Can The Government Stop It? (1974)

From the April 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every time a war ends they say, “Never again.” Every time trade picks up after a slump they say, “It can’t happen again. We know how to control the economy now.” They try tariffs, trade agreements, devaluation, revaluation, altering the bank rate, juggling with the price of gold. None of it works: slumps still happen, just as there is always a war going on somewhere these days. If things improve, the government takes the credit. If things get worse they blame the previous government or another country. The truth is that they have no control at all over the economic convulsions of capitalism, because they are uncontrollable. Slumps and wars are essential phases in its progress. They restore a sort of balance for a few years. But what a ramshackle way of organizing the production and distribution of goods in the world.

CAPITALISM IS DUE FOR 
THE SCRAP HEAP

About Solzhenitsyn (1974)

Solzhenitsyn with Heinrich Böll in West Germany, 1974

From the April 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

So Solzhenitsyn is now able to voice his views openly. It is possible, for the first time, to see how he measures up to the problems not merely of writers in Russia, but of all mankind. What can this Nobel Prize winner tell us?

Before weighing in with criticisms of his manifesto (Sunday Times, March 3), we must make it clear, first, that we have always opposed all forms of censorship, and secondly, that in criticising his ideas we are in no way defending the Kremlinite creed, to which we have consistently expressed our hostility. But however sympathetic we may be to one who has struggled successfully and has made his views heard in spite of all the Soviet censorship and suppression machine, we cannot applaud his political views.

We should like to have greeted him as a world citizen, an internationalist not a nationalist. But his views are based on an insular patriotism and Russian Orthodox Christianity. He believes in the myth of the “national interest”: indeed he bases his argument against a Russian war with China, not on the view that working-class interests are not at stake, but simply on the calculation that Russia could not win such a war and therefore it would be against Russia’s “national interest”.

Although apparently a fervent Leninist when he started his prison career, he is now a devout believer in Orthodox Christianity. If this is the result of incarceration in those inhuman prisons and labour-camps, it would seem to be an effective practical demonstration of the truth of Marx’s words:

  Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.

On War and the Environment
In his manifesto Solzhenitsyn argues on two issues of the day. The first is the prospect of a Sino-Soviet war: he proposes that, since in his view ideology is the main cause of friction, the Russian government should abandon its ideology in the “national interest”. He seems to believe that, if this were done, there would be peace with China.

What the author of August 1914 should know is that nowhere can one find evidence of a war being fought solely because of ideology. Dogs may dislike each other’s colour or breed, but when they fight it is over a bone, or a bitch. Humans likewise don’t fight over creeds, but over markets and minerals, ports and provinces.

Solzhenitsyn’s second argument is not original and he names his sources — the Club of Rome and the Teilhard de Chardin Society. He has adopted their doomsday environmentalism, arguing against pollution and skyscraper cities and for a return to 2-storey houses and horse-transport. He sees a no-growth economy as the solution to the problems of mineral shortages, population pressures and pollution.

His argument, like that of other doomsday writers, takes no account of any possible re-structuring of society. Their computers are never programmed to tell us how world Socialism, with production for use not for profit, would employ the earth’s resources. Like the Club of Rome, Solzhenitsyn assumes that production for profit will go on for ever, and then argues that this system must be reformed to prevent it from destroying mankind’s habitat. Better surely to argue for an end to capitalism, since it is a system which generates waste and seeks constantly to increase the quantity of materials processed, year by year.

Solecisms Versus Marx
But when we come to his views on “ideology” it is plain that Solzhenitsyn has no knowledge of what Marxist theory really is. He has accepted the lies of the Kremlinites and so presents us with a distorted caricature of Marxism, a series of Aunt Sallys which he passionately shoots down in flames.

From this great sage, we learn that Marxism, “a primitive, superficial economic theory . . . declared that only the worker creates value and failed to take into account the contribution of either organizers, engineers, transport or market systems.” To start with, he ignores the fact that Marxist theory puts engineers and transport workers in the working class: they all have a living to earn, they all have to sell their labour-power. Also that in reckoning the value of a commodity, we take into account the wear and tear on machinery, the value of all raw materials used in manufacture and also any socially necessary labour time used in research and development (e.g. by engineers, organizers etc.)

The Marxist theory of value asserts simply that human labour is the sole source of value. But there is a lot more to Marxist economic theory than this basic proposition: to start with there are three volumes of Capital, and it is doubtful if even the sage Solzhenitsyn would describe them as “superficial”.

His other attacks on Marxism are similarly wide of the mark. Most of all he goes wrong on the question of revolution. According to him, Marxism “was mistaken through and through in its prediction that socialists could only come to power by an armed uprising.” Evidently Solzhenitsyn’s education in ideology did not include what Engels wrote on this subject:

  The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past.

Indeed Engels argued that for a complete transformation of society to be undertaken successfully, it must be on the basis of full participation and the support of the mass of the community.

Again, according to Solzhenitsyn, Marxism is wrong in stating that the Socialist movement will come to the fore in advanced and highly developed countries first. We have only to use our eyes, to look at countries such as Russia which claimed to be “socialist” and see that this vaunted pseudo-socialism is merely a nasty form of capitalism. In 1917 the S.P.G.B. was pointing to Russia’s backwardness as an indication that the revolution could only bring about an acceleration of capitalist development. Now in 1974 Solzhenitsyn describes how Russian technology has copied Western technology, how pollution increases due to greed for profits and how the people are oppressed by poverty:

  In practice, a man’s wage-level ought to be such that whether he has a family of two or even four children, the woman does not need to earn a separate pay-packet and does not need to support her family financially on top of all her other toils and troubles.

Russia is just as much a capitalist country as America or Britain, Cuba or Kenya. Everywhere the capitalist “mode of production” prevails: we see men and women who possess no land, no tools, nothing, who are driven by fear of want to sell their labour-power by the week or the month, mortgaging their lives in instalments so as to survive till the next pay-day. We see them producing goods galore, “an immense accumulation of commodities”, all their own work, yet they remain unable to afford most of what they need. We see human toil and human skills diverted from man’s real needs — food, clothing, health, housing, culture — to pander to the aristocracy of Big Business, the wasteful war-machine, the accountants, the luxury resorts, and so on.

This is what Marxists oppose: a worldwide system of exploitation of the many by, and for the benefit of, the few. A system which combines wanton waste with wasteful want. Shame it is that Solzhenitsyn has failed to join the movement to end it and has instead sided with those who say that authoritarianism can be made tolerable by reform. He is indeed one of those who “wear their chains with decency”.

Charmian Skelton

Russia is Capitalist (1974)

From the April 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

No matter what lies their leaders tell them (chiefly to make them work harder), the people of Russia, China, Cuba, and countries like them live in capitalism — not Communism or Socialism. You want proof ? — In all these countries, just like Britain or U.S.A., capital is invested for profit; commodities are produced for sale; ordinary people work for wages. — That’s capitalism. It doesn’t make any difference if the state nationalises some, or all, industries — as we know in this country — the people still don’t own them. That is why they have to sell their energy and skill to those who do own them — and the state can be a more powerful and ruthless boss than private companies.

Wherever people work for wages or salaries, they have been robbed of the land, the mines, the factories and so on; and they are steadily robbed of everything they produce, because it doesn’t belong to them when they have made it. In Communism or Socialism (same thing) it will belong to them. The land and factories will belong to the whole people. But that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world yet. It is the next stage in the evolution of society — the system to supersede capitalism. The sooner we make the change-over the better.

CAPITALISM IS DUE FOR THE SCRAP HEAP

So They Say: A Decent Idea (1974)

The So They Say Column from the April 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Decent Idea

“They fly forgotten, as a dream”: things said in General Election campaigns, of course. Here is one which should not be allowed to do so.

Before the election Mrs. Mary Whitehouse, as secretary of the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, sent a five-point questionnaire to each of the party leaders purporting to seek their views “on the issues of indecency, obscenity and sex education”. In fact three of the questions were on that theme. The fourth asked for the leaders’ assurance that Christian religious teaching would retain a strong footing in schools. And the fifth? It ran:

  Would you establish a broadcasting commission to inquire into every aspect of broadcasting, particularly that of the facilities granted to the viewer and listener, and the effectiveness of existing safeguards against corruption and the exploitation of broadcasting by small and unrepresentative groups, whose activities enshrine anti-social and political aims.

(Guardian, 18th Feb.; our emphasis.)

Nothing about obscenity there. It means Mrs. White- house and her supporters want minorities to be refused expression of their views in the broadcasting media. Whose activities “enshrine political aims”?


Down With Profit — not Exactly —

During and after the Election the “big four” London Clearing Banks declared profits totalling over £600 millions, embodying increases over the past four years ranging from 67½ per cent. (Lloyd’s) to 99 per cent. (National Westminster). Whereupon Roger Opie, in The Guardian's Economic Notebook (4th March), carried on dreadfully — “effrontery”, “fantastic", “oligopolistic”, etc.:

  The Bankers have always had some excuse or other for their anomalous prosperity . . . Now a new one has been invented. The Chairman of the National Westminster Bank now has the impudence to argue that his and other banks’ vast profits are “in the national interest”.

Opie argues that the banks’ ordinary customers are made to subsidize their lending to pay for “the grasping excesses of the fringe bankers” and demands for advances from industry, and of the latter he says:

  Nor is this the only or the proper way to provide finance for industrial borrowers in liquidity trouble this year. Again, it is the responsibility of the Bank of England.

But this means Opie himself acquiescing in the myth of “the national interest”. He agrees that firms must be lent money at interest so that they can make profits. What is the difference? Is it nicer to see Carrington Viyella Ltd. on 11th March declaring a profit of £12,017,000 — or ICI’s £311 millions announced on 24th February? Presumably he would say these are features of the acceptable face of capitalism, as against the “unpleasant and unacceptable” one of the banks’ raking-in.

— in fact, Not at All

The source of all profit is the exploitation of the working class; where it goes is irrelevant. Part of the propaganda for nationalization (which Roger Opie ends up advocating, vis-à-vis the Clearing Banks) is that under State auspices workers are not exploited as they are under private ones.

The East German propaganda organ Democratic German Report (13th February) had a naive story on these lines. It told of Hermann Helbig, who had built up a small tailoring business after the war. It was one of 3,000 small enterprises nationalized in 1972, and he became manager. The article says:

   Property relations have changed fundamentally. Although the work is done on the same machines as two years ago, the workers are now the owners of the means of production.

That’s nice, Hermann. So the profit motive, wage- slavery and all that are abolished and . . . but what’s this?

  Hermann Helbig’s firm holds first place in the innovators’ movement of his district. Last year they achieved a per capita profit of 2,646 marks from innovations in the factory . . . New production techniques are to be introduced in the next few years and will provide for a further increase in productivity and reduction of costs.

So only the words are different. The actuality is the same.

Look, Mum — Twins !

We may have been wrong in insisting there is no difference between the “New” Left and the Old. There is a difference. The present lot are incontestably funnier, and International Socialists the most mirth-provoking of all.

Their paper Socialist Worker on 9th March had a front-page article headed keep your guard up! It began:

The Tories are out. Good.
The government that hammered workmg-class pay, living conditions and trade union rights for 3½ years has been kicked out of office.
Labour is back. That’s good, too.
We wanted a Labour victory because a vote for the Tories was a vote to carry on union-bashing, rent-raising, wage-freezing and profiteering.

Well, hurrah. And, having campaigned for a Labour government, what do IS anticipate from it?

For Labour supports the capitalist system . . .  it will surrender to the demands of the employers at home and the moneylenders abroad.
Don’t forget, the last Labour government — with a majority in parliament — froze your wages, hoisted your rents, boosted prices and profits and attempted to bring in anti-union laws.
This time the economic crisis is worse. Labour will attempt to shore up the tottering system by again turning on the organised labour movement.

Part of the System

IS, like the rest of the Left, want “organized labour” to take the form of extra-legal militancy. Something we have pointed out consistently is that workers’ organizations need trade-union law just as much as the employers and the government. One reason is simply to protect their funds which otherwise would be vulnerable.

As an example, in 1960 (chosen as a characteristic year, not an exceptional one) the Transport and General Workers’ Union lost £3,805. 4s. Id. through defalcations by Branch collectors. The standard resolution in each case includes that “proceedings be instituted under the Trades Union or other Acts” for the recovery of the moneys.

The sum is small in relation to the huge funds of the TGWU but the need for legal protection of funds is obvious. However, it can be added that in the same year the Union donated £75,000 to the Labour Party.

From Rags to More Rags

One of the myths of capitalism is that any man can become his own master and climb above the rest. The November issue of the New Zealand transport-union paper, Wheels, which has just reached us, has something on this subject. It cites a submission made by the Wellington Union to a Labour Bills Committee hearing:

The attraction to a worker to become an owner-driver is that:—
(a) His income will be greater than if he was an employed driver.
(b) He will, by physical effort and the application of his own initiatives, be able to increase even still further his income, and
(c) He will enjoy greater freedom of living, working, etc., due to being “his own boss”.
On examination it is found that in a great many cases this attraction is more illusory than real . . . The realities of this situation are that these workers are generally more heavily exploited than “employed drivers”.

Down to the See Again

On 3rd March The Sunday People, searching diligently as ever for scandals, found them among the priesthood in Rome:

I can inform His Holiness that when it comes to La Dolce Vita, the “sweet life” of Rome, there are no sweeter-living exponents than some of these young priests — and their more experienced seniors.

Lots about wine, night clubs, and permissive nuns. It would hold no interest — except that the Catholic Church lays great store by the text “By their fruits ye shall know them”, The common condemnation of Protestantism is that Martin Luther was a debauchee.

Will Catholicism therefore consent to being known by these fruits picked up by the Sunday People? Of course not. There are none like the religious for having their fruit and eating it. But how absurd they all are — reporter, Pope and priesthood alike!

Robert Barltrop

Letter: William Morris and Parliament (1974)

Letter to the Editors from the April 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

I refer to the book review, “Revolutionary Art & Socialism”, in the January, 1974, Socialist Standard.

The writer states that ", . . he (William Morris) never did deny that in the course of the socialist revolution the working class would have to capture political power including Parliament”. Maybe. But putting it a different way: where does Morris actually advocate the capturing of political power, including Parliament as a (the?) means of establishing socialism/communism in Britain and elsewhere in the world ?

Perhaps A.L.B. might tell us the names of the ". . . anti-parliamentarians and anarchists” in the Socialist League who advocated “violence and bomb-throwing”.

Furthermore, was Morris’ vision of socialism the same as that of the SPGB? In his article, “Communism”, he writes: “An anti-socialist will say How will you sail a ship in a socialist condition? How? Why with a captain and mates and sailing master and engineer (if it be a steamer) and ABs and stokers and so on and so on. Only there will be no 1st, 2nd and 3rd class among the passengers: the sailors and stokers will be as well fed and lodged as the captain or passengers; and the captain and the stoker will have the same pay”. (Selected Writings, p670). But under socialism, will a ship have a captain as Morris and, for that matter, Engels (see his article “On Authority”) argue ?

Peter E. Newell

Colchester

Reply:
For the six years from 1884 that William Morris was an active member of the Socialist League he was resolutely opposed to a Socialist organization advocating or supporting reforms of capitalism and insisted that the sole task of such an organisation was to make socialists. In 1890 he left the League (because it had fallen under anarchist control) and later became reconciled to some extent to the Social Democratic Federation, and its policy of trying to advocate both Socialism and reforms.

But even in his period as a member of the League Morris was never completely and dogmatically anti-parliamentary in the way that anarchists were and are. For instance, he wrote to Dr. J. Glasse in May 1887:

  My position to Parliament and the dealings of Socialists with it, I will now [try] to state clearly. I believe that the Socialists will certainly send members to Parliament when they are strong enough to do so: in itself I see no harm in that, so long as it is understood that they go there as rebels, and not as members of the governing body prepared by passing palliative measures to keep “Society" alive (William Morris. The Man and The Myth, by R. Page Arnot, London, 1964, p.82). 

and again in September 1887:

  Of course, it’s clearly no use talking of parliamentary action now: I admit, and always have admitted, that at some future period it may be necessary to use parliament mechanically: what I object to is depending on parliamentary agitation. There must be a great party, a great organisation outside parliament actively engaged in reconstructing society and learning administration whatever goes on in the parliament itself (Morris’ emphasis, p.86).

We would not claim that Morris’ views were always clear, but it should be remembered that Morris was a pioneer Marxian socialist in Britain and was grappling here for the first time with a very important problem: how could a Socialist party prevent itself from becoming a reformist organisation? In his day the reformists were advocating the use of parliament to get reforms. Hence Morris’ anti-reformism tended at times to express itself as anti-parliamentarism. The use of parliament for the one revolutionary purpose of dismantling capitalism and its State, such as was advocated by the Socialist Party of Great Britain when it was founded in 1904, had not yet been elaborated, but as the above quotes show Morris came very near to doing this.

Was Morris’ vision of Socialism the same as ours ? Substantially, yes, but, as we said, Morris didn’t always express himself precisely. He and Engels are entitled to their opinions as to how they think a ship should he run in Socialism.

The 1890’s was a period of anarchist bomb-throwing called “propaganda by the deed’’. Those who came to control the League’s journal, Commonweal, after Morris left in November 1890, supported this policy. As one example, on 9 December 1893 Auguste Vaillant threw a bomb into the French Chamber of Deputies. Within two months he had been tried and executed. In June 1894 another anarchist assassinated the French President, Sadi Carnot, for having refused to pardon Vaillant. In July the English anarchists were selling a pamphlet “Why Vaillant Threw the Bomb’’ defending this assassination (see Wililam Morris, His Life, Work and Friends by P. Henderson, Penguin, pp. 411-2 and also pp. 376-7). For further evidence, Peter Newell might like to consult the files of Commonweal from 1890 onwards.

Editorial Committee.

The Professor and the Dustman (1974)

From the April 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Professor Samuelson’s book Economics: An Introductory Analysis is 794 pages long. It is the basic textbook for students of economics at American universities. In this mass of words there are only a meagre dozen or so references to Marx and Socialist ideas. That fact alone speaks volumes about the conspiracy against Marxian economics and Socialism in the so-called centres of learning.

Bland statements in the book like “A billion people, one third of the world’s population, blindly regards Das Kapital as economic gospel” display the Professor’s ignorance. How many people (in Russia and China, presumably the main places to which he is referring) have actually read any of Marx, let alone Capital? and what has state-capitalist Russia got to do with Marx’s main thesis that capitalist society, having created by technological advancement the possibilities for satisfying all man’s physical needs, should be replaced by Socialism — that is, a world-wide system based on common ownership and production for use?

Samuelson also states the following (pages 105-6):

  His (Marx’s) assertion that the rich will become richer and the poor poorer cannot be sustained by careful historical and statistical research. In Europe and America there has definitely been a steady secular improvement in minimum standards of living, whether measured by food, clothing, housing or length of life.

It is about time the Professor came out of his academic dark-room to look at the real world round him. For the working class, that is the vast majority, a study of Socialist ideas would put them on the right lines for solving the myriad problems they face all over the globe. The first step is to analyze correctly the society that surrounds them: a step equally necessary for the intellectual and the manual worker — say, the Professor and his dustman.

Capitalism is the system of society that exists over most of the world today. Those areas of the globe that are still surviving in semi-feudal conditions are being unavoidably brought into it. What is this system of society? It is based on private (or State) property relationships. The resources necessary to create wealth of whatever form are owned by, and therefore operated in the interests of, a small minority of the population. Production of the essentials (and luxuries) of life takes place solely because the owners of the means of wealth production hope to make a profit when what is produced is sold on the world markets. The ultimate object is the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the capitalist class.

There are certain features of capitalist society which can be distinguished. The converse of the fact that the instruments of production and what is produced belong to a small minority is that the vast majority own nothing other than their ability to work. Most workers in this country do not own the houses they live in, the cars they drive nor the washing machines they use; often even the clothes they wear are on credit. The fact that most people own almost nothing is even more apparent at the factories and offices where they work. The machines, raw materials etc. that they use, and the commodities they produce, belong to others. Other features of the landscape of capitalism are buying and selling, money, prices (including of course wages), employer and employee, and production for sale (commodity production). All these are identification marks of capitalism. They are all evident in the U.K., U.S.A., Russia, China, Japan, etc. Some of these things existed in a limited form in pre-capitalist society — e.g. a limited amount of commodity production in feudal society; none of them will exist in Socialist society.

Another characteristic of capitalism is great wealth alongside great poverty. The wealth of capitalist society is evident in vast luxury items (expensive houses, cars, hotels and so on) but the poverty side is even more evident. If it wasn’t, then government statistics make it abundantly clear. A report was published on 22nd February 1974 (see The Guardian of that date) based on figures from the Central Statistical Office. ‘‘Whatever happened to the Welfare State?” by George Clarke of the City Poverty Committee argues that living standards for one British citizen in four are now worse than they were in 1937-8. The report compares what an average family could purchase in 1937-8 with 1972, and shows that (largely because of increased food prices) one in four may well be worse off.

This sort of revelation (which, by the way, is constantly coming out of official sources) is of no surprise to the Socialist. It will clearly be a surprise to the Professor. In 1849, in his series of articles which later were published as a pamphlet under the title Wage, Labour and Capital, Marx pointed out that all wants stem from a social source. Man’s expectations depend on society’s possibilities at any given stage in man’s development. He says:

  A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and it now shrinks from a little house to a hut.

When mankind is capable of producing vast quantities of things necessary to satisfy all sorts of desires which were unthought-of even fifty years ago, man’s social desires — his requirements of society — are raised proportionately. Accordingly, whether man is a socially satisfied creature depends on what needs are met at a given stage of his development. Queen Victoria did not miss a tv; now most workers at least rent one.

Because of the restrictions capitalist society places first upon production (limiting it to what can be sold on the market) and second on the consumption of the majority (the pay-packet and salary-cheque are only forms of rationing), man’s social wants are continually unsatisfied. This is what was meant by Marx when he said that under capitalism the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Note that this does not mean, as the academic misrepresenters like our Professor seem to think, that the worker necessarily becomes worse off in absolute terms. Obviously workers now use washing machines, cars, etc., that they were never able to have the use of in the past. What it does mean is that capitalist society creates contradictions for the working class by throwing up the possibilities of ever-increasing amounts of wealth whilst restricting the workers’ access to that wealth.

By its nature this outmoded system of society creates wealth, that wealth in turn creates increased demands by the workers — and yet capitalism is totally incapable of satisfying them. And those recently-published figures show that not only in relative terms do the workers get poorer as capitalism “advances”, but that in some cases they become worse off in absolute terms as well.

Anyone want a copy of Samuelson ?

Ronnie Warrington

Voice From the Back: Hungry kids in the USA (2015)

The Voice From The Back column from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hungry kids in the USA

Poverty is usually associated with countries in Africa and Asia not the highly developed USA, but here are the facts. ‘about 16 million kids relied on the US government supplemental nutrition assistance program according to census bureau data released Wednesday, up from 15.6 million a year earlier’ (Huffington Post, 28 January). Capitalism is a world-wide system and it has world-wide problems.


Kobani carnage

‘The Kurdish forces’ unexpected victory in this north Syrian town marked a huge strategic and propaganda loss for Isis, which once seemed unstoppable in their rampage across the region’ (Observer, 1 February). There is no sense of triumph for these troops as Kobani is completely destroyed. Thousands massacred, all that remains is a bombed-out shell. In the yawning craters left by US air strikes buildings have vanished during months of heavy shelling. One side street is blocked by the bodies of Isis fighters, rotting where they fell – a pile of bones marked only by a foul smell. This is the inevitable product of capitalism’s rivalries.


A strange communism

According to the Hurun Global Rich List 2015 the world now has a record 2,089 billionaires – and for the first time, India has more of them than Britain or Russia. ‘The list charts every dollar billionaire currently living in the world. It shows an additional 222 billionaires were created last year, almost a third of whom were in China. The US still holds the crown for most mega-wealthy residents, at 537. But China conditions are not far behind with 430, having acquired 72 new billionaires in 2014’ (Daily Telegraph, 5 February). Somewhat comically the Chinese government still claims to be communist.


A fortune in stamps

Capitalism is a crazy system that can condemn working men and women and their families to starvation for the want of a few pounds while this madness occurs. ‘a few stamps which lay together in a cigar box in a dusty attic for a century are set to fetch £250,000 when next auctioned’ (Sunday Express, 8 February). Scraps of paper worth more than human existence. Crazy.


An obvious statement

It hardly needed a high-powered business survey to tell us the following. ‘Big UK firms face a ‘crisis of trust’ and the next government must prioritise better ethics, a lobby group has said. In a survey, the Forum of Private Business (FPB) found that over three-quarters of respondents think big firms put profits before ethical standards’ (BBC News, 9 February). Tax avoidance, treatment of suppliers, and late payment were all areas of concern we can easily understand that the poll of 2,000 people found, but business putting profits before ethics? Wow, what a surprise!


Crime and capitalism

TV programmes and the national press are fond of depicting the police as dealing successfully with the problem of crime, alas that is a complete fallacy. The advent of cheap heroin in Chicago has led to an increase in crime undreamt of by Al Capone and his contemporaries. ‘In the 1920s, 227 gangsters were said to have been killed in the city in the space of four years. Last year there were 424 murders in Chicago, most of them said to be gang-related’ (Times, 9 February), an increase of almost double in a quarter of the time. Some progress.


Profit and pollution

Details released at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science show that about eight million tonnes of plastic waste find their way into the world’s oceans each year. ‘The new study is said to be the best effort yet to quantify just how much of this debris is being dumped, blown or simply washed out to sea. Eight million tonnes is like covering an area 34 times the size of New York’s Manhattan Island to ankle depth’ (BBC News, 12 February). In the battle between profit and pollution there is a clear winner.


Desperate workers

According to the UN at least 300 migrants are feared to have drowned after attempting to cross the Mediterranean from North Africa this week in rough seas. ‘UNHCT official Vincent Cochetel said it was a ‘tragedy on an enormous scale’. Survivors brought to the Italian island of Lampedusa said they were forced to risk the bad weather on ill-equipped vessels by human traffickers in Libya’ (BBC News, 11 February). Desperate workers are prepared to take enormous risks just to get a job.

Senseless slaughter (2015)

Book Review from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Barroux, Line of Fire, Phoenix Yard Books, 2014.  Ivan Petrus, The Nieuport Gathering, Lannoo, 2011. Jacques Tardi,  It Was the War of the Trenches, Fantagraphics, 2011

Those interested in the literature of the First World War may have come across other ‘graphics’ (with such gruesome contents one can hardly use the word ‘comic’) similar to Charley’s War (reviewed in the August 2014 Socialist Standard). Most of these were originally French language. France, unlike the UK, still has a thriving ‘graphic’ scene. In contrast to Charley’s War or American works, in French language publications the artist and writer are identical and the material was not originally produced as weekly or monthly part works but as a single unit. There should be, therefore, a unity that English language ‘graphics’ lack.

In Michael Morpurgo’s introduction to the Barroux book he comments about the diarist from whose notes the work is derived: “He is the unknown soldier and these are his words. Read them and weep.” Unfortunately there is little to spark such a reaction. The carrot noses are an irritating novelty.

The Nieuport Gathering is the story of a pledge of three men of different nationalities to meet after war and how those three men met their deaths. The historical treatment of the shocking events combined with saccharine Spielburgesque sentimentality means, that like the other contemporary book, it does not engage.

The War of the Trenches, on the other hand, cannot but. Originally published in 1994, this is a work burns with feeling. The senseless slaughter was still then a live issue. Particularly vivid is the contrast between priestly class cant (“Joyful are those families whose blood flows for their country”) and the feelings of a ‘real’ soldier (“Bastards, bastards, miserable fucking bastards! Fuck the army! France can kiss my arse!”). This is a non-chronological sequence of episodes, impressionistic in the best sense of the word. One may disagree with author’s view of human nature (“men are sheep . . .  victims of their own docility”) but one cannot help but be impressed by this immaculately researched and beautifully illustrated book. Tardi concludes “We are all of us, still down here, down in the trenches”: Even now the vicious warmongers are inciting hatred, not of fellow Europeans but of fellow workers, stirring up the necessary background for their oil wars. War, then and now, is about profit for the ruling class . . . and loss for the working class.

Keith Scholey

Dreams and Nightmares (2015)

Book Review from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

David Goodhart: The British Dream: Successes and Failures of Post-War Immigration. Atlantic £9.99

This is a real mixed bag of a book, a curate’s egg as you might say. It combines some interesting observations about migration with some rather unconvincing arguments.

Goodhart points out that many of the outcomes of immigration to Britain were unplanned and not those envisaged; but this after all is what happens with much government legislation under capitalism. The Salman Rushdie affair of 1989, arising from the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, led to a boost in the authority of Muslim leaders in Britain, and ‘began to mark out Muslims as a special, and in some ways especially problematic, minority’. Satellite television has played an important role in slowing down the integration of immigrants into mainstream British culture, as it enabled people to watch news and soaps from ‘back home’ (Turkey, for instance) rather than the BBC.

Goodhart sees himself as a Labour-supporting ‘progressive’ but as one impressed by Conservative politician David Willetts’ claim that cultural diversity undermines the legitimacy of a universal welfare state. This just illustrates how little difference there is between Labour and Tory policies, and it is also part of the current attack on benefits for those at the bottom of the pile. He observes that forty percent of ethnic minority Britons (not all of whom are immigrants, of course) are poor but he has little idea of the capitalist framework within which migration and the struggle for jobs and housing occur. He refers quite often to ‘the elite’, but this seems to mean the political and media establishment rather than the capitalist class. Moreover, last year’s Sunday Times Rich List featured nine immigrant individuals or families in its top twelve, but the extent of inequality gets almost no mention here.

The two biggest sets of arrivals in the last decade are Poles and Somalis, neither of whom Goodhart regards as ‘model immigrants’ (which presumably would mean causing no problems and producing plenty of profits for the owners of industry). The Poles are mostly hard workers but (though no real evidence for this is provided) have helped to drive down wages for the unskilled. Moreover they ‘mainly have a guest worker mentality and many have no particular interest in joining British society’. As for Somalis, they are highly dependent on welfare, and as a group have retreated into themselves. So refusing to integrate (whatever that might mean exactly) is seen as a major problem. Perhaps, if they lived in grand mansions in some posh part of London and consequently had little contact with the average worker, that kind of non-integration would be acceptable.

Paul Bennett

Commercialising Water in Ireland (2015)

From the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

It’s a funny thing. The United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) contains a clause that says: ‘Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control’(Article 25). Yet this has never been given effect by the states concerned. Instead they tend to try and manage markets so that people can try to secure their standard of living by buying it. Also, curiously, although food is mentioned, water isn’t. The UDHR was adopted in 1948. It took until 2010 for the toothless United Nations to declare that water is a right too.

We can see how effective this change of heart has been, over in Ireland. Here, as the BBC notes: ‘Tap water in the Republic of Ireland until now has been free’. The government there, however, is intent on introducing water charges and water meters. As the info sheet from Irish Water explains: ‘Water is a valuable resource but it is expensive to deliver. It is costing €1.2 billion every year to run the public water system, with €1 billion of this funding coming from the Exchequer. This current funding model is no longer sustainable. In addition our infrastructure is badly in need of an overhaul’. So, water is plentiful in Ireland, but treating it costs effort and in capitalism, effort means money.

Seeking profits

Note, they do not explain why this current funding model is becoming unsustainable, or how charging households directly is more sustainable. They say that under the current system, those who pay more taxes are paying, pro-rata, more of the costs of the infrastructure and that this is unfair, and so those who have to count their pennies should be made to pay a wedge or lose their access to water. So much for the right to water in Ireland. Of course, this change is about commercialising water: ‘This transition will ensure that Ireland is well positioned to attract foreign and indigenous investment, creating real potential for new jobs within the country’. So, as a ‘semi-state’ company, it will be attracting investment and profits from the water that hitherto was in effect a necessity of life to which everybody had free access.

Of course, this is hardly uncontroversial, and there have been demonstrations tens of thousands strong on the streets of Dublin against the charges. It is doing significant damage to the Fine Gael/Labour coalition government’s popularity. There have also been reports of communities and activists blocking the installation of water meters, and sabotaging those that have been installed. Such actions are widespread, and being reported widely on social media. There are also widespread threats to boycott the charge and refuse to pay it.

Naturally, the government has tried to make concessions, giving people an uncharged allowance of 30,000 litres, and rebates in the form of a €100 water conservation grant to all households. Clearly, such concessions are designed to mitigate the transition to charging, whilst retaining the core principle that water has become a commercialised commodity in the hands of Irish Water.

There are formal campaigns at a national level as well. Right2Water is a campaign backed by Irish trade unions, and it was responsible for the main marches back in December 2014 that attracted 80,000 in Dublin marchers and around 200,000 overall across the country. As might be expected with such campaigns, the left parties, such as the Workers Party and the Communist Party are a formal part of the alliance.

Additionally, the Irish SWP has also been involved in promoting these protests, through their People Before Profit campaign, while the so-called Socialist Party (really another Trotskyist group) are engaging in their own boycott campaign. Whilst they are involved in the formal organisations, it seems clear that the real impetus on the ground is coming from the communities themselves, and all parties are running to keep up.

Stealing clothes

The far-left’s main success has been to win a by-election in Dublin South. The Anti-Austerity Alliance (which some accuse of being broadly controlled by the ‘Socialist Party’) won a by-election there in October, thanks largely to their opposition to the water charges.

This has been a strong test of the tactic of using popular discontent and campaigns for reforms in order to win support for anti-capitalist organisations. Whilst it may seem that winning a seat in parliament is a vindication of this tactic, it also illustrates its weakness. Sinn Fein had been expected to win the Dublin South seat, and were stung by the defeat. They are an opposition party in the Dáil, and one that is expected to gain significantly in the coming general election, feeding off discontent with the government and austerity.

They had previously been relatively quiet on the water charge issue, but their defeat stung them into action. They mobilised their supporters for the big protest marches, and ensured that Gerry Adams was given a significant platform. In effect, they walked up and stole the issue from the Trotskyists. This is a clear example of the way in which reforms to capitalism can be appropriated by any opposition party with sufficient freedom to manoeuvre, and the way in which they do not guarantee any advance in support for socialism in itself.

Of course, if the ‘Shinners’ win the next election, with their anti-austerity agenda, they are going to have to make good all their promises, and that means governing within capitalism. They will find that the requirement to attract funds for all activities they want the state to fund means in some sense either accommodating to the markets or international bodies. Another party will come along and capitalise on the discontent with their policies (and, again, the advantage lies with the established parties with networks of support, it is unlikely to be a swing to the left that will follow them).

Actual socialism would, of course, have to find the materials and effort to maintain a water infrastructure. Maybe all the time and effort that goes into protesting could be instead spent on real solutions. Certainly, the actual expense and effort of administering taxes and soliciting investment, collecting charges, taking people to court, and so on, could be done away with. Instead, we could, and should guarantee every man, woman and child on earth their right to clean water.

Pik Smeet

Homelessness and Health (2015)

From the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Homelessness isn’t just a housing issue. Struggling without a home usually also means struggling with poor health, and being unable to find enough support.

If asked what the three most important aspects of our lives are, most of us would say something like having reasonable health, somewhere comfortable to live and people we’re close to. But what happens if we have none of these? Poor health may rule out employment, which means having to rely on benefit payments, which limits what accommodation is affordable. And our health needs may mean that many types of housing are inaccessible or impractical. If we don’t have friends or family in a position to help, we would expect the health service, councils, and other organisations to provide a safety net. However, the support services industry has failed to provide for the complex needs of people with both health and housing problems. This is despite a definite relationship between homelessness and poor health. Research from St Mungo’s Broadway and Homeless Link found that 73 percent of homeless people have a physical health problem, and 80 percent have mental health issues (p.3). To what extent poor health is a cause or an effect of homelessness is hard to determine; for most homeless people, it’s probably both. What is clearer is that many people struggle to access often insufficient help from services lacking enough staff and resources.

The definition of homelessness includes people in many different situations. The most extreme, and visible, aspect of homelessness is sleeping rough on the streets. A conservative estimate of the number of rough sleepers in England was 2,414 in 2013. Many more people are in various types of temporary housing, including homeless hostels, bed-and-breakfast accommodation, and staying with friends or relatives. Ten years ago, Crisis estimated that there were 380,000 of these ‘hidden homeless’, which is more than the total population of Leicester (p.3).

Despite their varying circumstances, all homeless people will have an unsettled way of life which exacerbates other problems, especially health. The most obvious, and stark, way of summing up the additional health concerns affecting homeless people is by looking at mortality rates. The average age at death of a homeless person is 47 years old, compared to 77 for the wider population. Homeless women, on average, live until they’re only 43, whereas in the wider population, women tend to live longer than men (p.2, Homelessness: A Silent Killer, Crisis, 2011).

One reason why homeless peoples’ wellbeing suffers is because of difficulties with accessing healthcare. Although there are no upfront charges to use NHS services, and prescription fees are waived for people on a low income, the bureaucracy of the NHS makes it hard for homeless people to navigate the system. The usual way to access healthcare is to make an appointment with your GP, who can then make referrals to hospitals or clinics for particular treatment. To register with a GP, you need a stable address, which creates the first barrier for homeless people. Without easy access to a GP, medical conditions could go undiagnosed or untreated. As a result, when a homeless person’s health deteriorates, they are more likely to approach a hospital directly.

A&E

Homeless people attend Accident & Emergency, or Casualty, departments six times more often than the general population (p.2, Healthcare for the Homeless, Deloitte Centre For Health Solutions, 2012). The numbers of homeless people attending A&E has been flagged up in the context of unbearable pressures on hospitals. The efficiency of A&E departments is measured against the government target of 95 percent of patients being treated within four hours, lowered from 98 percent in 2010. This winter, the mainstream media reported on how many hospitals have failed to meet this target. At the start of 2015, only 86.7 percent of patients in England were seen within four hours (BBC News, 14/1/15), with worse figures in other parts of the UK. Eight hospitals declared ‘major incidents’ because demand on A&E units had increased to more than could be managed.

The four hour target will be prominent in the minds of all A&E staff, alongside the stress of the excessive workload. The constant pressure to process patients quickly means that underlying health problems could be ignored. And the shortage of hospital beds means that not enough people will be admitted to a ward. Consequently, homeless people, especially rough sleepers, often get discharged from A&E straight back into a situation unlikely to promote their recovery. So, when their health deteriorates again, they will probably return to hospital in the near future. People trapped in this cycle of needing to go back to A&E again and again are called ‘frequent flyers’. One in ten homeless people use A&E at least once a month (p.5, Healthcare for the Homeless, Deloitte Centre For Health Solutions, 2012), with some returning partly because they have nowhere else to go, and a hospital is somewhere warm, dry and reassuring.

Not all homeless people who come in to hospital fit this profile of repeat visitors not registered at a GP, though. Lots of people first become homeless at the same time that they enter hospital, usually as the result of a crisis. If someone has had a stroke or an amputation, then it may not be possible or practical for them to return to their previous home. Or, the trauma of being evicted may have pushed someone to attempt suicide.

On the ward

If a homeless person is admitted into hospital, they’re likely to stay there three times longer than the general population (p.2, Healthcare for the Homeless, Deloitte Centre For Health Solutions, 2012). This is partly because homeless people – especially the long-term homeless – often have multiple and complicated health problems, particularly liver damage, asthma, pneumonia, tuberculosis, epilepsy, diabetes, malnourishment, trench foot, wound infection and blood-borne viruses like hepatitis C, especially among intravenous drug users. Drugs and alcohol are often used as a coping strategy by homeless people, and heavy use can lead to cirrhosis of the liver, infections and dependency. This creates a vicious cycle where homelessness both leads to and is prolonged by addiction. 40 percent of homeless heavy alcohol users believe that a lack of stable housing is the main barrier to their recovery. Over a third of homeless people die due to alcohol or drug misuse (p.2, Homelessness: A Silent Killer, Crisis, 2011). The crisis of becoming homeless or struggling with homelessness as a way of life is also often linked with mental health problems. Someone with depression or schizophrenia is less likely to fit in to the expected routines which come with having a job and a ‘normal’ lifestyle. As a result, they are often pushed into homelessness, which will exacerbate their condition.

Another reason why homeless people remain in hospital longer than average is delays in discharging them. The aim is for a patient to leave hospital when they’re judged ‘medically fit’ to do so. They may still need longer to recover, but they can do this in the reassuringly familiar surroundings of their own home. This isn’t going to be possible if the patient is homeless. There have been many instances of homeless people being discharged from hospital in a taxi straight to a council office or a hostel, with no prior notice. This is particularly unsettling for the person, who has left the hospital without knowing whether they will get anywhere to stay, at a time when their health still makes them vulnerable. The practice of wards discharging homeless patients in this way has become less accepted in recent years. However, if a ward doesn’t discharge a patient because they don’t have anywhere suitable to go, then this creates the problem of ‘bed blocking’. When someone who is medically fit to leave hospital remains in a hospital bed, it prevents someone else from having it and creates additional expense.

Discharged where?

If a patient needs to be discharged to a care home, a nurse would refer them to a social worker to make the necessary arrangements. But only people with severely reduced capabilities qualify for this assistance. Presumably, if hospital social services departments and care homes had more staff and resources, they would be able to support more people, and the criteria for accessing them could be relaxed. As the situation is at the moment, many homeless people who would benefit from social services assistance aren’t eligible. Instead, it’s usually left to nurses to try and find accommodation to discharge a homeless person to. They may approach the local council, although the criteria for qualifying for statutory assistance excludes many single people except those judged extremely vulnerable. Even if a disabled homeless person is eligible for assistance under council criteria, then there still might not be anywhere appropriate for them. Temporary accommodation often means a placement in bed and breakfast accommodation, which is notoriously shabby and intimidating, and unsuitable for someone with poor mobility or little resilience. Council staff are aware that they are working within a frugal, inadequate system, and will try to compensate by interpreting their guidelines broadly and with some sympathy. So, temporary accommodation may be arranged in empty flats, care homes or hotels.

If there isn’t an arrangement with the council, or if the homeless patient doesn’t qualify for assistance from them, then the usual option would be direct access hostel accommodation. However, hostels can be almost as intimidating as bed and breakfasts, and are unlikely to be accessible for disabled people. They may have stairs, shared bathrooms and kitchens which could make them unsuitable. If someone can get into a hostel, then they would usually be able to stay there until they can find long-term housing, such as a flat rented from the council or a housing association. This could still take many months, but at least they would have the benefit of staff support.

If a homeless patient is in the country unofficially and has no recourse to public funds, councils and housing providers are very unlikely to help. Not being able to claim benefits or work legally will mean that they can’t afford rented accommodation, including hostels and B&Bs, and will be left destitute.

Generally, the worse someone’s health is, the harder it is for them to get suitable accommodation, especially at short notice. The situation is eased once someone turns 55, as this is the age that sheltered housing usually becomes available. But for younger people, unless they have a profoundly limiting disability which makes them eligible for statutory support, there is very little available. In other words, there is a lack of accommodation for people whose needs are too high for usual homeless provision but too low for social services involvement. The types of people that would be worst affected by this gap in services are those who have had strokes, amputations, suicide attempts, a diagnosis of schizophrenia, or drug and alcohol addiction. Most would also suffer from depression.

The bottom line

Costs accrued by bed blocking and the complex medical issues of homeless people mean that the average cost of a hospital stay for a homeless person is nearly five times higher than that for other people. More precisely, a homeless person will cost the NHS almost £1,900 per hospital stay on average, compared with £391 for the general population (p.6, Healthcare for the Homeless, Deloitte Centre For Health Solutions, 2012). The NHS is always being pushed to reduce its spending to cope with funding cuts. So, it was recognised that investing in more support for homeless patients would reduce costs in the long run. Looked at this way, the homeless are an economic problem, rather than people in need. In 2013, the government announced funding of £10 million to improve support for homeless people being discharged from English hospitals. This involved recruiting specialist staff to arrange discharges into suitable accommodation with ongoing support. This led to reductions in both bed-blocking and frequent flyers. But this wasn’t enough for funding to be extended, and many of these services are no longer running. The solution was only temporary.

To some extent, a society can be judged on how well it treats its most vulnerable people. The problem of homelessness only arises in a society where adequate housing is only available to those who can afford it and, as we’ve seen, people with poor health face additional barriers. These difficulties reflect wider problems in society:

1. The bureaucracy of the NHS, councils and support services, which makes it hard for some people to access help in a more planned way. This problem can’t be solved just by ‘cutting red tape’ or simplifying procedures. The NHS, councils and support services all have to operate in the same economic market as any other institution, so they have to be run like any other. This involves bureaucracy to ration and restrict who qualifies to use them.
2. The lack of resources in hospitals, whether a shortage of beds, nurses, mental health staff, social workers or support workers. Again, this problem can’t be solved within capitalism because the economy can never support enough funding to meet everyone’s needs. Money tends to go where it can be re-invested to create more wealth, and the NHS isn’t an attractive investment for the elite. The economic downturn and climate of government spending cuts only highlight an ongoing problem.
3. The lack of accommodation which is both suitable for and available to disabled people. This is part of the overall housing shortage. It costs more to build or adapt accommodation for people with poor mobility, and landlords may be reluctant to invest the extra money if they don’t think it will end up profitable. When houses are built to be sold or rented, rather than because people need them, then anyone without enough money will struggle.

All of these problems are built in to the way our society is structured. When society is driven by economic forces, rather than what people want and need, then some people inevitably suffer. Increased funding, new services, or reformed procedures may help a few people in the short-term, but they can’t address the causes of the problem.

Clive Hendry

Letters: Timeless Leninism? (2015)

Letters to the Editors from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Timeless Leninism?

Dear Editors

I think a careful reading of my document and of my biography of Tony Cliff would respond adequately to all your points (‘Where Leadership Leads’, February Socialist Standard). Indeed your author seems to have been rather careless in checking his facts – What is to be Done? was published in 1902 not 1903; much more seriously, your author simply disregards the arguments developed not only by Cliff, but by Hal Draper, Pierre Broué, Lars T Lih and many others about the place of What Is to be Done? in Lenin’s work, and whether it can be considered as a timeless statement of ‘Leninism’. Likewise the IS did not adopt the slate system until 1975, which rather undermines the claim that it is a central tenet of Leninism.  As for ‘what we’ve been saying for over 100 years’, that may well be true, but with what results? It is easy enough to point to the limited achievements of the Leninist left, but since your own achievements are equally thin on the ground, a more modest tone might be called for.

Ian Birchall

Reply:

We are aware that there is a school of historical revisionists who try to argue that Lenin was merely a left-wing Social Democrat. This may well be how he appeared when he participated in discussions within the Second International, but inside Russia he never gave up the idea that the revolution there would have to be led by a vanguard party of full-time revolutionaries organised on the lines he had outlined in his 1902 pamphlet and which had shocked other revolutionaries at the time such as Rosa Luxemburg and even Trotsky.

That he still held this view to the end can be seen from his other notorious pamphlet, Left-wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, that came out in 1920. In chapter II, headed ‘One of the Basic Prerequisites for the Success of the Bolsheviks’, he wrote repeatedly about ‘absolute centralisation’ and ‘iron discipline’ and attributed the Bolsheviks’ success to this. He still clearly thought in terms of a centralised and disciplined vanguard party ‘leading and attracting the backward masses.’ The chapter can be read on the internet here.

There is also the fact that, historically, all parties and groups descended from the Bolshevik Party under Lenin, Trotskyist as well as Stalinist, have been organised as vanguard parties along the lines of his 1902 pamphlet. Frankly, we cannot understand how anyone can seriously argue that Lenin did not advocate a centralised and highly disciplined party of full-time revolutionaries.–Editors.

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More on Syriza

Dear Editors

I agree with the article written on page 10 of February Socialist Standard about Syriza. But Syriza is not simply a coalition of various left and green, etc. There are also various splits from the socialist party (like the Labour in England) and more important inside Syriza the most solid ideologically group are  the one of the ex-eurocommunist party of Greece that gave also to Syriza the ideological guidelines in a eurocommunist way like the 70s. The thinktank of Syriza is called ‘Nikos Poulantzas’. If somebody is sect-maniac I can send you a list of the groups that consist Syriza!

Anyway I think the next thing to be analyzed is why Syriza collaborated with a populist party to rule the country, but this is strictly a Greek peculiarity…

Theodore Desponis, 

Greece

50 Years Ago: Churchill in Perspective (2015)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sufficient time has passed since Churchill’s funeral for popular emotions to wane—but not sufficient yet to make it likely that his words and deeds will be subjected to any analysis for popular consumption. No doubt historians in the future will discover reasons to doubt his greatness, but there is no need to await the passage of time.

In what way can he be considered great? His actions concerning the working class, his military prowess, his flair for foreign affairs?

It was he who called out the troops during the Dock Strike in 1911. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the government which put on the statute book the 1927 Trades Disputes Act, prohibiting strikes by one group of workers in sympathy with another, curtailing the right of picketing, and preventing the Civil Service unions affiliating to the T.U.C. (…)

In death, as in life, he served our rulers well. The pomp and ceremony of his funeral was a circus for the diversion of the working class. The entire pulpit—religious, political, press and radio—have been loud in his praise. Here was a man, they said, for workers to look up to, to recognise as a leader, and in so doing to pay homage to future leaders and to the principle of leadership.

Here perhaps we may rephrase Bevan’s comment, and apply it to all leaders—The failure of their actions is concealed by the majesty of their promises.

Where did Churchill lead the workers? Where will any leaders take them? Workers have only to reflect on their experiences—not for Churchill and his class, but for those they dominate, it is a life of blood, sweat, toil and tears.

And it will remain so, until the same workers who are now deluded into an hysterical hero worship of men like Churchill, learn that their interests lie in dispensing with leaders and setting up a social system in which all men stand equally.

(from article by K.K., Socialist Standard, March 1965)

Mixed Media: The Pajama Game (2015)

The Mixed Media Column from the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Pajama Game, a Broadway musical comedy was produced last year at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London’s West End directed by Richard Eyre. The musical originally opened in 1954 and is based on the 1953 novel 7½ Cents by Richard Bissell, who had worked as a manager in the family’s pajama factory in Dubuque, Ohio.

The musical is set at the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory in 1950s Mid-West America where the majority of the workers are women. In this period 35 percent of the American workforce belonged to a Union, and 29 percent of the workforce were women while in 1952 unemployment stood at only 3 percent (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics).

It is a story of Capital and Labor where the workers in the pajama factory demand a 7½ cents an hour pay-rise. Bissell described the shop floor: ‘the sewing machines are working out themes by Stravinsky: it’s warm and lively: the blonde table tops gleam; the needles are punching their way to glory, 4,500 stitches a minute. Telephones are ringing, the elevator gate is banging.’ (7½ Cents) In The Pajama Game the new factory Superintendent Sid Sorokin falls in love with his adversary, Union representative ‘Babe’ Williams (Joanna Riding). Babe is a proto-feminist heroine declaring ‘If I needed a man to look after me, I’d kill myself.’

Capital is represented by such numbers as Racing with the Clock where we see factory work and the insistence on ‘Time is Money’, and Think of the Time I Save by Hines, the Time and Motion manager. The 1950s saw Time and Motion studies introduced to industry based on a business efficiency technique combining the Time Study work of Frederick Winslow Taylor with the Motion Study work of Frank and Lillian Gilbreth. Taylor and his colleagues placed emphasis on the content of a fair day’s work, and sought to maximize productivity irrespective of the physiological cost to the worker. The capitalist boss Hasler speaks of ‘profit levels are perniciously low’, and refuses the workers’ demands saying ‘7½ cents will price us out of the market.’

The pajama workers are organised in the Amalgamated Shirt and Pajama Workers of America, and the antagonism between the workers and the bosses is evident in Babe’s words to Sid: ‘your the Superintendent and I’m the Grievance Committee’, and ‘Don’t listen to this man. He’s management.’ The Union say that ‘7½ cents an hour pay-rise is standard in the industry’ and that ‘business is doing well’ so the workers engage in a slow down, and ‘new ways of jamming things up’, it is 7½ cents or a strike. Then it is discovered that 7½ cents had been added to the operating costs six months previously, and Hasler had pocketed the difference.

The pajama workers win their 7½ cents per hour increase in wages and the climax of the musical is the number Seven and a half Cents: ‘Seven and a half cents doesn’t buy a hell of a lot, Seven and a half cents doesn’t mean a thing! But give it to me every hour, forty hours every week, and that’s enough for me to be living like a king! That’s enough for me to get an automatic washing machine, a year’s supply of gasoline, carpeting for the living room, a vacuum instead of a blasted broom, not to mention a forty inch television set! I’ll have myself a buying spree.’

In the 1950s the working class are bought off in capitalism with consumerism. John Bugas, Ford Motor Company boss coined the term ‘consumerism’ as a substitute for ‘capitalism’ to better describe the American economy in a 1955 speech: ‘The term ‘consumerism’ would pin the tag where it actually belongs – on Mr. Consumer, the real boss and beneficiary of the American system. It would pull the rug right out from under our unfriendly critics who have blasted away so long and loud at capitalism. Somehow, I just can’t picture them shouting: ‘Down with the consumers!’

Consumerism in capitalism was critiqued early on when economist Victor Lebow wrote in 1955 ‘Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate’ (Journal of Retailing), and in Vance Packard’s 1960 book The Waste Makers, ‘consumerism’ is changed from a positive word about consumer practices to a negative word meaning excessive materialism and waste.

For socialists, modern capitalism manufactures false desires with advertising, the glorification of accumulated capital, and the abstraction and reification of experiences of authentic life into commodities and passivity which become the concrete manufacture of alienation.

Steve Clayton

Iconoclasm (2015)

From the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Humanity has always been in danger of being seduced by the creations of its imagination. The gods and monsters that have haunted us still wield enormous power over many. The symbols and images that represent these creations are considered sacred and ‘iconic’ by millions throughout the world. In a sadly familiar ontology the symbols become the very incarnation of what they represent. Representations of gods, saints and prophets, in the original iconic meaning, share some of the power that is presumed to be owned by what is represented. A nation’s flag is thought, by many, to be a symbol of who and what they are. It is this political identification rather than being derived from any supernatural or innate cultural superiority, that is at the heart of iconographic power. An individual’s desire to identify with his family, clan, tribe or nation is an essentially social instinct which, due to any given cultural context, is directed at those whom they love and respect; or more problematically, those whom they fear. Authoritarian cultures thrive on the need of the isolated and alienated individual to identify with the powerful – even if, or possibly because, this power derives from the exploitation and subjugation of that individual.

When a group identifies with a symbol of political power, which in capitalism invariably implies a militaristic power, it is the climax of sometimes decades or even centuries of propaganda and can generate immense irrational emotional destructive energy. Historically it has been partly the manipulation of this negative energy that has made wars possible. It is, then, vitally important to challenge these pervasive icons and the irrational political narratives that they represent. But when indulging in such iconoclasm are we in danger of alienating those with whom we seek to communicate? And, in the light of recent murderous violence, are we willing to put ourselves in danger by doing so?

Although somewhat devalued by journalistic overkill it is still possible to identify something ‘iconic’ in the results of nearly every human endeavour. In the arts, architecture, technology, science etc there arises a consensus that recognises a cultural/historic significance to something, or indeed, someone who or which is created as a result. Sometimes these are intentional (propaganda) or unintentional (cult status) but all, at least for a time, capture the zeitgeist of a cultural moment. It doesn’t have to be of a contemporary nature as, for example, artists from the past can be ‘rediscovered’.

The political significance is always present but varies in its importance. The twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York were once icons of the US dominance of the global economic system but are now, as a result of the success of that iconic status, monuments to the terrifyingly potential murderous focus they presented to America’s enemies. ‘A building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by people. Alone, a symbol is meaningless, but with enough people, blowing up a building can change the world’. Some may recognise that quote from the film ‘V for Vendetta’. In that narrative the Houses of Parliament were destroyed without the killing of anyone within, which renders the act one of pure iconoclasm in contrast to 9/11 where those who died (the victims not the perpetrators) were transformed into martyrs. It may well have ’changed the world’ but not, most would argue, for the better. The original ’gunpowder plot’ which ’V’ seeks to recreate was, of course, just as murderous in its intent as was 9/11. But does iconoclasm have to be violent and destructive? Can the political deconstruction of an icon be ideologically constructive? In its reformulation perhaps the underlying meaning and source of its power can be revealed, thus exposing the irrational nature of political symbolism?

It is sometimes said that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ and an icon is testament to the power of the image. Undoubtedly any deconstruction of such images will anger and alienate some people but others might well be inspired by the unflinching moral and political analysis that can motivate such iconoclasm. Socialists seek to do just this, we do not destroy images but we hope to render them impotent through their subversion. We will never flinch from exposing wickedness, especially when it’s draped in a flag or motivated by religious symbols of intolerance. But what of socialist iconography?

Hammers and sickles

The Socialist Party has never been attached to symbolism; the stars and hammers and sickles of the Leftist totalitarian states have increased our distaste for such icons of ideological/nationalistic power. We do perhaps have a slightly romantic regard for the red flag and its historical association with the Paris Commune and the blood  shed in the class struggle by the workers during and since that time. If anyone was to subject it to contempt and iconoclasm a socialist’s response would typically be analytical in terms of the ideas represented by this essay rather than by any emotional distress; something that continues to perplex and frustrate our opponents. We continue to use the ’iconic’ images of Karl Marx in our publicity but this is mainly because those images gained their fame from their usage by his opponents (the left & right) independently of our use of them; it is his ideas, not his image that inspires us.

Someone once asked me, only half jokingly and because of my militant atheism, if I would be ready to swear an oath on a copy of Das Kapital instead of the bible. The idea struck me as amusing, as I’m sure it would have done to its writer, because at the very heart of that work is the essential need to subject everything you think you know and believe to a constant process of critique – a rather different approach than the one recommended by the contents of the Bible!

Anyone who doubts the continued irrational power of iconography only has to witness the candidates in the upcoming election draping themselves in the Union flag. This is the symbol of capitalist power and political ignorance in the UK; anyone kissing its hem to gain votes is either a hypocrite or a fool. Some years ago I was asked, in my capacity as a graphic designer, to design a symbol for the Socialist Party. Having produced many logos in the past I was surprised how difficult I found this commission. I realise now, in the light of this analysis, why I found it so difficult – in some ways socialism needs no symbols, just as it needs no leaders. Consciousness of the world as it really is makes transparent the once opaqueness of capitalist ideology and its symbols.

Socialism does not depend on marketing or advertising, because, like the revolution itself, it depends on the individuals’ struggle with their own cultural and political conditioning – we can only provide a catalyst for the human need for involvement in the community. We may use the globe as a universal symbol to distance ourselves from the prosaic and insular icons of our opponents, but only as a signpost for the individual to aid their personal struggle and then the inevitable involvement in the class struggle itself. Would we like to destroy the buildings of ’the mother of parliaments’ as in the climax of the film mentioned above? Perhaps we could preserve it as the museum it really is, where the mannequins (MPs) are replaced by waxworks. These will then serve much more purpose as icons of the past. A past, of course, where they were slavish puppets of their capitalist masters.

Wez.