff had the misfortune to make people doubt the seriousness of his other researches when he jumped to the conclusion that the "Communist Manifesto" of 1847-48 was sheer plagiarism on a “Manifesto” by Victor Considerant, published by the Paris Fourierists in 1841 and 1847. I remember the morning when Tcherkesoff, happy as a lark, just returned from Amsterdam, placed before me copies of the “Communist Manifesto’’ and of Considerant’s “Principles of Socialism: the Manifesto of Democracy to the Nineteenth Century” (Paris, Libr. Phalanstérienne, 1847, 157 pp.) He had discovered the latter among Domela Nieuwenhuis’ store of old pamphlets, and recognised it as a little book which he had read in Russia over thirty years ago, which the “Communist Manifesto” always recalled to his mind, though he had not been able to trace it during all those years. He placed before me many parallels in the descriptive and critical parts referring to capitalist society, and as Considerant’s text, the revised edition of his “Bases of Positive Politics: Manifesto of the Societarian School founded by Fourier” (Paris, La Phalange, 1841, 119 pp.), was the earlier work, Tcherkesoff concluded that Marx and Engels were guilty of outrageous plagiarism, stealing ideas and even the words from Considerant.
   I was not struck by this discovery: on the contrary, I felt that Tcherkesoff made a great mistake, and I told him so from the first moment; but all was in vain. With one single exception I never met a person who believed that Tcherkesoff was right in this supposition, but it was felt to be painful not to let him enjoy his discovery which made him so happy. So he published what he considered the proofs of this plagiarism, and later on hunted down Engels for a similar matter (Buret), overdoing this case considerably, and in general he was convinced that he had made out Marx and Engels to be literary rogues and scamps—in one word, thieves.
   He had not made out this case; he had only diminished the value put on his other criticism of Marxism which touched very weak spots of that system, but which his Marxist opponents discredited by pointing to the lack of critical judgment shown by the unproven charge of plagiarism.
   Those who had the leisure to examine the original publications of the early French, English and German Socialists need not be told that Victor Considerant was an infinitely able social critic of the 30’s and 40’s, wonderfully apt in describing the effects of capitalism after seeing it at work in that eminently capitalist period, in France and England of that Louis Philippe and early Victorian age. They also know—and can still add to their knowledge by manuscripts of Marx and early writings of Engels which have only quite recently come to light—that these two German Socialists, a decade younger than Considerant, had also since the beginning of the 40’s worked harder than most others at philosophical, political, and economic studies, leading them to the outspoken Socialist conclusions which we know. Both they and Considerant were at their best in 1847, and as thoroughly competent Socialist thinkers both parties necessarily described and criticised capitalist society in similar appropriate terms, in the standard technical language of well-informed Socialist writers of that period. What else were they to do? If to-day two Anarchist authors were to write manifestos summing up Anarchist criticism of the State, their texts would necessarily more or less agree, provided each of them refrained from indulging in too personal a style —and from this personal style both Considerant and Marx and Engels refrained in 1847, the latter writing moreover on the basis of previous material, questions, etc., which are known at present in derail, but were not yet unearthed in Tcherkesoff’s time. So our comrade’s splendid fight against Marxism was somewhat marred by the idiosyncrasy here discussed.

Thus the Anarchists themselves throw overboard one of the most stupid charges ever made against Marx. Those who care to read the pages of George Julian Harney’s “Democratic Review” of 1849 can study the articles written by Considerant for that journal and the Utopian, idealist and unscientific language will easily show the difference between Marx the materialist and Considerant the Utopian idealist.

After Engels death there was discovered the original manuscript of his independent draft of the Communist Manifesto. This was published in Germany under the title of “The Principles of Communism." It has now been translated into English and published in Chicago.

This draft was made by Engels originally for a programme read to the Paris section of the League of Communists in 1847, and was used later as Engels' individual draft submitted to the London meeting in 1847.

One is struck when reading it with the remarkable agreement in the statement of their ideas by Marx and Engels. A study of Engels' pamphlet shows how ridiculous Tcherkesoff’s allegations were.

Apart from Engels’ draft, the magazine and polemical writings of both Marx and Engels prior to 1847 shows every student that the later writings were an application of ideas, outlined and suggested in their earlier work.

Adolph Kohn

Editorial: The euro, an unimportant issue (2003)

Editorial from the July 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Enormous publicity has been given recently to the question of whether Britain should join those countries in the European union which have decided to accept one single currency – the euro. No less than eighteen volumes were produced by the Treasury, containing many hundreds of jargon-laden pages for the cabinet members to digest. But it is all pointless from the point of view of the working class. What we should be striving for is a moneyless society. It is immaterial whether the coinage is called sterling or European, pound or euro. You are never going to be allowed to have enough of it, whatever you call it. Money is simply a device to separate the workers from what they produce. The workers must aim to abolish it, not change its name.

There could finally be a referendum, so the voters can state their preference – pound or euro? But such a vote would be almost meaningless. It may be that some groups of workers would find their position slightly improved with currency union; some groups might think their position would be slightly worsened; but the over-riding fact is that, whether the money the workers are short of is called the pound or the euro, they will remain with no stake in the great wealth-producing agencies of what the papers call “their” country. A referendum would be like an assassin giving his victim the choice of being strangled or drowned.

All the media – the newspapers, television, radio, and so on – are getting intensely excited about the sterling/euro question. But like all the other political questions we are told to worry about, all this noise merely reflects disagreements among the owning class. It may be that larger companies think there will be more chances of profit with the euro, resulting from a closer engagement with the markets across Europe. It may be that smaller companies think that their lesser resources won't let them compete if the big conglomerations are cleaning up all the profits – if the bigger predators are doing better, perhaps they will do worse. And that would certainly explain why Tony Blair and his Labour government are getting friendlier towards the euro. Tony has always liked being on the side of the big battalions, at home or abroad.

In due course it will be obvious that all this ferment has nothing to do with the basic propertyless position of workers in society. Eighty years ago, after the First World War of 1914-18 had slaughtered millions of workers who were fighting for the interests of their masters, and had plunged many of the survivors not even into a dull job and a weekly pay-packet, but into unemployment, a Socialist Party speaker on a London street-corner was addressing a crowd of workers, many of them ragged and ill-shod. He explained the class-divided nature of society, and how only Socialism could offer them any future worth having. At the end of this clear and careful exposition, one of his audience raised his hand. All he had heard sounded very good, he admitted, but he wanted to hear more about the important day-to-day issues confronting the working class. What could the speaker say about the most urgent topic then before the public? “What is the position of the Socialist Party on the disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Wales?”

Most of the people reading this probably never knew there was an Anglican Church in Wales, established or disestablished. (For the record, after a tremendous public debate, equal to the present commotion over the euro, the Church in Wales was disestablished in 1919.) It makes you wonder if the questioner at that Socialist Party meeting ever realized that it made no difference to him.

All this furore, the endless discussions in press, pub and Parliament, will make no more difference to the mass of propertyless people than the disestablishment of the Welsh Church. If the workers could devote a tenth of the effort to their own interests that they spend debating the interests of the various sections of the master class, we would have Socialism in double-quick time.

The Availability Heuristic (2016)

From the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Logical thinking, and how to do it

"What we’re facing in Iraq now with Isis is a greater and deeper threat to our security than we have known before." - David Cameron, 29 August 2014

A common cognitive bias is the availability heuristic - this is the tendency to create a picture of the world using the elements that most easily come to mind. When assessing risk we will most likely give much more attention to sensational dramatic events than to more commonplace, but less spectacular, happenings. Striking and emotive stories stick more in our mind causing us to ignore, forget or downplay the larger, but more abstract, picture presented by statistical evidence. Repeated media reports of violence will lead to people thinking that the world is much more dangerous than it actually is, since violent acts leave a vivid and quickly recallable picture in the mind, this being one of the reasons that acts of terror are committed in the first place. To avoid falling foul of this heuristic we need to remember that events do not happen more often just because we can think of them more readily, we should be prepared to question any initial conclusions that come to mind.

So, whilst media coverage and public perception of terrorist threat appears to be on the rise, is the UK really facing a greater terrorist threat than it ever has known before? According to the Conflict Archive on the Internet, a website that documents 'the troubles' in Northern Ireland, since the late sixties there have been 36,000 shooting incidents and over 10,000 bomb explosions, with more than 3,500 people killed, 1,707 of them by the IRA. So whilst it is true there has been a recent upsurge in Islamist inspired terrorism, this has yet to reach levels anything like those previously experienced, the total death count from Islamist inspired terrorism in the UK is currently less than 60.

Yet there has been an area in recent years that has seen a rise in deaths, but as it is largely hidden from view its presence weighs little on the public mind. Excess winter deaths (the amount of deaths occurring in winter months compared to the average amount of deaths in non-winter months) are at a 15 year high. Between December 2014 and March 2015 there were almost 44,000 of these excess deaths – the largest annual rise in almost five decades. Part of the reason for the increase has been put down to the flu vaccine being not as effective as in previous years but the background story is one of poor housing, poverty and pensioners who can't afford to pay for heating.

So rather than being at risk from an unprecedented threat of Jihadi terrorism, it is the more mundane features of society, such as inadequate provisioning for the elderly that are the real killers. But as these victims die silently and in private, and because of the availability heuristic, they are unlikely to come to mind when thinking about threats to life.

DJP

Ray Hill (1988)

Book Review from the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Other Face of Terror: Inside Europe's Neo-Nazi Network. Ray Hill with Andrew Bell. (Grafton Books. London. 1988)

This is the story of Ray Hill, the nazi activist turned "mole", who successfully infiltrated both the British Movement and British National Party while working for the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight. Having become involved in far right politics during the 1960s, Hill emigrated to South Africa in search of a standard of living denied him in Britain. It was there that he came to reject the racist policies that he had embraced for some years earlier. The turning point came when he was confronted on a roadside by a homeless Indian family - they had been evicted as a direct result of a campaign organised by the South African National Front, of which he was then a leading member.

Hill returned to England at a time when the British extreme right was in turmoil after the NF"s debacle in the May 1979 General Election. Under the direction of Searchlight journalist Gerry Gable he re-established many of his old links in the British nazi movement. During the next four years he was able to gather evidence of the British far right s growing involvement with European terrorist groups and was largely responsible for the prevention of a major bomb attack on the 1981 Notting Hill Carnival.

In this book Ray Hill lays claim to being the primary reason for the demise of the British Movement in 1983. He argues that by promoting himself as a rival leader to Mike McLaughlin he was able to orchestrate a split from which the British Movement never recovered. Although the British Movement has now ceased to exist as an organisation, the ideas that it held have persisted. Many of its members - like Hill himself - joined John Tyndall's British National Party. Indeed, Ray Hill's attempts to damage extreme right groups structurally has done little or nothing to stop the spread of the racist ideas he now abhors. An illustration of this is the situation at present in the National Front Despite the fact that it is split into two warring factions it has increased its membership and support considerably.

As Hill partially realises, the only lasting challenge to fascistic and racist ideas must come through political education. Groups like the NF. BNP and British Movement are the organised expression of an ignorance and prejudice which stems from the material basis of capitalist society. As such they can only be defeated when the working class understands capitalism and decides to reject it in favour of socialism.

Dave Perrin

Letter from Ghana (1988)

From the April 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Having now lived in Ghana for more than two months it is time to try and fit this totally new experience together with the socialist ideas I used to discuss (what seems like such a long time ago) at weekly meetings of The Socialist Party in Bristol. I came to Ghana with VSO, not so much to make a great contribution to the world's problems but for personal reasons. I wanted to travel to a third world country not as a tourist but to work. I wanted to change from the nine to five job that I had had in England for the last twelve years. So I ended up becoming a trainer with Ghana's National Service (not a military service but a compulsory community social service). training school leavers and graduates to do Primary Health Care, which largely means health education, in rural districts.

I now live in a very rural district myself in a pretty basic way. 1 live in a small village in the chiefs compound - no electricity and having to boil river water to drink, defecating in a pit (quite a luxury here) down a path which has to be carefully inspected for snakes.

I am sure that all of us advocating world socialism would find it useful to travel and live in the third world for a while to begin to understand some of the enormous problems facing the case for world socialism. We have to understand that the vast majority of the world's people come from very different starting points, not just geographically but differing social, economic and political structures and. most importantly, different ways of seeing the world.

The difference I think is most important here in Ghana has to do with people's sense of their own powerlessness. A terrible brand of fundamentalist Christianity has been laid on top of already existing traditional beliefs in the powers of ancestors and gods over the details of people's lives. Here is just one example: last week I was waiting for my Twi lesson and my teacher did not turn up (Twi is the local language). He is a trained teacher teaching at the local village school and I had just seen him the day before. He had not come, I was told, because his sister-in-law was very ill - someone had put a curse on her and he had to take her to the other side of Ghana to see a famous fetish priest.

One of the things I first noticed in Ghana was the absence of the political posters or graffiti that you see in so many foreign countries. Instead, everywhere are slogans about the power of God. the need to accept God's will and not to put your trust in humanity. In a country where the vast majority of people only live just above subsistence level there are perhaps many reasons why people do not concern themselves with national politics. When people here think of improving their material conditions it is in terms of managing to make a little more money by selling in the local market or by doing a deal with a friend rather than joining up with a group of people who advocate more radical change.

The Ghanaian government, the PNDC or Provisional National Defence council, under J.J. Rawlings is claimed by many to be a great improvement over previous governments and over many others in Africa. However, no elections have been held since he came to power in 1981. although this is supposed to be a transitional stage and local elections are to be held in October 1988. But candidates are to stand in their own right only and no parties are allowed. Candidates will be elected on the basis of local projects they propose - a new school or a new health centre perhaps. None will be seeking a more radical change. Since I have been here I have heard no one question this absence of political parties and in fact voter registration, which is to end at the end of this month. November 1987, is still at very low levels.

As far as I can discover new reformist policies in health, education and social services are in theory in the direction of greater fairness but there is no money to finance them. The poorest families still have to pay for schooling and medicines for their children. Of course this will change under socialism. Health care and education, as with everything else, will be freely available according to need, not ability to pay. However strongly I have argued in the past that a socialist system is both desirable and possible, I have had trouble enough to persuade my English friends. Here, I feel, it is even harder. 'Socialism', as it exists in this part of Africa, is the top-down imposed variety and often associated with the Eastern bloc or Libya.

Socialists maintain that the experience of capitalism as a member of the working class leads people to question the system. But here the subsistence farmer will not experience capitalism in the same sort of way. Although big business affects them - world cocoa prices, the cutting down of their forests for timber export - the connections are not clearly seen and most people's economic worlds revolve around their own small-holdings and market trading.

The women that I live with make peanut toffee and buy long bars of soap which they cut into pieces to sell. They sell to friends and relatives and one thing that 1 have come to understand is that buying and selling is about the best fun they have in their lives. There is none of the English embarrassment about money — several times people have quite unashamedly looked in my purse and cheerfully commented "You've got a lot of money in there”.

At the village level people do have experience of rich people. The chiefs of villages, especially if they have large farms, may be rich but their households, such as the one where I am living, may be filled with relatives who have almost nothing. In Ghana the chief's money is passed around when he dies - in ways that are studied by anthropologists - to his sister s sons.

Also I notice great divisions between the sexes and their roles. But even so this is not clear-cut for, although women do not own the land, they are involved in trading and as traders can become rich and powerful. In the household however, women work, cooking, caring for children, while the men sit chatting and drinking together, waiting for their food to be brought to them. I have talked to women about these hard-and-fast sex roles which seem, from my position, to mean a lot of hard work and drudgery for women and they smile at me good naturedly for having such strange ideas.

So the question I keep asking over and over again is. what needs to happen before people react to inequalities and oppression and begin to realise the possibility of a better world which they can bring into existence themselves? I wish I knew for Ghana and I wish I knew for Bristol - and whether the answers are different.

Naomi Roberts

About Books (1953)

Book Review from the April 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

A man who was born and reared amongst a primitive people, who speaks their language fluently, who has been accepted and initiated into a high and respected rank in their community and who is a student of anthropology, such a man is in a remarkably good position to write of their history and social organisation. Mr. L. S. B. Leakey has all these qualifications to write of the Kikuyu people of Kenya and the Mau Mau organisation that has developed amongst them.

Mr. Leakey spent a number of years, working with Kikuyu elders, compiling a very lengthy and detailed book on these people, but the book has not yet found a publisher. Last year Mr. Leakey wrote a shorter book, now published by Methuen and Co. under the title “Mau Mau and the Kikuyu,” for 7/6d.

Since September, 1952, when the Kenya Government declared a state of emergency, the press in this country has told us of the murders and terrorist tactics perpetrated by Mau Mau without giving us much of an inkling why an erstwhile peaceable people have suddenly resorted to these measures, and for what object.

Mr. Leakey does not seek to explain the trouble in Kenya merely by reference to the present set-up. He takes us back to the misty origins of the Kikuyu tribe and traces their history briefly from those times to the present day. He leans very much to the idea of “the white man’s burden” and tries to whitewash the activities of the white colonists and their governments, a task which he obviously finds difficult.

Before their contact with white men the Kikuyu were an agricultural people living in the highlands of Kenya with a favourable climate and a fertile soil.

“. . . by the closing decades of the nineteenth century the early travellers and explorers of Kenya, describing Kikuyu land as they saw it. used such terms as ‘ as far as the eye could sec it was one vast garden.” (page 7)

Their social organisation was simple but highly effective. Land was held by families and sub-clans, the sub-clan being a sort of extended family. They had no chiefs; the head of the family was the senior man and the head of the sub-clan was an elected man chosen for his wisdom. But these heads had no arbitrary powers and any trading in land could only be done through consultation with the elders. Tenants on a piece of land did not claim property rights but only the right to cultivate it, and could be called upon to give it up subject to certain compensations.

The social administration was on a tribal basis and tribal councils were democratic. The marriage customs, education, religion and the system of magic were complicated but fitted in with the social conditions prevailing. Theft and immorality were practically unknown. The fear of social ostracism was sufficient to deter any possible wrongdoer. The religion, like all religions, was steeped in superstition but was peculiarly adapted to the conditions under which the Kikuyu lived.

Then came the white man at a time immediately following a tragic period in the history of these people, when they had been decimated by plague, famine and epidemics. The rest of the story is the age old one of the breaking down of primitive social organisation, the expropriation of the land and the creation of an army of wage workers with all the evils that capitalism brings in its train. The missionaries attacked the tribal religion and broke down the system of native education in favour of Christianity and capitalist ethics. The capitalist government took over the functions of the tribal councils. Many of the Kikuyu were rendered landless and reduced to abject poverty with none of their old security of livelihood.

Mr. Leakey tells us in simple words of the results: 

“At the same time the temptation to steal has increased a thousandfold. The needs of young men and women in the olden days were small, and they were met without difficulty by their own families. Young men, seeking to enhance their reputation with the girls, did so by deeds of bravery, by excelling at dancing, by being such good organisers or speech-makers that they were chosen by their fellows as leaders. Today, a young man, after initiation, feels that in order to make an impression with the girls, he must dress well in European clothes, must have a bicycle with a pillion to take his girl friends for rides, and so on. As he often cannot earn enough to fulfil this need for exhibitionism of the average courting male, the temptation to steal becomes measurably greater." (page 79)

Unemployment and hunger also drive these people to steal, and the breakdown of the tribal moral code removes the fear of social ostracism for theft. As the author tells us, under the old tribal conditions, thieving “ just wasn’t done.” Now it is.

“Under present day conditions, too, it often happens that the difficulties which face a young married couple are much more serious than in the olden days, and the circumstances are far less conducive to a happy marriage, so that many of these marriages break up. The woman is far from her people, and if she leaves her husband she often does not return to her home, but may join the ever increasing number of prostitutes in the towns or else make a semi-permanent liaison with some man to whom she is not married, either by native law and custom, or by Christian ceremony, or by ordinary civil marriage." (page75)

So with drunkenness, bribery, corruption and the rest. A few Kikuyu have become very wealthy, the majority have sunk to poverty that they never knew before.

Out of all this grew the Kikuyu political organisations; the Kikuyu Central Association, the Kenya African Union and finally Mau Mau. They threw up such men as Harry Thuku, Peter Koinage and Jomo Kenyatta. The suppression of the K.C.A. drove its members underground and gave rise to the present terrorist movement.

This is a useful, topical and easily read little book. The reader will find in it, not only the story of the Kikuyu but also the story of all primitive peoples when capital permeates their society. Despite the author’s reformist conclusions and his feeble apologies for the actions of capitalist governments, we can unhesitatingly recommend this book.

“The Naked and the Dead,” by Norman Mailer was reviewed in The Socialist Standard in the July, 1950 issue. It is a very gruesome and ugly war bode of World War II with the scene laid in a tropical jungle island. We have nothing to add to the previous review. But it may interest readers to know that a cheap edition (by Allan Wingate, 8/6d.) is now available. Of its kind it is good.

W. Waters

Who cares who cares? (1988)

Editorial from the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Stirring the public conscience became part of the entertainment industry some time in the early eighties. At first, unsuspecting viewers in leafy suburbs noticed nothing more harrowing than malnutrition and death thousands of miles away, and threw loose change at the spectacle. A vogue for tales of glue sniffing and dragon chasing in dank, inner city garages then led to terrible addiction to earnest debate among experts, a form of exorcism which suddenly made way for a string of fresh concerns. Somewhere between Crimewatch and Hospital Watch was sandwiched a feast for the gourmet voyeur: documentaries on the growth of child labour and teenage prostitution down among the marginalised; telethons on children in need (quite obviously of money); phone-in shows on emotional and sexual problems; a shocker on "granny farming", an everyday story of secondhand car dealers in the geriatric marketplace; endless films and chat on the despair of daily life among the unemployed, with whom the majority appear happily to co-habit provided no intercourse takes place; cameos on frozen or battered pensioners, racist attacks and supplementary benefit poverty; specials on the plight of the homeless in wastelands of property development; stomach-churners on child abuse-, and offerings from socially aware dramatists. Most of this output was probably forgotten somewhere between the bus stop and coffee break next morning, but not before millions had dug deep into their pockets and come up with yet more fluff for the less fortunate. The day of the armchair Samaritan had dawned, the Thatcherite model citizen who tends his or her mortgaged garden but finds time to toss a coin or two in the direction of the gutter. Sniffing the stench of capitalism's less public parts can create a warm glow inside, provided pegs are firmly on red noses and everything is at arm's length.

Throwing money at problems is not, however, the government's idea of compassion: they favour a variant called "value for money", an incantation heard whenever rigor mortis of the fist sets in. Translated into English and seasonally adjusted, it means the ability to spend the very minimum consistent with the efficient running of capitalism without being rumbled - a tricky operation carried out on the National Health Service since its inception but undertaken recently without the aid of anaesthetic. An increasingly healthy competition for beds, medical equipment and operating time has driven thousands into the caring arms of private medicine, whose sunlit wards full of flowers and smiling nurses welcome any chronically ill worker with enough of the life-blood of our civilisation. The overwhelming majority will, as always, have to settle for the grossly inadequate, a state of affairs they have grown to accept stoically as inevitable. Recognition that their lives are conditioned and restricted by their social class may strike at times of adversity, but not to the point of challenging the notion of commercial exploitation of care for human beings at their most vulnerable.

While the government's supporters are concerned that the crisis could seriously damage their political health, opposition to present policies is based largely on a mythology fostered by proponents of the Welfare State and its institutions. Seen through Labour party eyes, the deterioration of health care is attributable to a congenital heart defect in the Prime Minister, a condition strangely absent when they themselves took a knife to the service in the seventies. Their picture of the NHS as a humane oasis in a desert of cost accountancy simply does not tally with experience. Like any expectant father, Beveridge wanted nothing but the best for his child: "a comprehensive national health service will ensure that for every citizen there is available whatever treatment he requires, in whatever form he requires it". Recalcitrant from its birth in the madhouse, the poor kid in fact made treatment available to the sick only because it contributed, in the short or long run, to the production of profit and the accumulation of capital. Resources were always expensive and therefore scarce; waiting lists long and periodically cleansed of impatient corpses; doctors, like Caesar, give the thumbs up or down to those jockeying for life-saving technology; and infant mortality rates continue to be determined by factors of class and occupation.

In a society where reality can increasingly be mistaken for a series of fast-moving, interwoven images of fact and fantasy, it is hardly surprising that response to the distress of others is numbed or stifled. The pursuit of self interest has led not to harmony and satisfaction but a tidal wave of disillusion and mean values lightly sprinkled with a token concern. Who's for opting out?

The General Strike: A Weapon of Class War (2016)

From the May 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the 90^th anniversary of the 1926 General Strike we look again at its lessons and at the uses and limitations of this class struggle tactic.

The General Strike lasted from 3 to 12 May in an attempt to defend the miners. It has been claimed that a significant proportion of the union leadership actually feared victory. ‘I am not in fear of the capitalist class. The only class I fear is my own,’ said J.R. Clynes of the General and Municipal Workers Union. Trade union leaders were not going to challenge the state even though as the strike continued, more and more control over the day-to-day functioning of society passed into the hands of the strikers. The TUC General Council betrayed every resolution upon which the strike call was issued and without a single concession being gained. The miners were left to fight the mine-owners, backed by the government, on their own.

Most commentators agree that the strength of the strike came from the solidarity of the grass-roots mass support and the weakness from above by an indecisive bureaucracy. ‘There’s never been anything like it. If the blighters o' leaders here dinnae let us down we’ll hae the capitalists crawlin’ on their bellies in a week. Oh boy, it’s the revolution at last,’ said one striker in Glasgow. Revolution was exactly what the trade union leaders didn't want. The General Strike had opened a Pandora's Box and in the words of NUR leader Charlie Cramp — ‘Never again!’ and said Ben Turner of the TUC General Council: ‘I never want to see another.’ The trade union activists' shock at the call-off was only matched by the employers' and government's unexpected surprise.  ‘A victorious army disarmed and handed over to its enemies,’ declared another Glasgow striker.

What We Said

The Socialist Party realistically understood that there was no immediate question of revolution. We favoured the general strike for the limited objective of exerting massive pressure upon employers to concede over pay or conditions. We had advocated:

 ‘. . . combined action by the workers to resist the wholesale onslaught by the masters upon wages and working conditions . . .  that the old sectional mode of industrial warfare was obsolete; that, while the development of industry had united the masters into giant combinations, with interests ramifying in every direction, supported at every point by the forces of the State, representing the entire capitalist class, the division among the workers, according to their occupations, led automatically to their steady defeat in detail. The only hope, even for the limited purpose of restricting the extent of the defeat, lay, therefore, in class combination... economic and political ignorance kept the workers divided and the defeats went on. Yet even worms will turn, and rats forced into corners will fight ...There is a limit even to the stupidity of sheep; and not all the smooth-tongued eloquence of their shepherds could prevent the flock from realising that they may as well hang together as hang separately.’

The Socialist Standard (June 1926) lamented the TUC's lack of strike plans:

‘As an expression of working-class solidarity the response of the rank and file was unquestionably unprecedented; but the long months, nay, years of delay found effect in the official confusion between ‘essential’ and non-essential occupations, the handling of goods by some unions which were banned by others and the issuing of permits one day which had to be withdrawn the next. Just prior to the strike the railwaymen were working overtime providing the companies with the coal to run their blackleg trains ...’

In particular, we urged the working class to learn the lessons of the General Strike:

 "The outlook before the workers is black, indeed, but not hopeless, if they will but learn the lessons of this greatest of all disasters. ‘Trust your leaders!" we were adjured in the Press and from the platforms of the Labour Party, and the folly of such sheep-like trust is now glaring. The workers must learn to trust only in themselves. They must themselves realise their position and decide the line of action to be taken. They must elect their officials to take orders, not to give them! ... It is useless for the workers either to ‘trust’ leaders or to ‘change’ them. The entire institution of leadership must be swept by the board." At the time we urged workers that they "must organise as a class, not merely industrially, for the capture of supreme power as represented by the political machine... The one thing necessary is a full recognition by the workers themselves of the hostility of interests between themselves and their masters. Organised on that basis, refusing to be tricked and bluffed by promises or stampeded into violence by threats, they will emerge victorious from the age-long struggle. Win Political Power! That is the first step.’

The general strike as a tactic

The possibility of a general strike keeps cropping up within the trade union movement. When we speak of the general strike we are not concerned with the general strike of a single trade union but of all workers. The movement is no longer a trade union movement but has become a class movement. For the general strike to succeed, the working-class must be convinced of the importance of the purpose for which it is declared. It must be shown that the aim is legitimate and victory is possible. The general strike cannot be a disguise for revolution, but simply the exercise of the right to strike on a wider scale and with a more clearly marked class character. The Socialist Party dismisses the idea that the general strike is a panacea for workers.

The idea of carrying through a social revolution by means of a ‘folded arms’ policy is romantic. A stoppage of production and transportation is not enough to bring about the overthrow of a society. Strikers will stand idly outside places of work, and even if the workers occupied and took possession of the factories and offices, it is a pointless exercise for they cannot function while the economy is suspended and production is stopped by the universal strike. So long as a class does not collectively own and control the whole social machine, it can seize all the factories and offices it wants to, but it really possesses nothing. The failure of a general strike involves real suffering, and discouraged and disconsolate, defeated strikers withdraw from the movement into passivity and apathy.  A general strike is ‘All or nothing!’ Workers should think twice about supporting such a gamble.

There are some who seek to transform a proposed general strike against austerity, for instance, into a political general strike, using the opposition to the cuts as the slogans to mobilise around. They expect that because of a sustained general strike the normal economic life of the country will be suspended, and there would be a total stoppage in distribution and in production. Naturally, workers would be forced to adopt more forceful methods in order to live. They would seize food and other provisions wherever they could lay hands on them. The ruling class would respond in kind with repression and so the general strike is envisaged to escalate into a revolutionary scenario. That is the idea of the ‘revolutionaries’. But this sort of strategy is a trick to delude the working-class. It proposes to drag them far beyond what was proposed. To imagine that a social revolution can result from misleading workers in such a manner is nonsense.

Although the general strike is quite powerless as a revolutionary means of liberation for the exploited class, nevertheless it is a potent warning to the capitalist class. It tells them if they are crazy enough to make the right to unite in trade unions and the right to strike empty forms, then a general strike may well be the shape that a labour revolt would take. It would be more as a means of damaging the enemy to save ourselves than a means of liberation. The trade union movement has proven itself to be a powerful instrument of a defensive character.

The strike weapon is the workers' only means of defence or attack which it has for the protection of its immediate material interests.  Working people are right to jealously guard the right to strike. While the Socialist Party fully supports this right for all workers, it is not our business to incite them to make use of it. It is not for us to urge or discourage strikes. It is for those immediately involved, those who will have to endure the consequences of their decision, to decide without pressure of any kind from outsiders. When those workers whose interests are at stake have decided upon a strike, other workers including socialists ought to aid them to gain every possible advantage from the situation in which they have placed themselves.

That is, generally speaking, what is and what should be the conduct of socialists so far as strikes are concerned. We acknowledge the strike as a weapon, but recognise that its effectiveness should not to be exaggerated and that it possesses limited power. Under favourable circumstances it may compel some employers to yield to union demands but it has never been able to produce any radical change in the capitalist system. Here or there some ameliorations have been achieved but they have not been incompatible with the increasing prosperity of capital.

The political expropriation of the capitalist class today is its economic expropriation tomorrow. To win for socialism the greatest possible number of partisans, that is the task to which the Socialist Party concentrates its efforts. What is necessary is to make socialists, to bring people's wills into harmony with a movement that seeks the election of more and more socialists to our various elective assemblies. The political expropriation of the capitalist class today can be its economic expropriation tomorrow and the transformation of wage labour to the free association of workers and common ownership.

ALJO

After the holocaust (1988)

Book Review from the February 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Incomer by Margaret Elphinstone (Women's Press £3.95.)

Some of the best, and best written, accounts of moneyless societies are to be found in the pages of science fiction novels. Books such as The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin and Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy present convincing descriptions of egalitarian non-market societies. The Incomer doesn't rank with these, but does have some interesting comments on life without exchange relations.

The scene is an isolated village in the south of Scotland, after some vaguely alluded to holocaust, "when the world changed'. Industry seems to have vanished and agriculture has reverted to a subsistence level, with soils and seas recovering from pollution. The village. Clachanpluck. does make use of money in its dealings with other towns and villages but its internal functioning does without buying, selling and wages. Here are one character's comments when offered money in return for putting someone up:

'Well, thank you.' said Bridget doubtfully, looking at the coin as if it might bite her. 'I won't deny it might be useful. but I know that money is an evil thing, which can bind a person, so one remains in bondage to another. There's a powerful kind of magic to it. and it's done more harm in the past than can be told . . . I know too much about the past. They used money to win people away from their land They took their birthright from them and made them sell themselves for money.'

The mini-society of Clachanpluck is not socialist (socialist society will not be matriarchal, nor will we hound rapists to death) but the picture of a community based on co-operation and production primarily for use should make the reader reflect a little.

Paul Bennett

What's your class? (1988)

From the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

A worker's class position under capitalism is not determined by the particular function he or she carries out at work. If you depend for your existence either on a wage or a salary then you are a worker. In this respect it does not matter whether or not you are a carpenter or an architect; a nurse or a doctor.

Likewise a capitalist is not necessarily someone who goes into the Royal enclosure at Ascot or holds membership to the MCC. The capitalist's class position is determined by his or her ownership and control over the means and methods of production. Unlike the wage or salary-bound worker the capitalist lives off the exploitation of the worker through either rent, interest or profit. All other notions of class belong either to the meaningless realm of pop journalism (Sloanes and Yuppies) or to the more insidious. unscientific writings of academic sociology (class as a passive social hierarchy).

Both classes stand in antagonism to each other; both classes have diametrically opposite interests and it is the interests of the ruling class in terms of commodity production and profit that will always prevail. For workers, their sole interest and objective is in the abolition of commodity production and all the other paraphernalia of the economy, such as money wages, buying and selling, property rights and ownership. Nothing short of this objective will ever free the working class from their subject class position.

No matter what errors of judgement workers have made in the past or their current conscious or unconscious support for either private or state capitalism and the various political parties that administer them nothing can take away from the fact that they are the only agents who are capable of ending class society. The belief held by the left - an arrogant and insulting belief - that workers are either too stupid or irrational to establish socialism - says more about their own failings and ignorance than it does about the class they wish to lead. Essentially all that workers currently lack is an understanding of the class ownership of the means of production and their exploited place under it. Workers certainly do not lack intelligence or the capacity to reason since after all they run capitalism as well as design, invent, produce and construct everything in it. Furthermore The Socialist Party is itself evidence that workers can understand capitalism and work democratically for its abolition.

Workers may dream about escaping from their class position by doing the football pools, gambling or entering competitions to win a house or money. But it is a dream that for millions of workers will evaporate by Monday morning when they are forced to return to the factory, office or shop. Here as wage-slaves they will encounter, in their boredom and frustration, in their alienation and exploitation, a reminder of their place under capitalism.

Of course workers might temporarily place their faith in the illusion of "popular capitalism”. Workers might buy shares through unit trusts or in the de-nationalised industries like British Gas or BP but they will never own or control them; they might take on the responsibility for a mortgage or indeed own their house outright but they will never be in the position to live off property incomes; they might receive a few pounds each year on their fluctuating savings in a building society or a bank but they will never be able to stop selling their mental or physical labour-power for a wage or a salary. Workers are imprisoned within capitalism, exploited by private and state capitalism alike but have, through local and general elections, the means as class-conscious socialists to set themselves free.

Capitalism is not a natural, perennial system of commodity production but is instead a social system possessing a beginning and an end. Capitalism is by its very essence anarchic, unpredictable and prone to continual periodic crises. Capitalism does not progress either, but blindly stumbles around in circles. Capitalism has long lost its historical usefulness and it is now a matter of urgency that the working class should instead establish a rational social system based on common ownership and production for social need, for workers no longer have the luxury of time on their side.

Richard Lloyd

Economics Exposed: Fair shares? (1987)

The Economics Exposed column from the December 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The plummeting of share values on October 19 of this year produced a lot of hot air, as pundits on all sides attempted to draw their political conclusions. Brian Walden, in a feature article defending the free market, warts and all, glibly referred to "capitalism's manifest superiority to socialism as a method of improving society" (Sunday Times, 1 November 1987). The Labour Party shadow cabinet produced a document stating that what was needed to avoid further trouble was "massive government intervention". And the CBI, at their Conference in Glasgow, made it a shocking crime to utter the dreaded word "crash", referring instead to a range of terms such as "adjustment". "nosedive", "the problem", "the events of the past few days" and "the latest squalls '.

There were two types of people who were immediately affected by the wiping of about 25 per cent off of the share prices at the London Stock Exchange in the course of a week. On the one hand, there were those for whom losing a quarter of the value of their shares meant losing millions, or very many thousands of pounds. Of course, they still had three quarters of the value of their shares, which would have been worth even more millions! Moreover, at the time of writing, share prices appear to be regaining a large part of their former value. For the people in this first category, socialists would not have shed any tears. They are a small minority who live comfortably on the backs of the rest of us. Most big capitalists would not have been affected by such a hiccup. Their privileged lifestyle smugly continued regardless of the panic by workers on their bosses" behalf.

We can sympathise rather more with the second group of people who were affected during that week. Many workers have been persuaded in recent years to buy shares in industries which had previously been nationalised. The government claimed it was taking these industries out of the hands of the state bureaucracy (which Labour had indeed falsely equated with "the people") and handing them over to ordinary people themselves. Of course, there was one snag. Most people are workers and therefore lack the cash to buy more than a handful of shares at the most. All the rhetoric about ordinary people becoming "capitalists" overlooks this simple fact.

To be a real capitalist you would require the cash to buy such shares in hundreds of thousands. Dividends paid on shares tend nowadays to be in the region of, say, 20p a share annually. While this provides the owner of a million shares with a nice unearned income of some £4,000 a week (making it a matter of choice whether to bother to go to work or not), the worker who has proudly bought 400 shares, for example, would receive £1.60 a week; hardly enough to retire on. It is an obvious but rarely stated fact that somebody can have a small "stake" in an enterprise, even with some minimal voting rights or control, but it is the size of the stake they can afford which dictates their position in society, their class and therefore their condition of life. And no reforms proposed by any of the political parties can even attempt to deal with this ultimate inequality at the roots of capitalism.

Beyond this aspect, several other problems have emerged from the great privatisation "sell-off" bonanza of recent years.

★ Largely as a result of these policies, the number of adults in Britain who own any shares has increased from 7 per cent in the late 1970s to 15-20 per cent today. But that still leaves four out of five adults with no shares whatsoever. There is every possibility that the number of shareowners will once again fall below 10 per cent, particularly after recent events.

★ Within the small minority who own shares, there is a much smaller minority who monopolise the bulk of all shares. About four fifths of all privately held shares are owned by less than one per cent of the population.

★ Of all the shares bought in recent "privatisation" issues such as the Trustee Savings Bank. British Gas and even British Telecom, a substantial proportion have already been cashed in again, with more shares gradually falling, predictably, into fewer hands. In many cases workers had saved a few hundred pounds and found that they needed that money back again after a year or two to help with household expenses, for which they had no other resources to fall back on. In other cases the intention was to make a quick (and very small) profit, then withdraw. The proceeds will hardly finance a life of leisure. Real capitalists do not have to sell their entire investment portfolio some months after acquiring it.

It is the people in this second category whose recent position was tragic. In some cases, workers had put their life savings into projects promoted by the government's smooth-talking advertisers only to watch their modest nest-egg eaten into during one week by the fluctuations of the business casino known as the Stock Exchange. During the television coverage of the October "crash", some investment analysts actually came on (rather too late) and said that it really was "not right" for the "very small investor" (the worker) to get too involved in the risks of share investment in the way that the big investors are able to and that the dramatic fall in share prices might serve as a warning and lesson to such people.

The real lesson, however, is that such wild commercial fluctuations show us the true nature of the capitalist economic system. Based on competition for profits throughout the world market, capitalism is unpredictable, uncontrollable and unable to meet human needs securely. The mass media had a field day, getting excited about their tedious obsession with share price indexes minutely fluctuating in a way that was of little immediate interest to most viewers. It was nearly as bad as the boring hysteria of the election coverage during the summer. What they failed to point out, though, was that such "strange" developments have happened before and will happen again, because of the very nature of world capitalism itself. They will happen under Brian Walden’s "free market" and under the "massive government intervention" which the shadow cabinet waffled on about. Nobody can predict when such problems might happen again, or find any way to avoid them.

The price of shares in a company can respond to subtle changes in business "confidence”. In a sane, socialist society the only pointers will be human needs on the one hand, and the real resources available for meeting those needs, on the other. The only “confidence" to be concerned about would be our vital confidence in our own ability to work together co-operatively to meet our needs. That ability certainly exists.

The temporary failure of "confidence" which found expression on October 19, on the other hand, was a failure of confidence in the secure, continued flow of profit into the bank accounts of the parasite class in society. They seem to have picked up since then, and persuaded themselves that there is nothing to worry about. Shall we prove them wrong?

Clifford Slapper