Editorial: Anti-capitalist, pro-what? (2002)

Editorial from the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Calling yourself “anti-capitalist” is a bit like proclaiming yourself to be “anti-cancer”. We would all like to see an end to cancer, but the only way to bring that about is to understand how cancer works. In the long run, there isn't any point in just trying to treat the symptoms of the disease. Unless you cure the disease itself, the symptoms will keep on coming back.

The same logic applies to capitalism. People have been trying to reform capitalism for as long as it has existed. What have they achieved? A polluted planet, scarred by war and hunger, which is owned and controlled by the McMicrosoft Corporation. Why have things turned out this way? To understand this it is necessary to understand what capitalism is.

Under capitalism, the raw materials and tools which society needs in order to produce things are owned by a tiny minority. The actual work of producing things, however, is done by the vast majority - all those of us who have no choice but to work for our upkeep (hence the term working class). The owning class gets its profits by, very simply, paying the producers less than the value of the things they produce.

Once this basic fact is understood, it becomes quite easy to see why capitalism fails. It is based on profit - no wonder human needs never come first. Feeding the world, for example, wouldn't make a profit, so it doesn't happen. Such things are not accidental shortcomings of capitalism - they are an inevitable part of a social system based on profit for the few, rather than the needs of the many.

All the useful work of society is done by “ordinary” people who have to work for a living - the working class. Not only do we produce goods and services, we also carry out all the work of organisation and administration that capitalism requires. We run society from top to bottom, but we do not run it in our own interests. Instead, we run it in the interests of profit and of the tiny minority of owners who live off our labour. And we will have no alternative but to carry on doing so as long as the resources of society are owned and controlled not by us, but by the tiny few.

The alternative to this is a society in which the tools and materials of production, what we call the “means of production”, are owned by everyone in society. This does not mean state ownership, since that is merely another type of private ownership in which one group controls access to the means of production. In a system of common ownership everyone would have access to the means of production, and no one would be able to deny access to any other group or individual.

Production in such a society would be carried out voluntarily, in order to meet the needs of individuals and society as a whole, and would be the realisation of Marx's phrase “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”. This is what we mean by socialism.

In such a society, co-operation would be the only sensible way to proceed. Under capitalism, we are all obliged to pit ourselves against each other in a fierce competition for jobs, security and material possessions. This competition will be unnecessary in a world of free access, where everybody will benefit from everybody else's contribution towards society.

A society such as the one we advocate, based on co-operation and democracy, can only come about when the majority of people in society want it. It cannot be brought about by a conspiracy of intellectuals and imposed from above against the wishes of the majority. The idea that socialism could be brought about in this way - vanguardism - is not only nonsense in theory, it has also failed in practice, in Russia, China, Cuba and elsewhere. All that it has ever achieved is to transform one type of private ownership to another, giving state capitalism rather than ordinary capitalism. There is no half-way house between private ownership and common ownership and we in no way support schemes of nationalisation or state control of industry.

So, we do not agree with Leninists and trotskyites who base their theories on the claim that ordinary people cannot understand the arguments for socialism, and who want to manipulate the working class for their own ends. A vital aspect of the fight for socialism is arguing the case for socialism. We must do this whenever and wherever possible. We must counter the lies and distortions of the capitalist-run media, and expose the shortcomings of reformist and vanguardist organisations.

We say, fight the system root and branch. It's class against class. Understand the fact that capitalism can never work in the interests of the majority, and that socialism is the only system that can. Leave behind pleading for reforms and fight for revolution. Give up trying to mend the system and get rid of it.

Material World: The Troubled-Teens Business (2012)

The Material World column from the January 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the internet I keep running across the same image - the scowling face of a teenage boy - accompanied by the words: Fix Defiant ODD Children. It is an ad for a “Total Transformation Program” that will “empower” you to “stop defiance, backtalk and lying” and “regain control of your child, your family and your life”.

ODD, in case you’re wondering, is the “diagnosis” that psychiatrists now pin on disobedient youngsters: Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Until recently no one had ever heard of it.

Numerous programs to “fix” disobedient kids are on offer to American parents. Many are residential programs run by private entrepreneurs in “boot camps” and other locked facilities located both inside the US and outside (in Mexico, Jamaica, Costa Rica, etc.). Or you can send your child off on a gruelling “wilderness expedition” in the harsh desert landscape of the Southwest.

Force and deception are routinely used to trap children in these programs, which usually entail physical and/or emotional cruelty inflicted in the name of “tough love”.

Abuse and deprivation sometimes result in death – in particular, when complaints of pain and exhaustion are not believed. (See, for instance, nospank.net/boot.htm: Torturing Teens for Fun and Profit.) In many places, victims are made to attack and humiliate one another and extract “confessions” (often fabricated) in spectacles reminiscent of “struggle meetings” in Maoist China.

Maia Szalavitz, author of Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids (Riverhead Books, 2006), estimates that 10-20,000 teens are held in several hundred abusive programs at any one time. The programs are very lucrative business ventures, as fees are high while costs are kept low. Total profits are thought to be well over a billion dollars a year.

Why so desperate?

What makes people so desperate that they will abandon their own children to the “tough love” of strangers – and pay through the nose for the privilege? Parents are, of course, alarmed at the perils their children face – perils that even if exaggerated by sensationalist media reports are real enough. They worry especially that their children will start using street drugs. Many feel unable to cope with such problems and easily fall prey to any huckster who claims to have a solution. The decline in the economic position of working people over the last few decades has made it even harder for them to cope. Compensating for falling real wage rates by working longer hours or even  taking two jobs, parents are left with little time or energy to devote to bringing up their children.

Another factor is the strength of religious fundamentalism in large areas of the US. The “tough love” approach (which also includes corporal punishment, for example) is especially prevalent among fundamentalists. Many abusive programs call themselves Christian. Authoritarian relations within the family are an important part of the  fundamentalist creed. Preachers tell parents not to feel obliged to tolerate or respond to “backtalk” – in other words, to listen to and reason with their children.

Targeted by advertisers

But are children inherently more difficult to bring up nowadays? Doesn’t every generation imagine that their children are especially hard to understand and deal with? Be that as it may, there are good reasons for thinking that the task facing parents has become even more daunting. One significant change concerns advertising. In the past, except for items like sweets and chocolates, advertisers aimed only at adults. Now, as Juliet B. Schor describes in her book, Born to Buy (Scribner, 2004), children are a primary target of advertising and marketing campaigns. Exposure to these campaigns makes children anxious and obsessed with status. To acquire and maintain status they must nag their hard-pressed parents to buy them lots of expensive junk. Otherwise their peers will look down on them. Even apart from the anti-adult messages conveyed by some ads, this puts children and parents on a direct collision course. When some relatives of mine refused to buy something demanded by their son, he lay down on the floor of the store and screamed until they gave in – just to escape the embarrassing situation.

Attention deficit disorders

Then we should bear in mind the harm done to children’s mental capacities by long periods in front of a television. Research shows that the more hours of TV watched per day the more likely a child is to suffer from an attention deficit disorder. Video games have a similar destructive effect. How can a parent reason with a child who is unable to pay sustained attention?

This does not mean that TV and video games are solely responsible for attention deficit disorders. There is evidence that toxins in the environment such as organophosphates contribute to these disorders by disrupting thyroid hormones (Philip and Alice Shabecoff, Poisoned for Profit: How Toxins Are Making Our Children Chronically Ill, Chelsea Green Publishing 2010, pp. 92—95).

Profit at both ends

Many of the underlying causes of the difficulty of bringing up today’s youngsters – from the excessively long hours worked by their parents to TV advertising and environmental toxins – stem directly from the profit drive of capitalist business.

The same relentless and remorseless drive for profits underlies the fraudulent promises to “fix” ODD and other supposed mental disorders by means of dangerous drugs or abusive programs.

So, capitalists make huge profits at both ends, both in causing and in pretending to solve the problem. It is all good business for them.

And it all counts as “economic activity” for inclusion in the GDP statistics that prove how prosperous, productive and highly developed the country is.

Stefan

Film Review: Lincoln (2013)

Film Review from the March 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, written by Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner is based on Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns, and has another acting tour de force by Academy Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis as the 16th US president. Kushner's political thriller, set in the White House and Congress in Washington DC in January 1865, tells of Lincoln's struggle to have the 13th Amendment (abolishing slavery) to the US constitution passed in Congress before the defeat of the Confederate slave states in the Civil War. Its back room deals, politics and legalities are reminiscent of Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing.

Lincoln was a moderate, pragmatic abolitionist, he had written to Horace Greeley in 1862 of ‘my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free,’ and he is generally featured as the stern bearded president portrayed on the five-dollar bill and the imposing Lincoln Memorial. Day-Lewis gives Lincoln a soft-spoken, conversational tone and portrays him as a flesh and blood president who is politically cunning, charming, a loving husband and devoted father, an intellectual but also the folksy ‘prairie lawyer’ from Illinois. Marx believed Lincoln represented the idea that ‘ordinary people of good will can accomplish feats which only heroes could accomplish in the old world.’ Sally Field is outstanding as Mary Todd Lincoln especially in a heart bursting scene with Day-Lewis about the bereavement for their dead son.

Tommy Lee Jones gives a scene-stealing performance as Republican Party radical congressman Thaddeus Stevens who could be the ‘hero’ of the film. This contrasts with how he was portrayed in DW Griffith's 1915 paean to the Ku Klux Klan, The Birth of a Nation, where Stevens is denounced as a 'race traitor.' The American Civil War which left 800,000 dead was about slavery and Marx identified this in 1861 when he wrote ‘the South already declared that the continuance of slavery was no longer compatible with the continuance of the Union.’ Lincoln needed the help of radicals like Stevens to pass the 13th Amendment . This would ‘legalise’ and expand the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 which was dependent on Union military victory, and had stated ‘that all persons held as slaves’ within the Confederate States ‘are, and henceforward shall be free.’

Lincoln is probably Spielberg's best film, lacking his usual sentimentality and is the third of his films looking at the African-American experience, the others being the 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker's The Color Purple, and the 1997 story of the slave ship revolt Amistad. Lincoln directed by Spike Lee would be interesting. Lincoln as a period film is comparable to the 1993 The Age of Innocence by Martin Scorsese which portrayed the 'haute bourgeoisie' of 1870's New York City.

Lincoln played by Day-Lewis portrays ‘the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world’ which is how the International Working Men's Association (drafted by Marx) wrote to Lincoln in 1865.

Steve Clayton

Unfair shares (2011)

Book Review from the August 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Deadly Waters: Inside the Hidden World of Somalia’s Pirates.  By Jay Bahadur. (Profile £12.99.)

Somalia is often referred to as a ‘failed state’, one with no effective central authority. Instead there are a number of autonomous enclaves, owing little if any allegiance to the official capital, Mogadishu. One of these is Puntland in the north-east, which, with a long coastline on the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, has become a centre for piracy (over forty hijackings in 2008,  for instance, with ships, crew and cargo held for ransom of several million US dollars). 

Fishing (especially for lobsters) used to be one of the main occupations in Puntland, but from the 1990s fishing fleets from other countries (mainly China, Taiwan, South Korea) began using dragnets and so destroyed much of the marine life, leaving locals with no reliable source of income. The effect of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami aggravated the situation. Many Puntlanders retaliated by capturing the fishing vessels and keeping their catches, but then graduated to full-scale piracy.

Some pirates benefit far more financially than others. The ‘holders’, who guard the crew once a ship has been captured, earn about US$10 an hour, while those who carry out the attack get a fair bit more (but have a much greater chance of being killed or arrested). The controller of a pirate gang might receive a million dollars per hijacking, so they are in effect rather like capitalist bosses. 

And indeed the pirate industry has a number of similarities to other capitalist enterprises. There are investors who expect a return, both single investors and those who operate on a private equity model. As Bahadur says, “Piracy is not so much organized crime as it is a business, characterized by extremely efficient capital flows, low start-up costs, and few entry barriers.”

The Puntland pirates benefit from the area being not quite ungoverned but not completely stable either. There is no out-and-out civil war, unlike other parts of Somalia, but neither is there an effective coastguard operation. The Puntland government officially has a clampdown on piracy, but cannot afford to implement this properly. Instead, private security companies place staff on some ships, and international navy patrols are another deterrent. But there is an awful lot of ocean to cover, and a comprehensive naval force would cost far more than is paid out in ransoms.

Bahadur bases a lot of his discussion on interviews with pirates and members of Puntland’s government. His suggested solutions (such as enlarging the local prisons and stopping illegal fishing) can hardly be taken seriously, though. And it is, to say the least, unfortunate that he refers to Said Barre, who ruled Somalia in the 1970s and 80s, as a “Marxist dictator”. 

Paul Bennett

Death of a "hero." (1930)

From the January 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following actual incident is related by Robert Graves in his recent book "Goodbye to All That." The person referred to as the "Actor" was an officer—British.

At last Thomas's orderly appeared, saying, "Captain's orders, sir: A Company to move up to the front line." It seems that at that moment the storeman appeared with the rum. He was hugging the rum bottle, without rifle or equipment, red-faced and retching. He staggered up to the Actor and said, "There you are, sir, then fell on his face in the thick mud of a sump-pit at the junction of the trench and the siding. The stopper of the bottle flew out and what was left of the three gallons bubbled on the ground. The Actor said nothing. It was a crime deserving the death penalty. He put one foot on the storeman's neck, the other in the small of his back, and trod him into the mud. Then he gave the order, "Company, forward!" The Company went forward with a clatter of steel over the body, and that was the last heard of the storeman.

Football wars

From the July 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1969 rioting by fans during a World Cup match between Honduras and El Salvador appeared to trigger a four-day military conflict –the so-called football war. In fact, the Salvadoran generals merely used the rioting as a convenient occasion for launching a planned attack on Honduras. The main cause of tension was land disputes between Salvadoran migrants in Honduras and local farmers.

Nevertheless, competitive sports like football do have connections with war. The Duke of Wellington is supposed to have said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. The connections are especially striking where competing teams represent different nations and the memory of past wars is still fresh –or is artificially revived by nationalist politicians and publicists.

The Euro 2012 soccer finals, co-hosted by Poland and Ukraine, offer a veritable feast of national and racial hatred. When Russia played the Czech Republic in Lvov (western Ukraine) on June 8, Russian fans threw lighted fireworks and fought Ukrainian fans. When Russia played Poland in Warsaw on June 12, Russian fans clashed with Polish fans and police, leaving 15 injured. Fans from several East European countries have made black players on West European teams targets of racial abuse. And so it goes on. 

The East European media have played their part in fomenting hatred. For example, on the eve of the Russian-Polish match Polish newspapers took care to remind their readers of the ‘Miracle on the Vistula’–the victory of Polish arms in the war of 1920 with Bolshevik Russia.

When talking about ‘football hooliganism’ it is important to distinguish between spontaneous acts by excited fans and the much more serious violence orchestrated by the gangs or ‘firms’ that are attached to many football clubs. These firms are paramilitary organizations that supply commanders, provide training in armed and unarmed combat and conduct preliminary reconnaissance of unfamiliar terrain. They are often infiltrated or even controlled by ultra-nationalist political groups that recruit among fans.

On June 13, The Sun Today described a training and indoctrination camp set up on an abandoned Soviet military base near Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine by Patriot of Ukraine –the paramilitary auxiliary of the fascist Social-National Assembly (SNA). The SNA website (sna.in.ua) –under the motto ‘Strength! Order! Wellbeing!’–explains that Patriot of Ukraine is “the revolutionary avant-garde of the Ukrainian social-nationalist movement”and was established to “purge the nation”and guard the SNA.

The SNA is related to the All-Ukrainian Union ‘Freedom’ (Svoboda), which has captured control of large areas of western Ukraine, including Lvov and other cities, and is poised to enter the national parliament. Both have their origin in the old Social-National Party, but Svoboda has cultivated a more respectable image. You can find videos of their torchlight marches through Ukraine’s cities at http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/120329/ukraine-svoboda-nationalist-party-nazi-echoes-hitler-pt-2.

The ‘national identities’ inculcated through competitive sports impart a sense of meaning and importance. They offer an illusory escape from humdrum lives. For the ‘hooligans’ there is also the temporary emotional release and addictive adrenalin rush of acted-out aggression –cheaper and perhaps less risky than alternatives such as drugs. The identity and meaning are sham, because ordinary working people live much the same lives and face much the same problems everywhere. National identities have nothing to do with real life. But they do the ruling class a great service by blocking any alternative identity rooted in real life –an identity capable of uniting working people throughout the world in the fight for a life from which we will not feel the need to escape.

Stefan

Dictatorship or Democracy (1930)

Book Review from the January 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shaw's apple-cart upset

Most of our readers no doubt have heard or read of George Bernard Shaw. It is not Shaw's fault if they haven't. He has done his best to make himself known and has, on the whole, succeeded fairly well.

His combination of a shrewd wit with an equally shrewd ambition has enabled him to rise in a society wherein the superficial brilliance of diamonds is of greater esteem than the solid utility of the humbler foundation stone.

A master of paradox, he poses as the supreme contradiction, the wealthy Socialist. In the 'eighties he claimed to have superseded Marx by means of a kind of Irish stew of David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill and Stanley Jevons. (See "The Economic Basis of Socialism." Fabian Essays.) This was somewhat sadly burnt in the frying pan by his fellow-Capitalist, H. M. Hyndman, in "Economics of Socialism" (see chapter on the Final Futility of Final Utility), but such ambitious chefs as Shaw are undeterred by little accidents like that.

So, more recently, he has made a further hash of things entitled "The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism," in which juicy bits of real information are all but totally submerged in a sticky mess of rubbish. Shaw appears to have learned little about Socialism during the last forty years and that little he admittedly owes to Marx. He can give us an effective description of the effects of Capitalism and even indicate their underlying basis, but his attitude towards that basis is as unsound as ever. The blunders of the Third International give him something more to talk about and a chance to show off, by contrast, his supposed practical political sagacity. Upon examination, however, his sneers at the "Marxist fanatics" only turn out to be another case of the pot calling the kettle black. So far from Shaw's Socialism being a science he boldly avows it is as a religion, a curious blend of sentiment with childish fantasy and prophetic cocksureness.

Confronted with concrete issues Shaw asks not "how does it arise?" nor "what is the solution?" but "who is right?" Thus in an article in the Labour Monthly of October 15th 1921, he condemned the miners in Britain for striking, and praised the Soviet Government for shooting men for slacking and shirking at their work. Compulsory work, he held, was dictated by "the irresistible logic of facts and of real responsibility." (p. 312). His article was dated August 10th. The very next day the Soviet Government published their New Economic Policy. The attempt to introduce "Communism" from above by compulsion failed and the seer had written a day too soon; but he did not learn his lesson nor cease to worship with all the fervour of his vegetarian heart the brutal "directness" of Lenin, Mussolini and Pilsudski.

In his attempt to impress his wisdom upon the intelligent ladies of his class Shaw makes no secret of his "despair of democracy" and his faith in the "intellectuals" and in those capitalists who are in danger of immediate precipitation into the ranks of the workers through the development of Capitalism.

This group provides the finance and "brains" of the Labour Party; but Shaw is by no means optimistic concerning the ability of this party to hold together once it has acquired office. Recent events confirm his fears of the danger of splits fostered by the rival ambitions of different leaders and discontent among their working-class followers. For Shaw, "Socialism" is something to be imposed upon us with or without our consent by the Civil Service. It is, in other words, expert Capitalist government tending towards equality of income by means of taxation, nationalisation and an increase in insurance and pension schemes. Hence the support of the workers is desirable inasmuch as it may smooth the pathway of the administrators; but Shaw is uncomfortably conscious of an awkward fact—the class struggle.

While his Fabian politicians and permanent officials are trying to hold society together in order to keep their cushy jobs, the irreconcilables may refuse to be reconciled. The capitalists may lock-out or, worse still, the workers may strike; to which emergency Shaw's timid Fabianism answers in one word—"Dictatorship!" (pp. 379-380).

This magic phrase expresses in inverted form the hopeless confusion in which Shaw lands himself and his readers in his frantic endeavour to appear wise. Here are one or two examples.

Discussing the subsidy to the mine-owners in 1925 he says "The people who say subsidies are Socialistic  . . . are talking nonsense. They are frank exploitations of the taxpayer by bankrupt Capitalism" (p. 305).

Reverting to the same subject (on pp. 387,388) he tells us that "the capitalists themselves have established the Socialistic practice of subsidising private business."

In sections 57-62 (pp. 268-284) he tries to show that compensation (to be provided by taxation) is necessary to avoid "revolution." On page 372, however, we are told "It may quite possibly happen that even if the most perfect Fabian Acts of Parliament be passed . . . the capitalists may . . . try to prevent by force the execution of the Fabian acts. We should then have a state of civil war"; while on p. 376, he admits that "a political revolution may be necessary to break the power of the opponents of Socialism."

In the face of this it is difficult to avoid  drawing the obvious conclusion, namely. that Fabianism is an attempt to prolong "the power of the opponents of Socialism."

Further items of interest to members of the working-class who make no claim to Shaw's level of intelligence, are statements to the effect that the army and navy and the police force, as well as the Church of England, are "communistic institutions" (see pp. 13-15) because, forsooth, their services are available to rich and poor alike. Workers on strike will no doubt appreciate this.

On page 18 we are informed that "money is the most convenient thing in the world; we could not possibly do without it." Under Shaw's special brand of "Socialism" the whole paraphernalia of commodity-production, buying and selling, etc., would this continue to exist, thus implying the private property which he professes to get rid of.

Again, "Thoughtless people think a brickmaker more of a producer than a clergyman," is another sample of Shavian wit. What does a brickmaker produce? Under Capitalist society he produces profit for his kind exploiter and the function of the clergyman is to persuade him that he should love his exploiter as himself. Shaw's easy-going facetiousness as shown in the above instance is only typical of his incurably conceited notion that the so-called intelligentsia are as necessary as the workers to social life in the future.

Professional parsons and playwrights appear in his eyes as among the eternal necessities; but these brainy people recognise that in order to bluff the common herd and safeguard their own position they require the assistance of another special body of intellectuals tools, namely, the professional politicians, male and female. The more "advanced" of these tricksters will, no doubt, find in Shaw's writings most valuable aid in specious "arguments" and verbal jugglery. But members of the working-class requiring an understanding of their position will find them worse than useless. Nothing prevents intelligent political action by the workers more effectively than confusion, and, so far as this country is concerned, we have no hesitation in handing George Bernard Shaw the palm—as the master-confusionist.

Eric Boden

Running fast to stay still (1968)

From the June 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the occasion of the Centenary of the Trades Union Congress we publish this special survey of the trade union movement in Britain.

A Socialist member of the executive of one of the unions in the printing and paper industry comments on the trade union scene: 

The attitude of the unions today seems to mystify most people. In fact even Socialists find it difficult to keep up with the contradictory poses taken up by different trade union leaders. Some seem to be in favour of a form of wage freeze. Many fight even the suggestion of voluntary wage-vetting by the TUC. It is less of a mystery when you realise that some unions would be quite satisfied if they could get even a small rise like 3 per cent every year, while other unions reckon they can get a little more because of their extra bargaining strength. Only a few are concerned with refusing to surrender the principle of free and unrestricted bargaining over the price of the labour-power of the workers they represent.

What has changed over the past hundred years? Certainly not the class struggle between worker and owner. The TUC in its Economic Review for 1968 points out that it is a myth that some kind of wealth levelling has been going on: they have discovered what we have been saying all along, that ten per cent of society still own 90 per cent of property and receive each year over 25 per cent of personal income after tax.

There is one change, however, that has taken place since the war, and that is a change in attitudes resulting from a period of relatively full employment. Most employers have been forced by their economic need for labour power to take up a more liberal attitude to the workers and the institutions that represent their interests. The state has been influenced, too, to give more prestige to union "leaders", and these gentlemen are consulted before the government takes any decision that might affect the economy. We all know that the government does not take much notice of what they say, but the process of consultation goes on, and the unions do have their representatives on many government bodies. But this prestige may only be temporary and may vanish should the economic winds blow any chillier. At the moment however Woodcock can still gain the ear of the Prime Minister and trade union leaders can be found taking lunch with the representatives of big business.

This has affected unions at all levels. The leaders themselves are flattered. The rank and file's reaction is very mixed. Union members are not Socialists. In fact many are not even politically interested. Most of them think that their economic interests are tied up with those of their employers. For when the firm they work for is doing well their employer is more willing to pay out; and of course when trade is poor the reverse is true. This attitude reflects itself nationally; most union members are patriotic. Then, most do not go to union meetings or use their votes so that it is anybody's guess who is going to end up as the professional representative of the workers.

There are three distinct levels in union life: the professional, the active rank and file member and the card holder. All three levels seem to be in a different world. The professional is the "realist", doing a job of work for which he is reasonably well-paid. The active rank and file members do union work for poor pay (if any at all) and so need some other stimulus like ambition, or political ideology. Amongst this group will be found the "communist", the trotskyist and all the other mixed-up leftwingers. All of these latter for one reason or another seem to think that capitalism can be made to work against its own economic laws; that capitalists can be made to pay out wages beyond the profitability of the company and still not withdraw their capital; that the commodity labour-power can be separated from the economic laws governing commodities generally. All of them dig their own graves for it is difficult enough to get workers to fight for moderate demands. After a while most workers will find local leaders whose leadership is a little less demanding. Sometimes gains are made locally but this happens just as often in industries where the union representatives are less eager to sing their own praises. In fact in most cases it is circumstances rather than people that dictate the course of events. But, when all is said and done, capitalism still remains in the saddle.

This perhaps gives some logic to such things as a Royal Garden party to celebrate a hundred years of economic struggle against the capitalist class during which the forces of the state were always ranged against the workers. When the TUC leaders sit down to dine with the Queen at the Guildhall we may well wonder if they will be celebrating one hundred years of trade union struggle or just indulging their own ego (anybody who has been at one of these trade union celebration dinners will suspect the latter).

What of the future? This is the real issue for we could spend pages listing the faults of the unions today. This would not serve much purpose as these faults are those of the working class generally - lack of interest, economic ignorance, call it what you will. A union is not a Socialist organisation but has to struggle within the society of which it is an institution - capitalism. As soon as union membership starts to take a class attitude to social problems then the days of capitalism will numbered. Meanwhile Socialists, who reject capitalism, follow the same pattern as the others, struggling for a small improvement in conditions they know can be lost overnight. But to stop struggling would only make the worker worse off than he now is.

Socialists work for an improvement in working class understanding, and a consequent improvement in the quality of trade union membership. If this happens and the unions become less nationalistic, then they have many useful international contacts that could be used for the further spread of Socialist knowledge. Working against the Socialist today are those with a vested interest who prefer the workers to want leaders, those in fact who make a damn good living out of the fact that workers depend on leaders.

So, what will the working class be celebrating this year? The passing of a hundred years? If, so, a hundred years of what? We can read of the aspirations for a better world of the early union members. The Brotherhood of Man was a term many used. Compare this with the nationalistic attitude of most unions and you are left wondering just what the working class has learned in a hundred years of organised class struggle. Or you see the great institutions the workers have built up by trial and error, and realise that people who can organise like this will have no difficulty in organising Socialism.

Obituaries: Arthur George, Jack Hurley, Tony Mulheron (1982)

Obituaries from the April 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Arthur George
We are sad to report the death of Comrade Arthur George at the age of 69, just as he completed 50 years of uninterrupted membership of the Socialist Party. Arthur and his wife Phyllis joined the Party in the early thirties and became deeply involved in a host of propaganda activities. He was responsible for a number of his Post Office colleagues at Mount Pleasant joining the Party prior to 1937.

At the outbreak of World War II he was one of the members who became Conscientious Objectors, and had to leave his employment at the Post Office and work on the land. Being based in Hertfordshire he was able to live at home, and this made it possible for Arthur and Phyllis not only to maintain their work for the Party, but to increase it. Because of unsettled wartime conditions, much of the central administration was done from members' homes, and it is no exaggeration to say that Arthur's home at Golders Green was virtually the wartime Head Office of the SPGB.

During this period he was Central Branch secretary, and was largely responsible for the formation of Discussion Groups, then an innovation in the Party. On returning to the Post Office after the war, he became involved in the work of his Trade Union and was branch secretary for many years. He was also General Secretary of the Party. Later, when funds were at a low ebb, he became Party Funds Organiser, a job he carried out with remarkable success.

Our sympathy goes to Phyllis and her family whose sense of loss is shared by the members of the Party. We mourn a valued, loyal comrade and friend whose contribution to our deliberations and work will be sorely missed, but for whom there will always be a warm place in our memory.

Camden Branch

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Jack Hurley

It is with regret that we learn of the death of Jack Hurley at the age of 92. Comrade Hurley joined the Party in November 1931 and was active in the old Walthamstow and Leyton Branches. In his later working years shift work did not allow him to participate in Party activity as much as would have wished. On retirement he transferred to Central Branch and moved to Poole. Nevertheless his continued interest in the Party was demonstrated by his regular attendance, with his wife Pat, at Conference up to 1980. We extend our condolences to Comrade Hurley's wife and family in their bereavement.

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Tony Mulheron

Many members and sympathisers here and overseas will be saddened by the death of Tony Mulheron. He had been in ill-health for several years.

Tony joined the SPGB in 1935 and, except for a brief disagreement over the party's attitude to the Spanish Civil War, remained a member of the end of his life. A brilliant speaker and debater, his flamboyant style and wit made him a joy to listen to. Although he had only the minimum of formal education he acquired a thorough knowledge of Marxist theory, which he applied to wipe the floor with numerous left-wing opponents.

The old Workers' Open Forum in Glasgow was Tony's favourite stamping ground. This was run by a committee of working people who for many years organised regular political talks and debates and Tony was a frequent and popular lecturer there. Such was the impact he made on many minds over the years that even to this day members will be stopped in the streets of the city by complete strangers and asked about "Mulheron".

In a brief address at the cremation Comrade Donnelly reminded those present that even on such a sad occasion socialists have no time for religious superstition: to a materialist such as Tony was, the only heaven and hell are the ones people make for themselves on this earth. This is why Tony's life was devoted to spreading the case for socialism. Those of us who knew him, especially in Glasgow branch, will remember him with affection and admiration.

We offer our condolences to his wife, Mary, and the rest of his family.

Vic Vanni

Poor old capitalists (2012)

Book Review from the April 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pity the Billionaire. By Thomas Frank. Harvill Secker. £14.99.

If you have been paying attention to the Republican primaries, you have probably been shocked by the low level of political debate in the US. Personal attacks, vacuous appeals to religion and the use of ‘liberal’ as a swearword seem to be the common ground in speeches and debates. In the book under review, Thomas Frank looks at the politics and tactics of the ‘newest Right’, as he calls them.

The banking crisis and recession have led, not to calls for more government control of the economy, but for less regulation and the introduction of a genuine ‘free market’. Despite the Reagan and Bush regimes, it is claimed by many that ‘true conservatives’ have never really been in charge and the market has never had a proper chance to impose its discipline on the economy, as there has always been some state interference.

The Tea Party movement is the most obvious manifestation of these ideas. Interestingly, Frank argues that the Tea Party is essentially based on small-business owners who see government regulation as a matter of time-wasting interference in their activities, in contrast to the checks and balances that were (to some small degree) imposed on the big banks. The smaller capitalists tended to borrow money against their homes, so the collapse of house prices left them far less able to borrow and made them look on with envy at the bank bail-outs.

Along with this is an ideology of individual responsibility, the view that those who make it succeed by their own efforts and those who fail and suffer deserve to do so. Where once communities might have rallied round to help someone whose home was being repossessed, now many people are pleased to see a person losing a home that they should never have tried to buy in the first place.

Frank shows how the Democrats have made no serious attempt to respond to these illusions. And he makes a valid point that the real role of the state is far from what the conservatives imagine: ‘neither federal nor state governments have ever mounted a campaign to intern the free-market faithful or blacklist the hardworking proletarians in the Chicago futures pits. However, they have used force over the years to break up strikes, imprison labor organizers, keep minorities from voting, round up people of Japanese descent, and disrupt antiwar movements.’

Paul Bennett

In the kingdom of the blind (1995)

Book Review from the May 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour's Utopias: Bolshevism, Fabianism, Social Democracy by Peter Beilharz (Routledge, 1993.)

If one tenth of the energy used during the last hundred years to pursue reformist dead-ends had been committed to the cause of genuine socialism our movement would today number tens of thousands. The frustration for socialists has not been simply that workers have failed to listen to us, but that all too often they have been diverted towards those who have proclaimed the cause of socialism whilst committing themselves to no more than the radical re-organisation of capitalism. Intentionally or otherwise, this is the main message of Beilharz's book: the utopians (in the philosophically idealist sense of that term) have not been those of us seeking a classless, propertyless, moneyless world where all can have free access to available resources, but the schemers and dreamers of a reformed and sanitised profit system.

The introductory chapter is disappointing in its theoretical vacuity, but there are illuminating chapters on the statist utopias envisaged by both Fabians and Bolsheviks. From Webb's London Programme to Trotsky's Literature and Revolution a vast array of extravagant hopes have been aroused for what were essentially state-capitalist visions of the future. For an account of these this book is of worth. As an account of the Socialist Party within the history of socialist thought Beilharz follows a long tradition of scholarly precedent in completely ignoring Britain's oldest existing and most politically impressive workers' party. The Lenin Award for Historical One-Eyed Blindness is presumably in the post.

Steve Coleman

Editorial: Do they take us for fools? (1996)

Editorial from the April 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Politicians ask for our votes and promise to make things better but you know, from your own experience, that they can't. Every government running the present system will put profits before needs. This is a system of production for sale and profit, where goods and services are not produced mainly for need.

That's why so many of us, and those around us, are feeling discontented and deprived.

Problems abound: unemployment, mortgage repossessions and homelessness, destruction of the environment, cuts in the care services, escapism in a drug epidemic, families too poor to feed their kids properly . . . and a million other ghastly problems which are socially, not naturally caused.

All because the current social system puts profits before needs.

So what do we propose that a majority of men and women unite to put in place of this rotten system?

We call it Socialism, but don't be put off by the word. Look what it means:

• Common Ownership: no individuals or groups of individuals having property rights over the natural and industrial resources needed for production.
• Democratic control: everybody having an equal say in the way things are run including work, not just the limited and distorted political democracy we have today.
• Production for use: goods and services produced directly to meet people's needs, not for sale on a market or for profit.
• Free Access: all of us having access to what we require to satisfy our needs, not rationed as today by the size of our wage packet or giro cheque.

Of course, nothing will change unless a majority wants it to. Socialist change calls for understanding and democratic organisation. It means not being taken in by leaders, but following your own social interest.

All quiet on campus (1986)

From the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Good news if you missed the "Swinging Sixties": a revival is underway. However, while the music and fashions might be making a comeback, one of the most popular products of that period is not. The long haired, tee-shirt wearing, slogan chanting, banner waving student appears to be dead and buried.

Most undergraduates today are too  young to remember the Sixties, when a wave of student upheavals swept across America and Europe. In Berkeley, Berlin, Madrid and Paris, young men and women turned against the very institutions that had nurtured them. The student leader, Cohn-Bendit, mimicking Marx, wrote: "A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of student revolt." In Britain, too, higher education became a battleground with anti-war demonstrations, marches, sit-downs, sit-ins, rent strikes, days of action and grant campaigns. Hornsey College of Art was occupied and declared a "Student's Republic". Inevitably, there were casualties as students clashed with the police. At the London School of Economics, a porter died of a heart attack when students occupied the building. Today the slogan, "Essex, Oxford, Kent, Unite. One Struggle One Fight" must sound rather strange to students.

If the Sixties were characterised by "student unrest", the late seventies and eighties have seen a general decline in protest. This is not surprising given the bleak climate of cuts, competition, and record levels of unemployment. Much student energy today is taken up with grades, jobs and overdrafts, which leads to a number of problems. In an article called "When Finals are the Final Straw". (New Society, 30 June 1983), the writer states:

. . . all the counsellors I spoke to agreed that the economic climate is greatly increasing the stress on students. Their grants are worth less than ever, and many have overdrafts. Academic staff, facing redundancy themselves cannot always give them support they need. And they risk not finding a job after they've finally achieved that degree.

Two recent government papers have angered students into organising limited demonstrations at Southampton, Portsmouth and Oxford. Firstly, the Green Paper, Higher Education into the 1990s, described by P. Flather (New Statesman, 11 October 1985 "The Sack of Academe") as "perhaps the greatest peace time threat to higher education". This paper will not surprise socialists as it sets out in plain terms the purpose of education under capitalism - to meet the needs of the economy. Vocationalism is the new "in" word. Subjects in the arts and social sciences which do not directly contribute to the economy are to be severely cut and the cuts presently hitting higher education are to be extended. Libraries are closed in the evening, research is shelved and universities are losing one in seven of their staff. Secondly, the White Paper on Social Security proposes proposes to exclude students from claiming Supplementary and Unemployment Benefits in the short vacations and intends to withdraw the right of students to claim Housing Benefit if living in halls of residence. The National Union of Students believe that the combined cuts will cost individual students up to £1,100 a year.

There have been mixed fortunes for those organisations involved in student politics. Left Wing groups have been on the decline for several years now; their heyday was in the late Sixties when students were "in struggle" - demonstrating against the Vietnam war and campaigning against bad housing, social services cuts, rent increases, the wage freeze, unemployment and racist government policies.

This provided groups like the International Socialists (now the SWP) and the Workers' Revolutionary Party with the opportunity to recruit concerned students. The activity of these groups is at best silly and at worst undemocratic and anti-socialist. The fact that marching up and down and chanting reformist slogans is considered "exciting", says a great deal about college life. Far more serious is the undemocratic behaviour of groups like the SWP who, acting as a self-appointed vanguard, decide which views can and cannot be heard by other students. When the SWP organised a mass picket to prevent Patrick Harrington entering North London Poly, not only were they suppressing free speech in the name of "socialism", but they were also giving the dwindling NF valuable publicity. Similarly, in January, the SWP broke up a meeting at Southampton University because it was being addressed by the Right Wing MP, Harvey Proctor. Fascist ideas need to be exposed and defeated, along with all anti-working class ideas, but this is not achieved by disconnecting the microphone.

If the new economic climate in higher education has led to the general decline of the Left, the Right have fared much better. Indeed, the balance of intellectual and academic thought has shifted as professors, departments and students have realigned themselves with the new Right. In the past, Keynes dominated university economics; today, free market economics is taught in the departments of York, Bath, Exeter, Liverpool, Southampton and the LSE and the so-called "Libertarians" have become increasingly active on campus. They even have their very own guru. Professor Roger Scruton, a sort of intellectual Rambo whose task in life is to remove Left Wing academics from their privileged position. He sets about this task in his recently published book, Thinkers of the New Left. Conservative student organisations are also flourishing. The Federation of Conservative Students (FCS) which is dominated by a libertarian faction, made the headlines last April when its members were involved in acts of hooliganism during their conference at Loughborough University. Then then Chairman of the Conservative Party, John Gummer, set up an investigation into the FCS, but the intended crackdown never came. David Rose, writing in the Guardian, (15 November 1985) comments:

The grip of the hard Right on the Federation of Conservative Students was strengthened last night by the internal party inquiry originally supposed to curb it.

This change of style among Conservative  students was commented on by the Tory MP, Michael Brown, in the Guardian (31 May 1985):

Traditionally, in the 1960s, the FCS was no more than a mouthpiece for the Party to disseminate party literature for that small band of short back and sides, sports jacket and tie brigade.

The tactics and new found enthusiasm of the Right mirrors the Left. Some members of the FCS wear provocative tee-shirts which read, "Hang Nelson Mandela". Opponents' meetings are boycotted or disrupted. Slogans are chanted, such as "The Right united will never be defeated!" The ideas of the libertarians include extreme market economics, leading some members to advocate the legalisation of heroin and paedophilia, loans for the unemployed and students, and no doubt the right of prisoners to buy their own cells. They are generally pro-South Africa and anti-Soviet. At the annual societies' fair at Cambridge, a poster of the Cambridge University Right read, "Apartheid OK, Apartheid UK". The FCS also supports Ulster Unionism and is firmly opposed to the recent Anglo-Irish Agreement; indeed, some of its members are said to hold Loyalist and Protestant views which make Ian Paisley look positively middle-of-the-road.

Students, like all other members of the working class, need to organise themselves within their own organisations to protect their position within capitalism. Although the protestors of the sixties have grown old and, for the most part, disillusioned, the problems are still with us in one form or another. The only effective protest against them is the struggle to abolish capitalism itself.

Brian Rubin

Cooking the Books: Ed, Ralph and Karl (2013)

The Cooking the Books column from the November 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

One result of the nasty attack by the Daily Mail (1 October) on Ed Miliband’s father, Ralph, has been a revival of discussion about Marx and Marxism. They described him a ‘lifelong, unreconstructed Marxist who craved a workers’ revolution’ Absurdly, they also claimed that

‘his son’s own Marxist values can be seen all too clearly in his plans for state seizures of private land held by builders and for fixing energy prices by government diktat.’

But there is nothing Marxist or socialist about taxing land values or price controls. The first was a 19th century radical Liberal demand aimed at weakening the landed aristocracy which then still stood in the way of complete capitalist class control of the state, and all sorts of governments have resorted to price controls.

But to what extent could Ralph Miliband be described as a ‘Marxist’? He certainly considered himself to be one and was well versed in Marx’s writings. He was the author of two books which influenced leftwing thinking in Britain, Parliamentary Socialism (1961) and The State in Capitalist Society (1969). In the first he dealt with what he regarded as the Labour Party’s obsession with trying to move beyond capitalism step by step by constitutional, parliamentary means and explained how and why this failed. The second described how the top positions in the state in Britain were occupied by people from the same social background – families rich enough to send their children to the top ‘public’ schools – who controlled it via an Old Boy network whichever party had a majority in parliament.

Both books were used by the Trotskyist groups which mushroomed in the 1970s to argue that there was ‘no parliamentary road’ and that violent revolution was therefore the only way. Actually, this was not Ralph Miliband’s own position as he held the more reasonable view that the road to socialism could and should involve both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary action.

But what did he mean by socialism? The Daily Mail wrote:

‘Ralph’s Marxism was uncompromising. ‘We want this party to state that it stands unequivocally behind the social ownership and control of the means of production, distribution and exchange.’ He declared to the 1955 Labour Party conference as the delegate from Hampstead.’

Here he was defending the Labour Party’s ultimate aim (on paper) as set out in its then Clause Four. But there was nothing Marxist about Clause Four. It had been drafted by the Fabian Sidney Webb and committed the Labour Party to achieving, by gradual and constitutional means, the sort of state capitalism that the Fabians favoured.

We have always pointed out that the common ownership of ‘the means of exchange’ does not make sense. If there is common ownership of the means of production and distribution then there is no ‘exchange’ and so no ‘means of exchange’ (banks, etc.). The concept of ‘common ownership’ of banks only makes sense if common ownership is equated with state ownership. Which is what Ralph Miliband did.

This was confirmed by his attitude to Russia. He didn’t regard it as socialist, but he did regard it as non-capitalist on the grounds that it was based on state ownership rather than private ownership. For him, all that was required for it to become socialist was for its political structure to be made democratic. So, his ‘socialism’ was full-scale state capitalism plus political democracy, a combination that has proved to be illusory.

But state ownership is just another form of class ownership. That was Marx’s view too. Which makes Ralph Miliband an odd sort of Marxist, but at least he understood more about Marx than his son.

Hopping on moving cars (1995)

Book Review from the May 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dialectical Investigations by Bertell Ollman (Routledge, 1993)

Bertell Ollman, an American Marxist theorist, whose earlier works on Marx's theory of alienation, and the relationship between social and sexual liberation (as well as his invention of the fascinating board game "Class Struggle") have marked him out as one of the finest radical scholars in North America, has written a book which makes the concept of dialectical thinking both accessible and inspiring. Consider this opening to chapter 1 on "The Meaning of Dialectics" as an illustration of both of these charcteristics:

"Have you ever tried to hop on a car while it was still moving? How different was it from entering a car that was stationary? Would you have been able to get into the moving car if you were blindfolded? Would you have been able to do it if you were not only blindfolded but didn't know in which direction it was moving or even how fast it was moving?"

Society is just such a vehicle, says Ollman, and there is no point in trying to understand or change it without a method of thinking about where we are and where we're going.

Much of the book is academically challenging and points here and there could be challenged, but first read the book. Chapter 9 on "How To Study Class Consciousness" is a worthwhile essay in itself. 

Incidentally, Ollman's use of dialectical thought is not a mere paper commitment. Some time ago the present writer attended a conference in Chicago at which the fad amongst left-wing theorists was the oxymoronic "market socialism". The few of us who challenged this political absurdity (now the official credo of Blair's Tory Reserve Team, of course) were dismissed as anachronistically "unreconstructed" Marxists. Speaking on a panel with Ollman it was good to see the latter make a far better job than the present writer of explaining with striking dialectical force the utter incompatibility between socialist freedom and the continuation of any form of the money relationship. Anyone put off for life from the term "dialectics" after reading some of those atrociously devious defences of the indefensible by old-time Leninist dialecticians (practitioners of what one old comrade called "diabolical materialism") should read Ollman and restore their confidence in the historical highway code.

Steve Coleman